Chapter 3: The Dragon's Reward
The silence in their chambers was a thick, living thing. It had settled in the days since the wedding feast, a third occupant that followed them from the solar to the bedchamber, sitting with them at meals, lying between them in the vast bed. Naerys filled her days with duty: attending petitions with her mother, walking the gardens with Helaena, studying histories in the library. And she rode.
The wind over the Blackwater was the only thing that felt clean. On the back of her dragon, Shrykos, a slender she-dragon the color of jade and bronze, she could outpace the whispers, the looks, the crushing weight of expectation. The dragon’s mind, a vast furnace of instinct and sky-longing, welcomed her without judgment. For an hour, she could forget the taste of wine on her husband’s tongue, the slickness between her thighs, the memory of his breath in her ear.
She returned as the sun began to dip, staining the sky the color of a bruise. The tower corridors were quiet. Her riding leathers, smelling of smoke and high air, felt like a second skin she was reluctant to shed. She pushed open the door to their rooms.
The scene was staged, deliberate. Aegon lay sprawled naked across the coverlet of his bed, one arm thrown over his eyes. The other hand was curled loosely around his cock, which was half-hard against his thigh. A goblet of wine sat on the floor beside him, next to a plate holding the picked-clean bones of a capon. The room smelled of him—citrus oil, wine, and a musky, animal laziness.
He didn’t move as she entered, but his lips curved. “I heard the wings. Like a great leathery sail tearing.” His voice was a sleepy drawl.
Naerys closed the door, leaning back against it. She watched him, this stranger who was her twin, her husband. His body was a map of idle strength, all lean muscle and pale skin. A thin trail of silver-gold hair led from his navel to his groin. She felt a flush that had nothing to do with the remnants of the flight. It was anger, she told herself. Only anger.
“You missed the Small Council again,” she said, her voice flat. She began to unbuckle the stiff leather vambrace from her forearm, the metal clicking softly.
“Did I?” He didn’t sound interested. His fingers gave a lazy stroke to his shaft, which twitched and thickened under his touch. “What vital matters did I forfeit? The taxation of turnips in the Reach? The precise width of a lord’s hat brim?”
“The reconstruction of the watchtowers along the Stepstones. Pirates are taking advantage of the season.” She tossed the vambrace onto a chair. It landed with a heavy thud.
“Let the pirates have them.” His hand moved again, a slow, maddening rhythm. “Rocks and sand and shit. Not worth the coins it would cost to rebuild.”
Naerys unlaced the front of her leather tunic, her movements sharp. “It’s not about the rocks. It’s about the principle. The crown’s presence. Your presence.” She shrugged the tunic off, standing in her thin linen undershirt and breeches. The cool air of the room prickled her skin.
He peeked from under his arm, his violet eyes glinting. “My presence is required here, it seems.” His gaze traveled over her, lingering on the swell of her breasts under the linen, the curve of her hips in the riding breeches. “You look like a dirty stableboy.”
“And you look like a cheap whore waiting for a customer.”
He laughed, a genuine sound of amusement that surprised her. “Only one customer I’m interested in.” He removed his arm from his face, propping himself up on his elbows. His cock was fully erect now, jutting proudly from a nest of pale hair. He didn’t cover himself. “Come here.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a challenge, wrapped in that familiar, infuriating arrogance.
She should have turned away. She should have called for a bath, should have gone to the Maester’s tower, should have done anything but cross the room. But her feet moved, carrying her to the edge of the bed. Her own breath felt tight in her chest.
He reached out with his wine-wet hand and grabbed the front of her undershirt, pulling her closer. His other hand continued to stroke himself, a slow, hypnotic motion. “You’re all windblown and righteous,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on hers. “Did riding your dragon make you feel powerful, Naerys? Did it make you forget you’re just another piece on the board?”
She slapped his hand away. “Fuck you.”
“That’s the idea.” His grin was wolfish. He let go of himself and instead gripped the waistband of her breeches, yanking her forward so she stumbled, knees hitting the edge of the mattress. Before she could right herself, his fingers were on the laces, undoing them with a deft, impatient pull.
