PurpleSky

opal angel | @aphroditesmoon

the crown prince Jacaerys finds himself falling for his mother's new queensguard.

Jacaerys Velaryon • Masterlist | @sylasthegrim

My dear betrothed | @slaytheusurper

After years of not seeing each other, you are to be wed to your cousin Jace, but can you hold off your desires for each other before the wedding?

I am yours and you are mine, whatever may come | @/slaytheusurper

After your mother Rhaenyra ascended the iron throne you were finally able to wed your betrothed. But with a royal wedding comes a bedding ceremony.

Grief | @jacaerysgf

Plagued by you, Part two, Part three  | @/jacaerysgf

Otto doesn't go to Dragonstone you do. And you are faced with a past you never thought you would see again right before the war.

Your Reflection | @/jacaerysgf

when the thoughts jacaerys has had his whole life finally can no longer be pushed down he seeks comfort in you

Flowers | @/jacaerysgf

In a world where the dragons do not dance it's time for Jacaerys Velaryon to choose a wife as the heir to the iron throne. When House Targaryen invites all the eligible ladies in the seven kingdoms to meet the prince, chaos follows. In comes you, a lady from a minor house who makes an impression on a certain prince.

Forbidden | @illyrianbrat

BOUND BY DUTY | @house-strong

THE TORMENT of a life time | @/house-strong

LOVE, PARENTS, and truths  | @/house-strong

i love you  | @murdocksdaughter

jacaerys finally confesses his feelings at the oddest hour

missing you, kissing me | @/murdocksdaughter

leading up their wedding y/n and jacaerys has had any alone time together

teaching his wife how to fight | @sourcherryandsprinkles

Saving Jacaerys during the battle of the gullet | @/sourcherryandsprinkles

IMAGINE | @/sourcherryandsprinkles

the scene where Ulf disrespects Jace | @/sourcherryandsprinkles

Blessing disguised as a Curse | @asumi2020202

You were Alicent's daughter. Younger than the three, Aegon, Aemond and Helaena but older than Daeron. After returning from Dragonstone, Rhaenyra proposes a marriage pact between her eldest and you. A man your mother had warned you about.

Midnight Battle | @/asumi2020202

The Kingdom was at peace when a small battle began inside the Red Keep. But.. it was not a normal battle.

Crossroads | @hxtd

prince charming does not merely exist within fairytales, though he might be a little more unorthodox than expected.

𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜n | @/hxtd

grieving prince jacaerys needs a distraction from the pain.

𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑏𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑛, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑛 | @/hxtd

Masterlist | @/hxtd

here we stand | @controld3vil

news had broken out that the throne has been usurped. jacerys rides his way to winterfell, the end to the north where he meets cregan stark. and in evidently, you, lady mormont of bear island. mormont!reader

Cracked | @toms-cherry-trees

No one ever said duty would hurt like this

Something wrong with me | @maidragoste

Jacaerys comforts his wife after she tells him her worries.

Nothing Can Happen | @chloe-skywalker

Jace fall’s in love with Cregon Stark’s twin sister.

the other one | @delulujuls

heart want what it wants, and y/n's heart belong to young prince from dragonstone, not to the future cruel king of westeros.

the right one | @/delulujuls

the hardened and hateful heart of the future king of westeros is no match for the tender and loving heart of the young prince of dragonstone. so it's not difficult to guess whose heart belongs to the young targaryen princess

Saving Face | @hughesmybaby

with what was supposed to be a happy moment in the new chapter of your family with jacaerys, only wounds linger when your mother is unhappy with your child’s appearance.

Overprotective | @imagines-for-the-fangirls-soul

Jace’s overprotective nature begins to grate on the reader’s nerves as the birth of their first child looms closer.

Safe and Sound | @/imagines-for-the-fangirls-soul

Jace comforts the reader after they wake up from a terrible nightmare.

LINGERING IN OUR MEMORIES, PART 2. | @goldsainz

Death does not scare me | @eunoiathewriter

They all thought she was only feeling a bit under the weather, but that soon proved to be wrong. It made Jacaerys realise one thing, the forever he wanted with her would not last long so he had to, one tell her how he felt and secondly do something so he knew they would be forever.

ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ ɴᴏᴛ | @anatay004

Ever since you were kids, Jacaerys detested you. And, quite honestly, you didn’t know the reason behind his hatred towards you (or cared enough to), until one night you’re betrothed to no other than him. 

under the weirwood | @targaryen-jpg

Hunger | @vhagarsback

jacaerys just wants to see all of you, despite your shyness.

Warm | @/vhagarsback

jacaerys finds you, and he will never let anything happen to you.

Not ideal | @starless-starkov

reader is known as daemon’s bastard daughter but jacaerys doesn’t care

Kerosene, part 02, part 03 | @aphroditesmoon

after you find out your family has been orchestrating a plan to use you as a scapegoat to assure your brother's reign. You pledge your allegiance to the black queen and switch alliances as pleaded by your secret lover himself, prince jacaerys velaryon.

Replaceable, part 02, part 03, part 04 | @/aphroditesmoon

After your twin sister decides to run away weeks from her wedding to the prince and heir to the throne, Jacaerys Velaryon,  you are left with no choice but to step in her place.

Sweet Nothing | @its-vannah

Question…? | @/its-vannah

Vigilante Sh*t | @/its-vannah

RUEFUL | @januaryembrs

Jace says goodbye to his pregnant wife as he leaves for the North

WHAT ONCE WAS | @urblondiebaby

for the lovers who found a mirrored heart | @enviedear

amid the dance of dragons, queen rhaenyra’s prospects blossom after the discovery of a potential and powerful alliance. she sends her firstborn to enact a plan of union, condemning him to a marriage of duty—or so he believes.

The coronation | @thesongoficeandfir3

The Great War, PART 2,  PART 3 | @vividxpages

Jace and you are lovers, but stand on opposite sides of the war, not allowed to see each other anymore. But love always finds a way.

“lay it all on me” | @/vividxpages

With the Queen and your betrothed Jacaerys’ delayed arrival, you are left in charge of the day’s council meeting. When one of the lords starts to speak of a possible bedding ceremony for your upcoming wedding, your thoughts begin to spiral badly…

“in the dead of night” | @/vividxpages

when Jace is attending a late council meeting, two hired assassins take their chance to sneak into your chambers and hold you captive. Taken to the dragon caves below and meant to be slain by your own betrothed’s dragon, you have to trust the bond between Vermax and you is strong enough to escape your captor’s murderous plans.

𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 | @flowersforjude

You could not leave him. Not when your very breath was the only thing that kept him tethered to this world

Beacon of Hope | @princessbellecerise

After the war, Jacaerys finally finds his purpose for living again

Court Shenanigans | @/princessbellecerise

Missing their father, your children decide it’s a good idea to interrupt him in the middle of court

Husband Jacaerys | @/princessbellecerise

Headcanons about married life with Jace

Rotten Soil, Rotten Fruit | @/princessbellecerise

You are Alicent Hightower’s pride and joy. Sweet and innocent, you’re the apple of the Queen’s eye more than her own children are. But how will she react when you slip into the hands of her enemies?

Starry Nights | @/princessbellecerise

Jace takes his little family on a night ride when they can’t sleep

Leap of Fate | @idkyetxoxo

A young woman’s daring climb over a wall to escape an arranged union leads to an unexpected encounter with her betrothed himself. What begins as a night of escape becomes the start of an enchanting story of love and destiny.

Family Legacies | @/idkyetxoxo

Amidst the chaos of war, two childbirths unfold. A mother’s potential agony and a new mother’s fear collide, as life and loss intertwine in a moment that will define their family’s legacy forever.

Masterlist | @/idkyetxoxo

Always Enough | @/idkyetxoxo

A new mother battles overwhelming guilt and helplessness as she struggles to soothe her crying babe, feeling like a failure in the face of her emotional breakdown. In the quiet aftermath, her husband's steady presence offers a fragile comfort.

War Between Kin | @bumblesimagines

When Rhaenyra Targaryen takes her throne back, she ensures to take care of the remaining Greens in the Keep. Jacaerys attempts to figure out the whereabouts of the Usurper King Aegon by questioning his younger sister.

Vermax | @spxllcxstxr

Jacaerys takes a servant girl to see Vermax

Dragonrider | @/spxllcxstxr

Prince Jacaerys catches you claiming the Cannibal

My King | @creganslover

You find your dear husband sulking in his study.

SPOILS OF WAR | @luvrottt

The war between kin was not long fought; culminating in the bloody battle of kings landing a mere moon after the battle of rooks rest in which Aemond ‘kinslayer’ slew his brother Aegon the usurper. And yet; thousands lay dead, the realm is uneasy— there still lies a dragon in the reach whose motivations are yet to be known. A Queen is in chains, a princess is amidst salt and sea, and another feels a prisoner in her own home enclosed with walls that have both eyes and ears.

Honeyed | @eldrith

“After we heard news of your success in the rebellion, Her Grace was eager to have you sit council with us. She seems to remember you quite fondly.” He says honestly, “She believed we would get along quite well.”

and his will be the song of ice and fire | @ophelieverse

during his first stay at Winterfell,Jace and Y/n got much closer than they should.Now,after knowing the prophecy about the song of ice and fire from his mother,Jace is determined to make it true with the most beautiful lady he had ever seen.

A silver haired girl | @realmsdelght

a visit to a brothel leads to sharing feelings that had been buried deeply within the twins

Gates of the Moon | @/sylasthegrim

Upon getting his brothers to safety in the Vale, Jacaerys finds a kindred spirit in Lady Jeyne’s sister. They share a night before he leaves for war, that bears unexpected fruit.

Dad!Jace x Mom!Stark!reader | @/thesongoficeandfir3

You and Jace have a slight disagreement on a decision made about your eldest child

Not of noble birth and yet very much acknowledged as such through the friendship you shared with the oldest children of Daemon Targaryen, Baela and Rhaena.

Your mother, a maid within the service of house Velaryon, your father a man unknown to you and a bond forged with those two girls so tight they had refused to leave you behind in Driftmark once they moved their home to Dragonstone.

You followed the across the Narrow Sea not as a lady with title and nether as a servant bound to the by duty. You followed as a friend, as someone to confide in when war and battle grew to big for them.

Though you held no claim to dragon or throne, not that you craved either, no one on Dragonstone thought it strange to find you at Baela’s side or with Rhaena’s hand hooked through your arm as the three of you wandered the halls.

Over the years you had become a familiar face within the castle as the cold stone itself, earning warm smiles from guards and servants alike and the occasional teasing remark from Prince Daemon, who insisted his daughters had adopted you long ago. As if he himself hasn’t started seeing you as someone to care for just as he did for his daugters.

The prince consort has never said it aloud, his brash character often off-putting and fear inducing, yet somehow there were little things that contradicted this entirely just like when it came to Baela and Rhaena.

He never asked whether you had eaten, yet somehow an extra place was always set whenever he knew you would return late with his daughters.

If training in the yard left bruises blooming across your arms, a jar of salve would mysteriously find its way to your chambers before nightfall without a servant ever admitting who had sent it.

When the sea winds bit too sharply atop Dragonstone's cliffs, Daemon would grumble at the three of you to "either come inside or freeze together," pretending his irritation had nothing to do with concern.

It was never spoken of, but everyone in the castle understood that any slight against you would be treated as a slight against House Targaryen itself. And for a girl born with neither silver hair nor noble name that was more you should ever be allowed to ask for.

Even the youngest princes, sweet and blissfully innocent, had taken to you like a moth to a flame. Joffery, Aegon and Viserys each demanding to be played with and told a story before bed whenever they had the chance to do so.

Lucerys, grown as he was and seeking the acknowledgement of his mother, still came to you as the young boy he still was. Lingering on the side, pretending he wasn’t as interested in the stories his little brothers greatly exaggerated until you quietly shuffled your skirts around to make space or listen to him talk to you about Arrax and how well he grew.

And then there was Jacaerys, Jace, the only one you willingly called by his nickname and the only one you felt truly comfortable enough to lower your walls of polite respect for the noble family. Then one who as heir to the iron throne should be the one you should be the most distant with and yet there was this unspoken understanding that both of you were allowed to simply be with the other.

IT was in those moments where no judgmental eyes of the court and council where you saw the oldest prince clearly. Not as an heir that was being shaped into the future of the 7 kingdoms, but as a boy that laughed at the silliest of jokes.

When duty weighed heavy on his shoulders, he’d come to you. Sometimes in the dark of night when nobody saw him walk to your chambers, sometimes when you were hiding out in the fields far above the sea. Until he was able to breath again.

In return, you never asked about what it was that had him feeling so frayed, simply listening, offering an ear that was not meant to tear down every thought the prince voiced out in front of the council.

And though neither of you were aware, both of you instinctually looked for the other first in a crowded room.

Jacaerys didn’t have time to himself very often. Not with the prying eyes of the court tracking every movement of his and his mother not allowing him to fight on dragon back as she did Baela or Rhaenys.

It frustrated him, making him feel useless and like a boy being scolded more then a prince wanting to fight for his queens claim to the throne.

Frowning, he left his mother and the lords behind once it was clear that he was no longer needed. Baela walked out just a little before he had, most likely already on her way to the dragonpit to mount Moondancer and Rhaena had left for Driftmark the day before. That only left Luke or you, and honestly, he’d rather go make his search for you then suffer of his brothers brooding.

His feet carried him through winding corridors almost without thought, guided by habit until he reached the sun-warmed terrace overlooking the sea from where he found you exactly as he’d hoped. Seated upon the ancient stone wall with your skirts carelessly bundled up so you could properly climb the stone without getting caught in the fabric of them.

As unbecoming as it was for a lady and as much as Jacaerys knew your own mother would scold you, he didn’t mind your little show of skin in the slightest. Gentleman as he was he of course didn’t look, but he really also didn’t care as long as you felt comfortable.

Yu looked up at the sound of his approaching footsteps, and before a single word was spoken, the tightness in his chest eased ever so slightly at the immediate smile spreading over your face.

“Now why do’s our noble prince look like someone has spat into his dinner?” you grinned, causing a quite laugh to leave his lips.

Leaning his forearms on the worn stone beside you the prince let his eyes trail over your face, the carefree teasing causing his heart to flutter as though he was flying with Vermax through the skies. “I’d prefer that to being stuck here and having to watch my cousin fly out.”

You hummed softly, turning your gaze back toward the endless stretch of dark water below. “Then perhaps Her Grace keeps you here because she knows Dragonstone would lose two dragons if you flew off after them the moment her back was turned.”

Jacaerys let out a long sigh, though the corner of his mouth betrayed him as it twitched upward. “You always have a way of making me sound unreasonable.”

“I don’t make you sound anything, Jace,” you replied with a playful nudge of your shoulder against his. “You usually manage that all by yourself.”

“Is that how you want to talk to your future king, my lady?”

You tilt your head at him unbothered, the wind tugging at your dress. “If my future king keeps sulking like a kicked hatchling, then yes, I think ixll risk it.” You say, eyes glinting with mischief.

Jacaerys lets out a short, incredulous breath though it breaks halfway into something softer as he shakes his head at you.

“I am not sulking,” he mutters, but the way he drops down beside you fully, shoulder pressing lightly against yours, tells a very different tale.

After a moment of silence, he adds quieter, almost reluctant, “I just… hate being left behind.”

Feeling bad for the prince you let your hand rest on his, squeezing gently to comfort you refused to look at him, wanting to prevent a scandal caused by an innocent touch.

“You know why she does it, and you know why the small council says it too. Jace, you aren’t just the son of your mother, you are heir to the throne! They are trying to keep you alive and not lose you to a reckless act of pride that might cost us your live,” you explained, understanding where the hesitancy to let him act came from more then he did. “I wouldn’t want to live knowing I have lost you.”

The last part was quieter in volume but loud in meaning and it had him look at you again. He opened his mouth to reply and got cut of by the load shriek coming from above as Vermax had found his rider sitting outside.

A thought struck the prince.

“Fly with me?”

Your head whipped around quickly, face falling a bit as the request registered within you.

“You are jesting, are you not?”

“Do you not trust me?” he shot back in an instant.

Shaking your head with wide eyes you jumped of your seat on the stones, skirt falling properly as layers on fabric returned to cover you once again.

“It is not a matter of trusting you, but Jacaerys, Vermax is going to eat me before I can even get close enough to touch the saddle!”

Jacaerys knew that Vermax would not harm a single strand of hair on your head as the dragon had taken a liking to you with the years that he rarely did with others.

Yes, his dragon was said to be ill-tempered and yes, more than one dragonkeeper had been on the receiving end of said temper over time but, you? You had been a different story. Always had been ever since you had arrived on dragonstone at two and ten and you had followed Baela right into the dragonpit.

You had stayed back, held your distance as you knew dragons were only really inclined to your riders and that just because Moondancer tolerated through association with her rider, the other bests would not be bothered if they set you on fire out of a mood.

Arrax had been small, not yet as much of a danger at that time, Vermax however had already been the size of a small horse and very capable of doing damage far greater then Luke’s dragon. And yet somehow, the green beast had only clicked and shook his scales , even going as far as to ignore the young boy Jace had still been then to investigate the newcomer.

Jacaery would keep the secret of why his dragon was so tolerating of you until the day he either died, or he somehow managed to convince his mother to betroth him to you.

“He would not. I would not let him harm you, I promise that.”

His voice softened as he stepped closer, the bravado slipping just enough to reveal the certainty beneath it.

You searched his face for any hint of doubt and found none, only quiet unwavering trust in the green beast.

With a reluctant breath, you finally nodded, letting him take your hand as he guided you down from the terrace and toward the distant roar of the dragonpit.

As if he had felt it the dragon came flying, settling low even as he saw you. His prying eyes not leaving you as Vermax watched his rider keep you close.

“Jace I’m not sure if—” you began, fear making your eyes shake and nearly cling to the princes arm the closetr you got.

Jacaerys only smiled, laying a reassuring hand over yours where it gripped his sleeve.

“Look at me, not him,” he murmured, waiting patiently until your frightened gaze left Vermax’s golden eyes to meet his own.

“You trust me when I ask you to listen, do you not?” he asked softly and when you gave the smallest nod, his smile widened. “Then trust that Vermax knows the difference between a stranger and someone his rider…” he hesitated for the briefest heartbeat, “…someone his rider cherishes.”

Vermax let out a low rumble that vibrated through the very stones under you before, to your utter surprise, lowering his enormous head until his snout hovered only a few feet away from you.

You stood frozen and not daring to breathe much as the warm dragon breath almost seemed to caress your face, smelling of smoke, ash and something you didn’t want to know while the great beast merely blinked at you with as much curiosity as you did. The fact that his teeth were mere handwidths away from your face di not seem to settle yet.

“See?” Jacaerys whispered beside you, unable to hide the pride softening his face as he watched his dragon all but demand your attention. “If he wished to frighten you away, we would both know it by now.”

Very reassuring, you thought.

With trembling fingers you slowly reached forward, expecting at any moment for the illusion of safety to shatter, yet Vermax only leaned into the hesitant touch against the warm scales his head, releasing a pleased croon that made the dragonkeepers nearby stop and stare in open disbelief.

Jacaerys smiled brightly because neither you nor anyone else could have known that Vermax had just accepted the girl his rider had long ago given his heart to.

“Not so bad, isn’t it?" He asked, the answer already knowing when you turned to look at him with wonder.

The prince let go off you, climbing up into the saddle fastened to Vermax’s back and held out his hand for you to take.

With shaking fingers you climbed up and settled behind him, feeling Jacaerys breath falter when your arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

The moment Vermax’s wings spread, the entire world seemed to drop away beneath you as the great beast launched into the air with a powerful beat that stole the breath from your lungs.

You clung tighter to Jacaerys instinctively, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing as he guided Vermax smoothly out of the pit and over the black waters of the Narrow Sea.

Wind tore at you, but instead of fear like before there was only… freedom.

Jacaerys turned just slightly in the saddle, his hand finding yours where held on tight, lacing your fingers together without a word as if it had always been the most natural thing in the world.

He listened to your laugh that you couldn’t hold back, relishibg in the moment of closeness and intimacy he knew he had craved for a while now.

Yet for centuries the merfolk had kept to themselves, hidden from human eyes by choice rather than necessity, for the sea was their domain, vast and forgiving, older than any castle built of stone, and they had little wish to share it with a race that seemed forever at war with itself and everything around it.

In time, that same secrecy had turned them into little more than legend, tales spun by sailors over cups of watered wine on nights when the wind howled and the deck rolled beneath them. Sirens were known to lure ships onto rocks with voices sweet enough to make a man forget his own name, and feast on whatever remained once the rocks had finished their work.

Mermaids were a gentler breed by comparison, prone to guiding lost sailors safely home as often as they were blamed for storms and ill weather they had no hand in at all. Two natures entirely, wearing similar faces, and precious few humans who lived long enough to learn the difference between them.

They were beautiful creatures beneath the waves, long tails the colour of pearl and coral fading seamlessly into human torsos, faces too fine and too still to belong to any mortal woman, gill feathers tracing delicate lines along their throats that fluttered faintly with every breath of water drawn through them. Webbing caught the light between their fingers and along the curves of their ears, and their eyes, when a sailor was unlucky or lucky enough to catch one open beneath the surface, ethereal was the word men reached for, when they had any words left at all.

It had been pure chance that placed you so close to the Gullet on the day the battle came, chance and your own incurable curiosity, which your sisters had scolded you for since you were small enough to hide behind their tails.

You had always had a weakness for collecting things. Rings slipped from dead men's fingers, buckles and buttons and the little bronze bells that sailors sometimes wore for luck that had done them no good at all in the end, coins gone green and soft with centuries beneath the salt.

You kept them in the hollow belly of an old sunken hull you had claimed as your own years ago, arranging and rearranging them the way a child arranges shells on a beach, and you were forbidden, absolutely forbidden, from ever breaking the surface to retrieve anything that had not already sunk deep enough to be safely yours. The deep waters near the wreck sites were permitted. The world above the waterline was not.

You had seen fleets pass overhead before, dark hulls cutting shadows across the sunlit shallows, and it had never troubled you much. Ships came and went. Men fought their wars on the surface and left their dead to sink down to you eventually, and you had learned not to think too hard about where the trinkets came from.

What startled you that day, what sent ice through your veins even in water still warm from the summer sun, was the sound. A battle breaking out with no warning at all, not the slow grinding approach you were used to but something sudden and enormous, the water shaking with it as though the sea itself had been struck. Fire that should not have been able to burn beneath the waves somehow did, hissing and spitting where it touched the surface, and ash sifted down through the water like grey snow, and wood came apart in great splintering chunks, and bodies. So many bodies, falling and falling, sinking past you like stones dropped from a terrible height, men who had been laughing and cursing and praying only moments before.

You very nearly got swept into the worst of it yourself. Your pale pink tail caught for one heart-stopping instant on a length of trailing rigging, and you fought and thrashed to free yourself, kicking hard for clearer, deeper water, away from the chaos above. It was then that something struck the surface with such force that the shockwave of it rolled straight through your chest, and you turned back despite every instinct screaming at you to keep swimming, and saw a dragon.

Only the one. You did not know his name yet, though you would come to learn it soon enough. Vermax, green as new leaves, thrashing against water he had never been built to fight, wings beating in great useless sweeps, trying and failing again and again to claw his way back up into a sky that no longer wanted him.

And strapped to his back, tangled in leather that should have kept him safe and now threatened only to drown him with the beast, was a boy.

A very pretty boy, you thought, even through the horror of it, because you had always had a weakness for pretty things as well as shiny ones, and some habits did not care what was happening around them.

He fought his harness with a growing, panicked desperation, one leg caught fast beneath a buckle that would not give no matter how he wrenched at it, and you watched the fight slowly bleed out of him as the water rose past his chin and then his mouth. You watched him press his palm flat against his dragon’s scaled hide, whether in farewell or in simple desperate comfort you could not say, and something inside your chest twisted so hard and so suddenly that it hurt, a feeling you had no name for and no time to think about, and you were moving before your brain had caught up to it.

The buckles gave easily enough beneath your fingers, quick clever things built for human hands rather than merfolk ones but simple enough once you understood the shape of them, all but the one pinning his leg fast, which would not release no matter how you pulled. It was your sister's whalebone dagger, tucked always at your hip, that finally cut him free, the leather parting in one long stroke. By then the boy had gone entirely still, his eyes half open and unseeing.

