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Never have Caraxes’s screeches echoed so loudly along Daemon’s heart. Never has the wind prickled at his eyes so harshly. Never have his hands or thighs burn so as Deamon grips sword and saddle.
Daemon is afraid. Caraxes is afraid.
A dragon has nothing to fear but its own might. Daemon has never been afraid but for the day Rhaenyra birthed their Visenya. His mother had died on the birthing bed. Laena had died on the birthing bed. Vhagar had burned Laena.
He had vowed to the ashes of the dragon-child Rhaenyra had pulled from her own body that he would never fear again. But he has been afraid for every day he sat under the weirwood tree and watched blood-sap trickle to its base.
When Aemond had come to the God’s Eye, the fear had vanished. He had chained himself to dragon with only strength and certainty. Now Caraxes weaves around Vhagar’s maw, fire, and serrated teeth. He can hear Aemond laugh and Daemon is afraid. Fear sings to him all the way from Harrenhal where he left Rhaenyra’s last letter to him; where the Queen ordered him to kill Nettles.
Daemon fears for his wife.
His wife had cared for the brash and sweet girl she came to call Netty. She taught the girl to mount her spindly dragon and command him in the tongue of their ancestors. In the privacy of his mind, Daemon had wondered if it was what she would have wanted for their Visenya. He has never asked Rhaenyra, and he never would, for their babe's death still burns as bright as that of Lucerys and Jacaerys.
What had Mysaria said to Rhaenyra? What plagued her that he could not vanquish except with the death of a child?
Daemon fears for his niece.
Why did he leave her alone? He should have never left her side. The only brideprice he ever gave his brother in exchange for his firstborn daughter was protection. He had left her alone in a court of vipers for ten years once, and he has done it again.
Daemon must atone.
He will go back to King's Landing and make Rhaenyra see reason. He will exterminate the vermin that invades her house. He will gift her the Seven Kingdoms.
First, he must win so she would allow him the mercy of showing her his face. Eliminating her strongest threat will ensure it. He remembers riding Vaghar with Baelon more than he remembers riding Meleys with Alyssa. After his mother’s death, he rode Vaghar no more. Meleys is gone. Vhagar must follow. For Rhaenyra’s cause, he needs to kill his father's dragon. He needs to kill Leana’s dragon.
He does not wait to be close enough. With closed eyes and a last prayer to his love, Daemon lets go of fear and saddle. He leaps from Carexes's back early, sword in hand, when dragons are not yet touching.
Caraxes’s too, no longer fears. Free of Daemon, Caraxes twists under Vhagar in a way he hadn’t been capable of without dropping his rider, unchained as he was. He bites at gullet first and with powerful wing’s beat, the she-dragon plunges closer to the God’s Eye and Daemon continues to fall. Caraxes dives at her belly and Vaghar lurches in furious agony and puts her rider in Daemon's falling course. He catches Aemond’s gaping expression before he plunges Dark Sister into his eye. His sword remains embedded there far above him, but for him the surface of the lake is fast approaching.
Daemon does not know if he hits the water. He thinks he hears Vhagar’s cries. He thinks he hears Rhaenyra’s.
Daemon dreams of fire.
He dreams of Viserys on his deathbed; in the hollow of his empty socket burns a hell of green fire.
He dreams of his daughter, Visenya, a living toddler, flying at his shoulder with green dragon wings; from her smiling mouth spews flames to match.
He dreams of the old Queen Visenya, in her right hand, she holds Blackfire instead of Dark Sister, and on the left, a green candle.
“Maegor,” she calls, urging him to take her treasures.
“Daemon!” Someone calls. Something warm blows on his face. “Daemon! Wake up!”
Daemon lurches to his knees and Caraxes screeches a startled howl. His dragon scrambles from his curl around him to nuzzle at his chest, flattening him to the ground once more. Caraxes is unharmed, breathing warm breath into him, trilling a dragon song of victory. Behind him the waters in the God's Eye are still, nothing moves within them. Nothing comes soaring from its depths.
Beside him, on the shore, stands a thin, brown dragon, and Daemon heaves a sigh.
“Nettles,” he says to the girl standing over him, her face furrowed with concern, the scar on her nose twisting, “I told you to leave.”
