Chapter 9: A Month of Waiting
The quiet in the lord’s bedchamber had become a tangible thing, a third presence lying between them in the great canopied bed. It was a month of hushed voices, of Baelon’s mewling hunger, of Naerys’s slow, wincing recovery. A month of Gwayne sleeping rigidly on his side of the mattress, a chasm of linen separating them.
The need did not build in him so much as it fermented. It was a dark, restless yeast in his blood, fed by exhaustion, by the animal smell of milk on Naerys’s skin, by the sheer terrifying normalcy of the infant in the crib beside them. He was a lord, a husband, a father. He should want his wife. He did want her, in a way that terrified him with its complexity—a tangled knot of obligation, profound tenderness, and a raw, physical hunger that felt borrowed from another man’s body. A hunger that, in the deep watches of the night, wore Ormund’s face.
Tonight, the knot pulled taut.
Naerys had just finished nursing Baelon. The candlelight gilded the slope of her shoulder, the damp tendrils of silver-gold hair stuck to her neck. She hummed a low, wordless Valyrian lullaby, her violet eyes soft with a weary love. When she laid the swaddled babe down, she sighed, a hand going to the gentle swell of her belly, still softened from pregnancy. The linen shift she wore clung, revealing the fuller curve of her breast, the dark nipple visible through the fabric.
Gwayne’s breath caught. The sight was not lewd. It was deeply, fundamentally female. It should have cooled his strange fire. It ignited it.
He had been staring at the tapestry—a hunt, woven in greens and golds—for an hour, seeing nothing. The ache in his groin was a persistent, blunt demand. He was hard, had been for what felt like hours, a prisoner of his own treacherous flesh. The memory of the frozen woods, of brutal, desperate friction, was a ghost that would not be exorcised. It left a residue of self-loathing that now, perversely, fed the need. He felt filthy. He felt alive.
“Naerys,” he said. His voice was rougher than he intended.
She turned from the crib, her eyes widening slightly at his tone. “My lord?”
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The cool air of the chamber hit his heated skin. He did not look at her. He could not. “The maester has not yet cleared you.”
“I know,” she said, a faint, confused tremor in her voice.
“But I need…” He trailed off, finally looking at her. The words were ash in his mouth. He saw not a princess, not a hostage, but the young woman who had held his son to her breast, who had smiled at him over the babe’s head with a trust that gutted him. The conflict was a vise. “I need to see you.”
He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes. Not fear—he would have stopped at fear—but a flicker of that same giddy anticipation he’d seen the night they conceived Baelon. A reclaiming of something. Her lips parted.
“Undress,” he said, the command a low thrum. “Lie at the foot of the bed.”
She held his gaze for a heartbeat, then nodded. Her fingers went to the ties of her shift. The fabric, damp from milk, peeled away from her skin slowly. She let it pool at her feet. The candlelight loved her body, painting her in warm gold and deep shadow. Her breasts were heavier, the blue veins faintly visible beneath pale skin. The silver stretch marks on her hips and belly were like faint, luminous scars. She was lush, changed, profoundly beautiful. She moved to the foot of the vast bed and lay back upon the deep furs, her hair fanning out like a molten crown. She watched him, her chest rising and falling faster now.
Gwayne stood. He removed his own sleeping tunic, letting it fall. The cool air puckered his skin. His cock stood rigid against his stomach, thick and angrily flushed. The need was a pounding drum in his skull. He wrapped his fist around his length, his breath hissing through his teeth at the contact. He began to stroke himself, a slow, deliberate pull that made his thighs tremble.
He drank her in. The sight of her laid bare for him, compliant, waiting, was a fuel poured on the fire. His hand moved faster, his grip tightening. The slide was dry, almost painful, a stark contrast to the imagined wet heat he could not claim. This was its own thing. A ritual. A claiming. A desperate, clumsy bridge across the chasm in his soul.
“Gods,” he groaned, the word ripped from him. His hips began to jerk in time with his fist. The sound was crude, wet, obscene in the quiet room. “Look at you. Fuck. Look what you’ve done.”
