Original Sin
Word Count: ~11,798
Pairing: Daemon Targaryen x Nettles
Warnings ⚠️: 18+; smut; p in v penetration
Description: He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
AN: As promised here it is. Enjoy and thank you all so much for bearing with me. You have all been a most wonderful audience⚜️
“I love you.” He had screamed it at her. If they had been inside Maidenpool’s halls it would have bounced off the stone walls and echoed around the castle, but under the cover of twilight, it was carried away by the wind from the valley and hills which the castle sat upon.
Nettles would’ve thought she had gone mad had the man not been drawing circles into her cheek with the pad of his thumb. The callouses upon well-worn hands having seen a lifetime of battles, reminding her of where she was. They were warm and solid and entirely too real for her to imagine.
Where his tone was severe, his carasses were gentle. Lulling her into a calmness that she didn't feel only moments ago when her heart was racing. Feeling as though it would beat out from her chest.
He poured every ounce of sincerity he could command at the tips of his fingers into his touch. The same gentleness as in his gaze. A gaze she was slowly getting lost in. There was no were else to look, but the violet pools. As if that was not enough he repeated those words holding her to him so that she could not mistake them for any other. Vibrating through her. His breath fanned her face.
“I love you Netty.” There was no mistake.
Three simple words belonging to her. They set her afire. Burning her. Setting her ablaze with want. She wanted to hear him repeat those words over and over until he grew hoarse. Until she heard she knew nothing except them. She didn’t care if he said them with that same harshness. With the same breathlessness as if it pained him not to. Giving as much breath as it took. She wanted them. She dreaded it.
What they meant. Everything they meant. She wanted everything they could give her. Everything he could give her. Every promise. Every whisper. Everything. I love you Netty. Four words too many and too few.
She had wished she had reached Sheepstealer. She had almost reached him, if she looked back she could see the outline of him painted in the storm's light so close, but he was out of reach. Had flown away with Caraxes when Daemon had come thundering after her like the stranger himself.
Only her feet could take her from here.
He did not stop her when she pulled away. Plans forgotten. Not stopping as she let the wind carry her away. She didn’t stop until she reached her chamber. Barely remembering to bolt the door, lest he change his mind and pursue her and she lose herself in the insanity of it.
She was shaking as she slid down the wood and rested her head in her hands.
Nettles didn't know when she had exactly changed from her hiding place, but the sun had gone down by the time she had removed herself from the door. Calmed enough for her crying to have stopped as she peered into the darkness with bloodshot eyes. Seeing the disbelief state of her reflection in the windows glass. A sight she made.
The sound of glass clinking against each other came from the other side of the door pulled her away from her own visage. Crystal lifted by steady hands up from their resting place. Hands she knew better than she should. He had arrived back at this late hour. Who was to say what that hour was she had not known.
It was past super time no doubt, for the castle had gone still in the hours past and the world outside was covered in an inky blanket. No sound apart from him and the wind pounding against the shudders could be heard. The latter of whom Nettles could hear as if he were. In this dark chamber with her right beside her offering her a drink along with him.
That thin little scrap of wood laced by iron doing nothing to drown out the noises of life in his chamber or her ability to hear them.
How many thimbles had he had? Two? Four? Six? Was he in his cups? Had she driven him to it? Darting off and giving him a fright twice over.
She heard the sounds of the crystal being placed back down again. Had he heard her? Was he coming to command her to open her bed chambers up to him? No if he had heard her he would have demanded she open her door to him a long while ago.
She would be left with no choice. He would not leave her alone to wallow in her sorrow when he had been the cause of her tears. When he had confessed the depths of his affection and left her head spinning trying to make heads or tails of his declarations and her own powder keg of emotions on the precipice of combustion.
No she must have ceased her crying long before he had turned in. Or mayhaps she could only hear him. She was pressed up against the door like a child spying when they should be in the land of dreams. A child. That is what she was. A frightened child. Hiding in the shadows where she shouldn’t be while he stalked around in the night.
They were not the only ones awake past the hour of the wolf. Nettles could hear their dragons in the distance filling the night air with roars, loud enough to reach over through the valley and breach past Maidenpool’s stone walls.
She had grown used to their roars. Learning how to distinguish them. Enough to know that this one was a greeting from Caraxes. Sheepstealer had arrived back from his evening hunt with a few sheep in his belly. Mayhaps he had even shared his feast with the bloodwyrm. Well-fed and satisfied, the pair of dragons were settling down for the night.
It was their routine. Sheepstealer going out to hunt. and Caraxes alert and waiting up for him. In due time her dragon would come back to his companion with as many sheep as he could carry. He would always come back. To their little sanctuary in the woods.
They had not separated as their riders had. Finding no problem with each other's company. Finding comfort in it or contentment without a care. The feelings of man are nothing of their concern. Lost in their own version of safety and mayhaps even bliss.
He loved her. Daemon Targaryen loved her. The words danced around in Nettles' head.
He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
She turned the meaning of those words backwards and forwards. Round and round a hundred times till she was giddy with it. Like a child. Letting it soak into her very bones and impart its strength where she had faltered.
Love. He loved her, but what did love mean to a man like that?
There were three before her. Three who had stood where she stood. Two still living among them.
His first wife, the Lady Rhea Royce she decided did not count. The Lady of Rhustone had been thrust upon him by his late grandmother and it was the most unwelcome match.
They had shared the title man and wife for six and ten years, but by all accounts they shared no more than if they had been strangers. Leading separate lives Nettles doubted she had ever held a place by his side or in his bed much less in his heart. She was his wife in name only and therefore would not be given any more consideration of, but the others more than would.
Lady Mysaria had been first. The first woman he had chosen for himself that he had kept and claimed His first. The first woman he had loved.
She saw how he was with her. Did he love her?
He had taken her into his bed without a doubt. She had once even carried his child ill-fated as that may have been. She had been banished from his side for it, but it mattered not. She had returned back to his bed. Everyone knew that.
It was no great secret even if it ought to have been with the impropriety of it, but war was seldom a time for prosperity and pleasure they took indeed.
Addam had told her before she had left with him for this place that it was done with the queen's blessing.
A simple arrangement that satisfied all. It seemed to serve them well. Though her mistress of whisperers shared her husband's bed, the queen did not treat Mysaria any differently than Lord Corlys or any of the others on her council.
