Chapter Text
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
-Ellen Bass, The Thing Is
Helaena Targaryen has been dead from the beginning.
There is a window.
There has been a window since she was a babe.
Helaena Targaryen’s first memory is sitting on the floor in her mother’s chambers, playing with a bug, watching it fly up and out of the window.
She remembers staring up at it and thinking—some day, I shall fly out of that window like one of my creatures.
But despite the fact that she would soon claim Dreamfyre, that she would take to the sky on the back of her lavender-blue she-dragon, a gift from one Queen of the Seven Kingdoms to another, one mother of tragedy to the next, she knew that when it came to the window, she was not going to fly out of it. She was not going to fly free.
Helaena could hear the rats scratching at the panes, gnawing at the glass, feasting on her bones, as surely as any rodent would.
For all that she is a dragonrider, she has always known that it was her destiny to fall.
Helaena has been dreaming of her own ghost for a long, long time.
For a long time, she thought that it might be someone else that pushed her. It makes sense, in its way. Her family was hurtling itself towards civil war, the dragons were soon to dance, and those that she loves would fall, she knew that, it was the destiny of everyone to fall, leaving a trail of blood on the ground, drip, drip, drip.
The dragons dance, and men are like dust beneath their feet.
When they were locked up, when Aegon died, when her mother left, when they stopped letting her see Jaehaera, when the window came closer and closer—
Helaena cannot imagine a version of this story where she doesn’t leave out the window. Where she doesn’t fall.
She doesn’t want to. For so long, she wanted to live.
But sometimes, there feels so little to live for.
Her boy is dead.
She can’t see her daughter. Jaehaera is going to be Rhaenyra’s captive for a long, long time, until it is only the few remnants of dragonblood that persist, burning against the cobblestones as the dragons all die.
It is a well-known fact that princesses cannot escape their fates. The only way that you can do it is to become queen, or to find yourself burned out of the narrative, either going quietly or dying of fireworms beneath your skin, crawling their way out of your flesh.
Helaena has always known that she was going to marry her brother. She has always known that she was going to become queen.
She has always known that her body was going to end up on the spikes, maggots feasting on her corpse.
The future spools out in front of her, lightning-silver, blood-red, dragonfire-white.
But for the first time since she can remember, there is a shock of blue through it. A glance at the sunlit sky. A glimpse of the moonlit heavens, that midnight-blue blanket of constellations, a tapestry woven by the gods.
A glimpse not down through the window, but up.
---
Daemon Targaryen enters Gwayne’s room, and the dragonfire in his eyes is more dangerous than that of the Queen's, because Gwayne knows what Daemon Targaryen is capable of.
Gwayne swallows. He knows that he is no strong source of endurance, no matter the name and origin of his house.
But he also knows that he cannot let Daemon know that they are aware of the tunnels. He cannot let Daemon know that Gwayne was able to see his nephew and niece, that he was able to connect with Daeron, that he was able to get any glimpse at hope.
He cannot give Daemon anything.
But that is a hard thing to hold onto when Daemon Targaryen has the methods to dig his dragon’s claws in and extract what he’s looking for.
Because Daemon sits on the edge of the bed next to Gwayne and Gwayne cannot crawl away. He cannot do anything but hold his breath and wait for the Rogue Prince to do his worst.
But it's hard to do that when Daemon's fingers play at the hilt of Dark Sister and says, "I heard that the maester has been draining the fluid from your knee by cutting into it. I could always help by chopping it off entirely,” Daemon says, almost conversationally, and Gwayne absolutely believes that he would. That Daemon Targaryen would happily wield Dark Sister to take out a worthless cancer at his side. That as much as Rhaenyra Targaryen has guaranteed Gwayne’s life in order to guarantee Daeron’s good behavior, Daemon Targaryen earned his moniker for a reason—“But Rhaenyra doesn't want you dead, so that she can control your little runt of a nephew.”
“He's your nephew too,” Gwayne protests, but it's not enough.
It would never be enough.
Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms knows that Daemon Targaryen only has a fondness for one of his brother’s children, and it is the one that he ended up marrying.
(Gwayne cannot imagine treating his nephew in the same way that Daemon treated his niece.)
And sure enough, Daemon scowls at the implication that he should have any sort of sympathy for Daeron. “You will tell me what I need to know in order to win at Tumbleton, every one of your cousin's plans."
“Make me,” Gwayne says, and it’s a taunt, he knows, a dangerous thing to do, but what else is he supposed to do? He has spent enough of his life cowering, and this is all that he has left.
“Gladly.” Daemon rolls his eyes and presses down hard on Gwayne’s knee.
Gwayne’s vision whites out for one precious moment, shattering into shards of light, before returning to fire radiating through his leg, the pain flaying him open.
Gwayne screams. Protests. Reveals gods know what, because he is weak, because the pain that is rattling through his veins is too much and he is not enough and he cannot help it, he cannot help himself, the only part of himself that he is able to cling to is that he does not reveal anything regarding Daeron’s willingness to fight.
