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For as long as Helaena could remember, she had wandered through life half awake.
Be it night or day, the world danced to the tune of mirages, shifting right before her eyes. Visions veiled in clarity one moment, only to be vanished in a wink. Many a time she could not tell what was real from what was not, and rarer still was her ability to make use of her gift.
For it was a gift, foresight.
It had frightened her when she was a child, and no wonder. The whispers in the wind and the shadows in the flames made for bloodcurling companions, chilling her to the bone. The white shadows most of all, oneiric and pale as milk, capable of smothering fire in their glacial wake. As a woman grown she feared them still, but the years had taught her that even in terror there was comfort.
She used to hope for blindness, to pray for the quietude of black oblivion, to stare at the sun long enough to hurt. Until she realized it mattered little whether her eyes were open or not. She saw and she heard, regardless of her willingness or strength to bear the burden.
Closed, her eyes saw the most.
Parts of a whole not yet made, a chorus of chaos and harmony, both extraordinary and appalling. Fragments of truth were revealed to her often, twisted in form and obscure in essence. Some she interpreted before they came to pass, but most were beyond her understanding. Her mind served as a vessel for them all. She could not act upon her knowledge any more than she could crush the moon between her fingertips. She could only guide; such was the extent of her power, and such must be her solace.
Winged, she truly lived.
Helaena rode on Dreamfyre’s back, the morning air warm against her cheeks. Her hair flowed wild in the wind and her mind was unshackled, freed from shadows and darker visions, from the whispers and their restraints. Up in the skies all her fears thawed, and no spectre of fate could reach her.
Bright scales of gold glimmered on her right as Aegon dashed past her upon his own mount, Sunfyre. A celestial body in the blue vastness of the sky, her brother’s dragon was nimble and eager to please, pale pink wings flapping persistently in his effort to outrace them.
With a playful growl, Dreamfyre sprang forward. Helaena eased into her dragon’s surge of energy with a cry of delight. The beat of her wings was the song of a raging torrent, fluid and powerful, oddly reassuring. Her silver blue scales were hot as cinders beneath the saddle, turning moon-like and powdery with the kiss of sunlight.
“That’s cheating!”
Aegon’s bellows of protest died in the rush of wind and wing. Helaena felt her belly tingle with mirth and she let a string of laughter escape her, gladdening her heart.
West they flew, past the Goldroad and toward the Reach. Their dragons dove and glided happily for a while before descending upon Leafy Lake, where the respite of sparkling waters welcomed them, rippling and reflecting the emerald hues of the bountiful land.
Helaena and Dreamfyre were the first to land. As she dismounted, her brother came down unevenly on his dragon, disrupting the lake in its entirety and splashing water all about.
“I should win this round,” he proclaimed breathlessly, “if you and that enormous beast of yours knew to play fair.”
A smile creeped on her lips, her hand idly brushing along the scales of Dreamfyre’s neck. She could never wear riding gloves, the heat was too welcome and soothing against her bare skin.
“Play is seldom fair, Aegon.”
Her brother unclasped his belt without care or patience, his head a mess of tangled curls. “For once, I fear you may be right,” he admitted, grinning.
Tail swaying in the water, Sunfyre let out a happy shrill and bumped Aegon lightly as soon as his feet landed safely on the lakeshore.
She watched her brother laugh and crane his neck to plant kisses upon his dragon’s golden snout. The sight saddened her. He will never be merry as he is now, she thought, without a crown to crush him.
Dreamfyre growled softly, and she was reminded to pat her favorite spot under the maw, before stepping back to let her rest. Those lapis lazuli eyes followed her movements with a depth of meaning she feared to grasp, for they echoed all she knew and wished she could unlearn.
The seed was planted long ago, and the fatal fruit sleeps no more. Now the soil wants for blood.
Dizzy, Helaena sat down on the nearest patch of grass. The sweet breeze was a lover’s caress on her face, and the gentle sun warmed her worries away. She could breathe easier, if she looked not.
Aegon came to stand before her, glancing around appreciatively. The dragons settled as well, refreshing themselves by the lake, lazily lapping at it or flickering wing and tail in the shallow water.
