Archive of Our Own

And, for a while, I thought I was

                                                                                                the princess,

cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,

       young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with

confidence

            but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,

while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,

                                                               and getting stabbed to death.

                                    Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.

-Richard Siken, Litany With Certain Things Crossed Out

Princess Daenys Targaryen was born with strawberry gold hair. The maesters were sure that it would lighten to silver-gold over time, just as they were sure that her bright blue eyes would settle to proper Targaryen lilac, just as her baby-round cheeks would sharpen to a Targaryen’s beauty.

Her father didn’t pay attention, but the lords of the realm did. Of course they did. 

A Targaryen princess, especially one who would some day become a pretty thing, would make a perfect bride and a great prize for some great Lord, just as her great-Aunt Daella once was.

(At the end of the day, Daenys did none of these things, because she died before the age of sixteen, a ghost without a body found over the ashen battle of Tumbleton.

Or, at least—the girl named Princess Daenys died.

The boy who rode her dragon didn't.)

---

There is a period in Princess Daenys' childhood in which she is convinced that she shall become a septa. A period where she knows that she veil her hair and read the Seven-Pointed Star and heal people and teach young girls and she doesn't mind the idea that much.

Daenys has always been good at being obedient and pious, after all. Her own septas tell her that.

And while she’s already getting rather good with the sewing needle, she doesn’t much like a lot of the fashions that they want her to wear when she’s older, things with jewels and shiny things and lace and bare collarbones and the like.

Septas don’t have to wear jewelry. They don’t have to array their hair with flowers. They don’t have to birth babes.

Malora Redwyne, the freckle-faced and honey-haired younger daughter of Lord Redwyne and the wife of Daenys’ older cousin Ormund, curls Daenys’ little fingers around her stomach, distended, rounded by a babe, and tells her that one day, Daenys shall sit in the birthing bed just like she does, that one day she shall birth little princes and princesses for her lord husband.

The words are not intended to be terrifying, Daenys doesn't think, not like the tall tales that Gwayne likes to tell her about giants and dragons and sea serpents and the creatures that prowl the depths around the Iron Islands.

Malora smiles as she says it. Malora Hightower, once Redwyne, loves being a wife, loves being the Mother, loves getting to fulfill the role that she’s supposed to. She speaks of children as gifts from the Mother, as the best miracle that a woman can hope for.

But when Daenys feels the hard swell beneath her fingertips, the way that Malora’s stomach bucks and moves, the way that Malora was emptying her stomach on the daily until the maesters declared her bedridden so that she didn’t die, she thinks—

I am not as strong as Malora, because I could never do such a thing.

Daenys knows that a woman is supposed to become the Mother, but there is another way that she fulfill her vocation in life—if she was a Septa, her body would not have to change. She would not need to grow breasts or birth a child.

Septa Daenys still doesn't sound quite right to her, but the idea of never having to birth babes like Malora is very appealing.

This calling doesn't last very long, though. Soon enough, she realizes that there are no dragonriders that are septas, that she would have to trade Tessarion for the Seven-Pointed Star, and she refuses to do that.

Daenys knows that cousin Ormund doesn’t like Tessarion. That he thinks of Tessarion as a monster, an abomination, not a gift, not a miracle.

Cousin Ormund is Lord of Oldtown, the Beacon of the South, the defender of the Faith, newly minted after his father died last year. What he says about magic, about miracles, about the Seven, must be true.

And so Daenys knows that there is something wrong in her that she can never quite carve out of her veins.

Perhaps becoming a septa would have allowed her to cleanse herself of the instinct. Of the ache. Of the hollow that can only be filled by the sinful temptation of reaching toward the heavens.

Men are supposed to stay on the ground, Cousin Ormund says, They are not supposed to think themselves pious enough to reach towards the heavens.

What about the Hightower? Daenys had asked at a young age, and cousin Ormund’s nostrils had flared in frustration, but she’d been too young to know what nervousness was. To know what fear was healthy to have around a man who might take out his anger on someone around him, especially if someone contradicted him.

The Hightower is still connected to the ground, Ormund had eventually said, It keeps us anchored.

Daenys wants to be the perfect princess. She wants cousin Ormund to appreciate her. To be fond of her. To be as proud of her as he is of his own children.

Uncle Gwayne doesn’t agree with cousin Ormund, though.

When he speaks of Tessarion, he speaks of her as Daenys’ companion, not her chain. Not the temptation anchoring her to sin and ill.

Uncle Gwayne speaks, sometimes, of getting to see the dragons when he went to tilt at the tourneys in King’s Landing when he was younger. He speaks of them not in glowing terms, but in matter-of-fact ones, as companions, as beasts, but not as monsters.

Daenys likes spending time with her uncle Gwayne. He isn't always the closest person in her life, but he's the one who lets her get away with the most, the one that encourages the parts of her that are not bound by the Seven-Pointed Star and strict rules and the like.

For example: Uncle Gwayne teaches his niece to play the lute, the sort of thing that is one step away from a proper lady. A lady would learn the harp, but an instrument is still considered elegant enough.

Well, until her cousin points out that she is a proper lady, not a minstrel, and Daenys has to take to only playing the lute when Ormund is guaranteed to be busy with other things.

But there is a certain wildness in her that she cannot tuck away entirely, and so there are certain things that she learns to keep in silence, in privacy, rather than where anyone can hear.

---

Malora nearly dies in this childbirth, in birthing young Garmund, and the maesters caution Ormund on any others. He already has three sons, and if Malora gives birth again, then there is every chance that she would die for sure this time, greeting the Stranger with open arms.

So Malora doesn’t get pregnant for a few years, and Daenys thinks that Ormund is a pious, obedient man who treats his wife with respect. She wishes to be that sort of spouse one day, the sort of spouse that someone could trust to keep her spouse safe.

---

Gwayne tells Daenys that at one point, her mother says there was a bit of a controversy with Daenys' name. At one point, the king wished to name her after his beloved late wife's mother, his own aunt, but had ended up naming her after the first Dreamer.

Well, if Daenys could have had another name, she wonders about choosing her own name instead. Could she have something that wasn't given to her by her father?

Daella isn’t bad, but it’s still not right. Jaime is closer to what she needs, something that could fit anyone, but she likes the D, likes the sharpness of it on her tongue, and she wants to keep at least some of what her parents gave her.

And in looking up old names of Targaryens, she finds the name of Aegon and Elaena Targaryen's younger brother Daeron. 

So she tests it out on her tongue, and it feels more natural than anything else she has come across.

And one day, when they are training on the lute, Daenys—or, Daeron, perhaps, in her own mind—asks Gwayne if he could call her it as well.

“It’s just a nickname,” she says, even though her fingers are sweating, because it’s so much more than that, but if she admitted how big it means to her, how vast its meaning, then he would be unlikely to accept it, because to admit that the name her mother gave her doesn’t fit her broad shoulders then she would be seen as ungrateful.

And Gwayne calls her it, too, but never in front of Ormund, and she understands why.

To Ormund, she is the Maiden pure. Her mother reborn, a Hightower maiden with flowing Florent-auburn locks, two braids entwined behind her head, gold-edged green skirts arrayed out from her.

Gwayne doesn't quite understand why she feels more comfortable in her skin under the two syllables of a masculine name rather than the dreamy one her mother gave her, the name of a girl who saved her dynasty from being devoured by the Doom of Valyria, the entire world coming up to swallow them all whole in a gush of lava and fire and ash.

After all, Daeron knows a thing or two about feeling like she’s suffocating. She knows a thing or two about the smell of dragonash, even if she isn’t allowed to spend more time than a gasp or two with Tessarion, the Blue Queen.

She doesn't want a legacy. She doesn't want Daenys the Dreamer’s purple silks and jewels and children to weight down her shoulders.

Daeron is a girl that can build something for herself. Can claim something, one small thing, for herself rather than letting the world carve her to fit its expectations.

“You have your mother's strength,” he says, but there's some note of grief in his eyes, some note of sorrow, as he speaks a blasphemy to say: “I just hope you don't have her fate.”

