The Ghost of the Godswood

Daemon stirred awake with a groan, the heavy pull of exhaustion clinging to his limbs like chains. The room was dim, grey morning light filtering through the silken curtains. He blinked slowly, disoriented, a strange weight settling across his chest, his center of gravity oddly shifted.

Something felt… off.

His body was sore, but not in the familiar, aching way of a battlefield wound. This was something stranger. A tightness, a tenderness in his chest that throbbed with a dull ache. His hips ached too, and there was a softness to him that hadn’t been there before. Subtle, but unmistakable.

Frowning, he slowly pushed himself upright, wincing slightly as his balance shifted in an unexpected way. His arms trembled more than he expected; he felt lighter, but not weaker, and yet every movement felt wrong, like wearing another man’s armor.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stared down at his hands. They were clean.

He blinked.

No, they weren’t.

His breath caught in his throat. There was blood, fresh, red, and wrong, smeared across his palms, dripping between his fingers, crusting at the base of his nails.

He could feel it. Sticky. Warm. Familiar.

The metallic scent of it coiled in his nostrils, but when he rubbed his palms down the sides of his sleeping robe, nothing came away. His hands remained pristine.

A phantom stain.

The blood wasn’t real. He knew that. It hadn’t been real for years.

And yet… it was always there.

Always his.

Always their blood.

His breath grew shallow as he clenched and unclenched his fists, willing the image away, struggling to hold on to reason. For the first time in a long while, his hands were physically clean. Truly, immaculately clean.

But then he felt the weight again. The pressure on his chest.

Confused, Daemon looked down and froze.

What stared back at him was not the flat plane of his chest, not the sharp ridges of lean muscle.

But soft, round curves.

Breasts.

His mouth opened, but no sound came. He slapped his hands to his chest, hoping, praying, he was hallucinating. That he was still dreaming. That the phantom blood had broken his mind at last.

But the softness was real. The tender, sensitive weight of it real. The way his skin flushed under his palms, real.

He inhaled sharply, but the sound that escaped him was not the low, gravelly snarl he’d grown used to hearing over the years.

It was a high-pitched shriek.

Sharp.

Feminine.

Weak.

To Daemon Targaryen, that made it worse.

The sound echoed through the chamber like a blade dragged across glass, and he clutched his robe tighter around himself, chest heaving with disbelief.

Behind him, his wife stirred.

Still groggy, she rolled toward the sound, hair spilling over the pillow as her brows furrowed in confusion. “Daemon…?” she mumbled, voice thick with sleep.

He didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

All he could do was sit there, paralyzed, staring at his hands, clean hands, and the changed body he now wore. A body cursed with softness. With new pain. With everything, he’d always used to define weakness in others.

And it had only just begun.

Rhaenyra was no stranger to being jolted awake by her husband. Screams in the night, breathless gasps, or the occasional wild thrash as if he were mid-battle in a dream; Daemon had never been what one would call a restful sleeper.

But what she was not prepared for was the shrill, distinctly feminine shriek that cut through the chamber like a blade.

Her eyes flew open.

There, sitting up in their shared bed, was a woman, hair tousled, skin pale as fresh snow, eyes wide with panic as she clutched her robe tightly around herself and stared, horrified, down at her own chest.

Rhaenyra stared.

The woman was staring at her own tits.

Daemon’s side of the bed. Daemon’s robe. Daemon’s shrieking.

“What in the seven hells-“ she muttered, already reaching for the weapon at her side. Her hand found the hilt of Dark Sister. Her hhusband's sword.

The woman noticed.

“Wait! No! It’s me!” the stranger cried out, voice catching in her throat.

Rhaenyra froze.

The voice was too high, too breathy, but behind the pitch was a familiar cadence. A familiar lilt.

“…Daemon?” she asked cautiously, her grip on the sword tightening.

“Yes!” the woman, Daemon, yelled, arms flailing slightly as if to emphasize the truth of it. “It’s me!”

Rhaenyra blinked, her hand loosening just slightly. She looked again. The eyes. The shape of the jaw beneath the softer cheeks. The scar above the left brow. It was Daemon’s face. Changed. Smaller. Softer. But still him.

“You’re a woman,” she said flatly.

Daemon looked just as horrified as she felt. “I know! I woke up like this! I, look!”

With sudden, reckless urgency, he yanked the drawstrings on the loose pants he’d slept in and peeked down. Rhaenyra instinctively looked away, then immediately looked back when he gasped.

“That… definitely isn’t a cock,” Daemon said, voice wobbling. He swallowed. “…Yes. I am. A woman.”

Rhaenyra dropped the sword to the side, speechless.

They stared at each other in stunned silence, the absurdity of it sinking in by degrees.

Then Rhaenyra started to rise, instinct kicking in. “I’m calling for a maester. We need answers-”

“No!” Daemon lunged forward, grabbing her wrist with a pleading look. “Please, don’t tell anyone. No one. I beg you.”

“But, ”

“Please, Rhaenyra.” His, her, voice cracked, raw with humiliation. “Let them think I’ve gone hunting. Fallen ill. Something. Anything.”

Rhaenyra hesitated, but the desperation on Daemon’s face was real.

“…Fine,” she relented. “But we can’t just keep you locked in here.”

“I’ll say I’m… a cousin,” Daemon said quickly. “From the Vale. Visiting.”

“You want me to lie to everyone and pretend you’re your own cousin?”

Daemon gave her a deadpan look. “Do you have a better idea?”