No, all that Gwayne spills is that regarding Ormund’s plans, Ormund’s battle plans, Ormund’s willingness to use his cousin as a pawn, Ormund’s evils—
But not Daeron.
Never Daeron.
Gwayne has failed Daeron over and over again. Failed to protect him from Ormund and Ormund’s ambitions, failed to protect him from Rhaenyra and capture and his own idiocy.
Gwayne remembers how it felt for Daeron to fling himself into his arms, the way that Daeron had a half-healed wound at the throat, the way that Daeron had been the one to come back to him, despite the fact that Daeron is a boy, that it should be Gwayne that saves him and not the return.
But Gwayne Hightower is a weak man, and he cannot count the ways that he has failed Daeron.
So he knows that he cannot fail Daeron now.
Daemon is smug by the end of it all, sharp as he has been since the day that he threw Gwayne from his horse at that tourney back in the day, Gwayne a fresh-faced knight with pimples on his face at this first tourney, filled with delusions of grandeur, and Daemon the dragon-riding Rogue Prince with more experience with fighting than Gwayne would ever learn.
And he should be smug; Gwayne collapsed. He fell apart, shattered, beneath Daemon’s ministrations, because he is weak, because he couldn’t be strong, because he isn’t anything more than a gasping, sobbing wreck of the man who had sworn to uphold his vows the day that he was knighted and yet has failed in every way.
What little strength that Gwayne had been working back up in his knee is completely gone, now. Gwayne cannot even feel his toes right now, much less move them.
All he can feel is the burn of the stars within his joint, just begging him to saw off the limb because perhaps having a ghost in its place would be more pleasant than this, one of the seven hells come to roost inside of his body.
Gwayne couldn’t tell you how long it is until the door opens again. The hours bleed together, in a haze of pain and ache.
All he knows is that his knee is swollen to what seems like as large as a pumpkin when Orwyle next enters the room.
And he begs Orwyle to cut it off. To get rid of it.
But Orwyle is not kind enough to swing the sword and give Gwayne the sort of ending that he could endure, bled out onto a bed but at least not a fucking anchor on his nephew’s fate, a noose around Daeron’s neck that will keep squeezing until Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen get what they wish.
Rather, Orwyle scrambles to drain the fluid out, and afterward, fluid splattering his maester’s robes, he cauterizes the wounds, as he always does.
At this point, Gwayne’s knee is more scar tissue than flesh, and it shall take a very, very long time before he is capable of walking again, much less fighting as a warrior.
“I suppose that you wish for me to exercise again,” Gwayne says, “To make the tissue flexible.”
Orwyle snorts. “I do not believe, milord, that anything but rest is advisable right now."
Gwayne shakes his head. “Call me Gwayne. You’ve seen the inside of my body—I cannot believe that there is anything that could get us more intimate than that.”
The corner of Orwyle’s mouth turns upward. “Gwayne it shall be, then.”
But then Orwyle says, as he bandages up Gwayne’s knee so that infection does not set in in whatever cauterization might not have fully protected: “I should tell your niece and nephew.”
Gwayne immediately protests: “I can handle it. They have enough of a burden on their shoulders already. They do not need to know of the weakness of their uncle. I am a knight, I should be able to hold up better than I did—”
“You were being tortured, Gwayne,” Orwyle protests, and there is some flicker of satisfaction in Gwayne’s chest that Orwyle does call him by his name rather than by a title. "You cannot blame yourself for faltering."
You would be amazed at the sort of things that I can blame myself for. I'm not sure that I will ever hit the end of the list.
---
But that night, Gwayne sleeps terribly, and he wakes to dark shadows under his eyes and fear whittling away at the inside of his ribs.
---
But before Gwayne can manage to heal, before he can manage to find himself a way to even begin to pretend as if he has not been tortured, the panel for the tunnel opens in the hours before dawn, at the hour of the nightingale when Orwyle has woken up early to attend to Gwayne’s knee before going to the small council to advise Rhaenyra—quite the conflict of interest, to anyone who might be aware—Daeron and Helaena come in through the tunnels.
Daeron comes in, and there is nothing but shame burning in Gwayne’s stomach at the fact that he failed Daeron, over and over again, and he cannot stop failing him, he cannot stop being a worthless burden.
But Daeron’s gaze is on Gwayne’s knee, as if he knows, as if someone told—
“You told him,” Gwayne hisses.
Orwyle doesn’t have the decency to look ashamed. “He deserved to know.”
“I tried—I tried to do my best to keep the information from him,” Gwayne says, and it is half a confession. “To only tell him of Ormund’s plans. Not of you. But I—I do not know what spilled from my lips. All I can tell you is that he does not know of the tunnels.”
