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The first time Rhaenyra touches herself, she’s listening to her uncle fuck his wife. “I don’t like you spending all your time with that Velaryon boy,” Rhea says while she’s chopping zucchini. “You’re a girl of good breeding, Rhaenyra, you should make better friends.” Her voice is sharp, cutting Rhaenyra with the same cadence as knife slicing through vegetable, careful not to risk a single streak of green on her impeccably white apron. She scrapes the zucchini from the cutting board into a stainless steel bowl and continues, “I’ve heard he was expelled from his last school for doing cocaine in the bathroom! It’s crass, honey.”Of course, Rhea doesn’t know that Rhaenyra procured the cocaine for Laenor. Nor does she know that what he really got caught expelled for was sucking cocaine-dipped dick, but Roxbury Latin wasn’t the kind of place that would admit to having a faggot in their ranks, much less one whose father pretty much owns the city—most of the Boston Red Sox and all of Boston Globe Media Partners, including Boston.com and The Boston Globe. Coke is trendy, it’s the drug of fashionistas and enfants terribles and finance bros—hardly a stain on the transcript when your father is a gazillionaire. “I like him,” she protests softly. “And you know I would never do cocaine.”“Of course not, sweetheart. I know you’re better than that.” Rhea tips her bowl of vegetables in the crockpot before plucking fresh herbs from the refrigerator. Thyme, savory, oregano, rosemary. She spreads them on her cooking board and chops with fervor as she continues her pointless monologue. Good breeding comes out twice more, pretty and smart girl like you is reiterated and emphasized with a severe tone, didn’t we raise you well? punctuates one question and I want you to succeed in the world follows in mellowed out halftones, half-incitation half-command. Rhaenyra listens distractedly, nodding and humming every so often to pretend she’s interested; it’s the melody of their Tuesday nights, the sizzle of the knife followed by mhm, the lectures about being a good girl punctuated with a nod—they sing the same song whenever Daemon is away, because Rhea is not allowed to have a say about Rhaenyra’s upbringing when he’s around. That’s why Laenor still comes over every Saturday to hang out, even though Rhea would like nothing more than for it to stop.Once the lectures are exhausted and the matter of their words wrung out, they eat in silence and go to bed early. Tonight, they’re having ratatouille—Rhea’s only foray into French cuisine. She spent months scouring recipes and scrolling through websites to recreate the very one Aemma used to make for Rhaenyra when she was a child, trawled through every farmer’s market in the larger Boston area for the perfect ingredients, switched out a large pot for a pressure cooker and the pressure cooker for a crockpot, and painstakingly sat through French lessons at the local Alliance Française to commit every subtlety of the dish to memory. Rhaenyra wants to appreciate the effort, but no matter how hard Rhea tries, the ratatouille never quite tastes like Maman’s. “I thought we could watch a film tonight, since it’s just us girls,” Rhea offers once the plates and the cutlery are stocked in the dishwasher. “What do you think? We could watch one of those romcoms Daemon hates, it’ll be our little secret.”It’s pathetic, how hard she tries. How much effort she expands. “I’m good, thanks. Go ahead though, I won’t tell him.” Rhaenyra is in her bedroom before Rhea can respond. “How’s the new school?” Laenor and Rhaenyra are on her bed—he’s sitting, rolling a spliff, while she’s lying down, with her head lolling on his lap. From down below, Laenor looks like a gentle giant: his bejeweled and white-blond dreadlocks are tied back in a thick ponytail, his dainty—almost aristocratic—hands whisper and tiptoe as they spread the ground weed and tobacco, and his eyes smile down at her. There’s weed scattered on the bedspread and an air of rebellion in the air. The penthouse is empty today—Daemon is out schmoozing with some investor and Rhea is visiting her family in Vermont. “A bore.” Laenor licks the rolling paper with expertise before sliding the spliff between his fingers a couple of times. “Ladies first,” he adds as he hands it down to Rhaenyra.She tucks it between her lips and lights it. Soon, the smog of marijuana mixed with tobacco fills the air in the room, eclipsing Laenor’s face and posters of pop stars and pink velvet furniture and scattered knick-knacks on a white cedar desk. Pungent and thick smoke travels to her lungs, where she lets it rest for one, two, three seconds before breathing it out slowly, eyes closed and pleasure drawn on her lips. “Fuck, that’s good.” “Rhea still on your ass about hanging out with a drug addict?” Laenor laughs as he plucks the spliff from her hand. Kendrick Lamar’s ‘luther’ begins playing on Rhaenyra’s speaker; she closes her eyes and swings her head from side to side as she thinks of a response to give Laenor. Rhea has made no secret of her dislike for him, but it still hurts to have to admit it to him—she can’t help but feel like her supposed good breeding is about more than the fact that she’s a good Catholic girl from a good Catholic family. “Yeah, but don’t listen to her. She’s full of crap,” she decides. Behind her closed eyes, she feels like she’s looping on a perpetual rollercoaster. “She’s always lecturing me about how a good girl should behave, but she loves to be called a whore in bed.”Laenor squints his eyes and tilts his head. “How the fuck would you even know that?”Rhaenyra jolts, tearing her body from the slumber the nascent high was leading her to—the rush is sudden, blistering, a splinter in the bone. “Forget I said anything,” bitten lip and immediate regret, “it doesn’t matter. Daemon won’t let her ban you, and you’re my best friend. I don’t give a shit what Rhea thinks.”