Chapter Text
People are selfish, people are prone to hate
But god I love some people sometimes
People are my religion because I believe in them
People are my enemies and people are my friends
I have faith in my fellow man
And I only hope that he has faith in me
-AJJ, People
They are cleaning up the tourney grounds.
Everyone is packing up their tents, getting ready to depart Riverrun with their retinues.
Daeron does not want to go back to Oldtown. He does not wish to go back to chaining Tessarion up.
But where else can he go? Who else would take him?
Despite a possible moment of connection, his mother and siblings have not indicated any desire to take him back with them to King's Landing. Of course they haven't. In sixteen years, no one has ever invited him to King's Landing. Why would they start now?
Daeron is the third-born prince. Not the heir, not the spare, and not even the spare to the spare if Rhaenyra is considered the heir to the throne. Even as the winning knight of the tourney, he is unnecessary save as a fostering in Oldtown, a strengthening of the bonds between the Reach and the crown.
Someday, his hand shall be handed away in marriage, a dragon given to some Andal or First Men house to strengthen their ties to the throne and to Oldtown alike. That is all that a third son is worth, after all—a way to provide heirs for some other house scattered throughout the realm.
Well. If Ormund allows it, that is.
Daeron is not oblivious. He knows that as long as he is in the Hightower, he shall not wed. Ormund will not allow him to leave his walls.
Especially after this. After defying Ormund as he has on this trip, with crowns of flowers and dragon rides and the rest.
If Ormund was willing to burn Daeron for Tessarion’s crime of burning a servant as she was being moved, then what will he be willing to do to Daeron for the crime of defying him?
As they pack up, Gwayne says, "I want you to know that when we get back to Oldtown—I shall be there for you. I shall be there between you and Ormund."
Daeron wants to believe that. He wants to believe, even more, that either of them defying Ormund shall be enough to keep them safe.
Daeron wishes that he could believe that the strength that filled him when he knelt before Gwayne to be crowned will continue to hold for him.
Tessarion is—
Tessarion should be his. He should be hers. He should have been on her back a long, long time ago, when he was a small creature, a little boy whose burns were still pink, who still believed that his mother might show up in Oldtown and relieve him from his ache.
But Daeron has learned better. There is some part of him that wants to fly away, yes, but where would he fly? He is a knight, yes, but where could he go that he would not be identified—also that he would not leave Gwayne behind with Ormund?
He will fly back to Oldtown, and no matter how defiant he has learned to be, she shall be chained.
But right as Daeron is climbing onto Tessarion's back to soar above the Reach, to watch Gwayne's back, to follow Ormund and his retinue back to Oldtown, Rhaena arrives at the Hightower contingent, galloping on horseback out to meet them, satchel bouncing against the side of her dress.
She is a beautiful, glorious sight—a woman riding not side-saddle, but full tilt towards them in a split-skirted blue gown, silver braids spilling down her back.
The flowers are gone from her hair, Daeron notices, and his heart aches at the realization. She has likely discarded them.
After all, it was not a true gift that he gave her. She deserves jewels, vases, cloth-of-gold, not a knight’s temporary honor.
But even without the flowers, she rides like a queen. Whoever she marries will be lucky, Daero nknows.
“A raven from the king,” she says, triumphant, and Daeron’s heart squeezes.
My father, he thinks, of a man he has never met, a man who was willing to send him away, a man that sent him away before he was even old enough to speak.
Daeron is a prince, beneath it all, before it all. He is the son of a King who is said to reign in kindness and peace and prosperity, who is said to be as peaceful as Jaehaerys the Conciliator, who has never cared about him in the least.
Ormund turns to look to Rhaena with a half-checked sneer. He has lost the battle here, Daeron knows, but he could win the war, if he takes the dragon to his side, if he folds Daeron back into his hold, a knight in the light of the Hightower, a knight on the side of the Greens.
(I do not care who rules this realm, Daeron thinks, a treasonous thing, and yet, here he is, thinking it true and honest and strong. I do not wish to fight this war. Aegon, Rhaenyra—why does it matter who rules?
All I care about now is Tessarion and Rhaena and Gwayne.)
But then Rhaena possibly wins the entire war as she announces, loud enough for his siblings to hear: "The king requested the presence of Prince Daeron Targaryen."
For the first time Daeron actually sees Aegon react, eyes going wide. “He requested you by name?” Aegon asks, “I didn't realize that he had the capability."
Aemond actually looks somewhat taken aback, and Daeron has to wonder if their father has paid any real attention to any of them, if he cares about any of them.
“Yes, he did,” Rhaena says, and her voice is so sure that it is impossible for her to be lying, Daeron has to think.
"Why would he possibly ask you to send his son?" Ormund snarls.
"He sent the message to the queen," Rhaena says, chin tilted stubbornly, bravely upwards. "I was just the one that volunteered to deliver it when it arrived, as she was already in the river barge."
Ormund looks about ready to strafe Riverrun with dragonfire himself, but he cannot say a thing against the king, and he knows it. He knows it as well as he knows his prayers from the Seven-Pointed Star, as well as he knows that Daeron is the King’s before he is the Hightowers, as well as Daeron is learning, now.
He is the King and he commands everyone, Daeron thinks, in a way that he never quite has before. Even the Beacon of the South must bend the knee before the final rider of Balerion the Black Dread, the King of the Seven Kingdoms.
Daeron shall get to return to King’s Landing, not with his own crown of flowers, but as his father’s son, for whatever that is worth.
But Ormund has one card he can play. One person that he can still order about. One wife to drag back to Oldtown with grasping hands.
So Ormund, lips twisting and pressing into a thin line that guarantees danger whenever he gets back to Oldtown, turns to Gwayne and orders, "We shall return to Oldtown at once."
Gwayne’s face goes pale, and Daeron thinks about kneeling before the throne in the Hightower, thinks about crowns and queens of love and beauty, about the rumors he has heard about Gwayne’s inclinations, about the way that Ormund looks to him and Gwayne sometimes and all Daeron can see is hunger twisted up beneath the love in his gaze.
To Ormund Hightower, to love is to control. To love is to have.
And Daeron knows what Ormund did to him when he had the chance. He knows that sometimes, Gwayne flinches when Ormund comes close.
Daeron does not know if Ormund touches Gwayne as he touched Daeron. He does not know how far back the splinter is shoved.
All that he does know is that Gwayne should get the chance to decide who he wishes to touch. That Gwayne should get the chance to make his own choices, as well.
And so Daeron plays his hand. Plays a blatant, bald-faced lie, and he hopes plays it well.
“Well, I cannot go to King’s Landing without my sworn shield, can I?” he asks, and Gwayne, to his credit, does not blink. Does not narrow his eyes in shock.
Instead, he looks at Daeron and he doesn’t miss a beat as he nods and says, “If Your Grace would like me to continue to attend you in King’s Landing, then I will gladly follow you and my sister," even as Ormund’s face goes red as a beet.
Aegon is complaining about his brother getting a sworn shield that isn’t a member of the Kingsguard, but Helaena is staring at Daeron, calculating him, evaluating him.
And Daeron has to wonder if she can see right through him and his lies. If she is judging him for them.
But he doesn't flinch. He can't flinch.
