Chapter Text
Have you ever felt like you were born in the wrong time? That perhaps another sphere exists where you might have been happier?
He should have said no. He should have said you’re mind is fuddled with rot. It tricks you towards macabre thoughts. And then maybe a slap. It would always work for Daeron when he was in a drunken stupor. But it is a half-willed thought. Had he lifted his hand, even just a few inches, it would have dropped back into his lap like a wilted stalk.
She sounded so much like Daeron, her words an eerie consonance.
Sweating, miserable, sweet-faced, he would crawl into his parents’ bed with dreams neither Maekar nor Dyanna could comprehend. He wept little-boy tears and Maekar felt his heart crack down the centre. But because he hated that feeling, he masked it with harder ones – impatience and anger – and demanded that Dyanna return their son to his bed so that he could learn an important life lesson: men bear their burdens in silence.
He knows now he should not have been so harsh. But when has life ever afforded the privilege of retrospect in the present? He was all of two-and-twenty himself, yet to fight in his first real war, accustomed to suppressing his own complaints in favour of Rhaegel getting the attention he needed.
All the children in this family are ailing. The feeling was mild when he first held Daeron and his infant son screamed as if his skin was boiling off his little arms, his legs. His boy’s reluctance towards life was vivid from the start. None of the children are well.
No matter how bright they were, or how loud they screamed and chased each other around in the corridors of the Keep, Maekar could smell the sickness off their little bodies. The vacancy behind their violet, brown and blue eyes. They were all rushing for a cliff’s edge, ducklings without balance.
Maekar only really noticed after the Battle of Redgrass Field. He considered it punishment for murdering Daemon’s little boys on the battlefield. Tow-headed twelve-year-olds, with their mother’s eyes and hands still pudgy with baby fat. The younger watched his older twin bleed out in their exhausted father’s arms. Daemon could barely speak, an arrow in every appendage, one through his neck, and yet somehow, still conscious and kneeling. Surrender, he choked out to Aemon, who screamed in harrowed rage and stumbled to grasp Blackfyre instead.
Aemon! Set it down! Baelor shouted across the field, but Maekar knew the boy would not hear, and if he did, it would mean nothing. He dug his heels into the stallion and rider and beast lurched forward as one. He thought of that race across Redgrass field many times in the years since. The length of it, the speed of the horse, the speed of an arrow wrapped in an uncle’s love. I do this for you, Bloodraven told them later when they refused to look at him, stomachs roiling with sick. I do it all for you.
The arrow cut through Aemon’s chest as Maekar reached for him. He yanked the reins to keep from trampling the little corpse and half fell, half jumped from the saddle. The boys were dead. Daemon had already succumbed.
“I had him!” Maekar roared towards the Weeping Ridge. “I fucking had him!”
Bloodraven’s face was indistinguishable from a distance. But there was nothing there to see. The only thing certain about Brynden was that when it mattered most, he could remove the parts of himself that made him human. His Raven’s Teeth lowered their arrows, job done. Aemon’s warm little head was the heaviest weight Maekar had ever carried on the crook of his elbow. Bittersteel’s horn rang out in the distance, and Baelor shouted for his brother. The battle was not yet over. They had names to earn. The Hammer and the Anvil.
It was on Maekar’s return to the Red Keep, bruised and victorious, that Daeron’s nightmares began.
He was a sunny child before then. Teething was difficult. He awoke at night to scream. But in the light of day, he toddled around and wanted to show his parents everything he found, and Maekar who was only fifteen when he was born, was willing to play along. Still treated as a child by his own family, he had a baby son on his knee to rock and was more brother than father towards him.
The joy and brightness he could not remember truly experiencing in his own childhood was exhibited by Daeron. Rhaegel’s fragile health meant Maekar was left to himself because he was strong. It was assumed he did not need Myriah as much as Rhaegel did. He would sit out on the battlements in the rain to try and make himself sick so Myriah would come to him. You must take care of your brother when I am gone, she would say, even when she was at his sickbed, tending to him. Your oldest brother is the Crown Prince. Aerys is forgetful, distracted by his books. But I know you will protect Rhaegel, will you not, Mayakar? Oh, my little cherub, smile, smile – do not look so glum – how wonderful the world is! You have your family around you and a mother who would die for you!
