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Chapter Text

It was the new year and the beginning of what appeared to be spring when the invitation to visit the enigmatic Dragonstone  reached the Royal Family. And in the eyes of the intrigued Court, no one celebrated the news more, and more publicly, than King Viserys Targaryen; The Peaceful.

The invitation came from Princess Rhaenyra herself. The Disinherited. The Silent One. The famously absent one. The invitation came from the very princess whom Aemond had never met in all his years of life. Although he knew she was his half-sister, Aemond thought of her more as a myth. A story and a warning to scare him before he went to sleep. But now, on the night before leaving for the domains of that same princess, he paused to reflect deeply on her in the privacy of his small, neat solar. 

He hadn't had time to do so before. Before, he had been too busy arranging for his trunks to be properly packed and for a couple of his treasured Valyrian texts to be carefully wrapped. Before, he had been too busy learning every word he had to recite to win the favour of a woman who had never attended his name days, despite the blood ties that bound them. His grandfather himself had trained him for days, in the company of the Queen Consort. While the King burned with excitement like a child in his chambers and prepared gifts for the elusive ghost that was his daughter, Aemond, Aegon and Helaena learned everything they needed to know about the woman they had despised in favour of a firstborn son so many years ago. 

"She also likes lemon cakes and, to a lesser extent, buns filled with meat, vegetables and spices," he suddenly remembered his mother saying, while Ser Otto pressed his lips into a grimace that seemed both stern and approving at the same time. "...On the other hand, she always wanted a sister, and since she has already accepted Heleana, it will be easier for you to win a place in her heart. Even so, you will have to make an effort..."

"She already has brothers in her heart," Aegon interrupted her, in a bad mood. And Aemond knew, even now, that it was entirely due to the lack of watered-down wine and privacy that the eldest son had been experiencing lately because of the upcoming visit to Dragonstone. "She doesn't need us. Lady Arryn has given her more than enough replacements. And if they weren't, she has children to fill any void she may have."

Aegon was right, of course, Aemond reflected in the moonlight. Sitting at his desk, twirling the pen between his growing fingers, he recalled how close Queen Alicent had come to slapping her son for interrupting her efforts to instruct them. He remembered the steel in his grandfather's eyes, and the expression of petty amusement on his brother's face. He remembered how smug he looked at being superior for once, even at the expense of his own interests. Aemond, however, was not so amused to admit what even that budding drunkard could see. 

Princess Rhaenyra had brothers and children to spare. Ever since Lady Arryn had arranged her own marriage to Lord Stark, things had become significantly tense. Aemond had sensed this even as a child. Aemond knew, ever since he learned to walk, that he had to be patient and silent. He had to be a shadow on the wall, a seemingly perfect puppet, who could be overlooked when discussing matters of state. And his wisdom at such a young age had provided him with information that Aegon had no intention of using and in which Heleana had no interest. Neither of them saw what he did: the past was an incalculable source of information. A source from which they must learn in order to fine-tune their future. They did not see, as he did, that knowledge was power in the absence of dragons. 

Fortunately, Aemond was more intelligent. More cultured. More educated. He had devoured with genuine passion the few Valyrian texts left behind when the princess departed for good. What's more, he taught himself to read them. Aemond, though still only a child, carefully devoured all the letters that others saw as insignificant. And from them he learned a bitter truth. His mother was a late replacement and her marriage had no major advantages. The then Lady Alicent was a shadow of the former Queen of King Viserys, who managed to get her dowry, rights and privileges back as compensation after the annulment of her marriage to the King. Queen Aemma was released from her marriage contract after a final miscarriage. She was cast aside in favour of the fertile daughter of a second son with no lands, armies or great wealth. 

She had been humiliated in practice, yet she emerged victorious in the end, in Aemond's opinion.

The former Queen departed a year before her own daughter did. She left with half of the Princess's House (half-built in haste) for Dragonstone, to act as a kind of Regent on behalf of Rhaenyra, who was still Heiress at the time and resided part-time in the Fortress. She left on the arm of the King's brother. She left on the back of a barely claimed dragon, and since then she never set foot in the capital again, despite being summoned by royal decree on several occasions. Aemond knew that she had remarried the Lord Paramount of the largest kingdom on the continent when her daughter came of age. He also knew that, after two full turns of the sun, she had given birth to a replacement for the Lord of the North and two other siblings for the princess. Lady Arryn gave birth to three healthy children, two of them boys. She carried all three pregnancies to term successfully, even though everyone had assumed that her second marriage would be as barren as her first. Aemond also knew that she had established herself in Winterfell as a true force of nature, capable of forging ties with Dorne and the Iron Islands. How she had achieved this exactly was something that even Otto's spies, and by extension Aemond himself, did not know. 

Thanks to his love of knowledge, Aemond knew that the Princess forged alliances after Prince Daemon acquired the Stone Steps for her with fire and blood. As a secret wedding gift. As a strategy to assure that woman, not yet despised, that she would never have to beg the Crown. Aemond knew that she had acquired maidens from all over the Kingdom while she was still Heiress, and that she had arranged marriages for them that still benefited her in the present. He knew that the Princess, a few months before being officially disinherited, married Prince Daemon after a brief courtship, for like her mother, she had obtained permission to find a husband herself. 

And the Faith made a scandal of it. A real scandal. They declared the marriage illegitimate and pagan. And they condemned all the children born of it as bastards. However, it was of little or no use. Even though the prince had not obtained an annulment as Lady Arryn had done, he and Rhea Royce had sent ravens throughout the Kingdom to declare their marriage useless. Fruitless.

The Rogue Prince declared himself and his family excommunicated from the Faith. He turned his back on the predominant religion in favour of the Fourteen Flames. And even more boldly, he rejected and condemned the King as a Hightower, rather than a Targaryen. Prince Daemon flatly refused to capitulate to the King. He refused to yield to the will of the Throne, and threatened to enter into open rebellion against the Crown if he was not left alone. 

And the King had agreed. Ser Otto himself, reluctantly, kept the poison he fed to the Privy Council and the court to himself. For what good would it do them to go to open war against a warmonger backed by dragons? At that point, after all, it was too late. The King had snubbed and lost the loyalty of the Vale by setting aside Queen Aemma. The King had snubbed and lost the loyalty of House Velaryon by marrying Lady Alicent and not Lady Laena. The King had angered an entire Kingdom and driven from the fold a House that had more dragons than his own. And even more, a House that had the greatest wealth on the continent, after the Crown itself.

The King categorically disinherited the princess, just a few months after Aegon's birth, and then watched her leave for her family's ancestral seat, taking with her nothing less than all the dragons and eggs under her command. And all for a single night alone with his eldest daughter. 

A single night alone with a despised child still burned among them, along with the consequences that a weak, grieving, and drunken King had brought upon them due to his lack of intelligence.

After all, Viserys signed a contract without the careful supervision of his Hand. After all, Viserys gave the princess complete autonomy over herself and her seat. He dispensed with Dragonstone, the eggs, the dragons in their entirety, and absolutely every single Valyrian relic other than his sword, crown, and daggers. The King gave authority to a defamed girl. He gave her such a great gift that it left them all defenceless. And still, to this day, they were paying dearly for that foolishness. That stupidity ran rampant, for copies of the document were sent to all the Houses, and the princess somehow ensured that the clauses were irrevocable, even for the King's highest authority.

But things were slowly changing, he told himself as the ink stained his fingers. In a tortuous but sure way, the ravens with the isolated and prosperous Dragonstone were exchanged more frequently than ever. And a few years ago, they even enjoyed a formidable victory, for the princess had extended an invitation to the King and Helaena in honour of the name day of one of her eldest sons. It had been shortly before Daeron's departure for Casterly Rock. Although neither he, nor Aegon, nor Aemond had been invited. Neither had the Queen or the Hand, which was a complete snub. But a victory was a victory. And the King and Helaena had left, only to return with a gift for which everyone had worn their knees raw, praying day and night in the Sept and in the sanctity of their private chambers. 

Those had been dark and anxious days. But both Aemond and the others endured them with fortitude. With enviable dignity. And their patience was rewarded as soon as Helaena arrived at the Courtyard of the Fortress, carrying a pale golden egg in her hands that were too small. 

"It was Prince Baelon's idea, blessed be he," the King said proudly that day. Aemond remembered how radiant and almost healthy he looked. He remembered seeing him smile then with more sincerity than he had ever done in his entire life. "He became very friendly with Helaena, and he and little Visenya insisted on finding the egg themselves. We have promised to return in a few moons, whether it has hatched or not. Ah! And Rhaenyra even gave us a few dragon guards to make sure the hatchling here thrives properly." 

"Without a doubt, the princess is a very thoughtful soul, my King," Ser Otto murmured, in a tone that seemed pained, as it became clear that the King expected a flood of praise for his daughter. "May the Seven protect her and grant her long life." 

Queen Alicent echoed the blessing with apparent warmth. After a brief but meaningful glance in her direction, Aegon, Aemond, and Daeron did the same. 

After the formalities in the courtyard, Helaena retained the honour of holding the egg only until the lively dinner with the King was over. As soon as Viserys left, the Hand snatched it from her hands and transferred it to Aegon.

"Give me back my egg!" Helaena begged that one time, her eyes teary and half-focused. "Visenya gave it to me! It's mine! It's not for him."

Otto had slapped her, his rings clinking against her hand. Aemond remembered falling silent. He remembered swallowing the persuasive argument he had been about to use on his sister. Aegon, slightly tipsy from the wine he had been drinking on the sly, held the egg more tightly and pressed his lips together. Queen Alicent stiffened, stared at her daughter for a long minute, then forced all her children out of the room. But it didn't help much. They heard the beginning of the shouting match anyway.

The next morning, unbeknownst to the King, the egg and the dragon guards were reassigned in their entirety to Aegon. 

Perhaps that was why it did not thrive. 

Perhaps that was why it grew cold. Before dinner, and throughout it, Aemond had felt the movements of the hatchling through the shell and scales that covered it. He had felt its burning heat and the pulsing of the life that dwelled within. But a few weeks later, it was nothing more than a precious stone. A dead thing. It was nothing more than a stark reminder that they had failed. 

It was then that the people added a new nickname to the infamous list of names they called the crown prince. They all began to call Aegon the "Dragon Slayer." The dragonless one. The Unworthy. 

Those were dark days, to be sure. Especially because all correspondence with Dragonstone ceased as abruptly as it was absolute. Especially because the dragon guards left under the cover of darkness, never to return. 

It took years. It took pleas. It took humiliation. It took everything it had to re-establish communications with the princess and her family, but in the end, it was achieved. 

And finally, an invitation had arrived again. This time, it was extended to the entire royal family. And it was more crucial than ever that Rhaenyra liked them. They hadn't told him in explicit words, of course, but it was common knowledge that, by now, the princess would already know about the cooling of the egg and that they had spurned her goodwill by giving it to Aegon. 

"If they had left it to Helaena, perhaps those future visits would have included us too," Aemond thought, not for the first time. "Had we been more prudent back then, perhaps today we would all be dragon riders..." Aemond sensed he was right. However, they would never know. Ser Otto, his mother, and Aegon's incompetence had ruined that possibility. 

Fortunately, Aemond would not have to suffer them much longer. After all, he was growing up, and although he did not claim to be the most intelligent man in Westeros, perhaps one day he would come close to being so. 

Soon they would depart for the mysterious Dragonstone. Soon he could prove his worth, if he was patient enough. Cunning enough. 

And the Seven knew, in all their glory, that Aemond was. 

"««««««««««‹·«»««»

They departed an hour after breaking their fast, leaving Ser Otto in charge of the Kingdom's security. The invitation had not extended its benevolence to him. And although it was a new open snub to his position as Hand of the King, no one would go against Princess Rhaenyra's wishes this time.

They simply could not afford to do anything contrary to pleasing her. 

So the Hand dismissed them at the docks with greater severity than ever before. He dismissed them with clenched lips and a look that Aemond Targaryen would never forget as long as he had blood in his veins. 

"The future of the Kingdom, and of our House, I must remind you, depends on the success of this visit," he said before watching them leave, his voice as tense as it was low. Aemond noticed that his fingers were like claws on Aegon's shoulders. But it was him and Queen Alicent he was looking at. "We have no room for failure. And I trust you know that nothing less than excellence is acceptable on this occasion." 

Aemond had wanted to crack his puppet mask for the only time in his life. He had wanted to tell him to his face that his failures were, almost entirely, his fault. However, he nodded like the perfectly polite prince he was and left with complete serenity. 

He boarded the ship, went to his quarters, and read until the evening of his first day at sea. That night he dined with the King and encouraged the conversation to revolve around the only time he and Helaena had been welcomed to Dragonstone. That night he trained in swordplay with Ser Criston Cole and then with a very sober Aegon. That night he went to bed early and dreamed of dragons. 

He dreamed that he was flying over the island he had never set foot on, riding a mount as wild as it was formidable.

And the next morning, amid favourable winds and rapid progress, he fantasised about the moment when he would come face to face with those magnificent creatures. The King, when he was lucid, had spoken to him about Balerion, the Black Terror, in a nostalgic tone, full of old affection. His mother had told him that they were unpredictable, chaotic and hostile creatures, although she had once known the only decent one of her kind up close: the dragon Syrax. She had told him, glancing briefly at the walls and doors, that Syrax had been an almost gentle dragon, even pampered. The Hand was less kind in his descriptions. Even less so than his mother. The only time he stopped to answer his questions about the beasts of Dragonstone, he called them a massive weapon that needed to be brought back into the fold. And that was it. 

Helaena, on the other hand, was the greatest source of information at her disposal. Due to her brief stay at Dragonstone, she knew more than anyone else who was willing to satisfy her curiosity. Although she had to be bribed with promises of exotic creatures and special cages for them, she finally agreed to recount the few encounters she had had with the Old King's mount. The Bronze Fury was terrifying, she told him, but under Prince Aemon's command, he let her touch its hot scales on one occasion. And Dreamfyre, the only dragon that had remained until Aegon's birth in King's Landing, even consented to take her on a flight, under the command of Princess Visenya, daughter of Princess Rhaenyra. 

Lady Rhaena Celtigar, the eldest daughter of Lady Laena Velaryon and the future Lord Celtigar, commanded a dragon born in her cradle. A dragon named Morning that strutted at the slightest provocation. And Dragonstone, her sister told him, was full of provocations in the form of baby dragons, for never before since the fall of Old Valyria had there been so many living dragons and hatched eggs. 

All of the adult dragons had riders. All except for one of the wild ones. Cannibal had succumbed to the charms of having a rider after four years of constant persuasion by Prince Baelon, the first son of Princess Rhaenyra. Meleys was still the property of Princess Rhaenys, and Vhagar lay under the yoke of Lady Laena. Seasmoke belonged to Ser Laenor, and a dragon named Grey Ghost had fallen for the flattery of Ser Laenor's dubious eldest son. Caraxes was still loyal to Prince Daemon, and Silverwing remained faithful to Lady Arryn since her infamous claim upon leaving the capital. 

"So between them, the Whore of Dragonstone has ten adult dragons at her disposal," whispered the Hand on the night of Helaena and the King's return home. It had been shortly before they took the egg from his sister. It had been at the exact moment when the King left them to rest in his own chambers. 

Ser Otto had been very pale. He had been more upset than any of them had ever seen him. However, the paleness and fear in Aemond's mother's large eyes far surpassed his.

Queen Alicent shuddered and began to tear at her nails with unusual violence. Aemond remembered it perfectly. 

"Six of those ten dragons have gone to war," his great-uncle Hobert interjected. The infamous great-uncle Hobert, who had come to stay for only a year at the Fortress after the destruction that had struck the Hightower in his time, and who had instead spent five sun turns in the capital with what remained of his once large family. "Six dragons that know how to dodge scorpions that we don't even have, since Dorne flatly refuses to give up its secrets. Six dragons against one egg given to a girl and nothing but schematics and prototypes that may not work at all".

It was at that precise moment that Helaena lost without ceremony. She had given too much information to her elders. She had condemned herself because she was born short of the vision he possessed. She condemned herself because she was born with a womb and not a cock. 

No, they could not allow a girl to have a dragon when the crown prince lacked his own mount. That had been clear from the start. From the exact moment the invitation was extended to Helaena alone. However, as far as he knew, the process would have been less traumatic for his sister. She would have been granted the privilege of keeping the egg in her chambers for the first few weeks, to keep up appearances. She would have been granted the privilege of being the priority when it came to sharing the tasks of raising the dragon that was born. But panic had taken hold of them. 

And even now, knowing what a disaster that decision had been, he couldn't blame them. At least, not entirely. He himself had been afraid. After all, after setting aside the former Queen and the princess, they had lost kingdoms and dragons. After letting the Velaryons go, they had lost gold, ships and dragons once again. The situation had been precarious from the very beginning, and things only got worse with the birth of Aegon.

After all, people still whispered about the misfortune that had occurred during his birth. The Citadel itself had written about it, despite the renunciation of the Crown and the Hightowers. 

People still talked about the fall of a bloody red star on the day the princess left for good. They still talked about the violent natural disasters that had shattered every Sept throughout the Kingdom. They had christened it a cursed day. The day when more than a hundred thousand people died across the continent. From humble maidservants to septas, nobles and soldiers. Anyone near a religious site had suffered. Or had died. 

And the association of the terrible event with the birth of the new prince was not long in coming. 

"It is nothing more than a misperception," declared the Crown with a thousand swift ravens . "However, the Throne is committed to helping repair our afflicted people.

Between one disaster and another, the royal coffers continued to suffer from that time on, even though some fifteen years had passed. The Faith, reluctant, had barely forgiven them. In their eyes, the Targaryens did nothing but offend them or cause them misfortune in appearance. As a direct consequence of those beliefs, his mother was only allowed to enter the city's Sept once a month, and only after paying generously for the invitation. Ironically, Aegon was the one who spent the most time among incense, prayers and septas. But it did little to improve public opinion.

The crown prince had only been named for fifteen days. And yet he already had more enemies than the king himself. It was said and known that he had an insatiable appetite for whores, maids, and noble ladies. It was said that he had an appetite for meat, drink, and irresponsible hunting. And it was true. But even Aemond admitted that his brother had certain redeeming qualities. He was good with numbers, he could be charismatic when he wasn't drinking, and he knew how to give speeches when necessary. His brother had a certain intelligence that he rarely used, except when he wanted to get his way. With the right guidance, he might become a decent king.

The gods knew this to be true, but the Hand, as astute as he was in some things, did a terrible job of guiding him. Aegon feared him. He did not respect him. The Queen believed that beating him served to train him, when it only generated resentment that would one day take its toll. Great-uncle Hobert was more of the same. He pushed too hard and offered too little, compared to the power of the Throne or the dragons. 

None of them saw what Aemond saw. Someday, he predicted, that would isolate them and drive them from Aegon's court. But he was another story. He had learned to handle, in a way, the worst aspects of his older brother. He had broken through the prince's armour and had his loyalty due to various favours. 

Favours he would collect one day. In due course. Now they were too young. They were still too subject to the adults who wielded power in their name. But in the future... No, better not to go down that road. 

He would have time to entertain certain ideas later. For now, Dragonstone awaited. 

For now, he could make out the outline of the island through the thick layers of fog covering the Fortress that belonged to them by birthright. 

And soon they would strike the first blow to reclaim it.

Chapter Text

«Dragonstone in sight!» shouted one of the sailors on the ship, although Aemond had been the first to see the island, of course. "Dragonstone in sight!" he repeated loudly, although it wasn't necessary. 

It was not necessary at all.

The Royal Family had broken their fast long ago. And although he was the only one at the front of the ship, leaning on the railings, that did not mean he was the only one on deck. King Viserys himself had come up before anyone else, displaying an energy he had never shown before in King's Landing. At that very moment, in fact, he was whistling a strange melody in foreign tongues as he gazed at something in the distance. He seemed to be admiring the peaceful waters. 

Aegon and Helaena, in a manner as unusual as it was refreshing, were conversing in a corner about something he could not hear because of the sound of the wind. And his mother, the Queen, whispered in the ear of her sworn shield, while twisting the Seven-pointed necklace between her slender fingers. Daeron was not there, but his entire family was gathered in the same place and with the same goal. And he had never felt so much a part of a cause as he did at that moment, even though he had been raised from the cradle for it. 

He drummed his fingers on the wood. He breathed in the salt in the air. He listened to the birds and the distant roars. And he suffered a pleasant shiver of anticipation, much to his chagrin. He had wanted to appear mysterious, almost distant, but he was still young and his emotions managed to get out of his control infrequently, but with great intensity. He was still young, so he allowed himself the small luxury of smiling openly at the seductive feeling that came with the magic of the island.

Aemond breathed in the fresh air and allowed himself to feel excited without shame. After all, if not now... when? He had the perfect excuse. Both his inexperience and the promises that awaited him at the Fortress would be enough to unsettle anyone. And he was sensible enough to let himself get carried away only to a certain extent. 

And that point was exciting. It was wonderful. 

"Soon we will dock and I will see a dragon for the first time," he thought with joy. Although, technically, he had already seen dragons even before entering the official perimeter of the princess's territory. 

He had seen two distant figures, half-hidden in the clouds and flying over the royal ships a couple of hours ago.

"It's Cannibal and Dreamfyre!" he heard Helaena proclaim at that very moment, before anyone had time to process anything. 

And Aemond had lost his breath. Before that day, his knowledge of dragons came entirely from second-hand accounts. It came from stories told by people who had seen them once and from books he devoured in an instant. But in that moment, in that wonderful moment, he saw them for himself. He saw them for himself, even if it lasted only a few measly seconds. 

He saw their monstrosity. He heard their roars above the powerful gusts of wind created by their wings. And then he lost sight of them between the sun and the clouds. And that was enough for now. It was enough to make even the crown prince boil with excitement. 

"They're real..." he heard Aegon say, as breathless as Aemond himself felt. "Oh, damn it. They're real..."

"And if we succeed, I'll have one myself." That's what he didn't say. But it was what he thought. Aemond knew because he felt it too. He knew it too. 

That's why he redoubled his efforts. That's why he recalled again and again the lessons of his mother, of Otto and his great-uncle Hobert. He took what suited him and discarded what didn't. He recited in his mind, over and over, everything he knew about the princess, her rogue prince, and their children. He recited it until he knew it all by heart, and pressed his fingers against the wood. He recited it from memory, while suddenly the shadow of Queen Alicent approached and hovered over him. 

"You know what you have to do from this point on," she whispered when she was within earshot. She whispered it as if they were resuming a conversation interrupted for nothing more than a few minutes. And in a sense, that was true. "I know you will make us all proud, my sweet prince. 