She did not even seem to mind the idle gossip that permeated about her court. How It festered. Addam had been right when he had said that she shared more than just the queen's confidence and the prince's favor for she had seen how they behaved. They certainly had not been discreet, even in the queen's presence.
The two acted almost as if they were friends or at least she relied on her a great deal. Entrusting her with her secrets and her confidence in her council seemed impenetrable. She owed her or at least her gratitude towards her foreign adviser seemed endless.
Placing her at the head of her table. Placing her between her husband and her, daring anyone to say a word against her. She cared not one bit about what they did with one another and they certainly had their way with each other.
The two coming out of council meetings with hers lingered on his arm. She sat at his side at feasts giggling up a fit like a maiden and whispering things into his ear, making a spectacle of themselves, but that suited them well. Both liked the attention they got from their displays, never hiding their affections or Mysaria’s other role at court.
Even her chambers were close enough to the princes or they might have been Daemons for Nettles had seen the woman exit from the royal family's apartments with her own eyes. A curious place for one’s mistress of whisperers. A curious place even for Lord Corlys Velaryon who was very much family, but he had taken up apartments within the tower of the hand. All the others of her council of advisors had found chambers far away from the royal apartments, but she was not just any ordinary advisor.
Twas the only time she had spoken with her. Well, she was spoken at rather than spoken to. The Lyseni lady had pulled her “Are you lost girl,” it had been said with a sneer. Taking everything in her to keep her chin up and meet her pale eyes when she apologized for her absentmindedness. Her voice thankfully did not desert her for she had been in a dreadful fright enough to descend into stuttering.
Nettles had not gotten away from the woman soon enough. She did not spook so easily, but the de facto mistress of whispers was unnerving. Always lurking about. Those pale eyes watching her.
Always watching. Always there. She had never approached her save that once but she felt her presence all the same. In the air. In the walls. The walls were painted with her eyes and listened with her ears. Even in her bedchamber she felt some presence gazing down at her as she slept. Something crawled up the back of her spine and planted itself like a spider she couldn’t shake loose. Everywhere and nowhere.
She’d find herself hanging out high upon balconies like a vulture waiting for its prey to weaken and descend upon it for the kill overlooking the training yard when she would in halls, around the corridors.
She had not wanted to acknowledge it. At feasts, those same pale sets of irises, the palest ones she’s ever seen almost devoid of color entirely, so pale they were, would find her for a second or two.
Never blinked, for they did not seem to need to, but if she were to, if she were she’d not find them upon her again, but they were there. They had been there.
There was something unnatural in them.
Cold. They were cold and hard. Hardset like stone. Ghostly. Reflecting only back what they saw. Gleaming from the light of the candles, the sun, the moon, some trick of the shadows dancing with the light, but never from the brilliance of her own joy or happiness.
Misery, the court called her. Half-whispered as they huddled together whenever she was within earshot. Recoiling back with their noses in the air clutching whatever they hand in hand close as she glided past them. Nettles had almost felt sorry for her for it before their run-in.
Surely she hadn’t deserved that. Could they not see that? She had the look of a woman who had seen too much and had been changed for it. Written plain as day in that ghostly face.
She could not possibly be more cruel than the rest. A part of her knew why she was as she was. Why she had made her bed where she had.
A part of her could see herself in her because of it. How did anyone have the right to judge her?. These fine lords and ladies of the court, they had no right. They had never gone without, but no amount of bitterness was an excuse, but no longer she had seen her share but she had not been changed by it; she hadn't fallen into wickedness and had certainly not thought to enact wickedness on some other poor soul, but not Mysaria. She had indeed lived up to the jeers thrown her way. Nettles seemed to have become her favorite target of said misery. There was no excuse for that.
She would’ve thought herself gone mad if she had not spoken to her with such venom. It was an utterly ridiculous thing to picture even Mysaria being jealous, but there she was. With hate in her eyes and a barbed tongue turned her way. She could’ve sworn that the Lyseni woman was trying to get a rise out of her then when she had found her where she felt hadn’t belonged. What a thought that was. She was hardly worth the effort.
Or mayhaps she was right to be as paranoid as she was. She had eyes and ears around the Red Keep. She was the spider upon the wall. She was far from blind, unknowing, or willfully oblivious. She had to have heard something. Saw something. Something that would make her cease from her lurking and give voice to the shadows which were in.
Mistress she may be, but she was no fool and more importantly she was his. His first taste
at passion. His present passion. The woman who had invited back by his side. Constant in his patronage. She knew a threat when she saw one. She was his no matter how long or what she was, once he had claimed her she was his.
Mayhaps that was the way Daemon behaved with women too. Even with his mistresses. Even women whom he did not love, they were, all his mayhaps he had claimed that he would not take another to his bed, but he had not brought Mysaria here with them. Whatever claim he had upon her or promise he had made he had given it up.
Nettles did not know when they had ceased their arrangement, but she had known it had reached its conclusion when he had dragged her here in this place of refuge in the midst of war. All to protect. He left her behind, it all behind to protect her.
Mistress of whisperers she may not be, but Nettles herself had eyes and ears as good as any other, and him being with her told her more than she could ever see. It was all the proof she needed. Why he had rushed her here. Why he wanted her in his bed.
All of them had, yet it had but she doubted he would after that incident in the training yard she had entered those bedchambers of his again. She had seen them.
He had discarded her. Deemed her something which he could live without for something he could not. Maybe once upon a time an age ago, mayhaps never even then, but certainly not now. Now he had no need or want of her. Had he wanted her like that? Had he ever loved her? Had she just been like the others? Was she to be like that?
Loved.
Loved upon until he got bored and wanted a taste of something different. That wasn’t love. To be discarded and used, that couldn’t be love. It wasn’t something she even wanted to name Traded and then he too would get bored of her. Find another and forget about her. Was she to be just another one of those conquests?
Something which to just pass the time with.
Another young pound of flesh to slack his lusts with and then he’d move on to the next doe-eyed girl who caught his gaze.
Nettles heard the rumors. She was young, very young even if she had seen and done more than those twice her age, but the man had a reputation.
Of course, he liked them young. Young enough to be his daughter and then some. She was young enough to be his daughter and then some, but those girls were little things. Some were younger than her. Obscenely younger than her. Had never tasted anything apart from a world of spring, the bitter taste of winters cold an unfamiliar truth, or the darkness of that eternal winter had never been felt upon their flesh. Never gone without such dismal truths even in their state of squalor for they had something which always to depend upon.
