Chapter Text
The scent of the flowers growing in the Godswood perfumes the air around me as I sit in the grass, my fingers dancing along the blades. It is hot today. Outlandishly. King’s Landing seems to swelter in the dense heat. The walls of the Keep–thick, heavy and so thoroughly grounded– trap the warmth so when I glance too far in either direction, the back reach of my view ripples like the dawn’s light on a quiet ocean. It is stifling and the air seems to stagnate, making me feel as if my wings have been bound. A dragon rider should never feel like this. We are creatures of air, chosen as worthy to share the bond of man and a beast so ancient that even the first eyes of Old Valyria were young by comparison. When I fly with Syrax, I am not Rhaenyra Targaryen. She is not Syrax the Golden. We are something else.
Daemon once told me that only the most worthy of dragon riders are truly bound to their beasts. It was the very same day on which he and my father glowed with pride as Syrax and I claimed one another as dragon and rider. I do not know what she sensed in me when I approached her. At merely seven years of age, surely I was too young to have much inside of me to impress a wyrm as formidable as she. Her golden scales had gleamed in the light as we faced one another, and she’d dwarfed me tenfold. My mother insisted I was not yet old enough when I’d felt her call, pleading that not I be permitted to answer it.
“Nonsense,” Father had exclaimed as he swept me from the floor into strong arms, making me glow from his jovial attention. “She has the blood of the Dragon, Aemma. Only she can tell us when she is ready.”
Set once more upon my feet, I was free to claim my birthright. Syrax was testing me when she roared into my face loudly enough to blow my two little plaits off my shoulders. Most other children my age would have trembled, cried perhaps and run for their mothers. Not I. Father has told the story so many times that I can recite it. ‘My sweetest little daughter, my dearest treasure, myRhaenyra approached a beast of such resonance that she shook the very foundations of the Red Keep. Fearlessly, Rhaenyra approached and claimed the she-dragon. The youngest dragon rider in years. It is as my brother decrees: the blood of Visenya herself courses through this child's veins.’
The memory brings a smile to my lips and my eyes gleam. It is a most appreciated respite from the oppressive heat. I can feel Syrax as if she speaks into my mind. She is restless as I am. I can never be entirely sure whether what I feel when I “hear” her is the magic I believe it to be, or if it is the imaginings of a mind prone to dreams of heroism and a gleaming stage on which to bask in the love and warmth of my charmed life. Do I imagine myself so far from human that I can hear the murmurs of my dragon? Or am I truly so elevated as one of the last remaining dragon lords that I actually am capable of feeling Syrax? I don’t believe the latter could be so wildly impossible, even as fantastical as it sounds. I am Targaryen. The blood of the dragon runs through my veins. Dragon are as kin to me as the mother who suckled me at her breast or the father who bounced me on his knee. Or the uncle…
As if he feels my thoughts wander to him, he announces himself, voice low and honeyed. “Yours is the only face possibly wearing a smile today, sweet niece.”
He speaks and my heart flutters. I don’t look up immediately. If I do, I know I will see him and it will be difficult to breathe. The sun will gleam in his beautiful hair, as silver as my own, and it will ring him in a halo of light. His eyes will glow bright as the amethysts they harvest in the warmest underground caverns across the Narrow Sea. I cannot remember when my dearest uncle, an occasional shadow at my shoulder and the one who taught me to ride a dragon, changed himself so thoroughly within my heart.
