Chapter Text
You’re not meant to rule.
No, you’re meant to be a cautionary tale—to be the example, like your uncle before you. You’re the uncontrolled brightness of a pyre left to burn itself out. You’re contained only by altering everything around you—clearing the brush, stacking the rocks, arranging the sticks, and keeping far away from the inciting spark. The consuming blaze.
You’re overlooked, overseen, and underestimated—the Realm’s Delight, the Rogue Princess, the only thing worse than a second son. A firstborn daughter.
You don’t learn to covet your happiness until you’re eight name-days old—until your lady mother struggles beneath the profound weight of yet another pregnancy. Yet another effort by your father to procure himself his precious heir—a boy, something you’ll never be despite how hard you try. You sword fight with your uncle and dragon ride with prodigious talent—three dragonriders in all the kingdoms, all the realm, and you are one of them at the historical age of seven.
You try, cut-cheeked and wide-eyed to salvage that last piece of his affection, that place in his heart he saves for the children who never come to pass—boys and girls both that seem to devour pieces of your mother with each perceived failure. She seems less—less happy, less willing to stop, less alive.
She’d told you once when you’d been fresh from dragon flight, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, that you must be careful—must mind the danger of the world, and keep yourself safe. If not for you—as she understood you thought yourself nigh invincible, a notion often encouraged by your twin flame of an uncle—no, you must be careful for her, as you were a piece of her very soul cut free from her person, walking around with edges of her heart stitched into the very fabric of your being.
“So, please, my precious dragonheart,” she murmured in straining high Valyrian, her fingers warmer than warm against your cheek, “Can I trust you with my heart?”
Your mother, the most precious thing in the world to you, had nothing to fear because you would protect her heart—you were her dragonheart, and you’d do everything in your power to keep hers safe. You’d become the best sword fighter in the kingdom, you’d ride your Golden Lady with kinship and skill, you’d…you’d…
You’d do nothing as she dies.
It was a bright afternoon, the howling crowd resounding and absolute, edging into the black spots in your vision as you stared at glinting armor for too long—your uncle resplendent in his black metal, his ancestral sword, his swagger, and showmanship. Your twin-flame burned brightest for a crowd.
Beside you sat the comeliest girl in all seven kingdoms, Alicent Hightower—with ember spun hair, and eyes the brown of spilled honey, or the most wayward of woods. Deep eyes, your uncle agreed when you waxed poetic about your closest companion, the types of eyes you could fill with your secrets, knowing full well they would be safe upon your return. A sanctuary masquerading as a gaze.
Alicent had been your mother’s solution to your fearless—yet solitary—wanderings of the city, your restless desire to move, and see, and experience. She was one year your senior—an impressive seven name days, when you first met—and cautious of most everything. A dinner chime was known to make your lady squeak—she keeps your small self still long enough to impart caution, or at least lessen the danger. You feel she might be getting some compensation from your sworn protector—Ser Westerling—for keeping you more readily within his sights.
You’d somehow slipped from your chambers in an illusion of a gown—brilliant and Arryn blue, laced in gold and black from your wrists to the underside of your chin, but only if one looks close enough, they’d see the cut made near to your hips that allows you to reach the weighted practice sword belted to your waist and the riding leathers beneath. You’d fought your father tooth and talon to wear pants, that you weren’t a lady, you were a warrior like Visenya before you. He’d laughed, loud and boisterous, and still told you no—but the specially tailored dresses appeared in your chamber only a fortnight later.
You’d thought it was your uncle’s doing, but the knowing glint in your mother’s eye had said otherwise.
“When I’m knighted,” you whisper, “I’ll ask for your favor in every tourney I joust in. I’ll never lose.” Confident as any royal child can be at eight name days; your uncle still doesn’t trust you with live steel during training, but he’s stopping having to ask you not to run with your practice sword unsheathed.
”Am I to be your good luck?” Alicent asks, cheeks going warm in the loveliest way.
“Aye,” you say, trying your best to be gruff as a Northmen, cheeks puffing out and gaze too serious. “And then I’ll crown you the queen of love and beauty.” Alicent is pink as rose petals and twice as lovely, her hand reaching out carefully to clasp your own hand and bring it forth to her lap. You like her best when she reaches out; when she isn’t afraid that her touch might be rejected.
“Of course,” you continue, prideful and arrogant, “I will have to crown mine own mother occasionally.”
“Naturally,” Alicent agrees, smiling at you without looking at you. “The Queen deserves all accolades you might bestow, as you are much the handful.” Her wit surprises you, not because she’s witless, no, but because she often keeps her japes to herself for fear of offending—a trait that was surely nurtured by her lord father, Ser Otto Hightower.
As the lances begin to tilt, and the crowd draws to a fever pitch, you’ll always remember the sour drop in your stomach—the resounding silence that swallowed the cacophony, that made your ears pop and your jaw ache. You hadn’t known it, hadn’t been able to put your finger on it until you see someone whispering into your father’s ear, see the pale wash of his face before he hastily made his way back into the keep.
