Chapter Text
For years, the Fourteen Flames had whispered secrets to the winds—until, at last, they granted a wish as grand as Old Valyria was.
Jacaerys Velaryon had been reborn, his soul woven into a new life as Prince Rhaego Targaryen, the firstborn son of Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons and the Prince that was promised, and her consort, Aegon 'Young Griff' Targaryen, Southern Conqueror and Slayer of Euron Greyjoy.
Sixteen years had passed since his rebirth, and now, fate had been kinder to him than in his past life. No longer seen as bastard son born out of wedlock, no longer shadowed by the name Strong. This time, he was born with the silver hair of Old Valyria, eyes as divine as Targaryen purple, a true Targaryen prince, heir to the Iron Throne of the fire and blood his mother had shed. And his name—a blend of Dothraki fierceness and Targaryen legacy—commanded respect before he even try to speak.
And before the memories of his past life returned, Rhaego was the realm’s silver prince, beloved for his charm and feared for the dragon at his side. A slender, pale green she-dragon, swift as the wind, with pearl-white horns and wings that shimmered like moonlight on water, had hatched from the clutches of Drogon and Viserion. She was faster than any beast in the sky, her movements a blur of emerald and silver—a living storm.
Now, with dragonfire in his blood and the weight of two lives in his mind, no one dared question his claim. The prince was unstoppable.
But that was it. That was before his memories returned.
Because when the memories of his past life surged through him like wildfire, Rhaego’s heart burned with a singular purpose: to fly, to fulfill the promise he had made to Baela Targaryen—his lost betrothed from another time. And though he was now heir to New Valyria, bound by duty to his sister and future queen, Princess Rhaella Targaryen, he could not silence the ghost of his former love.
Defiant, he demanded an annulment from Queen Daenerys and rode out across the realm, chasing whispers and shadows, desperate to find Baela that himself was so sure also reborn. His rebellion sent shockwaves through the court, stirring unrest as the queen’s fury clashed with her son’s obsession. Yet neither her wrath nor the weight of the crown could sway him. For a year and four moons, he searched, his dragon cutting through storm and sky—but fate offered no mercy.
In the end, he returned to Dragonstone with empty hands and a hollow heart, the realm’s silver prince bowed beneath the weight of a destiny he could not outfly. No one knew of the memories that haunted him, the grief that had driven him to madness. With silent resolve, he knelt before his mother, the fire in his veins cooling to embers.
Right then—Jacaerys Velaryon’s ghost would have to rest and his now self, Prince Rhaego Targaryen, would wed his sister, rule his people, and let the past burn in fire and blood.
However, two years after Rhaego’s own memories had returned, Princess Rhaella awoke in the dead of night, gasping as the past crashed over her like a tidal wave. She clutched her chest, tears streaming unchecked down her face—because of the years of a forgotten life now screaming in her veins after sixteen years living without it.
Fortunately, Rhaego found her. And when she was curled into herself, trembling, and without hesitation, he pulled her into his arms.
As she sobbed against his shoulder, something shifted in him. The way she shuddered, the way her fingers dug into his sleeves—it was too familiar. And his breath caught. Because no, it couldn’t be. And worse, when she spoke, her voice raw with a grief too deep for dreams, and his blood turned to fire the way only Baela could do in their another lifetime.
Why does this feel familiar? He thought.
"Have you gotten a bad dream again?" The question left his lips automatically, though some instinct already whispered this was no ordinary nightmare. The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
When her gaze snapped up to meet his, Rhaego nearly recoiled. These weren't the eyes of the girl who had trailed after him in the gardens yesterday. These eyes knew things—terrible, hungry things that had lived centuries before either of them drew breath. The violet hue was the same, but the weight behind them belonged to someone who had watched cities burn and fights herself to win it.
Her whisper cut deeper than any scream. "It was all my life." The words landed like a death sentence, each syllable heavy with the weight of buried memories clawing their way to the surface. Rhaego's skin prickled as if the very air between them had grown teeth.
A memory flickered at the edge of his consciousness—the ghost of a girl with fire in her smile, her laughter ringing across Dragonstone's courtyards— that held his ground through the most devastating time of war. But when he reached for it, the image dissolved like smoke. The harder he tried to grasp it, the more his head throbbed in protest, as if his own mind had barricaded the truth behind walls of forgotten stone.
The chamber seemed to shrink around them, the tapestries on the walls suddenly feeling like silent witnesses to something monumental. Even the candles flickered uncertainly, their light wavering as if afraid to illuminate what was unfolding between the two silver-haired figures.
Rhaego's breath came shallow now. Some part of him—some deep, primal part that remembered what his conscious mind did not—recognized this moment for what it was: the fragile second before a dam breaks, before a carefully constructed reality shatters beyond repair. His pulse hammered a frantic warning against his ribs, though he couldn't say whether it screamed danger or salvation.
"Are you dreaming something so bad about your life? Or what?" He forced a laugh, though it sounded hollow even to him. "Because frankly, I am so confused right now."
The forced chuckle died in Rhaego's throat as Rhaella's violent headshake sent silver strands whipping like banners in a storm. Her fingers—always so gentle when braiding his hair or tending his wounds—now dug into his jaw with desperate urgency. The pressure bordered on pain, yet he found himself leaning into it, as if his body remembered this touch from another lifetime.
"Not this life." She said.
Her words struck like dragonfire, scorching away the fragile pretense of normality between them. The bitterness in her voice was all wrong—this wasn't the sister who'd giggled behind her hand at courtly fools, nor the betrothed who'd shyly pressed a favor into his palm before tournaments. This was someone older, someone who'd swallowed centuries of sorrow and spat them back up as vinegar.
