Chapter 6: A New Understanding
The stone corridors of the Hightower were never silent. They whispered with the echoes of the sea, the distant clang of the smithy, the muffled conversations of servants scurrying like mice in the walls. Naerys walked them slowly, one hand resting on the subtle, firm curve of her belly. Four moons along now. The nausea had passed, replaced by a relentless hunger and a fatigue that slept in her bones. She found the rhythmic tap of her slippers on the flagstones soothing. It was a small claim to territory, a tiny noise that was hers alone.
She was turning toward the library, thinking of the dusty tome on Valyrian star-maps Daeron had mentioned, when voices, low and strained, slipped from an alcove ahead. One was Gwayne’s. She knew its timbre, its gentle cadence, even when it was hardened as it was now.
“—understand what you’re asking is impossible.” Gwayne’s voice was a tightly wound wire.
“Nothing is impossible in shadow, Gwayne. Old times. For old times’ sake.” The other voice was unfamiliar, lighter, almost melodic, but with an edge of desperation.
“There are no old times. There is now. I am married. I have a wife. A child coming.”
A harsh, bitter laugh. “A pretty cage is still a cage. Does she know what sleeps beside her? Does she know what you are?”
Naerys froze, her breath catching in her throat. She pressed herself against the cold stone, just out of sight.
“You will not speak of her.” The threat in Gwayne’s voice was cold, final. “What I am is her husband. I made vows. I will not dishonor her, or myself, by creeping back to what was. It’s done, Lucan. It’s over. You need to leave Oldtown.”
“She’ll never love you, your little dragon whore. You’ll die a little every time you touch her, pretending.”
“Get out. Before I have you thrown from the battlements.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, a grunt, then rapidly retreating footsteps echoing down a side passage. Naerys stood, paralyzed, the words burning in her ears. What you are. Does she know?
She stepped back, her heel scraping on stone. It was a tiny sound, but in the sudden silence, it was a thunderclap.
Gwayne emerged from the alcove, his face pale, his hazel eyes wide with a panic she had never seen. He saw her. His expression shattered. “Naerys.”
She turned and walked away. Not hurriedly, but with a numb, deliberate pace. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs, but her mind was a cold, clear pool. A pretty cage. What you are. Pieces she had refused to examine too closely clicked into a devastating, obvious picture. His gentle distance. The initial failure. The way his tenderness felt like a conscious decision, a magnificent act of will. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. It was that he didn’t want any woman.
She heard his footsteps behind her, quickening to catch up, then slowing, matching her pace a few feet back. He didn’t speak. He followed her all the way to their chambers, a silent, grief-stricken shadow.
Inside, the afternoon sun slanted through the high windows, illuminating motes of dust dancing in the air. She went to the window seat, her back to him, staring out at the sprawling city and the glittering bay beyond.
“Naerys,” he said again, his voice raw.
“Who was he?” she asked, her own voice disturbingly calm.
“Ser Lucan Crane. A knight from the Reach. We trained together as squires. He was… he is…” He struggled, the words choking him. “He was my first.”
The admission hung in the sunlit room, huge and fragile. She finally turned to look at him. He stood just inside the door, as if afraid to enter fully. He looked utterly broken, the honorable knight stripped bare.
“You should have told me,” she said quietly.
“I know.” He took a step forward, his hands opening and closing at his sides. “By all the gods, I know. I was a coward. I told myself it was to protect you. I told myself it didn’t matter, that I would do my duty and you would never need to know the… the deformity of it.”
“Deformity?”
He flinched. “My father… the things he said… it is a sin. A sickness. A degradation of nature. I believed him. For a long time, I believed him.” He sank to his knees before her, not in supplication, but in utter collapse. “I am so sorry. You have a degenerate for a husband. You, who deserved fire and passion, are chained to a man who has to close his eyes and think of—”
“Stop.” The word was a whip-crack.
He looked up, tears cutting clean paths through the dust of the day on his cheeks.
