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Chapter Text

There is nothing about me that is soft.
My outer shell proves the steel beneath. Valyrian Steel.
Light but strong chainmail fits close to my body even in times of peace. Dark Sister, my blade, is at my side more than my husband. My long and beautiful silver gold hair, the only part of myself that might equal Rhaenys in beauty, is bound in iron rings and taught braids so that even its luster is used as a tool to intimidate.
My little sister is an infamous beauty. Her curves are soft and graceful, violet eyes playful and inviting. She sparks desire in men as easily as striking flint.
Unlike Rhaenys, my charms are harsh. My body is curvy but tightly corded with muscle. I move with a dancer’s grace as smoothly as when I meet a warrior’s blade. My cheek bones are high and sharp, my mouth sensual but unsmiling. At court men can barely meet my dark purple gaze, though I feel their eyes when I turn away.
My brother-husband is drawn to Rhaenys like all other men. He touches her warmly and with as much satisfaction as a merchant runs his hands through Lysene silk. One might think this would leave me in her shadow. And If I were any common woman, it would - It takes something…special to turn a man like Aegon away from a woman as amorous as my sister.
So I hunt him. I plan my seductions with all the skill and ruthlessness of my wars. I corner him in the Aegonfort and shove my hands beneath his tunic, dragging my fingernails over his bare chest just hard enough to draw hints of blood. He’s wide eyed, our faces are just a breath apart. I lift one hand to fist his hair and guide him to my hungry mouth. I bite his bottom lip and draw it though my teeth. When he gives a small gasp I dip my tongue into his mouth. He’s forced to fully taste me. I then glide my lips along his jaw to his ear. I murmur all the things I will do to him once he’s in my bed again. The ropes I had ready. The Old Valyrian oils and potions I could use to erotic and dizzying effects.
When I leave him he looks equal parts aroused and frightened.
Certainly the courtiers who had been trailing behind Aegon when I found him looked scared.
When he comes to my bedchambers, he bursts through the doors. He grabs my shoulders and pulls me to him, kissing me hard. My handmaidens flee. He struggles to undo the clasps and ties of my leathers and chainmail. When I am finally undressed he is panting with impatience, hard with desire and I am smirking.
Our first coupling is frantic, wild, and caters to Aegon’s attempt to dominate me. Attempt.
When his frustration eases and his seed fills me I use his breathlessness to take control.
I shove Aegon on his back and pin his hands above him as a man might a woman. My knees dig into his hip bones.
“You will not move,” I hissed, “Or there will be painful consequences.”
Aegon the Conqueror, the Dragonlord, the Tyrant: watches my movements like a dog does his master. I lean over his head, my breasts just brushing his face, and I take out the straps of leather behind my pillow.
Like the warriors we are, by morning both of us are bruised and bloody…admittedly him more so than I. They say that Aegon spends one night with me for every ten he spends with Rhaenys. For his sake, it’s probably for the best.
Rhaenys may have Aegon’s gentle love but I have his darker one. I always have. He resents me for it, the way I can rule him. I am his elder sister and I married him when he was thirteen years old. I was the first woman he ever had. Before Rhaenys bloomed, Aegon thought sex was as brutal and unfeeling as battle. When Rhaenys showed him otherwise Aegon demanded that our parents grant him a second sister-wife.
It mattered not.
When Aegon had dreams of a vast and glorious kingdom it was I he told first. When others would’ve scoffed or balked at the prospect of such blood, death and turmoil I simply asked:
“East or West?”
I was more than his wife, I was his sister. Even when our differences brought divides between us that were so cold and hateful they seemed impossible to bridge, we crossed them. We were family. I would obey him and he would trust and respect me.
And so we conquered Westeros.
I reveled in it. I was destined for it.
The Battle of Gulltown had ended with the crushing of our fleet by the Arryn bastards. We could not take Gulltown but neither would I let victory go to our enemies. They would learn that if the Targaryens don’t win, no one does. Riding on top Vhagar I felt like the Dragon Queen I was. But it only took the word “dracarys” and the screams of a thousand sailors for me to feel like a goddess.
They say I have darkness in my heart. That I’m an unnatural woman of the most dangerous kind. Even my brother, with the same Blood of Old Valyria running through his veins, I sometimes catch looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
But they are repelled by me for the same reasons they are bewitched.
I am Visenya Targaryen, I am like no woman they have ever met. Nor will again.

Chapter Text

I was born to ride a dragon.
But there were no dragons to be had.
When I was a babe my parents caught a glimpse of the woman I would become. I was loud and demanding, never sleeping and always demanding milk. Yet when my wet nurse offered her teat to me I would cry, sputter and turn my head.
As a small child I was even more of a spoiled chit of a princess. I raised all seven hells on my septas. Lessons befitting a proper Westerosi lady would end with me throwing something at their heads. I would disappear for hours and drive them mad with worry.
I often went looking for my father.
King Aegon Third of His Name wore all black and, with dun purple eyes and milk wan face and hair, he looked like a sinister spirit of Targaryen kings past. The crown was a heavy burden and it showed on every inch of him. Courtiers and advisers sought him with just a touch of trepidation. But to me he was just my father.
I was his eldest daughter and despite his solemnity I had many little proofs of his love. He would let me sit on his lap and toy with the gold three headed dragon necklace about his neck as I told him about the adventures I planned on having. When I was eight I once interrupted a small council meeting just to kiss him. Though he never smiled, my antics made his eyes dance when other fathers would have struck me for my impudence.
And then there was Baelor, my elder brother.
He was tall and lean, with gentle waves of the same silver gold as my hair that framed an always kind expression. He was not as handsome as our oldest brother Daeron and not a warrior like the legendary ones I looked up to. But he had long beautiful fingers like a harpist and he used to cup my face with them as he kissed me on the forehead. Baelor was ever kind. I trailed after him everywhere. To me he was as mysterious and alluring as one of the Children of the Forrest.
Daeron was proud and magnetic, but he was preoccupied with the duties and pleasures of being a prince. He loved to ride, hunt, practice swordplay and archery, breathing in life with wild joy. I admired and wondered; but I was simply not old enough to be a true companion to him. Not yet.
A princess’s life was at once easy and complex, idyllic yet strange.
When I began to mature I did it in my true fashion: dramatically and on my own terms.
For my eleventh birthday I received a sleek black courser stallion and a proper bow, it was the death of all hope for being a refined lady. It was time for me to “come out of my shell”. I practiced archery every day until my fingers bled. I raced my gorgeous stallion alongside Daeron, laughing as I beat him. I hunted pheasants, rabbits and small boars in the Kingswood and, much to the shock of the court, skinned and cooked my kills myself and shared the meal with my guards. I felt freer then I ever had. I was a hind bounding through the wild brush, a fish swimming in endless ocean. A dragon gliding though empty skies.
I had grown into a beautiful maiden, and would’ve had to be a witless dolt not to know it. I was a Targaryen in nearly every possible way, with purple eyes the same shade as my king and silver gold hair that rippled thickly down my back. I was fit and lithe with supple curves that belied my strength. I liked to think I also had the bold smile of my father’s youth. I dressed in black to honor him and it made me feel as formidable as he.
Men clamored for my favors like they were drowning and I was driftwood. Or, perhaps more accurately, they were starving and I was the most succulent fireplums, peaches and apples from the Reach. They wanted to devour me, I could see it in their eyes. I teased and playfully mocked most of them away to a more respectable distance.
As for the others who were the most bold and charming, I permitted them to come closer. I learned how to kiss. I learned the thrill of a man running his hands along your body. How the tweak or nip of some fingers could make your insides pool warmth and then spill over the edge.
With these few courtiers I discovered how to run my tongue along a man’s neck. How the bite of an earlobe could make them groan. How exactly a woman’s hands could make a man lose control in the most sinful ways.
I no longer looked at Baelor as I once did, if for no other reason than it was hard to look at someone who was rarely in sight. For some reason, he locked himself away in his room more and more often. He never brushed his long fingers along my head as he walked past. Now when we crossed paths he wouldn’t meet my eye. Daeron had mostly taken his place in my heart, as he seemed to notice me for the first time. He recognized a twin to his own soul.
Daeron was as proud, as handsome and as skilled in battle as I imagined the Warrior Himself to be. He would whisper in my ear that his reign would be even more glorious than Aegon the Conquerors. That his Conquest of Dorne would finally make him the true Lord of Seven Kingdoms. I would be his most beautiful and beloved Queen Consort and he would never try to change me.
My father betrothed me to Baelor.
It was the first time the king and I had ever fought. It was also the first time I had ever lost a fight.
At the time, I thought it the greatest tragedy that could befall me. I loved Daeron as more than a brother, more than even a lover. The future he had shown me, of a proud and powerful Targaryen queen, chainless, boundless, had taken root deeply in my heart. I felt it was my destiny, that Daeron was Aegon and I some divine compromise between Visenya and Raenys. Anything less was mocking, a betrayal of my true self. I was born to ride a dragon.
Baelor, from his position as the second prince, to his own peace-soaked nature, could never give me what I needed.
I tried to reign in my hurt and disappointment. Gradually my anger turned to resentment then resignation and finally hope. My childhood affection for Baelor was reignited as my optimism grew. My father was a melancholy king but he revived in my company, our love was fiercer than any between a parent and a child.
I determined to make Baelor love me just as powerfully. I would take him as my husband and take him to my bed. Everything I had learned of seduction I would pour onto him. I knew the passion that must lurk within him as a Targaryen. By my spirit I would kindle his own and make it flicker into life and burn hotter than an open flame. Together we would be Targaryens to be reckoned with.
And Daeron…Daeron would always be my brother, in blood and spirit.
Baelor avoided me until our wedding day but it mattered not. Any doubts he had I would sweep away with our first night together.
For my wedding day I put aside my customary black for white. Elaena and Rhaena, my younger sisters and bridemaids, watched in awe as my hand maidens dressed me in a plain ivory silk gown that flowed like river water when I moved. A thick belt of woven gold and silver cinched the dress at the waist. My hair was pinned back from my face with dark amethyst droplets. The most glorious necklace was put about my neck, a collar that from its base dangled hundreds of fine strands of yellow and red gold. It shimmered down from my neck to my breasts as if still molten metals.
Everyone awed and gushed as my father walked me down the aisle. When the High Septon concluded his business, and the cloak of Targaryen was on my shoulders, I moved to kiss Baelor. He instead clasped my face with his beautiful hands and kissed my forehead, like he had when I was child, though he was blushing. I laughed with a wry grin and most laughed with me.
Daeron attended only the ceremony and not the wedding feast. I could not blame him.
During the feast a lord asked Baelor permission for a dance with his lovely new wife. Baelor, not looking at either of us, nodded. Laughing and flushed with the night’s jubilation I returned to my seat to find Baelor absent. I wasn’t concerned, a prince was besieged for attention by courtiers even at his own wedding. I giggled and gossiped with Elaena. But the night wore on and Baelor was missing still.
My father came to me, asking after Baelor, and went looking for him himself. There were guests, unaware of the growing tension, who began calling for the bedding ceremony and I smiled weakly at them. I endured three more torturous hours of sitting silent and being stared at before it was apparent to everyone that, wherever Baelor was, he didn’t intend to return. I rose and with as much dignity as could be mustered I walked away from my wedding feast, without my husband.
I was brought to Baelor’s bedchamber and told that my husband was being ferreted out and would be brought to me directly. My handmaidens made ready for my bedding while I looked out the window at the night sky. Rhaena was grave and silent but Elaena was cursing Baelor so colorfully it shocked me that she knew vulgarities even I did not.
It was hours later when we received news. Baelor had found a quiet library in the sept and, using bookcases, tables and chairs, had barred the door. I later heard that my father’s rages and demands were met with reciting of holy passages of scripture and righteous silence.
And so it was that I slept in Baelor’s bed, my marriage bed, alone.
I woke up to a red dawn. My anger and shame, beaten back by shock the previous night, rose in me like the untamed Northern Seas. I shook and cried with its might. If Baelor appeared before me at this moment I would’ve murdered him. I would have torn his throat out with my teeth. I would’ve flayed him with nothing but my fingernails. I would have deboned him as easily as the game I shoot with my bow. Eventually this animalistic bloodlust faded but my profound humiliation did not. I was an unwanted wife, a married virgin. As if I was some ugly crone with a shriveled and barren cunt. The whole world would hear about this.
And the worst part, the most mortifying and crushing part about it, was that it was my own brother who had hurt me this way. My siblings and I had been fed stories of the Dance of Dragons our whole lives. The civil war in which Targaryen turned against Targaryen - resulting in the gruesome murder of my grandmother as well as the extinction of the dragons. As frequently as we’d been told our house name we’d been told to never lay a hand against each other. Targaryens owe each other a depth of loyalty that we show no one else.
I picked up my wedding dress, still untainted and lovely, from the floor and wore it when I went to my father.
Hard eyed and more furious than I’d ever seen him, he explained to me that Baelor refused to consummate the marriage because it would be licentious and sinful to marry his own sister. He promised me he would bring his son to his senses.
I slept in my own bedchambers that night.
The next morning when my handmaidens, eyes lowered and voices soft, brought me my usual black garments I raised myself up from bed and made them look at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, voice eerily calm, “Why do you bring me a widow’s gown? My husband is not dead. I am a maiden. And will be until my husband’s manhood rises to the occasion. Tell him that. Tell your friends. Tell the lowest beggar to the highest lord that I am a maiden, the most beautiful Targaryen princess in the world and my husband refuses to take my maidenhead. Go.”
Later, I firmly and very publically ordered the royal tailor to make me a pure white selection of clothes.
Daeron, Elaena and Rhaena comforted me as best as they could in their own ways. Daeron took me on long rides and hunts, soothing my soul. Elaena told me about the elaborate plans of murder she had concocted, making me laugh. Rhaena tried to comfort me with ideas about religious magnanimity, which only made me lose my temper with her.
The first time I saw Baelor after the wedding was quite by accident. We happened to be walking in opposite directions in the same corridor. I started and stopped to stare at him. He stilled and looked at me.
He had a pink wild flower behind his ear and he was carrying the book of the Seven Pointed Star in the crook of his arm. He was thinner than I remembered him being.
Baelor looked me up and down, scrutinized the eggshell colored gown, and gave me a radiant smile.
“Sister, you look pure,” he said, “like an innocent untouched and unspoiled by the sins of this world.”
I flushed with something other than pleasure, and all the things I planned to say to him fled my mind with the overwhelming force of it. With that, he left.
My father never convinced Baelor to correct his ways before he died. Daeron inherited the crown, Baelor inherited the status of heir to the throne and I inherited a golden dragon necklace I had played with as a child. I was bent over double as I cradled it in my hands and wept with truest heartbreak. I never took off the necklace for the rest of my life, and requested I be entombed with it till the end of days.
I could never have imagined this was only the beginning of grief and nightfall.
King Daeron’s first act as king was to deny Baelor the dissolution of his marriage, refusing to shame me further than I already had been. His second act as king was to call a small council meeting where he vowed that if nothing else was accomplished in his reign, if he had to craft all the weapons and armor himself, if he had to walk all the way south alone and barefoot, the Targaryens would finally conquer Dorne. Everyone balked at this and insisted it couldn’t be done. Even Aegon the Conqueror and his dragons failed twice at the task. Now the dragons were extinct and all chances were spoiled.
“You have a dragon,” was Daeron’s reply, “He stands before you.”
My brother’s willpower was too great to be denied. The invasion began and ended with a secret goat track that skirted the Dornish watchtowers, a swift Velaryon ship fleet on the Greenblood and an impish wink from Daeron at me. For the first time in known history Sunspear submitted.
His return to Kings Landing prompted nothing short of sheer adulation. He was a Targaryen King like no other, the Young Dragon, the Warrior Himself. I could not have been prouder. When he gifted me a short recurved bow from Dorne, wrought of a golden wood and carved with the figures of three dragons, I kissed him and shed tears of happiness and sorrow for what might have been.
But as cunning and audacious as the conquest had been, the Dornishmen were even more so. Dornishmen that bent the knee one day were leading rebellions the next. Where Daeron had lost ten thousand men in winning Dorne he spent fifty thousand trying to keep it. And still he lost.
We were all betrayed when Daeron went for a peace summit and never returned. I struck the man who first told me. I ran to my chambers and proceeded to ravage all my possessions, smashing and overturning everything my hands touched, lost in rage and grief. I heard the twang of a bowstring. My Dornish bow had been knocked to the ground. I picked it up and clutched it to my stomach, sinking to the floor to cry.
Too late, far too late. In my pride, I had never been able to distinguish between my love for a person, and what they could offer me. To me, they had been interchangeable. Whatever and whoever could feed my drive for freedom, for adventure, and therefore make me feel alive, always won my devotion. What’s more: I thought such people would never want to leave me, that they could be put aside and picked up again at my convenience, that they would always be drawn in and contented and changed by my will.
I cannot say that part of myself ever changed. But I hated myself the day I knew Daeron was dead. For only in his death could I strip away the glory, the splendor and ambition that blinded my eyes and truly understand what a friend I had lost.
We all grieved the loss of our Young Dragon. Our people cried out for justice, for vengeance, for fire and blood. But Baelor become King Baelor, First of His Name, and retribution never came. He forgave his brother’s murderers with the same light and compassionate heart I had once admired. His first act as king was to free all Dornish hostages. His second act was to sign a peace treaty with Dorne. His third was, as I suspected it would be, the destruction of our wedding vows.
He was no longer my husband. And as far as I was concerned, he was no longer my brother. But then he made me revile him, every single pious piece of him.
He called it our “Court of Beauty”. King Baelor summoned me and my sisters and we were escorted by a retinue of gold cloaks. He waved and bid us enter the rooms and give our opinion. They were filled with silk pillows, colored candles, furs and jewels. The book shelves were full, exquisite musical instruments were strewn about and fine bone sewing kits were ready for use. Gleaming tapestries of gold thread were on the walls and an inviting fire blazed. There were many beds.
As my sisters made obligatory sounds of appreciation, the thought struck me like a bolt of ice-cold lightning. Somehow, as if the future had shown itself before my eyes, I knew exactly what was happening. I choked with horror, whirled around and tried to run back the way I came. Calloused and bruising hands grabbed me and threw me back. I fell hard on the floor as Elaena and Rhaena gasped and yelled. I caught a glimpse of Baelor hiding behind the gold cloaks, his eyes closed as if in prayer, before the door was shut. I leapt up and pounded my fists on the door. I screamed and begged and threatened.
It was two weeks before Baelor came to speak through the door. “The world is teeming with sin, my sisters,” he declared softly, “The hearts of lesser men are overflowing with lust and evil hunger for your bodies. I cannot even trust my own court with you. I love you as a king and brother. I just want to protect you, to keep you from the corruption of such a wicked world.”
It was like a maiden’s tale; with shining knights, evil wizards and poor hapless damsels.
“People say you’re kind hearted,” I snarled through the door, “But you simply cover up your weak heart with illusions of generosity and compassion. You are no brother of mine. You’re a liar, a coward and a hypocrite. I see who you are deep in your bones and you are as wanton as every other man. You want to fuck us hard and deep and fast, and you’re not man enough to admit it,” I punched the wood with a bang, “But the Gods still know. And nothing you do will ever make them forgive you for it.”
I said everything I couldn’t say the first time I saw him after our wedding. I spoke such vulgarities, insults and curses that it made even Elaena color. I was practically spitting blood and hate.
When I was finished the silence proved that Baelor was gone. I wondered how much he had heard. Then I wondered if he had stood there, and listened to all I said, and if my words slid off him like water.

Chapter Text

From the beginning, I reached for light that seemed desperate to flee me.
My mother, I was told, used to lie by my cradle all night, listening to her only daughter and last child struggling to breathe. I didn’t even have the strength to cry, all the power in my scrawny body being used to keep my heart beating.
Everyone expected the Stranger to take me. Sometimes I imagine that perhaps, tiny and near senseless though I was, I expected to die as well. That I even sensed the Stranger’s presence and was happy to escape my pain.
But I lived, and ever since then I don’t know who’s been doing the chasing: the Stranger or me.
When I was a child and I looked down at my twig like arms and legs, or when I was too weak to move from my bed, or I cried because Aegon called me a sack of bones waiting to be delivered at the Stranger’s door, my brother Aemon knew how to make me smile.
He’d clasp my hand in his and put his mouth to my knuckles. Between small and tender kisses he’d murmur:
“Naerys the Willow Blossom, Naerys the Soft Fallen Snow, Naerys the Gentle Dragon, the White Hind Bounding, the Silver Crane Gliding, the Kindest Heart that ever lived.”
Aemon was my companion in near everything.
I would practice on my harp, long thin fingers plucking at notes, while he read the poetry I so loved. He’d read me stories of knights, magic and the Children of the Forrest. He’d tell me that once he became a knight he’d scour the world, from the Summer Isles to Ashai, until he found a cure for what ailed me. I’d either laugh or shake my head.
The court gossiped that I preferred to be a hermit, locked up indoors with my books and no company. As if I relished my sickness. They didn’t understand. They didn’t know what it was like to walk up steps and be gasping for air and clutching the wall when you reach the top. They’ve never learned how to eat like a sparrow, taking the most delicate bites of the smallest portions, lest you retch and bring back up what little was gained.
Sometimes I imagined what it would be like if I had a different body, strong and healthy. I could dance all night in the Great Hall with Aemon. I could learn to ride horses without fear that I’d fall and break my frail body on the stones. I could leave Kings Landing and visit another kingdom. Be the Targaryen princess everyone wanted me to be.
But the only glimpse I received of such excitement, such endless possibility, was when I would sit and watch Aemon practice his swordplay as I sewed and embroidered cloth.
“You are going to be a great knight someday,” I noted when he swung his sword in a particularly brilliant flourish.
“For you, my princess,” he grinned impishly. I smiled and lowered my eyes back to my work.
Without Aemon, I surely would have given up on life. But without my faith, life would have been devoid of hope and meaning. I leafed through the pages of the Seven Pointed Star every day. Like some men couldn’t fathom leaving behind their sword, I held onto that book like the lifeline it was.
All my pain, every hurt and suffering that the world offered, could be comforted and answered for. I would not trade the light I found for the strength of ten men; for without faith even the richest of lives are blinded and lost in darkness.
My beliefs and Aemon’s love sustained me. I was a puny baby that labored to be a feeble child and then unfolded into a very slender woman. I think to grow tall would’ve shocked Westeros too deeply and so I stayed short. Everything about me was small, from my feet to hips and breasts, except for my eyes, which Aemon told me are large amethysts in a face like a winter moon. I dare say I was the palest person in Kings Landing. My father sometimes said that if I stood with the sun behind me the light would still shine through, as if I wasn’t there. He meant it as a kind of rebuke, but it would make me smile just a little when he wasn’t looking.
For the first time in my life men looked at me with more than detached interest. They would act in ways, or say things, that were artfully designed to draw me in, but would only make me stammer and blush before giving my excuses.
I was in the Godswood, lying beneath the Heart Tree on a perfect Summer afternoon, when Aemon found me.
“I thought you might be here sister,” he said, and laid his great length next to me so that our shoulders brushed.
I didn’t move my eyes away from the green leaves rustling above.
After a few minutes of companionable silence he spoke.
“You know, I’ve never understood why you like it here so much. This tree is for the followers of the Old Gods to pray to. It’s sacrilege,” he teased, “Heresy. Lucky this tree is an oak and not a weirwood though. Those trees are something else, with their scarlet crowns, ghost white skins and bleeding faces.”
“The Seven Gods created this tree,” I replied thoughtfully, “As well as the weirwoods. I wonder what their reason was to make them so beautiful. And so sad.”
I felt Aemon turn his head to look at me.
“Yeah. I wonder,” he murmured, voice soft.
I found myself meeting his eye and our faces were a breath apart. We were both still as the calmest of waters. I looked to the sky again and Aemon did the same.
“Lord Velaryon’s son was pestering me again,” I told him, frowning, “So I’m hiding.”
Aemon hummed. “Father would say: ‘You’re not a child anymore Naerys. You must receive a lord’s attentions with not only modesty but courtesy and charm.’”
“And what do you say Aemon?” I queried.
He sighed heavily. He got up on one elbow to lean over and study me with kind violet eyes.
“You can’t hide forever Naerys,” he said gently, “there’s a part in a story you are destined to play. Even if you think not, you have all the strength you need for it.”
“I want peace,” I spoke softly, “That’s all I ask for. When others pray for long life, true love or glorious fortune I don’t judge them for it. But I could never ask the gods for that when it’s by sheer grace that I’m alive. Even if it means I’m alone, I’d settle for the humblest of means and the barest of living - just grant me peace.”
Aemon’s brow furrowed and his expression was pained.
“We can’t,” he whispered, agonized, “I can’t.”
And he leaned down and kissed me.
I jolted, shocked, as he moved his lips gently on mine. It felt…soft and good and pure. I moved my lips hesitantly against his and then was lost to the exquisite sensation. Our hands were in each other’s silver gold hair as we moved in sensual unity. It was like the magic we used to read about in stories. Like true love's kiss. It was how a prince and a princess were supposed to kiss.
“He’s your brother,” a voice in my head said.
Gasping, I shoved Aemon away and stood up to run a few feet. I pressed my fingers to my damp lips.
“I shouldn’t have…” I rambled, my back to him, “We…that was wrong. The Faith…the High Septon says…”
“We are Targaryens,” he offered weakly.
“No!” I whirled to face him. He looked miserable and his fists were clenched at his side. “No. We cannot. I cannot. Don’t you see that?” My voice cracked, “Don’t you see I’m not made that way? Aemon… If I lost you. If you weren’t with me I’d have nothing. No matter what people think, no matter what I say, I don’t really want to be alone so the thought of losing you…But I just can’t…”
I was sobbing, gasping for air like a child again. With tears flowing from both our eyes he came and grasped my shoulders with firm hands.
“You will never lose me,” he vowed as I gazed up at him, “As long as you live, I will be by your side.”
He held me as I cried into his tunic.
It wasn’t long after this that I asked my father to allow me to become a septa.
“You were born a princess,” he growled, “and you will live as such.”
My father was a stern and implacable man, but still I pleaded and exercised passion as I had never done before.
“It is the noblest cause you could give me. I will never want for anything else,” I begged, but he would shake his head.
Still, my hopes didn’t vanish entirely until Father ordered my betrothal to Aegon, my eldest brother.
Aegon was the handsomest of my brothers, the most charming and the most dashing. He was also endlessly insulting to me and dismissive of my presence. When our mother, Larra Rogare, grew so homesick for her native Lys that she abandoned our family, I was not old enough to remember it. But Aegon had been; any tenderness in his heart went with her back to Lys, never to be seen again.
This was not to say he was unfeeling. Aegon felt many things, and he was unable or unwilling to stop any of them from controlling him. He had numerous bastards already and wasn’t particular about creating more - nor where they came. He bedded noblewomen, whores, septas, pirates, beggars and dancers. He drank until he passed out and hunted until the sun went down and his saddle bags were bursting with game. He danced until every lady had been in his arms and hawked until the bird drooped in exhaustion. And still Aegon was not satisfied, with any of it. He always hungered for more.
If a brother I had to marry, it certainly should not have been Aegon. I think even Aegon himself argued the point with Father. I know Aemon certainly did.
Every argument and plea was made in vain.
“It’s for the good of the realm,” Father stated, firm as stone, “for the prosperity of our family.”
He wouldn’t look at me as he said it.
I endured the preparations for my wedding in silence. I couldn’t even bring myself to look in a mirror when I donned my wedding dress. I felt numb inside, having fallen into icy waters. I tried to think rationally - marriage was not the worst fate for a woman, surely I would be no exception. But I could not steel myself against the curious dread I felt.
My face was blank as my father escorted me to the High Septon and my betrothed. Aegon was dressed superbly, gleaming in gold and silver raiment. He was, to a stranger’s eye, equally impassive as I. But I could see a cold predatory glare. I didn’t think I'd keep my peace if I saw Aemon’s face, I didn’t look for him in the crowd.
As Aegon, my new brother-husband, put our House cloak around my shoulders I prayed to all Seven Gods:
May the Father not judge me too harshly,
May the Mother forgive this incestuous sin,
May the Warrior and Smith grant me courage,
May the Maiden know I would’ve preferred to honor her,
May the Crone guide me to wisdom,
And to the Stranger, the God I know above all others, as always: I ask nothing. May he take me as he will.
When it came time for the official kiss of husband and wife, Aegon grabbed my waist and pulled me to his chest. He kissed me passionately, yet there was no warmth in it. It was only the second kiss I’d ever had. My face must’ve been burning scarlet and I only felt humiliation as the court cheered and Aegon grinned at them. The thought that I would only ever know the touch of my own brothers went belatedly through my mind.
Aegon may not have wanted to marry me but he spared no expense for his wedding feast. It was in keeping with his preferences: lavish, seductive and wild. Rich arbor wine was poured freely and succulent roasted boar and honey hams were stripped and gnawed to the bone. Dancers, jesters, jugglers and minstrels worked the guests to a frenzy of merriment. All about me was color, laughter and light but I rarely looked up from the table as I carefully ate my meal. Aegon seemed to find no reason to be at my side, he was dancing with every possible woman, so I kept my own company throughout the feast.
The one time my indifference was breached was when I heard a woman scream. I jolted to my feet; to see Aemon on the ground with Aegon. Alarmed and confused, people shifted out of the way to form a haphazard circle around the rolling pair of bodies. Both brothers were spitting and snarling like beasts as fists swung, legs kicked and each tried to pin the other to the stone floor. My father and others finally broke through the spectators to seize the princes, not without sustaining a few crossfire injuries themselves. By the time they were torn apart, Aemon had a bloody nose, Aegon’s cloak was torn and their faces were darkening with bruises. Aemon was forcibly escorted away but not before he glanced my way. My breath caught in my throat at what I saw in his face and my composure was nearly lost. All were silent as Aegon shrugged off the hands that restrained him.
He looked about him and laughed.
“A toast to my brother,” he picked up a nearby goblet and raised it high, “For helping get my blood up to properly bed my wife,” he paused and turned to me with a sharp grin, “and all the beauties after.”
Nervous laughter from polite guests and raucous laughter from the more intoxicated ones followed.
I sat down again.
Eventually, inevitably, calls for the bedding ceremony began. Aegon strutted out of the masses and into sight, grinning boyishly. I turned to my father, who was standing across the room. There was a moments pause, where I imagined I saw him hesitate.
“Then let us bed them,” he announced stoically.
Howls of excitement. Women flocked to Aegon, eagerly grabbing his clothes. And suddenly I could see nothing but the circle of men around me. I blinked up at their blurred faces, not moving, heart hammering. Someone pulled me up.
I was lifted into the air so that I was looking up at the ceiling. There was the trample of feet, a crowd cheering and walls sped past me. I felt my cloak slip away first before the prodding pinching hands of strangers ripped away piece after piece of my clothing.
Disembodied voices below me:
“If any man can break you in, it’s Prince Aegon.”
“Probably get you with child the first night if my cousin Maegan is anything to go by…”
“I hope you’ve been practicing your horse riding little girl.”
“Can someone so little even fit something so big inside?”
“Kiss your maidenhead goodbye. Of course, it’s Aegon who will be kissing it won’t it?”
I was naked and held aloft as I felt fingers caress my thighs and back. I found I was trembling uncontrollably as I crossed my arms over my breasts and tried to preserve what modesty I could. I was scared, whether of these men or of what was too come, I didn’t know. The compulsions to scream, run and hide, call out for Aemon or simply beg them to get it over with overwhelmed me to silence and shivering. I thought I was close to fainting, but I felt myself being dumped in a bed and I quickly pulled the sheets up to my neck. The crazy thought that I could go to sleep now, that it was over and I could put this ordeal behind me, was what finally made me burst into tears.
Giggling and squeals erupted at the door. A smirking Aegon was there, with arms flung around two dreamy eyed women pressing against him, and they were running their hands down his naked body. One glance at his bare self and I looked away.
“Out, out, you shameless bastards,” he mock-sneered at the throng of people, “Some privacy, please.”
The last guest trailed out and Aegon shut the door. We were alone. I watched the muscles on him ripple with strength as he stretched and walked over to a table holding a glass and jug of wine. He poured a cup for himself and gulped it all in one breath. He caught my eye and smirked.
“Don’t worry,” his tone was casual as he put the cup down, “Some men cannot perform when they have drunk wine, but I've never been one of them.”
His gaze dipped to where my hands clenched the sheet to hide myself.
“It’s true,” he said after a moment, as if I had said something, “You don’t have anything worth seeing. If I had to choose between a lowly foul mouthed big-titted pirate and you, little sister, I’d fuck the pirate.”
He strutted over until his shins touched the bed. I’m sure my eyes were as wide and unblinking as a rabbit before a wolf.
“But I don’t have to choose,” Aegon smiled, eyes dark, “I can have both.”
He leaped onto the bed and crawled until his much larger body covered mine. I gave a small cry when he ripped the sheet away. There was a myriad of harsh sensation. Aegon’s breath was hot and stunk of wine. His teeth bit the flesh of my ear, my neck, my breast. Rough hands, hard and strong, pawed my body.
Without warning, he grabbed my hair and pulled, making me cry again.
“See this,” he hissed and gestured to his face.
My confusion must’ve shown because he yanked my hair.
“Our dear brother,” he said, “thought I shouldn’t mess around with other women at my wedding feast.”
I then noticed the red scrape on Aegon’s cheek, the bruise on his chin.
“So he must have decided to bloody me, before I bloodied you.”
He then slithered down my frame and gripped my tiny waist in his hands. His face hovered above the silver and gold curls between my legs. Dipping his head down, he tasted me. I felt no desire, just shame, as he lapped at me, holding me steady even as I tossed and squirmed. He only caught my gaze once. His beautiful purple eyes, so like my own, held only a slight glimmer of lust. The rest was triumph, and greed. Lips slick, he slid forward until his face was above mine.
He grasped my chin with a determined hand and tried to force me to taste myself on his mouth. I shuddered and turned away. He angrily tried again, but lost the patience he’d conjured thus far to engage in this ‘foreplay’. He yanked my hips to his, raised my legs, and plunged in.
I screamed.
Aemon found me the next day, curled up against the Heart Tree, with the Seven Pointed Star clutched to my breast. He sat and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to his chest. He held me as tears ran down my face, my fingernails digging into the leather binding of the holy book. He petted my hair and murmured:
“Naerys the Willow Blossom, Naerys the Soft Fallen Snow, Naerys the Gentle Dragon, the White Hind Bounding, the Silver Crane Gliding, the Kindest Heart that ever lived.”