He watches her face shift from concern to sorrow to anger and settle into stubborn defiance. She reminds him of Baela. Daemon does not think about the dream, about baby Visenya and her little green wings.
“No. I will not run.” She crosses her arms. “I saw the kinslayer fall into the lake with his beast. Caraxes scooped you up before you hit the water. Aemond One Eye is dead. We will go to King's Landing.” The child ducks her head, uncharacteristically bashful. “I know not what I did to cause her ire but I will beg the Queen for mercy. I will pledge myself and mine dragon to die for realm and liege. I know she will forgive me.”
A dragon does not beg, he wants to tell her. She is not at fault, Mysaria has twisted Rhaenyra’s mind. But Daemon knows he will beg too.
“Very well,” Daemon answers and stands to mount Caraxes. This time, he chains himself to the saddle.
Nettles goes to Sheepstealer and they take off for the capital. They fly over deserted Harrenhal, and Daemon debates for a moment, if he should stop to retrieve Rhaenyra’s latter, If only so he can press it to his face and imagine that he can smell a whiff of her perfume. But a pain, a blooming living thing, settles beneath his breast and Deamon reconsiders. Nothing can hold a candle to his niece’s warm smell, to the softness of her skin, or the greatness of her frown; even her scorn is delight. Soon, he won’t have to imagine. The closer they get to King’s Landing, the hotter the pain grows, as if Deamon himself could breathe fire.
Daemon and Nettles separate when they spot the greens’ forces and further behind them, Rhaenyra’s. Their soldiers roar in battle cry and though they don’t need a dragon to win against Cole’s forces, Nettles stays.
“Go to the Queen!” she shouts and the pain doesn’t let Daemon argue.
He presses a hand to his drumming heart and lets searing hope engulf him.
King’s Landing is burning.
Towers of smoke coil from atop Rhaenys’ Hill, a wall of the Dragon Pit has crumbled and the doors are wide open. On the streets of Flea Bottom, the smallfolk crawl like insects. Screams reach Daemon as he flies to the Red Keep. He lands in the outeryard and a swat of haggard men come to meet him with swords and forks. Daemon does not allow his heart implosion, but these are not his gold cloaks. These are not his niece's Queensguard.
“Where is the Queen?” He asks.
One of them hurls a stone to Caraxes's eye.
Daemon had been knighted at three and ten and given Dark Sister. Viserys oft said he was arrogant even before that. He has flown Caraxes to war, but he has never pretended to command a dragon.
He blinks. Flames consume the gutter knights, and Deamon can’t ask what is left of them where his niece might be. They fly once again, over the roof of the Great Hall. It takes Caraxes a moment and equal force to melt and crush a hole big enough to slither in wyrm's grace and land inside the throne room.
Some simple man sits his niece’s throne. The throne that had been Viserys’s.
“Where is the Queen?” Daemon asks.
“The bitch queen is dead!”
Deamon turns around once the swords of the Iron Throne have been turned shiny from the fat that has boiled off the man’s flesh, the tip of each blade glows red. He spots Corlys in the crowd, the Dowager Queen, and a few maesters, surrounded by hedge knights and the kind of scum that once called Deamon Prince of the City.
Visenya’s sword is with Visenya’s dragon.
“I suggest you run,” he says.
When dragon fire has cleansed his niece’s floors and he has driven the rats out of the Keep, the members of the court trickle back in like docile mice.
“Where is the Queen?” Daemon asks Corlys. He looks thin and old.
“Daemon,” Corlys says, both wary and gentle. It does not seem like it, to others, and it shouldn’t be, that Corlys has always treated Daemon with gentleness. His cousin Rhaenys had been stern. Viserys had commanded Daemon. Viserys had sent him to exile again and again; respect and niece and Daemon’s birthright by his side as his Hand were denied to him turn after turn. Corlys had given Daemon his daughter to wife, his right side on the battlefield, and sage understanding. The realm's second sons, he had called them. What Daemon had to beg of Viserys, Corlys gave freely.
He hears Corlys talk and then listens no more. He turns around to mount Caraxes, for Daemon has nothing but dragon.
“Daemon,” Corlys says, “you have to stay. The city needs herding, the New King—”
“New King?” He cocks his head, and behind him he feels Caraxes’s breath, warm. Does he mean Daemon to rule until he finds his niece? “There is only the Queen.”
