Chapter Text
Compromised
Rhaenyra I
“Daemon could drag a princess into a brothel, take what she offered, and disappear into the night-yet it would be Rhaenyra whose virtue had been compromised.”
Rhaenyra had worn a path into the carpet before she realized she was pacing.
Back and forth she went between the darkened hearth and the foot of her bed, her bare feet making no sound against the thick weave, though every turn seemed to thunder through her chambers all the same. The room felt smaller than it had when she left it, as though the walls had drawn inward during her absence, conspiring with the heavy bed curtains and the carved stone pillars to hold her in place until morning came and brought with it the whispers, the accusations, the cold disappointment in her father’s eyes. The candles had burned low in their sconces, their flames trembling whenever she passed, and the shadows they cast seemed to move with her, stretching across the walls like black hands eager to seize her by the wrists and drag her before the king.
The princess could still smell the city upon herself. Smoke and sweat, sour wine and the stink of close alleys where men relieved themselves against crumbling walls, all of it clung to the rough commoner’s clothes beneath the cloak Daemon had given her.
Beneath those smells lay others she could not name without thinking of the Rogue Prince, and thinking of him made something hot and miserable twist beneath Rhaenyra’s ribs. She could still feel the press of bodies around them in the brothel, the feverish heat of the place, the careless laughter, the wet gleam of naked skin beneath red lanterns. She remembered Daemon’s hands and his mouth on her skin, the wild exhilaration of being looked at not as the Realm’s Delight or the king’s chosen heir.
Being seen as a woman who could want and be wanted in return. Rhaenyra remembered surrendering to that exhilaration because Daemon had made it seem as though freedom might be seized simply by refusing to be ashamed.
And then he had left her.
Rhaenyra pressed both hands against the carved bedpost, raking her fingers along the grooves until the wood bit into her palms. She had followed him through half the city disguised as a boy and trusted her uncle to lead them through streets she had never walked without guards. Then she had even entered a place no maiden of noble birth was meant even to know existed, and when the danger of it had ceased to be a game—when Rhaenyra had trusted him with the most intimate thing she possessed—Daemon had abandoned her among strangers as easily as one might cast aside an empty cup.
Perhaps he had grown afraid. Rhaenyra scoffed at the thought.
Daemon fucking Targaryen, who rode Caraxes into battle and mocked the king before the whole court, frightened by a girl’s desire. No, that could not have been it at all. A more likely answer was that Daemon had never intended to stay.
Perhaps this had been the purpose from the beginning: to ruin her, to stain her name, to punish Viserys by touching that which her father guarded most closely. Rhaenyra did not know which possibility wounded her more—that Daemon had fled because he could not bear what they had done, or that what they had done had never meant anything to him at all.
Fuck. Her throat tightened, and Rhaenyra forced herself to resume pacing before tears could gather. She would not weep for him. She would not stand in her chambers like some discarded tavern girl waiting for her prince to return and explain why she had not been worth remaining for.
Yet beneath her anger, dread spread through the princess with the slow, relentless certainty of frost.
Someone would know. Someone always knew.
The Red Keep had ears in the walls and eyes behind every curtain. Servants whispered while changing linens, guards traded rumors over dice, and Otto Hightower seemed able to pluck secrets out of the air as though the gods themselves bent down to murmur into his ear.
There was also the fact that Daemon had taken no pains to hide their passage through the city. He had pulled off her cap where anyone might see the silver-white hair beneath it, and Rhaenyra had been naive to think Daemon had just been lost in the moment, but what if he had wanted to be seen? It was his Gold Cloaks who patrolled the roads between the Red Keep and the Street of Silk after all—men who had owed their positions to Daemon—what if he wanted word of their romp in the city to spread?
Rhaenyra threw her head back with a barely muffled groan, silver hair pooling over her back in silken tangles. She refused to spend another moment guessing her uncle’s intentions for the night. He’d had his way with her and left, the matter was finished, and Rhaenyra needed to focus her mind on the future.
