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There's blood in the mortar, they say - the blood of a thousand quarry workers mixed with sand and cement to bind the stones of Harrenhal.
Rhaenyra learns of this horror while tucked beneath a banqueting table, playing with a set of silk-clad dolls from her uncle and wishing herself wherever he is (away from this monstrous, drafty castle). Her presence forgotten, the conversation has turned from succession to Harren’s curse; her father's supporters telling nightmarish tales like she's never heard before in her five years.
"The walls still bleed red in the middle of the night,” declares Lord Frey to rapt attention from the table. “But only those cursed to die at Harrenhal can see the blood."
Rhaenyra’s eyes widen and drift to the far wall of the solar where they sit - charred and grotesquely melted. If any wall were to bleed red in the middle of the night, it would certainly be this one.
“They say-”
"Hush." Her mother seems to remember her presence then and halts the conversation.
She whisks Rhaenyra away to bed, reminding her that she is shielded from evil by her faith in the Seven. Flimsy armor, Rhaenyra cannot help but think.
She lies awake until her eyes grow heavy and the fire burns low.
Her uncle is once again not at the breakfast table. Still no sign of Caraxes. Her knight and her dragon, skimming through the sky as they please, leaving her to stare out the window and wait. Their absence gnaws at her. Restless, she pushes her morning porridge aside.
“Gathering his men, no doubt. Creating problems,” her father sighs, when she asks where her uncle might be.
It's wrong for her uncle to make a show of force, her father says. Wrong for him to attempt to influence the outcome of the vote. Wrong, deviant, reckless, her uncle. The legitimacy of the succession matters more than which Targaryen sits the throne. Her uncle fails to appreciate this. Her uncle is heedless as the tide.
Rhaenyra doesn't understand why heedless should be her father's description of the tide. It doesn't seem so to her. To her, the tide seems fierce but steady; like the steel in her uncle's voice when she's heard him command his men or the fire in his eyes when she's seen him fight in tourneys. It comforts her, the knowledge that this force of nature speaks to her with a lilt in his voice and a soft smile. She doesn't understand why her father should feel otherwise. All she knows is that she would sleep easier with her uncle here where he belongs, at the ready to protect her from the blood in the mortar.
Sleepless again that night, she decides that she must know her fate. Crawling out of bed, she creeps past the kingsguard stationed near the top of the stairs and slips into the solar.
The room is flooded with shadows, lit only by a dying fire. Like every space in this cavernous fortress, it dwarfs and disquiets her. Wrapping her arms round herself, she turns her attention to the purpose of her sojourn.
She was right, she thinks, to fear this wall.
Disconcerting, the unevenness of the discoloration in the stones. Chilling, the slaggedness of them, the depth of the cracks, the way the firelight seems to avoid illuminating this side of the room.
The longer she stares, the more the shadows seem to move in strange patterns against the wall, ominous, torqueted motions in her periphery. When she turns to examine them, they disappear. Only to shift to the corner of her other eye, where they drip...trickle...ooze ...
“What are we staring at?"
She jumps at the unexpected voice behind her, but then spins around, bursting with happy relief when she realizes that she recognizes that voice.
All will be well now.
She runs, leaps, flings herself into her uncle's arms without waiting for him to ready himself, expecting that he should and will be prepared to catch her at all times. He proves her faith justified, easing her landing against his chest exactly as she knows he will: with an exaggerated "oof" and unshakeable sturdiness.
"You're late," She clings a bit longer than usual to the safety of his embrace, his cloak still cold from the night air, smelling of burnt cedar and Caraxes. "We've been here for days."
“You were early then," He chuckles, setting her down. “Is this how you've spent your evenings without me? Examining the castle walls?"
She can see that he is teasing and it will fall upon her to apprise him of the seriousness of the situation in which they find themselves. "There's something wrong with this place, uncle. Do you know of the curse?"
“I know of the myths they tell in the Riverlands." He gently pinches her cheek. “But how can this place be cursed when it will see your father named Prince of Dragonstone tomorrow? What could be more auspicious?”
He will have to see to understand, she decides.
She grabs his hand and pulls him to the wall, facing it down beside him.
He quirks a bemused eyebrow but then crouches down to her eye level, a reassuring seriousness on his face.
“There’s blood in the mortar." She whispers. “They say the walls bleed in the middle of the night.”
“Mmm. I see. Blood in the mortar, is it?” He follows her gaze to the wall and then pauses for a long moment. He squints. And then he concludes, “There's clay in the mortar, sweet girl. Or rust in the beams. That’s where the specks of red come from - like as not.”
Her stomach turns over.
“You see specks of red?”
For all the shadowy movements in the corner of her eye, she’s not seen any trace of red. She is nearing panic on his behalf. “Only those cursed to die at Harrenhal see it. Mother and the Septa say the Seven protect pious men from curses, but -”
“But you don’t believe that, do you?” His head is still pointed toward the wall, but he gives her a conspiratorial side-long glance. “You know the truth."
"What truth?" She loosens her grip on his arm, turning to face him in confusion.