Rhaenyra sighed and buried her face in her hands. “Seven hells. You’re lucky you’re still attractive.”

Daemon perked up a little at that. “You think I’m attractive?”

“I hate how smug you sound, even like this.”

She turned, already planning the elaborate lie in her head.

Daemon, meanwhile, slowly laid back on the bed, one hand over his chest.

This was going to be a long, long week.

Daemon had lost it.

The fury roiled beneath his skin like wildfire, hot, blistering, and directionless. He stormed through the corridors, breath shallow and teeth clenched, his hands balled so tightly at his sides his knuckles ached. The world felt wrong. His body felt wrong. It had only been a few days since he woke up… like this. And every moment since had been a fresh insult.

He was furious at Harylos, the so-called god, the being who had healed others, who had cursed him.

He was furious at the constant bruises along his hips and shoulders from simply passing through doorways he used to clear with ease. Everything felt just slightly off. His centre of gravity had shifted, his reach had shortened, and he kept knocking into things like an untrained child in a full suit of armour.

He was furious at how even his sword forms, muscle memory honed over decades, felt foreign now. Familiar motions disrupted by new limitations. A loss of brute strength. The pivot of a wrist that felt too slender. A parry that now required precision instead of sheer force.

Gods, it infuriated him.

Even worse was the mirror.

He couldn’t stop staring at her. That woman.

Her jaw was too soft. Her cheekbones too high. Her lips too full. Her lashes too long. Her eyes,

He had to look away. He didn’t want to admit what he saw.

Those wide, dark eyes held fear in them. Fragility. Not the kind forged from wisdom, but the raw, new sort born of vulnerability.

He gripped the edge of the dressing table until his knuckles went white, staring into the reflection like it might shatter if he glared hard enough.

“This isn’t me,” he whispered, the words escaping like a ghost.

That woman wasn’t him. Couldn’t be him. That wasn’t Daemon Targaryen. The Rogue Prince. The Dragon knight. The man who had carved his legend into the flesh of kingdoms.

She was small. Delicate. Breakable.

And worst of all, there was a certain beauty to her face, his face, that Daemon didn’t know what to do with. It was an insult. A mockery. A cruel joke played by gods who never knew when to stop.

He shoved himself away from the mirror and strode toward the door, dragging his fury behind him like a storm cloud.

The moment he stepped into the hallway, one of the guards, one of his guards, glanced up from his post.

“Good day, my lady,” the man said politely, nodding in deference as Daemon passed.

The words hit like a slap.

He froze mid-step. His spine went rigid.

My lady.

The guard hadn’t meant offense. He was just speaking the truth as he saw it. That was the problem.

No one could correct him, not even Daemon, once feared for his presence. Couldn’t say “I am Daemon, you fool.” Because what would that mean now? What weight would it carry coming from this, this soft-skinned, wide-eyed shell?

He said nothing.

He just kept walking, eyes forward, heart pounding like war drums in his chest.

He didn’t want to feel this way. Didn’t want to admit how helpless he felt. How humiliated.

Because he was a woman now.

And that was the greatest humiliation of all.

He had forgotten. Or maybe he’d tried to.

The summons had sat unopened on his table for a day and a half before someone knocked, delicately, irritatingly, and reminded him.

The High Lords are coming. A feast in their honour. Her Grace expects your presence.

A celebration. A gathering of Westeros’ most pompous bastards. A night Daemon Targaryen should have ruled with his usual lazy confidence, wine in one hand, Dark Sister resting in the other, that charming smirk on his lips that made men nervous and women curious. He had always known how to walk the line, dangerous, magnetic, untouchable.

Now?

Now they expected him to wear a gown.

A gown.

No armour. No black leathers. No heeled boots with steel at the toe. No Dark Sister strapped across his back like the extension of his will. They wouldn’t let him bring it.

“A lady is not permitted to bear weapons at court,” someone had said gently, smiling as if they were being reasonable, not stripping him of his identity.

As if he were truly just some delicate ornament. Some carefully curled and powdered thing to be admired and passed over.

As if he were not Daemon fucking Targaryen.

His hands shook as he dragged open the wardrobe doors.

The gowns stared back at him. Mocking. Row after row, soft fabric and finer embroidery than any blade. Silk and lace, velvet and pearls. Rhaenyra had tried to be kind, he knew she had, ordering things in black and red, his colours. A quiet kindness. A gesture of dignity.

It didn’t help.

He yanked one out. Lace at the sleeves. The delicate stitching reminded him of spiderwebs spun in a crypt.

The next one had pearls sewn into the bodice, glimmering like dragon’s teeth. It made his lip curl. He flung it to the floor.

The third one, some sheer-shouldered atrocity that whispered when it moved, was on its way over his head before he stopped halfway through and ripped the sleeves off entirely, sending a rain of silk thread fluttering to the floor like ash.

His breath caught.

The mirror caught his eye.

Her eye.

There she was again.

That same woman he saw every time he looked now. She had his white hair, falling long and smooth over her shoulders. His nose. His jaw, but softer now, betraying something gentler beneath the bones. She looked flushed, red-faced from frustration. Her chest rose and fell with shallow, angry breaths. Her hands were clenched at her sides.

There was no sword at her hip.

Daemon stared.

The woman stared back.

Her lips trembled.

Her eyes brimmed.

And then he screamed.

