"She's a fine one, isn't she?" Rhaenys whispers, nudging her sharp elbow into Viserys' soft side. "You've told Aemma well done from all of us, I hope?"
"Of course, cousin," Viserys says, weary and fond. Aemma snores in her bed, hidden by almost-sheer white curtains, and Rhaenys hopes that this little babe-in-arms has even half as much good sense as her mama.
"Aemma wishes to name her Rhaenyra, cousin," Viserys says, nudging his hip to hers. "If you permit it, that is."
Rhaenys is not a woman given to tears, but she cries at that. She and Aemma have always been lone ducks, oddities to their parents simply for having no siblings, and they cleaved together as girls. It is a great honour to know that her little cousin esteems her so highly, if only because Rhaenys has always held Aemma as the best of women.
"I should be delighted," she says, smoothing little Rhaenyra's dark hair back from her pale face. "Thank you, cousin. I- thank you both."
Corlys has Laena under his arm and Laenor over his shoulder when he meets Rhaenys outside the library, looking a little sheepish.
"Lord Rodrick's maester threw us out," he admits. "Your hellions wouldn't shut up for long enough to do their reading."
"We aren't hellions, Papa!" Laena protests. "We're dragons!"
"Aye, dragons too small and silly even for the dragonpit," Corlys scolds, setting both children on their feet and ruffling their hair. He's terrible at remaining stern with them, and Rhaenys wonders if it's anything to do with how long he went without wife, without children - often, he looks at their wild babes as if he cannot believe his luck.
The children usually cause some mess that brings their papa's head down out of the clouds sharpish, but Rhaenys loves the softness her pirate shows only with herself and the children. None would believe the Sea Snake capable of it, but Rhaenys has seen it, and guards it more closely than any jewels.
"Your cousins are well?" he asks, drawing her under his arm as Laena sprints down the corridor, whooping and shouting, Laenor trailing good-naturedly in her wake.
"They are naming their daughter in my honour," she says. "It's an old family name, but no one has used it since before we came to Dragonstone, and Viserys says that it was chosen for me. Rhaenyra."
"A fine name," Corlys says approvingly. "Mother and babe both came through the birth well?"
"Let's just say that everyone is glad Aemma took more her father's size than her mother's," Rhaenys says, shaking her head. "The babe is a sturdy little thing - it would have been hard on Aemma, had she not been so sturdy herself."
Corlys kisses her cheek, which lets him nuzzles against her hair so he can think. He always says that he does his best thinking tucked around her, and she is hardly likely to complain about his being so affectionate.
"Daemon will be angry," he says. "That the babe and Aemma both lived."
Likely he will - Rhaenys will just have to smother her little cousin's fury. A shame she can't simply smother him.
They sail from Gulltown home - Corlys captains, of course, because there is nothing in the world he hates more than to stand aboard another man's ship - and Meleys screes in the sky above them, drawing answering cheers from the children.
Rhaenys might grumble that it is silly, Laenor being assumed as her heir when Laena is the elder, but some small part of her is happy with the arrangement. Laena has Corlys' wild heart, set alight by Rhaenys' own fierce temper, and the crown would stifle her. Laenor, with his quieter, more thoughtful demeanor, might flourish, and can always retreat to whatever madness Laena creates on Driftmark as a haven.
Laena will be Lady of Driftmark, Mistress of Tides, before Laenor ever comes to the crown - either Corlys' death or Rhaenys' ascension will see to it - and that is something of a relief. Laena trails her grandfather's footsteps like a hungry pup, the pair of them a younger mirror of Rhaenys and the King, and she is learning every lesson there is to be learned from Rhaenys' parents.
Laenor prefers the company of the Queen and her Hand. Septon Barth prefers to stand at his tall table as he goes about his many duties, and he has had a neat little step built for Laenor so that he can watch as the old man works. There's been a high stool in his workchamber for years, Grandmother's designated perch, and Laenor has carved out his own niche at her side, listening to every thoughtful argument between septon and queen. Rhaenys used do the same, lingering in her grandmother's shadow on the ground and in the air as she and Meleys found their feet, and it bodes well for Laenor that even at so young an age, he has seen that the true wisdom is not in the King, but in those who guide him.
Rhaenys hopes that she can give such worthy guides to her own grandchildren, when the time comes. She will have Aemma, and gods willing Corlys will live to a fine old age, but she will have to find others she can trust. Others without Valyrian blood, so they might have not only her trust, but that of her people.