She slid from the window seat and knelt on the floor in front of him, their faces level. She took his face in her hands. His skin was warm, his stubble rough against her palms. “You are not a degenerate. You are not sick. You are not deformed.” She spoke each word with a fierce, quiet certainty. “A part of me has always known, Gwayne. In the way you looked at me, not with absence, but with a… a chosen focus. A willed affection. I accepted you. All of you. I accept you now.”
A sob wracked his frame. He tried to turn his head away, ashamed of his tears, but she held him firm. “How?” he whispered, brokenly. “How can you not be revolted?”
“Because you have never revolted me. You have been my only sanctuary in this damned tower.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. It was a soft kiss, a seal of her words.
He froze for a heartbeat. Then, with a desperate, starving sound, he kissed her back. His hands came up to tangle in her hair, pulling her closer. This kiss was not like the others. There was no duty in it, no performance. It was a floodgate breaking. It was an apology and an acceptance, a surrender and a claim, all fused into the hot, slick slide of his tongue against hers. It tasted of salt and longing and a truth finally set free.
He tore his mouth from hers, breathing ragged. “I need you. Gods, Naerys, I need you.”
He stood, pulling her up with him. His fingers, usually so careful, fumbled with the laces of her gown, yanking them until the fabric gaped. He pushed it from her shoulders, letting it pool at her feet. Her shift followed. She stood naked before him in the sunlight, her belly rounded with his child, her skin glowing. He drank her in, his gaze a physical heat.
“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he rasped. “My wife.”
He stripped his own clothes off, jerking at buckles and laces, his urgency making him clumsy. When he was bare, he took her hand and placed it on his cock. It was thick, hard, already leaking at the tip. “This is for you,” he said, his voice trembling. “Only ever for you. Do you understand? It is yours.”
She wrapped her fingers around him, stroking slowly, feeling the silken skin over iron hardness. He shuddered, his eyes slamming shut.
“Look at me,” she commanded softly.
He opened his eyes. The reverence there, mixed with a wild, unguarded hunger, stole her breath.
He guided her back onto the great bed, the velvet cover cool beneath her. He didn’t tease. He came over her, his weight settling into the cradle of her hips, his cock nudging at her entrance. She was already wet, her body aching for him, for this new, unfettered version of him.
He pushed inside with a single, deep, claiming thrust.
She cried out, her back arching. He filled her completely, a perfect, stretching fit. He held himself there, buried to the hilt, his forehead pressed to hers. His hazel eyes, bright with tears, locked onto her violet ones.
“Naerys,” he breathed her name like a prayer.
Then he began to move. His thrusts were deep, measured, relentless. Each drive of his hips was a punctuation to his gaze. He fucked her with a desperate, focused intensity, as if trying to fuse their souls through their joining flesh. The slick, wet sounds of their bodies were lewd and beautiful. The sun warmed the side of her face, his sweat dripped onto her chest.
“Tell me,” he grunted, his rhythm starting to fracture. “Tell me it’s mine. This cunt. This perfect, tight cunt. Tell me.”
“It’s yours,” she gasped, her nails digging into the muscles of his back. “Yours, Gwayne. Only yours.”
“Fuck. Fuck, yes.” His pace became brutal, a piston driving her into the mattress. The pleasure built, a coil of white-hot wire in her core, pulled tighter with every slam of his body against hers. She could feel the primal thrill of it, the raw, filthy rightness of him taking her, claiming her, needing her.
The coil snapped. Her climax tore through her with a silent, seizing violence. Her vision whited out as her cunt convulsed around his driving length, milking him, pulling him deeper.
The sensation broke him. With a raw, shattered cry that was her name and a sob and a curse all in one, he plunged deep and held. His body locked, every muscle rigid. She felt the hot, liquid pulse of his release flooding her, jet after endless jet, marking her as his in the most fundamental way. The intensity of it seemed to overwhelm his senses; his eyes rolled back for a second, his body going limp as the last of his seed spilled into her.
