Chapter Text
Albeit the frescoes and mosaics of obsidian and rubies on the murals of Maegor's Holdfast depict what lesser men sees as the deviances of binding dragons through the intricacies of blood magic in Old Valyria, it is within the walls beyond the rest of the Red Keep that the true devils lie in wait.
In a chamber of finely carved wooden panelling and fluttering tapestries dyed with ultramarine, vermillion, and ochre for each fork of the Trident, sparks from a crackle of logs to ward off the early summer chill are thrown onto a moth-eaten hearthrug with every pace back and forth by a man as deep in thought as his blood and bone is entrenched in the soil of the land.
“Folly, to name her Queen Regent of all things! Our ruler is a man ruled by the whims of a capricious little witch.”
“Father…” A golden cloak sweeps across the slabs of stone as its bearer watches the cinders in the grate with azureous eyes that burn from within. “The Queen is no-“
“What else do you suppose to call a woman that bewitches and ensnares her husband to heed her every command and do her bidding? An anointed king at that, by the Seven!”
The Master of Laws claps a hand to his forehead, lined by the years of service to a house whose customs are far removed from his own, and the woes that come from denying it.
“Once he enjoyed his whor*s, and plenty of them, yet now she has him wrapped around her blackened finger and surely all she had to do was spread her legs and show him the silver of her-“
“The King loves her and he has long been devoted to her, since she was but a babe in his arms!“ Golden brown locks catch the pale light of the wan sun not yet at its zenith as the son protests the words of the father. “You should take care and mind that you do not speak so crudely of her, the Queen always seems happy in his presence, and she is blessed by the Fourteen-“
“Do not speak to me of that heathenry, boy!”
A sneer twists the stern face of the Lord of Harrenhal as he levels his son with a quelling stare that speaks of the centuries gone by since days of yore when their ancestors worshipped sap the colour of blood wept by the eyes of trees with snowy bark.
“I myself have been blessed with two sons yet cursed all the same for one is a cripple and you, Harwin, are a cretin. ‘Tis bad enough that the King brought the Citadel and the Starry Sept under his command, now more than half the Realm has been hoodwinked by the sorcery of these pagan high priests and priestesses.”
A moment of quietude settles as the differences between them, of faith and fealty, seems to stretch into a chasm and it is only with the unscrewing of a carafe sloshing great quantities of wine as dark as blackcurrant into an alloy of tin and copper that the eldest of the Strongs calms down.
“Still, she will be less happy now I should think.“ Draining the wine, staining his teeth red, deceit spills forth as easily as a worm in the bud. “His departure may be a blessing in disguise for us, she will be pliable as never before, and it should be easy to keep the little minx away from the affairs of the council.”
“You speak of her as some she-devil but she is but a girl. I hear much of the small-folk and their admiration for her during my patrols in the city.” Were it not for the sigh of his father then the enchantment of desire woven into the words of the Queen would not have gone amiss.
“A girl, a woman, call it as you see fit.” A wave of airy dismissal from the lord with a hand not used to grip steel but to turn pages. “Never has a Targaryen woman sat the Iron Throne and with good reason, given the madness in their blood. The Queen in the East lost three dragon’s eggs and the Queen Who Never Was lost her own head. I shudder to think what may come to pass should this one birth a daughter and seek to sway his mind on the succession. He is fickle and far too like his father in the worst regard.”
Silence falls as the ornate doors of the chambers opens to admit a maidservant, wearing a wimple in the colours of the house she has sworn to serve, hands quivering as she unveils the hollow of her heart in exchange for a pittance of coins, allure of gold stronger than the fear of coruscating dragon fire.
A cloth of silken fabric, pure as snow yet stained with the blood of a maiden and seed of a man, is presented unto them and grim satisfaction colours the roughly hewn face of the righteous man before he sends the servant girl away with a flick of his heavy jaw.
Father and son alone once more in a chamber decorated with banners that speak of their humble origins, with naught else heard but the hisses and splutters of flames licking at crimson droplets of innocence.
“Did you know that their ancestors would gift silks to the mothers of their dragonseeds?” Evidence of tarnished youth is consumed by the fire in the grate as the older man scoffs. “As if scraps of silver could erase the taint of bastardy. The Old King had the right of it, he sought to honour the traditions of this land, rather than the ruins of an olden empire, but our Dragon King and his Little Queen would undo it all.”
Mockery laces the words of perfidy born from a distaste for the depravities of the blood of the dragon and he nods to the bloodied sheets and threads of silver and gold curled to ashes, speaking not so much a wisdom as commanding his son to action.
“If this is the worth of his love, then you should have no trouble with her. No heart is as easily won as a broken one.”
***
Brimstone permeates the darkness, tendrils of light through cracks of bronze in the domed ceiling of the Dragonpit left behind, with only flickers of torches to illumine a deep descent into cavernous lairs of fire made flesh. Smoke and steam billows from hollows in the rockface and with every step tread forward by supple leather soles, dragons are roused from their slumber to sniff the air for the embers of one of their own.
