Archive of Our Own

You wanna love me right now

You wanna get alone with me

You wanna get my clothes off

And hurt me

You came alone to me

From however far away

Asking me to know how I know

You're all the same

-Ethel Cain, Gibson Girl

For Rhaenyra’s third marriage, her official coronation as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, no usurpers trying to steal her birthright, no civil war to destroy her claim to the throne, she marries her brother.

She has never had good luck in marriages, she thinks; her first marriage was to a man who she loved, in his way, who was a good father to her children, but who had no desire for her.

Her second marriage was to her uncle, to a man whose interest in her was all desire, was all hunger, was all passion, the exact opposite of her first husband in all ways.

Rhaenyra knows nothing about her third husband other than the fact that he rides a dragon, that he is her brother, that he tried to steal her throne, and that she will give him less babes than either of her first two husbands.

That is—she will give him nothing save her hand, which will be enough.

It has to be enough, because it was more of a compromise than she ever wished to make.

It was the only way to get the green armies to lay down their weapons, to agree to marry the last child of Viserys Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, to guarantee a grandchild with Hightower blood on the throne.

(Not that she plans on giving them that, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.)

All of the other dragonriders had killed each other save Baela and Rhaena, who lost Moondancer and who doesn’t have a dragon at all, respectively. Aegon, Aemond, and Helaena are dead. Rhaenyra’s living boys have dragons—at least, Joffrey and Aegon do—but they are small, barely more than hatchlings.

Daemon, Rhaenys, Laena, Laenor, Ulf, Hugh, Addam, Jahaerys, Jaehaera, Jacaerys, Lucerys—they are all gone.

The house of the dragon has been weakened down to just two full grown dragons and two hatchlings. That’s it. It’s enough strength to hold onto the throne, but one single push could send the entire tower tumbling to the ground if she is not careful. One more war—seven hells, one more battle, if it is between dragons—will destroy House Targaryen forever.

So the only thing that could maintain peace is the same thing that always maintains peace: a marriage contract between the two people that are left to make it, the last child of Alicent Hightower and Viserys Targaryen and the current Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

Rhaenyra Targaryen is to marry her youngest brother, Daeron Targaryen.

And Rhaenyra doesn’t want this. Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t want her younger brother to usurp her, for history to repeat itself, for her to have to share her power.

But this is the compromise that must be made for the sake of her house’s survival. For the sake of her and her sons.

Daeron will have to be put up with, if she wishes to continue being Queen without any major rebellions.

So Rhaenyra dresses in a gown of gold and black and red, jewels arrayed in her ears and around her neck, rubies and gold and pearls, all displays of the wealth and power she has managed to claw back for herself.

(She had thought about wearing the necklace that Daemon gave her, long, long ago, but she had left it behind on Dragonstone along with the marriage that died when Daemon and Aemond slayed each other over the God's Eye.)

She is the picture of the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the recovered iron and ruby crown of the conqueror perched on her brow in place of a traditional veil.

And her future prince consort is dressed for the occasion, as well. 

She’d been expecting silver hair when she met her younger brother for the first time, but instead, while he has the same bright eyes as most Targaryens, he has his mother’s round cheeks and auburn hair pulled back into the braids she once wore when she was younger.

Beneath his hair, he wears green and black, golden embroidery on the brocade, a sword at his hip within a golden scabbard, the best offerings that House Hightower can offer up to the altar.

He looks—

Young, is all she can think as he walks up the aisle with his mother’s arm in his own, Alicent dressed in a gown of black and gold, her hair caught back in a golden net.

(Many expected her to wear green, Rhaenyra knows. One last act of defiance against the stepdaughter who is taking her remaining son's claim once and for all.

But Alicent was the one who negotiated some of the kinder aspects of the marriage contract: Daeron’s dragon, his separate chambers, his freedoms.

Alicent wants to show support for this union. The support of not just Alicent Hightower, but the Queen Dowager, Queen Alicent Targaryen.)

Alicent and Daeron part at the altar, Alicent stepping back to stand with her brother and her cousin, Daeron’s small amount of family that is left for the wedding.

Behind Rhaenyra, all of the remaining Targaryens stand: Rhaena, Baela, Joffrey, Aegon. No green Targaryens are left—Daeron is the last of his side of the family that remains.

Daeron is a bit of a quiet one, stiff and barely speaking as they go, only responding when he must, swearing vows in the Great Sept in front of the crowds of gathered nobles, the two halves of the house of the dragon finally cleaving together after all of this bloody, bruising war.

She knows that Daeron must resent being married to his twice-widowed older sister instead of some maiden that the Faith would have offered up their choice for King of the Seven Kingdoms. In another life, King Daeron the Daring would have had his pick of any noble maiden he wished, but in this one, he is becoming hers, and not vice versa.

As she drapes a cloak over his shoulders, as Ormund Hightower announces that he is giving Daeron away under the eyes of the Seven, she expects her brother to glare at her.

They are both Targaryens, both dragonriders, so the offers of protection of the house are somewhat moot. The cloak is red and black either way, though the trim and embroidered dragons would vary between Arryn blue and Hightower green depending on who was cloaking who.

But he is being made Prince Consort, not king.

She knows that it is an embarrassment for any knight of the Seven Kingdoms to be cloaked by their wife. This is the first time in the history of Targaryen rule, at least, when it is recorded to happen.

But she is queen, the first ruling Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and he is not the king that he claimed to be, merely a prince knighted before a disaster of a battle that claimed Ulf, Hugh, and Addam (and injured Daeron’s own dragon, while her own stayed out of the battles and thus is bigger, stronger, more likely to triumph), so this is how things will go.

But even as the blue embroidery settles across his shoulders, he doesn’t glare at her. He just stares straight ahead, steady as the Hightower that the blood in his veins is named for.

The kiss is a brief thing. He closes his eyes during it, stiff, and she would, as well—for all Targaryen reputation for incest, she has no desire for her younger brother—but she refuses to give any of the remaining green supporters a blind spot to sink their daggers into.

When they pull back, it almost feels like the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms lets out a sigh of relief before the gathered nobles launch into cheers enough to shake King’s Landing to the foundations.

It is a relief, Rhaenyra knows, for the war to be officially over, the peace sealed with a marriage.

And so it is no surprise that when they step down through the aisle, hand in hand, his hands calloused by dragon scales and sword hilts, that the smallfolk and the nobles alike are cheering the end of a war and the beginning of a new reign, a hopefully new golden age for the Seven Kingdoms.

Rhaenyra knows that they cut quite the image, in jewels, in Targaryen regalia, the dragons roaring outside of the Sept, a symbol of the coming age—hopefully a golden one.

Once they emerge from the Great Sept, they make their way on horseback to the Dragonpit, their respective families riding behind them. It would have been ill-advised to ride dragons through the city, given the size and the reminder of the war, but Syrax and Tessarion still fly overhead, scales gleaming in the sunlight, a show of strength but also of blessing, a reminder that the gods still favor Targaryens and their power.

The most of a response she gets from Daeron is when they go to do the Valyrian side of the ceremony.

She was willing to marry with the Septon in order to acquire legitimacy for her reign, but she was not going to marry without the blood of the dragon being involved, without everyone understanding where her power truly came from.

There are far less people here, no lords and ladies, just her sons and stepdaughters, his mother, his cousin, and his uncle, and the two dragons perched on the stones of the Dragonpit behind them, one blue, one gold, the largest dragons still alive save what wild ones still roam Dragonstone.

To his credit, Daeron doesn’t flinch when she cuts into his lip, just as she doesn’t flinch as he cuts into hers. He is Hightower and Targaryen in one, dragonfire and black stone, enduring past what many of the petty lords that they shall see again at the wedding banquet could ever dream of.

Behind him, his cousin looks triumphant.

This is not your victory, Rhaenyra wants to snarl, Daeron is Prince Consort, not King. I am your Queen and that shall not change until the day my body burns on the pyre.

Rhaenyra will not sleep with him. She will not give him any claim to her power beyond the circlet perched on his head, gold in his auburn hair just as a golden crown sat on his mother’s for so long.

The thin crown on his brow once belonged to Good Queen Alysanne Targaryen, a reminder that he is her consort, not her king. She is the one with the power between them.

Daeron will be her figurehead, not she theirs. That is all that this is—an alliance for the sake of peace and shoring up her claim and her son’s claims to the thrones. As long as what remains of the Green faction believes that she will give them a babe of Daeron’s blood, they will withstand her current heirs. As long as he receives the title of Prince Consort, she can keep both grown dragons left ridden by Targaryens in Westeros on her side.

All that she has to do is this. Tasting her brother’s blood on her lips. Letting him wear Alysanne’s crown.

Now, Rhaenyra knows that plenty of the Hightowers consider that an insult. The former King Daeron, demoted down to consort alone.

Daeron hasn’t said a word about his opinions at the subject, merely arriving after the negotiations between his “Hand” and hers had been finished, on the back of a sapphire-blue dragon, his sworn sword behind him.

Yes, her new husband's (though ‘husband’ is a loose word, and shall stay a loose term, because yes, the High Septon married them, in the name of Targaryen Exceptionalism, and there is blood on both of their lips in the style of Old Valyria, but when she looks at Daeron, she has less than no desire to consummate the marriage, as he is a child who tried to usurp her throne) sworn sword, which she has been debating whether or not to take the final spot on her Queensguard.

It would be a gesture of peace to her new husband to let him have his own sworn shield, but she has heard of what Criston Cole got up to on the Greens’ side of the war, and she is leaning towards doing whatever she can to strip power from Daeron and keeping him from trying to steal her crown from her—especially when Gwayne Hightower has made it clear throughout this entire process that he has no respect or fondness for her, from the way that he glares at her while his cousin smiles at her.

