Chapter Text
It was his brother Aerys who planted the seed, and his nephew Daeron who watered it. Baelor had never dreamt before. Dragon dreaming was a Targyren trait and he’d always believed the court’s whispers, that he’d inherited only his mother’s dornishness and none of his father’s dragon.
Whilst the rest of his family concerned themselves with the mystical, he contented himself with only the mundane.
Aerys, who did little but haunt the library and mutter about prophecies, was oft to press him with those fevered eyes of his, on old Targaryen fables and the importance of placing weight on the absurd amount cryptic legends that strung up in a family such as theirs.
“A song of ice and fire, Baelor. Aegon’s dream. The reason we must rule, that only a Targaryen can stand against the dark.” he had muttered to him one day, as Baelor tried his best to focus on Lord Tyrell’s latest levy filing. “If you are to wear the crown of our kin, you had best open your mind to better bear it’s weight brother.”
Baelor had filed it away with all of Aerys’ rambling as nonsense. There were more pressing matters than his brother’s foibles, Blackfyres and treasonous lords, levies and the all important roads his ancestor Jaehaerys had built and he struggled to keep from crumbling.
Then Daeron had added some fuel.
“Beware the brother that loves you most. Beware the hedge, and the cost of kindness.” Daeron had slurred it at him, deep in his drink, stumbling through the keep’s shadowed halls one night. Daeron, back from the Inn, and Baelor returning to his room from his study.
Not a compelling warning, but it amused Baelor nonetheless, and niggled at him.
For Daeron had been right before in retrospect, about the scullery maid who stole his mother’s silver, about Lord Peake’s clumsy treason. Have a peak into three black castles, therein contains great deception.
Maybe he was fated to trip over a hedge and die, or to follow Maekar, who was surely the brother who loved him most, into one of those endless messes of his nephews, and fall, like some hapless puppet, on fate’s shears.
That very night after Daeron’s drunken foretelling, Baelor could not sleep. The scent of Lady Dondarrion was long faded from his sheets, and the bed felt cavernous, empty. He thought of his last child, a long-desired girl, born in blood, who had taken her mother and drawn but one breath before too falling silent.
He thought of the odd little scales on her flesh, the malformed spine, so very twisted. It’s best you not look, my prince. But he had looked, as it was his ruined thing, and it was his duty to look at it.
Later he’d reflected that it was as though he had purged the dragon in him and delivered it all to that sweet cursed babe. The memory of the pyre’s smoke lingered in his mind, the scent of the burning flesh, mingling with the faces of his sons, eyes wet and hollow, and the death knells of all the poor boys on Redgrass Field, who surely cared nothing for the color of a dragon.
Sleep came at last, slow and cold, and it was then, the dream claimed him.
“Egg, Egg, I dreamed I was old.” The voice reached him before the nightmare realm had even formed, childish and weary, an old man acting the part of a child, echoing down a corridor of darkness. He floated, weightless in a cold that pressed against his skin, until the shadows beneath his feet solidified into a plain, vast and formless.
“I have to do it, Duncan. There is no other way. It’s real. I saw it, I dreamed it. A great fire and a cracked egg.”
The words fell heavy, dragging the air itself downward. All around him, the black rippled. A wind rose, made bitter with ash, and flames kindled at the edges of sight, burnt orange, then gone.
“Burn them all. Burn them in their beds. Burn them!” A third voice, wild and sharp, sliced the air.
Fire erupted again, searing across the plain, shadows writhing and shrieking as they burned. A wolf twisted in the flames, its pup’s cries shrill and desperate, until the smoke closed over it too. The scent of char and sorrow filled Baelor’s lungs, and for a heartbeat, he was back at his babe’s pyre, clutching nothing but ash, and wondering why.
“Tell me he didn’t burn them. Tell me he didn’t—”
A woman’s voice, raw and northern, cracked the silence. The darkness parted: she stood there, hair black as coal, a blue rose behind her ear, silver tears on her cheeks. Her gaze was fixed on a silver-haired man in Targaryen red, her grief a howl beneath the words.