Helaena is staring at him, eyes bright in the moonlight through the window. It is a treacherous thing, the fact that if someone was just looking in through the windows, if someone could see them, they would know that Gwayne was unable to be strong like the Hightower, he was unable to endure, he is nothing but the frailty of blood and bone and flesh.
And yet: “You did what you could,” Daeron says, reaching forward to squeeze Gwayne's hand, and the words taste like absolution.
“Infection is coming close,” Orwyle says, “If the Prince Consort was to do such a thing again, then it is like as not that you would never walk again—and perhaps you would even die of the infection.”
And Gwayne watches as something bright blazes through Daeron’s eyes.
“You will not survive staying in the Red Keep,” Daeron says, “We have to find a way to flee.”
“Queen Helaena is pregnant,” Orwyle says, “Ser Gwayne is still injured. You cannot leave on your own—”
“We shall crawl our way out of here if we must,” Daeron says, and there is a fire in his eyes.
“There is no way that we can survive such a thing,” Gwayne says, “You are the one that wished to run from Tumbleton—”
“There were no dragons there,” Gwayne says, “Here, there are dragons all around us.”
“Perhaps not,” Orwyle says, and Daeron and Gwayne’s heads both snap in his direction.
(Orwyle remembers a mother who knew that she was losing her mind and left rather than touch her son and bring him to the grave with her.
Orwyle is tired of just surviving and ignoring the horrors that are happening around him.
It goes against the vows of maesterhood, but—)
“Prince Daemon heads for Tumbleton tomorrow with Caraxes and Ulf the White,” Orwyle says, “Baela Targaryen and Moondancer are already gone to the Vale. Hugh Hammer shall remain in King’s Landing to defend it, but that leaves only two dragons left in King’s Landing, and Rhaenyra plans to push the Sept for a proper coronation on the morrow.”
One night only.
Sink or swim.
Either flee now, or never get the chance again.
It’s simple as that, in the end.
“Our master of whispers,” Gwayne says, half-awed.
Maester Orwyle ducks his head. “Just a maester, milord.”
“The grand maester,” Daeron says, “And yet you turn on yet another monarch.”
“A maester is supposed to serve whoever is the head of a castle,” Orwyle defends himself.
“And yet you help us against Rhaenyra,” Helaena says, and it’s not a question, it’s a statement.
Orwyle nods. “That I do,” he says, and swallows. “I have spent the last several years serving Queen after King after King, watching everyone butcher each other. All I wanted was to learn. To heal. And I was ruthless in the pursuit of my art, for so long, for the power that would allow me to pursue such studies, but now—now, I wish to try another path to that original dream.”
And Gwayne says: “I trust him.”
Daeron’s head snaps to look at him, shocked, half-stricken. How is that possible, that Gwayne trusts a stranger enough to put all of their lives into his hands?
“There is so little chance of this working,” Daeron says, “Rhaenyra might be distracted, but her dragon is not. Vermithor is still in the air. And Dreamfyre and Tessarion—they’ve never fought.”
“You’re not intending to fight, though, are we?” Gwayne asks, “You’re intending to run. You two can flee on your own, on your dragons,” Gwayne agrees, except that’s not it. That’s not right. It can’t be.
“Absolutely not,” Daeron says, “We're not leaving without you. That is an absolute non-starter.”
Daeron has always wanted so much that he knew he could never have. To fly, to flee, to live a life that he wishes for rather than one that is prescribed to him.
And Helaena—he doesn’t know the exact details of her dreams. He doesn’t know what she has seen of the future and what she has seen of the past and what has changed since he arrived and what is set in stone. He doesn’t know what happens when a dragon dreams.
All he knows is that his chest has cracked straight open, here in the Red Keep, in this small little tangle of people in this room, plus his niece.
If what Gwayne feels when he looks at him is what Daeron feels when he looks at Jaehaera, except more, because he has raised Daeron this entire time, has known him for fifteen years, then Daeron can only imagine how he feels.
There is some part of Daeron that wishes to be six namedays old. That wishes to be curled up on a chair next to Gwayne as Gwayne tells him stories of the magic that once existed, of the lands across the Sunset Sea, of the falling star that crashed through the dawn to form the Hightower—
(“Isn’t that the story of Starfall, not the Hightower?” Daeron asked, once.
Gwayne rolled his eyes, though he didn’t seem to be paying attention as to whether or not his nephew was noticing that. “Okay, my boy, listen to this version of the story, instead: the maesters say that fused black stone only belonged in Valyria. In the land of your ancestors, not mine.”
“Don’t we have the same ancestors?” Daeron had asked, brow furrowing in confusion.
Gwayne had shrugged, this small movement of the shoulders. “Half of your ancestors are all of mine,” he said, and Daeron had been satisfied with that answer—for a time.
“But as I was saying—fused black stone belonged in Valyria, created with dragonfire. And yet—here beneath the Hightower, the fortress beneath us is made of fused black stone. There are no answers as to where it might have come from. No answers as to how it got here. If there have never been dragons in Westeros before the Targaryens—your ancestors, Daeron, not mine—arrived, then how did the Hightower form?”)