Laena hardly stops laughing when she's on the ground, but she is near silent in the air - she folds herself against Meleys' thick neck and narrows her eyes against the wind, and she moves as if she can read the dragon's mind.
Laenor, though, he laughs - he finds the same joy Rhaenys remembers when Father would bring her out on Vayeles, or Grandmother on Silverwing. There's something keener in Laena's love, but Laenor is so quiet and reserved a child that Rhaenys savours every show of happiness from him. He is so much like her father, always sharp-eyed and always guarded, and has not yet met someone to bring his heart out, the way Mother does for Father, the way Vayeles used, before the slavers.
She wants dragons for her children. She's spoken to her grandmother about it already, about bringing the children to the dragonpit to choose eggs from among the many, because she wants them to know the thrill of that bond. Rhaenys was only four years old when she slipped away from her septa, slipped passed the guards, and found Meleys' egg.
Grandmother has always insisted that Meleys was daughter to Meraxes, and since there is no one alive left who could dispute her, Rhaenys is happy to agree. It always makes Grandfather thoughtful to hear that, more since he accepted Rhaenys as his heir than before. Father's return has taken the weight of that decision out of Grandfather's hands, but it is as if having to face the reality of Rhaenys sitting the throne someday has made him wonder what kind of Queen she will be.
Rhaenys has recently started wondering the same thing.
"Mama! Mama, can we go flying?"
They are barely beyond the Sisters when Laena starts asking, and Rhaenys has to remind herself that it is not appropriate to terrorise her cousin's bannermen. People are still wary of dragons, rightly so, and scaring them needlessly has no benefits. The Vale has been loyal for long enough that there is no need to remind them just who sits the Iron Throne, after all.
"Once we're over open water, we can fly," Rhaenys says, to which even Laenor groans in theatrical disappointment. "Less of that, thank you very much - you know how Captain Velaryon feels about whiney passengers."
Laena mocks swooning over the railings, which makes Laenor laugh even as he drags her safely back on deck. Corlys grumbles under his breath, wondering why sailing is not enough for their hellions, and Rhaenys slips her hand up under the back of his shirt in comfort.
"Just think," she says. "Imagine how feared Laena will be, leading her fleet on dragonback."
"She might conquer the Stepstones," Corlys says, leaning into her hand. "I suppose I can settle for that - a King for a son and a Queen for a daughter."
Rhaenys flies the children into the dragonpit when they return to King's Landing, and has to force them into the necessary bows when Meleys lowers her wings to reveal the King and Queen. They are too used to the more lax standards of behaviour Father allows on Dragonstone, and those she and Corlys indulge on Driftmark, and she will have to start training them in more courtly manners as soon as she can.
A shame to tame them. Needs must, though.
"You honour us, Your Graces," she says, rising from her bow and keeping her hands firm on the children's shoulders. "We did not expect such a reception."
"I'm sure you didn't," Grandfather says, reaching up a hand to stroke nosy Vermithor's massive nose - oh, what a kitten the Fury is, under his master's hands, and curious as a cat as well. "But there have been some interesting developments, and we thought it best to brief you as soon as you landed - we did not expect your passengers."
Grandmother beckons, and Laenor runs to her, Laena dawdling a little in his wake. Mother is standing just inside the door, her dark hair shining like jet in the gloom, and Grandmother sends the children away to her waiting embrace. Septon Barth is here as well, elbows deep in a bucket of entrails that he is throwing to the dragonlings, and his face is unusually grim.
The door closes behind Mother, and Grandfather sighs, settling into the warmth of Vermithor's fussing shadow - kitten and mother hen in one, with the way he sets his massive claws to picking at the ends of Grandfather's robes.
"Tell me, then," she says, accepting a canteen of water from Grandmother and trying not to cringe at the stink from Barth's long, bloody gloves as he peels them off and sets them aside. Meleys retreats to settle with Vhagar, snapping affectionately at one another as Rhaenys no longer could with Uncle Baelon by the end, and Silverwing nudges close against Vermithor's flank.
Grandmother pushes her away by the snout, earning her a snuff of hot breath all over her hair. Cats, all of them.
"You will notice that Caraxes is not with us," Barth says, shrugging out of his dragonkeeper's coat and into his septon's robes. "Your cousin has not reacted well to being shunted further down the succession, we think."
"Aemma's babe is a beauty," Rhaenys says. "A jolly little thing with Aemma's hair. They're calling her Rhaenyra."
"A fine name," Grandmother says, "and one that will no doubt inflame Daemon even further. What has Corlys to say?"
