porcelain, ivory, steel

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It became something of a habit after that - they’d cross paths on a sporadic basis throughout the day, usually when Gwayne came to Lord Ormund on city watch business, but they’d talk and spend time together more regularly in the evenings. They wrote to the Queen together and talked of knighthood, politicking and warfare, and all in the Hightower were glad to see it. An uncle not prone to doting taking an interest in his nephew now he was nearly a man grown, and a nephew needing more tutelage than a man as busy - or as cold - as Lord Hightower could afford him.

Gwayne learned that Daeron spoke two tongues and wrote exclusively in High Valyrian to his brother Aemond to keep his skills sharp while isolated among Andals. He tried to teach Gwayne - simple greetings and commands for his dragon - but it felt heavy and unnatural on Gwayne’s tongue, and Gwayne was not one for persevering with things he found himself naturally deficient at. The writing came easier to him - while runic and inscrutable on the page, there was a logic to it that he found easier to keep up with than sounds that tumbled over each other like a river over rocks.

He signed his name in Valyrian glyphs once on a letter to his sister, just to see her boy hide a smile in his collar.

The first time Gwayne watched his nephew secure Lord Ormund into his armour, they shared a little nod over his puffed-up cousin’s shoulder.

The time passed that way - with Gwayne splitting his attention between his duties in the city watch and keeping an eye out for his nephew, and Daeron improving in his squiring, schooling, and mastery of Tessarion, his blue-scaled dragon. It was not long before Daeron was passing him in height and had truly grown into a man who could swing a full-sized sword, needing to be fitted for his own armaments instead of attaching polished plate to others.

Before long, the Targaryen Prince was turning his attention to earning his knighthood, the first of his brothers to express an interest in doing so. Gwayne had nudged him in that direction, of course - earning his own knighthood had been a defining moment for him as a young man. It helped that Daeron wanted some way to distinguish himself other than the third son or the plain-featured one, as he had bemoaned before to Gwayne, no matter how much it made Gwayne scowl. It was also in House Hightower’s interests, of course, as a knighthood would make him appear more chivalrous and dashing to the nobility and smallfolk alike. Ser Daeron was kinder on the ears than Aemond One-Eye or Aegon the Sot, after all.

As part of this endeavour, Lord Ormund decided (in his infinite wisdom) that Daeron should see more of the commonfolk he would be charged with protecting. The weak, the needy, the downtrodden. And (in his infinite wisdom) he decided the best way to do this was to send Daeron along with Gwayne on his patrol one day. Gwayne argued, of course - his job was to maintain order and protect the vulnerable among the city’s most destitute folk, not trot a princeling through to gawk at them - but, of course, it fell on deaf ears.

And, Daeron being Daeron, he could sense Gwayne’s disgruntlement as soon as they stepped out of the barracks, one sticky summer’s day. The Prince was clad as plainly as possible in City Watch colours to avoid drawing eyes, his auburn hair pulled back from his face in a simple knot rather than his usual braids. “I apologise for the imposition, Uncle. The change to your usual routine must be tedious.”

Gwayne frowned. Daeron being Daeron, he’d assumed he was the issue. Where did he get that from? His elder brothers were certainly not shy, as Ser Otto wrote. Was Ormund really wearing him down in such a way? Ormund was difficult, but Daeron seemed more than used to him by now. Maybe the boy simply missed his mother? Or was it Gwayne who was doing something wrong, failing him in some way? The idea did not sit well with him. “You are never an imposition, neither are you tedious,” he said. “I only… questioned your uncle about whether this was entirely necessary, or appropriate.”

Daeron was close to Gwayne’s elbow as Gwayne steered them through a busy square in the shadow of the Starry Sept. It was market day, and the commonfolk haggled for the best price on pickled herring and new potatoes as a dragonrider slipped amongst them, anonymous. Daeron was silent in thought for a second, his nose twitching and valiantly avoiding wrinkling at an unfamiliar smell - rotting turnips, if Gwayne had to guess. “Lord Ormund thought it best for me to learn from you how we protect the commonfolk, Uncle.”

Gwayne wished he believed that. In truth, he rather suspected his lord cousin simply wished Daeron to be disgusted by what he saw, and comforted in his own blueblooded superiority. That was certainly all Ormund had ever seemed to get out of his time spent amongst his subjects, pomander lodged firmly under his nose. “And what has Lord Ormund taught you about the city watch?”