And thus, Gwayne Hightower will have to be dealt with.

The Hightowers and Greens will understand that Rhaenyra is the queen, and if she has to deal with a sworn shield or two and show them their place, then she shall.

---

After the Valyrian ceremony is over, they have their wedding feast.

They enter the great hall to yet another set of cheers, for the crowns on their head, for the symbol of peace bringing the bread to start the healing of the country.

With the war that just devastated the country, it is far from the elaborate banquets that were held for Alicent or Rhaenyra’s first weddings, but there is still a feast, thanks to Rhaenyra—and Alicent, to an extent-'s efforts.

Rhaenyra collected jewels from Dragonstone and taxes from the rebel lords, threatening a field of fire on the Lannisters to get them to return the stolen crown gold to her. Cregan Stark, to make up for being late with his forces, sent gold, as well as others that she coaxed tribute from.

So they have a small feast, and she thinks that this proof of the fact that her reign can sustain is enough for many of the lords that might still be nursing protests against her to start setting aside their protests.

And for a moment, she is able to relax. To indulge in the feast that she put so much effort into organizing. To enjoy the food and the sight of her boys eating and playing.

They are still looking for Viserys and where he might have ended up. So many wish to say that he is like as not a body under the Narrow Sea, just like her first two boys, whose ghosts haunt the fleet.

But Joffrey and Aegon are here, and they are nervous, at first, but they do dance with their stepsisters and even some other young girls at the court, and she cannot help the first smile that’s come close to flickering to her face throughout this entire wretched day and the multiple ceremonies as she watches them, chatting with Corlys and Alyn Velaryon.

She had legitimized Alyn as Corlys’ heir. Since Joffrey is hers, Corlys deserved an heir to Driftmark. That doesn’t take away from the fact that he is Joffrey’s grandfather, though, legally and in all of the ways that matter.

And since he is with Joffrey, he is kind to Aegon, as well.

One thing is for sure: her boys are certainly having a better time than Rhaenyra’s new goodfamily.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Alicent’s fingers clenching tight around her wine goblet.

Next to her, Daeron is still quiet. Still silent as he pushes around the food on his plate.

Rhaenyra holds back a grimace. She understands that the food is not up to the usual standards of a royal wedding, but she would expect more courtesy than this, this casual dismissal, this clear upturning of the nose.

Both Alicent and Gwayne Hightower’s gazes are fixed on him, some measure of caution in them, and Rhaenyra is not sure why she has earned such appreension.

She supposes that Alicent thinks her a snake in the grass, that Alicent doesn’t trust her, that Alicent still thinks that Rhaenyra’s lies caused their issues back in the day, and now, well—

Rhaenyra knows that Alicent blames her, at least in part, for Aegon and Aemond’s deaths, but that Alicent definitely blames her for Helaena’s death.

And now that Rhaenyra is marrying her son—

I didn’t want this marriage, Rhaenyra wishes to tell Alicent. Your son is the one who tried to claim my throne, in his reckless teenage bravado and upstart ambition.

(You know more than anyone the sort of person that I fall for, and it is not a young boy, still green behind the ears.)

But next to him, his cousin Ormund Hightower is triumphant. He has been unable to keep the sneer of triumph, the smirk of victory, off of his lips throughout this entire ceremony.

If it had been up to Rhaenyra’s decision alone, she would have dismissed him the first moment that he looked at her like he had found a way to stake his claim on her dynasty.

But Rhaenyra understands that in the wake of a continent-breaking civil war, she cannot afford to offend the lord of Oldtown, the most powerful city on the continent other than King's Landing.

And yet, ice goes down her spine when Ormund clamps a hand on Daeron's shoulder, fingers up the side of his neck, and says, all charming smiles, “You know what you’re supposed to do."

“It is my duty,” Daeron murmurs, voice quiet, “I am supposed to claim my title,” and something goes cold in her veins.

Rhaenyra’s nostrils flare. No one can claim the dragon. No one can claim her.

And if her fifteen-year-old brother thinks that he can make himself a man off of her blood—

He will not get such satisfaction.

Rhaenyra knows that Ormund Hightower wishes to see her blood. Wishes to see her humiliation.

And she knows that Daeron was raised at his knee. That Daeron was raised to think that men deserved the throne over women, that his brother and his own claims were superior to her own.

Well, fuck that.

Rhaenyra slams her goblet down on the table.

This fifteen-year-old will not be stealing her title and power from her, no matter what he might think is his birthright. This is her title. This is her throne, and her crown, and he shall not have it from her.

And so she stands and announces, "My new husband and I thank everyone for their attendance to our wedding and your grace in celebrating with us. We invite you to continue to stay and make merry for as long as you should like, but we shall be leaving to enjoy our wedding night."

Cheers go up from every corner, and she has to wonder what are cheers of ambition, what are cheers of lust, what are cheers of relief.

There are so few left at court that she can truly trust. Baela and Rhaena, she thinks, and perhaps their grandfather. Sabitha Frey and Torrhen Manderly might be gossips, but they are reliable.

Mysaria is gone. Grand Maester Orwyle a fairweather ally.

And the rest—dead. Gone.

Rhaenyra turns to her brother and holds out a hand.

There would have been a bedding but the dragons were not pleased about it, Syrax and Tessarion making their whims known.

At least—that is her excuse.

For Rhaenyra herself, she was never going to allow a bedding. There is nothing to them stripping her but humiliation. Her brother, hopped up on teenage bravado and pride, might be happy to show off, but Rhaenyra does not wish for the realm to be able to see stretch marks and deride the way that the body of the Realm's Delight has changed throughout six pregnancies.

They are the sort of things that she is proud of—she survived the birthing bed, over and over, fought that war as much as the Dance of the Dragons—but that others would shame her for.

Rhaenyra refuses to be shamed for the wars that she fought. For the children that she birthed.

(For the children that she lost. Jacaerys, Lucerys, Visenyra—her babes, babes that Daeron never met, that her new husband has no investment in.

Daeron likely wishes to set aside her current sons in favor of his own. Well, fat chance of that. Daeron shall not get a babe on her. He shall not touch her more than what is necessary in public.)

Daeron's eyes go wide as he looks up at her—likely shame for her overhearing his blatant confession of coveting her title, but that is a generous interpretation, she is sure. More likely than not, he is just surprised that she paid attention at all.

"This will be alright, my boy," Ser Gwayne says, tone comforting, and the condescension over the idea of having to bed an older woman, a mother rather than a maiden, is enough to make Rhaenyra want to snap at him.

Do not worry, Rhaenyra nearly says, Your nephew shall not suffer having to bed a woman he does not desire. I shall not give him the privilege.

But sworn shields will have nothing to do with what is going to happen in the bedroom, and she will not reveal any weakness here.

So Rhaenyra offers out a hand and Daeron takes it with a stiff jaw. He doesn’t meet her eyes, and her own jaw clenches at the insult, but she knows that she will not say a word until they make it to her chambers.

The continent bears the scars of dragon claws and fangs, the blood of Targaryens scattered across salt and sea, mountain and vale. They need to be a unified front. The house of the dragon has been whittled down to her, him, two boys (unless Viserys is found, and she has to believe that he will be, she cannot bear the grief of another boy carved out from her arms), and two girl cousins. They have to appear stronger than they truly are. They cannot afford a single crack in the armor.

And yet—

Behind him, Alicent and Gwayne Hightower both stare at them both, and while Ormund Hightower toasts them as they exit the Hall, Rhaenyra can feel both of their stares burning into the back of their neck as she leaves.

---

They make it to the doors of her chambers, where there are only Queensguard standing outside of the doors. No crowds—with the bedding and its associated gossip off of the table, all of the nobles remained in the Hall for the feast. 

Daeron immediately lets go of her hand and slips inside of the chambers ahead of her—overeager, ready to sink his teeth into flesh that she refuses to give him access to. 

Rhaenyra enters the room and closes the door behind her, taking a deep breath.

Her anger is a blistering thing. She will make sure that Daeron knows that she has no plans on bedding him, or him bedding her.

But she knows that while she needs to lay down the law, establish the rules, she cannot let fury override the relationship between them. They will need to work together, or at least, she needs to do what she can to have enough of a gauge on him to prevent him running off and trying to usurp her.

So in order to smooth the night, to give herself some liquid courage to deal with what is sure to be a bit of a fight, she goes to pour wine into the glasses that have been set out for them alongside oils and other lubrications that she will not be using, no matter how much Elinda was genuinely trying to help.

Rhaenyra takes a few sips, and they burn going down, but they do ease the tension in her veins at least a little bit.

But when she turns around, she finds Daeron has stripped off his gloves, unclasped his bridecloak, unbuttoned his doublet and slipped it off, and is now quickly and methodically stripping off his trousers, leaving him in naught but his smallclothes before she’s even pulled off a single layer of her gown (not that she will pull off any layers, but he isn’t aware of that).

And what sort of eagerness to take what he considers his is leading him to move this quickly?

The anger flares again, hotter than Syrax’s flames.

No matter what blood runs through Daeron’s veins, no matter what claim their father passed down to him, he does not get to have a claim on her. 

“I will not sleep with you,” Rhaenyra snaps, because she is an adult, she is the Queen, regardless of whatever Hightower propaganda he was fed, and he only has the title of prince consort because it was the least of the concessions she could make.

She is not here because she wants to be, and she will not let him take from her.

At her rejection, Daeron freezes. Flinches, his gaze turning downward.

For a moment, Rhaenyra thinks good. She shall not be having her half-brother be getting ideas above his station, above his position. She had to agree to this marriage to nullify his claim to the throne, but she has no plans to let him put a babe in her, especially after what it did to have Visenya die on her way to stain the world with her own blood.

