Chapter Text
Two brothers: one of them wants to take you apart. Two brothers: one
of them wants to put you back together. It's time to choose sides now.
The stitches or the devouring mouth? You want an alibi? You don't get
an alibi, you get two brothers. Here are two Jeffs. Pick one. This is how
you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space
between them. Jeff or Jeff? Who do you want to be? You just wanted
to play in your own backyard, but you don't know where your own yard
is, exactly. You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one
safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet.
You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You're
still right here.
-Richard Siken, You Are Jeff
Gwayne Hightower doesn’t come back from his scouting.
No—Daeron Targaryen stands at Ormund Hightower’s side, and the raven arrives, and Daeron can see the moment that Ormund reads the words that something has gone very, very wrong with his uncle out on his scouting mission.
Daeron knows what Gwayne Hightower’s handwriting looks like. He knows what his uncle’s penmanship looks like, even when harried and slapdash.
And that’s not Gwayne’s handwriting.
That is a maester’s. And more than anything—
The wax seal is black, not green.
And Daeron, standing rod-still in the corner of the room, can tell the exact moment that Ormund makes it to the end of the letter, because his shoulders tense, pulling back, pulling straight.
The anger rises as a lightning strike, but Daeron can see the clouds gathering in the moment before the lightning strikes.
Daeron jerks his head at the servant. “Get. Out,” he grits out, under his breath, the sort of warning that the servants are used to hearing from him.
Daeron is the person that people rely upon to be the only wall between them and Ormund. The sort of person that protects other people.
Ormund has only hit him the once, when he was a child, and even then—it wasn’t a hit, in truth. It was a burn, because Targaryens have dragonfire in their blood, they are heat-resistant, yes, but they are not fireproof.
Targaryens burn. Everyone knows that when Aegon II fell from the sky, he fell as a shooting star, a tail of flame clinging to his skin.
And when Tessarion grew too large too quickly when he was a child, when she was being transferred from cage to chained in the sept, she burned someone, and it was the first and only time that Ormund withdrew a whipping boy, so that Daeron could learn the lesson himself.
Daeron learned it, alright. He learned that Ormund Hightower was the burn of the fire, as dangerous as any Targaryen, and that for all of his faults, Uncle Gwayne was the source of the balm, as he was the one to make sure that Daeron had milk of the poppy and honey for his burns after the fact.
And he also learned that if he was to make any mistakes, someone else would bear the pain that he still remembers to this day, the sort of pain that burns through the skin, the sort of pain that lingers and presses deep, deep down into the muscle where it festers.
So Daeron doesn’t make mistakes. He doesn’t let his whipping boy suffer his punishments. He gets the servants out before Ormund explodes.
It’s the sort of thing that Daeron once had Gwayne for, to blunt the blade before it hit, but the war hit, and Gwayne ran off to war, and Daeron had to remain to take care of himself and those around him as much as he could.
That’s why Daeron has done everything he can to protect the men. Why it is a craven act to leave.
Because if he leaves—if he condemns them to Ormund’s wrath, to Rhaenyra’s dragonfire—can he live with that on his conscience, an entire army falling to dust for his name?
Ormund’s mouth twists, the only warning, and then—
A blast of fury. Ormund’s sword, slid from its scabbard, hacking into the table.
To say that Ormund carves would give him too much credit.
He is a blastwave of fury, a wave of dragonfire, a natural disaster seeking to chop and damage and destroy.
Daeron holds his breath. He holds his breath, because he doesn’t know when he’ll breathe again. He holds his breath, because what is he if he lets Ormund win?
Then Ormund takes a deep breath and coils back into himself, posture going perfect again, and he smiles, this serene thing—the sort of thing that is more dangerous than his anger, Daeron has learned, because at least the anger is quick and can be redirected—the calm covers up whatever Ormund is planning.
“That bitch that calls herself a queen has captured your useless cunt of an uncle,” Ormund seethes, this quiet simmer that shall burn Daeron’s skin just as the fire did all of those years ago, when Ormund held Daeron’s hand over the fire in the fireplace when Gwayne was helping out Daeron’s grandsire when he was living in Oldtown and Ormund told Daeron that he wasn’t allowed to scream, to sob, because that was weak, even as Daeron’s skin sizzled, all because Daeron needed to learn not to let his dragon let out her fire when not commanded.
The burn scar lingered across Daeron's fingers for years. The pain was easy to summon, to remember, with just a press of his nails into his skin.
But while the scar is gone now, finally faded only last year, Daeron remembers that lightning strike of pain across his skin in this moment.
Because Daeron’s heart stops, and holds its breath as Ormund continues to rage: “She purposes that we surrender in exchange for his life, but I am no fool. Your uncle’s life isn’t worth it, especially if he is as injured as she says that he is.” Daeron’s heart surges to life, a sluggish beat. Injured? How badly? Is he forever crippled? Is he dying? What could possibly have injured Gwayne enough to allow him to be captured by Rhaenyra’s men?
But his heart threatens to collapse within his chest as Ormund continues: “Let him burn.” Ormund steps forward, cups Daeron’s cheek, cradles him close, and there is bile rising in Daeron’s throat, because it is one thing when brothers that he has never met are burning, when people he has never met are dying, but it is another when it is Gwayne that he is having to imagine burning up under the force of dragonfire. “You are all that matters.”
