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Her uncle has always been a dangerous man.

'He is an inferno barely leashed,' her mother once muttered as they watched him brawl a man in the training yard and leave him lame and blind.

'How can one leash a fire?' Rhaeynra answered curiously, bouncing on her heels as Daemon glanced up at them with a smirk before stalking from the yard.

'Well,' her mother pondered, 'Dragons are fire made flesh, one may leash them, chain them.'

'I think dragons should always be free,' Rhaenyra said crossly, resting her chin on the stone ledge of the balcony. 'Free to roam, free of chains and ropes and leads.'

'Do you know why our dragons reside in the dragonpit, daughter? Do you know which dragon was the first to be kept there?'

'Balerion,' she said in a gust of breath, thinking of his skull and how Daemon had once lifted her over the flaming altar so she could touch it, reminding her that she was a Targaryen, a dragonrider, that this was her birthright, that dragons were not meant to be worshipped from afar, but ridden.

Her mother smoothed her hair back and she looked up at her. Aemma was pale, her belly thick. There was a babe inside of her but the last babe did not survive. Would this one? Rhaenyra prayed it would.

'It is a horror rarely spoken of at court, what happened to Balerion's last rider before your father. Do you know her name?'

'Princess Aerea,' Rhaenyra said.

'Yes,' Aemma said, and a nervous hand fluttered over her middle. 'And do you know what happened to her?'

'She travelled to Valyria,' Rhaenyra said in a whisper, 'and she died.'

'She died because she travelled to Valyria,' Aemma said with a reprimanding tone, 'she died because Balerion took her to that hellish place, to the smoking ruins of a once great empire, to the ashes where only vile creatures and black curses dwell, abominations that found a home within her, that burnt her up from the inside. She died because she went in search of something she shouldn't have.'

'How can a person burn up from the inside?' Rhaenyra asked, curious above all else.

'With dark magics, darker magics than you or I could imagine.' Aemma said, her face straining, flushing paler still.

'Mother, you need to rest,' Rhaenyra said, tugging her hand.

'I'm well, just weary from dreams. Nightmares,' her mother said and as she looked at her, Rhaenyra prayed that they were nightmares and not visions.

When she lost that babe, when she lost all of them, when she lost her life, did Aemma think of those dark magics and wish she had them at her fingertips? Rhaenyra wondered later bitterly.

When her mother died did it feel like she was being burnt up from the inside? To think of that was to feel such sorrow and rage, Rhaenyra could not brook it. She had never wished to have a child herself, never wished that particular human magic to be visited upon her.

And yet.

What was a child growing inside of you but a creature you could not control, a flame lit and burning? Rhaenyra thinks with a tremble in her own heart, staring at the long ornate mirror - larger and finer than any mirror outside of Essos, a rich finery owed to the heir of the throne, the princess of Dragonstone, the Realm's delight – and at the slight curve of her own belly.

What was desire itself but an unquenchable fire?

The women of Old Valyria coupled with beasts, with fire demons, the smallfolk whispered. And Aerea died because she made congress with such a demon, because she gave herself to the flames of wicked desire. And look how she was punished, they said. And look how close she came to spreading her evils in the Red Keep. The Red Keep, where, Rhaenyra thinks, the walls are decorated by tapestries and murals of Valyrians fucking dragons and serpents, limbs and coils and bellies entwined, clawmarks and bared teeth and drops of blood picked out in the finest of red threads or painted from crushed rubies themselves.

And you wanted me to be something pure, father, she thinks, you wanted me to bow to the Seven, to be a princess fit for a Westerosi throne. You thought I might be satisfied with a cold bed, with a man who could not spill seed somewhere fruitful.

It is not our fault, father, not mine and not his, she thinks, as her own demon of fire, her dearest uncle, slides into the room using the hidden door he showed her when she was but a maiden.

'Lover,' he says, setting aside his cloak and its sulphurous fumes of dragons and torches, 'have you missed me?'