“My fault. My fault. Our fault…”
“The Prince who was promised. Of ice and fire. We are better together, than apart, my sweet love.” The man’s thumb lingered on the curve of her swollen belly, and the words seemed to ripple outward.
Faces rose and fell in the gloom, some clear, some monstrous. Aerion, his dastardly nephew, apperared, lips curled, green dragon wings unfurling like a cape, tongue flicking forked and venomous.
Then Maekar, astride a phantom steed, his mace swinging, then a crash, and a fall. Baelor felt a thud on the back of his head. Then, blood everywhere and a screaming crowd. All of a sudden his brother was weeping as the darkness crept over him.
“Oh brother… forgive me. The anvil means nought without the hammer.”
His sons, Vallarr and Matarys, stood together in pillars of fire, unmoving as they burnt, their eyes hollow and searching. At their feet, a severed branch bearing Baelor’s own sigil.
A sudden, stabbing cold pierced him.
The plain trembled, and a wall of ice rose up, towering and blue as the sky. It splintered, fell away, and an army poured from the breach; faceless lords of frost, blue and stark, banners of snow streaming behind them, death billowing in their wake. The Wall?
“Fire melts ice, my prince.”
A whisper as soft as breath slipped through the cracks of the world. A woman stepped from the gloom: slight, milk-pale, chin dimpled, hair midnight-dark, eyes round and silver and intent. Her presence steadied everything, made it too real and unreal all at once.
“I beg of you, leave the fire untended tonight. I shall never freeze, not with your little dragon inside of me.”
Her voice was a balm, gentle but edged with northern gravel. She lay atop white sheets, her shift stretched over the roundness of her belly. She was pregnant, and further along than the first maid. He found himself beside her, folding around her, hand resting on her womb, just as he had once with Jenna all those years ago, and for a moment, although strange and unreal it was, he felt at peace.
“See, he stirs for his father. The maesters say he’s hale and healthy, so you need not fret, for neither me nor the babe. I rather tire of your fretting of late…”
She nestled her head on his chest, her breath warm, the scent of honey and dew all around him.
“You’re doing it again, when you go all absent and mopey and look at me like you’ve never seen me before.”
“I haven’t.” He barely recognized his own voice, so soft and unguarded.
She laughed, low and bright, a sound that shimmered and nearly broke the dream apart from the inside.
“Let me guess, it’s because I’m even more beautiful than yesterday, and you can scarcely recognize me, that I’m positively glowing and despite the added weight, still the very picture of a princess. Everyone says the same at court, but what they do not know is that the glow is just congealed sweat from all the wood you insist on piling in the fire and—oh, whatever, just keep looking at me like that. I rather enjoy it.”
“How am I looking at you?”
His hand pressed to her belly as the babe shifted beneath his palm. She smiled with plump red lips, the very picture of contentment.
“Like I’m the entire world.”
She sighed then, chest rising and falling, her cheek pressed against his heart. The fire beside them guttered and died, and in the dark, only the shape of her face remained, soft and distant. He charted the curve of her cheek, trying to puzzle her out. Who was she?
Then, just as his body had begun to calm, a hand gripped his shoulder, cold and sharp. More hands gathered at his waist, dragging him down, down, into a darkness deeper than night.
He awoke, gasping, the chill clinging to his bones though the fire still burned and his Dornish heat should have warmed his blood. The taste of ash lingered in his mouth. There was no northern girl in his bed, only the echo of her voice and the empty place beside him.
He grunted, his head buzzing. The wall, an army of frosty lords, his brother, Maekar of all people, actually weeping. Two northern maids, his sons on pyres.
If he asked Maekar of the nature of dreams, his favourite brother would laugh. If he were to ask Aerys, he would take it too seriously. Rhaegel would struggle to formulate a response between mouthfuls of lamprey pie, which left the second most reasonable mind after his own to ask for insight, his father.