Valyria.
Most were Valyrian, or Valyrian enough with their pale silver-white hair, skin the color of marble and sheets of parchment without a blemish or mark upon them, eyes of various hues of violet, indigo, and lilacs. The blood of old Valyria ran through their veins. Unquestionably the seed of the dragon, but they had nothing to show for it, same as any other peasant. Same as her. Mayhaps they were worse off for it.
Nettles, after all, had managed to avoid the unfortunate pitiful of having to sell herself for whatever she could get. As had been the fate of her long-departed mother.
Narrowly of course, there had been times when she thought she would have to sell the one thing which she alone possessed. The one thing that was hers left to give. Hers to batter for a bit of bread and ale in her belly and perhaps a warm bed for the night. It was tempting. Just for one night of respite and comfort she had so long lacked.
It was not as if she would have a hard time finding someone who would be willing to lay their hands on her flesh for a night or two.
Even with her scared nose and dirt caked upon her skin from sporadic washings, something she was exceedingly grateful to be rid of now, men were never too picky about what their whores looked like. She was not especially beautiful, but beauty was not needed for a whore. A whore was a whore. One only needed one thing from them. Nothing more.
In any case while she was not especially comely she was not so hideous as to dampen a man’s passion. She might even inspire the right man. A man who did not mind her image.
Nettles stood out from the rest with her brown skin, dark eyes, and inky mane of coils. Not a thing like the milkmaids that dotted up and down this land or the silvery vestiges of old Valyria in the streets of Kings Landing, Driftmark, and Dragonstone that blended in with the rest.
She was different. Her own visage spoke of a place far removed from the petty squabbles and the dreary gray that enveloped much of Westeros. Far more foreign than the red mountains and sandy dunes of Dorne.
Some place warm with the smell of the sea, and fruits, and flowers one could not pronounce the name of. A place one could lose themselves in. A place of savages who lived untainted by the customs of polite society. No one would know what would happen there, no one would care.
Naath perhaps or maybe the Summer Isles. Someplace entirely exotic. There were men who would pay good money for that, to sample the flavors of the known world. She’d have to close her mouth for it. Feign one of the lithe and airy voices she heard at port from the long way from home.
Perhaps she could even name her price for the charms of that exoticism, but she hadn’t had to use them. Thank the Gods she hadn't and she had Sheepstealer now. She’d never have to succumb to that.
Twas a sin what they did. She had no right to judge them. She could not judge someone for the choices they made.
She had done her fair share after all, every day when she gazed upon her reflection she was reminded of what she had done. When one lived as she did, and was born into, what she was. There wasn’t a choice.
One did whatever they could to make it through the day without winding up six feet under, but in the eyes of the Gods, a sin is a sin, and they would not be so merciful to turn the other way.
Not to her. Never to her.
For they had seen all. All her miseries and misfortune and they had done nothing for it. Give her more pain for it.
She was born to endure. Nothing more. And if she bargained with her body for earthly pleasure and comforts to grasp for something more which wasn’t to be hers she’d have a debt which she could not pay back.
She couldn’t bargain for more. Twas her soul that hanged in the balance and because of it, she could not do as they could.
And what was she compared to them? To all those silver girls. To the ones he chose and did not choose alike. To Mysaria. To his wives, both of them. All of them. Even to Rhea Royce. She wasn’t Valyrian. She wasn’t the daughter of a lord much less a king. She did not come from a great house nor any house. Not even a blacksmith.
She was the daughter of a whore. The daughter of no one. She didn't even know who her father was. What he was. Where he was. If he lived or died.
There was a time when she thought she could be Daemon’s. It was in truth next to impossible. Such a silly thing to even ponder when she knew in her heart who had sired, madam had all but told her the blackguard who had split his seed into her mother, but she could not picture him being anything else to her.
So she had wandered for about a fortnight to be precise when they had first taken Kings Landing if madam had been wrong. Nettles supposed she could blame it on all the attention he gave her. All his staring, naive she hoped it had been for that reason. It was a want more than anything else.
She did not wish to be a Targaryen or Valyrian, but she did dream, more importantly, she wanted as all living creatures with some soul of sorts did.
Nettles wanted to belong. To have a home. A family. To have a person. It had been so long since she had belonged to someone.
So very long since she was someone’s dear one. Since she was the center of someone’s world. Perhaps it may have been a bit shameful that she wished that she was someone’s dear one in a more intimate manner, annoyed at the Gods for dropping another surrogate for the one she had lost so long ago instead of in the arms of a lover, but beggars could ask for more than they were.
Never mind that she wanted him. Wanted him in a way that was written in some ancient text somewhere. In the way the singers sang their ballads she wanted him, but she’d settle for the dotted cherished daughter and hope to find intimacy along the way.
She spent her time trying to find any shred of familial similarity between them. There were scarce few to be found, but she was deterred by it grasping at whatever she could catch. Perhaps the glint of his eyes, the smile that spread, maybe in his laugh, or the attention he bade her. Fathers freely showered their daughters with affection with attention. However, the man's attentions soon turned less than fatherly.
Anything, but fatherly.
His conduct bordered on obscene no it was obscene with the way he pulled her in dark enclaves and trailed after her skirts in the Red Keep. His eyes watched her too following her into that field that had become her place of respite in those weeks.
How he had behaved in the training year a week before they had departed had been the final straw. Picturing Addams bloody and bruised tan face pummeled into the dirt beneath his boots as clear as day.
It took six men to pull him off the younger man and it had taken every bit of her resolve to push Daemon away when he had pulled her away after that.
He was a madman. Full of red-hot molten fire. For her. He couldn’t contain himself for her.
His lips upon her own. Hands on her body. Underneath her skirts. Hiking them up. Drifting lower and lower until they grazed her thatch of womanhood. She could barely breathe with the way his tongue and his thumb had found her sweet spots that made light dance behind her eyelids and her knees buckled, yet she hadn't wanted him to stop. Not even the need for air had brought her to her senses.
She had only been inebriated a handful of times in her young life, hating the way ale would burn the back of her throat and her stomach when she imbibed too much, but he made her feel dizzy. Drunk on him. Quenching a thirst she didn’t know she had and making her want more.
