Chapter 6: Give it Life
The first pain came not as a sharp blow, but as a deep, rolling clench that tightened around Rhaenys’s spine and did not let go. She was in the solar, attempting to sew, when the world narrowed to the vise of her own body. She dropped the needlework, her breath hitching. The second pain followed soon after, a wave that made her grip the edge of the table, her knuckles white.
By the time Jaime found her, she was pacing slowly, one hand pressed low against the monumental curve of her belly. He stopped in the doorway, his face going still. All the color drained from it, leaving his eyes a startling, vivid green.
“Now?” he asked. The single word was stripped bare.
She nodded, unable to speak as another contraction built, crested, and released her. “It’s… steady,” she managed after a moment.
He moved then, not with knightly grace, but with a frantic, efficient purpose. He bellowed for the maester and the midwife, his voice echoing down the stone corridors like a battle cry. Servants scattered. When he returned to her, he was trying to mask his panic with action. “To the bed. Or do you want to walk?”
“Walk,” she said. The thought of lying down, of being trapped beneath the weight of what was coming, was intolerable.
He offered his arm, a formality that felt absurd and necessary. She took it, leaning into his solidness as they made a slow circuit of their chambers. The world outside the windows darkened into evening. Time fractured into the space between pains. They were close now, stealing her breath, making her legs tremble.
The midwife, Anya, arrived with a calm, weathered face and competent hands. She was a woman of the Rock, her loyalty to Jaime absolute. She checked Rhaenys with a gentle touch and nodded. “The babe comes true, my lord. It will be some hours yet.”
“Hours?” Jaime echoed, sounding betrayed by the concept.
Anya almost smiled. “The first one takes its time. She’s strong. Let her walk.”
So they walked. And when the pains grew too fierce, Jaime would stop and let her crush his hand, her blunt nails digging into his palm. He didn’t flinch. He just stood as her anchor, his other hand on the small of her back, rubbing slow circles. He murmured nonsense to her, fragments of sentences. “You’re doing so well. Just breathe. I’m here. I have you.”
Once, when the maester, a young man named Arvin, suggested a tonic for her nerves—a gift from the capital, he mentioned—Jaime’s head snapped up. His eyes, moments ago soft with worry, turned to chips of ice. He took the proffered vial, uncorked it, and sniffed. His lip curled. Without a word, he walked to the balcony and flung it out into the sea wind.
“We will not be needing that,” he said, his voice allowing no argument. The maester bowed deeply, chastened.
As night deepened, the walk became a stagger. The pains were relentless, coming in great, crashing waves that left her panting and drenched in sweat. Anya guided her to the bed at last, propping her with a mountain of pillows. “Now we work, my lady,” she said, her voice kind but firm.
The next hours were a red haze. Rhaenys lost all sense of anything but the animal imperative of her body. She screamed, a raw, guttural sound that didn’t seem her own. She cursed Jaime, the Seven, the Targaryen ancestors, and the Lannister lions. He stayed at the head of the bed, one hand tangled in her sweat-soaked curls, the other holding her hand, letting her break the bones in his fingers.
“I can’t,” she sobbed once, collapsing back against him, utterly spent. “Jaime, I can’t.”
“You are.” His voice was rough, his own face sheened with sweat as if he were the one laboring. He pressed his forehead to her temple. “You are. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. You are a dragon, Rhaenys. Now push. Push our child into the world.”
His words, his belief, were a rope thrown into the abyss. She clung to them. She found a reserve of strength, a fire banked deep in her blood. With a cry that tore from the very core of her, she bore down.
There was a burning, a splitting, a sense of rending. And then, a sudden, shocking release.
A thin, indignant wail pierced the air.
Rhaenys fell back, gasping, the world swimming back into focus. She heard Anya’s joyful chuckle, the sound of cloth, a soft, wet, snuffling cry.
“My lady,” Anya said, her voice thick with emotion. “You have a daughter.”
Jaime made a sound, a choked-off sob. He was staring, transfixed, as the midwife laid the squirming, vernix-smeared little body on Rhaenys’s chest.
The world stopped. The pain, the fear, the years of captivity and doubt, all of it melted away before the reality of this tiny, furious creature. She was perfect. Her skin was flushed pink, her limbs plump and waving. And her hair… a damp, curling fuzz that caught the candlelight and shone like spun gold.
“Jaime,” Rhaenys whispered, her voice cracked and full of wonder. “Look at her hair.”
He reached out a trembling finger and touched the golden down. Then his finger traced the curve of the baby’s cheek, so gently it was barely a breath. The infant turned her head, her little mouth making a rooting motion. And she opened her eyes.
They were a deep, stormy violet, like a twilight sky over Blackwater Bay.
A tear tracked through the sweat and grime on Jaime’s cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. He just stared at those eyes, then at the golden hair, then at Rhaenys. The look on his face was one of utter, devastated triumph. All of Cersei’s poison, all the realm’s rumors, shriveled to ash in that single, truthful moment. This child was theirs. Unmistakably.
“She has your eyes,” he said, his voice thick. “Your beautiful eyes.”
Anya finished her work, cleaned Rhaenys, and helped her into a fresh nightgown. She swaddled the baby in soft linen and placed her again in Rhaenys’s arms before quietly withdrawing, leaving the three of them alone in the warm, intimate cave of their bed.
The baby had stopped crying. She was blinking up at them, her purple eyes dark and curiously alert. Jaime stretched out beside them, propped on an elbow, his body curving around them both in a protective arc. He couldn’t stop touching—a fingertip on the baby’s impossibly small hand, which immediately curled around it; a broad palm smoothing Rhaenys’s damp hair from her forehead.
“She’s here,” Rhaenys sighed, the words a prayer. She was exhausted to the marrow of her bones, but a new, clean energy hummed beneath the fatigue. A fierce, expansive love that left no room for anything else.
Jaime leaned in and kissed her, a slow, tender kiss that tasted of salt and relief. Then he bent and pressed his lips to his daughter’s golden head. “My brave girls,” he murmured against her skin.
“What shall we call her?” Rhaenys asked, watching his face. This was a negotiation, a first shared decision for their new world.
He was silent for a long moment, studying the baby’s face. “She has the look of a Lannister,” he said softly. “But she has your spirit. I felt it. She fought her way into the world like a conqueror.” He met Rhaenys’s gaze. “Visenya. For the warrior queen. A dragon’s name. But she will be a Lannister of Casterly Rock.”
Rhaenys’s throat tightened. It was a reconciliation, a name that honored both their bloodlines without apology. A name of strength. “Visenya,” she repeated, testing the sound. The baby stirred at the vibration in her chest. “Yes. Hello, Visenya.”
Jaime laid his head on the pillow beside them, his eyes never leaving his daughter’s face. The candles burned low, casting a soft, golden glow over the bed. The only sounds were the quiet crackle of the fire, the distant sigh of the sea, and the tiny, snuffling breaths of their sleeping child.
For now, the lions slept. And the dragon, curled safe among them, dreamed.
Not the timid rap of a servant. This was the sound of authority, impatient and expecting entry.
Jaime’s head snapped up. The midwives froze. Rhaenys’s arms tightened instinctively around Joanna.