Chapter Text
Beginning of the year 101 AC
Late afternoon sun cut across the solar, baking the dust motes suspended above the oak desk. Leaning his weight onto his left forearm, Baelon scraped the flat edge of a paring knife over a botched line in the harbor taxes, shaving the vellum away in curling strips. His shoulder popped as he shifted in the hard chair.
Maester Culiper stepped in front of the arched window, casting a long shadow over the scattered parchments. The metal links of his chain clattered against his wool robes.
"Lady Aemma is holding down her midday broth, my prince," Culiper announced. "The spotting has stopped. We are encouraged."
Baelon’s hand stalled. The blade bit into the vellum, tearing a jagged gouge through the page.
"Is she asking for dreamwine?" he rasped.
"Only at night. A fraction of the dose. The babe is strong."
Dropping the knife, Baelon dug the heel of his hand into his gut, right where the ache had twisted into a tight knot since the morning meal. He dragged a breath through his nose.
A squire hurried past the maester, setting a clay cup near the inkwell. Steam rolled off the dark surface. Baelon grimaced before the cup even touched his lips.
"To ease the cough," Culiper urged as Baelon pushed the ruined ledger away. "You woke the guards during the hour of the wolf."
Baelon swallowed the scalding liquid in one pull, wiping the sludge from his mouth with the back of his wrist before cracking the wax seal on a fresh scroll.
"Where are my sons?" he asked, unrolling the parchment.
The bitterness lingered on his tongue long after the cup was empty.
"I believe Prince Viserys is in the Grand Library."
Baelon dragged the inkpot closer and dipped a fresh quill. "Not with his wife."
"Reading the Valyrian histories, I am told."
He scratched his signature across the bottom of the petition, the nib catching on the rough fibers. "And Daemon?"
"His escort lost him near the Street of Silk an hour ago." The maester bowed as he left.
The quill snapped under Baelon's sudden grip, spraying black ink across his knuckles. He shoved the splintered feather aside, driving his fingers back into the cramp in his side.
Wiping the ink away with a linen rag, he reached for a brass-nibbed pen. He pulled the Master of Coin’s leather ledger into the center of the desk, dragging the nib under a long column of cramped numbers.
"Four hundred dragons," he muttered. "Beesbury expects the Velaryons to front the harbor debt, but the crownlands are hoarding the autumn customs tax."
The oak door creaked open again.
Baelon kept his eyes on the parchment, scratching a harsh line through a false sum.
A nursemaid hovered just inside the threshold, a patch of spilled milk soaking the front of her gray skirts. "My Prince," she rasped.
Baelon dipped the pen back into the inkwell. "I told you an hour ago, Sarra. Let her tire herself out."
"She bit Septa Nola." The girl took a hesitant step into the solar. "And the new nurse. Right through the sleeve. She hurled the washbasin at the wall, and she is screaming until she chokes."
Baelon set the pen down.
"Should we fetch Lady Aemma?" the nursemaid asked, twisting the rag in her hands. "Perhaps if her mother just held her—"
"Leave Lady Aemma in her rooms."
Planting both palms flat on the desk, Baelon shoved himself upward. The muscle deep in his lower right side seized. Catching his weight on his wrists, he stayed bent over the wood, trapping a breath behind his teeth as he waited for the burning to recede.
"My prince?"
Forcing himself upright, he grabbed his sword belt with Dark Sister from the back of the chair and hooked it over his hip. "Go back to the nursery. I will deal with my granddaughter."
His boots hit the stone steps of the Tower of the Hand with a rapid rhythm.
At the second landing, Lord Rosby stepped out from an alcove with a yard of parchment. Baelon didn't break stride. He dropped his shoulder, forcing Rosby to flatten against the masonry to avoid a collision, and kept walking.
In the lower bailey, a junior clerk jogged to keep pace with him. "Just one signature, lord Hand, the ironmongers are demanding—"
Staring straight ahead, Baelon took the courtyard stairs two at a time, leaving the panting clerk behind.
He cut through the covered breezeway toward Maegor’s Holdfast. Near the iron-banded doors, grease hung beneath the kitchen arches. As a scullery maid hurried out of the stairwell with a basket of root vegetables, Baelon caught her sleeve.