You spared one moment, only one, though it cost you dearly to spare it, to press your palm flat against Vermax’s scales in something like an apology, for jot being able to save him. The great beast simply closed his eyes, as if content that his rider had found safer hands than his own to carry him the rest of the way, and sank without a struggle into the dark below, leaving no trace but a slow drift of green scales catching what little light remained.

Surfacing was a huge mistake. You broke into open air in the very heart of the wreckage, ships burning on every side, smoke thick enough to sting your eyes, and had barely a breath to get your bearings before an arrow split the water beside you, close enough that you felt the wind of its passing against your cheek and almost hitting the boy in the neck.

You looked up into a row of crossbows all trained your way, men shouting words you did not understand but whose meaning was plain enough in the set of their shoulders, and understood with sudden, terrible clarity exactly how little difference they would see between a dragon’s rider and whatever monster had come to finish the work the sea had started.

You went back under. Humans could not breathe water, but neither, you thought grimly, dragging the boy's dead weight down with you, could you survive a volley of bolts meant to end lives.

You swam hard and fast and low, keeping to what cover the drifting wreckage offered, dragging him through water gone thick and stinging with smoke and ash, until the sounds of battle fell away behind you into a dull, distant roar and the nearest shore rose dark and welcoming against the horizon. You hauled him up onto the sand with strength you did not know you possessed, adrenaline lending you what your body alone could not, and only then let yourself look at him properly.

Your stomach dropped. His lips had gone the deep, bruised blue of a man already claimed by the sea, his skin pale as the underbelly of a fish, and his chest did not move at all.

The old stories. Your grandmother had told them half as warning and half as wonder, back when you were young enough to still believe every tale she spun, of how a drowned man's lungs might yet be coaxed back to life if the sea inside them was driven out in time, before the body forgot how to want air at all. You laid both palms flat over the centre of his chest, unsure of your own strength, and pressed down hard.

Once. Nothing happened. Panic clawed up your throat.

Twice. Your own breath caught, tight and painful.

Thrice, and you pressed with everything you had left in you, uncaring now whether you cracked something beneath your palms, because a bruise, even a broken rib, was nothing at all set against death.

On the fourth press he convulsed beneath your hands and turned sharply to one side, retching a lungful of seawater onto the sand, coughing so violently his whole body shook with the force of it. You sat back, tail curling instinctively beneath you, heart hammering, and watched the grey slowly bleed out of his face as air, found its way back into him at last.

He did not understand, in that first hazy moment, anything beyond the fact that he was somehow, impossibly, still alive. The world swam in and out of focus around him, blurred and ringing. The last clear memory he had was of Vermax beneath him and the water closing over them both in a great green rush, of struggling against a harness that would not give no matter how he fought it, and then a blurred pale shape cutting toward him through the murk like something out of a half remembered dream, and then nothing at all.

He sat up too quickly. Pain lanced through his skull bright enough to make him gasp, and he only dimly registered that he had knocked someone backward in the process, hearing a small startled sound beside him.

"I am sorry- I did not mean to- are you..." The words died somewhere in his throat.

A hand still rested lightly against his shoulder, small and cool and strange. He gaze followed it down past a bare collarbone, down a torso, and then no legs at all, only a long tail the colour of pale coral, still trembling faintly where it lay half in the surf, catching what little light the dying sun still offered.

His eyes came back up to meet yours. Yours were already wide with fright, caught somewhere between diving straight back into the water and staying just long enough to see what he would do with the knowledge now sitting plainly on his face.

"You," he breathed, and could not seem to manage a single word more than that.

You did not wait to find out what he would say next. You began dragging yourself backward toward the water on your palms, tail scraping over wet sand, and that seemed to break whatever had held him frozen in place, because he scrambled after you across the shore despite the state of his own battered, aching body.

"Wait, please, don't go, who are you? What is your name? Why did you save me? Why?" The questions tumbled out of him faster than you could possibly have answered even if your voice had worked properly, one tripping over the next, desperation making him clumsy with his words. When you opened your mouth to try anyway, nothing came at all, no sound, not even a whisper. You touched two fingers to your throat and shook your head slowly.

"You cannot speak?"

You nodded, something apologetic in the tilt of your head.

There was no simple way to explain it to him, not with gestures alone, that merfolk voices were shaped and tuned for the weight and pressure of deep water and simply could not survive in air thin and empty as this, so you only looked at him, sorry, and slid a little further back toward the tideline, the cool water lapping welcome against your tail.

"Wait!" He was on his feet now, unsteady, swaying slightly as he turned to take in the shore around him properly for the first time. "This is Driftmark- I think- and that," he pointed to a dark shape rising jagged from the water in the distance, smoke still curling faintly from somewhere within the battle behind them, "that's Dragonstone. That is where I live. I must find some way to thank you properly, I do not even know how yet, but I will. I swear it."

You gave him one last long look, drinking in the sight of him properly now that the worst of the danger had passed, pale and shaking and utterly unlike anyone you had ever pulled from the wreckage before, and nodded once before the water closed silently over your head.

What he did not know, could not have known, was that you had not truly gone. You lingered just beneath the surface, hidden in the shallows where the light still reached, watching as the full weight of what he had lost caught up to him at last.

You watched his shoulders begin to shake, watched him sink slowly to his knees on the wet sand as the grief he had been too shocked to feel finally broke over him, grieving the bond severed so suddenly with his dragon, a bond you understood was not so different from the ones your own kind shared with the great whales that sometimes let mermaids ride upon their backs through the deep currents. You felt sad and helpless and entirely too far away to do anything about either, your own chest aching in sympathy for a boy you did not even know the name of yet.

Trinkets, you thought at last, retreating slowly deeper into the water where the cold and the dark could swallow the strange, unfamiliar feeling sitting heavy in your chest. I will bring him pretty things. Pretty things always help. Everyone knows that.

By the time Jace made it back to Dragonstone, disguised as best his battered state allowed, the sun had long since set and the castle had already begun to mourn a prince presumed lost at sea.

Rhaenyra, who had spent the whole of that day and the one before convincing herself, against every hope, that he was truly gone, very nearly lost her composure entirely at the sight of him standing whole in the doorway of her solar, swaying but breathing, and threatened violence on anyone who dared suggest it a cruel trick before she was even certain of it herself.

Then he was close enough to touch, close enough that she could feel the warmth still clinging to him despite the cold seawater soaked through every layer of his clothes, and she crossed the room in three swift strides and pulled him into an embrace so fierce it near cracked his ribs, one hand cradling the back of his neck the way she had when he was small enough to carry on her hip.

She pulled back only far enough to strike him hard across the face, the sound of it sharp in the quiet room, then dragged him straight back into her arms before he had time to recover from either the blow or the embrace that followed it.

"Never," she whispered fiercely against his hair, "never again. Do you understand me?"

Jace made no complaint about any of it. He only held on, breathing in the familiar smell of her, flowery and something that had always simply meant home no matter where in the world he found himself, and let himself be scolded and forgiven in the very same breath, over and over, until the shaking in his hands finally began to still.

There would be time to explain everything later, the mermaid and the potion he did not yet know he would go looking for and the strange ache already settling in his chest at the thought of never seeing her again. Tonight he only wanted this, his mother’s arms and the solid stone floor beneath his feet and the simple, overwhelming relief of being alive.

It was two full days before he saw you again, two days that felt considerably longer to both of you than their number suggested.

He had taken to walking the shore each evening as the sun went down, though he offered no one an explanation for it beyond a vague murmur about wanting air, and Rhaenyra, watching her son closely for any sign of the grief she knew still sat unresolved in him, chose not to press the matter, not yet.

On the second such evening, with the light turning gold and heavy across the water at the very edge of dusk, a small shape broke the surface some distance out from where he stood. Only your eyes showed at first, wary, scanning the beach with the caution of a creature that had learned, however briefly, exactly what danger humans could pose. Once you were certain he was truly alone, no soldiers, no crossbows waiting in the shadows, you swam closer, arms full of things gathered carefully from the seafloor over the two long days you had spent working up the courage to return.

He laughed before he could help himself, disbelieving, because you had brought him what looked like a small fortune of drowned treasure: coins gone green with centuries of salt, sea glass worn to the smoothness of river stones in every colour from deep emerald to pale, milky blue, pearls still crusted faintly with the ghosts of the shells that had once held them, all of it cradled carefully against your chest as though it were the finest gift any king had ever received.

"For me?" He pressed a hand to his own chest, incredulous, and you beamed and nodded so hard your whole body shook with the force of it, tail flicking once against the shallows in what he would later come to recognise as excitement.

"I have nothing half so precious to give you in return," he said, quieter now, kneeling properly in the wet sand so that he was closer to your level, and you shook your head firmly, as if to tell him that was hardly the point of any of it, that gifts given freely required nothing given back.

He knelt at the waterline for a long while that evening and talked, filling the silence you could not, telling you his name, his House, that he was a prince of Dragonstone and heir to something called an Iron Throne that sounded, from the little he explained, far heavier a burden than any crown ought to be. Your eyes lit at the word prince, delighted, and you pointed to your own chest in turn, tapping it twice for emphasis.

"A princess, then?" he guessed, and you nodded, pleased as anything with yourself, and something in his chest that had been wound painfully tight since the moment the water closed over his head two days before finally began, slowly, to loosen.

You tried, that first proper evening, to tell him other things too, though the telling was slow and clumsy without words. You drew shapes in the wet sand with one finger, a rough sketch of a tail, of waves, of something that might have been a whale or might simply have been a very poor circle, and Jace watched with a fascination that made you strangely warm beneath your scales, guessing at your meaning and laughing softly whenever he guessed wrong, which was often.

When the moon rose high enough that you knew you had to leave, you leaned in and pressed a quick, shy kiss to his cheek, as if to tell him not to be sad any longer, that you would return, that whatever grief still lived behind his eyes need not be carried entirely alone. That Vermax lay peacefully beneath the sea. And if he had been pretty enough to catch a second glance from you even amid the chaos of a burning battlefield, well.

You had always liked pretty things, and you saw no shame in admitting it, even silently, even only to yourself.

In the days that followed, Jace found himself buried in the library far more often than seated at council, a fact that did not escape his mother's notice for long. The war, if it could even still be properly called that, had cooled in the aftermath of the battle into something closer to a wary, watchful peace, both sides circling cautiously around the idea of parley rather than open slaughter, and so Rhaenyra could afford, for the first time in longer than she cared to admit, to spend her worry on her son rather than entirely on her crown.

It was on the seventh day since his return that she finally cornered him about it, finding him hunched over a table stacked high with scrolls he had clearly been picking through for hours, Daemon lounging nearby against a bookshelf with a look of a man who had already scented an amusing story and had no intention whatsoever of leaving before he heard the whole of it.

"The one who saved me from the water," Jace admitted at last, ears burning red under his mother's steady gaze, "was a mermaid. I have been meeting her at dusk every evening since. She brings me gifts."

Silence, and then Daemon's low, delighted laugh rang out across the quiet library. "A fish," he said, "has stolen my son’s heart. Rhaenyra, did you hear that? A fish."

"She is not a fish," Jace snapped, mortified, colour flooding all the way up to the tips of his ears, and would say nothing further no matter how Daemon pressed him for details, though his ears stayed scarlet the rest of the evening and he refused, quite pointedly, to look either of them in the eye.

It was only once they were alone, Daemon finally chased off by some matter of ships needing his attention, that Rhaenyra asked, more gently now, what exactly he hoped to find buried in all those old scrolls.

He confessed it slowly, haltingly, that he was searching for some means of letting you speak properly above the water, because you listened to him so patiently each evening, tilting your head at his every word as though nothing he said could ever bore you, and he found, to his own quiet surprise, that he wanted very badly to hear your voice in return, to know what you sounded like when you laughed instead of simply seeing it in the curve of your mouth.

Something in her face softened at that, the last of the earlier sternness melting away entirely. She crossed the room and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, something she would often do when he was but a babe and even now.

"I nearly lost you once already," she said quietly. "I do not think I would survive losing you a second time, not truly. If this girl from the sea brings you peace after everything, then that peace is worth more to me than I can properly measure. I will help you find your answer, if I am able. You have only to ask."

He thanked her, throat tight, and went to bed that night lighter than he had felt in a very long time.

By the tenth day, though, his search had turned up nothing but dust and disappointment, page after page of tidal charts and shipping records that told him everything about the sea and nothing at all about the creatures who lived beneath it, and he was scowling so fiercely at a particularly useless scroll that he did not hear Baela approach until she dropped a stack of books onto the table hard enough to make him jump nearly out of his seat.

"What have I told you about pouting, cousin? It hardly befits a prince, especially not one so recently returned from the dead."

"I am not pouting," he said, pouting.

She laughed, unbothered, and pushed the books toward him anyway, settling into the chair across from him with the satisfied air of someone bearing very good news. "Found these buried in the old archive, behind a shelf half the household seems to have forgotten existed. Scrolls on sea creatures, potions, that sort of thing, all written in the old tongue. Some of it looks to go back to Old Valyria itself, if the binding is anything to judge by. Thought they might serve you better than moping about the library like a wet cat."

His whole face changed, disappointment giving way so suddenly to hope that Baela laughed again just watching it happen. He thanked her so earnestly, gripping her hands in both of his, that she looked half embarrassed by the whole display and waved him off with a mock scowl of her own, and then he buried himself in the texts for the rest of the day and well into the night, barely stopping to eat, ink staining his fingers as he copied out passage after passage by candlelight.

The gods, it seemed, had finally decided to smile down upon him after everything, because tucked among the brittle, crumbling pages he found precisely what he had been searching for all along: an old Valyrian draught, described in cramped, faded script, said to grant a creature of the sea, mermaid or siren alike, a brief and temporary span of human legs, the magic bound to fade again once enough days had passed.

Gathering the ingredients took the better part of two more days, some of them common enough to find in any well stocked kitchen and others requiring correspondence sent quietly to a maester on the mainland who asked no questions he clearly did not wish answered, and finding an alchemist both skilled and discreet enough to brew the whole of it properly took longer still. But by the fourteenth day since the battle, Jace stood at the shoreline at dusk with a small vial clutched tight in one hand, its contents glowing faintly violet in the fading light, and his heart hammering somewhere up near his throat.

You surfaced as you always did by then, cautious first, scanning the shore out of old habit, then delighted once you saw him standing alone, swimming in swiftly with your usual haul of shells and drowned bottles clutched against your chest. He knelt at the waterline and, for once, did not simply talk about his day or ask after yours in the halting, gestured way you had both grown so used to.

He explained the potion instead, slowly, carefully, holding the vial up so you could see the strange violet light swirling within it, watching your face closely all the while for any sign that this was too much, too strange, too great a thing to ask of you.

You went very quiet. Your brow furrowed the way it always did when you turned something over carefully in your mind, weighing it from every side, and Jace, who had come to know that expression well over a fortnight of evenings spent together, made himself sit still and wait, though every part of him wanted to fill the silence with reassurance.

"It is only if you wish it," he said softly, when the silence had stretched long enough that he could not help himself any longer. "I would never have you feel forced into anything on my account, not after everything you have already given me. If you would rather not, I will understand completely, and I will still come to see you each evening, just as I have."

You studied the vial a long moment more, turning the choice over one final time, thinking of your sisters and the warnings you had grown up hearing about the dangers of the world above, of legs that were not truly yours and a voice that might vanish again the moment the magic faded.

Then you looked at him, at the earnest hope he could not quite hide no matter how he tried, and something in your face settled at last, resolve chasing out the last of the hesitation, and you nodded.

He could have wept from the sheer relief of it. He handed you the vial with hands that were not entirely steady, and you drank it down in a single determined swallow, immediately screwing your face up at the taste, which was somehow both bitter and sickly sweet beneath it, like rot dressed up in honey, and Jace laughed at the disgusted noise you made.

The change came almost at once, faster than either of you had quite expected. Your tail began to glow faintly from within, the violet light spreading through the coral pink scales, and then, slowly, the scales themselves began to dissolve and reshape, splitting and lengthening before your very eyes.

You watched it happen to your own body with something closer to wonder than fear, propping yourself up on your elbows in the shallow water to see it better. It did not hurt, not truly, only felt strange, an unfamiliar pulling and settling sensation that ran the length of what had been your tail only moments before, and then, quite suddenly, you had legs. Two of them, unfamiliar and entirely new to you, kicking weakly in the shallows as you tried, with no success at all, to make them do anything useful.

It was Jace who first remembered, with a start that nearly gave him whiplash, that you now had absolutely nothing on at all beneath the water. He spun to face the other direction so fast he nearly lost his footing on the wet sand, hurriedly unclasping his own travelling cloak and passing it back over his shoulder to you without turning around, ears burning scarlet all over again.

"Here, please, wrap this around yourself, I am so sorry, I did not think- I should have thought of it before you drank the wretched thing."

You took the cloak, bewildered by the whole strange business of clothing, and wrapped it clumsily about yourself as best you could manage with limbs that still refused to cooperate properly.

"Why," you whispered, voice thin and strange and entirely your own, and both of you went utterly, completely still.

"You spoke," Jace said, turning back around despite himself, eyes wide with wonder, all thought of modesty forgotten entirely.

"I did," you said, marvelling at the strange, thin sound of your own voice carrying through open air, so unlike the way words moved and pressed through water, lighter somehow, and stranger, but yours all the same.

He knelt properly before you then in the wet sand, something almost formal in the gesture despite how thoroughly absurd the whole moment truly was, both of them soaked and shivering and grinning like fools, and asked if he might finally know the proper name of the maiden who had pulled him back so stubbornly from death's door.

You told him. Your name, spoken aloud for the first time in your life, and that you were the seventh daughter of a house that ruled beneath the narrow sea, a true princess in every sense, just as you had claimed all along through nothing but gestures and a proud tilt of your chin.

"I know this may only last a short while," Jace said, still kneeling, still holding your hands as though he feared letting go might undo the magic.

"And I mean to keep searching, if that is what you wish, for some way to make it last longer, or even permanent. But for now, will you come and meet my family properly? They ought to see, with their own eyes, the girl who saved their prince from the bottom of the Gullet."

You tried to stand at that, eager and entirely too confident in limbs you had possessed for all of ten minutes, and discovered immediately that legs demanded a coordination and strength the sea had never once asked of you. You stumbled, pitched forward, and landed hard on your knees in the wet sand with a startled, frustrated huff.

You tried again, gripping his shoulder for balance this time, and managed perhaps three wobbling steps before your legs betrayed you a second time, sending you tumbling sideways with a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan of pure exasperation.

Jace, biting back a laugh of his own though it clearly threatened to escape, knelt beside you and tightened the cloak properly around your shoulders, then slid one arm behind your back and the other beneath the crook of your knees, lifting you up into his arms with far more ease than his still-recovering body should reasonably have allowed.

"I will teach you to walk properly," he promised, adjusting his grip as you settled, somewhat stiffly, against his chest, your new legs kicking experimentally against nothing at all. "Though I think that particular lesson is better suited to daylight and a rather softer patch of ground than this. Just now I have limited time before the magic fades, and I intend to make the very most of it while I can."

The jaws that dropped when Jacaerys Velaryon strode into Dragonstone’s great hall carrying a girl in his arms, salt still drying in tangled waves through her hair, wrapped in nothing but his own travelling cloak and kicking her bare feet with open, delighted fascination at the strange new sensation of having feet at all, were a sight none of the household would soon forget, and several among the kitchen staff would still be whispering about weeks later.

Baela nearly dropped the tray she was carrying. Rhaena’s mouth fell open mid sentence and simply stayed that way. You met Rhaenyra and Daemon’s twin looks of open astonishment with wide, curious eyes of your own, entirely unbothered by the attention, as though growing an entirely new pair of legs within the hour were the most ordinary thing in all the world, and gave the queen a doe eyed stare that made it very difficult indeed for anyone in that hall to remain suspicious for long.

Daemon was the first to find his voice, low and disbelieving, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Well- damn. He wasn’t kidding about the fish.”

Rhaenyra’s palm found the back of his head before he had even finished speaking, a sharp, swift smack that made him yelp and rub at the spot, wounded.

“Mind your tongue,” she warned, though there was little real heat in it, her gaze already softening as it moved from Daemon back to her son and the girl held so carefully in his arms.

In the end, there was little else for anyone present to do but believe it, however improbable the tale sounded when spoken aloud: that the lost prince of Dragonstone had indeed been pulled from the bottom of the sea by a little mermaid, and that she, in turn, without quite meaning for it to happen at all, had followed him all the way home.

Every answer she sought seemed wrapped in careful avoidance, hidden behind sympathetic looks and half-finished sentences. Servants lowered their gazes whenever she approached, while knights and messengers exchanged uneasy glances before offering the same frustrating response: they did not know.

Yet rumors drifted through Dragonstone’s halls like ghosts.

She heard that Prince Jacaerys had fought bravely against overwhelming odds, leading men into battle with the same courage that had always made others follow him. Some claimed they had seen Vermax soaring through walls of smoke and dragonfire, his emerald scales flashing amidst the chaos before disappearing into the flames. Others spoke of burning ships, shattered fleets, and the sea choked with wreckage.

There were survivors, they said. Men who had escaped the slaughter and returned with tales of fire raining from the sky. There were casualties too—far too many to count—and with each passing hour the lists of the dead seemed to grow longer. But when it came to Jacaerys, certainty vanished.

No confirmation arrived. No raven carried his name among the living or the dead. As the days stretched on, the whispers gradually faded, replaced by something far crueler.

Silence settled over Dragonstone like a storm cloud, heavy and suffocating. It was the worst kind of silence; the kind that left room for hope and despair to exist side by side, tormenting her with every heartbeat.

For three endless days, Y/N remained in her chambers overlooking the sea, unable to eat, unable to sleep, staring out the window as though she could somehow summon Vermax from the horizon.

Her betrothed.

Her future husband.

The man she had loved since childhood.

The man who had promised her beneath the godswood trees of Dragonstone that he would return from every battle.

“Because I have something worth returning to.”

The memory hurt.

Especially because she no longer knew whether he was alive.

Outside her chambers, servants moved quietly. Guards spoke in hushed tones.

Everyone feared giving her news.

Because no one knew what news existed to give.

Then, shortly before sunset on the fourth day, hurried footsteps echoed through the corridor.

Y/N barely looked up.

She expected another servant, another apology, another uncertainty.

The door opened.

“My lady—”

She stood immediately. “What is it?”

The maid looked breathless. “He lives.”

Tears immediately filled her eyes, and for a moment it felt as though everything around her had come to a standstill. The world blurred into silence, the air caught in her lungs, and even the frantic pounding of her heart seemed to falter beneath the weight of what she had just heard.

Y/N stared. “What?”

“He lives,” The maid was smiling now. “The prince lives.”

For a moment Y/N simply stood there.

Then she ran.

There was no thought of composure or dignity as she broke into a run, racing through Dragonstone’s stone corridors and down its winding staircases. Guards and servants alike scrambled out of her way, startled by her urgency, while anyone unfortunate enough to linger in her path was quickly left behind.

Her skirts tangled around her legs as she raced toward the harbor.

Toward the ships.

Toward him.

Please.

Please let it be true.

Please.

The harbor was bustling with activity as sailors unloaded supplies from arriving ships, their voices mingling with the crash of waves against the docks. Above them, the distant roar of dragons echoed through the sky, a reminder that even here, the war was never far away.

And standing at the end of the dock surrounded by soldiers was a familiar figure.

Alive.

Gods.

Alive.

Jacaerys.

His dark curls had grown longer, falling untidily around a face marked by exhaustion. Damaged armor hung heavily from his frame, a bandage wrapped around one shoulder while bruises darkened his jaw. He looked worn and battered by battle, but most importantly, he was unmistakably alive.

Y/N stopped running.

A sob escaped her lips.

Jacaerys turned as if he had felt her presence.

The moment his eyes found hers, everything else seemed to fade into the background. The soldiers surrounding him, the bustling harbor, the crashing sea, and even the war itself ceased to matter as his entire focus settled on her.

Only her remained.

“Y/N,” His breath caught. “My love.”

Her eyes immediately filled with tears. “You idiot.”

A smile appeared on his face. A weak but beautiful one.

Then she was running again.

Jacaerys barely had time to brace himself before she crashed into him.

