MAEGOR I
Maegor Targaryen narrowed his eyes against the wind as Balerion circled high above Pinkmaiden Castle, the late afternoon sun casting the Black Dread’s shadow across the pale stone like a curse.
He could see them below already: tiny figures in the courtyards scattering, guards shouting, banners being hauled down as if the mere absence of a sigil might save them. Cowards. He imagined the stink of fear wafting up to him as Balerion passed again, slow and deliberate, like a hawk choosing where to strike.
It would be so easy, Maegor thought. One breath from Balerion and the entire keep would be engulfed. He could scour Pinkmaiden from the earth, just as he had cities before it. Just as Harrenhal still smoked in memory.
But not yet.
Not until he had what he came for.
Inside those trembling walls were two small pieces of House Targaryen: Rhaella and Aerea, the squalling babes of his treasonous nephew and niece. Aegon and Rhaena had died trying to take his crown. Died well, perhaps. But they had left embers behind. And Maegor loathed embers. Embers could grown into infernos.
He had no use for children. He barely even thought of them as kin. After Aegon and Rhaena had attacked him, no Targaryen was above suspicion.
Only as threats… and threats needed watching.
He had already dispatched ravens to Dragonstone, commanding his mother Visenya to deliver Queen Alyssa and her whelps to King’s Landing. There, Tyanna of the Tower would see to them. Tyanna missed nothing. She saw more than even his mother. And she knew how to keep children quiet.
Now these two. Aerea and Rhaella.
Little Aegon and Rhaena’s spawn. He did not yet know what he would do with them. Raise them in the Red Keep? Wed them off as pawns? Smother them in their sleep?
He would decide later. The point was: he would have them.
Balerion growled beneath him, sensing his tension, angling low over the outer bailey. The people inside shrieked and ran for cover. A dozen archers raised bows, fools, but they did not loose them. Not yet.
Maegor yanked on the reins and whispered into the dragon’s ear. “Embrot!” he said, pointing to the castle’s wide, open field just beyond the stables. “Let’s see what the Lord of Pinkmaiden can offer a king.”
Balerion folded his wings and landed like a falling star, the ground quaking beneath his massive weight as his claws dug trenches into the field outside Pinkmaiden Castle. Grass and soil turned to ash beneath him as a burst of smoke and heat erupted from his maw, sending soldiers and servants fleeing in every direction. The Black Dread exhaled, steam hissing from his nostrils, wings folding in with a sound like cracking timbers.
From Balerion’s back, Maegor looked down, impassive.
The people scattered like rats. Screaming guards dropped spears and bolted. A few brave souls tried to usher children and livestock away from the growing shadow of the dragon. Maegor watched it all with cold detachment. Panic always looked the same.
He raised his voice, letting it carry like thunder across the yard.
“Lord Piper! Come out now with the babes, Rhaella and Aerea, and you may yet live. Delay, and you die with your walls.”
Silence.
He waited a full minute, watching the windows, the towers, the gatehouse. Still nothing. Just the wind and the distant sobbing of smallfolk too slow to run.
Maegor’s lip curled.
“Two minutes,” he barked. “Then I burn this place to the foundations. Balerion has done it before. Ask House Hoare.”
That worked. Cries rang out from within the keep, orders shouted, doors slammed, people fleeing like they believed hell itself was about to fall upon them.
And then… one man came forward.
He walked alone across the scorched grass, cloaked in the pink-and-blue of House Piper, his gait steady, his hands empty. Maegor’s eye narrowed, studying him. He saw the terror in the man’s face, the tremble in his jaw, but the man did not falter. He bowed low, and his voice, though tight, was clear.
“Your Grace,” the man said. “I am Jon Piper, Lord of Pinkmaiden. I greet you as king.
Maegor gave no reply. He watched, waiting.
Lord Piper straightened. “I bring you no lies. I bring you no fight. But… I must speak plainly.”
Maegor said nothing. That was permission enough.
Lord Piper swallowed, then continued.
“The babes you seek, Princess Rhaella and Princess Aerea, were sent away. As soon as their parents left. We knew the danger. They are not here.”
The words fell like a stone in a well.
