Chapter Text
Past the Gate of the Gods, the Kingsroad leads to the northern reaches of the Crownlands, an ancient piece of land never once a realm in its own right but adorned with castles sworn to the Iron Throne. Born as a princess in the heart of it, there should have been some kind of kinship from the Queen unto the balmy hills with pinefresh shade, rich farmlands of golden barley and olive groves with zephyrs from the Blackwater in play with celadon leaves.
Yet peace is in the lap of the waves over volcanic sands strewn with mother-of-pearl seashells and sea meadow. Solace is in the waft of steam from the heart of the mountain against the glimmer of obsidian and glyphs carved in gold. Her home is Dragonstone, even if the island of memories is now steeped in blood.
As the sundry retinue of a queen with bound hands, a healer with blood on hers and a knight without golden spurs breaks away from the Kingsroad and crosses the boundary stream that marks the entry into the Riverlands however, Rhaenyra does find herself struck by a fierce ache.
In the Crownlands are the houses that she knows the best, much of her household is composed of distantly related Masseys or Celtigars fortunate to have a drop of Valyrian blood in their saltstained veins, but those in the Riverlands are an entirely different breed of people.
Not Andals or First Men but rivermen of mud and toil. The landscape undulates with a sea green river that flows from its headwaters in the lake of the Gods Eye and as they follow the downtrodden path that runs along the eastern shoreline, Rhaenyra takes heed of the wilder nature.
Trees of ash, birch and holly are not only gnarled with age but there are trunks that carry hallmarks of battle and branches ghostly wreathed in withered stumps of ropes rather than brittle leaves. There is beauty enough in the forested mountains silhouetted against the rainy horizon, but there lies an augury of fell deeds over the riverbank, sentries of reeds shadowed in hues of blue.
Even the riverside blossoms of swamp milkweed and rose mallow seem burdened, their sweet fragrance usually reminiscent of vanilla pastries and dewy petals but now masked by the earthy musk of marshlands.
As they reach the southern shore of the Gods Eye, a small town emerges at the end of the riverine lane. Aside from an old dilapidated sept in the shadow of a newer temple devoted to her gods, there is a lively inn nearby a long pier where dinghies bob like corkscrews in the murky waters of the lake.
In the strangled light of stars speckled with wisps of clouds, the white houses of the walled town around a sturdy holdfast reminds her of the childhood wonder that were sugarloafs in the kitchens of the Red Keep after deliveries from their fertile breadbasket in the Reach. The thought of those bygone days makes her feel strangely hollow.
Her uncle will never feed his son crumbs of cake made with tart fruits. Prince Daemon. Not like he did when she was a child that clung to his knees for a taste of his sweetness.
The whinny of a charcoal black palfrey disturbs the sluggish equilibrium of her mind, still rattled by the effects of the concoction poured down her throat, and Rhaenyra watches impassively as Mistress Alys gracefully lands on the muddied ground not far from the riverbank and feeds her impatient mare a crisp green apple from the pockets of her dove gray linen kirtle.
The other woman had ridden with her legs spread as if she were to participate in a hunt and not with both to one side as any lady on a leisurely ride would and there is a ripple of jealousy in Rhaenyra at the instinctual bond between them, since she has never been fond of the temperamental snowy white filly given to her by her husband.
"A bitch if I ever saw one," Daemon had once muttered about the obstinate filly when he had thought Rhaenyra was out of earshot and even if she held similar views of the stubborn creature that had thrown her off the saddle more than she liked to admit, she had still bitten him in retaliation. He had playfully shoved her away and mounted his own handsome destrier named Mele for his red coat – a nod to Meleys even if his rider would never admit to that either – for he was as sure on horseback as he was on a dragon.
Her own uncertainty around these lesser mounts had only been made worse by the tight ropes around her wrists that meant she had to rely on the bulky figure of Ser Harwin throughout their journey. His presence behind her on the rounsey horse had unnerved her, but not nearly as much as when he now dismounts and bodily lifts her by the waist just like Daemon always helps her down.
It does her no favours to think that the danger that she finds herself in will be resolved without bloodshed, not least because the man that has taken her gazes at her with a wild look of desire that he has no right to. He is not Daemon. It has become abundantly clear however that Ser Harwin is a man that acts first and thinks later, if at all.
“Forgive me,” he whispers as he smooths his hands possessively over the golden cloak that hides the evidence of his madness, a silvery white chemise meant for the marital bed he has stolen her from. “Rhaenyra.”
The want in his voice, so common and uncouth with no seductive Valyrian lilt, repels her.
“Leave her be,” Alys sighs wearily beneath willow branches that ripple in the shallow waters of the lakeshore. “Brother.”
Her bonds are not untied but Harwin stays his hands at the waspish reminder from the turncoat about their own ties to each other. There is no love lost between them but an unspoken truce as they settle into a small row boat to ferry them over the ghostly lake.
