Chapter 4: The Next Day

“It came on very quickly. He’d already lost two fingers to wounds from sitting the Throne, and then he lost a third. The maesters removed it, but the rot had spread. A fever of the blood, they called it.”

The wind tries to whip her words away. Very early that morning, with dawn still only a promise, Daemon had unwillingly disentangled himself from Rhaenyra’s arms so he might slip out before anyone found them abed and got the sadly wrong idea. He’d found parchment and ink at her desk and written her a note in High Valyrian: meet me at the Dragonpit when you awake.

They had flown out to the headland outside the city where Rhaenyra had once ordered her dragon to immolate her mother, and then, more recently, her father. They walk alone together along the sheared rim of the coast between the water and the sky.

“Did he suffer?” This is all Daemon can find within himself to say. Only to Rhaenyra could he ever hope to express the rending grief that had wracked him when the messenger brought the news of his brother’s passing. Apparently he’d nearly beaten the man to death; he didn’t remember it, or the succeeding hours. But even to her—he could not.

“He was delirious at the end. He mistook me for my mother, most of the time. When he wasn’t mistaking me for you.”

Part of him had wanted to ask if his brother had said anything about him in his last days, if, knowing he neared his end—had he known?—had prompted him to leave any message for Daemon. He could not decide which answer would be more unbearable, so, craven, he had refrained from forcing himself to learn.

Learning that Viserys was so finally finished with Daemon that his name had not passed his lips once, could surely not produce a greater shaft of agony than this, the knowledge that he had, in the end, cursed him or called for him.

And which of those options would be worse?

“What did he have to say to me?” He finally manages to venture when it is clear Rhaenyra will not continue.

“Nothing,” she says. “Just your name. Over and over.”

It stops him in his tracks. He nearly bends over at the waist with the force of it.

Daemon wants to ask Rhaenyra how he said it. She could be a mouth to form exactly the sounds of his brother saying his name for the last time so he might attempt to divine love or hatred or condemnation or yearning or disgust in it.

“Ah,” he says.

“That’s it?” Rhaenyra says, wounded and incredulous. “That’s all you have to say?”

“What would you have me say?”

Once she had cried in his arms for her mother. She had wept last night for the queendom she had attained but still felt beyond her grasp. Her face is bleak now, but she had shed her tears for her father without him while in the Narrow Sea Daemon tapped into a rage so consuming he had felt quite ready to die to vent it.

“Anything! He’s dead. He was your brother, and he’s dead.” Then, the challenge: “Or do you rejoice in his death? Did you hate him that much?”

“I wonder,” Daemon lashes back, switching into High Valyrian. “If he would have had any tears to spare for me if I’d fallen in the Stepstones.”

His brother was dead. He’d died with things unresolved between the two of them. It could never be made right, and Daemon did not have enough delusion to madden himself with fantasies that if only Viserys had lived it was a simple matter of time and opportunity to make it so. He could not decide whose duty it would even have been to begin the work of repair, but it didn’t matter either way. He knew himself. He knew Viserys.

Daemon had disappointed his brother. Daemon might also say that Viserys had disappointed him first.

But it did not matter.

“You very nearly did die,” Rhaenyra replies hotly, coming toward him, crowding into his space. “Baiting the Crab.”

She sounds scornful, but she had congratulated him with the rest the other day. He had enjoyed having his niece’s adoring eyes on him once more as he turned an act of thoughtless despair, of sheer stubborn spite against Viserys and the Stranger both, into a thrilling tale of his daring.

Now she is close enough to touch him. She puts her palm over the part of his burns visible above his collar. A bit of flesh to bait the crab, and who to miss it?

The anger ebbs from her. With a tentative glance, she winds her arms around his waist and lays her cheek against his chest, stiff as if he might possibly rebuff her.

He understands. Whatever this is—this new and yet now recurrent standard where they apparently touch each other freely, on impulse, feels fragile. Even when she was a child, it wasn’t like this. Daemon always knew he had Rhaenyra on loan. His brother controlled access to his daughter, and someday she would belong to her husband—and Viserys had determined that would not be Daemon. When she reached young womanhood he was no longer allowed to touch her, this future property of some other man. An uncle could only really have a niece for a short, proscribed time. Now, she is no longer a child, and as Viserys had wanted, and even though he is dead, Daemon is not her husband. He wraps his arms around her anyway, squeezes until her entire small frame seems to sigh into his.

