Chapter Text
So many things had changed since he had woken up in his bed in the Red Keep, convinced he had died. So many things had changed, he even started to believe himself what Gael, his father and his grandfather all believed, that it had all been a mere dream, not a life lived.
So many things had changed, and yet one seemed determined to remain the same. He had not expected it to. His grandfather was sound of mind, sounder than he had any right to be, and he had thought him to be safe, had thought them to be safe.
And yet, here he was, in a bedchamber stiflingly hot, the fire blazing in the two hearths of his grandfather’s bedchamber stoked high and unforgiving, kneeling at his grandfather’s side, his head spinning.
Gael lived.
Alysanne lived.
Father lived.
Jaehaerys was supposed to live too.
Kneeling here, his grandfather’s freezing fingers squeezing his own, he could not bring himself to believe it, the cold seemingly spreading, infecting the blood in his veins, poisoning his heart.
Dragons were not supposed to be cold.
“Promise me,” the old, dying king rasped out, giving Daemon’s fingers another squeeze, more urgent than before, more desperate, “promise me, you will tell them.”
The king’s eyes, dulled by the fever that had ravaged his body, were too sharp still. He had no right extracting any deathbed promises. No right. He would recover. Too much had changed for Jaehaerys to die on the same fucking day.
“Daemon,” the old man gasped out, and he was forced to look at him, “whether you believe or not, you must tell them when the time comes. Now, promise me!”
A dying man had no right to sound so commanding.
The king was not dying.
“I promise,” Daemon heard himself whisper regardless, his father’s hand, resting on his shoulder, as heavy as the world.
His grandfather did not speak again, but his clouded eyes flooded with relief, with gratitude, and he smiled at him before he turned away. Bile rose in Daemon’s throat as the skeletal fingers let go, and his throat burned as he watched them caress the pale cheek of his grandmother on the other side of the bed, wrapped in Gael’s arms and in possession of the king’s other hand.
The king was not dying, he sternly repeated to himself.
“I would have a moment with my wife. Alone,” the king spoke up once more, his eyes fixed to his queen.
“Father-” the king’s children protested, Gael’s a sob, his father’s a quiet plea.
“Alone,” the king mercilessly repeated himself, never tearing his eyes away from his wife.
There were no further protests.
“See what a selfish man I am, my love?” he heard the old man rasp out just before the door closed behind them with cruel finality.
His grandfather was not going to die, he tried to convince himself uselessly as his arms wrapped themselves around his wife without a thought as she stepped into them, hiding her face in his chest.
Daemon was a selfish man too, he supposed as he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to Gael’s pale hair.
His eyes were still closed, breathing in the comforting warmth of his wife, when the Queen Dowager emerged an eternity later.
King’s Landing had draped itself in black in mourning for its king, its streets and its denizens decked in it as they lined the path the Old King’s bier and the funeral procession took.
For once, Daemon had opted for a carriage, accompanying his wife, his father and his desolate grandmother, every single moment of journey too much to bear. He had thought himself no stranger to grief and yet, his grandmother’s agony seemed a living thing, inflicting raw bleeding wounds on those around her.
Her husband’s death had seemingly aged her decades, her shoulders curving, her head dropping, her eyes two black holes in her ghostly pale face, her voice retreating into a whisper. Gael and his father tried to console her, he knew, and he admired them for it. He supported them in it.
Daemon himself could hardly bear to be in her presence since grandfather’s passing, and he could certainly not bring himself to meet her devastating eyes.
The journey from Aegon’s Hill to the Dragonpit atop the Hill of Rhaenys had never seemed so endless.
He wished he could have stayed behind with the children.
He wished he had joined Rhaenys in her carriage.
He wished he had ridden a horse.
When the carriage rolled to a stop at long last and the door opened to allow a dull sunshine inside, he breathed a silent breath of relief.
And yet, the moment his grandmother stepped out into the light, she transformed.
Daemon had never respected his grandmother, could not see her as the Good Queen the masses named her. She had always been an old haughty petty woman in his eyes, too focused on what could have been, too resentful of what was.
Not now.
Now, Alysanne, garbed all in black, stood with her spine straight, wearing her grief like a shroud lending her worn out features an unearthly, dignified kind of beauty.
She was old. She had outlived all of her siblings and most of her children, yet here she stood, regal and proud and as unyielding as Valyrian steel. Every bit the queen he had never believed her to be.