Naerys’s eyes were dark, her lips swollen where she bit them. A hand drifted to her own breast, her thumb brushing a nipple. She was breathing in shallow pants, mesmerized.
“You are so… fucking… beautiful,” he gritted out, each word punctuated by a savage stroke. His balls were drawn up tight, the pressure coiling, unbearable. He was losing control, the animal part of him obliterating the gentle lord. He took two stumbling steps forward until he stood over her, his shadow engulfing her. He leaned down, bracing one hand on the furs by her head, his face inches from hers. His other hand was a blur between his own legs, rough and fast.
Her scent—milk, sweat, her own unique sweetness—filled his nostrils. Her violet eyes were wide, reflecting his own tortured expression.
“I can’t wait,” he panted, a frantic apology and a declaration. “I’m going to come. I’m going to come all over you, Naerys. My perfect wife.”
A sharp, broken cry tore from his throat. His spine arched violently. The release was a convulsive eruption, wrenched from the very core of him. Thick, hot ropes of seed spurted from him, painting warm stripes across her stomach, her hip, the tender underside of her breast. He grunted with each pulse, a raw, animal sound, his body shuddering through the last waves of it.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. He stared at the evidence of his release on her skin, a stark, white contrast against her pallor. A mark. A pathetic, beautiful flag planted on shores he could never truly inhabit.
Then, with a tenderness that felt like violence after the frenzy, he lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was deep, swallowing her gasp. He tasted salt and her own breath. “My love,” he murmured against her lips, the endearment a true ache, a hope.
He broke the kiss and fetched a damp cloth from the basin. He returned to her side, his movements now soft, methodical. Gently, with a reverence that bordered on worship, he cleaned his spend from her skin. He wiped the pearly drops from her belly, the curve of her breast, his touch infinitely careful. She watched him silently, her eyes liquid and unreadable.
When he was done, he tossed the cloth aside. He blew out the candles, plunging the room into moonlit gloom. He slid into the bed behind her, pulling her back against his chest, his arm wrapping possessively around her waist. Their skin was cool now. His heart still thundered against her shoulder blade.
“Sleep,” he whispered into her hair.
Her hand came up to cover his where it lay on her belly. Her fingers laced through his. She said nothing. But she held on, her grip tight, as if he were the one who might drift away.
He lay in the dark, her body a soft weight against his. The physical need was spent, a dull throb. The ghost of Ormund was quiet, banished by the scent of her hair and the memory of seed on stretch-marked skin.
If one had told him a year ago that he would find himself hopelessly in love with a woman, he would have called them mad. But as he stared at his wife, her body bearing the signs of having born his child, he couldn't imagine it any other way.
But as he stared at his wife, her body bearing the signs of having born his child, he couldn’t imagine it any other way. The thought was a quiet shock in the calm that followed the storm. It settled in his bones as they slept, a fragile truth he carried into the grey light of morning.
A week later, the Queen Dowager’s banners were spotted on the Honeywine. Her visit was not a surprise, but a political necessity. Alicent Hightower came to see the future, swaddled in white linen.
She arrived in a cloud of green samite and solemn ladies, her smile practiced, her eyes missing nothing. She cooed over Baelon in the great hall, her fingers—slender and nervous—barely brushing his cheek. “He has the look of his father, Gwayne,” she said, her voice carrying to the listening courtiers. “A blessing.”
The real audience came in private, in her appointed chambers high in the tower. She dismissed her ladies with a flick of her wrist. “Walk with me on the balcony, brother. Bring the babe. The air in here is stale.”
The balcony was a slender stone crescent overlooking the sprawling city and the distant, glittering Whispering Sound. A cold salt wind snapped at their clothes. Gwayne held Baelon close, shielding him from the brunt of it. Alicent stood beside him, her hands gripping the rail, knuckles pale.
For a long time, she just looked at the water. “I did not think you would do it,” she said finally. The words were soft, almost lost to the wind.
“Do what, Sister?”
“Get her with child.” Alicent turned her head, her gaze sharp and unnervingly direct. “Not truly. Not given… your preferences. Otto thought it might require… inducements. Or an heir from a more willing branch.”