“I'm not dead. My brother—” He can't even say the words. He rubs his cheek angrily against the top of her head.

“I watched him die. The maesters, Alicent, they all tried to get me to leave, to rest. But I wasn’t there when my mother died. I didn’t even get to see her after. He did suffer. He was in great pain, and all I could do was wipe his forehead with a stupid wet towel and help shift him when they changed his soaked linens.”

“You kept vigil beside him. That’s a hard thing.”

“I thought he might say something to me. I couldn’t leave, unless he did that. That’s all.”

“It doesn’t matter why. It’s a hard thing. A well-done thing, Rhaenyra.”

Viserys had not died alone. His daughter’s cool fingers against his brow, her hand holding his. That is something. He is glad of it.

He’d been unable to bear his own father’s deathbed. Baelon had died in agony. He might say it was because he was young, but here and now a shameful part of himself is grateful he’d not been at his brother’s.

Daemon had come close to dying several times over, a warrior’s end amidst blood and flame, and closer yet to perishing on his back, shitting himself and crying out who knows what in his own delirium from his burns.

Far from home, far from what family remained to him, far from her. He can make some guesses on who he might have called for, and what might have been heard in the futile summons, although there had only been a Pentoshi barber-surgeon to hear it.

“I was waiting for you,” Rhaenyra says, the words muffled as she turns her face into his chest. “I thought we could—share it. No one else…people are sad. It’s even genuine. He was a kind king, a kind man. Everyone says so. But it’s not—they aren’t—”

They were not the blood of the dragon.

Rhaenyra had finally collapsed under the weight of losing her mother on hearing Daemon’s voice. He could give her her own tears, then. Is that what she wants now? Or did she want him to weep, to bow under this desolation and press his forehead to her shoulder—

Then he is breathing in her scent, his nose against her neck: the soap she washes her hair with, leather, dragon. One hand moves up to his neck, nails scratching at his still strangely bare nape.

“I lost my brother a long time ago,” he admits. Mourning his brother—he would have to take himself back to Rhaenyra’s age. Younger, even. About as horribly, unbelievably young as what he is coming to think of as somehow the first time he took her into his arms.

A choking laugh into his own neck where they twine around each other. “I only just got him, I barely had him—”

She cuts herself off.

When he lifts his head to console himself with the sight of her, the cheek his thumb runs over is dry.

“Little dragon.”

“Why did you cut your hair?” Rhaenyra suddenly bursts out. Her fingers tug at the newly abrupt point where his shorn locks give way to fuzz. Daemon shivers.

“Getting Crabfeeder guts out of it proved difficult,” Daemon says wryly.

His niece nods knowingly. “Yes. It was hard with the boar as well.”

“The boar?”

“You're not the only one who has stories to share, uncle. I killed a boar. In the Kingswood. During a hunt for father’s name day. I washed most of the blood out in a stream, but I missed one spot near my ear and it took forever for Annora to untangle it. I should have just cut it.”

Daemon shudders in horror and Rhaenyra says, “See?”

“So you don’t like my hair cut?”

“No,” she says, so firmly he can’t help but laugh. She breaks away from him, reaching down to take his hand in hers.

“Then don’t talk about cutting yours.”

“I always liked your long hair.”

“I remember.”

Daemon, at eighteen, at twenty, and willing to let his small niece brush his hair whenever she asked, let her play with the strands, twirl them around her fingers while she jabbered.

“When I was little, there was nothing I loved more than brushing my mother’s hair. She didn’t have much patience for it. Or sometimes she was too great with child to sit on the floor in front of my chair so I could reach it. But when she allowed it…I remember how soft it was. I remember thinking it looked like the full moon reflected in the Blackwater. I felt so responsible. If I tugged too hard she would scold me, tell me to be gentle. Or sometimes she would stop me. But if I was very careful, very gentle, sometimes she would actually fall asleep. I liked that.” She dashes her hand across her eyes. “You were always a lot easier to convince.”

“Mm.”

He imagines putting his head in her lap once more as slowly, carefully, very gently, she worked out the tangles, pulled every hardened bit of dried blood from the strands until her nails turned brown with the residue of gore beneath them but his hair flowed like the moonstruck sea through her hands.