A shudder brings to mind the tales of the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye where Aegon the Uncrowned and his she-dragon Quicksilver were felled by the Black Dread and she wonders where along the wild landscape it happened. Clouds of silver and opal offer no answers as the boat glides serenely over the deceptively calm waters under the moonlight that spills across the depths as a lighthouse in the distance.
“Aye,” Alys says with mystery in those pewter gray eyes of hers, a pale hand adorned with silver and sapphire alloys submerged in the water, beneath which all manner of secrets could be tangled in the lake weeds. “There is great sorrow on these shores but the dead are at rest.”
Words that cut at her and Rhaenyra stares at the other woman with a fury of larkspur tears in her eyes. Her son is at rest she says, but Rhaenyra is not and in that moment she wants little else than to trade places with him, to be ashes stored in an obsidian urn in the heart of a volcanic mountain.
“You think that my cruelly slayed baby is at rest?” Rhaenyra shivers in the summertide chill that rises in pearlescent spirals of mists from the Gods Eye and wills the tears not to fall, for she will not weep when she asks the question that burns inside of her, “Why?”
Of all that could be done against her, why oh why, when she had not yet even given her son, her cousin, her brother, all of her frightened heart before he was torn away from it.
“He was always meant to die to make way for the others.” A dream of purple-eyed, silver-haired children dances in the soft eddies left behind by her hand in the water and what cruelty of the traitor to remind her thus. “If your prince had lived, Little Queen, it would have been the end of all of them.”
“Why do you always call me that?” Rhaenyra bristles and wipes at the equally treasonous tears that dares defy her will. “What do you mean?”
“Forgive me,” Alys says in the same manner as her brother that lets Rhaenyra know that she is not sorry at all, certainly not as she tilts her head curiously as if the sight of tears fascinates her. “I see you in his dreams.”
“What else have you seen, witch, that made you turn against me?”
“However did I turn, Queen Rhaenyra, when I was never with you?” There is a splash from a hand slapped against the surface in sudden ire. “’Tis not the first time I have been named witch nor will it be the last. Why my own lordly father saw fit to burn my mother at the stake for it,” Alys hisses as if a tether of restraint has snapped and she seems as surprised as Rhaenyra is at her unexpected outburst.
A flock of black swans are illuminated by the waning moonlight as the small boat passes the Isle of Faces and for a while there is nary a word exchanged between the two women in the stern of the row boat. A terrible guilt pulls at her conscience as Rhaenyra tries to imagine Just Alys at whatever age she lost her mother.
As a scarcely weaned babe with raven hair or as a young girl with stormy eyes. Another name comes to mind then, Poor Alys, for she cannot imagine the pain that the loss of her own lady mother would bring despite the hurts between them.
Once unlocked, the box of carefully tucked away secrets spills out of Alys like never before. All of it in hushed whispers, even if Ser Harwin is distracted by the oars and the spires of Harrenhal that seem to throw taller shadows against the ripples of the lake with every row that breaks the surface.
“I have never once heard the word daughter from his lips but I am well used to bastard and witch,” she scoffs and her thin lips curl into something just as cruel as it is soft, at memories of the past that must be plaguing her still. “I learned long ago that his words cut deeper than even his hands leave scars. Some days I wonder if my crippled brother is not blessed for at least he is unnoticed rather than bruised.”
A chill that has nothing to do with the night grips Rhaenyra and despite the turmoil of their relationship, the hurt and humiliation of being his prisoner rather than his bride, she is endlessly grateful that her father in everything but name has never disciplined her like that.
“Rivermen are made of mud,” Alys spits and her disgust swirls in the gentle squall of the dark waters as the boat is thrust ever forward, with the brute force of the man that takes after his father in so much. “They fear all things strange and unnatural and Lord Strong is the most frightened man of all. ’Tis why he hates you so much and he is right to fear you, for there is magic in your blood.”
“The blood of Old Valyria,” Rhaenyra whispers under the hold of those stormy eyes undecided between slate gray and river green, but Alys makes a noise of derision and shakes her head with vehemence.
“The blood of Targaryens.” Veneration cracks like logs on fire in her gaze and without doubt or any thought of propriety, the young woman reaches out to twirl a lock of her hair between bony fingers. “Pure silver and gold like this cannot be found in Volantis or Lys, let alone in the poor house of minnows that you burnt to a crisp,” Alys chuckles darkly as some of her gumption returns and Rhaenyra flushes with mingled pride and unease at the memory of what happened in Driftmark.
It is one thing to speak of such things herself, she had told Daemon that they were far more than mere dragonlords not yet a year ago, when she was still blissfully unaware of the babe in her belly, but it is quite another to hear it spoken by another.
“You do not ride the dragons, no, you are the dragons,” she goes on in a reverent tone that raises shivers on Rhaenyra. “’Twas the only reason I helped my fool of a brother in his lust for you, a thimble’s worth of blood will be enough for him to rise.”