Daeron swallows. “Grand Maester Orwyle—where do you think the fused black stone that makes up the Hightower comes from?
For a moment, Orwyle’s eyes go wide, as if he doesn’t understand how in the world the conversation managed to get this direction, but he swallows and answers, “The Hightower seems to be one of the oldest structures in Westeros. There are some Archmaesters that say that the Hightower’s fused stone can be traced to the black stone that Corlys Velaryon found in the Five Forts on his trip to Yi Ti. Some say it comes from dragons, like the roads of Valyria, though there is little evidence of dragons coming here before the Targaryens did. There are stories about the black stone having fallen from the sky to start a religion that ended the Great Empire of the Dawn and began the Long Night.”
“It fell from the sky,” Daeron murmurs, remembering Gwayne’s tales from childhood.
Grand Maester Orwyle nods. “A shooting star, if you wish. Now, many maesters believe the Great Empire to be nothing more than a child’s fairytale. People don’t live for thousands of years—dynasties do. Families do. But countries rise and fall, kingdoms crumble and reform, and all that remains—”
“All that remains is a Hightower,” Gwayne says.
“And the bugs,” Helaena says, and Gwayne nods at her.
Grand Maester Orwyle nods. “There are many theories, none of which can be proven correct—I suppose that the only one that matters is what you make of it nowadays. I leave being an Archmaester to others. I followed the path I did in order to pursue healing.”
“And yet you decided to become Grand Maester,” Daeron points out, “Any maester can pursue healing. Only Grand Maesters pursue power alongside their more scholarly efforts.”
“A chance to effect change, I always believed,” Orwyle says. His mouth twists. “I clearly was not as effective as I wished, and that is my failure.”
The ending of a Great Empire Of the Dawn. The beginning of the Long Night. Murmurs of prophecy, a song of ice and fire—
And none of it matters.
Whatever might have come down from the North in the past means nothing to Daeron if they will all spend the rest of their lives imprisoned.
What matters is—
A shooting star. Dragonfire.
We light the way.
A way to get out, if they can only take it—
“But why would Rhaenyra finally allow her men to attack Tumbleton?” Helaena asks.
“There were ravens that arrived to the Red Keep during the night,” Orwyle admits, “Of King Aegon being discovered alive, with his dragon.”
Helaena’s face goes pale. “No,” she says, and it might just be shock, but Daeron’s had his suspicions about the nature of their marriage, about the fact that Helaena might never have wanted it in the first place.
And she isn’t the only one that’s shocked. Daeron’s jaw drops. “They declared me king because he was found dead. Because there was no way that he survived Rook’s Rest—"
“But he did,” Orwyle says, “I helped him survive it.”
“But if he’s coming back—if the dragons are coming to King’s Landing—the city might burn. And if it doesn’t—" Helaena’s hand goes to her stomach. “Jaehaera. My babes.”
Yourself, Daeron thinks, though he doesn’t know if it would sway her to say aloud.
Daeron has never ran in his life. At least—not away from anything. Just towards them. He didn’t know how to run away from Ormund until Gwayne’s life became more important than his own.
But looking at Gwayne now—looking at Helaena—thinking of Jaehaera—
“We can do this,” Daeron says, “We have to do this. Tomorrow, or not at all.”
Helaena is staring off into the distance, staring off at what, Daeron can’t be sure.
But he has to believe that she will do this. That she will escape with them.
---
The children disappear—and yes, Helaena might not be a child anymore, but she was forced into being an adult before she was ready, was a mother by fifteen, and she shouldn’t have to be, not anymore, save in the ways that she wishes—leaving back for their room, and the instant that they’re gone, Orwyle starts preparing. He knows that he must leave the room soon, must be somewhere else, must give himself an alibi, must not raise suspicion, but for now, he can help them.
But why?
“That boy loves you,” Orwyle says once Gwayne and Helaena are gone.
“And I don’t deserve it,” Gwayne says, immediately, because he has been naught but a burden the entire time.
“You survived torture and managed to keep from spilling information about him,” Orwyle argues, and it is the sort of faith that Gwayne cannot understand, cannot find a way to believe in, but Orwyle does see something in him, as impossible as that seems.
And that is the sort of faith that can guide a man as surely as the North Star.
So they’re going to leave tomorrow.
They’re going to leave, and hopefully not take any part of King’s Landing with them. They will leave behind this wretched place, and Gwayne doesn’t even know if he’ll be able to make it out.
And Gwayne looks at Orwyle and thinks—I do not know if I can survive with my leg, with Helaena’s pregnancy, with my own aches, without you.
You are trapped in here as much as we are.
And no Grand Maester has ever abandoned their post before, but you could be the first.
And he’s thinking about ghosts, and the likelihood of death, and the fact that he doesn’t wish to leave without Orwyle—
So he leans forward and pulls Orwyle in by his robes.