“Rhaenyra?” Alicent asks, your name a pinprick of noise, a disturbance in the warble of your world. Her fingers are tight around yours, her nails little crescents pressing into your palm as she tries to keep you with her. You wonder, is her world wrong too? Has her axis tilted so viciously that she can’t keep her feet? Is that why she always seems so afraid? How can you fight a world tipped elsewise with a sword and dragon?
“Something’s wrong,” you exhale the words in a single breath, feeling Syrax expand and growl, her wings pressing against the inside of your ribs, her smoldering heat filling your dragon’s heart. You’re one, you and your Golden Lady—one soul split into two bodies, one small and one magnificent. Your dragon hatched for you, warm in your cradle, there was no other remnant of a previous rider’s presence in the bond—and somehow, someway, you knew she’d join you in the Fourteen Flames. That she wouldn’t stay to mourn your loss.
You were one, you and your Golden Lady.
“Wrong? Rhaenyra, what’s wrong?” Alicent worries, she always has and she always will, but it’s small and pale in comparison to the tha-twump of Syrax’s wings, the rumble in the billow of her chest, your she-dragon alive and well in your blood, in your heart. You give Alicent a small smile, eyes far away and slip free from the view box with just enough time to see your uncle topple from his horse—graceless in a way you aren’t used to from him. He moves, he laughs, and then the half-lit halls of the keep are all you see.
It falls to the eldest to set their parent’s pyre—you remember your uncle telling you how your father had set the pyres by hand because Balerion had been too large, and his dragon flame too hot—and then Balerion had died, and your father had set his father’s pyre by hand for there was no other option.
As the eldest, you’ll set your mother’s pyre. Syrax sat upon the hill, her rumble near a purr to comfort you, her warmth in your chest a reminder that she’s always there. A comfort as you stare at the wrapped shroud that was your mother—you try not to focus on the almost concave give of her stomach, or just how small she seems all alone up there.
A sharp rasping cry makes you look down, at the babe in your arms. Eyes squeezed shut, with hair more blonde than white-gold, you hold him just that much closer—not tighter because he’s so small and you’re afraid you might hurt him. Baelon quiets only for you, the warmth of your body, the soft lullaby you had sung—always off-key—to your mother’s stomach for months before his birth.
A hand rests on your shoulder, and you force back the tears threatening to spill down your cheeks—no, not today. You are your mother’s dragonheart, and the protection she once begged you to give yourself, must surely extend to the wriggling bundle of limbs tucking closer to your chest. A small warm hand somehow finds its way into the collar of your shirt, scratching soft newborn nails against your skin.
“ Dracarys .” You say, you feel the churning of fire at the back of your throat as Syrax takes two massive steps forward on her foreclaws. You feel the slightest tightening of your uncle’s hands on your shoulder as your dragon bellows a wave of flame over the pyre—your mother’s form catching a blaze much quicker than all the siblings you buried before.
Baelon cries, and you wish you could cry with him, you wish you could split your chest in halves and give your still-beating heart away so that you might be given your mother back.
A fair trade, after all—a heart for a heart.
.
You never turn away from the blaze.
Not when it gets slightly out of control, not as it crawls closer as it grows smaller, not as your eyes threaten to crack as all the moisture is whicked from them by the immense heat.
You stay as everyone else leaves—including your father, especially your father. Your uncle is the last to depart, and you think it a kindness on his part and no one else’s, because he leaves with a kiss pressed to the back of your head and grieve whispered in your ear.
.
Alone, you cry.
Is it worth it , you want to ask every time your father avoids your stare from across a dinner table, or from the head of the small council chamber. You want to ask every night he refuses to hold Baelon, or doesn’t enquire about his health.
You keep your brother close at hand, his bassinet beside your bed, his clothes a mess on your bedroom floor. A boy just born with no mother to hold him when he cries, to love him unconditionally as only mothers can. You’re too young to be anything other than a pale facsimile of your mother, all your efforts half-remembered moments of your own childhood.
“Bae,” you whisper at night, his face relaxed in sleep, his lashes light and dusting upon his cheeks. Even asleep, he holds your hand and you fret because your fingers don’t dwarf his—not like your uncle’s do yours.
Every reminder that you are still a child yourself, despite the yawning desolation in your chest, makes you yearn to be more—to be enough. For Baelon, for your father—wishing with your whole limping heart, that you had been enough, and your mother was still alive.
“I’ll protect you,” a promise, on your blood, in your bones—a truth unable to be changed. “You’ll be king, a great king—and I’ll protect you.”
Your promise must stay in your blood, and on your bones, written in those most secret places; because no one makes mention of your new destiny, your new goal. Ser Westerling gives you the same small smile he has every morning since you’ve been a babe, the rotation of staff ducks and bows so you might not spend more time than necessary acknowledging their existence—the only new moment in your morning routine is dropping Baelon off in the nursery.
The first few days you’re unable to bring yourself to leave—unable to leave when his cries start the moment he’s out of your arms.
Eventually, you firm up your resolve and leave him with a kiss upon his brow, and a promise to return.
Your uncle doesn’t question the additional hours you spend in the training yard, doesn’t question your interest in spears and daggers. Your father is in mourning, unable to be questioned about what his eldest is doing—and months later, when he finally does bring himself to the railing, looking down at the feral creature you’ve become, he can only smile—eyes faraway and hurting.