Chapter Text

I was born in the shadows of greatness. Dragons sailed the skies, scales gleaming like gems as they twisted in the air with one beat of their mighty wings. A blast of fire from between their dagger pointed teeth could melt stone into glowing puddles. When their shadows fell upon the ground, the smallfolk cringed into themselves or looked up in wonder. But it was the Targaryens, and Targaryens alone, who rode upon the backs of dragons and ruled over Westeros. I was the first born grandchild of Aegon the Conquerer; his dragon, Balerion the Black Dread, cast the greatest shadow of them all.
Amidst my birth hid a premonition of things to come. Queen Visenya, my great aunt, demanded at once that I be betrothed to her son Prince Maegor. I was the only new female of our blood thus far, and the blood of Old Valyria was not to be wasted or polluted. Not to mention, it could only bring Maegor closer to the Iron Throne. Perhaps that request would’ve been granted; but the High Septon, a man with the weight of an entire religion behind him, was not to be lightly crossed, and howled his protest of the incestuous match. And so Maegor married the High Septon’s niece, Lady Ceryse Hightower.
Growing up, I was almost completely unaware of the insidious machinations of court. I only knew of my family. My earliest memories are of my father singing, his sweet voice serenading me to sleep or to a new morning. He would take me to see the artworks he had commissioned, the gold thread tapestries, the silver veined marble statues and the colored glass windows – all of them depicting fiery, frightening glorious dragons.
I was not an only child for long, my pesky brothers followed in my wake. They were terrors, bullying me into playing with them until I scrapped my knees or ruined my dress. I was not as high spirited as my only sister, Alysanne, who was born with a bow and arrow in her hands. I wanted to sit next to my parents, listening to the harpists pluck melodies into the air, not next to my grandfather, who’d spin tales of his bloody conquests.
“You are like me,” my father told me, a hint of sadness in his lilac eyes, “like your grandmother.”
I did not mind the comparison.
Nonetheless, perhaps because of how often my siblings forced me into their misadventures, I grew into a tall strong girl. My eyes were a very dark and somber purple, my hair more golden than silver.
“You could be a Lannister,” Aegon teased, the eldest of my brothers.
“You could be an old man,” I’d counter with dignity, and he’d laugh. His hair lacked all gold and was fully silver-white.
“Only together,” he grinned, “do we look like proper Targaryens.”
I wasn’t a great beauty, but my life had beauty enough.
In one way, I was Targaryen to my bones. On a Summer’s day, before I turned thirteen, I found Dreamfyre. Her long neck was collared, a single chain keeping her grounded. She moved her massive head to turn baleful eyes on me. I was struck; like love, I was enchanted into stillness, staring into her silver coin eyes and seeing her soul. Her scales were a clear untainted blue, when she stretched her wings it seemed like pieces of the sky moved and shook. She was not the size of my father’s Quicksilver, and comparing her to Balerion or Vhagar would be laughable, but to me she was the most magnificent creature I’d ever seen.
“Hello, lovely girl,” I murmured, stepping closer.
She held my gaze, slitted pupils widening as I approached.
“I am called Rhaena. And you are Dreamfyre - a fitting name, for you rose out of the dreams and flames of Old Valyria,” I smiled, “as I did.”
The she-dragon slowly gave me her neck, and I brushed her scales with a gentle hand.
“Do you want to ride her?”
I turned to see my grandfather, the rubies on his circlet glinting on his brow, as soft eyed as I would ever see him. I nodded wordlessly, heart thrumming with unnamed song.
When she was old enough, Alysanne joined me in the skies. Her mount, Silverwing, was smaller than mine. Aly playfully circled us, Silverwing beating her wings furiously. I laughed and Dreamfyre huffed, dipping into a smooth glide downward. I felt the dragon working her powerful muscles even through the leather of the saddle. Two flaps of her leathery wings and we evened out our flight, the sea churning beneath us and so close I could feel the spray on my face. I stroked the sun warmed scales of Dreamfyre’s back and she hummed in pleasure. A soft roar came from behind us and I peeked over my shoulder to see Alysanne and Silverwing had caught up.
“I’ll race you back to Dragonstone!” Aly yelled. Silverwing tilted sideways and the wind caught in her wings, lifting her higher and to the east.
I shook my head at the pair of them and easily followed. Our dragons danced together, taking us home.
Such sweetness couldn’t last forever.
When I was sixteen my grandfather, Aegon the Dragon, the King of all Westeros, died of a stroke. He was at Dragonstone, standing over the giant map of Westeros illustrated on a fifty foot long table - the Painted Table. My brothers Aegon and Viserys were with him, had watched it happen.
Aegon found me afterwards, tears dropping as he gave a weak smile.
“He was telling us of his victories; the sworn fealty of every king, the death of all his enemies. How he’d planned it for years and before his waking eyes, all of his ambitions succeeded.”
I hugged Aegon as we wept. He for his namesake, I for the man who’d helped saddle me for my first dragon ride.
My father, who’d been in Highgarden at the time, flew on Quicksilver to the funeral. He was crowned King Aenys at Dragonstone next to his half-brother Maegor. In trust and deference, Aenys gave his brother our ancestral sword Blackfyre, shocking us all.
“It is only right,” my father declared to his audience, “Maegor is a better swordsman than I will ever be. Now he will be the sword of the entire realm. We shall rule together.”
Maegor was a huge bull of a man and dwarfed my willowy father. I saw him look down at Blackfyre, clasped in his giant hands, and his expression was stoic as usual.
Dowager Queen Visenya, however, scowled.
I thought the dawn of my father’s reign would herald a new golden age. He was the kindest, most intelligent man I knew. Perhaps my opinion was colored by the sweet tone of his singing and his guileless eyes. It was incomprehensible to me that anyone would seek to hurt him.
Many lords did not share this sentiment and rose in rebellion. They were not cowed by Aenys as they had been with the Conqueror, sensing weakness like sharks in blood dipped waters.
As eldest child to the king I witnessed my first twisting of politics and the toll it took on my loved ones. A worried look became permanent on King Aenys as crisis after crisis was brought to him. He’d pace his rooms, turning the problems over in his mind. Few were solved, others deferred and many charged to others. My father’s words about Maegor, the new Hand of the King, proved true for a time. The Vale had erupted into civil war, Arryn turning against Arryn. Maegor, who had claimed the only dragon he considered worthy of him, rode Balerion to the Eyrie and hanged all the perpetrators.
Maegar was briefly a hero to King Aenys. And then Maegor took a second wife, while the first still lived.
“Why did you do it?” Aenys shook his head, “You have a wife already, the niece of the High Septon no less. This lowers you in everyone’s eyes.”
Maegor stood unrepentant. “I need to beget an heir. Our father had two wives. You are the product of the second, I the first. Do you say you are lesser for it? Am I?” he challenged, fire in his eyes.
The Faith of the Seven, that great lumbering beast of righteousness, was shocked once more into baring its teeth. Attempting to soothe it, the King stripped Maegor of his office, exiled him to Pentos and appointed a septon called Murmison in his place.
Afterwards, my father took me aside. “I gave him my trust,” the king explained, as if I had voiced doubts, “and blessed him with Blackfyre. He had my love. I could give him nothing more.”
I patted his hand.
Two years later, when I had witnessed nineteen summers and the kingdoms were fraught with tension, my father summoned me. He sat me down and I was immediately curious. He was shifting uncomfortably in his chair and tugging on his ermine collar.
“Rhaena,” he said, tapping his knee, “You are a Targaryen.”
I waited for more, but none came.
“Yes Father,” I said slowly, “I have noticed.”
My father laughed nervously. “Yes, yes, of course you have. But you see…when I married your mother, it was a political match. Not that your mother and I don’t care for one another,” he added quickly, “Charming woman, very kind, excellent mother- “
“Father,” I murmured.
He stroked his beard, a sure sign of agitation.
“Our marriage was for the good of the realm. It was not protested, though she is my cousin,” he told me, which I already knew. “But our house has a tradition of…much closer unions.”
He sighed. “I say tradition. But in truth, besides our dragons, it is the last remnant of our religion. It’s what little remains of our culture, our way of life, of Old Valyria,” he met my gaze hesitantly, “I dare not break with it.”
We looked at each other.
“Do you bid me to marry Aegon?” I asked, raising a golden brow.
He nodded, frowning.
I smiled. “Father, Aegon is my little brother, my friend. I have played with him all my life,” I shrugged, blushing, “Being wed, I suppose, will mean nothing but learning to play a new game.”
Aegon and I were wedded in secret by an uncomfortable Hand of the King, septon Murmison. Only my parents, my brothers and sister, and a few of our most loyal subjects attended our wedding. Neither Visenya nor Maegor were invited.
The bedding ceremony over, Aegon and I were alone and naked under a bedsheet. We lay on our sides facing each other and I ran my hands over his chest, feeling the strength in his young body. He lightly touched my golden hair, tucking it behind an ear. We locked eyes, and I sensed his nerves. I shifted closer, so that my small breasts grazed him and his breath caught. Taking the lead, I was the eldest after all, I closed my eyes and kissed him. We had not kissed since we were little; Aegon used to sit on my stomach while I wriggled with indignation and he kissed my pouting lips – as often and mischievously as when he’d try to make me eat dirt.
But when Aegon’s confidence swelled and our kiss prolonged, it felt nothing like our childhood games. I felt the flicker of his tongue and I gasped. He didn’t allow me to break away, his arm encircling my waist and tugging me closer until I was pressed up against him. He laid his lips back on mine demandingly. A smile grew, until a giggle escaped me and Aegon had to stop.
“What?” Aegon asked.
I laughed outright at his offended expression. I touched his cheek fondly.
“It’s just,” I said, “you never change.”
He glared a moment longer before giving a wicked smile. In one quick move he grabbed my hands and pinned them to my sides, his body looming over mine.
“One thing has changed,” he smirked, and moved against me.
I gasped anew at the hardness I felt rubbing against my thigh.
“A very little thing,” I mocked breathlessly.
Aegon growled and captured my mouth again. Loosening his grip on my wrists, he peppered greedy kisses down my jaw and neck until he reached my breasts. Watching me, he circled my nipple with his tongue, and I shoved weakly at his shoulders.
“Aegon,” I moaned, half laughing, “Stop teasing.”
“But you know how much I love to tease you, sister.”
This was true, for when we were joined and moving against each other, Aegon froze without warning and whispered in my ear: “If you look down at where I’m inside you, you finally have some silver in your gold curls.”
I whacked him on the head for his impertinence and he snickered and resumed his pace.
Before long, our marriage was exposed. Didn't our kingdoms have a sense of humor? Did people have nothing better to do than obsess over a marriage that had nothing to do with them? That would be a “no”. My father was denounced as “King Abomination” and two weeks hence since he’d performed the ceremony septon Murmison was torn apart by a mob. Embers that had long smoldered in the realm blazed into wildfire, and the Faith Militant uprising began.

Chapter Text

I am no Targaryen, and they thank the gods for it. Imagine, a princess such as I, when men already proclaim me a goddess. The last of King Aegon's mistresses was the most mysterious and beautiful, Serenei of Lys. She died at my birth, with her last breath naming me “Shiera”. The Star of the Sea. Surely she knew through her secret arts, as all Westeros knows now, that I would be a light to be coveted.
My face was smashed into the dirt, a young Barbrey Sunglass sitting on my back and gripping my hair. I kicked my legs, snarling with all the fury an eight year old could muster.
“Something wrong Shiera?” Barbrey crowed, and her friends giggled.
I gritted my teeth. “If you weren’t so heavy, I’d toss you on your fat ass.”
My hair was pulled so hard that tears burned my eyes before my head was smacked back to the ground. My lip caught on a rock and I tasted bitter blood.
“Filthy bastard,” Barbrey hissed, “How dare you speak to me like that? You’re nothing. Squirming in the mud is where you belong.”
My heart pinched, her thorny words pricking me. “The King – “
“The King?” Elinor Stokeworth mocked in a high voice, and I glared up at her, “The King? His Majesty wouldn’t care if you lived or died. You’re just a bastard girl, one of his many.”
“My septa says,” another girl spoke up, “that she’ll become the King’s whore, like her mother.”
“What? But he’s her father!” Elinor sounded shocked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Barbrey said smugly, “Targaryens do that.”
I heard mutterings and shuddering noises of disgust. I wanted to defend myself, to speak up, but I feared my voice would waver or break and I refused to give them that satisfaction.
Barbrey yanked my hair again. “Do you hear that Shiera? When I grow up I’ll marry a lord and live in his castle. He’ll give me all the pretty jewels I want. Where will you be? Rolling in the mud with your godsforsaken bastard children?”
I can still remember their sharp laughter and the taste of dirt and blood as I struggled not to cry.
And yet it was not even six years later that my father, King Aegon IV, was leering at me from his seat on the Iron Throne.
“You are me, but with tits, lovely daughter,” Father declared, a toothy smile splitting his chubby face, “All the world scrambles to revolve around you, to surrender to your whims.”
“Perhaps,” I curtseyed, throwing a modest smile, before turning on my heel and walking away.
And a thought that would’ve meant my execution if voiced, went through me: “I’d rather fuck a court Fool than let those disgusting hands touch me.” Brave words, but also perilous ones. I was born and raised in a court of hedonism and depravity. Where a woman’s survival depended on how amusing or “obliging” she was. The most one could hope for, the most ambitious future a woman could aspire to, was to marry. Only then were you safe, by the same logic that a man must care for his horse. If the animal dies, what would he have to ride or breed?
One night, before my tenth name day, I was shivering in my bed. There were no windows, no comforting glow of moon or stars, and the air was chilled. It was one of many cramped rooms belonging to the King’s bastard children. Better rooms were given to whatever courtiers were in favor at that moment. To keep my mind off the cold, I thought of my father’s mistresses.
“Merry Meg” was returned to her husband after four years, and beaten to death within just one. Lady Bracken found love with a kingsguard and watched as he was torn apart, before perishing with her family. Mad Cassella Vaith was still convinced Aegon would take her back and poor Jeyne caught the pox from our father. Even my proud mother died on the birthing bed to give me, just another bastard, to the King. And my father’s wife and Queen of Westeros, Aunt Naerys, had watched it all and suffered.
But mistress Bellegere Otherys, the Black Pearl of Bravos – now that was a woman to be admired. She sailed the seas, captain of her own swan ship; shifting into the role of pirate, smuggler, trader or King’s mistress whenever it suited her. Bellegere loved freely. They say she had a husband in every port, and that her three bastard children weren’t even the King’s. And yet she held Aegon’s heart longer than any other woman. When Aegon did put her aside for good, she unfurled her sails on a strong Western wind and disappeared from Kings Landing. I doubt any thought she was poorer for it.
I laid in my bed, rubbing my legs under the sheets to try and warm them, and thought of all this. I remembered also the cruel words of Barbrey Sunglass and the countless dismissive words and looks that had come before and after.
Just another bastard.
Poor thing.
What will Aegon do with her?
Probably sell her off to whatever knight will have her.
If she’s lucky.
My jaw tightened. “I’ll live life the way I wish to,” I said aloud, making it real, “No man will decide where I go, what I do or whom I love – no matter where that leads.”
Words to live by.
No passionless Seven Gods heard my vow that night. No. Only the shadowy gods of Old Valyria could’ve shaped me. My body grew to be light and graceful, yet perfect curves were set to tantalize men into madness. My skin was silvery white. My face was heart shaped, shaming the moon’s beauty. Compared to mine, dull and muted seemed the silver-gold hair of other Targaryens. It was a blend of precious metals that shone, flowed and curled down my back in heavy waves. I could make men hard, by permitting them to do nothing more than run their fingers through my hair.
No deception, no false pride – I was the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms.
People, whom I suspected consisted mostly of women, whispered that I was a savage sorceress.
A glorified whore.
What did they know? No one ever saw me in my private library, breathing in the written word. There were rows upon rows of books, and each one precious, from the yellowed scroll to the gleaming gold leafed tome. No servant or handmaiden dusted the shelves or maintained the candles; I did. If you don’t care for your library as tenderly as a garden, then you don’t deserve it. Ages long gone, villains vanquished and cultures savaged were kept alive on paper, were hoarded and treasured in my collection. I brushed past many suitors and lovers to spend my hours there.
“I will bring you…the rarest scrolls…from the most…ah….celebrated scholars from across the sea…” Wylis panted, leaning heavily against a wall.
I gripped his hips and lifted my head. He was assaulted by the beauty of my mismatched eyes, one of sea blue and the other grass green, both outlined by long silver-gold lashes. Even when my soft lips trailed up his hardness, making him twitch and gasp, he couldn’t break our locked gaze.
“The last scroll was impressive Wylis,” I hummed, licking my lips slowly, thoughtfully, “Are you certain you can bring me another?”
Wylis nodded with vigor, hand clenching the wall like he was afraid he’d collapse.
I hold his eye, before delicately taking his length in my mouth. I took my time, until he throbbed with pressure.
“I will find you more Shiera,” he promised breathlessly, “More…more…More!”
Well. As I said, I’m fond of books.
Anything I wanted, any desire that drifted into my heart, was brought to my hand. How was that my fault? Egg sized rubies, mewling lion cubs, blue-eyed sand steeds and golden wine brought from the Jade Sea were the kind of gifts given in the hope of catching my attention. No one held a dagger to my suitors’ throats…except other suitors.
“You’ve pushed more men into the Stranger's arms than I have, Shiera,” Aegor Bittersteel rumbled, hard purple eyes boring into my face. My half-brother didn’t sound completely disapproving.
I unleashed a smile, a well-aimed arrow from a bow. Bittersteel, the battle hardened, grim hearted warrior, stumbled back a step.
“That is kind of you to say, Aegor,” I purred, lifting one elegant finger to trace the emblem on his tunic, “But I’m only a woman. If any man earns my ire, I will come to you.”
If I had spread my legs and asked him, he would’ve slaughtered the King himself.
Men are hilarious.
I was sitting in my bath, soaking in the silky hot water. Ivory pins engraved with silver held part of my hair in knots while the rest hung free and wild. Lyseni incense burned, perfuming the air, and I inhaled it deep into my lungs. Three of my servants stood waiting with a towel and to dress me in the garment I’d chosen to wear. With hooded eyes I studied the mosaics on the walls; the blazing sun and shimmering moon cast beams of white, gold and ruby red, and the serpentine forms of dragons twisted and danced through the colors.
The sound of footsteps had me turning my head. A cloaked and hooded dark figure appeared at the doorway and my servants tensed, nervous. A milk pale hand swept off the hood, revealing piercing red eyes in a thin face. A red birthmark on his right cheek declared his identity as my half-brother Brynden Bloodraven; my servants did not relax. I could’ve ordered them to escort him out, no man was permitted to invade the sanctuary of my rooms. But he was family. And certain allowances had to be made for family.
“The seven kingdoms are slowly descending into the seven hells,” Brynden said flatly, “And here you are, taking a bath in the middle of the day.”
I hung an arm out the lip of the bathtub and gestured for him to come closer. Almost warily, he did so.
“I have already offered to help in any way I can,” I reminded with a small smile, “Any enemy that needs breaking down into a slack jawed shell of a man - I’m your woman.”
“Are you indeed?” Brynden grumbled, looking down at my naked body, my breasts just touching the bath water. He sat on the bathtubs edge, facing me, and he raised his eyebrows at what he saw. It amused me how long it had taken him to notice, so distracted he had been by the show.
“What’s this?” he asked.
The necklace about my neck was made of linked panels of ornate silver. Set in the middle of each panel was a rounded gem, alternating between a star sapphire or gleaming emerald all the way to the clasp. The necklace was large and heavy but worth any discomfort. The jewels were the exact shade of my mismatched eyes and I knew anyone would be struck and bewitched at a mere glance of me.
“Do you like it?” I asked Brynden innocently, widening my eyes.
Without expression, he touched my arm, trailing his hand up slick skin to my shoulder and then collar bone. I watched his face as he brushed away hair to better see the necklace and, coincidentally, my breasts.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, stroking first a sapphire and then sliding his hand down to my nipple, “But you already knew that.”
He circled a nipple as casually as he had the gem. I shivered pleasantly and beads of condensation rolled off my skin.
“I just received it,” I grinned, “and haven’t had the heart to take it off yet.”
“Who gifted it to you?” Brynden asked, jaw tightening, “Was it Aegor?”
I gave a low chuckle as he rolled my hardening nipple between his clever fingers.
“No. I commissioned it myself.”
“Oh,” he replied, deflating.
He dropped his hand from me and swished the bath water.
“No virgin’s blood, Shiera?” he teased, a rare mischievous glint in his eye, “How disappointing.”
Ah, because I bathe in blood. Very funny.
With a huff I let my head fall back, exposing the sleek line of my neck.
“That silly rumor, it shames me. The dark arts of our Valyrian ancestors are subtler than that.”
“I know,” Brynden whispered, now touching my leg under the water.
I raised the leg steadily higher until it rose from the water and my toes pointed at the ceiling. With a burning look, he supported my leg with a hand that was dangerously close to my inner thigh. The side of my calf rested against his cheek. He planted a cool kiss on it. I gave him a slow smile, and then snapped my leg back to kick him in the chest. He slipped off his perch on the bathtub to fall onto his backside with a grunt.
I laughed, looking down at his dumbfounded face.
“That will teach you to walk into a lady’s quarters without knocking.”
He narrowed his eyes then stood and brushed off his clothes.
“Well then,” he growled, “it’s only fair I teach you something in return.”
He held out a hand. I pursed my lips before standing up. Water streamed off me, trails of silver-gold hair slithering over my body. I let Brynden drink in the view before placing my hand in his and stepping out of the tub.
“Are you sure I have anything to learn Brynden?” I questioned in a haughty tone.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled until my dripping nakedness was pressed against him.
“You would be wise to listen to your older brother, Shiera,” he warned, face dark with desire.
I ghosted my lips against his. “You lecture me?” I spoke softly, “Of the two of us, who is more foolish for being here?”
He kissed me deeply, all restraint and pretense gone. We dipped and moved against each other, tongues clashing. I fisted his cloak to keep my balance, the force of his need dizzying even the likes of me. He broke off our kiss, breath heavy. He started whipping out my hairpins so that all my tresses tumbled down my back. I unclasped his cloak and dropped it. He shrugged off more clothes, following my steps backward into my bedchamber as we resumed our delicious kiss. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realized the servants had disappeared. At what point they had silently agreed to retreat, the gods only know.
Brynden soon had me lying in the soft canopy bed, my fingernails digging into the lean muscles of his back as he tasted my neck. Each lick, every soft bite, coaxed me into a high.
“Shiera.”
All my lovers spoke my name in a way that made it sound different on each tongue. I liked the way Brynden said it the best.
I pushed him away, he lifted himself up and rested on his heels. Staring into his blood red eyes, I straddled his lap. When I felt his hard length sparks zipped along my skin. He threaded his fingers into my hair and moaned into my mouth while I sunk onto him. I rocked and pushed, breasts bouncing under the glimmer of my necklace. Brynden stayed still, muscles straining, until the heat proved too much. He slammed me back onto the mattress, thrusting into me hard. Wrapping my legs around him, I panted and hummed as he slid into me. He went faster, growling in his throat, and I finally crested to a climax. I tossed my head back and moaned, toes curling. He bit my neck and came after me with a yell.
Brynden rolled off me, flinging his arms out in triumph. My chest rose and fell with bliss. We lay beside each other, both pausing to recover for our next coupling. I felt a stab at the side of my head. I turned to look at him, and indeed, he was gazing at me with yearning.
“Marry me Shiera.”
It seemed his pride had healed from his last rejection.
“What will you give me if I say yes?” I asked, raising a brow.
“Anything,” he answered at once.
“The Iron Throne?”
He hesitated. “Anything but that.”
I chuckled. “What about a castle?”
“Yes,” he said eagerly.
“Jewels?”
“Of course.”
I turned on my side so my hair glided down my shoulders and tangled in my necklace. My green and blue eyes looked him over.
“What about this?” I traced my jewelry, feeling the cool gems beneath my fingertips, “Would you get me another necklace like this?”
“I swear it,” Brynden said, voice rough.
I leaned back and stretched, languidly teasing him with the view. “Unfortunately for you,” I sighed happily, “I already have exactly what I want.”