The only blood that Daeron shall ever have of hers is what they had to exchange at the ceremony.

But then Daeron says, voice a whisper of a rasp: “But we have to. I—I must.”

“You do not need to do anything,” she says, and she knows her voice is sharp, but she is laying down the law. She will not let her brother get any upjumped ideas about him trying to take her birthright away from her.

But his voice sharpens as he says: “Yes, I do. You need to—"

There is dragonfire spitting from her mouth, fury unbridled by the few sips of wine she has taken. “I do not need to do anything, and no matter what teenage bravado you are experiencing, you will not force the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms to let you bed me—"

But Rhaenyra’s words grind to a sudden halt when he flinches. When his neck drops, his head bowing, his fingers twisting together.

And she suddenly notices that his fingers are exposed for the first time since the wedding feast began, and she can see the blood staining his cuticles, right where Alicent used to pick at her fingernails.

That his face is not the young hunger of a teenager fresh to manhood craving to become a knight, to slice the world open on his blade and carve it up in his image, to fuck the most powerful woman in the Seven Kingdoms and claim the womb of the Realm’s Delight as his own, but rather the face of a boy unsure, nervous, desperate.

Rhaenyra looks at him and she sees that his hands are trembling.

And she sees—

She sees a young girl, braids in her hair, as she stood in the chamber of the Small Council, staring silently, speechlessly, at Rhaenyra. She sees Alicent Hightower and the ghost of her best friend, clutching at a rounded stomach that carried her father’s seed and a possible threat to Rhaenyra’s own claim. Sees a girl, dressed in white, offered up at the altar for the sake of a crown that had killed Rhaenyra’s own mother because people cared more about an heir than they did about a queen.

Sees a girl, fifteen-years-old, with bright eyes and rust-red hair and bloodied nails.

Sees a girl, fifteen-years-old, whose uncle is wrapping a necklace around her neck.

Sees Helaena, dead. Sees Aegon, eaten by a dragon. Sees Aemond, dragon found crumpled in the God's Eye.

Sees Alicent’s final boy, her youngest, her baby, shaking.

Daeron is her brother, and she's never met him before this day, but he’s the age of her son.

(Her dead, dead son, whose waterlogged corpse she sobbed over, broke over, who died too young, who broke too young.)

But no. 

That can't—

She couldn't have—

Rhaenyra swallows. She couldn’t have gotten this wrong. She knows what Daeron wants. He shouted his claim to her throne and her crown far and wide, declared himself King, had coins minted in his own likeness.

There is no way that he is Alicent, a ghost, a child who was forced into a marriage he did not wish for.

He wants power. That is what kings desire. That is what warriors wish for. That's what she saw in Otto, and Daemon, and Hugh, and so many others.

And yet, when Rhaenyra speaks next, her voice is softer. “There is no need for consummation."

“But the blood on the sheets—" Daeron protests, and he is as tall as she is, but his cheeks are round, the braid in the back of his head the same as his mother’s, and all she can see is Alicent Hightower on her wedding night, the bedding as the men pawed at her wedding gown, shredding all that white down to expose her body naked, not even leaving her the dignity of her smallclothes despite the fact that she was the future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, despite the fact that she was fifteen.

All she can see is Alicent as she walked her son down the aisle in the Great Sept, Ormund Hightower proud, triumphant in his victory, at the altar next to Rhaenyra, but Alicent’s spine rigid as the walls of the Great Sept.

The way that Alicent had flinched as Rhaenyra had cut into Daeron’s lip.

The way that Alicent had looked at them both as they'd left for the wedding night.

Rhaenyra shakes her head. “Everyone is well aware that I am no maiden and that there will be no blood on the sheets for proof of consumation.” she says. “I have given birth to five babes, brother.”

Six, in truth, the ghost that has sat in her abdomen since Visenyra’s gnarled stillbirth protests. And you only have two sons left before you have even entered your grave. Heir to Jaehaerys and Alysanne in more than one way.

“But you will—" Daeron swallows, hard. Picks at his nails. Spills the blood of Alicent Hightower on the floor, one drop at a time. “You will still consummate, right? Eventually? There will be a babe?”

“I will not fuck a child,” Rhaenyra says, point-blank.

“But someday, you will—”

“I have no need of more children,” Rhaenyra bites, thinking of dead babes in either the waters of the womb or the bays of Westeros, crippled by the Blackwater or broken by the storms. The rage of grief, of revenge, of ache.

“But—if I don’t—"

And to her horror, Daeron goes to his knees, as if to beg her, as if to throw himself on the altar.

“They say that it is my duty, to do this for you. To you. To—get a babe of Hightower blood on the throne. And if I don’t—" He swallows, stares at the ground, and something seems to gleam wet in his eyes.

Something in Rhaenyra curdles in horror.

She still has three boys in line to the throne ahead of whatever hypothetical child she could have with Daeron. Even with Viserys missing, there are two sons. This marriage was only ever supposed to be a means to an end, a way to quell Green sentiment at court.

And she does not wish to get pregnant again. She will not risk a death in the birthing bed, handing over the power of her children’s regency to Green hands or even worse—Daeron seizing power and making himself King in front of her sons.

(She will not risk another stillbirth, for her own sake. Her Visenya is dead and gone, a ghost burned on the pyre.)

Two sons is enough. She will not risk making another child that could bleed as Visenya did.

“Who told you this?” Rhaenyra demands.

Daeron flinches. “My—my cousin. If I wish to protect my mother, my uncle— “

Rhaenyra lets out a sharp bark of a laugh. “None would seek to harm the Queen Dowager—”

“My mother—she is still thirty-five. Of—" His voice shakes, just a moment, as he stammers over the words. “Of child-bearing age and proven fertility. And Ormund says that he shall marry her and create heirs to the Hightower name if I do not—if I do not restore Hightower blood to the throne.”

Rhaenyra remembers her own mother, not even thirty-five yet and yet dead, carved open by a birth gone wrong, by a husband who at least claimed to love her but cared for heirs more than her life. She could not bear to see Alicent in a similar state. She refuses it. 

And since she is queen now, her father the king no longer, she gets to make decisions on such things.

“They could not marry without the permission of the crown,” Rhaenyra says, a quick dismissal.

Daeron’s brow furrows in confusion, as if he didn’t know the basest information about such things, but she remembers, all of a sudden, the fact that he had spoken to his dragon in the Common Tongue, a part of his education stripped from him, and she wonders if he does know about the laws of the kingdom that he is supposed to be helping rule from now on.

He is a prince. He should have been taught.

But he spent his entire life away from court, raised up in Oldtown under the hands of those that would teach him in their own way.

She remembers having to play catch-up on her own duties and responsibilities. She spent the first fifteen years of her life raised not as an heir, but expected to be married off to pump out babes for some noble house—a fate that she refuses to let herself fall into again.

And she thinks—I never asked if he wanted this marriage. 

Rhaenyra had assumed that everyone who might marry a princess, a queen, would do it for ambition, would do it for power, because what else would you ever do such a thing for?

But— 

Fifteen. 

Alicent Hightower, picking at her nails as Rhaenyra had silently repaid the favor that Alicent had done her so many times, handmaiden for her future stepmother by her father’s request on her wedding day. The way that Rhaenyra had been tempted to pull the laces too tightly on Alicent’s wedding dress, on her stays, to make her feel some measure of the betrayal that Rhaenyra has.

But that in the end, Rhaenyra's touch had been tender against Alicent’s back, even with her resentment, even with her fury, even with her ache, because once, Rhaenyra had loved Alicent like she’d loved no one else. She had never offered to take anyone else up on Syrax. Not the husbands she’d married, dragonriders in their own right, but also not Harwin, also not her babes, no one since the girl who had rejected her in favor of keeping her feet planted on solid ground.

Alicent and her sliced themselves apart, a canyon growing between them, but Rhaenyra never forgot how much she loved Alicent, once.

Rhaenyra’s voice nearly breaks, but she manages to keep it together at least a little bit, holding tight to her own voice as she asks: “Did you even want this?”

“Do I want to fuck my sister?” Daeron instantly snaps, and it is the first time that she has heard his voice sharp, full of dragonfire, and it flays something raw inside of her. “It’s an abomination. But I suppose that there is something tainted in our blood that makes us crave such sinful things, and I know that is what you want, what I am supposed to do to please you—"

His jaw snaps shut, but she is impressed that he is finally speaking the truth to her. Or, at least—she appreciates it.

But Daeron's face crumples.

“I am sorry, Your Grace, please forgive me—" Daeron says, and he reaches up to grab her sleeve, to lower his forehead to his hand, as if begging, as if praying. 

Her head jerks down to the very place where his mother scarred her with a Valyrian steel dagger when he was a child living in Oldtown, where Alicent pulled blood from beneath her skin as repayment for the maiming of a boy now consigned to a watery grave.

Daeron’s face goes white, as if anticipating punishment for touching when he’s not supposed to, and he lets go in an instant. 

When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. Subdued. Surrendering, in the way that the blood of the dragon should not.

“If I don’t do this—my uncle, my mother—they shall be forfeit. Please—let me do my duty. Let me do what I am supposed to do.”

“No, they will not,” Rhaenyra says, and she kneels on the ground in front of him. Daeron’s eyes snap up to hers, wide and bright.

And Rhaenyra understands the shock. Kneeling on the ground, meeting the eyes of an opponent—

It is not something that a Queen should do. A queen should kneel and bow before no one, not even her husband. She fought Daemon on that matter often and well, when he assumed that a blowjob or two could be equivocated with a claim on her and her throne.

(That is not to say that he didn’t try, later on. That he didn’t wrap his fingers around her throat and seek to name that ring of flesh a crown upon his own head.)

