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His niece is a spoiled thing - greedy, not ruined, not yet, that's to come, though he will be responsible for both things - for spoiling her with gifts and jewellery and trinkets and books and sacks full of furs and velvets and lace and any other fine object that takes his fancy on his travels away from her; and for spoiling her for other men, for ruining her with his fingers and his tongue and his cock, for defiling the realm's delight and his brother's greatest joy.
She accepts both gifts, both spoilings, as if they are her due, she demands them even, so, looking back, he does not know which fist has ever held the reigns, hers or his.
Even when she is very young, a toddling thing with silver hair and sullen purple eyes, she can make him do her bidding, demand things from him - gifts, love, care – that he would offer no one else. He cares for her, worries for her, wishes to protect her. But it is a selfish love, for he wishes to be her favourite above all else, even her father, his brother.
'You should have had a son,' he tells Viserys once, a year or so before Aemma dies at her dearest cousin's hand, when the two brothers are in their cups gazing out at King's Landing, the murmur of a small riot below, the scent of incense in the air from the festival that caused the riot.
'Yes,' Viserys says. 'But there is still time.' he raises his cup, eyes too soft, too hopeful.
Oh, brother, he thinks, that is not what I meant at all.
Perhaps he should have said instead, you should not have had a daughter.
Not one with such spirit, not one who has been made for me, not a girlchild ripe for my stealing.
*
He brings her back two fistfuls of rings inside a small hammered golden chest for her seventh nameday and everyone disapproves. But the smile of delight on the princess's face is hard to resist.
'Rings, Daemon. Like she is one of your whores,' Rhaenys mutters as they watch Rhaenyra fit ten rings on one hand, wiggling her fingers and flashing the room with sparks of light from diamonds and rubies and emeralds.
'I've never given a ring to a whore,' he says with a moue of his mouth. It's hard not to match the princess's smile, to be as delighted as her.
'No, you've only given a ring to one woman before, your wife.' She raises an eyebrow and he tilts his head.
'Exactly, she already has one, she doesn't need any more.'
'No matter how many rings you buy her, he won't let you marry her,' Rhaenys whispers.
Do you think I asked for those rings I brought back? he thinks of replying as he stares at her. Do you think I begged for them, wheedled for them, bargained for them? I took them.
'What funny thoughts you have, cousin,' he replies and then the princess calls for her uncle and he obeys.
'Help me, Uncle,' she says, splaying out her fingers.
'Help you take them off?' he asks, crouching in front of her.
'No,' she shakes her head. 'Help me put more on.'
He does as she asks, fits rings of pearl, silver, gold filigree, and amber, all the way up each of her little fingers, as the musicians play and the court schemes and laughs, gorging on the feast of foods and preening in their finery.
'I don't think I can fit any more on your hands, princess,' he says, finally. There are still five bands in the bottom of the chest, glinting against the blood red velvet.
'You can,' she insists.
'Don't your fingers hurt already?' he murmurs, studying her face. Her violet eyes, her little nose, the tiny scar from a fall from a tree on her cheek.
She leans closer, glances at the room apprehensively as if she does not wish them to hear. 'Yes, but I want to wear all of them. I want them all.'
'Oh, princess,' he says, my greedy little girl, 'they're not meant to hurt, my gifts, I never wish them to hurt.' He presses a kiss to the back of her fingers quickly, before the room can see. His lips feel hot skin and warm metal, they catch on jewels and gems sharp enough to cut.
He sits back on his heels, sucks a fleck of blood from his lip. She sees, she knows she has hurt him. She is curious but she does not apologise.
You want my blood too, don't you, he thinks. You take it as your due.
Sometimes he thinks she wants too much from him, sometimes he thinks he wants to give her too much.
He leaves the gathering then, fleeing to his whorehouses and then, afterwards, on his dragon to find a fight somewhere, a bloody one.
It is only after that fight is over – the wayward keep restored to his brother's rule, the rebels slain by dark sister – and as another whore is patching up the shallow wound on his side – that he looks at himself in the mirror and realises that she got her wish, that the blood he spilled was for her.
