Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Amongst the Burned Men, a youth must give some part of his body to the fire to prove his courage before he can be deemed a man. This practice might have originated in the years after the Dance of the Dragons, some maesters believe, when an offshoot clan of the Painted Dogs were said to have worshipped a fire-witch in the mountains, sending their boys to bring her gifts and risk the flames of the dragon she commanded to prove their manhood.”

— Excerpt from The World of Ice and Fire

If Daeron were more sober, he would have noticed the way their surroundings quieted, the sharp sound of steel being drawn from scabbards, and the way his horse began shifting in unease beneath him.

Instead, he takes another sip from the leather wineskin he has strapped to his belt, attempting in vain to drown out his uncle’s inane chattering to his left. At any other time, he would have marveled at Rhaegel’s choice to ride a horse instead of a carriage, but now is not that time.

“Alys and I have spoken of staying in the Eyrie for three more months with the twins. You must consider lengthening your stay as well, Daeron. My brother—that is, your father Maekar,” Rhaegel clarifies, as though any one of his other brothers would give a damn about Daeron’s whereabouts other than his own father. “He insisted I give you a tour of the wonders the Vale has to offer. My good-father, Lord Donnel, has graciously hosted a tourney in honor of our arrival. It is your father’s hope that you should participate in the tilts.”

Were Daeron not so hungover from last night’s bout of drowning himself in wine, he might have deigned to respond to his uncle’s good-natured, albeit droning and overlong, suggestion to participate in the tourney. As it is, however, his eyes sting from the rays of the overhead sun, and his head is pounding something fierce.

Would that there were a magical cure for the ailments that drinking wine brings, he would have paid any maester a significant sum to relieve him of the throbbing behind his eyes and temples. Last time he’d been tricked by a woodswitch to buy her concoction that supposedly granted the drinker a headache-free morning after drinking; what he got was nausea and a chamber pot filled with vomit. His father had the woman hanged for attempting to poison a prince. Ever since, Daeron has been leery of anything merchants and the like try to sell to him, lest another lose their life on account of his foolish naivety.

It isn’t until one of the Kingsguard leads his horse in front of Daeron’s that he notices that something is amiss.

“My prince, the scouts have reported a group of the mountain clans making its way to us,” Ser Gwayne relays solemnly, the grizzly scar he obtained from his duel with Daemon Blackfyre visible amidst his open visor.

Daeron’s uncle immediately pales at the mention of the mountain clans. Being married to an Arryn, he must know more than most how savage they truly are. Rhaegel dismounts from his horse, looking about wildly as if men dressed in rags and human body parts will start pouring out from the thickets at any moment.

“I must return to the carriage, where it is safest. Yes, I must,” Rhaegel says, more to himself than anyone. He fiddles with the reins of his horse before turning away and making for the large carriage in the center of their entourage, where his wife and twin children are staying for the duration of the trip.

Then, as if remembering that he isn’t the only royal that needs to be protected, Rhaegel turns back to Daeron, seeming to reach for him before thinking better of it. A wise decision. Daeron doesn’t think he can stomach his uncle’s coddling, not when they’re about to be set upon by a group of men no better than the wildlings north of the Wall.

“Daeron, come quick. We must retreat to the carriage where it’s safest.”

He needn’t have bothered. Daeron would have hidden away even if his uncle hadn’t made the offer. Lounging inside the softly cushioned carriage is a great deal better than having to fight against the men of the mountain clans. Daeron might even become a hindrance to Ser Gwayne. He wouldn’t be surprised if he got himself killed.

Last night he dreamt a great bronze dragon stole him away in his sleep and hid him in a cave on the mountains. Perhaps he misremembered and the dragon was no dragon at all, but a mass of unwashed men in rags who would take him to their dens and make soup out of the meat on his bones. He’s heard enough tales from his aunt Alys of what the mountain clans do to unruly children, though he hasn’t been afraid of such tales since he was a boy of seven dreaming of war and death.

Uncle Rhaegel is waiting for him to dismount and follow, but Daeron waves him away.

“Go, uncle. I must regain my bearings first.” By which he means he doesn’t want Rhaegel to witness the lack of grace with which he will dismount from his horse. His uncle means well, truly, but he will inevitably bring the event up in conversation with Daeron’s father, and he will once more be subject to Maekar’s disappointed stare in the near future.

“Are you certain? If you need help—”

“I’m fine,” he snaps a bit too sharply, immediately regretting his tone when Rhaegel flinches. He brushes his fingers through his hair in an attempt to distract himself from the guilt. “I’ll follow soon, uncle.”

“I… very well.” Rhaegel dithers in place for a few moments before he seems to decide that Daeron is not worth wasting his time on. He smiles at the Kingsguard watching their interaction silently, a hasty, “Ser Gwayne,” uttered toward the man before Daeron’s uncle makes his way to the carriage.

“My prince,” Ser Gwayne calls out to Daeron, a question in the tone of his voice that he mislikes.

“Just give me a minute,” he huffs, blinking rapidly and willing the world to stop spinning for a moment so he may dismount from his horse without falling on his arse. He rests his forehead on the back of his horse’s neck and pats the great beast’s side. “Catch me if I fall, girl,” he whispers before putting all his weight on one stirrup and raising his leg.

And he might have gotten off relatively intact, had the mountain clans not chosen that moment to blow their horns and come charging from the bushes. The sound of it intensifies the ache behind his eyes, and he miscalculates the distance between his foot and the ground, such that when he yanks himself off the horse, he finds that the ground is much, much farther away than he realizes.

“Prince Daeron!”

The familiar sound of steel on steel rings in his ears. Daeron begins contemplating the merits of lying in place and pretending he’s dead. Surely the mountain clans would hold no interest in a corpse, no matter that it is the corpse of a prince. They never seemed very interested in the goings on of politics beyond the mountains of the Vale. What is a dragon prince to an Arryn of the Vale?

Oh.

They aren’t here for him. They are here for his aunt and, in turn, Daeron’s little cousins, and perhaps even his sweet uncle Rhaegel, too.

Except that it was not them Daeron dreamed of getting whisked away into the mountains. There was a large dragon, a great deal of fighting, and a cave that was oddly devoid of the coldness and dampness usually found in them.

It seems he must find his uncle’s carriage after all, lest his dream come true and he finds himself a captive prisoner.

Daeron picks himself up just as a man falls dead on the ground next to him. Thankfully, the man is not one he recognizes, nor one he should recognize, if the matted furs and the mace that looks as if it belongs in the Bronze Age are to be believed.

“Prince Daeron!” 

Ser Gwayne Corbray is there in an instant, grabbing his collar and hauling him up like he weighs nothing. Daeron resists the urge to empty his stomach from the motion, instead holding onto the Kingsguard knight’s arm for dear life.

“Ser Gwayne, what…”

“No time, my prince. Come, we must get you to your uncle.” Ser Gwayne unsheathes the sword from Daeron’s belt and passes it onto his hands. “It is to your left. Go whilst I hold them off.”

Daeron nods clumsily, looking around and fighting another wave of nausea at the amount of corpses strewn around him. He flexes his fingers against the handle of the sword and tries to ignore the sound of his father’s voice in his head, berating him for his inability to unsheathe his own sword. Oh, he knows how to unsheathe his sword alright, just not the one his father would be proud of him for.

His uncle. Right. He needs to go to his uncle and hide away in the safety of the carriage, where the smell of piss and blood won’t reach.

He gets five steps before something collides to his side. He tries to fight, raising his sword with shaking hands only to get it smacked away by a weapon that looks as though it was pillaged from a lord fifty years ago, with how rusted and corroded the metal is.

Daeron sees the moment his attacker realizes who he is, the man’s eyes honing in on the three-headed dragon stitched to his breast.

“Oi! This one’s a dragon!”

And like an avalanche descending upon him, the rest of the men begin fighting to get to him. Daeron moves to pick up his sword, but he can’t duck to the ground unless he wants to have his head separated from his shoulders. Evasion is all he can do, cursing the savage in front of him, then cursing himself for refusing Rhaegel’s offer to help him down earlier. What is a bit of humiliation compared to being threatened with decapitation? He vows to apologize to his uncle if he manages to get out of this alive.

He can hear the sound of clinking armor and hopes Ser Gwayne comes to his immediate rescue.

“Prince Daeron!”

Another man with heavy burn scars on the right side of his face leers at Daeron with hungry eyes.

“Oh, you’ll do nicely.”

I wish I’d just stayed in Summerhall, are the last words he remembers before something hits the side of his head, and everything goes dark.

His time in captivity goes like this: they drag him through the forest with his hands tied behind his back, a sack thrown over his head that smells like it was once used as a chamber pot, and his stomach growling with hunger as hours pass without any sign of rest.

Daeron pretended to be unconscious for a good while, until his captors realized he was faking it and began kicking him until he walked on his own. And he has walked, miles upon miles, hours upon hours, tripping on rocks and overgrown roots, having to endure their merciless jeers whenever he falls face-first with no way to catch himself with his hands bound. The soles of his feet hurt and his wrists ache something fierce from the too tight ropes biting into his skin, but he voices no complaint, lest they find that he is more useful to them dead than alive.

He curses his uncle for bringing up this trip to his father, then he curses his father for making him go, then curses Aerion for throwing away all of Daeron’s nondescript clothes he often used to sneak out of the castle. If it weren’t for the embroidered cloak he had to wear, these savages would have been none the wiser of his status as prince.

“Almost there. The fire-witch will be pleased with our sacrifice this time. Eor and his men will be howling with envy.”

They laugh at the expense of this Eor fellow and his supposed envy. Daeron could care less about whatever politics the mountain clans of the Vale participate in, except he’s almost certain that the sacrifice they spoke of is supposed to be him.

For the first time since he was taken, Daeron voices a question, “Who exactly is this fire-witch you speak of?”

“Who is the fire-witch, he says,” a man bellows with a laugh, the rest of them cackling as well, like Daeron has made a jape instead of a question that merits a proper answer. Then again, he supposes he is at fault for expecting a proper answer amongst people who could hardly be bothered to bathe, let alone be proper.

“You’ll see soon enough, lad. But you ain’t gettin’ to be seein’ much after that.” Another round of laughter follows that cryptic statement. “Now, get! Stop draggin’ your feet!”

Daeron, for what feels like the hundredth time this day, is shoved and ordered to walk faster, threatened with taking his fancy boots off, and threatened once more about getting roped to a horse and dragged until they reach their destination. Daeron, for all his faults, decides to keep quiet and embrace his fate.

He knows they’ve reached the lair of this fire-witch they keep speaking of when a hush falls over his captors, their easy banter and crass japes turning silent.

“Mistress, we’ve brought an offering for you!”

Everyone seems to wait with bated breaths, none daring to make a sound. Daeron finds himself swept up in it as well, sweat beading down his back as he imagines what this fire-witch they spoke of might be like.

A hag with a hunched back and withered face? He tries to recall the woodswitch who swindled him his coin years ago, but all he remembers is the way her tongue lolled out of her mouth and how blue her face was as she hung from the rafters. Maekar made him watch to teach him a lesson, though what lesson he was supposed to glean from watching a woman be hanged other than how agonisingly long a person struggles before dying, Daeron will never know.

He finds himself unconsciously tensing up as the sound of footsteps approaches, lighter than he expected them to be.

“What in the hells have you people brought this time?”

The voice is young, much younger than he thought would belong to someone called a fire-witch. There is a casualness to the way the witch spoke, a sort of dismissiveness that is clear to hear, like this is all something she finds inconvenient rather than something that will dictate whether Daeron lives or not.

“Something big, mistress! Bigger than anything our ancestors have ever brought.”

Someone kicks him in the back of his legs, sending him falling to the ground on his knees. He will be bruised all over once he returns home—if he returns home, which is starting to sound less and less likely the more he spends time here.

“Did you kidnap someone?!” She sounds… not angry, but more as though she is in disbelief of their actions. Daeron dares to hope that she is the kind of witch that does not accept human sacrifices, and therefore will let him leave and go home once she realizes that he is very much alive and not dead.

“I… yes? But, mistress, he’s different, look!”

Daeron can feel a hand grabbing his cloak, showing off the three-headed dragon faced to the right, a very unimaginative sigil he made when he was six-and-ten, and his father told him he would need to have a sigil of his own to show off during his very first participation in a tourney. Not that it did much, as he was quickly unhorsed on his first tilt, much to Maekar’s disappointment.

“You idiots. You kidnapped a prince.”

His cloak drops to the ground, forgotten.

“An offering, mistress. Dragon blood to sate a dragon’s—”

“Enough! Just. Good gods, I hate you people.”

Even unable to see as he is, Daeron can practically hear the exasperation on the woman’s voice, can imagine her rubbing her temples the way he’s seen Maekar do when Daeron does something that further dishonors him in his father’s eyes.

“Mistress?”

“Oh, for the love of—just go. Leave. I thank you for your generous offering, now go and I will… burn him alive. Or something.”

Daeron’s heart starts beating rapidly at the witch’s words. Perhaps he misread her intentions and she truly is the kind of witch who sacrifices people on a pyre. He’s heard tales of priestesses across the Narrow Sea who practice such things, but to think one would be here in the mountains of the Vale, of all places, where the teachings of the Seven are most prominent.

“But we want to watch—”

“Unless you want to be burned alive, I would suggest you leave.”

There’s a hardness to her voice now, leaving him sweating underneath the sack they tossed over his head. She intends to make good of her words, that much he can tell from the way footsteps begin leaving the lair of this witch. None of them utter a complaint, these seasoned warrior savages. Earlier they had japed and mocked him at his expense, now they leave because of a few mere words from a woman. A fire-witch, but a woman nonetheless. Either she has dirt upon these men for them to listen to her so, or she truly does have the power to burn someone alive. A loyal set of warriors different from the ones that brought him here, perhaps?

When the last footsteps have faded, and Daeron is almost certain that he and the witch are alone now, he hears her sigh, a long, put-upon one that shows her chagrin. It reminds him of Aerys, when his bookish uncle tires of Aemon’s unceasing questions and sends him away. Daeron would almost feel amusement at the comparison, almost, if only his life weren’t about to be sacrificed for some nefarious purposes unknown to him. Would that rumors of his family being dragons made flesh were true, then Daeron might pretend at being burned alive, before making a quick escape once his restraints turn to ash.

“Sorry about that,” she says after a while. With a start, he realizes that her voice sounds much closer than it was before, seemingly right in front of him. “Let’s get this thing off you.”

The sack upon his head is unceremoniously removed, and for the first time after hours of that unbearable stench, Daeron breathes in the fresh scent of nature. His eyes squint against the sudden glare of the sun, blinking rapidly to rid himself of the spots that have overtaken his vision. He finds that the shadows cast by the trees around him have grown long, nearing sunset. They left the inn along the High Road at dawn, a mere few hours away from the Bloody Gate. Daeron just had to be idiotic enough to be caught and taken prisoner right at the edge of safety.

He wonders what his uncle is doing at the moment, whether he fainted from the news of Daeron’s disappearance or is frantically urging their household knights and sending scouts along the mountains in search of him. His father, Daeron knows, will be wroth and come riding for the Vale once news reaches him of his capture. Perhaps Aerion might come along, not because of concern or anything of the sort, but to see Daeron’s corpse with his own eyes and ascertain himself of his place as Maekar’s heir.

His eyes are still struggling to adjust to the sudden onslaught from the sun, when a hand grabs his chin and forces his head to stay still. A shadow passes over his eyes, providing a nice reprieve from the sun.

Daeron raises his gaze to the witch, only to find that she is neither a hag like he imagined or a withered old woman.

The first thing he notices are her eyes, a dark shade of blue that is almost hard to discern with the sun alight against her, casting her face in shadows. Her brows are thick and currently furrowed, set upon a dusky face that is looking at him with concern. Dark hair falls in waves along her shoulders, half of it pushed up by a stick poking up from her head. Pursed lips capture his attention, an enticing shade of cinnamon that makes him wonder if they would taste just as sweet.

Daeron acknowledges within the confines of his mind that were he in a whorehouse and he saw her face among the rabble of girls working there, he would have chosen her in a heartbeat.

A second later, he realizes that it is perhaps not wise to lust after the woman who spoke of her intention to burn him alive just minutes ago.

“Are you alright?”

Is he? Apart from the bone-deep ache in his body from being forced to hike his way through a mountain, the throbbing of his head when one of the savages knocked him out cold, and the howling of his stomach begging for a morsel of food, Daeron can almost call himself all right.

“Hello? Earth to the Targaryen princeling?”

Hel…o? What in the gods’ names is a hello?

She waves her hand over his face, her eyes pinched with something he hesitates to call worry, but it is the only apt descriptor he has.

“I’m…” He finds himself tongue-tied, his throat dry and unused to speaking after hours spent holding his tongue for fear it may be the last time he spoke. “I am well.”

“Oh, good. I was afraid those oafs might have given you brain damage.” She smiles, as though the idea of Daeron’s brain becoming damaged and leaving him simple is something she finds amusing. And suddenly, he remembers that for all that she has a comely face that Daeron would, on any other occasion, proposition, she is also the one those savages called a fire-witch.

With her hands returning to her sides, the glare from the sun returns in its intensity. Daeron realizes that she used her hand earlier to shield his eyes from the light, an oddly considerate act that leaves him questioning her intentions.

“Sorry about earlier. I don’t even know how you managed to get yourself captured by them. They’re barely competent on a good day.” Her lips twist into a sardonic smile, eyeing him like they’re sharing a joke only they understand. Daeron, unfortunately, does not.

“They called you a fire-witch,” is all that manages to leave his mouth, his biggest question yet.

Something uncomfortable passes through her features, before it settles into one he is familiar with: annoyance.

“Yes, they did call me that, but I’m no fire-witch, or any sort of witch.” She adds that last part hastily, in a tone that tells him she has discussed this a number of times and has grown weary of misunderstandings. Or, at least, that is what he wishes were true. It would give him a great deal of relief if her words prove true, although it is just as likely that she is lying to give him a false sense of assurance.

But it is not as if Daeron has any sort of choice on the matter. He is bound and bruised, and were he to run away, he is certain one of the men who dragged him here will be at him before he has the chance to go far.

He will have to trust that she is being truthful about not being a witch, though even were she not one, it doesn’t mean she does not have an ulterior motive.

“If it is gold you want, then you will have it. My father will be glad to pay any sum you demand, so long as I am returned to him whole and alive.” He is grasping at straws here. What use does a woman have for gold in the wilderness? Ransoms paid by noblemen from the Vale have always ended in betrayal or having their kin return missing parts of themself. He realizes with sudden dread that there is no going home; at least, not one where he would keep all of his limbs intact.

She frowns, and Daeron prepares himself for the inevitable doom her words will bring, but she proves him wrong yet again.

“I don’t want your gold, prince,” she says, her lips set in a straight line that reveals her seriousness. “I want you to leave this place and forget you ever saw me.”

What?

“That can’t be it,” he insists, further proving Aerion’s claims that Daeron is a fool, for why else is he insisting that there is more to this than what she has already said? He should be grateful that she doesn’t intend to burn him alive, but he cannot let go of that feeling inside him that this cannot be all that she is, that there is more he has yet to uncover.

But the question that gives him pause is why he even wants to know more about a woman whose existence he hadn’t been aware of until mere hours ago?

She purses her lips but says nothing else, choosing to gaze at the sky instead of meeting his eyes.

“It’s nearly sundown. I can escort you down the mountain tomorrow, but it’s too dangerous to go tonight.” She rises to her feet, eyeing him still kneeling on the ground. His legs have begun to turn numb. Sighing, she procures a knife from her belt and goes to stand behind his back.

Daeron tenses, fearing the worst. This is it, she has lied and her true objective is to have him lower his guard, then stab him in the back when he least expects it. Foolish, naive Daeron. He can almost hear his brother’s chafing voice at the back of his head.

But instead of stabbing him in the back, she cuts away at his restraints.

The ensuing relief from the tension that’s been forced on his shoulders and arms leave him nearly falling face-first onto the ground. Were it not for the steady hand that grabs onto his shoulder, he might have.

“Woah, steady there.” She comes into view, eyes wide as she surveys his body. He thinks he might have seen her wince. “They really did a number on you, ugh. Sorry again.”

She keeps apologizing, though Daeron knows not why she does. It’s not as if she was the one who inflicted these injuries upon him, but he appreciates it nonetheless. After hours spent weathering their mocking words and harsh kicks, this care she’s showing him, however false it may be, is a welcome one.

“So you’ll let me go?” he asks, just to be sure he heard her correctly earlier.

She huffs. “Only if you promise not to breathe a word about my existence.”

