Chapter Text
“Why the fuck am I not mentioned in the article?” Rhaenyra slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, “A profile puff piece on the potential heirs to the Targaryen empire, detailing Daemon, Aegon, Aemond, and fucking Daeron, but not me?” Even Helaena had been mentioned, only an aside to mention that she was uninterested in business and happy pursuing whatever dumb fucking liberal arts degree she was pursuing, but still a mention. “Does Alicent think that people are just going to fucking forget that I exist? Why did you let this story run?”
Alfred Broome sputtered on the other line as Rhaenyra rolled her eyes at the slow car in front of her. If you were in the left lane, you had to want it. No pussyfooting around going ten or fifteen above the limit. She laid on the horn. “The article is very unflattering towards Aegon,” Alfred managed to get out.
“Everything is unflattering towards Aegon, he’s an alcoholic sex pest coming up on year seven in high school who can’t last five minutes without a hit of his fucking weed pen,” Rhaenyra snapped, “What’s really unflattering is that I’m not even mentioned. It makes it look like I’m not even in the running. And why isn’t Otto off the board yet?”
“They’ve got this new guy, Larys-” Broome tried valiantly to defend himself, but Rhaenyra had had enough of incompetent men.
“You know what? I think I’m gonna get a new guy too. You’re fired.” Rhaenyra hung up the phone before she had to hear his response. Everyone in the company who was worth taking seriously had a guy. They were given different shiny and meaningless titles to write on tax returns, but their real job was to dig up dirt on the opposition and anything else their bosses deemed useful.
Rhaenyra sighed, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel of her car. Maybe firing Alfred was a mistake. Maybe she was just nervous about meeting her.
Mysaria. That was her name. No longer just her and she and the woman from the photos but a real person with a voice and a name. A beautiful voice, with a slight accent she couldn’t quite place. If she had been younger and single, she would have batted her eyes and asked So, where are you from? But now she had six children (six!), three of them by the bastard who was cheating on her. Mysaria. Whatever.
She pulled into whatever dingy coffee shop had been chosen. She let Mysaria pick, to show how nice and generous she was. She trudged in, her pantsuit and designer sunglasses out of place among the usual patrons, but what did she care? She ordered a decadently sugary latte now that Alicent or Daemon wasn’t around to make a pointed comment about it, and scanned the cafe as she sipped.
It wasn’t hard to find the long sheet of midnight black hair in a cafe full of dull browns, reds, and obviously dyed blondes with brown roots coming in. Not like Rhaenyra’s. Her platinum blonde was natural, thank you very much. She sat down without much fanfare and observed the woman sitting across from her. She was pretty, even prettier in person. Well, of course she was. Rhaenyra didn’t know if Daemon cheating with an ugly woman would have made her feel better or worse about the whole thing.
A moment passed. Mysaria didn’t utter a word, just calmly assessing her with those brown eyes. Good lashes. Rhaenyra wondered where she got them done, if the two women’s relationship might be cordial enough that she could ask. Rhaenyra never spoke first in situations like this (something Carly’s taught her), so she waited. And waited. She realized Mysaria was trying to pull the same power play she was and a scowl appeared on her face. God, she didn’t have time for this.
“Okay, so what do you want? You want me to pay you to sign an NDA?” Mysaria had been rather elusive on the call, only saying they needed to talk in person before confirming the affair and telling Rhaenyra a date and time.
“Daemon got me fired.” She said finally, as if she couldn’t believe it.
“Oh. So you want me to pay you a lot to sign an NDA. I could do that for you,” Rhaenyra drummed her fingers on the table, “What job did he get you fired from?”
“Waitressing.” Mysaria answered easily.
Rhaenyra frowned. “Oh. I thought you were a…”
“An escort? Yes. But it was nice to keep a respectable day job, even if it didn’t earn me much. It was just out of spite, to remind me that I could never be anything other than a whore.”
“That’s…mean,” Rhaenyra said awkwardly, wheels spinning. Was Mysaria going to threaten a lawsuit? Did she want more money? Was she threatening to go to the press?
“He’s a very mean man,” she said, “And he knew I wanted to retire soon. He wanted me to have nothing left but that.”
The cruelty of it rankled her in a way few things did these days. “I can’t offer you six figures upfront,” Rhaenyra started, “I can do a lump sum now and then send more later.”
“I don’t want a lump sum.” Mysaria said evenly.