Daeron is just ten, but she can't help but think so do I.

Since she first held her hand to cousin Malora’s stomach, feeling the taut swell of a stomach beneath her fingers, she has not wanted that fate. She has not wanted to be Queen. She has not wanted the babes or the crown. It seems a shiny thing that requires babes, and if something requires her being in the birthing bed, she can’t see a reason why anyone could convince her that is a price she would be willing to pay.

She knows that it’s what’s expected of her. What she is supposed to do. What every maiden is supposed to pray to experience.

She is good at embroidery. At her studies. At the tiny moments of detail.

But it's what she's supposed to be, and thus it itches beneath her skin.

She isn't a dreamer. She isn't a proper Hightower lady.

But even if Gwayne doesn't understand her, he does go along with it. Calls her by the name. Doesn’t tell her that it’s just a childish whim. Ruffles her hair when it's just the two of them and her hair hasn't been pinned and braided up for the day.

When she's with Gwayne, she doesn't feel a proper lady. She feels like a kid. A person.

---

Other princesses, at age eleven, are given handmaidens. Are even given ladies of their own. Daeron's own mother was made Princess Rhaenyra's official lady in waiting at this age.

But Daeron gets a different place of honor.

When Daeron is eleven, she is made Ormund’s cupbearer.

Ormund says it is a place of honor, and of course it is. To be a lord’s cupbearer, to be invited into meetings, to serve the high lord of a city as grand and important as Oldtown, is a gesture of trust and privilege. 

Daeron is a girl. She cannot be a squire. She cannot batter and callous her fingers with the hilt of a sword. 

But she can bear the weight of a cup. She can listen in on important meetings that Ormund has with his council, this imitation of the Small Council in King’s Landing—or, as Ormund points out, the Small Council was an echo of councils that already existed to the kings that existed before Daeron’s ancestors poured across the country and took what didn’t belong to them.

Still—despite the fact that it’s an honor, despite the fact that it’s supposed to be a privilege, Daeron can feel the weight of a crown she's never worn on her head.

She is a princess, and she is obedient, and to have a princess obedient to you is a powerful thing. She can feel it every time that a new lord enters the room and his eyes go wide at her strawberry-gold hair, the proud announcement of Ormund as to the identity of his cupbearer.

(Though it must be said that awe is replaced by shock as the years go along and her hair darkens and she starts to look far more like a daughter of the Hightower, like the mother she’s never met, rather than a Targaryen princess. The only thing that could give away her identity at this point is the blue dragon that is currently chained up in the Sept.

If only meetings like this were held in the Sept. Then Tessarion could bare her teeth and these lords could learn what it meant to go up against a dragon, a true dragon— 

But no. To be a dragon is to be an abomination. To be hungry in a way that cannot be truly answered.)

So she gets to see the edge of Ormund Hightower’s anger young. The way he rages at servants. The way that if he had a sword in hand, the edge of his table might suffer the bite of his rage.

He doesn't touch her, but his fingers slip close, sometimes—

But she's sure that he won't hurt her. He wouldn't touch a girl that he is supposed to protect, she's sure of it. He is the Lord of Oldtown. The Beacon of the South.

Most of the men on Ormund's council would all love to see beneath her skirts, but Ormund has a wife and thus he sees Daeron as an extension of his house, a trophy, an icon of the faith, but not as a potential bride.

And there is something strangely reassuring in that.

Ormund will not ever want him like that, no matter how much his hands linger on Daeron’s shoulders, no matter how much his gaze follows her, no matter how fondly he smiles at her.

Ormund has never taken a mistress. He is too wed to the purity of marriage. To the image of his wife as the Mother. 

He is far more a devout man than Uncle Gwayne, Daeron has always known that. Ormund is the sort of lord that a princess like her would be lucky to have, she knows.

But he doesn’t, and that is why he is safe to be around. To know that each time that he curls a hand around her cheek, that he curls his fingers around her jaw, that he lingers a hand on her shoulder, that he smiles at her like that— 

It is the fondness that a child who has never had a parent craves.

Uncle Gwayne is a safe place to go to, but in the sort of way that she thinks that an older brother or sibling might be. The sort of safe place that one might call a garden, the place that the sun shines through the tree branches, the gentle breeze that crosses over the cliff faces of Battle Island in the spring time.

Ormund is stronger. A tree, unto itself. A trunk to brace her life against. The Lord of Oldtown, as enduring as the Hightower itself.

But knowing all of that, knowing that they are both safe in their own ways, knowing that they are both good in their own way—

That doesn't stop the itching beneath her skin every time Ormund touches her.

There is something in Daeron that aches for Ormund’s approval, it must be said. He is the father that she has never had. He is the head of the house.

But there is a barrier between them because he’ll never truly get her.

Ormund says Princess Daenys, but Daeron knows that that isn’t her. That she never could be. That there is something about the name, about the word princess, that doesn’t fit and never could.

So Daeron bears his cups, and she keeps her new name nestled beneath her gowns like a precious jewel, a secret only given to those that she trusts can understand how she feels, what she needs, the shape of the skin that she inhabits.

---

Daeron is a devout girl, it must be said, no matter how much she likes her lute, no matter how much she likes to try on new names like new clothing, no matter how much her needle pricking her skin feels like reminders that she is not callousing her fingers with a sword but rather with embroidery.

She doesn’t want to hate the work that she does. She doesn’t want to hate her own skin.

But she can’t help herself. She cannot help but look at herself, at the face in the mirror, at the long coppery hair that is darkening more with each month, and think—

This doesn't fit me. This isn't the person that I want to be.

But she does it even though she hates it, because she is devout, because she is obedient, because she is the child that her siblings are not said to be, each a problem in their own ways according to Gwayne and Ormund's separate information from King's Landing.

It is a chance idea one day: she enters the Sept to pray with one of Ormund's guards by her side.

It is an awkward thing, as usual. Being this close to Tessarion and yet so far away.

And Tessarion is clearly uncomfortable in her chains, twisting her head to get more comfortable, to find a way to get to Daeron.

Daeron understands it, even though she knows that she shouldn't. That she should stay far, far away from her dragon.

But Tessarion tilts her head, almost beckoning Daeron forward, and Daeron knows that she shouldn't touch, that her connection with Tessarion is an abomination, but she looks into those big golden eyes, the dragon that is hungry and aching and hers, and Daeron hesitates before kneeling in front of the Maiden, where she has been taught to kneel her entire life so far, so far away from Tessarion.

Daeron looks up at the Seven in front of her. The Maiden and the Mother have never fit. The Crone doesn’t seem like her as well.

Some part of her is drawn to the Stranger, but she is young. Not yet flowered. She is not ready to die yet.

The Warrior and the Father aren’t quite right, either. Of course they’re not. She wields a needle, not a blade. She has never been able to step forward and fight in the way that she’s supposed to. She’s never been able to be what she wants to be.

So which is it, then? What is left?

What is left to weave together the pieces of a child that has never felt comfortable in their own skin?

Death or life?

Further breaking or mending?

Tessarion is chained down between the Smith and Father, between mending and justice, and Ormund always said that it was meant to counteract the abominable magic that courses beneath Tessarion’s scales, binding her Targaryen blood to the dragons and their cursed magic that seeks to devour the realm whole.

Daeron takes a step toward her girl. Toward Smith and Father. Between mending and justice.

And the answer spins itself in front of her, as instinctual as darning clothing or embroidering in a pattern she has practiced a dozen times.

Mending. Putting broken things together.

Daeron kneels in front of the candles in front of the Smith, and she can feel the questioning gaze of her guard on her.

But Daeron hasn’t gotten too close to Tessarion. She hasn’t gotten ash on her fingers, taking it back to Ormund to see his nostrils flare in disgust at the smell.

And so the Smith cannot be that strange.

Can it be that strange to wish broken things? Even though she is a girl, even though she is supposed to kneel at other altars, even though she is a princess—

Except, she's not quite a princess, is she?

