Chapter 2: Six Months Later

Daemon almost leaves. He tosses the egg at Rhaenyra and furious, frustrated, prepares to walk back to the keep to lick the gaping wounds in his already tattered pride his little niece had inflicted so effortlessly.

If you wish to be restored as heir, you’ll need to kill me. So do it. And have done with all this bother.

The minutest tremble of her lashes as she gazed up at him.

Perhaps not entirely effortless.

That golden immensity thrusting up through sun-gilt clouds. His men’s cloaks, a close match for Syrax’s scales, snapped in the wind. A silver-gold princess as one with her beast of flame. She’d cut like a blade through Hightower’s men toward him, confident, bold, a dragonlord of old come to parlay with her foe.

He is very angry. At his brother. At her. At himself.

None who saw her today would guess at his last sight of her. Clever girl, to show up the former heir this way, to use his own weakness against him. My baby niece. Her dry eyes pleading with him in that hallway, the tears he only coaxed out of her with no witnesses. Shouldn’t it give him some power over her? Her snotty little nose in his neck. Her babyish whimpers. Instead it only made them both more keenly aware of what was never in question. Still, none but he knows her fussy, wordless murmur as he rose unsteadily to his feet with her asleep in his arms. He had laid her down gently, still clothed, in her bed. Her tear-stained, swollen cheek hot against her pillow. The last sight. He’d been escorted from the throne room and out of the Red Keep directly to the Dragonpit, managing only to bribe a guard to deliver his message of summons to Mysaria. No goodbyes.

He turns around sharply, before he can think about it.

“Rhaenyra,” he calls.

She turns around from where she was securing her prize in its container. He sees the proud smile drop off her face as she glances warily at him.

“Come and have supper with me,” Daemon says in Valyrian.

Rhaenyra laughs scornfully, the disdain settling back into place. In the same language she scoffs: “You want me to come as a guest to the keep you’ve stolen? Are you so much of a coward you can only kill me surrounded by your own men?”

He has to smother a smile. Then he decides not to bother, and laughs aloud.

“My goldcloaks could take them here. Your Syrax would not yet stand a chance against Caraxes.” Softly, he delivers the blow. “I was not allowed to say goodbye, princess.”

She breaks first this time, eyes darting down, away. “You scorn us. You mock us, you insult us—”

“Dinner, Rhaenyra. That is my invitation. If you choose, when you mount Syrax, to head for the Dragonmont instead of the Red Keep, I will be waiting. I give you my word I will not detain you when you wish to depart. It is up to you to trust it or not.”

He does not wait for her response. He spins on his heel and marches away. He can’t decide if he wants his pride soothed by her flying back home in fear of what he could do to her, or the sweet power of her coming to him anyway.

-

He did not say: I give you my word I will not harm you. If it ever had to be said, all was already lost.

-

It would have—hurt, if she had asked. If she ever had to ask. Will you kill me? A dare, now that they both could bear. That they could survive. It put Daemon in his place. It stung. It galled, it mocked, it sneered. It was a bitter draft to swallow. But he could live with it.

-

It was Daemon who had chosen Rhaenyra’s cradle egg. In the womb-like hot damp dark of the warming chamber it had been smaller than the rest, and brighter.

-

“So, princess. How go things at home?”

Daemon throws himself into the chair at the head of the table. About to depart the room in a huff a half hour past, Mysaria had abruptly stopped in her tracks and whirled toward the window and then he’d heard it too: the sound of wings, very close. A wall of gold had slid across the view, close enough to make the chairs of the table shake.

“You invited the king’s only daughter here?” she had screeched after he updated her on their new hosting responsibilities, pushed beyond all endurance under the mistaken impression that the presumed kidnapping of Viserys’ only child was more likely to motivate him to violent action. She had left then—the room, but also possibly the castle, and, after stealing some of the family heirlooms to bribe a fisherman to take her to the mainland posthaste, the island.

