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Dragonstone was built in the shape of dragons, and it breathes as they do.
It howls and groans, goes from puffs to growls in a lazy blink—the castle carries the mercurial moods of it’s namesake. It moves in tandem with the island around it such that while it thunders against the gates, the castle itself whistles in tune. Within the castle, the hatchlings are off somewhere running afoul of Ser Broome’s rules surely, they will come to their mothers when they tire but for now said mothers are spared so many gangly children clamoring for attention.
Instead, Rhaenyra is embraced by the quietude of her scorching warm chambers. At peace, and at home.
Time passes in her proper beats. Sleeping silks linger at the crevices of her body like so many little loves, beneath her breasts and the generosity of her waist and in the folds of knees, all of them falling unstuck when she stretches to sit upwards. Kicking at the thin cover with her little foot allows her to tuck her legs up under herself while she leans back to the headboard.
“Would you say—”
“Rhaenyra,” the only other presence in the room blows in annoyance, slapping a hand against Rhaenyra’s oak table. “Rest. Or did you not adjourn the petition hall because your head ached awfully?”
Rhaenyra, well-chastised, can only pout. “How may I shut my eyes when a great friend is in my company? We do not see one another as oft as I like, Lady Laena. You have neglected me.”
“Oh, please.”
“Tis true,” Rhaenyra argues hotly, twisting a ring around her finger, “you must only look upon the marks on the wall that show how our children have grown since they were last in Dragonstone! They are fingers apart.”
“Fing —should I mention that in between these fingers, you did visit Driftmark upon Syrax and your sons by boat, and we did attend my Lord father’s lesson in clamming which our babes failed spectacularly? Should I mention this?”
“No, you should not. You should come to my side.” Rhaenyra shuffles over in the bed to allow Laena space to slip in. In front of the world, they share laughs and pleasure rides; in private, they share a bed.
“You might bring your project with you,” she adds magnanimously.
Laena waves that off, slippers abandoned when she clambers up. “There are too many little pieces in that jewelry box of yours. They would be lost.”
“Well then, do not complain of your restless hands being empty. I did offer.”
“Empty, you say?” Laena teases huskily, gripping the flesh of Rhaenyra’s hip and back in jest. She is a woman quick to forget irritation, Rhaenyra’s Laena. The lie as man and woman might, Rhaenyra tucked in beneath Laena’s chin with calves lain all abouts. Rhaenyra enjoys this shamelessly—pinning Laena down is the only way to catch her. It is no torture for either of them, though. Laena dotes on her in this arrangement, unsticking any silver strands from her neck and rubbing circles onto the nape of her neck.
The three-headed beast that is JaceLukeJoff are all knees and elbows, constantly poking and snoring, clinging like barnacles to their loving mother. Rhaenyra can never quite resist their pleas although she gets no sleep with them in her bed, too busy tending them and staring transfixed upon their sweet sleeping faces. Her Strong ladies-in-waiting are not much for such gentle petting either. Harwin could be gentle if she asked, for he would be most anything if she asked, but their time for bedplay is scarce, thus his circles are most oft thumbed between her thighs or onto her teats.
When they lie together, Harwin is a hunter. He gives chase and makes her blood run hot.
In contrast, Laena is an explorer. A sailor of skies. In the safety of her fantasies, Rhaenyra fashions herself as wife not to wayward Laenor, ever running around Driftmark or thinking of the next tourney, gleefully disrupting the boys’ routine when he visits, but to Laena.
Hearth and heart. She would be that. Seafarer’s safety. Kisses on her brow, image on her prow.
That is a wifehood that would fit her as well as her pearl necklaces and Myrish silks do. The largest dragon in the world is ridden to corners of continents beyond by a woman who loves me, and she need not return to me, for I can meet her in the clouds.
“Stop,” Laena whispers, clutching Rhaenyra’s hands that twirl her rings round. Rhaenyra mounts a flimsy resistance. “Small wonder you are dizzy, with how you spin these at all hours. Must you? With this priceless thing?”
“It is not priceless,” Rhaenyra argues, allowing Laena to slip the sigil of House Velaryon wrought from Valyrian steel off of her third finger. It had been a courting gift from Laenor. Surpassingly beautiful, as they all had been. “It is beyond price.”
“It is beyond nuisance, the way you irritate such gentle skin until it’s all red.”
“Kiss it better then, won’t you?”
“Well it seems I must!” Laena groans in put-upon exasperation, dropping her lips to Rhaenyra’s fingers. She nibbles at the ring finger while there, sea-blue eyes darting upwards to watch Rhaenyra’s reaction. Rhaenyra for her part says nothing—she stares through a low-lidded gaze, bedroom eyes blinking. When Laena slinks upwards to press her lips to Rhaenyra’s own in the soft sort of kissing that feels boundless, absent any sharp corners... then, Rhaenyra takes her due.
A weak moan flutters out from Laena’s mouth, answered by a whine, and soon they are set to singing, to sinking, to knowing one another. The day is all rain, no good for flying, yet they soar together. When Rhaenyra thinks of their children happily tangled together just outside, the press of their bodies together, so different yet so similar, only feels better.
(Beyond price, she had said. Surpassingly beautiful. A ring, a wife, and a family.)
Later, Rhaenyra stares out of the window at the dwindling rain. “Perchance we should go flying tomorrow morn. Oh, only if it is not raining. Syrax despises storms.”