She makes to stand, only for him to reach for her arm in a silent request for support. His father, were he to see his eldest son needing help from a woman to stand, would balk at the scene. But Daeron’s legs ache and his shoulders are sore, and only last night he was drinking himself merrily until the world began to swim, and he could dare to hope that his dreams might finally be peaceful ones. No such luck.

“You’re heavy,” she complains as she pulls him up by his arm, but despite this she continues to support him well after he’s stood up on his own. An arm loops around his own, and Daeron is not proud enough to decline help when it’s offered so freely. He rests his weight against her, only just. She might tumble to the ground should he rest his entire weight on her.

They begin to trek through the hard packed dirt, a pathway of sorts that leads to somewhere covered by trees. He thinks no more of hidden motives and nefarious schemes. If she wanted him dead, she would have taken her chance when he was bound and defenseless on his knees. The fact that she is helping him walk, presumably to her home, is enough to tell him of her character.

A pretty woman in his arm dragging him to her home. Were the context behind such a thought not so depressing, Daeron thinks he might have found the experience more pleasant.

“What is your name?” he asks, if only to fill the suffocating silence that has engulfed them, and perhaps because he wishes to put a name to such comely face. If he does make it home after all this—a fact that is starting to become more and more likely, however baffling the thought is—he wants something to remember her by other than pretty blue eyes and cinnamon-colored lips.

She hums noncommittally. “Why don’t you tell me yours first, prince? You’ve got the eyes, but where’s that pale hair everyone seems to talk about?”

He understands her confusion well. Many a time he has escaped from the Red Keep thanks to the inconspicuous color of his hair, needing only to don a servant’s clothes and steal a ratty cloak for him to be mistaken for one of the commonborn. His eyes are telling, but if he keeps his gaze low and stays in low lit areas, he finds that most people will think they are blue rather than violet.

He has no compunctions about telling her his name. He asked for hers, it is only proper that he give her his own.

“My name is Daeron.”

She stops, stumbles more like, and now it is his turn to support her so she won’t fall to the ground.

“...of course it had to be…”

He catches her mumbling something beneath her breath, but he only manages to catch a few words before she shakes her head and continues their walk. The sun is beginning to set, casting her face in an orange glow that compliments the warm tone of her skin. It is here, with the sun finally casting its light over her face, that he sees, truly sees, her eyes, crinkled as they are as she gazes up at him.

And he finds that he cannot look away.

He is so distracted by this revelation that he misses the words she says next.

“What?”

“I said,” she huffs, smiling up at him—and there. There it is again, mocking him as they shine brightly against the dying sun. “My name is Elissa.”

Her eyes are not blue. They’re purple.

Chapter Text

The revelation doesn’t compel him to do anything outrageous, like ask about her heritage or why a woman bearing the eyes of Valyria is living in the mountains and being called a fire-witch by the savages of the Vale.

It is likely she was fathered by a Lyseni oarsman who passed through Gulltown, her mother a whore of no particular standing, and she—Elissa, a Westerlander name if he ever heard one—was abandoned by her mother and taken in by the mountain clans. Yes, it is the most likely story behind those eyes.

He considers his dream once more. A great bronze dragon whisking him away to the mountains and off into a cave. Perhaps he was wrong, he thinks as he gazes at the woman next to him, the dragon was not bronze, but brown. Her skin is certainly dark enough for it. But, ah, purple eyes does not make one a dragon, or even descended from one. Daeron might be overthinking it, but—but.

He dreamed of a dragon carrying him, the way she is now. It might mean something, his presence here and her adamance on him forgetting about her once he leaves this dreadful place. That dream, he acknowledges, was one of the better ones. Daeron did not get eaten by the dragon, nor was he taken away only to be burned alive, or even that he was forced to watch as the dragon maimed and burned armies until the field was painted red. It simply… was. Peaceful enough that were he anyone but himself, he might have called it a normal dream, mayhaps even a pleasant one.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Elissa remarks, steps slowing as a cottage comes to view. Not a hut, as he would have expected anyone of such lowly birth would be living, but a cottage made of bricks and a proper roof overhead. Furthermore, it is clean, with a garden out front and flowers that look carefully tended to. “Well, this is it. Welcome to mi casa.”

“Mi… what?”

She huffs through her nose, an act he is starting to believe she’s fond of doing. “It means my house. Welcome to my home, Daeron.”

She uses his name so casually and without the proper titles that usually come with it. It’s discomforting how unbothered he is by this, as though the moment he allows someone of lower station to address him with such familiarity, his father would appear like a ghost, berating Daeron and reminding him that he needs to have more dignity as his eldest son.

But gods, what he would give to have his father right now rather than the woman beside him. A woman with a pretty face and familiar eyes, yes, but a stranger still.

“Your home is rather quaint,” he says, sniffing amidst a sudden runny nose. He’s uncomfortably aware of how drenched he is with sweat, and it feels as though he might suffer a fever on the morrow. He instinctively reaches for the leather wineskin attached to his belt, before he remembers that those men earlier took it along with whatever coin he had and the dagger strapped to his belt.

He eyes the flowers once more and remembers the tales his aunt Alys used to tell of backwater savages living in the mountains of the Vale. It’s hard to believe such things like dainty flowers can exist in a place full of grisly tales and the bodies of countless innocents.

Elissa looks fondly at her home, and Daeron knows he shouldn’t, but he finds himself staring again. Specifically at her eyes.

“My grandfather was the one who built this home. He said my great-grandmother was content to live in caves and the wilderness, but he was having none of it. So he built her this cottage.” Her voice holds a wistfulness to it as she recalls her grandfather’s legacy. “The garden is mine though.”

She seems the sort to like pretty things, from the way her dress is full of embroidered flowers with not one stain upon them. A rarity if he ever saw one. She must be well-to-do if she can afford to have stainless dresses. Well-to-do for a lowborn, that is.

“Come on inside. I think I’ve got some leftover stew from lunch.” She squeezes his arm tentatively before dragging him to her quaint little cottage.

The stew sits warmly on his stomach after a hard day of hiking through the mountain and being pushed around.

“So,” Elissa begins, putting her elbows on the table then resting her chin atop her hands, “what’s the story?”

Daeron pauses in the middle of bringing a piece of meat to his mouth. He notices a faint quiver to the spoon he has held aloft in the air.

“What story?”

“You know.” She waves her hand in the air, making little circles. “How did you end up being captured by the Burned Men?”

Burned Men?

He relays his confusion to her, taking another hearty spoonful from his bowl of stew. Elissa finished with hers minutes ago, but Daeron had been unashamed to ask for a second helping. She claimed it was made from sheep’s meat, a fact he’s inclined to believe on account of the bleating he heard just outside the cottage. She’s a shepherd.

“They call themselves the Burned Men, for… reasons. Anyway, they sometimes come by with offerings, like the one you just witnessed.” She smiles at him apologetically. Daeron tries not to get too lost in it, reminding himself that now is not the time to be distracted by a pretty face as he rubs his eyes.

“They called you a fire-witch.”

Being a witch is one thing, but a fire-witch? The purple eyes, the brown dragon in his dreams, and this mysterious woman with her comely face and delicious stew. His ancestors used to burn people alive, though that was when they had the dragons to do the actual burning.

Her nose scrunches the way his might when smelling something foul.

“Ugh, that. It’s a long story, but I’m not the fire-witch they keep worshipping. That was my great-grandmother.” There’s a nervous edge to her smile, one she tries to play off by asking him a question of her own. “Now about you. How do I know I won’t be set upon by knights the moment I deliver you to your… whoever it is I have to escort you to.”

Daeron… can’t actually guarantee they won’t seize her the moment he’s returned to his uncle, and he isn’t certain any amount of bargaining for her to be spared will be heard. She is a woman from the mountains associated with these Burned Men, and there is nothing the Arryns hate more than the mountain clans. She might even be married to one of those savages, though Daeron’s seen neither hide nor hair of this imagined husband. He doesn’t think any man would be happy that his wife brought home another man, no matter if said man is a prince.

“I don’t know,” is all he can say to her query. “My uncle is married to Donnel Arryn’s daughter. Surely you know of the Arryns’ hatred for your kind.”

A brow raises at his choice of wording.

“My kind?”

He notes a hint of offence at her tone, though why she is offended, he doesn’t know.

“The Burned Men called you mistress, and they’re one of the mountain clans, are they not?” If the way they dress and their crass words are bases for him to judge. Certainly the brute way they knocked him cold and let him walk all day are indicative of their barbaric nature.

“Well, yes, but I’m not one of them, despite what they call me.” Elissa looks at him with open offence now and not merely the hint of one, as though the idea of being a part of them is as revolting as Daeron thinks it is.

“Your husband, then. If not the Burned Men, then surely he’s part of another clan.” He dreads her answer as much as he awaits it, scarcely taking his eyes off her for fear of missing a hint of anything on her face. His stew lies forgotten on the table, steadily turning cold by the minute.

Elissa is quiet for a moment, her eyes blinking rapidly, before a confused smile makes its way across her lips, and then—

“I don’t have a husband.”

Daeron ignores the spike in his heart at her admission.

“T-Truly?” He coughs into his hand and averts his gaze, lest she see something in his face that would give him away.

“Yes, truly.”

He chances a glance in her direction and finds her with her cheek resting on her palm, watching him as though he is the most fascinating thing she’s ever beheld.

He doesn’t know what to say after that, so he settles for returning his attention to his stew and ignoring the woman boring holes to his face. Look at him, acting like some green boy just because a woman, however easy on the eyes she may be, saved him from certain death.

He reaches for the cup set next to his bowl and nearly chokes when it enters his mouth. It’s water, not wine, or ale, or anything that might ease the thirst that’s formed in the back of his throat for something that will clear his mind of his worries and make him forget everything that happened for the past few hours. He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve with a grimace he doesn’t bother hiding.

“Haven’t you got any wine?” It’s spoken closer to a demand than a request, something that Elissa must hear clearly, as she raises an unimpressed brow at him. And just like that, the easy air that’s fallen over them after Daeron’s bumbling attempt to discover whether she is married is gone.

“I don’t drink alcohol.” She leans close and taps her finger on the wooden table. The position grants him a good view of her collarbones and the tantalizing hint of the top of her breasts. Daeron snaps his gaze back to her face, lest he be caught with wandering eyes and promptly kicked out of her house. “And while you’re in my home, you won’t be drinking anything of the sort. I don’t like drunks.”

Her gaze is pointed as she says the last part, and he has to swallow amidst a dry throat to keep his eyes from straying any lower.

And then her words actually register in his head.

Daeron would feel more ashamed that his vices are so easily read by a stranger, were he not so upset at the thought of not getting to have a single drop of wine for the duration of his stay in these mountains. A bottle of Arbor gold would have been the perfect companion after the day he’s had, but from the look on Elissa’s face, he won’t be getting his wish granted.

But he squints at the unfamiliar word, puzzled. “Alcohol? Is that a new kind of beer they’ve made?”

Daeron’s tasted his fair share of beer, though he largely prefers the sweetness of wine over the malty tang beer leaves in his tongue. A tavern just at the edge of Flea Bottom once sold beers that were said to have been fermented since the reign of Old King Jaehaerys. He didn’t believe it, of course, but his curiosity got the best of him and he ended up with stomach pains the next day with his father’s voice in his ear, asking him if he’s trying to get drunk or trying to kill himself.

Elissa looks surprised by his question. “You don’t know what alcohol is? Isn’t that a word here?”

“Is it supposed to be?” Daeron asks, unable to recall if he has ever encountered the term before. His head is a mess of blank spaces where memories should be, nights spent outside only to wake up in the morning in an unfamiliar place with no recollection of what happened or how he ended up there. He used to think Rhae was still a toddling babe, until he encountered a child running through the halls and realized that was his youngest sister.

“I suppose it’s not,” she says hesitantly, a frown on her lips that makes it seem as though she’s thinking deeply about something, perhaps wondering if she should argue about the existence of a word to a prince.

Daeron watches as she glares at the table like it’s wronged her. He brings a large piece of meat to his mouth and chews.

Elissa seems to come to a decision as she heaves a sigh and slumps her shoulders. “Whatever. It’s no big deal that you people don’t know what alcohol is.”

“What is it, then?” It seems to matter a great deal to her that he doesn’t know what an alcohol is, no matter her words saying the contrary.

His conclusion proves true when she immediately launches an explanation into what this alcohol is. “Alcohol is this thing that’s present in wine that makes you drunk. It’s poison to us, but apparently it’s a fun kind of poison when taken in small doses.” Her nose scrunches in disgust.

Daeron wouldn’t describe being drunk as fun, certainly not the aftermath of it. The lightheadedness, the lack of compunctions in his actions, the way everything feels so much better and less like the world is going to fall apart at any moment. He doesn’t know how to live without it. It isn’t fun the way Aegon might consider tourneys fun or Aerion terrorizing others entertaining. It’s a necessity, something he needs rather than something he wants.

But he doubts Elissa would understand even if he explained it to her, so he settles for shrugging his shoulders and taking another mouthful from his stew.

“The gods saw fit to give us wine. I think it only fair that we indulge in the gifts they’ve given us.” Invoking the gods and watching the other person struggle to form an argument without sounding like a heretic are what he often settles for when he wants to escape uncomfortable conversations. Daeron finds this tactic works best against servants and nobles who are too afraid of his status as prince to rebuke his words.

He’s certain the gods have a special place in the hells reserved for him, but in the meantime he might as well use their name for his benefit in exchange for all the good they’ve done in his life, of which there are none.

Contrary to his expectations, Elissa doesn’t back down at the mention of the gods, instead it only seems to make her more impassioned.

“The Faith condemns overindulgence in wine and claims it’s sinful. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Seven,” Elissa recites, eyeing him challengingly as Daeron gapes and flounders for a response.

“You’ve read the Seven-Pointed Star?” His voice is full of disbelief.

A woman called a witch, no matter that she isn’t actually one, knowing the teachings of the Faith enough to recite a direct passage from the holy text. Daeron isn’t religious enough to know whether there’s truly such a line in the book, but the conviction with which Elissa recited that passage leads him to believe that the Faith does, in fact, condemn getting drunk, and if so then the hells must be very crowded indeed.

And then, he realizes one crucial aspect. “You can read?”

“Of course I can read,” she says, looking indignant at the idea that Daeron thought her illiterate. “The Seven-Pointed Star and the other texts the Faith sells were the only books I could get my hands on for cheap. You people need to invent a printer, everyone’s handwriting is so difficult to read.”

“A printer,” he repeats. Daeron doesn’t know where to begin parsing through the words she just spoke. The fact that she can read, or the fact that she has read through all of the books that preach the teachings of the Faith, or this mysterious “printer” that they ought to invent.

A sudden, foreboding chill crawls down Daeron’s spine. Gods, what if she’s an aspiring septa, and Daeron has spent the past hour ogling her and wondering what her lips might taste like? He truly is destined for the hells.

Elissa waves her hand in the air. “Forget it. It’s not important.”

What’s not important?

He tries to recall their conversation. Right. The Seven-Pointed Star and this printer.

…And her aspirations to become a member of the Faith. It would explain the lack of a husband and why she is so knowledgeable on the contents of the Seven-Pointed Star.

Daeron feels something inside him wither. His leg begins to bounce beneath the table as he reaches for his cup, before he halts as he remembers that it isn’t wine. He returns to eating his stew dejectedly, unaware of Elissa’s considering stare.

He doesn’t notice when she stands from her seat and procures something from one of the cupboards. Only when his cup is replaced by another does he deign to look up from his food and meet her eyes. Elissa pushes the cup towards him. When Daeron glances at its contents, he nearly cries with relief.

The cup is halfway to his lips when she dashes his hopes yet again.

“It’s not wine. It’s juice made from mulberries I picked this morning.” She crosses her arms over her chest, and not even the sight of her tits being pushed up against each other is enough to cure Daeron of his dejection. “Try it. It tastes similar enough to wine that it should sate your cravings.”

Daeron doesn’t like the word she uses to describe his need for wine. Cravings, as though he is a woman with child wanting boiled fish stuffed with jams and made into a palatable sandwich. His mother once said she craved the most bizarre meals when she was carrying Aerion. It’s no wonder the little monster turned out the way he did.

Despite his reservations, he still drinks the juice. Anything to quench the thirst in his throat, no matter that it’s merely a pale imitation of the real thing. He downs it all in one go, finding that once he’s begun, he cannot stop. It is sweet with an earthy flavor to it not dissimilar to Arbor red, albeit of a much poorer quality. Once he sets the empty cup down the table, he sees Elissa looking at him with amusement.

“Taste good?” It seems she isn’t above taunting him.

“A bit tart,” he responds, wiping his lips and resisting the urge to lick the residue off the back of his hand. It would be a tad too unbecoming, even for someone like him.

His appetite has left him, leaving him stirring the rest of his stew listlessly. Elissa has procured a pitcher and is in the middle of refilling his cup with mulberry juice. She is attentive and dutiful, kind even when Daeron has done nothing to deserve it.

She would make a good wife for someone. A pity that she has chosen the path of a septa.

“What?” Elissa barks out a laugh. “Me, a septa?” She giggles, and were Daeron not so confused he would have marveled at the sound.

He then realizes that his thoughts must have escaped through his mouth, for her to be laughing at him so. He decides that he might as well sate his curiosity.

“Aren’t you?”

The looks she gives him is near scandalized. “Gods, no. Never in a million years. How did you even come to that conclusion?”

“Well,” he fumbles to explain, “you remain unmarried at your age, and—” He smacks his lips together a few times, his tongue suddenly feeling heavy. “—you recite passages from the Seven-Pointed Star as though you’ve memorized it.”

“I don’t have it memorized. I know the teachings of the Faith so well because I don’t have any other books to read.” She gestures towards the pitiful shelf to his right that houses the meagre amount of books she owns. “And why are you so concerned about me being unmarried? I’m only seventeen, I have the rest of my life ahead of me.”

From the way she carries herself and the confidence with which she’d made those mountain savages leave earlier, he never would’ve thought her one year younger than him. Twenty years of age, mayhaps a year or two more, but seven-and-ten? Only a year past her majority, and were she nobility, she would already be married with a babe in her arms or on its way.

Daeron’s own parents married at four-and-ten and had him only a year after. A way to strengthen their position amidst Daemon’s politically advantageous marriage and his growing brood. He suspects Maekar’s early marriage is the reason why his father has yet to betroth Daeron to anyone, despite him being older than Valarr was when his cousin wed Kiera. To give him the freedom he never had, or simply that Maekar cannot find a nobleman’s daughter willing to put up with Daeron’s drunken, whoring ways. He won’t pretend at knowing the way his father’s mind works.

“Noble ladies have married far younger,” is his weak counter to her statement about being only seven-and-ten.

“But I’m not a noble lady,” she argues before gesturing to him with a wave of her hand. “And what about you? Are you married? How old even are you?”

The sudden onslaught of questions directed at him leaves him feeling anxious, and for no reason he can discern. He wishes he had a drink at hand to ease his nerves, but there is only the cup of mulberry juice and it isn’t enough.

“I’m eight-and-ten.” He licks his lips and swallows hard. “And no, I am unmarried.”

Elissa tilts her head. “Betrothed?”

“If my father has set up a match, then I’m unaware of it.” And likely he will remain unaware until the time comes for him to stand before a septon, and only then will he realize that the one getting married is him and not one of his siblings or cousins.

She has a contemplative look upon her face that Daeron doesn’t know what to make of. And then, she throws him in for another loop.

“Say, how is your uncle?”

“I… pardon?” Daeron gapes. How did their conversation go from asking about Daeron’s nonexistent nuptials to his uncle? And his most pressing question: which one?

“You know, your uncle the heir to the throne?” She regards him the way one might look at someone simple in the head. “Is he alright?”

“My father always said his most sensible brother was uncle Baelor and that he’d outlive us all.” At Elissa’s questioning look, he clarifies. “Yes, my uncle is alright, though I wonder at your concern for his wellbeing.”

“Just asking as a concerned citizen of Westeros,” she says with a look about her face like she’s said something funny.

Daeron doubts that’s all there is to it.

“Hm,” Elissa hums, staring at a spot over Daeron’s shoulder. She then slumps her shoulders and sighs. “You know what, I’m not going to get involved. Whatever.”

Daeron can only stare as she purses her lips and glares at the table. This strange woman with her even stranger behavior. He would almost call her not right in the head were he not so certain that he’s behaved worse when deep in his cups.

“Anyway,” she starts, straightening from her seat and sending him a smile like the past few minutes never happened. “Marriage, betrothals, the rules of society we can never escape.”

He wonders what she knows of what goes on in society, isolated in the mountains as she is with only the barbaric mountain clans for company.

