Chapter Text
Daemon gazes down at Rhaenyra sleeping tucked against his arm, gilded by the moon. Her hair has come loose, and silver strands scatter about her face, making her look like a Valyrian goddess of old.
Part of him is still afraid even to breathe—for fear that he is dreaming, and one wrong move will pull him out of this reverie. With a light finger, he traces over her cheek and to her throat. Unbelievably, the texture of her skin is soft and irresistible and real.
He wonders if she still has the necklace he gave her—Valyrian steel and dotted with rubies. Over the years of her youth, he brought back all manner of curiosities and pretty trinkets for her, but that necklace was no trinket. Daemon found it amid the treasure vaults at Dragonstone. It no doubt belonged to some long-ago ancestor, brought over from Valyria. Part of their shared heritage.
The moment he glimpsed the necklace, he thought of her, his little niece who was finely formed and radiant, but strong as Valyrian steel and impossible to break. He’s always known that about her. He should have known the damage Valyrian steel can do to a man who, despite all his blustering, is still just flesh and bone beneath his armour.
He can admit this to himself now. Back then…he’d have had his tongue pulled out by burning pincers before admitting any softness for anybody. Daemon thinks of how he was at eight and twenty—thinking himself truly a man after years of war and a victory in the Stepstones; thinking he would take innocent, naïve Rhaenyra out into the city to teach her there could be some pleasure and joy to be found in this life. Thinking he was ever in control over any matter to do with her.
What an arrogant fool. Only when she’d torn him apart at the seams with her bold eagerness and defiance—cut though my father’s Kingsguard—take me to Dragonstone—make me your wife—did Daemon realise it was too late to protect himself. He never stood a chance against her. She beckoned with her little finger, not knowing what she did, and he was ready to rip his whole heart out and offer it to her, bloody and on his knees.
He told her he spared her as if that had been his intention at her wedding. That was a lie.
Daemon went to Rhaenyra’s wedding intending to marry her. That idea had sprung fully formed into his mind the moment she said, “who knows when I’ll next taste freedom,” that night they roamed the bowels of the city.
I can give you more than a taste, he wanted to tell her. Marry me, and you’ll never feel stifled, never feel trapped. I’d give you anything you desire.
Instead, he laughed and tired to sound carefree, but in the brothel, he let down their hair, hoping…he didn’t know precisely what he was hoping. That he could manipulate circumstance to force his brother’s hand? That this way, he wouldn’t have to make his case with nothing save his desires—his need?
And when his brother refused, Daemon had taken care of the reason for his rejection and flown right back to King’s Landing, for one way or another he was going to have her. Her voice, her smile, her very presence and every expression on her smirking, defiant face—everything about her filled the empty, yearning places in the blackest parts of Daemon’s being, and only with her did he feel alive.
Yet somehow, her brazen words cut something tender in the very core of him, reminding him circumstance was no hinderance to Viserys deeming him unworthy. For the first time, he considered what Rhaenyra could lose should they marry, and suddenly Daemon needed night air to clear his mind of the red haze that brimmed on madness.
He was supposed to have seven days to straighten his thoughts and convince her of this marriage—convince himself to follow through. He left her at the feast for what could only have been moments. He came back to chaos in the castle and blood in the hall—and the sound of Rhaenyra repeating her vows to Laenor Velaryon.
If Rhaenyra deems her life droll tragedy, Daemon thinks now, listening to the soft lapping of waves, his is surely tragic farce. Yet by some miracle, here he is—beneath the remnants of an ancient rowboat, his Rhaenyra tucked into his body, the taste of her mouth still on his tongue, the feel of her molten body still tingling on his. He presses a tentative kiss to her hair, breathing in her clean musk mixed with the salty air. New, after so many years, but somehow so familiar, too, that he aches with it.
But she is not his, is she? Has she ever been? Maybe, at one time in her youth, she had felt for him an ounce of the weight she holds in his heart. But she is a woman grown now—he had not needed her to remind him—and no doubt she has outgrown her childish reliance on her uncle. Daemon had thought, too, that she’d outgrown whatever adolescent attraction she may have felt when he tried to seduce her, but just because she still desired his body does not mean she wants anything more. She had desired that Ser Harwin Strong too, had she not, to have three babes with him?
This means little to her, surely, but that is of no consequence. Daemon is a second son—the spare—and he has grown used to the feeling at last, this decade past. Made a dull sort of peace with it. His purpose has always been to step in if needed, but he has learned by now that his brother and niece do not need him, and so he must make his own life. Perhaps his daughters have need of him, now that Laena…perhaps he ought to try, when they return to Pentos, to lift a little of the gloom that hangs over them both.
Yet his gaze is tempted back down to Rhaenyra’s sleeping form once more, and even in her sleep, she clings to his hand. A tiny crease has appeared between her brows, and the corners of her mouth are strained. And he cannot help but think that perhaps he can smooth her brow and make her smile as he once did. There is something dimmer and more subdued about her that he’s certain came not with age, but with the burdens of being without allies. And it makes Daemon’s chest throb and his anger flare, for how dare they try to smother her fire?
If he were back here with her, he’d cut down those leaching creatures of dampness and dark. His Rhaenyra should have flames in her veins and that defiant glint in her eye when she wears his brother’s crown one day. Does she realise? What they’ve done to her? How he can help her, if she’ll only ask? Would she even want any of it, or would she think him presumptuous and in the way, for she is a woman grown now, and a princess set to be queen. She has no true need of him, surely.
He can’t bring himself to offer. To beg for scraps. Perhaps one day, but not yet. He’s got that much pride left. But if she asks—if she makes even the slightest indication that she’d like him here beside her—Daemon knows he will stay and be anything she wishes. Even if it’s just to stand in the shadows, slice open her enemies, and take her to bed on hidden nights.
If she asks, he knows he’ll stay.
In the distance, Daemon hears a dragon cry, faint over the lapping of the waves. He frowns. Surely that is not…
Careful not to disturb her, he withdraws his hand from Rhaenyra’s grip and lays her gently on his coat. By the moonlight, he makes his way to the shore, peering into the distance whence came what surely could not be Vhagar’s cry. But he was not gentle enough, it seems, for in a moment he can hear Rhaenyra stirring, as if she felt his absence even in her sleep. She walks up behind him, and it takes all of Daemon’s will not to turn around and revel in her soft heat.
“What is it,” she asks, tender hand on his shoulder.
Without his bidding, Daemon’s hand comes to grip hers.
“We should head back,” he says, closing his eyes to brand this night into his memory, for once they return to the castle, Daemon does not know if he will ever have another such moment with her.