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Chapter Text

Baelor had been Hand of the King long enough to know that panic was not always loud.

Sometimes it came quietly.

Sometimes it sat across from a man in his own solar, silver-haired and violet-eyed, one hand curved beneath the great swell of her belly, looking as if she had been carved out of grief, rage, and old fire.

Sometimes it came wearing the face of a dead queen.

The room was his.

That was the first thing Baelor had forced himself to understand when he opened his eyes.

Not Ashford.

Not the place of flame and voices where gods older than the Seven had split his soul open and filled it with centuries of blood.

His solar on Dragonstone.

The same black stone walls. The same narrow windows looking out over the sea. The same carved desk with letters stacked at the left, ledgers at the right, and the seal of the Hand resting beside a half-dried pool of red wax. The same chair beneath him. The same ink stains on his fingers.

The same year written plainly on the letter nearest his hand.

Two hundred and two years after Aegon’s Conquest.

Seven years before Ashford.

Seventy-two years after Rhaenyra Targaryen had died screaming before her son.

Baelor looked at her.

She looked back as if she would rather put a knife through him than speak.

In fairness, he could not fault her.

The flames had shown them everything.

Not gently. Gods did not know gentleness, or if they did, they hoarded it.

They had shown Baelor his own death: the trial, the mace, the helm crushed in, Ser Duncan’s horrified face bending over him as the world went strange and distant.

His brother’s mace, most like. He’s strong.

He remembered saying it. Remembered meaning no cruelty by it. Remembered thinking, absurdly, that Maekar would grieve.

Then came the blood. The silence. The fall.

And after that, the fire had opened.

Valarr dead. Matarys dead. His father gone grey with grief. His mother made quiet in that terrible way women became when the world took too much and still expected them to pour wine at dinner. Aerys childless. Rhaegel broken. Maekar crowned. Maekar dead. Maekar’s sons scattering into drink, flame, vows, crowns, and graves.

Summerhall.

Gods, Summerhall.

Then the girl.

Daenerys.

The name had burned itself into him before he understood it.

A girl the blood of Old Valyria had been reaching toward for generations. A girl kings dreamed of and maesters dismissed, a girl born after dragons had become skulls and songs and dust.

The Prince That Was Promised.

And when she came, she came alone.

No father worthy of the name. No mother. No house strong enough to shelter her. No dragon at her cradle. No court to guard her. No one to tell her she was more than a coin to be traded.

The Targaryens had prayed for her for centuries.

Then abandoned her to the world.

Across from him, Rhaenyra shifted.

It was a small movement, but Baelor saw it. He had always watched people closely. A prince who did not learn faces early learned regret later.

Her gown was wrong for this century, black and red and cut in a fashion seen now only in old portraits. It had not been made for the body she wore now. The laces strained at her bodice. The fabric pulled tight over her breasts and belly. Her hair, silver-gold and unbound, fell down her back in waves that made her look younger than the fury in her eyes allowed.

Twenty, the flames had made her.

Twenty, with every memory up to her death.

A girl’s body.

A murdered woman’s mind.

A mother’s grief.

A queen’s pride.

And in her womb, his daughter.

Their daughter.

Daenerys.

Not by desire. Not by bed. Not by any act he could remember or she had consented to in the ordinary way of men and women.

The flames had made the child of them both.

Blood of the queen who had been usurped.

Blood of the prince who had kept peace and then died before he could preserve it.

A child born from correction, not passion.

Though looking at Rhaenyra now, Baelor suspected passion would become the least dangerous thing about her.

“You are thinking very loudly,” she said.

Her voice was low, roughened by what they had seen.

Baelor blinked once.

“I was unaware thoughts made noise.”

“Yours do.”

“Then I apologize.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you do that often?”

“Think?”

“Apologize.”

“When I have given offense.”

“You have been breathing near me for several minutes.”

“Then I am fortunate you are showing restraint.”

Rhaenyra stared at him.

Then, against all reason, against death and gods and the child pressing beneath her ribs, her mouth twitched.

Only once.

Barely.

Then it was gone.

Baelor took that small mercy and set it aside carefully, as he did with all precious things.

“You know the year,” he said.

“I know the year.” Her hand pressed once against her belly. “I heard you read the letter twice before you remembered I was in the room.”

That was true.

Not his finest moment.

“You are in the future,” he said.

“And you are in the past.”

“Seven years.”

“Lucky you.”

“I would not call it that.”

“No.” Her gaze flicked over his face, sharp and assessing. “I suppose not. You saw your sons.”

He went still.

There it was.

Valarr. Thirteen years old in this year, proud already, too determined to grow into his father’s shadow and too young to understand shadows were cold places to live.

Matarys. Nine. Sweet-faced still, cleverer than he let others think, with Jena’s mouth and Baelor’s unfortunate habit of watching too much.

In the flames they had both died.

Spring sickness had taken them as if they were no more than beggars in Flea Bottom.

Baelor folded his hands on the desk.

“I saw them.”

“And your wife?”

“Jena is already dead.”

Rhaenyra’s expression changed.

Not softened. That was too easy a word. Rhaenyra did not soften. She had been chewed by history and spat back through fire. But something in her paused.

“When?”

“When Matarys was still a babe.”

“That is cruel.”

“Yes.”

“Did you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still?”

“Yes.”

Rhaenyra nodded once.

“Good,” she said.

That answer surprised him more than her anger had.

“Good?”

“A man who can put away a dead wife as easily as an old cloak is not a man I would trust near a daughter.”

There was no tenderness in the words.

That made them truer.

Baelor’s gaze fell to her belly.

Rhaenyra’s hand moved at once, protective as a closing gate.

“Do not look at her like she is prophecy,” she said.

Baelor lifted his eyes back to hers. “I was not.”

“You were.”

“I was looking at my child.”

Her face tightened.

For a heartbeat he thought she would strike him.

Instead she said, “She is mine.”

“Yes.”

“I bled for sons. I buried sons. I watched my son watch me die.” Her voice lowered until it was almost a snarl. “I will not have another child taken from me by crown, council, husband, god, or song.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Baelor said. “You will not.”

She studied him as if searching for the lie.

He let her.

There were promises men made because they wished to be admired, and promises men made because they had seen the shape of a future and would tear out his own heart before letting it come to pass.

This was the second kind.

Rhaenyra looked away first.

“The child is large,” she said, with all the bitterness of a queen forced to discuss weather.

Baelor paused.

He should have been wise enough not to answer.

Death, apparently, had not improved him.

“My sons were large babes.”

Rhaenyra turned her head slowly.

Baelor regretted many things.

That now ranked among them.

“How large?”

“Not impossibly.”

“How reassuring.”

“I only meant—”

“You meant to tell a woman six moons gone that your blood produces large infants.”

“Yes,” Baelor admitted. “Poorly.”

“Does wisdom run in your family, or must I expect this from all of you?”

“My father is wise.”

“Good. I will speak with him instead.”

“My brother Aerys is learned.”

“Not the same thing.”

“Rhaegel is gentle.”

“Also not the same thing.”

“Maekar is direct.”

“That sounds like a polite word for stupid.”

“He is not stupid.”

“He kills you.”

“In seven years.”

“If we fail.”

“Yes.”

The humor left them both.

Outside, the sea struck the cliff beneath the window. Dragonstone answered with its old groaning voice, stone and wind and salt.

Rhaenyra leaned back carefully, her face tightening for one brief moment as the child shifted. She looked so young when pain caught her unaware. Then she gathered herself, chin lifting, mouth hardening, and the queen returned.

“Then we do not fail,” she said.

Simple.

As if it were a command already obeyed.

Baelor almost smiled.

“You were made for councils.”

“I was made for a throne.”

“Yes,” he said. “You were.”

The words settled between them.

Rhaenyra did not thank him.

Baelor would have been disappointed if she had.

Her eyes moved around the solar: the ledgers, the seals, the letters, the maps pinned under polished stones, the ribbons marking ports, castles, roads, and houses of uncertain loyalty.

“You are Hand.”

“I am.”

“You were Hand before the flames brought you back?”

“Yes.”

“So you are not merely a prince with pretty manners.”

“No.”

“Good. Pretty manners bore me.”

“I shall endeavor to be ugly, then.”

“You may not need to endeavor.”

He laughed once, quiet and startled.

Rhaenyra looked faintly pleased with herself.

Gods help him.

“My father is in King’s Landing,” Baelor said, because if he did not return them to business quickly, he feared they might begin to enjoy each other, and that seemed dangerous at present. “King Daeron. My mother with him. Aerys as well, most likely buried beneath books. Rhaegel comes and goes. Maekar will be either with the king or drilling men until they hate him.”

“You have sons.”

“Valarr and Matarys.”

“They live here?”

“Often. Sometimes in King’s Landing. Since Jena’s death my mother keeps trying to steal them, and I keep pretending not to notice.”

“Your mother sounds clever.”

“My mother is terrifying.”

“Good.”

“You say that often.”

“I like terrifying women. They are usually the only people in a family telling the truth.”

Baelor thought of Myriah Martell, her black eyes calm over a council table while men twice her size slowly realized they had walked into a trap.

“Yes,” he said. “You may like my mother.”

“I did not say that.”

“No.”

“Do not become optimistic.”

“I shall try to remain miserable.”

“That would be best.”

The child kicked hard enough that Rhaenyra sucked in a breath through her teeth.

Baelor half rose.

She pointed at him.

“Sit.”

He sat.

Slowly.

“I was not going to touch you.”

“You were going to hover.”

“I am told it is a family failing.”

“Your daughter is assaulting my ribs.”

“Our daughter.”

Her eyes flashed.

He held her gaze.

It was not dominance. That was a fool’s game. A man who tried to dominate Rhaenyra Targaryen would deserve the smoke left of him.

This was claim.

Quiet. Equal. Necessary.

The child would be safer if she belonged to both of them in the eyes of the world. Safer if no man could call her only the daughter of a strange dragon-woman Baelor had found and bedded. Safer if she had his name, his protection, his father’s crown, and Rhaenyra’s fire.

At last, Rhaenyra looked down.

“Our daughter,” she said, as if the words offended her tongue.

“Thank you.”

“I did not do it for you.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

Then she looked back up, and the brief almost-softness vanished.

“What is the lie?”

There.

At last.

No fainting. No endless trembling. No useless circling of revelations already burned into them.

Rhaenyra had been heir to the Iron Throne. Queen for half a year. Daughter of Viserys. Wife, mother, dragonrider, victim of usurpation, and survivor of death itself.

Of course she would go straight to the lie.

Baelor reached for the map.

“We need two lies,” he said.

“One for your family. One for the realm.”

“Yes.”

“Your family gets more truth.”

“Enough to obey,” Baelor said. “Not enough to drown in.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes gleamed.

“Good.”

He pulled one map closer. Dragonstone, Driftmark, Sharp Point, the Gullet, the Stepstones beyond. His fingers moved from the island to the narrow sea routes, then eastward.

“If I tell the realm a nameless dragonseed appeared with three dragons, they will suspect Blackfyre within an hour.”

“Obviously.”

“If I say you came from Lys or Tyrosh, the Blackfyres will try to claim connection. If I say Pentos, men will ask why Pentos hid dragons and whether magisters now own part of my marriage bed.”

“I would burn Pentos before sharing a bed with it.”

“I believe you.”

“Continue.”

“If I say you are lowborn, half the court will insult you and the other half will try to use you.”

“Then do not say that.”

“I will not.”

Baelor tapped Dragonstone with two fingers.

“The lie must begin here. In our own stones. Old enough to be hard to disprove. Close enough to the truth to explain the dragons. Strange enough that men expect missing pieces.”

Rhaenyra leaned forward despite the awkwardness of her belly.

For all her fury, she listened beautifully.

That could become dangerous too.

“After the Dance,” Baelor said, “there were dragonkeepers, servants, grooms, wet nurses, guards, bastards, loyalists. Not all names were recorded. Not all bodies were found. Some fled. Some were sent away. Some secrets were sealed because Aegon the Third could not bear dragons and Viserys the Second preferred useful silence.”

Rhaenyra’s mouth tightened at the mention of her sons.

Baelor did not look away from the map.

“We say a remnant of the old Dragonstone households survived,” he continued. “Not noble enough to threaten succession, but noble enough in blood and service to be honored. They knew where Silverwing had gone. They knew the old feeding grounds. They knew the paths of Sheepstealer. They knew better than to approach the Cannibal.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes were fixed on him now.

“You were born among them,” Baelor said. “Raised in secrecy by those who still kept the old rites. Named Rhaenyra because that line remained loyal to the Black Queen.”

Her face changed.

Barely.

But he saw it.

Rhaenyra, who had been made into a curse in histories, hearing that even in a lie some line had loved her enough to name daughters after her.

Baelor kept his voice even.

“They did not command the dragons. You grew up near them. Learned them. Fed them when you could. Sang to them in the old tongue. Silverwing accepted you first. Sheepstealer followed because you understood wild hunger. The Cannibal obeys no one, but he tolerates you.”

“Incorrect,” Rhaenyra said. “He obeys.”

“That claim can wait until after my father is seated.”

She smiled.

It was sharp and lovely and very alarming.

“This lie is better.”

“I am relieved.”

“Do not sound proud. It needs work.”

“I expected nothing less.”

“It explains my manners.”

“Somewhat.”

“My speech.”

“Yes.”

“My clothes.”

“Old rites preserved in isolation.”

“My knowledge of dragons.”

“Your life among them.”

“My name.”

“Loyalty to the dead queen.”

Her mouth moved slightly.

Not quite grief. Not quite victory.

“And you?” she asked.

“I am Hand of the King,” Baelor said. “I have access to sealed records, old accounts, rumors men bring quietly because they fear being laughed at. I followed reports of sheep stolen from coastal villages, great wings seen near Dragonmont, fisherfolk hearing old roars in fog.”

“And found me.”

“Months ago.”

Her brows lifted.

“Months?”

“You are six moons pregnant.”

“I noticed.”

“The realm will count.”

“The realm can choke.”

“It may, but not before counting.”

Rhaenyra sighed with such deep irritation that for a moment she looked less like a resurrected queen and more like an angry cat forced into a bath.

A very pregnant angry cat.

Baelor wisely did not say so.

“We say I found you months ago,” he continued. “Quietly. I came as Hand, not as prince, to determine whether the rumors were Blackfyre bait, Essosi trickery, or truth. I found truth.”

“And then?”

“And then I negotiated.”

“With me?”

“With your guardians, at first.”

“They are dead?”

“Conveniently.”

“Very.”

“Fever. Age. A storm. Choose one.”

“Storm,” Rhaenyra said. “Fever invites maesters.”

“Storm, then.”

“And after negotiating?”

“You agreed to bring the dragons to House Targaryen only by marriage.”

“I like that.”

“I thought you might.”

“Because it makes me ambitious?”

“Because it makes you intelligent.”

She studied him.

“You are careful when you compliment.”

“I am trying not to be slapped again.”

“I have not decided against it.”

“Then I remain motivated.”

The almost-smile came again.

This time it stayed a heartbeat longer.

“The child?” she asked.

“The child is mine.”

“Before marriage.”

“Before the public wedding.”

Rhaenyra’s gaze sharpened.

Baelor nodded. “We say there was an old Valyrian betrothal rite. Binding before fire, witnessed by dragons, not yet recognized by court or Faith.”

“I will not have my daughter called bastard.”

“No.”

“Not once.”

“No,” Baelor said again, colder. “Not once.”

The room seemed to hear him.

Rhaenyra did too.

“And if they do?” she asked.

“Then I remind them I am Hand of the King, Prince of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne, and father to the child.”

“And if that fails?”

“Then you remind them you have dragons.”

She sat back, satisfied.

“Better.”

“The formal wedding will be in King’s Landing,” Baelor said. “With my father’s approval. Valyrian rite first. Public acknowledgment after.”

“No Seven vows.”

“No Seven vows.”

“No septon blessing my womb like he owns it.”

“No septon comes near you unless you ask.”

“I will not ask.”

“I suspected.”

“No one calls me princess.”

Baelor paused.

Rhaenyra lifted a brow. “Not yet.”

“Lady Rhaenyra,” he said.

“For servants. For guards. For court until your father raises me higher.”

“He will.”

“He may not want to.”

“He will understand necessity.”

“And if he does not?”

“He is my father.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No,” Baelor said. “It is a complication.”

That pleased her less, but it was truth, and Rhaenyra seemed to prefer ugly truth over sweet lies.

Good.

Sweet lies had killed her once.

“We go to King’s Landing,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Not your father here.”

“No. If we hide on Dragonstone while ravens fly, rumor will reach the city before we do. Worse, it will make my father look as though he came running to a mystery he did not control.”

“And kings dislike looking summoned.”

“Very much.”

“Even wise kings?”

“Especially wise kings.”

Rhaenyra nodded once. “Then we arrive before the rumor does.”

“As much as possible.”

“With dragons.”

Baelor looked at her.

She looked back.

“No,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You are six moons pregnant.”

“And?”

“And I would prefer you not cross Blackwater Bay on dragonback while carrying our daughter.”

“I did not say I would ride.”

Baelor paused.

Rhaenyra’s mouth twitched.

“You assumed.”

“I did.”

“Poorly.”

“Yes.”

“We go by ship,” she said. “The dragons follow.”

“That will cause panic.”

“Good.”

“Rhaenyra.”

“If dragons return quietly, men will think they may discuss whether to accept them. If dragons return over King’s Landing, men will understand the discussion has ended.”

Baelor hated how much sense that made.

He truly did.

He also hated how quickly his mind began arranging it.

The royal harbor cleared. The Gold Cloaks warned but not told enough. The Red Keep gates sealed. His father informed before the city saw wings overhead. No septons. No court. Family first. Small council after. Public story prepared by dusk. Wedding planned before the Faith could gather outrage into doctrine.

“You are dangerous,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You say that as if it is a virtue.”

“It kept me alive until it did not.”

The words cut.

Baelor let the silence after them stand.

Then he said, “My father, my mother, my sons, and my brothers hear first. In King’s Landing. Privately.”

“All?”

“All.”

“Even the strange one?”

“Rhaegel.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“No.”

“Then why include him?”

“Because exclusion curdles. Rhaegel is gentle, but men around gentle princes are not always gentle themselves. If he learns through whispers, others will speak through him.”

Rhaenyra considered that, then nodded.

“Aerys?”

“He will ask for records.”

“Give him some.”

“Forged?”

“Created,” she corrected. “There is a difference.”

Baelor’s laugh was very soft. “You sound like my uncle Bloodraven.”

“I do not know him.”

“You will.”

“Should I be pleased?”

“No.”

“Useful?”

“Very.”

“Then I shall endure him.”

“Many have tried.”

“Did they live?”

“Not all.”

“Promising.”

He should not enjoy her.

He really should not.

“Maekar,” Rhaenyra said.

“Yes.”

“He will be the loud one.”

“Yes.”

“He will accuse me of being Blackfyre.”

“Likely.”

“He will suspect I trapped you.”

“Almost certainly.”

“He will think the child might be used against your sons.”

Baelor’s hand tightened on the map.

“Yes.”

Rhaenyra saw it at once.

“Your sons matter in this,” she said.

“They matter in all things.”

“Valarr is heir after you.”

“Yes.”

“And Matarys?”

“My second son.”

“How old?”

“Thirteen and nine.”

Her face shifted.

The mother in her, wounded and wary, looked through the queen.

“They are boys still.”

“Yes.”

“They will hate me.”

“Valarr may.”

“Because of his mother?”

“Because of Jena. Because of me. Because he has spent years watching me refuse every marriage put before me, only to discover I have chosen one in secret with a woman no one knows and dragons no one can ignore.”

“Then he is not wrong to be angry.”

“No.”

That answer surprised her.

Again.

Baelor found himself pleased by that too.

“And Matarys?”

“He may be frightened before he is angry.”

“Then I will be kind to him.”

Baelor looked at her.

Rhaenyra’s chin lifted.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, say it.”

“I believe you.”

She seemed offended.

“I am not cruel to children.”

“No.”

“I am not Alicent.”

The name came with such venom that the candle nearest them guttered.

Baelor went still.

Rhaenyra noticed.

So did she, then. The small answer of fire.

Her eyes moved to the candle.

For the first time, she looked afraid.

Not of Baelor.

Of herself.

The flames had returned more than flesh.

Baelor spoke before fear could settle too deeply.

“No,” he said. “You are not.”

Rhaenyra swallowed.

“I will not make your sons feel hunted in their own home,” she said. “I know what that does. I will not be her.”

“I know.”

“You do not know me.”

“I know that.”

“Then do not speak like you do.”

“I know enough to begin.”

“Begin what?”

“Trusting you with them.”

Her mouth parted slightly.

For a moment she looked younger than twenty.

Then the armor returned.

“Foolish,” she said.

“Perhaps.”

“Your sons could become obstacles to my daughter.”

“Our daughter.”

“Our daughter,” she said, impatient now rather than furious, which Baelor chose to count as progress. “Valarr stands before her.”

“Yes.”

“And you still trust me near him?”

“I trust that you understand what happens when a stepmother turns children into enemies.”

Rhaenyra went silent.

The room did too.

Outside, far off, something roared.

The sound struck Dragonstone like the voice of the mountain itself.

It was not like any beast Baelor had ever heard.

Not lion. Not aurochs. Not warhorse screaming beneath a spear. Not even the great horns blown from castle walls in fog. This sound had weight. It seemed to pass through stone, through wood, through blood, through the old Valyrian bones of the castle and into Baelor’s own chest.

For one shameful, honest heartbeat, he forgot how to breathe.

No living dragon had been seen in Westeros in nearly half a century. The last had been a small, twisted, miserable thing, a poor dying remnant of a glory men now pretended they understood because they had read about it in books. Baelor had grown up with dragon skulls beneath the Red Keep, with black teeth longer than swords and empty sockets large enough for boys to climb inside. He had stood before Balerion’s skull as a child and felt wonder, yes, but also safety.

