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Jacaerys Velaryon had discovered, over the course of one year and seven days of marriage, that Ysella, his wife, was very easy to love.
This had been somewhat inconvenient, as no one had warned him it would happen.
There had been warnings about duty, certainly. Endless ones. His mother had spoken to him of alliances and honour and the delicate nature of joining great houses. The maesters had provided records of dowries, bloodlines, land rights, and the sort of ancient grievances that apparently mattered a great deal to men who had been dead for a century. Even Daemon had offered counsel, though most of it had involved looking less eager and never trusting a lord who smiled too much.
No one, however, had said, Your wife will laugh softly at your worst jokes, remember which shoulder aches after you fly Vermax too long, and look at you across a dinner table as if you are not merely useful to her house but wanted.
That, Jace felt, would have been useful information.
The match had not begun romantically. It had begun, as most things in his life did, with tense correspondence, careful negotiation, and his mother wearing the expression she used when pretending not to be worried. His bride had arrived highborn, well-mannered, and so composed that Jace had briefly suspected she might have been raised by septas who considered blinking a moral failing.
Then Ysella had smiled at him during the wedding feast, small and private and a little nervous, and Jace had promptly lost whatever sensible opinions he possessed about political marriages.
By the end of their first month, she had taken to walking with him in the gardens after supper. By the third, she had begun stealing pieces of fruit from his plate when she thought he was not looking. By the sixth, she had moved most of her favourite books into his chambers and then, with a perfectly serene face, behaved as though they had always belonged there.
By the year’s turn, Jace no longer remembered what it felt like to fall asleep without her beside him.
Ysella was beloved by nearly everyone, which Jace found both gratifying and vaguely alarming. His mother adored her. His brothers sought her out when they wanted sympathy and sweets. The servants brightened when she entered a room. Even Vermax, who did not lower himself to approving of people merely because Jace approved of them, had accepted her presence with a huff of warm breath and a solemn nudge that had nearly knocked her into a stable wall.
She had taken this as a compliment. Jace had fallen in love with her a little more, which was becoming an increasingly common and distracting problem.
Most importantly, his wife was steady. Not cold, never that, but even. Calm in a crowded hall, gracious beneath insult, patient with delays, amused by nonsense, and rarely cross unless someone had well and truly earned it. Jace had seen her stare down a blustering lord twice her age with nothing more than a raised brow and a quiet, “How interesting,” which had somehow left the man flushed, sweating, and apologising to the table.
So when Ysella came to breakfast one morning, looking pale, sat beside him without greeting him properly, and stared at a dish of honeyed pears as if they had personally betrayed her, Jace noticed.
“Good morrow,” he said carefully.
“Mm.”
Jace paused with his cup halfway to his mouth.
Not good morrow, husband. Not even good morrow, Jace. Merely mm, a sound so small and displeased that it could not possibly belong to the woman who had kissed his cheek the night before and told him he looked very handsome when he was too tired to argue with ledgers.
“Did you sleep poorly?” he asked.
“No.”
That answer, being short, direct, and delivered while she continued to glare at the pears, was not reassuring.
He considered several possible causes. Perhaps she was displeased with him. Perhaps he had said something foolish. Perhaps he had not said something he ought to have said. Perhaps one of the lords at table had offended her. Perhaps the honeyed pears truly had committed some grave wrong.
“Would you like something else brought up?”
His wife looked at him then, and her expression softened for precisely the length of one heartbeat. “No, thank you,” she said, and reached for his hand beneath the table as though apologising without admitting to anything.
Jace laced his fingers with hers at once. This improved matters greatly for him and, from what he could tell, not at all for her.
By the time breakfast ended, she had eaten three bites of bread, refused the pears entirely, sighed at nothing twice, and looked very close to tears when a serving girl accidentally dropped a spoon.
Jace watched Ysella leave the hall with her shoulders stiff and her chin lifted and felt the first cold stirrings of alarm.
By midday, alarm had become concern. By early afternoon, concern had become a private state of siege.
The difficulty was that nothing was wrong in any way Jace could prove.
