Chapter 3: Master of Laws
You step between Dark Sister and the Kingsguard before you have time to think about whether it's a good idea.
It isn't. You know that the moment your boots hit the sand. Behind you, Daemon has come down off Caraxes with his blade bare and rippling smoke-dark in the noon light, and in front of you forty gold cloaks have raised their swords, and over all of it the Blood Wyrm has lowered his great red head and begun to make a sound like a kettle coming to the boil in the bottom of a well.
"Ser Harrold," you say.
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard is an old man with a white beard and tired eyes, and he looks at you the way a decent man looks at a situation he would very much like to be somewhere else for. "My lady."
"Am I under arrest?"
"No, my lady. You're to be escorted to your betrothed."
"I have no betrothed. The contract my uncle carries is a forgery, and I have proof of it in the raven book of Hartmere, copied in my maester's hand and sealed with my house's seal." You keep your voice level and clear and pitched to carry, the way your father taught you to speak to the garrison when the storms came in. "I'm a lady of the realm, ser. I have the right to put my petition before the King. You can escort me to the throne room, or you can escort me to Lord Celtigar. But if you choose the second, you'll have to explain to His Grace why you did it before he'd seen my evidence."
Ser Harrold looks at you. He looks at Daemon, behind you, who has not lowered his sword one inch. He looks at Caraxes, who has started to drool something that hisses where it hits the sand.
"The throne room," he says, "seems wise."
"Harrold," your uncle splutters. "The Hand's orders…"
"The Hand," says Ser Harrold, "is not the King."
Behind you, very quietly, Daemon slides Dark Sister home. As you pass him he leans down, just slightly, his breath warm against your ear.
"I had that," he murmurs.
"You had forty swords pointed at you."
"I've had worse odds."
"Not with me standing in front of them," you say, and keep walking, and you hear him laugh under his breath behind you.
The throne room is fuller than it was three days ago. Word travels fast in the Red Keep. Every lord in the city seems to have found a reason to be here, crammed along the galleries and pressed against the pillars, whispering behind their hands. You catch fragments as you pass. His ward. All night. On the dragon. Hartmere. Unmarriageable.
Somebody's going to write a song about this, you think, and it'll be filthy.
Viserys looks even more tired than last time. Otto Hightower stands at his shoulder, white around the mouth. And Lord Celtigar sits on a bench to the side, ancient and gaunt and swaddled in furs, peering at you with a look of damp anticipation that makes your skin crawl.
Your uncle presents his contract. He does it well. He's practiced. The parchment is fine, the ink is good, the seal at the bottom is your father's merman-and-harp pressed deep into dark green wax. It's dated the day before Bloodstone. Lord Celtigar's name is written out in full in a fine clerk's hand: Bartimos of House Celtigar, Lord of Claw Isle, Master of Laws.
The court murmurs. Otto nods slowly, gravely, like a man watching justice done.
Then it's your turn.
You don't give a speech. You'd planned one, three days ago, at an inn on the Street of Seeds. You don't need it now. You just unwrap the oilcloth and lay Benifer's ledger open on the steps of the Iron Throne, and you read your father's letter aloud.
You will not touch the harbor accounts. You will not speak for my daughter. If I fall, Hartmere is hers.
Your voice doesn't shake. Not once. You're proud of that.
When you've finished there's a silence. Your uncle has gone pale. But he rallies fast, the way men like him always do. "A private letter," he says. "Written in anger, months earlier. It proves nothing about what my brother signed later."
"No," you agree. "It doesn't. This does."
You hold up his own contract. You turn it so the King can see the line you're pointing at.
"Master of Laws," you say. "Lord Celtigar was named Master of Laws a fortnight ago, Your Grace. By your own hand. Eighteen days after my father died at Bloodstone." You look at your uncle. "So I'd very much like to know, ser, how a dead man knew about it."
The silence in the throne room is so total that you hear Celtigar's furs creak as he shifts on his bench.
Your uncle opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.
Viserys looks down at the parchment for a long time. Then he looks at Otto. Then, finally, wearily, he looks at his brother, who is leaning against a pillar at the back of the hall with his arms crossed, not even pretending not to enjoy himself.
"Ser Cassor Harte," the King says, "will be held in the black cells until the matter of this forgery has been examined." He rubs his eyes. "And Hartmere, its harbor, its holdings and its tariffs, are confirmed to the lady in her own right. As heir to her father, with no guardian required." He waves a hand, as though to clear smoke. "Daemon. Your wardship is dissolved. Congratulations. You've managed a full three days."
Laughter ripples through the galleries. Gold cloaks lead your uncle out, still spluttering. Lord Celtigar mutters something to his servant and is helped away. Otto Hightower stands very still at the King's shoulder, his face carefully, perfectly blank, and you watch him look at Daemon across the hall, and Daemon look back, and you'd swear the temperature in the room drops.