So Helaena turns back to her bugs, to her butterflies and caterpillars and dragonflies, and Daeron doesn't blink until Rhaena rides up close to his dragon to reach up a hand to clutch his in hers.
Rhaena nails dig in as she smiles, this teeth-baring, brave thing. “Did you really think that I would let you go?” Rhaena asks, a heart forged in dragonfire, teeth as sharp as her father’s sword, ferocious in a way that only the blood of the dragon and the salt of the sea could be.
Daeron thinks, for the first time—
Does she want me as much as I want her?
It seems an impossible thing, that Rhaena could think of him in the same way that he thinks of her, that she could look at him and see any sort of close.
Daeron knows that he does not carry the beauty of a Targaryen. His siblings look like their Valyrian ancestors. They look like gods, writ in silver-gold and violet.
Meanwhile, he looks a Hightower, a Florent. If it was not for his dragon, for his title, he does not think that he would catch anyone’s eye. He would fade back into the landscape, a faded smudge of paint in the corner of a canvas.
So it must just be that she wishes for his promise to help find her dragon. He does not blame her for it—the idea of getting to go to King's Landing and fly more often is an impossible one to turn away from.
---
And so they go.
Oscar Tully says the expected goodbyes to the royal family—and to a steadily reddening Ormund, now blistering with anger that he is about to lose Daeron and Gwayne at least for their trip to King’s Landing.
(Some part of Daeron is scared about going to King’s Landing, remembers every warning, remembers Gwayne’s own recountings about how wretched and corrupt a place the capitol is, but another part honestly hopes that he might be able to stay in the capitol for longer than expected.
Or, at least—that when in the capitol, he might gain the freedom to fly to the Vale or elsewhere that there are wild dragons with Rhaena.)
And now that Daeron can offer again, now that they are heading to King's Landing, Daeron asks Rhaena if she wishes to ride on Tessarion again—this time all the way to the capitol.
Rhaena looks at him with contemplative, curious eyes, but she smiles and she nods, letting Daeron pull her up onto Tessarion's back.
Before he goes, Daeron takes one look back at Ormund Hightower, whose face is less red but no less furious, his anger barely bitten back behind gritted teeth.
But that anger shall not catch Daeron. Not now. Not for awhile yet. Ormund cannot catch him now, after all.
So Daeron pulls on Tessarion's reins and she pulls up into the sky, soaring upward, soaring out towards the capitol that she has never visited to and Daeron cannot remember.
---
Rhaena rides with him on Tessarion back to King's Landing, arms wrapped around his stomach, fingers digging into the ridges of his hips before moving to his ribs to splay out, to hold on firm but not too tight.
Daeron can feel her smile pressed into the back of his neck, the rumble of her laughter against his skin, and Tessarion’s own laughter beneath them both, this bright thing, because she is delighted, because her boy likes this girl, and thus, this girl can be her girl as well, even if the girl isn’t quite the same as her boy.
Rhaena is not his girl, Daeorn wants to protest. He does not own her. She is not his in any way that matters, because she is her own, because he does not know if she shares any of the feelings that thump away inside of his chest, just begging to be heard.
And yet, it is a song, the three of them together, flying above the Crownlands on their way to King's Landing.
Beneath them, Gwayne rides on river barge and eventually a wheelhouse with Alicent while Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond ride their own dragons.
One night, they even alight by shore as the barge stops to give the rowers rest, and Daeron finds Gwayne strangely at ease, speaking with a sailor in his thirties, a man who is usually a sailor in Hull but who was commanded by Lord Velaryon to attend the tourney at Riverrun to negotiate.
It seems as if Gwayne has become rather close with the man, as Daeron sees the way that Gwayne smiles at the man, this soft thing, this sharp thing.
And Daeron knows that Gwayne has mentioned, once or twice, the fact that while Oldtown is the seat of the faith, it is also a harbor. And what a man might be forbidden from doing on land, he can indulge on the water without fear of repercussion.
And Daeron hopes that Gwayne is able to indulge himself. Is able to make his own choices, this far from Ormund and his grasping, taking hands.
---
When they land in King's Landing, Daeron must admit that he expects the capitol of the Seven Kingdoms to be nicer.
King’s Landing was clearly created without much plan. Oldtown is older, prouder. It has its own back alleyways, of course, but it is not as chaotic as this place, with streets that are messy and cramped and sprawling.
King's Landing, the capitol of the realm, doesn’t even have a Sept that could compare to the Starry Sept.
But it does have the Dragonpit, which is where Daeron's siblings guide them to land.
Daeron lands Tessarion next to them all. Daeron and Rhaena slip off of Tessarion's back, and for all that neither of them are used to dragon-riding, they are both loose-limbed, with the wind in their hair and the smell of dragonash on their skin.
Rhaena reaches out a hand to tuck a strand of hair that had been plastered to his temple by the wind behind his ear, and it makes Daeron's throat go dry. It makes him wonder what it might be like to be able to feel it again—
Dragonkeepers come up to Daeron, chains in hand. Tessarion bares her teeth at the dragonkeepers, and Daeron does not stop her.
As a matter of fact, he helps her.
“Absolutely not,” Daeron snaps, and it is the first time that he has made a command of his own, a demand of his own that isn’t an extension of Ormund.
The dragonkeepers look at him in confusion. After all, this isn’t the Dragonmont, where Daeron has heard that the dragons live unchained, half-feral things that still have the memories of their former riders pressed into their scales. They are in the middle of the capitol, and it can be dangerous to let dragons move about freely.
But Daeron is a prince, and even if he has never really been able to exercise any of the power of his status before, he wants to use it now. He needs to use it now.
Because he refuses to let Tessarion be chained again. He would rather burn himself than let her be chained again.
“She is well-behaved,” Daeron says, raising his hand to run along her neck as she trills at his touch, and it is a promise, and it is a threat, and it is a vow that his girl shall never be chained again.
---
Daeron enters the throne room and finds not his father, but his grandsire on the throne.
Hands of the King are allowed to occupy the throne, he knows, but that does not mean that seeing his grandsire ensconced in the hulking thing makes it any less eerie.
The Iron Throne looks a devouring thing, dwarfing anyone who sits upon it. A thousand swords, melted and twisted and reforged in dragonfire and the ravenous dragon maws, all shoved up into one artery of blood and rust and battle-hunger.
And it makes Daeron shudder.
This is the sort of taint that Ormund spoke about. Not the dragons themselves, but what ambitious men did with them.
(If Ormund was given such a weapon, Daeron has the feeling that no ambition would stop him. That if the King had died sooner, if the conflict between Aegon’s supporters and Rhaenyra’s turned to war, then he likely would have used Tessarion whether Daeron wished him to or not.
Holy fire, Ormund likely would have called it.)
Daeron would not wish to sit on the throne, and he doesn’t know why Ormund or Otto or anyone else would wish for such a thing.
His grandsire smiles, though, as he descends the throne and congratulates him for winning the tourney, for being knighted, a gleam of ambition in his eye that Daeron can’t quite trust.
It is only when the Hand of the King turns to Aemond to congratulate him for winning the melee that Daeron is finally able to take a breath—though it doesn't last long, as his grandsire soon turns to him and says, "It is time for you to finally attend to your father in his later moments, Your Grace," Rhaena turns to him.
