Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

206 AC 

Daenys breathes in the fumes of her lady aunt’s cadaver. There are traces of Dyanna's perfume laced into the smoke, but perhaps that is a fault of imagination. A year and a half ago when her own lady mother burned on a similar pile of glorified sticks and kindling, she'd thought to go with her.

She’d made it only a couple of steps to the pyre before fainting. The maesters blamed it on her atrocious diet since Jena passed, in that she ate little and threw up the rest.

No one wants to die. But her mother had been forced from the world as a half-dragon had chewed its way out of her. The little corpse lay at her side, a calcified creature wrapped in bandages. Mother would have hated that it was there.

Father’s madness lasted a fortnight.  

He did not bathe, he did not eat, he barely drank. Daenys would go into his room and crawl under the covers and hug him to her. She stroked his hair and kissed the sweet points of his ears and brushed the tears off his handsome face just as she had seen Mother do and it felt good. She felt needed. She went to his room every morning, and remained there till nightfall, feeding him soup because he could keep nothing else down, and wiping the sleep from his eyes and brushing his hair and trimming his beard. Daenys forgot it was her own mother she had lost. She became the mother her father needed and nursed him out of his grief. Her brothers grieved alone.  

When Father recovered, he was thinner, but the light in his eye had returned. Daenys noted it as she affixed the Hand’s pin on his lapel with gentle, careful hands. 

“A star, Baba." Her grandmother taught her the Rhoynish word for father and it always sounded sweeter than the Common Tongue alternative. She pointed to the star in the reflection of the mirror. “There, in your right eye.” 

He smiled when he saw it, and kissed her forehead, the tickle of his beard on her nose making her giggle.  “It is you,” he told her. “My little star guiding me north.” 

She'd liked that. Father's praise always sank under her skin and pulled out warmth she did not know she possessed. He took her hands and kissed them, before setting them over his heart. Daenys felt trembly then, the sort of feeling that came before a hearty, wet vomit. 

“You are the oldest of your girl cousins. And the new lady of your father’s household. You must care for your brothers and guide your little cousins as best you can.” 

Blind with love, Daenys nodded. She was thirteen years of age. 

Baelor always praised Jena's fastidiousness when it came to managing the money and the family affairs, down to the betrothal she had made for Daenys to Lord Velaryon’s boy before she died. Mother's opinion on a Targaryen marriage for Daenys were plain. I will cut off my own hand before I let it happen.  

She had overcome the famed Dondarrion dislike of the Dornish when she fell in love with her prince. The very foundation of her house was built on the corpse of two Dornishmen struck down by violet lightning. Baelor's mismatched eyes made her forget for a time.

But she kept the rest of the family at arm’s length, Lady Dyanna and her brood especially. Dyanna often extended a hand of friendship, and suggested Aerion and Daenys play together as they were the same age and bright as shiny little pennies. But Mother’s smile would turn cruel, and she would hold her daughter like a shield to her body, with a trite declaration that Daenys had to go and pray. 

Daenys hated praying when she was a child. There was never any noise in the sept. It was the only place in the world that made her want to scream like an ill-bred Dothraki bloodrider. She, Valarr and Matarys would play Dothraki hordes together in a secluded corner of the Red Keep. Her beautiful Khal of a brother, auburn-haired and spry as a spring branch. She was his Khaleesi, a silver thread woven into her red hair to match his natural streak of white. Their games were childish and twisted and resplendent.

Mother hated to hear of them playing at being savages.  

“It is just make-believe mother!” Valarr would protest.  

Jena would turn on him, her magnificent height a tower fortress over her small, bright son. “You may tell that to the gods on the day of reckoning! But my duty as your mother is to steer you right!” 

Valarr made the same argument when she caught the ‘Khal’ and his ‘Khaleesi’ doing as their parents did with their tongues. She was ten, and he was eleven. At first, she became still, simply observing them both with a vacant look in her eye. Daenys's stomach roiled with excitement and fear, tongue still thick with the blackcurrant juice she had kissed out of her brother’s mouth. 

Mother struck her first. Daenys always remembered that. And while she was crying, blinded by tears, she could not see how hard Valarr was slapped, if at all. He later said he was, but she knew he lied to make her feel better. 

Aunt Dyanna found her later, crying her heart out into her skirts.

“What is the matter, child?” she cooed, wiping her tears with soft hands.

Daenys was not supposed to speak of family matters to outsiders. It did not matter how much Father loved his brothers, Mother said it was unseemly, and besides, she did not like Uncle Maekar for reasons that were beyond her daughter's understanding. But Dyanna was no ordinary woman. She was a witch, adept in prying open the secretive world of children and she pulled the whole story from Daenys’s mouth.  

There was an awful row that evening. Mother and Aunt Dyanna fought like angry wolves. The final blow was landed by Jena herself.  

“You cannot strike a child for innocent games!” 

“Have your own daughter and then you may come and lecture me on how to raise mine!” 

“But you did not slap Valarr! Why is it different that Daenys is a girl? I would treat her the same as my sons if she were mine!” 

“Ha! Spoken like a true Dornish woman!” 

At the time, Daenys did not understand why it was that Lady Dyanna almost came to blows over it; Maekar had to physically hold her back. She would later grow up and understand the venom behind Mother’s use of the word Dornish. It was turned into a spear aimed right between Dyanna’s lovely blue eyes.  

Mother never regretted her words. Daenys knows because she asked her, fearing that she might hate her daughter for causing the rupture. “Not a word untrue was said.”  

When Jena was given to Baelor, she wore her red hair loose on the day of her wedding, refusing to have it done up, a defiant storm maiden to the very end. Because it was a defeat in her eyes. She was now sleeping with enemy, and it did not matter how much she might come to love him, the first foot into the marriage was skewed. She warmed to her goodmother Myriah only because Myriah overcame her own resentment first - she had wanted Baelor for one of her Martell nieces, but hewed to Jena out of a desire for peace.

“How did you make her love you, baba?” Daenys would ask her father sat her on his knee before the hearth.

She loved the story, and she loved the tenderness in Father’s eyes when he told it.  

“I loved her a hundred different ways. And for ninety-nine of them, she scorned me, turned me down. Saw the Dornish sun in my eyes and claimed it was nothing but trouble.” 

“And the hundredth?” 

“The hundredth time...” he leaned in close, beard tickling her ear like insect legs. They would both turn their eyes to Mother sitting in a corner where she was busy with her embroidery and feigning deafness. Father would wait until her lips twitched. And then, he'd say, “The hundredth time I walked away from her and she told me...never do that again! And I never did.” 

And so Daenys understood better than Valarr why her Father needed her now that Mother was gone. He had never abandoned her. How could he cope? He could not. How sweetly he tended to Daenys, cupping her chin and begging her to smile for him when her natural temperament reverted to subdued dampness. 

Always so sad, my little girl, he'll murmur. It bleeds out of you sometimes.  

Her darling kepa with his wounded eyes when his children did not do as he told them. When they defied him with their little ways, because they were raised too well by Jena to be anything more than just slightly wilful.

They were not Uncle Maekar’s children. They were better. They had to be - they were an example to the realm.

206 AC 

Daella and Egg are weeping. It is the broken, fragile keen of lambs abandoned in a barn without their mother. Their father reaches from behind and squeezes only Egg’s shoulder, not his sister’s. It is a silent command. Egg sniffs, squares himself to stand taller and does not make another sound.

Aerion is at a distance, staring out at the sea, refusing to look towards the pyre. Daeron is huddled against the wind into his cloak, sandy blonde hair whipping into his eyes. They are the colour of cerulean powder diluted in water, just like his mother's.

A large hand comes to rest on her shoulder. She always smells Father before she sees him, the traces of cinnamon and smoke. He curls his arm over her and pulls her into his cloak, before doing the same with Matarys. Valarr looks to them but does not join. He is sixteen now, too grown up to be comforted in such a way, or so he believes.

“Your uncle will need help for a time, so he is will remain at the Red Keep,” Father whispers to them. “Dany, he will need your aid especially. With the girls.” 

She looks at newborn Rhae,drowned in her swaddling. She is held aloft by a Dayne aunt whose name Daenys does not remember. The woman is crying into Rhae's blankets. Uncle Maekar casts her a dour glance, as if the display of grief disgusts him somehow. He turns back to the front and Daenys notices only then that Aemon is standing inside his cloak, huddled against his leg. 

Why not Egg and Daella? Why does he only let Aemon cuddle up to him?  

“Daenys?” Father says, and she nods to show that she is listening, she will help.  

She always helps. She does not understand why Father always asks, as if she will begin a case for disobedience now, after all this time. Her fingers lift to her mouth.

She rips into an exposed hangnail on the index of her right hand and the pain is blinding. Her eyes roll into the back of her head, and she goes at it again, nibbling like a mad hare, until Father tuts and pulls her hand from her mouth. The blood imprints from her flesh to his lips when he kisses the wound. It is an old habit of hers. He no longer asks why. He just kisses it and the wiry hairs of his beard inflame the injury further.

“Egg? The oatcakes have pine nuts and blackberries. Your favourite.”  

She coaxes him with a gentle rub to his shoulder. A film of unshed tears turns his eyes watery. The room is unusually quiet for how many children are gathered at the high table. Members of the nobility filter in and out of the hall, none daring to stay too long and partake of the food and wine. Even Jena's funeral was a more lively affair, though that was in part because Manfred Dondarrion got drunk and claimed it was what his cousin would have wanted. 

Daella tugs on Daenys’s sleeve and points to the bowl of fish stew. Her cousin spoons some into her bowl. She turns her attention back to Egg, asking if he would like some fish stew too. He lets out a rickety sob and wipes his eyes, darting a nervous look at his father to see if he has noticed.

Uncle Maekar is staring into empty space, face ashen. Rhaegel is at his side softly stroking his arm with a feeble, mottled hand. Aerys is more interested in the loose threads on his sleeve. He looks utterly bored.

Only the twins, Aelor and Aelora, eat heartily, giggling and whispering in their made-up language. Their mother, Lady Alys picks at her food, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.  It should be Aunts Alys and Aelinor in Dany's place, cajoling and caring for the children. They are the only princely wives left. But neither shows any interest.

Egg is saying something. Daenys hears it too late. Aerion reaches across the table and smacks the ladle full of fish stew out of her hand.  “He said he didn’t want to fucking eat!” 

Some of the soup splashes on Daella’s sleeve and she bursts into tears. Egg can no longer hold his peace and follows suit. Great, glugging sobs, the raw pink of their mouths stretched wide, wailing as loud as their baby sister. 

Daenys looks around, helpless, as all the eyes turn on her. Your fault. You can’t even get two little children to eat. Children are always hungry, no matter how sad they are. But they don’t want to be fed because it’s you, you’re standing over them. You're a useless heap of sh- 

“Daenys, sweetling, come.” Father beckons to her as Uncle Maekar stands up unsteadily.

They pass each other halfway down the table but Maekar does not acknowledge her. He puts his hands on Egg and Daella's heads, and whispers to them. Daella buries her head in her arms and her aunt reaches over to stroke it. But Egg cannot stop sobbing. He has done his best to keep from expressing emotion, but he is only six, and he can do so no more. Maekar lifts him out of the chair, carrying him as if he were a babe again. He paces back and forth behind the long table, a hand cupped over Egg's silver-blonde head where it has dropped onto his shoulder. Aerion glowers.

Daenys trembles as she lowers into a chair. “I’m so sorry. I only - “ 

“I know,” Baelor nods, squeezing her hand. “It’s alright. Maekar has them now.” 

“She's a little copy of her mother,” Alys says to Aelinor, and they both smile at Daenys. But then a wry glance is exchanged, and the smiles take on a different meaning. 

It is the tone. Dornishwoman. Little version of her mother.  

They never liked Jena. She was haughty, and she was tall, and she looked down on dull, stolid Aelinor and pale little Alys. But Daenys is not her mother. She does not know how to convince them of this so that they will like her and not give her compliments that make the food in her mouth taste like crushed slugs. She wants so desperately to make her aunts love her. She wants to have a mother again.

When Daenys hiccups a sob into her fish stew, her Father thinks it is because she misses Jena.  

“I am sorry, sweet girl,” he mutters, rubbing her back and pulling her flush against his side. Matarys swats her arm with brotherly affection and goes back to shovelling crab into his mouth. “I should not have put such a burden on your shoulders. What was I thinking? You are a child yourself. Your cousins have their nursemaids and their aunt. They will recover from this, as you once did. As your brothers did. All will be well.” 

His words are impossibly gentle. They should be a balm on her torn nerves. But they make Daenys want to scream until her lungs burst.

When night falls, the Red Keep is like a fairy tale place, a creature of stone that might get up on its hindlegs and wander off through the rolling fog. Many a time Daenys has dreamed of such an eventuality. Many people would fall out of its windows in a panic. But the Red Keep would know where it was going and Daenys would trust it and hold on tight. They would end up somewhere far, like Old Valyria, where there are only Stone Men who will not be able to scale the high walls of the Keep to get to the little princess inside.

Her dreams do not frighten her. It is the flames she fears when she looks into them. Her dreams are a fluid place, unlike Daeron’s which only ever frighten him half to death.

She adores night time. Pure silence. Nothing to do. Nowhere to run to. She knows all her loved ones are in their beds. She does not have to worry about anyone. The soft hiss and crackle of candles in their sconces mingle with the hymns of crickets. The air is heavy and damp, like the plumes of steam from her tea when she hovers her face over the cup. It will rain soon. Aunt Dyanna’s pyre, lonely on the hill, will be completely extinguished. She wonders what shape and colour the urn is in which they put her ashes. She hopes amethyst and silver, with stars carved around the widest part. 

She decides she would quite like to go for a walk.

One footstep out of the door and Ser Roland’s giant bulk appears to block her. Daenys shrinks back. She is well used to the kingsguard assigned to her protection, but not quite to his height whenever she is attempting to sneak off somewhere.  

“Might I escort you somewhere, princess?” Ser Roland’s tone is polite, but there is a watchful gleam in his eyes she is never sure what to make of.

He has never been impolite with her. But for some odd reason, he reminds her of the potential future, where she will be bound to a lord in some castle far from the Red Keep, far from her family. Princesses marry outside of the clan all the time. Daenerys did and is happy by all accounts in Dorne. But Daenys fears not being surrounded by other Targaryens, alone in a castle somewhere, with a husband that mounts her on the wall with his other hunting trophies. 

“I would like to go for a walk, Ser Roland. I will be quite safe. You don’t have to follow me.” 

He bows his head and follows her anyway. But he is careful to walk several paces behind, short enough that he can close the gap with ease, but long enough that she can pretend she is alone.  

The sky is near-black, with a deep velvet tint of plum. Each star is picked out like a beam of light pierced through a fabric covered in tiny needle holes. As if some celestial being sits behind it, embroidering the darkness to let light seep through. 

She loses herself in the ambivalence of thoughts stitched together with no real meaning. When her mind runs loose around the edges this way, it is the safest place in the world. 

A howl rips through the night air.  

Daenys jumps, startled. Ser Roland approaches slowly, his eyes scanning the courtyard below. He has his hand on the pommel of his sheathed blade. His jaw is set, but she can tell the sound unnerved him too.

“It sounds like a wolf,” she whispers.  

“There are no wolves here, princess,” he answers. “Would you like to return now?” 

She hesitates.

Aerion once told her a nasty story about wolves. He only ever tells nasty stories. But this one was truly horrible and haunted her dreams for nights on end before Father told her not to play with her cousin anymore.

We might marry you off to the North, like cousin Daenerys went to the South, Aerion said, his sharp teeth stained with the red of strawberries. Would you like that, Daenys? Forced to breed Stark pups in a Northern hut somewhere? Their men turn into wolves at night. I hope you like the smell of wet dog. They’ll make you a Stark bitch through and through.  

But she isn’t young anymore. She is fifteen. That was no Stark wolf. It was a man’s howl. 

“It’s coming from the godswood,” Daenys says, and sets off running.  

“Princess!” Ser Roland hurries after her, his white cloak cast out like a ghostly hand behind him. 

The heart tree is a pale beacon at the centre of the godswood, its branches overgrown with smokeberry vines, flowering scarlet, like the droplets that fell on the snow the day she first had her moonblood.   Daenys stops at the columns at the top of the stairs. There is someone kneeling there, hunched over one of the tree's gigantic roots.

Ser Roland puts a hand on her shoulder to coax her back. “Princess, we should return - “ 

“No!” She shrugs her shoulder out of his grip, suddenly panicked at the thought of being touched.

The moon eases out from behind a cloud and the godswood is bathed in its faerie glow, every blade of grass cut pristine, the white stones agleam. It brushes over a head of silver hair, the broad shoulders under it wilted like a child's. Beside him is the urn. It is squat and round, with a lid in the shape of a turnip. It does not suit Aunt Dyanna at all.  

“Stay here,” she whispers to Roland, and before he can try and stop her again, she darts down the stairs.  

Uncle Maekar looks wretchedly alone. But he is still terrifying. She does not think she has ever seen him smile directly at her, or anyone else. Except for Father. Baelor always makes him laugh, reluctantly albeit. They tease each other like they are small boys again, until the awareness of being watched reduces them to the grown men they are.

Daenys inches closer, mouth too dry to form the word uncle. His head is bowed into his hand, the nails untrimmed. She noticed earlier his beard was unkempt too; she has never seen Uncle Maekar without his beard perfectly combed and his hair swept tightly back across his head. She has never seen his hair dance in the wind. How strange. She wishes she knew some grown-up way of telling him that it feels nice to dance in a field with your hair flowing wild. Uncle Maekar seems as if he would only appreciate a grown-up way of looking at the world. Dancing in a field likely does not count.

She is almost within arm’s reach, but still, nothing leaves her mouth. Her hand alights on his shoulder, fingers trembling over the slack muscle.  

It hardens instantly, and the tremor that runs through him makes her recoil. But before she can withdraw, a larger, tougher hand clamps on her wrist, hard enough to break. Maekar doesn’t turn; he just grips her, so tight that they are both left shaking.  

Daenys is speechless with pain. She tries to scream, but the bone in her wrist feels like it is seconds from snapping. Ser Roland is suddenly there, forcing her uncle’s fingers open. But even he struggles. Maekar’s stare is unseeing, a glaze of ice pulled over the damson of his eyes.  

“It is your niece, my prince! It is only Daenys!” Ser Roland cries, and finally, finally, she breaks free.  

The blood rushes back to her hand, but the pain in her wrist makes her stumble. It is fresh and bright, vicious as a whip of fire tangled around the bone. She feels more alive than she has in days.

Ser Roland is staring down at the prince as if he has grown a second head. Then he rushes to Daenys's side, checking to see how bad the injury is. Her wrist is bright red with the imprint of Maekar’s fingers, the same ones that wield the mace with such ease. Her grandsire does not approve of the weapon; to this day he asks Maekar if he would not be better suited to a sword. It is difficult to imagine her fortress of an uncle dancing behind the swing of a sword.

“We’ll need to get that seen to,” Ser Roland murmurs, and lifts her up into his arms with little effort.  

Prince Maekar is still on his knees, staring, as if he has never seen either of them before.  

Daenys starts to weep as her sworn shield carries her back up the stairs. “You should call my father. He will know what to do.” 

“I am sure the maesters will know better, princess. I will have someone send for the Hand once you are in their care.” 

“No, not about my wrist. Uncle Maekar.” 

To this, Ser Roland says nothing. His hold on her tightens instead. 

Chapter Text

209 AC 

“My prince...my princess. Your father...he was a great man.” 

Valarr’s grip on her hand is bone-crushing. Both are pretending they do not see the big, blonde man cowering a short distance away.  

They have been sitting in silence for the better part of an hour, watching the smoke from their father’s pyre. Ashes of him, floating. Daenys wants every single speck accounted for. They likely never manage to get every bit of a corpse once it is reduced to cobweb-grey dust. It doesn't matter to them. They’re dead. But the idea of any small crumb of her father left behind in this desolate place is beyond bearing. 

She peers at the hedge knight with narrow slits for eyes. At least he has the decency to cry.  A big oaf with a wet, innocent face and a mouth that slurs the Common Tongue into a facile version of itself. He looks like he wants to die. Valarr turns to her, shaking his head a little. The oaf won’t leave. They communicate with glances, and soft traces of their fingers over each other's skin. Twinlets, Father used to call them fondly, they like their secrets. 

She wonders if they will kiss again. They kissed after Mother’s funeral. More than kissed, really, but she does not remember the details in the fog of that followed and they never spoke of it again. She was so exhausted from putting Father to bed – he cried like a baby until he fell asleep – that when she went to the sept to pray, she found her brother and they had no words left to speak to one other. They became as two lambs suckling at the teat for comfort.  

“He died in my armour.” Valarr bites his lip, hard, as he surveys the distant grey skies. “Plenty of sons have died in their father’s armour. How many fathers have died in their son’s?” 

“I could not say." Duncan's eyes are downcast.

Her brother sniffles, and her heart breaks. She leans in to kiss him, but remembers where they are, and makes do with a bump of her nose to his shoulder, like they did when they were little after one had received a harsh scolding. A tear slips from his eye, cracking like a spilt jewel into her palm.  

“He was still young. He had it in him to be a great king. The greatest since Aegon the Dragon. Why would the gods take him and leave you?” 

Valarr’s voice is soft, spiritless. There is no strength to it. But it strikes Duncan like a mace to the head. She sees him bunch up, this giant of a man with a baby’s face and clumsy, bearish hands. “I’ve-I’ve wondered the same.” 

Daenys loses her patience. “Be gone with you, Ser Duncan.” Her voice is thin and reedy. She has not used it since the scream she let out when she saw her father’s brains drip through the hedge knight's meaty fingers. Meat, pink and red. Her father was just meat and gristle and fat in the end. He died like any other man. An animal howl of grief tore her chest open when she saw it. On and on, until her chest caved as if crushed by the weight of her uncle's mace. 

Since then, Daenys has been quiet. She does not think she will ever make so loud a sound again. It has taken what was left of her soul with it.

As they watch Ser Duncan limp away, Valarr strokes her hair. “It is not his fault.” 

“It is his fault.” 

“It is Aerion’s fault.” 

“Always - always it is Aerion’s fault. But stopping him from doing as he wishes has greater consequences. You and I know this. Father knew it. But this hedge knight did not. Whichever hole he crawled out of, I wish he’d died before he ever saw the sky.” 

Valarr turns his eyes on her then, one clearwater violet, the other reddish brown. He smiles, cheeks ruddy from the whip of the wind. Her anger gives him more comfort than gentle words. Daenys sways, heady with sleeplessness and misery and refuses to take back the cruelty of her curse upon Ser Duncan. She should be allowed to hold onto it for a little while at least. She is not Prince Baelor. She cannot be magnanimous whenever she is required to be. The world is ended. There is no point in attempting to be anything anymore.

“How will we tell Matarys?” she mumbles.  

“He will already know by now.” 

“I know. But we must say it with our own words. Like Father did when Mother died. How will we do it?” 

Valarr’s face wrinkles up and he dissolves into tears. Daenys pulls him into her arms and grips him tight. She tries to make herself twice her own size, as big as Father, so that her arms will be just as reassuring. But they are thin, and she is exhausted and cannot stop shaking. Her brother collapses into her like a dying star.  

The sky is dark when they separate and Vaemond is suddenly there, whispering something to her. She cannot make it out. His hand smells of leather and cinnamon against her cheek. Daenys blinks away the fog in her vision, a muscle fluttering in her left eyelid. She is rigid with exhaustion.

“Go with your husband,” Valarr whispers, and then tells Vaemond to be careful with her, as if his sister is made of glass.  

Her hand is swapped from Valarr’s to Vaemond and her husband leads her down through the tall grass. Neither of them speak, which is nothing unusual.

The lights of the tourney flicker and dance like glow bugs in the grey gloom, but the music and laughter of a night ago is gone. Somewhere, a bard plucks a lonely lute, tossing together phrases to see if they will stick. She hears sweet Baelor and we shall never see his like again. She wants to go and kick the lute out of his hands and smash it over his head.  

“Will you come to bed?” she asks her husband, her voice devoid of emotion.  

They haven’t shared a bed for several months, at least not to sleep side-by-side. She imagines even he will not commit to his usual ignominious behaviour when they are alone together, not tonight at least. Vaemond’s sea-green eyes search her face, and she can tell he is considering coming with her. When he smiles, it is a kinder expression than she is accustomed to witnessing on him. He kisses the hollow of her cheek, telling her to sleep well. 

It is only as she walks away on frozen legs that she wonders if he saw her kiss Valarr on the hill. If he did, he will make her pay for it later. But she does not have the energy to worry about it now - she does not have much energy for anything. 

The halls of Ashford Castle bear a melancholic cast of teal. It spreads over the stone walls like a patina. Daenys walks in a dream, her organs swaying inside her body like septal bells. Mother will be glad tonight. Father’s hundredth attempt at wooing her is complete. She has taken him back, just as she always does. Jena Dondarrion seizes her victories and leaves her lessers in the dust

Daenys is glad Ser Roland is not tailing her for once. The injured princes need all the protection the kingsguard can muster. But she has a knife in her belt, Roland’s gift, a small, wicked thing jeweled at the hilt. Dornish in make, curved at the tip. The gem is as violet as Father’s right eye. Dornish knife, for the Dornish princess, Ser Roland said, and then he winked, and her stomach felt like maggots feasting.

Daenys pushes open the door to the bedchamber. Neither guard turns their head to look at her. She is not a threat. The room is empty, save for her uncle's Stokeworth squire dousing candles by the window.  

“Princess,” Edric murmurs, and bows his head, his skin as grey as her own; the affliction is cast over all at Ashford today, as if they had all awoken at dawn and forgotten what it is to breathe.  

Once Edric is gone, she glides to the bed, a little phantom in her white gown. Somewhere, a bell is struck to mark the turn of the hour. ‘Tis the hour of the wolf, blackest part of the night. 

Her dress whispers across the floor, a dozen sibilant voices trapped in the folds of fabric. Cousin Shiera’s dress used to sound the same when she floated across the ground and she'd laugh when Daenys pointed this out, a finger to her lips with a sly murmur -  

“The souls of the many.” 

Daenys peers down at the bed's lone occupant. 

He looks so peaceful when he is asleep.  

Not as angry in repose. Just tired, and old. Since Aunt Dyanna died, he has looked older every year. Would that he had withered away long before his time instead of her. Then Father would have sent Aerion to the Free Cities, as he kept imploring his brother to do.

Send him, let him experience the world as it is, and not from behind the illusion of safety he is given here. He behaves this way because he is allowed to, Maekar.  

But Prince Maekar had said no. He was too selfish to part with his children after already parting with his wife. The very same children he had had little part in raising beyond harsh rebukes and demands for perfection and presentability. The children whose names he mixed up. Egg answers to Aemon now, no longer possessing the energy to quibble over it the way he did with Aunt Dyanna when she made the mistake.  

She watches her uncle sleep. His eyes dance under their lids, thin flesh shot through with threads of purple. A hand trembles on the sheets, breath coming in quick bursts. Daenys leans in closer, trying to make out the words on his lips, but the syllables disintegrate half-formed.  

Her hand lowers to her hip and she unsheathes the dagger. 

How strange, she thinks, as she climbs onto the bed.  

She has done this before, straddled her uncle in the felicity of dreams, felt his hips rise to meet hers. A swell of power and heat, upon which she quivered like a broken arrow. The gnarled hands that gripped her hipbones then are limp on the coverlets now. She would wake some mornings, her breasts tender, as if he had travelled miles in the night to give suck to them, while her husband slept in the bed beside her. She does not know why these dreams, why Maekar. It frightens her that her mind could conjure such a thing against her will. How vivid the images are, like the brush of velvet on freshly bathed skin. Throughout the day, she would twitch when she recalled them, feeling her uncle’s fingers dig inside her cunt. In truth, he has never so much as looked lower than her face.  

Uncle Maekar towers over her at full height. Daenys towers over him now, a plinth of moonlight in her pale dress, the red curls of her hair licking like flames down her back. She lifts the knife over her head.  When the blade breaks flesh, the blood will come like a tidal wave. She has never stabbed anyone before. She steels herself for the strength it will take to wrench a knife out of rigid bone and flesh and drive it back in. The smell of meat and iron. Her uncle's shock. His gurgled gasps. She cannot lose heart in the face of his wretchedness. Butcher’s girl.  

A raven caws on the windowsill.  

Daenys’s head whirls around. Maekar's eyes snap open. Stark raving mad they look, but her own are no better. He wrenches her arm, and for a wild, glorious moment, the knife stays inflexible in her grip, as if she has a chance to overpower him.  

But even wounded, Uncle Maekar’s strength is twice hers.  

She does not make a sound. No dragon’s roar, no wolf's howl. Nothing but a horrible, tense silence, as the bed judders beneath them. Maekar wrestles her down, knee denting her abdomen. His entire weight is on her, but she is too breathless to try and prise him off. When he has thrown the knife across the room, only then does he relax. A hand over her head on the pillow, growls panting through his chest. One of the wounds in his side starts to bleed again.  

Daenys grabs his face as if she means to push it away. Her nails dig into his pockmarked flesh, scratching the the silvery battle scar on his temple. Furious little notches.

“If you had curbed Aerion, this wouldn’t have happened!” Daenys weeps, and it is a surprise to her that she can form words through her tears. “If you had ever curbed him, Father would still be alive!” 

Her fist hits his chest, pounding the bruises left by his breastplate. Maekar grunts, subduing her with one hand. It is so easy for him. She has never felt so powerless in her life. Her legs start to kick too, kneeing him in the sides where his bruises are the colour of ripe plums. It is not a deliberate act of malice, but that of a broken, hapless child left alone in a field, hoping her desperate cries will lure her father back to retrieve her.  

Her uncle does not call for the guards. He does not strike her. Neither does he kill her.  

Kinslayer once, why not kinslayer again? Surely, it would not sting so hard the second time.  

He collapses on the bed beside her. Daenys curls away, but Maekar pulls her back, his scarred hand gripping far too tight through her dress. Like a man unused to holding girls. Father was always gentle – a pat here, a brush there, dancing her from hand to hand as if she were a thing made of precious stone. He never will again. No one will cherish her like that in Baelor's absence.  

A guttural wail disgorges from her mouth. Maekar hushes her, half-hearted, and gathers her into his chest to muffle the sounds. The guards know she is in here with him. She had no intention of walking out free once he was dead. But he does not want them lured here, to explain what has just happened.

His arm binds around her shoulders, hard with corded muscles. She hates it. There is no softness in it. Father’s was the same, but he made it soft when he held her. She doesn’t know how, he just did. 

He squeezes her tighter until her struggles stop. Her lips are slack against his neck, every gulped sob awarding her a taste of his scarred flesh, the short snowy hairs dusted over it. His arm must hurt where her head is on it. She hopes it does. She hopes it never stops hurting.  

She burrows into his neck, trying to find Father’s scent under her uncle's dried blood and sweat. Thin gulps of air turn into weak suckling. The primal instinct to self-soothe. He lets her do it. Her legs are tangled up in his, and he is half-naked, and still he lets her suckle on the flesh of his neck, the pulsing central vein, until it starts to bruise. Until she is causing him fresh pain. “Kepa.” The word comes like a plea. It hiccups from her chest and becomes a cold, watery drip down the back of her throat.

Father, Uncle, one and the same.  

A royal maester walks in with a fresh tray of water, and new medicine for the prince's wounds. His cheeks are ruddy, and he has jowls that give him the countenance of a mournful dog. He is rarely seen to be taken by surprise. It is one of the more amusing things about Maester Ambrose. No matter the situation, he keeps his cool simply because he is too distracted to notice. 

But when he sees them tangled together, uncle and niece, the colour drains from his face. 

The poor child sounds delirious. Half their bodies are covered by the bedsheets, so he cannot know for sure what it is that he is seeing or not seeing. But it makes his blood turn cold. He flees from the room before either the man or the girl notices his presence. A dirty, sticky feeling scratches at the back of his neck. He will curse himself later for being an accidental witness to something like that. But for now, he refers the weight of it to his betters.

As soon as he is returned to the safety of his room, he tears off a piece of parchment and snatches up his quill. The Grand Maester will need to know. He may inform King Daeron. Maester Ambrose would never risk his own neck to break such dangerous news. 

"Gods be good, what is the world coming to?" he mutters, desperately wiping the sweat off his face. 

A few drops of it stain the parchment anyway. 

By the time he is finished writing the letter, a deep dread prevents him from tying it to a raven's leg and sending it off. Some feeling of doom that eats at his ample stomach. He ends up tossing the letter into the fire, sweat dripping in a slow trickle down the back of his neck. He has seen nothing. It is better that he has seen nothing.

When Maester Ambrose leaves Prince Maekar’s chambers as quickly as he entered, uncle and niece remain oblivious.  

She recovers, her sobs abating long enough to pull her face from his neck. She wipes the sweat from his forehead with a clumsy dab of her sleeve. The down on her arm is silvered in the moonlight. The raven on the sill sits silent now. One beady eye is turned towards them. She strokes an awry lock of silver hair off her uncle’s cheekbone. Her thumb probes, stretching the flesh of his temple until his eye is pulled taut as an arrow slit.  

“His last words were for you,” she whispers throatily. “Raymun Fossoway repeated them to my brother when he asked. Do you wish to hear them, uncle?” 

Maekar’s dark violet eyes glaze over. The bruise on his cheek is red as raw meat. He shakes his head. Daenys’s hand slips down the side of his face, into his beard. She strokes it, pulling it by the roots until his face moves closer.

“'My brother’s mace, most like. He’s strong'.” 

Maekar's fist closes against her hip and trembles there. For a fractional instant, she understands what it must be like to face her uncle on the open field. The strength behind an action borne from grief sits on her body like a heavy rock. It is the same strength that broke open her father’s head. There is physical power in him he can barely restrain.

Tears turn her face dewy, and she slides the tip of her nose over his. “I always wondered if you did not like us because we took Father from you. You weren’t his favourite child anymore once Valarr was born. But now I know even that was untrue. He never stopped loving you. He loved you the most. He did not think of Valarr, or me, or Matarys at the end. He thought of you.” 

She kisses away his tears faster than they can well, drinking them as they fall from his snow-white lashes. Her uncle is as a little boy again, curled up in bed, missing his brother. Not the man who killed him, but the boy who wants him back. The coarse flush of his pockmarked face is hot against her mouth. Her lips bloom little flowers in their wake.  

“You have made an orphan of me, Uncle. You owe me a great debt.” 

His powerful body trembles against hers, holding down the same howl of grief she once heard him let out for her Aunt Dyanna.  

Her tongue catches another tear as it slips free off the side of his nose. A grimace creases her face, the preparatory anguish of a child about to cry. Maekar emits a low, tortured sound. 

His gnarled hand broaches the tangled vine of her hair. The heat of his mouth scalds her. She slackens against him with a soft, droopy slurp of her lips until his tongue is between them. Her bare knees compress his thigh, as if fearful something will break them apart. Uncle Maekar’s mouth is unlike her husband's; she hates to kiss Vaemond, the urgency of his assaults, the way he never cares to stop and notice her eyes are glazed over. Maekar was made in the same womb, the very one that created Father.  

She pushes her tongue in like an eel, running it over his teeth, the ridged swirls on the roof of his mouth. The scratch of his beard on her chin makes her shiver. She clenches her back teeth and whines, moving her head side to side wanting it to merge with his entirely. Two heads of the dragon joined as one until this grief inside her will become his responsibility and she will never have to reckon with it again. It hurts unlike anything she has ever felt. 

He forces her jaw to open, squeezing with his fingers when she refuses to unclench. She can’t hold out against them for long. Her muscles relax, and a bubble of spit bursts against his grasping lips. He kisses her with heavy, gropes of his tongue, until her mouth tastes of medicinal herbs. All she can do is sip at him, the way she does to her brother, a newborn lamb suckling. But it is no match for her uncle's grief-stricken hunger.

Just when she is beginning to imagine he is Father – dear, sweet Father – Maekar finally pushes her away, towards the edge of the bed, a banishment for her own sake. Daenys crawls off the mattress in a serpentine glide. Fire quivers in her belly, and the middle of her legs is slick. She takes his cloak without much thought, burying herself in it as her nimble feet dance her out of the door.  

If she had had the presence of mind, she would have crawled back in with a voluptuous whisper-

Take me back, uncle.  

And he would have; he would take her. He would not deny his brother’s little girl, not then, not with Baelor’s last words cut into his head with a rusty blade. Even if it was the unthinkable she asked of him. 

My brother’s mace, most like. He’s strong.

Chapter Text

dany sketch

208 AC 

Marriage is not at all the way she thought it would be.  

Neither is Driftmark. It is colder for one, less sulfuric than Dragonstone where her brother and his new wife have made their home . Kiera is beautiful, and she is sweet and mild, which surprised them all. Everyone expected a second Rohanne. Daenys likes Kiera because she knows Valarr will be happy with her. He isn’t like father. He does not want a fiery woman for a wife, one who will give him as many headaches as she will nights of pleasure.  

At first, Daenys thought her new husband might be like Jena. Bold and fierce, like his resounding laugh. “He is a burning star,” she murmured to her cousin Aelora when the Velaryons first marched into the Great Hall as guests of honour at the wedding. Aelora wrinkled her precious nose and answered, "I think you could do better, cousin." And then she went back to chewing on Aelor's nails.

It was the greatest union between the seahorse and the dragon since Rhaenyra Targaryen wed Laenor Velaryon many years ago. But it was inauspicious to mention that event.

Daenys found her gaze flitting to each of her uncles.  

She could not picture herself marrying any of her uncles with the same zeal. Aerys, a reed in the wind, always smelling of camphor and books. Rhaegel – poor uncle Rhaegel – with his blank stare and sunny smile and ‘Dany, are you alright?’ over and over as if he saw something amiss inside her head that no one else was witness to. And Maekar... with his six children.

No, she really did not think any of these uncles would whisk her away like Daemon did to Rhaenyra.   

And then she’d looked to her new husband again. He was beautiful and young – but much older than her sixteen years at thirty - and there was Targaryen blood in him. Somewhere.

Driftmark was in the Crownlands. Dragonstone was close. King’s Landing was a few hours away by ship. It had all come together wonderfully. Really, truly. She was happy. She could visit her father whenever she wanted, and her brother and Kiera too.

Her stomach ached in protest, rejecting her mind's desire to make peace with her new life. It would not stop aching for another few months into her marriage.   

Vaemond cares not to keep note of her moonblood or even ask if she feels the tender growth of a child in her stomach. He always gets off her once his seed is splashed pearlescent on her stomach. When she asked, he'd claimed that was where it was supposed to go in order for the babe to be made.

Rumour holds that he has bastards on Driftmark. Corly Velaryon had had his bastards legitimised. Perhaps that is what Vaemond intends if she cannot give him children. Daenys doesn't think Baelor would let him, but men often make decisions behind closed doors that she doesn’t understand, nor agree with, but has no power to change. 

She and her husband have not argued once.  

Sometimes, she wakes up to Vaemond hovering over her, drunk and drooling, like some monstrous sea creature with fluids oozing from every pore. He is not handsome then, with vomit crusting strands of his white hair. He can’t get his cock hard, so he crawls down her body and buries his face between her legs. She tries not to react. There is nothing to react to. His tongue is like an eel, hunting for prey, and finding little of it. He mumbles things about little dragon into her flesh and thinks she is wet with excitement for him. But he is mistaken because it is only his own drool.  

She hates looking at him down there. He looks pitiful but it still frightens her. As if birth will be like this, a man-sized head and torture that won’t stop. She imagines other things, such as the stars her septa taught her the names of, her mother writing in a ledger, her nursemaid picking out the bad stitches in her embroidery. Her mind is stuffed with cotton wool and her mouth is filled with sand.

Those are the better nights, when falling asleep under Vaemond does not offend him. It is worse when he wants her to participate.  

She tries not to think of it as she picks at her breakfast. Her dress is sea-green. Many of her clothes are pale shades of the sea at various times of day. But never black, nor red. Vaemond does not like to see her in those colours. 

Vaemond gets up, flinging down his napkin. “I’ll be down to the port with Father. Won’t be back until nightfall.” 

“Husband, can you not stay? Lady Kiera and my brother will be here in a matter of hours. I do not wish to receive them alone.” She told him of their visit last night – she hates having to tell him again. 

He observes her pale, hopeful expression from under white lashes. Disgust darts across his face as he plucks a grape from the stem, tossing it into his mouth with a boyish flick of the wrist. “I will return later. Your brother and his wife know what I look like. Make an excuse.” 

She hesitates. She wants to let him go despite what would constitute for good manners. But Mother would not let him. Mother would make him stay. “Vaemond, I think that would be rude.” 

He stiffens, an animal ready to bite. “Do you? Do you think that would be rude? What does Daenys Targaryen know of rudeness? Has anyone ever been rude to you in your life, little girl?” 

He is being rude now. But it would not be a good idea to point it out.

“This is Lady Kiera’s first time visiting and I think you should remain here and greet her with me.” She lifts her chin in a show of defiance that mirrors Jena's. A pup trying its hardest to be a wolfhound.  

Vaemond laughs and shakes his head. Daenys is emboldened. She feels a ray of hope burst in her chest. Father used to do the same thing before he gave into Mother’s demands. He’s going to stay.  

Her husband walks around the table and crouches, so that he is the one looking up. Daenys goes very still, honey eyes sparkling with the desire to fall in love with him. She has been waiting months for it to happen. Please let it be today.

Vaemond touches her abdomen through the fabric of her dress and splays his fingers over the seed pearl design. A breeze from the window dances a tendril of lace-white hair on his cheekbone. “I pray to the gods every day that your womb quickens. A babe in your arms will rid me of these mooning eyes of yours. You can busy yourself with it, and we may cease offending each other in that bed your father calls a wedding gift.” 

Daenys’s mouth tastes metallic and bitter. “I am sorry I am not pleasing to you, husband.” 

“I find you pleasing enough.” He runs his finger into the hollow of one of her curls, tugging it down. “Was I meant to be head over heels? Is the Crown Prince’s daughter such a prize? You Targaryens think you’re a gift from the gods. People wanted you for your dragons. You’re about as appealing as wet hose without them. This attitude that comes with your name...let it go. You are a Velaryon now. Understand?”  

He drops a kiss on her cheek and strolls out. 

Daenys sits there for a while, as the servants clear the dishes. Her thumb flattens on the end of her fork, flesh pooling around the prongs. A fat beetle scuttles onto the top of the table. It skirts the edge of her plate, dashing in circles before it reaches her limp hand. She pierces its shell with her nail and then crushes it to mush under her fingertip. Bile-green fluid seeps in an uneven puddle. 

When a steward notices her face glistening with tears, she glances down at the beetle. She sniffs and smiles miserably. “Oh dear.” 

His face slackens. Slow-witted, he thinks to himself. Poor creature. 

That night Vaemond does not come to their bed, and she is glad for it. She does not want Valarr to see her the next morning, subdued and bruised. He will ask questions she doesn’t wish to broach with a ten-foot spear.  

They are so lovely together, Kiera and Valarr, though that most important part of marriage seems absent. They are polite with each other, but there are no lingering glances, nor secret smiles. 

The bed creaks softly as she crawls in on her side of it. 

Father had it made specially, a gift for marital good luck, upon which she would – gods willing – bear the Velaryon heirs for years to come.  

It was a different bed in the Red Keep that he brought her to on the night of her wedding. Mother was no longer there to do to the job and Daenys had quietly insisted she did not want one of her lady aunts to do it in her stead. She would have been happy with Aunt Dyanna had she still been alive, but not Alys and Aelinor who would only make her nerves worse. 

Uncle Maekar brought Vaemond because Lord Velaryon was too drunk to stand steady. She remembers shrinking under the sheets when Maekar’s stern face appeared at the other side of the bed, with Vaemond gripped in one strong hand, all bright-eyed and tipsy. He did not spare his niece a glance and neither did he give Vaemond any of the bawdy well-wishes the other guests had. Once the curtain was drawn, Daenys heard him whisper -  

“Did you tell her what is to happen?” 

A nervous chuckle snagged in Baelor's throat. “She...yes, I am sure her mother will have done.” 

“Are you? She is lying there like a plank of wood.” 

“Maekar, the boy will know – come, let us not speak of it here.” 

She remembers feeling touched Uncle Maekar would bother to ask. But not so much at being called a plank of wood. Baelor was mistaken. Mother had never had the chance to tell her what was to happen, or the specifics of conception. 

As she tosses and turns, she goes over her wedding night again. But this time, Vaemond is someone else. Some faceless knight. Ser Roland perhaps. Only a year ago, imagining Ser Roland desecrating his kingsguard vows, even if it was just in her head would have made Daenys dissolve with shame. But it does not matter anymore. His face keeps bleeding off the skull of the man thrusting on top of her. Fingers, more fingers, thick, long, steady, buried deep inside her. She turns to face the other wall, squeezing her thighs shut.  

She thinks of her uncle instead. In what form, it is unclear. A longing for the Red Keep reduced into the pockmarked ridges of his face, her fingers extending across the distance to find purchase there. The uncle who pays her the least mind becomes the face of home. She thinks of him until his features liquefy and she can no longer ascertain if it is him inside her or a vague approximation of every male member of her family. 

Sleep dissolves into her stomach the same way lust does, like the last of a snowflake melted on the tongue.

207 AC 

The godswood is alight with lamps glazed in rainbow glass. A Dornish invention. Her grandmother Myriah had quite the collection, with most, if not all, commissioned from a single glassmaker in Hellholt. “Your grandmother used to plan your wedding when we lay side by side in bed. I know how dearly she would have wished to be here,” her grandfather told her as they danced together. Daenys burst into tears, and could not stop, even when King Daeron embraced her like she was a little girl again.

It is a blessing the godswood is empty. The sept, unusually enough, is not. But here, where the mirror pool twinkles and shimmers with the dappled colour of the lamps, Daenys searches for the mother she misses, the grandmother, and the aunt.  

“I wish you would return. There are too many men in our family now,” she jokes, a miserable sniff turning her nose pink. 

She sits down by the pool, skirts cascading around her. Her dress is ivory with threads of gold and silver, the damask pattern swirled into the form of pomegranates. It is a fruit unique to Dorne. The material was saved by her grandmother, in preparation for when it would be sewn together  for the wedding of her first granddaughter, her beloved as she would trill when she saw Daenys.  

The veil is Velaryon-gifted. A net of silver threads with pearls sewn in for the cap, and a sheer translucent fabric that flows behind her like wings. The same Velaryon pearls are in her ears, around her throat, and dangling from her frail wrists. When Daella saw her, she’d gasped and immediately demanded that her nursemaid inform Uncle Maekar she would like to have the very same dress, and if not, she would be upset.  

“You will have this dress, my darling,” Daenys told her, kissing her little nose. “There’s still plenty of grandmother’s fabric left over – we will make you whichever kind of dress you want.” 

Daella shrieked in delight, bouncing around in circles. 

“I do think Aelora’s wedding will come first, no?” Aunt Alys cut in.  

Daenys blushed, realising her mistake. “Y-yes, of course.” There wasn’t enough fabric left for three dresses, but her intention was appeasement before Alys could look any sourer. Aelinor, for once, took her niece’s side.  

“Daella shall have her dress and whatever else she wishes. I am certain House Arryn can bring forth an array of fabrics to drape their princess in.” 

Aelora was completely uninterested, and when she murmured that she would like to wear a black dress, and so would her twin-husband, no one listened. Alys turned a shade of beet red that was a sight to behold. 

“Well, if House Dondarrion could not produce any for their princess, House Arryn needs must for Aelora.” 

It was then that Daenys almost began to cry.  

It spills out of her now, in a lurched sob, all tension and grief for the women in the family who did love her. Even if Jena had a harsh way of showing it. Daenys was her blood, they had the same red in their hair. Mother loved her. She hasn’t eaten much all evening, so she chews on her fingers, as if sucking hard enough will draw out more blood, a fleck of meat, iron to bolster her weak stomach.  

“There you are, cousin. They’re all losing their minds in there.” 

Aerion appears behind her like a bad dream.  

Daenys flutters her lashes, clearing the clogged tears. And then a discreet rub of her sleeve to her chin. Weakness displayed here would be deadly. She turns, briefly, so he can see she is acknowledging him, before turning back to the mirror pool.  

“I will return in a moment.” 

Please go away.  

He does not. He comes closer. Her cousin has a serpentine grace, addictive to watch if one isn’t in its direct path. His father calls him ‘little beast’ out of affection. But it is true. Aerion is more beast than man, a dragon without a purpose. There is nothing more dangerous in this world.

His eyes are almost fully black, the pale violet of his irises a thin ring around them. Sitting beside her, he runs his fingers through the waters of the pool. “You look pretty in grandmother’s dress.” 

Daenys glances down at it as if she has never seen it before. “It wasn’t her dress exactly. Just the fabric to have it made.” 

He nods, feigning interest. But his eyes are distant. This manages to unsettle Daenys more than if he were his usual swaggering self. She waits, her stomach coiled in an unforgiving spiral. His kindness is not to be trusted. Egg learned the lesson quickest and hardest, having been lured in by many a, ‘I just want to show you something.’ 

“Daeron told me something amusing,” he says. A dimple indents his cheek like a fingertip into sweet dough. 

“What is it?” Daenys settles against the edge of the fountain. 

“He wouldn’t tell me where he heard it, but apparently you and I were meant to be married.” 

She is proud of herself for keeping a straight face. “Oh?” 

Aerion wags his eyebrows, a slight divot forming on top of his cheekbone. Aunt Dyanna had the same one. He has stolen her whole face. From Maekar, he received nothing but the colouring. If he were different, if he had anyone’s personality but his own, Daenys thinks she would have married him. Willingly. Happily. She would still be a Targaryen if she married Aerion. She wouldn’t have to go outside the clan. 

“My father made the case for it. But it did not pan out. Do you remember how my mother used to want us to play together? She had hopes for it, I think.” 

There is a subtle softness in his heavy-lidded eyes. It invites her closer. She stays where she is. But she smiles at the mention of Dyanna. “I loved your lady mother.” 

He laughs shortly. “Who didn’t?” He removes his signet ring, twirling it in his palm. It winks when it catches the reflection of the rainbow glass. Fireflies mill close to his head, forming a thin halo of light. Beautiful, just like his mother. In a heartbreaking way. There is something so delicate about their features that if Aerion were anyone different, the entire world would fall to its knees at his feet. He could have had his mother’s ability to gather love if he wasn’t so -  

Daenys isn’t sure who or what he is really. Because the only other person he might have taken after is Uncle Maekar. Father has mentioned his baby brother’s rash temper when he was young, but Aerion is different. Cold cruelty, diamond-hard, rotten. 

“I would have liked to marry you,” Aerion says. 

She is still, afraid to breathe too loud. Something is coming. He looks like an angel. Something is coming. He smiles wider. Something is coming. 

“No answer to that?” he presses. 

“I am married now. It would be uncouth to speak of marrying another,” she says thinly.  

“Yes, you are married now. To a Velaryon, no less. All their sanctifications are to do with the sea. Just like ours is with fire and blood. Did you know that?” 

“Sort of.” 

“Have you been sanctified, sweet cousin?” 

“What?” 

“We’re not by the sea, but we can make do, can’t we?” 

Daenys moves half a beat before he does. But it is futile. Aerion drags her back down and then he is on her, his hand jammed into the back of her head. He shoves her face into the pool. Deep, deeper still, until her ribcage is bruised against the stone edge.  

Daenys’s scream bursts from her in a stream of panicked bubbles. Light and dark meld in a strange, twisted shape. He waits until the convulsions get violent. And then he pulls her back up and grabs her face in his hand, lizard tongue curled over the shell of her ear.  

“Shame we’re not for each other, cousin. I would have looked forward to waking you every morning by pissing in your mouth. Uncle Baelor’s precious little girl. I hope Vaemond fucks you bloody tonight. Judging by how he treats his whores, I’ve no occasion to worry.” 

Daenys has no sooner finished choking the water out of her lungs then she is back under. The second time lasts longer. He means to kill me here. Bloodlust will lead to both their demise. Father will murder Aerion with his bare hands and be tainted as a kinslayer for the rest of his life. She cares not for her own wellbeing. She does not want Father’s future reign as king to be tainted. But no matter how hard her hands claw back at her cousin, his strength is relentless. Dots of black pulse across her vision.  

Father, I am sorry.  

“AERION!” 

Aerion’s arms suddenly wrap around her, dragging her up and back. The world wobbles. She can see purple stars over her head. One is red. Another is green. But mostly purple. How wonderful. Her lungs are inflamed. Aerion turns her onto her side and she retches, throwing up bile and pool water.  

Uncle Maekar’s hands replace Aerion’s, and then he has her cradled on his arm. He strokes her hair off her face, saying her name with a tone of intense panic. 

“What the fuck have you done?” he snarls at Aerion.  

“I didn’t do anything!” his son exclaims. “I was passing by the godswood and saw her doubled over with her face in the pool! I saved her!” 

“You little fucking sh - “ Maekar’s hand rests on her forehead like a crown. Its heat steadies her, bringing the double, triple copies of them both back into just the one. “Daenys. Daenys.” 

“Yes, Uncle?” she rasps.  

“What happened?” 

Her bloodshot eyes flicker to Aerion. He looks worried. She wants nothing more than to say the truth of it, exorcise this demon. But that will never happen. Aerion is family, a Targaryen, and Targaryens stick together. If Maekar finds out, he will have no choice but to tell his brother, and Prince Baelor will beat the daylights out of Aerion. He used to get the most bitter look on his face when Aerion cheated during swordplay with Valarr in the Red Keep’s training yards. It is no secret he has little love for his nephew. He might not risk his relationship with his brother for much, but he would risk it for his daughter.  

“I must have fainted, Uncle,” Daenys whispers. “Cousin Aerion pulled me out.” 

Aerion inhales, slowly letting the air out in a shiver. Pure relief. When their eyes meet, he does not smile, but his eyes are subdued with gratitude. She has never wanted someone dead more badly in her life.  

Maekar looks to his son with a begrudging apology on his face. “Aerion, return to the Great Hall.” 

“What about her?” 

“’Tis almost time for the bedding ceremony. The septas will have to change her out of this damned dress first.”  

Aerion leaves, albeit with reluctance. Uncle Maekar guides his niece to stand, and she goes limp against him like a rag doll. Her legs are failing to do their only job. She whispers an apology, small hand convulsing against his arm.  

“What are you sorry for?” His lazy baritone is unusually gentle. 

“I am not sure. Being a nuisance.”  

“You are not a nuisance. Wedding night nerves are natural.” 

He briefly touches her face, a warm cup of her cheek. Daenys clings tighter, shivering as they return indoors.  

She glances up at him, this uncle of hers, her father’s favourite sibling. A complete stranger to her. The pox scars on his cheek are divots on the face of the moon. He is all deep set eyes and strong nose, a pale bird of prey. Just like Aerion, he has his mother’s features but his father’s colouring; it is the opposite for Prince Baelor. She has never thought of him as handsome before. But the fascination was ever there – just like Mother, he is hard to please, rarely smiles unless he must, or when his big brother coaxes him to. It is difficult to avoid the pitfall of wanting his approval when it is so sparingly given. 

When he passes her to the septas, he does not take the hint in their glances and remains in the room. They peel the dress off Daenys, until it is pooled around her ankles. She is left in her underdress, a thinner shift of ivory, through which her slender frame is silhouetted against the flames in the hearth. There is nothing to be done with her hair, so they pull it out of its braids and let it fall open, sliding the pearl hairnet over the top.  

Her uncle watches, unblinking, looking away only when one of the septas gets in his line of sight. Daenys’s hands feel warm and shaky. They do not really feel like hands at all, but paws. An animal preparing to scamper for safety. As the replacement dress slides up over her hips, Maekar’s gaze finds hers. Her jaw trembles and she clenches it, heart thudding in her chest. His lack of expression both upsets and confuses her. His eyes haven’t moved off her since they entered the room.  

But then she notices his hand is gripping the back of the chair he is resting against. White-knuckled.  

Her mother’s spirit is not in the room with her. Rhaenyra’s is. It slides into the back of her throat and makes a home for itself. Her voice comes out strong, all girlish confidence.  

“Do I look pretty, Uncle?” 

Maekar’s brow gathers dark. He takes care to look her up and down, the drag of his gaze slow, like a flattened palm over her belly. She pictures herself sliced open, wet, flaccid flowers taking root in her intestines. A pulse shoots between her legs. She thinks if she had a cock, it would be straight and steely as a sword right now. 

“Very,” he snaps, and then takes her hand under his arm so tight, as if he fears she will flee and try to drown herself in the nearest body of water again. 

She skips slightly to keep up with his strides through the corridors of the Keep. “Listen – they've started a new song. We have not danced yet, Uncle.”  

“Haven’t we?”  

“No. We should. I have danced with all my other uncles. Only you remain.” 

He doesn’t answer, as if he hasn’t heard. 

But when they walk into the Great Hall, he lets her small hand wriggle its way – by force – into his own so that she can pull him behind her. It makes her laugh to be leading such a powerful edifice of a man. His weight pulls against her, but she persists, turning with stars in her eyes to see that – lo – even Uncle Maekar can smile without the weight of the world upon his shoulders.  

The dance has enough energy and sway in it for people to swing their bodies, hair bouncing, sleeves trailing. But Uncle Maekar keeps his movements sedate, circling her where she moves, catching her around the waist and lifting her as if she weighs nothing. He doesn’t grip her too hard, but she feels his fingers long after. Wine on an empty stomach and almost dying has made her heady, reckless. In the rush of whirling bodies, no one notices that she sways too close to her uncle. Her palms flatten against his neck as the room spins around her. Her breath comes in little pants, damp and hot against his lips.  

Prince Baelor notices, and his smile wilts. But before he can take a better look, a trail of people dances in between, glittering and bright, and by the time he hunts for Maekar’s silver head again, it is lost in the throng. 

Daenys leans up so her mouth is by Maekar’s ear. It brings her chest flush to his, her nipples hard under the fabric of her bodice. “Aerion told me that it might have been he and I who were married.”  

He turns his head to stare at her, and their lips almost brush. She feels the tickle of his beard, softer than Father’s. “Not Aerion. Daeron.” 

“That’s not what he said in the godswood.” 

She is faintly aware of his hands grasping her hipbones. Hers move down to cover them, fingers slipping over his knuckles, feeling the scar on the back of one. She pinches it gently, eyes dripping honey in the candlelight.  

“It might have been nice to be the lady of Summerhall for a time.” She teeters, a sleepy smile curling her mouth.  

Maekar is staring down at her as if he has been struck over the head. “Aerion told you this in the godswood? When? He said he found you unconscious. When did you have time to speak?” 

Daenys laughs and takes her uncle’s face between her hands. She thinks she likes his face like this, rippling with horrified disbelief. Better than indifference and displeasure. She has scared Uncle Maekar. How many people can claim to have done that?  

“Thank you for dancing with me, uncle.” She kisses him on his scarred cheeks, first one, then the other, and then her father is pulling her away for it is almost time for the bedding ceremony.  

She does not notice Baelor’s dark glance in his brother’s direction. She does not know it is the only time he has ever looked at Maekar in such a way.  

Chapter Text

202 AC 

A gloom lies over the Red Keep. Rhaegel has spent the better part of the night screaming for his mother. Nothing has worked to calm him down. The king, ashen-grey with his own grief, rocked him the way Myriah did and only then would Rhaegel sleep for an hour. Daeron would not let anyone near him, not even to change the prince out of his urine-soaked breeches. 

He recovered enough to be at her funeral, but was heavily sedated. They believed it might help him, to see that she was gone. As they stood watching the pyre, he'd tugged on his little brother’s hand, eyes like round pennies, as if he were one of Maekar’s own children. Might they give the ashes to us, brother? Maekar told him that the ashes were for them, that no one else could have them. Then I would very much like to mix them into my tea, brother, with the poppy milk. I can keep her safer than the urn will. I promise. Please ask them. I will keep her tucked into my stomach lining. She will want for naught. When I eat, she eats. Just like she kept me in her stomach. Ask them, brother...please. 

In moments of despair, Maekar wonders if feeding their mother’s ashes to Rhaegel might have cured him. A Martell fed to her Targaryen offspring. Some balance restored to the world.  

He will be grateful for Summerhall again, its fountains and jewelled mosaics and the waterways that run through the vast corridors, with gold and silver fish and aquatic plants harvested from the Summer Sea. The diamond glow of its white stone through the mist, the glow of lakewater onto which its reflection is painted on clear days. He misses it desperately.

He would have returned after the queen’s funeral, but Dyanna wished to remain with the family. It is good to be close after the loss of one’s own. That used to be who they were. It is not anymore. Myriah is dead. Her sons no longer have to play at unity the way they once did. Even Aerys – cold, dry Aerys – loved his mother enough to tolerate an hour or two playing with his littlest brother when they were children.

Maekar veers towards the training yards but halfway there he changes his mind. His sons’ squabbling will rub salt to his frayed nerves. If Aerion wishes to beat Daeron black and blue with a wooden stick, so be it. Daeron may learn to defend himself better. 

He diverts to his mother’s chambers. Curtains of pale saffron dance at her windows, still open, just as she preferred them. On clear days, she claimed she could feel the desert winds of Dorne on her skin, blowing in from the south. 

A curved sword hangs over her vacated bed. Jewelled lamps of burnished bronze and polished glass. A pair of her slippers, curled at the ends, with mirrors sewn into the rainbowed embroidery. A thin sheaf of incense sticks smoke gently in one corner.  

It is as if she is still here. She has only stepped out for a moment, likely to attend to his father. She will return, her black hair falling in loose waves the way she preferred to keep it in the sanctity of her quarters. Mayakar! she will exclaim, hands held out to him as if he were three again and can leap straight into them.  

Mayakar. 

Myriah loved her mother dearly, but the old woman had never bothered to learn the correct pronunciation of her Targaryen grandchildren’s names. She forgot most of them. She’d held onto Maekar’s, but mangled its syllables. When he had gotten the pox, she came all the way from Dorne to help her daughter nurse him back to health. She spoke of Mayakar on her deathbed, but that child was long gone. In his place was a scarred, moody creature of ill temperament and few smiles. 

A sneeze breaks his reverie. Maekar whirls, blinking away the wetness in his eyes. His voice bursts thick with anger.  

“Who’s there? Show yourself!” 

The outer curtain – a small lump is hidden behind the heavy brocade – does not shift. Whoever is behind it is trying desperately to hold their breath. Another sneeze breaks the spell. And then an annoyed grunt at her own idiocy. 

Maekar tears the curtain back. Crouched on the bottom step of the balcony is his niece. She rubs at her pert little nose, freckles splashed golden-brown across it. Sunlight blondes the soft down of her tensed arms, lower lip jutting red as licked jam. A single wave of auburn hair falls over her right ear; the rest is in loose ribbons down her back.  

They stare at each other. And then she gives him a tender dreamy smile.  

There are fresh drops of blood on the marble, cardinal red. Maekar turns almost the same colour. His own daughter is only three, and he has no sisters. Dyanna’s moonblood comes and goes, but she shares nothing of it with him, save to push away his face when he tries to slip his hand between her legs in bed. Off with you, scoundrel, I am in no mood.  

A far cry from an eleven-year-old hiding behind her grandmother’s curtains.  

And then he notices the dragon egg. Green scaled, with swirls of silver, and slick with blood. He knows the egg. He chose it for Baelor to place in Dany's cradle when she was born. Maekar had leant over her, that rapt little creature, and coaxed her to show interest in the egg. It may as well have been invisible. She chewed on her tiny fist and her eyes followed him with unnerving steadiness.  

In Daenys’s right hand is a knife.  

“What in the seven hells have you done, girl?” 

Maekar falls to his knees, embarrassment forgotten. The idea of having to carry her to Jena and see the blood leave his goodsister's face turns him cold. She will find some way to suspect him. Baelor is in Tyrosh with Valarr so he will find no respite there. Jena’s temper flares quick but hard, and with the queen’s death, she is now the head of the royal household. If Maekar will not suffer for it, Dyanna will while they still remain at the Red Keep.  

Daenys does not protest to her skirts being pushed up at first. But then she yelps in embarrassment when his hands touch her sunburnt leg. He pulls it across his knee, and it twitches, but she goes still to let him inspect the damage. 

Her smallclothes are stained with splotches of bright red. Five neat lines weep blood in a disorganized web down her semitranslucent thigh. Her hand grips his shoulder to catch balance when he leans in to inspect the damage. Iron, crushed lavenders and sweat - her scent is warmed by sunlight. Dread grips his spine. She mumbles something, and he barks, “What? Daenys, have you lost your mind?” 

“Aerion said – “ 

“What the fuck did Aerion say now?” 

She is warm and woozy in his grip, and Maekar’s panic increases. Aerion said, Aerion said. Baelor will not forgive him when he discovers this. The cuts are shallow, and there is only enough visible blood to shock her into dizziness. Whatever demented focus led her to do this is wearing away now. His brother will demand the skin whipped off the back of Aerion’s calves for punishment. 

“Aerion said – “ Daenys leans in to whisper, breath bittersweet on his cheek. “ – that we would need to couple to make it hatch. He wouldn't explain what coupling is, just that I would bleed onto the egg and then we would have our dragon. But I didn’t want to. Not with him. I thought this would work instead. I am sorry, Uncle.” 

Sorry. She was sorry for not wanting the fruit of his loins as her child-husband. Her thigh was bleeding onto the tile, but she was careful to say sorry for rejecting his son.  

An eerie expression comes over her childish features. Mouth aquiver, she droops into his arms, close to fainting. Maekar smells his mother’s scented oil behind her ear. He does not know where to begin scolding her. Stealing her grandmother’s things or cutting herself open on Myriah's balcony to hatch a dragon.  

“Why must you hatch a dragon?” he says, with great effort, as if the honey-dew weight of the child is ten times greater than it is.  

“I want to fly away like Princess Aerea. Far away. Even if it was a lie, I wanted to try it.” 

Maekar once rescued a small bird from its broken nest with Rhaegel’s help when they were children. With little responsibility beyond clashing wooden swords and competing over the number of fish they could catch, the bird became their entire life for a few days before it finally succumbed. Daenys’s tremors bring back its memory. Of cupping it under his chin where it quivered like a raindrop. He wants to wring Aerion’s neck. He will wring his neck.  

He forces her to sit up and shakes her a little to keep her conscious. “You don’t remember how Aerea died?”  

Daenys sniffs, but a thin diamond trail of snot leaks to her upper lip anyway. Maekar swipes it clean with his thumb and taps her cheek. She nods, but when two fat tears roll out, he has his answer. Dying like Aerea is worth having a dragon to fly away on. 

“Girl, what is the matter with you? You were quite the glad child once.” 

When her silent tears do not stop, Maekar’s frustration grows. This should be easier. The boys receive a clap on the shoulder and walk it off. If they cry, they do not do it in front of him and that suits him fine. But little girls are akin to Valyrian esoterica.  

“Stay here, I will fetch a maester – “ 

Daenys lets out a piercing cry. “You cannot! The maester will tell mother! Uncle, please do not tell her! She hates talk of dragons! She will make me kneel and recite the Seven Aspects! Uncle, please!” 