Once, amid swirling snowflakes under a pearly sky, a Valyrian steel circlet of rubies forged and welded for the Conqueror had been presented on bended knees to the last living prince of his blood and she, a child clutched to his chest, had been but a tiny tot. Ice crystals in her windswept curls and roses in bloom on apple of her cheeks, bundled up in ermine-trimmed furs embroidered with the finest of silvery threads and with a stubborn refusal to be parted from the warmth of the man she had not been without since he had cut her silk-soft lip with a shard of dragonglass.
On this day, a promise of a summer storm beyond the veil of misty clouds, a crown once worn by the Conciliator had rested on her head as she addressed the Court, not as a little girl, not even as a little queen, but as Queen Regent in the sudden absence of her uncle, her husband, her Daemon.
The jagged outline of the Iron Throne, sharp edges like the rock formations of Dragonstone, had been silhouetted against the glass aglow with a silvery sheen from the dewy morning and never before had the blades felt as cold to the touch as they did without him by her side.
The loss of her maidenhead only yestereve paled in comparison to the loss of his presence come morrow. A scalding hot bath strewn with rose petals, sprigs of lavender and orange peels had washed away the last remnants of his seed from her skin and dulled the ache from his manhood inside of her yet there was no milk of the poppy poured in golden cups or words of comfort from her ladies that could alleviate the loss of him – nor cool the burning of shame aflame on her face from learning that each and every man of the Small Council had been privy to his plans.
It is why Rhaenyra now finds herself wandering through the sulphuric heat of the grottoes beneath the earthen floor of the Dragonpit, despite the looks of consternation from the ornately robed and finely bearded men of the Small Council at the announcement that she would take to the skies. Not merely in search of solace for the very first time she awakened alone – abandoned – in the marital bed that was supposed to have brought her only bliss yet gave her nothing but torment, but also for the weight on her heart that is the agony her she-dragon must bear without her mate.
An almighty roar echoes through turmoil of her thoughts and shakes the foundations of stone around her, thunderous in its power with a snap of a spiked tail as swiftly struck as a bolt of lightning cracked across the sky. Hide bedecked in horns as sharp as any blade on the throne that her last mistress died in envy for, the Red Queen emerges in a crimson cloud of dust and smoke from the opening of her cavern.
Eyes of topaz glimmering and spiked tail slithering away from where it narrowly avoids tearing into the mantle draped over Rhaenyra’s shoulder, Meleys’ appearance stirs a discomfort of feelings in the pit of her stomach.
It was by thine mistress’ own doing that she lost her head, a traitor’s death for attempts on my life, Rhaenyra wishes to tell the blood red beast. One day you shall have a bold rider, a prince or princess born with a crown. Meleys lingers at the mouth of her cave as if she discerns the unspoken thoughts and as vicious snarls are replaced by mournful cries, Rhaenyra is reminded of the fact that she is not the only one that Daemon has left behind.
The Red Queen was the first dragon that Daemon ever rode on, as a babe wrapped in a blanket and strapped to the chest of his mother, the untameable Alyssa, without a strand of silver in her wild ringlets, who ruled the starry skies with the Spring Prince. Rare are the words that Daemon utters about her but from the crinkle in the corner of his eyes when the few memories of his childhood have seeped into their conversations, Rhaenyra knows that his mother is never far from his impenetrable thoughts nor his guarded heart.
Her own mind is a fell place of moonless nights and in the crimson tatters of her heart lies a sepulchre carved from her naked flesh promised to him as a babe in his arms when her blood was spilled by his hands. Her trek into the caverns of the Dragonpit, to where she knows that her mount has always made her lair coiled together with her mate, continues to the steady drip drop of pendent stones and caliginous musings.
Is this marriage yet another shackle for you?
A childish fear he had lulled to rest with the stroke of his tongue and bite of his teeth, a balm to her as much as hums of their shared vernacular or gentle circles on the small of her back. Yet lust is not akin to love, not to a man such as him, as her lady mother had spoke of it, with a history of women of the night strewn across his flushed skin like strings of pearls on theirs.
The unfurling of golden wings brings a fiercer ache to her heart but it is not the sight of Syrax without Caraxes that spills dewdrops of white hot fury but a glint of steel from chains that have been secured around the sinewy but sturdy limbs of her mount.
Once, the Old King had struck her dragon in chains, when she was but a golden hatchling an ocean apart from Rhaenyra, but not since her uncle had cut off the head of the serpent Otto Hightower on the bridge where the bad man had struck her, had Syrax ever been fettered thus, weighed down by steel to keep her aground.
Dragons were made for the skies, Daemon had always told her, and were meant to soar through the tenebrous clouds above Dragonstone as well as the glittering depths of Blackwater Bay, for all and sundry to see the might of the blood of the dragon, and as Rhaenyra had been bound to him, so had Syrax been bound to his mount, yet now he has bound her dragon not with blood but with chains.