But he does not stop bringing his gifts to her, or sending them by cart and by messenger. Necklaces, rings, bracelets, pendants. Books old and new, decorated by gems and painted with exquisite detail. He gifts her a horse, a lap cat, exotic birds in cages. He gives her statuettes, dice, models of creatures and gods. He gives her boxes, chests, and bags made of silver cloth tied with golden ribbons. He gives her everything except for coins, those he keeps for himself – or uses to buy things for her, on the rare occasion he cannot steal or take them.
*
When she is named heir, that is the closest his love comes to hate. He dreams of it, of her some years hence, of his hands around her neck, of blood slicked between them. But in his dreams, she never dies, instead her jewelled fingers reach around his own neck tight, her moans are ones of desperate pleasure, not pain.
He is brought to his knees in the dream.
To his knees.
Soon after, he steals Dragonstone from her.
His brother sends his odious lord hand and a crowd of useless footsoldiers to take it back. Footsoldiers against gold cloaks. Men against a dragon.
His brother, the king, is a fool. His brother seeks diplomacy, talking, scrabbling around in the dirt, over a show of power. His brother does not understand power.
But she does. Arriving on the back of her dragon, glorious and stubborn and righteous.
Does she look jealous when he says he is to marry, when he speaks of a future child? Does she understand yet the true tie between them?
'Was it the threat to your father that brought you here?' he murmurs in High Valyrian, quiet enough that only she may hear. 'Or was it because I stole something from you? Could you not bear that, princess, to lose one measly jewel out of so many you shall inherit?'
Her eyes flicker fire, she smells of dragon and of girlhood, something sweet and soft. She has never killed a man, not yet.
'I'm right here, Uncle,' she says, her chin set. 'the object of your ire, the reason that you were disinherited. If you wish to be restored as heir, you'll need to kill me. So do it.'
She asks to be killed, even in this she demands. She wants and she wants and she wants.
You don't know what you want, not yet, princess, he thinks. But your words and your face give you away. I won't kill you, darling niece, but one day I'll give you many little deaths. One day you'll beg for those too.
*
When she comes of age, it is all people talk about wherever he goes - in brothels and courts and on battlefields, in pleasure gardens and in stables. For which man will the princess spread her legs, which man may gain the iron throne through her hand, which family will be hoisted upwards.
It bores him, it irritates him, it infuriates him.
So many feasts and balls and tourneys are held in her honour, so much money bled from the coffers of the crown, so many chattering greedy fools with their eyes split between two spectacles. On the one side of the room, the boy child feted to be heir, to be king, whose every gurgle and step is cheered. On the other, the girl child, the princess whom all in the room once knelt to as the King's chosen heir, who is now paraded to be sold.
He knows it because he attends Kings Landing during one of the balls, in disguise, flying from the battlefield, bruised and sore.
But it is not her he came to see, or, not just her, but her father, his brother.
He finds him in an antechamber, staring out the window as if imagining himself somewhere else. His cronies gather like carrion near him.
'Might I beg an audience?' Daemon drawls and laughs when swords are drawn.
'It's alright,' Viserys says, 'it's not an intruder.'
'I arrive without an invitation, isn't that the very mark of an intruder, brother?'
Viserys sighs but he is pleased to see his brother. Is Daemon pleased to see him? This man who stole his birthright and gave it to his daughter, and whose only plan to secure that claim is to find her some odious highborn man with the riches enough to make his small council happy?
'Might I speak with you, alone?' he asks.
The guards seem reluctant but at a nod, they slip from the doors.
'You make a fool of me with your war, Daemon,' Viserys says, smile gone. 'You undermine me.'
'I'm helping you, you fool, I'm battling back against an enemy backed by the wealth of the Free Cities, who would weaken Westeros, who would see you ruined slowly but surely.'
'You are not helping me. What Westerosi king wishes for war against the Free Cities.'
'All you show is weakness and your people and your rule suffer from it. I should have been a better king than you,' he says, too tired to bite it back.