“Come on. You can’t say something like that and then just leave me hanging!” He’s excited, puppy-energy crackling, eyes wide and smile wicked. It’s always been like this with him—where Rhea sees a delinquent, Rhaenyra sees an angel. Kindness to the point of credulity, eagerness that borders on childlike, perpetual awe in the face of the world; he’s always stood in contrast to her sharp edges, her acidic tone of voice, her duplicity. “It’s not like I’m going to get off from hearing about it. You know I like my partners carrying a little extra something.”“It’s just a little embarrassing,” Rhaenyra half-admits. It’s a lot embarrassing, actually, but she hopes the idea that it only foreplays embarrassment instead of fully raw-dogging it will tamper his excitement. “I just got expelled for giving a blowjob, Nyra. Give me some fucking credit.”“That’s true.” If anyone can appreciate the truth, it’s Laenor. He’ll find a good joke to make, he’ll grab her by the neck and plant a kiss on her forehead while calling her silly, he’ll even quote Freud to convince her what she’s doing is fine and normal and not at all some weirdo-freak-cringe shit. She bounces until she lands on her knees, suddenly filled with the desire to let him in on her secret; her dirty, shame-wrapped treasure. “You can never tell anyone!”“Come on, you know I would never.” He turns up the music; Kendrick Lamar’s voice fills the space between them. “I won’t even let the walls hear,” he explains before taking another drag from the spliff. “Here,” he shoves it in her hand, “some herbal courage.”Rhaenyra smokes a little more, then purses her lips and moves closer to the wall against which her bed is pushed. Then, carefully, she lifts the photograph of her parents hanging on it.“Why is there a hole in your wall?”“So I can watch my uncle have sex.”“Why?”“Because I want to.”It started when she was twelve—the night was clear, and she’d just spent the day being teased by the girls in her grade for not knowing what sex was. You mean sexism? she asked, a little defeated, because she knew what sexism was, and they laughed. Such a virgin thing to say, they echoed amongst them, even though Rhaenyea would come later to figure out, they were all very much virgins too. Just hide in your dad’s bedroom one night and you’ll see what we mean. Rhaenyra did not mention that her dad was dead; Daemon, surely, was enough of a dad to her to do the trick. Still, as she sat huddled in the closet of the master bedroom, peering through the open wooden slats, the anguish of having been wrong, or duped, or played for a fool, or not methodical enough in her process, gnawed at her lungs—the idea of breathing made claws slash her throat. She’d stuffed pillows beneath the covers to pretend she was asleep; then, she waited. Hours ticked on, the sound of her purple Flik Flak watch a pounding thrum in the ears, but she never gave up. I’ll show them all. I’ll prove to them I’m the best at sex. Daemon and Rhea had gone out to dinner, opalescent and glittering in the moonlight, leaving her with enough money for a pizza and unlimited TV time. You’re a big girl now, said Daemon. We won’t be long, promised Rhea. It was past midnight when they finally tiptoed past their bedroom door—ribbons of yellow light poured through the space between the slats, and Rhaenyra shuffled backwards until she was hidden by Rhea’s long, gorgeous gowns. “You’re sure she’s sleeping?” Rhea asked, half-whisper, half-laughter—a bubbling, hiccuping sound that surely would have woken Rhaenyra if she’d been asleep.“Stop worrying, I checked.” Rhaenyra could not see much past the louvered closet door, but she remembers her uncle leaning forward, and, almost like a vampire, pressing his mouth against Rhea’s neck. “You can’t escape me now, darling.” Twelve-year-old Rhaenyra did not have the words to describe what happened next; seventeen-year-old Rhaenyra, no longer green with innocence, recounts it to Laenor in crude detail, with red-hot desire and the vibrant energy of an MMA commentator. “Did it turn you on?”Rhaenyra lets the family photograph fall back into place. “Am I a freak if I say yes?” The spliff is burning to its sad end, paper curling into ash—there’s just enough left for her to take one long drag, to annihilate her indiscretion and consider it forgotten and buried by the next morning. She grabs it from Laenor’s hand with renewed hunger and breathes in. “Well?”