Twas only when he had found a spot within her that made her toes curl whispering her name as if she were the one making him feel like she had entered within the halls of the seven heavens that she remembered where she was and who was making her feel such joy.
He had whispered her name. The name he gave her. That had done it for her. Netty.
Even the Targaryens had their limits. They would certainly never stoop so low as to take their own daughter into their bed. Not even the zealots among them.
Daemon would never dare touch her if he thought she was his.
There was no familial connection between them and it was hardly more likely that she had a drop of the old country in her, but did that matter? It didn’t matter to him and she had never been ashamed of who she was. What she was. Where she came from. Proud of it for she could never forget it.
He most certainly had not said anything of her heritage. Even if he believed himself more than most men because of his blood he loved her. He said he loved her. He had proven in his own way the truth of those words.
Hell, perhaps he loved her more than all the others. Loved her mayhaps more than anyone else had as silly as that sounded, but did she not deserve more than what she was given? To be treated with love. Did she not deserve love? His love.
Yes, they were just words, three simple words, but he had taken her away from the vipers’ nest that was a rotting den of sin. He had seen that she was safe. Even from himself. He had not forced himself. He had not pushed. Even now when he nursed a bruised ego from when she had run away from the declarations of his affections.
They were all things that one should expect from another common decency, chivalry even. Being seen as someone worthy of protection, but Nettles had learned to live without expectations this existence was seldom what one could expect. One had a lot in life and it was up to them to change it. That is what she had grown to expect. She was alone. No one had ever come to save her. She had to save herself. She was the only one who cared for herself till now.
We do not exist in the world to be alone. Nettles had to believe that. That there was something more than what had been.
She had not known him for very long but did that matter when he cared for her and she for him. Did that matter?
The grandson of a king. The son of a would-be king. A brother to a king, a prince in his own right, the husband of the queen, and yet, Daemon had been good to her. Kind. Honest. Self-sacrificing. To her at least, he had been every bit of food she had seen in this world.
That had to count for something. It had to mean something. Especially for a prince and someone like her. He did not have to and yet he was kinder than the lot who had been her tormentors for more years than she’d like to count. That meant something.
She may be nothing, she may come from nothing, but by the Gods, if she was going to sell her soul she was going to sell it for much more than pleasure of the flesh.
She hadn’t been quiet when she turned the lock. The door had creaked as she pushed it open. She wore no slippers, nothing apart from a simple frock and robe. She had buttoned up the ivory thing up to her chin for her modesty. Her bare feet padded against the cold stones, loud enough for him to hear her in the still.
Nettles had washed away her tears in the wash basin that she kept near her bed. The maids always kept the small pitcher full for her. It was a Godssend after she came back from an exhausting day of riding.
She was especially thankful for it now when she crept out on shaky legs into the unknown without the evidence of her distress upon her face a beacon in the moonlight, but she had done no more than that.
He had indeed heard her, whipping his head around to face her and with such speed that it would’ve startled her had she meant to be quiet, but she did not wish to be so. That’s not what this was about.
“Do you have a lover?” A simple hello would’ve been polite, a have I disturbed you would've been even more appropriate, mayhaps even an apology was warranted for her trying to storm off in the middle of a storm, but pleasantries served little purpose here. There was a raging sea, as great as the narrow sea which to cross which could not be with pleasantries.
“Had,” he breathed out and added in the next breath lest her mind start wandering again desperately trying to fill in the answer. “Lady Mysaria.” Her mind wandered. An answer for an answer. Questions begetting more questions
“Do you wish her here?” In my place. In your bed. At your side day in and day out.
For everything that the Lysenni woman was, she was many things, for how high she had risen, she had risen high indeed having wormed her way into the queen's small council from a common dancing girl, she was not a dragonrider and likely never would be.
That is something Nettles could offer. Her youth. Her abilities. A dragon. A companion in the skies as well as inside this castles walls. Those were her services to the war effort. To a throne forged in blood. For a crown. The crown. It always came back to that bloody crown. Perhaps she reminded him of the one who wore that crown. “Or perhaps you imagine another here in my place.”
Flashes of the proud woman with blazing violet eyes always narrowed in assessment down at her subjects seated upon the throne flickered across her eyelids. Did he picture her too? That thought worried her more.
Nettles had told him what she was and what she was not. They both knew she wasn't his or any other Valyrian. She didn’t look anything like any other Valyrian. Her mother most certainly and from what she’d been told her father was a simple ship hand, but she was young and a dragonrider.
It was what he was used to. The familiar. Familiar enough at least.
A dragonrider still in bloom. The things he loved best in a woman she supposed. Youth and the connection to his heritage. As long as a woman possessed some version of it, even a minute one. It would be good enough. She would be good enough.
Good enough. Was that all she was? Just good enough?
“No,” The sound of his boots snapped her out of her reverie as he reached out for her. He’d not changed out of them. In fact he hadn't changed out of anything. He probably was to drink himself to sleep in that chair. Still clothed and slumped over staring into the flames while he thought her asleep. Comforted by the fact that she was safe and sound except she didn’t feel so sound. She felt a world away from it.
It was funny how he always seemed to know what she was thinking and how she felt without her having to voice it. Her confidence failing her, he reached out a pale hand to her as his irises widened in recognition.
“No Netty,” she flinched back when his skin grazed hers.
To his credit, he pulled that hand as if it had never been reaching for her, but the damage was down. Violet eyes downcast. Reminding her of a boy burned by her actions, as if she was the one who had been the cause of this all. As if she had wounded him from her rejection yet pitiful they may be those eyes did not part from her.
Was that love? A need to console no matter if she had bruised him. That she was paramount. That her needs and wants came before his own.
“If I did not wish for your company I would’ve taken another as my—,” he hesitated, his eyes unblinking as his eyes scanned over her face as if looking for the right word, eyes softening when he had seemingly found it. “—companion,” Companion. That was one way to put it. It was certainly something. Something with meaning something akin to what he spoke of and she supposed that was its own truth she was to face.
Was that what she was? Her contribution to this plane of existence. A companion? His companion? Was that what was to be written when the old men in their robes with their chains set her name down in their great tombs by the flick of their quills they wielded like swords?
Here lies what is left of the small brown girl known as Nettles, daughter of a nameless whore, rider of Sheepstealer, the companion of Prince Daemon Targaryen. Was that the truth of it?
