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Maekar had not come to council in one week.

Baelor had allowed it. Aemon was home for the first time in almost two years and Maekar was not a man who showed his softness often or to many people, and Baelor was not without understanding. He had given him one week. One week was generous, more than Baelor would have given anyone else.

He found them at supper without announcing himself.

He heard them before he entered. Maekar's voice, lower than usual, saying something Baelor didn't catch. Then Aemon's laugh, genuine and a little surprised at itself, the laugh of someone who didn't do it often enough.

Baelor had passed the boy in the corridor on his way here. A serving girl had fumbled a tray, caught it at the last moment, and Aemon had stopped walking. Said something quiet. Waited until she had herself collected before moving on, as if he had nowhere more pressing to be.

Baelor had noted it. He noted most things.

He opened the door.

Maekar looked up. Something in his expression shifted, that careful middle ground he occupied whenever Baelor appeared somewhere he hadn't expected him. Not cold. Not warm. Waiting to see what this was.

Aemon rose from his seat. "Uncle Baelor."

"Sit." Baelor crossed to the table and looked at the boy properly. Three years at the Citadel had lengthened him, sharpened the line of his jaw. He had Maekar's colouring and something steadier behind the eyes than Maekar had ever managed. "You look well."

"I am." A small smile. "It's good to be home."

Baelor pulled out the chair that had not been offered and sat. A cup appeared at his elbow. He accepted it.

"We were talking about the Citadel," Maekar said. Offering it without quite offering it.

"Tell me," Baelor said.

So Aemon told him. Carefully at first, measuring his words the way young men did when they were uncertain of their audience. Baelor asked questions, not many but the right ones, and after a time Aemon stopped measuring. He had opinions about the maesters, about the library, about a dispute between two senior scholars that had apparently divided the Citadel into factions for the better part of a year. Maekar interjected twice, skeptical, and Aemon pushed back on him with the ease of someone who had long since learned that his father's bark outpaced his bite.

Baelor watched them and kept his expression neutral.

Maekar was different with his children. The hard edges of him went somewhere else and what remained was still Maekar, still impatient and prone to interruption, but softer at the joints in a way he permitted nowhere else. Baelor had always known this. He simply did not often have occasion to watch it directly.

He watched it now, and thought, not for the first time, that it was a pity.

Maekar loved his children fiercely and without question, that much was plain. What was equally plain, to Baelor at least, was that love and temperament were not the same thing, and Maekar's temperament had never quite caught up with his intentions. Too quick to anger. Too quick to the hand. He had been that way as a boy, restless and combustible, and he had never fully outgrown it. Baelor had watched him raise his children with one fist open and one half-closed and had never found the occasion to say so. He was not certain there was one.

Aemon was midway through a story about a maester's prized raven escaping into the library and causing considerable damage to three years of accumulated research when a steward appeared at his elbow to refill his cup. The man miscalculated the distance, stepped too close, and Aemon shifted quickly to make room.

"Forgive me," Aemon said to the steward.

Maekar's expression changed, his brows burrowed slightly. "Don't," he said.

Aemon looked at him. "Father-"

"He stepped too close, you have nothing to apologise for." Maekar's voice was not unkind but it was firm, the voice of a man who had said this before and expected to say it again. "You are a prince. You do not apologise for existing, not to anyone."

The steward had gone very still. Baelor kept his expression neutral.

"He is polite," Baelor said, mildly, as an observation. "It is not a poor quality in a prince."

Maekar's jaw tightened, something sharp moving behind his eyes, and he set down his cup with more care than the gesture required. He glared at his brother. 

"I know what qualities my sons have," Maekar said. "I don't need your opinions."

"I am simply complimenting-"

"No." Maekar's voice had taken on that particular edge, the one that meant he had decided something was an attack and was working backwards to find the proof of it. "You were not merely complimenting, you were implying something. There is a difference."

"I implied nothing."

"You said not a poor quality in a prince, as if there were qualities that were. As if my other sons-"

"I said nothing about your other sons." Baelor replied, without rising to meet it, which seemed to push Maekar further. 

"You didn't have to." Maekar reached for his cup. "Not everyone can produce sons like yours. Quiet. Biddable. You'd think they were bred for it." A pause, deliberate and pointed. "Meek."

The word landed on the table between them.

Baelor set his utensils down. Unhurried. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Maekar, one brow lifted, his two-toned eyes steady and without heat. He did not fill the silence. He let it sit there and expand until it had taken up all the available space in the room.

Aemon had been watching his father the way he watched most things, carefully and from slightly sideways, and so he saw it clearly when it happened.

The look his uncle fixed on his father was not loud. It was the opposite of loud, the kind of stillness that took up more space than noise would have, and his father felt it. Aemon could tell by the way his father's shoulders changed, some slight shift in how he was holding himself.

His father held the look for three seconds, maybe four. His jaw worked once. Then he looked away and said something low, directed at the table, something Aemon caught the shape of but not the words.

"Repeat yourself," his uncle said, calmly, as if he had all evening and nothing better to do with it.

His father glanced back. Something moved through his expression, brief and difficult, the look of a man swallowing something that did not go down easily. "I misspoke," he said. "Apologies, brother." 

His uncle let that sit for a moment longer than was comfortable. Then he turned to Aemon and the look was gone entirely, replaced by something easy and warm, the face of a man with nothing unresolved behind him.

"You were telling us about the raven," his uncle said, with a smile. "Continue."

Aemon looked at his father once. His father was studying his cup with great concentration.

"Yes," Aemon said. "Right. The raven."

He continued, his voice coming out steady. He was rather proud of that.

He finished the story about the raven. His uncle laughed. Even his father's mouth curved at the end of it, reluctant and then not. It was a good supper, mostly. Aemon decided to remember it that way.

He heard her before the door opened.

Small feet, quick steps, the rhythm of a child who had not yet learned to slow herself down in corridors. Baelor had a half second, perhaps less. He stepped back and to the side, putting distance and a carved oak chair between himself and where he had just been standing.

Maekar straightened, and the door opened.

Daella was nine, or near enough. She had her mother's nose and her father's eyes and absolutely none of her father's caution. She came into the room like she owned it, and went straight for Maekar with her arms already reaching.

"Kepa-"

She stopped.

She had seen something. Baelor watched her process it from across the room, the furrow between her brows, the way her eyes moved over her father's face and then his neck and then cut sideways to where Baelor was standing.

"Uncle Baelor," she said, surprised. Not frightened, Daella was not easily frightened.

"Little one." He smiled at her.

She looked between them once, something working quietly behind her eyes, and then she crossed to her father and let herself be gathered up. Maekar's hands were steady. His colour was not, quite, though it was fading.

Baelor stayed where he was.

"What are you doing here?" Maekar asked her, his voice was even. He was better at this than Baelor sometimes gave him credit for.

"I wanted to show you." She produced something from her sleeve, a drawing, birds or possibly ships, it was difficult to determine. "Septa Irla said it was very good."

"It is very good," Maekar said, with the conviction of a man who had not looked at it yet.

Daella twisted in his arms to look at him properly and her eyes found the red mark blooming on his neck. She stared at it with the attention of a child who had not yet learned that staring was rude.

"What is that?"

Maekar did not miss a beat. "I caught myself on something."

"On what?"

"A clasp, on my cloak."

Daella considered this with a frown. "That looks like it hurts."

"It didn't, sweetling." Maekar reassured her.

She looked at him the way children looked at adults when they were deciding whether to believe them. Then she looked at Baelor, then back at her father. "You always say it is wrong to lie," she said.

Maekar opened his mouth, but Baelor replied to her first. "It isn't polite to question your father, little one.”

He kept his voice gentle. He kept the smile in it. He watched her turn to look at him and held her gaze, easy and warm and entirely immovable, and after a moment that was not very long at all Daella closed her mouth.

She was a clever girl. Cleverer than she let on, probably. But she was only nine and he was who he was and some things did not require force to hold their shape.

"Show me your drawing," Maekar said. His voice had dropped slightly, a certain softness only reserved for his daughters.

She turned back to her father and held it up and whatever had been in the room a moment ago rearranged itself into something ordinary. Baelor watched them for a moment. Then he crossed to where they stood, and rested his hand at the curve of Maekar's neck, his thumb finding the mark without searching for it. He pressed a kiss to the top of Daella's head. His face was close to Maekar's when he straightened. Maekar did not look at him, his ears were red. 

"Good evening, Daella." Baelor said, then he crossed to the door.

She looked at him over her father's shoulder as he left, "Good evening, Uncle Baelor."

He left them to it.

Daella heard the door close.

Her father's hand was warm on her back, moving in the slow circles he did when he thought she wasn't paying attention, and she leaned into it and looked at her drawing and thought.

There had been something, even if she wasn't sure what exactly. A feeling in the room when she came in, like walking into a space where the air had just shifted.

She looked again at her father's neck, and thought to herself, that mark that was not from a clasp. She knew what clasps did, she had caught herself on them before. They left small crescent shapes, sharp-edged. This was not that.

