Chapter 2
They walk for mere moments, or hours, maybe.
He never knew a place could smell like this. Oldtown didn’t. Not the parts he remembers, the parts he used to know.
(Or look so dark like this, really—)
It’s flashes of somethings he catches in the din, between the legs and around the hips and rags of the beggars, the carts of the merchants and pedlars and hawkers—
The women in the alleys, at the edges.
(One, with long red hair, like his mother’s—
A man’s hand fisted in it, bending her low, on her knees.)
Aegon laughs with a hand on his shoulder, pushes him forth, closer to it. Daeron claws at his hand, tries to stumble back—
Did you see that, little dragon? He sneers. You can’t blame our sister, see. Everyone wants to enjoy the Queen.
He turns to Aemond, breath tight and high in his throat—“I want to go back—I want Rhaenyra—”
But before he knows it, Aemond is gone.
“Aegon?”
Beside him, a man breathes a plume of fire and two men roar and barrel through the crowd and he falls to the cobblestones. He picks himself back up. The palms of his hands are black.
If you get lost, head toward the Blackwater.
(He knows which way is east; the Maesters taught him so.)
There’s a shout, a whistle through the sizzling air; a crowd calls out Aegon’s name, but he’s not there, and a man on a stage points toward Aegon’s Hill—
The only cock on the rock!
Daeron turns, again, and his eldest brother is nowhere to be found.
He spies a soldier, there—by the edge of the crowd, a knight—
Daeron tugs on his gold cloak. “I want to go back to the castle,” he murmurs, voice quiet from below his hood. “I want to see the Queen.”
The goldcloak laughs and shoves him off. “So do I, little beggar,” he snickers. “Quite a few things I’d like to do with her—”
The crowd grows louder as he wanders—a flagon of wine spills and wets his boots, someone shouts—
Daeron makes haste toward the beach.
The day before it happens, Daeron drops his egg back in its cradle by the fire and looks back at Rhaenyra with stinging red hands.
His mother rises, but it’s Rhaenyra who meets him first, turning his palms gently over, frowning, tutting at the crisscross of the red welting scales—
You must be careful, sweetling, she says, as she always says. Mother calls for the maesters, dispatches Ser Harrold behind her. You mustn’t touch, when it’s hot.
He sighs with consternation, with wide piteous eyes.
I want it to hatch.
Mother pets his silver hair, an arm around her middle, looking down at the red of his hands, sad and vacant and far away—
“That way I can fly back,” he supplies.
(So she’ll understand; so she’ll be happy.)
“Back here. If they take me away.”
“Daeron,” Rhaenyra squeezes his wiry wrists. “No one shall ever take you away. I command it.”
The King has demanded a feast, the evening of the morrow; one for his family, and his family alone.
(That means Daeron, too, because the King is his father.)
He knows because Aegon has been griping about it all day, how Rhaenyra is too busy with the King to join him in the skies with Sunfyre, how Sunfyre always smarts when Syrax isn’t around, how Daeron should be angry, because it means Daeron can’t fly, either—
I don’t like Syrax, he wants to say, but he doesn’t.
(Not since his dream, anyway.)
Aemond always attends the Small Council with Rhaenyra upon the moon’s turn; Aegon is supposed to as well, but he always stalks through the hallways shouting to Mother that I’ve told her a thousand times I don’t fucking care and slips off to somewhere else. Luke trains separately now—with Jace again—because he’s tall enough, and Daeron still isn’t, so Daeron’s alone.
Well, not completely.
“Ser Erryk?” He begs, again, tugging on the knight’s sleeve—“Can’t we please go for a lemon sweet?”
(Ser Erryk is the youngest knight of the Kingsguard. He’s like Daeron, that way. Daeron’s always youngest, too. He can’t fly on Sunfyre because he’s youngest, or train will steel because he’s youngest.
Or even wander the halls alone. But he can go with Ser Erryk, who sometimes lets him go for treats in the kitchen. Ser Erryk likes lemon sweets, too, even if he pretends not.)
Ser Erryk shoots him a half-smirk and directs him through another corridor. “As I said—not today, my Prince.”
Daeron skips along beside him—swings below the tapestries two steps at a time, pianos his fingers against the painted walls and silver banister; hums a tune he thinks he’s heard Rhaenyra whistle, when she walks the halls to think.
“Ser Erryk, surely my dragon shall hatch soon, don’t you think?”
Ser Erryk shakes his head. “I’m no Valyrian, my Prince. I'm afraid I do not know.”
But Daeron only sighs. “Neither do I.”
A while later, after midday, he’s meant to train with Ser Criston—
(And he knows Rhaenyra doesn’t like him—)
(When Daeron falls on a parry with Ser Harrold, he always helps him up and tells him that to persist is the true victory, my Prince; Ser Criston always leaves him in the dirt, tells him to watch your damned feet.)
I want to be a knight, he whispers to his bedroom ceiling, sometimes. I want to be the bravest knight in the land, so Mother will never be scared, and then—
“Does Ser Criston not like me?” He’d asked Rhaenyra, one evening, upon her lap at her desk. She’d looked up from her papers and down at him and seemed angry and so—sorry he’d said, sorry, I’m sorry.
Still, she’d not relented—"Why do you ask that, sweetling?” She’d brushed his hair from his eyes with concern across her face. “What’s happened?”
Then Mother had entered their chambers and Rhaenyra had turned back to her letters like nothing had happened.
(But later that night, tucked into his bed, waving away his nursemaids—Rhaenyra, silver hair framed like a crown—
I love you, Daeron, and she’d reached her hand upon his own, and he’d tried to clutch her back, trapped her first two fingers in his palm. She’d merely smiled, a tired smile, resigned. There’s no limit to my love.)
I will watch my feet today.
Ser Criston swings the wood across again, a simple blow, and Daeron’s supposed to catch it on his left side and then switch to the backfoot—
“No, I told you, use your momentum—"
Ser Criston’s practice sword comes under his swing—but instead of knocking him on the kneepads it raps him hard just under the ribs and he falls, winded, and the air won’t come—
“You’re lazy and careless today,” Ser Criston scolds, and it’s a low voice like his cousin Garse from the Hightower who’d used to walk past and shove him aside. “Just like your sister.”
Daeron only frowns. Ser Criston barely knows Helaena.
“She’s not,” he protests, meekly.
Ser Criston scoffs, motions for him to get back on his feet. “And insolent, too.”
Later, Ser Harrold arrives to bring him to supper. Bess, who’s round and plump and kind and his nursemaid who says you’re just as sweet as you were as a babe, skinny and happy as a little colt, but her eyes are unhappy when she beckons Ser Harrold into his chambers and lifts Daeron’s shirt to show him—
Ser Harrold frowns at the blue bloom upon his ribs. They look at each other a moment but Ser Harrold doesn’t say anything at all.
“I’ve heard,” Ser Harrold says, after a moment, smiling that wry smile that means sorry, the smile he used to give him when he’d barely just arrived from Oldtown and he’d cry when his mother had unfurl his fingers from her skirts and leave him—“That my Prince is our greatest admirer of lemon sweets in all the world. How about we sneak down to the kitchens and have you one? As a reward, for my Prince’s hard training.”
“Yes please,” Daeron smiles, and it’s as though he’d never felt the bruise at all.
Sometimes in his dreams there’s a dragon that howls, and she’s brilliant and blue and looks happy, happy and triumphal and splendid. She snarls with gleaming white teeth and ascends into the skies, strong and righteous battle-ready.
He watches her lift and lean, dodge and swoop, sure as an arrow, light as all air. Upon her flies a knight with white hair, in gleaming silver.
Sometimes Mother stands beside him, in the vermillion grass, looking younger than he’s ever seen her. Tessarion, Mother says.
