Chapter Text
120 AC
They said she had tried to mount Vhagar one last time before the Stranger took her. Laenor could imagine it well enough, Laena batting help away as Daemon or Rhaenyra or Rhaenys reached for her, insisting she could walk and dance and fly even as her legs gave out beneath her.
The world is darker without you, sweet sister.
He had been in the privy far too long. Someone would notice his absence. It was not seemly.
But he felt his stomach churning still, the bile rising in his throat, thin and pale and sour. Surely none of his breakfast remained inside him. He ran a hand through his hair, silver-white. When he was a child, his mother used to style his hair just as she did Laena’s, though only when their father wasn’t there to witness it, to forbid it.
Find strength today, for Mother and Father, for Rhaenyra, for Daemon.
Laena Velaryon had been well-loved; that, no man could deny. Driftmark was overrun with mourners, Velaryons and Targaryens alike, and even a day like today was not exempt from the knife-twist of court politics.
“My father pretends to care for Daemon, where all these fine lords and ladies can see him.” Rhaenyra’s tongue was loosened by Dornish red, and by her husband’s presence, ever accommodating. “He should be ashamed.”
Laenor placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder, soothing. She should not speak so, not in the presence of so many sharp ears and wagging tongues. But she knew that and it was not his place to chide her.
“Alicent’s tears are sickening. By the Mother, I would strike her if I could. She has no sorrow in her for Laena. She did not know her as we did. She did not love her.”
Queen Alicent was at her husband’s side, looking solemn and sympathetic as the king spoke in low tones with his brother. Daemon was silent, expressionless as one of the stone men. Also present were the king’s young children, silver-gold of hair and purple of eye, and Laenor’s own dark-haired sons. The groups were not likely to mix.
He thought of Laena’s girls, now motherless, and the child who had died before her. That was the final, wrenching agony of the whole matter, he thought. That might have been some comfort to them, at least, had Laena’s son lived.
He had watched his own wife take thrice to the birthing bed; had wept for joy and relief with each healthy son she bore. Rhaenyra was strong and lucky and blessed to have survived each one. Was Laena any less strong, any less determined? Laenor often thought himself fortunate to have been born a man.
“My father could have left her and her brood in King’s Landing, at the very least.” Rhaenyra’s eyes narrowed as she stared without shame across the hall. Once or twice, Laenor noticed, Queen Alicent looked back at her rival. “He could have done all of us that small favour. Aemond has already been causing trouble, you know. He went for Jace in the yard. A small scuffle. Jace came out of it well, for all he is four years younger.”
Laenor said, “This is not a day for squabbles.”
“If Alicent’s brats cannot behave themselves, that is no fault of ours.”
His fingers ghosted along her shoulder, rubbed gentle circles on her back through the heavy satins she wore. He could feel the tension in her, fierce and knotted. He knew these last days had been agony for her. She and Daemon had sat together with Laena, long past the time when anything could be done. He was glad the two of them had each other, at least.
Rhaenyra’s words about Jace played on his mind, though, and when the day was done he sought him out as he felt a father should. He did not see his three sons as often as he would like, nor as often as he ought, perhaps. But he listened to their stories, and bought them gifts, and rejoiced in their achievements, of which there were many. Each of them was like their mother, bright and clever and brilliant, and Laenor was so very proud to call them his.
“Your mother tells me you quarrelled today with Prince Aemond,” he said mildly, as Jace fidgeted. “She said he was telling untruths about you, and about me.”
Jace avoided his eye. “Yes, Father.”
Laenor himself was no stranger to these untruths. Rhaenyra and her father had made their rage at these quite clear. But Laenor was not Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and nor was he Princess of Dragonstone. Men were still bold in his presence, sometimes, in the taverns and the whorehouses, where different rules applied.
“You are not in trouble. But I expect you to rise above the foolishness of others. One day you will be Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and most will love you for it, but there will always be lesser men who resent it.”
“I know it was wrong, what he said.” Jace’s voice was almost a whisper. “I know it was a lie.”
Laenor took the boy’s chin in his hand, encouraging his face upwards. Their eyes met, murky brown to Valyrian purple. “You are my son. You have your mother’s strength and her brains and her fire, but you are mine too. Let no man tell you otherwise.”
*
“My love, you are the only husband in Westeros who pretends to care for his wife.”
Qarl was sprawled on the bed, wearing a smirk and very little else. Laenor could not pretend he was indifferent to the sight. But he dipped his quill again into the ink and focused on the letter before him. His letters to Rhaenyra were often long and flowery, anecdotes turning into tangents turning into poetry; her replies were generally short and to the point, but he knew his missives amused her.
“Pretend?” His quill scratched against the parchment. “Careful how you speak.”
Qarl bounded over to the desk and kissed Laenor’s cheek by way of apology, arms sliding around his neck from behind. His misspoken words were not malicious, Laenor thought. He had a good heart. But even after some years at court, he had not learned when to speak with intention and when to speak with ease. With Laenor in particular, he took liberties he should not. At three-and-twenty he was but a few years Laenor’s junior, but in his more brazen moments he seemed far more immature.