“The problem was, you so often weren’t around to be asked,” Rhaenyra continues angrily. “Oh, I know. You were a young man and I was a tiny child and you had more important things to do in a world I wasn’t supposed to know anything about.”

He has a feeling this wasn’t about the hair. “You were hardly neglected. Isn’t that why girls have companions? Didn’t you have Lady Strong’s locks to play with?”

“It was much less satisfying. It was thrilling to have an adult as a willing, very large doll.”

“I’m sorry you couldn’t put me in your cupboard, Rhaenyra.” He isn’t talking about the hair either, and he’s also not exactly joking.

“No, that’s exactly what it was like. Like you were kept in a cupboard under lock and key and occasionally it was opened and I was allowed to take you out.”

“I wasn’t in a cupboard.” All those girls and boys he’d fucked, all those brawls and scrapes in all those winesinks in all those cities, and Daemon, to Rhaenyra, lay in the dark, inert, lifeless. He shifts uncomfortably. How to tell her that’s sometimes what it felt like for him too, like being a little girl’s most beloved plaything was the moment he sprung to life?

“Obviously. And I knew that wasn’t what you were. I remember once my father walked in. I can even remember the song I was singing: pretty uncle, pretty uncle, oh pretty pretty uncle. He laughed. Mocked you. I felt so embarrassed. For you, and that I’d done something that made someone laugh at you. I could tell there was something he thought was ridiculous about the entire scene. Do you remember what you said?”

“No.”

“Of course not,” she mutters. “You said: you’re just jealous you aren’t pretty daddy, you old goat. Is he, Rhaenyra? And I laughed. I said, no, not pretty daddy! It delighted me, you inviting me to mock him in turn. He seemed genuinely hurt.”

So does she, and so does Daemon as he says with a bitter smile, “Poor Viserys.”

Hadn’t it given him pleasure once, Rhaenyra’s adoration for him, her marked preference? Hadn’t he earned it? He’d never wished for Rhaenyra to be anyone but herself.

“You were so patient with a little girl. Then. At least you showed up more than once every three months or so,” she says accusingly.

“That was not of my choosing.”

“Being given the City Watch made it impossible to come to court?”

“Otto Hightower—”

Rhaenyra scoffs in exasperation. “He did not actually succeed in ousting you from court.”

“So even as a child you picked up on the fact he wanted to.”

“This isn’t about Otto. You resented my father. He was your king, and your brother, and you came to despise him for it.”

“And since you have dismissed Otto and his sway as the reason, what is your theory for why that should be?”

“He commanded you. He could command you.”

“As was his right as my king, and as I recognized. I obeyed.”

“When it suited you.”

“Are you too still upset about me not returning to my Bronze Bitch?”

“Stealing my brother’s egg, occupying my seat, was this obedience?”

He sent me away! The cry remained silent. He can track Rhaenyra’s thoughts easily enough. She is his queen, and Daemon is hers to command, and Viserys before her had commanded him as his king, after all, and where had that led?

Daemon had wanted to be commanded. It was just that his brother commanded him incorrectly. In a way he supposed that isn’t a willingness to be commanded at all.

Still, he had gone. He had allowed himself to be sent.

“You are my queen,” he says steadily, “The only thing that can send me from your side is you.”

Her face shows he’s guessed right. Her mouth twists. “The King of the Narrow Sea, set to scrape drunks off the alleyways of Flea Bottom. Even that must be more exciting than whatever awaits you in the Red Keep. From a warrior to a—”

“A what?”

“—I enjoyed all the exciting tales from your travels as a child. Even relieving of rapers of their cocks is more thrilling than—”

His hand comes down on her arm. Daemon tugs Rhaenyra to him and she comes, grasping the fabric at his sides in her fists.

“Rhaenyra,” he says. “My girl.”

His niece’s lips tremble, but her voice is steady. “I don’t want to keep you by force. By command. If you wanted—I wouldn’t order you to—”

“You wouldn’t? If I decided to return to my lady wife at long last?”

“Oh, please—” she tries to pull away and Daemon holds her tighter. Her eyes close. A heady surge of satisfaction, of relief, thrills through him.

“What do you need me for? Ah. Of course. To command the City Watch.”