“That is because your dragon is a princess, as is her rider.”
The yes goes unsaid. They never miss an opportunity to fly. Rhaenyra can hear Laena thinking to herself, so she leaves her to it—there is such pleasure as being alone together.
Later still, it is the hour of sleep and they are wrapped together. Their intimacy in the afternoon light has relieved them of any urgency in the night. The children are in a shared room, likely not sleeping a wink, and the men are all in the Kingswood camping on some silly little hunt so nothing else needs be said. Dragons roar in the distance, conjuring red flames that lick against the dark.
“You are the first, you know,” Laena whispers sleepily, pillowed on Rhaenyra’s chest.
“Hm?”
“For me. You are the first… the first bosom friend I have had. I don’t know… I suppose I’ve had little interest in the past. Other women, men, they... you are the one who matches me. I would not... I would not be upset if you were the only.” She buries her face in flesh once more. “I know 'tis a silly sentiment.”
“It is not,” Rhaenyra disagrees—a foolish lump forms in her throat. “At times it does not feel real, that I may have you and not be denied you.” That for once, I don’t have to gnash and roar for each inch. There was Harwin and his sisters, yes, but Rhaenyra had fought tooth and nail to keep them at her side, and they had fought for her just the same. Daemon had been exiled East twice and left Rhaenyra wanting each time. Little one, he once called her, and made of her a little beast. Laenor, oh, the whispers grew so bold they grated even him.
Laena Velaryon though, the world seemed to not know what to make of her, and thus it let her exist in Rhaenyra’s arms with little more to say on the matter. For once the word unnatural was on no tongues. When the castle was full and they dined together (utterly raucous between the hatchlings screeching, Harwin and Daemon attempting to outdrink one another, Laena and Laenor and Lyanna and Gwyn all ridiculing one another as normal siblings were wont to do, Rhaenyra in stitches, presiding)—only then did Rhaenyra let grow inside of her a suspicion that it was the rest of the world that was unnatural. For not having this, not knowing this.
When she and Laena fall asleep, it is not for long. As a mother and a liege princess, Rhaenyra is rarely left to rest.
It bothers her naught.
Arranged as she is, she no longer clings to the solace once offered her only in her dreams.
Laena comes to her from behind to say farewell.
The sun is shining and Dragonstone baking beneath it as a pie does: smells wafting, dragon wings stretching and fanning. Rhaenyra pouts. It will never sit well with her, to be left behind. She prefers her loved ones within an arm’s length. Her arms are not long.
Laena’s are longer. They wrap around her shoulders easily, leave space for an affectionate kiss to be perfectly placed on Rhaenyra’s temple. It’s then that a heavy weight wraps around her neck— a necklace? A gift? Rhaenyra reaches up to touch it in wonder, coming in contact with a familiar warmth.
“Is—”
“Indeed,” Laena rumbles, impossibly pleased with herself. “You shan’t torture yourself any longer, my princess.”
The chain is short. Forged of the steel that once made the grip of the ring, no doubt, for Valyrian steel cannot be mistaken. The seahorse sits itself atop Rhaenyra’s already laden neck as the king of a castle does upon a throne.
“Laena!” Rhaenyra gasps, turning to touch her—Laena dances out of reach, though, all terrible confidence. Daemon’s awful influence.
“Until we see one another again, your Grace!” Laena bids farewell from the sky.
Well.
That is fine. Rhaenyra prefers her farewells effusive to elusive but...
Thankfully, Harwin awaits her when she returns inside, leaning against a wall with a grin playing on his mouth. Hunger in his eyes.
“Did you enjoy yourself, Princess, while I was away?” he asks in that deep voice, timber-felling, thigh-quivering. He knows, or thinks he does. He finds it all thrilling. None will ever excite him as I do, Rhaenyra knows in turn. Half his height and double his arrogance—she growls at his presumption. The warmth of the chain round her neck brands her, but it doesn’t quell the burning inside.
Harwin bares his teeth right back. Rhaenyra pounces.
The next time she sees Laena, she covers her in gold, and silver, and gems.
All one of their kind, commissioned from far and wide. All for Laena. She looks strikingly similar to some depiction of Syrax in one of the old books Rhaenyra used to pore over as a child. Dripping in treasures mined from the earth’s womb. Dressed in them by a lover who can adore her, who can afford her.
Rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, ornaments; no expense was spared.
The sight is a divine one to Rhaenyra’s eyes. It makes Laena look half a goddess. Makes Rhaenyra feel one as well, some benevolent devoted deity shrouding her favored mortal in all the graces she could possibly desire. The two of them raising one another into the heavens. I did this, Rhaenyra preens when she sees Laena’s skin flashing between adornments, everywhere glittering gold.
When Daemon enters the room, he blinks once in surprise. Then, he stalks around his wife like a predator; coiling around her as silk spreads
“I did this,” Rhaenyra rumbles— territorial.
Daemon’s serpentine purple eyes flash up at Rhaenyra from where he looms over an unafraid Laena. They flicker in desire. They quirk in the offering of a shared meal. Rhaenyra challenges him with the raising of one elegant eyebrow; he nods in deference, but smirks in insolence.
“As you wish, Princess.”
Leaning down to whisper in Laena’s ear, they two share a chuckle. A kiss, too, one that has them all but swallowing each other whole.
Rhaenyra pouts.
