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mirrorwitches) wrote2023-07-11 04:27 pm
mirrorwitches) wrote2023-07-11 04:27 pm
(hotd) rūs riña, chapter ten: the morning after
RŪS RIÑA, CHAPTER 10: THE MORNING AFTER
🐉masterpost🐉
Daemon fails to sleep much at all in the chambers appointed to the commander at the Gold Cloak’s barracks, and is awoken from a nightmare—his brother laying on him, just laying, not even doing anything, the full weight of him smothering him, pinning Daemon to the mattress of his bed, and he is screaming get off, get off, his twisting and bucking having no effect, but Viserys doesn’t move, and eventually he realizes it’s because his brother is dead, dead and too heavy for him to shift, and he yells and yells but no one comes to get this dead body off him—by a messenger summoning him to the Red Keep.
He is shown into the Small Council chamber by Westerling. Rhaenyra sits in the queen’s seat, alone. The morning sun falling from the window at her back casts her face in shadow for a moment, but she shifts and he sees it is pinched, weary, reflecting his own sleeplessness.
“Please go fetch the Lord Hand from his study, Ser Harrold. That is where he should be at this hour.” He bows and turns to obey, Ser Cole guards the door, and he and his niece are alone. She gestures for him to sit in the usual place to her left.
“I am summoning my Lord Hand to dismiss him from my service and order him back to Oldtown. I figured it would be cruel to deny you the witnessing of such a longed for event.”
“A generous queen indeed,” Daemon says cautiously, seating himself.
“More than you deserve.”
“I know. Rhaenyra—”
“I also would like your support. Alicent couldn’t—she couldn’t face it. And Laenor, Laena—it is not for them to know.”
Daemon has endless questions about the previous night, and the scene he had left Rhaenyra and Alicent to play out. That is not for him to know either. “You have it.”
“I will need it. I am in a mood to take you up on your offer to deliver me his head. But Alicent has asked me to spare her father’s life and so I will need someone to restrain me from giving into the impulse to do otherwise. I realize it is perhaps foolish to rely on your judgment to hold us back from lopping off heads.”
“No doubt. As your father foresaw, having me at your side is dangerous.”
“Why did you do it?” Rhaenyra asks, more puzzled than anything.
Before he can request she specify, the door opens, and into the room is shown not Otto Hightower, but Mysaria.
“Lady Mysaria,” Rhaenyra greets her warmly, another flourish of her hand indicating Mysaria should seat herself opposite Daemon. “Good morrow. Then again,” she says in an aside to Daemon. “I will also have the support of my new mistress of whispers.”
Mysaria and Daemon eye each other. “I am certain she will provide a cooler head when it comes to refraining from chopping off heads.”
She snorts. “I have no objection to the lopping of heads or any other body parts. The full backing of the crown first, my prince. I believe that is what I said.”
“I believe so.”
“He has it. Now. You were right.” She follows this up with a glare. “I’m still angry with you. I went to Mysaria’s last night to—”
Rhaenyra knew how to leave, and had someone to run to, when Otto stripped all from her. Daemon had at least shown her that much, even if it nearly makes his heart give out, the thought of her small form alone in the city. “I’m glad you arrived safely.”
“I have already told her it was foolish, and that I am hers to summon,” Mysaria says.
“Yes, I’ve been thoroughly scolded. I like going out to the city, though,” Rhaenyra pouts. “You’ll have to teach me how to—gut a man, was it?”
Hope leaps up. “Name the time and the place, my queen.”
This is new—a week is not the shortest time he’s been home before he was found irksome enough to send away, but to be banished from the Keep and returned to it in two days is a record.
Rhaenyra smiles and scowls at once. “Good. You owe me. You’ve made a mess for us to sort out. But we will.”
She hurries the last bit out as the door opens once more and Otto Hightower enters. He stops short, clearly taken aback. He does not sit and Rhaenyra does not waste time on pleasantries. “Lord Hightower. I have summoned you here to dismiss you from your service as my Hand.”
Otto startles, but it is quickly muffled, smoothed over with a courtier’s grace. “What possible offense have I given, my queen?”
