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"Soves! (Fly),” Rhaenyra waits expectantly, bracing herself in the saddle. Her eyebrows knit together in disapproval when nothing happens. “Dohaeris (Serve me), Caraxes!”
She feels her uncle chuckle behind her before quietly commanding, “Soves, Caraxes.”
The creature immediately takes flight, causing Rhaenyra to whip her head around. “He didn’t listen to me. Why won’t he listen to me anymore?”
Her uncle smirks and gives an exaggerated shrug.
Rhaenyra sighs, grumbling, “Ao've umptan qrīdrughagon tolī bōsa (you’ve stayed away too long). He’s forgotten me.”
“Or perhaps, Princess, you’re simply more observant now at the age of seven than you were at the age of five."
After a moment of puzzling, she is filled with righteous indignation. “He never listened to me? It was always a lie?”
She should have known, she supposes. Of course she knew that most dragons only take commands from their bonded riders. But her uncle had told Rhaenyra years ago that Caraxes was different. Caraxes was so enamored of her, he said, that the dragon would make a special exception and obey her if she was very diligent in practicing her High Valyrian, if her pronunciation was perfect.
“It was a game.” He corrects indulgently. “Caraxes apologizes for his shortcomings. If he could obey anyone but me, it would most certainly be you. But the truth, little one, is that you’re stuck with me until you’ve claimed a dragon of your own.”
“I’m not stuck with you though. You’re never here anymore.” she sulks. “You’re always in the Vale.”
“Mmm,” he acknowledges, his thoughts seeming to turn inward.
Rhaenyra’s father says that her uncle cannot live in King’s Landing because he must live with his wife at Runestone, but this is no justification for the years between his visits - especially when court gossip is filled with stories of his adventures across the Narrow Sea.
He knows - he must know - how she suffers in his absence. No one to take her flying, show her how to wordlessly command a dragon with weight shifts and rein twists. No one to casually joke and tell secrets in the language of their ancestors, teach her the words a princess shouldn’t say. No one to idolize for being only just eighteen and already knighted, wielding Dark Sister, leading armies for her father, traveling the world.
How she longs to study him, be him, possess him in a way she doesn’t fully understand. And yet he keeps her waiting, always waiting for a glimpse of red wings on the horizon.
It’s impossible, though, to remain sullen as they soar above the clouds and over the sea. After a minute or two, she lifts her arms to feel the wind between her fingers, confident that Daemon will adjust, as he does, to hold her in place.
“Perhaps I’ll claim Cannibal,” she says provocatively, breaking her silence. “And then you’ll regret your offenses - you and Caraxes. When my dragon devours you both.”
Her mother had admonished her uncle when she heard him telling Rhaenyra stories of Cannibal, chiding him not to scare his niece. But Rhaenyra wasn’t scared, she was fascinated. Cole black Cannibal, wild and ancient - older, some said, even than The Conqueror’s Balerion. Living in the caves of Dragonstone, feasting on villagers and other dragons alike.
He laughs aloud, a rarity. “Such a harsh penalty. But very well, I accept my fate. Shall I steer a course for Dragonstone, then?”
Rhaenyra grins, pleased to have amused him, wishing they could indeed proceed to Dragonstone; that her father hadn’t given strict instructions to return before the feast tonight.
“Not today. I’ll grant you a reprieve.”
"Merciful Princess Rhaenyra.”
They are turning back towards King’s Landing when she gathers up her courage. "Uncle, do you ever wonder…” She hesitates, not wanting to sound foolish, but needing to know and trusting him as the final authority on all things. “Sometimes I wonder if perhaps Cannibal is happier than our dragons in the pit. Happier than Caraxes-"
"Happier than Caraxes?” he interrupts lightly. “What a thing to say. Daor zaldrīzes iksos biare raqagon caraxes (no dragon is happy like Caraxes). Such a fortunate dragon, Naejot emagon issa syt nykeā kipagīros (to have me for a rider.)" Rhaenyra thinks she hears Caraxes snort, Daemon’s boast reaching its intended audience.
"But what makes you think that Cannibal is happy, niece? Alone and unclaimed, eating his own kind? Not exactly a picture of happiness.”
“He’s free," she says simply. "He answers to no one.”
“Ah, I see.” He seems to consider her concern. “But you mistake freedom and happiness. They are not one in the same. Freedom is not what dragons most desire."
"What do they most desire?" She waits expectantly for him to reveal the mysteries of the universe to her.
"They desire purpose.” He replies immediately, with his usual confidence. “Without us, their power is meaningless, wasted. With us - with the right rider, their power serves a larger purpose. It’s wielded for glory."
