continued // @knightcrowned
I have followed orders my entire life. I am looking at you and wondering, for the first time, what it would mean to refuse one. (jorah and daeron)
"And what is it, brother," the word tasted bitter on his tongue. "that makes mine so different?"
His hand clenched, and for a moment he turned his back on Jorah, looking instead out the window across the city, as though answers could be found in the horizon.
"You think that because I am plain, because I am not a swordsman, because I am not like my father, that I am unfit to rule." he looked back at Jorah. "You need not say it. Enough men have. But I sit in my father's throne, that was his father's before him, and I will not waver. Do not defy me, ser."
When he was young, Jorah would have given anything for Daeron to treat him as a son, the way he treated Mariah as a daughter. He never had; Daeron had ignored him, and barely treated him as a brother. It had broken his heart, over and over, and then, when he thought he no longer cared, he learned the ugly truth of why his mother and the King seemed so close.
For all the years in which Jorah had tried and failed to earn the love that his sister was so freely given, Daeron had had their mother in his bed. Even that had not been enough to make him act as though he loved both of her children, not just the one in which he saw no threat. And Myriah had known all along. Neither Daeron's wife nor his mistress had cared enough to make him treat both twins the same.
Fine. He had wanted Mariah as a daughter, and not Jorah as a son. Jorah didn't need him; he had his own father, the one they were cursed to share. But now, for Daeron to claim their father as his alone, to deny him even that?
"Our father." Jorah tried to keep his voice low. "He was my father too, not just yours. And it's not about you not being a swordsman, it's - " He bit back the end of the sentence, shook his head sharply. "Doesn't matter. You're the King, and I'm just one of the bastards you never wanted to deal with, isn't that right? Only you had to, because you turned my mother into your whore and that meant you were stuck with me as much as I was stuck with you. So you'll forgive me if, no, I don't particularly want to just do as you say. Your Grace."
For a moment, he was himself taken aback. He had always been careful - to keep his mouth shut, and his head down, and his true thoughts to himself. But he set his jaw and glared at his eldest brother just the same. He would not apologize.
