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emilykaldwen · 5 months ago

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You're The Lighting of the Blaze | One Shot | Jacaerys x Helaena

(moodboard by @vampire-exgirlfriend)

Title: You're the Lighting of the Blaze Ship: Jacaerys x Helaena WC: 6,484 Rating: Explicit Summary: On the eve of war, all that Jacaerys holds dear is poised to be stolen from him. But the fire flows through him just as the rest of his family, and a dragon does not surrender his treasure so easily.

(Jace x Helaena Betrothal AU)

Notes: This was my entry for last year's big bang, and in honor of tonight's finale, I'm finally posting it to tumblr. I've been seeing my Jacelaena stuff get some traction, and I'll definitely be writing more of them (and I'm totally open to suggestions to percolate). They are a featured side pairing in my main fic as well.

Tumblr Masterpost | AO3 Link

When I first saw you / The end was soon To Bethlehem, it slouched / And then, must've caught a good look at you Give your heart and soul to charity 'Cause the rest of you / The best of you Honey, belongs to me

Helaena’s hips rolled up against Jacaerys’ mouth and the sigh that escaped her was soft, a murmur crossing her lips like a prayer in the sept. He couldn’t quite understand her words, but looking up from his comfortable spot between her thighs, he could see the furrow of her brow. Whatever caused her eyes to dance beneath her lids was distressing, at odds with the way her body bowed against his touch.

“Hush,” he consoled against the soft skin of her pale thigh thrown over his shoulder. Helaena moaned and he swiped his thumb lazily over the slick gathering against her. A gentle swipe over that bundle of nerves that made her tremble even in the sleepy dream that held her. “You’re safe now.”

Helaena’s head tossed against the pillow and she wriggled her ass into the bed. A smile caught along Jace’s mouth, the proud smirk that spoke to his pride and satisfaction. He nuzzled his nose into her, bumping up against her clit, and pressed his mouth to her skin. “Lykiri,” he murmured, his breath ghosting over her as Helaena’s hips jerked at the attention.

She fell apart soon after that, with his fingers pressed inside of her against that spot he found that made her keen and cry in her wakefulness. In sleep it shudders her out of the dream, finally, and her mouth parted in a wordless cry that dares to have them found out. He crawled up her body and pressed his face between her breasts and the thin fabric of her nightgown kept his mouth from tasting the salt of her skin.

Helaena’s fingers rose to dive into his tangled curls and held him close. “The crow flies,” she murmured. “The crow dies.” A yawn, the haze of sleep clouding her lavender eyes. Jace turned to rest his chin on her sternum and watched her for a moment.

“Worried?” he whispered, and Helaena squirmed beneath him, tugging on his dark brown curls until he crawled up the rest of the way. His princess tasted herself off his mouth, the kiss otherwise chaste and full of sleepy softness.

“We’ll be caught one day,” she replied in the same hushed tone, and his mouth swallowed her words, pressing his hips against the apex of her thighs and encouraging her to wrap her legs around him. Jace relaxed at the feel of her against the front of his breeks, where he was half hard.

“Nothing will happen.” The promise in his voice was true. So what if they were caught. They were betrothed and would be married soon. No matter how much Queen Alicent dragged her feet, he knew Helaena had her gown fitting the moon before. His mother had even casually mentioned the idea of him and Helaena moving to Dragonstone after the wedding.

“You should be able to enjoy the flush of new marriage with privacy and not under the scrutiny of the entire court,” she’d teased. It had been a cool day, the sun warm and the sky endless. She’d pulled the pair of them into her office, a cloistered room overlooking the main courtyard outside of the Holdfast and the main gate of the keep - the Dragon Pit a great focal point in the distance. Helaena had been curled up in the window seat with a stack of letters his mother had given the pair of them to work through. The workings of the realm were all in little baskets between this office and Lord Tyland in the Hand’s Tower.

The thunderous look on his mother’s face at the mere suggestion of Otto Hightower entering the Red Keep once more had kept that nomination from going through.

