Chapter Text
Aerys knew. Of course Aerys knew; he made it his business to know such things.
Maekar could scoff and deride him as much as he liked, but Aerys had long ago learned that it was better to act more ignorant than one truly was. How much could be learned when one seemed as if they were not listening.
It was not that he had sought to spy on his brothers, merely that, when Baelor and Maekar were in each other’s company, it was as if Aerys didn’t exist. He had taught himself not to mind. That it was no great insult, that for the first five years of his life, he had been Baelor’s closest friend and confidant. That he cared not that, following Maekar’s birth, everyone else had ceased to exist to Baelor.
It was as if they all expected Aerys and Rhaegel to then pair off. Almost insulting. Rhaegel was Aerys’s brother, and he loved him so very dearly, but much of what Aerys enjoyed, Rhaegel struggled to comprehend. That Rhaegel enjoyed watching their brothers and uncles spar, though he himself was useless.
Brynden was a better match to Aerys, but Baelor himself had left ominous warnings. That Brynden’s love fell first to Daemon before their trueborn brother.
Aerys scoffed. Hadn’t he proven Baelor wrong about that assumption, in the end?
Yet, before Blackfyre rose in rebellion, before their aunt Daenerys had been sent to Dorne, Aerys had sat, and he had watched, and what he saw disquieted him.
Hours in the practice yard became hours in the other’s room. Sparring became Baelor, and Maekar pressed to each other’s side at every meal.
Maekar’s presentation had Baelor in a foul mood, pacing the corridors, barking at anyone who came too close. Standing all but pressed against the room door where Maekar’s scent crept forth.
Aerys saw how his brothers orbited around each other. How they matched each other’s every step, how they grew towards each other like flowers to the sun. Therefore, when Baelor announced to Aerys that he and Maekar were to be wed, Aerys was not surprised. If not for Maekar reeking of Baelor’s own scent, it was their mother’s foul mood that told him as much. The grief lurking in their father’s gaze. Neither of them had been pleased with it. Yet another Targaryen marriage, another bride given away too young.
Maekar had laughed when Aerys attempted to explain such to him, speaking on their parents’ behalf.
“Some brides are given away at two-and-ten. I am two years past that, and even then I knew I would marry Baelor or none at all.”
The snivelling arrogance of a child. Aerys wished him well; Maekar had made such a bed when he saddled up to Baelor, finding any excuse to touch him. If Maekar was to lie in such a bed, it was no more than what he had asked for.
It was Baelor that Aerys had more fear for. Fear what he could do, what he had done, what would become of him now.
Baelor, at least, listened to his concerns before turning him away.
“Please, Aerys. Do not worry so.” What else was he to do? His brothers were ignorant of the chaos they were sowing. Aerys loved them too much to see shame brought upon their heads.
He had sat, sullen, at their wedding table. It was a great deal of fuss over so meaningless a marriage. Aerys had brought a book and had gotten fifty pages in before his mother had closed it with a hiss of his name. He went to protest before noting the pained look his mother could not fully hide.
“Please. Do not compound their shamelessness.”
So Aerys picked at his food, noted the fawning guests absently, noted more the whispers from those who stood to the side in disapproval. He talked to Aelinor and tried to relax beneath her sweet voice and measured intellect.
Then he turned to his brothers, watching how they bent close to each other in conspiracy. Baelor held grapes out for Maekar to lick from his hold; Maekar sank his fingers into Baelor’s hair, twisting at the curls. Aerys watched them, and lost his appetite.
From where he sat at the table’s head, Maekar’s feet barely touched the floor.
Near scandalously close to their wedding, Baelor and Maekar had informed their father of the child growing in Maekar’s womb.
King Daeron had stood during one of their family dinners and toasted the newlyweds with a strained smile and tired eyes. His lady wife, the queen, kept her eyes to her plate, and Aerys could have sworn he spotted a glint in them that was not joy.
Rhaegel leaned over in his seat, the chair wobbling beneath him, and whispered a question to Aerys.
“Did Baelor put the baby there as father did with mother?”