And in a show of affection rarely seen in public, she stroked his silver hair as they gazed together at the island growing ever closer. This pleased him greatly, for it elevated him in her eyes and those of others, even though he was too old to receive such pampering from his mother. While the heir received open rigidity, he received warmth where anyone could see it. Aemond knew he was his mother's favourite. He knew she barely tolerated Aegon's irreverence, that she felt affection for Helaena and missed Daeron. But he was her favourite, because Aemond could make her see that he appreciated all the sacrifices she had to make in honour of their family. For the sake of protecting him and his brothers.

If it weren't for Queen Alicent, he reflected, as was his custom, he would already be betrothed to some Baratheon daughter or some unimportant princess from Dorne. If it weren't for his mother's foresight and constant persuasion over the years, he might be a ward in the Rejo or some other kingdom, forging precarious alliances for Aegon. Queen Alicent appreciated his potential. His worth. Queen Alicent saw what he saw. She knew that, of all her children, Aemond could succeed where the others would fail immediately and completely. 

And Aemond, even from a very young age, cherished an ambitious idea. An idea that could well have been ruined by Lord Hobert's lack of foresight and the desperation of a Hand who saw the nascent empire of a princess he had helped to snub flourish. Yes, the Hand was a cunning, capable and politically astute man, but the years had soured his faith in miracles. And a miracle was precisely what Aemond would need to win the hand in marriage of one of his nieces. 

Not Princess Visenya, of course. That was too ambitious even for him. It had been known for years that the princess, who rivaled her own mother in beauty and wit, was betrothed to her older brother, Prince Baelon Targaryen. Baelon was said to be a staunch devotee of his betrothed princess. He always competed for her favour, had courted her since he was eleven, and was never seen anywhere with undesirable company. He did not visit brothels, if the rumours were to be believed. He did not encourage the flirtations of ladies, did not condone the coquetry of errant squires, and was not addicted to vices, for in his early years he declared himself totally faithful to his future consort. And the princess showed herself before the court and the Kingdoms to be a mirror image of her brother's actions and intentions. 

One day, the Rogue Prince himself would give away the eldest of the Targaryen twins. One day, he would give away the one who was, technically, his first daughter. The sweetest flower in his garden. However, he would only do so to the knight he had raised himself to his own standards. No, Aemond did not have his sights set on such a high position, for he knew that even if he won the favour of Princess Visenya, Daemon Targaryen would drown him in his own blood on their wedding day. And perhaps even before he had the chance to consummate the marriage. 

No, no. Better not to tempt fate. Even with a dragon, he would not risk losing everything for a single woman, no matter how advantageous her position as second in line to inherit Dragonstone among Princess Rhaenyra's offspring. So Aemond had more modest intentions. Reasonable ones, even. He would settle for marrying Visenya's twin. He would settle for marrying Daenys Targaryen, whose beauty was already legendary even at King Viserys' court. Princess Daenys was said to be more beautiful than her sister, with sparkling lilac eyes, a button nose and a full mouth that any man would give his life for. Like her twin, she was tall for her age, knowledgeable about art, and danced like the pagan goddesses she believed in. She was also known to have perky breasts. And more importantly, she boasted hips more than adequate for bearing healthy children once she reached maturity. Princess Daenys, who was conveniently her age, possessed a lively wit and a quick tongue. She divided her time between Dragonstone and the North, as she was the most beloved granddaughter of the despised Lady Aemma Arryn. On her tenth name day, she had been given a lordship and empty lands in the North, courtesy of Lord Stark and at the insistence of numerous vassal Houses who wanted to ingratiate themselves with both Dragonstone and the little princess.

It was common knowledge that Princess Daenys was beloved among the northerners because of her predisposition to diplomacy and the aid she offered on the back of her dragon. As far as the wisdom of the Greens' spy network could tell, it had been discovered that the Targaryens of Dragonstone used their dragons as little more than glorified beasts of burden. They used their dragons to burn miles and miles of farmland, which then flourished more fertile than it had ever been. They were known to help transport heavy loads and agreed to make plans and maps of the land, carrying scholars on their backs.

At first, the Hand had mocked these vulgar uses before the Court. But the laughter and taunts had died with the first harvests, which far exceeded their predecessors, and with the increasingly evident advances of the North. The laughter and condescension had died when, in a perfectly polite letter, the Tyrells informed the Crown of a recent association of theirs — private, moreover — with the Targaryens of Dragonstone. 

"They voluntarily submitted themselves as vassals to the island and the lordship of Rhaenyra," his mother had whispered the same afternoon the letter arrived. Her lips were pale and she seemed to be trembling. "It can't be. No, it's not possible. It's a nightmare... If they submit..."

"The rest will follow." No one had said so, of course. And Aemond should not have had the opportunity to know, but Aegon once discovered one of Maegor's many secret passages in an attempt to escape from the Red Keep, and shared the knowledge with him on a drunken night. Aemond discovered the others on his own, including one that allowed him to spy on the Queen's chambers. And he was never more grateful to his brother than in those days of exploration and personal satisfaction. He never felt more indebted than on that bitter evening in his mother's chambers, as he secretly listened to her exchange concerns with his great-uncle and the Hand.

"We cannot allow it. We must do something," squawked Lord Hobert. "We must use our great influence now that..."

"The Hightower has fallen and has not yet fully recovered, Oldtown watches us with suspicion, the Faith blames us for the disasters that befall it, and the Tyrells imply in their letter that we ourselves are a vassal house to theirs. A House subject to their authority, which has lost its way and has long since begun to overstep its bounds," the Hand snapped with haste and venom. "What great influence are you talking about, Hobert?" 

And they kept a tense silence until Lord Hobert withdrew first, with a bottle of wine in his hands. 

No, they could say nothing. They could not accuse the princess of taking Houses and Kingdoms that belonged to the Crown, when the Tyrells themselves were taking the initiative to join her ranks, even though they did not belong to her territory in the slightest. They could not accuse Rhaenyra of anything, when they lacked dragons and eggs that would at least give them expectations to rely on. They could not accuse the princess of Dragonstone of anything or call her to threaten her, when they already had the loyalty of the North through Lady Arryn's marriage, the Vale because of her, the Stone Steps through conquest, and the loyalty of the richest House in the Kingdom through more marriages, engagements, and blood ties. 

"The Arryns and my half-sister have enriched Dorne and the Iron Islands, so they will take their side if we do not offer them something better," Aemond had thought then, and he still thought so now. If there were war when the King died, the North would bet on Rhaenyra and her dragon-riding children. The Vale would follow them, Dorne would probably end up neutral, the Iron Islands would try to seize their ships, and the dragons would rise to defend their lady. The throne would be reduced to ashes, if Rhaenyra did not take it first. And the heads of Aegon and Aemond would roll first. Daeron might be the last to fall, alongside his grandfather and mother. His family would disappear from history... Although perhaps Heleana would be allowed to live, if not as a hostage, then at least as a septa in some remote place.

But that was the worst-case scenario. That was the scenario they had been trying to avoid for years, begging for audiences with Dragonstone.

It wasn't the ideal situation, of course. The ideal would have been to have all the dragons under their protection, Prince Daemon dead, the princess married to a Lannister, and Lady Leana to a Hightower. Lady Arryn, as required for the stability of the kingdom, should be dead or held hostage to guarantee the loyalty of the Vale. However, the Gods were capricious and their trials were harsh. But they would overcome them. Aemond had already been born. Things were changing. 

"Although I would have preferred that the spies and their poisons had worked much earlier," lamented the prince. That would have saved them practically all the humiliation, but, again, the Gods had not wanted the attempts to assassinate the princess and her children to succeed. Perhaps to spare them further suspicion and negative nicknames. Perhaps to spare them the stigma and curse that came with being relatives' murderers. Aemond only knew that he and his siblings would have been spared the stain of that sin because they were so young, but the Gods, in all their wisdom, must have prioritised Queen Alicent's soul, she being as devout as she was. 

Or so she said when she thought no one was listening. Aemond had other opinions, though he dared not debate them even with himself. He had other, more important matters to attend to. More plans to make. 

Plans that had led him to this day. To the very place where Ser Otto's most competent agents fell prey to dragon fire, torture at the hands of the ships guarding the Fortress, or mysterious disappearances and illnesses. They were there, where no one from his side had ever been before, because of the heretical sorcery with which the princess and her allies surely protected themselves. Aemond did not believe much in those rumours and theories either. But it was difficult to deny the prosperous alliances, the longer seasons suitable for harvesting, and the unbreakable protection that seemed to surround the princess. It was difficult to deny the unreal beauty of her daughters, even hearing about them from another source. It was difficult to deny the fact that there were now more riders, dragons, and eggs than ever before in the history of Westeros with the Targaryens. 

It was difficult to combat the rumours of settlements appearing out of nowhere in the Islands conquered for the princess. Settlements where they had built castles and forged trade routes that greatly enriched their coffers. 

It was difficult to deny the good fortune that surrounded the princess. And even more so when she stopped to compare that unbeatable success with the decline of her own kingdom. While Rhaenyra forged alliances, they lost them by having little or nothing to offer. While Rhaenyra filled her treasury, they lost theirs on scorpion prototypes, on fostering alliances, and on repairs they could not postpone. 

While Dragonstone flourished as they had never seen before, King's Landing succumbed to darkness. Literally and metaphorically, for although no one wanted to admit it out loud, after the princess's departure, a cold had settled on the streets. A cold that was here to stay and that killed a good part of the unsuspecting population begging on the streets. Since then, and long before Aemond's birth, the sun had refused to shine at all on the Fortress. It rained almost all the time, it was always cloudy, and the city stank more than in days of old. Residents, both noble and poor, were forced to request thick fabrics from the North to protect themselves from a premature winter that seemed to have fallen without warning. 

In the end, their partial winter never went away. Aemond never knew a day without fog. He never knew anything other than a thin layer of rain covering the city for practically half the day. He grew up amid storms and the mud of training in the courtyard. And he was never able to believe that it had not always been this way. At least, not entirely. But now he saw the sun, extremely radiant in the skies. He saw it as clearly as on those few trips he had made outside the capital, when they took him to the great Houses to show him off as, perhaps, a possible pupil.

At that moment, he absorbed the powerful rays that fell on his face and secretly delighted in realising that the sun was also shining very clearly on the island. The fog that covered it was dissipating. He would not have to suffer it. As soon as he noticed this, Aemond breathed happily, almost completely content, and his mother stroked his hair as they both remained lost in their thoughts. 

««««»»»·»»«««««

The ship carrying his family was greeted by the Prince of the Sun himself. On the main beach. With a huge dragon behind him.

It was a miracle that Aemond did not faint on the spot. 

And it was true that Aemond had lived in luxury, control and great influence. He lived in the king's favour and, being a prince of royal blood, little or nothing was beyond his reach. Even with all that, he couldn't help feeling like an insignificant worm in front of that magnificent mount. 

It was gigantic even from the distance that separated them. 

That dragon had terrifying eyes and dark green veins, partially covering the blackest scales he had ever seen in his life. Compared to that colossal beast, the one he assumed was Rhaenyra's eldest prince was nothing more than an ant. But even so, he managed to appear self-possessed. Master of them all. 

Aemond envied him. 

"My dear grandson!" 

The King hurried to disembark first, closely followed by his Royal Guard. He left them there without looking back. He set out in the first boat. And then he embraced the prince first, without bothering to observe any ceremony. He embraced him with an affection that could be felt through the waters that separated them. 

"You've only seen him once in a week's visit," Aemond wanted to shout at him. But he didn't. He was smarter than that. 

His mother, on the other hand, was not happy to be left behind. Neither was Aemond. However, neither said anything. Even Aegon disembarked in silence. No jokes. No jibes. No sarcasm or attempts to draw attention to himself. 

They touched land together, he and his mother. Ser Criston helped the Queen out of the boat, and Aegon helped Helaena. He helped himself. And together they waited, standing stiffly on a thin strip of damp earth that separated them from the King and his grandson. 

The sun shone brighter than ever on that long-awaited and carefully planned morning. But Aemond couldn't enjoy it as he had minutes before. It seemed to have lost its sweet charm. For some reason, the dazzling light of Dragonstone now had the bitter taste of ashes in his mouth, when just a few minutes ago he had admired it sincerely. Now it seemed unnatural to him. Now he saw that warmth and brightness in the air as something that should not be there. As something supernatural. 

"Here they have everything that used to be ours," he found himself thinking with palpable bitterness. "They have even stolen the sun." 

Perhaps it was petty to think that way. Perhaps it was not logical. Aemond did not entirely believe the rumours of sorcery, which were so popular at court in relation to his sister. He did not believe that she had gods, even pagan ones, on her side. But it was one thing to think that from the gloomy King's Landing. It was another to do so from the bright Dragonstone. 

It was one thing to mock the common belief that those territories had switched allegiances with the princess's departure, and another to glimpse a piece of that undeniable truth with his own eyes. 

"It wasn't always like this," the Queen once told him, when she heard Aemond complaining that it rained even on his name day and on the few tournaments they could afford to organise. "We used to have sunny days even in winter. I suppose this one has lasted too long, but true spring will return. Be patient." 

That was precisely what he possessed in abundance. Patience. Patience. Patience. But even the greatest patience had its limits. Even patience could crack when witnessing so many injustices firsthand. 

And he was witnessing so many that he couldn't even begin to count them. The first of these, the most obvious of all, was perhaps the mount in front of him. That dragon, under the command of a more intelligent king, would surely have been his by right of blood. But no. It belonged to that prince. To that boy even taller than Aegon. There was the man who was probably Prince Baelon, with hair more silver than his own and eyes that promised to be a soft violet despite the distance. There was Baelon, with his princely rank and his Valyrian sword at his hip, while he possessed nothing but common tools.

There was Baelon, future prince of Dragonstone and heir to the main settlement on the Stone Steps. There was that bastard in the eyes of the Faith, wearing fine clothes, gleaming armour and jewels coveted by half the Kingdom on his wrists. There was the prince who, in the first place, should not have existed, betrothed to a woman who would have been his in better times. And he did not even deign to look at them, at him, at Aegon or at the Queen.

Aemond saw him. He stared at him. And he could find no fault with him. He could find no nail to hang on to, while that bastard chatted animatedly with the King.

With his lord father, who did not wait for them or look at them, because he had his daughter's living lineage in front of him. 

"Ah, yes. Yes, allow me, allow me," the King suddenly began, finally letting go of the bastard to face his children and his wife. "You already know the charming Helaena, of course, but now I present to you my sweet Queen Alicent," and then, as if it were an afterthought, he added, " Oh, and this is my heir, Aegon. And there is Aemond. They are my sons, your uncles. By the way, where is your mother? Why do I not see your brothers or little Visenya?

Heleana barely had time to bow her head in deference to the bastard. Her mother did not have time to wait for a curtsy. Neither he nor Aegon had the opportunity to even exchange the courtesies they had practised for weeks for that specific moment. 

The King left them reeling on metaphorical quicksand. He pushed the bastard aside as he began to bow and open his lips to say what etiquette demanded. The King put his arm around his grandson's shoulders and forced him to walk with him to the road leading to the Fortress, which was surrounded by a halo of golden light so incandescent that it could not even be seen properly beyond the contours. 

And there the introductions died.

They could only blink, frankly perplexed by such unusual behaviour from a King who spent half his time under the influence of poppy milk. 

For a long moment, Aemond thought it was a joke. A cruel joke. He thought that at any moment the King and the bastard would return and the proper introductions would have a chance to take place. But no. The Royal Guard followed their supreme master. The Bastard never turned his head to look at them, as he seemed overwhelmed by his grandfather's incessant questions. 

No one came back for them. They stayed there. Standing on damp ground, with the fierce wind ruffling their hair. They stayed there. Without a court to welcome them. Without maids to show them to their rooms. 

It must have been a nightmare. But it wasn't. Aemond confirmed this when he turned his head and met the hostile gaze of what he assumed was the Cannibal dragon.

He wasn't dreaming. He wasn't dreaming. He had been blatantly insulted. The Queen and the heir had been too. And he was shivering with cold even though the sun was shining brightly. He was cold, even though everything around him seemed to be burning in its incandescence. He was cold and shivering with bewilderment. 

"Your Grace, we must go after them," Ser Cole urged. His voice was tense. His jaw seemed to be made of steel. "We cannot stay here. The dragon..."

"This isn't real," he said to himself, still in disbelief. But it was. 

In the end, they followed the distant figures of the King and his grandson. The servants, knights and maids they had brought with them joined them and kept them company until they reached the gleaming entrance to the Fortress, where it was also very sunny and where the Castellan greeted them with great coldness. His mother's lips were tightly pressed together. But she said nothing to protest the rude treatment they were receiving. They had to be polite. They had to be polite and not complain. They needed dragons. They needed eggs. And they would get neither if they dared to complain. 

So Queen Alicent bit her tongue. So did he. He was perfectly obedient. He was perfectly quiet. And he even accepted with apparent good grace having to share a room with Aegon, in a very opulent but too small suite for what he was used to as a prince of royal blood. He later learned that Helaena had been given her own quarters in the princesses' wing, and that was the only gift. The Queen would also have to share a room. With the King. Something they never did and never would do in King's Landing.

"You may refresh yourselves and stroll around the tower for as long as you wish, my princes," Princess Rhaenyra's chief lady-in-waiting informed them an hour after they had settled into their room. She entered without knocking. Without announcing herself. And Aemond would have said something about such a gross breach of etiquette, but he knew from rumours that she must be one of Lord Strong's daughters, a staunch supporter of Dragonstone in the Privy Council. He did not want to fall out of favour so soon, so he kept the rebuke he would otherwise have given her to himself and listened attentively. "However, you are expected to attend the banquet offered by the princess and her entourage to celebrate the arrival of spring."

"A banquet to celebrate spring!" Aemond scoffed in the privacy of his mind. "A banquet to celebrate a season they've had here forever!"

He couldn't believe it. He simply couldn't believe it. It was like a spit in the face. To his intelligence. It was like gloating and bragging that they had everything the capital lacked. It was outrageous. Almost blasphemous. Aemond was about to say something. Anything. He opened his lips slightly and thought of a scathing but subtle taunt. However, Lady Strong turned on her heel, without bothering to curtsy, and left. Just like that. Without saying goodbye, without giving any further instructions or any other message. 

She simply left, leaving behind the rustling sound of her luxurious dress and a trail of her elegant perfume. 

"What an insolent woman!" he finally said, when he could find the words, although she could no longer hear him. 

He turned at that moment to Aegon, hoping to find a companion who shared his justified anger. But Aegon did not see him. He was ignoring him. He was standing in front of the large desk in the chambers, holding some kind of marine debris in his hands, which he was contemplating as if it were a fragile treasure. 

"I thought she was very kind," he said, without deigning to look him in the face. He continued to stare at what Aemond assumed was the old shell of a moderately large animal. Perhaps the shell of a crab or a sea slug. Except that this particular shell had jewels embedded in it, some a soft pale gold colour and others pure white. "She was also beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful of all our sister's lady's, but I couldn't say for sure until I saw the others. 

"Our sister!" Aemond repeated to himself, even more incredulous than seconds before. Our sister, Aegon called her. And he couldn't believe it, for she had never been called anything other than "that princess". Or, failing that, the King's other daughter. The first.

A ghost they had yet to meet. 

"Kind? You call her behaviour towards us, princes of the Kingdom, kind?" 

Aegon finally deigned to raise his head, after hearing the bitter tone Aemond had used when speaking. 

The sun shining through the balcony of the chambers seemed to increase in intensity by the moment. And suddenly it was shining directly on his brother's face. It shone on his silver curls, his pale cheeks, and his purple eyes, which, because of the golden rays, were lighter than dark. 

They looked at each other face to face. They stared at each other, albeit with some difficulty, for a long moment. And Aemond saw it. For an instant. 

For no more than a second. 

He saw, in those eyes he knew as well as his own, the expanding flash of a familiar light brown. Aemond was sure he glimpsed it briefly, between blinks. But as quickly as it was there, it was gone. 

"What would you call her, then?"

"What?"

Confused by the trick of the light, and instinctively, Aemond brought his hands to his handsome face and rubbed his eyes, convinced that he was seeing things because of anger and fatigue. Suddenly he felt exhausted. He even felt half asleep, and the thread of what he had been saying before slipped from his mind in favour of less important things.

He wanted to sleep. He felt like lying down on the bed. It was as if those two days of boundless energy at sea were taking their toll at the worst possible moment.

"You say she wasn't kind. Why?"

Aegon would never ask such questions, he told himself as he moved his hands away from his face to look at him. And he saw blurry through his right eye. He saw flashes and intervals of absolute darkness through that pupil, while his left eye functioned almost normally. Through his healthier eye, he saw a figure shorter than his brother, half enveloped in rays of sunlight and shadow. He saw curly hair, perhaps damp. And then he saw nothing else for a few minutes that seemed agonisingly long. 

And as if to frighten him further, a ringing sound settled in his ears. But that disappeared after a short time. Although when it did, Aemond felt himself stagger and then felt the cool touch of a hand on his arm. 

Aegon was shaking him, he quickly realised. Aegon was saying something to him, and he seemed to be laughing. 

From his tone, it seemed like he was mocking him. But it didn't make sense. What had they been talking about before? He couldn't remember. 

He couldn't think of anything else but the fact that he was going blind for no reason. 

"««««»«»»·«««»»»»««

He woke up in a bed that wasn't his, not knowing when he had fallen asleep in the first place. 

He woke up in what appeared to be a pool of sunlight and sweat, feeling feverish and terribly dizzy. He also felt the strands of hair on his forehead and the back of his neck damp from the heat. His throat was dry, and he had the strange feeling of being awake on a day completely different from the one he had left behind. But he couldn't say exactly why. 

At least he could see properly again. And that in itself was a comfort. 

"Ah, I see you're awake." 

He raised his head abruptly. This made him feel nauseous and he almost vomited. 

However, he managed to control himself in time and concentrated on his brother. 

Aegon was there. Standing again, though in front of another piece of furniture. His brother was looking at himself in a large, elaborately framed mirror, deciding between a handful of iron rings. He looked freshly bathed, was excellently dressed, and even his hair looked neater than ever. He looked like a stranger. 

A stranger to everything Aemond had known since childhood. 

"What time is it?" he asked that strange Aegon, before doing anything else. And he had to grimace at how squeaky his own voice sounded.

It felt like he had sand on his tongue.

"It is the exact time we must join our sister and her beloved family to celebrate spring," was all the heir said.

Aemond closed his eyes tightly, feeling more confused than ever. Then he opened them to admire how the sun's rays changed from illuminating the room with a golden brown colour to the colour of the finest wine. 

