Chapter Text
“You’re back!”
Daenys bit back a curse or a whimper or both when Egg’s knees landed square against the small of her back, rousing her from a surprisingly peaceful sleep. Even with the weight of her youngest brother waking her, Daenys couldn't make sense of where she was through the pounding between her temples. Slowly, she peeled her eyes open, fighting back a groan.
The last thing she remembered, she and a pretty inn keeper’s daughter had been making use of a free room. Truly, she wasn’t certain how she’d made her way into her own bed between now and then. She wasn’t even certain that she knew when ‘then’ was.
“How did you know?” Daenys forced herself to ask, her face smothered in her pillow.
“I’ve been checking in the mornings,” Egg said.
Guilt was strong enough to pierce through the insistence of her aching head and sore muscles, and Daenys turned toward Aegon, lifting her comforter and letting him slide beneath with her. She did poorly by her younger siblings and she knew it, no matter how often she tried to do otherwise.
Mother’s death had left them and Father alike floundering, and Daenys had only ever been a poor substitute for Dyanna. The image of Egg checking her rooms only to find them empty for gods knew how many days in a row made her stomach churn.
“Does Father know?” she asked, turning onto her back.
Egg settled against her side, his head resting on her shoulder. Beneath the blanket, she could see his foot tapping restlessly. Daenys wasn’t sure he’d stopped moving since the day he was born, little beast that he was.
He shook his head, and his soft hair brushed against her jaw. “Just me.”
Daenys let out a sigh, wrapping her arm around Egg’s shoulders. That was a relief, at least. Father was always angrier when his knights had to drag her back to Summerhall. A sliver of light made its way through her closed curtains, and when she shifted enough that it met her eyes, Daenys had to fight the urge to whimper again. “Keep it that way?”
Egg looked up at her, his purple eyes sparkling. They were just a shade darker than hers, as wide and shining and curious as their mother’s blue eyes had been. “Four gold dragons for my silence.”
If her head didn’t hurt so much, Daenys might have laughed. “One.”
“Two.”
“One and a handful of stags,” she muttered, pinching Egg’s side and regretting it when he wriggled against her. “If you try for more I’ll tell Rhae you stole Shiera’s gifts from her rooms.”
Daenys had told Rhae some months ago that Father had found and confiscated them, rather than ratting Egg out. Part of her choice to blame Father had been to avoid fighting between the youngest siblings. A bigger part had been because she expected a moment exactly like this one to occur and had known that she would need the leverage.
Egg huffed but nodded. “Fine. But Father will figure out you’re back eventually.”
“Go get your coins out of my drawer, Egg.” If she was lucky, Father wouldn’t know she was back until she’d slept well into the afternoon or later.
He climbed out of bed, making his way over to her bureau and pulling open the top drawer. They did this dance often enough that she kept coins there just to bribe him with. When she was out, she lost her coin purse too often to rely on what she carried with her when she went drinking.
A brief glance around her room made her realize that she’d left her dress and shoes in a heap next to her bed. Beneath the red fabric, she could see a strip of her leather belt, but she had no clue if she’d made it home with her coin purse attached.
She let her head fall back against her pillows, running her tongue over her teeth. Her entire mouth felt stuffed full of wool, but she’d at least wait for Egg to leave before she found a flask or flagon of wine she had stashed somewhere in her room.
Gods, her head ached. She wished that Egg hadn’t woken her, as her sleep had been blessedly blank. No dreams of death and dragons and smoke choking her, haunting her with things that made her feel half mad with grief.
Simply half mad.
All mad, very often.
“What will you do with your winnings?” Daenys asked, pulling her blanket back up over her shoulder.
“I’ve yet to decide.”
“You should leave and make a choice, then.”
From across the room, Daenys heard Egg snort, but she’d closed her eyes already. “And you should take a bath. You smell like you spent the night in a ditch.”
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Father was hoarding the wine.
Hoarding might not have been the right word, really, when he wasn’t actually drinking, so much as he was guarding it from Daenys. Semantics didn’t much worry her when she wanted little more than to drown her thoughts, however.
After Egg had left her room that morning, Daenys had slept the rest of the day, only waking when the sun was beginning to creep below the horizon. But nearly as soon as she’d dragged herself from bed and called for a bath, images had started flickering behind her eyes again, and whatever peace she’d found from her latest escape had vanished with their arrival.
