Chapter Text
Rhaenyra is married to Laenor Velaryon in a deserted hall. She’s wearing a blood-soaked gown, and her hair is disheveled, both from the exertion of the dance and the chaos that ensued.
Her new husband’s face is covered in the blood of his lover. She tastes it on her lips when she leans on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
It’s a sad wedding.
Rhaenyra’s father can barely stand upright. Alicent looks absolutely stunning in her green gown, but the distance in her eyes when she meets Rhaenyra’s eyes tells the princess everything she needs to know. Their friendship is at an end.
As for Rhaenyra’s uncle—well, Daemon, has vanished. He’s abandoned her yet again, and that hurts more than this farce of a wedding.
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They don’t consummate their wedding that night.
Laenor cries for his lover.
Rhaenyra comforts him as best as she can. She loves him as her kin and blood, if not as her husband.
She remains awake long after he’s fallen asleep, plagued by her own sorrows. Her heart is heavy in her chest, and each beat is a struggle.
Rhaenyra takes in her surroundings and the husband sleeping next to her. The walls feel like they’re closing in around her, and her breaths turn to sharp pants.
She escapes before stone can crush her. She rushes out on the balcony and inhales deeply. She fills her lungs with the fresh night air and glances at the starry sky.
She envies the stars, envies their beauty and freedom.
Gūrogon nyke naejot Zaldrīzesdōron se mazverdagon nyke aōha ābrazȳrys [Take me to Dragonstone and make me your wife], she told her uncle, brave and daring.
He didn’t.
And now, she cries.
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News of Daemon’s marriage to Laena Velaryon reaches King’s Landing a few months after Rhaenyra’s disastrous wedding.
She tells herself she doesn’t care, tells herself her uncle had to remarry. Laena Velaryon or someone else, it doesn’t matter. He would have always remarried—it does matter, and Rhaenyra cares. She cares a lot.
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Rhaenyra and Laenor consummate their wedding.
There’s no desire between them—Laenor is comely, and she’s beautiful, he pleases her, but she doesn’t please him.
It’s awkward. Their hands are too clumsy, so they don’t really touch.
It’s just a means to an end. It’s just them performing their duty to produce an heir.
But Laenor struggles.
Rhaenyra struggles too.
She tries to think of something else, someone else. She remembers the callouses on Daemon’s hands from holding Dark Sister as they brushed her most sensitive parts, remembers the feel of his demanding lips against hers.
Still, there’s no pleasure in the act. Rhaenyra feels nothing of the triumphant rush she got from her time with Ser Criston.
The whole thing becomes painful, and Rhaenyra cries when she’s alone again.
xxx
They try again. And again. And again.
Rhaenyra’s womb remains desperately empty.
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Rhaenyra feels eyes on her as she walks through the halls of the Red Keep. People whisper about her. She’s been married six moons and has failed to do her duty. She has yet to conceive a child and produce an heir.
They all look at her, nobles and servants alike, and think she doesn’t notice.
They all talk about her and think she doesn’t hear what they’re saying.
She notices. She hears. She knows.
She also knows Alicent is their leader. “You just need to try harder,” she says sweetly, feigning concern.
Her words are coated in venom.
xxx
There’s one man who doesn’t look at Rhaenyra like she’s a failure.
Ser Harwin Strong.
He’s taken over command of the City Watch.
His eyes are dark, his hair long and curly. His features are pleasant enough, his body strong and large—she still remembers how he easily lifted her above his shoulder during her wedding feast.
He couldn’t be more different from Daemon if he tried, and that’s exactly why Rhaenyra likes him.
She also likes the way he looks at her, with fire in his eyes—she still remembers the weight of his gaze after she returned soaked with blood and dragging the body of the boar she slew behind her.
He desired her then, and he desires her still.
It feels good to be desired, Rhaenyra thinks.
She’s a dragon, her father’s heir. Men hate it when women wield more power than them. Not Ser Harwin.
He looks at her, and far from recoiling, he wants to burn with her.
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After a year of fruitless coupling, Rhaenyra and Laenor stop sharing a bed altogether.
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Rhaenyra takes Ser Harwin to bed.
He’s not gentle with her. He doesn’t treat her like she’s some fragile doll.
No, he’s rough and wild, his hands and lips expertly bringing her to new heights of pleasure.
Rhaenyra doesn’t mind his lack of manners and consideration. If anything, they make her like him more. Ser Harwin knows she can take it, he doesn’t hold back, and it feels good to be completely unrestrained, to let the fire burning inside her consume her.
It feels good to feel alive.