Her arms are around his neck again, not so much a desire for a comfort, but a puerile attempt at restraining him. Maekar tries to peel her off, but she clings like a monkey. More drops of blood stain the floor. Her wet, crying mouth is pushed to his neck and she will not release him, no matter how he promises that her mother will not find out.  

With endless difficulty, he pacifies her into sitting on the step again. And then he storms to the door, furious and upset in equal measure. A servant girl prancing by through the colonnade opposite balks when she sees him. Maekar snaps at her to fetch Maester Ambrose and to ensure that he comes alone.  

The man arrives, huffing and puffing, and breaks into soft tsks of concern when he sees the little princess. Daenys finally lets her wound be attended to, but she refuses to relinquish her grip on Maekar. In the end, he is forced to sit her on his knee, her skinny leg stretched out into the maester’s hands. She tucks her face back into her uncle’s neck, the wick of her mouth twisting in discomfort as Ambrose applies the salve.   

“I will deal with Aerion,” Maekar mutters under his breath.  

Daenys’s fingers curl into fists against the point between his shoulder blades. A vein in his neck pulses against her cheek. She turns her head, nosing at the scar directly under it with the uncomplicated curiosity of a pup. Only when he feels her sharp teeth pinch – Aerion has the same jagged edges, Maekar knows the bite well – that he flinches and takes both her arms to force her to sit up. She blinks, eyes passing over him lightly, as if he were nothing but furniture.  

Ambrose is charged never to speak of the incident. He bows his head and leaves without the slightest bit of curiosity on his dull, mournful face. Maekar cleans his niece’s blood off the steps of his mother’s balcony himself. Most of it is on her smallclothes, and she can return to her rooms without anyone noticing anything different, save for a slight wobble in her gait. 

“Thank you, Uncle,” she says before she leaves, swaying in the doorway. 

He never does deal with Aerion. He does not speak of it to Aerion at all.  

209 AC

“What are you wearing?” Vaemond hisses in her ear. “Do you wish for tongues to wag?” 

Daenys pays him no mind. She continues affixing the amethysts to her ears. Her maids flutter around her, brushing out her hair until it gleams like a sheet of textured copper. They are being awfully gentle today. Everyone is. It is as if they are waiting for her to collapse like a beached sea creature.  

The dress is black and Tyroshi purple; her mother’s favourite, the one she’d worn the day she came to lay eyes on her betrothed for the first time. It is her father’s favourite too. They had had to shorten the hem to fit the princess's lesser height, but it still looks beautiful. She had intended to wear it on the last day of the tourney to surprise Prince Baelor.  

Her father will never see it on her slender frame. But she is thinking of the ashes they did not entirely sweep up. A few specks of him must still be lingering here, in the Reach, too weak to follow his family back to King’s Landing. She hopes the dress will lure him, so that what remains of him clings to its material and she might safely carry him with her to the capital. 

“Husband, I dreamt I felt a kick in my belly,” she tells Vaemond gently, as she always does when she wants him to leave her be. “Last night. Perhaps I will birth us a son in Father's image. May we name him Baelor? Baelor Velaryon. It has such a lovely ring to it.” 

Distaste spasms across his bland features. It is enough to drive him off, back to the door, away from her, just as she prefers it.

“That one, Silla,” she whispers to one of her girls, who dutifully lifts the coronet of purple gems and sets it on her head. Her mother’s silk veil is affixed under it, covering the spill of Daenys’s hair, and arranged with romantic care around the fur collar of her cloak.  

She is stared at immediately when she leaves her chambers. But not scandalised stares, as Vaemond implied. Daenys has never much lingered on the effect she has on people. How Mother and Father wanted her to present was correct, and its effect on others was not as important as doing the right thing. She is forced to notice now, so she can measure herself against the judgement.

But she does not spy out disbelief nor contempt, as closely as she watches for it. The little female Ashford cousins beam at her. They want to come and talk, but their mothers stroke their hair and tell them not to bother the princess. To her, they offer sympathetic smiles. Daenys wishes she had the energy to stop and speak to the children, and let them not see the last of her in such miserable circumstances.

The winter air is brisk on her face, but the sun is bright as polished gold. It gives no warmth. She holds up her fingers against it, turning them a luminous red.  

In the courtyard, a hubbub of activity blocks out individual faces and voices. Everyone is a shapeless blur. Daenys waits on the steps of the castle as her oak chests are carried towards the wheelhouse. She does not look away from the sky until something in her gut pulls her to turn. Uncle Maekar is emerging from the gloom of the castle doors. He cuts a lonely figure. People give him a berth when they pass by. They always have done, fearing his bad moods. But it is marked today.  

They see each other. Her eyes drift over him, and she returns to picking out shapes in the clouds. Spinning wheel. Braavosi Titan. Horse. Lance. Ewe.  

“Sweet cousin.” 

Manfred – foolish, ginger clown of a man – is bowing like a flamboyant peacock at the foot of the steps. Daenys recognises this false gallantry. Her Mother found Manfred ridiculous, and never quite forgave him for the sin of it. Had he been a reasonable heir to the Dondarrion name, she would have gladly betrothed Daenys to him.  

“I am ever so - “ 

“I thank you kindly, my lord,” Daenys smiles tightly, before he can launch into a string of flowery phrases.  

She is tired of these vulgar men, these rats scuttling in a barrel, when they decide to don the cloak of civility and playact as gallant knights. Manfred enacted a scoreboard for how many whores he could fuck during his time at the tourney. The slab of wood was covered in notches. On the other side was Vaemond’s score. She’d seen it in passing and asked Ser Roland about it, who was forced to explain when she charged him to be honest. 

Manfred opens his mouth, closes it, nods in confusion and wheels around on his heel to traipse away, believing his duty done. She wonders why that delightful red-haired woman is that she'd seen him with. At the tourney, only she appeared to share Egg and Daenys's delight at watching Aerion get pounded into the mud.

“I’ve never seen a ginger hog. But I imagine it’s arse-end resembles Cousin Manfred.” 

Lyonel Baratheon’s beetle-bright eyes glitter as he descends the steps beside her.  

“Were you not intending to leave after the funeral, my lord?”  

“Aye. But I had to pay my respects. Privately. Your family and mine have a long history. Could hardly sneak off like a thieving tart.” 

Daenys peers at this impudent ember of a man. “My lord, you needn’t tell jokes to endear yourself to people. You are impressive enough.” 

He looks half-offended, a startled laugh falling from his lips. “I beg your pardon?” 

“I mean that you are very likeable. You needn’t try so hard to be.”  

It is, frankly, the first time she has seen Lyonel lost for words. On the journey home, he will perhaps mock her, the little princess who told him he was likeable. And then make another bawdy jest to cap it off so that his men will laugh and thank the gods they were given such an entertaining lord to follow.  

But that will be the Laughing Storm, an epithet. This is not him, this man here, the one who knighted Raymun Fossoway on the field, and fought alongside her father when the crowd jeered at Ser Duncan for daring to assume highborns sought justice for the innocent. 

“I never got to thank you, for what you did for Ser Duncan.” She touches his arm, knowing there are several pairs of male Targaryen eyes currently burning angry holes into her skull. None of them are feeling too kindly towards Lord Baratheon, especially not Uncle Maekar who had quite blatantly tried to kill him by lancing his horse. “My father was right. You are a good man, Lord Lyonel.” 

Lyonel’s throat bobs as he glances around. Then he lets out a burst of air that might pass for an ashamed laugh. When he looks down at her little hand squeezing gently into the gold fabric of his doublet sleeve, it fades. He smiles, and it not his usual display of white teeth and flaring nostrils. It is a subdued, but pleased curl of the mouth, dark lashes pulled low.  

Daenys’s father had said no such thing. In fact, Lyonel’s participation in the Trial was hardly noted by Baelor at all. But he would likely have warmed to Lyonel if he’d survived. Telling a small lie to appease a Lord Paramount’s poorly disguised scorn towards House Targaryen will bear fruit later. 

A slurred Dany reaches her ears as she heads for her horse with Ser Roland trailing in her wake. It sounds again, louder this time. Daenys turns to her sworn protector, who keeps his face passive. But his scorn is evident from the way he refuses to look at the man addressing her.  

Daenys turns to the offender. “What?” 

Aerion peers at her through one swollen eye, hand clutched to his injured side. “You did not visit me.” 

Her fingers lose feeling. “What?” 

“I said – you did not visit me.” His voice cracks, and he sways a little with the jostle of the cart he has so laboriously been loaded upon. 

She wanders closer, until she is peering up, and his head hangs over her own. He smells of medicine, and sickness, and death. She has never smelt anything sweeter. Maester Ambrose is unmatched when it comes to wounds of the inner thigh. She knows it well. His quick work had unfortunately saved Aerion from bleeding out.  

The tumour in her gut grows, a barbed ball of hatred. Only Aerion makes it pulse. The little creature he created, held nurtured inside her belly. A child between them that could raise a dragon. 

“I never want to see your face again,” she whispers to him in a soft hiss. 

Over his shoulder, she notices Maekar staring at them from a distance. Aerion forces breath into his lungs, his quiet whimper sodden with pain. Daenys feels a sudden rush of love for Ser Duncan.

“That’s not what you said at Driftmark,” Aerion wheezes.  

He doesn’t sound like he is goading her. That is the worst part. He means it, this tortured, fragile inquiry as to where she was, why she had not come to visit him in his sick bed after he had orchestrated the events that led to her father’s death. 

“I was without family when you visited. And for a moment, I mistook you for such. Never again.” She turns away, legs trembling under the folds of her heavy skirts. 

Maekar is still watching her.  

Moments later, when the procession sets off, she hears him snarl as to Aegon’s whereabouts. 

The sun breaks from behind a cloud and Daenys turns her head up towards it.  Her skin warms.

Behind her closed eyelids, she sees Father smile, dark eyes alight.  

After the Ashford Tourney, Daenys Targaryen came to be known by a fonder moniker.  

Baelor’s little girl.  

Bards vied to write lyrics that would encapsulate her tragedy. A father lost, a mother gone, and two brothers to die in the year that followed. But few would forget her astride her father’s destrier at the head of the Targaryen procession as it left Ashford Meadow. The princes were injured and broken and grieving, their heads brought low. 

It was the princess who rode alone, as benevolent towards her kinslaying uncle, and her cousin the Brightflame, as she was to the destitute encountered on the return to King’s Landing. It was said she emptied what riches she had with her that might be sold and traded for coin to feed every hungry child, woman and man who stretched out their hands in supplication. 

And of course, she was beautiful, delicate as a summer flower in the rain. Who didn’t like to imagine a beautiful princess, keeper of hearts?  

Would that she were born a boy, people whispered, the realm might have been saved.  

They marvelled at her strength of character.  

For how difficult it must have been to forgive a man, even one’s own uncle, for the slaying of a most beloved father.

Chapter Text

209 AC 

Egg was the first of her cousins she was big enough to carry when he was born.  

Aemon was born when she was seven, but he was so sickly, Daenys was not trusted to carry him alone. Dyanna’s hand was ever there, poised to steady them if needed.  

But Aegon – her sweet boy, her little egghead - she carried alone. In her arms, on her hip, on her shoulders. He was the most agreeable baby, if louder than all the rest combined. He reminded her of Aunt Dyanna in that way. Her laugh was always loudest, and it was often the only sound that could induce her moody husband to chuckle.  

Egg loved to squeal himself hoarse, delighted by all manner of mundane things. It was his first time living and he behaved like it. 

When it was just them walking in the gardens of the Red Keep, Daenys would pretend she was his mother. It felt nice to have a little creature to protect and care for. She did not quite understand then how children were made, and just how much sacrifice was demanded to have one that would look at her as if she’d hung the moon.  

Egg would pelt her with a hundred questions. Why do horses poop so big? What does ‘maester’ mean? Why is the sea blue? Why do ladybirds have spots? Why is your hair that colour? Where’s Dorne? Why don’t we live in Dorne? Where did the dragons go?  

She always did her best to answer every question, tenderly, if not to his satisfaction. Because any answer she could give bred new questions. Eventually, Daenys would run out of answers, being that she was only thirteen. Egg’s brain never stopped. He was formidable that way. Most people made do with one question and then ceased digging. Egg was barely more than a toddler. But she imagined the inside of his mind was that of a maester’s, all intricate webbing, the bright lights of his thoughts passing across each silk-spun thread.  

On the eve of her wedding to Vaemond, Egg turned up in her chambers, strangely quiet for once. He stood in the doorway and stared at her with those moonlit eyes.  

“Will you be happy with him?” he asked.  

“Yes.” It was the first dishonest answer she’d ever given him. 

“Are you sure? I can get them to stop.” 

“And how would you do that?” 

“I’m almost eight. In seven more years, I can marry you. You’d only be three and twenty. We’d have fun. We could go on adventures every day and no one would stop us.” 

It was offered with the innocence of a child attempting to safeguard one of his few good relationships. Daenys had to turn away to keep from crying. She dug her nail into her thigh until it seared with pain. “I’ll ask your father to send you to Driftmark. Perhaps Vaemond will be needing a new squire soon. Then we can have adventures all day.” 

Vaemond did in fact need a squire a year later. But when Daenys wrote to her uncle, Maekar’s answer was cold. He did not want Egg to live so far away and feared that the boy’s carelessness would only cause trouble. It was his polite way of mocking the offer itself. And perhaps it had a little to do with his lingering resentment over Daenys not becoming his gooddaughter. Uncle Maekar could never quite let go of a grudge. 

But Daenys could hold grudges too. Life on Driftmark with Egg would have made the time pass sweeter. Vaemond would not have been so brazen in his maltreatment of her. Egg was young, but he was still a prince of the realm, blood of the dragon – her blood. That meant something.  

Maekar’s refusal stole that small ray of hope.   

And thus, he has continued to take. She has little else left to give. No one except for Valarr and Matarys. 

Her older brother has been avoiding their uncle on the journey home. Maekar rides ahead of everyone and avoids Valarr in equal measure. Aerion is still bound to his cart and makes no effort to speak to anyone. Daeron is jarringly sober. And Father -  

Daenys looks over her shoulder, chest compacted. Her stomach swoops, like missing a step on the way down. The absence of his silhouette shoves itself into the gap in her chest where her heart usually beats. She runs her eyes over the procession, until her vision blurs, as if this is a particularly vivid dream and any second now, Prince Baelor will trot up beside her on his horse.  

The horse she is astride. Its streak of white hair so very like Valarr’s. It is why Father chose him.  

Daenys waits for Father to ride up alongside her. She counts to ten several hundred times. A scream builds up in her chest. Comportment, she tells herself, comportment. As Mother would. Except Mother went first; she did not have to see any of them die. What is comportment in the face of such horror? 

The princess begins to rock back and forth. The scream remains where it is. Her nails dig into the thin skin of her thigh through her dress. Deep, red welts. Pain wells in the saltwater of her eyes. Kiera finally notices her distress from her own saddle. She rides up in Baelor’s place and reaches to touch Daenys’s shoulder.  

“You are exhausted,” she whispers, in soft Low Valyrian.  

Daenys imagines squeezing her knees into her father’s horse and letting it dash her across the field. Standing from the saddle and being thrown at the first hurdle. The mercy of a broken neck.  

Her brother notices too. Soon, the whole procession comes to a halt and rather than draw attention to the reeling princess, it is suggested that it would be best to rest before nightfall at Cider Hall which is only a short distance away.  

Steffon Fossoway – massive twat that he is – couldn’t look more pleased by the idea. After the humiliation at the hands of his little cousin, he has spent the last day’s ride stuck to Maekar’s left side. The prince has ignored him, but it hasn’t put off the incorrigible apple knight.  

He tugs his destrier around to ride on ahead, stopping first by Daenys’s horse. “You will be well cared for by our family, my princess. Fear not.” 

She regards him with vacant eyes. Then she leans in and vomits all over his nice shiny leather boots.  

Cider Hall is a stout little keep, similar to its mistress. Lady Fossoway is round as an apple and only half as red. She wears black for mourning, as does her husband, but she can hardly contain her delight at hosting such important guests. Eyes glittering with greed, she oversees the servants as they help take the Targaryen party inside. When she sees Daenys, her face melts like lard off a pig.  

“Oh, my sweet, sweet girl,” she murmurs, taking both her hands and pulling her close.  

Daeron limps past, eyes clouded. “She is not your sweet girl. She’s a princess. Address her as such.” 

Daenys wonders if she has heard wrong. Her older cousin has never been one to bother or care for proper address. She also notices he isn’t drunk. How strange. She looks down at Lady Fossoway and notices the woman’s chin is wobbling. Whether it is Daeron’s rebuke, or Baelor’s death that caused it is hard to tell. 

“Thank you, Lady Fossoway. You are very kind for taking us on such short notice,” she murmurs. 

The woman sniffs, squeezing her hands. “Do not worry. We were well prepared, princess. And with so many princes injured...well, our maester is wonderful. Top of his class at the Citadel. Come, you and this lovely girl here – ah, of course, Lady Kiera – my, what a beautiful face you have – we shall leave the men to it and get you into baths.” 

The rooms of Cider Hall are small, but beautifully furnished. However, the lady of the keep is obviously embarrassed by their size and deprecates her home to compare it to what the princesses must be used to at both King’s Landing and Dragonstone. Kiera and Daenys exchange weary glances until she leaves.  

“She talks so much,” Kiera says when the door closes.  

“I think she is nervous.” 

“A ridiculous woman. Are you well? I will have the servant girl fetch a cup of wine - “ 

“No, no, it is quite alright. Best not to test my stomach.” 

“What about your maids?” 

“I have given them leave to rest. Jenny did not look well at all. The Fossoways have servants. I am sure they will come soon.” 

Kiera then leaves for her own room once she is convinced Daenys will be fine.  

The princess is finally free to curl over. She knows she should not. It would be so easy for a servant to walk in and gossip away to their mistress at the next opportunity. But there is a rusty nail in her throat, and a chisel stuck underneath, attempting to pry it loose. Only one thing will. She draws back her sleeve and runs her lips over the fattiest part of arm. Then she bites in. Not hard, not at first. But harder as the feeling grows, her free hand bunching up her skirts. Her pulse beats violently against her teeth and only then does she let go. Indentations, but no blood. This one might not even bruise.  

There are scars on the inside of her thigh, gentle and silvered, but she promised herself she would not reopen them. Since the day Maester Ambrose had seen to the initial cuts, she’d discovered something about herself. It has been sitting on the back of her neck ever since, a twisted, gargoyle creature that slobbers into her hair when it wishes to be fed. Pain feeds it. Occasionally, screaming will do, but sound echoes too well in the halls of High Tide. Vaemond has never asked about her scars, if he has even noticed. She dreads the idea of him discovering the truth. 

A knock on the door heralds the arrival of two maids dragging in an empty wooden tub with them. They are about half her size and look barely more than eleven.  

Daenys is embarrassed to be tended to by them. She suggests that one kindly go down to ensure her father’s horse is well-fed. And from the other she asks for a cup of wine, just to get her out of the room. An older woman soon appears with a young man to fill the bath, and once they also depart, the princess submerges herself before the return of the Fossoway child-servants.  

One of the girls reappears and she is truly startled to see Daenys already inside the tub. She flounders, rushing to retrieve a brush and hair oils. The other comes in with towels, and they both stare at each other in thinly veiled horror.  

“Will you get in trouble?” Daenys asks. “Do not worry. I will not tell your mistress. I am perfectly capable of bathing myself.” 

“W-we can’t let you, princess. We must do it.” The eleven-year-old on the right draws forward with the brush held aloft rather like a weapon.  

Daenys laughs, thinking of Egg. She resembles him. “You can’t let me? You think to command a princess?” 

“No, my princess! Never! I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking!” The girl slaps her cheek hard enough to turn it red. She goes for the other in quick succession. 

Daenys’s smile vanishes. “It’s alright. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was a joke. Come, you can brush my hair. And you – hold on, what are your names, you never told me?” 

They introduce themselves as Heather and Misty and claim to be daughters of the stable keeper. But by the look of Misty, she is most likely a bastard Fossoway. Heather is content to brush her hair before Daenys allows her to wash it, which she does, with her little careful hands. Misty takes over her nails, applying oil to their reddened, crack edges.  

“We heard about your father, princess,” Misty says. “We’re very sorry.” 

Heather nods earnestly. “He’s visited Cider Hall before. And he was right kind to us too. Lady Fossoway cried for hours when she found out what Lord Steffon had done. Fighting against him in the trial, I mean.” 

Misty murmurs something that has the word twat in it. It is the first time that Daenys has received condolences for Baelor and wanted to laugh instead of wail. She keeps her composure and nods solemnly. There are two eleven-year-old girls bathing me like a puppy. Perhaps this is the new truth of life, its surreality. Father is dead. The rules of the world have changed.  

Misty offers shy praise for her hair, and Heather joins in. They giggle when Daenys compliments their sandy brown locks in return. Once she is dressed again, she thanks them and asks for a small plate of food to be sent up to her room. She does not much feel like eating, but if she has it here, no one will come up to bother her to descend to the dining hall.  

It arrives – something thick and fattening, she is too nauseous to check – and she sits it on the table, watching the steam rise off it.  

It begins to rain outside. No stars, no moon, not even the shape of a cloud. She studies the small imperfections in the stone tiles. The little rip in the curtains. The beeswax dripping into the candle holders. If she lets her mind speak, she will sink into the mud. It will force her to her knees and smash her head into the wall for every kepus that ricochets against her skull. 

Memories return in slivers. Wet and slippery, fish through a net.  

Of rearing to her feet with a frantic scream when Maekar’s mace smashed into her father’s helmet. Lord Ashford exchanged a look with one of his kin, pitying and half-amused. His thirteen-year-old daughter was stomaching the violence better than the princess. He’d guided Daenys back into his seat, because look, Baelor was on his feet again, albeit a little unsteady. Daenys was forced to watch him the rest of the trial, until the horn finally rang. She remembers screaming YIELD at Aerion, her fool of a cousin, so that the horn would sound and her uncle could stop fighting to get to him. 

If she sleeps, she might dream of it again. Her uncle ramming the mace into his brother’s head and tossing him like he weighed nothing. 

Daenys wonders if there is something stronger than milk of the poppy, something to keep one awake for the rest of their life. A copy of the Seven-Pointed Star is tucked under her pillow. She reads that until she can no longer bear another word. Mother’s obsession with it is a mystery to her still.  

Finally, she tosses back the coverlets and pulls her cloak – Maekar's cloak – over her shoulders. Ser Roland stirs when the door opens and the princess emerges. Her long red hair is damp and loose, and her cheeks pink from the effects of the hearth.  

“My Uncle Maekar’s room. Do you know where it is, ser?” 

He hesitates. “May I ask why, princess?” 

Daenys studies him, her mouth curving into a smile. “You look worried, Ser Roland. I hardly think I would try and harm my uncle in the Fossoway’s Keep. Such an unheroic place to die.” 

He starts to laugh but catches himself. He offers her his arm, and Daenys slips a small hand under its crook, the other resting atop the blueish-white steel.  

“I never got to say how sorry I am for your loss, princess.” 

“Thank you. I know you felt deeply for my father.” 

She had never seen him cry before that day. In the haze of numb grief she hadn't really lingered on it. Whatever else she once thought of Ser Roland in the past, he looked like a broken little boy when he sobbed. It is an image of him she will hold with her.  

Uncle Maekar’s room is a short way down the corridor once they descend to the floor below. His liveried guards are stiff outside, two black-and-red pegs. Ser Roland nods to them. Daenys slips her hand from his arm and breathes in softly.  

“Come!” Maekar’s gruff bark answers her knock.  

When he sees that it is her, he relaxes. Perhaps he was expecting Steffon. But he does not give her any other word of welcome, or even so much as an inviting expression. How little he feels he owes her still, even with Father’s blood on his hands. Daenys thinks her martial uncle was never kind nor soft. It was but a mere illusion created in Baelor’s shadow. Father was ever his baby brother’s greatest defender. The rare times Daenys flinched at her uncle’s rough tone, Baelor would reassure her that it meant nothing, Maekar was just being Maekar. 

“You sent out men to hunt for Egg, uncle. But he is safe. He is with Ser Duncan. He told me you gave him permission to squire for the man. I assumed it was not the case later.”  She plays with her fingers, tugging until they turn red. “Guilt forced me to come and tell it to you myself." 

Maekar has his back to her. His shoulders seem to broaden, a black cloud of rage and malcontent lifting from them in a tattered scrawl. She can see it, as she once used to spy out Mother’s cloud of anger. It shrinks her into a little girl in trouble again. Maekar turns his head only enough for her to glimpse his scowl, the line of his strong nose. 

“I know where Egg is. And I did not give him permission.” 

“He would be safe with Ser Duncan.” 

“The same Duncan who caused this whole mess?” 

“Yes. He would. Safer than he’d be with Aerion - “ 

“You forget yourself, girl!”  

It takes all her willpower to look him in the eyes when he turns. It isn’t fair that he can make her feel so reduced, a spirit in place of a girl. He should be the one to suffer this diminishment. I know the taste of your mouth, uncle. Still you won’t love me. Such soft bristles of hair on his chin and upper lip, much softer than father’s. She had always assumed they would be as prickly as the rest of him.  

“Egg was screaming for Ser Duncan to get up and defeat Aerion during the trial. How do you think the prince will come to react once the dust settles?” 

Maekar’s left eye twitches around the rich damson of his eye. His fingers coil into weapons, before they shake loose. He swats a hand in the air, as if she were a fly to banish. “They are brothers.”  

“When has that ever been enough?” 

He goes still. Daenys swallows the bile in her throat. The implication is unintentional. But the damage is done. She has never seen hatred on her uncle’s face directed towards her. Whatever this expression is must be the closest he’s come so far. 

“I spoke rashly,” she mutters. “Forgive me. I did not mean my words.” 

Maekar’s jaw works under his silvery beard. He is still in his riding clothes. A bath sits in the corner, the water cold. Father used to joke about Maekar’s preference for a soldier’s bath during the war, rather than to indulge in the luxury of a bathtub if a nearby stream or river could not be found. No more than a whore’s bath really, but he’d have your tongue for phrasing it so.  

“You meant them,” he says, turning away from her again.  

A raw bubble of emotion bursts inside her stomach. She wants to launch herself at his back, tear the flesh from his steel-clad bones until chunks of it are under her nails, between her teeth.  

“He was my father!”  

“He was my brother before he was your father!”  

Daenys groans, as if he has struck her. “And you were his brother before you were my uncle!” She bends at the waist, hands pressed to her stomach. The pain radiating there threatens to paralyse her. “But you did not love him more than your son...I loved him more than anything in this world!” 

Air. Air. It won’t come to her. She fights to seize it into her lungs, but every rise of her chest is sucked dry. Pain savages her insides. Her hands grasp her face, nails clawing into the soft butter of her skin. The opening inside her that Father tended to like a garden, filled with love, patience and affection, is doused in wildfire. 

Maekar just stares at her, his eyes encased in the opalescence of unshed tears. Anger, madness, grief, kneaded into petrified wood. Daenys lurches towards him with the agony of a baby animal taking its first step.  

“Uncle, it hurts,” she whimpers, hands still crushed over her abdomen. “It hurts – here -” 

He jerks towards her. His arms catch her just as Father’s did when she collapsed at Mother’s funeral. She clutches his left arm to her like a branch to steady herself, face pushed into his bicep. Repeated sobs of uncle, it hurts tipple out, as if he might dig into her with his fist and smooth out the red rubies of her organs, fix their jagged edges and refit them inside her small frame. The first time she saw Maekar in his armour, she thought he was a god. She wants him to be a god once more and commit the atrocity of breaking her open to set her to rights. 

He calls for Ser Roland, who pales upon seeing the princess slumped into Maekar’s chest. He moves as if he means to take her away himself. 

“Don’t be a fucking fool, boy! Fetch Ambrose!” Maekar snarls.  

He forces her to sit in a chair, but she will not release his sleeve to let him put distance between them. The painted window dances in her tear-stained vision, its coloured inks blending. It mesmerises her. And then she notices Father’s brooch on her uncle’s doublet. 

“You have taken his things.” Her voice is limp with exhaustion and her mind is worn to a frayed thread. It is the only explanation for what comes out of her next. “If it is to soothe your guilt, will you not take me too, uncle?” She does not know what overcomes her to utter such a thing. She wants to be held. She wants her uncle to hold her and kiss her and tell her that somehow he can reverse this. She wants him to reassure her that it was not resentment of Baelor that led them here, the way other people whispered. Maekar's jealousy. His stern temperament marked as the hilt of a lifetime's disappointments. Overshadowed always, the baby brother.

Maekar’s fingers tighten against the back of her head almost at the same spot she saw Father's skull crushed in. 

Daenys laughs into her shaking fingers, tears salting her lips.  

When Maester Ambrose arrives, he looks pale and harried. Tender with the princess, he is unusually polite to Maekar, curt almost. But then everyone must be behaving in such a way towards the prince now. Baelor was beloved by all of them, and if not, more than his youngest brother at least. Had Maekar accidentally killed Aerys or Rhaegel, it would be quite different. 

“I am well, Maester Ambrose,” Daenys murmurs. “It hits me in waves and then I falter. But it will be so for several weeks I imagine. With my mother, it lasted three months.” 

The old man clucks his tongue in sympathy. “Ah but child, we cannot let you suffer so - “ 

“Give her milk of the poppy,” Maekar interrupts.  

Ambrose’s eyes roll towards him. “My prince, I would not suggest such an extreme measure. The princess should remain lucid.” 

“I wasn’t asking for suggestions. I gave you an order.” 

He gives instruction with the sternness of a father well used to it. Ambrose’s mouth pinches, but he obeys, bowing low before gently guiding Daenys to her feet. Maekar does not demand to see her drink the drug in front of him. He knows Ambrose wouldn’t dare circumvent his word. His back is turned again before she has left the room.  

“Princess, you must not - “ Ambrose hesitates, eyeing Roland who is trailing behind them. “You must be careful. If your uncle had a wife, there would be less tongues to wag.” 

Daenys grimaces. “He has lost a brother, Maester Ambrose. The same brother who I call ‘Father.’ If anyone should twist our mutual grief into something salacious, I would have Ser Roland rip their tongues out.” 

"Princess!” Ambrose’s jowls quiver twice as hard when he is shocked. 

“And I would happily do as the princess asks, old man,” Ser Roland supplies, his blue eyes hard with warning. 

Ambrose blusters out an, “Of course, of course, as you must,” and is wise enough not to push the subject further.

He has always been precious about his neck.  

209 AC

An hour yet left till dusk. Light bleeds off the walls of the Red Keep. It sags into the shadows cast across the worn stone floors as petrichor dampens the air. Everything feels twice its weight. Maekar’s shoulders sink beneath it like a stone.

His father has never made him wait for an audience before.

No sooner had the king finished with Baelor’s children, the Grand Maester shuffled into the audience chamber. The king rests, my princes. The day has stretched long.

Maekar’s children scattered. Their father took up his post outside the king’s bedchamber, staring at the whorls in the wood of the door. They are as familiar to him as the lines of his own palms. He has been here many times before, usually in trouble for beating up someone or other. 

It must have happened a dozen times. Young Maekar smashing the daylights out of a stable boy, or a butcher’s boy, or a bastard son of his grandfather’s for making an offhand remark on Baelor’s ‘weakness.’ What they called weakness, he knew to be restraint, but Maekar was not the eldest, so he had no qualms battling out that argument with fists.

Father would discipline him. That usually meant a light caning of his palms. He could never bear to do more than that or else Mother would cry. Maekar swore he would not be so easy on his own sons. And then he caned Aerion for killing Egg’s kitten – an accident, I swear it Father – and Dyanna could not sleep for days. She refused his touch and cried into her pillow. Maekar’s discipline petered away into cold disapproval and neglect when he did not know how else to deal with his wayward sons.

Look at our boy now, Dyanna. You have won the argument by leaving with the Stranger. I remain in your shadow.

No living parent can match up to their deceased counterpart. Maekar remembers his mother whenever he and his father attempt a conversation. It does not happen often.

He oft forgets his age, until he looks in the mirror for a brutal reminder. The hands in his lap are calloused, worn as tree bark. You are old, they tell him. He is not that old. But then he felt unspeakably aged when he was but a boy. Age does not bracket Maekar’s existence the way it does for others. His body has always been a mere carcass. It waits to wither as his mind exists in a single age, where everything is grim.

Your temper, Maekar, it is a living, breathing creature, Baelor would jest. What a mad little brother I have. My enemies should fear you.

His brother will never know what it is to fade.

The door creaks open.

Matarys steps out, water-blue eyes dim with lack of sleep. Jena’s eyes, without her fire. His limbs have a loose quality to them. As if he were a mummer’s puppet turned into a real boy. Maekar has often felt sorry for him. An overlooked prince, no one’s favourite. Had Maekar been known as simply sweet when he were that age, it would have driven him mad with anger.

When he sees his uncle, Matarys’s face loses colour. “His Grace is awake, my prince.” He turns carefully on his heel and lopes away as if Maekar might chase him down. His uncle rises, hand twitching in his direction. Something hovers on the rim of his lip. An apology, or comfort perhaps. He has hardly given enough of either to Valarr and Daenys.

Thoughts of her crawl up his spine like a many-legged creature. It pinches the back of his neck, sucker flat to his skin. He shakes it loose before he walks through the door.

The king is propped up against his pillows, thin hands clasped before him. His eyes blink tiredly in Maekar’s direction when he enters. And then they return to staring out of the window. From this angle, the long-vacant balconies of Queen Myriah’s bedchamber are visible. She used to sunbathe there in the mornings. The first image to grace her husband’s vision when he awoke.

The silence stretches until it is nigh unbearable. Maekar is straight as a soldier, waiting for a command. It does not come.

Just when Maekar's spine starts to compress, Daeron lurches into a sob. It turns his son cold to hear it. A wet, retching, coughing sob. His lungs sound weaker than when they were last together. Dread sinks its weight into Maekar’s chest like a balled fist.

“What did you do?” Daeron inhales, eyes squeezing shut. When he opens them again, his voice is steadied. “They told me he died during the Trial. But they did not tell me how. Was it the mace?”

The first weapon Maekar ever chose for himself. His father never approved. He’d wanted him to cleave to a sword, something more elegant. But Maekar was clumsy. He did not take to the Dornish style of sword-fighting like Baelor, all dancing spins and quick jabs. He’d never been over proud of his Valyrian looks. He looked at Rhaegel, at Baelor, their twinned dark hair, and wished to be one with them. Rather them than Aerys the cold fish. Maekar wanted to be a Dornish swordfighter, a dancer of grace. He chose the mace instead.

“Yes, Father.”

“Was it necessary? A mace? Someone couldn’t have lent you a sword?”

“He borrowed Valarr’s armour - “

“So, it was your brother’s fault?”

“No. That isn’t - “ his throat dries up, palms somehow both cold and sweating. “It was an accident, Father.” He wishes mother were here. She would speak for him even through her grief. He and Daeron do not understand one another. The king is no warrior, and his son is too much of one.

“He wore armour that was ill-fitted. And you swung a mace. Fetch me a scale so I might weigh my sons’ mistakes. For in my mind, I am lost. Adrift, Maekar! You - “ he pinches his fingers together, gesturing the way mother would. She had a way of making her anger impossible to look away from. The king’s face crumples instead and he is forced to cover it until he is composed again. Daeron has always hated to cry in front of people.

Maekar blinks at the ground. “I am sorry, Father.” It is a boy’s voice that Daeron hears in place of the warrior's deep rumble, flute-like and angelic.

Daeron sniffs, clawing the nail of his thumb under a loose thread on the sheets until it comes loose. “He should never have gotten involved. To risk his own life that way for a – a hedge knight. Everything your mother and I went through to ensure he survived. Wasted in one fell swoop. Your swoop, with your fucking mace - “

His son winces. He has never heard his father curse. Daeron turns red, trembling. Maekar knows better than to approach him. A low, mangled keening burns in the king’s chest. It is anger and grief with nowhere to go. Pain unmatched.

It is Daeron’s ultimate act of love to keep it from breaking open on Maekar’s head. Even if it takes up what remains of his strength.

And then – Father, why won’t you look at me, look at your son – he asks if Maekar has had anything to eat, and that he should, because he looks pale, as if he has lost some weight. It is his mother speaking through Daeron. Her death mask hangs over the king’s haggard countenance. He fears hating his own son, his youngest boy, and so he pushes the ghost of his wife between them.

She protects her Mayakar even in death.

In his bedchambers, Aemon is waiting. Almost as small as Egg despite being a year older in age, his boots don’t touch the ground under his father’s bed. He is hunched over, staring at his rosy palms. The phlegmatic sunlight turns his lilac eyes a milky white.

“Father!” The word pulses from him with such innocence. He slips off the bed and runs to Maekar, smashing into his mid-riff with the kind of frenzy only an abandoned child possesses. It is not his fault Maekar proved to be especially fertile. Too many princelings in the Red Keep. And then Bloodraven sent the wrong one away.

“When did you arrive?” Maekar murmurs, ruffling his downy head. “Did they cut your hair? What have they done to it? It’s hideous.”

Aemon touches his shorn locks, the fringed ends halfway up his forehead. “Maester Joffrey is half-blind. He cut off a bit too much.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“I do not mind it. My hair grows fast. Mother always complained about it, remember?”

A shrike lands on the sill. It pecks at the windowpane and bobs its head inside curiously.

Maekar thinks of Daenys, tossed in the grip of some false happiness conjured up by Ambrose’s tea.  He has half a mind to go to the Tower of the Hand, and clasp his brother’s children to his chest. Push his face into their tousled hair and breathe them in, until Baelor materialises from the sum of their parts. Maekar would let Daenys ply him with her hungry little mouth, Valarr notch his flesh loose, and Matarys weep into his surcoat until they have no choice but to wholeheartedly call him ‘Uncle’ again.

“You should visit your cousins,” Maekar directs to Aemon. “Give them your condolences.”

Aemon fiddles with his colourless locks again and shuffles his feet. “I will. But I wished to see you were well first, Father.”

Maekar cannot answer for several minutes. When he finally lifts his head, the light slashes his pupils and turns them a lilac reflective of his son’s. “You’re a good boy, Aemon. Go.”

His son stares at him. He has not yet discovered his favourite brother has fled with a hedge knight. Maekar does not have the heart to break it to him. He will find out soon enough. Aemon offers him a honeyed half-smile and then leaves, as quiet as he came in.

The shrike hops onto his knee. It digs its claws in gently, just enough for purchase. It proceeds to observe his room with mild interest. Maekar offers it a finger. It pushes the point of its beak into his skin. No more than a little peck. Thin, exhausted tears cut lines down his face. Maekar takes the bird in hand, but still, it does not struggle or in any way observe the danger it is in. Its tiny head pokes through the circle of his index and thumb. Baelor’s one dark eye stares out at him.

Before his fist can grind shut, he flings the bird out of the window. It takes to flight and lands on a withered pear tree branch in the garden below.

A single feather sits behind on the sill, grey as a storm cloud.

Chapter Text

196 AC (Before Redgrass)

For a book he’d stolen from Aerys out of spite, it’s turned out to be riveting.

Mere scraps from Grand Maester Orwyle who’d lived through the death of the last dragons. But the man has an engaging voice.

Maekar does not think about dragons, not the way Rhaegel does, nor Baelor when his eyes wilt with wistful longing. Maekar trusts in the strength of his own sword hand. Power is in the grasp of those who can wield it. Dragons are beasts to be ridden, a trust that walks an all too delicate thread. There is no wielding one, as proven by their inept ancestors.

But as he reads a description of Vermithor’s bronze beauty, he feels a wrench in his stomach. The same one he experiences when he looks across a crowded room at Dyanna. Dragons are like drugs to a Targaryen. Their memory, their existence, the promise of them. Maekar would much rather feel that tug in his belly and go and fuck his wife to sate it.

He is currently avoiding his little family. Aerion is six, and Daeron is seven and his wife is five and twenty and can hardly contain them. When she ‘jests’ that Maekar behaves as one of her children – being that he is three years younger, it stings – he takes the hint and makes himself scarce. The boys cry when he shouts at them, and he cannot help but to when the squealing turns chronic.

His mother’s bedchamber is the safest place at this time of the day. Just as he did when he was a little boy, he finds a corner window and pulls the curtain across. He’ll return the book to Aerys later. Might even talk to him about it. Aerys does not so much converse, as he grunts and nods and mumbles. But there have been rare times when a subject has so enthralled him, his eyes lit up and he chattered until his throat was parched. One such topic was the mating rituals of turtles on the Summer Isles. It was Baelor who had to suffer him then.

Aerys likes it when you talk to him, his mother tells Maekar, but Maekar is positive Aerys would be equally happy to talk the paint off a wall.

The spell of peace breaks when the door opens.

A soft, hesitant creak. Small hands pushing on heavy wood. Maekar flicks the curtain open just a tad and groans inwardly. Baelor’s brat. She is the same age as Aerion but far better loved by her grandfather. Maekar convinces himself he does not care, but in a series of instances where his brother has proved exceptional, this is the bright, shiny apple stuffed into the hog’s mouth. Even his children are better liked.

He goes back to his book, tensing whenever the little footsteps stomp past his curtain. Something crashes to the ground, and he hears a cheery, whoops! He flicks the curtain again. She’s kicked over the small table but caught the figurines just in time. She burbles to herself as she sets them back straight, and then does an exaggerated sigh of relief, tossing a cloud of bobbed red hair off her face. Maekar drops the curtain back again before she notices him.

The child is friendly to a demented degree. He has tried to scare her with tales of huntsmen and bears and wolves that devour friendly children. This was after she disappeared for an afternoon when she was three. The Red Keep was in uproar. Jena screamed and sobbed and raged in equal measure. Baelor was no better. He’d threatened everyone tasked to watch her with execution. It was the most frightening his brother had ever been.

In the end, it was Rhaegel who found her curled up in the kennels. The hounds were sleeping snug around her as if she were one of their pups. Jena wanted the kennelmaster whipped. But the old man was blind, and if the child made no noise when she slipped inside, how was he to blame? Or so Baelor reasoned once his anger cooled.

But he ordered a gentle flogging to appease his wife. Daenys made it her mission to return to the kennels whenever she could – supervised – and was fast friends with the old kennelmaster until he’d died a few months ago.

Maekar was on Jena’s side for once. He believed there should have been people who lost their heads for letting such a small child go loose.

When she’d first arrived as his brother’s bride, Maekar would have taken Jena’s side blindly on anything. The woman was a painting come to life. Tall and voluptuous, with a face that could pass for the Maiden’s true likeness.

Even Daemon stared at her as if she were an impossible equation. Maekar knew that look. He was drinking her in so that later, his mind might recreate her faithfully when his hand went to tugging at his cock. Baelor wouldn’t be impressed knowing how many of his male relatives did the very same over his wife at least once. Not on the surface perhaps. But Maekar knows his brother. Baelor has spent his life feeling he does not deserve what he has, no matter how mother and father convince him. Their grandsire’s raving against Daeron’s illegitimacy bled into his eldest son. Then here comes this woman, a thunderstorm of auburn hair and eyes that take up half her face. And she wants no man but Baelor. Men stare at her like the Stranger is at their heels, and to look at her would be their last hearty taste of life. But Jena is Baelor’s, and she has never let it be known any different.

It is the only reason Maekar tolerates her now.

Jena’s child knocks into a chair, and Maekar almost draws back the curtain fully to tell her off. Before he can, the door opens again. He hears her worried intake of breath.

“Hello, guilty one.” Bloodraven’s thin voice whispers like a chain across the floor. “What are you up to?”

Daenys twists her skirts up over her head and spins on the spot. “Waiting for...Lady Grandmother!” And then she laughs, the way children do when nothing is really funny. They just feel like cackling. Maekar learned this the hard way with Aerion. He likes to hit people when he does it.

Maekar remains where he is. If he’s lucky, they’ll both leave. Not that Daenys disappearing somewhere with Brynden is a good idea. But it would irritate Jena. A small ray of light. He shrugs and returns to his book.

His concentration dips in and out, as Brynden neither leaves, nor instructs Daenys to do so. He takes a seat and humours the little girl, letting her clap his hands and play a game she learned from her nursemaid’s children.

“Can you write your own name?”

“Yes!”

“Really? Advanced for a girl of your years.”

Maekar eyes the curtain askance. The condescension goes right over the five-year-old’s head.

She ruffles up her skirts and twirls, reaffirming her intelligence with another buoyant “Yes!”

Brynden then tells her to turn around. Through the thin slit in the curtain, Maekar watches him choose objects from around Myriah’s room and lay them on the bed. A gold-rimmed mirror; an onyx hairbrush with boar bristles; three different combs set with glass gems; a lace fan; four pieces of an ivory cyvasse set; a blue hair ribbon; a curved dagger. He tells her to look at everything before turning her back again, which she does no hesitation. Then, he covers them with a blanket and asks her to list them.

She remembers everything except for the dragon piece. Brynden holds it out to her, visibly impressed by her recall. “A Targaryen forgetting a dragon? Perhaps you are more Dondarrion after all.”

“No.” Daenys climbs onto the bed, chubby little legs tumbling over her grandmother’s belongings. “Father said...I am...” she has clearly forgotten the word, but she mimics a horn off her forehead and then laughs uproariously when Brynden mimics her.

“A unicorn?”

“Yes!”

He seats himself on the bed. Daenys seizes her chance. She grabs the brush and stands behind him, wobbling only a little as she runs it gently down his long silvery hair.

“Your eyes are red,” she tells him.

"Your hair is red.”

“Yes!” It is her favourite word.

Maekar wonders if she even comprehends the word no. He wonders even more at Brynden’s mildness with her. He is nothing like his mother, the oddly amiable Lady Blackwood. Children have never held much interest for him. Indeed, nothing much does save for his attachment to Shiera, and the fixation on his older brother Daemon which has only just waned in recent months.

Brynden touches the bright mop on her head and tilts her head this way and that. “You are a little droplet of blood.”

Daenys grins and keeps tugging her brush through his hair.

Baelor does not possess the same qualms about her looks as his father did when he was born. He does not scrabble to convince Daenys of her position as a Targaryen. He couldn’t be happier that his children look like Jena. The man is possessed by her.

“’Tis is a blessed thing she looks like a Dondarrion. The Marcher Lords will see her as more theirs, and so will the rest of the realm in turn.” More than they might see me as one of their own, goes unspoken.

“It means nothing,” Maekar snapped back. “She is ours. The blood of the dragon. It doesn’t matter what she looks like.”

Baelor only smiled, that slow, easy smile he reserved for his little brother. He knew it was not on Daenys’s behalf that Maekar was so offended. He always knew that.

Daenys tires of brushing her great-uncle's hair. He lifts her up and takes her to the hearth, where the flames dance gentle. They stand there only a moment before they begin to leap higher. The smell of sawdust and pine needles fills the room.

“Do you see?” Brynden asks her.

Daenys nods and then looks up at him. She sees nothing, but she is eager to please him. He smiles down at her, and crouches, pointy chin resting on her shoulder.

“Look closer.”

This time, she chews on her thumb as she does. Her eyes do not waver, even though it must hurt her to stare so directly into the light. Brynden strokes her hair, telling her to pay attention. Maekar’s fingers twitch against the fabric of the brocade curtain. He feels as if he should come between them both, but he knows not why. Brynden is gentle with her, and the child shows no distress.

“What do you see?” Brynden asks her.

She blinks away the wetness and peers at him as if he is a particularly interesting type of beetle. Her little finger runs over the bump on his nose. She leans in to lick the tip, and smacks her lips, as if her great-uncle is not made of the same stuff as her parents. And then she gives the same experimental lick to his birthmark. It must taste different because she wrinkles her nose and paws at it with damp, curious fingers. She mumbles something.

Brynden continues to stare into the fire, allowing the little creature to toy with him like a doll. He always looks small, underdeveloped against his heartier brothers, his nephews. As if he might fade away at the merest gust, silver dust on the north wind. But next to Daenys he is alabaster and garnet, his knee a pedestal upon which she leans. She is entirely comfortable with him. Not even Aerion likes to sit in Brynden’s presence too long. Dyanna once encouraged Brynden to hold him – she finds their resemblance amusing – and he had held Aerion at arm’s length until the boy’s squalling forced Maekar to retrieve him.

“I see...elephants,” Daenys announces.

Brynden frowns, elbowing her just hard enough to make her fall. She laughs harder. “Do not toy with me, wench.”

“Wench!” She points in delight, repeating the new word. Jena will have a nasty surprise later when Daenys inevitably calls her mother a wench because she thinks it sounds funny.

Brynden dangles his fingers over her face, and she kicks up at them. He dodges just a second too late and she screeches in triumph.

“Do you like your name?” he asks.

She nods dutifully.

“I wanted them to name you Rhaenyra. Though you have red hair, like the Hightower queen. But your father was not as amused as I was by it.”

“Rhae-ny-ra.” She sounds out the name, flopping from side to side, filled with the energy of a slippery eel. Her curled syllables, the baby babble thick in her five-year-old voice, plays in direct contrast to Brynden’s cold enunciation. It is a strange mummer’s farce.

“Shall we promise you to your great-uncle Daemon? His wife will die, and you will be her replacement. You will give him tow-headed babes. And his agitation will ease. He'll have his Targaryen princess at last.”

Daenys sits straight, slapping her hair out of her face. “I don’t want babes. I want to have animals, lots of animals. Like a cow. Or a hound. And four sheep. Chickens. Mama said I could have a fox if I behaved.”

She does not care about her great-uncle's musings. They do not unsettle her.

Behind the curtain, Maekar is frozen, his insides turned green. He does not know how he would begin to repeat this encounter to Baelor. It will not sound as eerie. It is but a great-uncle, twenty one years of age, odd in his own way, playing games with his niece. His brother will not be unduly alarmed.

Brynden pricks his fingertip and shows her the bead of blood. Daenys does not hesitate to give him her own finger. She wants a bead too. He is careful with her. She does not flinch the way a normal child would being wounded. He presses their fingers together and she wriggles, excited by the strangeness of it.

“Zaldrīzo ānogar,” he tells her. “Do you know what that means?”

Daenys shakes her head.

“One day, you and I will be of great service to one another. That’s what it means.”

She shrugs, still confused. Brynden tells her it is their little secret to keep, and aren’t secrets fun? She agrees to this. And then she stares down at her bloody finger. He sucks it into his mouth, cleaning up the scarlet spent.

There is a timid knock on the door. One of the servants informs Brynden that the queen is taking the air in the gardens and invites him to visit with her there. Brynden lifts Daenys into his arms. The last glimpse Maekar has of his niece is her cheek pressed to his uncle’s shoulder. The wounded finger is tucked into her mouth.

He thinks he dreamt it later. But for a split second, she looks directly at him, through that needle-thin chink in the curtains.

209 AC (Spring)

“Roland, are you afraid?”

The princess’s whisper moves through the door like a curl of smoke. Her sworn protector stands stiff.  Only his blue eyes are visible over the linens masking his face. They are wrapped in the Dornish style, but tighter. If she could see him, she would know he is afraid. For quite some time now, every pair of eyes he has looked into possesses the same fear.

The sickness is in the air the Grand Maester claimed as Ambrose nodded with laboured pauses. Spring makes him stuffy, but he is too afraid to sneeze or cough lest it be mistaken for something worse. Both are exhausted to the bone. But they are the first to rise each morning to hand out fresh linen masks. Only the most essential royal servants remain within the fortress. The rest have been dismissed. The Red Keep has become a ghost town.

“They are all dying, Roland. As will you. As will I. Why not let me walk free one last time?”

Her voice is that of a centuries old spirit, its bird-like cadence replaced with a grey strain heard only in the throats of the most aged.

They have stopped giving her milk of the poppy. The dose she’d taken after her father’s death was the most her body could handle. When her brothers succumbed, one after the other, like little painted butterflies, Ambrose could not in good conscience raise the dose. Even when Prince Maekar threatened his life, the old man would not budge.

She will lose what remains of her mind, my prince.

She has lost it already! Keep her alive!

Bloodraven stepped in and took Ambrose’s side. The prince was forced to retreat. Both were kinslayers, Brynden and Maekar. But suspicion rested greatly on the latter. Whatever his true feelings were, he was attempting to dose the heir to the Iron Throne into catatonia.

Maekar’s children were sent to Summerhall as soon as the disease first reached Oldtown where his son Aemon was originally meant to return. Dorne had closed off its roads and ports to travellers. The sickness was not so widespread there. Alys Arryn had bundled her twins to the Vale, where they had wisely imitated the Dornish example - she was to return soon however, as Rhaegel was suffering great mental pains in the process of watching his father succumb. Baelor’s children would have been sent to Summerhall too, but then Matarys fell sick, and his older siblings refused to leave. Neither threat nor cajoling could budge them.

People waved off the rumours at first.

Ah, ‘tis just the sweating sickness. The maesters know well how to deal with that.

But then it spread. With the firm, unyielding swallow of a tidal wave tossed by a tremor in the earth. Men, women, children, of all ages and class were taken by the Stranger’s gleeful hand. ‘A curse, a curse, for Prince Baelor’s death’ the weak-minded claimed. But the gods had taken him in a fair fight and spared Ser Duncan’s life. So, it could not be that. Roland was not half as superstitious as his mother would like him to be.

Where it went, the plague fell heavy. Fields upon fields of farmland swelled with grain and no one to collect it. Farmers dropped where they toiled, their corpses bloating in the sun. They burst like rotten fruit when nibbled at by scavenger animals and thus spoiled the wheat until it wilted in circles around them. Children watched their parents die and starved until they were naught but bird bones themselves. Parents dying of fever were said to have gnawed on the dead limbs of their offspring to numb the agony of slipping slow into the Stranger’s hands.

Ser Roland’s own family are holed up in Crakehall, a distance from Lannisport but not far enough. To date, no ravens have arrived except to ensure that he is well. They are safer than he is. King’s Landing has had the worst of it. The pestilence rises from the dirty corners of Flea Bottom, across the merchants’ homes, up towards the Red Keep, mingled with the usual stench of faeces and rotting. No windows are kept open, and the open courtyards are avoided. No one wishes to leave their room.

This too will end. The septas are convinced of it. The septons are steadfast in the prayers they cast through the empty corridors, incense-laden censers swinging. A purification approved by the maesters, to keep the air ‘clean.’

But two princes have died and the king is ill.

And a girl is now heir to the throne though no one really believes she will be allowed to sit it.

She whispers to him again and Ser Roland feels his stomach turn. He almost gives into the sweetness of her call through the door. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. The opinion may be sullied by her status, as does not every plain face varnished by royalty become twice as comely? But he remembers her mother. There was no beauty like her, as there is now none like Daenys.

They keep her bound to a chair, her hands and feet wrapped in layers of linen to keep her from harming herself. She prefers to have the chair by the door, but she gives them no reason why. It is only when Ser Roland is alone that the intention becomes clear. She whispers, and it goes on and on, her words a noose around his neck.

Things that frighten him, stretched across her tongue like silk. The kinds of things Rhaegel would scream of a night when his clothes burned him and he must take them off, off! Roland would never have imagined Baelor’s daughter to bear the same seed of madness. But Targaryens disguised as red-haired lambs are still Targaryens.

She is quite lucid today, sounds almost like her tender self.

“Are your family safe, ser? Do you not wish to be with them?” Her head thuds against the wood of the door. She is so light, that when opened slowly, the chair moves with it. He always reminds the maesters to open it slowly. “I know you miss them. I’m sorry they’ve kept you here. What are kingsguard vows to a mother’s embrace? Or duty to your king against a little brother’s kiss? I will speak to Maester Ambrose, have him send word to Prince Aerys. He will know how best to argue the case. Very wise, my uncle. He does not like me very much, but I think he would enjoy the idea of less people in the Keep. Even less than there are now. I will exchange – yes, I know – I'll exchange my status as heir to have you sent back. He can be heir, and you shall return to Crakehall!”

She laughs, entertained by the very idea.

Poor little thing. Heir. With Valarr and Matarys dead, and Aerys buried in his books, to pass over Daenys was not so easy. She had won hearts on her return from Ashford. People have given her the endearing moniker of Baelor’s little girl, a promise of what could have been had her father lived. But she would be reigning Queen over a plague-ridden kingdom. The king does not look long for this world. They might chain her to the Iron Throne to contain her madness. If half the people in the realm are dead, who would object?

A sick little queen with an empty womb, and Bloodraven as the shadow behind the throne. The future awaits.

“When I am queen, I will release you from your vows. You may wed, produce little Crakehalls. Would you like that? Ser Roland? Release me from this solar, and I will grant your every wish! Please? I feel – “ there is a pause, and he hears a quiet whimper. “I do not feel well…Ser Roland…please…”

He twitches towards the door. But something makes him hesitate. Perhaps not. He should fetch a maester first. Yet it would be better to carry her there than leave her here alone. When he hears a wet, strained vomiting sound, his mind is made up. He bursts into the princess’s solar. The light from the open windows blinds him after the damp dark of the corridor. He blinks against it, reeling. Perhaps he is already getting sick himself.

Her chair is by the door. Empty.

“Princess?” His heart leaps into his throat.

“I am here.”

He only turns halfway before a much bigger chair smashes into his head.

Daenys has never struck a man so hard. She has never hit anyone that hard. Even with the linens covering his head for protection, she fears the chair was too much. But she could think of nothing else. He will not be unconscious for long. On cue, his fingers twitch. He groans and his head tilts to the left.

“I am ever so sorry, Ser Roland.”

She seizes her chance and runs.

Crown Princess someone called her the other evening. A half-title, dusty from disuse. But with her brothers gone – the pain burns, it eats – Daenys is the only one of her father’s children left. There are lords ready to swear fealty. Ones who have little love for Bloodraven or the other three princes. Ones who would gladly pay homage to a weak little girl if only to easily supplant her with a Blackfyre.

“The king speaks of you in his delirium,” her handmaiden Jenny told her one evening, when Daenys had begged to learn news of her grandfather’s state. “I heard him, princess. He speaks of you as his heir, but the maesters feed him milk of the poppy and he is silent again. You are all he speaks of.”

The very next day, Jenny was sent from the Keep. It was Bloodraven’s doing. Daenys knows because when she demanded for her return, she was told Jenny had gone to take care of her sick mother. A blatant lie. Jenny’s mother was already dead.

“You have sent her to her death!” she’d wailed, until finally, just like her grandfather, the princess was bundled into her bed and dosed with gentle spoonfuls of opalescent liquid. She sank to her pillow for hours. When she awoke, she forgot all about asking for Jenny.

Exhaustion swaddles her like an infant. Her legs feel weighed down by plated armour glued to the flesh. She fights it and runs quicker, keeping to the shadows, until she finds her grandmother’s solar. I did not ask for this, Father. You must forgive me. It is a sin to forfeit the gods’ gift of life. But she is certain they mean to kill her if she truly is the acknowledged Crown Princess.

For the past fortnight, the woman that sits in the corner of her bedchambers whispers the very same. The circles under her eyes are purple as rich plums. She has wild, long silver hair and a waxen quality to her pale violet eyes. Sometimes, she opens her hands, and cerulean butterflies pillage the air over Daenys’s face. The delirious princess giggles until she drools.

If you become queen, they will kill you. You must escape, sweetling. You must run.

Daenys looks behind her now and sees the blue light following. It dances, orbs of it mingling to create the face that has become her only companion in imprisonment. Her silver hair streams like Dornish moss on the great oaks at the lake in Summerhall.

The queen’s rooms, that’s the best place, she whispers, breath cold on the back of Daenys’s neck. For you are a queen, are you not? You will be. They always make queens of the weak. The strong couldn’t bear it. No rook, nor plover, nor owl, nor crow. None of them queens. But a shrike. Like you and I.

Her features waver into focus. A long, straight nose, and thin lips that curl into a smile. Tears well at the corners of her eyes but they do not fall. Daenys tries to touch one, to make it come loose, but her fingers only broach thin air.

Grandmother’s rooms are hallowed ground. Lady Aelinor pined for them, to be able to live here as the unofficial queen of the Targaryen household. But King Daeron is too attached to his wife’s memory to allow for it to be upended by a Penrose.

Daenys tiptoes over the neat, even tiles, counting each black square to the ivory. She touches the back of a threadbare green chair. Grandmother used to read to her on it. Jasmines, citrus and cedarwood. She smelt so sweet. Daenys has had dreams of eating her. In such visions, Grandmother was always happy to be devoured. She would lay herself out on the feast table in the Great Hall. For some reason, it was always during Daenys’s wedding. Her granddaughter dressed in pale silver, and the grandmother in gold. She would touch Daenys’s chin, coaxing her to dig the spoon into her mid-riff. The red meat of her guts burst like pomegranate seeds on the tongue. When Daenys could eat no more, Grandmother would still urge her –

Eat, child, eat, you are wasting away!

The window in the middle of the solar is wide open. Below it, is the dry moat, filled with towering iron spikes.

It only hurts for a moment, her companion whispers. I know. I felt it. One of them went through my throat. It was just a little cough. Nothing more. One and twenty, that is all. But you are even younger than I was.

She turns to see that the woman’s neck bears a weeping wound. About the diameter of an iron spike. Its fleshy purpled edge pulses. Its shape is a gyrating whorl, like one of Corlys Velaryon’s fossils, kept in pride of place at High Tide. Daenys remembers feeling scorn when Vaemond pointed them out to her. You have dead fish. We have the skull of the largest dragon in the world. But the bones of the kraken had impressed her. She hadn’t even been aware a kraken could have bones.

Daenys can’t feel her tongue in her mouth. She pushes it to the back of her teeth. It is still numb. Cold fingers slide over her abdomen from behind. They slide up towards her breasts and come to rest over her beating pulse.

Little shrike’s heart. My clever girl. My brave girl.

In that thin, tired voice she hears her own mother’s whisper. Never has Mother called her a good girl, not since she stopped being five. Something changed after that. She was no longer as good as she could be. Always left wanting.

Daenys climbs onto the sill. Her hands sweat against the sides of the window. She turns back to search for her pale friend. “I cannot jump from here. I won’t – I won’t land on them. They’ve narrowed the moat.”

She receives no answer. Her companion is gone. She eyes the ledge jutting from the edge of the balcony. It is wide enough to walk, and it goes straight towards the broader end of the moat. She does not want to break every bone in her body. A spike will do the job clean at least. She will not disintegrate when they lift her off it.

“Princess!” A servant’s shriek pierces the air behind her.

Daenys knows there is little time. She begins to move. Her dress is simple wool, no fancy sleeves or undergarments to get in her way. The wind coming in from the Blackwater whips her hair about her face. But she remains steady. King’s Landing looks beautiful in the spring sunlight; it is ever lovely from afar.

When they were children, Valarr used to tie a rope between two trees and they’d make a game of who could walk it without falling. The memory is pressed into her bones like a flower into the pages of a book. The thought of seeing her brother soon, of Matarys, mother and father, it gives her hope.

There is a dragon egg inside her stomach. When she jumps, it will hatch, her blood coaxing forth the dear creature. Aerion was right about blood sacrifice. A life for a life. Without the spike to pierce her open, her poor, scaled babe will never breathe.

She flattens herself against the red stone and breathes until her heartbeat evens out. She must pray first. The gods may forgive her for this weakness if she does.

Her pale friend has returned. She walks through the air, her blue nightgown dancing about her legs. She has a young, round face. Plain and sweet. Daenys beams at her. They know each other, but she cannot say how. She just recognises her.

We’re all waiting, the woman whispers. Many of us. You’ll meet your namesake. Would you like that?

Daenys nods uncertainly. She thinks of this morning, her last meal that she had picked at so miserably. Rich dark bread, moist as earth, with jam the colour of Uncle Maekar’s eyes. Smoked beef, mushrooms and spoonfuls of sturgeon eggs with cream. She’d only picked at the figs, run her tongue over the unappealing texture and made herself vomit. The septa looked as if she wished to slap her. Spoilt little princess shunning food as the realm starved for it. But the dream she’d had last night had shrunk her stomach into a small black stone. Nothing would stay in it.

It was a most unsettling dream.

Queen Daenys of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm!

A seven-foot Dothraki lord with hair like Valarr’s hailed her to the crowd. And all her courtiers answered. Their flesh rotting, maggots carving away the meaty part of their mouths. Blue-eyed and vacant, flies circled their heads. Each an undead saint with their own halo. Snow fell lily white onto her hair, and oh how strange, there was no roof to the Great Hall.

It made sense. Everyone says bad things happen when women rule. A plague comes, and with it a girl-ruler. It is best for the realm that it ends here. They are already burning bodies by the dozen, the Dragonpit glowing green day and night. She does not wish to be queen of the ashes.

“Daenys.” Not a woman’s voice anymore. She turns her head slowly to the left. Cousin Brynden is as pale as the spirit, but he is undeniably more solid. He is on the balcony, pressed to the edge of the balustrade. His expression is steeled. But there is a tremor in his hand when he reaches for her. “Come.”

“I wish to be free, cousin.”

“You shall be. But not like this. Come.”

Daenys tries to keep her head up. If she looks down, she will not have the strength to jump. “You may have my crown, Uncle. It will serve you better.”

“It would not go to me. It will go to your Uncle Aerys if you die. Come.”

A softer voice sounds behind him. Shiera is not in her usual silks, but in a woollen dress, her head covered with a fur-skin hat and a cloak whipping about her frame. White arms emerge from the dark grey material, and she too reaches for Daenys.

“Not like this one, little one. Come here to us. I beg you.”

Daenys shrinks her shoulders and whimpers. Shiera whispers something to Brynden. Her eyes are red-rimmed, as if she has been crying for hours. They both look worn thin, ragged. As if something worse has happened, or is about to, that she is oblivious to. It does not make her want to return to the balcony.

Brynden leans out as far as he can, but his hand is just shy of her skirts. He cannot grab at those without toppling her.

There are shouts down below. A great deal of activity.

Noting her hesitation, Brynden clicks his tongue to pull her head towards him again. “Your Ser Roland will suffer a most vile fate at my hands if you fall, Daenys, I swear it.”

She trembles, breathing through a swell of blue nausea. The guards are throwing things onto the spikes. A peek between her eyelids reveals mattresses stripped from beds. If she hesitates longer, they may end up ransacking the entire Keep of its beds to keep her from impaling herself. Even then it is still a gamble. The sheer drop itself could kill her.

Daenys clenches her fists and tries to recite the prayers she once knew by heart but now struggle to come to her.

“Daenys!” Brynden’s sharp, cruel teeth appear from under his purpled lips. “I will cut the flesh from him in pieces and feed it to the pigs! If you die, he dies with you!”

“Leave him alone!” she shouts.

“Not just him! Your girl Silla, your septa, all of them! Your life is worth ten of theirs and I will make them pay in blood! COME HERE TO ME NOW!”

She has always found Cousin Brynden off putting. But never truly frightening. A trick of the light perhaps, but he suddenly resembles the blue-eyed corpses from her dream. A spindly, malformed, craven creature. What handsomeness he possesses turned to malice.