Otto might already know.
By breakfast, Alicent might know.
By noon, her father would send for her.
Rhaenyra imagined entering the king’s chambers beneath the scrutiny of Otto’s smug gaze, Viserys seated beneath the weight of the crown, his face stricken with that particular sorrow he reserved for only his daughter’s transgressions. He would ask whether the rumors were true and command her to answer him as her king and father. Perhaps Daemon would be summoned as well, smiling that crooked smile of his, accepting exile as though it were no more troublesome than an unexpected rainstorm while Rhaenyra remained behind to bear the ruin of what they had done together.
Otto would see his chance and take it. Of that, she had no doubt. He would speak gravely of honor and the expectations placed upon an heir to the Iron Throne, of the instability that might follow should the realm lose faith in Rhaenyra’s virtue. Otto would never call her a whore, not before her father; he would not be so careless in his schemes. The Hand would merely suggest that a princess who could not govern her own appetites could hardly govern seven kingdoms.
And then, with all the solemn reluctance of a man forced into an unpleasant duty, Otto would mention Aegon. Little Aegon, with his downy silver hair, lilac eyes and conqueror name, would continue to be the bane of Rhaenyra’s existence.
In all fairness, Aegon had done nothing to Rhaenyra. He was simply a toddler who knew neither crown nor conspiracy, yet his very breathing had become an argument against her. Every cry from the nursery declared that Viserys possessed a son now. Every lord who smiled too broadly when speaking of the king’s firstborn boy reminded Rhaenyra that the promise made to her before the lords of the realm had begun to diminish the moment her father’s new queen delivered a living male child.
Otto would say that the gods had provided a remedy for the king’s misjudgment. And perhaps her father would listen. The fear of it made her stomach turn, but anger rose swiftly behind it, hotter than fear and far easier to endure.
Why must she be perfect?
Why must every careless step become a question of succession, every word an omen, every desire a weapon to be placed in another person’s hand? Men slipped through the doors of brothels nightly even while married, laughing loudly enough for the entire city to hear, and no one stripped them of their names for it.
Princes had filled the Street of Silk with bastards, had bedded serving girls, dancers, widows, and the wives of lesser men, and still the histories called them spirited or merely young. A man might spill his seed in half the beds of King’s Landing and be praised for his vigor, while a woman who chose a single lover became soiled beyond repair.
Her own father had remarried within months of her mother’s death because the realm required him to produce sons. The small council had discussed his marriage as though choosing which mare ought to be brought to a stallion. No one had asked whether it was seemly for him to place another woman in Queen Aemma’s chambers before the smoke from her funeral pyre had faded from memory. No one had suggested that his appetite made him unworthy of the throne.
He was the man, and men were permitted their appetites.
Daemon could drag a princess into a brothel, take what she offered, and disappear into the night—yet it would be Rhaenyra whose virtue had been compromised.
It would be Rhaenyra who had tempted him and shamed the crown.
Rhaenyra who must be married at once to whatever lord was willing to overlook the stain.
She saw it all with terrible clarity: Otto arranging the pieces, her father yielding because he feared conflict, Alicent sitting dutifully beside him with another child swelling beneath her ribs. They would wrap Rhaenyra in black and crimson, place jewels upon her throat, and deliver her to a husband chosen to contain the damage.
The most likely option was Ser Laenor Velaryon, who had developed a reputation of swallowing his squires swords and yet his honor remained favorable amongst the nobles of the Capital. Meanwhile men who spent their nights rutting in Flea Bottom would mutter behind jeweled cups about whether Rhaenyra had come to her marriage bed already spoiled.
The word made her flinch.
Spoiled, as though Rhaenyra were milk left too long in the sun. Ruined, as though she were a tower Daemon had put to the torch. Defiled, as though her own desire had been some invading army against which she had failed to defend herself.
Rhaenyra hated the court, with its bright silks and rotting heart. She hated the Iron Throne, that ugly mound of swords which had already taken her mother from her and would now demand that Rhaenyra surrender every part of herself in exchange for the possibility of one day sitting upon it.