All of it seems to be part of some elaborate plan that Rhaenyra cannot make head or tail of, nor does it seems like the fool of a brother has any idea that his sister harbours these delusions. It is not the first time that she has come across those who profess to worship her and her Daemon, but the realisation that the woman before her is a fanatic comes with a certain amount of fear.
“Alys,” Rhaenyra says and the fact that it is the first time she has ever used only her given name must resonate with the other woman since Alys stares at her as she asks, “You said that his will fire purge these lands but what is it you think that he will do?” For a part of Rhaenyra wonders if Alys means Daemon at all.
“Burn their fear to ashes,” Alys responds without a moment’s hesitation and something misty clouds her vision, fog over a shallow pond in the woods on an autumnal morrow or smoke from the fires of dragons amidst ruins. “Bring a new dawn for us.”
Part of her purpose is clear, womenfolk and witches alike will suffer under the muddy boots of rivermen no longer, but it is then and there that Rhaenyra comes to understand that Alys Rivers, be she a witch or not, is well and truly mad.
***
Not ghosts or ghouls, but rather the Lord of Harrenhal is responsible for the shouts that emanate beneath the near ruins that is the greatest castle in the Seven Kingdoms. Towers and turrets of weathered stone, walled courtyards with brambles of briar roses, crimson leaves of a weirwood tree in an abandoned godswood and amidst it all, fears and frustrations that are bellowed out.
In the solar of the spinsters in Kingspyre Tower, the sounds from the Hall of a Hundred Hearths are distorted by the uneven stone walls, once melted with dragonflame and then immortalised into its present cursed shape.
While the legitimate daughters of the Lord of Harrenhal tend to her, dressing her in a black kirtle with sashed sleeves of dark satin made for a widowed queen and fussing over her with sweet nothings, as if their father is not a treasonous snake, Rhaenyra can just make out words like, ‘You have doomed us all you utter fool!’ and ‘How dare you succumb to the seduction of that whore!’ and the last one fills her with indignity.
Not once has she encouraged the blatant desire from Harwin, played with it for the benefit of provoking her husband yes, but like a cat toying with an insignificant little mouse, yet now she is viciously named a whore for the fatal mistake of mistrust. If only she had told Daemon about her suspicions – if only her uncle had trusted her love for him.
It is bad enough to witness how callously the two sisters treat the third, so by the time that Rhaenyra is forcibly brought into the hall and watches the bastard daughter intuitively presses herself against the wall in the presence of her lord father, the rage that she feels towards Lyonel Strong burns volatile in her veins.
As always, the lordly man is wreathed in garments that bear subtle yet significant signs of his heritage, lapels and sleeves that take after the forks of the Trident whose moss green branches dig into iridescent blue waters to a sway of garnet red leaves. All of it under the hiss and splutter of chandeliers covered in beeswax and a constant drip drop of rainwater from holes in the roof.
The very air is heavy with mildew that creeps in between the aged bricks and the stench of treason that smells as foul as the breath of the man that still looks at her blatant lust. Harwin took her on a whim but now the willpower of his house is to be tested in face of the wrath and retribution that will be as terrible as it is swift.
There is not a soul in these cursed halls that does not know he will come for her and it seems to have been madly decided that the castle will make a stand against him, in an effort to unseat him, with accusations of ‘madness’ and ‘blood magic’ thrown from the man that served on council of the Old King that would have bartered her to the Sea Snake for the illusion of peace.
“Unseat or usurp?” Rhaenyra spits at them. “This will not stand in our Realm nor shall the rightful King ever be defeated by the likes of you.” Never before has she detested the Westerosi more and she feels utterly removed from this corner of the kingdoms with its closeminded people.
“He is not infallible,” a young man with an ill-favoured look says with an expectant gaze towards the Lord of Harrenhal and Rhaenyra understands him to be the crippled brother that has never been allowed to come to court, be it for the shame of his father or the wise refusals of her own husband.
A glance towards the shadows and she sees Alys give an almost imperceptible nod as if she has read her thoughts. “Indeed he fell in the Stepstones and was grievously wounded for it. He was captured by pirate scum and tortured in the filthy caves as a common prisoner,” the second brother goes on and it is hard not to wonder what she has ever done unto him, even as she knows that he is not inherently an enemy but a badly kicked dog that begs for scraps from its cruel master.
Rhaenyra wants to ask him the same question that she levelled at Alys – Why oh why – but he must have spent hours in the study with secretive royal correspondence about the extent of Daemon’s injuries and matters of the realm from King’s Landing. All of it to leap at a chance to impress his lord father should the moment ever arise.
“He may be brought down by a volley of arrows, the beast cannot protect both of them for long,” Harwin mutters with a glare at the cripple, even as he remains without the approval of their lord father. “The moment that the King is on the ground, he can be overpowered.”
“Nāpāstre,” Rhaenyra hisses at the traitor and struggles against his obscenely close and wrongfully possessive hold on her, a kept woman in the arms of a man that schemes to murder her husband. “He honoured you as Lord Commander of the City Watch and you repay him with treachery.”