She supposed that it was true enough. At least in the practical sense of the word. They rarely parted from one another. He had seen to that when he had dragged her across Westeros to this place. This place where there was some semblance of peace intertwined with duty.
Unmoored by the court's expectations or the constant demands of a war council breathing with spies watching their every move.
Where there was some state of being here. Just being. Their presence, the way they flitted around each other, the way they sought out the other, had been ever since she had landed atop Visenya’s hill, into his field of vision, was unnoticed or at least not trampled upon. It was freedom
Daemon had seen to it to take full advantage of that.
Nettles was at his side in the open skies and within the walls of this stone castle. They slept in adjoining bedchambers. They spent their days roaming on dragonback searching for his crazed nephew They broke their fast and suppers together. The only time they parted was for slumber and even then that was no guarantee.
She liked to believe in knights and shining armor coming to rescue fair maidens. Daemon was no knight riding upon a white stallion and she was no fair lady of the court, but he had come for her. He had taken her under his protection.
Made her his companion in deed if not yet in bond. She was his companion, his only companion here, his only companion now. Or she could be. If she just reached out and grasped the battle-worn hand he was so willing to give, she could have that.
On that account, she would take his sincerity for what it was. For she was the one he had forsaken others for. Even if he had not told her everything even if they could not have everything he had done so for her.
Nettles had not been spying upon the man, but there hadn't been a need to. They were with each other day and night. They slept in adjoining bed chambers. Sometimes she’d even fall asleep in that armchair he had just now been sulking in. He’d cover. Respectable
If he had been with someone else, if he had taken one of the maids to bed, she’d know. She’d hear it. See it. By the seven some of the less than friendly ones who glared at her while they filled her bathes and made her bed would’ve made sure that she’d have known, a hand gliding down his back when they helped him into his doublet showing one the serving boys away to do so, no she had seen no evidence of that, but Nettles couldn’t help thinking bitterly of the thought.
She’d conceded that she was indeed his companion, but that wouldn't stop him if he wished for another. That hadn’t stopped the Targaryen prince before. That hadn’t stopped him from being with Mysaria when he was his wife’s. That hadn’t stopped him from marrying Rhaenyra only half a year after his most beloved wife had died.
She was mad to think herself different. To think herself better than the women who had come before her for many women held the title of that and yet here she was. If he wanted to, he could find the time. If he wanted someone he would find her and take her into his bed.
“That’s never stopped you before. You’ve never only had one woman, my prince.” She regretted it as soon as the words came out from her lips. Biting her lip in embarrassment as she took to looking at her feet feigning interest in her reddened soles.
Lady Laena Velaryon. He had been good to her. So she had been told by Lady Baela. Though she was, but three when she went to her watery tomb from which she remained, youths bloom eternal. her memory never to be clouded over and withered with age. What did a child truly know of her parents and their marriage? How would Nettles trust what the girl had to say there? A girl even younger who had not seen half of what she had. A child by all measures.
But even if she were not to trust what a child parroted, by all accounts Lord Corlys Velaryon, who Nettles knew with as much confidence as the elder dragon twin, did not seem the type of man to tolerate his daughter being mistreated. Much less to bear witness to said mistreatment within his halls. And if the late Lady Laena Velaryon had any of her eldest daughter's ample spirit, her own independent will would not permit him to.
“She’d have been fond of you.” There was a wistful look in his eyes. She didn't doubt him. Not with that look. Not with the way they described her. She’d like to think she’d be fond of her too and yet she. Do you picture her? She had almost asked it, but this too he sensed. “You’re you Netty.” He smiled. Twas the dreamy kind. “She would’ve loved you for it. As I do.”
Odd as it was, for the thought of a woman who was long since dead and would’ve always had to be as such to ensure their being here, to ensure what they were about to become to one another was an odd thing, nonetheless the notion was comforting.
In another life, another time far distant from here in some way they could’ve all been happy together.
“Have you taken a lover?” The teasing was back in his voice when he had seen that she was not to contradict him. Levity returned to his chamber. Twas she now who moved closer to him. She who let him take a curl between his fingers.
He twinned her dark ringlets around until those calloused digits grazed her skin. Dropping the curl in favor of letting the back of his hand caress down the apples of her cheeks. Nettles leaned into it. What would be the point not to? What would be the point of denying him or herself any longer?
“No,” it wasn’t needed. They both knew that. He’d know just as well as she knew of him if she had, but she imagined male pride made him wish to hear the words coming from. She would grant him that wish. It was a simple enough request just the same asher. She smiled. Shy thing it was and met her with one of his own grins.
“Your hands are freezing sweet girl,” he brought them to his lips. The warmth of his breath fanning her cold skin before kissing it. Warming up more than the cold of her hands.
Gods, why was he so warm? His hands. His breath. Was it due to his blood? The dragon's fire which flowed within all Targaryens did it keep him in this perpetual furnace state?
Was he warm everywhere? That pale skin lay just beneath his robes. Was that warm? What would it feel like to have him surrounding her? To be underneath him. She would have blushed at that, should’ve blushed at that if she could, but the memories kept the heat off her cheeks.
There were nights when she had forgotten what warmth was. When all she knew was cold. The bowl of the wind or the gust of the sea breeze bearing down on her. Winter’s storm wreaking havoc upon Driftmarks shores. Cold burying itself into her skin like a needle into a thread. She'd doubt ever growing cold again there with him.
“I—I—” standing there stuttering with him looming over her and she was forced to look up at him. Nettles felt like the girl she never intended to be, but she didn't know what she was going to say. Mayhaps telling him that he was warmer than afire and she never wanted to leave out from its radiance. His radiance, in any case, she had never finished it.
“You’d know if I had,” she breathed out, finally finding the words with a burst of heat brought to her cheeks with the admission helped by his fondling of her.
Nettles closed her eyes and breathed out with a gasp when he began to nip at the skin behind her ear and opened them when pulled back. He had that boyish look upon him again.
“I’ve never been with a man,” she whispered looking up at him. Blurting it out was more like it. Blunt and course. Her voice was low as she kept her gaze on a freckle underneath his right eye. A not-so-small part of her had hoped her words were indistinguishable, but he heard her well enough.
“Do you mean to tell me you prefer the company of women Netty?”
