Work Text:
one (the wicked king and his bride)
It's said that even before King Daemon married her, his dragon princess, his niece, that if you ventured into the Great Hall you might oftentimes see her sitting on his lap atop the Iron Throne listening to him murmur his wickedness into her ear, her jewelled slippers dangling far above the still-sharp swords at his foot, his ringed hand tight on her waist.
Was it tales of his youthful times in pleasurehouses he told her, the maidenheads he had stolen, or was it his plans for her own bedding once she was of age? Did he seduce her with lurid visions of herself amongst the silks and furs of his own bed?
Or perhaps it was tales of his bloodthirsty valour he told her instead, his mayhem and his plots and games, his war-mongering, and not anything lascivious, for the maesters insisted that Rhaenyra was indeed a maiden upon her wedding to the King.
But was that any better? the court thought with distaste and horror. That such an innocent young thing, the delight of the realm, her father's dearest daughter, be told of how her husband-to-be slew a hundred men on the battlefield, murdered a dozen rogues in a brothel, gut many a man, noble or poor, for simply looking at him wrong?
Viserys's death had handed the Realm's Delight to a monster.
It was only she who did not know it, the poor lamb.
Rhaenyra with her smiles for her betrothed and her delighted laughter. With the stars of the heavens in her eyes when she looked up at him as if he were a knight from a song.
The King had died from an ordinary kind of sickness, a blood fever caused by a wound that would not heal and then turned black. He took to his bed on the third day of the third moon and by the sixth he had passed.
If his brother had not been at court but in the Vale where he ought to be, if Rhaenys had been in the Red Keep with her husband and his fleet close at hand, with her own son by her side, then perhaps things might have been different. But few truly believe that, for Daemon and his wyrm of a dragon would be hard to argue with, and it was Daemon who sat by the King's bedside that last day of his life, Daemon who brought the little princess into the room by her hand so that she could place a farewell kiss upon her father's feverish brow.
And thus was King Daemon, the first of his name, swiftly crowned.
In his first act as king he dissolved his own marriage to Rhea Royce and announced his intentions to wed his niece the princess Rhaenyra when she was of age and thus ensure that the line of his brother continued, that the Targaryens would be strong and united.
The great houses who witnessed the coronation cheered his words, as they might cheer any King they wished to curry favour with, any King they feared, but privately many with tender hearts felt sorry for the little princess who should have been sister to a wise king, not wife to an uncle so much older than her, whose care and raising would now be in the hands of a monster of a man.
It was hoped that her mother, the king's widow, might temper his influence over her as she grew, but what did the soft kindness, the wise counsel, of a mother have against a man who rode a dragon? What was a mother against a man who could be father, uncle, husband to her, who could indulge her so?
When she was a child, her betrothed let her eat cake whenever she wished and stay awake to hear the singers at feasts instead of being ushered off to her bed to sleep. He had endless patience with her games of make-believe, it was said by the maidservants who observed them in the private royal quarters, carrying her on her back as if he were her horse or her dragon, listening to her stories, letting her braid his hair.
He took her hawking and sailing, danced with her, read to her from her favourite books again and again, and struck down any who scorned her, banished any who wronged her, slicked the floor of the Great Hall with blood for her.
He bought her gifts, her uncle, gifts of such riches and splendour that they might have won a war for another king.
There were furs skinned from the rarest and most pampered of beasts, of soft white and speckled pelt, of black fox and sable and ermine, furs enough that one could clothe a northern village in them.
There were dozens and dozens of slippers themselves lined with fur or velvet or the softest lambswool and embroidered with gems and glittering beads and the finest of gold and silver threads, so that she may never need take a single step without her toes being shielded from the chill of the flagstones or the prickle of rushes, the rough warp of old carpets (her chambers, of course, had their own plush carpets, softer and finer than elsewhere in the keep).
There were books and scrolls illuminated with paints made from crushed gems, decorated with gold leaf and precious stones. There were figurines of ivory and pearl, intricately carved puzzle boxes, gem-studded chests, jewelled horse saddles. There were pure white housecats and exotic songbirds in golden cages, goblets of silver, bowls of amber, and haircombs of filigreed gold and rare whaletooth.