"Our glory - not theirs." She considers his words. "It still seems we get the better end of the bargain. We need them more than they need us."
"No, child. If anything, they need us more." He pauses as if looking for the right words to make her understand. "To live without purpose - no role to play, nothing to protect, nothing to serve - is not really to live. If we were to refuse to make use of them, relegate them to aimless obscurity - that would be the true cruelty."
There is a note of bitterness in his voice that confuses her, but she doesn't dwell on it. She has her answer.
“So you truly believe a bonded dragon is happier than a wild one?"
"I truly do."
"And that if I were to choose a dragon, it would be happily claimed?" She is deliberately vague, not ready to tell anyone, even him, about the plan forming in her mind to claim Syrax.
“When you claim a dragon, my pet, it will be the joy of their life to serve you.” He dotes. “Besides, we don’t choose our dragons, byka kipagīros (little rider), they choose us. It would be impossible for you to claim a dragon that hadn’t already chosen you.”
“You were magnificent tonight.”
Her heart skips at the sound of Daemon’s voice greeting her when she opens the door to her guest chambers. She had hoped he might find her after they had each tended to their own distraught children, but it still feels impossible - the solid reality of him standing there by the open window in the moonlight. She slips inside quickly and closes the door behind her, throbbing pain at her wrist all but forgotten.
“Much has transpired tonight, uncle. When specifically did I impress you?” she banters with a lightness she hasn’t felt in recent memory.
He breathes a low laugh that sends a pleasant shiver down her spine. “At no moment tonight did you fail to impress me, niece. Your every move has been magnificent. As you well know.” (Indeed, she can still hear his incoherent moans on the beach, still feel their warmth lingering where they’d spilled from his mouth onto her neck. She can still feel him trembling in her arms at the long overdue culmination of their dance begun ten years ago on the Street of Silk.)
His eyes are glowing hot as he walks towards her. "But downstairs - the way you pulled her strings, the way you stood your ground with a blade to your eye - never blinked, never even flinched… gods, Rhaenyra.” He’s looking at her with something like wonder, almost veneration. “It was a sight to behold - the woman you’ve grown into. The dragon you've become.”
Rhaenyra finds herself suddenly unable to speak.
“Come to me.” His voice is gentle but firm. She obeys without a second thought, walking into his arms and taking a shaky breath when they wrap around her like armor. The relief of them, the unparalleled safety.
She’s bone-weary, she realizes as she relaxes against him, tucking her head under his chin; dropping her guard for the first time in hours, days, years. The steady beat of his heart under her ear, the cool clasp of his tunic grazing her cheek as she rests there. She breathes him in: saltwater, leather, musky smoke, and, she’s pleased to realize, traces of her own scent still on his skin.
“Always such a fearless girl, my Rhaenyra.” He’s stroking her hair as he used to when she was a child with skinned knees from ill-advised leaps off ridges, rails, tree limbs. “Ao jāhor sagon nykeā jaqiarza dāria (you will be a glorious queen ).”
It feels as if something long broken and forgotten inside her is moving to repair itself. She came to Driftmark on a mission to formalize their alliance and secure his support, but the idea that he might sincerely believe her worthy of the crown is something else, something more than she had known she needed until this moment.
“It made me bolder, having you there tonight,” she risks confessing after a long moment burrowed silently into his chest. She gauges his reaction, the low vibration of his “hmm” and the way his arms tighten around her, before adding, “You make me stronger.”
“That’s what I would wish for. That’s how it should be." He pulls back to look at her, a strange expression on his face that she doesn’t think she has ever seen there before. Maybe regret. “Dark Sister behind you, that's how it always should have been."
It’s more of an apology than she ever hoped to hear from him. She drinks it like an elixir. It feels like the beginnings of a promise, if an ill-defined one. Tomorrow she’ll define it for him. She’ll tell him her plan.
But now she’s brought back to the present moment as he reaches for her hand and accidentally brushes her wrist. She’s unable to cover a grimace.
His mouth turns down. “Show me what that madwoman did to you.”
Rhaenyra obliges, rolling up her sleeve as far as it will go, holding her arm into the pale light of the moon, allowing him to inspect it more closely than had been possible with so many eyes on them downstairs and the thin veneer of appearances to maintain. (Though who could have failed to guess what they had been doing when they arrived in the throne room together at such an hour, the state of her hair, the smirk on his face? Nevermind. Tonight will be nothing compared to the scandal they are about to cause, if she has her way.)