Dragonstone was his mother’s seat, but she stayed within the capital, refusing to give an inch, sitting on the council where she belonged. It would be his seat one day, and he found that he thought constantly about the great stone table carved with all the land of Westeros. He thought of running his fingers through the rivers and over the mountains, thought of how his grandsire took him before the Iron Throne and told him “This will be yours one day, lad.”

He thought of the hollow eyes of his uncles and his bride, of the wan, feral look on Queen Alicent’s face.

The words “such Strong boys” lingered in his mind, and Jace thought of scarred Ser Harwin, Lord of Harrenhal. The fire had stolen the life of his father, the Lord Lyonel, but Harwin had endured. No longer the champion of the Realm’s Delight, Lord Strong lived a quiet life in a crumbling castle on the edge of the great God’s Eye with his younger sister, whose favor Aegon wore tied around his wrist. He wrote Jace ravens from time to time asking how his training was going, and telling him how proud he is. He cannot come back to King’s Landing, not when Jace has grown tall and broad, with dark curls and a way with a sword.

That is saying nothing for the way that Luke and Joffrey’s hair had grown in dark as mahogany, righteous curls on Jace and Luke’s head, and Joffrey’s pin straight with their mother’s features staring out from his mischievous, sprite-like features.

Jace startled at the sensation of Helaena’s warm fingers ghosting across his eyes. It drew a smile just as it drew him from his thoughts and she hummed.

“Would you give it to me if you could?” she asked with a soft moan, and he could feel her soaking into the front of his breeks. He pressed further into her as if there was no barrier between them. “Turn the line to that of women as you have no sisters?” Jace thinks of his cousins and thinks of the almost future where they had wondered about betrothing him to Baela instead to keep Corlys Velaryon appeased, and he wonders had Baela and Rhaena had been his sisters, if he would be wed to one of them without hesitation. If he had sisters instead of the brothers he loved, would he have lost Helaena, like the fragments of a dream upon waking.

He thinks about the gentleness of Daemon with his daughters, thinks of how warmly he smiles at his mother when no one is looking, and knows that they are waiting for the crown to perch upon her head. They’ll be his sisters one day, but too late to change destiny.

“I would,” he murmured, and sucked a mark against her jaw where she cannot hide it, where it will be there like a beacon for all to see; that Helaena Targaryen is his, and he will be king and none would take it away. “I will.”

An uncertain edge permeated the Landing when Queen Alicent left by wheelhouse toward Oldtown, Vhagar in the sky above her as Aemond provided the first escort. Aegon disappeared for two weeks after that to Harrenhal before returning, lighter than his usual melancholy allowed, and he rolled his eyes at them as he headed to the dragonpit.

Helaena was to go with him.

“It is a celebration for the Hightowers and it’s been so long since we’ve seen Daeron,” Helaena said. Tension curled in Jace’s gut at the idea of being parted from her, and he remembered her words about the death of crows before she wrapped her arms around him and he sank into the taste of her and the candied lemon she’d eaten that morning.

“I didn’t get to taste you this morning.” She grinned, all bright teeth and a sharp, feral edge in her lavender eyes. Jace snorted and knocked his cheek against her. He would take her in the alcove beneath the stairs if there was enough time. His mother had forbidden him from providing escort, anxiety over the King’s declining health drawing those worried furrows to her brow.

“It’s not safe for you in Oldtown, Jace. Stay here, where it’s safe.”

Yet he must let her go. But she is a Hightower just as she is a Targaryen, and there she should be safe.

“What is it? Two days on Dreamfyre? When you feel reckless, just come back. Or better, Vermax and I shall meet you in the mountains and we��ll just stay there.” He nipped at her mouth, cupped her soft cheeks in his rough hands and tilted her head back for another kiss. “Dreamfyre would love to roost in the mountains, wouldn’t she?”

Helaena’s laughter echoed off the red stone of the courtyard before he swallowed the sound down to keep in his chest where his heart beats in time with hers.

The King died a fortnight later.