Maegor’s face darkened. Not a flicker of surprise. Only displeasure.
“Where.”
“I do not know,” Lord Piper said quickly, but not pleading. “Their mother didn’t tell us. She didn’t trust anyone with the knowledge: not even me. She had… loyal women. Quiet riders. They left in the night.”
Then Maegor spoke, each word edged like steel.
“It has only been a day and a half since the battle,” he said. “No horse, no cart, no loyal woman of Rhaena’s could have carried those babes far. You either know where they went… or you’re lying. Either way, you are culpable.”
He shifted in the saddle, eyes never leaving Jon Piper’s face.
“If I do not have those children in hand by the time the sun moves a finger’s width; this castle will burn.” He raised his voice, letting it carry to every window and every cringing soul inside. “Pinkmaiden will become a second Harrenhal. House Piper will end.”
Maegor reached for the reins. Balerion reared his head with a roar, wings spreading wide, shadows drowning the courtyard in their span. Servants screamed, a few soldiers dropped to their knees.
Jon Piper snapped.
“WAIT!” he shouted, hands raised, voice cracking with fear and desperation. “Wait- Your Grace! Five minutes! Five! That’s all I ask!”
Maegor held the reins tight, his face pinched.
Lord Piper stumbled forward a step, eyes wide. “I- I might be able to find them, maybe. Please, five minutes. That’s all.”
The king watched him for a beat. Then another.
Maegor slowly relaxed his grip on the reins.
He gave a single, slow nod. “Five minutes,” he said. “And if you lie, Jon Piper… your bones will join those of your brothers.”
He gave Balerion a soft pat on the neck.
The Black Dread settled back on the ground, a low growl still rattling in his chest. The reprieve was brief. Temporary.
Maegor Targaryen could wait… but not for long.
He turned his head, gaze falling on the two makeshift cradles strapped securely behind Balerion’s saddle. They were ugly things: hastily nailed wood and boiled leather, padded with rough furs his men had torn from stables near the God’s Eye. Crafted for a singular purpose: to carry infants through the sky on the back of the Black Dread.
He frowned.
They would do, but only barely. The wind would tear at the cloth, the roar of flight would terrify the little creatures, and the straps… were they tight enough? If he didn’t lash them in properly, the babes could slip. Fall from the sky like feathers turning to stones.
He thought on that for a moment, longer than he ought to have.
Would it be so bad? One less burden. One less link in the chain of Rhaena and Aegon’s cursed legacy. Less to watch, less to guard. Easier.
But then… her voice.
That cold, stern voice that still lived in his skull.
Visenya.
“A dragon does not kill without cause,” it said. “We burn our enemies, not our blood.”
He scowled, jaw tightening.
He didn’t fear being called kinslayer. He was already. But there was a line between killing a rival in war and letting babes fall from the sky like discarded toys. That kind of thing turned fear into revulsion. And revulsion turned lords into rebels.
Besides, the girls weren’t dangerous; not now. Just potential. Potential to be used, shaped, married off. Controlled.
No… he didn’t need to kill them. Not unless they made themselves dangerous. Just like Jaehaerys, and Alysanne, and that soft-eyed boy Viserys. He would keep them all where he could see them. Watched. Studied. Moved when needed. If they made trouble, he would end them… but not before.
His gaze darkened as he thought of Aenys, his brother. His poor, pathetic brother.
Maegor had wanted to love him. Truly. Had hoped, once, that Aenys would rise to the demands of kingship. But instead he had exiled Maegor, his own blood, and let the Faith fester until it tore the realm apart.
It had taken Maegor to fix it. To burn the Sept of Remembrance. To crush the Warrior’s Sons. To make the High Septon kneel or die.
And now, with Aegon and Rhaena dead, broken beneath the God’s Eye, and the Faith Militant crawling back to whatever holes remained, the war was almost over.
His reign could finally begin.
Not just as a tyrant. Not as the dragon in the sky. But as King.
The Seven Kingdoms would know peace at last: not the fragile, crumbling peace of Aenys’s songs and prayers, but order, carved from steel and forged in flame.
He sat straighter, gripping the reins as Balerion stirred beneath him.
