Chapter 3: Four Years Later
Daemon walks slowly up the length of the throne room, curious onlookers still pouring in behind him, eager to catch whatever spectacle they think he might provide.
He knows that he won’t see his brother when he finally makes his way before the Iron Throne, and yet it is still a shock to see his niece in the crown of his brother and grandfather. Gold like her dragon, like her queenly raiment. The incongruity of the cold steel of his last gift to her around her throat, swallowing all that light.
She is very small before the Throne, under the vaulted ceiling. The massed humanity holds its breath.
A knight of the Kingsguard—Queensguard—pushes the point of his sword into Daemon’s chest to stop him from coming any closer to his niece. He doesn’t miss the look from Otto Hightower that prompts it. Rhaenyra has given no order or even moved, her face fixed, her eyes locked on his.
Do they think he’d bury a knife in her chest here in front of everyone? Really, the most offensive thing about all this theater is the stupidity, the hysterical note. If Daemon didn’t intend to abide by the succession, he’d hardly dismiss the army he had on hand to the four winds and enter King’s Landing with nothing but his dragon, the keep with nothing but his sword and his crown of bone that made him a king of wind and sand and dead men.
Still, it was something to offer her. He’d gotten the news of his brother’s death and known two things: he must return to Rhaenyra’s side, and he could not do so with nothing at all to his name. He would bring something back to her, or die in the attempt. He thinks she’d understand that, if not forgive the abandonment.
He has no doubt his name has been on everyone’s lips, and Otto Hightower’s most of all—perhaps Corlys Velaryon’s as well. There he stands to Rhaenyra’s left, beside his son. Corlys and he had always gotten on the best of anyone in Viserys’ council, and the Lord of Driftmark had put a Velaryon army under Daemon’s command, with which he had in turn won the Velaryon fleet its unmolested reign over the Narrow Sea once more. But that was before Corlys had become father-in-law to Rhaenyra, First of her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms.
Otto would have insisted that such a man as he would never accept bending the knee to the niece who had displaced him. He’d probably advised sending an assassin to the Stepstones, and then attempting to shoot Caraxes out of the sky at the first sighting of him over the city, and then preventing Daemon from entering the Red Keep.
“Add it to the chair,” he says, flinging down the Crabfeeder’s blade as his first offering. The blade at his heart is lowered in exchange.
“You wear a crown. Do you also call yourself a king?”
Daemon knows what she asks. Or, rather, looking at the challenge in her eyes, what she demands. No, let him come, he can picture her saying to those whimpering old men. And let them all see him acknowledge the true queen.
They’d probably thought her hopelessly naive.
“Once we smashed the Triarchy, they named me King of the Narrow Sea. But I know that there is only one true queen, Your Grace.” He kneels. “My crown and the Stepstones are yours.”
Rhaenyra takes a step forward. “Who holds the Stepstones?”
“The tides, the crabs, and two thousand dead Triarchy corsairs, staked to the sand to warn those who might follow.”
It is not much, but it is his. Bought with his strong sword arm and his own blood. His, to give to her.
She comes towards him. Close enough now he could kiss the hem of her garment. He presses his crown into her small beringed hands. Gasps echo behind him as she takes off the crown of Jaehaerys and crowns herself with the false dowry which is the only one he will ever have to give, the queen of the only kingdom Daemon will ever have possessed.
“Rise,” she says in that soft cool voice, and Daemon gets to his feet.
Then, only pausing to hand her crown to her sworn sword, she does something very, very stupid, and flings her arms around his neck.
-
It lasts only a moment before she remembers herself, pulling back and pronouncing all the right words about the realm’s debt to the prince. She swaps his crown for her usual one and the humble bit of bone and driftwood his men had presented to him with such pride is whisked away he knows not where.
The welcoming party is a dismal offering from a court still in mourning. Flatterers and the merely curious come in waves to praise him or ask for a recounting of his exploits, and Rhaenyra is there but never alone, flanked by her husband and the now Lady Strong, as much her shadow as he remembered. He feels the weight of Otto’s eyes on him.
Rhaenyra is thinner. Daemon does not see her eat. She has great shadows under her eyes and she twists her rings on her fingers constantly in her familiar gesture of nervousness.
