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The day after Rhaenyra lights her mother’s pyre, she’s scarcely broken her fast before the maids’ gossip of an early morning confrontation between the King and the Rogue Prince sours her stomach.
It doesn’t take much to coax the details from Ser Harrold, her faithful protector ever a soft touch for her. The story that emerges is deeply unsettling for what it imports: her uncle called before the Iron Throne to answer for charges of mocking their family’s losses (charges that he did not deny, Ser Harrold informed her gravely), a bitter quarrel following, and her father roused to a dragon’s rage as it seems only his brother can provoke. By the end, the King had ordered Daemon exiled from King’s Landing and declared his intention to name a new heir.
Rhaenyra’s blood runs cold, seeing the writing on the wall.
Her father has long been fond of sending his brother from court over offenses real or imagined, but it’s never signified much. A little time and distance for tempers to cool and he’s welcomed with open arms once more. But something about this feels different, feels final in a way it never has before.
More chilling still is the matter of succession. To name Rhaenyra heir in her uncle’s stead would make little difference in the eyes of the realm. Unless….
Fuck.
Unless her father means to break their betrothal.
Her mother, Rhaenyra is sure, would have talked him down.
(Her mother was the one to persuade him to it in the first place.
The year Rhaenyra saw nine namedays, a plague swept through the northeastern kingdoms of Westeros, a winter fever that killed three out of every four afflicted. The North and the Vale were hardest hit, the Crownlands and Riverlands scarcely less so. It was said that dragon’s blood was proof against illness, and perhaps it served to spare her family from mortal danger, but it did not suffice to avoid misery. She remembers days spent shivering and half-delirious, and an infuriating weakness that persisted after the fever broke.
In the midst of it, not long after the illness reached King’s Landing, Daemon had returned to the Red Keep a widow. Already recovered from his own bout, her uncle had scarcely moved from Rhaenyra’s bedside in the days that followed, except when he was at her mother’s.
Rhaenyra recovered in due time, no worse for the ordeal. Queen Aemma did as well, but the babe in her belly was not so fortunate, another potential heir lost like so many that came before.
When the danger was past, and there’d been time enough to mourn, the Queen had spoken of her goodbrother’s dedication to their family, and the need to ensure her daughter’s future in light of the fact that she would bear no brother old enough to be a reasonable match for her, until at length her husband agreed to a betrothal between them.)
But now her mother is gone and Otto Hightower drips poison in her father’s ear and it seems everything is slipping from her grasp.
She bangs her head against the wall in frustration and anxiety. Seven Hells, Uncle, what have you done? She cannot believe him guilty of such calumnies as her father holds against him. But Daemon is prone to lashing out in pride and anger, to letting his tongue get away from him, and possesses an impressive capacity for self-sabotage; she doubts he is wholly innocent either.
She knows him, after all.
Knows him better than anyone else in the world, she likes to think – and perhaps that’s a naive supposition, but she doubts it. While he is certainly popular, the Rogue Prince’s daring and charisma winning him as many admirers as he has detractors, he has few intimates. And who but the blood of the dragon can truly relate to their own? Yet of their family, her father loves his brother in his way but has never understood him, their dissimilar temperaments frequently clashing, and though her mother was more tolerant of his foibles she understood him little better. But he and Rhaenyra have ever been kindred spirits.
For all his faults, he’s everything she’s ever wanted. The day he was promised to her was among the happiest of her life, and she’s not about to let him ruin it for them.
Hastily she throws together the scraps of a plan, knowing she’ll have to act fast. Daemon is sure to be gone from the keep soon, and her chances of salvaging anything of the situation with him. She takes to the hidden passageways, to the path between their rooms he’d shown her years before. She means to have the truth from him before they figure out a next move, and neither can be done with an audience.
His rooms are empty when first she arrives, and she thinks for a minute she’s come too late, but it turns out she’s beaten him there.
Daemon does not see her at once when he storms into the chamber, immediately going to a trunk by the wall and throwing it open.
“Did you say it?” Rhaenyra demands by way of announcing herself.
He whirls in an instant, Dark Sister halfway out of her sheath before he recognizes the intruder is only her and stays his hand.
He takes a step backwards and exhales heavily. “That was foolish, Princess.”