It was late, he realised. Terribly late. And Aemond couldn't remember when or why he had fallen asleep. He had fragmented memories of the day spinning around in his head, but he couldn't piece them together to form a clear picture. He could barely remember where he was and why. 

He could barely remember that he had to get dressed and join his family in the banquet hall at Dragonstone to try to impress the Whore. 

"Mother already knows you'll be late," his brother added suddenly. "My sister has been informed as well, so don't rush and take a long bath before joining us at the table. You need it. I'm not sure why, but you stink of seaweed." 

Aemond hadn't seen him, but Aegon moved from the dressing table to the door. To the open door, where his usual guards were already waiting for him. He was ready. There was no need for him to be there with him. It was late. It was late and Aemond was in bed. Dirty from the day. Covered in sand from the beach where he had been very briefly. He smelled of sweat and, he admitted, seaweed too, as Aegon said. It was late and he wasn't ready for the celebration, even though he had only been asked to be punctual. 

"We'll wait for you for dinner." 

And with that, he left. Just like that. Just like Lady Strong. 

That didn't seem like his brother, he told himself. Between blinks, as he watched him walk away, Aemond saw his figure getting smaller and then taller. 

First silver, then bronze. 

Aegon left without looking back. Without making jokes. Without mocking Aemond for being, for once, the least obedient. The one who would fall out of favour in the eyes of his mother. He left without gloating. Without boasting that, for once, he would not be scolded in public. 

Aegon left and he was left alone in a room that no longer seemed so small by his standards. Now it seemed too big. He felt alone. Suddenly it was very cold. And then twilight settled unceremoniously between the stone walls. Without asking his permission. Without warning. 

In the gathering gloom, Aemond stood up and tripped over his own feet. A maid entered the chambers and helped him up before he had a chance to do so himself. And then everything happened too fast. It was as if someone had wielded some kind of power to put the hours into hyper-speed. Aemond suddenly found himself in a copper tub. Then in front of a dressing room.

He didn't know how he got dressed. He didn't know who helped him. A bunch of pale hands surrounded his body, and between one heartbeat and the next, they sometimes looked rotten to him. 

In the end, however, he was as ready as his brother. By then night had fallen and Aemond, although he tried to think with all his might, had a blank mind. He was guided solely by instinct. Mechanically. Without thinking. Without calculating. He felt alien in his own body for no apparent reason. And yet he moved forward through the corridors, after dismissing the servants. After his bath, he smelled clean. His hair felt slightly damp. And from outside came the pungent aroma that always preceded a storm.

He moved forward without being fully aware that he was doing so. In total silence.

He walked through the corridors, flanked by the Hightower guards he had known since he was a very, very small child. Practically since birth. They did not speak. They followed him through the shadows and the torches that guarded the black stone walls and the statues of sphinxes, chimeras and gargoyles. They followed him to the exit, instead of guiding him to the banquet hall of the Whore of Dragonstone.

They followed him to the main beach. There he discovered that the sand was very white and dotted here and there with logs spewed out by the sea, tall grasses and dry twigs. There were sharp rocks everywhere. In the distance, he could see cliffs. And Aemond knew that if he turned around, he could admire the Fortress in its entirety now that the sun was no longer shining on it. He could finally see it, if he wanted to. But he didn't want to. Nor did he want to see the mountains, the caves or the volcanoes. He was there for something completely different.

He descended the steps. He felt the night air whip his face. In the distance, he could hear music. He could hear laughter and loud voices. Behind him, oblivious to the large, cynical moon that night, the noble friends of the Whore of Dragonstone drank and celebrated a season that had been denied to Aemond his entire life. 

Inside, his mother and siblings were surely reciting, from memory, the compliments they had all crafted together in King's Landing. They were surely already kissing the fat feet of the viper that everyone insisted on calling "Delight of the Realm."

The Queen and the heir were there, enduring humiliation solely in the hope that they would be offered the benevolence of a dragon egg.

Aemond would not join them in begging for what already belonged to them, even though it was arbitrarily denied them. Aemond would not exchange pleasantries with the nephews who had not deigned to receive him as a prince of his rank deserved. No one had come down to honour him or his mother. They had been left there, like simple peasants. They had scorned and trampled on hospitality, on good decorum. 

No one had come to see him. Not his half-sister, the great Whore, nor his nephews, the bastards. He would not kneel before them and their court of vipers; all of them less valuable than a single strand of his hair. 

Oh, no, Aemond would not be like the crown prince and his mother. He had been patient for too long. He had endured everything. From the endless rains to the disasters that came with every birth of a child on the Green side. He had endured with fortitude the rumours that the fall of the Hightower was his fault, for the tornado that destroyed it had chosen the very day of his birth to strike. He had endured with enviable serenity everything from the loss of allies with each passing year as trade grew in Dragonstone to the scorn of the Faith. He had been patient. 

Patient. Patient. Patient. 

But now he no longer had to be. There was no point in bowing down to that greedy princess when he could take power into his own hands. 

He went down to the beach. His boots sank into the white sand. In the sky, the full moon winked at him knowingly. And an unfamiliar euphoria filled him.

And there was Cannibal, partially lying on some rocks, his large head resting on the grass. There was Cannibal, with scales so black they could have blended in with the night, were it not for the silvery light the moon cast on the beach. 

There was Cannibal, turning his head to look at him with his large, terrifying eyes of a green that he could only describe as the embodiment of poison if it existed in the form of colour.

There was Cannibal, calling him with a double pulse that burned in his Valyrian veins. 

Aemond took ten steps forward. His guards stayed behind. Cannibal reared up on the sand and opened his jaws to reveal fangs even taller than Ser Harrold Westerling. Cannibal reared up and stretched his thick lips into what Aemond believed to be an evil smile. 

"He's calling me," thought the prince, intoxicated by the arcane magic of his blood. Intoxicated by the pure, crisp power that seemed to exude from that particular mount. "He's calling me. He knows that I am his true master and that that bastard is a usurper who has taken my place."

Ah, but he would not tolerate it any longer. His half-sister had carried out her reign of terror for too long. She had overstepped her bounds, but only until that day. Aemond would no longer allow that capricious woman to get away with it. 

He took ten more steps forward. Now he could feel Cannibal's heat pouring down on him. A drop of sweat slid from his right eye like a tear. 

He stepped forward and smiled at the mount that fate had given him in honour of his patience and faith in justice. 

"I will free you from this charade," he said to the dragon, who lowered his head to see him more comfortably, although they were still too far apart for Aemond's liking. "Rest assured, I have come to claim you as your true and only rider."

Aemond smiled, and Cannibal fixed his malevolent eyes on something in the distance behind him. Aemond stepped forward, and Cannibal tilted his great head as he heard him come closer. Aemond blinked and felt his right eye go out of focus.

Aemond stepped forward, and Cannibal turned his head completely to unleash a burst of green fire that landed a few metres away from where he was standing.

And in the distance, as the sand twisted and hissed, turning into a shiny, transparent material, Aemond heard someone shouting his name, begging him to run away.

Chapter Text

The King's voice reached him like a muffled rumble. And perhaps too late. 

"Get away from the dragon!" he heard him shout with the urgency that the precarious situation demanded. "Run, you stupid boy!"  

His mother was shouting too. Aemond could hear the hysteria in her voice. The desperation in a plea that only a frightened mother could conjure up when asking for mercy from the indolent Gods. 

It was useless, of course. 

Cannibal's green eyes, like a bottomless pit of poison, kept him frozen in place as he tried to claim him. His new leather boots sank into the warm white sand, still protected by the fabric. And Aemond stared back at the beast out of sheer force of inertia. Aemond glanced confusedly at the dragon's deadly fangs, which it displayed with an air as satisfied as it was evil. And he knew immediately that no human power could save him. 

Cannibal would not let him take possession of him as his rightful owner. The beast had deceived him.

He understood this when he looked directly into those bright golden eyes, which showed no hint of greater intelligence or compassion. And his stomach sank in such a dizzying plunge that it physically hurt him. Blood pounded dully in his ears. His heart rose in his throat, struggling to escape from a corpse already announced. And Aemond felt dizzy. He wanted to give an order. To say anything that could free him from this situation. 

But he didn't. He knew very well that it would be a futile effort. A dragon does not negotiate with humans. Beasts do not recognise the importance of being a prince. 

He was going to die. He realised it too late. And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, a thought came to him, wrapped in the fluttering wings of a butterfly in flight. 

"The gods love their jokes." 

Around him, the hot flames, the same colour as the sun, thrived between his blinks. They spread until they licked every green blade of grass in the bushes and the dry twigs on the beach. The sand sank a few metres away and the air rippled under the power of the dragon fire. The sand hissed, crackled and released sparks that jumped very close to his face and clung to his clothes. And there was something almost deliberate about it. Almost human. 

But Aemond did not move. He did not run as he should have done long ago, so paralysed was he. 

Cannibal's tail then lashed the ground. The world reeled and Aemond was sent flying through the air like the puppet he pretended to be in the capital. 

And he didn't realise he was screaming until Cannibal opened its jaws once more and sulphur enveloped him from head to toe, while he was still in the air. The next burst of fire, green again, spurted out, aimed specifically at his face. 

It was right then that his half-sister's bastard son appeared out of nowhere. 

In a second, Aemond was sure he had met his fate. He convinced himself that the Stranger would claim him once and for all. The next, the world spun, twisted, and then he saw an ocean of stars and twinkling lights flowing indifferently above him. 

He hit the back of his head on a sharp rock as he fell like a sack of potatoes. The breath was violently knocked out of his lungs, and something that smelled dangerously like blood splattered his cheeks, already covered in sand. 

The air was suddenly filled with the unmistakable fragrance of burnt flesh. Aemond realised this as he choked on his blood when he stopped screaming. His ribs burned, his back cursed him in a thousand languages. And cool arms wrapped around his battered waist. 

And he suddenly smelled the fabric of his doublet. 

It was burnt. 

The lower part of his body was on fire. 

The scream that escaped him a minute later stunned even him. The world was reduced to burning. To the crackling, unbearable pain of an agonising death. Aemond, breaking free from the bastard, turned partially onto the burning sand and vomited bile. He half-choked on it. The world changed once more as he collapsed onto his forearms. The ocean of stars vanished completely from his one good eye. 

All he saw after that was red. And blisters already forming on his wrists. He saw grotesque welts where once there had been immaculate skin. The screams of agony that followed the discovery almost tore his half-obstructed throat apart. 

"Let me see you!" demanded the voice of a boy older than him. "Let me see you, you useless boy!" 

His words meant nothing. Aemond did not recognise him as an authority figure. Nor did he recognise the increasingly close screams of his mother. 

The world became a dangerous unknown to him. It became a tragedy unworthy of his position. And in the midst of it all, someone struggled with him to cruelly rub his body against the sand. They hurt his burnt skin badly, but the flames burning in his clothes gradually died down. And yet Aemond, frankly beside himself, fought and writhed bravely, screaming, kicking and squealing like a pig. 

He had only one goal in mind. 

"The sea," his brain gasped, overwhelmed by such raw panic. Aemond could barely function. "Go to the sea. Go to the sea." 

The cold of the early night stung his raw wounds. Aemond shivered relentlessly, and his throat filled with something new. Suddenly, a liquid with the strange aftertaste of iron and salt covered his entire mouth. And a new pain joined the others. He had bitten his tongue in his attempts to scream. But he had no time for that. He had no time for the Bastard of the Old Whore, who was fighting with him and digging his pagan claws into his filthy cheeks to force him to look at him. He had no time to process anything. He spat out everything on his tongue without hesitation.

He had to go to the sea. 

He would be safe there. And he prayed that the Gods would send them a storm capable of relieving him. He prayed that the Gods would condemn the treacherous beast that had hurt him to eternal damnation. 

"Hold him too, Lucerys!" the bastard said to someone who stopped violently beside them. "And command the fire of your dragon to cease!. Otherwise Aemond will burn alive!". 

The new intruder's skid covered his face with a thicker layer of sand. It got into his eyes. Into his half-open mouth as he spat out the excess blood. And Aemond choked even more on it. He felt his face contort into hideous grimaces as he struggled to get rid of the sudden excess. Aemond pushed his body further and further away with innate desperation. 

The bastard holding him cruelly dug his elbow into a key point in his injured ribs. 

And it was as if lightning had struck him. 

After that... after that, he felt a sharp blow to the back of his head, and then there was only darkness. 

There was only the deafening silence that precedes the storm. 

«««»«»·««»»»‹««

He opened his eyes for the third time that day, feeling as if he had sawdust in his throat and someone had tried to cut off his head, only to leave the job half done. 

His right eye was working again. Halfway. Halfway. Halfway. A sticky, warm film prevented him from opening it completely. And he felt like he was floating in the middle of a sea that repelled him. 

He felt blood everywhere. He felt it running very slowly down his face like living water. 

Then he remembered. 

The fire, the burnt flesh and the ocean of stars above his head. He remembered the burning in his ribs and the bastard he couldn't see, but who was fighting him. 

He moved abruptly, suddenly furious. Suddenly aware that nothing hurt him anymore. 

"Aemond!" his mother croaked from somewhere very, very close. And the squeaky sound made him grimace visibly. "Thank the gods! You're awake!"

He saw her hovering over him in a flurry of green skirts and a crooked crown atop thick copper curls. She looked as if she had suddenly aged twenty years. And her face was drenched in smoke, blood, and tears. 

Aemond felt nothing for the panic he saw in his mother's desolate expression.

Absolutely nothing. 

"Thank the Seven, thank the Seven," she whispered, stretching out a couple of fingers to touch his face. "My son, my sweet prince..."

As best he could, Aemond threw his head back before she could touch him. The Queen's hand stopped. She hesitated, then turned away in embarrassment to something else. Towards the maestre, whom Aemond had not noticed. 

He was a small, ordinary-looking man. There was nothing about him that would attract attention, and perhaps that was why he had not noticed him, even though he was practically on top of him. The man was sewing his wrist with a neutral expression. He was sewing between the blisters and the marks where the fire had touched him were still visible. 

The prince hissed. The room blurred before his eyes at times, and he felt too vulnerable. 

"Let go of me!" he snapped at the old man in a hoarse whisper. "Get away from me!"

But the grim-faced maestre ignored him. He continued sewing his half-open skin as if a prince had not given him an order. As if he were mending the seams of a well-used toy instead of the wounds of a superior being. 

"I tell you to step away!"

"Aemond, please, he's..." Queen Alicent began. 

He ignored her. The maestre did not move away. Aemond considered giving him a good slap. He sat up straighter, ready to do so. And then he realised something very simple. 

He was sitting on a high chair. As high as a throne. And he was in a room that was too bright for his standards. (Although he couldn't say exactly where all that light was coming from. He saw no candles or chandeliers on the ceilings.) It turned out that the incandescent light in the room scattered his thoughts. It eradicated them almost completely. And then he could only devote himself to admiring, in imposed silence, the high vaulted ceilings, the exquisite stained-glass windows of a thousand colours, and the rich tapestries that luxuriously adorned the cold, smooth stone walls. 

He was inside the castle, he realised. In a place he did not know. And there was the family of the unfortunate princess.

Aemond looked at them dispassionately. Oblivious to his most secret ambitions. 

He saw the eldest bastard first. Standing next to a woman of unreal beauty. His cheeks were covered in smoke, as were Queen Alicent's. There was a steely gleam in his eyes. And his lips were curved in a discreet, mocking smile. But Aemond did not linger on him, nor on his smoky clothes, soaked in blood. 

His blood. 

His attention was completely absorbed by the woman beside him. By his half-sister. 

She was an ethereal beauty, Aemond thought. His sister had full lips, a nose that would not have been so attractive on another face, and a proud air in her profile . Rhaenyra Targaryen had violet eyes that sparkled like freshly polished jewels, shimmering silver hair, and an unmistakable expression of disgust that seemed very out of place on her beautiful face. 

To anger such a sublime woman should be sacrilegious. But there was something about her. Something horrendous. Something repulsive beneath all that dazzling beauty. And Aemond can't understand what's wrong with her, exactly. But it was there nonetheless. Lurking. 

He walked past. And then he met the eyes of the rogue prince. The warmonger smiled, half reclining on the armrest of the throne from which his wife watched over the hall. He looked content to the point of satiety.

There was something wild about him. Something mean and almost feline. Or perhaps draconic. Aemond I didn't really know . He turned his face away from that danger incarnate in a human body. The princess's daughters and young children stood in perfect posture alongside their parents and older brother. Forming a unit. Looking beautiful and terrifying at the same time because of the supernatural nature of their eyes.

Those bright eyes.

All their pupils, ranging from the softest lilac to indigo and purple, looked like real gems. They looked like jewels that someone had carefully sewn into vaguely human faces, after lighting a demonic candle in them. 

But no one seemed disturbed by those eyes. Not even him, whose calm heart could hear itself beating, even though the adrenaline had subsided, leaving him in a lethargy he couldn't shake off no matter how hard he tried deep down inside. 

He turned his face once more and found a stone table in view. It was long, black and very elaborate in appearance. Next to it, the King seemed to be saying something, looking tense, to a man with dark skin and hair as silver as the rest. It must be Lord Corlys, of course. Another woman, much older than her sister but regal in bearing, stood beside him. She had her fingers clasped around those of the sea serpent, while her tense mouth pressed together in obvious displeasure at whatever her cousin the King was saying. 

Princess Rhaenys, he assumed. She was there. And if she was there... Lady Laena and Ser Laenor must be there too. Aemond spotted them at the other end of the hall, accompanied by what appeared to be their spouses and surrounded by their entire brood. Lady Laena herself had her forearm intertwined with that of a tall, majestically dressed woman. Dressed in Arryn blue. Next to that woman, whose hair was a blend of gold and silver, was a tall man who was decidedly northern. And they were all gathered with ladies and nobles in a corner of the gigantic room. They seemed cheerful. Oblivious to the tragedy that had knocked on Aemond's door.

And finally... Ah, finally, Aegon and Helaena. Standing side by side, next to the large fireplace that seemed to be the heart of the room. Both with their heads tilted towards each other, exchanging quick whispers. Helaena seemed annoyed. Exceptionally annoyed, though she never showed any expression other than absent-mindedness. And Aegon stood over her, clearly in conflict with himself. When his brother turned his face and caught him watching them, he gave him a strange look. 

Nauseating. 

Dark copper instead of silver. Brown instead of purple. 

He looked away with a sharp jerk. But his brother's features—melted on one side, like wax thinned by the flames of the fireplace—were burned into his pupils.

"Ah, here's the rascal," Prince Daemon began suddenly. Very abruptly. He was addressing his wife, that much was clear from his posture, but it was Aemond he was looking at directly. "Look at him, my love. Our eccentric dragon tamer has finally regained consciousness." 

Aemond realised he was saying this as if they hadn't exchanged a glance a few seconds earlier. As if his mother hadn't been the first to announce that he had woken up. 

In a corner of the hall, someone jumped. 

"Aemond!" 

And then it was as if someone had turned the sounds in the room back on. Aemond hadn't realised they had been muted. Muffled. But suddenly the crackling of the flames in the fireplace filled the room. The sound mingled with the murmur of the nobles' conversations. He heard the murmur of something Prince Baelon was saying in the distance and the low sobs of his mother. 

His mother, who still lay slumped beside him and the maester, half collapsed at his side. She was like a wayward child. An orphan stripped of shelter and food, rather than a ruling Queen. 

Something unpleasant settled in his chest when he saw her. 

It was then that a handful of very thick shadows crouched in the hall like cracks, waiting for the right moment to cover everything. But only he noticed. 

"Aemond! You stupid brat!" roared the King, waving his staff aggressively as he strode towards him with great strides and an energy that promised very bad things for him. "Insolent boy! You are a disgrace to the family!"

"Viserys, please!" begged Queen Alicent, rising in a burst of green, ever protective of him. "He is your son and he is hurt!"

But his once peaceful father dismissed her with a dismissive wave of his half-rotten hand. 

"You would do well to get out of my way, woman," he roared at his mother. "He is a disgrace, yes, but you and you alone have been responsible for his upbringing. His ruin is yours." 

And then he did something that made everyone in the room hold their breath. Including himself. He pushed her out of his way with a deliberate shove that made her scream in surprise and threw her onto the stone floor. Then, turning his attention to him, he struck Aemond in the eye with his oak staff. He hit him with the tip adorned with a huge ruby.

Blood then spurted out in a gush.

Someone let out a horrified scream. A woman screamed, and something seemed to fall and shatter into a thousand pieces.

Aemond's head flew back like a rag doll, hitting the hard back of his tall chair. For a moment, he saw the high ceiling. He saw stars and darkness. Blood covered his nose. It made him choke like he had on the beach and spit between tremors. But, and this was what made him most proud, he did not scream. 

"My King!" the Queen screamed from the floor on his behalf. 

And Aemond tasted the copper of his own blood on his swollen tongue for the first time. 

"My King! I beg you...!" 

"You beg me nothing! Nothing! Nothing, woman!" 

In a flurry of anger and wood, King Viserys, the Peaceful, struck his son once more. This time on the head. 

"Because of this imbecile, my only daughter...! My only daughter...!" The monarch's breathing was erratic. He couldn't finish speaking. He spat and looked very red. Then very purple. As if he were on the verge of a major attack. "Because of this hateful, vile brat...!"

Aemond didn't know exactly what he was guilty of. And he wanted to laugh. None of his king's blows hurt him. None of the insults hurt him. His body must have been full of poppy milk. Or perhaps the Whore had given him poison while he was still unconscious, and that was why he was no longer in control of himself. 

But she had done him a favour, he decided as thick blood dripped from his lips and poured from his head. The Whore had done him a favour, because everyone could see him. Covered in wounds, half burned from the waist down. With his face perhaps disfigured and his King beating him like a common thief. But without crying. Without complaining. Without showing any sign of pain that they could later cling to in order to spread their gossip. 

The maester who was attending to him stumbled away from the King's wrath. He was left alone, receiving blow after blow to his already swollen and almost disfigured face, when he heard laughter. 

And then, just as quickly, it all stopped. 

"Enough, Father." 

For a delirious moment, he thought it was Aegon speaking. Or perhaps Helaena. He thought that one of his siblings was interceding for him, seeing that his mother was no longer enough to appease Viserys. 

But behind the King's shoulder, he did not see Helaena's uncertain bearing. Nor did he see Aegon's smugness. 

"Enough," and suddenly there was Rhaenyra. Majestic and cold. "You will stop this immediately." 

She had a grimace on her lips. She looked disgusted as she looked at him. She snatched the cane from her father, and the King, suddenly staggering, turned to her like a child caught in the middle of a tantrum. 

