#character death

Valarr stood uselessly in the hallway at first, palms pressed flat against the wood as if he could feel you through it. The sounds from within were not like battle cries, nor courtly laughter, nor the weeping of petitioners. They were something rawer. Something that tore through him in slow, merciless strips.

“Your Grace,” A maester had said gently earlier that evening, “it is common for a first birth to be long.”

Long.

Valarr had fought in tourneys, he had ridden through storms and stood in council beside kings. He had believed himself patient.

But time was a cruelty he had never known until that night.

He pushed through the door at last, his feet feeling like lead.

You lay on the great bed, sheets tangled around your thighs, dark hair plastered to your damp temples. Candlelight trembled across your skin. You had always glowed in sunlight, golden, warm, the sort of beauty that made bards forget their rhymes. Now the light flickered uncertainly, as if unsure whether to stay lit.

Your eyes found him immediately, for how could you not instantly recognize your beloved.

There it was. That small, familiar smile, the one you reserved for him alone. It was faint, but it was there.

“Valarr,” you breathed.

He crossed the room in three strides and fell to his knees at your side. His hand wrapped around yours, careful and reverent. You squeezed back with as much strength as you could muster.

“I am here,” he said, voice cracking on the final word.

He had not wept when a many of his relatives died, he had not wept when his cousin fell in the lists, but his throat burned now, thick and unsteady.

Another wave seized you. Your body bowed against it. A cry tore from you that made him flinch as if struck.

He would have traded anything in that moment. His claim, his titles, the dragon banners. He would have thrown the Iron Throne itself into the sea if it meant you would not suffer any longer.

When the pain passed, you looked at him again, dazed and breathless.

“Do you remember,” you whispered, “the orchard at Summerhall?”

The question startled him. He let out a broken laugh. “Of course I do.”

It had been the first place you had kissed him. Apples half-ripe on the trees, bees lazy in the heat. You had scolded him for climbing too high, though he had been a prince and you only the daughter of a sworn lord. You had always scolded him when he acted foolish.

He leaned forward until his forehead rested against yours.

“You told me,” he murmured, “that love was not a lot of things.”

Your lips twitched.

“Not a crown,” you breathed. “Not a kingdom.”

Another contraction seized you before you could finish. Your grip on his hand tightened painfully.

The maester’s voice rose, the midwives moved in urgently, their skirts flowing. Valarr was gently pulled aside, but he refused to leave entirely. He stood at the edge of the bed, watching as if through a pane of glass, powerless.

Hours bled together, and your screams grew hoarse. Your strength slowly fading.

At some point, the maester’s expression changed. Valarr saw it. He recognized that look, the quiet gaze of loss.

He stepped forward sharply. “What is it?”

The maester hesitated. “The babe is large, Your Grace. And the princess-”

“Say it,” Valarr demanded.

“She weakens.”

The room seemed to tilt, and not in his favour.

You were drifting now, your voice thinner, your skin pale beneath the candlelight. When Valarr returned to your side, your gaze struggled to focus before settling on him again.

“Valarr,” you whispered, barely audible.

“I am here.”

“I am not afraid.”

The words struck him harder than any sword.

“Do not speak so,” he said fiercely. “You will live. We will-”

“Listen,” you interrupted, with a surprising thread of authority. You had always possessed that. Even when you were a girl with grass stains on your hem and laughter too loud for court.

You raised your trembling hand to his face. “He will be great, he must be,” you said softly, “please Valarr, you must take care of our boy.”

He did not understand at first, how you knew it was a boy was beyond his comprehension.

You said plenty of funny things. Sometimes they made sense, others not.

He recalled a memory.

It had been a jest once, something you had said in the orchard when he promised to love you until the end of days.

Not a lot, you had teased. Just forever.

He pressed his lips to your palm, desperate.

The maester gave a quiet command. The midwives shifted you.

And then a cry.

A son.

For one suspended heartbeat, the world was nothing but that sound.

The babe was lifted, red-faced and wailing. Valarr’s eyes snapped toward him instinctively, and then back to you.

You were too still.

“Maester,” Valarr said, voice low with warning.

The cloaked man did not answer immediately, his hands were busy. Too busy.

“Maester,” Valarr repeated, louder.

There was blood, so much blood. Your blood.

Valarr had seen men disemboweled. He had seen fields painted red after skirmishes. But this, this was wrong. This was sacred and terrible all at once.

“Stay with me,” he pleaded, kneeling again. “Stay.”

Your eyes fluttered open once more. They were unfocused now, blurry.

“Is he…?” you breathed.

“A son,” Valarr choked. “Strong. Loud as a dragon.”

A faint smile ghosted across your lips.

“Good,” you whispered.

Your hand twitched in his. He clutched it tighter, as if he could anchor you to the world by force.

“I love you,” he said. It came out raw, unguarded. A boy’s confession, not a prince’s declaration.

You exhaled slowly.

“Forever,” you murmured.

And then-

Nothing.

The candles burned on.

The babe cried again, indignant at the cold air.

Valarr did not move.

He remained kneeling beside you long after the maester’s hands had stilled. Long after the midwives had wrapped your body in white linen.

Someone placed the child in his arms.

He took him automatically, as one accepts a blade or a burden.

The boy was small and furious and impossibly warm.

And he looked exactly like you.

The same pattern of his hair already curling damply against his scalp. The same stubborn line of brow. Even the shape of his mouth, the hint of that familiar smile that had undone Valarr from the beginning.

Valarr let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.

“You could not even leave me without haunting me,” he whispered.

The child quieted slightly, blinking up at him with unfocused eyes. Valarr pressed his forehead to the infant’s, trembling as he did.