He does not give the standard formulations about his grief at his brother’s death in reply to the condolences. There is only one person that belongs to.
Once night has fallen and the guests have begun to slowly drift away, Rhaenyra ends things by announcing she will retire. She gives her hand to Daemon to kiss.
“Will you break your fast in the morning with me and my lord husband, uncle?” his niece asks, her eyes trying to catch his own.
It is unbearable. Viserys had kept him at a distance for so long, a constant barrier of councilors and courtiers between them. The last time Dameon saw his brother, the last time he would ever see him, they had been as alone as they had been for some years, with only the Kingsguard with their hands at their swords to witness his banishment. And yet the memories of when it was otherwise crowded in, almost more vivid as the throne room around them, rendering the present moment unreal. Tussling in the training yard. Crawling tearfully into Viserys’ bed after mother died. Watching his brother stroke Balerion’s snout and murmur soothing words in High Valyrian so Daemon could come close enough to put his hand on the Conqueror’s own dragon.
How, after he had held Rhaenyra in his arms as she cried, could he accept this?
“If my queen wishes,” Daemon replies.
“She does,” Rhaenyra says, and leaves him.
Daemon thinks about using the passage he knows of to enter her rooms. He will not be barred from her, he will not be dismissed. He thinks of going to the city and finding a whore, a tender little silver-haired thing. And what would he ask of her? To let him hold her, rock her, sing a Valyrian lullaby in her ear?
It isn’t that he has too much sense, or too much dignity. It is just that he is very, very tired. He goes to bed instead.
-
He does not break his fast with Rhaenyra and her king consort. He has no desire to make inane small talk observed by Laenor Velaryon and interrupted by sycophants.
But Daemon does attend the morning meeting of the small council. He had ruminated on what his return to court would look like as he tied things up in the Stepstones. His niece was young and untried, surrounded by powerful men who believed they could bend her to their will as they had with her father. Rhaenyra was made of different stuff than Viserys, but her youth and sex would be tools they could use to make her doubt herself. That was if they even let her keep her throne. The Seven Kingdoms had never had a queen regnant and it had been some time since Jaehaerys relied on his grandmother’s good advice and even longer since the Conqueror’s sisters had ruled in his stead. There were almost no appealing Targaryen alternatives to her, which meant people might get ideas about a Westeros finally cleansed of dragons. Her own husband was the likeliest candidate, and although Daemon liked and respected Corlys, he did not trust a man who might once have been king consort himself to remain content with that for his own son who would have been king in his own right had his wife reigned. Daemon had more experience than her, and his martial prowess, and more than anything else he was loyal to Rhaenyra and their house above all. None seemed to believe it so he rarely bothered verbalizing this, his deepest and only truth, even to himself.
And would they let him stand by her side, or would he have to force his way there? That was the first question.
When his brother had ascended the throne Daemon had eagerly attended council meetings once he had returned from the Vale. He was young and restless, he could admit now that Otto had been correct in that much. But it had felt like an adventure he and Viserys were embarking on together.
Every jibe, every sneer, every proposal laughed at and shot down, Daemon found wanting at every job Viserys gave him. He’d shown up less and less. Then he was given the City Watch and all knew it was his last chance. He’d thrown himself into it, and, ceasing to show up at council at all, had been permitted to keep it, for a time.
The room falls silent and every head turns his way when he crosses the threshold. There is his old place, beside the king—beside the queen—chair empty and with the black orb of attendance resting in its slot. He swallows and makes his way to his seat.
“Good. You’ve come. We were just speaking of you, uncle,” Rhaenyra says with a slight anxious wobble in her voice.
“Ah. Only good things, I’m sure.”
His niece gives a small smile and casts an uncertain glance at Otto, at Corlys. “We are glad of your return. With the loss of my father”—she has to stop and clear her throat—“it is more important than ever that House Targaryen stand united.”
“I agree, Your Grace. I am—”
“We expected you back for King Viserys’ funeral, my prince. We have all wondered these many months when you would appear to pay your respects.”
Why has Rhaenyra not dismissed this cunt? He knows why, although the reasonable need for continuity with the old regime doesn’t make it any less galling. And it worries him that the old order of things might be allowed to define the new.