“You don’t like them?” she frowns later while Laena observes herself in the looking glass. The taller woman turns herself here and there to find all angles but Rhaenyra can sense that she is not satisfied. “They are too much.”
“They are… quite heavy,” Laena admits.
Rhaenyra concedes defeat with little grace, but she does so all the same, in silence unhooking this and that to free Laena from her earthly offerings. The necklace Laena had wrought for her had felt so right, was all, Rhaenyra had only wished to return the devotions! But of course, Laena is a woman of the world. She has seen too much to be impressed by mere baubles. Rhaenyra will try again, she resolves, some other approach… for the idea that she cannot please Laena feels unbearable.
“Do not be upset,” Laena says softly.
“I am not upset,” Rhaenyra dismisses. Her hands raise to the final necklace that is woven of gold and styled in the way of Valyrian shieldmaidens of old. Women wed to their dragons, sworn to fight on behalf of their temples and never marry. Written onto it is a single glyph: dāerves.
Freedom.
Laena clutches it. Rhaenyra, in no mood to be pitied, tut-tuts at her.
“Leave this one,” she says.
“You need not spare my feelings, my lady,” Rhaenyra sniffs.
“I do not—no, that is not the way of it. This one,” she turns then, presses her forehead against Rhaenyra’s own. “This one speaks to me. This one is all I need.” Cupping Rhaenyra’s face, she turns it up towards herself and coaxes her into a smile. “I know you love quite large, Princess. It is your way. I need no diamonds to prove that.”
“I would give you diamonds for love of you alone.”
Laena blushes. “You and this Daemon are so…” alike? Perhaps. I learned seduction at his knee, after all. “Ceaseless. Ceaseless, that is what you are.”
“One necklace alone cannot contain all my affection for you,” Rhaenyra laments.
“Then you must feed it to me slowly over such time, so I do not gorge myself ill.”
“Must I?”
“Mm,” Laena nods, “you must. For if I will have to be patient for the next seven moons, I would at least have you at my side, suffering with me.”
Rhaenyra blinks. Seven moons?
“Oh, Laena!” she cries, touching her yet flat belly. “Truly?”
“I believe it to be. None know yet, not even Daemon. I have not spoken to the maester either… I know it, though. I knew it the moment it happened.”
“Why do you not wish to share this news?”
Forlorn, she casts her gaze to the window. “As soon as I say a word, they will chain me to the castle and forbid me from riding Vhagar. It happened before, and my father has only grown more superstitious since the twins were born small. Although Daemon is beginning to suspect I’d say, I’ve had to pretend at my own moon blood to throw him off the scent.”
“Nonsense!” Rhaenyra banishes the very thought, raising herself high. “I shan’t allow them shackle you. I shall be with you, flying by your side.” Squeezing her hand, Rhaenyra embraces her dear friend, all thoughts of grand gems gone.
Later that day, they take to the skies in covert mischief—having gossiped to their fill about how the rest of the hatchlings shall react to this new babe, a sister or brother or cousin, perhaps a wife to Joffrey although it was getting a bit ridiculous, all these betrothals; Rhaenyra cannot help herself however, it simply fits too nicely!
She would give Laena’s daughters the most wonderful husbands, as she would give her own sons absolute jewels for wives. Face the future by preserving all the safety and nurture of this family she has—an odd one, queer perhaps, all of them too entangled to be unraveled by a single sour stranger.
Beyond price.
High in the sky, Syrax gleams in the brightness of glorious day while Vhagar’s green all but disappears. Yellow and bronze bloom into gold, into shimmering stars undiminished by sunlight. Surpassingly beautiful.
One necklace cannot hold all her affection, no.
Neither can the entire heavens.
Whether big or small, Rhaenyra reflects, it hardly matters—when it comes to the love they share, there is always more.
Always more heartbreak.
Always more death.
Was I made to outlive them all? Rhaenyra weeps in the dead of night. Aegon, her Aegon is teething and his cries are a tempest to her torrent.
Jace, Luke, and Joff do not come to her bed any longer—they are old for it and fancy themselves grown boys, better-suited to comfort the twins who still miss their mother rather than seek comfort themselves, to escape into the dragon coves at any hour.
Little one, Daemon at times still drips into her ear, in a bed that feels monstrously large. He grounds her. She clings tightly to him.
Was I left alive so I could be alone?
Joffrey does not take well to being sent to the Vale, Baela even less to the thought of being sent away, yet dear Rhaena gives Rhaenyra nothing but peace. The girl has some piety to her and she has always been so eager to please. An exemplary young woman. She was meant as bride to Lucerys. She was meant to make all the love last.
She is set to board a ship to Gulltown.
Rhaenyra... does not know what to say to this pair of blinking purple eyes upon her. Rhaena clutches a dragon egg close (twin to the girl’s cheeks, for it is also pink with a smattering of freckles) and awaits words Rhaenyra cannot seem to find. Finally, she breaks the silence herself.
“Your Grace,” she smiles—oh heavens, she’s too lovely— “I shall hatch this egg, Gods willing. I shall pray for it day and night, I swear on the Mother, I shan’t let you down! I will return with a dragon to pledge to our true and good cause.”
Sweet child. Laena’s little girl, so soft, so unlike the never-queen she was named for, or her own twin sister. Baela was all ablaze and made in the image of her ferocious parents. Invincible, protective, both rebel and hero wrapped into one. Rhaena had never had such a clear fire as Baela and Laena and Rhaenyra… although she knows what it is to feel left behind. Don’t they all, these days? Small, scrambling at purpose.