Viserys grits his teeth. 'It is unfortunate for you then, but fortunate for the realm, that I was the first born.' He squares himself, or tries to, but Viserys has aged and his body is plagued by sores that will not heal, Daemon knows this from his spies, others know this too.
'Let me help you, brother.'
'You will end your warmongering?' the king says, picking up his glass and draining it.
'And let the Crabfeeder take the Stepstones and cripple the shipping lanes? Let the Triarchy grow in power and confidence? No.'
'Then you do not offer help.'
'Let me marry her, brother.'
'Marry whom?'
'Are your wits so addled by wine and sycophants at court? Are you not aware of the ball this night, taking place in this very court, beyond those very doors, to parade your daughter in front of suitors?'
'You have a wife.'
'Not by choosing, and not with issue. Let me set her aside,' Daemon says.
'Even if you didn't have a wife, you couldn't have her.'
'And why not?'
Now it is Viserys's turn to laugh. A bitter, black, mean thing. 'My daughter is the most precious thing in the world to me. And you are a curse upon me, a whoremongerer, a cutpurse, a warmongerer, a thorn in my side, a danger to the realm. I would sooner put a dagger to your throat than let you touch her. And I tell you now, if you do touch her, I shall count that as sedition and treason.'
'That is your final word on the matter?'
'It is,' Viserys spits.
'You're a fool, brother. A fool.'
'Be gone, Daemon. Be gone and end your war. This is how you may help me, and help your family.'
He knocks the goblet from Viserys's hand before his brother can react and stalks out.
'Have you come bearing gifts too, uncle?' the princess asks him when he finds her on a balcony, her body cinched tight into lace and brocade, her hair woven tighter.
'Forgive me, there were no jewels to be found on the battlefield, only bones and crabs and hunks of flesh. Not the kind of gift fit for a princess.'
'One of the Lannister lords gifted me a rattle, I should have preferred bones to that.'
'A rattle?' he asks, mystified.
'He told me he hoped our child might enjoy it. I told him if the only gift he brought was a rattle, jewelled though it may be, he could give it to my brother.'
The court feels even stranger to him now, standing here amidst perfumes and spiced foods, the cool breeze of the sea untroubled by fires and destruction. Yesterday, he cut off the hands of a dozen men and ended the life of two of his soldiers who begged for relief from the burning of their flesh from flaming arrows. Screams and roars and the crackle of fire, these have been the sounds of his life this past year – years? - not harps and false laughter. Perhaps he should have visited Flea Bottom instead, got himself blind drunk with cheap wine, fucked six whores there, not dragged himself here. To be insulted by his brother, to have gifts demanded from his niece.
'Sit by me, uncle,' she says then, as if she can see his weariness, his weakness. He will not have it.
'I'm well. It is your feet that must be tired in those shoes and with such poor dance partners.'
'Are you offering yourself as dance partner?'
He shifts closer. 'Would you like that, princess? Would you like to dance with me out there in front of everyone? Your father's thorn in his side. I think you would, you'd like to rebel like that.' He can't help a little scorn from colouring his voice.
'Why did you come here, uncle?'
'I came to see the show.'
His sardonic words anger her, perhaps even hurt her.
'You don't send me gifts anymore, have your coffers run dry too?'
'You don't need gifts, you need a husband.'
That shuts her up.
'Tell me, have any of them taken your fancy yet? Have any of their kisses been sweet enough to make your cunt flutter?'
'Uncle—'
'Well?' he asks. He can smell the spiced wine on her breath this close, see the gleam of her nervous eyes in the light of the torches on the balcony.
'You have been kissed, haven't you, princess?'
'Yes,' she says. Her hand flickers at her side, her breath makes her bodice creak.
'I would expect someone who spent so much of their time within these walls to be a better liar,' he says, giving into temptation and stroking a finger across her bare shoulders.
'You're not wearing the Valyrian steel necklace I gave you,' he says.
'It's too precious for a night like tonight.'
'I should like it if you wore it.'
'I didn't know you would be attending, uncle.'
'But you would have worn it if you knew? Good girl,' he says and she makes a noise in her throat. 'You haven't been kissed, have you?'