“Aye, ‘tis true enough,” Lyonel ignores her entirely as he finally speaks up, but she is struck by the strange kinship of words that exists betwixt those that share blood. “A handful of men can subdue him and once he loses his crown in the mud, he can no longer claim to be King.”
“Six men or sixty he is still Daemon Targaryen.” Lilac flames and tears on silver lashes could incinerate all of the men before her. “He will burn you all and this time I will not lift a finger to stop him.”
“You?” At last Lyonel deigns to meet her eyes of the fairest lilac purple that comes from a union of forget-me-nots and violets. “I ordered the death of your dragon spawn and you could not do a thing to stop me.”
There is a rupture in her heart as she remembers that the irises of her beautiful son were the amethyst shine from starry celestial skies of his father, before a veil of darkness hid them from her maternal love that was still as shy as the first snowdrops of springs.
The man in front of her speaks more cruel words, but she is overwhelmed by the sheer guilt at how she let this man live despite Daemon and his desire for fiery vengeance, to the loss of her son orchestrated by schemes that she, in her reckless innocence, had never even imagined. All she hears is, “What can a Little Queen like you do to a man like me?”
***
KING’S LANDING
A temple hush has fallen over the palace, outside the gates there is febrile activity among men at arms, with chargers and destriers armed for war, but inside the Red Keep and not least Maegor’s Holdfast, there is a stony silence. Only gasps of flames in bronzed sconces that throw shadows on the sturdy bricks and pristine marble are heard in the frozen devastation of the King and Queen’s chamber.
Corpses of guardsmen cut down with Dark Sister are out of sight and out of mind, shrouded in veils for either the high priestesses of the magnificent temples or the Silent Sisters from the few delipidated septries to prepare for the last journey. Pools of blood have been cleansed with wood ash and lye, with such a strong medicinal smell that it has overpowered the seductive fragrance of her honeysuckle and rose scent, that still lingers in the bed sheets that he has buried his nose in more than once.
Daemon cannot say how much time has passed since he lost his niece and thus his only reason for life. He is oddly removed from what happens around him as one of his many groomsmen helps him into his heavy armour in front of a silver and gold mirror, just like her heavenly locks, but he knows that the Small Council has convened more than once, made plans for action and come to decisions.
All the evidence points in one direction but he needs to be certain lest more precious time is lost. He needs to know that she is there, in a hall of ghosts, he needs to know that she did not leave him as he left her.
“Your Grace?” Yet another timid groomsman trembles in his presence, all of them frightened by the rage that had flared inside of him and snuffed the lives of more than a dozen men, and announces that, “The Queen Mother and the Lord Hand request entry.”
Had his mind not dwelled amidst memories of lilac springs and his heart not beaten in a silent echo of its twin flame, Daemon would have pondered the heresy of the unearned title of Queen Mother. As it is, the woman that enters his domain with ermine-trimmed samite and silvery blonde locks bound in a gold-thread crespine under a circlet adorned with sapphires, is not the widow of a King.
Nevertheless the lady Aemma Arryn, now styled as Lady of the Tides if she wishes, commands a royal presence that rivals that of their late grandmother and there is a highly noticeable difference between her and the weary man that follows her like a beaten dog with a fleabitten tail between his humble legs.
The Hand of the King does not bear the blame alone – Daemon is the demon after all – but as heavy as the crown lies, so does the burden of guilt on the man that let the attackers escape and spurred the madness that led to a Queen in chains.
It is infinitely easier to blame his eldest friend for the fallout, rather than acknowledge that in the aftermath of loss, Daemon treated the love of his life with more cruelty than an innocent, fiery, delicate, wild queen like her could ever deserve from a man such as him. By all the gods, she birthed him a son that was taken from them and was rewarded with a silver cage in a golden tower, he has the blackest of hearts.
Mayhaps that is why the littlest and sweetest of his wives still will not show herself to him, she has abandoned him and faded into the late summer mists just as the true Rhaenyra has done.
“Leave us,” he grits out at Luthor. “I have need of Aemma.”
A filigree of bruises have faded but there is still a hesitance in the movements of the giant of a man. “I only wished to convey that the Crown’s men are ready to march upon Harrenhal and more soldiers will join from the Crownlands, but they will need time to match the speed of Caraxes.”
White-boned knuckles crack beneath hardened gloves and Daemon growls in frustration. He does not have time. No more had it been determined that the man that has ever been a thorn in his side had taken her before the fear had set in.
He hates himself for it, it is the love of his life and the mother of his lost child, she deserves more respect than this, but there is a deeply irrational yet instinctually male concern that another filthy man will claim her sweet little cunny, that paradise that has only ever been obscenely stretched and filled to the brim by his cock.
“Fuck,” Daemon growls at the thought of how he will die before he lets another man taste the pure nectar of his once and always virgin bride, but the truth is that he is without power to stop it when he still leagues away from her. “Leave us and give the order.”