Rhaenyra does not sit. She walks towards the hearth, drawing off her gloves and holding out her hands to warm them. The setting sun dies a fiery death in her hair, and the porcelain of her cheek is ruddy with flame. He can look his fill at her from this angle, at least.

“I did not come here for a touching family reunion, Uncle. I came here with a purpose.”

Oh, very well. If they must do this. Has she grown? Is she thinner? Not sadder, at least not at the moment, filled with the inspiring brand of anger that keeps grief at bay that Daemon is kind enough to continually provide.

“And what would that be?”

“To persuade you to give up the unlawful occupation of my seat.”

He laughs. She is five-and-ten now. He had ignored her birthday, unable to stand the thought of not seeing her face when she received his gift. “How’s my dear brother?”

“His burdens are much added to by your antics.”

“Mm. I simply thought to enliven his period of mourning with glad tidings. Weddings, babies—aren’t those the sort of things typically met with rejoicing? Not when it’s me, I suppose.”

Daemon was to have no family, no children. If Viserys and the rest actually thought there was any chance of him going to Runestone and getting a clutch of trueborn Targaryen princelings on Rhea, he had no doubt their eagerness to shuffle him off the scene to the Vale would quickly dim. He’d decided to test it.

“Not after you disobeyed his order to return to your lawful wife, after you fortified Dragonstone—”

“Which had been allowed to lapse into a fearful state, I assure you. The base from which our house won the Seven Kingdoms should always be ready should someone come along with any ideas about relieving us of it.”

“Planning to launch another invasion from here, are you? The king’s rightful heir?

She turns her back to the fireplace to glare at him. Before the Iron Throne, lords from every corner of the realm had knelt to swear obeisance to her. No such honor had ever been afforded Daemon in all his years as heir. Was he not to even have his anger, a futile revenge in word if not deed?

“The night I was banished I had two thousand armed men loyal only to me all over King’s Landing. I know almost every passage Maegor carved into his keep and I could have had your father, you, Hightower, every cunt on the council slaughtered in their beds and my ass on the Iron Throne before the first cockcrow. Yet here you stand.”

“You wouldn’t have kept it,” Rhaenyra shoots back without any delay for maidenly outrage.

“And you wouldn’t have been alive to see me lose it.”

There were other, better uses he might have had for his deposed brother’s daughter as a girl rather than a corpse. But this is all fantasy, so let him imagine here at least he could have ever brought himself to slit her throat in his spurned fury. He would have done it himself, of course. He would let no common guardsman touch that column now agleam with reflected light.

“And yet you turned tail to come here and sulk instead of obeying your king’s commands.”

“I might change my mind.”

“You wouldn’t succeed. And no one even loses any sleep over it. Why else do you think you’ve been allowed to throw your impotent tantrum here for half a year?”

“Why not let it continue? Why let my joyous news ruffle their feathers so?”

And, observe! What a panic the idea of even the offspring of a lowborn wife of dubious legal standing, or, he is not so stupid as to not know would actually be the case, one of his bastards, had them all in.

“It was an insult and you know it. You intended it.”

He had laughed penning that letter, crossing things out here, inserting a hidden jab there, endlessly revising, honing it. He’d painstakingly crafted a slim, wicked blade pared finally of anything not perfectly balanced to slice everyone he could imagine would hear its words. His niece included.

“Sending me to the Vale like a misbehaving boy was the insult. Replacing me as heir with a—”

It burns him.

“What? Say it.”

“A little girl,” he snaps. Another minor, pointless cruelty for this child who has supplanted him, who is right in her arrogant lack of fear. A cruelty that lessens him in the bargain—as if they are yoked together.

Rhaenyra flinches. “Yes,” she sneers. “They all prefer a little girl to you.”

If only Daemon could believe them wise enough to see what he sees as she kindles before him. Had he ever seen it before this? His niece had always burned brighter for him than other people. But on that bridge, she’d seared.

Just a little girl, a fucking baby. And yet.

