Chapter Text
Rhaenyra Targaryen stands in a slender recess in some nondescript back alley of Spicetown with her cloak drawn tight and her hood heavy over her eyes. Although she is unlikely to be recognized, what with the secrecy she and a select few have painstakingly took to be right here, right now, just as they are, Rhaenyra cannot help but peer around herself with unchecked suspicion.
Every passing shadow is a possible spectator, every noise that draws too close is a likely witness, every face she spots of roving smallfolk is a possible set of eyes that might one day remember seeing a Princess where she should not be, holding what she should not be holding, in the company of people a proper Princess has no right being in the company of.
It sets the hair on the back of her neck on end. It makes her teeth feel like skinned knees. Every sense is alight with a sort of shaken awareness, a nervous energy that is hard to keep a hold of with her shaking hands.
That is not the only thing Rhaenyra is trying to hold.
The bundle in her arms squirms before it settles against her breast once more, covered barely by a flap of a flimsy robe. Another worry to chew along with her bottom lip.
It is not regret Rhaenyra feels.
It is self-soothing assurance.
Nothing will go wrong.
Nothing can go wrong.
The salt breeze is crisp that eve tide, prickling with the advancing night. One strong gust and the cloak will open, and there it’ll be, for all to see.
Rhaenyra does not glance down at it, this parcel in her arms. She cannot bear too, as she cannot bear to name it. Names have meaning, Rhaenyra thinks, and to give a name to this meaning would be akin to acknowledging an existence-
Acknowledging precisely what she is about to do.
Whether Rhaenyra’s reluctance to do so is because she knows what will come next or whether Rhaenyra has had difficulty facing her own lapses plainly before is for the Gods to decide. She only knows if she looks once more, one very last time, this might all be for naught.
All the hiding, all the concealment, all the tiny lies that thread themselves together into the not so tiny lies that have become her life. And then what? Rhaenyra is already on uncertain footing with her father. This just might be the final affront the King is willing to take. If her father decides to strip Rhaenyra of her title, of her inheritance-
Then what pray tell? As a woman her options are limited, unlike her Nuncle who can, and has, decided to fly off to lands unseen and revel on shores so very far away every time he has been banished by his brother for some transgression or another. Namely, for taking yet another wife.
She should have drunk the moon tea.
Of course, not for the very reason Rhaenyra’s father had sent the cup to her room that morn what felt like a lifetime ago. Despite the Hands whispering in her father’s ear, that thrice damned Otto Hightower who has been a thorn in her hip since the death of her mother, Daemon had not drawn her maidens blood. Rhaenyra had lost thaton her own wants and wishes, through her own not-so-careful planning, and for that one solace a woman is not often allowed she cannot feel remorse.
Nay, she refuses to on principle.
And yet it is precisely this that has led her here, right now, just the way she is.
Reluctantly, her gaze falls to the bundle in her arms, through the fold of her cloak that allows her to peek the round face resting at her chest. The babe is only hours old, and still has her birthing pains in eroded stains smeared here and there where a wet cloth could not scrub in time.
She’s small, so small, this child of hers, and Rhaenyra, for a flicker, pictures silver hair and lilac eyes, her Nuncle’s nose and her cheekbones. She thinks perhaps it might have been better that way. If the child looked Valyrian. If it were, against the odds, Daemon’s child. Perhaps; perhaps not.
Mayhap that is just the younger Rhaenyra speaking. The little girl who had thought her Nuncle had hung the moon in the sky. Who would have, and perhaps would still yet, do anything to have a little piece of him with her.
But the babe has none of that. Not a drop. It can’t. The girl was not born of Rhaenyra’s dalliance with Daemon in the brothel, but by-
Well.
Even thus young, the babe holds the olive hue Valyrians tend to shy away from, would burn brown and not red in a heavy sun, and though small she is, the babe would be lithe Rhaenyra would bet once grown. Upon her crown is a crop of black curls. Her eyes, which peer up hazily, fogged still from their newness, blink in a green so dusky that they first appear blackened without direct light.
A Dornish babe if there ever was one. A Princess, perhaps, in another life. A stranger she must be. For there is only one Dornish man at court, one possible father to this babe at her breast, one mistake that would cost Rhaenyra everything.
And then what?
The life of a bastard was hard enough as it was. A bastard born from a disgraced Princess who has been disinherited? Pitiful. Hardly a life at all. This is for the child, Rhaenyra tells herself. It is for the best.
Then why does her stomach sink in dread? Is this just another lie she will have to live by? A mistake she hides from instead of facing? Is it for the child-
Or is it for herself?
Perhaps, truly, it is a shade of both. Conceivably, like her ancestors before her, the cost of the Iron Throne is nothing short of grave sacrifice, and here, this day, in some nondescript alley in Spicetown hours out from her birthing bed, Rhaenyra Targaryen will make her bloodied pact for a seat worthy of a one-day Queen.
A hand on her shoulder snaps Rhaenyra from her swirling thoughts, snatches her eyes from the babe in a buckskin bundle. Leanor, hood drawn similarly low, tenderly smiles.
“Are you ready?”
Is she? No, Rhaenyra is not ready, but, she thinks, she never will be. Yet, she cannot stall no longer. The sun is setting. The moon will be out soon. A new day shall come, and with it, all that must be done.
Her and Laenor’s wedding had been postponed as far as possible, due to the scandal it would cause to see the Princess at the alter with a belly as rounded as she had become so early into her condition. Rhaenyra’s father was growing restless, suspicious, by Rhaenyra’s sudden decision to stay upon Driftmark for a turn to ‘acquaint herself with her future husband’. A story Rhaenys, one of the sparse people to know the truth of the matter, could only peddle to Viserys a while longer before the glass would shatter.
In the last raven from the Crown, the King had hinted towards a visit from him and the Queen should Rhaenyra not come to the Capital soon. The Queen… another challenge altogether. One look at the babe and she would know. They would all know.
Ser Cole would know.
For all his faults and liabilities, Ser Criston Cole was a man who prided himself on honour. And his honour to do right would doom them all.
Doom Rhaenyra.
Rhaenyra Targaryen has never been concerned with doing the ‘right’ thing. Only the ‘best’ thing. Which were never really the same thing but coincidentally typically ended with whatever Rhaenyra wanted.
And she wanted her Father’s throne.
So much more so now that her once-upon-a-time friend was threatening that possibility.
Rhaenyra had to look to the future. Her own future. Her mother had sacrificed her very life for a son who did not breathe ten breaths.
Rhaenyra will not make the same folly.
She cannot risk it. She dare not. She has come so far… just a bit further. She will marry Laenor. He will have his lovers, and she will have hers, and together they could build something beautiful.
As awful as it sounded, as sick as it made her feel to admit it, the babe at her chest would ruin all that.
So Rhaenyra nods, and she squares her shoulders, and she refuses to look down at the buckskin bundle once more, a little girl, so small in her arms, a little girl with a Dornish face through no fault of her own, and Rhaenyra does what she has grown accustomed to doing.
Trying desperately to bury the truth down where no one will ever find it or dare question it.
She, the babe, and Leanor walk into the brothel down the narrow lane of Spicetown, bookended between a butchers and a blacksmith.
Only two walk out come moonrise.