“You know,” Rhaenyra muses, “I think your confusion is genuine. I think you are truly at a loss. I think you honestly cannot fathom that what you have done is something you would ever be confronted on. I think it might not be anywhere in your mind in this moment.”
“I must insist, Your Grace, that my confusion is genuine. I do not know to what you refer.”
“I suppose it’s fair enough. It’s an offense against gods and men, but while the Faith rose when Aenys’ married Rhaena to his Aegon, I can recall no instance of anyone taking up arms over this. Although it does happen, doesn’t it? It does happen. I suppose, technically, although it is such an unspeakable, it is not a crime against the crown. But it is to me. You have violated your own daughter, under the roof of this Keep.”
“Violated?”
“Violated. Forced yourself upon. Raped.” Rhaenyra strokes the orb that marks her attendance at council lovingly, staring hard at Otto, obviously contemplating the impact it would make on his face if she hurled it. “Must I go on?”
“Your Grace,” Otto says with a small laugh, visibly relaxing. “This is absurd.”
Perhaps he experienced one moment of panic, of shock, that Alicent would ever possess enough courage to tell. Unimaginable. But equally unimaginable to him was being made to account for it, and so it does not penetrate. He goes easy, confident. He underestimates Rhaenyra, always.
Daemon does too for a moment. He looks at Rhaenyra and sees she is shaken by his aplomb, his unruffled exterior.
“Do you deny it?”
“You know my daughter well. Alicent is of a nervous temperament. Ever since her mother died…and she has been under much strain.”
“And what is the source of that strain?”
“I have always demanded much of her, that I can admit.”
“To what end? Ah, yes. To make her Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”
“Alicent has told you much.”
“I’ve known about your attempt to pimp her out to my father for years. I wanted you to know I knew. That I was cleverer than you. Well, I wasn’t really. I wouldn’t have guessed such a thing was possible if Daemon hadn’t suggested it first.” Otto’s gaze flies to Daemon. “You’ll look at me,” Rhaenyra snaps. “But at least once I knew—I couldn't let him have her.”
“You have never known duty,” Otto sneers with the freedom he’s grown accustomed to. “The interference of a spoiled girl. Your father should have remarried for the good of the realm.”
“For the good of Otto Hightower, you mean. And I also knew that my father having a son would mean nothing good for me. Yes. But I do want you to know now that I outwitted you there. You should know Harwin didn't touch her until they’d been married nearly a year. You'd ruined her long ago but her public defilement in a brothel was an illusion and you had no choice but to sell your prize heifer at a loss. But I’m sure you do know. She thought it would stop.”
“Oh, I suspected,” he spat, anger finally stirring him from that unflappable courtesy. “I suspected your uncle’s hand in this. Alicent didn't tell me of your plot, but it was plain enough. I knew she would never—”
“Have a lover? Fall in love? Want anyone who wasn’t you? Of course that’s why you wanted to give her to another old man.”
“Your father—”
“I always knew you knew. You’re sharp, you’d put it together. Even my father did—but he lied to himself. And I let him. I wanted to scream it sometimes, sitting there of an evening. But I was sitting there with him, and he said I would be queen, and he smiled at me, and I would have done anything for it. He died not knowing, not letting himself know. And I was grateful. Do you deny it?”
“You have been led astray by your uncle. You admit it from your own mouth. He put foul suspicions into your mind, put a filthy spin on something quite reasonable. You were no fit daughter, and in his grief, Alicent took your place—”
“Yes. Your brilliant plan. Give my father a biddable daughter and let him realize what delight was to be had. Do you deny it?”
“He did not want your father to remarry, to have a son. Prince Daemon knows how well he can control you and your father knew it and in the last bond of filial duty he placed upon you he bid you heed this wisdom, I see to no avail.”
“He’d prefer I be controlled by you, yes, I know. And you know even yesterday, this might have worked on me. But Lady Mysaria—”
“I’m very curious as to what your uncle’s discarded whore is doing here.”
“—is my new mistress of whispers. And what whispers she hears. For example there is a girl who now works for a lacemaker in the city. But four years ago she worked as a nurse in the Red Keep.”