'Like a wick misses a flame,' she replies, spinning around so she can meet him, so that he can press her up against the mirror at her back, his mouth a hot brand on hers, his lips a torch to set her alight.

*

The first time Daemon had told her of the scheme, of why he had been sent to Dragonstone to meet with her while her husband was off on some jape with one of his boys, she had slapped him across the face and left a burning red mark on his pale skin.

He had rocked back on his heels and smiled. 'It was Laena's idea, but if you do not like it,' he said with a shrug and then leant against the painted table, gazing at her over the rim of his goblet of wine.

'Why should I enjoy the thought that my goodsister and uncle talk of me like a breeding mare. That they think to decide who I welcome in mine own bed?' she hissed, angry tears pricking at her eyes.

She had begged Daemon to take her to wife and to steal her away from her own wedding and he had not. She hadn't heard from him for a year, not a letter nor a gift or the sound of Caraxes's wings beating. And here he was striding unannounced into Dragonstone informing her of his wife's scheme to put a silver-haired babe in her empty belly.

'I could kill you where you stand,' she said. 'Were I a marksman, a man skilled with a dagger—' her words cut off in a strangled scream and she dug her fingernails so tight in the palms of her hands she feared she might draw blood.

'Perhaps I should not have brought Dark Sister with me,' he quipped, flexing his hand on its pommel lazily and she rushed at him again. This time he caught her wrists and grappled with her until she lay atop the table and he leant over her, his breath not quite so easy.

'Let me go,' she gritted out, tears marring her vision, mouth shaking with anger.

'I will not,' he drawled. 'For what if you call your men? What if you have them barrel in here and attack me?'

'You would deserve it,' she spat.

'Perhaps,' he said, his hands flexing, his eyes roving across her face.

The mark from her palm on his cheek was fading. She wished it wouldn't. She wished she could mark him permanently.

'Forgive me, Rhaenyra,' he offered.

'For what?' she demanded.

His smile was rueful. 'For not approaching the conversation in a neater fashion.'

'Is that all?'

'No, not all,' he said, leaning closer, his chest resting over her middle.

Something unfurled inside of her, her belly softened. How she had missed him. His dear face, his familiar features. 'I am not sure I shall ever forgive you,' she confessed bitterly.

He let her go and rose to stand between her splayed knees at the edge of the table while she laid back and stared at the tall obsidian ceiling, so dark one could not see where it truly began, where air became stone.

'Do you remember our conversation upon the bridge some years ago?' he said, taking another sip from the goblet that had miraculously not been knocked over in their scuffle. His other hand moved to rest just above her knee, warm through the layers of her skirts.

Her thigh twitched but he did not remove it.

'Yes,' she said. 'When you stole Dragonstone from me. When you stole an egg from my brother and declared you were to marry your whore.'

'You told me to kill you,' he said, and she felt the press of his fingers on her leg. 'You said if I wished to be restored as heir I would need to kill you. Kill me and be done with all this bother, you said. A bold, brave girl you were. A reckless one.' His face had something of awe on it.

'I did what my father could not, what Otto could not.'

'Dragon to dragon you came to me. As equals we met.'

'Yes,' she said.

'But you were still a child then, still blinkered to the ways of the world.'

She sat up, angry, unwilling to lay there under his gaze. Now she met him face to face. Her, sitting upon the painted table, he standing before her, hands flexed on either side, resting over lands conquered by their shared ancestor.

'If you wish to be restored as heir, you'll need to kill me, you said.' He brought a hand to push her hair behind her shoulder, to thumb at her bare neck. She felt caught by his eyes, by him. 'Or ruin you, I thought,' he said softly, dangerously. 'Or ruin you.'

Or ruin you. She shivered hot.

'Such a strange girl to think of death first, to beg for it,' he crooned.

'Such a perverse uncle to think of my maidenhead first,' she countered, putting a hand on his shoulder as if readying to push him away.

'Would it make me the more perverse if I say that this was not the first time I had thought of it, your maidenhead?' he said. He could look so wicked, her uncle. His eyes dark, his smile crooked, wanton.

