gevivys (beauty) │ Chapter 2: A Meeting
terms of endearment ‘verse: see my Masterlist for the correct series order!
Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 (Coming Soon!)
Synopsis: Daemon returns to King’s Landing after ten years in exile, intent on rekindling his affair with Rhaenyra. He wasn’t expecting you - the revelation changes everything.
THANK YOU TO THE AMAZING @elaan21 FOR THE HIGH VALYRIAN TRANSLATIONS - YOU ARE AWESOME AND UNREAL.
Um, I’m sorry for the person I’ve become writing this. Please be warned - Daemon is a feral perv simp. It’s probably NSFW, but given he doesn’t actually do anything, just has weird AF thoughts, I didn’t tag it as such above. Enjoy!
Well - when he said he was looking for something new, he wasn’t expecting it to smack him clean across the fucking jaw quite so suddenly as this.
He had spent the previous few days idly wandering the halls, lost in thought as he considered all that had transpired between him and Rhaenyra, when he catches the metallic glint of a finely-polished breastplate in the sun. Squinting, he looks across the way to see the staid figure of that cunt Ser Cole, Crispin or Colin or whatever his name was. Beating in a knight’s head at a royal wedding wasn’t enough to get the man exiled? He is standing at the entrance to the garden, staring watchfully in at its occupants, and Daemon can hear the sounds of light chatter and laughter. What the fuck…?
Daemon is striding toward the Kingsguard before common sense can rein him in. “Still here, Cole?” he asks, enjoying the look of thinly-veiled vehemence on the Dornishman’s visage. “I’d have thought you’d be an exile after the little stunt you pulled at our dear Rhaenyra’s wedding.” He relishes in the further lines of tension that spread across his visage, knowing of the boy’s long-held desire for his eldest niece - he wonders if she’d bothered to let him into her cunt, or if he was still pining pathetically. He refuses to consider the potential that such a thing would make them more similar than different.
“Her Grace was charitable enough to advocate for my continued presence, Your Highness,” he responds through clenched teeth. “Unlike some, I was seen to have some use yet.” Daemon cannot help it - he laughs, impressed and infuriated and enraged by this juvenile upstart from some little-known region of Westeros. Who does he think he is?
“And indeed you are,” he replies merrily, amused by the spirit of this nobody, this Ser Caspian from House Cole. “A fine guard - of a tree.”
“I am the Princess’s sworn shield,” Cole retorts hotly before catching himself, reining himself in, exhaling a breath and returning to that vacant, accommodating stance that had first tickled Daemon with enough amusement that he felt it worth venturing over to have fun.
“How interesting,” he ponders, stepping closer to the man, forcing him to look up into his line of sight, an exercise of dominance if there ever was one. “I seem to recall you had sworn yourself to the older one, not the younger, for Rhaenyra is safely up in her chambers now.” For whom else could Ser Callen mean if not you, his younger niece?
In three days, he had not seen you yet, always an excuse presented via messenger to the expectant ears of the King at mealtimes. Tutoring, minding your nephews and littlest brothers, or simply nowhere to be found - a whisper on the wind, a person in name only. If it were not for the frequent references to you made in casual conversation across the Keep, he would think you did not exist.
“Allegiances change,” Cole counters, smiling tensely. Daemon quirks a brow at the admission, not having expected such a sentimental acknowledgement from the knight. A change of loyalty, eh? Well, he shall have to see what it is that has turned Caradoc’s head so. Stepping away from the guard with a mocking little twist of the lips, he treads forward into the garden.
What had long been a place of silent contemplation was now alight with chatter; a group of young ladies all sat about on laid-out furs, giggling over grapes and sweet-wine, an endearing display of girlish delight that would have made any other man smile at the scene before him - but Daemon is not other men. Staring upon the scene, he wonders darkly at just how many of them he could persuade to let him slip a hand into their smallclothes, to pry apart their coltish thighs, to wet his cock on their maiden’s blood and hear them scream. He snorts at the thought - knowing King’s Landing, he’d wager at least half of these girls had already trysted with some man or another.
He rolls his eyes at the sight of that crotchety old Septa - Marlow, was it? - the very same wretch to have ruled Rhaenyra’s childhood household with an iron fist and stern voice, sitting undercover with a silver-haired girl. At first, he thinks this is his niece; but upon looking at her closer, he sees the Hightower whore pasted over Valyrian colouring, limbs too long and spindly, features not as comely as the little girl’s had promised to be, and he wrinkles his nose slightly when he realises this must be the smaller one. He cannot think of her name, and nor does he care to know it. Casting his eye across the landscape, he frowns as he fails to see the form of a second silver-haired girl.