Of all the family, only Corlys is still at ease in Daemon's increasingly unpleasant company. Rhaenys hates to use that friendship for political ends, knowing as she does how hard Corlys works to remain friends with Daemon.
But it is their best insight into Daemon's anger. And so she has no choice.
"He hasn't heard anything since we left for the Eyrie," she says. "But he said Daemon would be angry if mother and babe lived. It seems he was right."
"We have word that he has flown west," Grandfather says from under Vermithor's chin. "And we have had no word from the Westerlands in many weeks."
"A marriage?"
"He has been more vocal about his opposition to the Royce match since Baelon's passing," Grandmother says, pushing the canteen back into Rhaenys' hands when she tries to return it. "And he has been more vocal about his opposition to you, sweetling. He thinks he should have Laena for a bride, and if not Laena, then Aemma's babe."
"No," Rhaenys says, because there is no part of her that can accept the notion of stupid Daemon having either Laena or little Rhaenyra. "No, he is to have Rhea Royce, and he ought to be pleased with that."
"We think he might be aiming for Greta Lannister," Barth says, of Lord Lannister's sister, two years Daemon's senior and easily the loveliest woman in the realm, "and we think he means to buy her hand with the half dozen dragon eggs he stole before he left."
Daemon asked for Rhaenys' hand, once. It was a long time ago, when they were all children, more or less, and she had laughed at him. Rhaenys had known from a very young age that the only cousin she might wed would be Viserys, and Daemon's silly manner had never appealed to her at the best of times. Aemma had been her very favourite cousin from the day they met, and Viserys is the best kind of harmless fool, but Daemon? Daemon is something else altogether.
"He deserves a better bride than that fat Royce girl," Aunt Alyssa says, "but I agree that he has gone about this badly. He is not likely to find another dragonrider in the Westerlands - there are not so many dragonseeds as he seems to think."
Grandfather is the fourth king to sit the throne, and the fourth king either disinclined to sire bastards or, in one very special case, incapable of doing so. There have not been so many Targaryen princes who lived to adulthood to sow their seed far and wide, and so any dragonseeds Daemon might find will be of older lines - Rhaenys' great-great-grandfather and beyond, those proud men who would not bend even to conquer westwards, it will be whatever remains of their seed that will try to hatch the stolen dragons.
But even of those - there are not many Valyrians in Westeros. The Celtigars were stewards to the Targaryens, as once the Tyrells were to the Gardeners, and the Velaryons kept to the seas and all that lies beneath the waves, and so even those bastard lines will have little or no claim to any dragon.
"Your granddaughter is a beautiful child," Rhaenys says sharply, because they have been speaking with Aunt Alyssa for half an hour and she has asked only for Daemon. "Aemma is well, and Viserys is already doting on the babe - Rhaenyra. You should visit, my lady."
"And I will, once the son that is more in danger is seen safe," Alyssa says, as typically aloof as ever. Aunt Daella once said that she no longer recognised the woman Aunt Alyssa grew into, and Grandmother had hushed her for it - but she had not denied it.
"Daemon is not in danger, child," Grandfather says, brow resting on his upraised fist. The seat he has claimed is a simple, plain thing, out of place in Alyssa's sumptuous rooms but made regal by his noble bearing. "He is a dangerous rogue, but he is not in danger. Caraxes will see to that."
"He is flying for Casterly Rock," Alyssa says. "Where in the realm is more dangerous than the lion's den?"
"And here we thought you did not know where he was bound - thank you, my dear."
Grandfather rises, dusting off his long robes, and Alyssa gapes.
"Baelon's absence does not excuse the way you coddle Daemon," he says, pressing his hand to her shoulder as he passes. "I miss him as well, sweetling, but the son is no match for the father - even at his worst, Baelon was a better man than Daemon. You might be better paying more attention to Viserys on occasion."
"I do not like it," Corlys says, pulling the door of Laena's bedchamber closed behind him as gently as he can. "I understand why you must go, but I do not like it one bit, Rhaenys."
All the family are gathered in King's Landing now, from Father and Mother right down to Maegelle in her septa's robes. The children think it all a fine adventure, but something in Rhaenys' gut is worried that there is some true and grave ill on the horizon.
"Father has no dragon to ride, and he is not well enough to lead the army regardless," Rhaenys says, taking him by both hands to guide him away to their own bedchamber, where she intends to mark him so deeply that every inch of him will ache for her while they are parted. "I am Grandfather's heir, after Father, and Meleys and I will have this made right."
