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The Almost Queen

Chapter 4

A woman with child should not attend funerals, common wisdom claimed. Rhaenys was not sure that applied to dragon ones but she was not ready to find out the hard way and Viserys did not expect her to. Before leaving, he only held his hand against her cheek and then moved it on her belly where the babe, now too big for kicking fully, moved anyway. He startled.

With a quick movement, Rhaenys held in place the hand he was about to draw back. "No," she said, recognizing his fear. "It isn't starting now. Just turning of the head."

"Ah." Viserys relaxed. "How do you know?"

"I don't."

He stayed there with his hand on her belly and the now calm babe, wonder writ on his face in the stark sunlight of the finally drawn curtains. Rhaenys looked at his bowed head and sympathy, tenderness, and regret overcame her. If she had reached out earlier, he would have gotten to know this babe almost as well as she had – and she would not have spent all those nights alone, terrified each time she had to use the privy, fearing that she would see blood on her smallclothes. Only now was she realizing that he had been feeling this same crippling fear all along.

"I must go," Viserys finally said, a long moment later. He didn't want to. Rhaenys nodded.

Awkward hush had settled down the Red Keep and Rhaenys felt it like a cloak of assessment and eagerness as she walked towards the garden for her everyday walk. Her goodmother was there, breathing the scent of the flowers in, and Rhaenys wondered if Alyssa had felt the hungry curiosity as well. It didn't happen every day for the Targaryens to lose one of the symbols of their power. And the loss of this one… She could say what a good number of the courtiers she encountered thought, that the era of Aegon the Conqueror was truly gone, making place for the era of a future king whose reign would be marked by the bad omen of losing the greatest dragon that had ever lived. Not so fast, she thought and felt a shudder of dejectedness when she realized that she had finally made her peace with the truth: her future would not be one of her own making. It would be inextricably bound up with the decisions Viserys made, his triumphs, his failures. Would he ever have any triumphs? She didn't know but she liked not to see people ask themselves the same question. We're as strong as ever, she railed. We're still dragons. But of course, she could not say it when no one had doubted it aloud. And she was now just the lady wife. The vessel.

As Balerion's skull was placed at the wall in the throne room, she looked at the double doors waiting for Viserys but he was nowhere to be seen. The first needle of worry tickled her unpleasantly and it only grew when she did not find him in his chambers. She did not know where he could be but the thought of what she might do if she lost Meleys did not let her rest. Without caring what anyone would think of her – controlling or clinging, or whatever they liked, - she sent a few servants to learn where he was. But he was not in the Red Keep and her concern increased, turning to real terror as a sudden storm blew, forcing everyone to rush for cover and howling in the great hall through all the thick walls.

"Do you not know where he is?" Alyssa asked from her place at the dais.

Rhaenys looked at her plate, feeling inexplicably guilty. "No."

"Why should she?" Baelon asked briskly. "She only has one task now and it isn't being Viserys' keeper… or guard."

Despite the brisk tone, there was worry behind his hooded eyes as well and that made Rhaenys' own fear grow. The many eyes following them from beneath the dais did not help. Did people expect that with Balerion's death, they'd all just keel over and die?

"He should have been here," Baelon said when his mother joined them and asked about Viserys.

"That's easy enough for you to say," Rhaenys cut in angrily before she could think better.

For a moment, she could have sworn that she had seen a smile on her uncle's lips before his usual sterm expression returned. Her grandmother did smile and it was such a welcome relief in the gloom reigning in the great hall, as if a great plague had wiped out the families of all people present. Rhaenys actually wondered if everyone thought that the court was in official mourning. The atmosphere certainly reminded her of those terrible first weeks after her father's death. At least then, the grief of many had been deep and true.