She did not say so. Uncle Baelor had looked at her in a way that was kind and smiling and had still, somehow, closed her mouth for her, and she was still thinking about how he had done that.

Her father pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and asked her about the drawing. 

She decided, after some consideration, that whatever it was it was not bad. Uncle Baelor had been here. Uncle Baelor would not let bad things happen to her father, she was fairly certain of that. He was always watching. Even when he seemed to be looking elsewhere he was watching, and her father was never quite so settled as when uncle Baelor was in the room.

Daella didn't have a word for what that meant, she was only nine. The word would come to her a few years later. 

The tailor was a short nervous man who had the good sense to keep his eyes on his work.

Maekar had been difficult since they arrived. He stood with his arms out at the tailor's direction and managed to make even that look like a grievance, his jaw set, his shoulders carrying the particular tension of a man being handled against his will. The fitting was for Matarys, but somehow Maekar had ended up in it as well. Baelor had said nothing, of course. Getting Maekar into a fitting voluntarily was the kind of thing you did not question or he would remember he had somewhere else to be. 

Baelor stood to the side and watched and did not offer his opinions. He had learned, a long time ago, that offering opinions to Maekar in this particular mood was like handing a man a sword and then expressing surprise when he used it.

He moved closer to look at the fabric the tailor's apprentice was holding up. 

"The silver braid," Baelor said to the apprentice. "Not the gold."

The apprentice nodded and disappeared.

Maekar said nothing, letting Baelor decide what to dress him in. Matarys was watching from the window seat with the patient expression of a boy who had learned that his nameday preparations involved more adults than strictly necessary. He had always been a good natured child, Baelor was grateful for it more often than he said.

"The sigil," Maekar said. He had found his grievance again. "I want to wear my own."

"You are my Lord Hand," Baelor said. "You wear mine."

"I am also a prince of the realm with my own sigil and my own house and my own-" Maekar glared at Baelor.

"And your own opinions, yes. I am familiar with them." Baelor sighed.

Maekar turned back to the tailor with an air of great sufferance. "My children should bear my sigil. I should bear my sigil. I don't see why everything in your vicinity needs to be stamped with your-" he gestured vaguely, "-yours."

Baelor considered him for a moment. The tailor was making himself very small and very busy, sensing the change in the air. 

Baelor crossed to Maekar, standing behind him as they both faced the large mirror in front of them. He straightened the collar of the new doublet, smoothed the shoulder with the flat of his palm, and let his fingers find the mark at the curve of Maekar's neck as if by accident. He held them there a moment.

"Your children can wear your sigil, brother.” Baelor said, matter of fact, the way he said things that were not up for discussion. Then his thumb caressed the mark, and he continued, "But you will wear mine, as you wear everything else of mine."

Maekar opened his mouth to argue, but then met Baelor’s gaze in the mirror. He knew better than to question his brother. The flush started at his collar and moved up. He turned to face the tailor with great deliberateness and said nothing and stood very still for the tailor, who took this as his cue to work with renewed efficiency.

Baelor stepped back and looked at the fabric samples.

"The silver braid," he said, to no one in particular. "Definitely the silver."

His uncle had stopped talking.

This was notable because his uncle had not stopped talking since they arrived, a steady current of complaint about the cut and the colour and the sigil and the braid and the entirely unnecessary amount of time a fitting required for what was, in his uncle’s estimation, a straightforward task that any man ought to be able to accomplish without assistance.

Then father said something Matarys didn't quite catch and his uncle stopped. Turned to face the window and held his arms out for the tailor and said nothing argumentative for the remainder of the fitting. 

Matarys watched his uncle’s profile, the tips of his ears were red. He then looked at his father, who was examining a length of fabric with the calm attention of a man with nothing on his mind.

Matarys had noticed, over the years, that his uncle was different with his father than he was with anyone else. Louder, mostly. More likely to argue. More likely to say the thing he was thinking rather than the thing he had decided to say. With everyone else his uncle was a particular kind of person, controlled in the way of men who knew their own temper and kept it at arm's length. With father, he seemed to forget to do that.

And then father would say something, or look at him in a certain way, and his uncle would go quiet. It happened every time, Matarys had stopped being surprised by it.

He had not yet worked out what it meant. He was not sure he had the right words for it yet. He was eleven and the words for some things came later, he had found, when you had enough of the world in you to understand what you were looking at.

He looked at his new coat, held up now for his inspection, and decided it was a very good nameday so far.

The evening had been going well enough until it wasn't.

Baelor had been at the far end of the hall when he heard it, not the words but the shape of them, the particular quality of Daeron's laughter when he had been drinking long enough to stop caring about the volume. He had excused himself from the conversation he was having with Lord Butterwell the moment he saw Maekar's expression change.

He was already moving, shoulders squared, chin dropped, the walk of a man who had found his target and was done being reasonable about it, and Baelor crossed the hall at an angle and got a hand to his arm before he reached his son. 

"Leave it," Baelor said quietly.

"He is making a spectacle of himself-"

"He is. And you are about to make a larger one." Baelor kept his grip light but did not remove it. "Walk with me."

Maekar looked at him. Then he looked at Daeron, still holding court, cup raised, the men around him laughing at something that carried poorly across the noise of the hall. His jaw worked, and it seemed like he was going to ignore him, so Baelor tightened his grip. Not quite painful, but the kind of grip that made its point without requiring discussion.

Maekar looked down at his arm. Then up at Baelor.

He walked. Baelor had Daeron removed quietly while Maekar was looking elsewhere. By the time Maekar realised what had happened they were already in the corridor and there was nothing left to make a scene about.

Maekar said nothing on the walk to Baelor's solar. This was worse than if he had.

By the time they arrived Daeron was in a chair looking at the ceiling with the boneless ease of the very drunk, and whatever composure Maekar had managed on the walk over dissolved the moment he cleared the door.

"Look at you," Maekar said.

Daeron shrugged. One shoulder, loose, unbothered.

"Do you have any idea what your mother would say." Maekar's voice had already dropped, which was worse than if it had risen. "Do you have any idea what she would think, looking at you right now. Sitting there like that. Like you haven't a thought in your head beyond the next cup."

Daeron's expression shifted. The looseness went out of it.

"Don't," Daeron said, glaring at his father. 

"She didn't die so you could-" Maekar continued, as if he had not heard his son. 

"I said don't-"

"A disgrace." Maekar spat. "That is what you are. That is what she would see. Everything she hoped for you and you can't manage a single evening without making a spectacle of yourself, without dragging my name through-"

"Maekar." Baelor's voice was low.

Maekar did not stop.

"-the mud like you haven't a thought in your head, like everything we worked for, everything she wanted for you was nothing, like you could not care less-"

"Maekar.” Baelor interjected again, louder this time. “Enough."

"He needs to hear it-" Maekar snapped, turning his fury to his brother. 

"He has heard it." Baelor rose from his chair. "He heard it the moment you walked through that door."

Maekar looked away. "Stay out of this, he is my son-"

"I know whose son he is." Baelor crossed the room. "Step back."

Maekar held his gaze for a moment, something violent moving behind his eyes, and then turned back to Daeron and reached for his arm. Baelor slapped Maekar’s hand away and put himself between them.

The silence was immediate.

"I said leave us, do not make me repeat myself brother." Baelor commanded. Final. "I will see to him, I will see to you later."

Maekar glared at him, jaw tense, holding back the argument running through his mind. Something moved through his face, the anger and something beneath the anger, the look of a man who had gone too far and knew it and was not yet ready to say so.

"You do not get to-" Maekar said quietly, voice barely above a whisper.

"Go, Maekar." Baelor said, letting the rest of his words unspoken. 

A long moment of silence passed, their gaze boring into each other. Then Maekar looked away first, looked at Daeron with furrowed brows, and left. The door closed with more force than was necessary and less than Baelor had expected.

Baelor watched him go.

He knew what would have happened later, had he let Maekar say the vicious things he had in his arsenal. He would lie awake with every word he'd said tonight laid out in front of him like evidence, turning them over, finding the worst of them. He would not sleep. He never did, after invoking Dyanna. Her name in his mouth that way cost him, always had, and he would pay for it in the dark hours the way he always paid, quietly and without telling anyone.

In the morning he would be quieter than usual and Daeron would not know what to do with that and Maekar would not know how to bridge it and it would sit between them for weeks, maybe longer, because Maekar did not know how to apologise for the things that mattered. He only knew how to carry them. And even Baelor could not reach him in that particular quiet, the one he reserved for Dyanna and her children. That room had no door he had ever been given a key to.

He had long since made his peace with that, but that does not mean he would let it happen willingly. Baelor turned to Daeron.

He crossed to the chair across from him, sat. and looked at his nephew for a moment without speaking. Daeron met his eyes for two seconds and then found something interesting near Baelor's left shoulder.

"Your father loves you dearly," Baelor said. "And poorly, at times. He says what he shouldn't and then carries every word of it, long after you've forgotten." He paused. "He takes whatever hurt you give him and drinks it down like it's owed to him."

Daeron said nothing.