After he’s dressed for the feast in an itchy black doublet he watches his egg in its cradle by the fire and waits. Helaena is there, in her silvery lilac dress, and Mother enters soon afterward, moving briskly through the apartments and until she’s nowhere to be found, embattled-looking and dour again.
Mother’s very sad, he’d told Aemond, though it was more a question than elsewise.
Not like before, Aemond had said.
Daeron didn’t know what to make of that. Did the King make her sad?
Aemond quirks a brow. Not for much longer.
He looks at Helaena with her needlepoint, and something like Mother herself, Helaena can be there without being, her eyes someplace else, like she’s not really with him at all.
“I want my egg to hatch,” he laments.
Helaena answers from the longue, drawing the thread across another strand, calm and unbothered as ever. “It won’t.”
“Rhaenyra,” he asks, when he’s found her along the hallways, outside their apartments, dressed in her finery, enigmatic, saying something to Lord Beesbury, and Ser Harrold, who looks tired and resigned. She doesn’t look so he tugs on her skirt and she catches his hand without even looking down, rubbing with her thumb in that way that means hush now as she finishes telling Lord Beesbury that they’ve got to be prepared, at least.
“Rhaenyra,” he nags, tugging again at her hand. “What if my egg doesn’t hatch and I have to go? Helaena said—what if I have to go, and—”
Then she does look down, frowns. “Go where, my sweet?”
“Away.”
“Daeron, my love,” she entreats, in that calm low voice that means it’s okay, the same voice she uses when he had his night terrors and she used to take him on long walks in the night around the Keep. “Nobody is ever, ever taking you away. Why don’t you go find Luke, yes? Perhaps you can practice a round of cyvasse before the—”
“But what if I have to? Because of duty? Or if I’ve made a promise?”
She sighs; nods to Beesbury, who departs behind Ser Harrold down the corridor. “Listen,” she says, leaning down, “When you are a man grown, and a very brave knight, you may embark on all the adventures you wish, so long as you wish it.”
“But how will I get back?”
She frowns, again. “How will you—?”
“How will I ever return?”
She takes his shoulder in her hand, squeezes, runs a thumb across his cheek. “The same way as always, Daeron. Not to worry, my love,” she murmurs, gentle. “We will always bring you home.”
His mother approaches, then, from the corridor that leads to the King’s chambers, among other things, quickly and with much purpose, like she’s running, a little.
Rhaenyra catches her eye down the corridor and they share an inscrutable expression.
“I’ll retrieve you on Syrax, if I have to,” Rhaenyra assures him, eyes still on his mother. “From anywhere in the world.”
“I don’t like Syrax,” he says, before he can think.
Mother almost pauses; turns and looks at Rhaenyra with an impossible cast.
But Rhaenyra merely nods, unbothered as ever. “On horseback, then,” she says. “Or a carriage, or a boat, or on the back of a giant ape from Yeen.” She smiles, then, and he does, too. “However, wherever I can.”
Usually, they take dinner in their apartments; it’s when Mother sits with Joffrey on her lap and coaxes blueberries and parsnips into his mouth, and he and Luke wait for him to fuss so they can try and play marbles under the table without Mother noticing. Aegon always tries to sit furthest from where he thinks Rhaenyra will and Rhaenyra always comes in last and sits right beside him. Then they engage in silent battle—Aegon pushing his luck on his cups and Rhaenyra deciding whether she’s in the mood to lecture. Sometimes she does and Aegon slides his chair out on the stone with that awful sound and storm back to his rooms, cup in hand and uses a word that you know you are not to utter around the children.
(Some nights Mother tries; asks Jace a question, then another, waiting with plaintive eyes—his day, or his reading—to which he hardly replies.
And then Rhaenyra asks him the same in that tone and he moves his food around and mutters something like yes, quite well, thank you, Your Grace.
But Mother never looks happier for it; she just looks back at him, bouncing Joffrey, quieter and sadder than before.)
If they’re good, sometimes he and Luke get to play with Rhaenyra’s four-sided hourglass (which they only broke once and not even that bad and Rhaenyra didn’t even mind.) One time after dinner, later, when he’d left his rooms to ask for it, he’d found Aegon and Aemond outside her doors—
(They were shut, but there was sound, just the faintest sound, almost like crying—)
Aegon laughed and sipped something awful smelling, and Aemond rolled his eyes and said surely SerArryk won’t choose this night to finally object to your damned adventures—
(Adventures where Daeron is infuriatingly never allowed—)
Still, the noise, again.
“Is Mother sad?” He’d asked Aemond, as Aegon smirked wider. “Is Mother crying?”
“No,” Aegon chortled. Then he looked down at Daeron, lanky and tall and big-headed as he’d gotten, smiling a canary grin. “Mother is fucking.”
“Watch your tongue,” Aemond had snapped. “Especially here.”
“She’s fucking our sister. Everyone knows,” Aegon japes. He smiles back at Daeron, but it’s that woozy smile, like it’s not really Aegon at all. “That’s what she’s in there doing, right now.”
“Helaena’s in her rooms,” Daeron protested.
“Not Helaena,” Aegon sniffed, disgusted. “Rhaenyra, of course. Gods, you’re—"
“Let him alone,” Aemond had said. Daeron had only frowned. Then Aegon had slunk off, and it was only Aemond who remained, tugging his cloak in tow.
“Is that a bad thing?” Daeron asked. “What Mother’s doing?”
“It’s not to be spoken of,” he’d replied. “Ever.”
Daeron had toed his slipper into the stone for a moment, worried his lip.
“Aemond,” he said. “What if my egg never hatches?”
Aemond only sighed through the nose, shook his head.
“Gods.”
And then he’d been off into the night.
He doesn’t remember the King, not really; isn’t sure if they’ve ever met, except that one time, that time in his apartments—
Hello, my son.
I like your ring, Daeron had said. It looks like my egg.
The King had smiled warmly, and coughed, then, coughed loud.
Then you must have it, my boy, the King told him. He’d looked back up to Mother. Will you ensure…?
(Of course, she’d said, hand on his shoulder. I promise.)
Only months after his arrival back home, Daeron had to go, but Mother came with him—to Driftmark, in that chilly, foggy air, how grey it was that day, how sour in the morning dew.
Mother had put him in the carriage with herself and with Rhaenyra and Joffrey—who’d squalled all the while, and Rhaenyra had looked distraught and said I should not have brought him, and I can’t let him with the nursemaids upon the road, I can’t, and then Mother had moved to her bench and touched her arm and said it’s alright and give him to me and she’d held him and shushed him and made him stop and Daeron could finally sleep.
He'd met his Uncle Daemon at Driftmark. Daeron didn’t like him.
He’d stood beside Jace and Helaena and Luke, that day. They were very sad, because someone had died. Uncle Daemon’s wife.
Later in the evening the King had approached Uncle Daemon and touched his shoulder.
A month afterward, there had been a feast, in the Red Keep, again; Daemon had worn a golden pin.
(All the while Aemond kept talking about a dragon, talking and talking and talking—by the shore, in his sleep; when he thought no one was there to listen.
God of war, he’d murmured, in the velvet dark; God of war.)
Ser Laenor has passed, Mother told him, later. Murdered by his companion.
He’d only blinked.
(Once, Ser Laenor had given him a blue ornate dagger—blunted, though, at the banquet for his eighth birthday.
You’ll become a most fearsome night, Laenor had assured, and then he’d smiled. Together, you and I and the knights of the Realm shall vanquish many enemies on behalf of the Queen.
Do you promise? Daeron had asked. Do you think I’ll be brave?
I promise, Ser Laenor had said, and then he’d patted him on the back, small and hearty. He’d smiled again with assurance. Daeron the Daring.
