Chapter 3: Claiming His Bride
The air in the bridal chamber tasted of salt and cold stone, undercut by the sweet, cloying scent of the beeswax candles guttering in their dragonbone sconces. Crimson silk draped the walls, swallowing the sound of the sea roaring far below. The great bed, carved from the same dark stone as the castle itself, was heaped with furs and pillows of grey and black. It looked less like a place of rest and more like an altar.
Naerys stood just inside the door, her wedding gown a waterfall of pale silver samite. The ceremony had been a blur of green-eyed scowls from the Queen, the tired blessing of the King, and Daemon’s unreadable violet gaze fixed upon her throughout. Lord Tyland had looked relieved. Helaena had whispered something about "threads knotted too tight" before being led away.
Now, alone with him, the silence was a living thing.
Daemon closed the door with a soft, definitive thud. The iron latch fell into place. He stood against it for a moment, studying her. He had shed his ceremonial leathers and wore only a dark tunic and breeches. He looked more like a warrior come from the yard than a groom.
“You’re shaking,” he observed, his voice low.
She wasn’t sure she was, until she looked down at her hands, clenched in the silver fabric. A fine tremor ran through them. From cold, or fear, or the sheer, terrifying reality of it all.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, and the words sounded true enough to her own ears.
A ghost of something passed over his face. “You should be.”
He pushed away from the door and crossed the room. He didn’t go to the bed. He went to the high, narrow window, looking out at the moonlit churn of the sea. “Aegon,” he said, the name a curse on the salt air. “Did he hurt you? That day in the throne room.”
Naerys remembered the damp thumb, the wine-sour breath. The helpless fury. “He touched me. It was… it was like being handled. Like a thing.”
Daemon’s back tightened. The muscles in his shoulders corded beneath the linen. “And now you are handled by me.”
“It’s not the same.”
He turned. His eyes in the candlelight were like dark amethysts, full of a simmering, dangerous heat. “Isn’t it?”
He came toward her then, not with Aegon’s drunken stagger, but with the liquid, predatory grace of a panther. She held her ground as he stopped before her, so close she could smell the leather and smoke on him, a scent that was uniquely his.
His hands came up, but they didn’t grasp. They hovered near her temples, where the intricate silver net held her hair. With a careful, almost delicate touch, he began to unpin it. One by one, the pins came free, clattering softly to the stone floor. The weight of her hair, moon-pale and straight, cascaded down her back.
“This,” he murmured, his fingers sliding through the strands, combing them loose. “This is what he wanted. This is what she wanted to barter.” His voice was rough. “My blood. My…” He didn’t finish.
His hands left her hair and went to the fastenings of her gown. They were tiny, delicate pearls. His own fingers, calloused from sword and dragon scale, fumbled for a moment. A tremor ran through them—a slight, betraying shake that vanished as soon as it appeared. He tore his gaze from hers, focusing on the task. With a soft ripping sound, a few threads gave way. He didn’t care.
The gown slipped from her shoulders, pooling at her feet in a whisper of expensive fabric. The cool air of the chamber touched her skin, raising gooseflesh. Beneath, she wore only a simple shift of ivory silk. She was exposed, vulnerable, standing in the center of the room as he stepped back to look at her.
His eyes burned. There was no drunken leer in his gaze, only a fierce, consuming intensity. He saw her. All of her. The slight frame, the curve of her hips barely softened by womanhood, the pale peaks of her breasts visible through the thin shift.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word raw and reverent.
He closed the distance again, and this time his hands found her waist. They were warm, large, spanning her completely. He lowered his head, his forehead touching hers. His breath was hot on her lips.
“This will hurt,” he warned, no gentleness in the statement, only fact.
Before she could answer, his mouth captured hers.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was a claiming. His lips were demanding, urgent, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with a possessive heat that made her gasp. One hand slid up her spine, into her hair, gripping it tightly, angling her head to deepen the kiss. The other stayed locked on her waist, holding her flush against him. She could feel the hard, unyielding planes of his body, the rigid proof of his desire pressing against her belly through his breeches.
A shockwave of feeling tore through her—fear, yes, but beneath it, a darker, thrilling current of something she had no name for. It was like standing on the battlements in a storm. Terrifying. Exhilarating.
He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. Without a word, he hooked his fingers in the neckline of her shift and pulled. The silk tore like parchment, baring her completely to the waist. She cried out, a short, sharp sound of surprise, but he swallowed it with another searing kiss.