He tilts his head, studying her for a moment before responding. “Why are the walls of Harrenhal black?” When she begins to protest that he isn’t answering her question, he insists, “Tell me why.”
She recites impatiently. “Harren refused to bend the knee, so Aegon ended his line. Balerion’s fire melted the walls and all within them.”
“Good. And who is your ancestor, Aegon or Harren?"
She gives a tiny smile in response to his rhetorical question, prompting him to nod in approval.
"You've nothing to fear from this place, tala zaldrīzoti (daughter of dragons ). Harranhal should fear you. Your blood is the fire that burned it.”
His words stun her into silence.
She's never thought of it like this before, what it means for the Conqueror’s blood to run through her veins. Her parents never speak of it like this. Like a sacred relic. Like a weapon at her disposal.
There are goosebumps on her arms when he turns to fully face her, still crouched at her height. She stands between his knees, intent upon his face. His eyes are burning pools of violet.
“Our blood is the bringer and vanquisher of curses. More powerful than any gods. The Seven would cower in fear of it - if they existed."
She stares at him wide-eyed, half afraid that he is about to be swallowed into the Seven Hells, half exhilarated at his utter lack of fear.
"Do you not believe in the Seven?" her whisper is nearly inaudible.
He shakes his head. His face is fire-lit as he takes her hand, enveloping it in his. "I believe in the blood of the dragon."
Yes, she thinks.
Kessa.
His heresy calls to a latent instinct in her sinews and bones, in her blood; her blood singing beneath her skin in agreement.
It tells her that the onyx altars in the Starry Septs are nothing compared to this: the blood they share, the blood of their ancestors. The same blood that harnessed the dark magic of Old Valyria and conquered the Seven kingdoms. The same blood that makes her uncle fierce and steady like the tide. The same blood that pumps through her chest like an ache in his absence and quickens in his presence, whispering things that she doesn't understand but wants to; whispering that the steel and fire in him belongs to her in a way she can't explain.
It's the strongest force she's ever known. If anything can protect her, it's this. It's him. The blood of the dragon flowing within him.
She wraps her arms around his neck and curls into the warmth of him when he picks her up, when he carries her back to bed. Nuzzling into his neck where she can hear his pulse beating, she refuses to release him before extracting a promise that he will still be there when she wakes up in the morning. He leaves her with a kiss on the cheek and a reminder that she is a dragon.
She falls asleep thinking of Balerion, Vhagar, Vermithor, Caraxes ...
She dreams a tangled dream she will dream for years to come.
Golden blood running through her veins and golden ashes on the floor of the solar. Fire protecting and fire destroying. The red of Caraxes and the red of the blood in the mortar.
He rolls in like a storm tide, as always; a tempest crashing over the Keep. And she rushes headlong into the eye of it, as always; into the place carved out just for her, where she can bask unharmed in the stillness, the warmth at the glowing center.
It's different this time though. Warmer even than she remembers it being before his war and her title and four years outside in the cold. Simmering now. Smoldering. She's giddy with the heat.
"Do you wish to know your death, child?"
She almost laughs at the fortune-teller's question. The air is buzzing; drums thrumming like her racing heart, acrobats flipping like her stomach - another somersault every time she feels Daemon’s eyes on her. Death is the furthest thing from her mind.
“Sand and stone.”
The fortune-teller calls after them, her words blurring with the shouts of peddlers selling brightly colored rugs. The smell of ale and exotic spices for sale. The feeling of liquor burning down her throat from the flask that Daemon has just handed her.
“Claws and teeth.”
A shot of pure adrenaline hits her as Daemon’s hand slides lower than it’s ever settled before, searing its memory into the curve of her back.
“Fire and blood.”
Rhaenyra stops in her tracks, causing him to brush up against her; his hand sliding from her back to her hip.
“What is it?” he leans down, his mouth almost grazing her ear.
Neck tingling under his breath, she suppresses a shiver. "Did you hear the fortune-teller? Perhaps she recognizes us or… or perhaps-"
“Or perhaps ‘fire and blood’ are the most recognizable house words in all Westeros.” There is a smirk in his voice. “Easily exploited by a charlatan looking for phrases that will resonate with as many passersby as possible.”
“Perhaps," she allows, not entirely convinced.
But the fortune-teller quickly slips to the back of her mind as he guides her forward; her senses overloaded in a dizzying array of tightrope walkers and jugglers, illusionists and flame-throwers.
A treasonous stage-show that leaves her vexed. An exhilarating chase that leaves her breathless.
The familiarity of his hand grabbing hers. The newness of his thumb brushing back-and-forth over her knuckles.
Soon their fingers are twisting and tangling together as he leads her along the Street of Silk. Hectic, this flutter in her chest. Strange. She’s held his hand countless times before. Not like this though. Never like this. Like a dance, a game, an expression of something she’s always wanted to tell him but never before known how.
"We should race to Dragonstone tomorrow,” she says, flushed with wine and the euphoric freedom of the night. They've settled at a bench in the darkest corner of a dimly-lit tavern.
A look passes over his face that she can’t read, but it's gone before she can question it. He agrees, “We should.”