“Yes.” His answer was clipped. Aerys loved Rhaegel dearly, but it could be difficult to talk to him.
Rhaegel had the look of summer upon his face. A leaf newly come to bud.
“It’s a good thing then, yes? A new baby, like when Aunt Shiera was born!”
Aerys’s laugh barked out of him, but there was no mirth in it. “Yes, and maybe Maekar will bleed away as the Lady Sereni did too.”
Rhaegel withdrew from him as if struck; horror painted across his sweet, naïve face. Aerys felt regret bubble in his stomach but steeled himself against it. He was not the one who pulled Baelor into bed. He was not the one who defiled two betrothals and broke their father’s heart. He would not be the one to die on the birthing bed, yet it might kill him all the same.
Elder brothers were not meant to live past their little brothers’ end.
(What had Baelor been thinking?)
Maekar, on the other hand, seemed pleased with the whole ordeal. Thrilled, even. As his belly grew, so did his clothes seem to shrink, and ever did his brother have a contented smile upon his face. At the dinner table, Maekar stroked over his womb, kicking his feet as their father discussed the day’s affairs and their mother sat, sour with displeasure, doing her best to force meat down Maekar’s throat.
Aerys found it mildly disgusting. Maekar was ever so pleased that he had accomplished something so base. Something that those with his body were designed to do. And Baelor spent every spare moment gazing at his bride with soft wonder. Aerys had watched Baelor rest his hand atop his growing child, thumb stroking Maekar’s. He had seen Baelor kneel to kiss the dome of their brother’s stomach, whispering to the child that was growing there.
“You are to be an uncle, Aerys.” Baelor had been breathless when he declared it.
Joy. As if the Red Keep had never known a child in it before.
And then Baelor had swept him up into his arms, laughing and spinning and happy again in Aerys’s company. His mouth crept up in spite of himself. Baelor had always been so free with his affections; it was impossible to deny him. Maybe Maekar had found the same problem.
“I am to be a father!”
“Seven help us all.” But he held his brother in return. There would be none better suited; the child would not know how lucky they were.
Aerys slowly found that he was happy for Baelor. For them both. His sweet, foolish brothers, every one of them.
For the most part, it was easy to ignore. Life continued as it always had, Baelor and Maekar trapped in each other’s orbit, Rhaegel in a world of his own, Aerys left in the wake of his always-flighty brothers.
However, more and more, Aerys began to notice cracks in his once-normalcy. Did his father tire all the easier, or was it just that Baelor called upon him less? Was his mother always so pensive and drawn, or had Maekar’s visits to her solar filled her with dread instead of comfort?
Steadily, Aerys had come to realise that Baelor had taken a great many of their family’s burdens upon his back and, now that he was captivated by his pregnant bride, his grip upon them had slipped. Instead, they had fallen upon Aerys’s shoulders, and he had always been the weaker of the two.
What could be done, but sit with his father late into the night, fetching him scrolls that Daeron’s eyes no longer had the strength to fully see. What was Aerys to do, but trail after Baelor into the small council chambers, the items of the meeting drawn up for his brother’s benefit.
His mother? Well, Aerys had long known he was not the favourite of her sons. Baelor, she respected and adored, always ready to beg forgiveness for the burden her Dornish skin had placed upon him. Rhaegel she pitied and mothered, dragging him after her, searching for jobs that would have him content.
Maekar? Maekar was her autumn child, she had said. Come into the world fat and red, only calming with his brother’s touch. Maekar, who had Myriah’s biting humour, her stern countenance, her itch for vigilance. Maekar had always been her darling, and he had flaunted it. So consumed was he with the status of their bastard uncles, the disinterest of their father, that he missed how many of the Queen’s seldom smiles were for her youngest child.
Aerys hated him for it. He envied him for it.
The envy was made worse when Myriah constantly called Maekar to her solar, sitting with him to prepare and sort infant clothes. She fretted constantly, having maesters bring all sorts of tonics to aid Maekar in his laying-in. Aerys rolled his eyes at the excess of it, maddened by the fuss.