Jace watched as his mother sat upon the Iron Throne. It was an ugly chair, a twisted metal monstrosity forged from his ancestor’s conquest. His mother wore her hair as Visenya was said to have worn hers: an intricately woven braid along the top of her head woven with black and crimson ribbon and silver Valyrian runic charms. Her gown was red silk, long draped sleeves that fell about her like water and cut to reveal the black underdress, the tight sleeves a shock of obsidian against the blood red. The tail of her braid hung over her shoulder and down to her waist and Jace remembered sitting in her lap as a boy to play with her hair, her own fingers tender in his curls. He could not imagine doing such a thing if his mother had portrayed the vision that she did now. There was a hardened look in her violet eyes, and outside of the tender rim of red that showed her grief, she was, in every sense of the word, Rhaenyra Targaryen, First of her Name.

The crown looked heavy, Jace thought. His mother deserved a sunburst, she deserved to drip in jewels. She did not need such a clumsy, heavy thing to weigh her down when she flew through the sky with such joy.

Joy that was absent from her face as news of Oldtown closing their gates and sending ravens was relayed. Lord Beesbury’s voice echoed in the cold quiet of the chamber, cold fear and heated anger curling along Jace’s spine. This was to be expected - that Aegon would be pitted against his mother no matter how much he did not want this.

“We’ll need to draw them out,” Daemon’s voice echoed, Dark Sister held naked in front of him, the wedding ring that matched his mother’s glinting in the light streaking through the window. “Treason cannot be tolerated.”

“I would welcome my dear brothers and sweet sister back into my arms,” his mother said, so beautiful and queenly. “We must not frighten them, nor give them any further reason to listen to the poison that’s being fed them.” Her gaze, like Valyrian steel, cut to Jace. “You are to stay here.”

All eyes swiveled to Jace. Daemon smirked at him. Luke raised his eyebrows.

“Of course, your Grace,” Jace replied, and his mother held his gaze before Daemon spoke again.

He mounted Vermax in the dark of the moonless night.

Oldtown had closed their gates, but no matter how they forgot, a dragon does not tolerate that which is theirs being taken.

The Grande Festival in Oldtown was an ancient affair, dating back to before the conquest, when the Hightowers ruled as kings in their own right. It was the sort of event Jace had heard about in passing. The grand carnival in Oldtown had been a tradition even before the landing of the conquerors. The city was decked out in banners, not just the flapping viridescent banners of House Hightower, of which there were plenty. There were colorful streamers and fabrics twisting across every lane and thoroughfare, the sky littered with falling colored papers and flowers from people standing with great baskets out their windows above. Music and the scents of foods filled the air; the crisp sweet tartness of apples and cinnamon pies, the currants and spice of mincemeat tarts mingled with roasting boars and stag carved there on the streetside. Beef sloughing off the spit with spices from Dorne were just as mouth watering as the array of pastries beside them, and if Jace had been there for any other purpose, he would’ve gladly indulged.

Tonight, his indulgence was in quarries that were far more dangerous, and far more rewarding.

Jace adjusted his mask, ensuring that it was secure around his head. The other masks he saw ranged from the simple fabric domino cuts that simply covered the eyes to full face paper with hanging beads. As he approached the heart of the festivities they became more elaborate: headdresses of iridescent feathers around ornate full faces with silver inlays and gold leaves.

The raven mask he wore was one that should pass notice. His curls were braided back with a gold ribbon, and the material was smooth on his face, made with fine, soft feathers and an abbreviated beak that did not get in the way like the plague masks and other bird beaked visages did. It covered his full face with only his bright lavender eyes circled with grease paint looking out. Jace had his own ruff of raven feathers surrounding him, but was far less ostentatious than many of the masks around him. The great fan of feathers that others sported wouldn’t serve him when he was trying to get close to his princess.

His dragon mate.

Helaena stood in the great square in front of the High Tower, beneath the fluttering banners of her mother’s house and the flapping Targaryen banners. Lanterns were strung across the place like great fireflies and colored light streamed out from the wrought iron and glass window of the tower behind her.