He collapsed, his full weight on her, his face buried in the curve of her neck. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breaths.
Then, a hot wetness touched her skin. A tremor went through him. Another. He was weeping. Deep, body-wracking sobs that he tried to stifle against her throat.
She held him. She wrapped her arms around his broad back, her legs around his hips, keeping him locked inside her, keeping him close. She stroked his sweat-damp hair. “Shhh,” she whispered. “It’s alright. You’re alright. I have you.”
He cried until he was spent, until the storm passed. He went utterly still, his breath warm and steadying against her skin. He lifted his head, his eyes red-rimmed, swollen, but clear. He looked down at her, his expression one of awestruck devotion.
“I love you,” he said. The words were quiet, simple, and absolute. “I didn’t know it could feel like this. I didn’t know I could. But I do. I love you, Naerys Targaryen.”
The words did not feel like a cage. They felt like a key turning in a long-locked door. A warmth, different from the heat of sex, bloomed in her chest, spreading through her limbs, settling in the womb that carried his child. This fierce, complicated, honorable, broken man loved her. He had chosen her, against the current of his own nature, and now, in the wreckage of his secret, he loved her.
She cupped his face, her thumb wiping the last tear from his cheek. She smiled, a real, unguarded smile that reached her eyes. “And I love you, Gwayne Hightower.”
He kissed her again, sweetly this time, a slow sealing of the vow. Then he carefully rolled, taking her with him, so she lay draped across his chest. Their bodies were still joined, sticky and spent. The sun had moved across the floor. The world outside their chamber, with its politics and perils and watching eyes, seemed very far away. Here, in the tangled sheets and the quiet aftermath, they had built something new. Not just an alliance. Not just a truce. A fortress. And for the first time, she felt its walls might just be strong enough.
And for the first time, she felt its walls might just be strong enough.
The fortress was tested daily, not by siege, but by expansion. Naerys’s body became its own landscape, a terrain of strange wonders and profound aches. By the seventh moon, the subtle curve had become a proud, hard dome straining the seams of her gowns. The child within was a vigorous one, a relentless dancer who turned her insides to bruised fruit. Her feet swelled. Her back was a constant, dull roar of protest.
Gwayne watched this transformation not with detached curiosity, but with the focused intensity of a scholar and the devotion of a acolyte. His love, now spoken, became a verb enacted in a thousand small, meticulous ways.
He had the maesters procure oils of sweet almond and chamomile. Every night, without fail, he would guide her to the bathing chamber warmed by braziers. “Sit,” he’d murmur, his hands already gentle on her shoulders. He would kneel behind her, pour the oil into his palms, and work it into the knotted muscles of her lower back. His thumbs pressed deep, finding the specific points of tension along her spine, unraveling the pain with a patient, circular pressure that made her groan with relief.
“The little dragon is feisty tonight,” he’d say, feeling the frantic kicks against where his hands rested on her belly.
“He has your stubbornness,” she’d gasp, leaning into his touch.
“Or your fire,” he’d counter, his lips brushing the top of her shoulder. He would then move to her feet, cradling each swollen arch in his lap, massaging the puffiness from her toes to her ankles with a tenderness that made her throat tight. This was his liturgy. His hands, which had learned the geography of her pleasure, now charted the maps of her discomfort and soothed them.
He redesigned their world. He had a padded bench with back support installed in her solar. He ordered pillows stuffed with goose down and spelt husk, arranging them around her in the bed each night like a nest. When she craved blackberries in the dead of night, he woke, pulled on a tunic, and went to the kitchens himself, returning with a chilled bowl and a smear of jam on his thumb which he let her lick clean. His vigilance was a quiet, relentless force against the world’s indifference.
Otto observed this with a cold, approving eye. The heir was secure. His son’s… attentiveness was a useful tool for keeping the asset placid. He said nothing, but his presence was a winter draft at the edge of their warmth.