But this isn’t her husband, is it? Not in a way that matters.

No, this boy in front of her is not some teenage boy with delusions of grandeur and stealing her birthright. 

No matter what others claimed in his name, she looks at him and she cannot see a boy wishing to stake a claim. 

This is just her little brother. Her little brother, who was just trying to do what he can to protect the people that he loves.

“Your uncle, your mother—they will be safe.” There is a gentleness in her voice now that there wasn’t before. “Not only shall we tell the court that we consummated and then go on with our lives, you must remember—I am Queen. The most powerful person in the Seven Kingdoms. We both have dragons. If our plans were not to work, then no one can stand against us.”

Rhaenyra knows what it is like to have to fight to take what should have given to you.

And she thinks—

For all of the years I had to meet you, I never did.

The boy in front of her has Alicent Hightower’s face, her hair, her braids, but he has Rhaenyra’s bright eyes, because they are siblings.

And whatever he went through in Oldtown—she wasn’t there for him. She wasn’t there to get to know any of her siblings, because she let petty disagreements and frustrations and anger and drama split her and Alicent apart, and the entire realm suffered for it.

“There is no need for children between us. I have three—" She swallows. “Two confirmed sons still alive. And you—you are a child yourself,” she says, because she is looking at him, at the roundness to his cheeks, at the desperation in his eyes, at the way that he has carved himself open just as his mother did.

Rhaenyra remembers bloodstains on the sheets, her mother carved open, all of those stillbirths leading into a breached babe that they carved out of her and killed her just because she had been bedded too early in the first place, thirteen when she conceived her first babe.

But those aren’t the only bloodstained sheets Rhaenyra remembers.

Because there, she sees them, the blooded sheets that they crowed over the day after Alicent and her father’s wedding.

House Hightower has not stopped offering up maidens and their blood to the altar for a sacrifice, it seems.

But neither has House Targaryen, she thinks, because she did accept this. She accepted the marriage offer for Daeron's hand, because it was the easiest way to end this war, the easiest way to get the power that she was owed.

But Daeron just blinks up at her, those bright, large eyes. “Ormund said that I am a man. That I am to—that I am to do what men do. That if I do not, then you would wish for it anyway.”

He reaches up, but not to her. Fingers trace his own jaw, as if absentmindedly tracing the path that someone else’s fingers once took.

“I know—I know that that is what people want of me. To devour me.”

And Rhaenyra suddenly feels Daemon’s hand beneath her jaw at her own wedding, grasping her tight, clutching her close.

She’d wanted it, she is sure. She has always wanted it, wanted Daemon, wanted the fire that burned between them.

But she remembers his hand around her neck after her father died, after Aegon took the throne. Remembers Daemon placing his claim on her crown. Remembers Daemon placing his claim on her.

And Rhaenyra cannot land such a blow against Daeron. She cannot do that to him. She cannot claim him. She will not claim him.

He is a child, Alicent’s son, and every man is someone’s son, but he is her little brother.

Rhaenyra looks at him and all she wants to do is to sweep Joffrey and Aegon into her arms and bury her face into their curls and hold them close until she knows that they shall never be forced into a circumstance such as this.

But instead, she has her shirtless brother in front of her, expecting her to do the worst, to ask him to bed her, and he is shaking.

Rhaenyra's brow furrows. He is the blood of the dragon. He should be warm.

And yet—

He shivers.

Cold, fear, or something else?

Daeron has broad enough shoulders for a growing young man and has the sort of muscles that a squire would develop from the sparring grounds. He is a bit on the taller side, just like Jace.

But in between the ribs, she sees that he is skinny. Hollow.

She remembers he did not eat much at the banquet, just mostly picked around his meal.

And she asks: "You did not eat at the feast tonight. Why?"

Daeron answers honestly, she has to give it to him, no matter how much his answer curdles her stomach: "I couldn't stomach it."

Rhaenyra is going to need wine to stomach anything. Arbor gold, Dornish red, it doesn't matter; all that matters is that it will burn away the memory of this—her little brother, so nauseous at the idea of sleeping with her but convinced that he has to that he had been unable to eat.

She steps back to the table. "Here," she says, "Would you like some—" She glances over the items of the table, trying to select the blandest food, something she would ask for her boys when they were sick. "Crackers?"

Daeron is staring up at her, gaze unsure, gaze glassy, but he nods, and she gathers some crackers onto a wooden plate and hands them to him.

Daeron takes the offering, rocking back on his heels and nibbling, carefully, slowly, making sure that not a single crumb hits the ground.

And when one does, he quickly darts out a hand to sweep it up, flinching, gaze darting up to her as if expecting—

A blow.

He is a prince. He should have a whipping boy, should have protection, should have a reason to grow up as spoiled and precocious as Aegon and even she did.

But he is scared. Worried about repercussions of something as small as a crumb hitting the floor.

And he looks—

A child. A child.

Yes, a teenage boy, but very clearly not one that is here because he thinks that he can tame a dragon, but because he himself is a beaten creature. 

She could drape the bridecloak over his shoulders again to alleviate his shivers. It is sitting next to his doublet and tunic and trousers and gloves.

But as much as she wants to gesture to him that she wishes to protect him, that she does not wish him any harm, she does not wish to make him think that it is only in the name of their marriage. In the name of some future romantic or sexual intentions. She is not her own father.

(Rhaenyra loves her father. Loved her father. He did everything he could to protect her, support her claim, put her where she is today.

But did he protect anyone else? Or did he just use Alicent to fill the hollow that Aemma’s death left? Did he just neglect the boy in front of her, just as much his child as Rhaenyra was?)

Therefore the cloak, the very symbol of a claim, is not an option. 

So Rhaenyra reaches over to her wardrobe and pulls out the least fussy or flashy dressing gown she owns, the silver-blue robe that she once wore when his mother begged her to save Alicent’s children’s lives.

Arryn blue, some part of Rhaenyra’s brain thinks, thinking of eleven-year-old Aemma Arryn at her wedding, of thirteen-year-old Aemma Arryn giving birth— 

But also of Florent blue, of fifteen-year-old Alicent Hightower at her own wedding, of a bedding that Alicent had no option to turn down.

Rhaenyra had always worn this robe on nights when she was feeling out-of-sorts. When she was feeling off-balance, unable to center herself. The fabric is soft but heavy, solid against the skin, centering, without being too stiff to sleep in.

And then she steps forward and drapes it over her brother’s shoulders.

It is instinct, Rhaenyra knows, that causes his hands to dart out, quick, to pull the robe tight around himself, to cover himself up.

They are the same size—he might even be an inch taller than her, she cannot be sure—and yet he still looks swallowed up in the fabric, somehow.

(She wonders how many people have looked on him and sought to devour. To take and claim and use what they could of the prince and the power that came with his name.)

“Here,” she says, “No prince consort should have to bear the cold." She swallows. “Would you like me to have a servant come and light the fire?”

“And reveal the fact that the Queen has not bedded her husband?” Daeron points out, pokes, prods, and he is quicker than she would have expected, sharper than she would have guessed, but Rhaenyra should have guessed such a thing—he might have a heart big and soft enough to be willing to throw himself into a terrifying situation for the sake of those he loves, but he has to have a survival instinct and a certain level of cunning to have been able to survive for so long.

"Fine," Rhaenyra admits, "You might have a point."

Something akin to satisfaction almost seems to flash through Daeron's eyes, but it is quickly replaced by something that aches.

“I did not want to be the king, you do know,” Daeron bites out, “I just wanted—I wanted to fly. Wanted to live with my uncle, to meet my mother, wanted to be free. I had no fear of insignificance. But this—this was how I kept them safe."

“I can help you keep them safe," Rhaenyra offers, "I can let you fly. If you would like—the two of us can go flying tomorrow, if you would like.”

Daeron’s head jerks up, and for the first time, there is hope in his eyes, a desperate, burning thing.

But then he swallows and asks, "What would you like in return?"

Rhaenyra nearly swears under her breath. “There is no bargain that needs to be made,” Rhaenyra says, “You are blood of the dragon. You are my brother. You should be able to fly.”

But Daeron snorts. “There is no such thing as just being able to fly. Not when—not when you’re me.” He says the word me like it’s an insult, like it’s something that should be whispered, something to be ashamed of. “To give me something like that—there has to be a price to pay.”

“Is it hard to believe that you’re my brother and I just wish for you to be able to spend time with your dragon?”

But when Daeron looks up at her in disbelief, Rhaenyra realizes that it is that hard to believe. She thinks about how this whole thing began. How quiet he was throughout the entire process. How he let it all wash through him, over him, swallowing him down and drowning him.

How she snarled at him over dinner, assumed the worst of him, and thus made it easy for him to assume the worst of her. Assume that she pulled him away from the feast early because she wanted to take from him, wanted to make a man out of him, wanted to plant a babe in her own belly from his seed.

Led him to pick his nails, blood on the sheets, blood that she shed from Alicent’s youngest child.

A wedding built on blood. A wedding, built from a man circling his hand around the jaw of a cloaked child about to enter the wedding bed. A wedding built on grief and ache and the way that princes and princesses have to marry for the sake of the realm and never themselves.

Daeron thought her his uncle. Thought her Daemon.

Rhaenyra loved Daemon, she was so sure. They burned together, him pushing her to greater heights, but she cannot deny that even with the weight of the kingdom on her shoulders, she can breathe easier now, without his fingers and his fangs in her neck.

And so she says, “All I wish is for you to be able to fly.” She offers up what she hopes is a comforting smile. “Did you know that I am the youngest dragonrider in Targaryen history? I first flew when I was seven.”

It is a point of connection. An attempt to make up for a childhood spent on opposite ends of the continent.