But there was revulsion, too. That Maekar’s stomach seemed larger than he himself was. That there was a roundness of childhood still clinging to his cheeks. There was a perversity to the glow of adolescence that he bathed within.
And not one word would turn either of them from their course. Maekar bristled and marched away from any such questioning. Baelor only regarded him with a sad smile, a look that was nearly happy. Baelor merely bid that he show Maekar patience. Baelor asked Aerys if he could find suitable books to read to his infant niece.
(Aerys had found them. Nearly a hundred by his count. Brynden had helped, and they had compiled a book of tales for the child. He wanted so badly to love them.)
Mayhaps Maekar did not remember their grandmother’s death. Aerys did. He remembered his father crying, and he remembered how small Queen Naerys had looked as the babe that died within her turned her blood septic.
Aerys feared for Baelor, the guiding star of his childhood, the steadiest of protectors. How would Baelor, a man with such gentleness and such fury buried within him, suffer the loss of brother and bride? Had Maekar, ever selfish, thought of any beyond his own satisfaction?
(Aerys feared for Maekar. Bloodied legs. Poisoned blood.)
Fear moved him. Fear and pride, the unceasing need to be right, to present himself as an authority on all, for Aerys could not ride, he could not fight, he could not win armies to his side with the charm of his smile. But he could be the smartest person in the room. Baelor had a Hand, and he had a septon; surely he would have need of a scholar?
Aerys knew himself to be correct. Correct in his knowledge, in his pride, in his fear. And therefore he spoke with the cruelty that such assumptions always begot.
“This is a mistake, Maekar.”
Maekar turned slowly from where he sat, stabbing fruitlessly at swaddling clothes, trying to keep the edges even.
“You should speak plainly, Aerys. Your riddles are a fucking bore.”
Maekar had all the arrogance of youth and none of the wisdom to temper it, nor himself. It sowed such fury in Aerys and brought his hands clenching at his sides.
“You are so sure in your own knowledge, your own ability, and Baelor is a fool to indulge you it. But you are a child bearing a child, and you cannot even allow yourself the honesty of such an admission.”
“I am a man grown, an omega flowered. I wed Baelor in a sept, the same as any other my age might have done.”
“Others your age do not take their brothers to bed.”
“Neither are they blood of the dragon.”
Blood of the dragon. He did not remember, but Aerys did. He remembered standing with Baelor as their father presented Rhaegel to the king. He remembered his grandfather, grotesque with his indulgences, laughing at his grandson who would not calm, and congratulating his son and heir.
At least he is like the other one, blood of the dragon. None of that Dornish stink.
Aerys remembered his father pushing them out of the room, nurses coming to take Rhaegel in their arms and lead him and Baelor away. Aerys remembered hearing the bellows of his father before the throne room door closed. And Aerys remembered how Baelor had frozen beside him at Aegon’s words. How he had smiled with empty eyes. How he was still young enough to believe that Aerys was ignorant of his eyes glazing with tears.
Blood of the dragon. As if Maekar knew the first thing of its weight.
“You think I did not hear you?” Aerys felt his own temper at last rise to meet Maekar’s own. “Stealing to each other for years. You think I relished explaining it to Rhaegel, how you were committing our grandfather’s sin? That your actions were breaking our father’s heart?”
Maekar’s teeth had come to bear. Always quick with his temper, that one. “And you were free to explain to Rhaegel that it is our heritage. The custom of our house.”
“Your own words, valonqar,” Aerys allowed the title to curdle with his grimace, “you wed within a sept, mixing as much Rhoynar blood as Valyrian. And now your brother’s child grows inside you. It is ill-gotten.”
“It is mine!” Maekar cast the fabric to the side, throwing himself from his perch, still standing far beneath Aerys in height. Five-and-ten to Aerys’s near twenty. A sickness again makes itself known. “She is mine!”
Maekar turned, storming from the room, leaving Aerys to seethe in his aftermath.
So be it. If the boy was so uncaring of consequences, let him suffer them in full. Aerys would have no part in it. He and Maekar had never been close, far too stubborn and far too entrenched in their beliefs, without any shared passions to bridge them.
