Work Text:
Theirs is not a lavish wedding.
At least not to royal standards. The party accompanying them to the Sept is small, consisting of the Small Council, half a dozen servants and a score of guards. A few curious onlookers gathered around the carriage to peek inside, but most of the city folk ran to get out of their way as soon as they spied the gold and steel.
Baela does not mind. In fact, she enjoys having this last “fuck you” to give to the regents. They would not, at least, have the time and resources to parade her around like prized cattle.
Besides, her own mother and father were married in secret, as runaways, somewhere in Essos. Her grandparents’ and Daemon and Rhaenyra’s weddings had also been private affairs. So was her own.
Baela stands by the altar wearing a heavy cloak of red and black. Her maiden cloak, she thinks, although it is funny to her. She is not a maiden, not in the vulgar sense, and not before her true Gods. But the Seven do not seem to mind it, or so the Council seems to believe.
She briefly wishes that the little king had been allowed to attend, but Aegon’s life cannot be risked outside the Keep. Of course, the council had argued the same for Rhaena, but Baela knows her sister is being kept from her as a punishment.
Lord Corlys, grandsire, is the only family she has in the room. She is glad this comfort was not denied, but his presence reminds Baela of all the others: grandmother, mother, father… Jace.
Lord Cregan stands by her side, eyes trained onto the Septon and body stiff, as if he was still on the battlefield. Perhaps that is now the only pose he knows how to take.
At the priest’s behest, the lord unclasps Baela’s cloak and it pools on the floor before a servant snatches it away. Then he removes his own, a gray mantle lined with fur and embroidered with a large wolf, and places it on Baela’s shoulders.
From this up close, Baela can see his knuckles are shaking.
When the Septon ties their hands together, she remembers how Cregan’s skin is so blessedly warm, a reprieve from the cold she feels even beneath the cloak.
In the sight of the Seven, I hereby seal these two souls, binding them as one for eternity.
The Faith is arrogant like that, believing they could turn into soulmates those who were never destined for it.
Back at the Keep, they are allowed to shed their guards and move into the godswood with an even smaller retinue.
Cregan had wanted them to marry before his Gods back in his home castle, but the Council refused. That would require them to take a long journey, outside of their careful watch, and without having consummated the union. Tyland Lannister went so far as to warn the lord that if he smuggled Baela out of the city unwed, she would be at once stripped of her title as Heir.
So he relented, and now they kneel before the faceless heart tree. It is an oak, ancient and imponent, but it lacks the white branches and red leaves the Old Gods reside in. Baela tries to picture the carvings Cregan has told her about, a bleeding mouth and eyes frozen in anguish. She thinks she would quite enjoy the sight.
❦
Cregan watches from the bed as the chambermaid passes the lamp to his wife’s hands. His wife. She places it on the bedside table and joins him, settling on her knees and looking down at her husband.
Baela Targaryen is a remarkable sight. Her dark violet eyes reflect the firelight like the flame is within them. Curls of silver cascade down her shoulder. The burn scars peeking through her neckline and up to her chin do not remove from her beauty, but only call Cregan’s imagination to the expanse of skin hiding beneath the thin chemise.
From this up close, he can admire their similarities. Baela’s face is also dusted with freckles, although hers are harder to notice in her rich skin tone. She has the same sharp jaw and cheekbones, an effortless regal look.
Baela must have been observing his face as well, for she reaches out and drags her fingertips through the line of his beard.
When they first met, Cregan was naive enough to hope that whatever strange trick the Gods had played to bond Jacaerys to both of them, would also work between the two in the absence of the dragon prince. Baela was certainly as feisty as her cousin, as she assured Cregan with a sword to his throat.
Still, her touch is lukewarm, like a flame licking at his skin from a safe distance. It is pleasant enough, until it reminds him of a harsher touch, of a fire that used to consume him whole and leave him gasping for air.
He wills himself to stay put as Baela’s hand trails down his throat and to his collar. She undoes the buttons slowly, and Cregan sees the moment something catches her eye.
“What is this?” Baela asks, pulling aside his shirt to gawk at the large mark across the side of his neck and chest. She traces it softly, and although the shape is not easily identifiable, realization shines on her face.
“It was an accident,” Cregan answers. “Ja- He held on for too long. I didn’t let the maesters treat it.”
Baela places her hand over the scar, almost covering it. No matter how long she presses, the gentle warmth does not become hotter, would never be unbearable or melt his skin.
She moves, straddling Cregan, trying to find the position one would have to take to leave such a burn. He grunts when Baela shifts her seat over his groin, still holding onto his chest, and she smiles.
“I also have one,” she declares, leaning back and pulling her nightgown over her head at once. Cregan doesn’t know where to look, or if he is allowed to, but Baela gestures at her left hip. This burn isn’t rough and raised like the one at her neck, but defined, in the outline of a hand. “I asked him to do it. And I gave him a matching one.”