She's not Princess Daenys. She is Daeron, the name curving more male in her mouth, and she thinks—

It is a heresy. A blasphemy. To even suggest that the Seven made a mistake when crafting the body that Daeron was born into.

It is more of a profanity than shrugging off the name that Daeron’s parents gave him.

But when Daeron tests he on his tongue when he prays silently, when he thinks him, when he thinks he, when he allows himself to let the word boy settle over his shoulders like a bridecloak— 

It feels more sacred than any prayer ever has.

In an instant, some of the tension in his spine just starts to melt. Some of the itch beneath his skin starts to soothe.

He still aches to be free. Still aches to fly. 

But there is some question in him that is answered. Some answer that is questioned.

Daeron Targaryen, prince. Boy.

(And as he leaves, he skates fingertips across Tessarion's scales, a touch he normally wouldn't allow himself, but there is a secret kept tucked beneath his bodice and Tessarion is as much his as his secrets are.)

---

Daeron tries to find the right moment to tell Gwayne, but there isn't a right time. There never seems to be a chance to get him alone, to bring up the fact that his niece is not a niece at all, that he is a prince rather than a princess.

And then Viserys Targaryen dies, and the dance finally begins.

The Hightowers have waited decades for this moment. For the chance to put Aegon III, Daeron's older brother, on the throne.

Daeron knows that he should be more upset that his father is dead, but he never met the man. Viserys Targaryen has never been anything other than a king on a faraway throne that Daeron's blood technically, theoretically, linked him to.

What he is more upset about is the fact that Gwayne leaves. Gwayne leaves to head to King's Landing to fight on the front, leaving behind Daeron, abandoning Daeron.

Yes, he does give Daeron a dagger as he leaves, squeezing Daeron's hand with an apologetic smile, but it's not enough.

There is no one left in Oldtown who could possibly understand him, and he cannot help but hate Gwayne for it, just a bit.

Gwayne has left Daeron in a city, in a tower, filled with people that only see him as a girl, as a maiden, as a future lady, as a fucking princess. People who would split him open with the maester’s knife if it meant extracting babes from his belly.

And yet he goes to fight for a nephew that Gwayne barely knows rather than the one that is here, the one who needs someone by his side.

The fury is a sharp thing inside of his chest, shrapnel from the siege that Daeron is about to have to face on his own.

But Daeron is a creature built for siege. Built to endure.

So Daeron digs his nails into his palms, grits his teeth, and resolves to survive the siege, no matter what it takes.

---

But then, age fourteen, he flowers, and it is a knife between the thighs—not just because the sensation stabs him in order to draw out his blood, but because there shouldn't be blood there, because he is a boy, because this isn't right.

Daeron tries to get rid of the sheets before he’s spotted, of course. He tries to get a maid to burn them.

But Ormund finds out, because of course he does, because Daeron has never been allowed his own private misery.

Every aspect of Daeron’s existence is on display. Is available for others to pick apart and judge and consume.

And so Ormund comes into Daeron’s room and Daeron wants to scream as Ormund smiles at him, this sweet thing, this fatherly thing, the sort of affection that Daeron craves so badly, “The Mother has finally blessed you. Someday, you shall join your mother in the birthing bed and birth new Hightower children.”

(Daeron should have seen the signs then. He should have realized what was waiting for him. But he didn’t, because when he looked at his cousin, at his uncle, he saw nothing but the men that had raised him, not the way that hands curl around things that they do not belong to.)

Daeron wants to protest that he is a Targaryen, but last names do not matter when a husband would drape a cloak over his shoulders and Daeron’s babes would carry a lord's last name and Daeron doesn't wish for babes in the first place.

Ormund smiles at him and he twines the end of Daeron’s flowing hair in his fingers, the coppery strands slipping through his fingers like silk, and it's too much. It's more than Daeron can handle.

Daeron is going to grow breasts and his hips will widen and the very idea of it makes him want to peel off his own skin, to shed it like a snake, to destroy every part of him that makes people think of him as the princess that he knows they call pretty will grow into beautiful.

To see beauty in things is one thing. To be a beautiful thing is something else entirely.

They call him pretty already, and they don't even know him, but he knows that it's the truth, that he has his mother's beauty shaped by some sort of Targaryen etherealness, and he wants to claw each of the words off of his skin, but he cannot do that, because Ormund needs a flower of the Reach to betroth away and Daeron is too obedient, too devout, to ruin such a thing—

But he is not betrothed immediately, and he isn't sure why.

Daeron is a princess by title. A third princess, with no chance of inheriting the throne, but a chance of a dowry beyond compare. He has one of the most valuable wombs in the country.

Daenys would never have been allowed to choose her own husband like Rhaenyra did. Helaena was wed to Aegon three years hence.

Even if his father the King has never given a single shit about Daeron and his future, his mother, grandsire, and cousin Ormund have enough ambition to fill the gap, he is sure of it.

So why is he not being sold off immediately to the highest or most righteous bidder to create an ally for his brother's cause?

---

Then Aegon dies in the Battle of Rook's Rest, it seems, and Aemond calls the banners, so they're defending Aemond's claim instead of Aegon's.

Right before they leave, Malora announces that she is pregnant once again. Her face is pale and a bit wan, her stomach already looking too large for her body, and some part of Daeron thinks—this is not a war that she can win, and yet Ormund charged into battle anyway—

But he cannot focus on that beyond hugging Malora and wishing her good health, because the Princess needs to go with the army as a source of morale.

But Daeron finally gets to ride Tessarion, because she is a symbol of power above any religious restrictions, and climbing up onto her feels more natural than breathing, especially when Tessarion trills in excitement when her chains are cut.

Daeron has to restrain everything he can to not whoop from her back. To not laugh in delight.

He cannot even bring himself to care about his long hair and his riding skirts, split like a woman who rides on horseback, because he is a dragonrider, and Ormund’s words of faith cannot take that from him.

(There is some voice in the back of his head that says you are a dragon and dragons hunger. Dragons devour.

What do you crave, Daeron Targaryen? What do you starve for?)

But when Daeron lands, he has to give up the riding leathers and slip back into proper gowns, has to accept the title of princess again, has to be the proper cupbearer.

Gwayne is somewhere in the Riverlands, he and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard (a knight that Ormund has nothing but a dismissive sneer and comments about his “Dornish blood” for), and there is no one here to be anything but a princess for.

---

But then cousin Malora dies in childbirth right as they take Tumbleton, right as Ormund gets the news that Aemond has disappeared somewhere over Harrenhal and will not be coming to save them all.

Something in Daeron aches for her. For the honey-haired girl with the bright smile who always had a kind, reassuring word for her husband's cousin. Who loved to sing even when she had so little pitch. Who was a devoted mother and Lady of Oldtown and who wanted, so badly, to have a family.

For the girl who wanted to be a good wife and bled for it.

And the position as Lady of Oldtown opens up, Daeron cracks right down the center, because he finds out what Ormund's plans are for him.

They are in Tumbleton, in the Footlys keep, and Ormund has thrown his fit over both Aemond's lack of arrival and Melora's passing and where that leaves him.

(Daeron had ushered the servants out of the room as he raged, because he knows all too well how dangerous Ormund's furies can get.)

But then Ormund clears his expression and he gathers up a table of his most trusted advisors.

His smile is proud, victorious, and Daeron has no idea why.

Yes, Daeron has never been a squire. Never been allowed to hold a blade larger than his fabric scissors.

But he did take his studies seriously. He studied not just the histories of both of his Houses, but their tactics in war.

Daeron knows that if Aemon is not arriving, then they have no way to defend their position. The Queen might have lost her sons and their dragons as well as Princess Rhaenyra and her Meleys, but she doesn't just have Syrax and Caraxes and Moondancer left on side; she has the dragonseeds as well, Seasmoke and Silverwing and Vermithor. Other than Vhagar, now possibly running wild somewhere in the Riverlands, she has all of the largest dragons alive, the mounts of Jaehaerys the Conciliator and Good Queen Alysanne. 