He frowns at the blood still seeping through her bandage. “It will need to be stitched.”
“Whatever the damage, it’s less than she inflicted upon herself with that display.” Rhaenyra is unable to keep the satisfaction from her voice.
A small smile of approval crosses his lips. “It was well done. You took no prisoners.” And then, tucking loose strands of silver hair behind her ear, “I would follow you into battle, byka jenys (little commander).”
An extravagant compliment on a night filled with them. But coming from her war hero uncle, this one especially pleases her. “You jest, but it may come to that.”
“I do not jest, I assure you. And it will certainly come to that.”
“Tell me you need me," is Daemon’s whispered demand on nights when he has her writhing underneath him, whimpering against his lips, teased to distraction.
He buries his face in her hair and tells her in a dead language that she was always meant for him. He tells her that her heart, soul, and cunt were made for him, that he loved her long before either of them were born and he’ll love her long after they’re both dead. Sometimes he says that she's his perfect little whore and sometimes he says that he's her slave. He finds the words that make her shudder on any given night. He lavishes words like jewels, like the endless gifts he’s showered upon her since she was an infant, a sparkling fortune of pendants, bracelets, and rings spilling out of silk-lined boxes in her chambers.
In return, he asks only one thing of her.
"Vestragon ziry (Say it),” he pleads when he is desperate for release that won't come, gripping her hips and flipping them over, ceding control and letting her pin his hands above his head. On these not infrequent nights when his body rebels against him, they have found that it will often still listen to her - a mystery that sends white-hot adrenaline coursing through her every time.
“I need you, uncle,” Rhaenyra repeats unfailingly when he asks, and often even when he doesn’t. She gives him her assurance as freely as he gives her priceless Valyrian heirlooms, flasks of Dornish perfumes, yards of Myrish lace.
She understands what those words mean to him, even more now than she did when she first said them last year on Driftmark. She recognizes that he has waited his entire life to be needed by the family, the dynasty he worships like a religion. She accepts that, of the many things she is for him, one is high priestess of his faith. Another is surrogate - for the mother who abandoned him to the pyre before his fourth nameday, the father who could never meet his eyes because he looked too much like his mother, the brother who never missed a chance to banish him into exile.
It carries the weight of their entire lineage when she tells him she needs him.
She basks in the power of being the one to give this to him. She loves to watch the blissful agony on his face as she pushes him over the edge with nothing but the truth:
“Nyke jorrāelagon ao, issa jorrāelagon, issa glaeson (I need you, my love, my life). Need all of you. Need you inside me, need your blood in my veins, your breath in my lungs, your seed in my - yes, fuck, yes, just like that, Daemon, give me everything. I need you. Only you. Always you."
If he notices that her ramblings are unusually frenzied tonight, he doesn’t comment.
But she feels him watching her later as they both lie awake, unable to sleep.
She is thinking about the weak scrawl of her father’s handwriting on the raven’s note that arrived from King’s Landing this morning, how impeccable his script used to be and how far his health must have declined for him to write with such little care for his penmanship. She is grateful that he is at least communicating with her again after months of silence, and that his message was not dictated, so she knows the words are his. She is relieved that he has affirmed her status as heir and seems to have given up on his demand that her marriage be set aside.
But it twists in her gut, the things he writes - the accusations he continues to levy at Daemon, the warnings to guard herself against her husband, the appeals for her to please reconsider moving home.
Daemon’s hand brushes hers in the dark and she grabs hold of it, lacing her fingers with his.
They have no secrets. She handed him the note this morning as soon as she finished reading it. He scanned the parchment and then left without a word, disappearing for hours - off in the caves, she supposes, or perhaps he flew to a nearby island.
It was after dark when he returned, smelling of dragon and strongwine. Though he sleeps in her bed more nights than not, she had thought this seemed like one of those evenings when he might withdraw to his own chambers, and so she wasn’t expecting him when he appeared at her door.
Before she could speak, he had already crawled under the covers beside her and grabbed her face in his hands, kissing her with a hunger that might have startled her in the beginning of their cohabitation - before she began to learn the rhythm of his moods. As it was, she quickly matched his urgency, eliciting a groan as she pulled him on top of her and wrapped her legs around his waist.
Now, hours later and still sleepless, she turns on her side to face him. She finds him staring at the ceiling, eyes open, jaw tense. She closes the distance between them, curling herself around him.
“I’ve written a reply to my father,” she whispers, her mouth near his ear. “Would you like to know what I said?”
He hesitates as if bracing himself before giving an almost imperceptible nod.