His hands were everywhere. Roughened palms cupped her breasts, his thumbs dragging over her nipples until they hardened into tight, aching peaks. He broke from her mouth to trail hot, open-mouthed kisses down her throat, over her collarbone, lower. He took one peaked bud into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue swirling around it. A jolt of pure, electric sensation shot straight to her core. She gasped, her fingers tangling in his silver-gold hair, not to push him away, but to hold on.
He worshipped her body with a starved, single-minded focus. His mouth was relentless, moving from one breast to the other, biting, licking, sucking until she was whimpering, her legs trembling. He dropped to his knees before her, his hands sliding down over her hips, gripping the torn remnants of her shift and dragging them down her legs. The cool air touched the junction of her thighs, and she flinched.
Daemon looked up at her, his face a mask of raw hunger. “So perfect,” he growled, his voice thick. “All mine.” He didn’t ask. He parted her with his thumbs, and before she could comprehend his intent, his mouth was on her.
The intimacy was so shocking, so profound, she cried out. His tongue was a hot, wet, merciless thing, licking a slow, deliberate path through her folds. He found the sensitive, throbbing nub of flesh there and sucked it gently, then not so gently. Pleasure, sharp and unbearable, lanced through her. Her knees buckled, but his hands on her hips held her upright, forcing her to accept the wet, wicked stroke of his tongue.
“Daemon…,” she moaned, the name a plea for something she didn’t understand.
He answered by driving his tongue inside her, fucking her with it, before returning to that aching peak. The coiled tension in her belly tightened, unbearable, terrifying. Her world narrowed to the hot, relentless pressure of his mouth. She shattered with a broken cry, her body convulsing against his face as waves of release crashed through her, leaving her limp and trembling.
He held her through it, his stubble rough against her tender flesh. When her spasms subsided, he rose, his own need etched harshly on his face. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her to the massive bed, laying her down on the furs. He stripped his own clothes with hurried, impatient movements, revealing a body honed by war and dragonflight—lean muscle, old scars, and the fierce, thick evidence of his arousal.
He came over her, covering her body with his. The weight of him was crushing, anchoring. He kissed her again, and she could taste herself on his lips, salty and intimate.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a guttural rasp.
She opened her eyes, meeting his fevered violet gaze.
He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad, hot crown of him nudging against her soaked flesh. “This,” he said, holding her gaze, “is the only pain I will ever give you that matters.”
He thrust.
The tearing ache was instant, blinding. A single, searing point of agony that made her arch off the bed with a sharp, stifled scream. Tears welled and spilled over, tracing silver paths down her temples into her hair. He went still, buried deep inside her, his body rigid with the effort of holding back.
“Breathe,” he gritted out, his own breath coming in harsh pants. “Just breathe, Naerys.”
She obeyed, sucking in a ragged gasp. The initial sharpness began to recede, melting into a deep, full ache. He was inside her. A part of him, in a part of her. The violation was absolute. The union was complete.
He began to move.
Slowly, at first, with a torturous, rocking cadence that stretched her, filled her beyond thought. Each withdrawal was a loss, each return a claiming. Her tears kept flowing, but the sounds she made changed. The cries of pain became fractured moans, caught in her throat.
“That’s it,” he growled, his pace increasing. “Take me. Take all of me.”
His thrusts grew harder, deeper, driving the breath from her lungs. The bed frame, ancient and solid, began to creak in protest. He hooked an arm under her knee, hiking her leg higher, opening her wider, changing the angle. The new depth made her cry out, but the pain was now inextricably woven with a startling, rising pleasure. The friction of him moving within her, the relentless pressure, stoked the embers he had ignited with his mouth back into a flame.
He fucked her with a desperate, driving rhythm, his hips hammering against hers. The slapping sound of their joining was obscene in the quiet room, mingling with their ragged breaths and her soft, staccato whimpers. Sweat sheened his skin, gleaming in the candlelight. He was a dragon above her, fierce and beautiful in his abandon.
“You feel like heaven,” he choked out, his control fraying. “Tight and sweet and mine. All fucking mine.”
His words, filthy and possessive, poured over her like hot oil, feeding the fire inside. She moved her hips, tentatively at first, then with more urgency, meeting his thrusts. The sensation was overwhelming, a violent, delicious friction that coiled the tension in her belly anew, tighter, hotter.
“Come for me again,” he demanded, his voice raw. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”
The crude command, the relentless pounding of his body into hers, tipped her over the edge. Her second climax crashed into her with a force that stole her sight and sound. Her inner muscles clamped around him in rhythmic, pulsing waves, milking his length.
With a hoarse, guttural shout, he drove into her one last, devastating time and spilled his seed deep inside her. His release was hot and endless, flooding her, claiming her in the most primitive way possible. He collapsed onto her, his weight a welcome burden, his face buried in the crook of her neck. His heart hammered against her own, a frantic, syncopated beat.