Aerys sat upon the stairs of the keep, reminding himself of every slight Maekar had ever paid him over the years. He was so consumed by his rage that, when a presence settled beside him, Aerys hardly noticed.
Then, a hand reached for his arm before pulling away, and Aerys turned to behold his older brother.
Baelor had come to the steps Aerys had perched himself upon. Neither spoke for a long time. Aerys was quite content to allow Baelor the discomfort of the silence.
“I know you do not approve,” Aerys nearly jumped from how suddenly Baelor spoke, “and I know you never have, and I know you are surely angry at me. But… We are happy. We—” Baelor’s voice trembled, just by a fraction. Strange, to be so saddened by such joy. “We’re going to have a child, Aerys. I want you to love them the way we do. I want my child to grow knowing their uncle’s love. Can you…” Baelor again fiddled with his rings, twisting them around and around before he stopped and fixed his eyes ahead to some far-off point. “Could you pretend? Just for a while? For me?”
It hurt that Baelor thought him too proud to hold it over them both. Not forever, certainly. He loved them too much for such a thing.
They were brothers and, for years, all they had had was each other. Best friend and confidant. Sometimes, Aerys yearned for such days to return.
“You are my brother, Baelor. It would not be pretend, and it would not be a labour.” He risked a glance to his side, to where Baelor had bared himself. “It’s your child, and for that alone I love them, and I will do so gladly.”
Baelor sniffed, bringing a hand to quickly wipe across his face. His eyes fluttered closed, and his lips moved, caught between smile and frown. He slung an arm around Aerys’s shoulder, pressing them together in an embrace that was a heartbeat long and left Aerys saddened by its absence.
“Thank you, Aerys.”
Such words should not have haunted Aerys. And yet they did.
Aerys had come to Baelor’s bed, the night after Rhaegel was presented to court. He had slipped in past the covers and turned to face his brother, nearly three years older, but decades wiser.
“I’m sorry.”
Baelor had only smiled, ruffling Aerys’s hair, even though he complained and pushed Baelor away every time his brother did so.
“For what? Grandfather fussing more than Rhaegel? He only does so because he .” Baelor pinched his nose, giggling at the way Aerys fussed and complained. “Now go to sleep. Maybe you can come with me to the yard tomorrow.”
Aerys had nodded, knowing full well that he wouldn’t. He had turned to his other side, feeling the stillness of Baelor’s back against his own, and allowed his brother’s warmth to bring his slumber about.
Aerys had ignored the disaster of the day’s events, turning his mind to other ventures.
But his grandfather’s words, his brother’s tears, they had lingered for many years after.
It was Brynden, of all people, who informed Aerys of his brother’s labours.
His uncle seemed to always know even the most private goings-on in the Red Keep. It made Aerys wonder what he had learned of Baelor and Maekar, and why he had never told the king. Loyalty towards his nephews? The threat of retribution? Love for his own brother?
But Brynden came to him, telling of Maekar confined to his room, and Aerys had ventured forth. If nothing else, he was curious as to an omega’s birthing process. If nothing else, he wanted to be near Maekar as his death calls began.
Aerys came upon Baelor pacing the corridor before his mate’s room. Their father sat on a chair beside him, eyes closed, and head bowed over, as if in prayer.
When Baelor noticed his presence, he stopped, all but running up to Aerys and grabbing at his shoulders.
“He is doing so well.” Baelor’s grin was proud, yet there was a fault hidden in his eyes. “Our brother is strong. So very strong.”
As if he was convincing himself of the fact. What could Aerys do but take pity on them both?
“Mother succeeded four times, and Maekar has her build.” And grandmother’s look, yet it was childbed that killed her, after four babes lost to it. “I’m sure that he is preparing to curse you up a storm for putting him in such a condition.”
It was meant as a joke, so both he and Baelor forced hushed laughter for it. But it was clear neither of them really believed it as such. Aerys stood and cringed at his phrasing, the jape turning into condemnation.
You did this. Everything that comes, good or ill, is upon your head.
A faint cry came from behind the doors. Their father’s brow twitched, as if a spike of pain had struck through him.