“Aemma always said you had no need for knights.”
You’re furious when you find out—when Daemon says something about your father remarrying.
The realm demands it.
You sneer, the expression unfamiliar yet with your face used to smiling. It hasn’t even been a year since your mother was murdered, since Baelon was born, and already the vultures fly around your father’s inability to make a decision. There’s a part of you that doesn’t care—let some other woman waste away in some search for something that need not be looked for. Let some new family find out the truth behind succession; the horror, the pain, the pressure. Let some father, or mother, or brother, watch their loved one waste away and be unable to say anything.
But Daemon makes mention of what an ambitious family might do to a firstborn son not of their line. A firstborn son in the way of their own sitting on the Iron Throne, and your throat had tightened. Your mouth had gone dry and your blood cold; Syrax prowled, alert and curious to the flood of terror rushing through you that had no exact source. It was aimless, and fluid, and then it sank into an anger that was fire and blood.
A dragon’s fury.
Ser Redwyne allows you into your father’s chambers, and you find him hunched over his model of Valyria—he looks up as the door closes, smiling that tired and sad smile he always gives you. It’s strained and makes his eyes look feverish. You know he sees your mother every time he looks at you; you have the look of her except in your coloring, and it hurts him always now. It still unbalances you, how something that had been a delight is now something to be wary of; something to avoid speaking of.
“Rhae—,”
“You can’t remarry,” you say, as firmly as you can. You’re dressed as a princess ought; silks and layers, fine as a doll. You even left your sword in your room, not wanting your father to have his normal disagreements.
“Remarry?” He inquires, confused, and then frustrated—you see him shuttering away, see the way he turns his eyes back toward his model, looking for something uncomplicated and peaceful. Looking for false promises. “You needn’t bother yourself with such things, sweet girl.”
“I must,” you insist, “you can’t remarry. You can’t have children with someone who isn’t—who isn’t part of our family.”
“Whoever I married would become part of our family.” Your father wants to live in his perfectly replicated world; a memory of something long dead, that will never change because it’s already over. Already gone. His world was your mother—his desire never fit into his world, and it was what tore it apart. His need for an heir, his determination to have a son—it ruined his world and made it go the way of Valyria. Already over, already gone.
“No,” you sniff, you clench your jaw, exhale angrily, and refuse to let the tears in your eyes fall. “No. They’ll be Tyrells, or Lannisters, or Baratheons, or—or whoever! They’ll want their sons on the throne, they’ll—they’ll. You have to protect Baelon.”
Please, you want to beg, you want to believe that he’ll do this for you, do this for your family, that he’ll look outside his stagnant world and see this one for what it is. Terrible, and cruel, and never-ending—Targaryens are dying all the time, and they’re falling closer every day to the men below. Even if your father will never admit it. There are five Targaryens left, three dragonriders—even if cousin Rhaenys is technically a Velaryon, she’s as much a dragon as your uncle, regardless of what shade she dresses in.
“Rhaenyra, who has been filling your head with this nonsense?” Your father acts like you’re a child, a foolish child, but you haven’t been one since your mother died. Since you set her pyre ablaze, since you rocked Baelon to sleep that first fortnight. Since you promised the world fire and blood if anything was to happen to him.
“You killed mother for a son,” you say, broken and wavering, losing faith in your father. “You must protect him.” Your father looks like you’ve smacked him full-handed in the face, like you’ve found the part of his heart that still bleeds—maybe it’s more than a part, maybe his whole heart bleeds like yours does. Maybe you can speak to him about it, maybe—maybe—
“Please think on it, my king,” you bow, hiding the tears falling from your eyes—but you think he sees them. Spinning around you run back into the hall without leave, and you make it two hallways away before you collapse to the floor sobbing. Ser Westerling hesitates only a moment before picking up your shuddering body and carrying you back to your rooms, shushing you all the while.
.
Your father doesn’t remarry.
“—as she set the ships ablaze,” Alicent recites, reading from the book she’s holding against the thigh you aren’t using as a pillow. You hum in agreement with whatever she’s saying, and turn onto your non-dominant shoulder and bury your nose in her stomach. “Rhaenyra! Septa Marlow is going to be awfully cross with you if you can’t recite even the smallest portion of this passage.”
You’ve learned to always stay still, always let Alicent relax before you make any more movements—she exhales and all the tightness in her frame goes away, she even goes so far as to run her fingers through your hair, giving it a tug when you seem like you’ll not answer her.
“Septa Marlow is cross with me regardless of what I may, or may not, do. Her distaste for me must be prescribed by the Seven themselves,” you grouse, opening one eye to peek up at Alicent, who is gazing down at you with an exasperated fondness that is liable to make you do all manner of foolish things.
“She’s always cross with you because you make it your life’s work to frustrate her,” Alicent points out, never one to let you claim undeserved innocence.
“Not my life’s work,” you counter, shifting so that you might grin up at her from where you’ve nestled in the layers of her skirts. “Merely a fulfilling hobby.”
