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The year passed with little fanfare on Dragonstone. It had now been a hundred years to the day since Aegon’s Conquest. A hundred years since the High Septon placed the crown upon the Conqueror’s head in the Starry Sept of Oldtown. A hundred years of Targaryen rule.
Celebrations were being held throughout the realm, he did not doubt, and no grander were they than in King’s Landing and the Red Keep. Most of the realm would have gathered for it. The songs would be grand, the feast succulent and filling, the gossip to die for. But she doesn’t want it, so neither do I.
Baelon had named him castellan of Dragonstone in his stead, taking his household with him when their father named him Hand of the King. Prince Valerion Targaryen appreciated the position, but he knew that it was more for his sister-wife’s benefit than his own, and for that he thanked his elder brother all the more. Dragonstone was quieter than King’s Landing, that great city sitting on the mouth of the Blackwater, and it was just what she needed. Peaceful, with the stone dragons beautiful as they were intimidating, and the live ones a wonder to see.
Walking through the halls, it was hard to imagine that he was truly here, amidst stories made real. He failed to describe how big Dragonstone is. These halls were labyrinthine in their ways, snaking through the mountain face the castle was built upon. The stone was black as pitch, warm to the touch, nearly alive with heat. The towers raked the sky like fingers, their crenelations capped with statues of dragons, their stone maws and wings untouched by the rains and winds and time. Many a night Valerion stood by them, gazing out onto the narrow sea, wondering what the gods had planned for him. He knew there was a reason for his being here, in this second life, this second chance. It was just that he didn’t know for sure what it was. The gods were silent in this, and his memories were but that, memories, useless in this new world.
Only his dreams told him what was to come, and even then, they were filled less with portents, and more with songs and harps.
By word of the servants, Valerion chanced upon his wife in Aegon’s Garden, past the arch of the Dragon’s Tail in the shadow of the Sea Dragon Tower. Here the black stone gave way to tall trees heavy with fruits, wild roses, and hedges armed with thorns. The crash of the waves was a distant sound here, and the smell of pine hung in the air, with a dash of salt and a whiff of flowers. From behind the hedges he spied her, sitting on a bench beside the black stone dragon in the center of the garden, idly plucking notes from his harp.
Gael had the Valyrian features. Her eyes were purple, a shade darker than their mother’s own, and her hair was as white as the snow that had fallen during the year of her birth. She had been a small and pale thing in her youth, but as a woman grown she was slender and sweet, though frail and simple. Valerion loved and pitied her in turn, the little sister who loved his songs, and the tales of the Florian and Jonquil. In another life he might have been Aegon the Conqueror come again, but for her, he would be Florian the Fool.
Valerion stepped from the hedge and clasped his hands behind his back. “Gael,” he said, as she strummed a note from those silver strings. It hung in the air as she turned his way, purple eyes wide, and then she smiled so sweetly. “I see you’ve found my harp,” he continued, and in a rush she stood.
“I did,” she said, clutching it to her chest. “You shouldn’t misplace things you care for.”
He agreed. “Sound advice I shall strive to follow.” In a few strides he was before her, and with a deft hand he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She was only a head shorter than he was, and she stood on the tips of her toes when he gave her forehead a kiss. “Would you like a song, my sweet Winter Child?”
“I would.”
With harp in hand, Valerion sat on the stone bench, and beside him Gael sat. She leaned against his shoulder, humming to herself as he worked to find the right note, plucking the silver strings of his harp. When he had it, she peered up at him. “Will it be a happy song?” she asked.
“In a way it is,” Valerion told her, strumming his harp. In his dreams a prince with silver hair had played it first, sitting alone among the burnt ruins of a palace. “Rhaegar played it better than I, to be sure, but I think you’ll enjoy it more than he did. It’s a sad song in truth.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“It is,” he agreed, and with his fingers he started to tell his tale. Oldstones was coming into view by the harp’s way, and the kings were on their feet. “Mayhaps a name for a king?”
Gael thought on it, her gaze drifting among the trees. “I think so.”
“Then I shall sing as much for him as I do for you.” Valerion let his fingers guide the song along, and by the harp’s strings did Oldstones rise around them, the ruins of a castle once great. “This one I first heard in a dream, just last night, the words soft as sin.”
“Soft as sin?”
“Aye,” he said, as the ghosts appeared before them. “Soft as sin. You’ll love it, just as I do.” With grace he plucked his strings, caressing them with a tenderness he reserved for few alone, and then he sang. “High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts…”