Like a dream, she was cloaked in silks of lapis and gold, her silver hair turned molten in the light. Her mask was more paint than physical creation; blue and silver and gold paints decorated her smooth skin in the visage of butterfly wings and delicately spun fabric to emulate more wings were affixed to a tiara. She sparkled as a star would, leading him as if he were a traveler lost in the wilderness.

While he knew where he was going, Helaena was the one who looked lost. Her beautiful costume could not hide the frozen, remote look on her face, nor the way her large, lavender eyes danced around the crowds, flinching as her mother touched her shoulder. Jace’s eyes narrowed behind his mask, seeing Alicent as Helaena’s jailor rather than someone tender.

For so long, Jace had thought of Alicent Hightower as simply The Queen. Remote and icy, her beautiful face with perpetually narrowed eyes watching him, taking in his dark curls, the set of his jaw, the very non-Targaryen features he displayed that he knew could not be explained away by his grandmother Rhaenys’ Baratheon heritage, that everyone else seemed to ignore. She stood on the dias beside her daughter, swathed in mourning black of a widow, her gown lined in gold and green trim, her black lace veil worn over her features in lieu of a celebration mask.

He wondered if she were truly mournful and Jace knew in his chest he would not begrudge her joy at being freed from his grandfather. The man had doted on him, doted on his siblings, but the years gave weight to age and opened his eyes, and he could see the wrongness of it all. He saw the cruel negligence to his wife, he saw the way he dangled carrots of affection to his own mother, his chosen heir, and then turned around and denounced the discord that his actions sowed. Jace had vowed to never treat Helaena the way Viserys treated his wife. He would never treat his children the way that he saw how his mother was treated.

It was insidious, and something that took Jace far too long to realize and understand - that his grandfather did not see his mother, not unlike the way he passed over his other children; an old man falling deeper into his dreams, of his longing for a woman who died brutally in the birthing bed. It was the ghost of his long passed grandmother that kept Rhaenyra Targaryen at the edges of her father’s graces. To witness his mother claw as fiercely as Alicent Hightower clawed for just a scrap of attention from the dying king was enough to make Jace consider regicide, not to mention kinslaying. The senselessness of it all made his stomach curl and when he thought of putting Helaena through the same, his vision would go red and his stomach would heave.

He would do better, as he always did, as he always had to do. Even as he felt compassion for the woman, there would be no forgiveness for her hand in the strife.

Nor would there be forgiveness for how she hoarded his bride away from him, as if the death of one king meant she could do what she pleased.

Helaena was his bride, and he was her groom. They would be together, they would fly their dragons together, and share their bed every night. Helaena would be his queen one day, ruling by his side in all the ways that she deserved, and they would heal what had been broken and fractured, torn apart by his grandfather’s negligence, picked over by his mother and the former queen in their long simmering resentments

He would never forgive Alicent Hightower for trying to take Helaena away, to marry her to Aegon and attempt to put the crown on his head.

Oh, this wasn’t a coronation, not yet. First, there needed to be ravens sent and alliances made and barely a week had passed since the king’s death. It wasn’t even enough time to get a raven north to Winterfell, let alone alliances. Not with the suddenness of the King's demise. But everyone knew what was coming.

While Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen sat the iron throne, swathed in her grief, she had not yet been publicly crowned. Not with the mourning of the old king and the rituals being followed. Even as the small council addressed her as their liege lord, the position was tenuous and some kind of truce needed to be made.

A heavy hand clapping his shoulder made him start and Jace turned to look into the face of Aegon Targaryen.

His uncle looked utterly miserable. Aegon’s eyes were bloodshot, his round face flushed beneath the golden mask of dragon scales. Of course, there was no doubt that he would wear the golden visage of his beloved dragon.

“Found you,” he murmured, the lightest slur to his wine soaked breath. “Truly fascinating, nephew, that you escaped your mother’s skirts and came here of all places.” Lilac eyes flicked towards the dias. “Definitely not to rescue me.” Wine sloshed over the edge of the goblet he held as he took a heavy swallow of it. His thick fingers tightened on Jace’s shoulder.