“Uncle. I need—”

“I think you would,” he says, smiling, “I think you will command me,” and he presses a kiss to her lips. She kisses him back. He cradles her head in his palms. He is very aware of her spine, the plate of her skull. After the Stepstones, fighting hand-to-hand on the deck of a Triarchy ship, he is even more familiar with exactly what it would take to destroy it. How hard it actually is, and also how easy. Her lips give under his with a little whine. All thoughts he might have expected of her naked under him in bed are quite far away: this is enough, her body against his, her life in his hands, and him treating it very, very gently, with featherlight kisses. “Oh, my baby, my baby girl—”

“I will,” she vows in a cracked, ardent whisper. “I would order you. I would command you.”

Daemon wants to be asked, as Rhaenyra wants to not have to ask. She does not have to ask, not anymore. She can order. She has before always had to ask—no, not even to ask, but to hope. That she might be allowed Daemon. And so he had, and to eventually let the hope wither away and die, that he would be granted Rhaenyra.

He thumbs the swell of her bottom lip. “My baby, with the keys to the cupboard at last.”

-

The place stinks. The blood-soaked sawdust is in need of a change. Unwashed bodies press close and laying atop that scent is a sickening perfume, cloying with roses, wafting from the cloak of some lordling standing in front of Daemon and Mysaria, with every shake of his fist as he cheers on his chosen fighter. He blocks Mysaria’s view but from the nauseated look on her face Daemon knows she doesn’t need to lay eyes on the scene Daemon is tall enough to observe with his own superior height in order to imagine it.

A girl who still appears shy of ten years, or perhaps simply very malnourished, launches herself at the larger boy whose feet she has just knocked out from under him with a devastating kick at his ankles. They grapple as he tries to rise, and he nearly succeeds in throwing her off before she buries her teeth in his cheek. His howls are drowned out by the raucous cries of excitement from the crowd, followed by cheers as the girl’s trainer pries her from her defeated opponent and hoists her atop his shoulders, her sharpened fangs dripping gore. The lordling groans and shoves between Daemon and Mysaria, having presumably lost his night’s drinking allowance to his poor bet. Daemon watches as the boy’s trainer enters the ring: though his face is stormy with disappointment, his hands are gentle as he pries the boy’s own from his torn face so he might assess the damage. “There now, she didn’t get your eye at least, we’ll get you stitched up, there’s a brave lad…”

Daemon’s stomach roils. With his hand on Mysaria’s elbow he steers them towards the exit, bending his head to whisper in her ear: “Inchfield was relieved of his post this afternoon. I’ll have full command of the Watch tomorrow. I’ll gather a detachment, and—”

Mysaria stops in her tracks and he stops with her. She moves them to a spot on the wall near the door, where they have a clear view of the whole wretched hellhole.

“Look again, my prince. What do you see?” Already two more small forms are circling each other in the ring. “Not there. Although I understand it does draw the eye.”

A lull as the spectators assess their options, and into it the jingle of coin as bets are slapped into the palm of the pretty, dirt-smudged girls taking bets. It’s the usual Flea Bottom riffraff in attendance. Then he thinks of the idiot in his velvet cloak who surely had his pocket picked in addition to losing his bet. He scans the faces and recognizes Jason Lannister among the crowd—wiser than the unknown fool, and dressed in drab, lion-less clothes that rendered him unrecognizable. He then lands on a Redwyne, and a Tarly, and—

“Men from high places with low tastes,” Daemon says.

“Yes. I fear this will not be so easy as your last attempt to sweep Flea Bottom,” Mysaria replies as she tugs him out the door.

It’s a relief to walk out into the purpling evening and breathe in the familiar aroma of cat piss, drunkard’s vomit, and pig dung.

“That did not meet with much approval either.”

“And no one you targeted with even a dream of a noble title or a rich father.”

He sighs heavily. “It is certainly no rarity for those in possession of those things to enjoy low company and loathsome pastimes. But I am guessing there is a story to such a concentration of worthies.”

“Indeed,” Mysaria says as they begin to weave their way through the streets. “In the last year, a man named Arthur Flowers has come to have his fingers in many…enterprises, in Flea Bottom, a brothel here, a cock-fighting ring there…”

“A child-fighting pit there. And I am guessing he is some lord’s bastard get—”

“Lord Tyrell’s himself, so they say.”