Yearning for the euphoria of finding one’s star.
She only wishes Rhaena’s determination was not set on a thing as mercurial as a dragon egg hatching.
“Rhaena,” she forces a smile. “I trust that you will remain safe and stalwart in your fostering. The Vale are valuable allies, and I know you have it in you to charm them. The eggs—no matter the outcome, you mustn't lose faith.”
“I shall not!”
“Remember who loves you,” Rhaenyra advises. Someone had told her that once.
Rhaena nods eagerly again. “I shall, my Queen.”
Would that I were your mother, and could embrace you as only a mother can. Lately, Rhaenyra did not feel a mother, felt more of an empty shell, but a familiar warmth rests against her neck and she is undoing the chain before she can think of it.
Wrapping it around Rhaena’s slim neck, it falls to the girl’s collarbone where the winged seahorse swims—or flies, mayhaps. Held aloft it does not sink. Rhaenyra chokes away a sob.
(Lady Laena’s love. It was only hers for a moment.)
“Your lady mother’s work,” she manages. “A gift she gave me, that I now gift you. A piece of her for you to keep safe throughout your warding. Keep it safe for me now, dearest Rhaena. Remember that, dragon or not, you are descended from love and glory. You could never be less.”
Words that I never gave Lucerys. No, no—Rhaenyra will have her revenge, she must, she must believe! The young lady’s breath hitches to feel the charm’s warmth for the first time, her large eyes growing wet with wonder.
“For true? I have always…”
“There was another necklace, one I gave Laena in turn. Your father must have it.”
“He did,” Rhaena swallows. “He gave it to Baela. Dāerves, it says. It is so—it is beautiful.”
Rhaenyra’s love to one daughter. Laena’s to the other. Perhaps Rhaenyra has something to give, still. Perhaps I was left alive for more than merely to be alone. “Freedom, yes. We will all be free of this scourge, one day. Until then, you must be as brave and as beautiful as your grandmother Princess Rhaenys.”
Clutching the charm in her palm, Rhaena looks up towards the sky with a face that blooms with new confidence. Hard and strong as her sister, as her mother, when she says: “I shall.”
A promise. Beyond price. Rhaenyra looks to the sky when the ship has left her sight—it is grey and tight to the land. No dragons fly this day.
Not for the first time this season, she shivers.
Dragonstone was built in the shape of dragons, and it breathes as they do. It howls and it groans, oh, it burns as hot as eggs hatching, it coils in it’s throes, these dragons, they live, they die—
So long as the blood remembers, how can the fire die? In the world mayhaps but never in Rhaena’s memory.
Rhaena has Morning’s bones interred on Dragonstone for that is where the she-dragon was most celebrated. Most free. In King’s Landing she’d been Aegon’s reason to frown, in Oldtown she’d been a reminder of a reckoning narrowly escaped; even Rhaena’s own Garmund had never quite slept easy with the matter of Morning between them. He’d built her something of a Dragonpit and encouraged her visit here and there as she pleased, so long as there was no babe in her belly of course, but... Dragonstone was Dragonstone.
Morning hatched the day Moondancer died. She and Baela will be buried apart, but in this much they may remain always entwined. The little poetries of my life, Rhaena hums as they make dock on the Targaryen island.
It is not all bad.
She’s been Lady Targaryen, a Velaryon lady-wife-to-be, Lady Corbray, Lady Hightower, dragonless, dragonrider, daughter, orphan, wife, matchmaker, widow, mother, goodmother—all of these parts make her. Some lifetimes have been easier to bear than others.
Similarly, some daughters are simpler than their sisters.
“Leonette,” Rhaena sighs when the girl is brought back from where she’d been mingling at the docks among all sorts of undesirables. Blustering Garmund is always watching the daughter he calls Leo affectionately like a hawk, reporting her comings and going to Rhaena with fever. Rhaena has exhausted her patience in telling her husband to leave Leo be. That he will turn grey before his time, going on this way. All thanks to their slight and slippery girl.
But Aunt Sam goes there, Leo constantly argues back. But Aunt Baela does this!
Lady Hightower is a woman grown who may do as she pleases, Rhaena reminds her primly, and dearest Baela is mad as anything. Leo is one of those girls born to bring pleasure to her mischievous aunts, though, a girl embroiled with conspiracies and the commons from the day she could walk. She is also her father’s favorite. Rhaena was young when she learned about fathers and their favorite daughters, and only wishes her husband would heed her wisdom on this topic.
Let her go while she is still asking for your permission, Rhaena had told him time and time again. And Garmund could not hear it—not until now.
“I am a woman grown, mother,” Leo laughs. She kisses her mother with a mouth that smells of dark ale, of fried street meats. “I only wished to look at my ship once more.”
“You will see her all you please when you begin your journey to Pentos on the morrow,” Rhaena scolds. “Allow me this one night of knowing you are in your bed, if you would have that much mercy on your old mother’s heart.”
Leo’s face falls the slightest bit. A note of guilt rattles through her chest and Rhaena sighs. She is in no mood for theatrics. Not tonight.
“Never you mind that. Come, sit. I would give you something.”
Leo sits. Ambling over to her, Rhaena stands at her back to smooth her curls from the back of her neck—then, she loops a chain that her neck knows instinctively around the thin neck of her daughter instead. A winged seahorse wrought of Valyrian steel glints silver in the hearth light.
