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"Father."
Jace could tell from her tone that his daughter had serious business, but he couldn't help but smirk. He couldn't imagine what business could be so serious for a six year old that it warranted such a tone. He had hoped to have left sombre tones in the small council chamber he'd just come from, rather than be confronted them in miniature.
"Yes, jehys." He asked as he continued setting up the cyvasse board for their weekly game.
Rhae watched him with her hands folded in front of her, her skirts swishing beneath the table as she swung her feet back and forth. Her brown hair pulled back from her face by a ribbon, her curls brushing the edges of her shoulders. Jace loved to say that his sons were Baela's boys, but his wife loved to say that Rhae was his girl. The very picture of his youth.
"I have been remarkably well behaved this week." She commented, trying to inject some casualness into her tone as she adjusted some of the pieces. As if she did not have an agenda, just making friendly conversation before their shared competitiveness set in.
"Is that so?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes, mother will attest to it." She assured him.
"Will she now?" He returned, eyebrow remaining raised. When Rhae nodded, he leaned back in his seat and appraised her before speaking again. "And we can agree that it is not well behaved to lie on your mother's behalf?"
"I am not lying." She promised.
As soon as she spoke, the door to his study opened and Baela stepped through. She smiled fondly at the scene before her, beginning towards where they were sat by the window.
"There you are." She said by way of greeting, although Jace was unsure who she meant.
"Just the woman we needed." Jace told her, reaching a hand out for his wife. Baela frowned quizzically and began to her husband's side nevertheless. He slipped his hand into hers, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand as he explained: "Your daughter claims that she has been well behaved this week and you will provide testimony to that effect."
Bemused realisation dawned on Baela's face, glancing over at Rhae who stared expectantly back. "Well, she has attended all her lessons and not slipped her Septa's watch. I have had no reports of misbehaviour from the King's Guard nor the dragon keepers nor her tutors." She assessed, leaning slightly on the back of her husband's leather armchair.
"What about her brothers? Has she left them un-vexed?" Jace asked, tilting his head back to look at Baela, mischief in his eye. Rhae looked rather put out by their obvious toying with her.
"If she has vexed them, husband, they have not told me." Baela commented with a shrug and a soft smile.
"I have not vexed them in the slightest." Rhae interjected indignantly. Her parents both looked from each other to her in unison. "Not even when Aeris stuttered and stammered in front of Lady Flora because he likes her pretty blonde hair and green eyes." She insisted with a roll of the eyes.
"Hmm." Jace thought before turning his eye to his youngest, trying not to smirk at his middle child's romantic tribulations. "You are right, jehys, that does sound rather well-behaved."
"As I said, kepa." Rhae reminded him as she leaned forward to make her opening move. The chair scrapped slightly against across the stones as she brought herself up to do so.
Baela smiled softly and lifted Jace's hand to her lips to press a kiss there before excusing herself. Once they were in a throes of a game, they were best left be anyways. She wished them both the best of luck, pressing a kiss to Rhae's forehead as she did. A moment later, she stepped through a side door into their solar, no doubt to attend to some business with her ladies.
Jace offered a opening move of his own. "What of it then, this good behaviour?" He asked.
"Since we agree that I have been well-behaved, I want to place a wager on this game." She returned. Jace blinked in surprise, barely noticing the move that she returned in the silence that followed her revelation. "If I win today, I want you to promise to take me with you when you next take to the skies on Vermax."
Jace tilted his head in consideration of her request. No doubt she had figured out that her brothers had been the age that she was now when he'd first started to take them with him. Of course, he hadn't been King when Lucerys had turned six and they'd lived on Dragonstone by the time Aeris had turned the same age, both facts that had made the excursions easier. Still, Rhae was a future dragon rider herself and she wanted that experience too, as she often did when it came to things her brothers had.
"What if you lose?" He asked.
She shrugged. "Then you will not have to promise."
Jace breathed a smile, running a hand over his beard as he took in the board and his daughter. He wanted to point out that she could have simply demanded the promise as a reward for her good behaviour, rather than add the condition of winning.
He instead leaned over to offer his hand for his daughter to shake. "You have a deal, my love."
