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The feast was a merry swelter, warm with bodies and food still steaming from the kitchens. A hundred hearths were burning, filling the Great Hall with a smoky haze. Singers bellowed, fiddles screeched, dancers wheeled and leapt. All of it for them, the crown’s youngest prince and his new wife.
By then, her husband had fed her so many finger foods that her stomach was full to bursting. Darling little apple tarts, spiced cubes of lamb, here and there a sip of strongwine. Yet Dyanna wished for another morsel, if only so Maekar would bring his hand once more to her lips. She loved kissing his fingertips before he could draw them away. Loved the way his ears pinked and his eyes shied, bashful.
She had been in love before, many times. It was her sickness, her mother liked to say, her burden, though Dyanna never considered it so. She saw the shine in all those she met, no matter how well-hidden, and did not rest till it was brought to the fore. She delighted in prying open the hardest of shells, to marvel at the treasure within.
Speckled with old pox scars and flushed red with drink, Maekar was lovely. He had required little coaxing, in truth. His scowl was a flimsy shield, and he’d folded at the first touch. Wine only made him softer, freeing his hands to wander across her waist. My silver prince, Dyanna thought, helpless with affection. My sweet sullen husband.
Once, he’d been the only Targaryen she had ever known. A purple-eyed princeling, proud and imperious. And, she discovered later, a fumbling boy of four-and-ten. His mother was Dornish—brave, bold Myriah Martell—but there was nothing of her in her son. Only Prince Baelor was blessed with the queen’s coloring.
When Maekar spoke of his eldest brother, it was with equal parts love and grievance. A little brother’s jealousy, so petty and earnest that it endeared her beyond sense. Dyanna thought of her own brothers—Apollon, the wild, demanding middle child, and Aron, born last and forever the apple of their mother’s eye. How she loved them, how she hated them. How they made her laugh and smile and weep.
Maekar was the youngest of his brood, but Queen Myriah seemed to regard him as the songbird did the cuckoo egg. As if he had come from somewhere other than between her own legs. It perplexed Dyanna that they could not all see the softness beneath the stern mask, the boyishness that Maekar locked away and let out only when safe.
It emerged more often with his brothers about. Upon the dais sat the other princes: smiling Rhaegel and unsmiling Aerys, the simpleton and the scholar. Maekar loved Rhaegel well, and Aerys rather less so. In proof, Rhaegel had greeted his brother with a shower of kisses. From Aerys was only a curt nod.
Baelor had fallen somewhere in between, drawing his brother into a tender embrace. After a beat, Maekar made to squirm away. His brother just squeezed him tighter, laughing, before finally letting him go. “You mustn’t run away again,” Prince Baelor warned with mock displeasure. “Else I shall drag you back by the ear.”
“He acts as though I am still a boy of seven,” Maekar had huffed later, still flushed down his neck.
Prince Baelor acted strangely indeed. It was clear to all and sundry that he loved his brother well, though it was a queer, indulgent affection. As if Maekar remained the surly child who kept to his brother’s shadow, who would carry his sword and be his shield, who would always, always cleave to his side.
Her husband cleaved no more; his hand was hot on her hip, the line of him pressed against her from shoulder to ankle. He might’ve crawled inside her if she let him. The thought gave her a pleasant shiver.
Rhaegel and Aerys were yet unwed, but Baelor’s own wife sat beside him: Lady Jena Dondarrion of Blackhaven. A Marcher woman—a pale, vulpine beauty who smirked at Dyanna past her husband’s crooked nose. Dyanna liked her but little.
She nudged her husband with an elbow. “She’s pretty at least, isn’t she? Lady Jena?”
Maekar gave her an adorably wary look. “No?”
“You’re allowed to say so,” she teased. “I don’t mind.”
“You are the most beautiful woman in the room,” Maekar replied gruffly. Honestly, for it was all he knew how to be.
In front of the king and queen and all the court, Maekar allowed himself only the briefest touches. Dyanna had no such scruples, capturing his hand and whispering, sultry, “And you are the most handsome man.”
Maekar’s face shuttered, and she could feel his fingers tense in her palm. His shame found his pox marks as surely as rain found the unsheltered. Sometimes his hand would come up to cover them, a childish impulse that embarrassed him worse than the scars themself. Dyanna bent and peppered them in kisses till his fingers were lax again, twined with hers.