“Mother?” Leo chuckles, confused.
Leo has long been more handsome than pretty, more accustomed to raiding her sisters’ jewelry boxes when she wished to peacock than to collecting trinkets of her own, so this is somewhat of an odd gift for Rhaena to bestow. She has commissioned saddles for Leo ever since Leo could make her preferences known. Exotic pets, songs from traveling singers. Garmund is more apt to present all of his daughters similar jewels (so none feel left out, he smiles, the oaf!) than Rhaena.
This necklace is similar to nothing, though. It is one of it’s kind. Her own lady mother gifted it to the Queen Rhaenyra.
(Queen. Rhaena is stubborn as Baela when she wishes. She names Rhaenyra Queen even within the walls of the Hightower, so otherwise agreeable that none dare chastise her for it. The tart looks tell her all she needs know about the popularity of her comments, regardless.)
“You must keep this with you always,” Rhaena instructs sternly. “This is a treasure and with it go my love and trust. Please, my child, do not defy me in this. Each of my daughters are as a heart beating within me and I have lost too much to lose one of you as well.”
Leo swallows. She does not protest.
She smiles instead, uncomfortable with the somber attitude on this night before she begins her coming-of-age tour of the Free Cities; she is quick to change the mood.
“I do not need a necklace to remember you by, you know. I—”
“Remember?” Rhaena scoffs. “You foolish girl. It is to sell if you ever require! It can command any price, so do not hesitate if you are in some great quandary. Do you hear me, Leo? Do not hesitate! Whatever mischiefs you may get up to, fret later, but bring yourself home to me first.”
Remember who loves you, Rhaena has always told her daughters, when they nudged nervous feet into carpets and admitted to whatever inanity they were embroiled in.
Someone told her that, once.
Leonette sold her lady mother’s necklace, indeed, and commanded a staggering price for it too. She is still reaping the rewards from the interest and resulting investments—she sold the necklace, but she never went home.
No. How could she?
Leo loves song near as much as she loves sail, her coming-of-age tour taught her that, the saltwater in her blood some have said although always followed by a long-suffering moan. Moans, blusters, threats to cut off her funding, her lord father all but weeping in letters about this duty and that intended…
Even at ten-and-seven she was brave as brass, as Lord Garmund found and reluctantly accepted only after Leo had sold her mother’s necklace and established herself in a grand manse with all her assorted companions and wise investments to keep her warm. You taught me all this, she told him when he finally visited and witnessed her flourishing. I learned from you.
I love you nonetheless and always, she would have said had the man not embraced her tighter than a cocoon then and there.
Mother had a much more measured reaction, thankfully—perhaps even having suspected this future for Leo. After all, she has five other daughters to spread duties, honors, and intentions among. Lady Rhaena Hightower was never one to make a scene unless absolutely necessary.
Leo has traveled. She has written copious letters, journals, sent gifts, darted out of danger, fallen in love. There are two silver heads to prove the last truth. Seven years apart. A girl and a boy.
Older and wiser is how her cousin—Laena, the eldest daughter of her Aunt Baela and Nuncle Alyn—finds Leo when she visits Pentos, after her father has achieved yet another infamy. He has also gone missing somewhere in the Sunset Sea. Leo’s father passed on years ago now, so there is no danger of waylaying him. Laena tells her she should be grateful for as much.
“Fathers,” she groans, the two of them in their third and fourth decades, practiced in complaining about men.
Leo chuckles as she pours them more wine. “They can only be who they are.”
“They can only be fools!” Laena rails in the haze of shared spirits. They are barefoot in silks and robes to contend with the Pentoshi heat, cheeks reddening against a sunset of purple and blue. Watching her cousin speak, Leo is reminded of the youths they’d once been: Laena, all her lady mother’s boldness, curvaceous with a deadly tongue. Leo, boyish and skinny, half in love with the older girl in all her bravura.
Even now Leo notices how Laena spills more than words out of her haphazardly tied robe. The chunk of flesh that was ripped from Laena’s arm as a babe grew into an odd shape and discoloration whose taut texture Leo had once loved to rub her face against. The urge crosses her mind now, too. So distracted is she in the echoes of an old desire that it takes Laena gasping upon spying a little intruder for Leo to realize that her daughter is peeking about a corner.
“Come, come!” Laena insists.
So the impish child does, crawling into Laena’s arms to be fawned over and fed sweet fruits. Leo sees no reason not to allow it; to shield her child from the truths of the world. She herself had always reveled in the company of devilish aunts.
“Do you recall when we were this small?” Leo asks, tracing the edges of her earlier thoughts. “You the leader of all our misadventures.”
“Misadventures? Please, cousin, it was all I could do to keep you hatchlings from killing yourselves upon Driftmark’s rocks! You in particular! Do you hear that, sweetling? Your mother was once the grandest terror.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Hardly,” Leo snorts. “That honor belongs to Daena, as you well know.”
“Oh yes, the defiant, as they call her now. Can you believe? Our own precocious little gremlin—life has dealt that one quite the hand, I fear.” Pausing, Laena’s mouth pitches down. “Elaena was the quietest, was she not? Such a shockingly silent child. She used to hide beneath my skirts.”
Perhaps they’d all been half in love with Laena, Leo surmises.
The mention of Elaena quiets them once more.