“Stop—” she began, but it was a weak protest, swallowed as he tugged the breeches and her smallclothes down her thighs in one rough motion. The cool air hit her bare skin, and she gasped.
He didn’t let her step back. He manhandled her, turning her, pushing her so she was facing away from him, bent over the edge of the bed. His hands gripped the cheeks of her arse, squeezing hard. “Look at you,” he breathed, and she could hear the raw hunger in his voice. It mirrored the sudden, shocking wetness between her own legs. “All that high talk, and here you are.”
She braced her hands on the coverlet, her face burning. She felt exposed, vulnerable, more so than on their wedding night. This was not a duty performed in darkness. This was daylight debasement.
He didn’t enter her. Not yet. He spread her open with his thumbs, looking his fill. She shut her eyes tight. She felt his breath, then the wet, hot swipe of his tongue, licking a broad stripe up her slit.
A jolt went through her, a shocking bolt of pure sensation. She cried out, her fingers curling into the fabric.
He did it again, slower, more deliberately, his tongue circling her clit before plunging into her entrance. It was crude, lewd, and it made her thighs tremble. Her hips pushed back against his mouth of their own accord, a traitorous betrayal.
“Tastes like the sky,” he mumbled against her, his words a vibration that made her whimper. “And like me.”
His hands held her open as he feasted on her, his tongue fucking into her with a rhythm that was relentless and knowing. He found a spot inside her that made her back arch, a sound torn from her throat that was pure wanton need. The shame was still there, burning in her gut, but it was being drowned out by a rising tide of physical craving. This was different from the harsh taking of the first night. This was a calculated seduction, a reduction of her principles to pulsing flesh.
When she was slick and shaking, her moans filling the room, he pulled back. She heard him spit into his palm, the sound crude and explicit. Then the blunt, hot head of his cock was pressing against her, replacing his tongue.
“You missed Small Council again,” she whispered, the words a ragged breath, “but I suppose this is a better use of your time.”
He didn’t answer with words. He answered by sheathing himself inside her in one long, smooth thrust.
She cried out, her body stretching to accommodate him. He was thick, and the position was deep, invasive. He filled her utterly. He held himself there for a moment, buried to the hilt, letting her feel every inch. Then he withdrew almost all the way, before slamming back in.
“Gods,” she gasped.
He set a brutal, driving pace, his hips pistoning against her backside. Each thrust rocked her whole body forward on the bed. His hands were on her hips, digging in, guiding her, using her. The sound of skin slapping against skin was loud in the quiet room, obscene and rhythmic. The bedframe began to knock gently against the stone wall.
It was raw. It was filthy. It was nothing like the songs. His grunts were animalistic, punctuating the wet, rhythmic sounds of their joining. He leaned over her, his chest pressed against her back, his mouth at her ear.
“Is this what you want?” he panted, his voice thick. “To be fucked like a common whore while you scold me about my duties?”
“Yes,” she hissed, the admission ripped from her. It was true. In this moment, the complexity burned away, leaving only the sheer, physical truth of it.
He fucked her harder, faster. One hand slid around her hip, his fingers finding the swollen nub of her clit. He rubbed it in rough, tight circles, matching the rhythm of his thrusts. The dual assault was too much. The coil in her belly, wound tight by his mouth and his cock and his words, snapped.
Her orgasm slammed into her with a violence that stole her sight. She screamed, a raw, broken sound, as her body convulsed around him, clenching and fluttering. The pleasure was so intense it bordered on pain, a searing-white annihilation of thought.
Her climax triggered his. With a guttural roar, he slammed into her one final time, his body locking as he emptied himself inside her in hot, pulsing jets. He collapsed over her, his weight pressing her into the mattress, both of them slick with sweat and gasping for air.
He softened and slipped out of her. The room slowly came back into focus: the tapestries, the dying light, the smell of sex now thick in the air. He rolled off her, landing on his back beside her on the rumpled coverlet.