Bones did not breathe.

Skulls did not look back.

Tapestries did not shake the stones beneath a man’s feet.

Another roar came, harsher, uglier, a ragged bellow that made the horses outside scream in answer.

Baelor’s skin prickled from scalp to wrist.

The child inside Rhaenyra kicked hard enough that she hissed.

Then came the third sound.

Lower.

Deeper.

Not truly a roar at first.

A silence made monstrous.

Then Dragonstone trembled.

The Cannibal.

Baelor had faced armed men in tourneys and battle. He had stood before lords who wanted blood and rebels who wanted crowns. He had been called brave so often that the word had begun to mean very little.

But this was older than courage.

This was the thing courage had been invented to answer.

His first thought was not political.

It was not even princely.

It was small and awed and childlike, rising from the part of him that had once stood beneath the Red Keep staring up at dead black bone.

They were real.

Not histories.

Not sigils.

Not skulls.

Real.

Alive.

Outside his window.

Rhaenyra rose so quickly her hand shot to the desk for balance.

Baelor moved before thought.

He caught her elbow.

She looked down at his hand.

He released her.

A beat passed.

She did not rebuke him.

“Silverwing,” she whispered.

There was grief in the name before he understood why.

Then he did.

Syrax had not come.

Syrax would never come.

The old wound opened in her eyes so nakedly that he looked away, granting her the only privacy he could.

She gathered herself with visible effort.

Then she moved for the door.

“My lady—”

“Do not.”

“You are barefoot.”

“The stone will live.”

“You are with child.”

“I had noticed.”

“You nearly fell.”

“You nearly hovered.”

“I did hover.”

“At least you confess.”

“I would prefer you take my arm.”

“I would prefer a crown and a living son.”

That struck him quiet.

Rhaenyra regretted it the instant after saying it.

He could see that she did.

She did not apologize.

He found that he liked her better for not cheapening it.

Instead, after one tense breath, she held out her hand.

Not gently.

Not sweetly.

A command.

Baelor gave her his arm.

They stepped into chaos.

Servants had flooded the corridor and then frozen there like deer before a hunting party. Guards stood with swords drawn as if castle steel could answer dragonfire. A cupbearer dropped a flagon. A maid crossed herself in the sign of the Seven, then seemed to remember Dragonstone was not the place for such comforts.

Every eye went to Rhaenyra.

Her hair. Her belly. Her old-fashioned gown. Her hand on Baelor’s arm.

Baelor felt rumors begin to breed in the air.

He killed the first generation before they could crawl.

“This is Lady Rhaenyra,” he said, voice level, carrying. “My betrothed. You will address her as my lady. You will obey her where she gives instruction. No one is to speak beyond these walls of what is seen tonight. Anyone who forgets that will answer to me as Hand of the King.”

A guard swallowed. “Yes, my prince.”

A servant whispered, “Betrothed?”

Rhaenyra’s eyes slid toward the girl.

The whisper died.

Baelor almost laughed.

Terrifying women, indeed.

They descended to the yard.

Dragonstone had always been a dead dragon’s dream of a castle, all black stone and heat beneath the earth. For all Baelor’s life, that had been poetry. Family vanity. The sad inheritance of a house that kept skulls because it had no living beasts.

Now poetry stood in the yard and steamed in the sea wind.

Silverwing had landed near the inner gate.

Baelor stopped.

He could not help it.

The sight of her emptied his mind.

She was enormous.

Not large as a ship, no easy singer’s exaggeration, but great enough that men looked like toys beside her forelegs. Her hide was pale silver, dulled in places by age and scar, yet still catching the dim light as if moonfire lived beneath the scales. Her wings were folded against her sides, vast membranes veined and ragged at the edges like ancient banners torn by war. Steam curled from her nostrils. Every breath she took seemed deliberate, sovereign, older than any law Baelor had ever enforced in his father’s name.

He had seen Balerion’s skull.

He had seen Vhagar’s in shadow.

He had seen carved dragons on thrones, embroidered dragons on cloaks, dragons stamped into wax, dragons painted on shields, dragons reduced to metaphor by men who had never stood within reach of living flame.

None of it had prepared him.

A skull was a memory.

This was judgment.

His knees did not buckle.

He was grateful for that.

Near the cliffside, Sheepstealer crouched on the rocks, brown and lean and hideous, watching everything with yellow eyes that carried no trace of reverence for princes. He looked not like a mount from old glory, but like hunger given scale and wing. The smell of him reached even where Baelor stood: smoke, wet hide, sheep blood, earth, and something hotter beneath.

Above them, circling Dragonmont, was a shape so black he seemed less a dragon than a hole cut in the sky.

The Cannibal did not land.

He did not need to.

His shadow passed over the yard, and hardened men fell to their knees.

Baelor understood them.

He did not kneel only because he had Rhaenyra on his arm, and some stubborn part of him remembered he was a prince.

But his blood knew.

His blood remembered before his mind did.

This was what House Targaryen had been.

This was what they had lost.

This was what all the songs had been trying and failing to describe.

Rhaenyra took one step forward.

Baelor did not hold her back.

This, at least, he understood.

A dragonrider did not meet her dragon from behind a prince’s caution.

Rhaenyra lifted her chin.

“Lykirī,” she called.

Calm.

The word carried through the yard like a bell.

Silverwing lowered her head.

The castle gasped.

Baelor felt the movement of that great head in the air, felt warmth wash over him from the dragon’s breath. It smelled of smoke, salt, and old meat. The beast’s eye was larger than a serving platter, pale and knowing and horribly alive.

Rhaenyra walked to her and placed one hand against the old dragon’s snout.

For a moment, she simply stood there.

Small beside Silverwing. Young beside that ancient beast. Swollen with child, dressed in black and red, the sea wind tearing silver hair across her face.

She looked impossible.

She looked like a painting no maester would ever believe.

Silverwing rumbled, deep and mournful.

Rhaenyra closed her eyes.

“I know,” she whispered.

Baelor heard the grief in it.

Syrax.

The name was not spoken, but it was there.

Then Silverwing shifted one great claw.

Three eggs lay nestled against the black stone.

The yard went silent.

Even Sheepstealer stopped moving.

The eggs were beautiful in the way dangerous things were beautiful. One red-black, dark as old blood beneath flame. One pale cream and gold, soft as dawn. One green-bronze, flecked with silver.

Rhaenyra stared.

Her hand moved to her belly.

“Pentos,” she said.

Baelor came to stand a few paces behind her, close enough to be useful, far enough not to presume.

His eyes kept dragging back to Silverwing despite himself.

He could not stop looking at her.

At the slow flex of claws against stone.

At the smoke curling from her jaws.

At the scars crossing scales older than his grandsire’s reign.

At the fact that she was real, real, real.

He had spent his life ruling a house that called itself the blood of the dragon while surrounded by bones.

And now one breathed before him.

“Syrax’s eggs?” he asked, voice quieter than he intended.

“Yes.” Rhaenyra’s voice was barely there. “Rhaena hid them.”

Silverwing breathed warm smoke into the yard.

“And stole them back,” Baelor said.

Rhaenyra laughed once.

It broke in the middle.

“Yes,” she said. “Good girl.”

One of the guards looked as though he might faint at hearing a dragon praised like a hound.

Baelor could not blame him.

Rhaenyra bent as if to lift the eggs.

Baelor saw the difficulty before pride let her admit it. The belly was too large, the gown too tight, the ground too uneven.

He stepped forward and picked up the red-black egg.

Rhaenyra’s head snapped toward him.

He held it carefully, palms open, not clutching.

The egg was warm.

Not stone-warm. Not sun-warmed.

Alive-warm.

A pulse seemed to move through it, or perhaps that was only his own heart beating too hard against his ribs. Baelor did not know. For a man who had built much of his life on knowing things, he found himself suddenly ignorant in every direction.

“Only this one,” he said. “Unless you wish to fall in front of my entire household and give them something truly exciting to discuss.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Then she looked at the rows of servants, guards, and stableboys pretending not to stare.

“I hate you,” she said.

“No, my lady.”

“Do not correct me.”

“I would not dare.”

“You just did.”

“I did.”

Silverwing huffed smoke.

Rhaenyra looked at the dragon. “Do not take his side.”

Baelor stared.

“Is she taking my side?”

“No.”

“She sounded as if she was.”

“She has poor judgment today.”

Silverwing’s great eye turned toward Baelor.

He decided silence was the better part of survival.

Rhaenyra, curse her, laughed.

The sound struck him somewhere beneath the ribs.

Not love.

No. Certainly not. He had known her less than an hour in this life, and most of that hour she had spent threatening him, insulting his faith, and implying his family did not deserve dragons.

Still.

It was something.

Something living.

After all that fire, all that death, all those futures filled with ash, Baelor would take any living thing he could hold.

Even if it had claws.

Especially, perhaps, if it did.

Rhaenyra gathered the other two eggs with some difficulty and held them against her belly, as if the daughter inside her and the eggs outside her were all part of the same fragile hoard.

Baelor looked at the sight and understood, with sudden awful clarity, how dangerous this woman would become.

Not because she was cruel.

Because she had already lost too much.

A woman who had lost nothing might hesitate.

Rhaenyra Targaryen would not.

Not for Daenerys.

Not for dragons.

Not for daughters.

Not again.

They returned inside with every eye following them.

This time, when servants bowed, they bowed lower.

Rhaenyra noticed.

She pretended not to.

In the solar, Baelor ordered everyone out except Ser Arryk and old Maester Otherys, who looked as though his chain had become a noose.

“No records,” Baelor said before the maester could open his mouth.

“My prince, three dragons—”

“No records.”

“The king—”

“The king will hear from me.”

“As Hand?”

“As Hand, as son, and as heir. Choose whichever frightens you into obedience.”

Otherys went white. “Yes, my prince.”

Rhaenyra, setting the eggs near the hearth, murmured, “Better.”

Baelor did not look at her.

If he looked, he might smile.

And if he smiled, she might throw an egg at him, which would be both tragic and difficult to explain.

Once the room was sealed again, they returned to the desk.

This time Rhaenyra did not sit across from him like an enemy.

She sat beside him.

Not close.

Not warm.

But beside.

That, too, was a beginning.

Baelor pulled fresh parchment toward them.

“We go to King’s Landing by ship,” he said. “Tonight if the tide allows. At dawn if it does not.”

Rhaenyra looked at the window.

“The dragons follow.”

“Yes.”

“Silverwing will not like the ship.”

“Silverwing is not boarding the ship.”

“She may still dislike it.”

“Then I will endeavor not to offend her.”

“You will fail.”

“Likely.”

Rhaenyra traced one finger along the map, from Dragonstone to Blackwater Bay.

“The city will see them.”

“Yes.”

“The city will panic.”

“Yes.”

“The Faith will shit itself.”

Baelor looked at her.

Rhaenyra looked back.

“What? Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“Then do not make that face.”

“I was considering whether to ask you not to say that before my mother.”

“Does your mother dislike accuracy?”

“My mother dislikes vulgarity before supper.”

“Then I shall say it after supper.”

Baelor closed his eyes for one brief moment.

Rhaenyra smiled to herself.

Terrible woman.

Very terrible.

“We send a raven first,” Baelor said. “Not to summon them here. To warn my father we are coming and to give him just enough time to keep the court from seeing him startled.”

“Kings hate being startled.”

“So do queens.”

“I like startling people.”

“I had guessed.”

He began to write.

Not a long letter.

Long letters invited readers. Copies. Questions. Maesters with memories too sharp for their own good.

This one needed to be a blade.

Father,

I return to King’s Landing at once.

Keep Mother, my sons, Aerys, Rhaegel, and Maekar within the Red Keep. Admit no court to your private chambers until I arrive. Clear the harbor nearest the royal landing and keep the Gold Cloaks quiet.

Three dragons have returned.

I bring the woman to whom they answer.

Her name is Rhaenyra. She is of old Dragonstone blood, raised among the last keepers of our lost dragonlore. She is my betrothed. She carries my child.

Let no septon near this matter.

Let no singer hear of it.

Trust me as your son.

Obey me as your Hand.

Rhaenyra leaned over to read it.

This close, Baelor could smell smoke in her hair.

Not perfume.

Smoke. Salt. Dragon.

“That last line will anger him,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Angry men move faster than confused ones.”

“My father is the king.”

“And you are his Hand.”

“He is still my father.”

“Then he may be angry twice.”

Baelor shook his head, but he did not remove the line.

Rhaenyra reached for the quill.

He let her take it.

Beneath his name, she wrote:

Delay will breed rumor. Rumor will breed claimants. Claimants will breed war.

She pushed the parchment back.

Baelor read it once.

Then again.

“You write like a queen,” he said.

“I am one.”

“Yes.”

That word did not frighten him as much as it should have.

Perhaps the flames had burned fear out of him.

Or perhaps he was simply tired of a realm that survived by making women smaller than their blood.

Baelor sealed the letter.

When Ser Arryk returned, Baelor handed it over.

“To the rookery. The bird flies now. You will watch Maester Otherys tie it. You will watch the raven leave. Then you will return to this door and tell me it is done.”

“Yes, my prince.”

“And Arryk?”

The knight paused.

“Prepare a ship for King’s Landing. Quietly. No more men than necessary. No one boards without my leave. The lady travels with me.”

Arryk’s eyes flicked once to Rhaenyra.

She smiled at him.

Not kindly.

The man’s face drained of color.

“Yes, my prince.”

“If anyone asks what happened tonight,” Baelor continued, “you saw storms over Dragonmont and nothing more.”

“Storms,” Arryk said quickly. “Yes, my prince.”

When the door closed, Rhaenyra exhaled and slumped back in the chair.

Only a little.

Enough that Baelor saw how tired she truly was.

“You need to rest before we sail.”

“I need to plan.”

“You need both.”

“You speak boldly for a man whose daughter is attempting to break my ribs.”

“Our daughter has ambition.”

“Our daughter is a menace.”

“She comes by it honestly.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes narrowed.

Then she realized he meant both of them.

This time, when she smiled, it was real.

Small, exhausted, unwilling.

Real.

It vanished quickly, but Baelor had seen it.

Outside, the dragons roared again.

Silverwing first.

Sheepstealer after.

Then the Cannibal, low and terrible over Dragonstone, as if the mountain itself had remembered how to speak.

Baelor looked toward the window despite himself.

He wondered if he would ever grow used to that sound.

He hoped not.

A king should never grow used to dragons.

A prince should never forget what they were.

A Hand should remember that no law he wrote, no seal he pressed, no army he commanded, could match the simple terror of a living dragon drawing breath outside his walls.

Rhaenyra looked toward the window too.

Her face changed in the firelight.

Grief was still there. Rage too. Fear for the child. Hatred for the men who had ruined her. Suspicion of Baelor, his family, his king, his court, his century.

But beneath all of it, something else had begun.

Purpose.

Baelor knew that look.

He had seen it in mirrors before battles. In his father before councils. In his mother when men mistook peace for weakness.

Rhaenyra Targaryen had been returned to a world that had once killed her.

This time, she had arrived before the knives were drawn.

This time, she had dragons.

This time, she had a daughter.

This time, Baelor thought, she would not be alone unless he was dead twice over.

Rhaenyra’s hand settled over her belly.

“Daenerys,” she whispered.

The name was not soft.

It was a vow.

Baelor bowed his head.

Not to a princess.

Not to a dragonseed.

Not even to the queen she had been.

To the work before them.

To the child the world had prayed for and abandoned.

To the woman who had died once and woken ready to make history answer for it.

“We go to King’s Landing,” he said. “We tell my father. We secure the story. We wed before the Faith can learn how angry it wishes to be. We place you where no one can pretend you are a secret.”

Rhaenyra looked back at him.

“And then?”

“Then we decide what must burn.”

For the first time, her smile showed teeth.

“No,” she said, reaching for the map. “First we decide what must live.”

Outside, the Cannibal roared over Dragonstone.

The sound rolled out across the sea, toward King’s Landing, toward the Iron Throne, toward every old lie waiting to be broken.

Rhaenyra bent over the map beside him, silver hair falling forward, one hand braced beneath the heavy curve of his daughter.

“Our enemies will expect fire,” she said.

Baelor looked at the black water between Dragonstone and the city.

“Yes.”

“Good,” Rhaenyra said. “Then we shall begin with peace.”

Baelor stared at her.

She looked up, eyes bright and dangerous.

“What?” she said. “I am not stupid.”

“No,” Baelor said.

And despite the terror of dragons outside his walls, despite the letter flying toward his father, despite the child of prophecy turning beneath Rhaenyra’s ribs, despite the future waiting like a drawn sword, Baelor smiled.

“No, my lady,” he said. “You are not.”

By moonrise, the ship was ready.

By dawn, King’s Landing would see dragons.

Myriah Martell had learned, long ago, that men shouted when they were frightened and called it judgment.

Kings called it command.

Princes called it honor.

Lords called it counsel.

Her sons, despite the best efforts of their mother and the Seven’s occasional mercy, called it speaking plainly.

Myriah called it noise.

The letter arrived before noon, carried in the claws of a raven so exhausted it nearly dropped dead in the rookery after delivering it. Maester Erreck brought it himself, pale-faced, with the seal of the Hand unbroken and Baelor’s mark pressed clean into red wax.

That alone was enough to make Daeron still.

Her husband sat at his table in the king’s solar, spectacles low upon his nose, a book open before him and three others stacked nearby like faithful hounds. Sunlight spilled across the maps and letters. The room smelled of parchment, lemon oil, and old stone warmed by spring.

A peaceful room.

That peace lasted until Daeron read the letter.

Myriah watched his face change.

Not much. Daeron had always been careful with his face. Too careful, some said, though usually men who had never had to hold a realm together after brothers and bastards tried to tear it from beneath him.

But Myriah knew him.

She saw the blood leave his mouth.

She saw his fingers tighten on the parchment.

She saw the king vanish for one heartbeat and the father appear beneath him.

“Daeron?” she said.

He did not answer.

That frightened her more than an answer would have.

She rose from her chair and crossed the room. “Give it to me.”

His hand closed once around the letter.

Instinctively.

Husband, king, scholar, stubborn fool.

Myriah held out her hand.

He gave it to her.

She read.

Father,

I return to King’s Landing at once.

Keep Mother, my sons, Aerys, Rhaegel, and Maekar within the Red Keep. Admit no court to your private chambers until I arrive. Clear the harbor nearest the royal landing and keep the Gold Cloaks quiet.

Three dragons have returned.

I bring the woman to whom they answer.

Her name is Rhaenyra. She is of old Dragonstone blood, raised among the last keepers of our lost dragonlore. She is my betrothed. She carries my child.

Let no septon near this matter.

Let no singer hear of it.

Trust me as your son.

Obey me as your Hand.

Delay will breed rumor. Rumor will breed claimants. Claimants will breed war.

Myriah read it once.

Then again.

Then a third time, because surely at some point the words would arrange themselves into something less absurd.

They did not.

Three dragons have returned.

The woman to whom they answer.

My betrothed.

She carries my child.

Myriah looked up.

Daeron looked back.

For a long moment they sat in the same appalled silence.

Then Myriah said, “Your son has either gone mad, been bewitched, or found the most politically inconvenient woman in the known world.”

Daeron closed his eyes.

“That is what you choose to say?”

“It is kinder than what I thought.”

He took the letter back, read it yet again, and exhaled through his nose.

Myriah watched the way he looked at Baelor’s signature.

Not as king.

As father.

Baelor had always written clearly. Even as a boy his hand had been neat, deliberate, almost too controlled. There was no wildness here. No ink blots. No shaking lines. No sign that the Hand of the King had been drunk, drugged, terrified, or forced.

That was the problem.

Madness could be dismissed.

This looked like Baelor in command of himself.

Which meant the world had become less merciful.

“We need the boys,” Daeron said.

“Yes.”

“And Aerys. Rhaegel. Maekar.”

“Yes.”

His mouth tightened at the last name.

Myriah saw it.

Maekar had been made raw by grief. Dyanna’s death had taken something from him that he had not known how to surrender gently. He had loved her as he loved all things: badly, fiercely, with more force than tenderness, and no skill at surviving the loss afterward. For a year he had moved through the Red Keep like a sword no one had sheathed, sharp at every edge, striking sparks when spoken to.

And now Baelor was coming with dragons, a secret betrothed, and a child.

Gods spare them.

Maekar would take one look at the letter and decide treason had learned to write in his brother’s hand.

“Send for them quietly,” Myriah said.

Daeron gave her a tired look. “I am still the king.”

“And I am still the woman who keeps this family from setting itself on fire before supper.”

“That is not entirely fair.”

“It is not entirely false.”

He said nothing, which was wise.

Within the hour, the private solar had filled with Targaryens.

Aerys came first, thin and distracted, one finger marking his place in a book he had evidently brought with him despite being summoned by the king. Aelinor followed behind him, quiet as a shadow and twice as observant.

Rhaegel arrived with Alys, smiling uncertainly as though he expected either a birthday feast or an execution. His children were not brought. Wise. Very wise.

Valarr came in with his chin high and his face already guarded. At thirteen he was too beautiful in that polished Targaryen way, silver-gold hair, proud eyes, the beginnings of command sitting awkwardly on shoulders still too young for it. Matarys stood beside him, smaller, pale, and trying desperately to look as if he were not frightened.

Myriah wanted to pull them both into her arms.

She did not.

Princes did not forgive grandmothers for comfort offered in front of kings.

Then Maekar arrived.

He did not so much enter as invade.

Broad-shouldered, hard-eyed, still wearing riding leathers as if he had come directly from the yard. His jaw was set before he even spoke. A year of mourning Dyanna had not made him softer. It had made him worse at hiding pain.

“What has Baelor done?” Maekar asked.

Aerys looked up from the letter Daeron had handed him. “That is a remarkably efficient question.”

Maekar turned on him. “Do not start.”

“I had not begun.”

“You are breathing in that tone.”

Aerys blinked. “I have a tone of breathing?”

“Yes.”