“Your Highness!” Ah, fuck. The old sow has seen me. The hag’s eyes are upon him disapprovingly, and it pleases him wryly that he can at least count upon her to remain unchanged by time; Septa Marlow had never liked him, had constantly reproved Rhaenyra for being taken in by his gifts, his attentions, his flattery. He supposes she was right to be so concerned for her naïve charge. “You have returned.”
“Septa,” he says, bowing to her, though he is sure the derisiveness of the movement is not lost upon her - there it is - her eyes narrow, lips pursing as she glares at him disfavourably. The young one tracks the interaction with a tilt to her head, wondering just who had come to disturb the peace of the afternoon. “It is truly a delight to see you once again.” Old cunt.
“Hm,” huffs the woman, and she turns back to the young girl before her. No doubt proselytising about the dangers of letting a craven such as him see so much as a slip of an ankle beneath her skirts. Once it is clear that is all he will get out of the old bitch, he wanders further into the garden, smirking in an affectation of gentility as the girls whisper to themselves, staring at him, likely plotting their way into his line of sight.
As he passes the shade of the tree, he receives his first glimpse of you in ten years.
You are laid outstretched on the bare grass in a pretty summer gown of pale violet, legs folded at the ankle beneath your skirts (he can see the limbs twine through the silken fabric), your wild pale hair spilling carelessly in a halo about your head, your eyes closed and your smile tipped up to the warming sun. Your once-cherubic face has lengthened, defined, and he tracks the familiar slope of your nose, the arch of newly-unveiled cheekbones and plumped lips, a red-mouthed nymphet of a girl become a woman in his absence. Seven fucking hells. He cannot stop himself from studying you, tracing the curve of your bared neck - and why is the sight so fucking obscene, gods help him - the spill of your breasts encased (regrettably) in the cut of your gown and the way your pale little hands clasp together in chaste repose under your bust, highlighting the blooming of your body.
The sight exhilarates him - it devastates him. For who the fuck was this fey being, this Maiden come to life, this princess-shaped doe-eyed dream of a girl? Certainly not the child he had left behind, and he is utterly annoyed with himself at having expected some flat-chested, androgynous approximation of that little girl grown up.
He calls your name, and your startled head whips to face him directly, eyes opening and widening in shock and confusion, a quizzical furrowing of brows disturbing the peace that had smoothed your expression only moments before. You sit up further as he advances towards you, making no move to leap up from your place situated below him, a place for gullible girls with pillow-soft lips and pink little tongues held out in prayer, begging to lap up his milk - but you only stare up at him, an utter lack of comprehension on your face, and it is then that he knows, as only a man who had stolen the virtue of half the ingenues now assuredly selling their wares in the Street of Silk could know. How could he have stayed away for so long, when this unspoiled prize (and oh, he can tell you are fresh) awaited?
“Hello, sweetling,” he says, crouching down beside you, and he feels a vicious sense of satisfaction when your brows uncurl, wet posy petals unfurling into an open-mouthed expression of awareness as you recognise the sound of him, take in the ashen hue of his hair and the long-forgotten features that comprise a familiar face.
“Uncle Daemon?” You ask softly, and he has to fight his cock’s urge to spring up at such a pretty entreaty. Funny, he muses darkly, how it doesn’t rise when I want it to, but one breathy question from his baby niece, his sweetest girl, and it is prepared to cut through steel. He feels the beginnings of self-reproach stir as he takes in the slow-dawning smile upon your face, the look of a little girl who’s favourite long-distant uncle has finally come home. “I did not know you had returned!”
He shifts to sit before you properly, gaze roving over you, taking in the tumble of Valyrian-white spilling from your crown, the dusky lavender-bruise of your eyelids, the deep violet of your eyes. He wonders at the assertion that you did not know of his presence, for he is sure that it is all that the city has been gossiping of since his homecoming.
“I did not announce my arrival,” is what he chooses to reply with. There is something yearning and haunted in that saccharine stare of yours, he thinks, a babe with her arms held out, wailing at the world as it leaves her abandoned in the crib. He wonders if you have been as terribly isolated as he has been all these years, with naught to yourself but a sister and father with their own new families and an old Septa to punish your desire before it is even allowed to spring into fruition.