"Bring me a honey pie from the cooling racks. Now."
The girl dropped her basket and bolted down the stone steps. Baelon leaned against the damp wall, driving his fist into his side. The maid reappeared moments later, thrusting a steaming clay tin into his hands.
The heat seeped through as he rounded the corner toward the Margot Holdfast—and froze.
Lady Aemma was navigating the shallow incline of the corridor, her knuckles gripped a Kingsguard's forearm. Two ladies-in-waiting hovered behind her, clutching silk shawls. Sweat glued strands of brunette hair to her temples.
Baelon shoved the hot pie tin behind his back, tucking it flush against his tunic.
Closing the distance, he slipped his free hand under her elbow to take he weight from the knight, resting his palm gently against the high swell of her stomach. "Aemma," he said quietly.
She leaned into his arm, a tired smile touching her lips. "Uncle. I just... I needed the air. The gardens…"
"You are burning up," he said, feeling the heat radiating through her brocade gown. "Do you need Culiper?"
She waved her hand. "No. Just my bed. I am going to rest." She paused, her chest heaving as she dragged in a breath. "How is Rhaenyra? I have not seen her since the morning meal. Is she fussing?"
Baelon held her gaze, the clay tin burning hidden behind his back. "She is fast asleep. Has been for an hour. You do not need to worry about her."
Aemma let out a long exhale, her shoulders sagging. "Good."
"Where is my son?" Baelon asked quietly.
Aemma’s eyes darted to the flagstones. "He was with me under the weirwood. He stepped away to speak with the master of horse."
Silence settled over the corridor. Baelon watched the sweat bead on her pale forehead. Her fingers were picking nervously at the gold threading on her sleeve.
"Get to bed, sweet niece," he ordered softly, signaling the Kingsguard to take her elbow. "I will find him."
He navigated the winding stairs toward the nursery. The smell of boiling vinegar and mint from the lower levels gave way to the sweeter scent of beeswax and damp wool as he approached the royal children's wing.
Stepping past the velvet curtain into the main room, he found Rhaenyra sitting dead center on the braided wool rug. Her silver hair had been shoved into two thick braids, already fraying into loose fuzz from where she had rubbed her wet face against the cushions. Her eyelids were swollen, her chest giving an occasional, ragged hitch.
"Who is making all this racket?" Baelon asked, dropping down to one knee to pat the crown of her head.
Rhaenyra whipped away, slapping his hand. "Don't touch! Go 'way!"
"Feral little thing today, aren't we?" He tilted the tin forward. The caramelized crust of the honey pie caught the gray light from the high window. "And here I thought you might want to see what I stole from the kitchens."
Rhaenyra’s wet eyes fixed on the glaze. The furious line of her mouth wobbled. Holding perfectly still for a heartbeat, she scrambled forward on her shins. As she moved, she swept an arm awkwardly behind her back, tucking something out of sight beneath the folds of her pink skirt.
"Pie?" she demanded, her voice thick from crying.
"Pie. But only if the roaring is finished."
She snatched the wedge out of the tin, her thumb sinking directly into the sticky center. Tearing a massive bite through the crust, she glared at him as she chewed and nodded.
The iron latch of the door groaned. Jaehaerys walked into the room, his black velvet doublet looking slightly too large where his shoulders had begun to curve inward over the last year. His silver beard was tucked neatly into his belt, but his breath came faint and with a whistling wheeze.
Baelon stood instantly, extending an arm.
"Get your hands off me, Baelon," Jaehaerys grunted, snapping his arm back. "I have my own legs. I’m not a corpse yet."
The old King used his cane heavily, dropping into the high-backed oak chair near the hearth with a low grunt that smelled faintly of old parchment and throat lozenges. He rubbed at the stiffness in his left knee.
"The maesters told you to stay off the tower stairs today, Father," Baelon said.
"The maesters are old women who think a man should die in a bed of goose down," Jaehaerys shot back, his voice raspy but carrying that ancient weight. He looked past Baelon toward the rug, his sharp features softening as he watched the girl eat. "The septas were wailing in the gallery about her temper. I’ve had enough of weeping women to last me three lifetimes. I came up here to spend the afternoon with the little girl, eat some cake, and get some youth back into these bones instead of listening to the council drone on about grain taxes."