“They prefer someone they can control.”

“I am the blood of the dragon,” she says, goaded, emboldened, determined. The fire is no longer reflected in her eyes, but that is not needed for them to blaze up, alight. “If that is their fancy, they will soon find that they are mistaken.”

Daemon smiles. He cannot do otherwise. “How are you, Rhaenyra?”

She sways toward his wretchedly soft voice like a reed in the wind, but only says stiffly, “As the heir to the throne I must ask you to give up my seat—”

So proud, so unyielding—but she’s holding onto that prickly dignity by a thread. Rhaenyra has come to make him bend, and she has. She has had her victory. But now it is his turn. He presses on.

“Yes, yes, that old farce. Your father won’t lift a finger against me. He’s weak.”

“I am Princess of Dragonstone—”

“He has so named you, and yet here I am in your seat, and he lets me pollute it for six turns of the moon. A nice defense of his new heir, don’t you think?”

The truth of it rocks her on her heels. “I—”

Gently, brutally: “How have you found it then? Your new role.”

The dam bursts at last. “The heir,” she laughs miserably. “We all know it’s a joke, don’t we? Is that what you want me to say? It was done only to spite you.”

“Hm.”

“Go on, gloat.”

It was as he’d suspected. Viserys had done something out of emotional impulse and failed to follow through. He’d painted a target on Rhaenyra’s back for spite, and Daemon would bet he did nothing to secure her position so she might actually hope to keep it.

“Does he let you sit at his council?”

Rhaenyra takes a few steps towards him, rests her hands on the back of the chair next to his. She looks at him for a moment. He looks back, and waits. “He lets me pour their wine.”

“Ah.”

Contrary, prideful, Rhaenyra pushes back. “It’s an honorable position. Many noble boys take such a role as they are groomed to inherit.”

“Indeed. But it reads differently for you, because you are a girl. They are used to you pouring their wine as the king’s pet. It marks no break.”

“Yes. And when I dare speak—”

“They never loved it much when I spoke up either, Rhaenyra. As you point out, they find even you more acceptable.”

“Easier to control.”

“Yes, well, and the added bonus of getting rid of me.”

Rhaenyra tilts her head, peers questioningly at him with a confused wrinkle between her brows. Daemon supposes she's never heard him speak this baldly, this bitterly. He’d thought about it before. Neither of them were the thing Viserys wanted. Now Rhaenyra was elevated to cast him down, and he should take some satisfaction in at least knowing it was no true victory for her at all.

“We are longer cursed with you,” she says with a small smile. Hm. Not quite this baldly.

“Yes, the gods answered your prayers, but not the way you expected.”

With a lighter laugh, Rhaenyra finally sits down. Daemon pours her some wine and leans back in his seat, smiling a little too. He raises his glass ironically at her, and makes eye contact with the servant in the corner, who leaves to begin bringing in the meal.

“So what do they do when you speak? No, first—what do you say?”

She still hesitates.

“Please, take pity on me. I have been pining away for Lord Beesbury’s great-grandfatherly wisdom.”

More laughter to add to his hoard. “There’s trouble in the Stepstones, as I’m sure you know, and endless dithering about what to do. I suggested sending dragons as a show of force, to try to convince the Triarchy of the foolishness of war.”

“Very good.”

Rhaenyra looks surprised, suspicious, and a bit pleased. “It is,” she insists. Not letting it show, or so she thinks.

“I agree.”

“Well, they looked at me as if I’d grown a second head.”

“They often gave me the same look.”

“But you’re a man, and you sat at that table with them, and you were expected to speak. And I’m a little girl, only wanted to fill their cups. It’s not the same.”

Two of Dragonstone’s faithful old retainers file in, set down plates before them.