As a girl, I’d loved him as only a child could. He’d been a source of the greatest comfort when my whelpish agonies brought me to his side. He’d never begrudged my pressing to his leg to whine of my mother’s cruel denials of sweets and toys when my nursery teemed with hundreds, or of my father’s chastising when I spoke loudly enough to interrupt his affairs when I craved his attention. With patience, my beloved uncle listened to each lament about how boring the maesters' droning was, and how lonely I had become because there were no other children at Court with whom I could play. He’d stroke his fingers wordlessly through my hair and reassure me with a kiss to my forehead before distracting me with an enrapturing tale of Visenya, Aegon the Conquerer, and Rhaenys, or of Princess Nymeria of the Rhoynar and her life in Dorne. He filled me with awe and made the world seem larger as he lost himself to the histories with a wistfulness which at the time made his spirit feel kindred to mine, and he became someone I could love differently than I loved Mother and Father. There were sides of him he showed to only me. He was my white knight, sworn to be strong for me when I needed him to be and to support me when I took my girlish battles on myself. After all, though he was at my back, Daemon did not help me when I claimed Syrax. Daemon did not hold my hand when I demanded to Ser Harrold Westerling that I be taught how to fight with a sword, but he had been the one to offer me my first gleaming wooden practice blade in clear view of the Captain of the Kingsguard so he could not refuse. He was my white knight, but he was also my friend and he indulged my wildness. Encouraged it.
As I grew and took a confidante to my side in my dearest Alicent, the awestruck girlishness of my perception of Daemon changed with each quickly whispered word in my ear. House Hightower is only a Vassal house. They are not as removed from the world as House Targaryen, which flies through the air above their heads. Alicent hears things. I can always tell when something new has found its way into her ear from her older brother’s mouth as he whispers to his friends in the halls of their home in Oldtown. Her lips will purse, and her large eyes will both beseech me not to ask and plead with me to force her to tell me. Our games have clear steps. Alicent is so different from me. The expectations for her will never match mine. She has to live within the rules befitting her station, her gender, and her role as her father’s only daughter. It would be wrong of her to gossip with the Princess, but if I ordered it from her lips then it would be disgraceful for her to ignore the commands of her Lady. In our first years together, I took great pleasure in playing our game, especially when what she’d heard was about Daemon.
The Lord of Fleabottom, they called him. In those clandestine nights huddled in an alcove in my solar (receiving room), or beneath the Godswood tree, Alicent proved to me that my beautiful white knight was not as untouchable as I had imagined he was. Pleasure houses and nights at taverns with strange women… and men. My illusion shattered and left in its place something so much more thrilling. A flat and archetypal Prince Charming became a man with secrets behind his smile, and an alluring darkness in the powerful flex of his hands. And I was no longer a girl of seven. Visenya had been three and ten when she became the wife of Aegon the Conquerer. Was it so strange that Alicent’s whispered words excited me even as young as I was?
Of course, the white knight hadn’t died. He’d only become a man as I grew into a woman. My mind and body began to mature. It was good of Alicent to tell me what she knew, and the more she told me, the more I seemed to detect these same rumors in the walls around me. Daemon became a puzzle and a mystery, a dear distraction from my isolation in the Keep. Because of Alicent, I could fantasize about what it would be like when I was a woman as soft and alluring as he seemed to crave. The people around me had noticed as I left behind my more childish pursuits and turned my attention toward discovering the woman inside of me waiting to break free. I was used to eyes on me, but soon their gazes held more than adoration. The Realm’s Delight was no longer merely a delightful child to bring smiles to their lips.
By my twelfth name day, I had already begun to become a woman physically. My bodices stretched across my budding chest and my riding leathers had to be replaced to accommodate my rounding hips. I bloomed under the cherishing stares at court, among the servants, and even within the Kingsguard. I was something to envy… and soon something to desire. I’d felt hunger in the eyes of the lords for the first time on the very same night as my twelfth nameday celebration. Men looked at me, and the attention fortified me. But when my eyes sought a pair I’d come to enjoy imagining on me just to see what it felt like, he was so often missing. Had Daemon noticed me? Was I as lovely as the whores who sated the fire in his blood? Surely I was lovelier. Why did he not ever seem to come to look upon me?
“Why is that, uncle?” I ask him now in the Godswood, a girl turned young woman of four and ten. I have learned some of the beginning steps of courtly dances, and it is within my power now to invite him to look. Perhaps that had been the problem all along. Though it is a long tradition of Old Valyria, the Westerosi people do not seem to understand the importance of blood. They do not comprehend the imperative to maintain a bloodline as rare and as special as our own. Even my father turned from the traditions to marry my mother, whose Valyrian blood was less than half. I am a trueborn Targaryen, but if we do not have a care soon that will lose its meaning. I need to let Daemon know that I have not forgotten what we are, and neither should he.