“Craven!” Her own roar is not a thunderstorm but a tempest that echoes in the confines of the hollowed cave, fragments of charred bones strewn across the ground scattering before her as she takes the final steps to the heart of the cavern at a run. “Coward!”
Her hands tremble and her arms ache from the effort as she hurries to undo the heavy irons struck around Syrax whilst her little golden lady shrieks out her dismay at being shackled in the darkness. “Do not fret, ñuha qeldlie jorrāelagon, do not fret.” Her words do not possess his soothing lilt, a chill of a phantom breath skimming across her skin as she thinks of the soft humming of his dragonsong in the crook of her neck and she swallows back a sob as the last of the chains come undone.
With her mount freed of her confines, golden-beryl scales ripple with movement and steam and smoke rises with every ungainly step forward to the entrance of the cave by the clumsy hindlegs of the furious she-dragon, as a firestorm and bloodlust the likes of which Rhaenyra has only ever seen in the eyes of her husband, dripping with the blood of traitors and clinging to her with a bruising grip, takes possession of her heart.
A burst of near black fire rages through the cavernous tunnels as Syrax stalks on and sniffs the air for traces of him. Leather and smoke as any dragonlord with embers of vetiver from the bottles of scent Rhaenyra has gifted him, long since dissipated in the hours from his departure.
“Syrax, keligon!” Rhaenyra cries, rushing after her through the tunnels adorned with shards of obsidian aglow with the light of braziers and ancient glyphs drawn in the rockface in a red as dark as blood, tasting bitter ashes on her tongue at the cruel irony that she cannot even command her dragon to stay by her side. “Ziry geptot!”
Unsure if she means the man with silver hair and a forked tongue or his mount with a gleam of menace in his peridot eyes – each of them have left her in a pit of snakes - she reaches for the ruby-encrusted dragon-bone whip at the hip of her riding leathers yet it is all in vain in face of the rage that seems to rule Syrax.
Her she-dragon is under the command of a voice not hers, a summoning of blood, and she snaps against the lash of the whip and instead of a command like the ones taught to her by her uncle in the tongue of their forebears, it is a sudden yelp of shock that Rhaenyra lets out, a sound from behind her ribcage not even uttered when she mounted her dragon at the age of seven.
As Syrax readies to take flight through the dome of the Dragonpit, it is only with the utmost of effort that Rhaenyra manages to climb onto the rough surface of her scales. Without chains to secure her and not even a saddle to sit upon, she clings on with tears frozen on her face from the clouds heavy with rain that they break through at a dizzying speed within moments and there is only one thought echoing in her mind.
Dragons can smell fear
***
A storm brooded over the misty rim of the sunrise on the fateful day he took Rhaenyra as his bride at the ancient altar nestled between the mossy crags of Dragonstone.
Flames from gilded candelabras danced as dragon in the skies with the drip of melting wax shining as drops of amber through evanescent flashes of sunlight caught in the rain. Fabric strung between poles of ash trees fluttered in the wind as did the starlight of her hair left unbound past the braids at the crown of her head that bore the headdress beaded with pearls and rubies in a flush of colour the same as the beaming face of his exquisite babe.
Timeless are the rains upon the island carved from rock by their ancestors and glimpses of sun over tilled earth as ephemeral as the lives of all those without the blood of the dragon and the day they had been sealed to each other, with fire and blood drawn upon their foreheads, the weather had been punctuated by the angry lashing of waves and the fierce beating of winds.
A remnant of summer in the autumnal air had existed only for a sliver of time after the last of the haunting chants of High Valyrian had been swept away in the fog, a frozen moment of newly wedded bliss in which the island had come alive with the swaying of heathers on the misty moors traversed by the tottering steps of the little princess now promised to be his little queen.
As Daemon kneels before the altar eleven years later, silver hair loose in the wind with strands stuck to his cheeks but not from the rain, he thinks of the vow he had laid unto himself, when he told her of why he had brought her to the distant shores of the island that she was all but barred from by the men who had sought to truss her up like a lamb for slaughter.
He had promised to always be a sentry to her happiness and yet as he gazes to the ancient stones aged by centuries of rites, once adorned with symbols of their heritage, aglow with an irresistible allure to his little magpie he had to pry away from the flames, he knows that he has broken his vow.
There is no warmth to be found for an oathbreaker, all colour leeched from the bleak slabs of stone no longer stained from the blood drawn from his lips by the unbridled fervour of a child of only four summers, and he does not know why he is here – he is meant to be on his way to the Stepstones – but the cries of his mount soaring above him in the skies as dark as the stormcloud on the horizon is telling him that there must be a reason for his being there.
Never before has Caraxes taken him somewhere not of his choosing, yet as they had passed Sharp Point in the lands of the House of Bar Emmon, the Blood Wyrm had veered from the course set southeast and no lashing of any whip or commands shouted into the winds had broken the furious beating of his carmine wings.