But that only seems to rub salt in an open wound she cannot see, because Daeron winces. “The first time I got to fly was when flying to war,” he says, “When Tessarion was more useful to Ormund as a weapon than she was profane as an abomination.”

Daeron says his dragon’s name with love. With the sort of fondness that any Targaryen speaks of their dragon with.

And Rhaenyra thinks of the sapphire-scaled dragon with the burned face that she met when she first met Daeron, after the wedding contract had been signed by his cousin and his reluctant mother, his uncle Gwayne Hightower standing silently behind Ormund Hightower. The dragon who moved in front of Daeron when Rhaenyra had stepped forward to shake his hand.

Rhaenyra had thought, at the time, that it had been to attack, to move forward in aggression when Daeron knew he had to restrain himself for the sake of the truce between them, but she realizes, now—Tessarion was moving in vain to protect him.

“And before that point, after that point—" Daeron swallows. “She was kept chained in the Sept.”

In the Sept? Rhaenyra nearly snarls, just barely able to keep her teeth tucked away. A dragon should not be chained in the light of the Seven—they are gods, in their own rights.

Rhaenyra tries to imagine a life where she wasn’t allowed to ride Syrax. Where her dragon was chained within the temple of a foreigner's gods.

“I swear to you here and now,” Rhaenyra says, “You shall be able to fly whenever you like, here in the Capitol. Dragons—they are not abominations. They can be weapons, I know, and that makes us closer to gods than men to everyone else, but more than anything, they are companions. They are ours, and we are theirs."

Rhaenyra suddenly registers the ache in her knees from kneeling on cold stone, and if she aches like this, she can only imagine how her brother feels. Yes, she might have some years on her bones and joints compared to him, but no one can do well kneeling on stone for too long. “Now—we should both rest. Neither of us can leave the room this evening, not without inviting too many questions, but—"

Daeron swallows. “I can—I can sleep on the floor, this eve.”

Rhaenyra shakes her head. “We shall share the bed,” she says, and Daeron grimaces, but then she clarifies: “I will not push you out of the bed for the sake of my own comfort. I do not wish for you to be forced to sleep on the floor.”

“That would not be the most comfortable place to spend one’s wedding night,” Daeron agrees, and for a moment, she almost sees his mother’s sharpness in him, poking through beneath the layers of obedience and propriety and acquiesence.

Rhaenyra grimaces. She does not want him to think that she wants any sort of intimate contact between them, but she cannot undo her dress herself.

So she sighs.

“Can you help me with the laces on the back of my dress? I shall not undress before you, but if I wish to change for sleep—I cannot sleep in this heavy gown, and I cannot start the process myself.”

Daeron’s face looks not unlike a knight steeling himself to charge into battle, but he stands, carefully does the ties of her robe around his body, securing it tight—perhaps he does not trust her entirely yet, and though she wishes that he could, she cannot bring herself to blame him for the suspicion—and then pads across the floor on bare feet, the sound an echo of her boys sneaking around Dragonstone to spend time with their stepsisters, their cousins, their future betrotheds.

He carefully helps her undo the laces on the back of her dress in complete silence before quickly moving away, moving backward, moving towards the bed.

And she gives him the space to make himself comfortable by grabbing another nightgown and dressing robe from her wardrobe and stepping behind the wooden changing screen and undoing her gown, slipping it off of her shoulders and replacing it with her nightclothes, multiple layers of clothing to show that there are really no intentions from her to him. That he can rest assured that she will not make him do anything that his cousin tells him that she lusts for.

But by the time that she returns, she finds his body a thin, taut line in the bed, curled close to the edge as if to take up less room. There is no way that he is going to get comfortable in the bed of someone that he thought would— 

Until this moment, Rhaenyra would not have believed that one could use the word rape to describe what a woman could do to a man.

But she looks at him and she looks at the reddened cut on his mouth, the blood that has stopped crusting the flesh shared between them, and she imagines some older woman—Laena, Alicent, Sabitha Frey, whomever—taking an unwilling Jace to bed and him doing it because he wants to protect what family he had left to him.

And nausea curls in her stomach.

She feels sick at the idea that this is what they want her to do to him.

She sees the youth in him, in the soft planes of his face, and she thinks—Alicent was that young, once.

(But so was I. And maybe I shouldn’t have been. Maybe Daemon should have—he looked at me, when I was younger than Daeron, and Daemon wanted me, and maybe it was too young. Maybe it was—maybe I was—

I wanted it, which is more than what Alicent and Daeron did. But should Daemon have?

Was I too young?)

Rhaenyra blows out the candles and sits on the other side of the bed, hand on top of the blanket, looking at the boy there. The boy who lived away from his family for his entire life, who met his mother for the first time after she fought to negotiate gentler terms for his hand in marriage, who was delivered into the jaws of the Red Keep in order to fulfill someone else’s political desires.

She would much rather be in this room with his mother. How many times when she was a child, before she became the heir and the entire world descended on her, did she imagine flying over the Narrow Sea and starting a new life where she and Alicent could curl up together in some inn together, where she would get to kiss Alicent’s fingers and brow and mouth at night, where she could smell the lavender in Alicent’s hair tucked against her chest?

But in this moment, at least, she can give him some measure of peace and rest. At least, she hopes.

“Will you not relax?” Rhaenyra asks.

“I am yours,” Daeron says, his body uncurling just slightly in perfect obedience, and it splits Rhaenyra’s heart in two, that he took it as an order instead of as a genuine question.

“That is not—that is not what I meant. The bed is half-yours,” Rhaenyra swears, “You are allowed to be comfortable here.”

Daeron doesn’t untuck himself at first. 

But slowly, over the next ten minutes, he relaxes, just a bit. Just enough.

He is still facing away from her, but it is an improvement, and it is only once his shoulders slump forward, when he pulls the blanket up around his shoulders to surround himself in warmth and comfort, finding a spot where he actually takes up space, that she lays down on her side of the bed, on top of the sheets. She is a queen, the Queen, and there should be better, more comfort, but one night of laying on top of the sheets to give Daeron some barrier between them is a small price to pay for what has occurred here this eve.

This, she assumes, is how they shall pass into sleep, this silence filling the air between them.

But then she hears him sniffling—quiet, nearly inaudible, clearly a skill he has perfected over the years, but she is a mother. She knows the sound of a child in tears, comforted her boys from their nightmares over the years.

And Rhaenyra’s heart crumples inside of her chest.

She thinks of Jace, thinks of Luke, thinks of her boys, thinks of Daeron Targaryen, growing up on the other side of the continent from his mother.

There has been a hollow in her heart for so long. A series of ghosts all begging for her to settle them at peace.

Rhaenyra used to take her boys in her arms and cradle them close. Used to hum them lullabies to soothe them to sleep.

But she doesn’t know how Daeron will react to a touch. To an act of kindness, too little, too late.

And yet—

Daeron is her brother.

He is her little brother, and she was never there for him or any of their siblings in the past. Their other siblings are ghosts, now, bodies stained with blood.

But Daeron—

Daeron is here, and he is her brother, and she wants to do what she can to alleviate his suffering.

And so she takes a deep breath and she says, “You are allowed to cry, you know.”

His breath hitches. Halts. 

“A prince should not cry,” Daeron says, voice half-muffled by what might be the sheets. “A prince is supposed to be strong.”

The worst crime that a king can commit, according to some, is to be kind.

For all that her father was peaceful, for all that he protected her and her sons, defending them against accusations—

Was he kind? Was he ever gentle, compassionate, kind?

He married a fifteen-year-old girl and began forcing babes on her. He did not once defend his other children, even when a knife ended up in one of their eyes. He did not do anything prevent a war that consumed most of his descendants, just because he ached for peace.

Rhaenyra has no idea if he ever held his youngest son. If he held any of his children other than her at all.

And now, here Daeron is, having to carry the weight of everything that their father didn't bother to teach him, much less cradle him.

“I’m the queen, and I still cry,” Rhaenyra admits, “I cried when I lost my sons. I cried during my first wedding. I cried when I had to—" She swallows. She cannot say when I realized I had to marry you, because she is a woman in her thirties, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. She does not want to seem weak.

But in the dark of their room, nothing more than the moonlight and starlight through the windows to light the way, Rhaenyra thinks of the sad boy that she just saw on the floor, and she swallows, opening her mouth to admit the truth, because Daeron deserves it—

But then Daeron speaks, baring the truth of the raw underside of his heart to her.

“Back in Oldtown,” Daeron says, voice quiet, “I didn’t have a mother. And the septons were only there to teach during the day. So when I dreamed of fire, when I had nightmares, when Ormund punished me—my uncle Gwayne would come to my room and tell me stories."

For a moment, Rhaenyra thinks shall I need to take a dragon’s justice against more than one Hightower on the morrow?

The only uncle she ever had was one that lit her up from the inside, every vein set alight each time he looked at her, much less touched her. If this uncle of Daeron’s touched him in such a way, she will be willing to strike him down—

“It was all that I had to reassure me, when Ormund—when he touched, when he struck, when he raged—but then Gwayne left me behind, when he went to fight in the war,” Daeron says, and his voice breaks.

And it is instinct to punish a man who abandoned Daeron. To punish another who touched her brother, her blood.

And Rhaenyra is queen, now—she shall have her justice. She shall make an example that though she is a queen that wishes to have peace throughout the Seven Kingdoms, she shall not have anyone hurt those she considers her own.

A unified front, some part of herself thinks.

“But when you sent those assassins—he identified them as being imposters, and he stayed,” Daeron continues, and perhaps there is only one Hightower that she will need to punish. “He stayed, and not like Ormund did, where I felt like I was suffocating. When he was there, I could breathe, just a little bit. 