“Wonderful. So he has connections with deep pockets and delights to offer them. But why should I care about ruining their pleasures?”

“Destroying these amusements might make trouble for your little queen.”

“And this is something you care about?” Daemon asks dubiously. Mysaria had cheered his triumphs and lamented his setbacks, once, but that was when her fortune was directly bound up with his.

“She owes me a debt yet unpaid, remember?”

“So the Tyrells might take it amiss if I interfere with this byblow’s profits. I suppose angering the Reach is not politic, but it poses no risk to Rhaenyra. Those fat lords are too drunk on Arbor red to stir themselves for a money-grubbing bastard.”

“You’re right,” Mysaria says sharply. “I do not much care for whatever inconveniences your queen might face. I want it shut down. For good.”

“And me and my goldcloaks relieving this Flowers and whoever else involved in running it of their heads won’t achieve this?”

“The rich fathers might object to some of those heads.”

Daemon stops walking and they move into an alcove out of the way of the increased traffic in the streets as the sun goes down. The smell of cat piss increases.

“They aren’t just spectators.”

“No. I have many eyes and ears in many places and they tell me money is being made—for many. They can find other low pleasures, perhaps, but interfering with their profits will lead to pushback. If it becomes a battle in the halls of power…you will need the full backing of the crown for this.”

“And I can get it. I see.”

“Have you not had a touching reunion with your niece?”

“Just as you wanted. Your concern for my family affairs touches me.”

“How well I learned that your intimate dealings have consequences that reach far beyond your own petty squabbles.”

“Not for you, not anymore. You’re just a common whore once more.”

She bares her teeth at him. “Not any more. How well I also learned the limits of the skin-trade.”

“A not-so-common whore, then.”

“No. Not at all. And how well I know what happens in that keep affects what happens in Flea Bottom.”

Once, Mysaria had concerned herself with his petty squabbles because it was a part of their agreement that she be a listening ear. Daemon had tried to restrain himself, at least at the beginning—he knew what an absurd figure one cut, crying to the whore. Now she looks at him steadily, cooly assessing, weighing him up to see if he will be useful or a liability.

When he’d last stormed through these streets and cleansed it of thieves and rapers and murderers, had he expected his brother’s approval, the crown’s approval? Had he desired to please, or to provoke?

As the only man I trust to secure the city whose loyalty I desperately need to ensure the security of my reign. He does not want to disappoint Rhaenyra. The urge to have done with these tedious ditherings and unleash fire and blood surged through him. But—a little patience.

Not least because if Mysaria still needs him to access the halls of power, he still needs her. You have no allies at court but me, Viserys had said, and how right he’d been, although it’s not like he himself was actually much of one. And Rhaenyra…a little dragon, as yet. In need of him, as Viserys had been. In need of these teeming streets—he inhales in the murk, and feels that despite the foul miasma he breathes easier here than on Aegon’s High Hill—and Daemon is able to secure them for her.

“Alright. I will bring it to the attention of the queen. And one more thing to put me further in your debt—you’ll like that—do you have any eyes and ears in those high places? There’s something I need looking into.”

-

Daemon raps softly on the hidden door to Rhaenyra’s chamber. Before parting at the Dragonpit that afternoon, she told him she would send her attendants away, but absent the fever he’d been in the night before he can afford to be cautious.

He steps back as Rhaenyra swings the door open. His smile dies away when he catches sight of Hightower’s daughter seated on one of the couches, Daemon having obviously interrupted a chat over some wine.

“Lady Strong,” Daemon says, pausing on the threshold.

“Alicent was just leaving, uncle,” Rhaenyra says, stepping back from him in turn so he can enter her chamber.

“My prince,” the girl says, bobbing a curtsy in his direction and accepting the goodnight kiss on the cheek Rhaenyra hastens across the room to bestow before slipping out the main door.

“Don’t look like that,” Rhaenyra says. She has undressed to a nightgown and robe, but her hair is wrapped around her head in intricate braids strung through with jewels.

“If it is not advisable that the court—especially certain members of the court—to know I visit you of an evening, in your chambers, alone—”

“We share everything.”

“She didn’t share her father’s plans with you.”

“She did when I confronted her. She’d wanted to tell me.”