“I’m seventeen, a peasant, and unmarried. You’re eighteen, a prince, and unmarried with no betrothal.” With each attribute she lists, she puts down a finger from her hand. She looks at him, unimpressed, the way Shiera might when someone makes a remark upon her bastardry. “I think the question you should be asking yourself is why you don’t have a wife rather than grilling me about my lack of a husband.”

“I… well…”

Daeron has no response for that. He understands the hypocrisy of his words, but unlike her, he will not be incapable of bearing children if he marries late into his life.

He shifts in his seat uneasily, his leg bouncing despite the trembling hand he places over it to stop the jitters.

It seems they are both at an impasse. Elissa is willing to argue her way, and Daeron is unwilling to continue on with this line of conversation.

But then Elissa smiles, and the tension that’s formed around Daeron’s shoulders eases. “I’m kidding. Stop looking so tense.”

She reaches out as though she might push his shoulder, before seeming to think better of it and retracting her hand. Something about her seems to turn brittle all of a sudden, her smile losing some of its brightness.

“It’s not like I haven’t thought about marriage, but I don’t want any child of mine to carry the responsibilities my grandfather passed onto me.” There’s a moment of quiet after her admission, before Elissa suddenly chuckles, the sound of it strained even to Daeron’s ears. “I’m really dumping all of this on you, aren’t I? Sorry. It’s just a novelty for me to have someone to talk to who doesn’t treat me like a witch.”

“I’d imagine unwashed men occasionally announcing themselves bearing offerings don’t make for riveting conversation partners,” he says, recalling how he nearly became an offering himself. Daeron never thought himself a particularly good conversationalist, but he must be doing something right for Elissa to spill her inner thoughts to him after having one meal together.

His words make Elissa giggle, the kind that has her leaning her head forward with a hand raised to muffle the sound.

“You know, you’re not so bad.” She smiles, all crinkled eyes and flushed cheeks. “I guess I’m thankful there’s one person in this mountain who isn’t so revolting.”

Daeron’s mind comes to a halt.

He has been flirted with before; noble girls seeking to marry into his family, whores he paid to make him feel good for one night. He has been called handsome (though he doubts the sincerity of their words on account of his bloodshot eyes and unkempt hair), dashing (again, words he didn’t believe, with him barely remembering to change out of his ratty clothes whenever he returned to his duties), and a noble prince (must he provide more reasons why this isn’t the least bit true?).

All instances have been insincere, with the other party doing it to curry favor with him or because he paid them good coin.

It is fitting, then, that the first time a woman compliments Daeron genuinely, she does it by saying he is only less revolting than the unwashed savages in these mountains. Not a particularly high bar to overcome.

But the fact remains that of the men she knows, he is the best one yet. It isn’t something he should feel good about, with his competition being as they are, but he can’t help the small smile fighting to make its way to his lips. Were he less sober and more drunk out of his mind, he might have leaned across the table and propositioned her then and there. Likely she would have slapped him across the face, given the lack of compunctions she has about treating him as though he isn’t a prince of the blood.

He shovels a spoonful of stew—now grown cold—into his mouth before Elissa sees the smile and rightfully assumes that he has been affected by her words.

The next few minutes are spent in comfortable silence, if a smidge awkward on Daeron’s part. A part of him wishes to continue their earlier conversation, figure out what else she thinks about him, but the silence has stretched too long and the time has passed for him to respond to her comment. So he slumps his shoulders and sullenly eats his meal in silence, the only sound being the continuous thumping of his bouncing leg.

Once he finishes with the stew, he pushes the bowl to her in a silent request for it to be taken away. His hand itches to grab a cup of wine, a slight tremor to his fingers, but he clenches his fists and hides them away in his lap.

“I’m not your servant,” Elissa huffs, but she still takes both of their bowls and goes outside. He follows her, having nothing better to do and not wanting to be alone in a stranger’s house, though stranger is too distant a word to describe what she is to him. His helper? Savior?

The first person to make him smile since… he can’t remember.

Daeron sits across from her on a stone carved into a bench, and he watches as she puts the bowls and spoons into a large wooden basin and begins cleaning it. The soap that she uses smells pleasant, a herbal mix that settles nicely in the air. He wonders where she acquired such a thing, being in the wilderness as she is. Even earlier when he was leaning his weight on her and she led him by the arm, she smelled not of sweat or dirt, but of something floral and citrusy. She smells like she bathes in flowers and fruits, which is odd to consider for a commonborn like her.

Then again, with her literacy and well-spokenness, she is unlike any of common birth he has met before. Not that he has met many.

Elissa dries her hands upon her skirt once she’s done, resting her hands on her hips and looking at him consideringly. In the darkness of night, with the only source of light being the torch she lit earlier, her eyes look a shade of dark blue, but Daeron knows better. He imagines his own are just as difficult to discern in the low light.

“You’re probably tired after being dragged through the mountain. You can sleep on my bed.”

The offer is as innocent as can be, but Daeron’s mind goes to different places.

“...That would be best.” Now that she has brought it up, he begins to feel the first dregs of fatigue wash over him.

Elissa quietly shows him to her bed, a small thing with blankets and pillows made from sheep wool.

“It’s not as comfortable as the fancy beds you must be used to, but it’s soft enough.” She slaps the top of the headrest with a grin like she’s a merchant selling him her wares.

It isn’t the same as the goosefeather bed he has in Summerhall, or the silken sheets from his apartments in the Red Keep. It is much smaller, made for one person with significantly less body mass, and it creaks when Daeron lays down on it.

“It’s a great deal better than the ground,” he sighs as he buries his face in a pillow. “It will do.”

The aches in his body seem to magnify themselves now that he is no longer on his feet. Everything from his temples down to the soles of his feet hurt, but the call of sleep tempts him so.

His hands tremble as he brings the blankets to his chin, and he swallows once more to rid himself of his thirst before closing his eyes. He barely hears Elissa’s quiet murmur of “goodnight” before he is falling into the realm of dreams.

Chapter Text

Daeron dreams of that dragon again, only this time he is resting underneath its great wing.

It opens one eye at him, easily the size of his torso, and he finds himself staring at a familiar shade of purple.

The dragon shifts itself closer, urging him nearer to its chest where the heat emanates most. It would have been enough to burn a normal person and scar them for life, but for Daeron, it leaves him feeling warm, like sleeping on the carpet next to a hearth.

It’s nearly too pleasant to be considered a dream of his.

Daeron wakes up at the cusp of dawn drenched with sweat, hair sticking to his face and feeling as though he’s spent the afternoon pretending to be a dutiful son in the training yards.

He shoves the blankets off him, but even without them he still feels unbearably hot. His inner shirt sticks uncomfortably to his skin, and his mouth feels like he’s swallowed a bucket of sand. It’s only when he tries to undo the buttons and laces on the front of his doublet that he realizes that his hands are shaking. His entire body is wracked with tremors, and his fingers are unable to stay still, even as he squints his eyes to focus on removing his clothing.

He turns to the side and fights a bout of nausea when the motion makes his vision spin. Groaning, he buries his face into a pillow and squints his eyes shut, unable to do anything but lie still, his limbs uncontrollably shaking.

Everything feels too hot. He needs to remove the extra layers between his skin and the sweet kiss of cool air, but when he tries to sit up and get his breeches off, he finds himself falling back onto the bed. It feels like something is pressing down on him, rendering him unable to do anything but roll his head whilst lying in bed. His stomach churns, and he wills himself not to expel his dinner onto his front.

His mind wars between his current state and his dream, of the dragon that cradled him within its warm breast and the unbearable heat crawling along his skin. For the first time since he realized the weight of his dreams and the visions they entail, Daeron wants to go back to sleep and live in it.

But sleep has eluded him. There is a hearth next to the bed, but Daeron cannot get up to extinguish its flames, still unable to stop trembling, his mind stuck on his too-good-to-be-true dream.

He hears the sound of the door opening and being shut, footsteps quiet in a manner that makes him think Elissa is attempting to be considerate of his sleeping state. She needn’t have bothered. He is well awake and will not be returning to sleep any time soon.

“Eli-Elissa,” he stutters out, trying to turn to the direction of the door but having to close his eyes at the way the room begins to spin. The stew he had last night threatens to leave his stomach as he breathes through his nose, desperately wishing away the nausea to subside. It feels as though he is hungover, except that he had not a single drop of wine the entire day before.

He hears her footsteps stop at the call of her name. In a matter of seconds, the door to her room is pushed open and her face is all Daeron can see. She is moving, rocking, in a way that makes it appear as though she is standing on a boat on a stormy day. But she is not moving, nor is Daeron, so it must be that his vision is spinning once more.

Her hand is cool against his feverish forehead, and he eagerly leans into her touch.

“Daeron? Daeron, hey,” Elissa calls him, panic evident in her voice as she gently slaps his cheek.

He blinks awake, unaware that he had begun to nod off after feeling the coolness of her palm. Elissa’s face is mere inches from his. This close, he can see each individual fleck within her eyes, dark blue though they may appear.

She smells foul, like rotten eggs and the smell the breeze carried from the Dragonmont when he last visited Valarr and his wife on Dragonstone. It is such a drastic change from the pleasant smell she had last night, more pleasant than Daeron, who spent all of yesterday trekking through nature without having taken a bath the night before.

“El-Eli—” He tries to call out her name, but she’s quick to shush him.

“Don’t speak.” She gazes at him sternly, and for a moment, with the light from the hearth and her purple-blue eyes, Daeron imagines it is his father come to scold him for drinking the day away in his rooms again. “You’re going through withdrawal, and it’s only going to get worse from here. I don’t have any wine, and I can’t go anywhere to get some, so you’ll have to tough this one out.”

Withdrawals? Tough this one out?

Daeron wonders if she might have poisoned him with that stew, and if so, more’s the pity for him for finding his poisoner pretty under the fire light.

Elissa’s face turns into a series of complicated emotions, before settling for reluctant amusement.

“I didn’t poison you,” she tells him dryly as she makes her way to the shelves, and oh, he must have said his thoughts out loud. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have made you sleep in my bed and eat my precious stew.”

Yes, that does sound sensible, except there is nothing that would explain the tremors wracking through his body and the way he can’t seem to form words without stuttering them out. He’s known shaking and he’s known nausea, but not to this extent. He needs wine.

Daeron shuts his eyes harshly and wills himself not to vomit on Elissa’s… what even is she wearing?

With half-lidded eyes, he squints against the hearth’s light and finds her lighting candles along the room. She’s wearing leather, not of particularly good quality, and a pair of trousers with worn boots. If he was in his right state of mind, he would have asked her what she was doing dressed as a man, having just come home at the break of dawn.

When she returns to him, so does that foul smell. It must show on his face, because Elissa takes a whiff off her arm and grimaces.

“Sorry. I smell like—ah, terrible.” She smiles apologetically, and despite everything wrong on his body, it seems Daeron’s heart is still capable of beating faster than it already is. “I’ll take a bath later.”

She then makes her way out the door, lingering for a few moments on the threshold and glancing at him with concern.

The sound of banging pots and the log crackling are the only sounds he hears, before Elissa returns with a small basin and a washcloth. She lays it over his forehead after she’s dipped the cloth in the basin and wrung out the excess water. She then drags a small stool and settles next to his bed, reaching out and resting her hand on his arm. Somehow, despite the layers of clothing separating them, Daeron can almost feel the warmth seeping from her hand into his skin. It should feel uncomfortable, drenched with sweat and hot as he is, but it isn’t.

“Go on. Puke your guts out if you need to. I’ve got a bucket ready and waiting next to the bed.”

Daeron would feel grateful for the consideration, if his head wasn’t trying to split itself open and the nausea that hits him feels like he is two-and-ten once more, experiencing his first hangover and vowing to never drink a drop of wine ever again.

He feels Elissa’s hand slip under his head, raising him enough that he won’t choke on the cup of water she directs to his lips. Daeron’s mouth clamps down in protest. He wants wine, not water. His body is begging for it, with its shaking and the spinning and the tiredness that threatens to pull him under. He hasn’t felt such exhaustion since he was first unhorsed in a tourney and broke four ribs on a bad fall.

He’s dying. It is the only explanation for all of this. Mayhaps his sins have finally caught up to him.

“Drink,” Elissa urges, pressing the cup of water more insistently to his lips. “You need to be hydrated or you’ll feel even more terrible later.”

He doesn’t know what being hydrated means and why he needs to be one. Whatever it is, it’s unnecessary. He doesn’t need to be hydrated, he needs to get drunk.

“Drink, Daeron.”

The water spills from the edges, soaking his chin and staining his doublet. His mouth remains closed, eyes barely open in a half-hearted glare.

Elissa looks at him pleadingly, worryingly, and he wonders why she feels for him so. A prince he may be, but he is no Valarr or uncle Baelor. His misfortunes have always been met with disappointment but not surprise. The Prince of Summerhall’s drunken son has once again disgraced himself in a manner unbefitting his station. He wonders what the court would say if they saw him now, if they would look on with worry like Elissa, or if they would shake their heads and go on with their day as though this is nothing. As though he is nothing.

Elissa tries once more. “Please.”

Unbidden, Daeron’s lips part, and the cool refreshing taste of water flows into his mouth.

He thought he would spit it out in disgust, but he finds that the more he drinks, the more he wants more. He doesn’t even notice when the cup emptied or when he closed his eyes. Only when the back of his head meets the soft pillows does he realize that his throat is no longer as parched, and he feels less like dying and more like he has been run through by a horse. It isn’t a significant improvement, but it is better than the former.

He finds Elissa crouched next to the bed, adjusting the damp washcloth on his forehead after it was dislodged in his failed attempt at refusing to drink water.

She grins at him assuringly when she sees him looking. “I’ll make something for you to eat. I know how difficult keeping things down can be during withdrawal.”

He wants to ask her what withdrawal means and why she seems to know so much about it, enough that she recognized it in him with one look after entering the bedroom. But Elissa makes to stand, and Daeron, by impulse or something else he cannot name, grabs her arm in a silent request for her to stay.

He doesn’t want to be alone, not like this, not without wine in his system to dull the worst of his dreams. He knows what awaits him once his eyes close. The darkness, the cold, the screams of everyone whose suffering has yet to come. Nightmares that have yet to become reality.

“Daeron?”

He has to exert a tremendous amount of effort to say one word amidst the quivering of his chin and the heaviness of his tongue.

“Stay.”

Something strange passes over her face.

“I can’t stay. You need food, and besides,” her lips quirk up sheepishly, “I smell terrible.”

He huffs. “N-No worse than me… I’d wager.”

After being dragged across dirt, shoved next to smelly horses, and the stench of the sack seeping into his hair. Yes, Daeron imagines that daisies and roses are the farthest things he smells like.

Elissa laughs. “Yeah, you do smell a little bad.” Despite this, she settles herself comfortably on the floor. “Alright, I’ll stay.”

Her hands rest on the edge of the bed, not quite touching him, but close enough that he can reach out and erase that distance between them.

He doesn’t, but it is a close thing.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep, because when he next comes to himself, the sun is shining bright over the windows.

His body jolts out of sleep, his breaths heavy and near heaving as he looks around wildly to assure himself that he is awake and no longer asleep, trapped in a nightmare of things yet to come.

Elissa, his mind supplies, she was supposed to stay.

And she has.

When he looks to his left, he finds her already watching him with concern. The sight of her, all dark curls and purple eyes bright in the sun, makes something in him come loose, like a breath that’s been held for too long.

He didn’t think she would remain, but there she is with a bowl of something steaming. Another stew, his mind supplies, but the thought of eating anything has saliva gathering in his mouth, his throat contracting as it prepares to expel the contents of his stomach and—

Elissa is there with her promised bucket as Daeron shifts to the side of the bed and wretches. His throat burns and his mouth tastes revolting, but Elissa remains standing next to him, pulling his hair back from his face and rubbing his back in comfort. Why does she do this? Out of a sense of obligation, responsibility? He wants to ask, but he dreads what her answer will be.

His eyes sting, both from the burning in the back of his throat and—whatever this is she is doing to him, this care, this kindness. He barely knows her. She barely knows him.

And yet she remains with him, the poor excuse of a prince who cannot even hold his own against a clan of mountain savages, untrained as they are unwashed. She needn’t have offered him a place next to her hearth and given him her own food. He was foisted upon her. She could have left him to rot in the wilderness, left him kneeling in the dirt with his hands bound behind his back.

But instead she is here, nursing him through whatever bout of sickness, withdrawal, whatever this is. His mother was the last person to do this for him. Dyanna Dayne with her soft hands and kind smile, ever so understanding, softening the worst of Maekar’s punishments and lofty expectations. But that was before she died giving birth to his sister, and Daeron was left with a father that does not understand, will never understand, the way his mother did.

He spits at the bucket one last time to get the lingering sick out of his mouth. Elissa guides him back to bed, having procured a damp washcloth and is now in the process of wiping his face with it. She doesn’t comment on the tears streaming down his cheeks or the way he must be staring at her, raw and unfettered.

“You should eat something,” she tells him after he’s finished crying and she’s done putting away the bucket he vomited in. Elissa picks up the bowl she was holding earlier, having grown cold in the time between Daeron puking and Elissa cleaning him up. “It’s soup. Easy on the stomach and easier still to swallow.”

She brings a spoonful to his lips, and Daeron, unable to deny her kindness, opens his mouth willingly. She was right that it is easy to swallow, light against his tongue with a lingering herbal aftertaste.

He’s glad that she doesn’t comment on the display of vulnerability he showed earlier, that she never once makes a mocking remark or looks at him as though he is little more than an inconvenience. She simply feeds him soup, like nothing is amiss and Daeron hadn’t cried real tears at the reminder of his mother.

“You know, I had a brother like you,” Elissa starts, staring into the bowl of soup in her hands. “He turned to drinking to ignore his problems, but it only served to make them worse. He became a different person when he was drunk, meaner. But he was a good person. He always wanted to be better.”

She looks at him like she believes the same of him, that he wants to be better as much as her brother did. Daeron doesn’t think he wants to or that he can. He tried before, several failed attempts to be better and do right by his family, to curb the worst of Aerion’s cruelty and pay more attention to his littler siblings. He never had much success on such endeavors, often ending up saying the wrong words or making mistakes, and he would wallow in his failures and end up right where he started: with a drink in one hand and a whore in another.

Elissa wipes at her eyes with her sleeve. “I helped him through it. Always. Even when he kept breaking his promises and leaving, only to return saying it was going to be different this time.”

Daeron listens with half-lidded eyes, ignoring the way the room spins in favor of giving her all of his attention. It leaves an uneasy feeling in him to see himself in a stranger. Promises broken and remade in the heat of the moment, when Daeron was feeling particularly good about himself and thought it might finally be different this time. It never is. He stopped trying a long time ago.

Elissa sniffs and gives him another spoonful of soup. It takes about four mouthfuls before she continues with her story.

“He was the best he’d ever been. A hundred days clean. We were supposed to celebrate by going out for dinner, but then I—” She cuts herself off, blinking rapidly as tears gather in her lashes. “I left him, and I… I just know he went bad again after I was gone, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

He wonders if that was what his siblings felt whenever they watched him stumble along the halls, a wineskin at hand with bloodshot eyes and vomit clinging to the ends of his clothes. There was a time Matarys berated him, back when his cousin still thought Daeron capable of changing himself. He doesn’t remember what was said back then, only that it happened, and every interaction hence has been stilted with barely hidden pity.

Elissa smiles wetly at him, bringing the soup to his mouth once more. “What I’m trying to get at is that I’ll stay with you through this. You won’t be alone, Daeron.”

I’ll stay with you. You won’t be alone.

He swallows his soup and ignores the way his chest tightens at her words and the promise she has made.

What else can he say after she has spilled her heart to him? Daeron has never been the best with words, too much levity, lacking the seriousness the situation requires. He imagines that were he in Daenys the Dreamer’s place during the fall of Old Valyria, the Targaryens might have gone extinct with the rest of the dragonlords due to Daeron’s inability to search for the right words. And the stuttering. He will not even be capable of getting the words out properly, much less find the right ones to say.

How does he tell her not to get her hopes too high? That Daeron will inevitably fall into the farthest pits a man can go and disappoint her just as he has disappointed every person in his life? He does not want to be better, hasn’t considered the notion for years. He is not her brother. He is nothing to her—should be nothing to her, and yet.

“Don’t-don’t worry about me,” is what he settles for saying instead, managing to twist his lips into a wry smile despite his stinging eyes and quivering chin. “I’ve grown quite… quite used to my lot in life.”

Daeron tries not to take to heart the way Elissa’s face falls at his words.

“And what lot is that?” she asks solemnly, staring into the bowl in her hands. “Running away from your problems and drinking yourself to an early grave?”

Elissa shakes her head, glaring at him with something foreign he cannot name.

