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Rhaenyra
“There’s been an incident in the yard.”
Rhaenyra immediately hands young Joffrey off to Lady Gwenys, both her handmaiden and Harwin’s youngest sister, and rises, as quickly as a woman who has recently birthed a child may rise. She knows that Joffrey would be safe with the midwife, but it’s Lady Gwenys who shared the news, and in a time when the hounds are sniffing for blood, it’s Harwin’s kin that she trusts foremost with her fragile child.
Their fragile child.
There was a time in Rhaenyra’s life when she detested the idea of children, when she loathed the thought of destroying her body to bring life to another.
But it’s different, when they’re Harwin’s children.
It’s different when it’s the seed of her love taking root in her belly, filling her body with a babe of his blood, if not of his name. And their children together may look like a Strong, may speak like a Strong and may love like a Strong (the latter, of which, she can only hope), but it’s the Targaryen flame that runs deep in their veins, that hatched eggs for their sons and served proof of their place in the royal line.
A place the greens are taking every opportunity to undermine.
So today, so soon after Alicent’s loathsome words were spoken to Laenor, Rhaenyra does not hesitate. The Princess pulls herself from her chair as fast as she’s able, pushes down the pit of fear forming where their babe once grew, and leaves through the back of her chambers, to a hallway rarely used by any in court.
A hallway with a painting that is actually a door.
Rhaenyra pauses near the dragon, one painted with green scales, and checks to make sure that she is alone. When she hears no one coming, she slips her hand beneath the tapestry to its left, and tugs on the hook embedded in the wall that releases the latch.
The painting swings open, and Rhaenyra steps through, moving as quickly and quietly as she can into the winding stairwell she knows as well as her own palm. She doesn’t need a torch, doesn’t need firelight, doesn’t need to see her way to know the worn path.
It’s one she’s taken often.
Their chambers are near, and if traveled between through the main halls of the Keep, it takes mere minutes to move from one to the other. As her sworn shield, it only made sense for Harwin to live close. But this passageway, this secret path between her chambers and his, it is one known only to them. To them and the ghosts of this Keep, the men who were killed for building her secrets. When she was younger, when she and Harwin first began their affair, Rhaenyra dreamed that these hallways were built for lovers.
A secret entrance to an opulent lair, one fit for a Dragon Princess. A way for a man to sneak in at night, to ravish his love before morning light. Or a path for a woman, who rides fearsome dragons, to slip through the darkness, to find time with her beast.
But Rhaenyra is no longer a child, sneaking out of her bed to slide into another. She’s a woman, full-grown, and her man holds more than her thoughts. He has her whole heart in the palm of his hand, and their love is not fragile or simple or feeble, she knows deep inside that it’s a love spun by fate, by The Mother herself.
So while she sneaks down the stairs, and up through the other, this pathway, once dreamy, is something much more. She knows why it’s here, for death and for murder, but for her and for Harwin, it’s shelter and haven.
She hears the voice of her father’s hand as she’s ascending the steps that lead to Harwin’s chambers, and it stops her in her tracks.
“It fills me with unrelenting shame.”
Her heart sinks, but she does not waiver. She needs to speak with Harwin, to formulate a plan. To find a way for them to leave the Red Keep, to go to Dragonstone, where she is the Princess and they can have their own world.
She knows Viserys wants the children raised together, but she’s going to put her foot down. Going to tell him no, and retreat. To save their own skins.
Laenor was right all along.
“So that’s what this is about, then? Your shame.”
“Our shame, Harwin!” Lyonel’s voice is loud, it’s as weighty as their last name, at the normally-level-headed man yelling, she slows her steps. “Shame on the whole of House Strong.”
A fissure creeps through her heart.
“Because I laid my hands on that insufferable Cole, the son of a steward?” At his voice, she finds strength and begins moving, again, slower this time, as she slinks up the side of the steps. If he sees her, maybe he will stop arguing—maybe he will stop so they may speak, so they may plan.
“He is a Knight of the Kingsguard now, a defender of the crown.”
“He assailed Prince Jacaerys, the future heir to the Throne!”
Rhaenyra can hear the clanging of metals, as Lyonel or Harwin—or maybe even both—release their frustrations, and when he looks up at her, when his gaze meets her own, Rhaenyra feels that fissure crack straight through her.