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As much as she loves the moments of passion she shares with Ser Harwin, Rhaenyra also enjoys the quieter moments.
The moments after they’re spent, and she’s resting on her stomach, skin shimmering with perspiration, and he draws circles on her back.
Rhaenyra loves talking to Ser Harwin. He is fun, but not cruel, good, but not naïve.
She loves his smiles, so wide and warm they can light up the darkest night.
She loves the sound of his voice and how it resonates inside her chest when he tells a hunting story.
She loves his strength and soft hair.
She loves him.
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Their relationship is a relationship of thieves.
They steal moments, kisses, touches.
They meet in secret, in the middle of the night. During the day, they have to pretend they don’t know each other as intimately as they do.
It’s a relationship of thieves, but there’s genuineness in it.
Care and kindness.
Love.
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When Rhaenyra’s moonblood doesn’t come, she doesn’t think much of it. She hasn’t always been regular, surely, it’ll come later.
A moon passes, and still nothing.
Her breasts start aching. She feels nauseous upon waking.
Something’s wrong.
xxx
The maesters tell her she’s with child. After nearly a year and a half of marriage, Rhaenyra is pregnant.
The only problem is, it’s not her husband’s child.
It’s Ser Harwin’s.
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“I’ll claim the babe as my own,” Laenor reassuringly says.
It does little to reassure Rhaenyra.
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Late at night, Rhaenyra can’t sleep.
She is relieved to finally be pregnant—at long last, the looks and whispers will end—but she can’t say she’s happy either.
She’s not unhappy either. She just doesn’t know how to feel about the whole thing.
Her child. Motherhood.
She doesn’t know if this is what she wants.
She knows she must have children—sons will strengthen your claim to the throne, her father always tells her—but that doesn’t mean she wants them.
She lost her mother when she was young, and she’s only ever seen Alicent struggle with her own motherhood, at times growing frustrated with her children.
What if Rhaenyra is such a mother? What if she doesn’t know how to be good to her children? What if she doesn’t know how to love them?
Her child’s life is already going to be tough enough. Life is hardly ever kind to bastards, especially the bastards of a woman—it’s not fair, were she a man, she could sire as many as she wants and no one would bat an eye.
Her child needs a good mother. A strong mother, one who will love them unconditionally.
Rhaenyra doesn’t know if she’s ready. If she’s even capable of such love.
It terrifies her, and she can’t sleep at night.
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She’s three moons into her pregnancy when she feels cramping in her lower stomach. She dismisses the concern of her servants—it’s nothing, she assures them, something I had at dinner—and goes to bed early.
The following morning, she wakes up in a pool of her own blood.
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Just as easily as the maesters confirmed her pregnancy, they confirm Rhaenyra’s child is gone.
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Rhaenyra has sought refuge in the godswood. It’s quiet there, and she can be alone with her grief.
It’s punishment, she can’t help but think.
She didn’t love her child enough, and so it was taken away from her.
She stares at the face carved in the trunk of the weirwood tree. How cruel the gods can be! To bless her with a new life only to take it away.
“I’m sorry,” she weeps, vowing to be better.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to be a mother before, but now that she knows there won’t be a babe coming out of her womb in a few moons, now that she knows she’ll never hear her baby’s first words nor witness their first steps, she is hurting.
She wanted it all, she just didn’t know it.
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No one knows what to say to her.
Her father knows her grief all too well.
Alicent is no longer her friend.
Laenor tries, but he doesn’t quite understand her.
Ser Harwin is her only comfort. It was his child too, but he remains strong for her.
His hand in hers is the only thing preventing her from spiraling down a dark path.
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Laenor informs Rhaenyra of the birth of their nieces three moons after her miscarriage.
It takes everything in her not to react to the news. Her legs nearly give out under her weight, but she catches herself before she can crumble before her husband.
He wouldn’t understand, much like everything else about her.
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Rhaenyra can’t find her sleep that night.
Daemon is a father.
The words sound strange to her ears.
She’s never known her uncle to be fond of children, her being the only exception.
Now, he has two of them.
What a funny world.
What a funny, cruel world.
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Rhaenyra is pregnant again before the year is over.
She welcomes the news with warmth in her heart, and she instantly loves her babe.
She talks to them, strokes her belly all the time, and plans for the future.
For a few weeks, she’s happy.
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Being pregnant is hard on Rhaenyra.
She’s sick every morning upon waking, and, more often than not, it lasts all through the day. Her cheeks hollow as she loses some weight.
Her breasts grow bigger and turn overly sensitive. She can barely bear the touch of fabric against her nipples.
