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Others wanted favors. Others wanted titles. Others wanted land and gold and promises. Others, many others—lords, both young and old, green boys and seasoned commanders alike—wanted marriage. And others—most, driven by the insatiable greed of man—wanted what came with marrying not only a princess, but an heir.
Most, Harwin knew, wanted a throne. But not him.
He wanted her, Rhaenyra, in any way he could have her. Be it exchanging the occasional pleasantry at court or holding her gaze from across a bustling yard until they were forced to go their separate ways; be it watching her run off in the dead of night, shrouded in boy’s clothes, giggling, hand in hand with her uncle, the rogue prince himself, and taking this knowledge, this sordid secret, and locking it away.
It had been what drew him to her from the start: the princess’s free spirit, the charm of her unpredictability. Disappearing into the Kingswood only to return to the hunting camp showered in blood, a dead boar trailing in her wake. The horror she elicited from all those finely dressed lords and ladies; the buzz of murmurs her presence bore; the prickling warmth Harwin felt as his eyes followed her, his own hands sticky with blood, feeling as though the dragon princess’s fleeting glance had set his very soul afire.
And Harwin had smiled at her, while skinning a rabbit; how could he have not? What else could he have done from afar, struck dumb with queer admiration, when words deserted him and all he was left with was something akin to an amusement he hadn’t felt since he was a boy, along with those other, heavier, more familiar sensations: a pulsing, an aching, a throbbing; sensations that came with being a man.
Harwin felt it again, deeper, worse, when he chanced upon the princess in the bowels of King’s Landing, witnessed the crestfallen look in her eyes when she feared he’d put an end to her night of gallivanting through the city.
“Don’t,” she’d said.
From thereon Harwin knew that, whatever Rhaenyra Targaryen demanded of him—his loyalty, his obedience, his affections—it would be done. Because Harwin wanted her: the Realm’s Delight, and his too.
When he learned the desire was mutual, that the princess longed for more than mere glances and pleasantries and dances, he never thought to question it; never thought to convince her otherwise, too prurient and eager to feast on whatever scraps she was generous enough to toss his way. Rhaenyra, in everything she did, delighted him, fed his inner beasts. But seeing her and speaking to her were beasts of a different nature—each balancing on the knife-thin edge of remaining gallant, chivalrous, a cavalier in her presence—and fucking her another entirely, fiercer than dragons; a beast the princess mounted and together dove off the edge, headlong into a sea of bottomless bliss.
The moon had turned thrice since the princess’s wedding to Ser Laenor Velaryon; thrice since Harwin had danced with her at the welcome feast, drunk off the ease and innocence of her smile; thrice since, with knuckles bloodied and bruised, he slung her over his shoulder and stole her away from the throne room, to safety; thrice since, no longer in the company of bloodshed and chaos, Rhaenyra flattened her palms against his chest, the gesture like a wordless thank you, and she kissed him, or he kissed her, and he carried her farther away, into an alcove all but lost in shadow, where he buried his face between her thighs, the princess’s words softening and thinning into gasps as his tongue lapped at her—a sweeter taste than any wine from the arbor—working up a thirst he would never be able to slake; thrice since he escorted the princess nary a moment later, with the scent of her soaked in his beard and the tang of her rich on his tongue, and returned her to the king, to wed the heir to Driftmark that very same night; thrice since he made the small trek to her chambers hours later, at her request (and, Harwin would later learn, with the permission of the future king consort), and bedded the new bride.
Three turns of the moon, stealing moments when they could, where they could; Harwin’s reverence of her never lessening, only blooming. In the canopied sanctuary of Rhaenyra’s bed, no sooner would she squirm and flush with pleasure than Harwin would rut on top of her, and wonder, hazily, before he could so much as pull out his cock from her warm embrace, when he’d have her again.
Harwin had never been known for his patience, but Rhaenyra was the exception, the only. Princesses have duties, heirs have responsibilities; Harwin understood this, and so he waited, had no qualms heeding to her every beck and call, no matter when they’d come. Because he wanted her, in any way he could have her: sleeping at her side, her delicate face pressed against his ribs, until the sky purpled with the threat of dawn; leaving her chambers, but not before pressing a kiss to her still-shut eyes, and giving a polite nod to her husband as he passed through the solar.
From the time he was a young boy, barely old enough to wield a tourney sword, Harwin wondered how his life would come to its inevitable end. Not out of fear, but that of a child’s innate curiosity, a mind prone to wander. By whose blade? By whose arrow? By whose morningstar? And why: to defend himself? To defend his liege lord? His father? His brother, Larys? Such were his thoughts, during bouts, during tourneys, during brawls that broke out from one disagreement or another. Would this be it? Would this be the end? But always, Harwin knew: Not today, not here. And with every victory, big or small, with every day he eluded the Stranger, his confidence grew, in tandem with his strength. Redoubtable, they called him. Breakbones. The strongest knight in the Seven Kingdoms. His end no longer seemed so inevitable.
Until:
Harwin had never much cared for when others commended his strength—men would make passing remarks in the aftermath of a bout, often grudgingly; whores, too, theirs the sort of ingratiating whispers motivated by the promise of silver or gold—but praise dripping off Rhaenyra’s lips—pressing her against the wall, skirts rucked up to her hips; trapping both of her wrists in his hand and pinning them above her head, his jaw clenching each time he thrust; seizing her waist, bouncing her on his lap, the whisper of silver-gold hair against his face—ruled him, governed him. The pulse of her incantations, wispy breaths that burned against the shell of his ear, beneath the harsher sound of his rasps and grunts. Harwin, Harwin, how she made his name sound like a blessing in the common tongue. By all rights he should have felt his strongest in these moments, the most redoubtable; how queer for him, then, to have felt his weakest. To have felt, every time he touched her, from the moment his fingertips brushed the silk-softness of her skin, a heaviness that would overcome his limbs, as if they were no longer supported by muscle and bone but filled only with blood, and that blood boiling. How queer to have known, fully and wildly, that when he died it would be because of her.
Now, whether lying abed, sleepless in those nights without her, or bloodying men in the streets of the city, when his imagination would run its circles concerning his death, every vision included her: a too-swift dagger to the gut defending her honor, a sword opening his throat protecting her from those who would do her harm; living for her, faithfully, until he no longer could. In the grim uncertainty of life, Harwin had the solace of knowing that no matter the nature of his death, by the cut of steel, the crush of fists, or something worse, it would be for Rhaenyra.
The things we love destroy us every time.
Harwin had heard those words, once, as a boy, spoken by a lord who’d visited his father; now he understood what they meant. That even the strongest, most redoubtable of knights in the Seven Kingdoms could meet their end in a girl. It had only been by sheer luck or the Seven’s design that his was the most extraordinary.
Harwin wanted her—princess or queen, every day, every moment, never any less as the years drifted by—and their sons, their three boys. Brown of hair, brown of eye, Velaryon only in name.
Fatherhood: Harwin wanted it, in any way he could have it.