“What am I to do with you, princess?” Your lady asks, smiling down at you softly, fixing whatever strands of your hair have fallen away from the rest.
“Whatever you wish,” you say in all seriousness, devout in this as you’ll never be to the Seven. You need no house of worship, no symbol of faith—it's as simple as the gold in Alicent’s eyes, and that smallest of dips when she truly smiles. Those are your plains of worship, your symbol of fulfillment. You might still not be a woman grown—though, ten-and-two is awfully close, you feel—but you know things that are unwavering, and this is one of them.
“You say such things. Rhaenyra,” she whispers, eyes darker than gold now but just as captivating; her voice softly yearning, like she wishes to believe you, but can’t bring herself to.
“I do,” you say with compounded confidence, “I say these things, and I mean them in full. Or do you doubt the words of a direct descendent of the Conqueror?” It’s cheeky, and serious, and you want Alicent to smile—which she does, while rolling her eyes. Turning her attention back to the book resting forgotten, she turns the page.
“Well, direct descendent, we should make sure your histories aren’t lacking…”
Your father doesn’t know you’re going.
No, he’s none the wiser; exchanging you for Baelon as cupbearer in the small council, there’s very little need any longer for him to see you daily. He tries, and you warm to the idea. Accepting his warm—yet tentative—smiles, his inquiries about your day, his inquiries about Baelon’s day, and his desire to reconnect—to be some version of the family that was torn apart by his selfishness, his cruelty—his hubris.
Baelon bemoans his cupbearer responsibilities, starting his day sprawled across your shins as you wake, blinking those Arryn blue eyes up at you with beseeching love. Save the eyes and the hair, very little of your mother lives in the curves of his cheeks, or the line of his nose. Truly, he hardly looks Targaryen at all—a golden boy with skyward eyes everywhere you’re silver and purple.
Some had commented on the new heir’s appearance, commented on his unhatched egg, and his serious happiness. A quiet boy, a studious boy—who knows most things before he’s taught, and digs further still. Who likes answers to be explanations, and not platitudes. The roughest row between you and your darling brother had been your inability to explain beyond because I said so, and his wailing need for clarification.
You’ve learned to give true answers, or none at all—Baelon thinks you're all-knowing for your additional eight years lived, and at his ripe age of six you still don’t wish to dissuade him of the notion.
“I’m going away, Bae,” you whisper to him the night before you sneak through the passages and into the company heading to the Dornish Marches. “I’ll be back, I promise, you mustn’t tell father.”
“How long?” Your darling boy wobbled, his lip jutted out and his blue eyes filling with tears.
“A few moons,” you assure, “have I ever broken a promise to you?”
Baelon shakes his head, rushing to embrace your waist and tuck his wet cheeks into the rough material of your travel tunic. Running your fingers through the mess of his golden hair, you bend down to kiss the crown of his head. Squeezing your eyes shut, you ask whatever gods will listen to watch over him—the old, the new, the Seven, the Fourteen Flames.
Any—all.
Alicent—Alicent’s…harder.
You slip through the passages between the walls, silent as a shadow ought, and find yourself in the dark slant of her bed chambers just beside her moonlight-filled window. You see only the auburn hair spread across her pillows, the curve of a shoulder just above the line of her blankets. Her back is to you, and you could easily leave—refuse to burden your heart further and leave yourself wondering how she would react.
Stepping through the light spilling across the floor, you sit on the edge of her bed and feel that flutter of dragon’s wings in your chest. The quick tha-thump of your heart at the back of your tongue and in your ears. She’s beautiful, lovelier now with the vulnerability of closed eyes and softly open lips.
“Ali?” You whisper, trying not to give her a fright, but she only hums in her sleep and tilts her cheek deeper into her pillow. “Alicent? Wake up.”
When she blinks her eyes open, she smiles upon seeing you and it makes your cheeks hurt with the grin splitting your lips. She’s rumpled, and sleepy, and doesn’t seem worried at all when you clasp her sleep-warm hand in yours. It takes her a few more moments to realize you’re dressed in travel clothes, right down to the cloak around your shoulders.
“What’s going on?” She asks, blinking awareness into place.
“I’m going to prove myself,” you tell her, rubbing your thumb along the back of her hand. “A company leaves tonight for the front lines.”
“Rhaenyra! You can’t!” Pulling her hand back as she sits up and looms closer to you with wide eyes. “You’re not a soldier, you’re going to get hurt.”
“You never doubted me before,” you say, hurt.
“We were girls then, Rhaenyra. We had all sorts of foolish notions of our future,” she’s exasperated and sad, and there’s the same wobble to her lip that Baelon had been trying to hide, though her eyes didn’t shimmer—they were bright with something feverish, something desperately tender that you wished to steal away and lock in the cage of your chest, just beside your fire-beating heart.
“There’s nothing foolish about wanting to protect Baelon, my future king,” you insist, lips firmly pressed.
“He has real knights for that, trained men. He doesn’t need you getting yourself killed for misplaced glory.”