Daeron wants to scream, but he can’t scream.
He can’t sob.
He can’t do anything but nod. “Of course, sire,” he says, biting back his aches, biting back his protests, biting back the part of himself that is now stuck in King’s Landing.
But in the back of his mind, he thinks—
I am an acolyte of the Seven. I kneel in the Sept.
But Ormund has a point. He knows as well as I do that there is a fire in my veins, a filth that shall pollute the river until it burns.
I am a dragon beneath it all.
And I know how to burn.
If someone is going to have to burn, it will be me before I will ever let it be Gwayne.
---
Gwayne Hightower groans as he wakes up to an unfamiliar room, not in Tumbleton, not in Oldtown, not in a tent on the march through a boggy section of the Riverlands, slowly being bled to death by the leeches that insist on feasting on his blood.
Except—not so unfamiliar, as he finds it.
He recognizes these wall hangings. He recognizes the shape of these windows, and the curtains that drape across their surfaces, and the dark wood of the bedframe, and everything that is not a place he has ever lived in.
Except, not quite.
Because it’s hard to process why he is in King’s Landing, in the Red Keep that he stayed in when stopping by to check in with Alicent on the way to war, that he stayed in only once or twice before when his father was Hand, when his leg is on fire, when he looks down to see his trousers cut and the knee swollen red and larger than an apple and he wants to hurl.
A scream tries to rip itself from Gwayne’s throat, but there is someone at his side. The clink of a maester’s chain, the spooning of some sort of goop onto his leg, and—
And some sort of blessed relief.
“What in the seven hells is that?” Gwayne rasps.
“A concoction I developed for use in helping the King,” a voice answers him.
And Gwayne looks up to see Grand Maester Orwyle—he thinks.
The pain is making his mind a haze. It is hard to comprehend much.
All that he can figure is that he is in King’s Landing, injured, not scouting, and that means that Daeron is alone with Ormund again, with an army advancing on Tumbleton, a Tumbleton that shall have no Aemond and Vhagar, no Criston Cole, as the Kingsguard was shot without honor in the Riverlands, butchered, as the stories go—
The door slams open, and Gwayne’s mind focuses for just a moment as the Grand Maester immediately steps back, bowing his head, and some part of Gwayne's brain wants to call out please don't go—
But he is a knight, not a craven (no matter the fact that he abandoned Criston Cole on his march—that was to Criston's certain doom, and Gwayne did not wish to wreck himself against the warfront when he, unlike Criston, had at least one person left to live for.
And so he doesn't shout, even when he sees the iron crown above a silver-pale head.
Here she is, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, come at last, a streak of fire and blood and sunlight against the corridors, her Kingsguard right behind her.
“You are a hostage, Ser Gwayne Hightower,” she informs him, with all of the righteousness afforded the woman who cleaved his father’s head in two. “You are to be traded to your cousin.”
“You must be japing me.” Gwayne laughs. It is a rattle of a thing, because his leg is on fire, the blade is slicing him open, Maester Orwyle’s efforts going to be for naught. He knows he is not long for this world; he is a felled horse with a broken leg, useless for what he is supposed to be.
Gwayne is not a lord. He is not a maester. His mind means nothing if he cannot ride, if he cannot fight, if he cannot be the Warrior. “My cousin would never agree to that, just go ask my sister—"
Rhaenyra shakes her head, a quick jerk of a thing. “Your sister is gone,” she snaps, and Gwayne’s heart stops. “Gone to Harrenhal to take care of an…issue.”
What could possibly be in Harrenhal? There are rumors of Aemond, but they didn’t see him while they were there, there was just a witch, there was just a bastard, there was just a flood and a fire and the burning of her own sons' ancestors, because everyone that sets foot in Harrenhal dooms themselves, and Rhaenyra sent his sister into that gaping maw—
“But you should hope that your cousin is willing to trade what I wish. That he is willing to hand over the traitor Daeron Targaryen." Rhaenyra's voice is righteous as she says, "Because if he does not, then you are not long for this world.”
I’m going to die, Gwayne thinks with absolute certainty. Ormund won't trade anything for him, and especially not Daeron. Not his treasure.
"But as for now—" Rhaenyra nods at the Grand Maester. "Orwyle shall attend your wounds. I am the rightful queen, the Prince Who Was Promised, because I do not seek to inflict the sort of horrors that the Usurper does. I do not wish your pain."
The Prince Who Was Promised?
Gwayne can hear the emphasis in the term, and he knows religious zeal when he sees it in men's eyes, he spent enough years with Ormund Hightower, he who considered himself the Beacon of Oldtown, the Light of the Seven, he who would cleanse Alicent's children of their Targaryen taint—
Rhaenyra might have some kindness to her, might have some measure of her father's desire for peace, but they are at war, now, and she is definitely willing to do whatever she needs to in order to keep the throne she believes to be her own with the sort of faith that Ormund burned across the Reach, all the way to Tumbleton.
No matter what the Grand Maester does, no matter how much Gwayne aches to see Daeron, Gwayne will not live long enough to properly heal whatever is wrong with his leg. That is the one thing that he knows for sure.
---
Gwayne Hightower is the one person in the world that Daeron Targaryen has ever been able to truly trust.
