Chapter Text
The cloaks were unceremoniously stuffed back into the pack, and Daemon dragged her through Flea Bottom with swift steps, breaking out into a run once they entered the darkness of the tunnels. Their haste had her gasping for breath before long, but she pushed on, well mindful of the shortness of time.
When they burst into the brightness of Daemon’s bedchamber, her head was light and her side ached as he brought her into an embrace.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, pressing their foreheads together, his breathing almost as harsh as her own.
“Of course,” she answered on instinct and rose to her tiptoes to join their lips in a kiss.
“The dress needs to go,” he told her when they parted, his hands falling to her hips and her heart stuttered. “May I?”
Her nod was a short mute jerk of a head, a lump forming in her throat as he slowly turned her around to face his bed and she blinked rapidly praying not to cry as his fingers worked her laces open. She wanted this, she reminded herself. They needed it done lest they be separated.
But…
There would be pain. She did not truly remember, but she did remember the blood and the terrible, terrible pain and the dark bruises that had bloomed on the pale skin on her thighs when she had awoken after.
Daemon pressed a kiss to her shoulder and the tension there melted a little. She liked the kisses. She liked everything they had done together so far. She could bear the pain for all the rest. She could.
And it was Daemon.
Another kiss to her shoulder and another and another to her throat, lips gliding over the blood rushing there had her melting entirely. Only the body behind her held her up as her dress was peeled away, only her thin shift left to her, separating roaming hands from her overheated skin.
She barely even noticed her back meeting the mattress, far too intent on Daemon’s lips, on his fingers brushing, teasing, torturing her poor poor breasts.
His doublet and shirt went flying, and a delighted, breathless little laugh left her in the little time she had before her lips were sealed and her mouth so exquisitely invaded again.
Oh, how wonderful it was to burn.
The flames were doused the moment cold air met the heated flesh of her bare leg, breath freezing in her lungs and her gasps of pleasure turned desperate as she could not breathe, fighting against the weight pressing down on her, robbing her of the ability to draw breath.
Daemon stilled and pushed himself up to look down into her face, his brows drawn together in confusion. A foul curse was mumbled under his breath, his face tight with anger, and Gael’s sobs died in her throat as she burned with shame. “We don’t have time for this.”
“I am sorry. I– don’t mind me. Let’s just–”
But his head was shaking and he was pulling away from her, leaving her even colder. “No. This… This isn’t going to–Nevermind, I thought it might not…”
“I am sorry,” she repeated miserably and rubbed at her damp temples as he slid off the bed and rooted around the abandoned clothes, but he paid her no mind and she drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them tightly, willing herself not to weep. They had to do this, she knew that.
Daemon returned to the bed with a dagger and she looked at him with wide shocked eyes as he raised his arm and put a blade to the inside of it, very, very close to the armpit.
“What are you doing?!” Her voice was a weak squeak.
His eyes did not turn toward her at all, intent on the dagger and where it pressed into his flesh. “There needs to be blood,” he informed her evenly, “and there can’t be a single nick on your body but there can be one on mine. Just a little cut where no one is likely to see.”
“There needs to be consummation,” she heard herself say from a distance as she watched droplets of blood gather.
“There needs to be proof of consummation,” Daemon corrected her. “Some blood and– well, that will not be an issue.”
Her hold on her knees loosened as he put the dagger away at last and she watched him kneel on the bed, working the laces of his breeches open. “You–you should close your eyes,” he instructed her, red-faced.
“Why?” she demanded to know, fascinated by the way his face burned and his eyes would not meet hers.
“Because–uh–this–uh–this will be embarrassing.”
“How?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Gods, we don’t have time for this,” he uttered through gritted teeth and reached inside the breeches and her eyes slammed shut and she buried her burning face in her knees to hide, her arms coming up to cover her head.
She could hide from the sight but not from the sounds, and as curiosity tickled deep in her gut, she allowed herself a peek.
A peek was not enough, curiosity licking up her insides like a treacherous, treacherous flame.
“May I–may I… touch… it?”
Daemon’s movements stilled and his eyes snapped open, locking with hers, igniting something dark inside her. “We—we don’t—don’t have time,” he told her between gulps of air.
She shifted closer, placing shy fingers on the wrist of his immobile hand, feeling traitorous heat creeping up again. “I–I would like to.”