“Syrax… My beloved…” His words are but a whisper carried away in the oncoming storm but he chants her name and prays for her protection and if there is any deity that can hear them it is the goddess of love and beauty for which the names of his niece and her she-dragon have always been a byword. “Mīsagon zirȳla… My goddess...”
Baptised in the name of the Seven with the cursed waters of the Starry Sept he had scorned the feeble thralls that the sheep of Westeros believed in when he had been but a boy and prayed nightly to the Fourteen Flames for his egg to hatch and give him a hatchling of his own that he would name in their honour.
There had been no augury of faith in the pleasurable and vindictive acts of sinning he devoted himself to despite the consternation of his pious grandmother but when he had held Dark Sister in his hands for the very first time he had felt the pull of divinity and as Rhaenyra had been placed in his arms merely a moment after her birth, specks of birth blood in the silver hair that he cut a lock from, he had not doubted that she had been given unto him by the grace of the gods.
The hatching of the egg to he had chosen for her and secreted into her cradle against the orders of his grandfather had only strengthened his conviction that like Visenya had Rhaenys, so would Daemon have Rhaenyra, his own Rhaenys with the silver and gold of Meraxes herself.
He does not know how much time has passed when he rises to stand, a crick in his knees telling him that it may have been hours or that he is no longer the youth of not yet twenty tasting happiness in the blood of a cup of ceremonial wine, but he does know the stubbornness of his dragon and wonders if his prayers – protect her from it all, protect our child she may carry – is enough to wash away the sin that is his forsaking of her mere hours after taking her maidenhead.
“Caraxes!” It is a near foreign sound to him to summon his mount by name because the Blood Wyrm has always harkened to his every thought before he has voiced any of them but as Daemon treks the familiar steps to the castle, passing the winding bridge wreathed in mists, he is evaded and forced to call out time and time again for the dragon that he claimed not long before he made his claim to Rhaenyra. “Kesīr!”
A prickle of unease mounting inside of him at the disobedience never before shown and an irrational fury to be bound to the ground that feels wrong, wrong, wrong to walk upon, without her small hand, bandaged with white gauze stained red by the wound of their bond, clasped in his much larger hand. A dragonite growl tears itself out his throat as the beat of leathery wings makes him stumble on the slick stones of the bridge where he once lost her.
Any empty threats of retribution are choked back by a scintillating golden dragon that breaks through the cover of the clouds. For a moment, the world is a tempest of crimson and topaz bleeding into each other before his watering eyes, until a burst of fire leaves naught but the acrid smell of smoke rising in spirals. He is frozen in place at the edge of the bridge, held down by the weight of unseen irons chained around his heart as Syrax and Caraxes coil together in more of a collision than a reunion, with no understanding of Rhaenyra has come to him even as he ensured she would not.
He only stumbles towards them as Syrax sets down on the bridge, fragments of stone and specks of dust crumbling and floating away into the mists under the weight of Caraxes landing not far from her, their tails entwined under the pattering of a light drizzle.
As he catches the slight figure of Rhaenyra slipping from the scales, it is as if the passing of the last eleven years have been a mirage at the canvas of indigo that he awoke to on the night that he lay in his bed with a bleeding wound earned for his fear of losing the weeping babe on his chest.
As a star to the night sky she had clung to him, his little girl, and refused to be parted from him even an inch and come morrow she had remained with him even as the wound was cleaned with purifying ashy waters from the hot springs and dressed in fresh layers of gauze wrapped with marigold. As straight as a stretched piece of pretty ribbon from her lacy skirts and with her swan neck arched gracefully in the impression of a dignified lady she had learned to master by watching her lady mother, as if to show him that she could be brave even when he was in pain.
A bravery he has never known in himself, driven to the edges of sanity by the sheer thought of anyone hurting her - anyone but him – and a sublimity to behold as her starlight hair had spilled out against his naked chest in the days of bedrest after the skirmish on the bridge, but now he is the moon chasing after the sun, a brother burnt by the soot of his sister, as she fights from his grasp.
“Do not touch me,” she spits, a fiery red flush on her pale cheeks streaked with tears, and he rears back from the vehemence in the voice he had despaired at not hearing for years or mayhaps ever again. “Do not dare lay a hand upon me lest you wish to lose it.”
“You are my wife, my niece, any hand upon you is mine to lay.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them and the sting of her slap burns on his cheek even if he knows it is a threat she can never act upon. “Rhaenyra-“ He spits crimson from the bite of his tongue and his heart clenches at the whimper she lets out as droplets of blood and saliva falls onto the weathered stone.
“You abandoned me.“ Her breath hitches and he yearns to touch her, starved for the warmth of her skin, but the glaring of her watery eyes, a cluster of lilac blossoms laden with rain, is so withering that he stays in his attempts to reach for her. “For a lie.”
“A lie?”
