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em-writes-stuff-sometimes · 1 year

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ñuhus prūmȳs (my heart) │ Chapter 11 PREVIEW

terms of endearment ‘verse: see my Masterlist for the correct series order!

Hey, all! I'm around 3000 words into the latest chapter - I know it's a little early for a preview, as I've still got PLENTY left to write for this one, but because it's been so long I figured I'd give you guys a little look at the first part of my draft. I'm honestly unsure when this one will be ready, so no idea re: expected post time/date. Remember, I have a progress bar on my desktop blog that I update regularly! Stay tuned, and thank you so much for the patience!

You are startled awake by the sound of crying.

Jolting up before your mind truly registers the sound, it takes you a moment to remember why it is that you have roused. You rub your eyes and yawn, peering to the side as the wailing multiplies, two thready, discordant pitches begging for someone, anyone to notice.

Daemon groans beside you.

“Fucking hells.” His voice is muffled by the pillow, timbre lacking the heat his words imply. “We were just up, weren’t we?”

You reach out to whack him for the profanity, arm striking across the span of his back. He grunts with the impact.

“I will take your daughter,” you mutter, already untangling yourself from the sheets, “but your son also begs for attention.”

“Fussy thing,” he mumbles, rolling from the bed behind you.

You smile. It is true that Aelys is the more demanding of the pair, and you are certain it is her tinny squalling that dragged you from unconsciousness in the first place. You ache with every step, your body still experiencing the shock of forcing your babes out, but it is difficult to resent the pain when your eyes alight on the pair of pale-haired miracles fussing in the cradle.

Your thought had been correct, indeed. While Rhaenar’s cries quieten at the brush of your fingers across his cheek, your daughter only sobs harder at the contact. In the weak light of early dawn, her flushed face and stubborn frown are easy to see, wrinkled features contorting in as furious an expression as an infant less than a sennight old can possibly muster. Her knees jerk against her wrappings, the only part of her that can gain any traction within the firm swaddle you have placed her in.

“Rhovus riñus,” you coo, lifting her up and carefully manoeuvring her into your arms. Loud girl, you call her, gently settling her fragile head in the crook of your elbow. Mind her neck, mind her neck,you think, a whisper repeating itself over and over again. It is overly cautious of you, perhaps, but you do not wish to inadvertently harm your babe. “Skorio syt ñāqī hīghā?” Why are you screaming at sunrise?

Her lashes flutter and she cranes toward the sound of your speech, lip quivering. Though you know she cannot see yet, you swear her gaze is trained on you, muzzy and unfocused as it must be. She kicks again at the feel of your thumb brushing over her pout, angry soft breaths puffing from tiny lungs. That raw, wrenching feeling of violent love wells up as it does each time you behold these lives you have made, bringing with it the urge to bar the entrances and dash the eyes from the skulls of all those who dare to look upon your little ones.

“Kesrio syt kepo ēdrunon iotāpteks daor,” Daemon grumbles, the warmth of his body spreading into yours as his hands fall to the cradle on either side of you, bracketing you in. Because she has no respect for her kepa’s rest. He punctuates the statement with a drowsed, aimless press of lips to your temple, sliding down to your cheekbone as he sets his chin to your shoulder and peers down at the troublemaker in your arms. “Vȳs zȳhom kiragon jaelza, hm?” She wants the world to wake when she does, hm?

You are sure this is a quality inherited from your uncle. From all accounts, you had been naught but a quiet, pleasant infant, scarcely to be heard unless in great need of the necessities for survival. It entertains you greatly to muse upon Daemon’s penchant for commotion being passed to his daughter, your daughter. Already she shows the signs of such a fate.

“She hungry?” His palm spans the circumference of her scalp and then some, a gentle ruffling of snow-fuzzed skin – your colouring, his colouring – that coaxes a vexed scrunch and whine from your girl.

“No,” you respond, passing your thumb back over her mouth. She does not attempt to suckle at them. “Just wanting her mama and papa, I think.”

There must be something soporific about the hum of mother and father conversing, for by now Aelys’s haranguing has petered off to a manageable grizzle. She is clearly unhappy with her present state, though you are glad she has chosen not to be quite so combative about it.

Rhaenar’s whimpers begin anew below you.

“Oh, kepus…” you begin, but you did not need to. Daemon readily slides around you and plucks the babe from the cradle with a deftness borne of familiarity. You do not know if it unnerves or reassures you that you yourself had helped shape this skill, once a newborn niece to the budding Rogue Prince.

“Kesīr māzīs, ñuhus trēsys,” he sighs, cupping the back of your son’s head to his shoulder with a hand propping him up under the rear. Come here, my son.