Her entire body aches, and she feels miserable.
Still, she puts on a brave smile on her lips. She recognizes her blessing for what it is and tightly holds on to it.
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She’s dining with her father when she feels it.
The cramping in her lower stomach.
Rhaenyra tries to appear unaffected, but she’s quickly nearly blind with pain.
She makes her excuses, something warm trickling down her thighs.
She leans on the wall outside her father’s chambers, body bent over by the cramps tearing her belly apart.
More blood drips down her legs, and Rhaenyra knows she’s losing her child.
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This loss hits Rhaenyra differently.
The first time, she cried a lot.
This time, she doesn’t.
It’s like she bled out all her emotions with her child, left them on the stones outside her father’s chambers.
Now, she feels nothing but cold emptiness.
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Rhaenyra has a hard time finding her way back to Ser Harwin.
She feels nothing, wants for nothing—not even the comforts of his arms.
She flies Syrax a lot, instead. She stretches her arms above her head when they’re in the sky, reaching high.
It’s as close as she’s ever going to get to her lost babes.
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People keep staring. People keep talking.
There are rumors about Rhaenyra and her body, and how she didn’t just inherit her beautiful looks from her mother.
She also inherited her cursed womb.
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Ser Harwin is there when she’s ready for him again.
His touch is different, gentler, as though he fears she might break away in his arms.
Rhaenyra revels in his tenderness. It soothes the aches of her heart.
“You’re so good to me,” she tells him in the middle of the night, soothing the furrow of his brows with the pad of her thumb. He isn’t just her lover. He’s also her champion, ever at her side and winning fights in her name. He’s the one person she can trust in this court of snakes, the one person who loves her unconditionally.
She’s so grateful for him.
She tells him so, and he smiles at her words. Then, he kisses her deeply, and no more words are exchanged between them.
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Rhaenyra gets pregnant a third time.
And a fourth.
She loses both babes.
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People keep staring. People keep talking.
Rumors circulate about Rhaenyra and her desert womb, about her and her strong lover.
She ignores them all, keeping her head high as she walks through the judging halls of the Red Keep.
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One thing Rhaenyra promised herself early on is that she wouldn’t share her mother’s fate. She wouldn’t bleed out heirs until it killed her.
She hasn’t come close to death during any of her miscarriages, but she’s still dying. Her death is one of the soul, for each time she bleeds out a child, she bleeds out a part of herself.
Rhaenyra loses her joy and happiness. All the things that used to bring her joy—new rings, beautiful fabrics, good stories—now leave a bitter-sweet taste in her mouth.
She, who used to be so bold and daring, she, who dared leave King’s Landing against her father’s order to meet her uncle’s challenge, becomes weak.
She stops riding her dragon, and there are days where she can’t even get out of bed anymore.
Every time she looks in the mirror, she sees a bigger resemblance with her mother, and so she asks for all the mirrors to be removed from her rooms.
Her fire is dying down, and she feels cold all the time, ice spreading from her heart through her veins.
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Ser Harwin remains loyal to her. He tries to help her as best he can, but he can’t do anything about the hollowness in her chest, the hostility of her womb. He can’t revive her fire.
Rhaenyra herself can’t.
She’s not sure anyone can.
Slowly, she gets used to the cold that has settled over her body, and Ser Harwin remains at her side.
Her broken heart both loves and loathes him for it.
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Rhaenyra starts drinking moon tea after her fourth miscarriage.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she tells Ser Harwin.
Her champion’s smile is understanding as he tightens his grip around her hand.
He can’t do this anymore either.
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It’s when Rhaenyra is at her lowest that her enemies strike.
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For years, Alicent has spread her poison to the court. She was the one who started the rumors about Rhaenyra and her husband. Then, she spread rumors about her and her strong lover. Then, there were more rumors about her desert womb.
Alicent is smart and cunning in ways Rhaenyra never suspected.
She spits her venom until most of the court is drinking it, but around Rhaenyra’s father, she remains sweet and kind and appears the ever-dutiful wife and concerned step-mother.
At first, Rhaenyra believes ignoring the rumors is a good strategy. Acknowledging them is giving them importance.
But with each year that passes, Rhaenyra’s reputation crumbles, and Alicent pushes for Aegon to be named heir—he will inherit the throne after the princess anyway.
Rhaenyra’s father never falters and keeps her as his heir.
That doesn’t put an end to Alicent’s schemings.
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Ser Harwin is banished from King’s Landing for assaulting a Kingsguard—Ser Criston.