The crowd knelt for her, much more so than for her son at her side, as she walked for the massive door to the Dragonpit whence Jaehaerys’ bier, dragons and more crowds awaited them.
His father had offered Vhagar to be the one to light the pyre, Daemon knew, but he had seen Alysanne’s hand on his father’s cheek and the way his head had dropped. It would not be him leading the ceremony.
Funeral rites would never cease to unnerve Daemon, he rather suspected, itching to be anywhere but right there.
It was his rattled mind he blamed when for a mad, mad moment, as his grandmother pressed a long kiss to her departed husband’s cold lips, and Silverwing stirred, he made an alarmed step forward. Had his father’s hand not shot out and seized his arm in a vicelike grip, he would have made more.
But the moment passed, the kiss ended and Silverwing stilled, her maw remaining closed until Alysanne stepped back, her husband’s crown clutched to her breast and ordered her forward.
“Dracarys,” her voice rang clearly, not given a chance to echo in the vast chamber, the roar of dragonflame swallowing it greedily.
Her back was still almost painfully straight, her head still held high, her otherworldly beauty still there, but to behold it was to experience an agony.
Daemon preferred to watch the pyre burn until it was little more than a rather small pile of cooling ashes. A too-small a pile for such a man.
The crowds had long dispersed by the time they set out to leave.
Daemon turned to watch the gates of the Dragonpit close behind them, and, the fool that he was, he could not help but question, “Will Silverwing not return to the Red Keep?”
Caraxes and Gaelithox had long escaped the confines of the Pit, Vhagar had retreated to her lair underground, but Silverwing remained by Vermithor’s side, by the ashes.
“No,” his grandmother’s voice was raw, “there is nothing left for her there. Let her find some comfort in- Let her stay.”
With Jaehaerys turned to ashes and interred at Dragonstone, all the strength drained from his former queen, and the Red Keep shrouded itself in gloom. Grandmother proved herself resistant even to Gael’s persistent efforts to have her rise and dress, not even the presence of the children capable of stirring her to more than a sad smile.
Daemon would have left her to it, were it up to him. While he had little understanding of apathy, he had quite a bit of when it came to wanting to be left alone to wallow. However…
“How was your visit with grandmother today, hm?” he asked his frowning son, intent on destruction of his toy army.
Serious purple eyes looked up from the pitiful wooden soldiers. “It was…”
“Grandmama was sad,” his daughter inserted herself, a second set of too-serious eyes now focused on him. “The baby made her cry.”
“Ah, however did he manage that?”
Gaemon’s gaze dropped to his soldiers and his frown deepened. “He was a baby.”
He forced out a laugh. “How rude of Aenar, no?”
His son gave a mute shrug, not bothering to engage further. It was not so with Daena. She climbed into Daemon’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I think Silverwing would cheer her up.”
“I think grandmother is not in a mood to be cheered. By anyone.”
“Silverwing should be here,” Daena maintained.
“Silverwing should be where her rider wishes her to be — at the Dragonpit. With Vermithor,” he argued back.
Gaemon came to his sister’s aid. “Vermithor should be here, too. This is his home. He must hate it at the Dragonpit.”
“He does not. He likes it there,” Daemon lied through his teeth. He had yet to encounter a dragon that did.
“How would you know?” His son’s voice was full of doubt. “Were you to see him?”
Daemon sighed, well-aware where his reply would lead him next. “No, I-”
Daena bounced, tugging on his hair in her excitement. “We should go! We should go and bring him and Silverwing home, and grandmama will-”
He felt obliged to interject gently, “Even together, they will not fill the void grandfather’s absence created.”
His daughter would not be deterred, and her pleading eyes were too reminiscent of her mother’s. “But missing Silverwing and Vermithor too only makes it worse!”
Daemon grimaced. He wanted to argue against it. He truly did. But he knew there had never been a darkness in his life that could not have been made lighter by having Caraxes there with him. “They might not want to come,” he said instead.
“They will,” Gaemon told him, “we just have to tell them they need to.”
Daemon let out a startled laugh at that. It sounded so easy when put like that, did it not?
He did not laugh later, at the Dragonpit.
There was something heart-wrenching about the way Silverwing wrapped herself around Vermithor’s seemingly lifeless body in the very same spot the dragon had last seen his rider. They did not seem to have moved since the funeral, and he wondered whether it was possible for a dragon to die of grief.
It hurt to look at them like that. It hurt to know they could hurt like that.
The need for comfort was instinctual, he supposed, as Daena demanded to be lifted and then clung to his neck while he questioned dragonkeepers.