His arms wrapped around her instantly.

Holding her.

Clinging to her, almost desperately.

As if letting go would somehow make her disappear.

Y/N buried her face into his chest.

“You stupid, stupid idiot,” Her voice broke. “I thought you were dead.”

Jacaerys closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to feel her warmth against him and the steady beat of her heart. After days of uncertainty and survival, the simple reality that she was truly there in his arms felt almost unbelievable.

“I know.”

“I hated you.”

A laugh escaped him. “You did not.”

“I did.”

“You love me.”

She pulled back just enough to glare at him through tears. “I hate you right now.”

He laughed again.

Gods, even laughing hurt.

But hearing her voice was worth every ache.

His fingers brushed tears from her cheeks. “You cried.”

“Do not sound pleased about it.”

“A little.”

She smacked his arm.

Jacaerys immediately winced.

The smile vanished from her face. “Oh Gods.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not.”

“I’m alive.”

“You look terrible.”

He grinned. “You always know exactly what to say.”

For the first time since hearing he lived, Y/N laughed.

A watery, trembling laugh.

Jacaerys stared at her.

Gods.

How many times during the battle had he thought of this?

Of her?

When arrows darkened the sky, when ships burned around him, and when Vermax’s cries echoed through the chaos, her face had remained at the forefront of his mind. Even in the moments when death felt inevitable, thoughts of her were what he clung to most.

He had pictured her face.

Over and over.

The one thing keeping him from surrendering to fear.

Now she stood before him.

Real. Alive.

Beautiful.

More beautiful than memory.

His hand rose to her cheek.

The harbor around them had grown strangely quiet.

Everyone watched but neither noticed nor cared.

His voice came out softer than intended. “I thought I would never see you again.”

Y/N immediately looked away, fresh tears appeared.

“Do not say that.”

“It is true.”

“No.”

“Y/N—”

“No,” Her voice cracked. “You are here.”

Jacaerys swallowed.

The pain in her eyes struck harder than any blade.

Slowly, he pulled her closer, resting his forehead against hers. “I am here.”

The words were almost a whisper.

“I came back.”

“You nearly didn’t.”

“I know.”

Silence lingered.

Eventually Y/N spoke. “Did you think of me?”

Jacaerys stared then laughed softly. “Every moment.”

She looked up. “Truly?”

His thumb gently traced her cheek as a soft smile touched his lips. “Every moment,” he murmured before pressing a kiss to her forehead. “When the battle began.” Another kiss followed near her temple. “When our ships were burning.” His gaze softened as he brushed a kiss against her trembling cheek. “And when I thought I might die, you were all I could think about.”

Y/N’s breath hitched.

Jacaerys smiled gently before pressing another kiss against her skin. “I was not thinking of glory,” he said softly. “Nor victory.” His voice lowered as he rested his forehead against hers. “I was thinking about the fact that if I died, I would never get to marry you.”

Her eyes widened at the confession. The prince who commanded fleets, who was destined for greatness, and who always seemed fearless now stood before her looking unexpectedly vulnerable. For perhaps the first time, she could see the fear he rarely allowed anyone else to witness, as though the thought of losing her frightened him far more than any battle ever could.

Y/N cupped his face. “Then do not leave me again.”

Jacaerys closed his eyes, leaning into her touch. “If I can help it, I never shall.”

“You promise?”

“I swear it.”

“On what?”

A smile tugged at his lips. “On my crown.”

“That is not yours yet.”

“My dragon then.”

Y/N giggled. “Dangerous.”

“My life.”

Y/N immediately shook her head. “No.”

His expression softened. “Then I swear it on my love for you.”

Neither spoke for several moments.

Because some promises felt too sacred to interrupt.

Finally, Jacaerys leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers once more.

The harbor had vanished again.

The war had vanished.

Only the two of them existed.

And after days of fear, grief, and uncertainty, Y/N finally allowed herself to believe the truth.

He was alive, and he had returned to her at last. In that moment, she did not see a prince, a warrior, or the future heir to a kingdom; she saw only the man she loved standing before her.

And as Jacaerys held her against his chest, feeling her heartbeat beneath his hands, he realized something that no battle had ever taught him.

Victory was not surviving the Gullet.

Every answer she sought seemed wrapped in careful avoidance, hidden behind sympathetic looks and half-finished sentences. Servants lowered their gazes whenever she approached, while knights and messengers exchanged uneasy glances before offering the same frustrating response: they did not know.

Yet rumors drifted through Dragonstone’s halls like ghosts.

She heard that Prince Jacaerys had fought bravely against overwhelming odds, leading men into battle with the same courage that had always made others follow him. Some claimed they had seen Vermax soaring through walls of smoke and dragonfire, his emerald scales flashing amidst the chaos before disappearing into the flames. Others spoke of burning ships, shattered fleets, and the sea choked with wreckage.

There were survivors, they said. Men who had escaped the slaughter and returned with tales of fire raining from the sky. There were casualties too—far too many to count—and with each passing hour the lists of the dead seemed to grow longer. But when it came to Jacaerys, certainty vanished.

No confirmation arrived. No raven carried his name among the living or the dead. As the days stretched on, the whispers gradually faded, replaced by something far crueler.

Silence settled over Dragonstone like a storm cloud, heavy and suffocating. It was the worst kind of silence; the kind that left room for hope and despair to exist side by side, tormenting her with every heartbeat.

For three endless days, Y/N remained in her chambers overlooking the sea, unable to eat, unable to sleep, staring out the window as though she could somehow summon Vermax from the horizon.

Her betrothed.

Her future husband.

The man she had loved since childhood.

The man who had promised her beneath the godswood trees of Dragonstone that he would return from every battle.

“Because I have something worth returning to.”

The memory hurt.

Especially because she no longer knew whether he was alive.

Outside her chambers, servants moved quietly. Guards spoke in hushed tones.

Everyone feared giving her news.

Because no one knew what news existed to give.

Then, shortly before sunset on the fourth day, hurried footsteps echoed through the corridor.

Y/N barely looked up.

She expected another servant, another apology, another uncertainty.

The door opened.

“My lady—”

She stood immediately. “What is it?”

The maid looked breathless. “He lives.”

Tears immediately filled her eyes, and for a moment it felt as though everything around her had come to a standstill. The world blurred into silence, the air caught in her lungs, and even the frantic pounding of her heart seemed to falter beneath the weight of what she had just heard.

Y/N stared. “What?”

“He lives,” The maid was smiling now. “The prince lives.”

For a moment Y/N simply stood there.

Then she ran.

There was no thought of composure or dignity as she broke into a run, racing through Dragonstone’s stone corridors and down its winding staircases. Guards and servants alike scrambled out of her way, startled by her urgency, while anyone unfortunate enough to linger in her path was quickly left behind.

Her skirts tangled around her legs as she raced toward the harbor.

Toward the ships.

Toward him.

Please.

Please let it be true.

Please.

The harbor was bustling with activity as sailors unloaded supplies from arriving ships, their voices mingling with the crash of waves against the docks. Above them, the distant roar of dragons echoed through the sky, a reminder that even here, the war was never far away.

And standing at the end of the dock surrounded by soldiers was a familiar figure.

Alive.

Gods.

Alive.

Jacaerys.

His dark curls had grown longer, falling untidily around a face marked by exhaustion. Damaged armor hung heavily from his frame, a bandage wrapped around one shoulder while bruises darkened his jaw. He looked worn and battered by battle, but most importantly, he was unmistakably alive.

Y/N stopped running.

A sob escaped her lips.

Jacaerys turned as if he had felt her presence.

The moment his eyes found hers, everything else seemed to fade into the background. The soldiers surrounding him, the bustling harbor, the crashing sea, and even the war itself ceased to matter as his entire focus settled on her.

Only her remained.

“Y/N,” His breath caught. “My love.”

Her eyes immediately filled with tears. “You idiot.”

A smile appeared on his face. A weak but beautiful one.

Then she was running again.

Jacaerys barely had time to brace himself before she crashed into him.

His arms wrapped around her instantly.

Holding her.

Clinging to her, almost desperately.

As if letting go would somehow make her disappear.

Y/N buried her face into his chest.

“You stupid, stupid idiot,” Her voice broke. “I thought you were dead.”

Jacaerys closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to feel her warmth against him and the steady beat of her heart. After days of uncertainty and survival, the simple reality that she was truly there in his arms felt almost unbelievable.

“I know.”

“I hated you.”

A laugh escaped him. “You did not.”

“I did.”

“You love me.”

She pulled back just enough to glare at him through tears. “I hate you right now.”

He laughed again.

Gods, even laughing hurt.

But hearing her voice was worth every ache.

His fingers brushed tears from her cheeks. “You cried.”

“Do not sound pleased about it.”

“A little.”

She smacked his arm.

Jacaerys immediately winced.

The smile vanished from her face. “Oh Gods.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not.”

“I’m alive.”

“You look terrible.”

He grinned. “You always know exactly what to say.”

For the first time since hearing he lived, Y/N laughed.

A watery, trembling laugh.

Jacaerys stared at her.

Gods.

How many times during the battle had he thought of this?

Of her?

When arrows darkened the sky, when ships burned around him, and when Vermax’s cries echoed through the chaos, her face had remained at the forefront of his mind. Even in the moments when death felt inevitable, thoughts of her were what he clung to most.

He had pictured her face.

Over and over.

The one thing keeping him from surrendering to fear.

Now she stood before him.

Real. Alive.

Beautiful.

More beautiful than memory.

His hand rose to her cheek.

The harbor around them had grown strangely quiet.

Everyone watched but neither noticed nor cared.

His voice came out softer than intended. “I thought I would never see you again.”

Y/N immediately looked away, fresh tears appeared.

“Do not say that.”

“It is true.”

“No.”

“Y/N—”

“No,” Her voice cracked. “You are here.”

Jacaerys swallowed.

The pain in her eyes struck harder than any blade.

Slowly, he pulled her closer, resting his forehead against hers. “I am here.”

The words were almost a whisper.

“I came back.”

“You nearly didn’t.”

“I know.”

Silence lingered.

Eventually Y/N spoke. “Did you think of me?”

Jacaerys stared then laughed softly. “Every moment.”

She looked up. “Truly?”

His thumb gently traced her cheek as a soft smile touched his lips. “Every moment,” he murmured before pressing a kiss to her forehead. “When the battle began.” Another kiss followed near her temple. “When our ships were burning.” His gaze softened as he brushed a kiss against her trembling cheek. “And when I thought I might die, you were all I could think about.”

Y/N’s breath hitched.

Jacaerys smiled gently before pressing another kiss against her skin. “I was not thinking of glory,” he said softly. “Nor victory.” His voice lowered as he rested his forehead against hers. “I was thinking about the fact that if I died, I would never get to marry you.”

Her eyes widened at the confession. The prince who commanded fleets, who was destined for greatness, and who always seemed fearless now stood before her looking unexpectedly vulnerable. For perhaps the first time, she could see the fear he rarely allowed anyone else to witness, as though the thought of losing her frightened him far more than any battle ever could.

Y/N cupped his face. “Then do not leave me again.”

Jacaerys closed his eyes, leaning into her touch. “If I can help it, I never shall.”

“You promise?”

“I swear it.”

“On what?”

A smile tugged at his lips. “On my crown.”

“That is not yours yet.”

“My dragon then.”

Y/N giggled. “Dangerous.”

“My life.”

Y/N immediately shook her head. “No.”

His expression softened. “Then I swear it on my love for you.”

Neither spoke for several moments.

Because some promises felt too sacred to interrupt.

Finally, Jacaerys leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers once more.

The harbor had vanished again.

The war had vanished.

Only the two of them existed.

And after days of fear, grief, and uncertainty, Y/N finally allowed herself to believe the truth.

He was alive, and he had returned to her at last. In that moment, she did not see a prince, a warrior, or the future heir to a kingdom; she saw only the man she loved standing before her.

And as Jacaerys held her against his chest, feeling her heartbeat beneath his hands, he realized something that no battle had ever taught him.

Victory was not surviving the Gullet.

you sat in your room looking through the old books dragonstone inhabited , it was really the only thing you could do at such moments as your betrothed , jacaerys , wouldn’t let you out for any reason . ‘ there’s a coming war upon us , you need to be here , where it is safe ’ . of course you understood his worry for you , not just because you’re his future wife but rather because you’re his best friend . you two have known each other since you were about five years of age , inseparable from the start that it seemed only fitting to marry in the future . after his brother and your grace , you’re all he has . it’s only nature to be protective after what he’s been through

‘ i’m leaving , my love , i have duties to attend to ’ you knew what those duties were , the battle that was just arising in the seas , you quickly stood up as he rummaged through belongings and blocked the door . ‘ you can’t go , you will not go ’ . he looked up and grinned at you before making his way toward you , he takes your face into his hands ‘ i’ll be alright , you don’t have to be worried for me , i know what i’m doing ’

‘ but do you ? ’ you looked in his eyes , those soft eyes that always made you feel calm , but now they made you feel uncertain ‘ how can i be calm ? how can i sit here while you go and prove yourself to your mother despite her clear orders ? ’ he dropped his hands and paced around the room

‘ my mother doesn’t think i can do it ! she wants me here studying books and listening to her council ! that’s stupid , i should be helping ’

‘ sounds familiar ’

‘ it’s different with you , my love ’

‘ how so ? because i am no targaryen or velaryon ? because i don’t ride a dragon ? it is the same jace , the way you order me to stay here for my protection . your mother loves you ! she’s protecting you ’

‘ well i never asked for protection ! ’

‘ as heir to the iron throne , you don’t need to ask jacaerys ! ’ he stayed quiet for a while , staring at you with sudden fear in his eyes but he snapped back into his own reality and immediately composed himself ‘ i can do this ’ once again he walked towards you , now caressing your cheeks and your hair

‘ i can win this , baela and i will be the only dragon riders there , we can do this and we will do this ! for the queen ! and for luke ! ’ the fire burned restlessly in jace’s eyes

you moved away from his touch , from the door , the barrier that you blocked now open for him ‘ and what happens when you don’t win ? you’ll leave everyone behind , you’ll leave me behind ! you’re everything i have , everything i need and you’re ready to let it go just like that ? ’

‘ i’m not leaving you my love , you’re not getting rid of me that easily , i promise you ’ in that moment baela came around ‘ the dragons are ready jace ’ he simply nodded and she went off without a word , just a smile of sympathy directed towards you . jace kissed your cheek and was about to kiss you on your mouth but you darted away

‘ i love you and i’ll be back before you know it ’ he stood there while your back was to him for a good minute and when he turned to leave , strange words spilled out your mouth

‘ if you take one more step , jacaerys , this is over ’ he stopped in his tracks but didn’t look back , his shoulders hunched and you watched him as he chose his decision . his duties . his dragon and his priorities

. . .

‘ has there been any word ? ’ you finally left the room after the tears flowed from your bright eyes . you walked to the balcony of the castle , where the sea met the dragon’s sanctuary for lookout . ‘ nothing , my princess ’ the guard that jace assigned to you followed suit ‘ i shall like to be alone out here . if there is any word of the battle , i shall like to be alerted at once , especially if it regards the prince ’

your guard nodded and left you to your solitude , the breeze calmed you down a bit but it wasn’t enough to make all your worries go away . battles are long , yes but when the love of your life is out there it seems longer . too much to bear especially when you just fought over this . you didn’t mean it , no , you regretted it when the words spilled out . it was against your will . . . but he did leave . you don’t blame him , all his life he has wanted to show the land that he’s strong , that he’s capable of such things but your gut tells you otherwise

it’s not that you don’t believe in him , it’s quite the opposite . you know he’s capable , too capable . he will do anything to keep his family safe , to make sure the throne stays in his bloodline , anything . even if it leads to his death . and as if the gods are against you , your gut was right

baela’s dragon shows up on the coast , your heart races at the arrival , waiting vermax to follow pursuit . but as moondancer approached the castle rapidly , there was no other dragon in sight . your heart sank and wasting no time you ran down the steps of the castle to the dragons cave . you didn’t want to believe it to be true , that he was somehow hurt but when you arrived at the cave and saw baela with dried up tears , guards carrying a lifeless body you broke . ‘ no , no , no ! ’ you started to shake at the sight of them walking in defeat with his body ‘ p - put him down ’

‘ princess - ’

‘ put him down ! ’ the guards wasted no time and placed his body on the crossing of the cave , you kneeled before jace and caressed his face ‘ please , please , please , you said you’d come back ’ faint whispers and pleads turned into guttural screaming and loud cries as you mourned jace . your body was flung over him as you cried out loud , so loud it felt like dragonstone shook in its wake . when the maester arrived you wouldn’t let go of him no matter how much they pleaded , it wasn’t until baela kneeled beside you and begged for you to let go , to help them save him if there was a chance . you looked at her through your wet eyelashes and let go of him

you covered your mouth as they carried him upstairs and followed but the maester shut his door in your face and no amount of pounding could make them open it up . baela and your guard helped you up and brought you to the grand room where rhaenyra was , you were afraid of being near her in moments like these but she stood up and walked towards you with open arms . you cried together , something you’d never done but the queen knew the bond you and her son had and it was only right to grieve together . at least now she had someone to grieve with

. . .

it was late now when the maester finished his work and when he walked into the grand room you stood up from your seat , hand on your heart and one steadying yourself on the table ‘ jacaerys velaryon , prince of dragonstone and heir to the iron throne . . . was pronounced dead one and ten minutes ago ’ you knew he wouldn’t make it but hearing those words hurt your soul , your heart was crushed and your body started to falter . the tears were flowing out once more but your voice was long gone that no screams came out , not even the soft sounds of your sobbing could make it . you walked up to your room , stumbling as your guard followed but you wouldn’t allow him to help you

when you arrived the door was closed and you couldn’t bear to walk in , the memories of you two still embedded in that room . the essence of the room , the bed you shared , the books you two touched , everything in there was haunting you and you couldn’t walk in . ‘ i want to see him ’ your guard nodded and lead the way to maester’s quarters , he opened the door for you and it took you a while to get the courage to walk in . ‘ i’ll be outside , take your time ’ you nodded and he closed the door behind you

there he was , still handsome even in death , you pushed back his hair and kissed his forehead , whispering something to him . there was blood almost everywhere on the table , it looked like they tried to give him some after he presumably lost a lot of it . you took hold of his lifeless hand and smiled at him , ‘ it’ll soon be all okay my love , i promise you that ’

you looked around the room in search for something , you don’t know exactly what but really anything would suffice . you looked through cupboards full of elixirs but nothing poisonous was found be found ‘ don’t maesters carry poison these days ? ’ at some point you got frustrated that you started to throw things around and your guard called out to you but there was no answer . and the door was locked too , he left in search for help

. . .

the maester , rhenerya , baela , and your guard all barged into the room once they were able to unlock it . there you stood with jace’s sword in your hand , blood trickling down your forearms with deep gashes . you looked scared but not because of your blood , rather because of them ‘ put the sword down at once ! ’ the queen’s voice filled the room but you just put the sword up as they approached you . ‘ i can’t ! he needs me ’ the light in your eyes was gone , filled with craziness and torture , something darker . ‘ i have to be with him ! i promised - we promised ! ’

‘ my son wouldn’t want you to hurt himself , neither do i , please i beg of you put the sword down ’ but you just smiled , an expression that scared the quartet in front of you . your guard got closer to you , his hand out to clam you down but you just stepped back even more ‘ no ! i no longer belong here , i belong with jace ! with him only i need to be with him ! now ! ’

‘ princess - ’

‘ you don’t get it do you ? did you ever wonder why we were so close ? it’s the gods telling us we’re meant to be together , in every universe , in every life ’ your smile only got bigger and more frightening, your eyes more haunting and the sword more closer to your stomach . the blood was dripping everywhere from your arms , the goal was to loose as much blood as jace did ‘ don’t be afraid for me ! don’t be sad for me if you care ! i will be fine , it’ll be alright because we’ll be together again ’

‘ it’s what he would want ’

. . .

for those who remember the day the prince and princess of dragonstone died paint the story that the princess died in her sleep due to a broken heart . the queen wouldn’t let anyone know , or tell of the true story . that she killed herself in the same room where her son lay . it was a pity to see it happen , to see a girl she saw as her daughter die before her after she lost two of her sons in less than a year . but somehow it gave her some sort of comfort that they would all be together again , her heir and his princess watching over her second son . at least they were all together again.

Fire danced with a horrific, erratic grace across the blackened waters of the Gullet, transforming the vital shipping lane into a sprawling, floating graveyard. Flames leapt from ship to ship in hungry arcs, feeding on timber and pitch and the desperate prayers of drowning men. Beneath the merciless onslaught of Team Black’s dragons, mighty Triarchy war-galleys splintered like kindling, their hulls cracking open to swallow their crews whole. Great masts toppled into the waves with the slow, theatrical finality of falling monuments. And yet, this was no easy victory. No clean triumph etched into the history books with golden ink. Below, Lord Corlys Velaryon’s fleet fought with everything it had, attempting to trap the armada in the narrow, choking passage, buying time in blood and smoke and screaming iron.

The atmosphere was a living thing, a suffocating shroud woven from the sharp salt tang of brine, the acrid bite of billowing smoke, the unmistakable iron-sweetness of fresh blood, and the sickening, almost honeyed stench of burning pitch. It coated the throat and burned the eyes.

High above the carnage, roaring through the roiling tempest of fire and ash, rode Prince Jacaerys Velaryon.

He sat astride Vermax like a man born to the sky because he was. The great emerald dragon cut through the smoke-choked air like a gleaming blade, his scales catching the hellish firelight below, wings spread wide. Jace’s riding leathers were already dark with spray and soot. His dark curls whipped against his face. He did not notice. His eyes were fixed on the battle, calculating and measuring, feeling the terrible weight of command settle across his shoulders with the intimacy of something he had worn all his life.

He had locked his mother in her chambers at Dragonstone before leaving. Had stood outside the door and listened to her pound against it, her voice cracking on his name. The sound had nearly unmade him entirely. But she was the queen. She was the cause. She could not be lost, and Jacaerys Velaryon had long since made peace with the arithmetic of that.

She lives. Therefore, I go.

Beside him, Baela streaked across the smoke on Moondancer fierce and brilliant, her silver hair streaming behind her like a war banner. And then, piercing through the mist like something half-imagined, a new silhouette emerged. Jace’s eyes snapped to it. His stomach lurched with shock before his heart swelled with a pride so fierce it nearly hurt.

Rhaena. Flying the wild dragon Sheepstealer.

Of course she was.

Together they were three dragons raining hell from the heavens, and for one blazing, exhilarating moment, Jace believed they might actually win this despite Sheepstealer almost knocking him out. He watched their collective fire devastate Admiral Lohar’s vanguard below, great tongues of flame consuming the armada’s leading ships, sending men screaming into the sea. He felt the savage triumph of it. The rightness.

Then the heavy, rhythmic thrum of scorpions began.

Massive iron bolts tore through the clouds around them. The Triarchy fleet was enormous, he had known this, had known it academically the way one knows a thing from maps and reports but knowing it and watching it materialize below him in all its terrible scale were entirely different experiences.

He pressed Vermax into a steep, dangerously low dive.

Below, through the roiling chaos, Jace had spotted Lord Corlys’s flagship being violently rammed by Lohar’s vessel. The silver-haired sea snake, his grandfather by every measure that mattered, surrounded and struggling. Jace made his decision in the space of half a breath. He would break the enemy lines. He would fly low. He would end this.

He flew too close to the water.

His focus had narrowed to a single burning point, the ships, the threat, the duty and so he did not hear the volley until it was already too late.

A heavy iron shaft sliced violently through the membrane of Vermax’s right wing with a sound like tearing cloth and screaming metal fused together. Another slammed directly into the dragon’s chest with a concussive, world-shaking force that Jace felt through every bone in his body.

Vermax screamed.

The sound ripped through Jace like a physical blade. Not a roar, not the magnificent, terrible declaration of a dragon in battle. A scream. Raw and agonizing and so deeply personal that Jace felt his own lungs seize in sympathy, as though the bolt had pierced him too. The great emerald body shuddered beneath him. The massive wings faltered, losing the steady rhythm that held them aloft. The world tilted.

They were falling.

“No-”

Jace yanked desperately on the reins, his boots straining hard against the stirrups, body thrown forward as the sea rushed upward to meet them with terrifying speed. Wind screamed past his ears. The fire and the smoke and the battle became a chaotic blur of sensation.