What does she see when she looks at him? A drunken prince? The ghost of her brother? The man who was supposed to be sacrificed as an offering? Whatever his gaze mirrors, whatever she must see in them, it causes all the fight to leave her body. Her shoulders slump, fingers slackening from their tight grip on the bowl.

“Never mind.” She looks away and releases a breath. When she turns back to him, there’s a smile on her face, small and brittle at the edges. “Just focus on getting better.”

Elissa places the bowl on a table to the side and reaches out to smooth her fingers over the hair that’s settled over his forehead. Then she stops, snatching her hand quickly as though she’s been burned, before grabbing the bowl in a haste and stuttering out an excuse about having to clean it.

And off she goes, gone before he has finished processing the feel of her fingers against his skin and the wistful smile on her lips.

Elissa remains true to her promise. She stays with him all day, and even through the night.

Daeron falls asleep in fits and bursts, an hour or two passing before he’s awoken by the chirping of birds or the creaking of the door. His dreams are worse, nightmares and visions blurring together such that whenever Daeron wakes, he does so with a jerk and wild, shaking eyes. Elissa is a constant presence beside his bed, soothing him with softly murmured words and her grounding touch.

Now, she’s crouched next to the bed with a basin of water smelling faintly of the soap she uses. The light from the hearth paints her in an orange glow, shadows flickering along the planes of her face.

He closes his eyes for a moment, fighting another bout of dizziness, and when he next opens them Elissa is sitting next to him on the edge of the bed. She places a hand on his shoulder, not pressing, but with just enough force to tell him that she’s here.

“Daeron, are you awake?” Her voice is low and quiet, as though he would break if she raises it any more.

He groans in response, unable to find it in himself to speak, but it seems to be good enough for her.

“I’m going to need you to sit up. Can you do that for me?” She slides her arm behind his back, pinned between the bed and his own weight.

He thinks he might have nodded or showed a sign of affirmation, because she leans over him, close enough that the tips of her hair tickle at his nose. And then, he’s rising from the bed, his head lolling to the side like a puppet cut from its strings. Only the arm she has around his back and the firm hand grasping his arm stop him from flopping uselessly back onto the bed. He feels as though he is a ship at sea, his vision swimming and his body being pulled down by an invisible anchor.

Elissa is there next to him, a pillar of support as she allows him to lean his weight on her. Even seated as they are, she only comes up to the tip of his nose.

He rests his cheek on top of her head, breathing a sigh of relief as it quells the spinning of his head, if only for a brief moment. Like this, with her arm around him and their bodies pressed so close, it could almost be called an embrace.

“I’m going to remove your shirt now.”

What.

Daeron’s eyes flutter open just as Elissa begins unbuttoning and unlacing the front of his doublet with one hand.

With entirely too much effort for such a simple act, he raises one arm and grabs her hand. How does one go about rejecting something they would be very enthused about on any other occasion?

“While I… I wouldn’t say no,” he huffs and licks his lips, wishing he had wine to wet his tongue. “I do think… it’d be best if… if we waited ‘til I’m…” If they waited until he was relieved of his illness to fuck.

“Huh?”

He has never had any qualms about fucking whores whilst drunk out of his mind. Some days he would wake up with a woman next to him without memory of what happened the night before save for the unmistakable scent in the air and his lack of clothing. He remembers vomiting on a whore once, though it isn’t a memory he’s fond of recalling.

But it’s different with Elissa. She isn’t a whore he can pay good coin to get him off. She is sweet, and kind, and has taken care of Daeron when she could have thrown him out of her house at the first sign of an illness. He wants to remember her, what she feels like, and everything else that comes with coupling. Daeron is aware enough to know that he is a poor partner when deep in his cups, never mind his current state.

He leans away from her, just a bit, in order to see her expression. With half-lidded eyes, he watches her face go from innocent confusion to one of dawning horror. Her face flushes a deep color, mouth opening and closing as though she is at a loss for words.

“I, I’m not—I wasn’t—it’s not what you think it is!”

Elissa recoils from him like the very thought of going near him disgusts her, only to hastily pull him back when he begins sagging backwards. His front ends up plastered to hers with his head lolling weakly onto her shoulder. Her scent fills him, lavender this time without a hint of that fruity smell from the last time they were this close. And if Daeron nuzzles his nose a little into her collarbones to inhale more of her scent, well, he cannot control what he does when ill.

Strong hands find his shoulders and push him back onto the headrest of the bed. Soft pillows cushion him from behind, leaving him free to sit back without suffering the hard wood digging into his back.

Elissa sits next to him, a sizable distance now separating them from the almost-embrace earlier.

“I wasn’t trying to do… that. Especially not when you’re like this,” Elissa says, staring at the sheets and unable to meet his eyes. The flush on her cheeks has yet to abate, and Daeron finds himself staring again. “I was just going to change your clothes, really!” Here, she raises her gaze to him, looking at him imploringly. She even grabs a washcloth from the water basin and shoves it to his face. “See? I was going to wipe you down first since you’ve been sweating for the past three days.”

Her eyes are wide, the washcloth clenched tightly in her fist and steadily dripping water down to her elbow.

It takes Daeron a minute to realize that she’s waiting for him to respond, to absolve her of the supposed crime of attempting to bed him.

“Alright,” he breathes out. “I believe you.”

Although he wishes she truly was trying to bed him, then he might have something to look forward to once he’s been cured of his ailment. If his head wasn’t aching so fiercely, he might have contented himself with fantasies of what it would be like to have her under him. Or her on top of him. He isn’t going to complain either way.

But the way Elissa smiles in relief is enough to make him forget about his disappointment.

She places the washcloth back to the basin and reaches out to him, but before her fingers touch his doublet, she hesitates.

“I’m going to take these off now. To clean you up. Not–not because of anything perverted,” she hastens to clarify.

At his nod, she reaches with shaky fingers and begins to undo the first few laces and buttons, slowly revealing the linen shirt beneath that’s grown dark with sweat. Once she’s finished, Daeron leans forward to help her push the doublet off him. Rather than throwing it at a random corner and leaving it to be forgotten, as Daeron is wont to do when there aren’t servants to help him undress, Elissa folds it delicately and leaves it at the table next to the bed.

When she turns back to him, the flush on her cheeks has lessened, but there’s a faint hint of it as she grabs the end of his shirt and pulls it up, slowly revealing inch after inch of skin.

The heat of her touch against him is near scorching, and Daeron shivers when the back of her fingers slide across the side of his ribs. Elissa is focused on a spot next to the bed, her face steadily deepening in color. The sound of his breathing is near deafening in contrast to the silence that has engulfed them since his doublet was removed.

Then finally, finally, his shirt comes off, and Daeron is laid bare before her save for his breeches.

Elissa busies herself with folding his shirt and laying it on a pile on top of his doublet, then busies herself some more by dipping the washcloth in the water basin and wringing it of its excess. She dithers in her seat for a few moments, seemingly looking for something else to do. When nothing proves to be more pressing than the task before her, Elissa turns to him with trepidation, holding the washcloth between them like a shield.

“I’m going to wipe you down now,” she announces, tone forcibly light.

Daeron swallows thickly, eyes darting between hers and the washcloth in her hands, before nodding.

It’s slow at first, her touch light and hesitant, as though the slightest pressure would cripple him. But when Daeron makes no noise of complaint or shows discomfort, she seems to gain more confidence. He is intensely aware of her touch, the way her fingers circle around his wrist as she lifts his arm and wipes the length of it.

He shivers when she reaches his chest, though it is no doubt lost to the constant shaking of his body since he arrived in her home. Her hand lingers on the center of his chest, and he dearly hopes she doesn’t feel how fast his heart is racing. Elissa raises her head, but Daeron is quick to look away and focus on a spot on the ceiling. It makes his head spin, but better that than meet Elissa’s gaze.

Daeron has been wiped down by servants before, has been thrown into a bath naked as the day he was born, dressed and pampered and watched by numerous sets of eyes. So why does this feel so much more different?

She swipes along his shoulders harder, almost like a massage, and when she reaches that one spot that has left him feeling sore for the past two days, he unintentionally shuts his eyes and releases a groan of appreciation.

It sounds uncomfortably similar to the sound he makes when he finishes inside a whore.

Elissa stops, brows raised to her hairline and mouth open in a gape. Daeron, for his part, has frozen in place and is staring at Elissa the way a child might at being caught doing something they shouldn’t.

“I… It was,” Daeron stutters, feeling his face grow warm, unable to come up with an excuse. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s… it’s fine.” Elissa is the first to look away, dipping the washcloth in the basin and taking more time than necessary to twist the water off it.

When she returns to wiping him down, Daeron finds himself unable to look anywhere near her, and Elissa, it seems, is similarly incapable of looking him in the eye. The rest of their time is spent in cumbersome silence, with only the sound of the cloth dragging across his skin filling the air.

He feels lightheaded, and not merely because of the fever wracking its way through his body.

He glances at Elissa, finding her with furrowed brows and a focused glare as she swipes the washcloth over his arm. Her lashes are long and thick, and they cast shadows at the tops of her cheeks.

“All done,” Elissa whispers, a nervous edge to her smile as she finally raises her eyes and meets his gaze. “I’ve got a clean tunic that should be large enough to fit you.”

From somewhere he cannot see, she procures the promised tunic and raises it over his head. Daeron, not wanting to be a complete burden, manages to fit his arms through the right holes and pull the tunic down to preserve his nonexistent modesty.

Elissa helps him settle back down the bed, fluffing up the pillows and feeding more logs to the hearth.

Only a couple of minutes have passed since he changed into a tunic, but already he is sweating. His hair plasters itself to his forehead once more, but Elissa is there to move the strands obscuring his vision.

Her fingers linger in place, hesitant. Daeron turns his face into her palm and leans into her touch, sighing in relief.

He parts his eyes open when she pulls away, finding her sporting a complicated expression. When she sees him looking, she smiles and places her hands on her lap.

“Go to sleep, Daeron. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Unable to fight the lull in his head and the comfort of having his sweat-drenched shirt replaced by a fresh tunic, Daeron closes his eyes and falls into a fitful rest.

The unbearable heat stops after a time unknown to him, the hours blurring into a hazy dreamlike state that left him feeling both anxious and nauseous. He thinks he might have imagined the fingers that carded through his hair during the worst of it, when he could no longer think straight and his body felt like it might fail at any given time. He wanted a sip of wine, just a sip, but a voice kept telling him no.

Now his fever has broken, and the darkness in the room indicates that the sun has long set. Daeron searches the room for Elissa, but she is nowhere to be found. The only hint of her having been there is the cold basin of water with a washcloth strung by its side, and an unwashed empty bowl and cup set next to his bed.

He struggles to his feet, finding that though his head and body feel heavy, his vision no longer spins and his stomach does not threaten to expel its contents through his mouth. There remains a faint tremor throughout his limbs, but it isn’t as noticeable compared to the days before.

Daeron looks down and finds himself bereft of the clothes he was wearing on the day he left the inn with his uncle. A white tunic fits him loosely, and when he lifts his arm to his nose, he finds that it smells much the same as the soap Elissa uses to clean her dishes.

He remembers, suddenly, the night Elissa cleaned him with a washcloth and dressed him in the tunic he wears now. He fights the urge to smile like a simpering lady being crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty by a knight.

A chill erupts along his skin as he leaves the warmth of the bedroom and its toasty hearth, finding Elissa’s main hall as bereft of her presence as the bedroom. Daeron sees his boots placed next to the front door, so he dons them and steps outside the house. He doesn’t see her tending to her garden, however unlikely it may be at this hour, and neither is she seeing to the sheep at the back of the house.

It is as though she has vanished, but Daeron does not believe she will run away in the dead of night. For one, this is her home, and two—

She promised to stay.

So Daeron sits on the stone bench in front of her home, and waits.

He does not wait long.

The sky is clear of clouds, letting the light of the moon shine down freely from above. It reveals the pallor of his skin and how pale he has become after the time it must have taken for him to recover from the illness that overtook him. It is because he is staring so intently that he notices when a shadow passes over him, a large shadow that does not take a mere moment to pass, but seconds. It does not simply engulf him, but the entire garden, no, the entire house up to the trees that line the downtrodden path to Elissa’s home.

There is only one thing in this world large enough to cast a shadow this big.

Daeron cranes his neck up to the sky, eyes wide and heart beating a thundering rhythm in his chest.

And there, lit by the light of the moon and visible on a cloudless sky, is a dragon.

Chapter Text

If he was Aerion, he would have lunged from his seat and followed the great beast, intent on claiming it for his own and possibly getting burned alive for his troubles. If he was his father, he would have stalked the dragon and discovered its lair, before returning to call for uncle Baelor to claim it. If he was Baelor, well, he doesn’t quite know what his good uncle might do in his shoes, but he certainly wouldn’t be sitting around gawking and doing nothing.

His first thought after seeing the dragon is that he has had too much to drink.

His second thought is that he hasn’t had a drop of wine for what feels like days. His mind is clear, and save for the faint throbbing behind his eyes, he is as hale as can be. It is perhaps the most sober he has been since he was four-and-ten and only just discovering that if he drowns himself in wine and the nearest cunt he can find, his dreams cannot reach out and haunt him in his waking hours.

The dragon—because it is a dragon, there is no mistaking the large leathery wings that look half translucent against the moonlit eve, the faint sound of flapping wings, and the way it covers Daeron whole in its shadow even when it is so far away. The dragon swoops low, disappearing over the treeline, and he is left staring at the sky with wide eyes.

Surely he must be seeing things.

A bird would be smaller, barely visible in the sky and would not even cast the smallest pinprick of a shadow, let alone the behemoth that swallowed up the trees and shrouded them in darkness. His eyes did not deceive him, and his mind is not making things up. Daeron, for all his faults—and he has many faults—is not so obsessed with dragons the way Aerion is that he would conjure a false image of one soaring over the sky.

The moon mocks him, glowing much the same as it has always done, as though Daeron hadn’t just experienced something so monumental, so unbelievable that were he to utter a word of it to anyone, they would think him drunk out of his mind.

A dragon.

An honest to gods dragon.

Daeron pinches himself in the thigh to make sure he isn’t dreaming after all, but no, the pain is real, as is the moonlit evening and the hush that has fallen over the clearing that houses Elissa’s home.

He is neither drunk nor asleep, and he just saw something that was said to have died out years ago.

Is this it? The dragon he saw in his dreams with bronze-brown scales and purple eyes the same shade as Elissa’s under the sun. He thought Elissa might have been it, diluted though her blood may be, a product of some ancestor’s bastard line. He didn’t think it would be a real fucking dragon.

Where is Elissa? Surely she must have seen the hulking monstrosity in the sky, wherever she may be. He needs her to tell him that this is real and not merely his mind playing tricks on him.

And then, a thought occurs to him, one that leaves him feeling dread much the same as he did when he was first taken by the clansmen. Elissa said that all she asked of him was to forget he ever met her, back on that fateful day he was supposed to be sacrificed as an offering. Perhaps the reason for it is because she feared his family’s response if they found out that a dragon yet lives and resides in the Vale. Doubtless his grandfather will want uncle Baelor to claim it.

But the color of Elissa’s eyes always gives him pause. Nothing else about her is faintly Valyrian save for her eyes, and while Daeron knows from his mother’s family that such a color doesn’t always mean they are descended from Valyria, the massive dragon he just saw paints a different picture.

A woman living alone in the woods with naught but the Burned Men for company, men who call her a fire-witch and speak of sacrifices and offerings and not at all flinching when she falsely claimed her intention to burn Daeron alive. He once thought the reason they obeyed her was because of a different set of warriors loyal to her, but having seen something from history come to life before him, Daeron realizes that he had never been more wrong.

Elissa is worshipped by those savage clansmen because she has a dragon.

It’s so outlandish, so out of the realm of possibilities, he almost cannot reconcile the woman who wiped the sick from his mouth without complaint to this newfound knowledge. He feels faint and like he might be ill.

Perhaps he is seeing things again, his dreams come to torment him beyond sleep. There was a time when he was a child where such occurrences weren’t so sparse. He used to wake up drenched with sweat and come running to his mother in the dead of the night, crying about nightmares and seeing things in the dark. His father would frown, and now that Daeron is older and more learned in the ways of the world, he realizes that Maekar must have feared him afflicted with the same malady of the mind that uncle Rhaegel suffers from. His mother, his dearly departed mother, never failed to bring comfort and assurances, despite his father’s grumbles about coddling him and turning him soft.

But now there is no Dyanna Dayne to tell him that his fears are unfounded and that dreams cannot seep into reality.

He looks up into the sky once more and tries to find a hint that what he saw was real and not merely his unfortunate gift at play, but there is nothing save for the moon and the chill of the air to stand as witness. Daeron feels himself fall into the familiar pit of doubt where nothing is quite as it should be, and he feels as though he is the butt of a joke everyone is in on except for him.

Daeron stands on shaking legs.

He needs a drink.

When Elissa returns, Daeron is nursing a leather canteen of what he assumes is juice, but what kind he knows not. It is similar in taste to the one she served him all those nights ago. Though what makes him certain that it isn’t wine is the lack of warmth that should have settled within his stomach after downing half of it within seconds in a half-mad attempt to drown out the thoughts that continue to plague him regarding the dragon he saw. One part says it is real, whilst the other claims that he is once again failing to find the distinction between dreams and reality.

All of which has culminated into the scene Elissa is greeted with as she opens her front door: her home a mess of opened cupboards and littered items, bowls and empty flasks discarded carelessly, and there Daeron lies on the floor right in the center of the hurricane, gulping down juice the way he might gulp down a goblet of Arbor gold.

He freezes when the first creak of the door’s hinges reaches his ears. A sharp gasp from him causes the juice to go down the wrong pipe and leaves him spluttering, liquid running down his chin and staining the front of his one-pristine tunic.

The light of the moon casts itself along Elissa’s face in such a way that Daeron sees the exact moment she perceives the chaos he has made of her home. Her face, which lit up at the sight of him, turns to confusion as she sees the disarray of items across the floor. Her gaze returns to him, taking in the hollowness beneath his eyes and the juice dribbling down his chin, before her expression falls.

Daeron clenches the canteen tight in his hands and averts his gaze to the floor. There’s an upturned cup lying next to his foot, so he focuses on that instead of facing the inevitable disappointment or wrath that is sure to paint itself across her face. His mind is a chorus of words that both berate and soothe him in equal measures; one minute saying Elissa must surely despise him now, and the next declaring she is not Daeron’s father come to condemn him for this.

The sound of her footsteps echo softly amidst the quiet they’ve found themselves in. Daeron keeps his head hung low until Elissa’s boots settle next to his legs. They’re crudely made and caked with dirt, laces fraying, and he would bet that the soles are worn out and must hurt to walk in. Meanwhile, Daeron’s are made of thick leather and wrought silver for clasps, dirty from the road and his hike, yes, but a good deal better than Elissa’s.

He is a prince, raised to wear only the most comfortable of shoes, his old ones thrown out as soon as he outgrew them. Elissa is a baseborn woman dressed in threadbare leathers who has likely never felt what silk feels like beneath her fingers. And yet, as she kneels before him and closes her hands around his own, gently easing the tight grip he has on the canteen, it feels more as though she is the prince and he the lady in need of saving.

“I told you I don’t have wine,” she says quietly, taking the canteen with one hand and setting it aside. Her other hand remains nestled within his own. Her palm is callused much like his, though lacking the hardness along the finger joints from swordplay. And he wonders, suddenly, what else she does when she isn’t tending to drunken princes who’ve been offered to her as a sacrifice.

Not so drunk now, he supposes glumly.

“I take it you are upset?” He tries for a lighter approach, acting like he cares not for the damage he has done, but it falls flat without the confidence wine oft brings him. Instead, he is intensely aware of the dryness of his eyes and the itch caused by the fuzz that has grown across his jaw. He feels uncomfortable in his own skin, and he has never felt less like himself than he does now as he raises his head and is met with Elissa’s stare.

Contrary to his expectations, she does not look wroth with him, nor does she seem like she’s a moment away from telling him that he is no longer welcome in her home.

“I can’t say I appreciate what you’ve done to my home,” she tells him drily, taking her hand back and picking up the cup he’d been staring at earlier. The loss of her touch leaves him feeling odd, so he flexes his fingers a few times before settling them along his sides.

“Thought I might help redecorate the place.” Daeron takes the cup from her hand, and he’s only mildly surprised she lets him take it. He spies an upturned footstool to his left, one he vaguely recalls stumbling from earlier. He rights it and sets the cup on top of it, turning it a few times as though he’s contemplating which angle suits it best.

“It’s a bit too messy for my tastes.” Elissa shakes her head at his actions, but the slight upturn to her lips gives cause for relief.