"I should go reunite with my siblings and my father," Rhaena says, and from her expression she is clear which of those two groups she is more happy to spend time with. "I shall see you later."
Daeron doesn’t want to let go of Rhaena’s hand, but at least she squeezes Daeron’s hand as she goes, leaving him to be guided to his father's chambers by his mother.
---
Daeron smells the King before he sees him.
The door to his father’s chambers open and the stench wafts out.
It smells of death, the rusting of the blood, the rotting of the skin.
Dread seeps into his blood, slow and poisonous as nightshade.
His mother looks to him, something worried in her eyes, a question of can you handle this?
But Daeron is someone with scarred fingers and ash in his nostrils and an ache beneath his skin. He knows what it’s like to have the world bearing down on you and wondering if you can withstand the pressure.
I am a prince, Daeron thinks, I am a knight. I withstood living alone with Ormund Hightower. I made it through being deprived from my dragon for sixteen years. You sent me to live in Oldtown, to live being told that I was a monster, since I was a child.
I survived the fire.
I can face my father.
I can face the end.
He isn’t afraid of death.
So he steps forward, not taking her hand, to step into the chambers of a king that he has never met.
The man—the living corpse, really—in the bed doesn’t even look up at Daeron. Doesn’t even register him, it seems, through the film in his eyes.
Because Daeron’s father is rotting in the bed. Decaying. Putrefying while still alive.
It takes everything that Daeron has not to hurl at the sight, but he is the son of the Hightower, and he is stone as much as he is dragonfire, and he is built to endure. He will not falter, even if he knows that the man before him, the half-corpse struggling to breathe ragged breaths, has his blood flowing through Daeron’s veins. That his bones are meant to one day become Daeron’s.
This is the man that once laid with his mother to create him. It seems an impossible idea to picture in one’s brain, a man this weak having the strength to create four children, a man this week having once ridden the greatest dragon that Westeros has ever seen, the Black Dread.
He is just a man. An old, withering man who no longer has a grasp on reality.
And next to him, holding his hand, is the one sister that Daeron has not met yet.
A quick glance across the sheets shows that his older sister, the only one he has not met yet, is in a similar state to his own nausea, a tint of green to her features.
Rhaenyra is wearing a gown of blood-crimson and mourning-black, dragons embroidered along the paned sleeves where panels of Arryn blue just peak through the inside pleats of the shoulders. A silver-and-ruby necklace sits at her throat, matching earrings attached at the ear.
But the thing that tells her identity, even more than what she wears, is the curtain of silver-gold hair that falls over her shoulders, the single braid behind her head.
Rhaenyra Targaryen, the Crown Princess of Westeros, is three-quarters Targaryen. The daughter of cousin and cousin, of Valyrian and Valyrian, dragon through and through.
And thus, her hand squeezes around their father's, pressing in tight, aching, worrying.
His mother, though—she is the picture of strength. Of serenity. The grace of the Mother, here to attend her husband, as she reaches forward, adjusts his bedding. “Your son is here to meet you, my love,” she says, and Daeron does not know if he believes her flat tone when she calls the King my love.
And so Daeron reaches out a hand to take the King’s in his other one. Here they are, Viserys Targaryen’s firstborn and lastborn, both here in his final days.
“Your Grace,” Daeron says, and his voice does not shake, because he has seen worse sights than this. He has borne worse burdens than a man he has never met dying. The stench from the body is worse than whatever is happening between his ribs, because his heart isn’t doing what it should, seeing his father dying in front of him. King Viserys Targaryen is old and decrepit, a withering corpse just clinging to life, and Daeron does not know him. Daeron does not love him. And that might be a sin, but it is the truth. “I am your youngest son, Daeron.”
The King lets out a small groan and Daeron’s mother reaches over to acquire him something in a small pot—from the smell of it, milk of the poppy.
That is as much of a greeting as Daeron is going to get, he expects, from the state of things, from the open hollow in the King’s face.
The King doesn’t know him.
The King, in all likelihood, will never know him.
Why would he? How could he?
Daeron’s father’s fingers are in his, dry, chapped, gnarled. A stranger’s hands. Daeron knows Gwayne’s, Ormund’s, even Rhaena’s far better than this parody of a connection.
This is the man who gave Daeron half of his being, and yet, they are strangers.
The king doesn’t likely realize who is sitting here, other than perhaps his beloved daughter.
And as Daeron is realizing, there is no way that the King would have been lucid enough to send a raven to Riverrun.
Someone made the decision to bring him back to court, but it wasn’t the King. There is no way that it could have been.
Daeron's father doesn't know him. Daeron's father could never love him.
But his mother?
Perhaps there is a chance that she won't become a ghost too quickly.
---
After about fifteen to twenty minutes of sitting vigil by his father's side, Daeron is finally able to peel away, to leave into the hallway, to leave Rhaenyra with their father, her father, the father that Daeron has never known, the father that could never know or love him.
Daeron is having a hard time breathing. He knows that he should be praying. That he should be giving prayers to the Warrior and the Father for strength for his father, or toward the Stranger to finally lay their blessed hand on his father’s brow and carry him away to the peace of death.
But he can’t find the prayers that sustained him for so long. He can’t find the words of the Seven-Pointed Star.
Daeron is in a place where the Seven-Pointed Star feels far, far away. Where dragons reign supreme and dragonfire feels like the only thing that could ever cleanse a stench as strong as that.
Ormund’s perfumes, Ormund’s prayers, are not strong enough to handle whatever decay is clinging to Daeron’s father’s bones.
He wants Gwayne. He wants out of this place.
He even, in some distant way, wants Ormund. Wants the man who raised him. Wants the man who was a source of stability even when the world felt as shaky as the deck of a ship.
"Once, I attended another King in his grief, in his last days," his mother says, her voice quiet behind him, and Daeron turns around to face her.
“When did you send the raven here?” Daeron asks, because he knows it to be the truth.
His mother doesn't deny that she is the one that drew his father's attention to him.
"I sent off a raven to my own father when you won your first tilt," Alicent says, "When you requested Rhaena's token and I saw the look on my cousin's face. And your grandsire interceded on the King's behalf to bring you here and out of Ormund Hightower's hands."
If only life had ever been that easy. If only Daeron had lived in a place where someone with more power than Ormund could see the way that Ormund looked at him and decided that he had had enough. That Ormund wasn't going to get to take anything else—
Rhaenyra comes out into the hallway, arms over her chest, but he cannot tell if she is holding herself above him or holding herself to hold herself.
Everyone in the realm has heard the stories of how much the King loves his daughter. No other lord would pass over a firstborn son to declare a girl heir, after all.
And Daeron knows how much he ached for Ormund’s affection. He can only imagine how much more he would be breaking if he and Ormund were even closer.
Even the idea, now, of Ormund dying—it turns the stomach.
So Daeron swallows. “I am sorry about your father, Your Grace.”
Rhaenyra looks to him, brow knitting. “He is your father as well, brother.”
How does Daeron say that a father is someone that raises you, that supports you, that disciplines you, that teaches you of wisdom and justice and faith? That a father is someone whose hand is heavy but present?