Most of all, she hated the frightened creature pacing her chambers, waiting for men to decide what would become of her.
Rhaenyra halted before the narrow window overlooking the sleeping city. Beyond the glass, King’s Landing spread beneath a starless sky, its tiled roofs and crooked streets washed in darkness. Small fires glimmered in the distance. Somewhere below, men drank and coupled without fearing that their kingdom would despise them for it. Somewhere in the maze of alleys, Daemon moved through the night—or slept peacefully, perhaps, having already put his discarded niece from his thoughts.
She pressed her forehead to the cool stone beside the window, hearing Alicent’s voice as clearly as though her former companion stood beside her.
When Rhaenyra and Alicent were younger, before her mother died and before Viserys married Alicent and filled her womb with royal heirs, Rhaenyra had once suggested that they abandon everything and fly away together upon Syrax. Alicent would be the responsible adult of the two while Rhaenyra would provide transportation through her Golden Lady, a perfect pair they would make.
She remembered Alicent smiling at the recklessness of it, though there had been longing in her hazel eyes. We could see the wonders across the Narrow Sea, Rhaenyra had said. We would eat only cake and never answer to septas, fathers, kings, or duty.
They had not gone, and look at what remaining had brought them.
Alicent had become her father’s wife, a girl transformed into a queen at six and ten, before she had even learned what she wanted from her own life. She spent her days carrying children, soothing a husband twice her age, and scratching the skin around her nails until it bled. The court called Alicent fortunate. They draped her in jewels, bowed when she passed, and could not see that the crown upon her auburn head was another sort of chain.
Rhaenyra had stayed as well, though the chains had merely taken longer to close around her.
“No.”
The princess reflected in the darkened window looked strange to her: pale hair tangled around her shoulders, lips bruised, eyes wide and violet in the faint light. Rhaenyra did not look like the Realm’s Delight, nor did she look like a suitable heir. She looked like a girl cornered by a future everyone else had designed.
But why must she follow the path chosen for her?
The decision felt like madness at first, yet once it existed, it seemed not mad at all. It seemed easy. The Red Keep had spent years teaching her that every path led back to obedience, but there was one path they could not command her to walk—one of Rhaenyra’s own making.
She would leave. Tonight, before dawn. Before the whispers even began.
Her heart began to pound as Rhaenyra turned from the window and crossed to the chest at the foot of her bed. She threw open the lid and pushed aside folded gowns, silk stockings, embroidered sleeves, and a mantle clasped with tiny pearls. None of it would serve her. A princess could not vanish while dressed like a princess.
She returned to the rough clothes Daemon had given her, the brown tunic and worn breeches that had allowed her to pass through the city almost unnoticed. Rhaenyra decided she would keep them. The thought of anything belonging to the asshole touching her skin filled her with fresh anger, but anger was not reason enough to discard something useful.
Let Daemon give her one gift worth keeping.
From beneath the gowns Rhaenyra pulled her plainest travelling bag, a sturdy brown leather sack used during royal progresses, meant more for usefulness than appearance. Into it she placed what coin she could find, though she quickly realized it would not be much. Rhaenyra had recently used most of her spare gold from buying a beautiful carved plate for Syrax and had been patiently waiting for her allowance to refill her coffers by the end of the week. Shit.
A single small purse contained a handful of silver stags—a paltry amount for a princess, but it would have to do. Perhaps she could sell some of her more conspicuous trinkets for more coin if necessary. Rhaenyra emptied the small coffer where gifts from visiting lords had accumulated over the years and took the pieces easiest to sell without announcing her identity: a gold chain, two rings without Targaryen marks, a pair of ruby earrings and a bracelet set with polished jet.
For a moment the princess stood before her table of treasures, uncertain what else a person required when leaving the only home she had ever known.