“It is and it isn’t.” Daemon turns it over in his mind. He thinks he grasps some of the problem. If Daemon was just a feckless second son, they all felt free to ignore him. If he tried to be anything more, it was read as grasping ambition. If she is just a girl, they would disregard her. If she is the dragon, how wary they will grow. “The dragons make them nervous. We make them nervous. Viserys included. Wary of our power, desperate to conciliate, to please everyone. Not realizing they won’t be pleased, not until all the dragons are gone and everything that makes us us gone with them. We are still strangers in a strange land. Yes, they don’t expect you to speak, but I have a feeling even if they did they wouldn’t care for what you had to say. Your father doesn’t know you’re here. Does he?”

“We?”

“You didn’t ask permission this time. It would never have been granted. Your big bad uncle made a perfect mess for you to swoop in and fix—”

“How kind of you.”

“—and smart girl that you are, you remembered you are a dragon.”

“I am the heir! Let everyone there today remember it was I who prevented bloodshed.”

“Exactly right.”

“You did me no favors. Let you remember that too. I knew you were hotheaded enough and bored enough and discontented enough to start a war when Otto Hightower provoked you and then even my weak father would have had no choice but to destroy you.”

Fondness floods him at the heat in her voice. He still smarts with the humiliation of this day. But he was not lessened, not by this little girl. If it was at her hands, he could live with being saved from himself, his own desire to watch it all burn to ash. They could survive it, because she was worthy.

“I’m touched.”

She glances down at her yet untouched food. “I find I am rather short on family these days. I would regret even you.”

“Rhaenyra—”

“Don’t,” she says, angry again. “You have no right. You insulted my dead brother.”

The heir for a day. Viserys had been so caught up in his search for a son he neglected this perfect girl. No one would believe it of him, but mixed in with Daemon’s own churning resentment of the way his brother scorned him had been the memory of Rhaenyra cradled against his heart as she cried.

“So Otto Hightower told you.”

“Why? Did he lie?”

“I’m saying he never says anything without carefully weighing the benefit to him. And I’m saying this benefited him. With me gone and with it whatever limited influence I had on your father the path is that bit clearer for whatever it is he’s planning.”

“Planning? He’s not planning anything.”

“Oh, he is. What’s he been up to?”

“Serving the realm.”

“Hm. Of course, if I am quickly provoked to anger, it is not because he has any intent to provoke. He volunteered to come himself, didn’t he? I’m sure Viserys wanted to clout me about the ear himself, but such a faithful servant as Otto could not permit it.”

“Wanted big brother to notice you?”

How efficiently Daemon had been discarded, life going on in King’s Landing without him, the problem cleared away. He could only try to remind them he exists and could be a problem. He knew it was useless—that all he could achieve was his death. The most he could hope for was taking Otto out with him and in that moment it had seemed worth it. What else was there to hope for now? What was the point? Had he thought he’d actually achieve Viserys’ notice? Not really. Rhaenyra had noticed, of course. He had gotten to her, and she was not so inert as to let it pass. But still he never imagined his brother’s treasure would come, because he knew well she would never be allowed. Rhaenyra had not cared. They should lock this girl up or she would make them notice her.

“I’m sure I’ve been wiped from his mind. I’m sure he’s wondering where you’ve gotten to right about now.” Or die trying. “Or perhaps not.”

Her head jerks under the blow, but she ignores it. “Seriously, Uncle? Banished here, and all you can do is brood on the wounds Otto inflicted on your pride?”

“You just showed him you will not be so easily controlled as he imagines. I’m sure he’s been spinning his web, but now the weaving will get faster. He likes having Viserys under his thumb. Will he have you under his thumb?”

“No.”

“Just so. Then what is the lay of the land at court?”

“You just want to help me, is that it? Or are you trying to control me as well?”

“You didn't just show up Otto. You showed me up as well.” Would she have him say it? Would she have that from him as well, in plain words, what he had ceded to her?

She gazes steadily at him. She must find whatever it is she searches for because she says, “I might not get to enjoy my supremacy over you for very long. You may soon have company as a discarded heir.”

“Viserys intends to remarry.”

