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As loud as his actions can be, Daemon is mute when it comes to his feelings.
He tamped them down when he saw his mother pass in the birthing bed, helpless and confused as his little brother took laboured breaths that were soon extinguished. He knew that duty came before love and did what was asked by his father and brother, taking a wife of their choosing. Rhea was sharp and stubborn and ever the proper match on paper, but never one he connected to, and the resentment dug deep into his bones to the point where he couldn’t look at her anymore without ire.
He craved for his brother’s belonging but was cast aside for a second son that possessed the honeyed tongue that he didn’t, who lacked the rough edges that still poked out from him. His heart has been pricked and prodded and crushed beyond repair, but he has forged walls of fire and iron around it now, vowing to never let anyone breach his defences.
They’ve always been strangled someway from his heart through his throat, mangled and erupting in a plume of fire and hurt. Coated in barbs that protect him like rows of dragon’s teeth, he uses his words to keep everyone at bay from what lies beneath, a soft core ripe for exploitation. But the only match for a dragon is a dragon itself, and when his darling niece turns into a fine young woman, something shifts. Seven Hells below, he’s well aware of how wrong it is, looking at his brother’s child half his age with the eyes of a knight first enamoured with a maiden. Rhaenyra has the same rough edges as him but where he is a sword cutting deep, she is chainmail, steadfast and withstanding anything that comes her way. She is just as astute but kinder, her mother’s good heart evident in the way she treats commonfolk and nobility alike.
He wants her to know just how much he values her, how much he sees her.
Sees her loneliness and her fears, her heartbreak. Sees how she looks at Alicent Hightower with the eyes of someone mourning the loss of their first love, pain that morphs into resentment and anger. Daemon sees her struggling with her ambition and duty, wanting to seize so much more than the world wants to give her. That hunger is echoed in him, eyes set on a prize that he can never attain if he were to play by the rules. He would say prizes, but his niece is no trophy to be won nor beast to be tamed. Like their dragons she answers to neither gods nor men, and he can only hope that she chooses to let him into her world. Perhaps she would if he let her know how willing he was, the lengths he would go to if she said the word.
Then again, he was never able to utter his love when it counted.
Besides, he cannot imagine the damage it would bring to her, the scandal of the Realm’s Delight being sullied by her roguish uncle, a man so tarred and stained in the eyes of the Red Keep he was only fit for burning. If she were to ascend the Iron Throne, she needed to be exemplary beyond belief. The world is cruel to women, Rhaenys’ repeated rebuffals proof that men cared more for their ruler to be of their ilk than to be capable, and he cannot stand Rhaenyra losing Aegon’s crown because of his foolishness and past mistakes. No, Rhaenyra Targaryen was born to be queen, and if he truly loved her, he would do everything in his power to ensure that the realm knelt to her.
Still, his heart stutters when he sees her descend upon Dragonstone, Caraxes voicing delight and relief that he cannot express. When she asks him if he were expecting a child, he cannot bring himself to lie, telling her that yes, perhaps, one day. One day, when his edges are smoothed out enough to not hurt the ones he loves, when his children won’t bleed from his mistakes. She tells him she’s right there, and he doesn't know if this is an open challenge to his impunity or a suggestion that perhaps, she feels the same too. That he was not deluded by his own want as he felt her shiver upon clasping that necklace around her neck, that he didn’t imagine the gleam in her eyes at the tourney.
It is wrong, but wrongs never stopped him before.
Their love is not bound by rules and titles, he had declared to Otto Hightower before, and Targaryens have a long and storied history of marrying their own. He is not in the wrong as a Targaryen pursuing another, but he watched her take her first steps, utter her first words. That child is gone now, however, replaced by a maiden of iron will and a heart not yet fully damaged.
She’s right there, she reminds him, the object of his ire, the reason he was disinherited. If he so wishes, he can get what he wants by taking her out of the equation. Strike her down and his brother has none but him to choose as heir but beyond the sin that is kinslaying, he cannot imagine hurting her. She is all too aware of his truth, as evidenced by the look in her eyes, and he tosses her the egg, striding back to the castle as he mulls over what just transpired. Rhaenyra Targaryen flew in on her beloved dragon and successfully quelled a possible bloody battle because she is the only one who could see past his armour of bravado. Daemon wishes he could show her his admiration, the pride that swelled in his chest when he saw her stride past Otto Hightower with all the poise of a regnant, the awe at her calling his bluff and winning.
Perhaps he can show it when she is crowned, kneeling at the foot of the throne as he pledges fealty to the one true ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. Perhaps, when all this business is behind them, he can show it by pledging fidelity to her in the language of their ancestor, the blood from his hands smeared upon her forehead and running down their entwined fingers, their only witnesses the fire of Dragonstone’s sept and their dragons.
For now, his silence will have to suffice.