Aerys and Baelor turned towards the sound, and Aerys almost missed his brother’s next words, confessed to the ground as they were.
“There is no life left for me if Maekar is no longer part of it.”
And wasn’t that the sad truth of it? They were a matched set, a complement to the other’s best and worst. One tempered, the other vehement. One measured, the other forthright. Maekar needed Baelor’s patience, his compassion. And Baelor? Aerys supposed he needed Maekar’s adoration. Maekar’s loyalty, no matter what wrong Baelor could think to do.
His brothers, ever at the other’s side. Ever in step. The weight of their gazes as they conversed in silence.
Aerys had no response, for there was nothing to argue, and to agree felt cruel, so he shortly took his leave. Childbirth was a messy affair, and witnessing Maekar’s own arrival into the world had been more than enough for him. Aerys had no desire to see his brother’s child amid viscera and womb waters.
He had no desire to see his little brother die.
For just a moment, it was Baelor that Aerys hated. Baelor, who had done this to their brother. Baelor, who took no risk. Baelor, who awaited an heir. Baelor, who would watch Maekar bleed and then be ready to do it all again.
Maekar had been born small. What Baelor had done, it had not been selfless.
In his own chambers, Aerys lost himself in his pencils and paints, sure that no more than a few hours had passed before the door swung open without ceremony. Someone had come to him and it was no servant.
No, it was Queen Myriah Martell, and her kohl had run across her cheeks. Tears, soon dried, but furious in their falling.
Seven Above.
Aerys watched her and his stomach dropped open. Maekar. His baby brother. Gone from them, gone from the world.
Maekar, with a cutting, ferocious laugh. Maekar, always leaping to the defence of his brothers. Maekar, his heart far too soft for what he pretended at.
Maekar. Gods, why was it only then that Aerys realised how dearly he had loved the boy?
Grief began to press down upon Aerys before his mother answered the question he couldn’t voice.
“He lives,”
Aerys’s chest again began to move, air drawn back into straining lungs. Relief was total, near sickening as it swept over him, even when he paused and realised what, exactly, his mother’s presence meant.
“The child…”
“The child,” Myriah agreed. “A girl.”
His niece.
The child was dead.
“Come,” his mother commanded. They were to go to Maekar’s side. The royal family would draw together, close its ranks tight, and mourn the loss. The loss of a dragon, the loss of an heir. The loss of an innocence that had still haunted his brothers’ steps.
It was the last thing Aerys wanted to do. How could he face his brothers, their grief, all the while thinking how it would always have come to this. To Maekar broken, Baelor lost.
He did not want to look upon his dead niece and know exactly how such a thing could be prevented.
“No.”
Myriah Martell kept her nails carefully trimmed into sharp points. They plunged into Aerys’s arm, drawing blood forth, and her voice snarled like a mountain lion.
“Your brothers need you, Aerys. I will see you in that room, one way or another.”
His mother, a viper roused from hibernation. Ferocious in wrath. Aerys could see where Maekar had been gifted his rage.
When he entered the room, Aerys recoiled from the stink of it. Every morsel of strength in Aerys’s body was given to halting his body’s reaction. The gagging sound of his throat, the urge to flee from sweat and blood and death. A battlefield and its ruin.
Maekar sat upon linens that hadn’t yet been changed, both stained with far too much blood. His gaze was fixed on the window. The sea did not seem too terribly far, so high up.
Baelor’s knees were curled beneath him. His body had turned to Maekar’s own, yet they did not touch. Instead, Maekar’s arms curled around his own body, Baelor’s around another.
It must have been his mother who pushed Aerys forward, forward to where Baelor wept over his dead babe.
The child’s hair was all but plastered to her head, and Aerys felt a something in his chest tremble when he saw her hair, silver, just like Maekar’s, just like their father’s. Just like his.
A little niece, one he would never know.
“She is beautiful, is she not?” He had not expected Baelor to speak. Aerys was shocked he could parse the words, so stifled were they by the aftermath of sobbing. “My perfect girl.” A finger swept through her hair, trying to twirl at strands that were far too short for it. Strands that would never grow.