It was Gael—always Gael—that was so overwhelmed by his kisses and by his touches, that fell apart under them. It was fascinating to see him so affected now and she hungered for that power, to know how.
“You may,” was a mere puff of air and she shuffled yet closer until her shift stuck to his skin as much as her own. Her cheeks felt like they would never stop blazing red hot when he took her fingers and wrapped them around his member where they remained trapped in his warm warm hand.
She did not dare look down, did not dare look away from his dark dark eyes and the deep deep hunger there. Could one’s hunger infect another, she wondered as her own insides twisted and coiled with the need to fill an unknown emptiness buried somewhere almost impossibly deep down.
Curiosity was a dangerous thing she came to realize as he shuddered under her touch and slumped against her and still it was not enough for her, that mysterious emptiness gnawing at her with growing insistence. Just a kiss. Just a single kiss to help and fill it, she told herself.
And then more, more, more, she found herself begging when she found herself pressed into the mattress once more, her shift pushed down, and her exposed breasts proved as defenseless against the heat of Daemon’s mouth as her lips had.
They were made for each other, she was sure. How could they not be? His lips had no right to make her feel as glorious as they did.
A ragged moan tore out of her when his teeth grazed and bit and she drew his face up for a kiss because he had no right–
The door rattled in its frame and they froze, lips a breath apart.
“Daemon! Open the door this instant!”
“Baelon,” she whispered, panic settling in, “oh, gods, he will–”
“No. No. This… This is good. Discovery is essential. There… there will be no doubt like this,” he assured her as he petted her hair and drew away from her and left the bed entirely to find and throw a shirt on.
Gael blindly reached for covers to hide herself away, to shield her too-thin shift from her brother’s sight, to shield herself. Daemon… Daemon did not share her concern, unlatching the door and throwing it wide open without even trying to lace his breeches up.
“Father,” he greeted her brother evenly, “whatever brings you by?”
Oh, Baelon seemed ready to spit fire. “It is the middle of the fucking day! Your aunt is missing and you–” His voice died as he threw a look of disgust to the bed and his eyes settled on Gael.
Fury and horror battled on Baelon’s face and it was the horror that won out and his eyes closed in painful resignation, his hands coming up to cover them for good measure. “Gods, Daemon, I beg you, tell me you have not dishonored my sister.”
And Daemon, his hands innocently folded behind his back, bounced on the balls of his feet and reassured his father in an all too bright voice. “I did not dishonor Gael.”
Baelon paused and his hands fell away so he could bestow a doubtfilled look upon his son, upon the bed, upon Gael herself, the covers drawn up to her chin. He seemed to be weighing believing the words he so desperately wanted to believe against the evidence his eyes provided him.
In the end, it was no battle at all. Baelon brushed past Daemon, stepping past him to get to the bed, his dark suspicions confirmed when his eyes landed on the mess they had made of the sheets and she drew the covers yet higher as Gael’s cheeks burned, burned, burned.
The gaze he shot her was… part pain, part confusion, part rage, and his voice was colder than the heart of winter. “You are lying.”
Daemon, heedless of the danger, shrugged. “I am not. How could I dishonor Gael?” He grimaced and shook his head. “Don’t–Don’t answer that. I am sure there are ways to dishonor one’s wife, but not this way.”
“Wife,” her brother retreated dully, his eyes roving back to her, over the rumpled bed, the discarded clothes, his entirely unconcerned son and back to the clothes, to the open sack and the cloaks spilling out of it. “No. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.”
“Of course, wife. You must know I would never dream of dishonoring your sister, Father.”
Only her eyes peeked over the covers to observe and it was a good thing because she nearly choked on the way his guilelessly earnest expression mixed with the slightest note of mocking in his voice.
Baelon’s eyes closed once more and his voice was plainly pained. “Oh, gods, take me now.”
When he snapped his eyes open, it was Gael he addressed. “Mother will be most disappointed.”
And that was the truth of it, she supposed, but she had weathered far greater disappointment than this could ever evoke from her mother. In endless misery she had weathered it, but she had.
