120 AC, Braavos
"I told you!" Ophaella all but screamed. Her high-pitched voice was muffled by the door, but the words were still clear as bells. Daemon folded his arms across his chest, eyebrows raised and mouth twisted into a smirk. To his left Laena - who he had unceremoniously pulled from bed well before dawn when one of the servants informed him that Ophaella was spotted sneaking back in from the gardens, missing boy in tow - mirrored his posture. "I told you, Aemond!"
"Stop shouting at me," Aemond said back, his own voice louder than necessary.
"We should not eavesdrop," Laena whispered.
"We are doing out duty as parents and guardians, seeking to ensure that the boy is safe and the girl is well."
"Is that what we are doing now, seeing to our duties?"
"Haven't we always?" Daemon said, unable to not smirk at the way Laena was looking back at him.
"In a manner of speaking," She agreed, smiling back at him.
Despite the mirth in her voice, Daemon could tell she was not truly as unconcerned as he was. Just from the darkness under her eyes and the way her normally immaculate curls were thrown back and pull tight into a knot at the nape of her neck. She was still dressed for bed, but he did not think she had slept any more than he had.
Though he thought, perhaps, that he hid it better than she did.
But then again, he thought he hid a lot of things better than she did.
If she only knew the depths of his entanglement with the Sealord, the lingering debts he would owe. For every day they stayed under his roof was another stone added to the scales. Perhaps he should simply kill him and be done with it. He had already overseen the transition from one Sealord to the next by writ of the sword. It mattered little to him to do so again.
But something stayed his hand.
Something at the back of his mind that kept him from following through.
It was a foreign thing, he realized, to be so frozen with fear from what could happen to his daughter if he did nothing. It was equally foreign to him to be just as fearful for what could happen if he did. Its intractable nature snuck up on him, just as his care for the little girl had, and now he was left wanting, grasping, fighting to find some sort of solution before it was too late.
Before he contracted himself and his only heir into treason.
Before he committed his daughter to a betrayal that was not hers, for a house that she sat on the periphery of, and for rifts that were not hers to mend.
"We will go back today. Just after breakfast."
"No!" Aemond shouted back, a touch more panicked than before. "It's not your business."
"Of course it is! I'll claw his eyes out for what he did."
Something slammed down on the other side of the door, something distinctly metal and sharp sounding. Laena moved to open the door, mouth popping open as her amusement turned to concern, before Daemon stopped her with a hand on her stomach.
"They have fought before," Laena said after a prolonged silence. "But this sounds different. She sounds angry. She sounds like…"
"Rhea Royce."
A scarier prospect, Daemon could scarcely imagine.
"You just had to go seek him out." Ophaella shouted even louder now. "And now look. Oh wait, you cannot not because he took your eyes."
Daemon and Laena pushed off the wall next to the door in tandem, smiles faltering as their playful banter melted away. Daemon threw the door open with a flourish, Laena hurrying in behind him.
The room was the sort of scene of chaos that Daemon had come to expect from the two ten year old terrors. Books strew about, clothing riffled through with abandon, a fast burning fire that choked all the chill from the room and turned into a furnace.
And in the middle by the fire, Ophaella stood with her arms cross and her face set into a glare.
Across the room, Aemond stood with her back to them, still dressed in whatever he had been wearing the night before. His normally pristine white hair was caked with dirt and grime, matching the same stains that spread up and down his back. Like he had been pushed. Like something had laid their hands on him. Despite how angry Ophaella currently was, Daemon had little cause to believe it was her.
"Aemond, what happened?" Laena rushed into the room, pausing long enough to run her hands over the top of Ophaella's head, before she grabbed Aemond by the shoulders and turned him round. "Aemond…"
"It is nothi-," Aemond started, only to be cut off by Laena grabbing him roughly by the cheeks and letting out a startled moan.
"You are blind!"
Daemon stood up straight.
"Only temporarily."
"Temporarily? What do you mean only temporarily?" Laena squeezed his cheeks tighter, causing them to practically block out his eyes and she continued to panic.
Daemon closed the door behind him and crossed his arms over his chest, content, for the time being, to let the little dance play out in front of him.
"It was that man," Ophaella said, keeping her place next to the fire, though she did seem to soften ever so slightly now that she was not alone in the room with him. Perhaps relieved that there was someone else to be alarmed. That there was someone else to panic right along with her.
"Man? What man? What have the two of you been doing?"
Despite his commitment to remaining neutral in this whole affair, Daemon could not deny that he was more than a little curious as well. He was fully aware that he had allowed them to run feral, just as he was fully aware that as the Sealord laid more claim to his time, Aemond had begun to look to other sources. He had assumed if there was problem, Aemond would come to him. But then again, perhaps he had overestimated the boy's trust in him.