That the man in that room might have once had Daeron’s bright eyes, but he is a withered husk now that is far more stranger than the Stranger itself. That it will be a mercy when the King is finally taken away, because he will not have to suffer, and that the only grief that Daeron will have for him is as his King, not his father.
That Daeron has been alone most of his life, with only Gwayne as a source of real support and warmth that didn't burn him, and that even that was taken away when it came to his siblings' wedding, an event ordered by King and Queen and Hand and clearly not them, given how much affection they clearly have between them.
“He is my King,” Daeron says, voice quiet. “Perhaps he could have been my father, once, but I was sent away. And even if I’d stayed-” He thinks of his siblings. Of Aegon and Aemond’s shock that his father would have sent a raven after him. Of the fact that Aegon didn’t even think that their father knew their names. Of what he remembers Ormund and Gwayne saying about the night that Aemond’s eye was taken. “I do not wish to speak ill of the dying, of our rightful king.”
Rhaenyra arches an eyebrow, her bright eyes piercing. “Speak honest, brother.”
She is older than any of his siblings. A mother already, having birthed five babes to her, one more even than his own mother.
She is the picture of silver-gold, with the blue eyes of the Arryn mountains, those shear, sharp things.
And she is the crown princess.
Ormund might have been wrong about many a thing, but Daeron understands the mechanics of the situation all too well.
If this all falls apart, if their father dies and war spirals, Rhaenyra will like as not decide to kill them all to preserve her claim on the throne. She’ll have to, in order to win the war.
But if she does—Daeron will regret not having said anything, he knows.
“Was he a father to any of our siblings?” Daeron asks, and behind him, he can hear his mother’s sharp breath even as Rhaenyra’s nostrils flare in offense. He has to push on, though. “I do not know what a good father is like. Perhaps a father who is apathetic is better than one that hurts.”
Behind him, his mother's breath stops for a moment.
It is a dangerous thing to say, he knows. He knows a thing or two unbending rulers, after all.
For all that Rhaenyra is three-quarters Targaryen, she is also an Arryn. Also the daughter of a daughter of the mountains. Her mother withstood miscarriage after miscarriage, stillbirth after stillbirth.
If he is the stone of the Hightower, she is the stone of the Vale.
Is there any way that they can bend enough to make a compromise? That they can find a way for green and black to meet in the middle, not two mountains clashing against each other, but rather two rivers seeking to connect, to melt into each other, to create one single waterfall?
Rhaenyra looks him up and down, this hard, sharp thing, and it's only when she turns to his mother that he is able to breathe. “Thank you, Your Grace,” Rhaenyra says, and her voice is soft, but not as soft as her gaze as she looks to his mother. “You have done far more anyone should have had to, when it comes to taking care of my father."
Alicent nods, but the movement is not as stiff as Daeron expected it to be. “It is my duty,” she says, stiff.
“You have gone above and beyond,” Rhaenyra says, and Daeron has not survived this long because he was oblivious to the subtleties of human beings.
He sees the way that they look at each other. The way that thank you is obviously for more than just the single moment of milk of the poppy soothing away their father’s aches.
That there is something that threads all the way through the ages here, a precious ache.
Rhaenyra finally tears her gaze away from Alicent to turn back to Daeron.
And Daeron swallows. Hard. There was fondness in his sister’s gaze as she looked at his mother, but he just bad-mouthed her father. She has every reason not to like him.
Daeron braces himself for Rhaenyra to wield her status to punish him for his misdoings, but instead she moves forward. “Before I left the room, our father indicated that he wanted to have a dinner between his children and grandchildren, his brother and nieces. His family,” Rhaenyra says, and something sours in Daeron’s throat. It is a reproach of Daeron’s words regarding his father’s ability to father, he knows.
Daeron swallows. “Can—can my uncle attend, as well?”
He is the only family that I truly know here in King’s Landing.
Once, they called her the Realm’s Delight, and he hopes that the title was in truth, an indication of her heart and not just her beauty, might refer to some level of warmth within him.
Despite what Daeron just said of her father, there is something gentle is in the eyes of the woman who Ormund has told him so many a time is just a spoiled cunt, willing to kill Daeron if it means conniving her way to the throne.
Rhaenyra looks to Alicent and then nods, and something that almost feels like warmth starts to bloom in Daeron's chest.
---
They all quickly go to wash faces and comb hair and change.
Now, Daeron didn't bring many clothes with him. He mostly just has the practical things he packed for the tourney. He only has one rather fancy doublet—an emerald green thing with some golden embroidery at the collar—and he just has to wear his usual boots and belt along with it.
He has no jewels. No fancy sword. No offering to make a good first impression on the strangers that are his family.
Daeron takes a deep breath and heads out to the hallway anyway.
There, at least, is Gwayne, much in a matching state to him. He was a bit more prepared with a richer doublet, trousers, and boots to wear at the banquet that was supposed to occur at the end of the tourney, but he also lacks jewels and silks and the like.
Still, when he reaches out and adjusts Daeron's hair and doublet, there is nothing but care in his eyes. "Whatever happens in there with your father," Gwayne says, "I want you to know that I shall stay. I shall be there, and I shall always be there for you. Wherever we have to go, whatever happens—I shall not leave again. You will not have to face anyone alone, Ormund or otherwise. I will make sure that you will get a choice. Just say the word, and I shall fight whatever battles must be fought to make sure that you get to choose your future."
Gwayne knows Daeron like no one else does. He knows what Ormund is like. He knows how Ormund’s touch lingers, an ongoing burn, a claim chaining you to the ground.
And Gwayne also understands the value of someone staying.
Daeron lunges forward and buries himself into Gwayne's chest for a brief, tight moment, before he pulls back with a shuddered breath and fixes his hair and face so that he doesn't start crying. His eyes cannot be rimmed with red if he is about to meet his relatives for the first time.
And it is only now that they head down the hallway to meet the rest of Daeron's family for dinner.
And it is here that Daeron finally meets his nephews and cousins. Aegon and Viserys are young, too young for the table, he is told, as are Jaehaera and Jaehaerys. They are all of them in the royal nursery, being taken care of by handmaidens and servants and septas and septons.
But Jacaerys and Lucerys and Joffrey Velaryon are all there, sable-haired and dark-eyed and pale of skin, not a pair to the Velaryon look. It is easy to see why rumors of bastardry have persisted regardless of what his sister might have said or done to try and prevent them.
But Daeron doesn’t look Targaryen, either. He looks as much of the First Men as they do, albeit a different branch. Yes, perhaps he does have bright eyes, but that is it.
He has a dragon, but so do they. They ride hatchlings, which all of his siblings failed to do, and they don’t seem that cruel or immoral or whatever else is said about bastards. They seem rather normal boys and princes, and when Rhaenyra introduces them all, they wear smiles on their lips as they shake Daeron and Gwayne’s hands.
The table is a large one, full of noise and life and warmth. Helaena is smiling at something that Luke says to her across the table even as Aemond glares at Luke, as Aegon drinks himself stupid—and something in Daeron’s chest aches for his sister, that this is the husband she was saddled with.