He has obeyed his cousin, yes. He dreamed of meeting his mother, yes, and being pulled into her arms. But not trust.
Trust is a far harder thing to grasp. Some days, Daeron thinks the only person that he should trust is himself.
After all, Daeron knows that he shouldn’t trust Gwayne. Gwayne left, off to war, leaving him alone in Ormund's grasp, and when he returned, Gwayne told him that he would leave again. He told Daeron that he would go back to Oldtown, and Daeron felt his only chance at freedom slip away between his fingers.
There is every chance that Gwayne had ridden off from Tumbleton with the intention to head back to Oldtown and never return, just a few days hence.
But he did stay, these past few weeks, even after he'd said he was going to leave, and he took down the assassins who called themselves Baratheons, and he saved Daeron’s life, kept Daeron alive, kept Daeron here instead of letting him go to the Stranger, and more than anything, Daeron remembers a childhood that only carried softness because Gwayne was there to comfort Daeron after Ormund seared him alive, because Gwayne was there to tell him stories, because Gwayne was there to teach him how to play the lute instead of only games suited to military strategy such as cevasse.
And Daeron has to repay the favor.
He cannot send his uncle to the Stranger. He cannot let Gwayne Hightower die for his sake.
Daeron had thought that there was nothing that could sway him from the battlefield. That there was nothing that could stop him from dying for his men, from seeing this entire war through.
But it turns out that this is it.
The one person he can't see die is Gwayne.
And so, in the middle of the night, after Ormund goes to sleep, Daeron goes to the Sept to pray.
Or, at least—that is what he tells his guards. He wishes to pray to the Warrior, for protection, to Father, for justice, and all the rest—
But that is not where this story is going to end, is it?
When Daeron Targaryen was a child, he dreamed of getting to fly. Of getting to soar through the air on Tessarion’s back.
He knew that his dreams were temptations from the dragonfire that he was supposed to pray to cleanse from his veins, but there was something beneath his skin that sang each time that he was able to touch Tessarion. That he was able to run flesh against scale, dragonwarmth against his own skin.
Daeron has only flown Tessarion once, on the way from Oldtown to Tumbleton, the green armies marching towards war—a war that has cracked down the center with the disappearance of an older brother that he’s never met who was supposed to meet them here with a weapon that no one could ignore.
(Vhagar—that is a dragon that Ormund could stand, because Vhagar is a conqueror’s dragon, a dragon large enough to turn the tide of an entire war, a dragon that might have once been ridden by a woman, a queen, the last ruling queen of Westeros, harsh, enduring, resilient in the sort of way that even Ormund could not entirely turn his nose up at, even if he called her an upstart bitch, but is the largest dragon in the Seven Kingdoms by far and thus worth as much as an army, while Tessarion is just barely big enough to be ridden, and not worth anything save the fact that she is Daeron’s.)
Tessarion has been allowed out so infrequently that it makes Daeron ache. There is some part of him that is as chained as she is, bound to the Sept, bound to Ormund.
To see her outside—to see her unchained—
It didn’t matter that Daeron had to watch from the back of the lines as Ormund offered up a fake version of him, Tessarion sitting alone as the one thing keeping Daemon Targaryen’s dragons from burning the Hightower host alive, because he got to feel her free, her wings unbound, her scales unmarked, outside of the dark, the sunlight dappling golden against her gleaming sapphire scales.
Majestic, Daeron had thought proudly, even as Prince Daemon and Ormund had discussed a prince that was not the squire standing in the back of the ranks, only even allowed out here because Tessarion would have not have gone quietly otherwise.
A boy with Targaryen-silver hair was brought forward for Prince Daemon—Daeron’s uncle, who he had never met—to take away, and Daeron had had to chain Tessarion back up, and it made his insides shudder with shame and ache.
But he needs to fly her now.
He needs to get to Gwayne.
There is every reason why he shouldn’t be doing this. Why he shouldn’t be fleeing after Gwayne.
Gwayne abandoned Daeron in Ormund’s hands. He left Daeron to suffer and sicken beneath his cousin’s touches.
But at the end of the day, the only glimpse of light that Daeron has had in his fifteen years didn't come from the beacon atop the Hightower.
It came from his uncle's smiles as he told him fairy stories, as he told him of the history of the Hightower and the fused black stone and how the fire in his veins didn't just come from the Targaryen side of things—it came from the Hightower side, as well.
We light the way.
That is the way that things have always been.
That is the way that things shall be.
Tessarion bursts through the front door of the Sept and flies up, up, and away, aiming straight east towards King's Landing.
---
Daeron lands Tessarion right outside of the walls of King's Landing. He does not fly over them, even if he is heading to where Rhaenyra asked him to go—he cannot dare risk Tessarion being strafed from the sky by dragonfire.
And there, Daeron lands Tessarion, and waits, his heart in his throat.
Within minutes, there is a dragon flying over the ramparts of King’s Landing, dragon that Daeron knows all too well—that beast with the misshapen, long neck, the creature they call the Blood Wyrm, with the Rogue Prince on his back.
The Prince Daemon that they had met in the middle of the battlefield, at that farce of a parley, the exchange of a mummer’s dragon, was smug.
This one is none of the triumphant smugness—it is a warrior’s scowl, the sneer of bloodthirst beneath a dragon-shaped helm, Caraxes’ maw already opening with a glow.