One afternoon, the late summer heat lay thick in their chamber. Naerys felt huge, cumbersome, a vessel stretched to bursting. The baby was a solid, insistent pressure low in her pelvis. She stood by the window, wearing only a thin, damp chemise, trying to catch a breeze that wouldn’t come. She was crying, silently, furious at her own helplessness, at the sweat trickling between her breasts.
Gwayne came in from a council meeting, still in his linen tunic, his brow furrowed. He saw her, the tears on her cheeks gleaming in the harsh light. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He knew.
Wordlessly, he went to the ewer, soaked a clean cloth in cool water, and came to her. He dabbed her forehead, her throat, the flushed skin over her chest. The relief was so immediate she whimpered. He guided her to the edge of the bed, his hands firm.
“Lie back. Let me help.”
He pushed the chemise up, baring the immense swell of her. He poured more oil, this time scented with mint, into his palms. He started at her distended navel, his hands gliding in wide, slow circles over the taut, shiny skin. He worshipped the shape of their child. He traced the faint, silvery lines that had appeared on her hips, calling them battle marks, proof of her strength. His touch was cool and sure, a counterpoint to the internal, burning heaviness.
His hands slid lower, over the aching crest of her belly. The heels of his palms pressed down where the child’s head seemed to rest, a gentle, sustained pressure that felt like heaven. She moaned, her legs falling open of their own accord.
“There?” he asked, his voice low.
“Yes. Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He worked her with a knowing rhythm, easing the physical burden. But his touch, as it always did, began to stoke a different fire. His fingers brushed the thatch of curls between her legs. She was slick, an readiness that had nothing to do with the child and everything to do with his hands on her. He stilled, his breath catching.
“Naerys…”
“I need you,” she said, the words raw. “Not just to be comforted. I need to feel you. I need to come.”
He let out a shaky breath. He helped her turn carefully onto her side, facing away from him, and nestled behind her. He pushed his breeches down just enough to free himself. His cock, hard and eager, slid between the warm clutch of her thighs from behind. He reached around her hip, his fingers sliding easily through her wet folds to find her clit.
“Like this,” she panted, pushing her ass back against him. “Just like this.”
He entered her from behind, a slow, careful invasion that made her gasp with its perfect fullness. The angle was deep, but the position spared her belly. He sheathed himself completely, groaning into her hair. “Gods, you feel… even more incredible like this. So hot. So fucking tight.”
He began to move, shallow, rolling thrusts that ground his pelvis against her backside. His fingers on her clit were relentless, a circling, insistent counterpoint to the thrust of his cock. She was a knot of sensation—the relief of his hands on her body, the obscene, wet sound of him sliding in her, the building, coiling frenzy in her core.
“Talk to me,” she begged, lost in the haze.
“Your cunt is dripping for me,” he rasped, his voice gritty with lust. “My beautiful wife. Taking my cock so well. You’re gonna come on it, aren’t you? You’re gonna squeeze me so tight while our son sleeps right here.” He bit her shoulder gently, his thrusts gaining force.
The filthy promise of it, the sheer carnality amid the care, shattered her. Her climax ripped through her with a silent, seismic intensity, a series of pulsing contractions that milked his length. She cried out, her body bowing against his.
The violent clenching of her around him was too much. He fucked her through her climax, his rhythm breaking into frantic, slamming jerks. “Fuck! Naerys! Yes!” He came with a guttural shout, his hips stuttering as he emptied himself deep inside her, his seed spilling into her already crowded womb.
They lay joined, panting, a tangled mess of limbs and sweat and oil. His arm was a protective bar across her belly, his hand splayed possessively over their child. He nuzzled the damp hair at her nape.
After a long while, he carefully pulled out and rose. He returned with a warm, damp cloth. He cleaned her with the same tenderness he had massaged her, wiping the evidence of their joining from her thighs. He helped her into a fresh chemise, then stripped himself and slid back into bed behind her, pulling her into the fortress of his body.