As he removes his belt and lays it on a table, he watches from the corner of his eye as his niece comes toward him with comb and brush outstretched in her hand. “Will—will you undo my hair? And—brush it?”

Rhaenyra sounds almost shy. That warmth fills him, so much headier than any wine that he fears becoming addicted to it. Daemon nods and goes to the couch, sitting in the place Alicent had vacated. He pushes a cushion to the floor between his feet and gestures for Rhaenyra to sit on it.

She perches on his lap instead.

Slowly, he raises his hand and unpins one of her braids, unplaiting it. His baby doll down from the cupboard, except real dolls don’t wriggle on laps and sigh with pleasure as some of the tension on their skull is released, get in the way of their owner’s hands when they reach up a questing finger to itch under the coils of their coiffure.

“What‘s all this for? Ambassadors from Dorne to be entertained? Representatives of the Iron Bank to be dined?”

He is accustomed to the straight flow of her hair, the simple lines of her gowns that shift like water with her quick movements.

“Nothing special,” Rhaenyra says. “The usual courtiers. It just—looks more grown up, don’t you think?”

“Lovely,” he confirms, unloosing the last twist and combing his fingers through it, massaging the place on her scalp where it pinched. “But tedious, I imagine.”

“Tedious is the word. What were you doing?”

“Getting reacquainted with the city. Your report from Mysaria is a good place to start. She took me to one of those child-fighting pits you mentioned.”

“You went with Mysaria?” The wriggling stops.

“If the crown is to get anything done there, she’s a valuable ally to have.”

“Can we trust her? I suppose we have been. But I mean, after all, she did…”

“What?”

“Decline to continue sharing your bed,” Rhaenyra says primly. “So I’ve heard.”

“Mm. It’s best to trust no one. But Mysaria is a practical girl. As long as we’re useful to her, she’ll be useful to us. Having the ear of the throne suits her very well.”

Rhaenyra is quiet for a moment, and then she continues briskly: “I can’t even imagine it. Children with filed teeth…”

“Be glad you can’t.”

She twists in his lap so she can look him in the eye, “I want to be able to imagine it. To not have to imagine it would be even better. I am the queen, and this is my city, and I know hardly anything about it. About anything.”

Braavos, is it really a city where everyone goes around by water? Alyssa’s Tears—is it really only mist when it reaches the valley floor? Is it true that some of the stews in Flea Bottom have dog meat in them? When did you kill your first man, and what was it like? His niece’s appetite for knowledge had been bottomless, but he’d done his best to satiate it.

“I will tell you. I’ll make my report to the small council tomorrow, but if you’d like I’ll come break my fast with you and we can discuss it then. But tonight”—with a hand at her jaw he turns her head back around—“what are you?”

He feels a tremor quake through her body. “A baby.”

“That’s right.”

Then there is a silence filled only with her steady breathing and the crackle of the hearth, where small bodies ripping themselves apart for men’s amusement seem farther away than they are. Unimaginable.

“I’m not, though,” she says sleepily. “A baby. No matter what some may think, I—”

“Whose baby?”

A shaky exhale. “Yours.”

“And who am I?”

“My uncle. Daemon.”

“So?”

“Your baby,” Rhaenyra whispers. “Uncle’s baby,”

“That’s right. You’re my baby, my rūs riña. Who else dares to think you’re anything less than a dragon?”

“Otto Hightower,” she mutters. “I know, I know, but—for now, he is my Hand, and I want to complain to you without—”

“Then I will say this just once. Should you get tired of his insults, he’ll find them difficult to express without his head. You only have to say the word. In the meantime…”

She giggles. No wringing of hands, no chiding at this foolhardy declaration. Daemon knew well that he could not summarily execute the younger brother of the Lord of Oldtown, and also he would if she asked.

Anyway, he can afford to bide his time. He’d asked Mysaria before they parted earlier if she had any eyes and ears in the Red Keep itself. Daemon does not trust Otto and his brother’s death nags at him: poison was one of the first thoughts on the death of a man who had been mostly healthy when Daemon last saw him, even if he’d heard that had changed since Aemma’s death, a man relatively young—no matter what the maesters said about fevers of the blood. Yes, it did not appear Otto had anything to gain from losing such a pliable king, even if he mistakenly believed Rhaenyra might be even more so because of her youth and girlhood. Still.