He sniffs and a strange smell assaults his nose, something rotten yet oddly familiar. It’s the same stench he remembers from his time abed, when Elissa came home at dawn and found him with the first signs of an illness. He further recalls the sight he witnessed after he woke up from his fever. The great shadow that engulfed him and the beast that caused it.

Oh.

If a hound kennel smells foul at a distance, then all the more so would a dragon be. The stink of dragon, a phrase from Aemon’s beloved history books, and it must apply to Elissa. She stinks of dragon.

It beggars belief. Do the gods love their little ironies so? Pull enough strings and tug a few puppets, and entertainment will be had aplenty. The puppet being, of course, Daeron. The gods must find his misery entertaining indeed, for why else have they decided that the no-good prince and the commonborn girl with a dragon are to meet?

“Am I dreaming?”

Or perhaps she doesn’t have a dragon, and the last few days have been nothing but the works of his dreams seeping into reality. Daeron will wake up tomorrow and find himself in the inn along the High Road, and armed with the knowledge of what’s to come he will pretend at some illness and claim he must return to Summerhall lest he infect Donnel Arryn’s court with it. There he will face his father and explain why he didn’t travel with uncle Rhaegel to the Eyrie, and Daeron will lie and say his stomach hurt or he incurred a disease from one of the whores he fucked.

And he will spend the rest of his life haunted by purple eyes and what could have been.

Mayhaps this truly is all a dream he has yet to wake from. He cannot tell, and more than ever he feels the need for wine to dull his senses and leave him to act as he pleases without guilt.

The sudden sensation of hands upon his own drags him from the depths of his mind. Elissa is there, taking over every bit of his senses, and yes, even his nose. Though even the stench manages to pull him back to the present, harsh reminder though it may be of the fact that were his hypothesis to prove true, then Elissa does in fact have a dragon.

She squeezes his hands lightly. “Does this feel like a dream?”

Daeron’s dreams aren’t pleasant little images of his greatest desires manifested in his sleep. His are wrought with death and bloodshed and the cold, so much cold that he sometimes woke from sleep drenched with sweat yet shivering as though he spent the night in the North.

But if he were to liken himself to a normal man, one whose dreams don’t make him drown himself in vices, then he might look upon her without the burden that comes with being himself and wonder: does her touching him and looking at him with such softness seem like a dream?

Yes.

“I suppose not,” he says instead of giving voice to his thoughts. He hesitantly squeezes her back, feeling the warmth of her skin and the dryness of her palm against his. Elissa isn’t a small woman, her hands are neither dainty nor soft, but they are slender with blunt nails, and when Daeron turns them around, he spies a thin scar across one knuckle and a mole on her wrist. “A dream could never be this detailed.”

Slowly, reluctantly, he releases her hands.

“Have you—” He stops himself before the sentence fully forms.

Daeron cannot ask her about the dragon he saw. It is clear that she wants to keep the existence of it hidden, and it doesn’t take much thought to guess why. The why matters little, it’s the how that he’s concerned about. How did she come to acquire a dragon, and since when has she had one?

He tries to recall all that she said of her family and history. Her great-grandmother was the fire-witch the Burned Men worshipped. Her grandfather built this cottage, and he left her a responsibility—is that it? Was the dragon the responsibility? Though that begets the question of who and where Elissa’s parents are, with the most likely possibility being that they are dead.

Elissa’s great-grandmother was a fire-witch, so it must be that the dragon was hers first. How old would she have been? Daeron’s own great-grandmother was Naerys, and if Aemon’s ramblings are to be believed, she gave birth to his grandfather the same year the last of his family’s greatest weapons died. He doubts any dragon born at that time would have grown as large as the dragon he saw earlier. That beast was massive.

“Do you still feel sick?” Elissa looks at him with worry and places her palm against his forehead. “You don’t feel hot, but I think it’d be best if you got some rest.”

She makes to stand, but Daeron reaches for her arm to halt her. She blinks at him questioningly, and he finds himself stuck at a crossroads.

Should he tell her, reveal his knowledge of her dragon and risk this easy spell that has fallen over them? What would she do if she found out he knew? Daeron, a prince of the house of the dragon with no dragon to their name save for the skulls that line the throne room of the Red Keep. Would she burn him alive to keep her secret, as she once falsely claimed the day they met, or would she be content with a vow of secrecy? Daeron cannot imagine himself ever keeping to it, not when his tongue turns loose when deep in his cups, and though most would dismiss his words as the ramblings of a drunken man, there are those in his family who would not.

Elissa grabs his wrist gently. “What is it? Does your head hurt?”

“No, I was just—” He swallows. Tell her! “—thinking I need to go to bed.”

The lie tastes sour on his tongue, but he makes no move to take it back. The risk of the unknown is too great. He may know of her stance regarding marriage, his unfortunate similarities to her brother, and the way her smile shone brightest when seen beneath the sun, but he doesn’t know her enough to tell whether the kindness she has shown him will easily be ripped underneath his feet once her safety is threatened. And threatened it will be, because if his family ever discovers her existence, she and her dragon will find no peace.

“Oh.” Her demeanor softens. “Do you need my help getting up?”

“I fear my legs have fallen asleep.” It is a lie. His legs are perfectly fine, but who is he to deny the chance to have her close again?

Much like the first time they met, Daeron leans his weight against her as they walk towards the bedroom. In the darkness of the night, he nearly trips on a bowl in his path, but Elissa’s steady arm around him keeps him from making a fool of himself. Without the nausea and lightheadedness of the days past, he finds having her so close a more pleasant affair. The stink of dragon puts a damper on things, but Daeron spent his boyhood in King’s Landing, his nose is better than most at ignoring unpleasant smells.

All too soon he is lying down the bed, the softness of it a much desired contrast from the floor he’d been sitting on. Elissa stokes the hearth, though she glances at him from time to time and smiles assuringly when she sees him looking.

She feels for his forehead again once she’s finished tending to the fire. “Your fever’s broken. I think you’ll be ready to go down the mountain tomorrow.”

She finishes her words with a smile, unaware of the way Daeron’s heart has stopped at her words.

“Is that so?” His voice sounds distant to his own ears, mind racing at what going down the mountain could mean. Back to his uncle and having to endure his endless coddling after going missing and perhaps assumed dead, but if Daeron plays his cards right he might be allowed to refrain from participating in the lists. That would entail leaving this cottage, and more importantly, leaving Elissa.

A few days ago he would have been delighted at the thought of leaving these dreadful mountains and getting to go home in a few moons, but things have changed. He knew not of Elissa’s kindness and care, that which has rarely been given to him genuinely. And the dragon. Gods. Is he to return home quietly and forget the sight of such a massive beast looming above him? To keep his mouth shut as Aerion prances around with his flame-colored clothing claiming himself a dragon, when Daeron has seen a dragon in the flesh and knows his brother’s little red and gold liveries pale beyond comparison?

Is he to forget Elissa, with her purple-bright eyes and gentle hands and lips he has yet to taste?

He can afford to stay a few more days, mayhaps pretend he is ill again on the morrow. Then he can work at winning her trust, perhaps enough for her to tell him of her secret. Doubtful, but it is something at the very least. Uncle Rhaegel and the Arryns are likely sending knights to scour the mountains for him, but they’ll live. Unlike Daeron, those knights are well-trained and won’t be unarmed by mere barbarians whose sole protection are ragged furs that can easily be cut through by castle-forged steel.

Elissa hums, her eyes twinkling with mirth. “Excited to go home?”

“Are you so eager to be rid of me?” He finds himself grinning, lost in the infectious glimmer in her eyes. He can almost forget that an hour ago he was scouring the cupboards like a madman and wondering if his dreams had come to terrorize him in his waking hours.

“You did mess up my home,” she points out, but there isn’t a bite to her words. It makes something in him pause. He has wronged her, and while there is guilt for his actions, more pressing is the urge to make it up to her.

“I will give you gold.” And many more once he has gained her trust and convinced her to leave this place with him.

“I told you I don’t need gold. Just,” she pauses for a moment, her gaze tender, “just be safe and healthy.”

“That I can do,” he promises. Daeron will scarcely put himself in danger after all of this is over. He will spend his days idly in Summerhall and let Aerion receive all the glory in tourneys. “But beyond that, I will make it up to you. Not simply for the mess I have created, but for everything else.”

“It’s really not necessary, but… thank you.” Her smile is warm as she says this, fingers toying with the edge of his blanket before letting go. She tilts her head ever so slightly, playfully. “Goodnight, my prince.” 

Being called a prince has never been sweeter.

Maekar pats his horse’s flank and regards the stableboy who looks damn near pissing his pants at the sight of him. He does not bother masking the thunderous frown that has made a permanent home on his face since he received the news that Daeron was taken by those savage clansmen the Arryns have so foolishly allowed to remain living in their mountains.

They should have done something about those pests long ago, and now his son has paid the price of their idleness. Nigh on five days since he was taken, yet still, no news arrive bearing good tidings. Rhaegel’s written apologies for losing Daeron did little to ease the fury that coursed through him when the maester at Summerhall handed him the missive. What good are apologies and honeyed words? His son remains captive by those savages, and Maekar remains useless thousands of leagues away.

This whole ordeal has made him realize how lax he was regarding Daeron’s education. No more. To be defeated by untrained barbarians… were the situation not so dire he would feel more shame. Once his son is returned to him, he will beat him into a proper warrior the way he should have done years ago.

If he still lives.

Maekar shoves the reins to the stableboy with such force that the boy nearly falls over. His temper has been fraying thin since the raven reached him, but he will not consider Daeron’s death. The gods may have seen fit to give him a drunken lout for a son, but he is of Maekar’s blood. He will raze those mountains himself if it means getting Daeron back.

“Have her saddled and ready before dawn,” he tells the stableboy with a bit more bite than is necessary.

“Y-Yes, m’prince.”

He nods dismissively and goes in search of Aerion. He finds his son already dismounted from his horse. The garish cape made to imitate flames is an eye sore, but Aerion has always been fond of their family’s heritage. Too fond, some would say, but Maekar tends to ignore such drivel.

He sees Aerion’s gaze snag on a wench waiting by the entrance of the inn they’ve chosen to rest at. Maekar frowns when his son waves her over.

“Ready a bottle of wine, I’ve grown parched from this ceaseless riding,” Aerion sniffs with disdain, looking down the wench with leering eyes.

Maekar stomps his way over and glares when Aerion turns to him with a grin. To ask for such a thing, acting careless as though they are riding for a tourney instead of making haste to aid in Daeron’s retrieval.

“Father,” Aerion greets, pushing a sweat-drenched curl away from his forehead as he does. “I grow weary of inns. How long until we reach Felwood?”

“Wine?” Maekar hisses, ignoring the question and feeling his nostrils flare at Aerion’s unperturbed look. “Your brother is missing and you wish to drink?”

“A cup or two won’t addle my mind, Father. I hardly think my dear brother would care.” Aerion’s smile turns sharp, something in the depths of his gaze that Maekar does not wish to acknowledge. “I’d go so far as to wager he’d appreciate us partaking in drinks that he cannot indulge in.”

His blood turns to ice at the cruel jape. “Do not jest about your brother’s condition.”

The thought alone of Daeron bound and at the mercy of those savages is enough to bring forth another wave of fury across his veins. Foolish boy, if only he trained more seriously at the yards, if only Maekar was more heavy-handed in the past, if only, if only, if only. Dwelling on what he could have changed does nothing but fill his mind with unnecessary thoughts and unease. His time would be better spent thinking of the routes and logistics they will take to arrive at the Vale at the earliest possible time.

Aerion looks properly chastised at Maekar’s tone. He bows his head in concession. “Of course, Father. My words were thoughtless.”

Maekar nods sharply and strides for the inn. Aerion’s footsteps follow behind him along with the sound of their household knights following close. He’ll have the inn cleared out to make room for their group.

Tomorrow, they will reach Felwood and spend the night, exchanging their tired horses for fresher ones before continuing their hard ride for King’s Landing. Baelor will have the knights ready to depart with Maekar at the port. He mislikes the idea of traveling by ship, of the idleness of doing nothing compared to riding a horse, but it is the fastest way to reach the Vale. They will anchor at Dragonstone for a night where Valarr wishes to send his own men along to aid with the retrieval of his cousin. Gulltown is where they will land, after which is a week’s ride where Daeron was last seen.

He won’t waste time on frivolities with Donnel Arryn, Rhaegel can handle paying courtesies to his good-father. Maekar will join the knights marching on the mountains and slay every last one of those savages he can get his hands on. With Aerion serving as his squire, mayhaps his second son will gain his knighthood soon.

It has been a decade since his mace last tasted battle during the bastard’s rebellion. In a fortnight, Maekar will once more shed blood.

Chapter Text

Daeron has never been one to wake up early in the morn, rather the opposite. He comes to bed at the break of dawn when the servants are beginning to make their rounds and the guards exchange shifts, so it isn’t such an ordeal to fall asleep with the sun high in the sky. The darkness beneath his eyes attests to many a night spent awake running from dreams, but as of late he has found himself waking around the hour he would normally fall asleep in.

The room is dark, but moreso the kind of darkness that preludes the arrival of the morning sun, with its hazy blue tint accompanied by the steadily growing orange light. His first concern is the dryness at the back of his throat, which is easily relieved by the cup of water conveniently lying on the table next to the bed. Another one of Elissa’s thoughtful acts.

Speaking of Elissa, she is nowhere to be seen much like last night when his fever broke. Daeron hopes she isn’t away feeding her dragon to break its fast. He wouldn’t quite know what to do alone in her home, and he mislikes the idea of having a repeat of last night’s events where he lost all senses and ransacked the place in a fit of madness.

Something uncomfortable lodges itself in his chest at the reminder of the mess he made and how he went to sleep after as though he did nothing. It isn’t as if Daeron never made his fair share of messes and had others clean up after him. The Seven know the servants at Summerhall grow weary of cleaning vomit from his chamber pot, and that is when he’s capable enough to walk there instead of merely retching on the spot. But Elissa isn’t a maid employed by his family to serve him. She has a dragon at her beck and call, and though it is a theory, all hints point to it being true. Who knows when she’ll tire of Daeron and the trouble he brings, and decide he’s more useful to her as livestock for the damned beast?

Daeron rises from the bed despite the warm blankets and the lingering heat from the dying hearth beckoning him to lay back down. His knees pop when he goes to stand, and he feels like an old man as he shuffles his way towards the door, careful not to make too much noise in case Elissa is sleeping nearby.

Where does she sleep anyhow? Her cottage consists of a single bedroom which Daeron occupies, unless she sleeps on some cot on the floor of the kitchen. He hopes that isn’t the case. It just… doesn’t sit well with him.

He finds the answer to his question the moment he opens the door. Elissa is slumped over the table they’d shared and eaten stew over days ago. Her head rests on top of her arms, face to the side and looking the very picture of ease. She has rid herself of the riding leathers in exchange for a woolen dress that covers most of her arms and legs.

The house is spotless. All the chairs and little stools have been righted, the cupboards closed, with nary a single cup or random trinket littered on the floor. Were he not the cause of such chaos, he might have thought he dreamt the events of last night, but—

Elissa’s warm hands around his own and the tender way she held him. Does this feel like a dream?

Daeron makes his way over silently and sits on a chair across from her. Her hair is held up by a stick, but a single curl has fallen over her face, swaying with every gust of air from each breath she takes. He doesn’t try to do anything foolish such as tucking that curl behind her ear, lest he accidentally wake her from slumber and discover whether she is the kind of person who is easily aggravated when woken. Instead, he settles for watching the way the sun slowly pours in from the uncovered windows, bathing her features in a warm glow and highlighting the highness of her cheekbones and the slope of her nose. With her dark skin and purple eyes, she could pass as an offspring of one of his grandfather’s Otherys half-siblings.

The dust motes dance in the space between them, and the birds are chirping to announce the beginning of their day. He could almost call it peaceful.

He eyes the slump of Elissa’s shoulders and the hollowness beneath her eyes, and once more feels that foreign sensation stab at his chest. Guilt. Is this where she has slept all these nights, whilst Daeron laid on her bed and made her attend to him like some servant when she is anything but? Between the two of them, it is she who owns a dragon. In the days prior to the Doom, that would have been enough for her to be seen as his better.

Daeron mirrors Elissa on the table, resting his head on top of his arms and angling his head so he remains facing her. He watches the way her brow twitches, likely a reaction from a dream that’s no doubt a great deal more pleasant than his. Her scent fills him, something he recalls from when she looped her arm around his and guided him along the path to her home, the same smell he remembers in the haze he spent lying in bed. There’s a comfort to it that he cannot explain.

The light from the sun shines through the windows and onto Elissa’s eyes. Daeron unfurls his arm beneath him to shield her face from the harsh rays, his hand raised mere inches from her, so close he can almost reach out and tuck that damned curl away from bothering her from sleep.

He can’t see Elissa’s face like this, slumped over the table as he is with a hand between them to cover her from the sun, so he startles terribly when fingers enclose around his wrist.

“What are you doing?”

She releases him a moment later, leaving him free to place his hand flat on the table, but more importantly, leaving him free to view Elissa without obstruction. She’s looking at him with bemusement, half of her face scrunched, pressed against her arm as her cheek is.

“I was protecting you from the sun, as I’m told gallant knights are wont to do for ladies.” Never mind that he is neither a gallant knight, nor is she a lady. He feels bolder in this early morning haze, his tongue less heavy now after a night’s sleep with dreams that are a little less bloodier than the norm.

“Hm,” Elissa hums, blinking slowly, eyes unfocused.

“Still sleepy?”

“Just,” a yawn, “tired.”

“A table doesn’t make for a comfortable bed, I reckon,” he says wryly, trying to brush off the discomfort that comes with the knowledge that he is the reason she is so tired.

“No,” Elissa smiles, her eyes a tad watery from having yawned, “it really doesn’t.”

She seems content to stare at him after that, interspersed with blinks that tell him she is still fighting the lull of sleep. Daeron isn’t very tired himself, another one of life’s rare occurrences, so he simply remains where he is and watches her in turn. He wonders what she must see, Daeron with limp hair falling over his face, shadowed eyes, the scruff along his jaw and chin. Does she look and laugh at him in her head, finding the irony of their situation as ridiculous as he does? A dragonless prince none the wiser about the dragon right underneath his nose?

“What are you thinking about?” Elissa asks.

The gods’ odd humor. This alien guilt in his chest. That hulking beast that might have once belonged to his family. How lovely her eyes look in the light, heavy with sleep as they are.

“I’m thinking of breakfast, and what we might be having for today,” he replies, mirroring her when she sits up from her slump and stretches her back.

Elissa grunts as she makes a strange maneuver, before her back makes a sort of cracking sound that Daeron is morbidly fascinated by.

“Ahh,” she sighs, shoulders sagging with relief. “Breakfast, hm. I was thinking maybe eggs and—oh! There’s this meat I cut the other day in really thin stripes. How does eggs and bacon sound to you? Of course it’s not really bacon ‘cause it’s not pork, but eh.” She shrugs.

He isn’t partial to much foods, especially breakfast foods. He has never been one to rise early and break his fast with his family, unless the king himself is present or there is an occasion that calls for all of them to dine together, and even then he’s usually too busy trying not to expel the contents of his stomach in the presence of his kingly grandfather to truly appreciate the courses set out in front of him.

It is rare for his stomach to be settled enough for him to have an opinion on food, so at Elissa’s expectant stare, he says, “I could do with eggs and bacon.”

“Alright, let’s get to it then.” Elissa rises from her seat, working out the kinks on her neck and shoulders. When Daeron doesn’t move to follow her, she looks down at him expectantly. “Well?”

It takes him a moment to understand that she wishes him to follow her.

“You want me to help you cook?” Daeron asks, his tone just shy of showing how absurd he finds the notion to be. He has been made to shovel horse droppings and polish armor to the point of mirror shineness as punishment, but cooking? Not even Daeron’s mother would have trusted him near an open flame. “I have to warn you that I would sooner burn down your house than cook anything the lowest peasant of Flea Bottom would find appetizing.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I’ll be doing most of the work anyway.” She smiles one of her funny smiles, the kind where she looks torn between laughing or holding it in. “Just, come on. I’ll show you at the back of the house.”

Before he can utter another protest, Elissa grabs his wrist and pulls him along. And Daeron is distracted enough by the gleam in her eyes and the amusement so clearly painted all over her face that he voices no other complaint.

“Chickens?”

Daeron stares at the little fenced coop housing around five chickens… or more. He can only count five milling about, though that isn’t to say there aren’t more hiding inside. It’s well hidden near the back of the house, sequestered underneath a large tree that keeps it shaded from the early morning sun.

“You didn’t think I was going to magically conjure eggs from thin air, did you?” Elissa procures a bucket from somewhere and leans close to show him its contents.