At their feast, finally, private and solemn and warm as it is, Daeron pulls at the black wool across his chest and tries to smile as the King brings his hands to the chair and slowly, shaking, stands.
(You must remember your father in good health, his mother told him, in good spirits.)
(I don’t want the King to die.)
When the King pulls forth his mask, Mother’s brows knit, but she reaches for his hand again and her eyes are deep and sad.
Rhaenyra remains still to his left; still and cool as the air.
“It gladdens my heart,” the King says, “That our family has reunited despite its differences, and come together, today and in all the tomorrows to come, to embrace love and unity over discord.” The King looks at Mother, then, and Rhaenyra, on his other side. “I am grateful,” he says, “That you have set aside your quarrels. For the sake of this old man.”
(Aegon snorts. That’s why, he mutters.)
“I know that the House of the Dragon shall only grow stronger, for the trust and good will of the beloved faces gathered round this table. Your husband, your brother, your grandsire—” and then the King turns to Rhaenyra once more, tender and quiet and true, like it’s only them, like they’re alone—“Your father is happy, my dear.”
Rhaenyra smiles, looks down.
“My daughter,” he says, then. “You shall indeed make a fine Queen.”
(Mother smiles—just a little.)
The King raises his cup, and they follow suit, and he sits. Somewhere off, music begins to play.
“My King,” Mother entreats, again, hand clasped in his own, “You have always said that the House of the Dragon could not stand unless united. As you’ve echoed tonight.”
“Yes.”
“Unity is the fruit of leadership,” she beseeches, softly. “Leadership that is strong.” Daeron notices Rhaenyra’s eyes lift from her plate, from Daemon’s conversation beside her. Mother swallows. “Strong, and upright, and uncontested.”
Rhaenyra quirks a brow.
(Ser Criston stands silent as the night in the far corner by the door.)
The King frowns. “Dear wife—”
“The lords of the realm are like to stir up gossip,” Mother presses. “And take whatever advantage they can, whenever they can, to flock and scavenge to power. It has been more than a decade since the lords of the realm affirmed their leal commitment to your trueborn and chosen heir. The first in history of her kind.”
(Her eyes flicker up to Rhaenyra. They look like they do when she’s asking for something, like when Daeron’s overheard her telling Rhaenyra to fasten her straps tighter on dragonback, or make Aegon leave his wine aside, or watch over the boys’ training.)
Daemon sighs. “Your Grace, she may be right—"
The King stills her with a hand. “What do you ask of me?”
“I believe it would be prudent,” Mother entreats, her hand closing around his, “To call upon the Realm again in this hour. And receive their oaths of loyalty to the Crown, and to your heir. And to peace.” Her eyes shine. “A decade is a century to men with fickle memories.”
Rhaenyra looks between the King and Mother, a tempering voice—“Your Grace, perhaps—”
“My dear,” the King rasps, “Hardly necessary. Oathbound and honour-bound, the Realm knows my wish—”
“But shall the Realm accede,” Mother pleads, “Shall the Realm honour—”
“Alicent,” Rhaenyra insists, again.
(She sounds serious, Daeron thinks, serious as she is when she finds him jumping down the stairs.)
Daemon’s eyes move fluid and expressionless between them.
“My dear wife.” The King states. “There is no cause to fear. Rhaenyra shall rule. With strength. And wisdom. It shall be.”
(Mother’s eyes are wet in the firelight. Daemon raises a brow.)
“I must agree the hour grows late,” Daemon murmurs, eyes on Mother, “To put our trust in men so far away.”
Rhaenyra’s jaw twitches. Then, slowly—“This is hardly the time, or the place—”
“Later, then.” Mother says.
Something passes between them, then, something left unsaid.
The King sighs, merely tips his chin. “If this will put your concerns to rest, my Queen,” he says, “Then I shall consider it.”
Daeron looks around, then—Jace and Luke and Aemond, watching with worrisome intent; Helaena, far away as always.
But Daemon—thumbing the edge of his plate in the firelight, eyes downcast, thinking; working his fingers over, like he’s been thinking all the while.
Later that night, after his burned palms have been wrapped, and they’ve been sent to their chambers, his brothers and Jace and Luke and even Aegon, surly as he is—he pads out of his chambers in the apartments. Mother’s door is open—
Mother is angry with Rhaenyra—her eyes are livid, and she’s pointing, pointing and seething—still they’re only whispering, like they always do after they’ve all gone to bed, quiet and forceful in clipped breaths.
(—whether they want it or no, Mother insists.)
Rhaenyra whispers something back, quieter; Mother replies, and then Rhaenyra, again, reaching out a hand—and then Mother draws back, covers her mouth, closes her eyes.
Alicent, Rhaenyra says.
(Rhaenyra brings Mother’s head to her shoulder, fits her arms around her waist, holds her; like the knights do in the songs.)
When he returns to his rooms, Aegon is there, with his hood, and Aemond, too.
Aegon holds a third shroud.
“Would you like to come play, little brother?”
(Aemond looks away.)
Aegon leans down, right in his face, smiles with too many teeth. He looks like his dragon.
“Are you a brave knight, Daeron? Brave enough to meet the Conqueror’s city?”
When he was younger, Rhaenyra used to lift Daeron into her arms, when he was sad, used to sit with him in the gardens, by the flowers and the water and when the sky was nothing but sun.
Do you like it here? She’d asked him, once, smiling down to his face, a thumb stroking at the base of his spine. In the capitol? Your brothers, your nephews—are they kind to you? Are you excited to train with the sword?
“What happened to Oldtown?” He’d asked, then. His face leaned in her shoulder. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard.
It’s still there, she’d said, though her voice had changed, maybe a little. But then she’d smiled again and bounced him a little and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head.
(He’d liked that.)
We can visit. Whenever you’d like.
Somewhere, a gull’s call, deep over the waters.
He remembered this moment—her braids, her silver; like his.
He looked up at her. “Why did I go away?”
Her eyes were smooth as satin, but she hadn’t replied. Not right away.
She looked out forth, toward the sea. “Your mother missed you very much.”
He finds the docks past the Iron Gate and they smell like fish and death and by a sidestreet ways away, a man beats another, and his cries are loud, and then he cries not at all.
The man with firebreath, the goldcloak’s oily beard—
Daeron runs, faster, until the docks and tents and stragglers are gone, and there’s only deep beach, gleaming sand, yards and yards and yards, and then the water.
Black as dragonglass, still as a stone.
Daeron sits upon the sand, waits for Aemond.
(Sometimes in his dreams he sees a man with long silver hair and beaten-silver armor and a gleaming sword, and he rides upon a dragon as blue as sapphires, blue as a dress of Mother’s, that he’s seen her in, sometimes.)
(The dragon rears up and the sun hits its belly of gleaming bronze; her flame burns bright and blinding and blue, too, blue as the sky. Daeron feels the heat on his face, the burn on his brows beneath her long copper eye.
She reminds him of his mother, standing by the throne, in blue, when Rhaenyra sits in the King’s stead. When she touches Rhaenyra’s shoulder, just gently.)
The moon is low in the sky when a hooded man approaches.
“Is that you, little Prince?”
So smiles the wolf with its gleaming teeth; when he draws his knife and removes his hood he’s got no eyebrows, no beard, no hair—smooth as a serpent.
As Syrax.
“Sweet little princeling,” he croons.
(Daeron stands, bites on his lip, tastes blood.)
“Wandering the beach all alone? Where’s your knight attendant, my Prince?”
Daeron swallows. “He’s relieving himself. He’s just over there. He’s much much bigger than you.”
The man snickers.
Daeron can feel his heart in his chest. “He’s got a Valyrian sword. And claws like a lion’s.”
The serpent raises a brow. “Call for him.”
(And in his mind, Daeron does—
The blue dragon, and the silver knight—anyone—
Please, please, please.)
