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( He does not answer her in text, but it is not long before her eldest son finds Rhaenyra huddled by the hearth and warming herself with a flame. The fire needs another log and after putting down the plate of fruit he's managed to gather, Jacaerys takes on the task of stoking the flames as he's done on hunting trips and seen servants do.

After that, he sheds the fur coat he wears from his shoulders and drapes it over his mother's instead. If nothing else, he can continue to protect her. To be the dutiful son he has always been. He stands behind her, hands on her shoulders as the flames dance before them. He misses the warmth of their blood, misses their dragons and their home. ) You will not freeze. This way.

[ Her first thought is to protest the gesture, as it comes, but she is ill-prepared for it, as divided as her mind is, drawn in by the view of the flames before her and the knowledge that she is somehow failing to draw its heat into her bones, to keep it as she'd once been able to. Fire cannot kill a dragon, but what happens if a dragon cannot keep its fire? What if it cannot produce the warmth from within itself?

As Jace settles behind her, the heavy drape of his coat over her frame, she reaches to take one of his hands in her own, knowing her touch will be chilled but unable to do anything for it. Between the newly stoked flames and the added garment — and he somehow feels warmer, or perhaps she can trick her mind into believing so — Rhaenyra shivers, once, and then falls still. ]

You cannot give everything up for me. [ She's speaking of the coat, of course, but in the moment it feels like much more — foreboding words that nearly cause her to flinch away, inwardly, as soon as they leave her. ]

Is it not my duty as a son to ensure my mother is well? ( He can sense that is not what she means. But even if his own mind goes to the duty of an heir, it all still stands. He would give up much of himself to ensure their victory, to ensure that their family survives the war and peace returns to the realm so they can prepare for the Long Winter and the horrors that are coming.

Rhaenyra's hand is cold and Jace wraps his fingers around it, wishing he had more warmth to offer. ) I fear it is not big enough to share. Perhaps if I was as young as Joffrey still.

( If he were young and small, still a boy who could cling to his mother's skirts and hide inside her grand coats when the cold air chose to bite. Or crawl into her bed when the chill plagued the halls of Dragonstone, cuddling close when her bed was only her own until his brother's trickled in as well. It has been long since Jace grew past it, shed boyhood to become a man. Sharing body heat is the answer now, but it feels almost foolish and childish to suggest it now. )

Soon your duties will not be those of a son, but a husband. [ And she hopes to be far from his thoughts when that time comes — but she also knows, in the same breath, that he is referring to his duties as her heir, rather than any obligation he might feel to her as his mother.

Her fingers curl around his more definitively, as his do, and she turns, without thinking, to rest her cheek against his hand, a brief nuzzling that precedes the soft press of her lips to his knuckles. It is a gesture she would not offer toward anyone, especially when it is her hand that is most often held out in expectation of kisses, but her appreciation and fondness permeate through it.

His remark, then, prompts a playfully defiant look, followed by a scoff, and she lifts her arm slightly, indicating the space where he can tuck himself against the side of her body, the way he used to curl in when he was still a little boy. The way Luke had, weeks before Storm's End, even after insisting he was much too grown for it. A part of her aches, now, to recall the memory, and she does not think she can be blamed for selfishness here. ]

Come. [ A soft entreaty — because she wants him snuggled up against her, because it may be the last time they have opportunity for such a thing ever again. ]

And when that time comes, Mother, you will miss this. ( Jace says it with more lightness than the conversation calls for, when they know that this is not what either of them mean. But it is also the truth. When he and Baela wed, she will be his priority first. She will be the family he prioritizes, his children too before the needs of his mother. Then it will be duty to the crown, yes, but duty to the family that will inherit it as well. Perhaps he will seat a son on the throne after himself, perhaps a daughter. Either way, it will be his heir and Baela who come first.

The affection is not lost on him. He smiles, softly where she cannot see. As he grew, he'd felt that such a thing was not suitable for a young man trying to prove he would not always hide behind the skirts of his mother. But her affection is always something Jace treasures, for he is aware that amongst dragons it is not so common a thing. So when she entreats, he clicks his tongue as if put out but moves to tuck himself into his mother's side like he is a boy. An arm slips around her back and draws her close, for even leaning in he is a bit too large to hide against her side.

Silence passes for a moment, before he speaks, ) I miss home.

I will. [ Confessed on a sigh, and Rhaenyra doesn't think she can be all that faulted — or subjected to potential jesting — for how honest the statement is. Yet the responsibilities that await him as husband are not just part of his duty as the prince and future king, and they are not merely a part of how his betrothal to Baela will further strengthen their claim. They are a reminder that he is no longer a child with the inclination to hide behind his mother's skirts; he is her firstborn, and a young man who has already been tested by the threat of war.

In the same instant, now that she can no longer embrace Luke in this way, and now that her other children have been sent far from her, far from any danger, her arms ache to hold any of them at all. She doesn't expect that Jace will move to hold her in return, the weight of his arm settled around her frame further proof of his maturing in that regard — and after a moment, she curves into him instead, tipping her head to rest it against his shoulder before she draws the blanket closed around both of them. ]

I know. [ It is a longing she herself has, and one that may not even need to be stated aloud when he can surely hear it in her words. ] There are times when I close my eyes and convince myself that I can still hear the dragons beneath our feet. Hear the sounds they make that would so often soothe me to sleep each night.

( 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.

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