“I wished very much to be with my niece in our bereavement, Lord Hand, but as you yourself have often impressed upon me duty must come before desire. I felt the most useful thing I could do in a time of such grief and upheaval was to finish what I started and remove the Triarchy as a threat to the prosperity of Queen Rhaenyra’s reign.”
“I suppose such an understanding comes better late than never. Although finishing the war you started rather than return to your lawful wife as your king commanded is what opened us up to all out war with the Triarchy in the first place—”
“The war he finished, Lord Hand. Without open war ever being declared and without the realm’s coffers being so much as touched,” Corlys interjected.
“Yes, I am sure we all owe the Prince and your coffers a great debt, Lord Corlys. Not only did they defeat Craghas Drahar, Prince Daemon spent a further three months…doing what, exactly?”
The insinuation is plain enough. The Stepstones in Daemon’s control as a possible launching point for an invasion. They wouldn’t be at all useful for such an undertaking, but Otto knew fuck all about military strategy.
“Building rough forts and manning them with those trusted men under my command I felt suitable to take up posts there. They fly the banners of the three-headed dragon, but for now it is a flimsy claim at best. It is a holding measure until more permanent fortifications can be built and the booty taken from Triarchy ships captured by the Velaryon fleet during the course of hostilities that are currently paying their wages will run out soon enough.” He turns to face Rhaenyra fully. “That will be something to address, my queen. If the Iron Throne wishes to make the Stepstones a permanent part of our dominions, more lasting measures will have to be taken to secure it.”
“Out of the realm’s coffers, this time.”
“That is up to Her Grace.”
“I am sure you will most ardently advise her in that direction, but our resources are not infinite, and surely have better uses than…what was it? Adding the Kingdom of the Narrow Sea to our possessions? Is it to be the eighth kingdom?” Otto punctuates this with one of his dry little laughs.
Daemon could attempt to provoke in turn, sneer at Otto’s own total lack of experience of war, make the point that the Stepstones were far more than he’d ever added to the realm, or even try to once again press upon him the strategic necessity of the accursed place, so great he’d almost died for it more than once—or more to the point, so great that dying for it might have meant something to Viserys, to Rhaenyra. Despite Hightower’s air of the wise, seasoned elder statesman to Daemon’s hotheaded young reprobate it was an easy enough thing to do and he’d derived immense amusement from it in times past. But it had never gotten him very far, never seemed to cut into Viserys’ esteem for him or lessen that dependence formed in the earliest days of his reign. He glances at Rhaenyra and takes a deep breath.
“We’d have to secure Dorne in truth first for that, my Lord Hightower. Regardless, it was my understanding advising the queen was the purpose of this council.”
“It is,” Rhaenyra says. “Which is what we were discussing before you arrived. You always served my father faithfully, and you have rendered the realm a great service—”
“Your Grace—”
“You interrupt your queen?” Daemon lashes out, pulse picking up. “Please finish, Your Grace.”
There is a wrinkle of stress in Rhaenyra’s brow, a pinch of misery at the corner of her eyes. “I hope you will serve me as faithfully,” she concludes quietly.
Otto audibly scoffs. “Your Grace, none doubt the prince has indeed done the realm a great service. But you will recall that three years past—forgive me for bringing up past unpleasantness, but—”
“No, go on, let’s have it out. In what way am I unfit to sit on my niece’s council?”
“The fact you were removed from her father’s for base conduct,” Otto hisses.
A heavy silence hangs over the council chamber. None of the other members speak, watching and waiting to see how this tussle goes before committing themselves.
Daemon does not respond, sick to his stomach, because if he made any action at all it would be to draw Dark Sister and strike Otto Hightower’s head from his shoulders.
Rhaenyra is the one to break the hush. “My father is dead. Daemon is the only family left to me. Now is surely the time to put aside past grievances and start anew.”
The only family left to her. That is how it had felt to Daemon when his own parents had died and he and Viserys had only each other to cling to. But Viserys had married, had a daughter, dreamed endlessly of sons. His brother had told Daemon to return to his wife over and over as if he too might make some more amenable family elsewhere, as if there was an elsewhere for a Targaryen, as if Viserys had not watched his own daughter placed in Daemon’s arms—
“I wish to serve my house in whatever way the queen sees fit.”
A sigh of relief from Rhaenyra. “I wish for your voice on this council. As well, I would like you to take up your old post as Commander of the City Watch.”