The man steps closer and tears bloom in Daeron’s eyes and he stands and tries to make himself run, run now—
And then he recognizes the knife as the serpent nears—the handle, the hilt, at least.
He steps back, back and back, until he’s pacing, until he falls, scrambles back as the serpent moves forth with languid strides.
“That’s my father’s,” Daeron accuses.
The serpent only sneers. “Your father’s dead.”
It’s just a sniffle, Bess had said. He’ll be right as rain in a fortnight.
But Mother’s eyes shone as she looked down at him.
Rhaenyra nodded, from the corner, looked to Mother with a sympathetic gaze. “You’ll take your medicine, now, for us; won’t you, Daeron?”
Daeron nodded. Took the cup from his nursemaid’s plump and happy hands.
Thank you, Bess, he’d said. She’d squeezed his shoulder and smiled.
(It tasted like ash.)
“Would you like us to remove the Prince to his own chambers, this evening?”
“No,” Rhaenyra had said, eyes on Mother. “No, I believe he shall remain with the Queen.”
His fifth day in bed, Rhaenyra brought a jester, all the way to hers and the Queen’s chambers, when they’d let him lay in the big bed. He’d performed all the histories Maester Gyldayn had read to him, in those long and boring days; he’d had cloth of bright colors and jingle bells, shimmery-loud.
He’d been Balerion, the Black Dread, and fluttered and flapped his arms, waving streams of paper fire all across the room. He'd roared and danced. He'd been Harrenhal. “I’m melting, I’m melting!”
Rhaenyra smiled. Daeron laughed and laughed and laughed.
Mother’s voice, a year ago, maybe more—Yes, you’re a happy baby, you’re a sweet boy, hello, yes you are.
He’d tugged on his mother’s skirts. “Why can’t I hold Joffrey?” he whined. “Luke and Jace get to.”
Mother looked to Rhaenyra, and then back down at him. “You promise to be very, very patient, and very gentle?”
Eagerly, he nodded.
He’d sat at her cushioned chair. Mother had leaned down; he’d held out his arms, the way she told him, and she’d transferred the baby in her arms, slowly but surely, to his lap, kept her hand just under his head.
“Say hello to your nephew,” Mother smiled. “Tell him you love him very much, don’t you, my sweet?”
Daeron nodded.
“I love you very much,” Daeron said.
He thinks it’s a dream, at first.
The Gods provide when we ask, they extend mercy to the penitent; the Mother takes pity on the naked, the Father shall vindicate the righteous—
But this couldn’t be an act of those gods—not Mother’s, the gods of right and wrong.
No, these are Rhaenyra’s; the gods of fire and blood.
(Silver like mine.)
From the dark of the skies the dragon sweeps down from the skies like a bolt of fire in the air, loud as a thousand sirens is her cry. Bright and blinding and screaming like a rancorous god—down from the clouds tumbling and thundering in the nighttime rains, she descends, cobalt and gleaming and cutting as a lance, larger than anything Daeron could ever imagine he would have seen; larger than Syrax, larger than he can capture with the edge of his covered eyes, as he put his elbow to his face, as he braced for the killing blow—this dragon he doesn’t recognize, this dragon he does, knows he does—
The serpent man is captured in jaws big enough for three of him, and the riderless dragon ascends again light and swift as a lance and then hot blood rains in sheets upon him—
Daeron turns and wipes at his eyes and stumbles two paces and he can taste it in his mouth and empties his stomach on the sand.
The dragon cries out again—triumphal and carnal—and then descends once more.
Daeron begins to run—
And then, in a cloud of sand, a boom that knocks him back, back ten paces, flying down into the ground—
The dust clears and she beholds him, staring with a simmering copper eye.
Blue, bright blue.
(Daeron knows—this dragon he knows, he knows, knows deep in his blood.)
Where is the Silver Knight? Daeron asks.
The dragon provides no answer.
He nears her as the image vibrates like a vision. He lays his hand upon her flame-blue maw. The dragon snorts, and the great gust of her wings turns him over into the sand.
Daeron sits, for a long while.
He breathes shallow. His pants feel warm and wet and the blood is dry and it’s sticky.
And then a voice, a familiar one, shouting loud—
“Prince Daeron!”
Before him, running like mad, it’s Ser Erryk, sword drawn, eyes wild.
“Prince Daeron—”
Ser Erryk drops to his knees in front of him, takes his face in both hands. “What’s happened? Are you hurt, can you hear me—seven above—”
Daeron shakes his head.
Ser Erryk peels up his shirt, the sleeves, trying to find—“You’re bleeding—"
“I’m not.” He says. His voice sounds very far away. “It’s not mine.”
And then Ser Erryk looks around—to an arm, a hand dead on the beach.
And then he looks back to Daeron. “What—?”
“A dragon.”
Ser Erryk shakes his head. “A—what dragon?” His chest rises and falls. “Vhagar did this?”
Daeron shakes his head. “No.” He says. “The blue one.”
Ser Erryk shakes his head, again, eyes wide, mouth open—and then seems to get hold of himself, shuts his eyes, tight, shakes himself, stands and grabs Daeron and hoists him clean over his shoulder, begins to run—“We must go—no matter—quickly, now—”
They’re almost at the gate when Ser Erryk stops in his tracks. Leans down on the beach.
Daeron turns his face over on his shoulder, then, in the vague light of the fires at the gate.
The knight looks down at the hilt of the blade and his breath leaves him quick.
“My father’s dead.” Daeron says.
Ser Erryk’s eyes are wide. “Who told you?”
“The man.”
Ser Erryk swallows. Quickly, then, he carries him back through the night.
Ser Criston finds them at the gate, the mouth of the Red Keep, hands on his belt.
“Prince Daeron,” Criston bellows. “I have been looking for the Prince. I see you’ve found him.”
“And why might you seek the Prince this night, Ser Criston?”
“The meaning of the Queen’s orders is hardly a concern of yours, Ser.”
“I’ve strict orders from the Queen to return the Prince to Her Grace at once.” Ser Erryk sets his jaw. “You may report to the Dowager Queen,” he states, “That is where the Prince shall be taken.”
Ser Criston merely stares. “No sign of his elder brothers?”
Ser Erryk pushes past him, up the steps, into the halls.
They near the Queen’s chambers, the ones where Rhaenyra emerges, most mornings, in her long silken nightdress, into the apartments, where sometimes when the door is ajar he sees her lacing Mother’s dress, as her handmaidens sit and stand beside, each criss-cross pulling with cool languid fingers—
But it’s shouting from it now, shouting like ice and fire, shouting like venom and wroth—
Mother’s voice—fucking coincidence that mere hours after the King’s passing all three of my sons are miraculously missing—anywhere under the Seven—and I’m supposed to believe—
And Rhaenyra, muffled, lower but deeper and more cutting—halfway along the road to Oldtown—as you found him first, after all—
The door opens. Ser Erryk bows his head.
“My Queen.”
They both turn, at that.
Daeron stands unsteady on his feet, blinks through sticky eyes.
(He’s not sure what the look on Rhaenyra’s face really means, but he knows he’s never seen anything like it; knows somewhere inside of himself that he never will again.)
His mother shrieks, but he can hardly hear it; and then he’s in her arms, lifted against her chest, and Rhaenyra behind her has a hand on her own chest, and her eyes look panicked and relieved and there are tears at the corners of her eyes—
Rhaenyra brushes something out of Daeron’s matted hair and rubs his back and then fits her palm on Mother’s trembling cheek.
They sit him on the cushioned chair. Rhaenyra tells Ser Arryk send for the maester at once with a tone of command that sends a prick up his spine.
And then his mother is reaching for her handkerchief, wiping sand and dirt out of his eyelashes—
He’s not hurt, Ser Erryk says, somewhere else. It’s someone else’s blood.