Let them call me their names, he thought. Let them call me abomination, tyrant, kinslayer. Let them remember.
But they will kneel, and they will know the King’s Peace, and the realm will obey.
Maegor’s gaze snapped toward the castle gates as movement stirred within the stone archway. A line of guards stood stiff, grim-faced, useless men trying to look braver than they felt, but behind them came Lord Jon Piper, flanked by two women.
Each held a squalling babe in her arms.
Even from the saddle, Maegor could see the truth of it. The infants had the unmistakable stamp of Old Valyria: silver-gold hair, pale skin, and the faintest trace of dragonfire in their wails. They were Rhaella and Aerea, daughters of the traitors. The last embers of that cursed union.
His lips pressed into a thin line.
Balerion lowered himself slowly at Maegor’s command, wings folding inward, nostrils steaming. The king did not wait for a ladder or ceremony: he gripped the leather of the saddle and swung himself down in a single motion, his black armor clanking as his boots struck the scorched earth. He strode forward with purpose, towering over the lord and the two women like judgment incarnate.
The cradles lay behind him, their rough wood and leather waiting, yawning open.
The women flinched as he neared. One was young, barely more than a girl, holding her babe with both arms and weeping openly. Her eyes were red, her lips trembling as she clutched the child tighter against her breast, as though her body could shield the babe from fate.
Maegor looked down at her with complete indifference.
His voice was like stone breaking. “Get her to stop crying,” he said, eyes flicking to Lord Piper. “And wrap the babes. Tightly. If they fall, it will not be my fault.”
Jon Piper swallowed hard and turned quickly to the women, murmuring urgent words to the one who wept. The older woman, the one holding the other babe, nodded briskly, her face tight with fear but dry of tears. She began swaddling the child in silence, fingers trembling slightly as she tucked the furs and tightened the cords.
The weeping girl hesitated, sobs catching in her throat.
Maegor took a step closer. The shadow he cast over her seemed to chill the air.
“If she keeps crying,” he said flatly, “I’ll give her something to cry about.”
The girl choked on a gasp, her eyes going wide. She said nothing more after that, only bent her head and did as she was told, wrapping the babe in the same rough furs as her sister, as if sealing them for a cold and uncertain death.
Maegor watched them both with the same impassive stare he might have given to a smith shoeing a horse.
The children were not his enemies. Not yet.
But now, they belonged to him, and he would see to it they never forgot it.
Maegor stood still, arms crossed over his chest like iron bars, watching with a hard, unblinking gaze as the two women gently placed the squalling babes into the makeshift cradles. The wailing echoed softly in the open field, high and thin and useless. It didn’t bother him. Let them cry.
But it did give him time to think.
He looked past them to Lord Jon Piper, whose face had gone pale, his mouth drawn tight. The man was trying to remain composed, shoulders squared, spine straight, but Maegor had spent a lifetime watching men buckle under the weight of fear. He knew the signs. Piper’s stillness wasn’t strength; it was dread barely contained.
He lied, Maegor thought, cold and certain. He said the babes were gone. Said they had been taken away. Hidden far off. And yet here they were, wrapped and squalling, inside the very walls of the castle. Not an hour’s ride away. They’d been in Pinkmaiden all along.
A direct lie. An insult to his face.
Maegor’s lip curled faintly.
Piper was lucky he hadn’t let Balerion burn him where he stood.
The lord’s eyes darted up to him, as if he could feel the weight of judgment. Maegor stared back, and for a heartbeat, let the silence stretch; let the possibility of fire hang in the air.
Then he turned back to the babes. One was still crying. The other had fallen into a shuddering, frightened silence.
His voice came low, slow, deliberate.
“Lord Piper,” Maegor said, not looking at him. “You lied.”
Jon stiffened but didn’t speak.
“You said the babes were gone. That you did not know where they were. And yet here they are… in your arms. In your walls. Your lie could have cost you your house.”
Maegor finally turned, letting the full weight of his gaze fall upon him.
“But,” he said, voice softening just enough to draw in listeners, “you have given them to me. And for that, despite your falsehoods, I am willing to show mercy.”
He watched Piper closely, saw the man’s shoulders sag just slightly, saw the faint flicker of relief pass over his eyes. It might have even been gratitude.