Rhaegel leaned toward Alys and whispered, “I think I do as well.”

Alys patted his arm. “Yours is charming.”

Maekar looked ready to kill them all.

Myriah clapped once.

Not loudly.

Enough.

“Children,” she said.

All three of her sons looked at her.

Aerys was thirty.

Rhaegel twenty-nine.

Maekar twenty-seven.

They still looked at her when she used that voice.

Good.

Daeron passed the letter around.

The room changed as each of them read it.

Aerys went still first, his brows drawing together with scholarly offense, as though the parchment had personally violated chronology.

“Three dragons,” he said. “There have been no living dragons of that size for generations.”

“Of any size,” Maekar snapped.

“The last was stunted,” Aerys corrected absently. “This implies not only survival but concealment, which raises an extraordinary number of questions.”

“It raises one,” Maekar said. “Who is lying?”

Valarr reached for the letter.

Daeron hesitated only a heartbeat before giving it to him.

Myriah watched her grandson read the words.

Her heart hurt.

Valarr’s face did not crumple. No. He was Baelor’s son. He had inherited that dreadful discipline. But his mouth tightened. His eyes caught on one line and did not move for too long.

My betrothed.

She carries my child.

Matarys leaned close enough to read with him.

His face went white.

“Father is marrying?” Matarys asked.

No one answered quickly enough.

Maekar made a harsh sound. “Apparently he has done more than plan a wedding.”

Myriah turned her head very slowly.

“Maekar.”

His eyes flashed.

“She carries his child, Mother. Shall we pretend not to read?”

“Shall we remember there are children in the room?”

Valarr stiffened. “I am not a child.”

“You are thirteen,” Myriah said.

“I understand what it means.”

“That does not make you grown.”

Valarr’s cheeks colored with anger, but beneath it was hurt.

Deep hurt.

Myriah looked at him and thought, cruelly, of Jena.

Poor Jena, dead too young. Jena, who had left Baelor with two sons and a hollow place no court lady had managed to fill. Jena, whom Valarr had made holy because children did that to dead mothers. They had to. The alternative was admitting the dead had once been ordinary enough to leave.

Baelor had refused every match since her death.

Politely.

Patiently.

Absolutely.

And now this.

A secret betrothed.

A pregnant stranger.

Dragons.

Valarr’s whole world had shifted before his father had even arrived.

Myriah wanted very much to be furious with Baelor.

She was.

She was also afraid for him.

Because the letter sounded like Baelor.

But something in it did not.

Not madness.

Not exactly.

Urgency, yes. Danger, yes. Command, certainly.

But also something beneath the ink.

A man writing as if one misplaced hour would ruin the realm.

“Could it be a trap?” Rhaegel asked softly.

Everyone looked at him.

He smiled faintly, wounded by the attention. “I only mean… if someone wished to draw the king’s household into confusion, they might use Baelor’s seal.”

“Baelor’s hand,” Aerys said.

“Hands can be copied.”

“Not easily.”

“Dragons can also not easily return, yet here we are discussing it.”

Aerys closed his mouth.

Myriah gave Rhaegel an approving look.

He ducked his head.

Maekar began pacing.

“Blackfyre,” he said.

Daeron sighed.

“There it is,” Aerys murmured.

Maekar pointed at him. “Laugh if you like. Daemon’s get would sell their own mothers to put a dragon beneath them.”

“Daemon’s get do not have three dragons,” Aerys said.

“That we know of.”

“If they had dragons, brother, I suspect they would not trouble themselves with subtle letters about betrothals.”

Maekar ignored him. “A woman appears from nowhere, has dragons, takes Baelor’s bed, carries his child, and now he brings her to the heart of the realm? You call that coincidence?”

“Baelor does not get taken by the nose easily,” Daeron said.

“No,” Maekar said. “Which makes this worse.”

Silence.

That was the thing none of them wanted to say.

Baelor was not foolish.

If Baelor had done this, there was a reason.

And if Baelor had done this without telling them, the reason was either dangerous enough to demand secrecy or personal enough to demand anger.

Likely both.

Myriah reached for the letter again.

Trust me as your son.

Obey me as your Hand.

Arrogant boy.

Beloved boy.

Something moved outside the window.

A shadow passed over the sun.

For one absurd moment, Myriah thought of stormclouds.

Then the first scream rose from the city.

Not one voice.

Many.

The sound came up from King’s Landing like a pot boiling over.

Aerys went to the window first, all his bookish disinterest stripped away. Rhaegel followed, then Valarr, then Matarys. Daeron rose more slowly. Maekar was already at the door, hand on his sword.

Myriah did not move until the second shadow crossed the room.

Larger.

Slower.

Alive.

She went to the window.

Below, the city had broken into motion. People ran through the streets near the harbor, some toward the water, more away from it. Bells began ringing, sharp and uneven at first, then spreading from tower to tower. Gold Cloaks shouted. Horses reared. A cart overturned near the lower square, spilling apples across the road like scattered blood drops.

And above Blackwater Bay flew a dragon.

Silver.

Vast.

Impossible.

Myriah forgot how to breathe.

She had seen dragon skulls beneath the Red Keep. Every Targaryen child had. Her own children had stood beneath those blackened bones with wide eyes while Daeron explained which skull had belonged to which beast. Balerion. Meraxes. Vhagar. Vermithor. Caraxes. Syrax.

Names like dead kings.

Names like prayers no one expected answered.

But bones were courteous things. They stayed where they were put. They let men build stories around them.

The creature over the bay was no story.

Its wings flashed pale in the sun, each beat slow and strong enough to send ripples across the water below. Ships veered wildly from its shadow. Men leapt from docks. The dragon’s long neck curved, and even from the Red Keep Myriah could see the gleam of its head turning toward the city as if measuring what remained of a house that had forgotten it.

Behind it flew another.

Brown. Lean. Ill-favored. Ugly as hunger.

“Sheepstealer,” Aerys whispered.

No one corrected him.

Then the sky darkened.

The third dragon was black.

Not dark green. Not brown.

Black.

It came higher than the others, great wings cutting across the sun, and a sound rolled from it that made the glass in the window hum.

Matarys made a small sound.

Valarr grabbed his brother’s sleeve.

Maekar swore.

Aerys whispered, “Gods.”

Daeron said nothing.

Myriah reached for the windowsill.

Three dragons.

Baelor had not gone mad.

Or if he had, madness had brought friends.

The door opened behind them, and a guard stumbled in, white-faced.

“Your Grace,” he gasped. “The prince’s ship has entered the harbor.”

Daeron turned.

All king now.

“Seal the gates of the Red Keep. Double the guard at the royal landing. No one enters the private holdfast without my order. No septons. No singers. No courtiers.”

The guard bowed so fast he nearly cracked his head. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“And tell the Gold Cloaks,” Myriah said.

The guard froze.

Daeron glanced at her.

Myriah did not look away from the window.

“Tell them if one fool looses an arrow at those dragons, I will feed him to the black one myself.”

The guard swallowed. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Maekar stared at her.

“What?” Myriah said. “You were all thinking it poorly.”

No one laughed.

Fair enough.

By the time Baelor’s ship reached the royal landing, the Red Keep had remembered how to pretend.

That was the first rule of power: never panic where the city could see.

Daeron descended to receive his son with only the chosen family, a tight line of guards, and no more ceremony than could be managed without looking frightened. Myriah walked at his side, spine straight, face composed, every heartbeat loud in her ears.

Aerys looked like a man trying to memorize history before it fled.

Rhaegel looked pale but oddly calm.

Maekar looked murderous.

Valarr looked wounded.

Matarys looked terrified.

Aelinor and Alys had come too, because women in this family had never been ornamental no matter how often men forgot it. Aelinor watched everything with quiet, sharp eyes. Alys had one hand on Rhaegel’s arm and the other resting against her own skirts as if reminding herself she was real.

Above them, dragons circled the city.

The silver one came lowest.

The crowd beyond the line of guards shouted, prayed, sobbed, cheered, and screamed in unequal measure. Myriah heard fragments.

“Dragons!”

“The prince!”

“Is it war?”

“Seven save us!”

“Dragon! Dragon!”

“Where is the king?”

“Look, look!”

The ship’s gangplank lowered.

Baelor appeared first.

Myriah’s breath caught.

It was him.

Of course it was him.

Her son. Her firstborn. Tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, composed even as the city lost its mind around him. The same proud carriage. The same calm face. The same eyes that had always watched too carefully and gave away too little.

And yet—

Something was wrong.

No.

Not wrong.

Changed.

Baelor stepped onto the landing and looked up.

Not at the dragons.

At them.

At Daeron first.

Then Myriah.

Then his brothers.

Then his sons.

His face held.

Barely.

Myriah saw it.

No one else might have. Perhaps Daeron. Perhaps Valarr, who knew his father in the hungry, resentful way sons studied men they loved too much.

But Myriah saw.

For one heartbeat, Baelor looked like a man who had been holding himself together by law, duty, and pride alone, only to have all three fail at once.

His eyes went bright.

His mouth tightened.

His hand closed once at his side.

He looked at Valarr and Matarys as if the sight of them hurt him.

Then he bowed.

Perfectly.

Publicly.

As if the world had not cracked under his feet.

“Your Grace,” Baelor said.

Daeron stared at him.

“My prince,” the king answered.

Formal.

Good.

Necessary.

Painful.

Then Baelor turned.

The woman came down after him.

Myriah had expected many things.

A witch, perhaps.

A schemer.

A frightened girl.

A Blackfyre plant dressed in borrowed dragon colors.

She had not expected this.

Lady Rhaenyra was young. Younger than Myriah had imagined from Baelor’s letter and far younger than the power gathered around her should have allowed. Twenty, perhaps. Her hair was silver-gold, unbound beneath a dark cloak, and the wind lifted strands of it around her face like pale flame. Her gown was old-fashioned black and red, strained around a body heavy with pregnancy.

Very heavy.

Six moons, perhaps more, unless the child was large.

Gods, she was lovely.

Not in the polished, court-trained way of girls sent to sit beside princes and smile with measured teeth.

There was nothing measured about her.

She looked tired, furious, seasick, too hot despite the wind, and very likely to bite the next person who spoke foolishly.

Myriah liked her at once.

Then reminded herself not to be an idiot.

The silver dragon cried overhead.

Rhaenyra’s eyes lifted.

The whole harbor seemed to hold its breath.

“Lykirī,” she murmured.

Calm.

The dragon quieted.

That, more than anything, frightened Myriah.

Not the wings. Not the teeth. Not the black monster circling high above them like death with a tail.

That.

The casual command.

The living proof that the woman beside Baelor had not merely arrived with dragons.

They listened to her.

Baelor offered his arm.

Rhaenyra looked annoyed by needing it.

She took it anyway.

Interesting, Myriah thought.

Very interesting.

Daeron stepped forward.

“Lady Rhaenyra,” he said.

Rhaenyra inclined her head.

Not low.

Not insolent.

Exactly enough.

“Your Grace.”

Her voice carried clearly enough for those nearest to hear. No tremble. No simper. No apology for arriving pregnant, armed with dragons, and inconvenient.

Myriah watched Valarr’s face.

Hurt sharpened into anger.

Matarys clutched his brother’s sleeve harder.

Maekar’s stare moved from Rhaenyra’s belly to Baelor and back again, and Myriah could almost hear the accusation forming.

Not here, she prayed.

Not in front of the harbor.

For once, Maekar’s pride served them. He said nothing.

Daeron turned with kingly calm.

“We will speak inside.”

“Yes,” Baelor said.

His voice was steady.

His eyes were not.

As they began the climb toward the Red Keep, the silver dragon descended to the outer yard with terrifying grace. Men scattered. Horses screamed. Rhaenyra looked over her shoulder and said, calmly, “Lykirī.”

The dragon settled.

Myriah heard Aerys inhale sharply beside her.

Rhaenyra looked back ahead, one hand braced beneath the curve of her belly.

The child inside her moved.

Hard, from the look of it.

Rhaenyra’s face tightened.

Baelor noticed instantly.

Of course he did.

He leaned toward her, said something too low to hear.

She gave him a look sharp enough to skin fruit.

He almost smiled.

Myriah saw that too.

Oh, Baelor, she thought.

What have you done?

They kept their faces until the doors closed.

The royal family entered Daeron’s private council chamber with the guards outside, the curtains drawn, and every servant dismissed. Only then did the room remember it had lungs.

Maekar struck first.

“What in seven hells is this?”

“Maekar,” Daeron said.

“No.” Maekar rounded on Baelor. “No, Father. I will not stand here and pretend this is some minor surprise. You vanish to Dragonstone, write that dragons have returned, bring back a pregnant woman none of us have ever heard of, and expect what? Congratulations?”

Baelor stood beside Rhaenyra near the long table.

Too near, Myriah noticed.

Protectively near.

Rhaenyra did not hide behind him. In truth, she looked irritated that anyone might think she needed to. But Baelor had placed himself at her side in a way that blocked the easiest line between her and Maekar.

That would make Maekar worse.

It did.

“Say something,” Maekar snapped.

“I will,” Baelor said, “when you learn to be quiet for more than a few seconds.”

“I am not the problem here.” Maekar pointed at Rhaenyra’s belly. “That is.”

Baelor’s face went cold.

Not angry.

Cold.

Myriah had seen Baelor angry. Anger in Baelor was a bright thing, brief and controlled, like a torch held behind glass.

This was not that.

This was ice over deep water.

“Point at my child like that again,” Baelor said softly, “and I will cut your fucking finger off.”

Matarys made a small, frightened sound.

Valarr went rigid.

Daeron’s head snapped toward Baelor.

Maekar’s face twisted.

“And I will beat you bloody for shaming your sons like this,” he said. “You stupid bastard.”

“Enough,” Daeron said.

But enough had already gone past them.

Baelor took one step forward.

Rhaenyra’s hand moved.

Not to stop him.

To hold the edge of the table.

Myriah saw it.

So did Alys.

So did Aelinor.

The men did not.

The men were too busy making war of their mouths.

“Shaming my sons?” Baelor repeated.

Valarr flinched.

That, finally, broke through Baelor’s fury.

He looked at his son.

Myriah watched him try to hold his face and fail.

Just for a heartbeat.

Just enough.

The sight of Valarr standing before him undid something. Baelor’s eyes shone again. His mouth trembled once before he forced it still. He looked from Valarr to Matarys, and there was such naked relief in him that Myriah’s own anger faltered.

It was not the look of a man enjoying his surprise.

It was not even the look of a man expecting forgiveness.

It was rawer than either.

“Father?” Matarys whispered.

Baelor’s face broke.

Not fully.

Baelor would have died before breaking fully in front of them all.

But the crack was there.

“My boy,” he said, so softly it nearly vanished.

Matarys took half a step forward before remembering he was angry.

Valarr did not move at all.

That hurt more.

Baelor saw it.

Of course he did.

“Valarr,” he said.

Valarr’s jaw tightened. “Your Grace.”

Oh.

Myriah closed her eyes for one breath.

Baelor looked as if his son had driven a knife into his ribs and then asked him to admire the craftsmanship.

“Valarr,” Daeron said, warning.

“No,” Baelor said.

His voice had gone rough.

He swallowed.

“No. He has cause.”

Maekar made an ugly sound. “How generous of you to notice.”

Rhaenyra turned her head slowly toward him.

For the first time since entering the room, she spoke.

“You make a great deal of noise for a man who has asked no useful question.”

Maekar stared at her.

The room went silent.

Aerys blinked, abruptly fascinated.

Rhaegel made a small choking sound and disguised it badly as a cough.

Maekar looked at Rhaenyra as though she had slapped him.

Myriah, who had seen many women try to survive Targaryen tempers by shrinking, felt her interest sharpen.

This one did not shrink.

This one did not even appear to know how.

“You arrive in my father’s keep with dragons and a belly full of my brother’s child,” Maekar said. “You will forgive me if I do not ask politely after your health.”

“No,” Rhaenyra said. “I do not think I will.”

Alys’s brows rose.

Aelinor looked down at her hands, but Myriah saw the corner of her mouth move.

Baelor said, “Rhaenyra.”

“Do not Rhaenyra me.”

Maekar’s eyes flashed. “So she speaks to you like that?”

“Yes,” Baelor said.

“And you permit it?”

“I survive it.”

Rhaegel looked delighted and then immediately tried not to.

Daeron pinched the bridge of his nose.

Myriah began, very reluctantly, to understand why Baelor had not put all of this in a longer letter.

No parchment in the world could have prepared them.

Valarr, pale and furious, stepped forward.

“Is it true?”

The room stilled again.

Baelor turned to him.

Valarr held the letter in one hand, crushed now at the edges from how tightly he had gripped it.

“Is she your betrothed?” he asked. His voice did not break. That made it worse. “Is the child yours?”

Baelor looked at him.

Then at Matarys.

Then back to Valarr.

“Yes.”

Matarys looked down.

Valarr’s mouth twisted.

“Since when?”

“Valarr,” Baelor said.

“No.” Valarr’s cheeks had gone red. “You do not get to use that voice. You do not get to look at me as if I am the one being unreasonable. You refused everyone. For years. Grandmother said you were grieving. Grandfather said you needed time. Uncle Aerys said something about dynastic restraint and then walked into a chair.”

“I did,” Aerys murmured.

Aelinor patted his sleeve.

Valarr did not even hear. “And now you bring her here? Pregnant? With dragons? Were we not owed the truth before the whole bloody city?”

“Valarr,” Myriah said softly.

“No.” Valarr’s eyes shone. “Was Mother so easily replaced?”

Baelor went white.

Myriah could have crossed the room and slapped her grandson.

She could also have gathered him into her arms.

Both would have been useless.

Baelor took the blow.

He stood still and took it like a man taking sentence.

“No,” he said.

The word came rough.

“Your mother was not replaced. She cannot be.”

Valarr looked away.

Matarys had begun to cry silently, his face turned toward the floor, humiliated by his own tears.

Baelor saw that too.

For a moment, Myriah thought he might go to them.

He did not.

Because if he did, Valarr might step back.

Because Matarys might cling to him and make it worse.

Because Rhaenyra stood beside him, swaying very slightly, and the room had not yet finished trying to devour her.

Gods, Myriah thought, suddenly exhausted. Gods save us from men who try to hold too many breaking things at once.

Maekar was not done.

Of course he was not done.

“And what is she?” he demanded. “Some Dragonstone bastard? A Blackfyre plant? A Lyseni trick? Did she crawl out from beneath Silverwing’s wing and you decided to bed her for the realm?”

The air changed.

Baelor moved first.

Rhaenyra moved faster.

Not toward Maekar.

One hand went flat against her belly. The other gripped the table so hard her knuckles blanched.

Her face drained of color.

For one heartbeat, Myriah thought it was rage.

Then Rhaenyra gagged.

A sharp, violent sound.

Every woman in the room moved before any man understood what had happened.

Alys seized the nearest basin from the sideboard. Aelinor caught Rhaenyra by the elbow. Myriah crossed the room as Baelor turned fully toward his betrothed, all anger gone from him as if cut by a knife.

Rhaenyra doubled over as much as her belly allowed and retched into the basin.

Once.

Twice.

Hard enough that the sound made Matarys cry out.

Baelor’s hand hovered uselessly over her back.

“Do not hover,” Rhaenyra rasped between heaves.

“I am not hovering.”

“You are.”

“She is correct,” Aelinor said calmly.

Baelor looked betrayed.

Myriah took Rhaenyra’s wrist.

The girl’s skin was hot.

Too hot.

Not fever-hot exactly. Stranger. As if heat lived beneath her skin and had risen all at once, flooding her face, her throat, her palms. Sweat had broken along her hairline. Her breathing came too fast.

“The child?” Myriah asked.

Rhaenyra spat into the basin with no dignity whatsoever and less concern for it.

“Angry,” she said.

Baelor’s mouth tightened. “Pain?”

“No.”

“Bleeding?”

“No.”

“Cramping?”

“No.”

Maekar stared. “Are we meant to continue an interrogation while she vomits?”

Rhaenyra lifted her head enough to glare at him.

“You may continue if you wish to lose teeth.”

Myriah laughed.

She did not mean to.

It escaped her before she could stop it.

Every eye in the room turned to her.

Rhaenyra looked offended.

Baelor looked as if laughter was a language he had briefly forgotten and only now remembered existed.

Myriah patted Rhaenyra’s wrist. “Forgive me. You reminded me of my sister.”

“Was she ill-tempered?”

“Constantly.”

“Good.”

Then Rhaenyra retched again.

Alys winced in sympathy. “Poor thing.”

“I am not poor,” Rhaenyra said into the basin.

“No,” Alys said. “Of course not.”

“She is sweating through her gown,” Aelinor said quietly.

Baelor’s gaze snapped down.

Rhaenyra’s bodice, already strained from pregnancy and travel, clung damply at the collar. The skin of her throat flushed red, then pale, then red again. Her pupils had gone wide.

Myriah laid a hand against her cheek.

The heat pulsed.

For a moment, just a moment, the air around them smelled faintly of smoke.

Myriah looked at Baelor.

Baelor looked back.

There was fear in him.

Not surprise.

Fear.

He knew something.

Not enough.

Too much.

“Has this happened before?” Myriah asked.

“On the ship,” Baelor said carefully.

Rhaenyra’s eyes flicked to him.

Warning.

Baelor corrected himself without pause.

“The voyage unsettled her. The babe was restless. The maester said strain, salt air, and pregnancy.”

“That maester is an idiot,” Rhaenyra muttered.

“Likely,” Baelor said.

“He told me to eat less salted fish.”

Daeron, who had been standing frozen in the wreckage of his sons’ tempers and this woman’s sudden illness, blinked. “Salted fish?”

Rhaenyra closed her eyes. “Do not sound like that.”

“Like what?” Daeron asked.

“Like a man preparing to have an opinion.”

Myriah looked at Daeron.

Daeron looked at Myriah.

The king wisely closed his mouth.

The room had changed.

Not healed.

No.