Silver brows raised as the corners of his thin lips curled into a lopsided smile.
It was the teasing sort. Boyish shaved several years off his face, but it was arrogant. Far too cocky. The kind which would’ve earned him a slap a couple of moons back and had if she was well within her mind, but Nettles could do little more than give in to her nerves, hide her head into his robes, and let out a quiet I’ve never been with anyone. Thankful at least that her brown skin hid her blush. What a sight that would've been.
She had debated about telling him, had more than half a mind to keep it to herself, just because she allowed him into her bed or rather she’d come to his bed didn't mean he had to know the state of her he couldn't
expect much after all, but Nettles had figured it was no good keeping it from him.
Of course, If she were a man she wouldn’t have told him, but it was different for a man and she doubted she’d be in his bed if she were one.
Thankfully she was very much a woman and happy to be one for all the troubles it brought her, but women bleed. He’d know whether she told him or not in half an hour or two and she wanted him to know. She’d wanted to know if she were in his place and wanted to give him everything she could, but she hadn’t been expecting him to know. Most certainly not to voice it then and there.
“I know.” She could not help how her eyes bugged out. Feeling the strain to the socket which they were attached to. If Lord Moonton had sprouted up from the embers of the fire speaking fluent Valyrian she couldn't have been more shocked.
He knew. Sure enough, he had known. He thought her an innocent and he was right to think even though the fact of the matter was that she should not be an innocent. He should not expect her to be one.
She was six and ten and she was a baseborn girl with barely a coin to her name. There were younger girls who had given up their virtues long since past. There were girls younger than her with a babe at their hips to show for it. Some highborn girls even and she was as lowborn as they come.
It was harder for girls like her to keep her innocence and in the grand scheme of things twas not important. Such was the price of life. What good was one's maidenhead when one was bent over with an ache in their belly for morsels of something that would take that pain away. Nettles had, but plenty of girls had given theirs. He knew.
“Whenever I touch you, you behave like a frightened colt,” he was grinning now.
“I could be frightened of you.” It was a half-hearted statement if she had ever heard of one. She didn’t even believe herself as she said it. Nettles could feel her brows furrowing with her confusion. An act which caused Daemon to swipe his thumb gently across the crease as he smiled down at her and then repeated the caress on the scar that graced her nose. It was a sweet and maddening gesture.
He knew. She did not know why she thought he would react any other way, but arrogant and proud man as he was he laughed at her. It was not a quiet thing either. It rumbled deep within and shook her along with it.
I’m glad of it. Not for that— I’m glad they did not take away that from you either. She tried to look away then, but he kept their gazes affixed onto each other. Transfixed by the green reflecting off the candlelight.
“You do not know the way men look at you, sweet girl.” He kissed and coed at her. Hands cupped her face as his thumb drew circles into the apples of her cheeks. Gentle. His touch was delicate despite the calloused upon the pads of his fingers. “My innocent sweet girl.”
“I’m not innocent.” Because she was not. She had done things. Seen things that no innocent had which she should not have ever seen, but he shushed her. It didn't matter.
“I have seen my share of devils and monsters,” his thumb reached to brush against her scar. Caressing it as he swiped the pad of the digit across the marred skin. So sweetly. So undeserving for such violence she had inflicted upon herself.
Shame, shame came over her then and there when she should have been feeling anything but it. She should have. been in the throes of passion and sempiternal ecstasy, but there was only shame. Shame for such a hated thing.
Hate did not even begin to describe it, but there was no other word which Nettles could use to describe l.
She Hated how she’d gotten it. The desperation and the shame coming over her whenever she remembered what transpired and she so tried not to remember. She tried not to, but it was a hard thing to ask of a girl of, but seven and ten. “You are the most innocent of creatures, Netty.”
She had to protest that. Feeling the lump form in the back of her throat with her protest. I've stolen.
I’ve killed. I’ve seen war. I’ve been at war. Far longer than these past moons I've been marred by it. My body may remain untouched but no more innocent than you are, but that most worthy, most admirable protest ended with a flick of his tongue across the roof of her mouth.
Arching where she stood she felt the rancor leave her with a waver in the pit of her belly. Words could wait. The words were stolen from her in truth, but she didn't mind that. They were not important.
She’d been here before. In what seemed like a lifetime ago. An age clouded by grief and ignominy. The touch of his lips upon her own was a sensation shameful as it was to admit it that she had already been privy to.
Nettles would be lying to herself if she said she did not like it then as she did now. Not stopping him when he grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her into him.
However, that stolen kiss had never been like this. It was quick and greedy and maddening. She had been kissed with the force of a man dying of thirst, but this was a man who wished to savor them.
Anticipation. That was what was different. It may have been there before, but it was shrouded by fear rather than unrestrained desire. She couldn't give in. Couldn’t get lost in it. She couldn't have him. She couldn't want him. He was not hers to want much less need. She needed him. Mayhaps she shouldn’t have, but she did.
Her robe had too many buttons. Far too many buttons. Gods she should’ve picked something else. Forgone the insipid thing. There was a part of her who liked its frills. Cornflower etched into neat little rows on the border. It was pretty despite its plainness. The buttons were the most intricate thing about it. Marked with the sigil of his house. A bronze three-headed dragon, a gift she had allowed to adorn her, to brand her even when she had been too proud to accept more than that, when she would’ve never accepted this supposed the Daemon had a different branding.
He stripped her bare. He was patient in his doing. More patient than she expected. Oh he huffed and he groaned at the amount of layers she wore. He certainly seemed annoyed by the amount of buttons on her robes, but he was gentle. Taking every button at a time. His fingers worked to undo them with a gentleness that did not match the hot current buzzing through the chamber.
So very gentle and so very maddening. For she wanted it off her. Needed it off her. Needed his skin upon her own. Needed not a stitch between them. She must've said something in her haze for when the breath returned to her lungs and her mind floated back to body she was greeted by the rich cadence of his deep laugh.
“We have all night Netty,” he said when hands had finally undid the last of them. Freeing her at last from the garment as he threw it off somewhere behind them to be forgotten, the cold of the chamber hit her like an ice bath, but she did not remain cold long, placing a kiss upon the skin above her heart, another beneath her breast. Hovering above her as his lips ghosted her flushed skin leaving trails of wetness in their wake.
