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certifiedskywalker · 2 years

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Claiming Of Mine - Daemon Targaryen

Yet another banquet at the Vale hosted by House Royce presents you with yet another night with Daemon Targaryen, Prince of the Seven Kingdoms.

“I fear you have caught the eye of a certain, silver-haired guest.”

“If I am correct in which guest you’re speaking of, he looks at everyone like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like he wants to devor you.”

Your pure-circumstance companion scowled at your words. “You paint him with a broad brush.”

“No,” you murmured, averting your eyes from the visiting Lady Evealyn Celtigar of the Claw Isle and her embossed crab-covered dress. Even with the crowd swirling about the hall, it took you but a mere moment to find the piercing eyes of the guest in question. Daemon smirked at you. “I draw him with a fine point quill.”

Grey Lady Evealyn’s eyes widened and her face flushed seashell pink. As her lips pursed and puckered in search for a proper response, you left the Old Crab alone to the quiet corner you had attempted to carve out for yourself. Such solitude was mythic at these banquets, as it seemed the most ill-informed gossip in the Realm always sought to flush you out. Lady Evealyn was simply the most recent in a long line of older Ladies looking to sow rumors for the mill. They were everywhere, peppered throughout the crowd, adding to the number of shining, irksome eyes. There was no shadowy solace in a room gleaming with heedful faces and glittering gems. The grandiose light of nobles danced around the hall, blinding and horribly cajoling.

You had no choice but to fight your way through; but when it came to the beacon that was Daemon Targaryen, you willingly surrendered.

Careful not to take an improper step, you wove through the crowd and towards his brightness. You dipped and bowed whenever a handsome Lord or Lady took pause of you. After a pleasant greeting, you fed them a sorry excuse for your early leave and continued on your journey across the room. At each mannerly stop, you could feel Daemon’s sly smirk spreading across his lips, burning as the source of his light. By the time you reached him on the other end of the hall, he was grinning like a child promised a sweet.

“I see everyone and the Old Crab has taken note of your presence at this vile affair.” His words were ribbing, slanted, and laced with the sweet-sour twinge of the wine he sipped at.

“You sound envious, dear Prince.”

Daemon’s grin pressed itself into a closed-lip smile, one that did not dare reach his narrowed, crystaline eyes. This look you knew as his thin guard against your teasing, not that he would ever admit to needing a guard. No, Daemon was offensive in all manners, your banter included.

“If they knew who the heir to House Grafton bedded, they would sound so very envious,” he leaned down to you, close enough to prompt quick, gossip-starved glances from passersby. “You know how I so enjoy being the talk of these banquets. Shall we spill your secret?”

“Our secret,” you corrected, tipping your chin up to situate your lips daringly close to Daemon’s. His pale brows rose in surprise at your boldness before he put on his airs again.

“Oh, you see, pet,” he drawled, unyielding to your closing proximity, “I hold no secrets. None of my ladies and loves are hidden so. Lest you forget, I am Lord Flea Bottom.”

You fought the wild, burning urge to brush back the stray strands of silver hair that fell across the side of his face as he spoke. Daemon, eyes flicking down along your figure saw the urge in the itch that twitched in your fingers. His grin returned at the sight and you cursed yourself for so revealing your shattering resolve, your own offense dwindling like a dying fire. In an attempt to recover, you straightened your posture to the peak of proprietary.

“Yet none know of me. What does that make me, if not your lady or your love?”

You saw it then, again, what Lady Evealyn Celtigar had refused to see in the Prince’s pointed gaze: hunger. If not for the wine he held and the hoard of Valemen about, Daemon would have shed his skin into red scales akin to Caraxes’ and sunk his claws into your softest flesh. How futile it would be to try to dodge the maw of a keen Dragon. Though, to be devoured by Daemon would be, and was, worth the bite.

“You,” he said, eyes razing over the features of your face, “are simply mine.”

The last words slipped from his lips in a wine-scented whisper before he leaned back. You held eye contact as he brought his chalice up to his mouth. Before he sipped, Daemon tipped the golden rim of it towards you in the smallest of toasts. As if swallowed by flame, heat bloomed across your body at the gesture, the weight of it only for you and he to bear. Your secret.

Before you could collect yourself, Daemon quickly emptied the chalice of wine in one slug and leaned back over towards you. Mellow fruit from the Arbor Red soaked into his lips and you ached to kiss the color from his skin. Rich, woody scents and the smell of cinders distracted you from that cloying want. As did the warmth that burned out from Daemon’s limbs so near you. It was an attack on your resolve, offensive, in the best manner.

“When my lady wife sleeps, I’ll show you what that title means.”

You heard the clinking of the chalice bottom being placed at rest against the table behind you before Daemon pulled back. There was no blush on the high peaks of his cheeks, no starlit glint of mischief in his hawk eyes. Nor was there a smile, of any sort, playing on his lips. The man, no…the Dragon before you was staid, a hunter with his prey marked.

Only at your prolonged silence did Daemon’s lips slightly quirk up at the corners. He had you, and you both knew it, felt it. Granted, you were certain he had always had you. As Daemon wordlessly stalked away, you felt that he was certain in that too.

And that certainty bled into the night, licked at your wounds of waiting. You endured the pestering of fellow banquet guests, including the re-emergence of Lady Evealyn Celtigar from where you left her. She was tipsy and therefore more resigned. Though even resigned, she was talkative, rampant in her chittering about the other Lords and Ladies. The ignorance of the elder head of House Celtigar regarding the culture of the Vale, of King’s Landing, was clear in her romantic optimism.