The last word on her lips before she passed away was Rhaegel.
Maekar already knows who will be on his lips when he dies.
If he had run that horse faster, blocked Bloodraven’s aim, Aemon would still be alive. Daeron would not have gotten sicker. Valarr would not have retreated into himself. Aerion’s temper would not be so quick. Daenys would still smile and laugh the way she used to. Aelor and Aelora would not be so sickly.
If he had saved a twelve-year-old boy, this might have been avoided. All manner of things are blamed for the Targaryen decline. For it is a decline without the dragons, no matter how many tours of the realm the king does, or how many tourneys the Targaryen princes flaunt themselves at.
Maekar knows it is the dead children. When House Targaryen has a hand in murdering its fledglings, the horrors follow. Lucerys, Jaehaerys, Maelor, Aegon, Aemon. And there will be more. No other family in the realm has such a taste for the blood of its own babes.
Daenys’s death would have been on your head too. He’d known it when he saw her on the ledge, a baby bird stranded. It was Baelor’s death that led her there. Valarr and Matarys dying in quick succession only sped it along. She would have ended up on that ledge regardless. She might still. Not even Bloodraven can keep his eye constantly trained on her.
The ghost of her mouth flutters wet on Maekar’s cheek. The way she writhed and arched in his lap, abandoned to her pleasure. She possesses the hunger of a dragon that has never been allowed to eat its fill. Soft in his arms, under his hands, so tender he could bite and chew her right through. Her little giggles when his beard tickled.
A long-ignored delirium rears its head. Lust and madness combined in the single-minded pursuit of a woman’s flesh. Dyanna’s death took what was left of it with her. Maekar’s body still functions as normal. There is an erection between his legs every morning when he awakens from dreams he cannot remember. But there is no urge to tend to it. It is the same as eating used to be in the months after Dyanna’s death. Food was tasteless, but it kept him alive.
He felt the urge when it swelled under his pretty niece. Her slender weight squirmed on top of it, unaware of what it was she was doing, what she had already done. Greedy as any Targaryen born into a world as colourless as their hair. The fire that burned in one could only be understand by the same flame that burned in another. There was no one else left in the Red Keep who felt Baelor’s loss as keenly as she did. To be seen, was to be loved tirelessly.
He had thought of none of this in the sept. His mind was empty. He’d touched her, kissed her, felt her skin with the mindless hunger of a soldier returning from war. The jasmine oil in his niece’s hair did not need meaning. Nor did her soft panting. Or the sweet innocence of her mouth melting into his own.
Maekar closes his eyes. His heartbeat picks up. He presses his forehead to his hand waiting for the heat in his body to wear off.
At the far end of the solar, his squire fumbles with a tray of food on the table. A new boy, one of Lord Stokeworth’s many offspring, red-haired and nervous, with more eyes than brains. Maekar watches him slip a piece of cheese into his mouth quickly, chewing fast as a squirrel to get it down his gullet.
“Take the tray,” Maekar says.
Edric turns, freckles scattered over his face like sun dappling. “But you did not break your fast this morning either, my prince.”
“Did I ask you to keep track of my eating habits? Take the fucking tray.”
“Yes, sire.” Edric can hardly hide his glee. The tray will be polished off by the time it reaches the kitchen, which serves Maekar well. Even a lack of appetite reaches Brynden’s ears in this castle. The less his sainted uncle knows of his mental state, the better.
“Wait.” He bids Edric to return, and reaching into his pocket, pulls out Daenys’s ring. He’d kept it since she spat it into his palm. “Return this to the princess. I found it dropped in the courtyard.”
Edric takes the ring but then blinks at him in confusion. “Which princess, my lord?”
Maekar’s brow creases. “Are you slow of wit, boy? How many princesses are there?”
“Princess Daenys and Princess Aelora.”
Maekar pauses. How little he considers the existence of Rhaegel’s children. Of course there is Aelora. Strange, milky Aelora with her wan smiles and clouded eyes. He cannot remember if they have ever shared a word between them. He does not even remember how old she is.
He banishes Edric with a mutter of Daenys’s name.