Gwayne pulls Orwyle in for a kiss, and Orwyle’s mouth is soft and warm, and for a moment, it almost feels as if Orwyle kisses him back, pressing back, the seam of his mouth beginning to open—
“Come with us,” Gwayne murmurs, “We can flee to the Vale, or Essos, or even to the Summer Isles, to the lands of your mother—”
But Orwyle shakes his head and pulls back.
“I shall help you pack food and medicine for the journey,” Orwyle says, and there is a stubbornness to his face that Gwayne understands all too well, a need to protect, a need to help.
But he won’t look Gwayne in the eyes, as he helps, as he leaves, and something in Gwayne thinks—
Orwyle trained in Oldtown, in the shadow of the Starry Sept. He knows how to the Faith feels about men who kiss other men.
There is every reason why Orwyle should look at Gwayne and his inclinations and think him some deviant, just as Ormund did, and seek to turn him in for it.
I have ruined it all, in some attempt to save each of the people I have come to care about.
---
Princesses only escape their fates by taking on something worse or dying.
Helaena was raised on the cautionary tales of Saera and Viserra Targaryen, of Rhaena the Black Bride, the tragedy, who sought out a lover of her own, who watched her lovers die at the hands of her final husband, the one who was supposed to give her some taste of freedom.
Helaena has never dreamed of freedom.
She’s never been able to dream of freedom.
Because every time she closes her eyes, she sees the window.
She has always seen the window.
The moon is bleeding through the window, over King’s Landing, over the Iron Throne.
Helaena dreams of her dead body on the spikes, a crown falling from her silver hair onto the ground, bright and sharp above the Iron Throne.
She is impaled on the swords of the Throne. Her body is broken by the fall. Rhaenyra stands over her until she is eaten up by Sunfyre’s decaying, rotting mouth, right in front of her son, a son for a son, a life for a life, blood spilling over the Iron Throne down to the base where the bodies of Daeron, Aemond, and Aegon lie, Aemond’s eye socket pierced by Dark Sister, Aegon’s mouth covered in poison-white-spittle, and Daeron’s head lies there, severed, the stump of his neck bleeding brighter red than his hair, his blood spilling across the stones of the throne room, right beneath the Iron Throne.
But unlike with Jaehaerys, there is no one to stitch him back together.
Rather, there stands Daemon Targaryen, pulling Dark Sister out of Aemond’s eye to slice it through Daeron’s neck.
Helaena peels herself off of the spikes. She moves forward, dripping blood from her broken neck, from the place that the spikes pierced, from the place that she was impaled.
Her blood drips on the stones. Drip, drip, drip.
Her boy.
Her little brother.
Helaena kneels next to her brother’s bodies, her needle and thread slipping into her fingers.
She needs to stitch Daeron’s head back on. She needs to bring at least one boy back before he slips from her fingers.
But Daeron—Jaehaerys—
“Momma?” a frail voice gasps, and Helaena turns around to find her daughter’s body impaled on the spikes of the Iron Throne, small, sorrowful, alone.
The window sits behind the Iron Throne, sunlight cast across her small body, but the window is not that of the throne room; it is that of her room. A room that is a prison, a room that is a trap, a room that has been swallowing her whole for so long—
Jaehaera leaps. Daemon Targaryen saws off of the head of her son, her brother, blood on his teeth, a dragon devouring its prey whole.
And Helaena can do nothing about it, because she has been dead since before she was born, because she has only ever been a ghost haunting her own story, because they are all going to die, a dynasty decapitated, a bloodline bled into nothing, a boy sitting on the Iron Throne too young, too frail, ghosts in his eyes, the end of all dragons.
She wakes up screaming. “Jaehaera,” she rasps, three syllables.
Her girl. Her little girl. The only one left. The only one left that matters.
But there he is next to her, a hand cupped around her shoulder, bright eyes frantic: the little brother that she’s never known, eyes kind, kinder than Aegon’s, kinder than Aemond’s, kinder than her mother’s, gentled not by a lack of time in King’s Landing but rather by the fact that he had one uncle in his life that tried.
Gwayne Hightower might have failed as much as he tried, but he did his best.
Daeron was treated as terribly as the rest of them, but he was brave. Brave, because he was scared, and that is the only time that you can be brave.
Helaena doesn’t want to be brave. She wants to be numb. She wants the world to sweep over her, to carry her along, to allow her fears to crack her open as the dreams have told her would happen since she was a child unable to understand why she couldn’t have a single dream without the window hovering in the background, in the wall, in the sky, burning blindingly bright over everything.
But the cost to that would be Jaehaera and Daeron, the last two she has left.
Because now Aegon is alive.
Aegon is alive, and there is so little chance that their escape plan will work, and if it doesn’t work—if Helaena is stuck ending up in that marriage again—if Helaena is taken hostage again by Rhaenyra, along with her babe—
Daeron says, “Do you want me to tell you a story? Do you want to talk about bugs? Whatever you want,” and he says it because he cares, because he’s trying, and she can tell that.