There was too much blood under the words for that.

But the yelling had stopped.

Rhaenyra’s body had done what Daeron’s command had not.

It had forced them to see her as flesh.

Young flesh.

Pregnant flesh.

Sweating, nauseous, exhausted flesh that had just crossed Blackwater Bay beneath three dragons and walked into a room full of hostile Targaryens without flinching until the child inside her decided enough was enough.

Myriah guided her into a chair.

Rhaenyra resisted for half a breath, then sat with a resentment so clear it was nearly impressive.

Baelor knelt before her.

Myriah watched that too.

He did not seem to realize he had done it.

Princes did not kneel easily. Not even to women they loved. Especially not in front of fathers, brothers, sons.

Baelor knelt and took a cup from Alys, offering it up without touching Rhaenyra.

“Small sip,” he said.

“I know how to drink water.”

“Humor me.”

“I dislike doing that.”

“You do it beautifully.”

She stared at him.

Myriah’s brows rose.

Baelor did not flush.

Rhaenyra did, though perhaps that was only the heat.

She took the cup and drank.

The child moved.

They all saw it.

The entire curve of Rhaenyra’s belly shifted beneath the old black-and-red gown.

Matarys’s eyes went wide.

Aerys whispered, “That is… vigorous.”

Rhaenyra looked at him over the rim of the cup. “Do not make me dislike you. You seem the least troublesome.”

Aerys straightened slightly. “I have never been accused of that before.”

“I said seem.”

“Ah.”

Maekar dragged a hand over his face.

For the first time since entering the room, he looked less angry than pained.

Myriah saw it and understood.

Dyanna.

Of course.

Dyanna had carried six children. Dyanna had borne Maekar’s sharpness with more grace than he deserved. Dyanna had died, and Maekar had not been there to command death away from her. Now he stood before a pregnant young woman tied to his brother’s future, and all he knew how to do was sharpen fear into accusation before fear could eat him alive.

Men shouted when they were frightened.

Myriah was so tired of being right.

Baelor rose slowly.

Not far.

He stayed beside Rhaenyra’s chair, one hand resting on the back of it.

She looked too exhausted to object.

That frightened Myriah more than if she had snapped.

Daeron noticed too.

His expression shifted.

King again.

“Enough,” he said, and this time the word held. “Baelor. Explain. From the beginning. And if this is some madness, make it a tidy madness. I have had enough untidy things today.”

Baelor drew a breath.

Myriah watched him gather himself.

The Hand returned first. Then the prince. The son lagged behind, wounded and bright-eyed and trying not to look at his living boys too long.

He placed both hands on the table.

“I went to Dragonstone because of reports,” he said. “Quiet reports. Shepherds losing animals near the old volcanic passes. Fishermen seeing great shapes at dawn. Smoke from slopes where no fires had been set. Men have brought me such tales before. Most are nonsense. Some are smugglers. Some are drunkards. These were different.”

Aerys leaned forward.

Of course he did.

“I found old accounts in the Dragonstone ledgers,” Baelor continued. “Not proof. Fragments. Names of households tied to dragonkeepers after the Dance. Servants dismissed without destination. Wet nurses paid in secret. Guards reassigned and never recorded again. I thought, at first, it might be Blackfyre bait.”

Maekar’s jaw flexed.

“But I went,” Baelor said. “Quietly. As Hand.”

“And found her?” Daeron asked.

Baelor looked at Rhaenyra.

She had recovered enough to sit upright again, though sweat still clung at her temples. Her hand rested beneath her belly, thumb moving in slow circles that looked almost unconscious.

“Yes,” Baelor said. “I found Lady Rhaenyra.”

Myriah watched the girl’s face at the lie.

Lady Rhaenyra’s face did not change.

Good.

“She was raised among the remnants of the old Dragonstone households,” Baelor said. “Families who fled after the Dance and kept to the island’s hidden places, caves, old storehouses, abandoned keeper dwellings, fishing coves no lord has bothered to count in generations. They preserved more of the old ways than we knew survived.”

“Convenient,” Maekar said.

“Yes,” Rhaenyra replied.

Everyone looked at her.

She leaned back, pale and sweating and still somehow the most dangerous person in the room.

“Lies are more useful when inconvenient things are made convenient by truth,” she said.

Maekar’s eyes narrowed. “Is that meant to reassure me?”

“No.”

Baelor continued before Maekar could answer. “They knew the dragons had not all died. Silverwing survived in hiding, old and wary. Sheepstealer was wild. The Cannibal…”

He paused.

Above the Red Keep, as if summoned by name, the black dragon roared.

The chamber windows trembled.

No one spoke until the sound faded.

“The Cannibal remained the Cannibal,” Baelor finished.

Rhaegel swallowed. “And she commands them?”

Rhaenyra’s mouth twitched. “I ask sweetly.”

Aerys looked fascinated. “Do you?”

“No.”

Alys covered her mouth.

Myriah decided then that she liked the girl.

Still unwise.

Still true.

“Silverwing accepted her,” Baelor said. “The others follow. Not as tamed horses follow reins. Dragons are not horses.”

“No one here is stupid enough to think so,” Maekar said.

Aerys made a faint sound.

Maekar glared. “Do not.”

“I said nothing.”

“You breathed.”

“Again with that.”

“Baelor,” Daeron said.

Baelor inclined his head. “I negotiated with her guardians first. The last of them died in a storm before terms were complete.”

“Convenient,” Maekar repeated.

Rhaenyra looked at him. “You have learned one word. Excellent.”

Maekar’s face darkened.

Myriah said, “Lady Rhaenyra.”

The girl looked at her.

Myriah held her gaze.

Not scolding.

Not yet.

A reminder.

There were children here.

There were wounds here.

There were men here, unfortunately.

Rhaenyra’s chin lifted.

Then, after a moment, she looked away.

Not submission.

Adjustment.

Good.

Very good.

“She agreed to bring the dragons back to House Targaryen under certain conditions,” Baelor said. “Marriage was one.”

Valarr made a harsh sound.

Baelor looked at him.

“Before you ask,” he said, voice roughening, “no. This was not done to shame your mother. It was not done because I forgot her. It was not done because you and your brother mattered less than dragons.”

Valarr’s eyes were wet now.

Angry tears.

Myriah hated the sight of them.

“Then why did you not tell us?” Valarr asked.

“Because I thought I could finish the terms first and bring you certainty instead of danger.”

“You brought both.”

“Yes,” Baelor said.

Valarr blinked.

A prince expected excuses.

A boy wanted them.

Baelor gave him neither.

“I was wrong not to tell you sooner,” Baelor said. “Not because the secrecy was needless. It was not. But because you are my son, and I owed you more care than a letter read in your grandfather’s solar.”

Valarr looked down.

Matarys whispered, “Do you love her?”

The question was so small it cut through every defense in the room.

Rhaenyra went still.

Baelor did too.

Myriah watched them both.

Ah, she thought.

Not love then.

Not yet.

But something alive enough to be dangerous.

Baelor answered carefully.

“I respect her,” he said. “I trust her with more than I trust most people. I chose her. Love is not the only reason people marry, Matarys.”

Matarys’s face fell.

Rhaenyra spoke before anyone else could.

“But it is not an insult to love, either.”

Matarys looked at her.

So did Baelor.

Rhaenyra looked uncomfortable with every eye upon her, but she did not retreat.

“My father married after my mother died,” she said.

Myriah saw Aerys file the detail away.

Dangerous, that.

Rhaenyra continued, “It caused trouble. Most things do. But grief is not a tomb one must climb into forever to prove the dead mattered.”

Valarr stared at her as if he wanted to hate her and had just been denied the easiest road.

Baelor looked at her as if she had set a broken thing gently back into his hands.

Myriah looked between them.

Oh, she thought again.

Oh no.

Maekar, of course, ruined it.

“And the child?” he asked. “Was that part of the negotiation as well?”

Baelor’s hand tightened on the chair.

Rhaenyra answered.

“No.”

One word.

Flat.

Cold.

Myriah’s skin prickled.

Maekar had the sense, for once, not to push there immediately.

Daeron did it instead, but as king, not as wounded brother.

“You claim the child, Baelor?”

“I do.”

“Before the public wedding?”

“Before the public wedding,” Baelor said. “There was a Valyrian rite on Dragonstone. Binding before fire. Witnessed by dragons. It is not recognized by the Faith. I did not expect it to be. We will have the matter acknowledged properly here.”

“No Seven vows,” Rhaenyra said.

Daeron looked at her.

She looked back.

“Pardon?” he said mildly.

“No Seven vows,” she repeated. “No septon’s hands on me. No blessing over my womb. No little crystal crown of holy approval placed over a marriage already witnessed by older fire than any septon’s candle.”

Maekar muttered, “Seven hells.”

“Those are yours,” Rhaenyra said. “Not mine.”

Daeron’s brows rose.

Myriah nearly smiled.

Nearly.

This girl had all the survival instincts of a cat in a kennel.

But not stupid.

No.

She was watching every reaction. Measuring every insult. Deciding where the walls were.

Daeron folded his hands.

“You understand, my lady, that you arrive asking the crown to accept a great many irregularities at once.”

“I arrive with three dragons,” Rhaenyra said.

“Yes,” Daeron said. “I noticed.”

“And your son.”

“I noticed him as well.”

“And his child.”

“Our child,” Baelor corrected.

Rhaenyra’s eyes flashed toward him.

Not anger this time.

Habit.

“Our child,” she said, after a heartbeat.

Myriah saw Daeron notice that too.

Good.

Let him.

“Then yes,” Rhaenyra said to the king. “I understand irregularity. I also understand opportunity. Your house lost its dragons. I have returned them. Your realm has enemies with old names and new hunger. I make them afraid. Your succession is strong but not invulnerable. I make it stronger. Your Faith will object. Let them. The Faith has never hatched an egg.”

Aerys whispered, “That is a remarkable sentence.”

Aelinor whispered back, “Do not write it down.”

“I was not going to.”

“You were moving your fingers.”

Aerys tucked his hand into his sleeve.

Daeron had gone very still.

Myriah knew that stillness.

Her husband was angry.

He was also interested.

Worse, he was beginning to respect her.

That was dangerous for all of them.

“And what do you want?” Daeron asked.

Rhaenyra’s answer came without hesitation.

“Protection for my child. Recognition of the marriage. A Valyrian wedding before your family before any public feast or proclamation. Dragonstone restored as a seat of dragonkeeping, not merely a prince’s holding. No Dragonpit.”

At that, her voice sharpened.

“No pit. Not for Silverwing. Not for Sheepstealer. Not for the Cannibal. Not for any hatchling that may come. Not now. Not ever.”

Aerys leaned forward. “Hatchling?”

Baelor said, “Later.”

Aerys leaned back, offended by the existence of later.

Daeron’s gaze flicked to Baelor.

“There are eggs?”

The room changed again.

Valarr’s head lifted.

Matarys stopped crying.

Maekar went utterly still.

Rhaenyra’s hand curved over her belly.

Baelor said, “Yes.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

Myriah sat down.

Not because she meant to.

Because her knees had made a decision without consulting her.

Three dragons.

Three eggs.

A pregnant bride.

A city screaming outside.

Her son looking as though he might shatter if any one of them touched him too kindly.

A young woman who spoke like a blade and swayed like she might collapse if pride loosened its grip for even a breath.

Daeron removed his spectacles.

Cleaned them.

Put them back on.

It was the most alarming thing Myriah had ever seen him do.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“Safe,” Rhaenyra said.

Maekar laughed once. “Safe. With you?”

“With me,” she said. “Yes.”

“The eggs belong to House Targaryen.”

The room inhaled.

Baelor said, “Maekar.”

But Rhaenyra had already turned.

Myriah saw the change in her face and thought of the silver dragon quieting at a word.

“No,” Rhaenyra said.

Maekar stepped toward her. “No?”

“No.”

“They are dragon eggs.”

“Yes. Well done.”

“They belong—”

“They belong to the future,” Rhaenyra said, and the candle flames along the wall leaned toward her.

Not flickered.

Leaned.

Matarys saw and gasped.

Rhaenyra did not.

Or pretended not to.

“The future is not yours because you are loud and male,” she continued. “Nor yours because you are wounded. Nor yours because your father is king. Those eggs will not be handed to boys as toys because boys have been taught to expect the first bite of every fruit.”

Maekar’s grief found the easiest road and became cruelty.

“Careful, my lady. You speak boldly for a woman whose place here rests on my brother’s protection.”

Baelor moved.

So did Myriah.

But Rhaenyra rose first.

Too fast.

The color left her face.

For half a second she stood tall, furious, magnificent.

Then her eyes rolled back.

Baelor caught her before she hit the floor.

The room exploded.

“Rhaenyra!”

“Fetch the maester!”

“No maester,” Rhaenyra gasped, coming back hard enough to claw at Baelor’s sleeve.

“My lady—”

“No maester.”

Baelor held her carefully, one arm behind her shoulders, the other bracing beneath her belly without pressing. His face had gone white.

“Breathe,” he said.

“I am breathing.”

“You are not.”

“I am speaking.”

“Badly.”

“I hate you.”

“Later.”

Myriah was already beside them. “Put her in the chair. Not flat. Alys, water. Aelinor, loosen the collar. Maekar, if you speak again before I tell you to, I will have you removed by men smaller than you just to make the shame worse.”

Maekar’s mouth shut.

Good boy.

Rhaenyra did not fully faint.

Myriah had seen women faint. This was not that.

This was a spell of heat and sickness and too much blood rushing wrong. Her face flushed scarlet, then drained white. Sweat dampened her upper lip. She swallowed hard, jaw tight, fighting her own body like it was an enemy army.

“The room is too hot,” she said.

“It is not,” Aerys said.

Aelinor elbowed him.

He added, “For us.”

Rhaenyra gagged.

Alys thrust the basin forward just in time.

Baelor held her hair back.

The gesture was so intimate that Valarr turned his face away.

Myriah saw.

Of course she saw.

Rhaenyra retched until there was nothing left but bile and trembling.

The chamber, finally, was quiet.

Outside, the city screamed beneath dragons.

Inside, a pregnant woman wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glared at them all as if they had personally offended her stomach.

“Do not look at me like that,” she said hoarsely.

Myriah handed her a cloth.

Rhaenyra took it.

“Thank you,” she muttered, as though the words had been dragged from her with hooks.

Myriah smiled faintly. “You are welcome.”

Baelor crouched before her again. “Pain?”

“No.”

“Bleeding?”

“No.”

“Cramping?”

“No.”

“Dizziness?”

“I nearly fell on my face. Guess.”

Baelor closed his eyes.

Myriah should have been horrified.

She was, somewhat.

Mostly she was fascinated.

This was not a seductress who had wrapped Baelor around her finger by fluttering her lashes. This was not some sleek court creature using pregnancy like a knife in silk.

This was a storm in the body of a girl who looked as if she had not slept in a hundred years.

And Baelor, her careful, grieving, disciplined son, looked at her as if he had been handed something breakable by gods he did not trust and told the world depended on whether he could keep it whole.

Myriah did not know what to do with that.

So she did what she always did.

She made order.

“Everyone sit,” she said.

Daeron looked at her.

“Now,” Myriah added.

The king sat.

Aerys sat.

Rhaegel sat.

Alys and Aelinor sat.

Matarys sat at once.

Valarr remained standing for three long seconds, then sat stiffly beside his brother.

Maekar did not sit.

Myriah looked at him.

He sat.

Baelor stayed by Rhaenyra.

No one commented.

“The yelling is over,” Myriah said. “If any of you feel the urge to resume it, swallow your tongue until it passes. We will hear Baelor’s explanation. We will hear Lady Rhaenyra’s terms. We will not call unborn children problems. We will not accuse pregnant women of whoredom in my presence. We will not make the younger boys watch their elders behave like drunken hedge knights.”

Rhaegel raised a finger.

Myriah looked at him.

He lowered it.

“Good,” she said.

Daeron folded his hands. “Baelor.”

Baelor stood slowly.

Rhaenyra caught his sleeve.

Not dramatically.

Barely at all.

Enough that Myriah saw.

Enough that Baelor paused.

“I am well,” Rhaenyra said.

“No,” Baelor replied.

Her eyes narrowed.

He continued, “But you are upright.”

She looked annoyed.

“Accept that as compromise,” he said.

“I hate your compromises.”

“You will hate many more.”

“Promising.”

Myriah watched them and thought, with a strange twist behind her ribs, that this was not new between them.

It could not be.

Or perhaps that was the frightening part.

Perhaps whatever had happened on Dragonstone had made strangers move like survivors of the same shipwreck.

Baelor turned back to the family.

“The eggs,” he said, “will be discussed after the wedding.”

Maekar opened his mouth.

Myriah said, “Tongue.”

He shut it.

Baelor went on. “One remains with our child.”

Rhaenyra’s hand tightened on the chair.

“The other two,” Baelor said, “will not be promised today. Not to sons. Not to claimants. Not to anyone who thinks dragons are ornaments of inheritance.”

Valarr’s face changed.

There it was.

The hurt beneath the anger.

Dragons had returned, and already he was being told no.

Baelor saw that too.

“Valarr,” he said.

His son looked at him reluctantly.

“You are my heir. Nothing in this room changes that.”

Rhaenyra did not move.

Maekar watched her.

So did Daeron.

So did Myriah.

The girl did not flinch. Did not protest. Did not look pleased either.

Interesting.

“You will have work in this,” Baelor said. “Real work. Not flattery. Not scraps. If dragons are returned to our house, then the heir after me must understand them better than men who only know songs.”

Valarr’s throat moved.

“You would trust me with that?”

“I would require it of you.”

That answer did more than tenderness would have.

Valarr straightened despite himself.

Matarys whispered, “What about me?”

Baelor’s face nearly broke again.

Myriah saw it.

“You,” Baelor said, voice low, “will help me remember not to let your brother become unbearable.”

Matarys blinked.

Then, very faintly, smiled.

Valarr muttered, “I heard that.”

“You were meant to,” Baelor said.

It was not healed.

Not nearly.

But Myriah felt the room step back from the edge.

Then Rhaenyra laughed.

Only once.

Small and unwilling.

Every eye turned to her.

She looked immediately annoyed by her own amusement.

“What?” she said.

Matarys wiped his face with his sleeve. “Nothing.”

Rhaenyra studied him.

For a moment her expression shifted so strangely that Myriah leaned forward.

Pain.

Recognition.

Fear.

Rhaenyra looked at Matarys as if she saw another boy standing in his place. A dead boy, perhaps. Or a memory shaped like one. Her lips parted.

Baelor’s head turned toward her.

“Rhaenyra,” he said quietly.

She blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Then she was back.

“I am tired,” she said sharply.

Too sharply.

Baelor’s jaw tightened.

Myriah stored that away.

Another secret, then.

This family was drowning in them.

Daeron spoke at last.

“The story for the realm is this: Lady Rhaenyra is of old Dragonstone blood, raised among hidden remnants of the dragonkeepers and those loyal to the old ways. Baelor found her while investigating reports of surviving dragons. She agreed to bring those dragons under royal protection through marriage to the Prince of Dragonstone. The child is his, conceived after a private Valyrian binding rite that will now be publicly honored.”

Rhaenyra watched him.

“And the dragons?” Aerys asked.

“Returned to House Targaryen,” Daeron said.

“No,” Rhaenyra said.

The room stilled.

Daeron’s gaze moved to her.

Myriah felt the balance shift again.

Rhaenyra was pale, damp with sweat, one hand still gripping the cup Alys had given her. She looked in no condition to challenge a king.

She did it anyway.

“Not returned to House Targaryen like stolen swords found in a cellar,” she said. “That implies possession. Men will hear possession and begin measuring chains.”

Daeron’s face did not change.

“What wording would you prefer?”

“Returned to the protection of House Targaryen,” she said. “Under my guidance, through my marriage to your son.”

Maekar laughed without humor. “Your guidance.”

Rhaenyra looked at him.

“Would you like to guide the Cannibal, Prince Maekar?”

The black dragon roared outside.

Maekar said nothing.

Aerys murmured, “A fair point.”

Aelinor nodded slightly.

Daeron’s mouth twitched.

Myriah saw it and wanted to kick him beneath the table.

Do not encourage her, she thought.

Then again, perhaps someone should.

“Very well,” Daeron said. “Returned to the protection of House Targaryen under your guidance.”

Rhaenyra inclined her head.

Exactly enough.

Again.

Myriah had to admire the consistency.

“And the wedding?” Myriah asked.

“Valyrian first,” Rhaenyra said at once.

“With family witnesses,” Baelor added.

“No septon,” Rhaenyra said.

Daeron sighed.

Rhaenyra’s eyes narrowed.

Daeron lifted one hand. “I am not arguing. I am considering the Faith’s headache before it becomes mine.”

“The Faith may have wine and silence,” Rhaenyra said.

Rhaegel brightened. “I like her.”

Maekar turned. “Of course you do.”

“I like many people.”

“That is your problem.”

Alys patted Rhaegel’s hand again.

Myriah looked at Rhaenyra.

The girl was fading.

Pride kept her upright, but only just. The heat had left her shaky. Her color was poor. The journey, the dragons, the vomiting, the fight — all of it had taken from a body already bearing too much.

And still, her hand never left her belly.

Never.

Not once.

Myriah knew that gesture.

She had done it herself, long ago, in a land that had sent her north as peace offering and bride. A hand over the life within. Not soft. Not delicate. A guard at a gate.

My child.

Mine before yours.

Mine before the realm’s.

Mine before history.

Myriah looked at Baelor.

He was watching Rhaenyra with the same terrible attention.

The same vow.

Whatever else was true, that much was not a lie.

Daeron rose.

“We will continue this after Lady Rhaenyra has rested.”

“I can continue,” Rhaenyra said.

“No,” Myriah said.

Rhaenyra looked at her.

Myriah looked back.

“No,” Myriah repeated. “You cannot.”

Rhaenyra seemed prepared to argue.

Then the child moved again.

Her face tightened.