There was jewellry, so much jewellry that there did not seem enough chests and drawers to store it, so much jewellry that a woman, a girl, could not hope to have the chance to ever wear every single piece once. Rings, girdles, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, diadems, hairnets, circlets, and brooches. Of silver, gold, beaten copper, even Valyrian steel. And of the stones – emerald, ruby, diamond, amethyst, sapphire, opal, garnet – there were of a size and brilliance so remarkable that mere rumours of their existence had caused the deaths of at least two dozen would-be-thieves who sought them out and were gutted by one of the Red Keep's guards.
There were velvets and silks and satins and samites and Myrish lace in such quantity that there was a shortage of laces the Seven Kingdoms over, that even the wealthiest of Free City merchants struggled to find enough for a meagre collar for his own wife.
There was fabric in every hue, embroidered and beaded and threaded with gold and silver, studded with freshwater pearls, brocaded in dizzyingly intricate patterns.
There were inumerable gowns.
The King, it was said, loved nothing more than attending the visits of the seamstresses to the Princess's chambers, of lounging with a goblet of wine as she stood atop a padded stool and was pinned and trussed and swathed with silks and velvets.
He had opinions on the gowns that favoured her the best, the King, and he and the princess did not always agree.
How she would stamp her little foot, the seamstresses recalled, how she would clench her little fists and be sullen and even teary-eyed!
He gave in, most of the time, indulgent, amused by her anger, his eyes glinting with wicked fondness.
When Rhaenyra was older, when they were wed, she would saunter across the room towards him, her hips swaying, while the seamtresses looked elsewhere, humming under their breaths and arranging fabrics or plucking at seams of dresses in their laps, while the Queen persuaded her husband with words or with gestures or wifely enticements, that she be allowed the gowns that she chose.
And of the smallclothes and nightgowns the seamstresses made for her, why they would say nothing of them, fearing the King's wrath. Besides, 'twas a man's private business, what he wished his wife to wear under her gowns or abed with him.
(There was a rumour though, a rumour too sumptuous and wicked to ignore, that he draped her in jewellry once, soon after they were wed and before he quickly put a babe in her belly. That she stood in his chambers swathed from head to toe in gold chains and rings and gems and girdles and hairnets of such pure gold that she trembled under their weight, that she glimmered in the light of the lanterns like a Valyrian goddess of old.
That he had her like that on his bed, tugging aside links and loops and chains of gold to get to her cunt, pressing rubies and emeralds and diamonds between their bellies and hips as he fucked her so that for days afterwards the imprint of the gems could still be found in her pale flesh.
That he placed the largest gem, a rare firestone said to have been forged in the very heart of a volcano, on her tongue to muffle her noises as he had her a third time that night, that she drooled and she whimpered and cut her own marks into his flesh with her grasping nails when she peaked.
That afterwards he plucked the same firestone from her tongue and had it set in a bracelet for her to wear, to remember what he had done to her that night.)
The Kingsguard who stood at the door of their chambers were not allowed to acknowledge the noises they heard every night, the words and the whimpers, the smack of flesh against flesh.
They could only blush and tighten their jaws as the King's little wife emerged on the morrow with footsteps as unsteady as a foal, sleepy-eyed and warm-cheeked.
They could only work out their lusts and frustrations, their wild imaginings, on the training yard or against any fumbling assassin that might think to try their luck against the King and his wife and their issue.
The King had a whole brood of children upon her, his little wife.
He japed that he would give her as many children as the dragons could lay eggs, and well might those at court believe it.
Sons and daughters with silver hair and violet eyes, with the fierceness and loveliness of their father and mother, with the wildness and might of their dragons.
How pleased he was, the King, when his wife was with child. How rich his smile, how indecent his looks towards her, how satisfied his manner when he touched the back of his fingers to the rise of her belly.
(It's said that he wept when his first child was born, when his niece survived the childbed, and he kissed them both - babe and wife – on their foreheads with trembling lips and called for the bells to be rung through the city.
It was a sight that secured the loyalty of her handmaidens towards him forever more, this wicked beast of a king brought to his knees beside the birthing bed, tears on his cheek like the orphaned boy he had once been.)
It was the fecundity of the couple, and the number of dragon eggs retrieved by the King himself from the caverns of Dragonstone, that made it hard for any foe to find courage to muster a force against the crown.