Perhaps he had overestimated what superficial training could do for a squire-knight relationship.
Or a father-son.
Daemon scowled.
"No one," Aemond insisted, trying to pull himself out of Laena's grasp only to have her grip him even tighter.
"He will not even let me try to fix it," Ophaella said. "He knows I can."
"I do not want you to, Aella," Aemond said, finally managing to extract himself from Laena for just the briefest moments before the woman grabbed him again and practically shoved his face into her stomach. "I want to do it for myself. I am not scared."
"You should be!" Ophaella practically snarled. "He took your eyes."
"He borrowed my eyes."
The fire poker sailed across the room just a moment after Aemond finished speaking, still red hot from where it had been abandoned in the flames in pursuit of far more important things. Such as hitting the boy. She let out a cry of pain as she touched the metal too close to the part that had sat in the fire, too concerned with smacking Aemond with it to let that stop her. It slammed to the ground right next to Aemond, sparks flying.
Infernal little beasts.
But they had their moments and Daemon could not help but smile at the action just as Laena began to look truly horrified.
"Enough of this, both of you," Laena tried, looking to Daemon for some sort of support.
Truly, he did not think it was so terrible. The eyes still sat in the boy's head. Milky, but intact. If the Aemond felt no great cause for concern, the neither would Daemon. But there was something else - something of far greater concern - that drew his attention. Daemon's gaze fixed firmly on Ophaella, trailingover her form, cataloging every little detail he could, before he settled on the clotted cut on her palm and the grime on her hands.
"How can you fix it?" Daemon asked, finally forcing himself into the conversation with words rather than simply observing the chaos, if a menagerie of high pitched shouts could ever be described as such. His head was beginning to ache and his patience begged for the sweet release of a resolution.
But he would take this over yet another conversation a thousand times over. He would take sitting in a room alone with the three of them, silence their only companion. He would take a night by the fire with Laena, a day spent on dragonback with Ophaella, a fortnight on the tiltyard with Aemond.
He would take his wedding night with Rhea.
All to save him from his own slow moving torture.
A torture of his own making, no doubt, but a torture all the same.
"I do not want her to fix it," Aemond yelled back, hands scrabbling to find the poker before he found purchase.
His palm closed over the red metal.
"Aemond, wa-"
Aemond lobbed it across the room.
If Daemon had not been so preoccupied with his concern for the state of the boy's palm, he might have laughed out loud. For he might still have his strength sans eye sight, but he certainly did not have his aim. But this was all too serious for that and he did not fancy drawing the ire of all three in the room when it was directly so nicely at Aemond.
"Let me see your hands."
"They do not hurt."
"That poker was red hot, Aemond."
"And I am unhurt." He punctuated each word as he finally managed to pull away from Laena entirely. "I am without my eyes only as long as it takes me to learn to see."
"Seven take me, the boy is delirious."
"Oh Laena there is no need to be dramatic." If Aemond could actually make eye contact with him at the moment, Daemon thought he might endeavor to do so at that moment. Instead his turned his head in his general direction, unseeing eyes practically imploring him to do more. To keep Laena from continuing to build up to what Daemon distinctly thought might border on hysterics soon. "The boy seems confident. Why should we not trust him?"
"Because he is ten," Laena said, turning to face Daemon with all the furry of her mother and father combined into one.
"And so is Ophaella, and yet that does seem to stave your hand. Do not think I have not noticed the new cut on her palm."
Laena fell silent at that.
Well and truly caught.
To her credit, however, she did not bother play at being ashamed. Instead she held her head high, chin jutting out as she jaw worked over all the words she likely would have liked to say.
But for once, she was speechless.
Daemon smirked.
And when she turned her anger on him for his audacity, he smiled fully.
"Do not look at me as such, Daemon Targaryen. This is not about Ophaella."
"It certainly always seems to be," Aemond muttered, earning himself a mighty glare from the girl in question.
Daemon and Laena shared another look before they glanced between the children. They had fought before, childish little imps that they were, but this had a certain bite to it. It had a certain seriousness that caused Daemon's amusement to melt like early summer snow. He knew he had grown neglectful of the boy, knew that he had turned into someone no better than Viserys in that regard, but his own stupidity had forced his hand.
He never should have taken that first meal with the Sealord.
Never should have opened them all up to the knife that current sat balanced precariously above all their throats.
"Tell me, did the four of you intend to wake the entire palace this morning, or is the normal nature of your conversations?"
The four of them turned towards the door in tandem.
"Father."
"Lord Corlys." Daemon and Laena spoke at the same time. Laena shot him another look as she crossed the space, conveniently stepping in front of Aemond to block him from view. But the impertinent little shit leaned sideways and Corlys, never the sort to be distracted by a sweet face and open arms, focused on the boy's unseeing eyes in only half a moment.