“Vermax, fly!”

The dragon fought. Even now, even broken and burning, Vermax fought. A beast born of fire, refusing absolutely to yield to the water. One wing beat heavily, then another. The torn membrane fluttered uselessly, a tattered rag of what it had been, but still Vermax tried, and something in Jace’s chest shattered at the sight of it.

“Soves!” His voice broke on the word, all royal dignity stripped away, reduced to something raw and helpless and very young. “Soves, Vermax! Please-”

One final, agonizing beat of the wings.

It was not enough.

Freezing, brine-heavy water swallowed Jacaerys Velaryon whole. It was not like diving, it was like being struck by the earth itself, like the sea had become solid in the last instant before collision, and he felt the shock travel up through his ankles, his knees, his spine, rattling his teeth in his skull. The sheer velocity of the crash tore his fingers from the saddle. The weight of his armor dragged at him immediately, a slow, patient, lethal pull downward into the dark.

Primal instinct flared.

He unhooked himself and practically clawed upward. His lungs burned. The cold was absolute, the kind that doesn’t feel cold at all but rather feels like being unmade, like the sea was simply erasing him a layer at a time. He could see nothing, only dark water and distant fire and the enormous bulk of Vermax somewhere below him, a shadow become a nightmare. He burst through the surface with a gasp so violent it tore his throat.

“Vermax!”

He spun in the churning water, hair plastered to his face, salt burning his eyes. The battle raged on around him, ships groaning and splitting, men screaming, iron raining from all directions. The world had not paused for him.

“Vermax!”

Through the haze of cresting waves, he found him. His dragon, his Vermax, who had carried him since boyhood, who had grown as he had grown, who had been as much a part of him as his own heartbeat was desperately trying to swim. The damaged wings beat uselessly to try to swim up. His great neck was straining upward. His eyes, when they met Jace’s from below the water, held something that a person with less grief in them might have dismissed as imagination. They did not look like the eyes of an animal.

They looked like the eyes of someone saying goodbye. A massive anchor, or debris, Jace could not tell which, tangled around Vermax’s exhausted body. The sea accepted its offering. With a final, sorrowful look that Jacaerys Velaryon would carry with him for the rest of his life.

He never resurfaced.

Something inside Jace broke. Not cracked. Not bent. Broke, the way an old bone breaks, the kind that doesn’t ever quite knit back the same way. He hauled his upper body onto a large piece of floating wreckage with the determination of a body that had not yet received the message from his mind that none of this mattered anymore. His chest heaved in ragged, desperate gasps. He was shaking. He was exhausted in a way that reached all the way down into whatever part of him had believed, until this moment, that he might survive this.

He had not brought enough of that belief. He saw that now.

He thought of his mother.

The image of her face, proud and terrified and trying not to show either rose unbidden. He had done this for her. Had done all of it for her. He hoped she would understand, someday, that locking her in her chambers had been the most love he had ever offered anyone.

He thought of Baela. Of Rhaena.

He thought of-

A sharp, dull impact struck his upper back.

Jace lurched forward with a sound that was almost nothing, barely a breath. Confused, of all things, not yet understanding, he glanced over his shoulder. A heavy crossbow bolt protruded from his shoulder blade at an angle that his mind catalogued with strange, distant calm, the way one notices a detail in a painting.

Slowly, numbly, he turned his head toward the source. A Triarchy war-galley drifted just yards away. Lined along the wooden railing stood a row of Admiral Lohar’s soldiers, unhurried, methodical, their crossbows leveled at the figure in the water.

They knew exactly who he was. There was no urgency in their posture, no battlefield fever. This was an execution.

The heir to the Iron Throne, stranded and defenseless. A second bolt flew. It slammed into his chest. He heard it before he felt it.

Then a third...straight to the neck.

A strange, sudden calm washed over him.

The deafening roar of the battle receded, becoming muffled, distant, the way sounds narrow when one goes underwater. The sea rocked him gently now, almost tenderly, as if it had been waiting all along to offer this small mercy at the end. He had not expected kindness. He was grateful for it.

He thought of his mother, safe on Dragonstone.

He thought of Baela’s laughter.

He thought of his brothers.

And he thought with a softness that surprised him, with something that might have been the very last warmth his body could generate, of you. Of a future that would not be built. Of a promise he was not sure, now, that he had ever been given the chance to make.

The last image to imprint itself on the fading mind of Jacaerys Velaryon was that reflection.

A burning sky, mirrored in the water.

Beautiful.

Tragic.

Then everything went black.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Jacaerys bolted upright with a gasp that felt like surfacing.

His eyes flew open. His hand flew to his chest and then to his neck, pressing hard against his sternum, feeling for something, a wound, an absence, a bolt buried in bone and found nothing but the soft cotton of his t-shirt and the solid, living rhythm of his own heart. He sat there for a long moment, chest heaving, and simply stared at the ceiling.

White plaster. Crown moulding. A small water stain shaped vaguely like a continent.

No smoke.

No dragon.

No sea.

No battle.

Just a bedroom. His bedroom.

Morning sunlight filtered through floor-to-ceiling windows in long, clean shafts, illuminating the warm disorder of his life: the desk buried under business textbooks and notebooks with pages dog-eared and margins crowded with his handwriting, his laptop open from the night before with a lecture slide still visible on the screen, a hoodie slung over the back of his desk chair. Outside the windows, King’s Landing stretched endlessly in the early light, the city already stirring, glass towers catching the sun.

His alarm clock flashed 7:00 AM.

No swords or the banners of House Targaryen. Jace pressed the heels of both palms against his eyes and breathed.

The memories were still there. That was the wrong word for them, memories. They did not feel like the soft, dissolving stuff of ordinary dreams that faded on the edges as soon as you tried to examine them. They felt like the other kind of remembering, the kind that lives in the body rather than the mind. He could still feel the cold of the Gullet in his fingers. He could still smell the smoke. He could still feel the weight of dragon-riding leathers across his shoulders, the particular pull of Vermax’s movement through the air, the way the saddle had sat against the backs of his thighs.

He could still feel the bolts.

Just a dream, he told himself. The words felt inadequate in his own mouth, like trying to describe a storm with the word weather. He muttered them anyway, pressing his face harder into his palms.

“Just a dream.”

A dream where he had been a prince.

A prince who had died.

His stomach dropped with a physical lurch. The alarm was still beeping. He silenced it with a slap and sat on the edge of the bed for one more moment, just one, breathing in the ordinary scent of his ordinary room.. Then his brain supplied the information he had been avoiding.

Classes.

Shit.

He was already late.

He moved through his morning routine with the efficiency of someone running on instinct rather than thought, shower, clothes, a cursory battle with his curls that ended, as it always did, in a draw. He emerged from the bathroom in jeans and sneakers and his favorite dark hoodie, his hair doing exactly what it wanted. There wasn’t time to argue with it. There was rarely ever time.

The smell of coffee reached him in the hallway. It pulled at something in his chest and he followed it through the penthouse to the kitchen.

His steps halted in the doorway.

Rhaenyra stood at the island counter, reading something on her tablet with the focused, slightly stern expression she wore when she was processing information she found annoying. A coffee mug steamed beside her elbow, forgotten. She was already dressed soft grey, elegant, effortlessly so in the way that had always seemed to come naturally to her and she looked exactly as she always looked in the morning, tired by all the corporate bullshit.

CEO of Targaryen Corporation. One of the most influential women in King’s Landing. The most formidable person he had ever known.

His mother.

The word hit him somewhere unsteady. Something twisted painfully in his chest, relief so acute it nearly hurt, threaded through with the dreaming grief of a boy who had watched her face in his mind as the water closed over him, who had spent his last conscious moment believing she was safe, needing her to be safe, and had been right without ever knowing he was right. He crossed the room before he had consciously decided to.

He wrapped his arms around her.

Rhaenyra nearly dropped her coffee.

“Jacaerys-”

She caught herself, setting the mug down with a firm clink on the marble countertop, and then without hesitation, because she had always been this, whatever else she was, she wrapped her arms around him and held him back.

“Sweet boy.” Her voice was softer now. Her fingers found their way into his curls the way they had when he was very small. “What’s the matter?”

Jace swallowed against the tightness in his throat. The dream came rushing back through him like a tide, the war, the weight of a crown his mother should have inherited without blood, the desperate, bone-deep need to protect her. The image of her face as he had walked away from Dragonstone, toward the dragon, toward the battle, toward the Gullet. The way he had looked back.

He shook his head against her shoulder.

“I’m fine.”

“You are clearly not fine.”

Her hand moved in slow, soothing circles against his back. Despite himself, despite everything, Jace felt something in him begin to loosen.

He laughed. A weak, slightly broken sound, but genuine. “I just…” His voice cracked on the nothing he was trying to say.

Rhaenyra pulled back slightly to look at him. Not the way she looked at her board of directors, or at rivals across conference tables, or at the city from thirty floors up. The other way. The private way, that only he and his brothers ever saw.

“What happened?”

He wiped his eyes quickly, hoping she wouldn’t comment on it and took a breath.

“I had the most vivid dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

He hesitated. There was something strange about saying it. As though speaking about it aloud would make it either more real or less, and he wasn’t sure which outcome he wanted.

“I was a prince,” he said.

Rhaenyra blinked. Whatever she had been expecting, it was not that.

“A prince?”

“Yeah.” A small smile found its way onto his face, unwilling, almost involuntary. “You were a queen.” Something passed across her expression something soft, something she would never have allowed in a meeting room. “Oh?”

“I died fighting a battle for you.”

Silence.

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached up and brushed a curl from his forehead with the gentleness that had no performance in it, something she reserved for the three of them and no one else.

“Well,” she said finally, her smile warming to something that was almost, almost teasing. “That sounds exhausting.”

Jace stared. “That’s all you’ve got?”

“You are standing in my kitchen wearing yesterday’s hoodie and telling me about dragon wars, Jacaerys.”

He opened his mouth to protest then closed it. “Fair.” She squeezed his shoulder. “It was only a dream.”

“You know,” said a new voice from the doorway, “some families start their mornings with good morning.”

Luke wandered in carrying a cereal box like a trophy, nineteen years old and permanently, professionally smug. He surveyed the scene with the cheerful heartlessness of a younger brother who had found ammunition and intended to use it.

“Did Jace finally lose his mind?”

Behind him, Joffrey, fourteen and grinning with the particular delight of someone who had been waiting for this squeezed past into the kitchen. “About time.” Jace rolled his eyes so hard it was almost an athletic achievement. “There he is.”

“Dreaming about being a prince?” Luke plucked a bowl from the cupboard with casual ease. “That’s because you’re already treated like one.”

The napkin Jace threw hit him square in the face. Luke threw it back. Rhaenyra sighed with the air of a woman who had calculated exactly how many more years of this lay before her and found the number disheartening.

“My sons,” she said, picking up her coffee. “Truly intellectual giants.”

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

Breakfast passed with the comfortable velocity of mornings that had been rehearsed through repetition until they ran themselves. Luke complaining about something, Joffrey eating cereal in quantities that defied his size, Rhaenyra reading from her tablet while simultaneously tracking all three of them with the peripheral attention of someone who had never once been entirely off duty.

Jace was reaching for his coffee when Rhaenyra glanced up.

“Are you still picking up your girlfriend?”

He froze.

The coffee cup remained halfway to his face, arrested in mid-air.

“…My what?”

Luke’s head snapped up. The expression that crossed his face was one of pure, unalloyed joy. He looked like he had been handed a gift.

Rhaenyra stared at her eldest with the patient, faintly incredulous expression of a woman who had not expected to be performing this particular reality check on a Tuesday morning.

“Your girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Jace set the cup down carefully. “Right.”

You.

He had a girlfriend.

A beautiful girlfriend, and she was his girlfriend, and she had been his girlfriend for- he was briefly lost in the arithmetic of it, which was itself a kind of answer and she was wonderful, she was brilliant, she made him laugh, and somehow in the space between waking up with the sea in his lungs and standing in his mother’s kitchen in yesterday’s hoodie, he had momentarily forgotten she existed.

And then, because his brain was apparently in full catastrophic mode this morning: betrothed. Not yet. Not technically. But the word had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since he woke up from his dream.

Heat flooded his face with spectacular completeness. Luke nearly choked on his cereal.

“Oh my God.”

“Shut up.”

“You forgot your girlfriend.”

“Only briefly.”

“Only” Luke dissolved entirely, shoulders shaking. Across the table, Joffrey watched with the dignified appreciation of a connoisseur.

Rhaenyra shook her head slowly. “Honestly, Jace.” “It was a very intense dream,” he said, with as much dignity as one can muster while slowly turning the color of a sunset.

“You forgot your girlfriend.”

“The dream had dragons, Mum.”

She gave him the look. The specific look, the one that had been making him feel twelve years old since he was actually twelve years old. “She’s a lovely girl. I wish you’d bring her home more often.”

Jace stood from the table with the decisive energy of a man drawing a conversation to a close. “I was planning to.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Today?”

“…Possibly.”

“Good.” Rhaenyra returned to her tablet, the slight smile at the corner of her mouth saying everything she was too dignified to say aloud.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The underground parking garage was cool and dim, smelling of concrete and oil and the expensive quiet of a building where people took the lift rather than the stairs. Jace’s Porsche sat in its usual spot, Oak Green Metallic, catching the fluorescent light.

Vermax.

He had named the car Vermax which now sounded so ionic to him.

He stood beside the driver’s door for a moment, hand on the handle, the thought arriving fully formed and then sitting there in his chest with an odd weight. He had named his car Vermax years ago. He had thought it was because he liked the sound of it, or because it was the name of a character in a book he’d read, or because of some half-remembered reason that had never quite solidified into anything coherent.

He looked at the car. The deep green of it. The long, low lines of it, built for speed, built for the sky-

Built for the sky.

A strange feeling settled over him, the kind of not-quite-vertigo that comes with recognizing something without being able to name what it is you’re recognizing. Like seeing an old friend across a crowd before you’ve registered their face.

He shook it off. Got in and drove.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The street outside your house was quiet in the way that Tuesday mornings in King’s Landing occasionally managed to be, with the morning light that made ordinary things seem briefly considered. Jace pulled to the curb and sat for a moment with the engine idling, window down.

Then the front door opened and you stepped out. He got out of the car.

The morning light caught your hair the way it always did, making you look almost angelic in Jace’s eyes in that moment. You were still in the act of adjusting the strap of your bag when you spotted him, and the smile that crossed your face. Happy just to see him.

And for one strange, suspended moment, another image overlapped the morning like a transparency laid over a photograph. A figure standing on the cliffs of Dragonstone. The sea grey below and the wind pulling at dark fabric. Watching him leave. The expression on her face, your face, heartbroken and resolute and trying to be neither.

Waiting for him to come back.

The image dissolved as quickly as it had arrived. The morning reasserted itself. You were walking toward the car, your bag settled on your shoulder now, your smile still in place, and Jace found himself already stepping forward already moving toward with certainty that was less decision than gravity.

Before you could say a word, he took your hand and raised it, and pressed a kiss against your knuckles. Deliberatea and unhurried. Like he’d done it a thousand times before, in other rooms, in other centuries.

“How are you, my beloved?”

You stopped.

Looked at the hand.

Looked at him.

And then, because you were you, you laughed, the bright, surprised sound of someone caught genuinely off guard. “What has gotten into you this morning?” you questioned him.

Jace grinned, and the grin felt more like him than anything else had all morning. “I genuinely have no idea.”

“You’re being sooo weird.” You studied him with the narrowed eyes trying to grasp his words and actions. “How weird is this going to get?”

“I had the wildest dream.”

“Oh?” Already your expression was shifting into the one you wore when you were preparing to be entertained. He leaned forward and kissed you softly quick, warm and certain.

“In it,” he said against your smile, “you were my princess too.”

Your cheeks went pink with entirely gratifying speed. “Oh my God.”

“You asked.”

“I asked what was wrong with you, not-”

“Details.”

“Jacaerys Velaryon, I am going to need you to be normal for the next five minutes-”

“I make no promises.”

He opened the passenger door for you, still grinning, and the morning felt lighter than it had when he’d left the penthouse.

The dream wasn’t entirely terrible, he thought, settling behind the wheel. If nothing else, it had done this, sharpened his vision, made ordinary things brilliant again. Made you more vivid than you’d already been, which was saying something considerable. He found himself smiling the entire drive to university.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

University should have felt normal.

Instead, Jace spent the entire morning convinced he was losing his mind by degrees as new details of his dream would hit him.

The dream lingered with a persistence that ordinary dreams did not have, the kind he usually forgot by the time he reached the kitchen. This one clung. Every corridor he walked reminded him of castle hallways, the echo of footsteps on stone, and the smell of torch smoke. Every crowded lecture hall conjured the geometry of noble courts; the subtle theatre of power performed through proximity. His Strategic Management lecture had an entire section on resource allocation that kept pulling his thoughts sideways, toward councils and war rooms and Dragonstone. He stared at his notebook.

He had written, in the margin: Corlys was right about the Gullet.

He had no idea when.

“You’re disassociating again.”

Jace blinked.

Across the seminar table sat Cregan Stark, regarding him with the expression he used on everything: tall, dark-haired, slow-blinking, fundamentally and constitutionally unimpressed by the world and all its events. He was from Winterfell like genuinely, actually from Winterfell, which Jace had always found slightly funny without ever quite being able to explain why.

They’d been best friends since secondary school, the friendship that had calcified into something so much more. They were like brothers in every sense. Also, he looked almost exactly like the Cregan from the dream.

Same jaw. Same eyes. Same expression, the one that said I am listening to you and I find you exhausting. Same, in other words, as he always looked well except his had slightly shorter hair.

“What?” Jace managed.

Cregan raised one eyebrow. “You’ve been staring at me for ten seconds with an expressionless face.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I had a strange dream. I feel like I keep repeating these words over and over again.”

“You texted me at four in the morning.”

Jace went very still.

“I did?”

Cregan reached for his phone with the patience of a man who had long since resigned himself to the chaos of being Jace Velaryon’s closest friend. He scrolled briefly, then began reading aloud in the flat, informational tone of a news anchor delivering a weather report.

“‘Brother, imagine if we were medieval nobles.’”

“Oh, God.”

“‘You would have loved Winterfell.’”

“Cregan-”

“‘You were Lord of the North.’” He glanced up briefly. “I’m from Winterfell, Jace. I grew up in Winterfell. I know what Winterfell is.”

“Please stop-”

‘I miss Vermax.’

Cregan lowered the phone.

“I don’t know what Vermax is, if its not talking about your car.” he said.

Jace buried his face in both hands and made a sound that was less a word than a comprehensive statement. “You were never meant to read those.”

“You sent them to me.”

“I was apparently not fully conscious at four in the morning. I don’t remember doing this at all.”

“That’s concerning.”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

The question arrived without ceremony, Cregan always asked things he actually wanted to know, dropped into a conversation like a stone dropped into water, watching to see what it displaced. Jace hesitated for long enough that the silence became its own answer.

“Yeah,” he said. Then, quietly: “Not entirely.”

Cregan nodded. He didn’t push. This was something Jace had always valued about him, the Stark capacity to hold space without filling it.

“Tell me later,” Cregan said, and turned back to his laptop.

Mostly, Jace thought. He was mostly okay. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

You found him outside the business building at noon, materializing from the flow of students and your smile arrived before you did.

Jace felt the thing in his chest that had been clenched since 7 AM ease, slowly, like a hand opening. There was something about you that operated on him this way, had always operated on him this way, since the beginning. A quality of presence that grounded him, that made the world’s coordinates make sense again. He’d never found quite the right words for it. He’d stopped trying.

You slipped your hand into his without ceremony.

“Better than this morning?”

“A little.”

“Still thinking about your prince dream?”

He laughed, the sound freer than he expected. “Unfortunately.”

“You are such a nerd.”

“I was literally fighting a war.”

“You were dreaming about fighting a war.”

“Details.”

“Jacaerys Velaryon, if this dream becomes your entire personality, I want it on the record that I tried to prevent it-”

“Noted and rejected.”

You rolled your eyes with magnificent feeling. “I make no promises about what I tell your mother.”

Together you walked toward the café nearby. A small, overcrowded place called something Jace could never quite remember but it had had excellent coffee and terrible lighting and was perpetually full of students and professors who had clearly rather be somewhere else. The place that existed to absorb the ambient anxiety of a university and convert it, through caffeine, into something marginally more functional.

You had barely settled into your seats when a familiar voice arrived from approximately two tables away, belonging to someone who had apparently been watching for them.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite nephew.”

Aegon Targaryen dropped into the empty chair beside Jace with the comfortable confidence of a man who owned, and this was literally true, approximately half the building they were sitting in. Twenty-six, blond, expensive, reliably catastrophic. His jacket probably cost more than Jace’s car maintenance for the year, and he wore it with the carelessness never once considering the cost of anything.

He was nothing like the monster from the dream. The dream-Aegon had been something Jace couldn’t fully bring himself to examine yet. Jealous and bitter and capable of terrible things. This Aegon was mostly known for throwing parties that became local legend and mysteriously managing to avoid all professional consequences for anything he did, ever. Jacaerys supposed that has something to do with his mother and his uncle Aemond keeping these things contained.

“To what do we owe the honor?” Jace asked.

Aegon’s attention had already moved to you.

“And how are you?”

“Good,” you said politely.

“Still putting up with him?”

You smiled. “Barely.”

“Excellent answer.”

Jace groaned. Aegon looked absolutely delighted. “You’re blushing,” Aegon observed, with the tone of someone reporting a natural phenomenon.

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are.”

You leaned over the table, and Jace recognized the look on your face immediately. The collaborative look. The look that meant you had identified an ally.

“He was calling me his beloved this morning.”

Aegon’s chair nearly lost him. He grabbed the table.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“In what context?”

“He kissed my hand. In the street. Before nine in the morning.”

Aegon looked at Jace the way someone looks at an archaeological discovery with facination, slightly appalled, deeply pleased. “This is the greatest thing that has ever happened.”

Jace contemplated his options. Leaving. Changing his name and moving to Braavos. Committing entirely to the persona of someone who had never been caught calling his girlfriend my beloved at eight forty-five on a Tuesday.

None of these were practical.

He reached for his coffee and said nothing, which Aegon correctly interpreted as total defeat.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

After Aegon eventually wandered off, ostensibly to a meeting, credibly to cause chaos somewhere else and so the café settled back into its ordinary rhythms. Students came and went. Espresso machines hissed. The ambient noise absorbed itself.

You and Jace remained at your table, and the laughter faded naturally, the way good laughter does, not dying but simply becoming something quieter.

He was staring into his coffee again.

You watched him for a moment.

“You never told me the whole dream, since it has you in a weird mindset today.” you said quietly.

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the cup. He was aware of you looking at him, with your full attention, which had always been more like listening than looking, patient and genuine and without agenda.

“To put it simply, there was a war,” he said.

You didn’t ask him to explain. You waited.

“A civil war.” He looked up briefly, then back at the table. “A war over who would rule over Westeros. My mother was supposed to inherit as was the rightful heir to the throne but there were those who didn’t accept it. Didn’t accept her.”

“And you fought for her.”

“Of course.”

The images came without invitation, Dragonstone’s grey halls, the council table, the maps spreading the whole kingdom out before them like a wound. The feeling of duty that had lived in his chest since childhood, not as a burden but as a definition. This is who you are. This is what you do.

You reached across the table and took his hand. He continued.

“I flew a dragon. I know this sounds no so scary but-” Despite everything, he heard the ghost of wonder in his own voice. “Vermax. He was- he was mine. Since I was a boy. He knew me.” The wonder curdled, softened into something heavier. “He died with me.”

Your thumb moved in a slow arc across his knuckles. “The last thing I remember,” he said quietly, “was dying. Floating in the sea, after everything.” He paused.

“It was strange. It wasn’t- it wasn’t the way I would have imagined. It wasn’t terrifying.”

“What was it?”

He thought about it honestly.

“It was sad,” he said. “But calm.”

You were quiet for a moment. Then you reached up, and the gesture was so unexpected that he went still, your hand cupping his cheek, steady and warm, thumb tracing a line beneath his eye.

He leaned into it without thinking.

