Chapter Text
Baelor arrives at the chambers where they’ve put Maekar and pauses. There are two guards there; that is not what makes him hesitate. Rather, he can hear voices: voices that rise, voices that are familiar. Women’s voices. One, he knows, must be his sister. The other, then, must be—
He enters without knocking. These are not the chambers their family used before the last King died, for that was many years ago. Worse, still, is that Maekar was married while still a child: she left the space their father had carefully carved out for his children, all by force on the whim of their grandsire. Her chambers were moved to the other side of the castle, near that same King, shared with the husband that Baelor fought against and watched die under Brynden Rivers’ arrows: Daemon Blackfyre.
With Daemon dead, Baelor left Brynden to handle the aftermath and then rode west. Whitegrove in the Reach was where reports said his sister was hidden away, and his forces struck down the guards Daemon and Gormon Peake had left to at this keep, and Baelor had gone running through the halls in search of his sister.
He had found her outside of the nursery. She had stood there, hand on the pommel of the sword at her belt, dressed as if for training as a man might but for the chainmail she wore atop her torso. Baelor had forgotten to remove his helm until it was nearly too late, Maekar moving to unsheathe the sword just as he showed himself. The expression on her face upon seeing it was him haunts Baelor, still: her wide eyes, mouth parted around a question, eyebrows pinched in something that was fear and confusion and conviction alike.
She had removed her hand from the pommel. She had let Baelor take her into his arms. She had not asked after her husband, even after Baelor bundled her and her sons up and returned to the Red Keep.
Myriah had wept when they arrived. She had held Maekar in an embrace and tucked her daughter’s face into her own neck even though Maekar was taller than her now. Baelor had noticed how fiercely Maekar held onto their mother, and he had remained several paces away while their father approached and then took both women into his arms as well. He had been shaking, or perhaps Myriah was, or perhaps even Maekar. It did not matter. Maekar was back, and Daemon was dead, and all that business of the Rebellion could be settled tomorrow, after a night’s rest.
But it is still being settled, weeks now since Daemon fell. Baelor writes to his wife at Dragonstone and bids her wait for him: he had not wanted her so close to the fighting, and had left instructions for her escape besides, had the worst come to pass. A ship to take them to Essos, two Kingsguard to ensure the passage of his wife and only son, to ensure the bloodline would survive even if Baelor did not.
He thanks the Seven that has not come to pass. His wife and son live, his brothers safe with their wives’ kin, his only sister returned. All is well, he tells himself, even as it becomes clear that it is not.
A problem, the Council calls Maekar. They do not say it directly, but they use the words in a careful order, so that they may use them one after another without drawing the ire of Baelor and the disappointment of the King. The Black Dragon’s Widow, they’re calling her. Baelor hears the name in whispers. Daemon’s wife turned hostage. The mother of the pretender’s sons: Daeron the Younger and Aerion, both of them small still and often eager for their mother’s attention. Myriah dotes on them: takes them in her arms, kisses their faces, sings lullabies she once sang to her own children. The king visits them in the nursery. Baelor watches, from a distance, as Maekar watches them in turn.
Brynden had brought it up himself, in a conversation with Baelor and the King: Daemon’s sons live. We must think on what that means to those who fought for him. We must think on what Aegor plans, even now, viper that he is.
Daeron had not been pleased with his half-brother. His own grandchildren, he reminded Brynden, even as he stared back at them both with a bandage still fastened over the eye that Aegor cut from him, were not a threat. Their claim was through Maekar, not Daemon. Baelor was young still and would father more sons, and they would look to their cousins as playmates, not as threats.
That is how your son looked to Daemon, once, Brynden reminded them, and pinned his unnerving red gaze to Baelor afterwards. Baelor met it, but he did not appreciate the reminder. It was true: before the politics of the court overcame them and before Aegon the Unworthy had set his sights upon Maekar and called her his dearest Valyrian prize, Baelor and Daemon had trained together, had broken bread together, had laughed together, kin that they were.