Naerys pushed herself up, her arms trembling. She felt hollowed out, used, and utterly, devastatingly satiated. She looked down at him. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling rapidly. A strand of silver-gold hair was stuck to his damp forehead.
Without a word, she stood on unsteady legs and walked to the basin. She poured water and cleaned herself, the cloth moving mechanically over her skin. She could feel his seed leaking out of her, a sticky reminder. When she was done, she pulled a robe from a chair and wrapped it around herself, knotting the belt tightly.
She turned to look at him. He was watching her now, his eyes dark and unreadable.
“The Maester will be here tomorrow,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “For my moon tea.”
Aegon’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes—something that looked almost like hurt, quickly masked. “Of course. Can’t have an heir complicating things too early.”
“No,” she agreed coldly. “We can’t.”
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He reached for his discarded goblet, found it empty, and scowled. “You’ll have to tell him you need a strong dose. My swimmers are persistent little cunts.”
She flinched at the vulgarity, the casual cruelty of it. It was a wall he threw up, a way to push her back to a safe, hateful distance. It worked.
“I’ll be sure to mention it,” she said, turning toward the door that led to her own adjoining solar.
“Where are you going?” His question stopped her. It held a note of something besides irritation. Almost… need.
“To bathe. The smell of you is all over me.”
She left him there, naked and glorious in the twilight, the taste of her own capitulation bitter in her mouth. As she closed the door behind her, she heard the sound of the empty goblet shattering against the wall she had just left.
As she closed the door behind her, she heard the sound of the empty goblet shattering against the wall she had just left. The crash was a punctuation mark to the afternoon’s raw, unsettling intimacy. Naerys stood in the cool silence of her solar, her forehead pressed against the thick oak, and waited for the tremor in her hands to subside.
It didn’t.
She bathed methodically, scrubbing her skin with lavender soap until it felt raw, trying to wash away the phantom feel of his hands and his tongue. The water grew cold. She dressed in a simple grey gown, its high collar a silent rebuke to the marks she knew were blooming on her thighs. The memory of her own moans echoed in her skull, a shameful counterpoint to her simmering anger.
She found him, much later, not in their chambers but in the dragon yard below. He was shirtless in the deepening twilight, hefting a great chunk of raw meat onto a hook for Sunfyre. The great golden beast crunched bones with a sound like splintering timber, his warm breath fogging the air. Aegon’s back was to her, muscles corded with the effort, his skin glowing in the torchlight.
“Feeding your dragon is the least of your duties,” she said, her voice carrying clear and cold across the stone.
He didn’t turn. “He was hungry. It’s practical.”
“So is maintaining the royal fleet. So is hearing the grievances of the smallfolk you’ll one day rule.” She walked closer, the gravel crunching under her shoes. “You can’t fuck or fly your way out of every responsibility, Aegon.”
That made him turn. His face was shadowed, his eyes catching the torchlight like chips of violet glass. “I seem to manage well enough.”
“You manage to be a disappointment.” The words hung between them, sharper than any knife. She saw them land, saw the quick flinch he couldn’t hide. “To our father, who makes excuses for you. To our mother, who schemes endlessly to cover for your neglect. To the realm, which whispers that its future king is a drunken jester.”
He threw the empty meat hook aside with a clatter. “And what do you whisper, sister-wife? In our bed, when you’re not whispering other things?”
She refused to let him redirect her. This wasn’t about the bedroom. “I’m the one who has to listen to the whispers. I’m the one Lord Beesbury corners to ask about port tariffs because the prince is too busy. I’m the one Ser Tyland looks at with pity when you stumble past the throne room after dawn.” She took a final step, now within arm’s reach of him. Sunfyre rumbled, a low vibration in the earth. “You humiliate me.”
Aegon stared at her, his breath making plumes in the cold air. The defiance slowly drained from his posture, leaving something quieter and more vulnerable. “You think I don’t hear it?” he asked, his voice lower. “You think I like it?”
