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

Chapter 42: Revealing

Daemon had stared wide-eyed at Jaehaerys throughout this spiel, breathless. His grandfather rarely ever spoke of those that had come before him, no doubt memories tainted by pain and sorrow. To hear him talk now of figures that had only ever been nightmares in the mind of a little boy was everything he had ever wished for.

"Our greatness comes from our legacy," the old King had said. "What remains when we are gone. House Targaryen is all that endures of the Dragonriders of old. We honour the Old Ways, and in doing so, keep the memory of our ancestors alive. We all have a choice: to commit acts of mercy and kindness, or to revel in violence and anarchy. Each of us has something of ourselves to leave behind when we depart this earth. And so, I ask you this, my boy—what will your legacy be?"

Once, Daemon had thought it to be the very carnage and chaos his grandfather had warned him against; a life of bloodshed and suffering, a trail of bodies and blood that would imprint him upon the pages of history as a reprobate of volatility and fickleness. The old man sensed the propensity for madness in him even then. Each swing of the sword or temper-induced rage levied against those he ought to have been loyal to... All reminders of his failure, of his betrayal of everything his kekepa had valued most. The shame of it had settled like poison in his blood, fuelling a ceaseless cycle of ruin and self-loathing.

Until you.

He knows better now. Turning his head to look upon your sleeping form beside him, he wonders at the life he has been granted by whichever higher power thought to give him such a reward—a life he sometimes finds himself ill-deserving of.

A babe, he thinks. She's carrying my babe.

You lay on your back with your legs curled under you, lips parted and supple skin bared to the night. He cannot help but to trail his gaze down to the paunch of your belly. It shouldn't be possible to see the signs so early, he knows that. But, as he places his palm over your midriff, firmer now than it ever had been, he can see the rounding of your womb beneath the trace plumpness that lingers still from juvenescence.

My precious niece, my sweetest little wife—mother to my heir.

You are luminous in the light, illuminated by a pinprick of flame from the candle on your bedside, struck hours previous when you had intended to read before your slumber. He'd watched you from the corner of his vision with thinly veiled pretence at perusing his own tome, utterly fixated upon the living, breathing marvel of his baby bride with a belly full of child. Gradually, that book of yours had dropped lower and lower against your chest, your grip slacking as the fatigue of creating new life set in yet again.

He had removed the heavy thing from you near as soon as you'd slumped wholly into the pillows, smiling unbidden at the insensible grumble you'd emitted when the pages had ruffled at the action. At some point, you had grizzled awake, stumbling off the bed to yank your shift off heated flesh and returning to his side with nary a word to be said, relaxing immediately back into sleep.

This is the legacy he shall leave when he is dust upon the wind. If he is to be remembered at all, let it be for this: for the devotion he bears for you; for the emotion that already thrives sharp and stinging in his chest for the babe he is yet to know; for the family he has built and will defend with all the rage and fervour and derangement he holds within his soul.

"Kepus?"

He glances up at you, at your frowning face and slitted eyes too heavy to open fully.

"Did I wake you?" he asks, an apology in all but name.

When he moves to withdraw his hand from your skin, your own slides across your hip to hold him there, fingers warm against his wrist.

"No." You swallow, smacking your lips drowsily. "Breasts hurt."