“Oh, Harwin,” Rhaenyra had sighed dreamily in his nightmares of her entwined with a brute of a man that thrust between her thighs and spilled the foul seed of darkhaired bastards inside of her. “Did I not give him everything he wanted and still he threw it away?”
The memories of his sword plunged into the rose petal softness of her young and nubile body – still so young – haunts him and he is lost in despair. For a woman that had failed to notice his illicit visits to her daughter until the truth was revealed in romantic – obscene – sketches, his good-sister quickly perceives his distress and turns her glacial blue eyes to Luthor.
“The King has ordered you to leave,” Aemma says with frosty dismissal writ in every word that paints her visage as a mask of queenly grace. Their shy love would never have been allowed to truly bloom, for Daemon would have strangled the rose even if the thorns hurt him, but now it has wilted into petals scattered in the blustery wind.
“As Hand of the King you should attend to the matters that he cannot at the moment,” are her final words to him and there is regret in the flinch of his face, not least since the woman Luthor may have taken as a concubine to lick his wounds after her has definitely proven false against her daughter.
“My lady.”
The deeper yet softer blue of his eyes have a tint of adoration that Daemon has never harboured for her. Hers are forget-me-nots with a brim of tears before she blinks them away and he pretends not to have seen as they are left alone.
“I never wished to wed him, it merely felt good to be desired,” Aemma whispers to the silence that follows save for the soft chime of the metallic dragonscales upon an armour that she brushes a small hand over.
“You are the mother of the Queen.” A tired ghost of a smirk that is more of a grimace, Daemon thinks of how no one has ever had smaller hands than his niece. “You are out of bounds to all men.”
He cannot give her freedom nor let any man claim the widow of his brother, fair princess as pale as the snow on the mountains whence she came. He loved his good-sister once, she was second only to his mother in his heart but more than that she was his friend.
Once again he thinks of their first meeting and how the shrinking violet had peered up at him amongst the flowers of Aegon’s Garden. With the agility of a sinewy wyvern, he had simply skipped over his perch on the balcony and landed like a cat in the grass, a little flushed from the steep jump but uncaring at the sudden cries of shocked onlookers.
He liked danger even more as a boy and his father always indulged him by ruffling his hair affectionately, but Aemma had hurried to curtsy with a demure, “My betrothed.”
“I am not Viserys,” Daemon had laughed and exchanged an amused look with his father. “Iksan Daemon,” he had said in cocksure way but tilted his head and watched her curiously. “Udrirzi Valyrio ȳdrā, Aemma?”
The young lady had barely understood his question. “Daor sȳrī,” was her hesitant reply because she did not speak High Valyrian beyond a few words, but a rosy blush over silvery freckles suggested that she had liked his foreign pronunciation of her name in their mother tongue. “You are his little brother,” she had realised and he had not been pleased to be described as little in regard to Viserys.
“I am not your groom, no,” he had confirmed at his full height that towered above her and she had pouted slightly as if already decided that she liked him. Daemon had smiled wryly at that and instead of letting her join the courtly garden fête, he had said, “Come with me,” slinging a brazen arm over her shoulder, as if she were a fellow boy.
In truth he had few friends of his own, all of them taken by his brother, and he had never cared about that because all he wanted was a sister, even if the one he got was a rather silly little girl that had brought caskets filled to the brim with dolls.
“Do you like dolls?” The young lady had asked him politely during one of their hours of play together, but she had flushed with embarrassment when he had laughed at her just a little meanly.
“If they are princesses with white hair then yes,” Daemon had drawled and plucked a little princess doll from her dainty hands. “My brother does not know his own luck,” he had muttered and sat down by her side all the while twirling a lock of silvery hair between his fingers with familiar envy stirring in his gut.
“Is that what you want?” Aemma dared to tease him then and he had surprised himself by rolling his eyes rather than taking offense at her cheek. “A little doll?”
“I cannot very well marry you now, can I?” Daemon had huffed as if it was somehow her fault. “Cousin Rhaenys is an old, ugly little thief and married to the Sea Snake besides. I could marry aunt Gael but grandmother would never allow it.”
The fates had not allowed him to wed neither her nor his aunt, but she had given him a princess of his own instead, a far better reward that he never deserved but also never wanted more. It is to thoughts of the fussy little babe that she bled to give him that he boldly demands, “Give me your hand.”
A gasp escapes her as he cuts her palm with the cursed blade inscribed with prophecies. No pain reaches him when he opens the marital scar on his own palm and crushes their crimson hands together between the ruby necklace torn from Rhaenyra and a just a few strands of her precious baby hairs. The latter taken from his collection of ribbon-tied silvery gold locks that he guards as fiercely as any dragon after the loss of his locket into the wild seas when he fell - jumped - to his death.
“Blood magic,” Aemma hisses as red droplets rain down upon an aged parchment that depicts a map of his kingdoms. “The gods would not approve.”