Not pain.

Something close to it.

Baelor took one step.

Rhaenyra held up a hand.

He stopped.

Good, Myriah thought. He is trainable.

Alys stood. “I will see rooms prepared.”

“Near mine,” Baelor said.

Maekar’s head snapped up.

Baelor looked at him. “Say it.”

Maekar’s jaw worked.

Myriah could almost hear Dyanna’s voice telling him to choose sense just once in his life.

For once, he did.

He looked away.

Valarr stared at the table.

Matarys looked between Rhaenyra and Baelor, frightened and curious and hurt in the way children were when the grown world rearranged itself without asking them.

Rhaenyra saw him.

Myriah knew she did.

Because the girl’s expression changed again.

Just a flicker.

A wound answering a wound.

“I will not take your father from you,” Rhaenyra said.

Matarys froze.

Valarr looked up sharply.

Baelor went still.

Rhaenyra looked as though she had not meant to speak.

Then, because she was clearly constitutionally incapable of retreating once she had begun, she lifted her chin.

“I will not,” she said again. “Nor will my child. Whatever else you think of me, think that.”

Valarr’s eyes shone.

“With respect, my lady,” he said, and the respect was a knife, “you have already taken a great deal.”

Baelor flinched.

Rhaenyra accepted it.

“Yes,” she said.

No defense.

No pretty lie.

Just yes.

Myriah watched Valarr falter before honesty where excuse would have fed his anger.

Enough, she decided.

Enough blood for one room.

“How about we do this,” Myriah said, rising before any of them could decide to be stupid again. “Lady Rhaenyra, the bonds you make with the women in this family will help you more than you know. I promise you that. Why do I take you with Aelinor and Alys? We will find you rooms, a bath, something clean to wear, and a meal that is not salted fish unless you begin breathing fire at us.”

She looked at Rhaenyra’s gown and sighed.

“Baelor, why is she wearing something so tight?”

“I do not know.”

“Are you jesting?”

“No.”

“I like older fashions,” Rhaenyra said.

“Surely there was an older-fashioned maternity gown,” Myriah said. “Either way, do you agree?”

Rhaenyra looked suspicious.

Myriah ignored that and turned her eyes to Baelor.

“And you,” she said, “will speak to your sons.”

Baelor’s face tightened with worry. “Mother—”

Rhaenyra beat him to it.

“I agree.”

Every man in the room looked at her.

Rhaenyra pushed herself straighter in the chair with all the dignity of a princess and all the grace of a woman whose child had declared war on her spine.

“Baelor,” she said, not looking at him, “speak to your sons.”

Baelor opened his mouth.

She looked at him then.

“Now.”

His mouth closed.

Myriah almost smiled.

Rhaenyra’s gaze moved across the room and landed on Maekar.

“You.”

Maekar blinked. “What?”

“Carry me.”

Silence.

Perfect, crystalline silence.

Myriah felt Alys go very still beside her.

Aerys’s mouth opened slightly.

Rhaegel looked delighted.

Maekar looked as if Rhaenyra had asked him to dance naked through the Sept of Baelor.

“What?” he said again, this time more dangerously.

Rhaenyra looked him up and down.

It was not appreciative.

It was assessment.

“These two,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward Aerys and Rhaegel, “look decorative.”

Aerys said, “I beg your pardon.”

Rhaegel said, “She is not wrong.”

Alys pinched his arm.

Rhaenyra continued, “Baelor said you were strong.”

Maekar’s eyes cut to his brother. “Did he?”

Baelor looked briefly to the ceiling, as if asking the gods why they had returned dragons and this woman at the same time.

“I may have said something like that.”

“Perhaps we can bond,” Rhaenyra said.

“Bond,” Maekar repeated.

“Yes. Through useful silence and not dropping me.”

“I am not carrying you.”

Rhaenyra smiled.

It was small, sweet, and deeply false.

“Then I shall attempt to walk, fall on my face before your mother, your king, your brother, and my dragons, and when Baelor murders you afterward, I will tell the singers you died bravely.”

Rhaegel made a strangled sound.

Aerys turned away, shoulders shaking.

Daeron pressed two fingers to his brow.

Myriah did not laugh.

She was a queen.

Queens did not laugh when strange pregnant dragon-women bullied their grieving sons into carrying them through the Red Keep.

Not where anyone could see.

Maekar stared at Rhaenyra.

Rhaenyra stared back.

The black dragon roared outside.

Maekar’s jaw flexed.

Then, with the expression of a man walking willingly to execution, he crossed the room.

Baelor stepped forward at once.

“I can—”

“No,” Rhaenyra said.

Baelor stopped.

Myriah watched him make himself stop.

Good.

Very good.

Maekar stood before Rhaenyra, broad and rigid and furious enough to bite through steel.

“How,” he said flatly, “do you expect this to happen?”

Rhaenyra looked at him as if he had asked how chairs worked.

“With your arms.”

Alys turned her laugh into a cough.

Aelinor did not bother. She smiled openly, small and sharp.

Maekar muttered something under his breath that sounded very much like Dyanna save me.

For the first time all day, Myriah’s heart hurt for him without irritation attached.

Dyanna would have laughed herself sick.

Rhaenyra held out her arms.

Maekar stared at them.

Then at Baelor.

Then at his mother.

Myriah lifted one brow.

Do it, the brow said.

Or I will make you wish dragons were your worst problem.

Maekar bent.

Carefully.

Too carefully, at first, as if Rhaenyra were made of glass and poison. One arm went behind her back, the other beneath her knees. The moment he lifted her, his expression changed.

Not because she was heavy.

She was not, not truly, despite the pregnancy. Not heavy enough to trouble Maekar.

Because she was hot.

Myriah saw it in his face.

Rhaenyra’s heat pulsed through the room again, strange and bright beneath her skin. Maekar felt it where his arm braced her back, where her old gown clung damply at her shoulder.

He looked down at her.

Rhaenyra looked back up at him, pale and sweating and trying very hard not to tremble.

“If you comment on my weight,” she said, “I will vomit on you.”

Maekar’s mouth tightened.

Then, unexpectedly, his voice lowered.

“I carried Dyanna like this when she was ill.”

The room went very still.

Rhaenyra’s face changed.

Not soft.

Not pitying.

Sharper than that.

Honest.

“Did she vomit on you?”

Maekar blinked.

Then a sound escaped him.

Not quite a laugh.

Not quite a sob.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good woman.”

“She was.”

The words came out rough.

For one heartbeat, the room saw him.

Not Maekar the angry. Not Maekar the loud. Not Maekar the sword no one had sheathed.

A widower.

A man whose wife had died and left him with children and grief he had no language for.

Rhaenyra looked at him steadily.

Then she said, “Do not drop me. I am carrying something important.”

Maekar’s grip adjusted at once.

“I am not an idiot,” he said.

“Debatable.”

“Do you insult everyone who carries you?”

“No. Only men who earn it.”

“I see why Baelor likes you.”

Baelor made a strangled sound.

Rhaenyra’s eyes flicked to him.

So did Maekar’s.

For half a breath, the brothers looked at one another.

The fury was not gone.

Nor the suspicion.

But something else had entered the room.

Something older than the quarrel and more fragile than pride.

Maekar turned away first, carrying Rhaenyra as if she were both burden and bomb.

Myriah moved to lead them out, Alys and Aelinor falling into step beside her.

At the door, Rhaenyra looked back.

Not at Baelor.

At Valarr and Matarys.

Her expression flickered again.

Grief.

Fear.

A promise she had not meant to make aloud.

Then she looked at Baelor.

“Talk to them,” she said.

Baelor’s face was pale.

“I will.”

“No pretty lies.”

His mouth moved, almost smiling though his eyes were wet.

“No pretty lies.”

“Good.”

Maekar shifted her slightly. “Are we done commanding the room?”

Rhaenyra looked up at him.

“No.”

Maekar sighed.

Rhaegel whispered to Aerys, “I definitely like her.”

Aerys whispered back, “I am beginning to understand the dragons.”

Myriah opened the door.

Outside, the Red Keep waited in chaos disguised as order.

Beyond its walls, King’s Landing screamed beneath three circling dragons.

Inside, Maekar carried Baelor’s strange, pregnant betrothed down the corridor while she glared at everyone too frightened to meet her eyes.

Myriah walked beside them and thought, with growing horror and reluctant delight, that this girl might not destroy their family.

She might, in fact, save it.

If they all survived her first.

Maekar carried her all the way to the rooms chosen for her, Alys walking ahead to open doors and direct maids, Aelinor beside Myriah, quiet-eyed and thoughtful. The corridors of the Red Keep had never felt longer. Servants pressed themselves against the walls and stared before remembering to bow. Guards looked at Maekar, then at the woman in his arms, then at the windows where dragon shadows passed over red stone.

No one asked questions.

Good.

They had some sense left.

Alys, in an attempt at normalcy no one deserved, began pointing out tapestries.

“That one was commissioned by King Daeron after the peace with Dorne,” she said, nodding to a great woven piece showing sun and dragon beneath a crown. “It was done in Myr, I think. Or perhaps Tyrosh. Aerys would know. He knows things like that and forgets doors exist.”

Rhaenyra opened one eye from where she lay rigid in Maekar’s arms. “He walked into a chair?”

“A table,” Aelinor said.

“A chair,” Alys corrected.

“A table after the chair,” Aelinor amended.

Rhaenyra considered this. “Is he always like that?”

“Yes,” said Maekar.

“At least he is consistent.”

Alys pointed to another hall. “The royal sept is through there.”

Rhaenyra turned her head.

Myriah watched the girl’s expression change at the sight of seven-pointed stars carved into stone, crystal windows catching pale light, polished devotional plaques, little signs of the Faith worked into a castle built by dragonlords.

“So much of the Seven,” Rhaenyra muttered. “Are you sure you all are Targaryens?”

“Mother,” Maekar said, “may I put her down?”

“Maekar, behave.”

“The Faith supports the crown well,” Aelinor said mildly.

Rhaenyra’s eyes moved to her.

“The Faith supports what benefits the Faith. In this case, it seems the crown supports them rather more than they support it.”

Aelinor’s mouth curved. “You have been here half a day.”

“I have eyes.”

“She does,” Alys said cheerfully. “Very pretty ones. Very judgmental.”

“I like her,” Rhaenyra said.

Alys beamed.

Maekar muttered, “Of course you do.”

Myriah gave him a look.

He shut his mouth again.

By the time they reached the rooms, Rhaenyra had gone quiet.

Too quiet.

Her head had turned against Maekar’s shoulder, silver hair spilling over his arm. Her face was pale now instead of flushed, but Myriah could see sweat still dampening her temples. One hand rested over the child. The other gripped Maekar’s sleeve, though Myriah did not think she knew she was doing it.

The rooms were already in frantic preparation. Maids hurried with linens, pitchers, clean cloths, bowls of fruit, and trays of food no one had asked for. Someone had brought wine and then thought better of it. Someone else had brought a small dish of pickled lemons, which Rhaenyra saw at once despite appearing half-dead.

Her eyes opened fully.

“Those.”

Myriah looked at the dish.

Then at her.

“Lemons?”

“Those.”

Maekar looked down at her. “You were vomiting ten minutes ago.”

“Your voice makes me ill. The lemons are innocent.”

A maid made a strangled sound and turned it into a curtsy.

“Put her on the couch,” Myriah said.

Rhaenyra opened her mouth.

Myriah lifted one finger. “You have commanded half my family today. Do not test me before I have eaten.”

Rhaenyra stared at her.

Then, shockingly, obeyed.

Maekar lowered her onto the couch with more care than his expression suggested. The moment his arms were free, he stepped back as if she might explode.

Rhaenyra looked up at him.

“You did not drop me.”

“I considered it.”

“No, you did not.”

Maekar’s jaw moved.

Then he looked away.

No. He had not.

Alys came forward with the dish of pickled lemons.

Rhaenyra accepted it as if receiving tribute.

Myriah watched her spear one with her fingers, chew, and close her eyes in something very close to relief.

Then she reached for another.

“Slowly,” Myriah said.

Rhaenyra opened one eye.

“Do all mothers sound like that?”

“Yes,” Myriah said.

“That is unfortunate.”

“For children, perhaps.”

A maid approached. “Your Grace, the bath is prepared.”

“Cool?” Myriah asked.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes opened. “No.”

Myriah looked at her.

“I want a hot bath.”

“What?”

“The babe likes warm.”

“You are overheated.”

“The babe likes warm,” Rhaenyra repeated, as though speaking to someone very slow.

Aelinor, diplomat that she was, intervened. “I will tell them to warm it slightly.”

“Not slightly.”

“Moderately,” Aelinor said.

Rhaenyra considered this with suspicion. “More than moderately.”

“Let us begin with moderately and see if you faint less.”

Alys smiled. “That is reasonable.”

“I dislike reasonable people,” Rhaenyra said.

“You will be surrounded by unreasonable ones soon enough,” Myriah replied. “Take mercy where you find it.”

Rhaenyra huffed.

But she let Aelinor go.

Maekar looked toward the door.

“No,” Myriah said.

“I said nothing.”

“You were hoping to escape.”

“I carried her.”

“And lived. A moving tale.”

“Mother.”

“Stay until I dismiss you.”

Rhaenyra ate another lemon and looked pleased by Maekar’s suffering.

Myriah could not decide whether this was going to ruin him or help him.

Perhaps both.

Alys moved around the room, adjusting curtains and sending maids away with gentle commands. Aelinor returned, reporting that the bath was being warmed “to the lady’s satisfaction and no one else’s good sense.” Rhaenyra approved.

When the maids had finished and the bath steamed behind a carved screen, Myriah took control again.

“Alys. Aelinor. Help her out of that gown.”

Rhaenyra’s head snapped up. “I can undress myself.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

Myriah looked at the laces biting into the swollen curve of her breasts, the damp fabric clinging to her ribs, the seams pulled nearly to their limit over her belly.

Rhaenyra followed her gaze.

Her face reddened.

This time, not from heat.

“This gown fit when I put it on.”

“When was that?”

Rhaenyra paused.

Myriah noticed.

“A difficult question?” she asked lightly.

“No,” Rhaenyra said too quickly. “Yesterday.”

“Pregnancy has been known to win battles overnight.”

Alys giggled.

Rhaenyra glared at her.

Alys giggled harder.

Maekar turned toward the wall. “May I leave now?”

“Yes,” Myriah said. “Go before you start breathing in Aerys’s tone.”

Maekar looked relieved for exactly one heartbeat.

Then Rhaenyra said, “Thank you.”

He stopped.

His back was to them.

Myriah watched his shoulders tense.

“For carrying me,” Rhaenyra added, grudgingly. “And not being entirely useless.”

Maekar turned his head slightly. “High praise.”

“Do not grow attached to it.”

“No danger of that.”

But his voice was less sharp.

He left.

The room exhaled.

Alys and Aelinor helped Rhaenyra behind the screen. Myriah remained near enough to hear, far enough to grant some dignity, though dignity had already had a difficult day. There was a hissed curse when the laces were loosened and a groan of relief so heartfelt that Alys murmured, “Oh, poor thing,” before Rhaenyra snapped, “I am still not poor.”

The gown came away at last.

A maid carried it out with the solemn expression of someone removing a slain animal from a battlefield.

Rhaenyra stepped into the bath.

There was silence.

Then a sigh.

Soft.

Unintended.

Young.

Myriah’s chest tightened.

For all the dragons, for all the sharp words, for all the way the girl carried herself as if the whole realm were an enemy to be conquered, she was still only twenty or near enough to it. Twenty, pregnant, alone but for Baelor, and forced to enter a family that had every reason to fear her.

That was when Myriah knew.

Not decided.

Knew.

She would have to ask.

A queen could not avoid ugly questions because they offended love.

A mother could not avoid them because she trusted her son.

Baelor was good. Baelor was careful. Baelor had been raised better than most men could hope to be. Myriah loved him with a fierceness that had not lessened since the first time she held him.

But men did not have to be monsters to hold power over women.

Princes especially.

Hands of kings worst of all.

And this young woman had no family, no visible allies, no household behind her, no father to shout, no brother to draw steel, no mother to ask what Myriah was now about to ask.

So Myriah sent the maids away.

Then Alys.

Then Aelinor.

Aelinor lingered at the door only long enough to meet Myriah’s eyes.

She knew.

Of course she did.

Aelinor left.

The door closed.

Behind the screen, water shifted.

Rhaenyra said, “If you are about to tell me not to drown myself, I have considered it and decided against it.”

Myriah smiled faintly despite herself.

“No.”

“Good. I am tired of advice.”

“I am going to ask you something.”

The water stilled.

“People say that before asking things they know they should not ask.”

“Yes,” Myriah said. “Usually.”

Rhaenyra did not answer.

Myriah came around the screen.

The bath was large and steaming, though less hot than Rhaenyra likely wanted. She sat with her back against the copper rim, wet hair clinging to her shoulders, one arm across her breasts, the other resting over the great curve of her belly beneath the water. Her face had lost some of its harsh color, though her eyes remained bright and wary.

She looked smaller without the gown.

Not weak.

Never weak.

But young enough to make Myriah ache.

Myriah took the stool beside the bath and sat.

“I am going to ask once,” she said. “You may hate me for it afterward.”

“I may hate you now and save time.”

“Baelor is my son.”

“I noticed.”

“I love him.”

“That was also clear.”

“I do not believe he would willingly harm a woman under his protection.”

Rhaenyra’s hand stilled over her belly.

Myriah held her gaze.

“But you are young. You are alone. He is a prince, the Hand of the King, heir to the throne, and the man who found you. You carry his child by a story I have only just heard and do not yet fully understand.”

The heat in the room seemed to deepen.

Rhaenyra’s face closed.

Myriah continued anyway.

“Did he force you?”

Rhaenyra went very still.

“Did he threaten you? Did he use your dragons, your isolation, your lack of family? Did he make you agree to marriage because you had no other protection? Did he touch you when you did not want him to? Did he put that child in you by force?”

The last question hung in the steam like a blade.

Rhaenyra stared at her.

For one moment, Myriah thought the girl might call Silverwing through the wall.

Then Rhaenyra said, very softly, “You think your son raped me.”

“No,” Myriah said.

Rhaenyra’s eyes flashed.

“I think the world is full of men whose mothers swore they would never do such things.”

That landed.

Hard.

Rhaenyra looked away first.

Steam curled around her face.

Her throat worked.

When she spoke, her voice was different.

Not gentler.

Older.

“No,” she said. “Baelor did not force me. He did not threaten me. He did not groom me. He did not rape me. He did not touch me without my leave.”

Myriah let out a breath she had not realized she was holding.

Rhaenyra’s gaze cut back to her.

“Do not look relieved too loudly.”

“I will try to be subtle.”

“You are not good at it.”

“No. Not about my children.”

Something shifted in Rhaenyra’s face.

A flicker.

There and gone.

Myriah saw it anyway.

“So you asked because of me,” Rhaenyra said slowly. “Not because of him.”

“Yes.”

Rhaenyra looked down at the water.

At her belly.

“He is irritating,” she said.

Myriah blinked.

“He hovers,” Rhaenyra continued. “He apologizes too often. He thinks quietly enough for others and loudly enough for me. He keeps saying our child as if I do not know what bargain we have made. He refused to let me fly while standing beneath three dragons as though caution might impress me.”

Myriah’s mouth curved.

“And yet?” she asked.

Rhaenyra was silent for a long moment.

The child moved beneath the water.

A ripple crossed the bath.

Rhaenyra’s hand followed it at once.

“And yet,” she said, “he stands where he says he will stand.”

Myriah’s smile faded into something softer.

“That matters to you.”

“It matters to any woman with sense.”

“Yes,” Myriah said. “It does.”

Rhaenyra looked back at her.

There were tears in her eyes.

She seemed furious about them.

“I have no family here,” she said.

It was the first truly unguarded thing she had said.

Myriah did not move.

“No,” she said.

“The people who raised me are dead.” Rhaenyra’s voice was flat now, reciting the lie as if it were a prayer learned badly. “The old keepers. The ones who taught me. The ones who remembered. Dead in a storm.”

Myriah heard the story.

She also heard the grief beneath it.

Not for invented keepers, perhaps.

For someone.

For many someones.

“I am sorry,” Myriah said.

Rhaenyra’s face twisted. “Everyone says that when they cannot return anything.”

“Yes.”

“Then why say it?”

“Because silence can be worse.”

Rhaenyra looked at her as if deciding whether that was wisdom or nonsense.

Perhaps both.

The bathwater steamed between them.

Outside, far beyond the closed shutters, a dragon cried.

Rhaenyra’s hand tightened on her belly.

“She likes warmth,” she said abruptly.

Myriah accepted the turn. “The babe?”

“Yes.”

“Does she?”

Rhaenyra looked suspicious again. “If the babe is a girl.”

“If,” Myriah agreed.

A necessary lie.

A careful one.

“The maester said strong movement is healthy,” Rhaenyra said.

“It is.”

“She moves too much.”

“Some babes do.”

“Baelor said his sons were large.”

Myriah closed her eyes.

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

“Of course he did.”

“Is it true?”

Myriah opened her eyes.

Rhaenyra looked genuinely concerned.

Oh, Baelor, Myriah thought again. You fool.

“Valarr was not small,” Myriah admitted.

Rhaenyra looked betrayed by the entire male line of House Targaryen.

“And Matarys?”

“Easier.”

“That is what Baelor said. I disliked it then as well.”

“I imagine you did.”

“My breasts hurt.”

Myriah blinked.

Rhaenyra looked irritated by her own confession. “They hurt. The gown was too tight. The ship was awful. The child keeps trying to crawl into my throat. I want salted fish, lemons, honey, and something burnt. Not meat. Not bread. Something burnt.”

“Something burnt,” Myriah repeated.

“Yes.”

“Charred onions?”

Rhaenyra considered this with alarming seriousness.

Then her eyes widened slightly.

“Yes.”

Myriah nodded. “I will have the kitchens informed.”