“Your Grace, Ser Benedict Inchfield is currently the Lord Commander,” Otto brays in outrage.
“I am well aware who commands my own City Watch, Lord Hand,” Rhaenyra snaps at him before flushing and saying in apologetic tones—no, don’t do that—”I know it will be a blow to Ser Inchfield.”
“Indeed it will. There are no grounds for removing him from his post—”
“I know matters pertaining to the city in general and its harsher parts in particular have a way of not making it before this council, but I have heard what the state of the city is under the eye of Inchfield’s watch, and I assure you, he leaves much to be desired.”
“What things have you heard, my queen?” Otto asks icily, the how and from whom clearly barely held back.
“Pits where children fight with filed teeth and sharpened nails for slumming lords to take bets on have opened in Flea Bottom and young girls are being snatched off the streets and forced into service in the worse pleasure houses, just to start.”
“Ghastly tales,” Lord Beesbury murmurs. “Not fit for a queen’s ears.”
“How true, Lord Beesbury. And were we to have a commander of the goldcloaks able to keep such foulness in hand, perhaps my ears would be spared.”
“This is a matter of grave concern, Your Grace. However, as the prince and Lord Corlys have made clear, the Stepstones are of vital importance. Were you to in fact make the decision to have them as permanent possessions of the crown, they would need some sort of governor to oversee the transition. Clearly the best person for the job would be Prince Daemon.”
Daemon can’t help his laughter this time. Otto flails desperately for whatever would remove Daemon from court so he could whisper poison in Rhaenyra’s ear. He might be surprised Otto had not come right out and accused Daemon of plotting to murder Rhaenyra and steal her throne, if he did not know full well he saved that for when Daemon is not present. The Watch was too much of a risk because it gave Daemon power too close to home.
“The last time he had command of the Watch, when he was dismissed from the post that the king had granted to him, he took a contingent of men sworn to the crown and unlawfully occupied your seat.”
“Yes, and as I recall, I resolved that. My uncle invited me to discuss the matter and we agreed he would be regent of Dragonstone until I came of age.”
So that was how she had spun that one.
He can almost hear Otto’s teeth grinding together from across the table.
“Your Grace—”
“There will be no more discussion,” Rhaenyra says. “Prince Daemon will resume his post as Commander. Ser Benedict Inchfield will be made one of the captains under his command. He is young and perhaps in time he will prove himself worthy of greater responsibility. Your son Gwayne has expressed an interest in joining the City Watch. He will be placed under Daemon’s command as well to be personally groomed for leadership. Is that understood? Can we now move on to the many other topics that require our attention?”
The Watch, again. Daemon’s place was to be King’s Landing and no closer. King of the Narrow Sea, The Lord of Flea Bottom. And Hightower’s failed abortion of a son as his spy. What a fucking insult.
“Yes, Your Grace. I thank you for the trust you place in me,” Daemon says around an icy band of dread squeezing his throat.
-
Where was there for the incumbent new Commander of the City Watch to go but the city?
As dusk falls he seeks out his goldcloaks in their known haunts, lets them in on the news, receives their hearty congratulations, buys several rounds of celebratory drinks, and feels out the lay of the land.
Then he goes in search of another old friend.
Despite the fact he was less than perfectly civil when they parted, Daemon feels reasonably sure of his welcome. It is not the first time they’ve been in contact in the last two years, just as it wasn’t with him and Rhaenyra when he walked into the throne room yesterday. If nothing else, the assistance Mysaria had rendered him meant he was firmly in her debt, and that wasn’t something she would pass up on making clear.
He is shown into the apartments on the top floor of the old brothel he’d had her manage for his goldcloaks. She owns the place now—it makes him smile a bit to think of one of his poor grandmother’s anniversary gifts being put to such use. He can see a bed through the doorway into the farther room, but he is shown into a cozy, pretty parlor-cum-study. Mysaria sits behind a desk adrift in paper. The girl who brought him up takes an envelope from her and scurries off. They look at each other.
“I am in your debt,” Daemon begins. “I figured I’d get that out of the way.”
“Yes. It must have been an important matter indeed to have the Lady Alicent Hightower seen to be publicly defiled by a captain of the City Watch by as many eyes as possible for you to so lower yourself to ask for my help.”