It is an unfamiliar space, to be sure. Daeron is used to the large, mostly empty table in the Hightower, just him and Gwayne and Ormund. He has attended larger gatherings, of course, banquets that Ormund had organized for various celebrations and name days and occasions, occasions where he and Gwayne were supposed to only speak when spoken to, were supposed to be gracious, were supposed to defer to Ormund at all times.
But none of those larger gatherings were just family, and all of the anxieties and aches and affections bound between blood and bone and kin.
No one here is standing on courtesy. No one here is patient or waiting.
It’s overwhelming, in truth.
Daeron knows that where there are large groups of children that grow up together, they grow up each wanting to spread their branches, to define their own space. This is a table filled with love and tension alike, all woven between that shared history.
It is a tapestry that Daeron isn't sure that he belongs to.
But Daeron is sat next to Gwayne on one side and Rhaena on the other, and he knows he is in the position of least importance—that Aemond is on the other side of Gwayne, Helaena next to him, Aegon next to her, and only then Daeron’s grandsire and mother next to the King—but he doesn’t mind it, because if there are two people that he can find some sort of anchor in, it is in Rhaena and Gwayne.
Though it is a hard thing to hide his blush when he sees Rhaena.
Boys are not supposed to be too sweet on maidens, especially not ones that are not their betrothed, he knows that.
Daeron is a knight. He is supposed to be honorable. Even if Ormund’s intentions aren’t as true as Daeron once thought them to be—or, if they are, Daeron no longer agrees with his philosophy and the way that it devoured his childhood—Daeron still believes the vows that he swore on one knee in front of Gwayne.
And yet, when he sees Rhaena, wearing a new gown of medium blue trimmed in silver, a thin necklace of silver and sapphire at her neck, silver hoops in her ears beneath a crown of silver braids, he loses the breath in his lungs.
Most would make the mistake of thinking her merely a Velaryon, but there is a fire in her eyes, something bright and bold in her smile. She is the flame flickering against the mist, drawing every eye smart enough to follow the North Star.
There are not enough of those in the world. There are not enough people that see her for the light that she is, burning bright despite—or even because of—the lack of dragon.
Rhaena is stronger, more clever, more bright, without a dragon than anyone else is with a dragon. It is an impressive thing. A beautiful thing. She is a beautiful, bright lady, especially as she smiles at him, this sharp, clever thing that he wants more than anything—
But he knows that he shouldn’t. That he shouldn’t stare. That he shouldn’t grasp for what hasn’t been offered.
(Daeron knows all too well what it is to have your choices taken from you, and he would never do it to someone else.)
When Daeron looks to his uncle, he sees, at least, that Gwayne seems just a bit adrift himself.
So Daeron is able to speak to him as Rhaena embraces her sister, as the conversation washes over all three of them, as Daeron gets to speak—at least a bit—with each of these relatives that he didn't get to meet at the tourney.
There are toasts, and some of them toe the edge of happy and sweet while others do not.
Daeron’s mother’s toast to Rhaenyra and vice versa are genuine things, the sort of respect without a bitter edge that seems so inherent to toasts in the Hightower, while his brother's and uncle's efforts are decidedly less so—though nothing that any of them say anything that could overstep enough to catch the King's attentions.
All in all, Dinner is a rather fine thing. Daeron is a sixteen-year-old boy and thus has the appetite of a growing boy as well, so he enjoys the food, and as overwhelming as all of this is, there is something about the chaos that enfolds a person. That beckons them in into an embrace.
There is something warm about this place, all of these dragons, all of this life.
Rhaenyra speaks with his mother across Viserys’ chest, and he recalls that they were childhood friends. While there was a sense of duty in how his mother helped the King, there is genuine affection between Rhaenyra and Alicent. They certainly seem more fond of each other than their own husbands.
And speaking of their husbands—even Rhaena’s father seems a person rather than a terrible villain from a story. He is affectionate with his wife, speaks with Baela, and though he ignores Rhaena, he does not speak ill toward her, either.
Some part of Daeron hates him on Rhaena’s behalf, but he is not as familiar with hate as many Targaryens are; it burns slow and low and hot beneath his breast, but does not catch like wildfire, threatening to take him down entire.
And it's easy to ignore it when Rhaena pulls him into a conversation with her sister when Baela isn’t speaking with Jacaerys—who she was betrothed to last year, Daeron remembers hearing about it.
Rhaena and Luke, as younger children, were allowed a year or two for their parents to decide on their betrothals.
There is a rumor that they will be betrothed together just as their older siblings were, the heir to Driftmark betrothed to his cousin, combining the claims of both of Rhaenys and Corlys Velaryon’s children into one to avoid the issues that came with accusations of bastardry a couple of years hence.
It’s a solution that makes plenty of sense. A solution that will resolve issues that could explode into a side war of their own, even if by some miracle there is a solution found for the issue of Aegon’s green claim and Rhaenyra’s black claim possibly warring with each other down the line.
And Daeron tries to ignore the feeling digging into his chest at the possibility of such a thing. He doesn’t know why it feels like something is splintering inside of him, his ribs cracking open beneath the weight of something pressing too hard on his chest.
Daeron knows what it’s like for something too heavy to press against this chest. For something to be too tight for him to breathe through it.
Every time that Ormund has touched his chest, the hand has been too much. Too tight. Too possessive.
So what is this? No one is touching him. No one is even threatening to touch him. Seven hells; the implication is someone pulling away from him rather than coming close.
But Daeron refuses to indulge in the wreckage that is threatening to crash itself against the inside of his ribs. He wants to enjoy this night for as long as he has it.
Daeron does not know where he is going after this, does not know if he is going back to Oldtown, but in this moment, none of the circumstances can ruin this for him. Not his father’s rotting body, not Ormund in Oldtown, not the fact that half of the people here at this dinner hate each other.
But everything about dinner grinds to a halt when his father raises his hand.
“My son, Daeron,” the King rasps, and it is the first time that Daeron has ever been called son by his father. His mother has sent letters, yes, but this is different. This is a sharper, stranger sound, even if the words are labored, even if the voice rasps. There is something to the two syllables of his name on his father's tongue that makes his spine straighten, his gaze flick up to meet his father's, meeting him head on.
Because he is a King's son. The King's son.
And yes, Daeron has known that his entire life. He has been made more than aware of that fact. He is a pawn because he is the blood of dragon and Hightower alike.
But it is another to hear the words from his father's mouth, each syllable paining him but him managing to fight through them.
“Has made this house proud by winning the tourney at Riverrun and crowning a princess under our house the Queen of Love and Beauty.”
Some warmth blooms in Daeron's chest at the acknowledgement in his father's voice, but he knows—
Someone must have told him, Daeron thinks, and his gaze flicks to his mother for just a moment before returning to his father. She is smiling at him, this small, thin thing.
“And thus, he shall marry my beloved brother's daughter, the Lady Rhaena Targaryen.”
And for a moment, all talking at the table ceases as the King’s labored breaths fill the room.
No one knows how to react to such a claim. Such a command. The King’s commands are final, none may speak against them, but this? A connection between both sides of the family, black and green finally braided together, the fates of both claims intertwined?
Except—it isn’t even both claims, is it? Daeron is the third son. Rhaena is Daemon’s daughter, not Rhaenyra’s.
What sort of role could a marriage between them ever play?
But then, after that second of confusion, the uproar follows immediately.