They hadn’t begun to take shape yet, beyond flashes of fire and what seemed like the swing of a weapon, but that didn’t mean that things wouldn’t worsen. And with Father keeping the wine carefully from her, she feared that the visions would become clear enough to make her sick before she crawled back into bed.
“Where’d you spend the week?” came a low voice from her side.
Daenys took a steadying breath, debating the merits of just ignoring Aerion. He wouldn’t do anything overly untoward with Father in the room, but he was still capable of annoying her like no one else. She rolled her neck, wincing when something popped loudly.
“Gods only know, little brother,” she muttered, knowing he disliked when she called him that.
He’d seen sixteen namedays, he reminded her angrily whenever she said it. He was nearly a man. Was a man. Blood of the dragon and a knight in his own right, he would snap. ‘Little brother’ was demeaning, he claimed. But Daenys couldn’t quite let go of the desire to rile him up. Every time he pushed back against the sobriquet, she would fix a fake smile on her face and tell Aerion that it was not her fault that the gods had seen fit to have her born first. He would always be little to her.
It likely didn't help that he was a fair bit shorter than every other man in their family save Aelor, who had only just had his twelfth name day. Even Matarys quite towered over him, and they'd been born quite close together.
Aerion grunted, and she almost regretted saying anything, knowing that he’d no doubt return the favor with something cutting, as he was so adept at. Daenys still couldn’t think of Valarr’s wedding without cringing, Aerion’s words ringing against the inside of her skull until a flush burned across her face and down her chest.
But before Aerion could speak, Rhae’s voice cut across the table, saving Daenys from his retort.
"Daenys, come braid my hair after dinner," Rhae said. Requested. Demanded, in all actuality, because that was all she ever did. She was by far the most spoiled of them all, and Daenys wasn't certain if it was because she was the youngest or she'd just been born with a great deal of audacity.
Daenys ran a finger over the rim of her empty cup, ignoring the man's face she could see taking shape in her mind. She didn't know him, and she'd like not to. "You've maids to braid your hair."
"They do it too tight!" Rhae whined, which Daenys knew wasn't true. "And I want you to keep reading to me."
Something hot and uncomfortable started burrowing beneath Daenys' skin. Guilt, disappointment in herself, a great wish that Mother had not died when Rhae was only a baby and left Daenys as some sort of poor stand-in. Still, she didn't know if she was able of another few hours sober. Not with the way the things were flickering across her vision too quickly for her to make out.
"Rhae…," she started.
"No! You've been gone for a week, just come!"
Daenys flinched when Rhae's reminder of her absence sent irritation flashing across Father's face. At her side, Daella did a poor job of stifling a giggle, and Daenys kicked at her under the table.
Brats. Every single one of them is a fucking brat.
"Fine! Yes. Yes, I'll come." It was the least she could do, she supposed. She could last another hour without drinking herself into oblivion. And this would help her avoid Father, she hoped. If she was careful, which she thought that she could be. If she was lucky, which she didn't think she was.
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Braiding Rhae's hair had turned into braiding Daella's. And then into needling at Egg until he agreed to let Daenys braid his hair as well. Which had eventually turned into him and the younger girls sprawled across Daenys in Rhae's bed as she read a story of dragons that Rhae had no doubt stolen from Father's collection.
They were all asleep on her now, Daella laying on her stomach across Daenys' legs while Egg and Rhae used either of her shoulders as pillows. But as much as she'd like to, Daenys couldn't let herself fall asleep. If she did so sober, she'd no doubt wake her siblings with a shriek or a cry late in the night, and the thought made her stomach drop to her feet.
The entirety of the family knew that she was half mad, but she'd shield them from the worst of that if she could help it. A voice in the back of her head whispered that she wasn't mad, though. Reminded her in angry, sharp tones that she knew damned good and well that what she saw was liable to come true, no matter how little it made sense as she dreamed.
Her entire body stiffened at the thought, suddenly craving a drink so badly that her mouth watered. Daenys pressed her eyes closed for a moment, carefully shifting Egg and Rhae off of her shoulders, trying hard not to wake them as she settled their heads against the pillows. She had no desire for them to wake up to find her face pale and her eyes shining. And she had even less desire for Daella to wake as she pulled her legs from under her.
Daella was at the age where she thought she knew best in all the world. If she woke and saw Daenys close to tears, she'd insist she should be told why, certain that she could fix it if she only pushed hard enough. Daenys remembered herself at thirteen well enough—missed herself even.
