Archive of Our Own ^beta

1:

'I wish they looked upon me as they would a prince,' Rhaenyra bursts out. She is six, and her father has been king for a year. Already she understands that this means she is no longer good enough: that the King of the Seven Kingdoms demands a boy heir.

'As you wish, child,' the old woman says, and as she touches Rhaenyra's forehead, the world goes white.

2:

'Do you know whose sword that once was, Rhaegar?' says Viserys, his hand resting upon Rhaenyra's head.

She gazes up at Blackfyre, mounted out of reach upon the wall. 'Aegon the Conqueror's.'

'And do you know who wields it now?'

She frowns. 'No one?'

'That's right,' he says, patting her head. 'By rights, I suppose, it is mine. But on your thirteenth name-day, I intend for it to become yours. A weapon befitting my heir.'

'Thank you, Father,' says Rhaenyra, and remembers at the last moment that it is no longer considered proper for her - no, for Rhaegar - to fling her arms around her father's neck. She settles instead for clasping his arm, in silent gratitude.

Blackfyre has been kept well-polished even through its years of disuse. She stares into its blade and sees in it her real reflection: small, silver-haired, girlish. She shivers.

3:

Rhaenyra is seven years old when she flies for the first time.

'But Syrax will not grow to be a very large dragon,' she hears one of the keepers say. 'Surely it would have been more fitting for the crown prince to claim Vhagar?'

4:

Rhaenyra is eight when her mother dies.

She is allowed into the bedchamber to say goodbye. There seems to be more of her mother's blood outside the body than can possibly be left inside it. She kisses her mother's forehead, and when she gags at the smell of her cooling body, like raw meat, she turns her head to the side so that no one can see.

5:

'What are you doing, uncle?' says Rhaenyra, approaching the Iron Throne. Her uncle Daemon lounges across it, a sacrilege for a man who is not king. His fingertips drum upon the point of a blade, as if he is daring it to cut him.

'Sitting,' he says. 'This could well be my chair one day.'

'I am the heir,' she says, and a smile comes to her lips just to say it. 'It will be mine.'

'You are your father's heir, yes, but he has no spare,' says Daemon. In the dark light of the throne room, his violet eyes seem almost black. 'So unfortunate about your mother. If you were to suffer a - tragic accident -'

'Is that a threat, uncle?'

'Of course not, nephew,' he says, blandly. 'Heaven forbid.'

We used to be friends, you and I, thinks Rhaenyra. We were inseparable.

For Daemon, Rhaenyra was something to love. Rhaegar is something to kill.

6: 

'I must marry again, I'm afraid,' says her father. 'Of course any children from the new match would not supersede you, my boy, but - you understand. You understand what is expected of me.'

'An heir and a spare,' says Rhaegar. 'I understand.'

7:

Rhaenyra is ten years old when she gains a brother named Aegon. She finds that his arrival doesn't really change much about her life at all.

Her stepmother is a cunt, though.

8:

On Rhaegar's eleventh name-day, she nearly dies.

'To my eldest son, and to the health of the Realm,' says her father, and raises his glass. To his left: his new queen, Alicent; her father, the Hand; Aegon and his wet-nurse. To his right: Rhaenyra and Daemon.

'To the health of the Realm,' says Daemon, his voice a low purr in Rhaenyra's ear, and she shivers, her hand tightening around her glass. The wine has a bitter aftertaste.

On Rhaegar's eleventh name-day, he is poisoned.

9:

In his fevered dreams, he never became Rhaegar at all.

The Princess Rhaenyra grows up loved by all the city, and yet she grows up lonely. Upon the death of her mother, she is favoured above Daemon, and named heir despite her gender. But the lords of the realm cannot take her seriously. Alicent and Aegon plot to take her throne, and dream-Rhaenyra, privy to all their conversations, the overseer of her own doom, is powerless to stop them.

She beats on her father's door and screams for him to open his eyes, to help her.

'That's enough of that,' says Daemon, taking her hands, and when she looks at his face she sees that he is her Daemon again, the one who adores her. It's a sight she's missed so desperately that she lets him guide her away from the door, past Balerion's skull, out of the Red Keep entirely. He leads her to a Flea Bottom brothel that Rhaegar has already been allowed to visit, pushes her up against a wall, and kisses her senseless.

Even if she wanted to stop him, this body of hers would not have the strength for it.

'Daemon,' she says, but it sounds more like a moan than a name. She tries again. 'Daemon. Was it you?'

'What?' he says, shoving his knee between her thighs for her to ride it.

'Did you poison me?' she tries. 'Did you poison Rhaegar?'