It is not a question to ponder. They cannot die with her. Father would turn his back on her in the afterlife if she enters with the blood of innocents on her hands. Daenys would never force him to look upon such cowardice in his only girl.

But the walk back across the ledge is much harder than it was getting out there. Her hands are damp against the stone. She whimpers, a lone bird stranded on a tree branch over an  unforgiving sea.

“Daenys.”

It is not Bloodraven’s voice. Neither it is Shiera.

Her eyes snap open and meet Maekar’s. Pale and shivering, fear deepens the lines of his face. He reaches across the balcony’s edge, as far as he can get, and behind him, Brynden reaches to steady him. Some warm coil of strength grows in her stomach. Her body’s last effort. She inches sideways until his fingers brush hers.

He crushes her hand in his own, keeping her steady. She slips a little on the final stretch. Shiera cries out in fear. But Maekar wrenches the girl until her body lands against the balcony and he has her. He drags her over it and they fall in a tangled heap to the floor.

Anguished sobs wrack her throat. Powerful arms bind around her shaking body. He tucks his chin on her head, shushing her as if she were one of his little daughters awoken from a bad dream. It has been a long time since anyone has held her, touched her kindly. Everyone is afraid, as if madness is infectious as the plague. They don’t wish to be near her anymore. Because she doesn’t look or act like a princess. The acrid stench of a starved stomach in her mouth, and veins clustered in her eyes, red as anemones.

But Maekar clutches her to him like Father did when she collapsed at Mother’s funeral.

As if the world might end if he lets her go.

“More.” Bloodraven taps the desk impatiently, watching Ambrose lift thin flutes of the pearl liquid to Daenys’s chapped lips. “Keep it to the original dose. No more experiments with sobriety.”

“Should the roads open again, we might take the princess to Oldtown. The air will do her some good. And at the Citadel, they will study her with full devotion.” Ambrose wipes her lower lip clean with a dab of a handkerchief.

Brynden’s mouth twists into something wicked. “I’m sure they’d love to pry into her little head. A Targaryen plaything for your mousy brothers in arms. Something to rouse their shrivelled cocks.”

Ambrose’s jaw drops. “N-never! I did not mean it in such an awful way, my lord! I only meant – “

“I don’t care what you meant. She is the heir. They will come to her when the roads open.”

“Of course! Of course, my lord! Foolish of me to suggest otherwise!”

Ambrose turns to close his case and meets eyes with the princess. Her stare is heavy-lidded and scathing. It sends a chill down his spine. But he knows who he fears more between the young girl and her great-uncle. The case snaps shut and he scuttles out without a backward glance.

“Loathsome old fart,” Brynden mutters.

“He’s not so bad,” Daenys answers, wispy as a sea cloud. “He’s just guilty of being a coward. He tries.”

Bloodraven ignores her. He looks old when he sits back in his chair, waning in the light somehow. He is a year younger than Uncle Maekar. It is hard to tell. When he does not speak for some time, Daenys reaches for a slice of the cut up peach on the plate before her. Silla brought them in. She looked shaken, her green eyes overcome with anguish as she peered at her princess. But she hadn’t dared to say a word in Brynden’s presence.

They dragged Daenys from the balcony, straight to his study. She’d wanted to spend some time sobbing in Maekar’s arms, but that wasn’t possible. Nothing is possible for her anymore. All doors are open to Bloodraven. On his desk, sits the pin of the Hand. It was once on Valarr’s lapel. He had it clutched in his weak fingers as he lay ailing in bed, dutiful to the last.

Daenys nibbles at the tip of the peach slice. She licks the dribbled juice out of the corners of her lips and chews the dry skin off them a little. The peach fur feels good against her tongue. Her tastebuds are roused after days of sleep. She picks up another slice and rubs its skin over her tongue too, movements trance-like.

“Stop that,” Brynden says.

Daenys slowly puts the slices back on the plate. Her mouth feels empty. She pushes a fingernail in to sate it. I wish I had Uncle Maekar’s fingers. He always has hangnails. Everything about him is well-groomed except for his hands. She could put them in her mouth and chew off the extraneous bits. Soften his cuticles with her spit. Kiss until she finds his wrist and lick until his blue veins turn as green as her own.

“You are heir to the Iron Throne,” Brynden is saying.

Daenys mumbles around a mouthful. “Am I?”

“Is that a joke to you?”

“Nothing has been a joke to me for quite some time.”

“Would your brother have done what you did?”

“My brother is already dead. Had he survived me, I could not say.”

Brynden’s palm strikes the corner of the desk. Daenys stares at him steadily. 

“How dare you think your life is your own?” His mouth shapes the words like they are foreign to him, anger crushed into every syllable. “Ao iksa zaldrīzo ānogar!”

“There are no dragons left!” she retorts. “I cannot claim to be the blood of something I have neither seen nor touched!”

“Don’t be obtuse, girl! Do you think this is about the fucking dragons? It is about the family! The power we hold in this realm! What message does it send when the heir to the Iron Throne would rather impale herself on the spikes of Maegor’s Holdfast than take the seat her ancestors built?”

“It was not about the throne! I do not think about it! My family is gone!”

“You still have us!”

“This is not a family! It is an institution! I have lost my father, my mother, and my brothers! To the rest of you I am but a pawn to deal with!”

Brynden throws his hands in the air. It goes against his very being to be sitting here arguing with his great-niece. He is not the kind of man who has ever had patience for the emotions of little girls. Then again, neither is he patient towards the emotions of grown men. But because she matters for a brief time, here he is, humouring her.

“What of your husband? Give him a child. Make your own family. Motherhood will give you purpose. And the Iron Throne will have another heir to follow you.”

Daenys shivers. How easy it would be for Cousin Brynden then? If she dies in childbirth, his problem is solved. He has a little boy-prince in need of a regent. No wonder he is suddenly inclined towards the idea of her queendom.

“My husband is barren,” she lies, digging her thumb into her palm as she thinks of all the times she has tossed the moon tea back like Daeron does with his cups of wine. She has not seen Vaemond for months since the sickness first spread. No ravens either. A grateful thing.

“Not judging by the number of bastards he has stowed away on Driftmark.”

“Perhaps I am barren then.”

“Perhaps. And when you become Queen, who will be your Hand?”

It is a question asked levelly, with just enough indifference to ensure she understands just how significant it is. The kind of question she has been trained to answer with a lie. Father called it the melee of politics. Lies were not lies, but fronts established until the truth could safely be brought to light. But she is awfully tired. And she does not really wish to be Queen. She wants to sleep. A good, long restful sleep and on the other side of it, nothing.

“If I were afraid, I would appoint you,” she says.

Brynden’s good eye twitches. The empty socket of the other seems to extend in a fleshy spiral, reaching for her. Daenys leans back in her chair, mouth thick with peaches.

“And if you were not afraid?”

“Uncle Maekar.”

“Maekar is the reason your father will never be king.”

“It was an accident.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“I know it to be so. I watched. ‘Twas Father who should have let it be. Had he not fought, Aerion would have won another victory but at least we would still have a wise king to look forward to. My father is a good man. But the gods favour goodness above all. It is why they take the best of us early.”

“And here you remain.”

Daenys bites down against the cruelty of his words. “Uncle Maekar would not threaten to kill the people I love to make me do his bidding.”

Brynden scoffs in disgust, as if he means to say something incredibly cruel. Your uncle killed the one person you loved the most instead. “You love Ser Roland, do you?”

“I love him and all others like him who seek to protect me. As – “ she stumbles over the next sentence but gathers herself. “ – as a Queen should love all who serve her.”

He laughs like she is five years old again and has just completed a successful somersault. It riles her. Oh, it sticks to her like the pointed end of a hundred knives.

“Uncle may be a kinslayer. But so are you.”

It does nothing to dampen his mirth. “I killed my half-brother to defend the reign of my rightful king. Your uncle will return to Summerhall soon. He remained here for you and your brothers’ sake. Guilt, I can only assume. I have yet to decide whether I should allow you to leave with him.”

It is an easy game her great-uncle plays. Dangling the promise of distance from this place, where her brother’s ghosts still linger. Where her grandfather suffers. But if she leaves for Summerhall, she is away from the Iron Throne as the king’s health worsens. She knows she cannot match his machinations. But she does not have to submit to them with a whimper.

“I wish to stay,” she says simply.

Brynden smiles, and it is the first gentle expression she has seen on his face for a long time. “As you wish, Dany.”

The same evening, several ravens leave the tower at King’s Landing, each bound for the homestead of a Lord Paramount. Tragedy has struck. After the demise of her father, and her brothers in quick succession, the Princess Daenys has succumbed to an illness of the mind. The maesters are doing all they must to save what they can of her ruined little head. But now there is no question of keeping her as heir to the Iron Throne. After all, the last madwoman to wear the crown was Rhaenyra. The realm cannot afford another. In light of the king’s weakening faculties, his half-brother Brynden Rivers asks the Lords Paramounts to put their votes to Prince Aerys should a Great Council be called.

For how little love they bear for the loathsome Bloodraven – at this stage in his life, he is fingered to be at the kernel of many a conspiracy – the idea of a mad Queen they love even less.

Their answers are united.

Chapter Text

201 AC

“Daenys, stop gawping. Hand me the knife.”

She jerks forward on wobbly legs. Trips a couple of times before she lands against the horse’s saddle. Out comes the decorative knife Mother received on her wedding night. The blade is inscribed with one of Father’s favourite poems. Daenys holds it out, a relic balanced across her child palms. Jena unsheathes it, lifting it to up where the sun catches its burning cold edge. At her feet, the boar twists and flails its stubby legs. Blood bubbles from its side, cauldron-hot, pooling around a broken arrow.

“It sounds like a child screaming,” Daenys whispers.

“But it isn’t.” Jena swings the blade down.

A spray of blood whips Daenys in the face. The squealing stops. Jena licks a drop of stray crimson off her lip. She binds the legs of the hog with a coil of rope and drags it deeper into the clearing. Her daughter scans their surroundings.

“Mother, should we not wait for Father and – “

“No.” Jena crooks a finger. “Come. Have you ever seen an animal skinned?”

“No, Mother.”

“Do you wish to know what your insides look like?”

“I’m not sure.”

“A boar won’t be enough to enlighten you. But a healthy curiosity is good. Stop gagging, girl.” She kneels down in her expensive wool and riding leathers. Her hair is in twin braids, blue eyes sparkling. Each practiced rut of the knife is in tandem with a hearty grunt, as if the boar’s spirit has possessed her. “When my – grandfather – gambled away half our house’s fortune – I was but a girl. Younger than you. Our father set to taking us hunting. Every day. What was on the table, we caught it and we killed it with our bare hands. And then – Daenys, wipe your eyes, you are not a weakling, you are a Dondarrion.”

“Mother, you cannot say that!” she sniffles. “I am a Targaryen. It is treason to claim otherwise.”

Jena wipes a damp strand of hair off her cheek. Under the crisp light spilling through the golden canopy of leaves, she is hardened alabaster. A statue in a sept. It often takes Daenys’s breath away just how beautiful her mother actually is. “But your children won’t be known as Targaryens. Will they?”

She falters. “They won’t?”

“Not even in the past, when your blood would have hatched their dragon eggs. They would not be known as Targaryens. You bear no right to pass on the name. They will be named for their father. Just like mine are.” She rams the knife into the very edge of the hog’s hind leg. Her little daughter pushes her finger into the spongy pinkish-red insides. “I remind you of your Dondarrion blood. Because I have no legal right to give you the name. I don’t want you to forget.”

Daenys corkscrews her finger deep into the boar’s wound. She sniffs, recoiling at the hard, iron stench. There is nothing like the smell of raw meat. Pungent. Decadent. Life. When she closes her eyes, the tight folds of the pig flesh remind her of putting her finger where the piss comes out from. Curiosity, mostly. There is a hole there, and she wanted to know why. Valarr doesn’t have one. When she was much younger, and saw Matarys had a little penis, all shrivelled and prune-pink, she thought it would fall off eventually. That everyone had a cock until it fell away because it made better sense to not have such an unseemly appendage sticking out between your legs. Imagine her surprise.

“Your father made you skin the boars too?” she asks, still working her finger in. Out. In. Out.

Jena smiles with sharp teeth. “No. That was the work of a young man from House Bolton. My father’s guest. He skinned a Dornishman he’d caught trespassing on our land. And he let me watch.” Her tongue flicks out over her plush upper lip. Mother quite resembles a dragon then, bright and gleaming, lizard-tongued. “I wish for you to enjoy life before you marry. Your father was my first love. But not my first lover.” She growls deep in her chest as the boar’s pelt peels off with difficulty on the flank. Its belly wobbles, overbrimming with guts. Daenys takes up her own knife – a little thing, gifted by Uncle Rhaegel – and stabs it into the pale pouch. Blood dribbles into her palm. She holds it up like an offering and her mother laughs with her head thrown back.

“If Father is your first love, is he not your lover?” Daenys asks. “What is the difference?”

But Mother does not explain that part of her statement. Her eyes sparkle and dance.

Later, when she turns to the gods, that light dies out. The woman she becomes is not the woman who told Daenys she should have lovers before she married. With every dragon babe that squeezes out of her body already half-dead, Mother prays to be delivered from the nightmare. Daenys hears her shriek from the childbed whenever it is ‘time.’ That ominous ‘time’ the servants refer to, when Mother screams like a spirit damned to the seven hells, and Father looks more terrified than she has ever seen him.

Later, she understands why Jena came to hate the idea of Daenys marrying a Targaryen cousin, or a brother. She pictured a life for her daughter where she would also be forced to squeeze out one malformed dragon after another. Shrivelled little half-hatchlings with human legs and dragon tails and amber eyes. Some were born with full sets of sharp teeth.

It was one of those dragon babes that finally killed Mother.

No.

Father killed her.

Father and his dragon blood.

Father and his overwhelming first love.

209 AC (Spring)

She lights a candle for all the people she has lost. And for all the people she hopes the gods will preserve. Ten candles for grandfather. And then eleven, twelve, thirteen. As if spots of flame are all it will take to summon the gods from their hiding place and protect an old man on his ascent.

When a king dies, mourning becomes an event. For such a king as Daeron the Good, one would expect the entire realm to be turned upside down. But he did a final act of charity before he breathed his last.

A simple funeral. Gather my ashes and place them in Myriah’s tomb. It would not be right to spend lavishly on my passing when so many of my subjects are mourning their own.

And so, it was. The funeral was private, and toasts were made all over the realm to the life and reign of a king who very few men could truly fault. Even his Dornish queen had ended up being a sage companion to his throne. Grim mutterings stirred over what was to come next. Baelor’s mad daughter was out of the question. But the alternative was no better. A bookish prince, with no heir, and no desire to rule, his fiendish uncle waiting to sit the throne for him.

Brynden Rivers has a greater reputation than he deserves. But he is bad enough.

It was the first time she’d seen him be utterly still, at the king’s funeral. No twitching in his hands, no darting eyes. He stared blankly out at nothing, as his sister Shiera cried into his shoulder. Daenys remembers thinking grief looks like a mask of the Faceless Men on Uncle Brynden. But then Uncle Maekar had not cried either, and neither had Aerys. Rhaegel was too heavily dosed to even be aware of where he was. His twins clung to their mother’s side and grinned nasty grins at each other behind her back. They were ever lost in their own world.

It felt like all the tears had been shed. There were no more. Even Daenys had not managed to cry. She stood near the edge, Kiera by her side. As they linked arms, she realised the rosy-haired girl from Tyrosh was her only immediate family left.

“Do you think you might be with child?” she’d asked at the funeral feast, quietly hopeful. It had only been a couple of months since Valarr had died.

When Kiera’s eyes welled up, Daenys felt so awful she almost toppled her wine goblet in her haste to comfort her. She was not with child. Her last one had died in her stomach and no one but the servants at Dragonstone knew. Valarr had not told Daenys either. Kiera sat there with her wide, feline eyes wobbling with tears, and at the time, Daenys thought it was grief for her lost husband and children. But rumours have since circled that Kiera will not return to Tyrosh. Her family’s wealth is too precious to waste. The Targaryen dragons are coiled over the Tyroshi gold. There will be another match for her, another Targaryen prince. The only question is which one.

Daenys cannot form a legible enough prayer for her brother’s wife. They were not in love with each other. But Valarr was still the better option if Kiera was to be bartered. What’s left are old men and corrupted boys. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth. Ambrose’s ministrations are now a daily occurrence. They make her body weightless. She floats everywhere. The feel of the ground beneath her feet is foreign.

By the door, Ser Roland is back at his usual post. He is still in her service, a boon cousin Brynden was kind enough to grant her when she asked. Daenys knows she will pay for it later. Brynden collects favours like a girl collects ribbons.

The princess stops at the centre of the seven marble altars. In truth, she is overdressed for prayers. Mother’s wedding gown, white as the sea foam at dawn, with its lace trim and standing ruff. She was hoping to impress the gods today.

Silla split her hair into twin braids and wove through them a ribbon of the same pearly colour, all the way down to her waist. Then she stood back and sighed in delight. You look like a queen. Daenys admonished her for that. Aerys has not yet been crowned; it was dangerous to utter such phrases even in jest. Some of the servants whisper to each other when they see her pass. They are not unkind whispers. She can tell by their eyes. Perhaps they want a queen. But she must act oblivious to it. Brynden will hold her to account if she doesn’t.

The air is thick with incense dug up from the far corners of Asshai. High above, rainbow crystals nest in arched windows. The sun pierces them through, casting dappled sheets of multicoloured light across her white veil. They look like spilt jewels.

“I cannot do this anymore,” she whispers, her breath dancing the candle flame between her hands. “No one is listening. You are never listening.”

She wants to wail like a child. Insignificant. Powerless. Stomping her foot to catch her parents’ attention. Except her parents are dead and neither the Great Mother nor the Great Father want much to do with her. Only the Stranger turns his yellow-toothed leer on her with the devotion of a husband. His depictions are branded into her mind. He crawls into the shadowy corners of her dreams, and he reaches out with his clawed hand, as if he means to fuck his maggot-infested divinity into her.

He wears Uncle Brynden’s face sometimes. He smiles the way Uncle Brynden did when he took her into his study throughout her childhood, unbeknownst to her parents. In the darkness of his chambers, he would tell her to stare into the fire and tell him what she saw. He was always sweet. She remembers this vividly. Gentle hand on her hair, feeding her when she complained of hunger. Whenever Daenys entered his chambers, a plate of her favourite Braavosi snacks was already prepared. She would chew on the powdered jelly as she stared at the hearth. And Uncle Brynden would tell her she was a good girl, an obedient girl, and gently wipe her mouth clean.

You always do as you’re told. Do you know how rare a trait that is, Dany?

But she wasn’t obedient. Sometimes, she would lie to him about what she saw in the fire because it gave her a thrill. At first, he could always tell. And then he would pinch her until she bruised and yelped for mercy.

But Daenys grew older, and she had her mother’s bewitching, wicked smile, the weapon that turned lies into the sweet, syrupy truth. Lying to Brynden was one of the few pleasures of her life. Her heretic great-uncle who does not believe in the Seven, and who thinks himself the cleverest man in the world. She loves him, and it is deep and perverse, like the twinge of pain from peeling a scab off a particularly nasty wound.

The door opens opens at the far end of the hall. A soft clink of armour, and the ghostly whisper of a cloak. Murmuring voices. She does not turn to see Ser Roland leave. But she knows he would not depart his post for just anyone. Daenys’s mouth turns down at the corners. She refuses to turn in fear of who it might be.

“Your cloak, girl. Put it on.”

She exhales softly. A sleepy smile peels her lips back off her teeth. Her gaze lifts to the Great Father’s altar – he looks exactly like Maekar.

She turns, voice sweet with girlish relief. “Uncle. Do not worry. I am not cold.”

Maekar eyes her askance as if she is a much bigger animal. Scarier. That thrills her. Her warrior of an uncle afraid of her. But she knows it is not really her he is afraid of. He fears what he saw her do over the spiked moat. There will never be a way to convince him she will not try it again. She might. Her sweet companion still visits her, nightly mutterings as thick as black honey. They embalm Daenys in their viscous dripping as she lies in her bed. The spirit is her only friend these days. Friends are a subject most alien altogether. She has never been allowed to keep many.

“Uncle, you are upset with me,” she frowns.

Maekar’s lips part, and his eyes toss in a half-roll. “The whole castle is upset with you. Do not put it on my head alone.” He joins her on the dais, hand reaching for a candle before he changes his mind. A small shake of his head, as if this is nothing short of foolishness. Daenys reaches to light it for him and sets it with the others.

When she bows her head to pray, the words come easier this time. Her uncle watches her with a slight crease in his forehead. When she is done, he speaks.

“They’ve given you more.” Not a question but a statement.

She plays with the end of a braid, pulling a pearl free off the ribbon entwined around it. “Yes. Uncle Brynden thought it would be best. After Grandfather passed. Just in case.”

Ambrose’s concoction softens the flesh on her bones. It keeps her from experiencing the texture of the world around her. No one’s words really sink in. Everything dissolves into a sea of tranquillity. Even Maekar’s bluntness does not induce the familiar kick to the stomach, the inevitable hurdle of you’re doing something wrong, you’ve upset your elders again.  

“I re-read the histories. I fear I never paid much attention when Father read them to me. There was a queen who jumped from Grandmother’s solar. Well, it would have been her solar then I suppose. She was successful. That is why they narrowed the moat.”

Her uncle looks nauseated for a moment. As if this is the last subject of conversation he would have chosen. He lowers himself onto the topmost step of the dais. The candle that has been burning down steadily in Daenys’s hand for the past hour finally reaches its zenith. The wax burns her. She lets out a soft hiss, and sets it down. Still sucking on the side of her finger, she goes to join Maekar.

He is in black and red, the colours of their house. Her house. Mother tried her best to make her a Dondarrion. And Vaemond tried to fuck the Velaryon into her, if the little shrimp cock he forced into her body could be marked for such an act. It was so small, she could pinch it between her thumb and index. Nothing more than an overgrown nipple really. She never said these things to him, though sometimes, she found herself bubbling with laughter that he understood the meaning of anyway. And then he made her answer for it.

She smooths out her pale skirts. In another life, Maekar is as young as she is, and they are just married. His little ivory bride, two dragon mounts between them, and all the monstrous children they will create to terrorise Westeros for generations. All the things Mother would hate.

We are a horrible, evil family. I cannot stomach all the particulars. But I know that we are.

And she is a horrible, evil lout of a girl for looking at her uncle and dreaming such things. Other girls married their uncles amongst the great houses of Westeros. But they were political alliances. Happiness isn’t a requirement. Then again, she thinks she would be quite miserable married to Maekar. He is inattentive even to his own children. Strong only when there is no other alternative.

Perhaps Ambrose’s concoction has worked too well. The idea of being neglected by her much older husband is a positive delight. Vaemond is much too young, and despite his bizarre behaviour, still hopes that she will love him the way his mother loved his father. Daenys keeps a count of all the times she has drunk moon tea. A little mark for every Velaryon spawn killed. Forty-five. It gives her the same thrill as lying to Uncle Brynden.

“It is Helaena you speak of.” Maekar runs his palms together, skin dry and whispering. Pale fingers, waxen in the sunlight. His sigil ring is absent. She wonders if he gave it to Egg, or if Egg took the initiative and stole it himself. The latter is more likely. She misses her Egghead. “She was driven mad with grief.”

Daenys nods deliberately, like a reed bending in the wind. “Yes.”

He peers at her, the hollows under his eyes suddenly deeper. As if he knows what she is implying. “She should not have jumped. She had a child remaining.”

“Yes,” his niece repeats dreamily. “Jaehaera fell from the same window.”

His hand grabs her jaw and yanks her face up. Daenys’s teeth knock shut like tiny pearls in the oyster of her mouth. He shakes her – once, twice - forcing her to become at least semi lucid. “You ever try something like that again, and I’ll – “ he is breathing hard, too angry to finish his sentence. She has only ever seen him like this with Aerion. It makes her sublimely happy.

“Don’t worry. Maester Ambrose makes sure I swallow every last drop of his special potion. He says it won’t let me,” she mumbles through the forced pout of her lips. Maekar’s hold relents. Daenys rubs her cheek, yawning her jaw with a wince to test it is still functioning. “Do not be upset with me, kepus. I do not think anyone really wants to jump onto iron spikes. But sometimes…”

She takes a breath and forgets where her sentence is going. She sinks into a stupefied silence.

“Sometimes?” he coaxes.

Daenys ignores him. One small hand fiddles with the other, fingers circling a ring that fit snug only two months ago. Now it tips this way and that, the gem bruising the webbing of her fingers.

Maekar watches her fidget. “You play with your ring just as your father did.”

She smiles. “I miss him.” But it is not really a smile, and the truth is, Father’s face is getting harder to recreate in her mind. It frightens her so much that she tries not to think of him at all. As if keeping him out of her head will preserve what she remembers. Embalmed, like they do to their bodies in Braavos. His beautiful face hanging silent in a hall of other death masks. If she thinks about him, his features will wear away.

An upset hiccup racks her chest. She pushes her finger into her mouth, all the way to the knuckle and removes the ring with her teeth. Then she drops it into her uncle’s hand, a bird bringing shiny things back to its nest. The nest of his palm is lined with grooves that look like they would be wonderful to tuck herself into. She wishes she were small enough to curl up on them. So small, that when he closes his fingers, she will become invisible to the world.

Maekar accepts the gift of the ring without comment. He has that look again, like he is creeping past a caged tiger.

“You have always had such elegant hands,” she remarks, as if this is a perfectly ordinary thing to say. She strokes his knuckle, mulling over a small scab. When she tries to pick at it, he turns it away. “Mother always said so. But then she said you ruined them with the mace. That all men ruin the soft parts of themselves so that other men will find them worthy.”

“Your mother had commentary for everything under the sun,” Maekar mutters, but he gives her back his hand, and this time, Daenys scratches the scab off. She stares at it balanced on her fingertip. And then moves it towards her mouth. Her uncle makes a tsk sound and pulls it back down. The scab topples off the edge and is lost in the folds of her dress.

Her mind unspools like gold thread. She studies his beard, freshly combed, the light picking out lines of silver that are lighter than the rest. He is getting older. Everyone is getting older. Except for her. She is still five years old in her grandmother’s bedchamber with Brynden’s hand on her head. Her jaw starts to grind down on itself.

“What? What is it?” Maekar’s frustration is evident in the growled undertone of his voice. “Daenys, speak. Do not be afraid.”

She closes her eyes against the septal light. Stars bloom over the luminous crimson of her lids. Her fingers go to play with her ring again, but it is not there, so she presses her knuckle until it cracks. It is the concoction. It happens like this. Her mind starts to fight back against its gentle oppressor. And when it does, she hovers on the precipice like a strangled bird, waiting to be pulled free.

“I am not afraid of you, Uncle,” she whispers, but the lackadaisical reassurance fails. His hand is rough with panic when it grips hers. “You have never scared me. Not truly. And I am scared of everything. So that is quite a feat.

“Daenys.” Maekar tilts her chin up towards him. “If you wish, I will take you to Summerhall with me. Speak the word.”

The world opens before her for just a brief second.

A world in which she gets to chase after her childish desire. Freedom. She has not seen Summerhall in years. To abandon her husband, the duties on Driftmark and become the talk of the town for running off to play faeries in the garden with her uncle’s children. Talk will be rife over whether it is for Maekar alone that she is there. What kind of evil in a girl could induce her to lay with her father’s killer? Nothing is tastier than a Targaryen princess’s flesh laid to sear on the coals of judgement for the realm to pick at with forks. The Velaryons would take ire. Their fleet is no longer the most powerful in the world. But they could still create trouble for the beginning of Aerys’s intended reign.

Thoughts of Brynden crawl through the holes of her skull, passing from one eye to the other. A many-legged centipede the colour of black bile. Her fingertip pulses, a tiny prick, long healed.  You are to remain in the Red Keep for at least a short while after Aerys is crowned. The realm will discover that Ambrose’s tea is putting you to rights, slowly but surely. And that you whole heartedly support your uncle’s reign. Then, if you continue to behave, Vaemond will be dealt with. Daenys, look at me. Nod. Is that understood?

Deep in her heart, she knows defenestration was the only true cost for eternal freedom. But she had not jumped. That truth is too bitter to swallow. She cannot speak the truth of her conversation with Bloodraven to her uncle. She cannot implicate Maekar in whatever may happen in the coming months.

So, she squeezes his hand and clasps it under her chin. She brings it to her lips and kisses it. Over and over. Torment tightens the creases of her young face. Maekar’s bewilderment only grows. He is trying – it hurts to see him try so hard – to understand. Her childhood was devoid of his scowl for the most part. His general dislike of children and his possessiveness over Baelor’s time meant he had no patience for her and her brothers. Now it is as if all the years of neglect by her uncle is collapsing in on her head. It is overwhelming to be at the centre of it. When he pulled her from the balcony, perhaps he saw Baelor’s skull stitch itself back up in his mind’s eye. A short-lived moment where the worst thing he had ever done reversed itself.

“Daenys, come to Summerhall. Rhae and Daella will be glad to see you. And Egg – whenever that little rascal trudges his way back – he will be very happy to find you there.” He ducks his head to follow hers as she turns it away. “Do not worry about what anyone might say. We are your family. That husband of yours will just have to live with it.”

“Have you ever felt - “ Daenys draws in air until her lungs feel close to rupturing. It pulses there in her chest, a sparrow with a broken wing. And then it tumbles on the back of a sob that shakes her whole body. “ - like you were born in the wrong time? That perhaps another sphere exists where you might have been happier? Because I feel – I feel it constantly – that I am an uprooted tree – there are no roots holding me down. I no longer wish for things. Food tastes like – like dry earth. And I’ve stopped d-dreaming. I used to dream, Uncle.”

The horror on Maekar’s face is vivid. As if he has had this conversation before, in another time and place. But the eyes were blue then, and Daeron still believed he cared. He contains old frustrations – her irascible, difficult uncle – and tries to shape himself into someone softer. Someone who cups his niece’s head between his hands gently, as if she is made of the most fragile Dornish glass.

“What did you dream?” he asks.

Daenys’s shakes her head, shoulders hunched in anguish. “I don’t remember.” She bursts into tears and curls towards him. “I don’t remember! It is a-as if – as if the real Daenys d-died a long time ago – and the dreams d-died with her.”

Her mother’s veil slips off the fiery phantasm of her hair. Maekar strokes it, then her ear, her cheek, as if he does not know where to touch, where to find the seam that will keep her together if he only holds it tight enough. Tears cling to each of her lashes, dew on a spiderweb. She resists all efforts to make her lift her head. It hangs heavy against the anvil of his hand holding up her jaw.

“You are not dead. You will not die. I won’t allow it.”

Her shaking slowly quells. She holds onto his wrists, scratching the scar on his left one with gentle curls of her fingernail. The repetitive movement is soothing. His eyes are the colour of Aunt Dyanna’s favourite dress, violet silk embroidered with stars. Daenys feels her face go slack. It is a great relief when the tension in her head fades.

“It is out of your hands, uncle,” she whispers, “The gods decide.”

Maekar scowls. “I dragged you off that ledge. Not the gods.”

“I pray to them, but they do not listen. I ask them to return my life to me, but they do not.” Daenys pushes closer, until a slight tilt of her head brushes his beard to her cheek. His breath stutters in time with her own. Heat radiates off her skin, lit by the coals of despair and loneliness. “I want to feel alive, uncle. I want to be as I was. Make me feel alive…please?”

The sentence ends on a hysterical whimper. She knows she has ruined her chance. He will summon Ambrose, and they will jostle her back to her bed. Tie her down to it and force her to use the chamber pot with the maid present. Poor little princess, wasting away before her time.

And then he kisses her.

The blood rushes to her extremities. Time breaks open into a hundred different instances in which this very thing is happening. Hundreds of mouths conjoining. The evil is done and it is done honest. In the eyes of the gods, in the septal sunlight.

The texture of his tongue, wet velvet. Greed takes over. Her hands lock against the back of his neck. She will not let him pull away. He is hers, her blood, the last conscious thought Father had, hers. She attacks him with all the hunger and affection of a caged animal. Kisses over every corner of his mouth. The tip of his nose. Across the line of his beard. She bites at his scars, licks at the indentations.

Maekar steers her back to press their mouths together again. Her limbs quiver, euphoric. It courses through her. Every beat of her heart in her ears is a crash of thunder. It hurts. She ignores it and squeezes her arms around his neck tighter. Maekar’s hand grips her braids together and pulls her head back by them until her face is aimed at the ceiling. He noses down the column of her neck. Sinks his teeth into the hollow of her throat. Daenys sobs out “uncle” as her knees separate over his thigh.

“Do not call me ‘uncle,’ not like this, not here. Use my name.”

He commands her like a man who has never been told no. Daenys wants to ask what here means. The sept – their sacrilege – or here in the nest of his palm. She nods, but his name is too intimate. More so than uncle could be. She does not think she can utter it.

He presses kisses to her face, more decisive than the ones she peppered over his. Each eyelid. The curve of her nose. Her cheekbones. The soft hairs curling at her temple. The edge of her jaw. And then he drags his tongue from her chin, into her mouth with a low, obscene moan. Her mind is a wisp of cotton. She stretches her own tongue out for an offering. He steadies her jaw with one large hand and feeds it to her, liquid pearly-white. Daenys’s fist curls against his knee. Arousal blurs her vision. She swallows him down greedily, then nips at his chin, his bottom lip, asking for more, smearing her mouth over his as if she means to crawl inside it.

Maekar is forced to hold her still again. “Is this how your husband taught you to kiss?”

The sternness of his voice in tandem with the situation they are in makes her giggle. Sweet and airy and utterly deranged. “No. I hate to kiss him. I would much rather practice with you, un– “ she bites her lip to keep from using the title that offends him so. “I’m sorry. I can try it differently.”

But Maekar doesn’t tell her how he wants it differently, or if it all. He devours her in another kiss. This one holds strong, locking them together. She breathes in and exhales through her nose, but only briefly. She doesn’t want too much air. She doesn’t want to sully this. His hands are on her hips – he holds her exactly the way he did in her dreams – kneading her flesh until the bone underneath aches. 

She has always felt things with twice the intensity other people do. Something in her mind that lights a larger flame. Pain. Anger. Happiness. Strange textures on her skin. When she was little, she could sit for hours stroking a new material she liked the feel of. Or how it tasted between her teeth. She braces herself for Maekar’s touch. It feels hot against her throat, her arms, but when it brushes the thin skin of her thigh, his fingers turn colder. She lets out short, wispy cries, and to the untrained ear, she sounds afraid.

He does not meet her eyes after. She notices only because hers are fixed on his lovely, scarred face. For a brief, terrifying moment, Daenys thinks he will leave her there. Alone, to ponder what they have just done until her bones crystallise. He reaches down to help her stand. She laughs when her legs tremble like a knocked-over deer. Maekar does not smile back. Once she is decent – the dress covers the slickness of her thighs, dripping – he tucks her hand under his arm as if he is simply escorting his addled niece back to her rooms.

Ser Roland’s face does not change when they emerge. Daenys is half-afraid to look at him and see some knowledge in his eye. Perhaps he heard her yelp, and had opened the doors just a fraction before abruptly closing them again. The enormity of what has just happened begins to sink in. In the sept. The sept.

Her subconscious brings back its favourite whip. Her mother. Daenys shudders, gripping Maekar’s arm tight in an effort to banish Jena from her mind’s eye. Her dread is so deep, she can hardly breathe. When she returns to her body, she blinks and both Maekar and Roland Crakehall are in front of her, staring in alarm.

“I am well,” she smiles thinly, and takes her uncle’s arm again. “I think I would like to go to bed now.”

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.

Chapter Text

“I missed you.”

Silla is still in the room, flitting around pretending not to hear. Daenys stumbles against the onslaught of her husband’s affection. It is like being attacked by an overeager dog.

It startled her this morning to see him arrive on the steps of the Red Keep looking quite handsome. He has lost weight, and the sun has kissed his skin and turned it the same colour as Baelor's used to be. For a fleeting moment, she was once more like the sixteen-year-old who felt herself lucky to be marrying a beautiful sea lord.

But now he is here, having drunk far too much at dinner. The stench of Arbor Red compels her to hold her breath. She is trapped between Vaemond and the wall. If she lets her mind float, it feels rather nice to have her neck kissed. She has ached to be touched again since Maekar in the sept. This is close enough.

Vaemond lifts her up, wrapping her legs about his waist as he mumbles sweet nothings into her skin. Daenys half-opens her eyes to regard Silla whose face is burning red. “You may go, Silla. It’s alright. Clear the rest up in the morning.”

“Thank you, princess.” The girl curtseys, and flies to the door as if on the back of a strong gust of wind.

“You should get a cleverer maid.” Vaemond licks up the column of her throat and nibbles at her jawbone. “One who can take a hint.”

“I like her.”

“Where is Jenny?”

“Dead.”

“Shame. I liked her.”

“I know. She came to me when you tried to rape her.”

Vaemond’s fumbling halts. They stare at each other. She can see his mind working behind the glass window of his eyes. He decides on the wrong answer.

“She lies. Why would I ever? With her? Plain-faced wench. When I have you – “

“Lied, Vaemond. She is dead. The tense is past.” Daenys strokes the soft, hairless line of his cheek, pressing her thumb in to make it dimple. “And you have been with far plainer girls. It has never stopped you.”

He decides to give up the effort of speaking. His kisses turn to bites, and that relieves her. It means he is vexed and now this will be over sooner. The pearls burst from around her neck with a sharp tug. Her laces are ripped open. He pushes her to the bed and clears his throat with a hawking sound; it ends with a glob of mucus spat to the ground.

Daenys shudders. “Must you do that?”

Vaemond grins, all sharp teeth and spite. She lies back and finds the notch at the closest post of the bed to make figurines out of in her head. It has a remarkably malleable shape for it. With enough concentration, it can be a ship, or an anteater, or a unicorn. It will be over soon.

“What’s this?”

Daenys jerks back into her body and stares down at where Vaemond has her legs open in the same position a midwife might coax her to give birth.

“What?” Her husband continues to stroke her cunt as if it is a pet animal that might bite at his fingers if he isn’t careful. He pulls open her folds, and Daenys inhales. She is still dry as sand. That won’t help with what is about to come. But Vaemond appears to have no intention of getting on with it.

“What is wrong with you?” he asks in a silky soft voice.

Daenys’s heart drops like a stone. “Nothing.”

Too late, she realises she should have playacted harder, demonstrated some intense desire to have him here. Vaemond’s eyes burn with a familiar kind of hatred. The same kind she sees there when she wears black and red, or when she is with her family, or when someone calls her ‘princess’ when she is with him at High Tide.

“You seem...misplaced somehow.” He pinches the flesh of her thigh and twists until she grunts in pain. “Where are you, Dany? Who are you keeping in your head in place of me?”

“He glances at the door. “Is it that kingsguard? How I would love to shove that knife up his nostril.”

“It isn't.”

“Really? He looks at you like a bloodied steak.”

“It isn't him.”

Vaemond sighs, letting her skirts fall down. And then he leaps on top of her, hands jammed to her throat. “Who is it then?”

For a man so attuned to his own pleasure first and foremost, Vaemond can be incredibly intuitive when he wants to be.

Her nails claw down Vaemond’s hands until they slip off. But it is so that he can strike her across the face.

“What is wrong with you?” He strikes her again, and Daenys screams in mounting fury. It suffocates her.

She tries to push him off, but it only makes his cock swell up in his breeches. She can feel it pressing into her abdomen. It makes her nauseous. Her lips pull back from her teeth and she spits –

"It could be anyone! Anyone would be better than you!"

Vaemond closes his fist and punches her. The force of it takes them both by surprise. Pain flares through her nose, blood spurting in beads of ruby. Daenys’s hands tremble across her face, feeling for the broken cartilage. But it is intact. He doesn’t make the same mistake. His hand stays open for the next one, and Daenys chokes on a mouthful of blood as she tries to scream. She never makes a sound on Driftmark. She knows better than to. No one will come, and it will only infuriate him that she thinks to master the loyalty of his servants. But here she does it for the benefit of being heard.

He appears like an avenging angel, clad all in white. A gauntlet-clad arm drags Vaemond back by the neck. Daenys gasps in agony, retching a little as the pain pounds through her head. When Ser Roland sees the state of her, his eyes flare angrily. He shoves Vaemond to the ground and rams a fist into his face. Again and again, until specks of blood stain the white of his gauntlet.

Daenys does not know how she finds the presence of mind to lurch forward. She would much rather watch her husband beaten to death by her sworn shield. But good sense wins out. She grabs Roland’s arm, hanging onto it with her full weight to make him stop. He turns to her, pausing just enough to check she is not badly hurt.

“I am fine – it is not broken – but you must not – Roland – “ she strains at his arm when he tries to bring it down on Vaemond again. “Leave him be. It will not bode well in a castle full of lords to have a kingsguard disfigure one of their own! Leave him!”

“Princess, I will not abandon you here with this – this – “

“And yet you must.” She squeezes his hand, staring up at him with eyes that drip honey. They are softer for him than they are for her husband. “He will not do it again. I promise.”

Ser Roland is breathing as if he has run a very long race. The anger coursing through him will be ill-spent outside her door, where he will be forced to listen for the smallest sign of chaos erupting again. She wants to kiss his hand, hold it to her cheek. Anything to show him just how much he means to her in that moment. But it would not be appropriate. Her husband is bleeding on the floor, and if she is not mistaken, snivelling.

Roland finally stands. He bows stiffly, gaze lingering on his princess just before he pulls the door between them again.

Once her sworn shield is back at his post, Daenys goes to Vaemond with a damp rag to clean the blood off his nose and lip. The red stains drying on her own face and neck go ignored.

“You are a fool, Vaemond,” she whispers, “You forget you are in the dragon’s den. On Driftmark you may do as you wish. As I am sure you will.”

He grabs her hand to make her stop dabbing at his cut lip. Sea-green eyes wobble with pearly tears. If he were anyone but himself, Daenys would feel desperately sorry for him. There has always been something unbearably broken about Vaemond. Had he been tender to her at all, with any real honesty, she would have made it her life’s mission to piece it together and stuff him full of love.

“Why won't you just love me?" he whimpers.

Daenys continues tending to his injuries as he cries softly, hand pressed to his temple. At some point, he mumbles, I wish you were dead, and then thoughts of you would cease to torment me. The princess twists the bloodied rag into the enamelled basin of water, and swipes at the sides to get the pink droplets free.

“Now we know what it is to wish for the same thing.” When he sobs, she pats his arm and continues wiping at his lip. “Perhaps it will finally fix our marriage.”

The mood in the Red Keep is divided in two.

The nobility are having a grand old time. Fear of the Sickness has not followed them through the walls of the fortress. The weather is warming up, and reports are coming in that the deaths have slowed down. The maesters do not possess such a favourable view of it. But sombre predictions never stopped the desire of the wealthy to forget their troubles with excess. Even with Lord River’s regulations on what comes in and out of the Red Keep, there is still enough to keep the lords entertained. The day of the coronation draws closer, and they intend to make the most of the new king’s hospitality until then,

The other half of the mood is much darker, and it wraps itself around House Targaryen like a wall of ice.

Aerys and Maekar have fallen out spectacularly. A screaming match on a balcony with his brother was overheard by the Redforts and the Arryns in the gardens beneath. They promptly passed on the news to the Blackwoods who had a vested interest in their boy Brynden Rivers. Apparently, Prince Maekar was furious that Brynden is to be his brother’s Hand. Worse, a match has been arranged for him to Kiera of Tyrosh, the former gooddaughter of the brother he’d slain.

Here come the troubles, is the general consensus.

Now that the good king is gone, the era of stability goes with him. It is time for Lord River’s rule, and a split in House Targaryen that may end up with another war to fracture the realm. Bets are nervously placed on what the factions might be. Maekar and his sons, opposite Brynden, Aerys and Rhaegel’s children. Two kinslayers on either side. It is not a good betting match.

No one wonders whether Lady Kiera is happy to be forced to marry a man old enough to be her father. She’d been wed to so beautiful and gallant a prince as Valarr. How fortunes change.

Only her Tyroshi ladies know of her woes in detail.

Daenys hears them shushing and clucking over her like hens. She has been standing outside the door for a few minutes, wondering when to go in. Kiera is crying. Little girl sobs, like her heart is breaking. Daenys recognises the word Mhysa tangled up in her words. She wants her mother.

Daenys has never been far from her mother while she was alive. She does not know what it feels like to yearn for her, know she will likely die before she sees her again, and have little chance to return. Perhaps it is better that her own mother is dead.

She is about to knock on the door when she hears the voices of Lady Celtigar and Lady Velaryon, Vaemond’s mother. They speak in the Common Tongue but are no less consolatory. 

“He is a great warrior, Kiera. With strong sons. He will give you strong sons.”

Daenys’s blood burns at the insinuation that her own brother could not. She puts a hangnail to her mouth and chews.

“Yes, and ever so handsome. Older men know their way around the bedchamber, you know. More experience.”

“And patience – “

“Yes, patience is so important.”

“Don’t you just hate it when they jump on you?”

“It truly does take age to improve them – “

“Yes, as it does with wines.”

And then they giggle like young girls, as if Kiera’s real problem is whether Maekar will be able to tongue-fuck her through her grief over Valarr. As little as she wishes to see her goodmother, Daenys knows what Kiera must endure if she is left here without defence.

Lady Velaryon’s face cools upon seeing Daenys.

“Gooddaughter.” She drops a kiss to each cheek, and then pushes her towards Lady Celtigar a little more brusquely than needed.

Lady Celtigar is a small, pretty woman, born a Brune of Dyre Den, but with enough Celtigar inbreeding to give her the typical Valyrian look. She is immensely proud of her hair and often runs her fingers through it in Daenys’s presence. Daenys always humours her by telling her how good it looks. She has always been glad not to have silver hair. Her mother would have hated it.

“We were just congratulating your goodsister on the fortune of her new match, princess,” Lady Celtigar beams.

There is an extremely uncomfortable pause. This happens often when Maekar is mentioned in her presence. As if everyone must remember anew that he is both her uncle, and the man who slayed her father. And then nobody knows where to look.

Daenys’s lips twitch in a small smile. “Yes, good fortune indeed. My uncle is Prince of Summerhall, and a devoted father to his children. I am certain Lady Kiera will experience the same in being his wife.”

She does not know how the words come out so steady.

She likes Kiera. Only a blind fool would deny how good of a wife she was to Valarr, how much her body endured to try and give him an heir. Daenys is still too afraid to ask if the babes that slipped out of her already cold looked more human or dragon. That it could be a sign she herself will go the same route as her mother.

But even with such charitable thoughts about her, the idea of Kiera and Maekar together makes her insides break open and bleed. When they leave for Summerhall, and Daenys is left to High Tide, she knows all she will think about in her cold marriage bed is what they are doing in theirs. How her uncle must be touching Kiera, kissing her, fucking her, running his beard between her legs. Whether he will whisper good girl to her when she is as obedient as his niece. How long it will take him to test her before he finally fucks her without fearing he’ll break her cervine limbs.

She offers a hand to Kiera, and smiles, asking if she would like to visit the gardens with her for some air.

She already knows Lady Velaryon will not wish to come. The woman finds Daenys weak and slow-minded (her own words, overheard by her gooddaughter). Lady Celtigar will not go without Lady Velaryon. Kiera snatches the promise of freedom and quietly tells her ladies that she wishes to walk alone with the princess.

They do not speak of Maekar once they are free of the bedchamber. Neither do they speak of Valarr, or any other Targaryen man.

Daenys tells her that she read the book Kiera gifted to her many months ago. It is a brilliant treatise on the morality of blood magic as practiced in the Anogrion of Old Valyria. A meaty subject indeed. It had taken Daenys long enough to pick it up. But once she did, she was riveted. Kiera lights up immediately at the chance to discuss.

An hour and a half passes in lively debate, and by the end of it, Kiera’s eyes are dry and the kiss she presses to Daenys’s cheek is warm and sweet.

“I am glad you are still here,” are her parting words, before she joins one of her ladies waiting on the steps leading back into the castle.

Daenys stays behind, blinking against the blue twilight. How nice it feels to be wanted somewhere. She has not had the feeling since Matarys breathed his last in her arms. Even that had felt nice, in a sluggish sort of way as if everything was trapped in a prism where time stood still.

Don’t leave me, Dany. I’m scared. And she hadn’t. She’d even resorted to using a chamber pot behind a screen in the corner of his room. She did not leave him until he finally left her. Valarr had slipped away much too fast. Matarys had tried his hardest not to leave her without family, but her sweet, fox-like brother had been too weak in the end. The grief swings back like a pendulum. It hits her in the gut and she is winded for a moment, fighting to catch her breath.

At a distance, Ser Roland is watching her with a slight furrow in his brow. He turns his gaze away when she meets it. After a moment to compose herself, she goes to join him.

“I would visit my Uncle Rhaegel, ser. It will be a short walk to his chambers. You should have your evening meal seated at a proper table. For the past day or so, Silla tells me you have eaten far too quickly and whilst standing at your post outside my door.”

He says nothing. Just looks at her with that searching gaze that makes Daenys feel like a butterfly under a glass. It is almost the hour Maekar goes to Rhaegel’s solar to sit with him a while. She will need to dismiss Ser Roland before she goes else those blue eyes will burn upon her again.

“Have there been any other incidents in your bedchamber, princess?”

The bluntness of his question takes her by surprise. She twitches her nose as the memory of being struck returns. It is a blessing it isn’t broken. Glancing down at her shoes, she shakes her head. Her fingers snap the bracelet around her wrist. The audible thwack of the gems slapping her skin echoes between them.

“You should tell your uncles,” Ser Roland tells her.

“And what would I say?”

“It cannot stand that Vaemond Velaryon treats you like some common brothel whore he has caught of a night.”

Daenys squints up at him. “I do not think a common brothel whore should be treated so either.”

Ser Roland twists his mouth to hide a smile. “No, of course not. A figure of speech, forgive me. But I will not be able to go with you to High Tide. It does not sit well with me knowing you will be there alone.”

Daenys wishes there was some way to convince him that Vaemond does not usually strike her. His methods are different. Verbal mostly. The torture of being newly married is long over. Seeing her in pain does not give him the same thrill it ever gave Aerion. Vaemond only wanted to make up for his inadequacy in bed. Or at least she tells herself that in the flat hope that when she returns to High Tide this time, he will not revert to his old ways.

Many a time, she has wondered what might have happened that night on Driftmark when Aerion wandered into her bedchamber as she was half-dressed.

Does he hurt you? Tell me the truth, Dany. I’ll see to it he is dealt with.

But she’d lied then, as she lies now. Though lying to Ser Roland is infinitely worse. Aerion simply loathed the idea that a Targaryen princess – he felt entitled to them all by rights – should be hurt by anyone but himself. It was not a good sign that he had walked into her bedchamber without warning. Nor that she feared – quite sincerely – that he was there to rape her just like he had promised countless times he would. Of course she was not going to give him permission to ‘deal’ with her husband.

Ser Roland finally gives in to her suggestion that he eat a proper meal but insists on walking her to Rhaegel’s solar first. At the door, she lifts her hand in a shy goodbye, and his mouth twitches as if he is about to smile again. She decides she quite likes his face when it hovers in between.

“Uncle? ‘Tis your tiger cub come to visit.”

Rhaegel does not answer with his usual whistle and clap. The solar appears largely empty. It is a beautiful place, painted sky blue, Rhaegel’s favourite colour, with murals of dancing giants and nymphs and animals from around the world on the walls. On the ceiling, twisted around a candelabra, are two tigers running in circles around each other. It is a similar design to the banners of House Maegyr in Volantis. Of all the animals, Rhaegel has oft claimed the tiger to be his favourite. I am no dragon, I am a tiger! he exclaims. Daenys is the only one awarded with the title of tiger cub, an honour not granted to either of his own children. When she was first born, Jena would often take her to visit with Rhaegel, more so than she ever took Valarr. He’d formed an attachment, and despite his wife’s gentle sulking, still refers to Daenys as his cub over his children.

She sets about collecting his clothes and model pieces off the floor. The place is haphazard. A maid can tidy it one morning and come in the afternoon to find Rhaegel has scattered everything to the wind once more.

On the mantelpiece, a little crystal bowl sits with a new fish inside. The last one was golden, and her uncle had swallowed it while it was alive when he’d believed it to be spying on him. Then he’d had nightmares that the fish had not come out in his excrement and was in fact still inside his stomach, listening to his thoughts. He’d screamed and begged Baelor to have the maesters cut it out of him. But when Baelor held out, days of chaos followed in which Rhaegel would use his chamber pot and then inspect it with his bare hands to find the fish. In the end, they brought a new fish, killed it, and then performed a mock surgery on Rhaegel after putting him under the influence of poppy milk. When he awoke, they showed him the fish. Dead. He was finally assuaged.

“I hope you do not cause us as much trouble,” Daenys whispers to the little creature. It swims unknowingly, tail streaming iridescent behind it.

Beside it is her uncle’s little box of eyelashes. He likes to make little nests from them when he pulls them out. Sometimes, his blood relatives contribute. Rhaegel always knows when a lash is about to fall free. He reaches for their faces and takes them before they can. Daenys pulls one free from the corner of her right eye and tucks it into the box for him to find later.

The bolt on the door clicks shut.

She spins around. Aelor is beaming at her, ear-to-ear. Daenys exhales and turns back to the fish. “You move like a wraith. Were you already here?”

“Yes.”

Daenys puts her finger into the bowl, dabbling it in the water. The fish nudges it curiously. “Where is your father?”

“He is eating his evening meal with mother.”

“I’ll return later then.”

She shakes her finger free of the bowl and turns to leave. Aelor steps in her way. Daenys halts, eyeing him from head to toe. Her cousin is almost fifteen, but he has grown in recent months and is taller than her by enough that he can look down at her. No longer reedy thin either. But height alone has never merited respect.

“Move,” she says, mouth flattened into a straight line.

“Stay a while.”

Daenys sways to the right. Aelor does too. Then to the left. He follows. She is not afraid of him. The brat is a nuisance, and it is impossible to her that such a creature might have been produced in Rhaegel’s loins. Him and his strange little spawn of a sister.

“If you don’t move – “

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll beat you like Aerion used to. Do you remember being afraid of him?”

“I’m taller than him now.”

“So was Ser Duncan. And it took him a while to bring Aerion down.”

Aelor walks backward to stay in her path as she goes for the door. He flattens himself against the handle, refusing to let her reach for it.

“We don’t want you to return to High Tide, cousin,” Aelor says, voice whisper-thin. His eyes are burning with manic delight. “We’ll kill your lord husband for you if you agree to stay.”

A second pair of feet shuffle through the doorway of the bedchamber. Daenys knows it is Aelora. She can smell her. They both smell the same, powdery-sweet with a hint of iron underneath.

“Yes, cousin. We don’t wish for you to go.” Aelora drifts closer, pretty as a swan. “We’ve had many talks about it – “

“Many – “

“And we agree – “

“- you should be ours by rights – “

“What rights?” Daenys snaps. There is a buzzing in her head. It usually comes in the days before Maester Ambrose cautiously increases the usual dose of concoction.

“Dragon rights, cousin!”

“Yes, dragon rights – “

“ – that sea turd doesn’t deserve you – “

Aelor presses in closer, and when she retreats, she finds Aelora at her back. She laughs, and even to her own ears, it is a nervous sound.

“If you don’t move – “

Aelora’s arms come around her waist from behind. She squeezes Daenys tight. Her breath smells of limpets and honeycakes and her grip is surprisingly firm. “We’ve been wondering what you look like under your pretty dresses, cousin. Please show us.”

Aelor grabs her hand, running his mouth over the inside of her wrist. “Yes, please show us. I saw Aelora when she was five – “

“ – we’ve always been curious about you – “

“ – your breasts are about the same size now – “

“ – but I’m taller – “

“ – yes, you are, sweetling – “

“ – our cousin is but slight – “

“ – everyone would think you’re the younger one, Dany – “

“ – I think you’ll like us too – “

“ – yes – Aelora loves it when I suckle her breasts – “

“ – let him do the same for you, cousin –  he’s good at it – “

Their words pass back and forth, forming chains around her. Daenys is motionless. Two pairs of hands crawl over her body. She cannot tell which is which. Two on her breasts. One palming at the place between her legs. Her body begins to relinquish its hold on her. Crawl away, crawl away, crawl away. It wants her to leave so she will not feel what it is feeling. Run away before it gets worse, as you always do.

No. 

“Get off me, you little cunt – “

She shoves Aelor backwards. His eyes round in surprise. Aelora strikes first. Her vicious little hand wrenches Daenys by the hair. Aelor slaps her across the face. They wrestle their cousin down between them. Aelora flattens a hand over Daenys’s mouth. Her cousin bites into it hard and she shrieks in frantic pain. But Aelor is stronger, and when Daenys bites him, he only lets out an excited moan that riles up his twin sister to attack again. Aelora scrapes her mouth over Daenys’s collarbone, her lips slick with excited drool. Her brother manages to wrestle their cousin into stillness.

They pause in their efforts, panting as they exchange a triumphant glance.

“I go first,” Aelora declares. “It was my idea – mine, Dany – “ she pats Daenys’s stomach. “If we both have you, you’ll be ours. And Aelor can put his babe inside you. We will name him Maegor, because you are our Visenya.”

“Fine, you go first – “ her brother accedes, grip continuing to loosen.

“Pick up her skirts – “

“Careful – lick her first – make her as wet as I make you – “

“You have such pretty legs, Dany – “

“ - it’s alright to cry - you’re lovely when you do – we both agreed it was so at Valarr’s funeral.”

Aelor’s hand finally slips off Daenys’s mouth. Her eyes dart between them. And then she slams her fist into his jaw. She kicks Aelora straight after. Not as hard as she’d like but enough to get free. She leaves her body but not the way she usually does, to let it lie back and feel nothing.

It goes berserk without her.

Across the mosaic floor it scuttles, knocking down a chair laden in fine furs and silks and one of Uncle Rhaegel’s crystal balls. It retreats into a corner. Both twins advance, Aelora bolder than Aelor. Their eyes skit towards the door. If it screams, it will draw attention. Aelora clicks her tongue, a soft, oily sound to draw it closer. It lunges at her brother instead. The princeling flies backwards, crashing to the floor as fists ram into his face, his neck, his chest. Its strength is demonic. Aelora is the first to scream, tearing at it, grabbing its hair, its eyes, its arms, clawing the flesh to make it stop –

“GET OFF MY DARLING!!”

She forgets her own caution and the spell breaks. The sound travels.

By pure coincidence, Lady Alys and Lady Aelinor are both ascending the stairs towards Rhaegel’s bedchamber, the prince shuffling behind them with Maester Tommen. When they hear the commotion, Alys runs towards her child’s screams. Aelinor’s sworn shield is close behind, his sword already drawn.

“Break it! Break it down!” Alys shrieks as Aelora’s screaming turns frantic.

Willem Wylde does his best, but the double doors have been reinforced in such a way to keep Prince Rhaegel inside when he is in the throes of a violent fit. Another pair of guards appears, clad in red and black livery, and between the three of them, they break the doors off the hinges.

Daenys is crouched over Alys’s son like a wild beast. Her face is covered in bloodied scratches, tangled hair falling into her eyes. Aelora is behind her, trying to dig her thumbs into her sockets and blind her cousin. But when she gets a grip, Daenys wriggles free and goes back to punching Aelor.

“Stop her!” Alys screams at the kingsguard.

Willem manages to prise Daenys off, and shouts for the princeling to stay down. But Aelor, driven mad by fear and pain, darts for the open doors. The older princess slips free from Ser Willem and races after him. The commotion spirals. Aelinor and Alys are shouting at the guards. Aelora darts after her brother and cousin. Aelor has longer legs, but when he looks over his shoulder and sees Daenys running straight for him, he stumbles.

The mistake is fatal and she leaps the short distance that remains until they both land together in a tumble at the top of the staircase. The noise spreads further still. Servants and members of the nobility appear in the courtyards below. The source of the commotion is as of yet uncertain.

Someone yells, “there’s a fight!” in sheer jubilation, not realising who the fight involves and how dangerous such an exclamation might end up being. More of the kingsguard materialise. But they hesitate to lay hands on the tussling royal children. If one should get hurt, their necks will be on the line.

Aelor escapes a second time. Caught in a rampant bloodlust, Daenys races after him, Aelora hot at their heels. The kingsguard grab at the three of them as they dart past like silverfish. None of them manage to grab so much as a scrap of their clothing.

Daenys corners Aelor on the uppermost floor of Maegor’s Holdfast. They fall through the doors of the Queen’s Ballroom, into a hall of beaten silver mirrors and carved redwood. It has not been used to host events since Myriah died. Aelora locks an arm around Daenys’s neck and her hold on the prince weakens. Aelor scrabbles to his feet, panting. He turns around and with a wild snarl kicks Daenys in the stomach. They are both determined to kill her, almost as much as she is determined to kill them. She stabs her elbow into Aelora and rolls back as Aelor swings his boot forward again.

The doorway is blocked off. There is nowhere else for either of the three to run. Heavy boots stampede across the polished wooden floors. Aelora’s jaw is forced open to get her teeth off of Daenys’s arm. Daenys’s fingers are prised off of Aelor’s neck. She screams like a wild animal and lunges for him again.

“Let him go!” Maekar catches her around the waist and drags her back.

But he does not think to use his full strength for a girl half his size. Daenys knocks her head back hard enough into his skull to make him let go. There is only one thought burning brightest. She is going to kill Aelor before he becomes like Aerion. All of them – every Targaryen man in her family – all of them need to die before they become like Aerion.

“She is mad!” Alys screeches as her son crawls to hide behind her skirts. He is bleeding and bruised, just like his sister and cousin. “Get her away from my children!”

“Fuck your children!” Daenys roars and escapes her uncle’s grasp long enough to charge at both her aunt and the prince cowering behind her.

Aelinor screams almost as loudly as Alys. The pair of them do their best to fend off their crazed niece. But it is Maekar who restrains her again, cursing violently. His nose is bleeding.

Brynden suddenly appears, shoving Aelora back when she tries to hawk up enough bloodied spit to launch in Daenys’s face. Aelinor is trying to calm Alys, to keep her yells from reaching outside the ballroom. There is still a rapt audience scattered over the staircases of the Holdfast, desperate to listen in to the Targaryens squabbling like street dogs.

“I want her whipped!” Alys screeches.

“It was likely your shit of a son that started it!” Maekar barks back. He is keeping Daenys wrestled down with a single arm. But the screaming and kicking doesn’t help.

“Calm – her – down!” Brynden hisses at Maekar.

“She’s lost her fucking mind – “

“How dare she attack the heir to the throne!” Alys wails, clutching her trembling children to her. “She’s a rabid bitch just like her mother! Look what she’s done to my boy – “

“Rhaegel is the heir to the fucking throne, you insufferable woman – “

“It is alright, Aelor can be heir!” Rhaegel exclaims to Maekar. He flaps his hands to try and hush his family, but no one is listening. He hovers back and forth like a confused moth, unsure of whom to go to first. Alys cries harder when she sees him choose Daenys and not his own children.

“Quiet now, tiger cub, quiet – “

His gentle attempt to stroke her hair does not work. Maekar ushers him back as Daenys kicks out a leg and almost strikes Rhaegel.

“Get off me!”

Brynden replaces Maekar, who tugs his brother to stand away. The fearsome strength instilled by anger is beginning to abate. But she continues to fight until Uncle Maekar forces her to her feet.

Aerys appears through the blockade of the kingsguard. The commotion was enough to tear him from his books. Shiera is close behind, jaw dropping when the scene unfolds before her. Aerys’s face withers in disgust when he sees the state of his niece.

“This is whom you wanted as my queen?” He flings an incredulous arm in Brynden’s direction who pales with fury. Aelinor flinches, and blurts out, “What?” but Lord Rivers is already out of the ballroom, his cloak tossing after him like an unruly shadow.

“Get the nosy fuckers out of the Holdfast,” Brynden snaps at three of his Raven’s Teeth. They hasten to obey. “Shiera! Go with them! Make something up – anything!”

For once, his little sister does not argue as she usually would and follows them.

His great-niece is still raving and fighting to get free when they bundle her into King Daeron’s rooms. Alys and her children are being escorted from the ballroom. Rhaegel follows his younger brother instead. He shows little concern for the twins.

Maekar forces Daenys into an armchair, and barks an angry, “Seven hells!” when she tries to run again. He binds his arms around her and drops into the chair himself, pinning her against him. “Where the fuck has she found this strength from?”

Brynden moves towards her, but her legs kick out, unruly as a foal, and he thinks better of it.

Maester Ambrose finally bustles in, huffing and puffing. The shock on his face is stark. Daenys still has energy to scream and when she sees Ambrose, scream she does. Maekar winces and shoves his ear to her shoulder in an effort to muffle his hearing.

“Quickly, quickly,” Rhaegel encourages the old man, strangely lucid for this time of day. He goes to Daenys and continues to gently stroke her hair. It begins to work. Her face is a mess of drool, snot and tears. She is shaking so badly, her teeth rattle in her head and she can barely form a legible word. But under Rhaegel’s pallid hand, she calms enough for Ambrose to gather the courage to approach.

“Dose her properly,” Brynden warns him.

“My lord, she has only just been weaned off of – “

Ambrose’s words are choked off by Brynden’s fist around the collar of his robe. He yanks it up, forcing the squat old man to crane his head back. “Dose her until she is docile, or that bottle is going all the way up your decaying arsehole.”

“Y-yes, my lord.”

Daenys’s breathing slows only enough for her to speak, When she sees Ambrose pouring out the poppy milk, she begins to struggle again. “No – no I don’t want it – I don’t want it – stop – let me go – let me go!” She beats her fists against Maekar’s arms. They tighten around her like a vice. “I hate you! I hate you all! I don’t want to be put to sleep – let me fucking go – “

Ambrose hesitates, looking rather on the verge of tears himself. Not even when Maekar crushes Daenys’s arms against her front, can she be steadied enough to drink. Brynden loses patience. He grabs her jaw, and flattens the heel of his palm on her forehead. Some of her earlier strength begins to return and she kicks at Ambrose in pure hatred. Rhaegel reaches down to try and still her legs. But when she almost kicks him in the face, Maekar shouts at him to stop. Ser Roland appears in the doorway, pale and shaken. It is he who restrains Daenys’s legs so that the maester can put the thin spout  to her mouth.

The princess wails like a cornered lamb. She cries out for her mother and father. Desperate cries that half deafen the men holding her down. Ambrose tips the spout up and begs her to be still lest she chokes. Brynden squeezes her head tighter to keep it from moving. Her screaming cuts off as her body fights to preserve itself and keep the liquid out of her lungs. The maester pours and the room goes silent. Nothing but the sound of liquid glugged down her throat.

And then Brynden finally nods and lets her head go.

It is hard to tell who looks more shaken. The young girl or the adult men gathered around her. She droops like a wilted flower. Only then does her uncle’s hold relent. Maekar lifts her up into his arms and carries her to the bed. He says her name with a soft pat to her cheek, but she is lost in a daze, mumbling gibberish as she blinks slow and steady at the ceiling of her grandfather’s four-poster bed. Maekar lowers her onto the mattress and lifts her legs up onto it with more gentleness than he has exhibited so far.