Alicent is a few years older than I and she has already begun the complicated steps of procuring for herself the attention of enough suitors for her father to make an advantageous match. She teaches me what she knows about the ways of the eyes and of the hands, of teeth in my lip. I laugh and practice with her until we go to pieces with our amusement, but now that I am alone with Daemon for the first time in what feels like months, I wonder if what she has taught me will make him want to stay in the palace and leave Fleabottom behind to claim me as his birthright. I know I am lovely now. I have languished in it for two years. It gets me nearly anything I want.
I finally look at him after I have braced myself for how it will make my heart flutter when he meets my eyes. He cuts such a handsome figure in his silver armor, his golden cloak tumbling over his back. He is the Lord Commander of the City Watch. Before that, the Master of Laws, and before that, the Master of Coin. This role suits him best. He has a knack for leadership. He is domineering while rarely having to speak. He is enviable in his ferocity against the criminals peppering the streets of King’s Landing. Men will follow Daemon. I’ve overheard my father griping to my mother that his brother lacks any head for governance, and I recall his praise when Daemon finally found a position to fulfill him.
I am transfixed by the white and gold for a moment, and I very nearly forget the dance I am trying to do. I want to see if he’ll join me in it, or if he’ll elude me. Perhaps all he sees when he looks upon me is a girl. His sweet niece. What if he doesn’t notice I’m even dancing at all? My eyes flash with determination. If it is not that Daemon is wary of tradition, perhaps it is that I need to make myself as worthy of him as I have deemed him of me.
I keep my eyes large and innocent. “Is there something unpleasant about today?” I know he means the damnable heat, but I use it to my advantage. I lift my hand and press it through my hair before I reach down to gather it and lift it off my neck.
Daemon scoffs and looks out over the flowers. It’s as if he doesn’t even see me. I don’t like that. Men love to look at me. Why not him?
“Has the heat not reached you way down there?” My uncle teases.
I cluck my tongue, slowly rising to my feet as he crosses the length between us until he is standing close. My heart flutters again, but I do not break his gaze. Instead, I smile just as I have practiced smiling for Alicent. “I suppose it must be unpleasant to be so near to the sun,” I challenge, lifting my chin and moving up onto my toes as if I can stare him down despite the tremendous difference in our heights.
“Says the little dragonling to the Great Wyrm,” he answers, a smirk playing at his lips. He will play with me. He has done so before, praising my wit as I make him laugh. I want him to play, but I also want him to see that I’m curious in a way I never have been before. He sees so much of me when he looks at me. I always felt it, even when I was small. I want him to see me now.
“Not so much a dragonling anymore,” I tell him before I switch to High Valyrian. “{Syrax has shown me how to be fierce enough to match a Great Wyrm.}” To speak to him in our native tongue is freeing. So few within the Red Keep can understand us, and those that can are far from where we share our conversations. He is practiced and speaks it with the curling of his tongue which thickens his accent. Father has let the sound of Westeros change his voice. His accent reflects that. Daemon’s and rich and rolling, working its way through me with dangerous flutters over my skin.
He raises his brow, one hand coming to rest on Dark Sister by his side where she always stays. “{Has she?}” he asks me, taking the invitation of my switch into the language of our homeland. He leans down close enough that I almost lose my nerve in the dance I am initiating. Does he know what he is doing? Is he choosing to be so close that I could pull him down to press his lips to mine, or do I read signs I long for but do not truly see? “{And what has the she-dragon taught you, sweet niece?}”
My breath catches and I flex my hands at my sides, determination in my gaze. “{Many things. The ferocity of my bite.}” I stare at him as I add, “{The power of my body.}”
My brazen words reach his ears and he tips his head back to laugh. “{Your talks with Syrax must be truly enlightening, if you have learned all that.}” His eyes dance with amusement. He is aware of a game between us, it is clear. But is that all this is to him?