Chapter Text

The Faith militant uprising was raging across the Seven Kingdoms; its devout mission to crush my family through any means. Smallfolk and lords alike joined the High Septon, dividing the land and tearing it apart. My father became more heart sore as each little disaster collected into tragedy. I tried to cheer him, drawing him into the world of music and artistry that he so loved. But only when I told him of my pregnancy did he burst back into life.
“Rhaena!” he cried, kissing my hands, “Rhaena, that’s wonderful!”
I touched his cheek, beaming, and we embraced; and to my everlasting sorrow it was the last happy moment of his life.
I was heavy with child and had brought a minstrel to privately entertain my family and I in our royal quarters. A row of chairs formed a circle around the minstrel, who caressed the strings of his lute tenderly, crooning a love song. Alysanne sat at my right, half-asleep, no matter how often I hissed in her ear. Aegon was on my left, and beside him was my father. I kept straining my neck around Aegon to glance at the King, hoping each clear note or melodious lilt of the song would delight him. But Father stared without seeing, his eyes dull and tired, fingers fumbling together in his lap. His magnificent golden crown seemed to lie too low on his bowed head.
I felt a hand cover mine and I jerked back to see my husband. As the minstrel sung, Aegon searched my face and I nodded to Father. He didn’t look at the King, but squeezed my hand, and without words told me there was nothing I could do. I clenched my jaw and my vision turned misty. I wriggled in my chair, rubbing my belly with the hand Aegon didn’t hold. I felt my babies inside me, in my distress they too stirred.
The door behind creaked open. None of us took notice, thinking it a servant. But the ministrel’s performance faltered and then stopped altogether. He paled and clutched the lute to his breast. I turned to see four ragged clothed men and ice slid down my spine. In the center of each of their chests was a bloody badge, a red seven pointed star, that declared their status as Poor Fellows.
My brothers, Jaehaerys, Viserys and Aegon, leapt to their feet.
“What are you doing?” Viserys cried, “You have no business here!”
In answer each intruder drew long daggers, a strange mad light dancing in their eyes. I struggled to stand, wrapping my arms around my stomach. Aly clung to me, whether to shield me or keep me from fainting I didn’t know. Father sat still, looking at the Poor Fellows, seeing them as mere figures of a nightmare that would fade away at any moment.
The Poor Fellows tensed like feral cats about to pounce.
“For the High Septon!” one cried, “For the gods!”
They lunged at my brothers. I screamed, backing away until I hit the wall, expecting to watch my brothers’ lifeblood spray the room at any moment. But though they weren’t armed, having no reason to be in the safety of home, they met the zeal of the Poor Fellows with their own formidable fire.
Jaehaerys, my slender and gentle youngest brother, was grappling with a Poor Fellow, trying to relieve him of his weapon or at least stall it from being plunged into his chest. In the struggle the dagger sliced into the hands of both of the men, blood trickling down their arms. The Poor Fellow was a heavier man and threw his weight around to try and throw Jaehaerys off. But my brother held on, snarling and red faced.
Viserys, his tunic turning red from a gash on his stomach, was rolling and wrestling with a Poor Fellow whom he had forced to drop his weapon.
Aegon held the dagger in hand. His back was to me, but I saw him swipe and slash the air with the blade, threatening away two Poor Fellows. The pacing Poor Fellows stabbed the air in reply, looking for an opening that Aegon refused to give.
My father was still sitting down, looking at the potential massacre of his children with glassy eyes.
The breath was punched out of me when the tumbling forms of Viserys and his opponent knocked into the back of Aegon’s legs and sent him sprawling onto the floor.
“Aegon!” I cried, wanting to run to him but being paralyzed by fear. Useless as no Targaryen woman had ever been.
All I saw was a glint of a blade as it was raised high before I had to forget about Aegon. Because while one Poor Fellow had wasted no time in taking advantage of Aegon’s fall, the other had circled around the tangle of bodies and stalked toward Aly and me.
Black hatred was painted on this stranger’s face. I hugged my belly, trying to keep my babies safe with nothing more than the strength of my love. But Alysanne was no such romantic. She lunged for a chair and lifted it up by its back so that the legs pointed at the Poor Fellow.
“Stay away from us, you bastard!” Aly snarled.
She kept the chair, our only shield, between our attacker and us. The man growled, grabbed a wooden leg and tried to throw the barrier away. Aly gripped tighter, but the chair was heavy and the man was stronger. I could only cower behind her, watching.
A cry of pain and surprise was followed by a dreadful gurgle, and I was sure one of my brothers was dead. But when I looked, Ser Raymont Baratheon stood over the Poor Fellow he had speared with his sword.
The Poor Fellow Aly was fending off turned on his heel and abandoned us, barreling toward the kingsguard. She dropped the chair.
Relief, sweet and pure, rushed through me. I must’ve somehow sensed everything was going to be alright, because I fainted.
When I woke, I first saw Aegon. He was crouched in front of me, his expression wild with concern.
“Rhaena, dearest Sis, are you hurt? Please tell me you’re not hurt.”
I was sitting propped up against the wall, the cool stones were beneath me and Aegon’s warm hands were on my cheeks. I pressed one side of my face deeper into his palm, soaking him in. I didn’t answer until I wiped a hand over my stomach and checked on the precious lives within.
“I am unhurt, Aegon,” I whispered.
He pressed closer to me, his forehead brushing against mine.
“Thank the gods,” he breathed.
Our gods, the thought sparked red-hot in me, thank the Valyrian gods. Not their gods, the gods who sanctioned the slaughter of my family.
Alysanne had been standing near, and convinced I was okay, went to Jaehaerys who was slumped on the floor much like I was. Aly kneeled at his side and at her order he held out bleeding hands for her inspection.
I saw the minstrel, who’d I’d completely forgotten about, shivering in a corner.
“He could’ve at least tried to club the Poor Fellow over the head with his lute,” Aly would later sneer to me.
Half of Viserys’s face was swollen and his wounded stomach must’ve been agonizing, but he sat dutiful and silent next to our father. The kingsguard were now whole in number and swarmed the room, yelling for maesters and arguing with each other. The only sound besides their blustering was the broken sobs of the king as he wept into his son’s shoulder.
On King Aenys’s orders our family flew on dragon back to the safest place in the world for a Targaryen - Dragonstone. My siblings and I recovered from our brush with disaster. But my father wilted and faded even more.
Aegon and I were in bed, resting in each other’s arms.
“She wants me to convince Father to destroy them,” Aegon told me.
“Who does?” I asked.
“Visenya,” he replied grimly, “She wants Father to bring fire and blood to our enemies, to burn the Starry Sept and Sept of Remembrance and everyone within.”
“Good.”
He looked at me, shocked.
“They deserve it,” I told him, “You cannot possibly say they don’t. They would’ve skewered your wife and unborn children, thrown them into the sea and called it righteous.”
He ran his fingers in my golden hair and caressed me, his touch tender.
“There is already one Visenya in the world,” he said, “Don’t tell me there is another one here in my bed. Rhaena, don’t let this war darken the heart I adore.”
“Better to be Visenya than me,” I sobbed, shaking my head, “Useless, unremarkable me.”
He held me as I cried. The next day our girls were born.
Aerea and Rhalla were all the more dear to me for the perilous times we lived in. They were twin rays of light piercing through a sky that had been churning with storm clouds and becoming only darker.
“Beautiful,” Aegon agreed, cooing over them and touching their tiny hands, “Just beautiful.”
Father had smiled weakly when I brought the twins to him, and then he turned away. I suspect he thought he didn’t deserve to see them, that he was failing his family and the realms miserably.
I woke up to a mist covered morning and searched Father out. He was staring out a window at the gray waves which lapped at the feet of Dragonstone. We stood together, watching the bleak sea and not saying anything for a long while.
“Aegon and I,” I announced firmly, “will take a tour of the realms.”
He turned to me. He had become old beyond his years, white haired and wrinkled. He was crumbling from the inside out.
“It is too dangerous,” he croaked.
I shook my head. “We are Targaryens. Aegon is your heir and I his future queen. We will not shy away from our own people,” I smiled at him, but it was strained, “No matter the tantrums they like to throw.”
He hesitated. “But…but the twins…”
My heart ached at moving them so soon from Dragonstone, but I let no doubt show. “We will bring them with us. They are strong and healthy. And it’s not like they take up much space.”
King Aenys kissed both my hands. Finally, I could do something for my House, something worthwhile which I could excell at.
Aegon and I mounted our dragons, Quicksilver and Dreamfyre, and flew west with a baby cradled in each of our laps. We crossed Blackwater Bay and visited Driftmark only so as not to insult our most devoted subjects, House Velaryon. Then we flew over the last length of the Bay and landed in the courtyard of Dun fort in Duskendale, much to the surprise of the Darklyns. I mustered all my charm and wit for the few days we lingered; between Aegon and I House Darklyn never stood a chance. We left certain that at least two Houses thought well of us. But this was Crownlands, and people who were barely a stone skip away from King’s Landing. The closer to the Iron Throne, the more loyal a House generally tended to be.
We spent just one night in King’s Landing. We departed over the Lion Gate, a bright summer sun lighting the paths we followed west - the Goldroad and the river of Blackwater Rush. Rhalla blew content spit bubbles in my lap, not minding the rushing wind or loud beating of dragon wings.
We made camp for the night in a secluded meadow, the long bodies of Quicksilver and Dreamfyre forming a protective circle around us and the campfire. The babies were wrapped in warm woolen blankets, finally sleeping after I fed them to near bursting.
“I wager,” Aegon declared, stretching on his leather pallet, “That they are the youngest Targaryens to ever ride on dragon back.”
I chuckled, lying next to him. “If so, what does that signify, I wonder? Will they be the fiercest of our House? Terrible to behold?”
“Aerea and Rhalla, Conquerers of the East,” Aegon proclaimed, and laughed. I elbowed him in the gut.
“Be realistic,” I scolded him, and then sobered, “I don’t care if history even remembers their names. I only want them to be happy.”
He turned serious too, his light purple eyes steely. “They will be.”
I nodded.
The stars were a brilliant painting of lights above us and the scent of sweet grass soothed. I turned on my side and began kissing my brother-husband’s neck. The palm of Aegon’s hand was soon palming my sensitive breasts through my dress and I hummed. My hands slid under his tunic to feel the hard slopes of his stomach and chest. Our mouths met eagerly, and his taste was as familiar and heady as wine.
When I broke off our kiss, I was lying on top of Aegon. His arms had wrapped around me, trapping me against him. I could feel his arousal digging into me. Desire had glazed over his features and his hands slithered down my back to my ass.
“I think I’m still too sore down there,” I breathed into his mouth.
He blinked. Grimacing, he fought to bring himself back down to earth.
“Al…alright,” he gulped.
I smirked. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun.”
He watched as I slid down his body until I was level to his belt. Unbuckling it, I fished his manhood out. He moaned loud at the first lick.
“Shhhh,” I hissed, “Don’t wake the twins.”
“Yes Sis,” he submitted, licking his lips.
I stroked and kissed his sex with unhurried care, and his hands clawed the grass beside him. My golden hair flowed over his thighs and hid most of my actions, the sensations all the more thrilling when they caught him by surprise. There was nothing but the sound of the crackling fire, our dragons’ breathing and the small gasps and whimpers Aegon made as he tried to keep quiet. When I took him fully into my mouth and pleasured him until he spilled, he gave such a cry that, much to my annoyance, he woke the babies.
We were flying over fertile green valleys and hills until a black scar marred the land. I leaned over in my saddle, studying the earth that was fighting to bloom again. Even after so many years, the Field of Fire was still a lake of ash and slag. It was a hideous artwork, a combined effort between a stubborn army and my resolute grandfather and his sisters. I gazed down at the bundle within my arms and saw Aerea’s wide purple eyes staring up at me.
“This is what defiance looks like,” I told her, “Glorious and costly.”
We followed the Goldroad to Deep Den, and House Lydden was happy to receive and accommodate us. But they reminded us not to go to Silver Hill, as the Serrets had sided with the uprising. We flew to Hornvale next, and there we received our first chilly reception. House Brax broke bread with us with reluctance, but we acted oblivious to the tension. I flattered and jested and Aegon was respectful and kind. I think we left them with a much improved impression.
I swear the Lannisters must’ve heard we were coming. When we arrived, it was as if Casterly Rock threw her arms wide open and clasped us to her bosom where we nearly suffocated. A feast, wild and decadent, was held in our honor every night we stayed. Minstrels, mummers, dancers and singers played the crowd like a harp, having us roll with laughter and sniffle with tears by turns. Aegon was so drunk one night he started bringing me Lannister women and holding up locks of their hair to compare against mine. I had to pinch him very hard to get him to stop.
The days were no less busy than the nights. There was always some rarity or exotic which had been bought with outrageous amounts of gold and that the Lannisters were almost desperate to show off. I think they weren’t used to feeling upstaged and the presence of our dragons threatened their ego. But they were all warmth and friendliness to us, and we knew they were loyal to the crown.
Despite the festivities, Aegon and I never forgot that there was a war raging across the lands and that we were never completely safe. Guards were ordered to plant themselves at our door, Aegon and I never went anywhere alone and we were armed at all times.
And we had our dragons.
With the might of two fire breathing beasts at our side, I thought a man would’ve had to be suicidal to attempt an attack on us. But once again, I failed to grasp the zealotry that infected the minds of holy men.
We pried ourselves away from the grasp of the Lannisters, their court waving flags of gold and silver in farewell, and followed the Oceanroad to Crakehall. Lord Roland Crakehall, a robust man of fifty years, was somewhat foul mouthed but an obliging host. Crakehall reminded me of King’s Landing, with a shimmering sea on one side and a large forest on the other. After a comfortable dinner with the Crakehalls Aegon and I went to sleep content, and woke up to a castle under siege.
An army of thousands had flooded out from the forest and surrounded us. Under Lord Crakehall’s booming voice, every possible defense was mustered and the clink of armored men became a familiar sound. Fear soured the people trapped in Crakehall and I wondered how they felt about their visiting prince and princess now, seeing the blaze of hundreds of torches over the wall at night.
“We will leave,” Aegon said to our host, “and they will have no cause to besiege Crakehall. It’s us they want.”
Lord Roland shook his head. “They have bloody good archers, your highness,” he growled, “They’ll rain arrows on your dragons as soon as the bastards see so much as a fucking scale. Either your beasts, or you and family, will be shot.”
The dreaded dragon, Meraxes, who was so large he could swallow a horse whole, had been struck down by a single arrow through his golden eye. And Queen Rhaenys had perished with him, crushed under his weight. It was unlikely that we would be that unlucky, or our enemies so skilled, but we dared not risk Rhalla and Aerea. Lord Roland assured us that reinforcements would arrive to help us.
I was standing over the twins’ cradle watching their chests rise and fall in sleep. Their silver-gold eyelashes were like tiny crescent moons on their cheeks. If they had opened their eyes, two sets of amethysts would’ve looked back at me. The girls were more traditional in Targaryen coloring than either of their parents; a happy compromise between their mother’s gold and their father’s silver. They were so beautiful. So perfect.
I could hear the creak of siege weapons, the shudder and grinding of stones. There was a pack of thugs outside who wanted nothing more than to tear into my children. My incestuous abominations. These unholy monsters, sleeping soundly in their cradle.
Strong arms wrapped around me from behind and pulled me into an embrace. I had been crying without a sound, but Aegon must’ve realized anyway.
“I just wanted to help our family,” I choked, closing my eyes, “I wanted to do something for us. Something brave. But look at where I brought us.”
“I too agreed to the tour Rhaena,” he reminded me, kissing my head, “And we did it because it was the right thing to do. You can’t blame yourself if the world is too fucked up to know what’s good for it.”
I half sobbed, half laughed. “We really need to find a way out of here. Lord Roland is having an influence on you.”
Aegon’s grip tightened protectively before he spun me around. He cupped my face and made me look at him.
“We will get out of this Rhaena,” he promised, “Safe, and together.”
“Safe, and together,” I whispered back.
He kissed me gently, tasting my tears. He drew it out, coaxing me into a softer, private world. My imaginations of ruthless men, and their bows and swords and axes, were too vivid in my head. I fisted a handful of Aegon’s silver hair and brought him closer, deepening the kiss. I made a noise, a desperate keen that told him what I wanted. His mouth turned rough and demanding, hands roaming my body. I breathed in, wanting to taste, smell and think of nothing but him. He stopped the kiss only to take me by the hips and lift me up. I wrapped my legs around him and grabbed his shoulders, wasting no time in resuming our kiss. We were running our tongues together, the clothes we wore becoming unbearable, when Aegon dropped us onto the bed. There we were together as husband and wife for the first time since the twins’ birth - a commendable attempt to forget our troubles while Aegon’s sword was within easy reach of our pillows.
For weeks we kept our heads down, watchful of both the people outside the castle and within, until we were given the most dreadful news.
King Aenys was dead. After hearing that his most beloved children were pinned down and under attack, he collapsed and failed to recover. His reign lasted just five years; a king so full of promise had burned out and been shattered by his own kingdoms. Words failed to describe my grief and guilt.
If only we had never left Dragonstone.
But then even that horror was eclipsed.
After Father died Visenya rode Vhagar to Pentos and retrieved her son Maegor from exile. Without regard to honor or loyalty, Maegor stole my brother-husband’s crown and claimed the Iron Throne. None dared object after the swift execution of the first dissenter. My mind raced with what could've happened to my siblings. Were they prisoners of our uncle and aunt, were they hurt or dead?
Aegon’s fury was as understandable to me as it was alarming. Grief and rage were a potent mixture of poisons and I feared what it might do to him.
Regardless of what events were rocking the foundations of Westeros, reinforcements arrived from Casterly Rock to Crakehall. I kissed the cheeks of Lord Roland when he told me and he blushed like a boy. On a moonless night the lion’s army attacked the besiegers, and the roar and clang of battle was terrible. But the objective was not to destroy our foes, but distract them. Both Aegon and I were heavy with armor, a baby secured to our chest, when we approached our dragons in the castle courtyard.
Dreamfyre stood with neck arched proudly, resplendent blue scales glinting in the torchlight. I stroked her cheek and she gazed at me with silver coin eyes, seemingly unaware of the tension.
“If you love me Dreamfyre,” I pleaded in Valyrian, “You will not roar.”
She sniffed Rhalla at my chest and snorted, hot air washing over me. I took it for agreement and carefully mounted her saddle. I looked across at Aegon, mounted on Quicksilver, who nodded in reassurance. I gave a last wave goodbye to where Lord Roland stood.
“Sōves,” Aegon and I said together.
Simultaneously, both dragons shifted their great bodies and stretched out their wings. They surged upwards into the air and I sank deep into my saddle and covered up as much of Rhalla as I could. The roar of the battle only became louder when we cleared the castle walls. Terror, not for me but for my family, was a fever in my blood. I thought I heard shouts and calls of warning but I didn’t look down.
“Sōves, Dreamfyre!” I yelled, my face scrunched against the buffeting wind, “Sōves!”
Dreamfyre’s wings pumped furiously as we didn’t level out our flight but instead continued climbing higher and higher. We rose above the tallest peak of Crakehall when an arrow whistled past me. I gasped and ducked down, and Rhalla began blubbering at being crushed.
Then the sounds of battle were dim and people were ants under our wings. I glimpsed Quicksilver soaring toward the sea and by habit Dreamfyre followed. Soon neither man nor earth was below us, and all threat was gone. We flew out to sea before circling back and heading to a distant shore far from Crakehall. Aegon gave a whoop of triumph and I laughed, hugging Rhalla.
We were free, but we wouldn’t be safe until Maegor was dead.

Chapter Text

My brother-husband and I were fugitives from not only the Faith but our own realm, which had been usurped by my cousin, Maegar Targaryen. To hide and scurry around like thieves in the night was vital to our survival. But I despised it. It was Maegor who was the villain in this saga, Maegor and my cursed aunt Visenya, who should be running and hiding. Aegon was the rightful King of Westeros, I his queen, and we were flitting about the land begging for shelter and armies.
If I thought the Lannisters' ardor for us would survive passed our ill-fated tour of the kingdoms, I was sadly disappointed. When an unsmiling Lord Lyman greeted us, he bowed low, but couldn’t quite meet our eyes.
“My king and queen,” Lord Lyman murmured, “Welcome.”
“Lord Lyman,” Aegon said, “I am pleased to see that you remember your place, and the fealty you owe me.”
I startled at my brother’s uncharacteristic bluntness. Aegon’s face was hard and his eyes narrow. The recent refusals of other lords to aid their throneless king left a sour taste.
Lord Lyman measured his words. “You are my king; I recognize no other. But these are strange and perilous times Your Grace.”
“Yes,” I said, “And we wish to put an end to them, and renew the prospertity we enjoyed in previous years.”
“With respect, My Queen, caution must guide our hand and not rash action.”
“Let us not circle each other any longer, my Lord,” Aegon snapped, “You know what we ask of you. We need armies in order to rescue the Seven Kingdoms from its fate. As your king, I demand you lend your banner to the cause.”
Lord Lyman looked sick. He licked his lips and fingered his golden mustache. With a swallow, he made a visible effort to gather his wits and met Aegon’s gaze steadily enough.
“Maegor’s days are numbered even if you do nothing, Your Grace,” Lyman explained, voice mixed with guilt and worry, “His wives are barren, and he is a butcher, little better than a mad dog. The realms will never kneel to the likes of him.”
“And you will not kneel to me now in order to stop him from leading Westeros to ruin!” Aegon roared.
Lyman's shoulders slumped. “He rides Balerion. He has Dowager Queen Visenya and Vhagar. And right now he’s sitting on the Iron Throne with the sword of your House in hand. You are the true king and I will not hand you over to your enemies. But further than that, I cannot go.”
Aegon opened his mouth, looking murderous, but I touched his arm. He seethed, biting down on his anger and storming off.
“The cowards!” Aegon had declared when we were alone in our rooms, “No one wants Maegor on the throne, they know I am the rightful king, but they’re too spineless to do anything about it!”
“They’re terrified and we can’t blame them for that,” I said calmly, “In their eyes he is as powerful as Grandfather Aegon, but has none of his restraint.”
Aegon paced, hands clenched behind his back, and I didn’t know if he heard me.
“Maegor is a corrupt and honorless despot. I am ten times over the man he will ever be. I will not let this stand, Rhaena,” he turned to me, his gaze steely, “I will fight, and win. I have justice on my side.”
Aegon’s passion was only heightened when we heard of the capture of our mother and siblings. They were being kept prisoner on our very own Ancestral Seat of Dragonstone.
“Does his insolence know no bounds?!” Aegon had raged, “Has he no shame?”
‘No,’ I thought privately, ‘He doesn’t. He’s Visenya’s son. Strength and desire is reason enough for the things they do.’
The irony of it was, if Maegor had been circumspect and tactful in his rule, the Seven Kingdoms would’ve probably accepted him as their king. To the masses, one dragon riding Targaryen was much like another: god-like and near unstoppable. But Aegon’s claim was not forgotten because of King Maegor’s extraordinary brutality.