She'd been very like Daella was now, confident and unruly and demanding. But that had also been when Mother had died, and when her dreams had first begun to worsen, taking a shape that was far more terrifying and far more unsettling than they had been throughout her childhood.
She'd seen a star falling and burning out. Over and over for weeks, she'd seen it. A silver streak in a dark sky, landing against the earth, its light dying so quickly that everything that had once been bright and lovely was plunged into a deep black. Daenys had never been certain what exactly the dream had meant, but she had been certain that it made her cold all over.
Her dreams had felt real before then, but never so foreboding. The flames in her mind had burned hot and the dragons she had seen were solid, living things. The faces, known to her or not, were as real to her as they were when she was awake. Nothing she had seen had ever made her feel as though a dark cloud was coming like the star had, however. And she had felt her mind begin to slip each time she was forced to watch the the silver streak in the sky fall.
She'd stopped sleeping to the best of her ability to avoid what she was seeing. Had told Mother and Father both, though neither of them had seemed to understand what she was telling them or why it had made her so miserable.
A breath shuddered out of Daenys as she pushed from the bed and laid the covers over her siblings. In the moonlight that streamed through Rhae's open window, her and Egg's hair shone like silver. Daella's was the same pale brown as Daenys'. The same pale brown as Mother's had been.
Daenys' throat closed. The dreams of stars and their light dying had finally made sense when Mother fell ill. The maesters hadn't been certain what was wrong, and nothing they'd done had stopped the rapid deterioration of her health. One day, Mother had been chasing Daenys and her siblings around Summerhall with an infant Rhae on her back, and the next, they'd all been barred from her chambers, for fear that seeing her so pallid would scare the little ones.
One day, Daenys had crept into Mother's rooms when Father had stepped away, exhausted from weeks of avoiding sleep and trying to console her brothers and sisters. Mother's face had been alarmingly pale and thin, so unlike her that Daenys understood all at once what her dreams had meant.
In that moment, Daenys had wished very badly that her dreams had made sense to her. Because she might have done something, if she'd known what was to come. She might have been able to keep Mother well, though she didn't know how, even years later. She might have stopped the downward spiral she'd found herself in, and the rot that had so quickly taken over all of her thoughts.
With one final look at her siblings huddled together in bed, Daenys rushed from Rhae's room, desperate to go to her own chambers and break into the stash of wine she kept in her bureau. Knowing that her dreams were wont to come true hadn't made their meanings any clearer in the years since Mother's death. If anything, it had only made Daenys angrier. Stupider. A bigger disappointment than she'd ever thought she would be.
She made her way through the dark, quiet halls and shoved her way into her room, her thoughts preoccupied enough that she didn't notice Father sitting in a chair by the fireplace until he cleared his throat.
She spun around as she reached her bureau, her heart stalling in her chest, a breath hissing out from between her teeth. "Fuck!"
"Speaking like that is unbecoming," Father chastised, pushing to his feet.
Daenys rubbed a hand over her chest, glaring at him. Why the fuck did he think hiding in the dark was the best course of action? "You're the one I learned it from."
He tilted his head back, and she imagined that—not for the first time—he resented that Aemon had been sent to Oldtown to become a maester. Father may have less need of an heir than any of his brothers as the youngest son, but that didn't mean he wouldn't miss the steady company of his quietest child. Daella was likely second best, but even she was prone to moments of shouting and anger if one of the others annoyed her enough.
"Where have you been, Daenys?" Father asked.
With a wistful look at her bureau, Daenys slowly walked toward her bed, settling on the edge. If he realized she was storing wine in her room, Father would no doubt have the maids turn things upside down until he found every last flagon. She picked at a loose thread on her skirt and shrugged.
"Exploring," she said, injecting false levity into her voice. "As I'm known to do."
Father's jaw clenched, his expression going tight and angry. The Anvil, Daenys thought to herself, reminded of the title as his purple eyes flashed. His temper was as apparent now as it had ever been, and very little drew it out of him like his children.
"You cannot keep disappearing for days on end."
Another shrug from Daenys. "I came home."
"And when you do not?" He stepped in front of her, looking down. In the dim light, the shadows made the pox marks on his cheeks seem deeper, only half hidden by his pale, angular beard.
"Then I do not."