“Aelor, your name.” he said hoarsely. “For the strength you stole from her.”

—

He did not sleep that night.

He sat beside your still form until dawn bled pink through the windows. The babe rested against his chest, tiny fist curled in the fabric of his tunic.

When the sun rose fully, Valarr stood.

The court would need to be told, his father. The king. The realm.

But for a moment longer, he allowed himself to be only a husband.

He brushed a lock of hair from your face.

“You had said not a lot,” he whispered. “Just forever.”

He swallowed hard. “How cruel of you wife. To make me bear it alone.”

—

The Red Keep draped itself in black within the week.

Bells had tolled, septons sang, and ladies wept into their embroidered sleeves.

Valarr did not cry in public. He couldn’t.

He stood beside your bier in the Great Sept, dressed in mourning colors, son cradled in his arms. The boy had your eyes, that same clear shade that caught the light like glass.

People whispered about it.

They said it was a blessing.

Valarr thought it a cruelty. A mockery from the gods.

At night, when the court had dispersed and the corridors fell silent, he would walk the nursery alone.

Aelor slept in a cradle carved with dragons, soft blankets tucked around him. The blankets you weaved.

Sometimes he would fuss, tiny brows knitting together in a familiar way.

Valarr would lift him carefully.

“You have her mouth,” he murmured one evening, tracing the air above the child’s face. “When you are displeased.”

The baby made a small, indignant sound. Valarr’s lips curved despite himself.

“I do not know how to do this,” he admitted quietly. “She was meant to teach me.”

He would sit by the window overlooking Blackwater Bay, rocking the child gently as moonlight spilled silver across the floor.

“You must forgive me,” he whispered into the downy hair. “If I falter as a father.”

—

The boy grew, and the days blurred into months.

He smiled early, a bright, sudden thing that stole the breath from everyone and Valarr’s lungs.

The first time it happened, Valarr froze mid-step. Aelor gurgled, tiny hands reaching toward him.

And there it was. Your smile.

Not exact, but close enough to make his vision blur with tears.

Valarr laughed then, a broken, startled sound.

“You wicked thing,” he said softly. “You knew what you were doing.”

He began to speak to you in the quiet hours.

Not aloud, not where others could hear, but in his mind. In the spaces between breaths.

He would recount Aelor’s progress as if writing letters you might somehow read.

He has your stubbornness. He hates the taste of lemon cakes, though the cooks insist other children adore them.

Silly boy? He sometimes reaches for the sun as if he means to catch it. When Aelor took his first steps, it was in the courtyard garden, his palms open to the sky.

Valarr had been kneeling on the grass, arms outstretched. The boy wobbled uncertainly between nursemaids before lunging forward.

He fell into Valarr’s chest with a delighted shriek.

Valarr held him tightly, pressing his face into the child’s hair.

“You would have laughed,” he murmured. “Gods, you would have laughed.”

The court watched him carefully in those years. They expected him to remarry as a proper heir would. After all one son was not enough, they wanted him to remarry and his new wife to pop out a spare.

They whispered of alliances and heirs and the necessity of queens.

Valarr listened, he nodded where appropriate. But he could never get himself to agree.

“Your son requires siblings,” one lord pressed gently.

“He requires his father,” Valarr replied coolly.

He would not bring another woman into the chambers where you had died.

He would not risk another grave draped in white.

And selfishly, desperately, he could not bear the thought of another smile that was not yours.

—

Aelor grew tall and bright-eyed.

He loved the training yard, he loved stories of dragons, he loved the sea.

He would sit on Valarr’s lap and demand tales of you.

“What was she like?” he asked once, solemn and curious.

Valarr studied his son’s face, the echo of yours staring back at him.

“She was brave,” he said first. “Braver than any knight.”

Aelor’s eyes widened. “Did she fight?”

“In her own way,” Valarr answered softly. “She loved fiercely. That is its own battle.”

The boy considered this gravely. “Did she love me?”

The question struck deep. Valarr cupped his son’s cheek.

“She loved you before you ever drew your first breath,” he said. “She knew you before anyone else.”

Aelor seemed satisfied with that. Valarr was not.

He often wondered what you would think of him now, grey threading through his dark hair, lines stating to carve at the corners of his eyes.

Would you scold him for brooding?

Would you laugh at how hopelessly he adored your son?

On seasons, he would return to the orchard at Summerhall.

He stood beneath the same apple trees, older and heavier with grief.

“I am still here,” he would whisper to the wind. “As you asked.”

The years did not soften the loss. They only shaped it.

Forever, it turned out, was not loud.

It was quiet moments. It was watching your son tilt his head exactly as you once had. It was catching the scent of apples in late summer and feeling his chest tighten.

It was loving someone who could no longer answer.

—

On Aelor’s sixteenth nameday, Valarr presented him with a sword forged in Dragonstone steel.

The boy, no longer truly a boy, accepted it with shining eyes.

“Will you watch me train today father?” he asked eagerly.

Valarr smiled faintly. “Always.”

As Aelor crossed the yard, sunlight caught in his dark hair. For a fleeting instant, Valarr saw you there, not as you had been in that terrible bed, but as you were in the orchard. Laughing and alive.

He exhaled slowly.

Not a lot.

Just forever.

And as his son lifted the blade and stepped into the ring, Valarr felt the ache settle into something almost bearable.

You were gone. But you were still here.

In every smile.

In every stubborn argument.

In the fierce, unyielding love that refused to diminish, no matter how many years passed.

Forever, he realized, had never meant endless days side by side.

It meant this.

Carrying you forward in the only way left.

Through the son who looked just like you.

Through the love that death had not managed to silence.

Through the quiet promise whispered beneath apple trees and kept, steadfastly, until his final breath.