Chapter Text
Daemon walked her from her prayers silently that night, his hands folded behind his back, his head bowed low, and the kiss he pressed to her lips was a mere brush, a tease. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
How was one to content themselves with the sputtering light of a dying candle when they had touched the sun?
And how was she not to despair over this newly quiet and dispirited Daemon?
She remembered him like this only one other time and… “We do not have to wed. If… If you do not wish it,” she whispered.
He stopped rather abruptly and blinked at her. “Why–? It was I that offered.”
That was true enough and ever since then… She flapped her hands around, heat rising to her cheeks, into her eyes. “You do not seem to be… happy about it.”
His brows furrowed in a deep frown. “So? What does that matter? You do not seem to be happy about anything.”
Her cheeks burned. “I am,” she insisted. “I am so so very thankful—”
“Thankful,” Daemon jumped in, scornful, “is not happy. Thankful is not even content. One could be lying dying in a ditch somewhere and be thankful they’re not dead yet. I’m certainly thankful to know about the plans for me, though I am far from happy about them.”
She took a shuddering breath. “I… I would be happy being wed to you… I think, but… I want you to be.”
Daemon’s lips tightened and he shook his head. “I will be happy once all this… uncertainty and this… sneaking about is done with. Once you’re…you.”
“I am me,” she murmured in protest, steadfastly ignoring the way her arms rose unbidden to curl around her.
She did not notice her head was lowered until there were fingers brushing her collarbone to come under her chin and pry it up. A thumb came to stroke the delicate skin just under her eye as his somber gaze examined her and a soft sad sigh escaped him just as that painful gaze cut away. “I suppose I have not been paying close enough attention, then.”
Gael bit the inside of her cheek to stop a sob and her fingers dug into her arms with renewed desperation because it was true. He had not paid her any regard for years and years and it hurt when he had once showered her in it. It had hurt to walk into the sea, her body torn and aching for the relief of death, and still have some small desperate part of her wonder whether he would even know, whether he would even care.
“We do not need to wed, if you don’t want to,” he told her softly, gently. “I will… I will save myself some other way.”
Other way. Run away and leave her here. Alone. “You promised you would not leave me,” she reminded him in a broken whisper. “I asked you not to and you said–”
“Shh,” he urged her and pressed his lips to hers and she clung and clung and clung to him, willing herself not to cry. “I’m not leaving. I’m right here. Right here. Just… You need to know you don’t have to… we don’t have to…”
“I want to,” she admitted, and that was the shameful truth of it. Daemon could be free. He deserved to be free, but she wanted him and could not bring herself to let go of him, not again.
“Then we will have to do it the day after tomorrow, I would think.”
Shock swept the shame away and she stumbled a step back. “So soon?”
Daemon shrugged, almost unconcernedly. “The sooner the better. Less of an embarrassment for everyone if it’s done before they manage to seal the agreement and we have no way of knowing just how close to it they are.”
They started walking toward her mother’s chambers again and the frown returned to his face. “I am uncertain whether… I will have to make arrangements in the city and I do not know how long that will take me. I would… I would ask you not to go to the sept alone.”
She gave a little startled laugh at his words. “I think I will manage to find my way well enough alone.”
“I do not doubt that,” he allowed, his words slow and measured. “I would still ask you not to go alone.”
His concern was wholly unnecessary but heartwarming. Indeed, quite suddenly Gael felt as if her face might split with her smile. She kissed his cheek. “If that is your wish, I will not.”
“Good. Good,” Daemon nodded and coughed. “And… you better come for the morning prayers the day after and… well, stay for a few hours more.”
Her steps faltered. “I don’t understand.”
“It… It will be easier to spirit you away from the sept than to extricate you from your mother’s side, will it not? So, come with her to the morning prayers as you do and stay. Alone. There’s a secret passage out of there. We can use that one, or, well, a different one should the sept not be empty.”
“Oh,” she breathed, their recently proposed wedding suddenly and stunningly palpable. “Do I… Do I need to… do… anything?”
How did one even prepare for a wedding?
“No,” Daemon’s head shook, but how would he know? “I will have everything ready. The cloak and… well, everything.”