It was not a scream meant for battle. Not the cry of a warrior charging into war. This was feral. Raw. Animalistic. A sound torn from somewhere deep, from a place that had no name. Rage and grief, shame and fury, all lashing outward like a dragon’s tail in a narrow hall.

He grabbed the nearest thing, a porcelain vase, and hurled it into the wall. It exploded into jagged white shards.

Then the goblet. Then a dish. Then his boots.

Every breakable object in the room became shrapnel. Glass, ceramic, silver, splintered wood. The room descended into chaos as he tore through it like a storm, breathing like he’d run for miles. Furniture knocked over. Curtains ripped. The bedframe groaned under the strain of something being kicked into it. And still, it wasn’t enough.

Still, the mirror remained.

Still, she stared back.

Daemon stood in the ruin of the chamber, shoulders heaving, hair wild, dress half on and half torn, eyes gleaming with unshed tears he refused to let fall.

He didn’t know who he was anymore.

But he knew she wasn’t him.

And gods help the next person who dared suggest otherwise.

That was how his new lady-in-waiting found him.

Standing barefoot in the middle of a wrecked room, breathing like a dragon on the brink of fire, half-dressed in a torn gown that hung crooked over his shoulder. His white hair was wild around his face, tangled like a storm cloud. His eyes gleamed with unshed fury, and just a hint of humiliation.

The chamber looked like it had survived a siege. Shattered ceramics crunched underfoot. The sheets had been ripped from the bed and one of the wardrobe doors hung off its hinges. A comb was embedded in the wall like a dagger.

She stood in the doorway, surveying the chaos without flinching. Her expression was maddeningly calm.

Daemon had no idea what her name was. Rhaenyra had assigned her, insisted on assigning her, in that gentle-but-implacable way she’d started using around him lately. Some poor, unfortunate soul with good posture, clever hands, and a professional smile that reminded him of a snake’s.

She adjusted her grip on the folded gown she carried and sighed, just loud enough to be heard over the crackle of broken glass.

“A dress, my lady,” she said, stepping neatly over a porcelain shard. “You’re already late.”

“I’m not wearing that-” Daemon began, voice rough with fury.

It cracked. Halfway through the word, it cracked. Turned sharp. Shrill. His eyes widened in horror.

The girl blinked, unimpressed. “Do you want me to lace it,” she said flatly, “or will you scream and cry until someone else does it for you?”

Daemon lunged.

It was instinct. Pure, offended reflex.

She dodged like a cat, dropped the gown, and before he could blink, had twisted behind him and pinned his arms behind his back. The motion sent his hair whipping around his face and left him off-balance, caught in the embrace of someone who shouldn’t have been able to move like that.

“Wha-”

“You’re not the first to cry in a corset, Princess,” she murmured into his ear, voice smooth as velvet. “But you’ll be the prettiest.”

Daemon froze.

His whole body thrummed with outrage. Embarrassment. Disbelief. But under that, there was something else. A flicker of respect.

Maybe even terror.

She released him a moment later and stepped back, brushing imaginary dust from her skirts, entirely unbothered.

The gown lay on the floor between them like a gauntlet thrown in challenge.

Daemon stared at it.

Then at her.

Her lips quirked into a smirk. “Well?”

He ground his teeth. But slowly, furiously, he bent to pick up the gown.

She didn’t help him up.

She only turned and walked toward the dressing table, casually adding over her shoulder, “If you’re quick, we might still have time to pin your hair.”

He was going to kill Rhaenyra.

Later.

After the feast.

After the corset.

After all of this.

Daemon woke up a bloody mess, literally.

He didn’t stir so much as jolt awake, as if dragged from a nightmare straight into a worse one. His breath hitched, sharp and ragged. His chest heaved. His skin was clammy, soaked with sweat, clinging to the sheets that now felt far too hot. Disoriented, he sat up halfway, then froze.

A sharp, unnatural pain sliced through his abdomen. Not a wound. Something deeper. Something wrong.

It was a twisting, cramping agony low in his gut, coiled tight and squeezing. It felt like his own body had turned against him, like something inside was clawing its way out. It wasn’t dull. It wasn’t even stabbing. It was gutting. Violent.

And then he looked down.

The bed was drenched in blood.

Dark red stained the sheets beneath him, smeared across his thighs, sticky and wet and horrifying. His cotton sleep pants clung to his skin, soaked through. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Panic gripped him like a noose.

His hands flew to his abdomen in a blind rush; was he wounded? Had someone broken in during the night? Had he been stabbed in his sleep? Was this some punishment from the gods?

He clawed at his torso, trying to find the source. But there was nothing, no cuts, no slashes, no reopened scar. His chest, his stomach… whole. Whole and unbroken.

But the pain remained.

And the blood kept coming.

And then… then he looked lower.

It was coming from there.

There.

Daemon gagged.

His stomach lurched. His throat tightened and bile rose fast. He stumbled upright, or tried to, his legs trembled under him, joints loose and untrustworthy, every step a lightning bolt of pain. His vision swam. He caught the edge of the bedframe to steady himself, but the sheets were slick, he slipped and went down hard, shoulder slamming into the floor with a grunt.

That’s when Rhaenyra stirred.

Still half-asleep, she murmured something soft and unintelligible, turning toward him. Her hair spilled across her face, a lazy, familiar curtain of silver-blonde.

He stared at her from the floor, one bloodied hand braced on the stone tiles, the other still pressed between his thighs. His breath came in uneven gasps. His face was pale with shock. His mind felt like it was cracking.