Releasing the ring from his possession does not have the desired effect. Daenys returns in vivid colour, more like her mother in his memory than she is when she stands before him as a living, breathing girl. To an unwed boy of fourteen, Jena was like spilt wildfire.
Daenys is something beyond her, infinitely worse. She is Baelor, Maekar, Aerys, Rhaegel, Myriah, Daeron. Ours. Mine. The difference is slight, but visible. Ours is familial. Mine is a horrible lust that swells in his stomach.
He starts to pace the room. A glaze of blue light from the window shimmers across the solar, wilting away the edges of the furniture. Everything feels less consequential near dusk. As if consequences will never appear.
When he rests his hand against the wall, it is warm and soft. The cool stone wears away under his touch. It is her skin instead, stretched over the bones of his bedchamber like embroidered silk on a hoop. Maekar rocks in the sway of shame and despair. He tests his teeth against his knuckles, licking them as if her spit is still there to be tasted. Just for a moment, he imagines what it would be like to force her to be still. To quell the fire that makes her so eternally nervous by crushing his hand against the back of her head, a butterfly pinned to his pillow.
Nausea bursts sour in his mouth. Is this how it begins? The desire to murder a Targaryen fledgling? From this mishap of love and desire? To love one’s own blood so much it becomes despicable. His breaches strain at the crotch as if to offer the futility of an answer.
He does not turn to the Seven with his questions. His father’s blood is alien to them. Myriah’s Rhoynish veins originated from a brighter place, somewhere the gods are as passionate as the people they oppress. The Seven are cold like the Andals.
The room he is in is the very same he first moved into as a princeling, finally permitted to have his own space. The same Valyrian tapestry hangs to the left of his bed. Behind it is a small wooden panel that clicks open if you know where to touch. Inside is a chest carved of redwood. It bears the only gift he has ever received from his brother Aerys.
Maekar had walked in on him one day, not long after Aerys wed Aelinor, kneeling in the centre of his bedchamber.
Anyone else would have been humiliated. But Aerys did not feel things the way others did. He had neither the Targaryen fire and blood, nor the Dornish passion. That day was Maekar’s first awareness of his brother to be a creature of flesh just as he was.
“Hello, brother.” Aerys greeted him quietly and then went back to fastening his cilice belt with steady hands.
Thin silver wires in a looped pattern, each with its own sharp little spike. The second-born prince was moonlit pale, waist slender as a girl’s. Maekar could not help wondering how effective he was on top of his new wife, if he even had the strength to thrust into her. The sight of his body was startling. His brother was cut from finest marble, unblemished, perfect. Around his thigh and waist were nicks of barbed flesh, the older scars turned rose quartz in colour and the fresh ones with flecks of carmine. It stirred something strange in his little brother’s stomach.
“Would you help me?” Aerys asked over his shoulder.
Maekar moved against his own volition. With careful, shaky fingers, he tied Aerys’s belt behind his spine. His brother’s fluid, drooping body stiffened. He stood straighter with an aching sigh of relief as if it were the pain that kept him lucid. Life returned to his watery eyes, and he gave Maekar a vacant smile before going to the bed to retrieve his tunic.
“What is that?” Maekar finally asked.
“This?” Aerys touched it with a thoughtful jut of his lower lip. “I read somewhere Baelor the Blessed wore a similar belt. That it helped him with his sinful desires.”
“Don’t tell me you believe in all that.”
“In what, brother?”
“Desires being sinful. You’re newlywed.”
Aerys tilted his head, his fine curtain of silvery hair glittering in the sunlight. Maekar had never thought of his older brother as beautiful. But he was then. Like a water sprite trapped briefly on the threshold that divided his world from the one Maekar existed in.
“Is my wife not lovely? You may mount her if you wish, Maekar. Get in some practice before you find a woman to wed. Her tits are marvellous. Like spongy little pillows. She squealed when I touched them for the first time. Cold hands.”
Aerys hummed pleasantly, twisting this way and that before the mirror to admire himself. When he was done, he returned to his oak-carved case and unravelled a coil of knotted rope. He held it out to Maekar.
“I have not tried it yet. Would you like to?” By the implication, it was Maekar who would be hurling the whip at his brother’s girlish back. The image burned in his brain, tempting him. He shook his head, and Aerys took it back with a soft sigh. “It helps me not to think of her.”