The king struggled between states of lucidity and bewilderment, aged and prostrated he was, yet in the morning, just as the sun tugged up from the horizon, he was often just as diplomatic and reasonable as he was when Baelor had been but a little princeling, slurring his valyrian and playing with wooden swords.
“I had a dream father.” He sat, like an overlarge child, at thirty and seven, on the other side of his father's desk. The king, made weary by years, but still in possession of razor-sharp purple eyes cocked an eyebrow in surprise.
“Of what?” Daeron said, looking perplexed, as if inconceivable that the most grounded and mundane of his sons might have partaken at all in the bizarre arts of their kin.
“Of the wall, of the cold, and creatures that spread it. Of strange faces and angry voices. Of dying sons and their pyres.” Baelor said in a great hurry. He mentioned nothing of the swollen wombs of northern maids, for fear of making the dream sound more haughty than apocalyptic.
His father was silent for a while, clearly deep in thought. King Daeron spoke only in complete sentences, and delivered each word with care and precision. Quite often it would take him a long period of thinking before actually speaking. A good trait, Baelor thought.
“Heed them.” He delivered but two words. “As I have heeded mine. It is my estimation that the future is not one branch but a thousand, and we Targaryens may decide in ourselves which ones to follow. Does that make sense?”
“Not particularly.” Baelor winced. “But little in this life makes sense, father.”
He did his best to heed them. When Maekar came charging at him with a flailing mace in Ashford Meadow, as he stood to defend that lowly hedge, Baelor did his best to dodge the blow. If it had landed, Baelor wondered if he would have actually achieved the impossible; rendering his brother to tears.
But it had not, and life had gone on, and Maekar and he had exchanged much humour about the fight. He kept his sons close, for fear of them dying, but his dream had not been too descriptive as to just what he was protecting them from, and he had not been privileged by more since. Just a dull prod of terror each time he looked at them, wondering what lay around their corner and how best to shield them from it.
Then the sickness had come, and again he kept them close, isolated in the keep alongside him. Matarys passed first, sweating and blue, and cursing at the gods, and a bit of Baelor went with him.
The rest of him went with Valarr.
If he had let them wander, mayhaps the sickness would not have caught them. He burned them on a pyre together, and for a year grief was all he knew.
He even gave his hand of the king pin to Maekar, whom bore it grudgingly until his father, whom had narrowly missed his own demise with the sickness, had come to Baelor in the dead of the night to return the pin to his eldest son.
“You will wear this again, and attend tomorrow’s small council. You will relieve your brother, and you will return promptly to yourself.” His father had used his kingly voice, and had not had to think before he spoke. “You honour those boys none by consigning yourself to rot.”
Work helped. It distracted him from the new emptiness of his life, but at night, sleep became a struggling thing. All those pyres, all the dead boys, they would claw at him until he dreamt again, of that shadowy place and the woman who lived within it. That fair northern maid.
“I don’t like the tapestry.” She whispered out, a hand jutted into her hip. He studied her face intently, so that he might recognize it again. Soft features, round eyes, dimpled chin. Thick coily curls that seemed to repell any efforts of containment. Cheeks that were always pink and rosy. Full of life. “My prince, are you present in this plane of existence?”
“Unfortunately so.” He said, dumbfounded. “The tapestry?”
It was an ugly thing to be true, disguised by the shadows, of a dragon burning down a village. He recognized it as the one leading up to his quarters above the Tower of the Hand.
“It doesn’t send a very good message to your people. Anger the dragon and we’ll burn your children alive.” She assessed astutely. “I realize it was a gift from Tyrosh, but I feel that— mayhaps it should be replaced by the one with the bountiful field and the— you don’t ever listen to me, do you?”
She wasn’t angry, but laughing, and she brought her cold hands to his cheeks, pulling him further into the dream.