But before Daemon can send Daeron up in flames, Daeron has already slid off of Tessarion’s back, white cloth in hand—a surrender, clear as day.
And Daemon seems pissed as Daeron calls out, as loudly as he can: “I’m here, Prince Daemon, to fulfill the terms of the deal that Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen sent to my cousin."
Daemon doesn’t seem to recognize his nephew at first glance, but one single glimpse at the dragon that Daemon must recognize from that mummer’s parley has realization passing over his face.
And in an instant, despite the flag of surrender, Daemon is drawing his sword, the infamous Dark Sister, the weapon that Visenya Targaryen herself once wielded, and has it pointed at Daeron. “You must be the little fucking shit who declared himself king. I should have your fucking head.” There is something vicious, a predator playing with his prey, as Daemon says, “Where is your lying little craven of a cousin?”
“He doesn’t—he doesn’t know I’m here, Your Grace,” Daeron says, and that barely mollifies Daemon Targaryen, who should be his uncle, but bears not a single drop of sympathy for Daeron, that is clear. He would rather burn Daeron than take him inside of the castle walls.
But Queen Rhaenyra has made an offer, and Daeron is intent on seeing it through.
So Daeron waves the parchment that he’d stolen from Ormund’s desk before he’d left—a breath-bated sort of activity. “I'm here to bend the knee. To save my uncle.”
Daemon's face twists in a snarl. He has a hatchet face, sharper than a sword, all of those Valyrian features that never presented themselves in Daeron’s face outside of the bright eyes.
Daeron doesn't look a Targaryen, and that’s why Daemon is looking down his nose at Daeron, he knows. His looks are how Ormund was able to hide him away in the lines when trading away a mummer's version of Daeron—between the red hair and the rounded cheeks and the green garments, the only things Targaryen about him are his eyes, perhaps his height, and definitely his dragon.
And Tessarion is bright, yes, but she is small, far smaller than a dragon over forty years her senior, a dragon that has already seen combat in the Stepstones, and the Riverlands, and Daeron can’t let Tessarion die in a suicide mission, no matter how much he is starting to realize that that might be exactly what this is.
“Fine,” Daemon spits, “We shall let you bend the knee to the queen. But your dragon must be chained in the dragonpit as you go.”
Something in Daeron’s heart skips a beat. He should have anticipated this. Perhaps he did anticipate this. That he had always known that Tessarion would end up chained up and imprisoned again, just as she was in the Sept, except this time at the hands of the Dragon Queen herself, because there is nowhere in the world that Daeron Targaryen can go without being chained.
But the price is Gwayne's life, and he has already come this far, hasn't he?
So Daeron gets back on Tessarion to follow Daemon to the Dragonpit, where he slides off of her back again, and—
And they chain her down, with more than just the couple of chains that were used in the Sept, because Ormund knew that he had Daeron under his control.
They chain each leg, and her neck, and her wings, and Tessarion roars, and something in Daeron aches to scream as well, aches to let the roar rip out from between his teeth, because Tessarion is being chained again after a promise of freedom, after he finally let her free, and he cannot betray her, he cannot let her be trapped again—
But Daeron understands a thing or two about the bargains that people who are imprisoned have to make in order to survive, and so he has to clench down on the chains that are forming around his ribs.
Daeron cannot sob and scream and cry.
He is familiar with being a prisoner. He is familiar with Tessarion being chained.
And he needs to get to Gwayne.
So he reaches up, gritting his teeth, and cups her snout in his hand and he promises: “I will be back for you, I swear it. But—please be good, my girl. Please be patient. I shall be back to you soon enough, I promise.”
It is a promise that Daeron does not know if he can keep, but he wants to. He wants to, more than anything, and he knows all too well that want is almost never enough to get the things you need, but he has to believe that even Rhaenyra Targaryen would not keep him from his dragon. She is like as not to want him to fight for her, to be a weapon to wield, not a trunk to cut down, at least once he bends the knee.
Tessarion whines, this sad sound that makes Daeron's chest ache, but he has to go on with this. He has to move forward.
And so Daeron turns to face Daemon, just to find that Daemon’s face is twisted in disgust. “You speak to your dragon in the Common Tongue?”
I didn’t have anyone to teach me the correct answers.
I was sent off to Oldtown with an egg that hatched the moment that I was ensconced in the Hightower.
I can’t speak High Valyrian, and so you consider me a rotten root, a stump of an off-shoot of the family, unworthy of a dragon, but she is mine, and you cannot take her from me—
But he can, can’t he?
Daemon Targaryen can take whatever he wants, because he is the Prince Consort, and the Blood Wyrm is so much bigger than Tessarion, and more than anything—
“She knows me," Daeron says, and it is as much a sorrow as it is a claim, because it is the very reason why she is chained now.
Tessarion croons. Whines. Begs, as Daeron turns to leave.
Do not go without me.
Do not go where I cannot follow.
Take me with you, because I cannot watch you end up alone again.
There is nothing that Daeron wants more than to stay by her side. Than to fly away. Than to leave this wretched place that has never, ever been his home.
He has spent his entire life with his feet planted on dry ground, and that was enough for so long, but it is not enough now, it will never be enough.
And so Daeron reaches out one last time, to make an apology that she shouldn't accept from him.