“I’m glad it was only a dream,” you said softly trying to calm his anxieties that he didn’t want to confess out loud.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

The tightness in his chest released, not all at once but in stages, like a knot worked loose over time. He turned his head slightly, pressing his lips briefly to your palm, and you let him, and neither of you made anything of it. She’s right, he thought. Whatever that was. Whatever it meant.

He was here. Alive. With his family, with his best friend, with his girl.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was, actually, everything.

The afternoon passed.

Classes ended. The university slowly emptied like it did every day at dusk, students and professors releasing themselves back into the city like a pressure valve opening. The parking lot filled briefly with the usual chaos and then thinned.

“My mother wants you over more often,” Jace mentioned, as they walked toward the Porsche.

“Apparently she likes you.”

You brightened immediately. “Really?”

“She said so unprompted. First thing this morning.”

“Good.” You smiled with satisfaction. “I’m charming.”

Jace looked at you sideways. “You are deeply smug about this.”

“I’m charming,” you repeated, pleasantly. He laughed. “Come over tonight?”

You looked at him, with that look you had, the one he’d never found a word for, the one that made him feel simultaneously seen and unsteady in the best possible way. Made him feel a bit giddy.

“I’d love to,” you said.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The penthouse was unusually quiet when they arrived. Rhaenyra was visible through the glass of her home office, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, reading from a document with the focused intensity and it was clear that the woman needed a break from everything. Luke had evaporated somewhere. Joffrey was reportedly studying, a claim no one in the household had ever been successfully able to verify.

You and Jace settled at the dining table with laptops and scattered notes and the collective fiction of productivity.

For forty minutes, it was remarkably functional. Jace had his economics module open. You were working through something, he didn’t ask, didn’t need to and the sound of quiet typing and the occasional turn of a page created a kind of companionable silence that he had always thought of as the specific luxury of being comfortable with someone. presence. You could simply be in it.

He was reading about capital allocation.

“Jace.”

He looked up.

“You’re getting lost in your mind again.”

“I’m not what are you talking about?” he said automatically. Then, because honesty was something he’d apparently committed to today: “I was thinking about- uhhh. Economics?”

“That is not better.”

“You look pretty,” he said simply.

The silence that followed had a distinct texture. You looked at him for a long moment. Then you slowly, deliberately, closed your laptop.

“No,” you said.

“What?”

“You don’t get to say things like that when I’m trying to study.”

“I was simply making an observation.”

“You are impossible.”

He was very pleased with himself. He did not bother hiding it.

An hour later, the economics module had not progressed. The textbooks had been consolidated into a single pile and pushed to the far end of the table, a gesture that meant these exist and will eventually be addressed, which was as much as either of you were willing to commit to. A film had been agreed upon via negotiation.

Blankets appeared.

The overhead lights went off.

And somehow, as these things always somehow managed, you ended up curled against his chest on the enormous sectional, his arm around your waist, the film playing distantly while neither of you particularly watched it. Your breathing slowed first. His heartbeat was steady and familiar beneath your ear.

The city moved quietly outside the windows.

You didn’t remember falling asleep.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The prince stood before you.

The wind came off the sea like a cold hand, whipping through his dark, curling hair, pressing his black riding coat against his frame. Behind him, Dragonstone rose in its glory against a steel-grey sky, all sharp towers and dark stone, magnificent and terrible, built by people who had never believed in half measures. The sea crashed against the rocks far below. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon with the patient, deliberate advance of something inevitable.

“No.”

Your voice came out broken.

“No, please.”

He looked at you the way he always looked at you as if you were the clearest thing in a world that had lately become very unclear, like looking at you was the one thing he could do without effort in a life that had demanded extraordinary effort from him since the moment he was old enough to understand what he was.

“I have to go.”

“You don’t,” you said, even though you knew it wasn’t true. Even though somewhere beneath the desperate present tense of the argument, the truer, older part of you already knew exactly what was coming. Already knew the shape of this farewell.

His hands found yours.

They were warm. Strong and real, so real that makes their loss so much more brutal than the loss of things you never fully believed in.

“You can stay,” you said. Your voice was steadier than you felt. “You can let someone else-”

“I cannot.” His voice was gentle but stern. He was stubborn and so if he made peace with this decisions, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tears burned behind your eyes. The fear inside you was almost unbearable and burning, it was twisted and layered, because you knew. You already knew. This was not a premonition, not a vague presentiment. It was knowledge, carried somewhere beneath language, beneath memory, in whatever part of you had been this person before.

You knew what awaited him at the Gullet.

Fire.

Water.

“You promised.” The words escaped before you could decide to say them.

His expression shifted. Something moved across it, grief, tenderness, the ache of a man who loves something too well to pretend it isn’t breaking. “And I will keep that promise but this is a battle I must fight for both myself and my mother.”

He stepped closer, and you let him, and he pressed a kiss to your forehead so gently it barely qualified as a touch at all.

Then he rested his brow against yours. His eyes never left yours.

“If I do not return- which I intend to,”

The world seemed to hold its breath.

“I will find you.”

A tear escaped. Traced the line of your cheek. He watched it with eyes that were very dark and very steady.

“In every lifetime if not this one. I promise.”

The words landed somewhere deep in you, somewhere wordless, somewhere older than the language you used to think with. A promise that had the weight of truth rather than intention.

You memorized his face. The curls. The strong jaw. The eyes, brown and earnest and alive, so alive.

He smiled.

Then he stepped away.

He turned toward the waiting dragon.

Toward the dark water below.

Toward a destiny that was also a death.

And all you could do was watch him leave. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

You woke with a gasp that tore itself from somewhere past your chest.

For several seconds, you could not find the room. Could not find yourself in it. There was only the dream...the cliffs, the wind, his forehead against yours, the sound of his footsteps retreating and the grief of it, which was specific and devastating and nothing at all like the vague emotional residue of ordinary sleep.

Tears burned behind your eyes. Your heart was pounding.

You pushed yourself upright. A blanket tangled around your legs. The room was dim, the film long since ended, the television showing a menu screen. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, King’s Landing glittered in the full dark of night, the city’s lights reflected upward in a warm wash against the low clouds. Jace must have moved you to his room when you fell asleep.

The bedroom door opened.

Jace stepped in carrying two mugs, steam rising from both. He had apparently, at some point during your sleep, been productive.

The moment he saw your face, he froze.

“Hey.”

The concern in his voice was immediate, the shift from normal to careful happening in the space of a single syllable.

“What’s wrong?”

You didn’t answer. The words were somewhere on the way, but in the meantime your body had already decided what it needed, and what it needed was to close the distance between you and him as quickly as possible.

You stood.

Crossed the room.

The mugs barely survived. He caught them against the edge of the side table with an impressive reflex, setting them down quickly before his arms came around your waist, and you buried your face against the side of his neck, and breathed him in.

“Sweetheart?” Low and careful. His chin came to rest on top of your head.

You stayed there for a moment just letting the reality of him replace the dream of him. The warmth of him. The solidness.

Then you pulled back. Not far. Your forehead came to rest against his, which put you close enough to feel his breath and see the small crease of worry between his brows.

“I had a dream,” you said. It seems it was your turn to utter those words.

Something moved across his face. He went very still in the way that meant he was paying every variety of attention he had.

“What kind of dream?”

“I saw a prince.”

His breath caught. You felt it.

“I saw him leaving for a battle. He was going to fight-”

Your voice faltered, then steadied. “He knew he might not come back. And he said-” You stopped.

Jace’s arms tightened around you, almost involuntarily. “He said he would find me,” you continued. “That if he didn’t return-” Your eyes met his, and something in your chest recognized something in his. “He would find me in every lifetime.”

Silence.

Complete, absolute silence.

Jace stared at you.

Because those were the exact words. Not a version of them, not a paraphrase but the exact promise, the exact phrasing, the exact scene, the stone of Dragonstone under grey skies and wind coming off the sea. He had lived it from one side and you had lived it from the other, and here you both were, in a penthouse above a city that did not have dragons, with the memory of them living in your bones.

His throat moved.

You smiled softly with tears still bright at the corners of your eyes. Your hand lifted, your fingers moving gently through his curls, the same gesture that felt simultaneously new and ancient.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” you said.

“Neither do I.”

“But if it was real-”

His forehead pressed more firmly against yours.

“You kept your promise,” you whispered.

He felt his throat close.

And for the first time since he had woken to the sound of an alarm clock and a bedroom that wasn’t the sea, he stopped wondering whether the dream had been real. He stopped wondering whether he was grieving something imagined or something true. He stopped needing to know.

Because you knew.

You had been there.

You rose onto your toes.

Your lips met his.

It was slow and gentle. He kissed you back like someone returning to something, like a navigator finding a landmark in familiar water.

Like he had been waiting centuries and perhaps his soul had waited for this moment. The moment to return to her. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The knock was soft.

They both startled apart with the excellent reflexes of guilty consciences, then immediately demonstrated the dignity of two people pretending they hadn’t. Jace cleared his throat. Rested his forehead against yours for one final second. His breath was unsteady in the best way.

Another knock.

“Jacaerys?”

Rhaenyra’s voice, measured, carrying through the door with the easy authority of a woman who managed board rooms and board members and the shenanigans of three sons as a single uninterrupted professional skill.

“Dinner is ready.” They heard the muffled voice of his mother.

Jace answered at a volume calibrated for normalcy “We’ll be there in a minute!”

A pause that had weight.

“Five minutes,” his mother’s voice returned, drier than a desert, and entirely aware of everything and perhaps making a wrong assumption of you two being alone in his room.

You laughed, pressing your face briefly against his shoulder to muffle it. He was already smiling.

“Your mother doesn’t trust you.”

“She absolutely does not.”

“And honestly?” You poked his chest. “I don’t blame her.”

“You wound me.”

“Good.” You pulled your hand back, but he caught it, quick and easy, and pressed a kiss to your knuckles again. The same gesture as that morning. The echo of it traveled through both of you clearly.

Your cheeks went pink.

He watched it happen with a feeling in his chest that was too large and too simple to require any examination at all.

There she is, he thought. My girl.

My princess.

He took your hand properly, fingers laced and led you toward the dining room.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈ They heard the argument before they reached the dinner table.

Luke and Joffrey, seated across from each other in the arrangement that the family had collectively accepted as a flaw, were conducting a debate with the commitment of two people who had come to win.

“No, because you’re objectively wrong-”

“I’m objectively right-”

“You don’t even know what objectively means.”

“I literally do.”

“You used it wrong.”

Joffrey groaned with his whole body. “I hate this family.”

“You are this family,” Luke pointed out.

Joffrey considered this. “Exactly.”

Rhaenyra, at the head of the table, was pinching the bridge of her nose with annoyance. This was her normal and yet it was tiring.

The moment she saw you, her face entirely changed.

“There she is.”

You smiled. “Hi.”

She stood and pulled you into a hug with a warmth that was, Jace thought privately, rather more enthusiastic than his own homecoming greeting most mornings. “I was beginning to think my son had invented you.”

“Mum.”

“What? He never brings you over.”

“That’s his fault,” you said.

“Traitor,” Jace said.

“You’re literally my boyfriend.”

“Exactly.”

You smiled sweetly. “I’m allowed.”

Rhaenyra looked delighted in the specific way she allowed herself to look delighted when she was genuinely pleased, a rarity outside this apartment. Luke immediately leaned toward you.

“See? This is why she’s my favorite.”

“I’m sitting right here.”

“Unfortunately.”

Jace threw a bread roll at him.

Luke threw one back.

The war began immediately, and lasted approximately five seconds before Rhaenyra’s single sharp look ended it. She had a look for this. It was very effective.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she said, settling back into her chair and accepting a bread roll from the basket with the serenity of someone who had already mentally exited the building, “if I raised wolves.”

“That’s insulting,” Joffrey said.

Everyone looked at him.

The fourteen-year-old shrugged with the composure of someone who had thought this through. “Wolves are smarter.”

The silence held for two seconds before Luke’s expression cracked. Jace looked at the ceiling. Rhaenyra’s attempt at severity collapsed at its foundations.

You sat beside Jace with your hand warm against his under the table, and you were already laughing, and the sound of it filled the room the way laughter does when a room is already full of people who are glad to be there.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

Dinner found its rhythm.

Conversation moved in the easy, overlapping way it does with people who have logged enough hours together that they no longer need to manage it consciously. Luke complained about a group project with the vivid resentment of having decided the problem was everyone else.

Joffrey explained something about a game or a film or a historical period but the audience could not quite keep up, but that seemed to be part of the experience. Rhaenyra complained, with great economy, about company politics, and then told a story about a colleague that had everyone at the table paying full attention (It was Aemond who everytone is afraid of in their company).

You listened to all of it.

Jace, mostly, watched.

He had not expected this. Had woken this morning in the sea, or the memory of it. Had spent the drive to university with the dream still active in his body, had sat through lectures half-present, had carried the weight of Vermax’s last look in his chest all day like a stone.

And now.

He watched his mother smile at something you said. He watched Luke do the thing he did when he was actually amused, which was different from when he is pretending. Watched Joffrey explain something to you directly, having apparently determined that you were worth the effort, and watched your face do the thing it did when you were genuinely interested in something, slightly forward, slightly bright, entirely present.

You fit here. Not as a guest, not as someone being accommodated. As someone who belonged. He thought of the dream again.

Remembered standing at the dragonpit of Dragonstone with his armor on and the dragon saddled and the sea grey behind him, and looking back at everything he was leaving, his mother, his brothers, you, the stone halls and the cold salt wind and the ordinary miracle of a morning that didn’t require a king’s son to die for it.

He had wondered, in those last seconds at Dragonstone, if he would ever see any of them again. He had his answer now.

The realization settled in his chest quietly, without drama. Not a revelation, something more like a confirmation. A peace he hadn’t known he was looking for, finding him here, at a dinner table with a bread roll dent in the tablecloth and Joffrey currently holding forth on something no one else understood.

No war. No dragons. No succession. No battles. Just family. Just love.

Just this.

Halfway through dessert, Joffrey’s phone lit up. “Oh!” He reached for it with the speed of receiving news they’d been waiting for. “Dad’s calling.”

Jace felt himself smile before the screen even showed Laenor’s face.

It appeared a moment later, that face, familiar and warm and slightly tanned by whatever sun was currently shining on whatever harbor on whatever coast he was sailing toward. Behind him, a bright blue sky suggested somewhere in Essos, probably. The man was perpetually in motion, perpetually somewhere else and yet found time for them. He was not their real father, but he might as well have been. After Harwin passed away, Rhaenyra had remarried Laenor as more of a deal since Laenor wasn’t interested in anything but he cared for Rhaenyra platonically and it seemed to have worked out great and that’s all that mattered.

“There are my favorite children.”

Luke snorted. “We’re your only children.”

“And yet somehow still my favorites.” Laenor’s gaze found you across the table, and his face smiled “There she is.”

You laughed. “Hello.”

“Good. Finally, someone sensible has arrived.”

“Hey!” Three voices, simultaneous.

Laenor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “How are you, darling?”

“I’m well, thank you.”

Jace groaned. “Why does everyone in my family like her more than me?”

“Because,” Laenor said, and the timing was beautiful, “she has manners.”

The table erupted. Even Rhaenyra, which was a significant achievement.

Laenor spent twenty minutes on the call, chatting about his route, trading insults with. He heard both Luke and Joffery’s rambling. He asked Rhaenyra about the board meeting she’d complained about, and listened to her answer. He asked you about your studies, and remembered something you’d mentioned three calls ago, and asked a follow-up question about it.

The man had walked into their lives years ago and simply decided, without announcement or conditions, that these were his sons. No performance of it. No documentation. Just- love, extended to fill the available space.

Dream Laenor had disappeared. The thought arrived gently, without bitterness. The dream-Laenor, who had been present mostly in his absence, who Jace had barely known, who had been lost before Jace could understand what losing someone meant. This version was here. This version showed up.

And Jace was, quietly and completely, grateful for that. The call ended. The dessert finished. The evening moved toward its natural conclusion with the comfortable inevitability of all good evenings. Luke vanished in the direction of his room. Joffrey disappeared with a quantity of snacks that could feed a whole army. Rhaenyra retreated to finish what she’d started, she always had something she was finishing, this was simply who she was and the penthouse settled into quiet

Which left you and Jace, alone on the balcony.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

King’s Landing stretched below them without end. The city was all light from up here, not the individual lights, not streets and windows and the moving points of cars, but the collective glow of it, the warmth of a few million people living their lives in proximity, translated upward into something that looked, from this height, almost like its own kind of fire.

A cool breeze moved through the dark, carrying the city’s particular nighttime mixture of warm pavement and distant food and the faint, improbable ghost of something floral from a rooftop garden somewhere below. It found its way into Jace’s curls and did what it wanted with them.

You stood beside him. Close enough that your shoulders touched.

Neither of you spoke. Neither of you needed to. The city was enough, for a while.

Then you broke the silence the way you often did when a thought entered your head.

“Do you think it was real?”

He didn’t ask what you meant.

The dreams. The prince and the princess. The battle. The promise made at the edge of the world on the morning of an ending. The specific weight of standing on Dragonstone and knowing.

“I don’t know,” he said.

You slipped your hand into his. Your fingers were cool from the night air. He closed his hand around yours.

“But it felt real,” you said.

“It did.”

Another silence, this one richer. Weighted, but not heavily, weighted the way a good book is heavy, in a way you want.

“If it was real…”

Jace looked toward you. The city’s light caught you from below, softening the angles, turning you luminous in the warm way of a portrait painted with care. The same thing he’d thought this morning returned, effortlessly, as though it had simply been waiting for the right lighting.

Radiant.

The same as the princess from the dream. The same, and also entirely herself.

“If it was real,” you continued, a smile finding the corner of your mouth, “I think she’d be happy.”

“Who?”

“The princess.”

Your fingers squeezed his.

“Because she got her prince back.”

Something moved in his chest and he felt a giddy sensation.

“And he got his princess,” he said quietly.

The smile you gave him in return was the specific, undone kind that he privately thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He doubted this would change.

“You know,” he said, after a moment, “I’ve spent all day thinking about the battle.”

“The Gullet?”

“Yeah.” He looked down at the city. “The part where I died.”

You were quiet beside him.

“And?” you said, finally.

He looked back through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse.

His mother, visible in her office, signing something. The small movement of her hand showing her actions. Luke in the hallway beyond, typing away at his phone aggressively with determinations of someone looking to win an argument even if he may be wrong.

Joffrey somewhere in his room planning a prank on his mother.

And all of it, all of this life, this ordinary, extraordinary life, glowing warm behind glass thirty floors above a city that had never known a dragon. His family.

“I think that prince would’ve liked this,” he said.

You followed his gaze.

You understood immediately. He could see it in the way your face softened, not with sadness but with tenderness that recognizes grief and holds it carefully.

A life without war. Without the weight of a crown.

Without sacrifice, the kind that swaps one beloved thing for another in an endless, devastating ledger.

Just family.

Just love.

Just peace.

You rested your head on his shoulder.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to your hair, slow and quiet.

Neither of you saw it.

But just for a moment, a breath, almost a blink, the glass of the balcony door held a reflection that was not quite yours.

Two figures. Side by side. Dressed in black and red, the colours of a house that had once held the world.

Standing exactly as you were standing. Looking out at exactly what you were looking at.

Smiling.

At each other, and at this, and at everything that had managed, against all odds, to survive.

Then the image dissolved.

The glass held only the room behind it, warm and lit and full of the sound of Luke losing the argument.

And Jace, and you.

Exactly where you were always meant to be.

His fingers clumsily struggled to unfasten himself from Vermax, desperate not to share his dearest friend’s tragic end.

His first breath scraped his throat raw; the next burned with smoke.

Thwip.

Heat burst through his shoulder, sudden and blinding.

Thwip. Thwip.

The sky glowed a murky orange, smothered by smog and fire. Or was it the water blurring his sight?

He was cold. His chest hurt. He felt like he was floating.

I think I'm dying.

—

A shadow passed over his fading vision.

A touch to his cheek.

—

Cold on his lips.

Men were sinking before you.

You had seen them before, from afar.

But this one was sinking.

Slower.

You could hear his heart beating sluggishly. Could smell his blood.

How could a man smell like fire even underwater?

You took him south.

Men needed warmth, yes?

Yes. And food. Fish would do.

Plenty of fish.

—

This man had strange spikes.

They bled red when you touched them.

That isn’t right, is it?

No. So you took them out.

This man’s blood tasted like ash.

Pain radiated through Jace as he sprawled across rough stone, the air thick with damp salt. A cough clawed up from his chest, pain blooming in his sternum and neck as he rolled, spitting seawater and blood. Time had slipped by—hours, maybe a whole night, lost since the chaos above. Then came the shaking, cold gnawing at his muscles as adrenaline faded.

He blinked. Grit stung the backs of his eyes, salt burning from the sea. Pain sharpened in his neck as he turned, forcing his breath to catch.

Too weak to rise, he curled on his side. Slowly, his vision cleared: rock walls bathed in the pool’s glow. Moonlight spilled through a small hole in the cave ceiling, trailing down with a gentle trickle of water. It might have been beautiful, if not for the pain that kept him tethered to the now.

His hand comes up to the sensitive skin just above his collarbone.

Something glittered in the water at the edge of his vision. The hairs on his neck bristled as it slipped past once more.

He waits a few seconds before shuffling forward—albeit awkwardly and incredibly painfully—to peer over the pool.

Nothing.

Maybe his battered mind was conjuring things in the haze of pain.

—

Jace isn’t sure exactly when he fell asleep, nor how he had moved to the back wall of the cave. It was peculiar, but he knew injuries brought on strange behaviour.

A sudden splash behind him made him jerk around, regret slicing through him as pain flared in every muscle.

Once the pain ebbed, he spotted a battered, half-dead fish on the stone, its fins trembling feebly.

Confusion is the first emotion Jace experiences in that moment. How does a creature in such a state have enough strength to fly itself ashore? Did it get those… strange injuries from doing that? How is—

There it was again. The same glimmer, only closer now.

He almost caught its shape, but it vanished, leaving only a fleeting shimmer behind.

Whatever it was that was bringing him food, Jace realised over the next few days. Which also meant it knew humans.

The thought made his stomach turn. Or, it was the raw fish.

—

Jace wakes to the sound of water trickling onto rock. His head is pounding. Body shivering.

His eyes flutter open for a mere second, exhaustion keeping him at the edge of his consciousness. Something, a soft, muted green colour, enters his view before he is gone again.

—

Green. Water. Vermax. Arrow. Cold.

Jace hurts. His body? Not so much anymore, but his chest. Vermax.

He could feel him—well, perhaps the lack of him. He had never known a life without Vermax; it was… cold. The sort of cold that sticks deep in your gut. He was alive. Vermax was dead. Somewhere in the Gullet. Dead.

Drowned.

Tears pricked in his eyes. First his brother, then his dragon. How much more suffering can a person take? His mother comes to mind. She must think I’m dead; a whisper echoes against the wall of the cave.

His voice doesn’t sound right. Cracked, raw, so not him.

Trill.

Jace stiffens. Something was here with him.

The noise comes again. It’s soft, almost familiar—close to the noises Vermax and Arrax would make as dragonlings, but wetter.

He turns slowly. Searches every corner of the cave as he propped himself up, with dull aches pulsing in his chest and shoulder.

Nothing.

Now, he knew he wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t one of those Targaryens who lost their minds. That was not him. Something was here, and now it was gone.

Trill.

No, it was still here. Where was it?

Something moves to his left.

Oh.

A frog. Gods, perhaps he was going insane.

—

He could hear you.

And that nasty little toad took credit for it.

You could hear it taunting you.

Disgusting.

The frog didn’t last long. After waking (he wasn’t even sure how he had slept upright like that), he saw a little leg in the water—just a leg.

Jace was for certain convinced there was something else here.

His fingers find the skin of his neck again. It still felt a little raw; the skin puckered to the touch, but it was better.

His clothes were tattered, doublet torn and half a trouser leg gone. How long had he been here? Days? Weeks? No, he hadn’t choked down that much raw fish.

No more than five days, he thinks, feeling the roughness of his stubble.

Lost in thought, Jace missed the green shape slipping just beyond his sight.

—

Was he truly a man?

Pretty enough to be a woman, yes.

But his chest was flat.

Shame.