Daemon chimed in, bouncing behind his father’s back yet again. “Oh, there is no need for disappointment. It was a small, intimate wedding with not too many witnesses. We would not be too opposed to a grander, more public one for Grandmother to properly celebrate this joyous occasion with us.” A smirk made its way onto his face. “But no more than a moon from now. For… obvious reasons.”
Baelon’s shoulders slumped and he walked over to a cushioned chair, sinking into it tiredly. “Did you not want to be a Kingsguard just two days past?”
“Gods, no. Not for even a moment. I would be crawling out of my skin before the week was out and besides… Can you imagine me on your Kingsguard?”
Her brother let out a wounded sound. “Vividly.”
A queer tense silence descended on the room and Daemon cast a questioning look her way and then let out a heavy sigh. “Will Grandmother not grow more distressed the longer you stay here?”
Baelon let out a harsh bark of a laugh. “Do you think she would not be distressed should I appear in front of her in my present state? Let me think a moment, would you?”
Eventually, the Prince of Dragonstone heaved himself out of the chair to glare at them. “Get dressed the two of you and do not dare leave this room until I return. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Father,” Daemon voiced, his eyes forbearingly planted to the ceiling.
“Yes, brother,” Gael echoed, a tiny smile growing on her face as he left them behind with a snort of disgust.
Her husband pulled her from the bed and draped her in his dressing gown with a devious smile that simply had to be kissed away.
“You truly should lace up your breeches,” she told him between his kisses, the dressing gown sliding dangerously open under his attentions.
The devious smirk he gave her as he rested against the bed set her heart to racing. “You lace them up, if it bothers you so.”
She was no weakling to shy away from such a challenge and she set to her task without hesitation, batting his wandering hands away until she was done. Only then did she allow herself to be captured and kissed and fondled and oh, gods, she was going to enjoy being wed.
“You said you found her and left her with Daemon.” It was the queen’s voice, not Mother's, cold and cutting that chased her from Daemon’s embrace, that had her pulling the dressing gown closed and tightening the belt. “You failed to mention you found her with Daemon and left her with him.”
“We were in company, Mother,” Baelon replied smoothly, his countenance perfectly calm and collected, unlike it had been before he had left them, unlike Gael’s own right now. “I thought you would wish me to be… circumspect.”
“What do you have to say for yourself, boy? You have dishonored my daughter.” It was the quiet fury that was always the most dangerous one with her father.
Three voices rose in protest and her father cut through the clamor with a simple raising of a hand, the silence immediate and disorienting. “It might have escaped your attention, but it was Daemon I spoke to.”
“I did not dishonor Gael,” Daemon maintained sullenly. “We are wed. I could not dishonor her.”
“Wed,” her father repeated the word, rolling it about on his tongue as if he wondered at its taste.
“Yes,” sounded from three different directions.
“How could you be wed?”
Daemon’s senses must have left him, because he threw up his hands. “You take a man, a woman, a septon and some witnesses. Speak some prayers, say some vows and there you have it. We are wed.”
“And whatever gave you the impression this was a good idea?”
Daemon opened his mouth to say something awful, she was sure, and she could not let him do that.
“You were going to give him away! To someone wholly unworthy of him, to someone that would have made him miserable! Him and Caraxes both!” She raised her chin, gathering her indignation around her like a protective blanket. “I could not allow that.”
“That is not for you to judge! That is not for you to decide! Do you know what you foolish children did?” Her mother screeched at her, but Gael had words to say and say them she would.
“I know that he is mine and I am his and that is the manner of things. Always has been, always will be. Not even once did I think I could ever wed anyone but him. We were so close in age and held such affection for each other…” She stepped closer to her mother, glaring into her widening eyes, coming nose to nose with her, their heights evenly matched. “There was no better match. There could be no better match, I thought. But Mother disagreed.”
Her mother grew very very pale as she finished. “Oh, you foolish child, you are so young…”
“I am older than you were. Daemon is older than Father was,” she argued.
“I was not as frail—”
“I am not frail! I am not weak and I am not a child!” she cried. “How can you deny me what you had seized for yourself? Why don’t you want me to be happy?”
“Oh, sweetling were it so–” Her mother’s hand reached for her face but she stepped away.
“It is,” Gael insisted, her voice growing cold. “It is so simple. If you’ve ever truly loved me, you will let me have this. Let us have this. Besides, it is not like there is anything else for you to do. We are wed.”