“All morning.” She was in his arms before he had finished his sentence. Sweeping her up off her feet and into his arms. He cradled her like one would a bride Nettles could almost pretend that she was one. This was after all a beginning of sorts. A most thrilling little beginning. Perhaps they could be happy in this life with what they had.
“I do not intend on leaving these chambers until you are well looked after.” His mouth captured hers in a kiss mid yelp from the suddenness of being carried around like a doll.
Enveloping them in a sultry dance with the keen swipe of a wet muscle against the roof of her mouth. The fervor of teeth clashing in their pursuit of the other. Thin, but no less stimulating lips, softer than she expected, enraptured her plump ones as their tongues battled for domination or at least she tried to match his intensity as he folded the rest of her into him.
It faintly registered to her that she had been placed upon the bed when she felt the soft linens greet her as he pushed her back. Silk glided across her bare back as Daemon draped on top of her, encasing her between his arms he had dropped by her head. His knees knocked her legs apart to spread her wide and open for him.
He hovered above her on his knees as he divested of his own robes. Pulling the tunic over his head and tossing the garment that had become as much a hindrance as it had been a necessity before behind them to join her gown.
Standing there as naked as the day which he was born with all his might. A marble statue carved by the Gods, all for her as she was all for him.
Nettles wondered what she might look like in those violet eyes that stared down at her.
Shivering. Bare skin the color of earth spread out before him in her glory. Before a God. Every common flesh was exposed for his eye to see while she was left to wait and wait for that God.
He had left her cold, exposed for that spell, exposed in ways that had her flushed, chilled, and trembling with something more than anticipation, but he seemingly had his fill of feasting upon her. Taking up his rightful place within that empty space which had been left waiting for him. The cold was replaced by him and she was left to worry no more. She wondered why she ever had when he looked at her like she had set him ablaze. When she could feel the heat of that burn.
Daemon was warm. Warm everywhere. His flesh fire to her ice.
Warm and hard. Rough in places where she wasn’t.
“Have you ever touched yourself?” Perhaps he was right in saying she behaved like a freighted colt. She certainly felt like one then. Trying to hide her. No forming upon the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t quite get the words out. Too distracted. He had wanted a reply. Drawing it out from her with his lips upon hers. That smirk he wore was not so hidden by a small peck. Diligently awaiting an answer as he remained affixed on driving her to distraction.
“Yes.” Her cheeks felt as if they were burning under her embarrassment. He must have known the answer before it left her plump lips, but a silent knowing was different than an explicit confirmation that set her face ablaze and set him to claim the victory.
Daemon chuckled and the vibrations of his laugh grazed the skin under her now heaving breasts just where her ribcage sat encasing her lungs which at the moment she had a great deal of trouble getting air in from. Causing a new round of goose pimples to break out across her skin from the exertion and lack of air to her head.
That familiar feeling of pins through her. The deliciousness of that chill going down her spine that somehow warmed her when it reached her center. sent her trembling like a leaf not for warmth, but for him.
“You’ve been neglecting yourself.” Nettles would’ve been embarrassed by the admission of what he could feel. Of what she felt. His fingers plunging into her with
She should’ve been embarrassed by his touch at that most intimate place between her legs, the way in which but she was too far gone to care. He had barely touched her in truth, only a few simple thrusts and she had already gone hazy with something other than the emotions which had overwhelmed her these past moons.
“You’re so wet for me sweet girl.” As if to accentuate it he pistoled his forefinger back into the hilt her warmth. The sound of her wetness echoed throughout the chamber “Let me take care of you.”
She felt that stirring within her core. Want pure unadulterated want and yet despite that molten heat she froze at the last words. Trying to curl into herself despite the fact that he surrounded her.
Did she wish for him to take care of her in this way there would be no going back after this? She could not feign disinterest. Or curiosity for merely a friendly connection. That stubborn pride which she had clung to which kept her from him would sever. Gone. Banished to the ether.
Twas what she longed for even against all her self-righteousness, but a final bit of self-preservation made its last grandstand as she shifted her body, however fleeting it was. She had to make for as much
But he saw her fright and abated with a kiss placed behind her ear. Hands around her hips steadying her. Keeping her from crawling away from him further up the bed and curling into herself like a frightened kitten even if he could not stop her shivering. “One word,” he paused to gift her another kiss, this time upon her neck bared to him as he made his way down her body—“one word Netty and I will stop if that is what you wish.”
One solitary word and yet stop or its simple cousin of no could be the furthest thing from the tip of her tongue. Not with the way he looked at her, eyes glazed over with what sins his tongue concocted upon her.
Words were immaterial. Fickle simperings that men whispered to their lovers, but did not ever intend on making good of. Like wind.
Coming and going without planting any real roots. They might as well have been the wind pounding at the pane. The storm letting itself be known just beyond the warmth of these chambers.
And yet words were as real as that storm. As real as the Gods speaking to them. As real as her prince spoke to her. For they were more than just pretty troths. She knew better than that. “It is at your command that I obey, precious girl.”
He didn't give her time to doubt him. A set of rough hands planted themselves upon her hips to stop her from. Drawing little crescent shapes into the brown skin underneath his fingertips while his mouth had reached her center. The warmth of his breath fanning her bare cunny. Hot with desire and she froze again when she realized how he wished to take care of her.
“You do not have to—Daemon—,” Nettles cried out when she felt that wet muscle of sin upon her womanhood. That delicious tongue at last upon her dripping center. Lapping at her. The very thing she had tried to prevent, the very thing she thought herself undeserving of and yet there was nothing she could do except lie there and take it. Enjoy it.
Did she not deserve this? Had she not expected this There was no point in denial or hiding now. Not when they had come this far. Might as well trust herself. Trust him. Trust this.
There was nothing that she wished to do, but lie there and let him lap at her folds. Hands gripping his locks to bring him closer. Curling around him.
He drank from her heat like a starving man and she was his only salvation. She yelped out her pleasure. Whined and tried to stifle her moans into her pillow, but he reached a hand up to tilt her head back down to them.
Their eyes met, violet on brown as he groaned into her folds. It was The most erotic noise she had ever heard if that had not been the most erotic thing she had ever felt.
Daemon pulled away with a nip at her button to mumble something or another about a fountain of youth lying between her legs, but her mind had become too much of a hazy place clouded over by the fog of her impending orgasm to make much sense of what he spoke of.