Aemond had the audacity to wave.
And Daemon could do nothing but groan.
"You blinded the boy?"
"Shhhh," Laena made to quiet him. Corlys turned his back to her only long enough to slam the door shut behind him and lock it with a flourish. "We did not blind him."
"Well you bloody well better know who did," Corlys said, crossing to the middle of the room. He stared down both Daemon and Laena, as if this were their fault, and Daemon felt thoroughly scolded for the first time in decades. He had not been levied with that sort of look since his own father died. As permissive as he had been, Baelon had sought, for a time, to steer his sons down a more structured path than the one that he had walked. Daemon wished he could say he had succeeded.
Perhaps he would not have so obviously walked into this spider's web.
"Did I not tell you less than a day's past to keep the boy safe? Did I not?"
"You did. You're a prophet."
"And did I not tell you what Otto Hightower would do?"
"Father, we-"
"No. Did I not warn of what would happen if you lost your leverage?"
"The Hightowers never need to know of this. If the boy would but tell us," Laena turned, gesturing to them empty air where Aemond had just been standing. "Where did he go?"
"Shit."
"You knew Aemond to be Unburnt."
Daemon did not look away from the House of Black and White for long, though he did spare a sideways glance at Ophaella. She was certainly in a mood today, that much was a plainly obvious as the button nose on her face. That feature of hers was not Targaryen, but he had not bothered to observe a Royce – certainly not the one he had married – long enough to know for certain.
But he thought it too fine a feature to belong to that battleaxe.
Perhaps it was a holdover from her Arryn grandmother.
"I did," She said after a long moment, forcing him back to the conversation at present.
"And that this is where he was going in the city all this time?"
"I did."
"And you had not thought to tell me?"
"I had thought to keep his secrets just as he has kept mine." She folded her arms across her chest. The sun was high in the sky now and her pale skin had turned pink just as sweat bloomed across her brow. Daemon pulled a small cloth from his belt and dipped into the water that lapped at their boat. He set it atop her head, only after wringing it of excess water, and waited for her to continue speaking for he knew she had much more to say on the matter. "But I do not trust the man who he has taken to be his new master in your absence."
Daemon pointedly ignored the last part.
"Describe him."
"Old."
"Old old, or old such as me," Daemon asked, smiling at the way her cheeks scrunched up.
"Older than me, but not as old as you, I do not think," She said, seeming to think the question over for a moment before she spoke. "He is an assassin."
"I should hope so, if he is working in that House."
"You know of it?" She turned so fast to face him, it rocked the boat. Daemon threw out his arms to steady the sides, rolling his eyes.
"Do you think your father so green?"
"No." She turned back to look at the house, eyes narrowing. "I assumed you did not care to know."
"Ah. Perhaps, for a time. But it is always the wiser course to know a great many things and be an expert in none. I know of these Faceless Men and the god they serve. They are not wanton in their destruction and their lessons are not without purpose."
"Then he can get his eyesight back?" Ophaella asked, drawing her hands together in her lap.
"Without your interventions?"
"I should have told you," She said, though Daemon ignored her in favor of reaching his hand out to grab her own. He flipped it over, holding it out of his shadow to get a better look at it in the high afternoon sun.
"This one, what is it for?" He ran his finger over the freshly scabbed cut, careful to avoid irritating the already damaged skin. "Something important, I hope."
"I tried to save a bird."
"So utmost importance, then," Daemon said, keeping hold of the hand. Perhaps it was the sun, cooking his senses and addling his brain, but he felt just the slightest bit freer out here. It was just the two of them after all and he did not think she was the sort to go and gossip.
And what would she say.
That he was a caring and attentive father?
Daemon had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud at the very idea. Still, he kept hold of her hand and tried not feel the way his heart clenched at the very idea that his daughter would use her infernal gifts for something as trivial as keeping a bird alive. From the way her face fell, it did not seem to work. He endeavored to try even harder to ignore the way his heart clenched tighter at her sadness for that fact.
"It worked. For a time."
"What?"
"The bird. It lived again. But it died in my hands."
"And this is something Laena taught you?" Daemon tried to keep his voice deceptively calm, to hide the sudden panic that had bloomed in his chest. It replaced his affection so wholly it almost made his heart skip several beats.
"She said my mother could do it. I had thought to give it a try."
"And what did you have to give?"
"Nothing."
"Ophaella," Daemon said, gripping her hand tightly when she tried to pull it back. "You always have to give something. Always."
"I thought a bit of blood was a fair enough trade."
"Have I so neglected you that you believe you hold so little value?" Daemon squeezed her hand tighter, unsure of for whose benefit it served. "That you would reveal yourself for something as inconsequential as a bird?"