It hurts, her words brittle and sharp in places you aren’t used to from Alicent. Finding all the soft places that you never think to hide around your lovely lady—but she’s cruel tonight, vicious and insistent. As if malice alone could keep you by her side, but you’re a creature of fire and blood, you’re made for open skies and drawn steel bleeding red.
“I’m sorry you feel this way, my lady,” you say tonelessly, sniffling your nose once to keep your tears at bay, “I just wished to bid you goodbye before I left. I ask that you not inform my father until the letter I left is found—but do as you see fit.”
Standing, adjusting the bastard sword on your hip, the dagger just beside, you exhale—letting the tension bleed from your shoulders, from the steel down your spine. You’re fourteen, you’re almost a woman grown, and you’re ready for the terrible truth of the world. Alicent will see, and so will your father.
“Rhaenyra,” Alicent pleads, her blankets falling to the floor when she stands to reach for you, but you step back. Away from her, away from soft hands, and eyes holding fast to yours. Turning away you make haste back into the passages before tears could fall, before Alicent could convince you to stay.
The armor you wear is all secondhand, though it had been fitted to you by a commoner’s blacksmith on the far side of Flea Bottom. Dull gray metal over worn-through leather, the only piece of your tack that’s fit for royalty is your blade—a name-day gift from your uncle the year prior. Beautiful steel, if not Valryian, and a matte black pommel with a gem as blue as your mother’s eyes—your brother’s too.
You wear your hood for the ride south, camping under the starlight and wishing desperately that you’d been able to bring Syrax with you—she was free on Dragonstone, where your father would think you are for at least a few nights still. You’ll never learn how exactly he found out where you’d gone, and what you planned on doing—the aftermath a little foggy—but you’ll always remember the desperate way he hugged you. The croaking admonishments, and tearful declarations.
Helm in place, armor fastened, no one looks a well-outfitted soldier in the mouth—you pitch your voice low, and grunt near comically. Staying astride your horse as often as possible to hide your considerably lacking height. The few strands of your hair that slip free are rubbed black with shoe polish, and you keep your eyes shadowed during the day.
When the commander asks—a Ser Selmy of the marches—you give him the name Rhae Stone, an Arryn bastard of no renown. You think he might know something is off about you, though not what exactly, but he says nothing and assigns you a duty as a forward scout. You’re small—said with a raised eyebrow and knowing humor—and quiet.
“Who knows, Stone,” a boy—Darion—around your age says, a third or fourth son from some minor lord. Covered in dirt and sweat, and layered in leather armor, you don’t look much different than the boys your age—when young is the first obvious thing that comes to mind, no one looks much further. “Maybe you’ll be good enough to be a bastard knight.”
“You think?” You gasp, still out of breath from training, and trying not to think about the battle, it’s tomorrow—no later than midday. The Dornish lines had been concealed well, but you had found them during your scouting and reconnaissance. “My lord father would have a right fit.”
You both laugh, louder than you should, because tomorrow you could die—you wouldn’t be around to protect Baelon, to forgive your father. To make Alicent blush that soft pink she does when she knows she shouldn’t like the borderline blasphemous things you do. Haughty and other, you’re a Targaryen, and that means you’re closer to gods than man.
Battle is…brutal.
You shake, your hands sweat, and your eyes ache from behind the metal of your helm. You don’t have an affinity for the bow, so you’re kept from the line—sat upon the back of your warhorse, bred specifically for battle—hands larger than any you’d ridden before now. Though, hardly large in comparison to Syrax, who you feel far in the distance—still by Dragonstone, roosting and waiting, none too happy with your pleas to stay away.
Charge.
You hear the word echo long after you’ve kicked the sides of your mount, sword clasped in your hand, ankles close, and raising you above the saddle you’re sitting in. The horses and men coming toward you are resplendent in color, their skin bronze and beautiful, their faces free of helm even if their colorful jerkins are covered in leather and metal armor.
Your own armor rasps as it grinds in places, still slightly too large at your hips and armpits, but nothing to worry about.
Blood.
A splash of red slicking out from where you carve into a man’s throat. It paints the dull gray of your armor with color, and your stomach curdles—but you can’t think of that, because another man is too close and there’s sound everywhere, and the flutter of dragon’s wings that was your heartbeat. This time you stab downward, your sword piercing a Dornishman’s cheek just beside his nose and you feel the crunch-give of your steel sliding through bone and into the soft insides of his head.
You think you might be crying, but it’s warm blood on your cheeks, warmer still than the pulsing heat building in your chest. You’re just about to wheel your horse around, but a Dornishman appears with a morningstar and caves in the chest of your horse. There’s a billowing thud as your mount crumbles, and you’re tossed off and over the reins and onto the ground.
Everything rattles, everything hurts, and you think a shoulder might be dislodged, but it’s not enough to muffle the cacophony of battle around you. The thunder of feet and hooves, the ripple of yells and screams. You stagger to your feet, left arm limp, and parry a downward swing—sliding your bastard sword along the blade and slipping below it, closer to the man attacking.
Shoving a shoulder into his diaphragm, he coughs, and as he takes half a step back to recover, you up-end your blade and stick it through his belly. Like dipping a hot knife in butter, until the tip of your sword scraps against his spine on the way out.