“This nurse,” Mysaria picks up smoothly, “was in attendance on Queen Aeema during her final labor. All know she died giving birth to a boy that lived but a few hours. According to this woman, when it became clear the labor was going poorly the king was summoned from the tournament being given to honor his child’s birth. He was told by the maester that both mother and child would die. But there was a chance to save the babe. He could be cut from the mother’s living womb. This thing was done. The queen bled to death. Then all who were present were dismissed from the crown’s service by the Hand of the King and paid a good sum to keep their mouths shut.”
Silence. A fly buzzing against the window pane. Daemon’s gorge rises. Oh, Aemma.
“It wasn’t hard to get her to talk,” Rhaenyra says, face tight. “I pay better. And she still has nightmares. There was so much blood. I remember thinking it was odd, when I was finally allowed into my mother’s chamber’s afterwards, that the mattress had to be burnt.”
“It was a tragic business. It was not how your father wished your mother to be remembered. I did what I should for my king, and it is a king’s duty, a man’s duty, to make hard choices. Your mother was never going to survive that labor.”
Rhaenyra stares beyond him. She rolls the orb beneath her finger. “I concur. It is no crime against the crown. You were merely doing what you are meant to do. It isn’t really relevant here. But the one thing she said that hasn’t left my mind: she didn’t know. That’s what she kept saying. The queen didn’t know what was happening to her. He didn’t tell her. She didn’t know, and she was scared.” Her eyes fall on Otto like a hammer; he takes an unconscious step backward. “Do you deny it?”
“Your Grace, this is ridiculous, as your whole short reign has been ridiculous.”
She pushes back her chair and stands. “Do you deny it?”
“He,” a dramatic finger is flung in Daemon’s direction, “has been back a week, and see what he has wrought. Bloodshed in the streets of the capital, the Tyrells and Fossoways both given grave offense, your uncle in your bed, and his whore whispering into your ear. You are young, and a woman, but I fear the serious doubts your father sometimes confessed to me about your ability to rule go far deeper than that.”
“I know it. You think I didn’t know it? He only did it out of guilt for what he did to my mother, out of spite towards Daemon. He thought me unfit. He was planning to marry Lady Laena and get a son on her when he died. No matter how many evenings I sat there. I realize now. Somewhere I always knew it. I will never be a son. None of it fucking matters. I’m asking you did you rape your fucking daughter. Do,” a step forward toward him—“you,” voice rising to a shout—“deny it?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Otto says very softly, calmly. “Emphatically.”
Rhaenyra laughs wildly a few feet away from him. “I wanted to see if you'd admit it. At least he could have the courage to fucking admit it. But it doesn't really matter. I suppose you think that might stop me, denying it. It won't. Because I realized something else. You all make it seem so hard. You’re very good at it, making it seem fucking hard. Making up reasons. Why my father had to cut my mother open, why he had no choice. For why children must suffer in this city. But actually it’s easy. I can shut down those pits. I can dismiss you. I might have still been too much of a coward, but Alicent—her bravery shames me.”
“You don’t know what you’ve gotten into bed with.” The smile writhing to life on Otto’s lips is ugly, worms thrashing. He aims it at Daemon. “It’s obvious that this is an elaborate ploy to get me ousted. The prince and that crony of his married to my daughter put Alicent up to it. Supplied her with the story and told her what to do, and it’s equally obvious why he chose the calumny he did. His licentiousness knows no bounds. It never has. Even as a boy. Your own father, grieving their mother, was not safe from it. So he imagines this obscene fiction to reflect his own seduction—”
Daemon can feel Rhaenyra whirl toward him, although he cannot bring himself to raise his eyes from the table, the truth of it rising. There was something in him. There had always been something in him. It activated something in people, in Viserys. He was a kind king, a kind man. Everyone says so. This beast.
Gods, is that what Otto tells himself? That his frigid, prim little daughter had seduced him?
He almost laughs. Then Rhaenyra says, “But he was six!”
“Beg pardon, Your Grace?” Otto kindly provides another bit of inappropriate comedy to the proceedings, unfailingly correct, even now.
