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aboutdragons · 2 months

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the thing about dragons - chapter six

in which Viserys continues being the family disappointment.

Dialogues in quotation marks are in Common Westron, in angle brackets in High Valyrian, in square brackets for other. Thoughts, emotions and emphasis are in italics.

Cross-posted on

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43121373/chapters/108369012

Scribblehub: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/699684/the-thing-about-dragons/

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Read the Summary, Tags & Warnings as linked on the page to know what to expect.

warnings: Daemon Targaryen, Otto Hightower, Viserys Targaryen, allusions to statutory SA, blood magic, small children doing small children things

wordcount: 10,862

Read the chapter under the cut.

Daemon kills Crabfeeder, as a treat. Just because, really; Viserys doesn’t send any letters about sending reinforcements that send him into a rage, because between three dragons and Dornish allies, Daemon and Corlys are doing fine. More than fine, even. And the last time Viserys tried to interfere more significantly, Lyra did what she did and he didn’t seem to be over it even years after, still reeling from the fact that real world did not, in fact, work the way he expected it to. Of course, Lyra held no illusions that the issue actually taught Viserys anything, but his current careful distance was appreciated, whether it stemmed from genuine understanding or confusion over people not reacting exactly the way he wanted them to.

Still, when Daemon comes back covered head-to-toe in blood infected with grayscale, Lyra all but throws him in a vat of near-boiling soapy water and doesn’t let him out until she deems him acceptably clean of the infected blood, and then has his wounds and nicks disinfected for good measure.

Thanks to their dragon blood, Targaryens were less prone to getting sick than regular people and more prone to recover quickly, but Daemon’s aunt Maegelle died two years before Lyra was born of this very affliction, and Lyra wasn’t taking any chances if she could help it. And sure, Maegelle didn’t have a dragon boosting her physical health through the bond, but Maegelle also caught the disease through simply caring for the sick; Daemon likely got infected blood in open wounds, and with a line this direct Lyra was taking no chances. Even if he bitched about the soap and pure alcohol stinging.

She even saves his hair form the blood and grime taking to staining the white all too eagerly, and sure some of it is beyond saving and has to go, but more than enough is left to weave into Valyrian braids, gold clasps and whalebone pins Lyra carved herself included.

It’s the victory one, and Daemon preens. Both for what it signifies, and because Lyra can braid it exactly the way it’s supposed to be. But then again, she learned from the best.

(Ancalagon liked his diet whale-rich, and Lyra oftentimes had more whalebone than she knew what to do with; she wore no corsets or petticoats, and even if she did, she could only get so many made before it got ridiculous. Instead, she sold the whalebone to Corlys for mostly-cheap, as people on Driftmark could always use some. She liked having pocket money, and the way Corlys looked at her warily impressed was equal parts amusing and insulting. Was the bar really so low?)

But all good things have to come to an end eventually, and the War for the Stepstones does too, a little over three years early. Not with Daemon’s return upon the news of his wife’s death, but with the Triarchy being chased out by the combined might of the Velaryon and Dornish fleets and three grown dragons.

Rhea Royce isn’t even dead, and now that the divorce has taken effect Lyra hopes she lives a good, long life. She has no hard feelings for the woman; she just doesn’t want to see her again, and she knows her sentiments are much returned.

Or maybe she was just used to her first set of parents being openly disdainful of her instead of politely disinterested unless startled. The kind where she actively cut contact the moment she no longer depended on them for basic survival.

○

King’s Landing stinks as it stank when she first arrived here years ago for Viserys’ coronation, with rot of garbage and human waste alike. It’s horrid, and even with Jaehaerys’ work on the waterways they only ever benefitted the rich and privileged in the upper town, leaving the smallfolk to wade in their own filth because the Conqueror couldn’t have gotten a functioning city built to save his life, and his sons were certainly more interested in being an utter failure and a tyrannical fuckup respectively.

They land just outside the city, on the plains, Ancalagon and Caraxes both. Ancalagon would neither fit in the Dragonpit—and Lyra would never make him go there besides, to be chained in a cell too-small even for a dragon half his size instead of being able to at least burrow his own hole in a cliffside somewhere—nor would Lyra want him in such close proximity to other dragons, all of them smaller than him. That was just inviting trouble. Daemon doesn’t want to leave her to wander the city by herself, of course, and there’s little issue leaving Caraxes outside as well. He and Ancalagon at least won’t try to kill each other. They’ll likely roost somewhere on the cliff-face of Blackwater Bay, under the Red Keep.

By the time they get off their dragons and get all their things off their dragons, and it takes several trips on both ends, there’s a simple carriage waiting for them at the gate, flanked by Gold Cloaks. She sees Harwin first, with a well-groomed beard doing nothing to hide his grin, and the last of the baby fat gone since she last seen him. He’s filled out, she can see, lanky gait gone. Corren is a little harder to spot, his ginger mop hidden under the guard helmet, but she knows what to look for. The rest of them are less-familiar faces but she recognizes them still as having seen them in passing at least, and Daemon greets each like an old friend, with a clap on the back and by name.

He made them what they are now, and they are loyal to him even now. Will be still, nearly twenty years from now when Viserys’ short-sighted decisions catch up to everyone but him after he dies and leaves an utter clusterfuck of a succession crisis in his wake that would have been so easy to fix for him either which way, if he wasn’t a fool blinded to reality by the world he wanted to see.

Lyra can already feel the noose tightening around her neck, and it’s shaped an awful lot like her uncle’s hands.

○

They get to Red Keep without all that much fanfare past the excitement Ancalagon’s presence generates, and Daemon doesn’t do the whole song and dance with swearing allegiance to Viserys. He’s no King of the Narrow Sea this time around, and he’s not looking for his brother’s approval that much either. Not anymore, at least.

They reconcile anyway, a hug, a kiss to the cheek, a promise of good behaviour that everyone but Viserys knows Daemon won’t keep for long.

His wilful ignorance is a comfortable one sometimes but it makes Lyra seethe all the same, because this very wilful ignorance that serves them well right now is one of the major causes of the Dance less than twenty years from now.

If only he gave enough a shit to raise Rhaenyra’s popularity; if only he had her educated to rule; if only he put his foot down in the matter of securing a politically useful marriage for her, or at the very least a husband that would somewhat uphold her. If only he opened his fucking eyes and did something, anything, instead of saying a thing and closing his eyes pretending that made it real, no actual elbow grease necessary.

If only she could tell Viserys about the future, if only she could steer him towards a better ending without the very real and very terrifying risk of everything going so much worse through his meddling, and causing new disasters she couldn’t see and prepare for.

If only, if only, if only.