But inside, Maegor felt nothing.
There was no forgiveness in his heart. Piper had sent men to Aegon’s host, the pretender. He had taken arms against his king. The fact that the lord had kneeled now, after the battle was lost, after Aegon and Rhaena’s corpses were smashed on the ground, meant nothing.
Maegor would never forget.
But he would wait.
Because he understood now what Aenys never had. Fire and Blood could forge the Iron Throne, but it would take that and more to hold together the Seven Kingdoms. Not even dragonfire could hold seven crowns in place without lords to wear them, to carry out your law, to pay your taxes, to kneel before your throne.
Burning Pinkmaiden after reclaiming the babes would send one message: that submission bought nothing. That loyalty, once broken, could never be mended.
That would not help him now.
So he let Piper live.
Let him believe in the fiction of Maegor’s mercy.
Let others see it too. The ones still hiding in their castles, watching with wary eyes, wondering if they too might be spared if they bent the knee.
Let them wonder.
He turned to the cradles.
Time to return to King’s Landing.
Let the realm see what happened to rebels and what happened to their children.
Maegor seized the cribs without ceremony, gripping the wood roughly as the babes within squirmed and whimpered, too small to understand the world had changed forever. They were warm, weak little things: swaddled in furs, red-faced from crying. He didn’t spare them more than a glance.
Turning sharply, he strode back to Balerion, whose yellow eyes followed him lazily, smoke curling from his nostrils. The king scaled the saddle with practiced ease, the cribs clutched under one arm, and once seated, began to lash the makeshift cradles into place, strapping them tightly behind him with coarse leather cords. One of the babes continued to cry as he secured her, but he paid it no mind. Their fear meant nothing.
When the last knot was pulled tight, Maegor turned in the saddle and looked down once more at the figures below.
Lord Jon Piper still stood in the field, hands folded, face pale and drawn, eyes raised to meet Maegor’s gaze. The men and women of Pinkmaiden had gathered behind him, soldiers, servants, smallfolk, all silent now, listening.
Maegor let the silence grow until even the babes’ cries seemed distant.
Then he raised his voice, letting it ring over the courtyard like a verdict.
“The wars are almost at an end.” His voice was iron. “The rebels Aegon and Rhaena are dead. The traitorous Faith Militant is broken. The Seven Kingdoms will know peace again, under the rule of their true king.”
His eyes raked over the assembled crowd, cold and merciless. “Hear this, and remember it well: it is forbidden for any holy man to bear arms in the Seven Kingdoms. Forbidden. My laws are clear. The Warrior’s Sons and the Poor Fellows are outlaws. Thieves in the garb of piety. If any of you, be you lord, knight, or peasant, see them in your lands…”
He paused, letting the weight of the moment settle like a sword over every bowed head.
“You should kill them. On sight. There is a bounty: a gold dragon for the scalp of a Warrior's Son and a silver stag for the scalp of a Poor Fellow.”
There were no cheers. Only silence and the wind.
Maegor’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t need their cheers. He needed their obedience.
He gave Lord Piper one last look, his voice dropping into something almost conversational, but no less dangerous.
“You lied. Remember that.”
Then he turned forward again and gave Balerion the command.
The Black Dread’s wings unfolded with a terrible snap, sending dust and ash spiraling across the field. And with a single powerful beat, they rose into the air, the two babes bound tight behind the king as the shadow of the Black Dread passed over Pinkmaiden Castle.
Victory had been delivered. His enemies were ash.
And the realm would burn no more… unless it had to.
The wind rushed past Maegor’s face as Balerion cut through the sky, beating steadily toward Harrenhal, the first stop on the long flight back to King’s Landing. Below them stretched the green riverlands, peaceful from this height; placid and tame. But behind him, tied into the saddle in their crude cradles, one of the babes continued to cry.
High, shrill, unrelenting.
Maegor turned his head slightly, brow furrowed. Children were not things he understood. Not really. Not in any way that mattered. He had never held one. Never raised one. He had taken wives for duty or pleasure, but never had he produced offspring of his own, never had he felt affection for any child.
Still… he spoke.