It is a problem they have set aside, for now. They will have to revisit it and soon, Baelor knows, for the whispers will not disappear. The Council wants answers. They want the King to do something about his daughter and grandsons, but Baelor will not believe that Daeron would send Maekar away again. He remembers the raw look of him when Aegon took her from them, that first night. He remembers his mother’s keening, locked away in her own chambers for weeks afterwards. He remembers Maekar, too young, face set carefully still as Daemon put his cloak over her shoulders, a black dragon instead of red.
He is thinking of all of this as he enters these new chambers, and there he finds his mother and sister mid-argument. They give him twin looks of frustration, and Baelor thinks that they look alike as they never have before, the same expression on two faces that Baelor feared he would never again see all while he fought for their line. Myriah in red and orange silks, Maekar in black: the styles that Myriah has long preferred in private, what she might have worn had she remained in Sunspear instead of coming to King’s Landing. He tries not to feel fond of their matching hairstyles, long hair pulled into braids that spill over both their shoulders, these two Dornish women he cherishes deeply.
He does not have the chance to greet either of them before Maekar says, “Get out,” one arm flung out and pointing at the door. It is remarkably like what she was like as a child, when she would finally grow frustrated with his teasing and demand he leave her be.
“Don’t be rude,” Myriah scolds her, and Maekar twists back towards her.
“This conversation is none of his concern,” she says, gritting her teeth. “And in truth, Mother, it is not any of yours, either.”
“It is certainly my concern,” Myriah says, “for you are my concern, and I’ll not have you acting irrationally. You must let me lighten your burdens.”
“This is not a burden,” Maekar says, “this is an easily resolved problem. That you would try to prevent me from handling it is an insult and frankly absurd especially in light of this last year—”
“You are punishing yourself for things beyond your control,” Myriah says, “it is not your fault that your husband rose in rebellion.”
Baelor wavers. This is not what he expected to find, and he grows concerned at how all the color drains from Maekar’s face, at the desperate look in their mother’s eyes.
“I was not aware anyone thought to lay the blame at my feet,” Maekar says, stiffly, “but thank you, Mother, for reminding me of such a fact—”
“Do not put words in my mouth, Maekar,” Myriah says, “and do not fall back on methods you last used as a child. You are not a child, you are a woman grown, and you have options now—”
“Yes, I am aware,” Maekar says. Baelor’s head swivels between the two of them, the words coming faster. “And I am trying to utilize those options as a woman grown, to better ends than my predecessors—”
“I am entirely sure you are not suggesting I am to blame for your marriage,” Myriah says, and her tone is truly hurt now. Baelor remembers it all clearly: his mother weeping nearly endlessly, from the moment Aegon’s declaration took her daughter away to the day she was wed at the Sept.
Maekar looks offended. “Now you put words in my mouth. I speak of Daena. She should have taken moon tea.”
“She should not have fucked Aegon, worthless cur that he was,” Myriah says, and both Baelor and Maekar stare at her in open-mouthed shock. “What? He is dead. He tortured us for his own entertainment. Gods be good, I am glad he is dead. Would that he had died sooner, before he stole mine own daughter away for his worthless son.”
“Mother,” Baelor says, because he agrees with her, but he has never heard his mother speak thus. She is always careful, his mother. Aware of what her Dornish blood meant to the Council and to the rest of the Kingdom besides. She is thoughtful with her words and her actions and not once has he heard her speak so openly against his grandsire, though she is right to call him worthless, to call him cur.
She puts up one hand to silence him. She says, “You are not Daena, Maekar. Your situation is entirely different.”
“It is not any better,” Maekar counters. Her arms are crossed, and a flush is spreading rapidly over her face. It makes her look younger. “It is worse. I was married to a traitor and I bore him two sons.”
“There is nothing to do about that,” Baelor interjects, wondering if she has heard of what the Court whispers, of what Brynden warned him. “You need not worry over the boys—”
“Baelor, this does not concern you,” Maekar says at the same time Myriah says, “My son, why don’t you retire to your own chambers?”