Baelor looked at him steadily. "He has been dear to me since he was small enough to fit in my hands," he said. "I have not suffered anyone hurting him in all that time, at least without letting them go unpunished."

The fire shifted in the grate. Daeron looked at his uncle's face and found something there he had not expected, something sinister sitting behind his calm gaze, a darkness that was not anger exactly, not a thing that needed to raise its voice or make itself known. It simply exists like it had been there since the very start.

"I see no reason to begin now," Baelor said.

Daeron's shoulders changed, straightening his back as he sat up properly. Looked away from his uncle. Something coiled in his belly, cold and sudden. He told himself it was the wine.

The silence that followed was not comfortable. Baelor let it run as long as it needed to. He watched his nephew sit in it, watched the understanding move through him slowly, watched him arrive at the far side of it and find his footing there.

"Yes, Uncle," Daeron finally said.

Baelor held his gaze a moment longer, then he rose. "Sleep it off," he said. "You will feel a fool in the morning."

He was at the door when he paused,and said the next few words without turning around.

"Your father is very dear to me, Daeron." A beat. "I would hate for you to make me prove how dear." 

He left it there and left.

Daeron sat in the chair for a long time after the door closed.

He had spent twenty years watching them. Twenty years and he had never quite let himself look at it directly, had always found somewhere else to put his eyes, somewhere easier. Tonight he was too tired and now too sober to manage it.

He thought about Summerhall.

He had been perhaps five or six the first time he remembers, one of many visits over the years, uncle Baelor arriving with his household and Valarr, even then, solemn at his side with aunt Jena. His father had gone out to meet them in the yard. He remembered that very clearly, the way his father's whole bearing changed when uncle Baelor's party came through the gate, something loosening in him that Daeron hadn't had a word for then.

He had a word for it now, he wished he didn't.

There had been evenings during those visits where his father simply wasn't where he was supposed to be. Daeron had learned not to ask. His mother had learned not to ask before him, he suspected, though she never said so. Dyanna had been clever that way. Clever and quiet and she had loved his father with the particular grace of a woman who understood exactly what she had and had made her peace with the shape of it. He wondered sometimes if she had known. He thought she probably had, too clever to not have not. 

He has been dear to me since he was small enough to fit in my hands, his uncle had said. My hands. 

Daeron turned it over. There was something in it he couldn't quite put his finger on, something that sat wrong in the way that true things sometimes did. My hands. His uncle inserting himself into the sentence, into the memory, into something that should have just been about his father being small once and instead was about Baelor being there when he was.

Had always been there. Would always be. Daeron pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He thought about his father's neck going red. The way he'd left without looking back.

I have not suffered anyone hurting him in all that time.

He dropped his hands. He then went to bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about how in twenty years, through wives and children and wars and grief and living, he could not recall a single stretch of time longer than a few months where his father and uncle Baelor had been in different places. There had always been letters when there was distance. There had always been visits. There had always been, when they were in the same place, this. Whatever this was.

He had always looked away before. He pulled the blanket up and closed his eyes and decided, with great finality, that he was going to continue looking away.

Some things were better kept in the corner of your eye.

He heard Maekar before he found him.

This was not unusual. Maekar's voice carried the way few things did, because there was a quality to it when he was displeased that cut through walls and closed doors with remarkable efficiency. Baelor followed it down the corridor and found them in a sitting room, Rhae on a chair with her hands folded in her lap and Maekar standing over her with a vial in his hand that he was holding up like evidence.

"I want him," Rhae whined. "I don't care if he doesn't want me back. I'll make it happen."

Maekar stared at her, the vein in his forehead visible. "You'll make it-"

"Yes!"

"Rhae." His voice had dropped to the register he used when he was genuinely alarmed. "Listen to yourself. Do you hear yourself?!"

"I hear myself fine."

"There is love," Maekar said, "and there is something else entirely, and what you are describing is not love. Love does not take. Love does not- you cannot simply decide and then-" He pressed two fingers to his temple. "This is an obsession. What you're describing. Do you know what that word means."

"I love him," Rhae said, her voice wobbling. "Love is not wrong!"

"What's wrong-" Maekar made a sound that was not quite a word. "What of Aegon? Have you thought about Egg for a single moment in all of this. If you love him, truly, you would want him happy. Surely. You would want-"

"He can be happy with me."

"Rhae, if you have to put something in his cup to make him look at you, he is not happy with you, he is-"

"I don't care," Rhae yelled, petulant. "I love him and I want him and I don't care how I-"

"Enough," Baelor said, as he entered. They both turned to look at him. He looked at Rhae for a moment, then at Maekar, and when he spoke his voice was even and almost gentle.

"There is nothing wrong with love," he said.

Maekar was struck dumb. “Do not encourage-"

"Nor with the wanting." Baelor continued on, and kept his eyes on Rhae. "Wanting something badly enough to reach for it. To do whatever is needed. That is not something I would call wrong."

Maekar was very still, his eyes on Baelor with the intensity of a man who had run out of words and was considering kinslaying.

"However," Baelor said, to Rhae, "a love potion is a blunt instrument. Whatever Egg feels after drinking it will not be his. It will be the herbs." He tilted his head slightly. "Wouldn't you rather know it was real."

Rhae looked at him. Her jaw was still set, the tears she had not shed sitting just behind her eyes.

"What if it never is," she said, softer. "What if I wait and it's never real."

Baelor looked at her for a moment. Then his gaze moved to Maekar, who was still staring daggers at him. He kept it there when he spoke.

"It will be," he said. "What is real does not unknow itself. You may have to wait. You may have to watch it exist in a shape you did not choose, in rooms you did not plan for, beside people who are not you." His voice was even, almost gentle. "It will exist regardless. It will find its way to what it belongs to. It always does."

He was still looking at Maekar.

"We are Targaryens," he said. "We do not love by halves, what we want we want completely. What we decide we decide for good." A pause. "The gods made us this way. Touched us, some would say. Set something in us that burns differently than it does in other men, hotter and longer and without the sense to go out when it should." Something moved across his face, quiet and certain and fathomless. "I have never believed that to be a flaw. I have never believed that what I carry is anything less than what the gods intended when they made us what we are. There is nothing impure in it. Nothing lesser. Nothing that requires apology or amendment or the pretense that it is something other than what it is."

His voice dropped slightly.

"What is mine was placed in my hands by the gods themselves. I did not ask for it. I did not need to.” Baelor said. “And who are we to question the gods?" 

The words landed on Rhae. The meaning crossed the room to whom it was intended for.

Maekar had gone completely still. The expression on his face was the one he wore when he thought Baelor had lost his mind entirely, jaw set, eyes hard, working very diligently to hold onto something that was slipping. He was not entirely succeeding. Baelor could see exactly where it was slipping from, the tight line of his mouth, the way he had stopped looking quite so much like he wanted to argue and started looking like a man who had been told something he was furious to be reminded

Baelor felt the familiar weight of it settle in his chest.

"Put the vial away," he said quietly, to Rhae. "You will not need it."

Maekar looked at Rhae. Something moved through his expression, the frustration going somewhere softer and more tired. "I do not want to hear about this again," he said.

Rhae nodded, solemn.

Maekar left, not looking at Baelor on his way out.

The door was still swinging gently on its hinges. He watched it settle and did not move, his eyes on the space Maekar had just occupied, the empty doorway, the corridor beyond it. He was aware, distantly, of Rhae still in her chair. He did not turn around immediately.

He thought about certainty. About the arithmetic of wanting something and knowing you had it and the work of making sure it stayed. Maekar thought him measured. Maekar thought him composed and unhurried and in possession of himself at all times. Maekar was not entirely wrong. But he was not entirely right either.

He turned to find Rhae watching him. She had her hands folded in her lap still, her face very still and very open in the way of children who were paying more attention than anyone had accounted for.

He looked at her and remembered she was there.

"Put it away properly. Somewhere your brothers won't find it." he said, before leaving.

She waited until his footsteps faded down the corridor. Then she took the vial out of her sleeve and turned it in her fingers, recalling her father’s words. He had said you couldn't make someone love you. Her uncle Baelor had said some things were worth making certain of. She was not sure who was right, but she knew which one she believed more, which was not the same thing as which one was correct.

She had seen his face when her father left.

She had seen it because she was still there, which adults forgot about her sometimes, and she had the habit of watching people's faces when they thought no one was watching. Her father's face was easy to read. Her uncle Baelor's was not, mostly, but there were moments.

This had been a moment.

She knew that look. She had seen it before, in her own reflection, on mornings when she thought about Egg and whether he would ever look at her the way she wanted him to. The specific quality of it. The wanting that had nowhere to go and went there anyway.

She had not expected to see it on uncle Baelor's face, and  had not expected to recognise it so easily. Her uncle had said what is real finds its way to what it belongs to, and had been looking at her father when he said it.

She tucked the vial away into her hidden pocket and sat with that for a while. The thing she had seen on his face. The thing she saw in her own mirror. The thing her father called obsession and her uncle called something else, something that the gods had put in them, something that did not require permission.

She thought uncle Baelor was probably right.

