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Chapter Text

Rhaenyra is ten and five when her uncle first truly catches her eye.

It always begins this way—at least in her dreams. The queen after her knight, who yields to her with all the grace of chivalry and obedience. The maid after the monster, where a lithe hand tames even the cruelest of hearts. Dreams where power tips in her favour, pooling in the palm of her hand until her grasp sends its inexhaustible leverage scattering like red rubies upon the floor, where she is the one who reigns with nothing in her way.

She dreams of power just as often as she dreams of dragons. And she dreams of love—love and lust and all the hungry things that happen in the dark, but on her terms, less than those.

It just so happens that on the morning after her uncle’s arrival, after his gift to her is draped across her neck with hands of heat that burn, it is precisely then that those latter sort of dreams plague her.

And when she wakes, it is to startling rasps of warmth gathering at the junction of her thighs, stroking up until it settles in the pits of her stomach—and the memory of eyes of violet and a mane of silver. The weight of Valyrian steel hangs tight around her neck—a vice, but a comforting one, anchored down by a pendant that she swears still holds the warmth of a heavy hand. 

She rolls over, gathering her quilt over the thin filigree of silk and cotton that covers her body, and screams. A sound brimming with frustration, annoyance, and the desire for—

For something, to fill that emptiness in her. 

Later that day, when the last of the feast has been devoured, when the candles flicker low and the wine flows free, she is sitting in her alcove, watching the proceedings with sharp, keen eyes, when Daemon arrives. She swallows in hesitation—but makes no move to flee. Instead, she arranges her skirts, tipping her face towards the door in the most elegant of profiles, so that the light catches at the sharpness of her cheeks and the tilt of her eyes. The necklace against her neck grows warm, accented by the barest hint of a blush that creeps into her skin, blooming a soft red—vitality made flesh. 

The trap is laid—and it springs a precise path, for moments later, above the murmurs of the court and the crackling of flames, comes the sound of heavy footsteps.  

“Niece,” Daemon purrs, low and saccharine, prowling towards her with a practiced swagger, limbs lose with feline grace. “My—how you’ve grown, sitting here in that dress of yours. I can see it now.” 

Then, he switches into High Valyrian— their language, with a lilt in his voice more melodic than the crudeness of the language before, echoing with memories and birthrights and things left behind in flames when their bloodline had fled in fire and blood. Shared history wrought in syllables and tones that only they will ever know.

“Old enough to take to bed?” he questions with a roguish quirk of his lips. “Darling, I have neglected to ask, but have you flowered yet? You must have—sitting here with your poise and your elegance, all ripe for the taking. A maid at the height of spring.” 

And though his words are undeniably teasing, flattering even in a way, Rhaenyra catches the look in his eyes all too easily—it is a look of a predator. A dragon. Flame and hunger and heat that seeps out with undeniability. 

But Daemon forgets too, that she is also a Targaryen. And in her burns a fire of her own. 

And a fire is a hunger that must always be fed.

“Uncle,” she replies coolly in the same language, arching her brow and shifting her mouth into the faintest suggestion of a smirk. “My—haven’t you grown too comfortable while away from the stiflings of courtly life. You’ve let yourself go. Have you no greetings for your favourite family member on this fine day? Or have I been replaced?” 

He laughs. It is a boisterous laugh, and it crinkles his eyes, accentuating the crow’s feet gathering on his face, turning him into a wild, wicked creature, with nothing but revelry in mind. 

She finds it charming. And tries hard not to think of her dreams, lest she act rashly.

“I saw you just yesterday,” he replies, before tipping his head towards the pendant of steel which drapes down, settling warm in the hollow between her collarbones. “ That lovely thing is proof. I’m glad to see it be of use. Though I must say that I am … envious of its position now, seeing it wrapped around such a comely neck.” 

Rhaenyra licks her lips, then smiles, false-docility in every movement. “So ready to wring my neck, uncle?”

What she doesn’t expect is the sudden presence of him next to her; he approaches her smoothly, steps eating the meager distance between them until suddenly, he’s there—next to her. Then comes the feeling of long fingers carding through her hair, brushing silken strands away from her nape, before they rest upon the chain. When his lips angled towards her ear, she feels the heat roll off of him, the scent of him perfuming the air in leather and spice and musk—as dark and heady as the man himself. 