Rhaenyra nods. “Yes. And once he has a son…”

“So that is Hightower’s game.”

“What?”

“His pretty young daughter. Brought up as your bosom friend, and that might prove useful to him someday, but its true purpose is to put her under the eye of the most powerful lords in the realm. And now the king himself finds himself lacking a wife.”

His niece is shaking her head. “No. No! Alicent? She is my friend, we were raised as close as sisters. She is but five-and-ten—”

She blanches.

“What is it?”

“It is the Lady Laena who has been put forth as a match.”

Daemon snorts. “That doesn’t surprise me. And how old is Lady Laena again?”

“My father hesitates because of her youth,” Rhaenyra says delicately.

“But he does consider it.”

“That would be the wise match. It makes sense.”

“Don’t echo pieties from the small council. What do you think of it?”

Rhaenyra chews at her bottom lip. “We need the Velaryon fleet. She has Targaryen blood, and may yet be a dragonrider. It is a good match for the realm…”

“But…”

“Not for me,” Rhaenyra says, warming up. “Any son of Laena’s would have the backing of Velaryon wealth, Velaryon ships. And Corlys is ambitious, and Rhaenys still seethes that she was not chosen at the Great Council. My father has said he intends to keep me as his heir, but he might be pressured to change that. Lord Corlys is of strong will, and he can dangle the withdrawal of his fleets as a potent threat. And yet…”

“And yet?”

“Alicent?” Rhaenyra says in agony.

“On what grounds do you object? To having your friend as stepmother, or would Otto Hightower be a more formidable opponent than Corlys Velaryon?”

His niece appears stricken, but taking a deep breath, she works it through: “I’m not sure. Oldtown is powerful, and there are not the bonds of heritage and intermarriage we have with the Velaryons to stay their hand. And Otto has a greater influence on my father. You are right about that much. He relied on his experience when he came to the throne. I think he might find it easier to resist Corlys.”

“Very good. So what should you do about it?”

“What can I do about it?” she cries. “I can hardly convince him not to remarry. He doesn’t even let me speak up in council—”

“Easy. Think. Your father is easily swayed, but not by you.” Or me. “You have to approach it differently. What is the point of your father making a new marriage?”

“Heirs,” she replies instantly. “Even if he doesn’t intend to replace me, if anything were to happen to me…”

“And I am unlikely to provide him with legitimate heirs. Even were I to find myself back in his favor. So who else might?”

It takes her only a moment. “Me.”

Daemon has to swallow back bile. “Yes. Viserys grieves. He loved your mother. He is in no rush to remarry, and neither is he in a rush to lose you to your husband. He needs to pacify Corlys and his hopes of a throne.”

“Laenor? But he is…”

At least, from what Daemon has observed, the boy will get no joy from Rhaenyra in his bed. Still, it’s for the best that Daemon’s exile means he will not be seeing his young cousin anytime soon.

“The equipment still works.”

“I don’t wish to marry!”

“You must.” Rhaenyra’s jaw sets stubbornly. “You must, Rhaenyra, if you wish to rule. Suggest a long engagement. Buy yourself some time. Your father will be so relieved that someone else presented him with a solution he will grasp at it gratefully and forcefully and you will have as much as six months of resolution to possibly figure out something more to your liking.”

“Like what? Poisoning every girl of noble birth in King’s Landing?”

“This is my advice. Take it or not.”

Rhaenyra blinks down at her plate, toys with her fork. “The heir to the realm, and yet I still must marry.”

“Yes. But you see, you might make it so you get something in the bargain.”

“So my father has always said. He will ensure I have the love of a worthy man. Children to love.” She forces love past her teeth as if it is the vilest insult.

“Love is what any father would want for his daughter, is it not? Or so I must imagine. No, Rhaenyra, listen to me,” he says with as much sincerity as he can muster. “In your position, you can purchase something by selling yourself. Most of us get sold, and we don’t get a say in the deal. As a result it’s often not worth it.”

