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Prince Aegon hated the colour gold.
It was not a hatred he ever spoke of, nor one that anyone would have noticed had they been watching him closely. He did not flinch from golden banners or refuse to wear gold embroidery when the court demanded it, for the Red Keep gleamed with enough gold to make avoidance impossible, and Aegon had long ago learned that survival often meant pretending.
Even so, there were moments when a flash of gold thread caught the light at the wrong angle, or sunlight struck polished armour in a crowded courtyard, and suddenly he was no longer standing in King’s Landing.
He was back on Dragonstone.
Back beneath a grey sky.
Back watching Sunfyre feed.
Two years had passed since the war ended. Two years since his mother’s death. The memory remained as sharp as broken glass, no matter how often lords spoke of peace, septons preached forgiveness, and maesters insisted time made wounds easier to bear.
Aegon suspected none of them had ever watched a dragon devour their mother.
The memory never truly faded. It merely waited. A patch of gold silk. A dragon worked into a tapestry. A story overheard in a corridor. The smallest things could drag him backwards through time before he even realised what had happened.
The Iron Throne glittered beneath the morning light.
Aegon hated that too.
The throne room was already crowded when he arrived. Lords stood beneath towering columns, petitioners waited nervously along the walls, and gold cloaks guarded the doors whilst a herald announced another dispute over land, inheritance, or taxes.
The business of a kingdom never seemed to end.
Above them all sat King Aegon.
The first thing people noticed was the scar. The second was the limp. The third was the silence.
Dragonfire had marked him badly. The left side of his body bore the worst of it, hidden beneath a black leather glove and heavy sleeves embroidered with golden dragons. His left leg dragged slightly whenever he walked, and a black crutch carved in the shape of a dragon rested beside the throne within easy reach.
Even seated, he looked dangerous.
Not because he shouted.
Not because he threatened.
The king rarely did either.
There was simply something about him that made men choose their words carefully.
Aegon had realised that slowly.
At first, all he saw was the man who had won. The man whose dragon had survived Dragonstone. The man who sat the Iron Throne whilst what remained of his mother rested inside Sunfyre.
That should have been enough.
Hatred would have been simpler if it had been enough.
Instead, he found himself confronted by reality.
King Aegon was not the monster of stories, nor was he the hero his supporters preferred to imagine. He was simply a man who looked as though the war had taken pieces of him and never bothered returning them.
Black velvet draped his shoulders. Gold dragons decorated his sleeves and collar.
Sunfyre’s colours.
Sunfyre’s memory.
The dead dragon followed him everywhere.
Aegon wore the colours too.
Black velvet trimmed with gold thread. The same colours that appeared on banners, cloaks, and the king himself.
At first, he had despised that.
The tailors in King’s Landing had quietly replaced his wardrobe piece by piece until the blacks and reds of Dragonstone disappeared beneath black and gold.
Nobody had asked what he thought of the change.
Perhaps because the answer did not matter.
Two years later, he could scarcely remember the last doublet sewn in his mother’s colours.
Sometimes he caught sight of himself reflected in polished armour and felt a strange sense of dislocation.
The silver hair remained.
The purple eyes remained.
Yet the boy staring back no longer looked like Prince Aegon of Dragonstone.
He looked like the king’s heir.
Some days it felt as though King’s Landing was slowly swallowing everything his parents had left behind.
Their banners.
Their court.
Their colours.
Even him.
Beside the throne stood Princess Jaehaera.
Not below it amongst ladies and attendants, but upon the dais itself.
Aegon had once assumed the arrangement was temporary.
Two years later, he knew better.
Whenever the court sat, Jaehaera appeared.
Whenever Jaehaera appeared, the king seemed fractionally less likely to terrify the realm.
The princess wore black and gold as well, a dark gown embroidered with dragons at the cuffs and collar. The colours should have looked severe upon a girl of ten.
Instead, they suited her.
Perhaps because she had become severe.
There was a stillness about Jaehaera that often reminded him of the king. She watched more than she spoke, listened more than she answered, and possessed the unnerving habit of noticing things most people missed.
Most children their age would have been miserable after an hour of court.
Perhaps they should have been too.
Yet neither of them seemed capable of behaving like ordinary children anymore.
Whilst other boys and girls fidgeted, whispered, or searched for excuses to escape, Jaehaera simply watched.
She listened.
She remembered.
And far more often than people realised, she understood.
More than one courtier had made the mistake of assuming she was not paying attention, only to discover the princess remembered every careless word several days later.
She rarely smiled.
When she did, it was seldom for the reasons people expected.
A lord stumbling over his own flattery.
A councillor realising, he had contradicted himself.
A knight discovering too late that his elaborate story had already been disproven.
Those smiles never lasted long.
Brief.
Sharp.
Almost mischievous.
The sort of expression that belonged on the face of a scheming court lady rather than a ten-year-old girl.
Then she would ask whether dragons preferred one sheep or two for supper, and the illusion vanished entirely.
Aegon stood opposite her on the other side of the throne.
The position had become so familiar that he scarcely questioned it anymore.
The king sat above them.
Jaehaera occupied her place beside him.
Aegon stood opposite.
Together, they formed a picture the court seemed to find reassuring.
A king.
A princess.
An heir.
A future.
Sometimes Aegon wondered if anyone else noticed they were simply what remained.