The babe was turning its head left and right so vigorously that she had no chance of being left to eat in peace. You don't want me to eat? she thought. Very well but you should know that then, you'd be hungry, too. Still, if she wasn't going to eat, what good would it do to stay here? She rose, made her curtsey at the King and Queen and left, followed only by a few pair of eyes. Being an expectant mother meant that no one expected of her to control her emotions, at least.

He was sitting in her solar, in the darkness, so Rhaenys only saw him when the servant maid lit the candles. She startled, gasped. "I am sorry," Viserys said quickly. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"You didn't," Rhaenys whispered. "I am so happy to see you."

She made a few steps towards him. The servant maid closed the door softly behind her. Viserys rose and came forward as the storm kept blustering.

It was obvious that he had been caught in the storm. He had not bothered to change before coming. The couch was wet where he had seen, as were his clothes. His hair stuck to his face. He looked brokenhearted and vulnerable. "I didn't have a place to go to," he said softly and Rhaenys took his hands, trying to warm them, shock and realization gripping her like a vice. He had many friends, she knew it. But none of them was dragonrider; none of them would understand. He couldn't go to his parents or even Daemon who was possessed of the casual cruelty of happy youth. His own power, his elevated position left him with no one to turn to. Just Rhaenys.

He was chained to her just as she was chained to him, and they were both chained to power, although in a different way than they had expected at the time of their wedding. Strange but this notion no longer made her resentful. Just immensely relieved that it wasn't too late. She opened her arms and he came to her, careful not to press against the babe. Still, she could feel how he melted against her. "Stay with me," she said softly, astonished at the powerful longing for this to come to pass.

He looked up with sudden wariness which sent a sharp jolt in her heart. "Why?" he asked. "Why are you doing this? Why this change all of a sudden?"

Rhaenys hesitated, suddenly uncertain what the answer was. Just last night, she had gone to him with the intention to use the situation as her chance to make things work and yet in those long hours as the sun had been rising, something had changed. Now, her actions stemmed from the heart and not head. Now, under his questioning look, she could find no answer at all. "Come here," she murmured and he took her in his arms.

"I am not planning to claim another dragon, you know," he suddenly said and she smoothed his hair.

"Hush. Don't think about that now."

"I am serious, Rhaenys. I will not change my mind."

Months later, she would wonder if he had been rehearsing for stating the same in front of his father but now, she didn't think twice of it. "Come on," she said after a while. "Let's get these wet clothes off you."

They went to her bedchamber where she helped him get out of those. He nodded at her own attire and Rhaenys hesitated, suddenly self-conscious, before she allowed him to remove her gown. He lifted her shift and for the first time saw her belly. The awe on his face took her aback. Lost in her resentment, she had forgotten just how young he was. A sudden rush of tenderness overcame her as he placed his palm against the child, flesh to flesh. The thought of Corlys came to her mind but the memory had abruptly lost its power over her. He was just a shadow of a wish that she had nurtured for a very long time, fed by its very non-fulfillment. A shadow with his own lost hopes that had never been related to her. It was her and Viserys now.

"That's what I wanted to do when your father died," he said later as in the darkness and warmth that turned Rhaenys' bed into a comfortable nest, she cradled his head.

I wish you had, Rhaenys thought. Only now was she realizing how sweet and comforting giving an embrace was. Her father had believed in making her a man in a woman's body and she was now left to wonder just how soothing being held would have been. I wish you had dared. But she knew that had he been bold enough, she would have rejected him, lost in her resentment and ignorance. "It pleases me to do so now," she finally said.

That night, she fell asleep with her back against his chest and his hand cradling her belly, only to wake up to the first faint pains announcing the arrival of her babe, and then it all turned into a whirlwind of pain, fear, and feverish hope that the child was a boy because a daughter would not become an heiress easily, not now, and the most glorious relief in the world when the child slid out of her womb, and anger when even before she was proclaimed healthy enough to leave her chambers, Daemon's betrothal to Aemma was announced…

In the wake of their wedding, three years later, Rhaenys' third child arrived. This one, too, was a girl.