Corlys looks at him with something he cannot bear.
“Rhaenyra is dead,” he says. He had told him before.
Daemon turns to leave.
“Father!” a little voice shrieks and Daemon finds himself with his arms full of his son of ten.
A handful of Queensguard and gold cloaks covered in blood and grime have escorted little Aegon to him. His mother had hidden him at the heart of the passages of the keep, to sit inside Balerion’s skull, they tell him. He embraces his motherless, brotherless child and does not weep.
“Father, do not leave me here,” the boy says. His mother has left him here. Aegon glances at the people gathering in the room like a bird with its wings cut off does to snakes. The darkness in his abyss-purple eyes seems to spiral. “Do not leave me here with these people.”
“Go with the dragon then,” he soothes the boy.
And to Balerion’s skull, the boy goes. Meleys’s skull is there too, now. The usurper brought it back when he killed Rhaenys. They will protect Rhaenyra’s son.
He flies Caraxes first to Visenya’s hill, where a pale-haired pretender holds council. The windows in the sept burst and the stone thaws to sulfur slosh. The smell of charred flesh and blackened bones will bring vultures and wild dogs. They will eat the Seven. There is no place for the Seven in his niece’s kingdom. He has half a mind to turn and burn the Street of Sisters all the way up to the Dragon Pit. On the ground, the men of the Alchemists’ Guild scurry to the street, and among the filth and the fire, they kneel to Daemon and Caraxes; they kneel like the people of Lys kneel, brow to the earth. He leaves them be. Daemon leaves to the Dragon Pit and burns a ring around it. The squatters there burst like rotten fruit.
He enters on foot, unarmed but for the dragon at his back. A man with a begging bowl about his neck and who calls himself the Shepherd stands at the center, spewing madness, and Daemon is unarmed but many people have been delivered to death with bare hands. He tosses the body aside and behind he finds his niece, wife, Queen.
Rhaenyra has been ripped apart, head hacked off and arms twisted at odd angles. Her remaining fingers are bare of jewels and her head barren of crown. She is dressed, not naked, but Daemon does not think is a mercy. She has been placed on top of what is left of Syrax in a mummery of ride.
In the corner is Joffrey’s broken body.
It takes a moment for Daemon to hear Caraxes, though the ground is shaking with the force of his screams. His dragon writhes in grief’s throes, slashing at the stone and fire breathing at the sky, hunting the gods. Daemon feels nothing. No bright coal of hope-love lives in his chest. What is left of his soul lives only in the dragon that cries.
Daemon wraps Rhaenyra in the sullied white cloak of a Queensguard who died defending her. A leg was lost to chaos and he can not find it. He carries her back to the Keep in his arms, with his right hand he grips her body, and with the left, he grips her head.
Daemon does not chain himself to the saddle. Caraxes screams.
“Recall your men,” he tells Corlys when he lands in the throne room. He has his niece in his arms still and hearing is somewhat difficult. Perhaps Caraxes has deafened him.
“She tried to kill Nettles,” Corlys says in apology, in bargain. “She tried to kill Addam.”
Viserys betrayed Daemon when he denied him Rhaenyra. Viserys betrayed Rhaenyra when he left his daughter to the vipers, to devour her bones and suck her blood. Viserys betrayed the Realm for fool’s gold, for peace and feasts and tourneys.
Viserys betrayed Rhaenyra with the love of a father. Corlys betrayed Rhaenyra for legacy and pride, for a boy of his blood to carry the name of his house; in the name of a wife who never held a crown and who had stopped wanting it.
Corlys calls Daemon’s son of ten the New King with the same hunger he had called Deamon a second son.
“We tried to warn the Queen, my Prince,” a member of the court says, he is stupid or brave, Daemon doesn’t know. “We told her to flee to Dragonstone but the Queen insisted that she would mount her dragon from the Pit to the outeryard and then fly to you on Harrenhal.”
Daemon feels nothing at all but the ghost of the smell in the godswood.
He left Rhaenyra’s letter.