'And yet you lost your chance to take it,' she bit out. 'You were found wanting.'

His jaw tightened.

'Do you find yourself better able to perform now, with your wife?' she asked, leaning forward, crowding him.

'Do you find yourself satisfied with your husband's attentions?' he retorted, his breath hot on her cheek.

'I let him push me over tables such as this one and fuck me from behind.'

'Liar,' he hissed.

'I dress up as a boy for him, let him tug down my breeches and have me the way he likes.'

'Rhaenyra,' he said and caught her hair in his tight fist, pushed himself closer, widening her legs. 'Don't lie to me.'

'What do you care what I do in my bed or who touches me? You lost your chance.'

'The years I have wanted you,' he murmured, running his nose along her jaw, tugging her hair so that her neck arched.

She was wet and hot between her legs. She tried to muster control — of herself, for she would never be able to control him, she thought. 'You think you can stroll in here a year later, that I might welcome you into my bed.' Her voice was wet, her eyes were leaking tears again.

'Hush,' he said softly, lips against her forehead, 'hush, Rhaenyra.'

'Are you even sorry at all? Repentant? Do you not regret...?'

He tightened his hand again and she hissed at the pain and then he opened his fingers and let her hair go. 'Sorry, sorry,' he murmured, cupping the back of her head in an open palm.

'You apologise for that, and not for anything else,' she marvelled. 'How I loathe you.'

'No, you don't.' He pulled her face to meet his. Gone was the hardness, the smirks. Sorrow and wretchedness were in their place.

Good, she thought. 'Yes, I do.'

'No, you don't,' he said. He was begging now.

'A year,' she said, stronger now to see him so affected. 'You abandoned me, you left me. I was wed to another.'

He shook his head and she laughed. 'I was wed, you cannot argue against this, it is fact.'

'To steal you away would have been an act of war,' he said hollowly. 'I would have risked your future, your throne.'

'You could not have come to this realisation before you took me to a brothel and groped me in front of many watchful eyes?' she asked.

He winced. 'I wanted to show you what freedom was,' he said stubbornly and stepped back, running a hand through his hair. It was longer now, the ends at his shoulders. She missed when it flowed halfway down his back, when he let her braid it as a child.

'And yet what you did trapped me in a marriage not of my choosing. A loveless one.'

'Do you imagine my marriage is one of love?'

'How should I know,' she said bitterly.

'Do you imagine it is love that has my wife suggest I take another woman to bed?' he asked.

'A kind of love, yes. Love for a brother.'

'Love for a brother,' he said ruefully, a dark look on his face as he glanced towards the windows of the room and out towards Kings Landing. 'All I have done is out of love for my brother. Again and again I have brought myself to court, humbled myself before him and he has scorned me.' He walked closer to the view. The sea breeze ruffled his hair as if fingers had tugged at it. He worked at the buckles of his scabbard and removed his sword, set it aside. 'I asked him for your hand, the morning after our misadventure,' he confessed.

'What?' she asked, slipping from the table onto her feet.

'I asked him for your hand.'

'You did?'

He turned. The light behind him made it hard to see his eyes. She drew closer.

'He refused me. He said it was his throne I lusted for, and not his daughter. Perhaps I should have explained the events of the evening in more detail,' he drawled. 'Perhaps I should have told him how hot you were under my fingers.' His hand flexed and she felt an answering flex inside of her. Now he was walking back towards her, now she was backing up against the table again. That damned table.

'He refused you,' she said.

'And he is my king. I knelt to him.'

'I wished you for a husband,' she said and the words seem to land like a wound in him.

'I wished you for a wife.' His hands were at her sides now. She felt their strength through the velvet of her dress, the fine silk of her shift underneath. And now he was sliding his hands down, now he was kneeling at her feet. 'I would kneel to you, Rhaenyra,' he said.

She put a hand on his shoulder.

'I would give you what your husband cannot. I would give you a son if you asked.'

'A generous gift,' she replied, trying to stave this off for a moment longer.