Daeron peers inside and finds worms wriggling around in the dirt. “Are we to feed your chickens with this?” He looks at Elissa for confirmation but finds her sporting a disappointed frown. “Are we not?”

“No, no, we are,” she assures, but she gazes at the worms in the bucket as though they’ve wronged her. She grumbles something he doesn’t quite catch.

“What was that?”

She sighs, her hold on the bucket loosening. “I thought you’d be disgusted when I showed you the worms. Your princely sensibilities aren’t very delicate at all.”

“My princely sensibilities?” Daeron repeats, lips turning up in amusement. He takes the bucket from her hands and grabs a single, wriggling worm and tosses it at the nearest chicken he can see. “I’m not so craven that a bucket of worms would send me running for the hills.” Though that’s not to say he isn’t a craven, just not to the point of fainting like some delicate maiden at the sight of worms. He mentions none of this to Elissa, however; for some reason, she makes him want to seem a better person than he really is.

Elissa oohs at his display. “And bare-handed, too! Are you really a prince?” She grins at him.

It is meant to be a jest in good nature, but something inside him turns brittle all the same. He gets enough of it from courtiers and servants, following him with eyes that hold judgment and tongues that wag and speak of the latest acts he has done to further dishonor himself. It is well deserved, he knows, yet still.

Daeron turns away from her and focuses on the chicken that has found its way near his feet, poking at his boot with the tip of its beak as though demanding he give it more worms to eat. So he does, taking three in his fist and dropping them on the ground.

“My father used to take my brother and I fishing, back when my mother yet lived. We used worms as bait, so there goes my princely sensibilities. My brother and I used to make it into a competition to see who caught the largest fish. It was one of the rare things I was better at than him.” He once overheard someone jape that Daeron was better fit to be a fisherman’s son than a prince’s. He hasn’t touched a fishing pole since. “There was this one time,” he fights a grin at the memory, “I helped Aerion stuff worms into our father’s boots. He was livid, but our mother found it amusing, so we only got away with a mild scolding.”

Elissa comes to stand by his side and takes a handful of worms to feed the chickens that have migrated towards them. “Sounds like you miss them.”

Does he? His mother, certainly, not a day goes by where he doesn’t. His father, only mildly, and he doesn’t look forward to the punishment Maekar will impose on him upon his return. As for Aerion, well, Daeron never quite knows how to feel when it comes to his most troublesome brother. There were bad days, the ones where Aerion did something so cruel that Daeron wished the little monster was never born; then there were the rare good ones, where Aerion put up a facade of kindness around their father, and Daeron ached to see a hint of the boy he used to be.

“I suppose I do, but I doubt they’re missing me at all.” He shrugs in a ‘what can you do?’ manner, turning a sardonic smile towards Elissa, although he fears it comes across more as self-deprecating.

“You’re a really depressing guy, you know that, right?” Elissa tells him drily, scooping up another cluster of worms and throwing it at the clucking chickens. “I get it. You have these terrible prophetic dreams—”

A spike of fear lances across his heart. “How do you—”

“You talked a lot in your sleep, and even when you weren’t asleep, but I doubt you remember much of it.” She is right that Daeron has no recollection of the things he might have said during that time, constantly teetering between consciousness and a hazy dreamlike state of wakefulness. “Anyway, my point is yes, it’s terrible, and I’m sorry you have to see such things whenever you sleep, but you can’t keep letting it control how you live your life.”

Elissa is looking at him seriously with none of the good humor she had earlier. Her stare is flinty, hard in a way that makes it seem as though she is stripping him bare of his flesh down to his bones, yet still finds him wanting.

Daeron finds that he mislikes this side of her.

“It might be terrible, but it’s of no concern to you.” He turns back to the chickens now pecking at the dirt in search of nonexistent worms. “Look, the chickens are hungry still.”

“You know, you’re awful at trying to change the subject.” Elissa stands in front of him, sending the chickens scurrying away to avoid getting trampled on. “Is that what you do when someone tries to have this talk with you? Turn away, point to the nearest thing, and hope the other person forgets what they were about to say?”

He shrugs, glancing at the worms in the bucket before meeting her eyes. “So long as it works.”

“And how often does that go well for you?”

He thinks of Matarys, of his cousin’s resigned stare when Daeron pretended not to hear his sermon about doing better, being better, is this the kind of life you truly want, drinking and whoring yourself to oblivion? Daeron had shrugged, taken a sip of wine, and mentioned how he wouldn’t be able to visit King’s Landing again until their grandfather’s nameday feast in half a year’s time.

“More often than you’d think,” he says after a moment’s pause.

“Well, it won’t work on me.” Elissa tilts her chin stubbornly at him. “I didn’t pester you about this before because you were sick, but now you’re alright enough to be up and about feeding chickens. We won’t see each other again after you go home, so bear with me for a while.”

Daeron can do nothing but stand and feel the stirrings of resignation swirl around his chest. Of course it was too much to hope that she would turn a blind eye to the less savory parts of his person, to dare imagine that she would only see the good in him and then, what, that she would soon come to trust him enough to share the secret of her dragon to a prince she met merely a week ago? That she might find him handsome and dashing despite his juice-stained tunic and limp hair, that with a few bold words she would jump into his arms and declare that yes, she will leave this mountain with him and bring her dragon along, and his family might finally look at him with something other than disappointment by returning home with the woman who owns the last living dragon in the world.

Right. In what world would such a thing happen?

“Out with it, then.” He doesn’t bother masking the weariness in his voice.

It must be something in his tone, or perhaps it is the look in his eyes, but some of the fire in Elissa seems to burn out. “You’re not even going to fight me on this, are you? Say something about how I’m just some peasant girl, so who am I to presume how a prince should act?”

He shakes his head. “You would only be one of many who have presumed how I should live my life, a single drop in a sea of words.”

Daeron can no longer bear to look at her, so he fixes his attention to the chickens and tosses a handful of worms towards them, watching the way they eagerly eat up the poor wriggling things in the dirt, all the while Elissa stares silently.

“You’re overfeeding them,” Elissa says just as he’s tossing another helping of worms.

She takes the bucket from his hands. He lets her, following her with his eyes as she turns around and places it on a table overgrown with moss next to the coop.

“Daeron,” she starts, still with her back towards him. “You can tell me to piss off later if I’m being too much, but listen for a while, please. You’re a good person. You might not think it, but you are. I won’t be listing out all your virtues, don’t get your hopes up,” she chuckles, “but saying your family doesn’t miss you at all, when they’re probably worried sick and thinking the worst, you’re doing them a disservice.”

Daeron makes his way towards her, careful not to trod on the chickens, until he stands right next to her shoulder, close enough that he can glance at her face with an incline of his head. Elissa’s eyes are glazed over as though she is seeing something else in front of her, but she smiles when she sees him looking.

“Take this from someone who had a brother like you: your family misses you. Maybe it’s not always evident, and sometimes it’s difficult to show how much they love you, but they do.” Elissa looks away, repeating softly to herself, “they always will.”

Daeron swallows amidst the lump that’s formed in the back of his throat. “Right,” he says, not entirely believing her, but understanding enough to know that her words aren’t truly for him but for the brother she seems to dearly miss. In this, he can lie, for her sake rather than his. “I suppose there is some comfort with how large my family is, at least one person in this world who would care enough to miss me.”

“Two.”

He blinks, turning to Elissa questioningly.

She grins at him cheekily. “There’s at least two people in this world who would care enough to miss you.”

It takes him a moment to understand the implication behind her words, and when he does, something twists inside his chest, vulnerable and tender and entirely too fragile to name.

“You will miss me when I leave?” He meant to state it as though it is a matter of fact, not a question, but his voice betrays him.

“Are you kidding me? You’re the best company I’ve had since my grandfather died, even when you were going through withdrawal.” Elissa makes to place her palm over his arm, but seems to think better of it on account of her dirt-stained fingers and Daeron’s white tunic. “Of course I’ll miss you.”

“I,” Daeron clears his throat, feeling his neck warm, “I will miss you as well.”

Elissa beams at him, the kind that stretches across her cheeks and leaves her eyes crinkled at the corners. He feels the warmth on his neck travel to his cheeks up to the tips of his ears. How is it possible that he had not so much as blushed at the sight of the tops of her breasts days ago, yet now his face reddens at a mere smile?

Elissa suddenly jumps, startling him, and she whirls down to the culprit. A chicken stares up at them in silent judgment, moving to peck Elissa’s leg again only to squawk indignantly when she grabs it and holds it aloft in the space between them.

“You little glutton,” she hisses, but there’s a fondness to the way she holds the chicken. Dark brown wings flap in protest, but Elissa only clamps down harder. She addresses Daeron, “This one’s always been temperamental. You see how dark her feathers are? I named her Balerion for it.”

Were Daeron in the middle of drinking from a cup, he might have choked on it with laughter. “Balerion?” he repeats. “Like the Black Dread?”

“The very same!” Elissa proudly raises Balerion the chicken in the air. “You see, chickens are dinosaurs, right? So in this world, they’re the closest thing we have to dragons. I thought, why not name my chickens after the royal family’s dragons?”

Daeron has not the faintest clue what in the hells a dinosaur is, but he decides to humor her still. “If there is a Balerion, then which one of these chickens are Meraxes and Vhagar?”

“That one’s Vhagar.” Elissa puts Balerion down and narrowly avoids getting pecked, and points to a mostly brown chicken walking in circles. “I don’t have a Meraxes though. I only have seven chickens—” so there were more hiding somewhere “—and Meraxes isn’t memorable enough for me. No offense.”

He is hardly offended that she didn’t choose to name a chicken after Queen Rhaenys’ dragon. “Then what are the rest of these chickens’ names?”

“There’s Sunfyre, the one torturing a worm. The white one’s Quicksilver, she’s, well, really fast. That one’s Vermithor, he’s the only male so I keep him tied to a pole. Over there is Silverwing, and Cannibal’s probably inside the coop.”

“Cannibal?”

She grabs his hand and leads him to the entrance of the coop. Their fingers are stained with dirt and most likely worm droppings, and it is perhaps the least romantic situation he has ever found himself in holding hands with a woman, but gods be good, Daeron’s heart is racing all the same.

“Look,” she whispers, releasing his hand to point at a chicken devouring the yolk from a cracked egg. “That one loves eating her children.”

The absurdity of a chicken eating its own egg paired with the conspiratorial way Elissa whispered such a fact to him causes him to huff a laugh beneath his breath. It is barely audible, but Elissa whips her head towards him at the sound, her eyes wide and mouth parted as she blinks at him in wonder.

Just when he is about to ask her what the matter is, she reaches up and pokes at the corner of his mouth with a finger—thankfully not the hand she used to pick up worms earlier—and drags his cheek so that it appears as though he is smiling with one side of his face.

“Not such a depressing guy after all.” She grins, letting go of his cheek to crawl inside the coop and grab the Cannibal. “That’s enough from you. We’ll be taking our breakfast now.”

Elissa chucks the Cannibal out of the coop and starts picking up eggs, and Daeron can only watch and wonder why the gods deemed that a woman such as she should be born in these mountains rather than with his family. She would not be so out of place among them, his family is filled with headstrong women.

He feels for his cheek, the one she poked, before recoiling in disgust when he realizes that it is the same hand he used to feed the chickens earlier.

Elissa’s laughter fills his ears. He sees her already looking at him, having caught him touching his cheek with a dirt-ridden hand. Perhaps it is the ridiculous situation he has found himself in, a Targaryen prince crouched near the entrance of a chicken coop with dirt on his fingers in a juice-stained tunic, but he sees the way Elissa is giggling to herself as she holds two chicken eggs aloft, and Daeron finds himself laughing back.

Chapter Text

Elissa’s time with Daeron goes something like this.

There is a Targaryen prince being offered as a sacrifice to her by the Burned Men; not too bad, still salvageable. Said Targaryen prince is that dragon dreamer from half-remembered books of her previous life; okay, cool. Daeron is going through withdrawal and Elissa doesn’t have a single drop of alcohol in her home or anywhere near it; oh fuck he’s going to die.

What she isn’t prepared for is for him to live and for her to discover that he is surprisingly fun to talk to when he isn’t being a ball of angst and repressed trauma. He’s present in a way he never was the past few days, listening to her attentively and replying with actual full sentences instead of the stuttering mess and half-formed words he spouted before. Daeron is funny, and kind, and has never once made her feel unsafe the way many of the men she has met in this life have, with their medieval mindsets and beliefs on how a woman should behave or be treated.

And he has pretty eyes. Emphasis on the pretty.

Is she sad to see him go? Oh, definitely. That human need for social interactions was curbed a little by his presence, but now that he’s leaving it feels like having to bury her grandfather all over again.

…Alright, a bit over the top for a comparison, but the point remains. She wasn’t lying when she said she’ll miss him. A taste of normalcy before she went back to being by her lonesome with only her animals and Sheepstealer for company. It’s a little depressing that her normal is taking care of an alcoholic and seeing him off, knowing full well he’ll go back to bad habits once he leaves. Even worse for Daeron, because this world isn’t equipped to deal with trauma and anything to do with mental health. Hell, Elissa is barely equipped to deal with her own problems, let alone a prince’s traumatic, prophetic dreams.

But it’s not like lacking qualifications has ever stopped her from doing what’s right. Helping others, being kind, that’s a luxury most people can’t afford. Elissa’s had seventeen years to stew over old regrets from her previous life; things she wished she had done, words she was never able to say, a list of things she should have been. Life’s too short to double guess your actions and wonder whether you did the right thing. When you get the chance, you take it. When your heart wants something, follow it.

So when Daeron says, “I feel rather faint,” after they’re finished eating breakfast, Elissa ignores the voice screaming at the back of her head about how bad the idea is, how this isn’t a damn coming of age movie and an alcoholic prince isn’t going to solve how terribly lonely she is.

Her palm finds his forehead and feels for his temperature. He’s not feverish, but he’s given her an inch, so Elissa takes an extra mile and lies, “Hm, you’re feeling a little hot. Are you sure you’re up for the hike down the mountain?”

Daeron’s eyes meet hers, that shade of pale lilac that is both the most unnerving and fascinating color she’s ever seen.

Say yes, she wills inside her head, tell me you’re okay to leave today.

Another, smaller part of her whispers, stay.

“I know not,” he admits, looking away and fixing his gaze to the grimy window to their left. “But, ah, perhaps it would be best to delay until tomorrow.” He smacks his lips together a few times, fidgeting with the sleeve of his tunic. “When I’ve recovered in true.”

Relief and disappointment swell inside her chest, but she hides it all behind a grin.

“And to think I said we’d never see each other again after today. Ugh, so embarrassing.” Elissa covers her face with her hand, pretending to be embarrassed, only to peek through the gaps of her fingers.

Daeron is smiling. It’s a very pretty smile, despite the bags beneath his eyes and the five o’clock shadow making him look a little older than eighteen. “I think it more embarrassing to feel sick still after all these days.”

“That’s different,” she defends. She won’t have any of that self-deprecating stuff that only slips him further down the depression hole. “You can’t control how you feel. You could catch a cold tonight or,” she struggles to think of more scenarios, “or break a bone,” not the best example she could have come up with, “and it still wouldn’t be your fault. So it’s not embarrassing. At all.”

A lifetime ago Elissa would have been mortified at how candid she’s being, especially to someone she’s only known for nearly a week, but hell, she’s got something to say, so she’s going to say it.

“I meant it in jest, worry not.” Daeron shrugs.

She eyes him critically. “Hm, maybe, but you know what they say. Jokes are half-meant.”

“I’ve never heard of such a saying.” He blinks at her, tilting his head. It’s kind of cute.

“Well,” she coughs, trying to think of an excuse, “it’s a commoner saying. For us peasants. Yeah.”

Daeron nods, squinting at the light coming from the windows. His eyes are so glassy, with his hair limp around his face and the slight slouch he has, Daeron’s got that pathetic wet cat look. It’s a little endearing. Elissa purses her lips to hide the amused smile threatening to break free and busies herself with gathering the dishes to wash outside. Since they’re not leaving today, she can afford to be a bit more leisurely with her chores. No frantic rush to get the soup done or the water to boil because she’s afraid the moment she looks away, Daeron would be nothing but a corpse on her bed.

He stands abruptly when she rises from her seat.

“Where are you going?” he asks, looking at her with wide eyes.

“Er, to wash the dishes?” She raises the plates in her hand, wondering why he was so concerned.

“Oh,” he breathes, eyes darting between her and the plates in her hands. “Right, the dishes.”

“Wanna help?” Elissa jiggles the plates in her hand with a grin and narrowly avoids having a fork fall to the floor.

Daeron stares.

“You want me to clean plates with you,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying.

She nods, widening her eyes and feeling her cheeks ache with the intensity of her smile.

Was it too audacious? Elissa knows caring for livestock and cooking are work that can be done by men, but household chores like washing dishes is considered womanly and some other such outdated sexist beliefs, but, well, she’s living in a world where said beliefs aren’t outdated so much as they’re the current norm.

Oh well. The worst he can say is that he’s above such things and how dare some peasant girl make him do the lowly task of—

“Alright,” he agrees.

“Wait, really?” Elissa can’t quite hide the delight in her voice. She shouldn’t be so excited at the prospect of making a prince do the dishes, and by the look on Daeron’s face he’s thinking the same thing, but who cares? It’s not everyday she gets to see a prince sit crouched on a wash basin cleaning dirty dishes!

“Yes.” Before Daeron has any time to take back his words, Elissa shoves the plates into his hands and grabs his arm when she’s sure he isn’t going to drop them from the shock. Hastily, he adds, “But just the once!”

“Once is enough!” She all but drags him to the front door, ignoring the wide-eyed look he sends her as she opens the front door.

Just once ends up being twice.

“You’re using too much soap!”

“How else am I to clean them if not with soap?” Is that snark she hears in his tone?

“You’ve still got tons of it in the sponge, just squeeze it! You’ve scrubbed more soap than dishes since you started.” Elissa shakes her head.

The overhead sun is hot on top of their heads, being the height of noon as it is. After breakfast, she took Daeron to tidy up the rest of the house that she failed to finish last night, mostly just arranging things inside cupboards. He went along without complaint, though she had to correct him a few times from putting in dried herbs with the other wet ingredients. He even regaled her with a few stories from his time as a squire for one of the Kingsguard, polishing armor and sharpening swords. Man, what she’d give to wield a real life sword.

Lunch had them eating braised meat with mashed neeps to the side slathered with butter. It’s the closest thing to mashed potatoes she’ll get. She once tried to have the Burned Men look for potatoes so she could grow them in her garden, but apparently they don’t exist in Westeros. A travesty second only to being reborn in a backward world.

And then, Daeron offered to clean the dishes again. He did well enough the first time around with a bit of guidance, she even praised him for it. He’d stared at her for a good minute after she told him he did a nice job. Apparently, that was enough to make him think he’s some sort of dish cleaning prodigy.

Daeron sniffs. “Perhaps you ought to stop hovering so much. You’re distracting.”

“Distracting,” Elissa repeats, crouching down to his level with a grin. “How exactly am I distracting you?”

He glances at her from the corner of his eyes before scrubbing harshly at the fork in his hand. There’s redness creeping up his neck. She wants to cackle like a deranged loon. This guy’s too easy to tease.

“Hey, easy on the fork. That’s silver.” Elissa grabs his hands and guides them to a gentler motion, pretending not to notice Daeron whipping his head to her. “The clansmen gave the set to me a few years back, said they nicked it from a passing noble. I don’t really like their way of living, but they can be useful sometimes.”

She’d encouraged them to turn to honest work, leave behind the killing and the stealing, even brought Sheepstealer to threaten them to doing good, but they only got down on their knees and said it was an honor to be sacrificed to her dragon. That was when she gave up and deemed them a lost cause. Bunch of crazy people, those guys.

“Is that why you tolerate them, because they give you useful things?” Daeron asks, freeing his hands from hers and rinsing the fork in a nearby bucket with clear water.

“Part of it.” She rinses the lather from her hands in the same bucket. “But it’s mostly because I don’t have anywhere else to go, and they’re helpful for acquiring things I need.”

“Stealing, you mean,” he tells her, now washing the pot she used to cook the neeps. “My aunt said their lot are foul killers and r—” He cuts himself off, glancing her way for a moment before resuming his task. “They are unsavory people.”

Elissa can guess at what he was about to say. Foul rapists.

“I don’t tolerate that. I’ll never tolerate that.” She frowns, glaring at him. “My great-grandmother used to burn them alive for it, my grandfather, too. They may be killers and thieves, but they’re not monsters.”

Damn. She’s saying too much, revealing too much. What if he asks why her family burned people alive specifically? Why not just behead them, or hang them, or whatever those lords do to criminals? She can feel something in her chest stirring, Sheepstealer coming to awareness at the slightest distress.