Aerys began to nod before realising that Baelor could not see him. “Yes,” he instead muttered, at a loss for what was to be said in the face of such destruction.
Slowly, Baelor turned his head to face him. It would have been better to see his face empty of all expression.
“Would you like to hold her?” Baelor’s voice was so small. Hopeless, like he was a child presenting work to a judging father, knowing it would never be enough.
Before Aerys could reply, Maekar at last moved. His body turned, yet his eyes remained hidden from them.
“No. He does not get to hold her.”
“Maekar—”
“What was it you said, brother?” If there was more life in Maekar’s voice, it would have been called a sneer. “Ill-gotten? Mistaken?”
“Son…”
Baelor bowed over further, “Maekar, please—”
Maekar was not to be deterred. “Did you pray for this, Aerys? Did you pray for my daughter, dead in my fucking arms?”
Aerys was very aware of his tongue in his mouth. It was dry, swollen. “Maekar—”
“Get out. Give me my daughter and leave me alone.”
And there was no salvation to be found. No sympathetic eye to be met. All there was in the room was a dead babe and a tragedy that both could and couldn’t be prevented.
Aerys turned and ran.
They named the child Vaera, and Aerys stood at Baelor’s side as she burned.
Such convulsions ran through Baelor’s body that Aerys thought he was soon to be taken by the cold, and when his child’s urn was presented to him, Aerys feared that the porcelain would slip from Baelor’s grasp and shatter Vaera’s ashes to the winds. But Baelor’s grip was sure.
Their parents all but carried Maekar back to the keep, where he fled into his chambers, door closed to all, even Baelor.
Days later, Aerys summoned his courage and again ventured to Maekar’s rooms. When he got there, it was his father who sat vigil. Daeron’s face turned up, the skin beneath his eyes darkened with fatigue, and all he did was shake his head in denial.
Aerys swallowed, nodded, and returned the way he came, pretending he did not cry.
It was regret, and it was grief. It was powerlessness that he could not protect his little brother from such pain.
And it was the horror at knowing that he had been right.
“I heard of Maekar’s child.”
Brynden Rivers had always been well-apt at stealing upon the unsuspecting. But Aerys felt too wearied to startle at his uncle as the boy came upon his library perch.
“Yes,” Aerys replied, looking at the words without taking their meaning in. “A dreadful shame.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“He has no wish to see me.”
“I meant Baelor.”
Aerys risked a glance at his uncle. Brynden’s elbows sat on the table, and he lay nearly reclined on it, gazing at the library’s roof where some maester during the time of Jaehaerys had painted the constellations.
What was it, Aerys wondered, that Brynden saw? Why was it that his gaze was always fixed to stars?
“They have neither need nor wish of me.”
Brynden shrugged, picking dirt from one nail and flicking it absently to the floor. “Neither does the crown have need of me, or any of Aegon’s children born from a different womb. Yet your father hosts us here all the same.” Finally, Brynden turned to face Aerys, the sclera of his eyes ever so slightly pink. “Why do you think that is, nephew?”
One reason. The oldest reason there had ever been.
There had always been a strange beauty, watching them together.
The more Maekar grew into his body, the more readily he ran to the training yard, and the wider Baelor smiled to receive him.
With such ease, the dynamics of the brothers changed, and Aerys would sit, and watch, and hold Rhaegel in his arms. It was not a task, caring for Rhaegel. All Aerys needed to do was set the boy with wooden figurines, and he could content himself with a book. Occasionally, the yard would ring with the sound of steel meeting steel, and Aerys would glance up to see practice swords clashing together, Maekar made red and furious as Baelor again bested him.
Yet, sometimes, their parry lasted a few turns longer. Sometimes, even Daemon and Brynden came to watch. Swordplay was an ugly business, but Baelor and Maekar made it look like a dance. They were perfect complements; in size, in colouring, in gait. They read the other’s movements like it was what they had been born to do.
One day, Maekar was ten, Baelor six-and-ten and just finished his rut. Aerys had sat with a book, pointing some of the more detailed designs out to where Brynden sat, raptured, when falling limbs and clanging metal brought his attention to the field.