“Monthly payments, then? Semi annual? Quarterly?”
“I want a job.”
“You want a what?” Rhaenyra was flabbergasted, “What…what kind of job were you thinking?”
“I was Daemon’s source for years,” she said, “Who do you think tipped him off every time Aegon came stumbling drunk out of some bar or strip club? And now I have all this information on the Greens and no one to sell it to.”
Oh, right. The Greens, meaning Alicent and Otto’s faction, named for the school color of Hightower Prep. “So you want to be an information broker? We haven’t even talked about the affair—”
“I don’t give a fuck about your husband,” Mysaria said bluntly, “Yes, I was fucking him because I got paid, but now he’s not paying me. I have no desire to be involved in the upcoming divorce.”
“Divorce?” Rhaenyra was startled, “Did Daemon say something to you about divorcing me?”
A crease appeared between Mysaria’s perfectly plucked brows for the first time. “No,” she said slowly, “I just assumed, because of the…”
“No. We need to stay together. For the children.” For the majority shares.
“Right.”
An awkward silence hung between them. Mysaria leaned in slightly, her hair falling forward in an inky curtain. She smelled faintly of clean linen and sandalwood, like she’d taken a cab straight from a shower to sit here and wait for her. Rhaenyra was irritated to find herself noticing it. Irritated, too, that she had to scoot forward to actually hear her over the din. The knees of her tailored trousers brushed the underside of the sticky table. Humiliating.
“Are you judging me?” Rhaenyra snapped, sharper than she intended.
Mysaria didn’t flinch. She tilted her head, lashes sweeping down, then back up. “Do you want me to?”
Rhaenyra’s laugh came out brittle. “God, you sound like my mother.”
“I sound like someone who listens.” Mysaria’s voice was low, smooth, just cutting through the clamor enough for Rhaenyra to catch every word. “That’s what your last “guy” failed to do, wasn’t it?”
“My last guy…how the fuck did you know I fired Alfred?” It had happened barely an hour ago.
“I have sources in Targaryen Enterprises from my time with Daemon,” Mysaria said, sipping her tea, “You got rid of your last guy. I should be your new one.”
Rhaenyra blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You need someone to dig. Someone who knows where the Greens stumble, what they hide, who they fuck. Someone who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.” Her eyes flicked up, catching Rhaenyra’s and holding them. “I can be that.”
“You—you’re suggesting I hire my husband’s mistress to be my… guy?”
Mysaria smiled faintly, a mere curve of her lips making Rhaenyra feel frustrated and horny all over again. “If that doesn’t convince you, in two days the Greens are about to commit identity fraud and have Arryk Cargyll pose as his twin brother Erryk to sign over his shares of the company to Aegon, then whack Erryk before he finds out.”
Whack. It was an old style word, one she heard used in mafioso movies and not much else. “They’ve escalated to murder?”
“Escalated? What do you think happened to Harwin and his father?”
The buzz of the cafe seemed to dull. Every sensation narrowed down to her fingers clutching the table. “There was a house fire,” she choked out, “An accident.”
“Do you really believe that? Did you ever?” Her eyes were probing, probing.
“No,” Rhaenyra whispered. The silence hung heavy for a moment before she asked, “They can really do that? Hire a hitman? Just…take somebody out?”
“Hitmen don’t exist like they do in the movies. The best you get is a mid tier career criminal who’s willing to do anything for some money. They’re sloppy. Easy to find. And the guy they hired is very sloppy.” Mysaria paused, “If they were able to go through with it, they’d probably be caught. Probably. Then they’d all go to jail, or at least Otto, and you’d never have to worry about your future at the company ever again.”
“Yes, but…Erryk would be dead.” The prospect of Otto Hightower behind bars was a tantalizing one, though.
“So he would.” Mysaria folded her hands under her chin and stared at Rhaenyra. “Is that a sacrifice you’re willing to make?”
What scared her was that for a moment, it was. Erryk was once enough when she had seen him, a casual acquaintance, but the Hightower name forever sullied, associated with murder…
Mysaria must have seen the indecision play out across her face because she said crisply. “Think about. You’ve got two days. When you make a decision, then call me about the job.” And then she was gone.
Rhaenyra shifted in her seat. The café was still unbearably loud, her latte too sweet, the table tacky under her fingers, but suddenly all she could smell was Mysaria’s perfume and all she could hear was that low, steady voice.
Damn it.