But then Aegon and Aemond died, and all the dragons killed each other, and I was willing to die amongst the war, because maybe if I did, I could make my life worth something.”

Rhaenyra’s heart clenches at the idea of losing yet another family member before she even got the chance to get to meet them, much less get to know them. It clenches at the idea of Daeron, fifteen, not yet even a knight, dying because he thought that was the only way that he could be worth something, as if he is not a dragonrider, as if he is not a Targaryen, as if he is not a prince, as if he is not her brother.

(She thinks of her mother, telling her that to lie in the birthing bed was to fight her ordained battle and then being carved open for the sake of someone else's greed. Thinks of Helaena, dead on the spikes. Of her boys, dead because they insisted on supporting her claim, who fought for her, who sent themselves straight into the storm to die in fire and blood, in salt and the sea.

She even remembers a boy who took a knife to the eye for the crime of claiming a dragon for himself, who never got justice for the crime because he spoke the truth that still could threaten Joffrey to this day, if someone decided to try and lift Aegon over him, brave in his own way.)

"I realized—" Daeron swallows, an audible breath. "I wanted to live, if it meant living with him, living to meet my mother, living to be able to maybe, just maybe fly someday."

Rhaenyra could hug him, but she doesn’t want to make him feel any sort of obligation, make him assume that in any way her intentions and promises have changed.

So instead, she just swears: “I promise you—you shall be able to fly forever. You are a Targaryen, my brother. And I will do anything and everything I can to make sure that you can fly."

She can’t see his face. He still isn’t looking at her.

It is a knife between the ribs, the fact that he doesn't trust her words, that he thinks that she would take away his birthright.

But she understands why the brother that she met on their wedding day does not wish to look her in the eye when speaking of something that leaves him this raw.

So they lapse into silence, and Rhaenyra doesn't push any further. Rhaenyra stares at the ceiling as his breath finally evens out, as her brother finally falls asleep next to her.

The marriage is unconsummated. The realm is at a fragile peace.

And Rhaenyra Targaryen is left to find a way to sew the pieces back together.

---

The night of her third wedding, Rhaenyra Targaryen dreams. She dreams of the water, of the sky, of floating, of flying, high above Blackwater Bay.

She dreams of fire and blood, of the boys she has lost, of each of her children, of the ghosts that cling to the skin of every survivor of the Dance of the Dragons.

She dreams of the crown that sits on her brow, iron and ruby, the gift of her ancestors, the curse of her father.

She dreams of a boy with rust-red hair and ghosts in his eyes, of a boy with dark hair and violet eyes and the ocean closing over his mouth, of the way that the lightning strikes and the entire realm goes up in flames and a mother is left to grieve the boys that she once cradled in her arms and nursed at her breast.

A mother dies in blood on the birthing bed. The bones and the kingdoms are cleaved in two. The realm is drowned in blood and fire. The babes drink blood instead of milk, and what few Targaryens are left rise from the ashes.

---

There is a knock at the door the next morning.

Rhaenyra wakes to laying in bed next to her brother, their bodies no closer than they were the night hence, and good for it.

She wishes Daeron to feel comfortable here in the Red Keep. For him to understand that she does not wish to ever bed him. For him to understand that she is the Queen, that she has power, not his cousin, not the Faith.

They both have dragons. They are both dragonriders.

And while she does not wish to bed him, does not desire him in anyway, and will not budge in that, some day, she thinks that he might make a decent Prince Consort. He clearly has a protective streak, a certain kindness, to him that will serve the realm well.

They can be partners without romance. He can be an advisor without the expectation of him having to give anything of his body to her, not for her, not for his cousin's fucking ambitions.

And so she steps out of bed to answer the knocking, to give her brother a chance to sleep.

(The worst crime that a king can commit is kindness, but she is not a king, is she?)

Rhaenyra opens the door to find two copper-haired figures standing there, tense as bowstrings waiting to fire, the Queensguard the only thing keeping them both from charging into the room.

While others are slowly waking with hangovers around the castle, the castle slowly gaining a gentle buzz in the golden aftermath of a royal feast, Alicent Hightower’s fingers are shredded, her hair unbound, a gown and slippers clearly hastily thrown on so that she can pace the stone floors outside of her son's wedding chambers. There are deep shadows bruising the underside of Gwayne Hightower’s eyes, a sword at his waist.

And when she emerges, the way that they look at her—

Rhaenyra knows they believe that she did it. That she bedded her brother, the child who sought to protect them.

That she is Daemon and Viserys Targaryen, come again.

And though frustration flares in Rhaenyra’s chest—do they really think so lowly of her—she has to admit that by all appearances, that is exactly what she did. What she argued for in the treaty signing. A claim to Daeron as Prince Consort, so that she could eliminate his claim in rivalry for hers.

“Did you do it?” Alicent demands, and Rhaenyra can see the claws of fate digging into Alicent, shredding her so thin that she doesn’t know if she won’t dissolve beneath a single breeze.

Did you have sex with my son? Did you take away the innocence of the last child I have left? Did you do to him what your father did to me?

Of course not, Rhaenyra thinks, The only person still alive who I have ever desired is the one person that I have loved for longer than she has hated me.

But while I could not save her from the wedding bed, I would not do the same to her son.

Rhaenyra shakes her head. “I did not touch him, save to give him clothing to wear,” she says, and Gwayne Hightower’s shoulders slump in what seems like relief—she thinks, at least.

But Alicent’s gaze is still all fire, all a mother’s worry, all ghosts, and so Rhaenyra opens the door to reveal Daeron, unmolested, unharmed, still asleep beneath the sheets, still wearing the dressing gown she’d draped over his shoulders last night.

Alicent’s gaze flicks to the table of oils, clearly undisturbed, and something in Rhaenyra realizes that Alicent, like as not, left those here as a gesture to ease whatever was about to take place, if it had to happen, perhaps to play as subtle a gesture as she could to ask or remind Rhaenyra to be gentle.

"You can go to him," Rhaenyra offers, "If you wish to confirm for yourself—"

Alicent rushes into the room to cradle Daeron’s cheek, to check him over, but where Alicent pushed and negotiated for gentler terms for her son in the negotiations for his hand, all Rhaenyra can remember is Gwayne glaring at her throughout the wedding.

And that might be a good thing, that might be a bad thing, depending on what he knew and what he expected to come from the proceedings.

So before Gwayne can enter behind Alicent, Rhaenyra’s palm presses against his armor, catching him in his tracks.

Gwayne Hightower's head snaps to look at her, but no matter the fact that he has a sword, he is pausing here, responding to the power that he knows that she has.

It’s clear that he likely wishes to strike her, to fight her, defiance blazing bright in his eyes, but she is the queen, and she is the person that is in control of his and his nephew’s fate, and he cannot risk earning her ire.

“Tell me,” Rhaenya demands, because she needs to make sure that he is as honest a man as Daeron purported him to be. “Did you help push him into this?”

Gwayne’s lips twist. “I wanted nothing more than to take him and run as far as we could away from you,” he snaps, and it is a treason to admit to, but it is the most honest thing he could have said. The thing that she respects most.

“Then why didn’t you?” Rhaenyra asks, thinking of what Daeron had told her last night about a man who told bedtime stories and seemed to have cared about his nephew.

Gwayne gives her a look. “Why did you marry a boy?”

“For the sake of the realm,” Rhaenyra says, though that’s only half of the answer, isn’t it? She married him for the realm, but also for her own power, for cutting the Greens’ claims off below the knee, because if Daeron is a prince consort then he could not make a bid for king, because he was her partner before he was a claimant in his own right.

And from the way that Gwayne is looking at her, he clearly believes that she’s lying, that he thinks that it was entirely for the sake of her own power, not for the realm at all—and from the way that she acted at the wedding and the banquet themselves, the way that she pulled Daeron away from everyone else, even if it all made sense from her own perspective, she understands as to why he is making the assumptions that he is. “Well, I am here for one boy’s sake. That is all. I failed him enough when I was younger, and I refuse to do it again.”

At least one person was looking out for Daeron, in and amongst all of the fire and blood and ambition that was trying to shred him to pieces for the vultures to feast on.

Rhaenyra swallows. “Then I thank you for it,” she says, and Gwayne’s eyes go wide. He was assuming the worst of her, and some part of her, the part of her that burns with dragonfire, wishes to strike out at him, to dig her claws in, to peel him open and make him understand that she never wished to terrorize her younger brother, that she had thought the boy a threat, an ambitious plotter, because that is what all the evidence seemed to point to, and that now that she knows the truth—

“Mother? Uncle Gwayne?” comes a half-awake, familiar boy’s voice from the bed, and his voice is full of relief, and so Rhaenyra lets go, letting her hand slip from Gwayne Hightower’s chest.

The instant that Gwayne is released, he rushes in after his sister to check on his nephew.

Rhaenyra, on the other hand, lingers for a moment. She knows that she needs to go in and speak to her brother, to her newly crowned husband, but she can trust Alicent and Gwayne to watch out for him for a moment while she takes care of a spot of business.

And Rhaenyra turns to the Queensguard outside of the doors. Ser Lorent and Ser Harrold both turn to look at her, their Queen.

They are both men that she trusts. They took her side in the Dance, and while Ser Lorent didn’t stop Jacaerys from riding out during the Battle of the Gullet, he did organize to bring her son Aegon home to her while Ser Harrold saved Joffrey from the riots in King’s Landing.

And thus, she trusts them to take care of the issue at hand.

“I need one of you two to instruct the gold cloaks to find Lord Ormund Hightower and arrest him. Have him brought to the throne room this afternoon for sentencing for his crimes.”

Ser Lorent arches an eyebrow. “The prince consort’s cousin?”