It took every drop of desire for self-preservation to not search for Daemon while the Old Crab scuddled in and out of conversation. What a relief a simple look from him would deliver to you.

Though, a far greater relief was given when Rhea Royce bid those still assembled in the great hall a farewell. Daemon stood near his wife’s side, his sharp features dark in the torch light. His presence was symbolic only, the shadow of a crowned Dragon looming over this gathering of lesser men. For, if he were truly present, Daemon would be all gnashing teeth and laughter. That was how you met him, so many Vale banquets ago.

The Lady of Runestone made her early escape, Daemon trailing a few paces behind. You watched him go, watched how his hair washed like silver waves over his shoulders. He looked like a dark tide being shrunk by the setting moon as he washed out of the great hall. Further like a tide, you knew Daemon would return eager to sweep you away.

Until then, you had to stay afloat within the less savory political talk that erupted in the hall to fill his absence. Pretense shed, male heirs to the Vale’s great Houses chastised their host for her hapless marriage to the Prince that had yielded no children, no sons for them to ward. For them to groom for their game. At the thought, your stomach twisted.

“Oi! No sons we know of,” shouted one lord.

“Half the bastards of Flea Bottom are of his line,” cried another. “Dirty dragonseed!”

The epithets soared like Dragon fire across the room and burned just the same. Even the mildly drunken, chronically chatty Lady Evealyn felt the scorch of their words and seemed stalled in her merriment. The Old Crab sunk in her seat at what she likely deemed slander, dress of crustaceans crumpling with her. At such a rate, she too would be able to pen a far more accurate picture of Daemon Targaryen. Though, still nowhere near as accurate as yours.

You knew him, his rarest forms and his most base. That was why, when the large, wooden doors to the great hall opened as if to welcome a new arrival, you were not surprised to see Daemon instead of another noble stranger. The crowd about you, however, was shocked silent.

His arms were spread like wings holding the twin, grand doors open. There, centered in the strip of light, he stood, listening to the new quiet that swelled in his presence. After a tense enough pause, he let his arms fall to his side and he started down the main thorofare of the great hall. Daemon’s path was bordered by full tables and the wide, worried eyes of nobles realizing their mistakes.

“Do not settle on my account,” he boomed as he stepped. Dark, shining eyes surveyed the faces around him, marking prey. When you met his gaze, Daemon lingered, but only for a moment. “Talk of your future King, please. Give my bastards life with your words and be tried for treason when I sit on the Iron Throne.”

He stopped in the middle of the great hall as he spoke, chest rising and falling with all the presence you knew him for. A different hunger hung around him. Daemon would hunt every soul sat around him for the sport of it. Every soul save for yours, which he had other plans for.

“I am the blood of the Dragon, and we burn our enemies. I do so hope you will not find yourselves amoungst the pillars of ash.”

Stillness eeked through the crowd, with lords and ladies watching Daemon watch them. As he drank in the fear, the harsh glare he wore morphed into a lizard’s smile. He was enjoying this, just as he said he would.

Before he could bask further in the silence he wrought, a sharp, singular bloom of applause sprouted. You turned your head and saw Lady Evealyn, eyes wide and thin arms quaking as she clapped for Prince Daemon. Following the lead of their matriarch, the remaining House Celtigar envoys joined the chorus. Before long, and looking to buy themselves even a modicum of safety, the rest of the captive audience applauded. Even those of House Royce, under the thumb of Daemon’s wife Rhea clapped, though notably less committed.

The Prince threw his arms up and out as if soaking up the sound. His head threw back and his hair spilled over his shoulders. He looked glorious, kingly, and arrogant. Eventually, he gave a wave of his hands and the crowd fizzled its noise back into its rumbling chatter. Though, the name of Daemon Targaryen fell only then with niceties from noble lips.

“He could conquer Dorne with a mouth like that!”

“Fire and Blood!”

It was a wonder, how swiftly the minds of men could change with the right motivation.

“Perhaps the Vale can be redeemed after all.” At the sound of his voice growing nearer, you looked from the manic men about you and to Daemon. He approached you, shoulders back and face tilted up. He looked as he did on the back of Caraxes. Natural and wild.

Daemon kept walking, forcing you into the alcove carved out behind you. Shadows hugged you both as the noise of the hall was lessened by stone walls. You hummed at the dimmed sight of him, how he peered down at you through slightly hooded eyes that glinted still, despite the dark.

“The Vale is in need of redeeming in your opinion?”

Daemon lifted his right hand and you caught the glimmer of his rings in the far off torch light. The back of his fingers brushed against your cheek with a startling tenderness. His skin was warm against yours, a stark contast to the cool masonry that dug into your back.

“Some parts, yes,” he murmured, taking one last step towards you. His heat enveloped you, with his chest pressed to yours. Each breath he took, you felt as your own. “Not you.”

“I’m honored,” you said, a smile spilling over your lips as you tipped your chin up towards Daemon’s. “On the behalf of House Grafton, of course.”

“Of course,” Daemon replied, leaning down to capture your lips with his. At last.

His touch was a fervor. The kiss was a mess, wet, and wine-tasting. Steadiness came only when Daemon’s hand lifted to grip your chin, holding it still. Your hands rose up along his chest, grazing the red-thread, embroidered dragon bodies sown into the black fabric. Fingertips curled into the collar of his tunic and held him close.

“Mine,” one of you mumbled, voices melding in the dimness.

“Yours,” the other replied before you moved through the shadows and out of the great hall, becoming one within the dark.

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