“I think you’ve decided it’s easier to be the wastrel they expect than to prove them wrong.” She softened her tone, just a fraction. It was the tone she’d used when they were children and he’d skinned his knee, a blend of admonishment and care. “I know you, Aegon. I knew the boy who could memorize every line of a history scroll if it meant beating me in a quiz. Where is he?”
He looked away, towards the dark bulk of the Red Keep. “He grew up. He saw what the game was. Why play it well when the rules are written by fools?”
“So play it better.” Naerys reached out, her fingers gently touching his bare forearm. He went very still. “Outplay them. Show them the sharp mind you hide under all that wine. For one week. Just attend the councils. Listen. Ask one intelligent question per day. That’s all.”
He let out a short, bitter laugh. “And what’s my prize for this performance? Your undying admiration?”
“No.” Her hand fell away. “Your prize is that I stop looking at you the way I looked at you after you shattered that goblet. The way our mother looks at you. Like you’re a problem to be solved.” She met his gaze, letting him see her own exhaustion, the weight she carried for them both. “I miss my brother. I cannot bear the company of the stranger he became.”
A long silence stretched, broken only by Sunfyre’s contented chewing. The easy cruelty had left Aegon’s face, replaced by a considering, almost wounded expression. He studied her as if seeing her anew—not just as an obstacle or an object of want, but as the only mirror that showed a truth he couldn’t drink away.
“One intelligent question,” he finally said, the words grudging. “Per day.”
“Starting tomorrow with the Small Council on the Stepstones,” she said, not allowing her hope to surface.
“Fine.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “But I’m not wearing those fucking ridiculous hats Tyland favors.”
A hint of a smile, the first genuine one in days, touched her lips. “I believe that can be negotiated.”
He nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion. Then he turned back to Sunfyre, his shoulders set with a new, if reluctant, purpose. Naerys watched him for a moment before turning to walk back to the keep. The night air felt cleaner, somehow. Lighter.
Behind her, she heard him murmur to his dragon, his voice barely carrying on the wind. “Come on, you greedy bastard. Finish up. I have to be annoyingly coherent in the morning.”
He surprised her. For a week, then another, he appeared at the Small Council chamber, clean and relatively sober, his hair tied back. He listened to the droning reports on grain yields and timber imports with an expression of detached interest that was, at least, not openly contemptuous. He asked his one question per day, as bargained. They were, sometimes, startlingly astute.
“If the pirates are using the smaller channels north of Bloodstone,” he’d interjected during a particularly circular debate on the Stepstones, tracing a line on the map with a lazy finger, “why not pay the Myrish to patrol them? It’s cheaper than building towers they’ll just burn down, and it funds their fleet to annoy the Dornish. Two problems, one bag of gold.” The council had stared. Lord Beesbury had coughed into his hand, hiding a smile. Naerys, sitting in to observe, had kept her face a mask of serene calm while something warm and treacherous uncoiled in her chest.
He still drank. He still vanished for afternoons, likely to the Street of Silk. But he came to their chambers at night. Sometimes he just slept, his back to hers, the space between them humming with a truce. Other nights, he would reach for her in the dark. It was less a claiming now, and more an exploration. A negotiation of skin and breath.
She never sent for the moon tea. She didn’t examine that decision too closely. It felt like a gamble, a silent thread added to the fragile bridge they were building.
One such morning, the slow, honeyed light of dawn found them tangled. Aegon was propped on an elbow above her, moving inside her with a deep, relentless rhythm that had long since stripped away any pretense of sleep. Her legs were locked around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back. The room was quiet save for the wet, soft sound of their joining and their ragged breath.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he grunted, his forehead damp against her temple. His thrusts were measured, intense, seeking a specific, deep friction that made her eyes roll back. “Right there. Yes. Just like that.”
Naerys could only gasp, her fingers clutching at his shoulders. This was different from the frantic, angry coupling of the first weeks. This was slower, more deliberate, a mutual seeking of release that felt as much about connection as it was about pleasure. He kissed her, his mouth open and hungry, and she kissed him back, tasting herself on his tongue.
