Chapter Text
“He looks the part of king already,” her husband cut in. She’d wanted to laugh, but choked the embarrassing noise down. She wasn’t a child anymore, not with the solid warmth of this precious babe in her arms.
He was not quite what Rhaenyra had expected. She hadn’t allowed herself to expect, if she really pushed the matter in her mind. The sensible part of her knew now what a disaster this audacious little babe would herald. The larger, more vibrant part of her preened at it.
“He’s got my bearing,” she sighed fondly. “And your nose!” She held the babe out for his inspection, and not even a chortle out of her. Daemon would be proud to see it, when he returned. He would not stay away, when he heard the news of her son.
Laenor’s eyes clouded with the far away look he often got around her.
“Joffrey,” he gestured towards the babe, taking him into his arms. Rhaenyra pinched her lips tightly, but said not a word. It was Corlys who struck back, without her having to lift a finger.
“Out of the question. A Velaryon babe will have a Velaryon name.”
“A Valyrian name,” she cut in, searching her husband’s eyes. “A name between our houses.”
Laenor looked so longingly at the babe in his arms, the role of father seemed to fit onto his shoulders without a second thought. “Jacaerys,” he settled at long last. “Let the babe’s name be Jacaerys.”
“A fine name,” Corlys nodded. Rhaenyra tugged the babe back into her embrace, wondering if his red face looked a little prouder with a name to adorn it.
“Jace,” she whispered. She couldn’t give her fool husband all the glory.
“Please, let me see him.” She’d never seen such hysterics from Harwin in the sweet year they’d spent together, and she rather hated their emergence. She was far more used to such things from her proper husband, and even then only when Laenor was deep in his cups and Joffrey Lonmouth’s name on his lips.
“It’s indecent,” she retorted. “If anyone were to see the two of you together, and make a connection— It cannot be done.”
She tugged at his smallclothes, hoping to turn this conversation to far more pleasant topics. Harwin resisted her touch with an expression like she’d killed his favorite hound, forcing her to pull away again.
“You have my heart, Rhaenyra,” he said so plainly it startled her. Coming from a man who she’d seen split another man’s shield clean in half with a single blow, it was more than touching. It was— thrilling.
“Is that so?”
“It has been since I was given the honor of your company. I could not betray you without risking my own heart to suffer with you.” He pressed a firm kiss to the back of her hand, which he captured so completely in his palm. “My intentions are nothing less than pure. I only wish to be in the same room as the boy. Introduce me as ser, have him never know me as anything more, I do not care. As long as he knows me.” He placed another, softer kiss on the inside of her wrist to punctuate the request.
“Continue kissing me, and I might decide in your favor.”
“Yes, my princess,” he whispered against her collar.
“You can do better,” she prompted, drawing his chin up.
“Yes, your Grace.”
Time would have the kingdom see Jace for dark hair and eyes like there was nothing more to a boy than the snub of his nose or shade of his brow. If any actually saw Jace to the bone, they would see he was her trueborn son through and through. What was there to be said about his father when her family’s story was written across his soul? He had her laugh, the kindness of her mother’s eyes, her father’s half smiles, and even learned Daemon’s particular way of holding a sword.
It was impossible to see anything but, she thought, when that first precious egg had hatched. She’d watched it with her very own eyes, seen a moss-green snot push through the surface of the egg and pull itself fully out through force of teeth and wing. With its eyes still wet from birth, it found her son by instinct and curled into his side like a beloved doll. She hadn’t thought herself caught in the rumors around her son’s heritage, so it was not until the utter relief of the moment when she realized how much she’d been counting on this moment. It proved the truth very soundly.
When had the people become so concerned over whether the salt of High Tide was in him or the mortar of Harrenhal, anyway? He was the blood of the dragon, its fire would burn away all the unimportant bits by the time he ascended the throne. When her darling boy turned his face to the ground to avoid the courtiers’ gazes, she had to bite her tongue to keep from ordering them flayed on the spot. As if a dragon should have to cover himself from his future subjects, leal lords, and his own fucking kin.
The boy would ask her once, his eyes welling with a pain only a child’s heart could know, “who am I?”
The words came from her lips as fierce as any fire.