It wasn’t just Maegor’s thoughtless everyday cruelty to those around him that disturbed. In one battle between the Crown and the Faith Militant, the carnage orchestrated by Maegor made the largest river in the Reach run red with blood for twenty leagues. He placed bounties: a gold dragon for the scalp of a Warrior’s Son and a Silver Stag for a Poor Fellow’s. These methods, even against one’s enemies, so shocked the realm that Maegor drove more banners to our cause than what we had won ourselves.
The day came when Aegon wrapped his arms around me and murmured in my ear: “We’re ready.”
“We don’t have enough men,” I said immediately.
“We do. And I will lead them to victory on Quicksilver.”
I stepped out of his embrace, hugging myself. We had worked towards this moment when we could finally strike against Maegor. But now that the time had come, I was beset with doubt.
“Maegor will meet you on the battlefield. He will ride Balerion…”
“And I will defeat him,” Aegon replied easily.
I stared at him as if he were mad.
“You,” I whispered horrified, “You can’t possibly kill Balerion the Black Dread…”
“I don’t have to kill him,” he assured, “Only his rider. Quicksilver’s size makes him agile and difficult to catch. I will fly circles around Balerion and pick Maegor from his back like a flea off a cat.”
I bit my lip.
“I can help,” I said, eyes on the floor, “I could ride by your side on Dreamfyre.”
He tipped my head up and made me look at him.
“You’re not a warrior Sis,” he said gently, “You never have been. But there is no other so fierce and loving I would want to care for my daughters. Who will keep them safe Rhaena, if not you?”
There were unspoken words that hung heavy between us: ‘Who will keep them safe if we both die?’
I shook my head, my expression crumbling. “I don’t want you to go. Don’t go Aegon.”
All notions of honor, of justice, fled. I wanted to take my husband and daughters and ride to Essos. I never wanted to return to this wretched land. These thoughts were written on my face, were welling in my eyes.
Aegon’s lips tightened at my weakness, but he cradled my face in his hands. “I must,” he said with rumbles of dark anger, “I must go and take back what is mine. What is ours. Or what else is there, Rhaena? To live like criminals until the day we die?”
“We’d be alive,” I choked.
He gave me a sad smile. “That’s not enough. Not for a Targaryen. You know that.”
I cried into his shoulder and he rubbed my back until I stopped. Then he took me to our bed and we came together with kisses and touches as sweet as on our wedding night.
In the harsh dawn of morning, when I searched for him in the sheets, he was already gone.
People say much of the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye; the clash of Aegon’s and Maegor’s ground forces below while two dragons clashed above. The living shadow of the massive Balerion, spewing black fire into the air, against the slippery and darting Quicksilver. Not to mention the two men who dared ride them and proclaim themselves king.
Ministrels devoured the story, worshipped it.
They sing that Aegon and Quicksilver were a ribbon of silver in the sky, quick as lightning. Balerion was driven to frenzy by the nuisance dragon, giving such a roar it struck lesser men dead. The armies could barely fight because warriors heads were craning up to the sky and marveling at a sight not heard of before. The first dance of dragons.
The people say Aegon and Quicksilver darted like a sparrow and flew circles around an enraged Balerion before finally Quicksilver’s strength failed, and he was tragically defeated.
But the stories lie. The battle was, in truth, short. Brutal. Before Maegor’s army had fully surrounded our much smaller forces, Balerion had breathed a tidal wave of black fire which enveloped Quicksilver, and while the white dragon flew blind Balerion had snatched him from the air and crushed him between his jaws.
Who knows whether Aegon died from the flames. Or if he was speared by teeth thick as tree trunks. Or maybe he survived all of that only to fall with Quicksilver’s mangled body and break upon the ground.
It didn’t matter, really. There was no possible fable or truth which could’ve comforted me. It would’ve been easy then, so incredibly easy, to lie down and never get back up. But amidst the incessant pain, the jagged pieces inside that cut and tore, was also a voice that howled to keep going, to win.
War, I learned, is perhaps best fought with a broken heart.
I made Fair Isle my base with the blessing of Lord Farman. I kept Aerea and Rhalla there while I flew all over Westeros, trying to scrounge up support. But if lords were wary to stick out their necks before, they couldn’t get me out of their keeps fast enough now. Grief and grim prospects weighed heavy. I lost weight and gained bruises under my eyes.
If I had any chance of victory, it was years away. My daughters were terribly vulnerable until then. And so I made the hardest decision of my life. Lord Farman had a good friend in Essos, a wealthy and principled man. My daughters would be smuggled to him and be raised in safety.
I was at the docks in Fair Isle, the creak of ships and lap of water loud in the night. A wet nurse was hushing Rhalla, another one stood waiting. I had Aerea in my arms, her face dotted with my tears.
“I’m doing this for you,” I sobbed, rocking her gently, “I promise, it’s not about glory or power or revenge. I’m fighting for our family.”
I brushed their heads with my fingers one last time and watched them be carried to the ship. I breathed in the salt wind.
“We’ll meet again,” I whispered, “in better times.”
I threw myself into my cause. I forced myself to eat, to regain my full strength. No man who I argued my claim to doubted my passion or my drive to see Maegor deposed.
I flew Dreamfyre to near exhaustion. We would zip to the Reach before barreling our way to the North, chasing every rumor of a sympathetic ear. I practically lived on the wing.
On yet another flight, we were above the crags of mountains in the Westerlands. I gave Dreamfyre free rein; my mind was absorbed by the last raven that bore news of my daughters on how they fared. Then a shadow fell on me, darker than a cloud blocking the sun, so large that it engulfed Dreamfyre’s own shadow on the earth below. Dread spiked my heart and my teeth locked. A terrible roar shook the sky that made the rest of the world go silent. In the echo, even the ferocious lions that prowled the Westerlands didn’t move a muscle, I was sure. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the full weight of my failure. Then I looked up; Vhagar’s massive scaled belly was above me.
Visenya.
Dreamfyre keened a high questioning sound.
There was no possibility of out flying Vhagar. And if I pit myself against Visenya I would die quicker than Aegon. For my daughters’ sake, there was only one choice.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Dreamfyre, and to Aegon and my father.
With a prayer to the Valyrian Gods I flew Dreamfyre up to glide near Vhagar. The wind, fiercer amidst Vhagar’s pumping wings, was strong enough to make my eyes water. But I saw Visenya clearly when our gaze met.
She was clad in armor so black it seemed to absorb sunlight. Her braided hair whipped about her head and as always Dark Sister was belted around her waist. Age had only sharpened the edges and points of her beauty; she was so hard and cold now it was wondered if any man dared venture to her bed. It was her eyes that always struck people the most, as they struck me now. They were lovely; but utterly pitiless.
Without any words spoken between us, Visenya demanded my absolute surrender and I gave it. She broke our connection and looked forward. I dropped behind Vhagar and followed in Visenya’s wake all the way to our prison.
When our dragons circled above Kings Landing and prepared to dive I finally raised my drooped head. But I sat up straighter when I noticed that the Sept of Remembrance was missing. In its place was a skeleton of melted stone on a field of ash. Maegor and Balerion had done this, had burned the Sept and all who were in it. I remember I had once urged Aegon to do the same deed and now the reality of it turned my stomach.
The King’s Raven was waiting in the courtyard, smirking and looking mightily pleased with herself. Tyanna was Maegor’s favourite queen out of his three wives. She was also his Mistress of Whisperers. The dark haired woman barely waited for Visenya to dismount her dragon before she surged forward.
“She was just where I said she’d be, wasn’t she?” Tyanna crowed, “I have reined in the last of Maegor’s traitorous family!”
“Little good your information would’ve been,” was Visenya’s cool reply, “Without wings to retrieve her. But you have indeed done well, Tyanna. Maegor will be pleased.”
I dismounted and Tyanna focused on me. I ignored her, despite the powerful impulse to march over and rip out her hair and strangle her with it. I stroked Dreamfyre’s cheek, eyeing the men creeping forward with iron chains.
Tyanna was suddenly at my ear. “You will put the chains on yourself. Or we will forgo chains altogether, and my king and husband will put your dragon to the blade. He has just the sword to do it, too.”
Dreamfyre shifted restlessly, picking up on my outrage and fear. I murmured platitudes in her ear even as I clamped her head and feet in manacles. I imagined she shot me a betrayed look as she was led away to where they stabled the dragons. I watched on, solemn and grave, until the last glimmer of her summer sky scales was gone.
Talons dug into my arm and whirled me around. I recoiled, Tyanna was almost feverish with zeal, green eyes glowing.
“Where are your daughters?” she hissed, gripping me tighter.
Visenya was behind her, haughty as a dark bird of prey.
“They died of fever. Two moons ago.” I said flatly, threading just a hint of grief in the words.
They didn’t believe me. In the days to come they both threatened and entreated me; But I was implacable, and there was not much they could do except spread their net across the world and wait for a catch.
To my surprise I was not thrown into a dank cell and forgotten. Apparently, I was to be a living symbol of a wayward subject brought to Maegor’s heel. And I was not the only one. Many days after my arrival I was roaming the halls listlessly when a short gasp caught my attention.
A skinny boy on the verge of being a man was staring at me with wide purple eyes. For an insane, heart stopping instant, I thought he was Aegon. But it was Viserys, my second eldest brother. His silver hair was tied back and he was in a surcoat emblazoned with our sigil. For a long moment we could only gape, and then we threw ourselves into each other’s arms. My little brother and I hugged and cried, jabbering and shooting rapid fire questions at each other.
When my family had been imprisoned on Dragonstone, I had failed to hear that Maegor had taken Viserys to be his squire at Kings Landing. It was both a sinister threat and another twisted way to reunite the family.
“You look more like Aegon than I remember you being,” I said thickly, brushing hair from his forehead with a quivering smile, “But I suppose that’s a widow’s fancy. I’m sure you’ll grow to be even more handsome.”
Visery’s face crumpled, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Rhaena. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” I rasped, “If we’d won…then you’d all have been free. Now…what hope have we?”
He couldn’t answer and only drew me closer.
The world had become warped almost beyond recognition. I was treated as a pariah by the court, which had become a pack of cravens and sycophants whose only loyalty was to Maegor. They didn’t want to become friendly with a known traitor and so except for Viserys I had no company. I certainly wasn’t going to seek out any of Maegor’s wives. And Maegor’s presence, chilling as the deeps of Winter, was to be tolerated. Barely.
At first, I was too proud to ask. But it was inevitable I suppose, that I would go to Maegor and beg him to let me ride Dreamfyre.
“Your Grace,” I said through gritted teeth, “Everybody knows that dragons need to ride the sky like we require air to breathe. Will you not permit me to exercise Dreamfyre?”
King Maegor sat upon the Iron Throne, stonily peering down at me. I had to admit that he suited the throne very well. He sat straight and proud, his huge size even more imposing, perched as he was on a wild nest of swords. I didn’t know what I abhorred the sight of most: my grandfather’s crown on his head or the distinctive ruby pommel of Blackfyre at his side.
“Your dragon,” Maegor rumbled, “is to be confined until you have knocked out any traitorous thoughts in your head. Be glad my mother persuaded me not to do it for you.”
I fumed, but said mildly: “Are my dragon and I always to be prisoners then?”
The hot coals in Maegor’s eyes ignited, a dark and vicious cloud blanketing his expression. It lasted only for a moment but my mouth went dry. It was a mere glimpse of his temper and the writhing urge for violence inside him.
“You are a female of my House,” Maegor growled, “And as head of this House, and your King by right of blood and strength, you will do as I command.”
And with a wave of hand he dismissed me.
I was stomping back to my rooms when I met Visenya in a deserted hall. She was heading toward where I had left; no doubt to whisper into Maegor’s ear. I slowed to a stop.
Visenya was garbed in black breeches and boots, a deep purple tunic crisscrossed with leather strappings and a black coat embroidered with red dragons which fell to her ankles. It was her version of 'casual'. But I had always suspected that if Visenya wandered around naked, no man would crack a smile or jeer but fall to their knees for a woman who still looked every inch a queen.
I stood in the middle of the hallway where she would have to acknowledge me. After a glance, Visenya dismissed me more thoroughly than Maegor had. Head held high, she stared through me and would’ve glided past without a word. But something had snapped, and when she nearly brushed my elbow I said:
“They tell me that when Aegon and I left Dragonstone, you tended to my Father. You stayed by his side, cared for him; especially when he collapsed just days before he died,” my words were scathing, “How kind that was of you. It must’ve gone against your nature, to be so generous…”
Visenya stiffened, and we turned to face each other.
“What are you implying, niece?” Visenya’s purple eyes flashed.
“My father is dead, my brother is dead, and Maegor is on the Iron Throne. I think the facts speak for themselves.”
Visenya moved so that we were toe to toe. I clenched my jaw and didn’t move back. The long braids of her silvering hair swept over my shoulder as she brushed my ear with her mouth.
“Your father was weak,” she murmured in a near whisper, “Your brother was weak. And so they died. If you refuse to see that, it only makes you weak too.”
Visenya began to walk away but I followed on her heels.
“You’ve been enjoying this, all of it, admit it,” I hissed, shaking, “You’ve always envied your brother and sister and now you have the chance to destroy everything they loved or seize it for yourself!”
I didn’t see her turn around. Without warning my back hit stone. My head spun and her arms pinned me against the wall. Visenya snarled, making all the wrinkles in her face show. She gnashed her teeth like a wild creature that might tear out my throat. I quailed against the force of her fury but she had me trapped.
“Everything I do is for this family,” Visenya spat, voice deep, “I bleed for us. I kill. Don’t you dare speak of my siblings as if you knew them – understood what they were to me. My brother is gone, my sister is gone, but I remain – WHY?” she shook me so hard my teeth rattled, “It’s because I am Targaryen. I belong, body and spirit, to our House; and I will see that it forever rules Westeros or else Westeros shall drown in fire and blood!”
We were both breathing hard. She glared at me and I was incapable of speech. With a last shove she moved off me, turned her back, and disappeared.
It was the last time I saw my great aunt.
She died on Dragonstone, from what is anyone’s guess. Perhaps flesh and bone was no longer enough to contain such a spirit. The death of Visenya should have had the realm sighing in relief, but it was soon clear that it spelled nothing but disaster.
It was the dead of night, and as Visenya’s body was laid out awaiting burial, my mother separated Night Sister from the corpse. She took my brother and sister, Jaehaerys and Alysanne, in hand and by morning had smuggled herself and her children from Dragonstone along with the treasured Valyrian steel sword.
His mother’s death, the theft of the sword and the escape of his prisoners, was not to go unpunished by Maegor. But it would be many moons before I was made aware of these revelations. At the time, guards dragged and threw me into my apartments and locked the door without explanation. When I was finally let out, Viserys was long dead.
Tyanna, under Maegor’s pretense of “questioning” him about the escape, tortured him for nine days. In a lonely courtyard, my little brother’s body was left to ripen under the sun as a taunt for Mother to come back and claim it. She never did.
I was surrounded by enemies. And for the first time in my life, I was facing them utterly alone.

Chapter Text

For years I was a ghost, clinging to life for no obvious reason. In Maegor’s care I was a specter to his rages, unprovoked cruelties and crushing dominance. Long gone were the days that splendid music, art and color reveled in the court. Now the backs of courtiers were crooked because they slinked so low to the ground.
As usual, I was drifting back to my apartments after an aimless wander through the Red Keep. My garb was a somber grey dress without embroidery or pearl, its collar stitched up to my throat. My gold hair was pinned back and hidden under a coif. I was a drab bird in a thorny cage.
My thoughts were on my daughters, growing up under an Eastern sun with no memory of me. I also wondered about my mother and siblings and how they lived now.
When I was in my bedchamber an unnamed force made me fall to my knees. I exhaled; and all the tender feelings and nostalgic memories I had been brooding over were extinguished. I breathed deep; and I imagined Old Valyria, and the sin that magnificent civilization must’ve committed for their own gods to turn against them. For fire to rain from the sky and obliterate them from the earth. My gods were hard, unforgiving and strange. And I called upon them then,
“I pray my enemies die in terrible agony,” I said to cold stone, to shadow and flickering candles, “Let them fall from where they have dared to climb so high and taste the bitter poison of defeat. I swear to you, these loveless twisted creatures deserve to wither on the branch, and be forgotten.”
Within a handful of years all three of Maegor’s wives and queens were dead.
Alys Harroway died soon after the birth of Maegor’s first child, a monstrous shriveled dead thing. Tyanna persuaded the king that it was the gods’ punishment for an affair of Alys’s. Not only did Alys, the septas, midwives and Grand Maester die, but the entire House of Harroway was snuffed out by Maegor’s bloody retribution.
Ceryse Hightower was swiftly felled by an illness. Though rumor said, and I believed it, that Maegor had lost all patience with the woman he’d bedded for twenty years and who was still childless.
Tyanna, to my everlasting pleasure, received the worst death. She admitted to Maegor that she had poisoned the other queens, toxifying their wombs. Perhaps in the depths of her black heart, she truly believed that Maegor loved her. It couldn’t possibly be because she felt guilty. Not that bitch.
With a foot on her stomach to pin a screaming Tyanna to the floor, Maegor carved out her heart with Blackfyre. That night, I sat by my window and I smiled as I sipped on a dark red wine.
But my satisfaction came at a high cost.
There was a vacant position now. It was a place that had been planned for me at my birth, and maybe it been planned for me again ever since my capture.
With swords pointed at my back I went to my wedding. I entered a cold room lit eerily with dark wax candles and no furnishings except a long stone alter which held many cups, potions and oils. There were two other anxious women, clothed in the same plain white dress as I. I didn’t recognize them but later I would learn their names and history. The youngest was Lady Elinor Costayne. She had given her husband three children before the age of nineteen and for this achievement she was marked to be Maegor’s. The inconvenience of her still living husband was disposed of in a day; Theo had been seized, accused of treason and summarily executed. The beauty standing next to Elinor, straight backed and proud, was Lady Jeyne Westerling. Her husband had died in the same battle as my Aegon. She had given birth to their son while he was cooling in the grave.
We eyed each other. There we were, all mothers, all widows. And in front of us was our betrothed: Maegor. Our husbands’ murderer.
We were his Black Brides.
Behind him at the head of the alter was a smug and wizened purple eyed man. He was from the east, a practioner of Old Valyrian arts. He beckoned me forward, and before the guards behind prodded me like cattle, I stepped into the gathering.
“Welcome, Princess Rhaena,” the priest intoned, “Welcome all. The gods of Old Valyria will surely bless this night.”
If that was true, I thought, then for the first time in my life I was firmly on the side of the Faith.
The wedding Maegor had orchestrated was far removed from the traditions of Westeros. I could see the alarm and disgust in Jeyne and Elinor as we followed the directions of the priest: the drinking of potions, the cutting of our skin and tasting of each other’s blood, the foreign symbols painted on our belly and thighs, the chanting and strange oaths. I found it as perverse as they did. But at the same time it was familiar enough to me, a scion of Valyria, for me to keep my composure. But Elinor was sobbing by the end and even Jeyne was blinking back furious tears. Maegor barely looked at us and had remained inscrutable throughout. He took the lead as we were marched to his bedchamber by armed men. The guards pushed us through the door and then locked it from the outside.
I was a tall woman but Maegor towered over me and it was never so obvious as then. His dark purple eyes, so like his mother’s, looked his new wives over.
“You first,” he said to me, and grabbed my wrist.
He dragged me; not due to any defiance on my part but simply because his strides were so long and he didn’t wait for me. When we were at the bed he turned me around so that my back was to him. With one palm he pushed me down, and my face hit the sheets. My feet were touching the floor until Maegor took my waist and slid me further up the mattress. Before I could blink I was positioned on my hands and knees. For the first time that night I didn’t feel numb. There was a hint of fear. This rough handling made it clear just how strong Maegor was. If he wanted to, he could lift me up into the air with one hand and break my every bone with the other.
He remained standing and didn’t join me on the bed. He didn’t need to. I heard a rustle and the drop of clothing. He took the hem of my dress and unceremoniously flipped it over my back, exposing the parts he had married me for. The head of his manhood was placed at my entrance and he gripped my hips with his huge hands. I gasped when he thrust into me, he didn’t seem to care that I was dry. I wished he had a smaller sex, he was larger than most men but it was no source of pleasure. My eyes closed and I gritted my teeth as he tried to get what he could to fit. Then with a grunt, he began our rutting. The bed creaked from the force of our movements. I could almost feel the stares of my fellow wives still standing by the door, silent and ignored.
It was physically painful, but not agonizing. What pained me most was that I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between Aegon and Maegor, being the only two men I had slept with. There was no emotion, there was not even the consolation of heat, in this mating. I was like a sheep being tupped in the fields by a ram. Except I wasn’t a mindless animal procreating for necessity. In the hopes that I would bear his child, I was being fucked by the tyrant who had usurped my brother’s throne and murdered him.
It lasted too long, but Maegor eventually spilled his seed inside me. As soon as he was satisfied, he pulled out and pushed me so that I lay on my side. I wiped hair from my face and tried to stich myself together again.
Stiff lipped Jeyne was dumped on the bed beside me. She was on her back and she caught my eye for just a moment before she grimaced and turned her head. Maegor took Jeyne’s dress and ripped it apart. He mauled her breasts, palming them and bending over to slobber over them. The bristles of his beard scraped over her smooth skin and she broke out in goosebumps. He bit her brown nipple and she yelped in pain. When he had deemed himself rejuvenated and had his manhood in hand I had the presence of mind to look away.
But I couldn’t shut out the noises, which had somehow been muted when Maegor and I had sex. Maegor growled and grunted as he thrust and the slapping sounds were obscene. But it was the quiet whimpers of Jeyne that made me want to curl up into a ball.
Elinor didn’t handle the consummation of her marriage with half of our composure. When Maegor approached her Elinor had sobbed: “No!”, and ran from his reach. He growled dangerously and ran her into a corner. He grabbed and lifted her onto his shoulder as she kicked and screamed. Jeyne had retreated to the headboard, hiding her nakedness with pillows, and so Elinor was slammed on her back between Jeyne and I. Fat tears ran down the girl’s cheeks. She tried to leap off the bed, but Maegor pushed her down. She beat at him with her hands and it had all the impact of two flopping fish. Elinor began to screech hysterically and I winced, shrinking away and willing her to stop prolonging this.
Maegor slapped her and her cries were cut off when her head snapped to the side. Both Jeyne and I cried out, we thought that he had broken her neck. But Elinor was alive, just stunned. “Quit your squealing, wife,” Maegor snarled, “You’ll need to be strong if you’re to bear my children. Otherwise,” he leaned closer, “What use are you?”
Pale and trembling, Elinor sobbed the whole time Maegor was inside her. But she did it softly.
Incredibly, Maegor had us once more that night. Each. By morning, my hips were bruised black and purple and I was rubbed raw between my legs. I became used to the feeling. While he didn’t have the appetites of an adventurous lover, Maegor was overflowing with as much energy for breeding as he was for violence.
The Black Brides were to share their rooms, and I was glad of it. Elinor did not like me. I reminded her too much of Maegor and her red rimmed eyes would narrow when I tried to talk to her. But I found a friend in Jeyne. I looked up to her. I spoke to her of everything, of Aegon, Dreamfyre, my siblings and daughters, and how much I missed them all. She listened gravely, neither judging nor trying to lighten my grief. She simply let me unburden myself.
Her self-control was only broken when she learned she was pregnant. She retched into a chamber pot for a day, not from morning sickness, but from a more elemental disgust.
“I cannot carry that monster’s spawn,” she moaned to me as I held her hair, “I cannot.”
She turned green again, and spewed into the gold pot.
“A baby is innocent of his parents’ vices,” I said quietly, “You have only to look into your baby’s eyes and you’ll know it to be true.”
She wiped her mouth and turned pleading eyes on me. “But for nine months, to carry a piece of him inside me. To feel it move and kick....to be constantly reminded…I swear, this is another one of his cruelties! He wants to sit back and enjoy watching us be tortured without having to lift a finger!”
I shook my head, chest aching at seeing my friend so distressed, and brushed her hair.
“You are among the strongest of women,” I told her, “You can get through this.”
She birthed the child three months too soon. Perhaps Tyanna had been mistaken, maybe she hadn’t been the reason Maegor’s spawn were either non-existent or hellish. As Jeyne had predicted, her son was a monster. It was green and deformed with scaled hands and feet. Even though it was dead it had clawed and cut Jeyne as she birthed it and she died in a pool of blood.
The tragedy was overshadowed by the new climate of the kingdoms. Icy mortal terror was no longer enough to subdue the masses. Maegor’s grip was too suffocating and Westeros had finally had enough of their king.
Lords no longer answered the King’s summons. Courtiers, guards and servants were disappearing overnight. Maegor tried to shield Elinor and I from the truth, but it was obvious.
One day I was walking past a servant in the hall when the woman suddenly seized my arm.
“What?” I cried, but she shushed me.
“Please, Your Grace, be quiet. I needs to tell you something.”
I blinked and waited.
She leaned closer. “You should know, I think, that your brother Jaehaerys has announced his claim to the Iron Throne. He’s calling for banners!”
I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t even move. When the servant scurried off, I stared dumbly at the spot she had been. Her words were fire in my ears. No, fire in my heart; the same heart that had been punctured so many times that I had believed it useless and beyond saving.
But my little brother, plain and bookish Jaehaerys, had claimed the whole of Westeros as his. My mother, no doubt, was working tirelessly behind the scenes any way she could. My dear sister Alysanne was standing boldly by Jaehaerys’s side, I was certain. And somewhere out there, my daughters were waiting for me to bring them home.
And what was I doing?
I was in our enemy’s bed. I was playing at queen, no better than the courtiers I disdained, belly on the ground and baring my throat to Maegor, hoping he won’t bite. For years I had let him wall me up alive. When had I become so weak? So…so broken?
I had once begged Aegon to run away with me, to leave war and duty behind.
“We’d be alive,” I had said.
“That’s not enough. Not for a Targaryen. You know that.”
The fire in my heart burned brighter, filling my veins, waking me up.
“I can…do more than this,” I said to no one, and clenched my fists, “I can do more than this.”
That night I went to Maegor’s bed more eagerly than I ever had. Elinor was having her blood, and so was relegated to another bedchamber for a few nights. I had Maegor all to myself.
He noticed the change and half grinned while on top of me. I met all of his thrusts and moved easily under his hands. I bit into his shoulder. I even kissed him. I played on his hot blood, making him orgasm again and again. He collapsed on the bed, utterly spent.
“Good girl,” he said, and went to sleep.
I, however, stayed awake. I lay on my side, staring out the window and watching the sky. I waited for hours for the slightest lightening of the sky. When I spied it, I slid, ever so slowly, off the mattress.
I tip toed over to my dress and boots and put them on. I retrieved the cloak I had hidden under the bed. Every rustle was heart stopping, every creak was hated. But whenever I threw a furtive glance at Maegor he was deep asleep in the same position. I had fucked him into oblivion.
When I was ready, I hesitated at the door.
I could slit his throat now.
I was eager for it.
I am not a kin slayer, I thought. Be grateful Maegor, that I know the value of our blood better than you ever have.
Summoning all the knowledge I had acquired from the hours spent wandering the Red Keep, I visualized a map of the little known short cuts and solitary paths. Peeking behind each corner, I ran as quickly as I could, ears straining for the clink of chainmail. But the Keep’s guards were few and far between now. Still, I probably wouldn’t leave Kings Landing through any gate without being detected.
So, the gates weren’t an option then.
I slowed to a march and kept my head down when I reached the courtyard, wary of the windows. And before I knew it I was on the common streets of Kings Landing. My cloak covered me head to toe but I still felt conspicuous as I walked through the sleepy city. Like at any moment someone would point and cry: “Look! A Targaryen! Monstrosity! Deviant! Get her!”
After this was all over, I vowed, I would get out more. See if normal people hated me as much as I thought.
The sky was shading to purple-blue much quicker than I liked. But at Rhaenys Hill I finally found what I was looking for.
On top of the great hill was a tall circle of stones. Every sign that the Sept of Remembrance had once stood there had been swept away. Construction was taking place, building what appeared to be a gigantic cavern. It wasn’t even half finished. The sloping walls of stone had no roof and was open to the sky. Where the gate was marked to be was a gaping hole and, unfortunately, five armed sentries.
“Ay!” a sentry called out, “Go away! This is a forbidden place.”
I stepped forward and threw back my hood, showing them my purple eyes.
“Not for me, it isn’t.”
The guards made sounds of surprise.
“I don’t think,” one of them said slowly, “you are allowed to be here, Your Grace. The King…”
“Fuck the King,” I said, tossing my head.
A taught silence.
“We cannot let you through. We have to do our job, Your Grace. I’ll escort you back to-”
I put my hands on my hips. “Let me tell you about the choice you have to make. One option is: you can drag me back to the Red Keep. Do you think you will be rewarded for this? A nice pat on the back from your King? More likely, in his rage he will kill you all, because he needs someone to blame for my escape and he’s hardly going to blame himself. It was your kind that let me get this far in the first place. I’m sorry to say your lives were forfeit the minute you saw me. Your only other option is to flee. Right now. Run. Disappear and find your living elsewhere. If you think I’m lying, if you believe Maegor will be gracious, ask yourself: What kind of gifts is the King known to give?”
After much shuffling of feet and looking at each other with huge eyes, the five guards agreed to leave their post by running down the hill.
I entered the stone nest and smelled smoke. A smile, bright and joyful, crept onto my face.
There were no walls except for the building's shell but I went past many arches and pillars in various stages of completion, some of them taller than trees. It was a dark maze of stone, the only light coming from the glow of the coming dawn.
I could hear the deep breathing of Vhagar and Balerion from somewhere in the labyrinth. I ignored it as best as I could and explored the Dragon Pit with a thudding heart.
I went around a big block of uncarved stone, and there was Dreamfyre. I cried out.
“Hello, lovely girl,” I laughed, wiping away tears.
Dreamfyre raised her head and studied me with her bottomless silver eyes. She made no move to sit up. She seemed caught between wounded pride and pleasure at seeing me. I held out my hands and went to her slowly. Snorting an indignant puff of smoke, she let me stroke her cheek.
The manacles on her feet and neck were joined by iron chains with links thicker than my wrist. The chains were wound around and shackled to four pillars which boxed my dragon in. I glanced at the subtle keyhole on the band around Dreamfyre’s neck. No doubt it would take a master locksmith to break open the manacle without the key. Ah well.
Dreamfyre watched me step back from her. I fumbled inside the folds of my cloak for what was belted to my waist. What I had stolen from a slumbering Maegor.
I drew Blackfyre out from its sheathe.
Dreamfyre’s eyes flashed and she shook her wings, moving into an awkward stand amidst the chains. I went to the closest chain and hovered over it with the edge of the smoky blade. I gripped the hilt with both hands and hefted Blackfyre over my shoulder, and then swung it down.
With a strange sound like the tearing of paper the Valyrian steel sword sliced through the iron links as easily as a hot knife through butter. Not only that, but the blade buried itself deep into the stone floor. Stumbling, I yanked the sword out in a spray of stone-dust.
“O-kay,” I muttered, “not as much force this time.”
Dreamfyre huffed impatiently. One by one, I chopped the chains as close to the manacles as I could without endangering Dreamfyre. Beaming, I sheathed the sword. Dreamfyre's face pointed to the purple sky, eager to be reunited with it. As was I.
I scrabbled onto Dreamfyre’s back and breathlessly said: “Sōves.”
Clutching a spike in her neck, my eyes were forced shut when Dreamfyre pumped her wings and surged into the air. Then I opened them, not wanting to miss a moment of flying away from the Dragon Pit, away from Kings Landing, away from Maegor.
I laughed, throwing out my arms, feeling the wind and the dawn. I was floating on happiness.
Now I could find my family, my mother and siblings and daughters. I was free to help them, to protect and lend them my strength while we fought for what was ours.

It was not just the only way to live, it was the best.

