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He is five years old, and his name is Royce.
It is the only name he’s ever known until the dark woman arrives in the middle of the night, flanked by half a dozen soldiers, and tells him he is a princess and he is a dragon. The soldiers’ hands rest menacingly on the hilts of their swords, but it is the woman who makes him tremble—tall and beautiful, hair as black as night and skin as pale as the dead.
“You have it all wrong,” he dares to tell her. “I can’t be a princess. I’m a boy.”
The woman turns her head away, curtain of shimmering black hair hiding her face as her shoulders shake. Tears prick his eyes when he realizes the woman is laughing. “I am!” he insists. “I do not lie.”
“No. You do not. But the ones who call themselves your mother and father did.” She turns back to face him and takes his face in both hands. He startles, and wants to scramble away, but he is helpless in her clutches. A vivid image of her squeezing until his head bursts like an overripe peach invades his mind, and the fragile tears escape his eyes against his will, cutting wet tracks down his cheeks. But she merely sets a thumb beneath each eye, nails pressing lightly into the sensitive flesh.
“Have you ever met another with eyes such as these, sweet boy? I tell it true. You are a princess. Or a prince, if you insist. Only Targaryens have such eyes. Only the blood of the dragon.” He doesn’t feel like a dragon under the sorceress's gaze. He feels more like a tiny dragonfly, wings pinned and body prone for the studious eyes of a maester. The woman looks down at him like she might cut him open to see what’s inside at any moment.
“If I am a princess, who is my father? They say the king has no children. My friend told me, and he knows everything. Did he lie? Is the king my father?”
“The king has no children of his blood. But you, sweet boy, are the next best thing.”
He is five years old, and they tell him his name is Rhaella.
He still doesn’t believe it, not really. Not until they show him the girl—the girl who looks so very much like himself. She says her name is Aerea, and it’s like staring at his face on the surface of a pond—the same picture, but distorted. He imagines swiping at the water, splashing until the picture shatters into nothing and leaves him alone, but he knows that's impossible. She stands there, as real as he is, as the servants force them both into elaborate black and red gowns.
He wants to struggle. He wants to scream. He wants to claw at their eyes and bite at their hands and tear out their hair until they’ll leave him alone. Until they’ll give him his clothes back and his parents back and his name back. But the dark woman stands in the corner, watching them. With her there, he doesn’t dare. He lets the servants maneuver his leaden limbs until he is dressed head to toe in the finest clothes he has ever seen, fit for a princess of the blood. Black and red, the colors of House Targaryen. Princess and dragon, just as the dark woman said.
Satisfied, the woman guides her two young charges through the castle, a warning hand on both their shoulders. The twists and turns of the vast red stone castle seem endless, but just when his legs begin to ache from the exertion, they finally reach their destination, a vast crowded hall. At the far end of the hall stands a man who can only be the king, tall and powerful, a circle of steel and rubies perched atop his brow.
At the king’s side stand three women, two dressed in colors and sigils he doesn’t recognize. The other is shrouded in black and red as fine as the gown they’d forced him into, with hair as silver as his own. She stands proud and tall as she scans the hall, glaring at each guest until her eyes settle upon the twins and the dark lady who looms behind them. She blinks rapidly, but otherwise moves not even an inch.
The dark woman guides him and his twin closer to the king and his brides. Stopping directly before the woman in black and red, she says, “You were foolish to think you could hide them from me.” Her voice is soft and utterly calm, but for the very same note of triumph he heard in her voice when she first told him he was a girl. The king’s bride bows her head in defeat.
“Our mother,” Aerea whispers in his ear, holding his hand so tight that her nails cut into his palm. He can feel her hand tremble, unable to tear her eyes away from the king, who stands tall and menacing beside his bride.
Their mother speaks her wedding vows flanked by two other brides, head still bowed. When the very last word is spoken, and she is bound to the king by the gods as well as by blood, she raises her head once again, but she doesn’t look at her now-husband. Instead, she watches the twins, never once looking away from them as the two women beside her repeat the same vows.
The next morning, they take him and his twin to see their mother alone. Though dressed no less finely, she looks different today. The boy can sense it in the stiffness of her arms as she hugs him and the distant look in her eyes as she studies his and his sister’s faces.
“They cut your hair,” the new queen—the woman they insist is his mother says. She runs her fingers through his close-cropped hair. “You look so very like your father with your hair like this.”
“My… father. Where is my father?” They still won’t tell him anything. The only thing the dark woman told him since she stole him away in the night was that he’s a girl, and he didn’t want to hear that.
“You didn’t know? Nobody told you?” She laughs, cold and bitter. “Your father is dead. Prince Aegon is dead. My new husband slew him and stole his throne. His own nephew.” The boy wants to hear more, but before he can give voice to his questions, his sister chimes in, asking in that soft timid voice of hers what will happen to them now. To that, their mother has no answer.
It is not long until they learn. That evening, the servants force him into another fine red and black gown and whisk him and his sister away to the throne room, the king’s dark lady ever by their side. Their uncle, King Maegor, sits upon his great throne of twisted and mangled steel. The king is the largest man the boy has ever seen, towering dangerously over any man who stands before him, but surrounded by a thousand deadly, half-melted blades and seated so high, even he looks small. Unexpectedly, the king smiles when he catches sight of the two young princesses as they enter the throne room.