“We should visit Cannibal.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Are you in the habit of visiting Cannibal? Did you tame him as planned?"
"Not yet." She blushes at his remembrance of their old joke. “But if the fortune-teller was right - if teeth and claws are to be my fate, he seems a plausible suspect.” She is mostly jesting. “I’d like to look my destiny in the eye.”
"The fortune-teller would thank you for your efforts to find meaning in her gibberish," he teases, downing a swig of his rum.
She frowns. "You can't be sure she was a charlatan. Why are you so convinced?"
He tilts his head in sardonic disbelief that an explanation should be necessary. But she folds her arms, waiting, and he soon acquiesces with an exaggerated sigh. “Because, my dear niece, all fortune-tellers are charlatans. Because divination is a trick. The future - it can’t be seen by oracles and soothsayers. We make our fates as we live them."
Rhaenyra dislikes this answer. Her teeth worry at the inside of her cheek as she considers this newfound incongruity between them. “What of dragon dreams? They say Targaryens dream of things to come."
Her father says the Doom of Valyria was foretold. Her father says there is a prince who was promised. She wonders how her uncle reconciles his skepticism with his knowledge of the Conqueror’s Dream.
Daemon leans back against the wall, one corner of his mouth turned up. “They also say there’s blood in the mortar.”
Her cheeks flush, instantly burning with embarrassment at the thought that he still remembers all her childhood nonsense; the thought that he might guess her dreams are still occasionally haunted by blood in the mortar of the wall in the solar at Harrenhal. She is certain she must be bright pink and hopes the tavern is dark enough to cover the intensity of her blush.
“Your memory is too long,” she complains, taking a long gulp of wine. “I was a foolish little girl.”
“Never foolish, only a little girl,” His fond smile is fleeting, replaced by a look that makes her blush anew. “And now no longer so. Now..."
She feels as much as sees his eyes rake over her and, although she is covered head to toe, she feels as if he can see every inch of her. "...now a huntress. Or so I'm told."
She inwardly floats at the realization that he has heard the tale of her feat.
She had thought of him that day as she returned blood-drenched to camp, with her father and the lords of the great houses all watching her with expressions that ranged from disapproval to fear to disgust. She had thought that her uncle would not have looked at her like that if he had been there. Her uncle would have looked at her like he is looking at her right now.
"I was curious, I'll confess - when the story reached us in the Stepstones ..."
She waits as he trails off. She holds his gaze, the heat of it. Finally, when she can wait no longer, she prods. "Curious about what?"
"About the woman my niece had become."
She thrills in it - his acknowledgement that she is now a woman grown, his admission that he thought of her across the Narrow Sea, the hunger in his eyes.
His hand is resting on his knee and suddenly she wants it - contact, his skin against her skin again. She takes it - his hand between both of hers. His thumb skims her inner wrist, seeming to approve her boldness. Experimentally, she pushes her fingertips against his and watches them push back. Like a side conversation, like another secret language between them; the language of their ancestors on their tongues and in their hands.
“Ivestragon hen aōha arghugon, zaldrīzes prince (tell me of your hunt, dragon princess)."
She obliges, telling him of the boar she slew and the white stag she saw, pleased with the naked fascination that flickers in his eyes. She examines his hand while she speaks, turning it over, looking at the calluses on his palm, the scar running from the bottom of his thumb up up his arm. She follows the outline of it with her finger, wondering where he earned it; wondering at the power and the roughness of these hands that have only ever touched her with care.
“Ivestragon hen aōha scar, zaldrīzes prince (tell me of your scar, dragon prince),” she requests when her story has reached its end and their drinks are more than half gone.
He obliges, telling her of hand-to-hand combat on a rocky beach. She suspects that she is hearing a sanitized version of the tale, but this is enough. Enough to make her chest tighten with something like terror at the realization of how easily she might have never seen him again, something like jealousy over his brutality in the heat of battle; at the realization that there is a part of him she has never seen, not even in tourneys.
She wishes she could crawl inside his memories and feel everything he’s ever felt. Prince of the City. King of the Narrow Sea. The safest and most dangerous place she knows. She wishes she could live inside the myth of him; lose and find herself in it, so she could understand what she is and will be to him.
Later though, she thinks she catches a glimpse. When he pulls her into the depths of a pleasure house. When he removes her cap to expose her hair.
Like the prognosticators her uncle disbelieves, she sees their future: the irrevocable things they will do tonight and the ease with which they will force her father's hand to dissolve one marriage, sanction another. The throne of swords she will sit upon and the bearer of Valyrian steel who will sit beside her. Golden crowns on their heads, golden-haired children in her arms, golden blood ruling the Seven Kingdoms for centuries to come.
"This is where people come to take what they want," he says and she knows exactly what she wants. It feels as if her heart is pushing against her chest to reach it. To reach him.
He is waiting for her. So close that she can feel the warmth radiating off him. So close that she can smell the rum on his breath, the musky smoke clinging to his skin: the smell of dragon, always dragon - the comfort and the peril of it. The sound of his breathing, heavy like her own. He makes no move to close the inches between them. The decision is hers, he seems to say.