(He’s not sure that he’s there, not really.)
“Where,” Rhaenyra says, with a tone of insistence, “Under the seven were you? How in the gods’ name did you leave this castle?” Her eyes are wide, disbelieving. To Ser Erryk—“Whose—"
“The serpent man,” Daeron whispers.
Rhaenyra breathes in, in and out, and then blinks, blinks hard, brows knit, mouth open, shaking her head—“I—what?”
“Aegon took us,” Daeron says. “He said I would be brave if I went outside the castle. To the city. It was dark, and there were shows, and big men, and women—in the alleys—”
Rhaenyra’s eyes flash with concern, meet Mother’s over his head.
“I’m sorry.” Daeron shrinks into the chair, reaching for Mother’s hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Where is Aegon? Was Aemond with you?”
“He left, Aemond too, he said—he saidif I was lost, to go to the beach outside the Iron Gate, but he wasn’t there, and—” His eyes water. The maester seems to arrive, he thinks, someone coming through the door—his hands shake—"I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
Alicent squeezes his hand, staunches her fingers at the corners of her eyes, lips downturned—“That’s enough. It’s alright, my sweetling, it’s alright.” She looks up, into his eyes, fits her palm against his cheek, shushes him—"It’s alright, I promise.”
(She looks pale and distraught and shaking, Daeron thinks. There’s blood on her thumb, in the corner.)
Ser Erryk waits at the door—Rhaenyra makes her way to him, murmuring something about guards and searching and Aegon—
He looks into Mother’s eyes. “Is my father dead?” He whispers.
His mother shuts her eyes, brow evening out, slowly, lip trembling. She takes his other hand in her own, too. “My sweet,” she murmurs. “My sweet boy, it’s all going to be alright—"
“There was a dragon,” Daeron whispers.
Rhaenyra’s head whips around. “What?”
(Mother gives her that look that when Daeron gets it means stop it right now but Rhaenyra doesn’t seem to even notice.)
“Daeron, what dragon?”
“The blue one,” Daeron sighs. “The one from my dreams.”
Rhaenyra frowns, almost imperceptibly. “Was she real, Daeron? Tonight, outside the gates?”
“She was real. The blue dragon came from my dreams and ate the serpent man. And then Ser Erryk found me.”
The maester looks at Rhaenyra. “The Blue Queen hasn’t been spotted off of Dragonstone for six years, Your Grace. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”
“Daeron,” she says, gentler, leaning down, “Are you sure there was a dragon? Do you mean a real dragon, my love? Was Ser Erryk the dragon? Because of his sigil? On his breastplate? Is that what you mean?”
“No,” Daeron insists, hard, impatient. “A real dragon with wings and teeth and she was real and she was blue. She was my dragon and in my dreams she has a silver knight and he sent her to save me and then she flew back to him.”
Rhaenyra looks at the maester. Then Mother.
(They don’t believe him, he knows it, he knows it he knows it he knows—)
“She has copper eyes,” Daeron says.
At this, the maester turns.
“—An assassin,” Ser Harrold had said.
Daeron sits in the bath, as his nursemaids wait in attendance, as Mother leans forward, cleans the blood from his face, from his neck.
“Ser Erryk reported finding his remains on the beach.”
Mother looked back at Daeron in horror.
“It was the dragon,” Daeron explained, like it had been the most obvious thing in the world.
Then Ser Harrold had moved his cloak. “And Ser Erryk discovered this, as well.”
Rhaenyra’s eyes glowed upon the knife. She took it by the handle.
Her eyes met Mother’s.
Rhaenyra had rushed away, Ser Harrold not long behind her.
Ser Criston arrives. “The young prince Aemond,” he says. “I’ve found him.”
Mother places Daeron in her bed, tugs the covers up around him, tells Ser Erryk by the door that you are not to leave from this post.
“I have to go, my sweet,” she whispers. Her eyes look red and scared.
Somewhere through the window, he can see the blackness edge out, the herald of dawn, coming—
“I’m sorry.”
She presses a kiss to his brow, tucks the sheets up around him, tucks Rhaenyra’s silken pillow to his side, like he likes.
Then she turns to go, and—
Pauses; looks toward the door, at his face, and turns back.
“My love.” She looks at him deep, looks sad, looks like she means it, takes his hand gently. “Tell me why you don’t like Syrax.”
He focuses down on the clench of her fingers, white on the sheet. “It was my dream.”
Her eyes shine.
He dreams of Rhaenyra, but it’s not Rhaenyra; it’s not like Rhaenyra, anyway. Rhaenyra upon the throne, cold and distilled and burdened and tempestuous.
A man kneels before her—
The silver knight.
Bring him to me, Rhaenyra commands, waving him away, toward the door, her hand covered in rings of blinding bloodstones.
The knight rides out upon the blue dragon, in his silver armor, with his gleaming sword—
He rides out to the Trident, to its Southron edge, to a springtime ford.
It’s Aegon, sitting by a babbling brook, chin in his hands.
The silver knight approaches, raises his sword.
Aegon stands.
When he awakens, only hours later, Aemond sits by his bedside, half his faced covered in gauze.
Daeron’s heart races, eyes pour over him—“Syrax?”
“What?” Aemond looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “Of course not.” And then he lifts his chin. “I claimed my dragon and paid its price.”
Daeron only stares. “A dragon burned—”
“The dragon didn’t take my eye,” Aemond sighs. “A wayward gull did that.”
He worries his hands. “Is the King dead?”
Aemond nods.
Daeron swallows. “What happens now?”
Aemond shrugs, shakes his head. “They’ve been in the Small Council chamber,” he gripes, “For hours.”
“Why—”
“Aegon.”
Daeron frowns. “Aegon is missing.”
“And he must be there,” he says, in that tone that means he thinks Daeron’s stupid, “When Rhaenyra is crowned.”
“Why?”
Aemond merely tilts his head, sighs loud. “Why do you think.”
But Daeron doesn’t know, so he merely worries his fingers.
“Daemon’s missing also.” Aemond notes.
Then, without a word, he makes to leave—
“What dragon?” Daeron calls. “What dragon was it? Was it blue?”
“No,” Aemond replies. A smirk colors his solemn features. “It was Vhagar.”
(Aemond seems taller as he leaves.)
God of war, god of war.
Two days pass. Mother is beside herself. They haven’t found him.
There’s no word, no sign, as far as Daeron knows.
(Daeron watches his mother collapse into Rhaenyra’s arms; and still not clutch her quite as tightly, even while.)
On the second day, Daeron is allowed out of the apartments.
He wanders the castle, Ser Erryk beside him.
Where is my mother?
There are no histories with the maester. No breaking fast with his brothers, with Luke, who he has yet to have seen, these days; no training with Ser Criston.
The halls are empty, emptier than he’s ever seen. It’s grey and cavernous and the walls echo under his footsteps.
He goes to her, to the Great Hall, after an hour or so—or two, or four, he isn’t sure. Anything to avoid—
(The serpent raises the blade in his dreams, brings it down into Daeron’s belly, again and again and ag—)
Rhaenyra upon the throne. Looking out with ashen eyes; tired, and sadder than he’s ever seen.
Sitting like she was born to it, though.
Well.
(Cold and distilled and burdened and—)
Beesbury whispers something in her ear. He turns with Mellos and filters out the side corridor.
Her eyes find him.
“Daeron,” she says, disquiet in her face. Her brows knit. “Sweetling, have you broken fast?” Her eyes seem to follow to Ser Erryk, who nods.
It’s as though in a dream. He’s never seen anyone but the King upon this throne.
Where is the King, now? Is there a dais where the Stranger’s made him go?