Oh, there was much discussion, there were marriage alliances made by lords, garrisons trained, and lofty plans of rebellion drawn up, but one visit to court, one mere sight of the dragons, small and large, wheeling above the keep or of the gaggle of princes and princesses about the halls, quickly put an end to such plots.
There was also the rumour that the King had not only brought back jewels and lavish histories from his youthful travels but spellbooks and objects of magical power too. That he alone knew Valyrian witchcraft, though he made a cursory gesture to obeying the laws of the Seven.
The High Septon who had railed against his coronation after the death of King Viserys, died a quick death himself.
Poorly cooked meat, it was said, or indulging himself with too much wine.
As a matter of fact, the first year of King Daemon's rule was riddled with noble deaths both accidental — from drink, after brawls in brothels, falls from horses or windows, slips from decks of ships — and deaths ordered by the King or his loyal Kingsguard. Beheadings and hangings and men fed to the dragons in the dragonpit for the entertainment of the smallfolk.
They said he was a tyrant, King Daemon, but the smallfolk of King's Landing loved him all the same. They remembered his times on the Street of Silk, his generosity with his purse and his wildness, his infamous lusts, and they enjoyed the spectacles he arranged to celebrate the birth of each child — the tourneys and festivals and feasts.
The smallfolk did not see the Queen much, except in the royal box at the tourneys, for it was said that the King was ever so covetous of her, jealous of any who looked at her, that he protected her like a precious gem; yet she was a dragonrider herself, no weak frail creature, so it is true that often did they see her far above them on Syrax, her hair a silver banner of its own.
Though none had wished for such a pure and innocent creature, her father's dearest daughter, the Realm's Delight, to be wed to such a monster of a man, later historians remarked that it was perhaps the King's only wise action.
For it was agreed by all that though the princess did little to temper the King’s greed and petulance, his tendency towards violence against those who wronged him, she did at least keep him distracted enough that he himself did not wage any war or begin any new conquest.
That task he left to his children and his grandchildren and their children, who would expand the reach and power of the Targaryen empire beyond imagining in an orgy of blood and fire.
But that is a tale for another day.
***
two (a generous husband)
Her uncle, her betrothed, is a very generous man.
The nobles say he isn't, that he keeps a tight fist on the pursestrings of the realm, that he would rather ride his dragon over to scare people, burn down villages and ships and keeps and those who would quarrel with him, than hand over any coin.
The nobles are just greedy, greedy for that which does not belong to them, Daemon says.
When they're wed, he tells her as he walks the gardens with her, her little hand in his, he'll buy her so many rings that her hands will be too heavy to lift above her hips, so many necklaces and bracelets and diadems and girdles and gems that he will be forced to carry her, so weighted she be with his riches.
'And when we're wed,' he murmurs as she sits on his lap in his solar while he signs his seal on boring letters, 'you'll never be banished to your own chambers, not once, you'll always share a bed with me, I'll never let you wake alone in fear and worry, I'll never let you be cold in the dark.'
'And when we're wed,' he whispers to her at a feast, 'they'll bow to you so deeply, all the girls who sneer at you, who laugh at your hair tangled from your dragonrides, your foreign tongue, that their skirts will be mussed with the dirt of the floor, that their knees will ache and burn, that their heads will be dizzy when they are righted again.'
'And when we're wed,' he says, when finds her sad and sorrowful about her father and her grief-striken mother, 'I'll give you children, a family of your very own.'
It’s not just his wealth that he's generous with, her betrothed, but also his pleasures, her pleasures.
Or at least he plans to be.
'You may have heard that to be a wife, to be a bride, is to be dutiful, to suffer prettily the attentions of her husband,' he drawls one evening a few years into their betrothal, as he leans against the ballustrade of a balcony of Dragonstone, 'but your own pleasure, that is my duty, and my pleasure.'
His eyes glint dark, his smile is wickedness itself.
'Pleasures upon pleasures,' she replies, teasing him for his words.
They are on a trip to the island so that he might visit the Dragonmont, the King and his betrothed. The castellan had no forewarning of their arrival before their dragons were sighted, sending the keep into utter disarray as they sought to prepare in the little time they had.