“Of who?”
“Aelinor.”
“She’s your wife.”
“She distracts me from my work.”
“What work?”
“You ask so many questions and yet have so little affinity for learning, Mayakar.” Aerys’s eyes glinted, knowing their grandmother’s pet name would annoy his little brother. But Maekar held his temper for once. “I do not want to be interested in Aelinor. And yet I am. My body betrays me. However, my mind is elevated and will always come before the base will of the flesh. The pain helps to centre me. That is all. I have not used the flogger yet. But I might soon. The belt is enough for now.”
A year later, Maekar took his new bride into his bedchamber for their wedding night. On the pillow sat a small redwood chest. Dyanna was amused by what it contained, but innocently so. She had no idea what it was for. He was forced to pretend the same. “Your brother gifted you this? He is an odd creature. What will you do with it?”
Maekar inspected the mother-of-pearl handle. It was of Yi Ti make, with gentle grooves for a strong grip. “He is odd. You’re right.” He put the chest under his bed, and then climbed on top of his wife and did as Baelor had told him to. When it was over, and they were both redder and sweatier than when they started, he thought Aerys to be utterly mad. Why would anyone ever deprive themselves of this?
Why indeed?
The handle of the rope rests now across his callused palm. His fingers are no longer plump and youthful, but his grip is stronger. Three rope tails, the knots caked with dried blood on the ends. The last time he took it out, it was the night he visited his father and told him exactly how he had murdered Baelor. The blood is fresher, not as dark. Maekar knows when to stop. Always before the pain turns into euphoria, before the welts get bad enough to scar.
He is grateful for never having felt the curiosity nor the urge to do this before Dyanna’s death. It would have agonised her to know this hidden aspect of him. Dyanna had a heart greater than the sun itself, but little understanding or acceptance for anything she found irrational. This would have been unthinkable to her.
But it is the one thing Maekar and Aerys share that proves they are in fact brothers, and not strangers that happened to live in the same womb. As little pleasure it is to engage Aerys in conversation, it still makes him feel good to know this.
Maekar removes his tunic, cracking his neck to the right. In the mirror, he sees a powerful man reflected back at him. Hard muscle and a few notched scars, curls of snowy hairs scattered across his chest, and a silver trail of them from his abdomen until they disappear under his belt. The wounds from his last infliction are almost faded. Had he done what he so desired – taken his niece right there on the septal steps – what would she have made of them? Would they be atonement enough for what he did to her father? Or would she have sliced them open with those kitten-sharp nails and fucked the wound with her fingers? He thinks Daenys has unearthly rage in her yet. Jena runs in her blood.
I want to feel alive, uncle. Make me feel alive.
The rope handle goes slack in his hand, his gaze unfocused. His heartbeat pulses in his cock. Maekar swings the rope. The slap of the hemp against his flesh cracks through the room. His jaw tightens. He works it open, and then swings again.
Again and again and again.
Until he is shaking, and can no longer withhold a ragged cry. He is on his knees by the end of it, drenched silver hair hanging in his eyes. There is fresh blood on the rope. His mind is a steaming emptiness. Bliss makes him quiver. If he reaches out, he is certain divinity will find him. Some deity waiting to grasp his fingers. The Seven he still holds no faith in. But there is something beyond, he has always been certain of it. It burns hot as dragonfire in his belly.
Some semblance of life is returning to the Red Keep.
Only some. The roads are still too dangerous to travel for most. The spread of the plague has led to bandits tormenting every traveller too poor, too desperate or too careless. Those without an escort of heavily armed guards cannot afford to go far beyond their homesteads.
Even so, the coronation is no small thing. Aerys may live to a great age and many of the current nobility will likely be dead before they get to have such a party again.
Outside the castle walls, the pyres still burn in the Dragon Pit on the command of Lord Rivers. The streets are empty. The shops and brothels and docks have gone dark with very few brave enough to still work. With a population so decimated, the Raven’s Teeth have has had a much easier time of surveillance. It is also easier to distribute food from the Keep to the poorest citizens. There are less of them, so more mouths are properly fed.