He sways slowly, and you can only watch spellbound as the motion silences the little boy entirely. Your husband’s lips curve in that gentle, aching countenance reserved for only the quietest, most unguarded moments, his nose brushing along the slope of Rhaenar’s skull.

“Jeva idañe pelrar issa,” he continues, glancing at you impishly. “Vali hēnkirī mazumbiti.” Your sister is a menace. Us men have to stick together.

“Lies. Lies and slander, my darling,” you declare to your daughter, spinning on your heel to convey her imperiously to the bed.

Your jesting march reaches a quick and abrupt halt as the cramping of your belly reminds you why it is that you are confined to your chambers for the time being. You stop, waiting for the discomfort to pass, clutching the heft of your babe to you tightly enough that she squawks with the indignity of it.

“Give her to me,” Daemon says firmly, hand rubbing soothingly at your waist. “Get back under the covers.”

“But you have–”

“I can bloody well hold two babes, you know,” he insists, levying an expression of utmost stubbornness your way. “You, however, shouldn’t even be up. You’ve scarcely begun to heal after shoving them both from your cu–”

“Language,” you hiss, passing Aelys into the care of your uncle so that you may hobble back to your safe haven. It is still warm beneath the blankets, and you gratefully press your chilled feet into the temperate spaces so as to regain some measure of sensation in your toes. “I wish you would not use foul words in front of them,” you chide half-heartedly, rearranging the pillows on either side of you with unhurried pace. If you move too fast, a fresh bout of soreness will plague you. “If the first thing they say is something horrid they have learned from you…”

“… then they’ll prove themselves adept pupils, won’t they?” Daemon finishes with a smirk, sitting on the edge of the mattress.

You stretch forth to take your daughter back, propping her on your lap and unbinding the cloth that keeps her so unhappily restrained. Her little arms lift as though in jubilation the very instant she is free, the knot of frustration between her translucent brows smoothing and her legs curling up in a manner much like the pose she had decided was most comfortable while still in your womb.

“Besides, we’ve a while until that becomes a problem,” your husband adds, though you are only partly listening, utterly engrossed in the clench and unclench of her small fists as you shift her, swaddling cloths and all, to one arm. “Not as though they’re performing dramatic orations any time soon.”

You do not get the chance to scold him yet again for the profanity, for your other arm is promptly occupied by your son. The movement startles him but briefly; he squeaks with the jolt of sudden movement and promptly curls into the heat of your skin emanating through your shift, smacking sleepy lips and wiggling his feet against your belly before dropping into slumber.

Rhaenar is a different sort of creature to his sister, you have found. Whether it be that he allows her to make complaints vociferously enough for them both or that he simply does not have any, he is a solemn thing, content enough to while away the hours slumbering or blinking new eyes up at the world, aimless, as though deep in thought. He looks a little like an old man, you think to yourself, charmed by the frowning pucker that forms on his dreaming face. The peace in his darling visage is such that you feel your own lids droop, the comforting weight of happy babes lulling you quicker than any draught or brew could.

Aelys is fire and blood and retribution, the very image of her father. But Rhaenar… he is you, calm and introspective, the cool that acts as balm to the stinging burn of tempestuousness. Nothing pleases you more than to have given new life in equal measure, to have given Daemon both a child he may love for those traits he admires in you and another in whom he may see his own reflection – in whom he may learn to love the parts of himself that he has so long despised.

Of course – being her father’s daughter – Aelys is not one to stay still and silent for too long. Rhaenar begins to stir when she whines, twisting uncoordinated limbs and kicking her heels into his.

“Go back to sleep with our boy, hm?” Daemon leans down first to brush a kiss on Rhaenar’s velvety crown, then up to your lips, his smokeleatherspice scent filling your nostrils and his calloused palm etching tender along your jaw. “I’ll take this one for a time,” he says against your mouth, drawing back to lift Aelys from you with feigned resignation. He tuts down at her with an aching sort of softness as she complains further, striking out at his proffered finger. “Perhaps her fit will abate with some fresh air.”

“Do not go far,” you mumble with eyes already closing, turning to your side to face your son, your firstborn. The babe does not even notice as you make yourself comfortable, drawing him ever closer so that you can feel the line of him against you, small head to tiny toes.

Daemon grunts an affirmative. He would not risk Rhaenar toppling from the bed or being smothered. The last thing you register before sleep claims you entirely is the sound of his low hum, fading with each step he takes toward the balcony.

“Brand new to the world, young madam, and already tormenting your brother? A little dragon, that’s what you are…”

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