She nods, a quick jerk of a thing. She needs to get back into the room and speak with Alicent, Gwayne, and Daeron before she deals with Ormund and any fall out from what has happened yestereve. “He has committed crimes against the Prince Consort,” she says. "He has abused the prince in his youth."

They are Queensguard. They are sworn to the royal family above all else. They will do whatever it takes to protect her, her sons, and now her husband as well.

She swallows. Speaking of the Queensguard—Rhaenyra currently has six Queensguard. She was planning on filling the final spot with someone else, but now, she can see only one way to fill out the final spot.

“And also—Lord Commander Lorent, prepare for Ser Gwayne Hightower to be made a member of the Queensguard. In specific, he shall be the Prince Consort’s official sworn shield.”

Gwayne was already Daeron’s sworn shield when they arrived in King’s Landing, but if she wants Daeron to feel safe and comfortable, then she will make sure that he has his uncle by his side at all times.

Her Queensguard both nod at her, giving small bows before splitting off in different directions. Soon enough Lorent shall likely send another Queensguard to assume a position next to her door, she is sure, but for now—

For now, she enters back into her chambers, shutting the door behind her. There she finds Daeron sitting up in bed, her robe still drawn tight around his shoulders, Alicent sitting on the bed next to her son and Gwayne standing by his side, his spine stiff but his hand gentle as he leans over and checks Daeron's cheek, his jaw, Gwayne's fingers moving quick as he examines.

For a moment Rhaenyra’s brow furrows—Alicent was afraid of Rhaenyra defiling her son, using him, but why would Gwayne check there—but then Rhaenyra thinks about choking, about bruises shaped like fingerprints, and the clues about Ormund Hightower’s ways to raise a prince are unspooling before her to weave themselves together in a grotesque tapestry.

When Daeron’s gaze lands on her, he opens his mouth to begin apologizing: "I am so—"

But Rhaenyra shakes her head. 

You are your mother's son, Rhaenyra thinks, But I refuse to be my father's daughter.

“I made you a promise last night,” Rhaenyra says, “We shall never bed each other. You shall only be prince consort in title alone. But we shall stay married, to protect you.” She does not allow her gaze to flick to Alicent as she says, “All of you. Gwayne shall become an official member of the Queensguard and shall be your sworn shield.” Gwayne’s eyes go wide, and she thinks she sees the moment that trust starts to genuinely root itself between the two of them, Gwayne finally starting to put some small amount of faith in her that she does have some measure of Daeron’s better interests at heart. “Alicent shall not have to marry ever again if she does not wish it. And at this moment in time, Ormund Hightower is being arrested.”

All three of their copper-haired heads whip in her direction, eyes widening, jaws dropping. 

“You did what?” Gwayne hisses.

“For his crimes against the prince consort,” she explains, and looks right at Daeron as she swears: “No one is allowed to hurt you."

Daeron’s eyes are flint-strike-bright as he stares at her. 

He is not some frightened little thing anymore. There is something in his spine that speaks to the Targaryen dragonfire, to the Hightower endurance, to the fact that he is ready to bear the weight of the crown of the greatest queen that Westeros has ever seen on his head. That maybe one day he will grow into.

And there is some measure of faith forming in his eyes as she offers out a hand to her brother. "So—would you like to make a new alliance out of the existing one?"

Daeron stares at her hand for a long, hard moment, before taking it and shaking it, his lips twitching into something approaching a smile.

---

Elinda arrives with a tray of breakfast—enough for both the Queen and the Prince Consort. She doesn't even blink at the sight of the Queen Dowager or the Prince Consort's sworn shield being present in the room—Rhaenyra knows that she has had Elinda witness far stranger things over the years.

But while the little red-haired trio split the meal, speaking quietly together, Rhaenyra goes to stand. "I would ask that you change and get ready for our first day in court together," Rhaenyra says, "If we are to rule well together, then we must present a united front."

Daeron looks at her long and hard and nods.

Alicent kisses her youngest—and now only—child’s forehead, and to Rhaenyra’s surprise, she says, “Wait, Your Grace, might I speak to you out in the hallway?”

Rhaenyra nods. She did not think that Alicent would wish to speak with her after everything that has occurred—not just these past few days, but these past few years.

Although—she does have to admit that she should have guessed that Alicent would like as not wish to slice into Rhaenyra for the terror that she put Daeron through over the past day, no matter how intentional such circumstances have been.

But to Rhaenyra's shock, when they make it out into the hallway, Alicent flings her arms around Rhaenyra's shoulders.

“Thank you,” Alicent says, voice fervent with gratitude, and she buries her face into Rhaenyra’s neck like they are young girls again rather than shells of the girls that they once were.

We have too many dead children between us, Rhaenyra wants to murmur into Alicent’s familiar lavender-scented hair. When they were young girls, it had always awed Rhaenyra, the way that Alicent smelled of the Reach even when so far from home.

“You didn’t have a choice to marry my father, did you?” comes out instead, soft as the first winter snow settling into the skin, bright and blistering and yet soft as silk.

And Alicent freezes in her arms.

But Alicent has always had an effect on Rhaenyra that cannot be matched, it must be said, because Rhaenyra cannot stop the words that bubble from her lips, babbling like a brook: “I wanted to give him as much of a choice as he could have. I know he cannot marry how he wishes, but I swear to you—he can love how he wants. He can find a girl or a boy to be with. He shall have a future in a way that we did not.”

When Alicent pulls back to look at her, there is a soft, sweet smile on Alicent’s lips, the sort of thing that Rhaenyra had been so sure that she would never be able to see again after Lucerys and Jaehaerys and Helaena and all the rest.

But perhaps there is a chance, just a chance, to begin again. A chance to find some small streak of sunlight amongst all of the clouds.

Rhaenyra knows a thing or two about the skies, after all.

And to her soft, shocked delight, Alicent reaches out and entwines their fingers together.

And for a moment, Rhaenyra feels half a girl again, her head pillowed in Alicent’s lap in the godswood, the entire world at her fingertips, wondering what it might be like to kiss the mouth in front of her, to taste the faith of a girl that made a life on prayer.

(Rhaenyra got that, once. Just the once. And she craved it ever since, even if she couldn’t be sure if Alicent craved the same or if there was naught but regrets spilled like rue in their wake.)

---

Alicent helps Rhaenyra dress for her first day as Queen, and there is something about Alicent’s fingers skimming across Rhaenyra’s back, lacing her stays, adjusting her jewels, that takes Rhaenyra back to those halcyon days before it all went wrong, to a certain reckless bravery that she didn’t know how to find last night.

Rhaenyra does not need to dress as richly as she did yesterday, but she does not eschew her role, either.

She is the Queen. The first ruling Queen of Westeros.

And thus, for her first official day overseeing court, a prince consort at her side, she dresses in a dagged-sleeved gown of rich reds and golds and blacks, dragon embroidery along the neckline and the shoulders, a match to the crown on her head and the signet ring on her finger.

Daeron, in his turn, is dressed in Targaryen blacks embroidered in gold, his hair filling the other color of their sigil. He might not fit the traditional Targaryen appearance, but his eyes are bright and when his uncle settles Alysanne’s crown on his head with a proud, grim smile, he looks enough the part.

And Rhaenyra will make sure that Daeron grows into it. He certainly has enough potential, and she will have tutors and advisors to make sure that he is aided in his growth.

Perhaps a seat on the small council in a few years, if he proves himself to be as capable as she thinks he might be. Not too much power too fast, but enough, down the line, once she knows his strengths.

For now, though, his cousin is to be dealt with.

Rhaenyra cannot have Ormund’s head taken for a marriage that she agreed to, she knows. She cannot him punished for selling Daeron to her.

But she can have him repaid for what he did to Daeron, if she just words the crimes in the right way.

So Ormund Hightower is dragged in as Rhaenyra sits on the Iron Throne, Conqueror’s crown on her head, iron and ruby, Daeron standing at her side, wearing his own golden crown, but this time, he is not the terrified boy that he was yesterday. He is less a picked-raw nerve trying to soothe itself and more a boy starting to fill the shoes that he has been set into.

Their lips are already scarring. A matching scar, for two siblings facing the world together, for two dragonriders facing the world together, blue and gold.

(Someday, will they call them the Good Queen Rhaenyra and the Good Prince Consort Daeron, heirs to Alysanne and Jaehaery’s legacy? Rhaenyra cannot begin to guess how the histories will speak of them, but she does have hope that they will think of them as good and righteous rulers who pieced the realm back together after the bloodiest war it has ever faced.

The world will think what it will of them, but Rhaenyra does not care what others think is going on between the two of them as long as they know what they are and they present a united front against enemies: including this first one that she will deal with now that the war has ended.)

They have witnesses to her first official acts as a married queen. Alicent, Gwayne, Rhaena, Baela—they are all in the room, as well as the Queensguard and some scattered once-green-loyal lords, who she imagines will be quick to distance themselves from Ormund once the charges are laid at his feet.

“Do tell me,” Rhaenyra orders, “What Ormund Hightower has to say for himself when it comes to his treatment of his cousin, my brother, my prince consort, Daeron Targaryen I?”

Ormund’s gaze is simpering, charming, as he says, “I did more than my duty in raising Prince Daeron to become a strong, pious prince,” pride clear in his eyes.

But she can see through it.

Ormund Hightower is her last husband, her uncle, writ into Hightower coloring: not the auburn hair that Alicent, Daeron, and Gwayne collected from their Florent mother, but rather the chestnut hair of Hobert and Otto Hightower. All hunger, all need for control and power, all ambition that she will crush out the cruelty of.

“You know that you did far worse than that," Rhaenyra accuses.