Baelor stares at them both. He is out of his depth, he realizes, and he does not like it. He is the one who solves problems, he is the one mother and father and brother and sister alike used to turn to. He says, “What is it you speak of?”
“It is not your business,” Maekar snaps. She looks at Myriah, gesturing towards Baelor like she might be able to make him disappear with just a snap of her fingers. “Make him leave.”
“Whatever it is,” Baelor says, “if I can be of assistance…”
Myriah hesitates. She says, setting her beseeching eyes upon Maekar, who remains as unmoved as ever, “Perhaps you might share your concerns with your brother.”
“Absolutely not,” Maekar says. “I should not even have to share them with you. This is for me to deal with.”
“It is not a thing to deal with,” Myriah insists. She wrings her hands. Baelor has not seen her do so in years.
“I should like to help you, Maekar,” Baelor says, careful, and then has to duck quite suddenly when Maekar grabs an empty chalice and flings it at his head.
“Maekar,” Myriah scolds, but moves closer to her. She takes Maekar’s hand in one of hers. She settles the other over Maekar’s belly. “Let us speak on it.”
Baelor stares at them. He looks at Myriah’s hand over Maekar’s silks. He looks at Myriah’s face, and then Maekar’s, their matching expressions. He thinks on the phrase moon tea.
He says, “Seven hells,” and puts his head in hands.
“Men are useless,” he hears Maekar say. She sounds furious. “I know my sons are of great fucking concern to the Council, so I suppose I should have expected the new fucking Hand would take great offense to them as well.”
Baelor looks up. “I did not say that.”
“Baelor,” Myriah scolds. She wraps both arms around Maekar, who has gone fully pink in the face and scowls fiercely at them both. She used to make the same face at four, at five, at six, furious at being denied the training grounds, at being forced to sit with her Septa, at Aegor Rivers mocking her brothers. Myriah says, “Children are blessings.”
“Of course,” Baelor says, “I only meant—” He cannot finish the sentence. He does not know what he meant. He thinks only of Daemon Blackfyre putting yet another child in his sister and simply feels sick.
“This is why I bid the Maester bring me moon tea,” Maekar says to Myriah. “Look how mine own brother reacts to the thought of another Blackfyre whelp. I will not torture myself so. The realm no doubt wishes we’d all perished. I’ll not give them another son to judge on their father’s sins.”
“Children should not pay for their parents’ sins, and yours certainly will not.” Myriah insists. “I will not allow any to speak ill of Daeron or Aerion. They are beautiful children, they will grow into strong men who bring honor to the house. They are Targaryens, not Waters or Blackfyres.”
“That is not what the realm will think.”
“It does not matter,” Myriah says, “Aegon, worthless as he was, made sure they’d follow your claim. He decreed it thus.”
“Decrees mean little when they are known as Daemon’s sons.” Maekar shakes off their mother’s touch. Her hands fall to her own stomach, though, and Baelor looks despite himself, wondering how far along she is. He flinches when she snaps at him: “Do not stare at me. It’s unbecoming.”
“Forgive me, sister,” he says, and takes a step closer, that he might comfort her, but she rolls her eyes at him.
She turns her head towards their mother. “It is a better idea to get rid of it,” she says. “I am not so far along. I’ve not quickened.”
“But you will soon,” Myriah says. She has a delicate, pleading look: Maekar used to imitate it when they were children, asking their father for things like extra sweets or a sword forged in Essos so she might fight Aegor more easily. Daeron used to laugh and then gift her whatever it was she asked. Myriah continues, “Is that not reason enough to see it through? What if it is a girl-child?”
“A girl-child who might be married off in some political ploy by her king?” Maekar says, and her voice is hard. “A girl-child like you and I once were?”
Myriah purses her lips but says nothing; she cannot. Baelor bites the inside of his cheek. He wants to assure them it will not come to pass, but who is he to say? He is the Crown Prince, he is the King’s Hand. Myriah was given to their house as a child, Maekar to Daemon in much the same way.