“They told me that you left for war and that I am to sit your throne.“ Our throne he wishes to say for the quiver in her voice and he curses himself for his cowardice to have left her to the mercy of the vipers that seek to undermine her. “Yet here you stand, husband, so if you wished to sever the bonds of our marriage and discard me for one of your lords to wed then I tell you there was surely a better way than to leave me with nothing but your spend inside my-“
“Are you mad?” He charges at her before she has finished her sentence and takes a hold of her not sure if he wants to force the blasphemy of her words out by the strength of his grip or steal the breath of the gasp that escapes her. “There is no end to our matrimony, not even my death, and you will never take another man to husband.”
“Your death?” The war of emotions writ upon her face, a storm of anguish and ignorance born from innocence, is as captivating as any painting or sculpture he has commissioned of her, brushstrokes of her blushing cheeks under his fingertips tracing ashes in the sunkissed alabaster of her skin, and even as she turns her face away from his, there is a longing in the parting of her lips offering all the sweetness she has ever held for him. “Why so?”
“It was not a lie.” A firm hold of her chin forces her pale amethyst gaze to his. “I am to leave for war, my niece, I am only here because the gods willed it.“
It is not a truth but not yet a lie either and a lusty cry of Caraxes taking to sky with Syrax with a gush of wind has Daemon embrace Rhaenyra for fear that she will fall. He is spurred by a dilation of darkness in irises of lilac and another hitch of breath from her small mouth with plump lips bearing the faintest of silvery mark in the plush petal pink softness.
As his hands roam across the riding leathers covering her nubile body he feels the trembling of her small figure that has her leaning into the comfort of his touch and engulfed in the perfume of her sweetness with a hint of smoke, he also feels himself hardening at the memory of burying himself inside of her.
“How did you come here, Rhaenyra?” He cups her face and wants nothing more than to press his lips to hers, growing all the more certain that she was brought here in same way that he was and for the same purpose, dancing of their dragons above a sign of the divinity at play, of his chance to atone for his wrongs. “How did you know where I was?”
Shadows mars the loveliness of her features, porcelain smoothness of her forehead inherited by her mother and delicate button of her nose that he has bestowed many kisses upon, and she struggles anew with the crush of his hold on her brittle dove bones.
“You bound her in chains,” she bites out. “You are no better than the Old King and I never would have come here of my own volition-“
“If you mean to insult me you shall have to try harder than that, ñuha jelevre.” He tightens his hold on her once more and relishes in the knowledge that whatever may come to pass she will bear the marks of him. “I would do far worse than bind your dragon with irons if only to keep you safe and I would do worse still if you ever sought to leave me.”
“You left me, you f*cking bastard, and do not call me that!”
With her cry of fury and the second slap of her hand across his cheek echoing as loudly as her scream of fear upon the same bridge once did, it is an all the more arduous task to separate the truth of the moment from the torment of memory. From one heartbeat to another, she is the precious babe he had stolen from her bed only for her to be taken from his arms by the men sworn to serve their house and fear sluices in the cold sweat at the nape of his neck where her tiny fingers once played with silvery curls.
“I had no other choice!”
His roar is deafening to hearken to and greater than any words of protest she can offer when he wraps his fist in the cascading strands of silver left undone but for braids to tie it from the flush of her face, as it had snaked and weaved in the wind on the day she was wed to him.
“I have given you my heart and it is yours to break but I cannot bear witness to-to- yours-f*ck,” he tears himself away from her with a growl at the stuttered words he cannot speak with confidence, not even able to feign it, but she catches his hand and the cold kiss of her wedding band on his skin is a balm to the wound that throbs with a phantom ache in his side.
“You are a coward.” Her words sting worse than her slaps, her perfectly shaped nails biting into his skin in a stark reminder of only hours ago, but not so much as the hurt in her eyes or the shake of head. “I would ask you not insult me or what we have been to each other but you seem determined to do it anyway. You chose not to tell me of your plans but instead to treat me as a common whor* and sneak away from our bed as a thief in the night.”
He does not want to listen to any of it – he cannot command armies nor fight battles with the truths of her words ringing in his mind and the lies he has told her weighing on his heart and by the gods he cannot even think properly when she is near him for he is consumed by the fiery need of her – but she is as merciless as he was when he untangled himself from the mess of their coupling and fled into the darkness, alone in the night whereas once he had his moon of a child in his arms.
“You say that I am your Rhaenys yet you treat me as the Conqueror did Visenya and she is not the sister I want to be.”
“Rhaenyra-“
“I chose you.” A feverish glow in the colour of her eyes that is uniquely hers, a true lilac born from the blue skies of the Vale of the Arryn and the purple gems of the mines of Old Valyria, the likes of which has not been borne in the gaze of any other maiden, yet she is not a maiden anymore. A small thing she is but a woman now with the promise of widening hips and a bosom for resting silver heads on and he is mesmerised by the fire in her even as her words chill him to his core. “Yet you never chose me.”
Confusion must twist his features for she reaches a dainty hand – as small as ever in his grasp and unchanged from the past – to the frown of his brow.
