Chapter Text
She wouldn't wait if someone else asked. She wouldn't do it out of stubbornness, because no one dares to tell her what to do. She would confirm the rumors about her unbearable temper.
But Daemon says, "Don't go anywhere." And she doesn't leave.
She sits on his bed, resting her palms on the soft bedspread, raises the toe of her shoes, looking at her legs, modestly hidden today by the skirt of a long red dress. And then she looks around the room — the place where Daemon is most vulnerable, where he sleeps, where he doesn't let his mistresses (she knows he wouldn't offend her like this). There are other rooms of the huge mansion for his flings and lovers, and all the crowd he wants to attach. His bedroom is untouched, almost sacral. With the closet door ajar, where his suits hang. With a huge floor mirror. With dragon embroidered pillows. With a plastic bottle of water on the dresser. With a carelessly lying wristwatch nearby.
Rhaenyra licks her dry lips and looks down at her left hand, caught in the thread of the bracelet he sent her as a gift last April. For no reason other than April Fools' Day, it seems. She wants to rub her wrist with thumb, it still feels like a phantom touch — grip of Daemon's hand, marking "mine, mine, mine". When she came to this party, accepting an invitation for the first time in two years (they arrived to her every few months, signed by him personally, like in the old days, before email was invented), he was surprised.
She knew it by the way his eyes widened and the way it took him a couple of extra moments to pull himself together. But he put on a grin and came to her so quickly it made her head spin. Or maybe it was the champagne.
He took her by the wrist, and Rhaenyra — she wanted to believe — took him for a fool. Both of them didn't want to let go, and his fingertip traced circles around the chain of her bracelet. They exchanged polite nonsensical phrases before Daemon led her down the corridors, not looking at the guests who demanded his attention, led her straight to his bedroom. He hooked her chin up between his fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze—dark, hungry, hopeful— before promising to return and then he was out of sight. As usual.
Rhaenyra looks at the pale skin without any trace, though she expects to see a scar or a burn, or any other mark taken by force (taken by his tenderness), and she realizes that she is not afraid. She almost laughs at her own calmness and swings her leg again, letting the shoe finally fall to the carpet with a thud.
She bites her lip, feeling her soulmate mark burn on her ribs. The same damned mark, which gives her only heartache and suffering. She won't think about it now. And yet, a persistent reminder that even her soulmate doesn't need her, that she is an extra element, a hindrance, nothing more, pops up in her mind. Black bindweed of words — cruel and cold. Constant fear to hear it.
Go away.
Go away, go away, goawaygoawaygoaway...
As opposite of Daemon's demands to come here. His outstretched hand through time and distance.
She came here by herself — like fucking Daisy to Gatsby. And whatever happens, she's ready.
The door opens.
***
Rhaenyra remembers how she longed to hide in the dark corner or defend herself with claws and fire when she and her friends discussed soulmates while sitting in Laenor's room and sharing for a four a bottle of cognac stolen from Corlys' closet. Talking about the words of the soulmarks was not accepted in society, too intimate, shared only between soulmates. But they were sixteen and they were a little drunk, so they wanted the forbidden, the first attempt to know the boundaries of themselves, of the people around, of the world.
Laenor lay with his head on Joffrey's lap — they were lucky to meet two years ago at the track teams competition, bound firmly and forever, two halves of a one. A beautiful couple, even though Corlys still couldn't fully accept his son and his soulmate being both boys.
"I don't know how I'm going to meet the one if his first words are Nice to meet you, Miss Velaryon'", Laena snorted before taking the bottle from her brother's hands and taking a quick sip, wincing.
Rhaenyra wanted to disappear. To get away from this conversation or to lie shamelessly; but her gaze was fixed on Laena's forearm, where her words flowed. Usually she hid the mark with her sleeves, but now it was brightly visible on her tanned skin.
Looking at her greedily, Rhaenyra barely restrained herself from covering her ribs with her hand.
Go away.
The end, instead of the beginning of something new. She took the bottle from Laena's hands and felt the alcohol tartly roll over her tongue and scratch her throat. It would be better to have a simple, impersonal phrase, like the one that Laena had, but Rhaenyra had a refusal in two short words.
When Joffrey asked her with flashing eyes and a sly smile, without malice but with curiosity, she put on a wide grin and winked, saying that her words were too personal. There was a lump in her throat (there were no tears, not that time).
When Laena meets her fiancé during a trip to Japan four years later, Rhaenyra receives a hundred text messages and happy photos from her. She rejoices and forbids herself to think that this won't happen in her future.
Go away, silly girl.
***
As a child, she liked to scare Uncle Daemon: she hid behind the curtain and jumped out with a menacing screech, imitating a dragon. He played along, laughed, and ran away slowly enough for her little feet to catch up with him. She liked catching him because Daemon kept leaving. She remembers her childhood as a string of his departures and returns with long breaks to wait. He liked running away just as much as she liked chasing him.
Until, of course, she got tired of it. When she was a teenager, she no longer hid behind the curtains, but he still found her and gave her gifts, as if buying her forgiveness for his absence. He had a lot of women and a lot of problems, and at some point she grew up enough to understand that. She asked him about his soulmate several times as a joke, despite the fact that it was forbidden, but he only touched her hair, smeared his lips on the top of her head and smiled, chiding her for being too curious.
At some point, she started to think that he was one of those who didn't have a soulmark at all. She refused to believe that his soulmate could be Mysaria, exotic woman he had dated for several years.
And she, being the only child of her parents, never knew how to share.
Maybe that's why when he leaves her, nineteen year old, in a stuffy club with an obscenely pulled up dress, hot skin and red lips from his kisses, she finds nothing better than to use his own weapon. She runs away. Enters the University in Melbourne, listens to her father's long speech about expectations about her future and changes the number. She is used to rejection, but she isn't going to sulk and suffer anymore.
It doesn't stop Daemon, of course. Invitations begin to arrive six months after her departure. In even envelopes and signed by his hand, they end up in her mailbox like messengers with bad news. She learns to ignore them just as she doesn't listen to her father when he mentions his brother on the phone. Several years pass, her skin still doesn't acquire a golden tan, but her hair fades and becomes even lighter; her mark remains a brand on her ribs, but she makes new friends and lovers.
The invitations keep coming, and Rhaenyra obediently puts them in a separate box, which she hides away in her bedroom closet. She thinks Daemon's handwriting is looking more and more desperate, like his hand is starting to shake.
As a child, she pretended to be a dragon. But only now she feels that he is finally truly afraid of her.