“Other men curse their wives and laugh at their follies,” Qarl continued, tracing Laenor’s collarbone with a feather-light, teasing touch. “You have the good sense not to live with yours, and yet you are the most attentive husband I know.”
“Were other men married to the Princess of Dragonstone, I trust they would treat her with the love and respect she is owed.”
“Of course, my love,” Qarl said smoothly, having sense enough to see that he was approaching a line he should not cross. He kissed Laenor’s cheek again and then caught him off guard by nipping at his earlobe, before flopping back down on the bed and leaving Laenor to his letter.
When he next saw Rhaenyra at Dragonstone, she asked after Qarl. She was good at keeping track of his friends. Even the ones he did not tell her about.
“Bring him the next time you visit,” she offered. “Is he handsome? Witty? As long as he has some virtue to entertain me, he is welcome in my hall.”
Laenor had no doubt that Rhaenyra would despise Qarl, who would be intimidated by her and by Dragonstone and endeavour to cover it with unseemly bravado. Were there someone real and true, he might have brought them. But there had been no one since Joffrey.
Soon enough, it became clear why she mentioned Qarl. Rhaenyra had never been one for subtlety.
“Daemon will be joining us for dinner,” she said, framing it as though it were nothing. But Rhaenyra had never been able to speak of her uncle with anything less than ardour.
Prince Daemon bent low before her when he entered, kissed the hand she extended to him. “My princess.” He swooped in to kiss her cheek and she blushed like a girl of six and ten.
“Brother,” Laenor made a point of saying, when it became clear that he did not exist in the prince’s realm of vision. “It has been far too long.”
He had not seen him since Laena’s funeral, half a year since. He had been a shell of a man that day. Today, as he held his niece’s hand, calloused thumb rubbing gentle circles, he had much of his old fire.
“Ser Laenor.” There was something mocking about his title from Daemon’s mouth. “It seems like only yesterday.”
It took Laenor perhaps ten seconds to assume they were fucking, and ten minutes to be certain of it.
Their arrangement before Laena died was no secret to him. Laena had loved them both, and he would never have wanted to deny his sister or his wife anything that made them happy. But matters were different now. More complicated.
“The prince looks well,” he told Rhaenyra after dinner, in a brief respite from Daemon's company. He raised his glass of Dornish red to her.
She arched an eyebrow, though her cheeks were pink with wine and pleasure, with the sweet attentions Daemon had been affording her all evening. “Are you displeased?”
There was much Laenor could have said. Your Uncle Daemon, whom the king himself forbade you to marry. My sister’s husband. Truly, Rhaenyra, is there no one else?
He could have warned her, You must be careful. Daemon is not Harwin. He thought of the three boys who bore his name and Harwin Strong’s features. He thought of Daemon’s twin daughters and the son who had died with Laena. Things may not be so simple this time.
He said, “If you are happy, dear heart, I am happy for you.”
When Rhaenyra Targaryen smiled, plain and true, in a way she would not for most men, it was enough to power the sun. She held out a hand and he brushed it with his lips, just as Daemon had done.
*
It was one of those evenings, warm and comfortable in a safe fortress of their own creation, where there should have been no reason for lies or pretence. Where Laenor could speak as he wished, dress as he chose, drink more than was seemly and trust he would still have a full coin-purse in the morning. Where Qarl could curl up under his arm as they talked and Laenor could claim sweet kisses as though there was nothing strange about it.
But now a chill silence fell and his men’s faces were stone as Laenor snapped, louder and fiercer than usual, “Care to explain the joke?”
Qarl, halfway across the room, was by this time well into his cups. Truth be told, Laenor was not far behind him. Perhaps his thoughtless words were meant as japes. Perhaps, with less Arbor gold inside him, Laenor might have taken them as such.
“My love, I meant nothing by it,” Qarl said easily, perhaps ignoring the chill in the room, perhaps ignorant of it.
“Ser Harwin was a knight of the realm, and a friend of mine, and I will not suffer you to speak ill of him.”
“I would not speak ill of such a decorated knight. But you are right, my love — perhaps I was wrong to speak of him so soon after his passing. Forgive me.”
Qarl’s eyes, blue and bright and that Laenor once found so captivating, seemed insipid now as he gazed back, unabashed. Perhaps he realised his folly and was attempting to play it off as nothing by being casual. Perhaps he did not realise at all what he had said; perhaps he truly had no thought for court politics or for Laenor’s own feelings. But, these days, no one joked about Rhaenyra and Harwin Strong without knowing exactly what power those words held.
These men were supposed to be his. He needed to know that, in this room and out of it, they would tread the line he required of them. He imagined Qarl, drunk and careless or sober and foolhardy, letting such words slip in front of other lords and ladies of the court, knights and wenches in a tavern. The betrayal of it all pounded through him.
“You think Harwin Strong has known my wife,” Laenor said. Every man in the room had frozen, but he had eyes only for Qarl. “That is what you mean in jest. That is what you will not say.”