Her heart, already broken a thousand times over with every determined grin that Harwin flashes from across the room, with every sword fighting lesson he gives their children as the Lord Commander of the Gold Cloaks, with every unflinching use of the term ‘their father’ when referring to Laenor, cracks just a bit more.
She never wanted this for him, but she’s selfish, and she doesn’t know if she can continue on without him by her side. And, as she is finding she must remind herself more frequently as of late, she is the heir to the Iron Throne.
Harwin refuses to have their lives any other way, refuses to leave to protect his own honor—and constantly reminds her that it is her right to be selfish, that one day, it won’t be like this.
Once she ascends, nobody can touch them. There will be no shame for House Strong, no shame for their children. And maybe, just maybe, time for two more.
A son for House Strong, legitimate and proud. A boy born to inherit his titles and lands.
And a daughter just for Harwin. A strong, graceful daughter with the heart of her father and the fire of her mother. A little girl to raise, the one he so desperately wants—and one she vows to never force into marriage, to never force into hiding her heart’s true desire.
And at that look in his eyes, she vows not to leave this room until they have a plan.
Until they have a way out of this.
Or through it.
—
Harwin
Harwin has always cared for his father.
And in the past near-decade, his appreciation for the man has only grown. As Hand of the King, Lyonel has stood by in silence, and watched Laenor Velaryon claim the heirs to House Strong. Has pat the back of Viserys every time the King mentions the boys as his blood, refers to them as his own grandsons, rather than recognize them as those of his hand’s.
And in truth, they are his grandsons. They’re grandsons of both Lyonel and Viserys, and there are days where Rhaenyra and Harwin, alone beneath the cloak of nightfall, discuss the exchanges of their fathers. Discuss what they’ve seen, the knowing and happy looks Viserys gives Lyonel, as if they’re old friends, sharing the youth of their children’s children, the way that they might have, if Rhaenyra had wed Harwin instead of Laenor.
But she didn’t.
And so even though they sometimes discuss the days when Viserys looks and he speaks as if he’s sharing their secret, they know he will never acknowledge it, because it’s one that can never come out.
Not while Viserys is on the throne.
In his mind, maybe never, but in Rhaenyra’s, just not now.
But the difference between Viserys and Lyonel, is that it’s Viserys’ love for Rhaenyra that stops him from allowing the truth to be spoken. That drives his threats to remove the tongues of anyone breathing life into the rumors.
Whereas for Lyonel, it’s fear.
Fear for his son, fear for his grandsons, fear for their lives that holds him back.
A fear turned to shame, with one, tiny incident. One that was reasonable, justified. Harwin is the Princess’s sworn shield, and by extension, that of her children.
It does not matter who their father is, Harwin’s position as Rhaenyra’s sworn shield is enough reason to defend Prince Jacaerys from being beat up on in an unfair fight, preyed upon by a reckless Aegon, in a rage fueled by the dangerous Cole, right there in the middle of the courtyard.
His son, his blood, sure—but foremost, the future King.
The very same boy that Viserys held on his knee atop the Iron Throne as a boy, and told, “one day, this will be your seat, lad.”
So for Harwin, the why does not matter. The only thing that mattered, was that Aegon was stopped before he permanently damaged Jacaerys in an unfair, unmatched and unwarrented sparring match. And if he saw red shortly thereafter?
Well, Criston Cole certainly won’t challenge him again, after that.
Clearly, his father sees things differently.
“You have laid us open to accusations of an uglier treachery,” Lyonel says, his voice growing serious.
But Harwin turns from his father, then and he sees her.
His Princess.
His love, his heart, his life. And though he never thought this day would come—whether by idiocy or willful ignorance—he knows it has arrived. The day he must verbalize his choice. Must tell his father the truth of where his heart lies, and that it is not with his house or his titles.
Because his father… his father does not matter.
And neither does House Strong.
Harwin would never let Rhaenyra run away. He promised her as much years ago, and he’ll never allow her to give up her lands, her titles or her dragon for his love. (Not that she would offer. No, he loves her as much to know she won't offer, to know he doesn't want her to. No man should ask that of her, should ask her to give up her birthrights. They're hers, forever and always, and they're part of her soul. A Rhaenyra without her dynasty, without her crown or her dragon, is not a Rhaenyra at all.)
But sometimes… sometimes he dreams of something else.