Aemond, already choking on his blood again, held his breath despite everything. He didn't know what to expect from her. Defence or more punishment?

"Rhaenyra..."

"The carpets are new," the princess snapped, venom in her sweet voice. "It a gift from the prince of Pentos, and I will not allow them to be ruined with your blood". 

"How dare you, Rhaenyra! He is your own brother!"

Aemond laughed before the Whore had a chance to reply. He laughed between bloody coughs that shook his battered body and forced him to gasp for breath every so often. He laughed at his mother's protests and veiled insults. 

He laughed until his jaw ached, until, very slowly, a sharp pain made its way through his broken ribs, even at the cost of the numbness caused by whatever they had given him to spare him most of his agony. 

When his laughter died down, he realised that everyone was looking at him. The princes of the Whore and her warmongering husband. The princesses, their foreheads wrinkled with disapproval and their lips, all identically full, trembling with disgust or perhaps malicious amusement. 

All the nobles were staring at him. Lady Laena, Lord Corlys, Princess Rhaenys, and the whore Arryn. Ser Laenor and his illegitimate children. They all looked at him with their overly bright eyes in a room that was even more incandescent. 

But the shadows were growing thicker. And no one noticed.

"It seems that being rejected by a dragon has made him lose his mind," Prince Daemon mocked with ease, now sitting directly, and with great audacity, on the throne of his wife, the slut. "Now he looks more like a court jester than a Hightower half-dragon." 

"He is your prince!" Queen Alicent roared, rising once and for all from the floor with the help of the tense Ser Criston. "You will show him respect!" 

Aemond had not even seen his mother's sworn shield. He was so much a shadow of the queen that he had forgotten he was there. However, he noticed that he looked stiff. He already had a gloved hand on the hilt of his sword. 

"He's going to pull out his sword at any moment. " he thought with glee. 

He prayed to the Gods that the first head to roll would be his father's. Or perhaps, if he was even luckier, the Whore's and her consort's. Once they were dead, the Queen, as immediate regent, might offer him amnesty for his services to Aegon's crown. 

"My prince..." Daemon sneered once more. "Oh, no. I do not recognise that half-breed of yours as my prince, Alicent. I have enough of those already." 

Aemond saw him reach out a hand towards his silent son. Prince Baelon approached the throne, standing proudly at his father's right hand. Still covered in blood and with his doublet half smoking from what had happened on the beach, he looked just as his grandfather always said Aegon should look in public. 

"This one, in particular, would make all your sons pale even on their worst days. Your defective offspring are nothing but the dirt on their riding boots.

"Husband, enough," hissed Rhaenyra, as a horde of laughter bounced off the walls, causing an amplified echo that made Aemond shudder. "This is a waste of time". 

The princess stiffened even more as she spoke. His mother seemed to bite her tongue when she saw the icy expression on a face that should always remain delicate and serene. 

"They will leave immediately," continued the whore princess. And this time addressing the King exclusively. "With no chance of return. Ever. And if I see another ship with your emblem in my waters, or any of your children prowling around the dragons of Dragonstone, I will declare war on you, Father. I will show no mercy. 

Aemond gasped before he knew he was doing so. Then he did not hear his father's pleas or his mother's protests. He saw them all engage in an argument that included shouting, tears, and pleas for mercy. But he didn't really pay attention to them. 

He saw beyond them. He was drifting away once more in a mist that sought to drag him back into the comfort of unconsciousness. But Aemond fought against it. 

What had he expected? he asked himself in a daze. And he had no satisfactory answer. By skipping the spring celebration to go to Cannibal, he wasn't thinking sensibly. He was following his instincts. He genuinely thought he would end the night united with a dragon. He thought that when his parents came out, alerted by his absence, everything would be forgiven because he would have a formidable mount for his cause. 

"He has chosen me," he would have said to the indignant princess and her bastard son, as soon as he descended regally from Cannibal's back. "He has chosen me, and there is no turning back. I am a rider, just like you. Baelon will have to resort to the egg they had prepared for me." And then they would have been forced to accept him. They would have been forced to watch him ride triumphantly to the capital, while his brothers would have nothing but a few miserable eggs given to them out of pity.

It had been a stupid thought. Fleeting in his euphoria at the call of his blood.

Now he realised how much he had ruined everything in reality.

"My daughter, you must reconsider!" roared the King. 

He heard his mother say something. Rhaenyra too. Prince Daemon watched them from a distance. His legs crossed and disdain written all over his face. 

Prince Baelon, from his dais, had his eyes fixed on something else. Aemond followed his gaze and found himself looking at Aegon. 

He was coming towards him. Heleana had her hand outstretched towards her older brother. But she wasn't moving. Her lips were tight and her eyes were covered by a strange veil. A chill ran through him from head to toe when he saw her like that. As if in a trance. 

As if she were half trapped in another time. 

"It's all your fault," Aegon spat at her, long before he reached her side. 

He took very long strides. He seemed furious. He seemed personally offended. 

Aemond stiffened with renewed rigidity when he heard him. He moved his hands, wanting to get up, and a thread and a silver needle fell to the floor with a clatter. None of the adults paid any attention to them. 

"I didn't..."

"It's your fault," his brother repeated, hatred in his eyes, finally stopping in front of him after practically running to get there. "Mother was already arranging a betrothal between Helaena and Prince Lucerys. I had already managed to be taken on as Prince Daemon's squire. But you had to ruin everything... didn't you?" You had to go and try to claim a dragon that already had an owner, knowing what it would cost us all. You called me useless, selfish and stupid! Me! But look what you've achieved with your know-it-all attitude!

That was the most passionate and coherent thing he had heard his brother say in a couple of years. And he was completely against it. He didn't allow it. He clenched his hands into fists and clumsily got up from his chair to confront his father's heir.

He had already fallen into utter disgrace. He had nothing to lose. 

"At least I did something worthy," he said with his chin up and his voice dripping with contempt, even though blood was still running down his face and his vocal cords were torn from his previous screams. "At least I had the initiative to take what belongs to me for myself, instead of begging for scraps at the feet of that whore." 

He did not expect the blow that followed. It came out of nowhere, just like the bastard who delivered it directly to his right eye. 

As if he didn't have enough already. 

"Lucerys!" someone shouted. It was a female voice, and she seemed to be laughing as she misplayed her role. "Stop!"

Aemond's ears were ringing, and he was about to fall face-first to the floor, but, most importantly, he didn't feel any pain yet. He only felt the touch. The touch of a fist against his wounded face. 

When he looked up, tired of so many insults, he saw one of the Whore's princes standing in front of a very bewildered Aegon. He saw one of his many nephews. He was younger than him. A little shorter. He had a thick mop of brown hair and very strange brown eyes in that sea dominated by precious gems. 

He was a bastard. A real bastard, he realised. And he laughed in his face. Another punch hit him squarely in the nose for that audacity. But someone caught him before he could fall.

Someone taller, with olive skin and gloved hands. Someone with a sword at his hip and a dagger gleaming at his belt.

"Aemond, Aemond!" his mother screamed. It seemed that was all Queen Alicent was capable of that night. She could only beg and cry, lacking armies and dragons in her cause. 

Aemond couldn't see her. He only knew that suddenly he was the centre of attention again. Everyone surrounded him and the bastard in an uneven circle. Or perhaps in a very elongated crescent. The nobles had approached, Ser Laenor had his hand on his belt and was protecting a girl with tight silver curls with an outstretched arm. 

Once again, all those devilish eyes were fixed on him. 

"Pagans, all of them," he hissed with disdain in his head. "Beasts born of sin and the most horrendous abomination." 

"Lucerys, step back," the Whore ordered too calmly. 

"Aemond!" his father called out, as if it were all his fault. "Stop causing trouble!"

He was filled with rage. With more than justified anger. 

"Whore," he said to the bastard, forcing his voice to the limit. He realised that the boy did not speak. He defended his mother only with his fists. And there was no emotion on his face beyond a spark of evil in his brown eyes. He wanted to provoke something in him. He wanted to humiliate him worse than he had been humiliated himself. "Your mother, bastard, is a whore. A prostitute who defiles..."

Another faster, harder punch connected with his nose. And his head hit Ser Criston's armour with an ugly sound. This time he did feel something. A slight tingling in his brain and in his fingers, partially destroyed by the flames. 

"Stop this right now!"

"Back off, Prince Lucerys," Criston growled at the bastard. He tightened his grip on Aemond in a way that, had he been less drugged, might have been very painful. "Or I'll be forced to..."

"To what?" asked Prince Daemon. And he sounded dangerously close. 

Through the blood, the blows, and his increasing blindness, Aemond spotted Daemon far from the throne. He was standing next to his half-sister. He was holding her waist, a sardonic smile on his lips. They were surrounded by guards. And beside them, Lord Corlys and Princess Rhaenys formed a protective wall for the small children who had gathered around their wayward mother.

Out of the corner of his one good eye, he noticed a very tall, angry-looking guard dragging the bastard named Lucerys back into the fold. Along with a couple of princesses of the Whore and some dark-skinned girls who surrounded him and began to talk to him all at once. From that position, Aemond could only see the bastard's neck and part of his back, but it seemed to him that his shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. 

Aemond knew they were mocking him. And the blood in his veins began to boil.

"What will you do?" Prince Daemon insisted, meanwhile, to Ser Criston. "Tell me how, exactly, you plan to lay a finger on my son, and in his own castle, no less." 

"I am a royal guard, Prince Daemon," Ser Criston practically spat. And he seemed eager to throw punches as well. "I will protect this child at any cost. And from anyone." 

Daemon raised his angular chin and pointed it at the King. Like everyone else, the monarch stood very still, his eyes fixed on the tense quarrel. The air around the hall seemed to crackle. The temperature had plummeted. 

"That one, take a good look at him, is the only man you need to protect. And I see him in perfect condition. The brat he's holding, however, will be a very different story, once I feed him to Caraxes, to make him pay for his crimes against my House." 

"Daemon..." his mother began, her voice pleading. She no longer had her crown, which lay shattered on the floor. Her eyes were red from crying. Her lips were trembling, and Aemond didn't know if it was from fear or cold rage. "He's my son, my only..."

"You have two other brats to spare," the prince cut her off bluntly. 

He spoke of his impending death with enviable serenity. But Aemond felt no anger. He felt no fear. For him, it was like watching a street play or the life of a complete stranger. 

"He's just a child. Please..."

"And his crimes are already greater than his age," said the warmonger with a shrug. At his side, Rhaenyra looked colder than ever. "He has tried to steal the dragon from our pearl, and not content with that, he insults his mother in our ancestral home. The way I see it, his very breath is an affront to our pride." 

"Daemon," his father interjected. Finally. Someone had brought him his cane, and he was no longer staggering. But he seemed greatly diminished. The Royal Guard surrounded him in a tight protective circle. "Daemon, this is too much. We can agree on another punishment."

"No other punishment could be called justice." 

"He is my son," the King insisted. "No matter his crimes, he is my son. The punishment must be another."

But he did not say it as if he had absolute authority there. It was more like another faint echo of his mother's pleas.

Ser Criston let go of him halfway through the King's speech. Aemond stood up straight beside him, even though a sharp pain was already beginning to cover all his wounds. And a deathly heartbeat ran through the entire room in response to his agony. Aemond felt it. The shadows, like mist, curled around the ankles of his sister's family and around the Queen's shoulders. 

And again, he said nothing to anyone to warn them about them. For some reason, his lips remained sealed. Beyond his control. 

"Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra, please...You are a mother too," Queen Alicent pleaded, seeing her husband intercede with Daemon. "Don't let him do this. He it's my son..."

"Your son is a thief and has offended me personally," her half-sister said without emotion in her voice. And all conversation was cut short. "He will pay for them according to the laws that govern Dragonstone. 

"Rhaenyra, that's not..."

"I would have forgiven the insult he hurled at me, as an act of insolence born of the pain and venom he has grown up with. The attempt to steal a dragon, however, cannot go unpunished. A dragon is sacred to a Valyrian. And any offence against them is punishable by immediate execution." 

"Execution!" protested her father before the Queen could do so herself. "Rhaenyra, you cannot be serious. He is your brother. If you kill him..."

"You will be a murderer of your own kin!" screamed her mother. "The Gods will curse you, Rhaenyra. Please, I will give you..."

"The Queen is right," said a very soft voice. Sweet-tempered and as appealing as the tides at full moon. "The punishment is too severe. And I will not see my daughter cursed for something easily avoidable." 

"Aemma..." Prince Deamon began, with the same expression as someone who has been denied a delicious delicacy after days of fasting. "The boy..."

"The boy must be punished, I agree with that. But the King has already spoken. The punishment will be another. One more benevolent for his condition." 

The former Queen Arryn then entered the scene. Her skirts rustled delightfully with each step and seemed to part the shadows like a tide to make room for her in the centre of the circle. The blue of the sapphires on her bodice seemed to pulsate with a life of its own. She wore a crown of intricate braids on top of her head, just like her daughter. However, she also wore a strange tiara made of fresh flowers. The weaving in them was so delicate that it almost looked like royal jewellery. 

Aemond was breathless again as he looked at her face. She looked very young. Almost as young as her mother had been before she came to the island. She had clear blue eyes and a very soft mouth. A mouth made for kisses and gentle words. But her expression was another story. There was something about her that made her identical to Rhaenyra in a way that made him feel very alert. In danger. 

"The Valyrian laws are clear, Mother," her half-sister said to Lady Arryn, her face turned away and suddenly luminous. Excessively so. "The crime she has committed has only one payment. And it is immutable." 

Lady Arryn nodded sympathetically. 

"The laws say that, indeed, anyone who steals a dragon must be punished with death." But this prince has not achieved his goal. 

"Not for lack of trying, that's for sure," Daemon snapped. And for some reason, a note of amusement crept into his voice. "The boy had only one goal, and it wasn't exactly innocent." 

"But he didn't achieve it. And that's all that matters for now." 

His mother, Aemond realised, seemed to drink in every word with relief and excitement as it came from the mouth of the Queen she had replaced many years ago. 

"So, what...?"

"Take his hands as spoils and payment," Lady Aemma's voice was clear. Silky and musical. But her words cut off the free flow of blood throughout his body. And if necessary, to quench your thirst for justice, take any other limb of your choice. Take whatever you want from him and let him rot on some continent forgotten by the gods to atone for his sins against House Targaryen. 

"No!" Queen Alicent roared, throwing herself at him with the force of a natural disaster. 

Aemond would have fallen if she hadn't suddenly suffocated him in her trembling arms. 

"Viserys! Viserys, please! He's your son! He's of the same blood as all of you!" 

Ser Criston then drew his sword. 

Aemond heard the edge of his sword cutting through the air. A heartbeat later, the clamour of more steel followed. By the time Aemond managed to turn his face so that his mother would not suffocate him against her chest, a multitude of swords were already raised in the air.

Prince Daemon and Dark Sister drew attention as they stood at the centre of the circle. The northern man accompanying Lady Arryn discreetly took her by the wrist and pushed her back towards the nobles to keep her away from the commotion. He too had drawn a broadsword as monstrous as Dark Sister's. 

It was Ice. The Valyrian steel sword of House Stark. At another time, in another life, Aemond would have been thrilled like a child to see it. On this occasion, however, he couldn't care less. 

It still didn't seem like something that was happening directly to him. 

A royal guard, he vaguely noticed, had pushed the King back. The nobles were also fleeing a little. Ser Laenor and Lord Corlys wielded their swords against the nearest Hightower guards. Outside, the dragons roared in response to their riders' sudden unease. 

Aemond would have laughed if he could. He would have laughed until everyone knew how unbalanced he felt. 

"We won't get out of here alive," he thought with the same detachment he had been experiencing since he woke up for the third time. "This is the end." 

There was no way to win. There were only a handful of Hightower guards to protect them, whose swords had barely had a chance to taste blood in battle. They only had the royal guard, and ultimately, they would prioritise the King. Viserys would perhaps be the only one to get out of there alive. 

Aemond cursed him for it. Him and the Queen's insistence on appearing peaceful, at the cost of bringing few guards. 

"It will be a friendly visit," he had said to Ser Otto with a condescending smirk that Aemond would never forget, even in death. "Rhaenyra must believe that we trust her and her hospitality from the start, Father. It is better this way." 

Stupid, stupid, and a thousand times stupid. 

He shook her off violently. His mother, incredulous at his rejection, stepped back awkwardly. But no one was paying attention to them. The men, swords in hand, sized each other up, waiting to see who would strike first. 

"You'll lose your head for raising your sword against a prince of the blood, Crispin," Daemon sneered. "You've come this far." 

"I don't recognise you as my prince, Lord Fleabag," Ser Criston growled. 

He seemed very out of sorts. Aemond noticed something strange in his eyes too. There were no gems there, but it seemed as if a veil had fallen over them. However, his pupils were so large that they almost consumed everything else. His face was also very red, and his hands and armour were stained with blood. 

His blood, Aemond thinks bitterly once more. 

"Come, then." 

"Daemon, enough!" demanded the King from behind his human wall, trying to make his way through them. But the Royal Guard did not move. They gave no quarter, not even to their lord. "Stop this madness. No one will shed blood today." 

He heard a mocking chuckle. To his right. But when he turned his face, he only found Aegon, his eyes fixed on Ser Criston and Daemon. He wasn't laughing. He looked incredibly tense and had pink spots on his neck.

One side of his face was burned again. He grew taller and shorter between blinks. 

Dark copper instead of purple. 

"Do you wish me to call for peace and harmony, Your Grace?" Daemon asked the whore suddenly, very formally, without deigning to look at her. With a big smile and his sword pointed directly at Ser Criston's face. "Say the word and it will end." 

Aemond hurried to look at his sister. It was like watching a tournament. A joust. Everywhere, something important was happening. 

"My wish is the wish of justice, husband," the whore said in an incredibly silky voice. And there was something almost gentle in her tone. "Give me his head, then." 

Queen Alicent let out a bloodcurdling scream. His father cursed, and a collective gasp rippled through the hall. 

Aemond then moved towards his mother's sworn shield. He was still very close to him. It didn't take much to remove the dagger from his belt.

Ser Criston barely noticed as he charged towards Deamon with the battle cry of a mortally wounded animal.

"What are you...?" Aegon began.

Aemond ignored him. He left him to his own devices and weaved his way through the nobles and those who were clearly servants, searching for the bastards. He took advantage of the fact that the shadows had reached their peak. It was no longer light that reigned in the great throne room. It was darkness. And Aemond would die fighting. Just like the knight who would give his life for them that night.

Aegon would not survive. Helaena and the King might. Rhaenyra might show mercy to a grieving mother, but his mother would probably end up as a hostage in that nest of vipers. Aemond gave her one last look. Fleeting, half-hearted. Obstructed by blood, blindness, and a blossoming contempt for the feminine weakness that existed in the woman who had raised him to be extraordinary in everything except being publicly the heir. 

He said goodbye with that. She didn't understand. She looked at him half-heartedly, her attention fluctuating between him and the fight. It didn't hurt him. It had always been like that between them. He never thought of her as anything more than half a person. 

He did not look back as he moved forward. Aegon stumbled after him. He knew this because he could hear his curses and how he asked him to retreat to the safety of his guards. But his guards were already fighting. Aemond could hear the edge of the weapons cutting through the air with a deadly whistle. He heard the clamour of battle at its height. 

The women screamed hysterically. The men joined in the din of violence. 

"Aemond! Aegon!" his mother cried in genuine despair after them. "Bring them back! Bring them back to me!"

No one stopped him. Perhaps because no one wanted to touch a creature as battered as he now was. He was now a decidedly wounded creature. It was better that way. Aemond rushed blindly forward and found them just where he had last seen them. All together. At least a dozen children, bastards and ladies of high birth. 

Children of Valyria. Born of the sin of a nation extinct by divine design. The gods knew what they were doing when they pulverised the Freehold. They were a plague. And they had nested until they infected him too. 

But no more. 

"Bastard!" he roared at any of them, dagger raised. 

He looked for Prince Baelon, but did not find him there. There were only children and women. Twins at the front. Both beautiful. Both tall and slender. One of them would surely have been his wife in a kinder life. 

One of them, perhaps Visenya or perhaps Daenys, lifted her chin defiantly. There was contempt in her supernatural eyes. 

She was the embodiment of the Goddess  herself. But she must die along with all the pagans of her own blood. 

"Show yourself, bastard!"

"Aemond!"

Someone touched his shoulder in a hostile but familiar manner. Aemond turned and lunged with his dagger into the air. The hand withdrew and he heard an incredulous exhalation. Identical to his mother's seconds before. 

He turned. 

And he did not know how the next course of events unfolded. At least, not exactly. 

He only understood, or wanted to understand, that the bastard was in front of him. It was Lucerys, he remembered from the screams. It was Lucerys, he was sure, even though his vision was blurred and everything was stained with a red film. It wasn't Baelon. But that was fine too. He had hit him. He had humiliated him. 

The additional noise ceased. He could only hear his own breathing and the beating of his heart. The room was reduced to him and his enemy. Tall. Then short. Silver. Then brown. 

The bastard smiled in the same way as Prince Daemon. They were identical, except for the colour of their hair and eyes. Aemond lunged forward, determined to wipe that smug expression off his simple face. 

The blade of the dagger sank deep into a smooth chest. Warm blood splattered his face. And this time it wasn't his. The bastard didn't try to escape. He didn't scream. He didn't move and he didn't acknowledge the pain. Perhaps he understood that he had gone too far in striking him. Perhaps he knew that the right thing to do was to remain still while Aemond finished him off. 

Whatever the case, just to be sure, Aemond dug his nails into his broad shoulders and held him in place while he plunged the dagger into his belly, chest, hips and sides. He plunged and withdrew the blade, drenched in red, again and again with delight, until he had torn his beautiful emerald green clothes to shreds.

"Someone stop him! He's lost his mind!"

The bastard collapsed onto the stone floor. Aemond followed him down and climbed on top of him. He attacked his face, his brown hair. He attacked his brown eyes, which looked at him with panic and betrayal. He attacked his neck, throat, and arms as the bastard weakly tried to protect himself. 

To no avail. 

"Murderer... murderer..."

Then there was a flash of silver and purple instead of dark copper. 

"No!" 

It was then that he saw the scratches on the only healthy part of his own upper arms. Then the sound returned in all its glory. 

Aemond noticed thin arms closing around his waist and someone howling in his ear. He tried to cut that person too, but he couldn't pay attention to them. 

Lucerys was still moving. His chest, riddled with deep wounds, still rose and fell, though with difficulty. The bastard was clinging to life like the plague he was. 

