Chapter 13: A Reunion in the Shadows
The parchment from Oldtown was short, brutal, and smelled of his father’s lemon-based cologne. Lord Otto Hightower did not waste ink on sentiment. The King’s display was adequate. Ensure the girl remains compliant. The child is the key. His name day celebrations in Oldtown will be essential for securing the Reach’s full allegiance. Do not let personal attachments cloud your duty. Gwayne read it twice, then fed a corner of it to a candle flame in their chambers, watching the black-edged curl consume the words the girl and personal attachments. The ash fell onto the stone floor, a tiny, bitter snowfall.
“Bad news?” Naerys asked from the window. She was rocking Baelon, her back to the room, staring out at the maze of rain-slick rooftops and chimneys.
“The usual reminders,” Gwayne said, grinding the ash under his boot. “My father believes nostalgia is a weakness.”
She didn’t turn. “Is it?”
He crossed the room to stand behind her, not touching, looking over her shoulder at the dismal view. “I don’t know what to call it,” he said honestly. “I only know that seeing you before that throne, holding our son, answering his poison with grace… it didn’t feel like weakness. It felt like the only real thing in that entire fucking room.”
She leaned back, just slightly, until her shoulders brushed his chest. A silent acknowledgment. They stood like that for a long moment, the only sound Baelon’s soft, milky sighs.
Later, seeking air that didn’t smell of burned parchment or duty, Gwayne found himself in a forgotten alcove of the Red Keep’s older gardens. It was a place of retreat and decay. Crimson roses, long untended, grew in wild, thorny thickets, their petals the color of dried blood, brittle to the touch. The stone bench was worn smooth, still holding the day’s feeble warmth. Here, the sounds of the court were muffled. You could hear the wind, and the distant, constant drip of water from a cracked gargoyle.
He was not alone for long.
“I thought I might find you here. You always had a taste for melancholy corners.”
The voice was a familiar baritone, edged with a weariness that hadn’t been there during the war. Ser Criston Cole emerged from between two overgrown rose arches, his white cloak of the Kingsguard smudged with green from brushing against the leaves. He looked older. Harder. The handsome, earnest knight who had been a fixture of Gwayne’s youth was now a man carved from flint, his eyes like chips of dark glass.
“Criston.” Gwayne nodded, the greeting cautious. They had fought side-by-side at the Honeywine. They had shared wine and fears in muddy camps. That was before the tides of loyalty and ambition had swept them to different, bloodier shores. “You’re looking well.”
“Liar.” Criston offered a thin, weary smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He came to lean against the opposite side of the alcove entrance, arms crossed. “Neither of us is sleeping well, I’d wager. The smell of dragon smoke never really leaves the stone, does it? Or the memory of it.”
“No,” Gwayne agreed. “It doesn’t.”
A companionable, heavy silence settled, filled with unspoken battles and the ghosts of mutual friends now bones in the ground. Criston picked a brittle rose petal from his cloak, rubbing it to dust between his thumb and forefinger.
“Saw your presentation,” he said, his tone casual, too casual. “The little dragon princess. She held her head high, I’ll give her that. Just like her mother used to.” He glanced at Gwayne, that faint, knowing sneer touching his lips. “Same proud tilt to the chin. Same defiant set to the mouth. Rhaenyra’s look, right before she’d order something particularly treasonous.”
Gwayne kept his breathing even. “Naerys is her own woman.”
“Is she?” Criston pushed off the wall, taking a step into the alcove. The space felt suddenly smaller. “She’s Rhaenyra’s get. The seed is strong, they say. Strong and willful. You’ve tamed her, though. Or at least, put a pretty chain on her. The babe helps. A clever solution, that.”
The words hung in the air, dripping with implication. Gwayne felt a cold calm spread through his veins. “Speak plainly, Criston.”
“Oh, come now, Gwayne.” Criston’s voice dropped, became almost conversational. “We knew each other in the mud. I saw the way you looked at the squires. The way you never looked at the camp followers. You were always… discreet. Meticulous. This marriage, this sudden heir… it’s a very meticulous solution. Very Hightower. No messy passions. Just a tidy, political heir to bind the lines. I’ve wondered, since I heard the news. A son, so conveniently swift. Is he even yours? Or did you find some comely stableboy with the right coloring to do the duty you couldn’t stomach?”
The cold in Gwayne’s veins turned to fire. He moved, not with knightly flourish, but with a swift, predatory silence that made Criston’s hand twitch toward his sword hilt. Gwayne stopped a foot away, well inside the other man’s guard, his voice low and coiled as a garrote.
“You will listen to me now, old friend.” The endearment was a threat. “Naerys Targaryen is my wife. She is brave, and kind, and has endured more than you could fathom. You will not speak her name in the same breath as her mother’s wars again. You will not look at her with that sneer. And you will never,” he leaned in, the words biting the air between them, “speak of my son again.”
Criston held his gaze, the flint in his own eyes sparking. He was weighing, testing the steel he saw. He found it unyielding. The sneer faded, replaced by a grudging, wary respect. He took a half-step back.
“Your son,” he conceded, the words flat. “My apologies. The court is a nest of vipers. I hear things. I forget that not all men are what the rumors whisper.”
“The next time you hear such a whisper,” Gwayne said, not moving, “you will strangle it. For the sake of what friendship we had on the Honeywine. Do you understand?”
For a long moment, Criston said nothing. The wind rustled the thorny roses. Then he gave a single, sharp nod. “Understood.” He turned to leave, then paused, looking back. His expression was unreadable. “She has you defending her honor like a true knight. Perhaps she is more than her blood after all. Or perhaps you are less of yours.” He didn’t wait for a reply, melting back into the labyrinth of thorns and shadows.
Gwayne stood alone in the alcove, his hands clenched at his sides. He looked down and saw a spot of crimson on his thumb. He’d gripped a rose thorn without feeling it. He watched the blood well, a perfect, dark bead. The insinuations were out now, spoken aloud in this place of dying flowers. They wouldn’t be the last. Criston was a blunt instrument, but he was not the source, only a symptom. The rumors were spreading, from the kitchens to the barracks to the throne room itself.
He found Naerys not in their chambers, but in a small, secluded sept within the keep, one dedicated to the Mother. She wasn’t praying. She was sitting on a stone bench before the statue, Baelon asleep in a sling across her chest. She was just sitting, her hand resting on his back, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.
“I met an old friend in the garden,” Gwayne said quietly, his voice echoing softly in the domed space.
She didn’t look up. “Was he friendly?”
“No.” He came to sit beside her, the cold of the stone seeping through his clothes. He looked at the serene, carved face of the Mother. “He had… questions. About Baelon. About us.”
Naerys went very still. Then, slowly, she turned her head to look at him. In the dim, multi-colored light from the high windows, her violet eyes were vast and full of a terrible understanding. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth,” Gwayne said, meeting her gaze. “That he is my son. That you are my wife.”
A flicker of pain crossed her face. “Does he know about...you?”
He reached over. He didn’t take her hand. He laid his own, with its tiny, bleeding puncture, over hers where it rested on their son’s back. Their hands bridged the warm, sleeping life between them.
"He seems to. But that doesn't matter. We have each done our duty and Baelon is our son."
"And is that all we are, Gwayne?" Naerys asked. "A duty?"
Gwayne pressed his forehead to hers. "You know you're not. It was not easy for me in the beginning, as you know. But, surely you know now that I would die a thousand times before I ever let anything hurt you...hurt us."
Naerys pressed a quick kiss to his lips. "Tomorrow will be tedious. We should head for bed, husband."