Chapter Text
Coming to Dragonstone was Laena’s idea.
“Doesn’t your family, like, own the island?” she asked, a week ago while they were dangling their feet off the dock of Laena’s parents’ beach house.
Rhae laughed at that—it was something of a family scandal. Not quite a secret—or if it was supposed to be secret, it was an open one—more like a quiet shame, like everyone just avoided talking about it, or acknowledging it. But it was the biggest, most awkward elephant in the room.
“Uh, no, not anymore,” Rhae had told her. “Some great-great-someone or other failed to pay the taxes on it, and the bank seized the property. And now it’s just…uh…there.”
“Okay but still, we have to go!” Laena insisted. “Think of how old that place is! And abandoned for decades? It’s probably full to the roof with ghosts!”
It probably was, but Rhae wasn’t sure how she felt about meeting ghosts she was related to.
“I don’t know. It feels…weird? Like breaking into my own house or something.”
Laena rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. If anything, it’s less weird than the places we usually break into. It’s like…less illegal.”
“Not sure the cops will see it that way,” Rhae muttered.
“Oh come on. Since when are you so boring? You’ve been spending too much time with Ali.”
Rhae’s temper flared at the suggestion. “I’m not boring!”
Laena smirked. “Prove it.”
Which is how Rhae finds herself on the ferry to Dragonstone now. Her friends all chatter excitedly, hanging on the rail, leaning over the sea as if they can’t wait a second longer, ready to jump into the black waters and swim the rest of the way.
Rhae has a thick, sticky lump in her throat. An odd clammy feeling in her gut, made even worse for the fact that she’s known as the brave one. The girl who will enter any so-called haunted house, metaphorical guns a-blazing. She’s the girl who, on a dare, walked alone through Harrenhal, the “most haunted place in Westeros” in the dead of night with only her phone flashlight for company.
Visiting some crumbling old house in the middle of the sea should be nothing; just because her family once lived there doesn't mean it should be any different. The past is long-dead.
But something about this feels too personal. Like she’s intruding on someone’s private space, on their life. Peering through a darkened window.
“You alright, Rhae? You’re real quiet today.”
She hadn’t noticed Cris come sit down beside her. He pushes his hair back from his eyes, giving her that look. The one he gives her when she forgets to eat or loses her debit card again or lets her phone battery run down to zero.
“Oh. Yeah, I’m fine”
He nudges her with his shoulder, a teasing smile on his lips.
“Don’t tell me this is the one that finally scares you?”
“Of course not,” Rhae scoffs, and Cris holds his hands up defensively. “It’s not that I’m scared,” she explains. “It’s not fear. I don’t know. It’s just…weird, that’s all.”
“You didn’t have to let Laena talk you into this, you know. Could have told her it was too personal or something.”
Rhae rolls her eyes. “Right. And when have you ever known Laena to take no for an answer?”
“Fair enough,” he admits.
Rhae sighs. “It’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s just the weather.”
Another quarter of an hour later and they’re pulling into the pier at Dragonstone. The island is in a gloomy state—overcast, darker than it ought to be this time of day. The fishing village that encircles the docks carries the ineffable air of decay, a town long past its prime.
Rhae and Cris join Laena and Ali at the bow of the ship. Laena, in true Laena fashion, is already giving Ali a hard time.
“I don’t know why you even come with us if you’re so scared of everything.”
“I’m not scared of everything.”
“You should have just stayed back with Laenor if you were going to be such a coward.”
Ali gives a nervous look in Rhae’s direction as she joins them, then straightens, tossing her head back haughtily.
“If I didn’t come, who was going to keep you lot out of trouble? You’d never have made the ferry on time if I didn’t remind you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Laena concedes. “‘Spose every group needs a mom friend.”
Ali scowls.
“Don’t take it personally,” Cris consoles her. “She called my manhood into question in order to get me here.”
“I’m still calling it into question,” Laena says.