“I thanked him for his graciousness in affirming my claim, despite our transgression.” She is tracing the scars on his bare chest as she recites from heart. “I asked after his health and begged that he allow us to send Maester Gerardys from Dragonstone to aid in his treatment. I told him …”
She pauses, waiting for him to look at her. When he does, she brings her hand under his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I told him that it saddens me how little he knows his own brother. I told him that you’re the only person I trust. I told him I need you."
His body relaxes with a small sigh as he turns to fully face her, leaning his forehead against hers. “My sweet girl…” But then he shakes his head, his nose grazing hers. “If you’ve regained some small amount of capital with Viserys, don’t waste it trying to convince him of something he’ll never believe. We’ll almost certainly have greater need for it in the future.”
“But Daemon, I can’t abide -”
“It’s enough that he’s retained you as heir and not named his pathetic excuse of an eldest son.” he presses a kiss to her forehead. “It’s enough that he hasn't shaken your trust in me."
“Rhaenyra…” Daemon’s voice is strained when she hears it behind her. He’s hours late and she’s alone on the stone floor of her bedchamber, sweat-soaked and bloodied, cradling a mangled corpse in her arms.
She howled his name until it echoed through every corner of the castle, frantic for him to join her upstairs. Not just because she wanted to prevent him from declaring war while she was abed, not just because she was desperate to align on their next move, but, in truth, because she was frightened. Because she was terrified that she was on the verge of collapse and a maester would be summoned while she was unconscious. She cried out for Daemon until her voice turned hoarse, until she realized he wasn’t coming and her calls turned to curses as she sobbed.
There are still silent tears rolling down her cheeks as he takes his seat in the empty spot on the floor beside her that has been waiting (and waiting) for him. She accepts his presence without acknowledging it, continuing to rock their lifeless daughter.
His hand on her shoulder finally breaks through her haze of grief.
"Where were you?" She asks in a low, shaky voice.
He withdraws his hand, staring out over the balcony at the midday sky. He won’t look at her and, when she looks at him, all she sees is his absence. There are more barricades behind his eyes than she has ever seen before - every wall up, every bridge drawn, spikes on the gates, a mile of ice in every direction.
"Answer me," She demands, finding her strength, fumbling to scoot away and put distance between them. "Were my screams not loud enough to reach you? Or were you simply too busy to heed them - sitting in my seat, playing king?”
She watches a muscle in his neck twitch. Good. She wants to shatter all that ice, splinter all those defenses. She wants to hurt him.
Even if she knows he’s already hurting. Even if she knows that his worst nightmares have converged today - the loss of his brother, the loss of another baby, a brush at the loss of her. She doesn’t care. She has no sympathy. Because, when he wakes in a cold sweat from images of her dead in childbirth - hacked open like her mother, slowly bleeding to death like his mother, burning alive like Laena - she is there to comfort him every time. And when she was living the nightmare, where was he?
"I was doing what needed to be done." He says in a deliberate, detached voice that infuriates her. "We couldn't both be indisposed today, Rhaenyra. We have a day or two at most before all of Westeros is a battlefield."
"Less than that if you have your way." She snaps, hurting everywhere from the first battle of his precious war already lost - gnawing pain at the strange inversion of her vacant stomach, relentless pressure at her swollen, useless breasts, an ache in her heart that crescendos every time she thinks it can’t get any worse.
“If I had my way, we would be on the offensive already, yes.”
“It’s not your way though, is it? It’s not your place to decide what needs to be done or when. It’s your place to …” her voice breaks, a sob catching in her throat. “It’s your place to come when I call for you.”
He accepts her rebuke without response, still staring off into the distance.
“Daemon, look at me.” She demands.
He turns reluctantly, wincing at the sight of her. She knows what she must look like with a bloody, unbreathing bundle in her arms and her insides torn out, splattered on her nightgown, her skin, her hair. She wants him to carry the image as she will carry the scars.
“I needed you. And you weren’t here.”
"I'm here now." But his voice is all wrong - strange and far away. He can’t meet her eyes.
“No, you’re not.” She mutters, more to herself than him.
She is looking down at her poor Visenya, who never gave her a moment’s trouble in the womb, not a moment of sickness or discomfort until this morning. But the baby is not … normal. Rhaenyra knows the myth, that pure-blooded Targaryen babies are dragons until they reach full term, that they develop human characteristics only in the final days before birth. Propaganda, her mother once told her, against Targaryen marriage customs. But looking at her daughter now, one moon early to this world, she would almost believe it. Others might almost believe it.
“We must burn her. Today.”