He was bleeding.

He was bleeding from there.

He wasn’t just a woman now.

He was a functional woman.

And that thought, more than the blood, more than the pain, nearly broke him.

She sat up groggily, hair a silvery mess around her bare shoulders, eyes bleary with sleep.
“Daemon?” she mumbled.

Her voice felt like it came from a great distance. Daemon looked up from the cold floor, pale as milk, shaking and soaked with blood. His knees were drawn up, both hands clutched between his thighs as if he could physically stop the bleeding with sheer will. His lips were parted, his breath hitched.

“I’m dying,” he whispered, eyes wide with terror. “I’m dying, Rhaenyra, I’m being bled out, ”

She blinked at the scene in front of her, groaned faintly, and pushed the covers off with a wince.
“Oh. It’s your moon’s blood.”

“My what?” he croaked.

“Moonblood,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Every woman bleeds. You’ll get used to it.”

Daemon stared at her, utterly dumbfounded. Then let out a horrified laugh that broke halfway through, splintering into a wheezing, hiccuping sound that wasn’t quite a sob, but wasn’t anything else either.

“This, this much blood?!” he gasped, voice high and ragged. “This is a little bleed to you?! This is a gods damned slaughter!”

“It is a lot,” she admitted, giving the sheets and floor a critical glance. Her nose wrinkled. “Yours came strong. But it’s still normal. It’ll happen every month. For a week.”

He froze.

The words every month settled in his bones like frostbite.

“A week?” he repeated, so softly it was almost a prayer. “Every month?”

There was a long pause.

Then came the sob.

A soft, wet, broken sound that cracked open something in him. He pressed his blood-slicked hands harder between his legs as if he could hold himself together. Then, without warning, his whole body convulsed, and he vomited right there on the floor.

Rhaenyra sighed and slid out of bed. Her movements were slow, gentle. Familiar. Not the Queen. Just Rhaenyra. She approached him with pity in her eyes, and something deeper, something that looked dangerously close to sympathy.

She knelt beside him in the mess, her silk hem darkening as it soaked up red. With patient hands; she peeled his fingers away from his trembling body.

“It’s alright,” she murmured, reaching for the cloth bowl by the bedside. She dipped a cloth in the warm water and pressed it gently into his tear-streaked face. “It hurts more the first time. And yours came strong. That’s all.”

“I don’t want this,” he gasped. “I don’t want this fucking curse.”

“I know.”

“I can’t fight like this. I can’t ride. I’m-“ His voice cracked. “I’m not-”

He couldn’t say the rest.

Rhaenyra didn’t fill the silence with pretty lies. She only helped him rise with slow, sure movements. He let her limp and shaking, tears still streaking down his cheeks. She guided him gently back to the bloodstained bed, cleaned what she could with practiced ease, then climbed in beside him and rubbed slow, soothing circles into his aching stomach.

Daemon whimpered and curled around her hand like a wounded child.
And Rhaenyra held him through the pain.

Eventually, duty called.

She lingered longer than she should’ve, brushing sweat-damp hair from his brow and waiting for his breath to even out. But even the Queen could not hide from the grind of court. With a soft sigh, Rhaenyra rose and dressed, her fingers moving slower than usual over her rings and clasps.

At the door, she paused, casting one last glance at Daemon curled under the covers, pale and trembling, but blessedly still.

She summoned his lady-in-waiting with a low warning and a tired, pointed look.

“He’s in a mood,” she muttered. “And he’s violent when cornered. Don’t let him bite you.”

Then she was gone, swept into the dull machinery of politics and petty squabbles. Hours passed. Too many hours. Her heels clicked over marble as she returned, shoulders stiff from diplomacy, crown heavier than usual with the weight of keeping the realm from snapping in half.

She expected him to be asleep by now, or sulking in bed, perhaps muttering curses into his pillow.

She did not expect what she found.

The door to their chambers was slightly ajar, as if something had hit it from the inside. And inside,

Chaos.

The hearth stripped the bed bare, its sheets shredded and half-tangled in a pile. Someone had strewn blood-soaked cloths across the floor like grisly breadcrumbs. Someone had used a chair, splintering it and jamming it into the doorframe, as though it served either as a barricade or a battering ram, she couldn’t tell which. Curtains had been torn down. A pitcher lay shattered in a corner, the water dried in streaks across the stone.

And in the center of it all: Daemon.

He was sitting on the floor, cross-legged like some ancient, wounded beast, swaddled in a mess of blankets like he’d tried to cocoon himself in denial and rage. His hair was a wild, greasy tangle. His expression was eerily blank.

He was breathing through his nose with the measured calm of a man who had just crawled back from war.

Rhaenyra froze in the doorway.

“…Did you fight the gods themselves while I was gone?” she asked, only half-joking.

Daemon blinked slowly. Then looked up at her with hollow eyes.

“I fought a corset,” he said. “And lost.”

Daemon hated his moonbloods.

They were vile. Humiliating. A monthly torment that made him feel like his body was mocking him from the inside out. A grotesque cycle of pain and shame that no armor could protect him from. Each time it came, it was a cruel reminder of everything he wasn’t anymore. Of what had been taken. Of what he’d been turned into.

And yet… he missed them.

Because he hadn’t bled in over two moons.

At first, he’d been relieved. Grateful, even. Perhaps the gods had finally grown bored with their joke. Perhaps whatever cruel parody of womanhood had been inflicted on him was beginning to fade. Or stabilize. Or die.