“When my grandmother died, Daemon was six,” she whispers, bewildered, pained.
(So Alicent had not told. Right before leading her from the inn he’d said—if you can avoid it, can you not—)
“Even as a child—”
“There was a portrait,” Rhaenyra pushes on. “In the gallery. Of Daemon and Alyssa. My father told me it was actually painted a little after she died—Daemon was from life, but she was based on a previous portrait. Alysanne commissioned it. I would stare at it for hours. I would wish—I would wish that boy would come to life and step out of the frame. I wanted to be his friend.” Her breath comes fast. “I wanted to play with that boy, because I didn’t have any brothers, and he was my own age, just perfect, and I also wanted my uncle to come home, just as he was, because I always felt so—happy, and safe—oh gods, Daemon, is it true?”
He looks up into her horrified eyes. Is it true that I, born whore, seduced my brother at six? What a prodigy! Was I six? A little older perhaps, it was hard to know the exact date. There were big, dark rents in his memory. And it took time. At first he wiggled and giggled and made too much noise. Slowly, slowly. If you were my sister, you would be my wife someday, and wives give their husbands a special kiss. No, I can’t tell you now. You’re too little. You’re not big enough. Oh, you are? My brother is a big, strong, handsome boy?
Rhaenyra asks. He has never yet failed to answer. His smile is a spasm.
“Yes.”
He couldn’t say what he expects, but Rhaenyra grabs him by the arm and hauls him out of his seat. “Come with me,” she growls. She marches to the door and yanks it wide, and to her Queensguard she barks, “Confine Lord Hightower to his chambers. Show Lady Mysaria to the blue study and have a secretary attend to her—he is to obey her every command.”
Leaving them gawking, she drags Daemon by the hand through the halls to her father’s room.
It is untouched, shadowed, chill. Rhaenyra throws the shutters wide. The light falls on Old Valyria in all its glory. His niece casts wildly about and then hefts an iron candlestick from a sideboard. She staggers a bit under its weight but seized by some frantic energy she raises it up and brings it down right upon the Anogrion. Again, again, again, smashing it to pieces. Some of it. It would take a long time, more energy and strength than even she can call upon in one burst.
Numb, Daemon slides to the floor, the laughter finally erupting from him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Rhaenyra shouts, flinging her improvised weapon away with a crash and going to her knees amidst the falling plaster that dusts her hair and face and shoulders with white, as if she really has been pulled from the rubble of some vanquished city. “He raped you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Where to begin? When exactly would he have told her that her father once snuck into his little brother’s bed at night and—was he not even to have this? This secret, shameful thing, that was never to even be truly secret? Never to be his alone? He could say that he was scared that she too would know, and she too not much care. That he could never have let himself imagine this. He could confess that despite his avowal to Alicent he’d underestimated her like all the rest. I don’t think I could survive that, Alicent had said, more honest. He knew: he could not have survived it. Then the other fear: that he would survive it. That Rhaenyra would know, and the tears would drive tracks through the grime, and that she would never be young again. It's all true. And yet he feels the despair in her cry, the frustration, the betrayal. How could he keep this from her? How could he hold anything back from her?
He hopes they can survive it. The fact of it, and the fact he couldn’t tell her, didn’t want her to know this. Rhaenyra had saved Alicent again, and yet only Alicent could break the spell—the spell of not knowing. Was it love to allow Rhaenyra to persist in it?
"I spared you. You were a child. Oh, Rhaenyra.” But it had been the only love he thought he had to give. He crawls towards her, unable to stand up, and drags her into his lap. She begins to cry as he whispers, "I didn't want you to hate him."
It feels presumptuous to state that wish. How could she ever hate her father on Daemon's behalf? And yet, perhaps he’d not sold her short, not ever, he believed that he couldn’t tell her because somewhere he'd known what she spits next: "I do, I hate him—"
It breaks his heart. It’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to hear.
"I don't. I can't," he admits.