There are pretty dances that are done between people who wish to court, between parents who wish their children to marry.
Nothing has been done between Daeron and Rhaena. Ormund has not had his say, nor has Rhaena’s father.
(But there was a crown placed. Flowers exchanged. A dragon ridden by one who was not bonded to her, and what could be more intimate than that?)
Daeron's grandsire seems pleased at a highborn marriage, at least, but Daemon Targaryen is pissed. “You have already married one bitch with mud in her veins,” he rages, “And you dare marry off one of my daughters, my blood, to the same? Have you no fucking shame—"
Daeron can see the Rogue Prince’s face turning red with fury.
It can’t be because someone is stealing away his beloved daughter. It is like as not because Daeron is Hightower get rather than pureblooded Targaryen.
You do not have a right to be defensive on her behalf like she is your property. You have never been her father. You have spent so long judging her for being dragonless.
Your daughter shall ride a dragon if she wishes, Daeron wants to spit, I shall do anything to help her in her quest. She shall be beloved and strong and more clever than you could ever dream of being.
The King does not defend his wife. She is not his great love, that is clear, and it makes something in Daeron ache to know that his mother dealt with his casual disregard and apathy over the years.
But before Daeron opens his mouth to defend their m his brother Aemond is there, mouth twisting in a snarl, fighting with their uncle. “My brother would be an honor for your daughter to marry,” Aemond says, gaze flicking towards Rhaenyra’s elder sons, their dark hair and dark eyes an indication that they are in all likelihood not their sister's trueborn sons. There is some part of Daeron that wants to appreciate his brother defending him, especially since Aemond doesn’t even know him, but there is also something extremely personal, a long held grudge in the way that Aemond says: “Unlike your wife’s strong stock.”
Rhaenyra’s nostrils are flaring next to Aemond at the implication that her boys are the bastards of a long-dead knight, a ghost haunting the halls of Harrenhal, and she goes to defend her children.
But while Aemond and Daemon are making a war out of the prospects of their close relatives, next to the King, Daeron’s mother isn’t even paying attention to Daemon Targaryen’s insults. She is staring at him, her soft brown eyes fixed on him, narrowed into ink-dark question.
Daeron wants to say yes, I want this, because he does. He wants it more than he's ever wanted anything.
Marrying Rhaena would get him out of Ormund’s grasp. Ormund could not seek to marry off or hold a married man beneath his roof.
Marrying Rhaena would allow Daeron to marry someone that he wants to be with. Marry someone that is beautiful, that is free, that is everything that he’s ever wanted to be and wanted to be with.
But this isn’t about Daeron. This isn’t about his aches.
Because while Daeron would be absolutely happy to have the privilege of marrying Rhaena Targaryen, all Daeron can focus on is Rhaena’s reaction.
An almost-kiss, a dragon ride, a promise—they do not mean that she wishes for marriage.
The crown of love and beauty was likely thrown away the moment that they all turned in that night. She was not wearing it when she arrived with the raven, after all, and he has not glimpsed it in all of their travels.
Viserys fixes his brother with as much of a glare as he can, but glare is too strong a word to describe the stare of a dying man who rotted from the inside a long time ago. Viserys Targaryen is only a shell of the man that he once was, and that is what they all have to live with. “The house of the dragon cannot split or it shall fall. And this is clearly a way that honest affection can be had between two members of our family.”
Whether anyone likes it, a King's word is law. Is iron-strong above anyone else's.
Daeron and Rhaena shall marry, and there can be no real rebellion made against the order.
Rhaena squeezes his hand under the table, and he certainly hopes, but hope can mean nothing in the long run, Daeron knows all too well.
It is Rhaena that says, “I follow what His Grace asks me to do, father,” and there is a tight edge to her voice, the sort of warning to her father that the Rogue Prince is unlikely to heed. Why would he? She is dragonless. She is his daughter.
But she is brave. She is stubborn. She is beautiful, and Daeron can still see the flowers in her hair, even if her hair is just silver braids right now. She carries herself like a queen even if she would never inherit any crown.
It would be his privilege to marry her, but he does not know if she considers the reverse the same. Why would she? What does he have to offer?
Third sons are usually allowed to pick their own wives as long as they are noble ladies, but Daeron always knew that his marriage was going to be picked out for him by someone else.
The possibility that it could be with someone that he likes, someone that he is fond of, someone whose edges fit with his own—
That was never on the table.
And Daeron isn’t sure that it is still on the table.
Because yes, he is being commanded to do this, and Rhaena has agreed to it, but does she really want it? Or did she just agree to it, smiling like she did when he crowned her the Queen of Love and Beauty because that is the easiest thing to do?
And Daeron wants to believe. He wants to believe, so badly, that they might have a chance at something, but a lifetime of only being something when carved into someone else's image leaves one unsure of where one is going and what one is meant to be.
Thankfully, though, Daeron is saved from being dragged down by his doubts when his father starts to fall apart and has to be carried off on his own.
The moment that the king is gone, hell breaks lose.
Daemon grabs his daughter and pulls her away to speak to her. Daeron wants to go after her, even breaks to speak to her, but he is stopped when a hand with thin, soft, needle-pricked fingers catches his wrist.
Daeron turns around to see his mother staring at him, brown eyes bright and piercing.
“I was your age when I was wed to the King,” she says, and there is something scraped raw in her voice, something that aches with the ghosts of a life that she might never have wished to live. "And I want you to have more than what I had. I do not want you or your bride to feel fear on your wedding night,” Alicent says, quiet, tight, a quick, sharp thing that slices between the ribs, opening up the chest for the maesters to dissect.
And some part of Daeron thinks—who do you see when you look at me? The king you were sold to or yourself?
The King could not hurt a fly now, but back then—?
Daeron knows a thing or two about control. About bargains. About what someone will do when Faith compels them, when to turn down duty is to sin, when you do not have any choice but to serve.
And at least he has a sword and a dragon. What did a girl his age have back then?
Rhaena doesn't have a dragon, either.
To his mother, is he friend or foe? Victim or victor?
His mother is looking at Rhaenyra over his shoulder, fingers pressing close together, an echo, a ghost, and Daeron thinks of copper hair and blood dripping through, staining hands that have never met, blood rusting copper against cuticles carved open by grasping, aching hands, thinks of Gwayne standing in a tourney tent, thinks of himself kneeling in a Sept for so long that his knees bruised, just so that he could be in the same room as Tessarion.
He thinks of a sixteen-year-old girl, married to a King, likely without being asked, because who would ask?
Has anyone ever asked her?
Daeron doesn’t know. All that he knows about his mother is what she was willing and trusted to be sent through ravens and inked into parchment, nothing too dangerous to risk being read if the raven fell into the wrong hands.
All he knows is that he inherited obedience from someone, but he is tired of being obedient. He is tired of following commands, tired of answering orders.
And Daeron thinks—
“You love her, don’t you?”
Alicent’s eyes go wide. “I'm sorry?” She blusters, but she is looking at him like she is looking at a stranger, like she is looking at a ghost, and he thinks—I am your childhood writ over, aren’t I? I am your ghost. I am your child, not just in looks, but in heart.
