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The sky glowed above them, a thousand stars glittering and the pale moon full and bright.
Far above, Moondancer lived up to her name, circling and twisting in the light, casting her shadow over the waves. Vermax chased her across the night sky, chirping and calling until she’d give chase, diving with him down towards the water only to pull up at the last second, skimming the water with their claws. His chest shook with Baela’s laugh and he couldn’t help but laugh with her, pulling her closer and rearranging the blanket to keep her warm. There’d been a fire at one point, hastily made, with Vermax being a bit too enthusiastic in his efforts to light it that left the sand and rocks behind it scorched, but it’d gone out at some point when he’d been distracted by far lovelier pursuits than the keeping of a fire.
In this place, a hidden-away cove that Baela had found on Driftmark years ago, it almost felt like another world. A world where the war could not find them, where all that mattered was the waves and the shadows of their dragons against the night sky and the heated press of skin on skin.
Almost.
They could hide from the war, they could even hide from his mother, but he could never truly hide from himself. He’d tried to, for years and years, with a sharp internal denial that his veins ran with anything but Valyrian blood, only to look in every mirror and find Ser Harwin Strong’s face looking back at him. Jace could feel it when people looked at him, when they stared too long, scrutinizing and comparing him against the list in their minds of everything a bastard like him could be capable of doing. It had bothered Luke even more, made him curl inwards, a silent surrender, but Jace had refused. He was a Targaryen, that was all that mattered, right?
“But I cannot gainsay that which the gods have laid before me-”
“You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?” Baela lifted her head from his chest, the blanket slipping farther down her back. There was a dark smear still on her shoulder, blood from his lip that he knew was pressed from her jaw to the pulse in her wrist, a line of red tying them together, both of them stained around his mouth.
Baela had been there, waiting for him in his chambers when he’d returned from speaking with his mother, and when he had tried to send her away she had refused, as stubborn as any dragon on their island. The keepers said that dragons were possessive creatures, fueled by some primal need to hoard and protect, to guard their ancestral palaces in Old Valyria, curled around pillars and statues and heating the home with their very presence. Who would dare rob a dragon of its treasure? And what dragon would dare give up its bounty willingly? They’d seen it enough times with Viserys and Aegon fighting over a toy, tears and screaming and smacking hands that had to be corrected and fiery tempers that had to be soothed.
“She still wouldn’t even admit it,” He’d said to Baela, unable to say anything other than that at the start, his fingernails nearly wearing grooves into the back of the chair in front of his desk, “That he’s my father. I said it to her face and she still won’t say it, even as she takes everything from me.”
She’d been sitting at the fire, unmoving, watching, waiting, “Everything?”
“Jace,” Baela said now, on the beach, her belly bare against his ribs, and it still felt like he shouldn’t be allowed to touch her like this. Her hand came up, thumb pressing into the clotted blood on his lip, smearing scarlet across his lips, “Must I say it all again?”
“Do you really think,” and she was standing, walking towards him, stopping just out of reach, “that I wouldn’t make a Harrenhal out of anyone who would touch what is yours and mine?”
She dipped her mouth to his for a moment, her hand curling into his hair, pulling him to her, “Must I remind you of what you already know?”
“One day,” and she'd traced the scar on his hand, “our daughter will marry Cregan Stark’s son and secure an alliance that will last not for your mother, not for her reign, but for yours. For ours.”
Her lips pressed to his jaw, free hand weaving their fingers together and holding it tightly.
“Your father was a lord, your mother was a princess , not some whore with pale hair. That’s the most they can claim, a diamond in the Flea Bottom rough, but they cannot claim your mother as their own.”
“One day, we will lay eggs into our children's cradles, and they will grow up knowing their father is the trueborn son of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, first of her name.” Her hands had been on his face, holding him to where he had to look her in the eye, “And they will know that fire and blood will always find those who would say otherwise of him. They will never carry the shame that she has let you carry.”
“And they will never,” she said, and she sounded almost angry, “be King. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
She crawled over him then, hiding their faces in a curtain of pale hair, her mouth on his, and her voice rang in his head with every beat of her heart against his skin.
. . .
His back was to the fire as she pushed into his space, chest to chest, breathing each other's air.
“Prove it then.” In the palm of her hand lay a piece of dragonglass, shining in the light from the fire, “If you’re truly a Targaryen, then let us do as Targaryens do.”
. . .
“Mine.”
They would never understand what it meant to be a true Targaryen. To be born for someone, for someone to be born for you, even if no one knew it in that moment. They were dragons before they were human, an undeniable truth, possessive and protective and bonded. The dragonseeds could never understand this, could never comprehend it, this connection for dragons and dragons alone. They would never marry into the family, their children would never have eggs in their cradles, they would fade in obscurity, while the house of the Dragon would remain forever.
“Yours.”
. . .
He cut her lip first with a shaky hand, blood welling up beneath the dragonglass and dripping down to his fingers. Then, a pinch of pain from the blade, the taste of his own blood on his lips.
Was it possible to be in two places at once? Two times at once? It felt like that, like a glass painting atop a canvas, the portraits caught in the details of each other, blending in a strange way. Separate and together all at once. A cut on his hand and hers, clasped and bleeding before a makeshift altar, but at the same time standing a ways off, much younger, holding hands in the folds of their cloaks as their parents wed in a wake of grief and loss. Everywhere, yet together.
He’d never kissed her before that moment, always too cautious, too afraid. Not of her, never of her, but of perception, of what could be said of him and her. His mother and Ser Harwin’s sin looming around every corner, behind every door, on the tongue of every lord and lady who looked at him with disapproval. Every highborn who looked at his hair and their judgement showed in their eyes, even unspoken. He would not pass on such a burden, even if she would take it on willingly.
He kissed her for the first time before the priest, with blood on their lips, and when she pulled him close in their bed of blankets, the roar of the waves in his ears, he understood that loving her was right. That it was holy. Permitted. Not something to be ashamed of.
Loving her was inevitable, and loving her was undeniable.
. . .
Jace woke with the dawn, the sky still pale and purple, the last stars burning out, and his wife was still asleep.
His wife, a title he’d have to grow used to, something said with so much fondness that it felt almost like a secret hidden between blankets and under clothes. They’d shifted in the night onto their sides, her head pillowed on his arm, her back to his chest, feet tangled beneath their blankets. His hand had fallen to her stomach, warm against it, and he couldn't help but wonder if that promised daughter would make her appearance before the year was out, growing strong and beautiful in the belly of the strongest, most beautiful woman he knew.
Or maybe a son. Maybe a Lucerys, with his mother’s hair and without shame. Gentle and fierce and kind. Maybe all the things he could ever want in the world lay beneath his palm, asleep.
His son would never know the shame of rumor, of bastardry. He would know love, would see the love that his father had for his mother without shame or a need to hide it. He would know loyalty and honesty, honor and dignity. He would have a little brother, perhaps, a brother to protect and be protected by, someone to watch his back. His daughter would know the same, would be loved just the same, would be raised strong enough to bear the weight of the North alongside a boy noble and honorable enough to be her husband.
Jace pressed his lips to Baela's shoulder, holding her tighter. Her hand fell over his on her stomach and squeezed it gently.
“You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?”
“No,” He said, truthfully, shaking his head, “Just you. I promise, just you.”
“Good,” She said, a smile in her voice, and Jacaerys closed his eyes and breathed her in.