The only thing she can trust Viserys to do is to make everything worse, as always. He has claimed to love Aemma after all, and he had her butchered alive anyway. He doesn’t give half a shit about Alicent in comparison, or her children, and Lyra is certainly not willing to risk whatever Viserys would do with the knowledge she has and his absolute conviction that Rhaenyra will be queen just because he says so, without actually preparing her to rule.

(This can only end in disaster. Even if she assumes rule peacefully, she won’t know what to do if nobody teaches her. And nobody can teach her how to rule the country except the gods-damned king.)

She gives her best close-lipped smile as she claps and congratulates her king of an uncle and his wayward brother of her father on their reconciliation, though she doesn’t mean a word of it.

They only just got back, after all. Give them a few months before they make themselves unpalatable enough to Viserys’ sensibilities to have to leave. Unless Viserys does something so supremely stupid that they have to hoof it before then, of course.

He’s bound to do something stupid enough to piss them off himself sometime; he always does. But until then she smiles and curtsies and pointedly ignores the jabs the courtiers make about her wearing pants and looking like a boy, as if it’s a moral failing on Daemon’s part and she didn’t just spend several years in a warzone where court-appropriate dresses were a little hard to come by.

○

Alicent is awkward when they meet in person; a little startled, a little worried, and barely twenty this year. Thinner, her hair duller and her eyes have aged at least twenty years in the span of the past six; she doesn’t look particularly healthy, though she doesn’t look unhealthy either. There’s little happiness in those aged eyes, and her fingers are scabbed over in places, clearly picked at.

They run into each other half by chance and half by design on the hallway. Lyra has been on her way to do just that.

It’s a little startling to realize that they’re on eye-level now, though, because Lyra is thirteen and in the middle of a growth spurt that’s doing numbers on her bones and rapidly shrinking her clothing selection, and Alicent is now an adult done growing.

Before she left, after Aemma’s death, they were at best passing associates; her cousin’s best friend, exchanging greetings when they ran into each other as was polite, and little else, and Lyra barely reached Alicent’s bony elbows with the top of her head.

“Hi,” Lyra says with a small wave.

“Hello,” Alicent says and takes a breath, straightens her spine, folds her hands daintily in front; a posture more befitting of queen. It suits her. “I see you have returned from Stepstones. It gladdens me to see you well.”

Lyra smiles. “I am glad to see you as well,” she says. “Though you do look tired.”

Alicent sighs, a little self-consciously. “I… Am, somewhat,” she admits. “It is, they tell me, the lot of all mothers of young babes. Scarcely time to rest.”

There’s something in her voice, a tinge of displeasure at having young babes at all, that Lyra catches before it’s gone. She can’t blame Alicent for it at all, even if she knows this resentment will cause issues for her children down the line, too; a vicious cycle of abuse and neglect, begotten from a rape of a child.

No wonder Alicent’s children would turn out fucked up if she’s already like this, and between Viserys who can’t give half a fuck and Otto who does nothing but scheme for power and Rhaenyra who refuses to understand, she doesn’t really have anybody.

“I can’t tell, I’ve not been around small children… At all, really,” Lyra says, a little awkwardly. “They’re hardly the company I keep.”

“You will eventually,” Alicent says with a small smile. “They are tiring, but they are a blessing.”

She’s clearly trying to sell it to Lyra now, as she’s been taught by the society to. To soften the blow to her friend, no doubt; it comes from a kind place.

Still, Lyra wants to say that it’s beyond unlikely to happen. Her manufactured homunculus body is incapable of growing life, after all. Not without copious amounts of blood magic, and only once in its entire lifetime.

Instead she just shrugs. “We shall see,” she says. “First I’ll need to find someone crazy enough to withstand both myself and my father, and comely enough so that my father doesn’t cut him down for sport.”

Alicent gives a startled giggle. “Oh dear. He would, wouldn’t he?”

“He killed for far less.”

Alicent opens her mouth to say something, but they’re interrupted by a maid. Alicent, apparently, was on her way to the nursery; when Lyra held her up, the maids got worried, and came to fetch her.

Lyra catches the minute grimace Alicent makes. Split-second decision later, she’s opening her mouth.

“I can go with you, if you don’t mind,” she says quickly. “I’ve not yet met my younger cousins, after all.”

Alicent smiles. “In that case, let us hurry.”

○

It’s only when Lyra enters the nursery that she realizes she may have miscalculated a little.

Or a lot, actually.

Truth is, Lyra was never overly good with children, or all that comfortable with them, in either life. And so, when tiny Helaena in a puffy yellow dress toddles to her and latches onto her leg with zero warning, all Lyra really knows to do is freeze up, and look around panicked for help.

Alicent, some friend she is, laughs at her and makes no move to help at all, whatever sort of help Lyra hopes for; unlatch the toddler, ideally. Because those things are loud, and slobbery, and fragile, and she has no idea what to do.

Helaena reaches her grubby arms up and hops a little against her leg, and for a moment all Lyra does is just stare. The toddler is entirely undeterred, though; and eventually, slowly and carefully, Lyra bends down, puts her hands under Helaena’s arms, picks up the child, and examines the creature.

She’s not very heavy, for how chubby she looks, but she already has a worrying number of toddler-sharp teeth she’s undoubtedly plotting to put on nearest unidentified object, which just so happens to be Lyra herself right now. Helaena is certainly already making grabby hands at Lyra’s braids, barred from painful tugs by the distance alone.

“That is new,” Alicent says, amazement in her voice.

“What is?” Lyra asks, momentarily distracted. Helaena uses the momentary distraction as Lyra bends her elbows and, finally able to reach, grabs one of her braids and tugs on it as hard as a toddler can. “Fucking ow—! Ow, no, bad toddler, let go—”

Alicent lets out a startled giggle as Lyra grabs under Helaena’s legs with one hand for support and tries to unlatch the grabby hands finger by finger from her braids with the other, with only some success.

“Helaena hates being touched,” Alicent admits. “Will more often than not cry when approached at all. Certainly, she has never approached anyone herself before, not to my knowledge.”

Lyra looks at the giggling menace and narrows her eyes a little. Helaena only beams in answer, violet eyes twinkling, as if grabbing a scowling teenager by the hair is the best thing ever.

For a toddler, it might just be.

“Skill issue,” Lyra says and brings Helaena to her chest, hoisting her up and putting one hand on her back for support, like she does with Snickerdoodle. It doesn’t turn on any waterworks, so she figures it is as good a method as any.

Still, she’d much rather be holding an actual cat right now. A cat wouldn’t hold her hair hostage. Maybe gnaw on it, but not try to rip braids out of her skull.

“Skill—what?”

Lyra only grins at Alicent’s questioning look.

They talk some more after that, about everything and nothing and benign fun little things, and it’s not bad; except Alicent lulls Lyra into a false sense of security, and next thing Lyra knows more small children are being put in her immediate vicinity.