But the decision was made before they arrived. Before this night. Perhaps before she was born. He has always been her fate, hasn’t he?
She reaches on tiptoe and finds him ready to meet her with lips that taste like liquor: spice and citrus, molasses. They're softer than she expected. They yield with a tentative swipe of her tongue. He lets her lead, matching her pace without guiding.
Once, only once, Alicent missed a kiss on her cheek and lingered on her lips.Their tongues met briefly and they giggled after parting. When she has imagined it over the years - kissing Daemon - she has imagined it like that (like bashful affection and fleeting sweetness). But this feels nothing like that. Alicent never prepared her, her mother and the septa never told her. She didn't know it could feel like this: like something dark and exquisite winding its way through the deepest parts of her.
When Daemon pulls back to look at her, his eyes are burning. And when he drags his thumb down the middle of her lower lip, Rhaenyra feels certain that she understands his meaning, that she has not misunderstood what they are doing here. She she can almost feel it; the dragonglass cutting, the blood dripping.
She follows an irrepressible impulse to mirror the motion with her own thumb on his lip and watches a feral glint replace the restraint in his eyes.
Suddenly his hands are everywhere at once - tangling in her hair, tearing open her tunic, gripping her face; his touch scorching, branding her skin - igniting a bonfire in the place where he already lives, beating between her lungs. There is a lack of control in his fervor that thrills her. A brutality that brings to mind his battlefield story. She covets this piece of him he’s kept from her. She want to feel it, possess it: the ruthlessness of him alongside the tenderness that's always been hers.
He backs her against a wall and then spins her roughly around to face it; his hand splayed across her bare stomach, holding her up as her legs seem to dissolve. His breath is coming in hot bursts against the nape of her neck and he is murmuring something. He says it again and again. A wanton moan slips out of her mouth as she recognizes the word.
“Ñuhon (mine),” he is saying. He says it as he brings his hands to cover hers on the wall, an echo of their tangled fingers on the street and in the tavern. He says it as he reaches down her trousers, bringing his fingers to the ache between her legs, stoking the pressure building there into a sweet frenzy. He says it as he presses into her backside and she feels the hard proof of his desire for her.
Yes, she thinks.
Kessa.
Yes, yes, yes.
She is his. She can feel it, her blood singing beneath her skin in agreement, burning to be bound with him. It tells her that she has always been his. It answers his claim with its own.
“Ñuhon,” she thinks.
Her blood pumps in a fevered rhythm to the word, driving her to turn in his arms, needing him to submit to her claim as she submits to his. It calls to him as their lips crash together again. It reaches for him as her hand moves between them, boldly tracing the proof of his arousal, reveling in his sharp intake of breath.
Her blood demands to be recognized as the thing he believes in more than gods or curses or omens; the thing he reveres above all else. She could almost believe that he hears it, the blood of the dragon screaming for him, the way he suddenly goes still.
His eyes are wild when he pulls back, staring at her as if waking from a delirium. His fingers are on the pulse of her neck; the blood they share rushing beneath his touch. He stands there panting.
It's inexplicable to her, the shame clearly written on his face, the way he drops his eyes to avoid hers.
Perhaps they have taken things further than he intended, but she can’t see why that should matter if they are to be wed. Perhaps he imagines he has tricked her into this public display, but she can’t imagine how he could believe her so gullible. She lifts her hand to his cheek in reassurance and he leans eagerly into her touch, but his body's reaction to her seems to only distress him more. His fists pound the wall behind her.
And then he's gone.
He rolls out like the heedless tide.
The Iron Throne is an ugly thing, Rhaenyra thinks, confronted with its jagged deformity for the first time in six years. Perhaps it looks especially ominous tonight in the empty, unlit throne room against the back-drop of a seven-pointed star. But she can’t remember a time when it appeared otherwise to her.
It still draws her in though, as she passes by on her way back from her father’s chambers. It pulls at her like a magnet, bringing her to hover in the doorway on the fringes of the room. Hair loose, dried tears on her cheeks, she gazes at the warped black metal and listens to the storm rage outside; her thoughts spiraling like the wind pelting rain against the window tonight, tossing her from grief to guilt to dread.
The throne cuts him. She knows what they whisper in the halls of the Keep at the sight of her father's shredded, disintegrating flesh. He must be unworthy, though they can’t pinpoint exactly what he might have done to make himself so.
How much more will they whisper it of her? A single knick, the first drop of blood and they will say the throne is rejecting her.
Treasonous superstition. She knows what Daemon would say. The throne is not a sentient thing.
We make our own fates, he would say.
There's no blood in the mortar, he would say.
There is little that he fears. When he is by her side, she is fearless too.
She hastens back to his side.
Daemon asks no question when she returns, seeming to glean all the answers he needs from her tear-streaked face. Instead, he wordlessly pulls back the covers, beckoning her to rejoin him in bed. She crawls in and welcomes his arms as they wrap around her, one pillowing her head, the other curling over the unborn baby in her belly.