“I mean, sure, but you’re in good company. I’ve definitely had dreams of fucking your uncle, too.”She gasps and grabs a nearby pillow to swat him with it. “Ew! You’re such a perv,” and they fall together in a gauze of laughter and acrid marijuana smoke still clinging to the air—children unburdened and unchained. “I fucking love you, you weirdo.” It’s the most earnest she’s ever been with someone, and it’s the state in which Rhea finds her. “There was a snow storm,” she says before all Hell breaks loose. Daemon and Rhea’s screaming row is one Beacon Hill will remember for the ages. Rhaenyra doesn’t remember when it begins or when it ends—she sits with her knees to her chest as voices of steel and iron break through the walls, break up the family, break down the stifling tension that has simmered since Rhaenyra’s sixteenth birthday, when Daemon got her a baby pink Porsche and Rhea scowled, muttering words like irresponsible, still a child, too extravagant under her breath. In the scant space between their breathless arguments, some bits and pieces stick like glue to Rhaenyra’s skin. You treat her like she’s your own daughter is said in anger, hurled molten-red and resentment-heavy straight to Rhea’s chest. Well, she might as well be should be sweet, should comfort, should warm the heart, but is immediately rendered glacial by since you’ve never wanted to give me any of my own. Lead-heavy silence follows, a bullet ricocheting against a wall. You knew what the deal was when you married me is quickly followed by the memory of a promise—It’s you and I against the world, kid—and glass shatters; a rare Murano vase crafted by recluse nuns is thrown—at a head, or maybe at a wall, or maybe to nowhere. I didn’t think the deal included letting her act like a brat and disobey our every rule! Daemon ends it with your rules. Over her years of spying, Rhaenyra has identified the patterns of her uncle and his wife’s lovemaking. Doggy-style when he’s angry with her; reverse cowgirl when she’s pissed off with him; blowjob when she’s asking for forgiveness and cunnilingus when he cancels last minute on her; missionary when they fuck out of habit, or boredom; his degradation of her is always, an engraved ritual on the tombstone of their marriage. She knows every moan and every grunt, every cry and every word—in her journal, she has drawn maps and charts, keeps track of their fucking with a calendar and color-coded cells for each mood, tracking emotions like the twisted therapist of their sex life she’s morphed into. Usually, after an argument, they’ll hate-fuck in rapid, violent motions, vermillion-stained and dripping in sweat before sleeping back-to-back—this is when they’re at their most honest with each other, egos bruised past the need for etiquette, the reality of their broken, misshapen relationship white with light in their eyes.That night, they render Rhaenyra’s journals obsolete: Daemon pins Rhea to the red-papered wall next to their bed and fucks her silently from behind, a white-knuckled hand gripping her hair and a fist around her hip, his pelvis knocks against hers in a staccato and only the sound of flesh squelching and slapping can be heard in the air. Rhea comes with a whimper and a sob; Daemon comes on her expensive lilac dress—eggshell jizz drips down her leg after the fact, as they stand facing each other, still without saying a word to each other. Then—Rhea packs a bag and leaves.Rhaenyra’s hand is still wet and viscous with her own slick when the front door slams shut. Winsor is the premiere Catholic school for girls in Massachusetts: historic, central, red-bricked, Clipston Sturgis signed. Rhea signed Rhaenyra up the year she turned twelve, touting buzz words like elite, and saintly education, and good girls— words that meant nothing to a little girl still getting adjusted to having a new mother. In the five years since she’s become a student at Winsor, Rhaenyra has made a single friend (more frenemy than friend, truth be told): a girl by the name of Alicent Hightower, daughter of Massachusetts senator Otto Hightower. Alicent is as pretty as she is scathing, always dressed in jewel tones (ruby and emerald and sapphire and amethyst), quick with a deceitful compliment, and about as respectful of religious principles as an Evangelical boomer incoherently calling for the deportation of immigrants on Facebook. She’s also—more importantly, perhaps—the first one to suggest Rhea is less a mother and more competition vying for Daemon’s attention. “You’re delusional.” Rhaenyra spikes through a leaf of Romaine lettuce and munches on it as she continues. “She’s just pissed she doesn’t get to control me. He won’t give her kids, so she has to redirect that energy somewhere.”Alicent shrugs. “I’m not so sure.” Delicate fingers pluck a fry from her plate; she chews on it carefully and licks the salt and oil off her fingers before going on. “I think it’s more like… making sure he sees you like a child. You can’t compete sexually with a child, because that would be disgusting.” A loud sip from her tonic, ice clinking in a paper cup, smug lines around her mouth. “If your uncle sees you like a kid, he can’t possibly want to fuck you—know what I mean?”