“You have been gone for so long, Uncle,” you say, kitten-eyes begging for the answers to an unknowable question. Why did you leave? Why are you back? Why were you gone so long? What does it all mean?
“It seems I have,” Daemon returns, his scrutiny once more falling to the figure below the face, the hint of a collarbone as it peeks out from under an irritatingly high neckline, the darling swell of tits playing at the game of adulthood before they have been invited to the gathering, the flare of hips shrouded in damnable silks and satins. “You were a little girl when I left, and look at you now – a woman grown!”
The turn of conversation makes you uncomfortable; he can see it in the way your shoulders stiffen and your spine straightens ever-so-slightly, in the way you break eye contact with him, in the pretty peevish set of your rosebud mouth. “You know, then? What I have been asked by father?” In this, he sees Rhaenyra – the unwillingness to hedge, the direct line of pursuit – though the uneasiness at his inquiry is a new phenomenon. He had never had to coax out a maiden for too long, the allure of his exterior qualities and his Princely title and his roguish charm making even the most pious of virgins a willing whore without much work. He had certainly never had to lead Rhaenyra much, for she was all too eager to follow him to the darkness.
“He mentioned it,” Daemon responds, laughing at the twitch your eye makes at the knowledge; it is a delightful idiosyncrasy that makes you more real, less of a ghostly spectre come to haunt him for the wrongs of the past. “Why, pet – not a fan of being courted?”
You sigh, looking down, twisting your hands in the skirts of your dress, the way you did as a child. “When you phrase it such, it sounds – romantic,” you sigh, eyes fixed on some minute detail past his head, and he is struck by the melancholy in your voice. “But these men do not want me – they want an idea of me, a Targaryen bride with pale hair and Valyrian blood to give them children they will make little effort to raise, to clasp onto and show off at feasts and balls as though possessing me is somehow meaningful. They do not see me.”
It is here your voice cuts off strangely, and he wishes it hadn’t, enthralled by the mournful monologue that paints a picture of the loneliest girl in King’s Landing. It is an eerie echo of a conversation taken place a decade prior, though the lead role lacks the infantile indignation and petulant pouting of the previous star. He finds himself retracing those steps, almost without realising.
“Idīnnon dēmalio syt verdilla mērī issa. Dīnakson toliot, gaoso gaomagon kostas,” he murmurs testing, prodding, waiting for what might result from his efforts. Marriage is only a political arrangement. Once you are wed, you can do as you like. The words make your cheeks flush fetchingly and your brow wrinkle once more, glancing back at him apprehensively. Pretty pink girl with a pretty pink blush; how far down does it spread? You swallow; pause; look away, wrestling with a thought; you peep back up at him.
“Se skorverdon ūja avy kirimves mazuerdilza?” You respond, and the words of their Mother Tongue falling from your lips requires him to ruthlessly force back the wave of awakening below his belt once more. And how much joy did this bring you? Having been the only language you spoke as a young child, as all the Targaryen children had spoken from the cradle, it is a relief to hear it from you again, a reminder that the years had not washed away all that is familiar. “Aōhan ābrazȳryz buqilē, riñar daor, merpī īles… Tolī jaelan.” A wife you hated, no children, you were lonely… I want more. He grimaces at the mention of his bronze bitch.
“What is it you want, then?” He asks, switching back to the Common Tongue, the corner of his mouth already contorting in anticipation of the naïve response. True love, a happily ever after… We don’t get to have happy endings, sweetling.
“I want someone who loves me,” you reply, pressing on crossly at the huff of laughter that escapes him. “I never said I would love him back!” The clarification surprises him – it is not exactly what he had been expecting. He tips his head consideringly at you, inviting you to continue.
You hesitate for a moment. “I… They say my father loved my mother. I believe it, but-” You swallow, the corners of your mouth turning down as you mull over your words. “They say he had a choice, when baby Baelon was born; that he could cut her open to get the babe out, but that it would mean her certain death.” Gods above, where in the Seven hells had you learned that piece of information? Viserys had kept the circumstances of Aemma’s death under tight wraps, never even deigning to mention it to his own brother; it was pure happenstance that one of the maids he enjoyed fucking at the time had been present on the unfortunate day.