“You are a Targaryen.”
Jace hated Dragonstone. She could see it written across his small face as soon as the craggy keep pulled into view. It must have been a frightening sight, to a child. Carved out of rock like an extension of the ash and obsidian panes of the mountain, it was a far cry from the regal home the Red Keep had made.
Loss weighed on him, and there was no doubt their exile would be another stone pulling him into despair. What a sorrowful creature Alicent and her brood had made of a boy of six. She draped her arm around his shoulders, and he shuddered at her touch underneath his cloak. This new spring had quite a bit of trouble shaking off the previous year’s harsh last breaths of winter.
“Time will make you fond of it.” It had for her, when its shadowy walls took her into their embrace in her time of greatest need. Even though she’d eventually returned to the light of the Red Keep, a fondness for dark places had stuck to her bones like a warm stew.
“Why can’t we go home?” he asked pitifully.
“It’s not our home anymore.”
“Is it because of what happened with Aemond? I didn’t mean—”
“No, zaldrītsos, of course not. We are going because it’s not safe for us in our old home. Dragonstone is ours, Jace, yours and mine.”
“Mine?”
“Mine for now, yours when I become queen. This is where princes and princesses live, before they become kings and queens. Here, all who come and go follow our commands.”
She’d explained the concept before, but Jace’s age gave him trouble with understanding the weight of it. He knew nothing of ruling besides what it meant in relation to his little brothers. She could plant a seed of it here, and let it grow ripe in time. Here, she would not be choked by Alicent’s withering stares and whatever nonsense she fed to her children. Here, they had nothing but time.
“Again!” Daemon’s blade cracked over Jace’s leather training armor, sending her son to the ground with a wince. Rhaenyra exhaled through her nose to calm herself, trying to go back to the book of prayers in her hands. Dull stuff, but better than poking herself with a needle every time she heard the clatter of her son’s fall.
“Again,” he shouted alongside another noisy collapse into the dust.
“Again,” like a chorus to the slap of the sword across Jace’s back, pushing the air of out of his lungs from the way he wheezed on his third descent of the last half hour.
When Jace pulled himself up again, his face was burning red.
“Stop it!” He yelled with all of his wounded might. “How am I to learn if I’m always on the ground?”
Daemon’s response was to give him a glancing bow across the shoulders, staggering Jace backwards onto his back leg, weakened from one of Daemon’s tripping maneuvers. The joint fell out, and he collapsed to his knees, face beyond ruddy with rage.
“Stop this,” Rhaenyra finally surged up from her seat, dumping the book aside. “Both of you. There is no more instruction to be had. Jace, let Gerardys know you will take your lessons early today. Daemon—” she cut off with a leveled glare at her husband. It was not until the boy left in a huff that she dared approach her husband. The bastard was grinning like he hadn’t just sent her child away to nurse bruises deeper than skin.
“What is the matter with you?” she hissed. “Why must you frustrate him so? He’s only a boy, uncle.”
“Exactly. Fancy swordplay means nothing in real battle. If you want fancy twirls and bows, you should call on Ser Criston fucking Cole for instruction. Battle is pain, having the wind knocked out of you and learning to rise again. It’s being blinded by your own blood and knowing your opponent is still coming. You want him to survive war? I must teach him pain.”
Pain. How much pain did her son suffer as quarrel after quarrel pierced him? Tied down to a sinking dragon, gulping the salt of the sea and choking on his own blood to survive. The silent sisters could wipe away the water from his skin, but the salt had already sunk as deep into his flesh as the quarrels.
Sea salt in his blood, at last. She would’ve laughed if she was not already choking on her own sobs.
Daemon could not look at the boy. Joff was stone-still, as if all the weight on Jace had been passed to him in an instant. Aegon was the only one who could match her in tears, holding himself across the chest as he sobbed breathlessly.
“It’s my fault,” the boy whispered.
Rhaenyra disagreed. She knew whose fault it was, beyond the fingers that pulled the triggers or the billowing Triarchy sails that took her youngest son. It was the same hands which had been weaving her downfall since she was a girl of seven.
“I’ll burn them,” she gasped through the tears. “I’ll burn them all.”