“Jesus, gross! Why would you even say that?” The blush on her cheeks could be read as outrage, rather than the shame it reveals. She purses her lips and grits her teeth—part of her wants this to be true, of course, but that’s the point of a fantasy: it’s not real. The thought of her uncle’s cock tearing her asunder is one that thrives in the shadows, in the secrecy of her hormone-fueled rages, best kept tucked away; when Alicent speaks it into a three-dimensional reality, she makes it crass, incestuous, ungodly—it becomes an act of violence, and not one of love. “I’m just being honest,” she shrugs. “It’s not my fault you were placed with a perv after your parents kicked the bucket.” Her next sip is loud, gurgling, bovine, echoing around them like a full stop punctuating their conversation, a truth admitted and self-assured. “And don’t take Jesus’ name in vain—that’s what’s gross.” There she is, the Alicent Rhaenyra knows—uncaring, blistering her without care, walking on bones with a smile and arrogance. A fucking monster, one she loves despite all reason. “Like you give a fuck about Jesus.” Her fork scrapes her plate until every bit of her salad is impaled and stuffed in her mouth; she’s been ravenous since Rhea left, eating like a starved man every chance she gets (butter-slippery pastries from Bova’s Bakery before school, plastic-wrapped chocolate bars in-between classes, juicy meats and verdoyant greens for lunch, chips and tonic swallowed with guilt in the kitchen, illusion-thick and heavy carbs at the dinner table). “You’re wrong anyway. He’s just protective and she was smothering me. It was getting embarrassing, honestly. I’m glad she’s gone.” She downs her glass of water, hoping to force her stomach to feel full—if she knew Alicent wouldn’t turn it into a thing, she’d grab her fries by the handful until her cheeks were squirrel-like. “I just hope he doesn’t let her come back.”The more the days of October slip past her fingers, the more she grows convinced Rhea is a thing of the past—Daemon doesn’t speak of divorce, but he makes no effort to convince his wife to warm his bed once more. Life returns to a former normal—the one they knew before he got married: laughter over coffee as a shy sunlight streams through the kitchen window, check-in texts throughout the day (Hope you made me proud after an A.P. history test on Monday, Show them what you’re made of before lacrosse practice on a Saturday morning, I picked up some wagyu beef for dinner while she’s walking home on a Friday afternoon), conspiratorial inside jokes while watching Hitchcock’s Psycho together for the thousandth time. Of course, between then and now, some things have changed—the last time Rhaenyra had her uncle all to herself, she was ten—more child than woman, preferring pink bows over fishnet stockings, painting mental brushstrokes of Daemon as fatherlike rather than hot-blooded and man. Then, her wall was intact, covered in pink posters. Now, there’s a hole through which she watches him jerk off.She sits on her knees, thighs spread open, underwear dangling around one ankle, and she peers through the hole, eyelid oscillating like she’s snapping shots of his pleasure. He’s lying down on his bed, nude as the day comes, skin glistening and eyes closed. His ear-length blond hair is sprawled on his pillow, halo-like in shape; the lines of his muscles are supple, quadrilling down his stomach and tightening along the length of his thighs, growing taut then loose as his hand slips up and down his cock. Rhaenyra’s breath puffs out in tiny condensed clouds—the warmth in her belly has made her turn off the heat—as she slides a hand between her legs; she’s already soaking wet, having thought about this moment all day. There’s a ritual to her uncle’s self-pleasure: never on Mondays or Wednesdays, never when there’s still daylight, never after they’ve had pizza from Regina’s on the North End; always after they’ve snuggled together to watch a film, always on a Friday or a Saturday (but never on both those days), always when she has spent the day wearing a skirt (today’s was her beloved Gucci diagonal coated wool miniskirt in burgundy), always on days when Rhea hasn’t tried to reach out to him (which Rhaenyra knows by the downward angle of his eyebrows when he looks down at his phone). Hunger crawls in the hollow of her bones, gnawing its way into her blackened blood, goading her fingers into mirroring every move Daemon makes—light where he is airy, pressure where he is gripping, breaths in synchrony. When Rhaenyra was nine, she decided to teach her uncle how to dance: she played the ‘Toxic’ music video DVD he’d burned for her and stood, hands on her hips, in front of the screen, barking orders at him until their bodies flowed in the same direction, at just the right time, in just the right way. He never complained—he was quick to correct when she said he was doing it wrong, nodding like a scorned puppy when she playfully insulted him for being such a bad dancer. That was the day she stopped calling him Uncle and started calling him Daddy. In the alcove her shadows by her bed, she wonders if he can hear her, if his pleasure is entirely his own or if his body is subconsciously mimicking hers, grabbing the ghost of her from beyond the hole in the wall. Honey-viscous thoughts drip over her rational mind as she imagines her cunt replacing his hand, sliding down with ease on his cock and eliciting grunts of restrained desinhibition—if he were to