Daeron paused, as though he had learned that his answers must be tailored to who he was talking to. Good, Gwayne thought, that would serve him well. “That you have built a fine Watch that keeps the King’s peace, ser,” was what he settled on.

That was definitely not what Lord Ormund had taught him, but challenging it would only embarrass the boy. “And what do you think is the difference between my Watch, here in Oldtown, and your uncle’s on your father’s side, in King’s Landing?”

A furrow formed in Daeron’s brow as they sidestepped a heated debate over the price of hemp rope. He was not old enough to remember the Gold Cloaks at their worst excesses under Daemon Targaryen’s rule, of course, and the Rogue Prince himself was now firmly ensconced on Dragonstone with his niece-wife and the Strong bastards about him, but it was no secret that the paupers of the capital still cowered in fear when their City Watch passed by. “I suppose that… there is not the same reputation, uncle.”

“Exactly.” Gwayne led them off of the square, into a side street where upper floors leaned in precariously, casting a somewhat ever-present gloom. “You can see for yourself - the people walk shoulder to shoulder with us here, they do not fear us. Never trust someone who thinks they must rule with fear, my boy. In my experience, they are either fools or sadists - or both. And somehow, they are always surprised when their people rise up and choke them at the first chance they get.”

As they passed through a tight knot of people inspecting a popular potter’s work and offering prices, Gwayne took hold of Daeron’s arm so he wasn’t lost in the throng. The boy looked at his hand. “But your watch uses force, Uncle. To stop fights and root out people who do not wish to be found. I have seen the bruises on you before.”

“It is a different matter when you are answering violence than when you are being the first to wield it, and different again when you only ever use whatever force is necessary, and not a drop more.” The crowds had thinned out now, as they slipped into a quieter network of streets. He had taken the safest route for himself today, one that weaved through neighbourhoods of tradesmen and bookkeepers. On a regular day when he made it out from behind the desk and on patrol with his men, he would not shirk the darker, dingier parts of the city, but today, he had no desire to stroll into any trouble or ugliness with his sister’s boy at his heels. “A knight’s first duty is always to protect. Protect any who cannot protect themselves. And when people are at the mercy of their feelings and not their reason - the feelings they use to justify how they beat and murder and rape - there is very little chance of making them listen with only words. That is when you must use something even baser, such as force, so that even someone following the whims of their base emotions must understand.”

Instead of taking the instruction of his elder in hand with a meek thanks, Daeron frowned. “You speak as though all base emotions, as you put it, are violent and hateful, ser,” he said, and Gwayne would have never admitted it, but it irked him. He was no Ormund, he did not wish for blind obedience and an overflow of gratitude every time he opened his mouth and dispensed some tiny morsel of wisdom, but he must admit, even if only to himself, he was no longer used to people disputing him in his own realm, his world. “Joy is a base emotion - babes and animals feel joy without having the words to describe it. Desire, also. Love, even.”

Gods give him rest, Gwayne thought, but of course he ended up with the soft-hearted son. “As much as the bards seem to make romance a central part of the job, knights are never defending the weak from joy and love, Daeron.” He sighed, taking in the frown on the boy’s face. “And as for desire… desire is the root of likely half the harm done to innocents, here or anywhere in the known world.”

Daeron’s nose wrinkled, and he stopped Gwayne with a hand on his shoulder. He was so tall now, and the borrowed sword at his hip clashed with the haleness of his features, the smoothness of his skin. “It is not desire you speak of, Uncle,” he said. Insistent. Certain in a way that only a young man can be. “That is domination. That is about… making someone feel powerless. Taking that which someone does not wish to give.”

Gwayne raised an eyebrow, finding himself more than a little unwilling to engage with this seriously. The boy would make a fine knight if they were trapped in the tale of The Bear and the Maiden Fair, he had no doubt, but he may find that reality left less chance for pontificating. “I do commend your efforts to separate the good from the bad so starkly, Daeron, but I fear you may find reality less compliant-“

“Is that what my father did?” Daeron asked, and Gwayne stopped, mouth still open midsentence. “To my mother? Did he force her?”

The muscles that brought his teeth together into a firm clench twitched, and Gwayne felt something sluggish and sour and old at the back of his throat. “Who told you that?” He said, a prick of anger rising in him. Whoever was filling this good, kind boy’s head up with the ugliness of the world would pay for it, he thought.