Ysella did not swoon. She did not take to her bed. She did not clutch her throat, pale with fever, or cough ominously into a handkerchief, or do any of the clear and useful things that would have allowed a husband to summon a maester without looking like an idiot.
Instead, she simply moved through the day like a storm cloud that had learned courtly manners.
She thanked a maid for bringing her cloak and then nearly wept because the girl had folded it wrong, though Jace could not have explained how. She declined a cup of wine with such restrained fury that Lord Celtigar stopped speaking mid-sentence. She kissed Jace’s cheek when he met her outside the library, then frowned at his doublet as though something about it displeased her.
“Would you like me to change?” Jace asked, looking down at himself.
Ysella blinked. “What?”
“My doublet,” he said. “You seem displeased with it.”
“No,” she said, after a pause. “No, Jace. Your doublet is perfectly fine.”
This did not sound like praise for the doublet, but before Jace could ask another question, Ysella swept past him with all the dignity of a queen refusing to dignify a minor rebellion.
His first inquiry was discreet. At least, Jace intended it to be discreet.
“Has the princess mentioned feeling unwell?” he asked one of Ysella’s ladies later that afternoon, in the same tone he used when asking whether a lord had committed treason.
The lady, who had been arranging flowers and had not expected to be interrogated beside a vase of pale roses, blinked at him. “Unwell, my prince?”
“A chill. A fever. A headache. Some discomfort she might not wish to trouble me with.”
“Princess Ysella has said nothing of illness, my prince.”
“You are certain?”
“Quite certain.”
His second inquiry was with the maester, and was, he admitted, less discreet.
“Has my wife come to you today?” Jace asked, entering the rookery with no greeting whatsoever.
The maester, who had been writing something very slowly, set down his quill with the resignation of a man who had served princes before. “No, my prince.”
“Has she sent for you?”
“No.”
“Has anyone sent for you on her behalf?”
“No,” the maester said again.
Jace disliked the way he answered. Calmly. As though calm was appropriate.
“And you are certain?”
“I am generally certain when no one has come through my door, my prince.”
“She is not herself.”
At this, the maester looked at him more closely. “In what manner?”
Jace opened his mouth, then paused. Explaining that his wife had glared at pears, disliked his doublet, and looked near tears at a fallen spoon did not, when arranged plainly, sound like a medical emergency.
This was unfortunate, because Jace was increasingly convinced that it was one.
“She is quiet,” he said at last. “And cross. But not in her usual way.”
“Princess Ysella has a usual way of being cross?”
“Yes,” Jace said, offended on her behalf. “It is very elegant.”
The maester made a small sound into his chain that might have been a cough. Jace chose not to question it.
“Has she complained of pain?” the maester asked.
“No.”
“Fever?”
“No.”
“Faintness?”
“No.”
“Has she eaten anything spoiled?”
“She refused the pears.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“The pears seemed relevant.”
“I assure you, my prince, I am considering the pears with all due seriousness.”
Jace narrowed his eyes. He was beginning to suspect that no one in the Red Keep understood the gravity of the situation.
“If she does send for me, I will attend her at once,” the maester said, gentler now. “But if the princess has not asked for aid, perhaps the wisest course is to ask her what troubles her.”
Jace stared at him. That sounded simple. Worse, it sounded reasonable. “I have asked,” he said.
“And what did she say?”
“Mm,” Jace said grimly.
The maester was silent for a moment. Then, with the grave patience of a man explaining siege craft to a child holding a wooden sword, he said, “I see.”
Jace did not think he did.
He left the rookery with no answers, a growing dislike of honeyed pears, and the firm conviction that the institutions of learning in Westeros had failed him personally.
His next meeting was meant to concern harbour levies.
Jace arrived twelve minutes late, listened to Lord Bartimos explain something about tariffs with all the urgency of a man discussing the weather, and realised that he could not remember a single word of it. Across the council table, parchment shifted. Quills scratched. Men argued about coin, ships, and which lord had the better claim to make everyone else miserable.
Jace wondered whether Ysella had eaten anything since breakfast.
“My prince?” someone said.