“No thank you, uncle.”

“Then I always welcome your complaints about your Hand.”

“He had to scold me when I returned from our flight. That I was the realm, and my life was precious—”

“You’ve been on dragonback almost daily since you were seven,” Daemon scoffs. “I’m sure your choice of company was equally dangerous in his eyes. Did he warn you I’m like to shove you off a cliff?”

“Not in so many words. He said the realm has no heir, except you. But that was not a dig at you. Or not at you only.” Before he can make any reply, Rhaenyra says passionately, “I know you think I will be ruled by him as my father was. But my father was our king. You said it yourself. He had the right to command us. He is dead, but don’t I have a duty to try to respect that?”

“I’m lost. What particular command are we talking about?”

“There was a letter. I don’t know when it was written, exactly, other than it was sometime after he named me heir. To be read in the event of his death. In it, he wrote that if he were to die when I was still young and untried, it was his dearest wish that I keep Otto as my hand until I was twenty-one, to be guided by him as he had been.”

“For fuck’s sake. Did this letter impart any other commands?”

Rhaenyra is quiet for a moment before answering. “No. Not specific ones. He said I should try to keep the realm from war. Rule with caution. Things like that. I don’t remember. I burned it.”

“You—”

“You said it yourself,” she accuses. “He was your king. You obeyed.”

“Only when it suited me, remember? No, I’m not castigating you,” he insists when she shifts miserably on his knee. “I do understand, Rhaenyra.”

Sent to the Vale, sent to the Watch. And Daemon went. His brother, his king.

“You do?”

“I don’t like it. But I do understand.”

“That of course I’ll obey like a good little girl?” Rhaenyra shoots at him, but rolling on before Daemon has a chance to deny it. “I don’t. I didn’t when they wanted Alicent. I wouldn’t let them.”

Daemon swallows, chest aching at the fierceness in her voice. “You didn’t. They just don’t know what they’re dealing with yet.”

“They don’t. They had no idea I was involved,” she says with pride at her craftiness.

“Yes, they think it was all me.”

“He’ll never know,” Rhaenyra says, relieved and wistful at once. “I always wanted him to see me as more than a little girl. To truly see me as his heir. He suspected, I think. That I had something to do with it. But he didn’t want to know. And for some reason I felt guilty. He talked, after, about how Alicent had been a comfort to him in his grief. About how I had been distant. I started to go to his chambers in the evenings, like Alicent had. To read the histories to him. To help him with his model of Valyria. We got—closer, in a way.”

A buzzing behind the eyes. A dryness of the tongue. Rhaenyra’s braids have finally been undone and Daemon has begun running his fingers through the released hair, soothing out the kinks.

“It was my understanding that Alicent had been sent to Viserys’ rooms by her father to…seduce him.”

“Perhaps that was Otto’s intention. But I think he just—wanted a daughter. Wanted me to be a certain kind of daughter.”

Rhaenyra hisses as he pulls too hard. “Sorry,” Daemon says. “Sorry, baby.” He picks up the brush and begins to pass it over her hair. She slides down from his lap to the cushion on the floor and rests her head against his knee so he can run it in one unbroken line from root to tip.

“But I wasn’t. I disappointed him, I know it. And Otto is right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nearly two years of marriage to Laenor, and I have not provided the realm with an heir.”

“Ah.”

Daemon has been doing his best ever since he got the tidings of the magnificent royal wedding to ignore Rhaneyra was married to another. It wasn’t difficult in the Stepstones, with all the practice he had ignoring his own, and since his return to the capital Laenor Velaryon has proved scarce.

“My father wanted grandchildren. He spoke often of it. And that was the deal. You were right. He was relieved not to have to remarry. I told him I was his heir, and I would wed my cousin Laenor, and strengthen House Targaryen with princes and princesses of the pure blood of Old Valyria, and I—”

“You are young. There is time for that. Laenor must—”

“It isn’t Laenor,” she cries wretchedly. “Or not just him. And my father knew it. The day I killed the boar—me and father argued, and I shouted at him in front of everyone, and I ran off into the Kingswood. I’d learned that he’d called my maids in to question them about how often Laenor visited my chambers, about the cycle of my monthly blood. And that he was reconsidering marriage to Lady Laena, now that she is flowered and is so lovely, since I would not—since I couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t what?” he prompts when she breaks off. Even though he already knows.