Sometimes, when they’re tangled in furs, naked and wet and cooling from the heat of their passion, he and Rhaenyra talk of a future after she takes the throne. Of a world where she brings him two more heirs, two babes to carry the Strong name. And he knows it’s foolish, knows he shouldn’t indulge, but it’s in those nights, with his woman wrapped in his arms, her sex still full of his seed, where he listens to her dream for the both of them.
To dream of a world he’s desperate to live for but terrified to hope for. One where he stands tall at the side of his woman, her shield and her consort, with three sons and two more.
A boy and a girl, one heir for his land, both heirs for their names.
Not Velaryon or Laenor or Targaryen at all, but Viserys Lyonel and Aemma Jeyne.
A world with five children, each loved as fiercely as the next, but a world where Rhaenyra’s guilt is wiped free, their love sworn at sept. Because while Harwin has no problem with this life that he’s chosen, he knows that it does eat away at his love.
And he’ll do anything to rid her of that guilt, of any sadness at all.
So when she dreams, now so does he.
And Harwin understands his choice.
He knows this future is likely out of reach. Knows that he may never be more than her paramour, but it does not matter to him. Does not matter what he looks like to others or how the Strong House is portrayed. It’s a harsh truth, but it’s his truth. Harwin accepted a long time ago that he will always, always, always choose Rhaenyra over anything or anyone else, and when he sees her ascend the steps, when he sees her across the way, sees her listening in, he knows it’s time.
It’s time for him to stand up to his father in a way he’s avoided, at her request.
He’ll deny her very little, but he’ll never deny her his honor.
And the truth is, they can no longer hide this when it comes to Lyonel, and that all seven hells will freeze over the day that Harwin backs down from defending his family. So today is the day he chooses one side over the other.
Be it temporary or not.
And so instead of denying, he goads his father. “And what treachery is that?”
Lyonel, it seems, never believed this day would come. He freezes for a moment, but Harwin waits.
He’s good at waiting.
“Don’t play the fool with me, boy,” Lyonel finally says. “Your intimacy with the Princess Rhaenyra is an offense that would mean exile and death for you, for her, for the children.”
Harwin wants to yell, to spit back at his ugly words. To shout to holler to scream at his father, to deny that his affair with Rhaenyra is anything near offensive. And, because he knows she is listening, because she has been wavering, he wants to remind her that firstly and foremost, while he may be Strong, he may be Harwin “Breakbones” Strong, the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms…
He trusts her strength more.
He trusts her and her dragons. Trusts the power of Syrax and the young Vermax, the hatchling growing for Lucerys, the egg chosen so recently for Joffrey.
To remind his father, and his love, that his Princess and her kids carry the power of dragonflame. That he does not worry for their fate, because she—until recently—does not, either. To remind his father, and Princess by proxy, that she is a proud, strong, powerful woman who can hold her own atop a dragon.
And if nothing else, to remind them both that her father is the King of the Realm.
Harwin knows that Rhaenyra and the boys… they will be fine. They’ve been careful, so careful. They will always be fine. Viserys would rather cut his own heart out than hurt his daughter, his grandchildren. He loves them fiercely, everyone can see. That will never change.
And Harwin?
He does not fear his own death, should it one day come.
He only fears the grief it would serve to his love.
It is time his father understand this. Time his father learn where his heart lays.
“It is rumor only.” Because it is, because his father needs to remember that, needs to continue to see this as a rumor. “Spun by the Princess’s rivals.”
“People have eyes, boy.”
He wants to point out that those same people watch Alicent make her courtly moves, watch her try to tell Viserys what to do, but he holds his tongue. His point is not to discuss the greens or the blacks, but to let his father know.
This is the last time they will ever have this conversation. He will never entertain it again, not when it risks breaking Rhaenyra’s heart, should the truth ever emerge.
Lyonel continues speaking. “Yet His Grace, the King, it seems, will not accept what his eyes see. This flimsy shield alone, stands between you and the headsman”
Harwin wants to agree. To say, ‘yes, exactly—me, not Rhaenyra, not Jacaerys, not Lucerys nor Joffrey, but me.’ Wants to remind him of the vows he took to become her sworn shield, how he will lay his life down for her with no hesitation at all.
But she’s listening. And he knows that this is Rhaenyra’s greatest fear of all: that one day, her sons or Harwin will die for her decision to follow her heart.