But Daeron only smarted. “I’m not stupid, Uncle. I have eyes.” Gwayne opened his mouth to refute that that was what he’d meant, that he would ever mean that, but Daeron spoke over him. “I know what many of the men of my house are. And I know how young my mother was. She told me, once, when I was little and she was braiding my hair, that she used to braid the Princess’s hair, my half-sister. And my half-sister would braid hers in turn. They were friends, and Aegon is only five-and-ten years younger than them, and- and-“

“Five-and-ten is not so young for a noble girl to marry and have babes, Daeron,” Gwayne said, still skirting the question, because it was not a question he wished to answer.

“Perhaps not, but that does not make it right,” Daeron said, and Gwayne was avoiding his eyes now, so he ducked his head to force his uncle to look at him properly. “Did she want it? Any part of it?

Again, Gwayne’s guts twisted horribly. The city continued to churn around him, ignorant of his anguish. Steady but fine clouds of flour continued to waft from the bakery at the end of the row, and somewhere someone was hammering nails into something soft - perhaps a cobbler making boots. “It’s a lot more complicated than that, Daeron.” Seven help him, but here he was trying to find soft words for the hard people who took his sister’s innocence, so as not to hurt her good, kind boy.

“Is it?” He asked, and he was right, of course. It was not that complicated.

Gwayne changed tack. “I understand the urge. To know whether you were made in love-“

“Do you understand, though?” He asked. “A great many people say a great many things about Ser Otto Hightower, but no one has ever accused him of not loving his wife.”

“-but your father is not some barbarian throwing women over his shoulder and carrying them off,” Gwayne pressed on, his teeth firmly gritted. “He is a King, of seven kingdoms. And people want things from Kings… and they give a great deal more to get them.”

Daeron nodded, but his eyes had a shimmer to them that made Gwayne’s guts churn. “But did she want anything from him? Truly?”

Gwayne sighed, because there was nothing else he could do. “No.” It was Ser Otto who wanted a great many things. And all Alicent had ever wanted as a child was to make him happy. Gwayne had turned all his rage outwards at the world as a boy, had rocked the ship to force people to look at him, but Alicent swallowed her lot whole and only ever did her best to calm the waters. “It rarely matters, Daeron. What girls like her want.”

The boy looked wounded, but he also nodded slowly, as if to thank him for the answer. There was nothing left to say. Daeron gestured him on along their route, and followed a step behind.

They trudged on in silence for a while after that, and, if nothing else, Gwayne at least felt justified in thinking this whole excursion would be an utter disaster. The quiet between them stretched until they came to the end of the route, looping back around towards the shadow of the Starry Sept. It was then that Gwayne saw a familiar figure waiting for them.

Clothed in the garb of the City Watch, a young lad leaned against a sandstone wall that was scarred by the storms that rolled in off the sea and the carts that scraped by as they rumbled down the cobblestones. “Ser Gwayne,” he said, pushing off the wall - although in truth he had such a sprawling manner that it barely made a difference to his posture.

“Poppy,” Gwayne nodded. One of his youngest recruits, Poppy was a comely lad with the deep skin of the Summer Isles and a permanent smirk in his eyes. “All quiet through the market square and the midtown. How about with you?”

Poppy shrugged, “Usual nonsense down by the docks. Sailors looking to slake whatever thirst burns driest. Merchants upset I’d even suggest they’re cutting their salt with chalk.” Gwayne couldn’t help but smile wryly, because nothing ever changed, not truly. “It’s actually starting to taste like salt, though, so I thought I’d let you know. Think the word has gotten out about you weighing it ‘gainst a crate of the real thing.”

“Miracles never cease.”

“May the Seven keep us,” Poppy grinned, then ducked his head to look past Gwayne’s side. “Who’s the lad? Another boywhore for you to rescue?”

Gwayne could all but feel Daeron’s eyes snap to him, hot and questioning, and he shot Poppy a glare. “My nephew, Prince Daeron,” he said with gritted teeth.

In Poppy’s defence, it was the closest Gwayne ever saw the lad come to standing up straight and looking embarrassed. His eyebrows shot up a little as he took in Daeron, lips floundering as he grasped for the right words. “Sorry, milord, didn’t mean nothing by it.”

Daeron dragged his confused gaze from Gwayne to shake his head at Poppy’s apology. “No need. No offence taken,” he said simply. They must have been of an age - if Poppy knew how old he was. “It’s a common mistake, I know I don’t look a Targaryen. People tend to look straight past me.”