Rhaenys cannot shake the terrible fear that had she only been kinder to Daemon, had she and Aemma laughed at him less, then maybe things would not have come so far as this. Maybe.
Grandfather draws them all down between Wendish Town and Wayfarer's Rest, with the Golden Tooth looming in the hills above them.
"I've sent for Daemon," he says. "If the boy still has any sense, he will come."
Grandmother remained in King's Landing, for fear that Daemon might be fool enough to lay claim to the throne in their absence. Rhaenys misses her for her solid good sense, and for the strength she and Grandfather give to one another.
"I think he will," Rhaenys says, prays. "He cannot want this to come to war any more than we do, Your Grace."
Grandfather takes her hand and squeezes tight, and she knows that he is praying, too. She hopes that Septon Barth and Aunt Maegelle are guiding all the others to do the same.
"If it comes to it, child," Grandfather says, still squeezing her hand in his, "if it comes to it - if we must strike - let me. I could not bear to have that stain on your soul."
Daemon arrives with the last rays of sunset, Caraxes shining like rubies in the dying light of the day. He is wearing no armour, carrying no sword, and wielding only his smile.
"Your Grace," he says, bowing lower than Rhaenys has ever seen of him. "And you as well, Your Highness, I am honoured that you should come all this way just for me."
"I'm sure you are, grandson," Grandfather says, rolling his eyes. "Rise, Daemon. Rise and face us, and we might give you a chance to explain to us your plan."
"The Royces are already demanding recompense," Rhaenys says. "Did you think of that, cousin? When you fled your obligations?"
Daemon has the sense to look a little shamed.
"I did not mean to insult my brother and his wife," he says, and Rhaenys believes him. Daemon has always been annoyed by Viserys, disappointed in him, but she has never doubted that the love between the brothers is sincere. "But I admit that my frustration at seeing their heir born… It perhaps drove me west sooner than Jocasta and I might have wished-"
"Jocasta Lannister?" Rhaenys asks, thinking of the plain little thing who's been among Grandmother's wards since she was barely able to walk - a plain little thing who guards herself better than the Kingsguard keep Grandfather. Interesting. She is not the bride Rhaenys might have picked for Daemon, but Lannister gold and Lannister swords would make even the plainest girl attractive, she supposes.
"Jo and I have been- I asked her to marry me almost a year ago," Daemon says, more embarrassed than shamed now. "I love her dearly, Your Grace, I swear it to you on Caraxes' life, on my lady mother's, and while this is not as we intended-"
"What do you mean, not as you intended?" Grandfather asks, eyes narrowing sharply. He leans forward just a little, one hand clenched on Blackfyre's hilt and the other balled tight before him, as if he is barely resisting the urge to slap Daemon. "You are promised in the Vale, child!"
"There has been unrest about that, Grandfather," Rhaenys says, uneasy now at the notion of Daemon having actually thought about this - there isn't another in the family as in tune with the gossip of the court as he is, with all of what Aemma calls his little birds and with his own knack for befriending all he meets, high and low. Corlys has always insisted that he is smarter than any of them give him credit for being, and while this is badly done, it is also making Rhaenys reconsider her least favourite cousin.
"Please, Grandfather," Daemon pleads. "The Vale had Aunt Daella, and now they have Viserys - they do not need me! Promise my heir to the Royces if you must, but please, Grandfather, think on this! Jo and I have acted badly, yes, but never in bad faith!"
Has Rhaenys ever seen Daemon so sincere? Has she ever seen him anything but sharp and full of fury? She does not think that she has, and that is what has her pressing her hand to Grandfather's shoulder, just as a suggestion that he pause a moment.
He sighs. Nothing more. Then he turns and walks back to his pavillion, hidden in Vermithor's shadow.
"Rhaenys," Daemon says, "I swear I did not mean harm by this-"
"They think you plan treason," she says simply. "Marrying the only daughter of the wealthiest man in the realm only gave their suspicions more weight, cousin."
"I am uneasy to be so far from the heart of things," he admits. "I have never been quiet about that. My lady mother counselled me to keep my thoughts more to myself, as did Corlys, but it was Jo that convinced me of it. She and I- We have been close a long while now, Rhaenys. Ever since Grandfather took me into his household, to keep a closer eye on me. You know how much time he spends with Grandmother, and Jo and I were ever the youngest in any company-"
Just as Rhaenys and Corlys were the most easily bored in company at Dragonstone or Driftmark, where she spent so much time with Father and with Grandmother Alyssa.