“A fine spot, is it not?”
“Lovely,” she agreed, though her sight began to stray elsewhere, far away and to lands beyond. “It seems most suited for calm and solitude.”
“You sound weary of my presence so soon, sweet sister.”
She blinked, “but I am not.”
“Well, you look weary,” he pressed on, turning fully to glance at her and gesturing as he spoke. “I’ll not have you deny it, not when I can see all that under your eyes.”
A beat of silence passed. The rustling of leaves and Sunfyre’s pleased chirps grew more and more distant. Her mind scrambled to remain.
“Sleep comes not easy as of late,” she confessed.
The inquiry came before she felt ready for it, crashing silence like a tidal wave. “Why, what troubles you? Is it the twins?”
She had never wanted children. How could she have wanted them, when she had long known with painful certainty that her womb was tainted by the dark hand of sorrow? No mother would willingly bring only torment and misery into the world. But she had anyway.
It had not been her choice to make. Dragonblood or no, what a woman wanted bore little meaning.
“No,” she swallowed thickly, “the children are well.” Her hands trembled on her lap. “Two make a pair until a third breaks it,” she heard herself say. Ice traversed her spine. “I have no need to worry for them yet.”
Aegon narrowed his eyes, but eventually nodded. Without a word, he stared at the dragons awhile, but the subject was not dropt for long. “So? What keeps you from rest?”
“I have dreams.”
“All of us do,” he said simply, tossing a stone at the lake and watching as it skipped across until it sank. Sunfyre gave a shrill and went after it, flapping his wings and dunking his head underwater. It amused Aegon immensely. The golden dragon’s head resurfaced, jaws empty. “I find mine are sweeter after a few cups of arbor red,” her brother commented, looking back to raise an eyebrow at her. “Is that why you’re unrested? You’re having bad dreams?”
Her head shook. “Dreams disguised and true,” she tried to explain.
Aegon shot her a mischievous grin. “Do you dream of me?”
She knew what he asked. A truth that could not be borne without pain. It made her hesitate.
“Often,” she finally said.
As a man twice dead, she did not say, broken and burned, cloaked in blood and blisters that never heal. A dream so horrid and so old it had never truly disquieted her. Perhaps she had known his fate before they even met, as soon as she had drawn her first breath.
Her answer should have frightened him, but Aegon’s smile only grew wider, bright and boyish. “Ah, then they can’t be so terrible.”
They were indeed terrible, and as bleak as they were true, but he had not grasped her meaning, it seemed. How could he? Her dreams belonged in the shadow of the darkest night that knew no end, not in the face of the sun.
Helaena plucked a couple of flowers and toyed with the delicate petals. She glanced up to see Dreamfyre stir in her laying position, curling in on herself and tucking her horned head under a massive wing. She wished she could do the same. Sleep.
Aegon plopped down next to her on the warm grass, his features tender and radiant as he watched Sunfyre come out of the lake and flutter his wings to rid them of the wet. A contented sigh left him and he leaned back, using his hands to pillow his head as he gazed up at the sky.
At some point, he asked her: “Do you ever dream of flying away?”
“I do,” her gentle voice was soft and sad, “but I do not like those. When I dream of flying, I know I must fall.”
“What a bleak thought,” he noted with a frown. “I try not to think, you know. It makes my head feel bigger than I care to have it.”
“How do you not think?”
“I drink,” he snickered, “but even that remedy doesn’t last long, Gods help me, so I take as many measures as I have to. One should strive to never think. It overcomplicates every pleasant aspect of life.”
She wondered if there was some truth to that. But was a dream a thought? And could dreams exist, where thoughts did not?
The flowers seemed to tilt and wither in her clammy grasp.
“If I could never have another thought in my life,” her brother went on, “I’d leave this craphole behind and never look back.”
Desperation was palpable in those words. She felt it as her own. “Are you unhappy?”
“Aren’t we all?” Aegon let out a long, depleted sigh. “I dread what’s coming.”
“As do I,” her voice shook violently with the admission, and her breath caught in her throat.
Not even the clarity of daylight saved her then. Cold darkness shrouded her all over. Ten thousand whispers heard she, and for each one, a scream as chilling as the Stranger’s hand.