Gwayne nodded. There was not much that his sister did not know about him. He understood her shock.
“We are the family that won a war by planning for every contingency, Gwayne. Even the unpleasant ones.” She sighed, the sound weary. “I am shocked not by the act, but by the fact. How?”
The memory of that single, deliberate night pressed in. Naerys’s eager eyes in the firelight, her hands pulling him down. His own grim determination, a duty twisted into something like want. The frantic, focused coupling that had felt more like battle than passion. And the aftermath—her whispered thanks, his own hollow victory.
“It was not a trial,” he said, choosing his words as if crossing a narrow bridge. “It was not an act of… forced persuasion.”
Alicent watched him, waiting.
“I don’t have a preference for women,” he admitted, the old shame a faint echo now. The wind whipped his hair across his forehead. “In general. I likely never will. But I have a preference for her.”
He looked down at his son’s sleeping face, a perfect, peaceful mystery. “The war… it left a darkness in here.” He tapped his own chest. “A cold, vacant space. She walked into that. She didn’t shy from it. She just lit a candle.”
He met his sister’s eyes. “She is my wife. She is the mother of my son. That is not a political arrangement to me anymore. It is the axis my world turns on.”
Alicent’s stern expression softened, then fractured. A genuine, startled smile touched her lips, and her eyes grew bright. She reached out, not for the babe, but to squeeze Gwayne’s arm where he held him. Her grip was surprisingly strong.
“Good,” she said, her voice thick. “That is… good, Gwayne. Seven know, we have had enough of cold alliances and calculated hatreds.” She looked back at the sea, her smile lingering. “A guiding light. Hold onto that. Guard it. This world extinguishes them too easily.”
The Queen Dowager left three days later, the echo of her approval a warmer shield than Gwayne anticipated. The tower, for the first time, felt less like a monument to a finished war and more like a place where things, delicate things, might actually begin.
Naerys found the nursery sunlit and unusually noisy the following afternoon. Not with crying, but with a deep, cheerful voice making exaggerated dragon roars. She paused in the doorway, unseen. Her uncle Daeron, clad in a simple grey tunic, was on his hands and knees before the hearth. Baelon, propped on a mound of cushions, watched with wide, unblinking eyes.
“And then,” Daeron boomed, wiggling his fingers like claws, “the great green beast descended upon the sheepfold! RRRAAAHHH!” He collapsed forward with a dramatic groan, shaking the floorboards. “Defeated by a single brave shepherd with a very sharp spoon!”
Baelon’s tiny mouth formed a perfect ‘o’. A bubble of spit popped on his lips.
“He’s terrorizing the livestock again, I see,” Naerys said, leaning against the doorframe.
Daeron rolled onto his back, grinning up at her. His silver hair was tousled. “Naerys! Your son is an excellent critic. Very stern. No applause for my performance.”
“He’s two moons old, Daeron. His judgment extends to the quality of milk and the dryness of his swaddling.” She entered, the stone floor cool under her bare feet. She scooped Baelon up, inhaling his clean, powdery scent. “He’s probably wondering why his uncle is sprawled on the rug like a slain stag.”
“Practice,” Daeron said, sitting up. He nodded toward the window. “For when my dear grandsire visits. I plan to expire artistically at his feet the moment he starts lecturing about lineage and duty. It will save us all hours.”
Naerys laughed, a real sound that startled her. It felt rusty in her throat. She hadn’t realized how long it had been. She settled into a low nursing chair, arranging Baelon. Daeron, with an easy comfort that surprised her, dragged a stool over and sat, resting his chin in his hands. He watched, his expression shifting from playful to quietly observant.
“He’s got your chin,” he said after a moment. “The stubborn bit.”
“He has Gwayne’s hair.”
“Hightower hair,” Daeron corrected gently, but without malice. He was silent for a beat. “Do they look at you with kindness, Naerys? Those Hightower eyes?”
The question was a needle, precise and deft. She met her uncle’s gaze. The ghost of the war lived in him too, in the new lines around his mouth, in the watchfulness that had replaced his boyish recklessness. He was her keeper as much as her uncle, their shared blood a beacon to her in this house of strangers.