(I’ll retrieve you on Syrax, from anywhere—)
But upon her face, behind her eyes—only the Rhaenyra who’d sat with him in the garden, only the Rhaenyra who’d laughed at the jester.
(Her fingers wave him forth and there are no bloodstones upon her hand.)
She tilts her head, though, once he pauses. “Are you alright?”
He’s quiet. Beside him, the sorry edge of a smoked and blackened sword.
Rhaenyra smiles, almost sadly. “You don’t have to be afraid of the throne, Daeron.”
He only swallows.
“Come.” Rhaenyra beckons. She holds out her arms. “Come here.”
She seems so far away—
(There’s no limit to my love.)
When he approaches, climbs the steps toward her, she draws his hands into her own, soft and entreating, and then releases them to brush through his hair, cup his cheek. “You’re alright, today, aren’t you?”
He nods, looks down. Reaches for the edge of a blade, ash-black—
“No, no,” Rhaenyra counters, catching his hand—gentle, easy. “Touch here.”
She guides his finger to the round of a hilt. He runs his finger along its grooves.
(Bring them to me, she’d said, a her that wasn’t her.)
“Where is Mother?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she replies. Then she smiles. “Should we go find her?”
(Rhaenyra’s eyes always twinkle, a little bit, at the mention of Mother.)
But before they leave—something like before, so like before, Rhaenyra settles him upon her lap upon the throne, as though he’s still small as two years before, as though it’s easy, as though it’s then, in the garden, in the sun.
His mother sits at the end of the Small Council’s table, head in her hands.
Beside her, Ser Harrold looks grave.
(Ser Criston, in the corner, hand on the hilt of his sword.)
Rhaenyra pauses in the doorway. Daeron peaks around her skirts.
“Mother?”
But her eyes find Rhaenyra, only Rhaenyra.
“My love,” she begins.
(Daeron’s never heard her say that outside of their apartments, not ever.)
His mother, again—“If we could speak alone—"
Rhaenyra’s eyes flicker between them and her body hardens, solemn as stone.
“No,” she says, then. “Go on, Ser Harrold.” But when no one speaks, Rhaenyra’s eyes flicker to him. Her voice is low. “What news.”
“The Prince has been spotted upon the Kingsroad.” Ser Harrold murmurs. “By the Crown’s searchers headed South. He acquired a stallion from a trader outside the city and made it known to him that he required a mount fast enough to make South by the fortnight’s end.” Beside him, Ser Arryk’s eyes avert. “To Oldtown.”
Daeron can see the change in her features, something awful behind them; something that stills.
Mother stands, eyes desperate—
“Rhaenyra—”
Before she can say, before Daeron even knows it, really, Rhaenyra’s gone.
He hides out in the apartments, sits on the floor behind the sitting bench under the blue-and-gold tapestry, silk tugged over his back, hiding from his mother’s tears.
He’d never seen anything like it when she’d left—standing in her blue dress, her knotted red curls, a face crumbling, a face of such pain—
Daeron hides when Rhaenyra enters, again, blistering angry.
And then when Uncle Daemon comes forth, meets her on the veranda, a moment later.
You’re supposed to be missing, Daeron thinks. You’re supposed to be gone.
They speak for a while. Daeron wonders if his mother will come, eventually.
But then—
He catches wed and Laenor and marriage; and he catches together and the greens, all Daemon, all venomous—
He doesn’t know what Rhaenyra says, but he knows she’s mad, livid mad.
Daemon—
Of course not Oldtown—I arranged—You’re telling me you’d ever miss little curs whelped on that venomous bitch—
And then Rhaenyra says something. Something in a voice Daeron doesn’t recognize; something low.
(It stills him in his place.)
Daemon marches out only seconds later, but not arrogantly; almost like he’s slowing himself down, like he’s too proud to run.
Once he’d sat out on the veranda of their apartments, one warm summer evening, a year or so after his arrival; Mother and Rhaenyra had taken wine out in the nighttime air, and everyone else had been off and away, even Luke, who’d gone to his dragon—
He’d closed his eyes on Rhaenyra’s shoulder, on her lap, but he wasn’t quite asleep; not entirely.
His mother, whispering, a smile in her voice—He looks like he could be yours.
He’d felt Rhaenyra’s chin against his hair, her thumb tracing circles on his back. He liked that.
The sweetest little dragon, indeed, Rhaenyra had said.
He loves you, Mother had told her. I know he’s scared—but the way you’re so gentle with him, Rhaenyra, I—
It’s nothing, Rhaenyra said, then. He’s a gift.
His mother was quiet, for a moment.
Sometimes when you’re with him, I—then she’d stopped. I imagine another life, another place. Where you could have given him to me.
Rhaenyra’s voice, smooth and gentle and warm—He’ll never know the difference.
Mother enters, later. Tiptoes through the door.
He expects Rhaenyra to fight, he expects her to yell. He braces himself for it.
(Maybe Mother does, too.)
(He imagines the silver knight in the room, taking Mother by the hand, leading her to Rhaenyra, joining their hands together, making it better, making Aegon come home, making her tears dry, making Daeron theirs, putting a star in Aemond’s severed eye, making it right.)
But the silver knight doesn’t have to, because Rhaenyra does it.
She strides forth from the black of the night and envelops her before she knows Mother will take it, it seems; wraps tight around her waist, cradles her head against her shoulder, holds her.
(Mother cries and cries and cries.)
“I’m sorry,” Rhaenyra says, then, softer than he’s ever heard. “Alicent. Please, my heart. Please forgive me.”
Mother only shakes her head—
Lips wet, words crinkled, soft on the breath of a whisper—
“I love you,” she vows, but her voice is so hollow—
My first boy, my first one, please.
“I’ll find him.” Rhaenyra says. “I will. I promise.”
Rhaenyra’s lips on her knuckles. (Like the knights in the songs.)
Out corner of his eye, out the window, he almost doesn’t notice it—
“I’ll take Syrax south,” Rhaenyra vows, higher and further away.
The blue dragon gliding by past the furthest tower, over the Blackwater, into the velvet, through the blackness.
I’ll take Syrax south.
He knows Aegon’s not south.
(He knows it like he knows the blue dragon in his dreams; like he knows the silver knight, like he knows the quirk of Luke’s brow that means he’s sliding a marble across the floor.)
“I need your help.”
Aemond quirks a brow, looks up from the laces of his boot. “I’m headed out.”
“You’re not allowed.”
Aemond scoffs.
“I need your help, please, Aemond. I need to get to the beach.”
It’s then Aemond laughs, truly, shaking his head, looking back at him with a bewildering expression. “The beach? Gods above, Daeron. Septa Sibel always says some men yearn for death, though I never thought she meant so fucking plainly. Of course I’m not taking you to the beach. You’re not leaving the Keep.”
“Then neither are you.”
Something flashes in Aemond’s eyes. His back straightens.
He takes a step forward, just a little. “What was that?”
But Daeron holds his ground. “If you don’t take me,” he says, chest rising, “I’ll tell Mother. I’ll tell her before you’ve gone.”
Then I’ll punish you when I return.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
Aemond lifts his chin. “I’ll burn you with my dragon.”
Daeron frowns. “No you won’t. You like me a lot.”
And it’s almost not there—almost something he could be seeing in his head, really, something just below the surface—
But Aemond tempers, for a moment.
“Daeron,” he says. “You know I can’t.”
Daeron cocks his head toward the door. “Mother—!”
“Alright!” Aemond slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes averting to the door. “Alright, alright, gods. You’re a menace. Find your cloak.”
Aemond and Daeron wait, then, outside the Iron Gate. The night grows longer around them.
Behind them his colossal dragon huffs, head down, kicking up a cloud of sand in her wake.
(But still, it’s the same place; looks just the same, just the same as with the knife, with the hand—)
Daeron edges toward his brother. “We’re safe, aren’t we?”