And Aemond, though he has less teeth than Helaena, is significantly keener on using them, much to Aegon’s unrestrained giggles as Lyra yelps and locks her elbow in place as she fights the urge to swing her arm and shake the cause of hurt off it very, very hard.

Getting him off, when he clearly means to bite to blood and refuses to latch off, is more difficult than it should be. Snickerdoodle would never be this problematic.

She takes everything back; she hates it here.

○

Daemon finds them eventually, sometime after. Alicent is serenely embroidering a shirt for Aegon using a moment of peace, and Lyra covered in sleeping toddlers who couldn’t care less at how she stiffened whenever a small human appeared within five feet of her and showed any interest in her, and tugged at her braids, and bit her hands for sport.

At least she managed to put her braids up in a bun, out of reach for too-curious pudgy hands, but soon enough had to resign herself to be climbed, slobbered on, thrice bitten, and eventually napped on by two of three of them when the spawns tired themselves out after using as a glorified jungle gym. She’s not sure if they’re actually asleep or just resting before the next round of chaos, but she takes her peace where she can get it.

She can’t feel her legs, but at least all she has to do now is sit still instead of minding where each spawn is, what it is doing, and if it’s not eating something it really shouldn’t.

Like her hair. Or her hands. Or her shirt. Or the legs of the chair Alicent is sitting on. Aemond made it rather clear he has energy to spare unlike his elders.

Daemon is fair game the moment he enters, too. Fairest game of all, perhaps, as far as Aemond is concerned. He has no fear and teeth to sharpen, and his uncle’s leather boots apparently look tastier than his mother’s chair.

Daemon is having none of this of course. He scoops the toddler up in a well-practiced move, heedless of the way it makes Alicent tense, and looks him in the eyes.

“You sure do remind me of someone, nephew, though your eyes are far brighter,” he muses, eyes sliding to Lyra. Aemond gives him a grin; given that it’s the first time he sees his uncle, it’s a pretty good reaction. Lyra meanwhile bristles.

“I did not bite everything my teeth could reach!”

“No, but you loved to cause trouble,” Daemon says, putting the toddler in the crook of his arm and against his chest comfortably, effortlessly instinctual. Aemond settles almost instantly, as comfortable as one gets. “Not that much has changed since then.”

“I was unaware the Rogue Prince had such a way with children,” Alicent says, a little strained. Daemon looks at her, then back down at Aemond.

“It’s not hard,” he says. “You just pick them up and keep them interested. It worked before, why not now?”

Lyra can almost hear what Alicent wants to say in response to that.

“I suppose it is a gift not all men possess ,” Alicent says instead, and it’s close enough.

“It’s not a gift, it’s a skill,” Deamon says, focused on his mesmerized nephew and either none-the-wiser or wilfully ignoring of the jab hanging between them directed at his brother. “Some men are simply not inclined to learning the simplest of skills.”

Nevermind, he got it. Him talking shit about Viserys in court-speak is a new one, though.

He gives a startled Alicent a cheeky smirk and proceeds to entertain Aemond without making a single move to free Lyra of the rest of the toddlers.

What a menace, that father of hers.

“I thought you’d have gone to spent some time with Rhaenyra,” Alicent says eventually, carefully.

“She’s not my only niece,” Daemon says, half-dismissive. “And young women tend to be cantankerous in ways I’m in no mood to entertain for long besides. Not this soon off the road, anyway.”

“That might well be me in a few years, too,” Lyra reminds him.

“I have my doubts,” Daemon says. “And even if, you’re mine. I made you and I named you, and now you're my responsibility. Rhaenyra isn't.”

“If you say so.”

Alicent looks between them wistfully, with a twinge of jealousy she can't quite hide. She feels it on both fronts, Lyra can tell, as both a daughter of a father who put his greed over her wellbeing, and the wife of an absent, deeply mediocre man hung up on a ghost of the woman he murdered, forcing children upon her but never truly taking responsibility.

What-if s can be an insidious game.

But at least Alicent relaxes and returns to her embroidery, only glancing at them every so often, and less surprised each time.

○

With Lyra as a buffer, Daemon is much more receptive to his newest niblings. He likes them, she thinks. With time, he learns to visit them just by himself, without following her to the nursery. Alicent relaxes in his presence, too.

He’s good with children, after all. Engages them easily, knows what he’s doing. He managed to raise Lyra successfully and in some ways she was worse than a normal toddler, living with a half-remembered life constantly hanging over her that her developing child lizard brain couldn’t compute.

Surprisingly enough, it’s Aegon who latches onto him, almost desperately. It might just be the first time he has something remotely resembling a father figure; and a child of four starts to notice the cracks of a broken home in full. Lyra would know. She had, in her first life.

Helaena clings to Lyra mostly, and Lyra notices all the more how uncomfortable the girl is with literally everybody else. She’ll cry, and run, and if desperate enough, even bite a particularly dedicated nursemaid. Poor woman’s just trying to do her job.

Daemon comes a close enough tolerable second to be of use in an emergency at least, but he's on thin ice. Alicent is barely tolerated, even with Lyra mediating. Lyra isn't exactly sure why it's like this.

Aemond meanwhile is happy to hog his mother’s attention, now that his siblings consistently target other people, and Alicent herself is quite content with this arrangement. For the first time in forever she’s getting actual help with her children; nannies and nursemaids try their best, but they’re too human to properly care for those children in the end. Their bodies are too cold, they don’t purr, they don’t get the little lizard-adjacent tells that Targaryens do by instinct alone, and in the absence of Viserys, Daemon simply steps in. It's easy for him.

They calm down, Alicent claims, almost overnight. It’s as if something settles in them, now that they no longer feel so alone and disassociated among the non magical people without the first clue on what to do. It does weird Alicent out, though. It’s more like she tolerates Daemon’s presence than anything, especially when he purrs and chirps at them, and they respond in kind.

It’s difficult for Alicent to wrap her head around her children not being truly human, and needing different care than that, even if she means well. Forcing them into human boxes will never do anything but backfire, potentially horribly, and it’s giving Lyra flashbacks to her first life and her parents never putting any effort into understanding her own neurodivergent struggles and sending her into the world with a nice box of issues and trauma that not even reincarnation could fix because they refused to read a diagnosis, let alone understand it.

She’s better, though. Because she gets it, and even if Daemon doesn’t, he tries his best to be accommodating. Being magic elf-coded lizardpeople also helps. Is this why neurodivergent people were compared to fey in ye olden times? Because being weird sure is easier if your immediate family is just like you, and it weirds others out.

The children like music, too. Lyra has to keep her guitar from getting trampled on, but once she starts playing, they sit and listen and don't cause her much trouble.

Same can’t be said about poor Snickerdoodle. Lyra brings the cat to the nursery exactly once, and he spends most of his stay on the top of the wardrobe after Aemond tries to eat his tail.