“I do not think I could ever choose my own life over my child’s – but they say he did not even ask her, that he just… held her down while they – How could I ever trust a man to raise the babe I bore him, if he would be willing to butcher his own wife in her childbed?” Your eyes glisten at the confession. He watches as you clench your eyes tight, set your jaw and exhale a few shuddery breaths. When your eyes open, they are no longer tear-bright, and he suddenly admires you for it, for the way you so ruthlessly suppressed weakness. He wonders how often you have been made to force back your own pain for the good of his family.
“What happened to your mother was a terrible tragedy, sweetling,” he hums soothingly, reaching forward to finally grip your small, pale hand in his. It is cold, and dwarfed entirely in his own. “But you cannot live in fear forever.” You make to pull your hand away, and he closes his grip tighter upon it, coercing you to look up at him properly.
“When hope is gone, what choice left is there but fear?” It is a whisper, carried on the breeze, and the thinly-veiled misery pains him in the chest. I thought that beating thing was black and dead by now, he thinks to himself. You shake your head, smile – the picture of the melancholy maiden fades from view as you affect an appearance of energy once more, gentle and muted as it is. “I know my father loved my mother, and so love is no guarantee of loyalty; but it would be helpful, I think.”
“You see love and loyalty as intertwined then, pet?” He cannot help but to ask, intrigued by the notion proposed by this slip of a girl, his little niece with the curves of a gold-gilded whore and the thousand-year gaze of an ancient, arcane being.
“Do you not? You cannot have one without the other. Loyalty without love makes for an easy traitor; and love without loyalty makes for an unhappy marriage.” He laughs again at the latter part of your pronouncement – a sweet, trusting little filly waiting to be broken in.
“There are many ways to love someone, princess,” he ogles you shamelessly, savouring the affectation of outraged bewilderment painting your countenance. “I imagine you’ll find few of them in the marriage bed.” He waits for you to ask him – to ask him what he means, to ask him to explain, to teach you, show you –
You instead pull your hand back, and it seems you have taken all the warmth from his palm with you. “I dislike your implication, Uncle,” you say stiffly, returning your hand to your lap, nestling between your thighs to retain the heat. Fuck.
“I meant nothing by it, gevivys,” he responds soothingly, watching the blush daub the planes of your throat, not quite travelling up to decorate your cheeks. Beauty. It is an apt title – an underwhelming one, even.
“You never do,” you sigh. Daemon lets the conversation lull, deciding to instead look upon the little revelation before him. You are an interesting puzzle; a strange contradiction of a girl, whose buttermilk skin and pert teats and spit-shine lips should herald as a welcome to sample the delights hidden by the fabric of your lovely little dress, and whose decorum in the face of the gentle compulsion he had so often utilised to get fetching girls to strip bare for him and show off their equally-as-fetching cunts had instead left him lacking. The body of a slut and the mind of a scholar, all wrapped up in wide eyes and honey-sweet words and wild hair the shade of Old Valyria. Of home.
Your attention is diverted by the squeals of a dark-haired boy as he bowls his way to you, throwing himself across your lap with an exultant cry of your name. From the look of him, it is Rhaenyra’s second son Lucerys. Having grown somewhat accustomed to learning the schedules of the lives around him, it baffles him somewhat that the boy is not at his daily lessons, though he knew from talk that the child frequently enjoyed spending time with his little niece. It seemed as though he remained still in the garden, despite the lessons he was meant to have. Had Laenor not intended to come here and fetch the boy as he had in days prior?
Daemon looks up, and he is surprised to see the forbidding expression upon Laenor’s face as he strides over to you and the boy, reaching a hand down to you and arranging his appearance into something a little less – well, violent. You take it, bewildered, allowing your good-brother to tug you gently from the ground beside him, already grabbing at the boy’s hand to stop him running off. Maiden, Stranger and now Mother, too, he muses. Which of the Seven will you take the form of next?
“Would you take Luke off to the training yards, sister?” Laenor begs kindly of you, and Daemon can see a look of vague incomprehension cross your face at the question. At least you sense the oddity, too. Laenor’s head turns down to where he sits, and it is then that it dawns on him that his nephew-by-marriage was very possibly watching him stare at his baby niece’s tits for a time that is sure to be longer than he could claim plausible deniability of. Fuck.
“Of course, Laenor,” you reply sweetly, biddably, and Daemon cannot help but wonder what else you might comply with if gently persuaded. He glances up at you from where he sits still upon the ground, smirking playfully as your gaze turns to him.