She shakes her head and bites her lip.
He moves his thumb to her chin, tugs her lip free. 'If you wish your lip to be bitten, let me do it for you,' he says and kisses her.
Her hand grapples at his side, she trembles, her mouth hot, her lips eager as he teaches her, as he devours her. Tongue against tongue, his hand anchoring her by the back of her neck, where his necklace should be. He's hard and he wants her. He nips her bottom lip and she gasps, her head dropping back. He nuzzles at her jaw, sucks at her neck, thinking about making a mark, picturing it blooming, red and purple.
'Daemon,' she gasps.
He kisses her again, wants to taste his name in her mouth.
'I could steal you away,' he murmurs. 'You would be so happily stolen from here.'
'Daemon—' she says again.
'You wish it, don't you? To leave this place, to come with me?'
She pushes him away, he lets her, to a point. But he is still close enough to see her swollen lips, her hot eyes.
'Why should I wish to leave the Red Keep,' she says with shaking voice and with anger, 'why should I wish to leave my home and my family?'
'I'm your family.'
'You have a wife already—'
'Wives perish of sicknesses, of falls and accidents, all the time.'
She puts a shocked hand across his mouth. Her hand is the softest thing that has touched him in years.
'At your word, princess, I would do it,' he says, his voice muffled but not stopped, his lips rough against her fingers.
She takes her hand back.
'I preferred when you brought me gifts,' she says, looking young, uncertain.
'I preferred when you accepted the gifts I offered.'
Noise from the ball makes her look to the door nervously. Her suitors must be frantic in their search for her.
He kisses her again, draws her to him, overwhelms her for a long moment, feels her surrender, the relief of it, and then he steps back. She sways and grasps the edge of the balcony.
'Farewell, princess,' he says, with a smirk, 'I'm glad you enjoyed your gift.'
As he flies back to the battlefield it pleases him to think that he has stolen her first kiss, or been gifted it, maybe both.
It pleases him to know that she will be thinking on it for many moons to come, picturing him in her mind late at night, dreaming of him, just as he dreams of her when he lays himself down each night in his wretched camp, her body shuddering in his arms, her hair like silk tangled with his.
*
The feasts and balls and tourneys in the crownlands do not seem enough for the princess, no suitor is chosen, no match is made. She is spoiled, people say, she scorns the men offered, the houses who make their suit, she turns her little nose up at every firstborn son offered to her, hardy and hale and comely and rich.
It pleases him. She has always pleased him.
But what does not please him is the news that travels to him next, soon after he alone has won his war, with no help from the king or the crown, and soon after his wife has, through no act of his own, fallen from a horse to her death. The princess, the heir, is to tour the Reach with plans to visit the riverlands next and the Vale. To trot along from keep to keep as if she is a peddler selling wares, he thinks furiously, as he drains beer from cups in the brothel where a sozzled messenger from court blabs to all and sundry.
The further Rhaenyra is from court, the less safe she will be, the more she will be out of their minds, banished from their thoughts, while her brothers take all attention.
What advisers is she listening to? What schemes has she come up with herself, believing she knows anything at all about the world of men from her books, from being alone and friendless at court?
She is a fool. She wishes to throw it all a way. To give herself away. Daemon will not have it. He will not let her be brought so low.
He will not let her be stolen by someone unworthy.
He plans only to meet with her at Highgarden, to shake some sense into her there as they walk the pleasant gardens or at some masquerade ball held in her honour by House Tyrell, where he may take her aside and demand she returns home where it is safer or, at least, where she will be closer to the throne and not out of mind of the court.
But he has never liked to sit and wait, and Caraxes can sense it, he screeches, he grumbles, until Daemon takes his saddle and flies his dragon towards the Reach. He shall catch her at one of the keeps she beds down in with her retinue on the way to Highgarden, he decides, he shall disrupt her trip at its beginnings.
But he does not know as he flies to meet her, that some upstart little lordling at Cider Hall, drunk from the merest whiff of power that a single evening of her presence in his father's keep brings, has decided to attempt to stake his claim, and has gathered a small army of men to help him.