The need for comfort was instinctual, but there was a fucking difference between demanding it and giving it, godsdammit.
“Gaemon,” he hissed after his son. It would not do to yell when one found one’s child climbing a grieving dragon, muttering something under their breath. “Get back!”
His jaw was tight with the effort not to scream, not to make sudden and therefore stupid moves, desperately trying not to think just how long it had been since Vermithor’s last meal. He wished he did not know.
There were many things he wished, but Daena clung to his neck, resistant to his attempts to free himself, so he was given little choice in the matters. Mastering his racing heart and calming his breathing enough to manage a lullaby as he approached the intertwined dragons cautiously, too cautiously, was mayhaps the most challenging thing he ever had to do.
His son was too far up for him to climb with Daena latched onto him.
His fool of a son laid down on Vermithor’s back, petting him, still talking to himself softly as he rubbed his face against the hard scales. “I love you too, Vermithor. It will get better, you will see. We will make it better.”
“Gaemon,” he spoke in a low commanding voice, “come down right now!”
The boy did so, with a fucking smile, patting Vermithor’s side as he did so. “He will come home with us, kepa! I told you he would!”
He grabbed at his son, dragging him to safety as the dragon stirred, waking Silverwing, feverishly ordering dragonkeepers to slaughter their goats right fucking now! There would be time enough for counting limbs after there was blood to distract the doubtless hungry dragons.
“See? See?” Daena clapped excitedly when Vermithor attacked a carcass with fervor, almost as if he had not eaten in a fucking fortnight, Silverwing feeding herself much more sedately. “They want to come home with us!”
“Can they, kepa? Oh, can they? Please? Vermithor will be good, I promise.” Gaemon was the very picture of innocence, bouncing in place as he pleaded.
Oh, he had little doubt of that now.
Daemon closed his eyes and ordered himself to be calm.
He had been had. By a child.
Daemon had been had by his grandfather, he found back in the safety of the Red Keep from his entirely recalcitrant son.
The egg was Gaemon’s, all had been in silent agreement, though it never stirred.
The egg was Gaemon’s, Daemon knew, because he had been expressly forbidden from retrieving any more eggs from the hatcheries. There were to be no more eggs for Daella, nor for Daena, nor for Aenar or any of the babes to come after either. There were enough dragons and more would come in their own time, not on a babe’s whim, the king had declared.
The egg was not Gaemon’s, Gaemon insisted now in his too-bright voice, Vermithor was. “Grandfather said so,” tirelessly resounded in Daemon’s aching head.
“One cannot pass one a dragon,” he retorted uselessly for a hundredth time, because one apparently had.
Gaemon did not argue, secure in his possession of the dragon.
Daemon had been had by his grandfather, he found just a few days later from his father, the king.
“Pray tell, father, whatever do you mean, my son is betrothed?”
He tried for calm, he truly did.
“There was an understanding between the king and Rhaenys that should her egg hatch, her daughter would wed your son.”
Syrax’s egg had hatched years ago, and he promptly reminded his father of that.
His father’s lips twitched. “It would seem Rhaenys was not eager to bind her daughter to a boy who might not inherit.”
“'Tis too late. Tell her that. You are the king now.”
His father leaned forward, his gaze too steady, too unyielding, trying to reason with him. “'Tis not too late. It is something father wished, and it is something I wish. There is no better match to be made, and you know it.”
What Daemon did know was that there was something queer about his son being betrothed to a little girl that had been his wife once upon a dream. “She is twice his age,” he complained instead.
His father laughed at him. “That will hardly be true for long.” But he did sober shortly, “Or did you wish for Gaemon to wed your brother’s-”
“No!” Daemon jumped out of his seat to pace restlessly. There was queer and there was queerer. Daella was not the little girl that had become his wife once upon a dream, and that was somehow worse. That girl had lost a mother and kept a father. This girl had her mother and lost a father. “No, Aemma would not…”
Aemma did not wish her daughter to wed anyone at all, he was fairly certain. It had been years since her husband had vanished at the Wall, his body never found, and there had been countless suitors paying court to her at the Eyrie since, but she had shown little inclination to wed again.
In truth, Aemma had shown little inclination she had any wish to see most of them since leaving for the Vale. She had not returned to King’s Landing even once, and she had not come for the king’s funeral, despite her dragon being grown enough to ride for some time.
Aemma was free and unlikely to allow herself to be caught again.