And when her thumbs brushed his cheekbones, time itself seemed to stutter. The gesture was at once foreign and intimately familiar, like a half-remembered prayer from childhood of his another life. Because of that, when Rhaego's breath caught as her scent—orange blossoms and steel, always that strange combination—his mind flooded his senses with fragmented memories of torchlit balconies and whispered promises. Broken promises neither could keep.
"Do you believe in past lives and reincarnations?" She asked.
The question hung between them like drawn steel. Moonlight through the arched windows threw her features into sharp relief, and for one terrifying heartbeat, Rhaego didn't see his sister at all. He saw a wilder face, darker skin with silver curls but with the same defiant tilt to the chin, the same fire behind the eyes that had once watched him mount a dragon with pride rather than fear. The vision came with a wave of visceral sensation—the salt-sting of Dragonstone's winds, the ache of old burns along his ribs, the phantom weight of a betrothal pendant he'd never worn in this life.
Then, like a challenge, she gripped his face, her thumbs brushing the high curve of his cheekbones. "Tell me now, dear brother and beloved Prince Charming Rhaego of the smallfolk—do you believe in past lives and reincarnations?"
Her thumbs stilled against his cheekbones, the warmth of her touch searing through him like brandished steel. The pet name—Prince Charming of the smallfolk—echoed in his skull, too specific, too knowing. It carried the weight of a private joke from a lifetime he couldn’t place, and yet… his pulse leapt in response, as if his blood remembered what his mind did not.
"Why suddenly that?" He asked.
The question left his lips before he could temper it, his voice rougher than he intended. Shadows from the guttering candles danced across Rhaella’s face, etching lines of anguish and resolve that didn’t belong to a girl of sixteen. For a heartbeat, her eyes flickered—not with tears, but with something far more dangerous: longing. Not for him as her brother, but for someone else. Someone before.
"Because I believe I am experiencing that." She answered.
The confession hung between them, sharp as a blade balanced on its edge. The air in the chamber grew dense, charged with the static of an approaching storm. Somewhere beyond the tower walls, a night breeze stirred the leaves of the heart tree, its whispers just audible through the stained-glass windows. Rhaego’s skin prickled. The room, the castle, the very world around them seemed to hold its breath—waiting, watching, as if the gods themselves leaned in to witness what came next.
"And what do you mean by that?" He asked, clearly having a hard time to wrapped his head around the situation.
He barely recognized his own voice. The words were careful, measured, but beneath them thrummed a wild, desperate hope. A part of him already knew. Knew in the way her fingers trembled against his skin. Knew in the way her gaze searched his, not for answers, but for confirmation.
And then—
Rhaella stood abruptly, her movement sharp as a dagger’s edge. The firelight caught the gleam of unshed tears in her eyes, but her voice was steel. "There is no time to explain. I have to—I need—no, I must find him now."
But Rhaego caught her wrist before she could reach the door, his grip firm but not unkind. "Who are you trying to find again, beloved sister? Him? Who? Tell me, Rhaella. I am still your brother and betrothed." His voice was low, urgent, the words laced with something deeper than confusion—something like fear.
She wrenched her arm free with surprising strength, her laugh bitter, brittle. "Betrothed?" The word dripped with irony. "Come now, you haven’t treated me how I should be treated since almost two years ago. So let me go."
The accusation struck like a blow. Rhaego stiffened, his jaw tightening. Two years. Two years. The same span since his own memories had returned. Since he had pulled away, lost in his own search for a ghost.
But now—
"Btw, you won’t understand, Rhaego." She turned away, her hand already on the door. "Whatever I will say, you won’t understand."
What comes after was the slamming door echoed through the chamber like a funeral bell. And Rhaego stood frozen for half a heartbeat, the scent of Rhaella's perfume—orange blossoms and dragon smoke—still clinging to the air where she'd stood.
Then instinct took over.
His boots struck stone as he gave chase, the castle's ancient tapestries whipping past in a blur of embroidered histories that suddenly felt less real than the ghosts haunting them both.
You won't understand, Rhaego.
Her words chased him down the corridor, thrown over her shoulder like a gauntlet. The torchlight caught the silver in her hair as she moved with purpose toward the Dragonpit, her stride that of a woman marching to war rather than a girl fleeing an argument.
"Wait! Where are you going, Rhaella?" His shout bounced off the vaulted ceilings, raw with a desperation that surprised even him. The sound of his own voice—so like Jacaerys' in that moment—that it made his skin prickle.
"Dragonstone!" Her reply came sharp as Valyrian steel, carrying the weight of unspoken history, the ancestral Targaryen stronghold. And at her response, Rhaego's breath hitched again for the numorous times that day.
Because it was their place. The place where Baela had watched Jacaerys fly to his death. The same place where his old soul visits her years later before her wedding. The same place where promises had been made in the shadow of the Dragonmont. And the very same place where those promises meet its each bitter fate, lost with their lives.
The night air hit them like a slap as they burst into the courtyard. Above, the moon hung swollen and red, casting the Dragonpit in eerie crimson light. Rhaella's olive-green dragon stirred at her approach, his pale orange wing membranes catching the torchlight like stained glass. The beast rumbled deep in its chest—a sound Rhaego felt in his bones—as it recognized not just its rider, but the storm of emotions rolling off her.
Rhaego barely had time to call for his own mount before Rhaella was airborne, her dragon's powerful wings kicking up cyclones of dust and dead leaves. The wind snatched at his cloak as he leapt onto his waiting steed, the familiar leather of the saddle suddenly foreign beneath him.
There, they ascended into the ink-black sky, where Dragonstone's jagged silhouette loomed on the horizon like a broken crown.
Or perhaps, two broken hearts who longed for each others.