Sunfyre is dead. Dreamfyre has not left the Dragonpit in years. Morghul and Shrykos are barely more than hatchlings.

Ormund has one dragon, and it is one that he refuses to let see combat, because the princess is a delicate thing, because maidens are meant for marriage and not war, because he will never, ever be able to see Daeron as anything other than his mother’s daughter.

(They call Daeron's dragon the Blue Queen, and Daeron knows that Tessarion could fight, that she could fly, but she has no training. They have ridden together just the weeks that it took to get here to Tumbleton, days strung together, yes, but still just one trip in total.)

But he knows Ormund all too well to not anticipate that Ormund has some sort of plans. That Ormund's smile does not have a source behind it. Ormund is not an idiot—far from it, in fact. He has always had a trick up his sleeve, a miracle the Seven would be proud of.

And then, to Daeron’s shock, Ormund gestures him forward.

Daeron is used to pouring wine and standing in the corner of the room, watching, listening, calculating the best plans that he can.

He is not used to Ormund taking Daeron’s hands in his—hands that are blemished only by needle-prick scars and softened by lotions to be maiden-pure—and smiling at him as he announces, "I shall take my dear cousin Princess Daenys as my second wife so that we might have a proper King of Westeros."

There is honey in his voice as he makes the announcement, but a shudder coursing through her veins, ice shooting through her spine.

King. Not King Consort, King. The true power behind any throne.

As Ormund snarled when this entire war began, he does not view a woman as fit to rule. The presence of a cunt is enough to rule a person incapable of rational thought.

When they marry, with Aegon dead, with Aemond missing, with Jaehaerys dead, with Helaena Rhaenyra’s prisoner, with Jaehaera far too young to marry, with Rhaenyra’s bastard sons dying like flies and her only possibly trueborn sons missing and too young besides— 

Ormund shall be the closest man to the throne, ruling on behalf of his wife, a year shy of her majority. And if Daeron births a boy— 

A trueborn son of double Hightower get, secured.

To the Daenys of twelve, she might have found the pull of his words irresistible. Someone else making the decisions. Someone giving her the instructions she needed on how to be a pious child.

Daenys was obedient. A proper lady. Once, nearly a septa.

Even now, Daeron feels the urge to obey. To be the perfect cupbearer, the perfect acolyte of Faith and family loyalty, to answer duty just as his mother did.

There is no Gwayne here to remind him that he has the option to be anything else, after all. There is no Gwayne here to tell him you can be whoever you want.

There is no one to call him Daeron by his name. There are only the calls of Daenys, Daenys, Princess, future Green Queen— 

Not the Blue Queen. Not Tessarion. Not him, but just the Hightower Queen.

Ormund looks at Daeron with true fondness, true adoration, but he calls Daeron your grace, Queen Daenys, and he doesn't know Daeron at all.

Something in Daeron aches for Ormund's approval. Wants Ormund to look at him and say my boy.

But he knows that he won't get it. That from now until forever, he will never be anything but Ormund's lady. His princess and later his queen. A trophy that Ormund won, an ornament that he shall polish until it gleams with Hightower gold rather than Targaryen silver.

He knows it from the way that Ormund's hand rests not on Daeron's chest, as it might a boy, but on his hand and on his stomach, as if Ormund is imagining the babe hanging low in Daeron's stomach, Daeron the image of the Mother, the babe inside of Daeron’s stomach Ormund’s claim on the throne. 

Ormund will get closer to the throne than Daeron’s grandsire ever got, and with that claim, Daeron shall become far less powerless than Good Queen Alicent ever was. At least when Daeron’s father sickened, his mother was able to speak her thoughts from in front of the throne; Ormund will never give up such power. He shall rule with an iron first until the day that he dies, all in the name of Princess Daenys.

“You shall be as radiant as your mother the Queen,” Ormund says, nothing but affection and adoration in his voice, and Daeron’s stomach curdles.

Daeron knows, now, why he never received a betrothal, why Ormund didn’t even mention any offers to him, despite the fact that Daeron knows that there must have been some.

This has clearly a step Ormund has been planning for a long time. The reason why he never secured Daenys, a princess, a betrothal when her father had neglected it.

Perhaps even before his own wife died, he was imagining marrying a Princess, despite the fact that Daeron is of an age to his eldest child Lyonel, with his other children, Garmund and Martyn, within a few years of Daeron’s age as well. The only one that isn’t is Bethany, the surprise, the babe, the babe that killed Malora to birth, a little girl with Malora’s honey-hair and Ormund’s piercing eyes.

And Ormund wants Daeron to be their stepmother and then a mother. Daeron, fifteen-years-old, who is not a girl, no matter what Ormund says of him.

Daeron hears the words You shall be queen and birth generations of Hightowers to sit the Iron Throne, and he thinks of hips widening and breasts enlarging. Of babes distending the stomach.

Of blood on the bed, from Ormund taking him. From the babes ripping out of him. From a lifetime doomed to a body that will never, ever be his, but instead will be the property of a husband and the babe distending his abdomen and feasting upon his insides.

They told you not to put a babe in her belly and you bled her anyway, Daeron thinks, and something in him shatters. You emptied her out and bled her like a pig, and you didn't have to do it. You had three healthy sons. An heir and two spares. Any lord would be overjoyed.

But you wanted more. You wanted something else.

There is something buzzing, thundering, in Daeron's ears. He thinks he can hear a dragon keen, but that has to be a dream, a wish, more than anything, because Tessarion knows better and no other dragon would strike Tumbleton now, right?

Daeron is not meant to be a stepmother. He isn’t meant to be a mother, period. 

But Daeron knows that Ormund doesn’t see any of it. Of course he can’t.

All Daeron has ever been to Ormund is a chance for power, for devotion, for a way for House Hightower to satiate both ambition and faith.

Daeron can see the rationale as plainly as if Ormund had painted it in front of him: Ormund’s blood would filter out the taint in Daeron's. Him marrying a Targaryen bride would allow him to fold some measure of Hightower blood back into the line, to dilute Targaryen blood on the throne.

If they were to be coronated, then Ormund would get to arrange the marriages of their children, and certainly not to each other. Perhaps within a couple of generations there would not be enough Valyrian blood to harness dragons. There would be no dragonriders left.

“We shall marry within the fortnight,” Ormund says, and there is nothing that Daeron can do about it, because to everyone in this room, Daeron is just a maiden, just a girl, and Ormund is the only man in the room related to her, especially now that her brothers are dead or likely dead.

Hells; they haven’t received news from the field as to whether or not Gwayne has died in the Riverlands. Criston Cole is still alive, they know that as of the last raven, but Gwayne?

For all Daeron knows, Ormund is the only one that Daeron is related to that is still alive, end of story. End of tale.

Daeron gets wedded and bedded. Daeron is forced to pump out babes.

And all that he has to save him is a fortnight. Fourteen days. Fourteen days in which Daeron's only blessing will be the fact that Ormund believes too much in the Seven to take him ahead of the wedding. He shall care too much about the bedding, about marrying a maiden, to let anything else occur in the meantime.

This is Daeron's siege, he knows now. The thing that he has always been prepared to endure through.

He has to find a way out of this. He is no maiden. He is no bride.

And he cannot let Ormund make him into one.

---

But how?

What answer is there?

Daeron is alone, as alone as he ever has been. Who can help him escape?

---

There is something in Daeron that is tempted to sneak down into the Footlys’ cellars and drown his weight in sourwine.

Maybe that would burn away his insides. Maybe that would satiate the bottomless fucking hunger, all of that dragon-hunger, the starvation, the craving never answered.

Dragons are monsters. Are abominations. Are emblematic of all that is wrong in the world, the Targaryen pestilence spreading across the realm, devouring everything that was not theirs to take.

But he doesn't. 

He doesn't get drunk, because that would just leave him hungover and aching, and he would still be stuck in the same position as he was before: an obedient princess set to marry her cousin.

So he takes his flowing auburn hair, the hair that Ormund loves to wind his fingers through, the hair that allows Ormund to see in him a flower of the Reach rather than a dragon.