Jace looked up. Every man at the table was looking at him. “Yes,” he said, because it seemed safer than admitting he had not heard the question. This proved to be the wrong answer.
Lord Bartimos brightened. “Excellent. Then we are agreed the additional levy may be imposed at once.”
“No,” Jace said immediately.
The council stared.
“I mean,” he said, gathering what remained of his authority, “not at once. Nothing should be imposed at once. That is rarely wise.”
Several men nodded, either because this was sound governance or because princes were expected to say things that sounded like sound governance. Jace stood. “We will resume this matter another day.”
“Tomorrow, my prince?”
“No.”
“The day after?”
Jace considered the question with the solemnity it deserved. “Also no.”
There was a long silence.
“For two days,” he clarified. “All council meetings are to be postponed for two days.”
“Is there some urgent matter requiring your attention?” Lord Bartimos asked.
Jace thought of Ysella’s stiff shoulders, her untouched pears, the way her mouth had trembled over a dropped spoon. “Yes,” he said.
It was, he thought, entirely possible that no prince in the history of the Seven Kingdoms had ever abandoned harbour levies for a matter more important. Unfortunately, having cleared his duties with the decisiveness of a wartime commander, Jace still had no idea what to do.
He found his mother in her solar, seated near the window with a stack of correspondence at her elbow and a cup of wine untouched beside her. Rhaenyra looked up when he entered, and whatever she saw in his face made her set the letter aside.
“Jace?” she asked. “What has happened?”
That, at least, was comforting. His mother understood urgency.
“It is Ysella,” he said, closing the door behind him.
Rhaenyra’s expression sharpened. “Is she hurt?”
“No. At least, I do not think so. She has not seen the maester. The maester has not seen her. No one has sent for him. Her ladies say she has not complained of illness.”
“Jace,” Rhaenyra said slowly.
“She is not herself,” he pressed on. “She barely spoke at breakfast. She refused pears. She looked as though she might cry over a spoon. She clearly wished for me to be wearing a different doublet.”
His mother stared at him. Then she put a hand over her mouth.
Jace went very still. “Are you laughing?”
“No,” Rhaenyra said, in a voice that was absolutely laughing.
“Mother.”
That was her undoing. Rhaenyra turned her face away, shoulders shaking, and made a valiant attempt at dignity that lasted perhaps three breaths. “I am sorry,” she said, though she did not sound sorry at all. “I am. Truly.”
“My wife is distressed.”
“Yes,” Rhaenyra said, gentler now, though her eyes were still bright with amusement. “And I suspect I know why.”
Jace sat at once.
Rhaenyra considered him for a moment, visibly deciding how much mercy motherhood required. “Has it occurred to you,” she asked, “that Ysella may be near her monthly courses?”
Jace blinked.
It had not.
In truth, very few things related to women’s bodies had occurred to him with any clarity. Jace knew, in a general and mortifying sense, that women had bodies and that those bodies did things. He knew this from marriage, from whispers, from maesters’ books he had avoided, and from the alarming fact that every woman he had ever known seemed to understand a second world of knowledge that men only entered by accident and immediately regretted.
“Her courses,” he repeated, carefully, as if the words might detonate.
“Yes,” Rhaenyra said. “Her courses.”
Jace looked toward the window, as if the sky might offer guidance. It did not. “But she is in pain?” he asked, because that was the part his mind had seized upon with immediate and terrible focus.
His mother’s amusement softened. “She may be. Some women feel little more than discomfort. Some are laid low by it. And sometimes a woman who is usually only mildly troubled by it may have a worse month than others.”
“Every month?”
Rhaenyra’s brows rose. Jace had the abrupt and horrible sense that he had walked, smiling and unarmed, into a battlefield on which his mother had been fighting since girlhood.
“Yes, Jace,” she said. “Every month. More or less.”
“And no one has done anything about this?”
For one dazzling moment, Rhaenyra looked as though she might laugh again. Then she seemed to decide that if she began, she might never stop.
“Women have been asking that question for a very long time,” she said.
Jace sat back, appalled.
“Do not look so stricken,” Rhaenyra said, though she sounded pleased with herself. “Your wife is not dying.”