“Winter shall be coming for you if you do not answer me promptly.” She teased him. “A long, cold one, that stretches beyond imagination, with an empty bed.”
“Please no.” He managed out. That sounded like his life as it was now.
“Well, we shall move the tapestry, yes?” She smiled again, rosy cheeks flaring. “Because unfortunately I was not born with male parts, and a woman has little else to do in her life than decide which tapestry goes where.”
“Where can I find you?” He asked, out of the blue, his brow knitting together. She laughed then, a light airy sound, and flitted back to him.
“Right in front of you?” She tested his sanity with a second glance.
“Where did we meet, for the very first time?” He corrected, she looked puzzled, yet drifted closer to him, hands working at his doublet.
“We met where winter falls, in my family hold, under the very intense gaze of my dearest father.” She lilted. “How can I snap you out of this?”
She leant her lips up, and instinctively he leant down to claim them, but before he could, she drifted away, and he awoke alone in his bed, cold and hollow.
“I’ve decided you’re to take a bride brother. One with wide hips, and a fruitful womb.” Maekar charged into his room that morning, brow-beaten and angry.
“Brother, I fear I am your elder and hand of the king not to mention—” Baelor stood from his desk, already worn from the conversation. “What insanity has resulted in this… violation of my privacy?. I thought you were to return to Summerhall this afternoon?”
“Aerys is a profoundly unlikable man, who would only succeed in the begetting of heirs if books had wombs. Rhaegel just eats, that’s all he does competently, and even that he struggles with on occasion. His children I fear are lacking too.” Maekar paced the room. “As for me, I was a middling hand during your… seclusion from society, which I am most glad is at an end, and as for my boys—”
“What has gotten into you?” Baelor was positively exasperated.
“You have no heirs of adequate quality, if you and father are to fall, who do we leave the throne to? Daeron the drunk? Aerys the boring? Rhaegel the lamprey-guzzler, Aerion the—”
“Has Aerion done something?” Baelor’s teeth gritted.
“Just the usual threats of burning levelled at stableboys.” Maekar winced. “Our brothers are insufficient, as are your nephews. You must— proliferate yourself to stop this family from sinking. Perfect little duplications of yourself.”
He had a certain point with his existential foretellings. His house was in a precarious position, they were one bad king away from full out rebellion. Initially the idea appalled him, the concept of more children to give to the pyre yet—
He thought of the woman from his dream, of her full belly. Hale and healthy. Was she real? Was she a tangible thing? Like Ashford Field?
“I’ve been thinking about it too, as of late, re-marrying.” Baelor sighed. Maekar looked delightfully relieved, though if Baelor knew his brother at all, was likely simply gladdened by the prospect of less responsibility in the future. “If I am to be king, I shall be requiring a queen.”
“And the heirs.” Maekar pressed. “I shall arrange a tour. Lord Baratheon has a comely daughter with wide hips—”
“No. No, I shall find her where—” his voice caught, then his father’s words in his head. Heed your dreams, as I have heeded mine. “Where winter falls. She should be northern.”
“N-northern?” Maekar muffled a laugh. “You lust for a northerner? Forgive me, I had no notions as to your perversions brother.”
“Too long have the northerners kept to themselves. They care little for our foibles, and Lord Stark sent less men than he could have to aid us against the Blackfyres. They behave as partially independent, trading little and—” Baelor tried to find the reason in his silly pursuit of a dream-clad woman. “Well, honouring then with a queen might draw them closer? Should it not?”
“You tell me, you’re the king’s hand.” Maekar sighed. “A northern trip then, we’ll visit the Manderlys, the Starks, mayhaps even an Umber woman, can you imagine? Big giant-killing sons. Perfect for stomping out Blackfyre rebellions.”
“We?” Baelor’s brow twisted.
“I do not trust in your charm, brother, do not be insulted. I shall be your scout.” Maekar winked, tiredly yawning and sinking into a chair. “Every lord has a pretty daughter squirrelled away.”