He had heard about it from a steward who had the sense to look frightened when he delivered the news. The details had been sparse. Maekar, injured, his own son the cause of it. Baelor had not asked for more than that.

He had not knocked.

Aerion was standing when Baelor came through the door. His hands were clasped behind his back, his chin level, his expression arranged into something careful and contrite that gave nothing away about whether he meant it. He had his father's face, as he had been at that age, the same jaw, the same set of the eyes, and Baelor had made his peace long ago with the fact that this made him softer on the boy than he had any business being.

Maekar was in a chair.

His doublet was off. There was linen wrapped around his ribs and side, white except where it wasn't in small splotches of red. He was alive, he was upright and relatively well. The tightness in Baelor's chest did not entirely release but it loosened enough to breathe around.

He crossed the room anyway. His hands found Maekar's jaw first, tipping his face up, checking, then his shoulder, his arm, pressing two fingers to the linen at his ribs to feel for heat.

Maekar grabbed his wrist.

"I'm fine," he said.

"You are very clearly not fine." Baelor pressed his fingers more firmly against the bandaging. Maekar's breath caught. "You were saying?"

"Get off me." Maekar pushed his hand away, not particularly gently. "I've had worse."

"That is not the reassurance you think it is, brother."

Maekar gave him a sharp look and rolled his eyes. Baelor looked at him, the look he reserved for when Maekar was being difficult for the sake of it, and said nothing. He turned to Aerion.

"What happened."

"The boy got careless," Maekar replied instead. "It was merely an accident."

Baelor looked at Aerion still, ignoring Maekar’s words. "Well?"

Aerion met his eyes coolly. "A page appeared in my peripheral," he said. "It threw my aim."

"Appeared," Baelor repeated, with a raised brow.

"Yes." Aerion snapped. 

"A page appeared in your peripheral." Baelor tilted his head slightly. "Or were you aiming for the page to begin with."

The room went very still, Maekar immediately sat forward. Baelor’s hand on his shoulder the only thing keeping him seated. "How dare-"

"I am talking to Aerion," Baelor said, without looking at him.

"You are accusing him!” Maekar spat. 

"I am asking." Baelor's eyes stayed on Aerion. "And I expect an answer, Aerion."

Aerion's jaw tightened. Something moved behind his eyes that was not quite guilt and not quite innocence. "It was an accident," he insisted. "I have said so."

Baelor looked at him. The set of his jaw, the steadiness of his gaze, the particular way he held himself when cornered, all of it so familiar it was almost distracting. He knew this face. He had been watching this face for thirty years, only younger now, only less worn. He set the observation aside. 

He then looked at Maekar. The colour was high in his face, the flush of a man who had been humiliated in front of his son and was deciding what to do about it. Maekar was furious. "You will not come in here and accuse my boy of-"

"He is exactly what you made him," Baelor said. "Every time you softened when you shouldn't have. Every time you looked at him and saw something you recognised and decided that was reason enough to let it go." A pause. "You made him believe there are no walls. You cannot be surprised when he runs into them."

"You don't get to stand there and tell me how I've raised my children." Maekar scoffed. 

"I am your elder," Baelor said. "I am your king. This realm bends to me. Its lords bend to me. Its laws bend to me." His eyes stayed on Maekar, the hand on his shoulder went to hold him at the back of his neck instead. "You are no different."

Maekar stared at him.

The colour in his face did not fade. If anything it deepened, especially when Baelor’s grip tightened, something hot moving through his expression. But he said nothing in argument, he simply looked away, jaw set, shoulders rigid, and said nothing. And the silence was its own kind of answer, its own kind of humiliation, and Baelor watched it happen and felt the weight of it settle in him the way it always did.

He looked at Aerion.

"You will go to Lys," he said, before turning back to look at Maekar. "Six months. You will study under Maester Edwyn and you will come back knowing that your father's patience is not a resource to be tested for sport."

Aerion's expression did not change, but the brief panic in his eyes betrayed him. He turned to his father, but Maekar was still looking at Baelor, and Baelor was looking back at him, steady and unhurried.

Maekar said nothing, even when Baelor saw the anger in his eyes. The same anger he often saw in Aerion’s. Maekar’s jaw worked once, and eventually his eyes dropped.

Aerion had not begged. He had stood there and delivered his apology with his hands behind his back and his chin level and he had meant some of it, enough of it, which was more than most people managed.

He had known, even then, that it would not matter.

Growing up in his father's house had taught him certain things early and he learned them thoroughly. His father was loud and quick and his father's displeasure was a weather system that moved through rooms and left everyone slightly flattened in its wake. But uncle Baelor came and the weather simply… changed. Aerion could not remember a time when it had been otherwise.

He watched his father go through the motions of fury, the colour in his face, the set of his shoulders, the voice that could strip bark from trees, and he watched uncle Baelor stand in the middle of all of it and wait, unhurried, the way you waited for a storm you knew would pass. His hand at the curve of his father's neck, brief and certain. His father not even attempting to move away from it.

He had seen his father's eyes in that moment. Had seen the thing in them that always appeared when uncle Baelor spoke in that particular tone, something that was not quite submission and not quite peace but lived somewhere between the two. Old and settled and not up for discussion.

He turned to his father anyway. Habit, mostly, the same reflex he'd had since he was small, the one that said his father was the final word on everything. His father, however, was looking at uncle Baelor. Aerion looked away.

He had known before he turned, which was the honest truth of it. He had known the moment uncle Baelor's hand had settled at his father's neck and his father had gone still beneath it. There was no save coming, there had never been a save coming. Uncle Baelor had spoken and the matter was closed and his father, for all his noise and fury and the considerable terror he inspired in lesser men, would not be opening it again.

He looked at his uncle instead.

The wanting came the way it always came, cold and immediate and without apology, though he could not have said cleanly what it was he wanted. To be uncle Baelor, perhaps, the man who held his father still with a hand and a word. Or to be the thing held, which was the part he did not let himself look at directly, the older and uglier hunger underneath the new one. 

Because his father had never once looked at him the way he had looked at uncle Baelor just now. His father loved him, Aerion did not doubt that, his father loved him in the loud helpless way he did everything, but it was a love that arrived as fury and correction and the back of a hand, never as that. 

Never as the still attention his father gave Baelor, the going quiet, the giving over. Aerion had spent his whole life trying to provoke his father into looking at him properly and had only ever managed to provoke the anger, never the thing the anger turned into when Baelor was the one provoking it.

He had catalogued it for years, this difference, this lack. Told himself he was only curious. He was not only curious. He was the boy who had hurt his father today and could not entirely swear, even to himself, that the page had startled him at all, because some small starved part of him had wanted to see what it took to make his father look at him the way he looked at Baelor, and had learned, again, that there was nothing he could do that would manage it.

He wanted what uncle Baelor had. Not the crown, not the title, those were blunt instruments that anyone with the right blood could inherit. He wanted the specific thing, the quality that had no name he knew of, that worked on the strongest man he knew the way a key worked on a lock, without force and without fail. He wanted to be the one a man like that bent for. He wanted to make strong men feel the way his father looked right now, undone and quiet and entirely held, because if he could not be on the receiving end of it then he would learn to be the cause of it instead.

They brought Aegon back before supper.

Baelor had been in his solar when the knock came, Egg brought in by one of the household guard. Egg had made it as far as the stables before someone had thought to count heads and he had not gone quietly.

Maekar arrived before Baelor had finished reading the report. He came through the door already at full volume.

"What were you thinking," Maekar shouted at his youngest son, who was sitting in the chair by the window with his arms crossed and his jaw set and a spectacular amount of mud on his boots. "What in the name of every god was going through your head, do you have any idea what could have happened, do you have any idea-"

"I wasn't going far," Egg replied, petulant.

"You weren't- you weren't going far." Maekar stared at him. "You snuck out of the keep without telling anyone, without a guard, without-"

"I didn't want a guard."

"What you want is entirely beside the point. You are a child! You are a prince of this realm. You do not get to decide-"

"Yes only you decide, and you never listen," Egg said. "You just shout until everyone stops arguing."

Maekar went very still.

"It's true," Egg said. "You do."

Baelor watched Maekar's expression move through something swift and dangerous. He crossed to Egg in three strides, pulled him up by the arm and bent him forward, positioning him with the grimness of a man who had made this decision and intended to follow through on it.

"I have had enough," Maekar said, "of this. Of all of it-"

"Maekar." Baelor warned, at the raised hand, but Maekar did not stop.

The slap landed once across the back of Egg's thigh. It was more surprise than pain, from what Baelor could observe. Egg had layers on and Maekar's aim had been off, rushed with anger, and the boy's mouth was already opening again, already ready to say something that would have made it considerably worse.

Maekar raised his hand for the second strike, and Baelor crossed the room. The back of hand connected with Maekar's cheek, the ring caught skin. The red bloomed high on his cheekbone, vivid and immediate, spreading outward from where the ring had caught.

The room went completely quiet.

Maekar's face had turned with the blow. He did not look at Baelor immediately, just stood there with his hand still half raised and the mark rising on his cheek, and when he did look it was with something raw and unguarded that he covered over almost immediately with the glare, hot and direct and absolutely useless.