She burrows into the refuge of him as the wheels in her mind continue to turn. Silence, save for the crackling of the fire inside and the rolling of the thunder outside. His face is half-buried in the crook of her shoulder, her fingers smoothing his hair. She doesn't need to see the frown lines on his face to sense them. She can feel his disquiet, his waves of turmoil crashing against her own.
“I could end this tonight.” Daemon’s voice is muffled against her skin when he speaks. "Say the word and Dark Sister will learn whether salt truly courses through his precious Valeyron blood.”
Ours runs thick , Vaemond once said in barbed eulogy. Ours runs true, he said on a seaside cliff as Rhaenyra suffered his thinly veiled insults and imagined how satisfying it would be to silence him forever. She would shed no tears for his death. Still -
“It wouldn’t end there,” she says carefully.
“No."
She can feel her husband teetering on the brink tonight. His brother decomposing alive, his childhood home unrecognizable, his wife’s enemies circling like a pack of wolves. She can feel his coils winding, itching to spring in whichever direction she sets him.
“It would mean war.”
"Yes." He moves his head from her shoulder to the pillow beside her, where she can see his eyes: impatient, determined. "But we always knew war was inevitable."
It both soothes and terrifies her, having such a weapon at her disposal. The deadliest weapon in Westeros by any measure: the triune of Caraxes, Dark Sister, and her uncle. How to hold the tide, she wonders.
Her hand finds his on the bump of her belly, over the child she hopes will never know a day of war. “Your sword can give me many things, my love, but legitimacy is not one of them.”
“How is it that you imagine the Conqueror obtained legitimacy, Rhaenyra?”
The hint of a didactic edge in his voice, though she pays it no mind. Harren refused to bend the knee, so Aegon ended his line, she once recited at her uncle’s prompting. But she is no longer five years old. She no longer recites on command.
“I am not the Conqueror. The good of the realm would not be served by -”
“The good of the realm?" He scoffs. "You are the realm - or soon will be. You and the children. The good of the realm can only be served with the blood of the dragon on the throne.”
He speaks heresy without compunction, though she can’t quite summon the horror she knows her father would expect her to feel at the conflation of any single person with the realm.
“Is my brother not also the blood of the dragon?"
The legitimacy of the succession matters more than which Targaryen sits the throne , her father once said. Perhaps this is why he has made no move to crown her while he lives. Perhaps -
“No. He is not.” Daemon’s voice is low but his eyes are flashing. It’s clear that she is now the one speaking heresy. “He is a Hightower. And an unworthy cunt.”
A week of feasts when Aegon claimed Sunfyre. Her brother is a twisted, sullen boy, but it cannot be denied that he is a dragonrider. It cannot be denied that he is the child of Viserys, the great-grandchild of Jaehaerys. Just like her. If her brother is a Hightower, then she is an Arryn.
She doesn’t press the matter though.
“Vaemond would say that I am also an unworthy cunt,” she jokes darkly, changing the subject.
“I pray he does,” Daemon scowls. “I pray he's senseless enough to commit treason."
The beginnings of an idea -
"Perhaps he is."
A beat and then their eyes meet in shared understanding.
The frown lines remain etched on his face though. “Even if we manage to provoke him and rid ourselves of Vaemond, it will only forestall the inevitable. The time is coming when you must act.”
"When the time comes, I will act. Not before."
A long stare from him, a challenge that she meets without flinching until he exhales in tacet acceptance, leaning his forehead against hers.
They’ll do it her way.
But the storm is still raging inside and out. His body against hers is as tense as the crackling in the air. Her thoughts are once again tossed with the howling wind from the throne to the children to her father.
His hand moves to cradle the back of her head, his fingertips stroking the place where the base of her skull and neck meet. Tingles travel down her spine as his nails scratch against her scalp. Wordlessly asking him to continue, she nuzzles closer; her nose brushing his. And then his cheek is pressed against hers, his voice rasping in her ear.
"What use will you make of me tonight, princess? If not to cut down your enemies?"
He pulls back just far enough to look at her with eyes that are asking her to make him feel less helpless, grant him at least this form of release; offering her an escape from her thoughts and the darkness of this place. She assents, she accepts, she has already met his lips.
A sigh of relief, his or hers or both, when their tongues meet; tension pouring out, tension building. She sinks into him, the familiar taste of him. He tastes like home - like the jagged rocks, the salty air, the burnt smoke of Dragonstone. Like warmth and safety engulfing her. She has felt enormous all day with their babe kicking inside her, but she feels small now with his body pressed close, closer - sheltering her from the world; keeping her safe at the center of the storm.
He is whispering. The sound is swallowed into the hunger of their kiss, but she knows the shape of those words against her mouth. They send a molten flutter to her core. She needs, she needs -
"Say it again." she pulls back, lips just out of his reach.
She can feel it in her veins where his blood flows. Hers calling and his answering. But she needs to hear it. She needs the words echoing within and without.
His pupils are dilated, the trace of a smirk on his face as he attempts to recapture her lips without answering - testing, teasing. She allows the barest brush before tangling a hand in his hair, pulling hard enough to hold him back. A groan comes from his throat, the corner of his mouth still turned up. He knows this game. He taught her this game.