“Recall your men, Corlys,” Daemon says. He lays his niece’s corpse on the ground. His care matters not to the gods. Her head rolls twice before he can bring it back to his embrace. Alicent Hightower falls to her knees and screams. Daemon fists a hand on Corlys’s neck. “Recall your men or I will kill Addam and Alyn how I killed your brother. I will kill the rest of Vaemond’s line too. I will kill every single one of his whelps until what’s left of your blood are my daughters, and then house Velaryon will be no more.”
Corlys calls his men.
Daemon calls someone to clean the throne and to go to the Dragon Pit and bring Syrax and Joffrey home.
He calls no one to bring a golden shroud, but fucking Alicent Hightower and a maester do. Daemon wraps his niece and carries her to the pyre as bridegroom carries maiden to resting bed. He places his niece, wife, Queen in the heart of Syrax’s guarding twine and Joffrey he places in his mother’s perpetual cradle.
Dragon embraces mother, mother embraces child.
Everyone he sends away, save for son and dragon. At ten, Aegon is too tall to be lifted, too old for his father to offer his own throat as hiding place, as the mother they burn offered a dragon's skull as hiding place. It does not stop Daemon. He cradles his son as his mother can’t.
They watch dragon embracing mother and mother embracing child burn to ashes.
Something in him thinks that the flames should be green.
Deamon has sat the Iron Throne before. Once in defiance of his brother, waiting to put a Valyrian steel necklace about his niece’s throat. He watches the court watch him as he climbs the steps and sits on the chair. They don’t swear fealty to him. He wears no crown. They don’t call him King, not even Corlys.
He lifts his hand to his hair and finds that the throne has cut his palm. Blood wells up along the line he cut when he became one soul with Rhaenyra on the beaches of Dragonstone.
Daemon makes plans for atonement.
What is left of the small council assembles there, despite his dragon's presence and the hole on the roof. They natter and snide, but Corlys’s men strewn around King’s Landing make their way to the Keep. The fleet is too far away, they still lose the city to riots and disorder but the Keep at least remains sanctuary. Daemon doesn’t mount Caraxes to go on their aid. Caraxes stays in nest at the Great Hall.
Aegon stays at his feet, curled as dragon hatchling around his leg or perched at his knee. His Child King wears no crown either, the crown of Jaehaerys is lost, and he is afraid of most of the people at court. He prefers to sit in the coil of Caraxes's guarding hoard. When the abyss-purple in his eyes spirals as great shadows, he goes to hide inside Balerion’s skull.
“Our forces have reached the Neck and retaken Harrenhal,” some Lord or other announces. “The North’s army moves to meet them and then Oldtown and the High Tower won’t be able to repel us. After that's done, they’ll come to help us retake the city. ”
“We should take Daeron Targaryen alive,” someone, probably sympathetic to the greens, proposes.
“He has a dragon,” another argues.
Daemon makes a dismissive gesture with his hand and droplets of blood paint the air. “Let him live, bring him to his mother,” he says, not out of mercy.
The Dowager Queen weeps. No one has thought to send her back to confinement in her rooms and Daemon has honestly forgotten. She clads herself in the modest pale blue dress of a girl, with flowers embroidered at the neck. Daemon thinks she should wear green again. Her cries give him a headache and he dismisses the council.
He is old and he aches. He seldom leaves the throne. Sometimes he sleeps in the chair and dreams.
Daemon dreams of Rhaenyra taking a dragonglass dagger to her belly and gutting herself like Viserys did Aemma. No child comes from her womb and the seven hells and the fourteen flames spill from her body in green fire. “Daemon,” she cries as she cried when she birthed their last babe.
Daemon dreams of flying with Caraxes to Old Valyria where the fourteen flames burst with green lava.
Daemon dreams of the old Queen Visenya, in her right hand, she holds Blackfire instead of Dark Sister, and on the left, a green candle.
“Maegor,” she calls, urging him to take her treasures.
Prince of the City, the smallfolk had called him.
He knows the passages under the Red Keep as well as Maegor did. He knows the passages under the city itself better.
Daemon ascends to the Street of Sisters and knocks on the door of the Alchemists’ Guild.
They kneel to him as he imagines the people of Old Valyria kneeled to the first dragons, as the people of Lys do a master; brow to earth. “My Prince,” they say, and know not to call him king.
He is no King.