Nuncle Alyn has come to see Leo often enough over the years, sometimes on a sojourn alone, sometimes with some array of family members in tow. He has brought gifts and sweets, news of the delicate variety, was the first to meet Leo’s son when he was born. He has known her—known how to make her laugh—since she was a child. He was never untoward.
This news… even Laena is not brash enough to hide away that it disturbs her. From the moment Leo laid eyes on Laena, she knew the rumors were true as hangman’s noose.
Leo wonders for what purpose Laena was truly here: to search for the man, or to ensure that he would never come back.
The topic of their three cousins has disturbed the both of them for some years, always a subject in their correspondences. Laena had been banned from seeing said cousins for several moons, once, for the crime of being too outspoken. Leo, having birthed bastards, eschewed titles, and settled across the Narrow Sea, has not seen her cousins for many years now. She cannot quite imagine any of them pregnant.
In the silence, Leo’s little girl takes to tugging at a new fascination: Laena’s golden necklace.
Leo knows that necklace. Dāerves, it says.
“Dāerves,” a tiny voice reads out—young, yet gifted in tongues and letters. Leo swells with pride.
“Do you know what it means, child?” Laena asks gently. “It means freedom. There is nothing more important than freedom a woman’s life, you see. Without freedom… what comes after says it all.”
Freedom.
Leo looks out over the view of the city from her balcony and beyond her walls. She may have forsaken the warmth of her mother’s necklace for it but she bakes pleasantly in the sun and cannot regret it. Dāerves indeed.
Still, it surprises Leo when Laena goes to unhook the treasure from around her neck, placing it on Leo’s tiny daughter instead. It is ill-fitting, too large, too likely to be lost, yet the girl clutches at it immediately and her eyes fill up with tears when Leo protests such a generous gesture, tries to make her return it.
“She will grow into it,” Laena declares. She turns back to the child in her arms, solemn as the grave. Leo’s daughter stares back in rapt attention. “For you must, my love. You must.”
She does, although not for over a decade to come. The necklace with the Valyrian glyph is long lost by then, but the girl becomes a woman, and the woman lives free, her wings spread as wide as the world she lives in, as unending as Leo’s love for her surpassingly brilliant daughter. All of this— all of it, bought for the price of one single charm hanging from a chain wrought of Valyrian steel.
...that, and one mother’s exile.
Ties severed in sacrifice.
Gold grown from the wounds.
To freedom, are the last words written by a great poet and philosopher known only by her given name. Silver-haired she was, silver statues are built to her in temples and theatres for a hundred years to come. Performances of her work inspire playwrights of generations, some of them so famed that news of them travels to distant ports.
209 years after the Conquest of Westeros, a festival is held wherein the second Black Pearl of Braavos acts as the heroine in a soon-to-be-renowned production of The Plight of Anactoria. This festival lasts an entire fortnight, being in celebration of the end to the long-lived conflict between Braavos and Pentos; the end to the flesh trade of Pentos in general. Bellanora Otherys is a beauty supreme whose reputation as a courtesan at the height of her art soon reaches even the shores of Westeros. This is where one unwed darling of Court by the name of Lady Shiera first hears of the tragic performer she is to become a lifelong admirer of... although not for several years and a tourney intrigue to comes.
Bellanora causes the entire gallery to weep upon her final monologue—the illusion of wind whipping through her locks left down in terrible grief, in fury, in ode to what she knows she must do. In the audience, hearts beat faster than sunlight fades in winter. More than one watcher faints while the final spell is cast.
To freedom! she declares in almighty rage. The strength of her spirit cannot be questioned, only admired. Anactoria becomes Bellanora, as Bellanora becomes Anactoria.
Those words herald that the prophecy laid in the first act has come to completion. Bereft she may be of her once-divine purpose... yet Anactoria has made her choice. Named her unmeetable price.
Legends and new worlds are born in thunder.
Bellanora receives courting offers and praise from each corner of the city in the weeks following. Princes and magisters pay her audience, showering her in gifts and declarations of love, of faithful devotions. Poets write odes to her—duels are fought—bards their songs—painters beg for leave to render her in portrait.
It becomes tradition thereafter for the various Black Pearls throughout the years to lend themselves to such a performance of The Plight, to speak out through the ages in the same primal, arresting voice as Bellanora once did. From mother to daughter passes this final cry that shakes the foundation of the heavens. Each Black Pearl, in turn, takes up the mantle.
Each performance riles the city—from the Purple Harbor to the Ragman’s Harbor, from the Sealord’s Palace to the Gardens of Galenei, everyone from the highest of merchant-lords to the lowest of gutter rats are touched in some way by the performance. Whether it is through the influx of wealthy visitors into the city, or the piercing howl of the Black Pearl herself, the city comes alive that night.
Lines from the play are repeated and praised until the sun rises, scraping the tip of the Titan’s sword.
To freedom! the wastrel son of a temple’s High Priestess mocks in a winesink he has gambled in all eve, when he tosses an empty purse onto a table after paying out his debts.
Five moons later, he is found dead in the House of Black and White’s cavernous hall—cup still in hand, smile still on his face. The Plight of Anactoria is read in part at his funeral. Waxen, his mother recites in verse the lines:
For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.
“Beauty dead!” an urchin covered in the grime of the streets goes roaring through the crowd, his companion at close heel. “Black chaos comes!”