Aelinor is enjoying life. She is to be queen. The first Penrose queen. When Jena and Dyanna were still alive, it was Aelinor and Alys hewing to one another as the forgotten wives. Now, being that she has no children and Alys can hardly hide her delight at the notion of her husband becoming Prince of Dragonstone, Aelinor turns her attention to Daenys. She wishes for a new pet Targaryen to keep onside. Maekar’s children might have been lavished with her ‘affection’ too were they not all safely locked away in Summerhall.
“How kind it is of your uncle to remain in the Keep for his brother’s coronation. He must be so worried for his brood,” she whispers to Daenys. She surveys the banquet hall with a thoughtful tilt of her chin, wishing to appear sagacious so as to maintain her queenly disposition. “This sickness will come to an end soon enough. A new king – and you must agree how suitable your Uncle Aerys is to the position – will bring new blessings. Then we will look to even greener pastures. Perhaps a little heir to Driftmark? How I would love a little great-niece or nephew to run around these halls.”
She snickers shrilly, and pinches Daenys’s arm, which her niece has long ago come understand is how Aelinor shows her affection. She forces a smile but keeps her mouth shut.
Vaemond has not yet reached King’s Landing. But he is coming. When she received the raven that he had set off from Driftmark, her heart lurched into her mouth.
There will no doubt be another feast to welcome Lord Baratheon and the Velaryon heir. There is one every other day in the banquet hall as lords and their ladies arrive at the Red Keep. With so many dead in King’s Landing, who will protest the extravagance? They will take the victuals they are given, thank the royal family, and cower in their homes praying the gods will not strike them down next.
Daenys’s eyes linger over the hall, briefly resting on Lady Estermont attempting to wrangle her children. The brunette boy trips up a servant, and a flagon of wine arcs through the air. Half of it lands on Lady Massey, who leaps to her feet with a dreadful shriek, large bosom aquiver.
Egg and Rhae would have been beside themselves with giggles, Daenys thinks. If Valarr and Matarys were here, she would not be able to look at her brothers, else her laughter would explode, and Baelor would lean across the table to tell them to shut their traps. It is quiet without them all.
Milk of the poppy makes her forget her family are dead sometimes. Pockets of blissful ignorance. Those are the best days.
She twists her ring around her finger, this way and that. Silla brought it to her yesterday, wrapped in a handkerchief. Her uncle’s squire had returned it. As Daenys slipped it on, she’d thought of Aunt Dyanna for the first time in many months. Remorse was not the emotion that followed.
He was the love of your life, and you were his. I only offer to take care of him in your absence. And he can take care of me. Would that be so bad?
But Dyanna gives her no answer from the afterlife. Wherever she is, she is happy. It is Daenys’s mother likely suffering as she watches the proceedings. Daenys knows that if Jena could, she would have torn through the veil of death and stabbed her claws into Maekar’s eyes.
She hunts for him with her gaze. All she ever does these days is watch the corners of corridors, hoping he will walk around them. It is both the worst feeling she has ever experienced and the best. He was at the dais table only a short while ago. But without the responsibility of children to corral, he is free to move as he chooses.
“You are distracted, sweet girl.”
Shiera slips into the seat beside her, reaching for a berry tart. Aelinor’s face withers when she notices the arrival. She vacates her chair to join Lady Celtigar and Lady Fell. They are cooing over Lady Celtigar’s new puppy, a frilly, twitchy little thing adorned in ribbons.
“She doesn’t like me much, does she?” Shiera laughs, watching the queen-to-be leave.
“I do not think she likes anyone,” Daenys admits, turning to face the front again.
Her face slackens. Maekar’s silver head is suddenly visible. He is standing tall under Maegor’s hooded statue. Unsmiling and unspeaking for the most part but still drawing people to him. It startles her to realise there is a difference between uncle and Maekar. That he is someone who exists beyond being her Father’s youngest sibling. That other people look at him and do not see a baby brother, but a hardened man, a warrior who has earned the name.
She also never noticed the surprising amount of female attention he receives. Both from widowed noblewomen, and girls her own age. That they might gladly have a Targaryen prince with six children and live in Summerhall, one of Westeros’s most beautiful palaces, has simply never occurred to Daenys. With the sickness still raging, and three of its victims being royal, it is easy to see what future may lie ahead for a wife of Maekar.