Chapter Text

We were twins; two dragons were needed. We were Targaryens, and therefore that need should’ve been satisfied as easily as it was noted. But no one knew that the years where such things were even possible was drawing swiftly to a close. There was a time when I thought I was an anomaly, that something was wrong with me. But I was not alone in my failure. I was simply the first.
I was a child, lying in front of a giant hearth. The heat of the flames made my eyes water and my cheeks burn. The smell of crisping wood, ash and smoke filled my lungs. The only comfort was the cool floor I was curled up on, hard though it was. I was tired, my body ached for bed. But I kept my bleary eyes fixed on the hearth, and the priceless treasure amongst the crackling wood. A dragon egg, unblackened by the fire, sat motionless. Many nights I imagined I saw it shudder or shake, and gasping I would jump up and nearly plunge my hands into the fire, certain that any second the egg would crack open to reveal the baby dragon inside. But the shell of the purple egg was always perfect and unblemished.
I stared at the egg. My egg.
“Hatch,” I whispered against the stone floor, “Please hatch for me?”
My twin, Baela, had received an egg too. Baela’s egg was no different in size or shape from mine except it was green like a spring leaf. We never kept the eggs together. We each carried our eggs everywhere, fed them flames at night, but the purple egg was mine and the green was hers.
“I love you,” I told the egg, sounding young and sad even to my ears, “Won’t you hatch for me?”
He did.
He wasn’t the color of his egg, that rich decadent purple the same shade as my eyes. He was a muddy green-grey. His body was thin and breakable as twigs. He could barely hold his head up. His unseeing eyes were clouded. He’d flap his wings pitifully and each time my heart leapt with joy even as it was breaking. He died in my arms within hours, and like a grown woman who had just lost her firstborn I cried over his tiny lifeless body.
A shudder of disquiet seemed to sweep through my House, unvoiced but deeply felt. No dragon had ever been born so broken before.
Baela’s hatchling was strong and healthy, scales pale as jade with a pearly sheen and silver-white eyes. Sometimes when she was with Moondancer she would guiltily search my face, half-afraid she was flaunting her dragon in front of me while I ached. And I would smile at her, even though I felt the absence of my dragon sharp in my soul.
I knew the bond between dragon and Targaryen first hand, even before Baela and Moondancer. My mother was Laena Velaryon, daughter of Princess Rhaenys Targaryen the Queen Who Never Was. I was said to have inherited most of Mother’s looks, and it was a great compliment. Lovely as a summer rose, Laena was svelte and graceful with silver-gold ringlets curling down to her waist. But her beauty was eclipsed by how great and passionate a dragonrider she was. Vhagar, the colossal dragon who’d once belonged to Queen Visenya herself, had been Laena’s mount since she was twelve. When my parents had dwelled in the Free Cities, crowds would gather and marvel at the spectacle of my beaming mother on top of that gigantic beast.
For all my life, I remembered my mother’s screams as she tried to birth my little brother; the frantic rush of Maesters, septas and handmaidens pushing me away as they swept in and out of her bedchamber. And then a hush, a quiet desperation that lasted the whole three days they tried to save Mother’s life. When she appeared, haggard and white faced, she was supported on either side by her handmaidens. Her limbs trembled and sweat shone on her brow. She was only upright and standing because of them, but she neither listened to her ladies’ pleas nor let them hold her back. To watch her take each straining step forward was painful. Hearing her grunts and soft whimpers was maddening. But Mother didn’t care what Baela or I saw or thought; I don’t even think she understood we were there, squeezing each other’s hand. Mother was consumed by the idea of the door to the courtyard, and the open sky beyond.
“One last time,” she rasped, “I would fly one last time.”
But her strength failed and she collapsed on the stairs, dead.
There was an afternoon in which Baela and I relaxed in the courtyard of our home of Dragonstone. We were enjoying the feel of the sun after it had chased off the heavy clouds which had darkened the sky for weeks. I wore a flowing silver dress with bell sleeves, and it was embedded with pink seed pearls at the collar and hem; Baela was in leathers and resembled a dirty boy. I was sitting on a fountains edge, an open book in my hands. She was sitting cross legged on the cobbles with Moondancer’s head in her lap. The dragon had grown to the size of a pony. Wisps of smoke coiled up from Moondancer’s nostrils as Baela lovingly stroked the crest of her scaled head. We were deep into companionable silence when something possessed Baela to say:
“I will share her with you,” she said, “We can ride her together when she’s big enough.”
Startled, I looked up from my book to see my twin’s face, which was almost identical to my own. Her eyes begged me to accept, to let her ease my unhappiness.
I smiled sadly. “No, beloved sister,” I said, running my eyes over Moondancer, “You know as well as I that this is the one thing we cannot share.”
And I meant it. It wouldn’t have been right. Even if a part of me snarled and gnashed teeth when I refused.
And then out of the blue, I was granted my second chance. I would’ve begged, murdered and whored for that dragon egg; but she gave it to me freely. The egg was from a clutch birthed by Syrax – Princess Rhaenyra’s she-dragon.
Rhaenyra herself placed it in my hands. I received it reverently, as if a High Septon had given me a precious gift from the Gods. I don’t think I breathed as I held the egg against my wildly beating heart. The heir to the Iron Throne measured me, eyes speculative from between her golden eyebrows and chubby cheeks.
“Don’t fuck up this time,” Rhaenyra told me, pursing her lips.
I was determined not to. Everything else fell away as I took care of my egg day and night. When I woke up in the mornings, I put the egg where the sunbeams hit strongest and the orange shell of the egg could glow. Once again, at night I was fanning the flames in my bedchamber’s great hearth and praying over the egg at the center of a burning nest of logs.
I isolated myself, even from Baela. I prayed for the gods to grant me a dragon to match my sister’s.
“Hatch,” I would whisper to it, “Please hatch for me.”
My obsession was rendered insignificant; the wider world came crashing down into my field of vision like a fiery meteorite. King Viserys Targaryen died, and treachery ensued. The “greens” declared the sons of Viserys’s second wife the true heirs of the Iron Throne. Princess Rhaenyra, who’d long been named heir, was quickly denounced in Kings Landing and King Aegon the Second was crowned.
A civil war erupted and the House of Targaryen was split in two - all because a female was deemed unsuitable for the crown. I was proud to be named among the “blacks”, those faithful to Rhaenyra.
But it didn’t make Rhaenyra any easier to get along with.
She stormed into my chambers one night, the many ruby drops on her bodice flicking like snake tongues as she moved. I leapt up from where I’d been sitting and reading by the fire.
“How useless you are!” was the first thing Rhaeynra said. Well, screeched.
“What?” I stammered.
The Queen sneered. Her silver-gold hair was coming loose from her braids and her puffy face was blotchy and red.
“You are a laughable excuse for a Targaryen,” Rhaenyra yelled and shoved her finger in the direction of the hearth, “Not even an egg will hatch for you! You’re under my protection, eating food at my table and shitting in gold chamber pots, but what have you done to deserve it?”
All the blood had drained from my body, the book dropping from my hand as my arms hung limp at my side. I could only stare as the Queen raved at me.
“Your sister will do her part, but you…everybody pities you, everybody. But what use are you to us?” she hissed, furious tears coming into her eyes, “What use are you to me, if you have no dragon for a weapon?”
Rhaenyra glared at me, turning her jeweled rings around with such violence that I thought she might break a finger. A tear escaped and drew a line down her round cheek. I took a tentative step forward, but she threw up her hands with a swear, and in a swirl of her red velvet dress she turned and marched out of the room.
Shaking, but too shocked to cry, I sank back into my chair. I bowed my head, letting my long curly hair fall in front of my face.
Laughable.
Pitiable.
Useless.
Not like Baela. Fearless Baela.
I turned my gaze from my lap to the hearth, and through strands of silver-gold I watched my egg lie still as stone within.
Like a sleepwalker, I left my chambers and shuffled into the hall where the air was much cooler. I drew my night clothes closer to me. Not far was the door to another chamber, and I quietly opened and shut it behind me.
Not one candle was lit but I navigated through the darkness by memory. My shins hit the edge of the bed and I hesitated.
“Rhaena?” my sister called groggily.
“Baela,” I whispered.
I heard the rustle of her flipping the sheets back. And just like how I used to as a small child, I crawled into my twin’s bed and nestled into her side. The reassuring warmth of her arms and the sound of her breath was more potent than any medicine. Baela brushed my hair back as I relaxed completely into her embrace.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I bit my lip. “Since when are dragons our weapons?”
She took a long time to reply. “Since Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys. We just had reason to forget. Peace made us forget.”
“But…” I wavered, hating how young I sounded, “But we wouldn’t turn dragons…against other dragons. Would we?”
Baela stroked my arm with her thumb and said nothing. We fell asleep in an uneasy silence in which I imagined I could still hear the crackling of fire.
Orders came for my cousin Prince Joffrey Velaryon and I to travel to Gulltown and see that The Vale was protected. Joffrey strutted like he’d been given command to lay siege to Kings Landing, but Baela had taken me aside and apologetically explained that it was for our own safety we were sent away. It would also keep the young prince out of trouble. Nonetheless, I was charged with a most honorable duty.
Two more dragon eggs were given to me for safe keeping. One was black as pitch, the other an emerald green. The greedy hearts of the enemy would be set on the three eggs in my care. I didn’t dare leave their side all the way to Gulltown, and once there I trusted no one with their maintenance but myself.
I asked for and received the bedchamber with the biggest hearth and immediately put all three eggs inside it. I prayed longer and more devoutly at night than ever before. Staring at the eggs until my eyes watered and went half-blind, I often fell asleep on the naked stone floor just as I had as a little girl.
It was after one such night that I groaned and flinched at the pains in my body. My back cracked when I propped myself up on my arms and raised my heavy head. I licked my chapped lips, dry as parchment. I looked blearily at the ajar window and smelled the sea breeze. A glorious pink and orange dawn was melting the sky. A sun-drenched day was fast approaching.
A crack, which sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, reverberated in my ears. Too slowly, I turned my head to the cold hearth.
There was a chunk missing from the dragon egg in the middle of the cluster. A jagged piece of shell had fallen in the ashes and more slivers were quickly joining it. Awed, I saw the coiled form of a dragon peeking through the cracking shell. The hatchling writhed and stretched against its cage, using all its strength to try and break the egg into a shattered mess. Elation was bubbling and brimming over inside me, and I crawled closer on my hands and knees. I didn’t dare make a sound.
With a final twist of its body, the egg came completely undone and broke. The hatchling stood and gave a proud beat of its wings, the fragile membrane a light gold. Its scales were the same orange as the shell, the claws and horns a deeper shade. A soft yet vivid color, it was like a patch of dawn had been pinned to the flesh of a dragon.
He was perfect.
Suddenly he noticed my presence. He swung his head, no bigger than a newborn kitten’s, and our eyes met. His eyes were a burnt orange with a rim of gold, and they studied me thoughtfully. I offered a trembling palm. He looked at it, and walked a few dainty steps. He reached out the clawed thumb of one pale gold wing and touched my fingers. I broke out in goosebumps at the contact and bit my lip. He placed the edge of his other wing on my hand, the tiny claws digging into my skin, and hoisted himself up to rest in the center of my palm. He was warm. And I could feel the pulse of his newly beating heart. I leaned back on my heels with a shuddering exhale, cradling the dragon just beneath my breasts.
We looked at each other.
“Hello, Morning,” I laughed, “Because that’s what you are. A bright and beautiful new morning.”
Morning yawned, and snuggled against my chest.
How could I have guessed that the era of dragons was nearly over?

Chapter Text

I was the only Targaryen on Dragonstone, and living through the bloodiest war in known history. And I woke up to the enemy marching to my door.
The snarls and frustrated yells were muffled, but no less threatening. The door shook with the force of them throwing their bodies against the wood, splinters were dropping to the ground.
The mournful bells on Dragonstone were still ringing, warning of the invaders that were swarming the island. When I had woken up to the sound, I had seized all the furniture I could and barricaded the door to buy me more precious seconds. For months I had been in the habit of sleeping in my leathers; I had only to shove on my boots and belt my sword to my side to be ready for escape.
I tied the rope made of knotted scraps of my bed sheets to the heavy wooden post of my bed. Fear was kept at bay by muttering curses and filthy words under my breath.
“Traitorous arse licking Greens,” I hissed, giving a quick tug of the rope to test its strength, “Shit-for-brains bastard born idiots!”
I backed up to the window, the rope sliding through my hands. I sat on the ledge, swung my legs over and jumped out the window. I was weightless before the rope snapped taut and I slammed into the stone wall. I had braced for the impact, but all the air was still knocked out of my lungs. But I was now nearly half way down the tower.
I gritted my teeth and used my hands and feet to shimmy down the rope. I didn’t waste time looking down to see how far I had to go to. But a shout made me glance up. Two sneering faces were peering down at me from the window.
“Come back up here!” one of them hollered.
Sure, I’ll do that.
Morons.
The rope suddenly gave way. One of the brighter thugs must’ve slashed through it. I fell, and my mind went blank.
But, gods be praised, the ground had been nearer than I guessed and my feet met it easily. I grinned, resisting the urge to throw a rude gesture at my would-be captors, and sprinted toward the dragon stables.
The sky was a solemn blue instead of black. Dawn felt distant. The immature morning was filled with screaming and shouting, and the frenzy of running feet and clinking chainmail. And the unrelenting tolling of the damn bells. All of Dragonstone was whipped up in a panic. And I didn’t stop for any of it, didn’t even glance at the crying servant women throwing questions at me. I ran through the heart of Dragonstone, hand on the pommel of my sword and a name on my lips: Moondancer.
I reached the stables without any Green lying in wait for me. I suppose no man wanted to brave the castle’s dragon stables without an army at his back. I skidded to a halt, and met Moondancer’s lightning bright eyes. Her sleek jade body was quivering with energy and she strained against the chain linked to her shackled neck. She had been waiting for me, having smelled blood in the air.
I could ride her bareback but I brushed the notion away. I had a feeling I would need every advantage I could get. Her saddle was on a nearby slab and I seized it with a grunt. Usually, I would have help saddling my dragon but I had to slap the heavy saddle between two pearly spines and chain it around her neck and belly by myself.
Moondancer keened, telling me to hurry.
I yanked a silver key off the cord around my neck. Moondancer lowered her head, eye rolling to watch me push the key into the sliver of a keyhole on her iron collar. Click. The collar crashed down and I threw the key away. My dragon shook her head and there was the screech of stone as her claws dug into it with pleasure.
“Let’s chase after the moon, my love,” I smirked, “and dance.”
I leaped onto her back and strapped myself securely. Moondancer broke into a run. We cleared the stables and thudded into the courtyard before she flapped her wings and rose into flight without a single command from me. We climbed in height quickly and flew above the highest point of the black castle. I was deliberating on my next step, whether to flee Dragonstone or try and help chase out the enemy, when I noticed we had company.
The light was weak but I still saw Sunfyre break out of the column of smoke rising from the island’s peak. His golden scales were almost luminescent in the darkness and seemed to ripple when the barest of light touched them. He was said to be the most beautiful dragon ever born. He was named King Aegon’s Glory. But Aegon wasn’t a king, he was a traitor and usurper, and he was shooting toward Moondancer and me.
“Shit!” I swore.
At the same time as I ordered Moondancer to swerve out of Sunfyre’s path, the he-dragon jerked to a stop with a cry and hovered in midair. In a smooth glide Moondancer put a more comfortable distance between us and them. I craned my neck and stared at the rider and his dragon. It occurred to me that we had surprised them as they dived to land.
The false-king had probably expected me to be tied up and helpless or slain by his brutes. Not to nearly crash into me dragon-mounted. Aegon recovered from the shock and our dragons warily circling each other as we sized up the enemy. Aegon wasn’t prepared to let us go and I don’t know if I could’ve forsaken this chance anyway.
I clenched my jaw and calculated. Sunfyre was the larger dragon by far. Moondancer was only slightly bigger than a warhorse. He had brute strength, she had speed. He had endurance…
But perhaps he didn’t? I squinted. Yes, Sunfyre’s flying was definitely strained, his pale pink wings working harder than normal. Grim satisfaction twisted my mouth. It seemed Aegon’s senseless warmongering had taken its toll on his golden dragon.
I commanded, and Moondancer roared a proud challenge. Her cry rolled through Dragonstone and over the churning sea. I had to clamp my hands over my ears. Sunfyre roared back, deeper, like boulders tumbling over each other in a devastating landslide. It said he wasn’t beaten yet.
Sunfyre surged forward, sword-long teeth between his open jaws. I allowed him to shave off some space between us before ordering Moondancer to curve around him and rise higher. Sunfyre turned clumsily and followed us, flying against the wind. In an otherwise deadly quiet, the leathery snap of dragon wings was the only sound. It’s easier to glide downwards than it is to climb higher, and with his injuries Sunfyre would find it difficult. The cold wind whipped my braid against my cheek as I looked behind.
Aegon was in full armor. An advantage, I thought darkly, except when your being cooked alive in it by dragon fire.
I frowned, noticing something. Then I grinned.
“Aegon’s pretty dragon has lost an eye, Moondancer,” I told her in High Valyrian, “Time to get on his bad side.”
A slash of puckered skin was all that was left of one of Sunfyre’s gold eyes. As Aegon and Sunfyre picked up the pace to catch up to us, I had my dragon swerve sharply to the right and drop back, letting the wind drag us backward. Aegon reined his dragon in, but too slowly. Cutting through the air like a knife Moondancer darted into Sunfyre’s side.
I yelled the Valyrian word for kill.
Moondancer bit deep into the meaty part where ribs ended and hindquarters began. For the first time in my life I heard teeth slicing through armored scales. Sunfyre screeched in pain and rage. He swung his head around but we were on his blind side, he was also too big to twist his body easily and Moondancer stubbornly hung onto where she bit. I found myself flattened against the saddle as the membrane of his flapping wing hit me repeatedly. My vision was obstructed, and that was dangerous. Grimacing, I ordered Moondancer to break off. This is when we would be most vulnerable. Dark blood streamed from the wound and dripped from the she-dragon's muzzle as we fled. I felt drops land on my face like hot rain. We went over Sunfyre’s back, over the line of spines. He roared, and I got a great view of gnashing teeth as he swiveled his head and bit the air, missing us.
I steadied my breathing and nodded. First blood to us.
We were in a dive.
The island was still below us, the black castle sprawling under the looming peak of Dragonstone. Briefly, I wondered if someone was watching this. If anyone would witness how this battle turned out.
We banked left, and I glanced to see where the enemy was. Too close. I could see Sunfyre’s one eye glittering with intent and Aegon’s sour face under his helmet. A spew of flame, like a lash of sun, erupted from Sunfyre’s throat. I felt the heat of it, though it barely licked the point of Moondancer’s tail. My lips thinned. His fire reached further than I thought it would.
Moondancer swerved again and flew higher. I thought quickly. I couldn’t approach the next attack in the exact same way, Aegon would be ready. My gaze caught on the smoke rising from the island. Risky, but it could work.
With Sunfyre on her tail my dragon, with more speed and grace than a falcon, took us into the thick gray smoke. Immediately, my eyes stung and I closed them. The smoke was warm and smelled of sulfur. I kept my eyes shut until the stench disappeared and the night air was sweet again. We were free of the smoke and I had Moondancer dive sharply down, almost in a vertical drop. Then we hovered, waiting.
Sunfyre burst through the smoke above us, and I spotted something I had missed in the excitement. There were half healed wounds along his belly. Sunfyre would never be weaker nor Aegon more defenseless. I could end this war, here, now, with Moondancer’s help.
I had Moondancer dart underneath Sunfyre, who was whipping his head around trying to find us. As the golden dragon banked and circled the smoking peak, we kept out of sight, small as we were, by flying beneath his bulk and copied each turn of his wings. I looked up as I carefully matched our movements with his. Sunfyre’s scales glittered above me like a huge carpet of beaten gold. The lightening sky was purple now, and his sailing wings were the dusky pink color of the coming dawn. A small part of me couldn’t help but appreciate the mind-numbing beauty of it even as I calculated a way to bring this dragon down.
Perhaps Sunfyre was tiring or Aegon suspected that we had landed, because his dragon lost height and drifted closer to the earth. We were just above the border of the Dragonstone castle. I sucked in a breath. It was now or never. Again, we flew to Sunfyre’s blind side. I felt all the muscles of Moondancer’s powerful frame tense in readiness before we lunged upward in a flurry of wing beats. I heard Aegon yell, he saw us but too late, and we carved into his dragon again. Sunfyre screamed and it ringed in my ears. Moondancer bit his flesh in almost the exact spot as before, deepening the wound.
Sunfyre floundered, trying to shake us off. Hot blood spattered in my face and blinded me. Desperate, he rolled and we tumbled in mid-air with him. The world was upside down, I couldn’t see. All I could do was hang on. As soon as we righted I hurriedly wiped my eyes, just in time to see Moondancer lose her hold. The he-dragon pumped his wings, turning to face us head on. I knew in an instant that if we gave Sunfyre the room he needed he’d tear us apart. We had to keep close to his body until we could dart away.
“Under the wing!” I ordered into the wind, “Bite! Kill!”
Moondancer snapped her head forward and chomped down where wing met shoulder. It was an awkward and perilous move; Sunfyre’s wildly flapping wing was in danger of slapping against my dragon’s own wings and knocking her off balance, Sunfyre’s head was too close for comfort and Aegon and I were now less than four feet apart. Aegon bared his teeth at me and unsheathed Blackfyre, the blade flashing. My blood chilled. If Aegon reached us my sword would be sliced through as cleanly as Moondancer’s head.
I gave the order for Moondancer to escape over the he-dragon’s back again. She snapped her head back and we made to fly over him. But Sunfyre gave a powerful swoop of his wings so that he was almost falling backward. The line of spikes along his neck sped past Moondancer’s muzzle. An odd calm fell over me. I saw the mess of blood and gore where we’d injured his wing. Sunfyre’s one gold eye was full of wrath as he opened his mouth and breathed fire.
White hot pain nearly killed me right then and there. I was senseless to my dragon’s dreadful shriek, let alone my own. One side of my clothes melted from me like fat from a roasting chunk of meat. My silver-gold braid was crisped to black from the heat. I felt I would do anything, barter my soul to the darkest god, to stop the agony. Despite all, my Targaryen nature battled through the pain and whispered that Moondancer was in a free fall.
I opened my eyes, which had been clenched shut, to see that we were plummeting to the earth. Moondancer was screeching without pause and twisting and throwing her body around, wings limp. I blinked, trying to reclaim my wits. Moondancer’s shimmering eyes were burned out of her head leaving nothing but empty charred eye sockets. The blast had fully engulfed her head, I had been merely grazed by it.
“Fly,” I wheezed through chapped lips.
Land was rushing up to meet us.
“My love, fly!” I cried, “Fly!”
Whether she heard and obeyed or it was her own innate instincts, Moondancer flapped jerkily. We were spinning around, falling slower now. Boom. Like the castle itself had fallen down, a great crash echoed through the air. Sunfyre had fallen and sprawled just outside the walls of Dragonstone. He was on his side, his wing crushed beneath him.
“Fly, Moondancer. Fly!”
She couldn’t. How deeply had those vicious flames reached inside her head?
I later heard that just before Sunfyre crashed Aegon had leaped off his dragon in a twenty feet jump, breaking his legs. But the idea to jump never crossed my mind. I pleaded and sobbed for Moondancer to fly right up to the second when we struck the ground.
The whole earth seemed to shudder along with my bones. My vision went dark. When it cleared, my cheek was next to a pearly spine. I groaned. Body quivering with aftershocks, and broken ribs crackling with pain, I sat up in the saddle. Everything went sideways and I nearly collapsed again. But I thought of Moondancer and my gaze shot to her face. Blood was dribbling from her nostrils and her mouth. She was making a strange low sound. She moved and I was rattled in my seat. I thought she was trying to get up. But she was writhing in the dirt, like a headless worm. Bile rose in my throat. Her tossing and twisting became stronger, more violent.
My body was a puppet pulled by strings that belonged to someone else. Someone less broken. With fumbling and shaking hands, I undid the chain that strapped me into the saddle. I slid off Moondancer and fell down. I crawled passed the half of her wing that had snapped off. I listened to the sad gurgling noises my dragon made as it was dying, but couldn’t look.
A pair of boots appeared, dark with mud and blood. I squinted up at a scowling man who had drawn his sword over my head. On his breastplate he had the sigil of a three headed golden dragon.
Yes, I thought. Do it. End me.
Just as he raised the blade to swing, another man yanked his wrist and pulled the sword away. I collapsed. I heard the word “maester” and strong arms hauled me up. I shrieked at the contact to my skin. It was like being burned again. And then I screamed, at the sky, for its own sake.
The morning’s dawn was red. And behind me, a crippled Sunfyre watched Moondancer coil into the final throes of death.

Chapter Text

If I could give away my name, I would. Though no one would assume it willingly. Not now. War has warped and twisted it until its meaning is altered beyond recognition. But I deserve that.

Curled up in my bed, I stare at nothing. I’m wearing the same nightdress I’ve been in for weeks. My silver hair is dull and matted. I stink so badly that my handmaidens gag when they come too close. But it doesn’t bother me. I am an animal, just an animal, hibernating in a deep secret pocket within a snow bank. Waiting and dreaming of summer; of those days when I was the daughter of a King, yet strolled the busy markets with the smallfolk. Those days when I was plump and plain but the happiest Targaryen in the world. And my sons. My sons, one of their little hands clasped in each of mine, beaming smiles at me.

I shudder, my whole body rocking on the mattress, and I wait for the tremors to subside. Sometimes my memories feel detached from me. They’re pages out of story I must’ve read somewhere and only half remember now. But sometimes the past crashes upon me like a great ocean wave, and I’m helplessly tossed around and swept up by its power.

“Mother, I’m not tired,” Jaehaerys moaned, trying to pull his hand out of mine. I kept walking down the hall, slowly, so Maelor could toddle alongside me as well.

“Is that so sweetling?” I chuckled, “Well, we’ll just go say goodnight to Grandmother then, okay?”

But Jaehaerys wasn’t fooled. “We always see her before bed!”

Jaehaera was at her brother’s side, uncomplaining. She yawned and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her nightdress.

“Your sister is tired,” I nodded at her, lips quirking, “And twins feel the same things at the same time, did you know? So you must be sleepy too.”

Jaehaerys threw an accusing look at Jaehaera, who stuck her tongue out. Maelor tripped and I used our joined hands to stop his fall. His nearly translucent eyebrows furrowed and he stuck his thumb in his mouth. Jaehaerys was tugging at me, still whining. I smiled and teased him as we went through the quiet halls and arrived at my mother’s chambers in the Tower of the Hand.

When I drove my flock of children through the door, the heavy wood shut behind us. I turned.

A hulking man with black pitiless eyes was standing at our backs, holding a longsword dripping with red. An impulse made me look forward again. I saw the crumpled body of a handmaiden; a blood trail slathered the stones where they had dragged and dumped the corpse into the corner. The world frosted over. A second man appeared and threw my mother, gagged and tied up, on the floor. He kicked her hard so that she rolled closer to us. Her wide eyes conveyed a warning to me that was far too late.

Someone had just been at my bedside and showed me a slice of buttered bread. It doesn’t matter who it was. Everyone wants to feed me. But I never accept, and slap their offerings away when they try too hard. What would I do with food? There are children in Kings Landing, poor starving children, who need it much more than I. Give the bread to them. I don’t need anything.

“But I don’t understand!” I shook my head, “Why must you challenge Rhaenyra for the throne?”

My brother-husband sneered. “Are you stupid? I’m our father’s only son! No woman can inherit the crown. King Jaehaerys’s ruling made that perfectly clear.”

I crossed my arms under my bosom, inadvertently pushing them up. Aegon’s gaze flicked to my cleavage and I scowled. My large breasts were Aegon’s favorite part of me, but weren’t so bewitching that they kept him from his paramours and pillowmates.

“Aegon,” I snapped, atypically waspish, “Won’t this mean war?”

“Yes,” he replied, shrugging off the gravity of that answer, “But you will be Queen. Won’t you enjoy that Helaena?”

The question shocked me, made me think. Because…to assume my dear mother’s place, to nurture the smallfolk and prepare a rich and prosperous land for my dear children to inherit, had an unexpected allure.

“What about Rhaenyra?” I asked uneasily, “What will happen to her?”

He gave a lazy smile. “She’s only a half-sister.”

“Dreamfyre,” those out of focus figures, insubstantial as shadow, tempted. Coaxed. “Come Helaena, don’t you want to ride your dragon?”

My dragon? Yes. She is blue scaled, and beautiful, and she loves me. I remember that. But her eyes, like divine silver pools, are more piercing than any. Dreamfyre would see pass my dirty skin, souring blood and putrefying flesh and know what I’ve done. She’d buck and throw me from her back and I’d fall from the skies. “It’s no use,” the shadows whispered.

They had pried my sons from my side, deaf to my shrieks and waving blades at my grasping hands.

My daughter quailed and smothered her face into my dress, fingers digging through the material and into my thighs. The smaller of the two strangers was next to us, grinning, and casually throwing a dagger from hand to hand. I held Jaehaera, pushing her into my side as I eyed the dancing blade. The other man, with arms as thick as tree trunks, had my sons at his feet. His longsword was poised over them.

Jaehaerys was white-faced and looked to me as if I could do something. He hugged Maelor to him who hiccupped with sobs. My mother lied between my sons and I, wriggling in her binds.

“I’m always honored to meet royalty,” quipped the small, yellow toothed man, “We’re in awe, aint we?”

“Yes, Cheese,” his brutish partner grunted.

Cheese looked me up and down and snickered. “Mind, you ain’t much without those dragons. And I thought you Targaryen cunts were supposed to be pretty?”

“What do you want?” I quavered.

He threw up his hands, raising the dagger, and I flinched. “What my sort all want,” he answered glibly, “To get a slice of what you filthy rich bitches have.”

I swallowed. “We have jewels. Diamond necklaces and ruby rings. Take them and leave. We won’t stop you.”

“We’ll get our money, Your Grace. Don’t you worry about that. But we have to do the job first, don’t we Blood?”

Blood nodded, staring dispassionately at the boys. His sword hung over their silver-gold heads like the Stranger about to pass judgement.

“What job?” I asked, trembling.

“One of your sons has to die,” Cheese explained, scratching his chin, “But we weren’t told which one. You’re their mother. I think it’s only fair you get a say. Which of your brats do you want to be rid of?”

I recoil from the memory, my limbs flail and thump the bed. I clutch my head and scream into my greasy pillow to drown out the past. Suddenly, hard hands are shaking me and someone is yelling in my face. I blink. A familiar sneering man is looming over me.

“Snap out of it Helaena! Get a hold of yourself, you’re my queen damn you!”

I say nothing; all words are meaningless. The man tries to drag me out of bed but I go stiff. He wrestles with me, lips stretched back over his teeth, and I feel like giggling. I’m too big for him. He must see something he doesn’t like in my expression because he snarls and lets go. He picks up a nearby jug and throws it against the wall, smashing it in a blast of glass and wine. Unmoved, I watch this boring mummer’s play. If this mummer is supposed to be a villain, he’s too sulky for the part. And if he portrays the king, he’s obviously too stressed. He should drink some wine. This time I do laugh, and the croaking cracking sound that comes out of my mouth makes me laugh even harder. The man storms off, leaving me free to curl back into a ball.

How long ago did that happen? Time has turned odd, I can’t pin it down. Day and night has become scrambled like the words I used to know.

“Please, gods, no,” I begged, “Kill me! Kill me instead.”

“No.”

“Kill me!”

Cheese chuckled. “We were told to kill a boy, and that’s what we’re going to do. All that’s left is for you to pick one.”

My mother’s muffled pleas and demands made Cheese growl at her. “Quiet bitch! Let the Queen think.”

“That’s right,” I cried desperately, “I’m the Queen! My death is worth more! Choose me, and spare my children. They’re innocent.”

Cheese spat on the floor. “You think I give a fuck? We haven’t got all day here. Pick.”

Tears were pouring over Jaehaerys’s cheeks and his arms were wrapped protectively around his little brother. He glanced up in terror at the sword above their heads.

“Mother?” he said in a shaky voice. It was like he thought I could somehow resolve this, just as I broke up the fights between him and Jaehaera and afterwards everything was okay.

I shook my head wildly.

“No, I can’t! I can’t choose! You do it, you monster!”

Cheese raised his eyebrows. I saw him study Jaehaera and she shrank under his scrutiny, clutching my skirts tighter. Slowly, he licked his lips.

“I take back what I said about you dragon loving cunts. You have a pretty little girl there. Blood likes them young and sweet.”

For the first time, Blood cracked a smile. Under his heavy brow his black eyes lit up with interest.

“If you don’t pick which son you want dead,” Cheese went on, “I’ll set Blood on your daughter. He’ll rape her well, you can be sure. He’s had the practice.”

I stared at Cheese.

“We’ll kill a boy anyway,” he told me, “after he’s done. Or you can get on with it, and Blood won’t touch a hair on her.”

I exhaled, and all the fight was leeched out of me. Cheese smirked. I turned my head to regard my sons. They looked so small in Blood’s shadow. So breakable under his steel. Jaehaerys was watching me, and gods only know what he saw. Maelor clung to his brother, face red and blotchy. He wasn’t looking at anyone. Hadn’t said a single word. He was young. How much did he understand about what was happening? Very little, surely? Please gods, please let him not comprehend a single thing.