"Again," she whispers and the intensity of her need must be evident in her voice because the smile disappears from his face.
His gaze pierces to the deepest part of her as he complies. "I'm yours, Rhaenyra."
She hums in satisfaction, letting his words wash over her.
Hers, the storm tide. The crackling air.
“Again,” she demands.
“Aōhon, issa jorrāelagon (yours, my love). Yours to command."
Hers, the deadliest weapon in Westeros. The coils ready to spring in whichever direction she sets them.
"Kessa, ñuhon (yes, mine)."
She rubs her thumb back and forth over his lower lip before dragging it down the middle. She is still holding his gaze, watching his eyes flash, the sparks lighting her skin. And then his mouth is colliding with hers, his tongue demanding entrance that she readily grants, her arms curled around his head as her breath disappears. Until there's nothing in the world but the slide of his tongue against hers, the sharp edges of his teeth, the ridges on the roof of his mouth, hers hers hers -
His open-mouthed kisses travel down her throat, her collarbone. He pulls back just long enough to discard of her nightgown overhead, and then his ragged breath is warming her skin again, brushing the peaks of her swollen breasts, teasing until she arches into his mouth with a gasping moan. His lips obligingly latch around first one hardened nub and then the other, suckling as his fingers dance lower.
Warm, wet underwater numbness floods her, muting every feeling that isn’t desire. She disappears into the place that only her uncle has ever been able to take her - somewhere adjacent to oblivion. She craves it like she’s never craved anything in her life: the sweetness of burning to ashes in his fire, the flames that somehow seem to only grow with their years together; the feeling of consuming and being consumed.
"Aōhon," he is saying. He says it as he skirts the bump of her belly to nip at the cage of her ribs, lave at the jut of her hip bone, suck at the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. He says it as he hovers over her cunt, making her squirm with the barest, whispering contact before finally burying his face between her legs; his tongue stroking, swirling there just long enough to leave her whimpering. He says it as he lifts his head.
Ñuhon. The sheen of sweat at his hairline, the lust-drunk look in his eyes, the heaviness of his breathing, all hers.
She is writhing mindlessly by the time he settles behind her and she finally feels his heat pressed against hers. His words in the nape of her neck, “ Yours, sweet girl. Va moriot mērī aōhon (Always only yours).”
And then nothing. Nothing but mine and yours and blissful oblivion.
There's blood in the water - the white-capped waves of the Narrow Sea stained red with the blood of the dragon. It calls for vengeance. She hears it howling. She cannot bear it.
“I want her to suffer,” Rhaenya chokes out between sobs muffled into her husband’s chest.
He advises.
She commands.
A raven flies into the moonlight.
“She will suffer. Nyke kivio ao, issa jorrāelagon (I promise you, my love). She will suffer as you suffer. She will suffer more."
To know that her son died in fear and misery, to live the rest of her days in unspeakable guilt and grief: this is the suffering she wishes upon Alicent. She wishes upon Alicent suffering to match her own.
Red hair splayed across her lap in the godswood and jokes whispered in her ear at tourneys and once, only once, a kiss that missed her cheek, that caught her lips and lingered.
Knives stabbed in her back and daggers brandished in her face. A cunning toast to motherhood and a feigned reconciliation to lull her. A torn page kept for decades to be used as a trick, as a weapon.
A gift to his mother. That’s what Vhagar’s rider said before he slaughtered Luke - that his cousin’s death was a gift to his mother. Witnesses heard and ravens reported the Kinslayer's words. He boasted that Luke’s blood was a gift to Alicent.
And so the Kinslayer’s blood will be a gift to Rhaenyra.
An imperial jade tiara and a cursed fortress in the Riverlands. An opal studded goblet and a jagged throne of iron. Gold-embroidered reins for Syrax and an eye for eye. A son for a son. A second son for a second son.
Extravagant gifts as only her uncle can give.
He is whisper-singing a dragon lullabye as her tears pour. His hands are pressing her closer.
His hands, the violence and the tenderness of them; the bruises on her throat and the soothing motions on her back. She knows both now.
Her last thought before darkness overtakes her is that she is glad to know. She is glad to have finally glimpsed something of his brutality in the heat of battle. She is glad to have felt the ease with which he will rip apart their enemies.
She sleeps fitfully and dreams of sand and stone, claws and teeth, fire and blood - blood-curdling screams, blood-stained waves, blood dripping from the throne, blood in the mortar of the solar at Harrenhal -
She wakes with a start in the hour before dawn. Stillness, save for the distant thrushes beginning to sing their morning song. Clarity.
“I’m going with you,” she whispers. “I won’t sit here on an island while you wage my war.”
She won’t send Daemon alone into a curse that still haunts her nightmares.
“Mm,” he acknowledges groggily. He stretches his legs against hers, seeming to consider her words. “Let me secure our base first. Let me send for you when the walls are fortified."
"No.” She is not asking for permission.
She won’t embolden their enemies by cowering on Dragonstone.
“I should lead the capture of Harrenhal. Syrax should be seen with Caraxes over the mainland. Seen and feared."
Before Sunfyre, Syrax. Before the Usurper, the Queen.