“You gave her too much,” Rhaegel admonishes Brynden.

“And? Were you going to do something about it?” Brynden retorts.

“You gave her too much. Just like they give me too much. I never get a chance. And neither does she. Poor little cub. Poor little cub…”

He crawls onto the bed and settles beside her, curling his long legs up until they are the same height. Daenys mumbles Mama and her fingers convulse against her sides as if she is reaching for something. Rhaegel gathers her small hand in both his own and kisses it. He keeps shaking his head, whispering too much, too much, too much.

Outside, the clouds break under the weight of an eastern thunderstorm. Lightning cuts across the sky in whips of violet. Rain strikes the arched windows in translucent curtains of grey, muffling all other noises in the Red Keep. Nothing seems as if it will ever be as loud again as the sound of Daenys screaming.

The silence in the room settles like a stone. Maekar pushes his face into his hands. He pulls them back down and his eyes are vacant when they meet Brynden’s.

Neither of them says a word. 

Chapter Text

She sleeps and he finds her beautiful the same way he found his brother beautiful. Not quite. That turbulent ache is pitted into his mind like the scars on his cheeks. It haunts him on nights he is least prepared to face the clench in his stomach, when Baelor's cinnamon-scented hands spread over his face like a helm. Between his brother's fingers, Maekar watches the world in his dreams, detached and lucid. It is a safe place to be, safer still when he leans back and they combine into a single, many-limbed creature.

Dany is more Jena’s girl by her colouring. But Baelor is stamped across her features like the indentation of a signet ring into the soft wax of her skin.

He watches her sleep and a turgid knot untangles itself from the base of his spine. 

There is a dreamy radiance to her in repose. It binds to her while she is awake too, her smiles quick and enchanting, offered at a whim. Desperate to be liked.

Endearing, Baelor called it. She is beyond endearing. People are drawn to her. Maekar did not think that was a good thing. The sweetest fruit attracts the most vicious flies. And Dany’s innocence was almost comical. Several times, he caught himself on the verge of saying something harsh. Don’t be an idiot, girl – the servants aren’t being nice because they like you. She does not see herself set apart from those beneath her and will work for their approval as diligently as she might work for her princely uncle’s, a fact which is both offensive and slightly amusing. Egg takes after her, though his example is taken to the extreme.

Uncle, would you like another cup of wine?

I can take Rhae, Uncle.

I will find Egg for you, Uncle.

Have you eaten, Uncle? I can have the cook make your favourite dish.

After Jena died, it was almost impossible to watch. This little girl, all of thirteen, attempting to take her mother’s place so that her father would not crumble.

But his brother was ever delighted by his darling. He had wished to have a girl long before he discovered his firstborn was a prince. Sons do not care the way daughters do, Maekar. I hope for a brood of girls for you and Dyanna. The gods took Baelor’s wish and turned it upon its head, as they did with most things when it came to the youngest brother.

The welts on his back itch, pain crawling under his flesh like maggots set loose. Fresh wounds. The ache grows. Maekar flexes his shoulders once, twice, forcing the wounded flesh to chafe against itself. And then he gives into watching Daenys sleep.

The rosebud mouth, sweet as nectar, into which he’d pushed his fingers and his tongue, as if it were a cave filled with precious gems. Each tooth memorised. He has intimate knowledge of the one next to her upper left canine. It is slightly askew. His tongue goes to it first. The slope of her nose, freckled, sweet as one of the buttons on his daughters’ dresses. The delicate peach fuzz on the shell of her ear, pointed like Baelor’s. Her slender fingers twined into the sheets.

He reaches for her. It is the compulsive jerk of a starved man finding himself suddenly alone before a table laden with sumptuous food.

Life is simpler without lust. Since Dyanna died, he has done nothing to chase after it. His routine is martial, and distractions are few and far between. Maekar was never the kind of man to indulge; now even less so. It was not quite lust that drove him to Dany's mouth. Something worse. The fear of losing her. The last piece of Baelor left for Maekar to hold onto. His little girl. Their little girl if fate had been kind and the burden of maleness was removed from Maekar's shoulders.

He bites his lip until it loses feeling. The mosaic on the floor is withered. He studies its ruined edges, mentally replacing missing tiles into the worn patterns. Slowly, the tightness in his breeches abates. He can still hear her breathing. Wounded little gusts of air, as if her body is reluctant in its effort to remain alive.

When she stirs, he sits up, waiting for her to woozily ask for water as she does at intervals. It has been three days of this. She has not yet been lucid enough to eat.

Maester Ambrose comes in and out of the room in silent misery. He is not at peace with his task, but fear of Bloodraven is stronger than any personal affection for the princess. He knows better than to appeal to Maekar in an effort to reverse her dose. After dragging his niece off the balcony and away from the spiked dry moat, anything that keeps her in one place is approved. He needs her to be calm first. The strength she’d exhibited as she fought off the twins, and her uncles, baffled him. She’d escaped Maekar twice.

Rhaegel visits too. His brother has been unable to sleep and insists on sitting beside his niece. He does not say much to his little brother. Rhaegel is severely unhappy with him. He counts Maekar as one of the people who forced Daenys to go to sleep. It does not matter that it was to preserve her and keep her from hurting herself. Rhaegel’s view of the world is simpler: if the tiger cub does not wish to sleep, do not force her.

Daenys stirs but only so that she can turn on her other side. She makes a crooning noise in the back of her throat when she does. Her body unwinds beneath the sheets, fluid as a cat, and the curve of her hip is redrawn against the buttermilk light of the windows.

Maekar drops his face into his palms and clutches in despair for the words of the Seven-Pointed Star his septa used to feed him. They do nothing to stop the blood rushing south. Just when he is about to lose hope, there is a knock on the door.

“Come!” He falls back into his chair, the redness of his face disguised by the shadows beside the king’s bed.

However hard his cock was about to get, it deflates immediately when his goodsister walks in.

Alys is all luminous blue eyes and pallid skin. She inches inside like a frightened mouse, her hands clutched in trembling half-prayer. There is a saintly sorrow on her face. It is the only thing that keeps Maekar from forcing her out of the room one-handed. Waves of silent hostility rise from him like a black cloud. She avoids him and slowly shuffles towards the other side of the bed. And then she just stands there, head tilted, watching Daenys sleep.

He loses patience. “Why are you here?”

Alys flattens the back of her hand to her mouth and her pink eyelids flutter shut. Tremors rack her chest with the effort to keep from sobbing aloud, anguish keen as a knife. She lowers herself to her knees against the side of the bed. Bone-thin fingers press against the seven-pointed star hanging about her neck.

Maekar scoffs. “It was them, wasn’t it? They started it. Go on, Alys. Spit it out. What did your little monsters do?”

She still does not answer. Her lips flutter in quiet prayer. Her hands are locked against her forehead. They are the colour of lilies, blueish with veins that bulge against her fragile skin. He has never thought his goodsister to be beautiful.

But Dyanna remarked on a translucent quality to Alys that made her fascinating to look at. Like a raindrop quivering over painted glass or so she’d put it. Dyanna’s way of looking at the world added colour to Maekar’s. He saw what she meant, but in a very different way. Alys was indeed a raindrop, fallen from the high mountains of the Vale. She had no colour in her temperament and was forever envious of those who had plenty of it. Just because Dyanna chose to ignore Alys’s blatant envy, it had not escaped Maekar’s silent ire. She was the same with Jena, and now towards Daenys. But where Dyanna and Jena shrugged off their drab goodsister, Daenys could not. She allowed Alys to walk all over her in hopes that she would one day receive her aunt’s affection.

“I carried them alone. And I raised them alone,” Alys croaks, wiping tears off her chin. She reaches out with a damp hand and fixes a stray lock of Daenys’s hair. Maekar grips the arm of his chair tight.

“Is that why you came? To bemoan my brother’s inadequacy?”

Alys shakes her head, blue eyes wide. “No! No. Rhaegel is sweet, Rhaegel has always been sweet. What other choice does he have? The gods made him so. But – he was not – Aelor never learned – not truly – what it is to be a man. Prince Baelor had his two sons, and he took pains to include mine where he could, but Aelor has always been...” she trails off, her gaze pinched between the pale slit of her eyes.  “He loves his sister too much. I tried my hardest to pry them apart. But their whisperings – they have their own language – I was not permitted entry into their domain. If I had known how their little brains were twisting, I might have tried harder. But when their father loses his wits, I end up with three children and so I - “ she hiccups miserably, crying into her sleeve until she can compose herself again. “ - I tended to him like he was my own babe. Because they were quiet, they took care of each other. I neglected them.”

Maekar’s ears strike up a dull ringing.

Alys is nothing like his mother. Myriah was shades of passion, a jewelled bird amidst the dull plumage of his father’s court. But the tremor that flits over Alys’s face is remarkably reminiscent of the Dornish queen. Her guilt and grief over the son she could not sacrifice to raise her other two. Baelor was raised as the gem in his father’s sword hilt. But Aerys and Maekar were left to raise themselves, and neither did a very good job. Myriah wept over her shortcomings till the day she died, though even then, her last thought was for her weakest boy, her most precious.

He peers at Alys with unblinking sternness. She is not his mother. Rhaegel was much harder to deal with as a child than he is now, with all the new herbs Tommen mixes and crushes to keep him placid. Myriah’s sons, even at their worst, were never like Alys’s twins.

“What did they do, Alys?” he asks her again.

With stuttering breaths, she confesses that the pair of them, together, tried to rape their cousin. That they had not tried to hide the matter from her when she asked. They were instead surprised at how badly Daenys had taken it. They hadn’t wanted Daenys to leave the Red Keep and believed that bribing her with pleasure, the closeness they had with each other, would convince her to stay.

There is no guard on Alys’s tongue. She appears to be in a daze. Else she would not so sluggishly describe how Aelora promised they would not have hurt Daenys. That they would have pressed their tongues and fingers into her until she was stuffed to bursting with their love. To them it is the greatest compliment that they would think to include another in their sexual games.

“Enough!” Maekar snaps finally. His ears burn bright red.

Alys flinches, coming out of her trance. She wipes at her mouth. “They are children, my prince -”

“They are fifteen!”

“Their minds do not reflect their age! You should have heard them, Maekar! This is love to them! They have watched their uncle die! They loved Baelor in their own way, truly they did – and both their cousins and grandfather soon after! I believed them to be happy in their own world, but they notice what ails our family and they tried to fix the wound in their own way!”

“By trying to rape their cousin!”

Alys devolves into smothered sobs. She cries so hard she retches. Maekar emits a strangled sound of hatred and goes to fetch her some water. He shoves the cup into her hand, refusing to let his fingers brush hers, and instead turns to Daenys for any signs she is about to wake up. He does not want her to open her eyes to Alys wailing at her bedside. But Ambrose has worked a deep magic. Her eyes are still behind her lids.

Alys sets the cup down, driblets of liquid trickling down her chin and onto the front of her pale blue dress “They are sorry, Maekar. I beg you to tell Dany they are sorry.”

“Tell her yourself when she wakes up.”

“She will not be so inclined to hear it from me - “

“And who’s fault is that?” Maekar crouches down beside her, mouth twisted with displeasure. “Hm? Who’s fault is that? You bullied a little girl because you hated her mother. Picking at her with your words, your eyes, the way you did with Dyanna. And now look at you - too cowardly to apologise for your monstrous children.” He stands to his full height, towering over his shrunken goodsister. Strands of straw-blonde come loose around her fingers where they clutch at her miserable little face. “You have devoted yourself to my brother, and for that, I will always thank you. But it is not neglect of your children for his sake that is to blame for this. I fear you would have made them much worse had you given them your attention.”

He knows it is a cruel thing to say to a woman already so distraught. He says it anyway. She sinks a wretched whimper into the bedsheets. Maekar lays a gentle hand on her veil to make her look up. They gaze upon each other, brother and sister by grace of marriage and the laws of the realm. His face is kinder than she has ever seen it.

“If their monstrous little hands come near Dany again, I will do as I should have done to Aerion a long time ago. I will beat the skin off their frail backs with my belt. And I will have you watch, so that you might learn what it takes to raise dragons.”

He returns to his seat and refuses to give her another word until she finally hauls herself to her feet.

“I will visit her again later,” she says, though it is shakily done, more a promise to herself than any declaration to him.

“Close the door on your way out.”

The lattice arch of the window appears in her subconscious before she opens her eyes to it. She clambers out of bed and goes to it in a half-dream. Her fingers run over the ruby-painted parts of the glass. They burn like an open wound when the light hits them. A cobweb is stretched across one small corner of the sill. The spider is at home. Large, grey-limbed and elegant, like a septa at prayer.

Daenys admires it for a few seconds. It does not move when she touches it with her finger, save to wave a languid leg. I am hungry, she thinks. Her mind turns to logic and picks up the spider. It dangles helplessly between her fingers, legs twitching. She tips her head back, tongue unfurled, lazy as a squid’s tentacle. The spider’s lovely limbs kick harder, as if it knows what is about to happen. In its eight eyes it sees an orange light in the back of her throat, rising like the insides of a volcano. It stops struggling.

“Daenys!”

Her head twitches to the left, lizard-like. Uncle Maekar is staring at her. His eyes are bleary with sleep. By the look of it, he has not moved from his perch in days.

She sets the spider back onto its web. It shivers, curling its legs in on itself, chewing on one of its many dead flies for comfort. Maekar comes up behind her, and his large hands steer her away from the window, face mildly disgusted when he observes the size of the creature she had been about to ingest.

“I am hungry,” she says out loud.

“I can see that.”

“Helaena said it might taste good.”

“Did she?”

“Yes. She said she ate the dead ones. So that their babies wouldn’t have to watch them burn.”

“Hm.”

“You are not taking me seriously, Uncle.”

“No, I am not.”

Daenys allows herself to be lifted onto the bed as if she is a child with legs too short to do it herself. She swats his hand off and crawls to the other side. She has only just awoken but her limbs already feel twice their weight. Her head hangs against the pillow before she finally succumbs and curls up. The room sways as if she is on a giant ship. She dreamt of several ships in her blurry days. But they were all in the sky, floating on the backs of giant translucent clouds, the colour of cornflowers and periwinkle.

Her uncle briefly leaves the room. She hears him tell Edric to fetch her a tray of food.

“The princess is awake?”

Daenys perks up upon hearing her sworn shield’s voice. Maekar answers in a curt affirmative and comes back inside, shutting the door in his face.

“Was that Ser Roland?” the princess asks.

Her uncle eyes her askance and slowly lowers himself into his armchair. “Fond of him, are we?”

Daenys turns away and curls up around a pillow. It was Uncle Maekar who held her down the most, she remembers now. The others would have had a much harder time without him. He pinned her as Ambrose forced the poppy milk down her throat until she’d choked and twitched into silence.

Her uncle makes no effort to coax her into speaking. The room is silent until Silla finally enters with a weighty tray of food, her weak arms trembling to keep it aloft. Maekar goes to help her with an irritated scowl.

“How is she going to eat all this?”

“Forgive me, my prince. But the cook – when he heard the princess was awake, he insisted on piling it on – I did tell him.”

Daenys glances over her shoulder, eyes squinting into a brief smile for Silla’s sake. “Was it Toran?”

“Yes, princess,” Silla beams back.

“You know the cook by name,” Maekar says flatly.

Daenys smile wilts. “Toran is the best cook the Red Keep has ever had. Of course, I know his name.” And half his history, including the tales he used to tell her of his father who came from the Summer Isles and crewed the ship of Bellegere Otherys, her own great-grandsire's lady mistress. “Is he well, Silla? Last I saw him his knee was giving him trouble.”

“Quite well, princess. Maester Ambrose’s salve worked wonders. He really -”

Silla stops, eyes slowly diverting to Maekar’s face. He stares at her. She swallows down the end of her sentence and drops a cautious curtsey before departing without another word. Maekar turns to see Daenys’s withered expression.

“There’ll be time for all your waffling later. Eat.”

“It isn’t waffling if I enjoy it.”

“I am afraid it is.”

They scowl at each other. The family resemblance is quite striking for once.

Silla has been diligent with her demands in the kitchen. In a small silver bowl are cubes of powdered red jelly from Braavos piled high. Daenys reaches for them immediately. Maekar clicks his tongue and withdraws the bowl from her reach.

“Proper food first.”

“That is proper food.”

“It is sugared Braavosi rubbish.”

“As opposed to what?”

“I’m not arguing with you. Eat.”

He tears a chunk of wheat bread and dips it into a bowl of beef stew. The spiced smell makes Daenys’s stomach grumble furiously. Toran’s instincts for seasoning are magical. The bread drips invitingly, held aloft by her uncle’s long, elegant fingers. But she keeps her mouth shut out of principle. Maekar closes his eyes, praying for patience. He is trying to be gentle. This is his gentleness. Daenys’s mouth knots into a bad-tempered pucker.

“Dany.”

“Un-cle.”

He exhales through his nose. And then he puts the bread in his mouth and lowers back into his seat, chewing blankly. He takes another bite, a big one, the dip of the bread draining half the beef stew in the bowl. Daenys’s stomach growls, angrier this time. She reaches for the Braavosi sweets. Maekar swats her hand and offers her the bread again. She has no choice but to give in and eats it from his hand, delicate as a bird. The first bite of it sends a rush of warmth to her stomach. She thanks the gods Toran’s father fell in love with a woman from Westeros and settled here to raise his son. When Maekar feeds her another bite, he retracts it for a second, and her mouth closes around thin air.

Off goes that goblin burst of laughter. She has always found it funny. For such a big, rugged man to have such a silly, creaky chuckle. Granted it is likely because Uncle Maekar has never experienced a good, hard belly laugh in his life. This is all he can muster.

He feeds her the bite properly this time, pushing it into her mouth. Daenys notices a dribble of beef stew escaping down his thumb and licks at it. Then sucks at it properly before it can slip further. Maekar pulls his hand away.

He shifts the plate across for her to finish the bread herself. A few more minutes of silent chewing pass. We have nothing to talk about, she thinks sadly. They never really do when they are alone, which is not often. Maekar is playing with his ring, gazing unseeingly into the near distance. He does look as if he hasn’t moved from his seat in a good while. He looks like she did when she was at Matarys’s bedside, flattened, as if the essential parts of him have been removed.

“Uncle, you should take a bath,” she says. When his eyebrows lift up, she hastens to explain herself. “Not because you smell. You don’t. But it would revive you.”

“You just want to scoff down the sweets after I’m gone.”

“I promise I do not.”

He stares at her a moment longer. Perhaps he detects that her mood towards him is still sour. She would never be rude to him in her sober state. The most she can do is sweetly ask him to go away.

He gets up with a stamp of his boots and makes an extremely abrupt exit.

Her chewing slows, eyes lingering on the ajar door. Ser Roland turns his head so he can see her through the gap. They will not close the door if she is alone. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days. A wave of embarrassment and nausea roils in her guts.

Your fault. Her favourite handmaiden is a nervous wreck. Her sworn shield is little better, both tasked to protect a princess desirous of self-immolation at every turn. She can only imagine how glad Ser Roland will be to see her off to Driftmark. How glad Uncle Maekar will be too. After all, they have managed to keep her alive out there on that little island.

Out of sight, out of mind.

“How is she?”

Maekar grinds his jaw down, eyes pressed shut. She always slinks into a room as if she were no more than a shadow cast by the furniture. The green eye glints. The blue is quite dull. He continues drying his hair with a linen towel. The front of his tunic is open, damp silvery chest hair dusted across his scarred chest.

“I am not your brother. You are not welcome to walk in freely.”

“I was going to knock. But then I changed my mind.” Shiera drops herself cross-legged on a large wooden chest facing him. Her front teeth are slightly oversized in her mouth. They give her the impression of a very pretty bunny rabbit. Her gaze drops to his chest, the swell of his forearms against the sleeves of the tunic. She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth with a lazy smile. “So? How is she?”

Shiera’s stare is enough to unnerve the strongest man.

“Go and ask her yourself.”

“I will. When she is ready to see me. But you she is particularly attached to.”

“She told me to go and take a bath.” He gestures down at himself, as if to say and here we are.

“Did she?” Shiera releases a happy peel of laughter. “The girl is a delight without her mother. Jena restrained her so.”

The alternative being she turns out like you.

He ignores his aunt’s chatter – aunt, the woman barely deserves the title – and picks up a letter from Egg sitting on the desk. He has read it over six times on this day alone. He and Ser Duncan – Dunk – are in Dorne. As much as it grates on him, Maekar is relieved knowing he is far from the worst of the sickness spreading in Westeros. But the roads are closed towards the south. He will not be returning any time soon. He thinks of Ser Duncan again, reminds himself of the sheer size of the man. Egg will be fine. And if not, Dyanna will reach through the veil and scalp Maekar the way she threatened she would if she died and he remarried too soon.

I wouldn’t marry at all, he’d told her, without a speck of hesitation.

Then you will mother my children for me?

Whatever that means.

They’ll need a mother.

No, they will not. More crucially, don’t die before me. We’ll have no problem then.

As with most things, Dyanna disobeyed.

He folds up Egg’s letter and feels a weight sink into his chest. It is only then that he notices how silent the room is. He turns and almost jumps out of his skin. Shiera is standing right behind him.

“Seven hells, woman!”

Before he can stop her, she loops her arms around his waist, resting her pointed chin against the top of his chest. Big, cat-like eyes blink dreamily, lashes so long and downy they flutter to the tips. It is some sorcery to make them appear that way. She barely had lashes as a little girl. Maekar pulls himself from her grip, but she relatches instantly.

“Brynden would not mind – “

“Brynden would fucking mind. Get off me before you get hurt.”

“You would hurt me?”

“Not intentionally.”

Shiera purrs in approval. “Gallant you are. But I worry about you, nephew. No woman... for how long now? How can a man live content in a bed as cold as yours? To whom do you turn to for a soft word in the darkness of night?” She tugs on his beard, giggling when he dodges her with a jerk of his head. It only takes her a moment’s perusal of his face to see something there that he is trying his hardest to hide. “Unless you are already well-provided for in that regard? My, those words must truly be soft-spoken. Even Brynden and I have not heard them through the walls.”

Her tongue pinches between her teeth, fingers drawing runic patterns on his scarred back through the thin material of the tunic. Shiera presses her hips against him, the upper half of her body arching away. It offers a better display of the vision she is, her favourite necklace tucked sweetly between the swell of her breasts.

“Tell me all about it, nephew. I might even make myself look like her if you want,” she croons.

Maekar goes perfectly still. Just when she thinks she has him, he grabs her jaw. Shiera squeaks in surprise. Her grip weakens. He walks her back until her spine hits the edge of the desk. And then he bends her further, forcing her mismatched eyes towards the ceiling.

“I warned you once before.”

A month after Dyanna’s funeral, Shiera had crawled into his bed wearing a glamour of his dead wife. It was his aunt’s way of showing him love. The way Aelor and Aelora believed raping Dany would be the best way to convince her of theirs. Tangled up in grief, he had not realised. Not until she orgasmed so hard her concentration slipped, and suddenly all that sandy coloured hair wasted away to silver. Maekar has never quite forgiven her for it.

He shoves her away and continues dressing himself. Shiera rubs at the soreness in her jaw. She is shaken, but determined now, as if some truth has nested inside her mind. Violence gleams in her eye, undercut with arousal. All her games with Brynden are just like this. It excites her when another member of her family displays the same inclination towards hurting her. It reinforces their blood connection.

“They would have been happy together,” she says.

Maekar ignores her. He fixes Baelor’s brooch to his surcoat, fingers gentle over the burnished bronze.

“She would have given him twin boys by now. They would have been two years old when you went to Ashford.”

Maekar goes still.

Shiera continues, caught in a meditative lull. “He would have been happy with her. Once he had his sons, he would have given her anything she wanted. Maelor and Maegor. One silver-haired. The other red, with a streak like Valarr’s. A mistake was made, nephew. Had they been married, Baelor might still be alive. But some of it can be reversed. Have you told her about Vaemond yet?”

Maekar’s vision fixates on a spot of grime on the mirror in the top right corner. Shiera’s face blurs in the reflection, as if an invisible finger is smudging her out of existence.

She is blissfully indifferent to his silence. “But you will not. I know it. You will not bring him back from Lys to gift him his little shrike. You want her for yourself. And she – “ Shiera gurgles with delight, her eyes turning honey brown, hair dripping red. “ – she is in love with her father. She has always been in love with her father. If he had not died, there would be no room for you in her pretty head. She wanted Baelor. Now she wants you. You take from him his life, his daughter. Oh nephew, will you not summon Aerion back from Lys?”

Shiera’s skirts whisper across the floor, bringing the scent of sea salt and ambergris with them. Her fingers dance up his spine, across his shoulder, before settling on the back of his neck. Maekar waits for her to make the incision with her coral pink nail and pull his soul out through it.

“You can still fuck her if she is married to your son. It will make her so happy to crawl into your bed of a night and pretend Baelor is finally choosing her over her mother. You know this, don’t you? You are her father now. And yet you look upon her as my father did with his girls!"

Maekar evades the grip of Shiera’s talons before they can dig in any deeper. He flees from the room in a half-spun madness. She does not try to stop him. Nor does she laugh. There is a look of deep, trembling pity on her face. As if she knows every hidden crevice of his heart, the darkness gathered there.

The sound of Dany’s sobs reach him when he is halfway up the stairs of the Holdfast.

He takes the rest two at a time. Silla is at the door to the old king’s chambers, looking distressed. She is drenched, her brown hair stringy and coming loose from her braids.

“What in seven hells is going on? I was hardly gone an hour!”

“They came suddenly, my prince! They said they wished to pray with her, but that first the princess must take a bath.”

Maekar storms into the room and find three septas coaxing Daenys to lie back on the bed. Ambrose hovers uncomfortably in the corner with her medicine. Relief breaks out on his face when he sees the prince.

The younger septa is pink with exertion, and her clothes are as wet as Silla’s. The bathtub sits at the far end of the room by the window. A steady pool of water is draining out across the floor beneath it.

“I said I did not want you touching me!” Daenys wails as she crawls to the far side of the bed.

The oldest septa drags her back by the ankle and then motions for Ambrose to approach.

Maekar is thrown back to an unwilling memory. When he was nine, helpless, forced to watch as Rhaegel had a fit, and a septa grabbed him much the same way. She struck him across the face with a roughened glee. She’d savoured the chance to strike a Targaryen, no matter how weak. Maekar had wanted her hands to be cut off, but Myriah only sent the old woman out of the Red Keep.

This one binds a gnarled hand around Daenys’s arm. His niece cowers in frail distress. Her body is now thoroughly accustomed to being manhandled, even if her soul rejects it. She sinks into submission despite herself.

Something inside Maekar snaps. A command to get off her would have been enough. He grabs the woman by the veil covering her hair and half-throws her across the room. The younger septa screams in fright. Before the commotion can get any worse, Ser Roland hastens them to flee. Ambrose seizes his chance and hobbles out after them. The poppy milk sits forgotten on the nightstand.

Maekar reaches for his niece blindly. As he used to do to Egg when he’d had terrible dreams, the sheets on his mattress soaked with urine. But Daenys cowers from him just as Egg did. The last time Maekar’s hands grabbed for her, she’d been screaming for Baelor. The force of her despair was so great, Maekar almost believed his brother would walk through the door the very next second, dark eyes flashing with fury. But Baelor had not materialised.

“Dany,” he coaxes, and waits for her to calm down, his hands still held out to her.

She does not crawl towards them. But she is no longer crying. Her nightgown is wet through, turned sheer against her skin. Her abdomen sinks in with each shaky breath. The damp curls of red hair stick to the pert swell of her breasts, drawing a curve his eyes helplessly follow before he manages to tear them away.

“I told them I didn’t want to be touched!” She crouches against the mountain of pillows, violently abusing a loose hangnail on her middle finger with her teeth. Maekar tries to make her let go, but she twists out of his reach. And then she starts working at it again. “They touched me anyway.”

“They’ll be whipped within an inch of their lives. I swear it.”

He sinks down on the edge of the bed. Shiera’s words are still hovering in the back of his mind. As if she had climbed in there herself and etched them into his skull with her fingernail. You are her father now.

“Did you finish your food?”

Daenys turns her mouth down at the corners in a deliberately childish show of displeasure. “Yes.”

“You are lying.”

“You may cut open my stomach to check, Uncle.”

“You and Egg have the same expression when you lie.” He widens his eyes and blinks haltingly to mimic it.

Daenys fights to keep the smile off her face.

It is easy to make Egg smile too. Not that his smiles last very long. Neither do his cousin’s. She gathers her knees to her chest, watching Maekar with tired, glassy eyes as he reaches for the plate of cut up fruit sitting on the table. Ambrose brings the fruit along with the medicine. It removes the bitterness in her mouth.

“Is this to be my life now, kepus?” she mumbles into the inside of her wrist. “They put me to sleep if I am too loud? Like they do to Uncle Rhaegel?”

Maekar considers breaking the news to her. Your husband is dead. And she is but eighteen, with no children in her lap. The auction block will reopen, and she will be seated upon it as the eyes of every unmarried lord in the realm turn towards her. Brynden wants a Stark. Aerys prefers the Lannisters, Gerold in particular. Vaemond has been dead all of two days. Daenys knows not what awaits her yet. He certainly cannot find it in himself to break the hows and whys of Vaemond’s demise.

Maekar places the plate of fruit on the bed between them. Dornish plums, from a tree Myriah had grown and cultivated in the gardens of the Red Keep. Figs, cherries, grapes and apples the colour of blood. He prises open a small pomegranate and picks apart the seeds until a handful drop into his palm like twinkling garnets. There is a silver fork on the plate, but it goes ignored.

He holds his hand out with the seeds. Daenys ducks her head down and plucks them into her mouth. A sleek little animal, his niece. When his palm is clean save for a few reddish stains, he reaches for the fork. He spears a fig and puts it to her lips. His gaze is riveted, as if he has never in his life seen a mouth do what hers is doing now. Stretched open to curve around the plump fruit, tongue cupped snug under its flesh. Her eyes linger on his before she tugs it off. The scrape of her teeth against the fork makes her shiver in disgust.

Maekar tosses the fork aside. He uses the blade of his own knife to cut up the ripe skin of the plum. A succulent slice of it is lifted to her mouth. Daenys leans forward on her hands, shoulders bunched up by her ears. Her eyes drift over him like he is part of the room’s furniture. Ambrose has not yet given her a new dose. This must be the lingering spell of the last one, coupled with the panic of escaping the septas. There is a lolling softness to her, as if she might fall asleep in the middle of chewing.

Maekar decides to keep her awake by pushing the next plum slice deeper in, all the way until it touches her back molars. The teeth, the precious enamel. He feels the crooked one nip his skin. Daenys rears her head back to keep from choking. His index finger had almost scraped the back of her throat. She does not confront him or even make a face. Blank eyes, obedient chewing.

It is a compulsion then. To keep invading the sweet orifice, fingers rooting into the rosy rawness of her cheeks. He still offers her fruit, the pretext around which her tongue and teeth fit themselves. But his fingers are in the way. She must ingest the fruit half-chewed to keep from biting them too hard. She swallows a raspberry whole and chirps in discomfort. Her teeth wedge against his finger, working at the tough flesh.

Maekar spreads his index and middle digits open, testing the stretch of her mouth. Not very wide. Her body is designed against invasion, loving or otherwise. He spreads his fingers more, and her eyes water. The corners of her lips are stretched pink around the intrusion. She is still dazed, as if none of this is really happening. Her tongue hangs limp. She curls it up and flicks it over the webbing of his skin and Maekar’s stomach stutters and swoops.

“Wider,” he whispers.

She whimpers around him, his pretty girl, strung up on his fingers like a strand of silk. She does her best. Her eyes glimmer as she tries to let him push a third one in. Her body convulses with a retched sob. And then another. Her failure is as lovely as the rest of her. Maekar pulls his fingers out, and she babbles something unintelligible, skin opalescent with tears. Whatever it is she is saying, he cannot make it out. He pulls her flush against himself, rubbing his face into her damp hair. Her scalp smells of lilac and jasmine.

She is still crying. He nestles her body into place between his hands. She is kneeling on his thigh, her arms tight around his neck. He presses his mouth deeper against the side of her head. She cannot stop crying. Stuttering, guttural sobs that make her sworn protector pace restlessly outside the door. Whatever Roland Crakehall thinks is happening, he knows better than to come in.

Maekar does not try to stop her tears. There is no end to her woes and there never will be. If he believed in such idiocy, he would think the gods had marked her out for special misery so that she might be rewarded with twice as much in the seven heavens. He would ask her to lay out a list of all that she has endured and compare it to his own so that if by some miracle he had ever found a solution to ease his pains, it will do her some good. But he knows it will not. He has never truly learned to endure anything. It was forced upon him and he does not know why the weight of it has not crushed his skull in yet.

There is no reward in the afterlife for this little girl of his. She is crying because she knows it just as well as he does. There is no point to the suffering, to any of it.

Her thin, tremulous keens would destroy a weaker heart.

Maekar sucks the pomegranate juice off her cheek and cradles her tight.  

Chapter Text

Tw: self harm, mentions of CSA

Daenys…

Dae-nys……

Witness me, little one.

In her dreams, Bloodraven is twice his height, and his sclera is pitch black. A face so monstrous, even a mother would recoil. She cannot see over the top of his desk. She is five again. Five, ten, fifteen. He has been there when she was both a child and a woman. No before. No after. There never was. She has never existed in a world without Brynden. She will never exist in a world without him.

Wider.

The yawn of her mouth gapes like an abyss. Fungi fruit blooms in the back of her throat, its spores floating into the dark. Small nuggets of bright, beaded gold.

Brynden upturns a goblet of crimson liquid into the orifice. His thin fingers lock into her sockets and unhook the stitches. Her face melts off into his hand. A clean peel, like the skin off a peach. It flutters helpless against his grasping tongue. He chews on her face until his cheeks are stuffed with it. She laughs till the exposed veins of her temple turn blue. His lips are rouged blood-red.

They dance together, bodies conjoined into a grotesque mimicry of passion. Faerie wings, swan feathers, and white dragon scales catch in his hair. They turn to dust under her nose. She sneezes, little expulsions of crystal droplets that turn into stars around his head. Her feet are not moving. The ground is. The world is not the world anymore but one of Egg’s crystal shadow boxes in which he keeps tiny models of Old Valyria. Her great-uncle dances her through a forest grotto, sylphid niece hanging limp in his arms. She is no more than a mummer’s puppet. Brynden’s fingers are broken but still he pulls the strings.

She is in her mother’s wedding dress again. He is in his father’s red and black surcoat, the hair bound back off his head and a red gem in place of his missing eye.

You are ungrateful.

No, never.

I do this for you. I do this all for you.

I know. And I love you for it, great-uncle.

You love him more.

That could mean anyone. She loves a great deal many people more than Brynden Rivers. Most of them just happen to be dead.

She continues to dance. The world turns black as a raven’s wing, huddled around an ivory drop of a girl. Her red hair turns black and her lips pale to lilacs. She writes love notes on lambskin parchment and presses them between her legs. They are addressed to her father’s killer. He will smell them and know it was her.

Snow falls cold on her cheeks. She licks at it with her tongue and thinks of Uncle Maekar’s snow-white hair. Soft and glistening, as if the Maiden had wept one night and shed starlight onto his head. It is so delicate. So, unlike the look in his eyes when he thinks she doesn’t know. Her uncle is an animal labouring under the weight of his own decency.

He breaks her open and fucks the wounds with his graceful fingers. Indifference towards him is impossible. The greatest injury was Baelor’s death. He has been inside her since. The mace cracked open her father’s skull, and with it, Maekar crawled inside Daenys, locking their mangled joints as one. The way stags jam together their horns and the victor slowly succumbs to carrying the weight of its dead rival’s head.

She knows she cannot go on that ledge again, not without him.

He must come with her.

It is the only way she can face Father in the afterlife.

Bring to him his killer, his beloved brother, his little one.

She puts her face to the snow until the blue light drains around her. A pitch blackness replaces it. All-consuming.

King’s blood.

The whisper is half-bitten with cold. She lifts her head, lashes heavy with melted snow. A woman in red gazes back at her, eyes soft with pity. King’s blood, she whispers again, wonder in her voice. Its cadence is deep and rich as black honey. Her eyes are as red as the blood Brynden sucked off of Dany’s little finger, and her cheekbones slant like Maekar’s. Hair of pure burnished copper.

She reaches for the red woman. It is cold. Her dress looks thin. Daenys does not want her to freeze to death. The woman lifts a hand, fingernails clawing at the air like it has a shape. The line of the horizon is suddenly aflame. A smouldering whip of light that blinds Daenys.

She recoils, and the snow caves beneath her. Her hands fall against warm scales. A heartbeat, so powerful, it vibrates through her limbs. Its wings stretch outwards as far as she can see. One amber eye burns through the darkness, rolling to look back at her.

Daenys awakens with a horrible start.

Gulping gasps of air turn into pitiful sobs. She pants like an animal that has run far to escape its trap. But the feeling of relief after realising a dream was just a dream does not come. This is no better.

She is no longer in the old king’s solar, but in her own bedchambers. The room is wet and violet with cold. Dawn is not yet here. It is an hour where abandonment is the only emotion that sinks into the stomach with any kind of truth. Daenys presses her arms around herself and tries to think of good things, happy things. All her memories fail her. Each is a decayed tooth with the enamel worn off. What is left is a bad smell and agony.

There are no sharp objects in her room.

They have even installed iron bars on the windows. The balcony doors are locked. Nothing to sling the bedsheets over and hang herself with. Though they have not factored in desperation – she might tie one to the bottom of a bedpost and –

Rhaegel’s knife has been confiscated too. She misses running her thumb over the tiger carved into the hilt. But there is a small box under the mattress nobody knows about. It is filled with trinkets. Small, pretty things, each carefully selected for their sharp points. The collection has been ongoing for well on five years now

She removes a brooch in the shape of a curled fox and inspects the back. Uncle Maekar’s face drifts into her head. With it, a surge of missingness. It isn’t a real word. But she and Valarr both agreed that it was a word that filled the mouth better. Sometimes, words must be turned into much more than they are. Words for hysterical little nymphs to hiccup into the air and pretend the communication was done well. That no one will ever misunderstand them, and attempt to tie them down to a bed and drug them again.

Uncle Maekar’s missingness is felt to the very soles of her feet. A strange tingle that starts in her hips and spreads outwards. By the time it reaches her stomach, it is a nest of spiders. She rolls onto her side with a disjointed whimper. The inside of her mouth has been remoulded to the shape of his fingers. His gorgeous, long fingers. One, two, three. Wider…

It is a horrible feeling to crave. The memory of the vein pulsing in his neck pools saliva onto her tongue. It begins as a growl but turns into a scream when she forces her head into the cloth of her pillow. She wants the old man. Her old man. Hers. Not Celyse Arryn’s, not Gerold Lannister’s strange cousin’s, not Kiera’s, not the host of minor noblewomen wanting to take him – hers.

But he does not think of himself as hers.

He is twice her age, and he does not crave things like she does. All of that was done with Aunt Dyanna. He has lived a life beyond her comprehension. Love, lust, children, glory. And even that has all forsaken him in the end. She could never hope to fill the holes in his heart. She can hardly even tend to her own.

Daenys kneels up against the headboard.

Her skin is on fire. Every brush of the sheets against her bare legs, the slip of her silken hair over a shoulder; it intensifies into a somatic craving that licks heat between her legs. She is both exhausted and utterly alive. Make me feel alive…please. Father always said Maekar held fast to his promises. He held the shield wall against Aegor. He held to the pact of fatherhood with Aerion. He held to Dany’s plea. As if all these things are of equal consequence.

She pulls back her skirts and runs a thumb over her thigh. Her nail scratches out a word, flaking the white off her skin. The pin of the fox follows. It does not cut as easily as a knife. So, she goes over it, again and again, until the flesh blooms like freshly baked bread. Angry and red. She keeps tracing the little word, tending to its edges and corners. When it finally yields a few beads of blood, she stops. Her tongue is drooling in her mouth, body thick with the ache to feel more.

Alive.

She touches the word and blood spreads into the lace-like whorls of her fingertip. I want to feel alive. I want to be happy. Everyone loved her when she was happy. She cannot remember if she liked herself. But the important thing was everyone else loved her when she was a glad child.

She groans into her palm. “What is wrong with you?”

The words tumble into her skin like cracked shells. Daenys drops the fox pin and grabs handfuls of her hair, pulling it over her face. She wants to scream. The pain of holding it back feels like a wooden stick jammed crossways in her neck. But if she screams, the guard – it is not Ser Roland at this time of night – will hear and they will return with Maester Ambrose and his tired, mournful eyes. If she cannot be happy, if she cannot playact it, they will force her to drink.

If the poppy milk kept her unconscious, she would not mind it.

If she never had to wake up again. But when the fog falls away, she is a raw wound in its wake. A boar with its guts ripped open on a wedding knife. Something always ready to burst.

Her mother’s seven-pointed star sits amongst the trinkets in the little box. The points are especially wicked when brushed on a whetstone. She holds it to her forehead and begs the gods to listen. To pay her mind, to have mercy on a fool who cannot reckon with the gift of life granted her.

So many of her beloveds are dead, and she squanders her own. It is Jena’s voice in her head that rebukes, but the words are all Dany’s. She worries at the tip of her tongue until it bleeds so that she will not return to her leg with another word. Alive.  It is not a bad thing that she has opened her own flesh to put it there. It is a good word, a strong one. It will help to feel it raised as a gentle scar until she must go over it again.

The fire in the hearth burns brighter as she prays.

It slips Dany’s notice.

Vaemond Velaryon died in the streets of Fleabottom the very same night there was a fight in Maegor’s Holdfast.

Details of the fight are vague. No one knows exactly who was involved. Two squires, as the rumour goes. Lord Rosby swore he had seen the Princess Aelora race by on a landing above in a flurry of pale blue skirts and streaming hair. And since the twins had not been seen wandering around the Red Keep since, it was not so easily dismissed.

As with most rumours, details were added. The squires had been fighting over Aelora’s affection. Everything is more interesting with a salacious detail or two. And what was more scandalous than a princess cavorting beneath her station? Had it been the days of Jaehaerys, such stories would spill like grains of sand from every corner. If only there were more princesses. Princes were straightforward with their scandals. Targaryen princesses took them to extraordinary heights.

But then news arrived from King’s Landing that Vaemond, eldest son of the Lord of Driftmark was dead, and the mood changed drastically.

Stabbed fifty times by a cutthroat desperate for coin. The man was found and hanged within the hour so there was no confirming the story save for the words of a few witnesses. It was the Raven’s Teeth that questioned him. They were also the ones to bring Vaemond’s body back to the Red Keep, where his mother let out a terrible scream that could be heard all the way from the Tower of the Hand.

It was not a cheery start to the upcoming coronation. The people were desperate enough to murder lordlings in the streets. The last time there was such promise of anger between the smallfolk and the highborn, there were still dragons chained up in the Pit.

“Had you but given him a son,” Lady Velaryon was reported to have said to her gooddaughter Daenys. “I might still have had a piece of him yet.”

Opinions were divided on whether this was a fair thing to say. It was an open secret Vaemond had many bastards. If Lady Velaryon truly cared about a piece of her oldest boy, she might toss a rock and hit one of his seed walking around on Driftmark. But the real truth of it was agreed – she disliked her gooddaughter enough that not even grief could get in the way.

Most of the nobility sided overwhelmingly with the princess.

Onlookers could not help but notice the silver streak of hair growing from the top right of Daenys’s head. The weight of her losses written into the red sea of her hair.

Vaemond’s body is to be buried at sea in the fashion of the Velaryons. Hollowed out and embalmed, he is packed into a coffin with a death mask hastily carved that resembles him somewhat. What Targaryens remain in the Keep, gather with the rest of the nobility to watch his coffin carried out to the ship. Lady Velaryon walks ahead. His little wife shuffles behind it, hunched against the wind.

They wanted to take Daenys to Driftmark with them for the final burial. But Bloodraven would not stand for it. Released from her Velaryon bond, she is a Targaryen again, and her place is with them. Still, she was dutiful with her attentions to her husband’s corpse. She helped the Silent Sisters embalm him, put the coin in his mouth, brushed his hair, tried to ignore the fifty cuts of exposed meat all over his body.

She touched his cock, but only briefly. It would never be forced into any of her orifices again. She had not yet cried. But she began to cry then. Only his genitals brought out such emotion. The rest of him she could touch with calm hands. Lady Velaryon softened a touch to see her weep.

Her face is dry when she touches his coffin for the last time. The men lift it and begin hauling it up the gangway. His younger brother offers her a sweet smile before he follows after his mother. He is only fifteen, and he will now be the next Lord of Driftmark. Of the two, he was the calmer one, gentle like Matarys. His efforts to encourage Vaemond to treat his young bride with kindness were always laughed off. After all, what would a boy of thirteen know of a man’s business with his wife?

Daenys is glad at least that his fortunes will now look up.

She turns and blindly walks back to the small huddle of her relatives. Their culled numbers leave them to be a sorry sight. The veil covers her face just enough to disguise how dry it is. It has troubled her that she has not been able to cry in front of the other courtiers. They have noticed and will no doubt speculate later.

She goes to stand in front of Uncle Maekar. He is looking out towards the sea, indifferent to the proceedings.

She has only been there for a few seconds before his hand pulls her backwards. And then the warmth of his cloak drapes against her side. His arm comes across her shoulder from behind, tucking her against him. Just like he did with Aemon.

Daenys’s head droops against his bicep. The tears finally come. Her veil dances upwards, presenting her grief as jewelled drops down her cheeks. Her face scrunches up. There are whispers. Look. Over there. And eyes skitter across, drawn to the strange sight.

How close is too close? With grief, perhaps there is no telling. A kinslayer of an uncle, and his niece? When he kisses the back of her head, on the same place he’d smashed his brother open, how close is too close? He kisses it again and holds his mouth there, breathing in the smell of her hair.

Daenys does not think of the whispers. Nor does she notice the staring. The Velaryon ship is no longer the focus of attention. She brings a hand up to hold Maekar’s arm in place, already afraid he will rethink and pull it away.

She is cold even despite the warmth of his cloak. But it is not that which makes her shiver. It is the trembling that comes before a hearty, wet vomit. Except there is nothing much in her stomach to heave up. Her sobs drown into the wool of his sleeve. Without his arm to keep her aloft, she might have sunk to her knees. Her legs feel like fractured glass.

Uncle Maekar’s heart beats steady against her back. Hers patters like the wings of a bird afraid to take flight.

She cries and cries and cries until her tear ducts are spent.

And then she sinks into the same glittering daze she has been in for days.

On the walk back up to the Red Keep, Shiera accompanies her. Daenys does not know when she is passed from Maekar’s cloak to her great-aunt. But now their hands are interlocked. The silver glint of her bracelets chime like bells around her wrist. Daenys keeps her eyes on them as she trudges after her, so that she will not be distracted by anything else.

Shiera looks back at her with a sweet smile, her bunny teeth peeking out. Daenys begins to sniffle.

“Did you love him dearly, sweetling?” Shiera coos, pulling her arm under her own and clasping her flush.

Dany shakes her head, tired as a child swaying after its mother to be put to bed. Shiera has always been kind to her. After Jena died, Alys and Aelinor paid little attention to their niece. But Shiera came to Baelor’s room every morning to check Daenys had eaten and washed. In her attempt to care for her father, the young princess neglected herself. You cannot care for your father if you do not care for yourself.

“I understand,” Shiera says. “Sometimes you must weep over them still.”

Daenys looks over her shoulder. Uncle Maekar is nowhere in sight. Her footsteps stumble, and she digs her heels in. Shiera notices the panicked dart of her gaze. Her face breaks into an infectious grin. She tips Dany’s chin towards her and drops a kiss on her nose.

“Your uncle is riding out to meet his Dayne relatives. Dyanna’s younger sister and her new husband, I believe. They will go to Summerhall with him after the coronation to be with the children a while. Come, pet, he will be in the Red Keep before night falls. You will not lose him.”

Daenys thinks to her maternal house.

There are never many Dondarrions at a time. They fall to Dornish arrows sooner or later. But even so, she has only Manfred, his parade of mistresses, and his ever-suffering wife Laera Selmy. Her mother did not have any sisters and her brother died young. There was nobody to come and wipe Daenys’s tears after Jena or Baelor died, no Dondarrion aunt she might flaunt to show someone still loves me, here I have proof of it.

She remembers Dyanna’s sister. Clarisse. She remembers thinking what a pretty name it was, and if Uncle Maekar would marry her to give his children a new mother who would have Dyanna’s gentle blue eyes.

Shiera chucks her chin. “Always so sad, my little girl. It bleeds out of you sometimes.”

Daenys inhales. “What?”

Lady Swann suddenly appears to offer her condolences. With her are the Estermonts and Wendwaters and the Hayfords  - how many of these people managed to make the journey despite the sickness – and by the time Shiera can pull her away again, Daenys has forgotten the jump in her stomach at hearing those words.

Her great-aunt floats ahead of her in a swirl of pale mint greens. She has never worn black for any funeral save for King Daeron’s. She reminds Daenys of a water lily in flight, fragrant with the vagabond nature of a wickedly sweet heart. Often, her great-niece has wanted to ask why Brynden? Because it makes no sense to her. Neither does it to Shiera clearly, as she refuses to marry him and will occasionally be seen entertaining men in her rooms who look half-dazed at the very idea that she wants them. But always she ends up running back to Brynden.

“They are betrothing Kiera to Daeron,” Shiera says, when they reach Daenys’s doors.

She bites her lip, eyes glittering in anticipation of her reaction. It is a piece of news she’d kept back until the precise moment. But when Daenys does not react, she grabs her hands and squeezes them tight, holding them to her chest.

“I thought you would be happier.”

“To Daeron?” Daenys murmurs. Her heart drops at the thought of Kiera hearing this news. “He – is he fit to – “

But Shiera does not care to discuss Daeron. He does not interest her. There was a time when Daeron must have been interesting to everyone, when Maekar was for once the first to do something out of his brothers and give his father his first grandchild. He would likely have been fifteen, younger than Daenys when his son was put into his arms. She cannot imagine having a child even now.

Shiera pushes the doors open and whisks Daenys inside, where her solar smells of chestnuts, roses and lilies – Silla’s careful work. Her sweet Silla, ever dutiful and watchful for anything that might make her sad little mistress’s day better. Daenys knows it would affect both Silla and Jenny when she was miserable, and she would try her hardest not to let them see it if she was. It never worked.

Daenys knows she should marry Silla off soon, pick a match that will work in her favour, but she is loath to part with her. Jealously, she would rather wait for a male servant to join her household so that she might marry them together and keep Silla with her. How hateful it would be if she sent her off to her new home, only to discover later that the husband was as Vaemond, a wolf in sheepskin.

She lowers herself onto her bed with a thin sigh. “This is good news for Daeron.”

“Very good news for that boy. To be his age and unmarried is ridiculous. Heir to Summerhall isn’t enough to tempt the lords’ daughters. Though I imagine half of them are wary of having Maekar as a goodfather. Not much joy to be had there.” Shiera hums as she undoes Daenys’s hair and brushes out the russet curls.

Daenys fiddles with her topaz ring, angling it to catch the light and shatter into a hundred rainbows. The smell of wildflowers falls free from her untangled hair.

“She is no longer marrying Maekar,” Shiera says pointedly.

Daenys hums, reticent.

“Does that not please you?”

“I feel bad for Kiera.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Shiera pushes a cold fingertip under Dany’s chin, forcing her to look up. “You mustn’t disappear into yourself.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“When something bad happens, you disappear into yourself. Like a little tortoise. You’re not really there when people speak to you. It is dangerous, Dany. That is how they make decisions for you. When you are not awake to fight them.”

Daenys is intensely unnerved to have this pointed out. She has often felt it a most well-honed skill to navigating a frightening world. If she isn’t there, she cannot be found. She can nod and smile and play the dutiful girl. The pain is not hers. It is for some pale imitation who sits in her place.

“Uncle Maekar will not marry me,” she says at length, because she knows Shiera wishes for her comment on the topic. She is also well aware this conversation may return to Bloodraven. Whether he pulls it out of Shiera intentionally or not, is another question. Perhaps they love one another too much to try and keep secrets. “He is too devoted to Aunt Dyanna’s memory.”

“He may be devoted to more than one thing at the same time. Look how devoted he has always been to his brothers. Even when he is upset with them. The accident with your father was dreadful. But ‘twas a mishap. You know this. It is why you forgave him, no?”

Daenys does not care to voice the truth. She does not think she has forgiven Maekar. A whole host of other feelings are simply interfering. They distract her from the cold, hard detachment she wished to feel. None of it has gone to plan. She is half-afraid that one day she will wake up and realised she hated him all along.

“He is old enough to be my father,” she mumbles, wishing Shiera would stop so she does not have to keep coming up with complacent answers to cover for the turmoil of emotion underneath.

Her great-aunt gets comfortable on the bed and starts plaiting braids into her hair with deft twirls of her marble fingers. “Doesn’t that excite you? I always wondered what it would be like to marry my father.”

Daenys knows the godly response to this would be unnerved horror. But it would make her a hypocrite. She puts a hangnail to her mouth and sips at it. It tastes of citrus. She shrugs for an answer.

“Granted, my father did fuck his own daughter. Quite regularly. Mother's handmaiden knew it to be true. Jeyne was most certainly his daughter by Falena. Even she found it disgusting, but she was never much to voice her opinions. Jeyne was fourteen when he took her, you know. Mama's handmaiden said she was like a little sunflower, but when Father took her to bed, she turned in on herself. Missy Blackwood told Mama that he had had them both together, Falena and Jeyne. He died when I was five, but I used to wonder about it later.”

“Wonder about what?”

“That look in his eye when he sat me on his knee.”

Daenys feels unsteady. She flies up from the bed and reaches for the empty chamber pot to hurl up bile. Shiera’s bracelets chime behind her. She coos and tuts, looming over the younger girl to hold her hair back.

“I’m sorry,” Daenys croaks, coughing and retching until the last of it comes up.

“Don’t be sorry, precious one. Gods, there’s nothing solid in there. Did you not have breakfast? Stay here, I’ll have Silla bring up a tray. You cannot walk around half-starved like this. It ruins the mind.”

Daenys wonders at Shiera’s ability to remember names, even inconsequential ones, such as those of the maids working for her great-niece. She hauls herself onto the bed with a shaky breath. The silence of the room is as oppressive as it was with Shiera’s ambling chatter.

Something digs into her thigh. A small lump hidden under the bedcovers. It is a wrapped gift, badly done, with a pale blue ribbon. Inside is a small carving of a dragon curled around three eggs. The dragon is black and red. Two of the eggs are painted blue. The one in the middle is violet. Tucked into the wrapping is a note, scribed in Aelora’s neat hand. Across the paper are peppered rouged kisses.

We are very sorry, Dany. We still love you. We always will. You’re family. Aelor’s nose is broken, but the maesters set it back quite well. I think it makes him look distinguished. I hope you get to break it again. He would look good with a few more scars. Just like Uncle Maekar.

There is no funeral feast with the Velaryons gone. Dinner that night is reduced to an intimate affair for the Targaryens and their relatives by marriage. Unfortunately, that happens to include cousin Manfred who insists on escorting Daenys there.

She comes clad in a gown of black and red, rubies glittering at her ears and throat, and a standing ruff made of Myrish lace. Onyx gems glitter like beetles in her copper hair. Duty to her husband would dictate wearing only mourning black for at least a month. But the pretence is exhausting after so long.

Manfred pulls Daenys’s seat out with a flourish. She gives him a flat stare, and his smile droops a little. He clears his throat and drops into his own seat beside her, slightly pink as he tosses back his orange curls with false alacrity. Daenys slips the ring off her finger and sets it on the table. Only then does she look up to meet the damson eyes opposite.

Uncle Maekar is as disapproving as the rest of the elders at the table at her choice of attire. She knows that familiar squint of his eyes. He is debating between saying something and letting it go. She turns her attention to his left where Clarisse Dayne is also gazing at her but with much less disapproval. Daenys smiles at her and they exchange soft greetings. She presents her husband, Qayan Uller, a quiet, fine-boned man with dark blue eyes like gems. His skin gleams bronze in the candlelight, offset by thick lashes and long, raven hair swept back off his face.

“Your mother was a Dondarrion, princess,” he says, after the introductions are done. It is impossible to tell if it is a question or a statement, and whether either is hostile.

The conversation around the table lulls.

“Yes,” Daenys smiles blandly.

It is the Dornish’s own saying that half of the Ullers are half-mad, and the other half are worse. Their homestead is not near the borders of Dondarrion land. But the encounters between the two houses have been infamously violent. Both have vied to excel the other in cruelty. And of course, there is the matter of Rhaenys, and the rest of Meraxes’ remains still at Hellholt.

At her side, Manfred is oblivious – or choosing to be – and slurps at his soup.

“Your grandfather was Maldred,” Qayan continues.

“Husband,” Clarisse whispers in warning.

Daenys lifts her head, smile widening to show she is not perturbed. “He was.”

“Yes, we’ve established she’s a Dondarrion,” Maekar interrupts sharply. “Let us eat.”

A lesser man might have quailed before her uncle’s famed temper. Qayan just blinks. It is the unnerving smooth blink of an owl. His eyes are trained on Daenys as if he has a bird in his sights he very much means to skewer and pluck. Strangely, it is the first time Daenys has truly felt herself to be a Dondarrion. She quite likes the feeling. Mother would have laughed at the absurdity of an Uller making her feel so.

Qayan inclines his head. “I have a brother you might like.”

Manfred immediately chokes into his napkin. Clarisse looks mildly uncomfortable. At the other end of the table, Aerys bursts into laughter.

“My husband’s coffin was only just taken today,” Daenys says.

Qayan lets his eyes wander to the decidedly bright scarlet woven into her outfit. “I have always heard Dondarrions recover quickly.”

“About as quickly as the Ullers like to set fires.”

Qayan’s face splits into a grin. He has lines around the corners of his eyes that remind her of Baelor’s. Aerys is still laughing, and even Brynden deigns to sit back with a dry smile. Daenys gets the feeling she has done something successful. She is not sure exactly what, but she chuckles too, so she might pretend she is as worldly as these adult men. Only Maekar continues to look surly. Her uncle never has been able to hide his true feelings.

“Cousin.” Aelora pipes up from the opposite end of the table, holding out a dish of cod cakes.

Another silence falls. To her left, Aelor is staring fixedly at his plate. Manfred takes the dish when Aelora’s arms begin to tremble from the weight. Daenys twitches her mouth in her cousin’s direction with a quiet thank you. She has not allowed herself to think of the note, or their little ‘gift.’ Nor has she let herself think too much about what Shiera said. Of being five years old and –

If she does not forgive them, nothing good will come of it. They are family. And they are sorry. Most people who do bad things aren’t even sorry for it. Aelora’s eyes squint like a cat’s as she beams back, and then she rubs her brother’s shoulder as if to say see?

Daenys’s stomach twists into a knot. It makes her miss Valarr. She misses rubbing her nose into his shoulder, kissing his ear, smelling the soft sweetness of his skin. His skin always smelled good. She didn’t know how or why, it just did. Valarr would laugh and say she was mad, and that she was only imagining it.

Her Aunt Alys has been kinder to her in recent days. She came to Daenys as she helped to embalm her husband’s corpse and begged her forgiveness for her harsh words in the Queen’s Ballroom. That the twins had told her what happened but did not understand what they had done was wrong. Daenys had had no choice but to forgive Alys too. Every apology she has ever accepted has been one she has felt cornered into. This was no different.

At least she is no longer at the receiving end of Alys’s dry scoffs. Aelinor is keeping her attention carefully diverted to one of her Penrose cousins. Her brief friendliness towards Daenys has cooled. This is whom you wanted as my queen?  No one has yet mentioned nor discussed Aerys’s outburst.Best not to, really. 

“Have the pomegranates, Dany. They’re wonderful.”

Manfred “gallantly” breaks one open for her on a small plate, and sets with it a delicate silver spoon. Daenys’s chest tightens. She looks up, just as Uncle Maekar looks away. Heat floods her cheeks. And to other places. She curls her toes inside her shoes and concentrates on listening to Brynden and Aerys talk of coronation logistics. The spoon is left abandoned. She picks at the seeds, one by one, pushing them between her lips with her finger. When she lets her index flatten over her tongue, she can feel him watching her again. But she doesn’t look up this time. It will be unbearable. She will think of –

Daenys grinds her teeth into a seed, and it bursts like blood over the enamel.

In her mind’s eye, she is leaping across the table like an animal unchained. The dishes go flying. His chair topples back. She exhibits lust in the safety of her imagination because she is too nervous to be so aggressive outside of it. She feeds her uncle pomegranate seeds off her tongue. She licks his face, every inch of it, like some crazed tigress. And then she tears open his breeches and rides his cock until her insides are bruised.

Stop.

She exhales low and soft. Arousal quickens so fast, the rush of blood between her legs is painful. Daenys shifts in her seat and spears open a cod cake. Her pointy ears – Baelor’s pointy ears – are bright red. When she takes another peek at her uncle after an appropriate length of time, she thinks she sees the barest twitch of a smile under his beard. She can’t be sure.

Dinner goes by in a blur. The twins leave first, scuttling across the floor like blue beetles. Aelor glances over at Dany. When she looks up, he starts, as if touched by the bad end of a hot poker. Alys leaves soon after, with Aelinor, her Penrose relative and Clarisse and Qayan. Brynden and Aerys are the last to exit. Brynden’s hand briefly touches the back of Daenys’s hair as he passes her chair. She is making shapes out of her food, but her stomach is too knotted to force any of it inside. It is cold now anyway.

“Are you going to finish that?”

Uncle Maekar is still in his seat. He is leaning back, arms folded across his chest as the servants dart around, clearing plates as fast as they can. Daenys shakes her head, and he nods at the steward behind her to take it.

“Were you waiting for me?”

“I was waiting to see if your head would drop into the soup bowl. You seem riveted by it.”

Daenys smiles weakly. Maekar slides his chair back to get up.

“Uncle.”

He stops, a hand braced against the edge of the table. They stare at each other. The room is a diminished blur around them. Less servants now, but still, not entirely alone.

“Jaedurlion yne maghās se ābrazȳrys aōhys sagon ynot sahās.”

It comes out with a slight stutter in her powder-soft voice. Since father died, there has been no one to practice with. She went from evenings spent speaking only in High Valyrian, to her mind fogged by poppy milk, words floating here and there. But she knows enough to deliver a single line that the servants will not understand.

Uncle Maekar does not move. He doesn’t even blink. A statue, if a statue could be so impossible to look away from.

Her head tilts. “Have you forgotten your High Valyrian, kepus?”

His eyes narrow. “Don’t get smart, riña.”

“You were looking at me as if you did not understand.”

“I know what you said. What I cannot comprehend is why something so stupid would – “

“It is not stupid.”

“And what would happen – “ he stops, sealing his words behind a muted exhale as a servant reaches across to take the fruit platter between them. He leans forward again, brow gathered. “- if I kidnapped a girl whose father I killed, and then married her?”

“Tisn’t kidnapping if I wish to go with you.”

“The rest of the realm would not see it that way.”

“Fuck the realm!”

“Language!”

Daenys is struck speechless for a moment. “I learned to curse from you!”

Maekar’s eyes roll so hard they turn white. “And is that all you learned?”

“Stubbornness is another.”

He gets up with a strong kick back of his chair, and she does the same. Maekar stops, eyeing her in warning. Do not rush after me. Daenys’s eyebrows lift. She is going to do precisely that. She will chase him and he will simply have to live with the ridicule of having to run from a stupid little girl.

He glances around and notices the room is empty, save for the guards now standing outside the doors. Something seems to readjust itself in his head. Maekar resumes his seat and Daenys slowly does the same. One victory at the very least.

His eyes linger on her hairline, and she detects a flicker of concern. “Your hair is turning silver.”

Daenys touches it absently. “Merely a streak. It is the same colour as the poppy milk. Perhaps it is a consequence.”

“I cannot take you, Dany.”

“If you leave me here, they will marry me off to another lord. And he will likely be older –“

“Gerold Lannister is not old.”

“I do not want to be the Lady of Casterly Rock. I do not want to be the lady of anything. You offered to take me to Summerhall once – “

“As my niece. As the older cousin to my children. Not as – “

“If you leave me here, I will die!” Her hand coils into a fist against the wood of the table. There is a manic glint in her eye and her jaw trembles.

But she has never felt steadier in her life, or surer of anything.

Maekar’s voice dips low, and she is reminded that her uncle can be a very frightening man. “You mean to blackmail me?”

Daenys shakes her head violently. “No. I am just stating a truth.”

“You are stating a truth to manipulate me into granting your wish. You’ve learnt more from Brynden.”

“Uncle, had I known how everything would turn out, I would have asked to marry Aerion before mother ever decided on Vaemond Velaryon. It might have changed the course of all our fortunes. I would never have had to leave my family.”

It is not said lightly. Maekar knows this. He knows something of how Aerion has tormented her during their shared childhood. The things he whispered in her ear. The way he would grab her and threaten her with the promise of being her husband. Maekar had wiped the blood from her grandmother’s balcony steps after Aerion goaded her into trying to hatch an egg. Everyone thought she and Aerion were destined. But it was a nasty chain that bound them to each other, and Jena had worked harder than anyone to ensure it would never strangle her daughter.

Daenys taps her fingers in little circles. It helps to keep her emotions somewhat level. “The only thing I learned from Brynden is that he means to keep our family in power. And to him that means he must loom over us all to ensure his control. He usurped me, not because I am ‘mad,’ but because when he asked, I told him I wanted you for my Hand. Not him.”

This manages to Maekar by surprise at least. His scowl begins to fade. It would offend her if she didn’t know better; that he would doubt her loyalty to him. In the absence of all others, Brynden is family. But with all the Targaryens in one place, it will always be Uncle Maekar, Rhaegel and Aerys over Brynden. Even if she knows Maekar could easily induce her to hate him as much as she loves him. The qualities in him that existed before his soul-altering mistake will not so easily leave him after it. The steel is hardened. At his age, people rarely submit to being smelted down and reformed.

“Why did you choose me?” he asks quietly. “He would have made you queen.”

She gets up, stumbling a little as her skirts get underfoot. Then, she wanders around the table and comes to kneel by his chair. Maekar tries to make her stand, but she hugs his leg to her chest and sets her cheek against his thigh. It makes her head feel better, emptier. A soft kiss pressed to his breeches, which turns into a gentle suckling. It helps soothe her. His muscles are tensed like a rock against her. Daenys blinks up at him with glassy eyes.

“You would not think of power and the realm before you thought of me, Uncle,” she murmurs. “Not like he would. I did not want to be under his foot. I want – ”

I want to be under yours.

But that sounds strange to say. Even Helaena would agree, and she is the strangest, sweetest soul Daenys has ever met.