“You should get to have her, if she wishes you in return,” Daeron says, and he thinks about silver-blue flowers, about choices, about the fact that this time, for the first time, the command is something that he wants, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. “I do not wish to marry Rhaena if she does not wish to marry me, but I do like her, more than I have any other girl.” His cheeks are growing hot, but he cannot stop himself from continuing: “I would—I would very much like it if she would like to marry me in return.”
Alicent's expression splinters right open. “Oh, my sweet boy,” she says, and Alicent pulls him into her arms, burying her face in his hair, her coppery curls floating around his face.
It is in this moment that Daeron realizes that he is taller than her. That he has no memory of being a little boy cradled by his mother, small enough to be held.
It is a startling, lonely thing, and it should be devastating, but Daeron realizes, in this moment, that he does have memories of being held—just by Gwayne, not his mother.
He did have someone who cradled him. Someone who took care of him, for as well as he could.
When they part, when Alicent leaves to speak with Rhaenyra, to discuss plans for the future, Daeron turns to follow after where he last saw Rhaena disappear with her father.
But instead, he finds Aemond leaning against the wall. He had clipped, sharp words for their nephews earlier, but now, he looks at Daeron with contemplation.
The storm that Daeron faced on the tourney grounds is a man, now, the last of Viserys Targaryen’s children to be betrothed, to be ordered to marry, to face this battle and come away.
Daeron swallows. He doesn’t know if his brother will resent him or support him.
The man who bonded with the last of conqueror’s dragons, he should have a taste for blood. For war. He is Visenya Targaryen, writ male, imbued with fire and blood, a craving for vengeance beneath his tongue.
His single bright eye left stares at Daeron. “Do you wish to wed Daemon Targaryen’s daughter? The one who did this?”
Aemond gestures to his eye patch. Daeron knows the story—that it was Lucerys Velaryon that actually carved the eye out of its socket.
But Rhaena was likely involved. Perhaps she wished to claim her mother's dragon, perhaps she was defending a boy who would become her stepbrother, Daeron cannot be sure.
But Daeron cannot hesitate. He feels sympathy for his brother, of course, but Rhaena is—she is his future.
Daeron nods, this quick, sure thing, and Aemond sighs.
“Better you than one of those strong nephews of ours,” Aemond says, and he gestures Daeron down the hallway. "Let me show you to your betrothed's chambers. I'm sure you're going to be as stubborn as any Targaryen and wish to have your say."
---
And finally, now, Daeron can go to Rhaena's rooms to apologize.
He knows what Rhaena is like when she is righteously pissed about a decision being taken out of her hands—and there is no greater decision than this being stolen from her.
The smallfolk can wait until they are older to marry. Nobles are forced to marry young, princes and princesses even younger. Being able to wait until sixteen and seventeen, respectively, is rather decent.
Daeron is sure that Rhaena has flowered by now. There is no excuse that can be made to avoid the marriage. No reason to delay the king’s wishes.
A father that doesn’t even recognize his son will not be able to be dissuaded from this course of action by love of a child.
Hells; Daemon Targaryen would likely have a better chance convincing his brother than Daeron would have convincing his father, but Viserys Targaryen is likely too old to have another coherent thought. He is not coherent enough to be convinced of anything. This decision was spun into existence by a single moment of lucidity, Viserys trying to give the boy he’d neglected his entire life a chance.
But the King did it at the expense of his niece’s choice, and that is the sort of thing that makes Daeron ache.
The doors open to Daeron’s knock, and he is ready with an apology before she even greets him.
“I must apologize for you being forced into this marriage. I know a thing or two about having a choice taken from you, and I know that I am not someone that you would likely choose for yourself. I am well aware that I have no crown to give you, my lady,” Daeron says apologetically. “Whether my brother or your stepmother becomes the next ruler after you, I am just a third son. I have no lands to my name. No house to claim to myself. If you married one of Rhaenyra's children, then you might some day have a crown of gold, lands, power—”
But Rhaena smiles. “You have already given me a crown, have you not?”
She gestures to the top of her dresser, and there, he sees, dried out with care, a familiar crown of silver and blue flowers, the petals carefully preserved.
Daeron swallows, and when he speaks, his voice is a soft, cracked thing: “You kept them.”
Rhaena gives him a look that says of course I did, as if there was any other possibilities, as if there was ever any other answers.
There were other answers, Daeron wants to protest. There were other options. He knows that all too well. He knows the pace of royal betrothals, knows that her stepbrother would have guaranteed her a spot as the Lady of Driftmark, that she could have had a Lord Paramount, could have had anyone other than him.
But Rhaena isn't speaking of other suitors. She is speaking of a crown, of flowers, of an honor bestowed upon a lady who deserved it more than anyone else that Daeron has ever met. “I pressed them beneath the pages of a folio I had taken with me to read at Riverrun,” Rhaena says, “I could not imagine parting with them.”
Hope, Daeron thinks, even though he knows it to be a reckless thing, an urge that he shouldn’t listen to, an instinct towards optimism that should be pressed down.
“You deserve to choose your lord husband," Daeron says, but his voice is softer, aching, unsure, because if she wants—if she wishes for the impossible—
Rhaena snorts. “Do you really think that any daughter of a prince gets to choose their own husband if they are not my stepmother? My hand was always going to be given away to advantage. I would not have gotten to choose. But you—you promised me a dragon,” she admits, but more importantly, softer: “You saw me, when no one else did. If my hand was to be given away to anyone, I am glad that it is you.”
He looks at her, at her beloved, shrapnel face turning towards him, looking at him, gaze bright as the sun—
“I have always known that I shall have to marry, someday,” Rhaena says, “But you are the one I would choose, if I could. I would offer you my hand myself—although under one promise.”
“Name it,” Daeron says, because he would give her the world if he could. Whatever her request is, whatever he has to search for her, he will do it. He will make sure that she has exactly what she wants.
“If we have daughters,” Rhaena says, “They get to make a choice in their marriage."
Other husbands might have a protest to a source of power being ripped out of their hands. They might rage at their wife making demands over the fate of daughters, who under the laws of Westeros are for bargaining, not for lives of their own.
Daeron is the one that has the dragon, after all. He has the power.
But Daeron doesn’t even contemplate it.
Daeron, of course, has no protest for this request. Of course he doesn’t.
Daeron knows a thing or two about the value of choices, after all. He knows a thing or two about what ladies and princes alike wish for the ability to make decisions in their own lives. He knows about a mother who loved a princess, about a prince who was nearly trapped within the walls of the Hightower, about an uncle who would never get to marry a man as he aches for, about a lady who wanted a dragon more than anything else, about a dragon who craved the sky more than anything else.
Daeron would not deprive a son or a daughter of a choice like that.
And so Daeron nods without hesitation. “Of course they will,” Daeron says, “They shall have every choice that we did not. They shall have the chance to pick the husband that they wish, or to have no husband at all. They can pick a lover, man or woman, or flee across the Narrow Sea if they wish, just as you can decide to do the same, once you have your own dragon—”
With each word he speaks, Rhaena’s mouth curves upward, but on that last phrase, he is cut off by her stepping forward, slippers loud against the stone floor of her room, and kissing him under the moon, her hand curling tender around his cheek, her fingers splaying across his jaw, her other arm looping around his neck to pull him in.