But the relief soured quickly.

The sickness started not long after.

Mornings were the worst. He’d jolt upright from half-sleep, already halfway to the basin before his stomach could catch up. Sometimes he made it. Sometimes he didn’t. The bile burned his throat. The taste of acid clung to his tongue for hours.

Food turned on him. Meat made his stomach churn. Grease made him gag. Even the smell of wine brought a wave of nausea so sharp it made his knees buckle. His skin itched constantly, stretched tight and hot over aching bones. His chest throbbed. He thought it might be his heart. Or a curse. Or maybe some strange new humiliation brewing inside him.

Still, he refused to name the truth.

In normal women, yes, missed blood could mean pregnancy.

But Daemon Targaryen was not a normal woman.

He wasn’t any kind of woman.

He was the Rogue Prince. The Blood Wyrm. Rider of Caraxes. Wielder of Dark Sister. Second son of House Targaryen. Husband of the Queen. A warrior. A commander. A terror.

Not some soft-bellied, swollen-breasted broodmare.

And it wasn’t possible, anyway. He’d only been with Rhaenyra. Another woman. There was no seed. No chance.

So this? This curse that writhed and knotted and grew inside him?

It had to be something else.

Some twisted aftershock of Harylos’s magic. Some curse buried deep in his blood. Something unnatural.

Because if it wasn’t…

If it was what he feared…

Then Daemon didn’t know what he’d do.

Eventually, he snapped.

He stormed into the maester’s solar, pale and sweating, fury simmering just beneath the surface. The door slammed open against the stone wall with a deafening crack. The maester looked up, startled, quill jerking a line across his parchment.

Daemon didn’t speak at first. He marched across the room, planted his hands hard on the old man’s desk, and leaned in with a snarl barely held behind his teeth.

“Tell me what the fuck is wrong with me.”

The maester blinked. Flustered. “My… my lady, ”

“Don’t.”

A tense beat of silence passed. Then the maester nodded and began his work. Fingers fumbling, voice nervous, he asked his questions. He examined Daemon’s pulse, checked his tongue, felt his abdomen. All the while, Daemon watched him like a wolf, ready to tear out a throat.

Finally, the maester stepped back, pale beneath his wrinkled skin.

He cleared his throat.

“My lady… you are with child.”

The words didn’t land at first. They hovered in the air like smoke. Daemon stared at him, blank, disbelieving, hollow.

Then,

“No,” he said softly.

Then louder: “No. No no no, ”

“I assure you, the signs are clear. You have-” the maester swallowed, “-all the necessary internal anatomy. And your condition, ”

“Get it out of me.”

The maester froze.

Daemon’s hand went to his side.

Dark Sister sang from its sheath, the polished steel catching the firelight as it hissed through the air, stopping just inches from the maester’s throat.

“I said,” Daemon whispered, low and shaking, “get it out of me.”

The blade trembled. So did the maester.

Then, slowly, the old man nodded.

He brewed the herbs with shaking hands. Daemon watched him in silence, not sheathing the sword until the goblet was placed before him.

The concoction was dark. Acrid. Bitter as rot.

Daemon downed it in one gulp.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t speak.

He only slammed the goblet down hard enough to crack it.

Then he turned on his heel and stormed out of the solar, his cloak billowing behind him like a storm.

Not looking back. Not daring to.

But halfway to his chambers, he collapsed.

A sharp, tearing pain ripped through him, worse than any moonblood before. It was primal. Vicious. Like something was trying to claw its way out from inside him.

Crimson streaked down his thighs.

His vision swam.

The hall spun, tilted, then rushed up to meet him as he hit the stone floor with a sickening thud. The last thing he remembered was the blood, so much blood, and the cold.

He awoke in bed.

The sheets were clean, but he could feel it, underneath. The ache. The emptiness. The wrongness.

Rhaenyra was there, perched beside him, gently brushing sweat-damp hair from his brow.

“You’re burning,” she whispered.

Daemon blinked at her, eyes glassy and dazed.

She hesitated. Then, soft and careful, she asked:
“Did you lie with a man?”

His face contorted, rage, disgust, betrayal all at once.
“I would rather die than let a man between my legs.”

Rhaenyra didn’t flinch. But she asked, quieter still,
“Then how?”

Daemon turned his face away, jaw clenched.
He didn’t answer.

And neither did she.

They tried to move on.

Daemon recovered. Slowly. Grudgingly.

They assumed it was over. That the abortive had worked. That the nightmare had passed.

But then his belly kept swelling.

Then came the sickness again, worse this time. Violent, unrelenting. Mornings began in bile and retching, and his bones ached in ways he couldn’t describe.

Then came the kicking.

Not flutters, kicks. Real. Solid. Alive.

He and Rhaenyra returned to the maester.

The old man didn’t need to speak. His face said it all.

“…It failed,” he whispered. “The child still lives.”

Daemon lunged.

Rhaenyra caught him.

He thrashed in her grip, snarling, “I drank it. I drank every bloody drop, ”

“I know.”

“I felt it, “

“I know, Daemon, ”

He sagged in her arms, breathing hard, hatred rolling off him in waves.

Then: “Cut it out.”

“No,” she said softly.

Her voice trembled. Her hands tightened on his arms.

“I’ve lost too many,” she whispered. “Too many children. Too many chances. Please…”

Daemon froze.

She looked up at him, eyes glassy but steady. “Let me keep this one.”