“I am a man gracious in my heartbreak, Mysaria.”
He wasn't. He wasn’t heartbroken, either, but still he’d had some very ungenerous thoughts about her indeed. She laughs and relaxes a little. “What was the reason?”
“Oh, I'm sure a clever girl like you has figured that one out.”
“Your niece was dressed as a boy and had her hair under a cap when she accompanied the Hand’s daughter here with Ser Strong, but of course I’d seen her before.”
“Mhm.”
“What a mess we might be in now if the king had had sons. Hightower grandsons, no less.”
Rhaenyra had written to him, in the secret code they’d devised when she was a child, that he had been too right about Otto Hightower’s plans for her Alicent. The girl had been having meetings with his brother, kept secret on father’s orders. But how, she pleaded, was she to permanently prevent the possibility of Viserys taking Alicent to wife?
Ruin her, of course. Or appear to. It had given Daemon’s great pleasure to deflower Otto’s daughter from afar.
Just to be sure, Mysaria had sent a boy in her employ who had seen it all to the Red Keep with this grievous news, to waylay the first gossipy courtier he could find who might pay for the privilege of receiving such a delectable bit of scandal.
“Quite.”
“The Lady Alicent was—so I hear—very steadfast in maintaining that she was in love and had been seduced into sin by Ser Harwin only by genuine passion. I was surprised she had it in her.”
“It’s always the quiet ones.”
“I’m sure she had support. Of course—I also hear—the Hand didn’t believe it for a second. Ser Strong was ever one of your favorites. Still, it was that or make her a septa, and future Lady of Harrenhal is something.”
“You hear a lot.”
Mysaria gives him a slow, satisfied smile. “I do, these days.”
“It seems I am now even deeper in your debt. It seems the queen is well-informed on the workings of the city.”
“That would place the queen in my debt, no?”
“Her debts are my own.”
“Ah. I admit, a monarch taking such an interest in the city has been unusual for a long time. I was—this time—happy to reward such a request for information.”
“Perhaps she got it from somewhere.”
“And you are to be Commander of the City Watch again. Funny.”
“To enforce the queen’s law in her own city. Once again.”
“Congratulations.” Mysaria considers him with calculating eyes. He considers her right back.
“I would like us to be friends, Mysaria. I have a feeling it would make my job very difficult these days if we were not.”
Mysaria smiles at him, more sweetly. “You would be correct.” She rings a little bell on the table. “Have a drink with me?”
But Daemon is already standing up. He was sincere in his offer of friendship. All bitter thoughts of how this common whore he’d saved from her miserable life had spurned him in the mistaken belief she’d ever get anything better had melted away a while ago, and even if for his own pride he wanted to spit them at her now he knows how stupid that would be. And he remembers too well that intelligent sympathy, cut through with a delightfully scathing humor, but as much as he thinks he will one day enjoy sitting across this desk and benefiting from it once more, tonight he cannot forget when it was accompanied by the warmth of her body around his, by her elegant hands in his hair.
“Another time, Lady Misery,” he says, throwing her a small smile to let her know he meant it.
-
There was another warm body which called to him, another set of hands he longed for. Daemon looks up at the lights of the Red Keep and turns his feet in the direction of the hidden entrance, the one he’d sent Rhaenyra instructions for navigating from his war camp.
Her room is empty when he enters. She is probably at some banquet. He touches her hair brush, her bottles of perfume, puts his hand in a discarded slipper. Buries his face in the nightgown folded neatly over the foot of her bed before he can stop himself.
Rhaenyra jumps a foot in the air when she sees his deeper shadow amidst the dark of the room, but—
“You should have screamed,” he says disapprovingly when she lets the door slam behind her.
“Has the time for the coup finally arrived?” she tosses back, only a little breathless as she lights several candles.
“Where are your maidservants?” Daemon asks, not moving from his seat by the window.
“I dismissed them.” In the increased light he sees her bite her lip. “I—I thought you’d come last night.”
Her tone is accusing. Daemon rolls his eyes. “I understood my place was to be one of your breakfast callers.”
“I can hardly invite you into my chambers—”
“No, of course not. What niece could ever want the company of her beloved uncle as she grieves her father? Have to sneak in the back door for that.”
