( Once, Jacaerys had look at his mother and seen a woman infallible and beyond weakness. As he'd grown from child to man, she'd been the pillar of their family that held strong as his Lord father had slipped away to train or drink with his sworn man. Her choice to let those beyond the royal lines, those with silvered hair and Valyrian eyes, upon dragon-back had changed that. Not for the fact that it was a poor choice, but for it had shown him that she too was driven by fears for her own survival. She was human too, not a Valyrian goddess in the flesh.

It makes it easier to pull her close now, to feel that protective urge he'd felt once as a merely a son shift into something he cannot name. He wishes to protect her still. As son, as heir, as a grown man who has been raised with honor even if the nature of birth has some within these halls claiming that he can never know it.

Jacaerys holds Rhaenyra close, indulges and realizes that he needed this moment as much as she had. ) The Library will not grant us our dragons, but maybe we can ask for something like the sounds of our home.

I miss the winds blowing through the Sea Dragon's tower, the waves crushing into the shore. ( a pause, ) I would listen to Joff trying to bargain with Maester Gerardrys to allow him to leave his lessons early for hours if I could.