“Not sure I know what you’re talking about, my lord,” he said, pitching his voice to try and disguise it, and a peel of laughter, edged with mania, fell from Aegon’s mouth, sputtering wine as if Jace had said the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“You are pathetic,” he said. Which was utterly rich coming from his uncle, though he was barely any older. Aegon was a feral thing, a tom cat who prowled and refused to be kept down, yet a wet thing, desperate for affection. “The way you look at my dear sister can’t be hidden by that.” Aegon lifted his goblet to tap the mask’s raven beak. “Not to mention your terrible posture.” A clap on the back this time. Jace gritted his teeth.

“I am the prince of the realm now, uncle,” Jace hissed in reply. He refused to extract himself from Aegon’s hold as if he were retreating. “The future king of Westeros. I’m sure you’re most relieved about that.”

Aegon’s grin was sharp; manic and gleeful and sad all at once. “Aye,” he murmured, leaning in. “That you are. I should challenge you to a duel-” he paused, burping in his face, and Jace suppressed a sigh. “Make my mother happy.”

He’d never admit it to Aegon, but he understood the sentiment, even when their own mothers were as different as green and black.

“Tell me, is that what you desire? Or will beating me in a duel - if you even could - hold favor for long enough?” It was a low blow, and Aegon’s eyes narrowed even as the smirk turned cruel and sad across his face. “Or would you simply call your second? I’m sure Aemond would take more joy in it.”

Jace suppressed his shudder even as he said it. Aemond would find more joy in it, and Jace knew he likely wouldn’t get out of that with just an eye lost. His gaze instinctively roamed their surroundings as Aegon drank, looking out for the sight of Aemond Targaryen. There was no flash of his long, silver hair, or the familiar straight line of his shoulders. He wondered if the festivities might be too much for him. Helaena struggled with crowds herself, and Aemond struggled with them for his own reasons after losing his eye.

The event of it all still curdled in his belly, but there was nothing to be helped now.

“Vicious little brat, aren’t you?” Aegon snorted, mouth a bitter twist.

Jace breathed in through his nose, feeling the tingling in his hands, just aching to wrap them around his uncle’s throat to shut up his stupid mouth. His lavender eyes found the vision of Helaena once more and he exhaled slowly.

“You don’t want this,” he told Aegon with conviction, teeth gritted and turning to get him to face him head on. “You don’t, and she doesn’t. Don’t do this for me. Do it for you, or her, since I know you care for her too.” Fuck, it would be so easy to push him into the alley and end him. But while Aegon was an even match, it would simply make things worse.

Besides, Jace had no desire to be a kinslayer, cursed and haunted.

Aegon’s head cocked, mouth pursed in a mimic of his mother, and he looked towards the dais, eyes tracking up to the fluttering banners. “What brother steals his sister’s birthright?” Aegon muttered, eyes tracking back to Jace’s. Red rimmed and lined with tension, Jace knew Aegon didn’t desire this; he desired other things, like forbidden nymphs frolicking in rivers.

“What brother indeed.” His mother knew this was not Aegon’s doing, but it didn’t mean that boys didn’t present a problem - alternatives to her rule.

But that was an issue for another day. Right now, he needed to get to that which he was being denied. He’d take it with fire and blood, if he had to. Jace would just prefer not to.

Aegon shook his head and shoved him back slightly. “You fucking owe me, you little prick.” Something eased in Jace’s chest, the knot that had been building as he waited. Whatever Aegon was meant to do, Jace would have his opportunity.

He watched, wide eyed, as Aegon sloshed into the fountain with a whoop, drawing the attention of the party goers, and began precariously climbing the statue in the middle - an elaborate mime of the Seven, and Aegon was… gripping the breasts of The Mother as he hauled himself up towards the seven pointed star above them.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jace muttered, caught between horror and amusement and let the crowd surge around him as Aegon called for attention. Which meant no one was looking at the dais.