Not gently. Not even cruelly. Just plainly.
“Your parents are dead,” he said over the wind. “I killed them.”
The wailing continued, but Maegor wasn’t speaking to quiet the child. He was speaking because he needed to say it.
“You’ll hate me for it one day. Maybe both of you will. Maybe you’ll grow into women and whisper my name like a curse. Or maybe you’ll never know who they were: just that they died, and that I survived.”
He turned forward again, voice low now, carried only to himself and the crying babe behind.
“I don’t care if you love me. But I hope… one day, you’ll understand.”
He thought back, unbidden, to those rare moments in his youth: Aegon the Conqueror sitting with them beneath Dragonstone’s great hall, his sons at his feet. Maegor remembered his father’s voice. Not loud. Not angry. Grave. He repeated it to the babes.
“There is a darkness coming, a cold wind from the North, older than men, older than dragons. It will sweep over the world, and if we are not united, if there is not a Targaryen seated on the Iron Throne, it will consume all of us.”
It had sounded like prophecy. Like madness. But Aegon had believed it. And in those rare moments when he had truly looked at his sons, Maegor had seen it in his eyes: fear.
The Song of Ice and Fire.
Aegon had built a realm for it. United Seven Kingdoms under the dragon’s banner for it. And now, Maegor held it together with fire and blood.
“Aenys was too weak,” he muttered. “And Aegon… he had his father’s softness. It would have broken the realm.”
He clenched his fists around the reins.
“But not me.”
He looked out across the sky, his jaw set.
“I will hold it. I will bind the realm in iron and flame. When the cold winds come, there will be a Targaryen on the Iron Throne. And if the world of men is to survive… it will be because of what I’ve done.”
The one babe kept whimpering, soft and high-pitched behind him; like a wounded animal that didn’t yet know what pain meant. It irritated Maegor, not because it pierced his ears, he had heard the screams of war, the roar of dragons, but because it was pointless. It solved nothing. It changed nothing.
He glanced back, armor creaking slightly with the motion.
The other child, her sister, had drifted off, face turned slightly to the side, swaddled tightly in fur, lips parted in sleep. That surprised him. Pleasantly, even. Quiet was a rare virtue in this world.
His brow furrowed as he looked between them.
It struck him, all at once; he didn’t know which one was which. Rhaella and Aerea. Names given by their mother, Rhaena. Names he had never bothered to ask Lord Piper. He had never needed to.
But now…
Now they were his responsibility.
He studied them again. The loud one, red-faced and stubborn-lunged, reminded him of her mother; that wasn’t a compliment. Rhaena, who had charged him in the skies like a feral she-wolf, who would rather die falling from the heavens than yield.
Rhaella, he decided. She’ll be Rhaella. Loud. Troubled. Like Rhaena. Like Rhaenys. Bad names, all of them. Names of dreamers and dead women.
And the other, the silent one, sleeping peacefully despite everything, there was something of Aegon in her, his father, not her’s. A good name, hopeful. Aerea, then. It sounded better.
He turned back toward the horizon, where Harrenhal’s broken towers would soon come into view, jutting up like black fingers clawing at the sky.
There was still so much to do.
“When I return to King’s Landing,” Maegor said aloud, mostly to himself, mostly to the wind, “everything will change.”
The Red Keep would be finished. The foundation had already been laid. The real work would begin once he was there to command it directly: brick by brick, stone by stone, a fortress fit for a king and a dynasty.
He would return to his wives, and they would bear him a living heir. No more disappointment. No more barren wombs.
He would have a son. A Targaryen who would rule after him, strong and unyielding.
He would crush the last embers of rebellion. The Faith Militant would be hunted to extinction, and the king’s peace, his peace, would spread from King’s Landing to the farthest snows of the North.
And now, with all the remaining Targaryens within his reach, babes and whelps and traitors’ kin, there would be no more challengers.
He had them all. The bloodline, the name, the throne.
Anything was possible.
The wind shifted, and Maegor breathed it in like smoke from a battlefield. Cold. Clean. Final.
Behind him, Rhaella cried softly into the clouds.
Aerea slept, silent and small.
And ahead, the Seven Kingdoms awaited its king.