Freedom was not something that was afforded to many, no matter their position. Even the king was not free to do whatever he wanted, and he was certainly not free to sit in his castle and call upon the High Septon to attend him and perform the coronation there.
Or he could. It would merely never happen.
It smarted that the monarch was the one that had to travel to be crowned.
It smarted that Daemon as his heir had to travel with him. To fucking Oldtown. As a supplicant.
It smarted that one day he would be expected to return.
His father did not seem eager to depart King’s Landing either, and he had been the one to declare the children would not travel with them, leaving them in their grandmother’s care for the time being. It left Daemon conflicted. He had little wish to bring his children into the lair of those he would only ever consider adversaries himself. And yet… his father being of the same mind hardly helped settle his mind.
Three dragons descended upon Oldtown on the day of the coronation and no sooner, landing in the great marble plaza in front of the Starry Sept, its great dome, supported by black marble walls glittering in the sunlight. The streets around the sept were full of people, but the plaza itself remained clear, as the king had ordered.
It was a cloudless day and the streets cheered, and his father looked to have been born a king, his bearing as kingly as could be, utterly at ease and commanding at once. Daemon envied him that. Whether it was a truth or artifice, he envied it. He could not bring himself to lower his guard even a fraction, his hand never leaving Dark Sister’s hilt, not even as Gael’s arm snaked around his, not even during the prayers.
His eyes roamed the sept, looking for threats, looking for heads not bowed when his father took a knee in front of the High Septon as he prayed over him. The crown glittered in the bright multicolored light streaming through the tall painted windows as it descended to rest on his father’s head and as he rose, a thunderous roar of jubilation drowned out the High Septon’s voice.
There were no threats to be seen in the sept.
There were no threats to be seen in the Hightower either as they were greeted and feasted and waited on, and Daemon did not trust it for even a moment.
The view from the top of the Hightower was a telling one, he thought.
The world was at his feet, stars seemingly all around him, shining in the dark sky above him, reflected in the dark sea below, the distant flickering lights of Oldtown lending to the illusion. Was it any wonder the Hightowers thought so highly of themselves, living life so far above the rest?
This was a sight meant for dragonriders only.
“You are brooding,” his wife informed him with a sigh as she wrapped herself around his back, joining him on the balcony, leaving the lights and the bustle of the feast behind.
“I am not,” he retorted on instinct.
“Oh? What is it you are doing if not brooding?”
“Planning death and destruction,” he replied evenly, not even half-joking.
Gael froze against his back. “What?”
“Hightower would be such a captivating sight aflame, would it not?”
“What?!” his lovely wife screeched, and he winced at the jarring sound.
He pushed away from the parapet, turning his back on the starry night with a sigh, switching back to the Common, “Worry not. 'Tis merely an idle thought.”
“An idle thought,” Gael repeated after him, her voice colored by disbelief.
The corners of Daemon’s lips twitched. “Well, certainly a fanciful thought.”
She let out an inelegant snort. “Daemon, are you mad?”
He hummed agreeably, “Quite possibly.”
Gael hid her face in her hands and shook her head. “This is not what I thought to speak to you of!”
Daemon perked up, sensing an opportunity. “Oh? Did you wish to speak, dear wife? Are you quite certain of that? You need not pretend with me.”
She threw her arms up in the air. “Oh, I am quite certain of that now.”
He blinked at her, at a loss. “Truly?”
Gael rolled her eyes and took his former place, leaning against the parapet, her face turned up to the stars. “I wished to speak of names.”
“Names,” Daemon repeated blankly. They had not spoken of any names yet. It was too soon. Far, far too soon. “Now?”
“Yes, names and yes, now.”
“Here?”
“I thought it fitting. Here is where father’s peace truly started.”
“You cannot mean-” After Gaemon and Aenar, he had thought himself safe.
Gael turned sharply, and her glare brooked no argument, the stubborn tilt of her chin giving little hope of one either. “I do.”
Daemon bit his lip, considering his options. It could be a girl. He hoped for a girl. “Only if it is a boy,” he allowed eventually.
Gael’s smile was blinding in its intensity as she agreed, enthusiastically, “Only if it’s a boy.”
He let her cover his face with sloppy kisses and waited for resentment to well up.
And waited and waited.
Daemon was not a man to forgive easily. Never had been. Now, it had seemingly happened without him even knowing.
He let out a long, long sigh and trapped his now-puzzled wife in a tight embrace, closing his eyes, breathing her in.
It was not difficult to forgive, when there was much to be grateful for.