Jace had never thrown a game so easily.
It was a week later that Jace was able to interrupt Rhae's afternoon lessons and request that she change into some riding clothes. The girl's eyes had lit up with realisation, throwing her book closed and dashing from the room before her tutor could react. When she'd extracted his promise from him, he'd added the condition that no firm timings could be given and she'd promised in turn to respect that. She would wait as long as she needed to, as long as he kept to his word.
Still, she'd practically bounced down the courtyard steps to the wheelhouse. In fact, she vibrated the entire ride to the Dragon Pit.
"Why do we have to wear all this when it is so warm outside?" She asked as he lifted her from the top step of the carriage once they arrived. Rhae lifted her arms to indicate the thick leather coat she'd changed into, including gloves. Baela had braided her hair back.
"Why do you think?" Jace asked as he set her on the ground and they began up the steps, two King's Guard following behind.
Rhae pursed her lips for a long moment, casting her eyes around as if the sky or the large doors to the Dragon Pit held the answers. A wind briefly blew and disturbed her hair, her eyes lighting up in realisation. "The wind is colder up in the sky." She told him.
"Very good." He replied as he pulled out his own gloves and put them on. "But we are also more exposed to the sun, especially if we were to fly high. And the leathers protect us from injury in case of accidents, just like if you fell off a horse." He explained, pausing in the large expanse of the Dragon Pit to finish his preparations.
"How high are we flying today?" She asked, bouncing on her toes.
"Not very." He said with an apologetic tone. "Your mother made me promise."
Rhae scowled for a moment before smoothing her face over, eager not to get herself in trouble when her prize was so easily in reach.
"It will still be the highest I have ever been." She commented as if consoling herself, taking her father's gloved hand when he offered it and they began to the catacombs. "Did you go flying with Grandmother on Syrax when you were little, kepa?" She asked.
"I did." Jace nodded before going quiet for a moment. It had been a year since his mother had died and it still felt a little sore. Still, he wouldn't begrudge Rhae questions about the woman that she mourned as keenly as he did. "When we lived on Dragonstone, mostly. Although I always tried my hand at convincing your grandsire Daemon to take me on Caraxes when he visited from Pentos."
Rhae hopped from the final step of the stone staircase onto the level ground and looked up at him with amazement. "And did he?" She asked.
"Sadly not. Your mother always bragged about when he took her because she knew it annoyed me." Jace told her, which made her giggle.
He had sent word ahead to the dragon keepers, so they began through the caves towards the outer entrance. When they emerged back into the daylight, the keepers were waiting with Vermax already ready and saddled. Forty five years and an extended stay on Dragonstone meant the olive green dragon had grown large. He certainly looked it compared to the dragons hatched by his two younger sons, the largest kept in the city save for Dreamfyre. He called to Jace in greeting, his wings shuddering as if shaking off drowsiness, before noticing Rhae by his side and making an interested noise that might have been a chirp.
By his side, Rhae looked awed, clutching her father's hand and grinning. Jace smiled, oddly proud that a creature that had shared his cradle invoked such a reaction in his own child. It was the curse of a father, he supposed, that they were always secretly aching to be seen as interesting and noteworthy by their children.
"Right, let us be perfectly clear." Jace began as he knelt down to his daughter's height and took her upper arms in his hands, directing her attention. "What did I tell you?" He asked, serious.
"Both hands on the saddle at all times." She recited.
"And?"
"No fiddling with my harness." She added. Since she was precious cargo, Rhae would wear a harness around her waist which clipped into Vermax's saddle in two places. At least if anything did go wrong, she would only fall as far as the leather wrapped chain keeping her on the beast. "And do whatever you say, when you say it." She added.
"Good." Jace nodded and clutched her face, kissing her forehead. He ducked his head so their foreheads were close and muttered the next part between them. "It is okay if you find it overwhelming the first time."
"Really?" She whispered back, her lip twitching nervously. Like she'd been smothering the anxiety under her excitement and her father's words had given it oxygen to breathe.
