#bnfic

The Dornish lady could not help thinking looking down at the courtyard where Daeron and Aerion trained with the maester in arms that Maekar's father had been more than generous to have given them Summerhall as their seat. Be they the son of a simple farmer or the son of the king of all Westeros, fourth sons were never expected to inherit much of anything.

It was not near as impressive as Dragonstone with its grand towers carved in the shape of the sigil of their house that spiraled up into the gray sky. Dark cavernous halls and gargoyles that watched one's every move, guarding the stone walls of the castle that the Targaryens had erected when they had first landed upon the rocky outcrop within Blackwater Bay that the castle sat upon all those centuries ago.  

The honor and the privilege to call the ancestral seat of House Targaryen home belonged to the present Prince of Dragonstone, her husband's eldest brother and King Daeron’s heir. However, Summerhall, which had once been a summer palace and pleasure castle for Maekar’s family would’ve been a most generous seat for a second son much less a fourth. If she were honest, and she had always liked to think herself so, the lady of the noble and ancient House Dayne of Starfall truthfully preferred the summer palace with its stone walls carved from marble and sandstone to the dreary old ancient seat of her husband's house.       

They wouldn’t have had this on Dragonstone where storms battered the rocky landscape. A thick fog enveloping the island, choking out the sun’s brilliance. Swallowing everything in sight in a blanket of gray mist. 

Or in Kings Landing where one would be swallowed up by the depravity of the capital. The  swarm of smallfolk in Flea Bottom trading flesh for a mere loaf of bread, nobles at court who plotted and schemed in their jockey for power, and merchants peddling their wares to beggars and lords alike, turned the city into a putrid swamp that one could not breathe in without inhaling its foulness. Choking upon its rotten core. 

Here they could breathe. They had some peace to themselves. 

“You should be resting.” Her husband said, pulling her from the Dornish lady from her ruminations as he crept from out the shadows to join her upon the rapports above the training yard. He must have been watching her for some time, for she had not heard his footsteps in the hall leading to the balcony. 

For a man who had more than earned the title of The Anvil upon the battlefield, he could go quite unnoticed when he wished. 

His tone had been gruff and that ever present furrow made the scars upon his face more prominent. He is one of his moods I suppose, she thought. He looks so very severe. 

She tried smiling at him, but he did not return it. Maekar was not a man prone to smiling even in her company, though she supposed that as of late he had every reason to not.

I will fetch it for you, your grace. Let me my lady, you mustn’t exert yourself. It is very cold out princess. Perhaps we might enjoy a game of cyvasse by the fire instead… She had heard these suggestions and kindly offerings or some variation of them from her handmaids, her ladies, the maester even these past seven moons too many times to count. The gods only knew how many times Maekar himself had leered and stalked after her whenever she had made it so far as the gardens. Much as he did now. 

They acted as if she were going to march down to Dorne on foot instead of taking a simple turn about the castle's yard. Was it so very wrong that she wanted a bit of fresh air? To feel the warmth of the sun on her face and not of the low blaze of the fire that was kept lit from dawn to dusk within their chambers. 

“I hardly think watching your son's train is much exertion, my prince.” She said, turning back to face the two young princes as Aerion took a swing at his brother. “They do quite well when they are not being glared at.”

The accusation in her words he ignored as he shifted his focus away from her down towards the boys. “Are they not your sons too my lady?” Hers, she thought, though they did not look much like they had come from her. 

Framing a long fair in waves, Daeron’s hair was not entirely Targaryen, but it was more so than the dark hair of his uncles Baelor and Rhaegar and his eyes were entirely his fathers. Aerion was a copy of the man standing at her side. Aemon hadn’t inherited much of his fathers constitution or appetite for swordplay, but he could not tan no matter how long while he read at her feet as she and Daella embroidered in the gardens. 

His eyes were akin to Daeron’s and the silver of his white head gleamed under the sun's rays the same as Maekar's and Aerion’s. Daella shared her eldest brother's wavy sandy blonde not quite Targaryen locks; a light dusting of freckles scattered upon a round face was all the maker that she had left behind that spoke of her maternal lineage, but all the rest was as Targaryen as her brothers. 

Little Aegon was barely two name days, still very much capable of growing, but his silvery blonde locks that were an identical shade to Aerion’s and Aemon’s when they were his age, had yet to darken and she doubted they ever would. The babe that she had left fast asleep in her cot watched over by her wet nurse in the nursery with her youngest elder brother. Her features were yet to fully take shape. 

Tiny and pale. Smaller than Aegon who had fit the length of her husband’s forearm when he was a babe, but their littlest dragon was strong and healthy. She might yet inherit her dark mane or her eyes, the beauty mark above her full lips that Maekar liked to place the most tender of kisses upon when it was just them and the moon above, but she was indistinguishable from the rest of their babes. 

With pale eyes and paler locks that spoke of their Valyrian heritage. The blood of the dragon, strong as ever, with little of the lithe agility, the willowy frame, and sharp prominent angular face of House Dayne from her father or the soft midnight coils, the sable skin, and all knowing dark brown eyes she had inherited from her mother the daughter of a wealthy Greenblood merchant.

They were mostly Dornish after all. Maekar's mother had been of House Martell though one would never think it so. The Dornish lady herself would not have thought she had borne her babes if she hadn’t the scars of her own lacing in delicate strips across her hips, her thighs and her stomach to prove it. 

“Don’t leave me,” she had begged between each shaky breath that rushed out from chapped lips, clinging to his white hand as sweat curled the hair at her nape and pain wrecked through her body. 

He hadn’t. 

Not for any of their babes births. Even Daerons who had been born in the early days of their marriage when not many moons had passed since she had been plucked fresh from Dorne and dropped into the strange den of vipers, sycophants and men who thought they were more god than man that polluted his fathers court and they had barely known one another. The old maester and midwives who had attended to her had tried to get him to wait with his brothers and the king in the hall outside her chambers. 

Leave the princess to us your grace. The birthing bed is a woman’s battlefield, they had told him, but Maekar had stayed. Her hand clasped within his. Turning the already pale skin of the Targaryen prince bone white and drawing strength from the gruff man as she brought life into this realm of mortals. Her blood

“I believe the praise belongs to you when they have fought as they have. They are a credit to your house. To you.” Daeron looked up at her to meet her gaze. His eyes were downcast and tinged with red though he offered her a soft smile which had dropped when he had noticed his father standing at her side. Turning back his attention to his younger brother who had yet to notice their parent’s presence upon the rapports as Aerion took another swing at him, nearly knocking him off his feet, but he managed to keep his balance, only just. 

The poor boy. He needed rest, desperately so, but he was unlikely to get any of the kind. 

Daeron had been up since the hour of the wolf and she with him. Her hands combed through his sandy lock, sweeping back the wavy mane from his clammy forehead that rested upon her lap as she hummed lullabies she would sing to her boys when they had been babes, while Maester Melaquin administered his tonics and sleeping draughts.

It had not been a half hour past since the old maester had left that the boy had begged her to send for him and his vials of milk of the poppy and dreamwine. The tonic had not been strong enough to banish the that swarmed around his head. A request that was becoming all too common as of late and one which she was finding it harder to refuse as his visions only seemed to worsen with the passing moons.

Dragon dreams they called them. A gift from the Gods, if one could even call it that. Nightmares was a more apt word for. What else was she to call them when the boy clung to her skirts crying and babbling like a babe. His sandy mane swept across his clammy forehead which rested upon her lap. When Daeron had refused to rest his eyes and reenter the land of dreams lest whatever he had seen in those visions of his return to haunt him from the horror of his terrors. When he was granted so little respite from them in wake or sleep. How can the Gods above be so cruel to a boy? To give their boy that. To give any child that? 

You can not be at his beck and call for every phantom woe and anguish. He is far too old for you to coddle him like you do Aegon or the girls. Maekar would tell her, standing a sentry bathed in shadows and clothed in black robes in the doorframe of Daeron’s chambers as she tried to soothe their boy.

Perhaps he was right, but he was still her babe and at four ten he was too young for these terrors to plague him so. She could not leave him to scream himself horse waking up Aegon and the babe in the nursery, answering his screams with cries of their own while Aemon and Daella would stand in the hall pale and wide-eyed like a pair of kittens clinging to each other, before Daella would take her brother's little hand and usher him back to their beds. She could not force the boy to drink vial upon vial of dreamwine in exchange for a few dreamless hours of slumber. 

Aerion claimed that he had visions of his own, but whatever their second son had seen in these visions was not comparable to the sights of his brother. 

“This is not fighting.” Maeker said, breaking her from her own torments. It was not and she thanked the mother for that. She prayed to the gods that all her boys would never see a battlefield. That was one gift from the Gods that she would be grateful for.  

Daeron stumbled then. Losing his footing when Aerion took a swipe at his feet, finally knocking the sandy haired boy into the dirt he managed to make contact with his younger brother’s doublet in the next swing after pulling himself back upright. He missed, his swings wild and uncoordinated. 

She pulled the shawl tighter around herself as she felt a shiver run through her. She was not entirely sure if it was caused by the sight of the stumbling boy before her or her own lack of sleep and the still brisk morning air. In either case the dornish princess had hoped Maekar was still too preoccupied with watching their sons duel to take much notice of. 

He had noticed the pestering mother hen that he was. Like a hawk waiting to swoop down and envelope its prey at the first sign of weakness, he hadn’t missed the way she clutched at the thin wrap as he had shifted his attention back to glare down at her. 

“It’s fucking freezing. How long have you been out here?” Her husband's grimace deepened. His pale eyes scanned her person. Fully taking in how she had left from her chambers in a state of hurried underdress so as her maids could not find some other silly excuse to keep her cooped up staring at the tapestries castle's walls.  

“Not very long.” It was not exactly a lie. Not exactly the truth either. She had made the trek from the warmth of her chambers onto the balcony overlooking the castle's training yard as the sun peaked out over the orange horizon. That distant ball of yellow fire had now planted itself firmly above their heads in a sea of blue. 

She had been out here longer than she should have in her state. Her feet felt like icicles in her slippers. The wind stung her copper face, and her thin gown and shawl did little to keep the cold at bay, but she wouldn’t leave. If he thinks he can glare at me into submission he will have to try more than that, she mused to herself. He will have to drag me back from this balcony himself if he wishes for me to leave from here. Though that proved unlikely as his concern for her present comfort was thankfully rather short-lived. 

“Do not encourage him,” Maekaer hissed at her when she had clapped and shouted down a well done my love’s to both their boys. The maester-at-arms having finally taken notice of their audience and made them acknowledge their parent’s presence upon the balcony overlooking the yard with a low bow. 

Him. The Dornish lady did not need to be told which of their sons he had objected to her praise of. 

“Am I not allowed to congratulate my sons when they have fought valiantly," head held high as she fought to keep her tone airy as she returned her husband’s reminder. 

“Aerion fought valiantly,” her husband countered, making the distinction between their boys plain once more. “He lost his balance.” 

She need not have ever fought in a battle or competed in jousts and tourneys to know of her eldest limitations. Their boy was not a natural fighter, but Daeron did not deserve to be compared to Aerion who was zealous in his devotion within the training yard. The silver haired boy always seemed to put on a show of sorts when he knew that he had an audience watching him. Especially when said audience consisted of that of his father.

The duel resumed as Aerion took another swing at his brother. The steel blade Maeker had gifted him for his name day, gleaming and glittered in the sun's light. It was not Valyrian steel; the ancestral swords of House Targaryen had been haphazardly given to the bastards of his grandfather much to her husband's chagrin, but the blade was well made and had quickly become their second son's most prized possession. 

He certainly put it to good use.

Each strike and slash of Aerion's blade landed against the sigil upon Daeron’s shield. Their eldest son having lost all pretenses of attempting to fight, focused on defending himself from his younger brother’s attacks. 