It was intoxicating. Overwhelming and yet she itched still with want. With need. She wanted more so much more she never wanted it to end building and building what awaited her. She knew there was more and she needed that. She needed him.
“Take me.” She shuddered around his silver head, arching further into his touch, her body washed over with pleasure. “Please take me.” She cried once more, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t so much as flinch at her whines.
Fingers still gliding in and out as his tongue continued his lapping at that button resting atop trembling thighs. “I want you to take me.” A new flush overtook her body. If she grew any warmer she might very well melt into a puddle she had said every last word before but not in this way.
“I am.” An answer at last. Though it was a false statement if ever there was one and it did little to pacify the squirming girl in fact all it did was spur on that yearning. That burning wildfire within her being denied for moons for a lifetime and wanting so now that it had been stoked at his sinewy hand.
“I want you inside of me. Now,” she pleaded like a child. The word please playing on loop upon the tip of her tongue. Whining and panting hoping he’d listen. Give in. Do something to end this purgatory of lust and bring her to the abyss of euphoria, but he barely noticed how she had begun to thrash underneath his grip. Her cunt spasming around his tongue like a woman possessed.
He didn’t care that he was torturing her. Not caring one bit of the fevered state he had worked her to. Loving doing so judging by the way he would not let up. The way in which he aptly elicited her rapture. Egging her on and taking it in like a starved man.
Her whines were the tune of a siren to his ears. Every lick begot a new note. Every moan he drank and met with his own ardent lust of groans into her slick. Every tremble he caught with that velvet grip. Caring for her. Meeting her for all that she would give him. For all that she was.
Nettles had to be practically suffocating, no she was suffocating the silver haired man with her grip held firm as she pushed his head, his wonderful tongue further into herheat. There could hardly be any air left for him to breathe with his nose upon her clit, it caused the most delicious friction as she ground down on him.
Almost satisfying that itch that he built deep inside her he was so lovely bullying, but only almost. For and his mouth latched onto her sopping cunt. On and on and on. Lap after lap. Turning her into a mere puddle of want and need before him.
He had indeed been right when he called her a fountain. A fountain overflowed with passion. Covering them both in her spend which would surely leave a mess for the maids to clean on the morrow, or for her to try and clean, but that was for then to worry over and now to bargain. He set her a light and now she was boiling.
“Please.” She choked for breath, for him. “Please.”
“Patience sweet one.” He whispered into her folds. Pulling away briefly from His tongue swiping across the expanse of her cunt as she quivered around nothing desperately wanting to be filled. Desperately wanting him. “All good things come to those who are patient and sweet.”
“I’ve been good.” Begging it had come down to begging. “Please, I need you.” Her mind had become a scatterplot of moans and pleases in her quest for mercy. Black spots blanketed her vision, her tongue loosened on the verge of madness. She felt far away and so close that all that was worth living for.
He took pity on her at last. Perhaps he could no longer resist her and whine more than she could he. Calling to each other with blackened glances singed with fire and words left unspoken.
His cock head in hand hardened red and angry as he loomed over her before pouncing upon her. Sheathing himself into her quivering channel with one swift thrust. He knocked what little air remained from out her lungs to join her in that bliss at last.
“Is this what you wanted, sweet thing?” If Daemon expected her to say something he would be at a loss for she could not reply to him. Not with words. Barely with whines. Only her breath upon his scarred nape. But even in that haze that had enveloped her, she could see his questioning was more rhetorical than anything else when lauding her with lust-riddled admiration.
“Gods you're tight. So tight for me,” he crooned into the shell of her ear. Falling over to praise her. with such sweet simperings that left her mewling beneath him.
Her body curled around him. Bare skin against bare skin. Sweat and blood and slick. Legs wrapped around his middle. Clinging to him. Nipping at the scars upon his nape from battles of old. Drawing him nearer. Nails digging into the meat of his forearms.
The bit of her claws sharp enough to draw blood, she should’ve cared about that, but Daemon did remove her hands back to resting by her head, where he had placed them before, and the sting of her bite was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth rather than floating away into the ether into the bliss of oblivion.
She was going to burst. She was filled to the brim. That stirring inside of her was too strong to resist. She could not resist feeling her walls fluttering around his length. Pulsing with each pump into her walls. It was too much. Entirely too much and everything and he felt it too.
“You squeeze me so well. That’s it sweet girl.” In and out and back in again. Each thrust was punctuated with the soft squelch of her cunny echoing around the chamber. Sucking him in further into her heat. In and out.
He barely left her. only just pushing out of her cunny with his throbbing length to push back into her center to the hilt. Hitting her cervix with each thrust. She met him with a fluttering of her walls around him.
He moaned; he actually moaned into her ear. The breathy kind. The kind that one could not keep in. The kind too exhausted, too weary, too good to keep in for one might burst if they did not let it out. It was too good. She was too good.
Here and now beneath the cover of darkness a storm and in a far and distant place away from everyone they had ever known, she unbound the rogue prince in every way that mattered.
In the way her cunnys walls squeezed him, pushing him deeper inside her as she cared down upon him. In the way she dripped around him down to her little mewls at his ear and scratches down his back. The brown bastard girl with nothing but a dragon to her name unmoored him.
“I want you to come with me.” He choked out. His voice was a strained grunt. Just holding onto what little sanity remained left between the two for she had long given up on anything besides tethering herself to him.
“Come with me,” Daemon whispered, letting go at last with a groan and she followed into euphoria. Her body was shaking around him as he spilled his seed in her. Painting her walls with his essence. Marking her with him as she milked him dry. Marking him with one final rake of her nails down his pale back scars to join hers.
He did not move from her when all had gone quiet except for the howl of the wind. Quite the opposite for as they lay there panting bare with slick and sweat in each other's arms trying to catch their breaths, his softened length remained seated inside her heat pulsing with the aftershocks of their coupling.
Finding warmth in the lingering of bliss. Statues and satisfied at least for the time being at least until they wanted again until the longing became too much to bear as it surely would.
“Rest now sweetling, rest.”
Nettles headed the Targaryen man once more. Resting her head upon the space she carved for herself between his reddened nape and the heat of his shoulder blade as their spends leaked onto the sheets below them with.
Took comfort in him and let him take comfort in her for she knew one thing that night and night after and the night after that. She never wanted to leave his side nor would Daemon ever let her.
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