She turns to Rhae then, flashing a sparkling grin.
“Ready to meet your ancestors?”
—
Dragonstone is cloaked in fog. A dense fog, muggy and thick and difficult to draw breath without coating your lungs in mist. The same mist curls around their ankles like greedy fingers. The air is warm and swampy and still Rhae feels the urge to shiver.
A few seamy-eyed locals squint in their direction as they pass through the village. Rhae feels even more like an intruder. She can only imagine what they’re thinking—dumb kids, obvious tourists with their backpacks and hiking boots, interlopers. She keeps a brisk pace to encourage the rest of her friends to walk quickly.
Soon enough they pass out of the village and onto the winding path that leads up the manor house. Rhae catches only glimpses of it as they climb, when patches of fog disperse for long enough to afford a view of the imposing house. Though house is too small a word for it—a mansion, closer to a castle than anything Rhae had ever seen—looms over the island like a towering thundercloud.
Their clothes are damp by the time they reach the top of the slope, a mixture of sweat and the moisture in the air. They all take a moment to catch their breath and slug back bottles of water. Rhae stares up at the house. The bones of the place are Valyrian, echoes of ancient architectural arts long since lost to the world. Over the years it was modified, built upon, such that the sprawling mansion seems to have multiple personalities, multiple lives.
She thought some sort of genetic recognition might spark in her mind upon seeing it, but it’s just like any other creepy old building.
“Should we just go right in the front door?” Laena asks.
Rhae shrugs. “Seems as good a place as any. It’s not boarded up or anything.”
Even as she says it, her eyes are drawn upward, to a high tower, its roof adorned with a great stone dragon. It overlooks the sea, a silent, watchful guardian. For a brief flicker of a moment, she thinks she sees movement in the window. But it must just be a trick of the light.
Cris, Ali, and Laena are all watching her, waiting for her to enter first. Rhae hefts her backpack into position, and unhooks the flashlight from the side.
“Shall we?”
—
The chorus of flashlights flickering to life is the only sound as Rhae pushes inside Dragonstone Manor. The thick wooden doors are surprisingly easy to move, even as the hinges groan in protest and shake off years of rust.
“Ho-ly shit,” Laena says, emitting a low whistle.
It’s a spectacle, indeed, even in its current state—elaborate crown molding, finely wrought fixtures, the obvious signs of opulent wealth evident in every detail of the house, no matter how far gone to ruin they are. The high ceilings seem to reach up endlessly into the darkness.
Everything is choked with dust and cobwebs, layer after layer. The tell-tale scent of rot and mildew permeates the air. As they move into the space, their footsteps are muffled and leave deep tracks in the debris, which must have gone many years undisturbed until today.
This amount of space, of darkness, is almost oppressive. Most people would say it feels empty, but Rhae knows better. She can feel the weight of years, of decades, of centuries, even—all that’s happened in this place piling up like one great cluttered hoard.
To know that her family had once roamed these halls adds additional weight to the pressing dust and darkness—some nebulous ancestral compulsion.
Now that she’s inside, something unsettling flutters in her gut, a blooming seed of familiarity. Of feeling like she should know where she’s going—or that perhaps she’s been here before.
Rhae shakes her head; she’s letting her imagination get the best of her.
“We should stick together,” Ali says in a wavering voice.
“Not scared, huh?” Laena teases, throwing a look over her shoulder.
Rhae takes Ali by the arm.
“Come on, you can stick with me,” she assures her.
Cris and Laena take off up the grand staircase at the back of the room, the beams from their flashlights slowly being swallowed by the gaping maw of the house.
Rhae and Ali wander the ground floor, discovering room after room of covered furniture, ornate silver that’s all become tarnished, art that must be worth a small fortune. Idly she marvels at the fact this house hasn’t been plundered in all these years; it’s a veritable treasure trove.
Maybe there was truth to the rumors of this place being haunted.