He can hear the clash of steel as he approaches, see the fires of her wagons lit. He swears to the Seven, he curses her guards, his brother, the Reach, the realm.
Why is she even here at this miserly little keep? he thinks furiously as he dismounts and decapitates the first man who launches at him. Why is she here and not safe at Kings Landing? Why must she vex him so?
Caraxes burns those outside of the keep as Daemon forges ahead inside its walls, cutting men down, kicking them, smashing their faces in.
He finds her in the tallest tower of the keep. He slashes past dozens of rebels on his way up the stairs, his feet slipping on their blood, kicking their bodies down and down, his fury sharp as his blade, and then he cuts down her useless guards too for the hell of it, the four of them that remain at the barricaded doors of her room, sitting there like fat little ducks. When he pushes the doors open, the hinges are oiled smooth by the spray of their blood.
'What have you brought me this time, uncle?' the princess asks from her meagre seat of pillows and furs, tear-stained and shaking but still furious, righteous, demanding.
She is dressed in her riding leathers and has a sword in one fist. She looks queenly even here.
'A keep full of the bodies of your enemies is not enough?' he asks, throwing his bloodied dagger at her feet.
She does not flinch, only stares at him balefully.
'The gifts I have given you over the years,' he bites out, shaking his head, 'the spoils of war, riches beyond measure. No girl has ever been so spoiled.'
She lifts her little chin up. 'If this comes to pass, you will be the more spoiled, uncle.'
'And why is that?' he replies. There is no need to ask what she means, there is no other course of action remaining for them both.
'Because the gifts I shall give you are greater.'
'Greater? Greater than the wealth, than myself?' He spreads his arms.
'Have you given me the Iron Throne, uncle?'
'I can secure it for you, and you know that.'
'It is mine by right, by my father's decree.'
'What is your father's decree to the black scheming hearts of men? You cannot be naive, princess, not here, not now.' Not with the stench of blood their only incense. 'I can give you heirs,' he says. He leans closer, looms. 'Let me give you heirs,' he murmurs, holding her gaze, feeling the blood pulse between them. Let me fill your belly with my seed.
'Any man may give me heirs,' she says but her breath is short, he can see it. 'It is I who am royal, who will birth them, who will make them royal.'
'Pure Targaryen heirs? Children with dragon blood?'
'There are other Targaryens yet.'
He laughs, low. 'I can give you those heirs now, princess. I am already grown.' He takes her warm hand, slides it down his middle to the leather over the bulge between his legs. Her fingers twitch.
He ducks his head, brushes a kiss to the corner of her mouth. 'Don't you want that, princess?'
Rhaenyra has him beneath her palm now, the part that makes him a man, the part of him that has been denied to her – that she denied herself when she said no at King's Landing to his foolish plan to run away. Oh, he has given her much else over the years, she thinks, gifts and affection, attention, riches. But he has not given her his flesh.
She turns her mouth to his, hungry, incapable of resisting that which she wants. He kisses her richly, generously. It is a kiss just as good as the one he gave her at the ball, the kiss that has haunted her days and nights.
But the taste of blood, not his own, reminds her where she is and what she must say yet. She retreats and fists a hand in his hair to hold him back.
He looks delighted, charmed, by her show of strength.
She has always delighted him.
'I can make you a king consort,' she states, arguing her own corner, proving the balance is not as he sees it. 'I can give you a crown.' He smells of dragon and smoke, familiar. 'I can give you a crown and a line of kings and queens that stretch aeons.'
The heat in his eyes, the desire, the desperation and hunger.
Wanting looks good on you, uncle, she wants to say.
'You will be the most spoiled, Daemon.'
He licks his lips.
When she was younger she used to tell him more, confess more of her inner thoughts that she shared with no one else. He would bring her a gift, and she would whisper to him her hurts, her petty grievances, her wishes. And he would keep them as secrets, as his own little gifts.
'This, a marriage between us,' she says, taking his hand in hers. 'I will give the most, Daemon, lose the most, risk the most.'
