MAEGOR III
The moon hung low over King’s Landing, casting its silver light across the city’s crooked rooftops, the dark ribbon of the Blackwater, and the glinting spires of septs and manors nestled against the rising hills. From the balcony of the Kitchen Keep, King Maegor Targaryen stood half-dressed in the warm night air, his broad, scar-scored chest bare, a black velvet robe hanging open around his shoulders.
Below him, the city slept… or cowered. Even in slumber, Maegor’s presence was known. The people feared their king. That was good. Better to be feared than loved. Loved kings like his brother were overthrown. Feared kings endured.
Behind him, through the tall arched doorway, his queen, Alys Harroway, lay sprawled naked across their bed. Her skin glistened with sweat, her brown hair splayed across the pillows like tangled silk. She was asleep, still and breathing softly, her body bruised and marked from another night of hard coupling. He had used her well, as a king should, and she had taken it gladly; as all of them had, or should.
Tyanna would have her turn tomorrow night, or perhaps Maegor would return to her bed before dawn. He had to keep trying, trying until one of them swelled with child. The realm needed an heir, and he would give it one, no matter how many nights it took. No matter how many times he coupled with them.
But here, in the silence of his half-built castle, the world felt still. Only the wind, the moon, and the fire in his blood remained.
He gazed back, towards the castle-within-a-castle rising, where his holdfast, his true home, was nearing completion. A massive fortress, square and sheer, like a sword plunged into the earth. Soon, it would be finished. Soon, he would move out of this makeshift apartment in the Kitchen Keep and take his place in the heart of the Red Keep, upon his throne in the completed Maegor’s Holdfast.
It would be a palace of kings. His kings. His blood.
His legacy.
One day, Maegor thought, my son will look out from this balcony. And his son after him. And the world will remember me. Not Aenys. Not Aegon the Pretender. Not the Seven-damned Faith Militant. Me.
He took a long breath and exhaled slowly.
He had broken the Faith’s power, outlawed their swords. He had killed all the enemies who stood in his way to the Iron Throne. He was building a fortress no man could breach. Even dragons would tremble at the strength of the Red Keep.
Yet…
Beneath the pride, a colder thought stirred. The heirs of Aenys still lived; under his roof, no less. Viserys, Jaehaerys, Alysanne… even the babes, Aerea and Rhaella. Their blood ran thick with Old Valyria. If left unchecked, one day the realm might look to them again. As it once had looked to Aegon and Rhaena.
Maegor’s jaw tightened. He knew it would be easier to just kill them, to wipe out any opposition… but Visenya’s voice spoke again: Maegor was a fool if he thought wiping Aenys’s blood would solve all his problems. They would remain under his care and survive… if they behaved.
Still, he would sleep better when Alys or Tyanna gave him a son.
A true heir.
One who would never be questioned.
One who would never need to prove himself with fire.
One born to rule.
Maegor looked out again at the city, imagining the future. A future bathed not in rebellion and betrayal, but in order, iron, and an unquestioned king’s peace.
Movement from the bed drew Maegor’s attention. He turned from the balcony’s edge and watched as Queen Alys Harroway stirred in her sleep. The moonlight poured in through the open shutters, illuminating the tangle of sheets and her naked form shifting against them.
Alys’s brown hair spread over the pillow in thick waves, slightly damp from their exertions. Her body was full, buxom, and solid in a way that Maegor appreciated more than he admitted. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, ample and flushed, and her waist flared out wide before tapering to sturdy, inviting thighs. She had always had the look of a country girl: robust, healthy, fertile.
She was not the most comely of his three wives, not like Ceryse had been in her youth, nor as exotically captivating as Tyanna of the Tower, but Alys had something the others lacked. A vitality. A devotion Maegor could feel in her every motion, every gasp in the night, every time she threw her arms around his shoulders and welcomed him into her welcoming warmth.
She had followed him into exile. Never hesitated. Never balked at the crown or the danger or the scorn of septons. Never once refused him his bed.
That loyalty mattered. Even if Maegor had never said so aloud.
He watched her now, the way her hips shifted in a half-dream, and the way her lips parted softly, whispering nonsense into the dark. Her skin was marked by bruises, his lovely bruises, and she would wear them with pride, he knew. She always did.