“Friends and countrymen!” Aegon hollered out, his voice echoing off the sunbaked brick and stone of the courtyard. People cheered in response. “As the wine flows and tits come out-” Ribald laughter rippled through the crowd and Jace tuned out the flaxen haired buffoon and started making his way towards the edge of the festivities, searching for a way to get sight unseen towards the back of the platform where Helaena still stood, also focused on the spectacle her brother was making.

Alicent Hightower had turned to hiss at Ser Criston and a few of the Hightower guards that gathered around her. What danger could there be in this stronghold, for Jace noticed a distinct lack of protection now along the back edge; the back edge where Helaena lingered, melting further into the banners and curtains lining the platform. He recognized that look and it made his heart ache. His belly roiled with anger. She looked trapped, she looked like she wanted to run, but in an unfamiliar place, was unsure where to go. Jace knew she could handle herself, but when it came to crowds, and lights, when it came to all of this? Every instinct in him screamed to go up there, to hold her slim, warm hand in his and twine their fingers; a firm hold, and one that couldn’t be torn away.

Raucous laughter and applause echoed from where Aegon was on the fountain and Jace watched Ser Criston and the other guards make their way into the crowd. Queen Alicent stood at the front of the dais, hands clasped against her waist.

When he turned to look for Helaena again, she was gone.

He blinked.

“Helaena?” he whispered harshly, reaching up to remove his mask but pausing before he could. “Fucking thing,” he muttered, trying to look around and see if he could spot the glimmering blue and gold and silver of his betrothed. “Ābrazyyrys, skoriot ilā?” The Valyrian flowed more easily from his mouth than it had before. Helaena made studying… fun.

He wished they were back in bed, her mouth on him while she made him practice reciting the prophecies of Daenys the Dreamer.

“Vasīr ābrazyyrys ikson daor,” came a smooth voice, the words like a song, a dream. The scent of lemon wafted around him and he felt a warm hand stroking up his spine. “Don’t turn around.” Her voice was soft and commanding all the same and it made a shiver roll through his body, heat and arousal, excitement and nerves. “Did you come all this way just to find me, ñuha jorrāelagon?” Her mouth brushed against his shoulder. Her fingers curled nervously - he knew it was nervously by how tightly she clung - into his tunic. “I dreamed you.”

“I don’t know the word for bride,” he apologized, voice in a rush, breathless. His heart was thudding in his ears. “I’ve dreamed of you too. But we have to go.” A yearning edge to his voice and he tilted his head back to the sky as if praying for the opportunity to do it. Helaena’s arms moved to wind around his waist from behind, and she pressed her face between his shoulder blades. His hands came to rest over hers in a soothing motion, but as much as he wanted to wind in her embrace - “We have to get out of here.”

“I know, I dreamed this, I just told you.” He felt her rubbing her face against his back and Jace wondered if the paint on her face would streak across his shirt.

“Come on, this way. If they find me here, I don’t think Aegon will be able to make another distraction to keep your mother from demanding my head on sight.” Jace reluctantly loosened her arms and finally turned in her embrace. Helaena tilted her head back and her lavender eyes were luminous in the night, the lantern light reflecting like fireflies in her gaze. She reached up to run her fingers along his mask, smiling softly at the touch of feathers, the curve of the beak and he wished he could rest his head against hers, to kiss her as he longed to.

“Do you have wings that sprout from your back?” she asked. He snorted and shook his head at her, letting the feathers tickle her face and they needed to go but she giggled at the way they tickled her and it was worth it. “How could anyone think you are a raven when you are so clearly a dragon?” She wondered softly, her eyes, just as light and lavender as his.

“They whisper about it and I hate it. How easily they dismiss me and force me to declare who I am,” he’d railed to her, tears at the corners of his eyes, pain in his chest. By sight, who would see him and think him a Targaryen? How easily he was looked over, how easily ignored– unlike his uncles, unlike Helaena, unlike his own mother.

Helaena’s hands had been warm on his face and she gazed at him, unblinking. Her eyes were the same shade as his own, and far more beautiful, he thought, with her hair like moonlight.

“How could anyone look at you and think you are anything but?” she asked. “When I see myself in you? Dragons both.”