'I cannot be your husband but I can do this,' he said. And now his hands played at the bottom of her skirts, now they reached for her ankles.

'What makes you think I want a child?'

He glanced up at her as he slid the grip of his hands up her calves. 'I think you want my child.'

'Do I?'

'You need a child with silver hair, a son, a daughter, you need heirs.' His hands had reached her knees now.

'And you wish to be dutiful, to be kind,' she replied sardonically. Her legs were trembling, her own sharp grip in his shoulder threatened to tug the seams of his jerkin loose.

'You need a child but you want my child, don't you?'

'Is your wife with child yet?' It seemed suddenly of the utmost importance to know.

He smirked at her question, his lips inches away from the flesh bared above her stockings. 'No. There is not the same urgency when one is not the heir to the Iron Throne.'

His first child, yes, she would like that, she thought greedily.

'This was your wife's suggestion, truly?' she asked with a gasp as his lips met her skin, as he mouthed at her thighs and pushed her back against the edge of the table.

'Truly. The scheme of it, the offer. But Rhaenyra,' he said, dark eyes flashing to her as he tugged aside her smallclothes, as he lifted her atop the table as if she weighed of nothing. 'I have dreamed of putting my babe in your belly, I have dreamed of my mouth on your cunt...' He pressed a dirty, open-mouthed kiss to it and she whined and clutched his hair. 'I have dreamed of you beneath me, Rhaenyra,' her uncle said, crawling up over her, punching her breath from her with his weight as he fumbled at his laces and freed his cock, 'I have dreamed of nothing else, princess.'

She widened her hips, bucked up to meet him.

'Tell me,' he murmured at her ear, fitting himself inside of her. 'Tell me you have dreamed of me too.'

'You know I have,' she replied, her voice snatched away by the stretch of him, the ache. 'You know I have,' she moaned.

He rolled his hips, drove into her as he clutched her hair, grunted against her lips. 'This is right,' he said. 'This is how things should be.'

'Yes,' she said, for to feel him within her was to feel as if she was a weapon in a forge, branded, beaten into something purer, sharper; that the fire inside of her had met its match.

After the table, they retreated to her chambers and he kissed at the bruises the stone had made on her back and the bruises his fingers and mouth had made upon her and then he had her ride him into the plush surface of her bed, spilling such filth from his mouth that she clapped her hand over it but he bit the words into her flesh instead and she gave in and freed his lips, mewling as she clutched at his back.

This cunt, he said, it's mine, isn't it. This cunt, he said, it was made for me.

*

His seed did not take the first month so dutifully he returned, on dragonback.

And when he slid from Caraxes's back, the beast took to the sky again, Syrax wheeling around him, making their own dance, roaring so loudly that hermits emerged from their caves thinking that a second conquering was upon them, the dragons making such a ruckus in the sky and in the deep caverns of the island that beasts of the land keeled over in fright in the fields and ravens fled from each coop.

'Your dragon is ungovernable,' Rhaenyra said, breathless from Daemon's kisses, clutching the ruins of her dress about her as she watched him stalk about her chambers unearthing candles from every chest and cupboard.

'As am I,' he replied.

'What are you doing?' she asked, laughing as he swore at a taper that would not light.

'I did not see you fully last time, I did not drink my fill,' he said hotly. 'And since I cannot take you out in the open of the gardens lest we be seen. I shall fill this chamber with light.'

Soon the air was hot, the room a flickering maze of light, ablaze. She shed her dress, peeled off her own shift, coming to him where he stood at the foot of the bed, his fingers blackened with soot, his bare skin slick with sweat. As if he is some god and I his supplicant, she thought, and this my altar.

'And what should I tell my maids, my servants, when they ask why I used so many candles last night?' she asked, smoothing a hand across his broad shoulders, kissing at his scars.

'Say that you were only trying to read a very pious book but your eyes were sore,' he drawled, clutching at her hips, dipping his mouth to meet hers. 'Say you were praying,' he said, his voice a low rumble. 'Say you were on your knees.'

She fell to them then, before him, and he took her hair in his fist.

