Terms of Endearment │Part I: The Princess and the Rogue

Chapter 9: Homecoming

"I ran into the girl you were using tonight, my Prince. Did you not like this one?"

"She was fine." Daemon ignores Mysaria as she rests beside him and idly trails her hand down his exposed chest.

So often, such a motion carries with it the hazard of something proprietary, possessive, a claim upon his person from one far too lowborn to have the right of such importunity. Not now, though. She understands the way of things.

"I worked hard to procure her for you. Valyrian stock is difficult to come by, even in Pentos."

"She was no Valyrian."

He pushes her hand away and walks back inside, cursing himself for doing away with the wine so early. It may be shit, but at least it gets me drunk well enough.

Collapsing on the chair, he closes his eyes and tilts his head back, hoping the woman will give up quickly.

"What ails you this evening, Daemon?"

Fuck. He glances back up at her, abjectly noticing her concern for him etched in her features. She is beautiful this evening, his whore, sumptuous frame garbed in blood-red and mysterious eyes lined in thick kohl.

She treads forward, standing before him and placing her hand upon his crown. "You have been unlike yourself all afternoon."

The urge to fight drains from him. He jerks his head towards the nearby desk where the source of all his issues lay opened, waiting for a new reader to claim the words upon its pages. He says nothing as she saunters over to read its contents—merely resumes staring at the back of his own eyelids, listening to the sound of the parchment ruffle as she adjusts it.

"The Princess Rhaenyra has been delivered of another son—Joffrey, of House Velaryon."

The sound of the words spoken aloud is enough to bring his anger back. Mine, that should be my son, not that pillowbiter's or that fucking Strong cunt—

"Oh—and your little niece has begun receiving suitors."

Daemon pauses in his tirade. He hadn't noticed that little piece of news upon first reading Viserys's letter.

"Which one?" he asks her. There's three now, isn't there? Or is it four?

"The second one," Mysaria says.

An echoing indignation throbs through him. Not my girl, my sweetling, she is too young—

You were a child when he was exiled for the final time, having at last outlived Viserys's seemingly infinite patience with that business with Rhaenyra.

Fucking is a pleasure, you see; for the woman as it is the man.

He swallows at the memory, at the sting of thinking of her hooded eyes and parted lips, the smooth suppleness of her collarbone as he'd unbuttoned that ridiculous longshirt, her sighs and the feel of her wet between slender thighs—

No. It'd only make him angry again.

He turns his contemplations back to where it is safe. Back to you, his little princess. If his memories of Rhaenyra are tainted by the years of lust and longing and the chance of a love thwarted long ago, then you remain perhaps the only pure thing from his youth. Purity. 'Tis fitting, surely. There had always been an innate innocence to you that none other had possessed, a profound incorruptibility that evoked some long-repressed desire to be something more than the rogue he was.

He'd never really fathomed where you'd found such goodness in a world made for depravity and destruction. Rhaenyra was easy enough to understand—she'd been a reflection of himself, like looking into a mirror and finding the contents skewed slightly. Ambition, wanderlust, the bite of debauchery lurking below the otherworldly godliness of Valyrian features, concealing their baser natures from the world. But you—you were an oddity of the bloodline, strangely sweet and yet shrewd, sharp, a hidden fire waiting for fuel to light the blaze.