From where came the courage, Rhaenyra cannot say—but in defiant response, unwilling to step back or flinch, she tilts her head, allowing him more access, hoping, urging, begging for the stroke of his lips against her skin. 

He laughs again. Softer this time. “It’s not wringing that I’d like to do to your neck, niece. It’s something else entirely. Of which—” Breaking his words, he suddenly surges forward, pushing an open-mawed kiss punishingly hard against her neck, teeth rasping hard and sharp. And inadvertently, a gasp spills out her throat. 

“— you seem to have a good idea of — these things that you’ve done. Tempting me in such a way.” 

Then, the weight of him abruptly disappears. So does the heat. Until she’s standing alone again, staring up at the man she should not want—but has wanted, in every way. She’s left bereft. Startled. And suddenly, she realizes that she holds no power over him.

Not yet.

“You’re still too young. Maybe one day,” he says, almost kindly, after withdrawing, brushing at his clothing with practiced nonchalance. His eyes are a shade lighter, gentle in a way she’s not seen before. But the hunger remains.

“Until then, wait for me.” 

She’s left staring at the broad expanse of his shoulders as Daemon Targaryen, Rogue Prince and Scourge upon the House of Targaryen, walks away. 

Chapter Text

She is far, far older, when she gets her revenge. 

They have tumbled one another between sheets, dined on each other's appetites, driven a kingdom to its knees—reining as conquerors. Flame against flame. Dragon against dragon. 

And never has Rhaenyra felt like such an equal to someone. 

They are alike. In all ways. And in their coupling, they find the same freedom that drove their ancestors to take to the skies—fire and blood and nothing else but themselves. Mirrored halves of a whole, with the same vibrant need to take what is owed to them, brimming with a fury borne from self-wrought righteousness. 

Yet the dreams remain; she is a creature of their shared dynasty, yes. But unlike Daemon, who has never been sure of what he wants, dallying for approval, for affection, for attention—first from his brother, then from her, Rhaenyra does know, and the awareness of her appetite does not make it any easier for her to settle into her own place. It carries over, writhing into every corner of her life—her existence strung through by this understanding. And though her lust of fleshly pleasures—hedonism wrapped in silken sheets and scarred skin, is a raging, insatiable thing, Rhaenyra craves power too. 

The hunger for it—for that safety and prestige and glory, all in one, drives her in the most mercurial of ways.

And she is all too aware of the way the scales tip, the way the world works.

Daemon Targaryen is still a man. 

This is how she finds herself one evening, beckoning towards him with an unsettling heat boiling in her veins, crooking her fingers in the same way a lord calls a hound to heel.

The night outside is dark, yet their hearthfire burns bright, flickering in their shared room of stone with gentle leaps. Daemon too, is lulled by it, for once, for he sits silent and solemn as the silver of his hair shifts in the light, tinged with a warm glow. 

But despite the kindness of the late hour—the good fortune that comes with clear skies, cold stars and a gentle wind that blows at just the right season—as well as the comfort of a lover who truly knows her, there and waiting by her side, Rhaenyra remains restless.

There is a chair in their bedroom. Daemon calls it her throne. Carved from sea-wood and soldered by Valyrian steel, with its surface marked by a relief of a thousand dragons, it is a glorious thing. Fit for a queen. 

Daemon never sits in it—has never sat in it. She won’t allow it. It has always been hers alone.

So when she rises from her bed, slow and languid, stretching with serpentine grace as she saunters across the cold stone floor, she catches his eyes. Inevitably. For her husband has never been on to turn his gaze away from that which he desires. 

But he too has played her bedroom games oft enough to understand that there is a method to their madness—decorum needed and sanctified in a space where struggles—teeth and fingers and open-mouthed hunger, can very easily draw blood. A place where power turns this way and that, more fickle than the waves that crash against the shore, pulled too and fro by the moon.

And now—here, with her upon the throne, it is her that rises with the cresting of the tide tonight.

Daemon knows this too, for his gaze follows her— stalks her, across the room and up and up and up, to where she sits, perched against the wood, bone-white and bleached and adorned with the glint of a thousand dragon-eyes. All the while though, he does not move—as motionless as a predator before the kill, save for the turning of his face. 