The one person who is very unhappy with the whole situation is of course Rhaenyra. She expected Daemon to join her in complaining about her siblings, and instead, he shuts it down rather quickly. Reminds her that Alicent didn’t want to marry her father, and her siblings didn’t choose to be born, and that she should be kinder to them.

Rhaenyra doesn’t take kindly to it; Daemon doesn’t seem to care.

She gives up her sulking after a week when Daemon continues to not care. Huffs and puffs still, but seemingly accepts that she can’t hog her uncle’s attention. Even starts to come to see her siblings from time to time, and to her horror realizes they’re not that bad.

Lyra meanwhile follows Snickerdoodle’s example, and begins to climb out onto the roof whenever she wants a moment of peace. Past some startled looks, it works very well.

○

Daemon takes them flying, one by one. Alicent tries to disagree, but he insists it’s tradition, backed by just about everyone. Even Viserys comes out of the woodwork to support the idea. After all, he can’t because Balerion is dead, Rhaenyra is too young with a still-young dragon (a bullshit excuse nobody buys, Syrax is at a point where she can fly two) and Alicent never had a dragon to begin with, so it just makes sense. Daemon is the next best thing.

Lyra too it turns out when Helaena decides that today is the day she doesn’t like Daemon after all. It takes some back-and-forth, but Ancalagon graciously allows a passenger other than Snickerdoodle in the end. Once.

It’s a hit, especially with Aegon. He starts hunting down Daemon to demand dragon rides daily after that. It’s funny to see a toddler marching towards a spooked Daemon. Defeated by a child quarter his size, again.

○

It's never that Alicent seeks out Daemon's company in any capacity, so it makes it all the more confusing the one time she does.

“Thank you,” is what she tells him. “For all your help. You needn't have to.”

“But I did need to,” Daemon says. “If not me, then who?”

Her face does this funny thing where it freezes somewhere between anger and shame as she bites down on an agreement. They both know the kind of a man Viserys is.

“You need to learn to take care of them,” Daemon declares eventually and she startles. “Properly, I mean. I won't be here forever, neither will Lyra, and if you try to raise them like any other human child, all you'll have will be heartache and unstable, broken adults.”

Alicent picks at her fingers, face set in a frown. “Do you mean that I am a bad mother?” she asks eventually.

“No, just human. And that is simply not what they need. Can't make a bird out of a fish, or a fish out of a bird.”

“Do you detest my humanness then, then?”

“It's not a personal attack, goodsister. Just the truth,” Daemon smiles wryly. “Don't try to put a dragon into a human mold and we'll get along just fine.”

○

Corlys arrives eventually, too, with Laenor. They needed some more time, between Corlys making the best of the victory and not having a dragon, but they're there. Lyra doesn’t really remember if they did that originally, but without Daemon crowning himself, and with a newfound relationship between Velaryons and Dorne, Corlys is a very welcome guest.

Viserys grovels almost, between that and not having married Laena. It’d be funny, if it wasn’t so pathetic.

○

Honestly… Daemon should have known that something like this would’ve happened, and soon.

His stay in King’s Landing was nice. Too nice. Too peaceful. Too unproblematic past the chaos he caused himself for fun.

Then, Viserys calls him to a Small Council meeting, and Daemon can’t fathom why. It’s not somewhere he goes after all of Cunttower’s plots to have him removed from this very room. Part of it has him curious.

He finds Otto there, all smug, and Viserys positively beaming, and Corlys looking—wildly uncomfortable. He winces when his eyes land on Daemon, and that is the precise moment Daemon knows he’s about to hate this meeting equally as much, or more.

He soon finds out why as his curiosity bleeds into confusion bleeds into disbelief and eventually into simmering anger.

It’s a betrothal talk. Viserys’ and Cunttowers newest machination, trying desperately to soothe the relation with Velaryons fuelled by Corlys’ newest Dornish alliance and haphazard attempt at soothing the political quagmire Viserys gleefully ran into by not marrying Laena—

But it’s not Rhaenyra, who is looking for a husband anyway, that Viserys wants to throw at Laenor and call it a fix. No, no—Rhaenyra gets to pick her own future king. No.

It’s Daelyra that he wants to marry to Laenor.

“What,” Daemon says somewhat dumbly, because he, for the life of him, cannot quite compute anything about this decision, starting with the fact that his daughter, his child, is three-and-ten, and ending with the fact that neither he nor she were asked for their input on the situation.

Corlys, too, is looking like he wants to shrink into his chair, and part of Daemon can commiserate. Between the hell Rhaenys would unleash and the hell Lyra would add to it, and Laena no doubt being upset in the middle—

How can Viserys not see it?

“Daelyra and Laenor already have built up a rapport, after all,” Viserys says, hapless fool. “They know and are fond of eachother, and besides Daelyra already bleeds so there’s no need to wait—”

And how the fuck does he know that? Daemon will snap the neck of whichever maid that tattled.

He doesn’t hear the rest of Viserys’ speech as static fills his ears. He sees white, grits his teeth, clenches his fists; something burns in his chest and throat so hot he thinks he could very well breathe fire right now.

Instead, he stands up abruptly, bright eyes zoned on this foolish, foolish creature.

“Brother,” he says as calmly as he can and his voice sounds distant to him through the haze of the fire that swirls in his chest for it, and takes grim satisfaction in the way Viserys flinches. “I suggest you stop with this jest. There’s nothing remotely amusing about it.”

Viserys balks. Gods, please, he can’t be this stupid, he—

“This isn’t a jest, Daemon. Daelyra will be betrothed to Laenor—”

The world goes grey, static in his ears.

He will marry Lady Royce as soon as he comes of age. Married life will calm him down.

Of course, mother.

But he doesn’t—

He abruptly stands up and slams his fists onto the solid slab of wood they have for a table, and it crackles ominously under his fingers and the power of the blow, splintered spiderwebs left in his wake. “Stop. This. Jest. Before I do something you will regret,” Daemon snarls, and there’s nothing at all human in his voice. The kingsguard take a step forward but he doesn’t move, eyes boring into that pathetic foolish wyrm before him. Viserys had gone pale all of a sudden, shivering like a rabbit spotted during a hunt.

“I-I’m your king—” he tries.

“And?” Daemon snaps, because right now, he doesn’t think kings matter much. Just because Baelon, in his uncharacteristically limp-dicked spineless lapse let Alysanne sell Daemon off as she pleased in her senility doesn’t mean Daemon will do the same when his brother threatens his daughter like that.

He knows how that feels, and fourteen forbid he was a father quite as lousy as Baelon. He’d rather die.

He’d rather kill Viserys, really. Lyra wouldn’t even stop him, he knows, because he would be right to kill that wretched, spineless creature—

No.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. Repeat until you feel a little less like getting blood on your hands could fix you.