Maekar continues: “And if it is another son, then the Council and his supporters alike will see another seed planted in hopes of toppling our house. As if I would ever curse a son to the throne, worthless thing that it is.”
“Maekar,” Baelor says, taken aback. Their very birthright, the reason Daemon is dead at all, should not be discounted such. Perhaps Maekar has a different perspective, but men died for that throne, he thinks. He tries not to sound scolding but no doubt fails, if the scowl that Maekar sends him is any suggestion.
“This does not concern you,” Maekar repeats, “I’ve already said so. You can leave.”
“Do not be rash, I beg,” Myriah says. Her eyes are wide, expression desperately pleading. “It is a child. Your child, not Daemon’s. Do not let him take this from you.”
“He took everything else,” Maekar says, bitter, and Baelor flinches despite herself. She was so young, too young, when Daeron the Younger was born. He remembers how she wailed when he finally came, loud enough that he could hear it where he lingered outside her chambers. Daemon had paced the long hallway outside them but Baelor did not look to him as he did so, sick to his stomach at the reality of his sister’s marriage. Servants had come and gone, and sometimes they held sheets stained red with blood, and he had sat with his head in his hands and prayed his sister would not die in childbed like their grandmother had.
Aegon had been dead but three months when Maekar had given birth, and it was hard to look upon little Daeron afterwards. Baelor could not shake the feeling for weeks, not until Maekar had recovered enough to walk the Keep again, Daeron bundled into her arms and Daemon at her side with a hand at her waist. He remembers it so clearly: Daemon, beaming, as he offered wife and child to the new King.
A grandson for my dearest brother, he had said, named after the Good King himself.
And the King had been so eager to look upon his first grandchild as a harbinger of good tidings. A child tying the family closer together, a son with his mother’s Targaryen claim to soothe Daemon’s bastard roots. Baelor was less convinced, but what was he to do? Maekar, still pale, still tired, had smiled, but her eyes never left her son even as their parents and brothers looked upon her little family.
When Aerion was born, Baelor had hoped, despite the fear that had sat in his throat when her second pregnancy was announced, that perhaps it meant she and Daemon might settle well together.
And then Daemon had decided it wasn’t enough: he had risen against the Crown, and he hid Maekar and sons alike at Whitegrove for Baelor to rescue instead.
And here Maekar is now. Widowed young, her sons a threat to the Council, and another of Daemon’s seed planted inside her. Maekar, who knows what they whisper and wants to avoid it all, even as she knows she can’t, not so long as she is the Black Dragon’s Widow and her sons his, too.
“You wish for moon tea?” he asks her, and Myriah turns on him, furious.
“You will not give it to her,” she says. She sounds angry. She sounds scared. “I have told the Maester already. I forbid it.”
“You cannot force this upon me,” Maekar says. She sounds just as their mother does. Baelor, standing before them both, feels his heart ache as it did when Maekar married, when she birthed her first child, when he found her standing guard outside her sons’ nursery after he watched her husband die.
“What am I forcing?” Myriah says. “You have not told me anything that would sway me, were I in your place. You blame the realm. You blame the Council. You blame Daemon. But I, hated as I was, bore you and your brothers proudly.”
“You were not wed to a traitor.”
“I was wed into a family that mine own hated,” Myriah says, anger seeping into her tone now. “I was nearly as young as you were when I was sent here to foster, and I alone. You should not have wed so young, no, and Daemon should not have bedded you when he did, but,” and Maekar flinches. Baelor feels, again, that white hot anger at their uncle. Daemon’s bloody body comes to mind, dead beneath the arrows, and still Baelor does not believe it was enough. “But you were not alone in this keep.”
“How exactly do you define alone, Mother?” Maekar’s mouth pinches. Aerys’ does the same, when he is interrupted from his studies; Rhaegel, when he cannot understand some Court requirement or another. It is all Baelor can notice: Maekar, the same and different now, his little sister a woman grown. “I shared his bed. I bore his children.”