"You should be seen, yes. You and Syrax," he acknowledged carefully. "But it's too soon, Rhaenyra. The flight is long. After you've recovered -"
“When will that be?” She asks blankly. “When will I recover?”
He has no response.
Her body will heal from the loss of their babe, but she will never recover - not from Visenya, not from Luke. There’s no sense in waiting. The only sense is in pushing through the pain.
"I'm going with you," she repeats and her tone bears no argument.
When she is with him, she is fearless. She must be fearless now. She must be a conqueror, a huntress, a dragon.
She grips at his arms; rough burn marks stretched tight over lean muscle - survival and strength. They are already wrapped around her, but she pulls, she wordlessly insists that they be tighter; tight enough to squeeze the air from her lungs, tight enough to hold her together. Tight enough to keep the cracks from spreading.
He is the soldier who brought the Stepstones to heel. He is the safest and most dangerous place she knows. He is the tide and she’ll not hold him back any longer.
Protector of the Realm. In the bare mist of dawn with the Dragonmont to bear witness, she names him Protector of the Realm.
You are the Realm, he said once, not long ago, and he whispers it again before they mount their dragons for the flight to Harrenhal. He swears an oath sealed with a fervent kiss to the palm of her hand. “Daorun jāhor renigon ao hae bōsa hae nyke glaesagon (Nothing will touch you as long as I live).”
They are the Realm. The two of them and the children and no one else.
Heresy. Anathema to everything her father tried to teach her about right and wrong and the greater good. But her father was wrong. Daemon was right. He was always right.
They race to a bloodless victory, Syrax and Caraxes. On a golden dragon with a golden crown on her head and a golden-haired consort by her side, she takes the seat of Harren without resistance.
Dismounting with gritted teeth, she negotiates the surrender and welcomes the throngs of knights, men-at-arms, riverlords streaming to her banners. She leads the most esteemed of them to a side room off the cavernous Hall of a Hundred Hearths and spreads out a map. She takes their counsel on how best to break the traitorous House Bracken and lay claim to their fortress of Stone Hedge.
Until she begins to shiver and the room begins to spin.
She leaves Daemon to finalize the broad strokes of their strategy in the Riverlands while she climbs the stairs to the bedchamber they’ve claimed in Kingspyre Tower; her thighs, hips, stomach, cunt all protesting with every step.
Collapsing into an old dream she hasn’t had in years, she sees this monstrous, haunted castle engulfed in flames: Harwin trapped in the depths of Harrenhal, screaming as he slowly turns to ash. Except it’s Luke engulfed in Vhagar’s flames, burning alive like his father, like he always feared; like the nightmares Rhaenyra always promised she would protect him from. And then it’s Visenya wailing on the funeral pyre, crying with breath that never filled her lungs in life. And then it’s Daemon-
She wakes with a gasp, drenched in sweat and aching all over. It takes her a moment to register that she is being carried.
She can still hear them, the screams -
“Shh. I know, sweetheart, I know,” Daemon hushes the words she hadn’t realized she was speaking aloud. His fingers are cool against her cheek, her forehead, the damp strands of hair stuck to her face; he smooths them back. “You’re burning up. Today was too much."
"Today wasn't enough,” she mutters into his neck. “I want it done, uncle. When will it be done?”
Perhaps the screams will stop when vengeance is served. Perhaps then she will close her eyes to the solace of nothingness and not the torture of untold horrors.
“Soon,” he promises, just as he promised at dusk when a mysterious raven arrived with a message he burned without showing her. There were obstacles, he said, but none that couldn’t be overcome with a little more time. It would be better if she didn’t know more, he said. It would be better if she would let him carry this for her.
She lets him carry it. She lets him carry her.
Her legs are shaky when he sets her down and begins to help her undress. Falling, she grasps at his arms. But he’s already caught her. He holds her upright with unshakable sturdiness. Protector of the Realm.
“It’s not the way you like,” he warns apologetically. “It’s not hot. The Freys sent a maester who says lukewarm is better for ...”
She doesn’t have time to wonder what he’s talking about before she finds herself half-submerged in a bath with tepid water pricking at her skin; the scent of lemon and mint mixed with something like pine. Herbs to stop the fever. Herbs to stop the bleeding.
Soon she feels his fingers in her hair, lathering away the grime of dried sweat with a soap that smells of rose and metal.
His hands, the savagery and the gentleness of them; their iron chokehold and the care with which he's bathing her now.
She takes a deep breath and fills her nostrils with the woodsy, citrus, medicinal smell of the bath. Gradually, her chills subside and her mind begins running in straighter lines.
She stares up at the black stone ceiling.
She wonders if Harwin saw blood in the mortar before he died here. She wonders how she could have ever been so blind as to imagine Alicent incapable of orchestrating his murder. She wonders -
“They believe kinslaying is a mortal sin,” her voice scratches against her throat. “The Hightowers.”
The pious Hightowers of Old Town. They quote from the Seven Pointed Star and worship in their septs and believe all kinslayers are cursed. Alicent believes it.
“What people believe and what they do are often at odds,” he replies evenly, cupping water in his hands to rinse the suds from her hair.