Lookatmelookatmelookatmelookatmelook—

—

Jace cannot move. Your gaze has him pinned. He doesn’t even allow himself to look over you for fear you would lunge at him.

He thought back to stories his grandsire and father would tell him, of creatures in the sea. You were not a kelpie. Kelpies were half horse, and you had… Well, you were not half horse.

You tilted your head almost mechanically, and he could have sobbed.

You were going to eat him. You had been fattening him up with fish and you were going to—

“Are you a man?” Your lips hadn’t moved. Instead, the flaps on your neck– gills had moved.

“What?” He whimpers, swallowing his aforementioned sob.

You blink, inner eyelids swiping sideways. “You. Are you a man?”

Jace blinks back, tongue darting out to lick his lip. “A man? I… yes, I am a man.” He finally allows himself to look you over.

Your skin was human-like with an almost olive tinge, fading to green at your clawed and webbed fingers, as well as your tail. Fine scales shimmered there, catching stray glimmers of light and shifting like the surface of shallow water. Your movements were precise and strangely graceful, muscles flexing beneath that strange skin, every motion calculated, predatory, yet fluid—as if you were always half-melted into the water even when still.

When you spoke, your voice echoed with a low, melodic resonance, carrying hints of something unearthly beneath the words, and every so often, he caught the faint scent of salt and copper drifting from you, sharp and unfamiliar. He was sure you were something out of those books he used to read as a young boy, a beast made to kill; sharp talons and sleek body for hunting.

You bend at the waist unnaturally, catching his gaze again and making his breath hitch. “You look like a woman.” Your mouth opens, rows of teeth glowing in the light from the overhead fissure. “We eat men.”

The man in front of you pales. “Excuse me?” He knew it. He knew you were going to eat him. He had survived an arrow to the neck and this was what was going to kill him, Gods—

You close your mouth and sit back up, the corner of your lips curled slightly. “Joke.”

Jace exhales harshly, eyes still wide.

“Well. Not joke.” You hum, looking over him. “But not you.” You lean toward him, the vertical slit of your pupil widening. “You taste like ash.”

Oddly, that brought him no comfort.

After revealing yourself, you began to linger by the pool’s edge. Sometimes sitting beside him, your muscled tail coiling into the water, other times watching from just beneath the surface.

It gave Jace time to study you. Your speech was strange, as if several voices jostled for control. He learned your mouth was not required for words, though you sometimes used it. Maybe you were mimicking him? He still wasn’t sure.

“What are you doing?” Your voice was pitched higher than usual, arms and chin propped on the pool’s edge.

Jace hadn’t heard you surface, nor did he know how long you’d been watching. “I… am trying to start a fire.”

You push yourself up with a trill in the back of your throat, claws creaking against the rock. “Fire? Why?”

He glanced over his shoulder at the sound, still jumpy around you, and exhaled in relief to see you sitting still.

“Because… I get cold. And I am tired of eating raw fish.”

An amber eye glimmered at the edge of Jace’s vision. The eyes unsettled him most—they shifted colour, never the same twice, and he hadn’t dared ask why. Not to mention your relentless need for eye contact.

“Cold?” When he turned, he caught the faint scrunch of your face. “But it is warm here.”

“It isn’t warm.”

“Yes it is. The water is warm. Warmer than everywhere else.”

“I don’t live in the water.”

Your pupils narrowed as you tried to make sense of his needs.

You don't understand men. Warmth?

How much more warmth could he need?

It was almost too warm.

You glanced down at the two stones in his hands. “Stones make fire?”

“They can,” Jace finds his voice softening, as if speaking to a child. “If they are the right stone. You need flint.” He had pinched an arrowhead that has been tossed aside of where he had awoken: one you had clearly pulled out of him.

“Fu-lint.” You echoed, pupils dilating as you locked eyes with him. In that moment, you almost seemed innocent. Jace knew you were clever, but there was so much you didn’t know about the world above water.

“Yes, flint.”

Blink. “I do not know this flint.”

He inhaled, glancing away to hide a smile. “It’s okay, I have flint.” Jace turned one of the stones in his hand, holding it up. “See? This is flint.”

You leaned in, neck stretching just a bit too far for any human. Something twisted in his gut. He was sharing space with a man-eater who could turn on him in an instant.

Jace’s hands stilled, dropping into his lap. “Where exactly are we?” When your eyes met his, he had to hold his breath. Deep amber, almost gold—a colour he’d never seen before.

“South.” It is the only word you speak, quiet and subtle enough that if it weren’t for the ripple of your gills, he wouldn't be sure if you had actually spoken.

His hand trembles ever so slightly, the pads of his thumb and forefinger white around one of the stones he holds. “Okay, how far south?”

Your irises darken. It makes his stomach fall, hair prickling on his nape. “I do not know. South.”

He decides to drop it.

—

You watched him make fire.

You then watched him cook your fish.

He let you try it. Yuck.

But they were quite resourceful. Men.

You watched him strike fire with an arrowhead,

Then use the same tool to clean his face.

Clever.

After he complained about the same meal, you started bringing him all sorts of fish. Sometimes they looked too strange for him to eat, but that was fine—you finished whatever he left behind.

His curiosity for you only grew each time you visited him.

You moved with deliberate care, never too fast, every motion calculated not to startle him. Watching you was mesmerising; so fluid, like water given form. It brought a strange calm, a welcome distraction from the life he’d lost. Without you, Jace would be dead. He can acknowledge that. And the more he watched you, the more your dreamy eyes lingered on him, the less he wanted to leave.

It was a scary thought.

—

“Do you have a name?” Jace finds himself asking on a quiet day, laid back on the cave floor and admiring the small crack.

Your head emerges from the water, inner eyelids blinking to reveal a soft pink. You stare, blinking again with a tilted head. “Name? No.”

He hummed, fingers tracing a pebble you’d brought him. “Why?”

A swoosh and splash, and suddenly you loomed above him, silky hair framing your face, droplets sliding down to land on his skin.

Jace swallowed, lips parting on a shaky breath. Beautiful. He bit the word back before it slipped out.

“Why?” You echoed, staring intently. Your eyes flickered from soft pink to lilac-grey before settling. “I do not need a name; we do not live with others. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have a name?”

He hesitated. Myths of sea creatures and forest spirits who stole people away flickered through his mind. Grandsire always warned: never give your real name to such beings. He met your gaze, then blinked, pulling himself back to the present.

“I do have a name.” He says gently. “My grandsire gave it to me.”

Your eyes seemed to glow as you lowered yourself until he could feel the chill of your skin. “Would you tell me? Please?” The look on your face was eerily like the one you wore at your first meeting.

He knows he shouldn’t. He can’t. He still isn’t even sure what you are, but it spills out of his mouth before he can stop it.

“Jacaerys.”

© original content on this blog belongs to @kaz3tora and any reposts/copies, unconsensual translations and modifications are strictly prohibited.

Jacaerys felt the bite of the arrows like a brand, pulsing like another denominator of what was to come, to swallow him whole. One in his neck, one near his heart, and others in places he couldn’t name, but remembered your hands and mouth touching countless times before.

The Gods were cruel to punish him right where your sweetness had been, where your love had touched and imprinted itself onto him, now stained by sharp steel and blood.

He hopes you’ll have it in your heart to forgive him, for he cannot do so for himself. The more the world feels like a distant memory, the more his heart aches, its beating slowing, as if trying to mimic the syllables of your name one last time before it inevitably stops. One last call out to you, willing to see if you would answer, even if he knows that to be impossible.

Would you cry, he wonders, as if he doesn’t already know the answer. Would you curse him? Would you hate him? Would you damn every moment you’ve spent together, turning it into poison and ash?

Jacaerys would not fault you if you did, but his chest feels hollow at the prospect of causing such vile emotions to bloom in your tender heart, most of all towards him.

You are his most precious jewel, and losing his life is one thing, but knowing that means losing you as well? It tears at him more than those arrows have.

He thinks of his mother, who was so delighted knowing he had found someone to love, and someone to be loved by in return, truthfully and wholeheartedly. You two were meant to have a Valyrian wedding in a few moons, as it is custom, and he had been ardently awaiting to see how beautiful you would look in traditional garments. Trying to imagine it now, just as he had many times before, feels like another arrow aimed straight at his heart, plunging deep. Now, he will never get to teach you how to recite the vows in High Valyrian, won’t get to see the sparkle of joy in your eyes when you’re face to face, exchanging them, binding your destinies together for all eternity, even in death.

Death. Jacaerys supposes that if he dies without binding his soul to yours before his ancestors, he won’t have any pieces of himself that he knows will certainly be kept in the sanctity of your heart.

But maybe it is better this way, for you will not have to carry such a heavy burden ensnared in the crevices of your chest, reminding you of all you’ve lost; of all he’s made you lose.

It might seem callous of him to think so, but the thought of you mourning him brings warmth to his veins, even through the chill of the sea. Knowing you have loved him enough to let tears fall from those pretty eyes of yours makes the inevitable hurt a little less.

Someone had cared for him and felt strongly enough to weep at his departure. That, in itself, is a gift. One of the many you had given him. You yourself have been the greatest one, blessing his days and easing his worries with nothing but a look, a word, a kiss. It had come like breathing to you, and he had never felt like he was out of air until now.

The sea is seldom merciful, and no matter how much he tries to beg the Gods to spare him, Jacaerys knows this time it might be in vain.

But how can he not beg? How can he not plead? If not with his voice, then with the remaining beatings of his heart, with the last vestiges of the memories he has of you.

He wishes he would’ve said I love you more often, for it seems like he had been scarce in his vocalization of it. Now, every day doesn’t feel like enough, because no matter how hard he tries, his throat is clogged with water and the words he means to say, if only for the last time. He would’ve hoped it enough to ease the grievances he knows you would feel upon hearing of his demise.

Jacaerys wonders if you would eventually surrender yourself to another. If there would come a day where another man would sweep you off your feet, chipping away at all the parts of Jace burrowed deep in your flesh and blood. The thought makes him want to weep. You forgetting him, replacing the memories you have of him with those of another, as if painting anew on an old canvas one has no use of anymore.

If his promise would’ve rung true, Jace would be by your side now, celebrating the victory at the Gullet, hugging his mother, then you so tight it would’ve knocked the air out of you both. He would’ve twirled you around while laughing, leaning in to press a multitude of kisses onto every patch of skin he could reach, knowing it’ll make you laugh, cheeks flushed, looking at him like he’s your whole world.

May that be the last thing he wishes for before the sea takes him. May your face be the last thing on his mind before there is nothing but darkness, engulfing every bit of light that was you. May he always remember you, even when buried beneath the sea and the sand, wishing for nothing than to hear your voice saying his name one last time, your gaze softening upon looking at him, and maybe, if the Gods allow him one last mercy, the feel of your soft lips upon his own.

He knows he is not worthy, for if he were, Jacaerys would’ve held onto his promise to come back to you, to his mother, to the Realm. But he couldn’t. The Gods were ever cruel and took from him the very essence of his being, cursed to wait for his impending doom.

And wait, he had. Was it another punishment to still feel like he was hanging on but never sinking deep enough? To will him to replay every single memory of you and imagine thousands of others? To feel so close but so far away from the object of all his affections and desires?

Jacaerys would know you anywhere, he thinks. Even blind, hard of hearing, or sinking into nothingness, he would not fail to know you are close.

So why does it feel like you are? Is this another cruel trick before the ancestors welcome him to them? He swears he can feel the soft lilt of your voice somewhere in his vicinity, and it makes him want to move, to lean towards it and taste it. Make sure it’s real.

Please let it be real. To the Old Gods and the New, let it be real. Don’t dangle such hope in front of him only to take it away, for it would feel like getting speared with arrows again and again and—

“I shall watch him,” your voice sounded, just as sweet and lovely as he remembered, but also tired, croaky at the edges. What had happened? Why were you — “You need rest, my queen. Let me, for now.”

My Queen? Mother?

The sounds were a bit muted, but he could hear footsteps, then the creaking hinges of a door, followed by a thud.

A long, hitched sigh followed, the one people do when they try not to let it show they were hurting, right before the tears inevitably fall.

Were you crying? He couldn’t bear when you were. That pretty face he loved so much, marred by tears, undid him every time.

Jacaerys had to see, had to make sure you were okay, that nothing had befallen you too, that the Gods had been merciful to an angel such as you.

He was struggling. His body was not responding the way it should, barely able to feel his hands and feet properly. But that didn’t matter now, for he only needed his eyes to will open so he could glimpse you, even if it was all a cruel fiction of his imagination, probably allowing him one more wish before taking him to the depths forever.

Please.

Please let him see his wife. His lady. His love.

Please.

One last time is all he asks.

If the Gods had ever looked down upon him and smiled, let them look down and smile once more. Grant him this one mercy. Just this once. Only this once.

He knows he’s begging, but what is there to do other than implore with all the strength left in him for one last look at you? In case he is to meet his end soon, let the sight of you be what he goes down feasting upon.

Blessed be The Mother, for I beg for one last mercy, for I shall gaze upon the one I hold most dear before my death and meet my end with a settled heart—

Jacaerys wonders if you are wearing one of your soft gowns, the ones he loves most, for you look like a Fae from the library tomes you so love. Would you still wear the necklace he had given you, or have you thrown it away in a fit of grief and anger because of his recklessness? He wouldn’t fault you for it. Just wished he could give you another to atone for his many sins, for how much sorrow he must’ve brought you.

But he is wrong.

You are wearing the pendant. Your fingers are wrapped around it, settled at the base of your throat, holding so tight your hand shakes, lips pressed to it, murmuring to yourself, eyes closed in prayer.

Are you praying for him to come back to you, just as he was? The thought makes warmth bloom beneath his ribs, licking upwards towards his chest, weaving until it finds his heart, willing it to beat faster. Even so close to dying, he supposes, you still manage to affect him just the same.

If this is but a dream, he hopes he never wakes up. Because standing here, looking at you, just as beautiful as the day he lost you, brings him more peace than any prayer he could’ve uttered. You are so pretty. His pretty girl. Always, always so very pretty. Even now, looking worn out, expression pinched, and hands shaking.

He wants to see your eyes, at least once, before he can't do so again.

"M-may you look at me, my love? For I want to—"

Jacaerys is startled from finishing his sentence by the loud gasp you let out, body jumping beside him, startled and alert, like a doe sensing hunters on its tail. Your eyes are so, so wide with disbelief, watching him with the sort of bewilderment one would when seeing a creature unknown or some oddity come to life. Why were you looking at him like that? If this were but a dream, then why—

"Jace," you whisper, shaky and soft, like a petal swept by the wind, hands trembling so hard the pendant slips through your fingers. "Jace," he hears you repeat, as if the sound of his name in your mouth is something foreign you have to taste again. "Gods, Jace!" Your voice cracks along the syllables of his name, before moving closer, gazing at him with those pretty eyes he near plead to see, now teary and wide, sweeping over him as if checking to see if he's whole. He knows he isn't, for the battle must've left him with more than grievances and a hollowness in his chest that could only be filled if he still had a chance to live.

Your movements are shaky and hesitant, wanting to reach for him but shackled by a fear he does not know yet. Why won't you touch him? He can tell you want nothing more than to feel him beneath your palms, and yet you waver. Why? If this is to be the last mercy before his death, why is he imagining his beloved faltering instead of pressing close, so close and grasping at him like the air one needs to breathe?

Jacaerys tries to lift a hand, grimacing when his body again does not count him as its master, and makes it hard to move properly, feeling a sharp pain lance through his forearm, pulling a hiss from between his teeth. One to which you react instantly, shaking your head as you plead with him not to move, cradling his hand between both of yours, letting Jace feel the softness of your skin again. "No, no, my love, do not move," you sniffle, blinking back those stubborn tears lining your pretty eyelashes. "Please, you must rest. The Maesters said you are not to tire yourself any further."

The Maesters? What ever could you mean?

Blinking his eyes rapidly to dwindle the fog clinging to his vision, Jacaerys's breath catches when your own room comes into view, surrounding both of you. He supposes his imagination could not help but want to remember you in the place where you felt most at ease, the one where you shared your first kiss, first bedding, and many, many other milestones that now feel like a vice around his heart, squeezing tight. Will this be the last time he gets to pine for what once was and for what could never be again?

"H-how do you feel?" Your voice shakes again, snapping him out of his reverie, gaze finding its way back to yours, feeling himself melt just at the sight of you anew. Gods, you couldn't be more gorgeous. "You had been asleep for half of a fortnight. We didn't know if you would ever wake—"

And oh, his heart shatters into pieces when your words trail off into hiccuped sobs, soft chin wobbling, not being able to hold the weight of your grief and sorrow. His sweet wife was crying beside him because of his own foolishness, and there was no punishment severe enough for his transgressions. He could be put to the sword, and it would never erase the guilt in his chest at making you shed even a tear.

It takes him but a few moments to rear his mind from blame to the words you spoke, eyes widening in bewilderment as he registers the information you bestowed upon him. "Asleep?"

His voice is rough and unpolished from disuse, and he's watching you like you brought both salvation and perdition to his door.

But you only nod, squeezing his hand tighter, bringing it up to your mouth to press warm lips upon his skin, feverish and lingering, before cradling the back of his hand against your tear-streaked, warm cheek. "Yes, my love," you confirm, tone lightening with pure relief. "The Gods were watching over you, breathing life into you anew, just like we prayed for."

Breathing life back into you.

Does that mean—

But he cannot hope yet. What if this is nothing but another trickery? The cruelest way to tear his heart asunder by making him believe he escaped from the unforgiving claws of the sea and is now granted another chance at spending a lifetime with you?

Jacaerys can feel a lump form in his throat, near choking him, his lashes dampening rapidly. "Do not forsake me, please," he pleads, willing his hand to clutch at your fingers again, with what little strength he has. "I cannot bear knowing this is but a dream." It is hard to speak as his chest heaves, blubbering like a child as he begs for a miracle from you, who he now hopes is all flesh and bones and not smoke and ash in front of him.

Your expression pinches, studying him carefully, as you so often used to do with your tomes and books in the low candlelight before bed, thumbing each page as you uncovered the secrets written through the dried ink. He feels like one now, as your eyes narrow, before those soft lips part in a round shape, understanding dawning on you.

"Oh, my sweet prince," you whisper, voice damp from your tears, but then the sweetest sound of all accompanies the wetness of your eyes.

A laugh.

Amidst all this confusion, all this befuddling turmoil between dream and reality, you laugh as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders, and your mouth dared to form the shape of happiness again.

You turn your head to press a fervent kiss to his hand before moving closer, cradling his face between your palms. Thumbs soften the traces of tears onto his own pale cheeks from being under slumber for so long, willing to see a flush to them soon. "I am flesh and bone, not a mere mirage," you assure, another soft, disbelieving laugh tinkling between you, as if the mere thought of him believing this to be a play of the mind is ridiculous. "The Gods brought you back to me, just as I wished for, my love."

Gods, he thought he'll never get to hear that sound fall from your lips again. It makes his vision blur with tears, lips trembling as he chokes back from babbling again like a babe, but eager to quiet the ghosts of his mind that insist this is a delusion.

"P-prove it to me," he hiccups wetly, no longer preoccupied with how weak he must look, nothing like a prince and all like a man at the end of his hope, begging you to pull him towards salvation. "Please, ñuha jorrāeliarzy," his tongue wraps around the endearment like it never forgot it, full of longing and desperation. "Show me I still have you, for I cannot bear the thought of losing you again—"

He feels his heart breaking and mending itself back together over and over, waiting for you to grant him this one certainty in his hopelessness.

And Gods, you do.

Your lips are on his before he can blubber another supplication, palms tilting him the way you want to as you slot your mouths together so, so tenderly, like two wings of a butterfly touching while they flutter.

He feels it. He tastes it. Your tears, his tears, your promise, his desperation.

Jacaerys wishes he were stronger, for his body is weakened by the tragedy that befell him, not being able to grasp you as fiercely as he would if his limbs had not forsaken him. He can only will his fingers to brush against the folds of your skirts onto the bed, curling into the material until his hand shakes with the ardent want of closeness; of wanting to do more but being cursed into only hoping.

"You have me," you whisper against his mouth, branding the truth on his lips as you continue kissing him. He can feel you smiling into it, and it is unbecoming of him how that only makes him weep harder, his own tears trailing down your cheeks and chin now, too, from how close your faces are pressed together, smushed in your eagerness to prove what he so feared was nothing but a cruel twist of his mind. "And I have you, dārilaros ñuha."

Gods, your tongue tangles around the words so clumsily, no matter how many times he had patiently taught you the right way before, and still, he would never trade it for the world. Jacaerys wants to hear it a thousand times more, and then tenfold that, for the rest of his days.

He's overwhelmed. All the hopelessness he felt before, thinking he would never get to hear the sound of your voice, taste the sweetness of your lips, feel the warmth of your love. And now you are offering him all of those and more, and he feels like he cannot breathe if you dare stop for even a moment.

"Avy jorrāelan, " he sobs, trembling lips barely able to return the soft kisses you so kindly confer to him still. "Avy jorrāelan. Always," the words tumble from his mouth, choked and utterly devout. "Not a moment went by when I did not plead with the Gods to bring me back to you. I curse the sea for trying to wrench me from your side. For its greed and its cruelty, for—"

But you silence him with a firmer press of lips, swallowing the last of his blubbering with the sweetness of your mouth, tasting salt and love and life. You exhale shakily, drawing back so your gazes meet, lips brushing, leaning to nuzzle your noses together as you whisper, voice fervent with conviction. "No more talk of misfortune," you say, nudging his cheek in reprimand with the tip of your nose. "Let me rejoice in having you again."

Jacaerys had always been weak to your whims, never one to deny you anything, least of all when spoken with such longing, such relief, bodies close and shaking with lingering grief and solace alike.

He nods, gathering strength enough to nuzzle you back, eyes fluttering at the feeling, to which you shakily let out another one of those honeyed laughs as you whisper. "But do not think I shall forgive you for trapping me in mine own chambers before rushing to battle with such recklessness."

Oh.

In the midst of all this, he forgot the events that led him to this whole predicament. Closing his mother's door, then yours, vowing to come back in the end, no matter the cost.

"But I have—"

"Coming back in such a state is hardly enough for me to count this as you honoring your vow," you say, eyes narrowing, even teary and full of adoration as they were. And he couldn't find it in himself to feel anything, but the fullness of his chest as it filled with so much love for you, it damn near burst open. "We shall discuss more of this when you've healed properly."

"Yes, my lady," he whispers, having the gall to look a bit sheepish, but alas, a small smile curls at his lips, the normalcy of your reprimand willing his senses into solace.

You harrumph, trying to show displeasure, but he knows there is too much relief blooming between you two now, softening even this attempt at being stern.

He makes an effort to tilt his chin up until his lips brush your tear-streaked, warm cheek, kissing it softly, not moving for a very, very long time.

"I'm sorry," is pressed against the damp skin, and he knows it'll take time and an exuberant amount of grovelling to will you to forgive him, but he wouldn't have it any other way.

Now that he has escaped death's grasp, he has a lifetime ahead of him to try to gain your favour.

And Gods, what a fortunate way to live out the rest of his days.

tag list: @silkaurum @oldtowrs @mademoisellepetite @dreamgirlevill @0nlybitt3r4may @rhaenyras-crown @ghostlybfgf @pinkdoeweirdo

ñuha jorrāeliarzy — my love

dārilaros ñuha — my prince

You stand again, taking a few more steps down. Your mind drifts as you fall into a rhythm of checking these nets, pocketing pretty shells and scraps of metal. Wonder pricks at the back of your neck as you imagine the war. As the lone tenant of this pier, you had never had to consider the rites of the Targaryen rulers. Most of your neighbors had already chosen their sides, even if it did not really matter in the scheme of things—neither of those fighting for the throne cared for their subjects, especially not those at the bottom, like you.

Rulers like these bled the common man dry while claiming it to be an act of love.

You move a little rougher with the next net. Nothing but rocks and debris in this one. You imagine it will be a while until you find a worthy treat. The Gods are usually not as generous on solemn days like these. War makes monsters out of men, and the Gods scorn those who partake.

When you stand again, your eyes drift a little further down the bank. At the edge of the shore, a clump of trees catch your gaze. The water is darker there, cloaked in shadow. The shrubbery bends so far, it almost touches the water. You draw closer, eyebrows furrowed.