“Well?” she murmurs, just a shade too quietly, when she finally settles down, sprawling with careless comfort. In the focus of the man across from her though, she sees him catch every sound, hyper-aware of every single thing she does. Quiet words will suffice—will command more than demands, here in this moment. 

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to play—just a little bit more, though.

So she puts on a show, one designed to catch his interest more so than it has already been caught.

“Lord husband,” she demures, pretending to be soft, sweet—shy like the maid she was when she first lured him to her bed, feminine wiles seeping a perfumed poison. She is the serpent and the flowerbed, and he's never taken anything that she’s not willingly relinquished. It is precisely this that she wants to remind him of now; that question of who is to rule.

Another breath. The loosening of her robe, until the tops of her breasts are bare—Valyrian steel pendant ever-present, and pillowed against the curves of her flesh, a reminder of their shared beginning. 

 “Won’t you come to me?” she requests, lilting voice rising in question, perfectly innocent.

The speed at which he rises suggests otherwise—immediate, almost rash in the way he near-tips himself over in his haste. It makes her lips curl. A self-satisfied smile, just a shade away from cruel, seeps slow onto her face. 

This is precisely how she takes her power—her pleasure, many days. The heavy crown of a queendom is not so much a burden when the spine that bears the brunt of it is as solid as steel, and twice as unyielding.

And she has gotten very good at wielding it—especially here, on her throne. In their bedchamber.

Wordlessly, she curls her fingers, forefinger and middle joined together straight, before she beckons. Once. Twice. Motions sharp and sleek.

Understanding dawns upon him. He kneels, the movements immediate, his eyes glimmering with cunning humor. His hands are gentle against her hips as he curls around her until he’s near enough to embrace, with his face tipped up towards hers, perilously close to her lap.

He comes to her like a cur, a dog begging scraps from the mercy of the kind master’s hand, but with teeth just a bit too long and sharp and close to the palm from which it feeds. 

But Rhaenyra is a dragon, and she knows how often taming comes tangentially close to terror—and how to snarl back, with teeth bared and instinctive aflame. How to offer a punishing hand, and how to offer a gentled one.

So when Daemon dips just a hair-breadth too close to her without her approval, he finds that her fingers—sharp-tipped and clawed, are all too readily prone to grasping at his hair, pulling and soothing in equal measures of punishment and pleasure. It is a grip that twists, that pulls at the silken locks with the same purpose of commanding a horse to canter, or a dragon to fly. There is an expectation of obedience that cannot be missed. 

The answering hiss that spills from his throat is a sound that mingles together delight and discomfort, yet he makes no move to escape her. 

“I have come to you now, my queen,” he purrs, smiling guilelessly, an expression betrayed only by the grasping hunger of his fingers which linger a degree too heavily upon her own body, nails digging in with stark relief when she finally lets go of him. “How shall you have me serve? I am at your mercy.” 

She says nothing, choosing to shift slightly instead, crossing one leg jauntily over the other, extending their pale length until she’s leaning against the chair, careless and relaxed. The robe that drapes across her lies open, and beneath it, she is bare. No longer the body of a maid of ten and six, yet all the more comely for it—with curves and scars and flesh that proudly bears the marks of time. 

And all the while, Daemon Targaryen has lusted after her. 

When she shifts again, she hears his breath hitch, catching at the juncture of her thighs with warmth before he breathes in deeply, hunger evident in the way he shifts, body impatient and betrayed by the mind.

She smiles, a soft, secretive smile, then dips her head, imperiously arrogant, before she deigns it necessary to answer. “You may serve me in any way you see fit.” 

“And so I shall.” 

Then, without another word, he moves her tongue against her, pressing kisses against the soft, silken skin of her inner thighs, tracing the path of scars—of marks left from dragon-saddle and battle wounds left by time, laving at her skin with all the reverence of a supplicant before their god. 

It becomes harder to hold still, to act nonchalant, the closer he comes. But she refuses to break—not yet, anyway. 

So Rhaenyra holds her tongue, grits her teeth, near-motionless in her stoic veneer. It does not stop the wetness that seeps steadily from her cunt throughout.

Another kiss. Followed by a low groan, dark and deep—the same kind that has become so often heard here in their bedchamber. He’s always been such a vocal creature, and Rhaenyra finds herself chasing those sounds, more often than not. 

