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Lucerys Velaryon has been slain by the hand of Aemond Targaryen.
There is more to the message, words like Vhagar and missing and presumed accident , but none seem to matter quite as much as those first eleven. Resisting the urge to close his fist around the damning parchment, Cregan instead turns his gaze to Jacaerys. Something in his expression causes the prince’s own to sharpen, his brow furrowing as Cregan hesitates.
“Is it from my mother?” Jacaerys pushes, eyes flickering down to the parchment like he can glean its contents through the wrong side of the paper.
“The King Consort,” Cregan corrects — a matter of utter insignificance, and an inconsiderate attempt at stalling the tragic news. “Your brother Lucerys is dead.”
There is a long, horrible moment wherein the only movement is the falling snow around them and the barely perceptible twitch of Jacaerys' lips. Nobody could ever think Cregan cruel enough nor humorous enough to jest of such a thing, yet clear as day he can see that painful sliver of a second between Jacaery’s ears hearing the words and his heart sensing the truth of them. The grief that tears across the prince’s expression is so sudden, so raw, that Cregan has to look away.
“How.”
“Your uncle Aemond,” Cregan says to the snowy expanse of sky. “Their dragons fought over Shipbreaker Bay.”
“Fought,” Jacaerys spits. “That is no fight. Vhagar is to Arrax as a mountain to an anthill. He—” Words failing him, Jacaerys spins on his heel, and Cregan turns back to his friend just soon enough to catch him by the arm.
“Where are you going?”
He expects sorrow or guilt — he is not prepared for the pure vitriol in Jacaery’s dark eyes, all of it aimed at him . “Unhand me, Lord Stark. That is an order.”
As Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, Cregan is bound to the will of the realm’s prince. Disobedience is treason, yet he does not loosen his grip. “You cannot leave.” Jacaerys is no weakling, the lean muscles of his arm tensing as he twists in Cregan’s grip, but northern strength is not easily overcome. Holding Jacaerys near enough that even the howling winds will not snatch his words away, Cregan meets his eyes and warns, “Winter storms approach, my prince, and the Last Hearth is much too far.”
“I am needed at Dragonstone, I’m afraid, but we may continue any future negotiations by raven if there are still matters you wish to discuss.” Jacaery’s words are level, diplomatic and dismissively polite, the effect ruined somewhat by the way his lashes have frozen into clumps from unshed tears. He is shaking — from cold or emotion, Cregan cannot tell, though it is clear he is holding himself together with every last scrap of dignity left to him.
“Even Vermax cannot outpace a northern snow.”
“I must go—”
“Do not be foolish,” Cregan cuts in, unyielding as the ice beneath their feet. “Nothing good will come of your death, for your mother or the realm.” Grief knows Cregan well, cheerfully and ceaselessly dogging his every step, but Cregan does not know Grief in quite the same manner. He has never turned to face his ever-trailing shadow, never tried to look it fully in the face, and he wonders if now he pays penance for such reluctance — he cannot escape the way Jacaery’s dark doe eyes blink up at him from a hand’s width away, filled with a wild, aching desperation that tugs at something long-frozen in Cregan’s chest. “You long to go home, I understand that, but if the gods are good and the storm passes us quickly, you may fly as early as first light.”
Every word seems to chip at Jacaerys’ carefully constructed mask, and Cregan watches anger give way to frustration, which in turn caves into something far more delicate. Jacaerys straightens up, tugs his arm from Cregan’s lax grip, and says in a wobbly voice, “First blood goes to my drunkard uncle, I suppose. War often felt inevitable, but Mother always hoped—” He breaks off again, turning his bleak gaze to an equally bleak winter sky.
Never one for words of comfort, Cregan instead finds himself gathering Jacaerys into his arms. Some old, buried instinct worms its way up through months of loneliness and Cregan listens to it, threading a hand in Jacaerys’ unruly curls and cradling his head to his shoulder as he once did Arra’s. Jacaery’s own grip tightens in Cregan’s furs as somewhere in the shadow of the Wall, Vermax’s sorrowful cry echoes his rider’s heart.
The Black Brothers put them up in an old barrack near the kitchens. It is hardly a lodging fit for a prince, but the cook fires keep it warmer than much of Castle Black and two of the rickety beds have been made up with clean furs.
Since their embrace atop the wall, Jacaerys has been quiet. Cregan gave him what space he could to mourn, eating with the men while Jacaerys retired early, but eventually the hour grows late and he has no choice but to return to their room. The lantern light that filters under the door tells him Jacaerys is awake, and when the door creaks open Cregan finds him sitting up in bed with the parchment held open in shaking hands. Reading it over and over, no doubt, searching for a hint of his living brother in the inky scrawl of his name.
“Cregan,” he greets softly, so different from the man who had demanded unhand me just hours ago.
“Jace,” Cregan returns. He is not so fond of the nickname, preferring the elegant way Jacaerys rolls off the tongue even through his own rough northern brogue, but it brings a smile to the prince’s grief-worn face. No more words are exchanged as Cregan undresses, propping Ice in a dubious place of honor by the bedside before Cregan’s outer-clothes join Jacaerys’ neat pile atop one of the unmade beds. Shedding the leather and furs and wool leaves him feeling vulnerable, especially so when he turns, clad in only thick cotton shirt and trousers, to find Jacaery’s eyes on him.
To his credit, he does not look abashed at having been caught. He returns Cregan’s level look with a ghost of a smile. “All this time and I have hardly seen you without your armor, Lord Stark. I almost forget you are just as imposing in your underclothes.”
The frank assessment sends an uncharacteristic flush marching up the back of Cregan’s neck. “Not all of us come from such delicate southern stock,” he jests, bending to unlace his boots, “and not all of us can have dragons as protectors.” The moment the words are spoken, he regrets them. A dragon could not save Lucerys, not against the might of a beast like Vhagar.
Jacaerys takes the humor in stride but does not offer a response, his heavy gaze returning to the parchment in his hands. Suspecting a desire for privacy, Cregan lays with his back to the prince, though sleep refuses to come even long after Jacaerys has extinguished the lantern. The dark is total but in the utter absence of light, Cregan’s ears grow sharper. He can hear every restless rustle from Jacaerys, the distant shouts of the changing night guard… even the Wall itself, the groan and crack of thousands of tons of ice, and it is into this quiet cacophony that Jacaerys finally speaks. “Cregan?”
Not asleep but not quite awake either, the best answer he can summon is a questioning grunt.
“Would you…” Jacaerys trails off and Cregan hears the creak of his wooden bed frame. “Would you tell me of Errys?”
Cregan’s curiosity sours at the mention of his brother, curdling into something that sits uncomfortably in his stomach. “What is there to tell?” he asks the wall, grateful Jacaerys cannot see the tension that snaps through his shoulders.
“Nothing, if you do not wish,” Jacaerys says in a rush, “but you have been a great comfort to me today. I only thought to return the favor.”
The gesture is certainly kind, but Cregan has no desire to confront his ghosts. Not now, and certainly not here. “He died of illness. In the long, cold northern winters, I fear that is a common enough fate.”
“I am sorry,” Jacaerys says, “for you as well as him,” and it is so outright, so sincere, that Cregan’s heart lurches. Nobody has spoken to him in such a manner since Arra’s death.
“I am sorry for your brother.” Cregan wishes for more to offer than blunt condolences — words of reassurance, perhaps — but that has never been his way.
“Thank you.” Jacaerys’ reply cracks at the edges, full of more emotion than it can contain. As though reading Cregan’s mind, he adds, "Simple words always mean much and more than empty riddles.”
Cregan is unsure when sleep finds him, but he knows when he wakes that it has been hours, at least. The bed beside his is empty.
Gods be good.
A quick touch to the cold furs tells Cregan it has been some time since Jacaerys arose, and his clothes are gone too, though that means little when the alternative would be departing Castle Black in only his smallclothes. Urgency is too great for Cregan to waste time wondering how he, a notoriously fickle sleeper, slumbered through Jacaerys’ departure. He dresses quickly, strapping Ice into its place across his back even as he strides out the door.
It is early yet, dawn barely beginning her approach, and he encounters no Black Brothers on his way to the abandoned stable where Vermax is housed. Too small for the Watch’s use and largely left to decay, the structure is still sound and spacious enough for a dragon of seven-and-ten: had the queen’s mighty Syrax been visiting, she would have been full out of luck for shelter.
Snow falls still, heavy and wet in the relative warmth of autumn, and its whiteness brightens Cregan’s surroundings. The stable is dim in comparison, but not so dark that he cannot make out Vermax’s looming shape at the far end.
So the prince hasn’t flown south like Cregan feared. He lets out a long, relieved exhale, taking a moment to shake the snow from his hair before he cautiously treads closer to the beast. According to his rider, Vermax is particularly fond of Cregan, though he considers their bond to be a mutual, healthy respect at best. Now, any amiability dissipates into the air along with the fiery warning huff Vermax issues when Cregan takes one step too close. Strange .