Aemond looks over his shoulder at Vhagar, then back at Daeron. “Is that a fucking jest?”
They’re silent, again, for a moment.
“How did you know she was yours?” Daeron asks. “Meant for you. I mean.”
Aemond shrugs. Toes the sand with his foot. “I didn’t, I suppose. I wanted her to be. So I approached.” He sighs. “She saw me. Saw me in a way I’ve never been seen. Not even by Mother.”
Daeron looks down. “Do you think Mother is cross with us?”
“I think Mother is cross with Aegon,” Aemond snarks, bitter. “Who has always done his damndest to deprive us all of her happiness, one way or another.”
“I miss Aegon,” Daeron says.
Aemond sighs. “Go on, little brother. Call for your dragon.”
Daeron blinks, stutters—“I don’t—I don’t know her name.”
“Yes you do.” Aemond gives him a tired expression. “In your sleep, and at Driftmark. You say it all the time.”
He thinks, for a moment.
Then, like it’s a covenant all his own—
(Like Mother used to say, standing beside him on the open field—)
Tessarion, he calls.
He takes her by the horns, grips her back like a saddle.
“You’ve got to tell her, now!” Aemond shouts from meters below. Somewhere in the distance Vhagar watches, a cold yellow eye. “Tell her to fly!”
He can’t say it, his breath caught in his throat, but he knows it, knows the word, from the dragonkeepers and the maester and—
Soves, he’d once said, light as a bird atop Syrax.
(Soves! Soves!)
He doesn’t have to say it.
(Or maybe he already did.)
“Soves!” He commands, anyway.
Tessarion ascends into the night underneath her silver rider.
(It’s the most wonderful feeling, he thinks.)
He rides to the Trident, to the stream, to the brook.
Tessarion is striking in the day, a gleaming flame-blue beauty against the sea of vermillion, smiling back at him, he thinks, with that warm coppery hue.
He tumbles off of her and rolls into the grass and climbs back onto his knees.
He starts for a grove of trees. “Aegon!” he calls. A stallion startles, tied to a tree yards ahead. “Aegon!”
Aegon smiles softly when he comes upon him, in a hat and plainclothes and without his steel sword, but it’s him, sure as anything.
It’s Aegon, sitting by a babbling brook, chin in his hands.
He extends the paper in his hand. “Fish?”
Aegon settles where the dirt meets mud and watches the water of the ford glide past, slowly, with the sound of a rush at its edge, with the peak of the wildflowers.
“Mother never wanted me,” Aegon says.
Someday this place will be famous, Mother had said, in his dreams. But that’s a long time from now.
“That’s not—”
“Helaena’s four and ten. Maybe if you put a baby in her arms she’d love it. But that’s not the same thing as wanting.” He rubs his nose. "You're only a mother after the fact, you know."
Daeron only watches, chin on crossed arms, curious lilac eyes.
“Haven’t I been who I’m supposed to?” Aegon murmurs. “Who would have wanted me quick and dark and ambitious. Who would have wanted Aemond first. Wouldn’t that just have made it all the more complicated?”
A knot in Daeron’s silver brow—“What’s complicated?”
And then Aegon turns, laughing and sorry and sad. “Sometimes I’d like to have lived your life, Daeron. To truly not have a clue in the world.”
“That’s mean.”
“No it’s not, it’s a compliment.” Aegon picks at his fish. “Mother’s sweet boy. Rhaenyra’s adopted Strong.”
“We’re not supposed to say that about them—”
“I don’t care that they are.” Aegon laughs. “But what could speak louder of Father’s devotion, of the strength of Father’s pride.”
“Father, the King?”
Aegon, sardonic, sarcastic—“No, your father—Rhaenyra.”
Daeron frowns.
Then he toes his foot in the mud, flings it out to the water with the edge of his boot. “Mother misses you very much. Rhaenyra is looking for you.”
“Her search parties won’t possibly—”
“No, Rhaenyra is. Rhaenyra herself. With Syrax.”
And then Aegon seems to pause.
“I see you’re a dragonrider, now.”
“I dreamed of her.”
Aegon nods. “Yes, yes, the dreams. I suppose I inherited Mother’s dreams—that is to say, none at all.”
“What does that mean? Mother wants things. Mother wants you home. Why won’t you come home?”
“Easier for everyone.”
“Rhaenyra won’t be crowned if you’re not there.”
Again, Aegon pauses; and frowns. “Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what Aemond said.”
Aegon sniffs. “Legitimacy, I’m sure.”
“Aegon…” Daeron waits, thinks; toes up another clump of mud. “Don’t you think it’s all a bit harder than it has to be? Sometimes?”
Aegon is silent.
“Couldn’t you just come home and be our brother? Even if Mother was four and ten, and even if the King wasn’t nice, to you, I mean, and even if Aemond wants to be first but he’s third. I think it’ll find its peace, if you come home. I think we need you.”
(Somewhere off—a twig cracks; a doe, on the other side of the stream.)
“Out in the world we defend our own,” Aegon whispers.
“What?”
Aegon kicks a rock. “If I'd returned before now I'd have been dead before I reached the walls.”
Daeron’s head picks up. “What?”
“Daemon.” Aegon snaps, low. “Or did you think some heedless, haphazard city cutthroat simply came upon the Conqueror’s blade?”
“How do you know—”
“Whores know everything.” Aegon quirks a brow. “Actually, remember that. Might be useful to you someday.” He shrugs. “I suppose he thought it a more honorable death for you. Us. The Valyrian steel. He’s always had that obsession.” He sniffs. “Same as Father.”
Daeron shakes his head. “But Uncle Daemon—the King chose him as Hand, he’s our kin, why—"
“Rhaenyra is about to become Queen.” Aegon reminds. “She’s without a husband. Daemon’s without a wife. He wants Rhaenyra to ascend. No complications. No claimants.”
“I’m not a claimant.”
Aegon laughs but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Rhaenyra loves me,” Daeron tries. “Rhaenyra loves you.”
Aegon is silent, for a moment. “Regardless,” he says. “Daemon does not.”
“Rhaenyra’s very angry with Daemon,” Daeron says.
At this, Aegon’s eyebrow quirks.
“He said something to her,” Daeron continues. “Something in the apartments. About marriage and—and whelping. About us, I think. She sent him running.”
Aegon hums.
“You must come back. Rhaenyra wants you to come back, Mother begged—”
“Don’t you worry,” Aegon says, taking another bite of his fish. “I’m coming back. I’ve no choice.”
Daeron tilts his head. “Yes you do. I can’t—I can’t make you—”
Aegon rolls his eyes. “You rode a giant bright-blue dragon out of the city in the middle of the brightest hour of dawn. Rhaenyra will follow you in a matter of hours. Less if the wind is kind.”
Daeron waits.
“I had a dream Syrax ate Aemond, once.” He confesses. “Syrax ate Aemond and me. And Sunfyre ate Daemon, and Jace and Luke and Joffrey, too. Mother watched. Mother was screaming.” Daeron whispers. “And then Sunfyre ate Syrax. While you and Rhaenyra—”
“Yes,” Aegon muses, corners of his lips upturned. “What was I doing, during all this?”
“Dancing,” Daeron says. “You and Rhaenyra. You did the dragon dance.”
Across the ford, the doe picks up her head; perks her ears, tips them—rushes away.
Aegon is silent for a moment.
And then he laughs, breaks into a childlike, raucous laugh, so full it reaches his belly, stings at his eyes.
“Right,” he says, nearly bent over, “So Sunfyre is just—is just feasting on the Strong boys—Syrax, too, gulping down family members—and—” He wipes a tear from his eye. “And Rhaenyra and I are just jumping about.”