"That’s alright. I'll do it for you," she vows through her heaving wails, almost screams of horror, and it's too much, he can't let her cry for him too, he can't let her bear it all, alone, and finally, finally, that rips it out of him, one brutal, searing sob, as he drops his head to her shoulder, and then another, as her hand comes up to press his head hard against her, and another—
🐉masterpost🐉
Daemon fails to sleep much at all in the chambers appointed to the commander at the Gold Cloak’s barracks, and is awoken from a nightmare—his brother laying on him, just laying, not even doing anything, the full weight of him smothering him, pinning Daemon to the mattress of his bed, and he is screaming get off, get off, his twisting and bucking having no effect, but Viserys doesn’t move, and eventually he realizes it’s because his brother is dead, dead and too heavy for him to shift, and he yells and yells but no one comes to get this dead body off him—by a messenger summoning him to the Red Keep.
He is shown into the Small Council chamber by Westerling. Rhaenyra sits in the queen’s seat, alone. The morning sun falling from the window at her back casts her face in shadow for a moment, but she shifts and he sees it is pinched, weary, reflecting his own sleeplessness.
“Please go fetch the Lord Hand from his study, Ser Harrold. That is where he should be at this hour.” He bows and turns to obey, Ser Cole guards the door, and he and his niece are alone. She gestures for him to sit in the usual place to her left.
“I am summoning my Lord Hand to dismiss him from my service and order him back to Oldtown. I figured it would be cruel to deny you the witnessing of such a longed for event.”
“A generous queen indeed,” Daemon says cautiously, seating himself.
“More than you deserve.”
“I know. Rhaenyra—”
“I also would like your support. Alicent couldn’t—she couldn’t face it. And Laenor, Laena—it is not for them to know.”
Daemon has endless questions about the previous night, and the scene he had left Rhaenyra and Alicent to play out. That is not for him to know either. “You have it.”
“I will need it. I am in a mood to take you up on your offer to deliver me his head. But Alicent has asked me to spare her father’s life and so I will need someone to restrain me from giving into the impulse to do otherwise. I realize it is perhaps foolish to rely on your judgment to hold us back from lopping off heads.”
“No doubt. As your father foresaw, having me at your side is dangerous.”
“Why did you do it?” Rhaenyra asks, more puzzled than anything.
Before he can request she specify, the door opens, and into the room is shown not Otto Hightower, but Mysaria.
“Lady Mysaria,” Rhaenyra greets her warmly, another flourish of her hand indicating Mysaria should seat herself opposite Daemon. “Good morrow. Then again,” she says in an aside to Daemon. “I will also have the support of my new mistress of whispers.”
Mysaria and Daemon eye each other. “I am certain she will provide a cooler head when it comes to refraining from chopping off heads.”
She snorts. “I have no objection to the lopping of heads or any other body parts. The full backing of the crown first, my prince. I believe that is what I said.”
“I believe so.”
“He has it. Now. You were right.” She follows this up with a glare. “I’m still angry with you. I went to Mysaria’s last night to—”
Rhaenyra knew how to leave, and had someone to run to, when Otto stripped all from her. Daemon had at least shown her that much, even if it nearly makes his heart give out, the thought of her small form alone in the city. “I’m glad you arrived safely.”
“I have already told her it was foolish, and that I am hers to summon,” Mysaria says.
“Yes, I’ve been thoroughly scolded. I like going out to the city, though,” Rhaenyra pouts. “You’ll have to teach me how to—gut a man, was it?”
Hope leaps up. “Name the time and the place, my queen.”
This is new—a week is not the shortest time he’s been home before he was found irksome enough to send away, but to be banished from the Keep and returned to it in two days is a record.
Rhaenyra smiles and scowls at once. “Good. You owe me. You’ve made a mess for us to sort out. But we will.”
She hurries the last bit out as the door opens once more and Otto Hightower enters. He stops short, clearly taken aback. He does not sit and Rhaenyra does not waste time on pleasantries. “Lord Hightower. I have summoned you here to dismiss you from your service as my Hand.”
Otto startles, but it is quickly muffled, smoothed over with a courtier’s grace. “What possible offense have I given, my queen?”
“You know,” Rhaenyra muses, “I think your confusion is genuine. I think you are truly at a loss. I think you honestly cannot fathom that what you have done is something you would ever be confronted on. I think it might not be anywhere in your mind in this moment.”