Or more likely—no one ever bothered to come all the way out to this remote location.
“Can’t believe all of this stuff is still here,” Ali muses, echoing Rhae’s thoughts.
“Right? Kind of…strange, when you think about it.”
Rhae traces her fingers over the thick layer of dust on the dining room table. Something pulses in her chest, thinking that at one time her flesh-and-blood sat at this very table—eating, laughing, sharing meals. She’s heard the stories of course, studied the histories, of the many famous (and infamous) members of her family. But it was always abstract, academic. This Targaryen son of that Targaryen did this old thing in that old place. She was so far removed from all of it that they almost seemed like characters out of some fairy-tale.
By the time she was born, Dragonstone was already full of ghosts, and faded from memory.
But here, now, everything is so tangible and real. It’s not just some old house, it’s a former home, full of stories. Her stories—or they would be, if her family had kept any of their traditions alive. If they hadn’t tried to hide the loss of their fortune and name like some horrid, shameful skeleton in their closet.
Rhae’s big secret—the reason she can enter any purported horror without fear—has always been simply that she doesn’t believe in any of it. Ghost stories and curses and other such otherworldly nonsense aren’t real, so they can’t hurt her.
But for the first time Rhae thinks she has an inkling of what it means to be haunted:
To be a house full of stories, with no one left to tell them.
—
They meet up with Laena and Cris in the entryway after nearly an hour of wandering—and not a single ghost spotted.
“Anything?” Laena asks hopefully.
Ali shakes her head. “You guys?”
“No,” Laena exhales. “You’d think there’d be at least one dead body or a scandalous love letter in a drawer or something, but there was nothing.”
“Same down here,” Ali says. “I mean, aside from the silver.”
“Silver?” Laena perks up.
“We’re not stealing the silver,” Rhae says firmly.
“You’re no fun,” Laena pouts.
"We're ghost hunters, not grave robbers," says Rhae.
"Well the ghosts certainly aren't using it," Laena sniffs.
Rhae just shrugs; she doesn’t feel like arguing. She's tired, deeply weary in a way that has nothing to do with the exertion of reaching this place
She doesn't know how to explain what she’s feeling. She doesn’t think any of them would really understand.
Laena sighs, disappointed. “I swear to the gods if we don’t see a single ghost or ghoul or spirit I am giving up on this whole career.”
“Oh, were you being paid for this?” Cris challenges.
“I would be if you guys let me steal the silver,” Laena replies.
“Come on,” Cris says, gesturing with a sweep of his arm. “One more pass through, then we hit the road?”
There’s something telling Rhae it’s not time for her to leave yet. There’s still more of the house for her to see. That tower she saw from the outside, the one with the dragon on top of it. She thinks she knows the route she needs to take to find it.
“I’m going to look around upstairs,” Rhae says, suddenly feeling the urge to explore that part of the house alone.
“There’s nothing up there, Rhae,” Cris says. “Just a bunch of dusty beds and couches and desks.”
“Still, I figure I should probably see it for myself, right? Might find a family crest of something.”
“Want me to come with you?” Ali asks.
Rhae shakes her head. “Nah, you guys go on. Go check out the gardens, and I’ll meet back up with you here.”
Ali watches her closely for a moment, as if considering arguing. But she lets it go.
“Keep your phone on, yeah?” Cris reminds her.
“Yes, dad,” Rhae says, rolling her eyes.
—
The first thing Rhae notices when she arrives on the upstairs landing is the overwhelming sense of quiet, as if by climbing a level she’s entered an entirely different world. One where the myriad bird and insect sounds from outside no longer penetrate the air, and where the creaks and groans of an old house still settling into its bones are but distant echoes.
The second thing she notices is that Cris was right—there really is nothing but musty old furniture up here. She can’t help but feel a pang of disappointment. Foolish as it may be, Rhae hoped she might uncover something important, something meaningful.