There are so few people that try in a way that matters.
And Helaena thinks—I am supposed to die.
And Helaena thinks—I have always been meant to leave by the window.
And Helaena thinks—I can see the future, threading itself through my dreams in gasps, and I have always known that I cannot avoid it, that I have been dead since before I emerged from my mother’s womb, that all of her efforts to save me would just doom me and everyone around me, that they would doom you as well—
But Daeron’s eyes are kind, as so few in the Red Keep are, and he is trying to hum her a lullaby—and failing terribly at it, he has no sense of pitch, but neither does she, and what matters is not the song itself but that Daeron is the first person to try and hum her a lullaby since she was a babe with a mother who hated her existence as much as she loved her, and Helaena thinks—
The moonlight gleams through the window. The window calls to her as it has for all of these years.
Helaena can still taste the blood in her mouth, the acrid burn of iron on her tongue.
But there is no blood on her nightgown. There are no spikes piercing her flesh.
And while Daeron’s hair is red as blood, there is no blood rusting at his neck, as she has seen it every other night since he arrived in King’s Landing.
It is not in a dragon’s nature to rest, but there is some part of her that thinks, that aches, that wishes—
We are as much Hightower as we are dragon.
A beacon, dragonfire—either way, the light dissolves through the blood, cleansing, chasing, blinding.
Helaena looks at her brother, at his bright eyes, at the shards of the stars trapped within his gaze, and she sees her father, who never looked at her twice, who she never knew if he loved them at all, who let Rhaenyra’s children take a dagger to her brother’s eyes.
Helaena sees her mother, who let three children burn for the price of the final child’s life, who gave up her sons for the sake of her and Helaena’s freedom, who was willing to burn the entire world to get vengeance for sons that she ended up abandoning.
Helaena sees her brothers, who burned so blindingly bright that it is no wonder that Aemond lost an eye and Aegon ended up with half of his body burned.
But most of all, she sees her daughter.
Helaena sees her daughter, and her son, and their bright eyes, one set alive, one set so very dead.
And she sees the ghosts.
And she thinks—they already took one boy from me.
Can I let them take another?
---
The night turns, and Daeron can barely go back to sleep after he helps Helaena out of her nightmare, no matter the fact that he knows that he should, that it is important that they both rest before trying the most important flight of all of their lives.
But the next day, when the Keep is quieter than it has been since he arrived, when the Queen has taken her court to the Sept to demand her anointment as Queen, when the Prince Consort has gone to Tumbleton, when the only dragons roaring in King’s Landing are Syrax and Vermithor and theirs—
They need to leave.
They are supposed to leave.
The window for their flight is such a small one, and they cannot risk not making it.
And yet, Daeron finds Helaena sitting next to the window, still working away at her tapestry.
Daeron’s brow furrows. “We need to go,” he says, and he knows that he needs to be gentle with Helaena, that he needs to not be a creature of anger and force like his cousin, but they do need to go.
“I’m not meant to make it out of this building,” Helaena murmurs, and her body twitches, as if towards the window, but Daeron isn’t going to let that happen.
“We are getting out of here,” he swears, even though it’s a promise that he can’t make. There are so many things that could go wrong. So many things that still have all likelihood of going wrong. They could get caught by the guards. Vermithor could swallow Tessarion whole. The entire world could go up in flames.
The purple-silver bug flies through the window, wings flashing golden in the sunlight. Daeron has no idea if it’s the same one that they saw before—unlikely, since it’s been a couple of weeks since then—but it makes Helaena freeze in her tracks.
And Daeron thinks: cradle to grave, and he refuses to see his sister to the latter.
It is a bone-deep need, to see his sister survive. To see Helaena and her children—living or in the womb, whatever she wishes—to a life with bugs and dragons and whatever else she wants.
And so Daeron steps forward. Grabs his sister’s hand. Her hand is warm in his, warmer than Gwayne’s ever has been, warm as the dragonfire in their veins.
The clock is ticking down. They need to run out of this city today, while Tumbleton burns, while Rhaenyra is distracted on the wrong conqueror’s hill. “Please,” he says, and he is desperate, and desperation has done him nothing before, but this time, perhaps just this time—“You deserve to be able to see all the bugs you want. To make it out. To live with your daughter. Let me be an uncle. Let me help you. Don’t die for this war. Please don’t let me watch you wither.”
Helaena turns and looks at him.
And she says, “I would not wither. I would just—be cut. None of us were meant to make it out. The beast below the boards was meant to take us all. If one possesses a thing, another shall take it away. The gods were always going to take us. Fate was always going to take us. I sewed my boy’s burial shroud before he died. This child within me—I refused the tea, over and over, but I knew—” Her voice cracks. “I knew he wasn’t meant to live.”
“Then defy fate,” Daeron says, “Please. Please.”