take her, she’d want him to resist, to say ‘no’ while a thousand of his hands swarmed her body, to whisper ‘it’s not right’ in her ear as he surrendered to the raw instinct to fuck her into oblivion. If he were to take her, she’d want to tell him ‘no’ and then ‘yes’, to fight him before giving in, to struggle in his arms before becoming doll-limp and puddle-liquid in his hands. The spectacle of a fountain spurting white makes her keel over with pleasure and shame, red on the knees and yellow in her pressed palm and white in her fury—in her abandon, her throat closes and throws out a guttural sound, halfway between a moan and a groan.Daemon lifts his head and sees her; the picture falls back into place one second too late. Criston is a former classmate of Laenor’s from Roxbury Latin; he’s had a crush on Rhaenyra for three years now. She’s not interested in him, but they’ve reached a tacit agreement: she’ll pepper him with faux-affection and he supplies her with drugs—weed for her lazy afternoons with Laenor, molly for Alicent’s parties, coke when the nights grow long, acid when she’s particularly upset with Rhea’s antics. That Sunday, she adds a new one to the list: shrooms to bury her embarrassment and her guilt and her shame deep deep down. They’re sharing a strawberry kabob and a chocolate-dipped apple in Faneuil Hall when he slips her the ziplock below the table. “Be careful,” he warns. “The high I get from shrooms is unlike anything else. It’d be better if you did this at home.” Rhaenyra senses the with me held back in his throat but doesn’t coax it out—better he know his place in her life (lined up on a shelf of the boys she’s led on in exchange for the things she wants, their wants and desires collecting dust she can’t be bothered to brush away with her lips). “Thanks.” She pockets the ziplock bag as she plucks a strawberry whole with her mouth. “You still on for Alicent’s party next week? She says it’s going to be her best yet.” Alicent’s parties are always a sight to behold: she spends weeks on décor and theme, stashes away bottles of booze in the space beneath her floorboards, distributes gold-foiled invitations printed on card stock to her carefully crafted guest list, and cozies up to her dad in the days leading up to it so he’ll stay out of the way. He’s always under the impression they’re networking parties where everyone sits with their legs closed while discussing whether they’ll go to Harvard or MIT next year rather than the debauched and sticky ragers they always are. “Yeah, of course.” Criston hasn’t been yet but Rhaenyra has convinced Alicent to put him on her guest list, mostly because she’s not sure she’ll be able to endure the night without a little molly to mellow her out and make her forget. “Are you asking me out, Targaryen?” He tries to be cheeky, but his wink falters and his throat seems to grow so thick the words come out strangled.“Laenor is my date, officially.” She doesn’t stop chewing on her bite of chocolate-dipped apple as she replies; sweet-and-sour flavours swirl in her mouth and stain her tongue before she swallows. “But you can come as our plus two, if you’d like,” she dangles, like a carrot on a stick.He chomps on it without protest. “Sure!” It’s too easy to play boys. In moments like these, she wishes Daemon were seventeen and easily flustered.He hasn’t mentioned her voyeuristic tendencies since that night—sometimes, Rhaenyra wonders if, perhaps, she imagined it; if she wanted him to see her so bad that she made up their eyes meeting on the desolate land between their bedrooms. The silences they share are now littered with the corpses of all the things she wishes she could tell him to explain—she cuts their throats open before they can speak and inhabit the amorphous, empty space between Daemon and her. If someone has to bring it up first, it must be him, she’s decided. She comes home at little after five in the afternoon, her lips still stained with Criston’s saliva and her thighs still branded red with the print of his hand—for the shrooms, she’s granted him a single, one-time only makeout session on a bench in Boston Common. He was clumsy with teenage-boy-eagerness, eager with hormonal craving, craving with wasted time waiting for her to give him this opportunity. She makes a beeline for the bathroom and wipes her face clean of him before going to the living room to greet her uncle.“Did you have fun?” Daemon is mindlessly zapping through channels when she plops down on the couch next to him.“Yeah.” Her latest words to him have been monosyllabic and dull, the kind that ensures there are no loose endings, no openings or breaches for questions to come through.“Good, I’m glad.” He lets the remote fall on the couch and turns his head towards her. “You know, you can still have Laenor over. I don’t want whatever is going on with Rhea to affect your life.” One of his hands travels to hers—he’s all warmth and fire; she’s still freezing from the icy winds outside. “I don’t care if you guys smoke weed. Hell, I’d rather you do it here together than sneak out to God knows where. At least here you’re safe.” He’s always been like that with her—permissive without limit, cautious only as far as her safety is concerned, unbothered by the colorful splashes in her life; a pang of guilt strikes her in the stomach at the thought of the shrooms in her pocket.