She took the small ivory dragon her mother had given her when she was a child. The carving was worn smooth along the wings from years spent beneath Rhaenyra’s fingers, and one horn had broken during a fall from her bed when she was six. She wrapped it in a linen handkerchief and placed it deep within the bag. Beside it went one of Aemma’s necklaces, a simple chain bearing a pale blue stone, worth less than many of Rhaenyra’s jewels yet more than all of them together.
Rhaenyra took a comb, a waterskin, two shifts, a small knife meant for cutting fruit, and a thick pair of riding gloves. After a moment’s thought, she added a loaf of bread left untouched from her evening meal and a wedge of hard cheese. The bag grew heavy, though not unbearably so.
What would happen when they found her chambers empty?
Her father would rage and send men across the city, close the gates and search every ship in the harbor. When he realized his daughter was gone beyond recovery, perhaps the rage would become grief. The thought gave Rhaenyra pause, but only for the span of a breath.
Viserys had loved her mother and cut her open for the possibility of a son. He loved Rhaenyra and would still sacrifice her upon the altar of duty if Otto placed the knife in his hand.
Love had never prevented kings from destroying the women closest to them, and Rhaenyra would be a fool to think her father was any different.
Rhaenyra pulled the bag over one shoulder and crossed to the wall where the hidden passage lay concealed behind carved stone. Her fingers quickly found the mechanism Daemon had shown her earlier that night. The stone shifted with a low scrape, revealing a narrow black opening and steps descending into the bowels of the castle.
Cold air breathed against her angular face as Rhaenyra lifted one foot over the threshold before stopping. The passage seemed darker than before, the silence within it vast and watchful. Beyond the tunnels waited the sleeping city, and beyond the city waited roads she did not know, villages where her name might earn her capture, forests filled with wolves, inns filled with men who would see a lone girl and think her easy prey.
Rhaenyra had a dragon, yes, but Syrax could not fit into taverns or follow her through crowded markets. Rhaenyra could ride and speak High Valyrian and name every great house from the Wall to the Red Mountains, yet she did not know how to build a fire in the rain. The spoiled princess had never hunted her own supper or slept without guards nearby.
She looked down at the small knife in her hand, and its jeweled handle suddenly seemed ridiculous.
The court had taught her dancing, histories, courtesies, music, and enough scripture to please the septas. But her instructors had not thought to teach Rhaenyra how to defend her own body. Princes were given swords while princesses were given embroidery needles, and then men wondered why women required protection.
She could not leave alone, damnit.
The realization brought with it a new danger, for anyone she asked might betray her, whether from loyalty to the king, fear of punishment, or hope of reward. Rhaenyra considered the few servants who had attended her longest, but dismissed each in turn. They had families within the city and as such, could not vanish without leaving children or parents behind. Nor could any of them realistically stand against armed men should the need arise.
There was only one person she could really ask, and he was standing guard outside her chamber door.
Rhaenyra stepped back from the passage and pushed the stone into place, though she did not fasten it entirely. Her heartbeat quickened once more as she crossed the chamber. She did not know what she would say, exactly. Additionally, Rhaenyra did not know whether he would refuse her, or worse, agree only to deliver her into her father’s hands before she could reach the Dragonpit.
Regardless, she opened the door.
Ser Criston Cole stood at his post beneath the torchlight, one hand resting near the pommel of his sword. His white cloak fell cleanly from his shoulders, bright against the night-dark corridor, and his expression shifted at once when he saw her. Surprise came first, then concern as his dark eyes moved over her tangled hair, common clothes, and the travelling bag slung across her shoulder. “Princess?”
“Come inside,” Rhaenyra commanded.
Ser Criston hesitated only a moment before obeying. He crossed the threshold, and Rhaenyra closed the door behind him. His gaze found the bag again. “Has something happened?”
Many things have happened, Rhaenyra scowled, but she could not bring herself to speak of Daemon—not yet. Naming what had occurred would make it real in a way she could not bear, and Rhaenyra did not want Ser Criston to look at her as ruined, pitied, or foolish.
She wanted him to see only the decision standing before him. “I am leaving.”