“We should make certain the Wall is well garrisoned whilst we are there.” He added, oddly daunted by the prospect of doing it all over again, marrying and begetting heirs. At forty, he had thought it long past him. It should have been Valarr in his shoes, or Matarys.
Looking in on the wall wouldn’t hurt on a side note, another dream heeded.
“The faith shan’t like it. You know, a tree-worshipper.” Maekar stroked his beard. “At least the Godswood may enjoy some custom.”
They requisitioned some thick furs for the journey, a northern tour was long past due anyhow, the last Targaryen to formally visit had been Jacaerys Velaryon, who historically speaking, was likely a bastard, before that, Alysanne had deigned upon the North a fruitful visit.
They brought along with them an assortment of Kingsguard, and Maekar’s youngest son Aegon, and that odd Knight, Ser Duncan, whom Baelor had once risked all for, and had kept on in his service. He was most loyal considering everything, and loyal men were hard to find. Maekar had let the little prince stay on as his squire, as an apology for Aerion.
An odd pair, certain to generate a song or two on the way.
The journey gave him time to assess the roads and the rampant banditry he had heard tell of. It was a triviality to many, but the way the smallfolk decided whether a king was good or not, was by the safety in which travel could be conducted in his kingdom. By his measure there was work to do, if the awe-struck innkeepers had any say at all.
The air grew frigid the closer they drew to the North, and furs were donned when their attache reached the narrow neck that tied The North to the rest of Westeros. Could she truly exist, that odd woman from his dreams? He was starting to feel guilty of a great folly, as they teetered closer to White Harbour, their first stop at a major northern holdfast.
“This is the closest thing to a city the North has your grace.” Lord Ryland Manderly was an older fellow with a knotted white beard and had recieved Baelor with great enthusiasm.
“Viserra Targaryen was once betrothed to a Manderly, was she not? And so miserable she was at the prospect that she slipped from her saddle and died.” Maekar bit with his usual charm, whispered in a hush into his ear. “Yet still, Manderly’s are wealthy and keep to the Seven, less problems for the faith—”
But it was not where winter fell, was it? The snow did not lie so thick there. It was of no surprise to Baelor when Lord Manderly began to show off his daughters. Pretty girls they were, yet not one of them had a dimpled chin and pink cheeks. Maekar assessed his reaction to each maid, studying him like a cat.
“I might have mentioned you were in the market for a wife.” Maekar whispered, as Lord Manderly drew out, what he seemed to think was the most enticing option, a young wispish girl with honey-blonde hair and eyes wide as almonds. Pretty, comely, not her. “Wide hips too, you could birth a litter all at once through those.”
“This is my middle daughter, Lady Wylla, she speaks valyrian, don’t you dear?” Lord Manderly coughed.
The girl introduced herself in something that resembled dothraki more then valyrian. Baelor managed a smile. The girl trotted away amidst the revelry of the feast her father had arranged, seemingly disappointed not to have been asked for a dance. Lord Manderly, crestfallen, comforted himself with mead.
“Why the long face? I fear you’re starting to fit in with the locale.” Maekar poured mead for both of them.
“I am beginning to feel like an old fool, playing suitor to girls that are of age with the sons I ought still have, and who ought to be the ones courting.” Baelor admitted glumly. “And rather disappointed too, by the father’s so keen to sell their daughter for a crown.”
“Ah, well you’re forty and one. You’re hardly our father, and you need fertile stock for heirs.” Maekar's expression darkened. “And as for your sons, I am quite convinced they would see their father happy than a self-deprecating miser. I cannot fathom the pain of your life brother, nor attempt any comfort, but if any is owed a fair queen, t’is you.”
“I dreamt you killed me at Ashford Meadow, brother.” Baelor said after a drink or two. Maekar guffawed. “Sometimes, in the weariest of my moments I ponder if it would have been better if you had.”