"Hmm, do not bully him over it, but Lucerys did not like it at all the first time." He murmured back. That caused her to scowl in disbelief and he laughed, rolling back into his haunches. "I know, you would not think it now with how he rides Aegarax with reckless abandon. But I promise it is true." He commented, taking the harness from the waiting dragon keeper.
After they'd negotiated it around Rhae's tiny little torso, he lifted her off the ground and onto his hip. Jace noted sourly in his head that she was fast getting too big for such endeavours, or perhaps he was getting too old. Either way he didn't like it.
"Best say hello first." He told her as he carried her closer.
The dragon regarded them both, bringing his head a little closer until Jace could reach out to touch his snout. Rhae looked equal parts awed and nervous as her father murmured to the dragon in High Valyrian.
"Can I touch him?" She asked curiously.
"Of course, gently." He directed, hoisting her a little higher on his hip so she could reach.
Rhae did as she was told and gently laid a hand on the underside of Vermax's large jaw. The dragon tensed for a moment under the new attentions, turning his eye to the smaller of the two humans. But he seemed to give her a cursory sniff before returning his attentions to his rider, paying no mind to the gentle pats the Princess bestowed upon him.
Jace smiled to see Rhae so elated by the interaction. He remembered touching his mother's dragon for the first time as a boy. The first time Vermax had answered his command. The time he'd snuck to the Dragonmont with Luke so he could ride Vermax with his brother clinging to his back, which in retrospective had been both incredibly stupid and the best memory he had with his brother.
"Ready?" He asked her, although she seemed content to lavish the beast with attention all afternoon.
Rhae nodded, eyes bright with excitement once again.
Despite Rhae's iron-grip on the saddle and the way she'd shrieked when Vermax had first taken flight, it was clear that she took to riding like a duck to water. Indeed, she'd mounted the beast and slipped into the saddle in front of her father like she'd done it a hundred times.
It had only taken a few minutes before she was laughing in exhilaration, craning her neck to better see the city below them and compare to what she understood of the ground, as was the time honoured tradition of those who took to the skies. To understand that they now inhabited two worlds where most inhabited only one. There was the down-there and the up-here. The down-there was for everyone, the up-here was just for them.
Jace kept his promise to Baela and stayed low, never breaking the clouds even though he knew that Rhae would be more than agreeable and kept it secret if he'd sworn her to it. He gave Vermax gentle encouragement to stay level and calm as they began out over the Blackwater, enjoying the way that the sun bounced off the rolling waters.
"This is amazing!" She had to raise her voice over the winds around them, despite how close they were on the saddle.
"It is." He agreed, equally raised voice.
Vermax chirped as if he understood the compliment and Jace leaned over a little to pat the beast's side. He had always loved riding with Vermax, but nowadays it felt even more like a release from the pressures of every day. The only place he wasn't followed by King's Guard or duties, where it was just him as a dragon rider, as a father.
He would never share his Kingship with Rhae, gods willing. In fact, it sat between them most days, the brutal shift from Prince to King still settling on them both a year on. But this? This connected them. One day, she would be up here on her own mount, as high as she dared. Which would be very high indeed, Jace thought as he took in the fundamental shift happening in the child he'd held up for Vermax in her baby blankets just six years previous.
He kept them out longer than he should have, flying all the way to Dragonstone and back again. He shouted out landmarks on the island she would know as they did, increasing her new found understanding of the world by dragon back. He kept a weather eye for any of the other dragons that nested in their ancestral seat, but luckily none were to be seen. By the time he landed at the Dragon Pit, the sun was beginning to set and Rhae could not stop babbling about all they'd seen long enough to dismount.
Baela waited for them at the steps of the courtyard as he lifted their daughter from the carriage once more, having fallen to sleep on the journey back. Her head lolled onto his shoulder, arms looped lazily around his shoulders.
"Well, how did it go?" She asked knowingly as he walked up the steps, pausing to show off their unharmed, exhausted child. She smiled and smoothed a hand over Rhae's back. The girl did not stir, but made a grumpy noise of a tired child.
"I think, dear wife, that I am going to need to get much better at cyvasse or I shall be back here next week and the week after." He declared.
But even as he said it, he knew that it would not be so bad a prospect.