He had to finish the job before one of his guards came to kill him. And if no one did, he would go after Baelon. He would make him pay for what his beast had done. 

"Enough! Enough!" someone screamed above his head. "Stop! You've killed him, Aemond! You've killed him!" 

But he couldn't. He was filled with strength. With a vitality he had never known in his entire life. He kept plunging the blade until his forearms were soaked in blood. Up to his elbows. Up to his clothes. A watery, horrendous sound, like bones breaking, thundered through the hall. 

Aemond kept plunging the blade. Up, down. Into the throat and then again into the belly. Until he was sure the bastard had breathed his last breath. Until he could no longer breathe and felt himself choking on his own maniacal laughter. 

Until the person holding him by the waist vanished with a strange sound. Like a muffled sob. 

The world slowly expanded, one second at a time, as he found himself alone with the corpse of his victim on the floor. The room expanded one centimetre per heartbeat. The light became incandescent again and Aemond looked up, proud of his achievement. 

The shadows had disappeared completely. It seemed as if they had never been there in the first place. And in that light, which was almost as powerful as the sun, everyone would know that he had been a warrior to the end. 

He searched for Prince Daemon in the sea of people and found him still standing in the centre. For a moment, his vision cleared. 

Ser Criston lay dead at his uncle's feet. He noticed this as he wiped the excess liquid from his face with his soaked hands. 

"A pity," thought Aemond. His mother would have to find another sworn shield. And he was sure they would assign her a capable one, once the Hightower army, sent by the Hand of the future King Daeron, mobilised to rescue her from the clutches of the Whore. 

But his mother would have at least one joy in her coming days as a hostage. That would be on him. Aemond half-released the dagger and lifted the bastard's torso with a grunt of effort. He wanted to cut off his head and deliver it to his queen, just as Daemon would do with Ser Criston's head. 

Then he would be as feared throughout the Kingdom as his uncle, even in death. He would be like a legend. Like the one who should have been born the firstborn son. 

He cradled the bastard's head and began, carelessly, to try to sever it. But it was harder than he thought, and he was distracted by the sobs.

By the eerie silence. 

Yes, indeed. Except for the cries, the erratic and incredulous breathing, there was no sound. All battle had ceased. And yet Aemond had seen only one corpse. 

He looked up, confused, and immediately met his mother's wide, tear-filled eyes. She was slumped on her knees. The King was half bent over her, his jaw open, his eyes filled with horror. Around them, the royal guard was still there. But their previously rigid postures now seemed to be those of statues. Aemond scanned the hall and found a few bodies lying against the stone. The carpets that Rhaenyra had said were a gift drank greedily from the spilled blood of them all. 

And all of them, for who knows how many times now, were looking at him. With matching emotions. With those eyes of fiery purple in all shades of gems. There was a certain sparkle in those pupils. An unexpected delight. 

The whore, among all those vipers, smiled with the delight of a child on the happiest day of her life. Even though her son had just been brutally slaughtered.

"Yet more proof that he would have turned the Kingdom into a graveyard of ashes," thought Aemond with a gloating feeling that tasted strange on his tongue.

"My son..." whispered his mother, as if she couldn't believe what her eyes and senses were telling her. But he barely paid any attention to her. He only knew that she had her hand outstretched in his direction, as if she wanted to bridge the distance to touch him. "My son, Seven, my son..."

"You never love anything in life as much as you love your firstborn," a little voice whispered in his ear. And something awful settled in his stomach like bitter food. 

Aemond, moved by a strange force, looked down—perfect for some reason—one last time. He saw the blood dripping from his raw hands. The blisters had burst, and his own blood was mixing with the bastard's. The thread they had been sewing him with was between the flesh and the bones. Aemond saw a brief glimpse of pure white there. But that was not important. 

The silver in his victim's hair was. 

It was not Lucerys Targaryen who lay beneath his thighs. It was not Lucerys Targaryen who lay dead, his face smashed beyond recognition. It was not Lucerys who owned the empty sockets and white globes on either side of his face. Lucerys Targaryen was not the owner of that wide-open, slit throat either. 

It was Aegon. 

"No," he thought stupidly. As if that could solve anything. As if with a single word and his willpower he could travel back in time. "No, this isn't..."

But it was. 

It was. And Aemond had irrevocably stained his soul.

He had become, without knowing or wanting to, a killer of relatives worse than he had intended to be.

Chapter Text

The bloodstained dagger fell from his hand with a sinister noise. Condemnatory and thunderous. And Aemond —barely— managed to stifle the horrified scream that struggled to emerge from his shattered vocal cords.

Aegon's face, beneath his body, was utterly unrecognisable. The image he saw in his older brother (the lips missing parts, the jaw full of cuts so deep that he could see white underneath, and the eyes out of their sockets) would haunt him forever. 

He shuddered. Bile rose in his throat and he thought he was going to vomit. He hiccupped, between dry sobs that he didn't know when he had started producing. And then he leaned over the corpse of a man he had once loved  reluctantly in his early childhood. Aemond, bringing his hands to the deepest wounds of his brother, collected the blood that flowed from them between his fingers, struggling to return that red liquid back to Aegon's body. 

Surely he wasn't responsible for such a massacre, he told himself internally, in order to maintain a shred of sanity. He was just a skinny kid. He was only thirteen name days, compared to his brother's fifteen, and he was also — supposedly — severely burned by a wild beast. He was wounded and drugged, so someone else... Someone else, not him, must have done this to his brother. But it was his hands, not someone else's, that desperately plunged his fingers into Prince Aegon's open belly. It was his thighs, not someone else's, that sat on his brother's legs as he begged the Gods that none of this was true. 

It was Aemond himself who was sobbing, and it was his body that convulsed with violent regret as he begged for mercy from his mother's Gods. From anyone out there listening. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispered to his brother for the first time in his life. At least, voluntarily. "I didn't want to do it. It wasn't supposed to be you."

Trying to return the blood to the wounds was futile. A large red pool was already forming at Aegon's sides. So he brought his fingers to those white globes he had taken from Aegon and struggled. Oh, Aemond struggled to return them to the sockets where they belonged, hoping that simple gesture might fix everything. 

"Forgive me," he begged whoever was watching him from some divine throne. He also prayed that his right eye would fail again. For both to fail so he could escape that horror. That tragedy. But no one heard him. No one came to his aid. And he believed then that he might go completely mad.

His vision was perfect. Sharper than it had ever been. And Aemond firmly believed that it was the beginning of a punishment that could last for the rest of his life.

"There is nothing more hateful than a kinslayer," the same little voice from before reminded him. Aemond groaned and dug his blood-covered nails into his brother's forehead. There were too many cuts there. Too many wounds from which blood cascaded. And it was like that everywhere. 

His brother was like a crimson stream. A horrendous remnant of what had once been a crown prince. 

Aemond looked up, desperate. Seeking comfort from his mother. From anyone. 

"Maestre," he said, however, as he licked his wet, very red lips. And on his tongue, the blood tasted like a death sentence. "Maestre.. my brother, my brother is injured and you have to save him." 

He searched the room with his eyes, already half standing to force the old man to heal the prince. And he gasped. 

This was not the throne room of Dragonstone. Although the black table was still there. There were no incandescent lights. Only candles in various stages of burning down, partially illuminating the room. This was another dining room for large dinners, identical to those in the Red Keep in King's Landing. Some areas were completely in darkness. There were leftovers from a sumptuous banquet on the table and gold plates that sparkled in the light of the candles, torches and the large fireplace. 

The darkness curled like fog, once again, under the feet of everyone there. All of them paralysed. Their eyes fixed on him. 

All motionless. none of them knowing how to proceed. 

He saw Ser Criston before to see the Queen Alicent. The knight was still a corpse at Prince Daemon's feet. But Aemond saw something different in him. He saw the arm severed from the body, the head split in half, and grey bits surrounding his hair like a grotesque crown. There was no dignity in his twisted figure on the black stone floor. And he still held the sword—clean, with no trace of enemy blood—in his lifeless hand. 

"Daemon has taken his revenge on him," he thought, unable to help herself. And his stomach lurched, because he knew very well that this was a fate he could imitate. 

He would be executed, he realised with a burst of fear that made his heart beat painfully against his chest. His throat went dry and his hand instinctively reached for the dagger to protect himself. But his cramped fingers closed in the air. 

"He's dead," Prince Daemon muttered suddenly, harshly. And his voice seemed to come from a thick fog. "You took care of that, you kinslayer. No maestre in the land can save him." 

Aemond looked at him then. He really looked at him. Dark Sister had returned to his belt. The warmonger's posture was rigid but confident. And Princess Rhaenyra was half-hidden behind her husband, her hands outstretched to prevent her offspring, behind her, from stepping out of the shadow of the rogue prince.

"No," whispered Aemond. Desperate. In complete panic. "No, he can... He can be saved, I saw him breathe when..."

"He's lost his mind," Prince Daemon snapped, as if he didn't care about his explanations, and no longer addressing him. "Get him out of my sight, Viserys. I will not allow a kinslayer inside my halls. Much less in the same place as my children's. Get him out and do what you have to do with him." 

This time there was no cry of protest. There was no maternal intervention. Aemond looked for his mother, his eyes filled with tears, and found her still on the stone floor. Collapsed on her knees. Her bloody nails dug into her face with unusual violence, her shoulders shaking with aggressive hysteria. His mother was crying for the son she had lost, Aemond knew that because he could see her mouth open and sensed that powerful sounds were coming out of it. But he couldn't hear her. 

And she didn't hear him when he called out to her, asking for her protection. Asking her to intercede for him, even if it was for the last time. It was as if a heavy veil had fallen between them. As if the hall itself did not want to allow them to communicate. 

It was more than simple mourning and raging grief. 

"It is the Whore's magic that prevents her from hearing me. Rhaenyra is using the heresy that everyone in the capital is talking about, although I cannot know for sure what she is doing," he thought, his stomach clenching with fear. He thought that at any moment he would start screaming like Queen Alicent. Before he knew it, however, someone grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and lifted him up until his feet skidded on his brother's spilled blood. Someone forced him to stand still, and then he had a long sword against his neck, also covered in his own and someone else's blood. 

"Let him be executed as soon as possible, lest he bring us more tragedy," Prince Daemon continued, addressing the dazed King, who was Aemond's father. And something dangerous glinted in the warmonger's eyes in the light of the fireplace. "Let him die." .

Aemond never knew who had given the order to arrest him. But he almost wet himself with fear as the blade of the sword threatened to taste his flesh. A trickle of blood still flowed cheerfully from his head. And he couldn't scream or try to push the sword away. He feared that if he tried, he would end up slitting his own throat. The man behind him was too tall. He couldn't see his face. He couldn't turn his head to see what uniform or crest he wore on his armour. And that drove him to despair. 

A heartbeat passed between his mental notes, and another passed before his mother finally came out of her daze. Aemond still couldn't hear her, but she kept screaming and gathered the skirts of her dress as she rose violently. She looked like a wounded deer. Or perhaps a bound and cornered predator. 

She was saying something. And he couldn't hear her. He clenched his teeth in desperation. He struggled to make his ears hear her, just as they heard the crackling of the torches and the fireplace. He prayed to hear her in the same way he heard his own racing heartbeat and the murmur of the nobles' whispered conversations as they looked at him. 

He needed to know if his mother was helping him or condemning him even more. 

"Alicent, please, there is nothing more to be done for him..." said the King, looking a thousand years older. 

"They are condemning me, then," he thought incredulously as he heard his father. That couldn't be. But Viserys was arguing with her and still couldn't hear her. 

King Viserys leaned on his cane with an aggressive tremor, his eyes sunken and looking sicker than ever as the Queen shouted in his face. In another life, perhaps that image would have made him feel sorry for his father. On this occasion, he felt nothing. He just needed his King's mercy. He needed to be escorted out of Dragonstone urgently, or his head would roll. His whole body prepared itself to run or to beg. He moistened his lips, still stained crimson, and frantically searched for Rhaenyra. Daemon could say whatever he wanted against him, but this was still the princess's domain. And he needed to appeal to her feminine weakness to get out of there alive. 

"Sister..." he called to her. And his tongue suffered a painful spasm. Aemond felt an overwhelming urge to vomit as every cell in his body categorically rejected the kinship between the two of them. "Sister, I didn't want to kill him, I didn't..."

She moved very slowly away from Daemon's side. The eldest bastard —Baelon— followed her like a shadow, and his guard (he didn't know exactly who he was protecting), a tall, burly man, imitated him perfectly. There was something about that guard that distracted him for a moment. He could see that he was wearing fine, well-kept clothes. Like a nobleman. And the sword he carried in his hand was identical to the high-quality swords that were usually given to Aegon on his name day. Although he never used one in battle. But that wasn't exactly what caught his attention.

His brown hair and eyes, yes. That huge guy had the same brown curls as Lucerys. He looked just like the bastard he was trying to kill. 

"It's the father. It's Ser Harwin," he thought fleetingly, almost as if it were someone else. But that didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter. His only goal at the moment was to get out of there. 

"Then who did you want to kill?" Rhaenyra asked him in the same soft, gentle tone she had used before. 

Aemond hesitated before responding with a lie. His eyes betrayed him and went straight to the princess's son. First to Baelon. Then to Lucerys. That was when he gasped and the blade pressed against his neck sank sweetly into the surface of his skin. However, there was no pain in that wound or any other yet. There was only room for surprise in him. 

His eyes were deceiving him. He was convinced. The Whore's bastard no longer seemed so bastardly. Aemond barely recognised him because of the disconcerting familiarity of his sweet features. 

The bastard in front of him had undeniably dark silver hair, and although he couldn't be sure of the colour of his eyes because of the poor light in the large room, he was sure they were no longer brown. Something deep and old inside him told him so. And he believed it. 

But he didn't understand. Or perhaps he didn't want to understand. He searched that boy, a year younger than him, for any trace of identity that would give him away as a Strong. But he found absolutely nothing. So this couldn't be Lucerys Targaryen.

Even the name was Velaryon! That proved that the Whore had slept with other men; one of them might have been a Valyrian seed from Driftmark. Or perhaps she had slept with Lord Corlys Velaryon to secure the loyalty and wealth of his House. After all, Rhaenyra had eight children. Eight, compared to his mother's four.

Queen Alicent and his grandfather always said that his half-sister's appetites, more befitting a low-class prostitute than a princess heiress, were incompatible with the sanctity of marriage. 

"She and her warmonger would have turned the entire Kingdom into a brothel in less than a solar turn," Otto Hightower had once said. And his mother had pressed her lips together, after nodding. Aemond believed all his life that they were right. After all, they were the ones who had known her. They, in person, had driven her from the capital, along with her infertile mother.

But this prince, this boy who smiled at him once more from the protection afforded him by his entire pagan family, was irrefutably Valyrian. From head to toe. And he was intact. 

"No!" Aemond insisted. And once again he saw everything red, the result of the blind rage that possessed him. He turned his face away abruptly. The blade of the sword almost sank deeper into his skin and the guard staggered behind him as he pulled the sword away so as not to kill him on the spot without an order. Or perhaps the order had already been given and he couldn't hear it. But it didn't matter. Frantically, he tried to locate the real Lucerys in the hall. But all he saw were adult faces looking at him with varying degrees of malice, disgust and judgement. All he saw behind Prince Daemon was a tight circle of small children with silver hair. Some were fair-skinned, others dark-skinned. 

The older boys wore the robes and emblems of House Velaryon. Another pair of boys proudly wore the Celtigar crest. And the Targaryens... The older Targaryens were Baelon, the twins, and the Lucerys who was not Lucerys. Other than that, there was a boy a little shorter than Lucerys, some cute-looking twins, and more girls. They all had silver hair. Again. 

There was not a single dark hair in that area. 

Although there were some in another corner, not so far away. The Whore Arryn had two boys with black hair and slightly elongated faces standing in front of her. They were two tall boys for their age, who were also behind Lord Rickon. And they were undoubtedly Starks, although one of them had bright violet eyes that contrasted with his brother's gray eyes. There was also a girl, hidden behind her mother's skirts, who looked a little like Rhaenyra's children. None of them were of use to him. They were all children of the deceitful Arryn. 

Increasingly erratic and determined, he looked for Lucerys elsewhere. But there were too many children. All with different hair colours and clothes that declared them to belong to minor houses and important houses. He distinguished among them a Tyrell shield and blond hair, typical of the Lannisters. (Was there really a Lannister ally there, or was it again a figment of his imagination? He did not know.) There were children who seemed to come directly from Dorne and others from the Iron Islands. 

He could not locate any children from House Strong. 

And his time was running out. 

He hadn't heard it, he was so focused, but someone must have given his executioner the order to hurt him, because suddenly he found himself breathless and the world tilted strangely. He didn't know exactly where he had been struck either. Someone was screaming. 

A second later he was on his knees, his face turned towards Princess Rhaenyra, with the executioner still holding his shoulders, but even more urgently now. Aemond felt no pain from the force used to hold him, but he did feel the pressure exerted on him. And it was so great that no miracle could have freed him from its iron grip. 

"The princess has asked you a question," the Whore's Dog growled in his ear, his tone dripping with personal hatred. "And you will answer her."

Aemond wanted to spit in his face. At that executioner for treating a prince like this. At the Whore for stealing everything from them, at Viserys for allowing it, and at all those bastards for existing. But he was powerless and had to play his cards right. So he metaphorically bit his tongue and feigned a submission he would never feel. 

He felt a deep disgust for himself as the vipers enjoyed themselves at his expense. It took all his strength not to shout insults that his mother would never have allowed in public. 

"No one," he finally lied, after swallowing with some difficulty. Little by little, second by second, he began to feel a certain burning sensation throughout his body. Especially in his lower region and fingers. "didn't want to kill anyone.

"You had a dagger with you," his half-sister taunted him, her face full of arrogance. And Aemond saw her approaching. Ser Harwin and the bastard moved behind her, while Daemon turned and took the bastard Lucerys by the arm, leaning down to whisper something urgent in his ear. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw, a moment later, that the bastard was disappearing into the crowd, heading for the fireplace. "And I don't think it was with the intention of spearing any leftovers from the banquet."

The world came crashing down around him. If they touched Helaena...

There was laughter throughout the hall that enraged him even more. Aemond could no longer see his mother or his father the King. He didn't know where Helaena was either, but he assumed she was still by the fireplace and believed that Lucerys was already taking her hostage. That worried him more than anything else. His sister was an innocent and pure, and they would surely try to sully her virtue until she was worthless to the Green cause. He clenched his teeth even tighter and tried to lower his head to locate his sweet girl, but the executioner grabbed him by a lock of hair and pulled so hard that something finally hurt that night. 

And he screamed.

"I wasn't going to kill anyone!" he squawked before the fucking executioner could think of doing anything else. His heart was beating faster and faster. It was painful, and he felt like he was going to faint under the threat of more suffering. "I was taking her for protection!"

There was an incredulous pause. Even in his pain, he strained his ears and tried to hear Helaena's screams, but there was nothing. That fired his imagination, and he thought he could bite his tongue until he choked on his own flesh and blood if they hurt his sister. 

"And yet..." He didn't know why at first, but the Whore raised her voice to make herself heard by him. He assumed that, even though he couldn't hear her, the Queen was perhaps screaming too loudly and so the Whore had to make a great effort to be heard by others as she mocked his defenceless little brother. Something in that simple fact almost caused him a faint gloating, which vanished as his half-sister drew closer and closer. "...your drunken brother lies dead by your own hand." 

There was no way to refute that. He himself did not know exactly what had happened to him. But throughout the massacre, he swore he was seeing the bastard. He would never have risked killing Aegon. Much less in public. But saying that would not make him look good to anyone. He tried to say something in his defence. He opened and closed his mouth like a dying fish on the shore.

He had no explanation. He was beyond salvation. They had taken Helaena to hurt her, and he couldn't go to save her. His father wasn't helping as King, and he didn't even know if the Queen had realised the same thing he had. Nothing mattered anymore, he decided with a sigh of defeat. 

And in his final moments, he wasn't going to humiliate himself in front of the Whore for a pardon he would never receive. He would leave with his head held high. 

"I don't believe you're foolish enough to kill the heir in front of the King and your sweet mother," his half-sister spat out the last part almost forcefully. With venom seeping into her voice that froze his blood. "So tell me, Aemond. Tell me exactly... Who did you want to kill?"

She looked him straight in the eye. Aemond returned her gaze, no longer so afraid. Indignation and blind rage gave him courage. So he looked back at her, feeling his insides burn and the burns on his body soon activate to do him as much harm as possible. 

Perhaps he would die soon. But he would leave doing as much damage as possible.

"Your bastards," he snapped at the whore with all the hatred he had harboured inside him for years, before he could fall prey to the suffering of his wounds. "I was going to kill Lucerys. Baelon. I was going to kill anyone I could lay my hands on, to rid the Kingdom of its sinful filth. And then, if I was still alive and strong enough, I would have come for you, Whore. 

He finished speaking with his throat raw once more, but with the satisfaction of having said every word he felt. He was sure that his expression and the venom in his voice would haunt the Whore in her dreams for as long as she lived. 

And he smiled at her in the same condescending way Ser Otto did at his fallen enemies, ready to twist the knife of his hatred. 

It was then that he suddenly heard his mother. The scream she let out as if she were being stabbed. The executioner allowed him to lower his head. In fact, he moved it in the direction of the Queen with a delight that did not go unnoticed. And all the sounds came to him with a clarity that rivaled that of his eyes.

Daemon Targaryen stood before her. Dark Sister had returned to her belt. There were no Hightower guards or royal guards around them. Just the two of them. The Queen was on her knees, her face contorted in terrible pain, desperately scratching at her captor's arms. Daemon held the Queen's copper-coloured hair between his fingers, unmoved. He shook her with amusement, but it was King Viserys whom he looked at with delight that no one could ever imitate.

"The killer of relatives has confessed. You are all witnesses to the extent of his crimes and his dirty intentions," laughed the Whore. And it seemed like it was the best night of her life. Suddenly she turned abruptly, almost dramatically, turning her back on him. "Arrest the puppet king of the Hightower vipers, and take into custody any guards, maids, and servants who accompany them. We will make a delicious spectacle of them all for the capital!"

There was a flurry of shouts, skirts and swords. The Royal Guard moved and Aemond thought there would be a fierce battle. He prepared to elbow the guard. To flee amid the distraction of the brawl. Once he was free, he would find Helaena and take her with him after killing the bastard Lucerys. But something happened that made all the sparkle go out of his eyes. And all hope.

Ser Harrold Westerling stepped forward from his brothers in arms, sword raised, and then knelt on one knee with his head bowed in surrender. In submission to the Whore. 