“Maelor,” I whispered, feeling I would die as I spoke the name, “My youngest.”

My heels gingerly touch stone. It is cold as ice. I bite my lip and lurch to my feet. Legs wobbling, I tip sideways and grapple with the bedpost. My long fingernails break and fracture against the carved wood like dry leaves. I press my cheek against the bedpost and shudder. I am weak, inside and out. I am an animal who won’t survive the bitter winter, one who will die under layers of frost and sink into the earth, and no one will know.

There’s a sheet of sunlight on the floor, golden and sensual. I raise my head, and see a window. I feel like I’ve never seen it, like the room was all solid walls a second ago. The sky is red and purple outside. Red like blood. Purple. My sons’ eyes.

Blood grabbed Maelor’s neck and yanked him away from Jaehaerys. I took a step, breathless, but Cheese slashed his dagger in warning and I stopped. My mother was thrashing and screaming.

“Stop him Mother!” Jaehaera whimpered against me.

Jaehaerys was on his knees and yelling at Blood to leave his brother alone. Maelor squirmed like a feral kitten in the assassin’s grasp and clawed at his scarred hand. Blood held the longsword in his other hand and adjusted his grip, making me clasp my throat. But Blood paused. I followed his gaze to Cheese, who had gestured for him to stop.

Cheese scratched his chin again.

“You were a bit slow,” he said thoughtfully, and I realized he was speaking to me, “A bit too slow. And you hurt my feelings before, calling me a monster. Maybe…maybe you’re not thinking clear enough to make a good decision, Your Grace.”

He looked at Blood. “Kill the other one.”

“No!” I screamed.

Maelor was dropped. Jaehaerys’s face went slack with horror. His unblinking eyes were fixed on Blood, chest rising and falling rapidly like a snared rabbit’s. Then Blood swung and lopped his head off in one strike. Red splattered Maelor’s face and he jumped. My daughter swayed, then collapsed. Jaehaerys’s head hit the stones and rolled.

My muscles seized and bent me in half. I vomited. Everything blurred. The puddle of yellow-green at my feet confused me. My legs couldn’t support me and I crashed down. I studied my fingers twitching in my lap. A soft choking broke through the ringing silence. My mother had stopped struggling and was drenching her gag with tears. I looked passed her. Jaehaerys was lying on the ground. Inside, something was hacked out of me and rippled up my blood to feed my building scream.

I howled. I crawled over to my son and cradled his body, rocking him as I had when he was first brought to my arms. But something was wrong, he wasn’t whole. His dazzling purple eyes, where were they? His pink cheeks, the white shells of his ears, the sweep of eyelashes and his straight nose, they were missing.

The pad of small feet. My attention snapped to Maelor. He was staring at me blankly, his brother’s blood dripping off his chin.

Behind him, the assassins were leaving. As he strode away Cheese whistled a tune and swung something at his side, gripping it by its silver-gold curls.

They were taking a piece of my baby. I scrabbled along the floor after them.

“No!” I sobbed, “Come back. Come back here!”

Cheese’s laugh bounced off the walls.  

I am standing on the window’s ledge. The breeze is warm and I can taste the sun. I breathe deeply, drinking it in. My fingers dig into the stone on either side of me and I shake with the effort of staying upright. I can’t see any green and that troubles me for some reason. The sky is bloody and bruised and the moat below me is an ugly field of iron spikes. I would’ve liked to see a hint of green, I think, before I left.

I eye the spikes. I remember a shadow told me that my son Maelor died. He was killed by a mob when someone tried to smuggle him out of Kings Landing before the city fell. But that was a lie. Maelor was alive. He lived, and was growing up with the certainty that his mother had held his life in her hands and chose to throw him into the void.

“I’m sorry.”

I jump.

I fall.

The tip of the spike spears my throat and I think:

Good.

Chapter Text

I married a dithering halfwit.

Fuming, I stormed into the quarters I shared with my husband.

“Your Grace,” one of my handmaidens began, but I held up a hand.

“Out,” I said, “All of you, out.”

My handmaidens, whom I usually coddled, shared startled looks before my glowering convinced them to flee. I began to pace, a cold hand resting on the back of my neck, trying to calm myself. But the third time I whirled around and stumbled on the train of my dress, I stood with my eyes closed and mentally talked myself out of tearing it a shorter hemline.

This was how my husband found me as he tentatively stepped into the room. I opened my eyes and saw him. His narrow face, which I didn’t find at all handsome at that moment, was carefully neutral.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I snapped.

Jaehaerys sighed through his nose and came closer.

I put my hands on my hips. “Don’t pretend you aren't aware of what I’m referring to. Beggars outside the Red Keep heard every vile word of what that loud mouth was preaching. Hard headed as you may be, you are not so dense that it escaped your notice from on top of that throne.”

“Cool your tongue, Aly,” he said mildly, “I heard.”

“Then why did you let him go on like that?”

“He’s a septon. He was simply stating his beliefs. I can’t punish him for that.”

“His beliefs!” I cried, “He believes we’re abominations, and that’s not punishable?”

“He was speaking generally of incest, not of us specifically,” Jaehaerys muttered into his beard.

I pointed at him. “You don’t wish to make waves with the Faith. That’s what made you deaf.”

He folded his hands within the volumes of his flowing black and gold raiment. I recognized the sign of him about to impart some wisdom.

“You are correct,” he said, “I don’t wish to make waves when we are finally sailing calm waters. It has taken much time and effort to get to this point. Why aggravate the Faith now by giving some nobody our attention?”

I stepped close, staring into his deep-set purple eyes. “Because that nobody tried to convince everyone that all the beautiful and precious things created from our love is twisted and wrong. Yesterday, I would’ve assumed you’d no more stomach such filth than I.”

A troubled cloud passed over his face and he clenched his jaw. When he reached for me, I shrugged out of his arms. My patience to hear his response ran out.

“Or perhaps you agree with this septon?” I laughed lightly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffed.

“No, truly. Is this what it’s about Jae? You’ve become so fond of the Faith that you’re starting to believe their doctrine?”

He gazed at me in amazement. “Of course not!”

“You have not the slightest inclination to think incest is wrong?”

“No!” he blustered, red creeping into his cheeks, “No, there’s nothing wrong, I only…I wouldn’t recommend it to any other Houses.”

I raised my silver-gold eyebrows high. “And why not?”

He shook his head, reaching for me again. Scowling, I shied from his touch.

“Why not?” I demanded.

He gestured helplessly with his hands and looked around as if seeking assistance.

“Well,” he grumbled, “It’s not healthy, you see. Deformities have been observed in foals when they’ve been inbred and – “

He clamped his mouth shut, not daring to go on. I could easily believe my blue eyes flashed like lightning. 

“Are you comparing our children to deformed beasts?” I asked quietly.

“Of course not. Animals and descendants of the Andals or the First Men have weaker blood than us – “

My hands balled into fists. “So because I’m your sister, our children might be broken in body and soul? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No!” Jaehaerys raised his voice, and I could count on one hand the number of times that had happened, “My love, please. Be reasonable. Forget this septon. I’ll arrange for him to be sent from the court.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Where he’ll speak more of our monstrous offspring, knowing his king condoned it.”

I strode toward the door to leave, but he seized my arm and turned me around. I pushed him away and his face went pale with distress.

“You just sat there Jae!”

I left Kings Landing on the back of Silverwing that night.

I flew to Driftmark, were some of my closest friends lived. I sat at their table and picked at my dinner, forcing a smile onto my face. But they weren’t fooled. They glanced at each other with Valyrian eyes, purple like my husband’s and most of my family.

I retired to the bedchamber they’d given me and bathed in a brass tub filled with scented hot water. Strangely, that’s when my anger and humiliation chose to overwhelm me. Salty tears mixed in the bathwater as I wept. The servants who lined the walls were struck dumb and their presence only compounded my pathetic state. I couldn’t find the voice to tell them to leave, so I sobbed into my hands, sliding deeper into the water.

Having no doubt that word of my behavior would reach the Velaryons before the sun was high, I took my leave in the early morn. I couldn’t face their inquiries or gentle purple eyes. But neither could I go back to Kings Landing.

For three months, I travelled the realm without receiving word from my husband nor giving it to him. Silverwing, my green scaled blue eyed companion, was my great consolation. Nothing compared to gliding on warm currents of air, the sun on my back and the sky at my fingertips. Below, when the sea slipped into valleys then crested into snowy mountain peaks in a few dozen wing beats, all my troubles vanished.

Perhaps my mount could live on the wing, but unfortunately, I could not. I visited Casterly Rock and Storm’s End. Each House received their queen with delight. My husband and I, together or separately, often went on pleasure tours through the realm and no one supposed this journey any different.

I was enjoying the hospitality of Winterfell when a maester brought me my first raven from my husband.

To my beloved wife Alysanne,
I expect you have had time to reflect. Will you come home please? For my part, I regret how our quarrel played out and wish I had spoken more delicately. The septon who offended you has been relocated elsewhere. There is no need to prolong this separation.
Your devoted husband,
Jaehaerys

To my brother Jaehaerys,
I noticed you did not include my other title, that of sister. Does its mention upset your sensibilities? Or perhaps you seek to be diplomatic and not disgust any spies who might intercept your ravens?
Your sister,
Alysanne

To my sister-wife Queen Alysanne,
If we are speaking of titles, let us include them all. You have duties as queen which are not being attended to while you aimlessly travel. Another title is that of mother. You have young children in need of your attention. I have attempted to explain your absence to them, but find it difficult when I cannot comprehend the reason myself.
Your brother-husband,
King Jaehaerys

To King Jaehaerys, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm,
Please explain to my children that their father, in his wisdom, did not defend them from those who would name them monstrosities. Consequently, I have not the smallest idea of returning to Kings Landing.
Your sister-wife,
Queen Alysanne

No more ravens came from Jaehaerys after my last, and the silence spoke volumes. The breach in our marriage seemed as wide as the distance I’d put between us. As the months rolled together and rapidly approached a full year, everyone had realized we were quarreling. My reception at the ancestral seats of the great lords became guarded. In their faces I could see they wondered if they were harboring a runaway wife who happened to be their queen.

I sat on the wide windowsill, legs pulled up to my chest and face turned to the soft morning glow outside. The Reach’s jewel-flower gardens were laid out before my eyes in a glory of color, bursting with roses of every shade, and beyond the walls were lush fields and rows of fruit trees. The sight was enchanting, the air sweet and pure, but my mind’s eye was on the parchment I clutched against my stomach. It was a letter from my eldest daughter Alyssa, lately married to her brother Baelon. Alyssa said she wrote on behalf of her siblings and expressed her deep concern for both the kingdom and our family. She begged to know the nature of her parents' quarrel.

But how could I allow my most secret fears to be formalized in ink?

After the demise of the despot Maegor and the Faith Militant’s disbandment, these peaceful years and my children’s birth should’ve left me contented. Instead, a dreadful suspicion had crept in.

As king and peacemaker, Jaehaerys kept the Faith close to him. So much so, one of his greatest friends was Septon Barth, Hand of the King.

I’d see them walking the Red Keep, oblivious to anyone else, their heads close together and voices low. Both bright of mind, their conversation would blaze through topics from extinct civilizations to the design of a new sewerage system. Barth was a good man but he was still a septon. And their conversations must turn to the Faith more than I knew.

Jaehaerys was wise. He would see the benefits of marrying me and keeping our bloodline pure; dragons together were a near-invincible force. Yes, he was wise, so did he believe in his heart of hearts that our marriage was a sacrifice for the good of his reign? Had the Faith of the Seven found a home within him?

Jaehaerys loved me as a brother to his sister. I knew because when we were children he let me wrap my arms around his neck and dangle against his back as he walked. He kissed my knee when I scrapped it, and then kissed my fingers. He shook his head at my antics but would smile against his will.

Jaehaerys loved me as a man does a woman. I was certain, for when he kissed me sometimes a furrow appeared between his brows and he groaned like he couldn’t kiss me hard enough. The adoring look he gave me when our first child, Aegon, was brought to his arms had nearly stopped my heart. And he had stayed by my side and showered me with tender care when Aegon died in the cradle.

I knew Jae’s feelings, but the Faith hung on the king like a cloak, inseparable now. They fed each other strength. When he hadn’t cared about the septon spouting hatred, my worst fears seemed validated. The thought that he might be slipping away from me…

I couldn’t go back to him, couldn’t lie in bed beside the man I worshipped not knowing if a part of him doubted the rightness of our love, or that of our children’s.

I breathed in the honeyed breeze of the Reach. I held Alyssa’s letter out the window and tore it up into pieces, letting it fall to the ground like leaves.

Silverwing landed and I sighed when her talons hit the earth. It had been a long flight, and though the Eyrie wasn’t far, my body ached and I couldn’t resist the inn I’d spied from above. The sun was sinking down fast into the hills.

Happy rumbles came from Silverwing’s throat as she lifted her great snout and scented the air. I dismounted my dragon, which was surprisingly difficult. She fidgeted in excitement and I slid awkwardly from the saddle.

“Silverwing, what’s the matter with you?” I murmured tiredly, going to her head and stroking her scaly cheek. Her big blue eyes, which were as unlike mine as starling eggs were to star sapphires, turned to me and shimmered with emotions I couldn’t place.

“I’m sorry if this has been as hard for you as it has for me,” I sighed, smiling fondly, “You have been so patient. You are the best dragon in the – “

Silverwing whipped her head up and pumped her wings. I stumbled backward, the wind she swept up nearly knocking me off my feet. Her belly passed over me as she surged into the air. I had to duck to avoid the tip of her tail.

I stared after Silverwing as she flew into the distance. I felt eyes on me and turned to see some ogling smallfolk. I coughed, straightening my cloak and patting down my hair. Head held high, I strode through the opening in the white stone wall encircling the inn. The inn was inviting and spacious at three levels, topped with white turrets and many chimneys gently puffing smoke.

I expected my entrance to result in the usual shock and awe. Most of the common folk could recognize me by sight, my reputation as a blue eyed Valyrian haired beauty had spread wide. When they looked up from their plates and mugs, they stared and the conversation faltered, but the recovery was swifter than I expected. I smiled and nodded and stepped deeper into the room.

I was pleased at the calm atmosphere and how clean everything looked, the wooden floor and stairs gleamed. The owner hadn’t made himself known and I guessed he wasn’t around. I fingered my coin pouch within the folds of my cloak, and noticed a serving wench had one eye on me as she thumped mugs down on a table.

I approached her. “Hello,” I said, “Would you please fetch me the man or woman who runs this inn, so that I might pay for my stay here?”

The woman went red, bobbed her head and ran up the stairs amidst a chortling crowd. I smiled some more at the spectators as I waited.

The woman seemed to be taking an unusually long time. I decided to find the owner myself and save the wench the trouble. I went up the stairs and when I reached the top Jaehaerys nearly walked into me.

He jerked to a stop the same instant I did. We stared at each other. Outrage bubbled at the thought I’d been tracked to this inn like a hunted deer, but my husband’s dropped jaw convinced me he was as stunned as I was.

Words failed me. I tucked my hair behind my ear and he tracked the movement with his eyes. He snapped his mouth shut. I couldn’t help scrutinizing him, searching for any changes he might’ve undergone over the past year and more. But he looked the same. He was in black traveling clothes, his long hair tied back and beard trimmed neat.

I was surprised at the relief swelling in me and mentally scolded myself. Had I expected disfigurement or calamity to befall him in my absence? Because of my absence?

I forced myself to speak. “I…I didn’t see Vermithor outside.”

“No,” Jaehaerys swallowed, “He scared some smallfolk, so I sent him to wait for me in the forest.”

I nodded, looking away, suddenly not able to meet his soft gaze. I bit the inside of my cheek.

“Alysanne…”

My name on his lips, that familiar voice, was agonizing to hear.

“Milord! Milady!” someone shrieked. A frizzy haired woman with a massive bosom waddled down the hall to us. She took in the sight of me with rapture. “Milady, so kind of you to stay here, so very kind. I’m honored, thank you, thank you very much. So kind. And I’ve told the king…” and here she stopped with a dreamy smile and seemed to need a moment. Jaehaerys and I waited uncomfortably. She took in a deep breath. “I’ve told the king, I can’t think of taking one coin from you, not a dragon or a halfpenny. It’s my pleasure to have you here.”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, “This is a fine establishment. But I’m afraid I must travel elsewhere.”

It was difficult to determine who was more stricken, Jaehaerys or the innkeeper. The innkeeper implored shrilly and he stammered about the late hour and quality of the rooms.

I stepped back from them both. “Thank you but I must be going…”

Then I remembered I had no mount. I ran my tongue over my teeth. That traitorous she-dragon. She was probably that second cozying up to Vermithor, knowing full well she’d stranded me within Jaehaerys’s reach.

He took advantage of my distraction and herded me down the hall while the innkeeper led the way with loud exultations. Before I knew it, Jaehaerys had let the innkeeper throw us into our room before he chased her out and locked the door. Her vows to find a token way to repay us for our “great kindness” was only slightly muffled by the door.

The room had a cold hearth, large bed and table and chairs. I retreated to the opposite end of the room, near the windows. Jaehaerys slowly turned from the door to face me. The light was dim, the sun was nearly bedded and no candles were yet lit. We were in a strange limbo. I felt I couldn’t bear to look at him but wasn’t brave enough to give him my back.

Jaehaerys’s expression was solemn but the intensity in his eyes, locked on my face, was alarming.

He strode across the room, the distance between us closing too rapidly, and words jumped into my mouth. “How are the children?” I blurted.

He stopped and I inwardly sighed with relief.

“They miss their mother.”

The simple answer tightened my ribs and hurt my heart. My arms longed for my little ones. A full minute must’ve passed until I could speak without trembling.

“Tell them they are always in my thoughts. I hold them in my dreams,” I whispered, looking down.

“Are they the only ones you think and dream of?” Jaehaerys asked in the same low tone.

I looked up at the ceiling, begging myself not to crumble. “I don't allow myself to do otherwise.”

“Why would you be so cruel to yourself?” he asked, and I heard him step closer, “And to…others?”

I blinked hard and met his gaze. “Harsh measures are sometimes needed to starve off a greater hurt. Like the amputation of a contaminated limb, which seems a desperate action at the time, but ultimately saves the body from infection.”

His face hardened. “And who, between the two of us, is infected?”

I let my unwavering stare answer for me.

“Someone suggested to me,” he clipped, clasping his hands behind his back, “that your self-exile has been a selfish bid for attention due to feeling overlooked by a king’s many duties.”

“Did your beloved Septon Barth suggest that?” I hissed.

We turned from each other, seething. Arms crossed, I glared at the floor. But my brother-husband’s temper, when roused, had ever burned out quickly. In the corner of my eye I saw his shoulders slump.

“Don’t you realize how much I love you?” he said miserably, “I just don’t understand.”

I closed my eyes. I hugged myself, feeling like the most wretched woman in the world.

“The last thing I would ever want to do is cause you pain,” I choked, “But I cannot go home.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a good man Jae, the best there is. And if there was doubt and disgust underneath your love, you’d stay with me anyway out of loyalty and for the realm - never showing me your disquiet. And if there’s any chance of that being true, I can’t remain by your side. I just can’t.”

Hands gripped me and whirled me around. Jaehaerys pulled me against him, peering down into my face. “There is no chance, not the slightest,” he said fiercely, “Where would you get such an idea?”

“Oh, who knows?” I shouted, “Maybe from the zealots you keep around to pour poison in your ears? Or your approval of the construction of more septs? As the coils of the Faith of the Seven wound tighter around us, is it so fucking unbelievable for me to think you might actually start to listen to them?”

To my annoyance, he didn’t turn angry or contrite, but thoughtful. “The origin of your fear appears to have stronger ties within you than in anything I have done or said,” he droned, the scholar showing.

I spat out an exasperated noise and hit his chest, trying to wriggle out of in his hold. “Yes, that’s right, it’s all my fault. Blame me!”

He cupped my face with such gentleness that it sapped my fight. His thumb stroked my cheek as he looked at me. My breathing hitched. I urged myself to move, to do something. My hands rose, to push his arms away, I thought, but they ended up resting on his forearms. I couldn’t look away from his purple eyes.

“Aly,” he murmured, “My Aly, the thought of a world where I haven’t always been with you, looking after you, loving you, that is fucking unbelievable. If you hadn’t been born to our parents, it would’ve taken years to traipse this wide world and find you. But I would’ve done it. I’d search for happiness. I’d see the proof of its existence in the faces of other men. But only when I looked upon you would I finally know joy.”

I felt light-headed, almost faint. Jae’s eyes were half lidded with desire and my mind was clouded by half-thoughts and a tangle of emotions.

I licked my lips. “But I’m afraid that – “

“No more fear,” he said, his mouth rushing to mine in a hungry kiss. It was as powerful to the senses as the slap of an ocean wave on skin. But it wasn’t cold; behind it was the heat of a year's worth of frustration and yearning. Jaehaerys devoured my lips and I equaled him in passion, gripping his tunic and running my tongue inside his mouth.

He drew my cloak off my shoulders and dropped it the floor. With a slow hand he traced the line of my body from breast to thigh. He pinched my dress between his fingers and drew the skirt up. I gasped into his mouth at his questing touches on my bare skin.

I began to unbuckle his pants. It was then a fevered contest on who could disrobe quickest without breaking the kiss. When we collapsed onto the bed Jaehaerys placed me under him and stared at my body, reacquainting himself with it. But I was impatient and groped for his manhood. Moaning, he seized my wrist and kept me away. His mouth latched onto my nipple and any complaints died in my throat. He sucked and kissed my breasts in turn, his hands everywhere. I undid the tie in his hair so that silver-gold draped over the lean muscles of his back.

I noticed Jaehaerys’s kisses gliding lower and lower down my body. “Jae,” I whined, “Don’t you dare. I need you inside me, now.”

“But I’ve missed the taste of you,” he murmured, and parted my thighs. I bit my finger when he nuzzled passed my curls and licked and sucked.

Only when I cried out in bliss and he had me dripping wet did he slide into me. Our desperation had eased and we took our time. He held my hands to the bed and moved in me as I grazed his neck with my lips. Gods, how had I lived without this for even a month?

I hugged his hips with my legs as he rocked into me harder, the smooth rhythm gathering speed. I wormed my hands out from under his and clutched at his back, gasping.

“I love you,” he groaned, “I love you Alysanne.”

I didn’t have any spare breath to say it back. I was drunk on Jaehaerys and what he was doing to me. The pressure grew to unbearable heights and pleasure burst in brilliant sparks. I screamed into his shoulder. My body clenched around him, making him grunt and spill into me.

Jaehaerys stayed in me and spotted kisses over my skin as we cooled down. Finally he pulled out and fell beside me. I wiped the hair from his contented face and lay my head on his chest. He wrapped an arm about me and pulled me even closer.

“I love you too,” I murmured, “More than anything.”

He squeezed me. “I’ll sweep away your fears, Aly. Whatever it takes. So come home.”

Chapter Text

He did not look destined to wring my heart. He was tall and thin with a long face like a stork or a forlorn mummer. I had noticed him speaking to two of his fellow knights before the feast, and I couldn’t say for sure why my eyes lingered as I went by.

He gestured with his hands as he talked; and it was not in the brash boisterous manner of a normal man, who slapped shoulders and swung at the air like it would make him more of a male. This knight stood still and argued his point to his friends in a calm, almost serene, way.

Neither he nor his friends noticed me looking as I walked into the castle, and the knight slipped out of my mind.

The feast that night was more tedious than normal. Our host was desperate for the attention of Prince Jaehaerys, my father, and was seated on his right, speaking without drawing breath. My poor father had been coughing into his sleeve all evening, and as much as the dry wheezing sound pained me for his sake, it was playing on my nerves. At Father’s encouragement my mother had left the table and was dancing with a lord. Beyond the long tables heaped with food people danced in a wide circle of tall candelabras, gliding across the floor in the soft light and to the strolling tune of the musicians.

Besides my father and our host, I was alone at the head table. I formed words on my dinner plate by prodding the greens with my fork, occasionally glancing up to see who Mother was dancing with now. Father had turned to me and asked if I’d like to join her, but I’d quickly claimed fatigue.

I just wanted this evening to end. The musicians’ songs were insipid when they weren’t punctuated by my father’s coughs, I knew no friend here nor wished to make one in this tipsy crowd, my favorite dress had become tight around my chest and underarms over the past few months and I cursed myself for failing to recall that when I chose it for tonight, and the dinner of glazed meat and sweetened vegetables had been disgustingly sugary and unsettled my stomach.

I wanted to retire early but princesses did not offend their host by snubbing their hard planned feast.

I sighed and picked up my goblet to take a small sip of red wine.

I blinked, startled by a sensation around my neck I couldn’t place. I touched my neck tentatively with both hands. My necklace was gone! The clasp had suddenly come undone. I leaned to the side of my chair and looked down, thinking that I’d see it on the floor. But the motion made me aware that the necklace had slid down my skin and was buried between my breasts.

Wide eyed, I looked around to see if anyone was watching me. Then sneaked a glance down. The corset of my cream colored dress squeezed my bosom tight and I could only spy a silver glimmer down the valley of my breasts. To retrieve it, I would have to plunge my hand down the front of my dress. And in front of half the court. 

Stranger take me, I’d rather die.

The necklace would have to stay there, uncomfortable though it was.

Sighing again, I picked up my goblet and drank deep. And in the middle of my sip, my eyes wandered down again and I choked at what I saw. The chain of my necklace was strung with silver panels of diamonds, and one of those panels was poking through my corset in almost the exact spot where my nipple was. My face went hot. Anyone who looked at me would think my nipples had hardened. No, only one nipple.

My hand flew to my chest automatically but I forced it back down. Thinking quick, I held my goblet at my chest, trying to act natural. My eyes searched the crowd frantically, praying to all Seven Gods for no one to notice. But everyone seemed lost in their own pleasurable pursuits of food, drink or fair company. What was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t hold this drink all night. I’d have to find privacy.

“Rhaella?” Prince Jaehaerys’s wispy voice came across to me, and I found his large purple eyes peering at me in concern. “Is everything all right?”

“Oh yes,” I said, my voice a few octaves too high, “I’ll just…go find Mother.”

I pushed myself out of my seat jerkily and stepped around the table. With caution, and holding my goblet to my chest as casually as possible, I began to make my way through the hall, sticking to the walls and sliding passed lords and ladies while avoiding all eye contact. I think I heard Mother say my name, but I pretended deafness when I went by her. Head held high, I walked swiftly while trying to look like I wasn’t fleeing.

“Princess Rhaella!” a voice boomed.

I cringed. The large figure stepped directly in my path, forcing me to stop – and only a dozen steps from the doors.

A brown haired young man smiled at me. In my panic addled state his name eluded me, but I knew him for a Tyrell.

“Only a moment ago I said this dance sorely lacked fair maidens. Please permit me, with your assistance, to salvage the situation.”

And he bowed, grinning, and offered his hand in a gesture intended to be gallant.

“Thank you my lord,” I said primly, “But I’m a little fatigued and have no intention of dancing tonight.”

“Your Highness, you wouldn’t be so cruel! I was heart sore before I saw your face.”

“I don’t deny such a courteous request out of hand. Only out of necessity.”

But he wouldn’t budge. He declared increasingly dire predictions for himself if I didn’t dance with him and my smile grew strained as I tried to politely extract myself.

“Princess, I beg only one dance. Come, let’s not waste a second.” And he reached to take the goblet from my hand and lead me to the floor.

I pulled back from him, clutching my drink so tightly to me it threatened to spill on my dress.

“No,” I stuttered, flushing, “No, please I – “

A big hand landed firmly on the Tyrell’s shoulder. Serious gray eyes in a long face looked at me.

“Your Highness, forgive me for my lateness. It’s unpardonable. But I’m here and can escort you outside for some fresh air,” the knight said, for it was the same man I’d observed outside the castle. He was dressed in plain clean clothes now instead of tourney armor.

I blinked at him, uncomprehending.

The Tyrell scowled at the knight, shrugging off his hand. “The princess and I were about to dance.”

“Princess Rhaella is feeling faint,” the knight said, “and has ordered me to take her outside.”

The Tyrell turned petulant. “I will assist as well then - ”

“We don’t want to crowd her,” the knight said calmly, “She needs room to breathe.”

The Tyrell looked at me as if hoping I’d protest. I stepped gratefully to the knight’s side. The knight bowed to the lord and together we walked out of the castle doors and into the cool night air.

“Over here,” the knight nodded to the side, “It’s quieter.”

I hesitated, uncertain about this strange man’s intentions.

“You’ll want to get that necklace out before anyone else comes,” he continued, expression neutral.

I ducked my head in embarrassment. Grimly, I followed him to a quieter nook by the castle wall and near the shelter of the gardens. The torches were few and far between and the light was dim.

“I’ll keep watch,” he said, and turned his back.

I eyed him. But he’d brought me this far. I squinted into the darkness for a hint of another living being but we seemed to be alone. I faced the wall and reached into my corset. I pulled out the offending piece of jewelry, wanting to fling it away for the trouble it had caused. I coughed into my throat and the knight turned to me.

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

“You’re welcome, princess.”

I finally met his gaze. I was considered tall for my age but this man towered over me. His hands were clasped behind his back and there was an air of ease about him.