A maiden cloak and a wedding cloak.
Gael did not have a maiden cloak, though there seemed little sense to it when there was to be no difference between them, was there? One was meant to sew one’s maiden cloak in the circle of their family, whispering secrets and giggling and looking forward to the bright bright future. If there was to even be one, Gael would not get to see it before donning it. But that was better. Far better than sewing Daemon’s wedding cloak knowing it would not be her he would cloak in it.
But Daemon had not cloaked Rhea Royce in it either, had stood in the sept and refused to move to growing titters until his father did and threw the cloak over the stiff shoulders of the red-faced, thin-lipped lady. For all that Gael had resented her with all her heart, she had felt pity for her in that moment.
It had been a beautiful cloak, each stitch a testament to her broken heart, and it had been wasted on a farce of a wedding.
Bitterness was such an ugly thing to carry around in this bright new existence of hers. Bitterness about something that would never come to be, that she would be forevermore safe from now seemed ridiculous and yet it was no less there.
“Very well,” she nodded to herself. “I… I will be ready.”
Gael had promised not to go to the sept alone and she did not. For once, she asked her mother to come with her because she was to wed on the morrow and she had died and never wed before and excitement and fear and so many other unnamed emotions fought and clamored for prominence deep within her gut and she had to pray, had to beg for peace and there was no better place than the sept for it.
She prayed to the Maiden, to the Mother and to the Father.
For blessing, for understanding, for forgiveness.
And after, as she joined her mother in her bed for the night, she lay on her side, her hands folded under a cheek and asked for a bedtime tale as she had when she had been a little girl. “Tell me of the time you wed Father. Were you afraid? Excited?”
Her mother chuckled ever-so-softly and combed her fingers through Gael’s hair. “I was angry most of all, sweetling. He was mine and I was his and that was the manner of things. Always had been, always would be, I had been convinced. Not even once before that day had I thought I could ever wed anyone but your father. We were so close in age and held such affection for each other… There was no better match. There could be no better match, I thought.” Even now Mother’s lips twisted bitterly. “Mother disagreed.”
Angry… Her mother had been angry where Gael had been… silent. Useless.
“Why?”
“Mother was too easily swayed by her unworthy new husband. Can you imagine? They thought to wed me to a knight, not even a lord of his own keep. A knight.”
“To think they would give you and Silverwing away…” Gael mumbled.
“It was a folly,” her mother stonily agreed.
“But Rhaenys and Meleys–”
“For good or ill, Rhaenys made her own choice,” the queen declared, and she supposed that was true enough, but Gael had more questions she did not dare ask. Why Daemon? Why give him and Caraxes away? What choice did he have?
But that would be a foolish question to ask. Aemma had not gotten to choose either, nor had Gael. Choices were for heirs. For Aemon and Baelon. For Rhaenys and for Viserys. Not for Aemma or Daemon or Gael. Even Daella, Vaegon, and Maegelle had gotten to choose. Even Saera who had spat on the choice offered and forged her own path.
But not Viserra.
Had that been where the choices—where mercy—for those of them with lesser standing ended? With Saera?
Bitterness hissed and coiled in her gut like a venomous snake, and she closed her eyes and listened to her mother’s story, willing her sweet voice to lull her to sleep despite her tumultuous thoughts, willing her tears away.
Gael should feel wretched for deceiving her mother directly under the gazes of the gods, she knew but all she felt was peace. She had had no strength for anger but she had a right to a choice. The gods had given her that much.
Still, she prayed for the Father’s forgiveness most of all.
“It occurred to me that I have not properly asked you to wed me yet, Aunt.” Daemon’s voice was so very soft as he came to kneel down by her side at the foot of the Father’s statue and she smiled up at him.
A corner of his lips curled up slightly and his brows rose a touch. “Well, will you?”
Warmth rose to her cheeks. “I will.”
A hand appeared in front of her and she took it. “Then let us be about it.”
Daemon fixed a ratty cloak about her shoulders and led her through a seemingly endless maze of dark passages until they emerged into the sunlight and pungent smell that had her nose curling in disgust.