"Enough," Baelor said. “That is enough, Maekar.”

Egg had not moved, his eyes wide.

Maekar held the glare for a long moment. Then something shifted in it, the rawness coming back through, and he looked at Egg with an expression that had lost most of its heat and gained something more complicated in its place.

"Go," his father said. "We will speak later."

Egg did not move. He looked at his father's face, the mark already rising on his cheek, the cut vivid at the centre of it, and felt something he did not have a word for yet sitting heavy in his chest.

He did not want to leave his father there, not with the man who struck him, even if it is his uncle Baelor. He did not want to leave him alone in this room with uncle Baelor, though he could not have said precisely why, could not have put words to the thing that made him want to stay planted where he was and not move until his father moved first.

"Go, Aegon," uncle Baelor said.

Egg went, but he waited in the corridor because he could not make himself walk further than that. He told himself he wasn't listening. He stood with his back against the wall and his arms at his sides and looked at the opposite wall and he was absolutely not listening.

He heard nothing anyway.

He had seen his father hit people before. His father's hand was not always gentle and Egg had grown up knowing the difference between a warning and a punishment and knowing which one he was more likely to receive on any given day. He had thought he understood the geography of his father's anger, where it went and what it did when it got there.

He had not understood this.

Uncle Baelor had not looked angry. That was the thing Egg kept returning to, standing in the corridor with his muddy boots and his heart still going too fast. He had looked like a man doing something that needed doing, unhurried, certain, the way he looked when he was signing documents or receiving reports. Like it was simply the next thing on a list. And his father had gone quiet. His father, who had volume enough for three men and the temper to match, had stood there and gone completely silent.

Some time passed before the door opened.

His father came out. The mark on his cheek had darkened, vivid against his skin, the cut from uncle Baelor's ring still raw at the centre of it. His hair was not quite right, disheveled, and the coat he was wearing was no longer on him. He looked at Egg in surprise.

Something moved through his expression, but he said nothing. He put his hand briefly on Egg's head, heavy and warm, there and gone, and then walked past him down the corridor without breaking stride.

Egg looked back, met his uncle’s cool gaze before the door closed completely. He ran after his father. 

The council had not gone well.

Baelor had known it would not go well before it started. He had looked at Maekar across the table at the opening of the session and seen the mark on his cheek, darker now than it had been an hour ago, the cut at the centre of it still raw, and had said nothing. Maekar had looked back at him with the expression of a man who had decided to be difficult about everything today and was prepared to commit to it fully.

He had been thorough about it.

He had disagreed with the proposed trade adjustments, the garrison rotations, about the timing of the northern envoy's reception which was a matter so routine it should not have warranted a disagreement of any kind. Each time Baelor had responded evenly and each time Maekar had found a new angle from which to push. By the end of the session, the lords were glad for it. 

Valarr had said nothing throughout. He sat to Baelor's right and kept his eyes on the table and kept his counsel, despite being a little perplexed at his uncle. When the session ended Baelor dismissed the room. Most of them went with visible relief. Valarr, as well, began to rise.

"Stay," Baelor said.

Valarr sat back down, unsure whom his father addressed as the man was still looking down at the report he was reading. Maekar who had stood with the lords, decided the command was not for him, and continued for the door. 

"I said stay." Baelor commanded, two toned eyes looking up at his brother. 

The word landed the way it always landed. Maekar's jaw tightened. He looked at the door for a few seconds, before he turned, looked at Valarr, who was looking back and forth between the two of them. Maekar sat back down, his arms crossed. 

Baelor waited until the last of the others had gone. Then he dropped his reports and looked at Maekar, who was looking away at the far end of the wall.

"You were saying," he said.

"I said what I said," Maekar said. "If you disagreed you could have-"

"The northern envoy," Baelor said. "You argued for twenty minutes about the northern envoy's reception, a routine event."

"The timing is wrong."

"The timing is identical to all the ones preceding it."

"I have reconsidered." Maekar replied.

"Have you?"

Maekar's eyes cut to him. "Yes."

Baelor looked at him for a moment, then he stood.

The room changed size the way it always did when Baelor stood, something about the way he commanded space, and Maekar's chin lifted in response, that automatic defiance, the refusal to be made smaller even when everything else in the room was arranging itself accordingly.

"Stop posturing," Maekar said, when Baelor stood. "You are the king. Everyone in this room knows you are the king." His voice had taken on that particular edge, the one that meant he had found something and intended to use it. 

"My words don't matter, do they. What am I? I sit here and I speak and you do as you please regardless, so don’t pretend my disagreements amount to anything." A short, humourless sound. "You know best. You always know best. I am just here to warm-" 

Baelor crossed the distance between them before Maekar had finished the sentence and his hand closed around Maekar's jaw, and he tilted his face up. Maekar went still, his mouth kept open by Baelor’s fingers digging into his cheeks. 

Whatever was on his father's face at that moment, Valarr could not see from where he was sitting. He could see his uncle's, whose expression moved through something swift and unguarded, resistance and then the dissolution of it, and when Maekar spoke his voice had lost everything it had been carrying all afternoon, just from whatever was on his father's face.

"I misspoke," Maekar said. "I apologise."

Maekar then tried to move his head away, but Baelor tightened his grip. Maekar looked up again, Valarr could see the anger behind the pale eyes and was worried he would say something else despite having apologised just moments earlier.

But he did not say another word, and a few seconds later his father released him and stepped back and turned to Valarr as if nothing had happened, as if Valarr had not just watched his father's Hand apologise to him with his fingers still tight on his jaw.

"Leave us, Valarr." his father said. He was smiling. Warm, easy, the face of a man with nothing unresolved behind him. "I shall see you for dinner."

Valarr stood, and his uncle made a motion to rise as well. Baelor did not utter another word, instead he turned to look at Maekar and kept his gaze steady. Maekar sat, without being told to. Valarr excused himself, and went to the door. His hand was on the latch when he felt it, the heavy quality of the silence behind him, but he did not turn around.

He opened the door and walked through it and closed it behind him and stood in the corridor for a moment that went on slightly longer than it should have. He had noticed the mark before the session started.

His uncle, arriving with a cut on his cheek, fresh enough to still be raw at the centre, red blooming outward from it in the specific shape of something deliberate. Valarr had looked at it and felt something catch.

His uncle was not a man who got marked. He was large and careful and composed and in twenty years Valarr could not recall seeing anything on him that suggested he had been on the receiving end of anything. The occasional wrapped injury from the training yard, maybe, hidden under sleeves, but nothing on his face. Nothing visible.

His uncle always had opinions but today it had been different, this had been personal in a way that had nothing to do with trade or timing or northern envoys, and Valarr had sat to his father's right and watched and kept his face neutral and felt something sitting in his chest that he could not entirely account for.

His father had been patient through all of it. His father was always patient, and Valarr had spent his entire life watching that patience and trying to understand it, the patience that was not indifference, that was not distance, that was something else entirely, something that knew exactly what it was doing and was simply waiting for the right moment to do it.

The right moment had been the words his uncle said sarcastically.

Valarr had watched his father stand and watched his uncle's chin go up and watched the whole thing resolve itself in the span of a breath, his father's hand at his uncle's jaw, his uncle going pliant, the apology coming out quiet and undefended. He had watched it and felt the thing in his chest split into three distinct pieces and he had not been able to put it back together since.

He wanted to be his uncle. He thought it to himself and felt the shame of it crawl up his neck and made himself think it anyway. To be the thing his father crossed a room for, the thing his father's hand found without searching, the thing his father put a mark on and could not seem to stop touching. His father had never once handled him like that. His father had never handled him at all, not really. Every memory Valarr had of his father's hands on him was gentle, a palm on his shoulder, a thumb smoothing his hair, the careful affection you gave a thing you were afraid of breaking, and somewhere along the way Valarr had begun to understand that careful and distant were not so different from one another. 

His father loved him the way you loved something precious and fragile and slightly apart from yourself. His father loved his uncle the way you loved something you had decided was simply part of you, that you could grip and bruise and shout at and pull close again because there was no version of the world in which it left.

Valarr had spent his whole life being handled like glass and had only just now, at the foolish age he was, begun to wonder whether glass was the same as kept at a distance.

He wanted to be his father, too. That was the second piece, and it was easier to look at. To have someone like his uncle, a man who made lords step out of corridors and knights choose their words carefully, who bent for no one and had made a point of it his entire life. Not because his father was king. 

His uncle did not bend for the crown, that much was plain, had never bent for the crown. He bent for Baelor, for whatever Baelor was to him that had nothing to do with rank or title or authority. To have someone choose you like that, and go on choosing you, every single time, against sense and against the world and against their own considerable pride.

And the third piece, the one that sat the worst. He wanted to be let in. He wanted to know what lived behind that closed door, the room his father went into with his uncle and came out of looking like a man who had been somewhere Valarr had never been invited. He had been given every consideration his father had to offer. 