With the sudden urge to regroup, I depart from his side to cross to the roses in the far corner of the Godswood. It puts space between us and gives me a moment to breathe. I have extended my invitation to him, as I intended. But I will not make all the moves. I will not throw myself at him. Alicent advises that women who are desperate are ladies men bring to bed, but not to wife. But I am impatient. I want Daemon to look at me the same way the other men at Court do. Perhaps if he does, my curiosity will be sated and I will realize I do not crave him as I believe I do. He will prove he truly is the complex figure of my perceptions and Alicent’s stories both. It could well be enough for me to have only this single victory, but I will only know once I get what I want. And I willget it.
I can feel his eyes on me as I run my fingertips over the plush red petals of the roses in front of me, catching a bead of sweet dew upon the first of them. “Have I said something wrong, little one?” I hear him ask in the common tongue.
I nearly growl to myself, bearing my teeth slightly as I keep my back to him. Little one. That’s all wrong. I must steer the dance away. “Of course not,” I answer. “But remember, Uncle, you are the one who has come to join me. I was here first. Surely it falls to you to keep my attention, does it not?”
“Is that so?” he asks me, and I can hear he is still amused. “Who says that?”
“I do,” I tell him. “Your Princess.”
“And what of my desires?” he asks. “As your Prince.”
My Prince. I smirk at the flowers, eyes running over each one as I determine which I will pick to place in the thin bronze vase Alicent gave me on the last solstice. “What of them?” I tease him. “I am the daughter of the King.”
“And I could one day be his heir,” Daemon points out.
My eyes flash as he so brazenly suggests that something could happen to the babe which grows within my mother, the babe my father so dearly prays will be a boy. I retort before I think, leaping to the defense of my yet unborn baby brother. “You are no Prince of Dragonstone, uncle.”
His hand catches my waist, turning me to face him swiftly enough that my finger catches on a thorn and I cry out softly. The sound dies in my throat even as I feel blood trickle down my fingertip. Daemon stares at me, but he says nothing. His eyes are unreadable and my lips part as I register how tightly he holds me. My undamaged hand rests upon his chest. I cannot stand the silence. I cannot abide not knowing what he is thinking. So I speak.
“Wh-what are they?” I tremble out. He narrows his eyes in confusion. I swallow and then dare to elaborate. “Your desires?” I don’t stutter this time, my purple eyes defiant once more. I am still angry with him for his insinuation, but I will not give up my chance to learn more of him.
The question curls his lips into a wolfish smile and he releases my waist. I am still too bewildered to complain as he catches my hands. “My dearest Rhaenyra. You are so young, precious.”
“Not that young,” I argue. “Visenya–”
I trail off and wince as he takes hold of my finger, which he seems to have only just noticed is bleeding. A scarlet streak has come to pool in the center of my palm. “One of the thorns,” I tell him. “It caught.”
His gaze flicks to the rosebush and then back to my skin. When he raises my hand to his lips, I gasp as they circle my bleeding fingertip, the wet heat shooting desperate desire through my body unlike any of the small rumblings I have encountered before. My mouth falls open again, my eyes wide as the suck of his lips cleans my skin before he dares to trace his tongue along my palm. It leaves behind a cool trail that makes me shiver. I cannot believe he is doing this, and when he looks at me again there is something which almost seems wicked in his eyes as he explains in High Valyrian: “{Blood as rare as yours should never be wasted on something so common, Rhaenyra}.”
I am stunned. My name on his lips is like a purr, a rumble in his chest like a dragon whose fire simmers within him. He produces a handkerchief and presses it to the cut before more of my lifeblood springs forth. In the common tongue, he tells me to “See a Maestor if you need a stitch, sweet girl, though I doubt it is so dire.” He smirks once more, and the way his eyes flick down to my panting chest triggers the beginnings of victory within me. He has noticed that I have grown and my body has changed. But the look he gives me is not the same as the one I expect. He does not seem as if he wishes to devour me, like all the other men. The gleam in his eye is something more. It has a semblance of fascination.
Before I can successfully form words, he inclines his head as if we have only exchanged pleasantries and departs my company as quickly as he arrived. By the time I have it in me to call for him, he is gone and I am left utterly mortified by the heat curling between my thighs and, more importantly, enraged that he has bested me at the game I set out to play and win.