“It’s been years since I’ve had to endure such coddling,” Maekar grumbled. “You’re worse than Baelor.”
Summoned by his name, the way a spider sensed when its web was plucked, the eldest prince appeared. He and Maekar had dressed in mirrored doublets—red satin lined with soot-black silk for the eldest prince, midnight for the youngest, slashed with crimson like bloodied claw marks.
A hand came down on her husband’s shoulder. “Enjoying the feast, I hope?” Prince Baelor's fingers curled into the dark silk; a jewelled ring glinted in the torchlight.
Maekar turned toward his brother at once, then petulantly back to his plate, chagrinned. There was nothing he hated worse than to be caught wanting. “It is tolerable.”
That made Dyanna smile; Baelor smiled too. “Won’t you dance with me, Maekar?” the prince implored. “You always used to partner with me when we were boys.”
“I’m a man grown,” her husband replied stiffly, for the hundredth time since Dyanna had known him. Mayhaps the thousandth. “There are countless women here who would take my place. Your lady wife, for one.”
“I’ll dance with you, my prince,” Dyanna offered in his place. It would do well to endear herself to her goodfamily, especially her husband’s favorite brother. “I’ll dance with you, then Maekar will dance with each of us.” She gave him no room to argue. Her husband liked dancing, though he’d deny it till his dying breath.
“I suppose,” Maekar allowed, giving her a reproachful look. “One dance, for each of you.”
Dyanna grinned and kissed him firmly on his frowning lips. His mouth parted easily, wantonly, so unlike the maiden she’d known at Starfall. She let herself take a taste of him, spices and strongwine and Maekar. When she pulled away, his cheeks were rosy and his eyes were full of stars.
“I shall not linger,” she promised, touching a finger to those soft lips.
Prince Baelor was waiting, still and silent as a statue. Something in his face raised the hair on the nape of her neck, but she took his proffered hand, smiled, and tucked the feeling away.
As they stepped off the dais, she cast an inquiring glance at Lady Jena Dondarrion. The Marcher woman gave her a look of sly, darting amusement in return. Lady Jena was only a year older, yet she condescended like she were the queen herself. Dyanna grit her teeth and smiled back, close-lipped.
Down below the salt, half the trestle tables had been cleared away to make room for dancing. A hundred ladies in silks and a hundred lords in satin whirled gracefully or else lurched gracelessly. The crown prince himself was an impeccable dancer. Every step was perfectly precise. Maekar was always a touch too stiff, with short, bitten-off movements and perpetually sweaty hands.
The eldest prince’s hands were dry and warm as he swept her across the floor, but a chill lingered in his face. It unnerved her, but she did not let it show. Mother had taught her how to smile, how to handle men of every kind of tooth and claw. Some were dogs, just begging for a pet and a walk about the yard. Others were snakes, and needed to be taken firmly and fearlessly in hand.
Prince Baelor was neither hound nor serpent. She could not say what beast he was, and that only intrigued her more. The stories her husband had told her were of no help, for the telling changed with the hour. Maekar thought Prince Baelor courageous at sunrise, and a mad fool by dusk. Brilliant at breakfast, and an arrogant sod by dinner.
The man before her was not the dashing prince nor the tender brother of Maekar’s memory, but a stranger to her. His mummer’s mask was so immaculate that not even she could pick out the seams. With no crevices to pry into, her hand grasped not for the flaying knife but the hammer. Something to crack him open so she might peer inside.
“You do not like me very much, do you?” Dyanna asked boldly. Foolishly, her mother would say.
The prince dropped a step, but only one. “Why do you say that, my lady?”
He spun her in an elegant arc, just long enough to frame a reply. “Your countenance, my prince.”
Prince Baelor smiled for her as he did for all the rest, but his eyes were cold and dark as dragonglass. “If Maekar loves you, then you must be worthy of it. His good opinion is hard-won.”
That it was. During his first fortnight at Starfall, Dyanna suspected that the young prince hated her. At the least, he found her insufferable. Maekar had warmed slowly, as the dunes and stony rises did beneath the Dornish sun. By midday, his love was searing in its intensity.