If the princess had been the betrothed of any other man, it would not be seemly for her to reside in same wing of the keep as the King tonight, alone and without maidservants or ladies-in-waiting.
But who would dare tell the King that? Who would say to such a man that his actions risked sullying the honour of the late king's beloved princess who was yet of age?
'Yes,' he says, sauntering closer to the cushioned seat where she sits, her hair tangled by the sea-breezes, her cheeks warmed by the winds on their flight. 'Pleasures upon pleasures,' he repeats.
He comes to a stop before her.
She tilts her chin up.
'I would be so dutiful to you,' he croons with a smile, touching his thumb to her cheek, 'you do not know how dutiful I can be.'
His words have a resonance as if he is teasing her too, for things she does not yet know.
'Tell me,' she says, she demands, 'tell me how you will be dutiful.'
He hums. 'Perhaps I might kiss you.'
'You have already kissed me,' she replies, stubborn.
'On your cheek, yes, but when we are wed I will do my duty in kissing you elsewhere.'
His thumb moves to her lips.
'My lips,' she says, feeling the brush of the pad of his thumb against them as she speaks.
'Yes,' he says, taking his hand back, folding it behind his back. 'I would kiss your lips.' He regards her, tilts his head, voice lowering to a burr. 'I would kiss your neck too, and the tender spot behind your ears.'
'My ears?' she laughs.
'Yes,' he smiles. 'And then I would kiss across your shoulders.'
She finds her own hand drifting to her shoulders, hot under the fur cape of her riding garment.
'I would kiss your collarbone,' he says, his eyes stroking across.
She feels her chest tighten as if she has lost her breath, a warmth rising through her as he continues.
'I would kiss your feet, Princess, your ankles—'
Her feet twitch in her boots, the new ones he gifted her, the leather of them so soft they made no sound when she walked.
'I would kiss the creases behind your knees,' he murmurs, rocking closer so that his leg briefly touches her knee and she feels a spark even underneath her moleskin breeches. 'Your elbows, your soft palms—'
His voice, she thinks dazedly, is that of some predator who has some small shivering creature in his trap.
'Your belly, Princess, the small of your back, your thighs—'
'Uncle—' she gasps, her voice so thin, her thoughts a whirl of images.
He smirks, rubs a hand on his chin. 'Thus would I be dutiful to you, when we are wed.'
'When we are wed?' she repeats once she has eventually retrieved her wits.
'Yes, when you are of age and we are wed and tied together by blood.'
'We are already tied together by blood,' she argues.
He laughs and she frowns, her lower lip grows sullen. To be offered the gift of such kisses but have to wait so long to receive them, why that is most unfair, she thinks.
'You must be patient, my love,' he says, bending to press a kiss to her forehead and then moving back inside the solar, picking up the goblet of wine he had discarded when their dragons first started dancing out over the waters and they came to watch.
'I know patience is not in your nature, I know this will be a great trial for you,' he drawls as she sprawls in a huff on the chaise by the fire. 'But this is the way things shall be.'
'You're cruel,' she mutters.
He only laughs, the horrid man, and she resolves she shall no longer be kind to him, no longer share her stories with him nor her smiles. That she will be hard as stone, haughty and righteous.
Yet after a half of an hour as she sits in silence stewing while he reads through ledgers and letters, seemingly quite content to ignore her back, to not beg for her forgiveness nor pay her the attention she deserves, her stomach rumbles loudly in hunger and he sets down his quill.
'I had asked the kitchens to prepare roast rabbit for you tonight, but if you are poorly,' he says with a drawl, 'if you wish to remain in your punctilious seclusion, I can ask them to bring you a plate of bread and cold meats and give the rabbit to some other girl. What say you?'
'No!' she says and his eyebrows raise mirthfully at the loudness of her voice, at how she sat up in alarum at his words. 'I shall have the rabbit.'
'Good,' he says, getting to his feet. He holds his hand out to her and she hurries over to take it. 'Do you know, if anyone else had been so rude to me I would not brook it. I am too indulgent of you,' he says with a faux weary sigh.
She hides her smile. 'It is because you love me,' she says.
'Is it?' he muses, jesting.
She squeezes his grip. 'Yes,' she insists.
He tugs at the necklace peeking out from her cape. 'Rhaenyra,' he says wearily, 'I love you to ruin, to distraction. You hold the reins of my heart in your pretty little fist.'