“They were willing to risk the Seven Hells to do what they did,” she says as the realization dawns: “There’s nothing they won’t do.”
“No,” he agrees. “There isn’t.”
Each of us is capable of depravity, Daemon once said. He knew all along.
“I can’t rest until she pays,” Rhaenyra whispers. “I can’t rest until it's done.”
She reaches for him and he takes her hand, pressing it flat against his cheek; her wet fingers against the stubble growing there. He presses hard enough that she can feel the bones in his face.
“Then it will be done quickly.”
The next day passes and her fever breaks. Walls are fortified. Battle plans are drawn.
It’s the middle of the next night when the raven arrives.
He finds her sitting in the solar adjoining their bedchamber. No rest to be had with the clamor, screeching, groans of the dead still ringing in her ears, she is staring at the torqueted shadows cast by a dying fire.
Charred and grotesquely melted, the wall in this room is exactly as she remembers it. The same strange patterns moving with the flames, spilling from the floor to the ceiling. She can see how a five year old would see blood dripping … trickling … oozing …
She hears the sound of his footsteps, uncharacteristically halting. She looks up, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. His face is as white as she’s ever seen it, his expression unreadable.
He hands her a note and then walks towards the fireplace. Confused, she unfolds the parchment. His gaze is set on the wall as she reads, as her stomach drops and her blood runs cold.
“Daemon…” A slow-moving horror is crawling over her. It creeps. It spreads. “What … what have we done?”
“You’ve done nothing. You knew nothing.” He says quietly, his voice void of emotion.
“No one will ever believe that. This isn’t ... this isn’t what we -”
“It’s done now,” A note of steel enters his tone. “It can’t be undone.”
“This isn’t vengeance. This is…”
Senseless. Nauseating. Unspeakable.
“It isn’t the vengeance we planned or the end of the vengeance we’ll serve, but it is vengeance. An innocent for an innocent is vengeance.” She wonders if he is trying to persuade her or himself. “Did you read the last line?”
She didn’t. She reads it now. Once, twice, three times.
The dowager queen was there.
The dowager queen was made to watch.
The dowager queen was made to bear witness to the murder of her six year old grandson.
Alicent was made to suffer.
A sick satisfaction swells within her. A perverse calm falls over her.
The screaming in her head stops.
She stares at the words for a minute, maybe a few minutes, maybe longer.
“An innocent for an innocent,” she finally repeats in acceptance.
They’ll fear what else we might be capable of, she once said. They'll fear the consequences of touching her children. They should fear it. They should live in terror.
When he doesn’t respond, she looks up. He’s still staring at the wall.
She pushes herself to her feet and limps over to him, tossing the parchment into the fire on her way to face the black monstrosity beside him; the slaggedness of the stones, the depth of the cracks.
“Do you still see it?” she makes herself ask, a pit in her stomach.
“See what?” he asks absently.
She places a hand on his shoulder as she asks the question that’s haunted her nightmares for nearly thirty years.
“You saw it bleed all those years ago, didn’t you? You said it was clay or rust, but that was because you didn’t want to scare me, wasn’t it? You can tell me now.”
He turns to look at her, his eyes sunken and glowing in the firelight; a spark of affection shining through broken fatigue.
He takes her face in his hands. His blood-stained hands, the ruthlessness and the protection of them; his grip on Dark Sister defending her honor and his grip on the quill that set this mistake into motion. The child they’ve murdered and the child they’ve avenged.
“What did I tell you back then, dāria zaldrīzoti (dragon queen)?" His thumb is tracing her jaw, tilting her gaze to meet his. “Do you remember?” Pride and defiance flicker across his face. “Our blood is the fire that burned this place.”
Yes, she thinks.
Kessa.
It doesn't escape her that he hasn't answered her question. But she can feel it - her blood singing beneath her skin in agreement, affirming his belief with its own. It tells her that the answer to her question doesn't matter.
And even though she is Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, even though she no longer recites on command, she still finishes his recitation: “Our blood is the bringer and vanquisher of curses."
He nods slowly, brushing her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “I’ll not die inside this castle, niece. I’ll die on dragonback. I’ll die in your service. In service of our house.”
The deadliest weapon in Westeros by any measure.
Protector of the Realm.
"You'll serve," she confirms, taking both his hands in hers, "Not die," she amends, she commands.
The whisper of an indulgent smile touches his mouth. "Yes, Your Grace."
She didn’t understand it as a girl, how he could be so many different things at once - wrong and safe, heedless and steady. But she understands it now. She understands because, whatever the blood of the dragon has made them, it has made them the same. And she worships at its altar as he taught her, with as much devotion as the Hightowers have ever worshiped the Seven at their onyx altars in the Starry Sept.
She allows him to lead her to the bedchamber, leaning her weight on him as she shuffles out of the solar.
When she crawls into bed beside him and closes her eyes, she could cry with relief at the nothingness she hears. No more roars, shrieks, howls for vengeance; the blood of the dragon placated, satisfied - for now - with the sufficiency of their offering.
Safe in the refuge of his arms, she falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.