“Yours or mine?” Daemon retorts and she bites her lip as the blood coils into the shape of a dragon with its maws around Harrenhal. A breath that he did not know he held within him is released, he will tear Harwin Strong limb from limb, and he trembles with mingled fear and rage. “That is our answer.”
“It was already known.” Her hand falls from his and her face hardens as he cradles the bloodied soft baby hairs from his sweet little against his face. “You cannot waste more time with sentimental nonsense,” she orders him and even in his weakened state he bristles at that for only Rhaenyra is allowed to command him.
“I have to go to the Dragonpit,” he bites out before he licks at the blood and rubies in decadent rivulets upon his hand. The taste of Rhaenyra is distant but still there in the palate of iron and salt and he craves all of it. “Not just for Caraxes but for Syrax.”
More than he needs to be the Rogue Prince or the Dragon King, he needs to make amends and tame a she-devil that despises him for the wrongs he has done and will do again to both of them.
“Would that I could join you,” Aemma quips with a rueful smile and a tuck of silver and gold behind ears bejewelled with sapphires. “Alas I never did claim a mount of mine own.”
“Mind you do not cut yourself on my throne,” Daemon counters with a rush of bloodlust at the thought of his niece and her luscious tendrils of ice caught in sunlight and what he will do to those that harm a single hair upon her golden head. “Strike while the iron is hot but remember it is mine.” It is his Realm but also his Rhaenyra and he will set the kingdoms aflame to claim her once more.
***
Ash and brimstone, stone and bronze, the Dragonpit of King’s Landing is a world of contrasts under a dome of glass set with iron strength. Unlike the Dragonmont, these halls came to be after the conquest and there is a certain opulence even several feet below ground.
”Drakari pykiros tīkummo jemiros, yn lantyz bartossa saelot vāedis.”
The familiar words flow with ease from the iron that lingers in his mouth. In the mother tongue of beasts and riders alike, he calls for a fire breather, a winged leader, but there is a churn in his gut at last words because it is not two heads that sing to a third but only him alone in the sulphuric darkness.
All is quiet save for the flames in the braziers that light the path deeper into the heartlands of the dragons that dwell in the capitol. There is a pang of guilt inside of him, he should make more of an effort to come and spend time with the loneliest of them that have been castle dragons for nigh on several decades. The red hatchling that would have been the mount of his son, Prince Daemon, would have known the nursery as his earliest home but eventually come to stay here with the others in the Dragonpit.
Autumns of marigold leaves with caramel apple tarts would have been for visits to Dragonstone, he had decided that they would always stay there as a family of three now and with three times more children in the future, those seasons would be for celebrations of their wedding anniversary. In the end it had not been meant to be, all those hidden dreams of happiness with a dynasty of dragons.
”Hen ñuhā elēnī perzyssy vestretis. Se gēlȳn irūdaks ānogrose.”
The songs he sung to lull his niece to sleep as babe amidst the storms of Blackwater Bay were always about his eternal love and fierce devotion to her. Sweet little songs not about how his voice has awakened the fires or the price that he has paid with blood magic. Somewhere in the depths, shadows move and he feels gooseflesh rise beneath the woven leather of his surcoat.
Not fear, but thrill, a tingle down his spine and the allure from embers in the air and heat between stone walls decorated with runes in blood red and charcoal black. A summons from the dragons that he had answered as a little boy that ran away from the nursery in search of the beasts that he felt a stronger kinship to than any other.
There is a part of him that wants to go to Meleys, as he so often did as that motherless son, but it is not her blood red scales that he searches for comfort in now. His mother’s dragon remains a castle dragon, once the mount of the bravest princess their house has ever known, now in impatient wait for a new prince or princess to claim her.
”Perzyro udrȳssi ezīmptos laehossi. Hārossa letagon aōt vāedan.”
A yellow beauty emerges from a cavernous hollow with fiery smoke from her nostrils at the words of fire meant to bind three heads into one with dragonsong. Syrax is not yet as great as her mate, but she has grown into a fearsome beast in her own right and there is a presence to her movements that Caraxes lacks, even if she is slowed by the weight of golden chains.
Demons walk in the shadows unseen, a darkness so impenetrable that it blinds as the brightness of the sun, but deities are beings of such light that their incandescence sets all else aglow with them. The she-dragon that makes the ground tremble with the force of her growls is one such deity, but although Daemon worships at the altar of his wife he cannot kneel or show weakness before her mirror.
”Hae mērot gierūli and se hāros bartossi. Prūmȳsa sōvīli, gevī dāerī.”
The last of his song about their destiny in the skies, as beautiful and free as only a three-headed dragon can be, fades away as he braces himself for the inevitable. For a moment he dares to hope that it will be no more effort than when he tamed Vermithor, but of course his niece would never surrender to him without a fight and nor will her dragon.