I’m fine.

“And you?” Daeron turns those pale eyes towards her, seeming to cut right through her. “Have you burned people alive?”

“Just once,” she admits, unable to look away. “When I was thirteen and my grandfather just died, they thought they could scare me into submission.” That wasn’t her best moment, rather the worst actually. She still can’t stomach the smell of roast meat after all these years. Ugh, why did she have to tell him that? Now he’s going to ask how a thirteen year old girl managed to cow grown men into obeying her. Damn it.

“You’ve been by yourself since you were three-and-ten?” Daeron’s voice has grown soft, something in his face she can’t read.

She’s too busy being grateful he didn’t pry deeper into her words to try and discern the look in his eyes. “Not exactly. I had my chickens and my sheep to keep me company, so it wasn’t as bad as you might think.”

Elissa wasn’t really thirteen then, just slightly mentally older. If she’d really been thirteen, this conversation might have veered into a different direction. She turned out just fine on her own, despite the glaring lack of social interactions that drove her crazy enough to speak to Sheepstealer everyday, to the point where she began to think he was actually responding to her through whatever bond is between them. Might have been delusional of her, but it kept her from going stir crazy.

“Anyway,” she says, trying to change the topic. She’s had way too many close calls referencing Sheepstealer’s indirect involvement in her past. “Enough about me. These dishes aren’t going to wash themselves.”

Daeron eyes her a bit more intensely before sighing through his nose and turning his attention to the pot in his hands. “You speak so easily of my troubles but not of yours.”

Elissa grins. “I’ve had years to come to terms with them. Little troubles me now.” Little save for keeping Sheepstealer a secret from a Targaryen prince who could upend her entire life if he ever found out.

Daeron hums unhappily. “As you say.”

Her lip twitches. He isn’t even doing anything remotely funny, just scrubbing grumpily at a pot, but all the same.

Elissa pokes his cheek to get his attention. “How about this, let’s go fishing at sunset. You said you used to fish, right? There’s a river just a short walk from the back of the house.”

He shifts in his seat, rinsing the pot in the clear water bucket before reaching for the last unwashed plate. He’s using too much soap again, the bar’s been halved since he used it this morning. She’s never letting him wash the dishes again after this.

“I haven’t gone fishing in some time.” Daeron’s eyes are unfocused in a way she’s come to know as him being in deep thought, lost in memories or whatever haunts him during his waking hours that he’d turn to wine and other unsavory means to forget.

Elissa waits patiently for him to gather his thoughts. She wonders when he started drinking and when it got so bad that he couldn’t live without it anymore. Westeros isn’t like Earth, where there are regulations when it comes to minors drinking alcohol. He could have started drinking as young as thirteen, possibly even twelve. That’s about five years’ worth of some kind of neurological damage, especially since his brain is still developing. Elissa’s no expert, but she’d spent enough nights googling things for her brother that she knows enough.

Daeron shakes his head. “Not today, I’m afraid. Another time mayhaps.”

Disappointment wells up inside her, but she doesn’t push hard like she would have done. She remembers him saying his family used to go fishing when his mother was still alive, so probably a lot of touchy subjects there. It’s fine, there’s always—

“Another time?” Elissa rests her chin atop her palm, if only to hide the way her lips threaten to break into a grin. “I thought we were only delaying until tomorrow. Today is the only time we’ll get.”

She won’t force him to go fishing if he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t mean she can’t tease him for his choice of words though.

Daeron is busy rinsing soap lather from a plate, his hair covering the side of his face from view, such that she doesn’t see what kind of face he’s making as he says, “Then perhaps I shall feel faint again on the morrow.”

Elissa’s smile freezes on her face.

That wasn’t what she expected him to say.

Some part of her, that rational part that keeps screaming at her not to get too attached to a damn Targaryen of all people, knows he was completely faking that whole feeling faint thing earlier that morning. A few days ago, she would have leapt at the chance to be free of him and the constant threat of him discovering that the last living dragon resides right under his nose. But then she had to go and make him feed her chickens and have meals with her and clean the dirty dishes. Where else is she going to find a guy who snarks at her when he does menial chores and tolerates the modern slang that slips out of her mouth? He didn’t even bat an eye when she mentioned dinosaurs—dinosaurs!

Daeron dries off his hands using a washcloth hanging off to the side. The skin around his knuckles is a little red. Figures a prince unused to doing work like this would get dry hands after doing the dishes twice. Elissa makes a mental note to give him some moisturizer later.

When she lifts her eyes to his face, she finds him already watching her.

“You know,” she starts, leaning back on her haunches and attempting a look of casualness that she currently doesn’t feel. “You’re starting to give me the impression that you want to stay.”

He doesn’t, right?

“What if I do?”

Goddamnit it all.

Daeron seems to be as apprehensive as she feels. He almost looks green around the face, similar to that time he was puking his guts out every time he moved a little too quickly. A drop of sweat falls from his temple, and the glare from the sun makes his eyes all the more lighter in shade, almost white. For a moment, she entertains the thought of telling him to come live with her and rid her of the loneliness that’s plagued her since she was thirteen and alone in a foreign world.

A sharp lance of fury and indignation cuts through her chest.

Emotions not of her own making suddenly burst inside her. The intensity of it makes her stumble from the crouch she’s held and fall onto her knees. She clutches her chest, gasping at the feeling of wrongness all over, like something’s trying to worm its way into her head and she’s violently clawing at it to make it go away.

“Azantys…”

Daeron hands are upon her shoulder, trying to help her sit upright. “Elissa?”

“Azantys!” she calls out, knowing he can’t hear her but still willing to try. There’s always been something nestled within her ever since she first flew upon his back, a feeling of otherness that was never present in her past life, like a second heartbeat right next to hers, faint and near-unnoticeable, but there. “Azantys, what’s wrong?!”

Daeron is saying something to her, but it’s drowned out by the rush of something filling her head, something digging into them, like pressure forcing its way into her ears when she flies up too high in the sky. Her ears are about to pop.

“Elissa.”

Something swivels her upright, and she’s met with pale lilac that’s too bright to look at in the sun. For a fleeting moment, she thinks she sees a hint of red.

The pressure abates, her chest loosens, and Elissa takes in heaving breaths as if she spent the past minute underwater. Daeron is cradling her cheek, a manic sort of look on his face as he watches her gulp in breaths. Her hands circle around his wrists, uncaring how tightly she’s holding onto him. He’s a grounding presence, something to focus on to clear her head from whatever the fuck just happened.

“What happened?” He briefly lets go of her face to sweep her hair back.

She shakes her head, blinking rapidly as she tries to get her breathing in order. “I don’t–I don’t know.”

And fuck if that isn’t scary. Elissa has been taught what to expect when dealing with her dragon, the sudden fiery emotions and how to not let it control her. Her grandfather never said anything about feelings translating through the bond so intensely that it would bring her to her knees.

She needs to see him. Needs to know nothing terrible happened for him to feel so much that he overwhelmed her with his own emotions.

Elissa pushes Daeron’s hands away, staggering to her feet. “I need,” she breathes, “I need to go.”

Daeron moves to follow her. “Elissa, what—”

“Just stay here!” She pushes his shoulder to make him sit back on the stone bench, but he’s a head taller than her so it only serves to stumble him a bit. “It’s for your own good. Just stay, please.”

She doesn’t even want to consider the repercussions that Daeron knowing will bring. This world already has a set future written out. She can’t muddy that with her presence, she won’t. Fuck, what was she even thinking? Entertaining thoughts of letting him stay will only lead to him inevitably discovering Azantys. So what if life’s boring? Boring is better than having her peace threatened for the sole reason of harboring the last living dragon.

Elissa meets his eyes, seeing him look so lost as he watches her descend into a panic. She reaches for his cheek and allows a selfish part of her to run the underside of her thumb over the smooth skin beneath his eye. Daeron opens his mouth, but she’s quick to cut him off.

“I’ll explain later. I promise,” she lies, letting her hand fall back to her side. “For now I just—I really need to go.”

She turns around and sets off into a sprint.

Daeron is, once again, left to his lonesome.

Time passes strangely after Elissa leaves. He remembers returning to the dishes and drying them with a washcloth, carrying them inside the house and putting them to their rightful places inside the cupboards. Then he made his way outside, taking the path to the back of the house with the sun still high in the sky.

He blinks, and the shadows cast by the trees have grown long. It seems time has passed again without him noticing. He’s sitting next to the coop, two chickens watching him curiously with their beady eyes. He doesn’t remember which ones they are.

“Am I so burdensome?”

None of the chickens respond.

Daeron stares at his hands, the same hands that cradled Elissa’s face hours before, but felt as though it was mere minutes ago. She had a fraught look upon her face, eyes wide and mouth open but without air passing through them. It terrified him. He has never seen her so shaken. She has always been quick to smile and laugh, though there was nothing humorous to be found. To have her smile at him one moment, then on her knees gasping for breath the next…

He clenches his fists. “I should not have stayed.” He turns to the chickens as though finding someone to agree with him. They remain unmoved. “She seemed unwell. I… why did I stay? I ought to have followed her.”

He was too craven, has always been too craven. Anyone else would have insisted that Elissa not go, at least not by her lonesome. Why, even in this, can he not overcome his shortcomings? Stay. Do not go. A few measly words that should not weigh as heavy as they do upon his tongue. Daeron has said worse things, crass things, things that would have had his father washing his mouth with soap.

“Azantys,” he murmurs, Valyrian flowing from his tongue fluently in contrast to Elissa’s accented tone. “A knight. Her dragon is named Azantys.”

The chicken with dark feathers pecks at his leg, ruffling its wings and tilting its head to watch him at a strange angle. Daeron meets its stare with his own tired eyes. He flicks at its head to make it move away, but its gaze remains rooted upon his face.

“Doubtless even a chicken like you would have followed her despite the threat of a dragon.” Unlike Daeron, who realized rather quickly that this Azantys she kept calling for was her dragon rather than a knight. There was a moment when she held his face where he would have admitted to knowing the secret of her dragon, the words resting right at the tip of his tongue.

The chicken is still staring at him, likely waiting for him to give it worms. Daeron breathes deep through his nose and reaches for the bucket next to him. He tosses a worm at the chicken, but it ignores the wriggling thing lying next to its feet.

“Not hungry, are you?” It doesn’t respond, of course. Daeron watches another chicken scoop up the worm into its beak, walking away once it had its fill.

He leans his head back until it thumps against the wooden coop. The sky seems so vast above him. He wonders if he will see Elissa’s Azantys if she decides to fly him today. He never got a proper look last night.

It’s nearing sundown when Elissa returns, mud caking her boots and smelling of rotten eggs, sulfur. She had called out to him when she opened the front door, before making her way to the back of the house when she likely saw his absence.

“Have you been here all day?” She kneels next to him, appearing calmer than she did hours ago. “You hands are covered in dirt.”

Daeron looks down and sees that his hands are, indeed, covered in a fine layer of dirt, some of it getting under his nails. “I fed the chickens.”

“We fed them this morning.”

He shrugs. “What was I to do when you left so suddenly?”

Elissa winces, looking at him apologetically. She should not. It is Daeron who owes her an apology for being so craven. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left. It’s just that something happened.”

“I surmised as much by how you were behaving,” he tells her softly. He wants to reach out and hold her, to tell himself that she isn’t merely a manifestation of his dreams, but his hands are filthy. As it turns out, he needn’t have bothered. Elissa reaches for him of her own volition, not caring for the dirt as she pulls him up.

“Come on. Let’s clean up, then we’ll talk.”

After, when he’s washed away the dirt and he’s left feeling inadequate still, Elissa sits him on the table they dined upon and procures a jar containing a pale yellow paste.

“It’s lanolin, a sort of wax from sheep wool,” she explains as she twists open the lid and scoops some on her fingers. She grabs his wrist, and it is telling of his trust in her that he voices no complaint as she slathers an unknown paste over his knuckles. She does the same for his other hand. “It’s meant to help with the dryness. I noticed your skin was a little red earlier.”

When she’s finished closing the jar and leaving it on the table, Daeron gets to the matter at hand. “Could we talk now?”

Elissa seems to steel herself, arms flat upon the table and fingers steepled together as though in prayer. Her hair is falling out of the twist she put it up in that morning, curls falling freely along the sides of her face. Her woolen dress is fraying, the light from flickering candles casting her face in harsh shadows. Even now, with her mouth twisted into a frown and grime clinging to her sleeves, Daeron cannot find it in himself to look away.

“I need you to leave tomorrow, right at the break of dawn. No more excuses, just—please.”

“Oh,” is all he can say. He wonders what she saw to change her mind so. “Have I caused offense in some manner?”

“No, you’re not at fault here.” Elissa’s shoulders slump. “It’s a combination of things out of our control. There’s forces at play I’m not equipped to handle.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

She nods as though she expected such a response, gaze moored at the table. “I don’t blame you. I just wanted someone to spend my days with, and now I’ve got the damn psyops on my radar.” She closes her eyes and slumps further onto the table, hands cradling the sides of her head.

Daeron watches uselessly as Elissa spirals. What is he to do? What can he even do? He has no clue what a psyops is or what business they have with her radar, whatever that is. She seems set on having him leave on the morrow. He doubts any false illness will convince her, short of a life-threatening wound. Is this to be the last image he has of her, slumped across the table and weighed down by troubles he has no lick of understanding of?

He hesitantly places his palm over the back of one of her hands. “How could I help? Tell me, Elissa.”

She raises her head, dislodging his hand as she leans her weight across her elbows and stares at him intently. “Daeron,” she calls him softly, tinged with regret, “have you ever dreamed of me? Am I important? Do I become important?”

Apart from the brief mention this morning, she has never brought up his dreams to him. She only ever seemed to look at him without the weight of being a dreamer. He thought she might be in trouble with the Burned Men, or mayhaps some other tribe, and she would ask Daeron to help her deal with them, though how useful he would be at such endeavors remains to be seen.

But to ask him of his dreams, it must be that she is truly desperate. Looking at the crease between her brows and the stiffness of her shoulders, it seems there is no use in harboring secrets between them.

“Before we met, I dreamed that a dragon would come to take me away into the mountains.” He hears her do a sharp intake of breath. “When I was abed, I dreamed of that same dragon cradling me in its warm chest.”

With every word that passes through his lips, she grows more and more ashen. Yet still, she seems to remain unwilling to divulge her secrets.

“And?” she asks, voice noticeably shaky. “What does a dragon have to do with anything?”

Daeron swallows. “I think, Elissa, that the dragon was you.”

“My prince, a missive from King’s Landing arrived just now.”

Maekar snatches the rolled piece of parchment from Lord Fell’s hand.

Dinner from a proper household rests warm in his stomach, and though he will never admit such a thing out loud, he is glad to have a proper keep to stay in rather than spending coin to rent out an inn. He gave leave for Aerion to retire early into the rooms granted to their entourage by their hosts, though he doubts the boy is resting as he should be.

He turns his back to the lord of Felwood and unrolls the parchment, eyes roving over the words with haste.

And then, he reads them again.

I hope your travels have been uneventful, cousin. I bear good tidings. Daeron yet lives, and he is in good health. Rest your weary heart a moment, and try not to offend the Lord of Felwood overmuch.

Brynden Rivers, Master of Whisperers.

The parchment in his hands crumples from the weight of relief that overcomes him.

Maekar knows not what sorcery Brynden used to ascertain Daeron’s condition, but privately, he is grateful for it. He disapproves of the unsavory ways of sorcery and whatever dark arts Brynden and Shiera employ. It is distasteful. In this, however, he will turn a blind eye.

“Bring me a roll of parchment and a quill,” he orders the maester as he makes his way to Thurgood Fell’s desk. He has acquisitioned the lord’s solar for his own until they depart on the morrow to continue their journey to King’s Landing.

The maester hobbles to do as told, whilst the burly Lord Fell stands before his desk with his chest puffed out and near popping the buttons of his doublet. “My prince, allow me to express my relief at Prince Daeron’s continued good health.”

Maekar rolls his eyes at the lord’s attempt at fawning. “Did you know my son personally?”

Lord Fell flounders for words. “Well, no, my prince, but—”

“Then your relief means nothing to me. Away with you, Lord Fell.” He waves a hand in dismissal at the red-faced lord. Then to the maester, he barks out, “Are you to hobble if your lord appears to you gravely wounded? Bring me my quill and parchment!”

The aged man nods hurriedly. “A-At once, my prince.”

Maekar closes his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose. He yearns to arrive in King’s Landing and be rid of these incompetent fools.

Chapter Text

A dragon. The universe must hate her.

“Me, a dragon?” Elissa forces a laugh out of her, trying to adopt that nonchalant carefree personality she’s been cultivating since she first came to the conclusion that stewing over her past life’s regrets will do nothing but bring her misery. “You’ve got a funny imagination. This dragon could be one of your relatives, since you’re, you know, the house of the dragon.”

“Elissa,” Daeron says, sounding much older than his eighteen years, “I know what Azantys is.”

That stops her short, but her mouth is already moving before her brain is finished processing his words. “No, you don’t.”

He narrows his gaze. “I do know. Let us not pretend at ignorance here.”

“No. Whatever you think he is, he isn’t. Azantys is… my really temperamental dog.” Good god. What the hell kind of excuse was that?

“A dog,” he repeats. “Really, Elissa?” He even has the audacity to look unimpressed with her bold-faced lie.

She straightens from her seat. Might as well own up to it. “Yes, he’s a dog, a very bad dog. That’s why he doesn’t live with me. He’s… tied up to a tree somewhere outside.”

“Then why have I not heard any barking?”

“He’s mute, that’s why.” She’s getting kind of good at this whole lying thing. “I found him abandoned when he was a puppy, couldn’t even cry out back then. And you know me, I couldn’t possibly leave him out there—”

“Elissa,” he interrupts, “I know you have a dragon.”

That shuts her up.

Her mouth opens and closes repeatedly, trying and failing to find the words to refute his statement. Daeron stares at her, that all-knowing look in his eyes that tells her he’s done with her pulling his leg.

Her shoulders drop in defeat. “Since when have you known?”

Nearly a century of secrecy, of staying hidden and never arousing the suspicion of anyone, and there goes Elissa spilling the beans to a Targaryen not even a whole week after meeting him. Her ancestors must be looking down in shame.

“Last night,” Daeron says, leaning his elbows atop the table.

Last night when she brought Azantys out to fly.

Damn it all.

She shouldn’t have given in to his wishes to go flying. He’d been rather grumpy the past few days, annoyed at her lack of attention. Elissa used to visit him everyday, but with Daeron convulsing on her bed she couldn’t exactly leave to hang out with Azantys. That temperamental old grouch refused to eat the sheep she brought him last night unless she went flying with him. She was usually more careful, only flying him during nights when the moon wasn't visible in the sky.

Of all the times to get caught, of course it had to be the one time she had her guard down. How was she supposed to know Daeron would be well enough to get out of bed and see Azantys in the sky?

“So this whole time you knew I had a dragon, but you never said anything?” She glares at him suspiciously. “What, were you planning to go behind my back and claim him for yourself? Is that…” She falters, remembering the way he looked at her. “Is that why you wanted to stay? Because I have a dragon?”

All the little things they did together, feeding the chickens and offering to wash the dishes, the words he said earlier that day. What if I do?

If he’s been using her all this time just to get to her dragon, then fuck him. So what if he’s a prince and that spending time with him makes her want to have more than this simple life? He’s not even that good looking, with his stupidly long lashes and high cheekbones and, and that silly smile he gets on his face when she says something funny. Ugh.

“I am the last person in my family who would ever covet your dragon.” His lips do this funny thing where he seems unable to decide whether to frown or do his best approximation of a smile. “I can barely remain saddled on a horse, never mind a dragon.”

“Probably because you were always drunk,” she tells him drily, unimpressed with his indirect admission of what counts as drinking and driving in this world. They need to make laws and regulations about these kinds of things!

“Not probably. I was drunk.” Daeron sighs, smacking his lips together and looking wistfully at his empty hands. “What I would give for a bottle of Dornish red. I would even take that piss-water they call ale in Flea Bottom.”

Elissa purses her lips at him disapprovingly but makes no more comments about his drinking habits. If she begins a tangent about the dangers alcohol brings to his health, they’ll never get back to the topic at hand.  Right now, he doesn’t look like a man scheming behind her back to claim a dragon for himself. He looks rather small and pitiful, the way her brother used to get when beer ran out in the fridge and he had no money left to buy more. That helpless desire for something out of their reach is mirrored in his eyes. If a genie appeared to him right now, Elissa thinks he’d spend all three wishes for wine.

“So you don’t want my dragon.”