“I shall be back to your side soon enough, I promise,” Daeron murmurs, but that's the last that he gets to say.
Because behind him, Daemon commands, “Get away from your dragon and come with me to meet your Queen."
When Daeron turns around, he finds that Daemon looks at Daeron as if he wishes to call him you upstart whelp, and Daeron wouldn't be shocked if Daemon wants to execute him as the threat that Ormund tried to make him.
But without Tessarion by his side, well—Daeron is no threat at all. He's just a boy, just a prince, nothing more.
---
Daemon drags Daeron into the Throne Room, where Daeron falls to one knee in front of the throne. There are a few petitioners, there and there, but most duck their heads when they see Daemon dragging in someone with Hightower green garments and Hightower red hair into the room.
(An image that Daeron isn’t aware of, sixteen years in the past, a year before he was even born: a queen, auburn hair of the same fiery shade of his own piled high on her head, spilling blood-red across a green gown as she cuts through a wedding in this very Keep, a beacon to call her banners to war his entire life before this war seared its way across Westeros.
But where Alicent Hightower came to win, Daeron has only come to surrender.)
And here Daeron is.
For a prince, he has spent so little of his life in the palace of his ancestors. He has not been in the Red Keep since he was a babe.
He doesn’t know what his father looked like on the Iron Throne, nor does he know what his mother must have looked like when she was sitting the throne in his place, as Gwayne told him that she was. He doesn’t know what a King or a Queen of the Seven Kingdoms should look like.
Yes, he knows that there were people that declared him king. People who wished him to wear the Conqueror’s Crown.
Daeron never wanted to be a Conqueror. He just wanted to keep other people from dying for him, suffering for his sake.
But what he does know is that over the past century, a head of silver-blonde hair has sat atop the Iron Throne, beneath a crown as iron-strong as the swords melted down for them to sit upon.
And right now, the Iron Throne dominates the room, sharper than Tessarion’s teeth.
But it’s hard to look at it, to focus on it, as much the legacy of his ancestors pressed into his shoulders, burning through his blood, as the endurance of the Hightower, when it is the first time in his life he's ever met his sister.
Rhaenyra Targaryen is a pale thing, with dark circles painting themselves under her eyes in contrast to Valyrian pale skin and silvered hair. Her coloring is the inverse of his own, in so many ways; one would never assumed them to be related, except—
She is his half-sister and yet the only part of them that reflects is their bright eyes.
While Daeron has never felt himself a King, while every time he thought of the crown all he could think of was how heavy iron must be, she seems to wear the crown not too awkwardly. Rhaenyra is more than twice his age, of an age with his uncle and his mother. She certainly looks more a Queen than he could ever look a King, what with his squire’s clothes and his wind-whipped face and hair and his bow-legs, because this was only his second ever time on the back of a dragon and he is not used to it.
But Rhaenyra, for all of the fact that she looks a Targaryen conqueror, that she looks a Queen Triumphant, also looks—stained by the Iron Throne. Carved out of it, into it, by it.
She is colder than he would have thought, but there is something in the way she looks at him that feels contemplative.
Even—startled. As if she did not expect him to come. As if she did not expect him to bend the knee.
And the fact of the matter is that he wouldn't have. Not for his own pride, but for the sake of the men he just abandoned without a dragon to fight alongside them.
But—his uncle. His uncle, Gwayne, said to be gravely injured, who might be tortured, who Daeron came to save—
Who…isn’t in the room.
Something cold is trickling through Daeron’s veins.
A knot snarls in his stomach. Threatens to eat right through him.
Something isn’t right.
Something is going very, very wrong.
Where is Gwayne?
Where is his uncle?
Daeron nods his head. “Your Grace,” he says, because he has no reason not to respect her status. She is the Queen sitting the Iron Throne, chains around her neck, sword at her side, crown on her brow. He doesn’t care about being called king—he never has. “I am here to forsake any and all claim to the throne and to bend the knee to you.”
Daeron can picture how furious Ormund will be when he gets this raven—perhaps he will burn down Tumbleton himself, no dragons needed—but while that sends a chill down his spine, all that Daeron truly cares about is finding out what happened to Gwayne.
What is happening to Gwayne.
About, most of all, freeing his uncle.
“I have come because I was told that if I arrived, I could trade myself for my uncle. I am here, of my own will, and have even surrendered my—" For all that Daeron ran through what he was going to say on his way to King’s Landing, for all that he has experience facing down those with more power than him, he still stammers over the admission of: “My dragon, Tessarion.” My girl, he thinks mournfully, because he can feel the chains wrapped around her, the fear in her gut, and he does not even know when he’ll be able to see her next, much less unchain her. One prison for the next, Daeron knew, and yet—it still aches. “So—can you release my uncle now, so that I might see him before he goes?”
There is a certain warmth that threatens to break through Rhaenyra’s expression. A certain sympathy.
But then she looks up at the statues around them, these grand facades of their ancestors, and shakes her head.
“You're to be kept with your sister,” Rhaenyra says, “Perhaps you can get her to speak of her dreams to me, as your mother could not. And perhaps get her to eat. And your uncle shall be kept, as well, so that you can know the importance of—"
And Daeron's heart hits the ground and shatters.
He came here for Gwayne. He came here to save Gwayne.