Dogged they were, bordering—on merciless, especially for a boy his age. She thought Aerion too young to spend the remainder of the day when he was not being tutored by the maester, who he complained smelled of must and old shoes, with Summerhall’s master-at-arms in the training yard. It could wait until he was Daeron’s age or at least until whatever was inciting the rash wildness in his blood was tempered by a cooler head, but Maekar had thought he, unlike his elder brother, had shown much promise. 

“As I have told you, you make him nervous.” She hissed back at her husband as he scoffed at her.

“There will be plenty of distractions that will make the boy nervous upon the battlefield.” The bite of his words harkened back to all the times he had said something of a similar nature. 

Do you wish the boy to be defenseless? He is my heir. Even a prince must learn to defend himself, Maekar liked to accuse her of indulging and doting upon him to the point of neutering him when they got into their rows about Daeron’s future. As if the weight and expectations of the future Prince of Summerhall was wholly outside of her comprehension. 

He is a boy and he is your son before he is your heir, she wanted to remind him of that fact. 

She knew Maekaer did not push at him as he did to be cruel. He may be the anvil in battle, but he was not a cruel brute of a man by nature. Not when it came to her and the children. 

Not the man who would sit by the fire for hours until there were only embers left listening to Aemon recount his lessons with Maester Melaquin. Who would spar with Aerion after hearing disputes from the small folk and pouring over ledgers. Who would send their nursemaids away to bounce Aegon and the babe upon his lap. Who would not scold the children when they would grow entranced with his beard and reach up with their tiny fists to tug at it. Who let Daella decorate his silver strands with ribbons. Who hovered in the doorway of Daeron’s chambers during the worst of his terrors. Why half of Maester Malequins stores were sleeping draughts. Maekar would gladly lay down his life for any one of their children. Yet he was so very demanding, and of Daeron especially. 

A knight was not made by defeating his younger brother during sparring lessons in castle training yards. Her husband expected far too much from a boy who had not yet reached his sixteenth name day. No matter how much of a disappointment he thought Dearon was shaping out to be, he was still their boy. 

“He’s still young. He’ll learn Maekar,” she said simply instead, not wishing to provoke his ire further. 

“Not at this rate. The boy will only make a fool of this house and himself.” Maekar turned back to her then. He wore a frown that would be etched permanently into his silver brow if it deepened.

She wished to reach a hand and rub it away and banish it from her sight, but she banished the urge. Pulling the shawl tighter around her to give her hands something to do. “There are worse things that a man can be than a fool.” 

And what is a fool, she thought. A man who was unwilling to hack at another man until there was nothing left at him to send home to his mother. A scared green boy unwilling to meet the Stranger needlessly upon the battlefield before he had even reached his twentieth name day? A fool may still be honorable and there are many lords and knights less so, even among the great princes of the realm.

“You should be in your chambers by the fire where it’s warm and dry,” Maekar bit out in a low voice between grinding teeth, but the Dornish lady did not care if he ground them to dust in his mouth. 

“It is not wet outside your grace,” she replied, focusing her gaze back down to the yard. She could not bear the sight of him leering down at her or Daeron without feeling her anger boiling over. It was cruel she decided, the way he skirted around her concerns when it came to his unyielding expectations of their eldest to dismiss her so. Cruel and callous. 

“It is cold. You’ll catch a chill standing here.” It had been a short and temperate winter. Only had lasted for the duration of her pregnancy, but spring had not fully set in. Snow clung to the ground building up in low lying ditches and forming banks upon the castle walls and nearby riverbanks and cold lingered in the air, penetrating one’s bones. Causing teeth to chatter and chills run down one’s back if one lingered in it for too long and she had without being properly dressed in more than a robe and rather elegant slippers. Comfortable though not fit to trudge through the snow and ice that dotted the castle's landscape, but a moment more in the frigid late winter air watching their boys would certainly not kill her. 

“People do not die of a chill.”

“They do, especially in your condition.” Grinding his teeth as he spat out the last word. Her almost death, how he so liked to remind her of it. 

He hadn’t touched her since Rhae had been born. Not in the way she had wanted.

Rhea’s birth had not been an easy one as the rest of her babes. Daerons included, whom she had labored for two days and a night to bring into the world. Crying out for her mother to be for sent from Starfall during the worst of her pain. There was no mother waiting patiently awaiting the birth of a new grandchild some hundred leagues down south in a Dornish castle to send word to seven moons ago. There had been no one to hear her cries except the mother herself. 

Her face had lost its warm pallor and turned ashen as she had felt herself slip between the land of the living and that of the beyond. Drifting in and out of  consciousness while Maester Melaquin and the midwives worked to stop the blood pouring out from her womanhood. Maekar cursed and barked at him for what had seemed a small eternity. The old maesters efforts were rewarded as the bleeding had stopped sometime after the hour of the bat, the color had begun to return to her face, when a tiny squealing pink babe was placed in her arms. 

But that was life and that was her lot in. She had only been as close to death as all women are when they take to the birthing bed. She had survived it and given him another daughter. 

She did not admonish him when he had ridden off to war to fight in his fathers name and left her alone in a strange place with a newborn babe to care for. Men died on the battlefield and women in the birthing bed. If the mother was kind and the warrior was merciful they would both be spared from having to watch the other be claimed by the stranger before they could join each other in death. 

Her husband barely slept in her bed these days. The silver haired man kept to the lords chambers that he had not once had use for in the thirteen years since they had taken up residence at Summerhall. Even after the maester had proclaimed it perfectly safe to resume their martial activities, Maekar had not attempted to claim his husbandly rights. Bestowing her no more than the chaste brush of his lips upon the apple of her cheek at the dinner table in front of the children. Or later when the children had been by, his white battleworn hand would take her smaller one as he planted a kiss upon the back of it bidding her goodnight with before retiring to his chambers 

That was until he had come to her chambers last night. Hard and wanting at her back. Stay. He’ll fall back to sleep on his own. He whispered into her ear. Nipping at the brown lobe as calloused digits traveled the length of her legs. Up and up and up until they rested at the valley between her thighs. She felt her own arousal wet her inner thighs as his hand cupped her clothed womanhood.

Oh how she had missed the scratch of his neatly trimmed beard mouthing at her nape. Had missed the feel of his hands. Had missed the feel of him, grounding her. The hot pressing need of his want ensnaring her. Setting her passions aflame. 

How he had needed her in that very moment and she had in turn needed him, but she had left him to tend to Daeron. He had punished her for nearly leaving him with six children to raise on his for seven moons. He punished her now for choosing Daeron over him last night. 

She wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all and then she did. Descending into a fit of giggles like when Daella and Aegon chased each other around the gardens. Her husband with his thin mouth slightly agape and silver brows knitting together in irritation, stared down at her as if she had finally taken leave of her senses. 

“How very morose you are husband.” She said, trying and failing to hold back her laughter as she thought of something so dour, so very melancholic that it would shock even the grim Prince of Summerhall, wipe that self-righteous furry clean of his pale face and unmoor him. 

“Think of it now,” the princess began mirth brightening her dark gaze, “if I shall die from the cold as you so think I shall you may take another wife. Perhaps this time one of choosing.” That had done it. 

Maekar looked at her then as if she reached her brown hand out and up from under her shawl to strike him clear across the pale pocket-marked face that she had so maddeningly grown to adore. Not at all finding the humor in the jape, but no matter his shock, even he had to admit there was some amount of truth in it. 

They had certainly not been a love match. Not in the way of her parents, who had married in the wake of her grandsire's death. The new Lord of Starfall had gone against the wishes of a most beloved father not yet cold in his grave to take the woman he loved, only a mere merchant's daughter, to wife rather than keeping her as his paramour. 

She had often heard the bawdy jest and tall tales visiting lords Maekar would entertain for his father would exchange amongst themselves when they were too far into their cups to notice her or to care that a lady, a princess of the realm, was still in their company. For she was Dornish and had doubtlessly heard all manner of sin and perversions worse than whatever they could utter. In these jest spilled from tongues loosened by Arbor golds and Dornish strongwines they would say among other things that the first wife was for duty and the second for pleasure. 

They may not be as bold as her father to have gone after what they had truly wanted the first go around, but all men did want. One way or another, they would not be denied these wants. 

A prince was no different for he was still a man.

Her husband may very well want a wife who was of his own choosing. The lady of House Dayne couldn’t be entirely certain that Maekar had expressly picked her for a wife. She knew that their betrothal and subsequent marriage had been mostly his mothers and her aunts, one of the late queen’s ladies and closest companions, doing. Born of a want for shared blood and a want for something for the realm to look forward too. 

They called themselves one kingdom united under the dragon banner. A banner that held more symbolic value, recalling the days that had once been, than standing as any real threat these days. The Blackfyres and their rebellions had not yet been laid to rest on the Redgrass field, but they were at peace with Dorne at least. Yet old wounds festered. 

Scars did not fade so easily and past hurts real or imagined were not so soon forgotten. Two marriages between the royal houses of Targaryen and Martell did not rewrite centuries and thousands of years of bad blood for the high and low born alike of Westeros. A wedding, however, always made more than a worthy distraction. 

Her father had not seemed too surprised when he had received a letter from her aunt asking for her to join her at court more moons than she would like to admit to having passed. House Dayne was not the overly ambitious sort like the Fowlers and the Yronwoods or even the Ullers, but what house would turn down the chance to make their daughter a princess of the realm if offered?

They were not strangers, she could not say that. Before their betrothal she had been brought to court by her aunt on many occasions over the years, but she had only met the princes a handful of times and Maekar had spoken to her on less than that handful. 

When he had, he had always been gruff and stiff with her. Never exchanging more than a brusk though polite word or two. Never quite meeting her gaze as he exchanged these expected pleasantries. 

He had asked of her favorite flower once during these curt interchanges. She had obliged, informing him that it was the Evening Star that grew in the valleys surrounding Starfall. Maekar confessed while his cheeks turned the color of dragon in the Targaryen sigil that it was his as well. 

She hadn’t believed him. He had not even been able to look her in the eye as he had said it, but then the next day she had awakened to find evening stars filling the vases within her quarters in the Maidenvault and the surly Targaryen prince sported a small bundle of the flowers pinned to the lapel of his doublet as thundered through the halls of the Red Keep. 

No great production was made of their betrothal. Maekar never objected to her becoming his wife when it had been proposed to him and it had taken little on the queen’s part to convince the king of the merits of the match. With three elder brothers, all of whom were married and the eldest of which had children, sons of his own, it was unlikely that Maekar or now Daeron after him would ever inherit the throne forged by his ancestors. A well bred Dornish lady of minor though ancient and noble house was a more than adequate match for the Prince of Summerhall. And so Maekar had wed and bedded her with nothing more known about her than her favorite flower. 

But he has never strayed from my bed, she reminded herself. He never entertained the maids clad in dresses with plunging necklines that would linger a little too long as they poured him his wine. Never look twice at the wives of visiting lords who would laugh a little too loudly at nearly everything he said, whether truly amusing or not. His pale eyes searched until they met her dark gaze across the table. In Summerhall’s crowded great hall the slight raise of his silver brows seemingly at the shrill sound of their shrieks went unnoticed by all apart from the lady of House Dayne. 

During this godsforsaken self-imposed banishment from her bed he had put her through, the door between their chambers had remained unlocked. There were no silver haired pale eyed bastards left to rot in some dingy rat pit in Flea Bottom or running around the kitchens and stables of Summerhall and joining her children in their lessons. 

No servants nattering about what their fair prince had gotten up to last night while the poor princess slumbered alone in her bed had ever reached her ears. Only the sound of the door between them creeping open in the dead of night. The near silent padding of his footfalls upon the rug as he approached her bed followed by the feel of a worn thumb lightly stroking at the supple skin of her cheeks. The gentle press of a pair of chapped lips upon her dark brow when Maekar had thought she had finally been enraptured by her dreams. 

She stopped laughing. Full lips parted as she tilted her head up to meet her husband’s glower. An apology rested upon the tip of her tongue, but there was no need to. There would never be a need. 