“You,” I found myself saying haltingly, “You saw what happened? With…”

I held up my necklace. If his lips had twitched even a little, I would’ve raised my chin and stalked off. But his face was most solemn when he nodded.

“I didn’t see you watching,” I said.

This time a spark of humor lit his gray eyes. “No. I’m used to being overlooked and unnoticed. It can be an asset sometimes.”

“Such as now?” I accused.

He gave me a soft look. My heart skipped.

“Such as now,” he murmured.

I straightened, folding my hands together, trying to reclaim dignity. Or at least poise.

“Your name Ser?” I asked, a tremor in my voice.

He bowed, and when he straightened he gave me a brilliant smile that transformed the severe angles of his face.

“Bonifer Hasty, my princess.”

 *

He did not look destined to wring my heart. Even as a boy he was skinny, too pale and had large doe-like eyes more befitting a girl. Age didn’t improve his fragility despite endless attempts by tutors, maesters and swordsmen to “toughen him up”. Jaehaerys was his name, and it might as well have been the first word I ever heard, the name that was always on my lips since I was a chubby stumbling infant – Jae, my older brother.

It was the very early morning, and like every other day after waking I went to find Jaehaerys. I opened the door to his quarters, peeking in.

“Jae?” I called out.

There was no answer.

I went inside and shut the door behind me. My small feet padded against the crimson rug on the floor. I frowned.

“Jae?”

I found Jaehaerys beside his bed, wrapped up in his bed-clothes and crouched against the wall.

“What are you doing there?”

Again he didn’t answer. He was staring at the floor, hunched into himself. I slid down the wall to sit by him, shoulder to shoulder. I stared at the same spot he did and waited for him to speak.

“I had riding lessons yesterday,” he said.

I winced. That’s why he looked so miserable yesterday morning. He dreaded lessons like swordplay, archery and horse riding. The things every prince was supposed to excel at.

“What happened?” I asked carefully.

He drew the bed-clothes closer to him. “The second time I fell off I threw up in front of Father.”

I yanked on the braid over my shoulder, searching for comforting words. “Well, it makes sense. Targaryens are meant to ride dragons, not horses.”

“I’m lucky they’re extinct,” Jaehaerys replied glumly, “or I wouldn’t just throw up. I’d get eaten.”

“Don’t say things like that,” I said, and pulled down the material hooding his head. His eleven year old face was filled with sadness and disappointment at himself. I pressed my lips together and leaned into him.

“Everyone expects so much better from me,” he whispered, “Especially Father. And I want to please them. I’d do anything. But I can do so little, and it’ll never be enough.”

I found his hand and squeezed it. “Jae. Even if you were strong as an ox and were fit to tumble with the Warrior himself, that wouldn’t make you happy. That’s not you. You’re…well, you. And you’ll only be happy by being you. So forget about them.”

“You make it sound easy,” Jaehaerys laughed.

I brushed the skin of his neck, slipping my hand under his nightshirt to feel his warm skin and the sweep of his collar bone, delicate as a bird’s wing. He turned his big eyes on me, his silver-gold hair falling around his face. He looked so much like a girl, but I’d never tell him that.

“Do you want to be happy?” I asked.

He blinked. “Of course.”

“Problem solved. Be happy.”

I kissed his cheek and he smiled. I smiled back, pleased to see Jaehaerys brightening. I pecked his cheek again. Then below his ear. Then his neck. He flung the bed-clothes over me so we could snuggle closer and share its warmth. He put his arm around my shoulders and played with my braid.

I took my hand from his chest. Through his night shift, I rubbed and tickled the sensitive thing between his legs. Jaehaerys hissed. I giggled. Lately, he got so worked up when I touched him there.

He leaned over and kissed me. I had to admit, he knew how to kiss better than I did. He knew how to move his mouth against mine while I tried to remember to breathe through my nose.

He stopped and looked at me. “I love you Shaera.”

“I know,” I grinned.

“No, I mean….as more than my little sister. More than they’d want me to love.”

“I know.”

 *

I ducked into the tent. Bonifer stood inside and a young lad finished tying the last plate onto his shoulder. The boy saw me and paled, bowing deep. Bonifer thanked him and the boy half ran out of the tent. I inspected the knight before me. He was clad in good armor, not polished to a high shine like some but it covered his long frame well. The gray surcoat over it was emblazoned with the sigil of House Hasty, a simple white stripe going from the top left corner to the bottom right on a field of purple.

“You look great,” I smiled.

“You look…” Bonifer said, staring and shaking his head, “unbelievable.”

My smile widened and I curtsied. My dress was unembellished but of shimmering pale gold, the skirt thick with gauzy flowing layers. For beauty, I relied upon the rosy pearl drops at my ears and long silver-gold hair worn loose.

“Have you come to wish me luck, your highness?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, stepping closer, “And to lend you this.”

I unrolled the ribbon I’d been hiding in my hand. The satin was divided by black and red. A small - or what a princess thought of as small - diamond was sewn into one tail, glittering between the Targaryen colors.

“Is that a real diamond?” Bonifer asked, and I laughed at his amazed tone.

“Oh yes,” I smiled, “It’s from a certain necklace of mine.”

His gray eyes sparkled. “Well, I shall keep it close to my heart, since it’s been so very very close to yours.”

I shoved him lightly and he chuckled. He kept still and watched me as I slipped the ribbon around the left strap holding his breastplate. I tied the ribbon, and the tails draped over where his heart beat.

“Everyone will know who gave it to me,” he pointed out.

My smile faded. I swept a finger down the ribbon. “Indeed. And they’ll not dare to hurt you.”

“Rhaella.”

He held me by the shoulders and when my eyes remained downcast he tipped my head up. My amethyst eyes met his serious gray ones.

“I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“You’ll return this favor to me?” I asked quietly.

“Yes, my princess.”

I could hear horses snorting outside, the clank of armor as knights walked, the many shuffling feet and the excited murmurs of the commons as preparation for the joust was finalized. Emboldened by a sense of urgency, by the thought it could be the last time I did, I stood on the tips of my toes and caught Bonifer’s lips with my own. He made a surprised noise, but his hand clasped my hip and he pulled me against the hard shell of his armor. I locked my arms around his neck. The caress of his soft lips was addictive; I wanted to get closer, I never wanted to stop. My breath quickened until I felt I needed to break away or I’d collapse against him and lose all dignity.

I snapped my lips back and spun on my heel, striding to the tent’s entrance. Flushed, I turned my head to the side, not looking back.

“Good luck,” I murmured.

I stepped out of the tent and brushed my fingers against my bruised lips.

I went to the grandstand built for the nobles. The wooden railings and posts were draped with Targaryen colors, the sinuous forms of dragons moved gently in the breeze. I climbed the steps and sat in the chair next to my mother and father, who were talking softly with each other, crowned heads bent together.

Parallel to the grandstand was the tourney field, a long and wide strip of dirt broken by the lists running down the middle. Smallfolk, knights and lesser lords had gathered along the field and on either side till the tight press of people might push someone onto it.

Before long, a horn sounded; everyone clapped, eager. One rider trotted onto the field from each end. My head whipped to where Bonifer rode.

He was helmeted, a short purple plume springing at the top, and his visor was up to show his long face. His courser stallion was a long legged roan, covered in a white caparison with purple fringe. Bonifer had assured me it was a reliable steed, and the hedge knight he’d won it from in a previous tourney had wept to part with him.

Bonifer walked his horse in front of my father, as did his opponent – a big bellied Lannister, shiny armor filigreed with gold, riding a red destrier. Bonifer didn’t look at me as he bowed in the saddle. I glanced sideways at my father. His silver eyebrows were drawn together. He had spotted my favor. But Prince Jaehaerys dipped his head, and the knights drew their mounts away, trotting to opposite ends of the field.

The people hushed, and I leaned out of my seat to watch Bonifer. The knights closed their visors, and were given their lances and small wooden shields painted with their sigils. Those attending them stepped away and were absorbed into the crowd. The knights pointed their lances at the sky proudly.

A horn tooted. Almost without prodding, the horses leaped into a gallop, thundering down the lists toward each other amid riotous cheers and yells. The tips of both lances fell down to point at the rival knight. My eyes were fixed on Bonifer.

The moment the two knights swept past each other occurred directly in front of where I sat. My breath caught in my throat. Bonifer’s lance grazed the shield of the Lannister knight but both went by unhorsed.

The knights lifted their lances and slowed their horses, whose coats shivered with the excitement. The riders took position for a second pass. The horses galloped again, their pounding hooves spraying dirt; flags were waved and zig zagged in the air as the people shouted. The knights bowed their lances.

Bonifer’s lance struck the Lannister’s shoulder hard and the point shattered. The Lannister clung to his reins even as he fell, twisting his horse’s head into its neck and making the poor beast scream. Both knight and steed smashed sideways to the earth.

The crowd clapped and cheered for Bonifer. I beamed and found myself clapping my hands as fast as a beating wing. I felt my parents’ eyes on me and I ignored them.

But I soon discovered the Lannister had been a weak opponent. Many seasoned knights, with better steeds and armor than Bonifer, had entered the tourney lists and fought hard for the prize money and prestige of winner. Bonifer was young and relatively inexperienced, younger than I had assumed when I met him, at sixteen years.

But when lance or sword was dropped into his hand, Bonifer’s lanky awkwardness turned into deadly grace. And everyone at the tourney was fast learning it. Bonifer rode down opponent after opponent until the commons were crying out his name in worship.

The most nail biting tilt was between Bonifer and a freerider, the last match of the day and the deciding joust for winner. The freerider came onto the churned field on a dark gray stallion. His armor was as simple as Bonifer’s but he wore a long coat heavily embroidered with snarling wolves, open maws showing bloody teeth. This contestant had often unhorsed his rivals so powerfully that it had resulted in more than one near fatality.

Bonifer and the freerider took up position. The horses blowed out of flaring nostrils and sweat was lathered and white on their coats. The riders fixed their visors and raised lances.

My head was emptied of thought, I had only anxiety and fear drumming within. There was a moment of absolute silence before the sound of the horn.

The riders charged down the lists. I stood up.

Both lances, when pointed, were steady as flying arrows. They found a mark and each lance shattered in a hail of splinters against the riders. The crowd gasped as Bonifer and the freerider wobbled in their seats.

They managed to stay in the saddle and rode back for a second go.

“Rhaella!” my mother hissed, “Do sit!”

I stared at her dumbly before she pointed at my chair. I dropped down, breathing hard as if I was the one competing.

The riders thundered down the lists again as people cheered for their favorite. But again, the lances punched the rider in the chests and splintered. Bonifer and the freerider reared back from the blow, almost falling. They were too well matched.

The third pass was their last chance. If no one could unhorse the other, then the decision would fall to Prince Jaehaerys on who had ridden finer. It occurred that my favoritism could cost Bonifer the win. I bit the inside of my cheek and sat more composed under my parents’ watch.

The riders rode down the lists for the final time. The fevered cries of the crowd rose to deafening levels. My diamond winked at Bonifer’s chest. The riders crossed each other, and again both lances shattered. Bonifer was knocked back, his shield flying from his grasp, then he hovered over his steed’s neck, clutching his chest. All gasped.

But it was the freerider who failed to stay steady and fell off his horse as it galloped down the lists. I stood up and cheered with the others for Bonifer’s outstanding victory.

I only sat again when he rode toward me, struggling to contain the grin I so loved. He lowered his lance and a wreath of light pink roses and silver berries slid off it and fell into my lap.

“The Queen of Love and Beauty,” Bonifer declared.

 *

“The smallfolk understand what our ancestors did not,” King Aegon V, our father, declared, “that marriage or desire between a brother and sister is unnatural. Their shame for our sake taught me to live right. And I will not have my children descend back into that warped way of thinking. Am I understood?”

Jaehaerys and I didn’t look at each other, standing a respectable distance apart in front of our father. Neither of us answered immediately, letting the silence drag to show our displeasure.

“Yes Father,” Jaehaerys spoke first.

“Yes, Father.”

“Do you promise me that you will conduct yourself properly from now on?” the king frowned.

The weight of his gaze had us answering a little quicker. For an instant, it occurred to me that my brother might mean his promise. Jaehaerys had such admiration for our father and was not naturally willful. My eyes met his as we turned around and walked away, and the twinkle in them put me at ease at once even as we felt Father watching our backs.

We were discovered again, this time in the kitchens late at night. A servant found me on my back on a table soft with flour - no doubt where the cakes and pastries had been prepared for us that morning. Jaehaerys had stood between my knees, bending over me, nibbling my neck and venturing kissing near my breasts. I laughingly tried to fight him off by smudging flour on his face.

The servant shrieked as if she’d discovered a murder or an orgy. My parents were woken and we were brought to them, both of us powdered white. We looked down at our feet during Father’s furious reprimand and Mother’s crying.

After that incident, I felt the full force of the king’s willpower. Long gone were the days where I’d wake up and go a few doors down to Jaehaerys’s room. Now there were guards whose specific duty was to keep me separate from Jaehaerys. If there was an occasion where there was no choice but to bring us together, we were supervised like half-witted children who might walk off the balcony at any moment. 

If I hadn’t loved Jaehaerys so tenderly and irretrievably, I might’ve sneaked to his side anyway. If only to defy their smothering presumption of what was best for my heart.

Despite all that was done to divide us, my brother and I found ways to be together. We stole kisses like they were glittering jewels and we were greedy thieves. In the dark quiet corners of the Red Keep, our roaming hands became frantic and impatient. The thrill of outwitting our watchers made our stolen moments all the more pleasurable.

“Are we wrong to do this?” Jaehaerys whispered in my ear.

“Does it feel wrong?” I whispered back, and he never asked again.

Family dinners became fraught with tension as Father and Mother suspected what we were still up to. In one such dinner, the conversation was so stilted as to be nonexistent and the only one who didn’t notice the strain was Daeron, my little brother, who was playing war games with his peas and carrots. I glanced over to his plate. The peas had the high ground and so the carrot slices were being devoured by Daeron with vicious crunching.

“Where’s Rhaelle?” I asked Mother.

“She was sent to bed for misbehaving,” she shook her head.

I snorted. What I wouldn’t give for that fate right now. Mother frowned at me. A smile tugged at Jaehaerys’s lips as if he’d shared my thought. He’d been forced into the seat furthest away from me.

Father called for our attention.

Jaehaerys, Daeron and I looked at him. Duncan, my eldest brother, blinked dazedly, seeming to drag his mind away from where it had drifted.

King Aegon, face lined with sternness, looked at each of his children in turn. Mother placed his hand on his in support and unease slithered through me.

“Your mother has helped me arrange all of your betrothals,” Father said mildly, “To fine young people who I believe will do you credit.”

Duncan didn’t appear to hear him. Daeron looked bored. Jaehaerys and I stared in horror.

Father turned to Jaehaerys. “Celia Tully will be your bride, who I’m informed is a very pretty and amiable girl.”

Jaehaerys said nothing but his pale face seemed to whiten even further.

Father focused on me across the table, eyes harder than when he’d looked on my brother. “You will marry Luthor Tyrell and in time become the Lady of Highgarden. Won’t you like that Shaera?”

“No,” I bit out, “I wouldn’t, and you know precisely why.”

My parents went rigid. Mother’s ink-dark eyes flicked between Father and me, worried and sad.

“We will not discuss this again,” he said quietly, staring me down, “You must trust that I know what’s best for you as your father and king.”

“But If you would only – “ Jaehaerys pled.

“How can you be so – “ I said at the same time.

“Enough!” Father ordered, red with anger, “What lies between you is an immoral predilection, inherited from Targaryens who didn’t know any better or were deluded enough to think it made our line strong. But that unfortunate tradition ends now. My reign will see it extinguished forever and it begins with my children! That is an order from your king!”

I broke away from his forceful gaze, close to tears. Daeron had shrunk in his seat, eyes wide. Everyone startled when Jaehaerys surged to his feet, knocking his chair back.

“Please excuse me,” he said stiffly to the room, “I have no appetite.”

He strode out and I longed to follow him. But I knew his guards would already be on his tail and I didn’t want Father to see me retreat. I stayed seated, stabbing and cutting into my dinner with bloodlust. The only sound for some minutes was the tinkle of cutlery and slow chewing.

“Duncan,” Father spoke up somewhat awkwardly, “You are betrothed to Myranda Baratheon. Your future queen.”

Then he explained to Daeron about his betrothal to Olenna Redwyne. Daeron asked if this would affect his swordplay lessons, but I blocked out his clueless chatter as I scrutinized Duncan.

Duncan had nodded to Father then turned back to his meal without a fuss. But again, I thought he’d barely been listening. His brow was slightly furrowed and his lavender pale eyes were glazed over. It was like he was dreaming while awake.

 *

I stretched in my seat, stiff from bending over my needlework. I cast a look around me. The courtiers strolling through the garden seemed content, for once, to leave my mother and I alone in a peaceful spot close by the sea. I could hear the gulls crying and fat bumble bees flirting with the blossoms. I smiled and sighed easily, looking down at the embroidered cloth in my lap.

A knight on a white horse was charging, spear in hand, toward a black clad knight who’s horse had reared up in fright at the assault and was set to throw his rider. I brushed fingers over it lovingly. A romanticized version of events, to be sure, but it captured Bonifer’s victory well enough. I giggled at myself.

“Is that the man who crowned you at the tourney?” Princess Shaera asked.

I jumped, though I wasn’t sure why. Had I honestly forgotten Mother was in the chair beside me?

She was peering over my shoulder and looking at my needlework. I fought the urge to cover it with my hand.

“Yes, it is,” I answered her.

“You know him well,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.

Mother turned back to her own needlework, her long fingers threading the needle through the cloth so gracefully.

“You can’t marry him Rhaella,” she said softly, “You understand that, don’t you?”

Any hint of a smile dropped from my face. A lump formed in my throat. “I love him.”

My mother sighed, flipping her long braid of dark hair over her shoulder. “Oh sweetheart.”

“I just thought…” I bit my lip, “If it were possible, then I’d never wish for anything again…”

She fixed her eyes on me. “Bonifer Hasty is little better than a hedge knight. He’s poor – “

“He’s not so poor!”

“- and among the lowest of the king’s subjects. He shouldn’t aspire to court a princess,” she frowned, “and you should know better than to court disaster.”

I flinched. Her words were needles, stinging my eyes and piercing the gentle, tender part of me that yet lived and was responsible for daydreaming.

Mother leaned over and clasped my hands. “I don’t say this to be cruel. I’m reminding you of something you already know. You have always been aware of your duty, Rhaella, to this family and the realm. Integrity, dignity; these are qualities you have nourished within yourself, and all have noticed the great woman you’re becoming,” she tucked my hair behind my ear, “Don’t let this man cut back the things that make you who you are. He isn’t worth it.”

Princess Shaera opened her mouth as if she’d say more, but then lifted her embroidery again and returned her attention to it without another word. She left me feeling washed up on a lonely shore after being battered and spat out by the waves. In my lap, my thumb rubbed the threads and cloth of the brave knight.

To be concluded. 

Chapter Text

Her name was Jenny of Oldstones. She had not a drop of noble blood in her. When first I saw her, I thought her quite plain for a woman who was inspiring such passion. There were wildflowers woven in her long brown hair. She had black eyes, like my mother. In no other way was she noteworthy. At least from a distance.

When Duncan introduced me to Jenny and left us alone together to sit and drink and become acquainted, I received a glimpse of what he must see in her. Jenny threw one off-balance. She spoke without airs, but something in her voice had you leaning closer as if she were about to tell a secret. A certain turn of the head, and she could catch you with her eyes as thoroughly as a bird in a net. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Jenny was able to trace her bloodline back to an enchantress. But she seemed utterly unaware of the spells she cast, even as Duncan, the first prince of the realm and heir to the throne, looked on her in wonder.

I spent the afternoon with Jenny and to see her reunited with Duncan was an instruction in love. I thought we were engrossed with sampling cheeses and gossiping over wine, but I realized she had been listening for him when Jenny turned her head before he was even through the door. Duncan’s gaze latched onto her and his lips parted slightly with the softest of exhales, as if somehow shocked and delighted to see someone he already knew would be there. Jenny smiled. Duncan returned it and reached out his hand as he stepped to her. They brushed fingers, needing the reassurance of each other’s touch. He stood behind where she sat, their locked hands resting on the curve of her shoulder.

“Have you been enjoying yourselves?” he asked me, but that wasn’t what he really wanted to ask.

I nodded to answer the spoken and unspoken question. Duncan beamed at me, grateful for my support. Jenny leaned back and closed her eyes while he toyed with a violet nestled in her hair. I tried not to let my worry show on my face. If Duncan thought the approval of his siblings would better his chances when he presented her to our father, then he was either blind or desperate.

Jaehaerys and I were hiding in the Kingswood, lying on a bed of dry leaves and wrapped in each other’s arms, when he told me how the encounter had gone.

“Duncan was beside himself,” Jae said solemnly, “He told me Father seemed more bemused than alarmed, but still forbade the match in between his gentle ribbing. Duncan ranted about it for a full hour.”

“That’s that then,” I sighed.

I was a mixture of relieved and disappointed. It was just as could be expected. Duncan’s painful conundrum over his Riverlands enchantress had been brought to the natural conclusion. It had always been impossible.

Jae idly plucked out the leaves stuck to my hair. I bit my lip and studied Jae’s face, so close to mine that our noses nearly touched. He was dappled with patches of sunlight that shone through the canopy above, and had never looked more handsome.

“It doesn’t mean they can’t be lovers,” I spoke suddenly.

“No, no of course not. But Duncan cannot marry her. It’s…it’s just the way it is.”

We lay still, our young minds trying to absorb how harsh the world was.

Panic and anger hastened my actions. I grabbed Jae and smashed my mouth to his, clipping his lip with my teeth and not caring. Recovering from his surprise, he kissed me back with as much ferocity. We rolled together, legs entangled, hands roaming. I never wanted this to end. We panted into each other’s mouths, frustrated.

We brought ourselves to completion with our fingers, but I nearly, oh so very nearly, parted my legs wider and demanded Jae to forget his hands and tongue and do it properly.

And yet, after that day we had almost resigned ourselves to the fact we were destined to live a double life; one of sneaking behind the back of duty and honor for as long as our conscious could bear it. Celia Tully and Luthor Tyrell, our betrotheds, seemed to be barreling toward us with nothing to block their way.

I was sitting by a window with Mother, resting my eyes from my needlework by watching the clouds, when Daeron, my youngest brother, raced into the room.

He planted his feet. His small chest heaved up and down as he fought for breath and gestured wildly.
“Father so mad…Duncan…says he won’t, but Father…keeps yelling and says she’s,” he gasped, “not his real wife and – “

“Daeron,” Mother cried, standing up, “Slow down and speak sense. What has happened?”

“He’s married her,” Daeron exclaimed, wide eyed, “Duncan’s married that pretty girl of Olden Rocks or whatever her name is.”

We stared at him. Mother’s hand reached for her throat.

“Don’t be ridiculous sweetling,” Queen Betha tittered nervously.

Daeron was indignant that his important news wasn’t believed. He insisted he’d spied on Father yelling at Duncan, and so learned that Duncan’s secret marriage to Jenny had been unearthed by Father only a few minutes ago. Mother’s black eyes flashed, she clenched her jaw and barked at us to stay put before she marched off to find the truth. I waited the appropriate amount of time before I seized Daeron’s hand and followed her.

Duncan had married Jenny of Oldstones, and now that King Aegon knew Duncan took no pains to hide it. By the end of the day the castle was buzzing with the news, by morning, all of King’s Landing.

King Aegon the Fifth sat on the Iron Throne, summoned his son to him and ordered him to renounce his marriage. Duncan bowed and refused.

Aegon surrounded him with the small council, as well as the High Septon and Grand Maester in all their graveness. They each used their wiles, every call to reason and duty that could be conceived of, and coaxed Prince Duncan to break with Jenny. Duncan, expression flat as a stone slab, had said only: “If my wife were permitted to be here, she’d speak from the heart and in less than thirteen words you’d be weeping in shame.”

Alongside my siblings I stood back and watched, awed and a little frightened at the intensity of the love holding our brother captive, as he gave up the throne forevermore and became “the Prince of Dragonflies”.

*

She didn’t have a name. She was simply called “the woodwitch”. Her arrival was at the edges of my awareness; even though I didn’t care for gossip an albino dwarf was difficult to ignore. Aunt Jenny had brought the woodwitch to the Red Keep. This should’ve alerted me that strange work was afoot. Jenny of Oldstones lit trouble with the tip of her smallest finger.

We were alone with our father, Prince Jaehaerys, in his quarters. Father was pale, serious and coughing quietly into his fist. My older brother, Aerys, was beside me. His hands were behind his back, and he stood in such a way as to make clear that he’d been summoned from something he considered more important than this.

But I didn’t know what “this” was. What business could Father have which involved both me and Aerys – who was no more connected to me or my everyday life than the king’s horse?

“Are you well today Father?” I asked to fill the silence.

He turned his big purple eyes on me and looked at me for too long a time.

“Yes, yes, I am well,” he said, “I am overjoyed, in fact.”

I frowned. He didn’t seem overjoyed.

“Tell us the news then,” Aerys said, bored, “I have matters in need of attention.”

I resisted throwing my brother a look; it wouldn’t have affected him in the slightest. Couldn’t he see that something peculiar was happening?

“I do have news,” Father breathed, “Indeed, a revelation; which I need you to listen to carefully. It is vital for the future of our House.”

I straightened. “Of course, Father.”

Aerys raised his eyebrows and deigned to nod.

Then Father proceeded to tell us a tale; it was mad, insane, its foundations lied between reality and a mist draped otherworld where sorcery still thrived and dragons yet lived. Jaehaerys spoke of a coming darkness with real fear, of a frozen earth swallowed in deepest night. His passion grew with each word, his soft voice roughened and his round eyes shined with fervor. He looked unfamiliar to me then, a stranger sick with belief.

“The Prince Who Is Promised, the hero who’ll save the world from greatest peril, is destined to spring from the mingling of your blood. That is why the two of you must marry.”

I blinked and shook myself. I tried to understand the enormity of what was said. An approaching doom to be staved off through my marriage to Aerys? Was I dreaming, and when I woke I’d laugh at my imagination?

Aerys laughed loud and without hesitation. “What is this? A new way to punish my misbehavior, Father? To invent such a story, I must be more trouble than I thought for you to go to these lengths. No need for more dramatics, I will apologize to whomever you think I’ve offended.”

Jaehaerys frowned. “You are offending me now for not taking your father at his word. I am in earnest, son. This prophecy is real.”

Aerys shook his head and laughed more but his grin faded when Father and I stayed grave. His upper lip curled into a faint sneer. “Either your medicines have been tampered with or you’ve been listening to Jenny’s so called witch. I heard about the white toad she smuggled into court. She’s been croaking nonsense at you Father, rotten nonsense.”

Jaerhaerys drew himself up. “The woodwitch speaks plain truth and you are fortunate I believe her. This is the way, the only way, to save the world.”

“By our marriage?” I asked quietly.

Father took a deep breath. He approached me cautiously, as if I might lash out at him, before clasping my shoulders and looking me in the eye.

“If you cannot believe – then simply trust me, Rhaella. You have a higher calling, my dear. This won’t be some common marriage for coin, status or power. It is the noblest enterprise you could set yourself to. A destiny in which you’d be most gratefully received by gods and men alike.”

As I stared into my father’s face, another face appeared before me, a long face with gray eyes and a bright grin. I felt tears creep up and I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent them falling.

“And if that does not move you,” Jaehaerys murmured, “then I appeal as a father to his daughter. This is how you can honor and bless this House, and ensure its survival. Please, Rhaella. For our family’s sake. Obey me.”

He kissed my forehead and I closed my eyes, feeling his plea sink into my bones. Father patted my arm before turning away and walking to the window. Aerys seemed to think the same as I, that looking at each other then would’ve caused physical pain, and we shifted further apart while Father’s back was turned.

“Darkness gathers,” Prince Jaehaerys whispered, his hands trembling as he gazed outside, “And I will see my family strong enough to survive it before the Stranger takes me.”

*

It was Jaehaerys, amazingly, who turned out to be the most bold.

We stood together in what was little more than a storage room, having stolen a few minutes for ourselves. I wished to squeeze in as many kisses as possible. But Jae had barely brushed my lips before he stepped back. Curious, I watched him frown at my hands as he held them in his own.

“Do you know who we are?” he asked me, not looking up.

“Sometimes I have a vague notion.”

“No, Shaera,” he shook his head, “Who we really are.”

I looked askance at him. He meet my eye and gave a bitter smile. “You and I, we’re Good Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys. No one has ever questioned their love, nor the nobility of their deeds or the greatness of their reign. But we’ve had the misfortune of being born in the wrong era. And we are persecuted and maligned for it.”

“Jae,” I murmured, drawing closer, “Don’t distress yourself. It will turn out all right…”

“It will! I know it will, because I will make sure of it.”

I took my hands from his so I could smooth his hair off his face and make him look deep into my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I’m going to follow your long ago advice and ask you to do likewise. Forget everyone else Shaera. Let’s marry,” his expression melted into adoration,
“Be yourself, be my queen, and make truth to the world what we already know.”

I blinked. He grinned at my shock, and ran a hand down my silver-gold braid. “Is my brave sister trembling?”

Exhilaration was threatening do just that. I wanted to throw myself in his arms and submit to the scheme at once. In an exercise of willpower, I swallowed down my feelings.

“Can we do this?” I asked quietly, “Can we truly do this?”