“Where are we?” she demanded to know, her hand flying up to cover her nose.
“Flea Bottom,” he informed her with a grin and tugged on her other hand. Which he held still even though they were no longer in the pitch black of the tunnels. “Come, 'tis not far.”
Flea Bottom. What a fitting name.
The sept they stepped into was a small sorry thing squeezed between two winesinks, and Gael’s grip on Daemon’s fingers tightened when they came upon a few septas and a smattering of clean-faced but ratty-clothed children devouring steaming hot pies inside.
A fat-bellied septon was there too, wine stains on his holy robes. “Ah, you’re here. Good. Good. Come, get ready so we may begin.”
Gael’s cheeks reddened under the stern judging gazes of the septas. “They need to leave! They will tell,” she urgently hissed into Daemon’s ear. “We need to leave!”
“Shush now,” he consoled her in a low low voice. “We need witnesses and I paid them to be here. They will only tell if needed. I promised to keep their orphanage in food for two full moons.”
“Oh.” That explained the pies, she supposed.
“Here.” Daemon hefted the sack he had brought along onto one of the benches and drew out a cloak.
“It is… beautiful,” she murmured, her fingers tracing the rich fabric and the careful stitching reverently. It was certainly not what she had expected.
“It was Mother’s,” he shared with her quietly, two red splotchesappearing high on his cheeks. “Both of them were.”
She felt her eyes grow wide. “Truly? How?”
Daemon chuckled. “I might have stolen into Father’s chambers. There’s… there’s a chest with Mother’s… Sometimes…” He shook his head harshly. “Nevermind. He will not miss them anytime soon and she would have wanted us to have them, I’m sure.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, on the very brink of tears. She would have been happy with any old cloak so long as it was his but this… There were to be few witnesses, none of them people she would know or of any sort of repute, but her maiden cloak had been sewn by her sister and by her mother as it should have been under any other circumstance.
The septon’s face paled to see her maiden cloak unfurled and though the poor man gasped for air, she felt oddly reassured to have it. The cloak felt like Mother’s warm loving embrace around her shoulders.
The man’s face was intensely pained and he seemed like he might faint when Daemon drew out the second, almost identical cloak. Whatever gold he had been paid must have been considerable, for he gathered his wits about him with uncommon speed.
“Who… Who comes before the gods to be wed?”
“Gael of House Targaryen comes here to be wed. A woman grown, trueborn and noble. She comes to beg the blessing of the gods.”
“Who comes to claim her?”
“Daemon of House Targaryen, a man grown, trueborn and noble comes here to claim and wed her this day.”
They were bid forward and they knelt together under the gazes of the gods, under the light breaking into a myriad rainbows on the crystal the septon’s hands held above their bowed heads as he prayed over them.
“Please, cloak the bride,” he ordered them once done, motioning for them to rise.
Gael stood still as Daemon unfastened the maiden’s cloak and replaced it with the wedding cloak, smiling slightly as he brushed away wrinkles and her breast with them before his hands settled in her own and they stood facing each other.
The septon’s voice rang loudly and clearly in the small sept. “The love of the Seven is holy and eternal. The source of life and love. We stand here this day in thanks and praise to join two souls as one. Father… Mother… Warrior… Smith… Maiden… Crone… Stranger. Hear now their vows.”
Daemon spoke first, the words coming out in a grave gravelly voice entirely unlike him. “I am yours and you are mine. Whatever may come.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “I am yours and you are mine. Whatever may come.” Then, she stepped forward boldly, pressing her lips to Daemon’s. “With this kiss I pledge my love and take you for my lord and husband,” she declared clearly, proudly.
He smiled at her, an impish thing that set his eyes alight, and pressed a kiss of his own to her lips. “With this kiss I pledge my love and take you for my lady and wife.”
The septon raised the crystal above their heads once more and his voice gained a queer godly quality as he spoke his last. “Here, in the presence of gods and men, I do solemnly proclaim Daemon of House Targaryen and Gael of House Targaryen to be man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, and cursed be the one who comes between them.”
Aye, cursed be whoever might come between them.