A great roar erupts from Syrax and Daemon tightens his grip on the dragonbone handle of a whip that rends the air in two. “Lykirī,” he snarls at the she-devil as she lashes her tail at him in retaliation for the whip and makes him sidestep to avoid the indignity of a painful blow by her chains. His bond with Caraxes is one that has no need for words and the angry order of, “Dohaerās,” feels strange on his tongue that still tastes of blood.
He was the one that chose the topaz crusted egg for the silver gilt cradle of his princess babe and as a father to his child – a husband to his wife – he stands firm with a raised hand where the light of her fire dances against the eternity of Valyrian steel on his ring finger.
A burst of flames is her answer and he lets out an involuntary grunt of pain at the sear against his skin but then, the heat of the burn shifts and the hurt is no more. Out of the cavernous darkness behind Syrax, there is a great crimson shadow silhouetted against the flames as Caraxes emerges. The presence of his mirrored soul seems to have encased him in a sheet of ice, the last of the flames cannot hurt him when Daemon moves to subdue Syrax.
Cries of distress fills the hollowed stone when his dragon sees the struggle ahead, at the impossible choice of whom to protect between rider and mate, but the closeness to him seems to calm Syrax down. At least enough so that Daemon can approach her with ease – dragons can smell fear – and undo her chains.
While he does so, he thinks of his treacherous cousin and her poisonous words about his control over the dragons, but whilst it may be true that he cannot bond with Syrax in the same way as his niece, he can certainly bind her to his will with the dragonsongs of yore.
As if she has read his mind, Syrax lashes out against him a final time and he swears through another mouthful of blood. “I deserved that, you vicious cunt,” he mutters as he rubs his reddened chin under her imperious jade irises that judge him worse than any high priestess ever could. “She is mine,” Daemon reminds her in a low tone. “She belongs with me.”
He does not want to come to regret this merciful offer of freedom but loosens the last of the chains with purpose. He has wronged her, his little love, he does not regret what he did for her protection, but he should have held her in his arms rather than threaten her with chains. Returned to the light of day, he orders the Dragonkeepers to saddle Caraxes, while Syrax eagerly spreads her wings under the opened dome of the Dragonpit.
In truth he knows that Rhaenyra has always been the power beneath the leathern wings of his own dragon – the gods made him a dragonrider and an uncle almost at the same time for a reason – and every time that he has been without her, he has fallen into the abyss because he has no wings of his own.
Yet now there is a curious sensation beneath the burnt skin of his chest as if chains of fate are undone from hidden scales by her hands – soft and small as roses – even with the distance between them.
As if whatever happens has been destined for a long time and his true purpose is to be unveiled by some kind of unseen force that leads him to her. With Syrax he can pretend that he is once again the ‘Young King’ that slew his enemies on the bridge of Dragonstone without a shadow of a doubt when they tried to take her mistress from him.
In the time that it will take for the three heads of a dragon to fly to Harrenhal above the black and red banners of his armies, he can bring himself to believe that the mistress of his heart will baptize him in the holy waters of her sacred tears upon his naked chest once more.
“Nyke jorrāelan zirȳla." Daemon presses his forehead against Syrax with a warmth of topaz scales that brings an unexpected sting of salt behind closed eyelids. “I love her,” he repeats and Syrax bends lower so that her snout rests against his chest. “I miss you so much it hurts, ñuha jelevre, I cannot breathe without you,” he whispers into the heat that spreads over his heart and if he had less pride then he would let tears fall, but rogue kings do not weep and dragons need fire to burn.
***
HARRENHAL
Gentle morrows of late summertide suns with mists over the sapphire glitter of the Gods Eye and shivers of nights with the first drops in temperatures have passed in one of the melted towers of the cursed keep, when true rains begin to fall at last. Not with luscious dew on rose petals such as the last of the summers in King’s Landing or with the scent of petrichor in Aegon’s Gardens, but under thunderous stormclouds.
Autumn is her time, she was a bride amongst the wild heathers after all, but in a cruel twist of fate she has been locked inside an ornate but stale chamber in the Widow’s Tower and is forced to watch from a windowsill once dented with the tears of Queen Rhaena, as specters of metal gathers on the horizon.
An army of soldiers depicted against the darkness, swirls of clouds that could have been heliotrope flowers if this had been a summer storm on the island of her windswept home, with a promise of bloodshed in the nighttime.
Somewhere in the skies there is a man with spun starlight hair that rides a crimson shadow, but it is the man on his knees before her that concerns her the most. “My Queen,” he whispers reverently and gooseflesh rises on her arms for just like his sister he is well and truly mad. For every day that has passed, the dishonourable knight has come every night with the same proposal; “I will take you to safety, away from the battle, I will make sure that all is well.”
His lord father knows naught of it, but the torch he carries for her burns fiercer than his fear of reprisals. It no longer repels her but sickens her like the poison of bygone days to think that this man is responsible for the death of her innocent babe.
Her fear and fury knows no bounds but though she might have been made in his image and shaped from the ivory of his rib, Rhaenyra is not Daemon, she cannot fight her way out of danger with sheer power and insatiable bloodlust as much as she feels it in her veins.