“Yours helped buy my father’s throne. Didn't it?”

“And yours can buy yours. Get the Velaryons on your side.”

“Was it worth it?”

Daemon smiles, sharp enough to cut. “Who wouldn’t want to be a king’s brother?”

Night has fallen as they sat and planned Rhaenyra’s future once she flies away from here. Daemon watches her slump in her seat, exhausted by her exertions.

“You’ll have to stay the night.”

She sits upright. “I—my father—”

“Is probably already furious, but he would be even more so if something happened to you after I let you fly at night. And then your efforts to save me today will have been for naught. Let me return you to your father safely.”

“Oh, alright.”

“How are you, Rhaenyra?” he tries again.

She shakes her head, denying him. “I’m fine,” she grits out.

She has been so strong, so fierce. She can’t let anyone see her weak.

A more precise thrust. “How is the Red Keep, without your mother?”

“Fucking terrible,” she snarls, twisting her napkin in her hands. “It’s fucking terrible, uncle, is that what you want to hear?”

“If it's terrible, yes.”

“No,” she says. “No. I’m not—I'm still mad at you!”

“That's fine. I'm not very pleased with you either.”

“I should never have come,” she announces fretfully, standing up from her chair.

“You are a dragon,” he says, staring up into her enormous eyes as they drink in the candle flame. “Not a stupid little girl. I know. But—such a small dragon.” He opens his arms, his own heart thundering like the beating of a multitude of wings. “A baby dragon. Just—a little hatchling—”

With a cry, Rhaenyra flies into them.

His arms close around her with a great sigh from his own mouth. He wishes he had wings, suddenly, to cover her entirely, shield her, hide her.

She throws her arm around his neck and buries her face in his throat. She does not weep this time, but she clings, her tiny fingers scratching at his shoulders, winding in his hair.

Rhaenyra does not want to surrender, but in this moment, he surrenders too. If she is lessened, so is he. Yoked together. He has thought of this often in this exile, no matter how hard he tried to forget how right she felt tucked into him like this. He is weakened by how deeply he's wanted it, that no matter how angry he was, this is what he yearned for. Her in his arms. And she is weakened too, and that is why she trembles against him, groaning as if it hurts. She is not the heir to the Seven Kingdoms, not here, because she is small and scared and sad and he could just—he slides his hand around her throat, feels her juddering pulse against his palm—snap her neck so easily—caresses the artery he could open with his thumb, yes, that's how he'd do it, quick—but neither is he, he is nothing with his lips worshipful against her hair, because he can't, he can't.

-

“I’ll leave you to your bath,” Daemon says.

“No!” Rhaenyra’s protest is loud enough the attendant emptying the last ewer of hot water into the bath startles and splashes some on the floor. “You can’t leave a baby to take a bath alone,” his niece mutters as the maidservant scuttles away. “I might drown.”

Daemon’s laugh sounds deranged to his own ear as he drags his hand down face. He supposes he’d started this. Had he started this? He knows he should at least end it: tell her she has attendants to make sure the heir to the throne does not drown in her bath. He should suggest that Mysaria stay with her—when he and Rhaenyra entered there she’d been, trunk wide and clothing strewn everywhere. Rhaenyra had darted curious glances her way while pretending to ignore her. Mysaria would smack him for making her dance attendance on his niece but he feels the preemptive spite that comes from knowing he’s finally driven her away, that she will leave him as soon as she decides where she’s going next.

“Leave us,” is what he says instead. The serving girl exits quickly, but Mysaria, leaning with her arms crossed angrily against the wall, just raises a scornful eyebrow at him. Temporarily kicking her out of the chambers she has occupied with him for the last six months will have to suffice as revenge. “You too.”

She looks disbelievingly at him, then casts a questioning glance at Rhaenyra, a disgusted one back at him—a disappointed one.

He only grunts and jerks his chin in the direction of the door. Let her think of him what she will. If she doesn’t understand after everything they’ve been to one another that he’d rather die than hurt Rhaenyra, so be it.