True enough. She knew perfectly well it was unwise to startle him, and yet the satisfaction of seeing him wrong-footed was sufficient that she’d likely do it again. “Yes, well, this room has more than its share of fools.”
Daemon leans back against the wall, eyeing her irritably. “And what precisely do you mean by that?”
“The ‘Heir for a Day’. Did you say it? Did you truly toast to my brother’s death?” She sees him falter, clearly stung to hear such accusations from her, and her heart wrenches to have wounded him by her suspicion. But she’s had more of loss and betrayal than she can stomach of late; she needs to know. So she continues to press, “The truth, Uncle. I’ll have none of your painting yourself the villain because you believe it expected. Did you?”
He regards her warily for a long minute, as if weighing how much he dares reveal or how much honesty his pride will permit him. Rhaenyra waits him out.
“Not the way your father and Lord Cunttower would have it,” he says at last. “Not in mockery, not in triumph.”
“How, then?” she returns, for though she’s willing to hear him out, that’s still as good as an admission that he did say it.
“Disgust that Aemma should be butchered for such a futile end. I mourn your mother too, you know.”
“I never doubted that!” Rhaenyra protests.
“I am not proud of my words,” he admits. “But we all must grieve in our own way.”
“And yours requires rank carelessness?” she demands, irritated by his defense of his actions. “You tell me to stand strong, that we must stand united, only to turn around and hand ammunition to those who would prey upon our division.”
“I do regret it, Princess.” He lays a hand on her arm as if to placate her. She shakes it off.
“Much good regret will do against the blows already struck. Your thoughtlessness is like to cost us everything.”
“If you’ve a point, speak to it.” His short tone says she is reaching the end of his patience with her recriminations. From anyone else, she knows, he never would have tolerated it at all.
“The heirship,” she says tersely.
“Ah, you’ve heard about that too. Should you not be celebrating?”
“I don’t want it,” she snaps back. Not without him. Not if it is to be a means to fracture their family further.
“You do not wish to be Queen?” he inquires. “You could do well. My illustrious brother believes me too impatient for governance, and that much he may have the right of.”
“I’d rather be your Queen.” She huffs, irritated by the way he’s making light of the matter. “Do you not see? Father clearly means to dissolve our betrothal.”
“Of course he does,” Daemon sneers.
“That’s all you have to say?” Does he even care? “I cannot lose you too.”
She’s shamed by the tears that sting at her eyes, but Daemon enfolds her in his arms without a word about her weakness.
“I have no intention of being lost, zaldrītsos,” he assures her. “But even I cannot deny a royal command.”
“Then do what cannot be undone, before it can be gainsaid!” she bursts out.
His gaze sharpens upon her, intrigued and inquisitive. “What do you propose?”
“Take me,” she challenges. “Take my maidenhead, so that I might be ruined for all others. And then take me to Dragonstone and make me your wife.”
Rhaenyra has little fear of the marriage bed. She had at one time, after her Septa’s lectures presented a grim prospect of duty and discomfort to be endured. But her uncle had put her fears to rest, dismissing the whole lecture as nonsense with a derisive remark about how ridiculous it to entrust such education to Septas with no experience in the subject. Fucking is a pleasure, he’d promised her, in tones that set heat spreading through her whole body.
Alas, she’s had to take his word for it. He’s steadfastly refused to do anything more than kiss her. (If he let himself go further, he says, he fears he wouldn’t be able to stop. Flattering though that claim is, it’s small consolation to her.)
If she had her way, they’d have been wed shortly after she flowered, and would not find themselves in such a precarious position now. But he insists she is too young, that she must wait until she reaches her majority, this for some reason the one subject on which he has been in full accord with her parents. As if half the women of their house have not been married younger!
If he dares to tell her again that she is too young, she thinks she will scream.
He regards her with a long searching look, his eyes ablaze. His hand clenches on her jaw. “Do you know what you’re asking, little princess?”
“I do,” she insists, not flinching from the intensity of his gaze. “I’m not afraid to bleed for you, Uncle. Take what is yours.”
His mouth crashes against hers, hot and hungry. And then he’s lifting her up, pressing her up against the wall for a minute and grinding himself against her while he wraps her legs about his waist, before he turns and carries her to his bed.