The strawberry-gold hair that he was born with didn’t lighten as the maesters predicted—though, in all likelihood, they didn’t predict it because they thought it was like to be true, but rather because the dark-haired babe that was born in the Red Keep at the same time as Alicent Hightower’s final babe was rumored to be a bastard and the piety and devotion of the Hightower Queen needed to be reaffirmed.

(If they’d just waited for Tessarion to hatch, they would have had their proof either way.)

No, Daeron was kept inside and his hair darkened, and he is as auburn-haired as any Florent comes.

But no matter its color, its length is a princess’, properly pinned and braided over time.

But right now, today, it was left mostly down save the two braids behind the ears, because making sure that a lady's hair is taken care of in the middle of a town on the verge of battle is not a high priority.

Soon enough, he shall be a maiden wed and he shall have to wear his hair in the elaborate pinned-and-braided styles that he used to see on Malora and her honey hair.

And he refuses to let every part of himself be drawn into what Ormund wants.

Daeron can’t leave. There is nowhere to go to.

But he can’t let himself go into the marriage entirely unaltered. Entirely a princess, when he is not, he is not a maiden, he is not a girl, he is not Ormund’s untouched maiden.

And so Daeron takes the dagger that Gwayne left with him, the one that he tucked up in his saddle bags when he flew and under his skirts otherwise, and he slices through the strands of his hair, one swift hack.

It falls from his scalp, a literal weight shorn away as naturally as a sheep's. Auburn strands kiss the floor, an act of freedom.

It isn't as short as many men's. It is right beneath his chin.

And yet, he knows that it shall earn him Ormund's wrath.

But he cannot regret a thing.

---

The next day, when Daeron gets ready, he can see the look in the maid’s face when she comes in to braid his hair.

In the end, all she can really do is arrange the two braids in the back of his head that Gwayne once told Daeron once his mother wore as well.

The gown he is required to wear to be cupbearer for the day is an irritation as normal, but even that cannot weigh him down as much as normal because he can at least look to his hair and think I have secured one thing for myself.

And perhaps that is the reason for Ormund’s fury.

Ormund's gaze flares when he sees Daeron, and for a moment, Daeron thinks—

He is going to slap me.

For the first time, he is sure that Ormund is going to dig his nails in. Is going to hurt him, and the image of the Maiden shall do nothing to keep him safe.

But what he isn't expecting is earning Ormund's hand under his chin and a sharp tongue, a reprimand, a hiss of what have you done with the maiden.

Daeron's heart beats like a damn warhammer against the inside of his chest, threatening to shatter his ribs, as Ormund's fingers tighten around his jaw, the nails a breath away from digging in to leave crescent-shaped marks in the flesh.

Ormund does not wrap his hand around Daeron’s neck, because to Ormund, girls are maidens and women are in the image of the Mother, but Daeron knows that Ormund's fingers itch to wrap around Daeron's throat and hold him tight because then Daeron could never make another decision that Ormund doesn't wish.

“I have raised you in the light of the Seven,” Ormund says, “You are a maid untouched as the snow and soon, you shall be my bride and I shall worship you as no other lord would be capable of doing so. But if you dare to mar the gifts that the Maiden gave you, I shall just need to do my best to remind you what a proper Lady of the Hightower is meant for. You are not a dragon like your erstwhile cousins. You are a proper maiden. You are a bride in the image of the Maiden."

I am not a bride, Daeron wants to snarl, but he is smarter than that. He has more-self preservation instinct than that. He knows better than to offer himself up on the altar like that.

So because Daeron is silent, is seemingly obedient, Ormund does let go and cup Daeron’s cheek, his anger quickly simmering and burning off.

But Daeron can’t forget how it felt. How Ormund’s love is twisted up into a form of control.

How in this moment, it is likely the first time that Ormund has ever seen that Daeron is not just the maiden perfectly under Ormund’s control, but a person capable of making his own decisions.

Ormund sighs. “You are forgiven for your actions,” Ormund says, “I understand that you are a fifteen-year-old maiden and that you have your girlish whims, especially under the stresses of war. But next time—come to me, as the head of your house. I know better. I can guide you where you should go."

A moment of forgiveness, then. Daeron doesn’t need to be forgiven, but it connotes a certain safety in that he won’t be punished for this act, no matter the fact that he did it without Ormund’s permission.

What will come next, though—Daeron dreads.

---

Ormund has a handmaiden come and trim and fix Daeron's hair as much as she can, making the haircut look more feminine, but the first cut was still Daeron's, severing that Seven-damned umbilical cord.

Then Ormund has Lady Footly bring all of her jewels to array in Daeron’s hair, to fix his braids, to make him as proper a bride as Ormund to get with her hair not to the standards of an untouched maiden.

Ormund’s mouth twists at the fact that they cannot commission a new gown for Daeron to wear at the wedding, that they cannot show the full wealth and strength of House Hightower, that Daeron cannot be arrayed in green and gold as is befitting a Hightower bride.

But he has to make do. They are at war, after all, and Ormund wants his little princess wedded and bedded before the battle happens.

So they have to requisition Lady Footlys’ best gown, and it might be silver and black but it is still a better gown than any of the practical dresses that Daeron’s maid packed for the march, and the lady’s handmaiden is pulled away from doing important work sewing for the upcoming siege on Tumbleton to tailor the dress properly, and there shall be blood on the wedding sheets, blood on the birthing bed, and Daeron shall burn beneath the weight of the Iron Throne and its crown—

Daeron is shaking. Daenys Targaryen is dead and gone to him, buried before they left Oldtown for Tumbleton.

He cannot stay. He cannot go. There is no one to go to. No one who understands him. No one who would not immediately turn him over to Ormund or to his sister the Queen, who would sell him in marriage for an alliance in turn, he is sure of it, she has a war to win and she needs allies and armies.

Daeron can see his thin wrist in Ormund's, the way that Ormund will pin him down and devour him, and he knows that he is trapped. That there is no way out.

---

And then, the day before the wedding, Gwayne arrives in Tumbleton.

---

Gwayne arrives back in time for the wedding.

It’s the day before the wedding. The crease in Ormund’s brow clearly speaks to the fact that he is deciding whether or not to be happy about the fact that Gwayne is back. In the end, he greets Gwayne with a proud smile, the sort of smirk that says that things have gone exactly how Ormund wished them to.

Daeron nearly sobs when he sees Gwayne standing in front of them, face dirtied from his efforts in the Riverlands.

He can't decide in rage or relief, if the storm swirling through his chest is more grief with nowhere to go now that Gwayne is alive or not.

But Daeron doesn’t sob, of course. He learned self-control a long, long time ago, learned how to regulate his emotions, learned how to play the perfect, obedient princess so that Ormund didn’t lash out.

Daeron stands behind his uncle in a green dress that fits all wrong, that bunches around breasts that he doesn't want to grow. Today, he doesn't even get the slight advantage of split skirts for riding.

Other than his shorter hair, he is the image of his mother, he is aware. Round cheeks, bright eyes, auburn hair. 

Ormund looks at him and sees a ghost of a maiden he once might have wed, if she had not ended up married to the king first—what does Gwayne see in him?

But he looks at Gwayne, whose brow furrows when he catches sight of Daeron before his expression smooths as he looks at Ormund, and some of the sharp anger in Daeron's chest gutters.

Daeron supposes that the answer is relief, in the end, even if the sharp ache of Gwayne abandoning him will continue to smart before it eventually scars itself over.

Because Gwayne understands him as no one else does, always has.

Gwayne wasn't supposed to get back before the wedding, if he got back at all. Daeron is sure that Ormund would have been happy if Gwayne had died on the march.

Now, Ormund is more than happy to tear into Gwayne as a craven who abandoned his brothers-in-arms on the battlefield. Just yesterday Ormund was speaking of Ser Criston as nothing more than a Dornish upstart who had stolen the position of Hand of the King out from under Hightower blood, but now Ormund has the chance to tear Gwayne down, to remind him of his place, and so he takes it without hesitation.