Now Ser Harwin pleads with her over the bedlam that comes with a castle that prepares for war, braziers are lit to burn fiery oil and soldiers mill about the ramparts to ready armaments with heavy bolts meant to bring down more than one dragon from the indigo heavens, but her answer is the same; “Will you make sure that my husband lives?”
The reminder that she is wed to the demon that his ancestral home is set to fight against, turns the man into a foul and wretched thing of misplaced jealousy. The Queen is not his to covet or desire, she belongs to the King.
“Rhaenyra.” Her name falls as a curse and prayer in one from his lips. “Forced to wed him as a child, you are not to blame for his depravities, but do not forget that,” he mutters almost to himself and reaches for her even as she slaps his possessive hands from the hem of her black gown.
“I was not forced to marry him, you witless worm, it was the happiest day of my life,” Rhaenyra snaps as she always does when he comes to insult her uncle, but this time there is an urgency over the man and when he rises to tower above her she warns him, “Do not come any closer!”
For each time that Ser Harwin has come to see her, he has grown bolder and more brazen with his advances, touches, and now there is none to protect her from him. If she thought she had been a prisoner in the royal apartments, it is incomparable to the reality that has been her life in the Widow’s Tower, with the spinster sisters kept apart from her in Kingspyre Tower and Mistress Alys only allowed to pour strange concoctions down her throat.
“The salt and smoke will come,” the witch had soothed her with nonsense when she struggled against the smell of red clover. “The bright star will bleed red.” A part of her had been relieved that Alys was still allowed to see her, but the young woman offered no more comfort than strange words and a mandrake root placed beneath the musty eiderdown pillow of a queenly yet dusty bed.
“I would give you everything.” Harwin ignores her protests and pushes her against the damp walls, cold wet stone which seeps into the dark satin of the kirtle that once belonged to another wronged queen. “If you would only forgive me.”
“Would you give me my son?”
Heartbeat in her throat, she thinks on what Daemon taught her. ‘You are a small thing, my sweet little pearl, you must rely on your speed and nothing else’. Yet she has no means of defense and the man that strokes his hands up her bodice knows it all too well.
“The Prince that you and your father planned to have murdered as you pretended to care for me,” Rhaenyra curses at him with courage that she does not know where it comes from but allows to rush through her. “I regret the day I ever thought of as my friend and will gladly dance upon your graves should my husband even grant you that.”
“I would give you other sons,” Harwin promises, threatens, with no more false words of devotion but rough hands calloused by misdeeds around her bare throat from where he already ripped her ruby necklace. “Strong boys that would never die as whelps like his demon spawn did,” he sneers at her with a tightened hold on her throat and silver and violet bruises not unlike the violent love of Daemon blossoms on her skin but feels so wrong at the hands of this weak man.
Daughter, niece and wife of the King, she is not just the Queen but a conqueress in her own right and will not surrender without a fight, even if she has no weapon to defend herself. No weapon in truth, but as Rhaenyra turns her head to escape the foul breath of the brute before her, she realises that not all weapons are made of iron and steel but all of them are forged in fire.
Daemon will come for her upon Caraxes but she does not know when and the hand around her throat waits for no man.
“I was always your courageous azantys swooping in to save the day.” Her uncle had told her that with hot splashes of tears upon her forehead in the sickbed where he had feared to lose her to death. “I am scared now, my sweet. I need my brave girl with me. Come back to me.”
Every inch a Little Queen of a barely significant height but also the brave girl that Daemon Targaryen could not live without.
A canvas of dark stars before lilac tears, she makes sure that her words cuts as sharply as the immortality of Valyrian steel on her wedding ring, even with the chokehold on her throat, “As if I would ever let your filth inside of me,” and she spits at the lowly man before her and punches his nose with a sickening crunch of bones.
The pain flares up her hand, she forgot her damn thumb, but Rhaenyra feels a rush of adrenaline along with air in her lungs as Harwin stumbles back from her and she cannot resist the urge to mock him with a petty, “Brokenbones,” as he clutches the swell of his nose.
“Insolent child!” Harwin spits a mouthful of blood and perhaps she ought to fear for her life again, but his insults are naught compared to what she has heard from the men that would have made her into a bride for their own ends. “I only wish to save you from the pyre that my father wants for you!”
“I belong to a dragon and I am his to save."
Rhaenyra shivers at the delirious thought of dragon scales against bruises in the violet tint of his eyes and moves towards a wrought iron brazier as if she can guide him to her through the stormy night with a signal of smoke and with the conviction of, “Fire cannot kill a dragon,” she pushes the ornate brazier with all her might and the fire caresses her skin as her lover does in the dark of night.
The iron structure topples over and blue-wick flames catches the moth-eaten tapestries embroidered by the Queen in the West. In no time at all, the blaze of an inferno has engulfed the chamber and all she can do is hope that the blood of the dragon still runs thick as battle horns and wing strokes are heard.