But Alys gave him more than pleasure. She brought with her order, the semblance of a proper queen’s household. Ladies-in-waiting and sisters who fawned over her, brothers, uncles, and cousins eager to serve in the king’s court, and a manner that pleased courtiers and old lords alike. She smiled when she should, spoke sweetly, and kept the court running in a way Tyanna disdained and Ceryse had long since lost the will to do.
Maegor didn’t care much for such things. But he understood their use. Appearances mattered to others: to lords and ladies, to the Maesters, even to his mother. And for that, Alys was invaluable.
But her true worth, the reason she had been wed, the reason she remained favored?
That lay in her womb.
Four years, Maegor thought, his eyes lingering on the curve of her hip, and still no child.
She was young though, and there was still time. Time enough for the gods, or whatever ruled fate, to bless him with a true heir.
He stepped back inside, the stones cool beneath his bare feet. He poured himself a goblet of strongwine and took a slow sip, still watching her.
She murmured again in her sleep and rolled to her side, baring more of herself to him.
Maegor watched in silence.
Still hoping.
Still waiting.
Almost without intending it, Maegor’s thoughts wandered; drifting back across years of blood and fire, to a very different time. A time before the crown. Before Balerion’s shadow loomed over every corner of Westeros.
Ceryse.
Queen Ceryse Hightower. His first wife. The golden daughter of Lord Manfred Hightower, niece of a High Septon, kin to Oldtown’s holy blood. The match had been arranged by the Faith, a union meant to bind the dragonlords and the Seven together in peace.
Maegor had been barely more than a boy, thirteen years old, when they wed, broad-shouldered but untested, his strength raw and unshaped. She was ten years older, already a grown woman, with the bearing of a lady twice her years.
And yet, even then, he had desired her.
She was beautiful, he thought, undeniably.
Long honey-blonde hair, soft and thick as silk. A delicate, elegant face. Small of waist, long of neck, her every movement graceful. The men at court had whispered that she was untouchable, a maiden untouched by vice or whim. Maegor had taken it as a challenge.
Their wedding night had been the talk of the realm. The young prince and the radiant Hightower bride: their bedding had been legendary. Laughter, music, flower petals scattered across sheets of red and gold. For one glorious night, she had smiled, and he had believed it would last.
That illusion had faded quickly.
Ceryse was proud. Vain. And worst of all; frigid.
She had been unwilling more often than not, turning away on holy days, or when the moon was high, or whenever the spirit struck her as unfit. Her piety, once a political strength, had become a wall of thorns between them. She lay beside him like stone, lips pursed in silence, eyes closed like a septa at prayer.
He had tried. Gods, he had tried to make her love him.
She was never warm, never yielding. Not like Alys. Not even like Tyanna. She gave him no heirs, no comfort, and no fire.
Maegor had waited. For years, he waited; until he had no patience left. And then he had taken another wife. And then another.
He still saw Ceryse at court, of course. She remained comely, even as the years added fine lines to her face. She moved with grace, spoke with practiced civility. But she was barren. Frigid. And too bound to gods that hated his kind.
If she’d only given me a child… Maegor thought, bitterly, if she’d only been willing.
She hadn’t though.
And now she lingered in his halls like a ghost. Regal. Proper. Useless.
Maegor stared out across the moonlit sprawl of King’s Landing, his mind turning once again; to the third of his wives. The one they whispered about in the corridors. Hands whose touch could heal… or kill.
Tyanna of the Tower.
She had no noble blood worth naming; at least not in Westeros. Born in Pentos, the natural daughter of a magister, raised among tavern-dancers and alchemists, courtesans, and cutthroats, she had been many things before he ever claimed her as queen.
A dancer, a sorceress, a courtesan, a spy.
Maegor had met her during his exile, when he had been cast out for taking a second wife. Those had been cold years: bitter, uncertain. But Tyanna had been warm. Clever. Dangerous. She had become a comfort not just to him, but also to Alys, strangely enough. The three of them had shared meals, beds, even plans. And when he returned to Westeros, when he fought the trial of seven on Visenya’s Hill and fell into that long, terrible sleep, it had been Tyanna who brought him back from death.
She saved my life, Maegor thought, eyes narrowing. I owe her more than I like to admit.