That’s the entire reason that he’s here—so that Rhaenyra can give Gwayne over.
Gwayne is worth nothing to her, strategically. Gwayne is no commander, no Lord of Oldtown, nothing save the brother of a former queen and Daeron’s uncle.
She should set him free, if she’s the righteous woman she purports to be.
But she’s not going to.
She’s not going to, and Daeron frays right open.
Gods, for all of the military knowledge and strategy that Ormund tried to impart on him, Daeron allowed emotion to override logic. He was foolish enough to place himself in his sister’s grasp, without dragon, without sword, without the guarantee that Gwayne shall be released save the message that she offered and nothing more.
“No,” Daeron says, interrupting the fucking Queen, he knows, but he has to, he has to say something, he cannot have come all of this way, given up everything he has, for nothing, and the steel of Daemon’s blade immediately kisses his neck.
Dragonfire turns to ash inside of Daeron’s veins in an instant.
“You bent the knee,” Daemon says, and he sounds like he’s just begging Daeron to make one false move so that he can cut off Daeron’s head.
Daeron tries not to swallow. Tries not to let his Adam’s apple bob. One false move and Daemon will slice him open like he is said to have done to Vaemond Velaryon.
He can do this. He has a history with facing those with power and not blinking—or, if he does blink, it is only because he knows how to bend without breaking, because he knows how to survive, because he knows that to surrender is not to lose because the only true loss is the death of the people that you care about.
Uncle Gwayne is alive.
And if he’s not—if Rhaenyra killed him—
“I can help our sister, I can try,” Daeron agrees, because he knows how to do this, he knows how to survive, “But I came here to make sure my uncle is alive. You have to give me proof that he’s alive. Please.”
Daeron is already on one knee, but he slowly sinks to the other, careful to move slow enough that Daemon won’t chop off his head in one fell swoop.
It is like he is kneeling in front of the Stranger in the Sept, and in many ways, he is. One false move and his uncle will send him to meet the Stranger’s embrace.
But his sister is still his sister, right?
“Please. You promised me. He’s—he’s my uncle. Sister—"
“She is your queen,” Daemon snarls, sword pressing in just slightly, and pain stings along Daeron’s throat, a couple of drops starting to trickle. “Address her as such.”
“Your Grace,” Daeron says, and his eyes are burning, but he has to do this. He cannot let the breath catch in his throat. He cannot let emotion lead him into folly again.
Rhaenyra is his sister, and she is a stranger, and he just might meet the Stranger, but he has to try. Gwayne deserves that much. Daeron needs that much.
“Please. Please. I am begging you,” Daeron knows that he’s begging, that he is praying, but he doesn’t care. He is already on his knees. He has already given up his dragon. What else is left for him to do? What else is left for him to ask for? This is all he has. This is all he is. Not a prince, not a dragonrider: Gwayne Hightower’s nephew, who gave up the world in order to make sure that he didn’t die. “He’s all—he’s all I have left. The only parent I have ever known. I betrayed my cousin for you, for him—please just give me proof that he is alive, and I shall do whatever you wish. You shall have my undying gratitude.”
I’m sorry. I had to get through it.
And this is your way? Fawning?
Whatever saves your life, Uncle.
And Rhaenyra is staring at him, and her expression is impassive save the fact that her bright eyes are shining, and her lips are going pale in the sort of way that Daeron recognizes, because it’s what his own lips do when he is pressing down too hard with his teeth in order to keep from saying something to Ormund that he knows that Ormund will make him regret.
And Daeron doesn’t know what she is going to say. If she is going to be willing to give him anything.
Rhaenyra takes a deep breath and twitches her head at the maester standing next to her—likely the Grand Maester, if Daeron can infer correctly. “Ser Gwayne Hightower is your patient, Grand Maester. Inform his nephew as to his state.”
And the breath finally returns to Daeron’s lungs.
He could nearly weep in relief as a man in a maester’s gray robes, a chain round his neck, steps forward and says, “Prince Daeron, your uncle said to tell you if you showed up that you were a fool for doing so, but that he's proud of you for leaving your cousin. For telling him that you wouldn't do it."
As terrified as Daeron is, as fucked as he is, there is some part of him that breaks open at that. That splinters.
Yes, Gwayne called him a fool, and he is likely right for it, but—
He’s proud of you.
It isn’t proof that Gwayne didn’t try to abandon him.
But Daeron wants to believe that it could be.
And at the very least—they are the sort of words that he thinks only Gwayne could venture. Tell him you won't do it—those are Gwayne's words, as he remembers them.
Rhaenyra stares right into Daeron’s eyes. “Your uncle shall be kept otherwise unharmed, but you shall stay with your sister, away from the Dragonpit, away from your uncle. His continued life will guarantee your good behavior, and yours will guarantee the surrender at Tumbleton.” Her lip curls. “And I shall also respect the sanctity of bending the knee, brother.”
It is the first time that Rhaenyra has ever called him brother, and yet, what does it mean? What could it ever mean?
It means nothing.
And at this, Daeron could burst out sobbing. In relief, in horror, in some abominable mix of the two, he cannot be sure.
No Tessarion.
No Gwayne.
Nothing save his own life, and Tessarion’s, and Gwayne’s, but each a separate thread that Rhaenyra will not let them braid or weave together.