“Be reasonable,” she hisses.
Daemon knows full well he’s being unreasonable. Neither of them can quite articulate what would be unseemly about a nightly meeting in private between them, but it still galls.
He’d wanted to come to her last night. Not doing so was about vanity, not restraint or respect. He wanted her to ask. He had always wanted to be asked. Didn’t they know that all they had to do was ask? He wanted to know he was wanted. Pathetic. He could have held her, then and now, but he had his pride too, same as hers, the pride which had her jerking away from his embrace under watchful, suspicious eyes.
“Why is Otto Hightower still your hand?” he says, rising from his chair and walking closer to her.
She takes her crown off her head and places it on its cushion and begins to angrily remove pins from her elaborately coiffed hair.
“It’s complicated,” she says with a sigh.
“Is it? Walk me through what is so complicated that you have to have Hightower spies dog my every move.”
“It’s Gwayne. I once saw him try to eat a candle in the sept. He’s hardly a spy.”
“Then why make that concession at all?”
“It is an empty gesture, a sop to Otto's pride. And he is well aware of it. He was as unsatisfied as you, I promise.”
“And why must Otto's pride be so attended to?”
“One must be conciliatory.”
“As your father was? For years that leech ruled him.”
“Having Gwayne there will soothe his suspicions somewhat, perhaps cause him to lower his guard.”
“Again, I ask, what is it about Otto Hightower that makes it so necessary to pander to him?”
“It will buy time for you to settle back into your role at court.”
“Sent away to the Watch.”
“As the only man I trust to secure the city whose loyalty I desperately need to ensure the security of my reign.”
They are circling each other like the wild dragons do on Dragonstone, before they launch into each other. But this almost makes him pause. It sings through him—yes, yes I can do that for you, let me—but his rage moves through him now, burning away the grief, and the yearning, and the hurt.
“Until Otto Hightower has you under his thumb—”
“He will not!”
“—just like he did your father.”
“My father ruled before me. My father named me heir. He held the realm together. Is it so wrong to honor those that helped him reign?”
“You let him talk down to you, interrupt you. Is this helping you reign?”
“Considering it takes you insisting he not to make him cease, what would you have me do?”
“Dismiss him!”
“And you think every other man at the table does not feel free to do the same? You think it is just Otto Hightower? My father named me his heir and yet—”
“Perhaps if you showed them you are not to be trifled with.”
“By doing exactly what you want, and all to know it? You show up just for Otto to be dismissed? That will make me look powerful.”
“Yes, you can't ever show any partiality to big bad me, I know. I'm not asking you to make me your Hand.”
“Isn't that what you want? Isn't it at the root of your resentment?”
Daemon gives a bitter laugh and crowds closer so she has to tilt her head back to glare up at him.
“Who would you name Hand? Who do you consider most suitable? That is what I want to know.”
Her head goes down at that and Daemon jerks it up with a finger at her chin, searching her eyes deeply. They fill with tears.
“I don't know! I don't fucking know, so someone would have to fucking tell me because I don't fucking know anything!”
“You knew the real state of the city. You sought out Mysaria. Smart girl.”
“Is that where you were tonight?”
“I am to be Commander of the City Watch. I was in the city. You do know things. So who should be hand, my queen?”
Rhaenyra shakes her head. “I don't know, I don't know anything.”
“Your father should have considered this outcome,” Daemon says, disgusted.
“Yes, he should have.”
“To name someone as young as you as heir out of spite.”
A failure of a king, to not have ensured his heir would get the respect she was so evidently due. A failure of a father, to burden someone so very little, so very dear, with all of this. The one thing he ever did right in his reign, to recognize her as worthiest of them. The one act that redeemed him as a father, to give her this thing that makes her tremble with the force of how ardently she wants it.
His niece goes up onto her toes to push her furious face in his. “Go on!” she spits. “Tell me you think I'm a foolish little girl! That’s it, isn't it. A weak little girl. Stupid to name me his heir. It’s what they all think.”
She isn’t weak and every man around that table is a fucking fool. If only they could see her, brilliant with rage, shoving at his chest.
He gives her a little shove back. “Are you? Is that why you let Otto condescend to you? A little girl who needs daddy to put her over his knee when she's bad?”
Her breath catches. Daemon’s comes in heavy pants.