Rhaenyra is still muttering to herself, and so she is caught off guard when Daemon moves closer.
“Let me-” He reaches out to take the bundle from her arms, but she stumbles to her feet, holding the baby back as if to protect her from him. Or protect him from her. Or both.
“No, please.” She is suddenly as eager for him to be gone as she was hours earlier for him to be here. He isn’t himself and perhaps she isn’t herself and it’s too late. “I’ll send word when it’s time. But please leave.”
“Dreams didn’t make us kings. Dragons did.”
There are flames flickering in Daemon’s eyes, light and shadow chasing each other across his face as he clasps her throat in a vice grip and she struggles for breath. She is unable to comprehend the violence of his outburst, the way he is lashing out at her like a wounded animal when she is the one who has been physically gutted today.
But she is thinking yes, this dragon will make her queen. Unless she proves to be an unskilled rider, unable to make him heed her commands, unable to steer him from a collision course that will destroy them both and all of Westeros with them.
Claiming him was a decades-long endeavor and it felt like victory when she slashed his lower lip, held his lacerated palm to hers. But that was only the beginning, wasn’t it? She is realizing now that everything up until this point has been only a prelude, the blissful calm before the coming storm.
Their bond is untested. They have never seen battle together. She has never led him under fire against his instincts. Until today, she has never given him a command he wasn’t already inclined to follow.
The first time she did, he ignored her. The second time she did, he grabbed her in a stranglehold.
He once told her that dragons choose their riders and she thinks he was right. He and Syrax both called to her even in the womb. Blood magic wove them both through every fiber of her being. But it was Daemon’s own personal craftsmanship that sculpted her into the one person in the world he regards as his equal. He taught her how to claim him. He crowned her his queen.
And yet, unlike Syrax, Daemon wants to serve only on his own terms. He wants her to need him only in the way he wishes to be needed. He wants to lead armies for her and their house with as much ferocity as their enemies say he wants to steal her throne - like something fundamental to his survival. If she will not give him his purpose, he will try to take it. He will rebel against all the different shades of power she holds over him and try to compel her make use of him.
Dohaeris, she thinks. Serve me, love. Serve me fully or all will be lost.
His thumb is moving on her jaw in the parody of a caress, their fingers half-threaded from her failed attempts to pry his hand from her neck, his forehead almost-but-not-quite grazing hers and, suddenly, something within him seems to snap. Whether he is moving to lunge at her or collapse in her arms, she thinks either is equally likely for a moment, but then he does neither. He pushes her away.
They stare at each other from opposite ends of the fireplace as they both catch their breath. Her hand begins an instinctive investigation of her neck, searching for serious damage and thankfully finding none, though several spots are sore enough to make her wince at her own touch.
She can see him better at this distance, wild-eyed and ragged. She thinks she was right before: he has the look of a feral animal protecting an injury, seething in its own suffering. This is different from the blunt, heavy grief they have both been carrying for hours. This is sharp and fresh.
But why? What hidden wire did she trip to trigger this sudden firestorm over the Conqueror’s dream, when he has known the prophecy far longer than she?
Unless …
“He didn’t tell you.”
The words tumble out of her mouth before she is sure they are true. But he looks at her as if she has kicked him in the stomach, and she knows that she has finally solved the puzzle.
She could perhaps still choose to diminish the implications of this revelation. She could rush to soften the blow, reassure him as she always does. Tell him the truth - that she would not have kept this secret from him, that she honestly believed he already knew. Tell him lies - that this doesn't mean anything, it doesn't necessarily imply that her father never considered him the true heir.
But she does none of these things. Because tonight she must break him.
It’s your duty as queen to crush rebellion, he said moments before seizing her throat.
He was right. And so, she does the thing she knows will crush him: breathes a small, mirthless laugh of mockery as she calmly twists the knife, “He didn’t tell you, did he?”
The pain in his eyes turns to such misery that, yesterday, she would not have believed herself capable of tolerating the sight. But tonight she is undeterred.
Tonight, as they stand on the brink of war, bruises forming on her neck in the shape of his fingers, it is life or death that he recognize her as the victor of this power struggle. It is an existential imperative that there be no question as to who is in control when they leave this room. The fate of the kingdom rests on him, not just bowing, but heeling to her as his queen.
She stares him down without pity. Until he surrenders, lowering his gaze.
He didn’t need you, is what she knows he hears. I don’t need you.
But what she means is Dohaeris. Serve me, my love. Please.
Defeated, he turns and retreats without another word.
Reins firmly in hand, she watches him walk away.