“She might be miserable.”
“That,” his mother allowed, “is more likely.”
Jace leaned forward. “What do I do?”
At that, Rhaenyra’s expression softened fully. She reached across the small table and patted his hand, which Jace accepted with as much dignity as a grown man could manage while seeking instruction on how not to fail his wife.
“Speak gently to her,” she said. “Do not hover so obviously that she begins to feel like an invalid. Ask what she needs. If she does not know, offer small comforts. Tea, if she can bear it. Something warm for her stomach. Broth, fruit, bread, whatever she likes best. Have the kitchens send it quietly, not as though you have declared a kingdom-wide emergency.”
Jace committed each instruction to memory with the seriousness of a knight receiving battle orders. “Tea,” he repeated. “Warm cloths. Food she likes. Do not declare an emergency.”
“And kindness,” Rhaenyra said. “That above all. If she snaps at you, do not decide the realm is ending. If she cries, hold her if she lets you. If she wants quiet, give it to her. If she wants you, stay.”
That, at least, Jace could do. He stood, already arranging orders in his head. Tea. Warm cloths. Something sweet from the kitchens. Perhaps soup. Perhaps two soups. Did women want soup during their courses? He would have three made and let Ysella choose.
“Jace,” his mother called, just as he reached the door.
He turned back.
Rhaenyra’s mouth curved. “Of course,” she said, “if you truly wish to spare your wife this suffering, you might always give her nine months’ reprieve.”
Jace stared.
His mother, traitorously serene, lifted her cup. “I would not object to becoming a grandmother sooner rather than later.”
Jace left the room immediately.
He did not run.
Princes did not run from their mothers’ solar because their mothers had mentioned heirs, beds, and the bodily functions of their wives with the same serene expression they used to discuss grain stores.
Jace merely walked very quickly.
By the time he reached his chambers, he had recovered most of his composure and none of his dignity. There were, however, more urgent concerns than dignity.
He opened the door softly, already prepared to send for tea, warm cloths, three varieties of soup, and perhaps a sweet cake if that did not count as hovering. Then he saw Ysella. She sat curled in the chair before the hearth, one hand pressed low against her stomach, the other covering her mouth as she cried as quietly as she could manage.
Everything in Jace went still.
“Ysella,” he said.
She startled, turning her face away at once as though he had caught her doing something shameful. “I am sorry,” she said, voice thick. “I did not hear you come in.”
Jace crossed the room in three strides and knelt before her. “Do not apologise.” He reached for her hands, careful enough that she could pull away if she wished. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, which was such a transparent falsehood that Jace nearly admired her courage in attempting it. Her fingers trembled in his.
“Beloved,” he said softly.
That did it. Ysella made a small, wounded sound, bent forward, and pressed her forehead to his shoulder. Jace’s arms came around her at once. One hand settled between her shoulder blades, the other cradled the back of her head, and he held her as though tenderness were the only useful thing left in the world.
For several moments, she only cried against him.
Jace did not ask again. His mother had said not to hover. He suspected kneeling at his wife’s feet and holding her while internally preparing to send half the castle into motion might still count, but he hoped the Seven allowed for intent.
At last, Ysella drew a shaky breath. “I do not know what is wrong with me.”
“You are hurting?”
She nodded miserably.
Jace’s fingers tightened before he could stop them. He loosened his grip at once and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “Your monthly courses?” he asked, with the caution of a man stepping onto uncertain ice.
Ysella went very still. For one terrible heartbeat, Jace wondered if he had said the wrong thing so badly that there was no recovery from it.
Then Ysella tucked her face more firmly against his shoulder and gave the smallest nod.
“Yes,” she whispered, and sounded so miserable about it that Jace immediately decided monthly courses were among the realm’s crueller inventions. “I am sorry,” she said again. “I know I have been dreadful today.”
“You have not.” She lifted her head enough to look at him through damp lashes. “You have been somewhat unlike yourself,” he amended.