“My marriage has not been consummated.”

“Does anyone else know? Have you confided in the Lady Strong?” Rhaenyra’s marriage being annulled for non-consummation would certainly open the board up for Otto Hightower nicely.

“No,” she says very quietly.

“Alright. I will speak to Laenor. His tastes don’t run to women, but you made the terms clear to him, and—”

“It isn’t just Laenor, uncle.” Rhaenyra leans forward to rest her head on her knees, hiding her face from him. He can’t stand the shame in her voice. “We intended to do our duty. It was clear to both of us, like you say. He did have difficulty—being…ready for the act. But once he was, and he tried to—it hurt, and then I was crying, and he was crying, and then he couldn’t get hard again, and every time after, it hurt—”

His vision washes red. Rhaenyra must marry, and let it be to her sweet, pretty cousin, who she knew and liked. This is the advice he’d given, it hurt partly his doing.

“Did he prepare you?”

“Prepare me?” She sounds totally baffled.

“Seven hells,” Daemon swore. “He might not know his way around a cunt, but how would he like someone to shove his way into his unprepared asshole—”

“Uncle!” Rhaenyra says. “It isn’t Laenor’s fault. I just wanted it over with. I didn’t let him touch me. He is nice to look at, and it started out fine. We were laughing and a little drunk from the feast and still poking fun at the guests. Then we kissed, and we couldn’t stop giggling, it was so ridiculous, but it felt—nice, I felt—but then Laenor looked nervous, and I knew he did not want to, he did not want me, and it hit me, and I didn’t want to either, I just wanted it over—”

“It isn’t your fault, Rhaenyra,” he says, voice thick.

“Laenor is lovely. He was so kind, and he held me, and he was willing to try again, but I couldn’t. What is wrong with me?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

Daemon inhales. If Aemma had been alive when her daughter wed, what advice would she have given? Would she have been able to instruct Rhaenyra on how to find pleasure for herself in the marriage bed? A hysterical laugh nearly escapes him at this. He does not believe it is the usual wisdom mothers provide their maiden daughters.

It certainly isn’t a fatherly kind of instruction. Not for most of them, anyway.

He might tell her about his own wedding night. Rhea had not been to his taste either, but no matter. He was a man grown, a man wed. He had his duty. It was unimaginable not to do it.

His cock had not agreed. Rhea’s laughter—she come before the septon as unwilling as he—had sealed it, echoing through the other nights he’d remained in the Vale, following him when he finally fled it.

It would perhaps not be a comfort. What is wrong with me?

“I must—”

“You will. But it should not hurt.”

“Exactly! Everyone says it hurts the first time but then you get used to it. Something must be wrong with me.”

“No. You’re a dragon. You should not have to bear any pain when you’re abed with your husband. You don’t have to just have to lie there and accept it. You are exactly right.” He does not allow himself to think through what he says next. She should not hurt, and he has the means to make sure she does not. “Have you ever touched yourself between your legs?”

She wiggles nervously. “I—what—”

“You don’t have to answer that,” he says quickly. “But just as a man finds pleasure in the act through his cock, a woman can find pleasure as well. If you—mm—tonight, when abed, put your hand between your legs. At the top of your—of your cunt, there is—Rhaenyra.”

His niece squirms on her cushion. She has thrust her hand under her nightgown.

“I need to see what you mean,” she snaps, peevish.

“At the place where you—part. There is a small place—like a…button. You should rub at it with your fingers.”

Rhaenyra sounds a bit breathless as she says, “And if I just—ohh—if I just—rub at it, it won’t—”

“Rub at it. He should also get you ready to take him with his fingers before sticking his cock in. But since we can’t rely on him…put the heel of your hand to the top of your mound. Grind it against you and then you can slip a finger inside you.”

She rasps her cheek against his thigh, grabs his leg with her free hand.

“Ah! I—I don’t. It’s not, quite—oh, will you, will you please—can you just—uncle, can you—keep brushing my hair?“

Daemon hadn’t realized he’d stopped. He picks up the brush and gently—very, very gently—pulls it through the gleaming mane, the soft susurrus of the silken strands loud in his ears before they are drowned out by her sleepy whimpers as she slackens against his knee.

Chapter Index.