“I must insist, Your Grace, that my confusion is genuine. I do not know to what you refer.”
“I suppose it’s fair enough. It’s an offense against gods and men, but while the Faith rose when Aenys’ married Rhaena to his Aegon, I can recall no instance of anyone taking up arms over this. Although it does happen, doesn’t it? It does happen. I suppose, technically, although it is such an unspeakable, it is not a crime against the crown. But it is to me. You have violated your own daughter, under the roof of this Keep.”
“Violated?”
“Violated. Forced yourself upon. Raped.” Rhaenyra strokes the orb that marks her attendance at council lovingly, staring hard at Otto, obviously contemplating the impact it would make on his face if she hurled it. “Must I go on?”
“Your Grace,” Otto says with a small laugh, visibly relaxing. “This is absurd.”
Perhaps he experienced one moment of panic, of shock, that Alicent would ever possess enough courage to tell. Unimaginable. But equally unimaginable to him was being made to account for it, and so it does not penetrate. He goes easy, confident. He underestimates Rhaenyra, always.
Daemon does too for a moment. He looks at Rhaenyra and sees she is shaken by his aplomb, his unruffled exterior.
“Do you deny it?”
“You know my daughter well. Alicent is of a nervous temperament. Ever since her mother died…and she has been under much strain.”
“And what is the source of that strain?”
“I have always demanded much of her, that I can admit.”
“To what end? Ah, yes. To make her Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”
“Alicent has told you much.”
“I’ve known about your attempt to pimp her out to my father for years. I wanted you to know I knew. That I was cleverer than you. Well, I wasn’t really. I wouldn’t have guessed such a thing was possible if Daemon hadn’t suggested it first.” Otto’s gaze flies to Daemon. “You’ll look at me,” Rhaenyra snaps. “But at least once I knew—I couldn't let him have her.”
“You have never known duty,” Otto sneers with the freedom he’s grown accustomed to. “The interference of a spoiled girl. Your father should have remarried for the good of the realm.”
“For the good of Otto Hightower, you mean. And I also knew that my father having a son would mean nothing good for me. Yes. But I do want you to know now that I outwitted you there. You should know Harwin didn't touch her until they’d been married nearly a year. You'd ruined her long ago but her public defilement in a brothel was an illusion and you had no choice but to sell your prize heifer at a loss. But I’m sure you do know. She thought it would stop.”
“Oh, I suspected,” he spat, anger finally stirring him from that unflappable courtesy. “I suspected your uncle’s hand in this. Alicent didn't tell me of your plot, but it was plain enough. I knew she would never—”
“Have a lover? Fall in love? Want anyone who wasn’t you? Of course that’s why you wanted to give her to another old man.”
“Your father—”
“I always knew you knew. You’re sharp, you’d put it together. Even my father did—but he lied to himself. And I let him. I wanted to scream it sometimes, sitting there of an evening. But I was sitting there with him, and he said I would be queen, and he smiled at me, and I would have done anything for it. He died not knowing, not letting himself know. And I was grateful. Do you deny it?”
“You have been led astray by your uncle. You admit it from your own mouth. He put foul suspicions into your mind, put a filthy spin on something quite reasonable. You were no fit daughter, and in his grief, Alicent took your place—”
“Yes. Your brilliant plan. Give my father a biddable daughter and let him realize what delight was to be had. Do you deny it?”
“He did not want your father to remarry, to have a son. Prince Daemon knows how well he can control you and your father knew it and in the last bond of filial duty he placed upon you he bid you heed this wisdom, I see to no avail.”
“He’d prefer I be controlled by you, yes, I know. And you know even yesterday, this might have worked on me. But Lady Mysaria—”
“I’m very curious as to what your uncle’s discarded whore is doing here.”
“—is my new mistress of whispers. And what whispers she hears. For example there is a girl who now works for a lacemaker in the city. But four years ago she worked as a nurse in the Red Keep.”
