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They tell her there are two babies in her belly. The maester pokes at her and her mother holds her down. She is fourteen.
“Two, my sweet,” Alicent murmurs. “Won’t that be wonderful.” It is not a question.
Helaena says nothing. She is humming, to herself, and does not think about the maester and his assistant with their hands pressing on her stomach. She winces.
“Will it be…” Alicent stops herself. “Harder?”
The maester withdraws his warm clammy hands. “It will be difficult, no doubt, but it has been done by many women before. I myself have seen three pairs into the world.”
“All well, I presume?”
The maester leans over Helaena’s body. “Quite,” he says. He backs away and Helaena’s mother drags her small clothes back over her swollen belly, pulling the dress aright, in a way she has not done since Helaena was small, and scarcely even then. Her fingers brush against the belly and Helaena flinches again.
“Two grandchildren,” she says. “I am rather lucky, my sweet.”
Helaena struggles to get off the table. They tell her she’s months to go yet, but already she is clumsy and large. She does not much like the sensation. Two of them. She marvels how anyone ever does it.
She was twelve when they told her she was to marry her mocking older brother. She had not reacted then, only nodded. She had never had much choice, and they had all spoke of it as if it were a done thing. A certainty. They had wanted him to marry Rhaenyra once, so the handmaidens gossiped.
“Would you like some tea?“ Alicent asks her.
She has been bleeding since the start, on and off, and it is an unpleasant sensation, a wetness of which she cannot be free. When it is over, her handmaiden Lyssa had whispered one night, brushing her hair, you will forget the blood.
Helaena waddles over to the table set up by the window. Alicent pours the tea into a cup, not waiting for Helaena’s answer. She presses it into her hands, and it is scalding hot. Her fingers prickle.
“Perhaps you should rest, yes,” Alicent says, and that is not a question either.
“I want to see Dreamfyre.” It comes out small and mangled, a little thing, barely a whisper.
“Not now, perhaps.” Alicent wrinkles her nose. She has never quite warmed to the dragons, though she lives among them. An unhappy arrangement, Helaena thinks. Like her and Aegon.
It is getting dark. Alicent lights several candles before stopping herself. Helaena can see in her mother’s eyes the moment she realises this isn’t her job any more. She catches herself.
“Drink the tea,” she tells her daughter, “then lay abed. I will have one of the girls bring you dinner.” She falters for a moment and a silence stretches between them, an itching thing, a wound. “Two babes, my sweet. How lucky we are.”
Helaena does not watch her as she goes.
The night stretches on. Elis brings her bread and stew for dinner, and she eats it in silence. It sits heavy in her belly, and she wonders if it is squashing the babe. Babes , she corrects herself, there’s two of them.
“Leave me,” she tells her handmaidens, as they prepare her bath. “I will call for you later.”
They dither, silly things, thinking of her mother’s orders, but still they leave her.
Since she grew round with the pregnancy, none of her dresses have fit right. Alicent had commissioned more, and brought her some that she herself had worn with her own belly, but none of them feel right now. Helaena digs through her cases, and comes up with loose trousers and a tunic. Aegon’s, she recognises, left here the last time he—
They scarcely fit, but her belly balances it out. She ties the breeches around her over large waist, and the tunic is fit to drown her. She struggles into the jacket. Even her arms seem swollen.
She knocks on the door, and the guards beyond open it.
“Princess?” one of them asks.
“I’d like to take a walk,” she says, and though she tries to prevent it, her voice shakes.
The other guard nods solemnly. “A walk about the courtyard, perhaps?” he suggests.
Inside, somewhere near her heart, Helaena laughs.
“I’ll be fine alone,” she assures them, and they look at one another. She had gone walking by herself often when she was younger, but now she carries the heir’s heir in her belly. She wonders what they will say if they are both girls. Whether they will make her do it again. The thought hurts.
“Perhaps that is not wise,” the first guard shakes his head.
“I’ll be fine,” she says, but she cannot meet his eyes. “I’ll be quick.”
She begins her walk before he can give his answer. There is little that could harm her in the palace, she thinks. There are guards at every turn. She goes left, left again, right, down the stairs, across the colonnade, through the courtyard, down stairs and down again. Her belly hurts and her ankles are swollen. Just a quick visit, she tells the babes.
Down more steps. Each one sends her stomach wobbling and it is an odd sensation. She presses her shaking hands to her navel, to hold it steady. She feels something poke within. The babe’s arm, or maybe a leg, kicking at her bladder.
The dragon pit is more than a short walk away. She does not like lying to the guards. She does not like lying at all, it feels like trickery, but she had learned to do it as a child.
“How is my daughter?” Viserye would ask, when her mother took her to see him. She would sit on his lap and breathe in his scent of wine and maester’s herbs.
“She’s doing brilliantly,” Alicent lied. “Aren’t you, my sweet?”
They schooled her for this. To smile and nod. “Yes, father.”
“Have you been making friends?”
They did not school her for this one. She looks to her mother.
“The ladies you fetched for her have been here almost a turn of the moon. Helaena gets along wonderfully with them.”
This was a Lie. Helaena looked into the king’s aging face. Septa said it was a sin to lie to your father, king or no.