Despite everything, a wet laugh slipped out of her. It broke halfway into another sob, and she looked furious with herself for it. “I do not know why I cannot stop crying,” she said. “It is never like this. Usually, I am only sore for a day or two before, and then it passes. But this time my back aches, and my stomach cramps, and everything feels too loud.”
Jace felt a sharp, helpless ache beneath his ribs. “Why did you not tell me?” he asked, then regretted it at once when her mouth trembled.
“Because it is embarrassing,” she said. “Because it is foolish. Because ladies are meant to bear these things quietly, and I am not doing it quietly at all.”
“It is not foolish.” He said it with such force that Ysella blinked. Jace softened his voice. “If you are in pain, then it matters. If you are unhappy, then it matters. You do not have to be quiet for me.”
Ysella stared at him for a moment, then began crying harder.
Jace froze.
“Was that wrong?”
She shook her head and reached for him again, which Jace chose to interpret as a victory, though a confusing one. “I can help,” he said, with all the confidence of a man who had been briefed by his mother for less than a quarter hour.
Ysella made a doubtful sound into his shoulder. Jace chose not to be offended. Doubt, given the subject and his very limited training, was perhaps reasonable. “Tea,” he said. “And something warm for your stomach. Food, if you can bear it. Whatever you like best.”
She lifted her head a little. Her eyes were red, her nose pink, and her expression suspicious. “Did someone tell you this?”
Jace hesitated. “My mother,” he admitted.
Ysella closed her eyes. “You went to the queen.”
“I was concerned.”
“You cancelled council meetings.”
Jace stared at her. “How did you know that?”
“Jace,” she said, with exhausted fondness, “the entire castle knows when you cancel council meetings.”
That was unfortunate.
“I did not declare an emergency,” he said, because this seemed important to clarify. Ysella looked at him. “Not aloud,” he amended.
A watery laugh escaped her, and Jace felt something inside him ease. Encouraged, Jace rose only far enough to reach the bellpull. He did not yank it like an alarm rope. He was proud of that.
When a servant appeared, Jace lowered his voice with the solemn discretion of a man arranging matters of state. “Tea,” he said. “Something calming, if the maester has such a thing. Warm cloths wrapped in linen. Broth. Bread. Fruit. Something sweet from the kitchens. Not pears.”
The servant’s gaze flickered, very briefly, toward Ysella.
Jace added, with great firmness, “Quietly.”
“Of course, my prince.”
The door closed.
Ysella watched him with a look that was half fondness, half exhaustion, and half suspicion.
That made three halves, but Jace wisely kept the arithmetic to himself.
“Not pears?” she asked.
“They seemed to distress you.”
For a moment, Ysella stared at him. Then she began laughing and crying at the same time, which Jace found alarming until she reached for him again.
He returned to his place before her at once. “I am trying very hard,” he said.
“I can tell,” Ysella said, and kissed his cheek with damp lips. “It is helping.”
The tea arrived first, carried in by the same servant with the solemn expression of one entrusted with a matter of delicate diplomacy. Behind him came another with a covered tray, and a third with a basin and several folded cloths that steamed faintly in the cool air of the chamber.
Jace approved of this efficiency. He also disapproved of the number of people required to carry it out; three servants felt perilously close to a procession.
“Leave it there,” he said quietly, gesturing to the small table near the hearth. “Thank you.”
They obeyed with admirable silence. Jace made a mental note to commend them later, though preferably not in a way that informed the entire household that they had successfully delivered cloths related to his wife’s courses.
When the door shut again, Ysella eyed the table. “That is a great deal of food.”
Jace looked at the tray. There was broth, bread, sliced apples, sugared almonds, honey cakes, cheese, and what appeared to be a small pot of stewed berries.
“It is a selection,” he said.
“It is a feast for a very small council.”
“The council has been dismissed,” Jace said. “Their loss.”
She laughed again, softer this time, and leaned back in the chair as if the effort had exhausted her.
Jace poured the tea himself. He had never considered pouring tea to be a task requiring courage, but the cup rattled faintly against the saucer when he set it in her hands.
Ysella noticed. Of course she did. “Are you nervous?” she asked.
“No,” Jace lied.