But it could, though—

He shouldn’t commit regicide, and neither should Lyra. It’s rude, apparently. Bad for the realm too, or some unimportant shit like that. He doesn’t see how or why because Viserys is many things but a good king he’s not, but it would upset Lyra that she wasn’t there for it and that’s enough to stop him.

Viserys swallows, fixes his collar, fidgets with his hands nervously, as if aware of the thoughts going through Daemon’s head. Daemon doesn’t move, or even blink. He’s quite good at not blinking, and it makes people nervous the longer it goes on.

“You should,” Viserys says, stops. Swallows thickly. “You should consider it.”

It wasn't even about Laenor’s proclivities; Daemon himself partook in men, perhaps more often than in women. It was about the principle.

“I will,” Daemon tells him, voice devoid of anything. “If—and only if—Lyra drags Laenor before me on her own and in no uncertain terms tells me that this is who she will wed. I don’t give a shit about the political quagmire you waltzed into, and you will not use my child as a tool to get out!”

“Daemon, this isn’t how—”

“Am I understood, my King?”

There’s an undertone to those words. A growl, a snarl—he’s not sure, but it’s bone-deep and rattling, a flash of sharp teeth, and it makes Viserys snap his mouth shut. Because at the end of the day, they’re both dragons. Dressed in human silks as they may be, playing pretend with human hierarchies—it won’t kill instinct.

And Daemon is done deferring to one quite so toothless.

Daemon is also fairly sure nobody has ever used ‘my king’ as an insult to the king’s face either, but alas, there’s a first time to everything. All the councilmen suddenly decided their hands laid on the table are the most interesting thing in the room, even the Cunttower. Even the Kingsguard are uneasy, shifting from foot to foot like half-spooked horses.

“Yes,” Viserys says, voice a little faint to match the paleness of his face. “I—I believe… That this meeting is adjourned. You made your opinion on the matter quite… Clear.”

“And don’t even think of going behind my back about it,” Daemon feels it prudent to warn. “I doubt you’ll enjoy the consequences.”

“You dare threaten the king—” Cunttower rises up, but snaps his mouth shut when Daemon side-eyes him. Pales, more than he’s already pale.

“I’m not threatening anyone, merely reminding people to be mindful of the consequences of their actions, like you constantly remind me. And I’m protecting my daughter as is my gods-given duty,” he tells the man. “Though I understand that you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

As he turns on his heel and walks out, he doesn’t miss the sharp glint of discomfort in Otto’s eyes. It brings him enough glee to calm some of his anger.

The silence left in the wake of Daemon’s exit is nothing short of ominous. There was a sort of confidence in Viserys and in all his councilmen before this—that Daemon, despite his vices, would never turn against his brother.

Now, through Viserys’ own designs, that certainty is gone.

○

“Your Grace, you cannot let Daemon get away with such display of hostility. It is all the more essential you bring him to heel. I beg you to proceed with the initial plan.”

“I… You’re right, Otto. I made my decision. I ought to see it though.”

○

They go take a nice long flight, after Daemon comes back and tells her. It’s necessary. Caraxes was just about ready to chew his way through the Red Keep to get to Viserys, and the more Lyra listened, the more Ancalagon became a gleeful accomplice.

They’re still rattled by the end of it, but better. So long as Viserys pulls no more stunts.

Which is probably exactly why he pulls another stunt very quickly.

○

Corlys Velaryon, as steeped in the traditions and customs of the realm as he is, with all his pride and greed, is far from blind, and he’s far from stupid. He has also spent several years in close vicinity of Daemon and Daelyra at the Stepstones, and gained an insight that most seem to sorely lack in the face of those two.

And so when Viserys calls him to speak again privately and resumes as if each party agreed to the betrothal, Corlys shuts him down maybe more harshly than intended. Viserys balks at it, at this olive branch he so graciously extended, and Corlys doesn’t budge.

He declines, without any room for discussion even if it will inevitably lead to continued tensions between Velaryons and the crown, and he sends Laenor to tattle.

○

Laenor shivers under her gaze, co carefully blank, with a smile so carefully polite he dreads whatever hides beneath it.

“Thank you,” she says simply, voice carefully even. He swallows thickly.

“What will you do now?” he asks, even though he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.

Her smile sharpens; miniscule but noticeable, and Laenor finds himself flinching.

“Nothing,” she says breezily, but her eyes have darkened to black with rage threatening to overspill under that mockery of calm nothingness that devoured light as if it only ever starved. He doesn’t even want to imagine the kind of rampage her nightmare of a dragon is going on right now; he thinks he can hear it screeching somewhere outside the city, in the skies above the ocean, more than receptive to its rider’s rage and more than eager to act on it.

He’s relieved to see her turn around and leave; no doubt to go to the beast, and rage with it.

He’s glad to be wiser than the king, as the cold claws of danger leave with her.

○

Daemon is restless, and he knows himself that his idea is stupid and dangerous and, in all honesty, wrong, and that he shouldn’t—but he doesn’t think he cares.

He had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but he expected it would. It hurts him all the same, and it makes him want Viserys to hurt as well. To regret. He wants his brother to taste the same bitterness he’s tasting, to feed him the same medicine Viserys has been trying to feed him.

And if Viserys insists on targeting Daemon’s daughter—well. Daemon can do the same.

He runs into Lyra by what almost feels like chance, but he knows better. She’s still in her riding leathers, the braid he twined himself windswept but holding strong, coiled at the base of her neck.

She looks like a wraith in the candlelight, a ghost come to haunt him for his choices or maybe absolve him of guilt or something in-between, white hair and pale face shining in the darkness, black clothes melding with the shadows, and black eyes looking like bottomless voids full of emotion, reflecting candlelight back in an eerie glow, his own emotions thrown back at him through the warped mirror of his blood. Rage, mostly, but underneath the rage it’s a maelstrom of conflict there, and singularly he can read them fluently, but together he can’t make much sense of them—and by the looks of it, neither can she.

He can relate. He wants to lash out, too, some way, any way. He’s lashing out now, actually.

They stand like that for a while, just looking at each other.

She may stop him, he thinks. He worries. Because she’s the only one who can. If she tells him to not do this, he won’t. If she tells him she forgives Viserys for this transgression, he will forgive.

She takes a deep breath, and her eyes harden as she clenches her fists. Then—

She steps away without a word, away from the light and into the shadow. She looks away.

This is wrong, Daemon thinks. She should be stopping him. She should be telling him not to follow through, because it’s wrong. And she wants to, he realizes. That’s what shining in her eyes. Part of her does, at least, the lone righteous piece left.

But the part blazing hotter and hotter, the bitter anger; it snuffs the reason out. They really are made of the same stuff, in the end, vengeful and capricious and utterly unwilling to let this go. They will both regret it tomorrow when their minds are cleared of this fire, and neither of them cares.