And yet, Daeron’s anguish can only be so strong, because he finally sees an answer to his aches.

For so long, Daeron has been worn down to naught but threads.

But in this moment, he sees a way to weave himself back together, a way to take his cracked heart and fractured future and sew them back together.

When Ormund makes the comments about Gwayne being a craven, Daeron knows how to fawn. How to flatter.

Gwayne looks between them with half-disguised horror, but Daeron is playing this game as it has to be played while something sharpens inside of him, a need that now has a chance to be answered.

Daeron can squash down the nausea, bite back his words, and survive. It’s what he’s always done.

He just needs to make it through this conversation. Through this battle. Winning one battle does not mean that Ormund will win the war, after all. Daeron knows that all too well from his studies.

So Daeron does not flinch. He does not argue. He does not beg. He says nothing, just smiling when Ormund wishes him to, being the obedient princess even when it makes his insides want to crawl out from under his skin.

But at the end, as Gwayne bows his head just the required amount and asks his leave through gritted teeth, Ormund pulls his trump card. Ormund tells Gwayne that he shall be the one walking “Princess Daenys” down the aisle, and now it is Daeron whose stomach is curdling in horror, a match to Gwayne's.

One last lever of power. A request that Gwayne cannot refuse without being accused of wanting Daeron for himself.

This shall be Daeron’s ruin, Gwayne delivering him right to the man that shall devour him whole and leave nothing left to spit out—

If Daeron lets it happen.

If Daeron lets this continue.

There is something in Gwayne, in his inclinations, that Daeron recognizes in himself.

Neither of them are the right sort of man.

But Daeron doesn't care about being the right sort of man.

He just wants to be a man, period.

And he could never do that here. He could never do that in Oldtown.

And so there is only one true solution, isn't there?

One small chance at freedom.

---

Once they are out into the hallway, Gwayne grabs him by the arm. 

It’s not a tight grasp. Not like Ormund. Gwayne is not seeking to pull him back, to hold him in place, to pin him down and command him.

Daeron doesn't know whether to scream or not.

There is a certain relief in Gwayne being here. In Gwayne finally coming back. 

But there is also an anger that simmers beneath the surface. Gwayne left him. Left him in this fucking stomach that would devour him whole.

“So is this your way, Daeron?” Gwayne asks, and though Daeron knows that Gwayne sees him as naught but his niece, he is the first one to use the right name in the year since he left, and it makes something warm in Daeron's chest. “To fawn? To marry?”

“You left me alone with him,” Daeron snaps right back, an accusation, a condemnation, “You know what he is. I do what I can to keep him from… you know.”

Gwayne winces. “I had no choice.”

“No,” Daeron bites, “But neither did it grieve you to ride away.” He sighs. “I hate what I am when I’m with him. A puppet, a fool, a child—a bride,” Daeron spits, and Gwayne’s expression creases in sympathy. But also: “And do you think that Ormund did not rage when he saw my hair?”

A slight smile curves Gwayne's lips. “I had wondered about that.”

“You left me, and I did what I could to stop him from doing anything worse. But I do not want this marriage. I do not want to be a queen in name only, with Ormund puppeting my every decision.” Daeron swallows. It is a treasonous thing that he wishes to suggest, heresy against the Beacon of the South, the lord of Oldtown, but it is his last chance to do something, anything, before the wedding on the mrrow.

So he takes a deep breath and says, “I need to speak to you tonight, after Ormund takes to bed.”

Gwayne swallows and looks at him and Daeron wonders what Gwayne might have planned to say. If Gwayne had planned to stay or to leave him again. If Daeron can trust that if he asked to Gwayne to leave, he would go with him.

But Daeron has to believe—Gwayne still knows him better than anyone else does. 

And even if Gwayne isn’t loyal to Daeron—he still wants to leave Ormund. Daeron knows it.

The real question is if Gwayne will come with Daeron. If he will help Daeron escape or doom him instead.

Gwayne sighs as they reach the door of the room that Ormund has designated Gwayne’s: a small guest room unsuited for his status as the uncle of a prince, brother of a queen, but Gwayne doesn’t care about the insult Ormund is setting him as long as he gets a bath and a feather bed, Daeron knows. “I shall see you later tonight, then.”

Gwayne gives him a small smile. “It is a good thing to see you again, Daeron, even if it is under these circumstances.”

---

The day drags into the evening, with last minute questions about the wedding that Ormund decides nearly every answer on. The clothing, the flowers, the timing, the fact that Gwayne is given new green clothing to look proper—all of it is Ormund.

The only question that he leaves to Daeron, a gesture of generosity, Daeron is sure that Ormund believes, is the decision on whether or not she would rather Tessarion be chained elsewhere or muzzled for the ceremony.

After all, the ceremony has to take place in the Sept to be holy. To be binding in the eyes of the Seven.

And Ormund says he's kind enough to allow Tessarion as a witness to the ceremony—if Tessarion is muzzled. If the dragon is guaranteed not to make noise or trouble and ruin it for everyone else.

Daeron swallows and makes the decision. He needs Tessarion to be in a smart place, an easy place for him to get to tonight.

If there was to be a wedding, Daeron would hate being alone in that room without her, but to help the plans work—

Daeron can’t stand it. He can’t stand any of it. He can’t stand the idea of wedding Ormund tomorrow. He can't stand the idea of becoming a bride.

Daeron needs it to be night. He needs it to tomorrow. 

He needs to get Gwayne. He needs to tell Gwayne the truth about what has happened.

The kingdom is burning, and threatening to take Daeron with it.

Will Daeron Targaryen’s bones be found in the ashes, named Daenys the ghost princess to all that thinks to even care about a footnote to history, or will he rise from the ashes as someone else entirely?

---

And so the night before the wedding—which Ormund complains should be in the Starry Sept, not under the Footlys’ poor excuse for an altar to the gods, and yet he has two bridecloaks ready, one red and black, the other shimmering green, so he must have prepared it—Daeron sneaks out of his own room to Gwayne's, the taste of his own blood in his mouth.

He is a night away from being married off. From seeing his own blood in the birthing bed.

A full year of moon’s bloods he’s suffered, his blood on his smallclothes and rags, and no matter what they give him to mop it up, the blood persists. He cannot bleach it away anymore than he can bleach his own hair, that he can change the way that the world treats those it sees as women.

But he can stop Ormund from getting to pull one more sort of blood from him. He can stop Ormund from getting the princess that he has wanted for so long.

He just needs one ally.

Gwayne left him, once. And Daeron supposes that Gwayne could abandon him again, but from the way that Gwayne spoke to Ormund earlier today—

Daeron has to believe that Gwayne will help him run.

“What do you want, Daeron?” Gwayne asks.

There are so many things that Daeron should ask for, so many plans they need to discuss, but the most important thing of all is: “I need you to call me Daeron.”

“I already do that—”

Daeron reaches forward. His fingernails dig into Gwayne's arm as deep as they do into his own palms, and Gwayne grimaces, but Daeron cannot let go. If he lets go, then he cannot scrape back the life in his veins, and he refuses to give in now. “Not just—not just the name. I need you to know that I am a boy,” Daeron says, and the confession is blasphemy on his tongue, he knows. To admit that the Seven gave him the wrong body. To admit that he is more than Princess Daenys was. But if he cannot speak it, he cannot live with it, and if he cannot live with it, he is going to drown, he knows it. “Not a bride.”

Gwayne immediately sits up in his bed, eyes going wide, and Daeron can tell that he does not entirely understand, but what he does understand is enough to know that Daeron cannot breathe any longer, not like this, not in the gowns, not as the bride, not as the Maiden.

And so Daeron barrels forward, breath in his throat, heart an uneven thunder in his chest, aching, demanding its thunder be heard.

Daeron is storm, and if he does not find a way to calm it, then he shall blow everything down and take everything with him in his devastation.

Princess Daenys is the wound that threatens to kill him. If he doesn't bury her, then she and everything that comes with her will bury him.

“And I cannot breathe. Not anymore. If I stay—” Daeron swallows. “I will not become the Mother. It is either leave now or face the grave.”