Ysella took the cup from him with both hands, careful and slow. The steam curled around her face, softening the dampness on her cheeks, and for a moment she simply breathed it in.
“It smells of mint,” she murmured.
“Is mint good?” Jace asked at once.
She looked at him over the rim of the cup. “Jace.”
“Yes?”
“Breathe.”
He did. It helped less than he had hoped.
Ysella sipped the tea. Her lashes lowered; her shoulders, which had been drawn tight all afternoon, eased by the smallest measure.
Jace noticed. Jace noticed everything. “Better?” he asked.
“A little.” Then, because she was kind even when miserable, she added, “It is good.”
Jace accepted this as a decisive victory and turned to the warm cloths. He tested one against the inside of his wrist, because he had seen nurses do something similar with warmed milk for children and assumed the principle might hold. It was hot but not scalding.
“May I?” he asked.
Ysella glanced from the folded linen to him, then nodded and shifted her hand away from her stomach.
Jace laid the warm cloth gently over her lower belly, careful not to press too hard. Ysella inhaled sharply, then sank back into the chair with a sound so relieved that Jace had to look down at the floor for a moment. Not because he was embarrassed, but because if he looked at her too long, small and hurting and trusting him to help, he was going to do something foolish, like swear vengeance against her own body.
“Come to bed,” he said softly.
“I am not tired,” she said, which might have been more convincing if she had not said it while curled around a warm cloth and blinking as though keeping her eyes open required strategy.
“Naturally,” Jace said. “Then you may be not tired somewhere more comfortable.”
That earned him a faint smile. Ysella allowed him to guide her to the bed all the same. She sat on the edge while he drew back the coverlet, arranged the pillows, retrieved the tea, considered the tray of food, reconsidered it, and placed one honey cake within reach in case sweetness became necessary.
“You are very thorough,” she murmured.
“Thank you.”
Her mouth twitched again, and Jace felt absurdly victorious.
Once she was settled beneath the blankets, warm cloth still tucked against her stomach, Jace hesitated beside the bed.
Ysella looked up at him, softer now. “Are you coming?”
That question settled something in him. Jace removed his boots and climbed in beside her with more care than grace. Ysella shifted at once, curling into his side as if she had been waiting for the space there to open.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She tucked her face against his chest, one hand clutching the warm cloth beneath the blankets, and let out a long, uneven breath. “Better?” he whispered.
“Better,” she said, already sounding half asleep.
Jace let himself exhale.
For a little while, there was only the crackle of the fire and the slow evening hush of the Red Keep settling around them. Ysella’s breathing evened against his chest. Every so often, her fingers tightened around the cloth, but the worst of her trembling had eased.
Jace decided, cautiously, that he had done well.
This was, of course, when he ruined it.
“My mother said there is another way I might help,” he murmured, because he was comfortable, relieved, and therefore stupid.
Ysella made a sleepy sound. “Mm?”
Jace, having learned absolutely nothing from the morning, took this as encouragement. “She said,” he continued, earnest and soft and doomed, “that if I wished to spare you this misery, I might give you nine months’ reprieve.”
The change in Ysella was immediate.
One moment, she had been warm and drowsy against him. The next, she was fully awake, lifting her head from his chest with the terrible precision of a dragon hearing an insult.
“I beg your pardon?”
Jace became aware, with dawning horror, that the words had sounded different outside his head. “Not now,” he said quickly. “Not as an immediate remedy. Obviously. I only meant—”
“You only meant to inform me, while I am bleeding, cramping, crying, and attempting not to curse your entire bloodline, that your mother suggested you could improve the situation by putting a babe in me?”
Jace opened his mouth. Closed it. Considered several responses and, for once in his life, chose none of them.
Ysella stared at him.
“That was not wisdom, was it?” he asked faintly.
“No, Jacaerys,” she said, with lethal calm. “It was not.”
“I am sorry,” Jace said immediately. It came out with such feeling that, under different circumstances, he might have been proud of it. These were not different circumstances.
Ysella continued to look at him as though she were deciding whether widowhood might agree with her.
“I did not mean it like that,” he said, then winced, because that sentence had never improved anything in the history of marriage.