There’s dirt and blood in your mouth, and pain everywhere else, and time seems to have no discernible truth to it. Faster in some moments, and crawling past in others. Men fall bloody to the ground, others are trampled by horses, and some don’t die when they fall—they scream, flail, and beg for mercy from the Seven.
You feel Syrax in your chest, roaring and agitated, and you still press against her need to join you— not now, you convey, stay. She’s too far away, and nothing good can come during martial combat involving forests and meadows when a dragon gets involved. Everyone burns—and you’ve grown close to a good number of these men. Stormlanders, Reachmen, and even a fair number of Valemen seeking glory. Soldiers fighting to put food on their tables, and hedge knights fighting for glory.
A horn sounds—retreat.
Darion laughs, passing you the bottle of piss-bad ale. You like your wine fruity and sweet, but almost a fortnight of this and you hardly taste it. Your shoulder aches from where a healer popped it back into the joint, and your chest burns when you breathe, but multiple days of battle have made all the aches blend together. One singular, unstopping hurt.
“Poor bastard took a look at me ‘n me blade and called for his ma,” Darion says, telling the story of some Dornishman or another who he killed in truly impressive single combat— truly impressive with how Darion tells it, even if every man around the fire knows better. Darion was much more skilled in running his mouth than swordplay.
“His mother must be right unfortunate looking if he mistook your ugly mug for’er,” you say after choking down another mouthful of bad ale, wiping the moisture away with the back of your hand. You’re covered in dirt, and blood, and enough dye that your forehead and ears are black with it. You reapply it regularly, making sure none of your silver-white shines through.
“Oh, come off it, Stone!” Devlen exclaims, though his face splits with a grin, “Not all us blokes can be pretty as a highborn lady like you.”
Everyone howls with laughter, and you bat your lashes at him completely unbothered while a few more men chip in their ideas of just how pretty a woman Rhae Stone would be if he wasn’t always covered in blood and dirt. Lady Stone, they crow, and you take it gladly. These men matter to you, and you matter to them—not because you’re a princess, or a dragonrider, or highborn. But because they’d die for their charming Lady Stone, the comeliest bloke in the Seven Kingdoms.
You can only laugh.
You lay in the ankle-deep mud, your helm lost somewhere in the pouring rain, your sword still in the iron curl of your fingers, even if your left arm has dislocated once more. There’s an arrow—no, two arrows—sticking out of your torso, one in your shoulder, and the other in your side.
Sound wobbles and spills away, and you can’t hear anything, can’t make out the words being said around you. A horn, you think, but it is just another uncertain noise in a battlefield of them. You struggle to get up, even if every instinct in your body is telling you to stay down—there’s that frantic heat building in the pit of your stomach that’s restless as a forest fire, ready to sway with each change in the wind. Chaotic, consuming, dangerous.
A Dornishman must see you move because he bends down to finish you off, slipping a dagger into your belly—a small one, a cold one, and you howl in pain before frantically shoving him back and sticking your own dagger through the side of his neck—a waterfall of red falls on your face and you’re still screaming when his much heavier body falls on top of you.
Sound leaves you, everything but the burn in your gut flees you, until the abnormal pressure on your chest is thrown off and a few pairs of concerned eyes look down at you. It’s hazy, and you can’t hear everything they say, but Darion’s touching the black strands of your hair that have melted white in the rain, and then he’s pulling back your eyelids and taking a close look at your eyes.
“Silver fucking hair and purple eyes,” he says, going pale even under the dirt and blood, “Stone’s a fucking dragonseed. Maybe a Velaryon bastard.” You try to talk, try to say something, but someone else is pressing water to your lips and you don’t realize how thirsty you are until the first mouthful.
“We got you, lad,” another soldier says, hefting you onto a board to carry back to the tents. “Can’t have our best killer dying, can we, fellas?” There’s a good-humored murmur, and you grin, lopsided and tired. And you can’t remember why you were worried anymore—they have you. Everything’s fine, you’re fine.
Well, everything but the burn in your stomach.
They might’ve gone on believing you were some neglected dragonseed if it wasn’t for your very angry, very protective dragon—her fire keeps you stable, keeps you drifting in and out with each changing of the bandages on your stomach and shoulder wounds. Ser Arstan Selmy, broken collarbone strapped to his chest, sits beside your cot one evening. You’ve been stripped to the waist, bandages from shoulder to navel—you’re in a single tent, not the healer’s tent you’ve seen packed with mangled bodies.
“Knew you were a lass,” he admits, gruff yet somehow still kind, “didn’t know you were a dragonseed.”
“She’s worried,” you slur, drunk on pain and exhaustion, “s’coming—got to—got to see’er.”
“See who, lass?” He asks, leaning forward to press a damp cloth to your forehead. “Who’s coming?”
You can’t make the words small enough to fit on your uncooperative tongue, can’t wrangle them anymore than you can push down the pain in your head and body. Syrax growls, deep and vicious, and she’s so much closer—the sulfur and brimstone on her breath lingering on the back of your tongue like a warning. You know she’ll tear through this camp in her haste to find you—banners and allies mean nothing to a protective dragon.