Maekar looks as if the weight of her head is causing him pain. It couldn’t possibly. His fingers ghost over her hair. “Daenys, get up. Someone might walk in.”

She digs her chin into his thigh, right over the wet patch left by her saliva. Her eyes are amber in the muted light. “Please, kepus. Marry me and take me with you so that I will not be used for a bartering chip again. I will be as one of your children!  Your little girl! You may command me as you do them. I know that you – “

The words catch in her throat. She is afraid to speak it, but she must. She has seen them.

The last night she’d spent in the old king’s bedchamber, Maekar forsook his seat by the armchair and had climbed into the far side of the bed while she was asleep. Far enough from her so that not even turning in the night would have had them brush against each other.

Before she’d slept, they’d kissed, the taste of pomegranates still ripe in her mouth. His hand engulfed the side of her head, resting under her jaw, braced around her neck, keeping her anchored. Great, hungry, swallowing kisses that made the insides of her thighs sticky. She drank the spit from his mouth and moaned as if he were paying her coin to express her pleasure. She had wanted him between her legs after. She had pleaded, but he would not. Even when she cried, and tried to pull his hand down there in her poppy milk delirium, he had laid her on the bed and refused to let her have him. In that moment, if he had only fucked her, proved his wanting, she would have felt safety for the first time in months. Even if he thought it wrong, he would overcome it to prove his love for her sake.  

But then Maester Ambrose had entered a few minutes later and finished her off with another dose.

When she awoke in the middle of the night and found him in the bed, she was too tired to try and convince him again. She’d stared at the back of his neck, the whorl of silver hair set against pink. She brushed her fingers down his back, over the tunic. And she’d felt them.

“I know you hurt yourself.” Daenys shifts on her knees just a little so that she cannot feel the word alive etched into her own leg. “I felt them. Fresh wounds. You hurt yourself just like – “

Just like I do.

It was the first time she had truly felt they were of one blood.

Nothing about Uncle Maekar is similar to how she navigates the world. She is not powerfully built, nor sharp-tongued (and able to get away with it) nor has she fought battles and travelled as he has done. But when she felt his self-inflicted wounds, such tenderness came over her that she’d cried herself to sleep.

Maekar refuses to look down. He is glaring instead at the window. His strong profile is perfectly glazed against the buttermilk light of the candelabra. His fist is balled against his other knee.

“Uncle,” Daenys coaxes, kissing his thigh again. “If it was for my sake – even if it was not – please do not hurt yourself. Father would not want you to hurt yourself.”

She can feel the drawbridge lifting. He is closing himself off to her. We have nothing to talk about. The vastness between them, the years. They are all amounting to this – her inability to fathom how her uncle can hurt himself. It frightens her to think of him feeling as powerless as she does when she turns the blade on her own skin. There are only a few truths she has grown up with, which would shake her to the foundations if proven wrong. One of them is that Uncle Maekar is her father’s strongest brother. He is her strongest uncle. He always has been.

“Please, Uncle.” Her forehead presses to his thigh. “Take me with you. I will not try to supplant my lady aunt and mother her children. I will not take her place. I swear you will not hear from me until you wish to. If you hurt yourself because of – because of me – what we – I will never try to crawl into your bed again. I promise I will not, kepus, but you cannot leave me here! You cannot leave me alone!“

She told herself she would not cry. That for once, she will not be the weak creature she sees in the mirror. The creature her mother would dislike. But the fear and panic is greater than her courage. She sobs into his leg, moments from decrying herself as a baby. A stupid, wretched, weak baby. Something helpless, so that he will be forced to pick her up and take her. He never lifted her as a child. He did not so much as humour her attempts to grab his attention. This is her most desperate effort to have him make up for it.

Maekar gets out of his chair, and her hold on his leg is forcibly broken. His hands grip her biceps and drag her to her feet. He takes her face in his hands and wipes each bead of saltwater running down her cheek. Daenys hiccups miserably, huffing air through her chest in gulps. He clasps her face with one hand and uses the other to wipe under her eyes, at the corner of her mouth. The motions pacify her into silence. Until she is just staring at him, dazed.

“You cry too much,” he tells her. Daenys blinks to squeeze the last of her tears free. They tipple onto his fingers, and he puts one to his mouth to taste it. “No more, riñītsos.”

His thumb briefly rests over her bottom lip, and she fights not to suck it into her mouth. She meant it when she promised she would not try to crawl into his bed again. He hurts himself over it. It would destroy Baelor if he knew.

Maekar’s eyes briefly flicker over her shoulder, and he nods. A soft shuffle of footsteps approaches. Daenys is numb as she turns. To her surprise, it is a most unexpected face.

“Take your goodsister to her room,” Maekar tells Kiera.

The Tyroshi girl bows her head. She smiles kindly at Daenys and locks their arms together. “Come, Dany.”

Once they are out of the dining hall, some semblance of awareness returns to Daenys’s eyes. “You saw us?”

Kiera nods and squeezes her arm. “I returned for my ring. Which I have forgotten again it seems. But I stopped by the doors when I saw – well. I won’t speak of it to anyone. But I hope your uncle agrees.”

“To what?”

“To marriage. I am to leave to go to Summerhall with him. It worried me thinking of you here alone. The last thing I promised Valarr was that I would not. That you would always have a companion in me. I wish with all my heart you are to come with us, Daenys.”

She squeezes her arm again and pulls her goodsister close.

Chapter Text

tw // attempted sexual assault , underage sex

He had always been an angry little boy. 

But being that he was the fourth son of the crown prince, it was not taken as seriously as it might have if Baelor was the one with the quick temper. From the moment she leaned over his crib for the first time, it was his grandmother Yasiqa who cut to the quick of it. 

“Oh, he’s an angry one, isn’t he?” 

“Amma! He is just a babe!” Myriah laughed. 

“Yes…an angry babe. Ooh, look how he kicks at me. I am your grandmother, you little goblin. Show me some respect.”  

Maekar answered by releasing his bowels. Yasiqa laughed until her sides ached. It was only ever his grandmother who enjoyed his temper as he grew up.  

The egg they set in his cradle was green with silver streaks. He would later give it to his new born niece. He had no use for it. It would never hatch. Maekar had never laboured under any such delusion. Better to decide which Targaryen he wanted to pass it onto himself. Else he might die without warning and the decision would be made for him. 

He grew up dearly loved by both grandmothers. They could not have been greater opposites. It was Naerys who chose Maekar’s egg. He was the only grandchild she chose one for.  It was the same egg she had chosen for Daenerys’s twin who had died. 

Naerys was gentle to her own detriment. Her manner of speech, even towards the king, was always kind. Sometimes – and those were rare times indeed – Aegon was kind in his answer. Age had worn down both their defences a touch. But when Aemon the Dragonknight fell in defence of his brother, the king reverted his attitude towards his sickly queen. It was as if Aemon’s death left him unable to spread his anger out. Where once his younger siblings balanced it equally on their shoulders, the full weight now fell on her like a hammer. Aegon would kill Naerys with another babe less than a year after Aemon turned to ash on the funeral pyre. 

All these details became known to Maekar later. His mother was strict with the keeping of them. She was a wise woman. She knew their position was precarious, what with Aegon’s open preference towards Daemon. She did not want her sons to bear grudges towards their grandfather lest it ever show on their face at the wrong moment. Aegon would not forget even the smallest scowl. He certainly would not forgive. Myriah still heard him bring up incidents from Daeron’s childhood when the boy had seemingly run to Aemon faster than he ever did to Aegon. 

When she left for Dorne, Yasiqa was more dearly missed – for the plain fact she was willing to get into mischief with him – but Maekar appreciated the comfortable silences Naerys offered. She did not try to question him on his lessons, nor work out the progress he was making with his sword fighting, or his languages. Adults were strange with children that way. They could never just leave them alone. They always had to take the measure of them. 

“Why does my grandsire think Father is a bastard?” Maekar asked Naerys one day when he was six. He wasn’t entirely sure what bastard meant, but he knew it was not good. It made Daeron’s mouth pucker like a lemon.  

Naerys remained placid. She blinked her watery lilac eyes and smiled, running a hand over Maekar’s hair. “Because your grandsire wanted a war with Dorne. But your father opposed him.” 

“Is he a bastard?” 

“No. He is your grandsire’s trueborn son.” 

He liked that his grandmother did not lie to him if he asked her such a question. Everyone else would. Even Baelor told white lies to coddle Maekar. If Naerys did not wish to answer, she told him that. He preferred this to his own mother attempting to weave a sweeter story over a disgusting one. Most stories about his grandsire were disgusting.  

When he turned eight, he encountered the making of one firsthand. 

It was a wet afternoon. It had not rained in King’s Landing for many moons. The air was rich with petrichor, and the sky cracked with violet light followed by lusty gurgles of thunder. It was the kind of weather his septa used to love describing when she told him a scary tale. She was from the north. A very dramatic people. Maekar found the tales of men turning into direwolves ridiculous. The irony of being a Targaryen and holding this opinion was entirely lost on him. 

The windows of his mother’s solar were all open, for though it was raining heavily, it was warm, and Myriah loved the scent of damp earth wafting in from the plants in the courtyard outside. A little shrike plunged into a terracotta bath placed on the sill. It chirped merrily and tossed its wings in bliss.  

Maekar sat on his mother’s bed and scowled at it. The creature was freer than he ever would be. 

He’d had a truly rotten day in the training yard. Daemon, eager to show off, had not spared any of Daeron’s sons to prove his skill. Brynden was turning into quite the marksman with his bow. But Daemon had learned to wield a real sword when he was but seven. When he’d turned twelve, the king gifted him with Blackfyre. But he was not permitted to use the blade during training.  

He’d laid it out in pride of place on the stone steps, so that all his nephews could see, and then picked up a wooden sword with a curl of his lip. Maekar did not dislike Daemon. He was charming and full of wit and had a way of making his younger siblings and nephews feel utterly protected if they ever got into trouble. Many times, Daemon had taken the blame for things they had done. 

But something came over him when it came to fighting. It was the same look that glittered in King Aegon’s eye when he was bored and itching to ruin the temper of the room. Daemon stared down his nephews with that black look in his eye. And then he would beat them into submission and call it training.  

Maekar shifted on the bed. His bum cheeks were bruised and sore. Stupid fucking Daemon. He always made a point of beating Maekar the hardest. Rhaegel got no more than a gentle tap. It did not help that Maekar was no good with a sword. He wanted a mace, but he was not allowed. Too young to swing it effectively. He wasn’t too young for anything, not in his opinion. One could only be too weak, and no one would ever accuse Maekar of that. 

When the doors finally opened, he tripped off the bed and limped to the archway. It was his mother. He always hunted out his mother when he was certain she would be alone. It did not suit him to have others see him curl into her arms. He was eight. Much too old to be coddled.  

He opened his mouth to greet her. But then his grandsire followed her in.  

Maekar withdrew, quick as a shadow, and pressed himself flat behind her bedchamber door. He would not have been able to explain to himself why it was his first instinct. He was not afraid of his grandfather. Baelor became subdued around him, but Maekar was largely indifferent.  

“Daeron? My prince?” Myriah called, and Maekar heard the tremor in her voice. Politeness to mask her growing panic. “I did think he would have returned by now, Your Grace. Forgive me for misleading you. I will have come to you the moment he arrives.” 

Aegon gave her a look that made her shoulders tense. He grunted and dumped himself at the table. The chair screeched in protest under his bulk.  “I’ll wait. I wouldn’t want my precious trueborn traipsing all over the Keep after me.” 

“Right – well – I should – er – “ 

Aegon leaned back with a smile. There was enough charm in it to harken back to the days when he was young and far more handsome. “Sit, Myriah.” 

Maekar’s heartbeat juddered in the hollow of his throat. He did not like how his grandfather had commanded his mother to sit. Like she was some common serving wench. He was the king, he could command anyone. But his gooddaughter was the daughter of a sovereign ruler. She was not to be addressed so carelessly. 

“I thank you, Your Grace. But wine at this hour would only leave me – “ 

“You hold it well. I’ve watched you drink before. Have some.” 

“Truly, Your Grace, the children might be along soon and – “ 

“Drink the fucking wine, girl. Why do women insist on protesting? In the end you all give in. Drink. It’ll put you in a heartier mood for Daeron when he returns. The gods know that boy could do with some cheer.” 

Through the crack in the door, Maekar watched his mother’s shaking hand lift the cup to her lips. This was entirely unusual. Aegon never came to Daeron and Myriah’s solar. He never made a point of visiting any of his family. They all came to him, except for when he visited Naerys and broke down her doors to get to her. Maekar wanted desperately for him to leave. His whole body ached, and he wanted to be alone with his mother so she could comfort him. 

The king was staring at the young Dornishwoman the way a cat eyed a trapped mouse. Maekar did not recognise that stare. He was too young. But he would always remember thinking how beautiful his mother looked. A little drop of gold in her saffron silks, raven hair trussed in soft curls with white flowers woven through. His grandfather clearly thought the same thing. There was no sentence uttered to indicate the mood had changed. He patted his knee, and jerked his head, as if that was enough.  

Myriah went still. Her tongue flicked out nervously over her lip. Then she flew to her feet, and toppled her cup in the process. The wine dripped off the edge like blood. “I shall find out from the maids if the prince’s return is imminent – “ 

She rushed to the doors and swung them open. Two of the kingsguard stood outside. Maekar could not see them, but from the way Myriah stopped, he knew they were blocking her exit. Aegon grunted into his wine cup. A cruel smile curved against the metal.  

“They won’t leave until I do. And neither will you, little viper. Sit.” 

In 174 AC, the fleet Aegon built to send to Dorne and start an unprovoked war was destroyed by a storm. When accounts of Prince Daeron’s relief returned to his father’s ears, the rumour then began that the crown prince was Aemon’s bastard. The years of torment that followed for Naerys and her son were not enough for Aegon. He never truly got over the humiliation of his destroyed fleet. In his head, he would have been hailed as Daeron the Young Dragon, the man he had named his oldest son for. He’d ended up a debauched fool of a king. And the Dornish laughed from the safety of their sandy shores. 

Whenever Aegon looked at Myriah, he remembered that defeat. 

The king was fat and ungainly. But there was strength in his legs yet to carry the weight and when it came to darting after women, he was still quick. His gooddaughter was only a slender thing. When he pulled her into his arms, Myriah clamped a hand over her own mouth to keep from screaming. Even then, she thought of her family, the survival of her little ones. If someone heard her, news of it would reach Daeron, and she feared what would happen then. The kingsguard would murder the crown prince to protect their king. Her four sons, the oldest of whom was only twelve, would be left defenceless in the face of their grandsire’s hostility.  

Aegon threw her down over the table. Maekar watched in horror. Why was she not screaming? Why wasn’t she fighting back? His grandsire was half-monstrous over her. Bloated and whale-like, spit tacky in the corners of his pinched mouth, piggy eyes lost in the fleshy folds of his face. One of his fingers was equal to three of Maekar’s. They tore the laces open on the back of Myriah’s dress. His mother’s eyes were closed. She was quiet as a mouse.  

Maekar understood then that she was not going to fight back. She was going to let it happen. 

The young prince gripped the wooden hilt between his sweaty hands. 

All the lessons he had learned about controlling his temper vanished in a blink. He ran out from behind the door and charged the king with a boyish roar. It was a blur. His mother’s face showed signs of life at last. She tried to get up, her cheeks wet. Maekar rammed the blunt tip of the sword into his grandfather’s rotund stomach. He gripped it harder for the second stab and then a third, until he was screaming and stabbing and screaming and stabbing and screaming and stabbing. But the little sword did nothing save blister his own palms with the force. 

Myriah wailed for him to stop. She grabbed Maekar around the waist and gathered him to her. They fell back against the wall, mother and son, locked. Her youngest was red in the face and still yelling. Every curse word he could think of pelted off his tongue. All the words he had learned from Aegon himself. Myriah wept into his hair, kohl smudged into his silver strands. She saw death for them all. 

The kingsguard stormed in. But Aegon held up a pudgy hand, rings clacking. He stood tall, unaffected. It upset Maekar even more to see it. Aegon’s lips stretched into a grim smile.  

“A real dragon in the clutch. And here I thought they were all a lost cause.”  

Maekar hyperventilated, spittle blowing from his lip. Myriah hissed at him to look down, and when he did not, she covered his eyes. She kept apologising to the king. But he had no response for her. His interest had already waned. 

When they were finally left alone, his mother broke into hysterics.  

Maekar did not know how to comfort her. His brother would. When Baelor cupped her face in his small hands, Myriah always smiled. Maekar looked down at his own and grimaced at the blisters forming there. He sat still, feeling the tremors run through her body as she wept into the back of her fingers. Her dress was coming off her shoulders, and her hair was tangled from where Aegon had ripped at it. She cried until she could cry no more, and then she whispered that she must change and make herself presentable. His father was not to know. She swore Maekar to secrecy.  

Our lives depend on it, sweetling. Yours, your brothers, and your father’s. You must promise me. 

Maekar promised only so that she would cease sobbing. He hated it when women cried. It made him want to claw out the soft parts of his throat. Sometimes, he wondered if he just hated women and it had nothing to do with whether they were crying or not. But he loved Myriah and Shiera was two but awfully bright. He liked her well enough. 

The rest of his family believed it was Maekar’s fight against the pox that made him sullen. Only Myriah knew why. Maekar was never a glad child to begin with. Now it was difficult to get a smile out of him at all. 

He watched his mother carefully after that day. It became his favourite pastime. To watch. He watched his father, his brothers, his half-uncle Daemon. Whenever someone deviated from their usual behaviour, Maekar’s hackles raised. He prepared for the worst.  

He observed his grandsire closest of all. He watched him get fatter, sloppier with his choice in women. All shapes, sizes and colours, as if no single hole could sate the ever-growing pit inside his tumefied belly. There were even boys, young ones, dressed like girls for the king’s pleasure, with metallic blue lips and silver hair.  

Maekar did not know what exactly it was the king had been about to do with his mother. It was likely similar to what he did with all the girls and boys dressed as faeries. He made it his business to find out.  

One balmy night, he snuck out after Daemon and Ser Quentyn Ball, the master-at-arms. He’d heard them talking of it in the yard earlier. His uncle had just turned thirteen and Ser Quentyn was of the strong opinion that he should learn what it was to be a real man. Sanctioned by the king of course.  

There were boys and girls around Maekar’s age, silver-haired uncles and aunts, wandering through the Silk Street. Sons and daughters of whores, the collected progeny of a king. Maekar would have blended in even if he hadn’t put on a peasant’s hood. He kept the grubby little thing, for inscrutable reasons. It was the same hood he’d find Egg running around in many years into the future, jubilant, as if this inheritance from his father was everything he could have wanted. 

Maekar followed his half-uncle and Quentyn into a wealthy brothel situated higher up on the Silk Street. From here, the Red Keep was visible even through the fog. Small enough to wriggle past the guard, no one noticed Maekar dart in.  

The smell was overpowering. Incense, endless sticks of it, from Asshai and Lys and Pentos. No thought behind the mixed scents except to cover the smell of bodily functions underneath. Fluids and wine and vomit. He stuck to the walls of the establishment, with a sick feeling of wrongdoing in his stomach. He always felt it before his mother caught him in the act. 

Naked women and men danced by, ignorant to the little spy. He would return here when he was older, and it was deemed best that he know what to do on his wedding night before his little Lady Dayne arrived. It was the abundance of silver hair that marked the brothel as expensive. It was at every corner. Lyseni mostly, but some had the rough twang of Flea Bottom and the pale lashes of Old Valyria. Homegrown bastards. 

He peeled his eyes against the smoke and darkness until he saw the flash of silver hair at the far end. There were things happening around him Maekar did not wish to directly look at. Everyone sounded as if they were in pain. Daemon was disappearing behind a curtain. Quentyn saw him in and then had his cup replenished by the brothel owner. They clapped each other on the back and roared uproariously.  

Maekar snuck through the curtain as Quentyn’s back turned. The pair on the bed were distracted. Neither noticed the interloper.  

His uncle looked painfully young. In the training yard, Daemon was twice Maekar’s height and built powerful. He would loom over his nephews like an avenging god. But his naked limbs looked like willow stalks, and he was pale as funeral lilies. Pale as Queen Naerys. When the girl removed his breeches, he reached for them, as if he had changed his mind. But she kissed his hand with a well-practiced sigh of pleasure and praised him on the size of his cock. He did not look happy for it to be praised. And he did not stare at her the way Aegon stared at Myriah. He just looked young, eyes wide and wet. The woman had silver hair.  

Are you my sister? Daemon whispered.  

She shrugged like it didn’t matter and climbed on top of him. Daemon touched her hips with limp hands. It went on for about half a minute. And then his face scrunched up with the preparatory anguish of a sob. But it was not really a sob. He let out air in a rough exhale as the woman gyrated and teased him to look up. Tears leaked out over his pink cheeks, trickling into the hair at his temples. Tears like Myriah. She caught his hair in her hand and compared it to her own with a wild giggle. Daemon shoved her off, bony knees hitting the floor. He got dressed and darted wildly for the curtain.  

He almost tripped over Maekar. He didn’t ask why his nephew was there. He simply caught Maekar by the arm and dragged him to his feet.  

Where is Quentyn?  

I don’t know.  

They escaped the brothel together, with Daemon’s hand still squeezed around Maekar’s skinny arm. They did not talk on the walk back up to the Red Keep. Maekar thought of his mother. And then of Daemon. No two people were more unlike each other. But they were one and the same in his head. Her, pinned underneath the belly of the beast, trying not to scream so her sons would be spared. Daemon, trying not to scream so Quentyn would not hear him.  

Maekar scratched at his arm with increasing violence. One of his nails was sharper than the rest. It cut a red welt into his skin as he stepped across the threshold of the side gate. 

Go to your room, Daemon told him when they entered through one of the back passageways.  

Where are you going?  

To my room.  

They stared at each other, two slender boys with blackcurrant eyes. Maekar almost offered for Daemon to come to his mother’s solar. Myriah could comfort him the way she comforted Maekar. But then he would have to tell her where he was. She would be forced to bear the terrible knowledge that her son understood what he’d witnessed when Aegon came into her rooms. His mother was the strongest person he knew, but he felt that this would destroy her. 

Goodnight, he told Daemon and walked away. His uncle watched him go. He struck a lonely little silhouette under the moonlight.  

The rage grew steadier as he turned nine years of age.  

His grandmother died a few months after Aegon’s assault on Myriah. The king’s vitriol against his oldest son increased. With neither the queen nor the Dragonknight there to defend themselves, the rumours restarted. Daeron is a bastard. Daemon was growing stronger by the day, tall and broad-shouldered like Baelor, but Valyrian in look. No one else saw a crying boy when they saw him. They saw a young man, a prince, a king.  

Grandfather with his piggy eyes, and thin, ugly mouth and swollen carcass of a body. He was Old Valyria too. Maekar had never wished so desperately to be dark-haired like Baelor. 

Aegon still stared at Myriah openly when the family was forced to gather at feasts. Enough that Daeron noticed but put it down to his father’s usual lecherous ways. He knew better than to accuse without cause. Myriah ignored it so well she might have passed for oblivious. Maekar knew it was not so. Aegon would always make a point of glancing at his young grandson once he’d had his fill of raking Myriah with his eyes. As if it were a joke they were both in on. He’d wink at Maekar and slick his purple tongue out between his lips before taking a swig of his wine.  

Everyone said Maekar could not control his temper.  

But he controlled it remarkably well in those days. Almost too well. He would even smile back at his grandfather, dumb and bland. The way children were supposed to.  

“Why do you and father grin at each other?” Brynden asked him after one of the ‘family dinners.’ 

“Mind your business,” Maekar snapped back, because Brynden might be his uncle, but he was a year younger. And he was no good with a sword yet, not like Daemon. He could not hope to beat Maekar into submission. 

It was wrong to, but he looked down on Brynden for being a bastard. That part of it he could not deny even to himself. If the king meant to shame Daeron with the label, then Maekar would do the same to Aegon’s ill-begat.  

“I have bastards in every hair colour, save for red,” Aegon would guffaw across the dinner table. And then he’d turn to Baelor and fix him with that infamous porcine squint. “You, boy, shall we marry you off to a ginger? Make me some pretty great-grandchildren, eh? Hair kissed by dragonfire!” He bellowed with mirth, and no one else bellowed with him.  

Baelor stared quietly at his plate.  He did not blink or twitch a finger. Just stared, as if he were somewhere else in his mind. He did that often, Maekar noticed. Just left his body as if he was never there to begin with. He wished he knew how. Later, he would envy Daenys her ability to do the same. Her eyes glazed over like her father’s would and she was gone, light as a faerie. It never worked for Maekar. His soul was miserably anchored to his earthly form.  

Myriah would usually field the king’s ‘jests’ and encourage her sons to respond. But she was quietly staring at her plate too. Daeron’s eyes darted from his wife to his son, helpless. The change that had overcome his little family baffled him. He could not get to the root of it, but he could tell something was terribly wrong.  

It was Missy Blackwood who smoothed it over with a gentle jest. She suggested that perhaps Maekar should marry a redhead to match his fiery spirit. Aegon grunted in approval, the chair groaning under his corpulence.  

“I don’t want a ginger,” Maekar scowled.  

Myriah breathed in sharply. She still did not look up. Aegon, ever entertained by his grandson’s sourness, asked him what was wrong with gingers. Maekar shrugged and glowered at the table. There was nothing wrong with red hair. He’d never thought about it in any particular way. But he didn’t want to marry a woman with red hair because it would please Aegon to have little red-haired great-grandchildren. He decided then and there his wife would have any shade of hair but red.  

The eye he kept on his grandsire became keener as the months passed.  

Aegon was falling ill more often. Strains of pox that even the maesters could not get their heads around. The number of women streaming in and out of his room like a river of fish did not stop. Occasionally, even they were too overcome to serve him well. Some were escorted out, green with nausea, trying not to throw up onto their fine silks. The king’s hygiene amounted to silks and satins and perfumes to cover what was now a permanently bad smell tucked into the folds of his fat. Every wound that festered on his bedridden body added to the stench. 

But each strain of pox he caught, he recovered. Like a cockroach that had learned inexplicably how to flip itself off its back. The latest one had him prone for weeks. But his state neither improved nor worsened. The maesters kept at it. Lord Jon Hightower ruled the realm, and Daeron kept his peace, allowing Jon to believe his position was secure. While the king’s health was still in jeopardy, he did not wish to tip the boat.  

Maekar went to visit his grandsire. All the grandchildren were forced to. Since Daemon was devoted to the task, and Missy Blackwood was regularly escorting Brynden and Shiera to visit, it would have looked terrible had Daeron’s sons not done their duty. Maekar went once with Myriah and Aerys. But that was a short visit. He stared at his mother the whole time. She was as a living statue, her voice a thin whisper when she answered Aegon’s questions. As thin as Naerys’s used to be. He had a sudden vision of Myriah swathed in white veils, withdrawn into herself like her goodmother. Lost to the world. 

Maekar went to visit Aegon alone a few days later and sat by his grandsire’s bed to read to him from the Seven-Pointed Star. As he worked his way down the page, the king opened one eye.  

“Shut that damned book, boy. We both know you don’t believe a word of it.” 

Maekar frowned but did as he was told. “I believe it, grandsire. It would be blasphemy not to.” 

“This whole family is a fucking blasphemy,” Aegon muttered. “As if the Andal gods are going to do anything about it. Take it from me, boy. The only good thing the Andals ever did for this realm was breed like sheep. They’re meant to be ruled over. More of them, better for us. But gods are they a fucking plague…” 

A long, arduous expulsion of gas released itself from his body. And then he slowly sank into another stupor. Maekar closed the holy book and set it on the nightstand. One of the maesters had left behind his vial of poppy milk. The substance clouded up the glass. He lifted it, rotating it to catch the light. Liquified pearls. 

“Wine,” Aegon grunted.  

Maekar handed him the cup, helping to hold his head steady. He drank it in three greedy swallows. A quick wipe of his mouth and he sank back into the pillow so hard, the bed shook. His grandson set the cup back on the nightstand. He waited until his grandfather’s breathing turned shallow.  

And then he waited some more. 

When the maester returned for his vial later, he could not find it. He assumed that he had simply misplaced it elsewhere. But there was no time to think on it as the Grand Maester let out a frightened gasp where he stood hunched over the king. Aegon’s lips were blue. 

It has often been noted how similar the bells for a king’s death and a coronation are. 

One musical note bleeding into the next.  

Antiphony.  

It is the blue hour before dawn, cast with a sepulchral cold. The moon lingers low, reluctant to abandon her night’s watch. Behind her, the horizon bleeds violet and pink, a thin dribble of colour poured across the edge of the sea. 

This is the hill upon which they burned Jena Dondarrion’s body. It is the highest of its kind outside of the city. A single tree bows away from the wind whipping across the seafront. The flesh of its bark is silver, almost white, like the weirwoods of the North.  

Shiera chose the spot. My mother used to come here when she had me inside her belly. She wanted to come here the day she died giving birth to me. 

There are only a handful of them gathered. Kiera, Edric, Silla, Ser Roland and Shiera.  

It was her great-aunt that seeded the idea in Daenys’s head to have a Valyrian ceremony. She saw the sense in it. She had had an Andal ceremony under the eyes of the Seven with Vaemond. She did not want to think of him as she uttered those words again.  

Like dragon eggs, the children in their family are given a set of Valyrian robes when they reach maturity. It has no real meaning beyond obscure ancestral tradition. Without the dragons, none but the Targaryens care where they come from. The dyed wool of the robes is made in Asshai, Valyrian glyphs stitched into the gold detailing. Daenys chose the colour she wanted when she was fifteen, after her mother had been dead a year. Jena would have allowed them to be made, but she would not have let her wear them.  

This is the first time she has dared to.  

They are pale as freshly fallen snow; the base is dyed a deep red that soaks up the fabric as if she has walked across puddles of fresh blood. On her head is the diadem  her grandmother gifted her, ruby-studded gold. It drenches her in radiance.  

Shiera’s robes are sand-coloured, with the same creeping dye. Maekar is not wearing his. Daenys hasn't dared to ask if they are at Summerhall, or if he even kept them. According to Baelor, he even gave his dragon egg to Daenys. Her uncle only looks Valyrian – everything else he seems to have forsaken.  

She has not spoken to him much since the night she fell at his feet and woke in the morning to find a letter on the pillow beside her head. If she speaks too much, she fears he will come to his senses. Everything is fragile as a tightrope. Her uncle, the skittish hare. 

He was amenable to the idea of a Valyrian ceremony, only so that they would not have to bring in a septon. He did not trust any of the ones in the Red Keep, especially not Sefton Staunton. Daenys asked Shiera to officiate. Her great-aunt is well-versed in Old Valyrian tradition. And more importantly, she took great delight in the idea of keeping it a secret from Brynden. Nothing has delighted her in a long time as much as this.  

It provides the perfect cover. Shiera often comes to this hill before dawn. The servants in the Red Keep are accustomed to her comings and goings at ungodly hours. With her on these ‘outings’ are her usual group of quiet men and women, hauling along braziers and chests to pile into the wheelhouse that she then takes up the winding road. This is just another dawn for Shiera Seastar. She makes it known before she leaves that she means to cast spells towards a long life for Aerys I. 

The tree is strung with saffron scraps of fabric, each marked with a glyph. Runes upon runes of marital well-wishes. All made by Shiera herself, with such finesse, Daenys can only wonder at them. Perhaps there was a time when her great-aunt envisioned marrying Brynden Rivers after all. Or indeed, nursed the idea of marrying anyone. 

Her uncle rode out alone before the rest of them, Edric with him. Daenys was concealed inside Shiera’s wheelhouse, along with a similarly disguised Ser Roland, Silla and Kiera. She kept her mind empty of all thoughts. No faces, no names, just the rocking of the wheelhouse over the uneven road. 

She thought of cats, birds, lizard tongues, the morning dew, blue roses, bronze suns, glass slippers and torn parchment. She thought of Egg and missed him dearly. She refused to think of Dunk else her father would soon follow.  

Kiera and Silla did not speak much. They looked exhausted. Ser Roland watched Daenys the whole time. He had the hanged look of a man fighting with himself not to speak. She did not meet his eye for fear that he might and the enormity of it all would come crashing down upon her young head.  

As she got out of the wheelhouse, she thought it could only have been Shiera. Brynden would have murdered any septon they chose out of spite. Ser Roland had many brothers. He would not be so easily punished. The last time a kingsguard’s brothers had taken ire over the unjust killing of their sibling, Aemon Dragonknight lost his life.  

At least, she told herself that. To be safe, she had only told him a half hour before Shiera’s servants came to collect her. Roland could not be accused of conspiracy to commit treason. He is only following orders. As is Silla. Kiera is preserved by grace of her status. And of course, Shiera. Brynden would never hurt her.  

By the time she reached the hill, in sight of the white tree, Daenys had almost convinced herself everything would be fine. Bloodraven could have his reaction. They would be married. Nothing could pull her away from Maekar once this was done. Only death, if her great-uncle was bold enough to shove her towards it. 

She stands before Shiera and her uncle now, hands trembling inside her long sleeves. Maekar has not let his gaze linger upon her since the moment she arrived. His eyes glance off her as quickly as feet slipping on ice. He cuts a powerful silhouette against the burning flame of the braziers. The jet-black cloak whips around his legs, silver hair undone by the wind whenever he reaches to tame it back. His mouth is set into a grim line. But his voice is strangely soft when he utters the vow, like he is caught in a half-dream. 

As are his hands when he brings the dragonglass to her bottom lip. Daenys finally meets his eyes. Maekar’s fingers halt, a tremor that he quickly restrains. He slides the dragonglass down until her flesh gives way. Her first instinct is to suck on the blood. But he presses her lip to his thumb, and she ends up sucking on it a little instead.  

He brings the blood to her head, marking the glyph. Daenys’s hand is shaking much harder. It is cold, and she is exhausted. The dragonglass won’t steady in her grip. In the end, Maekar is forced to cover her hand with his own and help her cut open his lip. Like teaching a child how to write. Daenys focuses on breathing as she draws the glyph on his forehead. The blood drips down his chin into the white of his beard. It is a lovely stain. 

The slice over her own palm is practiced. It is her uncle she does not wish to cut open. There is no hesitation with herself. They clasp their cut palms together, and Shiera binds them with a deft flick of her wrists. A glassy smile sweetens her coral mouth. She is the only person who looks sublimely happy to be here. 

“Hen lantoti ānogar, va sȳndroti vāedroma -” 

Her great-aunt holds the goblet of dragonglass under their conjoined hands. Daenys stares at Maekar’s fingers until her vision blurs. They are pink and chapped with cold. She wants to heat them up with her mouth. Keep him tucked inside her until his veins flow warm again. Their blood drips into the wine and she wonders what he is thinking about. Whether he has thought about Dyanna during the night, and how many times. Whether he believes in the sanctity of this ceremony at all. If he is thinking about Baelor.  

Oh, but he is always thinking about Baelor.  

“Drink, pet,” Shiera whispers, and hands her the goblet. “Mēro perzot gīhoti, elēdroma iārza sīr, Izulī ampā perzī.” 

Daenys takes a sip, and shudders at the first revolt of her body towards drinking the unusual concoction. The wine sweetens it only a little. The rich iron rushes through her skull like the first cloying breath of winter air. But it is not her blood alone. It is Maekar’s, stronger, thicker. She takes another sip, and then another, suddenly greedy for it.  

“Sweetling, leave some for your uncle,” Shiera giggles, and takes the goblet before Daenys can drain it.  

Maekar finishes what’s left of the cup. The wet gash of his mouth gleams crimson in the firelit darkness. Daenys is reminded of her dream. The gaping hole in Brynden’s head. Red as moonblood. The colour of the woman’s dress. The velvet ribbons in her hair. 

“ - sȳndroro ōñō jēdo, rȳ kīvia mazvestraksi.” Shiera draws in a deep breath of air and clasps her hands before her.  

The pause is expectant. Daenys blinks at her in confusion. Maekar tilts her chin towards him. She is reminded of the kiss to seal the pact, the same in both the Andal and Valyrian traditions. It embarrasses and frightens her all of a sudden. She has never kissed her uncle in front of others. She stands rigid as he dips his head and closes his mouth over hers. It is a brief kiss, but it is intimate, and she tastes his spit under the stickiness of their combined blood. Her legs quiver like plucked harp strings under the wool of her skirts. Were it not for her hand still bound to his, she might have sunk to the ground. 

Shiera unwraps their hands and pulls them free from each other.  

Then, she draws Daenys into an embrace, whispering a prayer of blessing in her ear. Kiera does the same and presses a kiss to Daenys’s temple. There is a distinct feeling that there should be more people. More well-wishers, the mouths of a hundred women to bless her and bring her under the canopy of a second marriage, better luck this time.  

The first rays of the sun breach the boundary of the sky, and the bells begin to ring. They will toll at spaced intervals for the rest of the day. Only ever upon a king’s death, or a king’s coronation do they ring with such a grand cadence.  

“We must return,” Shiera tells her, “There will be a suitable time to break the news to your Uncle Brynden but today is not that day. Come, Dany.” 

“Yes - I am coming - “ Daenys hesitates as Ser Roland reaches out expectantly, waiting to steady her down the steep path back to the wheelhouse.  

But the princess is staring at her uncle. Maekar is standing under the tree with his back to all of them. Edric is at a distance. Whatever he can see on his master’s face cannot be good; his brow is furrowed. Daenys jerks across the grass in an unsteady motion. She wants to run to him, the way she never dared to when she was young. He is her frightening uncle again, unsmiling and stern, and there isn’t a drop of comfort to be had from his rough hands.  

But I am married to him.  

It sounds alien even just in her head. 

She had wept and convulsed, and he’d agreed to marry her. He had pacified a baby that would not stop crying. The drawbridge is still tightly pulled up. Daenys does not know her uncle the way he knows her. He has been there for the entirety of her life. She has only been there for half of his, and for most of it, as an unknowing child. She has Baelor’s blood, but none of his knowledge. Maekar’s back is inscrutable to her, his emotions unreadable.  

And yet she continues walking to him.  

It is Shiera that stops her.  

“We must return, sweetling.” Her eyes flicker towards Maekar, and there is a forced brightness to her smile that makes Daenys’s heart sink. It is always the smile she is given before someone lies to her. “There will be time for that later. You are his and he is yours. But there is a coronation ahead, and you are a princess of the realm. We must go. Come. Come, Daenys.” 

Chapter Text

Uncle. Uncle. Uncle. Uncle.

Uncle. Uncle. Uncle.

Uncle. Uncle.

Uncle.

She still cannot call him ‘Maekar’ not even in her own head. It makes her stomach churn with unease. He will be upset with her, of course, but when is he ever not? Even when his expression is replete with a neutered gentleness – something you might offer a puppy or a kitten that is harmlessly disobedient – Daenys can taste his disapproval, for himself, for her, the situation, everything. Maekar is never pleased by anything.

It would be a great deal more upsetting to someone with a weaker constitution. But since her mother first forced her to kneel on uncooked black rice for penance, Daenys’s desire to temper a difficult spirit with her obedience has run strong. At broken intervals she will recall that Maekar has murdered her father, and it is as if her head has resurfaced from icy water. She gulps down air, and dives back in, where the dull fog of the present bids her to forget.

The poppy milk has made her a master of forgetfulness.

When she enters the antechamber behind the Great Hall, Brynden grabs her by the head and brings it to his nose whereupon he sniffs deep and hard. Daenys giggles nervously, squirming to get away. His grip is relentless.

“You smell of her,” he murmurs, and then peers back to squint at his great-niece's countenance. She has wiped the blood from her forehead, but the look in his eye makes her half-afraid he will lean in and kiss her to discover it is still metallic inside her mouth.

"Yes, she was with me.” Shiera appears behind her, no longer in her Valyrian robes but in an ephemeral swirl of turquoise and pale lilacs, a lake flower in full bloom. “Is that alright with you, brother?”

Her arms come around Daenys from behind, and she tilts her chin up, mismatched eyes aglitter. Brynden keeps his hand cupped against his great-niece's hair. He leans in, and they pluck at each other next to Daenys’s ear, sweet little pecked kisses passed between their mouths like love notes. It is only when Brynden’s hair tickles her face to the point of sneezes that Daenys ducks down to escape.

Brynden will discover the truth soon enough. Something awful may happen, or perhaps he will see sense and decide he has enough power in his grasp that he does not need Daenys to secure it with a great house.

The world is soaked in the rainbow iridescence of a soap bubble.

Whatever she’d felt seeing Maekar turn his back to her is tucked away deep. Every pair of eyes she meets, even the ones who peer at her with a curiosity that oversteps bounds – wondering, perhaps, how she feels attending a coronation that should rightly have been hers if not for tales of ‘madness’ fanned across the realm – do nothing to dampen the buzz. She is married, unbeknownst to all. Lords measuring her with their eyes, deciding which of their houses she might end up in, eager to take her and earn favour with the King and his new Hand.

But I am already gone from this place.

She is not theirs, she will never be theirs. No man with resentment towards her family name will ever punish her with his affections again. She belongs to someone who will not force her to hate her father’s blood to be loved by him. His love comes without condition. Whether she is with him or without him, Maekar has always loved her, and will always love her. He is her family, her beating heart, her father’s womb mate.

There is freedom in winding this truth in her head. It transgresses every limit of her mother’s religious education. Daenys has not prayed in several days, which is the longest she has gone without doing so. The urge will come to her when she is left hollow again, but at this present moment, it is as if she will never want for anything again.

What a wonderfully twisted feeling!

The coronation itself is a sickly affair.

Aerys does not make for a very striking king. Aelinor is beautiful at his side, but there is a tangible sense that something is wrong in the way the light strikes them both at a skewed angle. Daenys’s uncle has been given the ‘honour’ of crowning Aerys. Perhaps it is Brynden’s way to twist the knife over Maekar’s reaction to being shunned for the position of Hand.

He looms over his slight brother like the Warrior himself. If it were a painting, it would look like a king crowning his queen; Aerys is pretty as a woman even with the soft tufty beard he has managed to grow in recent days. Maekar lowers the crown, and as he does, his eyes flicker to Brynden, the wick of his mouth twisting up.

I know something you do not.

His uncle grins, oblivious, for once.

Maekar sets the crown on Aerys’s white-gold head.

The hall of courtiers erupts in a fervent hail of long may he reign! Hundreds of pairs of hands collide until the thunder of collective adulation fills all four corners of the vaulted ceiling.

Even Daenys is clapping, eyes bright as stars.

It is noted – quite regularly over the course of the celebration – as to what good spirits the princess is in. Considering her husband has just died, it is quite startling. Those who know some of the truth tut sympathetically and wonder at Maester Ambrose’s skill to have mixed a dose that had dispelled her bad humours with such success. When it comes time for dancing, she whirls around with twice the joy of everyone else. Lyonel Baratheon is her favourite partner, the pair of them with linked arms, as if they are the only satyr and nymph in the forest who have ever had the idea to dance.

Brynden has Ambrose summoned. “What did you give her?”

“The usual dose, my lo – Your Grace.” Ambrose stutters over the change in title, but Lord Rivers is indifferent to the mistake. The maester is as baffled as the rest of them and is praying against all hope that he has not turned the little princess into one of his failed experiments. What hells would break upon his head if something happened.

Brynden has his eyes trained on his great-niece, his head tilted like a hunting owl. She dances with her Uncle Aerys, who manages to break into the smallest of smiles to acknowledge her happy spirits.  The crown of red-gold belonged to his grandsire Aegon, and it weighs upon his head, but every so often, he flexes himself straight and touches his midriff with a quiet exhale. Aelinor watches her husband dance with his niece over the shoulder of one of her male cousins. Her mouth sours.

Daenys is oblivious to her aunt’s growing bad temper.

She is rid of her snow-white wimple, something she has taken to wearing in the fashion of her great-grandmother Naerys. It helps her feel secure somehow. But today, moonstones shine in her hair, and the dress Shiera chose creates the impression of a freshly plucked lilac; the colours of her mother’s house but softened. Not even the silver streak growing at her right temple withers the overall effect.

Eyes follow her, entranced. Gerold Lannister, with his reported long-standing affection for Rohanne Webber, is rapt as the princess twirls past him. He asks her for a dance, but Prince Rhaegel interrupts, delighted by his niece’s joy – it has been a long time since he has seen Dany be joyous – and wishing to have a part in it.

They spin around, hand in hand, like children playing after being freshly freed from their school lessons. Rhaegel cannot stop laughing. Maester Tommen is afraid he might throw up from all the excitement, but the prince is remarkably lucid. He brings Daenys close and kisses her forehead when the song ends and begs her to always remain as she is, his happy little sprite.

“Our niece looks remarkably well,” is Aerys’s dry remark to his wife, if only to test the waters of Aelinor’s bad mood.

The new queen recovers with impressive ease. “She does, Your Grace. What a wonderful little wife she will make to our lucky Lord Lannister.”

Aerys’s smile is hidden into his wine. It appears that despite the lack of sharing a bed, he still enjoys his wife’s jealousy immensely. The belt around his waist digs into his flesh with its wicked sharp teeth when he shifts. He thinks perhaps he might remove it tonight.

It is when Gerold Lannister finally sets down his cup with a determined look towards the princess, that Maekar storms onto the dancefloor and takes Daenys by the elbow.

“Enough.”

“But I want to dance – “

“I said, enough.”

He tugs her towards the Targaryen table, off to the right, where they are suitably concealed from the madding crowd. And now that he has the chance, he peers at her with that truly dark frown that strikes terror into the hearts of lesser men.

“Are you drunk?”

Daenys shakes her head. She is, in fact, drunk. She had assumed it would help her not look so uptight if Brynden asked her any difficult questions, but had not factored in how it might mix with the effects of poppy milk, a dose of which had been stronger than usual this morning when Ambrose brought it in. It seems Bloodraven felt a coronation might be too much emotion for his great-niece to handle.

“Did you drink, Dany?” Maekar asks her again, and she gives in with a small nod.

“A little – “

“And Ambrose gave you that damned potion – seven hells – “

Daenys hovers, her arm still awkwardly caught in her uncle’s grip. She observes the room with a detached placidity that flows through her like Arbor Red. She very much wants more of it, but worries over her uncle’s – no, her husband’s – reaction to such marked disobedience.

“I wish to dance again, uncle.”

“Not bloody likely.”

“Why not?”

“Because Lord Hightower is eyeing you like a rabbit sprung from its trap.”

“Lord Hightower? I think it was Gerold Lannister. Anyhow, you may come and dance with me if you choose, but I will dance.”

Maekar fixes her with a stare she has only ever seen him give to Aerion when he is being especially mutinous. But she has enough wine in her stomach to not care. Mixed in with it is Maekar’s blood, mingled with her own, that she had supped just before dawn on the cliff. It gives her his brazen courage.

Daenys flashes her teeth in a tiger grin, and darts by him. He is too slow to catch her, only because he is not expecting her to do it quite so suddenly. Gerold Lannister captures her hand as she passes by, and the boldness of it pulls a shocked laugh from her lips. His handsome face warms and he asks for her permission. It is granted immediately.

“They look happy,” Shiera comments at Brynden’s side, where she has managed to coerce him into a dance.

He sways with her, eyes searching out Daenys’s fire-kissed head. “She likes Lannister.”

“Does she?”

“By the look of it.”

“Perhaps.”

“What? What is that smile for?”

“Nothing.”

“No matter. I will pull it from you later.”

“I know. I enjoy your interrogations, brother.”

The festivities carry on and they are loathsome.

Without any regard for inequity, the nobles run riot in the halls of the Red Keep. The Dragon Pit glows a steady green, corpses fed to it like coals. Every window in the fortress is alight with gold dust cheer. The poorest will look up towards the king’s abode tonight and wonder what mistake they had unknowingly committed for the gods to arrange the course of their lives thusly.

Maekar leaves the party early, but then he is hardly expected to stay.

He has never been the life of any room he has walked into. That was Dyanna’s burden. People would ask after Prince Maekar, simply in the hopes that he would bring his wife with him. It never bothered him. He had a woman no one thought he deserved. The spite it brought out in him forced her to suffer ever-increasing pleasures in the privacy of their bedchamber.

He thinks of his niece with her red hair cast about her like streaks of flame. All the eyes watching her dance, lusting. Much too young for him, and much too beautiful. No one in that room would have looked at Daenys, and then at Maekar, and not felt their stomach twist with revulsion.

Horrifying, really, for a little girl to be so abandoned in life that she must crawl on wounded hands and knees to her father’s killer. He scratches at his thigh where he can still feel the bleed of sobbing mouth.

You cannot leave me here, kepus! You cannot leave me alone!

Lyonel Baratheon’s laughter echoes up towards his window. Wherever that man goes, trouble follows. A walking bad omen. Miserable fucking castle too. Dick’s End, he and Baelor used to call it, for its impressive shape, and in honour of the Baratheons who lived there. Mother overhead them once and smacked their heads in perfect unison.

A timid knock on the door goes ignored. It happens a second time, louder, and Maekar grunts. The maid enters, weighed down by a wooden bucket. All the servants are especially dainty with their knocks. He has never been unkind to any of them – not that he remembers at least – and yet they tiptoe around him like little mice.

He goes back to the window. But she is not being quiet enough to ignore. When the bucket is set down with exceeding harshness, he turns. Her hair is hidden entirely under the sand-coloured servant’s coif. The red kirtle is badly laced. Maekar’s eyes narrow, following her scurried movements towards the shadowed corners of the room.

When she is forced to go by him, he snatches her arm and she lets out a shocked cry.

“Dany?”

Up turns that cheeky little face. “That was quick.”

Maekar stares down at the ridiculousness of her attire. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“A little. I would say.” She stumbles against the table and catches herself just in time. Less his taciturn niece, and more a wine-drunk sprite that has stolen her place. “Oh dear.” Giggles burst out of her like daisies on a chain.

Maekar has not heard her make such a sound in quite some time.

“You should not have come here.”

“It is our wedding night.”

“Yes, it is. But you know the situation – “

“I do, but – “

“Do not argue with me, Dany.”

He takes her by the arm, meaning to walk her back to her room, even if the urge inside him calls for something entirely different now that she is here. The evening spent watching her dance has had its effect.

But for once, she decides not to be predictable little Daenys and slackens her body to dead weight.

“No, I will not leave! Lyonel Baratheon was hunting me down to play a game of cards with him, but then Lord Selmy suggested that since we have houses from almost every kingdom, we might play a game of tag instead! Lyonel says – he says – I am a Dondarrion and therefore I belong to them. But they have enough nobles from every kingdom, but hardly anyone from Dorne. So, of course, I volunteered to be a representative of Dorne for my lady grandmother - but oh no, cousin Manfred won’t have that – and then Qayan Uller demanded that I should play for Dorne, being that it would only be him and Lady Clarisse otherwise – which did not please Lord Lyonel and they began to have words and I slipped away before it got rowdy – and so if I return to my chambers now, they will come and find me and play that game of tag after all, and Uncle, my legs ache from dancing, I do not think I can do anymore. Please, please, please – “

Daenys takes a deep breath and holds it, cheeks puffed up like an obnoxious squirrel.

Maekar is speechless.

His niece breaks into a blush. She looks so much like Baelor in that moment it leaves him winded. The same oddly bashful flutter of the lashes, and the slight squint about the eyes as she debates her next move.

“I know I said I would not attempt to crawl into your bed again,” she says.

Maekar lets her go and returns to the window. Down in the courtyard, two young noblewomen chase each other around, until a young lord in green jumps from behind a tree and the pair shriek like hens.

“And I will not, after tonight. But the marriage is not consummated. It isn’t done proper– un-until it is. I do not want to it to be annulled so easily.” She wrings her hands when her uncle refuses to be distracted from the shenanigans outside. “I will go.”

“Stop,” he murmurs, without turning around.

She is already retying her coif to hide the trace of auburn hair. She would still never be mistaken for a Tully or a Hightower. It is some ill-bred rabidity found in Targaryens that burns bright across her face.

The door opens a crack before Maekar’s palm hits the wood and it thuds shut again. Daenys eyes flick up, and then away, baleful. She seems the very picture of a spoiled little princess then. He buries a sigh and wags his eyebrows in the general direction of the reception chamber. Daenys beams and hurries away.

Maekar opens the door to a glimpse of Ser Roland’s white cloak. “You stand out here at the risk of being seen.”

Roland bows his head. “I could not allow the princess to walk here alone. Not in her – the clothes she chose, my prince.”

No, he imagines not. The prettiest of the maids in the castle will know better than to wander the corridors alone tonight, with drunken lords waiting to leap from every shadow. Maekar stifles a sigh and dismisses Roland.

“I will return her myself.”

The man looks as if he might argue. His eyes are very wide, and very blue, and Maekar remembers them looking the same way at Ashford when Aerion had made some offhanded remark about kingsguard training these days. Maekar has less patience than his son to quibble over the obvious dislike Roland bears him.

He makes sure to slam the door harder than necessary.

Daenys is kneeling before the fire. She looks dazed, and he is suddenly thrown back to watching her do the same thing at the age of five, with Brynden’s arm around her. It unnerves him. He taps gently on her skull to pull her from the reverie. She blinks up with unseeing eyes, until the flames dancing in their depths fade to a pool of honey-gold. Her hand pats the bear rug for him to sit beside her.

Maekar removes his cloak and obliges, stretching himself out with his arms behind his head. A deep groan of exhaustion rolls from his chest. His eyes droop closed.

“You have been awfully chipper all day for a girl who should have been queen.”

“How kind of you, kepus.”

Maekar’s lips twitch. “Do not flatter yourself. I would choose anyone over Aerys.”

“I am positive you would not.”

“I would.”

“Brynden?”

“Eurgh.”

She pulls at the laces of her kirtle, renting it free of her body until only the chemise is left and she can breathe again. “I do not know how the maids run around all day in this uniform. I must speak to Her Grace about having it changed.”

“She does not like you very much right now.”

“I will try to charm her.”

“Then you might try to look less like your mother.”

“I can hardly help that. As to your – your legs are on my skirt, Uncle – as to your quarrel with Brynden, you must have derived a certain satisfaction from the trickery.”

“What satisfaction?”

“I saw you glance at him when you lowered the crown.”

Maekar bites back a grin. That had felt good. He had almost feared he would end up half-erect before the entire court. A coronation gift for Aerys. Here’s the crown, and your little brother’s cock in your face.

Brynden gets the pin of the Hand and Maekar gets Daenys. The loose ends of the bloodlines might have so neatly tied up were Aelinor set aside and Baelor’s daughter forced to marry Aerys. It cannot happen now. Not without much upset.

He opens his eyes to find her staring at him.

This little girl hasn’t the faintest inkling of how deep his grudge with Brynden goes. She is lost, wandering from beacon to beacon. His brother has made the perfect creature, this droplet of blood, and abandoned her. Just as he abandoned Maekar – the baby brother he once called perfect – when he rode his horse to the other end of Ashford Meadow. Maekar does not think he will ever forget the feeling of watching him do it. It will live forever in his chest where he pulls it out occasionally to feel the skewering pain again.

There is a word to describe a child left without parents; it rolls crisp off the tongue, the weight of it irrefutable. But there is none for a little brother left behind by the elder. No syllable clean enough to girdle the terror of that grief.

Daenys’s face is aflame with the ruddy glow of the hearth. Maekar follows her gaze, to where the fire tosses up little embers. He sees nothing. But she is rapt.

“What is it?” he murmurs.

What do you see? He used to regret asking Daeron that question.

“Nothing.” Daenys shakes her head deliberately. “Nothing right now.”

“What do you usually see then?”

A dreamy despair takes over her baby face. “Dragons.”

Maekar tries to keep the derision from bleeding into his mien. It is enough that you try, was Baelor’s reassurance when charm and empathy proved impossible concepts to grasp for his little brother.

“Dragons?”

She nods, rubbing her palms together and holding them to the fire. “I would see…three most often. Green, black, and creamy gold. And then I would lie to Uncle Brynden about it. He was always so interested – well, I’m not sure how he ever found out I might be able to see things in the flame at all. He happened upon me in lady grandmother’s solar when I was five and bid me to look into the fire. And I did.”

He almost says he knows, because he was there.

“They will return one day,” she says.

It is a humdrum sentence, as if she has simply stated that the sun will rise in the morning. And then she laughs – an impossibly mischievous sound – her hair tossed back over her shoulder in a cascade of loose curls.

“You do not care much for talk of dragons, do you, Uncle?”

When she calls him uncle this way, all gurgled delight, he struggles to remember why he ever told her not to use the word.

She informs him that Egg told her of something Maekar himself once said (he cannot remember). Something about horses being dumber than dogs and only understanding the crop. That this attitude would not translate well to dragons, as she expected Maekar would claim a large beast that had had riders before him, rather than a hatchling in his cradle.

As she chatters away, he just looks at her.

He searches for his own features there. She is lovelier than he ever was, even when he possessed the fervidity of youth. Their mouths are similar, fuller than Baelor’s. Her lips were made to suck on and kiss and bite and to be fondled with loving fingers. Brynden once put it the right way: some people look as if they were made to be fucked. And then he had stared at Shiera across the room without blinking.

To think of Daenys the same way makes the barely healed wounds on his back itch. But he cannot stop once it has begun. Her supple young body, the chunks of flesh stitched together, wet and sweet, made in Baelor’s image for Maekar’s mouth to sup on.

Baelor made her for me, his parting gift. A sin laced with sugar is still a sin, but at least it slides down the gullet easier.

If she looked like Maekar, he wonders if the urge to hurt himself for touching her would lessen. If she had his silver hair, and dark purple eyes, would it mean nothing? His daughter, his child, blood of his blood, expendable. Six children already. What would be one more to ruin just as he had ruined the others?

“You crawled into my bed once when you were little,” he says. "You'd had a horrible dream. Wanted to be held until you fell back asleep because your parents were in The Reach or somewhere. I don't recall."

Daenys turns her curious gaze upon him. “I did?”

“You were six.” Her face changes and he laughs. It is not a kind sound. “Surely you did not think I would forget what you looked like when you were six just because we are now married?”

“No. That would be stupid.”

“And you are not a stupid girl.”

Her breath hitches, as if she might disagree with that just to hear him utter the words stupid girl again. She has such an appetite for correction, more so than anyone he has ever known. As if to be told she is disappointing gives her the same pleasure as being fucked.

Rarely has Maekar sympathised with Jena, but he wonders now. What did you endure in your attempts to tame this sordid little creature?

His heart judders in his throat at the idea of it.

Maekar sits up from his reclined position, and Daenys sways, a little moth drawn to the flame. The last time he’d kissed her – really kissed her – he’d squeezed the back of her neck until she squirmed, swallowing and grasping at the chalice of her mouth. Her nipples were stiff under her nightgown, and he had fought to keep his hands from diving under it. Whenever his tongue absently rolls against the roof of his mouth now, his mind conjures the swell of her breast.

Desire overcomes him. But no sooner does his hand convulse in her direction, Daenys gets to her feet and lopes towards his desk, oblivious. There are letters from Aerion sitting there unopened. She thumbs her cousin’s scarlet seal and gives it one of Baelor’s infamous grimaces before tossing it aside.

Then, she notices the redwood chest and grabs for it.

“Don’t!”

It is already open. Her fingers dig into the velvet, pulling out the flogger. The sight of the knotted tails in her hands, speckled with dried blood, it sickens him. Her expression is unreadable for a few heartbeats. She puts the knots to her mouth and kisses them with a knowing reverence beyond her years.

“Aerys’s gift on my wedding night to your aunt,” he says.

Daenys’s nose wrinkles, sweetly snub. “I knew there was something strange about that man. I could never quite get a handle on him. I just knew.”

Maekar does not smile, though she is trying to coax one out of him with her little jest. It is not a particularly amusing thought that he has two more relatives who also make themselves bleed to release whatever it is that burns them on the inside. It is not the sort of family bond he wants.

“You do not mind the mention of Dyanna?”

She sets the chest down, but keeps the flogger securely imprisoned in her grip. “No.” Her voice is silky soft, whatever her true thoughts might be. “You belonged to her first. You will always belong to her in that way. I know it well.”

“I belong to you too. I am your uncle.”

Again, those honey eyes melt, and she chews her lip quite frantically. “Yes, you are. But I must admit it is an injustice.”

“What is?”

“That you might you call yourself that, but I cannot. Hardly fair.”

Maekar scoffs. “I wonder what your basis for comparison is.”

He eyes the flogger, hoping she will have the good sense to hand it to him now. The itch under his skin is overwhelming. He wants it back. But he can hardly wrest it from her the way he would with anyone else.

“We are alike,” she says. “Ao nykē perzōñi iksi. I wish I had known it earlier.”

“I did.”

“When?”

“When you came into my chambers the night of your father’s funeral. When you wept like a baby into my neck and sucked on the vein. I used to do the same to your father.”

Daenys inhales softly, voice baby-soft with wonder. “You did?”

Maekar is forced to look away to keep his composure. “Since I was very small. I would wrap my arms around his neck and suck at the vein I saw pulsing there. It calmed me down.”

She bows her head. The flame of her hair conceals the cavernous emotion that tears her face open. When she lifts it again, she is smiling, and her eyes are wet. “How tender you both must have been. I wish I had known you then.” She comes back to him and tucks her hand to his cheek, thumb skirting over the mottled scarring, the rough edge of his beard. “You and Father. Lovely, sweet boys.”

Maekar crushes his lashes together to obscure his vision. It is Baelor there, in her face, replete with adoration. He can’t. He can’t. His forehead sinks onto hers, heavy.

“Uncle?”

“Hm.”

“Will you consummate our marriage if I whip you first?”

He agrees, because it is as it was in the bedchamber at Ashford. In this moment, he cannot deny her.

She takes a perch on his armchair, a glowing ember dressed in white, and watches him remove every article of clothing save for his breeches. There is an anxious wrinkle etched in her sweet forehead. He makes her nervous when he is unclothed. He remembers her reaction from last time. Maekar lowers to his knees on the bear rug, facing the flames as if they bear the same promise for him as they do her. But he sees nothing. Whatever magic torments her, it is not filtered through his blood the same.

Daenys slips off the chair and comes to stand behind him. He hears her lacy shock of breath. She asks him if he is ready, and he nods. The flogger comes down pitifully slack against the broad span of his shoulder blades. Maekar turns his head.

“Harder than that, Dany.”

“I do not wish to hurt you too badly.”

He fights not to laugh. “You won’t.”

She tries a little harder the next time. It still does nothing. After a third, Maekar takes the flogger and strikes himself once to demonstrate. Daenys jumps in fright at the severity of it. But then something takes her over. A slick fascination forms with the red welt on his skin. She takes back the flogger as if it were a stolen toy and promises to do better this time.

To her credit, she strikes him with all her strength and the brutality surprises him. It is not as hard as one of his own swings. But it is harder than expected. Maekar lets out a quiet groan. Daenys swings again. She is not so much breathing as she is panting, already exerted. He wonders at how little endurance she has. She’d tired so easily last time when he had her under him, whining and complaining about how it hurt. And he’d barely done anything.

The knots of the flogger hit a well-loved spot against the knob of his spine and Maekar jerks with an angry growl.

“Was that too hard?” she panics.

“No. Another.”

“But – “

“Another.”

She gives in one last time but then throws the tool away when his skin blossoms with blood. “Ten. I have given you ten. No more. It is only a consummation, uncle! You need not rip the flesh off your back entirely!” She falls to her knees and gently scrapes her fingertips over the scarred penance. “These could heal if you let them.”

“I know.”

“But you do not.”

“Hm.”

“Were I my father, you would have received a smack to your head.”

“Do you have the courage?”

“No.”

“Then stop lecturing me.”

“No. It is the one thing I can do.”

She kisses the single wound she has managed to break open. The heat of her mouth sings through the injury. Maekar hisses, eyes rolling into his head. It stops being pain and turns to delirium, metallic thick on his tongue. Daenys continues to nuzzle, lapping at the blood and sweat like a curious kitten. Her hands move lower, around his waist, feeling for the faint marks of childhood pox.

“It appears, Uncle, beating you with a whip has had adverse effects.”

She takes his hand and pulls it behind his back. His fingers are limp until she pushes them under her chemise and grinds her hips forward. Fuck, Maekar mouths, eyes screwing shut. Daenys flattens herself to his back, teeth pinching at his skin. He strokes at the slickness of her cunt until his fingers are glazed with it. A passing glance over his shoulder reveals to her that the adverse effect is shared.

“I want to put it in my mouth,” she whispers.

Had he the will, he would have struggled to reject her.

“The vulgarity of your mouth deserves soap instead.”

“I do not remember that working on Daeron. But you may try with me after if it please you, Uncle.”

She pushes his hand from between her thighs and Maekar fights to keep from reaching for her again. Daenys crawls around until she is facing him, and with a slight heave, gets him to stand again. She is flushed pink as a plucked rose. Her hands tremble as they loosen the drawstring of his breeches, but she is steady in her focus.

She does not seem to care that his pubic hair is not trimmed. There has never been a need since Dyanna’s death. She buries her mouth in it, biting at the snow-white roots and tugging. Her hands bracket his hips, nails scratching gentle over the scars on his thighs. His cock hovers over her face and she nuzzles at it with unpractised kisses. Her lust is unrefined. It manifests in awkward instinct. She pushes her mouth onto things and latches on when she likes them.

Curiosity drains away any embarrassment. Her fingers smooth down the unruly edge of his hair growth, until they reach lower. She mouths at the silky softness of his sac before taking one of his balls into her mouth with a wet slurping fondle of her tongue. A pleased hum sounds in the back of her throat. He lets her explore as she pleases, trying not to wince when a tooth accidentally grazes here and there.

“I take it your husband did not teach you well in this regard either.”

Daenys looks up, sucking the spit off her bottom lip. “He did not have much to work with. It suited him to force it into my mouth to make himself feel better about it.”

Her uncle snorts with laughter. “You’re a cruel little thing, aren’t you?”

She frowns. “He was crueller.” And then she goes back at it.

Her lips pull leisurely over the tip of his cock, kissing the leaking slit until her mouth is glossed with the fluid. She rolls the salty taste in her mouth and then goes in for more. There is no self-conscious desire to make him feel good. It’s like she doesn’t care.

His nails dig into his palm to curb his impatience. He does not want to hurt her. No, that is not quite right. He does not want the urge to hurt her. But it is there. Simmering behind the seam of forced gentleness he keeps tightly stitched in his dealings with his fragile niece.

Except she is not so fragile now. With his sweat and his blood in her mouth as she sucks the salty liquid from his cock. She squeezes his thighs to brace herself and pushes her head forward. The attempt to swallow more than an inch or two fails miserably. She coughs and gags and pulls off, eyes wet with humiliation. The failure does not please her. Maekar bites his lip not to laugh.

After a few more failed tries, he takes a handful of her hair and winds it into a rope with which to steer her head. “Relax your throat.”

“I – I don’t know how, Uncle,” she whimpers.

“Do it.”

She swallows once and then takes a deep breath and expulses it with a sigh. Her shoulders sink. Maekar pushes the head of his cock between her lips. When she starts to swallow again out of instinct, he shakes his head. Daenys understands now and forces the muscles in her throat to slacken. It has an arresting effect on her lovely face. Complete pacification. Like when his fingers push in until her eyes glaze over and she turns wispy as cotton. Her few precious whines of a dazed nature are lost around the intrusion.