“Maybe I do. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I'm just”—(shove)—“a stupid”—(shove)—“stupid little girl!”
Daemon grabs her about the waist and she flails, gets him in the nose and eye with her fists hard enough he curses. She fights and scratches and yowls as he hauls her over to the bed. He pins her to the mattress with his hand on the back of her neck. Her head is turned to the side so can see them widen when he brings the flat of his hand down on her ass.
The initial moment of shock is so great she makes no noise. He claps a hand over her mouth and says, “If you want to scream and see your sworn sword come in and try to take me down, you can. If not, you’ll note there is that handy pillow to bite.”
When he takes his hand away, first, she bites his finger hard. Then she shoves her mouth full of featherdown, cheeks red, eyes black.
Daemon should fucking seize the throne. He wouldn’t kill her; he’d given up that delusion years ago. If only her husband had been abed with her and he could have run him through and married her in the morning, his still loyal goldcloaks having secured the city in the night. Daemon would be king, and she would be his wife, and she wouldn’t have to worry about anything. She could loll about in bed covered in the silks and jewels he draped her with, amused by the birds and exotic cats he gifted her, eating the choicest sweets and too languorous to shift from the sheets as he made time to make her come six times a day amidst his other duties, dozing in a patch of sunlight like a cat between his visits until she couldn’t move from it for another reason, because she was too heavy with the child he’d put in her, and also because he was making her come eight times a day in recompense for how good she was being, how brave for him. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t she like that?
He should have gotten a silver-haired maiden from Mysaria tonight. To cuddle and spank and then kiss it all better and then to work her open for his cock, fuck her slow and sweet while she whimpered, “Uncle, uncle.”
The urge to touch her skin is overwhelming. He yanks up her jeweled skirt so his hand can meet flesh with a satisfying thwack.
“You are a queen. Act like it.”
“I'm not,” Rhaenyra cries, the pillow falling from her wet lips. “I'm not, I know I'm not. I want to be a queen, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm a stupid little girl.”
Daemon has been holding himself back, aware of the power in his own arm, but then he lands a blow that makes Rhaenyra whimper. Frustration is boiling through him. He cannot murder her. He can't marry her. And his brother is dead, Viserys is fucking dead, and the last time his brother and king had looked upon him it had been with loathing, because Otto Hightower had finally gotten his wish, and because Daemon couldn't shut his own fucking mouth, and here is the daughter he wouldn't give him, the only thing Daemon has ever truly wanted. An inarticulate pained noise slips past his gritted teeth.
He hauls her up and grips her wet cheek with his burning fingers. He rests his forehead against hers. “You are a queen. You are a dragon, and I will help you make them understand.”
“I want to, I want to, but I am a little girl,” she pleads. “I’m a baby.”
“Yes, you are,” he says tenderly. “My queen. We two know the truth. My queen”—a kiss to her forehead—“my darling girl”—cheek—“my pet”—nose—“my baby”—eyelids—“my little dragon”—mouth.
Rhaenyra could never ask Daemon if he'd kill her, and he knew he could never ask if she would perhaps not rather give this all up and let him take care of everything. But here, in this darkened room with just them, they can survive it as she goes silent and limp, as he finds an apple and figs and cheese and bread on a sideboard and cuts it up and induces her to eat it by feeding it to her from his own fingers and then removes her dress and tucks her into bed and when she grasps at his arm he strips down to his shirt and climbs in beside her and gathers her into his arms.
He remains sleepless but Rhaenyra is quiet so long he believes she has dropped off when she mumbles into his chest, “I want to dismiss him, I just can't yet.”
Daemon laughs tiredly, his chin on her head. He rubs her back. “I do know that.”
“I certainly couldn't until you arrived. What took you so long?” Her voice breaks on the last word.
“I couldn't come back with nothing,” he admits grudgingly.
Rhaenyra pulls out of his arms and Daemon can’t stop a ridiculous sad sound of protest at the loss of her warmth. He sits up and watches her go to a chest of drawers and remove a bundle of silk from the uppermost one. As she comes back to the bed she unwinds it to reveal his crown. When she goes to put it on his head, he gently takes it from her hand and places it on her own brow.
“It looks better on you,” he says. His moonshot miracle of a girl, a queen in nothing but bone.
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