“Got to—got to get up, ser,” you cough, a bit of congealed blood sticking to your lip, as you struggle and fight against the gentle hand he put on your shoulder.
“Seven hells, lass,” eventually he must decide it’s safer to help you than try to hinder you one-handed. He wraps a cloak around your shoulders and supports your weight as you stagger out of the small tent—your bare feet stick into the mud, grass splaying between your toes as you stumble toward the northeast edge of the camp. You can’t see her just yet—the sun’s still down, and your Golden Lady is above the clouds, ready to dive at a moment’s notice.
“Lass—Stone—,” Ser Selmy is just about to force you to stop when he hears it—the chest-deep rumble of a furious dragon. The sound rattles the water on the ground, rousing sleepy soldiers from their slumber, weapons in hand like there was some hope for them.
You see her long before they do—Darion on one of your sides, Ser Selmy on the other—you see the slice of her wings through the black velvet sky, the slide of her spines across the wisps of clouds. They see her when the first glint of firelight reflects on the sunset gold of her scales, the bright green of her eyes—there’s a tremor, a fear rippling through all these men who have seen death, seen war, and you can only feel the purring love of being seen for the first time since the last time Syrax was with you.
Your Golden Lady—the second half of your soul.
“Stone,” Darion says, trying to pull you away, trying to protect you—and you appreciate it, it lives in your chest and it curls your lips into a lopsided grin because you still aren’t too sure what half your face is doing.
“S’alright,” you soothe, for them—for your dragon—trying to find your center despite the burning wrongness in your stomach, in the place where you’d been stabbed.
Syrax crashes to the ground, graceful in her brutality, and her long neck curls around and sets those brilliant eyes upon the men still holding onto you, still refusing to leave you—brave men, loyal men, and it alights in your chest some more. The bonds forged in battle.
“Syrax,” you coo, staggering forward fast enough that they can’t catch you, and losing your footing enough that the only thing keeping you upright was Syrax leaning her muzzle into you. You catch yourself on the small horns along her snout, just beside the ridge of her eyes. Syrax purrs, a content sound full of affection when you run sweaty feverish hands along her scales. “ I’m sorry I worried you, lovely girl. You didn’t have to come all this way.”
Syrax snorts a hiss of smoke, obviously unimpressed with your assessment of the situation, and you laugh—even if it makes everything hurt so much worse.
“Stone,” Ser Selmy says haltingly, putting together a lot of information—trying to put the image of the ruffian soldier he commanded, with the princess known as the Realm’s Delight, who was most certainly the rider of this particular dragon. But—he doesn’t have the chance to ask anything further, because there’s a boiling sickness in your stomach, a churning weakness that’s fluttering and spilling into your limbs. You feel lightheaded, and with a swiftness you don’t expect, collapsing is really your only option—you cling to Syrax, and your precious girl rumbles a whine, a concerned little trill that makes your heart hurt because you don’t know what’s wrong.
You were feeling okay—in pain, and terrible—but okay.
Your body seizes, your hands shake, and your legs give out—Syrax follows you to the ground, curling a wing around you protectively and letting fire roil at the back of her throat when a few men take steps forward to help. You try to tell her that it’s okay, that they’re friends, but everything’s going unfocused and wrong. Slipping in and out, stealing color and time with every sluggish beat of your dragonheart.
Help, you want to say, but can’t. I’m sorry, you try to whisper but the sounds tangle on your tongue and between your teeth. You’re just about to plea for something, anything, that will prevent you from breaking your promise to Baelon—to Alicent—that you almost miss it. Almost.
The eerie whistle roar of a very familiar red dragon.
There’s a starburst of pain just behind your eyes, a brutal throbbing that threatens to blacken out the small bits of the world you’ve become aware of. Your shoulder and stomach ache terribly, and when you make the foolish attempt to sit up, the pain roars down your spine and settles somewhere brittle in your hips.
There’s the soft touch of warm fingers to your forehead, and then a cool wetness is set upon your brow. Struggling under the weight of agony, you peel open blistering eyes so you might be able to see something other than the bright bursts of color against the backs of your eyelids. You recognize the ceiling of your bedroom, the gossamer curtains billowing in the spring breeze. The bright splash of color half your chambers are shrouded in—a collection of your mother’s favorite tapestries.
“You’re awake,” a soft worried exhale, and warm fingers once more trailing over the curve of your cheek until they withdraw—as if suddenly unsure. Turning your head, with pain, you see her. Alicent is beautiful in her concern, her copper hair a mess just at her temples where she twisted the curl in restless fingers, her beautiful brown eyes bright and full—new moons and the Kingswood itself held so easily in the color of your lady’s eyes.
Your lady only in your head, of course—and when you bemoan your plights to your uncle.
Daemon delights endlessly in your loveless woes.
“And to such a lovely sight as this,” you try, your words scratchy and sharp, rasping from the dry ache that is your throat.
“I’ll have none of your charms, Rhaenyra,” Alicent says, lips pinching tight, her brow furrowing. “By the time Prince Daemon returned with you, they were near sure the poison would kill you. They feared you wouldn’t even make it through another night.” You believe her for the pain blossoming in your bones; you shouldn’t be surprised, there was a wrongness you couldn’t put your finger on since you’d been injured—well, injured the last time. Everything burns, and churns, and you really do want to lay motionless and expire.