Every patience, every gentleness, every careful measured thing. He had never been given that. He had never once made his father stand up, or go quiet, or grip him by the jaw like he could not help it. He was not even sure, standing alone in the corridor with the silence pressing at his back, that his father had ever wanted to.

He walked away from the door before he could decide whether that was grief or envy or some third thing that did not have a name either.

The door closed behind Valarr.

Baelor did not move from where he was standing. He looked at Maekar, who was still in his chair with his arms crossed and his jaw set, staring at the table with intensity. The silence ran for a moment. Maekar broke it first, he always broke it first, too impatient.

"You had no right," he said. "To do that. Any of it. The- sitting there, keeping me here like I'm-" He pushed back from the table and stood, and there was the afternoon in his face still, all of it, the argument and the jaw and the sitting and Valarr watching all of it. "I am not your dog, Baelor. I am a prince of this realm and your Hand and I am not something you own, I am not something you get to- to handle, like I'm-"

Baelor looked at him. How apt, Baelor thought. Of all the comparisons Maekar could have reached for. Not a dog, he said, and yet here he was, doing precisely what dogs did, loud and insistent and circling the same ground he had already covered twice, waiting for Baelor to flinch or yield or say something that would give him somewhere new to go.

Maekar stopped.

Not because he had run out of words. Baelor could see the words still there, backed up behind his teeth, the whole argument still live and present and looking for somewhere to go. He stopped because of him, no doubt because of the look currently on his face, that had been ending Maekar's sentences for decades.

The silence settled. Baelor held it for one moment longer than was strictly necessary.

"Come," he said.

Baelor walked and Maekar followed and neither of them spoke in the corridor. That was its own kind of language, the silence between them on the walk, Maekar a half step behind and not trying to close the distance, the quality of his footsteps when he had run out of argument and was moving toward something else entirely.

The guard at Baelor's door stepped aside without being told. Baelor went in, Maekar came in behind him. The room was dim, the fire low, one lamp burning on the table by the window. Baelor did not light another. He turned.

Maekar was standing just inside the door. The mark on his cheek had gone deep red in the low light, the cut at the centre of it still raw. His hair was slightly undone from the afternoon, a strand loose at his temple. He was looking at Baelor with the expression he only had in rooms like this, stripped of the afternoon's performance, something more unguarded underneath.

Baelor crossed to him. He took Maekar's face in both hands, carefully, his thumb passing once over the mark on his cheek. Maekar's eyes closed briefly. When they opened they were bright, wet at the corners, the fight still plainly there behind them. 

Baelor stepped back. "Undress," he said.

Maekar's breath hitched, but he didn't question it, didn't hesitate. His fingers, usually so steady, fumbled slightly at the laces of his doublet. He pulled it over his head, folding it with a care that came from years of practice, and he placed it on the back of a chair, the fabric dark against the worn wood.

His tunic followed, then his trousers, the garments pooling at his feet. He stood for a moment, the firelight catching the defined lines of his shoulders and the narrowness of his waist. The mark on his cheek was a vivid splash of color against his pale skin. The wound Aerion gave him moons back now just a scar below his ribs.

Baelor crossed to him. He took Maekar's face in both hands, carefully, his thumb passing once over the mark on his cheek. Maekar's eyes closed briefly. When they opened they were bright, wet at the corners, the fight still plainly there behind them.

Baelor stepped back. He looked at Maekar for a moment, then at the armchair by the window. Maekar followed his gaze. Looked back at him.

"Hands on the seat," Baelor said.

A beat. Maekar's jaw worked. He crossed to the chair with the deliberate unhurried walk of a man who was doing this because he had decided to, not because he had been told to, and that distinction mattered to him enormously. He bent over it. His hands found the seat. His head dropped forward, the loose strand of hair falling across his face.

Baelor stood behind him. 

"You raised your hand to your son today," he said. "Then you made a spectacle of yourself in council. You argued for the better part of an hour about nothing." A pause. "And then you stood in an empty room barking and claimed yourself not a dog."

Maekar's knuckles had gone white where they gripped the seat.

"You have been," Baelor said, "very insolent."

He raised his hand and brought it down. The sound was sharp in the quiet room. Maekar's whole body shuddered with it but he made no sound. His head stayed down, his hands stayed where they were, his knuckles white where he gripped the chair.

"Another," Baelor said, and brought his hand down again, on the other cheek. "For the disrespect you showed me."

Another slap, harder this time. Maekar's breath hissed out between his teeth.

"And another," Baelor's voice was a low growl, "for putting your own pride before the duty of our house."

He continued, a rhythmic, punishing cadence. Each slap was punctuated by a transgression. For the insolence, the rude words, the careless acts. Maekar remained silent, though his breathing grew ragged and his shoulders trembled with the force of the blows. He took it, absorbing the punishment as he had been told to, his submission a stark contrast to the fiery defiance that had landed him here.

Finally, Baelor stopped. His hand rested for a moment on the heated skin of Maekar's arse. "Stand up," he commanded.

Maekar pushed himself up slowly. He turned to face Baelor, his face flushed deep, the mark on his cheek swallowed up by the colour spreading across it, and his eyes were bright and wet and his jaw was still set. Not done, not quite. But something had shifted in the quality of the stubbornness, less armour now than habit. 

Baelor's eyes roamed down Maekar's body, a slow, deliberate appraisal. He took in the taut muscles of Maekar's stomach, the way his chest still heaved with ragged breaths, the powerful thighs that trembled slightly with the effort of remaining still. His gaze was possessive, as if cataloging every inch of flesh before him.

Then his eyes stopped, fixed on the evidence of Maekar's arousal. His cock stood hard and proud, jutting from his body with an undeniable need. A slow, mocking laugh escaped Baelor's lips. "Look at you," he chuckled, the sound rich with amusement. "All that defiance, all that pride, and yet your body betrays you so easily."

Maekar flushed deeper, the crimson spreading from his cheeks down his neck to his chest. He tried to shift away, to hide his shame, but Baelor's hand shot out, wrapping firmly around his length. A sharp intake of breath was all Maekar could manage before Baelor began to stroke him, fast and rough, with no pretense of gentleness.

Maekar's hips bucked involuntarily, pushing into Baelor's grip as a moan was torn from his throat. The pleasure was immediate, overwhelming, and humiliating all at once. His body, so recently disciplined, now responded with abandon to the very man who had delivered the punishment.

"Gods, you're pathetic," Baelor sneered, his thumb swiping over the sensitive head. "A few smacks on your arse and you're hard as a rock, leaking all over my hand. Did you enjoy it that much? Being put in your place?" His strokes quickened, his words a sharp contrast to the pleasure he was forcing upon Maekar. "Is this what you wanted? To be bent over my knee and spanked like a naughty child until your cock begged for attention?"

Baelor stepped back. Maekar whined, high in his throat, hips bucked forward, trying to follow his brother’s hand that pulled away. Without a word, Baelor walked towards his desk, and started reading the reports. The fire crackled, Baelor turned a page. The scratch of his quill was the only sound in the room for a long time.

Maekar stood where he had been left. His breathing had not yet evened out. He was flushed from his face to his chest, undone in a way he could not put back together, and the worst of it was that Baelor was not looking at him, was simply there at his desk with his quill and his reports as if Maekar were a piece of furniture he had finished with and set aside. As if he could wait. 

Time passed, almost an hour. Baelor had not spared Maekar a glance, but from experience knew exactly what he would find if he looked. The flush growing slowly down Maekar’s chest, the tension growing in his shoulders by degrees, the particular unease that came over Maekar when he had been kept long enough that the fight was brimming under his skin with nowhere to go. 

The knock came soft. "Yes."

The door handle moved, and Maekar lunged for his clothes.

"One more step," Baelor said, without looking at him.

Maekar stopped. The door swung open three inches and no further, the steward's face appearing in the gap, angled toward the desk and entirely away from the rest of the room.

Baelor leaned back in his chair. "The morning schedule."

The steward spoke. Baelor listened, responded, and asked a question. Entirely unhurried. Entirely at ease. Maekar stood where he was and did not breathe and stared at the far wall and felt the heat of his own face, the tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyes without his permission, the particular horror of standing there thinking this is it, this is the moment someone walks in and sees, and being completely unable to do anything about it.

A treacherous heat coiled in Maekar's gut. The fear of discovery was a sharp metallic tang on his tongue, but beneath, a current of arousal. Each second he stood there, exposed and helpless, while Baelor conducted his business with such casual authority, sent a jolt of pleasure straight to his cock.

The steward's oblivious presence, the narrow sliver of the open door, the sight of Baelor unaffected; all a twisted agonising fuel. The tension in his shoulders was not just from the effort of stillness, but from the effort of containing a response that was both a scream of protest and a silent, shameful plea for more. His hardness, which had flagged slightly from the time spent standing still, was now fully hard and leaking, resting against his lower belly. 

The door clicked shut. Maekar let out a shuddering breath, the air burning in his lungs. His gaze, slow and heavy, lifted from the floor to meet Baelor's. The word was torn from him, raw and desperate. "Please."