It is him begging.
It is him praying.
Not to the Seven, but to his sister. To whatever dreams she might have, not of fate, not of prophecy, but of herself.
“I’ve been seeing the window my entire life. It’s been haunting me, my own body on the spikes. I’ve been dead since before I was born. But I—" Helaena’s voice breaks. “I want to live. To see my girl. To see my boy." A hint of a smile flits to the corner of her mouth as she says, wistfully: "To raise chickens."
And Daeron nods. “And you’ll get to, I swear it. I'll find the chickens for you myself. Just—please. Take my hand. Fly away on Dreamfyre. Fly away with Jaehaera.”
Helaena takes one last glance at the window, and she swallows. Takes a deep breath.
And she stands, dropping her tapestry on the floor, and says, “Take me to my daughter.”
Daeron gets a glimpse at one of the images—a queen upon her throne, either sitting or impaled, he can’t tell, can’t tell anything save the fact that there is blood dripping from her throat and her hands—but he isn’t tempted to look more.
What matters is getting Helaena out of here. Is getting all of them out of here.
And so they head through the panel in the wall and out of this haunted place.
---
The first and only other rider of Dreamfyre was Rhaena Targaryen. The Queen in the West and the East, who had to watch siblings burn and be tortured, who had to watch lovers leave or be poisoned, who watched her children die, who lived out her days in the ruins of Harrenhal, tortured by ghosts.
It seems fated for the riders of the lavender-blue beauty to die tragically.
If Helaena stays, if she dies—
Jaehaera goes after her, as surely as Aerea Targaryen once did. Helaena won’t have to witness it, but her ghost will.
And Helaena cannot bear that.
Iron rusts. Everyone knows that.
After a century, the Iron Throne has not rusted yet.
But someday, it will.
And Helaena’s blood shall not hasten the process.
So Queen Helaena turns her back on the window. She reaches for her brother. She reaches for her daughter.
And she leaves, stepping out of her own dreams, stepping away from the bloodied spikes, stepping away from the grave that she was born into.
Helaena Targaryen died before she was born, but in this moment—
In this moment, her brother’s hand is in hers, and Targaryens burn hot, burn like dragonfire, she has dreamed a thousand times of the ways that each of them will die.
But his fingers are cool in hers, alive, real, not a blistering dream of the freezing cold from the North or the dragonfire from the East, but here.
And Helaena bites down on that cool, and she lets it guide her.
She leaves the window behind.
---
So they go through the tunnels to Jaehaera’s room first, where Helaena kneels by her daughter’s side and sweeps her daughter up in her arms. “We are getting out of here today,” Helaena says, “With your uncle Daeron, and his uncle, and our dragons. We are going to fly. But you have to be quiet, my little beetle. Can you do that?”
Jaehaera nods, this excited, quick thing, and Helaena holds her in her arms as they make it to Gwayne’s room, where Orwyle has helped bind up Gwayne’s leg in a brace as well as can be done for them to flee without the flight jostling his leg too much. He has a hastily-made crutch for Gwayne as well.
And Gwayne is leaning against Orwyle as much as he can, Orwyle's hand a brace against falling, because no one shall be falling today, Daeron refuses to let it happen.
But when Gwayne looks up at them, there is something bright in his eyes.
He reaches out a hand to Jaehaera, as if on instinct, but when Jaehaera flinches back, Gwayne drops his hand. “I’m your Uncle Gwayne,” he says with a smile. “Well, Daeron is your uncle-uncle, I suppose, but I am your great uncle.”
Jaehaera’s brow furrows. “You don’t look that great,” she says.
And Gwayne laughs, and it is the brightest sound that Daeron has heard in so very long.
"How are you able to laugh?" Daeron has to ask, though.
"Because Orwyle has great news," Gwayne says.
“Hugh Hammer is gone,” Orwyle says, and it feels like a miracle. "He went to Tumbleton. None is sure why, but that leaves only one dragon in King's Landing save the young prince's Tyraxes, who is still too young to fly, and Syrax is currently busy with the coronation. If you go now, if you go swiftly—you can surely make it out."
And that is exactly what Daeron needs to hear.
A chance.
That's all that they need.
---
So with Orwyle's help to get past the few sleeping guards left that Rhaenyra did not take to her coronation—the maester apparently snuck some sort of sleeping draught into their food—they manage to make their way out of the near-silent keep.
Most in the Red Keep are heading for the Sept, for Rhaenyra's coronation and anointment, and they are instead heading for the Dragonpit. For freedom.
And Daeron knows that he cannot stop. That he cannot afford to cry.
But when his hands touch Tessarion's scales, he nearly sobs.
Daeron has been kept prisoner for weeks, now, but so has she.
He cannot help touching his forehead against her snout, flesh against scale, one moment of connection, point against point, as Helaena climbs onto Dreamfyre, boosting her daughter up into the saddle ahead of her.