“My little queen has grown up,” she hears him say, eyes of violet tinged with the light of hunger peeking out from the between her thighs. His lips are wet with her, stretched wide in delight, and his eyes trace her figure with unhidden hunger, lingering at the swell of her red-tipped breasts, then at the curls of her cunt, slick and wet, in front of him. “And here, I feast upon her like a crow upon carrion, ever-wanting for the spoils.” 

“How romantic,” she manages to say, slipping words out between the tips of her teeth, tone dry and amused and sarcastic in spite of her struggle. ‘Why, Uncle, you— ah, you should’ve been a poet instead of a prince. Your tongue better suited for… bardsong than battle.” 

My dear,” he says in response, before dipping down to nip at the skin right next to her cunt, in playful chiding, “my tongue is better suited for other things—as my lady queen has discovered night after night, here in this very chair.” 

It occurs to her then, that she should do something—but a whine, just a sliver of a sound really, slips out. She can’t bring herself to mind, however, when the heat of his breath brushes up against the sensitivity of her pearl, when he is so close to giving her a pleasure that she now seeks with open-mouthed pants. The sting of his bite becomes heightened by the rolling need that rises within her.

He smirks a knowing smirk, then puts his teeth on her again, holding flesh hostage, with no promise of pain or pleasure.

“And I—I am only her obedient servant, humbled by a taste of the realm’s delight,” he says. “Serving in the way I know best.” 

Before she can answer though, he surges up suddenly, smile sharp and satisfied with scheming delight, before he puts his mouth on her, crushing the tip of his nose straight into the sensitive flesh of the tip of her slit. His tongue delves into her, rolling, searching, merciless in his movements as he ignores the whine that spills out of her throat. 

But she does not beg—though every nerve in her body is aflame, sparks snapping at her spine and down and down, ravaging the pit of her stomach with a reminder of her almost-emptiness. She wants to pull him down deeper, to close her thighs upon him, forcing him there to fill her cunt forever and a day. To keep him close and— 

Yet Rhaneyra is a queen. And she knows too, how to be poised in the face of destruction—and she feels her shattering come imminent, and knows that no matter what, she does not want it to be so at the command of her husband. 

So her hand comes up, grasping at him again, fingers digging into his hair with wild abandon. He laughs, then gasps into her cunt, but makes no move to shift away. When she pulls him down, onto her, wordlessly urging the litheness of his tongue deeper into the sopping wetness of her quim, grinding up and against him until she stains the red of his lips with her taste— he, darling husband and uncle of hers, makes no protest. No sound passes his lips, save for satisfaction expressed in growls and groans — wordless praise of the most instinctual kind. 

And this is how the scales tip. This is how she wields her desire. Hunger driven by ceaseless need. This is how she brings to heel the man who she has always wanted. And this time, it is he who turns towards her, who offers what she wants.

When the last, cresting wave of pleasure crashes over her, her world flickering and flashing and falling with the rush of pure ecstasy, she finally lets herself go—limbs shaking, trembling, with the force of her release. She thrusts up, hips twisting in chase of her climax, and catches herself, just barely—arching into the embrace of her husband with pants and whines and all the soft sounds she’s held back.

Daemon embraces her in the aftermath, raising himself until she’s able to slump over him, leaning against the broad expanse of his chest—scarred though he is. There is a comfort in hearing his heartbeat beneath her. His breath comes out staccato sharp too, driven by the urgency of his pleasuring of her and she sees him lick at his lips, swiping at her wetness with unhidden delight, just as he presses his cheek against her hair, rubbing with near-feline affection. And though she can feel him, cock hard and heat-filled against the seams of his clothing, he makes no move to satiate himself—be it on her, or through the workings of his own hand. 

It is a good thing too, for she is spent—warm and wanting for her bed, near-boneless in the soft, crowning jolts that come in the aftermath of her release.

And when Daemon bends down, pressing the most gentle of kisses against her brow, and whispers, “shall we go to bed?” Rhaenyra simply nods. Then lets him carry her away; into bed and the land of dreams, where for a moment, everything is right—and she has everything she wants, with none of the burdens that come with the question of power.

All the while, the hearthfire slakes itself upon its own bed of ashes, and the night grows dark with its hunger.