Then it's over. You're the Lady of Hartmere. In your own right. In front of Otto Hightower. Everything you wanted.
You turn around to find Daemon.
He's gone.
You find him in his rooms, packing.
He's not doing it well. There's a saddlebag on the long table and he's throwing things into it more or less at random: a shirt, a dagger, a rolled map of the Stepstones, a flask. He doesn't look up when you come in, though you know he heard you. He always hears.
"You're leaving," you say.
"Dragonstone. For a while." He shoves the map in harder than it needs. "My brother will want me out of his sight after today. Otto will want me out of the realm. I'll save them both the trouble of asking."
"And you weren't going to say goodbye."
"You got what you wanted," he says, still not looking at you. "Your keep, your harbor, your name. You said you'd walk out of the wardship and never be anyone's anything again." He buckles the bag. "I'm making it easy."
You stand in the doorway and look at him. The great Rogue Prince, the terror of the Stepstones, tying knots in a saddle strap like it owes him money, refusing to raise his eyes.
"You're a coward," you say.
His hands stop.
"You walked into that throne room three days ago and took me in front of the whole court because my father asked you to. Fine. I understand debts. But that's paid now. You don't owe him anything." You step inside and shut the door behind you. "So tell me why you're running."
He turns. And for the first time since you met him, he looks unsure. Not dangerous, not amused, not cool. Just a man standing by a half-packed bag with no idea what to do with his hands.
"Your father asked me to protect you," he says, low. "He didn't ask me to want you."
The fire crackles.
"I've wanted a great many things," Daemon says. "I usually take them. I usually ruin them. I took a seat on the Small Council and lost it. I took the Stepstones and the crown they gave me and I didn't want either a week later. I've been married. I made a mess of that too." His jaw works. "You're the first thing I've wanted that I'd rather leave than spoil."
You cross the room. You take the saddlebag out of his hands, and you put it on the floor, and you push it under the table with your foot.
"I'm the Lady of Hartmere," you say. "In my own right. Nobody gets to decide anything for me anymore. Not my uncle. Not the King. Not you." You put your hands on his chest. His heart is going hard under your palm. "So I'm going to decide. I want you. Not as a guardian. Not as a debt. I want the man who stood next to me like he'd been there all along. And if you spoil it, I'll have Benifer write it down, and I'll read it out to you every day until you fix it."
For a long moment he just looks at you.
Then he laughs. Low, helpless, rough, like something breaking loose inside him. And he takes your face in his hands and kisses you.
It's different from the night at Hartmere. That was grief and hunger and choice. This is slower, sweeter, darker, the kiss of a man who thought he'd lost something and found it on his doorstep. He backs you toward the long table with the maps, and you let him, and when your hips hit the edge he lifts you onto it and stands between your knees and kisses your throat until you're gasping.
"Daemon."
"Mm."
"The Stepstones," you manage. "We're on top of the Stepstones."
He glances down at the map crumpling under you. "So we are." He sounds amused. He sounds pleased. "Fitting."
He undresses you on top of the war that made you meet. He does it with his mouth as much as his hands, his teeth grazing the curve of your shoulder, his tongue tracing the line of your collarbone, his fingers working the laces of your gown loose until it slips down your arms and he can bend his head to your breasts. You arch into him. You pull his shirt over his head and run your hands down his scarred back, and when you find the waist of his breeches and work them open, he swears in High Valyrian, a short, soft, filthy word you don't know but understand perfectly.
He takes you right there, on the edge of the table, one arm around your waist to hold you to him and the other braced on Bloodstone. He moves slowly at first, deep and deliberate, his eyes locked on yours, then harder as you urge him on with your heels and your hands and his name, until the table rocks and a wine cup topples and rolls across the Narrow Sea and drops off the edge of the world.
You come with your face pressed into his shoulder and his hand fisted in your hair. He follows with a sound you'll remember for the rest of your life, low and broken and startled, as if nobody has ever done this to him before, as if he's never let anyone close enough.
After, he carries you to his bed, and you don't leave it until long after dark.
The raven comes near midnight.
You're half asleep against his chest when the knock sounds. His steward, apologetic, bearing a small rolled letter sealed with the three-headed dragon of the King. Daemon breaks the seal one-handed, his other arm still around you, and reads it in the firelight.
You watch his face. It goes very still.
"What is it?" you ask.
He doesn't answer for a long moment. Then he hands it to you without a word.
It's in Viserys's own hand. It's short. It informs his brother that, in light of recent events and the unseemly rumors attached to them, and in the interest of the realm's peace and the Velaryon alliance, a marriage has been arranged.
Prince Daemon Targaryen is to wed the Lady Laena Velaryon on Driftmark at the next full moon.
You look up. Daemon is already watching you, his violet eyes dark and unreadable in the firelight.
"Well, my lady," he says softly, and drops the letter into the fire. "How would you feel about making the King very, very angry?"