Her husband stripped the fur-lined black cloak from his body to drape it around her shoulders. It was far too big for the petite Dornish lady, but it was warm and smelled of smoke and iron. Smelled of him.

“I do not want another fucking wife,” Maekar grumbled. As if that was not enough to keep the cold at bay his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her to him. Eliminating the distance that separated them as he tucked her dark head underneath his chin. Drawing warmth from his person as he took on her weight and banished the chill that wished to envelope her upon the solid plane of his chest. 

The back of his hands stroked down the sides of her arms until they stopped. Maekar reached one battle-scared hand up to pet the back of her head while its twin glided downward until it rested against the curve of her spine. Flattening and fanning out his palm against her back, traversing that curve. 

For a brief moment even the shouts of their boys as they traded barbs and the clash and clang of castle forged steel that resounded around the training yard below faded away as she closed her eyes and let Maekar enfold her in his embrace. Focusing upon the steady rhythm of his heart beneath her cheek. Thump. Thump. Thump. The heat of his hand through the thin layers of her gown and shawl. Feeling the weight of it as it moved up and down her back. Languidly. Tenderly. 

“This is no good my prince,” She said, smiling into his doublet. Her eyes still closed as she broke the small still that had fallen over them. The dornish lady felt him stiffening slightly beneath her at her words, but he did not stop his caresses down her back. “You are in danger of losing your reputation. The servants will see us standing here and think we are very foolish. They’ll be whispering about us around the castle come midday.”

“They will not dare. Not if they wish to keep their heads. You doubt me?” Maekar arched a silver brow down at her when she had begun to laugh at the idle threat. 

“Certainly not, my prince, although, all men, even princes, are allowed to be fools for the woman that they love.” 

“And I love you do I,” her husband asked. The brusque rasp in his voice had not departed, but he pulled his right hand from her back to cup her copper cheeks. Drawing circles and irregular patterns into the delicate skin beneath the calloused pad of his thumb. 

“You did not wish for me to perish from the cold, your grace,” she teased. This time, however, he rewarded her for the jape.

“I do not mind being a fool for you.” Maekar whispered, tipping her head back he leaned down to meet her half the way before his lips brushed against hers. At last she felt his smile upon her lips.

“No Aerion, you can not take my tile to move yours there,” came from an exasperated little voice to her right besides a well attended to fire that lit and warmed the family sitting rooms that they had at present settled in. Her pitch only grew more shrill with each syllable she uttered, making her daughter's distress known as she called for her assistance. “Mama he is cheating again.”          

“It is very ungallant for a prince to cheat in a game against his sister my love,” the Dornish lady said rather absentmindedly as her attentions were divided amongst her children. The bulk of this attention was at present occupied with trying to keep little Rhae perched on her knee from chewing at her braid.     

Her teeth were coming at last and as so had become common, the babe in her hold had grown bored with yanking and twisting at the dark woven strands clutched between her tiny fist. She brought that little fist of braided curls to her mouth, taking the tail of it between her red gums to gnaw at it. A small bundled poultice of herbs dipped in honey lay abandoned at her feet upon the ornamental rug in favor of her braid. Another bundle rested near her side at the ready, if she could tempt the babe away from using her hair as a replacement salve for her aching gums.

The Dornish ladies' dark gaze flickered up and away from the teething babe in her arms out into the hall lined with lit torches searching until it landed upon Maekar’s study across the way. The heavy oak doors that usually barred the chambers entrance had been kept open, allowing her to see the back of Maester Melaquin's gray head as he stood with his back facing the doorway while his liege, the silver-haired Prince of Summerhall, paced around the chamber. The two men spoke in hushed voices that she could not make out over the brabble and prattle of their children and the patter of rain battering against the window. 

Maekar caught her gaze as the corners of his mouth quirked upwards in a hint of a smile that softened the crease at his silvery blonde brow and the lines marring his pale face. She couldn't help returning it with her own soft smile. It was such a rare thing, how could she not when it was entirely for her and held veracious sincerity of his affections and without its usual sardonic derision that he gave others. 

Damn him, she thought. He had left her alone with his rambunctious brood of children. All the while he had sequestered himself in the quietude of his solar to deal with some princely matter that had arrived in the form of a letter bearing the hands seal from Kings Landing that just so happened to demand his urgent attention. 

And yet still, she couldn’t really fault him for it. Maekar had wanted Daeron and Aerion to sit in on the meeting with him.

They are old enough to sit and hear of the bloody mess their grandfather has gotten us into in the Reach, he had told her after a serving boy had interrupted their dinner to alert him of the raven that had brought his brother's letter. “Mayhaps they may even enlighten us with their own opinions and counsel me on the matter. Whatever they have to say certainly can’t be worse than whatever fucking council my father has received.”

Pointedly ignoring his foul language that had sent Daella and little Aegon who had been perched upon his fathers lap into a fit of giggles, the Dornish lady in all her infinite wisdom had reminded him that, “They have been listening to petitions with you all day my prince. Let your sons enjoy some respite.”

This childish bickering over a game of tiles could have been avoided had she never dared to give into the looks of, not dread, it wasn't so severe as that, but annoyance was made plain upon her boys faces at having been made to listen to the appeals and disputes of the small folk and the occasional knight. A task that even their father found dull as counting a flock of sheep. 

Had only Maekar not acquiesced to her glares while she viciously stabbed at the roasted quail upon her plate with a lipless smile and a, As you wish poppet.

Depositing a still giggling Aegon into her lap, her husband leaned down and over the boy's silver head, to brush his lips across hers earning a round of gags from the children before he pulled away. The Targaryen man sulked off to his solar as more trays of sweet meats, lamprey pie, and honeycakes were brought in by the servants. 

Had he only stayed and insisted upon the boy's presence this all could have been avoided. 

“I was not cheating,” replied the boy as she brought her gaze from her infuriating husband back to her children. “Daella does not know how to play the game.” 

A smirk stretched across Aerion’s pale face, failing to hide his amusement at sight of the perfectly timed tremble of his sister's bottom lip and the tears she tried to push from bone dry eyes. 

Something in the way of his grin bathed in half shadows from the low light given off the chamber’s fire made him look like his father when he was with his brothers. If Maekar was not a mangrown and was instead a boy of nine name days taking pleasure in childish mockery in a game of tiles against his sister. A sister who looked as if she was to will herself into tearless weeping and wailing at any moment if he insisted on continuing with his version of the game. 

Mother Above give her strength, she thought to herself as she adjusted little Rhae in her arms away from the other bundle of herbs that she had begun to take notice of and was reaching for with her tiny hands. 

If Daella began to cry the babe would follow and little Aegon doubtlessly after her.  

Maternal intuition told the Dornish lady to call in one of her maids now to take Rhae and Aegon to bed. Just as a precaution. Just in case the dam that kept Daella’s tears at bay were to burst and break and plunge the chamber into chaos. 

“No one plays the game as you do Aerion,” said Daeron adding his voice to the powder keg. He who had been so quietly who sat at the far end of the room. Lounging upon a settee he shared with Aemon who sat opposite of him and Aegon seated between them. 

The two older boys had been reading from a nature book that their uncle Prince Aerys had sent as a gift for Aemon a moon past. Pointing at the various floral and fauna of the Reach illustrated throughout the pages as they tried to get Aegon to repeat the names back to them with middling success. 

Now Daeron sat with a smirk that almost rivaled Aerion’s self-satisfied grin his enjoyment of the situation was certainly not helping to the diffuse the soon to implode berth between Aerion and Daella, but his mother wouldn’t fault him too much for partaking in the teasing. 

Daeron had been in much improved spirits this past moon. He had slept through the night without calling out for her or recounting what he would of his visions to both she and the maester before he downed whatever vile tonic was put into his hands. 

It pleased his father enough for the man to honor him with his presence in the training yard, dismissing the master-in-arms to spar with him. He had gotten enough of a reprieve from the onslaught of haunts that he had gotten real and proper rest. Enough real rest to properly train without losing his footing and falling into the dirt with a strike of Aerions blade or missing nearly every blow he attempted to land against his brother. Daeron would never be as adept as Aerion, but he kept much more at pace with the younger boy during their sparring lessons. 

His cheeks had color upon them having nearly lost their swallow tint that made him appear dull and weary. His sandy strands had a sheen to them that they had usually lacked; no longer hanging as a lank curtain that obscured half his face. One could see the smile that reached his eyes. Maekar's eyes. 

It was not the first time that his mind's terrors had seemingly vanished into the ether without abetment from Maester Melaquin’s ample stores of dreamwine and sleeping droughts. These vanishing acts lasting for a day or two at most, grew less and less in their comings as the visions worsened. It had been over a year ago the last time this vanishing act had occurred, lasting for a blissful sentnight, the longest yet till now…only for them to return with almost unhuman cry ripped from the back of Daeron’s throat in the dead of night, as if they had never left him.

They always returned with this same manner of violence that would leave them to find the boy curled up into a ball on the floor of his chambers shaking in a pool of sweat and sobs so loud that they would shake the castle as if a thunderclap had passed over Summerhall. 

The lady of House Dayne knew that it was silly and strange to think so, but the sudden brutal ferocity of it all seemed calculating of the dreams that had a life of their own and wished to make up for their absence by terrorizing him. Granted the thought was not strange of said prophetic dreams brought on by ancient blood magic of a civilization long gone, but strange nonetheless. Still, even knowing what waited for him after this small bit of respite, for forever how long it lasted, it was good to see him smile, to see him laughing. To see him behave as a boy his age ought to and live in that precise moment. 

“That’s because he cheats,” Daella cried. The cracks spread through the dam as a rogue tear slipped down her fair cheeks. She had snatched her tile from the board to clutch it to her chest between crossed arms. Refusing to give into Aerion's will and relinquish the game piece. “He always cheats.”

“Then forfeit the game,” Aerion said, his grin that now spread from ear to ear as he held out his hand for his sister to yield her gamepiece to him. 

“I will not!”

“Sweetling, perhaps you can ask Daeron to play a game of dice with you,” the Dornish lady said, adjusting the babe in her hold, trying to find reason among her children and set an end to this quarreling, but both Daeron and Daella looked less than pleased at the suggestion. 

“We played a game earlier and said he would not play with me any more; and he cheats too when he wishes for the game to end. They all cheat.” Daella lamented with an anguished whine while Daeron, unlike his brother, had the good sense to look sheepish at his sister's accusation. Turning his attention back to Aemon and the openfaced book between them which had both thankfully kept Aegon distracted from joining his siblings in their petty squabbles.

“Then ask Aegon to play with you,” Aerion sneered. “You can not win a game against me or Daeron, but you should be able to defeat a baby!” Aegon's small protest at being referred to as a baby was drowned out by the taunts of his older brother and the shrillness of his sister's next words. 

“I would rather play with a baby than you. At least Egg is not a dishonorable cheat as you are!” A crack of thunder chose that moment to ring out from the heavens. A blessing from the mother for it had frightened the pair enough to stop whatever affronts and jibes that were next to hurl at each other.

It had been a moon of this. The sun had not shown itself for the better part of that moon hiding behind as late winter storms swept across the Stormlands. Bringing with them sleet that pelted against the castle's stone walls and galewinds that shook the windowpanes. Hail pounding against the roof in odd intervals and rain that came down upon them in thick blankets. Summerhall and its surrounding lands had become a gray bog of mist and rain. 

It hadn’t changed much of life around Summerhall. The people of the Stormlands were a hearty lot who had weathered a thousand such storms for several millennia and would weather a thousand more through another millenia, but the children, forced to remain within the warm and dry halls of the castle, had become restless. 

Namely Aerion and Daella had become rather restless. 

Daeron was content enough to entertain himself by listening to Aegon’s babbles and Aemon’s ramblings on whatever course of study occupied his present interest. Aegon in turn was happy enough to toddle after his brothers and follow them into their adventures and mischief making. Aemon would not venture further past Summerhalls rookery or the greenhouse to gather herbs with Maester Melaquin unless she forced the pallid boy to get some fresh air and some sun upon him. 