"You should have come to us."
"How could I? You all were set on my going to the Vale-"
"You should have gone to Corlys," she says. "Or to Viserys, Daemon - he loves no one save Aemma and little Rhaenyra so well as he loves you. He would do anything for you. He would have petitioned Grandfather on your behalf, and he is well loved in the Vale for his own sake and for Aemma's. He would have been your strongest ally, but now he and Aemma will think you mean harm to their daughter."
Daemon's face darkens enough to render him familiar, and there is a strange comfort in seeing the violence she knows lies in his heart return to the surface.
"I would never harm a child of Viserys'," he says, sounding insulted that anyone might think he would. "Whatever has been between us these last few years, I love my brother - even mine and Aemma's rivalry cannot change that."
What a quaint way of terming the seething hatred between Aemma and Daemon. How peculiar to see such restraint from Daemon.
"Had you not stolen the eggs," she says, "it might have been easier to believe that there was no malice in your actions. But Daemon… You must see that Grandfather must punish you somehow. "
"Let it be exile," he says, straightening his warrior's shoulders and smiling his rogue's smile. "Jo and I have already planned for that. Indeed, we've planned for that."
"I did not think you would plan on facing consequences," Rhaenys says. "You've never shown much taste for it before."
"Not for consequences, since we had planned on circumstances other than this. But we have never intended on languishing at the Rock, cousin."
"He plans," Grandfather says, slumped in the fine wooden chair that serves as his throne on campaign, "on conquering the Stepstones."
Grandmother, newly arrived from King's Landing and splendid in her shimmering silver-gold scale armour, begins to laugh.
"I don't see what's so funny, Aly!" Grandfather fumes, lurching forward to thump his fist down on the spread of maps. "A cadet branch of the House! What if his children seek advancement? What if they spread their wings westward?"
"They won't," Grandmother says, coming around to put her hands on Grandfather's shoulders - Rhaenys almost leaves then, because every touch between them is intimate and she feels intrusive. "We will plan for that, and we will be leaving the realm in good hands, silly man. Do you think Aemon and Rhaenys will allow him to endanger Laenor and his heirs? Don't be foolish."
Not very long ago, Rhaenys would have dismissed Daemon as a threat. She would have either ignored him or sought a means of ending that threat before it came to fruition, and both now sit heavy on her heart.
The Daemon who has visited with them every evening at sunset this week is not the Daemon she grew up with in King's Landing. Perhaps there is something in his insistence that Jocasta Lannister is tempering his wildness. Only time will truly tell.
"I want to meet them together," Grandmother says. "Daemon and little Jocasta - I can hardly believe that such a quiet girl had such rebellion in her!"
"You were a quiet girl," Grandfather grumbles, "except when Mother wasn't looking."
Rhaenys does leave them then, for it is nearly sunset and she wishes to warn Daemon of Grandfather's unwaveringly black mood - even Grandmother's arrival, with all her promises of a grand scheme of Father's and Barth's to appease the Royces, has not soothed him.
Vermithor is calmer though, with Silverwing grooming his flanks. It never fails to make her laugh to see the dragons mirroring their riders.
"Hello, girl," she says, leaning on Meleys' hip and sighing. "I miss the children - do you miss them too? I can't imagine you miss Corlys, not with the way you two grouse at one another, but I do. I can't remember when last I was away from him so long. I don't think I've ever been away from the children so long."
Meleys snorts, and then almost snickers, rolling one serving platter-size eye back to look at Rhaenys.
"No need to laugh at me for being moony," Rhaenys scolds her, reaching back absently to dig her fingers into the nearest wing-joint, where Meleys sometimes goes tight and sore after a long flight. " You're probably going to be moony after Caraxes if Daemon gets his way - don't think I haven't seen you two growing close, my girl."
Meleys snorts again, set alight by the setting sun, and Rhaenys leans closer. Against her better judgement, she is choosing to trust Daemon for the time being - she will have to hope for his wife's good influence, his brother's tempering his temper, her husband's strong will outlasting Daemon's foolish impulses, and more than anything, she will have to hope that Daemon will change the habits of a lifetime and show good sense.
"If we are lucky, girl," she says, "he really has changed. Or he'll die on the Stepstones without siring a son on the Lannister girl. Either way, we ought to be safe."
Once more, Meleys snorts.
"Aye," Rhaenys agrees. "It really does seem like wishful thinking, doesn't it?"