“Yeah, yeah.” A half-smile cuts through her face. “I just didn’t want to risk his presence attracting Rhea—it’s like she always knows when he’s here.” She’s not trying to be malicious, or to give Daemon a reason to scold her for speaking so bluntly about his wife—she’s trying to convince herself everything is back to normal, and realises as she speaks the words that she would never have been so callous if things had been normal. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”A naked arm slips around her shoulders and he pulls her in for a hug while his other hand messes with her hair. “Yes, you meant to,” he laughs. They fall together in a tangle of limbs and belly-bursting laughter, play-fighting like children, like siblings, playing ignorant to the fact that he’s forty-three and she’s seventeen, that he’s uncle and she’s niece, that—in a way—he is father and she is daughter. “Stop, stop, stop, I can’t breathe,” she cries-laughs when he pins her down on the couch and presses all his weight on her, murmuring I’ve got you now in her ear. Her cheeks are flush and her brow is wet with sweat—she tries to shake him loose by wiggling beneath him, but he doesn’t relent, instead burying his face in her hair, I’m not letting you go equally rhapsody and prayer and command tickling the skin of her neck and the dark desires sipping tea in her mind. One of his hands moves to her stomach and his fingers crawl like feasting ants on her skin—she breaks out in laughter and quivers, wobbling with ecstasy and joy, five or eight or ten again, when he came to tickle her before bedtime until her lungs shrivelled from lack of oxygen. The air crackles around them, time interrupted and suspended; heat is liquid within, flames licking her blood and blooming on her face, burning coal in the pit of her stomach and kindling brushing against matches in her bones—then, without warning, without reason, the bubble bursts. Rhaenyra’s laughter turns to sobbing.Daemon rises above her, a panicked look in his eyes. “Honey?” he whispers. “I’m so sorry—”“No!” she cries out, grabbing him by the collar of the tank top. “It’s not you,” the words are scattered and half-eaten in her mouth, “I’m so sorry.”There is no reason for this sudden shift—not one that Rhaenyra can come up with in the moment, anyway. Her body betrays her mind.Daemon sits up and pulls her up so she’s nestled in his chest, snot and tears staining his tank top—he rubs her back with a soothing hand, not pushing, not pressuring, letting her exhaust herself in the cocoon of his arms. Within, the fire has been extinguished by a violent rainstorm—it keeps her from breathing evenly, thunders in her belly, sends shockwaves to her lungs; the body keeps score, they say. It remembers. She can only parse bits and pieces of what memories are sliding in her limbs right now: her father smiling at her from above, her mother tickling her and kissing her on the forehead before bed, her uncle holding her in the safety of his arms while she wantonly spies on his intimate moments, Rhea’s smile on the day of her wedding to Daemon and the way it was wiped away by Rhaenyra’s rebellion—her uncle’s loneliness, his image distorted by her obscenity, his bed grown cold. “I f-feel like I b-broke you and R-Rhea up,” she manages after a few minutes, surprised by her own admission.Daemon tightens his grip around her waist and caresses her head. “No, of course not. It’s not your fault, it was never your fault. Rhea and I had an agreement about your upbringing and she broke it. It’s her fault as much as mine—she made demands, and I let her for too long.” He nuzzles his face in her hair. “You always come first, Rhaenyra. That’s a promise I made to Viserys when he made me your godfather. If that means staying single until you’re grown up and happy, then so be it. I won’t make that mistake twice.” Love has always been a complex concept to grasp for Rhaenyra; she knew her parents’ love for almost four years—then, they vanished. A sudden death, courtesy of icy roads and a leaking exhaust pipe. A little girl of three cannot grasp death—she knows two things to be true: her parents were there; then, they were not. What happened between those two moments is nebulous, the blackest, most liquid of stains spreading to infinity. Daemon tried it all—therapy, acupuncture, doctor’s visits, endless spoiling, bribery—but nothing was enough. For years, Rhaenyra refused to eat—her growth was stunted, her body trapped in a cage of her own sadness, death beckoning. Some creases in time allowed her joy—no matter how ephemeral, how tiny—and she held on to those until they took her up to sit amongst the skies and the stars, suspended and far away from the lackluster routine of life. Love takes on a new meaning when she turns nine and the faces of Viserys and Aemma lose their shine in her mind; Daemon becomes daddy and those who birthed and rocked her turn to quasi-strangers, tarnished and greyed-out pictures lost in an attic. Her attachment to her uncle grew toxic, verging on codependency—she cried if he left her for a minute, an hour, an afternoon; in a desperate attempt to remedy this, he homeschooled her and took all