Sweet little Rhea was happiest of them all, so long as she was within her parents arms. Too young yet to care about something as trivial and meaningless as poor weather, but Aerion and Daella were another matter.

Aerion was happiest when he was out trapping around Summerhall. Give the boy the open woods a day or two in them, with his horse, his father, and a handful of guards hunting and hawking and the boy would come back as content as Daeron after a mercifully dreamless night. Even a simple fishing rod and some bait would put a grin born of pure unadulterated glee upon the boy's face as he showed her what he had caught in the shallow lakes surrounding Summerhall. Holding up a net full of trout or carp proud above his silver head for her to marvel at when she called to him to return as the setting sun kissed the day goodbye, the moon rose in its place, and the twinkle of distant stars dotted the dark sky.

As for Daella, the sandy-haired girl liked to wander round the marshes and grasslands that bordered the castle. With a rogue thistle or branch carried by the wind planted themselves in wavy locs and a hemline caked in dirt and stained green from their trek through these marshland, she plucked bulbs of lavender, ladylace, and whatever other wildflowers that happened to catch her gaze from their earth beds.

For she had insisted that the flowers which grew in the gardens could not compare to the untamed beauty of a wildflower. She’d then spend hours under the shade of some great oak, weaving the bulbs into flower crowns before requesting that her maids and attendants adorn her sandy braids with their vibrant bloom. On occasion the young princess would run to her mothers chambers to bestow the honor upon her. Harvest in hand, she would solicit the older woman to braid her hair in the Dornish fashion.

“You do it best mama,” she would say. A sweet smile adoring her little freckled face that the Dornish lady could only lightly scold her for leaving a trail of dirt and mud upon the castle's stone floors in her haste to reach her. 

They were creatures of nature with a zeal for life and its great passions and adventures. 

Dragons, loathe as she was to admit it, that is what she had given birth to. Hatchlings still, but dragons nonetheless. Wild, restless, and untamed in the best of times much less when they could not roam and hunt and explore as befitted their nature. 

Now instead of the wild open wilderness, or what passed for it around Summerhall, they had only themselves for their dominion had narrowed down to white stonewalls and the expansive grand halls of the palace and what action and adventure that could be found within it. And in this lack her children turned to each other for entertainment as they roped each other in merrymaking and gameplay.

Only their playmates, the other children, had grown weary of these games for both Aerion and Daella made rather poor playmates. The former preferred to make up his own rules for the game at hand did not play fair, while the latter was unaware of the rules of the game in their entirety unless it was not a game of monsters and maidens where the rules were simple and plain and Daella could dictate her brothers roles being the only naturally being the only fair maiden available. And thus did their games quickly descend into accusations of trickery and foul play, real or imagined, as so was presently occurring—had thunder not roared down from the heavens. 

Now Daella’s agitated cries had ended with a yelp in her fright. Her small hand shot out from across the small table, were sat there at present the forgotten game, to grab a hold of Aerion’s open palm. The tile she had held tight to her chest to clatter on the gameboard as the thunder rolled overhead. 

A most sweet mistake and a most inopportune moment to forget their game, at least for Daella. For Aerion had recovered from the deafening roar much faster than his sister. That is he had recovered much faster than Daella if he had ever been frightened at all. 

Using the cover of the thunderclap to pick up one of his red tiles and her abandoned black one from the board, placing his tile upon the spot which had held Daella’s while grasping the other between his thumb and forefinger.  

“Your move.” Aerion smiled as he held his triumph Daella’s black tile in front of face. The dam finally cracked in two and crumbled as she snatched her hand away from his grasp bursting into tears. 

“Aerion,” exclaimed the Dornish lady glaring at her second son as she adjusted a now crying Rhae in her hold to accommodate a ruby cheeked babbling Aegon. The babe having toddled over from the chaise abandoning Aemon who had tried to comfort him for a motherly embrace. 

Her maids had at last decided then to make themselves known. Standing in the doorway like pale wraiths drawn in by the wails and cries of the children. She dismissed them with a wave of her brown hand. It was far too late for them to take the babes away to bed now.

“I did not cheat,” Aerion insisted, his grin holding. Not one bit deterred by her glower or remorseful to have reduced his sisters and baby brother to tears.“It was only a fair play mother.” 

“I pray that you will not play this way with our dear cousins when we are in Kings Landing” Daeron said, closing his eyes as he brought a hand up to his temples to rub away the growing headache that she felt coming on himself.

“Why? Will they be as incapable of playing a game of tiles as Daella?”

“Aerion!” 

“You can not treat our cousins as you do me. Especially not Valarr.” Daella said between wails, holding her little chin in the air and her sandy head high, took comfort in the surety of her own words and added, “He is your better.”

“Better than a mule or a dog perhaps, but not a dragon.”

“Aerion!” 

“A dragon that can not hatch an egg,” said Daeron, lifting his head to motion towards the fire where five of the six dragon eggs that belonged to her children had been placed upon the burning coals. “What a pity that is.”

Rather surprisingly, Aerion did not have a retort for his brothers, not one in which she could understand. That glint of mirth had left from the boy's eyes and the smile upon his lips had faded as he fixed his pale gaze upon his elder brother with a scowl, muttering something in High Valyrian from what his mother could make out.

Damn Maekar, the Dornish lady thought for the second time that evening. Damn him. Damn his house. Damn Valyria, and their customs and rituals, and damn him again for wanting to uphold them. 

They are the blood of the dragon, he’d tell her. Over and over and over till her head hurt from hearing it. It was little wonder where Aerion got his ideals from.

They had to live up to that expectation. That legacy. Dragons and conquest by fire and blood. The last of the dragonlords though they only had clutches of dragon eggs that might as well have been rocks, the skulls of long dead dragons lining halls of the Red Keep, a string of mad kings, and a near dead language to show for it. 

The Dornish lady could not speak a word of it herself. Her late mother had never seen the use in instructing her septa, horrid woman that she was, to teach her even knowing where the ambitions of her husband and his house lied. A daughter of the Greenblood, the lady who had married into House Dayne had been too proud, too Dornish, to allow her only daughter to speak in the ancient tongue of enslavers. Why should she be forced to do so when she had been forbidden by her own husband at the behest of his brother and sister to teach her the language of her people? 

By the time said daughter had been promised to Maekar and had been whisked away to Kings Landing, it was too late to undertake such a course of study, doubtlessly as her mother had intended.  

Her prince had not cared much that she could neither speak nor understand the language of his ancestors. He himself understood it better than he could speak it, but their children, his children, he had been so insistent upon it. The children took great advantage of their tuition when they wished to say something that they did not want her to know of as Aerion so now did. 

Her patience worn thin as a needle, she had grown sick of it.

“Aerion, must I interrupt your father and call him in here to deal with you,” she let out with a low breath, not wanting to disturb the babes who had finally stopped their cries and settled in her arms. Rhae once again chewed at her braid and Aegon was on the verge of sleep. His big eyes blinked slowly, silver head bobbing up and down, trying and failing to fight off the pull of dreamland. 

The threat of his father, the weight of Maekar’s disappointment. It was the only thing that seemed to keep Aerion in line most days. He had never been a bad child, but he was not an easy one either. 

He was willful and wild and demanding. He craved attention. He had since he was a little babe barely older than Aegon and would crawl into her lap and he refused to share her attention with Daeron. She had to stop him from pushing his brother away when he came toddling after her. 

It was in his nature what drove him. It wasn't born out of malice. Just another need for attention; she had to believe it so then when Aerion, turning from Daeron, looked her dead in the eye, speaking in the common tongue and said, “Father should have been firstborn. He should be king after my grandsire departs from this realm. My uncle and his sons are no dragons.” 

The room fell as silent as a tomb. Only the crackle of the fire and Rhae’s little babbles filled in the void where once had been much chatter. The weight of Aegon's head upon her shoulder, a very real tether to her present consciousness that she had not conjured up or imagined. Nor had she imagined Aerion’s words. 

Thunder roared above their head, but it was the boy's words that were a storm of treason, and parricide, and manner of seditious thoughts and deeds waiting to happen.

If the wrong person were to hear him speak such things. If someone had in fact heard him speak such a thing— 

Her black eyes flitted back down the thankfully empty hall towards Maekar's solar, hoping to catch his gaze once more, but her husband was still deep in conversation with Maester Melaquin. His back to her, stiff and hunched over as he faced out towards the murky dark of the night framed by the large window besides his desk. 

She could practically see the furrow upon his silver brow at whatever news his brother had brought him. Could almost hear his snarl at her ear if he had heard Aerion. 

He had not said so, he barely showed it, but the Dornish lady knew that he had been relieved that Rhae had been a daughter and not another son, by that little smile he had tried to hide when the midwife had placed the red squealing babe in his arms. His father had been glad of it too. Only he had not hid his gladness had graced them with his presence at Summerhall half a year past to meet his latest grandchild. 

“Tis a blessing that your wife has given us another princess of the realm rather than a dragon,” the old king had said softly to her husband as he rocked the babe around her chambers. Those days had passed by in hazy blur, gentle as the powder of fresh snow upon the ground. Still too weak yet to leave from her bed without her ladies or Maekar hovering over her, but she had not forgotten his words. 

A man without sons is a man without a legacy, but a man with too many sons, a king with too many sons, was a man who had sired a rebellion in his breeches. 

The Good King Daeron had sired four of them. 

Four boys, four dragons, and four claims.

Four too many sons and four too many claims. 

There was Prince Baelor, the heir to the Iron Throne and his boys. His eldest son and heir, Valarr, the Young Prince was set to be married by the year's end. The bride was a foreign girl from Tyrosh. The king seemed impressed enough with the Young Prince's choice in bride not to contest the match.

There had been some minor grumbling and harking from a lord or two who thought too highly of themselves, their houses, and their daughters. There always was when it came to these matters, much less when it involved a foreign bride. But none of these lords, no one who held the ear of the king, or his hand, had said a word against the girl and the impending royal nuptials. No one except for Maekar.

This foreign girl from half the world away had accompanied her betrothed with the rest of the king's party for that same brief jaunt they had spent at Summerhall following Rhae’s birth. 

“She is very foreign,” her husband had said to his elder brother when the tyroshi girl had gone off with the rest of the children. 

To this, Prince Baelor had simply smiled at the younger man and said, “And our mother was very Dornish, as is your lovely lady wife.”

Maekar snickered and replied in kind, “Dorne is not Essos.” Gifting his brother with his own thin smile, only one that did not quite touch his pale eyes. 

Nothing else was said between the two princes on the matter and when Maekar grumbled to her after they had retired to the privacy of their chambers, she said nothing. Baelor had been right of course, but she would not say so. It was not her place to side against Maekar, even in private, on such matters, but what did he really care if the girl was foreign? 

Dorne was not Essos, but it did not matter that Dorne was a kingdom of the realm the same as the Stormlands or the Reach. To be Dornish was to be as good as foreign in the eyes of many of the fine lords and ladies of the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. 

The Targaryens were not above this way of thinking. Closer to Gods than man, they viewed the people of Westeros, noble and common alike, like one would a dog that needed to be kept in. However, the Dornish were no more than a pesky weed. A weed which had for nearly two hundred years after the conquest still refused to submit to their anointed and ordained rule. 

Maekar’s grandsire had despised Dorne and her unruly people. He had not cared for his grandson's mother, he had not even cared for his son's heir, his own flesh and blood, and he had not cared for her. 

Oh he had been courteous enough, kind even, when she had been a girl of eight namedays and her lady aunt and the Maekar’s mother the princess had sent for her from Starfall to Kings Landing, the first and the last time she had met the unworthy king. 

For that fortnight she had been in residence in the Red Keep, he had liked to keep her underfoot. Petting and preening over her as if she were a little doll. He perched her upon his knee while he held council meetings. Sat her at his side at feasts, and fed her from his own overfilled plate. Let her take sips of wine from his chalice. He even goaded her into repeating her words for him; for he had found her Dornish lit to be amusing and pleasing to his ear. 