“No teeth,” he reminds her, but he knows she will be obedient in that regard, when she tried so ardently not to bite his fingers as he fed her slices of fruit.

She lives to please, his little Daenys, her lack of skill made up for with the sweetness of submission.

A reflection of himself, when he was her father’s little Maekar.

Her eyes gleam like polished amber, sanguine and content in her uncle’s grasp. He rocks his hips, gentle, and she tightens her mouth around him. Bending down, he takes one of her hands and pulls two of her small fingers into his mouth. He suckles until she understands his meaning, and imitates, her cheeks hollowed tight against the pulsing vein in his shaft. Maekar curses frantically. He reaches under her jaw with his other hand to keep it shut tight. His cock breaches the ring at the back of her throat. she swallows once, just once and his toes curl into the rug, hard. The sheer pleasure of her hot little mouth is worthy of more lashes. He should have pushed her to twenty.

He pulls her head forward as much as she can bear it. When she starts to cough around him, he pulls her off, a string of drool running from his cockhead to her lips which are red as licked strawberries. She sticks out her tongue for more, and Maekar slides back into her mouth, shallow thrusts, careful not to go too hard or too deep and hurt his little baby.

When he is close, he releases her hair, and she puts both her hands around the base of his cock, thumb tucked snug against the vein. She holds him steady, sucking vigorously at the tip. It is her inky red lashes turning upwards that starts to break his resolve. She trembles as her pretty face gets fucked, delighted by the look on his face, the sounds pouring out of him. He loses all sense and ruts the leaking head of his cock so deep, she squeals in complaint. She pulls off him with a wet pop, gasping and soaked in tears and drool.

Maekar hooks his foot into the crook of her knee and jerks it. Daenys lands on her back on the bear rug with a startled giggle. It doesn’t last long before he is on top of her. She cries out when the head of his cock breaches her entrance. Wasted, whimpering cries as she is forced to stretch around him, an unbearable possession, because he knows, he knows what it felt like to be possessed this way, he does not want to hurt her, his sweet girl, his riña.

The girl Baelor made for him alone.

He kisses –chews – the tender flesh of her neck as she rocks under him with each thrust. A thumb to her clit makes her moan into his beard, her teeth biting at his scars. More. For a hand that is accustomed to a mace, his fingers pull sounds out of her as if she were an instrument to be played. Ringlets of red hair, darkened with sweat, streak over her cheeks, her lips.

Her fingers slip for purchase against his neck, his shoulders, sobbing as she gets fucked, attempting to hold onto a semblance of control. Maekar does not intend to let her have any. His fingers crush bruises into her waist, dragging her onto him, until the perfectly drawn arch of her spine convulses. She braces one pretty foot into the bear’s fur and wails plaintively as the orgasm runs a loop through her sweet little body. Her hands fly to her face, nails clawing at the flesh. The despair of her ecstasy overcomes her. She can hardly make a sound when he thrusts into her fluttering cunt again. So tight it is beginning to hurt. He surges forward only a few more times before his cock floods her.

Maekar pins her hips with a hand, holding her still as he finishes She grabs his face between her hands, and pulls it down to her own. She runs her lips over him, from his eyes to his nose, to his beard, scraping it across the snowy-white hairs until her tongue pushes into his mouth. She still does not know how to kiss properly. It makes him smile, the world reduced to this small malfunction. But he does not mind it. The sloppiness of it feels nice. He understands the urge to push her flushed little face into his as if she means to mesh them together, the way an infant does to its mother.

Her fingers claw over his back, leaving gooseflesh in their wake, finding scars to press against as she suckles on his tongue with dazed enthusiasm. Until he is finished spending himself inside her. No thought left in his head save to clutch at her hair and let the numbness take over.  

But it is not a feeling that heeds the will to rest. When he is forced to break away from her, it is to make the few steps across the room that end with the empty basin in a corner. He vomits until his stomach is as drained as the rest of him.

She says nothing, his little girl.

She just watches him with limpid eyes, as his spend cools in the crease of her thighs.

Chapter Text

Maekar does not send her back to her rooms.

An impossibility, really. Daenys is half-asleep, slack with euphoria across the bear rug. Oblivious to her beloved uncle drinking an entire cup of wine in a single go just to get the taste of stomach bile out of his mouth. The vomiting doesn’t register in her consciousness; else she would be anxiously asking him what she has done wrong and how to never make the mistake again. There isn’t a world where something is not her fault first before it spreads towards others.

Being drunk has its benefits, slippery as they might be. She will have to apologise to Daeron for being so judgemental; this is a sublime state of existence.

Maekar lifts her up off the rug, cradling her to his chest, where her sleepy whimpers are doused into the silver curls of hair. She mouths at his nipple, lavishing lazy strokes with her tongue until a quick bite makes him hiss and utter her name in that irritated way that delights her.

“I do not wish to go back to my bedchamber,” she slurs when he lowers her to the bed.

“Then behave yourself.” He tips her back with a soft thwack of his palm to her forehead and she yawns dreamily.

The last thing she remembers is Maekar pinching out the lights of the candles with his bare fingertips.

The room is still dark when her eyes open again, with the slightest promise of blue on the walls. The curtains around the bed are drawn. Through them, she can see the fuzzy silhouette of the furniture, the archway, the light bleeding in from the next room. Birds trill on a branch outside, the air coming in cool and crisp. Her own room does not feel like this, as if it exists on the threshold between worlds.

He even sleeps like a soldier, on his back, with his hands on his abdomen. Daenys curls up against him, sucking gently on the skin of his shoulder. Her jaw hurts. And her lips feel bruised. She cannot remember the particulars of last night. But she recalls forcing her jaw to drop, of trying to flatten her tongue and choking, which Maekar seemed to like. That hard, hungry glitter in his eyes. Lusty injuries, every single one of them.

His lashes lift, but his breathing does not change pace, as if he were only pretending to be asleep. Daenys closes her own instead. For a while nothing happens. Her lips stay pressed to his skin, her small hand splayed over his chest as if someone might rip him away.

Then he takes her wrist and removes it, gently shifting until he can turn away from her and break the contact between them.

In the narrow light, the wounds on his back look like glyphs.

When she wakes again, it is still early, but the light has suffused further into the room.

Maekar is fast asleep. She slips out of bed, and tugs on the maid’s chemise she had borrowed from Silla the night before. Over it goes her uncle’s cloak. She wants to have one made with identical fabric. Her own never provides as much warmth.

There are two servants tending to the hearth in the reception chamber when she walks in. They cast a cursory glance over her. And then do a double take. She finds the initial reaction curious. Has her uncle previously made a habit of sleeping with maids when the urge calls for it? They do not linger long, and scurry from the room like house mice.

She takes it that by the evening at the very latest, Bloodraven will know. If he does not already. Shiera could hardly contain her glee yesterday. She will not have held out long.

Daenys settles herself at Maekar’s desk with a hazy yawn. She takes up the first book she sees.

It is the travel diary of some irrepressible maester who spent a year and a half in Vaes Dothrak and Bayasabhad. She likes reading about Bayasabhad. The sons of the Great Fathers grow to manhood and are gelded, save for the especially promising ones who are allowed to propagate. Their daughters are raised for warriors, hinging on the belief that only the givers of life may take it. Daenys has never held any particular interest in going to war, but she supposes if she were raised that way, it would be easier to take to. She much prefers the idea of weak men not being allowed to spread their seed. Had Vaemond been gelded, her life might have been easier.

She is only thirty pages in when her eyes drift to Aerion’s unopened letters. She noticed them the moment she walked in but proceeded to ignore them. Out reaches a hand, pale and quivering in the stale light. Her eyes knife to the bedchamber door.

Very few things supersede her desire not to upset Maekar. Hatred of Aerion is one of them.

She snatches up the first letter.

Daenys only intends to read one. But as it usually is with such things, time flattens itself.

There are twenty-five letters in total. It is remarkable to her that Aerion even has the capacity to write this much. He hated lessons as a boy, especially the ones that required essays. An entire bottle of ink was once thrown straight into a maester’s face, leaving the poor man grey-skinned for several days.

The tone of the first few letters – they are in a neat pile, and the older ones have worn edges, as if Maekar fiddled with them extensively before setting them aside without opening them – is carefully breezy. Aerion tells him of the ancient sites he has visited. That surprises her. She has never known her cousin to enjoy history in any form unless it was related to his own belief that he is an exceptional Valyrian specimen, beyond even the rest.

Each of the first five letters is buoyant with the excitement of visiting a new place. He jokes about women staring at his scars, and that he knows how Cousin Brynden feels now. The tone is humorous, charming even, filled with the peculiar nuances and wit of an endearing personality. This is Aerion as he is for Maekar alone, not Aerion the way he is with everyone else. The love for his father burns off the page, tone veering dangerously towards the strong and unending missingness of a lover.

By the sixth letter, the details wither. Twenty-five letters in only four months. He knows he must wear his father down. Everything breaks against the anvil, but Aerion holds strong.

It is by the fifteenth that she notices smudges around certain letters. He was crying. He wants to come back to Westeros. He talks not of missing any of his siblings, nor mentions any friends he might have (not that she remembers him having any). He wants to come back to his father, to ‘be useful’ to him again.

She regrets her decision to open any of them. Aerion possesses multitudes of emotion underneath his serpentine aspect, and she hates the feeling this discovery gives her.

But she is about to feel worse.

“What are you doing?”

Maekar is staring at her from the doorway, clad only in a tunic. Daenys has no time to hide the letters or even think of reforging the seals. Not that she could. Aerion’s ring is with him in Braavos, or Lys, or wherever his twenty-fifth letter will list him as being. She hasn’t opened it.

Her uncle storms across the room in two strides. It frightens her enough that she shrinks in her chair as if he might hit her. He looks angry enough to. He snatches at the letters, not a drop of colour in his face. She grabs the rest and vacates the chair.

“Daenys!” he thunders.

“He writes to his father!” She brandishes the crumpled parchment, dancing out of his reach when he draws on her. “He writes to his father!” Her voice turns shrill in a way she hates, addled with grief's fury. “He gets to write to you!”

Maekar extends a hand of placation now that she is closer to the fire. But he is less concerned with her and more with the letters that are dangerously close to the flames. She can tell by his face he now regrets not reading them.  

“Dany, give them back.” Pleading, soft tones, for Aerion’s sake.

Aerion’s sake.

My boy, my boy!

“I want to write to my father,” she whispers, eyes welling up. And then it bursts from her in an animal scream. “I want to write him letters too!”

Maekar closes the gap, but she manages to dart from him again. A few of the letters scatter behind her and he snatches them up. Wrath colours her vision red. She puts one in her mouth and tears at it like a savage, demolishing the inked words. Her uncle stares at her as if she has lost her mind. It would not be the first time. She can see that he is debating on whether to summon Maester Ambrose right now. Drug her into submission, just like the rest. She cannot be happy and drunk all the time.

“He misses you and he loves you and he does not mention Baba, nor me, nor Egg, nor anyone he has destroyed! He speaks only of you! You are his god, his universe! Yet still you could not curb him!”

She flings the rest of the bunched-up letters to the floor. The only one impossibly ruined is the one she tore at with her mouth. She stuffs the rest of it in, to gag her own sobs, and sound less pathetic about it. Daenys loathes her tendency to cry when she is truly angry. Men like her uncle do not take such tears at their value.

Maekar’s hands shake as he gathers the letters. Then, he walks up to her and cups his palm under her chin. Daenys dribbles out the ruined parchment into it, attached by a thread of silvery drool. Before she can wipe at it, Maekar’s mouth is there instead.

It startles her into silence, which she suspects is why he did it. To pacify the stupid baby who has no control over her emotions and cannot be dignified in her confrontation with her father’s killer. With her darling uncle. He kisses up the drool off her chin, until it is pink with beard abrasion, until she is shaky in his grip. And then he pulls her to his chest, Aerion’s letters clutched in one hand, and Daenys in the other.

As she starts to calm down, she wonders if this is how her uncle learned to cope with his wild children. By working out what will make them behave in the moment. Temporary tinctures. He does not have to speak to them, or work at the problem with a chisel. He simply needs to kiss them or pat their hair or pull them against him and squeeze his hands on their shoulders until they are calm and he gets some peace.

Father wouldn’t.

Baelor would sit her down and speak to her. Hold her face in his palm as if it were the most priceless treasure in the world and encourage her to tell him her grief and her troubles so that together they might decide how to solve them. He could not always concede to her wishes, bound as he was by duty. But he wished to make her happy and that was enough.

He would not kiss her and bury her face in his chest to shut her up.  She would do that herself if she did not wish to bother him but still required his comfort.

Maekar’s heartbeat pounds against her cheek like a hammer.

Daenys does as he wants and shuts her mouth.

Whether it was the servants tending the hearth, or Shiera, or some sixth sense of doom her great-uncle is ever in possession of, the kingsguard come for Daenys by noon.

Two of them, Willem and Donnel, watchful in their approach of the godswood. Daenys is unaware at first. She’d stolen the book from Maekar’s desk, the one about the women from Bayasabhad. If nothing else, her uncle – her husband – has wonderful taste in literature. She wouldn’t have expected it of him.

“State your purpose.”

The terseness in Ser Roland’s voice draws her attention. He has his hand on his sword pommel and is standing square in the path of the two men. Donnel laughs and then tilts his head to peer at the princess, his handsome face creased with something only a stranger might mistake for warmth.

“A king’s summon does not require a purpose stated. Out of the way, boy.”

Roland continues to impede them. When he draws his sword, they both have the audacity to look surprised. “Who summons her? The King? Or the Lord Hand?”

Willem scowls. “Is there a difference?”

“In a realm that has not gone mad, yes, there is.”

“I can relay these words back to Lord Rivers if you wish.”

Daenys gets to her feet in a hurry. “I will go and see my great-uncle.”

She smiles at Ser Roland in what she hopes is a reassuring manner. But the worry must be wracked across her face, because he does not sheathe his sword. Donnel holds out his arm to her and the princess has no choice but to take it.

“Unhand the princess. I will escort her to His Grace.” Ser Roland jerks forward, but Willem shoves him right back.

Donnel chuckles over his shoulder. “Keep him occupied, Wylde. He’s an unruly one.”

“I forbid you to hurt him!” Daenys snaps, as a grin spreads on Willem’s face.

“Do not fear, princess. A few bruises exchanged are as kisses between sworn brothers.”

She does not manage to see if Ser Roland submits to having her wrenched from him. They turn the corridor and the noise of the main Keep is overwhelming. Most of the nobility are still here, slow to abandon the castle. Daenys searches her eyes over them, hoping to see a silver head. But she does not see him.

Brynden is alone in the council chamber.

At least she thinks he is, until she hears a shuffle and notices Aerys sitting by one of the windows, a tome opened on his bent knees. Daenys suddenly wishes she had done more to be friendly with this uncle. Discussed with him her own love of books, set the foundation for an instance like this one where he would come between her and Bloodraven. Except she knows Aerys would not have, no matter the friendliness between them. Confrontation is not in his nature.

Brynden looks paler than usual, his lips a purple gash at the centre of his face. Daenys does not want to look directly at him. He crooks a finger.

She draws forward and starts to pull back a chair. He shakes his head. She slowly lets it go and remains standing.

“How demure. The very image of Queen Naerys with your hair covered.” He gestures towards her snow-white wimple, eyes dragging slow down her body until they rest on her folded hands. “And yet, a whore, sleeping with her father’s killer.”

Daenys goes very, very still.

Aerys’s head moves an inch, eyes on Brynden, as if he had not expected the discussion to begin quite so harshly.

“I succumbed to your tears.” Brynden throws his hands up as if he has the weight of the world upon him. “I had your husband killed, being that you were clearly so unhappy with him. I thought to let you choose your next one. Imagine my surprise at what Shiera was so gleeful to uncover.”

Daenys flickers her gaze to Aerys, but he does not seem surprised at the revelation that Vaemond died at the hands of the Raven Teeth.

Brynden’s knee jogs under the table, a steady rattle of discontent. “This is how you repay my act of love.”

Where is Uncle Maekar?

Horrible visions abound in her mind, of Maekar’s throat slit in a dark corridor somewhere. It would not be so easily done. They would have to drug him to achieve it so cleanly, else he would take down half the kingsguard with him. She still remembers the panic in his voice as he’d roared his son’s name on the tourney field. Daenys does not believe he would think to call for her. He would still think of Aerion, abandoned in Essos, without love and protection.

She takes a deep breath.

“I have performed all my life as I was expected. But then Father died. As did my brothers. And you stole the crown from me, cousin. I have nothing left to perform for. So, I did what I felt like. Just as you do, when you take Cousin Shiera into your arms.” Daenys clasps her hands on the back of the chair, her voice coloured with the bristling delight of free will. “It felt good to marry my uncle. It felt even better to fuck him and feel him inside me.”

Brynden’s good eye twitches. Aerys lets out a soft giggle and goes back to his book, even though he is not really reading anymore. His attention is fixed on them like the point of a sword.

“Is this it?” Brynden says.

“What do you mean?”

“You are still performing. Is this your new act?”

“I am not – “

“The only time you are entirely yourself is when you are weeping and blubbering like a baby. That is your only true form. Weakness.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I do, and I adore you for it. Your weakness is not a flaw. Not to me. It preserves you, and that is all I wish. For you to be preserved, and for me to stand in the way of all that might harm you.”

It is difficult keeping up with Brynden’s turns of phrase. They are laden with trickery. She has only ever known her father to hold his own against him. It takes her a moment to come up with a response.

“You mean that you cannot stand between myself and Maekar.”

Brynden slaps the table with a forced cheery smile. “No, I cannot. But no matter. It will be annulled. Easy as that.”

“It will not!”

“It will. You have not consummated the marriage.”

“I just said – “

“And who will verify it? Two servants who no longer work in the Keep? Or your Ser Roland? I’m sure he likes his head better than the state of your spread legs. The marriage was not consummated. It will be annulled – “

“It will not!”

“ – and you will marry Gerold Lannister – “

“I won’t – “

“ – and you will do your duty to this house – “

“ – I have done it many times over – “

“Then you will do it again!”

Brynden’s thin voice rises to a note she has not heard before. Daenys does not flinch. He is scarier when he is silent. This side of him does nothing to make her quail. He has his palms flat on the table, hunched forward like a spitting beast. She peers instead at Aerys, trying to work out what that expression on his face is, half disguised by sunlight.

The door flies open and Maekar walks in.

Relief loosens her spine.

Brynden looks startled to see him. “Who the fuck let you in here?”

Maekar walks into the light and Daenys notices the lock of hair dusted loose on his forehead. He is slightly out of breath. “Go and check.”

Brynden eyes the closed door, a muscle jumping in his jaw. It must have been a quick but violent struggle if it was not heard over the sound of Daenys and Brynden screaming at each other.

“You need a tighter kingsguard,” Maekar directs at Aerys, who is once more entertained.

“Noted, brother.”

Daenys knows Donnel left the moment he left her at the door. Which means it is likely Jon Inchfield and Rowan Hightower unconscious outside. Aerys slips off the sill to investigate, but a sharp, “Leave it” from Brynden draws him back.

“That is your king,” Maekar snaps.

Brynden laughs nastily. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

Maekar won’t be told where he can or can’t sit. He pulls out a chair and drops himself into it. And then he pulls Daenys down to sit next to him. They are still at odds, but she is grateful to be safely on this side of the line against Brynden’s wrath. She is not alone against him for once.

“He means to annul the marriage and claim it was not consummated,” she whispers in Maekar’s ear.

A cold smile splits his face. “Does he?”

“He does,” Brynden says tartly. “Your wedding had barely enough witnesses to count. And the consummation had none. There is no marriage.”

“On the life of my sons, I will fuck her on this table in front of you.”

It is difficult to tell who is more stunned to hear the words out of his mouth. Maekar delivers them with uncharacteristic focus. Some strange light burns in his eye, a likely aftereffect of taking on two kingsguards without so much as a scuffle. Daenys wonders what he did. Knock their heads together? She might have heard that at least.

Her cheeks are red, and she is desperately trying to find something to look at that isn’t Brynden’s face.

“You are going to make this difficult?”

“Incredibly.”

“Go on. Tell me your great plan.”

“I take her with me – “

“Of course.”

“ – and you can stew here, alone, wondering when the next lord paramount will take ire with your governance and turn his eyes not to the Blackfyres, but to Summerhall.”

Daenys’s eyes are round as plates. Her breath comes short and she is faintly aware of her hand gripping Maekar’s thigh under the table. Stop, please stop. He ignores her. He may as well be alone in the room with his uncle. The tension between them is stiff with the iron stench of spilled blood.

Brynden’s teeth clench in a half-smile. “I do not take well to threats, Maekar.”

“No…not even by a pair of twelve-year-olds weeping over their slain father. How were they threatening you, Brynden? Go on. Tell this little girl what you did to her uncles.” His hand turns Daenys’s chin in Brynden’s direction, and she sees what little colour he has drain away and leave him stark white.

Her mind scrambles to latch onto what it remembers. It flits from Redgrass to Daemon and then to the tale of his two sons that he had taken on the battlefield with him. An inexplicable decision, except to a cornered father. Specifics were not told to her in the process of learning the histories. But the new awareness must be written all over her face because Brynden looks away abruptly.

“A twist of fate, that we are both kinslayers now,” Maekar tells him. “But I have not yet murdered a child to ensure the future of my house. That was your bravery, uncle.”

Aerys is staring at his uncle without blinking. Brynden slowly returns to his seat and sinks into it as if the fight has left him. Daenys does not trust it for a moment. She remains tense, waiting for him to lunge across the table again.

He and Maekar stare at each other, the silence hollow.

“You always loved Daemon more than you ever loved me,” Brynden says.

Maekar slowly uncurls his fist against the table. “Daemon cared that I loved him. You did not.”

“And for that you mean to take up residence in Summerhall with Baelor’s daughter. In direct opposition to Aerys’s rule.”

“Not to Aerys. You.”

The you hits Brynden like a fist. Not my brother. You. A line drawn between the trueborn sons and the Great Bastard.

“And if I do not let you leave? A kinslayer twice more.” He passes a weary smile to Daenys. “You would die with your husband, sweetling. You have proven so eager to chain yourself to him. Daeron will surely take care of Summerhall as it deserves, won’t he, Maekar?”

Daenys expects her uncle to lose his cool at the mention of his son’s ineptness – as he always does – but for once, Maekar is even keeled.

“The Lords Paramount in attendance at the coronation saw her with their own eyes. She is not mad. My father did not lose his mind to the sickness. You kept him drugged. When he was lucid, he spoke his wish clearly. It was Daenys. He wanted her to be queen after him. Not Aerys. Not Rhaegel, nor I. The brother that loved you and raised you. You heard him speak it, and you did as you wished because Daenys wanted me for her Hand.”

“Father wanted Dany?” It is Aerys who interjects, brow furrowed.

He does not seem put out by the revelation. Becoming king, a position so desired by other men, is just something that happened one morning to Aerys. His father’s real wishes for the Iron Throne are but a curiosity to him. Another event, for another day.

Maekar nods, still focused on his uncle as if Brynden will throw a knife into his neck the second he looks away.

Brynden’s expression has largely calcified into metallic indifference.

“You would not make for a good Hand,” he says. “You know it as well as I. Still, you insist on holding a grudge.”

“As you wish. I should not be Hand. Aerys should not be king. One truth for another.”

“And Rhaegel should not be the crown prince.”

“No, he should not. And he does not want to be. He heard our father’s wish with his own ears.”

“Did he?”

“You would set him aside as ‘mad’ if he became king. Then perhaps Aelor and Aelora prove themselves to be ungovernable. Or the Arryns want a bigger slice of the pie. Who would follow then? The children you might yet have with Shiera? The rule of bastards. Because you and I both know, Brynden, she will never marry you.”

They get to their feet at the same time.

Daenys does not move. She closes her eyes and wills herself somewhere far away. It is not as if she can successfully force two grown men apart. And if they come to blows, she is in the perfect position to get hurt.

Perhaps Aerys finally remembers he is her uncle. He interrupts, and that too, with words alone. He is more efficient than he looks. “Brynden, let them leave.”

Brynden’s grip on the knife in his belt does not relent. “If I let them go, a few months, a year from now, they will rise up against your crown.”

“They will not,” Daenys blurted out. “I swear – “

Brynden lunges his head down until they are face-to-face. “You are yet a child. Do you think you will be the one to stop him?”

Maekar puts a hand on the table, his arm blocking Brynden from Daenys’s direct eyeline. “She will remain married to me. And we will leave, with the promise of full loyalty to you, and the crown.”

His uncle uncoils like a cobra, well aware there is an if coming. “Spit it out.”

“If you make her the heir.”

“What?” Aerys blurts out in unison with Daenys.

Brynden shows no surprise. “And?”

“Just that. Make her his heir. Rhaegel thinks it wrong that she was displaced. You have not yet crowned him as heir. He will renounce his position. And – “ Maekar gestures towards Aerys with a sweep of his arm. “Let us pray for a long, healthy life for my brother.”

“That is all you want? For Daenys to be named heir?”

She sees the light return to Brynden’s eyes. Aerys never leaves his room or puts himself in danger unnecessarily. He does not so much as eat a different meal each day, something unusual, that he might choke on if he isn’t chewing it with his full attention. Aerys will live a long life, longer than the rest of them.

“It is all I want,” Maekar reiterates.

Brynden’s attention turns back to Daenys. “If I make you the heir, it is with the express condition that I am to be your Hand. Not your husband. You will defer to me first.”

Daenys’s eyes dart to Maekar. He nods, ever so slightly.

“Yes,” she tells Brynden.

Aerys is unconcerned that his opinion has not been asked. Daenys would feel sorry for him if she had any inkling that he cared. Brynden has him entirely leashed and Aerys could not be more content.

“I do not much fancy having Alys Arryn here in the wake of this revelation,” the king says. “Very angry little woman.”

“Send her to Dragonstone with her children. Aelor is still after Daenys in the line of succession if Rhaegel is removed,” Maekar says. “She can play lady of the castle there.”

“Aelor? You do not intend to sire heirs with Baelor’s blood?” Brynden’s lip curls with mockery, but his heart is not in it.

Pale fingers clutch at his forehead as he lowers back into his seat. It is a poor relief to see him so exhausted.

Daenys and Maekar avoid each other’s gaze (and the question).

“I would ask one more favour, Cousin Brynden,” she says thinly.

Brynden wafts his hand at her to go ahead. He seems sick of her, and she does not blame him. She would be the same in his position. How easy a prospect to manipulate she was. How difficult it had turned out to be.

“I wish to take Ser Roland with me to Summerhall as my sworn shield. If the king would be so kind as to spare him.”

“You are much devoted to your sworn shield. Almost as devoted as he is to you.”

“If I didn’t know better, I would take that for jealousy, Uncle.”

“But you know better.”

“I do.”

He walks slightly ahead, his cloak flowing behind him like a dark cloud, and cuts a path for her through the busy traffic in the corridors. None of the nobility have anything better to do than wander around the Red Keep, oohing and aahing over the new renovations and of course, the tapestries. Brynden has had the Old Valyrian tapestries taken out from storage. They have not been displayed properly in the castle since the reign of Viserys I. Now they are everywhere, ancient Valyrians copulating with their long cocks and longer limbs, utterly indifferent to their own passion. All the expressions are bland.

She presses the bite on her arm with her thumb. A discovery she’d made after she left her uncle’s room this morning. When she puts it to her mouth, it does not fit the indentation of her teeth. It must have been Maekar. She does not remember when it happened. Perhaps when she was pinned to the bear rug, sobbing with the kind of pleasure she had never felt before. The pain of it would have gone unfelt.

“I wish – “ she lowers her voice when it comes out overloud. Maekar turns, his face grim. “I wish you’d asked me first.”

“Asked you what?”

“Whether I wished to be heir.”

“Do you not wish to be heir?”

“I am ambivalent.”

“Perfect. You and your Uncle Aerys are the same. Brynden will take well to being your Hand.”

“You have clearly given the whole plan some thought – “

“In a way.”

“But you never shared any of it with me.”

Maekar gives her a long, dry look, that makes her feel about as small as a seed in his palm, something to feed the birds with. Stupid and so utterly young. They are standing in the middle of the corridor. Neither pays any mind to the people forced to cut around them like fish in a stream. They may as well be alone. She notices his eyes flicker down to the bite mark still half on display where her sleeve is pulled back. His pupils dilate.

“Princess.” Lyonel Baratheon saunters by with his new lady wife on his arm.

 A red-haired young woman with dimples and big brown eyes, she is a Florent, the fifth of six daughters, who had never expected to land such an illustrious position as Lady of Storm’s End. Bright with excitement, a halo of gladness sparkles around her. The same halo Lyonel must have noticed when he first laid eyes on her and decided there and then she was to be his.

“Good morrow, Princess!” she greets, parting from her husband to extend both hands to Daenys, who takes them with a confused, but sweet smile.

“Lady Alyssa. I never got to congratulate you on your nuptials. May it be blessed before the gods.”

She darts her eyes to Maekar, hoping he will not walk away. By some miracle, he remains, though he is chewing on the inside of his lip with intense impatience.

“Thank you!” Alyssa beams, half-bouncing with giddiness. Daenys meets Lyonel’s eye over her shoulder, and he must look away to stifle his laughter, fond as it might be. “How lovely you look this morning! The very picture of your mother. I saw her once when she visited Oldtown with your father. They were such an excellent match, kind to a fault. I pray everyday for their good fortunes in the next life, and for your brothers. And you.” Here, she squeezes Daenys’s hands tight, and her eyes sparkle with unshed tears. “May you be blessed, Princess.”

Lyonel leans over, dark eyes ripe with mirth. “My love? As tender as your blessings are, we have an engagement with Lord and Lady Swann. And the princess is busy with – “ here, he pauses to give Maekar a sidelong glance, as if he suspects something but is not quite sure what. “ – her uncle. Come.”

Alyssa nods vigorously, and then with an abrupt lunge that almost knocks her head into Daenys’s, she drops a kiss on each cheek. The princess is speechless in her wake.

“By the gods,” Maekar mutters with a shake of his head. He continues on, glancing back to ensure she is following. “Back to where we stopped. You might thank me for saving your life.”

Daenys walks a little closer to him, so that she will be less easy prey to be snatched up for an idle conversation she cannot politely reject. “I do not understand.”

“I saved us from being ambushed by bandits on the road to Summerhall. Bandits who would surely have the Raven’s Teeth crest hidden under their cloaks.”

Daenys almost knocks into one of the Corbray squires. “Brynden would not – not so brazenly – “

“He killed two twelve-year-old boys in front of your father and me. I raced my horse across the field to try and save one of them. Brynden shot him straight through. Unless your name is Shiera, when your great-uncle says he loves you, do not believe him. You and I would never have reached Summerhall. Not unless he was convinced we had something he deemed of equal importance to ensure our loyalty. Now we do.”

We.

A small, inefficient word without context. But with it, it is everything. She has not felt like she was a part of a we since Matarys took his final breath. It has been Daenys alone, a kite with her strings cut. The we exists in the way Maekar slows down, how he glances back to ensure she is still there. The we binds itself around her tight, securing her with a safety she has not experienced in a long time.

If she was at liberty to, she would sink to her knees right here in the middle of the corridor, and sob at the power of a single throwaway word.

“I, Lyonel Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End and Head of House Baratheon, swear to be faithful to King Aerys, and his named heir, the Princess Daenys. I pledge fealty to them, and shall defend them against all enemies, in good faith, and without deceit. I swear this, by the old gods and the new.”

A gentle draught dances her cloak up off the ground as she extends her hand for Lord Baratheon to kiss.

Behind her, the stairs bleed with the jagged points of iron. When she was guided to stand at their feet, she had imagined stumbling and impaling herself on one. What an end to an heir’s naming that would be.

But she does not trip, she does not stumble. There is more composure on her face than she feels on the inside. Her headdress is tall and golden, beads of pearls and rubies hanging down the sides of her face. Every small movement makes them dance. She can smell incense on the air, the same kind she remembers from the sept, when Maekar found her there alone.

He is standing in the front row, set apart from the others.

The reveal of their marriage, though hastily done and considered strange even so, was tempered by the naming of Daenys as heir.

A necessary evil, some conceded.

After all, both her uncles are married. And rather than endure the painstaking selection of a new husband, at the risk of angering the rest of the lords who might hope to be king consort, the simplest solution presented itself in the form of an unmarried relative.

Even if it turned peoples’ stomachs to think of Baelor’s beautiful young girl sequestered in Summerhall with her father’s murderer, forced to be stepmother to six children, two of which are older than her. Even with the chance of being queen in her future, childbirth might take her away. And even if she were queen, what hope did she have of holding any power with Brynden Rivers on one side, and Maekar Targaryen on the other?

As such, it is a strangely sombre event to crown her in the presence of King Aerys, his Hand, and the lords present, paramount or otherwise.

One after the other, they draw forward and kneel, uttering words of fealty. Lannister, Hightower, Florent, Tyrell, Uller, Dayne, Dondarrion, Tully, Blackwood – on and on, the list goes on. There is a marked lack of Northern houses. But the honour-loving Starks have sent their fealty via raven, and the rest followed suit.

There are of course doubts on the timing of it all, despite Rhaegel renouncing his position. The Arryns are extraordinarily unhappy.

When Alys’s father draws to the front, his face is unpleasant. Somewhere to the left, his daughter stares blankly into empty space. Her twins are placid at her side, both delighted at the knowledge that they are still going to end up in Dragonstone to rule their little roost. The Arryns seem to have had it in their heads that Aerys would not be a long-lived king, and that their girl would be queen sooner, rather than later.

Before them stands a red-haired, silver-streaked impediment, staring unblinkingly down at their Lord Paramount. Her stare does nothing to phase him. She can see the scorn on his face, plain as day. It is when he meets Maekar’s eye that his knee finally bends.

“I, Lord Ronnel Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, and Warden of the East, promise to be faithful – “

The words start to blur into each other. One mouth after another, kissing her fingers when she wishes they wouldn’t. When it is done, she has to fight not to wipe her hand on her cloak. The Grand Maester draws forth with the ceremonial chain. Each of the sigils of the Great Houses sit heavy around her thin shoulders, Targaryen hanging heaviest over her collarbone.

Is it over? A voice in the back of her head whispers. Likely the younger version of herself, that wants to run outside and play in the grass, eat honeycakes, and find Baelor and Jena waiting at the doors to the Tower of the Hand. They have been looking for her all day and are beside themselves with worry. She runs to them in her head, arms flying about their necks until their embrace drowns her. Is it over?

The Grand Maester withdraws, and Daenys faces the Iron Throne. She bows her head to her uncle. He rises, a slender shard of jet black and scarlet in his ceremonial robes. His voice is surprisingly strong, echoing through the hall.

“I, Aerys Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, do hereby name Daenys Targaryen, Princess of Dragonstone and Heir to the Iron Throne.”

The room whispers with the rustle of a hundred knees bending in unison.

She turns back, and they are still lowered, all the bent heads, the jewelled headpieces. Even her uncle, who did not have to walk up to her and swear fealty because it is hers by rights already, twice over, through blood and marriage.

Daenys takes a shivering breath and coils her fists tight.

But the urge overcomes her and she puts a broken hangnail to her mouth.

Is it over?

Chapter Text

tw // CSA flashback  

“Forgive me, brother.”

It is said true, without her usual quicksilver malice.

“Leave me be.” He turns the page of his ledger, fingernail digging at the grain of the wood under his desk with an agitated scritch scritch.

His sister hovers.

Their roles have swapped. She is usually the one to play aloof. And then he presses her feet to his forehead and kisses the soles until she squirms and giggles. Just as he did when she was no more than a tiny pearl in her cradle, kicking at him when he pretended to grab her feet.

He should have seen this coming, but he had not.

When she sways closer, he grabs her neck. Thoughtless action, breaks his heart – let go, let go of her – to snatch his beloved like a bird mid-flight. His fingers contract. He holds her hostage until a tiny vessel bursts against her emerald eye. Release. Shiera sinks against the leg of his desk, lightheaded and panting. It takes her a moment to recover.

“Am I forgiven now?”

“She was not yours to take.”

Sullen, unrepentant. “I did not take her.”

“You wrapped her in ribbons and handed her to Maekar.”

“Because she is in love with him.”

“She is not in love with him. She misses her father. Or is it that you know her better than I?”

“Pray tell what is it you would do if you had your way? She would be sent to Casterly Rock, yes? Or does it not matter? Was it just important that you decide where she went? That you get to wrap her in ribbons? Just as you enjoy deciding for me when we play our little games?”

Little games. Of a sort, perhaps they are. The first time Brynden told Shiera to hold her bladder, it was said in jest, but she had done it and refused to relieve herself until he told her to in a half-panic. The degree of control she would let him have over her had terrified him.

But then she did the same to him another day, and he took pride in outlasting her.

Recently, it is all food. He tells her what she can eat at the dinner table, and how much of each dish, and Shiera takes delight in following his instruction to the letter, even when she is cajoled to eat more by Aelinor or Alys. It pleases her to let him hear her stomach rumble afterwards, proof of her devotion, of an obedience that is against her nature but is given to Brynden because she adores him.

“You are just upset I played with our little toy without your permission.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“You treat her as you would any child of ours. Like a toy.”

Brynden presses his face into his ghostly white hands. Shiera waits, watching for an opening. Sometimes, she can tease the truth out of him with deft strokes of her fingers, like guiding smoke. At others, it is best to wait.

“I wanted her for the North.”

“The Starks?”

“The heir to Winterfell is unmarried. A boy of fifteen.”

“Brynden, what would she do in the North?” Shiera’s voice glitters with mirth, but the look he gives her puts an end to all that. “Was it a vision? Or is it just politics? It cannot be the latter, surely. There has never been reason to wed a Targaryen to the North. Imagine, a Stark king consort. How strange.”

“I saw a woman with Dany’s eyes, crimson-clad, lighting the trenches around Winterfell.”

Shiera’s shoulders sink. “The dream about the Wall again.”

She has heard it before, when Brynden mutters terrors in his sleep, his tongue twisting High Valyrian glyphs into incantations that are alien to her ears. Shiera has studied the ancient arts of the Anogrion, every last page she can find. She would know the spells if they were recorded. They make the flames dance in the hearth, as if something else is in the room, watching them. The red woman, he whispers, until he chokes on his own lungs.

Once calm, he always tells Shiera he knows her by the expression on her face, not the eyes. When she is afraid, she looks just like Dany, and she is always afraid in his visions, standing against a terror he can neither name nor describe.

Shiera chafes Brynden’s arm, gently tugging his hand from his face. He looks worn in the grey light. Old, her brother looks old. She swallows down a sob of grief at the idea that one day, she will forget what he looked like when he was young.

“You have seen the Wall coming down a dozen times. But it is seven hundred feet high and has stood for thousands of years. What could do something of such magnitude?”

His voice is folded up thin. “I do not know. But the red woman stands against what is to come.”  

The visions began when he was ten, but they were not dragon dreams. He does not dream of fire. Only the hoarfrost and white skies pregnant with snow that falls when something terrible has already occurred. It makes him feel inadequate. He cannot even dream the way Targaryens do. Worse, his visions are unintelligible, even when he pores over them, writes down every detail and paces until his feet blister.

When he was a little boy, he wept into his mother’s arms as Shiera sat at the foot of Melissa’s bed waiting to show her the latest collection of bugs she had gathered from her rounds of the Keep. It was moments like those where she was reminded she did not have a mother. That Melissa would have to invite her into an embrace, and Shiera could not just leap and grab at her like Brynden did.

“Perhaps it is a coincidence she has Dany’s eyes,” she coaxes.

“’Tis a shade of amber rarely seen. Myriah had the same. I would not mistake them for another pair.”

“Or perhaps you dream of a dragon shown to you in human form. Remember? We have both seen that they will return. The dragons will come. The red woman may be one such.”

To this, her brother manages only a small lift of his shoulder. All Targaryens believe the dragons will return one day. It is a delusion so strongly shared, even the ones who cannot dream see the vision.

“You married Gwenys and Mya back into the Blackwood line despite their protests. That too was a consequence of this vision you had of the Wall. What if you are wrong? Would you sacrifice Daenys on the same pyre? She does not need to marry a Stark for her children – if the red woman is one of her children – to end up there.”

“I am not wrong, Shiera.”

“But what if you are?”

It is devasting to see the flicker of panic. Nothing frightens Shiera more than the notion of Brynden losing his control, the surety he has worked so hard to build in their father’s unforgiving court. The only enduring truth of the world is Brynden knows what he is doing. Without it, they are all lost. 

Even when he murdered two little boys, Shiera swore to herself he knows what he is doing. 

But his visions frighten him, reduce him to helplessness; he speaks of soaring in the sky, not on the back of a dragon, but in the body of a raven, sleek and fragile. When he awakens, he makes up for it by digging his fingers into his family, moving them across a game board and playing by rules only he is aware of. 

And yet he will not share the burden with her, even when she begs. In many ways, Shiera is still just his little sister, something to protect and sequester. It is why she refuses to marry him. She does not want him as a brother to wed, but a man she takes for a husband, equal footing.

He stares into the fire, as if it speaks to him. “I will be her death. And she will be the end of me. I have seen it.”

When her mother was drunk – a rare occasion – she would sneak into the throne room and take up her goodfather’s seat. It delighted her to see Daenys panic. Mama, you mustn’t! What if someone sees you? Which Jena would counter with Oh, I hope they do! Her hair was fire in the sunlight, blood in the darkness. The words of her husband's house.

Only a Targaryen could come up with something so impractical, she would comment on the throne as if it were a piece of art or a tapestry that demanded such scrutiny. And then she'd cast a guilty look at her daughter, whom she often forgot was a Targaryen, so well-tamed was Daenys by her mother’s hand.

Throw them on, Visenya, pile them high. Aerion once posited that a sword was no more than a man’s cock detached from his body. Aegon gathered a thousand, an entire realm emasculated. He had likely never imagined the dragons would one day stop hatching. And that the realm does not forget.

The doors open, and her sworn shield's languid strides echo behind her.

Daenys cuts a diminished figure against her ancestor’s haphazard seat. “How many lords will keep their oaths do you think?”

Ser Roland's answer is unhesitating. “All, if they know what’s good for them.”

Daenys manages a wobbly smile. “I have no dragon to coerce the unfaithful. The rest may decide fighting for a woman to rule them holds no merit.”

“Rhaenyra had a dragon.”

He isn't wrong, but it hardly goes against her point.

For you are a queen, are you not? You will be. They always make queens of the weak. The strong couldn’t bear it. No rook, nor plover, nor owl, nor crow. None of them queens. But a shrike. Like you and I.

This morning, in hopes of waking to Helaena crouched over her – she enjoys the hour before dawn, when her silver hair is the only light in the room – Daenys instead found herself before the hearth.

The visions were vivid. Three eggs, their scales so supremely different. The flames are fickle. Without dates, names and places, she is just another Targaryen dreaming of scaled beasts. No use to anyone. She cannot deliver a sure prophecy, like her namesake whose fear and panic had saved their dynasty. But the colour of those eggs pierced her with joy. 

“Am I wrong to be afraid?” she asks Roland. His eyes flicker towards the Iron Throne. Daenys employs her father’s dulcet words to coax the truth from him. “You may speak freely, ser.”

“I am afraid for you, princess.”

“That oaths might break as they did with Rhaenyra?”

“No. I am afraid that you will not be permitted to rule. Others will do it in your stead.”

Before she can ask him to name these ‘others’, the doors open again. Bloodraven walks in. Ser Roland turns and bows his head stiffly. 

“Cousin.” She curtseys out of habit.

“You do not curtsey to me. Your standing is higher now,” Brynden delivers in a bored tone.

Daenys’s attention is riveted by the woman behind him. She is tall, six feet at least, and Dornish.

There are three black dots drawn on her chin with kajal. Daenys's throat tightens. She remembers kissing those very same dots off her grandmother’s chin, leaving her in fits of giggles. Myriah explained that it was a mark to ward off evil. But Dany would still kiss it away, believing herself to be the only protection she needed.

“This is Lavana Sand, a kinswoman from your grandmother Myriah’s side. And a Blackwood from mine,” Brynden introduces her.

A surprised twitch runs through her. “A Blackwood?”

A spy.

He must see it written all over her face. Something coy and nasty curls the wick of his mouth. “Yes. My niece. Just like you. The last Lord Blackwood spent time in Dorne. He took a liking to one of Myriah's cousins.”

The princess gathers herself to speak, not wanting to appear rude to the stranger. “Lavana. That is a lovely name. What does it mean?” 

“Salt, princess,” she smiles at the clear evidence that she is Salty Dornish herself. “My mother was a literal woman.”

“Was?”

“She is dead.”

“I am sorry.”

“I am not. Her illness was cruel. She passed with relief.”

Lavana is lithe as a whip, and well-armed, if it were not immediately obvious. Daenys notices the tell-tale folds of clothing that denote knives tucked away. Her hands are calloused, the henna faded. A simple braid holds back her hair, and she wears her kajal much the same way Myriah did, a dab of blueish-black on the waterline. Around her neck, is a scarf of sandsilk, painted in Martell colours.

“No more kingsguard can be spared for your protection. And while I am sure your uncle will provide once you reach Summerhall, Lavana is more suited as your personal guard.” Brynden studies his nails with artful indifference. “Roland can be the de facto Lord Commander of your own little – queensguard. Until the time comes.”

“Not for many years yet, I hope,” Daenys says tightly.

“Your Grace, I would protest.” Ser Roland keeps a hold on his tone, but his eyes burn hard as blue gems. “This – lady – may have her place as one of the princess’s handmaidens. I am not familiar with her, or her style of...fighting.” Here, his eyes flick down to the knife strapped to her boot with more than a little scathing in his tone.

“You may test me in the training yards, ser. I submit to your experience, but I have full faith in my own.

“You may test her, Ser Roland,” Daenys agrees. “The master-at-arms at Summerhall is getting on in years, or so my uncle tells me. A man of your skill would be much suited. But you will remain as my sworn shield. You are the only one named as such. Is that not right, Cousin Brynden?”

Brynden concedes. The important thing for him is that Lavana ends up in Daenys's retinue. It would be unwise to fight the matter. Roland, whatever he might truly feel, has no choice but to bow his head. 

Brynden dismisses them but keeps Daenys with him.

“So. You have all that you wished for."

“Define ‘wished for’, Cousin.”

“Is that how we’re playing this?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Little Dany plays her hand and puts on her mask of innocence because – oh horrors – how uncouth it would be for Baelor’s girl to be caught wanting. I would respect honesty more. You have already bested me once. What is there to fear?”

Daenys hesitates. She thinks of the two little boys whose names Maekar cannot utter without a tremor in his hand. The pelting arrows of Redgrass.

Her great-uncle stares at her, unblinking, just like the raven on the windowsill in Ashford. Had the little black bird not appeared, her life would be very different. Infinitely less complicated for one, and locked up in the Maidenvault.

“My honesty makes little sense even to me.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I never knew what I wanted. But I have always known what I did not want. People's whispers are blatant. They think me to be the world’s most wicked girl, or paint Maekar as a truly vile man who would take his slain brother’s daughter for a wife. They do not know how I cornered him, until he had no choice, else he would watch me die. Even if they knew, they still would not understand how afraid I am, that under all of it, my love for him will run its course. And one day I will wake up in the same bed as my father’s killer with only hatred and a knife. If you dislike him so, be at peace in the knowledge that you are sending him to his death.”

For a long time, Bloodraven does not speak.

She half expects him to summon Ambrose, his usual defence against the faintest trace of Daenys’s insanity. He only smiles.

“I wish you a long and happy marriage, Dany,” he says, and then turns on his heel and abandons her to the cold mercy of Aegon's spiked chair.

Egg is enjoying himself in Dorne.

The little rogue takes great delight in informing his father that they have encountered Lady Vaith, as if she were some mythical creature, and not the sorry aftermath of his great-grandfather’s foul misadventures. His writing is far too descriptive for the length of parchment he had on hand. It teeters to the edge, turning into a scrawl that gets tinier, until Maekar almost has the letter to his nose to read the last few words. 

“Seven hells, boy. What the fuck was I paying that maester for?” 

Still, it pulls a smile from him upon a re-read. And another read after that. By the fourth, he is forced to set it aside else he will have to dwell on how much he misses the little shit.

But the letter stokes a deeper longing for that same lightness of spirit that Egg now wields as if it were nothing.

There was lightness when he was but two and ten, hunched over a map of the secret passageways in the Red Keep that he'd found on the back of a forgotten bookshelf somewhere in the Holdfast. He shared the secret with Rhaegel, who was too afraid to go out alone, and insisted Maekar must accompany him.

The night of excitement had been too much for his brother. They’d eaten street food and stopped to watch a mummer’s play, but a dragon puppet had frightened Rhaegel so, he wept for their mother. A few urchins, seeing the Dornish looking boy who was too old to be blubbering, seized the easy target. But they didn’t account for the younger brother. Maekar dove in headfirst, one against four, and won. 

Aerion’s letters are still folded up on the desk. He hasn’t looked at them. Not even the ones with broken seals. But something keeps him from setting them aside, or better yet, throwing them into the fire. They remain on his desk like the toys his children took to bed with them as babes, too afraid of the dark to relinquish the comfort.

Aerion will have received news of Daenys’s wedding and coronation by now.

Maekar seizes his cloak off the chair. A walk, perhaps, to clear his head. 

Without a destination in mind, he veers deeper into the Holdfast. The sound of girlish laughter draws him like a lost sailor summoned by sirens.

The tall Dornishwoman outside his niece’s door draws him to a stop. She bows her head and steps aside. Maekar does not move to go into the solar.

“Who are you?”

“Lavana Sand, my prince.”

“Telling me your name does not suffice. Who are you?”

“A new addition to the crown princess’s guard. On the order of Lord Bloodraven.”

Maekar scoffs, running a hand over his beard. “Of course. I expect you’ll be coming to Summerhall, then?”

“As ordered, my prince.”

She is an impressive specimen. It is not often he encounters a woman as tall as himself. There is no show of false humility and lowered eyes. They burn grey and steady into his own. Melissa Blackwood comes to mind. Same depraved shade, so pale it holds no warmth.

Lavana reaches to open the doors of the solar, but Maekar discourages her with a minute twitch of his head. He opens only the one and goes inside quietly.

The noise is louder. A handmaid races by, blonde hair flying out of its braids. After her chases another, pillow swinging. A soft thud and then twinned shrieks to indicate the prey has been caught. Silla shouts at one of the girls to pick up a new pillow as hers has burst. It isn’t the only one. The part of the chamber visible to him from the darkness of the hallway is alight with floating ivory feathers.

“Stop!” Daenys’s voice rings out. Silence falls. Silla throws a pillow to her companion who balances on one leg, rearing to go. The princess cackles. “Swap!”

The hunted become the hunters and the chase reignites. Daenys takes a flying leap off the end of her poster bed and thwacks Silla around the calves. Her handmaiden squeals in violent protest and the pair of them tumble together. One girl hits her leg on the corner of a table hard enough to topple it. But she still hops after her quarry, pillow braced like a morningstar. Another lunges for her playmate with such carelessness, they almost break their heads open.

Maekar is caught between enchantment and horror at this nymphean chaos.

It is only when Silla sees him and screams in fright, that the temperature drops. Their first instinct is to scrabble towards their little red-haired queen. They fall to their knees like chastised schoolgirls.

Maekar is scribbled into the part of intruder, an unfortunate man that has breached the domain of fae creatures. They will skin him the moment he turns his back and he will stand as an example to other travellers hoping to come this way.

Daenys sits up, fixing her coronet of pearls. Her cheeks are rosy bright, breath dashed with exhaustion. She looks elated. Drunk. Maekar wonders when it has become a habit. Jena never let her touch wine. Baelor was lax, but even then, he kept a careful eye on his girl. None of their children were permitted to imbibe much, especially not with Daeron as living proof of what might happen if they did.

“Uncle,” she greets, tipping her coronet as if it were a feathered hat.

Maekar has no words to voice his bemusement. He gestures around, as if to ask what is this? Daenys nibbles the tip of her finger. She fails to trap her bubble of laughter. One of the other girls snorts. And then another. Silla smacks both their heads and they hunch down lower.

“We were playing a game.”

“I can see that.”

“Girls, go away. My husband is here now.”

More muffled laughter. Maekar is aware he is turning red. The last time he felt this way, he’d entered his bedroom on his first wedding night and come face-to-face with Dyanna’s ladies, who had giggled much the same way. It beguiles him as to why they do it. There is nothing funny, but still they giggle, as if the very act itself is an illusion to conceal some deeper secret of girlhood he is not privy to. But half the point is to make him keenly aware of it.

Daenys leans back on her hands, spread-eagled. One velvet ribbon is skewed against her temple, and she only has on a single sock. The honey-gold of her leg stretches from under her crimson dress with a languorous arch. A velvety creature, too slippery to catch. 

Maekar looms over her. “Do you think this behaviour becomes a crown princess?”

She trills, lips a rosy blur. “Oh Uncle, enough lecturing.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Daenys bounds up, crouched on her bent legs like a demented pond creature. She leaps like one too, grabbing both his arms and dragging him towards the bed. It takes some effort, even when she puts her full weight behind it. Maekar lets himself be taken in the end. She grunts in triumph, as if it is all her doing, and pushes him to sit on the edge. Then she drops herself into his lap, one leg kicked up, arms around his neck. A raspberry is liberally – wetly – blown into his cheek.

“You’re never drinking again,” he tells her.

“I do not think you can enforce that.”

“I can, and I will.”

“But it makes me feel like I am floating.”

“Then you will have a rock tied to your ankles, and – Daenys, stop that – “

But the raspberries continue until she tires of them and not a moment before.

He almost tells her to act her age. Not that she ever has. She has always behaved as if she were a decade older than she is, and it has pleased the adults around her. She is only eight and ten. It does not make him feel better to remember it, the foul twist of fate that should force this half-child to call him ‘husband’.

“You are here in my solar.” She squirms in his lap, squeezing the nape of his neck gently. “You never come here.”

Because you always make a point of breaking into mine. “No, I do not.”

“Did you need something?”

“Not particularly. I heard you all screaming like monkeys.”

“We were playing Redgrass Field.”

“You were playing what?”

“Yes, it’s a game. It’s quite popular. We’d need more people to properly play it, but we did try to make a wall of pillows. It was not feasible. I led the charge, and Silla was you.”

“Silla was me?”

“Yes, Daenys the Hammer, and Silla the Anvil. But she did not hold the line very well. Rosie got a wicked bruise on her side but insisted she wanted to keep playing. I expect it was because she was on latrine duty. Silla snuck her upstairs.”

“What did I tell you about making friends with the servants?”

Her face falls, and Maekar wishes he had at least tempered his tone. He distracts her by touching the white streak of hair growing from the front of her head. The roots are not turning red again. It appears the lack of colour will remain. Under it, Daenys’s baby-soft, flushed pink face, all wide eyed and upset.

His voice eases into a softness that is believable. “I only tell you not to make friends because it will disappoint them. Your position as their superior will not change. For them to forget that could be fatal. Others will enforce the rules for you.”

Daenys nuzzles her face into his palm. “Is that advice for now or for later?”

“For later?”

“For when I am queen.”

“Both. But you would do well to learn it now.”

She blinks at him like a contemplative owl. And then lunges her head forward for a clumsy kiss. Maekar’s hand cups her throat to stop the collision. Before she can pout, and her eyes well up with diamond tears, he kisses her himself. A firm seal of his mouth, until her lips give under the reassurance that she is wanted.

When he breaks it off, she whines only a little, before succumbing to the authoritative pressure of no. It is rather like training a pup. He has forgotten what it is like to reckon with a hasty libido. Quick bursts of fire, no patience. At least she no longer tries to shove her tongue in his mouth, sweet as it is. That fool from Driftmark has taught her nothing.

Sputters of deliriousness echo in his ear, every little sound amplified. Her mouth is dry – she keeps swallowing. He wants to cup her skull and feed her his spit, but the course forward from there is inevitable. Jarring, that his first instinct is not to pour her a cup of water.

“Will you punish yourself for this kiss too?”

She rests her elbow on his shoulder, the very image of pensive reflection. Her underlip glistens wet in the melted candlelight.

He gives her no answer. Mischief lights her face and she dives for his ear again. The loudness of her whisper muddles the words into a throbbing peal of thunder. What? He murmurs, and she wipes the dampness of her breath from his ear before repeating them.

‘Tis a shame. I liked to fly. I want to do it again.

It takes him several beats to understand she means an orgasm.

“Vaemond never made you – fly?” Maekar cannot help a curl of his upper lip.

Daenys thinks on it but then grimaces with a mild shrug. “I felt things. But it wasn’t like that. When it was with you, I thought – I would lose control of my bladder. But I did not.” No blush stains her cheek as she speaks. And yet sober, she might combust at the very idea of voicing this to him. Remarkable thing, wine. It brings out a perilous magic in his deeply anxious niece.  “And he would never – he refused – to spend inside me. Not the way you did.”

“Never?”

She shakes her head and crawls off his lap to sprawl on the bed. She draws a circle over her abdomen. “He would do it right there, and then say that was how it worked. Because the baby would be inside my stomach, and the hole there was how his seed entered.”

“Through your navel?”

“Yes.” Her face slackens, as she must have now judged by the look on his that she is saying something stupid. “Is it not?”

Maekar almost laughs. But the anger surges quicker. Towards Baelor, towards Jena, towards that drooping stalk of a husband. Vaemond had not wanted to put a child inside her, clearly, but it was Baelor who had claimed Jena would have done the task of teaching their daughter the basics of conception.

The anger mingles with sorrowed affection at the beguilement on Daenys’s face.

“That – “ he touches the splay of her fingers over her abdomen. “ – is where you were bonded to your mother inside her stomach. Not where the seed goes in. Did you not think to ask one of your ladies?”

His niece twists away, forcing his hand off. “No. It was embarrassing.”

“Did he ever do it any other way?”

“No – well – in my mouth. And sometimes he – “

Here, her lips suddenly droop downwards, and then she hunches her knees to her chest. Maekar pulls the curtain of her back, but Daenys turns her face away again, blinking furiously at some vague spot at the distant end of the room.

“Dany, what did he do?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“It does not matter, he’s dead.”

“It does matter. Tell me.”

Still, she refuses. Jena’s stubbornness in human form.

Then, the mask is back on, and her body is open once more, crawling back onto his lap. The kiss she presses to his mouth is careful this time. The pearlescent silk of his hair unspools around her fingers.

“What was your first time like, Uncle?”

Maekar runs his fingers over the crimson samite of her skirt. The smallclothes are all silk. He grips her thigh hard to make her shiver, and she flattens a giggle into his hair. Punishment for daring to ask. Stalling, so that he does not have to answer.

Over by the nightstand, her doeskin slippers are stuffed with goose feathers. Stray remnants of girlhood lie wasted across the room, the aftermath of their pretend battle. What remained of Myriah’s scented oil collection is now her granddaughter’s, jewelled bottles in every colour with stoppers carved in the form of exotic animals. He can smell the lavender on her.

The sick lurch in his stomach has nothing to do with Dany, but her faerie weight is in his lap, and his mind can no longer see the red of her hair for what it is. It blanches to white, and then purple, falling over him like a veil. Two heads, and he is the third. The dragon must have three heads.

He is four and ten again – or was it three and ten, he cannot recall -  and his limbs are pinned down and breathing is a ritual of a forgotten life, a life before he was this, a mouth to spit in, to fill, an object to rut into slick flesh, and feel her squirm beneath him, until she squeals for her husband. Daemon, he is too rough! The fingers that push into his mouth, urging him to bite down, centre himself, ease into her as if she were a human being and not something invented only as a sheathe for his cock. Of bursting into tears because he can no longer feel his limbs. Everything becomes formless. Third head of the dragon, and below his waist, it all turns to nothing. The sickening envy he feels towards a bird on the sill for having wings to fly away from all that ails it. Such violent pleasure, it can only be the worst thing in existence, or the best, and it stops feeling like the best the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands – he cannot remember – of times he does it again, always in a different bed, until the brothel incense can no longer be scrubbed off his skin, until his mother can smell it, until she demands to know, until he crawls into Dyanna’s bed for the first time and has to pretend he knows less than he does to keep from frightening her.

“Uncle?”

Gingerly she calls to him, draws him from the memory, and for a moment, he can do nothing but stare at her. The silky radiance of this fatherless child.

“What?” 

Daenys understands something has gone awry. She kisses him again, and the flinch in his body goes thankfully unnoticed. She slips off his lap and darts into the next room. When she returns, she is brandishing a rolled up parchment.

“Look what I found.”

“What is it?”

“It was in the back of father’s study when we first cleared it out. Tucked behind a tome on the Rhoynish language. He was learning, you see, and he began to teach me, that’s why I took to calling him Baba. Look – ‘tis a map, Uncle.”

She flattens it over his knee. Excited stabs of her fingers into the thin vellum, drawing over lines he is well familiar with. Lines he drew himself. Maekar bursts into laughter. Daenys gawps at him.

“What? What is it?”

“You think your father made this?”

“Well – he had it – “

“I made the copy. The author of the original is unknown. But I copied it – faithfully – and look here – these three passageways weren’t on the first. I discovered them.”

He glances at her, and then does a double take, when he sees that she does not believe him. Her trust in her father’s excellence is single-minded. Maekar rolls up the map and swats her on the head.

“You think your strait-laced father had the gall to employ such a map for nefarious use?”

She sticks out her tongue in childish rejection. “It was on his shelf.”

“Yes. Because he confiscated it from me before my wedding to your aunt, and clearly, kept it out of some – “ he pauses to imagine Baelor smiling at the map with his cat-whisker wrinkles, before rolling it up with careful hands because it was something his little brother held such pride in. “Well, he kept it.”

Daenys paws at his hand to make him open the map again. “That passage there, it leads onto one of the outer walls. And then the side gate which is unguarded this time of night. But the hidden door – “ she leans in closer, before turning around sharply to point at the tapestry beside the hearth. “ – it’s behind there!”

“Wrong.” He tilts her chin back to the map and points out that the door is in fact behind the wood panelling of the corridor that links her reception chamber to her bedchamber. It leads to the Maidenvault. “Your great grandfather snuck Princess Daena into your solar through there. They likely made Daemon in your bedchamber.”

The map fascinates her. Maekar cannot deny the glistening burst of pride that she is so taken by one of his creations. Unfortunately, it backfires.

“Uncle, we leave for Summerhall soon.”

The burning light in her eyes makes him stiffen. “Yes. And?”

“And I have never – ever – really gotten to go into the city. Not the way it truly is. I have always been kept in a wheelhouse with a silk handkerchief forced over my mouth to keep me from smelling the place. But I would much rather walk through it.”

She beams, her youth an orchid's bloom flowering through her eyes, her mouth, her nose, every orifice in her precious little head.

Take me there, Uncle. Make me feel alive, Uncle. I want to fly again, Uncle.

The demands she makes of him, so sweetly uttered, are a frenzied fist around his throat. Do it, Uncle. The future vision of her queenhood comes in a refulgent whirl of colour. A wrinkle of her pretty nose and the people will sway in the direction of her will like charmed cobras.

He is seized by a sudden urge to turn her inside out, to push his fingers into the concealed atrium of her heart, nuzzle at the pink quartz of her lungs, and bite into her oystered pearl of a liver until it bruises the same colour as Baelor’s violet eye.

Instead, he pushes his fingers into her hair with a paternal authority he knows she misses. It turns her eyes limpid and she sways for him, as if she is the snake, and he the charmer.

He tells her to go and find a more suitable change of attire.

Chapter Text

“Father, why did you never – “

And then she stopped, a glass bead quivering on the end of her needle. She stuck it into the embroidery hoop with an impatient stab. Baelor’s gaze slid sideways until it found her. The damp, trembling nausea returned.

“You look so much like your mother in that light,” he murmured.

Daenys realised she was sitting on Jena’s usual perch, bathed in the sun, with the same red hair and wilful tilt of the chin. A will the mother put to good use, but not so much the daughter. She gave a weak smile.

“What were you about to ask me?”

“Nothing, Father.”

“Dany.”

“I only – I wondered why you never – t-told me what would happen on my wedding night, Baba.”

His whole demeanour changed. Any stranger would not have noticed, but Daenys was attuned to her father as if she had had a hand in making him. He was uncomfortable.

“I assumed your mother told you. ‘Twas my mistake.” Curt, sharp, his eyes fixed on the pages of his book, no longer melting with love in her direction because he was seeing Jena in her place, and oh, how he missed her. He missed his wife; kissing her, holding her, fucking her –

Daenys was too afraid to push further. Her father never so much as raised his voice at her – not even to Valarr – but there was a darkness that overcame him when he was irritated. It was there now. He does not like to think of me with Vaemond. As if the girl pressed beneath her husband was not his daughter, but an imposter, who had replaced the real Daenys, the girl who didn’t know about sex, nor the way a man’s tongue felt in her mouth.

“Speaking of your wedding night – “ It was Baelor’s turn to stop and consider his next words. He fidgeted furiously with his ring. “What were you and your uncle speaking of?”

“Which uncle?”

“Maekar. When you danced.”

Daenys stabbed the needle through again. “I do not remember. I was a little tipsy.”

“Really? Because it appeared to be a riveting conversation.”

His daughter stuck to her story. “I don’t remember what we talked about.”

He looked at her as if he did not believe her. Daenys had never seen such an expression on his face before, as if it were not her baba looking at her, but a man, a stranger to her, someone who had existed long before she had. It frightened her. Some of the emotion must have bled through on her face, because Baelor softened and came to kiss her on the head.

It did not have its usual effect. But she smiled anyway, because she wished for him to treat her as his little girl yet. Even if she knew he had already abandoned her to womanhood.

“Your marriage to Vaemond will be long and fruitful, I am sure of it. As was your mother,” he told her, and let her go before Daenys could embrace him properly and force him to hold her tight.

Why did you say it like that? Why did you make me try at the marriage for your sake instead of resisting it for mine?

A warm hand squeezes her chin. Her uncle, guiding her away from the peddler who is still rattling her tray of dried seahorses – an impetus for fertility she claims – because she thinks Daenys is a boy under the concealment of her disguise. Pretty boy, she’d cooed, and it was all it took for the princess to leave her husband’s side for curiosity. She does not think she would survive in the world alone with such weak survival instincts.

“Where were you?” Maekar murmurs as they continue on down the street.

He is tall and imposing even in his peasant’s garb. With his beard, he blends in with many old white-haired men, though upon closer inspection, he is obviously younger. The starkness of that hair ages most Targaryens beyond their time.

“I was thinking of father,” she answers truthfully.

He looks back at her, and she thinks he might take her hand for comfort, for her sake or his, she does not know. But their guise as father and son would be ruined. Too old to be clinging onto Pa’s hand. Once he’d dunked her head into a bucket of ice cold water to sober her up, the notion of pretending to be other people delighted Daenys and she’d even come up with names for them.