“Are we less devoted to each other than Duncan and Jenny?”

I straightened. No. Certainly not.

“I will fight to have you, Jae," I told him. 

He kissed me with abandon and I smiled against his lips.

We couldn’t have been married unaided, we were in need of an accomplice. There was only one choice. We sent a raven to Duncan. He extracted himself from Jenny induced bliss and traveled back to Kings Landing, finding a septon willing to marry us on the way. Jenny’s magic must’ve rubbed off on him because how he convinced the septon to secretly marry the heir to the throne to his sister, I’ll never know.

When Duncan sent us messages that all was prepared, Jaehaerys and I bribed our watchers and guards and slipped into the night. We met at the Great Sept. The cavernous insides were lit dimly by a few dozen candles and we all gathered within the soft glow, between the soaring statues of the Mother and the Father.

The septon, skin sagging with wrinkles, had a vacant smile permanently on his face. He wasn’t the sharpest mind in Westeros, I think. Next to the septon Duncan was garbed in the simple clothes suitable for his new station in life, and he looked no poorer for it, wearing contentment like a cloak. I thanked him with my eyes. He winked back.

In a wispy voice that barely carried beyond our small circle, the septon began the long line of prayers, vows and songs that would bind Jaehaerys and I together.

Jae squeezed my hand with his. I grinned at him.

*

The gardens were lit with torches under a star bitten sky. It reminded me of the first time I spoke with Bonifer. It was in a quiet spot cloistered by trees that he’d first told me his name, and far from the exacting eyes of the court, of my family, the entire realm, I knew in that moment that this was a man I could love.

I closed my eyes and hugged my shawl tighter to me. The crickets were chirping softly in the hedges. Sea salt was in the air. I breathed deeply, trying to remember how I usually composed myself.

“Rhaella.”

I turned. Bonifer appeared out of the darkness and hurried along the path to my side. He was already smiling and I was too weak to stop him from taking me in his arms. I buried my head in his chest, breathing in his scent.

“I’ve…I’ve missed you, my princess,” he whispered, lips brushing the top of my head, “You have endless duties, I know, and I don’t mean to complain. The time you find for me is a gift.”

I squeezed him tighter before stepping back and pulling him into deeper shadows. Good. I could only just make out the shape of his face. I didn’t want to see his smile or his expression change as I did this. Or I wouldn’t be able to do it at all.

“Kiss me,” I ordered.

He must’ve heard something in my voice. “Rhaella, is everything – “

“If you love me, kiss me.”

He searched for my face with his hands before tilting my head up. Our mouths met in the dark. I felt warm for the first time that night. I put everything I had into the kiss, expressing all that I hadn’t said, what I would never be able to say.

Bonifer felt it. He pulled away, grasping my arms. “What’s wrong?”

My chest heaved as I fought to speak. “I thought about lying to you,” I whispered, “Of telling you that…it’s because of your low birth, your lack of wealth, that I cannot marry you. I wanted to hurt and insult you. Show myself to be a shallow unfeeling creature. So that you could move forward and forget about me without regret.”

His hands fell away. My face was turned from him even though it was too dark for him to see me crying. The silence hurt.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked thickly.

I sobbed into my shoulder. “Because you are a gift. One I can’t accept. And I would not have us part with you harboring even the smallest doubt as to your worth.”

He didn’t move or make a sound. I pulled my shawl tight around me like it would keep me from unraveling.

When he spoke, his voice was different. It was flat and drained of all emotion.

“What has…prompted this decision?”

“Aerys. I’m to wed Aerys because…because that is the way it must be.”

“Don’t.”

I felt the word like a blow. I cringed into myself at hearing what I’d been most afraid to hear.

“Don’t,” he said again, in that same steady tone, “I have no right to ask. It’s foolhardy and selfish. But I’m asking anyway.”

His hand found mine and I felt the heat of his body as he pressed closer.

“Stay with me,” his voice broke.

I seized his hand with both my own and kissed it. “Goodbye.”

I ran from him, nearly blind with tears and clutching my skirts to run all the faster, and didn’t stop until I reached my quarters.

Thereafter, sometimes years passed between my sightings of Bonifer. When his gray eyes met mine they’d give away nothing. But I knew that he had kept the ribbon I’d pressed into his hand before I said goodbye, the same diamond studded favor I’d lent him for that tourney so long ago. I simply knew.

*

Rhaella was resplendent in a form fitting white silk gown. Her shoulders were bare except for the silver straps. Her hair flowed free down her back and she was crowned with an intricate diadem of diamonds. She nearly glittered when the sunbeams shone through the huge star shaped window behind her and snagged on her silver and gold beauty.

Aerys was dressed in startling crimson, a gold band of rubies on his brow, and the black cloak of House Targaryen on his shoulders. He looked formidable and impressive, a true prince.

The court stood witness as the septon crowed at Rhaella and Aerys. The couple stood facing each other, but looked at the septon.

I heard a sigh near me again. I didn’t need to turn my head to see who it was. King Aegon’s displeasure radiated from him. If he could’ve thrown the emotion at us, he would’ve, as he was forced to watch his grandchildren marry. It irked me that even after Jaehaerys and I’s many years of marriage, Father’s opinion on blood wedding blood was still unaltered. Jae had heard the sigh and lifted his head higher. Throughout the wedding he made a point of appearing proud of his offspring.

I found I kept glancing at him, searching my husband for a sign of distress. But mostly I looked at the faces of Aerys and Rhaella as the septon spoke prayers over them between the shadows of the Mother and the Father. Aerys gazed at the septon with thinly veiled contempt. Rhaella wore her favorite mask, a veneer of polite indifference. But it was cracking at the edges. I scanned the sea of faces. Was no else struck by their expressions?

"You may now cloak the bride and bring her under your protection,” the septon told Aerys.

Rhaella gave him her back. Aerys swung his cloak off his shoulders with a flourish. The ladies tittered and awed. He draped the Targaryen colors on her and Father sighed again.

I remembered this moment at my own wedding.

“- one heart,” the septon had murmured to us, “one flesh, one soul. Cursed be he who would seek to tear them asunder.”

Grinning, Jaehaerys had grabbed the black and red cloak around me and pulled me to him. I laughed. We memorized the look in each other’s eyes before we kissed. Victory had never tasted so sweet.

I shook myself out of the past. A different septon wrapped a red and black ribbon over the joined hands of my children. “Let it be known,” he intoned, “that Rhaella of House Targaryen and Aerys of House Targaryen, are one heart, one flesh, one soul. Cursed be he who would seek to tear them asunder.”

The septon pulled the ribbon away and their hands remained together. Aerys looked at the witnesses gathered. Then he lent down to kiss Rhaella. She stiffened. Their kiss was brief and ended almost before the audience began clapping.

Beside me, Jae’s strong clapping made me remember to clap also. The newlyweds faced the crowd, unsmiling, and descended the steps to walk down the aisle. I tried to catch Rhaella’s eye. But she stared straight ahead. My hands fell to my sides. I watched her leave the Great Sept, heart weighed down with stones and my own happy memories.

Chapter Text

I wait.

And a rumble, soft as a dragon hatchling’s first growl, rolls through the land. It is insignificant, easy to brush off by those who notice. Minutes pass and then another shake, stronger. The mountains swell and bloat. The slaves toiling deep under the mountains, mining gold and silver, choke when the air in the shafts turns from scorching hot to unbearable. The birds go silent all at once. Dragons cock their heads and flick out their tongues to sample the wind.

The land shakes hard enough that windows shiver in their frames and not enough people notice, not nearly enough.

Earth heaves beneath their feet, convulses like a living creature in pain. The people shriek, alarmed and bewildered. Furniture overturns in homes, precious artworks shatter against the floor. People leap from their beds.

Valyria is awake now.

The shudders transform into a constant quaking. The hills turn brown and dry as autumn leaves. Wisps of smoke curl from the dirt. The city trembles, poised for something it cannot name.

Screams.

The ground erupts, spilling smoke, then ash, then fire. Molten fire; flames fed with mindless rage, fire borrowed from the heart of the sun, lifeblood of the darkest gods. It vomits out and soars high. The rivers boil into steam and lakes become green acid. The ruined mountains, their bellies exposed and mouths gaping open, rain dragonglass.

People run but there is no sanctuary, the palaces and sacred temples crack open like eggs and collapse the same as the humblest abode. They clutch one another whether stranger or friend and put their heads into each other’s shoulders and cry. Desperate pleas to their gods are smothered into nothing. Towers fall on them. They burn. Waves of bodies disappear into the fissures.

And the dragons. They roar and take wing, flying through a sea of ash.

Lashes of hell-flame slap them from the black sky. Molten rocks crash down on their heads and even the greatest beasts are stoned to death.

None escape.

The peninsula of Valyria fractures, sinking into the sea or dividing into broken pieces.

The last life sputters a final breath and dies.

I sat up, drenched in sweat and trying to breathe despite the vice gripping my throat. The darkness pressed in on me and I thought the cataclysm was happening now, that the sky had gone black and I only had seconds before the ceiling dropped on top of me. I scrabbled and fell out of bed. Sobbing, I crawled with legs dragging behind and fingernails breaking against the hard floor. I didn’t get far before I felt my heart would pound out of my chest; I lost the strength to move.

Hours could’ve passed before Lor, a slave that served as my handmaid, found me curled into a ball, wide eyed and shivering.

“Mistress!” she cried.

Lor tried to get me up but I was stiff with cold and she couldn’t lift my weight. Torn about what she should do, she took a blanket off the bed and draped it over me before running to get help.

She came back with half the household. I was put on the bed with the blanket wrapped around me and a glass of red wine in my hand. I sipped it shakily while my father sat beside me and rubbed my back. Lor opened the windows and I could see the sky was a reassuring pink. The breeze that came through was clean and unsullied.

“We have time,” I croaked, “We have a little time.”

“Daenys," Father said, "You must tell me what has you so fearful. Speak, daughter.”

I looked sideways at him, into his frowning eyes. “Valyria will drown in fire.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw – otherwise there was no hint of the reaction I expected in him or anyone who surrounded me. This drove me to speak aloud what I had witnessed in my dream. I clutched Father’s hand and haltingly told them every detail. It was as painful as lancing a putrid boil. I was exhausted by the end.

“Mistress has had a nightmare,” Lor ventured to say.

“No. It was a dream that was not a dream. It was the future, our future – unless we escape it now.”

But I noticed the faces around me were sleepy and unafraid, even a little irritated about these hysterics so early in the morn. My elder brother, Gaemon, stretched and yawned.

“Try to have the next dream that is not a dream a little quieter, sis,” he said over his shoulder as he went back to bed.

Only my father was contemplative. “Tell me what you saw again, Daenys.”

“I’ve told you – “

“Again.”

The details hadn’t faded, they were seared into my mind, and my vivid recollection gave my story credence.

“She has had visions before,” Father pondered aloud, “that have kept us from troubles.”

Malaena, the second of his wives and my great aunt, scoffed. “Inklings and lucky guesses that have made you easy profits. Nothing more.”

I glanced up at Malaena, hurt when I should’ve been long used to her unkindness. She looked down her nose at me, imperious as a sphinx.

“I speak the truth,” I said quietly.

“Go ahead and think mightily of yourself,” she sneered, “But there are great families with purer, stronger blood than us. You’re not a fire-mage and you don’t have a glass candle to divine with – and you think you have the power to foretell the world’s doom?”

“Enough, wife!” Aenar snapped.

Malaena threw up her hands. She left, her ankle length hair swishing behind her like a general’s cloak, and the slaves and servants followed her out.

Frustrated tears slipped down my cheeks. “Please Father.”

He smiled grimly and rubbed my back again. “I will sort it out,” he said, as if he’d divert an apocalypse merely to comfort his child.

In the following days I was feverish with anxiety, unable to sleep or eat. Lor despaired, afraid she’d be blamed for not taking proper care of me. But it was beyond her ability to give me what I needed.

It was morning when I climbed the great stairs of the tower in which we lived, passing the apartments of other family homes. The journey to reach the open sky was long. But always worth it. Just when one was sure that they didn’t have the energy to take another step, there was an irresistible light ahead, an opening breathing fresh air into the passage.

There was no canopy to protect the tower’s flat top from the elements. The wind lifted the veil covering my platinum white hair. On the stones beneath my feet there was a massive mosaic of stars cradled within a crescent moon. The hem of my dress brushed over familiar constellations as I walked to the tower’s edge.

Valyria laid before me.

Towers sprouted from the land, some low, some high, all uniquely beautiful. The closest neighboring tower was made of smooth dark stone and embedded in it were seams of bright red-gold running down like rivers of lava. Another tower was short and stocky, and I had to lean over the edge to see it. It was bronze in color and ornate carvings seemed to slowly writhe like a nest of coiling snakes on its surface.

Nothing green was easily spotted. Nature had been uprooted to better boast the wonders of man and magic. Elevated paths and roads branched out across the city at different levels, a vast multilayered web connecting people together.

For the first time in what felt like a long time, I smiled. Dragons were reveling in the morning. Growls and screeches and roars were the song of the Valyrian Freehold. It either terrified or delighted you, depending if you were a true Valyrian. And if dragons had such thing as a home on the ground, it was here. Dragons of all colors and sizes sailed through the city. Or draped themselves across statues or bridges to soak up the sun. I laughed to see a young one clinging to a tower’s side and curiously poking his head through a window.

My smile faded and I hugged myself. I could’ve brought my dragon horn with me and summoned Vonath. I could’ve flown high above and looked at the mosaics on top the towers: the sunbursts, hypnotic swirls and brilliant pools of color, the exquisite works of art that only dragonlords and winged beasts could look down and admire.

Outside the solitude of my bedchamber, in the face of such vibrancy, my dream seemed absurd. This was a city so magnificent that no other city in the world mattered. And it was very much alive.

But I hadn’t brought my horn. I didn’t want to summon Vonath. I couldn’t bear to see the Fourteen Flames, the chain of volcanoes serving as the spine of the peninsula. Dread curdled in my stomach each time I thought of them. There was a cowardly impulse to fling myself off the tower and avoid the day those mountains exploded, to never witness the falling ash, feel the ground quake, hear the screams –

“Daenys,” a soft, melodious voice was near my ear. I jumped back from the thousand foot drop and knocked into someone.

“Mother!”

My mother, Saera, wore her usual dreamy smile. My veil was coming undone and she repined it with gentle hands. I met her eyes easily as she was the same height as her twelve year old daughter. I hoped to grow taller than her, but it was a faint hope. We had the same slight build, delicate features and sweetly bowed pink lips. Everyone remarked on the similar expression in our lilac eyes – distant and wondering. It wasn’t complimentary.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Saera twittered. She stepped back and twirled on the spot with arms outspread. “Do I need permission to wait for the wind to lift me up and carry me to the clouds?”

“No,” I replied carefully, “But you do need permission from Father to go outside. With an escort.”

“Little brother is a clot,” Saera pouted, and then sighed happily, “I love him. Did you know?”

“Yes.”

She tilted her head back and closed her eyes in bliss. “I love him. I love him, I love him.”

“Come Mother,” I said, putting my arm around her, “Let’s go back inside.”

Saera blinked owlishly and let me lead her away. Her head fell to rest on my shoulder. “Yes, yes. I know. Back where it’s safe.”

The dread returned. “Safe,” I murmured.

Gaemon’s excursions blazed through my life like lightning. They were sudden and exhilarating. And rare – the reason for which, Gaemon put so: “My favorite activity involving pretty maidens is, in your case, a year or two off yet. I’m a simple creature, and can’t think of what else to do with you”. But despite his loud claim to neglect and indifference, he occasionally indulged me.

One time, before the dream, our family didn’t see him for over a month, he’d been so busy entertaining himself. But on a hot day, hot enough that I didn’t think anything could tempt me outside, a shudder went through my bedchamber. Scratching, rustling sounds came from outside. I hung my head out the window and Zytion’s wing nearly slapped me in the face.

“Ay!” I yelped.

Gaemon laughed. His dragon Zytion, red eyes glaring, hugged the tower with his clawed wings and feet. My brother bent over in the saddle to keep his seat and grin at me. 

“Fair maiden,” he announced, “I’m here to rescue you from the monsters Drudgery and Tedium.”

I shook my head, exasperated and inwardly delighted. He held out his hand.

My eyes went wide. “…you don’t expect?”

“Oh, like you’re not tiny enough to fit?”

I gave him a look, but squeezed my body through the window. He easily pulled me to him and placed me in front of him. His arms were a reassuring circle around me.

“Don't worry. I've got you,” he had breathed into my ear. Goosebumps raised my skin.     

The excursion after the dream wasn’t so dramatic.

Gaemon simply strode into my quarters, appraised me, then ordered Lor to dress me in such a way that he wouldn’t blush to be seen with me. Resistance was futile.

Gaemon approved Lor’s choice and crossed his arms to stand and watch. Lor put me in a slim gown with a plunging neckline. The material was a mysterious color, undecided between pearly white, palest pink or softest blue. Fragile silver and gold chains looped around the dress and swayed when I moved. A matching chain headpiece was placed on my head, the strands shimmering against my white hair. A small star-sapphire dangled on my forehead. The sapphire’s twin was in the single ring I wore. Finally, a cape of thicker chains was clipped at the hollow of my throat to cascade off my shoulders.

Lor used a mirror to show me her efforts. I was garbed in a dawn cloud and glistening spider webs. Stars were on my brow and finger. If one ignored my tired eyes and thinning frame, I looked lovely.

“There,” Gaemon said, satisfied, “Now I can take you somewhere.”

We went to stroll arm in arm in one of the lower levels of the city streets where it was cooler. The path was shaded by the stone sphinxes lining the path and crouching on turrets and rearing over doorways. Sculpted fountains gushed clear water and I would linger where the mist could caress my skin.

A slave of exceptionally pale skin trailed behind us with a sun parasol, shading our figures as we walked. Gradually, my brother managed to get me smiling as he made up a ridiculous game.

“And I’ve bedded that one,” he whispered to me, “She’s the plainest little bird, but once disrobed she turns into a lioness. I got more scratches on my back from one night with her than a dozen proud ladies.”

The dainty young lady, with blue veils hiding most of her, walked past within a band of armed men and women.

“Liar,” I huffed, “That’s Lady Elaemerys. She’s sweet as a lamb. You’d scare her off.”

He patted my hand. “Sweetness is not an obstacle to passion.”

“I concede that. But you’re still a liar.”

His eyes went wide, offended, before he dropped the pretense and smiled wryly. “I am.”

The next woman he pointed out was striking. She was dark skinned and silver eyed with painted lips. Tiny rubies served as beauty marks, strategically placed at the curve of her breast, her neck and wrist. She strode down the street, servants in tow, like the world was hers.

“Father was furious at the amount of coin I spent on her,” Gaemon said wistfully, “She’s one of the most popular courtesans in the city. But she was worth it. The night almost rendered me catatonic.”

I frowned. This one was hard. I didn’t recognize the woman and it did sound very much like Gaemon…

“Truthteller,” I said.

“Partly,” he admitted, “She is a courtesan, but alas, if I paid for the Rose Star’s company it would beggar our family."

“Good to know you have some limits.”

He grinned. “If I burned our House to the ground where would I sleep between trysts?”

I stumbled. My breathing became shallow. My vision darkened, becoming narrow, and then it widened impossibly far and all around me had changed.

Flames are devouring the street. The fountains are cracked and bleed poisonous gases. By my feet a man barely recognizable as a human being crawls through ash, his hands blistering from touching the hot ground, determined to reach a prone figure hugging its knees. The child stares at the man with heartbreakingly young eyes. The man is wracked with coughing but he keeps going, the shadows of sphinxes witness to his struggle. Unable to speak, the man reaches out a desperate hand to the child. The child blinks and reaches back. And it is almost laughable how instantly they are swallowed up by the collapsing earth.

Gaemon shook me and I was jolted back into the present. His face was frightened as he peered down at my face. I realized his fear was for me. Even the slave held the parasol close to shield my fit from the public. I put a hand to my chest and tried to calm. The sapphire on my forehead trembled and the chains I wore were shivering.

“I’m fine,” I said, “I’m okay. Really. I just saw…I saw….it’s not important.”

As I dared to continue walking Gaemon stayed by my side, ready to catch me in his arms. We were silent for a long time.

“Was it a vision?” Gaemon asked.

I nodded, not looking at him.

“Daenys,” he began cautiously, “Are you sure that…you are not seeing these things for different reasons than you think?” When I said nothing he continued, “It might be due to stress. And I’ve heard that all kinds of odd things can happen to a maiden after her first blooming. Or the simplest, most logical explanation is that what you are seeing is merely what it appears to be: a dream.”

“It is so much more than a dream, Gaemon,” I said softly, “I can’t tell you why I’m the one who saw it. But I can tell you that it’s a vision of what is to come.”

He turned his head away. “Perhaps it won’t come to pass for a thousand years.”

“Perhaps it will be here tomorrow.”

Two women were walking in our direction and both were whispering to each other with eyes locked onto Gaemon. Immediately, Gaemon brightened and smiled at the ladies. They looked upon him hungrily. It wasn’t surprising. My brother was tall, lean and muscled, with powerful shoulders, a graceful neck and almost frighteningly perfect features. It made women shiver pleasantly and men ache to scar his flawless beauty. His eyes were a deep sultry purple and seeped in sin. His hair was long, gently wavy and of brilliant gold without a trace of silver. He had a reputation of probably being the most stunning man in Valyria and was thus named “Gaemon the Glorious”.

The lady wearing a wide collar of bright orange gems dragged her friend toward us. She was focused on Gaemon like a predatory big cat.

Gaemon remembered our game. “I bedded her when – “

“I believe you.”

“Lord Gaemon,” the woman said, “An unexpected pleasure.”

She drew out the word pleasure, making it obscene. I doubted I’d like this woman.

“Lady Sharra,” Gaemon bowed, “your beauty has lightened our hearts this fine morning. Regretfully, I don’t believe I am acquainted with your charming friend.”

The lady giggled and turned her head coyly but Sharra didn’t introduce her. Both ignored me. I might as well have been a perfumed hound Gaemon was taking for a walk.

“Your company has been missed in our recent…gatherings,” Sharra smiled.

“Overindulgence spoils the fun.”

“Overindulgence? What a big, strong word. One I wouldn’t have supposed you knew.”

“You always inspire me to tap into reserves I didn’t realize I had, Lady Sharra.”

The women laughed like harpies, their jewel-encrusted wrists and necks flashing. I sighed. My outing with my brother was thoroughly ruined.

“It’s not your fault, of course, that you’ve been too distracted to enjoy yourself my lord,” Sharra said with the air of someone holding a winning card.

“Oh?” Gaemon teased, “What could my lady possibly mean?”

“Everyone knows about the troubles of the Targaryens. How your sister,” she turned her gaze to me, full of false pity, “has Lord Aenar running around and cornering every fire-mage, magician and high lord in the city to speak about her vision of doom.”

Sharra shook her head, infinitely sad. “Such a shame when a young woman feels the need for melodrama to get attention.”

I could’ve sworn her friend whispered to her: “like her mother”, and then hid a smile.

“Maybe you will feel more comfortable in your skin when you’re older, sweetling,” Sharra consoled me.

I could’ve pointed out who the true actress was here, but didn’t. I was drained of everything but bone weariness and merely wanted to go home.

I noticed both of the women had gone dead quiet.

I looked to Gaemon. His expression was so altered he appeared a different person. Tightly leashed rage had whitened his face and blackened his eyes. His beauty had sharpened into a threat. As he glared at Sharra he was like a living thundercloud, divine and deadly, violence bubbling within.

Even though his anger wasn’t directed at me, I too held my breath.

After what felt like an agonizing full minute Gaemon seemed to shrink back to normal height. His face relaxed. He gave a slight bow.

“If we are to remain friends, you must not speak of my sister,” he said simply.

He took my arm again and we turned back for home.

If I said thank you he would wave away what he did and exercise his dry wit. So I pressed close to him and tried to send my gratitude through the warmth of my body. I think he received it, because he squeezed my hand more than once.

Sharra was telling the truth in one way: my father was making a nuisance of himself.

At first he consulted men and women meant to be wiser than he. Then he dared to debate with them. Finally he beseeched every power in the city to consider my prophecy. He was dismissed as a fool. I didn’t care to know what I was branded.

I opened the door, mentally prepared for coldness, sneering and demands to leave. This was my great aunt’s rooms and it had always been made clear that I wasn’t welcome in them. I took a deep breath and shut myself in with my father’s second wife. 

Malaena’s back was to me as she remained seated. She didn’t look behind her or ask who it was. She leaned over and rocked the cradle beside her in a tender gesture that was shocking to see from this ferocious woman. Intruding upon such a gentle scene, I had no idea what to do.

“My first husband,” Malaena said without turning, “was my eldest brother. I tried so hard to please him. Year after year I had to watch my sisters bear him children – beautiful heirs. Full of promise. One of whom was your father.”

Her tone was conversational, as if she confided in me all the time. “Despite the lengths I went to, I had not a single pregnancy. I could only conclude that I was…broken in some way, deep inside. Then my husband died and Aenar took me in. And just before age killed the possibility forever, my son finally decided to enter the world.”

A cooing, gentle as the gurgle of a river, came from the cradle. I tip toed to Malaena’s side. Nestled in his soft bed my little brother gazed at us with inquisitive eyes. His tiny hands curled and uncurled like pink flytraps. I smiled and his eyes grew bigger.

“He’s perfect,” Malaena whispered, “the loveliest creature ever seen. And you claim the world he was born to, that he came for, is nearly dead.”

She let her son wrap his hand around her finger and he burbled happily.

“He still has a future. It’s just not here,” I said.

I sensed the truce, this understanding that had sprung up between us, would quickly pass. This was my only opportunity.

“Aunt, I need your help. Father may believe, but no matter how his heart pushes him to go he is held back by all that we have here. Gaemon cannot believe. And Mother…” I sighed, “If I have your support, the others will follow, I know it.”

“How certain are you of your prophecy?”

“I will bring as many as I can with me. But even if I have naught but my life, I will soon be boarding a ship to leave Valyria.”

She looked at me sharply. Her hostility returned all at once and she was herself again.

“If you had courage,” she sniffed, “you would face the end with those you claim to love.”

I bit down on the indignation at the tip of my tongue.

Malaena turned to look at her son once more before she rose and faced me. “Well. Best to go then.”

My father’s dilemma on whether to leave was like a perfectly balanced scale, undecided either way. And it was as if my great aunt slammed her hand down on one side, forcing things into my favor with a strength of will that was truly awe inspiring.

Emboldened by Malaena, Father upheaved House Targaryen. Everything we couldn’t bring with us was sold. Our slaves, servants and treasures were put on ships set to sail for a distant stronghold we owned in the narrow sea. The family preceded the ships on our five dragons; we abandoned our city to the sound of jeers, sniggers and accusations of cowardice at tucking in our tails and running because of a little girl’s delusion.

On dragonback, I finally punched through the thick gray mist and saw the new seat of our House. Dragonstone. It was a spit of black rock in the middle of a foamy, tempestuous sea. Apart from the port and the dreary town, a dark castle sat at the base of a smoking mountain. At first I thought the fortress misshapen, twisted and specifically designed to increase the ugliness of the isle. My mind caught up and I saw that the castle was made of many stone dragons. Not beautiful like the creations in Valyria, they were more sinister than a murder of crows perched upon a tomb.

The alliance between Malaena and I was severed completely once we settled in. She took comfort in blaming and resenting me for bringing us so low. And she became as scornful of the wider world as one of the basilisks, demons or hell-hounds wrought in the castle stone. She lost interest in our family’s dealings and holed herself up in her rooms, greedily hoarding her only source of light: her son.

I feared my father would turn equally bitter. But now that his course was set, Aenar was determined to reap the most from it. He set the slaves and servants to work mending the castle and planned expansions and improvements for the whole of Dragonstone.

My mother never noticed the change in her surroundings except to become especially fond of the rain.

Gaemon worried me the most. He seemed to spend most of his days in a state of shock, as if he had never believed that such a grim place so totally ill-equipped to please him could exist. He didn’t know what to do with himself. Despite all his pitiful pleading, Father forbade him from stepping foot in Valyria again. He urged Gaemon to take an interest in improving the state of Dragonstone.

“Why would I enjoy that?” Gaemon had asked, honestly confused.

I stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the gray sea and stood by my father.

“How is he?”

“Your brother is threatening a tour of the eastern continent. I am trying to divert him with some honest work. Who knows, perhaps something good will come out of all this and Gaemon will better himself.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

Aenar wrapped an arm around me. I buried my face into his coat.

“This is not your fault Daenys. And it never will be. None of us can control what we see.”

I doubt words could ever lift the crushing weight on my heart. I sometimes wished for the cataclysm to happen sooner. To discover if the burden on me would lift once the prophecy came true, no matter how selfish that made me - desiring millions of deaths just to get it over with.

I found I was weeping. My father picked me up and I threw my arms around his neck like a child. I sobbed for the lives that were beyond my power to save, for the city I adored and the family I had injured. And the new visions I hadn’t yet voiced to anyone.

My father put me down. He ran his hands through my hair before kissing my head. “Let me call for some food, you’ll feel better.”

He left me on the balcony. I gazed out at the horizon and pictured the gleaming towers of Valyria. I imagined the veins running beneath the land, unseen and ignored. They pumped not with blood but with fire that was growing steadily hotter, anticipating the day it would be released.

I could do nothing but wait.