“No,” he sighs, “I’ve no desire to steal your dragon. I told you—”

“That you’d rather have a bottle of wine than claim a dragon, the very symbol of your house. I know that now, but,” there’s still one thing she doesn’t understand, “if you don’t want my dragon, and being here deprives you of your beloved wine, then why do you want to stay?”

Is it because of me?

She crushes that thought as soon as it forms. Way to be presumptuous! Elissa knows she’s pretty darn good looking, but to assume Daeron would choose some chick in the middle of nowhere over the comfort of his cushy royal palace and endless supply of wine is the height of delusion. This isn’t a fairytale. She’s no Jenny of Oldstones.

Daeron opens his mouth, but Elissa reaches up and shushes him with a finger, literally pressing a finger to his mouth. His lips are dry under her touch, but soft.

“Before you say anything, be honest, alright? I don’t care if you have ulterior motives, I prefer honesty over anything.” She blinks, realizing how blasé she sounds. “Well, I actually do care if you have ulterior motives, and now that I’m saying the words out loud, I realize this is kind of silly. I mean, who would actually admit to such a thing?”

She’s rambling. Oh god, she’s rambling and she can’t stop, because stopping means having to face whatever answer Daeron gives and accepting that the lies she’s been feeding herself since this morning are nothing but her overactive imagination.

“Not that I think you wouldn’t. You’ve been very honest with me so far, except for hiding the fact that you knew about Azantys. But since it’s only been about a day, I forgive you for it. And anyway—”

In one swift move, Daeron grabs her wrist and stops her from making a bigger fool of herself.

“Elissa.”

“I—yes?”

He smiles, a small thing that softens his face. She’s only seen him smile a handful of times, each one somewhat stilted like he’s unused to doing it in a genuine manner. He’s usually so glum, and when he isn’t, she can tell he’s putting up a facade to appear like some uncaring easy-going guy. He’s rather terrible at it. One look at those tired eyes is all anyone needs to know.

But right now, he’s smiling. It’s a pretty smile. Princely, even.

“When my father sent me to my cousin in Dragonstone to instill a sense of responsibility within me, I secretly boarded a ship to King’s Landing and drank myself to oblivion until the City Watch found me.” He slides his fingers along the length of her wrist until his hand reached her own. “Ser Roland Crakehall promised to knight me on my six-and-tenth nameday if I participated in a squire’s tourney. I hid away in my rooms and pretended at an illness.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this, but if you think I’m going to praise you or encourage bad habits, you’re out of luck.” No matter if that smile makes something in her feel mushy.

“I know I am no bastion of duty.” His brows crease in a telltale sign of frustration. He sighs deeply through his nose and tightens his grip on her. “What I am saying is that if I do not wish to be somewhere, then I will not be there.” Here, he meets her eyes. “And if I merely wanted your dragon, then we would not be conversing at all.”

There’s a beat of silence where Elissa tries to process his words. By all accounts, everything he’s said points to one conclusion, but it’s a conclusion that feels so unreal she might as well be dreaming. Whether this is a nightmare or not remains to be seen.

“What do you want, then?” Because if it’s not Azantys or a top secret plan to stab her in the back…

Daeron looks away, redness creeping up his neck. “Must I spell it out for you?”

“Yes.”

His eyes dart every which way, from their hands to the table to the grimy window, and back to their hands. He’s gripping her so tightly it’s bordering on painful. When he speaks, it comes out in a breathless tone.

“I want to be with you. That is why I want to stay.”

Oh.

It’s now Elissa’s turn to look away in embarrassment. She never thought it was possible to physically feel your heart beating without placing a palm over your chest, but here she is proving herself wrong.

Her first instinct is to call him out on his lie, because if he could feign ignorance about her dragon, what’s to say he’s not just trying to butter her up? But really now, she might be a bit paranoid that Bloodraven’s sent his animal minions to spy on her after that little stint he tried to pull, but she’s not that paranoid. She’s not going to start disregarding Daeron’s words just because he lied one time. Elissa’s always been a firm believer of second chances, and third chances, and fourth and fifth and however many chances it took her brother before he started getting better, truly better.

When she came back from checking on Azantys, Elissa’s decision to make Daeron leave tomorrow was ironclad.

But now? Well.

Now, one look at his semi-constipated face as he awaits her response, and she’s crumbling faster than a wobbly jenga tower.

Elissa slumps over the table and buries her face in the crook of her elbow, groaning in despair. “Why do I have to be such a pushover?”

She feels Daeron’s hand loosening from hers in surprise.

“Elissa?”

She abruptly straightens from her seat, ignoring Daeron’s startled look as she reaches forward and clasps his hand between her own.

Fine. Fine! If they’re going to be honest with each other, then she might as well go all out. The people of this world prefer dancing around their words and prolonging the suspense when it could all be solved with a single honest conversation. She’ll air it all out, and if he still wants to stay, then he can stay. She’ll deal with the fallout from it later.

“You won’t be treated like a prince here. This isn’t like one of your fancy castles where you have servants for every little thing. When we bathe, we’ll have to go to the river. It’ll be freezing cold. If we want something to eat, we need to get the ingredients ourselves. You’re going to be chopping wood for the hearth, and fixing leaks on the roof, and every kind of work you’ve never had to do. You also have to be prepared for Azantys to come by at night randomly. He’s… not very fond of you.” Elissa huffs at the reminder of her dragon snorting a hot breath over her face when she told him all about Daeron. “Do you still want to stay?”

Without a trace of hesitation, he tells her, “If you’ll have me.”

“It’s not wise, you know. I’m sure there are people looking for you. Your family must miss you.” At the very least, she has to try to persuade him to leave, however weak her arguments are.

“I won’t be gone forever.”

That’s the thing. The longer he stays, the more difficult it will be to let go when the time comes for him to leave. It’ll be hard enough to go back from cooking for two people to cooking for just herself. They say it takes two weeks to form a habit; Elissa must not have gotten the memo, because six days in and she was already instinctively setting the table for two.

“And after? You can’t hide away here forever. When you return home, will you tell them about my dragon?” She runs her thumb over his knuckles, feeling the residue of the lanolin she applied earlier. “Be honest. Please.”

“The truth is, I had hoped you would come with me,” Daeron admits, and her thumb stops midmotion.

“So you do have a motive for staying.” She releases him and folds her hands over the table a healthy distance away. “Gain my trust, make me lower my guard. What else did you have planned?”

He breathes deeply like he’s preparing for something, probably psyching himself up to reveal whatever notorious scheme he has.

“I plan to pursue you,” he says before placing his hand around her own.

“Pursue me? As in chase me down the mountain if I don’t agree to come back with you?” Elissa brushes his hand away, eyeing him warily. She really should be screaming and running for the hills after a man just said he would chase her if she doesn’t go with him willingly, but she wiped puke from his mouth and cleaned him with a wet rag. It’s hard to find someone threatening after you’ve seen them in the most pathetic state possible. “I appreciate the honesty, but really, Daeron, you might have longer legs, but I can outrun you anytime.”

Instead of being affronted, Daeron is looking at her like she’s some sort of alien.

“I… you…” He can’t seem to form proper words, his mouth hanging open and brows furrowed in what seems to be incredulity. And then, the most astonishing thing happens.

He starts laughing.

Now Elissa is the one looking at him like he’s an exotic animal. What was so funny about what she said? She may be a whole head shorter than him, but she knows the lay of the land and what shortcuts to take to get away from him. Plus, there’s the massive dragon at her beck and call. He’s delusional if he thinks he can take her down so easily. She knows his weakness; he’s ticklish at the waist.

“Gods, Elissa. When I said I would pursue you, I hadn’t meant—” He coughs into his fist like he’s trying to stifle his laugh, but his shoulders are still shaking, and his eyes are crinkled to the point where the violets in them are barely visible.

She crosses her arms over her chest and waits for him to calm down, lips pressed into an unimpressed line.

…He has a very nice laugh. Infectious, too. Elissa has to stop the upward twitch of her mouth. She’s supposed to look stern!

Daeron’s smile is wide after he’s composed himself, the kind that stretches across his cheeks and turns his eyes into half moons, with a hint of teeth peeking out. Elissa is too stunned by the sight to remember to keep her facade of coolness. After days of forced lightness and self-deprecation hidden behind sarcastic quips, seeing him look so bright is jarring. He really should smile more. Genuine smiles, that is. A face that good is wasted if he only uses it to look so depressed.

“Only you would think I meant it in the literal sense.” Daeron rubs his nose, but she suspects he’s only doing it to hide how his lips turn up in amusement. “I can’t recall the last time I laughed this hard.”

Of course he wouldn’t. The alcohol’s probably fried his brain to a degree where he’s missing chunks of his memory. It’s a little sobering to think about. Seeing him like this, so lucid and grinning at her misconceptions, it’s strange to think he’d been shaking insensible in bed two days ago. It’s another point added to the tally of reasons why he should stay, despite a good part of her mind telling her to kick him out and salvage whatever she can of her peace. He’s doing so well now. If he leaves, there’s no doubt he’ll go back to being a drunken mess, and she doesn’t want that for him. For all Daeron’s faults, Elissa does want him to be better, and not just because he’s pretty.

“What did you mean by ‘pursue me’?” she asks. It’s only because she’s watching him so closely that she catches when his smile edges into something more nervous.

“I would pursue you,” his smile is gone now, replaced by an anxious mien, “in courtship.”

Her ears must not be working properly.

“What?”

Daeron is entirely red in the face as he says, “I wish to court you, Elissa.”

A beat.

“You like me?”

His eyes are oddly glasslike in the candlelight.

“Was it ever in doubt?”

Oh. This is what elation must feel like. Fireworks in her stomach and a chest that feels too small to contain the bubbling emotions within. The tips of her fingers feel oddly electric, snaking up to her arms down to the tips of her toes.

It’s on the tip of her tongue. I like you, too.

But it feels too permanent. Like breathing the words into life outside of her mind would sign this invisible contract between them. It’s ridiculous, but despite how put together she may seem on the outside, she’s still reeling from what happened hours ago. What she experienced was only a taste of what’s to come if she continues down this path.

When she first realized that the place she was born in wasn’t just medieval Europe but Westeros itself, she vowed to never get involved with nobility and, most importantly, the Targaryens. How was she supposed to know that fate itself would intervene and drop a Targaryen prince right onto her lap? Bloodraven was only the tip of the iceberg. How the hell is she supposed to deal with court politics and interacting with people who’d view her as less than the dirt beneath their feet? She’s not cut out for any of that.

She looks at Daeron, at the hopeful gleam in his eyes and the redness blooming across his cheeks. Is she really willing to sacrifice her peace for a man?

“I need to think.” Elissa stands from her seat, resolutely not looking in his direction. “I’m sorry. Could we continue this later?”

Daeron stands as well, doing his best imitation of a kicked puppy. “Have I upset you?”

“No!” She waves her hands in the air frantically. “I just—it’s been a long day, and there’s so much I need to think about.”

He nods, but she spies the unsatisfied turn of his lips as he glares at the table. She makes her way to the bedroom but lingers just outside the doorway. Daeron is watching her, but she can’t get a read on what he’s feeling right now.

“We’ll continue this later. Promise,” she says just before closing the door behind her and falling onto the bed.

It smells like Daeron. It’s not an entirely pleasant smell, seeing as he’s been sweating through the sheets for the past few days, but Elissa has smelled worse. The pillows feel heavenly on her back after days spent sleeping on a cot or slumped over the table. Her eyelids start to droop from exhaustion. Maybe a nap won’t hurt. Hopefully the solution to all her problems will come to her after she wakes up.

If not, well, it’s not too late to fly to some unknown island and hide away until she grows old and dies (again).

Daeron finds himself afloat once more, a person without a body, seeing without eyes.

Events flash by him too fast to parse. A muder of crows taking flight. A dragon landing on a sunny meadow. King’s Landing as he last saw it, the Sept of Baelor ringing its bells as a dragon flies overhead. From his periphery, he sees a flame growing brighter as it comes close, only to recede just before the fires can burn him.

He turns, and suddenly he has a body with which to turn, and he finds himself outside the cottage. Through the front door, he sees Elissa facing away from him, dressed in white.

Above him, there are fifteen moons in the sky.

Daeron wakes with a start.

His neck aches something fierce as he comes to sit up from his slump over the table. The room is dark, the candles having long been blown out. Outside, the sky is painted in the shade of blue that heralds the rising of the sun.

He buries his face in his hands as he recalls what transpired last night and the things he said. Little wonder Elissa retreated to her room and refused to speak with him again the whole night. They did not even get the chance to have dinner, and Daeron refused to touch Elissa’s kitchen lest he burn it down and forever be barred from her home. His stomach rumbles.

Elissa must be hungry as well.

Daeron turns his head towards the door to her room but dares not approach it. What if he opens it and finds her in a state she would not wish him to see? It would only further sour her opinion of him. Worse still, what if he opens the door and she is not there, having fled in the middle of the night because she found his offer of courtship so repulsive. If he does not open that door, then he cannot be harmed by the sight that would greet him. Better to live in ignorance rather than face the unpleasant truth.

He stands from the table and rounds the counter that separates the kitchen from Elissa’s dining table. He remembers throwing a fishing pole to the ground during his mad search for wine the other night. Since he is too craven to face Elissa and own up to his words, Daeron does what he does best: run away from his problems and busy himself with the closest thing at hand.

It takes half an hour of walking through the copse of trees to reach the river Elissa mentioned. By then, the sun has risen enough to lighten the woods, so it is with no great difficulty that Daeron finds the bend of the riverside where the current is slowest.

He tries to recall the lessons his father imparted upon him during his youth. Drive the bait onto the hook, throw the line into the water, and settle down to wait. He realizes his mistake when he takes a worm from the bucket they used to feed chickens; he forgot to bring another bucket to store fish in. He looks up at the quickly brightening day and recalls the amount of time it took for him to reach the riverside without getting lost. Elissa must have woken by now, or will be soon enough. If he intends to bring fish back to break their fast, he can hardly afford to double back just for a bucket.

Daeron throws the line into the river and stabs the butt of the pole into the dirt. Perhaps he can carry the fish by hand later. He may not be the brightest, but even he knows that putting fish he intends to eat into a bucket filled with worms isn’t the best of ideas.

Waiting for a fish to bite and with nothing to serve as a distraction, he finds himself dwelling on his dream. It isn’t something he tries to make a habit of. Daeron would prefer not to think of his dreams, better yet, he would rather not have them at all. But regardless of what he would prefer, he cannot stop his mind from circling back to what he saw. It is the first time he has seen Elissa in a dream—the real her, not a dragon or some other such symbolism his dreams like to tell him instead of showing him things in a straightforward manner.

Elissa in white, even facing away from him, he would know the curve of her neck and those unmistakable curls atop her head.

Fifteen moons in the sky. Daeron looks up and spies a cloud shaped like a rabbit. What could such an omen mean? He can almost hear Brynden’s voice in his ear, that same drawl he uses that irks Daeron like no other whenever he interrogates him about his dreams. You overcomplicate things, often the answers you seek are those that are simplest in nature.

Cryptic bastard.

Something simple, then. Fifteen moons. Fifteen nights. Perhaps in a fortnight Elissa will tire of his company and ask him to leave, or more likely, Daeron will stumble into Azantys’ lair and get himself eaten.

The pole goes taut. Belatedly, he realizes that the dirt he stabbed the butt of the pole into was too soft. Daeron scrambles to catch the fishing pole as whatever monstrous fish in the river pulls at the hook, but it is no use. The pole dislodges from the dirt and shoots into the water, disappearing beneath the currents.

That was Elissa’s only fishing pole.

He closes his eyes and presses the heel of his palm to his brow, wishing he had a drink at hand. Now he has no pole, no fish, and a rumbling stomach.

“Fuck me.”

Elissa has searched everywhere, from the kitchen cupboards to the inside of the chicken coop. Hell, she even looked under the bed, but Daeron is nowhere to be seen. It’s like he just disappeared.

But he wouldn’t just leave without saying anything, right? They may not have ended their talk last night on the best of terms, and she left him without an answer to his semi-confession, but that isn’t a good enough reason to justify disappearing without notice! It’s not like she wanted him to leave. She just needed to sort her thoughts and make up her damn mind. So she asked for some time, and maybe she overslept and forgot to make dinner for them both, but god, Daeron—

“Could’ve at least said goodbye,” Elissa mutters to herself bitterly, sitting on the table and glaring at the empty space across her.

Maybe it’s for the best. He wasn’t supposed to stay longer than a day anyway. Him going through withdrawal and Elissa’s bleeding heart unable to drag him down the mountain in that state was never part of the plan. It’s good that he left. This way she doesn’t have to keep second guessing herself, wondering if she made the right choice or signed her death warrant.

Sure, she feels a little betrayed. All that talk about making it up to her and wanting to stay and missing her when he leaves, only to be left with nothing in the morning like a bad one night stand. Does he even know the route or is he just winging it and hoping for the best? What if he’s lost and gets captured by another tribe? Few of the other clans dare make their settlement close to hers for fear of her dragon, but there’s always a few stragglers. He might come across one of them, and he won’t be so lucky this time to be saved by someone like her.

Elissa buries her face in her hands and groans.

She will not go out and search for him. He made his decision to leave. It’s out of her hands now what happens to him from here on out. She won’t look for him. She won’t.

Elissa stands from her seat and is already out the door before she can change her mind.

She barely makes it two steps past the threshold before someone calls out her name.

“Elissa?”

Her head whips so fast she feels the muscles in her neck twinge in protest.

“Daeron!”

She doesn’t walk so much as sprints towards him, gripping him by the arms and checking him over. His hair looks greasy and in need of a wash, and his fancy boots are caked with mud on the soles. She looks up at his face and finds him watching her with a sort of guilty expression.

“Where have you been? I thought,” Elissa sniffs. Oh no. “I thought you left.”

He fixes his eyes on their feet, unable to meet her stare. “I’m sorry. I lost your fishing pole.”

She blinks. That wasn’t what she expected. “My… fishing pole?”

He nods. “I thought to go fishing by the river you made mention of yesterday, but I’m afraid my skills have grown rusty.”

“Why?” she asks, baffled. “I thought you didn’t want to go fishing.”

Daeron licks his lips, gazing at her hesitantly. “You said if I am to stay here, that if we want something to eat, we would have to get it ourselves.”

Elissa feels something in her chest tighten. And she thought he left without saying goodbye.

“You wanted to catch fish for breakfast?”

“That was my intent, yes,” he sighs, then gestures to his empty hands. “But I met no success, as you can see.”

It’s like it didn’t really register in her head that he didn’t leave her until now. He was out by the river trying to catch fish for breakfast, all because Elissa said they would have to provide for themselves. If she could go back and tell her past self that the drunken prince she read about a lifetime ago would willingly feed chickens and wash dishes and go out by himself to fish, she’d be labeled delusional, and not just because Daeron was barely a footnote in her memories back then. Her favorite had been Daenerys, not some random Targaryen prince.

“You really want to stay, huh?” Because of her, however baffling it is to think about. Somehow, between cleaning up vomit from a bucket and laughing at his attempts to avoid getting pecked by a chicken as he grabbed its egg, she did something to make him want to stay.

“I know you would rather that I leave—”

“I don’t, actually,” she cuts him off. Whatever misgivings she may have, however much she might regret this, she doesn’t want him to get the wrong idea. “I don’t want you to leave.”

Elissa angles her head towards the ground, feeling herself flush. Would it really be so bad? Like he said last night, it won’t be forever. She can’t continue living in ignorance though. A prince knows, Bloodraven knows, so it’s only a matter of time before the king finds out. It’s the after that she has to make a decision on.

“A fortnight,” Daeron blurts out.

She raises her head. He looks desperate.

“I’m to leave in fifteen days,” he says in a rush. “I said I would court you, and I meant it. I could—” He shakes his head. “Give me a fortnight to change your mind. Come with me.”

Her grandfather had always warned her not to get involved with nobility, especially royalty after what they did to Nettles. The current king isn’t Rhaenyra, but it’s not like he’ll be king for long. In two years, Bloodraven will all but rule, and then there’s nowhere in Westeros she can hide away from his sights, not after he’s scented blood in the water.

There really is no going back, is there? She never stood a chance. Her hands have been tied from the moment she decided to save Daeron’s life. Fate, the gods, George R. R. Martin, whatever being put her in this world clearly never intended for her to remain on the sidelines.

Alright, fuck it. Fine! They’ve won, but it doesn’t mean she has to lose.

Elissa surges forward and grabs Daeron’s hands. His eyes are wide, staring at her in bewilderment. She comforts herself with the thought that he’s easily the prettiest man she’s ever seen.

“You said you’d court me. Do it, then. Show me what life I’ll have if I come with you.”