"I am back, my girl," he says, "I am so sorry I had to leave you, and I swear I never shall again," and she croons, she aches just like he does, she wants to be free—
"Back away, brother," Helaena says, and Daeron turns around to find Helaena on Dreamfyre's back, Dreamfyre's mouth starting to glow.
And if Helaena trusted Daeron to flee with him, Daeron shall trust Helaena to get his girl out.
So Daeron reluctantly peels himself away from Tessarion with a quick whispered promise that "I shall be back in just a breath, I promise," and Dreamfyre melts through Tessarion's chains.
Tessarion sings a glorious song, and Daeron is right by her side, hand on her scales, humming to her, as Orwyle helps Gwayne boost himself up into the saddle.
They are almost ready.
They are almost free.
Just a few more moments—
---
There is something ugly and hard on the air in the Dragonpit as Orwyle helps secure the packs to both of the saddles. He knows that there is very little time, that the dragonkeepers likely alerted the queen as soon as they arrived, that he has signed himself up for sure capture and torture at the hands of Daemon Targaryen. (After what Daemon did in defense of the goldcloaks, after what he did to Gwayne—Orwyle knows that he has surely doomed himself.)
And sure enough—the gates to the Draonpit burst open. There are guards coming for them, a small contingent, because someone must have seen the glow of dragonfire, heard the roar of dragonsong. In the distance, Orwyle can hear the roar of the Queen's dragon, surely heading towards them to burn the deserters, the escapees, alive.
And Orwyle squares his shoulders.
He knows how he is going to die, now. Burned like they burned the body of greyscale patients, just as he is sure that his mother eventually died, travelling to Valyria to die as the Stone Men are said to.
Even now, fire sears the corner of his robes, gray as his mother’s skin was on that last day in the Gulltown port, scaled and stone and dead before her time.
"You all," Orwyle instructs, "Flee. Get out of here. Live—"
"Please, Orwyle: let me try one more time," Gwayne says, "You told us that we would have a hard time fleeing, with my leg, with Helaena's pregnancy. We will have a hard time fleeing without you." He swallows. "And more than anything—you deserve to try and find a life."
And Helaena reaches out a hand. “Come taste the moon with us,” she says, and Orwyle thinks of Gwayne tugging him in to convince him to try and flee, and the way that Gwayne Hightower’s mouth tastes, soft and warm and like the summer, and he thinks—
I never got to hold my mother’s hand before she left forever.
Orwyle doesn’t want Gwayne to leave without him.
He wants to do more than just survive. He wants to heal again. He wants to be able to do more than just try to avoid the swinging sword of Prince Aemond or Prince Daemon or whoever else wishes to see his head separated from his shoulders on that day.
(He wants to see what Gwayne Hightower's mouth tastes like again, and see if his mouth might just be as warm as the sunlight if they were to kiss again.)
And so Orwyle reaches up, and a queen sweeps him up onto the back of her dragon, her daughter tucked in front of her on the saddle, and they fly.
---
Tumbleton burns. Rhaenyra Targaryen crowns herself, claiming her throne in the eyes of the gods, New and Old and Valyrian alike, burnishes her new reign in dragonfire and septon’s blood and prophecy, and it should all be an unquestionable triumph. In what world wouldn’t it be a triumph?
She is on top of the world. The Riverlands march to her aid. She has won her battles and crushed her enemies.
But the dragons are turning. Ulf the White is the source of the burning of Tumbleton, not Daemon, no matter how much Caraxes and her rider both ached and craved to burn. Hugh Hammer will never forgive the Blacks for the death of his wife.
Ormund Hightower might be gone, but as Rhaenyra returns to the Red Keep with her last Velaryon son in hand, Harwin Strong’s dark hair beneath a silver circlet, her lady-in-waiting runs up to her.
“Your Grace,” she says, and Elinda Massey’s eyes are overlarge, worried, afraid of how her queen might respond. “The dragons are gone.”
“What dragons are gone?”
Ulf’s. Hugh’s.
But most importantly—
Rhaenyra storms into the Dragonpit, fire chasing itself up the hem of her cloak, burnishing her armor, to find Tessarion and Dreamfyre gone.
And not just them, either—
Her Grand Maester has finally quit his position at the Red Keep.
And when she returns to the Iron Throne, to the Red Keep, she finds every hostage gone.
---
Princesses do not rescue themselves, but Queens do.
Queens like Rhaenys, and Visenya, and Rhaena.
Rhaena and Visenya, who grieved and raged, and both Rhaenys, who died on dragonback, and now, as the dragons dance, as Tumbleton burns—
The moon shines bright overhead, able to be seen not through a window, but from the back of a dragon, high in the sky over the Crownlands as they fly.
Queen Helaena Targaryen finally leaves. She finally flies, Dreamfyre beneath her, the dreamer and her dragon, the mother and her daughter, and she does what her mother could not.
Helaena does not leave any of herself behind.