She tastes of strawberry tarts and sea salt and the future, the moonlight streaming through the window, the idea that Daeron’s future might glow more golden than he ever could have anticipated—
Someone knocks at Rhaena’s door, and Daeron pulls back, but he isn’t fast enough to do so before his mother comes in.
Even if there were guards outside of the door, they would not stop the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms from interrupting her son with his betrothed. They should have a chaperone, after all.
And they get caught, because Rhaena’s thumb is still dragging across his cheek as his mother enters the room.
But Queen Alicent doesn’t even blink at having clearly caught them doing slightly more than is proper for a boy and girl to do before their wedding vows are made.
She is the Mother, and yet, she doesn’t judge.
Her smile is small, but it is sharp. It is knowing.
She just arches a knowing eyebrow. “You do not need to jump back. I am aware of what teenagers desire from each other, and you two, at least, are to be wed." She turns to Rhaena. "I shall be glad to have you as a gooddaughter, Lady Rhaena.”
And Daeron doesn’t know his mother as well as he does Ormund, so he can’t in truth tell if what she says is true, but he wants to believe. He wants to take his mother at her words.
“Now," his mother continues, "Prince Daemon is being rather intractable when it comes to your dowry, Lady Rhaena—"
Daeron opens his mouth to say that he does not need a dowry, but Rhaena gets there first, her fingers squeezing in his as she begins, "I do apologize for my father—"
But his mother shakes her head. "Trust me, Lady Rhaena, I do not blame you for your father's rashness. What I was trying to say is that the King and I have decided to provide for you. I shall not have my gooddaughter marrying without a trousseau provided by the crown, but more important than anything—some land.
You are a knight, now, my son. You can stay here in the city or you can become a landed knight elsewhere. Perhaps—" She swallows, straightens her spine, and offers up a small, soft smile. “Perhaps the Vale? I have heard that there is a wild dragon there, and if I heard correctly, you did promise to provide your betrothed a chance at claiming a dragon of her own."
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rhaena’s eyes shining, and Daeron cannot help himself. He cannot obey the propriety that was trained into him from such a young age. He cannot keep himself calm.
He flings himself forward, throwing his arms around his mother's shoulders. "Thank you," he breathes, because he never could have imagined this. Never could have imagined the chance that he could have a house of his own.
For a moment, his mother stiffens in his arms, but she relaxes as Rhaena says, “As I was telling your son,” Rhaena says, “I have no plans on leaving his side, no matter how much he tries to convince me otherwise."
Alicent laughs into Daeron's hair, and he thinks—I finally think the future might look bright.
---
In the end, all living parents attended the wedding of Rhaena and Daeron Targaryen, even if Daemon Targaryen clearly wanted to rip Daeron’s head during it.
That was alright, though—Rhaena had asked neither father nor grandsire, but rather her grandmother to pull the cloak from her shoulders.
Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, understood a thing or two about choosing your own husband. About striking out and claiming that which was yours, whether other people agreed or not. About making the best out of the worst.
And for all that it was a King's edict that cemented the wedding in place, the marriage itself was going to be the start of something new. Something theirs.
When Daeron had draped a cloak over Rhaena’s shoulders, the cloak was a new cloak, for a new house, the cloak a bright, sky blue embroidered with copper-gold, colors they'd picked together.
House Targaryen has never had cadet houses here in Westeros. Every boy has died too young and every girl has married into other houses or died herself. The first Rhaena Targaryen had girls that could become their own houses, if they had tried, but they both died, leaving the Queen in the West alone.
But Daeron’s Rhaena?
She is ready to establish a new house.
Most princes and princesses would wish to stay close to court, but Daeron and Rhaena are more than willing to take the cut in power to become a cadet branch of House Targaryen.
As a gift for their wedding, the King has given them a tract of land, a keep in the Vale while they have their own castle built.
Yes, he could have given them Harrenhal. After what happened with the Strongs, with Larys Strong, the last Strong, recently being arrested and tried for murder, they could have given Rhaena and Daeron the largest castle in the Seven Kingdoms and all of its attendant lands.
But thankfully, that damned place was not given to them to start their own house. They shall not have to haunt the place like the first Rhaena Targaryen or pass that curse down onto the heads of their children.
Instead, they were given leave by the Crown to build their own keep, their own castle, on a Northern stretch of the Bay of Crabs, between Gulltown and Wickenden, at the base of the mountains.
The Arryns might have otherwise protested part of their land being carved up and handed to a prince and a princess, but the tract of land is said to be beset by a wild dragon. No one wishes to live there, not when the dragon is said to steal sheep.
But Daeron’s mother smiles at him after her husband’s declaration, as does Rhaenyra, a quarter-Arryn herself, and Daeron thinks that perhaps he might find more friends in his family than he’d thought.
And as they both go to get on Tessarion's saddle to head to the Vale, both wearing new riding leathers commissioned for both of them as part of their wedding gift from his mother and sister, Daeron stops by his mother and tells her to go after Rhaenyra. To kiss her and pursue her own happiness.
His mother looks at him in shock. “How do you-?” she begins, but it is not a denial. Far from it.
Daeron arches an eyebrow. “I squired for Ormund and Gwayne,” he says, “Do you not think that I am oblivious to my uncle’s nature? Why else do you think I invited him to join our household?”
“Because you love him,” his mother says, and she is not wrong, per se. Daeron did this, first and foremost, because he loves his uncle, and because he doesn’t wish for Gwayne to suffer continuing to be crushed beneath Ormund’s expectations and pressures and rules. “Because I want him to be happy, and I know that Ormund shall crush him beneath the heel of his boot."
In the end, Gwayne goes with them along to the Vale along with a small household of servants, a handful of each of the most important ones.
It is a great step down, for the cousin of the Lord of the Hightower to agree to become a household knight and basically act as a steward as his nephew hunts dragons.
But Gwayne has his own inclinations, his own romances, that he wishes to have to himself, that he wishes to find in a castle that allows its subjects to make decisions of their own.
And there, tucked away at their keep on the Bay of Crabs, a sailor from Driftmark can make himself a spot rather close to home, can spend every other month in the bed of a household knight, can even bring his shipwright of a brother to both help build the keep—kept well in coin—and eventually become the castle cook, when they all discover how good the man is at spinning soup into gold on the tongue.
Addam and Alyn of Hull find themselves positions of honor, paid well, in the house of Daeron and Rhaena Targaryen, and life begins anew, far, far away from Dragonstone and Driftmark and Oldtown and the places that tried to devour them before they learned to fly.
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Viserys I Targaryen dies, and perhaps the realm breaks itself apart for the crimes of concession that he committed, not making any true effort to sew the wounds of the house of the dragon shut.
Or perhaps Rhaenyra and Alicent manage to find a compromise. Aegon II does not want the throne, after all. Promises made with knives to lips and blood exchanged in goblets and the knowledge that they both share blood with each other and their daughters and brothers wed.
Only one thing can be sure: whether or not there is war, there are two full-grown dragons in the Vale, living in the castle at the edge of Gulltown, because on the sixth moon after her wedding, Rhaena Targaryen of Moonkiss Keep dragged roasted sheep over the mountaintop to a cave and claimed a wild dragon.