Salvation - Aemond Targaryen / Aegon Targaryen

A Stroll in the Gardens

News of Helaena's pregnancy was received happily by everyone in the court.

They stood in the light of the Sept with their hands intertwined, raised upward to the heavens in praise. Though, Helaena seemed far off. Jeyne stood with her relatives at the top of the Mother and Father's fine marble statues, large and looming above them at a mind-boggling fifteen feet high. In the center, Aegon and Helaena stood with their three children the Princes Jaehaerys and Maelor and the Princess Jaehaera. The five Targaryens wore matching ensembles of white velvet doublets and white linen dresses to promote their heavenly auras for the onlookers. They looked ethereal, otherworldly, as Targaryens oft did.

Beside Aegon, Lord Otto Hightower smiled. He waved the those beneath him that had come to celebrate the joyous news and had a careful hand placed on his grandson's shoulders. Jeyne could still see that Prince Aegon's eyes were bloodshot, and if one looked at him too long he still looked to be swaying.

On Otto's left side, Aemond stood stoically in a green velvet doublet that paired with black breeches to elongate his already tall frame. On the other side, to Helaena's right, Queen Alicent stood in a black and green gown with a high neckline and a golden star emblazoned at her throat. Her long red hair had been pulled and pinned behind her head, her eyes were rimmed with dark coal and a large, sweet smile did not reach her eyes.

Jeyne stood to the Queen's right. Her own gown was a lighter green with gold stitching. A thousand or so small flowers flowed from her chest downward to the base of her skirts. Her hair, much like the Queens, had been pulled behind her head to expose her face. But where no hair touched the Queen's neckline, Jeyne had hers flowing down her back in an endless sea of cinnamon curls.

She tried to ignore the eyes of the former Hand's son behind her.

Lord Larys Strong, or Larys Clubfoot, who had made his home at Harrenhal, seemed a permanent fixture wherever the Queen went. He cowered under the gaze of the small folk who had come to celebrate the news, choosing to lean on his black wooden cane with a silver metal tip and a silver metal pommel shaped like a Firefly.

Jeyne tried to search the Queen's face—for she would never ask her out loud—for a reason as to why Lord Larys seemed so enamored by her, and in turn so enamored by her young cousin. There was no answer, of course. Only a blank expression of feigned joy that paired well with the polite clapping the royal family gave their young Princess.

Jeyne supposed her prayer had worked. A pregnancy meant that young Helaena would be free of her husband for the nine moons until her child was brought safely into the world. It meant that Aegon could not get drunk and visit her chambers and do what so many men did to their wives. And it meant that poor Helaena could do as she pleased within the confines of her own room, or whatever freedom the girl seldom got. The joy of Jeyne's prayers being answered was diminished only by the growing fear in her belly of who would now occupy Aegon's time.

It was not up to her to figure out who he visited or when, so long as it was not her. What worried her even more so was Aemond, who seemed hell-bent on protecting her not just from his own brother but from any man who came near her.

Poor Lord Blackwood had been driven from court during the prince's escapades at his proposal. Though Jeyne was heartbroken to see him go, he retracted his name from her list and fled back North to his home at Raventree. That left 16 suitors remaining in the castle. All southern Lords save for the young Karstark, in whom Jeyne found a friend. She had already told Rickon of her desire to live in the South and Rickon approved, he stayed merely to see if he could find anyone else that would share his bed, and Jeyne helped him.