No words have ever been sweeter to her.
He shall not be moved, her betrothed, even as the years pass and he tells her more of how dutiful he would be, more of the pleasures owed to both husband and wife in the marriage bed.
He insists that he will steal only kisses from her lips until they were wed, though she should gladly give him more, would gift every part of herself if he would only take her. But he will not.
'I want you untouched until you come to my bed,' he insists, one midsummer day in the gardens as she lies sprawled on a silken blanket before him, heated from the sun above and from her own righteous anger.
He lounges on an elbow, regarding her with his wicked eyes as he plucks grapes from a bunch on the gold plate in his lap.
'I want you shaking with your wants, desperate with them,' he says, uncaring that the Kingsguard guarding them are close enough to hear his words. 'I want you to burn for me, my love as I have burned for you.'
'You're cruel,' she sobs.
'I'm your King,' he replies, tipping her face towards him. 'My word is law.'
In this decision alone is he the tyrant they say he is.
'It is my gift to myself, Rhaenyra,' he says as he feeds her sugared almonds. 'You, pure and lovely in your wedding gown.'
She swallows, licks the sugar from her lips as he watches.
'You, debauched that very same night in my bed by mine own hands,' he says, voice soft as honey. He sits back again. 'You would deny your King the thing he wants most dearly? Hmm?' he asks.
'No,' she says but anyone who hears her voice would know that she did not mean it, that she did not agree.
Later that day, one of her handmaids finds her sullen in her chambers, eyes red and sore. 'What sorrows you, Princess,' she says, picking up the haircomb to brush her hair.
'The King is a cruel man,' the princess says, watching her own reflection in the mirror, pleased at how she looks beautiful yet in her sadness (and yet not beautiful enough that the King will take her, she thinks indignantly.)
'How so?' the maid asks, blanching white.
'He will not touch me.'
'He will not...touch you?'
'No,' she spits, 'not until we are wed.'
The maid fumbles the comb in her hand and drops it, her mouth opening and closing like a startled fish. It makes the Princess laugh despite herself.
'You must be a maiden on your wedding day,' the maid agrees, her eyes darting about.
'Why is your manner so strange when you say this, why that look upon your face?' the Princess asks, turning in her seat, though she has half a mind that she already knows. The maid, she thinks, believes the King has already had her.
'It is nothing, my Princess, just a sneeze.'
'Tis no sneeze,' she mutters. 'Go call for Alys, will you, she is more careful with my braids than you, and less prone to silliness.'
'As you wish, My Princess,' the maid says, bobbing a curtesy.
'Did you know,' Rhaenyra says to her betrothed at dinner — which is he late to, for he has had to lop off the heads of two traitors with Dark Sister and attend a very tedious small council meeting, he informed her upon sitting down at the table opposite her and wiping flecks of blood from his hands in the silver bowl proffered by a wan looking servant — 'that many in the court think that you have already taken your husbandly rights.'
'My what?' he asks, voice sharp.
'Your...rights, uncle,' she repeats.
'And what rights might they be?' he asks, his voice silken now, dabbing meat juice from his lips, settling back in his chair with his wine goblet dangling from his wrist.
'You know,' she says, voice half a whisper. Whenever she intends to demand this particular gift from him, she finds her faculties so easily diminished by his own masculine countenance, by the way he eyes her like some lazy well-fed beast.
He knows so much about this matter, her betrothed, and he will only share the merest with her.
'Do I?' he teases.
'If they already think thus, then what should it matter, why should you wait?' she insists.
'Because, I wish it so,' he says. 'Rhaenyra, I do not care what the court thinks, I do not care what rumours are spread.' He returns to cutting up his food. 'Though you must tell me, of course, exactly who told you this sordid tale, for I do not like the thought of one so close to you having such wicked notions.'
Oh, how it amuses him to vex her, she thinks, huffing a sigh and gritting her teeth. Her maidservant will be dispatched to some lowly merchants house now, she knows it, and even though the maid was not the very best at doing her braids she did enjoy the songs of the Riverlands she taught her, especially those of knights and their ladies.
