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In the Marches of a Heart

As soon as she returned to her chambers, Jena starting washing her hands, three times in a row, under her attendants' stunned looks. She even thought of burning the gown she was wearing but reason stopped her on time. Dyanna's ailment was not contagious, it was all just old superstitions. And even if it was, who could it affect, the green taffeta? The fabric had not even touched the lesion, just Dyanna's hand as they had been waiting for the litter to arrive.

Was she safe? How could anyone be safe if the corroding disease could claim someone as young as Dyanna? Someone so full of life? Now, Jena had forgotten all about her disapproval and only saw Dyanna's vivaciousness – her onetime vivaciousness perhaps?

That night, Dyanna did not attend the evening feast and the empty chair at the dais attracted everyone's eye, or so Jena thought. She couldn't say she was surprised. Illness could fight even her goodsister's implacable command of herself. And still, Jena felt a small twinge of disappointment when she saw Maekar, looking like he usually did. Dyanna hadn't told him yet. No woman deserved to suffer through such a thing alone and if Jena had to bet on something, she'd bet that Dyanna was one of the very few things that could liven up Maekar's cold heart.

By now, the news of Dyanna's swoon had flown all around King's Landing and since she was… had been… an exceptionally healthy girl, everyone was curious. "Is she with child again?" Alys asked curiously and a little enviously and Jena trained her eyes on her pepper and cheese. At least people had learned not to talk about her like that since the first few times she had felt unwell without any babe to show for it. All of a sudden, she pitied Dyanna even more. When she left her chambers, she'd be asked this question herself many times, no doubt, and she'd have to deal with people expecting life and joy of her while inside, the vile growth claimed her.

"No," Maekar snapped and Jena glanced at him. Now she remembered the rumours that he was no longer visiting his wife's bedchamber and realized that it must be the other way around. Dyanna had probably closed her door to him, so he would not see. At the moment, he looked like the bear from the ridiculous story Dyanna had often told the children in Mariah's chambers, about the bear and the maiden not so fear. A bear who had no idea what had hurt him.

"I am thinking of adding another bathtub in my chambers, smaller," she announced in a loud voice and Baelor blinked.

"I had no idea."

"Well, now you know," she replied, not at all surprised, since she hadn't been thinking about any such thing at all. "It's very important for a woman to feel comfortable in her bath, after all. Bath can hide or reveal a good deal many things. A good deal many," she repeated pointedly, her eyes not on her husband, who was surprised by this sudden burst of poetics but Maekar who, in a second, nodded that he had understood. Dyanna thought that he had gone a little paler but it was hard to say with him.

The next day, she didn't saw him at the feast; sometime about noon the day after, she spotted him in the practice yard and shivered at the rage that simply poured off him at every swing of his mace. One day, he's going to kill someone, however inadvertently, she thought and felt relief when Baelor who had clearly been keeping an eye on other parts of the yard as well stopped his own practice to go there and nod at his brother's opponent to go away. Even from this far, Jena could hear the tone of Maekar's voice. She didn't need the words to think again how unlikeable he was even in the face of genuine concern as she turned to go to his apartments.

Somewhat to her surprise, Dyanna had her let in immediately, and in her own bedchamber. Jena immediately saw that both sides of the bed were disturbed.

"I hope you aren't angry with me," she said.

Dyanna tried to smile. "And here he was telling me that you never told him…"

"Well, I didn't, in fact, tell him…" Jena started explaining and Dyanna's lips twitched again as she nodded at a chair.

"It doesn't matter. You were right, I was a fool for not telling him. I don't want to die alone."

"You won't die," Jena protested unconvincingly and unconvinced.

To everyone's surprise, Dyanna didn't, although Jena heard her scream when they had the lesion removed, though two sets of thick doors and a hallway between them. It was a howl that echoed for days in her dreams, a howl that made one wonder if death wasn't the better fate, after all.

"Are you going to eat this?"

Jena looked up from the venison she had been examining. "What kind of question is this? Of course I will!"

"I didn't mean to irate you," he said. "I was jesting." His expression became thoughtful. "I didn't know it was so hard for you. Look, Jena, if you don't want it, then just leave it."

She bit her lip. Didn't he understand? Would he leave the Small Council during an important meeting just because he wanted to? Would he leave in the middle of a battle because he felt like it? "The maesters said…"

"I know what they say," Baelor sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, taking her hand in his. Jena had been on bedrest for a month now and her nerves were raw. He hated seeing her like this, especially when he knew it was all for nothing. She would either keep the babe, or she wouldn't. The prescriptions did her more harm than good, he was sure of it – but if he forced her not to follow them, she'd blame him when the babe came long before its time, long before it became a babe. By the pallor in her cheeks and the dull eyes he could already say that it would be what'd take place. But Jena didn't know it. "I am not sure it's going to help, Jena. Surely tormenting yourself with foods you don't really want can't be good for him either?"

"I have to try," she said simply. Her eyes shone brightly, the only thing left of her there. The rest was lost in new layers of fat, loss of the muscles that were unfitting for a court lady but had fascinated him in the beginning, shortness of breath and easy tiredness – all those injuries she kept sustaining in the battle to give him another son.

"If you must, my princess," he sighed, drawing a hand across her cheek. "I'd rather have you healthy and happy but if you feel you must…"

"I do," Jena confirmed and then her eyes went wide. "No, no, no!"

She pushed her chair away frantically; even before the motion was finished, Baelor knew what he'd find on her robe.

"My father is dying."

Dyanna's voice was flat, her eyes cast down. Jena wasn't sure what she was supposed to say. "I am so sorry."