His tanned face became very still, unsure if he heard her correctly. “Leaving? To the King’s chambers…?”
“Leaving King’s Landing,” Rhaenyra looked away. “All of it.”
The only sound in the chamber was the faint crackle of dying candles. Ser Criston looked from his princess to the window, then toward the wall concealing the tunnel, and she saw the truth wash over him slowly. This was no princess’s jest. Rhaenyra was entirely serious about running away, and Ser Criston was smart enough to know what she would be asking him next. “When?” he asked at last.
“Now.”
His jaw tightened. Rhaenyra forced herself to hold his gaze, though uncertainty had begun gnawing at the edges of her resolve. “I need your help, Ser Criston. I need someone who can fight, someone I can trust, to guide me in this endeavor. You swore to protect me.”
“I swore to protect you as a knight of the Kingsguard, Princess, my duty ought be to the King before your protection. ”
“I am asking you to protect the King’s daughter!” Rhaenyra protested, barely keeping her voice above a whisper. “He would want me protected, so you would be performing your duty well.”
“You are asking me to help the king’s heir flee the castle without his knowledge and—forgive me for being presumptuous—but I do not think the King wishes for his daughter to be outside her home. Especially his heir.”
“Your presumptions are forgiven, Ser.” Rhaenyra smiled nervously, ignoring the last part of her sworn shield’s rebuttal.
His eyes closed briefly, and when they opened again, Rhaenyra saw neither anger nor accusation within them, only the terrible weight of calculation. Ser Criston understood the consequences better than she did. Desertion from the Kingsguard was not forgiven. If they were caught, Criston would not be scolded and confined to his chambers the way Rhaenyra might. He could be stripped of his cloak, gelded, sent to the Wall, or put to death. Many would say he had abducted the heir to the Iron Throne. Daemon might accuse him of worse.
Rhaenyra knew then how monstrous the request must sound. “You may refuse,” she relented, though the words nearly lodged in her throat. “I will not command it of you.”
Ser Criston gave a quiet, humorless breath. “You would go without me.”
“I would.”
“Through the city. Alone.”
Rhaenyra lifted her violet gaze to his dark chocolate stare, sweet and bitter all in one. “I have done so once tonight, who says I would not accomplish it again?”
His eyes sharpened at that, catching the truth she had not meant to reveal, but he did not question her. Not yet. “You have a destination? Provisions?”
“I do not yet know where to go, but I would hope my guide might help me in that regard. As for provisions—” She gestured to the bag on her shoulder in response, jiggling it around so the contents inside tinkled lightly in the cool air. “—I have enough to last us until we find work. I think.”
Ser Criston raised a brow at Rhaenyra’s words, not exactly comforted by the princess’s clear naivety when it came to finances. “Does anyone else know?”
“No one.”
Ser Criston turned away from her. The white cloak shifted across his shoulders as he walked several paces toward the hearth, and Rhaenyra thought he meant to summon the guards. She imagined hands seizing her before she reached the tunnel, the bag torn from her shoulder while she was forced to wait in this room until her father came at dawn.
Instead, her sworn shield stared into the dying coals. “My father was steward to Lord Dondarrion, while my mother was Dornish,” he started. “I had no lands. No great name. No songs written about my blood. Before the tourney, I was a man most of the court would not have permitted through its doors.”
Rhaenyra said nothing, allowing Ser Criston to continue.
“You chose me,” he smiled. “Of all the knights who stood before you, all those sons of ancient houses with polished armor and famous fathers, you chose me for your shield. Everything I have now came from that choice.”
“You earned your place.”
“Perhaps.” Ser Criston looked back at her with warmth shining through his Dornish features. “But you were the one who saw it, Princess.”
The conflict in his face had not vanished. It had deepened, carved into the set of his mouth and the tension around his eyes, yet beneath it lay something firm enough that Rhaenyra’s breath caught. “If I go with you,” he sighed, “there can be no easy return. The king may forgive his daughter, but he will not forgive the knight who helped take her from him.”