Daeron can hear Daemon Targaryen’s sigh of irritation, but he will not disobey his queen.
And neither will Daeron.
Instead, he just bows his head even lower, and Daemon Targaryen’s sword finally slips away from his neck as Daeron’s head bows down to meet stone.
There is no one who will ever follow him after this. After he has humiliated himself, debased himself, beneath the Iron Throne, begging for scraps of information off of Rhaenyra.
But it’s worth it. It’s so very worth it, because he has knowledge that Gwayne is alive, and that has to be worth it.
Because if it isn't—
Daeron doesn't know what he'd do if it wasn't.
---
Grand Maester Orwyle enters Gwayne's temporary room to find Ser Gwayne Hightower on the floor, crawling to the door, feverish, desperate to get to Daeron.
And Maester Orwyle sighs and lifts Gwayne back up into the bed. “You are no use to him if you kill yourself," he instructs, something harsh in his tone, "What was your plan? Shatter your leg even further? You are not a fool, Gwayne Hightower, I know well enough to know that a knight of your caliber should know better—"
Gwayne is breathing hard. His breath is shards of iron inside of his throat, scraping his throat raw.
But he can’t give up.
He can’t give up.
He might not have a dragon. He might not have any dragonfire.
But he can’t let Daeron give himself up for him. For the second child of a second son, for a knight without a wife or children or any prospects.
Daeron has spent too long of his life as a pawn in Ormund's schemes, and Gwayne won't let his nephew become a pawn in Queen Rhaenyra and Prince Daemon's schemes instead.
Gods above, Gwayne should have screwed his courage to the sticking place and asked Daeron to run with him instead of going out on Ormund’s stupid fucking scouting mission. All Gwayne got for his troubles was a shattered leg, the news of Criston Cole’s death, and himself as a hostage for his nephew.
He’s worse than dead right now—he’s an anchor on Daeron’s freedom.
“He put himself in the dragon queen's grasp for me," Gwayne argues.
For me.
That is the fact of the matter, isn't it?
Daeron threw himself on the sword for Gwayne, and what did Gwayne do for him? What did Gwayne do other than hurt himself?
“If you ever wish to get out of here and to him, you have to let yourself heal," Orwyle says as he finally gets Gwayne back into the bed—Orwyle is surprisingly strong under those Maester's robes, Gwayne has to give it to him.
“What in the seven hells would you know about it?” Gwayne snaps.
Orwyle rolls his eyes. "I know far more than you think I do about what you'd do for the survival of those you love," he says, "Regardless of what you and other nobles might think of me."
Some distant part of Gwayne's mind, behind the gasp of pain striking through his brain, behind the soreness and the ache, is almost intrigued by the flash of stubbornness, of depth—
But Gwayne's mind is on Daeron. On the nephew that he cannot save, a nephew that has flown straight into the dragon's maw to save him.
And what a pointless, pointless task.
So at the end—Gwayne’s fingers dig into his thighs, useless, aching, drawing blood, yes, but still, feeling.
---
Daeron is shoved into what he thinks was once a Princess' apartment and the door is swiftly locked behind him.
Somewhere out there, Tessarion screams. Roars.
But she is chained down in the dragonpit, far away from him, far away from a Sept, and Daeron didn’t even get to see Gwayne.
He doesn’t even know if Gwayne is alive.
All he has is the word of a maester. The Grand Maester, yes, and thus surely someone that has been voted honorable and esteemed by his colleagues and by multiple councils, but still—perhaps someone who wishes to keep his head more than anything.
But what Daeron does have is this room.
This room, and Rhaenyra’s words—
You're to be kept with your sister.
Your sister. Not our sister.
Daeron has known, in abstract, of the brothers and sister that he has never met. A King, a Queen, a Kinslayer, a niece and a nephew—at least, there were.
And now—there is just Daeron, dragonless, and the backs of his eyes are threatening to burn because he is absolutely alone.
(“Daeron the Daring,” they called him, and he nearly has to laugh, because what daring does he have? The daring to fall for a lie? The daring to place himself right into a trap, right into the enemy’s hands?
Daeron the Delusional, perhaps. Daeron the Deeply Misguided.
Daeron the fucking idiot.)
Well, alone except—
A figure stirs out of the chair in the corner by the window, standing to turn and look at him.
And here she is: a girl that he’s never met before. A woman who was a queen, in brief moments, before Rhaenyra took back her crown.
A sister, that he has never known, and yet, Rhaenyra is rooming him with, because she considers them both of a kind, her prisoners, her political weapons, maybe even her siblings.
A sister who is now staring at him, a half-embroidered tapestry clutched between her fingers, taking him in, just as he is staring and taking her in.
Helaena’s hair is just as silvered as their sister’s, and she also has those bright eyes that even Daemon Targaryen seemed to have in common with them. Her dress is as blue as their Florent grandmother’s, and that is a bit unexpected, but—
But there, in the back of her hair—not a crown of braids, like Rhaenyra’s, but a simple set of twin braids meeting in the back of the hair, like the one that Gwayne braided into the back of Daeron’s hair when he was a child, that Daeron learned how to do himself, that even now matches the two of them together.
And Daeron thinks—a fingerprint marks itself.
Fingers are unique things. Not even parents and children have the same ones.