“And plum jam.”

“With charred onions?”

“No.” Rhaenyra frowned. “Maybe.”

“Pregnancy is a humbling battlefield.”

“I dislike being humbled.”

“I had noticed.”

Rhaenyra leaned back, exhaustion finally dragging at her bones. Beneath the water her belly shifted again, slow and strong. The sight unsettled Myriah. Not because she had never seen a child move in the womb. She had. Many times.

But something about this child’s movement seemed almost attentive.

As though the babe listened.

As though the babe disapproved.

Myriah decided she would think about that later.

Much later.

“You will need women,” Myriah said.

“I have dragons.”

“Dragons cannot lace gowns.”

“They can remove them.”

“With you inside?”

Rhaenyra paused.

“Fair.”

“You will need women,” Myriah repeated. “Not only maids. Women who know when to speak and when to keep quiet. Women who can help you dress, eat, rest, vomit, curse, and not murder men who deserve it only slightly.”

“Why would I spare men who deserve murder?”

“Because if you kill all of them before the wedding, the feast seating becomes difficult.”

Rhaenyra stared.

Then laughed.

A real laugh this time.

Small, breathless, startled out of her by absurdity.

Myriah felt absurdly proud.

Then Rhaenyra’s laughter broke off, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

“No,” Myriah said quickly. “Basin?”

Rhaenyra nodded once.

Myriah reached for it just in time.

The sickness passed more quickly this time, perhaps because there was little left in her stomach beyond lemons and fury. When it was done, Rhaenyra rinsed her mouth, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

“I am going to become monstrous,” she whispered.

Myriah looked at her.

“What?”

Rhaenyra’s eyes remained closed.

“For this child,” she said. “If I must.”

The steam coiled around her.

Her voice had gone quiet enough that another woman might have pretended not to hear.

Myriah did not.

“Most mothers do,” she said.

“No.” Rhaenyra opened her eyes. “Not like me.”

There was warning in it.

Not threat.

Warning.

Myriah thought of the dragons circling above the city. Of the candles leaning toward Rhaenyra’s anger. Of Baelor’s face at the harbor. Of the lie sitting beneath every word they had said.

Then she thought of every mother she had ever known who had been called mad for refusing to surrender a child quietly.

“Then be monstrous carefully,” Myriah said.

Rhaenyra stared at her.

Myriah stood.

“I will have charred onions brought.”

“With salt.”

“With salt.”

“And lemons.”

“Yes.”

“And plum jam.”

“I will ask for it on the side.”

Rhaenyra seemed satisfied.

For now.

At the door, Myriah paused.

“Lady Rhaenyra.”

Rhaenyra looked at her.

“If Baelor ever does frighten you, you come to me.”

Rhaenyra’s face changed.

Not offended.

Not grateful.

Something too complicated for either.

“And if I frighten him?” she asked.

Myriah smiled faintly.

“Then I expect he will come to me as well.”

Rhaenyra gave a soft, unwilling snort.

Myriah left her in the steam, one hand over her belly, dragons crying beyond the walls, and a future none of them understood moving restlessly beneath her skin.

Daeron stayed in the room even when everyone left.

Baelor may have needed his father.

But that was not why he stayed.

Those boys needed their grandfather.

The door closed behind Myriah, Alys, Aelinor, Maekar, and Lady Rhaenyra. The sound was not loud, but it settled heavily in the chamber all the same. Outside, beyond stone and curtain and shutter, King’s Landing still screamed in fits and starts beneath the shadow of dragons. Bells rang somewhere below Aegon’s High Hill, frantic and uneven. Men were shouting in the yard. Boots passed in the corridor. Orders were being carried, misunderstood, corrected, carried again.

The realm had changed in less than a day.

Daeron had ruled long enough to recognize such moments.

Some came with war banners.

Some with ravens.

Some with weddings.

Some with deaths.

This one had come with three dragons, a pregnant young woman with old eyes, and his eldest son looking as if the gods had put a knife beneath his ribs and commanded him to smile.

Baelor stood near the table, one hand still resting on the back of the chair Lady Rhaenyra had vacated. He had not noticed that he had not moved. Aerys and Rhaegel had left shortly after the women did. Aerys to run off to his books, Rhaegel, probably to sing.

Daeron noticed.

Daeron noticed too much.

It was one of the gifts kings called wisdom when it served them and misery when it did not.

Baelor was not himself.

No. That was not right.

Baelor was too much himself. Too controlled. Too careful. Too steady in the way men became when something inside them had begun to split and they had decided the crack was private. He had stepped from that ship and looked at his family as though the sight of them cost him pain.

Daeron did not understand it.

That was what frightened him.

He understood politics. He understood secrets. He understood men dragged by desire into foolishness and men driven by ambition into treason. He understood sudden marriages, inconvenient pregnancies, hidden bloodlines, half-truths dressed in silk, and young women with old names brought forward at precisely the wrong moment.

He did not understand the look in Baelor’s eyes.

His son had looked at Valarr and Matarys as if he might fall to his knees.

His son, who had held his composure through battle, rebellion, death, Jena’s funeral, and a thousand councils filled with men not worth the air they stole, had nearly broken at the sight of his own boys.

Daeron did not know what to do with that.

So he did nothing with it.

Not yet.

Valarr sat stiffly on one side of the table, his shoulders squared, his face set in a mask too old for thirteen. Matarys sat beside him, smaller, red-eyed, trying to stop crying because princes were taught early that tears were safer in pillows than in council chambers.

Daeron hated that lesson.

He had helped teach it.

That was the trouble with fathers and kings. One could do harm with good intentions and then be praised for discipline.

Baelor looked toward the door.

Not after Rhaenyra, Daeron thought.

Or not only after her.

After everyone.

After the room before it had broken apart.

After the life he had known that morning.

Daeron let the silence sit for one breath longer. Then he said, “Baelor.”

His son turned.

For half a heartbeat, Daeron saw the boy he had been. Not the Hand. Not the Prince of Dragonstone. Not the court’s beloved Breakspear with all his bright promise and polished honor.

His boy.

The one who had once fallen asleep over a book of Dornish histories because he wished to impress his mother. The one who had followed Daeron through the yard asking why men fought wars if everyone agreed they were terrible. The one who had held newborn Valarr with such terror that Jena had laughed until she cried.

That boy was still there somewhere.

Buried deep.

Bleeding, perhaps.

“Your sons,” Daeron said.

Baelor’s jaw tightened.

“Yes.”

Valarr looked away.

Matarys looked down at his hands.

Baelor crossed the room slowly, as if he were approaching skittish horses.

Daeron nearly winced at the thought.

No. Not horses.

Children.

His children.

Baelor stopped across the table from them.

Wrong.

Daeron knew it at once. So did Baelor, perhaps, because after a moment he moved around the table and pulled out the chair opposite his sons instead of standing above them like a judge.

Good.

Not enough, but good.

Daeron remained where he was, near the hearth. Present, but not between them. A king’s place was often at the center of a room. A grandfather’s place was sometimes at the edge, close enough to catch what fell.

Baelor sat.

For a moment, none of them spoke.

Then Valarr said, “Did you love Mother?”

Matarys flinched.

Baelor closed his eyes.

The question was cruel only because it was honest.

“Yes,” Baelor said.

Valarr’s mouth twisted. “That was quick.”

“Valarr,” Daeron said quietly.

Baelor lifted a hand.

No.

Let him.

Daeron held his tongue.

Baelor looked at his son. “Yes. It was.”

Valarr blinked, wrong-footed.

He had expected denial. Perhaps command. Perhaps wounded dignity.

Baelor gave him neither.

“It was quick,” Baelor said. “Too quick for you. Too sudden. Too secret. Too much decided before I brought it to you. I will not pretend otherwise.”

Matarys looked up at that.

Valarr’s fingers curled against his knees.

“Then why?” Valarr asked. “Why did you not tell us? Why did we have to read it in a letter to Grandfather? Why did the city see her with you before we understood anything?”

“Because I was trying to control the danger before it reached you.”

“You failed.”

“Yes.”

The answer struck like a slap.

Daeron watched Valarr’s anger falter. Not disappear. No, boys did not release hurt merely because a father admitted fault. But it faltered.

Baelor leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees.

“I failed you in that,” he said. “I thought secrecy would protect you. I thought certainty would be kinder than fear. I thought if I came to King’s Landing with the facts arranged, with the dragons visible, with my claim made and the story set, then I could spare you the worst of the uncertainty.”

Valarr’s eyes shone. “You spared us nothing.”

“No,” Baelor said. “I did not.”

Matarys whispered, “Are you angry at us?”

Baelor’s face changed.

All the careful words, all the princely control, all the Hand’s measured reasoning — gone, for one raw instant.

“No,” he said.

Too quickly.

Too fiercely.

Matarys shrank back a little.

Baelor saw it and softened his voice with visible effort.

“No, Matarys. Never for this.”

“You looked angry.”

“I was angry at your uncle.”

“Everyone is angry at Uncle Maekar.”

Daeron coughed into his hand.

Baelor’s mouth trembled.

Valarr did not smile, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him for half a breath before he forced it flat again.

“Your uncle has gifts,” Baelor said gravely.

“Yelling?” Matarys asked.

“And making men wish to jump from windows,” Valarr muttered.

Daeron said, “Your uncle is grieving.”

The boys looked at him.

So did Baelor.

Daeron moved closer to the table, not sitting yet.

“He is,” Daeron said. “That does not excuse every word from his mouth. It explains some of them. Dyanna’s death left him with more pain than sense, and he did not have an abundance of sense to spare.”

Matarys made a small sound.

Baelor looked down to hide his smile.

Valarr’s face cracked just enough for the boy beneath the prince to show.

Good.

A little humor did not heal a wound, but it could keep the patient breathing while the needle went in.

Baelor looked back at his sons.

“I am sorry,” he said.

Valarr’s expression hardened again. “For what?”

“For not telling you before the letter. For letting you stand in that room and hear men speak of your father’s child as though the babe were a problem to be solved. For making you wonder whether your mother had been forgotten.”

At that, Matarys began crying again.

Silently.

He turned his face away.

Baelor reached toward him, then stopped halfway across the table.

That hesitation hurt Daeron more than the tears.

Jena would have known what to do. She would have crossed the room without permission and gathered both boys into her skirts, princehood be damned. Myriah would have done it too, if pride and politics had not held her back downstairs.

But Baelor was a father, and fathers were too often taught to comfort at arm’s length.

Daeron thought of his own sons.

Baelor, too careful.

Aerys, too far away inside his own mind.

Rhaegel, forever slipping between laughter and shadows.

Maekar, all sharp edges and old resentments.

Had he done that? Had he loved them so formally that they learned to bleed politely?

The thought was ugly.

He kept it.

One should keep ugly truths. They were useful.

“Matarys,” Baelor said.

The boy shook his head.

Baelor stood.

Valarr tensed at once, as if expecting command.

Instead, Baelor walked around the table, knelt beside Matarys’s chair, and pulled his son into his arms.

Matarys broke.

Not loudly.

That made it worse.

He folded against Baelor with the desperate shame of a boy old enough to know he might be mocked and young enough to need his father more than pride.

Baelor held him tightly.

Too tightly, perhaps.

As if he were proving to himself that the boy was solid.

Daeron looked away for a moment.

Not because it embarrassed him.

Because grief deserved privacy, even when it occurred in front of kings.

Valarr watched them.

His face was pale and angry and lost.

Baelor looked up at him over Matarys’s bowed head.

“I have not forgotten her,” he said.

Valarr swallowed.

“Do not say it because I asked.”

“I am saying it because it is true.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes.”

“You love her still.”

“Yes.”

“Then why marry Lady Rhaenyra?”

Baelor drew a breath.

Careful, Daeron thought.

Very careful.

Not because Valarr could not hear truth.

Because he could hear lies better than most men thought children could.

“Because I must,” Baelor said.

Valarr’s face closed.

Baelor held up a hand.

“And because I chose to.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is two answers.”

“It is a coward’s answer.”

Daeron felt the words hit.

Baelor took them.

Again.

A son was sometimes the cruelest mirror a man ever faced.

“You are right to want more,” Baelor said.

“I want the truth.”

“I will give you as much of it as I can.”

Valarr laughed once, harsh and wet. “That means no.”

“That means some truths are not mine alone to spend.”

Valarr’s eyes flicked toward the door through which Rhaenyra had left.

Baelor nodded slightly.

“Yes. Some are hers. Some are dangerous. Some would put you in danger before you could even understand what you carried.”

“I am not a baby.”

“No,” Baelor said. “You are my heir.”

Valarr stilled.

Baelor let Matarys sit back but kept one hand on his shoulder. The boy did not shrug it off.

“You are my heir,” Baelor repeated, eyes on Valarr. “That has not changed. It will not change when I wed Lady Rhaenyra. It will not change when the babe is born. It will not change because dragons have returned.”

Valarr’s jaw tightened. “What if the babe is a boy?”

Daeron watched Baelor’s face.

Interesting.

Only a flicker, but there.

Pain? Amusement? Certainty?

Whatever it was, Baelor buried it quickly.

“Then the babe will be your brother,” Baelor said. “Still behind you.”

“And if Grandfather says otherwise?”

Daeron raised his brows. “Grandfather is in the room.”

Valarr flushed.

Baelor turned slightly toward him.

Daeron let the silence stretch just long enough for the boy to feel it, not long enough to crush him.

Then he said, “Your father speaks truly. You are his heir. No unborn child changes that.”

Valarr looked at him with eyes too bright.

“Even with dragons?”

Daeron’s heart hurt.

Ah.

There it was.

Not only mother.

Not only secrecy.

Dragons.

Dragons had come back, and Valarr had understood at once that power made men reconsider promises. Clever boy. Poor boy.

“Especially with dragons,” Daeron said.

Valarr did not seem to understand.

Daeron took the chair at the head of the table.

He had sat on thrones, council chairs, campaign stools, Dornish cushions, and horseback through rain. None of them had felt as delicate as this chair did now.

“Dragons do not make succession simpler,” he said. “They make it more dangerous. A weak claim with a dragon becomes a war. A child flattered because of a dragon becomes a fool. A prince who thinks fire can mend every slight becomes a corpse, or worse, a king who should have been a corpse.”

Matarys wiped his face with his sleeve. “Like the Dance?”

Daeron looked at him.

“Yes,” he said. “Like the Dance.”

Baelor went still at the word.

Dance.

Lady Rhaenyra’s chosen name made it impossible not to think of the woman history had drowned in that war. The Black Queen. The Realm’s Delight. Usurped, crowned, defeated, devoured, reviled. A woman whose name men still used like a warning.

Now Baelor’s betrothed bore that name.

No.

Not merely bore it.

Looked like it.

Daeron had tried not to stare at her too openly in the receiving yard. It would have been rude, and worse, revealing. But gods help him, she had unsettled him before she had even opened her mouth.

There were portraits of Princess Rhaenyra in the Red Keep, though not many displayed where the court could linger over them. A few were old and solemn, painted before the Dance by men who had wanted to flatter a king’s chosen heir. A few were later, crueler things, made after her fall, when painters gave her a hard mouth, greedy eyes, and a body swollen by sin rather than childbearing and grief.

Daeron had seen enough of both to know men painted politics as much as faces.

Lady Rhaenyra looked like neither version exactly.

That was the trouble.

She looked like the woman beneath them.

The proud brow. The silver-gold hair. The mouth that seemed made for command even when sickness had left it bloodless. The dark violet eyes that did not lower quickly enough for comfort. The air of someone who had entered the world already expecting it to move aside and grown furious when it did not.

But there was more.

Viserys.

His grandsire.

Daeron had known Viserys the Second as a boy and young man. Known the sharpness of his face, the line of his nose, the cool pale stare that made men straighten before he spoke. Viserys had not been beautiful the way singers liked their Targaryens. He had been too severe for beauty, too narrow-eyed, too composed, a man who had survived too much and trusted too little.

Lady Rhaenyra had that too.

Not in full.

But in the tilt of her head. In the set of her jaw when contradicted. In the disdain that came over her face when the Faith was mentioned, so quick and instinctive it seemed inherited from bones older than belief.

Daeron had found himself wondering, absurdly and then not absurdly at all, whether his grandsire had left more than laws and ledgers behind him.

Viserys had been many things.

Loyal brother. Captive prince. King for barely a year. Husband to Larra Rogare, though not happily in the end. Father to Aegon, Aemon, Naerys.

But men were men.

Princes most of all.

Had Viserys sired a child no chronicle named? Some daughter or son sent quietly away to Dragonstone? A bastard line tucked among keepers, servants, sworn men, old Valyrian households that had survived by being forgotten? Had that line bred true in secret while the lawful branches of House Targaryen stumbled from war to piety to madness?

It would explain too much.

Not all.

But enough to make Baelor’s tale dangerous because it did not sound entirely false.

Old Dragonstone blood.

Raised among the last keepers of dragonlore.

Named Rhaenyra by those still loyal to the old dead.

Daeron did not yet believe it.

He did not disbelieve it either.

That was worse.

“Grandfather?” Matarys asked.

Daeron blinked.

Baelor was watching him.

Not the boys.

Him.

Damn.

He had drifted too long.

“Forgive me,” Daeron said. “I was thinking.”

“About Lady Rhaenyra?” Valarr asked.

Daeron considered lying.

Chose otherwise.

“Yes.”

Valarr’s eyes narrowed. “Do you trust her?”

“No.”

Baelor’s jaw tightened.

Daeron held up one hand. “I do not distrust her either. Trust is not a door one flings open because dragons arrive in the yard.”

“Then what do you think?” Valarr asked.

Daeron looked toward the shuttered window, where the faint shadow of wings passed over the light.

“I think she is telling a carefully shaped story,” he said. “I think your father is helping her shape it. I think she is frightened, furious, proud, unwell, and far cleverer than is convenient.”

Matarys whispered, “She looks like the old paintings.”

Baelor went very still.

Daeron turned to Matarys.

“What old paintings?”

“The princess,” Matarys said. “The one from the Dance. The one Grandfather said the singers lie about.”

Valarr frowned. “She does look like her.”

Baelor said nothing.

Daeron watched him carefully.

Baelor had known.

Of course he had known.

The question was not whether Baelor saw the resemblance.

The question was what Baelor thought it meant.

And why it made him look, for one dangerous heartbeat, like a man standing too close to the edge of a cliff.

“Names have weight,” Daeron said at last. “Faces too, sometimes. But resemblance is not proof of anything.”

“No,” Baelor said quietly. “It is not.”

Daeron believed him.

Daeron also did not.

A grandfather’s instincts and a king’s suspicions were poor bedfellows. They kicked one another all night.

“Your father is right to say your place has not changed,” Daeron continued, turning back to Valarr. “But he is also right to say your work has.”

Valarr looked wary. “Work?”

Baelor’s gaze sharpened with gratitude and pain.

Daeron did not look at him.

He looked at the boy.

“You are Prince Baelor’s heir,” Daeron said. “One day, if the gods are kind and men are not fools, you will stand very near the throne. If dragons have returned, you cannot afford to be merely offended by them.”

Valarr’s back straightened.

There he was.

Pride could be poison, but it could also be a splint.

“You must learn,” Daeron said. “You must watch. You must understand Lady Rhaenyra’s terms, your father’s choices, the dragons’ place, the Faith’s likely anger, the Blackfyres’ likely desperation, and your own temper.”

Valarr frowned. “My temper?”

“Especially your temper.”

Matarys sniffed. “He has one.”

Valarr glared at him.

Daeron said, “You see?”

Baelor pressed his lips together.

Matarys looked faintly proud of himself.

Valarr did not smile, but some of the murderous hurt had shifted into embarrassment. Better. Embarrassment was easier to survive than heartbreak.

Baelor sat back on his heels beside Matarys.

“Lady Rhaenyra said you should be given work,” he said to Valarr.

Valarr blinked.

“She said that?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Before we came. On Dragonstone.”

Valarr looked as though he wanted to distrust that and was annoyed by wanting to believe it.

“What kind of work?”

“Council work, in time. Not all of it. Enough to learn. Enough that you do not feel matters are being decided around you.”

Valarr’s throat moved.

“And dragons?” Matarys asked.

Baelor’s face softened. “And dragons.”

Valarr looked down. “But not the eggs.”

“No.”

The answer was gentle.

It still hurt.

Valarr’s face tightened.

Baelor did not look away. “The eggs cannot become prizes for disappointment. They cannot be given because someone feels owed. That road leads to knives.”

“Then who gets them?” Valarr asked.

“Not decided today.”

“But decided already, perhaps.”

Baelor’s silence answered enough.

Daeron watched his grandson process it. Valarr was young, but not stupid. He knew, as all Targaryen children knew in their blood and nursery stories, that dragon eggs were not toys. If Baelor and Rhaenyra already had thoughts, they would not be casual ones.

“Girls,” Valarr said suddenly.

Baelor’s eyes changed.

Matarys looked confused. “What?”

Valarr looked toward the door again. “She said boys expect the first bite of every fruit. She meant girls.”

Baelor said nothing.

Daeron felt a slow, unwilling admiration move through him.

The boy had been listening through pain.

Good.

Good.

Valarr looked back at his father. “Is that why you like her?”

Baelor seemed struck by the question.

Then, after a moment, he said, “It is one reason I respect her.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“No.”

“Do you love her?”

Matarys looked between them, still damp-eyed.

Daeron almost intervened.

He did not.

Baelor looked tired suddenly. Tired enough that Daeron was reminded, sharply and unpleasantly, of Jena’s funeral. Baelor standing beside the pyre with Valarr clinging to his cloak and baby Matarys in Myriah’s arms, his face so composed that men had called him strong.

Men were fools.

“Not as I loved your mother,” Baelor said.

Valarr’s eyes flashed.

Baelor continued before the boy could speak.

“And not because your mother is greater or lesser. Love is not a cup of wine poured from one vessel to another. I do not empty myself of Jena to make room for Rhaenyra.”