“What charges do you lay on me, Your Grace?” Ormund asks, and though his voice is kept mostly level, proud despite being forced onto his knees by her gold cloaks, there is something in the way that he says the words Your Grace that sounds like he wishes to spit her title like an insult.

And from what Daeron and Gwayne told her before they entered the throne room of how Ormund spoke of her, she has no doubt as to what he would be saying if they were alone in a room together.

“You have struck the future Prince Consort of the Seven Kingdoms. You have misused him. You have laid hands on a prince of royal blood. And for laying your hands on the future Prince Consort of the Seven Kingdoms,” she says, “You, Lord Ormund Hightower, shall be banished from court and stripped of half of your family's gold, to be returned to the crown and to the prince you dishonored."

Rhaenyra would have stripped Ormund of his title and handed it off to Gwayne, but she is not going to force one of the only people who tried to protect her brother from his side. Rather keep Ormund weakened in Oldtown, far away from court, than force Gwayne away.

Thus, this is the compromise.

“A tyrannical cunt,” Ormund seethes, stripped of all of his bravado, and she doesn’t even blink an eye. She cannot, if she wishes to appear strong, to protect not just Joffrey, Aegon, Baela, and Rhaena, but also Daeron, Alicent, and Gwayne. “With incestuous lusts, wishing to take your brother—"

Around them, the formerly green-aligned lords are squirming. Ormund is raising points that she knows that some of them agree with.

But she has placed a wrench into the works.

These lords cannot cleave to Ormund and maintain their loyalty to Daeron. She is splitting what power is left to a rival claimant’s down the middle. Daeron’s cause and hers are the same and that is the cause of justice and she will not let these lords and ladies forget it.

“And I shall also have your right hand,” Rhaenyra says casually, “So that you may not strike another innocent child.”

It is at this that Ormund finally flinches, blood draining from his face.

Ormund looks to Daeron, likely for sympathy, for loyalty, and Rhaenyra would have been worried yesterday, but she has guaranteed her brother his uncle and his mother by his side, a place of protection from those who would wish to discipline, punish, or otherwise attack him.

And Daeron is hers, her brother. He does not belong to the man that wishes to peel his dragon away from him.

And so she is not surprised when he stares right at Ormund with eyes as sharp and bright as moonstone and says, “Someone once told me that a righteous ruler must demonstrate that he upholds many virtues. Honor, wisdom, justice. What did the man say? “He laid hands on a Hightower. That soldier was an extension of me. Of the crown. Justice must be done.”"

Ormund’s face, if possible, goes paler, and Rhaenyra can tell that Daeron is quoting Ormund’s own words back to him.

And something in Rhaenyra cannot help but respect the strength in her brother’s tone.

When he’d surrendered last night, she’d wondered if he’d be able to be sharp enough to be prince consort. If kindness might be so strong as to cripple him.

But there is a steel in him. A dragonfire in his eyes.

Ormund Hightower shall find no allies on the Iron Throne. Daeron will let him rot, for what he did to Alicent and Gwayne and Daeron himself.

Rhaenyra and Daeron are not their father. While they can have kindness, can have compassion, they will not let conflict pass them by for the sake of maintaining the peace.

---

With Ormund Hightower taken care of, Rhaenyra can finally keep her other promise to Daeron.

So they get dressed in riding leathers and they head out to the Dragonpit, where she is finally able to find Aegon and Joffrey with their dragons and their minders. Tyraxes and Stormcloud are not yet large enough to ride, but the boys can still find a connection with their hatchlings.

And here, finally, Rhaenyra can grab her two boys left and pull them into her arms and kiss their hair.

They spent the war in the Vale, and then Pentos, and she has spent so many days being grateful that they did not come back to King’s Landing until the fighting and rioting was over. They did not have to experience the horrors of war, of rebellion, of the death of so many dragons.

Now, though, she can properly introduce them to what family they have other than their sisters.

When she pulls back from hugging her boys, she wraps an arm around each of their shoulders and turns them to Daeron, who has been watching them with cautious, hopeful eyes.

“This is your uncle,” she says, “Daeron the Daring.”

Daeron rolls his eyes, and she is happy to see it, happy to see that he is at least a little bit more comfortable with her than last night. “I am not that Daring,” he says as he squats down in front of her boys. “It is nice to meet you,” he says, all Alicent’s sincerity from their childhood.

You are plenty daring, Rhaenyra thinks, You were brave enough to sell yourself if it meant the safety of those you cared about.

Aegon just offers up a gummy smile. "Nice to meet you, Uncle Daeron." Since he moved back into the Red Keep after the war, he has largely been able to forget the horrors that occurred. He is but four years old, now—she has hope that he will be able to grow out of any of the more terrible memories.

Joffrey, who was raised by Daemon, an uncle in his own way, looks up at Daeron with a furrowed brow, as if trying to figure out the way that uncle and prince consort might combine in a way that doesn't equal romance.

Rhaenyra does not say this is your new stepfather. She does not say Daeron, here are your new children.

She wants Daeron to just be able to be whatever he wishes to be. Her brother, not her husband. A child, growing towards maturity, rather than thrust into being a parent before he is ready. He is closer in age to her living sons than to her and he deserves time to grow into being a ruler.

Yes, he shall wear the crown to protect him from the wishes of others. Ormund Hightower and other greens shall not be able to use him as a pawn any longer when he is protected by his title, but he shall have time to grow into the title.

The two of them can be good rulers, down the line, she would like to think, she Jaehaerys and he Alysanne, with Joffrey and Aegon as their princes, but without romance between them.

They do not need any romance between them in order to be good rulers. As a matter of fact—it might even help, not to have that distraction between them.

Daeron seems to catch Joffrey's hesitance, his confusion, because he offers up: "I would love to get to know you all a bit more. My own uncle is my favorite person, and I know you two both already have favorite people, but I would like it very much if I could get to know you better."

Gwayne smiles over Daeron's shoulder, beaming at his nephew.

And it seems as if the fondness is infectious, because Joffrey's confusion and apprehension melts in favor of an enthusiastic offer to: "Want to meet Tyraxes, Uncle Daeron?"

Daeron glances up to Rhaenyra, to his mother, to his uncle.

Rhaenyra nods at her brother, who turns back to Joffrey and lets the young boy drag him over to the dragons.

And Rhaenyra sees the ache and yearning and softness in his eyes when he sees Tessarion, when he reaches out to her, the dragon kept in the Sept, chained beneath the Hightower's faith.

Rhaenyra refuses to let that happen to her—to either of them—ever again.

Tessarion nuzzles into his hands, into his face, and he smiles, unheeding of the ash that smears across his face, as he climbs up into her saddle.

And then he pulls back on the reins, and she flies.

Daeron's delighted laughter can be heard across the Red Keep—hells, likely across the entirety of King's Landing—and it is a gift to hear.

Rhaenyra looks at Alicent, at Gwayne, at her own boys.

"Will you?" Rhaenyra asks, looking from Alicent to her boys, and Alicent nods.

And if Alicent trusts Rhaenyra with her son, then Rhaenyra will trust Alicent with hers.

So Rhaenyra leans over and kisses Aegon and Joffrey’s foreheads, and then Rhaenyra climbs onto her own dragon.

Her dragon flew alongside one husband after another’s over the years. First Seasmoke, then Caraxes, silver-gray and then blood red.

And now, deep blue. The color of the sea. The color of the sky.

The color of hope.

Golden and sapphire fly through the sky together, Rhaenyra and her little brother, a girl and her brother, not a woman and her husband, no matter what they swore yesterday.

The wind whips through Rhaenyra's braids, and this is not what she dreamed of when she was younger, flying alongside the uncle that she thought was her future, was all of her, was more herself than she was—

But this could be good, she thinks. 

---

When they land half an hour later, Rhaenyra watches him slide off of Tessarion and smile at Rhaena, who despite not hatching a dragon yet is eager with questions, with a stubborn glint in her eyes.

Good, Rhaenyra thinks—it would be good for her brother to find a desire of his own in a girl far closer to his age.

Meanwhile Alicent is smiling at Rhaenyra, and Rhaenyra thinks—

A side effect of keeping Alicent close to home, close to the throne, close to Daeron, is keeping her close to Rhaenyra.

Maybe they can mend what seams have shredded between them. Maybe they can have the sort of life that allows all of them to find love and happiness while maintaining the power needed to make things better.

Rhaenyra offers out a hand to Alicent, and she takes it.

Rhaenyra cannot flirt with a woman on the day after her wedding, cannot wink, cannot take a mistress or do anything when the realm is this fresh from war and her marriage is the only thing keeping it together, but she can raise the Queen Dowager’s hand to her lips and kiss her knuckles, a gesture of chivalry.

Alicent’s cheeks pink, as rosy and beautiful as the sunrise, and Rhaenyra thinks of one morning, two decades ago, when they’d played kissing games, and she’d gotten a taste of Alicent Hightower’s mouth.

Alicent had blushed a deep scarlet and scurried off and within the year Rhaenyra’s mother was dead and Alicent was marrying her father and her entire world was ending, but now Viserys and Otto and Daemon are all dead, and Rhaenyra and her brother, Alicent's son, are the two most powerful people in the realm. They can make the world what they wish it to be.

And Rhaenyra looks at Daeron who is speaking softly with Rhaena, a hopeful smile on his lips, looks at Gwayne Hightower, who is smiling proudly at his nephew, looks at Alicent, who is smiling back at her, and she thinks—the world can begin again with the sun each morning. And between all of us, perhaps we can find a new world together.

A better question is—how do I want to live the rest of my life and what am I going to do to ensure that I get to do it exactly or as close as possible to how I want that living to be?

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.

I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere. Until it's ever breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!

—Audre Lorde, A Burst Of Light