At that, he pulls off her, his hands still pinioning her shoulders against the wall. 'Who is Rhaegar?' he says, voice full of honest confusion, and then she -

10:

He wakes up a week after he drinks the poison, his throat scratchy and his stomach shrunken. The worst of the fever has passed, and he is alive.

'Otto Hightower has been arrested,' says Rhaenyra's father, looking haggard by her bedside.

'Otto Hightower?' says Rhaenyra, holding her breath. 'It was truly him?'

'I am afraid so. If you had died, Aegon would have been named heir. Otto had hoped to place his own grandson upon the throne.'

'And you are sure of this?'

'He has confessed,' says her father, shrugging. He looks very old and very sad. 'He will be executed at sundown.'

And so he is. No conspirator is named alongside him.

Rhaenyra watches Alicent, who sobs, and Daemon, who smiles.

11:

Rhaenyra is fourteen when she rides in her first tourney. Viserys does not like it, she can tell; he stands on his feet every time she is called to joust, his hands gripping the rail of the royal box. She is no great fighter, hampered by the years she spent not learning as a child, but she is ferocious, and besides the other lords are all afraid to injure her too severely. She is unhorsed by Ser Criston Cole two rounds before the final, a respectable result.

Criston and Daemon are left to thrash out the contest between them. Daemon loses.

He is in remarkably good spirits afterwards, all things considered.

'Come to the city with me,' he tells her, and when she looks suspicious - 'What, are you afraid I'll knife you in a brothel?'

'I wouldn't put it past you, yes.'

'Rhaegar, Rhaegar,' he says, slinging an arm over her shoulders. 'If I wanted the throne, I'd have to kill you, your lady stepmother, and all three of her spawn to get to it. Do you really think I could stage all of those as separate accidents? Besides, you're my favourite nephew.'

'Thank you?'

'The others have shit for brains.'

She lets him take her to the brothel. Rhaegar sleeps with two girls and catches his uncle's eyes as he comes.

12:

Rhaegar is sixteen when he marries Lady Laena Velaryon. Everyone agrees that it is a suitable match: the Velaryons, like the Targaryens, are of the purest blood of Old Valyria, and obscenely rich to boot.

Besides, it is also a love match.

Laena is kind, and beautiful, and never happier than on dragonback. She is intuitive about politics in a way that most of the girls and boys who have spent their whole lives at court are not, but nor is Laena very interested in courtly gossip. She knows something of the world, and of her own desires.

Rhaenyra adores her.

They are married at the end of seven days' feasting. They ride back from the Sept to the Red Keep on open horseback instead of by carriage, and the people on the streets rejoice, calling out for their valiant heir and his soon-to-be queen.

13:

Rhaegar enjoys quite a friendly relationship with his  half-brother, Aegon, even if he's a bit of a twit.

14:

'Your uncle is very attractive,' says Laena.

Rhaegar is so startled that he pauses mid-fuck, his hips stilling against the mattress. Laena rolls her eyes. She rolls their bodies over, her knees now gripping Rhaegar's hips, and begins to ride Rhaegar's cock with enthusiasm.

'You cannot tell me you have never thought about it. I do see the way you look at him, sometimes.'

'How do I look at him?'

'Like he's a dragon and you want him to burn you alive.'

'We are all dragons,' says Rhaegar in Valyrian.

Laena laughs, curling her fingers into Rhaegar's hair. 'Well, you could burn him back. I know he wouldn't mind.'

15:

Rhaegar and Laena have three sons, Jacaerys, Lucerys and Joffrey. There are rumours that Lucerys and Joffrey are not the trueborn sons of Prince Rhaegar at all, but bastards, fathered upon the Lady Laena by Rhaegar's uncle Daemon.

But no one really cares, because they're all born blond-haired and purple-eyed: Targaryen heirs through and and through.

'I think Lucerys is mine, actually,' says Daemon one afternoon, lazily fucking into Rhaegar as Rhaegar's tongue swipes over the surface of Laena's clit. He's glad, in these scenarios, for the experience of having been a woman.

'Lucerys is certainly Rhaegar's,' says Laena. 'He has his nose. Now, Joffrey, he might be yours.'

'What do you think, Rhaegar?' says Daemon, smirking wickedly down at him as Laena settles lower against his face and moans.

16:

Rhaegar is thirty-two years old when his father dies.

'My lord,' says Alicent, the Dowager Queen, curtseying to Rhaegar. Her lovely mouth is pinched and sullen.

He smiles at her, and tells her to rise. He can afford to be a benevolent king.

17:

He keeps the sword Blackfyre well-polished, although the realm is peaceful and it sees little use.

He doesn't like to look at it often. In its blade lurks the image of a woman, quite beautiful, but beginning to run to fat. Her whitish hair, a little longer than his own, is braided as if battle-ready. 

