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Never had the chamber of the Small Council been so fraught with unease, nor so stifling with heat. In times past, such weight in the air might have heralded the whisper of scandal, but on this day, the cause was graver still. Rhaenyra sat at the head of the table like a storm contained in silk, fingers drumming against the carved wood with increasing menace. The tendrils of her braided silver hair coiled tight, as if in solidarity with her mood. Her eyes were fixed halfway between the ceiling and the abyss.
“Trade from Lys is down by nearly half,” Lord Celtigar said, dabbing at his brow with the sort of linen that suggested both wealth and terror. “They claim storms, but it may be the tariffs—”
Thump.
Rhaenyra’s eye twitched. The twitch of a woman who had known many kinds of agony but never of this precise flavour.
“—which may, of course, be tied to their feud with the Tyroshi guilds—”
Thump-thump-thump.
The ceiling groaned. It wasn’t the sound of stone or beam, but something far more disconcerting, the architectural sigh of a royal bed under siege.
“By the gods,” murmured Lord Beesbury, casting his gaze upward as though his very ears had turned traitor. “Has war been declared upon the furniture?”
“If such noise be wrought by furniture,” Lord Staunton replied dryly, “then the bedposts are in dire jeopardy.”
“No one speak of it!” Rhaenyra said, her voice knife-edged. “Speak of tariffs. Speak of trade. We shall not speak of my son’s—”
Thump.
“—unyielding commitment to consummation.”
Daemon, elbow draped over the arm of his chair, coughed into his goblet with the put-on delicacy of a man watching someone else’s dignity unravel to schedule.
“You,” she snapped, rounding on him with regal fury. “Stop enjoying this.”
He raised a brow, every inch of him aggravatingly amused. “My dear, if I cannot enjoy watching your composure come apart before the nobility of the realm, then what, truly, is the point of marriage?”
Another thump echoed overhead, followed by a low, unmistakably pleased moan. The chandelier above them shuddered.
“I take it,” said Beesbury delicately, “that Prince Aemond has not yet returned to the training yard?”
“Nor, I presume, to his senses,” added Staunton with barely concealed glee.
Lord Corlys, who had fought Iron Islanders with less weariness, shifted beside Rhaenyra and exhaled through his nose. “We could postpone, Your Grace. Reconvene when... the marriage, uh, festivities have ceased.”
“They are not festivities,” Rhaenyra hissed. Her words came in the rhythm of a woman trying not to scream. “They are my half-brother’s assault on my nerves.”
“On the Keep’s foundations, more like,” Daemon murmured, and took another slow sip.
Above them, the chandelier swayed with more ominous purpose, as though attempting to flee the room entirely, and every head at the table tilted upward in perfect, weary unison, not so much curious as grimly resigned to what they already knew they’d hear next. It was not quite a moan, not yet a shriek. Something in between, drawn-out and falsetto, with all the finesse of a dying minstrel and twice the volume. Whatever dignity the sound once possessed had been traded for flourish and a complete ignorance of how well sound travelled through ancient stone.
Gods help them all, it was distinctly Lucerys.
Beesbury, who had seen fifty years of court life and had foolishly believed he’d already witnessed it at its lowest point, let his council ball slip from his fingers. “That,” he said, voice thin and almost reverent, “was not furniture.”
Daemon reclined further in his chair. “For my part,” he said, voice smooth as oiled steel, “I should think you’d be pleased. They seem to be getting on rather well.”
Rhaenyra made a sound low in her throat, something between a growl and the first whistle of a boiling kettle. “I was given every assurance,” she said, her jaw clenched near to shattering, “that they loathed one another.”
Her husband arched a brow, wicked amusement dancing at the corners of his mouth. “As, if memory serves, we once did.”
She ignored him. “The marriage was arranged,” she said tightly, “to quiet dissent, and to placate the Crown’s more fragile alliances. And,” she added, her voice rising dangerously, “to keep Alicent from sulking like a milk-drunk child each time she imagined a slight against her precious brood.”
Daemon hummed thoughtfully. “Ah yes. A noble sacrifice, forced upon two unwitting souls. Though, I’ll say not every young omega meets the demands of matrimony with such sustained conviction.”
“I shall burn this keep to its foundations.”
“I would counsel against it,” said Lord Corlys, without looking up. “Not whilst Driftmark’s heir is presently—”
THUMP.
“—being most thoroughly dislodged in the north wing.”
At that moment, a servant peeked into the chamber. The poor soul looked like he’d run all the way from the seventh level of hell to deliver the unpleasant message.
“Yes?” Rhaenyra asked, much too quickly. Her voice carried the brittle hope of a woman offered a distraction.“What news? A raven?”
The servant bowed. “Only the requested handmaiden report, Your Grace. The marital apartments requested another pitcher of lemon water this morn. And fresh strawberries.”
The tension in the room was deep. Awkward. Almost entirely compromised.
Daemon exhaled slowly. “Strawberries,” he said at last. “A rather assertive request.”
Lord Celtigar, who had hoped to finish the meeting with his dignity intact, cleared his throat and made a valiant attempt to steer the discourse anew. “Shall we resume, then, with Lys?”
“Lys is welcome to dissolve into the sea,” Rhaenyra muttered.
Beesbury, now visibly trying to become one with his papers, attempted to reshuffle them without looking at the ceiling. It didn’t help much as the creak that followed was the kind that bespoke rhythmic exertion and a bed’s quiet plea for release.
“By the Seven,” Staunton muttered, half-rising. “Perhaps, someone should intervene?”
Daemon waved a hand, supremely unconcerned. “What would you propose, a bucket of cold water?”
“That is my son,” Rhaenyra snapped.
“And your brother,” Daemon returned, utterly unrepentant. “The gods themselves wrote this comedy.”
A loud crash followed. Then, horribly, a breathless giggle.
Rhaenyra stood. Her chair scraped back with the finality of a battle horn.“This council is adjourned,” she declared.
“To when?” asked Lord Celtigar, folding his notes as though they might ward off the memory.
Rhaenyra’s eye twitched. “When the noises stop,” she said. “Or I go deaf in both ears. Whichever comes first.”
As she turned to go, a final groan rang out — this one, unmistakably, Aemond’s. It resounded through the chamber like the curtain call of a play none had wished to witness, yet all would be hard-pressed to forget.