Ruin Me

Chapter Thirty Eight

"It does not befit a prince to pout," Baela admonished as she approached where Jace sat within the Hall of History. His cheek was braced on his fist, an open book before him on a table littered with tomes and scrolls of wisdom and knowledge.

"I am not pouting," Jace pouted, Baela unable to see it from where she stood behind him.

"What would you call it then?" she asked as she came closed, standing directly behind him.

"I'm reading," he answered dully as he turned the page of his book.

"While your mother waits?" Daemon Targaryen's eldest daughter sighed as she moved some books off a chair so she could sit at the side of her betrothed. "You're angry."

Jace removed his head from where it rested on his fist, to stare at her in confusion. "Aren't you?"

"I don't see what good it would do," Baela said.

"They will be an insult to us. To what makes us Targaryens. That is if this plan works. If any common lout can ride a dragon then –"

"That does not make me common. Or you," Baela corrected. "Wouldst you think someone like my mother and father common? They are anything but."

She had hoped that her somewhat humourous words would elicit a smile from him, perhaps even a laugh, but she was unsuccessful.

"You know what I am," Jace whispered, referring to his true sire.

"I don't care. You are the crown prince, the son of the rightful queen, and here you are sulking because you believe that if not for the dragon, or the trappings of your station that you are nothing." She chuckled. "Do you believe that you are not the first noble heir who was not sired by his noble father? My mother has told me story after story of people whose lives reflect yours. Such is the way of the world, Jace, and in resenting it, you only diminish yourself."

"Easy enough to say," Jace drawled as he stared now at the flickering candles in front of him on the table. "I've heard the whispers the whole of my life."

"They have not claimed their seats as you have yours. And if they do, you show them how worthy you are. You get up and you take your place by your mother's side," Baela encouraged and Jace's head fell back against his chair, his eyes full of water and red pigment as he glanced at her. Baela reached out and caressed his cheek. "I know your mother's conversation hurt you, but this plan of hers may not yet work, and despite its outcome, you need to stand at her side."

Jace was tormented even as he leaned into Baela's touch and his eyes closed in a moment of blessed relief. His mother's plan to collect and use a horde of would-be Targaryen bastards to fill the empty seats of riderless dragons was imbecilic. It was desperate even if Jace had helped her hatch such a plot. He had never thought that she would go through with it. He never thought that when he stood before her and begged her not to do it, that she would not listen.

It was considered wholly disrespectful and perhaps even treasonous when he asked his mother if she thought about what colour his hair might be when she took Harwin Strong into her bed, yet he did it. He did it, because now, he stood here, a mop of brown ringlets on his head and his dragon the only reason he had left to argue his ability to succeed his mother to the Iron Throne. And now, she was to strip it away.

Rhaenyra had not wanted to, especially when they were both on the verge of tears as Jace begged her not to follow through with this plan after Seasmoke escaped from the Dragonpit and claimed a lowborn rider. Steffon Darklyn had tried and promptly perished in a hail of fire before the dragon fled and terrorised the Driftmark harbour before bending his neck to one who had run, Ser Addam Hull. He had bent the knee to Rhaenyra and was the sole reason she endeavoured to find more like him with Targaryen blood somewhere in their lineage. She had said that she could not ignore what the gods had laid out in front of her.