“How did you mean it?” Ysella asked.
Jace took a careful breath. His mother’s advice returned to him: kindness, quiet, do not decide the realm is ending. Unfortunately, the realm felt very much as though it were ending. “I meant,” he said slowly, “that I hate seeing you in pain. And when Mother said there was a way you might not suffer this for a while, I thought—”
“You thought you would helpfully offer the use of your person.”
He closed his eyes. “When you say it that way, I understand there were flaws in my reasoning.”
“Several,” Ysella said.
“Numerous,” Jace agreed. That appeared to please her less than he had hoped.
She pushed herself upright with great dignity, which was somewhat undermined by the fact that she was still clutching a warm cloth beneath the blankets. “You are not permitted to speak for a moment,” she said.
Jace obeyed at once. This was difficult, as he possessed several apologies, one explanation, and a growing suspicion that honey cake might save him.
Ysella breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, and then pointed toward the small plate near the pillows.
Jace followed the direction of her finger. The honey cake.
His moment had come.
He handed it to her without a word. Ysella took a bite, chewed, and continued glaring at him. After the second bite, her glare softened by perhaps one degree.
Jace, who had once sat through three hours of negotiations with House Bar Emmon without betraying impatience, had never worked harder to remain silent.
Ysella finished the honey cake. Then she held out her hand. He placed another in it. Her mouth twitched.
“You may speak,” she said.
Jace chose his words with the care of a man handling wildfire. “I am sorry,” he said again. “For repeating my mother’s advice without considering whether it was advice or merely an ambush. And for suggesting, however unintentionally, that your present suffering was an inconvenience best solved by causing you an entirely different suffering.”
She studied him for a long moment. “You are very fortunate that I love you.”
Warmth moved through him so suddenly that it nearly knocked the apology from his mind. “I am,” he said softly.
Ysella sighed, long and put-upon, then lowered herself back against him with all the air of a woman granting royal pardon. Jace accepted the pardon with appropriate reverence and wrapped his arm around her again.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
This time, Jace did not mistake the silence for encouragement.
Ysella ate half of the second honey cake, drank a little more tea, and tucked herself more firmly against him with a sigh that was still faintly offended but no longer murderous. Jace counted this as progress.
“You are still an idiot,” she murmured eventually.
“I know.”
“But you are my idiot.”
Jace smiled into her hair. “That is better.”
She pinched his side, but there was no real force behind it, and when he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, she only hummed and settled closer.
By the time the fire burned low, Ysella had fallen asleep against him, warm cloth cooling beneath the blankets, tea gone lukewarm on the table, honey cakes reduced to crumbs. Jace lay awake a little longer, one hand resting gentle and broad over her back, and decided that marriage was less like diplomacy than anyone had warned him. It was more difficult, more delicate, and far more likely to involve being glared at while offering cake.
Still, he thought he had learned something important.
Namely: listen first, speak carefully, never trust his mother when her eyes were bright with amusement, and keep honey cakes within reach.
***
Three months later, Jace discovered he had learned one additional lesson.
His mother was insufferable when she was right. Rhaenyra did not say I told you so when the maester confirmed Ysella was with child. She did not need to. The look she gave him across the solar was worse.
It was the look of a queen, a mother, and a woman who had been handed victory by the gods and intended to savour it privately until the end of her days.
Jace bore it with dignity for nearly four seconds.
Then he smiled.
Ysella, seated beside him with one hand resting lightly over her still-flat stomach, saw the smile and narrowed her eyes. “Do not,” she warned.
“I did not say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Rhaenyra lifted her cup to hide her smile and failed entirely.
Jace attempted to arrange his features into something solemn, humble, and appropriately awed by impending fatherhood.
He suspected he only managed pleased with himself.
Ysella reached over and slapped his arm, not hard enough to hurt, but with enough precision to make her point. “This is not because you were clever,” she said.
“Of course not,” Jace said. He was clever enough not to say that it had worked.
Mostly.
He had, after all, solved the problem.
His wife informed him this was not the lesson he was meant to take from the ordeal.
Jacaerys, wisely, did not argue.