Later, her throat sore, her legs unsteady, he splayed her out on the bed and dripped candle wax across her body, splashing small fires and soothing them with kisses, peeling the wax off with his teeth.

If you dipped your ring in the flames you might brand me with it too, she murmured to him as he took her, his cock bruising her tenderly, and she felt him shudder inside of her at the image.

I don't need to brand you with fire, niece, not with my seed inside of you. You are blood of my blood, you will bear my child.

*

She had not bled the next time he came to her, but it was too soon to know for certain, she told herself. The matter was unspoken between them but he was more tender with her, she thought. He clutched at her face, told her to keep her eyes open, to look at him, to watch him, to see him.

'Who else should I see,' she replied mirthfully, 'there is none else here.'

He shook his head, thumbed her chin. Each roll of his hips spread a slow wave of fire through her.

'There is no one else in my bed,' she said.

'And there never shall be.'

'I might ask the same of you,' she replied and was surprised to feel tears pool in her eyes.

He looked stricken, he kissed the corners of them.

'You talk of my bed, but what of yours,' she said and pushed at his shoulder. It was like trying to move a man made of dragonglass, she had no strength to shift him, no power.

He turned over, brought her atop him, wrapped his large arms around her. She was trapped just the same, riding him, being ridden from beneath her. 'Do you think I take her to bed?' he asked.

'She is your wife.' That word hurt in her mouth.

He kissed her deeply as if he could scourge it away. 'I do not lay with her, princess,' he said and she felt the rumble of his voice through her, past skin and bone. 'I knelt to you, did I not? I pledged myself to you.'

'I should brand you,' she gasped as he gripped at her hips and she pushed herself up to sit atop him. 'It is you I should brand with my sigil,' she said.

He took one of her hands and curled his fingers over hers, made them into claws over his chest. 'We have the same sigil, we are of the same house, the same blood,' he hissed as her nails dragged a furrow down his skin and blood like rubies beaded. 'I am already branded by you, wounded, scarred.'

'The next time you come to me,' she said when they lay replete, when he was feeding her spiced honey cake from his fingertips, 'I shall be at the Red Keep. I have decided to return there for awhile, to court.'

'It shall be your court one day,' Daemon agreed. 'They should know you, they should see you at your father's right hand. The hand and his daughter grow too bold,' he said, and sucked honey from his own fingers, reached across the bed for his goblet of wine as she became distracted by the flex of his muscles, by the pretty marks she had made. 'You shouldn't hide yourself away at Dragonstone.'

'You could return to court too,' she said, arching her back as his hand palmed her teat, thumb brushing against her nipple.

'If I lived in the same keep as you, I should not be able to stay away from you, not for any night,' he murmured, brushing his lips against her nipple. It was sore but she didn't say that. Didn't say that she thought his seed had done its work in her belly and that her body was changing to welcome his child.

'You prefer being the dark thief who steals into my bedchambers,' she said and he laid his forehead against her racing heart. 'My dearest thief, my wicked uncle,' she said.

*

It is not the first time he has visited her at the Red Keep but the second, when he finds her gazing at her form in the mirror. When he knows.

After kissing her, he sinks to his knees before her and she feels him trembling, his body heaving. 'Daemon,' she says, alarmed, but when he lifts his face his eyes are dry, hot.

'I would take you to bed, princess. I would have you,' he says, his voice deep.

'Then have me,' she says.

He carries her to it, her bed where she once dreamed of him as a child, where she waited and waited for him to join her.

He has her on her side, his large form wrapped around hers from behind, one hand a gentle hold around her neck atop her jumping pulse and the other splayed on her stomach. He does not speak, only grunts, only groans, whispers her name tightly as she moans, as she succumbs to the heat of him around her, inside of her, to the hot ache of him branding her.

Afterwards, he arranges her on her pillows, fans her hair out, helps her into a silken robe that he does not tie but leaves open. His hands stroke her skin and lull her into a pleasurable haze.