She thinks of him telling her not to call him uncle when he had his tongue in her mouth. The wrench in her stomach could be anger. She isn’t sure. She doesn’t know who it is meant for, Maekar, or everyone who knows him as a person outside of their family. It is the same jealousy she felt over her parents. Her jealousy over Father was uncomplicated. It was Mother that made her rigid with it. Men pined after Jena, obvious as starved dogs, and she either pretended not to notice or laughed if she did. Daenys hated knowing other people perceived her loved ones. She wanted to hide them from the world. Her own. She has never felt that about Uncle Maekar until today.
“You are quiet,” Shiera observes, and Daenys twitches back to consciousness.
Her beautiful great-aunt is diaphanous as a water nymph. Always in silvers and whites, her hair loosely braided. She does not have many friends at court. But then she keeps to herself so jealously. Only Uncle Brynden is known to her, and they are much more than friends. It is an open secret.
Shiera’s mismatched eyes follow the trail of vision Daenys has abandoned and finds Maekar at the end of it. Her smile is abrupt and wicked.
“To love one’s own is natural.” Daenys’s throat dries up. She twists her ring so hard the gem cuts into her finger. Shiera leans in, as if to fix her hair, tucking it behind her pearl earring. “All Targaryens feel the pull. You needn’t look so upset over it, little one. It is your birthright.”
“It is not,” Daenys says sharply, and when she glowers, it is as if Jena is seated in her place, wilful and gods-fearing.
But Shiera is far less hateful of her than she used to be of her mother. She merely sighs. “Child, when will you grow up?”
“I am grown.”
“As lovely as that petulant pout is, you behave as if you are fresh out of your mother’s womb.” She runs a hand over Daenys’s red hair, ignoring the deepening scowl on her niece’s face. “Daeron wished for you to be queen, you know. Not Aerys, nor Rhaegel, nor Maekar, or any of their children. Only you.”
Daenys tears her eyes away from her uncle and turns them on Shiera with a slow turn of her head. They burn dark and hateful. “I know. But it was not Lord River’s will.”
Shiera shrugs. “Brynden would have made you queen. If you hadn’t wanted Maekar as your Hand. He felt betrayed, little one. He loves you so. But you show your uncle no such love in answer.”
A film of tears poisons Daenys’s vision. No such love. That man has her love by force. Never would she go near him were she not bound by blood. She blinks away the tears and stares at the tapestries on the walls. But there is no escape. There is a face everywhere she looks, waiting to spy out weakness in her.
They all find her pitiful. Were it not for the gods and Maekar’s red right hand, the coming coronation would have been Baelor’s. Daenys would be in her full regalia, and if the gods were kinder still, it would be Jena Dondarrion at his side, with her cruel smile and violently red hair.
The catspaw dagger King Daeron carried everywhere is now on Aerys’s hip. He is seated at the other end of the table, a book opened on the edge of it. He is uninterested in both the dagger and everything it signifies. Even Maekar would make a better king.
“It matters not,” Daenys says thickly, “What’s done is done. I have no future. Save to squeeze out an heir to Driftmark and spend my days praying my children do not die at sea.”
Shiera pouts in sympathy. On a face so beautiful, such an expression can only seem insincere. But Daenys knows she means it. Shiera has never been unkind to her, not even whilst she and Jena were at odds.
“You are surrounded by love. If only you were willing to see it,” Shiera says.
Daenys sniffs and says nothing.
Shiera slips her thin fingers a delicate way down the front of her bodice and removes a small, crystal-bright bottle of emerald liquid. It glitters with a strange lustre. She slips it to Daenys under the table.
“Only a drop each time,” she says. “He will be panting for you.”
Daenys stares down at it, and then sidelong at her aunt. “What is it?”
“A love potion.” Shiera puts her finger to her lips, green eye winking. “Ride your Uncle Maekar until you are sated. You deserve to take your pleasure where you can. You have suffered so much, my sweet darling.” She stands and places a kiss on the crown of Daenys’s head. The gesture is strangely maternal. If mothers ever handed their daughters love potions to drug and fuck their uncles with.