"Don't be." Now, Dyanna looked up. Only about a year after her ordeal, her beauty had returned, the sparkle in her eye, her zest for life. Now Jena saw the famed stubbornness that made her goodsister beloved by some, disliked by many. A man's stubbornness. A Dornish stubbornness. "He isn't dead yet. And he won't die before I go there."

Jena gave her a look of surprise. "Maekar let you go to Starfall?" Neither of them had visited back home since the moment they had been wrapped in the red and black showing their new belonging with dragons and the Iron Throne. Not that the King or their husbands had prohibited them from doing so. They just… hadn't come around to it. And now, the moment was the very last one Jena would have chosen for such a journey. Baelor would have never let her do it either and she was surprised that Maekar had.

Dyanna smiled charmingly. "Why, of course he would have let me if he were here," she claimed. "But since he isn't, I'll have to make the decision myself. I'm leaving tomorrow."

Jena glanced at the Queen but Mariah seemed immersed in the boys' chatter. Would Dyanna have dared say such a bold lie in their goodmother's hearing? At the same time, she could not help but be sympathetic. What would she have done in Dyanna's shoes? Death was final, for the Stranger never returned those he took.

"Are you sure Maekar will be truly fine with this?" Aerys asked, surprising both women with the fact that he had been listening. Throughout the years, Jena had realized that behind his absent-minded expression and long-winded words, there was a sharp and focused mind involved each time he chose to involve it but the instances themselves always startled her with the abrupt change from looking engrossed in his own thoughts or pushing his food around the plate, like now, to intense attention.

Dyanna shrugged. "I don't see why not," she said. The unsaid, Are you my jailor now? remained unspoken. "Is there any reason why I should be denied one last visit with my father?" she asked.

There wasn't. The tensions with Daemon Blackfyre that had lately reached a new peak were disturbing but hardly something to risk missing this chance for. In fact, there was no reason for any of them not to…

"I can see none," Jena said. "In fact, we can start our journey together. I'll go to Blackhaven and stay there for a while."

Aerys gave her a stunned look and Jena marveled at her own impulse and the gall to say it. Reasonable or not, she knew that Baelor wouldn't approve of her decision to wander off as soon as he had left for Tyrosh. It would look like she had waited for him to be away to go against what he would have wised. What, in fact, Dyanna was doing with Maekar… But while Dyanna and Maekar's relationship was progressing under the mark of fire, Jena had taken Baelor's wishes into account, mostly. Maekar might be furious when he learned that his wife had ridden off immediately after seeing his back but surprised? Hardly. While for Jena, it would be the first time she'd serve Baelor such an act of disobedience.

But she wanted so much to see Blackhaven again, remove herself from the prying eyes, the blood staining her sheets just when she started to hope, and the renewed pressure she felt to produce this second boy that she couldn't satisfy…

Would it be worth it for her to disappoint her lord husband over it? A few years before her marriage she would have never entertained such a question – a few years into it, even. But now, she was grateful that she was wed to a man who was half-Dornish, brought up by a Dornish mother. Because if he had been anything else, the mere possibility would have never occurred to her.

"You should have invited her to stay the night."

"She was in a hurry, Mother."

"Still. We would have liked to see her. See whether she was as charming and immoral as they say or not."

Jena gave her mother a tired look. To think that she had expected a respite from the gossips of court! "She is very lovely. And she isn't immoral at all. Maekar wouldn't have tolerated it."

"Who knows, with the Queen being like this…"

"Like what?" Jena demanded.

But her mother's interest in Dornish women and their dubious morals had evaporated. She gave Jena a stern look. "Why are you here?"

Jena blinked. "What?"

Her mother sighed impatiently. "If you were well enough to travel here, you were well enough to join your husband in his journey to the Free Cities. How do you expect to get with child if you leave him go here and there on his own?"

Jena gaped. Even Mariah had never been this brutal!

Her mother's expression softened. "I know it's hard for you, child," she said. "But for your good, for the good of our House and the realm you must give us another prince."

Jena leapt to her feet. "I am trying!" she shouted. "I accept Baelor in my bed regularly, although I've started fearing it, knowing that I'll bleed the prince you all so desire out of my loins! I spend my life lying in bed like a brood-hen in her laying-place, over the eggs. I've eaten so much meat that I feel close to bursting! Next thing I know, I'll find myself addicted to Dornish red since that's what the maesters prescribe me now! What more do you want?"

"Not sniveling like a little girl," Lady Dondarrion said shortly. "Comport yourself like a true queen. And for the Mother's sake, do your duty and give us an heir! I don't know what the problem is. I was a woman blessed with children and so was my mother. You don't have a problem conceiving them, clearly. We must find a way for you to keep them – but to this purpose, you should be with your husband and not me. You need to conceive them first."

So much for the sympathy she could expect from her mother! Jena spun back angrily, headed for the door and slammed it shut behind her. The Princess of Dragonstone could afford this much, at least!

In her old bedchamber, her handmaidens tried to dash for cover at the first look at her thunderous face. Jena demanded a riding outfit and changed immediately, not looking at the ruin the prescriptions to get her pregnant with a male and living child were turning her body in. Lately, she had started fearing that by following them, she'd get so corpulent that Baelor would no longer be attracted to her. Perhaps he already was? He had never taken another woman, as far as she knew. But now, when he was alone in Essos? Essos and the pillow-houses?

So stupid, being jealous. Such a waste of time. So unbefitting a royal wife! That was what her mother would tell her if Jena was stupid enough to share her concerns. She'd only grace her with a lecture on duty again and tell her that she should aim to be Baelor's queen on the Iron Throne one day, not the queen of his heart.

It it was up to Jena, she knew which one she would prefer.