He descends from the Iron Throne, growing larger and more imposing with each step he takes until he reaches the two children. There, in the throne room, before the entire court, their uncle declares his twin sister his heir “until such time as the gods grant me a son,” imperious behind her, with a hand on each of her shoulders as she trembles. If you are my stepfather now, he wants to shout, then you had a son. You could have a son still, if you’d only take me. He can’t say it. Very little frightens him, but his stepfather does. Just as his mother did the night before, the boy bows his head and bites his tongue.
He is five years old, and one day his name will be Septa Rhaella.
He can’t think of anything worse.
The night before they took him from King’s Landing for Oldtown, he nearly ran away. Only his sister’s tears convinced him to stay. Aerea swore they’d catch him and throw him in the black cells, and, if by some miracle he escaped, it would be her in his place. The black cells were where their uncle died, she said. No, not the king, Mother and Father’s brother. She’d heard the soldiers whisper of how the king and his dark queen tortured and killed him, slicing away at his flesh until nothing but bones remained. You can’t let it happen to us too, his sister begged, tears staining her fair face, and he could not bring himself to refuse her.
He is free from the torment she feared, but his white novice robes are as stifling as the blackest of black cells.
In the days he weeps and rages, fights the septas and other novices both. In the nights, he dreams. Dreams of flying and of falling. Dreams of dragon wings and dragon fire, great black wings that bear him so high he sees all of Westeros, even his stepfather Maegor, far away, alone on his lethal throne, desperately grasping for a son, oblivious that he’s already sent him far away. Dreams of a face exactly like his own, but older. Is it his father? Or is it himself? Older and taller and stronger. A man grown. A man. He chases after the man, trying to get a better look, but each time he draws close, he jolts awake, and the image of the man fades away, as if he was never there at all.
He is six years old, and his name will be Aerea.
It will be strange learning to answer to a new name again, but at least it is one he chose this time. It is no boy’s name, but it is his name, a gift given to him by his only sister, as he has gifted her Rhaella. He holds her tight after he’s traded his white novice robes for her dress of black and red.
Today is his last chance to tell her his secret. For several long moments, they both stay silent, until he finally dares to speak. “Did mother ever tell you what happened to me when she sent us away? To keep us from Uncle Maegor?”
His sister nods. “They hid you away in Lannisport.”
“Not that.” He chews on his lip then inhales deeply. “I meant… the family that took me in. The ones who called themselves my parents. They—I… to keep me safe from our uncle, they told me I was their son. I believed I was a boy. I knew no other truth until the day our uncle's sorceress queen came to take me away. Betimes I think that never changed.”
His sister stares back at him with wide guileless eyes. For a fleeting, fragile moment he is afraid, certain she will laugh at him, or worse. Rhaella is the gentlest soul he knows, but how could even she believe him? He wants to take the words back, lock them away and never again be so foolish to tell another soul this child’s dream of his, but then Rhaella throws her arms around him. “I think I understand how you feel. I shall pray to the Seven every day to keep you safe in King’s Landing,” she says, voice muffled by his shoulder. There’s a pause, then she adds, “My brother.”
He is eight years old, and his name is Royce once again.
They hadn’t planned it, but he can’t resist taking the chance. They sit him down before an old woman, and instruct her to dye his hair a muddy brown. “Cut it off,” he tells her. “Whoever you’re hiding me from, they’re looking for a little princess, not a peasant lad.”
“Clever girl,” the old woman says, then amends, “Clever boy,” and does exactly as he asked. He was half asleep when Lord Corbray’s men spirited him away from the Red Keep, but now he sits up straight and alert as the old woman shears away his hair. Her handiwork is jagged and rushed, but even so riddled with imperfections he trembles with excitement as his hair falls to the ground.
He can’t stop running his hand through what’s left of his hair as they bring him to the stables at the outskirts of the city. There, the master of the stables looks him over, squinting down at him beneath a pair of thick, dark eyebrows. “The lad’s a bit scrawny, but he’ll do well enough. What’s your name, boy?”
“Royce. My name is Royce.”
“Well, Royce, let’s tend to the horses.”
Amidst the mud and horses, far away from dragons and thrones and the young uncle who wears the crown that might have been his, none mistake him for a princess. None mistake him for a girl, either. These fleeting moons caring for the horses and playing with the other boys on the streets and conversing with a thousand travelers are the happiest time of his life.
He is nine years old, and he wishes his name was not Aerea.
He hates Dragonstone. He hates his mother.
He wishes his sister were here.
She startles at loud noises and is as terrified of tiny puppies as she is of the great dragons that share the island with them, but at least she knows his secret. She’s the only one who knows. She’s the only one who can understand even a little. She could not stand being Aerea, no more than he could stand being Rhaella. She would understand, in her way, that for him being Aerea is just as hard. Nobody else could.