“You only took me from my bed in the dead of night, from the arms of mine own mother, at her behest and not by your own choice. If my lady mother had not asked it of you, then you would not have absconded with me, eloping to this island. You did not even come at once, you waited until it was nigh on too late.”
Her words speak of a pain not inflicted by the bitterness of the night but buried deeply in years gone by and tears tangle in long lashes that cast shadows on the golden freckles of her cheeks even in the weakness of the light from the tempestuous day. He watches the rise and fall of her chest beneath the smooth expanse of supple riding leathers and thinks of the endless nights spent in restless desolation in the fortress that looms behind him.
“’Tis true that without her word, I would not have known of their plan to give you away to the son of the Sea Snake, ‘tis true,” he repeats with his tongue pressed against his teeth in an effort to preserve a modicum of calm but another gasp still escapes her when he traps her hand against chest. “Yet you speak of things you know nothing about,” he goes on and it is hard to keep a tone of malice from lacing his voice or a sneer of derision from twisting his face. “I did not linger on these shores, I ensured that I was free to wed you.”
“I have warned you-“
“You have warned me never to speak of the woman others would know as my first wife, yes,” Daemon snarls, digging his nails into the tenderness of her small hand, baring his teeth in a mirthless smirk. “Yet how can I not when you accuse me of reticence? I killed her for you, Rhaenyra, with mine own hands I took Rhea’s life and I rejoiced in splitting her skull open it as I would relish in strangling the life out of anyone you ask me to.”
“I should not have to ask for your devotion when you have demanded mine for years!”
Rhaenyra tries but fails to release her hand from his grip, a dragon’s hold on her, not for any fear of his words but fury at the mention of the woman incurring her eternal wrath for once having been recorded as his wife in the annals that Rhaenyra ordered to be burnt by dragonfire.
“I chose you then as I chose you throughout all that we have endured, yet for you our life together has been nothing but the passing of consequences of a decision you made not from choice but from a misplaced sense of duty to the daughter of your departed-“
“Is that truly what you think? That I am wed to you not by choice but by necessity?” He demands furiously as she wipes at her tears and shakes her head at her own folly albeit he is certain she thinks of it as foolish for the faith she has given him. “Do you not know how much I burn for you? Of what you do to me?”
In that moment he is unsure of if he burns with anger at the notion that he would ever sit idly by and let her be wed to anyone that is not him or arousal for the sight of her tears that is nothing he has ever wanted but always found himself enchanted by. A desperation and a desire to have her takes hold of him just as he takes hold of her with nowhere for their shared breaths to go.
“You have every part of me, Rhaenyra, you have every breath in my lungs and every beat of my heart, but I cannot, I cannot, I cannot bear witness to your torment. I feared I would watch you draw your last shuddering breath once and mine own breathing has not come easily since then and I adore, I adore, I adore you far too much to ever think of losing you. You have never belonged to anyone but me, you have never been a daughter to anyone but-“
He stops himself short but even the words that are left unsaid seem to give her some peace of mind as she comes to him as willingly as the prey of a dragon ever can when he pulls her closer still into him with an unspoken apology for his actions in the press of his lips from the corner of the eyes – crinkling from a sad smile – to the bow of her lips – wobbling with emotion.
“I lust for you, that much is true,” he whispers against her lips – soft as the day a droplet of blood sprung forth – and he licks the salt of her tears. “Yet I love you as I have ever done and ever will, for you are my chosen bride.”
***
It is not the first time he lays her down in the high bed of the ornate chamber where she once bounced on the soles of her feet in order to reach him among the mountain of pillows she had demanded be brought to him and named him her soldier as she wept against his chest.
It is not even the first time he is intent to give her pleasure in the eiderdown strewn with heather from the moor as fresh in bloom as if she had picked them with her bleeding hand.
It does carry with it a certain weight to know he will take her not as a girl but as a woman beneath the carved ceiling that bore witness to many of her firsts – a charcoal drawing of them drawn by her chubby fingers, a translation of her favourite book from High Valyrian to the Common Tongue, a fight over a long since forgotten grievance shaking the walls of the fortress, a giggle at a kiss stolen beneath the watchful eyes of her mother.
A scent of her arousal mingles with the fire and blood in the air, a potent mixture, and with her maidenhead already claimed by him it is a futile struggle for him not to give into his ferocious desire for her. A groan escapes him as he sinks a finger into the wetness of her sex, a soreness sure to linger from the less than ideal way he took her for the first time but she offers no protest. Enduring a pinprick of pain infinitely easier knowing of the pleasures that lie ahead for the both of them this time with only a thimble’s worth of blood from her innocence.
“I will not forgive you for it,” she tells him in feeble whines to the stroke of his digits against her velvety walls amidst sweaty kisses. “I will not forget what you did.”
“I have not asked you for absolution yet,” he answers with a curl of his lips against hers that mimics the curl of his finger inside of her. “Nor your oblivion.”