Someone had slipped, or fumbled, or allowed their attention to slip, and the brothers had fallen to the dust, Baelor landing atop Maekar, preventing his brother from being crushed by bracing himself on all fours.
Maekar had gazed up at Baelor with somewhat less of his usual prickliness, and Baelor had laughed, the sweat rolling from him. He said something to Maekar, and Aerys was too far away to know what, but he saw where Maekar’s face turned red, where his younger brother squirmed, then laughed, then gazed up at Baelor with an adoration that turned Aerys’s stomach.
Another glance at Baelor saw his brother’s face shifting, as if he were on the cusp of a great realisation, then reaching it, allowing his hand to tug absently at a strand of Maekar’s fast-growing hair.
That, Aerys later supposed, was where all the trouble had started.
Weeks continued to pass, and the Red Keep remained dark, cold. Trapped in a winter that threatened to stretch for years.
Maekar remained closed to all of them, and even Baelor’s eyes threatened to remain dull. Aerys did not have to share his parents' confidences to know that they worried as monarchs, that their heirs would not speak. That they worried as parents, to know that their sons were hurt in a way they could not fix.
It was the fourth time Aerys had caught Baelor staring at the empty crib that he at last reached his limits.
“Come,” Aerys instructed his brother, pulling a cloak around his shoulders and signalling to the household guard. “You are accompanying me to the Great Sept. I wish to pray.”
That Baelor’s expression didn’t change, that he merely nodded and followed like a well-beaten dog, that was what worried Aerys the most.
They sat in silence during the carriage ride and remained so when they stepped into the temple. The sept of Baelor’s namesake was vast, incense hanging like curtains, the air made hazy from the thousands of candles lit by the people of King’s Landing.
Yet, for the Targaryen brothers, the Great Sept seemed almost empty, their footsteps echoing as Aerys led them to the font of the Father.
“I thought…” Aerys paused, wondering how best to word his concern for Baelor, his regret for Maekar, his grief for little Vaera. A grief he had little claim to. “It would be good for us to take an hour away from the lickspittle of court.” It would be good for Baelor to consider himself, not as the king’s heir or the eldest brother. Baelor, not as a husband who must needs be strong for his mate, but as a father who mourned a life and a future that might have been.
Aerys knelt before the candles, closing his eyes. He had no prayers to offer. He could only grant Baelor the dignity of a privacy none had afforded him.
Before too long, Aerys felt Baelor come to kneel beside him. They remained together in silence, accompanied only by the faint tinkling of bells. The heat the candles gave was meagre in the vast stone hall; the colours of the glass windows shone down a distant sort of beauty.
It was an empty place and a fool’s errand. If his niece was to be found anywhere, it would not be in the company of silent gods.
Then, he felt the tremble of Baelor’s shoulders, the barely perceptible sound of stifled weeping. A man’s anguish come to the fore.
Aerys cursed himself. Rhaegel would know what to do. Maekar would know what Baelor wanted. Aerys had known him longer than either of them, yet he was stuck. Inept, unfeeling, exactly what everyone always assumed of him.
What words would make such a thing better? Had any in the history of the world found them? If they had, not had written of it.
He moved, then hesitated. Would it even be welcome? His eyes crept open, and he saw Baelor, one hand gripping the stone, the other covering his face. Turned away to disguise his agony from the world.
It was a pitiful sight; Aerys felt his own eyes strain. His older brother, kneeling with a child’s ghost. She was not there, and never again would she be.
Aerys rested his hand on Baelor’s back and, for a moment, regretted it.
Baelor froze, then turned back to throw his head against Aerys’s shoulder.
“My little girl! My girl! My baby.”
Aerys held Baelor. Embraced him as if to let go would allow him to be swept away. He was no warrior, nor even a scholar true. He had forged no chains, won no tourneys, charmed no women.
But Aerys could be that; a pillar, an anchor. A man whose shoulders carried a brother and all his broken dreams.
Aerys could wait and watch until the last of the candles burnt out.