She turns on her heel and leaves on silent feet, and Daemon watches her go as he lets out the breath that he didn’t know he was holding. He takes in another, in and out, plasters a cheeky grin on his face and hopes it looks real enough, and if the swagger to his step looks a little forced, it’s best to not dwell on it.

He has a note and some common clothes to deliver.

○

Cloak and rough spun clothes, a scarf wrapped tightly around her head. A prayer and a toll paid in blood spilled from her own veins, answered by a glint of yellow eyes just outside of the periphery as Morghul lets his shadows cloak her.

Until dawn and not a moment longer, the Shadowlord whispers as she lets blood drip down her fingers and into the fire. It’s more than enough she declares as she licks what is left off her fingers and takes a moment to wrap the shallow cut tight with clean linen.

And maybe that’s overkill. And maybe she doesn’t need them, and maybe she wouldn’t have been seen anyway, slithering through the bowels of the keep like a thief in the night with her skill alone—but one can never truly be too careful, and she wants to test her limits, too.

○

He leaves Rhaenyra with her pants down and hair undone in the middle of a brothel where everyone can see her, and leaves. Runs, almost, to Mysaria, grabs her shoulders, shoves a pouch in her hand, heavy with coin.

His skin crawls. His hands feel clammy. He wants to scrub his lips and neck and hands raw and then pour pure alcohol over them for good measure, to make sure they’re clean.

Stick them in a vat of boiling water, even. Maybe that would help.

“Make sure the princess remains unharmed. I want her reputation ruined, nothing more.”

“Of course, my prince.”

He trusts Mysaria’s greed.

He himself goes deeper in Fleabottom, and drinks, and drinks, and drinks—until Lyra, hooded and barely-recognizable in urchin garb save for the familiar gleam in her near-black eyes, materializes at his elbow and slams her hand on his cup.

She’s only a fragment of his wine-and-regret-addled mind, he’s certain. The wraith his guilt chose to show him, shaped like that which he holds most dear.

And then she speaks.

<She’s back in Red Keep.>

<You should be, too,> he slurs but leans onto her shoulder. She’s warm, and too solid for an illusion of what remains of his conscience. The hands she puts on his shoulders are warm, too, fingers digging into his shoulders so hard it hurts. He welcomes the distraction. <It’s dangerous here.>

<It’s more dangerous for you, in your state. You can barely sit up. Come.>

She tugs at his elbow and he goes, blindly following her lead, much too drunk to do more than focus on not falling flat on his face. She leads him through alleys he barely-recognizes when sober, better-versed in the veins cutting the city than he is, especially in the dark, and much less drunk. They stop eventually, she speaks to someone—he thinks he recognizes the voice, deep and friendly, but is tugged along again before he can figure it out. He’s ushered onto a cot and tucked in, manages to get his shoes off before fitful sleep claims him.

○

“Harwin.”

It’s barely a whisper, but it still startles him as he spins, face to face with the shining dark eyes he recognizes; Lyra, sitting on a barrel half-covered by shadows, deeper in the alley, awfully at home in rough-spun street urchin garb with a knife at her belt.

“Seven hells, where did you come from?!”

“Red Keep,” comes the dry yet cheeky answer. “I need your help.”

“I don’t know where Daemon is.”

“I do. Rather, I need you to escort the princess safely back to the Keep.”

“Ah. I. Yes, if you know where she is.”

“I do.”

“Of course, you do. I’m not even going to question why you’re sneaking around alone at night.”

“The less you know the better you sleep. Follow.”

“That wasn’t ominous at all. Aren’t you going to question how I’m not surprised Princess is here?”

“You ran into her earlier.”

“…how do you know that?”

Glint of violet in the candlelight, pupils that look uncomfortably slit and viperlike in the light, starting straight at him. That’s a familiar smirk right there, all smug and Daemon-like. Eerie, in this light.

She doesn’t answer. He doesn’t ask again.

○

Mysaria looks into the creature’s eyes, all the darker for the candlelight yet glowing impossibly bright under the shadows of the hood. She just sent off the princess, upset and cantankerous at being stood up as she was, led away and back to the Keep by a Gold Cloak the girl brought with her.

Then Mysaria is alone with the wraith, and it’s… Far from the way she imagined their first meeting would go.

“Can you make sure Otto Hightower thinks they fucked?” the wraith asks and Mysaria bites at her lower lip. “Just enough implication without outright stating it. Let his mind fill in the blanks.”

“I can try,” she says carefully. The wraith turns to look at her properly, and she shivers. Something moves under the cloak.

“Let me rephrase that,” the wraith says, a hefty bag of coin between its pale fingers. It’s bigger than the one Daemon gave Mysaria a scant minutes agon. The bag is more than enough to buy Mysaria’s loyalty for the night.

The wraith came prepared. Of course she came prepared, ready to speak the language of whores and thieves, dressed like an assassin urchin just after her father ran with his tail between his legs and something disturbed in his eyes.

Maybe it’s this very thing before her now that haunts him.

“I can,” Mysaria amends herself. “And then?”

“The rest will fix itself. Don’t worry about it,” the wraith that is Daelyra Targaryen says in a sing-song voice the notes of which send shivers down Mysaria’s spine and makes her feel cold around her neck, and then the girl slinks back into the shadows she came from leaving only empty space, like she was never there at all.

Mysaria rubs her arms, the bag of coin in her hand the only proof that she didn’t dream it.

She worries about it.

○

“What are you going to do about this?” Harwin asks.

“Sleep.”

“The dawn is already almost upon us. But I meant—” he trails off and gestures at Daemon sprawled on the cot. “He was out with the princess. I ran into them. The king will have questions.”

Lyra sighs, tugs the scarf off her head and two thick braids come loose from under it, falling haplessly on her back. They’re almost blindingly white in contrast with everything; very easily recognizable without the headgear.

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it in the morning. And you—and I mean, all of you,” she leans forward and points at the door where few other freshly-off-duty guardsmen cheekily wave at her, unabashed in their eavesdropping, “don’t throw yourselves under the bu—carriage for us. You don’t need that kind of trouble.”

“With all due respect m’lady,” Corren says and crosses his arms on his chest. An ugly bruise is blooming on his cheek, no doubt from duty hours. “If all of City Watch says you and Daemon were here all night, then who will speak otherwise?”

Lyra closes her eyes and sighs. “Some are in Cunttower’s pocket.”

“Few. They’ll be persuaded to speak the truth.”

She likes the tone with which he says it. She likes that they will stand with Daemon, the loyalty they still hold for him years later.

But getting them in trouble is not something she wants. It’s a lousy reward for their loyalty.

“Viserys will believe what he’s more comfortable believing. And if Otto believes Daemon to have been the culprit, and feels scorned by you—the Hand can make you all miserable. And he can spin his tales into a believable case.”