“Daeron,” Gwayne says, and his voice is plaintive, and his voice is a question, and his voice is a prayer. “You must understand—”

“You must understand. I am leaving this evening. I have to. I cannot wear a gown for another day. I cannot let Ormund pump his seed into me. If I get pregnant—” Daeron squeezes his eyes together for just one moment, a muscle in his jaw juddering. “I would rather die, and that is not a threat—that is a promise."

And Gwayne looks at him. Really looks at him, for a long, hard moment, and Daeron cannot breathe as he looks right back, but he also doesn't blink. He doesn't look away. He can't. He has to stay. He has to endure. He needs to leave, but he also doesn't want to leave alone.

Daeron has been so alone for so long and if he has to leave alone again—if he has to try to survive on his own—

He can do it, but he doesn't know if he can survive it without going mad.

Gwayne swallows and says, "I am guessing you do not want to leave Tessarion behind?"

Daeron nods, tentative hope filling his lungs.

"Then we shall go to her," Gwayne says, "But first—"

---

They pack quickly. Gwayne finds him trousers and a tunic and Daeron nearly cries in happiness. He doesn't care that the fabric is roughspun. He is happy that it obscures the shape of the body beneath, allows him to pretend that the shape is correct, that he is not one blood away from becoming the Mother.

Without leathers, riding Tessarion shall likely chafe and blister.

But that is the sort of pain that Daeron can live with, because it will mean living as himself rather than as the girl that they wish him to be.

Then they head for Tessarion. The night is cold and bitter, and Tessarion is antsy, is aching, is trapped more than she ever has been.

But Daeron can fix that, finally.

Daeron reaches forward, dagger in hand, to slice through her chains, to cut through her muzzle.

The chains fall like butter and Tessarion happily lurches forward, nuzzling into him like a cat that misses its owner—

But there is something desperate to it, too. She ached for him as much as he ached for her, Daeron can tell.

But he will never let himself be parted from her again. He refuses to let them be separated. He refuses to let the world fall in on them both and pry them apart.

She is him and he is her and he will never deny that again.

And so for the first time in their lives, he is able to tell her the truth.

“You're my girl,” he murmurs, “And I'm your boy.”

Tessarion lets out a small trill, a small chirp, and Daeron smiles, hand sliding across her scales, readying to turn to speak to Gwayne—

But then the doors fly open and Ormund Hightower enters. Daeron can see the flash of armor of guards and knights behind him and he can hear Gwayne's sharp intake of breath because here is the very man that they snuck out of the Footlys' keep to escape, ready to bar their chance to leave.

Ormund takes in Daeron's clothes and he scowls. “What has your uncle done to corrupt you, my princess?"

But while Ormund might have guards, Daeron has a dragon, and he is more than alright being tempted into sin to allow her to act as dragons are meant to.

So Daeron is not afraid to answer back in truth as he never has before: "Nothing that I did not ask for. I am leaving, and you cannot stop me."

“You are meant to be my queen,” Ormund says, and there is something almost desperate to his voice that Daeron doesn't recognize. "I will treat you like the maiden you are. Worship you as long as you set aside this foolishness, this girlish whim, and return to my side to become my queen."

Once, all Daeron wished was to have Ormund as a father. He certainly worshipped Ormund like one.

But Daeron's father is dead and gone, the entire realm burned for that fact, and Ormund has revealed that he was never any father at all.

It was Gwayne, always, who was there for Daeron in the ways that mattered. Who was the person that Daeron trusted. Who was the person that allowed Daeron to be more than a bride. Who didn't just plan to make Daeron his bride.

“You mean your puppet,” Daeron hisses, and he has been silent for so long. Too long. And he cannot be any longer. “Tell me, dear cousin—why did you do it? Why did you bed your wife and kill her for the sake of your cock?"

Tessarion growls behind him. Ormund's eyes are wide, as if he doesn't expect the words coming from Daeron's mouth, as if he does not understand the child that he raised, and it's not an if he doesn't—it's a guarantee. Because he's never understood, has he? He's never known who Daeron is, at his core. “It is a wife's duty—”

“A noble wife is supposed to give two boys. That is what the Seven-Pointed Star—your sacred book—speaks of the Mother and what she considers a duty. So tell me,” Daeron repeats again, “Why did you do it? You knew she would die. You knew that she had torn after birthing Garmund. Was it just because you wanted more children, or because you wanted to wed someone else?”

Daeron doesn't know if he can consider Ormund that callous, but after this war, there is nothing that he can count out. Nothing that he cannot imagine.

"It was greed, either way," Gwayne says, and his gaze is hard and flat as he stares at Ormund, but his lips are twisted in disgust. "Malora gave you three boys and you could not let her live."

Ormund scowls. "You two are not allowed to judge me, in your perversions, in your sin. If you will not come yourself, then I shall just make sure that my guards bring you back to perform your duty."

But Tessarion's chest is breathing in and out, the heat filling the Sept, and Daeron has had enough.

"I was never yours to keep," Daeron says.

He is not kneeling in front of the Seven anymore. They are behind him, around him, waiting to deliver judgement.

And no matter what Ormund says about dragons being abominations, Daeron's life is his.

And he refuses to let Ormund take any more of it.

So Daeron raises a hand to Tessarion and he says the only Valyrian he knows, the word seared across every recounting of the Conquering, the Field of Fire, Aegon and his sisters finally taking their triumph.

"Dracarys," Daeron hums, the sound singing like dragonsong across his lips, and Tessarion opens her mouth to born Ormund in holy hellfire.

Gwayne immediately kneels at Daeron's side, a devotion, a gesture of loyalty, and Tessarion doesn't touch him. She knows that Gwayne is important to Daeron.

Daeron, on the other hand, doesn't look away. He watches Ormund scream, watches Ormund burn, his skin dragging, melting, until he is naught but ash and bone and dust.

And then Daeron turns back to Gwayne, who is staring at the burnt lump of flesh that used to be Ormund Hightower. "Are you still willing to go with me?"

Gwayne tears his eyes away from Ormund's burnt corpse. He looks up at Tessarion with a look that is half-awe, half-determination. 

And he nods. "To the ends of the earth," he says.

---

In the end, the saddle is only built for one, but they make it work for two. Of course they do.

It's a snug fit, but Daeron does not care.

What matters to him is that Tessarion is strong enough. That she is hungry enough. That she wants as much as he does.

That when she lifts into the air, Gwayne clinging to Daeron with half-disguised terror, Daeron has never felt alive and comfortable in his own skin in his entire life.

Because here he is. A dragon-rider. Not a prince or a princess, but the one thing that he wants. The one thing that he needs to feel free. The one thing he needs to hunger.

So they fly, and the weight evaporates from Daeron's spine with each flap of the wing.

They land next to a river, far from the battle, and it's almost too much. Daeron cannot quite figure out how to breathe. How to continue on.

But Gwayne—no more used to dragonflight than he is—carefully wobbles over to the river, surely just as chafed as Daeron, and scoops up some water and brings it back to him to wet his mouth.

Daeron knows he should be thinking of the war effort he abandoned. The crown that Ormund is likely screaming about losing. The men that he left behind fighting for a doomed cause.

And he does think of them. He thinks of them, because that is the weight of war, that is the weight of what he left behind, that is what he always has to think about, because from the day he was a baby girl without even words to rise to his tongue, he was being told that one day, he would bear the weight of lives on his shoulders.

But he drinks, and when he can finally speak, all he asks is: “Tell me a story, uncle.”

Blot out the sky. Pick out the stars with your needle and make them shine.

Tell me of darkness and how people survived it, born anew as their true selves.

And Gwayne Hightower obliges.

---

Princess Daenys Targaryen never marries her cousin Ormund Hightower. Never leaves the battlefield at Tumbleton.

Her wedding gown is found discarded along with her jewels.

Not that it matters much; Tumbleton burns, two of the dragonseeds betray Rhaenyra, and Tumbleton burns. Princess Daenys' things are found in the ashes.