"It was hurt and I wanted to help."
"And now you have hurt yourself in return and the bird is still dead."
Ophaella finally wrenched her hand back, turning to face him in full. She was still such a little thing – doomed to be petite her whole life, he feared for her – but when she glared up at him she seemed to double in size.
"My gifts are why I have a dragon. They are why you are not dead and why Aemond knows he can still get his eyes back, even if this assassin will not give them. You want me to fear them and Laena wants me to embrace them and Aemond wants to pretend like he does not resent me for them all the while he throws his lot in with assassins and has gifts of his own. Does no one have a care for what I want to do with them? Does not no one stop to think that I cannot not use them?"
"Ophaella-"
"No! I know I have shamed you in more ways than one. I know I am not a son and that I remind you too much of a woman you hated and that you would rather I be a dragon and nothing more, but I cannot stop."
Daemon was certain there were very few times in his life he had felt worse than he did at that moment. Perhaps if he had a care to realize that his only child had felt like this, he might have known what to say. Instead he simply stared down at her dumbly, mouth slightly agape as he watched her face transition from anger to acceptance to the worst sort of disappointment he could imagine.
But he could also scarcely imagine how he was meant to fix it.
Mess of untangleable knots, and what not.
He knew, however, that he should endeavor to do so. To whatever end.
"I am not ashamed of you."
He could tell from the way she looked away that she did not believe him, but the words continued to spill from him all the same.
"I will not deny that I cared nothing for your mother. It is rare indeed for a man to love a woman who would never love him back. Even rarer still for a man to love a woman that prefers the company of other women," He paused, wondering if he was sharing too much, but unable to stop himself now that he had really started. Perhaps it was a residual madness from his own swirling mistakes or perhaps he simply had grown tired of the invisible wall that seemed to have grown between himself and the only person in the world that was truly of him that did not stay his tongue. Certainly he belonged to a house – a proud house that he would claim with his dying breath – but Ophaella was his line.
She would inherit all that he had.
And he had utterly failed her in that regard.
"But I cannot find it within myself to regret our brief union. I will not lie to you and pretend I was excited when I received news of your birth and I regret how long it took me to come and see you for myself." He was thankful when she looked away from him, feeling the tightness in his chest giving way just a touch. It would be easier to say if he was not staring into her impossible amber eyes. "But, you have made me proud every day since."
Her thought he heard her sniff.
He trudged forward. He would say it now or never at all and then they would be done with this terrible, horrible business.
"I have no need for a son. I have you."
He hoped it was enough -hoped she did not demand more of him than he could give and did not go looking for words that he could not say.
Looking for the love that should be easy to admit to.
But he was saved from himself by the boy.
He appeared from the inside of the house accompanied by a man dressed head to toe in simple gray cloth. Aemond's white hair stood out like a star against a black sky and Ophaella immediately squirmed in place.
"That is him."
"I gathered."
"Are you going to do something?"
"Do you think he should like me to?" Daemon asked, thankful that the boy seemed to cause Ophaella to forget entirely what they had been talking about a moment before. "Or do you think he will place the blame on you? After all, it is you who showed me this place even after he worked so hard to sneak out while blind and it is you who has pointed out his new master."
"He will blame me regardless."
"You would rather see him safe than see him succeed. And you have the audacity to wonder why he might have grown to resent you? Do you also parade about your dragon in front of him? What of your ability to see through the stones? Or the two parents you have that seemed concerned enough to flee a nation to keep you safe, while he has ones that gave him leave to be whisked away?"
"No. He is my best friend. I do not want anything bad to happen to him."
"He is family." Daemon watched her face, curious despite himself to see why she drew such a distinction. "Does that not matter more?"
"I have plenty of family. I have only one friend. That matters more."
"So it would seem. The facts remain, Ophaella. He has chosen his own path and it is not your place to dictate how he walks down it any more than it is his place to dictate yours. Perhaps, if the gods are kind, your paths will remain together."
"And if it robs him of his eyesight?"
"Then he will need his friend more than ever." Daemon placed his hand on her shoulder, tearing her attention away from the boy just as he got into his own boat, the strange man moving at a slower pace behind him. "Come. I had thought we would do something better today."
"Such as?"
"Caraxes has missed you. I would go for a flight with my daughter before she decides she is too old for such things."
"I promise I will not if you can say the same."
"I promise," He finally said, able to give her that, at the very least, even if he could not give her everything else.
Perhaps he would make it up to her one day.
Perhaps he would leave her a kingdom, if he would not give her his love.
But he remained loyal to the King.
He could not help but wonder, however, if it had finally come time for the Sealord to ask him his question again.