“I can’t imagine doing this with anyone else,” he whispered into the quiet. “Ever.”
She placed her hand over his, where it rested on the hard drum of her stomach. A fierce kick answered their touch. They lay in the humid dark, listening to the sea, feeling the future move between them. The walls held. They were thick with love, with sweat, with the salt of the sea and the scent of mint. And they were, for now, impervious.
And they were, for now, impervious.
The ninth month arrived not with a storm, but with a heavy, breathless stillness that settled over Oldtown. Naerys moved through the world as a ship loaded for a long voyage, low in the water and ponderous. The child felt less like a dancer and more like an anchor, a dense, immovable weight lodged in her pelvis. Gwayne’s hands were now constantly on her, a guiding pressure at the small of her back, a steadying grip on her elbow as she navigated stairs that had become mountains.
One morning, the heat had broken slightly. A thin, pale sunlight filtered through the haze. “Come,” Daeron said, finding her listlessly tracing the Hightower sigil on a tapestry. “The garden. Before you forget what the sky looks like from outside a window.”
She went, grateful for the escape. They walked the gravel paths of the high courtyard garden, where roses struggled against the salt air. Daeron, ever the attentive uncle, spoke of trivial things—a mummers’ troupe arriving from Lys, a new book of maps from the Citadel. He made her laugh with an impression of a particularly pompous septon. For a handful of minutes, the anchor within her felt lighter.
Then, a sensation, deep and internal, like a thick rope being pulled taut across her lower belly. She stopped walking, her hand going instinctively to the side of her enormous mound. It wasn’t pain, not yet. It was a profound, squeezing pressure that locked her muscles and stole her breath.
“Naerys?” Daeron’s smile faded. “You’ve gone the color of chalk.”
“A cramp,” she managed to say, exhaling slowly as the tension released. “It’s nothing. It passed.”
They took three more steps. It happened again. This time, the tightening was sharper, a vise that made her gasp and bend forward slightly. Her fingers dug into the soft flesh of her own hip.
“It’s not passing,” Daeron said. His voice was calm, but his violet eyes were assessing her with a swift, martial clarity. He had seen men wounded. He understood the signs of a body turning against itself. “How long since the last one?”
“A moment. I don’t… I don’t know.” Panic, cold and slick, began to thread through her veins. It was too soon. It wasn’t time.
Another cramp seized her, closer, more insistent. A low moan escaped her lips.
“Right.” Daeron’s hand was suddenly on her arm, firm and unwavering. He turned her gently but decisively back toward the keep’s postern door. “The babe is coming. One step at a time. Just walk with me.”
“It can’t be,” she protested, even as her body clenched again, forcing her to stop. “It’s not—”
“It is.” His tone brooked no argument. He supported more of her weight as they inched forward. The hundred yards to the door stretched like a league. Each tightening in her belly was a wave she had to stand against before she could move. Daeron kept talking, his voice a steady drone. “Nearly there. Good. Just here. Watch the step.”
They crossed the threshold into the cooler dimness of the stone corridor. A guardsman in Hightower livery stood at attention. Daeron didn’t break stride. “Fetch Ser Gwayne. Now. And send for the Maester. The lady’s labour has begun.”
The guard’s eyes widened. He nodded and took off at a run.
The world narrowed to the space between contractions. Daeron got her to their antechamber, easing her into a chair just as another pain crested. This one had teeth. It ripped a sharp cry from her throat. Her hands gripped the carved arms of the chair until her knuckles were bone.
“Breathe through it,” Daeron murmured, kneeling beside her. He didn’t touch her, knowing the pain was a solitary country. “It will fade. It always fades.”
The door burst open. Gwayne filled the doorway, his face blanched of all color, his doublet half-laced. He took in the scene—Naerys hunched in the chair, Daeron on the floor—and was across the room in two strides. He dropped to his knees before her, his hands hovering, afraid to hurt her. “Naerys.”