The rest of them followed suit. And those who did not were struck down by cowardly guards who fell upon their backs. The stone floors were also stained with their blood, while the King, frantic and his eyes bulging with fear and betrayal, ordered everything to stop. 

But it did not. Nothing ceased until the last man loyal to Aegon's cause fell dead. 

Rhaenyra, bathed in the light of the fireplace, stood before him, smiling at the spectacle. She was completely in control of herself and was not moved by the sight of guts, blood and organs spilled on her floor. 

She was a monster. An abomination of nature. She had been imposed to punish Westeros for harbouring the Valyrians in its domains. Of that he was sure. 

"The Puppet King has fallen!" Daemon Targaryen suddenly exclaimed with infinite joy, while his mother called on the Gods for help. And the King, as bewildered as Aemond himself felt, spat bile at the back of Ser Westerling the traitor; as he was seized by Ser Harwin and Ser Laenor — Long live the Black Queen! 

"The Puppet King has fallen!" shouted the noble crowd allied with the Whore of Dragonstone. From children to adults. From the representatives of the North to the Vale, from the Stone Steps to Dorne — Long live the Black Queen!

And then, for the last time, as his Usurper sister stepped forward with a drunken smile of triumph directed at him, someone struck him on the back of the neck. 

And he fainted. 

««««««»»»»‹·«»»»»»

The last time he woke up alive, he did so lying at the foot of the Iron Throne. And when he opened his eyes, still perfectly functional, he discovered that there was no longer a high, vaulted ceiling above his head. There were only grotesque remains of what was once a magnificent structure.

He woke up lying on still-smoking ruins. 

He woke up numb from a wind blowing fiercely from collapsed walls, with no torches to give him a little warmth. A blizzard of black ash fell from high in the sky. It fell in almost delicate gusts, but it stank of blood and death long forgotten. 

He got up confused, as he sometimes did in his dreams. Standing up, he noticed that he had nothing substantial in his head, apart from basic functions. And he soon discovered that, on contact with his skin, the ashes seemed to transmute into icy snowflakes. 

"How strange!" he thought as he examined a solitary flake he removed from his right cheek. However, before he could marvel at the extraordinary beauty of that tiny thing, he heard the thick, watery gurgling sound so typical of blood emerging from a recent wound. 

He turned his head and saw it. A small child, with a heavy, oversized crown on his head, as silver as his own. The child was sitting on the monstrosity that was the Iron Throne. He had a dagger stuck deep in his heart and an oversized sword spanning his entire lap. 

It was the King's Valyrian sword. 

Aemond blinked slowly. He tried to understand what he was seeing. But suddenly he was at the door of the hall, far away from the child. From that vantage point, he noticed something he hadn't seen before. Something that froze the blood in his veins more effectively than the hostile wind and snow that shouldn't have been there could have done. 

On the walls, which were barely standing, he saw more than twenty dragon skulls neatly lined up. 

From Balerion's black skull to a slightly elongated skull that he believed belonged to Caraxes. From the distinctive skull of Vhagar to the still-perfect head of a dragon that looked more like a very small dog. Aemond was sure he could have held that last skull comfortably in one hand. 

After all, he was returning to the fullness he had once achieved in another life. He was sixteen again. He was tall and slender once more. One more blink and his right eye disappeared. It transmuted into an empty socket, which was then filled by a sparkling sapphire, hidden under a green leather patch. He couldn't see it, of course. But he knew it was there as surely as he knew his own name and importance. And it didn't matter. 

Once again, he had a magnificent sword at his side. Once again, he was certain that, even without an eye, he was the most powerful swordsman in the entire Kingdom. 

However, there was bitterness in his happiness. As always. He had once given an eye for a war dragon. And now he would give a giant dragon to be the age he deserved to be.

He moved forward without thinking. Confident, with his hand on the hilt of his sword and his back perfectly straight; who knows who the owner of the room is. The dying child continued to spill blood on his father's throne. And he had to expel him as soon as possible. 

He had already reached the halfway point, barely noticing the disturbing sight of the dragon skulls, when someone called out to him. 

"Will you do it then?" she asked him. 

The Gods surely knew that only she could make him stop. For her voice and her mere presence were always a balm for his raw soul. 

Heleana. He almost savoured that name on his tongue. 

That girl, standing right where he had been a minute before, was his sweet, absent sister. Tall again. Her hips full again, for she seemed to have given birth. His gentle sister, her lips always full of nonsense and her mother's crown pinned to her silvery head. 

She was Queen now, Aemond supposed. But he felt nothing. They had returned, perhaps, to that night alone in the throne room that had changed so much between them. They had returned to half-spoken conversations and things left unsaid aloud. But the latter was unnecessary. She reproached him with her eyes, and there was latent betrayal in her posture. Aemond pretended not to notice.

He had finally gotten Aegon out of the way and was satisfied. He was the prince regent, and no one had power over him. Not even her, though he loved her. 

"Do what?" he asked her instead of asking her to return to her chambers. 

"Go away," he would have liked to snap with all the irritation he felt. "You still have a daughter. And when Aegon dies, I'll give you as many children as you want." She, more than anyone, should have known his intentions. But she pretended not to, because she liked being in the clouds better. Or perhaps with her insects. He would gladly leave her with them, once he had married her as was his right from the start. 

"He's just a child," she said, instead of answering his question. And Aemond noticed that she was looking beyond his shoulder. "Son for son. Brother for sister. We all failed him, and look how he ended up." 

That sounded perhaps more sane than anything Helaena usually said. And for that alone, he turned. The scene had changed beside the throne. Although the boy was still there, now there was a girl too. Right at the foot of the throne. The girl's belly was pierced by a sword and her lips were stained with the boy's blood. She was dead. Just as kid would soon be. The sight of the two of them caused him nothing but revulsion. He would have to do double duty and order the throne cleaned from top to bottom for the next day. The court could not see that horror.

In addition, he would have the guards who had allowed a couple of children to enter the throne room without his authorisation flogged. 

"They were just children, just like us when our Queen told us of the duty that weighed on our shoulders. Do you remember, Aemond? She said it belonged to us, but this kingdom already had its rightful heir. Mother would rather see us dead than let her have it," said his sister behind him. And her voice sounded more and more dreamlike. Distant. "And look how ended up." 

She faded away. Aemond knew it without turning to check.

There was no point in chasing a ghost who was so happy to leave him to his fate. So he moved on. And as he did, between blinks, I saw a tall, familiar figure looming over the throne. 

Rhaenyra. 

Just as beautiful as the day Vaemond Velaryon tried to claim his rightful place on the Throne of Driftmark. It had been a farce, that. And he remembered the taste of that failure on his tongue very well. He remembered that black dress well, with the red dragons sewn on and the slits in the sleeves. He remembered how well it had suited his half-sister's swollen belly. 

She looked identical to that day. Although somewhat translucent. And Aemond believed for a moment of rage that the Whore was clinging to the throne even in death, but he was wrong. He froze again halfway. 

Rhaenyra cradled the dying child's head in her withered hands. And she wept tears that were like bubbles of light. They were almost like pearls. 

The sight did not move him. But his irritation grew when he realised that this child must be a son of the Whore and the warmonger. They had somehow breached the security of the Red Keep to seat one of their most presentable bastards on the Iron Throne. Surely the Whore and Daemon had understood that the Kingdom would burn before it would see a woman rule by right. And yet Rhaenyra still sought to usurp the legitimate line of succession.

He drew his sword from its sheath. Ready to expel the bastard, the girl, and his slutty half-sister. But as soon as the blade touched the air, a snowflake fell on the blade and then... then the sword simply vanished. 

His fingers closed in the air. The room seemed to shrink and darkness settled on the walls. Thick shadows spread their rot through the throne, his half-sister and the children. The darkness swallowed everything until only he remained. Until he was trapped in his hallucinations, dreams or whatever they were. 

He was motionless. Small again. With the battle cry in his throat and the feeling that he was sinking into something viscous. However, it was only water. Sea currents dragged him violently from side to side, and air bubbles escaped every time he desperately and confusedly tried to reach the surface. 

He wasn't too deep. Above the roar of the water in his ears and behind his suffocating fear, he could see the light touching the surface. This must be a horrible nightmare from which he would soon wake up at all costs. And yet he tried to stay alive with all his strength. 

But there was no sun when he finally managed to lift his head out of the water. There were only black clouds swirling above him and rain so aggressive that it almost sank him once again. But Aemond, determined to survive, kicked and fought to stay afloat. 

At one point, he even managed to climb onto a white log that the raging waves had pushed in his direction. He felt relieved for a moment and tried to call Vhagar to rescue him. He had no bond with her, or at least not one like the bastards described when they were still allowed to live in King's Landing. But he felt the old dragon somewhere deep inside him. 

Or he had felt her once. But now there was nothing. Nothing but a void that almost distracted him from how small and useless his hands had become again. 

There was such an enormous void inside him that it almost distracted him from the pearly white war dragon swooping down with its jaws open. He noticed in an instant that the beast's throat was filled with a fire that glowed yellow. 

On its back, holding the reins, he saw Lucerys Velaryon. 

And he closed his eyes so as not to see the command that followed the bastard's movement of his lips. 

"Dracarys!" he heard despite everything. 

And a torrent of fire engulfed him before he even had a chance to consider diving into the sea. 

The fire pushed him anyway. It enveloped him even underwater, and all his cells burned immediately. He felt little pain. 

Everything boiled down to waiting for death. And then to the sensation of floating. 

He blinked. The scene changed again, and he found himself tied to a stone so cold it hurt his skin. 

He was in a chamber carved into a cave, he slowly realised, through the thick fog that clouded his senses. It was a very rustic and suffocating cave, with thick torches on the walls and a large entrance to other deeper caves. So he assumed, one heartbeat at a time, that this chamber was used frequently. 

His body shook violently and he spat seawater unceremoniously onto his own chest, where a bloody flower spread its crimson petals across on him. Down his thighs and legs.

He was completely naked, he also noticed. And he could appreciate the extent of his burns in all their sinister glory. They weren't as severe as they should be to come from a beast of Cannibal's calibre, he realised. But they still burned and stung at the slightest movement. And it wasn't as if he could make many, for his ankles, knees and hips were bound with shackles, whose bite was so cold that it perhaps relieved the fire in his burns. Although that wasn't exactly the case. 

And of course, his wrists were also immobilised above his head. Someone had laid him on what was perhaps an uneven stone table. Above his head, he could see the sky partially through a natural opening in the rock formation. 

Outside, the stars were burning. Inside, he was burning too.

But he didn't scream. He bit the inside of his cheeks to deny his captors that satisfaction. Because he wasn't fooled. They were probably out there somewhere, enjoying the undignified vulnerability of a prince superior to all of them.

"The kinslayer is awake, Your Grace," he suddenly heard someone whisper. It was the voice of a young, perhaps educated woman, but he couldn't tell who it belonged to. 

He tried to move his head to follow the sound of the voice and find a face to spit his hatred at. But he only caused himself a twinge in his neck which, added to all his other injuries, made him let out a cry of anguish. 

He heard a mocking laugh as he writhed against the shackles in search of some clumsy relief. It was a female laugh. Dry. Familiar. 

Rhaenyra. 

When he calmed down, when the pain allowed him to see beyond his nose, he saw her. 

The Whore was leaning halfway over the end of the thick stone table where they had him, staring at him with her supernatural eyes. She wore a cloak with a gold dragon brooch over her black dress, and a clearly Valyrian dagger twirling carefully between her hands. She also wore a crown of rubies on her silver head. 

The Conqueror's crown. Not Viserys's. 

"Usurper..." he hissed in a whisper that scraped his throat so violently that he ended up spitting blood on his own chest. But he did not regret it for a moment, even though he almost choked on the excess fluid. 

She smiled at him with false affection and then clicked her tongue in gentle rebuke. But she did not speak immediately. 

She simply plunged the dagger into the stone with a force that surprised him. Amid bloody insults, Aemond tried to follow her with his eyes as the Whore stepped forward to stand directly above his head. 

Rhaenyra paused silently and looked at him as one looks at a dying but appetizing prey.

"Daemon thought you'd be dead by now," his half-sister finally said, in that silky voice he hated so much. "You lost your pulse for six minutes, and Lucerys almost flew into a rage. But the Fourteen Flames are fair. They are so benevolent that they have allowed you to live even longer than you should. 

Aemond, who was half listening, writhed and gathered a large amount of blood and hatred to spit in the slut's face. 

"Perhaps it is half your Valyrian blood that keeps you alive," the abomination in front of him continued. "It is stronger in you than in Aegon, although I suppose Helaena would serve our cause even better. But I would never touch a single hair on my sweet sister's head," the whore smiled indulgently, almost apologetically for confessing that weakness. "I know she stayed there with you in our original life. She had a full-grown dragon, and she could have come to me with her children to ask for protection. She could have flown to the end of the world, and I would never have sent anyone to capture her. But she stayed in her golden cage and died. It was a pity. And I should hate her as much as I hate you, but I was always seduced by the idea of having a sister. And now I will have two. 

She fell silent abruptly. Then she moistened her lips, turning her face away just as Aemond spat at her with the best aim she could muster. The spit landed nearby. It almost splashed her luxurious cloak and slowly spilled onto the stone. Rhaenyra did not turn away from that new trajectory. She looked down in disgust for a moment and then laughed delightedly.

"I would have strangled you in your chambers, with my own hands for this, had I remained in the capital as Lord Corlys so desired," whispered the Whore, staring at the mess of filth. Aemond was already preparing another load, even though his whole body was protesting because of his injuries. "That, of course, assuming I had allowed Alicent become pregnant again after having already given birth to Helaena. 

Rhaenyra then moved. A hand reached out towards his and those icy fingers touched his face, covered in sweat and tears of pain. 

Aemond hadn't noticed, but his body shook occasionally with watery sobs. 

Rhaenyra caught a tear with her finger and then examined it with the same innocent curiosity as children. However, there was no sweetness or purity in her act. 

By the light of the torches and the moon spilling into the chamber, Aemond could see that Rhaenyra's amethyst eyes had the same incandescent glow he had seen in the heretical hallucination that led him to kill Aegon. 

"But Lucerys would never have forgiven me for snatching his prey," the Whore turned her face and smiled at something beyond Aemond's feet. "Or am I wrong, my sweet boy?"

Lucerys Targaryen was there. Aemond discovered him by following the trajectory of his half-sister's gaze.

He was sitting a few metres away from Aemond's feet, on the stone. He wore a travelling cloak draped over his shoulders and his dark silver hair was tousled. The sun shone in his indigo eyes. And his expression was so empty that Aemond felt a chill run down his spine. 

"I would have forgiven anything that came from your hand, muña."

The voice he used when he spoke was soft and full of genuine affection. But the coldness that inhabited that sweet face was frankly unnatural. 

"Although I confess I would have been disappointed not to have the opportunity to kill him myself," a brief smile suddenly crossed the face of the not-so-bastard bastard as he turned his face to look at Rhaenyra. "And about that... You must remember what you and kepus promised me, muña. I must be the one to put his traitorous head on a pike in the Red Keep. For all to see. 

"My father, the King, will not let you..." Aemond began with difficulty, and with a confidence he did not feel. 

"Your father, the King, is very busy with my husband right now," Rhaenyra interrupted him. The cheerful, carefree tone of her soft voice did not match her icy expression at all. She no longer wore a deceptive smile or feigned affection. "Daemon has waited too long for his turn to make Father bleed and beg for all his crimes against our great House. And as soon as I let him lay his hands on him, after my coronation in the Throne Room, he practically pounced on the poor old man like a hunting dog.

Aemond shuddered with sheer panic. A sharper pang shot through his right eye, which again felt half-blind for no reason. He noticed that his vision in that eye faded the more his sister spoke. 

And he tried to say something. Anything. He tried to refute those vile lies coming out of her poisonous whore's tongue. But he wasn't sure she were lies. Suddenly, it occurred to him that perhaps she was telling the truth for the first time in her life. 

His half-sister wore the Conqueror's crown, which should have been protected in a secure vault in King's Landing. That meant she had at least one spy in the Red Keep. And if she had already crowned herself as a usurper, she would surely try to take the capital by storm with her beasts born of sin and blood sorcery. Her father was surely dead by now, the Kingsguard was treacherous, and there was no army that could come to the capital's defence in time. Now that Aegon was dead, and with the Hightower fallen from grace, no one would risk stepping forward to crown Daeron as Viserys' successor.

The Whore had always had the upper hand, and now she dared to strike the final blow. She would destroy the legitimate heirs before sitting her unworthy ass on the Iron Throne. 

"Oh, gods, my mother," he groaned inwardly. His mother, the Queen, would never allow that. She would summon the armies allied to Aegon's cause from all parts of the kingdom. She would tear Dragonstone down and slaughter all his beasts with her unprecedented fury. Rhaenyra would never escape her wrath... But he had heard them, just before he faded completely into unconsciousness. 

"Seize the Green Bitch, but do not touch a single hair on her head until the order is given. Her torture is a matter for our Queen and Prince Baelon." He remembered it. He could almost hear that hateful voice, coming from the abominable demon with whom his whore of a sister had sired her bastards. "And remember to clear the dungeons so that Ser Harwin can finally have an emotional reunion with his brother the Cripple." 

Her mother's hysterical screams had filled the room shortly afterwards. They had mingled with the mocking laughter of that nest of vipers and the curses the King hurled at Daemon's entire bloodline. 

Ser Cole was dead, he remembered too. And Rhaenyra's smile widened before him, as if she too were sharing his memories. As if she too were reliving that tragic minute when her mother's brave protector went from raising his sword against Daemon to falling to the stone floor with his skull half crushed. Rhaenyra smiled with delight, as if she could see with him that large pool of thick blood, with the white pieces that made up the honourable knight's brain.

Her greatest protector with the sword was dead. And no one would come for him. If they had her mother as a hostage, and the King was in the clutches of that warmonger, then her grandfather and great-uncle would also soon fall. Or perhaps they would flee like rats to Oldtown, for news of the King's arrest would surely reach King's Landing before the whore set foot in the Red Keep. Either way, no one would save him.

Rhaenyra had dragons. And she would use them all to take the Fortress. He might as well consider himself dead. The Whore would never let him live, for fear that the great Houses and the common people would rise up to save him and put him on the throne. She would surely have one of her allies kill Daeron right under the Lannisters' noses. And she herself would kill Helaena as soon as she offended her. 

"She's a monster," he thought despairingly. 

And then... Oh. He felt a sharp stab in his belly. And he looked down, bewildered by the immediate gurgling sound he heard coming from his own body. 

Lucerys Targaryen had approached. He was practically floating, sitting on the most severe burns on Aemond's legs, holding the same dagger that Rhaenyra had held before. 

Now Aemond had it inserted into his skin. He admired it for a second that seemed like an eternity. He felt confused. 

And then... Oh. Another prick. The bastard was stabbing him. But Aemond felt nothing. 

Until suddenly every wound decided it was time to make itself known. And that the Seven had mercy. It was as if he were being burned alive again. 

He felt himself dying. Every cell sizzled against him. His body rebelled against him, and his confused and exhausted brain surrendered to the agony. Aemond screamed. He screamed with all his might, between bloody coughs and more convulsions. 

He wanted to rip out his insides. He wanted to pull every organ out of himself and throw it into the ocean. That would have been mercy. But the bastard showed no mercy. Lucerys continued to stab Aemond's belly with such violence that he could hear the splashing and spilling of blood as it fell on the stone. He could almost hear the slime of his own entrails as they half-emerged from him. 

He heard dragon roars above his screams. A strong wind rose in the chamber and the torches flickered as Aemond tried unsuccessfully to escape from his shackles. The bite of the steel hurt him incredibly where it touched. And the pain was so great, the agony so intense, that he lost his voice. 

His right eye played tricks on him when Rhaenyra climbed onto the stone to watch her son kill him up close. He saw her as young and sweet. With the roundness of childhood still in her features and the crown too big on her head. A blink and she was gone. A blink and she was older. The only thing similar among all those versions of his half-sister was that she smiled on every face. 

She even collected some of the blood flowing from Aemond's belly when Lucerys grew tired and climbed up her chest.

"Stab his heart," the whore shouted to the bastard, over Aemond's cries internally  for mercy. "We'll give it to Arrax while it's still warm. That way it will grow faster." 

Aemond, feeling that everything inside him was failing and that he could no longer bear anything else, agreed with her. And he wished that Lucerys would be as benevolent as his whore of a mother. 

"Rip out my heart," he begged the bastard. And in his head there was no room for anything else but that. "End this now." 

But he didn't. The bastard took his revenge on him, just as Prince Daemon had done to Ser Criston. He stabbed him in the right eye with the dagger. He ripped it out of its socket, and Aemond felt such a pull that for a moment he thought he was being torn in two as he stiffened in pain. 

It was hell on earth to feel that. It was as if he had never known any other state than miserable pain. Visceral.

And so it was that Aemond understood that Lucerys Targaryen was a worthy son of his father. However, it was too late. He finally stopped writhing. Little by little. Second by second. The blood continued to flow from him, anyway, and his vision faded with each frantic heartbeat. 

The bastard smiled at him through the blind mist of his vision. He smiled at him as he held the dagger high in both hands and said something in High Valyrian. 

Something that sounded like an offering. Like a chant that increased the heat in the chamber a hundred thousand times over. And Aemond did not want to know what would be done with his body once his soul had left it. The cave, meanwhile filled with yellow light. With silver. With fire capable of melting the finest armour in the world. 

A minute later, as he writhed and screamed with blood on his cheeks, he felt the heat reach a climax. Something lodged itself in his chest, and he felt something very similar to a human hand inside there. He felt a tug inside his ribs and then higher up. His chest moved accordingly. He heard the disgusting slime of organs and prayed to the Seven for a quick death. 

But he continued to feel. Only he was no longer screaming. The cave glowed brighter and brighter, but his eye grew increasingly blurry. 

"I've got it!" he heard Lucerys say with a cry of genuine euphoria. 

Rhaenyra applauded as the bastard ripped out her heart, even though he was only twelve years old. 

"He shouldn't be so strong," he managed to think one last time, "he's just a brat. A spoiled child."

Then, without another heartbeat, he suddenly found himself dead. Murdered with unnecessary brutality. 

Aemond Targaryen left alone. Without ceremony. With no one to mourn him, just as his mother mourned Aegon. And he supposed it was fitting for a kinslayer. The curse had already begun before, and this was its outcome. 

And in the dark hell he ended up in as payment for his crimes, it all started again. 

History repeated itself in detail for him, with the same violent ending, for the rest of his eternity.