"I have just sent the maid down to the kitchens for honeyed milk," Jaehaerys said, nodding toward the open door. "She had nearly finished the crust when I stood up."
"The crust?" Baelon asked.
The room went dead quiet, save for the rhythmic sound of Rhaenyra’s chewing.
"The lemon cake," Jaehaerys said, a pleased smirk touching his white mustache. "Brought it up myself. Took the edge right off."
Baelon looked down. Rhaenyra stared back, her cheeks bulging. In her right hand, she clutched the thick wedge of honey pie. But with the men distracted, her left hand had finally slid out from behind her back to balance her weight on the rug.
Clutched in her sticky fingers was a mangled, half-eaten yellow crescent, dripping with white lemon glaze and crusted in gray floorboard lint.
Jaehaerys followed his gaze. Taking in the golden pie, the linted cake, and the white smear of sugar stretching from the girl's ear to her collarbone, the nostalgic softness vanished from the King's face.
"Baelon," the King said carefully. "What did you bring her?"
"Honey pie," Baelon muttered, watching the sheer volume of sugar disappear down her throat. "A large piece."
"Ah."
Rhaenyra took another deliberate bite of the pie, followed by a small gnaw on the lemon crust. Her eyes met Baelon’s for a heartbeat. Then her little body scrunched in on itself and wiggled, a quick, delighted squirm from shoulders to hips, before she took a bite of the lemon tart.
Baelon rubbed a hand over his face. He thought of Aemma, pale and already half-mad with the stresses of her belly and the memory of the cradle they’d buried last year. Aemma, who had spent three weeks systematically threatening every cook in the Red Keep because sweets made Rhaenyra sprint down the stone corridors until midnight, screaming like a wildling.
"She's going to find out," Baelon said.
Jaehaerys’s fingers tightened on the silver head of his cane. "She is thirty feet down the hall, Baelon. She is asleep."
"I just walked her to her rooms, Father. She has the ears of a bat, and the septas will smell the lemon from the gallery." Baelon looked at his father. "If she hears that child bouncing off the stone walls, she will have both our heads on spikes before the Small Council sits tomorrow."
Jaehaerys waved a thin hand, his gold rings clicking against the cane. "You make too much of it. Call the maids up. Have her washed and put into a clean gown. Then send down to the apartments for Rhaenys’s two—those twins will have her running circles around the lower courtyard until she burns the sugar out of her system."
Baelon stared at his father. A blank, vacant stillness settled behind the King's eyes.
"Princess Rhaenys took the children to Driftmark a turn of the moon ago, Father," Baelon said quietly. "Lord Corlys wanted them at High Tide for the start of the summer sailing."
Jaehaerys tightened his grip on the cane. He cleared his throat with a dry rattle and looked toward the window. "Right. The boy. Corlys wanted the boy on the docks. I forgot."
The iron hinges of the oak door screeched wide.
"Where is my favorite little plague?"
Daemon strode through the velvet curtain in a damp linen shirt and riding breeches. He carried a brass-clasped red-leather book under his arm and a wicker basket in his free hand. Powdered sugar dusted the wicker basket.
"Dae!" Rhaenyra shrieked. Shoving her half-eaten crusts aside, she scrambled up from the rug and bolted toward him, leaving a sticky yellow smear across her pink skirt. "Dae! Cake!"
Daemon froze, his eyes darting from his father’s dark expression to the King by the hearth. His loose posture snapped to attention. Tucking the basket behind his hip, he dipped his head. "Your Grace. I was unaware you had left the council chambers. Father."
Baelon stared at the powdered sugar dusting the wicker basket and growled.
"What is that?" Baelon asked, his voice dead flat.
"Just... spiced fritters from the lower markets. And the poems of Daenys she asked for—"
"Get out," Baelon ordered.
"Father, I only—"
"I said out, Daemon." Baelon locked his hand onto his son's collar, shoving him backward toward the corridor. "Take the grease and get back to the dragonpit. Out."
Rhaenyra dropped her pie. "No! Dae!" She lunged forward, small hands grabbing frantically at Daemon's leather breeches to anchor him in the room. "Dae, he stay! Read!"