With every new room a small flare of hope kindles in her chest, but it's quickly snuffed out. It seems her long-dead ancestors drained whatever life was left to be found in this place long ago.
So Rhae meanders from room to room, hall to hall, heading vaguely in the direction she believes the tower to be.
“Rhae!”
Laena’s voice is vaguely recognizable from downstairs. Rhae ignores it.
“Rhae!”
She keeps moving, certain she’s close now.
“Rhae!”
She turns a corner, and her heart gives a hard, jerky lurch when she sees a darkened archway at the end of the hall. It’s a staircase, and Rhae knows in her bones where it leads. If there's anything of note to be found here, that's where it'll be.
As she approaches, her phone vibrates distractingly in her pocket. It’s Cris, of course. She sighs and picks up the phone.
“What?”
“Where are you? We’re going to miss the last ferry if we don’t leave soon!”
“Yeah, yeah, just five more minutes, I’m almost done.”
Cris’ heavy sigh creates static in her ear. “Hurry up, okay?”
“I’ll be right down, just hang tight.”
She hangs up and turns her phone on silent before shoving it back into her pocket. There’s no way she’s leaving now, not when a deep thrumming in her chest is urging her up those stairs. She’s overcome with the desire to see what’s up there, to know.
So Rhae climbs the stone steps, a narrow passage that could scarcely fit two people across shoulder-to-shoulder. The air seems to grow colder as she ascends, her skin rippling with goosebumps.
The tower didn’t look this high from the outside. She should have counted the steps. It feels like she’s been climbing forever when she reaches the top, slightly out of breath, and with sweat pooling at the base of her spine.
The room at the top is small and round, walls made all of stone, save for the expansive windows lining the far wall, providing a panoramic view of the sea below. And admitting a glut of sunlight that illuminates the space, so bright Rhae is temporarily blinded by the glare.
When Rhae's vision adjusts, her heart leaps into her throat, and a zap of fear shocks her into stillness.
There’s a man standing by the window.
Once she’s recovered enough to think, Rhae steps back, but her foot slips on some loose stone. She manages to grip the edge of the wall before she tumbles back down the stairs, but her flashlight falls out of her grip and clatters to the ground.
At the noise, the man at the window turns, his eyes going wide, his mouth dropping open.
He stares at her for a long, excruciating moment before he says:
“Rhaenyra?”
Rhae’s blood freezes in her veins as she stares at the stranger—though, not a stranger, not quite. There’s something so familiar about him. She feels like she’s seen this man a thousand times before, feels immediately that she already knows him. It’s not like meeting someone for the first time. It’s like reuniting with an old friend, one you haven’t seen in years, but with whom resuming the friendship is as easy and natural as breathing.
He’s tall and lean, with flowing white-blonde hair tied back from his face in braids, strong, striking features, and those eyes—she’s seen those eyes somewhere before. There are hints of familiarity, of things she recognizes, in the twist of his mouth, and the set of his brow. She knows this man—she has to.
Who is he? Why is he here? How did he get in? And most curious of all—
“How do you know my name?” she asks, unsure she is ready to know the answer.
The man steps closer to her, some of the glare of the afternoon light dropping away, and Rhae notices the oddity of his dress—a loose white shirt, tight pants, high boots. A heavy signet ring on one hand, and a sword belted at his waist. It all looks…archaic, like something out of a history book. Or the cover of a romance novel.
When he gets close enough, she can see an intricate web of scars climbing the side of his neck. Burns, Rhae thinks. She searches his face; he’s older, but not old. Yet in his eyes is a faraway look, like he’s seen far more years than what his body would suggest, that he carries a world of secrets and close-kept pain.
The man frowns, something hopeful and bright in his eyes snuffing out.
“No,” he says, and Rhae hears a depth of sadness in that simple word that makes her heart ache. “You’re not her.”
“Her?”
He sighs, and it seems to Rhae that breath contains a lifetime of disappointment beyond her ability to imagine.