Gwayne recognised the curl of Poppy’s lip straight away and braced for impact the way you would when a runaway cart collides with a wall. “If it’s not too bold, my prince, I would call anyone who would look straight past you a blind man.”

“Entirely too bold, Poppy,” Gwayne ground out, even as Daeron’s cheeks flushed hotly and Poppy continued to grin at him guilelessly. “Did you have anything else to report, or are you now just shirking your other duties so you can leer at my nephew?”

Poppy just about managed to stop himself from rolling his big brown eyes as he shifted his gaze away from Daeron, gearing himself up to get back into motion. “You’re no fun, Hightower.”

Gwayne scowled. “I’m your commanding officer, Poppy.”

“Like I said,” the boy grinned lazily as he started trailing off back towards the harbour, “no fun!”

Shaking his head in mild irritation, Gwayne waited until the lad had disappeared into the crowd of people milling on the street before he turned to Daeron. The boy was still decidedly pink in the face, watching after Poppy’s receding back. “Apologies,” Gwayne said, “Poppy is a good lad. He’s clever, decent in a fight, and he’s got a strong sense of right and wrong. But he’s definitely… the least disciplined of my men, shall we say.”

Gwayne was a little relieved when Daeron looked back to him at last, having given up on following Poppy in the crowd. “You’re very patient with him,” he said, neither judging nor disapproving in his tone. “I shudder to think what Uncle Ormund would do if a subordinate spoke to him in that manner.”

Gwayne shuddered to consider it also, or to consider his cousin and Poppy in a room together. “I wouldn’t allow my other men to do it, nor would I even let Poppy speak to me that way in front of them- not that he would. Like I said, he’s clever.” He couldn’t help but smile, a little proud of the lad. “Poppy is different, though. I met him before he ever joined the Watch. On a raid, maybe five years ago now.”

Understanding dawned on Daeron’s face, then, as he pieced together what Poppy had said about boywhores and rescue. “In a brothel.”

“Yes,” Gwayne said. “There were credible reports of this particular establishment offering their patrons the services of some very youthful workers. Poppy was one of them. His mother had died, he’d never known his father, and when he was on the streets he was unlucky enough to catch the eye of a monster calling herself a madam. She paid him in bed and board and just enough motherly love to keep him desperate for more.”

Daeron was grim-faced. He looked back out into the crowd, as if he could still find the boy - not that it mattered, Gwayne thought, as at least a few of these folk wandering around them would have similar tales. “When you are a knight, Daeron - as I have no doubt you one day will be,” he said, watching the graceful cut of Daeron’s jaw, clenched in a righteous anger, “it is very important that you never enjoy the violence. But it is also very important that you understand it is sometimes necessary in this world we live in, to protect those who are easy prey and have no one else.”

As soon as the words came out, he could taste the ash of his own hypocrisy in his mouth. What had his sister been, if not easy prey in need of protection? From the King and the courtiers and counsellors and their own father?

But Daeron was watching him, thoughtful and soft-spoken as ever. “You weren’t a knight, then, Gwayne. You were just a boy.”

If that was true, then why was there still a ball of lead in his belly?

His sight was blurry, and he sniffed hard, intent on Daeron’s boots. “I’ve had enough for one day,” he said, willing his voice not to hitch. “Let’s go back.”

-----

Gwayne rolled that day over and over in his head for many a day afterwards.

He gave as brief a report to his cousin as he could, and bore the sniggering and the eyerolling as Ormund asked his squire whether a day spent beating back the beggars and whores of Oldtown had made him into a glorious knight. Gwayne thought Daeron suffered it well, and answered as diplomatically as he could, but in truth he struggled to even look at the boy and avoided him entirely for a long time afterwards, so he could not say for certain.

As the moon waxed and waned, however, and Daeron quietly and decorously let all that had been said between them fade into memory, letters arrived on Gwayne’s desk from King’s Landing, asking for an update on the progress of their youngest Targaryen prince.

Gwayne could only tell the truth in his replies to his father and sister, and that was that it was becoming apparent that Daeron was quite the success.

He dutifully relayed the reports he got from all those involved in Daeron’s education. He was praised by his maester, graceful and unforgiving with a longsword, and had courtly manners that would make a maiden blush and an old crone smile and pat his cheek. A comely look, of course, and, by watching him with Lord Hightower, Gwayne had seen in him a cleverness he knew how to use but also how to conceal.