“Otto can go fuck himself,” spits out a huge guy, buzzcut and bushy moustache, Lyra somewhat recognizes him—Morsh, she thinks, former bouncer at one of Fleabottom brothels. Wave of agreements follows. “Daemon made us into what we are. He’s the only reason we’re able to do our jobs at all, that we’re no longer just a bunch of idiots with pitchforks and leather jackets!”

The men cheer. Lyra sighs and shakes her head. “I have a better idea,” she says, a half-remembered scene coming back to her, two girls, a tree crying bloody tears, and a lie by omission. “Say he was there, with Rhaenyra. Say you saw them drinking in taverns. Say they went to a brothel.”

A murmur of confusion. Lyra holds a hand up, wags a finger at them.

“And then tell the truth. Tell that he didn’t do it. Moment of clarity or coward’s way out or got distracted by whores, however you want to phrase it.”

“How do you know that?” Morsh asks. Lyra grins.

“Because I was there, stalking them,” she says simply. “Making sure nobody got into actual trouble.”

“She told me to get the princess safely to the castle,” Harwin admits, and turns to her. “Aren’t you a little young to be your father’s protector, though?”

“If I don’t look out for him, who will?” she asks. It causes an uncomfortable beat of silence as they look between each other. She claps her hands. “Anyway, boys, remember! Don’t get in trouble for our sake. We got ourselves into this; we’ll get back out. We always do.”

They filter out after that, shift rotating. Some get in the barracks for some much-deserved sleep, some leave. Corren’s cot is right next to the one Daemon is on right now, and Harwin sits at the foot of it once he’s gotten out of his armour.

“Sorry for taking your bed,” Lyra says. He shakes his head.

“I offered. I’ll figure it out.”

Corren lets out a long-suffering sigh and scoots to the side of his cot, patting the now-free half. “Get on, idiot.”

Harwin looks at him, eyebrow raised. “You just want me because I’m warm.”

“Would you rather sleep on the floor?”

Harwin rolls his eyes and heaves himself to lay down next to Corren. “But if you put your cold feet on my shins, I will kick you o—ogh-fucker!”

Corren, who has clearly just put his feet on Harwin’s shins, snickers and sprawls across his chest. It looks like a somewhat familiar maneuver, and he’s clearly comfortable. “I’m letting you sleep on my cot. Least you can do is spare some warmth in return.”

Harwin grumbles, but neither moves to push Corren off or to get out himself. Lyra giggles.

“Goodnight boys.”

○

“What if he does get banished again?”

“Then I’ll follow.”

“You can’t follow him forever.”

“I will for as long as I’m the only thing he has.”

“Lyra, Harwin.”

“Yes Corren?”

“Go the fuck to sleep instead of philosophizing, would you? Some of us want to rest.”

“Sorry Corren.”

“Goodnight Corren.”

○

Kingsguard comes, finds them—how they find them, Daemon stumbling towards Red Keep, disheveled and bitching about everything every step of the way. The sun’s too bright, the people too loud, the air too dry, and the puddle too wet.

Corren, bless his soul, crawled out of the bed to get him some water before they left, but then crawled right back under the covers, causing Harwin to bitch about cold feet all over again but not budge, and leaving Lyra to drag her father back to the Keep through the morning light.

What birds are out there chirping piss her off too as she does. Who let them be this chirpy this early even.

It’s Willis Fell who first sees them as they enter the courtyard, Lyra recognizes his face immediately. He takes a step forward and then promptly freezes when his eyes slide to her and he registers her presence, as if reconsidering his life decisions as his face circles through several emotions before settling on a sour grimace. The Kingsguard make a move to grab Daemon but Lyra whacks the hands of the nearest one with her sheathed dagger and snarls at the other and he takes the instinctive step back, hands raised. Smart man. Or startled—either way, no longer a problem.

“We know the way to the throne room, thank you,” she says primly and then shoves the cloaks and other unworn outer layers into the hands of Fell because carrying them wrapped around her elbow and dragging Daemon along is a bit much logistically. “If you want to be of use, carry these instead.”

Fell’s face sours further but he bites on his words, especially as Ancalagon’s crocodillian rumble resonates through the air, still audible from the other side of the cliff and over all the city-noises. It’s the kind of rumble that triggers something deep within the hindbrain that says run before the consciousness even registers the danger. Fell grips the cloaks and follows, and if Lyra purposefully sets a slower pace, well. Daemon is still somewhat out of it, and she herself isn’t faring the best either, between lack of sleep and coming off of a magic high.

Fell barely follows them in; throws the cloaks on the ground and leaves. Lyra doesn’t turn to look.

The throne room is drab and dreary as always, with its offensive chair sitting offensively as the centerpiece further in. Lyra sits Daemon by one of the pillars but he flops over to the ground, curling on himself. She lets him, though he doesn’t get to wallow for long, because the door creaks open, and Lyra’s second least favorite person in the world wobbles in.

He is surprised to see Lyra there for sure, as he stops and looks at her wide-eyed, taking in her appearance. Bar her hair, so white it almost glows in the shadows, she’s dressed like any other street rat after all.

“What—” Viserys says and sighs before looking at Daemon with disapproval. “My daughter. Your daughter. You’d take them both to the bowels of Flea Bottom?”

“No,” Daemon groans. “Just Rhaenyra. Lyra hunted me down herself.”

“You don’t—” Viserys snaps and makes a move as if to kick Daemon, but Lyra is faster and whacks his shin with her sheathed dagger maybe harder than she intended, but it certainly sends the message as Viserys stumbles back, looking at her wide-eyed, wind knocked out of him.

“He won’t deny the truth,” she tells her idiot uncle king. “But you don’t know the truth, do you. Just the honey Otto Hightower poured into your ears.”

“That I took Rhaenyra to the brothels,” Daemon groans and rubs his eyes.

“You defiled her,” Viserys says, but though he visibly wants to, doesn’t make a move to try to kick him again. Lyra still has her sheathed dagger in hand, and already proved she’s faster than him.

“Oh, what does it matter, brother?” Daemon asks as he slowly straightens up into a sitting position, only to flop his head on Lyra’s shoulder. If her back wasn’t against the pillar, he’d have toppled her over. “When we were Rhaenyra’s age we fucked out way though most of the brothels on the Street of Silk.”

“We were young men,” Viserys says with that disbelieving huff of his. “She’s just a girl. Your niece!”

Lyra isn’t sure what Daemon being Rhaenyra’s uncle has anything to do with it in the magic dragon incest family other than being a hypocritical kind of statement.

“Rhaenyra’s a woman grown,” Daemon argues instead and smirks. It’s a sharp and ugly thing, but a winning one nonetheless. “Besides, if you can marry off my daughter, then I can at least show yours how to have a good time, can’t I?” he coos and Viserys rears back and stutters, and looks at him in shock.