Rhaenyra pursed her lips, did he think she was stupid? Of course Rhaenyra knew the risks for Ser Criston, it was why she was asking and not commanding the knight to join her. “I know.”
“You do not,” Criston replied, though his voice held no cruelty. “Not truly.”
The answer should have chastened her. Instead, it made her lift her chin. “Then I have much to learn.”
Ser Criston stared for a long while, before something changed in his expression. Perhaps it was the first time he truly saw that Rhaenyra intended to tear herself from the life built around her. She could not tell whether that realization frightened him or persuaded him. Ser Criston’s gaze moved once more to the travelling bag, then to the hidden passage, and finally back to Rhaenyra. “Are we to leave right now?”
Relief surged through Rhaenyra so swiftly that she felt like laughing and sobbing at the same time. The walls no longer seemed to lean inward and the door no longer looked like the entrance to a prison.
A fierce grin broke across Rhaenyra’s face as she beckoned Ser Criston closer. “Drop your white cloak,” she told him. “And follow me.”
Ser Criston reached for the silver clasp at his throat. The cloak slid from his shoulders and fell in a pale heap upon the floor, startlingly small for a thing that had carried the weight of his honor, his vows, and his life. He looked down at it once, then unbuckled his sword belt and fastened it again over his plain white tunic.
Rhaenyra crossed to the hidden door and pressed the mechanism. Stone groaned against stone before darkness opened for them. She took one last look at her chambers: the unmade bed, the dying candles, the gowns spilling from the open chest, and the damning white cloak abandoned upon the floor. By dawn, the room would be filled with guards. By noon, the whole castle would know. By nightfall, ravens might be carrying her name across the Seven Kingdoms.
Let them. Rhaenyra smiled, stepping into the passage as Ser Criston followed, and together they disappeared beneath the Red Keep.
The Flight of the Realm’s Delight
From The Reign of Viserys the Peaceful, as recorded by Maester Ewan Manderly
The precise cause of Princess Rhaenyra’s flight from King’s Landing remains a matter of considerable dispute. The king’s own records name it an act of youthful rebellion, while Grand Maester Mellos attributed the princess’s conduct to “the passions and inconstancy common to maidens of her age.” Neither account explains why Ser Criston Cole, sworn brother of the Kingsguard and the princess’s appointed shield, abandoned his white cloak and vanished alongside her.
The testimony of servants provides little certainty. Rhaenyra was last seen retiring to her chambers near midnight, dressed not in silk or velvet but in the rough garb of a common boy. Her silver hair was disordered, her lips bruised, and she refused the assistance of her handmaids. By dawn, her rooms stood empty.
A travelling chest had been disturbed, though the princess had taken few garments. One purse of coin was missing, along with pieces of jewelry easily sold and a small ivory dragon said to have belonged to the late Queen Aemma Arryn. Most damning of all was the white cloak discovered upon the floor beside the princess’s bed. Ser Criston’s sword was gone.
Ser Otto Hightower immediately declared that the princess had been abducted. Others whispered that Ser Criston had seduced the king’s daughter and carried her away. Yet such claims sit poorly beside what is known of the night. No signs of struggle were found, and one guard claimed to have heard the princess command Ser Criston to enter her chambers shortly before their disappearance.
It is therefore the judgment of this author that Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen departed willingly.
Whether she fled from disgrace, an unwanted marriage, or the burdens of succession cannot be known. The court was quick to lay blame upon Prince Daemon Targaryen, who had reportedly been seen with his niece in the city’s less respectable districts earlier that evening. The Rogue Prince denied all wrongdoing publicly, though his denials convinced few.
King Viserys Targaryen ordered the city gates sealed before sunrise. Ships were searched, roads watched, and ravens dispatched to every lord between the Blackwater and the Kingswood. Yet the princess and her sworn shield had vanished as completely as smoke upon the wind.
Thus began the event later named the Flight of the Realm’s Delight, though singers would give it a more romantic title:
The Princess and the White Knight.