“You look very much like someone I used to know, when she was a girl.”
Rhae’s mouth feels dry, her voice stuck in her throat. Her whole body is tingling, on edge.
“Who?” she asks, barely above a whisper.
He looks at her, and through her, but says nothing. Rhae’s heart thumps so loudly in her chest she’s sure it will burst. She’s sure she knows this man, but she can’t think of his name. It’s on the tip of her tongue, dancing just at the edge of her awareness.
“Who are you?” she asks.
He smiles sadly. “It doesn’t really matter, anymore.”
It matters to Rhae; this feels like the most important thing that’s ever happened in her life. Yet her mind, frustratingly, seems to work like sludge, her thoughts clogged and inaccessible, too overwhelmed to function properly in the face of this strange moment.
“How did you…my friends and I, we’re the first people in here for, well, decades, by the looks of it. I didn’t see any footprints before ours. But you can’t…”
He crosses his arms, and has the audacity to look amused, as if this is not a completely bizarre situation for them to both find themselves in.
“And your clothes,” Rhae continues, looking him up and down. “Do you…you don’t, live here, do you?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
Rhae narrows her eyes. “Is this some kind of ren faire thing? A LARP event?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. There’s something beautiful and familiar about the sound of his laughter, an old favorite song she’s forgotten the lyrics to.
“Do you really not know?” he says cryptically.
Rhae’s breath comes rapidly now. A frisson runs up her spine. She knows what she wants to say. She feels it in every cell of her being. But she can’t bring herself to say it. The man looks her straight in the eye, and Rhae feels completely exposed.
“You come searching for ghosts, and yet are surprised when you find one?”
In all their years of messing around, breaking into haunted places, going along with Laena whenever she insisted she definitely saw something that time—
Rhae never expected to actually see anything.
She should be afraid. She should scream. She should run and get Laena and the others.
But she isn’t afraid. She doesn’t want to scream. And she doesn’t want to go anywhere.
Cautiously, Rhae steps away from the stairs, further into the room. She keeps her eyes on the man—ghost—whatever he is, and he merely watches her with curiosity.
“Who are you, really? You say it doesn’t matter, but…” Rhae clears her throat, and grips the straps of her backpack, stiffening her spine. She juts out her chin, and summons all her confidence. “You know my name; I think it’s only fair I know who I’m speaking to.”
He smiles, a lopsided grin that makes him look like he’s in on a joke she’s not privy to.
“You sound like her, too.”
An uncomfortable flutter erupts in her gut, and something nags at the back of her mind. She can’t help but feel like she’s supposed to know what he’s talking about—who he’s talking about. If she could just recall some piece of trivia or history that she’s missing.
“I’m sorry,” she says genuinely. “I don’t know who you mean.”
His eyes seem to glisten and shimmer in the light.
“My Rhaenyra,” he says, his voice soft and rich with emotion. “My wife. My queen.”
Queen.
Recognition bursts to life in Rhae’s mind, flooding her all at once with a thousand different fragments. Of course! Rhaenyra Targaryen, the first and only ruling queen of the Seven Kingdoms. The Realm’s Delight. The Black Queen. The Half-Year Queen.
There was a heavy air of tragedy around her life, and around Rhae’s memory of it.
The queen whose throne was stolen from her. Who was betrayed, time and again. Who was robbed of her children. Who lost her husband. Her great love, her uncle—
The realization hits Rhae like a slap. She looks at the man before her, and it all makes so much sense now. There’s no one else he could be.
One of the most infamous of her ancestors. A man with a life so storied he was more the stuff of myth and legend than history.
She looks him in the eye.
“You’re Daemon Targaryen.”
The ghost of Daemon Targaryen—the Prince of King’s Landing, the Lord of Flea Bottom, the Rogue Prince, the King of the Narrow Sea, consort to Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen—smiles.
“I was.”