“It was revenge, then?”

“Reminder,” Daemon purrs and leans forward, a little more awake. “I’ll cut you a deal, how about that?”

“What deal could you possibly offer me?”

“A very simple one. You stay the fuck away from my daughter, and I’ll stay the fuck away from yours. I suppose Rhaenyra will sulk for a bit for it, but in the end, everybody wins.”

Viserys’ face sours. He looks at Lyra, sitting next to Daemon, then back at Daemon. His face goes through several emotions Lyra finds very funny. The fact that her father can be slumped halfway between the pillar and her shoulder, though, hungover and in crumpled dirty clothes and looking like death warmed over, yet still exude a commanding aura over the king of the Realm—that’s impressive.

“I ought to have you sent away for this,” Viserys says. “You said so yourself, actions have consequences.”

“Then do so,” Daemon says as he leans back against the pillar, soaking up its chill. “But know this, once and forever. I’ll do anything to protect my daughter, no matter from what—or from who. Even from you.”

“Including harming mine?”

“I didn’t go that far,” Daemon bristles, violet eyes snapping open, ablaze in the morning light. “And I wouldn’t. Unlike some, I don’t find myself attracted to girls barely older than my daughter that I helped raise. I’m not a monster.”

Viserys rears back as if struck. Daemon grins, and his teeth seem sharper in the low light, bared and threatening.

“And I am to believe you have no ambition for my crown?” Viserys pivots quickly, grasping desperately at any topic at all to distract from being called out on his own misgivings. He’s good at that. “No intention for Rhaenyra’s hand?”

“Please,” Daemon scoffs. “She’s cantankerous and spoiled and more arrogant than us both combined on a good day, I can barely tolerate her in small doses. I got out of one miserable marriage, I’m in no hurry for another. And I’m certainly happier away from the responsibilities of ruling. Why do you think I didn’t crown myself King of Stepstones, or something equally idiotic? I could have. Corlys said I should have, but I have no patience for this nonsense and you should know this by now!”

“So you have no ambition for rule? For power?”

“I only have ambition for enough power to protect my daughter and punish those who’d seek to harm her,” Daemon snaps. “Which is exactly why I did what I did, and if I must, I will do it again until Rhaenyra’s reputation is shredded into nothing, because that, brother, is the best and most direct way I have to make you pay. To tarnish your precious, precious heir and force you to disinherit her. I can. And I will, if you keep pushing me, so step the fuck back while the situation is still salvageable, brother—because I did not start this, but I’m more than willing to end it.”

Viserys rears back, angry but helpless at the way Daemon looks at him, eyes bright and wide and so full of nothing but disdain. He may be consistent at failing his children, even the one he claims to care about, but Daemon isn’t, and the realization is a bitter pill to swallow now that it’s happening, before he shoves it in a box and pretends this conversation never happened.

Lyra flips him off on both hands when Viserys looks at her helplessly, and he winces. She only offers judgment, there’s no support to be found from her. Not for Viserys.

She is happy Daemon picked up on her very nonchalant way of speaking, though. Music for sore ears indeed, to hear him chew his brother the king out like that.

In the end, Viserys huffs and puffs and postures and tries and fails terribly at trying to take control of the situation but between the lack of sleep, Lyra coming off of a magic high, and Daemon’s hangover, they simply don’t give enough of a shit about it, and even Viserys catches on, too. That, or it’s their continued flippant, snappy comments that have him biting back tears at a certain point, because he knows he’s fucked up though he refuses to admit it, but it’s two on one. Especially after it comes to light that not only Daemon didn’t do anything to Rhaenyra—didn’t even think to, past making everyone see her be at the brothel—and Lyra on top of that made sure her cousin got safely back.

He doesn’t do much to either of them in the end. No banishment, not even a ban on seeing Rhaenyra for Daemon. Just a helpless and uncomfortable man being called out on his bullshit after being warned to not commit this very mistake and trying to shift blame when Daemon predictably did a very Daemon thing to drive the point home.

Lyra is so glad he’s on her side, her father is a force of nature. Same capacity to be reasoned with at times as a hurricane.

She hopes that this humiliation will make Viserys be even harsher on Otto later. He has to take it out on someone after all, and Daemon has just made himself an incredibly inconvenient scapegoat in his willingness to bite back where it hurts, and technically not doing anything wrong besides.

○

Alicent hunts Lyra down after the audience. She heard what happened, and wants the truth; Lyra gives it to her, and doesn’t mention things she shouldn’t know.

Granted, she doesn’t actually know if Rhaenyra went and fucked Criston Cole after she returned, so she’s not even lying by omission. She just knows it could have happened.

Final puzzle piece is set.

○

She hears about it. She’s in the nursery with her cousins and the bored maids whisper of a displeased king and Hand who’s no longer a Hand.

Life’s—not good, not really, but better.

○

It’s by sheer chance that she runs into Otto as she returns from the nursery. He seems to be in a hurry.

Lyra doesn’t think she’s seen the man up close before, at least not alone. He’s awfully unassuming for someone causing so much trouble for her family, though most importantly, he’s finally missing the Hand of the King golden pin that otherwise sat primly on his chest.

Lyra almost chokes on the giddy giggle that threatens to burst out.

“Good day to you, Ser Otto,” she says breezily as she passes him. “And a word of advice?”

He stops. He turns around. Lyra turns around, too. He’s taller than her, but it feels like they’re on equal ground, and she doesn’t cower under his disappointed stare that no doubt makes Alicent wilt every time.

“And what advice might you have for me, My Lady?” he asks. Lyra smiles.

“Daemon is not Viserys, and I’m not Rhaenyra,” she tells him simply. “And you’re not our old friend.”

“I’m not sure what you mean—” he interrupts.

“I’m not here to listen to you play dumb, Otto,” Lyra interrupts back, sharply, and his mouth clicks shut, maybe at the sheer shock of it. “I’m here to tell you that Viserys won’t protect you and take the fall for you forever if you insist on poking the sleeping dragon. While my father has the propensity to lash out at the surface threat he also listens to me, and I’m not blind to the underlying problem.”

“Is this a threat?”

“Actions have consequences, as you are so fond of reminding my father. Figured you could use a reminder yourself, too, is all.”

Lyra smiles at his grimace; and her smile widens further at the realization flashing suddenly in his eyes. The knowledge that a child, a little girl, played him like a fiddle. And yes, she followed what she knew, made sure to iron out a few kinks and ensure information flow is all… But him thinking it was all her master plan is infinitely funnier.

“Good day to you, Ser Otto,” she repeats herself with a small but perfect curtsy, voice just to the left of composed as some giddiness pierces through. “You played yourself beautifully.”

And then she’s gone.

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