Perhaps if she had been a bit older she would have seen it for what it was sooner than when in front of the entirety of his court he had laughed from the depths of his great fat belly and said to her goodfather, "She is a pretty little thing—for a Dornish girl. She would do well enough for Baelor. No doubt more black-haired whelps will spring out from the dusky little place between her legs and infest Dragonstone soon enough—The same as they have from that Martell witch you call wife. Or mayhaps, you will give her to Aerys or Maekar and she’ll, ha, she’ll pollute the whole fucking line with mongrels and half-breds.”

She did not feel terribly sorry after that when the king demanded his grandson refill his nearly empty cup and Maekar had slipped and accidentally spilled the entire flagon of Arbor red upon his grandsire's lap. A mishap which his father, the then Prince of Dragonstone, had not quite seen fit to punish him for, much to the late king's annoyance. 

Maekar didn’t hold his grandsires opinions, he hadn’t cared that she was Dornish, had told her that those lords and ladies that visited Summerhall and would practically grovel at his feet while ignoring her were, fucking half-witted sycophants, and to, Fuck the lot of them.

And yet, in that moment, to that pink-haired foreign girl, he had acted little better than his late grandsire and those very lords he would sneer down at when they would so much as hint at a betrothal between one of their insipid daughters to Daeron or Aerion.

As the latter so wished, a part of her wondered if Maekar had hoped for the same. That he had aimed for a match between Valarr and their Daella. Perhaps that had been his true objection to the girl and not her foreignness. 

For a house that so prized keeping their bloodline pure, to the point that a marriage between brother and sister had become so commonplace that it had become expected, some would say that the match would have been the natural order of things.

 It was certainly preferable to that of a union between Daella and Daeron or Aerion, or gods forbid little Aegon, in the eyes of their mother. The thought alone of that beastly union turned the Dornish lady’s blood cold. She had tried asking him that was his plan now, but he always had a way of evading giving her an answer. 

If they were more of age with each other and the king had not wished to see his heirs heir married off, Maekar would have gotten his wish, but his nephew was enthralled by his intended and would have no other but the foreign girl from across the narrow sea. 

A sweet, pretty thing she was. Polite if not a bit shy. The Dornish lady had been told that the Tyroshi girl's mother had given her father, the archon of Tyrosh, seven living children, five of whom were sons. She would no doubt prove as fertile as her mother. Only a matter of time before the Tyroshi girl gave the Young Prince sons of his own.

More princes. More dragons. More claims. 

Then there was Aerys. He and his wife, the pious and aloof Lady Aelinor of House Penrose, had not been blessed with children, but they had yet to reach five and thirty. They were still young enough—if only the prince was to take as much interest in his lady wife as he did in his combing through ancient tombs looking for wisdom in the words of dead men, the mother might yet favor them. 

Prince Rhaegal was of a rather feeble and fragile nature, but his wife had borne him a son, the Prince Aelor. The boy was barely older than Aegon, though he had shown some manner of aptitude that was not present in his sire. 

Maekar was last. Her husband, a fourth son. The spare, of a spare, of a spare, with four sons of his own now. She had given him four hale and hearty boys. Two upon the edge of manhood. 

The pitter patter of her children’s footfalls, the shrieks of laughter, and even that of their rows that reigned out around Summerhall breathing life into the sandstone castle, would be replaced by that of her grandchildren sooner than the Dornish lady would like to think on. 

There would be more princes. More dragons. More claims.

The king had drilled it in his sons' heads that they were brothers and brothers must love and protect one another, and they had taken his words to heart, but a king was still a man, and a man would not live forever. 

What would happen when he died? What would happen when Maekar and Baelor and their brothers died. When all that was left was the distant bound of kinship rather than brotherhood.

Suppose Aerion were to make his sentiments known and some ambitious lord would take to whispering in his ear, or Daeron’s, or even the ruby cheeked babe that had climbed into her lap to cling to her. Stoking the flames of their own ambitions. 

Look at him, Valarr is no dragon. You are of old Valyria. You are the blood of the dragon born in man's flesh. He is not fit to sit upon your ancestors throne. Those treasonous words would become deeds and acts and those deeds and acts would become a rebellion. It had happened before. It could happen again.

Of course, even a common man needed an heir and a spare or two for good measure, much more so the Prince of Summerhall. 

The king would not deprive him of Daeron or Aerion, his heir and his spare, nor little Aegon. The boy was barely more than a babe and perhaps out of his own sentiment for Maekar or the fact that he had recognized that a fourth son was unlikely to part with his fourth son, he would not ask that of him. 

His father was not a merciless man. He wouldn't be capable of depriving his own son, even if he were as vile and vicious as Maegor The Cruel, but the king was a practical man. One only needed so many sons, so many spares lying about. House Targaryen needed a culling, and that culling had to come from somewhere

A third son, a third son of a fourth son, quiet and bookish by nature, was not needed. At least not needed in residence at Summerhall according to her goodfather.

“Send the boy to Oldtown and let him forge a chain,” he had commanded. A king's command. The king's command her husband had failed to tell her of.

The Lady of House Dayne had always been less than fond of the idea of sending any of their children away. She had always found the practice of fostering children away from the comfort of and warmth of their families and all that was familiar to them to be raised in the cold halls of some strange lord's castle to be distasteful and barbarous. Had even threatened to never allow Maekar to share her bed again when Daeron was Aemon’s age after Baelor had offered to foster him. It was the only offer that she had ever thought he was ever tempted to accept. The subject was never brought up again about any of the children till that moon. 

It was her stays really that had saved them from having to send off Aemon then and there. Her ladies had tied them too tight underneath her dress that evening. And all the people crowded in the great hall, the heat from their bodies as they danced and drank and made merry had made it too warm, even for her blood. 

She should have stayed inside her chambers that evening and asked one of the maids to bring her a tray as Maekar and the maester had advised. Or at least stayed seated in her chair atop the center dias where she had let Daella take her place, talking her fathers ear about how much of a dreadful bore her septa was and how might he please send for one that wasn’t a dullard, and not ventured out to stand at the edge of the crowd.

She was still so shaky on her feet. It did not even take much to leave her fatigued. A simple trip down a few sets of stairs from the family quarters to the great hall, even while holding—clinging onto the black sleeve of Maekar's steady arm would do the trick, but she had wanted to feel like her old self again and not be reminded of her own fragility. And she certainly hadn’t wanted to concede to her husband that he had been right in his assessment of her delicate constitution. 

“Perhaps one day Aemon will sit upon Valarr’s council as Grand Maester. I think that would please them both greatly when this business is all sorted out,” Lady Jena Dondarrion had said to her over the roar of the hall as they watched the children seated at one of the lower tables in the hall. 

Focusing on that sight in front of her rather than the pale eyes she felt boring a hole into the back of her skull every time she so much as shifted upon the balls of her feet from the center dias.

House Dayne of Starfall had no real quarrel with the Dondarrions of Blackhaven. The house of the Dornish ladies father was inclined to reserve their animosity for their western neighbors in the Reach, though a Dornish man was a Dornishman to a Marcher lord. Thousands of years of skirmishes and incursions  tended to not lend to trust so easily between the two, but Lady Jena, she had always, always been kindly to her, and gracious and genial where her kin had not been.

“Your lady mother did not give you any sisters and neither did mine so let us be sisters my lady,” the older girl had said, clasping her sable hand in her white one on the eve of her wedding to Maekar. 

Jena had grinned at her as she spoke. Beaming as her children were then, and Aemon. Aemon was beaming too, laughing. 

He was not a dour boy, not so grim as his father, but he was a placid child compared to his brothers, who were as a whole very glad children. But Aemon had come alive that night of feasting and celebration.

He looked so happy seated with his brother and his cousins. She could see the light bouncing off his pale eyes in the candlelight. It gave the impression of a crystal blue lake that glittered in the sun's brightness as he laughed into his chalice over some jape that Valarr had told them.

Would he laugh like that in the cold and unfamiliar halls of the Citadel?

Would he even be allowed to?

Were the peals of a child's laughter banished from their precious order the same as they banished those that made up their sacred rank from living as men with lands and titles in their own right and made them as good as eunuchs? 

The Dornish lady knew that plenty of second and third sons of great lords, a Targaryen prince even, had forged their chains within the halls of the Citadel. It was an honorable undertaking. To be appointed as gr was more than an honor, but a mothers heart did not care for honor  

What was honor forged in a life of servitude compared to the laughter of children born of his flesh and bone? To hear them call out for him seeking paternal comfort in the dead of night when they've had a bad dream. Never know what it was like to feel the warm embrace of an amative wife on a gelid winter's day. Was honor worth living and dying in some strange place among strangers without a single soul who truly knew him by his side. 

Would he want that life for himself? That colorless half-life.

Lady Jena had thought she had known. 

The Dondarrion lady had worked herself into a fit of hysterics telling her husband so when Maekar snapped at her and accused her of wishing her ill later that evening before the dust of that wretched day had settled. According to one of her handmaids who had been witness to the confrontation outside of her bedchambers the pair had to be calmed by Prince Baelor.

The crown prince had served as an intermediary between his brother's wrath and his lady wife's pleading that she had only meant to reassure and set her goodsisters mind at ease over any qualms she might have on the matter, as any true sister would. 

Swearing upon the lives of her children, Lady Jena insisted that she would have never brought it up, without a care for the lady from House Dayne and the fragile state of her mind and body, had she known the distress she was to cause.

What a distress it was.

The Dornish lady had given them all a great fright when she had excused herself from Lady Jenna's side to join the thrall. Her mind had swarmed with thoughts and a million voices of princes, and dragons, and their claims, and the purging of dragons, and how her son was now to be one of these dragons.

Trying to make her way out of the overcrowded hall, her gait slowed as she darted between the sweltering menage of servants, drunken courtiers, and wily lords whispering amongst each other and their retainers.

Even in her disoriented stupor of half-madness and agitation, her husband's looming presence over her shoulder hadn't been missed. He must have wanted her to know it was him. Not even bothered to conceal his stalking as the heavy thunk of his boots upon the stone floors made by his lumberings steps at her back resonated over the roar of the bawdy melodies of the bards and raucous rabble of their guests. 

Sometimes she thought he knew her better than she herself, and that he perhaps knew the cause of her distress then as he would know it now, if he would just turn around and meet her gaze. 

It must have been quite distressing for him, for in one breath he had seen her gay and riant with Lady Jenna only to turn around and find her aimlessly meandering around the great hall like a ghost, our what would have appeared aimless meandering to his eyes, in the next

She would have made it out then, and her stern Tagaryen shadow would’ve had to face her wrath—–had she not collapsed under the grand arch at the mouth of the great hall.  

“You’re mad if you think I’ll send my son away to that place,” she had overheard Maekar hissing at the good king as she had come to. 

Moonlight streamed in, illuminating the two pale silver-haired men from the oriel window that had been thrown open by one of her maids at the far side of her chamber, much in the same way as he stood now with Maester Melaquin, only it had been a clear and humid evening unlike this night. 

The Dornish lady could not recall ever having heard him so angry before. Not at the man for whom he had donned his armor and ridden into battle when she had been heavy with Aemon and had begged him not to leave her. 

“You see her. She has scarcely recovered from Rhae’s birth. Sending the boy away now would only break her. I won’t do that to her. Not even for you.”

Her goodfather, her goodbrother, and their royal retinue had departed from Summerhall back to Kings Landing not two days afterwards. A whole fortnight before their planned departure.

“Do not tire yourself too much. My son has need of you my dear,” the king had said in parting as his thin lips brushed against her cheek.

Her fainting spell had bought them a year, two at most. Once she had recovered her and was no longer any danger of taking ill at the slightest worry or upset and her goodfather could wipe his conscious clean of her and the inevitable would be set into motion,

The good king would order Maekar to send Aemon away to the frigid drafty halls of the Citadel without a second thought. It did not matter that it would pain her and Maekar. Or that he would deny their boy, his own grandson, the babe he had named. A fourth son did not need four sons of his own.