“Ali—,” warm fingers against your lips, stopping your words.
“I thought you’d die,” Alicent whispers, eyes going wet and dark, and your chest aches for whole new reasons that have nothing to do with arrows and daggers. “That you’d die and the last thing I ever said to you was cruel lies and falsehoods. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that had come to pass.”
You struggle, and when Alicent tries to keep you down, you struggle more—until eventually, you sit up enough to clasp both her hands between yours. You worry about the blood in the beds of her nails, the scratches marked into her very skin. None of that matters as you press her delicate fingers to your lips and hope all your love might bleed through your lips and into her very blood—so that she might never question where she exists in your heart.
“Your words might’ve been lies, but your eyes could never be false to me,” you promise, your dry lips moving against the soft skin of her knuckles. You feel more than see the shiver that travels through her, the trembling of her now, and you’d be half a fool to press closer without assurance that no one would walk in—that this terrible, lovely secret in your chest would not become knowledge to anyone other than your lady.
But, if known history speaks the truth—you’ve always been a fool.
“Alicent,” you try, leaning up further still with a groan, one of your hands lifting to softly catch the curve of her jaw in your palm. She was made for your hands, whatever shape they were in—her hand made for the soft curl of yours when you were a spoiled princess of eight, and the set of her jaw made for the rough slant of yours now that you’re a dragon riding bastard knight of the Dornish Marches. Her lips are pressed tight, and her eyes glint, and she’s so pretty you feel it in your heart like the flutter of hatchling wings.
“My lady,” you say, smiling as her eyes close and she leans ever so slightly into your palm. The wet rag in her hand twists and drips on the rumpled sheets spilling from your lap. You’re dressed in a soft shift, bandages aplenty underneath, but none of that matters when you hear the small aborted little whimper trapped at the back of Alicent’s throat. Maybe you’re more dragon than person, maybe you scent the delicious weakness in the air—taste the succulent vulnerability—but you pull her forward, your fingers gentle at the hinge of her jaw, and she comes willingly.
“ Rhae —,” she says your name breathily, but you don’t let her finish before you’re pressing your lips to hers. They’re soft and parted, and you feel the cool inhaled gasp she makes at the contact. Your eyes are closed, and your lips unmoving; waiting for Alicent to pull away, to remove herself, to tell your brittle damned heart that this wasn’t what she wanted. That she didn’t burn for you as you did her—that she didn’t fall asleep to your face as you do hers. That—that—
She kisses you back.
Tentatively at first, the bare movement of her petal-soft lips, but then she moans—or you do—and the kiss becomes harder and more insistent, and her hand finds its way to the side of your throat where your pulse races. You’ve never kissed anyone before, but you’re ravenous—desperate for the taste of her, the feel of her lips against yours, the press of her hands to your feverish skin. Curling your fingers into her hair, you encourage her closer, and it’s when she places a hand on your waist that you hiss in pain and Alicent pulls back quickly.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she rushes, hands fluttering above you with worry, unsure how to help—unwilling to touch you and make it worse.
“It’s okay, Ali, it’s okay. Just sore.” You need these moments with her, this soothing quiet that would be broken soon enough with your father’s anger, and your uncle’s disappointment, and your brother’s worry. This moment—just you and Alicent. Running your thumb—so much rougher now—over the perfect swell of her cheek, you smile. It’s a bit of a grimace, because there’s some type of pain on your left cheek, but it’s negligible. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
“You’re not sorry you almost died?” She asks incensed, “just that I was worried ?” She’s beautiful in her indignant rage; nostrils flared, cheeks going rosy and tight with her frown. It shouldn’t delight you, but after weeks of not seeing her face, even her sour disposition is a gift.
“I feel I must stress the almost,” you say, foolishness abound, but when her face crumples, you feel a right prick. “No, no—I’m jesting, I’m jesting. I’m sorry to worry you, I always am when I do—which, yes, is frightfully often—but I…Alicent, I needed to see what waits beyond these walls, beyond King’s Landing.” Your lungs hurt, and your air burns, but you need to make her understand—that this wasn’t for wont of glory, or some in-fated recognition.
“But why must it be you ?”
“Because Baelon will be no warrior, and my father will have no more children. I am to be his second son,” you swallow back the pain, the copper taste on your tongue. “My uncle raised an army for my father at the Great Council, he wields Dark Sister, and even estranged, everyone in this kingdom knows there is little he wouldn’t do for my father.”
Saying it out loud, for the first time, makes it feel more real; makes it seem possible. Visenya is your ancestor as readily as the Conqueror is. Your brother will not have a brother to raise an army for him, to prowl at his back as a deterrent, a warning. So you will be that for him—you will be the second son your father does not have.
“I am one of three dragonriders in the kingdom, one of which isn’t even sworn to house Targaryen any longer. The Crown needs strength, and I will be Baelon’s. I will be strong, so he can be benevolent.”
Yes, that’s it—Baelon the Benevolent.