And so he remains silent. Lyonel keeps speaking about Viserys, though, reminding him that the thin barrier between himself and death, is “the willful blindness of a father towards his child.”
“I wish my father affected a similar blindness.” The words are out before he can stop them, but he refuses to take them back. They’re truth.
“Have I not, these many years? And yet today, you publicly assaulted a Knight of the Kingsguard in the, in the defense of your—”
And that’s it.
His father knows, and he won’t risk the words falling from Lyonel’s lips. Once they do, they’ll come again. And again, and again. If his father speaks it into existence, it can never be taken back—and so while Lyonel is bound by his own honor, to House Strong and to his role as Hand, Harwin is not.
For Harwin, those things are simply different.
“You have your honor, and I have mine.”
—
There are tears in her eyes, tears on her cheeks, when Lyonel leaves, and Rhaenyra steps into the room. Into their room, into this place so rarely frequented by anyone other than the two of them.
“Princess,” he murmurs, taking her into his arms, sweeping her up, clutching his woman to his chest, holding her while she breaks. “Please, Rhaenyra. Don’t cry.”
“You have to go,” Rhaenyra says. Her voice is strained, her words choked. Her cheeks are wet, but she refuses to sob, refuses to be weak, even now, with him.
It’s killing him to see her like this.
Rhaenyra has cried so few times in her life, that he knows of, and the very evidence of tears on her cheeks… well, he knows this is serious. Knows he cannot just deny how heavy the guilt of their relationship is weighing on her shoulders.
But that doesn’t mean he’s leaving, doesn’t mean he’s going anywhere. They’ll just have to be smarter, now.
“I don’t,” Harwin says, fiercely, moving with Rhaenyra to a seat tucked into the bend of the room, one out of the way, one he brought over here himself, a refuge of sorts up on this tower. It’s positioned so that even if somebody were to come up here to look for Harwin, they wouldn’t see Rhaenyra. Harwin would be able to hear them before they ascended the steps, and could move out to greet them, to steer them away from this bend, so that Rhaenyra could slip out the back door, could return to their rooms.
It’s a system they’re very, very familiar with after all these years.
“He violated his Kingsguard vows again, Rhaenyra, he was pushing Aegon to attack Jacaerys, he was going for blood, and our— your— Jacaerys is a Prince.” Harwin shakes his head. “I couldn’t stand by and watch that happen. Not to Jacaerys.”
Rhaenyra presses her face into his neck, and he knows she’s attempting to control her emotions.
He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Princess, talk with your father. I’ll take over their training, Cole doesn’t even bother instructing them. They were— they were standing there with their weapons down, today, and he ignored it. He does not care if the boys know how to fight, only that Aegon is receiving proper training.”
“You have to leave, Harwin.” Her voice is faint, raw, and he can tell that it’s killing her to say this to him. Knows when she doesn’t comment on the injustice of their training session, that she’s finally crumbling beneath the pressure of their lies.
Knows she’s made her mind up.
But so has he, and he’s not going anywhere. “I don’t,” he says. “This is where I belong, Rhaenyra. With the boys. With you.”
“Harwin, they want your head.”
“They won’t take it.”
“Harwin, please.” Rhaenyra’s voice is bordering on a desperation he so rarely hears from her. “Be serious. They’re circling us like dragons do fresh blood. They’re taking shots, now, they’re— they want you dead, want the boys gone, too, and I fear if you stay—”
His gut lurches.
How could he have been so stupid?
He may have defended Jacaerys from a broken skull today, something he would do again without hesitation, but attacking Cole… snapping like that.
Gods it felt good to punch that scum’s face, and he can’t wait for the day when he can do it again.
But the cost.
The cost is too great.
He understands, now, what Rhaenyra is saying, and wishes he had been wise enough to request to train the boys alone long before now, early enough in their training that it wouldn’t have been a change of routine, but would have instead, set a different precedent.
Before precedent mattered.
But fuck precedent. Fuck Cole, fuck all of this. He’s not going anywhere.
Harwin shakes his head, presses his forehead to hers, and breathes her in. “No,” he whispers. “No, I won’t leave you. I won’t leave them. I can’t, Rhaenyra. I can’t live without you, can’t leave you to their claws.”
“You have to.” And her voice, so strong, so powerful in all other ways, is cracking beneath the weight of their lives, of their decisions—of their dreams. “They’re going to use you, and they're going to push you until they have reason to kill you, and you... you would let them, if it meant defending our honor.”