Daemon stumbled against the doorframe, looking back over his shoulder at the distressed toddler clinging to his leg. "Father, let me just give her the book—"
"I said out!" Baelon barked.
He peeled the girl's sticky fingers off the leather, forced Daemon over the threshold, and slammed the door shut. The latch dropped into place, cutting off his son's protests.
Baelon turned back to the room, his chest heaving. On the rug, Rhaenyra’s face mottled purple as she drew in a silent, massive breath.
"No more," Baelon muttered, dropping down to snatch the lemon cake.
Rhaenyra lunged.
A screech tore from her throat as she threw her weight forward, beating sticky fists against his riding boot.
"No! No! Bad!" she howled, her voice cracking into a cough. "Bad grandpapa! Kepus bad! Zaldrīzes... bad!" She slammed her forehead into the rug, her shoulders shaking as she drew another breath. "You cunt!"
Baelon's eyes widened with the lemon crust pinched between his fingers, staring at the oak door.
"Daemon," he muttered.
Jaehaerys let out a dry cough, leaning his chin on his palm. "Well. Her Valyrian accent is improving, at least. Though the vocabulary leaves something to be desired."
"Father, that is not helping."
Out in the stone corridor, the rapid thud of Daemon's boot heels faded down the spiraling stairwell.
A moment later, the oak door swung open again. Viserys stepped past the velvet curtain, smoothing his sleeve and adjusting the gold chain across his chest.
Taking in the yellow crumbs ground into the rug, the sugar paste smeared across his daughter’s screaming face, his father’s dark expression, and finally the King watching from the hearth, Viserys stopped dead.
He dropped into a quick bow. "Your Grace," he murmured, instantly sliding his boot backward across the stone threshold to retreat into the hallway.
"Viserys." Baelon’s voice cracked like a whip over Rhaenyra's wailing. "Get your boots back inside this nursery."
Viserys halted, forcing a strained smile as he stepped back through the curtain. "Father. I was unaware you and the King were occupied. I have ledgers from the… the port authorities that require my signature before dusk—"
Baelon rose from his knee, his sword belt creaking. He marched across the rug, planting his bulk between his eldest son and the door.
"Pick her up."
Viserys glanced down at his screaming daughter, his fingers twitching nervously against his trousers. "She seems rather agitated, Father. The septas usually have a way with her when she gets into these humors—"
"The septas are down in the gallery because your grandfather climbed eighty stone steps to do your job." Baelon jabbed a thumb hard into the center of Viserys’s chest, right over the embroidered three-headed dragon. "Your wife is upstairs sweating through three layers of linen, half-mad with the stress of the babe she is carrying, and you are where? Sitting in the library? Rearranging stone models?"
"Aemma told me to leave her be!" Viserys flushed, shooting a desperate glance toward Jaehaerys. "She said the noise in the chambers was making her head split. I was trying to give her quiet—"
"So you leave your daughter to scream until her face turns purple? You leave her to eat dirt and stolen sugar off the floorboards?" Baelon grabbed Viserys by the shoulder, his fingers digging into the velvet to give his son a sharp shake. "I do not know where you learned this, boy. I did not teach it to you. When your mother carried you, I did not hide in the solar with a cup of wine while she suffered."
Viserys winced, his shoulder dipping under the grip. "Father, please, His Grace is right there—"
"His Grace thinks you need a hard yank on both ears," Baelon snapped. He released the shoulder with a swipe of his hand that made Viserys flinch. "Like I should have done twenty years ago when you refused to watch your brother. You take this child. You clean the sugar out of her hair, and you keep her out of her mother's sight until she remembers how to speak like a princess."
He stepped back, pointing a finger at the rug where Rhaenyra was sucking in air for another scream. "Pick. Her. Up."
Viserys opened his mouth, his face flushing a patchy red against his collar, but no words came out.
Down on the rug, Rhaenyra scrambled across the wool toward her father. She hitched herself up by the edge of his tunic, her sticky fingers leaving grease marks on the fine velvet.
"Papa! Papa, up!" she wailed, burying her dirt-smeared face into his thigh. "Grandpapa bad! Up, Papa!"
Viserys winced, his hands hovering uselessly above the sticky strands of her hair.