“I forget that drink makes you so such miserable company.” Maekar chuckled, pulling back the mead glass. “If you don’t dance with the Manderly girl, I fear I shall have too, her father is glaring.”
“I shall take the one with braid, and you—” Baelor groggily pulled to his feet.
“And me, the one who looks as if she could wield a mace better than me? The order of our birth quite often infuriates me, dear brother.” Maekar sighed, yet pulled to his feet nonetheless.
Hornwood was next, then Castle Cerwyn. No dimpled chins in either, just more daughters pushed his way. The snow grew thicker the more North they drew, until the white cloaks of his kingsguard became a perfect camouflage. The accents too became thicker and wilder, and he became more weary still that he was being a tired old fool.
“Lord Stark has four daughters, by basic arithmetic alone at least one has to be… tolerable.” Maekar winced, riding abreast on the saddle. “Are you regretting your northern notion yet? It is not too late to err… seek warmer pastures… I hear it is far easier to source genteel wives amidst civilised people.”
Winterfell loomed like something of a mountain. He had seen etchings of it in scribes and war tables. It’s double-breasted walls were a point of defensive envy, to siege such a place he felt, would have been nigh on impossible.
The tips of it’s cold stone towers pierced the mist, and below an assortment of stalls and inns, small holdings and markets, crept like little tunnels leading toward it. The horses worked the narrow weaving roads, their retinue swollen in anticipation of a grander feast at Winterfell, where surely Lord Stark had gathered his lords to receive their king’s sons.
“Oh but it’s fucking cold, brother.” Was all Maekar had to say in the face of Bran the Builder’s second most daring construction. His brother had been born cursed to enjoy almost nothing it seemed, and to find no marvel in the marvellous. “And you’re expecting me with you at the wall? To think of it there, when here halfway toward it, I can imagine not a thing colder.”
Maekar was wearing two cloaks, a peculiar sight that seemed to be generating some chuckles from the brow-beaten smallfolk that had gathered to watch them arrive. Unlike in the south, they threw no petals, only offered cold, judging stares, dead in the middle.
“It is I they call dornish at court, brother, if I can stand the cold, you certainly can stomach it too. It is a wonder of our world, the wall.” Baelor rebutted, keeping abreast.
“Yes, you must recount it to me in vivid detail.” He grunted. “Such jolly people aren’t they?”
“It’s the ‘ammer and the anvil. Prince Bylor! Death to the Blackfyres!” A young boy cried out, Maekar couldn’t keep from laughter.
“King Bylor, first of his name.” His brother chided.
Up ahead, a horn blew and the iron gates parted with great grunting. Baelor parted with his gloves in anticipation of the numerous handshakes that would be expected of him. A line of long faces awaited him, headed by a somewhat familiar one. Lord Benjen Stark he had met but once, on Redgrass field, when he arrived quite late with his sampling of winter warriors. Baelor had forgiven the slight, the journey was long indeed.
He was a tall man, broad of shoulder with a wolfish twist to his face and a sneer that reminded him of Maekar’s, save for the cold calculating eyes.
His wife stood beside him, Lorra Royce, a slender woman, of Vale-stock, with bronze circlets and hair the colour of honey. A line of their offspring stood. A tall young woman, timid with a freyed dark braid. Neither curls nor dimples. Two more girls, and a small boy who looked to be ten and four, and had his father’s face, who beefed up his chest, before they all plummeted down to a kneel.
“Your grace, Winterfell welcomes you.” Lord Stark offered his obligations. They shook hands, before Baelor kissed the knuckles of his awe-struck wife.
They were ushered inside with great haste, and out came the bread and salt, that Baelor was rather tired of eating, yet consumed all the same.
“I was sorry to hear of your sons, your grace, I offered my prayers for you and the princes at the weirwood.” Lord Stark said in his gruff manner, clapping him hard over the back. No southerner would dare touch him so, yet the gesture felt like an odd show of respect, though rough it was. He glanced at Maekar, whom appeared to be counting daughters.