There were too many dragons, and her goodfather, if he could help it, would not see the Targaryen dynasty go the way of their dragons because of familial sentiment. 

Except, Aemon was not a threat. He was not a pesky weed to be pulled out from the ground before it could take root and sprout and poison the entire field until there was nothing left except for weeds. 

He was just a boy the same as Aerion and his ridiculous notions of being a dragon and who was and was not one.

He was just a boy, not a dragon in man's flesh. A boy with a sharp seditious tongue, but they were not his words that he spoke. He was just a boy repeating the convictions and dogma of men. They were all just boys. Her boys.

“But father is not our grandsire's heir,” began Aemon. Deep lines appeared between his pale eyes, as he spoke in a quiet voice, barely above a whisper, but loud enough to break the uneasy still of the brewing storm that had overtaken the chamber. “And even if he was, and not seventh in line, then Daeron would be the heir and not you.” 

“Take heart Aemon,” drawled Daeron  with mirthless amusement. “Our dear brother–no, I am sorry, our dear dragon believes me to not be true a dragon either for he is no doubt the last of his kind.”

“No, only that you are a fool who should have never been fathers firstborn,” Aerion said as his sneer returned as the shadows grew long upon his face.  

“Aerion, do not say such things,” she snapped. “Apologize to your brother, now!” 

By some blessed miracle or at least it appeared to be so, with his eyes downcast upon the decorative carpet beneath his feet, the boy got up from his chair and turned to his elder brother. 

“I am sorry brother,” Aerion began. His gaze remained upon the carpet as he spoke in a small voice. 

For a moment, one foolish moment, the Dornish lady had thought that he had actually listened to her. That he had understood the weight of all of his words that surely were not his own and would never dare utter them again. That aThat mayhaps even he had felt some contrition for calling his own brother a fool, but then he lifted his silver head and she saw that glent of mischief in his blue eyes a moment too late when he said next, “that you are a fool who depends on dreamwine to sleep through the night or a whores cunt after our mother has gone to bed while father looks the other way so he does not have to hear your screams.” 

She pulled Aegon and Rhae and closed her eyes, as if that would blot out what she had heard Aerion utter. He is a child, a boy, the Dornish lady tried reminding herself. Those were not the words of a boy. He does not know what he speaks. He is just a boy who has heard too much from others. 

The thump of approaching footsteps at her back and a rather loud gasp from Aerion, interrupted the Dornish lady’s thoughts before those heavy steps halted at the rear of her settee.  Her husband placed a pale hand upon her shoulder, the pad of his thumb trailed up and across the expanse of her neck, stopping at her nape to rub circles into the sable skin as she leaned into his caresses while his other hand reached from around her to pet Aegon's downy head. 

“Father, I—” 

“Baelor is my older brother as Daeron is yours,” Maekar said, cutting their boy off from finishing whatever apologies or excuses, real or another faint, that would spill from his lips. She had not known what portion of Aerion’s speech the gruff Targaryen man had been privy too nor could she see the look he had given Aerion, but he had heard enough judging by the low and bitter bite of his words to wipe the sneer from his face and turn the boy stark white as he stared up wide-eyed at his father.

“Your uncle will be king after your grandsire departs from this life,” he spoke through gritted teeth as he renewed his speech. “And Daeron will be the Prince of Summerhall after me. Should he ever have need of you, should he ever call upon you, you and Aegon will provide him with whatever counsel is in your capacity and serve as his most loyal and dependable vassals. And you will all serve your cousin Valarr faithfully when he takes the throne. Is that clear?” 

“Yes, of course father,” Aerion replied, standing ramrod frozen in place having not moved a single inch since Maekar had entered into the sitting room. 

“Good. Now do as your mother says and apologize to your brother—properly,” her husband added when the boy had begun to open his mouth in a third attempt at making an apology. Instead Aerion, with his eyes upon his feet, walked over to where his brother sat and threw his arms around Daeron.The taller boy remained stiff upon the windowseat for half a beat, his lips had pressed tightly together to form a thin line as his gaze met hers until she had nodded her head and his body and resolve loosened. Placing pats upon his back with brotherly affection as he returned the younger boy's embrace.

This act of contrition seemingly satisfied their fathers request, and their mother, though she had not forgotten the younger boy's words nor that glimmer in his eyes as he had said them. She had tried to convince herself otherwise, but had those truly been someone else’s words?

“It’s late,” Maekar said, as he swiped that calloused thumb at her nape twice more before removing his hand and venturing towards Daella’s and Aerion’s chair sat by the abandoned game of tiles. Hands clasped behind his back, his lumbering steps were softened by the carpet. “Why are you all still up and bothering your poor mother?”

“Mama said that we may stay up to say goodnight to you papa,” Daella answered, still seated in her chair. Glassy fawn-like eyes tinged red from her earlier cries framed by sandy blonde locs and lips drawn into a pout as she tipped her head up to her father. 

She’ll say she’s not tired and try to convince him to not send her up with the other children, her mother thought. The girl hated being put to bed by her parents when something eventful had happened and there was still conversation and gossip yet to be had. Tonight had been more than eventful. 

Maekar usually indulged her on such occasions, letting her curl up in his lap like a little kitten until the soothing rumble of her fathers low voice speaking of nonsense beneath her ear lulled her to sleep. Only then would he call in a maid to come and take the girl, but tonight was not to be one of those nights. Having guessed so by the way in which his pale eyes had set upon her, the blue of his darkened by the dimness of and want met her natural brown near black ones as he locked her in his gaze. He wanted them alone and her husband was a man who was denied his wants.

“Well you have done so pet, give your mother a kiss and it's off to bed, with the lot of you.” He said as he slid a white hand from behind his back to pet the back of Daella's wavy tresses, the same as he had Aegon’s seconds ago, before gently pushing the girl towards her.

Thus did beget a small procession of goodnight mama’s pass by her settee as pale heads bent to place kiss upon her cheek until Rhae, contentment enduring yet as she continued to mouth at her braid, and one lone silver head remained, eyes remained trained on the ground, shuffling his feet by the window seat. 

Long and dexterous fingers belonging to his father, the man having moved several feet from his chair  to stand at Aerion’s back, wrapped around his slumped shoulders. Preventing the boy from slinking away unnoticed by his parents and joining the procession with his brothers and sisters as they made for bed. 

He looked so small standing there with Maekar behind him, a tall looming shadow clad in Targaryen black with a red slashed across his chest and the miniature dressed in the dark colors of their house to match him. 

No he was not a man. Just a boy reciting the beliefs of a man.

When Aegon’s toddling footsteps and Daeron’s sure ones disappeared around the corner, both having held up the rear of the procession, for the little dear had been the last to place a wet kiss upon her cheek after being roused from his sleep by Daeron,and grew so faint that the snap and pop of the coals filled the hush of the chamber did Maekar turned Aerion around to face him. Her husband gave her one last piercing glare before he shifted his focus upon their son. 

“You and Daeron came from the same womb. You share my blood, the blood of the dragon,” Maekar declared to their boy and this time she could see the deep lines and creases upon his scared face as he addressed Aerion. 

He’s tired, the Dornish lady couldn't help thinking, a small ache tugging beneath her breast. Whatever had been in that letter his brother had sent had exhausted him and now he must deal with this. 

“The common people and the other houses have always seen us as foreign invaders, conquerors.” Colonizers, that is why your boy is this way, a voice corrected her husband. A voice that sounded like her mothers. A voice that she banished into the far corners of her mind and replaced with her own rejoinder. He is just a boy.  

“They have resented us, admired us, and envied us, and at one point in time they feared us, but they do not do so now,” The Dornish lady flickered her gaze away from Maekar in time to see Aerion gulp, not quite being able to meet his fathers eyes as he spoke. 

“We were dragonlords. We were the last of the dragonlords after the doom and now our dragons are gone. Nevermind that we have united nine kingdoms that have been at war with each other for thousands of years under one banner, there are those that believe that since these great beasts have gone the way of the rest of Valyria that we are vulnerable. They look for signs in every law we enact, every tax, every time we go to war, in every decision we make of this vulnerability. And when the time is right,” Maekar paused then, his pale face became as hard as marble, “when they believe that even our fiercest allies will no longer support the house of the dragon, they will try to unseat us as the Blackfyres have. You may fight and exchange barbs  with Daeron in the training yard all you like, but that is where it ends.”  

Her husband paused once more, tilting Aerion’s head to meet his gaze using the thumb and index fingers of his sword hand he raised from his shoulders. “You and I are not first sons, but we have a duty to serve this house and our brothers as best as we can. You understand that, don't you?” 

Aerion nodded and then those blue eyes Maekar shared grew soft, losing some of that hard edge as the hand which had been at the boy's chin stretched up to ruffle through his short silver strands. “Give your mother a kiss then and say goodnight.” 

The boy did as he bidded. Stooping over the of her settee to press a shy kiss upon her cheek in parting as sweet as Aemon’s. 

“I did not mean to call Daeron a fool, truly. I am sorry mama,” Aerion whispered to wish her a goodnight, sounding more like Aemon or Daella than himself as well. No, he sounded like he did when she could still yet hold him in her and he did not have the expectations and paradigm of men put upon him. 

He was still her boy. Her boy whose face brightened when she pushed his hair back from his face and placed a kiss upon his forehead.

Aerion was nearly out the door before his father issued a final warning, hating him in his tracks as the boy turned as still as a statue.“Ahh, and no more spying on your brother. Unless you wish for him to return the favor.” 

“Yes father,” Aerion breathed out with the breath he had been holding before skidding off down the hall. His black boots squeaked against the stone floors as he made a dash to his chambers, lest his father order him back and scold him in another excessively long and winded tirade.

“Your imbecilic brothers are trying their best to send me to an early grave. I pray to the gods that you won’t cause me as much trouble as they have,” Maekar said, crossing the room in three great strides to loom over she and the babe. He reached his pointer finger down to tickle the underside of their daughter's chin which sent Rhae into a fit of happy chortles and chirps as she finally forgot the teething salve she had made out of her mothers braid.

Imbecilic, the Dornish lady silently repeated to herself as she let the word echo round her head. Little wonder indeed where Aerion gets it from, but she wouldn't say a thing, not yet. It was a most pleasant pause living in the here and now, forgetting the storms as she let the sight and the sound of Rhae’s gurgles and Maekar upon bended knee making a fuss over the babe wash over her. She could stay in the present interlude watching them forever, but her husband had other plans. 

A woman's silhouette outlined by the orange glow from torches in the hall appeared in Lady of House Dayne’s peripheral. The buxom wetnurse came into view as Maekar, without taking his eyes off of Rhae, motioned her over with a wave of his hands. 

She could try to bargain with the man. Rhae wasn't hungry and she had stopped her teething. The babe really wouldn't be a bother, but it was late and she saw that look of renewed hunger in his gaze as he lazily flickered his darkened blue eyes away from Rhae to her. There would be no point in arguing on this. The Dornish lady would only be wasting her breath.

“I doubt she will ever be capable of causing you much trouble in your eyes husband.” She said, placing a kiss twice upon Rhae’s silver hairline before reluctantly handing the giggling babe off to the wet nurse. 

He was soft when it came to their girls. He let Daella rush around the moors and when her round red-faced septa would come into her chambers huffing about how the girl had run off again in the middle of her lessons, if her husband was present, he’d dismiss her with a sleer. Questioning how she, who had been outwitted by a girl of barely seven name days, had ever made it through her training at the motherhouse. 

Maekar could find no fault in anything their wild girl did. He would even reward her by ordering the kitchens to prepare honeycakes, a favorite of hers, for when she arrived back from her dawdling, but that, the Dornish lady supposed, was the way of fathers and daughters. 