But there are still many that believe her still alive.

There are issues for prizes on the head of Princess Daenys. She could not have run on her own, they all say.

Everyone knows that Daenys, once rumored to be so pious that she would end up a Septa, would not have run from the altar. She would have done her duty.

It must be Gwayne Hightower that stole her away. Must be Gwayne Hightower who put ideas in her head, twisting Daenys away from her namesake.

Daenys the Dreamer saved her family from the Doom; Daenys the Delicate, Daenys the Devout, had to be dragged away from the source of her mother’s faith. She must have been kidnapped by an uncle who desired her as Daemon Targaryen desired Rhaenyra Targaryen.

There is something in the blood of Targaryen princesses that inspires something wild in their uncles, the legends say. Something in their silver-gold hair that makes men greedy for just one touch.

That must be what happened. That must be the only answer.

Because otherwise, Princess Daenys must be dead, and how could such a thing happen to such a lovely princess?

The rest of the Targaryens are dying like flies along with their dragons. Daenys has to be alive somewhere, even if something horrible has happened to her along the way.

She's strong enough to survive and make it back to Westeros, everyone knows it.

---

There is a small house with a blue door and big windows in the outskirts of Pentos.

A man with silver hair visits at least twice a week. He goes by the name Laenor Corran, a tribute to a long-lost lover, but nowadays, he dresses in silks and is the lover of the man who owns the small house with the blue door and the big windows.

But he is not the second man to live in the house. Laenor has a house of his own, here in Pentos, one that he and a dead lover bought long ago, in their efforts as sellswords to the various Princes of Pentos.

No, while Laenor kisses his dark-haired lover in the shadows of the house’s terraced roof, song slipping through the alleyways towards them so that Laenor can coax his lover to dance with him, the second man who lives in the house is not so much a man so much as a boy—a scrawny teenage boy with broad shoulders who shoots up in height the longer that he is in Pentos.

A late growth spurt, many say. There shall be stretch marks, lightning-blessed, soon enough.

And they shall be different stretch marks, different battle scars, than Daeron of Pentos had been expected to carry in another life.

If he had stayed, if he had remained in Oldtown or Tumbleton, his stomach would be swelling with babe by now.

But he didn’t. There is no hard curve of his stomach beneath the draping of a gown that he was forced to wear to mimic the Maiden, the Mother, all of that purity, all of that fertility.

There are surgeons, here in Pentos, herbs that can be given to women and men and others who wish to stop bleeding, needles that can slide beneath the skin to stop the growth of breasts and the widening of hips.

He never has to wear gowns or skirts. He never has to dread his breasts growing. Daeron gets to wear trousers and tunics and vests, gets to carry a dagger at his side, gets to let the piercings in his ears heal back into nothing more than memories, gets to wear shades of blue and brown, a far cry from the greens and golds of the Hightower he grew up in.

Gwayne and Laenor teach him how to fight when he asks them to—not because he has to, but because he wants to learn how to.

The same goes for tailoring and sewing, his source of income entirely his own, beyond his name, beyond his family. He can tailor and sew, and now that it isn't a requirement to perform, he can take satisfaction in it. The needle-pricks are not a reminder of his lack of choice—they are a chance to use a skill that he worked to master for years into a source of income. Few can embroider like he can.

And even beyond that—he can even earn extra coin by playing the lute.

Back in Westeros, they are looking for a runaway bride. An obedient princess with a mane of flowing silver-gold hair and silken skirts and mincing steps and a silvered voice and her uncle, who has hair of copper that glints in the sun.

They are not looking for a bastard boy with auburn hair who took the golden-haired princess’ dragon when she died somewhere over the Narrow Sea, and his supposed father, a man with hair of dark brown (darkened by ink, but no one needs to know that).

Princess Daenys’ bones might be in the ashes of Tumbleton. They might be in the Narrow Sea. She might even be in Oldtown.

No one knows where she is.

But to Daeron, she is no longer a wound. She is just a ghost.

And so now, Daeron smiles as he takes the road out of the city to the hills where Tessarion lives. Where she flies, unchained, without ache.

And there, he gets to fly with her. To finally be free himself.

He comes home to the small house with the blue door and the big windows with the smell of ash in his auburn hair, but Gwayne doesn't grimace and make Daeron bathe immediately—he ruffles Daeron's hair and lets Daeron be his own person.

Daeron has been reborn here, from the fire, from the ash.

Daeron is not a knight. He is not the Warrior or the Father. 

But he is not the Maiden or the Mother either, and that is all that he can ask for.

If anything, he is the Smith. He is the mender of broken things. When he sits with his needle, when he flies through the sky, when he finally answers his own appetite and learns how to indulge without ripping himself open— 

The world is answered to him. The universe opens up, vast as can be, an answer to aches.

Rather than digging his nails into his palms, he lets the world unfurl beneath his fingertips.

He is no longer running on fumes. He is able to live with the motions of life, let himself indulge in in delight and joy and curiosity, lets himself fuck up and make mistakes and explore.

It’s a hard thing, at first, to let himself make mistakes.

But Gwayne—and eventually Laenor, when Gwayne brings him home to meet Daeron with a bit of uncharacteristic nervousness in Gwayne’s expression, the sort of thing that Daeron could never have anticipated from the man that he knows—is there to catch him when he falls, the unconditional understanding that Daeron has always ached for.

So Daeron can try things. He can allow himself to make mistakes and not be afraid that he will get grabbed or disciplined or locked away.

And his first true act of freedom—not in clothing or work, both of which are practical necessities, or his dragon, which he seized for himself as they were leaving Tumbleton—is when he gets the piercing in on ear reopened—but only one.

Women's ears back in Westeros dripped in earrings and jewels, a symbol of their golden cages as much as their status.

Here, the women pierce their ears as well, but so do the men.

The lesson learned is that now that Daeron can be himself, in his own skin, he doesn't need to flinch from the sort of things that he once only associated with women’s roles. He can stick a needle into fingers and ears, and it doesn’t have to be about being a princess—it can just be about what fits him as a boy rather than what was expected of him as a girl.

The first time that Daeron goes out to a festival, kohl around his eyes, an earring in the one ear, it is there that he meets a girl that looks like Laenor, all silver braids and warm brown skin and bright brown eyes and small silver earrings, but who has a mischievous smile of her own that sparkles like the sun on the water, who has a hunger all her own, who dances with him, and who, afterward, sits on a rooftop with him that is too high for anyone else to be willing to climb to but is close enough to the sky to feel like home to him.

And her, apparently.

Daeron is not the only Targaryen to run away from home.

This is how Daeron learns that a second dragon has landed in Pentos, a wild thing transplanted from the Vale, a runaway princess on its back, that Rhaena of Pentos has finally come home, and that there is a chance of dragonrider’s lips tasting like cherry wine when they are allowed to taste, allowed to hunger.

That everything that Daenys Targaryen once wanted, a different girl managed to find in a way that made her feel comfortable in her skin as well.

Daeron takes a runaway princess back to the small house with the blue door and the big windows, where Laenor wraps his arms around her shoulders, where she is finally allowed to collapse into the arms of family, where she is able to laugh in relief, where Gwayne just arches an eyebrow before offering her up his own bed—he can share with Laenor, after all—and Rhaena and Laenor both laugh, tears in their eyes.

Rhaena ends up living in Laenor’s house, but they are both over often, and Rhaena and Daeron keep kissing just as much as Laenor and Gwayne do, and this is the sort of life that Princess Daenys never could have imagined, but Daeron, lutist, tailor, freeman?

Across the sea, there is a war going on, a realm splitting down the middle.

Princes rise and fall, queens live and die. The throne is traded between hands that probably never should have held it in the first place.

But Gwayne and Daeron are here. Here, with Laenor and Rhaena, in the small house with the Tessarion-blue door and the big windows, and they have a life that treats them better than anything that the Hightower could have given them.

i’m learning to become all the space i 

need. i laughed today. 

for a second I was unhaunted. i was the 

sun, not light 

from some dead star.

—Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead