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It was not quite dawn yet when she woke to the sound of the fire crackling and popping in the hearth.
Jacaerys knelt by the fire, shifting a new log into the dying flames, still as bare as he’d been when they’d fallen asleep the night before. There was a chill to the morning air, one she’d never quite felt before. There’d never been a winter in their lifetime, only scorching summers and balmy southern autumns.
“Cold?” Baela called out and Jace looked back to her, grinning. It made him look younger in a way she hadn’t seen since before Lucerys’ death, boyish and sweet.
And hers, all hers. The cut on his lip said so, his blood clotted and dark against his skin.
“Woke up and was worried I was somehow in the North again.” He shook his head, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt a chill like this here.”
They’d opened the windows last night before falling asleep, skin sweat-slick from their time together, letting in the night air and falling asleep in cool sheets. Heated skin against skin with their dragon blood burning as hot as the Dragonmont itself. If there had been any doubt that they were meant for each other, it had disappeared, leaving behind only a sense of rightness and an ache that she welcomed.
“It’s warmer in bed.”
Jace shook his head, laughing under his breath as he crossed the room to her. Baela took the opportunity to look him up and down, soaking in the pretty sight of him until he was flushed red down to his collarbone. He slipped back under the blankets and promptly rolled to his belly so he could press his chilled feet against her, holding her where she could not wiggle away from them. She hissed at the cold, trying to kick them away, and he laughed until she lunged up, catching his bottom lip with her own and biting down lightly on the wound that matched her own. His grip loosened just enough that she was able to flip them, sprawled across his chest and pulling back from his lips victorious. His hands dropped to her waist, hot against her skin.
He looked so very pretty like this, she thought. Curls messy from sleep, dark against the pillowcase, red lips swollen, bare-chested and pliable under her. She brought her hand up to hold his jaw loosely, resting her thumb on the cut she’d made in his lip the night before, freshly bloodied from her nip at it.
“As much as I appreciate a taste of the weather at the Wall, your choice of messenger is quite unwelcome here. Not very gentlemanly either,” She chided, but she was smiling, her voice full of laughter, “What good is a husband if he doesn’t keep his wife warm?”
“He can, perhaps, be redeemed by his other virtues? Or perhaps his creative mind.” He said against her thumb, the skin stretching beneath her touch as he smiled.
Baela raised an eyebrow, “Oh?”
“I can think of many ways to stay warm on days like these.”
She hummed, cleaning the fresh blood off of his lip with a swipe of her thumb, “I’m sure you can. Have you planned a demonstration?”
“Perhaps.”
His hand came up to the back of her neck, drew her down to him, and they were warmed.
. . .
“We could return to bed? I think they would understand…”
His lips were on her neck again which was proving to be quite distracting. Sadly for him though, not distracting enough.
“As much as I would love to spend the rest of this week locked away in here with you, I’m afraid the council will not wait, nor will the war.”
Water sloshed in the stone tub as she stood to step out of the tub, leaving him behind in the soapy water. She dried herself with one of the towels, amused fondness in her chest as she watched Jace look away from her as if they weren’t wed. It only took a moment before he seemed to remember, looking back and taking her in as if he’d never seen her before. Heat rushed into her cheeks and she forced herself to refocus her attention onto clothing herself, lacing the wrists and waist of the dark layers before tackling the many closures of the red dragonriding dress.
She heard him leave the tub, cursing under his breath at the cold stone under his feet, and the rustle of clothing soon followed from his side of the room as well. As she took her hair down from the twin braids Rhaena had helped her with before the wedding, Baela felt the phantom of her mother’s hands in her own, combing through the damp curls with oil and the sweet-smelling creams that had been on her Pentoshi vanity. How many times had she sat on the little bench in front of her mother’s mirror, her mother’s hands gentle and firm as they massaged her scalp and worked the tangles from her curls before sending her off to her bath?
She wasn’t afraid to admit that as Rhaena had plaited her hair, Baela had let herself shut her eyes for a moment, let herself fall into the fantasy of her mother being there for her wedding, a new baby likely gurgling and fussing atop the blankets of the bed. Her mother had always said she’d wanted more children, enough to fill a castle with laughter, if she had not been lost to them their family could have looked drastically different.
Their lives could have been drastically different.
Would she have still ended up here, a handful of feet from her marriage bed, a tub of cooling water and suds behind her? Baela hoped that would have been the case. That all paths led here, to the lacings on her red dress, to Jace in the mirror doing up the laces on his doublet, his hair still messy from sleep and her hands in it in the night. Jace, who met her eyes in the mirror and grinned, pausing in lacing up his doublet and looking as though he was considering unlacing it. It made Baela laugh, loud and free, as she grabbed her boots from where they’d fallen the night before and pulled them on.
“Wedding breakfasts are awkward enough,” Baela joked as she walked to him and made an effort to pat his hair down into something other than a bird’s nest, “Without being late. ”
Jace did chuckle at that, finally tying off the laces of his doublet and tucking away the ends out of sight, “It really does feel like we’re being caught doing something we aren’t supposed to. When do you think that will fade?”
She dipped a cloth in a nearby basin, squeezing out the water onto his curls as his hands came up to assist her. She adored his curls, how could she not, but not when they were so obvious about what they’d been up to.
“Hopefully soon, but knowing my father, maybe never. If looks could kill, you wouldn’t have even made it to our chambers last night.”
Jace snickered and finally his hair smoothed down enough to leave, “Think he’ll challenge me to a duel?”
“For your sake, I surely hope not.”
He smiled mischeviously, tilting his head towards her, “A kiss then, perhaps, before I go off to my death?”
She indulged that request, letting his hands fall to her waist as their lips met, and if they were a little later to breakfast than she intended?
The embarrassment was very much worth it.