She has found it hard to sleep without him. Hard to breathe some days. 'I've missed you,' she murmurs.

'As I have missed you,' he says.

She reaches out to tuck his hair behind his ear, he noses at her hand like a tame beast and she laughs.

Then he strokes a hand down from her neck, down between her full breasts, down and over her stomach.

‘The matter is, princess,’ he says softly, dropping a kiss to her belly, to the small rise of it. ‘The matter is, that I cannot let another man raise this child as his own. I shall not brook it.’

She swallows. The candles by the bed flicker. ’Laenor will be a good father. You knew it had to be this way.’

‘My firstborn, Rhaenyra,' he says, his tone deceptively mild, calm. 'Blood of my blood, of our blood.’

She feels a tremor in her chest. ‘What would you have me do, uncle?’

'I would have you rest and be well and birth this child in comfort and luxury,' he murmurs, 'as befitting the heir to the throne.’

'Daemon.’

'Wed me, be my wife.'

'I am already wed.’

'My child is in your belly.’ His hands flex and slide over her hips.

'How do you imagine my husband's family will feel if you find a way to have him set aside?' she asks, thumb rubbing against his chin. 'Your wife's family?’

'I care not.’

‘We have done something very dangerous, haven't we,’ she says, pulling him up towards her, framing his face in her hands.

He holds himself so carefully above her, but her shape has changed, her stomach brushes against his now in a new way.

‘Do you think our child will have your eyes?’ he asks and she can see something of the boy in him.

Their child. His face, hers. 'My eyes and your dimples,’ she whispers.

He lays down at her side, curls against her. Their hair is tangled on the pillow, silver white, gold under candlelight.

‘What is your plan?’ she asks.

'Are you sure you wish to hear it? Your tender ears,' he says with a drawl, touching his finger to a lobe.

'Is it so terrible?’

'These stories always are, are they not?' he intones knowingly. 'Blood, power, glory, revenge.’

'And all that because of a handful of nights together,’ she muses.

'All that because you wanted me to put a babe in you, my babe, because you demanded it of me.’

She shakes her head, he moves closer to kiss her.

'You seduced me, corrupted me,' she says. 'I was so innocent, almost a maiden.’

He lifts her thigh over his hip. He is hard now, and she is ready. But she always is when he is near. Molten as candle wax. 'You were so wet for me it dripped down the table onto the floor,' he says, 'so hot for me that you came with a single stroke of my cock inside of you.’

'I was very wicked,' she says on a gasp.

'A very wicked girl,’ he agrees, fucking into her.

'Perhaps my father should have been stricter with me. Perhaps he should have locked me in a tower.’

'A tower like the one you lay in now?' he asks. 'Towers are useless against dragons. However tall it was I would have flown to you.’

'And stolen me away. So young, so tender.’

'You would have begged to be stolen,' he says biting at her lips.

'I did,' she reminds him.

'And I took you and I made you mine,' he says, holding a hand across her belly. 'Didn't I?' he asks.

'Yes,' she says.

'There is a fire in us, isn't there, uncle,' she says, later when they are dozing. Plans having been made and discussed, oaths sworn. The world outside slumbering unaware of the mayhem to come, the blood to be spilled.

'We are strangers in a strange land. Targaryens in Westeros.' He lifts her hand to his mouth, kisses at her fingers. 'Our ancestors built a dragonpit to keep our beasts behind stone here, to chain them. To dampen their fires.'

'We bowed to foreign gods, conceded,' she muses, gazing upon the mural opposite her bed, at the agony and ecstasy of the girl laying beneath her dragon. I was raised in this room, father, she thinks. As a girl this was the vision given to me.

'Tomorrow,' he says, passing her his wine for her to drink, 'we will fly to Dragonstone and we will wed as the Valyrians of old did, mix blood and wine and fire.'

She swallows and the warmth of the wine spreads down her throat, her belly, followed by the stroke of his fingers atop her skin, by the hot kisses of his mouth.

'We were always meant to burn together,' he murmurs and his dark sweet smile is a spark to the flame inside of her.