The pain released its grip. She sagged, panting, and found his eyes. The terror in them mirrored her own, but beneath it was a bedrock of resolve. “It… it hurts,” she whispered, the confession childish and stark.
“I know, my love. I know.” He didn’t offer useless platitudes. He simply stood, slid his arms under her with a careful, formidable strength, and lifted her. He carried her the short distance to their bedchamber, Daeron a silent shadow holding the door. He laid her on the bed they had shared, loved, and fought in.
The maester arrived, flustered and smelling of dried herbs. He examined her with brusque efficiency. “The babe is correctly positioned. Early, but not dangerously so. It will be a long day, my lady. The first always is.”
The long day dissolved into a blurred mosaic of pain and darkness. The cramps became contractions, distinct tsunamis of agony that rose from the depths of her, peaked with a blinding, white-hot fury, and receded, leaving her trembling and drenched in sweat. She lost all sense of time. The sun crossed the sky unseen.
Gwayne never left. He sat on the edge of the bed, his tunic soaked through where she gripped it. He let her crush his fingers. He mopped her brow with a cool cloth. He whispered nonsense into her sweat-damp hair—stories of the stupid, gentle horse he’d had as a boy, descriptions of the funny-shaped cloud he could see out the window.
“I can’t,” she sobbed during a particularly vicious contraction, her body arching off the bed. “I can’t do this. Make it stop.”
“You are,” he said, his voice raw with her pain. “You are doing it. You are so strong. The strongest person I have ever known.” He pressed his forehead to her temple, his breath warm. “Breathe, dragon flame. Breathe with me.”
In the lulls, she was vicious. The pain stripped her of courtesy, of love, of everything but a raw, snarling need for it to end. “Your fault,” she spat at him once, her vision swimming. “This is all your fucking fault.”
“It is,” he agreed without hesitation, smoothing the hair from her face. “And I am so sorry. And you are magnificent.”
She hated him. She loved him. She needed him to disappear and never leave her side. When a contraction ripped through her, she cursed him with words she’d learned in the Dragonstone courtyards. “Seven hells, Gwayne! It’s tearing me in half!”
“It isn’t. You’re whole. I have you.” He held her through it, his body a solid anchor against the tempest. As the wave passed, he kissed her shoulder, his lips chapped and tender. “My brave, fierce wife. My dragon.”
The maester checked her progress with infuriating infrequency. “Slow and steady,” he intoned each time, as if commenting on the weather.
Evening cast long shadows. The room smelled of blood, sweat, and the sharp vinegar used to clean the cloths. Naerys was a creature of pure instinct, reduced to a cycle of crushing pain and exhausted respite. Gwayne’s constant murmur was the only thread tethering her to herself.
“I see the head,” the maester announced, his clinical tone finally shifting. “The next one, my lady. Push with the next one.”
A new, different terror seized her. The finale was here. She looked at Gwayne, her eyes wide with panic. He cradled her face, his own eyes shining with unshed tears. “Now,” he said, fierce and low. “Now, Naerys. Push our child into the world.”
A contraction, monstrous and overwhelming, gathered her up. She bore down, a guttural scream tearing from her throat, every fiber of her being focused on the searing, impossible pressure below.
Gwayne held her, his voice breaking as he urged her on. "Yes! That's it! I see him!"
But the peak of the pain subsided, the immediate urge to push receding with it. She collapsed back against the pillows, gasping, spent. The maester shook his head slightly. "Rest. Gather your strength. The next one."
The moment of climax had passed. The battle was not won. She was still in the thick of the storm, the promised shore glimpsed but not yet reached. Gwayne wiped her face with a clean, damp cloth, his hand trembling. "You are so close," he whispered, the words a prayer. "So close, my love."
Naerys turned her head toward the window, where the first stars were beginning to pierce the deep blue twilight. Another contraction was already gathering, a dark wave building on the horizon. She set her jaw, gripped Gwayne's hand, and prepared to meet it. The labour was not over.