They stared at each other in silence for a moment, and Daenys regretted letting the words pass her lips. Father had more than enough to worry him for the rest of his life, there was no reason for her to add to that with careless remarks. And however pathetic she may be, she'd rather others didn't understand the extent of how hopeless her dreams made her. That was a secret best hidden behind wine and rude words she never quite meant.
"Daenys."
"Father." She bit the inside of her cheek when his glare deepened, his brows nothing more than angry slashes on his face.
After a long, tense moment, Father sighed, his lip curled in what looked very much like disgust. "No more."
"I've no responsibilities here," she argued. Not entirely true. "Who's to care if I'm not at Summerhall?"
"It is not safe."
"And yet I return home in one piece each time I leave."
"You are a princess." She rolled her eyes at his words, only making his voice come angrier. "What the fuck am I to do with you?"
"Speaking like that is unbecoming," Daenys said, biting back a smile when Father's eyes bulged at having his words thrown back at him.
"No more, Daenys," he repeated. "No more."
She blinked up at him, her slight amusement slipping away at the anger and upset on his face. Promises would be broken if she made them, so she only sat still on the edge of her bed, trailing her eyes over Father's features. Finally, his shoulders slumped, and he turned, leaving the room without another word.
Daenys waited until the door clicked closed behind Father before she stood and made her way back to her bureau and dug out the wine she had hidden behind her riding habits and coats. She carried it back to her bed, throwing herself down on top of the covers and pulling the stopper from the bottle with a quiet pop.
The spiced wine hit her tongue, the taste making her relax almost instantly. Drinking herself to sleep usually ensured that her rest was quiet, even if it made her rather miserable when she woke. Father's voice echoed through her mind. He'd told her 'no more' a great many times, but he'd never done anything, no matter how she continued to disappear for days and weeks on end.
Daenys took another long drag of wine, letting her eyes fall closed. Father would do nothing if she disappeared again. And even if he did, what would he think to do? There was nowhere he could force her that she'd not find her way into some sort of trouble.
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Moment by moment, Valarr was considering the merits of bashing his head against the wooden table in front of him. That or the ship master's wrinkled face, which was steadily prattling at Valarr, as if he thought speaking in mass amounts made his words more believable.
"Harys," Valarr said, his hands balling into fists beneath the table as he cut off Harys' speech about trade routes and rising costs and unfriendly seas. "You've sailed through Dragonstone a great many times."
"Yes, my prince."
Annoyance prickled over Valarr's spine. He'd met Harys gods knew how many times over the past years, and never once had he tried to stiff Father in the same way he was now trying to do to Valarr. Father had left Valarr as steward of Dragonstone while he was acting as Grandfather's Hand in King's Landing, and he was determined to have the island in perfect order when Father asked after him.
Perhaps if he did, Father would finally trust him. Because he had reached a point where the coddling was beginning to suffocate and sting. Valarr knew perfectly well that he was capable. He was learned and he was steady and he was by all accounts poised to take the throne after his father. But he was not given opportunity to prove any of that.
And now, sitting across from a man who thought him young and foolish enough to swindle made anger flush across his skin. A shame that he was far better at holding his temper than any of his cousins were. Valarr could imagine well how satisfying it might be to let loose a shout or to let a fist fly awry, even knowing it did him no good. Instead, he cleared his throat and straightened in his seat.
"Then you know as well as I what dues are to be paid for docking here," Valarr said. Harys refusing to give the knights on the docks the proper coinage was the only reason that Valarr was meeting with the man at all. While Valarr knew he was capable of handling this, it was just annoyance he'd rather not have to deal with.
"Your father—," Harys started.
"Is not here," Valarr said, not interested in whatever stories Harys may have of Baelor, true or untrue.
The entire island ran on profits from farming, but things would fall apart without the dues from the trade routes that ran through their shores. One grizzled sailor wasn't exempt, no matter how long he'd sailed here.
Harys' mouth pursed, and after another silent moment of staring at Valarr, he nodded. "Very well."
Valarr's shoulders relaxed and he signaled at the knight in the corner of the room. Harys would be taken back to the docks and be made to pay before he and his crew could leave, and Valarr would hopefully not be forced to see another person who thought him so easily manipulated simply because he was still young.
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A gray streak ran out of the dining room when the guard opened the door for Valarr, pausing just long enough to hiss up at him. Valarr's lip curled looking down at Kiera's cat Uēpa. He was an ugly old thing, his face and ears tattered and littered in scars from years of fighting.