Chapter Text

Daenys Targaryen emerged from the dark depths of the Dragonpit on the back of her young mount. The same mount that the people of the North had proudly nicknamed «Crimson Death» during one of her first visits to Winterfell. The nickname, which had become popular throughout the kingdoms of Westeros over the years, was due almost exclusively to the beast's well-known ferocity. Although it was also said that it had been given to him because of his enormous size, which almost belied his young age. 

On that glorious morning of true spring, the princess flew over King's Landing and the roads that stretched beneath her power with the same boundless energy as on so many other occasions. She rose into the skies with flushed cheeks and veins full of adrenaline, for she had an important mission to accomplish, entrusted to her by her grandmother, the queen mother. Aemma Arryn, once exiled and missed by the people every day since her departure, had finally returned after so many years of passivity to claim what was rightfully hers and her family's.

And her plans, hatched even before those early days of isolation at Dragonstone, paid off handsomely.

The Black faction achieved all its ambitions so successfully that, at the time of that particular flight, a couple of months had already passed since the capture of the Red Keep. Oh, and of course, since the death of the infamous Aemond and Aegon Hightower, who were now reviled in every corner of the continent as vile dragon thieves.

Until that very moment, the most critical days for the peaceful transition of power had passed without consequences for them.

And, fortunately for the city thirsty for justice and spectacle, they had already publicly executed all supporters of the Green faction who were in the capital at the time of the Targaryens' arrival from Dragonstone. Among them were Otto and the entire Hightower family —whom they accused, without any evidence— of conspiring with the late princes to try to steal the mounts of Lady Laena and Prince Baelon. The event that led to their beheading in front of the angry crowd was quick, efficient, and of little importance to the royal family; who had already enjoyed a few days torturing those sanctimonious snakes at will.

For the moment, both the nobility of the capital and the people seemed equally delighted to have them in command.

During some of her outings, Daenys had heard that members of her family were credited with the happiness everyone felt at the disappearance of the constant rain and sadness that had enveloped the city in years past. Since the return of sunny days, the streets seemed much livelier. And trade was flourishing with the arrival of so many people for her mother's formal coronation.

Despite the increase in crowds in a city that had been half deserted for so many years, violent crime had dropped considerably. And it seemed that, as a sign of gratitude, the city itself had committed to cooperating fully with its new rulers.

That was why the Privy Council had decided that the upcoming celebrations would be longer and more splendid, as they wanted to put on a show worthy of being remembered in future history books. As a result of that decision, invitations had been extended to anyone who could and wanted to attend.

Among that large influx of guests, the Targaryens were waiting for one House in particular. One that, according to the gossip of the nobles who had already arrived in the capital, was closer than they initially believed. Daenys spent hours searching for them that morning. She found them at noon, when she had decided to stop at a tavern to buy a hearty lunch for herself and her mount.

It was Morghul, in fact, who saw them coming before she did. On this occasion, they were not flying their banners, as the great noble Houses usually did whenever they were too close to the capital.

The Lannisters of Casterly Rock—of whom Daenys had heard so much—were barely visible in the distance, as the soldiers guarding them on their journey wore dark cloaks, and their armor was gray instead of the usual gold. The only thing that distinguished them as the lions of the Rock was the family emblem, stamped on the wood of a few carriages.

The Lannisters themselves rode in a tight group along the royal road, half surrounded by the carriages of their vassals. At first glance, it seemed to Daenys that they were being used as a kind of shield. However, she did not have much time to analyze that first impression.

As soon as she was sure it was them, her mount flew over them and then swooped down to scare them a little, as the princess wished. The horses reared up, as expected, and the procession was forced to stop quite abruptly.

Morghul then landed with a thud and a fierce roar, which must have frozen the blood of a good number of the Lannister soldiers riding in front of the first carriages. To their credit, however, none of them broke ranks. On the contrary, they remained loyally around the carriages they were protecting, with their swords safely tucked into their belts and solemn faces.

Daenys—who had no inclination to instill fear without purpose—was pleased by this detail. So she dismounted her enormous dragon with practiced grace and landed on the ground as well, as was her duty since she had been named protector of the nobles. The title had been bestowed upon her by the Queen herself, in front of the members of the few Houses who had arrived in time to bid farewell to King Viserys at his hasty and austere funeral.

The princess, who by then was accustomed to her position, advanced with a confident stride. She threw her shoulders back carelessly and composed an arrogant expression, one that unmistakably distinguished her as one of the daughters of the roguish prince.

"A rumor about you has reached the capital, my good lords," she said in a loud, sing-song voice to the noblemen who were clumsily getting out of their carriages, just to find out firsthand which dragon had stopped them. She smiled at them all with the joy of a little girl who had been granted a long-awaited wish. "And I have come to discover, by order of the Queen Mother, if there is any truth to the gossip.

One of those noblemen stepped forward. It was not Lord Lannister. Daenys knew this because his clothes lacked the splendor of gold, pearls, or diamonds that must have been embedded in the precious fabric. His clothes, although befitting a powerful man, did not boast the wealth that his House always wanted to show off at all costs.

She wondered, rather vaguely, where the Guardian of the West was. They were just a few days away from her mother's coronation, and his presence was not requested. It was required. If he missed the event, all his lands would burn for disobeying the Throne. And he should know that better than anyone. After all, House Lannister was the only House stupid enough to take in a son of Alicent Hightower as a ward, when all the others knew it was best to stay out of it or side with the Targaryens of Dragonstone.

"What have they heard in the capital... princess?" the same man asked through gritted teeth, clearly reluctant to use her legitimate title.

Daenys did not fail to notice the hesitation in his voice. Nor did she fail to notice that the lord seemed very displeased to find himself in the predicament of having to submit to a mere woman. Worse still, a Valyrian woman who held more power in her hands than he would ever have in his entire life.

She would mention it to her father later. Or perhaps to her grandmother. But for now, she kept smiling and tilted her head, staring intently at the simple-looking man in front of her. She knew full well that nothing scared the Andals more than her intense lilac eyes. She had heard that, for everyone else, they were downright creepy. Supernatural.

"We hear you bring a gift for the new Queen. A gift with Valyrian blood in its veins.

The lord pursed his lips into a thin line that showed his displeasure. Then he looked back at the rest of the nobles, who were watching them with obvious apprehension on their faces. Even the women peered timidly out of the carriages to witness the encounter, without getting out.

One of them was very pale, her eyes wide as she watched Morghul.

Daenys thought she saw the woman praying under her breath. But she paid little attention to her. She was much more focused with letting her eyes wander over each carriage, searching for the jackpot she had been tasked with finding.

"The rumors are true, Your Highness," replied the nobleman who was leading the conversation, after clearing his throat unnecessarily. It was all too obvious that he was doing so reluctantly. So much so that Daenys wondered if he had not been taught to hide his feelings more diligently when being diplomatic. "We bring with us Your Grace's half-brother. As... as a gift for your coronation day. We thought you would want him with you on such an important day.

"They bring him as a sacrifice so we don't burn their Houses to the ground," Daenys thought with obvious sarcasm. But her face showed nothing more than a brief flash of interest that disappeared almost instantly. Morghul, however, was more demonstrative with his emotions. Her crimson beast roared fiercely again to show his satisfaction. The heat of his powerful breath frightened the southerners, who believed he was angry and intended to kill them. They screamed and stumbled over each other in their eagerness to retreat. Even the lord who was speaking to him fell to the ground with a crash, being closer, and turned so pale that Daenys thought he would faint.

But, despite everything, he did not. That added to her deplorable opinion, so Daenys decided to calm things down before he had a heart attack. Some ladies of good standing were already lying unconscious on top of their husbands or maids from the shock. And one great lord had wet himself from fright. She could smell his stench in the air. Only the soldiers remained standing, all on guard, although they must have known that any resistance would be futile if the princess really wanted to exterminate them.

"Lykirī, Morghul," she whispered in a tone as silky as it was affectionate, though without looking at her mount at any time.

And she did so more for theatrical effect than anything else, for Morghul, who made adorable noises—in her opinion—sensed her mood through their bond and imitated it perfectly.

At that moment, and as long as no setbacks arose, he was no more dangerous than a kitten playing in the sunshine. 

The princess's lilac gaze remained fixed for a few more moments on the scene before her, devouring every reaction produced in the southerners with an attention that anyone would find disturbing. She looked at them all in turn, as if she knew each of their sins personally, and finally decided it was time to get going. They had a long way to go to the Red Keep. 

"Ah, how delightful it is to know that, for once, the rumors were right about something that will bring joy to His Grace's heart." Her smile, which had disappeared at some point during the encounter, reappeared in all its splendor on her lips. However, rather than being reassuring to the southerners, it was more predatory. "In that case, allow me to escort you to the capital, my lords. My mother will receive you in person.

She left no room for anyone to think that what she was saying was a mere suggestion. Nor did she give them time to politely decline. She simply turned around after smiling broadly, and when she reached Morghul's position, she began to climb onto her dragon's back.

"Princess, you are very kind, but you don't have to escort us. We are too slow for your dragon..." one of the lords tried to call out to her, but Daenys ignored him.

She ignored everyone else who joined in the argument as well.

She didn't look at them once as she secured herself in the saddle. She did glance sideways at the carriages, trying to guess which one Daeron Targaryen might be in. And perhaps more importantly, which one the elusive Lord Lannister might be in.

Finally, she gripped the tense reins of her mount tightly and leaned her body in the same way her father did.

"Sōvēs, Morghul."

That was all it took. Soon they left the ground behind in a flurry of dust, much to the chagrin of those who remained on the ground, still calling after them. In a matter of seconds, the soldiers, horses, and great lords were nothing more than helpless ants beneath their shared power.

And on the tedious journey, in order to distract herself during the long hours of flight and the same old views, the princess glanced sideways at the carriages that followed her bitterly. Despite everything, she smiled to herself.

Not being entirely unfamiliar with gloating and malice, it occurred to her—rather condescendingly—that it must be very unpleasant for them to have believed they were so close to becoming related to the dragon lords, only to have their hopes dashed. After all, it was well known on the continent that the Lannisters, and all their vassals, were eager to have dragons of their own.

They coveted them as much as the Hightowers, but having been so open about their desires in the past, they had never been able to achieve it.

"Ah, how low the almighty have fallen," the princess mocked mentally as she watched them advance under the shadow of her dragon. "They were so desperate to achieve at least one of their goals that they didn't mind being forced to accept as their future son-in-law a boy who could offer nothing more than the title of prince. I almost feel sorry for them that they really believed they could get a dragon egg by having a child born to the insipid Daeron and one of his insignificant daughters."

Daenys knew from a reliable source that the Lannisters did not care which Targaryen faction would take the Iron Throne when all was said and done. The only thing that truly mattered to the lions was to obtain the coveted dragon blood that ran through their veins at that very moment. And they had been trying to achieve this for years by the only means available to them.

But that particular dream would be impossible to fulfill. And not just for them, but for anyone who sought to possess a Hightower dragon seed. Her mother, father, and grandmother had taken care of thwarting that possibility years ago, thanks to blood magic and rituals they had been practicing at Dragonstone since Daenys was old enough to remember.

As soon as she remembered all the times she herself had contributed her precious blood to thwarting her enemies' hateful plans, she burst out laughing with grim amusement. It was fortunate that the lashing wind, the altitude, and the noise made by Morghul's wings as he flew drowned out the sound. Had they known, the lords on the ground would have taken her for mad.

But they remained blissfully unaware of everything the princess escorting them thought and felt. And she finally had the relief of leaving them behind—for a short time—as she flew over the city gates bound for Dragonpit.

The princess had left the Red Keep very early that morning. Practically at dawn. And by the time she set foot on land again, the world had darkened significantly. A distant moon was already shining in the indigo sky, and a few stars were beginning to twinkle overhead. The day had been endless because of the slow procession of the Lannisters, who seemed to be trying their hardest to prove their right; they were too slow for her dragon's flight. As a result, both Morghul and she were frankly exhausted. So Daenys left her mount in the capable hands of the dragon guard, ordering them to give him as many sheep as he wanted to regain his strength. Before leaving, she kissed his scales with obvious affection. It was then that she felt able to leave the enclosure on the back of the steed that Ser Erryk had already prepared for her when she arrived.

Together, they sought out the Lannisters at the city gates and guided them all the way to the castle.

Finally, almost an hour later, Daenys entered the great courtyard of the Fortress. She dismounted with a grimace of pain, accepting Ser Erryk's help to do so, although it was not her custom. She would need a good hot bath to relax her muscles, she decided. And also a more than hearty dinner, as she had been out all day with nothing but breakfast in her stomach. But in the meantime, she needed to report her findings to her family. And it was fortunate that an important member of her House was there to receive her.

Baelon Targaryen, the Black Queen's eldest son, was there this time, standing on the upper steps leading to the castle gates. He was waiting for her, of course, in the company of one of her uncles. On this occasion, it was Brandon Stark, her favorite among Aemma Arryn's sons. Brandon had thick black hair, gray eyes, and a long face that gave him away as a Northerner. But his smile was identical to that of Daenys's father. Perhaps because he had been Prince Daemon's ward since he was seven days old. Perhaps because he spent a lot of time with Rhaenyra's most rebellious princes when he had the opportunity to stay at Dragonstone.

"You took your time coming home," Baelon remarked as soon as he and his uncle began descending the steps. That day, her brother was wearing riding gear, his silver hair tousled by the wind. "We were starting to think we'd have to go looking for you. Muña was getting desperate, and Kepus was talking about setting fire to Casterly Rock if anything had happened to you."

Daenys rolled her eyes at such exaggeration and caught up with her brother halfway down the stairs. She hugged him tightly, while Brandon patted her on the back. Before letting go, she whispered her reasons for being so late.

"Ah, so the rumors were true after all," Bran said, before Baelon could open his mouth. Her uncle looked over Daenys' shoulder at the large courtyard gates, through which a couple of carriages from the Lannister entourage were entering at that moment. "They have the last Hightower bastard."

Suddenly, a ruthless smile broke across the crown prince's usually kind features. Bran echoed it with one of his own. Daenys, however, had already exhausted most of her satisfaction on that subject. So she excused herself from her brother and uncle to go take a bath. She had nothing left to do there. The crown prince was in charge of receiving guests in the absence of the King Consort or the Queen Mother.

She, who was merely a dragon rider for the moment, was free to use the evening hours as she pleased. After her mother's coronation and her own marriage, she would have to leave the capital to serve as the supreme princess of Oldtown. All because they had confiscated every last Hightower possession after Aegon and Aemond's alleged attempt to steal dragons from their lands. Very soon, she and Lucerys would take over the lordship. And all the territories and titles that had once belonged to the now almost extinct House would become the irrevocable property of the crown.

That victory was something her father, Lord Corlys, and Lucerys had been plotting for years, and now it was a reality.

Even Daenys had to admit—although she didn't like the idea of living so far away from her family—that it was only fair. It was even poetic justice for that other cruel life, where the Hightowers had been determined to make life impossible for her mother and siblings.

But all those responsibilities would come later. Perhaps in a year or two, when her mother's reign had settled in and it would be appropriate to hold more than one wedding without falling into extravagance. Of course, Baelon and Visenya, as future monarchs, would marry first. So she and Lucerys would have to do something smaller at Dragonstone. Perhaps they would have another wedding in Oldtown, to keep up appearances. Until then, Daenys was as free as a princess could be.

For the time being, the most complicated thing she would have to do in the coming days would be to put up with overly fawning lords and ladies, as well as suitors who would try to win her love in order to gain power—and dragons—through her.

Just thinking about it put her in a bad mood, so she thought again about the hot bath she would ask for and the dinner she would eat. Then she would sleep for five days if they left her alone. 

She would run away while she still could.

But for a moment—moved by curiosity—she stopped in front of the enormous doors of the Red Keep and glanced at the least luxurious carriage among those that had entered. Finally, Lord Lannister himself emerged, clearly looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. It was evident from his stiff manner and the way his eyes frequently shied away from Baelon's tall figure that he wanted to leave immediately. Perhaps that was why he stepped forward to open the doors of a sturdy, well-protected carriage that was following behind his own. He unceremoniously pulled out a skinny, thin boy with coppery hair instead of silver, but with unmistakably Valyrian features. The boy was dirty, dressed in green clothes that had seen better days, and could barely stand, but he looked at Baelon with obvious hatred.

This must be, without a doubt, Daeron Targaryen. The last living son of the vipers of King's Landing.

«««««««««»»«»«»

Jocelyn Stark was there when Daenys emerged from the baths in her new chambers. She waited for her with a mischievous smile on her lips.

"You look rather wretched, dear niece," the Stark teased affectionately. "It looks as if an uro has run you over."

Daenys, her silver hair still damp from the hot water of her bath, groaned uneasily. Then she threw herself onto her enormous bed while the maids busied themselves preparing her choice of dresses and accessories for another night at the Red Keep.

"I'm so exhausted, Joyce. I haven't slept more than a few hours these last few days," the princess complained like a little girl. "I swear that when this whole coronation business and escorting carriages is over, I'll be the happiest woman in all of Westeros. Because the truth is," she added with a grimace, "I thought taking the capital would be much more exciting than it turned out to be.

The aunt Jocelyn laughed heartily and approached the bed with ease. She sat down a moment later beside Daenys' sprawled body with enviable elegance. Then she brushed the silver strands of hair from her forehead, fixing her dark purple eyes on the lilac ones that reluctantly returned her gaze. Of the three children Aemma Arryn had conceived with Lord Rickon Stark, Jocelyn was the one who possessed the most Valyrian features. She was tall, slender, and supernaturally beautiful. Her hair was ash blonde, identical to Aemma's. The only thing that gave her away as a seed of House Stark was her slightly elongated face. Although, in terms of personality, she was almost entirely northern.

And that "almost," of course, was because she had had too much Targaryen influence throughout her life. But she fit in quite well in the frozen North, where she was celebrated as the most beautiful among her people, and where suitors always fought for the future honor of obtaining her hand in marriage. However, she was not yet engaged. Not only because she was very young—she didn't really seem so, given her height and maturity—but because Lord Rickon flatly refused to give his most precious jewel to just any nobleman.

"I didn't want to admit it to my mother or Visenya before," she whispered, leaning slightly over Daenys, with an air of conspiracy. "But the truth is that I also thought that taking the capital by force would be more interesting. So far, the most exciting thing that has happened is the rebellion of the faith, but they have so few forces on their side that they seem more like a bad joke to me.

Daenys, despite herself, had to laugh. And without realizing it, she got out of bed so that the maids, who were always quick to seize the opportunity, could strip her of her bathing clothes.

"Muña said yesterday that we'll have to wait until after a moon has passed since his coronation to crush them," sighed the princess, as if having to show such patience were a prosaic task. "She said that the Shepherd and his most fanatical followers have been dead for years, and that for now, those who reject us because of the curse have nothing but rusty swords to stand up to the crown.

"Even if they got more than rusty swords, the people would rise up with rocks and sticks to protect the dragons. I'm sure they would give their lives for theirs. And for yours," her aunt said with certainty. Then she got up to help the maids dress her. "From what I've heard during these days of exploring the city, everyone in King's Landing knows what you've done for the North, the Vale, and the Stone Steps. Just yesterday, a prostitute was proclaiming in the streets that with the Targaryens of Dragonstone ruling, the city will prosper once again. She even promised a big discount on her services on coronation day.

Jocelyn laughed at that last remark, but Daenys nodded thoughtfully at the other part of her words. She herself had heard similar things every time she went out to Dragonpit. As soon as they saw her in the streets, crowds gathered to praise her family. They often tried to touch her hair and clothes. And they would shout for her to convey their blessings to Queen Rhaenyra.

The entire city—without fear of misinterpretation—saw the Targaryens of Dragonstone as their saviors. Apparently, they believed that anyone with money and the blessing of the Gods was a better option than the unfortunate Hightower half-breeds.

"In any case, I won't be able to truly relax until I have rooted out all opposition," Daenys confided to her aunt. As she spoke, she turned so that a silent maid could guide her to the dressing table, where her elaborate braids would be done. "You know how much I hate leaving loose ends."

"I know, I know. But I promise you there's nothing to worry about. This has been as easy as killing a rabbit. And it will continue to be so."

Daenys knew her aunt was absolutely right, so she kept quiet. She didn't want to burden her with her unfounded concerns. So, after finishing getting ready, she took her by the arm and led her to the estate to enjoy a sumptuous dinner together. She usually liked to dine with the whole family, but she was so tired that night that she didn't mind that it was just the two of them.

Besides, she told herself she should get used to smaller dinners now that they were the ruling family. They were no longer children living on a whim at Dragonstone. They had many more obligations than before, and nothing would ever be so simple again. Although it had never really been...

She sighed. And chatting with Jocelyn about some gossip her aunt had heard during the day, she picked at her dinner without much enthusiasm. As her aunt was talkative, between pauses to drink and swallow, Daenys wondered about her brothers and sisters. 

She decided that at that hour, her twin sister Visenya would be learning how to entertain the most distinguished guests of the Red Keep from the experienced Queen Mother. Jocelyn even told her that Lucerys—her sweet fiancé—had flown to Dragonstone half an hour earlier, as Princess Rhaenys had apparently sent him to prepare for the ritual that would take place when the celebrations came to an end.

And Baelon, Daenys correctly assumed, must be in the Black Cells with his father—the King Consort—taking Daeron hostage as a top priority. The youngest members of the family would be finishing dinner together in the nursery with their nannies. Or perhaps they would be with Lady Laena and Lady Rhaena. And her two uncles must be exploring the city or helping with some last-minute task.

Daenys made such specific assumptions because that was how every day and night had been since they took the capital, announcing in the process that King Viserys had died of a heart attack after the grief caused by the death of his two eldest sons.

"Everything was splendid," Jocelyn said suddenly, pulling her out of her musings. Without realizing it, they had reached the end of the meal. So Daenys allowed the maids to clear away the empty plates and the watered-down wine she had barely touched. "But I'm afraid I must take my leave now. I promised your other aunt that I would accompany her to say good night to the Green Viper.

Daenys, who was just getting up from the table, stopped abruptly and frowned.

"Is she still doing that?" she asked with genuine curiosity. And even with a hint of discomfort seeping into her tone. "Wasn't Kepus supposed to have forbidden her from seeing to Alicent again the other night?"

Jocelyn shrugged. Her face showed little interest in the subject. But as Daenys sat down next to her once more, she seemed to decide to give her more information.