As for the dragon quartered in a disused stable, the handlers that had travelled from the Dragonpit with it told him the only thing that outmatched Tessarion’s rapid growth was the doting bestowed on her by her master. Gwayne was as uncomfortable around the beast as anyone else in the keep was, but he did his best to accept it as part of the boy. A knight needs a mount, he repeated to himself again and again, especially when he watched the stableboys sweep mounds of charred animal bones out from the dragon’s lair when Daeron was out flying.

But what Gwayne was proudest of all to report to the boy’s mother and grandsire, though, was that even as a dragonrider and a Prince, Daeron never wavered from his instinct to lead with kindness.

There was only one thing he strategically chose to omit from the letters. Time and time again. Moon after moon, even as his suspicions grew. And that was the only thing desired in a Dragon Prince that Daeron seemed to lack - a healthy appetite.

Not for food, of course - he could rival his Tessarion for that kind of appetite after a day spent training, and his increasing height and strength were proof of it.

No, it was only after Gwayne had grown much closer to what was once a boy but was rapidly becoming a man that he noticed it. And it became much more obvious to Gwayne’s eyes after their miserable excursion in Oldtown and the boy’s subsequent meeting with Poppy.

Daeron lacked an appetite for women.

To begin with, Gwayne told himself he was being far too harsh a judge, that he was only seeing things he had seen in himself as a young man and drawing unfair conclusions. No, these things he saw in Daeron could still amount to a completely different conclusion in a different man, and he was only projecting his own patterns, clearly.

He was also well aware that men did not need to spend small fortunes in brothels and slather ointment on their diseased cocks to have a healthy interest in women, and someone with Daeron’s quiet dignity would no doubt tend towards a high degree of discretion in such matters anyway.

But then, nothing would change. Another year would pass, Daeron would be another inch taller - taller than him and nearly taller than Ormund - and still, no ladies hiding giggles behind their hands. No odd absences or furtive meetings in the rose gardens with the women of Ormund’s court. No coin going missing without explanation from Daeron’s personal allowance sent by his mother. No whispers among the serving girls. No disapproving arched brows of the cooks and washerwomen who would have to help a silly young maid rid herself of the consequences of a dalliance with a prince.

He started to look out for girls Daeron might take a shine to, girls that might make him trip over his words or draw his gaze from across a room, but there was nothing. And there was no lack of well-bred women in Oldtown to whet the boy’s appetite, in number or in variety, and the girls his age all fawned over him at feastdays, removing all barriers he needed to cross except the one where he reached out his hand and asked for a dance. Gwayne could see why they behaved so. A tall young prince with a face as comely as any maiden’s, sweet eyes, and a hint of danger in the dragon that heeded his beck and call - he was a maiden’s fantasy.

But, worryingly, Daeron regarded them all as though they were background noise at best or a fly on a hot summer’s day buzzing around his head at worst. On feastdays, he danced with those who asked him to dance, or with those Lord Ormund instructed him to. When girls giggled while he walked by, he either seemed to not even notice or, worse, became embarrassed and perhaps even a bit annoyed.

One time, when Daeron came to take supper with him in his rooms, Gwayne watched in bewilderment as a serving girl who had the undershirt beneath her bodice tied perfectly to the top before Daeron’s arrival came in with her laces hopelessly coming undone as she leaned unnecessarily far down over the table to place a dish right before the prince, her breasts practically spilling out of her bodice. And Daeron - sweet, innocent Daeron - had only asked her if he could please take away the fat trimmed from the meat later, as Tessarion had been especially good in listening to him today and he felt she deserved a treat. Gwayne had had to hide his face in his hands for a moment as Daeron continued plating his meal, ignorant of the embarrassment of everyone around him.

Even then, Gwayne had hoped he was wrong. Had hoped - for the boy’s sake - that he was just seeing things. Counting numbers up to sums that were greater than they should be.

But then… Daeron’s gaze started to linger on him more often.

And that was when Gwayne truly began to sense the danger.

Targaryens had queer customs.

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a/n: this chapter ended up going in a very different direction from how I thought it would initially!! So any and all feedback would be massively appreciated, please let me know what you thought. It's a massive boost for me to get feedback on this as I have been feeling quite out of my depth with it at times! :) <3