(He is beauty, and a terror, this boy called Illyrio alongside his companion, thrice the bastard descendant of a certain wastrel son who once careened drunk through these very streets, who is a black chaos. They spin with wooden swords, coppers of Braavos in their sewn pockets and armed with quotes from the upcoming production of The Plight. It is to be shown in a week’s time, and they are two of many children pried to spread word of it throughout the city. Pockets full; horizons bright.)
To freedom! are the most famous words to come from the famed playwright’s greatest achievement, but there are other verses of course. It is an epic that traverses a decade of Anactoria’s life while she speaks languages of loss and triumph, descent and revelation. Her monologues are several. They speak of death, and dreams, and births. Prophecy, too.
When Anactoria is shivering beneath the weight of her brother’s recent demise and the horrifying visions she is desperate to dismiss as nightmares, she tells herself that one dream coming true is no surprise. The sleeping world is woven of a thousand thousand dreams! Surely one dream in every hundred, or ten hundred, comes true by sheer chance of fate—never mind that they are not ordinary dreams, or her brother’s dying words.
Never mind that it is not simply one dream that comes true.
ACT I, Scene III, Line IX: “Men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss,” Anactoria—played by the sixth Black Pearl—consoles herself after meeting a soothsayer who urges Anactoria to take heed of her visions. Anactoria is not the first to be plagued by the knowledge of the Gods; men have been writing of such happenings since the Dawn. Men are big-bellied liars, is Anactoria’s consolation. “They do generally... but also with dreams!”
(Even if these dreams could cost me my life? Anactoria had asked the soothsayer, enraged.
A man follows his funeral procession several times before he dies, the sage had said, words as discomforting as their empty eye socket.)
And in the audience, a girl watches on nearly without blinking.
Silver-haired and starving only the night before, this girl is now sated and splendid in the silks her sponsor has deemed to garb her in. They are seated in an expensive box as her brother Viserys attempts to woo this dignitary with all his ten-and-three year old charm. Daenerys does not believe it will work, for it never works... indeed, she believes they will be on a ship again sooner than later. They always end up on a ship, somehow, but for now they are in Braavos, and she watches Anactoria's tale as Viserys haggles unsuccessfully beside her.
“She was so beautiful,” Daenerys Targaryen raves to her brother as they sail from Braavos as poor or poorer than they came. “The Black Pearl.” Viserys is sour as he is more often than not these days. He does not smile, although there was a time when he enjoyed mummer's shows, Daenerys remembers that much.
He sneers over the grey waters. “Perhaps one day you will grow beautiful, and be of some use to me.”
They speak no more after that.
To freedom, Daenerys mouths at the prow of the ship—playing by herself, playing as Anactoria, as the Black Pearl, as the sort of woman-not-girl who Viserys could love again. She imagines sailing to Westeros in cover of night and when the day dawns, cheers ringing out for their rightful King returned. That is the day Viserys will smile once more, Daenerys decides. She tries to believe that. Tells herself to dream of it when she tucks herself into a cold bunk below that night.
When she is thirteen, she is wed to Khal Drogo.
She is, to the relief and anger of her brother, made to be useful to him.
By her fourteenth nameday, Daenerys has long given up on dreams of Viserys smiling, dreaming instead of the child that grows within her who the crones of the dosh khaleen name The Stallion Who Will Mount The World with a reverence equal to the mockery the rest of the khalasar heaps upon Viserys. Then, she loses Viserys so she clings to Rhaego even tighter, she dreams of him and dreams of him, of the boy’s brothers that stretch out clawed hands towards him.
There is something like happiness for her, in that life.
There is happiness when she trawls through the market with her handmaids and those young men of the khalasar who keep her safe, her Old Bear as well. There are spice sausages and magic shows, parrots squawking. Daenerys’ belt grows light as she trades silver medallions for this and that gift—it is the Dothraki way, after all, and she is… she is of them, now.
Thus, she must give gifts.
To Doreah she gifts a necklace that hangs from a magician’s shelf, for the girl eyes it with longing and hope. It is gold patched together with golden thread, mismatched wooden beads hanging from where it ties in the back. The man names it a fertility charm and Daenerys for a moment does not understand why Doreah, who bruises under Qotho’s cruel hands, would wish for such a thing… but she thinks of how the Lyseni girl brushes her hand over Dany’s belly, at times, and thinks she might understand after all.
They’d stayed awake long into the night once, her and Doreah, a head of gold and a head of silver bowed together. When Daenerys offers her the necklace, Doreah snatches it as though Daenerys may change her mind. It happens too quickly for Daenerys to read the glyph upon the gold band but it is no bother, it is Doreah’s comfort and not hers after all.
“You honor me, khaleesi,” the older girl gushes.
…and for years to come, Daenerys will think of Doreah’s happiness that day. She will think of her—remember her—as she was: draped in her necklace, and smiling.
For Daenerys loses Rhaego.
For Daenerys loses Doreah.
(Eroeh, Quaro, her sun-and-stars, even Viserys who never smiled until that final terrible smile, until it was too late for he had gone too far—)
For Daenerys loses so much…
…that she thinks: there must be more that is intended for me, to have lost so much.
Her dragons grow bigger than Doreah will ever see them become and Daenerys thinks: Doreah might have doted on them. Doreah would have let these hatchlings bite at the charm that hangs around Daenerys’ neck although Dany does not allow it, for this is the only memory she has of Doreah and she would not have it harmed. She removed it from her friend’s body herself, after all, upon her death in the heat of the Red Waste. All the while Irri and Jhiqui stubbornly insisted that this would be ill-luck and Daenerys would catch the same death as Doreah should she touch it. Yet it is the last Daenerys has of Doreah and she would keep it with her. When she tenderly removes it, only then is Daenerys able to read the glyph upon it.
