Chapter Text
60 AC
His father presses the butt of his palm into his shoulders, urging him onwards.
Baelon struggles against the pressure, small feet skidding on smooth stone. No matter how he flails, he moves closer. Like a plank of driftwood caught on the currents, the prince tides towards the island of his mother's swollen belly, the navy curtains of her robes a sea he takes no pleasure crossing.
He whines a pitiful sound.
"Greet your mother, Baelon."
Aemon giggles at his brother's reluctance, nose hiked high at being the more courageous of the two. "Why's he so scared?"
Fists ball in anguish. Baelon throws a hateful glance over his shoulder before returning to the moon of flesh that awaits him. "Mama is very fat," he snivels.
It's true. The woman before him in unrecognizable, a behemoth shrouded in his house's colors, sweating and panting like an upturned sow in the midday heat. There is little of the mother he remembers in those shuttered, pain-filled eyes.
Alysanne tuts, arms jerking as she pivots along the slanted chaise. She gasps from the effort and stops her husband from reprimanding their son. "He's never seen me like this, Jaehaerys."
"Sooner or later, the boy will have to learn where they came from, my love."
She softens her gaze, fingers curling in silent welcome. "Sit by me, Baelon."
Every inch of him screams not to, every instinct calling on him to escape this cloistered wing of King's Landing and the unspoken promise festering in his mother's womb. He gulps and inches forward, his father a constant presence at his back.
"He'll smack Balerion on the nose, but the sight of your monstrous belly is too much for him," Jaehaerys chuckles; laughter strangled from his throat at his wife's stern glower.
"Monstrous?"
"Beautiful, magnificent round belly?" the King corrects. He bows over his son and clasps his wrist, guiding him to his mother under a stream of gentle encouragement.
Baelon winces as his fingers find flesh. He half expects it to eat him, for the cavernous heap to open and swallow him whole. "Soft," he announces after a time. "Squishy."
"Mmhm. Your new baby brother."
"Or sister," the Queen corrects.
"Will you lay an egg like Silverwing does?"
"Gods be good, I hope not." Alysanne grins, veering her son's hand across the purple webs fanning her skin. "Here. Do you feel it?"
Kicking.
Baelon screeches at the sensation, the sudden force pummeling his palm.
"You'll have someone to look after soon."
"A baby brother," he says quietly.
"Or sister," Alysanne insists. She turns to her husband, head lolling against the quilted pillow. "I pray it is a girl."
Aemon crawls onto the foot of the chaise, shaking his cropped, silver hair. "Don't say that, mama."
"It would be a blessing. And who knows? Perhaps someday, she will become your bride as I became your father's."
The children of King Jaehaerys and Good Queen Alysanne eye one another, lips upending into gleeful smirks. In their hearts, they know it is a boy. Soon, they will welcome a brother, a loud, baying heir whom they could chase through the godswood and teach all they knew of fighting, hiding, and play.
After a long, painful labor, Queen Alysanne gave birth to her fifth child: a healthy baby girl.