“We lost three in the cradle and a son at ten and two, just last July, spring sickness too.” Lady Lorra said with grief painted across her visage, a softer picture than her husband, it was certain. “Yet Winterfell has kept us busy, a good distraction I should think. The builders have finished renovating the hot springs, I’m quite certain the fire in your blood might appreciate the warmth of them, feel free to use them at will.”
Little Aegon was tottering behind his father, looking rather mystified at the drab stone walls that stretched high above them. Finally, for Ser Duncan the Tall, a door he needed not dip his head too cross. Lady Lorra smiled brimly at the little prince, as her daughters followed after her, like dutiful little fledglings.
“I seem to recall you having four daughters, Lord Stark, yet I count only three.” Maekar strode forward.
“My eldest is at the orphanage. She sings to the children, this time each morning.” Lord Stark said sternly.
“She sounds nauseatingly pleasant. Is the orphanage more important than welcoming princes to Winterfell?” Maekar cocked a brow.
“Her father is here to welcome, who is it’s lord. A promise made must be kept, even to those you may deem inferior, my prince.” Lord Stark’s voice was cold, and he strode through to a small side room, decently decorated. His wife fluttered off with her flock. “These shall be your quarters, my wife ensured they were made sufficient. There are rooms through there aplenty, and your kingsguard shall be fed and watered, as well as your horses, there shall be a feast tonight—”
“These rooms shall do nicely, my good lord.” Baelor said, shedding his furs.
“I understand you wish to visit the wall, I shall accompany, it's long past time I pay a visit to ensure it’s in order.” Lord Stark said slowly. “Unfortunately, it shall be a week or two before the snows loosen well enough to allow us passage—”
“Hot springs, did your wife say?” Maekar sunk into a seat, running a gruff hand over a small wolf totem. “I think I shall be enjoying those, whilst my brother regrets his life decisions on your wall of ice, good lord.”
Lord Stark made a laugh somewhere between a grumble and a sneer.
“I should say, good prince, if it is your intent to unify the North and the South by way of marriage, I would suggest a daughter of house Manderly.” Lord Stark said, rather off the cuff. Rumours had spread then. “They keep to your seven. The rest of us follow the old gods and any good father of the North, would see his daughter wed beneath a weirwood under darkness cover, not in a sept by a high septon, no matter how grand the candelabras. The traditions of my kin, predate even Valyria and it’s my oath to serve them—”
“Fret not, I am not of my namesake’s persuasion, your ways are your own, my lord, and I should never wish to impede on such, old ancient traditions.” Baelor smiled gruffly.
Lord Stark took his leave then with a gruff bow. Maekar let out a snort that was not becoming of a prince. It mattered not, for he had not come North to take anyone's daughter, he had come to heed a dream, that it seemed had been just that; a dream, and nothing more.
“All those old abiding fathers were throwing daughters at you in Castle Cerwyn and Karhold. It mattered not to them.” Maekar commented wryly. “Lord Stark dislikes us, mayhaps he means to ally himself with Blackfyres—”
“House Stark has never forgotten an oath brother, it is not in their nature.” Baelor said astutely. “I should wager he is but a father who does not wish to give a daughter to an old prince with no business—”
“An able prince of but forty and one, who will in not so long a time be our king.” Maekar corrected. “He’s squirrelled the eldest away, who sings to orphans, I told you they always have a pretty one hidden somewhere, they make you sample the pox-marked ones first, for the lower dowry, and in the case of Lord Stark it’s likely he has not the funds for any dowry, judging by the dry rot—”
“These are fine rooms, and kindly given.” Baelor said. “We shall enjoy the feast, visit the wall, and return home, where I shall find a fellow widow still fertile and—”
“You are the heir apparent, it is as you decide.” Maekar cut him off, seeming rather disappointed. “But widows make not queens, but maidens fair.”
But neither did fools make for kings.