They lay like that for long minutes, connected, slick with sweat and release. The only sounds were the crackle of the dying fire and the distant roar of the sea.
Finally, he softened and slipped from her body. He moved to her side, pulling her against him, her back to his chest. His arm wrapped around her, his hand splaying possessively over her stomach. The place between her thighs ached with a dull, sore throb. The scent of sex and salt filled the air.
He kissed the top of her shoulder, a surprisingly tender gesture. “No one,” he whispered into her skin, his voice frayed and quiet. “No one will ever touch you like that again. You are mine. In blood. In law. In this.”
She lay still, her mind a blank canvas. The fear was gone, burned away in the crucible of their joining. What remained was a deep, exhausted calm, and a secret, taking root in the silence.
Her hand drifted down, resting over his on her belly. The truth sat on her tongue, heavy as a stone. He thought he had taken something. He had no idea he had planted something else entirely.
“Daemon,” she whispered into the dark.
“Hmm?”
She closed her eyes, the words leaving her lips as soft as a sigh, carrying a truth she did not yet understand. “I dreamed of a dragon.”
The silence that followed her words was different from before. It was watchful, charged. Daemon’s hand went still on her belly.
“What sort of dragon?” he asked, his voice raspy against her ear.
“Red,” she murmured, sinking back into the drowsy haze of spent passion and exhaustion. “Wings like a sunset. It was flying over a city… but the city was black, burnt.”
He said nothing for a long time. His breathing evened out behind her. When he spoke again, the edge was back. “Dreams are just dreams.”
But his tone suggested he didn’t believe that. Not for Targaryens. She wondered if he was thinking of her silver hair, her violet eyes. The marks she bore, not from him, but from a bloodline they pretended was only shared, not direct.
“Sleep,” he commanded, his arm tightening around her.
And she did.
Morning on Dragonstone was a grey, roaring thing. Light seeped through the high, narrow windows not in rays, but in a dull pewter glow. The sea’s constant growl was the castle’s heartbeat. Naerys woke alone in the vast bed, her body a map of new aches. The space beside her was cold, but the indentation of his head remained on the pillow.
She found him in the map room, not at the Painted Table, but standing before a window, a cup of something steaming in his hand. He wore simple black, his hair tied back. He looked like a lord, not a consort. He looked like her uncle. A flint of discomfort struck her, then faded. He was her husband now.
“They’ve sent a raven from Casterly Rock,” he said without turning. “Your mother. Daena.” He said the name carefully. “She offers her congratulations. And a trunk of your childhood things.”
“Sentiments from a ghost,” Naerys replied, pulling a robe tighter around herself. The stone floor was icy under her bare feet.
He finally glanced at her. His eyes flickered over her face, her tousled hair, the bruised shadow of his own passion on her neck. A possessive satisfaction warmed his gaze. “Your father—Tyland—requests a visit. To assure himself of your… adjustment.”
“And will you allow it?”
Daemon took a sip from his cup. “In time. When I am certain he understands the new geography.” He set the cup down. “Come here.”
She went to him, drawn by the gravity in his voice. He turned her to face the window, standing behind her, his hands settling on her shoulders. Below, the grey sea chewed at the black rocks. In the middle distance, on a jagged promontory, a massive, coiled shape of bronze and green shifted in the morning mist. Vermithor.
“This is your home now,” he said, his mouth near her ear. “Not a gilded cage. A fortress. You are its lady.”
“I don’t know how to be a lady of a fortress.”
“You learn.” One hand slid from her shoulder, down her arm, coming to rest low on her abdomen. The possessiveness of the gesture was absolute. “You will learn by my side. Not as a piece in someone else’s game. As a player in our own.”
His fingers splayed wide. She remembered his seed, the hot flood of it inside her. She wondered if it had taken root already. She thought of the red dragon, and the burnt city.
“And what is our game?” she asked, watching the sleeping dragon.
His laugh was a short, hard sound. “Survival. Then, power. Always power.” He turned her to face him, his violet eyes locking onto hers. “Starting with what’s in this room. With what’s in this bed.”
His kiss this time was less about conquest and more about assertion. A slow, deliberate tasting. When he pulled back, he traced her lower lip with his thumb. “Are you sore?”
The bluntness of the question, the casual intimacy of it, made her face heat. She nodded.
“Good,” he said, and there was no cruelty in it, only a dark pride. “You’ll get used to it. To me.”
Later that day, he showed her Dragonstone. Not the state rooms, but its bones. The smoke-filled caverns where the dragons had once hatched, the vaults lined with ancient stone masks, the wind-scoured battlements that faced the sea. He walked with his hand on the small of her back, a constant, grounding pressure. The servants and guards they passed bowed their heads, not just to him, but to her. Lady of Dragonstone.
