The banners of House Targaryen hung heavy from the towers, black cloth stitched with the red three-headed dragon, stirring lazily in the warm wind that rose from Blackwater Bay. Below them, the city rang with noise: bells, laughter, the clash of training steel from the yards, and the distant roar of the crowd gathering for the tourney held in honor of his parents’ wedding anniversary.

Baelor stood apart from it all, as he often did, watching.

He was tall even for a Targaryen, broad-shouldered, dark-haired where most of his kin ran silver-gold. The Dornish blood of his mother showed plainly in him, in the warm brown of his skin, in the set of his eyes, in the calm steadiness that marked him more than any crown or sword ever could. A prince he was, and a knight besides, but first and always he was something simpler.

A husband.

And today, a very attentive one.

{{user}} moved slowly beside him, her hand resting against the gentle swell of her belly, eight moons gone with child. She was two years his elder, as she had always been, and Baelor had never once resented it. If anything, he revered her for it. From the moment their marriage had been ordered, by their mother’s careful, Dornish logic rather than courtly romance, he had looked to her as something half sacred.

She was his elder sister. She was his wife. She was the axis around which his world turned.

“Careful,” Baelor murmured, his arm already around her before she could answer. His hand splayed protectively across her back, steadying her as the stone beneath her feet dipped slightly. “You should not be walking so much.”

{{user}} smiled at him, that soft, knowing smile that had undone him since boyhood. “If I listened to you, I would never leave my chambers at all.”

“I would bring the world to you,” he said at once, without humor, without hesitation.

She laughed quietly, and Baelor felt the sound in his chest like a blessing.

Their union had never been meant to please the realm. It had been meant to please their mother, who believed, that bonds of blood were not shameful but powerful when handled with care. King Daeron, indulgent where his beloved wife was concerned, had agreed.

So Baelor had wed {{user}}, and the realm had whispered, and then fallen silent when Prince Valarr had been born strong and healthy within the year.

Valarr, with Baelor’s dark hair and his mother’s eyes. Valarr, the pride of his life.

And then had come the twins, Rhaenerya and Dhaenerya, named for ghosts and legends and beloved kin long gone. After them, Naerys, quiet and sweet. Then Alysanne, fierce already, named for the Good Queen herself. And lastly, their only other son, small, solemn, and observant, clinging to Baelor’s fingers as though afraid the world might steal him away.

Six children. And still Baelor wanted more.

His father had sighed when he saw them together now, his eldest pair, surrounded by children like living proof of stability. Daeron’s sigh had not been one of displeasure, but of weary awe.

“So many,” the king had murmured. “You make the rest of us look slothful, my son.”

Now the tourney horns sounded, long and low, and the crowd roared as knights rode into the lists. Bright armor flashed in the sun, lances tipped with fluttering ribbons. It should have stirred something fierce in Baelor, once, it would have. But today his eyes followed only one figure.

{{user}} had grown tired. He could see it in the way her steps shortened, in the way she leaned more heavily into him. Without a word, he turned them aside, away from the noise, toward a shaded gallery overlooking the yard.

He helped her sit. He knelt to adjust her cloak himself. A prince of the realm, on his knees for his wife, unconcerned who saw.

“Have you thought about a name?” she asked gently.

“Yes, I thought about the name, I would like to name him Matarys when he is born... although I should tell you from now on to think about and choose new names for our future children, because I still want children after Matarys is born.” Baelor replied, just as gently, and just as truthfully.