Baelor rose from his chair then, and he crossed the space between them until he stood before Maekar, close enough for Maekar to feel the heat radiating from his body. "Are you begging?" Baelor's voice was a low murmur, laced with amusement. "When you're standing so proud and tall?"

Maekar’s knees buckled immediately, and he sank to the floor. He grabbed Baelor’s clothed thighs, and looked up at his brother, the angle forcing a submission. "Lekia," he whispered, the word a fragile offering.

Baelor's hand came down, his fingers tangling in Maekar's hair, a surprisingly gentle touch. He tilted Maekar's head back. "Please what?" he prompted, his thumb stroking over Maekar's wounded cheek. “What does my baby brother want?”

Maekar swallowed hard, his throat tight. "Let me- let me touch myself." The admission was a fresh wave of shame, but the need was overwhelming.

Baelor pretended to consider it, his gaze drifting thoughtfully toward the ceiling as if weighing a matter of great importance. After a moment that stretched into an eternity, he looked back down. "No," he said, his tone final. "I don't think you've earned it." He let the rejection sink in, watching the despair bloom in Maekar's eyes. "But-" he continued, a cruel kindness in his voice, "I am feeling merciful. I will help."

Before Maekar could process the words, Baelor lifted his booted foot. The worn leather of the toe pressed firmly against Maekar's straining cock. A choked whine escaped Maekar's lips, his hips jutting forward involuntarily into the pressure.

"Just like this," Baelor commanded, his voice low and firm.

Lost to the desperate need for any friction, Maekar began to move. He rutted against Baelor's boot, the motion awkward and shameful. The leather was smooth and unyielding, and the friction was just enough to torment, to build a pressure that promised no release. Maekar’s grip on Baelor’s thigh tightened.

Baelor looked down at him. Something moved across his face, quiet and slow, and then he laughed. Not loudly, the soft private laugh he reserved only for Maekar. 

"Daeron," he said, almost conversationally, "whom you call disgrace." He watched Maekar's hips stutter against his boot. "If only he could see his father now."

Maekar’s thrust slowed down, but, Baelor noted, did not stop. 

"Aerion is in Lys." Baelor looked down at him with a calm and thorough attention. "Sent away for being reckless and unbecoming of a prince." A pause, letting it sit. "And here his father is, rutting his little cock against the King’s feet, how princely is this?"

Maekar's fingers dug into his thigh, and he made a sound, eyes closed, willing the images of his sons away from his mind. Maekar pressed his forehead to Baelor's thigh and said nothing. His shoulders were shaking slightly.

"And Aegon." The amusement had not left his voice. "Stood outside that door waiting for you. Worried sick." Baelor then puts his hand in Maekar's hair, pulling it back so Maekar is forced to look up again. "If only he knew he had to be sent away because his father was hard and leaking after one slap." A beat. "He would be devastated."

Maekar's jaw worked, his violet eyes brimming with tears, face flushed, and the sight of Maekar like this went straight to his cock. 

"Stop," Baelor said, running out of patience. Maekar stilled.

Baelor released his hair and stepped back. He undressed without hurry, the way he did most things, folding each piece with a patience that was its own kind of deliberate. He did not look at Maekar while he did it, he did not need to. He could feel the weight of Maekar's eyes on him, hungry and unguarded in the way Maekar only permitted himself in rooms like this, and he took his time and let him look.

When he turned Maekar was still on his knees, watching him with an expression that had shed the last of the afternoon entirely. Baelor looked at him for a moment.

"Lie down on the bed," he said. "On your back, and do not move."

Maekar's eyes widened slightly, and he hesitated for only a second before moving to the bed. He lay back on the pillows, his body tense, his hands fisted at his sides. His erection lay hard and flushed against his stomach, leaking steadily onto his skin. His eyes staring up at the canopy above him.

Baelor followed Maekar onto the bed, straddling Maekar's chest, his knees above Maekar’s shoulders. He looked down at his brother, at the defiant line of his jaw and his mouth slightly parting at the sight of his cock, hard and leaking right in front of his face. Baelor stroked himself a couple of times, and watched Maekar’s eyes follow his movement. .

"Open your mouth," Baelor commanded, his voice a low growl.

Maekar's lips parted, his breath hitching. Baelor didn't wait. He shifted forward, guiding his cock into Maekar's mouth, sinking into his throat. Maekar choked, his body arching off the bed, his hands coming up to grip Baelor's back, his nails digging into the skin. He tried to push away, to create some space, but Baelor's weight held him fast. He had half a mind to chide Maekar for moving his hands, but decided to give his brother small mercies

Baelor set a brutal pace, fucking Maekar's mouth with a rough rhythm. He watched Maekar's face, watched the way his eyes watered, the way his lips stretched around him. He could feel the desperate scratches Maekar was leaving on his back, sharp stinging lines that only seemed to fuel his own arousal.

"Take it," Baelor grunted, his hips snapping forward. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? To be put in your place."

Maekar gagged, his throat working convulsively as Baelor pushed deeper, cutting off his air. His struggles grew more frantic, his nails raking down Baelor's back, leaving angry red welts in their wake. 

Baelor held himself deep for a moment longer, feeling the frantic flutter of Maekar's throat around him. Then, with a controlled movement, he pulled back, sliding out of Maekar's mouth. A string of saliva connected them for a moment before breaking. Maekar was left coughing, his chest heaving, his lips swollen and glistening.

Baelor shifted off him, moving back until he was straddling Maekar's lap, up on his knees, back straight, not quite touching. He reached for the small vial of oil on the nightstand, uncorking it with a soft click. The scent of almonds filled the air as he poured a generous amount into his palm. 

Maekar watched, his breathing still ragged, his cock lying hard and heavy against his stomach. His own release was forgotten, his focus entirely on Baelor who one hand on Maekar’s chest for balance, the other reaching back to prepare himself. 

Maekar fell back against the pillows, a frustrated groan escaping him. He was helpless, forced to watch as Baelor worked himself open, his fingers moving with a practiced, sensual grace. The sight was intoxicating, the slow, deliberate up and down movements of Baelor's body above him, the flex of his muscles, the soft gasps he let out. 

Maekar's hips began to thrust upwards, an involuntary motion, seeking friction that wasn't there. His cock was so hard it ached, wetness welling at the tip and sliding down the flushed shaft. Baelor watched him, a dark, possessive glint in his eyes. He saw the desperate need in Maekar's movements, the way his body arched towards him. 

He positioned himself over Maekar's straining erection, aligning it with his prepared entrance. He looked down at his brother, at the raw hunger on his face. "Is this what you wanted?" he taunted, his voice mocking. "To be fucked like this? To be used?"

He sank down in one slow, deliberate movement, taking Maekar's cock to the hilt. Maekar cried out, his back arching, his hands reaching out to grab Baelor’s waist. It was too much, too good, the tight heat of Baelor's body enveloping him completely.

"Look at you," Baelor breathed, starting to move, "So desperate for it. So shameless." He rose up, then sank down again, harder this time, grinding his hips. "You'd take anything I gave you, wouldn't you? Like a bitch in heat."

The words pushed Maekar closer to the edge. He was lost in the sensation, the overwhelming pleasure of Baelor's body moving over his, the sting of the humiliation. Baelor leaned forward, his movements becoming more erratic, more demanding. He braced one hand on the bed beside Maekar's head, the other coming up to wrap around Maekar's throat. He didn't squeeze, just let his fingers rest there, a promise of what was to come.

"Look at you," Baelor said, breathless but even, his eyes on Maekar's face with that same thorough attention he gave everything. "All that noise this afternoon. All that talk." His hips rolled forward and he watched Maekar's eyes go unfocused. "Not a dog. A prince of the realm." He leaned closer, his mouth near Maekar's ear. "And here you are, exactly where I put you, exactly how I want you, waiting for me to decide when you're done."

Maekar groaned in embarrassment, tried to turn his face away. But Baelor tightened his grip on his neck.

"Look at me," he said.

Maekar looked. He was undone entirely, flushed from his throat to his chest, sweat damp at his temples, his hair stuck to his forehead. His pale eyes were wet at the corners and fixed on Baelor with an openness he would never have permitted himself anywhere else, in any other room, with any other person. Exactly as Baelor liked him, exactly this.

And then he squeezed his hand.

The pressure was sudden, cutting off Maekar's air. His eyes flew wide, silver lashes fluttering as his body convulsed. The lack of air, the overwhelming pleasure, the sting of Baelor's words; it all built up into an explosive release. He came hard, his orgasm tearing through him with a force that left him shaking, his vision whiting out. He spilled himself deep inside Baelor, his body arching off the bed, a strangled cry escaping his lips as Baelor's hand tightened around his throat.

Baelor held him there for a long moment before letting go of his grip, feeling the frantic pulse of Maekar's orgasm, watching the way his body shuddered and then went limp. Baelor didn't move. He remained poised above Maekar, his weight settling, his body still impaled on Maekar's softening cock. Maekar lay beneath him, limp and spent, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. The marks on his neck were already darkening, a vivid purple against his pale skin. He closed his eyes, a groan escaping his lips, exhausted. 