Harwin’s heart sings, as it sinks. Because knowing that she understands how deep his love runs... it's a heady feeling. But knowing that she's going to use it against him this way, to protect him from death because she, too, loves him... it has the power to ruin him.
His heart cracks, then. He can feel it, he knows how this will end. He wants to fight, seven hells he wants to fight, but for as many bones as he's broken in other men, for as many fights he's won with family and friends, he knows who wins this argument.
Who always wins, when it comes down to a disagreement between the two of them.
Rhaenyra is a future Queen.
Harwin, her sworn shield.
Only one of them holds the power in this relationship, and though he’s never once regretted it, he’s certainly regrets losing his cool earlier, regrets slamming his fist into the side of Cole’s face.
Regrets ruining their fragile state of life here.
“I’m sorry, my Princess,” he murmurs.
Rhaenyra shakes her head, but he doesn’t let her refuse his apology.
Because truly, this is his fault, and he won’t let her accept anything else.
He fucked up, and now, he’s going to find a way to fix things.
“I will find a way to stay,” he says. “I will talk to your father, plead my case, plead our case. There is no better defender—”
“I command you.”
His heart plummets, and Rhaenyra lets another tear slip.
And another.
And another.
And though it is silent, though they are just tears, his Dragon Princess, a woman of fire and blood and strength, is crying in his arms.
And Harwin knows that he’s lost this battle.
Though he vows not to lose the war.
He tucks her into his chest, and holds her while she weeps silently. He rocks her back-and-forth like he does their babes when he visits, soothes his hand through her hair, presses kisses to the top of her head, and when she finally stops, remains there with her while she gathers her emotions.
Allows her to dictate where this conversation goes, where they go, from this moment.
“I’m going to wait,” she whispers. “Take your lands, take your titles, Harwin. I will wait.” She looks up at him, her tears dried, her eyes serious, her voice raspy. “And one day, you will return to my side.” She places her hand on his cheek, and he leans into it, leans into the warmth of his woman. “With something for them, when they finally arrive.”
He knows who she means. He knows she’s referring to the babes they dream about together, and it’s that, more than anything, that brings tears to Harwin’s eyes. His throat closes up, and he struggles to hold himself strong, because even in her misery, even in her sadness, she is thinking of him. Thinking of his name, of his honor, of his duty to Harrenhal and House Strong.
Of his own father’s words, his own father’s agony, the agony of House Strong without a true heir.
And he doesn’t want it, but if she wants it for him, for their future children… if she, as his future Queen, as the heir to the Iron Throne, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, commands this of him.
He will go.
But only, only because he knows that when this is over, when she is on the throne, she will call him home, and he will have lands and titles to bequeath upon their future children.
But he must be sure.
Harwin dips his chin. “This is what you command?”
She nods. “It is.”
“Okay.” Harwin tucks a finger beneath her jaw, and lifts her lips to his. “I love you, Rhaenyra.” And then, he kisses her softly. Gently. Reverently. He brushes his lips against hers with delicacy, carefully exploring every inch of her exposed skin, searing her whines and her gasps and her taste into his mind. He kisses her passionately, kisses her without abandon, and when he’s done, when he sucks her lower lip into his mouth, slides his hand along her jaw and holds her there, holds her mouth to his—
“I love you, too.”
Harwin groans, and kisses her all over again. He worships his Princess for a minute or an hour, worships her with lips, with tongue and with touch. Speaks forbidden promises, and I love yous and oaths. Kisses her again, clinging to her just as much as she’s clinging to him. Refusing to let go until they absolutely must.
Imprinting her in his mind, in his heart, in his memory, lest he ever dare forget how this feel, this love they share.
And when they finally break for air for the very last time, their chests heaving, their lips swollen and their eyes crazed, Harwin feels a piece of his heart break.
Feels a piece of himself shatter, knowing that he won’t be here to watch his boys grow into men, and to watch his woman age into a Queen.
That for the rest of his life, until they are together again, he will be one-half of a whole. That his heart will remain, that he will be living by raven, by visits into the city to visit his family under the guise of seeing his father. Living for a future he knows deep down inside may never come to fruition.
But that… that is something he will deal with alone.
Right now, he must use this moment, this private goodbye with Rhaenyra, to make her one last promise.
“I will always love you. Always honor you.”
And for now, that must be enough.