“It seems we must part for now, Princess,” he tells you.
“It does,” you respond politely, and it is clear to see he has unnerved you; the notion sends a trail of perverse excitement through him. He wonders what other reactions he might prompt out of you with gentle teasing. “I am glad you are back, Uncle.” The words are honest, free of artifice, and he gazes upon you with surprise – you may well be the only individual in the entire city who would say such a thing and genuinely mean it.
When you make to depart, he calls you back. “What – no goodbye kiss for your beloved uncle?” He taunts you, hoping he will bait you into action. He determinedly ignores Laenor’s huff from above him, eyes trained on you as you swallow with trepidation, before quickly making the short few steps back to him.
You crouch beside him, and he turns his head to yours as you free yourself from the tangle of skirts. Up close, he can see each lash that frames your eyes, the hairs that sprout from your brows, the slick cherry bloom of your mouth. A whisper-sweet gather of plump, plush fruit he wanted – needed – to take a bite from. Would you let me, little girl? He wonders. You gasp, a short little breath of surprise, and lurch away lightly at the closeness. A brave little thing, you return to him, pressing those precious petal-soft lips to the skin of his cheek, covered breasts involuntarily pressing against his arm. Fucking hells.
“Sȳz bantis, kepus,” you whisper, before you depart, bundling the boy up in your capable little hands, murmuring what approximates a farewell to the other occupants of the garden – and when the hells did he forget those – not even deigning to look back as you depart, the Cole cunt falling into formation behind you. Good evening, uncle, in that light little accent of yours, an unintended provocation of his basest desires.
“Care to explain – well, all of that?” Laenor hisses. Right. He’d forgotten again. Daemon pushes himself off the ground, brushing the grass off his arse, deliberately stalling while he thought of a response that wasn’t what the fuck how the fuck when the fuck and why.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he responds idly, slyly, glancing over at the man.
“No!” his good-nephew snaps, leaning forward into his space. He is taken aback by the vehemence in his tone, uncharacteristic of the bumbling, affable Velaryon scion. “You don’t get to do this to her, not this one, not this time,” he bites through bared teeth, the promise of vengeance in his eye at the prospect of Daemon daring to lay hands on his young charge.
“Whatever do you think I plan to do to her?” Daemon laughs, wondering at the answer himself. Whatever would you let him do to you? Laenor sighs, steps back; the girls in the garden are looking nervously over at the exchange, a flurry of whispers and intrigued gossip surely flowing from ear to ear.
“Look,” he mutters lowly, lightly nudging him to walk alongside him as they make for the garden’s entry. “She’s not one of your whores, Daemon; she’s just a girl. She’s not the type to play your twisted little games, so leave her be - please.” He is warmed by the defence of your good-brother, an admission of a rapport of familiarity and care that is sure to have flourished since the man’s entrance into the family some years ago.
“What makes you think I have any intention of – how did you put it – playing games with her?” He responds, and perhaps, if he were a little less honest with himself, he would be affronted by the manner in which Laenor had jumped straight to an accusation; but Lord Fleabottom’s reputation is inescapable, even after a decade of absence. “Perhaps my objective is pure and wholesome, an absent uncle reuniting with his little niece.”
“Right,” Laenor snorts, shaking his head as he folds his hands behind his back. “You’re far more likely to fall in with her horde of suitors than to believably claim familial interest, my Prince.”
And there’s a thought. It irritates him that Laenor of all people is the one to introduce the notion. And why should he not? Viserys has been pressuring him to seek a wife since the untimely death of his bronze bitch, going so far as to give him leave to cloak a highborn Pentoshi girl in red and black, not that he’d sully his bloodline with spicemonger’s ilk. If his brother was truly that desperate for him to wed, why ever would he not grant leave to pursue the best – nay, the only – possible bride for a Prince of House Targaryen? He can see it now – your sweet little face peering up at him, marked with his blood, lip dripping red with the pledge of entangling their souls together in savage Valyrian custom; your pretty little eyes wide with maidenly shock as he breaches your untried cunt, tight and pulsing and hotwetwarm, binding you to him irrevocably; the slow waddling of your gait as you round with child, his child, his sweetest babe bringing forth life of her own, belly ripe with seed and leaking his spend –
“Laenor,” he says slowly, eyes glinting as his lips upturn in a wide grin, “I do believe you have the best ideas.”
Read the story on AO3 here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/42100623/chapters/105793659
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