“Laenor —”
“You think me a cuckold.” The word rang sharp as glass. “And my wife a whore.”
“Laenor. No. Of course not.” His eyes were wide now, pleading. Laenor cared not a fig for it. “I have the greatest respect for you and for Princess Rhaenyra. Of course I do.”
He had two men remove Qarl from his hall, from his sight. He had another of them, Ser Desmond, stay at his side and speak all the soothing words he needed to hear, reassuring him that Qarl was a shameless fool, that the rest of them had never thought such things, would never dream of saying them. Desmond curled calloused fingers in his hair and fucked him roughly and swore that he, unlike that ingrate Qarl, would never show such disrespect to Laenor or the princess, whom all of them adored and respected, to whom all of them owed their allegiance.
None of it was quite right, but as always, it was so very nearly enough.
*
Spicetown felt alive that day, swarming with traders selling everything from pies to rugs to perfumes; the townspeople drinking and dancing; a juggler and his trained monkey drawing a large crowd; a bard strumming at his lute and filling the air with song. Laenor felt the sea breeze whip at his hair, the sharp sun on his face, the thrum of celebration around him.
“A fine day for a fair,” Ser Desmond said, handing Laenor a flagon of ale.
Afterwards, he would scarcely be sure how it had happened.
Qarl had been loud, demanding. Laenor wondered whether he had been drinking, yet there was a strange sharpness to his manner, unlike the easy charm that liquor usually afforded him.
“Ser Laenor! My lord! Will you ignore me even in public?”
He tried to be kind to those he had once loved in whatever small way, out of respect for himself as much as for them. But Laenor was not bound to Qarl in the eyes of gods and men, nor even by his own feelings, not any longer. He owed Qarl nothing more than what he had already given him. If he would not accept his new, peripheral position in Laenor’s life, then he would be sent away entirely.
He remembered Qarl growing louder and more brazen. Had felt his own words getting sharper, colder. Qarl’s eyes were bright, as they always used to be, his pretty mouth set in a tight line.
There was the low voice, Laenor, my love, and the brush of a hand on his neck, the touch familiar.
The tangle of their bodies together, familiar too, yet fired with a foreign desperation, a sudden terror.
What he thought was a punch to the shoulder, then the dull realisation of the blade in his flesh.
The blade in his own hand, too, and the blood, the blood everywhere.
Qarl slumping against him, heavy and limp.
Qarl.
“Ser Laenor!”
Everyone rushed to him, too late. He staggered, Qarl heavy in his arms. Someone thrust the body from him; someone gently prised the dagger from his hand.
The words fell from him in a gasp. “He would have killed me.”
“Aye, my lord.” A disembodied voice, a hand on his arm. “He would, had you not killed him.”
“A fine strike, my lord —”
“We will have your shoulder seen to, and your doublet cleaned —”
“We should not linger here, there will be questions —”
“Someone should deal with the body —”
The pain in his shoulder began to feel more real, the blood on him heavy and thick. Tightness clutched at his chest and his breathing began to come short. He would suffocate in the fog of chattering voices. And Qarl was lying there where Laenor had condemned him.
“Husband,” Rhaenyra said, when she came to visit him the following day, at the inn where he was recuperating, “you have killed a man.”
Laenor held her gaze and willed himself not to cry.
“I have told the boys you were set upon by a thief,” she said, “and that you slew him in the street. They found the idea rather exciting.”
It was regrettable that the boys had been told anything. Regrettable that they had heard of it at all. He imagined the words, true and false, that would fly from people’s lips about him and Qarl, him and Rhaenyra and Harwin and Daemon, and he felt so very tired.
“Forgive me,” he said, somewhat hoarse. He could not meet her eye. “I have embarrassed you.”
“Nonsense.”
“Rhaenyra...”
“Let others think as they wish.”
She had her physician examine him, for all he insisted his wound was no trouble. The old man helped Laenor remove his shirt and tutted about the quality of bandages the local physician had used. Laenor wondered vaguely whether, in their six years of marriage, Rhaenyra had ever seen him in such a state of undress. He wondered if she looked at him and compared him to the men in her bed; if she was morbidly curious at the sight of his torso against the mass of yellowing bandages, almost glowing in the unforgiving sunlight; if she saw his narrow build and wiry arms and thought him weak.
She told him, “You shall come to Dragonstone. Stay at least a month. It has been too long since your last visit.”
Dragonstone, a home that was not his, with his wife and sons, whom he neglected in favour of his own pleasures. Rhaenyra’s face was carefully neutral, like she knew a smile from her would break him completely. He did not deserve her.
She leaned down to the bed and kissed his cheek, sisterly. “Thank the gods this was not worse. You must choose your friends more wisely.”
She took the hand of his good arm and squeezed gently. He tried to smile for her. “Truly, I must.”
“We shall find you a man more worthy,” she murmured, and the laugh that left him was a strange, strangled thing, but a laugh nonetheless.