“No, Vermax is off waiting.” Her fingers were tugging at the tie that held the mask to his head and he reached up to grab her fingers. “Once we leave,” he said but he couldn’t hide the longing in his voice.

She sighed and kissed his beak. “This way. I scouted it out a fortnight ago.”

“Of course you did,” he laughed, and with another glance at the commotion, he let his bride pull him through the crowd, none paying all that much attention to them. He supposed that if her mother turned and found her gone, she would think Helaena had fled into the High Tower. There was no reason to think that she was running away, cutting down a narrow alley and over the canal bridge.

“Dreamfyre is waiting,” she told him as they ducked into a little space between buildings, barely big enough for the both of them. It hid them with a perfect view of the little gate, a lone guard looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but there. Jace didn’t see any sign of the Hightower emblem upon his armor. No, he wore the emblem of the city watch, and he was young, which meant he’d picked the short straw on the evening’s rotation.

“What do you mean, Dreamfyre is waiting? Ah, right, you dreamed this,” he chuckled softly, and preened when she reached up to stroke his beak again. She tutted at him and looked about, pressing her hand against his chest.

“Umbagon, Jacaerys,” she ordered in that voice she used to command Dreamfyre. It made him shudder and his toes curl in his boots, his cock twitching in anticipation from what that voice usually meant. ‘How well she had him trained,’ he thought.

His violet eyes tracked her as she strode across the alley, the silver curls flowing down her back catching the light like starshine. Jace’s eyes narrowed when the guard perked up, the smile on his face meaning one thing, but then it faltered, his eyes widening at whatever she was saying to him. Jace had been prepared for this to be so much harder. Seven Hells, he’d been prepared to fight, prepared to draw blade and blood to get her out, to get them away.

Here he was, watching her back while Helaena had sent the guard scurrying away, holding onto his helmet as he was sent rushing further away from the party. She turned, a glowing thing in the torchlight, and beckoned him over. Laughter escaped him as he pulled the mask off, his curls catching a bit along the edges. He was finally able to see her with clear vision and he couldn’t help but indulge, grasping her by the back of the neck to pull her in for a proper kiss. Helaena laughed into his mouth, fingers cupping his cheeks as he tasted her, crowding her against the wall. They had to leave, he couldn’t get caught. It would be death if they were caught, but in the few moments they had, he would take them.

“Ao rystas,” he murmured, grinning.

Helaena beamed. “Ao rystas,” she returned the greeting and the sound of Dreamfyre’s call echoed across the hills outside the city, drawing both their gazes. “Hope Vermax can keep up,” she chuckled and together, they ran into the night.

His princess had surprised him by pulling a rucksack from beneath some bushes when they had hit the field, reminding him that she had dreamt of fleeing, and had prepared to. “I thought it would just be me,” she had explained as they flew over the sleeping, dark expanse of the Reach. “I dreamt that a raven came with news that would let me fly away.” She had kept a feather that had fallen from his mask in her hands, running her fingers over the inky blue-back edges of it. “I like it when those dreams come true.”

Vermax could keep up without a rider, although Jace couldn’t tell if it was because Dreamfyre was slowing down enough so they wouldn’t lose him, or if his weight really slowed his sweet boy down that much. It was one of her eggs that Vermax had come from, their bond strong as his and Helaena’s had grown.

In the beginning, Jace kept looking over his shoulder for the great bulk of Vhagar on their tails - for if anyone would be sent after them, it would be Aemond. Aemond who loathed the attention that Helaena bestowed on Jace. Aemond who loathed their betrothal. Aemond who did his mother’s bidding without question.

Jace wondered at that, for he knew it well. He wished nothing more than to make his mother proud. He wished for nothing more than to be a worthy successor to the throne, to be the King that the realm deserved. He had seen it in Aemond’s eyes when it came to Aegon, and he’d seen it when Aemond pinned him with a glare, swinging his sword against Ser Criston in the training yard.