A dark lump sits entangled by brush, barely concealed by the cluster of foliage. You draw closer, hesitantly. As your eyes adjust, you realize it is not a lump of debris, but a body. Your breaths quicken.

If the person is alive, would it hurt you? Never trust a soldier, your father had once told you.

You bend your knee just as if you are checking a fish net. Your hands unfurl from your sides, reaching out hesitantly. You can only see his body. It is clothed in thick leather, a quality of which you’ve never seen before. Several arrows stick out of his torso. A pool of blood stains the sand maroon beneath him.

You pull back the shrubbery to see his face. You startle at the sight, falling back onto your bum.

His eyes—they were open—albeit, he did not seem to see much of anything. His skin was not grey and placid like the bodies that you had seen before. Worse, you’d heard something when you held yourself over him. A breath, shuddering through his parted lips.

“Alive,” you whisper in awe. To survive so many arrows, then the tumultuous sea… it would take more than just courage. It would take something otherworldly. You know then that your decision has been made.

A huge piece of driftwood sits beneath him in the sand. You push it aside to straddle him. Gently, you grab his arm and sling it around your neck.

The rest of your journey back to the cabin passes in a frenzied blur. You move quickly, trying to spend as little time as possible forcing the grievously hurt man onto his feet. He lets out little grumbles as you move, head lolling this way and that like a puppet cut from its strings. You make it inside and push open the door that your father used to live, laying him onto his back on the bed.

Blood immediately infiltrates the off-white of the duvet, crimson floating before your vision. He groans continuously as you break the ends off of the arrows—serving as a reminder to the heart that still valiantly pumped beneath his ribs. Once they are off, you are able to slide the armor off. 

The tunic comes easily. It seems to be made of a material that deflects water, so when you drop it onto the floor, a puddle of liquid forms in its spot. You struggle a little with his breeches—though, those too come easily with a little pull.

After he is naked, you stare at his body in silence for a moment. You have helped men with injuries before. Arrow injuries just like these, even. But you’d never helped a man with this many. 

You reach out to touch his cold cheek. He is so young—had to be your own age. Too young for the cruel, unflinching hold of war. Gently, you close his eyelids, shutting away the dark brown of his unseeing gaze. He did not need to be witness to this.

You steel your nerves and clench your fists a few times to breathe life back into your numb fingers. Reaching into the bedside table, you grab your supplies—bandages, a bottle of rum, a couple cloths, and several blunt blades.

“I’m sorry, if you are awake,” you tell him, poising the knife along the edge of one of the arrow heads. “This will hurt a lot.”

Hours pass quickly under your blade. Each of the five arrows is cut away, sewn with fishing line, disinfected with rum, and bandaged tightly. Sweat falls into your eyes as you step away triumphantly, and you lift a hand to brush it off. As they are levelled with your eyes, you realize your hands are a bloody mess. Your stomach churns and you force the appendages away.

You hover over him a moment longer. You study the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the fluttering of his eyelids. He had a strong nose and jaw, thick dark eyelashes and a head of water-matted brunet hair. By all appearances, he was quite common-looking. He had the complexion and hair of any man you’d pass on the way to town. But something about him—the quality of his armor, the blemishlessness of his skin, it screamed something ethereal.

But even Gods can be killed. 

Your mystery man is not out of the woods yet. The chances of any of those arrows not nicking anything inside him is next to none. He’s also lost a lot of blood. The sheets are covered in it, not to mention the amount he was sure to have lost at sea.

You draw the hair sea-slicked to his head away from his forehead. Your hand slides to cup his cheek. He might never wake again. Your kind hand may be the last he knows. You wonder how many people missed him—if they were sitting with baited breaths, waiting for him to write. If only you could ease their worries.

You pull away and leave the room before your eyes can fill with traitorous saltwater tears.

There are few certainties in life. Ever since you were but a child, you had recognized this. Life is tumultuous and unfair. It takes and it takes, until you can give no longer. 

The sea is a comfort. She does not take, she gives. Usually, she gives you more valuable things than a body, but you try not to question her motives.

It’s been a day since you patched him and he still has not woken. His chest continues to move despite this disconcerting sign, and that remains your only comfort. You stood near-vigil at his beside for most of the hours following. Anticipatory nerves fill your every waking second, even at night when you lay awake trying to sleep.

You recognize that the danger has not fully passed for him. He had not had water in who knows how long. Eventually, his organs would fail due to dehydration and blood loss. That is, if the internal bleeding didn’t kill him first.

You also cannot help the hope that blooms in your chest as you gaze upon his face. Perhaps it is the fact that his skin seems more alive as of late. The fact that you have seen his eyes move behind his eyelids more and more often. The fact that you were quite insufferably lonely, and therefore latched onto any individual who came your way—alive or barely, as in the case of this man in your cabin.

You want him to survive because you want to know him. It is a thought that scares you as much as it invigorates you.

By his bedside, after a long morrow of scavenging by the tide, you dump your satchel of goodies on the now-clean duvet. (Now that had been annoying to do—having to move his admittedly quite heavy body over to remove the sheets). You begin to sort through them, cataloging them.

The silence is unsettling, so you begin to speak.

“The sea has been kind this morrow,” you say softly. You pick up a smooth rainbow shell, twisting it this way and that in the light. “These will sell for a couple of silvers.”

You put the shell down and then grab your cloth, gently stroking away sand and debris.

“My father taught me to do this,” you tell the man, “he taught me everything I know.”

Satisfied with its shimmer, you trade the shell for a clam. You pop it open forcefully—apologizing profusely to the creature as you did—and stick your fingers into the dark crevice you created.

“No pearl,” you report when your fingers come up empty. You bring the clam up to your eyes, stroking its now-broken shell. “I’m sorry, friend.”

The last piece had been one you were excited for. You grab the shrapnel of metal gently in your palms, categorizing the weight and feel of it with your hands. 

“Probably off a shield,” you decide. “I’m sure a blacksmith would like this.”

You put the metal down and let out a heavy sigh. You stare at the man, worrying your lip between your teeth. Perhaps some foolish part of you had hoped he would wake up to the sound of your voice, like the stories you had read as a girl.

But life is no story, as you had to continually remind yourself. Things like that just didn’t happen.

You go through a few other bits and bobs in silence, mood dampened by reality. A couple of small shells, a nail, and a scrap of maroon fabric. You aren’t sure why you grabbed the fabric—perhaps you’d wanted to try and sew something. It is quite pretty, you decide. It had belonged to someone once.

Once you finish polishing the items, you lift your head up to look at the man. Thoughts and images flash through your mind. What was he like? You wonder. He seems strong, based on his broad shoulders and defined stomach. But he also didn’t have the worn skin of a common man. He didn’t have callouses on his hands or fading scars upon his torso. He had to be a prince, you decide. A prince of a faraway land, hoping to bargain peace between the two feuding Targaryen houses.

You nod, satisfied with that recreation of events. Yes, a prince. A just, altruistic one. Perhaps he knew of the war and wished to come and save the small-folk.

You look down at his pale hand resting lifelessly upon the duvet. You swallow thickly. 

“You must wake soon,” you whisper, “the kingdom needs you.”

He does not stir. You sigh and gather your things into your satchel. If he is still not awake by the morrow, you decide, you will return his body to the sea.

That evening, you sit at the table with a plate of roasted fish and a glass of water. The fish is one of two meals you eat regularly. The other was for special occasions, depending on if you were able to procure bread and potatoes at the markets. 

You always eat the eye of the fish first. You do not like it looking at you as you eat its flesh. It feels wrong. The eye is not very tasty, though. The odd texture always makes you vaguely nauseous–the gooey, chewy ball. Your father had always laughed at you when you ate fish. He was not of an imaginative mind. He did not see the fish as being once alive, like you did. He did not imagine it swimming beneath the tide, with all its other fishy friends–before it was snared by ruthless hands and suffocated by the open air.

You stare at the vacant chair across from you with an empty feeling in your chest. It had been so long since you had a companion at supper time. Your father had not spoken much, but his presence alone was always enough to keep you happy. He is gone now, like with the ebbing of the tide, and all that is left is the shadow of the person he used to be.

His fishing pole, next to the door. His journal, where he kept extensive notes about what he found out on the sea during the day. His bed that now had a new, warm body sleeping in it.

You wonder what your father would have done, had he found the man. You take another bite of the fish, forcing it down with a thick swallow. Would he have left him? You had never thought of him as being cruel, but you also know he loathed unwelcome responsibility. He had enough of an imagination to conjure horrible images of betrayal and hurt, and so you decide he probably wouldn’t have brought him home to you. He had too much to lose to do so. Everyone did.

And so why did you? Perhaps, you think, you have lost everything that matters most to you already.

You stare down at the limp skeleton of the fish on your plate. You had never seen a person die of dehydration. Your father had once told you a story about a man he knew that had, and it sounded awful. 

You pick up your dinner knife, a sharp, clean-edged blade, and hold it in the candlelight. The silver edge catches the light, highlighting the sharp point. Your hand trembles as you study it.

Would it be quick, painless—slitting the sleeping prince’s throat? Or would it be messy and painful? Would it draw him out of sleep and would he gaze upon you with hurting eyes as he clutched the gaping hole in his neck?

Regret gnaws at you. As time draws on, you begin to think that the mercy you had granted your prince had been nothing but a farce. That by saving him for one moment had only just prolonged his suffering.

You put the knife in your satchel and stand. It is cruel, keeping a person alive only to die in a violent manner like this–it is inhumane. 

You take quick steps to the bedroom. 

You have never killed a person before. Your father had plenty. He always said the eyes, you can hear his voice in your mind now, the eyes are always the worst part. 

You can’t eat the prince’s eyes like you can the fish’s. No matter what you did, you would have to see those eyes. And with it, the betrayal. You stand over his prone body now. 

A sliver of moonlight streams in from the open window behind you, casting cool light across the heaving chest. He remains impassive, completely unaware of what you were about to do. You do not realize you are crying until you bring the knife up to your eyes and catch a glimpse of your face in the silver.

“I…I am sorry, friend,” you repeat the same mantra you had told so many clams before as you pried your fingers in their mouths, looking for a pearl. “But this is a mercy.”

Your hands tremble like windblown seagrass as you lift the knife against his skin. A moment of hesitation prevents you from acting. And it is just enough for a pale hand to wrap around your own and for dark eyes to snap open.

“Waaa-ter.”

You let out a sharp gasp and yank your hand away. The man watches you, his visage crumpled with pain.

He repeats himself, voice quieter than the first time. “Water, please…”

You move into action. You dart out of the room, hands fumbling with the metal bucket by your door. You run across the moonlit shore to the well that sits on the edge of the woods. Quickly, you fill the bucket. You curse yourself all the while–mind racing in what-ifs and guilt-ridden condemnations. 

You heave the bucket back into the house and grab the same goblet you had used with your own water. You take a huge scoop and shuffle back into the bedroom like a child caught with their hand on the sweets plate.

The man is still awake when you re-enter, his eyes wide and eyebrows furrowed. You drop next to him on the bed and angle his head and neck up onto the pillows behind him. Finally, you fulfill his request. He drinks like a man in Essos who has wandered the Red Waste for weeks; heavy, desperate gulps of the liquid. Some fall and drip down his side, which you dab away with a nearby cloth.

When he finally drinks it all, he pulls back, his breaths labored and eyes half-lidded.

“W…Where am I?” he finally says once he has caught his breath. You notice him scanning the room as if trying to find the answer written in the stone.

You decide not to answer honestly. You fear what his reaction will be if he forces himself to recall the battle. Instead you say, “you are safe.”

He stares at you as if only just noticing you. His dark eyes are swallowed almost completely by night, exhausted and ridden with heavy bags. He lifts a hand, as if to touch you, but it falls short. His eyes flutter, and then shut.

He falls unconscious. You touch two hands to his chest to confirm his heart still beats steadily. You let out a breath you had not realized you captured when you find his pulse.

Shame hits you like a tidal wave. You were going to… you were going to kill him. You are shocked at the tears that swim in your eyes. You stand in a hurry–not without remembering to pull the duvet back up to his chest–and stumble out of the room. 

The adrenaline has all but worn away now. Tears clog your eyes, slipping down your cheeks. You allow yourself to feel the emotions–all of them. Relief, shame, exhaustion, and fear overwhelm you completely and you can do nothing but sob. On the table in front of you, the skeleton of the fish and the silver knife mock you without having to say a word.

Waking feels like drowning. Fighting against the wave ahead of you, trying to get your head above water. Then when you finally surface, you fall behind the waves again.

Jacaerys wakes to the sun in his eyes and a warmth around his waist. He thinks for a moment, perhaps, he is in a dream. Another barrier between him and wakefulness. Then, the pain hits him. No, dreams don’t feel like this.

The groan stumbles past his lips before he can stop it and his eyes shoot open. Everything is pain. It surrounds him like dragonfire and steals his breath. He trembles as he uses all his strength to cradle his side.

“Gods,” he murmurs. He feels beneath his fingers the familiar texture of a bandage. Someone helped him.

Helped him. Helped him from what? He gasps as memory rolls over him. Drowning. Arrows piercing through skin and muscle. A dragon’s roar of pain. No, not just any dragon—

“Vermax,” he cries out, tears springing to his eyes. No, no, no…

But it was true. His mind had never failed him before. His dragon. His beautiful dragon. Falling to the bottom of the ocean like a ship’s anchor. He tries to move, to jump to his feet, but he can’t. Pain ricochets up his side, and he can literally feel the side of his chest pulling taut. 

He stares at the ceiling above him with tears fogging his eyes and coating his tongue in salt. For one long moment, he despairs. Why? Why would he be punished this way? Forced to live without Vermax? The bond between rider and dragon could not—should not be severed. Not by something as futile as war. He can’t breathe, can’t think. Everything is despair.

He should have died. Living is not a gift in this condition. His knuckles go white against the duvet. Anger sweeps over him—hot, potent fury.

He curses everyone who caused this. Aemond, Alicent, Aegon, even fucking Helaena. He doesn’t care. They’ll all pay.

But not like this. He finally shuffles himself into a seated position, cringing at the pain that shoots from every direction. Every small movement feels like another arrow tearing his skin. 

His feet are unsteady as he finds his footing. For a second, he fears he might not be able to even walk. Then, he finds himself. He grabs his breeches off the table and slowly, painfully, shrugs them on. He leaves his chest bare—unable to even think about having to lift his arms over his head. He keeps one hand on the wall and the other around his waist as he stumbles across the room. 

The place he is in is frighteningly humble. There’s nothing unnecessary here. Everything has a purpose, a function. No gilded armoires, tall candlesticks, or commissioned portraits. Bare, cobblestone walls, sparse furniture (all glaringly handmade and rustic), and cobwebs hanging in every corner. 

Jacaerys moves slowly from the room he started in to the short hallway that opens into a tiny living area. A large fireplace is the only comfort to him. A pot of a molten, unappetizing glob bubbles above the waning fire. 

There are very few personal effects here. Nothing to propose any kind of hint or insight. Out the window of the front of the ramshackle building, he sees amber light flickering across a wide sea.

His breath shudders out of his lips. He doesn't recognize this place at all. He’s hurt. He has no dragon. He’s never felt worse in his entire life.

All of what energy he summoned flees him in that moment. He practically collapses into a nearby chair and it creaks pathetically under his weight. He hangs his head and a soft sob escapes his lips. 

Tears tremble down his cheeks and onto the wood table beneath his hand. His mind races, memory and pain and fury collide in a war of its very own. Vermax, his mind strays. The perfect dragon. Gone. He digs his nails into the grain of the table beneath his hands, trying to recapture something to ground him. Short, hyperventilating breaths escape his lips—his vision fogs.

Then, everything clears. His hands unclench and he leans back in the chair. He stares at the ceiling, measuring his breaths. You are still alive, he tells himself. Therefore you are still useful.

Because perhaps that was his real fear. That he would no longer be of use—that he would no longer be worth fighting for. He’d always measured his worth in terms of what he could provide to his mother. Perhaps the truth is that his worth stretches beyond that.

He hears the sound of crunching footsteps outside. He sits up in the chair, eyes flickering toward the door. Ahead of him, he notices with a jolt, a knife lay discarded on the table. He grabs it before he can think the better of it, brandishing it like he actually could fight his way out of this mess.

He ignores the pain throbbing in his side and pushes himself to stand again. He won’t die now. He can’t.

The door creaks open slowly, and he angles the knife in front of himself protectively. 

But the figure that crosses the threshold isn’t what he’d been expecting. Wide eyes and a mouth fallen open into an oval. Hands clutching a satchel of… is that a seashell? 

She drops the satchel with immediacy, hands flying into the air. Jacaerys thinks he hears something break inside.

He keeps the arm holding the knife up despite the involuntary tremble that has begun in his arm. A cool sweat travels down his temple. His vision wanes. Despite her… figure (she hadn’t brandished a weapon a day in her life, he thinks), he knows looks can be deceiving. 

“You’re up.” She does not immediately acknowledge the weapon in his hand. She’s either brave or simply ignorant. Jace is not sure what he’s more afraid of.

“Who—“ he starts to speak, but he breaks into a coughing fit. His throat feels like it is on fire. She takes a step forward, as if to help or harm him, but he freezes her in place when he turns his gaze back onto her warningly. “Who are you?”

She tells him her name. Then she quickly adds, “you washed up on the beach in front of my cabin. I found you.”

He bends over to clutch his side. He notices her eyes widen.

“Please, I’m not sure you should be up. You sustained massive injuries,” she tells him. “Your body needs rest.”

“I cannot—“ he scoffs, then coughs again. “I cannot simply rest. I must leave. I must…” 

A pang in his side makes him gasp and hunch over. The knife falls with a clatter against the floor but he can’t seem to bring himself to retrieve it. Everything feels like it is in slow motion, out of his reach and control.

She grabs him around the waist before he tips over. He stays conscious long enough for her to lead him back to bed, but he falls within the waves again the second his head hits the pillow.

Consciousness returns to him in fragments. The sound of footsteps by his head. A burning pain spreading up his chest, to which he thinks he shouts, but cannot prevent. The feeling of a wet cloth soaking his tears and sweat. 

When his eyes finally flutter open, it is dark in the room. A candle burns to a nub on the nightstand next to him, wax coating the wood. Sorrow fills his chest again so quickly it nearly steals his breath.

He sees her slip into the room like a wraith come to haunt him. It is ridiculous, he thinks, that she should be the one to stand over him. On any other day, in any other circumstance, she would not put up much of a fight. Now, he is at her mercy.

“You tore one of your stitches.” Her voice is soft, but it reverberates in his ear drums and skull like a dragon’s final roar. He clenches his jaw and turns his head toward the moon that hangs like a silver noose in the sky. “I had to sew it back while you were resting.”

Jace doesn’t reply. He isn’t sure he would know what to say. How does he encompass all his feelings—or even one of them, into a coherent thought? It isn’t possible.

She draws closer and he tenses. She notices. “Are you going to try and hurt me again?” 

He considers her for a moment, then shakes his head.

She pauses, thinking about something, then she settles upon his side of the bed. Jace notices for the first time since she’s entered the room, that she has a bowl of that wretched-looking soup in her hands.

“Here,” she says, outstretching the bowl. He leans back. She pulls away slightly. “Sorry.” She cringes like even she realizes that the soup is nothing to write home about. “It is all I have.”

Jace swallows thickly. He reaches a trembling hand out. She smiles, relieved.

He goes to take the bowl, but his arm feels weak. He pulls back. “Perhaps…” he pauses, clears his throat. “Perhaps you could…”

Asking for help has never come easy to him. Being weak is not something he is accustomed to. His other hand clenches the sheet in his fist.

She nods. He does not have to be explicit. He untenses his hand as she leans forward, a small bit of soup in the wood spoon.

The first bite makes his face twist. She laughs.

“I truly am sorry,” she says. “I know it is probably not what you are used to.”

It takes every bit of his strength to swallow the offending liquid. It is strangely salty. It tastes like the brine that filled his mouth when he— 

He cuts the thought short. No need to ruin his own mood again.

“Something happened to you out there,” she says as if she’d read his mind, and although it should be a question, it is not, “something bad.”

He swallows another gulp of the soup. He does not reply. 

She must realize he does not want to speak on that, for she does not press the matter. She lifts the spoon again and he forces down another sip.

“The soup has fish and some potatoes—oh, and they had carrots at the market today, so I put those in too. Perhaps those are the disgusting parts. I won’t purchase them again.”

Jace does not have the energy, or perhaps the heart, to tell her it is certainly not the vegetables that have made the soup taste like what sea captains scrape off the bottom of their ships.

She scoops another bit of soup and he forces it down. His mouth had begun to retain that saltiness even when he no longer had the soup in his mouth, like a stain one can’t wash away with soap and water.

She does not speak for a long pause, but Jace suddenly feels a bit antsy. It feels too intimate an act to not be speaking.

He swallows another mouthful, then clears his throat to speak. “Did you catch the fish?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

“Oh, no, no,” she replies to him like it is a preposterous suggestion. Like killing fish is below her standards. “I just buy them.”

He frowns around the spoon in his mouth and hurriedly swallows the liquid. “Then why were you on the shore when you found me?”

She stirs the foul soup around for a moment, thinking hard about something, then she looks up at him. “I collect things. Shells, scrap metal, and fabrics. You would be surprised what comes with the morning tide, and even more what people would pay for them.”

An odd business, Jace can’t help but think. It seems like a hard thing to have to rely solely on the Narrow Sea for food and shelter. The Narrow Sea, he remembers with a sudden clarity. That is near where they fought.

“Are you going to tell your name?” Her head is tilted as she asks this, the soup bowl now empty and forgotten upon her folded legs.

He ponders the question for a moment. He could tell her his full name, but it might backfire, especially if she harbors a grudge against his family. He doesn’t think she has it in her to cause him harm, but he knows that many do not until they are cornered.

“Jace,” he finally tells her. “Just Jace.”

She smiles and her entire face lights up like nothing he’s ever seen before. Something twists in his stomach. “Nice to meet you, Jace.”

One, two, three, four. You count the shells noiselessly as you thread them onto the fishing line. They clink together softly as you pull the line taut around your wrist, measuring the width mentally. You remove the bracelet and add a few more of your little shells.

A few days had passed without much event. Jace drifted in and out of consciousness throughout the day and slept soundlessly through the night. He did not complain, but you had seen his thinly-veiled winces and his shuddering breaths. You know that he is suffering more than he lets on. 

It is an odd thing, you think, to be harboring a man in your home that you know next to nothing about, but had inexplicably formed an attachment to. You still know nothing more about Jace than his name and even that had not been an answer easily wrought.

You slide the shells all to one side and swiftly tie a knot at the end of the line, forming a perfect circular bracelet. Putting it to the side, you cut a new piece of fishing line and begin sorting through your shells again.

Just as you go to slide the first shell on, you hear something behind you. The creaking of wood as light footfalls go across.

You turn your head, body tense.

“Jace,” you say, surprised by his appearance. You stand.

He had not been up since he’d ripped that stitch a few days ago, actually heeding your pleas to rest. But a part of you knew even then that the peace would not last long. He is a restless creature, like a bird stuck behind the bars of a cage.

“Do you need something?” You clutch your fingers together across your front, as if doing so could somehow steel your nerves.

He takes a step into the room. You notice his gait seems more steady today. He looks around every bit of the room, his eyes taking in all the pieces that make up your home. You gnaw your lip between your teeth. Did he approve of what he saw?

His voice comes suddenly, a blade cutting through the silence. “What are you doing?” 

It is not accusatory nor standoffish, instead it seems almost curious. You grab the bracelet you just finished and hold it out to him.

“A bracelet.”

Jace steps closer, tilting his head. “For what purpose?”

You let out a short laugh. “It has no purpose. It is just pretty.”

“Hm.” He stares at the offending object like he’s never thought about making something just for the sake of making something before. You smile. He averts his eyes to the other side of the room.

“You said you do not fish,” he says, “and yet you have a fishing rod.”

You follow his eyes to where the thing sits near the door. It sits, forgotten, in the corner of the room—there to haunt you and the person you’d never become, you’re sure.

“My father…” you start to say, but something gets caught in your throat. You forcefully swallow past the blockage. “My father used to fish.”

Jace’s accusatory eyes soften around the edges. He hobbles closer and takes the seat across from you at the table. Your father’s seat.