She has told many lies since then. Her mother taught her well.
As she approaches the dragon pit, there’s that sound. A rumble, like thunder in the distance. They are singing. She closes her eyes and walks blind.
The guards do not want to let her in, but she is a princess and it is her birthright. The boys visit all the time, for japes and dares, to ride their sworn dragons and taunt the rest. Once, they had locked Aemond down here. Jace had told her. They left him for almost an hour, until the keepers had caught word. Oh, how her mother had raged. This is nothing, in comparison. Just a little visit.
Aegon the Conqueror had overseen Dreamfyre’s hatching. She’d been promised to his granddaughter. She had almost gone to battle, once. Legend said the lengthy silverish marks on the dragon’s body told a story. Now she is Helaena’s.
The dragon waits for her deep in the bowels of the pit. They each have a cave there, to prevent infighting. There are flame torches, and everything stinks of fire, of freedom.
She has not ridden Dreamfyre much. Her mother did not think it fitting for a lady to sit across a beast’s back like a common girl. To ride like the wind. She rode her once, when she first claimed her, a right of passage for any Targaryen. A quick flight around the skies above King’s Landing, then back down again. It felt like waking up in the middle of a fantastic dream. Happiness, interrupted.
Dreamfyre is blue, the blue of the ocean, the blue of rich gems. Her eyes are liquid fire, and it is these Helaena looks for in the gloom.
“ Dōna run ,” she calls into the darkness. “I am here for you.”
She hears her before she sees her, and she smells her before that. Burnt food, thick in the back of her throat. The sound of claw against stone, each step a burden. She hears leathery wings against the low ceilings and readies herself.
The dragon bows her head low, to Helaena’s eye level, and permits Helaena to press a shaking hand to her nostril. The dragon groans, and breathes heavy.
Helaena had never feared the dragons. Even Aegon had been scared once, though he would hit her if she ever reminded him.
As infants, Viserys had brought them down here.
“They’re Targaryens,” he’d told their fretting mother. Aegon had cried until he made himself sick, but Helaena had stared and stared into the depths of the pit and let herself go warm with their fire.
“Again,” she had told the king, and he had laughed. She was scarcely three.
She wonders which eggs her babes will claim. It would be fitting, she thinks, to choose from Dreamfyre’s clutch, but the gods do not care for what is fitting.
She moves her hand across Dreamfyre’s mouth, to feel the sticky wetness of her teeth, the hot hot breaths, the ever-present promise of fire.
She travels across the face, towards the throat. “We shall go for a ride, you and I.” It is dark outside. They’re not supposed to fly at night, but Helaena minds not.
She presses her hand across Dreamfyre’s neck, to the stocky blue shoulder. There, nailed tight, is the saddle. The steel yoke glints like silver in the half light, as if it is a natural part of the dragon’s body, and Helaena thinks maybe it is. Maybe that is what the gods wanted for the dragons. Maybe that is why they made the Targaryens. Her father would like that, she thinks.
It is always difficult to mount a dragon, and doubly so with her awkward belly. There’s a rope ladder nailed into Dreamfyre’s round chest, ages old, so old her scaly skin has scarred around it somewhat.
Helaena pulls herself up and up. It’s high, she thinks, maybe too high. She wobbles and the dragon looks back at her, placidly concerned.
“I’m alright,” she whispers, “it’s this belly is all. There’s two, did you know? I’m to birth twins.”
Let them be boys, she thinks, let Aegon be happy with his sons.
Dreamfyre does not respond. Instead she begins pulling herself across the floor of the dragon pit, out towards the opening. Moonlight bathes them both. The dragon stretches her wings, pale blue against the night sky
“ Soves, ” she tells the dragon, like they taught her. “Show me the sky.”
The wings flap twice, a stuttering start. The ground does not fall away beneath them. The dragon stumbles. It has been a while.
“ Soves Dreamfyre! It’s alright. Go on.”
She tries again, the thin see-through wings threatening to give way, and she catches the wind beneath her.
“That’s it,” Helaena urges, and then she can say nothing at all, because the wind is in her face and King’s Landing is below her. She spots the Red Keep. Her mother would be so angry.
She can scarcely breathe, the air is so quick around her, battering her face and chest as they head into the sky. It is cold, but Dreamfyre keeps her warm. She does not shiver. She is not scared. She grips the reigns tight and lets her dragon take over.
The city beneath them is visible only by the lit torches in the streets, and the flimsy candlelight filtering through open windows. It is pretty, she thinks, like she’s surrounded by stars, above and below.
She frees a hand to press against her belly, for this is their birthright too.
You will claim dragons, she thinks, in time, but your first will always be Dreamfyre.
The clouds press in, and rain smatters against her. She oughtn’t fly so high. She ought to go back, lie abed and wait for her babies to grow. She ought to listen to her mother.
Instead, she urges Dreamfyre higher, until all is thick with cloud and rain, until she can see nothing ahead of her, feel nothing but her dragon’s shuddering breaths around her. She closes her eyes and lets out a scream, one no one can hear, no one but her and Dreamfyre, so far above the city, a scream that has been a long time coming.