She looks hauntingly sad.

18:

'Rhae?'

He is dragged from his reverie by the sight of Daemon, half-dressed, leaning against the doorway. 'Laena may start spitting fire if you keep us waiting too long. She has a particularly interesting idea - something to do with some ginger root.'

'Oh,' says Rhaegar, blinking. 'Well, we mustn't keep her waiting.'

He makes for the door, but Daemon shoots out a hand and stops him in his tracks, his eyes narrowed. 'Is something the matter?'

'No. Why would it be?'

'I know you better than you do yourself,' says Daemon, 'so don't insult me.'

Rhaegar laughs.

'What?'

'Nothing, nothing. It's just -' He pauses, considering. 'I've known you my whole life. And you've known me for all of it.'

'Of course,' Daemon drawls.

'So -' Rhaegar scrubs his chin with his hand. 'What do you remember of my childhood? No later than when I was six. Was I - was I different? Do you remember my sword-fighting lessons? Do you know who taught me to joust?'

'The castle instructors, I suppose,' says Daemon, shrugging. 'This was twenty-five years ago, and you were a brat. I didn't cling on to every detail.'

'So you don't remember anything?' says Rhaegar, a little desperate. He suddenly feels as if a dam has broken. 'Not my father's reaction, when I was born? He wanted a boy so badly. And how worried he became later, when my mother couldn't carry another baby to term, that he would have to name you his heir?'

'Rhaegar, are you ill?' says Daemon, taking hold of his arms more tightly, as if concerned he might fall over. 'You are not speaking sense.'

'I am not ill,' Rhaegar growls, 'but don't you remember her at all?'

'Who?'

'Rhaenyra!'

Daemon's face is typically unreadable. Less typically, he says nothing, the muscles working within his jaw. His eyes look a little bit lost. Remember me, dearest kepa, Rhaenyra thinks. Remember remember remember. Rhaegar wraps his arms around her, attempting to soothe her, but she shrugs his efforts off.

'I will call Maester Gerardys to attend to you,' says Daemon. 'You do not seem well.'

19:

The maester prescribes tears of the poppy. Laena presses the goblet to Rhaegar's lips, and Daemon pries Rhaegar's jaw open, and together they send him to sleep.

20:

Rhaenyra's sixth baby slips from her body malformed, and scaly, and dead.

The midwives do not want to touch it, so she wraps it in her own bedsheets and cradles it close to her chest. Her arms are shaky.

'What happened?' asks Rhaegar.

At first he isn't sure if Rhaenyra has heard him. She looks up, but her eyes are so dull that she seems to be looking through him, more than at him, and he does not know if this is his dream, or hers, or a memory. 

'It was the shock,' she says. 'I miscarried her. Because of the shock.'

Rhaegar moves closer, perching on the end of her bed in sympathy. 'What shock?'

'Our father died, but Alicent kept it from me for a week. By the time I received word of it, she had butchered the lords loyal to me and crowned Aegon king.'

'But you were the heir,' says Rhaegar, shaking his head. 'It was meant to be you. And how can I rule Westeros and not you? Are we not the same?'

'Oh, no,' says Rhaenyra, and laughs. It sounds as if it hurts her chest. 'We are not the same. You could have been me, but I would never have been allowed to be you.'

'What will you do now?'

'I will fight for my crown,' says Rhaenyra. 'And then I expect I will lose it, and I will die. Daemon and I both.' She bites her lip. 'I hope they will kill me before him.'

'You love him, then?'

'Don't you?'

'Yes. Him and Laena both.'

'Ah,' says Rhaenyra, closing her eyes and smiling. She looks like a satisfied cat. 'I had that too, for a while. Don't squander it.'

'What?'

'Your happiness. Your life.' She reaches forward and grips his forearm, and Rhaegar flinches, twisting his arm against hers, unable to break away. Dream or not, it hurts. 'Promise me. Promise me you will not waste the life you stole from me.'

'I -' says Rhaegar, and the words catch within his throat. 'I promise.'

'Good,' she says, releasing him, and leans back against her pillows, visibly exhausted. 'Good. Now go home, Rhaegar. I have a war to plan.'

21:

'Your grace, I am glad to see you awake,' says the maester, leaning forward. 'Has the affliction passed?'

'I believe it has, Gerardys,' says Rhaegar. 'Now, could you have a servant bring my mourning clothes to me?'

'Your grace? I was not aware of any recent death of note.'

'She isn't dead, yet,' says Rhaegar, and he shivers. He wonders how it will happen: by sword, by fist, by dragonfire. 'But she will be.'

22:

When Rhaegar is thirty-three years old, he unsheathes Blackfyre, and in its mirrored blade he only sees his own reflection.