But Mysaria only sighs and the disappointment is chased away by something he might almost call fondness. Then, inexplicably, she steps forward and brushes her lips lightly across his cheek. Then she’s gone.

Daemon leans against the wall she’s vacated, looking at Rhaenyra standing in the middle of the room, her arms limp at her sides.

“Do babies need help undressing too?” he says with a smirk to cover the rapid thud of his heart.

“Obviously,” Rhaenyra says.

“I don’t know much about babies, princess. I’m a poor choice of caretaker.”

Her eyes beseech him. She asks. “Please, uncle. Just for tonight, I need—”

She stands still as he slowly unhooks her from her riding habit. Of course, it’s not only tonight. Rhaenyra rarely dresses or undresses by herself. But it is different to have him do it, it is satiating some need when he quietly says, “Lift your arms up,” and she obeys so he can pull her shirt over her head and leave her bare before him.

He looks at her. He is going to wash this body, so it would be a tedious delusion to refrain. She is beautiful, a maiden on that tender cusp of womanhood the songs make so much fuss about. Her high small breasts with their rosy nipples. The sweet pudge of her belly. The elegant arc of her calf.

His bed is right there. They have discussed her impending, destined marriage tonight. She is untouched and fervid with a potential she perhaps does not yet know lives right beneath her skin. He could free it, stroke that pliant flesh until it rose to the surface.

“Get in the bath, sweetling,” he says, voice hoarse.

“It might be too hot.” He rolls his eyes but dips his fingers in the scalding water.

“It’s perfect for a little dragon. Here.” She takes his offered arm and clings to it as she lifts one leg over the edge of the tub and then the next and sinks with a hiss into the water.

He works the soap into a lather with the cloth, rubs at her back, the shoulders curving away from him as she rests her head on her knees.

“It’s horrible. It’s been horrible,” she says thickly, face shrouded by her hair.

“I know.”

“It's like it’s not just mother who died, but father too. The whole keep. And me. Like I’m dead too.”

“Sit back,” Daemon instructs, and she does when he lightly touches her shoulder, so her front is revealed to him, her wet eyes. He runs the cloth down her throat. He doesn’t know if his hands have ever made movements quite this gentle, this careful, as he soaps her breast, slides it in the crease beneath.

“And you. Like you’re dead, or like you never existed.” Her voice cracks.

“I’m not dead. And neither are you.”

Rhaenyra breathes slowly, deeply, her eyes fluttering shut as she leans against the tub. His hand on her breast, and a warm, buoyant pleasure filling her body.

“Was he right to exile you?”

She doesn’t have to specify. Or ask if he’d said it.

“The heir for a day,” he says to her alone in much the same tone he had to that crowded room.

Her eyes open and lock on his. She nods frantically. “I don’t want it,” she whimpers. “I mean—if it meant having my mother and brother alive, I wouldn’t care about being heir. I wouldn’t.”

Daemon’s brother had no use for him if he wasn’t his heir. He had always known that. Not much use for him if he was, either.

“I know,” he says. “I know.” He smoothes her hair back from her forehead with his hand so he can look clearly into her face for the first time in months. “Let me wash your hair now.”

-

When he returns to his chamber after putting Rhaenyra to bed in the room she always occupied when the family fled to the island to escape the worst of King’s Landing’s summer heat—tucking the sheets up to her chin, a kiss on the forehead, her eyes slipping shut the second her head touched the pillow the only thing preventing her from asking him for a fucking bedtime story, probably—Mysaria is there, folding a dress into the trunk. He wanders over, bends down and plucks up a bracelet of sapphires he recognizes as having last adorned his grandmother’s wrinkled wrist.

“Yes. Just the family heirloom I would have picked for my new bride." Mysaria’s hand reaches out, wanting to snatch it back. He smiles, sad. “I’ll take you wherever you want on Caraxes on the morrow. Don’t waste this on boat fare. It’ll fetch you a fortune in the capital.” He fastens it around her outstretched wrist.