Atop the sheets of the bed, Rhaenyra writes like the snake and weave of the vines of the rose garden that he had plucked her from, to the adding of another finger, adorned with a silver ring, and his free hand cupping her tit*. Little things of milky white softness with pink nipples to pinch and tweak and suckle from as she clutches his head to the warmth of her bosom.
“My goddess,” he breathes in the valley of her breasts, sweetness of flowers with the salt of sweat and smoke of fire filling his nostrils, and she keens at the lick of his tongue teasing the underside of her tit*, sensitive skin pulled as taut as her nipples that he also gives a teasing pass of his tongue. “I will worship these for the end of my days.”
Her jaw slackens and her breath quickens with every thrust of his fingers in imitation of what he longs for. “I need-“
“Tell me what you need, my little love.” A muffled moan against her bosom as his mouth fills with the morsel of her breast. “What does my goddess of love and beauty require to reach the heavens?”
It is so different from the night before when he took her without asking, it is so much better as his silver strands ghosts across her skin from her sternum to her navel where he dips his tongue in before he pulls his fingers out with a gush of her slick and settles between the parting of her thighs at her stuttered words of wanton desire.
Her arousal is as heady as the gulp of their blood mingled with wine from the lead of a ceremonial cup, as sweet as the burning of sugar for the tower of lemon cakes he brought to her on their first night as husband and wife in that very chamber and as salty as the spindrift of the sea carrying her bridal posy of blossoms away.
His little girl, his little queen.
She had asked him once if she tasted better than his lovers but the silvery haired maidens he had deflowered before her had only ever been faceless and nameless c*nts to bury his co*ck inside as his hands conjured the silky texture of her tresses and his eyes closed to envision the will-o'-the-wisp that was the promise of his niece for so many years of longing.
He had never lowered himself in bestowing any other pleasure upon the women carrying the illusion of his wife other than the honour they had already received at being bedded by their King.
Tasting her sweetness in his mouth, spill of her wetness running down his cheek, he wants nothing more than for his tongue to lap at her weeping slit until the last stones of the crumbling bridge have been chipped away by the passing of time.
“Kepa-“ Her moans spur him on and he spreads wider her for him, placing one white thigh flushed with pinkness over his bare shoulder and licking at the nest of sweet cream revealed by the puffy lips of her puss* and at the swollen nub of pleasure that has her cries reach a crescendo and she pulls him away from the devouring of her c*nt by the roots of his hair. “Kostilus-“ She comes with a hitch in her breath as he pinches the engorged hood of her cl*t and draws blood from her arousal.
“It is too much,” she sobs as he tries to return his fingers to the fountain of her divinity and play in the mess of their making, shining spittle of his saliva and gleaming slickness of her arousal on the flowered petals of her c*nt. “I cannot bear it, please-“
“Shhh sweet girl, my sweetest girl, tell me-“ One large hand over her softness of her stomach, the small stretch of skin over her womb, another wrapped around the fragile bones of her throat as he crawls up her nymphet form with a licking of his lips ghosting over the curve of her hips and swell of her breasts, “-did you drink the moon tea I left for you?”
Her rapidly fading breath hitches as he licks into her open mouth, lapping at the drool of saliva and teasing the tip of his tongue against hers, but a darkness crosses the flush of her face as he nestles himself between her nubile shape curved to the demands of his larger frame and he takes himself in hand whilst securing the hold of her throat.
He is powerless to stop no matter what her answer may be but there is a loathing part of himself that wants to know the depths of his own depravity and the true extent of the blessing of the unbeknownst gods in giving him this sparkling star fallen from the indigo skies of immortal beauty.
“I may have-“ she bites out and sinks her teeth into his lower lip when he kisses her, “-or I may not have. You made your choice and now you must live with it.”
“Choice….” A pull away from her bloodstained mouth, a smack as his lip is released and the nails of the hand that held his co*ck digs into the plump of her cheeks to open her wider for a string of crimson spittle to dangle from his mouth into hers. “I choose you, my little love, my moonbeam child.”
“I cannot-“ She thrashes with shaking arms and smeared lips as he returns to torment her with the head of his co*ck against the seam of her overwhelmed c*nt. “I am too-
His co*ck sinks into her nevertheless, in the very same way that he took her only last night. This time he lets their mouths meet in search of gold at the stroke of their tongues and he buries his head in the crook of her neck.
The hand not adorning her throat, as the necklace of rubies he had gifted to her, moving to thumb at the pearl of flesh at the apex of her thighs as he wraps them around his middle in a warped and wicked imitation of an embrace.
Her small hands – how had he ever been able to make a cut in such a small palm of tender flesh with a shard of dragonglass - grapple with his sweat-slick body, to heft at arms that will be scarred by swords, to rub at the birth mark on his back, to tangle in strands of pure snow that will be dirtied by seawater.