'Should a gift improve your mood, Princess?' her betrothed asks after desert, as she brushes lemoncake crumbs from her lips. 'A jade bracelet said to be worn by a YiTish Empress perhaps?' He opens his fist and she sees it there, shining, like the most wondrous of magic tricks.
'It should,' she says, proffering her wrist so that he might clasp it around.
His fingers are so careful, the whisper touch of his fingertips so soft that she shivers. Their eyes meet.
His, hot. Hers, molten.
'It will not be long, my love,' he whispers then. 'You will be of age soon enough.'
And oh, when she is of age, when she is finally ready to be a bride, why she can hardly sleep she is so excited, so fevered the night before the wedding. Even more so when her husband, her King, steals a heated kiss from her at the doors of her chambers, groping her over her silken nightgown before stalking away and leaving her wanting and clutching at her own mouth.
They wed in the royal sept before the High Septon and then, after a feast at which her husband — her husband — whispers so many wicked things in her ears she fears her cheeks are as red as the rubies that spill down her gown, they fly to Dragonstone to be wed secretly in the Valyrian way by a priest of the old faith.
Then, and only then, does he carry her up to his chambers in the Keep, their ancestral home, strip her to her undersilks and deposit her on the bed which has been piled with the richest of velvets and silks.
She trembles as she lays there, gasping, tasting blood still — hers and his — from the ceremony, watching with wide eyes as he strips himself before her, baring his broad form, his narrow waist, his strong legs, and all else which a wife alone might see of her husband.
'Why so coy?' he murmurs teasingly as she rolls her head away. 'Hmm?'
He crawls atop the bed and she shivers, makes a noise in her throat as if she is the prey of some great beast. But a willing prey, she thinks, gasping as she feels him press himself over her, warm and hot, strong.
Her hands flutter at his shoulder and then smooth down his back, finding scars from fights, feeling out the muscles that he has used to carry her, to lift her from horseback or dragonback, to hoist her in their twirling wedding dance but a few hours ago.
He slides his nose along hers, whispers a kiss across her lips.
She lifts her head, hungry, and he smiles and kisses her deeply, holding the back of her head in one large palm so that she can barely catch her breath.
Then, when her lips are thoroughly bruised, when the cut he made with dragonglass has started to bleed again, he sits up on his knees regarding her. He reaches for his dagger, glinting with the fiery amber embedded in its hilt, and cuts her silk shift from her, from neck to waist, ripping the rest of it in two with his fists as she yelps.
She is not afraid of her husband, even then, even naked underneath him, he with a dagger in one hand, he with the darkest look of hunger she has ever seen in his eyes.
'How long I have waited,' he says in the manner of a confession, his voice half a whisper.
'Not as long as I have,' she retorts, thrilled at his ravenous look at the arch of her back.
He laughs darkly and ducks his head to press a kiss to her teat, a wicked lick to her nipple.
She gasps and digs her fist into his hair, the braids mussed already by their flight.
'I promised to be dutiful, didn't I,' he says, mouthing down her belly, drawing more shivers, more heat from her insides. 'Generous.'
'You have deprived me,' she says, her legs trembling as his teeth drag across her hipbone, as his hand clutches at her side.
'I have deprived myself,' he says, lips brushing lower, hands pushing her thighs wide. 'But now I will feast.'
And feast he does. On her cunt, until she peaks twice, her hips held tight to his mouth by the cruel grasp of his fingers; and of the moans and whines from her lips when he kisses her as he takes her maidenhead, the gift he has longed for most.
'This cunt,' he murmurs, her wicked beastly husband, 'this cunt was made for me, wasn't it?'
He stills until she agrees, until she tells him, yes.
'Yes, who?' he demands, his hips thrusting a punishing rhythm, his mouth bruising her neck with sucking kisses.
'Yes, Uncle,' she moans, tipping her head back on the pillow, overcome, her insides fluttering. 'Yes, My King. Yes, Your Grace.'
He spills inside her with a groan, clasping her to him tightly so that, he grunts breathlessly in her ear, none of his seed may slip from her. So that she will soon be so thick with child that all will known what he has done to her, how he has had her, that she is his.
And thus will she repay his many gifts — he tells her later when he has seated her atop him and is watching the movement of her teats, dipping his thumb into her panting mouth — by giving him sons and daughters, by giving him herself in their bed each night, by giving him her hunger.
***