Mouth dry, Daenys searches for Maekar like a lost child again. His eyes meet hers. He is halfway across the hall, but the focus in them is unmistakeable. Her cheeks flush pink. A younger sister of Alys Arryn is murmuring something in his ear. She is yellow-blonde, soft and blue as a cornflower in a meadow, and half his age. Her hand rests on his bicep. When he answers her, she laughs and slips it down his arm towards his larger hand.
Daenys’s heart pounds in her chest. Her toes curl in her silk shoes. A sweat breaks out on the back of her neck. Rage is no different to grief then. It makes her want to cut into herself all the same. If she were alone, she could. With Uncle Rhaegel’s knife, right over the inner seam of her thigh until she is left quivering.
She stands up, Shiera’s love potion clutched in one hand, and marches across the dais. She does not know where she means to go yet. Perhaps to make conversation with Alys Arryn’s sister.
But no sooner has she reached the far end of the table, Uncle Aerys suddenly swats her arm. It is his way of summoning her.
“Yes, uncle?” Daenys snaps. Even Aerys is not oblivious to the clipped tone. He stares at her blankly. She hesitates, ears red, and then mellows. “Might I fetch you another cup of wine?”
He glances at his full, untouched cup beside his book. Daenys swallows down a sigh and takes the seat beside him. Aerys does not attempt to ease into his business with her. Social etiquette is a concept books have not taught him.
“Brynden is encouraging me to set Aelinor aside when I am crowned.”
Daenys tenses, glancing around to see if someone has heard. Thankfully, Aelinor is at the far side of the room. “Uncle, I do not think it is appropriate to speak of this here – “
Aerys does her the boon of lowering his voice. “He has fingered you as the best option for a wife. You are young. One would hope that you are fertile.” He stares down at her stomach with a maester’s detachment. “And you are my niece. ‘Tis the Targaryen way.”
Daenys counts each breath. She stares at the wall over his shoulder and imagines herself combusting into flames. Or turning into a dragon, inexplicably. Something so sudden and so brutal, that her very existence in the fabric of history is obliterated. Gone.
“What say you?” Aerys has already returned to his book. “We can stay out of each other’s way. You will get to rule. As you should have after my father died. Madness, they called it. But you do not seem mad to me.” He looks up and lets out a laugh as dry as parchment. “Like the conqueror, you would have two husbands.”
Daenys sways in her seat, the room rushing around her in a blur of painted colours and heat. “What do you mean?”
Aerys jerks his head in the other direction. She follows his gaze and finds Bloodraven at the end of it. He is watching them. There is no acknowledgement in his eyes. Like the conqueror, you would have two husbands.
“Bloodraven will be your Hand?” she asks, and her heart plummets. “What of Maekar?”
Aerys flicks his fingers in dismissal. “He will be happy enough. He’s getting a new wife.”
Daenys controls her expression just in time. “Who?”
“The pink-haired girl from Tyrosh. Kara, or whatever her name was. Besides, he would be better suited for other positions than Hand.”
“Such as?”
“I do not know, girl. Do not bother me. Go.”
Daenys does not know how she steps off the dais without falling. There is no life in her legs. Her arm is brushed, and people offer her their condolences on the death of her family. She barely musters a nod and a smile where she can. Ser Roland spies her out and comes to help her cut a path through the throng.
From the corner of her eye, she sees Uncle Maekar move towards them. He is asking Ser Roland what the matter is. Is it that obvious on her face? But she is smiling at everyone. How can he tell something is wrong? Her sworn protector nods, but Daenys is moving too fast for him to stop and explain. He goes after her, and only when they are out in the coolness of the corridor does he ask –
“Princess, are you well? Should I fetch a maester?”
Daenys shakes her head and keeps walking. If she talks, the vomit will burst from her. This is not the time nor place to humiliate herself so. Not when everyone is beginning to rightly question just how ‘mad’ she is that Brynden Rivers had sent ravens in advance to usurp her. She focuses on walking. One foot before the other.
It has not yet occurred to her that Aerys broke the news knowing full well Vaemond is alive.
That Bloodraven had spoken of her as Aerys’s wife with the very same knowledge.
For the first time in her life, she prays her husband returns to her safe and unharmed.