He’d tell the Lady Elissa his secret—that he doesn’t want to be Aerea, doesn’t want to be a princess or even a girl at all—but he knows she would tell Mother. And what would Mother do? Shout at him? Laugh at him? Rage at what a fool he is to think he could possibly be a boy when the proof he is nothing of the sort sits upon the brow of his uncle, the king, and will never be his? Weep at the injustice that is their sorry lot in life?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know.
So he tells the dragons instead. First, just the eggs. They don’t have ears yet to hear him, or eyes to watch and judge him. They can’t hear his voice that will never break as he matures into manhood or see that he’s entirely too scrawny to be a proper boy.
He holds one close against his chest. It is black with iridescent blue swirls. The heat of it diffuses through his entire body, and he whispers his names into its hard shell. All the names he’s known and abandoned, and even the name he’s called only in his dreams.
In time, he speaks the same secrets to the hatchlings and the youthful drakes grown just large enough to take a rider. One day, he settles cross-legged before the great silvery-blue maw of Dreamfyre, his mother’s own dragon. “You probably don’t like me. Nobody does. But I can’t tell my mother this, so I have to tell you.”
She peers down at him, and he spills his secret, speaking his true name above a whisper for the very first time. Dreamfyre blinks. Is she judging him? Will Mother somehow know through the bond that lets her take to the skies on dragonback? He doesn’t know how it works. He’s never bonded with a dragon. Though his mother urges him to choose a hatchling of his very own, none of them feel right.
He peers back up at her, his arms curled around his knees, and waits. He waits—for a burst of dragonfire or a flash of a hundred deadly teeth, he isn’t sure. Neither ever comes. Dreamfyre closes the few feet between them and nudges him with her snout, incongruously gentle for a creature so large. Is it dismissal? Is it acceptance? Would Mother do the same? He doesn’t know, but for now, this is enough.
He is twelve years old, and his name is Aegon.
Like his father. Like the Conqueror.
He tells himself he is Aegon when, in the dead of night, he finally works up the nerve to approach Balerion the Black Dread. The Conqueror’s dragon. His Uncle Maegor’s dragon. The dragon that killed his father.
Killer of one Aegon, but partner to the other.
What will Balerion be for the next?
Standing before the greatest living creature in existence, all his High Valyrian seems to desert him. He cannot voice a single command to wake the ancient dragon. Balerion snores, and with each exhale, great gusts of hot air warm his skin and make him sweat. It’s just the heat, he tells himself, not his nerves. The boy—Aegon—wills himself not to tremble as he stretches out a hand towards Balerion’s snout.
When his fingers brush against weathered black scales, the beast stirs. He opens one great golden eye, wide and glowing, like the full moon. He cannot move. All he can do is stare back up at the dragon, willing himself not to blink and determined not to look away.
The great beast pulls his head back, and he stumbles forward and throws out his hands without thinking, grasping desperately at the scales for purchase. He clings to Balerion as the ancient dragon raises his head, lifting him high off the ground. If I let go, he’ll eat me alive. If I let go, he’ll know me for a fraud. He’ll know I’m no Aegon and never was. Balerion rises with a roar from his resting place, and there is nowhere for him to go but up. With only the moonlight to guide him, he scrambles from snout to the place between his eyes.
He holds fast to a mighty black spike that juts out above one of the dragon’s eyes with a desperate, unyielding grip, and looks out over the yard. Half a dozen smaller dragons gaze back, an audience sitting in judgment of his mad exploit. He prays to every god he knows for Balerion to accept him. Please, he thinks, Please fly. Let me see all of Westeros from above. Let me be free, just like in my dreams. The seconds stretch into minutes, and neither boy nor dragon stirs.
For a moment, he thinks he’s done it, then Balerion gives a fierce toss of his head, like a great warhorse shaking off a tiny, pesky fly. His entire body is whipped into the air, and his shoulder near wrenched out of its socket, but somehow, he still clings with one arm to the vicious spike that juts from Balerion’s brow.
He dangles by a single hand before the great golden disc of the dragon’s eye. They gaze at one another unblinking—Balerion and Aegon, beast and boy, dragon and… rider? It’s a challenge, he decides. No dragon will bow to a little boy simply because he begs it, least of all the oldest and mightiest of them all. No matter the pain in his shoulder or the inevitable fiery death that awaits him if Balerion rejects him, he has to meet the challenge. With fresh determination, he raises his other arm and grabs hold of the spike, ready to pull himself up. Balerion closes his eye, lets loose another roar, louder than the first—so loud it seems to make the very foundations of Dragonstone shudder—and tosses his head once again.
This time, Aegon is ready. He grasps tight to the protruding spike, braces his legs against the hard, scaly surface of Balerion’s eyelid, then hoists himself up. As the dragon stills, Aegon finally has a solid surface beneath his feet. He touches both hands to Balerion’s scales and says, “You killed my father, Balerion. Do you remember him? He was called Aegon too. Will you do the same to me? I know you can, if you want. Will you kill me, or will we fly?”
In answer, the Black Dread lets out a great snort, smoke spewing from his nostrils. He spreads his wings, so vast and so black they blot out the moon. Each flap of Balerion’s wings takes them up, up, higher and higher, and Prince Aegon Targaryen flies.