“This nurse,” Mysaria picks up smoothly, “was in attendance on Queen Aeema during her final labor. All know she died giving birth to a boy that lived but a few hours. According to this woman, when it became clear the labor was going poorly the king was summoned from the tournament being given to honor his child’s birth. He was told by the maester that both mother and child would die. But there was a chance to save the babe. He could be cut from the mother’s living womb. This thing was done. The queen bled to death. Then all who were present were dismissed from the crown’s service by the Hand of the King and paid a good sum to keep their mouths shut.”
Silence. A fly buzzing against the window pane. Daemon’s gorge rises. Oh, Aemma.
“It wasn’t hard to get her to talk,” Rhaenyra says, face tight. “I pay better. And she still has nightmares. There was so much blood. I remember thinking it was odd, when I was finally allowed into my mother’s chamber’s afterwards, that the mattress had to be burnt.”
“It was a tragic business. It was not how your father wished your mother to be remembered. I did what I should for my king, and it is a king’s duty, a man’s duty, to make hard choices. Your mother was never going to survive that labor.”
Rhaenyra stares beyond him. She rolls the orb beneath her finger. “I concur. It is no crime against the crown. You were merely doing what you are meant to do. It isn’t really relevant here. But the one thing she said that hasn’t left my mind: she didn’t know. That’s what she kept saying. The queen didn’t know what was happening to her. He didn’t tell her. She didn’t know, and she was scared.” Her eyes fall on Otto like a hammer; he takes an unconscious step backward. “Do you deny it?”
“Your Grace, this is ridiculous, as your whole short reign has been ridiculous.”
She pushes back her chair and stands. “Do you deny it?”
“He,” a dramatic finger is flung in Daemon’s direction, “has been back a week, and see what he has wrought. Bloodshed in the streets of the capital, the Tyrells and Fossoways both given grave offense, your uncle in your bed, and his whore whispering into your ear. You are young, and a woman, but I fear the serious doubts your father sometimes confessed to me about your ability to rule go far deeper than that.”
“I know it. You think I didn’t know it? He only did it out of guilt for what he did to my mother, out of spite towards Daemon. He thought me unfit. He was planning to marry Lady Laena and get a son on her when he died. No matter how many evenings I sat there. I realize now. Somewhere I always knew it. I will never be a son. None of it fucking matters. I’m asking you did you rape your fucking daughter. Do,” a step forward toward him—“you,” voice rising to a shout—“deny it?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Otto says very softly, calmly. “Emphatically.”
Rhaenyra laughs wildly a few feet away from him. “I wanted to see if you'd admit it. At least he could have the courage to fucking admit it. But it doesn't really matter. I suppose you think that might stop me, denying it. It won't. Because I realized something else. You all make it seem so hard. You’re very good at it, making it seem fucking hard. Making up reasons. Why my father had to cut my mother open, why he had no choice. For why children must suffer in this city. But actually it’s easy. I can shut down those pits. I can dismiss you. I might have still been too much of a coward, but Alicent—her bravery shames me.”
“You don’t know what you’ve gotten into bed with.” The smile writhing to life on Otto’s lips is ugly, worms thrashing. He aims it at Daemon. “It’s obvious that this is an elaborate ploy to get me ousted. The prince and that crony of his married to my daughter put Alicent up to it. Supplied her with the story and told her what to do, and it’s equally obvious why he chose the calumny he did. His licentiousness knows no bounds. It never has. Even as a boy. Your own father, grieving their mother, was not safe from it. So he imagines this obscene fiction to reflect his own seduction—”
Daemon can feel Rhaenyra whirl toward him, although he cannot bring himself to raise his eyes from the table, the truth of it rising. There was something in him. There had always been something in him. It activated something in people, in Viserys. He was a kind king, a kind man. Everyone says so. This beast.
Gods, is that what Otto tells himself? That his frigid, prim little daughter had seduced him?
He almost laughs. Then Rhaenyra says, “But he was six!”
“Beg pardon, Your Grace?” Otto kindly provides another bit of inappropriate comedy to the proceedings, unfailingly correct, even now.
“When my grandmother died, Daemon was six,” she whispers, bewildered, pained.