Another turn, another taut silence. “And still,” she said, “you dislike me.”
Prince Baelor stepped neatly around the words. “Maekar is my youngest brother. I had never been long without him until he left for Starfall.” Until you, he did not say. “He was… unhappy with my marriage to Lady Jena. I can only surmise that is why he fled to Dorne.”
Maekar had told her as much. He visited Sunspear each year with the queen, but the mountains to the west were alien and alluring. Dyanna oft took him up those rocky cliffs, with as much water as their mounts could carry and a tent just large enough for two. With no eyes but hers to see, Maekar was a yielding, needful thing. It was a pleasure to teach him all that she knew, to hold him, to have him all to herself.
“He loved Starfall well,” Dyanna stated, with a strange, savage smugness.
That made the prince’s mouth tighten, just a tick. “I suppose he did, but there is a truth you ought to remember, my lady.”
A finger of sweat traced down her back. “And what truth is that?”
“That wives come and go,” the prince replied, so chilly that it made her shiver, “but a brother will always be a brother.”
She could not hear the music anymore over the pounding of her heart. It made no matter; they had both stopped dancing. A voice came from deep inside her and said, “I am not going anywhere, my prince.”
Baelor’s grip remained gentle and courtly, but his eyes were impossibly dark. “Nor is Prince Maekar. He will remain here, in the Red Keep, with his family. You may return to Starfall at your leisure, Lady Dayne, but he will not accompany you.”
Already they were catching odd looks, but she planted her feet. The crown prince was so tall that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. “As I said,” she ground out. “I am not going anywhere.”
The prince held her gaze, his smile finally melting away. In its place settled a sharp, searching look. It was not a dog’s honest hunger, nor a serpent’s unfeeling regard. It was the scrutiny of a hawk, cold and curious. Her heart was rabbiting, but she refused to look away.
At last, the prince’s hands dropped. “As you will.”
They returned to the dais in silence. Maekar was digging into a bloody cut of meat as they approached, ignorant of the pall that hung over the Great Hall. The Iron Throne loomed from its corner, a great black maw with a thousand gleaming teeth. Dyanna had never been given to homesickness, but in that moment, she wished she were back in her girlhood bedchamber. Starfall danced and dazzled; the Red Keep heaved and hulked.
Maekar was already grumbling as he rose from his seat, but he could not quite hide his eagerness. Any other moment, Dyanna would’ve found it helplessly charming.
But the crown prince was there, his hands folded in front of him and a smile once again fixed to his lips. Easy as anything, Prince Baelor reached up and ruffled Maekar’s hair. She tensed, but her husband just grunted and slapped the offending hand away. “Enough of that. I’m five-and-ten now, and a man wed.”
“And ever my little brother.” Prince Baelor’s voice was light, but the way he towered over Maekar made her stomach tighten.
Dyanna was seized by the sudden urge to draw her husband close. He seemed so young to her sometimes, though they were scarcely four years apart. Maekar would surely sputter in affront if he knew how much she wished to tuck him in her pocket, to keep him safe from the world.
She found herself looking again at Prince Baelor. He was staring back, an arm coiled around her husband’s shoulders. The realization came slow and frigid, seeping in like snowmelt. It was his pocket he meant for Maekar to live in. And like a child, he would not share.
In another place, in another life, Maekar dozed on her lap. His head was pillowed in her purple skirts, pale lashes fanned across his cheek. Idly, she wound a lock of silver hair around her finger. In the warm, waning light of evening, it was easier to pick out the threads of gold. Soon the stars would come out, glimmering against Dorne's deep violet sky.
“What are they like?” she’d asked. “Your brothers?”
Maekar scoffed. “Aerys ought to be a maester. The only reason he isn’t at the Citadel already is that they’d make him scrub floors and empty chamber pots, and he cannot bear real work. Rhaegel is—” He let out a sigh, his voice going soft. “He’s not like the rest of us. Not like me. He’s kind, gentle. You’d like him. He’d like you.”
That made her smile. It was sweet to imagine—the Red Keep, her royal goodmother and goodfather, all her new goodbrothers. “And Baelor?”
“Baelor,” Maekar echoed, then he fell quiet. When at last he spoke, his voice was rough with anger and naked longing. “My brother. How to explain him?”