He stared at her, stunned. As if she’d spoken in tongues.

“You want this thing?”

“I want something that’s ours,” she said.

And for a moment, something in him cracked.

Daemon grew bloated with the parasite, his body swelling with something he never wanted, never asked for. He could no longer ride. Couldn’t spar. Could barely walk by the end. He felt like a stranger in his own skin. He tried everything, secretly. He brewed his own abortion concoction in a dark corner of the rookery. It failed. He threw himself down stone steps. It failed. Only bruises. Pain. He tried poisons, starvation, cursed herbs, punching his own belly, screaming into pillows to muffle his sobs. Nothing worked. And Rhaenyra never noticed, or perhaps she did, and chose not to see.

He stopped counting the days.

Time blurred. Measured now only in agony: the mornings he couldn’t stand without retching, the nights he woke clawing at his stomach, certain he felt the child chewing its way out. His skin stretched thin, taut over bone and swelling. His hips ached. His back screamed. He bled from places he shouldn’t have.

Even so, it lived.

It thrived.

He grew round. Heavy. Slowed.

The Rogue Prince brought low by a child that shouldn’t be. That shouldn’t exist.

He would stand before the mirror and not recognize the woman glaring back.

Sometimes, he punched the glass just to feel something real.

They stopped letting him attend court. His temper had frayed to nothing. Once, when a knight offered to help him down a stairwell, he had tried to bite the man’s ear off. Another time, he drew Dark Sister on a septa just for staring too long.

No one reprimanded him. They were too frightened. Too confused. He was still Daemon Targaryen. And yet… not.

He began sleeping on the floor. Refused cushions. Refused touch. Refused food until his hands shook too hard to lift a spoon, and Rhaenyra fed him herself, wordlessly, as if nothing had changed.

Maybe it hadn’t.

Maybe this was what she’d wanted all along.

Then came the day he had dreaded beyond all others.

The day it would finally leave him.
The day his body would betray him completely.
Labour.

It started in the darkest hours before dawn. A deep, twisting pressure in his spine that woke him from already-broken sleep. He knew what it was before the first genuine pain even struck. There had been no mistaking it. His body, traitorous and bloated and alien, had finally reached its breaking point.

By sunrise, he was already moaning into his sheets, sweat-soaked and trembling.
By midmorning, he was howling.

The milk of the poppy did nothing. Not even numbed the edge. The agony tore through him like wildfire, relentless, consuming. It was a deep, wrenching pain, like dragons fighting within him, ripping muscle from bone, shredding him from the inside out.

He screamed until his voice cracked.
He screamed until they were afraid he’d bite off his own tongue, and stuffed cloth into his mouth to stop him.
He screamed until even he forgot the words to beg for mercy.

Hours passed. Maybe days. Time became meaningless.

He thrashed against the sheets, clawed at his own skin, bucked against every hand that tried to hold him down. They bound his wrists to the bedposts after he tried to crawl, half-naked and wild-eyed, across the room toward Dark Sister. Not to protect himself.

But to carve.

To end it. To rip open his own belly and drag the creature out with his bare hands.

The bindings left bruises. The cloth left blood in his mouth. Nevertheless, it wasn’t enough to stop him from sobbing, from writhing, from trying to escape his own body.

At some point, he lost track of where he was. The ceiling blurred. Voices became echoes. Rhaenyra’s hand in his own felt like ice, even as she whispered his name again and again through tears.

He begged. He pleaded. He cursed.

He cursed the gods, all of them, old and new, for watching and doing nothing.
He cursed Harylos, wherever that sorcerer was, for forging this wretched curse in the first place.
He cursed the parasite for its stubborn, monstrous strength.
He cursed the maester for failing to kill it when they still had the chance.
And when his eyes met hers, twisted in pain, rage, betrayal,
He cursed Rhaenyra. For making him keep it.

But most of all, most bitterly, he cursed himself.

For not finding a better way.
For letting it grow.
For enduring.
For surviving.

His body had been a battleground from the moment the magic took root. But this, this was the final war. And Daemon Targaryen, Prince of the City, rider of Caraxes, breaker of blood and bone, could do nothing but endure it.

As the creature clawed its way into the world.

All he could hear between the crashing waves of pain and the pounding roar in his ears was the chant.

“Push.”
“Push.”
“Push, my prince.”

As if he wasn’t already being torn in two. As if he weren’t already dying.

He wanted to scream at them, to curse them all. He had been pushing. For hours. For an eternity. His body had been stretched and broken beyond recognition. His voice was gone, shredded raw from screaming. His lips cracked. His wrists bruised from the bindings. His back arched in agony, muscles locking, belly cramping like a hot iron brand.

He couldn’t cry anymore. There were no tears left.

Time lost all meaning. He floated between consciousness and oblivion, held only in place by the blinding agony and the soft, persistent murmurs around him; too kind for this chamber of death.

Then, at last, something shifted.

There was a snap inside him. Something gave way.
And in a final, violent push,
It tore free.

A rush of blood and fluid followed, gushing from him in a grotesque flood. He gasped, chest heaving, body quaking with aftershocks, as if he’d just barely survived a battlefield ambush.

The room moved around him, but Daemon couldn’t track it. He was drenched in sweat, as pale as moonlight, shaking uncontrollably. His head lolled to one side, eyes fluttering open.

And there it was.

The thing that had haunted him for months. The thing that had broken him, reshaped him, defiled him.