Dāerves, it reads.
Freedom in the old Valyrian tongue. Had Doreah known that? She must have.
From then on, Daenerys keeps it round her neck or in a chest kept close. She catches no death from it; rather, it lends her strength.
It is not alone, either.
The dosh khaleen shared their clothes and jewels the same way they shared their fate. When Daenerys had met them, she’d had paraded before her all the treasures of the women she was meant to join the day after Drogo was dead and buried, for a gift was intended to be made… Daenerys had wanted no part, alas. She was heavy with child and exhausted, and these women frightened her.
“This,” an elderly crone with a hunched back held up an ornate piece of emeralds and onyx that she had once worn, when her own Khal had still ridden beside her.
“It is known young girls do not wear such styles any longer,” another midde-aged widow had dismissed in a distinctly thin accent. She is foreign-born, as am I. Somehow, the knowledge that this widow’s mother tongue has eroded throughout the years, that she would likely never again see the place she was born, had made Daenerys want to weep. “She will enjoy this. It is known.” In the air was dangled a string of beads fashioned from elephant tusks.
So it went on until Daenerys was finally given a moment to herself, with the excuse that pregnant as she was, she needed to lie down. It was then that she came across it.
It was a treasure, no doubt. At first Daenerys thought it to be a silver dragon… it was not, however. It made in the image of a seahorse yet shaped with wings. A strange, fascinating creature. Did beasts such as this exist in the world? When she held the charm in her hand, however, she forgot her questions—for it was warm and it sung. Only then did she realize that it must be this Valyrian Steel she had only heard of before. Swinging it before her dragon eggs that evening, there was almost an echo, and Dany delighted at this small secret of hers.
None of the dosh khaleen had noticed her take it.
None had complained of any jewelry missing.
It was as though the necklace had belonged to no one at all, rather it had sat waiting for Daenerys herself to find it and cherish it, to lie with it while thinking of soaring through the sky and sailing the Narrow Sea once more. Sailing, ah, that was well-known to Daenerys Targaryen. Flying as her ancestors once had was beyond her—still, she had her waking dreams. Those felt as real as any saltwater spray, in any case, as true as grass bending beneath bare feet.
So now there are two.
Two treasures that hang to her chest and dip to where her heart beats. Simple, in comparison to some of the intricately jeweled gifts she is given. A crown in Qarth, a pair of pearled slippers from the Butcher King Cleon, a chest full of fine tokars never born worn, a bride’s price.
A bride’s price was nothing new to her. What difference, from the golden collar Drogo’s servants (or perhaps it was Illyrio’s servants) had placed around her neck? The finest of silks that had stuck to her body such that her youth was all too obvious? What difference between that lonely feast and these floppy ears? What difference between those who starved outside the walls tonight, and those who starved outside the walls every day of her life prior?
Yet, when she curls in her bed with Missandei reading aloud from a tome—the tome this tiny child attempts to read with a neutral voice however she cannot quite hide her excitement at a particularly riveting story—Daenerys thinks, there is a difference. There is a reason. A million million reasons, and at least one.
Her own hand curls against the two necklaces that she wears beneath her sleeping silks. The silks stick to her body like a blanket of butterflies, gentle as Daario hardly was. Another Valyrian glyph lies about her neck yet this one is different too.
Freedom, it reads.
A fertility charm, she huffs in amusement at the memory. Truly, what wool had the man been spinning? Men and dreams. One could never trust either entirely. But when her mind wanders to the topic of men and dreams...
To freedom! Daenerys remembers for the first time in years, a line from a play she once saw when she was a girl with as few years as Missandei herself. She remembers being awed by the courtesan who wept the line aloud; wide-eyed to know such beauty existed in the world. Beauty should always exist in the world, Daenerys believes. She touches the other chain from which dangles the silver charm. It radiates heat always, calming and caring.
It is a lover or a mother made miniature; a kiss from either, from both.
“Shall I make you a gift?” Daenerys half-teases Missandei, the two of them yawning.
“My Queen is too kind. Time with her is gift enough for this one.” Daenerys feels the same in truth, but there are nonetheless moments she wishes she had more to give Missandei. Not just now, however. Now, there is a solace in sleeping with a loved one in her bed that comforts her even as she drifts away, coiling around the small girl by instinct. Daenerys sucks in her belly to make more space for her scribe but she soon gives that up and allows their soft stomachs to touch instead.
Dragons are devoted creatures who breathe fire to guard that which is their own, and Daenerys is the Mother of Dragons. In her embrace sleeps a surpassingly clever girl whose safety is beyond any price. There will be a Missandei of Naath in the decades to come, Daenerys decides, and myself, too, one day, the both of us free and happy. She shivers in the warm room, her body a pleasant weight and a comfort to her own heart. A home for it.
From around her neck, Daenerys slips the chain of Valyrian Steel from where it lay. Fixing it around the neck of the snoring girl instead, she chuckles at the small smile that comes reflexively to Missandei’s sleeping face.
It is the warmth, surely.
Mother to us all, Missandei had once named her.
Daenerys kisses her eyelids before settling to sleep herself. Remember who loves you, she whispers—wondering just where she has heard that before—