Matarys whispered, “Then what is it?”

Baelor looked at his younger son.

“It is different,” he said. “It is new. It is not yet what it may become. But I have chosen to stand beside her. She has chosen to stand beside me. That matters.”

Valarr stared down at his hands.

“Did she want to marry you?” he asked.

Daeron’s eyes moved to Baelor at once.

There.

A good question.

A terrible one.

Baelor did not answer quickly.

Good.

A quick answer would have sounded rehearsed.

“Yes,” Baelor said at last. “But not like a girl in a song wants a prince.”

Matarys frowned. “How then?”

“Like someone choosing the safest dangerous road.”

Daeron looked at him.

Baelor met his eyes.

A message there, father to son, Hand to king.

Do not ask too much in front of them.

Not yet.

Daeron inclined his head the smallest amount.

Valarr saw it.

Of course he saw it.

“So there is more.”

“There is always more,” Daeron said.

Valarr turned to him. “Do you know it?”

“Not all.”

That answer startled him.

Good.

Daeron had found, over the years, that children forgave ignorance more readily than false certainty.

“I intend to know enough,” Daeron said. “But your father is right. Some truths are not to be flung about while the whole city is clawing at the gates to learn whether dragons have come back to burn them.”

Matarys looked toward the window.

“Will they?” he asked.

“Burn the city?” Baelor asked.

Matarys nodded.

“No,” Baelor said.

A beat.

“Not unless someone is very stupid.”

Matarys considered this. “People are stupid a lot.”

Daeron sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”

Baelor looked at him, and for one moment they nearly smiled at each other.

Nearly.

Then Valarr said, “Does she hate us?”

Baelor turned back.

“No.”

“She looked at me strangely.”

Baelor’s hand tightened on Matarys’s shoulder. “She has lost people.”

“So have we.”

“Yes.”

That answer again.

Yes.

No defense.

No comparison.

No lesson.

Valarr seemed to hate how little he could do with honesty.

“She looked at Matarys as if she knew him,” he said.

Baelor’s face went still.

Daeron saw it.

So that mattered.

Another secret.

“She has memories that pain her,” Baelor said. “Some of them may make her look at you and see grief before she sees you. That is not your fault.”

“Is she mad?”

Baelor’s jaw tightened.

Daeron expected rebuke.

Instead Baelor said, “She is wounded.”

Valarr looked unconvinced.

Baelor leaned forward. “There are wounds of the body and wounds of the mind. One does not become mad because one bleeds.”

“The candle moved when she was angry,” Matarys whispered.

All three men went silent.

Daeron had seen it too.

He had hoped, foolishly, that perhaps the boys had not.

Valarr turned to his brother. “You saw that?”

“Yes.”

Baelor breathed out slowly.

“Dragons have returned,” he said. “Old things are waking. Some of it will frighten us.”

“It frightened you?” Matarys asked.

Baelor looked toward the window.

“Yes.”

Valarr seemed surprised. “The dragons?”

“Yes.”

“But you brought them.”

“And I am still afraid of them.”

That was well said.

Daeron was proud of him for it.

Men lied too often to boys about fear. They called it courage and wondered why their sons grew into fools.

“Fear is not always a warning to run,” Baelor said. “Sometimes it is a reminder to be reverent.”

Matarys frowned. “Reverent means respectful.”

“Yes.”

“Are dragons holy?”

Baelor glanced at Daeron.

Daeron lifted his brows.

Do not hand me that snake.

Baelor looked back at Matarys. “Ask your grandfather.”

Coward, Daeron thought fondly.

Matarys turned to him. “Are they?”

Daeron considered the question seriously.

Outside, somewhere above the city, the silver dragon cried. The sound came through stone and glass, muffled but unmistakable. Every hair on Daeron’s arms rose.

He had seen bones all his life.

He had thought bones were enough to understand loss.

He had been wrong.

“I do not know,” Daeron said. “But I know men are wiser when they behave as if dragons are not merely animals.”

Matarys nodded solemnly.

Valarr said, “Lady Rhaenyra called them family.”

Baelor’s mouth softened. “To her, they are.”

“Are we?” Valarr asked.

The room stilled.

Baelor did not seem to understand at first.

Then he did.

Daeron watched the words strike his son clean through.

Are we family to her?

Are we family to you still?

Are we in this new thing, or outside it?

Baelor stood and moved to Valarr.

Valarr stiffened but did not retreat.

Baelor crouched before him as he had before Matarys.

“You are my son,” Baelor said. “Before dragons. Before councils. Before crowns. Before any child yet unborn. You are my son.”

Valarr’s mouth trembled.

He looked young.

Finally.

Thank the gods, he looked young.

“And Lady Rhaenyra?” Valarr asked.

“She will not be asked to replace your mother,” Baelor said. “Nor will you be asked to love her before you know her.”

Valarr swallowed.

“But I will ask this: do not make an enemy of her because I hurt you.”

Valarr looked away.

Baelor let him.

“She is not blameless in your pain,” Baelor said. “Neither am I. But the greater share is mine.”

That was good too.

Daeron let himself breathe.

“Is she kind?” Matarys asked.

Baelor smiled faintly.

“No.”

Matarys blinked.

Valarr looked startled despite himself.

Daeron covered his mouth.

Baelor added, “Not in the way you mean.”

“What does that mean?” Matarys asked.

“It means she may insult you while helping you.”

“That is not kind.”

“It can be.”

“It sounds like Uncle Maekar.”

“Uncle Maekar insults people while making things worse.”

Daeron made a warning sound. “Baelor.”

Baelor inclined his head. “Forgive me. Mostly worse.”

Matarys giggled.

Only once.

Then he looked horrified that he had done it.

Valarr stared at his father. “You are strange today.”

Baelor’s face changed.

Not much.

Enough.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

Another dangerous question.

Baelor looked at him for a long moment.

Then he said, “Because I have had a strange day.”

“That is not enough.”

“No,” Baelor agreed.

Valarr waited.

Baelor looked down at his hands.

“I cannot give you all of it,” he said. “Not yet. Perhaps not ever. But I can tell you this much: when I came down that gangplank and saw you both, I was grateful in a way I was not prepared to be.”

Matarys tilted his head. “Because we came?”

“Yes.”

“We had to. Grandfather told us.”

Daeron said, “I did.”

Baelor smiled faintly. “Then I am grateful to your grandfather too.”

Valarr looked at him closely.

Too closely.

“You looked sad.”

“I was.”

“Because of us?”

“Because I love you.”

Valarr looked down fast.

Matarys did not. “That makes you sad?”

“Often,” Daeron said before Baelor could answer.

All three looked at him.

Daeron shrugged slightly. “It is one of love’s less charming habits.”

Matarys considered this with the grave concentration of a boy weighing law. “That seems unfair.”

“It is extremely unfair,” Daeron said.

Valarr’s mouth moved.

Not quite a smile.

Enough.

Baelor reached for him.

Slowly.

Valarr saw.

For one terrible moment, Daeron thought the boy would refuse.

Then Valarr leaned forward.

Not much.

Barely enough.

Baelor closed the distance and pulled him in.

Valarr held himself stiffly for half a breath.

Then he gripped his father’s cloak and made one wounded sound that seemed torn from somewhere below speech.

Baelor’s eyes closed.

Matarys, seeing permission in his brother’s surrender, flung himself back into his father’s arms.

All three stayed like that.

Baelor kneeling awkwardly between their chairs, both boys clinging to him, his face bent into Valarr’s shoulder as if he could hide there.

Daeron looked toward the window.

The city bells had begun to settle into order. Still frantic, but directed now. His commands were moving through the Red Keep. Men were doing as men did: pretending the world had not changed because someone in authority told them where to stand.

Good.

Let them stand.

In here, no one moved.

After a while, Valarr said, muffled, “I am still angry.”

Baelor’s voice was rough. “I know.”

“I may be angry for a long time.”

“I know.”

“You deserve it.”

“Yes.”

Matarys lifted his head. “I am angry too.”

Baelor kissed his hair. “Yes.”

“But less.”

Valarr made a wet, offended sound. “Matarys.”

“What? I am.”

Daeron looked down to hide his smile.

Baelor did not bother hiding his.

“Your honesty is appreciated,” he said.

Matarys nodded, satisfied.

Valarr pulled back enough to look at him. “Does she know about Mother?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

Baelor’s expression softened with something Daeron could not yet name.

“She asked whether I loved her.”

Valarr went still.

“I said yes,” Baelor said. “She asked whether I still did. I said yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She said good.”

Valarr stared.

Matarys frowned. “That is strange.”

“Yes,” Baelor said. “But I understood her.”

Valarr looked down, processing that.

Daeron understood it too, perhaps.

A woman who saw continued love for a dead wife not as insult, but evidence of worth. That was no small thing.

Matarys leaned closer, lowering his voice as if Daeron were not sitting three feet away and as if Valarr were not pretending very poorly to ignore him.

“Father?”

“Yes?”

Matarys’s eyes were still red, but some of the fear had gone out of them. Curiosity had come creeping back in its place, as it always did in children once the first wound stopped bleeding.

“Did you and Lady Rhaenyra kiss?”

Baelor stared.

Daeron blinked.

Valarr made a strangled sound. “Matarys.”

“What?” Matarys whispered, though not quietly enough to hide from anyone. “They are getting married.”

“That does not mean you ask.”

Matarys looked genuinely confused. “But people kiss when they are married. I have seen Father kiss Grandmother on the cheek. And Aunt Alys. And Aunt Aelinor. But that is family kissing. Did you kiss Lady Rhaenyra because she is going to be family too?”

There it was.

Not lewdness.

Not teasing.

Only a child trying to understand where a stranger fit.

Daeron watched Baelor’s face soften through the awkwardness.

“Yes,” Baelor said carefully. “Once.”

Matarys’s eyes widened.

“On the cheek?”

Baelor paused.

Valarr groaned into his hands. “Please stop.”

Matarys ignored him. “Was it on the cheek?”

“No,” Baelor said.

Matarys considered this with grave seriousness.

“Then she is really going to be our family.”

Baelor went very still.

The question had not been about kissing at all.

Not truly.

It had been about proof.

Children believed in signs. A kiss on the cheek meant grandmother. Aunt. Known women. Safe women. A different kiss meant something else, something from stories and weddings and adult promises they only half understood.

To Matarys, this strange Lady Rhaenyra could not be only a dragon woman his father brought home. If his father had kissed her, then perhaps she belonged somewhere. Perhaps the baby did too.

Baelor’s voice was rough when he answered.

“Yes,” he said. “She is.”

Matarys looked down, biting his lip. “And the baby?”

“Yes.”

“Our baby?”

Baelor’s face broke again, softly this time.

“If you want,” he said.

Matarys nodded at once. Then, remembering he was angry, he tried to make the nod smaller.

“I think I want to be a big brother,” he said.

Valarr looked at him.

Matarys rushed on, as if afraid someone might take it back. “Not instead of being angry. I can do both.”

Daeron coughed into his hand.

Baelor’s laugh was almost a sob.

“Yes,” he said. “You can do both.”

“What if the baby is a girl?” Matarys asked.

Baelor’s eyes flickered.

Daeron saw it.

Ah.

So.

Matarys did not.

He was already warming to the idea, hands moving as he spoke. “If it is a girl, she can sit with me at feasts when she is bigger. Not with Valarr because he will be heir and boring.”

“I am sitting here,” Valarr said.

“And boring,” Matarys said.

Daeron looked away.

Baelor was smiling now. Tired. Wounded. But truly smiling.

“She cannot eat sweet cakes until she has teeth,” Matarys added.

“That is true,” Baelor said.

“But I can save them for her.”

“That is kind.”

“And if she is small, I can carry her.”

Valarr muttered, “You can barely carry your own boots.”

“I can carry a baby.”

“Not if it is Father’s baby,” Valarr said, and then stopped, as if surprised he had made the joke.

Baelor looked at him.

Valarr looked away, but the edge of his mouth moved.

Matarys frowned. “Why?”

“Because Father makes large babies,” Valarr said, with the solemn cruelty of an older brother finding new ammunition.

Matarys stared at Baelor in betrayal. “Is that true?”

Baelor closed his eyes.

Daeron laughed.

He could not help it.

The laugh escaped him, small but real.

Baelor looked at him in wounded accusation.

Daeron waved a hand. “Do continue. You are doing very well.”

“I do not feel that I am.”

“No father ever does.”

That quieted the room more gently than command would have.

Then the doors burst open.

Not opened.

Burst.

The guard outside gave a strangled protest that was immediately swallowed by shrieking.

Aerion came first.

Of course he did.

Eleven years old, bright-haired, sharp-faced, and already possessed of the dreadful certainty that every closed door in the Red Keep was merely a challenge issued to him personally. His tunic was half-untucked, his hair windblown, and his eyes were wild with the kind of joy that made adults reach for wine.

“DRAGONS!” Aerion screamed.

Behind him came Daeron, Maekar’s eldest, twelve and trying desperately to look like he had not been running too, though he was panting hard enough to betray himself. Aelor and Aelora followed together, seven years old and pale with excitement, with little Daenora clutching Aelora’s sleeve. Aemon, only four, came after them with his small face solemn and awed, dragging three-year-old Daella by the hand.

Then came a nursemaid, red-faced and horrified, carrying little Rhae against one hip while another maid rushed behind her with Aegon, almost two and absolutely delighted by the volume of everyone else.

Aegon saw Baelor and immediately reached both arms out.

“Ba-ba!”

Baelor froze.

Daeron did not miss it.

No one did.

The room, already strained thin, seemed to catch on that tiny voice.

Baelor looked at the baby, and there it was again — that awful, bright grief, gone almost as soon as it appeared. He looked as if some hand had reached through his ribs and closed around his heart.

Then Aegon squealed, “Dagon!”

The spell broke.

Aerion slapped both hands on the table. “There are dragons outside! Real dragons! One is black and enormous and I think it wants to eat the city.”

Daeron said, “Aerion.”

Aerion turned, saw the king properly, and remembered approximately one-third of his manners.

“Your Grace,” he said, bowing badly and quickly. “There are dragons.”

“Yes,” Daeron said. “We had noticed.”

Aelor bounced on his toes. “Can we see them?”

Aelora said, “We did see them. From the nursery window.”

Daenora whispered, “The black one is scary.”

Aerion grinned. “The black one is the best.”

Daeron, son of Maekar, said with older-brother authority, “The silver one is clearly more important. It landed in the yard.”

“The black one could eat the silver one,” Aerion argued.

“Do not say that near Lady Rhaenyra,” Baelor said.

All the children turned toward him.

Aerion’s eyes lit further, which Daeron had not believed physically possible.

“Is she the dragon lady? Is she really pregnant? Is the baby going to ride a dragon? Did she hatch them? Did you marry her? Father said something very rude and Mother would have slapped him if she were here.”

The room went deathly silent.

Daeron closed his eyes.

Dyanna, gone a year and still apparently policing Maekar through Aerion’s mouth.

Baelor made a sound that might have been pain.

Valarr stared at Aerion with the exhausted horror of a boy who had just spent an hour having his soul rearranged only for his cousin to enter like a thrown brick.

Matarys whispered, “I asked if Father kissed her.”

Aerion whipped toward him. “Did he?”

Baelor said, “No one is asking that again.”

“He did,” Matarys said, glowing with importance.

Aerion gasped.

Aelora looked intrigued.

Aemon said gravely, “Kissing makes babies.”

“No,” Daeron, Baelor, and Valarr said at once.

Aegon clapped.

“Kiss!”

Rhae, who had no idea what was happening and was nearly asleep against the nursemaid’s shoulder, began to whimper.

Daeron looked at the ceiling.

The gods, having returned dragons to the world, had apparently decided subtlety was no longer required.

Baelor crossed to the nursemaid and took Aegon before the woman could decide whether princes were allowed to hold toddlers during political crises. Aegon seized a fistful of Baelor’s collar and pointed toward the window.

“Dagon.”

“Yes,” Baelor said softly. “Dragon.”

Aegon patted his cheek with sticky fingers.

Baelor closed his eyes for one brief moment.

Daeron looked away.

He did not know why the sight wounded him so badly.

No.

That was a lie.

He knew.

Baelor had always loved children. His own, his brothers’, any child foolish enough to trust a prince with a wooden sword and a question. But today there was something desperate beneath it. As if every small hand reaching for him had become proof of something Daeron could not see.

Daeron was worried for his son.

The thought sat heavy in him.

Not politically worried.

Not merely.

A father’s worry.

The kind that did not fit in ravens or council minutes.

Daella tugged on Baelor’s sleeve. “Can the baby hear dragons?”

Baelor looked down at her.

“I think so.”

Daella’s eyes widened. “In the tummy?”

“Yes.”

Aerion looked betrayed. “That baby is already more interesting than all of us.”

Valarr said, “That is the first sensible thing you have said.”

Aerion pointed at him. “You are just angry because you did not get a dragon.”

“I am angry because you entered screaming.”

“I was announcing important news.”

“We knew.”

“You did not know with enthusiasm.”

Daeron said, “Aerion.”

Aerion subsided.

Barely.

Aemon had moved to the window and was trying to peer through the curtains without moving them too much. “Can I see?”

“No,” Baelor said.

Aemon turned, betrayed. “But dragons.”

“Especially because dragons.”

Aelora folded her hands before her, very proper. “May we meet Lady Rhaenyra?”

Baelor paused.

Every adult instinct in the room sharpened.

Rhaegel’s children had not been in the first storm of the meeting. Maekar’s younger children had not seen the vomiting, the accusation, the candle flames leaning.

Good.

Let them keep some innocence for another hour.

“Not yet,” Baelor said. “She is resting.”

“Because of the baby?” Daella asked.

“Yes.”

“Babies make people tired,” Aemon said with the weary wisdom of a four-year-old who had survived younger siblings.

The nursemaid holding Rhae looked as if she might cry from agreement.

Daeron said, “All of you should return to the nursery.”

The collective outrage was immediate.

“No!”

“But the dragons!”

“We only just came!”

“Aegon wants Baelor!”

“I want Baelor,” Aerion said.

Baelor blinked. “You do?”

Aerion flushed. “To ask about dragons.”

“Ah.”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Daeron raised his hand.

The room quieted, though Aerion looked physically pained by the effort.

“You will return to the nursery,” Daeron said. “You will not open windows. You will not climb anything. You will not sneak to the yard. You will not ask servants questions. You will not repeat anything you have heard in this chamber.”

Aerion looked offended by how specifically he had been anticipated.

Daeron continued, “If you obey, I will consider allowing you to view the silver dragon from a safe distance later.”

Every child froze.

Even Aegon seemed to understand that a bargain had entered the room.

Aerion narrowed his eyes. “How safe?”

“Very.”

“That sounds far.”

“It will be far.”

“Can we negotiate?”

“No.”

Aerion looked at Baelor. “Can we negotiate with you?”

Baelor shifted Aegon on his hip. “No.”

Aerion looked disappointed. “You used to be more fun.”

“I used to have fewer dragons in the yard.”

“That should make you more fun.”

Valarr muttered, “He has a point.”

Baelor looked at him.

Valarr looked away, but not before Daeron saw the smallest curve of his mouth.

Good.

Good enough for now.

The nursemaids began gathering the children with the weary competence of women who had endured worse than dragons: royal toddlers before naps.

Aegon clung to Baelor’s collar.

“No.”

Baelor softened. “You must go with your nurse.”

“No. Dagon.”

“The dragon will still be there later.”

Aegon considered this.

“Big?”

“Very big.”

“Ba-ba come?”

Baelor’s face changed again.

Only a little.

But Daeron saw.

“Yes,” Baelor said softly. “I will come.”

Aegon seemed satisfied by that oath and allowed himself to be transferred back to the nursemaid.

Rhae, half-asleep, reached toward Baelor too, because babies were fickle little traitors and had no respect for emotional stability.

Baelor touched her tiny hand with one finger.

She grabbed it.

His face went utterly still.

Daeron’s worry deepened.

Baelor gently freed himself and stepped back.

The children were herded toward the door in a flurry of questions, whispers, and dragon-shaped arm motions. Aerion was last, of course, walking backward.

“If the black one eats someone, I want to know first.”

“Aerion,” Daeron said.

“What? For history.”

The door closed on him.

Silence returned.

Not the same silence as before.

Messier. Warmer. Bruised, but alive.

Valarr sank into a chair and muttered, “I cannot believe he asked if the baby would ride a dragon.”

Matarys looked thoughtful. “Would it?”

Baelor rubbed both hands over his face.

Daeron decided, mercifully, not to laugh this time.

At least not aloud.

Baelor dropped his hands and looked at his father.

For a moment, there was no Hand there.

No prince.

Only Baelor, exhausted past strategy.

“What am I going to do?” he asked, so quietly the boys might pretend they had not heard.

Daeron’s heart clenched.

He went to him.

Not as king.

Not as judge.

As father.

“You will do what fathers do,” Daeron said.

Baelor looked at him.

“You will make mistakes,” Daeron continued. “You will apologize badly. You will be forgiven slowly. You will lose sleep. You will anger everyone. You will be frightened often and admit it rarely. You will love more people than is convenient. And somehow, if the gods are generous and your mother is nearby, the children may survive you.”

Baelor laughed.

Once.

A broken, grateful sound.

Valarr looked at him.

Matarys smiled.

Outside, the silver dragon cried again, and somewhere down the corridor Aerion screamed, “I CAN STILL HEAR IT!”

Daeron closed his eyes.

Baelor whispered, “Gods help us.”

Daeron looked toward the door.

Then toward his grandsons.

Then toward the window, where the shadow of wings passed over red stone.

“Yes,” he said. “They had better.”

They had explained the situation to the rest of the children as easily as they could.

Which meant, in Maekar’s opinion, that they had explained nothing at all and then expected children to behave as if the world had not just split open and spilled dragons into the sky.

