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«Let us bind our blood like Aegon and his sisters did,» Rhaenyra tells him in High Valyrian, standing on the ramparts of Driftmark, wind in her hair and sunlight in her face. The cut on her arm is not visible under the heavy sleeves of her dress, but they both know it is there.
«You would make me your Rhaenys and Laenor your Visenya?» Daemon says, because he cannot deny having thought of something alike himself. He wonders, briefly, about being overheard. Usually their shared language would make this conversation as safe as it can be – to read a language is not to speak it, even if many maesters and some nobles learn to read Valyrian. Here in the domain of House Velaryon, however...
Well. He has always been able to solve his problems as they come.
«I would not have you dead in a battle with Dornishmen,» Rhaenyra says with something like a smile. «But, yes. I will not win this war without you and I cannot… make myself free of him.»
«You would not kill him,» Daemon says, goading. He must know how far Rhaenyra would go.
«He is a good man.»
«Many good men will die in this war.»
«I know,» she says. «But I would not deprive myself of Laenor and his dragon and his family’s support prematurely.»
Daemon laughs. «The Queen Who Never Was will not love you for taking a second husband. Neither will the High Septon. Maegor the Cruel was the last Targaryen to wed more than one bride and no Targaryen queen has had more than one husband at a time.»
«Then I will be a king!» Rhaenyra snaps. «Tell me, Daemon, do you truly want to kill Laenor?»
Daemon does not meet her eyes. It would, in all likelihood, be the prudent thing. Make their marriage – not simple, no, but palatable in the eyes of the Seven Kingdoms, a widow and a widower coming together.
But Daemon cares for Laenor the same as Rhaenyra does, the way the blood of Valyria is always called to itself, the last embers of fire in an ashen world. Maybe the same way he cared for Laena, or Viserys. Maybe…
«You don’t.» Rhaenyra says, quiet. «You don’t want him dead any more than I.»
«I do not,» Daemon affirms.
“Then we should go and speak with him,” Rhaenyra says in Common Speech, and that is that.
*
Months later, long after Daemon and Rhaenyra have married in secret by Valyrian rites, around the time Laena’s death has stopped haunting them all, Laenor says: “I don’t understand why you agreed to be her second husband.”
“You did not disagree,” Daemon says. From the corner of his eye he sees Laenor grimace bitterly. This expression would have been alien to him once, when they were young (younger, in Daemon’s case) in the Stepstones. Back then Laenor was still bright, and joyful, and untrammeled by the pit of vipers that is Daemon’s brother’s court.
“No,” Laenor says with no particular animosity. “But we both know you could have had me killed, or otherwise driven away. And you did not.”
Daemon looks at him. “I did not,” he echoes.
“You’re the husband she needs when the war starts,” Laenor says, and there’s something in his voice that Daemon recognizes, but does not dare name. “I’m the one she was saddled with when her father worried about mine. I have tried… but.” A wave of the hand encompasses his failures, brushes them aside for now. “Why, then?”
“I think you know.”
Daemon takes a step closer and Laenor matches it, a dragonrider’s nonchalance in his shoulders and that same unnameable thing in his eyes. They’re close enough to touch, now.
“I want you to say it,” Laenor says, and Daemon could swear they can feel each other’s heat like two dragons circling one another.
“I could not have you killed any more than Rhaenys could have killed Visenya,” Daemon says.
Laenor smiles and surges forth to kiss him.