Chapter Text
Night fell solemnly over the desert plains of Slaver's Bay, stretching far and wide along the sister cities. From where she stood, Aerea could still see the tendrils of smoke billowing from Astapor and turning the night sky a dark shade of gray. The air was thick with the smell of smoke and sickness, which had followed them throughout the coastal road, clinging to hair and fabric and lungs, and her party had dwindled for it. The heat of day had given way to fierce winds that spread the fires and chilled the bones of sun-scorched men, men restless from waiting for a battle that did not seem to come. It might not come at all if everything goes as planned. Aerea did not understand why the soldiers around her seemed so eager to die. They expect Daenerys to refuse me. They don't know death awaits them either way.
Connington had warned her that the Golden Company had never learned to tell the weight of purse from that of scabbard, and sellswords grew restless where common men grew fat. He said it had gotten worse after Myles Toyne died, but he said that of many things. They think war means more coin to spend. They forget the dragons. It could not be denied, still, that since they started their way up the Ghiscari coastal road a fortnight past, no beast had taken to the sky.
Aerea glanced North, then, hoping to be the first, hoping that it would mean something for her to see a pair of black wings against black sky—hoping, even, that it meant Daenerys saw her, too—but when she looked at the horizon, where mountain ranges met arid sand, she saw only Meereen, standing still with its multi-colored bricks built by multi-colored slaves a hundred thousand years ago. A city drawn by men who owned too much and built by those who owned too little, passed down from master to master while moons turned above, walls grew thick around them, and history swallowed their names.
Until came the Dragon Queen.
I am marching where she herself has marched, Aerea thought; I am no less dragon than she is. I am no less queen.
"A King does not remind his subjects he is King, Aerea," Jon Connington had told her, not unkindly, a few days prior, while they mused over what should be done once they reached the rainbow steps of the Great Pyramid. "The same should apply to you. You should wear your crown even as you lack one upon your brow."
Your Grace, thought Aerea. The same should apply to you, Your Grace.
Still, she knew Griff spoke truly. He pictures my father when he says it, Aerea was sure. One day he will picture only me. Connington had been her father's friend, and on lonely nights, when she wondered if there would ever come a day they would cross the Narrow Sea, he would tell her stories of Prince Rhaegar's glory days, and the happy ones as well. I am Aerea Targaryen, she would whisper to herself before bed, with longing in her thoughts and hope brewing in her chest. I will be first of my name, daughter of Rhaegar, blood of the dragon, and heir to the Iron Throne. Young Griff was nought but a ghost in such nights, and in her dreams she always had a silver mane of hair.
The following day, Aerea washed the blue off her scalp. Daenerys would hear her words, Aerea was sure, but believing them was another matter entirely. If she mistrusts me, well, Daenerys has eyes. My hair will be my crown. My eyes will be my jewels.
Her hair had always been worn short as to lessen the amount of dye it required to quench the silver out, and it was not to their detriment that many a sellsword had mistook her for a boy in their ventures. It sat some inches below her ears now, for the only haircut Jon Connington knew how to make was simply his own. Washing was not enough, for the blue was deep and the dye thick, but sunbathing had lessened the pigment to a slight cold hue, leaving Aerea with sad grey strands.
Harry Strickland, Captain-General of the Gold Company, alongside Connington and Aerea, had devised a small party to accompany the princess on the few miles that set Meereen and their retinue apart. They were to be Westerosi, all from houses that had pledged their support to Rhaegar during Robert's uprising, knights in name as well as virtue, if Harry could be believed. He would stay, but Connington would follow, as well as four other knights in their service, off to see the Dragon Queen.
"I have gone through much to stand here before you… Your Grace." She chose her words carefully, recited a thousand times before the mirror. "I wore a false name and dyed my hair a false color, in hopes that a time would come when the Targaryen name would rise again as it was born to do. I have lived in hiding for sixteen years, My Queen… and as I think on it now, and though I did not think it then, hoping, too, for one like you. Dreaming of not being alone.
"I have travelled the Rhoyne, through the Dagger Lake, and the Golden Fields. I have seen Ghoyan Drohe, and Ny Sar, and Choroyne, ruins born of dragonfire by the dragon's will such was the Freehold of old. I have seen stone men and ghosts and turtles larger than our boat in my voyage, but what I craved to see were dragons… to see you." She glanced at Daenerys' crown as she spoke, though from where she stood, at the base of the golden throne, a glance to the face or a glance to the head looked about the same.
"I have also shared a roof with many a man, for one does not live as I've lived without help, and one of those men, in his wisdom, called you a widow… a mother… a sacker… Above all, my Queen, he called you Aegon, a conqueror born again." In truth, Tyrion had called her Aegon the Conqueror With Teats, but she thought Daenerys could be spared the rest. Besides, the less they talked of it, the better. Tyrion Lannister escaping their grasp need not concern the Queen, it had been decided.
"I ask you, then, not as a beggar, but as an equal. Not as your sister, but as one who shares the blood that flows through your veins." Aerea felt pride scratch her at throat and pry her mouth open. "I ask you as your brother's daughter, one that survived the lion and the stag, and that grew in a land not her own, hoping of one day crossing the sea they call narrow, but that to us is too vast, that we might unite ourselves as Aegon did his sisters. I ask, Daenerys, that if you are Aegon, that I might be Visenya. Let us rule together, and find a husband as we see fit.
"Ruare īlon siglison pa lentor zadrile sīrgoō jaqiarzir īlva idīnnon sikagon dārys." Let us restore the House of the Dragon to its former glory, for from our union shall hatch Kings.
For a long moment, Daenerys Targaryen did not speak. She simply sat, still, in her ebony chair, as foreign as it was simple in the grand audience hall made of gold.
"I… shall consider your proposition. If Ilyrio Mopatis has helped you as he helped me, then much will change. In the meantime, Princess Aerea, regardless if you truly are who you say you are, you shall live well and comfortably under my roof, and lack for nothing. That is all."