"Apparently Rhaenyra has revoked the ban, but I don't know her reasons for doing so," the northern woman told her in the same conspiratorial tone she had used before. "All I know at the moment is that she arrived at embroidery time this morning and took Helaena away from us for a few minutes. You know I love eavesdropping, so I pretended to struggle with embroidering a rose while I moved closer to them. From what I could make out of their whispers, Rhaenyra told Helaena she could continue to see her mother, but only until the ceremony we'll have at Dragonstone after the coronation. And only at night, when everyone is asleep or busy. Oh, and of course, as long as she had company from our side with her, because they can't talk alone.

Daenys frowned even more at what she heard.

"What difference does it make if she sees her alone? The Viper is mad" Daenys said impatiently "And since Heleana saw the Usurpers die, doesn't even spend a whole minute without being under the effects of blood magic and poppy milk. Neither of them can string together coherent sentences. It's not as if they could conspire or anything."

"Unless Muña is trying to punish the Viper by allowing her to see how her daughter is now our property, I don't see the point of this," Daenys thought with frustration. Since what had happened at Dragonstone, she had grown fond of her aunt, whom she saw as a kind of poor, scatterbrained fool. She felt sorry for her because it had been she and Visenya who had taken her under their wing. That night, while Lucerys and Muña were busy obtaining Aemond's blood, Daenys took Helaena to her room, which she shared with Visenya.

The three slept together after a maester gave princess her first dose of poppy milk. The next morning, her mother arrived in person, holding another dose in a chalice. However, there was something different about that drink. And it was blood. Daenys didn't see it until Heleana, lulled by Rhaenyra, stopped drinking when she noticed the strange taste. There was a brief moment when she lowered her chalice enough, and then there it was. A grotesque combination. A drink that was neither scarlet nor gray.

"Drink, sweet my sister," her mother had said to Helaena, bringing the cup to her aunt's reluctant lips, still dazed by sleep and the previous dose. "This will help you bear the pain. It will erase the dreams and bring you joy."

Daenys had believed that her mother was only trying to convince her aunt to remain submissive long enough. No one had much time to look after her, for Dragonstone was ablaze with activity. They would soon be leaving permanently for the capital and needed to finalize the last details of their move. Still, a strange chill ran through her body as she watched Helaena drink. And the way her mother looked at her did not bode well, even though she trusted her blindly.

There was hatred in her mother's eyes. Genuine hatred. But then Muña looked away and smiled cheerfully for all to see. Her smile was like looking closely at the sun. So the strange moment that morning was forgotten. Daenys was very busy in the capital and no longer spent much time with her aunt. She only saw her during dinners, always seated to the queen's right. Sometimes they shared embroidery lessons, but the other princess always kept to herself, her eyes unfocused most of the time. No one bothered to talk to her. It was too uncomfortable. It was almost like talking to a wall. Or worse, to a flesh-and-blood figure who responded only with incoherent ramblings.

And every time Daenys asked her mother if her aunt would live like this for the rest of her life, Rhaenyra smiled sweetly. But behind that mask of happiness, there was something dark.

"Of course not, my love. As soon as we return to Dragonstone and we've dealt with the last loose end, Helaena will come to her senses. She just needs time. We hate her brothers and her father, but she is in mourning."

"She is grieving," Daenys had told herself ever since, at every encounter with the other princess. And so it remained until then. But now she was burning with curiosity and wanted to share her suspicions with Jocelyn, who was her confidante in the absence of Visenya and Rhaena. But Jocelyn knew nothing more than she had already revealed, and she had no more time for conversation, so Daenys had no opportunity to ask her questions. Her maternal aunt left hastily, accompanied by her ladies, who were waiting for her outside the princess's chambers.

"You may all go to rest or to supper. Do as you wish today," the princess said to her servants. "But first, tell my family not to disturb me unless there is an emergency. I will sleep early tonight. I am exhausted."

With bows, her staff left as well. And finally, Daenys had the opportunity to lie down, but she did not do so immediately. She had been dressed to go out, but she had no desire to do so. Out there, nothing awaited her but curious questions, banal chatter, or more details about the coronation. And although she did not generally dislike those things in themselves, she preferred to face them with Lucerys by her side. He always managed to make everything more fun.

Daenys had never known a single boring night or day by his side. He was her light and her joy.

She loved him so much that she sighed like a fool when she thought of him, easily forgetting Helaena. And since she was nothing more than a maiden in love, she thought of those tight silver curls she loved to brush between her fingers. Sometimes, when the moon waned in the skies during a specific month, Daenys had the opportunity to see him as he had been before; in that other life where she never existed. She saw him with his "bastard appearance," as he, Baelon, and Maegor called those days when the children born of Harwin Strong's seed reappeared.

Those were precious moments, when she never tired of trying to drink in the image of her brothers and her betrothed.

Daenys revered Lucerys in whatever guise he took, but there was something very special about seeing that vulnerable side he possessed when his hair was brown and his eyes were brown.

That way, he always seemed clearer. More hers.

"Let my pearl return to me as he left. Alive. With a pulse and sure," she whispered like a prayer to the Gods who were always listening.

She prayed silently to the Fourteen Flames as she removed her braids and took off the dress she had worn for only a short time. She continued praying as she put on her nightgown, then lit black candles on her dressing table, thinking intensely about what she wanted to achieve.

None of the candles went out when, after cutting her right palm slightly, she poured her warm blood onto the flame each one gave off. As soon as she did so, the fire in the fireplace seemed to grow with force. An icy wind—coming from nowhere—ruffled her hair and cut her cheeks with its fierce howl. Despite everything, neither the sound nor the violence of the act frightened her. At that point in her life, she was already accustomed to this response, for it was her own ritual. One she had devised the first time she left for the north, ten days after her name.

It was on that occasion that she was finally told the family history. The night before her journey, her mother and father visited her with solemn faces. It was on that particular night that they took the opportunity to explain to her that she must be very careful with how she used the favor of the Gods and her blood magic. They spoke to her of prudence, of the expectations they had of her, and of how they hoped she would help the North while she was there.

They told her once again about her grandmother's story. How she had saved them all with the dragon dreams she had the night she bled her last son with Viserys Targaryen. And they also told her about the dreams that Rhaenyra herself had had that same dawn. 

"You're old enough now. So you can understand that they weren't just dreams," her father said in a very soft voice. "You know the story of the woman who gave you your name. And you know that something strange happens every time we meet with the Velaryons in the caves." 

Daenys nodded, but said nothing. He seemed to understand that his parents had prepared a speech in advance, and he didn't want to spoil anything. She had always been curious about how much truth there was in the stories they told her. 

"What we saw that night when Muña miscarried the other Baelon were fragments of another life. One where neither you nor Visenya nor your other siblings existed," her mother told her. "It was a cruel life that took away everything we loved most from the Velaryons, your father, your grandmother, and me. But the Gods have given us all a new chance. And that is why we perform our rituals with your blood and that of your siblings." 

Daenys, who was no fool, tilted her head and asked what she had wanted to know for years, without ever getting a satisfactory answer. 

"Did the Usurpers of King's Landing also exist in that other life? Is that why we reinforce their curse every year during the last full moon of the year?" 

Her mother smiled delightedly and nodded, while her father laughed with macabre glee. 

"Yes, dear. That is why we reinforce 'the curse business' every year. Because it is our duty to punish those who have wronged us in the past. And we enjoy it immensely. 

The 'curse business' was what the subjects of the Throne had christened the series of great calamities that befell the continent—because of the Blacks—with each birth of a child of Alicent Hightower.

It was known even in Pentos, in gloomy Asshai, and in all the free cities that it all began with the birth of Prince Aegon. Although there were those who argued—with more insight than they would ever know—that it had all begun much earlier, with the constant rains and the partial abandonment of the sun to the crown lands, following the departure of the former Queen Arryn and the disinherited princess. 

Well, the birth that brought the Usurper into the world lasted two days and three nights of absolute agony for his young mother, who had almost bled to death giving birth to him. The now-crowned Alicent had survived the birth by nothing short of a miracle—although it was said that she had died for a few seconds after expelling the placenta—and flatly refused to hold her son in her arms, as she was in the throes of hysteria due to a terrible fever. It was rumored for a long time that the queen screamed that the child who had come out of her womb was not her baby. She said it was a demon sent by the pagan gods of Princess Rhaenyra, and she struggled fiercely in the arms of the frightened and exhausted midwives.

The queen, according to what the servants later recounted, tried to reach the prince to kill him with her own hands, while crying out for the intervention of the Seven. She begged them fiercely to give her strength and forgiveness. But the Hand, who was present at the time to witness the birth on behalf of the King, slapped her across the face and took the child to another room, ordering that his daughter be given poppy milk and not be left alone for a second.

However, as soon as Otto crossed the threshold of the delivery room, tragedy struck the city. Later that day, it was officially stated that what had happened was a simple isolated collapse. But the truth is that an earthquake, the likes of which had never been seen before in the history of Westeros, split the earth open, and the abyss below swallowed entire buildings across the length and breadth of the continent.

Every place—except for Oldtown—where there was a religious site belonging to the Faith of the Seven disappeared on that fateful day, along with the faithful who were praying inside or nearby. Hundreds died. Thousands, even millions. Although no exact figure was ever given. Most of the bodies could not be recovered, and on top of the mourning that already afflicted the nation, there was another terrible blow. The pockets of peasants, nobles, and the crown alike suffered in terms of repairs and labor, which was now in short supply.

And they had not yet emerged—not even close—from the beginning of the terrible slump when Queen Alicent gave birth to a chubby little princess named Helaena Targaryen.

At that time, the tragedy of the Faith was not yet fully related to the birth of Prince Aegon, although it was openly admitted that the coincidence was extremely strange. When Princess Helaena was born, nothing tragic happened at first. The effect of her birth was overshadowed by a red comet that streaked across the skies on the day Princess Rhaenyra left the capital for good, after being disinherited in favor of the King's long-awaited firstborn son. The kingdoms talked of nothing but that offense.

And, of course, there was also another juicy piece of news that was beginning to spread everywhere: King Viserys, perhaps overwhelmed with guilt for casting aside both mother and daughter, allowed Rhaenyra to leave with all the dragons under the undisputed rule of Dragonstone. He metaphorically separated the island from the Crown and revoked his authority over the territory, which from that moment on would become autonomous.

The Hightowers, as expected, protested from the untouchable Old Town. And the Hand, stunned by the magnitude of the disaster at hand, tried to reason with his King. He argued again and again that Prince Aegon and Alicent's future children would need a mount of their own to keep the kingdoms in check. Furthermore, in his opinion, having a dragon was the right of every legitimate Targaryen. But his arguments fell on deaf ears. Stubborn as he had rarely been in his life, Viserys refused to appear perjured before his daughter again. And before the whole kingdom, at that.

"If Aegon and those unborn children want a dragon for their cause, they will have to go to their sister," he said loudly during the prince's name day celebration. "She will take care of the matter if she so pleases."

But Rhaenyra, of course, did not please.

Dreamfyre had fled the capital on the morning after Aegon's birth, and the egg she herself had placed in her half-brother's cradle had grown cold on the day of her departure. It was now nothing more than a precious stone, despite the Hand's efforts to deny it.

Thus, Aegon had proven himself unworthy of the gift of the Fourteen Flames, Princess Rhaenyra explained in a strongly worded letter sent to Viserys. In it, she told her father that she would not offend her Gods by going against their sacred will. And then she never spoke to him again. She shut herself off in severe silence toward the capital, although she continued to maintain diplomatic relations with the kingdoms subject to the authority of the Crown.

Meanwhile, the Hand was overwhelmed. A plague of fire bugs that had never been seen before took over the prosperous fields of the Seven Kingdoms, destroying virtually all crops. And a disease, equally unknown but deadly, seemed intent on destroying the health of peasants and nobles alike. Scholars could find no cure or treatment, as the symptoms were different in each sufferer. And in the meantime, people were dying in large numbers.

But the worst of the Crown's problems came with the birth of Prince Aemond and the natural disaster that struck only two targets: Oldtown, which had survived the previous catastrophes in such a way that the rest of the kingdoms resented it, suddenly collapsed with the unexpected fall of the Hightower. And the Citadel, which seemed immune to all calamity, found itself one day decimated by a hurricane so powerful that it destroyed much of its precious knowledge.

Between the two, the curse at least spared Daeron Targaryen, which was an immense relief for a people who could no longer bear any more tribulations.

"Daeron wasn't that important to us, apart from his bloodline. Your kepus had the idea of giving him darker hair than ours to raise doubts about whether or not he was a true Targaryen-Hightower. It seemed like justice to me for all those years of rumors about bastards. And it worked. Alicent was so ashamed to have him around that she sent him to Casterly Rock." Her mother told her with a mischievous smile when Daenys asked why her curse had ignored him.

Alicent's punishment, they told her, would be what she was already receiving. Seeing all her children die after years of trying to elevate them in the eyes of her kingdom. That was the revenge against her.

"But not all of it," thought the princess, going to her bed and throwing herself onto the warm blankets. Daenys had already seen the former queen, the day they dragged her out of a carriage to lock her in a small tower. The once proud queen was malnourished, her eyes sunken and her gaze wild. When she passed by the wing where she was kept hidden, she could hear her screaming prayers to the Gods. Sometimes she called out to her children. Other times, she mourned her father and begged him to rescue her.

Rhaenyra had shown her no mercy. In front of her new quarters, Alicent saw the tar-covered heads of her former family day, afternoon, and night. In the center was Otto's, and her father had found a disfigured head to which he had attached a few silver curls donated by himself. The screams of the former Queen still made her shudder every time she remembered them.

But it was what she deserved, she told herself to calm her racing thoughts. She had suddenly remembered too many sordid stories and moments, and she didn't want to dream about them. So she thought once more about Lucerys, her twin sister, and the rest of her siblings. She thought about her parents and the sweetest moments she had experienced at Dragonstone during her childhood.

And little by little, without realizing it, she sank into a dream world.

«««««««««««««»»»»

"History books will speak for centuries of this magnificent coronation, my princes and princesses," Lord Corlys said joyfully, accompanying Daenys, her brothers, and her uncles in the procession that followed Queen Rhaenyra's coronation at Dragonpit.

"Do you think so, my lord?" asked her uncle Alaric, with a decidedly mocking air. That uncle, who was the eldest of Aemma and Lord Rickon's children, liked nothing better than to contradict the Sea Snake on everything. "It was quite a spectacle, opening the dome and letting the caves run wild so the dragons could be part of the coronation. But I'm not sure it will be very memorable. The Queen told Brandon and me that she will make it a tradition for Baelon and the Targaryens who reign after him.

"Rhaenyra has certainly been a pioneer in that regard. But that's not why I say she will be remembered in the history books to come," Lord Corlys replied graciously. Nothing could bother him that day. He was very happy. And not just because Rhaenys had been named Hand of the Queen, or because Laenor had officially taken a seat on the Privy Council. But because in the fifteen years of close coexistence with the Targaryens of Dragonstone, he had come to love them all as an integral part of his family. And of his future glory. "I cannot say what specific detail will make this coronation special in the eyes of future generations, but what I am sure of is that yours will never be forgotten. Not even in a thousand years.

Lord Corlys was not exaggerating this time. The event itself had turned out to be idyllic. It was even blessed by the gods, as a golden comet streaked across the sky at dawn to bless the celebration that was about to take place. And it had not yet disappeared completely at that hour.

Princess Daenys had had the opportunity to see it for a few minutes as she left the Red Keep. And as she climbed into her carriage with Lucerys, she was able to do so without skimping on her admiration, as gazing into the distance was the only thing she could do without interruption while traveling to the castle to change her dress before the tournament that followed the coronation.

In the city, it was said that this cosmic object was an omen of good luck. Of an ethereal destiny. The comet had been blood red during Princess Rhaenyra's march. And it returned with a splendor worthy of the sun to enhance her seizure of power as supreme monarch. The crowd compared it to the end of the rains and cloudy days of yesteryear, as both events had come hand in hand with Aemma Arryn's departure and return to the capital.

"Both mother and daughter have been chosen by higher powers, that much is clear. So everything will be better now that they will take charge of the Throne," opined the nobles of the Dominion, whom Daenys heard whispering behind her as her mother was crowned by her grandmother herself, as an unmistakable symbol that power belonged to them.

The nobles, whose faces she barely remembered, were not exaggerating when they spoke like this. Now everything would be better. They had gotten rid of all the rot and all the green greed.

Or almost.

Alicent Hightower was still there, screaming in her isolated tower, as Daenys hurried to change in her chambers. She wouldn't be screaming for much longer, the princess told herself consolingly, as she filled her fingers with rings. So she forgot her—as she had forgotten her daughter—for the rest of the day.

That night of revelry, she drank golden wine that tasted like the nectar of the gods. Daenys danced with her uncles in turn, and knelt before the Queen to receive her crown as High Princess of Oldtown in the company of Lucerys.  Both rose moments later, now crowned. Visenya and Baelon did the same when they were proclaimed heirs to the Iron Throne. He as future King and she as his consort.

Returning to her table, where her absent but present aunt Helaena was also seated, she received so many compliments that she spent the rest of the evening blushing and giggling. Then she danced once with her father, with Ser Harwin Strong, and with Lord Celtigar. She danced with Jocelyn Stark to the rhythm of a northern melody, to the pride of Lord Rickon and her grandmother, and sang along with the bards that Lady Laena and Lady Rhaena had brought especially for the occasion. The celebration was full of shared happiness. Beer flowed like a river, and no one skimped on gold when it came to paying for services. King Consort Daemon had promised that, with the help of the Black Queen, prosperous days would return. And everyone believed him blindly.

It was a glorious night. One to remember. Although, at the hour of the wolf, all laughter finally died away.

The town fell into a slumber from which it would not awaken until the Targaryens returned to the Red Keep. The golden comet disappeared, not to be seen again for 172 years. And the Targaryens of Dragonstone took flight on the backs of their respective mounts, carrying one or two passengers with them.

One by one, they landed shortly thereafter on a very specific cliff on their island. The first to do so was the King Consort. He had Alicent Hightower slumped haphazardly on the saddle, and he unceremoniously threw her onto the inhospitable ground. The last Hightower was awake. And terrified, as she had been ever since her first visit to the island.

Then her mother dismounted. She still wore the Conqueror's ruby crown on her head and the war armor she had worn all day. In Syrax's claws was a limp but living figure. It was Daeron Targaryen. Unconscious. Oblivious. Disposable.

"I'll carry him, Lord Corlys," said Baelon, breaking the stillness of the night and leaping the last distance from Cannibal's great body to take Alicent's son in his arms.

They all moved forward after watching the dragons take flight once more. There was not enough space there for their increasingly colossal bodies. In the center of the cliff was a large rock split in half. And on it, Prince Baelon deposited Daeron on the cold rock. He stepped back shortly after, leaving the place to the Queen and the King. He returned to Visenya, who took his hand in hers.

Daenys, standing next to Heleana—whom she had brought with her— whistled a Valyrian lullaby.

Lucerys She added her own voice to the lullaby, and shortly after, Helaena did the same, with her eyes unfocused from the adulterated poppy milk she had been given to keep her calm until that night.

Each of Rhaenyra's children whistled as well. Rhaenys, Laenor, and Corlys sang the melody that preceded the ceremony, and in the distance, lightning flashed, coloring the world white for an instant.

Then Rhaenyra drew a dagger. The same one that once, in another life and under different circumstances, had tasted her blood. Alicent, held fast by Ser Harwin—whom Lucerys had brought with him on his dragon—screamed and cursed. She cried out to the Seven for help, but her voice, already worn out from so much misuse, faded into the air. No one paid her any attention. Not even when she tried to gouge her eyes out of their sockets so she wouldn't have to watch the moment when Rhaenyra plunged the dagger into her half-brother's heart.

The island's volcano rumbled the second the deed was done. Thunder roared in the sky. And the dragons circled over the cliff in separate circles.

that was ceremonial dance they had performed for years in every blood ritual.

"Take our sacrifice," Rhaenyra whispered into the night. Her cheeks splattered with their brother's warm blood, and she looked so beautiful that it physically hurt to look at her. "Take our offering and show us the way to victory against the Great Other."

Daemon gathered some of Daeron's blood between his fingers, and Daenys, realizing that it was time to fulfill the role her mother had entrusted to her before leaving the Fortress, took Helaena by the hand. She walked with her aunt to the stone where the ritual was performed. She helped her up to the center and kissed her on the cheek goodbye for a moment. 

She had not quite finished, when her mother loomed over Helaena; admiring her with the same malevolent gaze she used when she was about to finish off a hated enemy. But on this occasion, it would not be so.

Not entirely, at least.

"Everything will go away," Daenys heard Rhaenyra say to her most coveted whim. "Your love for Alicent and your grief for the dead. Your hateful dreams and memories of that other life. Every trace of them will disappear, as I promised you that day when you came to me, hāedar. And then there will be nothing but a paradise where no one can ever hurt you again.

"Ah, so she intends to erase her ties of affection to the Hightowers using blood magic," Daenys thought with a flash of understanding that left her feeling even calmer than before. And just then, Helaena, moved by Rhaenyra's hand on the back of her neck, leaned over Daeron. Her aunt drank the still-fresh blood of the sacrifice. The dragons sang almost the same way Rhaenys did, with voices that were not human. But that contributed to what they wanted on that special night.

The ritual was complete when, her lips bloodied and her eyes filled with new light, Helaena stood up to let the Black Queen cut her too. It was on her wrist, in a vein of little importance. The cut would leave no trace the next morning, nor would it have any consequences. Meanwhile, her aunt's blood flowed like a crimson river, and the sacrificial stone seemed to drink it. The chanting among her relatives grew louder when they noticed. And even she joined in. She sang willingly, as the sky lit up with new flashes of lightning.

The dragons sang, and Daenys, taking the hands of Helaena, who was returning in her direction, stared at her aunt for a precious moment. Her blood, inside her veins, sang too; recognizing the kinship that was now closer between them. Her mother, with whatever she had asked of the Gods in her prayers, had changed Helaena irrevocably.

Her aunt was now filled with pure Targaryen blood.

She was filled with the same blood as Daemon Targaryen. The same blood that ran through Daenys and her brothers. They had adopted her, thus stripping her of her Hightower identity; as a final coup de grace to Alicent and Viserys.

Daenys, recognizing the brilliance and twistedness of the idea, laughed. And then the princess danced around the stone with her family, as the body of the last son of the Puppet King and the Green Viper suddenly burst into holy fire.

And so the last ashes of the forgettable Daeron were extinguished.

As a sacrifice to the Gods.

As another seal contributing to the glorious future they sought to forge with fire and blood.

««««««««««««»»»»»»

About 172 years later, Daenerys Targaryen bowed before Queen Rhaella to receive the crown of Aegon the Conqueror. And behind them, the people and the dragons roared as one.