Aelor, Aelora, and Daenora had taken it well enough from what he had seen. Aelor wanted to know whether the brown dragon smelled as badly as it looked. Aelora wanted to know whether Lady Rhaenyra had truly spoken to Silverwing in High Valyrian. Daenora had asked if the baby could hear the dragons from inside Lady Rhaenyra’s belly, and when told perhaps, had looked as if this made perfect sense.

Valarr and Matarys seemed better.

Not well.

Better.

There was a difference, and Maekar knew it better than most.

Grief did not leave a man because he had stopped making noise. Sometimes silence meant the blade had simply gone deeper.

But Valarr had been seen walking with his father afterward, rigid and pale but beside him. Matarys had apparently asked a series of questions so pure in their innocence and so devastating in their effect that Daeron had nearly laughed himself sick, which Maekar would have enjoyed hearing under any other circumstances.

As for Maekar’s own children—

Gods fuck him sideways, apparently.

Because no matter what he said, threatened, ordered, explained, or hissed through his teeth in the nursery like a desperate man trying to halt a siege with a spoon, he could not calm them down by the time the luncheon hour arrived.

Not Aerion, certainly.

Aerion had been born with flame where sense ought to have gone. Eleven years old and already acting as if every rule in the Red Keep had been written by a personal enemy. He had seen three dragons and decided, within the hour, that life before this moment had been intolerably dull and that all adults were cowards for not sharing his enthusiasm.

Daeron, his eldest, was trying to appear above it. At twelve, he had begun wearing solemnity like a borrowed cloak, one he kept tripping over. He corrected Aerion often, which only made Aerion louder.

Aemon, four and grave-eyed, kept asking whether dragons prayed.

Daella, three, wanted to know if Lady Rhaenyra had pretty hair.

Aegon, not yet two, wanted to be carried by anyone who looked too busy to carry him.

Rhae, barely a year, wanted whatever Aegon had and then immediately did not want it once given.

Dyanna would have laughed.

The thought came so suddenly that Maekar had to stop in the corridor and grip the stone wall until it passed.

Dyanna would have laughed until she leaned against him, one hand pressed to her mouth, eyes bright. She would have known what to do with them. Not because she was soft. Dyanna had not been soft, not in the way fools meant the word. She had been clever and dry and patient until patience became stupidity, at which point she became sharper than any man in the room and twice as useful.

She would have caught Aerion by the chin and told him that if he wished to be eaten by a dragon, he might at least wait until after luncheon, as the kitchens had already gone to trouble.

She would have smoothed Daeron’s hair and told him not to grow old before his voice finished changing.

She would have kissed Aemon’s solemn brow and told him perhaps dragons did pray, but likely only for more sheep.

She would have distracted Daella with ribbons.

She would have taken Aegon from Maekar before he dropped him, not because Maekar would have dropped him, but because she liked telling him he looked terrified whenever handed anything smaller than a shield.

She would have held Rhae on one hip and still somehow known which child had stolen honey from the tray.

Dyanna would have known.

Dyanna was dead.

And now Baelor was moving on.

The thought came with such ugly force that Maekar nearly missed the doorway to the private dining chamber.

Moving on.

He hated the phrase. Hated the smoothness of it. As if grief were a road and one merely walked far enough to leave the dead behind. As if Jena Dondarrion were a room Baelor had finally exited. As if Dyanna were a cloak Maekar might someday hang up properly and stop looking for in the dark.

Baelor had lost Jena years ago. Maekar knew that. He was not a fool. He had watched his brother grieve. Watched him refuse match after match with courtesy so perfect it became a wall. Watched him pour himself into Valarr and Matarys, into the realm, into the Hand’s work, into being good because if he were good enough perhaps no one would notice the hollow place beside him.

Maekar had understood that.

Too much.

After Dyanna died, Baelor’s grief had felt like company.

Not spoken company. Gods forbid. They were brothers, not septas weeping into one another’s sleeves. But it had been there. A quiet fact between them. Baelor had lost his wife. Maekar had lost his. There were things no man needed to say because another man already knew the shape of them.

Now Baelor had arrived with a pregnant betrothed and three dragons.

And Maekar, who had shouted because shouting was easier than begging, had realized something shameful.

He had not only been angry for Valarr and Matarys.

He had been angry for himself.

Baelor moving forward meant Maekar would one day be expected to move too.

Baelor standing beside Lady Rhaenyra meant Maekar had been left alone in the graveyard.

The knowledge sat in him like spoiled meat.

He hated himself for it.

Then he hated Baelor because that was simpler.

The dining chamber had been chosen carefully. Not the great hall, gods no. The realm was already foaming at the mouth. Let courtiers gnaw on rumor for a few more hours before being fed ceremony. This chamber was large enough for the royal family and close enough to the inner rooms to be defended, but private enough that if Aerion said something treasonous or stupid, only blood relations would hear it.

A low mercy.

The children were already seated when Maekar entered.

No, not seated.

Contained.

Barely.

Aelora and Daenora had taken chairs beside one another and were whispering with the intensity of conspirators. Daella had climbed onto her chair on her knees until Aelinor gently corrected her. Aemon sat very straight beside Aegon’s nurse, watching the shutters as if expecting a dragon to put one eye through them. Aegon was chewing on the end of a linen napkin with the focus of a maester translating Valyrian prophecy. Rhae was asleep in her nurse’s arms, one fist curled beneath her chin.

Aerion leaned across the table toward Aelor.

“The black one is clearly the strongest.”

“You do not know that,” Aelor said.

“It is black.”

“That is not an argument.”

“It is when the black thing is enormous and circling like it wants to eat the sun.”

Daeron, Maekar’s eldest, sighed with enormous suffering. “You are going to say that in front of Lady Rhaenyra and get us all killed.”

“I am not afraid of her.”

“You should be. Father is.”

Maekar stopped behind his chair. “I am what?”

All of his children looked at him.

Aerion grinned.

Daeron looked immediately guilty.

Aemon said, solemnly, “Afraid.”

“I know the word,” Maekar said.

Aemon nodded as if relieved.

Myriah, already seated beside Daeron at the high end of the table, hid her smile behind a cup. Not well enough.

The king looked absurdly composed for a man who had seen three dragons return before noon and agreed to a Valyrian wedding by luncheon.

Too composed.

Suspiciously composed.

Maekar narrowed his eyes at him.

Daeron had that look. That quiet, contained brightness he got around babies, peace treaties, and complicated problems he believed he could solve before they exploded.

Gods help them.

The man was pleased.

Not only pleased, perhaps. Not stupidly pleased. The king still knew the dangers. Daeron always knew the dangers. He had built his reign around knowing danger before it learned to speak.

But beneath all the caution, all the calculation, all the grim understanding that the Faith would need managing and the court would need muzzling and the Blackfyres would shit themselves in exile, Daeron was excited.

Dragons had returned.

A wedding was to be planned.

A child was coming.

Another grandchild.

Maekar could see him trying not to look delighted by that part in particular.

He was failing.

Miserably.

His father was already planning the wedding in his head. Maekar knew it. He could see it in the way Daeron’s fingers tapped once against the stem of his cup, the way his gaze flicked toward Myriah and then toward the empty place reserved for Baelor. A week, perhaps. No more. Enough time to prepare robes, witnesses, words, guards, public explanation, private rite, feast, proclamation, and a dozen political lies wrapped so tightly in ceremony that no one dared pull at the thread.

Daeron Targaryen, Second of His Name, king of the Seven Kingdoms, was attempting not to look eager for a baby.

Maekar resented him on principle.

“I am not afraid of Lady Rhaenyra,” Maekar said, taking his seat.

Myriah looked at him. “You should consider becoming afraid of saying untrue things in front of your mother.”

Aerion snorted.

Maekar pointed at him. “You. Silence.”

Aerion pointed back. “You. Fear.”

“Aerion.”

“What? We are all thinking it.”

“We are all often thinking things we are too intelligent to say.”

Aerion’s eyes flicked to Aegon, who had now succeeded in stuffing most of the napkin into his mouth.

“Not all of us.”

Maekar removed the napkin from Aegon’s mouth.

Aegon objected loudly.

“Aegon,” Maekar said.

Aemon leaned over. “Egg wants it.”

Maekar closed his eyes.

“Aegon,” he corrected.

“Egg,” Aemon said, with the absolute serenity of a four-year-old who believed pronunciation was a matter of personal law.

Aegon clapped wet hands. “Egg!”

Rhae woke at the noise and, with the treachery of infants, immediately mumbled something that sounded very much like “Eh.”

Aerys, who sat beside Aelinor with a book he had been forbidden to open placed facedown beside his plate, looked thoughtful. “It appears the nickname has support.”

“It appears everyone in this family has chosen death,” Maekar said.

Rhaegel brightened. “A family activity.”

Alys patted his hand. “No, dear.”

That was enough of the nickname nonsense. Maekar decided then and there that if any other person repeated it, he would leap from the nearest balcony and leave the rest of them to raise themselves.

Then the door opened.

The room changed.

Baelor entered first, because of course he did. The noble shield. The perfect son. The Hand who could make scandal look like logistics if he stood straight enough.

Maekar wanted to hate him.

Could not.

That was half the trouble.

Baelor looked better than he had in the council chamber, but only because he had rearranged the damage into something presentable. His face was calm. His clothes immaculate. His eyes still betrayed him when they moved over the children.

Aegon shouted, “Ba-ba!”

Baelor’s face nearly broke again.

Maekar saw it.

So did Daeron.

So did Myriah.

Baelor bowed his head a fraction, swallowing whatever had risen in him, and stepped aside.

Lady Rhaenyra entered.

The little girls went silent.

All of them.

Even Daella, who had been whispering to Aemon about whether dragons ate bad children or only bad adults, went still as a doll.

Maekar could not blame them.

Lady Rhaenyra looked better.

That was the first thing he noticed.

Not well. Not truly. No one who had vomited in a council chamber and nearly fainted half an hour prior could be called well with a straight face. But Myriah and the women had done something useful with her. The old black-and-red gown was gone, replaced by a looser dress of deep red wool soft enough to move with her body, cut high beneath the breasts and falling in generous folds over the great curve of her belly. Someone had found black silk for the sleeves and collar, and a girdle of worked gold rested loosely above the swell, not binding, only marking shape.

Her hair had been brushed and braided loosely back from her face, though strands had already escaped around her temples. Her color had improved. Her eyes were clearer. She still looked too warm, one hand occasionally touching the side of her neck as if heat gathered there beneath the skin, but she no longer looked seconds from collapsing out of spite.

She looked young.

That was the second thing Maekar noticed.

Younger, somehow, when dressed properly. Younger without the old gown straining like armor. Younger beside Baelor, whose calm made men forget he was not yet old himself.

Pregnant, irritated, sick Rhaenyra.

Gods help them.

Aerion was going to get them all killed.

Lady Rhaenyra paused just inside the room.

Her eyes moved over the table.

Not quickly.

Not rudely.

A precise inventory.

King. Queen. Princes. Wives. Children. Doors. Windows. Servants. Distance to Baelor. Distance to Myriah. Distance to the little ones. Possible threats. Possible allies. Possible exits.

Maekar knew the look because he had worn it in battlefields and hostile halls.

That was not courtly nerves.

That was survival.

Baelor murmured something to her too low to hear.

She gave him a look.

Then she stepped forward.

Daeron rose first, so everyone else had to follow.

“Lady Rhaenyra,” the king said.

“Your Grace.” She inclined her head, exactly enough again.

Daeron gestured to the table. “You have met most of us badly. Perhaps luncheon will improve matters.”

“I have low expectations.”

Myriah said, “Wise.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes moved to her and softened by half a degree. “Your Grace.”

Then she looked at the children.

There was the smallest pause.

Baelor saw it. Of course he did. His hand shifted behind her back, not touching. Ready.

Rhaenyra noticed that too and seemed offended by the readiness.

“This is Prince Aerys and Princess Aelinor,” Baelor said, beginning carefully. “Prince Rhaegel and Princess Alys. Their children, Aelor, Aelora, and Daenora.”

Rhaenyra looked to each child as they were named.

Aelor tried to bow and nearly struck the table with his shoulder.

Aelora performed a perfect curtsy despite wearing a luncheon dress and standing beside a chair.

Daenora hid behind her sister’s sleeve, peeking out with wide violet eyes.

Baelor continued, “Prince Maekar you know.”

“Unfortunately,” Rhaenyra said.

Maekar snorted before he could stop himself.

Baelor’s mouth twitched. “His children: Daeron, Aerion, Aemon, Daella, Aegon, and Rhae.”

Rhaenyra’s gaze flicked, just once, to Aegon.

Then to Rhae.

Her expression shifted.

Not much.

Enough that Maekar’s guard rose.

For a moment her eyes seemed very far away.

Baelor said quietly, “Rhaenyra.”

She blinked.

The faraway thing vanished.

“Forgive me,” she said, though it sounded like the words had been dragged out with tongs.

No one asked why.

Good.

Aelora whispered, “She looks like the old princess.”

Daenora whispered back, “She looks better.”

Daella whispered, not at all quietly, “Her hair is prettier than mine.”

Lady Rhaenyra’s gaze dropped to the girls.

Maekar braced himself.

She smiled.

Not warmly, exactly. Lady Rhaenyra did not seem built for warmth in the simple way. But the expression was small, surprised, and almost helpless before she tucked it away.

“Yours has more curl,” she said to Daella.

Daella’s entire face lit.

Just like that.

Lost.

Aelora sat straighter.

Daenora touched her own hair as if wondering whether it had failed her.

Maekar looked at Alys.

Alys looked delighted.

Myriah looked as if she had just watched a battle won with a hairpin.

Baelor helped Rhaenyra to her chair beside him, though she gave him a glare that said she would accept the assistance but not forgive the implication. He pulled the chair out. She lowered herself carefully, one hand braced beneath her belly, the other gripping the table for a heartbeat when the child moved.

Baelor leaned down. “Pain?”

“No.”

“Dizziness?”

“No.”

“Nausea?”

“Only spiritually.”

Aerion whispered, “What does that mean?”

Daeron, Maekar’s son, whispered, “It means be quiet.”

Lady Rhaenyra heard both and looked at them.

Aerion grinned.

Maekar’s soul left his body.

“You are the loud one,” Lady Rhaenyra said.

Aerion’s grin widened. “Yes.”

“Aerion,” Maekar warned.

Lady Rhaenyra tilted her head. “At least you know.”

“Father says I was born screaming.”

“I believe him.”

“Were you?”

The table went very still.

Baelor closed his eyes.

Maekar began mentally selecting funeral arrangements.

Lady Rhaenyra considered the question with complete seriousness.

“I do not remember.”

Aerion frowned, disappointed by the lack of drama.

Then Aemon said, “Babies scream because being born is rude.”

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then Rhaegel laughed.

Alys followed.

Aerys looked as if he wished to write it down and was remembering, perhaps from fear of his wife, that this was forbidden.

Daeron, the king, smiled into his cup.

Lady Rhaenyra stared at Aemon.

Then she laughed.

Only once.

A short, startled sound.

Aemon looked pleased in the solemn way of a child who had accidentally performed well.

Daella leaned forward. “Do you have a dragon?”

Lady Rhaenyra’s smile faded into something quieter. “Yes.”

“The silver one?”

“Yes.”

“Can I touch her?”

“No,” half the table said at once.

Daella frowned. “I asked Lady Rhaenyra.”

Lady Rhaenyra’s mouth twitched.

Maekar looked at his daughter with horror and reluctant pride.

“She is very old,” Rhaenyra said. “And very tired. She does not like hands she does not know.”

Daella considered this. “Can she smell me first?”

“Perhaps one day.”

Daella nodded, satisfied. “I will wash.”

“Wise,” Rhaenyra said.

Aelora leaned forward. “Do you truly speak High Valyrian?”

“Yes.”

“Can you teach us?”

Rhaenyra looked at Baelor.

Baelor looked back, expression carefully innocent.

“No,” Rhaenyra said.

Aelora’s face fell.

“Not today,” Rhaenyra amended.

Aelora recovered instantly.

Daenora whispered, “I want to speak to dragons.”

Aelor said, “I want to ride one.”

Daella said, “I want hair like Lady Rhaenyra.”

Aerion said, “I want the black one.”

The entire table turned on him.

“What?” Aerion asked.

Maekar said, “No.”

“I did not ask you.”

“No,” Lady Rhaenyra said.

Aerion looked at her.

For perhaps the first time in his short, alarming life, he seemed to reconsider.

“The Cannibal,” Rhaenyra said, voice calm, “does not want you.”

Aerion’s expression became a tragedy.

Aerys murmured, “That is possibly the safest rejection he will ever receive.”

Maekar glared at him.

Aerys looked down at his plate.

Not quickly enough.

Myriah, meanwhile, had begun behaving dangerously like a woman attempting to soften a battlefield with conversation.

“Lady Rhaenyra,” she said, “I had the kitchens send charred onions, lemons, honeyed bread, plain broth, salted fish, stewed plums, and plum jam. Separately.”

Rhaenyra’s entire posture changed.

It was subtle.

But Maekar saw it.

So did every woman at the table.

Pregnancy hunger was its own form of war.

“Separately,” Rhaenyra repeated.

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“There may have been confusion regarding the onions and jam.”

Rhaenyra looked intrigued.

Baelor looked as if he had lived through this once already and aged from it.

Daeron, damn him, looked delighted.

The first course came.

It was less luncheon than hostage negotiation.

Rhaenyra ate half a lemon with salt, two bites of bread, one spoonful of broth, then stared at the charred onions with plum jam as if receiving a religious revelation.

Aerion watched her with fascination.

“That looks disgusting.”

Rhaenyra took a bite.

Closed her eyes.

Breathed.

The room waited.

“Good,” she said.

Aerion immediately reached for the dish.

Maekar slapped his hand away.

“Ow.”

“You called it disgusting.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You are not stealing food from a pregnant woman.”

Aerion looked at Rhaenyra. “May I taste it?”

Rhaenyra considered him.

“No.”

Aerion looked wounded. “Why?”

“Because I want it.”

That answer appeared to impress him more than any lesson about courtesy.

Aelora whispered to Daenora, “She says no very well.”

Daenora nodded. “I want to say no like that.”

Alys looked at Rhaegel. “We are doomed.”

Rhaegel looked proud. “They have taste.”

Daella, who had been staring at Rhaenyra’s sleeves, tugged on Maekar’s cuff. “Father, can I have a red dress?”

“No.”

“A black one?”

“No.”

“A dragon?”

“No.”

“You say no badly.”

Rhaenyra gave a soft snort.

Maekar pointed at her with his knife. “Do not encourage her.”

Rhaenyra looked at the knife.

Then at him.

Maekar lowered it.

He heard Aerys whisper, “Interesting.”

“I heard that,” Maekar said.

“I said interesting.”

“You meant coward.”

“I would never.”

“You are breathing in the tone again.”

Aerys sighed. “This family has become hostile to respiration.”

At the head of the table, Daeron had begun asking Baelor quiet questions about the wedding as though he were not practically vibrating with suppressed interest.

“A week,” the king said.

Baelor glanced at Rhaenyra.

Rhaenyra was eating onions and jam and pretending not to listen.

“A week may be too soon,” Baelor said.

“A week is generous,” Daeron replied. “The city has seen dragons. Every house in the realm will know within days. If we wait longer than necessary, the Faith will organize its outrage, the court will embroider the pregnancy into six different scandals, and some fool will ask publicly whether the child is legitimate.”

Rhaenyra’s fork stopped.

Baelor’s face went cold.

Daeron continued mildly, “And then I will be forced to have that fool removed before your betrothed teaches Silverwing new habits.”

Rhaenyra resumed eating.

“A week,” she said.

Baelor looked at her. “You need rest.”

“I need legitimacy.”

Myriah said, “You need both.”

Rhaenyra looked at her.

Myriah looked back.

Some silent conversation passed between them. Maekar did not know what it was, but he knew better than to walk through it.

Women built roads under words.

Men usually found them by falling into holes.

“How many people?” Rhaenyra asked.

Daeron folded his hands. “Whatever houses can make it with proper speed and discretion.”

“Which is?”

“I am seeing.”

“You want them to see the dragons.”

His father nodded. “Yes. I want them to see House Targaryen’s glory. I will admit that plainly.”

Rhaenyra studied him.

“At least you can say it.”

“I find honesty useful when everyone in the room already knows the truth.”

“An unusual habit for a king.”

“I am old enough to afford a few unusual habits.”

Maekar snorted.

Daeron looked at him. “You disagree?”

“I think you are enjoying this more than you should.”

“I am not enjoying the danger.”

“No,” Maekar said. “Only the dragons, wedding, baby, and chance to make the Faith swallow its teeth.”

Aerys said, “That does sound enjoyable when listed that way.”

Aelinor looked at him.

Aerys lowered his spoon. “Politically.”

Rhaenyra set down her fork.

That should have been warning enough.

It was not.

“If the realm is to see House Targaryen’s glory,” she said, “then they should see it properly.”

Baelor turned his head slightly.

Maekar saw his brother realize the danger half a breath too late.

Daeron, poor delighted fool, leaned forward. “Properly?”

Rhaenyra’s face remained calm.

Too calm.

“Yes,” she said. “Not a frightened little ceremony hidden behind locked doors because the Faith may whimper. A wedding.”

Myriah’s eyes sharpened.

Baelor said, “Rhaenyra.”

She ignored him.

“A true wedding,” Rhaenyra continued, looking at the king. “If your realm is to accept me as Baelor’s wife and the mother of his child, then the realm will not see me smuggled into legitimacy like a servant girl in trouble. They will see silk. Fire. Banners. Music. Dragons. They will see their prince choose me in daylight.”

The table went very still.

Maekar, against all reason, felt something like admiration.

The woman had smelled weakness.

Not Daeron’s weakness.

His want.

His hunger to see dragons restored, House Targaryen blazing again, every lord in Westeros forced to swallow the truth that the old power had returned under his reign.

And Rhaenyra had seized it with both hands.

Baelor looked at her as if he wanted to stop her and kiss her and throw himself into the sea.