Days folded into each other, marked by the tide and Daemon’s moods. He was a restless husband. He would spend hours in the training yard, a blur of steel and sweat, or locked in the Stone Drum tower with his captains, their voices a low rumble. Then he would seek her out, his need a tangible force.
It was rarely gentle. It was hunger.
He would find her in the library, a book open on her lap. Wordlessly, he would take it from her hands, pull her to her feet, and back her against the shelves. His kisses were demanding, his hands urgent under her skirts. “Need to be inside you,” he’d grunt against her neck, fumbling with the laces of his breeches. He would lift her, pinning her to the cold stone with his body, and enter her in one hard, deep stroke. The shelves would rattle with his thrusts, books tumbling around them as she clutched his shoulders, her cries muffled against his tunic.
He took her on the sun-warmed stones of the Sea Dragon Tower, the salt wind whipping around them. He bent her over the carved dragon head that served as a balustrade, hiking her dresses up around her waist. “Look at the sea,” he commanded, his own breath ragged as he pushed into her from behind. She gripped the cold stone, watching the waves crash far below as he pounded into her, each slam driving a gasp from her lungs. He came with a roar lost to the wind, his seed painting her inner thighs before the breeze chilled it.
One afternoon, he returned from flying Caraxes smelling of cold sky and smoke. He stalked into her solar, his eyes blazing with the aftermath of the hunt. Without a word, he swept the parchment and quills from her desk. He sat on the edge, pulled her between his spread knees, and made her ride him.
“Show me,” he demanded, his hands gripping her hips, guiding her, then letting her go. “Take your fucking husband.” She moved tentatively at first, the ache of penetration a familiar threshold now. But as she found a rhythm, rising and falling on his thick length, a new power flickered in her. She watched his face, the control fraying, his lips parting. She leaned forward, brushing her lips over his. “Is this how you like it, my lord?” she breathed, and increased her pace.
He swore, a filthy, beautiful sound, and his hands tightened, slamming her down onto him with new force. “Fuck, yes. Just like that. Use my cock, Naerys. Milk it.”
She came with a sharp cry, her body clenching around him. The sight of her pleasure shattered him. He pulled her down, burying his face in her breasts as his own release ripped through him.
Afterwards, he would often clean her himself, with a cloth and warm water from the basin, his touch unexpectedly tender. He would rub a salve into the bruises his passion left on her hips and thighs. These moments of care, following the raw intensity of their joining, confused her more than the feral sex. They spoke of a devotion that went beyond possession.
He began to talk to her. Not just commands or politics, but of his brother’s weakness, of the “Green Cunts” in King’s Landing scheming, of the Stepstone pirates he longed to crush. He asked her opinion on minor household matters, listening intently to her hesitant answers.
She started to change, too. The quiet, observant girl began to harden at the edges, tempered in the heat of his presence. She walked with a new assurance through the dark halls. She met the eyes of the servants, learned their names. She began to recognize the different pitches in Vermithor’s roars from the cliffs.
One evening, as they shared a simple meal of fish and black bread, she looked at him across the table. The candlelight played on the sharp planes of his face.
“The dream,” she said. “The red dragon. It wasn’t just a dream, was it?”
Daemon set his knife down slowly. He studied her, his expression unreadable. “Targaryens have them. True dreams. Firesight. It’s in our blood.”
“My blood,” she corrected softly, testing the words. “From my mother.”
His eyes flickered. Something guarded closed behind them. “From your mother,” he echoed, but the words felt hollow. “Dreams of dragons can mean many things. Conquest. Death. Birth.” His gaze dropped to her stomach, then snapped back to her face. “You’ve missed your moon blood.”
It wasn’t a question. She held his stare, her heart hammering. She hadn’t told him. She’d barely admitted it to herself.
“I have,” she said, her voice steady.
A slow, fierce smile spread across his face. It was a thing of terrifying beauty, full of triumph and a dark, blazing joy. He rose from the table, came around to her, and knelt beside her chair. He placed his hand, once more, on her belly. This time, the gesture was different. It was a vow.
“Our son,” he said, the words a gravelly promise. “A dragon. He will have the realm.”
Naerys placed her hand over his. She thought of Aegon’s drunken touch, of Alicent’s calculating eyes, of the Iron Throne’s cold blades. She thought of the red dragon, and the city of ash.
“Yes,” she said, and for the first time, she felt the game truly begin, not as a piece, but as a partner. The seed was planted. Now, it would grow in the dark, volcanic soil of Dragonstone.