(So Alicent had not told. Right before leading her from the inn he’d said—if you can avoid it, can you not—)
“Even as a child—”
“There was a portrait,” Rhaenyra pushes on. “In the gallery. Of Daemon and Alyssa. My father told me it was actually painted a little after she died—Daemon was from life, but she was based on a previous portrait. Alysanne commissioned it. I would stare at it for hours. I would wish—I would wish that boy would come to life and step out of the frame. I wanted to be his friend.” Her breath comes fast. “I wanted to play with that boy, because I didn’t have any brothers, and he was my own age, just perfect, and I also wanted my uncle to come home, just as he was, because I always felt so—happy, and safe—oh gods, Daemon, is it true?”
He looks up into her horrified eyes. Is it true that I, born whore, seduced my brother at six? What a prodigy! Was I six? A little older perhaps, it was hard to know the exact date. There were big, dark rents in his memory. And it took time. At first he wiggled and giggled and made too much noise. Slowly, slowly. If you were my sister, you would be my wife someday, and wives give their husbands a special kiss. No, I can’t tell you now. You’re too little. You’re not big enough. Oh, you are? My brother is a big, strong, handsome boy?
Rhaenyra asks. He has never yet failed to answer. His smile is a spasm.
“Yes.”
He couldn’t say what he expects, but Rhaenyra grabs him by the arm and hauls him out of his seat. “Come with me,” she growls. She marches to the door and yanks it wide, and to her Queensguard she barks, “Confine Lord Hightower to his chambers. Show Lady Mysaria to the blue study and have a secretary attend to her—he is to obey her every command.”
Leaving them gawking, she drags Daemon by the hand through the halls to her father’s room.
It is untouched, shadowed, chill. Rhaenyra throws the shutters wide. The light falls on Old Valyria in all its glory. His niece casts wildly about and then hefts an iron candlestick from a sideboard. She staggers a bit under its weight but seized by some frantic energy she raises it up and brings it down right upon the Anogrion. Again, again, again, smashing it to pieces. Some of it. It would take a long time, more energy and strength than even she can call upon in one burst.
Numb, Daemon slides to the floor, the laughter finally erupting from him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Rhaenyra shouts, flinging her improvised weapon away with a crash and going to her knees amidst the falling plaster that dusts her hair and face and shoulders with white, as if she really has been pulled from the rubble of some vanquished city. “He raped you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Where to begin? When exactly would he have told her that her father once snuck into his little brother’s bed at night and—was he not even to have this? This secret, shameful thing, that was never to even be truly secret? Never to be his alone? He could say that he was scared that she too would know, and she too not much care. That he could never have let himself imagine this. He could confess that despite his avowal to Alicent he’d underestimated her like all the rest. I don’t think I could survive that, Alicent had said, more honest. He knew: he could not have survived it. Then the other fear: that he would survive it. That Rhaenyra would know, and the tears would drive tracks through the grime, and that she would never be young again. It's all true. And yet he feels the despair in her cry, the frustration, the betrayal. How could he keep this from her? How could he hold anything back from her?
He hopes they can survive it. The fact of it, and the fact he couldn’t tell her, didn’t want her to know this. Rhaenyra had saved Alicent again, and yet only Alicent could break the spell—the spell of not knowing. Was it love to allow Rhaenyra to persist in it?
"I spared you. You were a child. Oh, Rhaenyra.” But it had been the only love he thought he had to give. He crawls towards her, unable to stand up, and drags her into his lap. She begins to cry as he whispers, "I didn't want you to hate him."
It feels presumptuous to state that wish. How could she ever hate her father on Daemon's behalf? And yet, perhaps he’d not sold her short, not ever, he believed that he couldn’t tell her because somewhere he'd known what she spits next: "I do, I hate him—"
It breaks his heart. It’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to hear.
"I don't. I can't," he admits.
"That’s alright. I'll do it for you," she vows through her heaving wails, almost screams of horror, and it's too much, he can't let her cry for him too, he can't let her bear it all, alone, and finally, finally, that rips it out of him, one brutal, searing sob, as he drops his head to her shoulder, and then another, as her hand comes up to press his head hard against her, and another—