A squirming, red-faced, white-haired infant, slick with blood and birth, writhing and wailing in the hands of the midwife.

He stared.

He hated it.

Hated it for existing. Hated it for what it had done to his body, to his mind, to him. Hated it for surviving when he had tried so hard, so many times, to be free.

“A girl,” Rhaenyra whispered, her voice thick with tears, eyes shining with something close to awe.

Daemon’s own voice was barely a rasp as they removed the gag.
“Get it away from me... before I kill it.”

The wet-nurse stepped forward cautiously, the child bundled in her arms, the infant’s tiny hands flexing, mewling softly now instead of crying.
“It’s over, my prince,” she said gently. “She’s healthy. Just hold her, just for a moment, ”

His eyes, once molten with rage, now burned with something darker. Deeper. A cracked and crumbling fury.
He didn’t answer her with words. Only action.

He shifted slowly, dragging one bound foot with purpose. The faint clink of steel on stone was nearly drowned out by the coos and wwhispersuntil they realized.

He’d hooked the scabbard of Dark Sister.
Dragged it across the floor.
The blade was already half-free.

Chaos erupted.

Hands reached to stop him. Rhaenyra shouted. The wet-nurse staggered back with the child in her arms.

But Daemon didn’t lunge. He didn’t scream.

Because before he could strike,
Agony tore through him again. A bolt of pain so sharp, so deep, it made the birth look gentle.

His back arched violently. He screamed. Blood soaked the sheets anew.

The maester’s hands flew to his belly, his face going pale.
“…Another,” he murmured in horror. “There’s, there’s another one.”

Daemon’s scream was inhuman. It split the air like a sword through flesh, raw and feral and full of murder.

“FUCKING, NO, GET IT OUT OF ME, KILL ME, KILL IT, ”

They shoved the gag back in before he could bite off his own tongue.

He thrashed violently against the bindings, a cornered animal gone rabid. Foam flecked the corners of his mouth. Tears streamed from his eyes, hot and angry and helpless. He bucked and jerked, hips lifting off the ruined bedding, his body wracked with sobs so forceful they rattled his chest.

The room was chaos. Midwives moved like ghosts around him. Rhaenyra’s face was pale with panic. The maester barked orders no one really heard. The stench of blood and shit and iron filled the air, heavy and suffocating.

Another contraction tore through him, sharp and savage.

Daemon screamed into the gag, muffled and wild.

Seven more hours.

Seven hours of torment, more brutal than anything the battlefield had ever thrown at him. No sword wound had ever cut this deep. No flame had ever burned this hot. This wasn’t pain. This was punishment. A cruel joke from the gods. Vengeance from Harylos. A curse made flesh.

Daemon howled until his throat bled.

He begged with his eyes, pleaded with his soul for it to end, for someone, anyone, to kill him. To stop this. To cut it out of him.

No one did.

And then, finally, it happened again.

A second child was torn from him with a wet, bone-deep rip that left him convulsing. Another white-haired thing. Slick with gore, wailing like the first.

He didn’t even see it.

Didn’t want to see it.

The world tilted and darkened. His muscles gave out. His limbs fell limp. The bindings held up a body that no longer had the will to fight.

He passed out, drowning in blood and sweat and hate.

A broken thing.
A prince carved open by fate.
Tied to a bed in a room that smelled like death.

And two children screaming beside him, born of magic, misery, and madness.

Rhaenyra didn’t speak for a long moment. The fire crackled low in the hearth, barely enough to fight off the chill that clung to the chamber like damp rot. One of the children, he didn’t know which, let out another shriek. Sharp. Grating. Endless.

Daemon didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.

He just stared upward, at the stonework above the bed, unmoving as a corpse.

“You haven’t held them,” Rhaenyra said softly. It wasn’t an accusation, not really. A more quiet observation, one wrapped in worry. “Not once.”

Daemon’s jaw twitched.

“They were inside me,” he rasped. “Isn’t that enough?”

“They’re ours,” she whispered.

“They’re not mine.”

Rhaenyra sighed, weary in a way that went beyond sleeplessness. She turned to her side to look at him properly. His cheeks were hollow. His eyes sunken. His lips cracked and pale. But his stare, gods, that stare, was fire and ice. Alive and dead all at once.

“You named them,” she said again.

“I didn’t,” he repeated.

But the truth hung between them like smoke. He had. Whether from dreams, madness, prophecy, or some accursed tether, he couldn’t yet sever.

Helyse.

Vaelyr.

Two names that burned on his tongue like old Valyrian steel.

Outside, the storm winds howled against the keep. Inside, the wails continued, as relentless as the sea.

“I want them gone,” Daemon said suddenly. Voice flat. Frayed. “Send them away.”

Rhaenyra went still.

“Somewhere safe. Far. I don’t care. Just-” he choked on the words. “I can’t; look at them.”

Her fingers brushed his wrist beneath the furs. Tentative. Cool.

“You don’t have to raise them, Daemon,” she said. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. But they are alive. And they will need us, one day.”

He didn’t reply.

Because in his heart, he wasn’t sure they would need him.

But he was certain of one thing:

He needed them gone. Before he broke again.

He couldn’t take it anymore.

The walls of the chamber felt like they were closing in, shrinking tighter by the hour. Every breath he drew burned in his chest, raw and shallow, as though his lungs had forgotten how to work. His breasts throbbed, aching with every movement, leaking through the linen bindings he’d wrapped around himself in a futile attempt to hold his body together. They were soaked now. Cold. Sticky. Unrelenting.

