Chapter Text
The market morning had begun like any other: Naerys insisting on bringing her divination bones, Maekar asking if he could eat something before they arrived, Daemon pretending he wasn't both of their favourite parent even though it was obviously true.
She was happy. It was a simple thing to say, and for years she had struggled to truly believe it — as if happiness were something you couldn't be sure of until you lost it. But that morning, with the sun on his skin and the noise of the market around her, she knew it.
Then the guard arrived.
The news was as concise as it was devastating: the children left at home — Visenya, Aemon, Aerion, Rhaegar, Daenys — were not at home. They were not even on the continent. They were in Westeros.
Rhaenyra read the message twice, then lowered it with the precision of someone trying not to react in public.
"Valzyyrys."
Daemon turned to her, and the tone of her voice was enough. "Ābrazyyrys."
"Your sons," Rhaenyra said slowly, "are in the Stormlands. For a tournament."
"My sons—" Daemon paused. His controlled expression faltered just enough to reveal something beneath the surface that resembled panic. "How many?"
"I don't know yet. Maybe all five, maybe fewer. We're waiting for confirmation." She moved, already calculating. "You're not going. You're wanted, and showing up at the tournament is the worst idea you could have."
"I didn't mean to show up at the tournament, I meant— "
"I know what you meant. And it's still not okay." She took him by the arm, lowering her voice.
"If they found them, they already know they're Targaryens. And if they know they're Targaryens, they're waiting for their parents to arrive. It's a trap we mustn't help them set."
Daemon fell silent. It was the kind of silence she had learned to recognise in twenty years: the kind where he was really listening.
They called Maekar and Naerys from the puppeteers. The two arrived racing each other, being chased by their nannies.
"My favourite little dragons," said Daemon, kneeling to greet them with the solemnity of someone about to tell a believable lie.
"That's not true, Visenya is the favourite." said Maekar, with the relentless precision of ten-year-olds.
Daemon opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"Now Naerys is my favourite." he said finally, with the air of someone who had found a satisfactory legal loophole.
"Thank you, kepa." said Naerys, who had already taken her bones out of the bag and was arranging them on the edge of the fountain with the concentration of a little maester.
On the way home, with the children in the front seat watching them with the serious attention of witnesses, Daemon remained silent for almost a mile. Then he said, “Three days.”
"I know."
“If they're not back in three days—”
"I know, Daemon."
He nodded, looked out the window. She looked at him—his tense jaw, his hands still on his knees, the way he pretended to be calm for the children. Twenty years old, and she still recognised every single lie he told with his body.
"Don't worry, little ones," he said, without turning away from the window, "nothing will happen to your siblings."
"Can we come too?" asked Maekar, already imagining adventures.
"No," said both parents at the same time.
"In any case," said Naerys, gathering the bones from the seat and looking at them with the serious expression she always wore when interpreting signs, "there will be no regrets. The Fourteen Flames say that something is being set right."
Rhaenyra watched the landscape roll by outside the window.
Something will be made right, she thought. Her father's last words on the night she fled had been angry and damning. Twenty years of silence, an absence that had scarred her like everything else. She didn't know if she wanted to make that absence right. She didn't know if she could.
But she knew her children were in Westeros, and that land had never stopped demanding things that did not belong to it.
"Let us hope so, my tala" she said softly, as if speaking to the bones as much as to her daughter.