“What did your brother's letter say?” She asked when the Rhae’s babbles and the clack of her wet nurses' heels dissipated into the aether, turning the conversation to more neutral ground. Rising from the settee as Maekar plopped himself unceremoniously upon the cushion abutting hers. He reached a pale hand out aimlessly to grab at her skirts, but she had been swift in her withdrawal to the window on the opposite side of the chamber. Knowing that if she stayed upon that settee with him and did not put as much distance between herself and her hot-blooded husband, this would go his way when she meant it to go another.

He looks like he has the weight of a hundred men upon him, she thought to herself as she peered out into the starless abyss of opaque gray. But we must talk of the children. Of Aerion especially and this storm he had brewed, and I must ease him into it. 

“What do you think poppet? Coin and taxes,” he said as he let out a dry laugh pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as he closed his eyes. “The bloody marcher lords pester our good king senselessly on why they must pay so much to export their fucking lumber while the Dornish are still permitted to pay a mere tenth to export spices and lemons.”

“All of the marcher lords?”

“Even Lord Dondarrion, much to my brother's dismay, has seen fit to air out his grievances. Lord Caron,” Maekar sneered, spitting out the man's name as if it was poison in his mouth, “is leading the charge and my blessed father has no intention of hiding his biases. He has earned his moniker, but he favors Dorne too much and the fucking Dornish do nothing to endear themselves.”

“I am Dornish, my prince,” she reminded him. And your children are mostly Dornish. Though they did not look very Dornish, it did not change what they were. What blood flowed through their veins. Twas more than just the blood of the dragon. They were half her too. 

It was she after all who had carried them for nine moons belly, having to endure sickness in the mornings that prevented her from taking sustenance, the fatigue, the aches that came with the additional weight of his babes upon her petite frame, and the hot searing pain that enveloped being her at the end of it all that had her crying out to to the Mother above. Feeling as if she was being split into two as she had pushed each one from her body and brought them into the world.

She supposed, though that in spite of the aforementioned babes she had borne him that filled the halls of Summerhall, and the fact that he had been married to her for near half of his life, these lords could not accuse Maekar of holding the same sentiments, when it came to the Dornish, as his kingly father

The most he had ever favored or honored a Dornishman was in agreeing to her fathers offer for her hand, and the most Dornish thing about Summerhall was her presence in it. 

A Dornish lady who dressed in Tagaryen reds and blacks and maroons so deep that they could be mistaken for red in the right light, as she hiked up her skirts to run after six Targaryen babes.

I married you, not your fathers house, her husband would tell her after having tossed another letter bearing the seal of House Dayne into the fire. The seal intact turned into an indiscernible puddle of wax in the flames, for he had long stopped opening the damned things as they would always contain another iteration of the same ask. A request from her uncle or one of his avaricious sons to petition the king on their behalf. Even if she felt some sort of kinship to her fathers brother and her cousins beyond the bounds of blood and tried to use her influence upon Maekar, her prince would not fold.

These days the border between Dorne and the rest of the realm was more ceremonial than something which needed to be guarded and defended. Still, the marcher lords would sooner forget their own mothers name than the names of their blades and the plains and passes of their marches that had served the realm well against the hordes of Dornishmen at their backdoor through the ages. 

Summerhall was well within these marches. 

Their neighbors were the stubborn and haughty Carons and Dondarrions. They offered them guest rights and had broken bread with them. Supped and drank with these lords and hosted them and their wives and their children at their hearth. Their children played games of hopfrog and chased each other around the gardens of Summerhall until they had worn themselves out. 

Maekar had fought beside these lords. Bled with them, Broken bread with them. and the ones he had not, the ones that had refused the call-to-arms or turned their backs upon his father in favor of the pretender, he remembered every last one of their faces, their tattered banners, and broken shields and bodies scattered across the Redgrass field. 

A king who has no equal must be neutral to all his subjects and a lordly prince with many equals must be mindful of his neighbors and fellow lords.

A fourth son he may be, a warrior rather than a natural-born statesman or a scholar as Baelor and Aerys were, but even a warrior must know the art of strategy and what hand to play and when to play it. 

He would curse their names and the day their fathers had spilled their seeds inside their mother's womb, but Maekar would not openly side against the other marcher lords in favor of Dorne. 

“And yet you’ve managed to endear yourself to me greatly,” Maekar said, his voice sounding much closer than it would if it had come from the settee. “You have given me six healthy pale-haired ingrates. Mayhaps I should commission statues around Summerhall in your honor for it.” 

The Dornish lady bit her tongue as she should have moments ago and not let her pride and displeasure guide it. She should have known what he was to say. She shouldn’t have started with this. Damn easing him into it. She should have started out with Aerion and his reckless mouth. She had to pivot now or this really would go his way.  

Should she still try to? Was it too late to try and steer the course of the conversation back to where she wished it?

“I—”

“Come here,” Maekar ordered, though he did not wait for her to follow his command. 

The Dornish lady’s words died upon her lips with a small yelp as he pulled her into the hard plane of his doublet clad chest. “I do not wish to talk about my father and politics right now,” he whispered into the shell of her ear. Wrapping his strong arms round her middle she felt his growing stiffness press against her backside. 

Her husband then proceeded to splay a pale hand possessively over her belly, keeping her flush against him, as if she would ever run away from him from this, while he ground his want into her clothed bottom. His other hand drifted up her navel to cup her left breasts, circling her bud with the pad of his thumb over the layers of her bodice. 

It was not long before that battleworn hand still at her navel gathered her skirts between his fingers, gliding the fabric up the expanse of her heaving body, exposing the soft brown skin of her thighs hidden underneath the layers of maroon silks to his lustful gaze. 

“You can not say everything you think out loud,” she stated in a voice that was airier than she wished it as heat and blood rushed from her head to the southern parts of her body from Maekar’s wandering hands. The Targaryen man craned his head down to brush his lips against her thudding pulse at the apex of her jawline. That wondrous scratch of his silver beard upon the  delicate skin of her throat set her heart racing as she tried to maintain her breath with her next words. “N—Not in front of the children.”

The Dornish lady reached a hand out to touch the cool glass as her dark head fell back to rest upon her husband's shoulder, trying to distract herself from the heat of his body at her back and his rough hand that was now upon her bare breast. For Maekar had grown so weary with the layers of fabric separating them, that he had ripped the bodice of her dress in two, straight down the middle. Revealing her heaving bosom for his sight and his sight alone. 

He was so warm. His lips, his hands, him. Like a fire. A roaring flame that was to consume her whole and set her alight if she did not douse it out.

“Aerion is old enough to know not to repeat the things I say to others,” he murmured into her fervid skin without ceasing his kisses and carasses. The hand at her breast moved to the neglected bud while the other dragged the back of his knuckles up and up and up her inner thigh, grazing dangerously close to her throbbing heat.

Maekar went to cup her mound and that danger became all too real. 

His ring and middle fingers slid up to swipe through her folds. His touch light as a feather as he spread her wetness around her lower lips, petting at her slick heat. Taking care to avoid rubbing at the button at the apex of her glistening mound with the same ardor as he had her breasts. Or penetrating her cunt with those fingers and putting her out of her rapidly escalating misery by bringing her to her peak. 

Maybe I should give into it, she mused, her thoughts flitting in and out of her as she arched into his touch. If it weren't for him holding up her weight her knees would have given out as she twisted and shook in his arms with the release he denied to her, but his grip was tight and as unrelenting as those fingers at her aching core. 

Encourage him and take my pleasure from him as he so clearly wishes me too. He knows that I am close to my peak even from these gentle pets at the place where she needed him almost as much. He can feel it. He could taste it upon his tongue if he were to get down upon his knees and worship her like the Maiden with the wet muscle as he did with his hands and fingers. If he was more of a mind he’d have told me so himself. Cooing at her instead of the grunts and groans muffled by his mouthing at her nape while he rutted his hardness into her back. Leaving behind a growing wet patch upon the dark fabric of their garments in pursuit of their pleasure. 

I can encourage him. I can make him peak too. He has not shared my bed beyond this in so long. If I reached back and took his length in my hand, with a few strokes of my thumb up and over that leaking slit atop his cock, I could make him spill into his pants like a green boy. I can make him forget any name apart from my own, and then, I can-I can–I, a moan of Maekar tore through her as he finally pressed the flat of his palm down upon her swollen nub. 

Her husband reached his thumb down a few centimeters from where he rested it over the top of her womanhood to rub at her clit. Swiping what little traces were left of her undiluted consciousness away into a small hole. A distant light at the end of a long and hot tunnel,  

Using her slick Maekar circled the engorged bud with the calloused pad of that thumb in time with the thumb caressing her teats. He wrought moans from her with each pass around her pearl until that hole narrowed and she almost forgot all  but the feel of his hands and the warmth of his breath on her heated skin.

With the next pass he grazed the tip of his index finger over her fluttering entrance, meaning  to plunge those digits that had been petting and gathering the slick of her heat into her soaked cunt. 

In and out, curling his fingers in her up in her most delicate place in search of that-swollen-spot deep within her that only he seemed to know. That allowed her to trace the constellations of the darkened heavens in the back of her eyelids as clear as she could the scars and lines of the beloved pale face panting above her. 

Had it not been for the heavens that were cracked open by a clap of thunder shaking the window pane beneath her hand and turned her mindless moans of Maekar to a gasp of air, she would have forgotten all and been lost to the burn of her peak.

As the gods drew her from the wanton spell that he had placed over her, she wrapped her slender fingers around his pale wrist, staying his hand and those wonderful fingers to hover above her sopping heat. 

“Seven help you woman,” Maekar growled into the pulse point beneath her sable skin that he had been peppering with kissings a few milliseconds ago. He turned her body slightly in his arms, jerking her chin up with the fingers that had nearly sent her into ecstasy so that she met his darkened gaze that now blazed with more than the fervid carnality of his need for her. “Do you think I have ever deigned to say such a thing in front of the boy, about my own brother no less?” 

So he had heard every damned word, the Dornish lady thought as she caught her breath between pants. She felt lightheaded, like she had sprinted out into the dark, down toward the creek that ran along the castle's southern gate and back again, but her blood was slowly flowing back up to her head from her womanhood. 

She knew that her husband loved his brothers and he loved Baelor best of all. Blood meant everything to Maekar, but brothers fought just as quickly as they would spill blood for each other. She did not have brothers but she had four sons and she had seen the way they acted with one another. Brothers said things about each other that could be crude more often than not and Maekar was a blunt man. His humor was brutish and foul, bordering on filthy. 

“Even something said in jest Aerion will take as fact.” He is so very literal. You must know that my prince. You know our son just as well as I do and you know how he hangs onto your every word. How he wants to please you. He emulates himself after you. He has your tongue, but he tempers it worse than yours. “And it was not only your brother he spoke of. He mocks Daeron for something he too claims to suffer from.” He has certainly heard something from you on that matter, she mused privately before continuing on, “and now he accuses him of sleeping with–” the Dornish lady trailed off as she saw him raise a silver brow down at her. 

A twinkle danced within his pale gaze and her eyes widened as she caught on to what that look meant. “Your children are insufferable, my prince.” The Dornish lady felt her pulse quicken for an entirely different reason than her husband's carnal ministrations. “Absolutely insufferable.”

“He's just a boy,” he stated using her own words against her, as if that made it any better. “Boys—”

“Boys sleep with whores?”

“They do when they are his age, yes.” Maekar laughed. He thought her naive, childishly naive. It is good to see that he is amused by this and takes pleasure in my distress. 

“Has he gotten any with child?” She bit out between gritted teeth, narrowing her black eyes at him. He should know that since he appears to know much on the matter. 

“No—and he has not taken one as his mistress either before you ask.” She glared at him, wanting to throttle him. As if she was to further humiliate herself and ask him that too when he should have told her. There would be no need for him to act so smug at her naivety if he had just told. “They do not mean anything. It’s harmless. ” 

Harmless, she thought, tasting acid upon her tongue as the word rolled around upon it.  

Is that what men tell themselves? Is that why her husband could be so apathetic on the matter and laugh at her alleged naivety, because it was harmless?