'I have killed for you,' he says, with a tender fury that makes her ache, and he squeezes her hand. 'Dozens, hundreds. I would kill thousands for you, I would douse you in the richest of blood of your enemies.'
'I want jewels, not blood.'
'You want power, power is blood.'
'I don't want war, Daemon.'
'Only a madman wants war.'
And are you not mad? she thinks. Are the stories not true, are the words of my father's men, the songs of the land, wrong?
'I am no warmongerer, princess. I am only a sword looking—'
'—for a sheathe?' she finishes, shocking a laugh out of him.
'So crude for a princess,' he croons. 'What do you know of swords and sheathes, hmm?' His hand curves around her knee. Even through the leather of her riding breeches she can feel it. Her insides flutter.
'A warrior for a husband suits me well,' she admits. 'But I do not know what the court will make of this.'
'They will hate it,' he smirks. 'And your father will rage, he will tear handfuls of hair from his own head, he will curse me to the seven hells.'
'That pleases you, the thought of his anger. You are a perverse man.'
'I am what I am, and you want me as I am.'
'Yes.'
'Take me as your husband, Rhaenyra. Let me rule the Seven Kingdoms with you.'
'Yes,' she says and raises her arms like she did as a child wishing to be lifted up by her favourite uncle.
He kisses her, holds her close, smothers her with his desire.
When she first found out what a husband was, when her ladymaid answered her curious question and told her that one day a man would take her to wife, that she would be tied to him forever more, she could only picture one man. And that imagining has never left her since. There has been no other choice in her mind, no other path. But oh, how she has fought it, lately with greater effort than ever. Stopping herself from sending a beseeching letter, from demanding he leave his war and come to her side.
'I've missed you,' she murmurs into his kisses. 'Don't leave me again, don't leave me.'
'I won't, I swear it. I'll keep you,' he replies and bites at her jaw, smooths his palm around her neck.
She did not know a simple touch could feel so good, she did not know anything—
'Pleasure,' he declares with a wicked smile, setting her down on the bed in the chamber, here in the keep flooded with the blood he spilled for her. 'I can give you pleasure. What gift is sweeter than that?'
'I welcome your skills in all matters, uncle,' she gasps, gripping his hair again as he tears down her breeches, pushes away her leather tunic, rips at her smallclothes.
He feasts on her, laves his tongue deep, sucks at the most delicate parts of her. He takes his fill of her, grips her hips with his cruel fingers, pressing her down into the bed as she bucks up into his mouth.
He takes her pleasure from her. She gives it to him. She takes it from him.
And when she is finished, when she is lying there panting, moaning with the echoes of pleasure, he brings himself off with his hand, spilling his seed on her cunt, grunting at the sight of it.
When he looks up to meet her gaze, his eyes are dark with triumph, his face smeared with her, flecked still with blood.
'You look a mess, uncle,' she pants.
'And you look ravished,' he drawls.
'But not despoiled,' she says, shifting in the bed, still wanting.
'Not here, my sweet, you need finer surroundings for the loss of your maidenhead.'
He helps her clothe herself again, well enough to join him on the back of his dragon at least, but not to any standard of polite society.
'You know, you have not thanked me yet,' he says to her as they lift up into the sky.
'For what?'
'For saving you.'
'You stole me, uncle, you didn't save me.'
'I did, didn't I,' he says, pleased, and his arm tugs her to him tight. 'My own spoils of war.'
'War?' she mocks, peering back over shoulder. 'That was a light skirmish at best.'
'You told me you didn't want wars in your name.'
'I don't.'
'Yes, you do,' he says knowingly. 'You want everything. From me, from the realm. You want it all.'
'I want the throne.'
'You'll have it.'
'I want to marry you in the Sept before the court, before everyone.'
'You will.'
'I want your children.'
'Please, princess,' he groans. 'Peace until we land, or I'll fuck you up here in the clouds.'
'What if I want that too?' she jests.
He throws his head back and laughs. 'You are the most spoiled girl in all of Westeros.'
'You would not have me any other way.'
'Gods help me, I would not.'
****