With no desire to become a glorified piece of charcoal, Cregan stops where he is, holding up a placating hand. “Message received,” he says, entirely unsure how much the beast truly understands. “I am only looking for your rider.”
A long, slow blink.
“Jacaerys?” he hazards, remembering that dragons are commanded in High Valyrian. Perhaps a Valyrian name will pique some deep-seated instinct. Vermax’s crimson crests ripple in apparent recognition, though he still does not move from his sleepy coil. Shuffling one cautious step forward, Cregan immediately cedes the ground he gained when bright curls of flame eke out between the dragon’s crooked teeth. Northern weather purportedly does no favors for his temper, but Cregan had been raised on stories of Visenya’s Vhagar and had previously found even an irritated Vermax to be unexpectedly docile. His behavior now feels out of sorts, like he has been picking up on his rider’s…
Ah.
“He’s here, is he not?”
Cregan gets the answer he anticipates…that is to say, none. Vermax only blinks once more, impassive but watchful as Cregan removes his right glove and tosses it before the beast. Reluctantly curious, Vermax stretches out his long neck and sniffs at the leather, at the scent that clings there — Jacaerys. Cregan’s left glove, the one that had been threaded through the prince’s curls just hours ago, is held out to the reticent dragon as well. Lulled by familiar scents, Vermax allows Cregan close enough to lay a hand on his scaled cheek, whereupon he remembers his earlier fondness (or perhaps, through that enigmatic bond they possess, his rider’s fondness) and shifts one membranous wing far enough that Cregan can see Jacaerys beneath. The Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne, curled up fast asleep in a bed of old hay.
“Cantankerous lizard,” Cregan grumbles, sounding more amused than he means to. Reassured that the heir to the throne has not disappeared under his watch, he intends to leave him to rest, though before he can do so Jacaerys is stirring, pushing himself into a sitting position as he squints up at Cregan.
“Are you in need of something?”
Just you he almost says, before realizing how it might sound. “Not at the moment. Though I would bade you stay for a few hours more while the last of the storm clears.”
Nudging Vermax’s wing aside, Jacaerys stands, looking somewhat abashed as he brushes hay from his cloak. “I am sorry if I gave you a fright, but sleep eluded me. I hoped perhaps for a familiar comfort…” Trailing off, he looks over at his dragon affectionately. When he looks back at Cregan, the northman notes the defeated slope of his shoulders and dips his chin in a nod of silent understanding.
“Grief must be hard to suffer in such a foreign place, but you’ll soon be able to find solace in the familiar.”
Jacaerys steps over the coil of Vermax’s tail and right into Cregan’s space, jutting out his chin as he looks up through the inches of height separating them. The smile he offers is mostly sad, tinged at the corners with faint amusement. “It gladdens me to say that you have become quite a familiarity, Lord Stark, and a welcome one at that.”
Were Cregan not such a sensible man, he would kiss Jacaerys right then and there. It would be an easy thing, but as it stands, the list of reasons why not is long as the Wall is tall and topped by no less impressive an item than Baela Targaryen. Jacaerys seems to be waiting for something , too-dark eyes fixed intently on him, but rather than invoke the wrath of his dragonrider betrothed, Cregan responds with a rarity — a smile wide enough to bare teeth. “You have certainly exceeded my own expectations, my prince.” For the first and only time, for just a moment, he lets his gaze roam freely. He drinks his fill of the strong line of his nose; the slant of his brows; the set of his shoulders, hidden underneath a thick sable cloak, that Cregan knows to be corded with lean muscle.
Then he steps away deliberately, stoops to retrieve his surrendered glove and schools his expression and says, “Come, break your fast with the Brothers then take wing. I will return to Winterfell ahorse, so as not allay you further.”
Despite the urgency limning his every movement, Jacaerys shakes his head. “I pass above Winterfell on my way to the Neck, and touching down will cause no significant delay.” Cregan tries to argue, Jacaerys hears none of it.
When Cregan finally slides from the saddle, ungainly and stiff, onto Winterfell’s cobblestones, Jacaerys does not dismount. He pauses for a long moment, brow furrowed, opens his mouth like he wants to speak until Vermax lets out an impatient, smoky snort. Jacaerys shakes his head as though clearing away his own thoughts, the moment lost, and says only, “Goodbye, Lord Stark.”
Cregan could and should adhere to proper addresses, public as this display is. Instead, he says, “Goodbye, Jacaerys.”
That is all the prince stays to hear before he turns Vermax with a command. Thundering steps and the now-familiar boom of leathern wings, and then they are airborne again. Cregan watches until their silhouette disappears, a minute speck dissolving into the clear winter sky, then he watches the empty horizon for a minute longer.