“Touch yourself,” he commanded roughly against her lips. “I want to feel you come around me. Do it.”
Blushing even now, she slid a hand between their sweat-slick bodies. Her fingers found the swollen knot of her clit, already throbbing from the relentless grind of his hips. A few tight circles was all it took. Her climax tore through her silently at first, a wave of constricting heat, then broke into a sharp, crying gasp as her cunt clenched rhythmically around his driving cock.
“That’s it,” he hissed, his own control shattering. His rhythm became frantic, brutal. “Take it. Take all of it, you greedy fucking cunt.” He drove into her one last time, burying himself with a choked shout as he pulsed deep within her.
They collapsed together, a mess of limbs and slow-drying sweat. He didn’t pull out immediately, just lay panting against her neck, his weight a familiar anchor. She traced idle patterns on the knobs of his spine. This was the peace they had forged, stolen and secret.
The door opened.
Neither of them had bolted it. No one entered the Crown Prince’s chambers unannounced at this hour. No one but the Queen.
Alicent Hightower stood frozen in the doorway, one hand still on the latch. Her eyes, wide with shock, took in the scene: the discarded sheets, the naked, intertwined bodies of her children, the unmistakable scent of sex hanging thick in the air. Her face drained of all color, then flushed a deep, mortified crimson.
Aegon raised his head slowly from Naerys’s shoulder. He didn’t jerk away, didn’t scramble for a cover. A mild annoyance flickered across his sated features. “Mother,” he said, his voice hoarse. “A tad early for inspections, isn’t it?”
Naerys closed her eyes for a brief second, a flush of sheer embarrassment heating her skin. She pulled a corner of the sheet over her breasts, but the gesture felt absurd. The evidence was everywhere.
Alicent found her voice, a strangled sound. “I… I came to discuss your… your presence at the petitioner’s court today.” Her gaze darted from Aegon’s bare back to Naerys’s face, then to the wall, anywhere but the bed. “I see you are… otherwise engaged.”
“You could say that,” Aegon drawled, finally rolling off Naerys and onto his back, making no effort to cover himself. He laced his hands behind his head. “We’ll be along. Eventually.”
The Queen’s mouth opened, then closed. A lifetime of strict propriety warred with maternal confusion. She gave a sharp, stiff nod. “I will… await you in the solar.” She turned and left, closing the door with a precise, quiet click that was louder than any slam.
Silence reclaimed the room. Naerys stared at the canopy. Then, a giggle bubbled up in her throat, born of sheer, incredulous shock. It escaped, a soft, shaky sound.
Aegon turned his head on the pillow to look at her. He saw her pressed lips, the mirth shaking her shoulders, and his own stern expression cracked. A snort escaped him. Then another. Soon they were both laughing, quietly at first, then with a helpless, gasping intensity that shook the bed. He rolled toward her, pulling her against his chest, his laughter vibrating through her.
“Gods,” he wheezed into her hair. “Her face. Did you see her face?”
“She looked as if she’d bitten into a lemon stuffed with horse shit,” Naerys managed, tears of hilarity streaming down her cheeks.
“She came to scold me for shirking,” Aegon said, grinning wildly. “And instead finds me diligently fucking my wife for the realm’s future. A devoted son, fulfilling his primary duty with… vigorous attention.”
Naerys swatted his arm, but she was still laughing, the absurdity of it washing away the last vestiges of shame. Here they were, naked and sticky, laughing like children while their mother’s world-view shattered in the corridor outside. The intimacy of the moment—the shared joke, the warmth of his body, the private understanding—felt more profound than any political alliance.
Their laughter slowly subsided into contented sighs. He kissed her forehead, a gesture so casual and affectionate it made her breath catch.
“We should probably get up,” she murmured, not moving.
“Mm,” he agreed, his hand stroking her hip. “She’ll be pacing a trench in the floor.” He paused. “Let her wait a little longer.”