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Half-submerged in the pool fed by the heated springs that bubble up from the Dragonmont, Laena heaves herself up so that her upper body and the ends of her long legs are draped across the rocks. “Look, I’m a merling,” she giggles.
Her goodsister’s playful humor is infectious. Rhaenyra, luxuriating in the deeper water, cannot help but smile. “A most alluring specimen. Will you entice the passing sailors to their doom?” she teases.
Laena gives a snort of laughter. “My father would have you believe I already do.”
Not hard to imagine. Certainly she’s driving Rhaenyra to distraction, unable to keep her eyes from the way the fading sunlight paints golden highlights on her cousin's skin and the glistening water droplets that cling to the contours of her pert breasts.
This pleasant evening they're sharing, soaking off the stiffness of a long flight on Dragonstone’s secluded slopes, is a rare joy in a life that’s seen precious few of them of late.
Rhaenyra’s marriage was broken before it began, all her hard-fought bargains and careful calculations of what she could and could not accept come to naught in one evening of celebration turned to horror. The supports she’d thought she had have fallen from beneath her, she’s becoming painfully aware that her new husband will not be able to hold up his end of their deal, and she feels the vultures circling in a court newly awash in green.
But her new goodsister is the one bright spot in all of it. In the aftermath of her disastrous wedding night – Laenor withdrawn in grief, her father ailing, and Rhaenyra herself reeling with fresh betrayal and abandonment – it was Laena who all but dragged her from her rooms to face the world again, insistent on drawing her out until Rhaenyra could no longer resist.
“I’ve always wanted a sister,” Laena announced one of those first days, taking Rhaenyra by the arm and baiting her into a dragon race, and the princess could not help confiding that she's long harbored the same wish.
Her cousin is irrepressible, and ofttimes over-bold, but so good-hearted and artless with it that it’s impossible to hold it against her. She's a streak of mischief, and a wildness to her nature that reminds Rhaenyra with a pang of her younger self. (When was it, that she lost that will to take on the world head-on? That her life became so concerned with duty and perception that she'd let herself become small?) As much as the reminder aches, in Laena’s company she’s able to reclaim some fragment of the carefree pleasures of her youth.
It strengthens her soul, to have such a kindred spirit at her side. And yet the more hours they spend strolling arm in arm through the gardens, sharing court gossip and impossible dreams of travel and adventure, or racing to Driftmark or Dragonstone and back, the more the princess’s appreciation of their friendship builds into a greater longing. Rhaenyra always has had a talent, it seems, for wanting what she cannot have.
“You're staring, sister. See something you like?” Laena’s voice startles her from her reflections. The younger girl stretches lazily, nearly preening, which does nothing to help Rhaenyra tear her gaze away.
“You are a terrible flirt,” Rhaenyra deflects.
Laena shrugs, unrepentant. “Yes, well, you deserve a little flirtation – or more. It’s a crime, really, for such beauty to be wasted on my brother. Someone ought to appreciate you.”
“And you think yourself best suited to the task?”
Laena slips from her rocky perch back into the full depth of the steaming pool. Pushes off against the edge and lets the water carry her to Rhaenyra’s side. When she drapes her arms about her neck and the full length of her lean, lithe body presses against her, Rhaenyra’s mouth goes dry with desire.
“We’re sisters, are we not?” Laena purrs. Her lips are so close, full and ripe as berries. “What are sisters for, if not the sharing of pleasures?”
Indeed they are; so it has ever been amongst the blood of the dragon. And it is the prerogative of dragons to take what they want. Rhaenyra buries her hands in Laena’s thick silver curls and sinks into the sweetness of her lips, and their bodies twine together in the heat of the water.