his meetings in their living room, let her sleep in his bed, and waited by the door while she bathed or went to the bathroom. Perhaps this was when he worried that she needed a mother figure to fill the space in her heart and sought out a suitable woman for the role. He landed on Rhea after meeting her at a charity ball.Love morphs yet again when they wed—Rhaenyra was eleven then, broiled enough by puberty to keep her dislike of Daemon’s new wife hidden beneath her skin. Love, she decided, was not all that it was cracked up to be—abandonment was the rhythm by which she lived her days. First, her parents. Then, Daemon. There would not be a third, there would not be another opportunity; in other circumstances, she might have grown to love Rhea somewhat like a mother, might have ramped up to calling her Mommy and enjoyed the fruits of her stepmother’s efforts—as it were, Rhea was not a mother. She was competition, and she needed to be squashed. Of love, finally, Rhaenyra shed the clothes of affection and care when she watched her uncle and his wife fuck through the open slats of the closet door. Love, she became certain at the age of twelve, was just a thing bodies did to one another—it was violent, it was brusque, it was wet and sticky and it meant nothing. Daemon did not tell Rhea he loved her as he dug his fingers into her hips and slammed his body against hers—no, he degraded her, and she liked it. Beauty lost the war to obscenity; tenderness conquered by sanguinity; love trampled over by lust. Yet, as Daemon speaks of his devotion to Rhaenyra, she thinks she may have misunderstood all along—all she sees, all she hears, is love; the tender, infinite kind she imagined as a child, the one she held onto for so long until she didn’t anymore. So, in a quest to recapture it, to learn of love again, she brings her lips to his and seeks a kiss.He hesitates for a second—a second too long. The sands of time hang in the emptiness of the hourglass, and the moment—once imagined to be one of love—turns horrific; bloodied by the monster of lust that has found shelter in Rhaenyra’s guts all these years ago. Ashamed, she pulls away and runs for the door, ignoring his cry for her to come back. Anger is gluttonous: it grabs every emotion that walks by by the hair and munches on its flesh until it’s bloated with its own matter, threatening to explode in a nuclear blast and blowing up everyone within its reach. To avoid ripping Daemon’s head from his neck, Rhaenyra and her anger hide at Laenor’s for the next few days. She refuses to tell him why she’s so sad, why she’s burgundy with rage, why she refuses to look at her phone—by night, she lies down in the darkness and stares at the ceiling, wondering when she’ll gather the courage to go home and face her demons; by day, she walks around in Laena’s clothes and tries to focus on the lessons doled out by her teachers and the snippy, gossipy comments Alicent makes about the other girls in their grade, but they wash over her like water on glass. In the lost space between night and day, she tries prayer, begging God to tell her why she was made so twisted and wonky. He never answers. “Come on, you promised Alicent you’ll go. It’ll do you good,” Laenor insists after a week of her moping around. “Poor Criston has been hounding me to know if you’ll be there. You don’t want to keep him hanging now, do you?” he jokes as he pokes her shoulder, but she does not laugh. “Fine,” she relents when he tells her his father won’t like her staying alone in their home for one night, even though they both know it’s a lie—Corlys Velaryon is never around to care about anything that goes on with his children. He’s barely aware of Rhaenyra’s presence. She borrows a black poplin dress from Laena and hides the shrooms Criston procured in her purse—she’s yet to touch them and figures if there’s one night to get high, it’s got to be tonight. “Will you do it with me?”Laenor winces. “I don’t know. You know I’m more of a weed guy, Nyra.” And the occasional coke, as long as it’s served on a silver platter of dick, she wants to respond, but bites her tongue and nods with a faux-contrite look painted on her face. “But hey, I’m sure Criston will be happy to partake.” He winks exaggeratedly and slaps her back, but the idea makes her crawl with disgust.“I’m good, thanks.” She drives them in her baby pink Porsche to the Hightower’s sprawling mansion on Cross street—valued at nearly three million dollars, it’s an endless sea of white walls and cedar furniture, created only for the purposes of featuring as a backdrop in Otto Hightower’s endless quest for power. There is never a shawl out of place, never a pillow that isn’t fluffed—the home itself seems stain-resistant by nature. That is, of course, with the exception of Alicent’s ragers—the meek, unthreatening beige essence of her home is corrupted by neon lights, the odor of booze, and the disgusting puddles of bodily fluid (vomit and sweat and saliva and cum) spilling out of her guests’ bodies. This night is no different—the feeling of flesh is everywhere, glutinous and overwhelming. Rhaenyra slips past the army of bodies and into Alicent’s room, where she locks herself and pulls the shrooms from her pocket—the urgency to drown her mind manifests in