Sometimes he wished he could tell Aemond that he could have it. He could have the lessons and the pressure, he could have the burden of legacy, the burden of his tarnished and whispered parentage on his own shoulders. Jace would give it up… he would give it up if it meant, in the end, he could still have Helaena, the two of them and their dragons living on the wind.

Aemond hungered in the way a dragon hungered for meat, for flesh, for everything. He couldn’t blame him. Jace thought he might feel that way as well, if he were in Aemond’s position. He wondered if Luke would feel that way some day. If his own brother would grow more angry and serious, chafing at the bonds of being the second son.

They needed only to rest once, ducking beneath the cloud cover to nestle in the forests that lined the borders of the Reach and the Crownlands. Vermax kept close, tired from flying so far back and forth. They watched him prowl through the forest, coming back with the corpse of a doe and licking his jaws over the bulk of it.

“I think he brought it to feed us,” Helaena murmured, her cheek rubbing against his shoulder. Dreamfyre had already found her meal, several cows in the field nearby. Jace turned his head to nose against the crown of her silver head. She smelled like the sky. She smelled like the promise of rain and the musky scent of dragon, and still beneath, the bright scent of lemons clung to her hair.

“He’s been a good boy, flying as swiftly as he did.” His fingers plucked at the lacing of her gown and Helaena shifted, turning so he could get his other hand there to work at her gown. “He knew how hungry I was for you.”

Her pale skin glowed, barely illuminated by the tiny fire they dared to foster before them. The silk fluttered around her waist and he drew her into his lap. “Now you let me have you?” She grinned at him, impish and serene all at once. Helaena drew a moan from him as her fingers dove into his hair, tugging enough for him to feel it shoot straight to his cock as she tilted her head back. “For I am hungry too.”

They woke hours later, half dressed and tangled into one another. The fire died down but Vermax had come over in the passing of the night to curl his warm bulk against Jace’s back and keep the chill at bay. Helaena was already awake, staring up at the blanket of stars in the sky, her fingers stroking absently over his brow.

“We need to beat the dawn, for it shall burn away the shadows.”

With aching bones, Jace climbed up Dreamfyre, who let out a low grumble, and Helaena spoke to her in soothing, musical Valyrian, as if coaxing the dragon from her own dreams. Vermax was complaining like a child, but promptly quieted in response to Dreamfyre’s warning huff.

“We’re almost home, Dreamfyre,” Helaena reassured, and they took off into the sea of stars, racing to beat the dawn.

Hours passed, and Dreamfyre ducked beneath the clouds. The first thing that Jace registered is Vermax’s eager cry of joy and the responding sounds of dragon calls.

Dreamfyre let out her own call, and in the distance Jace could see two small dragons shoot up from seemingly nowhere.

It was Dragonstone, the black rock shooting up from the ocean and cutting through the early morning fog, the sun a blazing eye at the horizon. It was their ancestral seat, his ancestral seat, and they approached the shores, a dreamer and a someday king. Dragonstone, where he would take Helaena to the rocks and make her his wife, his future queen. Surrounded by the expanse of the Blackwater and the Narrow Sea, by dragons and by himself alone, Dragonstone was where he would keep her safe.

He would be a good prince, a good king, a good husband, and a better father. Jace pressed his mouth to the pulse in her throat and his arms tightened around her waist, fingers splayed possessively against her belly and he pulled her closer to him to keep her warm.

Her head turned, the wind pulling at her braids. Her smile was brighter than he’d ever seen and her eyes, his eyes, their eyes, met his. She was his hope, she was his future, she was his star chart coursing the way home across the seas.

“Welcome home, my dragon princess,” he murmured and she brushed her mouth against his, breathed in his exhale.

“Welcome home, my dragon prince.”

Vermax and Dreamfyre roared to greet the dawn.

I still am totally in love with this story and I hope you enjoyed it! I would absolutely love to hear what you think! If you want more Jacelaena, you can catch them in my Aegon x OC series The Maiden and the Drowning Boy, as well as some drabbles under my Jacelaena tag!

If you enjoyed this story, please reblog and spread the love!

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