And quite frankly, Valarr fucking hated him.
Uēpa disappeared up the hall and Valarr sighed, hoping he didn't find his way to the bedchamber Kiera and Valarr shared. There were some nights that he refused to let Valarr into his own bed, hissing and spitting until Kiera picked him up and threw him into the hall. It was little consolation that Uēpa treated everyone save Kiera the same. Valarr couldn't quite get past the indignity of finding himself in competition for his wife's attention with a cat.
He's not even a handsome animal.
"You've scared him!" Kiera said from her place at the table, peering at him over the back of her chair.
Valarr's brows furrowed. "I did nothing."
"He's an old man, Valarr, you need to be gentle with him."
He knew that Kiera was teasing him, but he had never been overly talented at jesting or being jested with, and his glare only deepened.
"There's no shortage of strays on the island," Valarr said, rounding her seat. "Why couldn't you have decided one of the kittens was to be yours?"
Kiera laughed, not concerned with the fact that Valarr counted Uēpa amongst his enemies. She smiled up at him when he leaned down to drop a kiss against her exposed shoulder, just above the golden cuff she wore on her upper arm. When they were on Dragonstone, she tended to wear Tyroshi dress, flowing silk skirts and matching blouses with no sleeves or gauzy dresses that were a far cry from court fashions.
She wore them less often when they were in King's Landing, where there were more nobles to send her glares when they thought she wasn't paying attention. There had been a great number of men and women alike that had tried to make thinly veiled remarks to Valarr about Kiera. Their comments were always subtle enough for them to deny the disrespect—Kiera was still a prince's wife and the daughter of the Archon, strange fashions notwithstanding—, but Valarr was not foolish enough to not see the distaste on their faces.
But from the moment that Valarr had first seen Kiera adorned in stacks of gold, her hair dyed a shocking pink, and her stomach and arms bare, he'd been enamored with her. Her quick, sweet smile and easy laugh had ensured that he'd forgotten that he had ever once been wary of the match. And even if he had not fallen for her charms with an alarming speed, he did not think that he would disrespect his wife at court so blatantly.
He smiled down at her, pressing another kiss to her shoulder. "He's… willful, Kiera."
That was far less than he wanted to say, but he tried to keep himself from insulting the cat anywhere other than in his own mind, knowing how much she liked it.
She laughed and grabbed Valarr's chin, pulling his mouth to hers for a quick kiss. "Quit complaining."
He sighed and took his seat, trailing his eyes over Kiera. She'd begun feeding the stray cats that loitered around the kitchen doors nearly as soon as she and Valarr had arrived on Dragonstone a year ago, but Uēpa had decided that he was to be hers shortly after the loss of their second son. Valarr had been unable to fight it, no matter how much he hated the cat. Uēpa had been the first thing to make Kiera smile in truth in months.
A frown took over his mouth at the thought of their stillborn sons, both born quiet and too small after hard pregnancies. He and Kiera had only been married for two years, and while he adored her, the time had not been without its hardships. First and foremost, their inability to bear an heir, which often sat unmentioned but glaring between them. Half a year had passed since her second failed pregnancy, and each month when her moon blood came, they pretended they were not both disappointed.
"I've sent Lord Bar Emmon's son away," Valarr said after a moment, pushing aside the grief that tried to wrap around his throat at the reminder of his children.
Kiera's hands stilled for a moment and she glanced up at him through her lashes. She returned to cutting her food, though her movements weren't as relaxed as they'd been before Valarr spoke. "I liked his wife."
Valarr nodded, a weight pressing down on his chest. Kiera wanted a companion of her own terribly and he knew it. "I know."
Her mouth dipped into a frown, and for a terrifying moment, Valarr thought that her eyes would well with tears.
"Kiera—,"
"A shame her husband is a fool," she cut him off, still sawing at her plate. Her voice cracked slightly, making Valarr's chest tighten even more.
"I'd not keep people here who can't respect you," he said quietly.
Not Bar Emmon's son, who had spoken of Kiera as though she must be a witch or a whore for being from Essos. Not any of the women who spoke to Valarr as though they were better choices for him than Kiera. Not anyone else who caused her to frown or cry or shy away when she was perhaps the most open person he'd ever met.
"I'm not angry with you, husband."
She was just lonely, he knew. But he did not know how to fix it.
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