Chapter Text
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I'm scared of the love I have for you.
Because I know it will ruin me.
And I know that I will let it.
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SUMMARY
AS FOR YOU, AGAINST THE STARS
─── MAERYS' mother had told her once on a night when her coughing would not cease, "Steel is not born strong, Maerys but it is made so in fire. And if the fire comes for you, let it find you unafraid."
Princess Maerys had been born in 190 A.C to Prince Maekar and Dyanna of House Dayne, moments after her twin brothel, Daeron. He had come into the world wailing and red faced, strong lunged and furious with life. In comparison, she had come quietly, too quietly.
The midwives had exchanged glances.
It was clear from her first breath, there had been something fragile about her, her cries weak and fleeting. Maerys was small, her limbs thin.Where Daeron kicked and wailed, she barely stirred.
The Maesters spoke of her condition in the language they had. They said the twins had not been fed equally in the womb, that one child had drawn more strength from Dyanna which left the other one wanting. They warned gently, that such babes were claimed by the Stranger within the year, that Maerys might not even live that long.
For a time, it seemed that they were right.
For weeks, her cradle remained in her paren'ts chambers next to the hearth. Maerys was wrapped in lambswool and swaddled in warmed linen yet there was nights that her breathing became so faint that the septas began their prayers to see her off into the afterlife. Many thought she wouldn't live to see her first name day but she endured.
It was not easy for fevers came easily to her and coughs lingered, illnesses clung to her in childhood. Until slowly, her body began to strengthen and by the time she reached her sixth nameday, the worst of her frailty had passed, the winter fevers grip on her lessening.
At ten, Maerys was sent to Starfall at her mother's urging to free her from her younger brother's punishing grip as love turned into obsession, something sick like possession. Even as a child, Aerion's gaze had lingered too long so Maerys learnt what it was like to be watched. Distance did not diminish his fixation on her, it only sharpened it.
In Dorne, she grew into a woman of quiet strength and keen perception, the desert sun hardening what illness once left fragile. She learned the arts of healing from the women of Starfall—how to set broken bones, brew tinctures, and read the language of the body as carefully as any maester. She learned politics as well, not from dusty tomes alone but from watching lords bargain over wine and silence, and from her mother's kin, who understood that power was as much patience as it was steel.
There, she also learned love—not the fevered, grasping kind, but the steady warmth of companionship. When she arrived at court after her fostering was up she was welcomed with her mother's final gift, her final protection: marriage.
Maerys wed a Martell cousin, Prince Corbyn, not as a sacrifice but as a shield. Another wall Aerion had to knock down should he ever wish to reach her. What began as duty, as protection, became tenderness. Corbyn was kind where others were calculating, warm where the court was cold. In loving him, Maerys allowed herself to believe she had escaped fate, that he had too.
His death unmade her.
Dyanna's words followed Maerys everywhere, to King's Landing, to a grief she was too young to carry. When her mother died bringing Rhae into this world, she clung to them like a prayer. When Corbyn's body was laid to rest and the child she carried with him slipped from her soon after, she clung to them as if they were the only solid thing left.
Steel is made in fire. If that was true then surely Maerys had been forged again and again, in sickness, in love, in loss. And still she did not break.
Widowed young, she learnt the weight of mourning in how loud the silence in her chambers was and how wholly the absence felt. Grief might have hallowed her, but it did not destroy her. Not long after Corbyn's death, her bronze dragon broke free from his shell, fierce and radiant. They called it fate. A widow reborn in flame. A dragon answering loss with fire.
Maerys knew better.
Her dragon was not obligation, he was choice. In him she found not destiny, but defiance. Her bond with her dragon was not that of master and servant, of obedience, but instead a partnership. Through him, her dream was realized of seeing dragons flourish again so House Targaryen would never be without dragons again.
When Maerys returned to King's Landing, she was no longer a frail daughter or a guarded bride. She was instead a dragonrider, the court could not ignore. In her time as a wife, Aerion's obsession had not waned, it had only deepened. Now tangled with entitlement and delusion. He believed it was fate, he spoke of blood, of stars that could not be denied.
But Maerys had already defied the stars once. By surviving, by loving, by rising.
And in the halls of the Red Keep, amid whispers of fate and fire, she found Baelor again.
What began in youth as something soft and familial surpassed the distance and endured time and death. Loving him was not simple, it was not safe. It was not foretold. It was a choice that she made in full knowledge of loss, of fear, and the cost of loving someone in world eager to take.
Despite marriage. Despite death. Despite mourning.
Maerys loved again—wholly, fiercely, without apology.
Not because fate willed it.
But because she did.
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MAIN CHARACTERS
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✶ PRINCESS MAERYS TARGARYEN, AS DESCRIBED
───Like most of Old Valyria, she possessed smooth wavy hair of pale silver gold, and her almond-eyes lined in kohl were a purple so deep it almost appeared black. The Dornish blood of her mother lent her skin a warm bronze hue, freckled across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. Her face was feline, sharp of cheek and soft of curve, dimples deepening when she smiled, her full lips red as wine. Maerys had a strong nose that was pierced with a single ring that marked her as noble and distinctly other while her tall, curving frame carried an elegance that belied the strength beneath.
･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂
─── Thoughtful, soft-spoken, and possessed of a quiet resolve born of having once stood near death, Maerys was remembered not for boldness or fire, but for her patience, her steadiness, and the enduring loyalties she inspired.
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✶ PRINCE BAELOR TARGARYEN, bertie carvel
───Prince Baelor Breakspear, son of King Maekar Targaryen, was a man remembered for both valor and steadfastness. Though he bore the weight of expectation and the shadow of his family's ambition, Baelor's courage and sense of duty were matched by a quiet warmth for those he loved. His life, though brilliant, was marked by peril and sacrifice, and the tales of his deeds were told in whispers and songs long after his passing.
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| © mossypea |
STARTED: FEBRUARY 25th, 2026