Maekar is Tom Codswallop and Daenys is Harry Dicklepod.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d said immediately.

“I do not believe I am, Thomas Codswallop.”

And so on, and so forth. She was still a little drunk on the walk down to King’s Landing. But now the haze has well and truly worn off.

The size of the city is astounding on foot. But most of all, it is the revelation that there is a certain hour after which parts of it are as alive as they are in the day. Awnings are still stretched out over eateries that keep most of their patrons seated on tables and chairs outside. There are candles lit in the windows of stores selling everything from shoes, to fabric, to glassware. And every inn they pass by is packed with people.

Daenys notices several members of the nobility wandering around making drunken spectacles of themselves. Several Crownland lords keep homes in the city to remain close to the Red Keep. Most prefer it in King’s Landing to the quiet boredom of their homesteads.

“They won’t recognise you?” she asks.

“’Tis a miracle what the gloom of night and strongwine will do to the good sense of men.”

“Strongwine. Do you think I might try that? I’ve never had any.”

“Daenys – “

“M’name is Harry, Pa. You named me.”

Maekar bursts out laughing.

Daenys is startled into delighted silence at the sound. She quickly takes advantage of his softening to pull him towards a Yitish woman’s stall.

“Do you not have enough of this stuff?” Maekar says, as she picks out jade pins, and silk tassels and a little pot of red rouge.

“These are for Daella and Rhae. I should not go to Summerhall empty handed. There are already books and toys I’ve had commissioned, but I remember Daella especially likes quaint things. She was reading a book on Yitish imperial harems a few months ago and was quite taken with the described attire of the concubines.”

Her uncle’s face changes quite suddenly, and he snatches the pot of rouge. “You think it appropriate to gift her rouge? She is ten. And reading books about concubines! I should have Melaquin strangled!”

Daenys is aware the Yitish woman is pretending not to listen. She quickly hands the things back and pulls Maekar away. Once they are down a dark alleyway, she rounds on him.

“Do not blame Maester Melaquin for this! Daella likes to read, just as Aemon does! He reads widely for the purposes of research, so why is it different that she is a girl?”

“It is different because you are buying her a pot of rouge to go with the damned book.”

“The rouge is for Rhae!”

“What?”

“She likes to use it for face paint! When she does her little mummer’s plays! I have never once seen her use any on her mouth, but even if she did, it is just play, uncle. Gods!” She darts back to the peddler, who quickly takes the coin before the pair of them can change their minds again. With a simpering smile, she pulls the drawstring on the silken pouch and drops it in Daenys’s palm.

Maekar does not speak to her for a time after that.

His niece is irritated enough to shun him too and busies herself with admiring the city.

There will be time yet to fret over how these gifts bear an implicit message for her cousins. Please do not hate me. And that her uncle, whatever his feelings on her might be, will likely never see her as holding any real maternal authority over his children. Not that she wants it. But knowing that he does not believe she should have it is naturally galling.

Some way up a hill, she turns and looks back over the city, and the Blackwater bleeding into the sea. What songs the dragons would have sung on a night like this, the moon impeded by their strange and miraculous winged shapes. The wonders of her house were plenty indeed. A tangled, heaving sadness overwhelms her, and she is forced to turn away. Perhaps dragons will return to the world, but they will not fly over King’s Landing again. That time seems long over.

Her uncle is already halfway up the next cobbled street, believing her to be behind him.

Careless, really, to let his guard slip as he walks with the heir to the Iron Throne. Daenys stops at the mouth of a narrower, steeper road, bending up towards the Red Keep from an easterly direction. The laughter and music pours down on her in peels. It is the liveliest street yet.

Maekar finally turns and sees her at a distance, staring towards the Street of Silk. He has that look in his eye that suggests he will take her by the wrist and drag her. Daenys slips away before he can. She imagines the bark of fury he has had to swallow down burns something terrible.

She forces him to chase her, halfway up the Street of Silk where he finally wrenches her back by her cloak and pulls her against him. “Never do that again.” Such passion she has stirred in him. Only through anger it seems, can she entice her uncle to express this most ardent familial love.

“Have you ever visited this street, uncle?” she asks through panted breath. When he turns her around with little effort, she pincer grips his arm and tries to dig her heels in. He stops only so that they do not attract unwarranted attention. It is a well-policed street, with the gold cloaks in abundance. They will break them apart, thinking it is a patron getting rough with his young male lover, who no doubt belongs to one of these fine establishments. “You must have. You were a young prince once. But I never had the same education. They do not think it is necessary for girls to learn what pleasure is.”

One of her hands abandons his arm and touches his chest. Hard and well-defined, warm under the thinner, cheaper garb of the smallfolk. A thumb brushes over the nipple she had mouthed at like a searching babe when he’d put her to sleep in his bed. She has been too afraid yet to ask him if he has used the flogger again. If he thinks of her and beats himself even when she is decreed by the law to be his possession. The thing between her legs is now his rightful territory. It has never much felt like hers anyway, but at least there is a choice in the giving away of it here.

Whatever is going through Maekar’s head, when his arm relaxes, Daenys knows she has won.

The brothel does not have a name.

Some of the cheaper establishments have merry little painted boards, like inns, to signal their thresholds. This one has a pair of ornate, heavily guarded doors, and it is not as rowdy. The guards ask for a token, to which Maekar gives the name of a woman instead. They seem sceptical, but one of them opens the gates to summon a young boy, who upon hearing the name, rushes back inside.

A short wait later, the gates reopen. A tall woman with a thick, dark braid bound in flowers steps out. Green eyes and bronzed skin, she looks like –

Daenys flicks her glance at Maekar to see if he has at all noticed. But he must have. She is the spitting image of his mother, Myriah. All but the eyes. Her age is undetermined – the Dornish age remarkably well – but it cannot be much older than Maekar himself. Her eyes dance when they land on her uncle, and she beckons him in without a word.

“Mayakar,” the woman murmurs once they are in the privacy of the darkened courtyard. It smells of spices and flowers, and the fountains sound like rehearsed music. “I was beginning to worry I was naught but a faded memory to you, my prince.”

Daenys observes him keenly. Even in the quelled light, she sees Maekar’s twitch of a smile. What lies between him and this woman is an old intimacy which bears that most enviable kiss of friendship. He does not tense when she brushes his arm and kisses his cheek. The very same uncle that tenses when so much as a child runs past him too loudly.

“And who is this?” the woman turns to peer at Daenys. “A young man you have brought to me for my pleasure?”

Maekar reaches over to remove Daenys’s hat, unspooling the curtain of red hair. The woman’s surprise amuses him. She places her hands delicately on her cheeks and glides around Daenys, as if she were a statue to be admired.

“Can it be? Baelor’s little girl? Oh, my darling, look at you. Look at you. Perfection itself. And you married her.”

A strange look passes between them. But the woman’s smile towards Daenys does not change. It is tinged with a sad affection that can only be for Baelor’s sake. She gives her name – Ceryse Sand – and introduces herself as an old paramour of both Daenys’s father and uncle.

“They both…?” Daenys trails off.

Ceryse laughs, the sound a shattering of glass bells. “Yes, I am afraid so. But never together. Though I am to believe that it was not an unwanted concept.” Here, she eyes Maekar who gives her the smallest shake of the head to keep her from speaking further.

Daenys’s heartbeat picks up at the loaded potential of this informational scrap. Like glimpsing a stag at a distance, but it is yet too far to fix with her arrow. She is careful not to look at her uncle in case he spots her eagerness to know. She does not wish to scare her prey off. He shies so easily.

The brothel is indeed different to the others. For one, there are no drunks reeling in the corridors. And though there is an abundance of candles lighting up the expensive mosaics – the work of Lyseni tradesmen paid for in sexual favours as Ceryse tells her – most of the larger chambers are empty.

“It does not sound very busy,” she says.

“Because we have heavy wooden doors,” Ceryse smiles. Her walk is so fascinating – swaying, like her joints are oiled with jasmine – that Daenys cannot help but be riveted. “Curtains do not do enough to block out the noise. And since discretion is our greatest draw, it does get rather quiet even when there is a full house. Like tonight.”

Maekar then murmurs something to her, and as they converse, Daenys lingers to admire the decorations, the glass lamps, the potted palm trees and of course, the famous wooden doors carved with murals that mirror the Old Valyrian tapestries from the Red Keep.

Ceryse takes them to a private chamber. Blue in its entirety, from the tiles to the furnishings on the bed. On a hot summer’s night, walking in here must feel like releasing a lungful of bated breath. Ceryse leaves briefly, and Maekar and Daenys are alone in the wake of the closed door.

“Am I to receive my education from her as you did?”

“Does that make you nervous?”

“No. I want to be here. I asked to be here. Was your first time with her?”

He shakes his head and then glances away as if to indicate that it is not a subject of conversation he wants pushed.

“I visited Ceryse more than your father did. I saw the look that passed across your face when she mentioned him.”

“What look?”

“Jealousy.”

She isn’t expecting him to say it quite so plainly. But she manages to at least remain calm. They stare at each other, uncle and niece, with this great chasm of knowing opening between them. Daenys flicks her tongue over her lip.

“Does that bother you?”

Maekar raises his eyebrows and glances to the side, a slight derision in his half-smile.

“Dany, I’ve never been under any illusion as to the depth of feeling you held towards your father. The way he kept you, I would be surprised if you did not.”

The lining of her stomach sheds away like burnt flesh and in its place, raw and sticky, is something that hurts to touch. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.” Spoken so quickly, the words sound harsher than he intends them to.

“Well, Ceryse looks like your mother, so I do not know what it is you are trying to say to me, but – “

The door opens and Daenys is forced to bite off the end of her sentence. Maekar’s ears are red. But it is a different kind of tension. Not quite unpleasant. Just…different. That buzzy sting of a scab coming off a wound. Her uncle’s eyes dart at her more than once as Ceryse pours the wine. Daenys takes great pleasure in ignoring him. When he stops Ceryse from giving her any wine at all, that pleasure strengthens to vindictiveness.

“I take it the conversation was not so relaxed in my absence?” Ceryse says gently. When she notices Daenys staring, she chuckles. “You have Baelor’s look when you are annoyed, little one.”

“Everyone says I look like my mother.”

“You have her colouring. But Baelor’s face. Does she not, Mayakar?”

Daenys bristles a little that she gets to call him that. Only members of his family have, and even then, only his brothers, mother and grandmother. She would never be permitted. The irritation is not with Ceryse herself, but simply the situation in which she finds herself to be of the generation below, ever beneath him.

“She wants the same education a prince gets,” Maekar says, sitting back with one leg crossed over the other. His wine goblet dangles between the precarious squeeze of his middle finger and thumb.

Ceryse turns with a delicate flare of her eyes. “Is that true, princess? You wish to fuck me?”

Daenys giggles at the brazenness of it, but when it dies away, she realises that yes, she might like to. If only she knew how. In theory, anything can be appealing. Silla perhaps, she could, because Silla giggles and blushes and is so nervous, one would have no choice but to be confident in her place, and she would be so easily impressed. But Ceryse is different.

“I would – “ she swallows to wet her throat and ends up squirming in her seat. “I would much rather watch you please my uncle. He is so rarely pleased with me.”

That last statement is laden with sarcasm, and Maekar’s little eyebrow twitch is evidence enough that she is pushing it. Ceryse is either used to being at the centre of family fights, or she is just adept at ignoring tension. She has of yet displayed no opinion towards the fact that Maekar is her uncle, and more importantly, her father's killer. Everything is breezed past, as if it were inconsequential. The appeal of the establishment laid bare.

“I do not believe that for a moment. This creamy soft skin and these eyes. I just know you make his heart beat faster. Maekar simply…has issues with self-expression.” She brushes her fingers through the hair at Daenys’s temples and grins over her shoulder at him.

Maekar sets his cup down with an audible thud. “I concede. If my little wife wishes to learn through spectatorship, let us not disappoint her. She is to be queen, after all.”

His sarcasm is just as biting.

Ceryse coos, and says to Daenys of course, Your Grace before bending down, where she waits for the girl’s nod of permission to press a kiss to her mouth.

“You may join when you please, Your Grace,” she whispers playfully. “You are the authority in this room.”

Daenys sucks in air and feels rather like she might be on the verge of flying.

Awareness grows, of that obscene slash between her legs. A gaped wound that is never sealed or ever allowed to be. A pulse of a heartbeat catches there, flickering. It strengthens with every thrust of her uncle’s cock into Ceryse. When he looks at Daenys as he fucks his old paramour, she thinks she might die, so she keeps praying that he will stop, because anointed queen of this room or not, she yet lacks the ability to command Maekar the Anvil.

Ceryse touches him with the finesse of a woman who understands the human body with a learned proficiency. As if she one day sat before a detailed diagram of a maester’s anatomical study and knew early on how best to play this instrument to pitch it to the perfect sound. But even with her efficiency, there are moments of real surprise, usually when she discovers a new scar on his changed body, or when he grinds his hips a little too strongly.

“When was this?” she murmurs, fingering a scar on his side. He answers with equal quietness in his voice, as if he isn’t inside her and the conversation is what takes precedence.

Daenys marvels at that. She can’t imagine being able to unscramble words if Maekar was on top of her again. They do not kiss – she notes that in particular –  and Ceryse never tries to bring her mouth close to his.

For about a half hour earlier –perhaps lesser or longer, she could not tell – she’d watched his mouth devour Ceryse’s cunt. The woman whispered of missing the way he used to do it, and Daenys stopped blinking, wanting to know what it was, which particular flick and curl of his tongue had made Ceryse utter such passion for it.

“Won’t you join, Your Grace?” Ceryse called, reaching for her with a lazy smile, her glass bangles tinkling down her wrist. But Daenys declined and gathered her knees to her chest.

Now, Ceryse is flat on her stomach, her long hair falling off the edge of the bed, and the curve of her arse behind her pressed to Maekar’s hips.  The sound their skin makes when it slaps together, the way she reaches back and he grabs her hand, holding it hostage, the kisses he presses to the knots of her spine –

Did I sound like that? Did it sound like that when we fucked?

Why can she not remember? Only the rushing in her ears, and the little slit of fear opening in her belly when her uncle’s weight came down upon her and she realised nothing so powerful, so strong and as violent as his body had ever been so close to her. It trapped her, and she felt for a moment that she might scream for help. But she hadn’t. She’d let him push inside her and she’d taken it like a good girl, like his good girl.

He leans back and spits at the juncture where his cock pierces Ceryse’s body. Daenys’s jaw starts to tremble. Their eyes meet and Maekar’s are pale violet in the breached light. She stands, as if in a dream, and comes on wobbling steps to kneel before the bed, until she is face-to-face with Ceryse.

The woman is beyond words. All her confidence, her refined seduction, it is whittled down to a keening, panting heat. It is collected there, between her lips, and Daenys reaches for it with her own mouth. Tentative kisses at first, humming into each, and then deeper, until Maekar slows so as to keep Ceryse from accidentally biting down on his niece’s tongue.

That, and because he clearly likes what he sees. His eyes are agleam with some feral urge, a trace of days long past when he was in these brothels and there was little to his life except drinking and fucking.

When the kiss breaks, Maekar twines Ceryse’s lovely hair around his fist, and pulls her head back further. His thrusts are forcefully slow, his hand braced at her hip.

“Tell her how it feels,” he says to her.

Ceryse emits a creaky groan and sucks Daenys’s spit off her bottom lip. “Divine.”

“Divine,” Daenys repeats in a daze, and cannot help but to touch that beautiful face, the curve of her neck. “Has any other cock felt as divine as my uncle’s inside you, Ceryse?”

Maekar’s breath stutters, and his hand fists Ceryse’s hair tighter.

“No, Your Grace. Never. He knows it, I have told him.”

“And Ceryse does not lie,” Maekar grunts, his hand clawing over her abdomen and leaving red marks in its wake. “Do you, sweetling?”

She can see the pulse fluttering in the hollow of Ceryse’s throat as she tries to shake her head. Daenys lunges for it, like a kitten to a bowl of milk, lapping and sucking until the skin flushes a deep pink. She mouths lower, wanting to sink her teeth into the plump flesh of her breast, the dusky rose of her nipple. But before she can, Maekar drags Ceryse, until she is on her knees and her back is pinned to his chest. Daenys takes it as deprivation at first, but then his hand grabs the side of her hair – the only place he can reach – and drags her onto the bed until Ceryse is pressed between them both.

Their mouths connect over her shoulder in a deep, hungry kiss, until the taste of strongwine on his tongue is transferred to hers. Daenys mewls, sucking Ceryse’s fluids off his beard, the sweet musk of her coating his hair like perfumed oil.

“Make her fly, uncle,” she whispers.

When Ceryse reaches down to touch her clit, Maekar forces her hand off and tells Daenys to do it instead. And she does, with all the passion of a student wanting an approving mark.

Daenys covers her face in puppy kisses, which induces a giggling fit in Ceryse. But not for long, because she is soon crying out again as Maekar notches her on his cock and grinds back and forth until she is stuffed and stretched and dripping. Daenys runs her fingers over the place where her uncle’s cock is pumping into her and licks up the wetness. She can’t put her face there, not without getting accidentally hurt. So, she makes do with circling her fingers over the nub of flesh at the top.

Ceryse keens, a trill of a sound, and Daenys goes faster, wanting to hear it again and again. She licks up her neck and buries her face in the abundance of raven hair. Her fingers get steadily slicker. There is no practice to it, no prettiness. She takes mouthfuls of the woman’s flesh, as if Ceryse is confectionary to be consumed in a few bites. She is soft, and sweet and delicious. Her sounds are perfect, and so is her hair, the weight of her breasts, her buttocks, the neat little opening of her cunt that Daenys wants to taste just as Maekar had done but is too shy – and too aware of her own inexperience – to push for.

When Ceryse starts to come, Maekar replaces his cock with three of his fingers until the wetness squirts out of her. Daenys watches in amazement. She’d had no idea a woman’s body could do that. And then his fingers are at her mouth, and she swallows them without thinking, because they are her uncle’s fingers and where else do they belong?

Maekar’s pupils are wide and jet black; some semblance of recognition returns when Daenys’s cheeks hollow around his digits. He looks unbearably fond for a moment and presses a kiss to the corner of her stretched mouth.

“Do you wish to join now, my darling?” Ceryse offers again, watching them with a knowing look in her eye.

Daenys feels the heartbeat pulse between her legs again. But she shakes her head. She still wants to watch, to observe her uncle like he is in a cage, an exotic animal she is deciding whether she wishes to buy. But she wants to stay on the bed this time, which is what she mumbles when she removes her mouth from his fingers long enough to speak.

“As you wish, Your Grace,” Ceryse yawns. She submits to the demanding pull of Maekar’s hands on her thighs with a pretty squirm of her lower half. “But first – a kiss for good luck?”

Daenys leans down to her, but the woman laughs, and shakes her head, wagging her eyebrows towards Maekar’s erect shaft. If Ceryse notices the girl was quicker to lean into her than she was to her uncle, she does not point it out. Daenys hesitates, searching his face for permission. He places his hand against her head, and she dips low. Her lips suckle the tip, a quiet moan swirling in her throat. Above her head, she hears his gruff little breath and flattens her tongue to the slit until it leaks into her mouth, salty and wet. She kisses lower, sucking at the thick vein when she realises it is Ceryse she is now tasting on his skin too.

“Stop.” Maekar grunts and cups her neck to force her back.

At Daenys’s noise of offence, Ceryse squeezes her cheek gently. “You will make him spend too quickly, pretty girl.”

That soothes her pride a little. Maekar gives her his fingers again as consolation, and Daenys takes them happily. She curls up beside Ceryse who is whimpering again as her body is invaded. Her uncle is propped on one arm to keep from crushing Ceryse with his weight. The other arm is angled over Daenys, his fingers still stoppered in her mouth. It is a taxing position to hold too long, but he does not seem to notice.

He doesn’t look at Daenys now, as if doing so will also make him come inside Ceryse too fast.

The room smells of sex and wine and sweat and it hits the senses like a punch to the head. Daenys bites into his fingers, and he fucks Ceryse all the harder for it. It is a thrilling counterbalance. She knows what he will picture as her tongue folds over his digits and she gives him suction. Nudging her head up, she lets herself gag on them a little to remind him of the exact moment she’d done so on her knees, when he’d forfeited her wellbeing for a short while just to watch her struggle. The whole time, his cock was getting even harder in her mouth.

When Ceryse comes again, it is with a sharp scream, her hands strained against his chest as if having him inside her is far too much pressure, unbearable, and yet if he got off, Daenys knows she would grab for him like a woman drowning.

Every clench of her own empty cunt produces a fresh dribble of fluid, but she ignores it. Her eyes are glassed over, and Maekar’s fingers are starting to prune inside her mouth. She licks the newly made contours, briefly pulling off to run her lips over the texture.

“Wh-where do you want him to come, Your Grace?” Ceryse pants, brow furrowed with the effort to even speak.

Daenys’s eyes round at this decision put on her. But she does not hesitate. She touches Ceryse’s stomach, and Maekar obeys without question. Sprays of hot, pearlescent fluid spattered on bronzed flesh, and when he is done, the crown princess kneels up, her tongue already out in anticipation.

Maekar holds her hair back and out of the way. She feels him press his face into her scalp, as she presses hers into Ceryse’s belly. She sucks up his spent, running it over her lips and licking it into her mouth with hasty swallows. When it is finished, her greed pushes for more. She kisses downwards, until Ceryse squeals with pleasured laughter.

She is oversensitive, but Daenys’s mouth is hot and impatient, and when she tastes the silky wetness of her cunt, she wants more. Maekar murmurs something to Ceryse with a trace of amusement, and she giggles back. It quickly turns into a strained whimper. It gives the princess a shot of confidence.  

Maekar finally pulls Daenys back up when Ceryse starts to sound as if she is on the verge of losing her mind. The princess’s face is pink as a button, eyes half-lidded and her mouth glazed with wet. Maekar stares at her, open-mouthed. And then he kisses her, a furious crash of teeth and lips and tongue, her lissom form yanked tight against his own.

She doesn’t know how long they kiss for. But when she finally opens her eyes, Ceryse is no longer on the bed. Daenys pulls away from Maekar to turn and look for her, but the room is empty. He drags her down onto the bed, and for a few minutes more, there is only the wet, sticky sound of their conjoined mouths feeding on each other.

Ceryse left them because she sensed the shift in the air; it is the reason she is one of the most sought-after courtesans in the city. Her knowing. Had she stayed even a few seconds longer, the moment would have fractured. Daenys wishes there was some way to convince her to come to Summerhall with them, to become the permanent rope between herself and Maekar. She seems to read him far better than Daenys can, and there is very little time to take further lessons.

“Uncle, if I ask you something, do you promise you’ll answer?”

“I cannot promise if I do not know what it is you mean to ask.”

“That is the gist of it, I’m afraid.”

“Ask. I’ll decide if I want to answer.”

She strokes his beard, a careless leg tossed over his hip. He is still half-hard between their pressed bodies, but neither of them takes any notice.

“Did you and my father…” she hesitates, thinking of all the times she would wonder about some of the lords at court who had close male companions they were said to be fond and more than fond of. Daenys had always been too nervous to ask someone what that actually meant. And now the first time she is going to pose the question, it is towards her frightening uncle, and the other subject is her dead father. Never let it be said she is not brave. “Were you both ever – the way you and Ceryse – “

She starts to stutter, face turning red, and stares very fixedly at the pox scars on his cheek until they start to crawl across her vision.

When Maekar still doesn’t say anything, she forces out another trembling question.

“Was he your first?”

Her uncle shakes his head.

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

The corners of her eyes crease up as she remembers herself at thirteen. It isn’t conceivable. Not even after her mother died and she forced herself to ‘grow up,’ did she actually feel ‘grown up’ at thirteen. Her breasts hadn’t even formed properly yet. She was still of an age where her body felt unencumbered.

“Was it Aerys?”

“Why would it be Aerys?”

“The flogger. You said he gave it to you.”

“He did.”

“I just thought – “

“It was not Aerys.”

“Still. He should not have given you that. It’s his fault – “ she reaches over his shoulder to touch one of the welts. It brings their mouths closer and they kiss again. His quiet moan of satisfaction melts her stomach and she lets him bite her lips raw before she breaks for more questions. “You won’t do it when we return, will you? Because of Ceryse? Or is it only me?”

Maekar laughs brokenly, and she can tell he does not wish to say that she indeed is the reason he does it, as it will shift the blame to her. He cares enough not to do that.

“I did not want to tell you Aerys gave it to me. It isn’t ideal to see one’s elders in a less-than-perfect light whilst one is young. Ruins the illusion of safety.”

“I know. But His Grace has never really behaved as a reliable elder when I was growing up. I wouldn’t go to him if I were in trouble. Uncle, may I kiss you again – “

The end of her sentence dissolves into an absent whine. Flowing smoothly from ordinary conversation into carefree neediness is an altogether new experience. But she likes it, especially when Maekar’s hand grips the back of her neck and he gives in immediately.

Daenys closes her eyes and swims into his mouth like a happy little fish. Heat clogs her joints, chest pounding. Kissing is an overwhelming task, especially for a body that reacts as sensitively as her own. But she does not mind the suffocation if it’s him.

“I don’t think Father ever liked the idea of me being married,” she mutters when they take another breather.

Her lips are cushioned against his cheek, head resting on the crook of his arm. His fingers toy with the soft whorls of hair at her nape. “What do you mean?”

“Mother likely thought he was putting off talks of my wedding so that he might marry me to a relative. But I do not think it was that. I think – I’m not sure – sometimes, it felt – I don’t know.”

She turns very red and falls quiet.

It isn’t some illicit mark she is attempting to stamp posthumously on her father. She would never do that; she loves him to distraction. But she thought of him when Vaemond first entered her and that memory has stuck to her like tar because she could not explain it to herself. The first thought she had – as panic flooded her system – was to run straight into Baelor’s arms in her mind, and there she’d thought of him in a way no daughter should think of her father. But if she’d stayed in her body, with Vaemond, she would have felt worse.

“He asked me what you and I spoke of at your wedding dance,” Maekar says.

Daenys sniffs, clenching her fingers into his bicep, as if the hard muscle is easily mouldable. “He asked me the same.”

“What did you say?”

“That I didn’t remember.”

“As did I.”

“He wouldn’t have liked that our answers matched.”

“No.”

“Father was always jealous over the people he loved. Mother felt the brunt of it.”

“Oh, your mother felt it all the time. Baelor and I share that trait, of wanting to fuck out of spite. Jena attracted attention, and it made him plenty jealous even though he was proud of it too.”

“But he couldn’t – “ Daenys breaks off, fingernails digging into his skin. He senses the turmoil burning like a swarm of bees in her chest, because he leans in and presses a kiss to her cheek. “ – he couldn’t do that to me, could he? He would just get quiet instead, and pretend that everything was fine, but it was not. I could feel it. And then I went back to Driftmark and he would not write to me for weeks, or ask me to come and visit. He left me there adrift, and I was in such pain, and I wanted him to write, but he wouldn’t – and I think if I knew – if I knew it might help and make it all better – I would have let him – do it for spite – I would have let him do to me what he would do to mother if – “

She bursts into a fit of violent tears.

Her uncle’s hands bundle her into his chest and hold her there tight. She inhales in between sobs, taking in the combined scent of his sweat, Ceryse’s perfume, and the wine she wishes he’d let her drink because she wouldn’t be acting like this if she was tipsy.

“He has always had that way about him,” Maekar rumbles into her hair. “He’d go quiet and withdraw. It wasn’t you. He was always that way.”

Daenys squeezes his arm again and this time her nails break skin but he does not react. “He used to say so often that he wished I would stay little forever. And then he stopped hugging me the way he used to. Like the change in my body was beyond his comprehension. He always said I looked beautiful, like mother, but Ceryse is right, I look like him, I’ve always looked like him. Why would he never acknowledge that?”

Her uncle shushes her softly. When Ceryse left the room, she likely did not think this would be the outcome. Daenys cries until she is dizzy, and then lifts her mouth up for another kiss, demanding it off him, the way she could never just ask her father to hug her.

“How were you to know what to feel?” Maekar whispers against her mouth. “He made you the lady of the household after your mother’s death. And when I confronted him for it, he said as Jena would to Dyanna – mind your own children, Maekar, they are running wild.”

The notion that Maekar had tried to help in his own way only makes her cry again.

When her tears are finally spent, she turns onto her front and pulls the growing silver streak to the front of her head where she begins to braid it. Something to busy herself with no matter how small.

“Thirteen was too young.”

“Yes, that is what I told him.”

“Not me. You.”

Maekar lifts his arm from where he has just draped it over his eyes. “What?”

“For your first time.”

He lowers his arm again. “It is ordinary for boys to learn around that age.”

“Did it feel ordinary?”

“Yes.”

“Did it really?”

She watches him roll his tongue inside his cheek. “What is your point?”

“Nothing. That thirteen is too young. That is all. Just because something is accepted widely, it does not make it right. The maesters in the Citadel change their minds about medical treatments all the time. Something done a century ago is not deemed reasonable now.”

Maekar just laughs, as if she is too young to know what she is speaking of. But she can see that one of his fists is clenched, and his thumb is digging into his palm so hard it’s turning white.

Daenys presses her face into her palm to hold in the intensifying anguish. It is only doubled when she imagines Maekar at the age of thirteen. Moody, sullen boy, with scarred cheeks, and an innocence no one is giving a second thought to.

“I love you, uncle.”

He doesn't give her a response. He just lies there with his arm over his eyes, until Daenys has no choice but to curl up next to him, counting the white hairs on his arm until sleep takes her.

Outside, a gentle rain breaks out.

Chapter Text

Tw // mention of past CSA

“You smell like him,” Kiera whispers.

Daenys mumbles sleepily, head in her lap, and the wheelhouse rocking under them. They have been on the road for nigh on a week now. It is still better than travelling by ship, where there is nowhere to canter off on a horse.

It was not as bad as leaving for Driftmark two years ago. She’d wept in convulsions when she saw the Tower of the Hand fading into the distance and refused to pull her eyes from the Red Keep until it was nothing more than a speck on the horizon. But the Tower of the Hand only held Bloodraven when she left it now, so she cast it a brief glance and embraced her great-aunt Shiera instead.

Be good, she’d whispered to Dany. And write me lots of letters.

“His beard oil,” Daenys murmurs to Kiera. “It leaves a trace.”

Her goodsister hums and twirls her fingers into Daenys’s hair.

She thinks of Maekar playing with her hair, like a moody little boy with a dolly in his lap, head bonded to hers. Maybe this is why he spurns company; to hide the moody little child lest the wrong people notice his continued existence. Daenys likes him. She wants the moody boy more often, to play with him like he is her doll. Jaehaerys the Conciliator had a long braid; Maekar would suit one also, if only he’d grow out his hair again. Father said he kept it long until he turned thirteen, at which point he’d slashed it in half and refused to explain to his parents why. Myriah was especially upset; she loved her baby’s sheet of moonlit hair.

Uncle Maekar, aged thirteen. Valarr was pretty as a girl at that juncture; he’d bemoan that he could not grow even a hint of a beard like their father’s. Soft hands, soft lips, soft belly. A boy under the weight of the new armour that Baelor had made because Valarr pestered so much.

She does not know what it means to be thirteen and a prince. Being thirteen and a princess was terrible, horrible, no good. All she can think of is Matarys dying at thirteen, still a child, still frightened. Don’t leave me, Dany. I’m scared.

If Father wasn’t his first, who was it?

Daenys always wondered at Maekar’s single-minded devotion to Baelor. It superseded all others, coming second only to Dyanna, though even then, often it flattened to something equal. His scorn for Jena, his indifference to Baelor’s children; the devotion of a lover sent afar. He made it obvious. Father did not. Daenys sees that now, even if she could not have hoped to understand what this meant before.

Was Maekar spurned for a final time too, the way Baelor never again embraced Daenys tight, and left her to swim in the unspoken rejection? It is hard to relinquish hope when the desired object is still so close by. Daenys always waited for Father’s strong hugs because sometimes, it looked as if he might reach for her, that certain twitch in his hand and the wry smile

Maekar felt the same thing as Daenys then, that imbalance of hope and devastation.

If he were born a girl, he might have been my mother. She wouldn’t have had red hair; it would be white, most likely, because even in this other life, Daenys is doomed to take after her maternal half. Maekar would be no better than Jena, of that she is certain. And there would be no protection from either of them, her sibling-parents, already bonded to each other by a single womb. She could never win against that sort of attachment.

It doesn’t strike her that Baelor might want Aerys if he were a girl, or Rhaegel. That circular leash always rotates towards Maekar, the brother-in-arms, the wife, the sister, the son. At a time, Baelor played the part of husband, brother and father, all three, even at the end, when they were at Ashford, and Maekar was reduced to a petulant version of himself because when Baelor took charge, he regressed.

He was my brother before he was your father.

If only Maekar would tell her what that means to him.

But her uncle does not like to talk. He only kisses her, as if it is Baelor he searches for under her tongue. He touches the points of her ears – Baelor's ears – and her chin – Baelor's chin – and spits in her mouth – Baelor's mouth – and punishes himself for it later.

He has desired his brother and killed him, and now he continues to reach for him in the flesh and blood of his little girl.

“And how many more times will this happen on the way to Summerhall?”

This would be the fourth. The crown princess wanders off on her father’s destrier, and her husband, the future king consort, is forced to find her before there is a panic.

Father never gave the horse a name, but she calls him Val, because it comforts her to call for him and see him come running, the white streak of his mane dancing in the wind. He watches Maekar approach and huffs, stamping his hoof gently. Perhaps he remembers carrying him from Ashford, the tight grip on the reins that hurt. Maekar is not the kindest horseman.

“Come. They are serving dinner. Your favourite. Quail and truffle pie.”

Daenys continues to tear at the grass, crushing it in her palms. “That was Valarr’s favourite dish. Not mine.”

“It was? Are you sure?”

“Quite.”

“Then what is yours?”

“I don’t have a favourite dish.”

“You loved strawberry bread as a child.”

She nods, suddenly missing Toran the cook twice as much. She had already taken Ser Roland; Bloodraven would never part with the best cook in the Keep because his great-niece wanted it. Toran would have loved Summerhall. Far better than the sweltering heat of the Red Keep’s kitchens.

“That lady-guard of yours looked as if she might stop me from disturbing you. Keeping a husband from his wife. I do not think she values her neck.”

I wish I’d had her when I was still married to Vaemond.

At his niece’s continued silence, Maekar begins to lose patience. The calm tone turns to a hand on her shoulder, and then her arm, dragging her to her feet, with an even quieter, “Māzīs,” to which Daenys digs her heels in. They do this often. He leashes her, pulls her, speaks in High Valyrian as if it holds some greater quality of command, and she drags back. An impudent colt to break in.

“You needn’t come after me each time. I have Lavana. I am not one of your children off to - “

She bites her tongue before it can shape the words. Off to make trouble.

Maekar’s eyebrows fly up. “Off to what?”

Daenys yanks her arm free. “I can walk on my own.”

“Walk then.”

She whistles to Val who makes a slight fuss in his effort to budge his way between them so that he might be the one to walk closest to Daenys. Lavana is waiting a short distance away, exactly where Daenys asked her to. She darts a tense glance towards the prince, who mutters something under his breath before striding over the grassy hillock towards the open plain of the meadow where the camp is set up.

“Is all well, princess?”

“Yes.” And then a wry smile. “My uncle would not hurt me.”

“Of course.”

“You eyed him like a wild animal that might attack you.”

“He is not the sort of man one imagines when thinking of the word ‘prince.”

“Not clad in silk with his flesh spoiling and turned to fat?”

Lavana nods. “He looks and behaves as if we were constantly on the eve of war.”

“Still, he would not hurt me.”

Daenys had not wished to stay at Felwood – the Dondarrions have maintained quarrels with the Fells for decades – and so this meadow was chosen to be a good a place as any. The procession has picked up musicians and acrobats and mummers on the way, all heading towards Summertown. It has at least been entertaining in the evenings.

Her uncle offered her the courtesy of visiting Blackhaven on a detour first, but she denied that too; for a time, she wishes nothing but to rest, and it has been a long time since Summerhall graced her eyes. The last time she was but a child of eleven, and it ended badly. Aerion, always Aerion.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. We’re meant for each other anyway. Show it to me.

As with kissing games on Valarr’s lap, Daenys remembers little of what came after. Her body shoos her mind away when it knows something is about to happen that she will not be able to shake off. With it goes the ability to catalogue memory, be it her brother’s increasingly hungry kisses, or Aerion’s bony hands.

But sometimes, there are slivers, like something glimpsed through the dance of a tent flap.

Aerion was a year older, already strong. Daenys thinks she must have known not to fight him too hard lest he decide to break something – he'd broken Valarr’s finger in the training yard, and Jena had almost broken Maekar’s nose for it.

It made her cold to think what her mother would do if she knew of another one of her children falling victim to the little demon as she called him.

No details, no painted glass recollection. A feeling of entrapment lingers, Aerion’s arms squeezed around her, and light, lots of light, because they were under a tree and it was raining and over the hiss of water kissing the earth, her whimpers could not be heard.

It’s supposed to feel good, he told her, like it was her fault. I’ve seen Mother and Father at it. Don’t scowl. Your parents do it too, you little simpleton.

He hadn’t done what his parents did, because he was not quite sure what it was. But he’d grabbed and grabbed and grabbed until pieces of her body began to fall away like leaves. He told her he found her pretty like it revolted him, and then said he would be content if their children had red hair like her, and not white like his own.

Every time she thinks of Summerhall, of being under those hallowed ceilings, knowing Aerion will not be there, Daenys laughs until she cries.

Her uncle does not return to their tent until well past nightfall, and when he does, he brings with him the scent of fresh grass and the brisk, colder air in the mountains. He must have ridden off up there after retrieving her. Next time, perhaps, she will lead him on a wilder chase, really let him stretch his legs.

“Is it big enough?” he drawls.

He means the campaign bed. She mumbles an assent and rolls over to her side. “I do not take up much space.”

“I know. But I have become used to sleeping alone.”

“As have I.”

“I’ll have them fetch another bed - “

“No, kepus.”

The sharpness of her tone gives him pause. As you wish, he murmurs and continues removing his boots and the sword belt around his waist. Daenys plays the part of devoted wife and has Edric bring a tray of food, for her uncle must have surely gone without dinner in his bid to escape her. She does not try to make conversation with him as he eats, and neither does he make any effort in reverse.

She falls asleep at some point, after brushing her hair until it gleams.

When her eyes open again, it is pitch dark, save for a panel of moonlight caressing the foot of the bed. Outside, the crickets sing, a melancholic cacophony. Val snorts in his sleep somewhere in the distance.

Beside her, Maekar is quiet. He is a quiet sleeper, no snoring, no exaggerated coughs and hacks; a dragon always on the verge of waking and catching its prey by surprise. Or a cat.

“Kepus?”

“Mm.”

“Are you awake?”

“What do you think?”

She plays with his fingers, expecting him to pull them away and turn his back on her as he usually does. But the little noise she makes in her throat coaxes him closer. It is an intimacy, growing. Quiet sounds and caresses to communicate desires, no words.

But they have tried this at the Red Keep, after the visit with Ceryse, after the bliss of hearing him talk to her, tell her things.

Penetration didn’t work. It doesn’t work now. Daenys tries to force her body to relax – she is soaking wet on his fingers – but her muscles contract and refuse to allow his cock to enter her. “Force it in – your strength will do it - “ she pants limply.

Maekar pins her abdomen to the bed to still her writhing. “I have no intention of raping you.”

“’Tisn’t rape if I want it. It isn’t - “ she pauses to consider this. Many of her dreams regarding the act of sex are violent, and she is usually being forced, after a chase which she almost wins. “Kepus, please - “

If he can’t do it now, maybe he will stop trying, maybe he will never try again. The threat of abandonment draws out a beleagured whine of upset. When that does not work, she digs her nails into his arms. Small hands shove his chest, an intensely quiet tantrum, breaths growling deep in her chest, riling the bull to attack. He loses his patience and for a blissful moment, she thinks it will happen, as her hands are yanked over her head and he wedges himself between her thighs -

“You overestimate yourself.”

And then he rolls off her and they lie there together, breathing hard. Daenys kicks her feet with an impatient snarl.

“If I am to be raped, I’d only ever want it done by you.”

“You know not what you say, you stupid child!”

“Then teach me!” She sits up, red hair swimming behind her when she crawls to his side. “Teach me how to express this violence in me! Seeing as you know so much better!”

He gives in, if only to quieten her, because tantrums thrown by Daenys have proven to be extraordinary in the past. She tells him that he does not have to force himself inside her, but that she cannot bear the feeling in her chest, and it will only be made worse if he abandons her to it.

Maekar pulls her flat on top of him, tucking her head into his neck where her mouth soon finds the preferred vein to suckle. She mumbles that she loves him as if it is a prayer that will work its charm in time. He is hard under her, but he does nothing about it. Daenys wonders when her own patience will become like his, cold as ice, and whether it requires martial victory and murder of one’s own kin to achieve it.

She sits up to straddle his stomach, long hair falling in draped folds of scarlet down to her thighs. “I think of you hurting yourself and feel guilty for wanting you at all. For pushing you to it.”

A huff of amusement jerks his chest. “Do you think I cannot feel the scars on your thighs?”

“They are minor. I never cut deep. They heal. Yours are done without care. One day they will not heal.”

“But you cut open your flesh -”

“And you cut open yours. I don’t want you to.”

“I don’t want you to either.”

“You cannot – do not turn this on me -”

“I shall do what I like. Is this not what you wanted? To be my equal? We can return to being uncle and niece and I can coddle your feelings. Or you can argue and run the risk of being bested. What will it be, Dany?”

She kisses him in lieu of an answer. His mouth curves into a smile in willing submission to her trick. This isn’t the uncle she knows. It is another Maekar, one that has been kept from her, that perhaps only Baelor knew, and Dyanna, locked behind bedroom doors and unencumbered by armour. The smallest glimpse of him leaves her greedy for more.

“It feels good when I do this,” she mumbles against his mouth, lips slick with his spit, as she grinds her hips over the trail of hair on his hard stomach. “The way it does before the flying feeling -”

His hands run down the backs of her thighs, keeping her steady as she finds a rhythm. “It’s called an orgasm. Refer to it properly.”

“I know. But I prefer to call it the other thing.”

She clutches at the material of his braies, twisting it in her fingers. The crotch is fully tented. Daenys takes permission with another kiss before wriggling down until she is balanced over his lower half. If it can work against his stomach, it can work against -

“Ah - “

Little bird cry lost into the darkness. It feels much better. There is barely any fabric between them, most of it with patches of wet arousal. The lips of her cunt swell with a sudden rush of blood, all the heat in her body centred. They split open against his shaft, and the deep groan he lets out encourages her to grind harder. Her uncle’s hand goes under her gown, and she stutters, chest tight with the pound of her heart as his fingers fondle the wet crease between her buttocks, stroking up the slick from her cunt.

When she stops moving, he squeezes a fistful of her arse and slaps it, just hard enough to make her squeal ow. That makes him laugh.

“And you said you wanted to be raped. Little idiot.”

“Shut up!”

“What?”

Daenys giggles when he grabs her face in his whole hand, still wet with her juices, and utters another shut up that quickly turns into an overcome moan when he grinds his hips up to meet hers. Lady Caswell once brought a little dog with her to court that liked to hump everything, human legs, furniture legs, anything. Daenys feels like that dog now, breathless and dry-mouthed, driven to madness for the friction between her legs. And the way her uncle looks at her is only making it worse.

She sucks his thumb into her mouth, cooing in sated pleasure. Maekar fists the back of her gown to hold her steady and rolls his hips back and forth, pushing his cock lengthways against her clothed slit. Her toes curl like ribbons. A high-pitched moan undulates into his skin as she endures a full body jolt. It doesn’t last long after that. They come almost at the same time. Dany first, with a husky scream that she tries to muffle by biting into the webbing between his index and thumb.

Her uncle lifts his lower half entirely up off the bed, with her on top of it, and comes with a throaty fuck that makes her stomach feel like an inked scrawl.

She slides off him, boneless and content, hair damp with sweat and stuck to her forehead and cheeks. Her gown is rucked up around her waist. The moonlight falls over her apex just right, exposing her clenched opening to the cool air, bait for her uncle. When she notices him staring, she lets the tipsiness of pleasure induce her to open her legs wider, put herself on display. It is a new boldness. It doesn’t feel like something she would do, and yet she is doing it.

“I think it was because I was drunk last time. That’s why the consummation worked.”

Maekar smooths his fingers down her slit and does not answer. He plays with it a while, spreading it open between two digits, nudging the sweet little button at the top to make her twitch. As much as she wants him to do something – tongue, cock, fingers, she doesn’t care – it is gratifying just to let him admire her and touch her with such focus. She wonders if he is thinking of his brother, or whether he is always thinking of his brother, even as he licks the sweetness of her cunt off his hand.

In this sugarspun haze, nothing matters so much, not even that her father’s spirit won’t extricate itself from between them.

She puts the heel of her palm to her mouth and suckles softly, matching the rhythm to that of his fingers stroking her rosy slit. He pushes one inside, fucking her with it, and at her mewl of pleasure, adds another.

“We should both get drunk. And then it’ll work, kepus, I swear. My body will relax and – ”

“No more wine, Dany.”

“You said I could be your equal.”

“I didn’t say that. I asked if you wished to be.”

“Well, I do, and - “

“I’m not letting you turn into a drunk just to get fucked.”

Daenys hisses in irritation and kicks his arm, forcing his fingers out of her. They glare at each other. Something shifts. She doesn’t know what, but it makes her suddenly wish she had her own bed to go to after all. She makes do with crawling back to her side of this one.

Maekar moves lightning quick. The bed trembles under the aggressive shift of his weight. He is upon her before she can react, pinning her to the mattress face down, her mouth suddenly stuffed with the linen of the sheets. His fingers force themselves back in, a more violent penetration than the first, knuckles kneading the spot inside her that loves to be rubbed and fondled until she flies.

But there is no wind-up, no time to sink into it. The sudden weight on top of her, his harsh breathing in her ear, the feeling of complete entrapment.

Destruction. He could wreak it, easily, so easily. It would be as a wolf ripping out a rabbit’s throat on a moonless night, with no one any the wiser to the crime. The length of his legs, his hands, the weight of his head resting on hers – it creates a conclusion that leaves her shaking. If she somehow got out from under him, the chase would not be a long one.

Father did not feel this when the mace struck him in the back of the head. The mercy of quickness. This is different. The anticipation of violence borne from a strength she cannot hope to match.

“Stop - “ she whimpers, twisting her face to the side so that the words can break free from the cage of her mouth. “Stop.”

He removes his fingers. And then turns her onto her back to better inspect her face, and discern whether this ‘stop’ is part of the game, the desire she’d voiced earlier, of wanting to be forced. But one look at her expression and his drops.

“Is it not what you wanted, riña?” Impossibly gentle under the gruffness. Baffled, mostly. “Dany, you are crying - “

“I wanted it,” she sobs. “I did.”

“Then why - “

“I don’t know. I got scared.”

“You got scared?”

“Yes - “

“I would never hurt you - “

“I know - “

“Not truly, not like that - “

“I know – I just got scared, uncle - “

“Oh, my little darling - “

The words come out of him like an overspill. It breaks something inside Daenys. She reaches for him, face crumpled, and he lifts her into his arms as if she were half her size again, like when he found her on Myriah’s balcony, thighs cut open, and her dragon egg beside her. She has never heard him call her darling and then the word my before it –

Her mind is a pacified heap of nothing.

She wraps her arms and legs around him and he kisses her pink nose, her mouth, her eyelids, the hair of his beard scratching gentle irritation on her skin. But she doesn’t mind it; she rubs her face into his for more.

And when he lies her back down, he finishes her off with his fingers, as if it were a promise half-kept. But with no force this time, or even much thrusting. They slip inside her and he curls them, until the rim of her cunt constricts the blood flow past his knuckles. He keeps them inside, letting her ride it out, her tears wetting the pillow as she trembles on the edge.

And then she sinks back into his hand like a little bird to its nest.

The next morning, he wakes first, careful not to jostle her when he gets out of the bed. He does not bother summoning Edric in case it stirs Daenys back to consciousness. But it turns out to be futile. She is already awake, honey eyes blinking tiredly as she watches him brush back his hair and do the same with his beard. He fastens the chain of his cloak over his surcoat and tells her he’ll send Silla in to help her dress.

“Has Edric found himself a wife yet?” she asks.

He stops fiddling and looks over his shoulder with an arched brow. “Why?”

“Silla is yet unmarried.”

Maekar understands her meaning, and a curt nod is all that’s offered to indicate he will inquire. In truth, Edric is a fool, and Silla is far too clever a girl to be bound to him. But it does not matter. If she’ll have him, it would do him good. For all his uselessness, it is the boy’s simple loyalty that Maekar values. And it would take too long to train a new squire.

He turns for the exit to the tent.

“Uncle – “

Maekar disappears through the flap before her sentence can finish. The fresh air does little to soothe his nerves, except it gets him away, away from her, away from all of it. It will upset her to be so brutally ignored, the suddenness of his withdrawal. She will be upset just as Dyanna was, time and time again. And she will learn to live with it, just like her lady aunt before her.

He walks until people stop appearing in his vision, and there are only trees, and more fields, and the flat patch of sky that is always virginal at this time of morning.

I think of you hurting yourself after and feel guilty for wanting you at all.

Maekar claws at his ribcage, beating it a couple times to ease the tightness. Where that – thing – came from last night, he does not know.

My little darling.

He never expected to hear those words said in that order from his own mouth. He saw her crying, because of him, his temporary madness, and he’d picked her up and rocked her like it was the only thing to do. But it was not instinct. It was a memory, with the roles reversed. He used to be in her place.

He expects the vomit to come, bittersweet, the pre-breakfast acid. But it does not. This is somehow worse, the waiting for it. If he stands here alone too long, the words my little darling will turn into a tapestry, and the one thread will become a hundred, then a thousand.

He turns back, and by the time the noise of the camp is all around him, his face is grim-set again. They see the man they know and fear and they give him a wide berth. Nothing little about him anymore. Nothing little about the boys he made either. They would never be anyone’s little anything. Daeron sometimes has the same look in his eye that Maekar recognises from the mirror in his own childhood bedroom. But it isn’t for the same reason. He clings to that.

Daenys's pretty laughter carries on the air, and he walks towards it as if pulled by a rope. One of her girls is showing her a stray black cat she found. Just as the princess decides to name it Balerion, it scratches her. The girl holding it drops the animal, and it scarpers, eyes bulging in fright.

Maekar wants the girl whipped for being careless enough to bring a dirty animal of unknown origin around the crown princess. But Daenys intercedes, and glances at her in silent permission to leave before her uncle’s mood worsens.

“’Tis only a small cut, kepus.”

“It might get infected. You need to be careful. Every hair on your head is now owed to the Iron Throne.”

She gives him a flat stare of disbelief and pulls her hand out of his grip. The accusation in her eyes is rampant. He walked out on her and then expects to exhibit concern over a cat scratch? Maekar is content to let her be angry with him. She will sulk, and she will not ask him things, and he will not be tempted to give up all his secrets because she has her father’s benevolent trickery when it comes to prising people open.

She stalks away, and a weight lifts off his chest.

My little darling.

Don’t call me that.

Why not? You are. Mine. And Rohanne’s sometime. But mostly mine.

I’m not.

Then who do you belong to?

Nobody.

I bet your brother would disagree.

My brother would kill you if he knew.

Will you tell him?

….no.

Good. Besides, you get used to it.

To what?

I was somebody’s little darling too, long before you. You get used to it.

Chapter Text

His wife trembles like a little bird as he helps her off her saddle.

Powder-blue dress, with a stiff hood that spreads around her head like a halo. Only the silver streak is loose. The rest of her hair is a blood-coloured knot behind her head. She favours violets, but has avoided the shade today, despite it being as much a Dondarrion colour as it is Dayne.

Maekar holds her back for a moment, allowing Clarisse and Qayan to greet the children lined up on the steps.

“Courage,” he murmurs to Daenys. “All the colour has left your face.”

She mumbles an assent around her hangnail. Maekar lowers her hand. Daenys chases after it with her mouth but catches herself when she notices one of Kiera’s ladies eyeing her.

“Uncle, my hand is hot,” she complains, and forces him to let her go.

Maekar eyes the steps, where Daella’s scowl burns. Her face is too far to make out, but her father knows. It is the way her hands are behind her back. She expresses her displeasure much the same as Maekar, despite having stolen Dyanna’s whole face.

“Faaaaaattthhhhheerrrrr!” Rhae comes kicking and skipping down the stairs, tossing her three-year-old body out of her septa’s grasp and straight into Maekar’s.

He catches her in his arms, relieved that at least one of his daughters is eager to see him. She shrieks and covers his pox-scarred cheek in kisses.

“I missed you!” she roars.

“Alright, alright, you needn’t deafen me for it.” But he kisses her back, until she squeals and wriggles at the scratch of his beard on her baby skin.

And then she turns to Daenys. Her gaze is at first curious, but subdued. The memory of a near-toddler does not adhere to people she does not see regularly. There is some recognition in her eyes, but not enough for her to greet her cousin.

“Do you remember me, Rhae?” Daenys takes her little hand and gives it a squeeze.

Rhae pulls it away. She glances at Maekar, and then back at her aunt, who she does know and love. And then she pushes her face into her father’s neck to avoid the awkward moment. For a three-year-old, this is a splendid tactic and works perfectly.

Maekar sees Dany’s face fall, but there is no time to comfort her. The dreamy haze of the last few months, where he has only been her uncle, one child to care for, not six, is over. At least you are here, he wants to say, because comfort has never been his strongest suit. And not on Casterly Rock, squeezing out babies with Gerold Lannister’s piss-coloured hair.

Aemon and Daella are standing apart. Maekar can smell the ghost of an argument still hugging the air around them. Aemon manages a sheepish smile, eager to embrace his father; he will be gone to the Citadel again once the roads are safe, and he squeezes Maekar’s waist like he knows his time is running out. But Daella stays where she is. When Maekar says her name, she stares at him in silence. For a moment too long.

Her septa stiffens and nudges her. Daella jerks forward and offers him her hand. Maekar quirks a brow.

“I am too old for hugs now, father.”

His jaw tightens. The resemblance to her mother truly ends with that the sweet little face. Dyanna could never hide her anger. It burst from her like wildfire. Daella holds her grudges like an animal hoarding for the winter.

One year, she put squirrel shit into Aerion’s food over the course of several months after an argument in which he bested her. It was only when he began to fall ill that she confessed to her father. He is a grown man, but he’d been afraid of his eight-year-old daughter then.

Before Daenys can come up to her, Daella is already gone, skulking back into the shadows of the castle doors. If her hair was white, Maekar would think it was a ghost of his past self.

Clarisse offers a reassuring smile. “I will fetch her, goodbrother.”

“Leave her,” Maekar scowls. “She does not like to be chased after.”

Daenys is chewing on a hangnail again. She has none of the poise that her new position demands, still a little girl trailing after whoever will lead her. She stands amongst his children and looks to be one of them despite her finery and braided hair.

Maekar’s heart sinks into his stomach.

The fear of losing the last of Baelor’s blood has led him here. He should have known. His existence with Baelor never aligned with Summerhall. When their wives fought, they were apart again. Fate did not want him drawn back into his brother’s orbit. But he had forced his way through its design just to snatch Baelor’s daughter from a worser fate.

And now here she is, a seventh child, ready to burst into tears because her cousins do not want her for a lady mother.

Of course they do not. Maekar does not blame them.

Even if the look on Daenys’s face makes him want to hit something until it breaks.

He goes instead to find his oldest boy, and deal with the pre-emptive anger he has nurtured for the last few legs of the journey. He knew full well Daeron would not be there to greet his new betrothed. The boy’s unreliability is the only constant left. Just as Maekar knows exactly where he will find him curled up, the one place he ran to as a child to escape his father’s wrath.

High up in the bell tower, he is draped over an oak chest, two whores passed out a short distance away. Both are Summertown girls. One is a petite blonde, half-hanging out of the window. Maekar lifts her up by the hair, and she barely stirs. He checks her pulse, before dropping her to the ground beside her dark-haired companion. Three women have died under this very roof in Daeron’s ‘care’ – a combination of foreign substances taken in abundance and strongwine to wash them down – and only two had families whom Maekar had compensated. The lives of peasant girls reduced to the heavy thwack of coin bag in their parents’ grimy hands.

Maekar pulls his foot back and kicks Daeron in the ribs full force. “Get up.”

Daeron wheezes, coughing horribly as he rolls onto his front. He smells like a decaying animal. Maekar undoes the heavier belt around his coat, jangling the buckle by the boy’s ear to rouse him. He never uses the steel. But the threat of it is omnipresent and it works, just as it does with horses and dogs.

“Get up!” he roars.

The leather comes down once, hard, and paints a red slash across Daeron’s forearm. He jerks away, crawling like a roach from under a lifted rock. Blue eyes burn bright in the pear-yellow sun, and Maekar’s hand flies to his mouth to hold in the sound of devastation. Dyanna’s eyes, tear-filled.

“Baba?” Daeron drags himself to his feet, legs shaking under the weight of his own slightness. He has lost muscle mass. A swipe of his hand wipes the drool off his chin, and he blinks at the belt hanging slack in Maekar’s hand.

His father experiences the sudden urge to take Daeron into his arms and jump from the window. As if it were rightful penance for forcing Daeron to exist when every fibre of his being rebels against it.

“Daenys is here.” He binds the belt back around his waist and ignores the tremor in his hands. “As is your betrothed. I want you washed up and presentable at the dinner table tonight. Or I’ll have the skin off your back. I mean it.”

Daeron’s eyes dart to the two unconscious girls and his face crumples with bitter shame. Maekar can tell he remembers nothing of it. Not the drinking, nor whether either of the pair has a potential grandchild tucked into her belly. Maester Melaquin has made more moon tea whilst at Summerhall than he likely ever has during his other assignments.

“Melaquin will see to the girls. Go and wash yourself.”

He walks out before the poignancy of Baba off Daeron’s chapped lips turns into sobbing apologies. The remorse is somehow worse. At least Aerion does not demand to be forgiven with the cheap trick of having his mother’s eyes. When she was alive, Maekar moved heaven and earth to avoid her tears; now Daeron punishes him with them freely, as if to prove it was all for naught. You failed in the end, as ever.

“Daeron, MOVE!” Maekar barks up the stairs, and hears his son knock over a chair in his haste to obey.

Summerhall has not changed.

An oasis city of white and gold, with needled turrets, onion domes and Dornish latticework on the windows. It is a pearl cupped in the cradle of the Red Mountains. The fortifications are light, but it possesses the bones of a fortress. Vaulted ceilings, corridors broad enough for a regiment of soldiers to march through, great hearths of carved stone and ironbound doors.

Waterways run through the entire structure, carved channels of white marble, populated with fish of all colours, and aquatic plants she loved to draw when she was little. Skeins of emerald, soft coral and lilac fronds dancing like silk in the gentle current. Small bridges stretch over the wider streams, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and pale gemstones, and jewelled mosaics etched with dragons and selkies and unicorns span the floors. Where the onion domes are made of glass, the mosaics turn reflective, the glitter tossed across the walls like a faerie veil.

She counts each fountain she remembers, tiered celadon basins catching silver threads of water spewed from the mouths of swans and cherubs.

The sound of running water is a constant at Summerhall, a display of nauseous wealth, and Daeron’s desire to create a paradise for Myriah as beautiful as that made by Maron for his Daenerys.

The Tyroshi contingent is utterly taken by it all. Kiera, who has been a nervous, shaking mess for the past few days, is entranced, turning on the spot to admire the high glass dome of the atrium.

Daenys slips away before someone requires something of her. Lavana follows, her silent shadow. Ser Roland notices the pair leave and takes over the task of directing the servants to carry the luggage further into the castle. It should be Daenys’s duty. But she will shirk it for now and make up for it later. Or so she tells herself.

She goes straight for the sept.

There is a godswood behind it, but it is smaller than the one in the Red Keep, and only half as beautiful. The rest of Summerhall makes up for this deficiency.

Lavana takes up watch outside the carved doors of the sept and the princess walks into the shadows cast by the seven statues alone. The mica paintings on the walls seem to follow her with their eyes.

Her mind swims trembles in a wet glaze of exhaustion.

She lights a thin wooden stick and holds it to the first candle on the altar. “Baelor Targaryen.” And then the second. “Jena Dondarrion. Valarr Targaryen. Matarys Targaryen. Daeron Targaryen. Myriah Martell. Dyanna Dayne.” One after the other, the names are a pounding ache in her skull. The sheer number.

She studies the seven flames, and then reaches for four more candles.

“Helaena Targaryen. Jaehaerys Targaryen. Jaehaera Targaryen. Maelor Targaryen.”

Helaena still visits her in her dreams. Daenys knows now that her spirit is not gone, and that it is not just a figment of her own mind that conjures up the face of a woman she was born too late to have known. A part of Helaena is still anchored to the earth. And when Ambrose’s concoction is forced back into Daenys’s stomach, she will return, as if she were always real.

He kept the method of its creation.

In her uncle’s right pocket, she’d found the folded up parchment, not because she was looking, but because it had fallen out and she set it on top of his pillow for him to find later. But then she’d seen the lettering through the thin vellum.

Ambrose had written out the precise manner of mixing the concoction, and the ingredients required. The recipe was for Melaquin to study. And Maekar brought it with him to Summerhall. A precaution against her ‘temporary bouts of madness’.

Without telling her.

If she asks, she knows he will give her that slow side-glance that strikes terror into the hearts of men twice her size. One eyebrow will go up, and the corners of his mouth will turn down. And that will be all. Because Maekar the Anvil makes a face and it suffices. Her uncle is not the sort of man to explain himself.

My little darling.

Oh, how his face had crumpled. He was different then. She hadn’t recognised that man she saw, the alien glimpse of him. She wants to sob at the terrible immensity of this unknown Maekar, the pleasure, the exhilaration, the joy of wanting to understand him but to be ever denied. Her strange uncle, and his strange wants. She wishes she knew each one so she might offer her body to sate them, and he can break it to his will when it refuses to obey her.

Even if it frightened her terribly to be pinned under him. What a beast it was on top of her then, her father’s killer, that hateful, beloved creature she calls kepa.

The flames dance and melt into a single sticky orange burn. She blinks away the fault in her vision.

“You’re here.”

She inhales sharply and turns. She hadn’t heard the doors open.

Daeron slinks through the grey dust in the air, his shoulders hunched against the light of the central dome where it mushrooms across the altar. He drops to his knees next to her and counts the candles. All the members of their dead family accounted for. Helaena’s make him frown, as if trying to remember whether he’s forgotten anyone.

Daenys drinks him in, this cousin of hers she sees so rarely, a mythical creature to be spoken of in hushed whispers. Light falls in an indigo sheet over his hair, casting a patina over the gold. He is – always has been – beautiful. But he does not behave as if he knows this.

Daeron sniffs, wiping the moisture from his eyes. “So. What is she like?”

There is a pitiful pinkness to his mouth that stirs an urge to kiss and soothe. To make this sad, broken creature droop a little less.

Daenys thinks of Kiera’s downcast eyes when she said that Daeron was to be her husband. The disappointment in them. Daeron is not yet acquainted with her properly, and she is already another person he has let down.

“She is intelligent, and she is kind. She will keep to herself if you let her. She wanted to return to Tyrosh, but Bloodraven did not allow it. But she already likes Summerhall. It was written all over her face.”

Daeron does not look convinced by this attempt to soothe his conscience. But he nods, a drunken angel swaying in the misty light.

Her eyes fall to his arm, where the sleeve has ridden up. Daenys grabs it and pulls it to the light so she can see the wound properly. “What happened?”

Daeron opens his mouth, laughs, but then the lie dies half-formed and he deflates. “Father found me in the bell tower.”

“He did this?”

“He doesn’t use the buckle.”

Daenys’s expression makes it clear that it does not make a difference. Daeron takes his arm back with a creaky chuckle.

“It’s how he shows his love. Best be careful. You’re younger than me. He might mistake you for a daughter one day and spank the daylights out of you too.” He releases a goblin burst of laughter, so very like his father’s. But his eyes remain watery blue, and his smile wobbles when he turns them on her. “You won’t survive Dany, not as his wife, not as queen. You do not see yourself as you are, only as you wish to be.”

“What?”

“No rook, nor plover, nor owl, nor crow. But a shrike.”

Her hands fly to her mouth at hearing Helaena’s words repeated. He stares at her. The fine features are overlaid with still finer ones, wispy and light, someone else, someone sadder than even him if it is possible.

And then he blinks and faces back to the front with a shudder. When he glances at Daenys’s colourless face again, he mutters, “What?” as if she is the one being odd.

“Nothing.”

“Does he treat you well?”

She does not want to talk about anything his father does to her. It isn’t a subject Daeron would enjoy comprehending. Just as she herself avoids the thought of her own parents, or even Baelor with Maekar. It makes her stomach hurt in unexplainable ways, this awareness of how much more there was to know about her father, about her mother, knowledge she could never be permitted to broach.

“He does,” she answers, nail digging into her palm until the pain travels outward in a twisting spiral.

“Then I hope it continues.”

“You do not sound hopeful.”

“My father changed after my mother died. I do not think it was for the better. And then Uncle Baelor died and – “

Daeron swallows down the words in a lumpy swallow, as if his throat has something lodged in it. Daenys strokes it with her finger, right over the apple. He swallows again to make it bob. They both giggle.  It makes him forget what he was about to say, and Daenys is glad because she does not wish to hear it. Daeron’s utterances frighten her.

She tells him where she saw Kiera last, so that he might finally greet his betrothed and Uncle Maekar will have one less thing to be angry about. It feels quite like conspiring with Valarr when they avoided their mother on one of her bad-tempered days.

It feels like home.

Dinner is deathly quiet.

All Maekar’s available children are forced to be present. Daenys is not speaking, and neither are the younglings. Rhae mumbles to her nursemaid every so often, but the tension in the room is enough to keep even a three-year-old quiet. Aemon murmurs something about receiving letters from Egg, and that they are terribly brief, but that he asks after father. Maekar grunts in lieu of an answer.

The subdued clink of cutlery on plates is lost beneath the hissing rain on the eaves. The clouds finally broke after days of unforgiving sun. Damp air creeps in through the latticework, thickening each breath.

Maekar plays with his ring and barely eats. Neither does his wife, nor his oldest daughter and son.

Kiera is the only one eating, but it appears her intention is to keep her mouth occupied so she does not have to make small talk with her betrothed. He keeps casting her furtive glances. Daeron seems to find her very pretty. Maekar cannot find it in himself to be heartened by this. He has no faith in Daeron’s ability to make the girl like him in return.

“Daella, eat,” he commands.

The girl has been playing with her meal for the past ten minutes.

She suddenly grabs her spoon and shovels food into her mouth until she chokes. Her septa gasps in quiet dismay. Daenys gets out of her seat in a panic, but Maekar lifts a finger to stop her. It is an old tactic of Daella’s. She shovels food into her mouth until she chokes and she considers it to be a protest.