But on a piece of pottery, you can see the fingerprints of those that created them. Those that made them.
Helaena’s braids were made by the same fingers as his, as impossible as that might seem.
There is a thread that ties them together. Something that knots them together across an entire continent.
But beneath the braids, beneath that connection—
Helaena looks—wan. Near ghostly. Overlarge bright eyes in the middle of pale, hollowed cheeks, washed out even further by the silver hair, rail-thin, almost more death than life sewn into her skin.
Perhaps get her to eat.
Helaena looks more like Rhaenyra than him in so many ways, but there is something in her face that thinks—
We have the same mother and father. Were birthed of the same womb.
Daeron knows that family is not a guarantee, that if he were to meet his brothers they might cut him down as quickly as his uncle had wished to, but there is something in him that wants to believe—that dares to dream—
“You’re taller than I’d pictured,” Helaena says, “I imagined you a caterpillar.”
Daeron blinks, but before he gets a chance to even begin to figure out how to respond to that, she cocks her head just slightly. “You’re bleeding in the same place that he did.”
“He did?” Daeron asks.
“My boy,” Helaena says, voice soft, and she turns her head. Bites her lip.
And Daeron tries to think about who she could possibly be talking about. His brother Aegon is said to have burned at Rook’s Rest while Aemond was rather famously slashed at the eye, but the only place that Daeron is bleeding is at the neck, and the only family member who has recently been hurt at the neck was their grandfather, he’s rather certain, except there’s no reason why Helaena would call their grandfather my boy—
Daeron has a memory of kinslayer snarled from Ormund's mouth back in Oldtown and Gwayne’s horror as he'd stared down at the parchment delivered by raven in Daeron's mother's hand.
And oh, shit.
The first time that he meets his sister, and he reminds her of her murdered son.
Daeron steps forward. “I am sorry. That—when I heard about that, I was horrified.”
There is something glimmering in Helaena’s eyes. A glimpse of moonlight, of tears, of ache.
“I can’t see my boy anymore,” Helaena says, “And they won’t let me see my girl either.”
Daeron swallows and looks around the room. There was clearly room for someone else in here.
He is aware of the fact that his mother was here at one point, but she’s gone, now. To where, he has no idea.
And now the two of them shall be sharing a room.
"They won't let me see my uncle, either," Daeron says, "I came to give myself over for him, but they wouldn't let him go. And they—" His voice threatens to break. "They won't even let me see if he's alive or not."
There is a pause, a moment in which Helaena blinks, and—
“Did you know that there’s a bug that eats other bug's corpses?” Helaena asks. "It is the beautiful, purple-gold creature, and it takes care of the waste in the middle of long summers, when the rot would set in otherwise."
It is a morbid topic, but there is a bit of color in her cheeks, a genuine curiosity in her eyes, and Daeron cannot save his uncle right now, he cannot save Tessarion, but he can do this still, small thing. He can listen to the sister that he has never met. He can make the most of learning his fellow prisoner as he tries to figure out how in the seven hells they are going to make it out of here.
And so Daeron shakes his head. "No, I have never heard of such a creature, but it does sound interesting." He is curious, he does have to admit—though he doesn't know much about bugs, he has never been allowed to be curious about any topics that Ormund did not approve, and thus this sits high up on his potential list. "How does—does the color say anything about the bug itself? Is it poisonous? Or is it just a pretty color, like the dragons?"
Helaena's expression opens up just a bit at that, and she sets her tapestry down on the table next to her as she steps towards him and grabs a tiny section of his sleeve, pulling him forward as she speaks, spinning a tale of a scavenger bug and its importance.
Daeron isn't sure where she's guiding him at first, but she pulls him over to where a couple of small cages and boxes sit, and while there are living bugs in the cages, the smaller boxes that she opens reveal dead wings collected.
Something in Daeron wants to flinch back, but when Helaena turns around, she has wings to apply against the wound on his neck, and Daeron has never had bug wings applied a wound, unlike honey and ice by Gwayne, but never milk of the poppy, because of Ormund’s instructions that princes need to be strong, my prince, and if you are to grow to be a great king, then you will need to learn how to endure like the Hightower, like our ancestors, like our House.
“This should help,” she says, satisfied. “The grey-scaled lizard shall need to find a burrow before the tale is done.”
She doesn't seem to register that she's said anything strange, and perhaps it isn't that strange to her.
Perhaps it isn't strange at all.
---
It is only when he goes to sleep on the small lounge bed that night does Daeron finally let the grief in.
He is here, in the Red Keep, completely alone. No uncle, no dragon, nothing save the chains around Tessarion’s chest, now around his own, as well.
Helaena had offered to share the bed—she had shared it with their mother, she says—but he doesn't want to take from her. That wouldn't be chivalrous.
And thus, he is alone, wings against his throat, no one save a sister he has just met at his side.
And it is only now that he lets himself cry.
He is chained, once again, and so is his dragon, and if Daeron is willing to admit the truth to himself, he will have to accept that he has no idea what he's going to do next.
Darling, when you've tired
You will see
There is no safe place, no sanctuary
It's all just child's play, a game of hide and seek
Don't make it harder than it has to be
So life just keeps on ticking by
Compelled by instinct to survive
And love's the only thing worth being alive for
-The Crane Wives, How To Rest