hundreds of hands slipping in the creases of her brain and pressing down on her grey cells, exhausting her with sensation and anticipation. With a trembling hand, she shakes the pieces of dried mushrooms out of the ziplock and on her lap, where they lie pathetically while she looks for that final push to shove them in her mouth. When she does, she’s glad to be alone—it’s not a pretty picture, for a girl to eat like she’s been starved; her mouth crunches on dry matter, her teeth sharper than blades, her tongue lingering on chewed bits, her throat gurgling them down like water. Then, she lies down on Alicent’s bed, and she waits. An hour, tops, said Criston.An hour, tops.The ceiling turns blue after twenty minutes. Rhaenyra watches it expand until the copper light fixtures are gone and there’s nothing but an endless ocean; waves in the shape of blades cut through rock as a wooden ship travels upside down across the water, an armed cannon by the side shooting—she wonders what it could possibly be attacking until she sees the silver-haired sirens slicing through the waters; one of them has a bright jewel dangling from her neck.A knock—though it sounds rather like an ominous drumming—pulls her away from the thieving mermaids. “Open the door!” they say; Rhaenyra floats from the bed and obeys; she’s met with the sight of Laenor and his boyfriend Joffrey mid-kissing, clearly looking for a little privacy to fuck.“Jesus, Nyra.” Laenor pushes Joffrey to the side and wraps a hand around her shoulder. “Are you okay?” He grabs her other shoulder and forces him to face her—it tickles, so she laughs. “Oh, you’re high as fuck. I didn’t think—” He turns to Joffrey. “I need to drive her home, Jof. It’s not safe for her here.”“It’s perfectly safe,” Rhaenyra giggles. “There’s an elephant behind you!” The elephant disappears from her view—so does the rest of the people, she realises as she watches time drip like a candle. “Where are we going?”“I’m taking you home.” The smell of leather is overwhelming, and the change in surroundings is sudden, like the blur of space has focused again to let her see where she is. “You’ll sleep it off and be right as rain tomorrow.” Outside, a flurry of snow rushes past the window and peppers the dark road—Rhaenyra stretches her hand out and tries to grab some, but she hurts her knuckles against the glass. As she’s trying to shake the pain away, Laenor shoots her a worried look and adds: “Yeah, we’re going to go to your uncle’s. What the fuck were you thinking?”“I needed to forget,” a sudden sober thought plops out of her mouth. It lands on her lap, gelatinous and glowing with shame.“Forget what? You’re really worrying me, you know—you haven’t been yourself.”Whatever made Rhaenyra speak the truth seconds ago lifts like morning fog over the horizon. She remains tight-lipped and stubborn in her refusal, gripping the dashboard so the confession won’t leak through her nails, through her skin. “Nothing,” she says carefully, parsing out each letter in her head to ensure she’s counting them right and spelling exactly what she means—the vacuity of her lies.Laenor’s words are shaped like bubbles—he spends the rest of the drive babbling, though she doesn’t quite hear what he says, and she ignores whatever makes him hiccup pink and purple bubbles in the air, and she sticks her forehead to the window and thinks about snow and its icy hug—all the way until Laenor parallel parks in her street and drags her out through the door and takes her all the way up to the penthouse.“Leave me be,” says Rhaenyra before he knocks on the door.“Are you insane? You’re going to run away if I do.”She breathes in slowly—she knows what she must do now. The drugs have pierced the anger with a needle. “Trust me, please. He can’t see you.” She caresses his cheek gently, then smiles. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow, promise.”Laenor hesitates, but she should have known, because he’s been her best friend for years—he’s too good-natured to leave her to the wolves. “No.” He grips her harder and knocks on the door, a rap that breaks through her eardrums.Seconds later, a sleepy Daemon opens the door—he rubs his eyes and squints. “Laenor? Rhaenyra?” The words blur once more, slipping out of Laenor’s mouth like a music sheet, playing a symphony she thinks she’s heard before but cannot quite remember—in a movement that feels sudden, but is perhaps eternal, she’s behind a closed door; Laenor is gone and Daemon is holding her. Her uncle, her dad, the man who raised her. The only person she’s ever desired, she realises. The shape of his cock is drawn by invisible lines in her mind, every detail committed to memory since she first saw it, five years ago—engorged veins pumping along the shaft, the slightly purple head, the shimmer of liquid poking through; his lips, creased and pink are so close to her—she was a fool to escape them when she did, too wrapped-up in her own sorrow to see what they could have given her, what world they could have opened up for her. There’s clarity in her mind once more—Rhea’s body is liquid in her eyes, replaced by her own; this is what they were always meant to do. This is the love she’s always been looking for.“Fuck me, dad.” A single tear trickles down her cheek. “Please.”