“Sit,” Maekar says to Daenys, and the girl has no choice but to obey.

He waits, until Daella is done with her dramatics, and fixes his daughter with an unblinking stare. Fat tears roll silently down her cheeks, chest heaving.

“If you give her mother’s rooms, I will burn the whole place down,” Daella tells him.

Kiera’s jaw drops. Even Daeron has gone still, flaring his eyes at his little sister in warning. She ignores him.

“I have been gone too long it seems. You have become a wild animal in my absence,” Maekar drawls.

“Uncle!” Daenys protests.

Daella’s nostrils flare, scowl turning on her cousin. But her real anger is not for Daenys. “You order her around like she is one of us, Father. How am I to call her lady-mother?”

“You do not have to, Daella,” Daenys says quickly, pink with embarrassment.

Maekar almost feels sorry for her.

But then he looks at Daella and he sees Aerion burning in those dark blue eyes and it sets his teeth on edge. What Daenys wants goes right out of the window.

“And yet you will call her lady-mother.”

“I will not.”

Maekar’s fist hits the table and Daeron jumps so hard his chair skids back. He looks ready to flee. “I will not punish you as I do your brothers, but mark my words, girl, you will not be spared!”

The septa finally hauls Daella out of her chair, and after babbling a frantic bid for mercy on her charge’s behalf, rushes her from the room. Rhae is left open-mouthed in her sister’s wake. She mutters a quiet goodnight to her father and is led out by her own nursemaid.

The ringing in Maekar’s ears reaches an intense pitch. He does not look at the other faces around the table. He knows what he’ll find there. Tossing down his napkin, he kicks back his chair and stalks from the room.

He avoids the urge to go after Daella and try and coax her into not going to sleep angry.

She has always been studious, but not like Aemon who keeps his nose buried in books. His girl is quick-witted and curious, and prefers to debate anything new she has learned, so that it might stick in her mind better. For being all of ten, the girl is wicked-bright.

And yet she is slow to forgive – just like him – and when something does not sit well with her, she rarely gives in. He is her father, so she will give him the respect he is due once her anger fades. But she will not agree with him. Not until she decides it herself that the decision he took was correct.

If he goes to her now, nothing will happen save to anger them both further.

It is Dyanna’s solar he ends up outside. There is something tucked into his pocket he meant to return to her nightstand. A velvet pouch, with another one of Egg’s baby teeth, and one from Aemon that had come out on his journey from Oldtown to the Red Keep.

His first wife kept a case filled with the baby teeth of her first two boys, each tucked snugly into crimson velvet. When Aemon was born, years after Aerion, she took up the habit again. Maekar asked what she meant to do with them and whether it wasn’t it bad luck to keep body parts – even ones so small –  hoarded up like this.

I’ll make a painted mosaic of them, she’d tease. And hang it over your side of the bed.

Aerion had an incorrigible sweet tooth when he was young. Some of his were beginning to rot when they fell, little patches of darkness growing under pearl-yellow enamel. Maekar presses Egg and Aemon’s teeth into the velveteen grooves already prepared for them. Dyanna had a full set of grooves installed for Rhae, but she won’t see a single tooth fall from that pretty head. It is up to Maekar to finish the collection alone.

He closes the case, gut twisting ice-cold.

The solar is as she left it. But it now feels like an insult to her memory to keep it so. Dyanna hated being indoors. Every chance she got, she was out in the gardens, running around as free as one of her children.

He knows she would hate to have her solar preserved as a crypt. But for a time, this is the only way he could still have her without peering into the sadness that lived in the eyes of the two children who resemble her most.

Daella can have her mother’s solar when she apologises.

That will likely take a few weeks.

If he were younger, he might have more energy for it, to go up to her room and argue with her until her anger is spent and she will not go to bed with it turning her blood to poison. But he is not as young as he was when Daeron was born. He would much rather go to bed.

Every time any one of them pouts, Maekar just wants to go to bed.

And yet it isn’t his own bedchamber he goes to.

The bathtub is sitting by the fireplace, freshly used. He can hear her in the other room, yawning as she opens and shuts chests of clothes. Her girl is with her, Silla, the pair of them chattering in low, tired tones. The occasional giggle breaks out.

Maekar does not bother announcing his presence, and goes to the balcony instead, opening the doors to the wet warmth outside. The rain is still going strong. A loud, crushing rasp of liquid sheets striking the earth and drawing the scent of petrichor up the sides of the castle. It is his favourite kind of weather. White noise in the ears, everything else drowned out.

The array of glass bottles sitting on an upturned chest catches his attention. A smile curls his mouth.

No one really knows when or why, but since the age of six, Daenys has been obsessed with collecting bottles. When she turned ten, she had one thousand and fifty-six, until one of Rhaegel’s ‘episodes’ destroyed them all. The collection was so large it needed its own room. His brother came across it and was convinced that one of the many voices in his head was coming from inside of Dany’s bottles, if only he knew which one. He’d broken them all to find out.

When the princess woke up to discover they were all gone, she cried bitterly. But not in front of Rhaegel. For him, she had a sweet smile and a cheery ‘it will be fun to begin the collection anew, uncle!’ before she’d kissed his face until he finally smiled too.

Myriah ordered new bottles made from her glassmaker in Hellholt. Maekar and Baelor began to collect just for the sake of replenishing the lost stock. Rhaegel contributed the most so that he might assuage his guilt. Even Aerys handed her a couple on her next name-day, strange contraptions from Asshai, stoppered tightly with some kind of writhing black smoke inside.

Rather than keep them all, Daenys began to give some of them away. It was a more convenient resort than attempting to preserve each one. Shiera kept most of them with her in the Red Keep, but Dany’s favourites are now here.

Jade, turquoise, amber, indigo, fuchsia, carnelian, emerald. All different shapes and sizes, with some stoppers as simple as doorknobs, and others crafted to mimic dragons and unicorn horns. There is a silvery one in the shape of a dancing nymph. Maekar gifted it to her on her twelfth name-day. She’d been so delighted with it, she’d kissed him on the cheek, a gesture he and Aerys never received from her.

She claimed the bottles all had different personalities. Maekar never understood it. But his niece’s oddities were relatively harmless back then.

“Uncle!”

Daenys stops in the doorway. Behind her, Silla dips a curtsey when she sees the prince. They whisper to each other, and the handmaid hurries out, holding a pile of folded dresses.

“Edric is free to marry.” He sets the silver bottle down and flicks the dragon stopper on another. “If it is still your interest to marry them both.”

The princess’s face lights up, but she does her best to feign lady-like composure. “It does.” And then decorum fails and she claps her hands in an excited patter. “Oh, Silla will be Lady Stokeworth one day!”

Maekar frowns. “Edric is the second son.”

“I know – but the eldest is not yet married, and he is sickly.”

“Are you wishing death upon him?”

“No! I did not mean – “

Maekar waves her off to indicate it is a jest. His habit of telling jokes with a straight face continues to baffle.

He finally notices what she is wearing. Hair still damp from her bath, she smells of lavender and jasmine. Against the flickering candlelight, the nubile lines of her body are marked against the diaphanous silk of her lilac nightgown. It’s covering is no more than a suggestion. His graze travels down her neck, slow as a water droplet, caressing over the subtle perk of her breasts holding the fabric aloft.

Maekar’s throat tightens and he looks down at where his hand is flexing open and shut.

“Is Daella alright?” she asks, mistaking his darkened glance for something entirely different.

He wonders at her sometimes. A mischievous muse at random, fully aware of her own power. He cannot for the life of him understand how else she would possess the ability to lick her teeth and grin in such a way his whole body is set aflame. Other times, she is innocent as a newborn lamb. Both sides of the coin must be some sort of game she plays.

“She is fine.”

The gruffness of his tone makes her shrink. Maekar eyes the door. It would be best to leave. Let her sleep here for her first night alone. It would be the right thing to do.

But this is his domain, his castle. In King’s Landing, he did the right thing by his brother’s memory, and by her. Temptation was cast aside in favour of it. But she wanted to be here, under his rule, and now she is. He does not wish to leave.

He wants to remain here, an invasive stain in this sweet-smelling sanctuary where she keeps her coloured bottles and the remnants of her girlhood.

His very presence is an assault on the idea of her.

Maekar removes his surcoat, fingers tearing at the chain stretched. Daenys glides forward to help him, though by the clutch of her fingers, perhaps it is to get him away from the shelf upon which her precious bottles are resting. One small teeter and they might fall.

Her bottom lip is pinched under her teeth in concentration. Up close, the fabric of her gown barely disguises the ripe berry shade of her nipples. The memory of her body turning to steel against him, burns. His fingers it’ll have, but not his cock. It has only been inside her once, and the sin of it is now being weighed against his head.

Her desire to be forced is beyond her. She doesn’t know what she asked of him, and he hadn’t given her the full strength of it. But the nastiness of it lingers. Violence fits him like a glove, and when the smell of something as sweet as Dany was wrapped up in the instinct, the effect was heady. The dreams he has had since all end with her speared on his cock, bleeding out, sobbing and gurgling variations of uncle until he can no longer tell if she is alive or whether it is her corpse.

They are incredibly unpleasant, but he has not woken from a single one without the damning urge to masturbate.

When she undoes the tie of his tunic, Maekar curls his fingers against her cheek. Daenys tilts away. He grasps her tighter, until she finally turns her head and bites his thumb.

“You mean to fight with me as Daella did?”

She blinks up at him, mouth parted, honey eyes cat-like. His reflection fills them, the window arch behind his head, the rain falling.

She shakes her head. “No, kepus.”

She reaches up on her tip-toes and brands his lips with her own. A little groan of lust as she sways back, a debauched, kiss-drunk angel.

Maekar’s hand grabs the back of her head – he loves that spot, as if gripping it will forever protect her from Baelor’s fate – and pushes his face against hers. It steals the air from her lungs. To her credit, she is brave, despite how hard she trembles as she fights to breathe against the assault. When he finally lets her head tip back, her eyes are glassy and wet, and her face is florid from the friction of his beard, his nose, his mouth.

She stumbles to the bed, unsteady as wounded prey. Maekar’s gait is elegant in comparison. His shadow falls across her as she sinks to the mattress. She crawls up to the pillows, and he gets a glimpse of what’s between her legs from behind. The silk does nothing to hide it. Her nether lips are swollen with blood rush just from a kiss. He has never fucked a girl or a woman so sensitive to being touched – it almost takes the challenge out of it.

A burst of fondness pillages his stomach when she sits there cross-legged, waiting for him to come to her.

“The gown, riña.” It comes out in a lazy sing-song. Daenys blinks, uncertain of this playful version of her uncle she isn’t familiar with. “It’ll get sticky.”

She blushes when she realises what he means. The last gown she had gotten ‘sticky’ was in the tent, when she’d rocked herself on his clothed cock until the fabric was drenched. Shaky hands undo the golden clasps at the shoulders. She tosses it aside, but then quickly pulls her hair forward to cover herself instead. Playing the part of newborn lamb again.

Maekar pushes two fingers against her forehead and laughs when she pushes against them. He drops her back onto the pillow with a slight shove, and her arms fall away from her chest. Slick glistens in the crease of her thighs, silvery-wet, her young flesh ripe with the scent of arousal.

He cups her left breast, testing its softness with his fingers like fruit to be appraised. Every little moan she makes is matched by a quiet exhalation from him. He wrenches his hand through her hair, pulling her head back until she is forced into stillness. And then he rubs his face into the tender mound of her breast, biting gently until she shudders under him. He does the same to the other, inhaling the smell of her skin, enjoying the way it gives under the pressure.

When he takes her nipple into his mouth, she gasps and squirms, underlaid with the wet, sucking sounds of his starved mouth drawing the bud to crest. His enthusiasm is vulgar and feral and it startles her. He can hear it in her cries, as he moves from one teat to the other, savaging them, until they are mottled pink and aching from the abuse. He blows cool air onto the puffy red nipple on the right, enjoying the way she pants when the pain blends into pleasure. A wet patch grows on the sheets under her.

“No more – please – “ she covers his mouth with her hand, and two of her fingers slip inside.

Daenys is immediately entranced by the sight. She whimpers when he bites down, and the sound is filled with a near-demented lust. The little upturn of her brow, panicked. Like Baelor. Her father looked the same when overwhelmed by the enormity of his own desire. As if it might kill him, as if he feared it. Maekar learned to chase after that fear like a bloodhound.

“Is your little cunt going to open up, or are we settling for fingers again?”

Her eyes round at hearing the words. She is struck dumb. A dazed nod is all she manages, saliva-soaked digits falling to the pillow beside her head.

But as much as she wants him inside her, her body refuses to cooperate. She sobs in frustration when her muscles convulse and tighten against the breach of his cockhead.

“It hurts when it happens – “ she gasps, covering herself with her fingers, eyes screwed shut. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

“Nothing is wrong with you, riñītsos. Come here.”

His tone is rough, but his hands are gentle when he lifts her off the bed, just as he did in the tent. He sets her on his knee facing him, and she relaxes a little. Enough to take the hint and straddle his thigh until her bare cunt is pressed to his skin. A satisfied mewl is lost into his mouth, where she licks and sucks and explores with her tongue. He accepts the messiness of her kisses now, something endearing, rather than a trait to be trained out of her. Even if she manages to leave his beard soaked with her spit. She goes at him like she wants to eat him.

“I want to try again,” she mumbles.

Her small hand wraps around his cock and pushes it up against her slit. She attempts to let her weight take care of the rest, grinding and rocking for dear life, but when her pants turned pained again, Maekar forces her to stop.

She sags against him, dizzy. Something of an apology tipples off her rosy wet lip. He ignores it and urges her to continue rocking against him with a firm squeeze to her buttocks, thumbs kneading the dimples on her lower back. The position is perfect. Every thrust of her hips rubs her clit against the frenulum of his cock. He has to fight to remain steady. She remembers what happened the last time she’d supped on that part of him with her mouth, because her movements are suddenly slower, more deliberate.

Her hands squeeze his face, and the sight of his obvious pleasure pushes her to an orgasm. She releases his neck and dips backwards, arms stretched to the sides with a shaky cry, as if she really is flying, on dragonback, with only the clouds above her.

Maekar braces her so she doesn’t fall off entirely. She is mesmeric. The grind of her dewy, fidgety young frame. The wet kiss of her folds tucked snug against his cock. Both her wrists are caught in one of his hands, her hair spilling over his legs like a drape. When he comes, it is near-silent in comparison. The splash of his cum up her abdomen is messy, reaching all the way until a few pearlescent drops fleck the underside of her breasts.

Love overcomes her and she drops sweet, smacked kisses all over his face as her legs and arms come around him in a strangle hold.

They tumble down onto her pillows in a sweaty tangle, and Maekar can no longer tell what part of her he is kissing, but it does not matter, as long as his mouth is busy and she is all he can taste.

She reaches between her legs and takes a swipe of the sweetened fluid onto her fingers. It webs between them, catching the light in silver threads. And then she puts it to his mouth, stuffing it as he swallows. He presses his free hand to her cunt, dipping two digits deep inside to the knuckle. When he bites the fingers in his mouth, she whines and tries to pull away. But her pussy flutters around him, so he bites harder, until she is writhing with little noises of delight.  

“I want you inside – “ she lets out in a muffled drool, already sniffling with frustration.

“It’s alright. Ssh.”

“It’s not alright – “ her voice pitches higher, upset. “Do you think perhaps – if we got another girl – like Ceryse – but from Summertown – “

Maekar spits her fingers out of his mouth. “No.”

The speed of his answer shocks her. “Not exactly like Ceryse. I know she was special to you but – “

“I said, no.”

He removes his other hand, and Daenys clutches at him, unwilling to have the moment interrupted. But it is. Maekar turns onto his back, breathless, and suddenly furious.

“Uncle, I don’t understand.”

“I am sure you don’t. You have much to learn.”

“Then tell me – “

“You felt no jealousy towards Ceryse. And it suited you well.”

“I – “ she cocks her head, faltering, wondering if this was perhaps a mistake that she had not been jealous.

She is sitting up now, and her foot is digging under his side. Maekar grabs her ankle tight. She tests the grip with a slight tug, but it does not move. He is barely exerting any strength on her and she is trapped. He can tell she wants to make him let go but the notion is frightening her that if she fights, really fights, the futility of it will be proven.

“It delighted you to kiss her and touch her. Your eyes were aglow.”

“Because she was pretty! Not because I loved her like I love you! I swear, kepus, I did not mean it that way – “

She sounds close to tears. Even under the reared head of jealousy, he feels a forlorn pit in his stomach.

He remembers thinking how young she was, and how he could not recall ever being that young, that eager. All his memories are jumbled. He wants to remember what it felt like to experience the pleasure of sex for the first time, but his mind refuses access. He saw his niece’s face light up and felt only jealousy.

He lets go of Dany’s ankle. She does not scrabble to get away from him – she should, she has little awareness of how deep and dangerous his moods go – and instead crawls on top of him to stamp a kiss to his forehead.

“Please don’t hate me – I didn’t mean to like Ceryse – I didn’t, I really didn’t – you have to believe me – “

Shame floods him at making this heartbreakingly beautiful creature cry. Like breaking the legs of a deer and refusing to put it out of its misery, so that it might tremble into death’s arms on the forest floor.

A smaller, crueller part of him is satisfied with it. Delighted, even. Baelor stopped caving to his moods long ago, but Daenys still hasn’t learned. She panics at the merest hint of rejection.

It must be evil inside him to be so appeased by it.

He silences her with a kiss, and turns onto his side, keeping her cradled to his chest. She sobs in relief around her uncle’s tongue in her mouth. Tears dribble salty wet. Maekar holds her, until her breathing evens out, and she falls asleep with lips still attached, desperately afraid that if she pulls away, he will vanish.

Chapter Text

[A Year Later – 210 AC]

At Summerhall, time passes in the blink of a faerie’s eye.

A sweet coolness casts over the turreted tops of the castle like a bridal veil, set against a backdrop of lilac sky over tissue silk mountains. The jewelled windows and cupolas are a miracle. Dusk and dawn turn the halls and vast chambers of the fortress into a lovers’ dream. Lilacs, cerulean, ambers, pale fuchsias, and sage greens; sheets of enchanted colour glittering with dust motes. Bowers and baskets bursting with flowers hang in every open courtyard. When it rains, the perfume spreads into every room,

The flowers were a tradition maintained by Aunt Dyanna and Daenys has done nothing to interrupt it. In fact, Summerhall needs little guidance from its rulers; its servants are efficient and devoted to the place. Their demeanour is different to their drabber counterparts in King’s Landing, ever harried by the visits of nobles and the noise and smell of the city.

Summerhall is a paradise, and all who have the privilege to work there know it well, for their lord and master rarely interferes, and his remaining children are yet young. The significant absence of one prince must have made a world of difference. But Daenys is careful never to even think his name in her head. She fears the bad luck that will follow.

For a year, she has played the part of Lady of Summerhall and has followed her uncle’s example.  She keeps to herself and lets the stewardess – a formidable woman named Ygraine – handle its many affairs. Ygraine was distant at first, no doubt predicting a bout of meddling done by the new mistress. But once Daenys made it clear she had little desire to be an active overseer, Ygraine softened.

It was a great relief to shirk the responsibility.

Since the age of eight, Daenys had ceased to live the weightless life of a child. Now she returned to it. Her days were spent lazing by the many pools and fountains, sketching new types of insects she’d discovered, and plants she was learning the attributes of.  Her glass bottle collection grew. And she occasionally rocked an infant on her knee as their mothers worked.

The maids found it peculiar that the mistress of the castle was offering to take care of their children. Ygraine would not hear of it, protesting that Daenys should not be so familiar with her subordinates as it would give them “airs.” But Daenys insisted, and once Maekar deemed it suitable – he gave no more than a distracted nod when it was brought up at the dinner table – it was done.

She didn’t mind the children, but there was a strategy to it.

Now that she was married, the first thing any of the visiting nobility liked to insinuate was the potential good news of the heir to the throne producing the next in line. And there were many who “happened” to pass by Summerhall long enough to visit. She came to understand why Maekar left Summerhall as often as he could. Half of them seemed to come only for the beauty of the castle. She did not blame them, but it was a bother waking up on an unremarkable day, only to be told lord and lady so-and-so were visiting with all eight of their children. There were some who failed to leave for a fortnight when Maekar travelled to Oldtown to visit Aemon.

They take advantage of you, Ygraine told her, and with a pinched mouth added, you let yourself be taken advantage of.

Daenys knew she was right, but she could hardly turn people away. It would give a horrible impression. Besides, they were the instruments to spreading the news that the crown princess seemed to at least want a baby. She was not even queen yet and the realm was already anxious to know the succession was secure. All the recent deaths had rightfully made them nervous.

But the problems in the bedchamber have endured, and now a year has passed.

Some nights, not even his fingers would work. She’d tense up and cry and curse herself for not being able to perform the basic function of a wife, to which he would remind her that there was no need to put herself in a frenzy. It isn’t as if our desire sprang out of duty. Do not let it prevail upon your conscience.

In this case, and only this, Maekar was patient. Daenys wondered if it took root in the same instinct that caused him to harm himself. She had not seen that cruel, bloodstained implement since their wedding night, but he had no new wounds. This was his new penance. He had married the daughter of the man he’d killed but could not enjoy the fruits of it. A glutton for punishment, her uncle.

He left so often on his hunting trips. She was aghast when she first discovered just what he was ‘hunting.’ Men, mostly. Poachers, trespassers, bandits. And being that he was a prince, there was no need to drag them for judgement before a Lord Paramount. Maekar rode out in the mornings and cut heads from necks by nightfall, as if he were merely stamping his seal to the bottom of a parchment.

When she first heard of this practice, she’d said, “But uncle, that is barbaric,” and Maekar fixed her with a long stare before answering, “Yes, your father would have thought so too.”

It became clear that he would let her do as she pleased around Summerhall but that he would not suffer meddling in how the territories around it were managed.

The old master-at-arms used to protest that a prince should not put himself in such danger with such baffling regularity. But his pleas had not worked. Ser Roland, the new master-at-arms, preferred to accompany the prince without argument.

Daenys did not truly fear the notion that Maekar would get hurt. She had seen her uncle fight. If he fell during one of these excursions, she knew he would at least take his enemies with him. And when she received the news of his death, her heart would give out, and she would die too and it would all reach its blissful end.

In the meantime, she slept her days away, or idled, dressed in the Dornish silks Myriah left her, because it was oppressively warm in the summer. She fell asleep in odd places, and there would always be a brief panic amongst the servants when they realised and had to ascertain when they’d seen her last. They were all baffled by her. Any and all talk of Princess Daenys had always revolved around how ‘dutiful’ she was, how diligent. What they had before them was a ghost, albeit a beautiful one, that gave them dazed smiles.

Maekar found her once or twice, curled up in a bower in the greenhouse, or a reading nook in the library. He would watch her sleep a while, and then lift her into his arms, murmuring that it was only him. He did not tell her to take more care, or that the lady of the household should be more dignified and responsible and all those other stolid words Mother used to throw around. Ygraine, for one, was baffled by the prince’s benevolence towards his little wife. It was atypical.

Perhaps he was relieved Daenys was somewhere asleep. It was better than the alternative. The recipe for Ambrose’s concoction was still unused thus far, though sometimes, Daenys would give her drink a surreptitious sniff at the dinner table as if she suspected Maekar might have been drugging her all along. She did feel unusually calm after all.

Half her wandering was just an attempt to avoid her cousins.

She and Daella were still at odds, but had settled into a tense peace where they did not antagonise one another if it could be helped. Not that Daenys meant to antagonise her. But sometimes, she felt that breathing wrong upset the almost-eleven-year-old.

Rhae already had her favourite nursemaid and when Daella occasionally deigned to play with her, she was content.  She’d had Aemon too for a time and wept bitterly when he returned to Oldtown. In the days following, she sought out Daenys to play with more often than usual. A few times, she addressed her as ‘mama’ but only in a whisper, for fear that her older sister might hear of it. “It can be our secret,” Daenys told her, and Rhae was happy to play along. But once her sadness at losing her favourite brother was abated, she went back to living in her own little world.

All Maekar’s children were this way. They inhabited a sphere entirely their own and rarely came out to interact with each other or their father. They were just like him, when he went out on those hunting trips with only a handful of men and a quiver full of arrows. It was a blessing then, that Daenys was also accustomed to keeping herself entertained. Summerhall was lonely, but peaceful. None of the chatter and warmth of a large family existed. She suspected it was why her uncle had even fathered such a large brood, for the company. But the irony was on display.

And then came the most recent months, when she’d had to contend with her Dondarrion relatives. Daella’s temper was running wilder than usual those days, and so there was no better time to visit Blackhaven, where Manfred and his wife held court. There were other Dondarrions there – her mother’s very rugged uncles and distant cousins – but they showed little interest in the princess beyond the validation of her new status. Maekar stayed a fortnight and left.

Daenys remained there near two months.

At first, she wanted to leave with her uncle, but she knew it would be rude to turn down the invitation to stay for longer. She was a Dondarrion by blood. But as her stay reached a month, she sensed the desperate loneliness in Laera, Manfred’s wife, and took pity.  She was a funny, sweet soul under the gloom and Daenys liked her very much. So, she wrote to Maekar and asked his permission to remain. There was no telling what he actually felt. She only got a single sentence to arbitrarily communicate his approval.

They’d given the princess Jena’s childhood chamber thinking she would be touched, but Daenys only spent one night there and had dreams so terrible, she’d asked to be moved.

She wrote to Maekar and she wrote to Kiera, because she only had the pair of them to write to. It highlighted just how few friends she had maintained over the course of her lifetime. Baelor had not done his due diligence in finding a few young noble daughters to be around the princess. And Jena didn’t think a Dondarrian girl needed friends.

Kiera answered with long, flowery letters of her own and sent many kisses, and lied gently that her marriage with Daeron was enduring well. He is exceeding gentle, she wrote. He takes care not to visit me when he is inebriated. When he does, he is freshly bathed and looks quite handsome in his fine silks. And Dany – oh, I do feel slightly embarrassed writing this – he is an able lover. I suspect it might not be the case when he is drunk. I hope he continues to remain sober with me.

Maekar only sent back brief strips of parchment, ten words at the most, usually to say all was well at Summerhall. And then his name scribbled underneath.

Two months was a long time to fester over this, but fester she did.

And now Daenys is finally returned to Summerhall, with the seemingly serene acceptance that her uncle’s affection for her has waned.

It does not induce in her that old manic grief – though she still suspects he was having one of her servants drug her as her time at Blackhaven was quite lucid – and instead she steels herself to the inevitability. Now that she is safe, she is for granted. What else was going to happen? At least she is safe. She is his wife. She does not need him to treat her as he might have treated Dyanna in their shared youth.

When she ascends the steps to Summerhall, Rhae comes running to greet her. Even Daella is unusually mild-mannered and asks if her journey was peaceful. Daenys, startled by the change in demeanour, glances over at Kiera who is smiling proudly. It must have been her doing. Daella has taken to Kiera’s new place in the family far better and Kiera has used it in Daenys’s favour. The princess feels a surge of love towards her friend – her best and only friend, she realises, and her stomach lurches with nervous excitement at the idea. She has never had a best friend.

“Where is your father, darling?” Daenys asks the question of Rhae that she can no longer keep sealed. His absence is conspicuous.

“Hunting!  He said he would be back by evenfall.” She stops to frown at the sky. “Except it already is evenfall...uh-oh.”

“He goes out for longer these days,” Daella supplies.

There is no satisfaction on her face, nor a quip to make her cousin feel worse. If Daenys didn’t know better, she'd think Daella pities her.

She swallows down her disappointment and puts on the same vapid smile she’d perfected in King’s Landing. The servants are directed to eat and rest and delay taking the luggage to her rooms until the following morning. Ygraine tries to insist, but Daenys tells her to go and rest too.

“It is an order, Ygraine. You look weary and I am grateful for all that you do. Consider this part of that gratitude. Now go.”

Begrudgingly, Ygraine left, and a few of the younger maids whispered their thanks to Daenys with sparkling eyes. They would surely spend the rest of the evening in the pool over in the east wing. Daenys had given permission for it to be used by the servants as it was smaller and out of the way.

Maekar does not return until night has fallen.

Daenys lies awake, waiting. The fatigue of travel does not defeat her indignance. She does not allow herself to think or to hope for what his explanation might be. Both are hideous pursuits. Maybe she will scold him. But the very idea is novel; she can barely imagine it in her head without embarrassment. Her uncle will either laugh or simply walk by her as if she had never spoken.

I do not think he will take orders from me when I am queen.

He will drug me again.

The thought comes unbidden and she crushes it between her fists before it grows. It makes her dizzy. The feeling of betrayal and frightened excitement it stirs. Both at Maekar turning traitor, and her own desire to be numbed against her will. If she actively chooses it, it would be a sin. The gift of life is to be experienced, not slept through. But if it is done to her against her will, the gods might forgive her.

Daenys the Sleepy. Yes, that would be her moniker as queen.  

The distant sound of the gates jerks her off the bed. Red hair aflame in the light of the hearth, she considers looking into them before she makes the mistake of confronting him. At Blackhaven, the fire spoke to her often. It gave her good advice, though it had distracted her from prayer. She had not visited the sept as much.

She closes her eyes and Maekar’s face imprints in multicolour in that blackness.

She forgets her buried resentment at how short his letters were. How cold. She just wants to see him again.

Barefoot, she races down the winding stairs. A maidservant calls to her in alarm, but Daenys does not slow. It is a miracle that her toe does not hit the marble at an angle and break when she leaps the last few stairs.

Every man’s head turns, and they look perplexed, as if her absence from the castle had returned them to a reality where there was no mistress to rule it. Where they could wander freely and not mind their manners. Only Roland smiles, his blue eyes bright. Daenys beams at him. For a moment, they are not princess and sworn knight, but two children, playmates happy to see each other again.

“Princess. I am heartily glad to see you returned safe and sound.”

“Thank you, Ser Roland.”

“Leave us,” Maekar murmurs, and his men-at-arms scatter, Roland slower than the rest. But finally, the grand entrance hall is empty.

A shard of moonlight spills like silk from the high cupola. It bathes Maekar in an effervescent glow.

Daenys notices his hair is beginning to grow out. Father used to say Maekar was the most beautiful of their parents’ sons, but then Father was biased. Except she sees him now, that slender boy with long silver hair, easily mistaken for a princess from behind. The scars and the beard serve as a mask to cover what was once a singular truth. Maekar, the beautiful boy.

My little darling.

She hasn’t yet had the courage to ask him why his eyes looked the way they did when he’d called her that. A part of her never wishes to know. The memory of it makes her heart ache, and she experiences the confused urge to cry.

Maekar removes his gloves and sword belt and turns his tired eyes upon her.

All her planned words of retribution vanish. The complaints about his lack of letter writing and not being there to meet her after they were apart for two months. Of how she had felt her mind to be clearer at Blackhaven, which suggested he’d used Ambrose’s concoction in her food after all. That he had kept her drugged.

All of it, gone.

She just stands there.

Maekar holds his arms out to her.

Daenys runs into them. Doesn’t just run, leaps.

A whimper jolts from her chest when it collides with his and she latches onto him with arms and legs both. She sobs into his shoulder, thin keens of despair, and a choked I hate you spills out in the tangle of it. When he shifts his arms, as if he might set her down, she cries harder and grips him with all the violence of an abandoned child.

Maekar carries her upstairs that way. Every servant they pass artfully pretends not to notice their crying mistress clinging to her husband like a baby monkey. Only Ygraine – fastidious Ygraine – offers to bring the princess a calming tea.

Daenys lifts her head up, face flushed and pink. “Why? So that you might drug it again?”

Ygraine looks startled. “I do not know what you mean, princess.”

Maekar dismisses her with a slight nod, and Daenys realises her mistake. Ygraine doesn’t know, despite being the castle stewardess. Daenys assumed she would have, being that she keeps an eye on the kitchens too. She will have to apologise later.

For now, she pushes her face into her uncle’s cheek, using his beard to dry her tears. He makes no protest. But when they reach his bedchamber, he extricates her arms and makes her stand on her own two feet.

“Inside,” he tells her.

“You’ve been drugging me.”

“Yes. Inside.”

Daenys obeys, because the alternative is leaving him, and she does not want to. It has been two months. If she must bear him any hatred, she will have to do it here, where she can see every scar on his face, every pore, and kiss them as a profession of said hatred.

Maekar undresses in silence. The wounds on his back have faded. Some of the deeper scars are but pale shards under his skin. For the most part, he looks whole. Her absence has kept him from splitting himself open. She has not been so lucky. Daenys tenses, knowing there are new words etched into the insides of her thighs, and that he will see them. Her eyes dart to the candles. Just as she moves to blow them out, her uncle reaches into the nightstand and removes a velvet pouch. Inside are several scrolls, each tied with a ribbon in alternating patterns.

“Your Uncle Rhaegel wrote to you regularly while you were at Blackhaven.”

Daenys is confused. “Did he not know I was there? Why did he have them sent here?”

“I informed him, but he said he doesn’t trust the Dondarrions not to read your letters.”

“Who gave him that idea?”

It comes out a lot more accusatory than intended.

Maekar tilts his head. “Are you suggesting it was me?”

“I did not say that.”

“Your tone did.”

She bites the corner of her lip and though she cannot see it for herself, looks remarkably like Jena in that moment.

Maekar rids himself of his tunic and returns to the bath. A quiet groan escapes his lips as he sinks into the water. He does not immediately move to wash himself. He just sits there, eyes shut.

Daenys skims through Rhaegel’s letters. She will read them in detail later, but she wants to know he is not upset with her or that he misses her too much. For the most part, they are updates on his daily life. Half are fantastical tales of unicorns and dragons that only play out in his mind. Some anecdotes are of Alys who has come to live with him again. Nothing of Aelor and Aelora who are still at Dragonstone. An entire page filled with sketches of fish. Under it, he has written -

I think these ones will suit the pools at Summerhall. I will write Maekar and tell him you should have these. Note the purple one at the bottom! It bites.

It is a wonderful sketch, though the fish looks rather monstrous. Its teeth are like a wolf’s. Daenys wonders if it existed somewhere in the world and whether the Velaryons would know of it. What fun, to write to her dead husband’s family for the first time in a year only to ask them if they know of a small fish with giant teeth.

“You did not write to me,” she says to Maekar, without looking up from the letters.

“I do not enjoy the art of letter writing.”

“Not even to your wife?”

“No.”

“But you might have been softer in the ones you sent. I thought you were angry with me but was too afraid to ask.”

“I was not angry with you. You should have asked. I’d have told you.”

Daenys still thinks he should have tried to write to her with more feeling, but there really seems to be no point in quibbling over the fact.

Things were strange between them before she left for Blackhaven. The issue with Daella never really smoothed itself out. And Daeron was always on hand to unnecessarily poke his father’s temper.

But they still spent most of their nights the usual way.

Maekar would put her to bed with his tongue between her legs, fingers knuckle-deep in her mouth as she drooled and squealed her way to orgasm after sleepy orgasm. On occasion, he’d wake her up during the hour of the wolf, with his mouth pressed to her cunt. The first time it happened, Daenys screamed in fright and cried into his palm when it came up to muffle her. In that hazy mid space between fear and exhaustion, she discovered an even more intense pleasure, one that left her winded and as brainless as a wounded animal. The relief of embracing that fear. The removal of will  was freeing, and the next morning at breakfast, as they sat at the table alone, she whispered that she would like it if he did that more often, woke her abruptly and made use of her.

Maekar got that strange look in his eye, as if he were reminded of some distant memory, just as he had when he’d called her his ‘little darling.’ And then he’d simply nodded without comment. His next assault was more arduous. When she awoke, she sobbed until she was numb, and he rocked her back to sleep in his arms as if she were one of his children.

She tucks Rhaegel’s letters back into a drawer and slides off the bed to go to her uncle.

Neediness, in all its forms, has never failed to make her feel like a bedraggled dog.

But it is one of those feelings that cannot be helped. It just happens. Best not to fight it. Better to go to her uncle’s side and kneel beside the bathtub.

“Did you miss me?” she asks.

Again, his face shimmers, and looks young. The corners of his downturned eyes are soft.

“Desperately.”

Daenys tries not to smile but fails. She sinks it into her arm, rubbing her face into her bare skin until the muscles in her cheeks stop tugging upwards. Maekar’s hand plays with strands of her hair.

“I would suck on my fingers to fall asleep at night. I imagined they were yours. It was the only way I could sleep in that place”

His hand stops moving. It rests on her skull, exactly where he hit Baelor, always the place it gravitates to. “I’m not surprised. It’s a horrible castle.”

“’Tisn’t so bad. But some of the people are not so kind. I felt bad for Laera. I’ve invited her to live with us for a time, only her. I hope she understands my meaning and does not bring Manfred. Not that I think he will come. He is afraid of you.”

“Good.”

The water ripples.

Daenys lifts her head just in time as he leans in to kiss her. At the first taste of her lips, he moans, and the desperately is given new weight. She grasps his neck, his shoulders, kneading the hard muscle to expel some of her nervous energy. There is no movement in the kiss. Their lips latch tight, and she sucks on his tongue, swallowing his spit, until the back of her throat tastes only of him. It was how she used to kiss Valarr. A feeding frenzy her brother would call it and let out that charming laugh.

“You still kiss like a suckling lamb,” Maekar murmurs, breaking for air. A string of drool stretches from his bottom lip to hers. She licks it away with a nervous giggle.

“Except you let me do it now.”

“It has its appeal.”

Before she can move in for another kiss, he takes her by the scruff of her night gown and lifts her up and into the bath with him. Daenys’s laughter erupts in a half-scream. He knows the mistake he’s made the moment she splashes him deliberately.

“Stop! Or I'll throw you over the balcony and into the pool outside.”

“You can’t. The pool is too shallow for such a fall. I’ll die.”

“I’ll take the risk.”

He kisses her again, every corner of her mouth, until her skin is pink with friction. Water droplets burst like diamonds around each small movement. He feeds her the fingers she has hungered for, and bites into her breast through the sheered fabric of her gown. They sink their teeth into each other as if it were a fight to the death. But Daenys gives in first, crying out in pain. Maekar loosens his jaw only a little. His arm grabs her around the waist to keep her from squirming. A quick stroke under her gown, where she has him straddled, and his fingers come away slick.

“I think you like having chunks torn out of you, little girl,” he croons.

Daenys pushes the incriminating hand away and scowls. When he lowers his head again, she covers her breasts with an arm. “I’m still angry with you.”

Maekar sighs. “Find a better way to express it.”

She answers by lifting the gown off her body and tossing the soaked fabric away. The bite mark is horribly vivid. It is already a bruise. Maekar juts his lower lip in derisive apology but then he kisses and nuzzles at the soft flesh and asks her if it hurts quite badly.

It hurts, but she shrugs and shakes her head. They sit nestled against the side of the tub in silence for a while. Strange, how she had learned to live most of her life without being hugged and touched just for the sake of it. But two months in Blackhaven without Maekar, and that changed. Wanting to touch his bare back in the middle of the night and finding nothing but thin air was a knife twist in her stomach. She didn’t even dream about fucking him. She just wanted to strip naked and press against his body. To make a cocoon out of her uncle to sleep in forever.

“You’ve been drugging me.”

Maekar breathes in. “Yes.”

Daenys lifts her head to stare at him. She had half expected he would lie and claim that he’d only been jesting when he said yes earlier.

“Because you are afraid, I will become as I was.”

He shakes his head. “I am not afraid of that. I only want you to be safe. You forget your bloodline. We have our fair share of difficulties with - “ he touches a finger to his temple.

Daenys leans back, hands gripping the sides of the tub so hard, they turn white.

“I am not mad.”

“I did not say you were.”

“You implied it.”

“Alright. Do you want the truth?”

“After all this time, I think I deserve it.”

“I do not want the girls to see you that way if it ever happens again.”

Daenys’s heart is loud enough to deafen her. “Really?”

The first hints of impatience bleed through. “What else?”

“You do not fear I might hurt them?”

“Now when did I say th – Daenys!”

But she is already climbing out of the tub.

Her long red hair drips all over the stone tiles, body glistening in the candlelight. Maekar falls silent, staring at her. Whatever he was about to say seems to have flown from his head. She drops herself in front of the hearth and glares into the fire. The flames do not dance here the way they did in Blackhaven. But they usually respond to the worst of her moods. Perhaps she is just not angry enough. Deep down, she knows he is right to protect his daughters from what he saw of her behaviour with Aelor and Aelora.

“That is why you let me laze around and do not force me to play Lady of Summerhall as everyone expects me to! Your children are held to harsh standards. But not me. Do you think they will like me any better knowing that I alone am favoured?”

Maekar mutters something incredibly bad-tempered and gets out of the bath.

In the next chamber, she hears him throwing things around. But for once she isn’t afraid that he is angry. There is enough rage in her own blood to counter it. When he walks back out, there is a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair is in rubbed disarray. He tosses a larger towel around her shoulders to keep her from catching a cold out of pure spite.

“I have had a long day, and you are making it worse.”

“Then you might have lied and said no, of course I’m not drugging you, I would never think you’d hurt my children, Dany!”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic!” she yells.

Maekar’s scowl is ferocious. And then he turns away, murmuring, “Fire and fucking blood indeed.”

They do not speak again until he demands to know if she means to sit by the fire all night and that she can either get into his bed or leave. Daenys debates the repercussions of throwing something at him. Not good. Besides, it would make her more of a child than she is already appearing to be. She wants to prove she can control her temper without needing Ambrose’s tea to suppress it.

For all Lord Rivers think he would not make an adept Hand, Daenys fears Maekar would be entirely too good at the task. He can frighten or embarrass the whole realm into compliance as he wishes. Aerion is the most unscrupulous person she knows, but never once has he set a foot wrong in front of his father.

And now look at you, acting just like him.

Something in Maekar makes it impossible not to want to please him. And she isn’t entirely sure her uncle knows he possesses this frightening quality.

“What happened?” she asks, as she gets into the bed. “You said you’d had a long day.”

“I should be asking you that.” He snuffs out the candle on the nightstand and brushes her thigh. “I saw them.”

Daenys twitches her legs together, where the pink scars are still healing. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it is the same madness that is in you. I could get you some tea, uncle.”

She cannot see his face, but she knows he is laughing. She can feel the minute tremors in the mattress. Daenys tosses her eyes to the ceiling. With a wriggle of her body, she slides under the sheets.

“You never answered my question.”

“You don’t like to hear of Aerion. It is something to do with him.”

“You can tell me.”

“He - “ Maekar inhales, and she reaches out to rub his chest, trying to ease him. “He has joined the Second Sons.”

Daenys is glad for the darkness, because her eyes flare with wild delight. “The sellswords?”

“Yes. I wrote to him, finally, telling him not to. But this time my letter went unanswered. I suppose I deserve it.”

He might die. A wicked peal of laughter coils in her chest. It is a lot harder to repress it than it was to not be angry. He might die!

“It might do him good.”

“To risk death? And for what? A bunch of fucking mercenaries.”

“I am sure they know better than to risk their soldiers in a real fight. Their numbers are made up of noble sons. The fathers would seek retribution if they were in real danger.”

“Fathers mired in Essosi politics. It is a foreign continent. If something were to happen, there would be little chance of investigating it. Or even perhaps of retrieving him.”

Daenys does not wish to talk about Aerion any longer. The idea of his death has stirred such heat in her belly, she would much rather climb on top of Maekar and know his son would die cursing her for it. Aerion wants to be here, at his father’s side, but he is not. Daenys is, and she has Maekar all to herself.

He took her father, she took his.

“Do not think of it any longer,” she whispers, pulling Maekar’s face to her own. “He will be protected. For now, I am here, kepus. Think only of me.”

As much as she is still angry about the fight – and will return to it later – a part of her also wants to know if the siren call of her body will get him to cast thoughts of his son aside.

It does.

When she is flush against him, she feels his heartbeat quicken. Daenys melts into his arms with a starved moan. She hasn’t been so wet in months, not even when she pleasured herself with the edge of a hard pillow in her chamber at Blackhaven, eyes squeezed shut, desperately picturing her uncle.

Lust buzzes under her flesh like a stabbed hornets nest. Violent and irrepressible. It infects him too. He feels her wetness against his thigh, and with a fervent mutter to the gods, lifts her by the hips and drags her onto his face. Daenys keens in pure delight. His tongue spears into her, and she quivers around it like a wound. When she lifts, he pulls her back down, until his mouth is buried and his nose is crushed against her clit. She comes faster than he can have his fill. Powerful arms brace around her thighs, holding her full weight down.

He does not let her pull away, not even when she screams that it is too much to bear. Hot cheek pressed flush to the headboard, her tongue moves against the wood in unconscious mimicry of his. Her mind is empty. Feels so good, so good, so good. The sounds of it – wet slurps, the swallow in his throat, her choked gurgles – and the way his beard tickles the sensitive pucker of skin just below. Her giggles are delirious. She is weak with ecstasy. Words turn into incoherent sing-song, hips gyrating over his mouth until she orgasms again, in complete silence this time. The darkness behind her eyelids buries her alive.

She can’t remember when her back hits the bed again, but suddenly, she feels something bigger than his fingers at her opening. There isn’t enough sense left inside her to prepare for the disappointment when he won’t be able to penetrate. Daenys becomes a base creature, nothingness in the form of a girl.

“I want you to eat me alive,” she mumbles nonsensically, and sticks out her tongue for him to feed her his spit. The insides of her thighs glitter, slippery wet around his hips. She bites into his lip when he thrusts forward.

“Fuck!” she cries in shock. The word babbles off her tongue, faster.  

“Finally,” Maekar mutters, and then lets out a similar fuck of his own when his niece clenches with every fibre of her strength. “Dany, not so tight – “

But she can’t stop. The intrusion forces more convulsions. And then she looks down, at her pussy struggling to take him in. Her toes curl into the sheets and he has to hold her down to keep her from thrashing. Every inch forced deep, belonging to this man that she loves and hates in equal measure. Her uncle. Hers, hers, hers. Her fingers claw at his scalp and her thin arms choke him in a locked embrace. His gasps echo in her ear as if being inside her has brought him to the verge of death.

“Call me your little darling again,” she whispers, “Please.”

He pants into her neck, large fist crushed around the bedsheets next to her head. Only a moment’s hesitation. Then, he does as she wants. He licks the sweat off her face and kisses her mouth and utters the phrase against her chin. Daenys’s little cry of pleasure is high and sweet and she comes before he has even managed to move. Maekar has her hair gripped almost as tight as she has his. His sob of laughter sinks into her neck; he sounds as demented as she feels.

At least this time, when her body slackens after the orgasm, he can pull out. But he does it only to test that it can happen again. That it wasn’t a short moment of luck. When he plunges back in, a growl of triumph rolls through his chest. Every sound he makes pulses through her cunt. He tells her to ‘hold on’ as if everything he does isn’t the cause of blinding pleasure. She is oversensitive at the worst of times. But he has spent so long tenderising her cunt with his mouth, every thrust is potentially orgasmic.

Maekar does all the work. Daenys drops into his arms and lets him use her body as if it were not hers, but simply an instrument attuned to his pleasure. Sometimes, he slows to watch her silky wet flesh suck his cock in. How her little hole trembles around it, just about managing to take him in. At others, his thrusts are rough and frantic, and the only sounds left are his grunts and the depraved slap of skin.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she murmurs, when he pulls out of her and drops her on the pillows. “I want to fuck until my bones break. Don’t leave - “

Maekar squeezes her face in his palm. He searches it for signs of sanity and finds none. She is red, and dripping with sweat, her hair drenched dark. Every inch of her skin is soft as the inside of a flower. She can barely keep her limbs steady, but the grip she has on his cock is unearthly. That same strength she exhibited when he pinned her and Ambrose poured the tea down her throat.

A nymph-creature in place of the girl he knows.

In her mind, Daenys is back in the Red Keep, and he shouldn’t be here. That is why she begs him not to leave. Her father and mother are still alive, and all is right with the world, except Maekar shouldn’t be on top of her, inside her, fingering and licking every hole in her body until she is a spasming pile of nerve endings and goo. It is the only right thing to do. It has only ever been the right thing to do. To fuck him, and to be fucked by him, words long gone, until it is his saliva drooling from her mouth, and her sweat beading through his pores. She wants to be him. She is him. She is the man, she has the cock, and he is the one with the cunt to be invaded. When he whimpers in her ear, she knows she is inside him to the very backs of his teeth and it makes her jittery with joy.

Stay inside me, she tells him, and he nods and pants like an obedient dog returning home to its master.

Stay inside me.

Stay inside me.

Stay inside me.

Chapter Text

Several months go by.

His wife starts to take all her meals in the kitchen. Every plate laid out, every cup poured, she wants to see it with her own eyes. It was one of my servants, not yours, he tells her, to soothe her paranoia. But it does not work. If she means to embarrass him into ceasing to tamper with her food, that will not work either. He has six children, and is embarrassed by them regularly. Daenys is nothing in comparison.

He refuses to outright lie to her. When she asks him if he will drug her again, he says he will and that it is for her own good.

Because it is. It is for her own fucking good.

And now his wife will not sit at the dinner table. She eats her meals in a corner of the kitchen like a lost urchin. The servants are not discomfited by her at least. That quick wit and charm she and Egg exhibit towards those beneath them works in her favour. They do not forget their manners for fear of Maekar’s wrath. But they still treat her with more familiarity than they might do to someone of her status. She is happy in the kitchen (and importantly, far from witnessing uncomfortable family arguments).

For a year, she has been serene.

Just enough of Ambrose’s mixture to keep her alert and her moods level. The frantic energy begins to return. Silla, now married to Edric and pregnant, finds less time to spend with her mistress. Daenys is forced to make do with the servants Ygraine has picked out. Kiera visits her, but for the most part, remains in the west wing of the palace ensuring her own husband does not stumble into his father’s wrathful path.

Dany’s temper shortens without the concoction. She does not speak to Daella at all, to avoid any chance of a fight. Rhae she is still gentle with, but no longer so willing to smile and nod at all her ridiculous requests.

Maekar wonders if Daenys was ever gentle at all or if it was just the product of his brother and Jena’s meticulous control. She is soft and breakable in his eyes, but that is due to age and status. He could snap her over his knee easily. But to his daughters, she is no longer the shy cousin they once knew. He has brought them a stranger.

Maester Melaquin also falls victim to Daenys’s (rightful) paranoia. He has the unfortunate task of coming into Maekar’s bedchamber every morning to brew the moon tea in front of her. She fears that it too will be drugged. It is the only thing she drinks with consistency. Maekar never has to remind her.

There was no conversation had, but the idea of children is off the table.

He’d once asked her, “Would you want to be a mother to your own?”

Daenys blanched, and shook her head slightly. He did not press further. Jena’s death will have traumatised the poor child. By the end, all her pregnancies produced malformed, scaled half-babes. The idea of losing Dany to one of those creatures makes his chest inflame with the same grievous fury he’d felt when Donnel told him that Baelor was dead.

Just before he’d heard Dany’s scream split the air when she saw her father’s broken head.

They are very much at odds, it is a given. She does not speak to him in the daylight. He does not give her much opportunity to. But when night falls, she appears in the doorway of his bedchamber, sullen and sad. Always in those pale gowns under the heavy lilac of her bed robe, an escaped faerie child.

She rushes to his bed on light feet and jumps on him in a straddle. She lifts up her skirts, and tosses them over her face in a veil, as if a kiss to her cunny is the veneration required to begin. And he does, he kisses it, nose buried in the sweet-smelling curls of hair protecting it. He kisses the scars on her thighs too, the faint words – tired, alive, uncle, poppy.

Sometimes, she is already waiting for him. The naked sprawl of her on his sheets, hair like spilt fire. All the arguments of the day vanish. Like a cat she curls into his palm, honey eyes devotional. She nips at his fingers, spine arching to show off the perfect swell of her tits. She knows what he likes now. And they truly are, perfect. Almost small enough to completely take one into his mouth but not quite. During the daytime, she wears dresses with necklines up her throat, and wimples over them. Maekar cannot be certain but he suspects it is to deprive him of looking at her properly. There was a time when she was walking around with bare shoulders and arms. Now she walks around chaste as a septa, as if she knows it is only the curve of her plump, round arse that he can make out against the fabric of her dress.

But when the sky is pitch black, she sheds the covering and croons, “Uncle…” a sultry invitation to damn himself further. He still uses the flogger. But not with as much strength, else he would have no back left to speak of. Each wound takes its time to form, over the span of days, just like it takes time to bring Daenys to the edge and push her back, until she is so desperate to come she has to bite into him to muffle her screams.

On the nights when they are both tired, they still find ways to latch. To fall asleep without touching would be unbearable. She likes to hold his cock in her mouth as he reads to her. When his fingers stroke her hair, she rewards him with a sloppy suck until he drops the book just long enough to cram his cock deeper into her throat. She coughs and snuffles and whimpers but doesn’t let a single drop go to waste.

Other nights it is he who needs the quiet comfort and she offers herself up. His fingers hook into her pussy, because she likes to feel full, even if there is no rush to make her cum. He likes to feel it quiver when he sucks on her nipples as if he wants to draw milk. It is the closest he has come to peace in a long time.

He’s never touched a body so sensitive. Twice, she orgasmed from her teats being abused by his mouth. She applies oils to them in an effort to soothe the skin, but they never recover fast enough. He tries for gentleness where he can.

When he cannot sleep, he pushes his head under her gown and latches onto a mouthful. No suckling or bites, holding her inside the way she does to him. She complains sometimes when it wakes her up. But then still half-asleep, she cradles his head to her chest and rubs his back and it is the safest place in the world.

Dawn’s blue light make her eyes resemble Mother’s entirely. The shape, size and colour of them. They are Mother’s. This sweet, lonely child he only held a few times when she was a babe, and now his arms and hands are full of her, always – she has his mother’s eyes.

He was sixteen when he first held her and he remembers what a miserable time it was.

He was married almost two years, with two sons, and Daemon was still alive. Dyanna did not know why he visited his uncle’s keep so often, but she considered it a good thing because at least Maekar liked to be around someone in his family. His relationship with Myriah baffled her. It was not hostile, but neither was it comfortable on either end, not like Dyanna and her own mother, who were devoted.

How was he meant to tell her that while he was playacting as a man at fifteen, at being her husband, he was also in his uncle’s bed playing ‘conquerors’ with his wife? Daemon was Aegon, Rohanne was Visenya, and Maekar – little Mayakar – was Rhaenys, and the games always ended with the older two ganging up on the younger. Rohanne was sweet and playful and never wanted it to be just herself and Maekar in the bed, though he would have liked it. Daemon only let him fuck her as a reward.

Sometimes, he thought he preferred her, not Daemon, that his willingness to be fucked by his uncle was so that he could have Rohanne. It made him feel calmer if Daemon was being inflicted upon him, and it was not a mutual exchange. But even then, the idea did not sit long. The powerlessness came in a flood and he could not stand it feeling that way.

Near the end, Rohanne refused to join in at all. Their last tryst ended with her screaming Daemon, you’ll hurt him and then he had hurt Maekar, and the pair of them stormed out of the room to argue until Maekar heard something crash to the ground, and then silence. He hadn’t waited for them to come out and find him still curled up in their huge bed. He put on his clothes – inside out – and slipped away.

He’d gone back to Dyanna, and crawled into their marriage bed and wept into the back of his hand until she woke up. She said nothing, did not ask, knowing he would not tell her. But she held him to her chest, and he mouthed at her breast through her gown, until he fell asleep.

He did not want Ceryse in their bed despite his niece’s pleading because it would be a trio again. He would be Aegon, Ceryse the Visenya, and Dany as Rhaenys. He wanted her to know – but could not find words to tell her – that no matter how much she loved him, he possessed an endless desire to test it. He had never loved anyone and not felt he could not push them to a limit and see where the boundary snapped.

He could make his niece – this woman who would forever be a girlchild to him – question the very same love she took for granted. I love you, uncle. I hate you, uncle. Her expressions of emotion tippled so easily. When she had no words left, there was the crux of it. Then Maekar would shake her until her teeth rattled and look into her eyes and ask –

Youth’s fervour is ill-suited to an older body. So goes the common consensus. An old man cannot fight a young man’s battles. But he can fuck his way through them.

There are nights when Daenys is ravenous and he answers in kind. It is only a matter of tiring her out. And no matter how long his little darling tries to hold on, in the end she succumbs, because his entire life has been one long bout of endurance training.

He loves to wear her out. How she shakes, and clutches her fingers, and begs him in words that are little more than baby babble. Stop, stop, stop. And then her pussy clamps down on his cock so hard he can’t pull out, and decides to punish her with another orgasm. It is a lighter form of what she expressed wanting a year or so ago. To be forced against her will, until she collapses. Like the moment she shyly asked him to wake her at night with his mouth. Now he does it with his cock, until she cries, because she is tired, but still, she does not say the word they’ve agreed on to signal it is beyond tolerance. He shoves his cock into her mouth, and then her cunt, back and forth between both holes, waiting for her to admit defeat. When she does, he tucks her into bed and kisses her on the forehead and listens to her shallow breathing even out.

Her lack of shyness delights him. She tells him what she likes, what she wants. Very vocal about all of it. Every time some new pleasure hits her, she squeals and giggles, and then gets to panting – again, uncle, again. If he won’t do as she wishes straight away, she takes matters into her own hands.

It is hard not to get carried away. Her enthusiasm is palpable. She loves to ride his cock, his face, his fingers. She is so happy to be there, and it is a simple kind of happiness he misses and wants for himself. It becomes the only thing he looks forward to.

It amazes him that he still has the capacity to look forward to things. Where he once spent his nights pacing, attempting to read, pray, whatever else ‘good’ men are supposed to do when the weight of their crimes rests heavy, now he fills the hours stuffing his niece full of cum. His blood runs so hot, he swears it is a taste of hellfire preparing him for his eventual end

“You are only half here,” she mumbles to him now, reaching back to stroke his beard. “I want all of you.”

She is stretched on her side, taking his cock from behind. He gropes at her breast until she sighs and squirms. The massage is slow and passionate and makes her pussy tighten in short, vigorous convulsions. Maekar stops moving just long enough for his cock to be milked, and when it stays hard, takes a short pause before moving inside her again.

“I could never only be ‘half here’. Not when you’re draining the soul out of me.”

Daenys purrs and grinds her hips, squealing when he slaps her buttocks. She turns her head over her shoulder and swallows his mouth in a voracious kiss. She moans against his saliva-slick lips, tonguing the corner of his moustache, the upper edge of his beard. Maekar brings his hand to her stomach. It trembles, just before he presses down. Her eyes widen in surprise as it increases the pressure of his cock against that sweet little spot that makes her jump and twitch like a bunny rabbit.

“Feel that?” he whispers.

Daenys whimpers, nodding frantically, the tip of her finger caught in her teeth.

It ruins the lazy rhythm. The urge to properly fuck her rears its ugly head and he turns onto his back, dragging her on top. In the mirror opposite, she is caught and utterly helpless. Legs splayed open over his knotted arms, little toes curled in the air. He ruts his hips, watching the gorgeous slit of her pussy suck on the vein of his cock. But when more of it sinks into her, she spasms and cries wretchedly.

“What is it, baby?”

“’Mm – it – it feels fuller this way – “

He gives her another little jolt and she yelps. It is because his cock is straining directly over that textured spot of velvet on the roof of her cunt. He tells her as much, and thrusts again. Her teeth grit as if she is in pain. The pleasure is so wretchedly good, all she can do is cry and drool when he picks up speed. Her tears spur him on. He likes to fuck them out of her. Until all resistance leaves her body, and her mouth is full of blood because she’s accidentally bitten her tongue one too many times.

When she reaches a crest where she cannot do anything but surrender, he fucks her the hardest. His cock is a blur against her puffy lips. She comes first, and he spills seconds after, the convulsions in her cunt milking him dry. When she starts to scream from the overstimulation, he lifts her off and pushes her head into his lap. A hand to the back of her hair – fragile skull, delicate as an eggshell – and she gags and sobs but won’t stop hollowing her cheeks until she has sucked his balls empty.

It is then that her mind abandons her and she launches herself at him with shaky sobs of I love you, I love you and forgets all her little complaints about the drugging and the hunting trips and the way Ygraine won’t let her do this or that. She is all his. He has fucked her into agreeing with him and agree she does, vehemently, at the top of her lungs, as the bed shakes and his cock slaps into her spasming cunt until it is as red as her hair.

Because that is his duty if she will not let him drug her into a dreamless night’s sleep. He has to fuck his little girl into unconsciousness. No one else in the world could ever do it the way he does. She needs him. Someone still needs and wants him and goes to pieces in his absence.

“I wish I was born earlier,” she whispers as they lie side by side. “I wish I was your sister.”

“You would have hated growing up at my grandfather’s court.”

“Maybe. But I’d only care about you. I’d be your little sister. And we’d be married.”

Maekar, who once used to imagine how easy life might have been if he was the sister instead, laughs fondly. “And who would give me my heirs? You being so afraid of motherhood.”

She shrugs. “I’d do it if you had none. I’d try. Or maybe just once, and I’d have triplets and we would never need to try for children again. We could be like Aelor and Aelora. Attached at the hip. Hiding from mother to do bad things to each other.”

Maekar’s forehead furrows. He long suspected the twins ‘legitimised’ their union before the age deemed appropriate for it. If Daenys knows, Alys certainly would have.

“Bad things,” he repeats.

Daenys turns onto her front, red hair a veil over the sweat-soaked arch of her spine. Over her buttocks, are the two dimples he loves to press his thumbs into when he fucks her from behind.

“I remember when I first became aware I was growing breasts, I was strangely excited. I wanted to tell someone, anyone. But I knew I couldn’t. Modesty.” She rolls her eyes prettily. And then she grins, a dimple poking deep. “But I’d show my older brother. Since he likes them so much.”

Their eyes meet and Maekar bursts out laughing first. “Little idiot.”

It only spurs her on. “Or I could be the youngest prince and you could be my sister! I don’t mind.” When his eyes crinkle again, she grins. “What? You cannot imagine it? I’d be much taller than you. I’d have you up against the wall every chance I got.

His attempt to take her seriously is ruined by the size of his hand in comparison to her face. But he has no doubt she would do everything she promised if she were a boy. With this much lust in her, and a stronger body, she would be rabid.

“I’m sure you would.”

“And you could give me my six children. Except Aerion. I do not want that one.”

“Alright, let’s not get carried away.”

She shoves his shoulder. He kisses her. And then their bodies shift together, and even though his cock is beginning to chafe, it gets hard again and slips right back inside her where it belongs. Both are content to keep it slow this time. Tongues locked, and hands roaming. She is the one to thrust her hips, as if still playing pretend that he is the sister. He doesn’t mind. He likes these games. He likes the way her words ramble over each other. Flights of fancy that take him out of his own head.

He cleans up some of her slick with his fingers and uses it to play with the rim of her other hole. Daenys moans in soft approval, licking at the tip of his nose. He wants to fuck her there too, but she is still afraid, and Ceryse did say women do not derive the same pleasure from that area as men. But Dany likes it when he licks her there, and plays just inside the rim as he stuffs her cunt full with his cock. He contents himself with what she likes, and plans for when he’ll have what he wants. The limits, tested again.

Before she falls asleep, she mumbles for him not to pull out, so he doesn’t, and is unconscious before he has finished softening inside her.

Morning comes and the first sentence on Daenys’s tongue is always, “I wish it were night time again.”

Her uncle doesn’t say anything. The sun comes up, and he returns to who he is when others are watching. Candlelight brings to her the man she wants, the passion that quickens in him. She counts down the hours on her fingers until sunset. It never ceases to surprise her how good he is at putting on his mask.

Maekar does not let her kiss him in the mornings. The mistake was made several times, and when it was, he did not leave the bedchamber for hours after. Summerhall came to life around them, and the servants came looking. Hearing the grunting and moaning through the door was reason enough not to knock. But Maekar decided it was not appropriate. The day belonged to duty, and so, the rule was set.

Still, it took him ten mornings to decide this. Ten mornings of needing to take another bath because ‘just one more time’ turned into fuck-drunk, fluid-soaked delirium. When he tried to get off her, she would whine uncle and cling until he fell on her again. There was a time when he would not let her call him that when they so much as kissed.

Ah but duty, duty, duty.

It poisons even her uncle. Back to haunt her from beyond the grave where it now lies buried with her mother, plucked from the ashes of her father.

She bathes, dresses, and performs her usual routine of eating in a corner of the kitchen. They have laid out a table and chairs specially for her over by the window. There was self-consciousness amongst the staff at first, but once they were certain she was not trying to pick at their faults, they continued as normal.

Every inch of Summerhall has now been explored.

Her Aunt Dyanna’s rooms are well cared for, and just as Maekar wants, they are kept untouched. Daenys supervises the dusting and airing of the room herself. A strange line to walk, when it was her aunt whom she loved dearly, just as much as she was Maekar’s beloved. It feels wrong to miss her and tell him about it. The way she misses Dyanna could never match up to the ache it left in him.

Sometimes, she goes into Dyanna’s rooms to cry when there is too much activity in the rest of the castle and no one will leave her alone long enough to regain her bearings.

But today, Summerhall is quiet, and she ends up curled in a corner of the library with a tome on the folklore of the Riverlands. Her mind drifts, her thoughts curls of smoke in the air. The Riverland faeries lose their hold, and Maekar returns.

No, not quite Maekar. Whoever he would have been as a girl, a princess with long white hair and scarred cheeks with a scowl so nasty it could curdle fresh milk.

The fantasies begin as glimpses. Touching her hair, the curve of her cheekbone, her little hand which would be smaller than Dany’s, of course. It is only fair that their sizes are swapped and she gets to be the bigger one. She has always wanted a little sister, but not as herself. It would be easier to have a little sister if she were a prince. She would not know intimately what ails the mind of a young girl.

Lurid thoughts quickly follow. Her body is primed to the verge of bursting these days. It must be the sex – there is no other explanation for it. It has become greedy now that it is fed so often. The book stays in her lap for protection, but her hand is already under the fold of her skirts.

She pictures her uncle as she plays with herself, the princess, with a slight wave to her straight hair, curled up asleep in a sea of pillows and silk curtains. Daenys looms over her, the way her uncle does over her when she is asleep. Her sister is dragged down the bed, and her legs thrown open and there is no clear definition of a cock, but it is inside her, impaling her, and she is screaming with pleasure, or is she crying with fear, it is hard to tell, they are so often one and the same –

In her mind, she fucks her uncle until he is no longer a girl, but a prince again, still fragile, with his hairless face and slender, girlish hands. She feeds him her fingers and he sucks for nourishment. And when she has decided enough she turns him and buries his face in the pillows and fucks him until his voice cracks and his thighs bruise.

The orgasm hits her quick and sudden, and when she pulls her hand out from under her skirts, it is red and shaking.

The heat in her stomach subsides, leaving behind it a pit. She shoves the book back onto the shelf, guilty and swift, as if the gods are in the room with her, watching.

She hopes Uncle Maekar returns soon.