Now, she was his Mistress of Whisperers, and there was no tongue she couldn’t loosen, no secret she didn’t eventually uncover. The Red Keep, the city, the realm, even Dorne; they all had eyes and ears that bent to her command.
He did not ask how. He did not want to know.
She was, as always, useful. Very useful.
But there were… concerns.
Tyanna was comely, no doubt of that. Her raven-black hair, her long pale limbs that could wrap around even his wide frame, her serpentine grace; all of it seductive in the way foreign women often were, mysterious and exotic. In bed, she was eager, uninhibited, and always knew exactly what pleased him.
Too exactly.
That was the problem. It was all too perfect, too performed. Every gasp, every moan, every arch of her back; it was a mirror, not a moment. A show she put on just for him.
She knows what I want, Maegor thought grimly, but she never wants me.
Not like Alys, whose rough passion left bruises.
Not even like Ceryse had, in the earliest days, when there had been something real before the coldness set in.
And then there were the other matters.
Tyanna loved pain.
Not just in the bedroom, though there too, but in her work. She was fond of torturers, of truth-serums, of iron instruments heated red-hot. She claimed it was necessary to get to the truth. And it worked. But there were too many screams, and sometimes Maegor wondered if she liked them more than she should.
And of course, his mother despised her.
Visenya had never spoken openly against Tyanna, but her glances, her silences, the way her lips curled when Tyanna entered a room: it was clear. The old dragoness hated the foreigner. Maegor wasn’t quite sure why.
Maybe it was jealousy, maybe fear, or maybe Visenya knew something Maegor didn’t.
He rolled the stem of his goblet between his fingers, the wine inside forgotten.
They all serve their purpose, he thought, for now.
But when it came time to choose the mother of his heir, he would have to decide: loyalty, usefulness, or blood?
He looked back toward the bed, at Alys’s sleeping form, then out at the city.
One of them would give him a child.
And only one would become the mother of kings.
Maegor leaned against the stone archway, goblet in hand, his mind drifting deeper into the maze of bloodlines and wombs. The line of Targaryen kings, the future of the realm, rested on a single, frustrating truth: he had no heir, not yet.
He thought first of Ceryse.
Her beauty had lingered, yes, and her tongue remained as sharp as ever, but her womb? That was a tomb, sealed tight. Nearly twenty years of marriage and not a single quickening. Whether by the will of the Seven or some twist of fate, it did not matter: she was barren. And old, too old now to hope for miracles. Ceryse was his queen in name only.
Next came Alys.
She was everything Ceryse had failed to be: willing, warm, and young. Her body was made for birthing, her moans loud and eager, her family bountiful and ambitious. She had bled for him, cried out for him, laughed with him. And she looked at him not with fear, not with disdain, but with something like devotion. Alys was his best hope, and he knew it.
Then there was Tyanna.
Her body was young, her mind sharper than any blade in the Seven Kingdoms. And her bed was a theatre of shadows and silk. But Maegor could not shake the unease in his gut when he looked into her eyes: something dead. Like she was always acting, even when her nails raked his back, even when her lips whispered lies of love.
“There’s always something false in her,” Maegor muttered. “Something cold. As if her womb’s like her smile: painted on.”
He hated that thought. Hated doubting her… but it gnawed at him.
Still, Maegor wouldn’t cast her aside. Not yet. Two working wombs were better than one, and Tyanna’s mind, that sharp, sorcerous mind, was a weapon he still needed.
“Two more years,” Maegor said aloud, the wind catching his voice.
He would give his wives two more years. If no child came forth by then, he would take another. A fourth.
Would that be more blasphemous than three?
“What would the High Septon say?” Maegor asked pensively. Then, he remembered.
“Who cares what that fat fool thinks? He serves at my mercy.”
The Seven could rage, the Faith could curse his name, but Maegor was king. And no king of the Iron Throne, not even his brother Aenys, had ever bent knee to what a septon said.
“Four wives,” he muttered. “Five, if I choose. I’ll take a dozen if that’s what it takes to breed a dragon strong enough to rule the realm.”
He set the goblet down, turned back toward the bed, toward Alys still sleeping soundly in the nude, her breath deep and even.
“One of you will give me an heir,” he whispered to himself. “Or I’ll find another who will.”