Tears pool in the corner of her eyes and slip down her cheeks at the words grunted out of him with every thrust clenched down on by the walls of her swollen c*nt, pudgy mons of her puss* slippery wet as he flicks with her cl*t with roughened fingertips until she sings a broken song for him as sweetly as the hum of his lullabies for her.
“Daemon, oh Daemon,” she whispers from the faintness of her breath and the fullness of his co*ck, the feel of which brings her to completion with yet more tears that he kisses away, even as he is determined for still more droplets of salt to fall on her wet cheeks that he brushes his feverishly hot skin against.
The nudge of his co*ck against her core gives him her broken gasps of breathy little ah ah ahs and as he feels the familiar tightening of his muscles and the clenching of his jaw and comes with a guttural growl echoed in the skies by his dragon, he prays to the deity of her own she-dragon- protect her from me, protect her from my childas he fills her with his seed once more.
“I choose you, my fire and blood.” A collapse against her body and a rest of his head against her bosom and he ponders the fickleness of the gods whilst she presses kisses to his sweaty temple. “I choose you, my only reason for life.”
***
A promised storm rages throughout the night and only gives way to a sunrise blushed in mists still with a faint mizzle in the air. Sleep is peaceful with the soft sounds of his breathing only interrupted by the occasional shrieking of their dragons at play in the starry skies. A twinkle of stars can still be seen at dawn to a rim of pink at the horizon as he sits on the edge of their bed and asks her in helping to put on his dragon-scaled armour.
Their walk to the shell-strewn shores is quiet, madness of their blood guiding their lustful actions dissipated and leaving behind a tension as frangible as the brittle leafs of weirwood trees. Her hand is clasped in his even as he gazes to the skies for the blurs of different shades of sunlight that is their dragons spinning through the air with their claws hooked to each other.
As Caraxes lands on the wet sands, Daemon meets her gaze and there is a jolt of fear in her heart that tells her it may be the last time she will ever look into his pools of true purple, the deep amethyst shade of every depiction Queen Visenya, yet even so, there is a silence that neither of them is willing to break by reiterating their points of contention and their fighting words, from a day that already seems to be a memory of a life that is never to return to what it once was or what it may have been.
“You said that you would do much worse than chain my dragon in order not to lose me.” The menace of his words returns to her and her hand falls from his. “Would you kill me before you lost me to another man?”
A burn in his eyes tells him more than his words ever could.
“I am a maiden no more.” It is easier to feign the brazenness of brass than to admit the torment of her heart at the thought of him leaving with so many things left unsaid and if by stoking the fire of his bloodlust for her she can bring him back to her quicker then she will. “When you first took me I thought that I was mad to have begged you for it. Yet now you have shown me true pleasure and what it means to truly be taken by a man so perhaps I shall seek out the same thing at the Street of Silk in your absence.”
“You will do no such thing.” A snarl twists his handsome features and there is a comfort in the familiarity of his bruise of his grip. “You are my niece, my wife, and if you dare ever dream of taking of another man to-“
“You are not soon to find out if I do,” she retorts, relishing in the marks adorning her wrists. “Return to me quickly, my King, lest you return to find me in another man’s bed.”
An incredulous, mirthless laugh escapes him along with a string of curses and he shakes his head at the defiance that could only ever have been encouraged in a child raised by the deviance of such a man as him. As he holds her gaze once more, the moment of levity fades and is replaced by a seriousness that settles like the weight of chains around her.
“If I do not return-“
“Do not say-“
“I must.” He laces their fingers and rests his forehead against hers. “As you must sit the Iron Throne as Queen in your own right should I not return. Not as Queen Regent but as Queen Regnant.”
Understanding of what he means burns in the brimming of tears behind her eyelids. Unable to follow him to the shadow lands of their ancestors, doomed to watch the embers of his body rise to the skies.
“The first of your name, what a sight it will be,” he mumbles against her lips. “I will be sorry to miss it.”
“It will not be at all, for you are to return to me, ñuha azantys.” A finger against his lip as he tries to steal another kiss from her. “It is an order from your Queen and until you return you may not kiss her again.”
“A cruel mistress…” His thumb traces the silvery scar of their sacred bond. “I would gift my Queen the Sword of Kings and task her with keeping it safe. I have Dark Sister and she has seen me through many perils and it would give your uncle some measure of calm to know that if he falls in battle, then the scum of the Triarchy will only be getting one heirloom of our house.”
The ancient sword once wielded by the Conqueror gleams with dark steel and blood red gems and his last living male descendant helps her to secure Blackfyre to a sheath to be carried by Syrax. Tears spills past her cheeks once more and she falls to the sands where Daemon kneels before her.
“Do not forget about me, ñuha jelevre.” A lament whispered into the silver of her hair that he cuts a lock from with the sharpness of his dagger to place inside a locket tied around his neck. “Wear black for the rest of your days, ñuha tala.” A plea pressed into a kiss on her forehead with a touch of tears. “Do not take another husband, ñuha ābrazȳrys.” A request made with a turn of his ringfinger around the gold of her wedding band.