“They do,” she said, and found it was the purest truth she’d spoken in weeks. She thought of the damp cloth, the whispered ‘my love’ in the dark. The bizarre, beautiful mortification of the other night, which felt less like an insult and more like a confession in a language she was only beginning to decipher. “They look at me… carefully. Like I’m a page of text in a language he’s still learning.”
Daeron absorbed this. “Better than being looked through,” he finally conceded. He reached out a long finger, and Baelon’s tiny hand flailed, catching it in a surprisingly strong grip. Daeron’s breath hitched. “Seven hells, he’s strong.”
“He is,” Naerys said, pride swelling her voice.
“Come on, mighty warrior,” Daeron cooed, gently trying to extricate his finger. Baelon held fast, his face scrunching with effort. “Let go of your prisoner. I yield! I yield!”
Baelon gurgled, a wet, joyous sound. He kicked his feet, losing his grip. Daeron pretended to swoon backward. “My dignity! Shattered by an infant!” He righted himself, a wide, unguarded smile lighting his face. She imagined that he may have smiled like this before the war. It brightened her heart to see.
Naerys felt a sudden, fierce surge of love for them both—for the man her uncle was trying to remember how to be, and for the son who was too young to know about blood debts and conquered thrones. This, here, was a different kind of sovereignty. Small, sun-dappled, built on gurgles and finger-grabs and a shared, weary understanding between siblings.
“He likes you,” she said softly.
Daeron’s smile softened, turning wistful. He leaned in again, this time to brush a knuckle against Baelon’s cheek. The baby turned his head, following the touch. “Of course he does. I’m the fun one. I provide tactical rug-based warfare and dramatic interpretations of history.” He looked at Naerys, his violet eyes clear. “You look tired. But you look… here.”
“I am here,” she said, and it was not a complaint.
They spent the next hour like that, in the pool of sunlight. Daeron invented increasingly ridiculous songs about courtiers turned into toads. Naerys laughed until her sides ached, a release so physical it felt like shedding a skin. Baelon, overstimulated and delighted, eventually yawned, his eyes drooping. The simple, warm weight of him in her arms was an anchor.
Later, after the wet nurse had taken Baelon and Daeron had left with a promise to teach his nephew to sword-fight with a spoon at his earliest convenience, Naerys stood at the nursery window. The echo of laughter still hummed in the quiet room. She watched a gull wheel over the harbor, free and screeching.
Gwayne found her there, her forehead resting against the cool glass. He didn’t speak at first, just came to stand beside her, his shoulder nearly touching hers. He followed her gaze to the gull, then down to the courtyard where Daeron was walking, hands in his pockets, his head tilted back as if to feel the sun.
“He stayed a long time,” Gwayne observed, his voice neutral.
“He was playing with his nephew,” Naerys said. She turned her head to look at him. The afternoon light caught the chestnut in his hair, the quiet concern in his eyes. “They were negotiating the surrender of a dragon. The terms were mostly about milk.”
A slow smile touched Gwayne’s lips. It reached his eyes, crinkling the corners. “Ser Daeron drives a hard bargain.” He hesitated, then asked, “Was it… a good afternoon?”
She heard the question beneath the question. Was it a reminder of what you’ve lost? Was it a twist of the knife? She thought of Daeron’s pretend swoon, of Baelon’s fierce, tiny grip, of the aching joy of shared laughter.
“It was a good afternoon,” she said, and turned fully to him, leaning her back against the window. “It felt like… like breathing after being underwater.” She studied his face, this man who was her cage and her inexplicable comfort. “You should join us next time. Daeron’s dragon impressions are tragically flawed. You could provide a more scholarly perspective.”
The invitation hung between them, fragile and new. It was about more than an afternoon’s play. It was a thread, offered.
Gwayne’s hazel eyes held hers, and the careful distance in them seemed to waver, like heat off stone. He nodded once, a short, definite motion. “I’d like that,” he said, and the simple words felt like a promise, another candle lit in that vacant space, pushing the shadows back just a little further.