Daeron works his jaw. “It wasn’t funny.”
Aegon sighs. “No. I suppose." He wipes his eye. "War never is, really.”
As though it were clockwork, they both turn—
The beating of wings in the distance.
“Better pack up,” Aegon says.
Before long, Syrax approaches, silent as the breeze.
Aegon stands.
Rhaenyra dismounts in gleaming silver armor. Her eyes look tired.
She raises her arms. Aegon lets her envelop him. Syrax rumbles from the chest next to Tessarion; chuffs and purrs in the sun.
In less than an hour they’re due at the Grand Sept. Daeron waits in his finery.
Rhaenyra, back in the apartments—in her splendid dress, in her ornamentation, her jewels.
Helaena looks up, sees her first. Then Jace and Aemond.
“You’re supposed to be with the Septon.” Aemond says.
Rhaenyra holds a box. “Where’s your elder brother?”
“Brooding on the balcony.”
Rhaenyra makes her way past.
He’s there, it’s true; overlooking the city, in that red-and-black wool and metal, in his silver, his silver hair, gleaming like Sunfyre—
Aegon, she says.
She opens the box.
Aegon looks down with an expression Daeron has never once seen upon his brother’s face.
(He’s quite handsome, when he’s not scowling, actually.)
He draws the blade sacred like a prayer; There, in the light of the morning, gleaming brighter than a falling star.
Father’s, Aegon says.
Rhaenyra fastens the bejeweled scabbard to his belt; puts a hand on his shoulder.
After the Field of Fire and the submission of the North, when the Starks knelt, Aegon the Conqueror marched on Oldtown to find the pillars of the Faith.
Mother’s hand had stilled over the histories; Rhaenyra had fallen asleep, there on the pillow beside him, but Daeron was still awake, still sniffling and red-eyed, the joy of the jester’s amusement gone.
That night the High Septon had a vision of a great fire across the city. Thousands dead in the conflagration as the dragons danced overhead. Balerion, and Rhaenys upon Meraxes. The cries of terrible Vhagar.
He called upon the keeper of the city, Mother read. Lord Hightower, still young.
And Lord Hightower answered the call of the faith, with his sword and staff; and he went to Aegon, Mother had said. And placed a kiss upon his fingers. He said, let you be my Lord now. And Lord Hightower knelt.
Let you have my city, he said. Let you have my sword.
(Mother had woken Rhaenyra, when she thought he was finally asleep. With a hand on her face, jewels against her cheekbone; and her hair had fallen past her shoulders in long ringed curls.
And Mother placed a kiss upon her fingers.
My love, Mother had said. Are you awake?)
A thousand swords fall in the quiet of the Sept, as the lords summoned by the King watch, as Daeron watches, a step below Lucerys, astride the mighty dias.
Rhaenyra ascends, Rhaenyra kneels.
Mother—Smith—
Mother watches, only an arm’s stretch beside. Her eyes shine bright as the anointing oil.
Harrold Westerling holds the Conciliator’s Crown; it catches the light from a painted window, gleams like always; like on the King, once before.
Daeron wears Ser Laenor's dagger on his hip; fidgets with the ring on his finger.
(The one that had matched his egg.)
The Lord Commander steps back, the trumpets blow; Rhaenyra rises with her crown.
First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men—Lady of the Seven Kingdoms. Protector of the Realm.
Daeron bows low. Lucerys, bowing beside him, catches his eye.
(He smiles. Daeron smiles back.)
Daeron peeks upward. Mother—curtsying low, impossibly low.
But her eyes, upon Rhaenyra.
(The Septon says something else, but Rhaenyra doesn’t turn.)
Her eyes upon Mother, too.
(From beyond the painted windows, he heard it; the dragons roared as one.)
Later, at the feast, the celebration, where Luke has, in all has gall, dashed from their seats at the end of the high table and tugged on Rhaenyra’s shoulder, crown and all, and begged and begged and begged until—
Shaking her head, that telltale half-smirk—Yes, yes, you can go get the hourglass. Come straight back.
(They’d cheered like victorious conquerors.)
They return only moments later, turning it over and over and over again.
You know what this means, Luke says. Time’s all ours.
Mother sits beside her. Wipes something from Rhaenyra’s cheek.
Daemon has fled east, someone had said.
Rhaenyra catches her hand in her own. Presses a kiss to her knuckles. Mother smiles.
(Everyone knows, Aegon had said, arms crossed.
Mother should be happy, Aemond replied.)
Daeron begins training with Tessarion tomorrow.
(You’ll learn all sorts of commands. Rhaenyra had smiled and led him through the dragonpit, introduced him to the dragonkeepers. Not just soves. You’ll tell her lykiri, mazis, rybas—
Dracarys? He’d asked.
Yes, she’d smirked, shook her head, chuckled. Dracarys, too.)
But when Mother beckons him over, he goes; lets her pet his hair, plant a kiss to his forehead, even though it’s in front of everyone.
(He’s excited to train with Luke, soon. Ser Harrold told Rhaenyra that Daeron would become such a fearsome and selfless knight that he would train Daeron himself.)
“Rhaenyra—I mean, Your Grace,” he asks, and she returns, smiles over her goblet. “What happened to the Silver Knight?”
She frowns. “The Silver Knight, my love?”
“In my dreams. Upon Tessarion, her rider—there was a knight. He wore silver armor, and he had long silver hair.”
Rhaenyra’s eyes flicker to Mother’s—she smiles.
“I think we’re soon to meet such a man,” she says, grinning. She swipes his chin with her thumb. “Unfortunately quickly, actually. In far fewer years than I’d wish.”
“He’s coming?” Daeron asks, eyes wide.
“I think so,” Mother adds. She pushes his curls behind his ear. “Getting stronger every day.”
Mother smiles in the sun, in the garden, by the blackwater, beside the flowers, in blue.
Rhaenyra smiles back, hand on the small of her back; presses a kiss to her cheek.
“Look!” Joffrey leans up toward Mother, holds a fallen daisy, waves it in his hand, reaching his arms upward. “Flower!”
“Beautiful, my love,” Mother praises. She lifts him up into her arms. Rhaenyra’s thumb traces circles on her back.
“Have you found a pretty one, Joff?” Jace asks, sitting upon the wall, by the tree, beside her.
(Mother meets his eyes, gives him a tentative smile; Jace smiles back, just a little.)
“Now, listen,” Rhaenyra continues, tugging on Aegon’s hand again. “You’ll be managing your own castle, now. Your own castellans, your own stewards. Your retinue. You’ll need to mind the dragonkeepers, with Sunfyre, and ensure the maesters are minding your letters, and sending your envoys—”
“Yes, yes,” Aegon says. “I know—"
“And if I hear you haven’t been attending your own appointments—” Rhaenyra raises her brow, fixes him that look, that one that means she’s serious—“I’ll strip this title faster than you can say Dragonstone.”
“I know.” Aegon says. “I’m ready. I promise.”
“There was another Aegon, Prince of Dragonstone once,” Aemond needles from beside Helaena, smirk upon his features.
“Was there?” Aegon muses.
“Yes there was,” Aemond replies. “He died in a civil war. He was eaten by a dragon.”
Aegon rolls his eyes. “I’ll be sure to avoid that fate, thanks.”
It’s then that Daeron feels a familiar light thwack at his legs. He turns; of course Luke’s smiling back at him, ever mischievously.
“No fair!” He calls, raising his own wooden blade. “I wasn’t even looking!”
He lunges, only for Luke to easily dodge. “If you want to best me,” he says, “You’ll have to catch me first!”
Daeron takes off after him, a grin blooming upon his features.
Mother adjusts Joffrey in her arms, rests her chin upon the Queen’s shoulder.
Rhaenyra smiles at her, again; bigger and brighter than the sun.