And the crying.

Gods, the crying.

It was constant. Piercing. Like a blade drawn slowly along the edge of his skull, over and over and over until he thought he might go mad from the sound alone. Day and night, it didn’t stop, not even when the wet nurse cradled them, not when Rhaenyra hummed lullabies with a tremble in her voice. Not even when silence should have fallen.

Daemon sat up in bed, breath ragged, eyes hollow and red-rimmed. Rhaenyra stirred beside him, half-asleep, reaching out, but he was already on his feet. Barefoot. Drenched in sweat. He didn’t say a word.

He walked like a ghost through the halls, the stone biting cold against the soles of his feet. Every step echoed. Every heartbeat felt louder than the last, pounding against his ribs like a war drum. The torchlight flickered as he passed, casting warped shadows across the walls.

When he reached the nursery, the wet nurse turned from the cradle, startled. Her mouth opened, a gentle greeting on her lips.

It died there.

The look on his face stole the breath from her lungs, something ancient and wild, hollow and dangerous. She backed away without a word, clutching her shawl to her chest.

Daemon stepped inside.

They were crying.

Still crying.

Wailing like the world was ending. As if they knew. As if they felt the loathing burning in his chest, the venom that curdled every inch of him. The despair, the rage, the exhaustion that had long since burned through to madness.

He didn’t think. He couldn’t think.

He moved on instinct. On hate. On something black and bottomless inside him.

He reached into the cradle and scooped them up, one in each arm, their small bodies squirming and slick with tears. And then he turned.

And then he slammed them down.

Once. Twice. A scream tore from his throat, animal and feral and inhuman. He kept going. Kept smashing, down, down, down, each blow shaking the bones in his arms. Linen and stuffing burst into the air. Threads unraveled. Cotton scattered.

And then,

Stillness.

He stood there, panting, arms trembling, his hands full of limp softness.

Dolls.

Not flesh.

Not blood.

Just dolls.

The remnants of playthings lay at his feet, one with its head torn, the other split open at the seam, their insides splayed like entrails. Daemon blinked. His vision swam. The heat of the moment shattered like glass.

His stomach turned.

The real cradle, still there.

The real children, still screaming.

Daemon dropped to his knees with a sob that sounded like it had been ripped from the depths of him. He slapped a hand over his mouth to keep the noise in, but it came anyway, wet, shaking, strangled.

He crawled forward. Slowly. Like a man crawling to his own execution.

His fingers reached over the edge of the crib, trembling as they touched warm, wriggling skin. First Helyse, her tiny back, slick with tears. Then Vaelyr, his round belly rising and falling with panicked breaths.

And just like that,

The crying stopped.

As if his touch was enough. As if they had only been waiting for him.

Daemon slumped forward, head resting between them, his body sagging against the wooden rails of the cradle. His arms fell limp, his breath stuttered. Tears slipped freely down his cheeks, hot and bitter.

And there, amidst the silence he had so desperately craved,

He passed out.

Cradled by the cries that had driven him to the brink.

Daemon awoke to a throbbing pain that reached deep into his bones. His body was sticky, sore, and still leaking, the remnants of a torment that hadn’t yet released its grip on him. The smell of sweat and blood clung to him, the air thick with the scent of exhaustion and desperation. The infants were crying again, their high-pitched wails stabbing through his already fragile nerves.

His head was heavy, too heavy. His chest ached, a deep, aching throb that pulled at his ribs. His breasts, still swollen, tender, and leaking, felt like they belonged to someone else entirely. He could feel the dampness seeping through the linen bandages that were wrapped around him, the fabric soaked with milk, and with something darker.

Daemon lifted the children carefully, one in each arm. They were warm and soft, far too real, and the weight of them seemed to press down on his chest, on his soul. He couldn’t ignore them, couldn’t pretend they weren’t there. He knew the disgust that twisted in his gut was wrong, but it was an anchor in the storm that was tearing him apart.

The ache in his breasts burned like fire, but the need for silence, for respite from the unending noise, was far stronger. For just a moment, he wanted it to stop. Just a fleeting moment of peace.

With a tremor in his hands, he sat down on the nursery bench, his mind spiraling. He lifted his shirt slowly, and with a sickening slowness, brought the twins to his breasts. He flinched as they latched, their tiny mouths pulling at his flesh, and for a moment, Daemon felt his stomach twist with a sickening mix of revulsion and something darker. The sensation was vile. It was wrong. It was everything he had loathed, everything that made him feel less than a man.

But then, something shifted in the stillness. The crying stopped. The room fell into a strange, eerie calm. The twins suckled peacefully, their tiny bodies pressed against him, soft and warm.

Daemon sat there, shaking, his hands gripping the bench as if it was the only thing holding him together. He couldn’t look at them. He couldn’t look at what he had become. But the silence, the blessed, blessed silence, was enough.

As his gaze drifted down to the babies in his arms, he felt something stir deep inside. It wasn’t love. Not yet. Not in the way he knew it should be. But it was power. A strange, terrible power. It wasn’t what he had wanted. It wasn’t what he had expected. But it was his.

And maybe... maybe that was enough.

For now.

He sat there, trapped in the quiet, feeling the weight of his decision sink in. The power of control, the only thing that had ever been truly his, pressed down on him like a crown, sharp and suffocating. But it was his.

And, for the first time in days, Daemon Targaryen found that maybe, just maybe, it was enough to keep him standing.