Daemon is Protector of the Realm.
Rhaenyra is dead.
There is no Realm.
After, he takes the tunnels to the Street of Silk and there he finds a familiar, unfamiliar face.
“There are better maesters in the Keep,” he tells Mysaria. “I will let you live if you do this thing for me.”
She is ugly now. Her hair has been shorn and she has been made to walk from the Keep to the Sept, naked, as they whipped her. Daemon’s arrival on Caraxes allowed her to crawl to her dominion and be taken care of by the whores. She has very little strength for Daemon to drag her kicking and screaming, but she does. He gives her to a maester and doesn’t look at her twice.
“If she dies, I will feed you to Caraxes.”
When he goes to sit back on the throne, someone informs him that the greens are politely taking care of themselves. Daeron Targaryen dies in Tumbletown, crushed by a fucking tent. Addam Velaryon dies too, in fool’s errand to clean his name of turncoat’s curse.
Daemon laughs and laughs, even after Corlys has stormed off.
Then, he calls for Nettles.
“Father,” Aegon weeps in the hiding place of Daemon’s throat, inside the hiding place of Balerion’s skull. Through the cavern of the dragon’s eyes, they can see the Queensguard keeping watch. He can see the shadows. He can see the candles.
“You don’t like the people of the court,” he tells his Child King. “And your sister, Rhaena, is in the Eyrie. There is also her dragon, Morning.”
His son is not scared of dragons. Aegon caresses Balerion’s teeth as long and wide as Daemon’s arms and something dark-bright haunts his gaze.
His son is scared of the people at court.
“If Stormcloud had been bigger, I would have been able to save Viserys and Mother.” If Daemon had been here, if he hadn’t left Rhaenyra alone for ten years, then six moons, he wouldn’t have to atone. “One day, I will have the biggest dragon in the world,” the boy vows.
Daemon knows the passages of the Red Keep and the tunnels beneath the city, but he knows nothing as well as he knows the caves and crevices of Dragonstone where he keeps stowed away a score of eggs.
“Do you remember what your mother told you?”
Aegon looks at him, solemn. Someone once told Daemon that Maegor had been a serious, strange boy. “From mine blood come the prince that was promised and his will be the song of ice and fire.”
Rhaenyra told Jacaerys. She never told Lucerys because Lucerys was dead. When Jacaerys was dead, Rhaenyra told Joffrey. Rhaenyra told Aegon when she hid him here.
Daemon presses a kiss to the crown of his head. “Do not forget.”
When he saddles his son to Sheepstealer, Nettles is weeping bitter tears. Daemon has not told her, either someone else did or word has already gotten out of the city. “I never told her,” Netty says in her rough, wet voice. “Neither did you.”
Without Aegon at his feet, time passes mud-thick. The council still insists on converging before the throne. Daemon grips the arms of the chair until his hands bleed. He roams the tunnels under the city from the Alchemists’ Guild to the Old Gate, to Cobbler’s square, and back again.
When Mysaria is well enough, Daemon has her send her people to Storm’s End. Within a few days, he has Jaehaera Targaryen in the Red Keep. Alicent Hightower weeps and doesn’t wear green.
Then, everything comes to summit rather suddenly. Daemon receives two ravens, one is from Rhaena informing him of Aegon’s safety at her side and of Nettles's fast departure back to the capital. The other informs him that Dragonstone has fallen. The usurper has killed Moondancer and has his daughter.
Daemon sends a raven back.
The council protests, as they protest everything, but the city is in shambles and a siege is impossible. Their forces are too far up North or down on the Reach. Their armies won’t be here on time to defend them and they have a single dragon.
Rhaenyra is dead.
Daemon surrenders the city, his hostages, and the Iron Throne.
When Nettles makes her way back, Daemon leaves her to guard the Keep. He wants to fly Caraxes.
They fly over the Kingsroad, and through the Kingswood; then over Shipbreaker Bay. He opens the sack on his saddle and lets the ashes free, so Rhaenyra may join Lucerys lost to storm, Jacaerys lost to battle and Viserys lost to treachery; so Joffrey may join his brothers, all claimed by the sea; so Syrax may fly again.
Demon goes back and a raven is waiting for him.
“Your son is coming,” he tells Alicent Hightower. “You should wear green.”