Myriah says, voice shaking, “Did I not hold you the day after you wed? Who held you while you bled in the birthing bed? And I will hold you now though you reject me. Do not distract me, Maekar. None of that has to do with this new babe you carry.”
“Daemon’s child.” Maekar looks ill at the thought. Moon tea, Baelor thinks. Did she wish for it all those years ago, a child bride beloved in their monstrous grandsire’s eyes?
“Yes, your husband got another child on you, such is life in this wretched family,” Myriah says. Her voice steadies. She looks every bit the queen she has always been meant to be. “But you have not told me, Maekar, that you do not want this child. You have not told me that you regret your children, or that you don’t love them. Instead you stand here, afraid, and expect me to help you be afraid.”
Maekar swallows. She stares at Myriah. Myriah stares back. Baelor’s heart, tender that it is, cracks wide open. Maeker says, “I do not regret my children.”
“You love them? Despite their father?”
“How dare you,” Maekar says. Her voice is a strange thing, not how Baelor remembers it. “I love my children. They are mine.”
“As you are mine,” Myriah says, “as you will be, forevermore, until every last of our bloodline is gone. You will always be mine, for you are my daughter. Is it not thus when you look upon your sons? Do you not burn so? You are mine before the Crown’s, child.” Myriah looks at Baelor then. ”Both of you. You have always been mine first.”
Maekar looks from Myriah to Baelor. Something shifts behind her eyes. She says, “Daeron and Aerion, they are my sons. King Aegon decreed before Daeron was born that it did not matter who sired them, they would be princes of my blood.”
“Not Daemon’s,” Myriah says, steadfast. Baelor looks between them: useless thing is he in this, and he looks upon mother and sister alike and realizes there are things he cannot know about them, things he cannot touch. Maekar lets their mother put her hand at her waist, above the barely-there swelling beneath her clothes. Myriah says, “I will deal with the whispers. Your father will deal with the lese-majesty. You are allowed to be a mother. None can take this from you.”
Maekar breathes in, deep. She chews on the inside of her cheek, and Baelor watches the flex of her jaw, the rapid movement of her eyes, how they flicker between their mother and their mother’s hand on her.
She says, finally, “He did not know it, you know. He did not know I was with child.”
Myriah’s expression softens. She says, “Does it matter, Maekar?”
Maekar takes a long moment to answer. Baelor looks at them, both, and wonders what silent conversation they are having. He cannot know what it is like, to be a daughter and mother, both given away for the simple sin of their sex. He wishes he could understand its weight better, and hates that he cannot, son and man and prince that he is. Finally, Maekar puts her hand over their mother’s.
She says, “I want to speak to Father,” and Myriah bows her head. Baelor can see something akin to relief in her expression.
Myriah looks up, eyes and mouth tender. She says, “Of course. Now?”
“Now.” Maekar looks at him. She raises one pale eyebrow. She looks as she did before the rebellion, before the children, before the marriage. When she was a child and their grandfather had announced the betrothal and she had said, It does not mean anything. I am a princess. He cannot do anything to me, so young, so convinced.
Baelor burns with the memory, with loathing for their grandsire, with hatred for Daemon. But there is nothing to do about it. He knows this.
Maekar says, “I assume you’ll be joining us for this discussion.”
“I,” Baelor says, and then stops.
Maekar has never liked to ask for things. He thinks of her children, how they must be asleep in their nursery, looking more like Maekar than Daemon. Daeron the Younger, who has Myriah’s nose and mouth, first, and then Aerion with Maekar’s entire face. He thinks of the King’s joy at Maekar’s return, his relief to see two healthy grandsons, their little hands held in his as they circle the gardens.
Baelor thinks of his own relief, even now, Maekar in front of him alive and well and expectant—though of what he cannot say. He says, “Yes,” and hopes, truly, that Maekar makes the choice she wants.