A bitterful thought took a hold of her mind then. He knew because he had done so as a boy and all sons, even one as different from Maekar as Daeron was, are their father’s sons in some fashion or another. 

“Have you ever—” she started, but her voice waned. Not being able to finish her question as she felt bile and sick spring up from the pit of her stomach, swallowing down the sour feeling of unwarranted jealousy. 

Twas a bitter thought indeed. 

The Dornish lady wished she could turn from him and look back out at the night as violent as her thoughts, but he held fast to her. The arm of the hand that had been the source of her raw unabated pleasure had snaked itself around her middle. His sword hand was still at her chin, keeping their gazes orbiting one another. Still, she could close her eyes to him, refusing to meet that blue piercing stare that saw right through her. She could, but she would not, for she needed to see those pale eyes. She needed to read the truth in his gaze. 

“No.” He had replied firmly, without hesitation. As easy as he drew breath. His eyes remained on her, the blue of his irises holding, unchanged. 

He is telling me half truths. Things I already know to spare me, but what does it matter? No need to torment yourself with this knowledge too. We were speaking of the boys and not him, she told herself. I learned more than I needed tonight, but I know who my husband is. What do I mean to gain by conjuring up this storm as the gods do in the heavens? I am the only mother of his children. I have his heart. Is that not enough? Whatever, whoever was before me did not matter. They left no mark upon him. Let this be the extent of it, she tried and tried to reason with herself, but the Lady of House Dayne could not abide by her own inner counsel and reasoning.

“I mean before we married, my prince,” she said, her dark eyes wide as she swallowed down the bile caught in her throat. 

Distant memories of the brusque man before her when he had been Daeron's age flooded to the forefront of her mind. He had been so serious and surly even then, but as he had said, he was a boy. Boys had needs and they were allowed to exercise them in ways that ladies were not. 

Her own mother who had been her fathers paramour before she had ever been his wife had dismissed her maids after her betrothal was announced to Maekar and she had bribed the pair of them to tell her of what it was like to be with a man. 

A Targaryen prince, the son of a king—little was barred to them. They certainly did not have to bride a pack of nattering maids for a mere scrap of insight on what went on between men and their women in the dark and quiet of their bedchambers.

Maekar was not his grandsire. He did not keep mistresses. He had no bastards to speak of, but  as surly as he was, he was a passionate man too. He certainly had his appetites. The proof of that was down the hall and up a single flight of stairs asleep in their beds.

Maekar was right to think that she was childish, maybe right to spare her feelings too, but that childishly stubborn part of her wanted the truth. She searched those pale eyes stared down at her that had not left hers looking for it. 

“I have only ever shared one woman's bed, sweet girl.” He smiled so softly, regarding her with such tenderness, as he reached his hands up to cup her cheeks between his palms. His thumbs traced indiscernible patterns into her skin without an end in sight. 

There is your truth. You have survived this storm and you shall survive the other one you see brewing upon the horizon. 

How could she not? 

The Targaryen man leaned down once more to place a kiss upon her forehead. Then one upon the apple of her cheek, and another at her nape, gently nuzzling his silver beard into the delicate sable skin there. The heat of his breath renewed the flame within the Dornish lady as Maekar whispered into the shell of her ear.

“He is young, as you so like to remind me. As is Aerion.They have enough you and your Dornish stubbornness in them to keep the worst of their natures at bay. They will find their own way or so help me, I’ll knock sense into the boys skulls myself until they fucking do.”

Thunder crackled in the distance. To the lovers tucked away in a cottage warm in their bed under the cover of the storm within the Mountains of the Moon, it had become mere background noise. No more than the hum of a distant tune playing during a feast from a chamber above them. Too caught up and consumed by the other in a realm of their own making to care about the early spring storm in a world outside of it.                    

He was trying to kill her. That Nettles knew.         

Knew it in the way that Daemon had caged her in. A set of stalwart pale arms placed on either side of her head. Pinning her to the ruined mess of their bedding as she tried not to shiver underneath him.     

Not that he minded. He never minded her trembling when they were like this. 

Knew it in the way his hands would not leave her. Nor his mouth, or any other part of him. Cleaving himself to her.    

One would have to take a butcher's knife to cut them in two and even then they’d. He was everywhere. He was all there was. 

Pressed up against her with not a stitch between them. Flesh melding into flesh. His and hers becoming mere ideas of being rather than reality. This caging made it pointless.

He didn’t suffocate her. Nettles never would call what he did suffocating. She supposed she then should not call what he did caging either. Was it really a cage when she did not mind it? Even now when she had done what she had. 

When she had closed herself to him. Trembling legs snapping shut with a clap that echoed out round the room like the thunder in the night sky. Frantically trying to relieve her shaking the only way she knew how. Crawling up the bed as she tried to catch her breath from his merciless onslaught. 

A reflex, but it was a reflex that would not go unnoticed or without punishment. If one could call what took place in this chamber turned to an altar of worship a punishment.  

“I’m right here Netty,” her lover whispered into her crown. Her coils damp and slicked with sweat, his and hers as he reigned kisses down from her temple to the scar that grace across the bridge of her nose. Lightening streaked through the window, illuminating the chamber which made the back of his silver head glow. 

He had grown ever possessive over her as of late. Daemon had always been possessive of her she supposed when she thought of it, but now what little restraint he had vanished with the dying days of winter. Leaving a starving man in his place. 

That man pulled her from the intensity of her scrambled thoughts, the hands that had surrounded her going to her hips. Head lifting from its resting place along the slope of her brown neck lined with freckles he kissed each with such tenderness it made her ache for an entirely different reason than the throbbing heat aching at her center. The spot she swore was carved out for him the same as the one that matched hers upon his pale frame. The freckles traded for scars reddened by her mouthing.

She was going to hell. That she knew and he was trying to send her there. 

Oh, she knew what he said. In his eyes she was the Maiden, or whatever was the equivalent to his Gods. “You do not have a stain upon you Netty,” he’d tell her as he gazed down at her like she had hung the moon. Not in the way he had stained himself from a lifetime of battles and wars of his own making, but she was not made of sugar. 

She was the daughter of no one and she had survived that. She had seen her home turn ash before her eyes and she lived. She had survived a war. No one comes out of that without a mark upon them. She was not proud of her actions, but she had not taken a life that was undeserving and she had not stolen from those in need. Still, a thief was a thief and a murderer no matter how black the heart that had been taken.

A sinner she was as all the rest. The gates were barred the same as any other with only this brief mortal's respite left to her.

There was pleasure to be found in this realm. A pleasure that she had taken and grabbed hold of between. Never letting go. A consolation in the sin and the eternal damnation that surely awaited her afterward. Eagerly lapping at its saccharine taste. 

Better to enjoy her time here. Better to give what she could. Better to be a saint here if she could. It could never hurt at any rate. She could be the Maiden come to life. 

Though Nettles wondered if the Maiden would find herself in such a position as this. Spread out, a feast for her husband's eyes, naked and wanting. The Warrior taken her for his own. She would not be the Maiden if she did. Corrupted by the sins and lusts of mere mortals, but she could still bring love forth as she would now. 

“Sorry,” It was shakier than she would have liked. Horse, but as the Maiden would have she tried to apologize, but as the warrior would he shushed her, knowing just how pointless it was when she had lost this war nor was she very sorry for it. 

Lips skimmed the tops of her heaving breasts as she tried to keep her heart from beating out of her chest. An endeavor which failed at that when he nuzzled into the plump brown flesh and took a nipple into the warmth of his mouth. Laving her skin with his tongue. Only releasing the engorged flesh when she had begun to pant. 

She tugged on silver strands for more with a whine. Trying to pull his lips back to her breast, but he moved himself to her ear. 

“It’s rude to hide yourself from your husband little wife,” Husband. Little Wife. Nettles would have giggled at his whispering if her head hadn’t felt like she was underwater. 

She still had not gotten used to that. She did not know if she ever would, but she supposed she had a lifetime to get used to it, but right now she was having a hard time keeping her mind from drifting off into the hell they were making. Going blank with each carasses. 

With those fingers of his that had found their home in her sopping cunny once more. He had already Thrumming with her arousal under his stare and lips that seemed to have found its place upon hers breathing her in. Drinking up her moans and whatever little whimpers she would give him like the sweetest ambrosia. 

She would not make it to the end of the night much less another five and twenty years and two others after that like this if they were so lucky. 

Gods, he really was trying to kill her, but she would not go quietly. Or without him. 

Daemon faired little better. 

That she had noticed it. Him rutting into the sheets and her thighs like a dog in heat from the sight of her pleasure at his hands and tongue. “It’s rude to torture your wife husband.” In her haze and between pants she managed to wriggle a hand out from under his grip to bring it between them. 

Letting it trail down the pale skin of his abdomen softened by age and her attempts in their kitchen at domesticity all of which he greedily gobbled down before she took him in hand. She wasted no time swiping her thumb across his swollen cockhead.

Nettles was gifted with a groan for that. His head fell back down upon her breasts as he breathed out. He now the one leaning into her touch. 

Good, if he was going to kill her why should she not return the favor? They could both bask in their sin then. And sin it was. The most delicious kind that swallowed one whole and left them aching, but Daemon would be all too happy to oblige her. He had twice already. Drinking up much more than her moans.

It was a wonder how he had not spilled himself onto her thighs and the sheets though it was quite the relief and she wished to keep it so. Nettles was too selfish to allow him to make like a green boy and empty himself in his hand at the first sight of a woman. Or in her hand in this case. 

She wanted him inside her before he did so. Every last drop till she overflowed with him. 

Bringing her slender hand back up to her parted lips and took the tips of her now glistening fingers into her mouth to suckle upon as she caught his eye. He stared at her. Entranced by her lapping. 

Mouth agape. Only another crack of thunder broke him from the listful spell that had rendered him incapable of speech. Scrambling to give her what she wished. 

“You little minx.” His voice was as horse as hers. Daemon had plunged his fingers back into her heat in one thrust. Not giving a moment to adjust, not that she needed it. Nettles arched her back into his touch as she gave into him. Letting him lead her into oblivion. 

“Tis rude to keep your wife waiting my prince.” She had managed to stutter out between breathless moans. A fresh peak gripping its claws into her spent form.  

He chuckled at the sight of her whimpering and shaking.

Nettles thanked whatever God that might be listening that her husband was in a benevolent mood. Daemon decided to take pity upon her as he leaned down to take that nipple still hard and wet and waiting back into his mouth.

Doubtless, he could not hold back. Newly wedded bliss not yet worn off. She hoped it never would. With the way they went on, attached at the other's hip, it would not for a good while.

“You’re so beautiful Netty.” Mouth upon her neck again. Kissing every freckle under his violet gaze. “So so beautiful.” 

She bit into the plump of her bottom lip to stop from letting out  Nettles had given up on trying to hide her pleasure, but she liked to keep a bit of sense left. “Too beautiful to hide yourself from me.” She laughed breathless as it was, but full of life and that laugh gave way to a moan. Losing her resolve, but for this too she no longer cared for it. 

“My sweet Netty.”

A kiss this time was placed on her temple while his fingers pushed in deeper. It’s gentleness juxtaposed with the roughness of those digits. 

At the contrast, Nettles clamped down on his thick digits as she began to cream around him. The calloused pad of his thumb found the bundle of nerves at the apex of her quivering mound. Drawing circles into her pulsing nub that drew her closer to her climax. It stole the breath from her lungs before pulling from her and stealing it again when he gave her something else to milk dry. 

His cock had entered her the same way as his fingers. Taking her all at once as they clung to each other. “My sweet girl.” 

“You’re all my sweet girl.” He had reached her hilt as he whispered it upon her lips. Swallowing his cries upon his tongue. His length nudged against the spongy spot within her as he pushed deeper still. The lightning in the sky dotted the backs of the midnight of her eyes. The time for teasing long gone. 

All yours. Sin turned to heaven in the land of the damned and what a blissful heaven it was.

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