"Lekia," he rasped, his voice hoarse. “I can't-"

Baelor ignored him, and began to move again, a slow, deliberate roll of his hips. The sensation was immediate and overwhelming for Maekar. He was too sensitive, his body still humming from the force of his orgasm. Every movement was a jolt of pleasure and pain, a stimulation that was almost too much to bear. He squirmed, trying to pull away, but Baelor's weight held him fast.

"Please," Maekar whimpered, his hands coming up to push weakly at Baelor's chest. "No more-"

Baelor caught his wrists, pinning them above his head. "You'll take what I give you," he said, his voice low and uncompromising. He continued to move, his hips grinding down, his inner muscles clenching around Maekar's oversensitive flesh.

Maekar was trapped, forced to endure the relentless stimulation. He could feel his body responding, a traitorous heat beginning to build again in his groin. It was too soon, too much, but Baelor was relentless, his movements a calculated assault on Maekar's senses. He leaned down, his mouth finding Maekar's, his kiss a brutal, possessive claim.

Maekar groaned into his mouth, his struggles ceasing as he was overwhelmed by the dual sensations. He could feel himself getting hard again, his cock stirring to life inside Baelor's tight heat. It was painful, his body protesting even as it responded to Baelor's demands.

"See?" Baelor murmured against his lips, his hips moving faster now. "You want it, you always want it."

Maekar could only moan in response, his body arching up to meet Baelor's thrusts. He was hard again, fully erect, the sensitivity a dull ache that was quickly being overshadowed by a rising tide of pleasure. Baelor released his wrists, his hands coming to rest on Maekar's chest, his thumbs rubbing circles over his nipples.

"Since you've been so good," Baelor murmured, as he pinched both nipples. "You may do as you wish."

For a moment, Maekar was still, processing what Baelor had said. Then a raw, desperate energy seized him. With a cry, he surged upwards, using his strength to flip them. Baelor let out a surprised grunt as he was pushed onto his stomach, his face pressed into the pillows. Maekar was on him in an instant, his weight pinning Baelor down, his legs forcing Baelor's apart.

There was no finesse, only a frantic, primal need. Maekar guided his renewed, aching hardness to Baelor's entrance again and thrusted in, burying himself to the hilt in one powerful thrust. Baelor's breath hitched, a muffled sound as he was filled so completely.

Maekar didn't wait. He set a quick pace, his hips snapping forward, fucking into Baelor with a desperate, almost violent intensity. He leaned down, his mouth finding the smooth skin of Baelor's back. He wasn't gentle. He bit, hard, leaving a constellation of angry red marks across Baelor's shoulders and spine. He soothed each bite with a wet, open mouthed kiss, a confusing mix of possession and apology that made Baelor shudder.

Baelor, for his part, was lost in the sensation. He was no longer in control, no longer the one doling out pleasure and punishment. He was being taken, claimed. He pushed his own hips down, rutting against the sheets, the friction delicious against his own trapped cock. He could hear the sounds Maekar was making, soft, broken whimpers against his skin, the sounds of a man completely undone. It was intoxicating.

Maekar's rhythm grew erratic, his thrusts becoming shallower, more desperate. He was close. He collapsed against Baelor's back, his forehead resting between Baelor's shoulder blades for a moment before he turned his head to rest his chin on Baelor's shoulder.

"Lekia," he whimpered, his voice cracking, his breath hot against Baelor's ear. "Please- can I come? Please lekia, let me-"

A slow, triumphant smile spread across Baelor's face, unseen by his brother. He tilted his head, his cheek brushing against Maekar's. "All right," he whispered, his voice soft. "Fill me."

With a choked sob of relief, Maekar thrust in deep one last time, his body shuddering as his orgasm ripped through him. He pulsed into Baelor, his release a hot, flooding wave. He collapsed, his full weight settling on Baelor's back, his body trembling with the aftershocks.

Baelor thrusted against the furs and spilled as well, untouched, pushed over the limit by the sound of Maekar whimpering and moaning into his ear, by the warmth spreading deep in him from Maekar’s seeds. 

They lay there for a long time, a tangle of limbs and sweat, the room filled with the scent of sex and their mingled breath. Baelor could feel the frantic beat of Maekar's heart against his back. He reached back, his hand finding Maekar's hip, his grip possessive.

"Mine," he whispered again, but this time it was a different kind of claim. Not a command, but a fact. An acknowledgment of the wild, uncontrollable thing they had created between them. "Always mine."

Baelor stood at the mirror.

The candle on the sidetable was low, burning toward nothing, and the light it threw was thin and unsteady. He turned slightly, cataloguing what Maekar had left on him. Bites on his neck and shoulders, already purpling. Scratches down his back that he could feel but not see. He turned further and looked at the thumb shaped bruise on his hip, and pressed his thumb into it.

The pain was clean. He held it longer than he needed to. He liked knowing it would be there in the morning, under his robes, through the council session and the petitions and the long dull business of the day, a thing only he knew about. Maekar marked him in places no one would ever see and did not know that Baelor kept count of every one of them, pressed them when they faded, mourned them a little when they healed. He would have worn them openly if the world allowed it, but the world did not, and he had made his peace with it, and kept them anyway, in private, where they could not be taken from him.

He put on his robe and went back to bed.

Maekar was on his side, facing away, not yet asleep. Baelor knew the quality of Maekar's sleep and this was not it, the shoulders too set, the breathing too careful. He climbed in, put his hand on Maekar's hip and pulled, not gently. Maekar made a sound of protest that fooled neither of them, and let himself be arranged, settling back against Baelor's chest.

Baelor put his arm around him. His thumb found the mark on Maekar's cheek, the one his ring had left, and rested there.

"I'll send for a maester," he said.

Maekar was quiet for a moment. "Don't flatter yourself," he said.

"It should be looked at." Baelor insisted.

"It's a scratch." Maekar scoffed. "I've had worse."

"From me." Baelor said, tracing the finger shaped redness blooming on his neck.

"From you," Maekar agreed, with the tone of a man finding no grief in it.

Baelor's thumb moved once over the bruises. He would put a mark on Maekar every day for the rest of their lives if he could, somewhere new each time, until there was no part of him that had not at some point been Baelor's to bruise. It thrills him that Maekar knew and stayed regardless. It is what Baelor never tired of, the part he turned over in the dark like the bruise on his hip. Maekar could leave, Maekar bent for no one. And here he was.

"I'll send for him in the morning," Baelor said.

"You'll do no such thing." Maekar shifted, turning, and Baelor let him. He came around to face him in the dark, his eyes still bright, his jaw still set, the mark vivid on his cheek and his hair entirely undone. "I am not having a maester called because my brother's ring caught my face."

"And your brother's grip on your neck," Baelor said.

"That as well." Maekar's hand came up and pressed flat over the marks at his own throat, the bruises Baelor's fingers had left, and held them there a moment, his eyes half closing, something close to satisfaction moving over his face. He did not want them gone, Baelor certain of this, with a certainty one could only have after spending a lifetime with one person wholly. His baby brother never quite learned how to be quiet about wanting things. He only knew how to take them.

And he took now, the way he always took. His hands were on Baelor's face and he was kissing him the way he did everything, completely and without half measures, his fingers curling hard into Baelor's jaw, his mouth open and demanding and pulling him in like a man laying hands on what was his and daring the world to argue. Baelor felt it in his chest, behind his teeth, all the way down. He let himself be taken. There was no one alive he would let do this and only one he had ever wanted to.

When Maekar finally pulled back he did not let go. His teeth found Baelor's lower lip and bit, slow and deliberate, holding past the point of play, holding until the blood came, and only then did he release it. He licked it from his own mouth without breaking Baelor's gaze. Then he moved lower, his mouth at Baelor's jaw, his throat, biting again, marking him fresh over the marks already there, possessive and unhurried and entirely without shame, as if to remind Baelor that this went both ways.

"Mine," Maekar said against his throat. A fact, not a question, the same word Baelor had said into his back an hour ago and meant just as completely.

Baelor turned his head and let him. "Yours," he agreed.

Maekar bit him once more, harder, satisfied, then settled back against the pillows with the blood still on his mouth and looked at Baelor with the expression of a man who had won something.

"Now," he said. "Send for your maester. Let him see what your prince does to his king."

Baelor looked at him in the dark. The mark on his cheek, the challenge in his eyes, the blood on his teeth. The set of his jaw that never quite went away, not even here, not even after everything, the stubbornness that had no off position and never had and never would.

He felt something settle in his chest, warm and certain and without edges. There was a version of this, he knew, that other men would call sickness. The wanting that did not diminish. Two men, brothers, carving themselves into each other a little more every time, neither of them whole anymore without the other's marks on his skin. He had decided long ago that he did not care what other men would call it. They did not have this, they would never have this.

He pulled his brother in for another kiss, softer this time, tasting his own blood between them.

"Go to sleep, sweetling," he said.

Maekar made a sound of deep displeasure and turned back over. Baelor put his arm around him again, pulling him close. Maekar did not move away.

He never did.