The Dowager Queen haunts the halls of King’s Landing like Daemon haunts the passages under the city, from the Alchemists’ Guild to King’s Gate to the Street of Steel and back again. She smiles. He thinks he sees green in her eyes. “I think I should. Do you think Rhaenyra will come too? Oh! I hope Viserys does. I miss reading to him.”
Demon sits and waits. He haunts the underbelly of the city a thousand times, on and on, round and round. He grips the arms of the Iron Throne and feeds it blood. He stands, mindful of how Maegor died, and goes to Caraxes curling under the hole they carved on the roof.
“You should go,” Daemon tells him. “You needn't stay with me.”
Caraxes offers him dragon song and fire-warm nuzzle. There is all that remains of Daemon.
Daemon was born without a piece of his soul, for it belonged to brother before they came to nest in the same womb. To Corlys he gave his right to call him a second son in exchange for a bride. To Laena he gave ten years in exchange for two daughters. To Rhaenyra he gave a piece of his soul so they might merge it into one and make something new.
To Caraxes he gave soul and received soul. Caraxes nuzzles at his chest and stays where the other piece of him is.
Daemon sits to wait and dreams.
Daemon dreams only of old Queen Visenya. In her right hand, she holds Blackfire instead of Dark Sister, and on the left, a green candle. Her face is solemn like his son’s, like her son's.
“Daemon,” she calls him and presses her treasures in his ready hands.
The Usurper comes to King’s Landing with the carcass of his dragon, the clubfoot, a few more green commanders, and his daughter in chains. There is a pride in him that is sour and bitter all at once, even confined to immobility as he is. Aegon the Elder wears the conqueror’s crown and wilds, Blackfyre, the conqueror’s sword.
Daemon is brother to a king and husband to a Queen. He has no brother and no wife. His son of ten is hiding far away. Right here before his eyes, he has Baela. He gives Jaehaera Targaryen and Alicent Hightower to father and son even before they give him his own daughter.
Baela must see something in his eyes, when she is in his arms, because she clutches at him. “Father?” she asks in desperation.
Baela has always been Daemon’s daughter. Baela is clever. Laena was always more clever than he has ever been. He thinks of the ten years he gave her and the two daughters she exchanged and for a fleeing instant he reconsiders. He wants to see Baela’s dear face for longer.
Daemon thinks of ten years. Six moons. Hours. For hours he abandoned Rhaenyra as she gave birth to a dead babe and wondered if she would die like her mother did. Daemon had been in the other room while she cried for him, planning a war that killed her.
He kisses Baela’s brow. He walks her to Netty who whisks her away and to the sky. “Father!” she still screams.
Daemon descends the Throne and sits in Caraxes’s cradle. He knows not if the Usurper can sit it. It matters not. Daemon has fed the chair all the blood it needs, all which it demands.
Now, he will feed it fire.
“Take the dragon to the Pit and the prisoner to the Black Cells,” the Usurper sniffs.
“There is no Dragon Pit,” Daemon informs him.
The Usurper's burned face snarls. Daemon is surprised he still can. When he found his niece, she couldn't even show him scorn. “What is that?” he asks.
Daemon wonders for a moment, where his son will reign from. He hopes is Harranhal. He hopes he finds his mother’s last letter and still finds her scorn a delight. Not a thought he spares to the gods and whether they would find this a worthy sacrifice and bring Rhaenyra back, for they have forsaken him and Daemon has renounced them.
He tips the contents of the beggar's bowl on the ground. The court gathered stares at him as if in madness; Corlys, Mysaria, the dowager Queen, the Lannisters; all of them betrayers. All of them, along with the smallfolk, cursed; all of them enemies. A river of green Wildfire coats their feet. Cups and pots and grails overflow with it in the passages of the Keep; hidden in corners, behind the throne, and over the high pillars. Beneath the city, so many barrels line the tunnels, at the Gates, and under the streets, the ways, the alleys, and the squares.
Daemon is Prince of the City. He is Protector of the Realm.
Rhaenyra is dead. Now, he must protect his son's Realm.
He looks up and smiles. “Absolution.”
Daemon has flown Caraxes to war, but he has never pretended to command a dragon, nor has he ever had the need to beg him.