“And your father—“

“He is dead,” you answer curtly, “he has been for two summers now.”

You pick up the bracelet you had only just starteda nd slide a seashell onto the line. Hurt does not fill your chest like a cavity anymore—now all you feel is numbness as it spreads from your lungs to your heart. 

Jace turns his head to look out the window at the night sky. “My father is gone too.”

Your eyes leap toward his in a flash. He does not look at you, his hand tracing repetitive shapes on the table. The deep circles beneath his eyes have all but faded now, but the weariness to his expression remains. He possesses the gaze of someone who holds more than they can carry–a gaze your father shared.

Your throat bobs as you force yourself to swallow. You feel hollow, but a bit of warmth has reentered your chest. Two children, you think, without a parent—an awful thing, certainly, but not especially rare in Westeros.

You slide another shell onto the bracelet, fingers trembling. “He went mad.” Telling the truth, those three words, stings like betrayal. “He was a knight before I was born. He never… he never forgot what he had to do. The faces of the men he killed… they haunted him.”

Jace goes pale. His dark eyebrows furrow, the line of his mouth pulling down. “I-I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.”

You nod. Put another two shells on the line. Desperately, you search for a way to change the subject. “He always wanted to teach me,” you say, gesturing to the rod, “but he never did.”

He drags a quick hand through his curly brown hair, then pauses as he gets caught in a tangle. He huffs irritably.

“Perhaps,” he says, onyx eyes catching the amber light of the candle flickering on the table, “if I could summon the strength to get dressed and brush my hair, then I could show you how.”

You swallow thickly. “You do not have to—“

“It is the least I can do,” he murmurs. “You saved my life.”

To smile feels inappropriate, so you avert your eyes and begin to tie a knot in another bracelet.

Jace stares at himself in the mirror that stands in the corner of the bedroom with solemn eyes. His eyes glaze over the bandages that wrap around his chest and lower torso, then the unfamiliar slightness to his shoulders and waist. He feels as though he looks at a person he no longer recognizes, like his mind has been transported into the body of someone much weaker than he used to be.

The old house is quiet in the morrow. Every once in a while, a soft breeze will make the house creak. One may occasionally hear a sea bird calling in the distance. Other than that, everything exists as if completely removed from reality; untouched by the war that rages just beyond the sea’s reaches.

His eyes flick back to the mirror and he sees her standing behind him with a deep green doublet wrapped in her arms. 

“It was my father’s,” she says, drawing closer. “It might be a little large on you.”

Jace nods. She hands him the doublet. The material feels like cheap linen, nothing to the quality he had worn before. He does not mind. It would be odd, he thinks, for him to expect anything better.

He lifts the top over his head and she helps guide it over. She seems to be trying not to touch his skin, like she thought he might be made of glass. He clenches his jaw when he feels the familiar tightness in one of his wounds as his arms stretch over his head.

The doublet falls over his body easily, but it does hang on him a bit like the robes a septa might wear.

He hears the sound of muffled laughter from behind him and he turns his head.

“My apologies.” She can barely get it out through her thinly-suppressed amusement. “You do look a bit funny, though.”

Jace feels his lips tug upwards in the first semblance of happiness he’d felt in days. It feels odd and out of place, and so it disappears with his next blink.

“Shall we go?” 

Jace nods. He follows her out of the bedroom and into the living area, watching as she bends to grab the fishing pole. He walks behind her as she leads the way outside, too slow to match her pace.

The brush of a briney mist against his skin feels like flying across the humid air on top of Vermax. His chest pangs and he forces the thought away. His eyes brush the swaying grasses that stand cloistered around the sea’s edge, each one caught up in a current of air drifting by. He watches the woman as she strides ahead of him.

She is quite plain. She does not have the dresses of the courts he is used to, nor the manners of a highborn lady. She moves unhindered by corsets and the plumes of expensive dresses. Her soft legs pump quickly across the sands, barefoot, like she has mapped every inch of the shore to near-perfection and knows without looking where she must go.

Seeing her slip ahead, her hair tangled in the sea’s mist, then as she turns over her shoulder with a jovial grin, it feels so different than anything he’s ever known before.

Baela is beautiful. She is poised, and gentle, but with a rough edge that assures him she could—and would—easily hurt him if pushed to it. But his stomach never flipped when she spoke. He never searched for her eyes from across the room. He never grasped her hand and wished he never had to let it go. He had known her for so long, he assumed she was all he’d ever need, that the feeling of content he felt in her presence was love. Now he isn’t so sure. 

She reaches the shore and stops when her feet hit the tide.

He meets her gaze as she turns to him. His heart pounds in his ears.

“Is it not wonderful?” She sweeps her arm in a half-arc as she speaks, eyes glimmering beneath the high morrow’s sun.

Jace draws his eyes away from her figure to the open waters. It is wonderful, he thinks. If not wrought with pain and regret.

He forces his gaze away. “Yes.”

“So,” she says, shifting on her heels, “how do we begin?”

Jace steps forward and picks up the rod. He retrieves the little scrap of maroon fabric that she had found a few days back and attaches it to the end of the hook. 

“It is always a good idea to have some kind of bait,” he explains, “fish are attracted to movement. If you can find insects or worms, those work even better. But this fabric may do. We will have to see.”

He moves close to the edge of the water and lets the rod scrape the top of the ocean. “Most fish do not swim right by the shore, so you will need to throw the line out a little ways. Make sure that you do not catch your skin with the hook.”

She nods, eyebrows drawn together in deep contemplation. Jace nearly smiles at the way she’s taking this all so seriously, before he catches himself and schools his expression.

Jace steadies his hand and propels the line out into the ocean. One of the wounds on his side complains at the movement, but he ignores it. He watches the line bob in the water with a softened expression. His memory flits between days spent under the sun at Driftmark and Dragonstone, laughing while he chases Lucerys with a wood sword; Laenor showing him how to fish among the tidepools; a fierce burn from the sun that is soothed by his mother’s affectionate hand.

“Who taught you this?” Her voice breaks through the silence that had settled between them. Her eyes keep steady on the line, lashes squinting against the harsh light.

“My father,” he replies after a moment’s hesitation. 

Another pause. 

He feels her shift to look over at the side of his face. “I’m sure he would be quite proud of the man you have become.”

Jace’s breath halts in his throat. Hands suddenly feel clammy. His heart hiccups and thuds against his skin. He had not thought of Laenor in a long time, Harwin even longer. It feels like decades had passed since he had seen either of them, a forgotten moment in his life overshadowed by tragedy after tragedy.

“Oh, look,” she says suddenly from beside him. “A conch shell.” 

She wields the massive thing toward him. Her entire face is bright with delight as she shows him the object that any normal person would completely disregard. She is anything but normal, though.

“These always sell for a few silvers at the markets,” she informs him, “the rich folk think they are good luck.”

He is not able to reply before his arm suddenly jolts and he is pulled a few inches forward. On the end of the line, something stirs in the water. 

“Come,” he orders her urgently. “Something is biting.”

She draws close, her eyes wide. The conch shell drops to the sand. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he says, “here, you hold the rod.”

“What? I don’t know how to catch a fish!”

He thrusts the rod into her hands. “I am too weak to reel it in. You have to.” It is a lie, but she does not seem to recognize it.

Her hands slip all over the rod as she tries to fight the beast at the end of the line. Jace, pitying her struggle, slides behind her and steadies her hands by placing his on top of hers. She freezes for a moment, then begins to pull. Jace clutches her hands gently within his own and he notices that they tremble like seagrass beneath his own. 

“Hold it steady,” he says against the shell of her ear, “pull only when you feel it stop fighting. You do not want–”

Suddenly, the pressure is removed from the end of the line and they are both sent stumbling backwards onto the sand. Jace lands on his bum, but she is able to catch herself as she tumbles beside him. The line must have broken. The fish is long gone now.

“Oh Jace, are you okay?” He looks over at her as she crouches beside him. “You did not reopen your wounds, did you?”

The laugh that tumbles out of his lips makes her jolt back. Distantly, he is not sure why he is laughing. The fish got away, he landed on back on the sand, and now one of his cuts hurts. But he had just felt so alive. So unburdened by responsibility, like any man of ten and eight without the entirety of their mother’s empire resting upon their shoulders ought to feel. 

The laughter eventually abates, and all that is left is the open sky atop him and the sun beating down on his skin.

“Do you think that the fish I cooked last night was spoiled?” she asks in response to his exuberant mood. “Once, my father caught ill from bad potatoes…”

Jace feels another chuckle escape his lips. “Sorry,” he tells her. “I have… not felt that free in a long time.”

She lets out a soft ‘oh’ and moves to lay next to him in the sand. Far enough away that there is no chance that they will touch, but close enough that Jace can smell the lavender on her skin.

Jace stares at the clear sky ahead of him until he begins to feel his body ache with exhaustion. He pulls himself into a seated position, but she does not move immediately. She looks at him with soft eyes from where she lays against the sand, a small, affectionate smile upon her lips. Her chest rises and falls slowly, hand absentmindedly drawing pictures in the sand.

His stomach churns as he turns away. He stares out at the rippling current with half-lidded eyes. 

“How far is the nearest town?” His words are nearly carried away with the next tide that pulls up the shore. She hears him all the same, sliding to sit up next to him.

“Not far,” she replies, a toothy grin on her breath, “would you like to come and help me pick out a fish for dinner tomorrow?”

Jace does not reply. The hope tinged in her words makes something inside him feel rotten. Like he is corrupting the world wherein she lives. As he takes longer and longer to reply, he notices something settle upon her face. A realization that fades into melancholy.

“Oh.” She looks to the sea in an attempt to hide the dewiness in her eyes, but Jace notices all the same. “You wish to leave.”

“My mother,” he says, “she will be looking for me. She will not stop until she finds me.”

She nods.

Something compels him to continue. “I would stay. I would, truly,” he says, “but this is bigger than me. Bigger than this–”

“I understand, Jace.” But Jace is not sure she does. Her lips purse, her eyebrows drawn to form a small wrinkle between them. 

“I would at least stay a couple more days,” he tells her, “I need to make sure I do not simply hurt myself again by leaving too soon.”

She pulls her knees to her chest and rests her head upon them. “It sounds like a good plan,” she agrees quietly. “Perhaps… Perhaps I could pack you some food as well.”

“Yes,” he says this far too enthusiastically, but he notices her brighten at the joy in his voice and so he continues to smile. “That would be wonderful.”

She nods, pulling at a frayed edge of her dress. “Then it will be done.”

The two of them watch for a few more moments as the red sun burns a hole against the sky and as the water ripples with wrath.

“I will leave on the morrow”--That is what he had told you over dinner the previous evening. 

In the morrow, the sky opens and floods them with her tears. 

You stand by the window of the cabin looking out at the frightful weather. Rain falls like daggers against the darkened, tumultuous sea. Waves crash against the shore. A crack of lightning makes you flinch.

“The Gods are angry,” you say to the still air of the cabin. 

Jace sits halfway over his plate of roasted fish as you say this. Then he straightens, his eyes flickering briefly outside. The dark brown of his irises reflect the grey of the clouds swirling above. “Or they do not grant me leave.”

You force yourself to pull away from the window. Turning your head, another flash of brilliant light comes across the floor, painting everything white. You fall into a silence as you step carefully across the cabin.

You knew that from the moment you found him, that it would not be permanent. Just like the rains that fall from above now, this momentary storm in your life will too pass. You had not even wished for him to stay, initially. You recall that first night, sewing his wounds with fishing line, as your eyes stretched across his alien visage. You had told yourself that his presence would be temporary as a comfort then, now you tell it to ground yourself in reality.

Jace had become more friendly in the past few days. Conversation came easily to him and made the thought of him leaving that much harder. Now you were the one that deflated at the sound of his voice across the hall, the one that shrunk from revealing the parts of yourself that had not seen the light in years.

You are selfish. It is a quality that had always lurked behind your eyes, but had sharpened since your father’s death. It is a survival tactic. Every animal, even humans, wish to hold onto the things they hold dear. It does not matter if it is not much. Everything you have is in some way worth keeping–including Jace.

But you could not fight logic. His mother, his family–they had a higher claim to him than you did. You could not keep him like a bird with clipped wings. It is cruel to even think it. 

You scrub the dish in your hands until your hands feel raw and achy. The only light comes from behind you in the smoldering fireplace and the flash of light that illuminates the sky. You hear the clatter of the bowl from behind you as Jace finds his footing–the screech of the chair as it rubs harshly against the floor.

You feel his warmth as he comes to stand beside you. He reaches a hand into the soapy mess over the wood bucket and fetches your hand from the fray. 

“You have made yourself bleed,” he observes quietly, a finger stroking over the cuts. 

You feel your throat bob under the weight of his probing stare. You slip your hand away from his and turn your back to dip the bowl in the bucket of soapless water.

“Have I done something to upset you?” he murmurs. His words are echoed by a rumble of thunder in the distance.

You still your movements for just a second before continuing. Your cuts throb at the feeling of the cool water cleansing the blood from your hands. “No,” you reply simply.

“Then why have you been so quiet as of late?”

You drop the bowl onto the wood surface in front of you and turn, drying your hands with a near cloth. “I just haven’t had much to say, I suppose.”

Another flash of light. Rain as it beats ceaselessly against the metal roof. You face him, clenching the towel in your fist.

“Shall we remove your stitches?” It had been suggested a few days ago as the first thing he would do before departing, so he would not have to bother with finding someone to do it for him on the road. 

Jace looks like he might say something. Then he shakes his head. “On the bed?”

You nod. “That would be easiest.” 

You slip behind him as he moves toward the bedroom. On your way, you light the spill near the fireplace and bring it with you. Your eyes find his figure as it slinks through the darkness. He’s healed so much better than you had ever expected he might. He should not have survived his injuries—should not have been able to heal so quickly. You think the Gods must favor his survival much more than they favored the own laws they stipulated.

He slides off his doublet and lounges back into the bed. You let the flame on the end of the spill touch the end of the wick of the candlestick and the room is bathed in a soft glow. You suffocate the flame and put the spill onto the table next to the bed.

Jace watches you as you do this quietly. When your eyes move up to his face, you notice his eyes are lidded, the tips of his ears red. You feel a warmth catch hold of your skin at his gaze and you avert your eyes to his chest.

You begin your work in silence. You lift the knot of each stitch and easily slice through it with the sharp edge of your knife. At the end of your first removal, you are happy to see that the wound has faded to a pinkish stripe.

“Who taught you this?” 

You startle at the sound of his voice after several long minutes of silence. It is a deep baritone, rough around the edges. Its unexpected richness has you shifting in your place on the edge of the bed. A flash of white light from out the window bathes his face in color. 

“My father.” You do not elaborate further. You think it self explanatory. Your father taught you everything.

“Was he hurt often?” 

You cut another knot. “There are no maesters in the far reaches,” you tell him. A hint of bitter frustration lines your words. “I have assisted several people who have needed help in the village.”

“I did not know,” he replies softly, “that is quite kind of you.”

“We all share responsibility here, no one is without duty.” You put another piece of the fishing line to the side. “It is how things function when you do not have the entire Seven Kingdoms at your disposal.”

You notice Jace’s eyebrows furrow. His stomach tenses beneath your hand. “How did you…”

“It is obvious,” you say, “your voice, your cadence, the way you were dressed when I found you… you have no scars, no callouses. You did not offer your house’s name, so I can only assume—“

“Jacaerys Velaryon,” he says, “that is my name.”

You still. Your eyes dart to his, alarm filling your chest and stealing your breath. “Velaryon,” you echo, heart racing. “That is the name of…”

“Perhaps you know of Corlys Velaryon,” he offers, “the Sea Snake. He is my grandfather. Or Rhaenyra Targaryen, my mother—“

You stand, breathing panicked. “You must leave,” you say, “why did you stay so long? The realm… your mother… the Seven Kingdoms need you.”

Jace leans forward to grasp your arm. You allow him only because you fear you may topple over without the stability.

“I am of no use to them in this condition,” he scoffs. You notice a faraway look in his eyes. The same look he sometimes got when he stared upon the ocean or recalled stories of his father to you. “My dragon is dead, my body a wreck. There is nothing left of me for them to scavenge.”

“T-That is not true,” you stutter. “You must at least find out if they are safe. You have been healed for days… you could have left—“

“I stayed for you.” You fall silent at the sincerity in his voice. His hand drifts down the bare skin of your wrist to thread between your fingers. He cups your hand between his own.

“You cannot stay,” you tell him.

“It does not matter if I stay one more day. The realm will not fall today,” he replies, “we cannot travel in this ruinous weather, anyway.”

Your eyes drift to the window, where the wind throws its tears against the pane. You nod slowly and find your seat again.

You grasp the knife from where you sat it on the duvet. You slide the other to rest upon his warm stomach. His breaths quicken beneath your hand as you drag it up to the next wound.

“I almost killed you the day after I found you,” you whisper, “I thought it would be a mercy. The fact that you are here at all… alive, breathing. It is a gift from the Gods.”

He leans forward. “What stopped you?”

Your movements pause from where you had started to cut away another knot. “You did.”

His throat bobs. His hand moves from where it clutches the sheets to where your hand rests upon his sternum. He strokes the skin of your hand gently.

You lean forward without realizing what you are doing. He does not allow you to back away. He brings his other hand to the nape of your neck and leans forward to seal your lips with his.

The kiss is languid. His tongue probes the seal of your lips and you allow it to slip inside. You bring your hand up to cup his jaw and he drags the hand cupping your neck to your hair. You let out a soft moan against his lips and he responds to the noise by pulling you forward onto his chest.

You do not lean your weight onto him in fear of hurting him, but you feel his hands crawl to settle upon your heaving ribs. You gently settle your lower half onto his hips, settling your hand down on a part of his chest that had no injuries.

You and Jace continue to kiss for what feels like hours. It is exhilarating. It feels like flying. Your stomach feels warm and fluttery, and your lips are throbbing.

You shift your hips and Jace lets out a groan. You pull away from the kiss, concerned. His hand moves to grab the flesh of your hip, sliding you back some. There is a hardness beneath you that makes a pleasant chill slide down your spine.

“Are you alright, Jace?” 

“Unless you wish for us to have sex,” he grumbles, “you should move off my hips.”

You swallow thickly at the insinuation. Sex. A novel thing. A thing that should be saved for marriage. But marriage seems so far from your mind now, drifting away like a current.

“And what do you wish for us to do?” you murmur. You slide forward an inch and he throws his head back onto the pillows. His chest heaves.

“You know what I wish,” he groans. “Is it not obvious?”

You lean forward so that your lips barely brush his own. “Then take it.”

Sunlight streams through the window ahead of you, branding the side of your face with heat, and your eyelids flutter against the intrusion. You fist your fingers in the sheets and twist your legs close to your body. As you shift, you feel an arm pulling you backwards.

You grasp the hand splayed across your stomach between your trembling fingers.

“Stay,” he murmurs against the shell of your ear. Tears bead in your eyes, but you keep them at bay.

Your thumb finds the pulse that thrums beneath his skin and you count his heart beats. The Gods are cruel, you think. They had kept Jace here long enough for you to miss him when he leaves.

You turn your body over to face him. You are not surprised to see him already staring back at you. His dark curls are a mess on the pillow beneath him. His lips pull upwards at the corners, but do not reach his eyes. He brings his hand up to stroke your cheek.

Your chin wobbles and he blinks away a frown.

“It will not be forever,” he tells you softly, reverently,

“I will return to you one day.”

You bring a hand up to wipe away the stubborn tears. “I suppose you do not know when that will be.”

He leans forward to give you a kiss and you know that is the only way he can possibly tell you no. 

Pulling away from the kiss feels like saying good-bye.

You stay in bed as he stands, sluggishly dressing himself as if he was still looking for reasons not to leave. You do not think he finds one. He turns his head to look back at you and his expression falters. 

A small smile curls at your lips as you mouth the word—go.

He heeds your instruction and leaves your cabin with a satchel of roasted fish, a map to the nearest town, and a bracelet strung with seashells.

ONE YEAR LATER…

The nets are full this morrow. The tide ebbs and flows, slinking across the silver sands. Birds let out cries of rejoice overhead for the plentiful bounty gifted by the sea. 

You bend the knee to heave the first net out of the water. You clutch your chest protectively as you search through the things with the other hand. 

“Hm,” you murmur, “a rainbow shell.” 

You bring the shell up to the light and small reflections bounce across your vision. Tucking it into your satchel, you search some more. A piece of metal, two scraps of fabric, and a clam.

You pocket the metal and one of the ratty pieces of fabric, but allow the clam to slide back under the tide. You bring your dry hand to rest upon the head of the babe swaddled against your breast.

“Shh,” you whisper to him as he begins to stir. “It is alright, my prince.”

He brings his head up slowly to peer at you. A splatter of sea foam settles on the side of his face, but he does not seem to mind. He gives you a gummy smile and you return it lovingly.

He watches with bleary eyes as you sort through the next net of things. You show him each individual item as you retrieve it. Your heart skips when you feel a familiar shape and weight in the palm of your hand.

“A conch shell,” you inform him with a giddy grin, “these sell for several silvers at the market.”

He stares at the shell with wide eyes. The pattern, a dark brown and white mottling, you think, must confuse or enrapture him by the way he looks at it.

The small of your back has begun to hurt. You straighten up and lift a supportive hand to rest underneath the baby’s bum.

“This will be enough for today,” you decide. “The sea has gifted us more than we need.”

The little boy smacks his lips as if agreeing with the statement. You nod and carry your satchel and the boy up the familiar path to the cabin.

However, your footsteps slow as you grow closer until you stop right before the door. Something is not right. You protectively cradle the back of your son’s head as you touch a hand to the door.

It pushes open with little resistance. You slide the knife you kept on you at all times to your hand in one swift movement as you step inside.

You take not but two steps beyond the threshold before you freeze. The knife clatters to the ground and a gasp shudders from your lips at the sight in front of you.

He stands across from you like he never left. He’s dressed in black gilded leathers, his body a tad leaner and steadier. His face looks older, more mature and shaped by circumstance, just as you imagine yours must too. His mop of dark hair curls around his ears, longer than when you saw him last.

His lips with awe. He stares at you and your face as if trying to map something with his mind. 

“Jace,” you say breathlessly. “How…”

“I saw you by the shore as I rode in from town,” he murmurs, taking a hesitant step forward. He lets out a soft laugh that sends your stomach aflutter. “I thought I might surprise you. I guess I am lucky to not have received a knife in my throat.”

Your throat bobs. Mistiness clouds your vision. “You came back for us.”

“For us?” Jace echoes, eyebrows furrowed. He comes so close he can reach out to you with his arm and you know that he has seen him then, by the shock that melts his features.

The boy turns his head to the best of his ability in your swaddle, his eyes searching for the unfamiliar voice. Jace’s mouth comes nearly unhinged, a trembling hand lifting as if to stroke his head, but it falls short.

He forces his eyes to look at you. “He… he’s mine?”

You bite your lip to suppress your smile as you nod. You reach around your neck with one arm while the other supports the baby’s bum. You unravel the swaddle easily, and the chubby baby flails his arms with relief. Never one to like a cage.

You outstretch him toward Jace and he takes him eagerly. He holds him with practiced ease. He supports the baby’s head and bum as he gazes down at him, tracing his forehead to the slope of his nose to the flutter of his lashes with only his eyes.

Jace finally breaks away from the baby long enough to look up at you. “And I just… I just left you. You and my son.”

Your heart skips a beat at the name. Son. You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning like a fool.

“You had to,” you say, stepping forward to lay a gentle hand upon his upper arm. “Your family needed you.”

He clenches his jaw. “Nothing we did… nothing we accomplished… equals this.”

He strokes a featherlight touch against the boy’s cheek and he wrinkles his nose.

“Will you…” you pause. You try to steel yourself for the rejection that may very well follow, hands clammy by your sides. “Will you be staying long?”

Jace’s eyes rush to meet yours. He steps forward. The baby whimpers in his arms at the movement. 

“I would stay forever if you would have me.”

You feel your heart skip a beat. “What? What of the throne? Of your family?”

He shakes his head. Your stomach drops.

“My brother Aegon will be the next ruler. Wed to his cousin.”

“And you?”

His dark eyes soften as they consider this question carefully. He clutches the lost prince to his chest protectively.

“I am right where I want to be.”