“My prince…”

“I was serious, you know. About marrying you.” He hasn’t let go of her hand. He rubs his thumb over the back of her hand, pleased with how beautifully the jewels adorn her graceful arm.

“I know. That is why I must go.”

“I am not so enticing a lover disinherited and with little hope of a crown, I gather.”

When he glances back up at her face, she’s rolling her eyes. “I came to this horrible island with you—”

“The sticking point is where you would be forced to play hostess? I see.”

“—waiting to see what would happen. It did not matter if you were no longer the king’s heir. You were still Daemon Targaryen. You can make the world what you wish it to be. Not many have that power.”

He moves towards the window and laughs, listening to the waves crash against the shore, seeing nothing. “I really cannot.”

“Yes. I see that now.”

“Do you? What would you have me do, my dear? Do you fancy being whore to some mercenary captain in pay of Volantis?”

“You would not be the first man to be a king even without being the king’s heir.”

“A rebel’s whore does not seem to me any security from fear. Or a usurper king’s. Power, is that what you want? I don't know if one ever truly buys the other.”

Is that what you would have me give you? I can’t, I can’t.

Daemon turns back to her. He feels very close to her, and yet she is a mystery to him. She does not respond to this, does not share with him whatever it is she has discovered about her own wants. “I cannot make up for your family, Daemon. I cannot be your family.”

“How would you even know what it’s like? You told me you never had one,” he says snidely.

“Is she your daughter or are you in love with her?” Mysaria replies, unperturbed.

“Why not both?”

Let her think he surpasses even the rest of his family in perversity. Perhaps he does. He can still feel Rhaenyra’s soft breast under his fingers. But he’d given her some good, fatherly advice tonight, hadn’t he? Selfless, disinterested. That’s what paternal love should be, no? Marry Laenor Velaryon. Secure your throne, and Viserys’ love in the bargain. You will get neither if I do as I want, and keep you here, to feed and kiss and wash and cuddle, by marrying you as my second wife as Maegor did.

“You have a family still,” she says, moving about the room, erasing herself from it. “If that is what you want. She’s in the next room.”

“I return her to her father tomorrow.”

“Then make peace with him.”

Daemon's lips twist, but he says nothing. Mysaria sighs. She does let him fuck her one last time. Nice of her.

-

Sometime in the depths of the night, Rhaenyra shakes him awake with her hand on his shoulder. “Uncle, I’ve had a nightmare,” she whispers, and suddenly it is ten years ago, he is one-and-twenty, and his niece spurned the comfort of her father and mother to crawl into bed with him when she dreamed Balerion’s giant skull had gobbled her right up. As solace he’d said: You’re a dragon. You’re a Targaryen. He never would have eaten you. He would eat whoever you told him to.

He can feel Mysaria’s outrage at his back, but he simply lifts back the sheet so Rhaenyra can crawl in and nestle against his naked body.

-

“You did not succeed, princess. I have not agreed to give up your seat. I’m sorry. Still, one of two isn’t bad.”

The Dragonmont, morning. Rhaenyra in her riding leathers once more, her hand on Syrax’s neck.

“It is not a failure. It is a strategic surrender.”

“Oh?”

Rhaenyra turns away from him to watch her hand petting at her dragon’s scales. “Yes. Because you see, if I convinced you to give it up and make peace with my father and come home, he might make you heir again.”

Her voice breaks at the end. A dragon. Such a little dragon.

“Ah. Very wise.”

“But I don’t want to go,” she chokes out, spinning around again.

“I know,” he says, the words barely audible. It would be quite easy to get her to stay. If he pulled her into his arms again, he thinks she wouldn’t be able to tear herself away. So, as he says, “But you’re my strong, brave girl—the little dragon who took everything from me—” he limits himself to one, brief press of his lips to hers and sends her into the sky.