When she blinked again, it all faded. Her brother’s sullen tone crept in by degrees, as did his dragon's trills and the shift of wind on leaves, until serenity returned and she was free.
“—I’m sorry for our nephews,” he was saying. “The Seven know I’ve tried to dissuade us from this path.”
He will succeed, came the thought as clear and fragile as glass, when all is lost and he tries anew.
“No,” she uttered instead, “the path was sown for us long before we came into this world.”
“It’s absurd,” Aegon groaned. He must not have heard her. “I never gave anyone cause to champion me against our sister’s claim, quite the opposite. I drank and I whored and I made myself useless, yet none of it worked. How droll is that? I can’t even succeed at failure.”
She turned to look at him, her lilac eyes burning with unshed tears. The pang in her heart was so sudden and so great it threatened to make her spill all she knew, but her tongue felt like a blade against her teeth. “It was never your fault,” she whispered.
Aegon seemed frightened, somehow, and quickly tore his wide, red-rimmed eyes from hers. “She’s the elder anyway,” he resumed uneasily after a moment, voice wavering. “Father has had plenty of time to alter the succession, and he hasn’t. It’s her birthright and her burden, not mine; no matter what Mummy says.”
“I mislike this,” she breathed, “the thread is all backwards. The pattern is not right. We are family, we should be united, not divided.”
Aegon scoffed. “Tell that to Aemond, see if you can change his mind before insanity takes it. Gods, he’s obsessed. His prick never softens so long as he talks about it. That seven-times-damned cunt has been parroting Mummy’s tales ever since he was off the teat.”
“You must not blame him,” she chided him softly. “He sees but half.”
“I’m aware,” Aegon chuckled, stretching out in the grass like a cat. “I only worry his ambitions are larger than that hoary old bitch of a dragon he rides.”
“Do not be unkind.”
“You know it’s true,” he grumbled as he sat up, crossing his legs. He began to pluck at the grass mindlessly. “I can never understand him," he murmured after a pause. "All he seeks is to scheme and make war. I’d sooner take my dragon and go East, live a simpler life. Perhaps not so far, Dorne might do. I fancy the heat and the wine they make, and I’ll love their women too, I’m sure.”
An escape. He was yearning for an escape as much as she did. It was then she saw the possibility, a thin branch among countless others. Hope, unfolding its pale wings right before her eyes, too beautiful and fickle, but possible.
And she was too glad not to ask: “Why don’t you?”
“Betimes I think I’ll do it,” her brother replied oh, so softly, “I don’t even think of the children, I’m sorry to say, only of fleeing and starting anew, never to return. I’ll get dressed, ready to forsake everything: my name, my title, my blood. But then I’ll look in the glass as I walk past and see Mummy’s face, and suddenly, I’m reminded I can never escape her no matter how far I go.”
Understanding dawned on her with a chill.
The root, no matter its decay, was seated too deep for a removal without fatal cost.
She felt the urge to reassure him. “Whatever path we may choose to tread, the Gods will have us serve our purpose.”
“I doubt I’m of much use to the Gods,” he quipped, tone drenched in self-deprecation.
He was mistaken. She could not tell him so. “The winds may turn and batter us all,” she said instead, “but we cannot blame the storm for running its course. I can never bear Rhaenyra any ill will, she has always been kind to us.”
A spell of silence befell them.
She felt the air stir with abrupt violence, and distant clouds gather on the horizon. Harmless, full white clouds, not dark, not yet. The flowers fell from her open palm, back to the earth she had tore them from.
“They should’ve wed her to me,” Aegon declared with sudden gravity. “I’m not much of a husband, this you well know, I fear; but I’d do much better as a forgotten consort than I’ll ever do as king. It could've saved us, no doubt. I could learn to be content with knowing my place and tempering my nature, if she looked at me once every six moons. But she's never looked at me once.” He then rose to his feet, hands coiled into fists. "We should head back, my dragon is restless."
Helaena turned her gaze towards Sunfyre, who only perked his head up and cooed cheerfully at them, tail swaying and slashing in the air.
Perhaps her brother was right, and thinking had its perils.