Baelon took a step forward, his voice dropping into a low growl. "Look at her. She is four namedays old, and she rules this room because you are too soft. Alyssa would have had both you boys in the courtyard by the ears."
By the hearth, Jaehaerys let out a rattling sigh. As the noise in the room swelled—Baelon’s rhythmic scolding layered over the girl’s persistent sobbing—the old King forced himself up from the oak chair. Dragging his cane across the rug, he navigated toward the tall, arched doors at the end of the nursery.
He threw the iron bar and shoved the glass panes outward, stepping into the brisk air of the high balcony.
The wind from the Blackwater hit him instantly; it was cold and sharp with the smell of salt and rotting kelp, cutting through the cloying scent of burnt sugar clinging to his beard. Leaning against the stone balustrade, he squinted against the bright gray glare of the afternoon sky.
Across the bay, where the horizon stretched toward the distant silhouette of Dragonstone, a pale shape disrupted the low-hanging clouds.
Jaehaerys watched her climb. A gust from the east tilted her frame sideways, her pale underbelly gleaming against the slate-gray sky before she leveled out. She made one sweeping turn around the hook of the bay, passing over the masts of the trading galleys, before pointing her snout toward the open sea.
Strange.
Silverwing had never liked to stray far from Dragonstone after Alysanne’s death.
With three slow beats, she set her course south. Her pale form shrank to a speck against the gray expanse until the mist swallowed her.
High above the bay, the freezing wind washed over the heat radiating from Silverwing’s chest. Her pale wings caught the air with a wet snap, her tail lashing the drafts as she left the smoking chimney-tops of King’s Landing behind.
Beneath her scales, a low, persistent frequency vibrated.
The rhythmic hum dropped straight from the upper layers of the sky, pressing against the hollows of her skull. It pulled at her, thick with ancient, multi-voweled clicks. Straining her neck forward, she snapped her inner eyelids shut against the glare of the sun.
She cleared the Gullet by midday. The trading carracks in the channel drifted far below, the air turning damp against her snout as she flew south. The drum tower of Storm's End slid past her right flank, rising out of the smashing white foam of the breakers. But she kept her gaze locked on the horizon. The hum in her ears swelled to a grinding resonance, pulling her copper-colored crest rigid against the wind.
By the time the broken rocks of the Stepstones gave way to the dry red cliffs of the Dornish coast, her breath came in short, rattling gasps. Heat rose from the sands in shimmering waves.
From a sandstone watchtower on a ridge, an iron scorpion bolt whistled past her flank and plunged into the sea. Down on the rocks, men in linen wraps shouted. A second bolt struck the thick leather of her tail, bouncing off the pale scales with a dull thud.
Silverwing dipped a wing. Her shadow swept over the red dust as she dropped into a narrow, brackish river valley.
She landed with a sliding crash, tearing up the dry scrub and sending red dirt flying— A flock of goats scattered across the rocky slope in a panic of bleating and clattering hooves.
Her jaws snapped. Swallowing four of the beasts whole, the bones crunching in her throat, she swept the grease and wool from her teeth with a massive tongue. Plunging her snout into the muddy riverbank, she gulped down sandy drafts of water before pushing her hind legs off the stone. With three heavy beats, she lifted back into the air.
The coast sank into the horizon. The red land vanished beneath the flat, unbroken slate of the deep ocean.
The sky grew dark, the clouds thickening until the sea turned the color of old iron. The air turned biting cold, hardening the salt spray into white crusts along the edges of her nostrils.
The hum in her skull swelled into a roar. An ancient, metallic chorus filled the upper atmosphere, swallowing the sound of her own breathing.
Ahead of her, the horizon vanished entirely. A wall of black water and cloud stretched from east to west, rising miles into the air.
A downdraft caught her wings a league from the perimeter, flipping her sideways. The waves below rose into towering peaks, crashing together with deafening cracks. Lightning crawled horizontally through the black front of the storm, illuminating the interior in jagged bursts of green and blue.
Silverwing straightened her neck toward the center of the dark mass, stiffening her tail to steady her weight. The freezing wind stripped the last of the land-warmth from her scales.
With a hard sweep of her pale wings, she plunged directly into the wall.
The dark swallowed her.