He was defending her, Rhaenyra knows, defending her honor against the vilest accusations of the queen’s shadow.
There are tears in both their eyes as they say their farewells.
“I’m sorry,” Ser Harwin says.
Rhaenyra is the one who’s sorry. Her shield stayed at her side, never married, and all for what? Nothing.
Nothing, but pain and losses and insults.
Watching him leave is agony. Watching him leave is relief.
She gets a feeling she’ll never see him again as she watches his retreating back.
Good.
She won’t further ruin his life.
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With Ser Harwin gone, Rhaenyra is left alone to deal with Alicent and her court of vipers.
Her husband is of little help. Laenor has found himself a knight he fancies and spends his time drinking, fighting and fucking.
Rhaenyra has no friends.
She feels colder with every day that passes.
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One day, Rhaenyra decides she’s had enough and leaves King’s Landing.
She loves her father, truly she does, but she can’t stay in the capital anymore. Too many ghosts haunt the halls of the Red Keep. They’ve more than lived up to their name, and the sight of her home only reminds her of her own blood shed on the cold stones.
So, she leaves and settles on Dragonstone with her husband.
He brings his lover, and she brings her Syrax.
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Rhaenyra finds it easier to breathe on Dragonstone.
The weather is windy, but she doesn’t mind it much. She’s always enjoyed the feel of it in her hair. The air is fresh and smells salty. It doesn’t have any of the stench of King’s Landing’s sewers.
Rhaenyra can finally breathe again on Dragonstone.
So, she fills her lungs with the seaside air, and she breathes.
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It’s easier to get out of bed on Dragonstone, too. There are no ghosts haunting the halls of her ancestors’ castle.
No dead mother, no dead siblings, no dead children.
Even the livings are different, kinder. These people are loyal to Rhaenyra’s family, to her. They don’t stare at her, don’t whisper about her in the hallways.
Rhaenyra is free to get out of her room and be.
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One ghost does haunt the island and its castle.
The ghost of the previous Prince of Dragonstone. Rhaenyra’s uncle. Daemon.
He’s managed the estate with firm efficiency, and left his mark everywhere.
Rhaenyra goes over his records of the keep and traces the shape of his handwriting. It’s the closest she’s been to him in nearly ten years.
She slams the book shut before she can ruin the ink with her tears.
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Rhaenyra starts flying Syrax again. Her golden mount welcomes her back with a mighty roar the first morning and takes her higher than she ever has before.
Syrax has grown during the last ten years and her flight is more confident. She moves as if the sky is her realm. She dives and spirals around the clouds, surfs the currents of the wind with her wings spread wide.
Rhaenyra’s heart is racing in her chest after only a few minutes, not in pain, not in fear, not in shame.
No, her heart races with joy, each beat stronger than the previous one. It’s the same rush she felt all these years ago, when she first rode Syrax at age seven.
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Rhaenyra is free to cry her eyes out amidst the clouds, and so she does.
She cries for her dead children, for the dreams she lost, and the futures that will never be.
It’s a special sort of pain, the pain that comes from the loss of someone that never was. One is haunted by thoughts of a thousand what-ifs. One is haunted by a thousand non-things.
This should have been my child’s name day.
They should be turning two around this time of year.
They should be learning to walk. They should be riding their dragon.
Most would say she hasn’t really lost anything, she didn’t have her children with her long enough, but Rhaenyra still feels like she’s lost everything. It doesn’t matter that she was never pregnant for more than four months. It was still a lifetime of memories and promises.
Her children’s entire lives, however brief.
And so, Rhaenyra cries. Small as her children were, they were still bigger than her duty, bigger than the world.
They were her world.
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Rhaenyra rides Syrax every day after that second cathartic first ride, sometimes leaving early morning and returning late at night.
Things don’t hurt so much when she’s high up in the sky.
Some of the cold around her heart melts at the contact of her dragon’s breath.
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“You look good,” Laenor tells her one morning.
Rhaenyra smiles. She does feel good, the acute pain in her heart now dull.
Her wounds are closing. Healing is impossible, but she can recover.
She can live.
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Two months after Rhaenyra settled on Dragonstone, she receives a raven from Harrenhal.
She collapses after reading it.
Dead. Ser Harwin is dead.
She shakes her head, tears streaming down her chest.
No. No. No.
It can’t be—he can’t be dead. She set him free the last time they saw each other. She freed him from herself. He was supposed to live his life, to get married and taste happiness—no, no no. He can’t be dead.
He can’t be—but she knows, deep in her heart, she knows.
He’s gone.