That had to have been after Cregan saw Jacaerys for the last time. He would’ve noticed such an obvious mark marring his pretty skin. Although he has always known he had to share his prince’s affections with another, being reminded of it still stings. Even if the reminder takes the form of the most beautiful woman Cregan has ever seen, sitting naked on his lap.
It is absolutely unfair how his body reacts to the similarities and the memories, while begging for a missing part that he cannot bring back.
Baela seems to notice his absent mind, and sighs. She tugs his shirt off gently, like Cregan is a shy maiden on her first night, and feels up his arms, looking for something in each scar and blemish.
Then she reaches the palm and traces the cut, “You shared blood with him.” An affirmation, not a question, yet he nods. Many in the North do, especially when they find their destined one.
Her laugh borders the maniacal. “You had no rights.”
No rights? Cregan had all the rights. He had a willing boy, a sharp knife and the blessing of the Gods. Yet he knows women say strange things in their grief. “He needed something to remember me by. You had a lifetime with him, my princess. We had but a moon’s turn.”
“A moon’s turn that you stole from me!” Baela is hissing now, digging claws into his skin. “All his time was mine. My husband. My betrothed. Mine!”
Cregan could take many offenses, but not this. He grasps both her wrists in one hand and flips them over, hovering above her face. He can see tears welling up in her eyes.
“He was no one’s. Now he belongs to the waves.” He tells her. “And we belong to each other.”
Cregan releases his wife’s wrists, but continues whispering at her. “I came for him, but I stayed for you. Because I promised your cousin I would care for those he loved. If you want his wish to be honored, we have to do our duty, wife.”
She stares up at him, the fire burning lower and weaker with every passing moment. Finally, she nods.
Cregan stands to remove his trousers and returns when Baela reaches out to him.
It is easy enough, their joining, and Cregan cannot deny the pleasure. Baela is warm, warm, warm. She digs her heels into his lower back like he used to, and although it doesn’t burn, the scratch of her nails is sharp enough to mimic it.
He holds onto her hip to change the angle, and Baela freezes. She slaps his hand away with a hushed “no.”
Cregan holds onto her legs instead.
“Baela. Baela.” He tries to alert her, but as soon as bliss takes him over the line, there is only one name on his mind.
A name he fights not to let out, but Baela does not have the same concern as she whispers in his ear, “Jace.”
❦
As soon as they are done and her lord falls at her side, Baela leaves the bed, ignoring the soreness.
She digs through Cregan’s belongings, because of course their marital bed is in his quarters, a guest’s room, not in her own.
“What is it you need?” He asks, one heartbeat before Baela pulls his dagger from its sheath.
Cregan crawls back towards the headboard, his face softened by fear.
“I’m not about to- murder you.” Baela laughs.
“We are not yet married,” she tells him. “Not as commands my family’s tradition. We don’t have dragon glass, so this will have to do. Let me absolve you of the sin of bedding another man’s wife.”
She approaches him again, and asks for his right hand. Although hesitant, he gives it. Baela makes quick work of reopening Jace’s cut, trying to follow the exact line of the scar.
Cregan is not as precise with his cut, though she knows he wouldn’t mind.
They breathe deeply, looking for a readiness that will never come, until Baela pounces and presses their palms and wounds together.
Baela cries out in bliss. She can feel the heat, his blood, burning on her skin and sinking into her flesh to warm her from the inside.
Cregan has his eyes closed and is muttering words she can’t hear.
It is pure pain to separate their hands, the air between them is too cold, but Baela has to. She gathers some blood on her thumb and holds Cregan’s face to draw a glyph on his forehead. Zȳrys.
Her groom’s hand has to be guided to draw the same on Baela. Their chests are heaving harder than when they were in the throes of sex.
Finally, she holds the dagger to her own lip, and then to his. She barely has time to let go of the blade before Cregan’s mouth is on hers.
She devours him back, licking all the blood she can, taking what Jace left with this northern brute that should’ve belonged to her. Their mouths are on fire, and it’s such a relief. It is only then that Baela realizes how dead she has felt. Cold. Bare. Lifeless. Just as he is now.
Tears mix into the kiss, and she doesn’t know if they are hers or Cregan’s, because now it does not matter. They are one, their loss is one.
There is only so much one can give, and once the cuts dry down, Baela pulls back to look into her husband’s stormy eyes.
She wants to do it again, to have that spark of life. To jump into the flame and be burned into nothing. But she has to let go.
Cregan is her future. He will give Baela her title and her family’s security, and a gentle warmth, which is better than freezing by herself.
“I am yours and you are mine,” Baela repeats. And we are his, but he is gone.