Chapter Text
“Mother, I am sorry to disturb, but-”
Maeve stopped when she cleared the door and found Rhaena at the raised seat, gazing over the Painted Table.
“Daughter. I was just looking at the Conqueror’s table.” Rhaena rose to kiss her daughter on the forehead, noting that her daughter wore her backless top, before throwing an arm to gesture at the great round room.
With walls of bare black stone and four tall narrow windows that looked out to the four points of the compass atop the Stone Drum of the castle Dragonstone. The chamber was dominated at the centre by the great table from which it took its name. A massive slab of carved wood, that in the days before the Southron Conquest Aegon's carpenters had shaped after the land of Westeros, sawing out each bay and peninsula until the table nowhere ran straight. Upon it was painted the land: rivers and mountains, castles and cities, lakes and forests. At its narrowest, it ran four feet wide, and at its widest the picture it held was the exact width of its length, leaving half of its surface bare.
For where the Riverlands and the Vale and the Westerlands began to peter north, the painted surface gave way to a smooth severing across the headwaters of the Green Fork – bisecting the Twins, and leaving Seagard forlorn at the lip of the Cape of Eagles and the Iron Isles just at the edge of the depicted Realm. The line ran straight across the varnished grain, disappearing along where the Narrow Sea would lie as the rest of the wood remained bare of carving or paint.
“Kepa – my late father, your grandfather – said that Aegon the Conqueror carved that line with Blackfyre.” Rhaena murmured when Maeve leant over to peer at it. “Great conqueror, unifier of five kingdoms, mayhaps six if we consider Dorne… and in the end the Stranger still came for him in three and threescore years, at this very table as he untangled old yarns of the Conquest. My late brothers Aegon and Viserys stood witness, and the pyre was set to the torch by Meraxes. I can only wonder if on that accursed day, my foolish little brothers were talking about the Conquest and how…”
“It runs in the blood,” Maeve murmured, before she addressed Rhaena. “I am sorry, Mother, but our cousin Vaegon is missing – and no, he is not at Dragonstone’s library, the maester’s chambers, or his rooms. Ser Strong has called upon the garrison to search the island.”
Rhaena felt one eyebrow lift. “You seem to get along well with the younger brood.”
“Even if we are of competing houses, they are still of my blood, Mother,” Maeve frowned back. “And if a Targaryen prince disappears right after the northern retinue arrived at Dragonstone and Prince Aerion’s bones were just interred, it would be… complicated. Lady Anya spoke on the thin veneer of peace.”
For all that House Stark had built itself up by warring and shedding blood, the relationship between north and south had stayed peaceful even through the Conquest and beyond – the Faith Militant’s failed crusade being taken as a breach of the king’s peace, made the Lord Commander’s act one of police suppression. Allegedly, the Washing of the Faith was done by the Night’s Watch against the Faith Militant, with neither of the land’s two crowns being involved.
“This is Dragonstone, the seat of House Targaryen,” was Rhaena’s terse response. “Essosi slavers kidnapping what looks to be a comely dragon-seed is more likely. And, even if tales of northerners subduing and spiriting away a prince would spread, how then do they account for the breach in guest right that such an act would require? Anyone who’s been north would know that incest is more likely than breaching guest rights.”
“We may as well assist,” Maeve reasoned, the teasing smile so much like Walton’s playing about her bow-lips. “Even the Prince of Dragonstone is well stirred by his brother’s disappearance – for that brotherly regard it is worth the respect. You must understand, Mother, being that you had cared for your siblings as such.”
“Sometimes you speak so much sense, daughter, I wonder how I birthed such a good child,” Rhaena pursed her lips, her softened heart already conceding over her initial umbrage. “No, you are-”
The rare admission would not be spoken, swallowed as it was over the bellows of dragons and screams that had Maeve’s head snapping north towards the Dragonmont.
“Maeve?” Rhaena echoed as her daughter headed for the window. “Wait, Maeve, stop-!”
The leaded glass made a rattle, but it did not stop her sweet daughter from leaping into the unknown, arousing a gasp from Rhaena’s throat even as she ran out of the Chamber with her slippers clattering.
“Guards! Guards! The princess has run to the screaming!” And then she seized a passing servant. “Where is the nearest dragon-keeper?! I will mount Dreamfyre immediately!”
The flight across Dragonstone might be faster than the legs of men, but to Rhaena it still seemed that time raced against her, even as a beat of Dreamfyre’s wings took her ever higher and past the Dragonmont, that past the belch of sulphurous smoke she could finally regards amongst the rocks and chips of dragonglass-
Rhaena blinked as her eyes landed on the great Black Dread, and then the Cannibal’s roar distracted her before she found the brilliant light of her Einheri daughter and a blow, the result of which was the Cannibal rearing back, and the rending strike from the Black Dread tore through scaled wing and broke bone. It was only two thumps that distracted her, and only then it was when Jaehaerys dismounted, his lips parting to demand an answer.
With the superhuman litheness that came of the Einherjar, Rhaena’s shining daughter mounted the Black Dread, booted feet planted on the scaly skull before it was as though dragon-fire was unleashed. The tongue of flame flared, almost taking the shape of a dragon itself to barrel into the Cannibal’s face, drawing a scream and a spatter that had Rhaena backing from flecks of liquid that began to eat at the ground where it landed.
“She drew blood from a dragon,” Jaehaerys breathed, the shake of his hands causing the chains that dropped from his own mount’s saddle to clink.
“Not now, Jaehaerys!” Rhaena finally snapped. “Dracarys!”
Dreamfyre obeyed, her flames scorching at the Cannibal who roared back in pain, stumbling before it took to the wing – and then slumped to the side to list leeward off of the island, clearly having decided that draconic pride could only last so long against mounted dragons.
Her brilliant daughter lightly leapt off, but all of Rhaena’s praise died when she saw the look on Maeve’s features. She was distressed, the bone-white of her hair askew where it escaped her long fishtail braid, and she did not even note when brushing the soot off of her face left streaks of blood instead where dragonglass fragments had broken into the palms of her hands.
“Have you seen Vaegon?” Maeve demanded without regard for propriety – quite rightly, as Rhaena’s siblings now reacted.
“Vaegon? What happened to my boy?!” Alysanne’s pitch rose sharply. “By the gods if he-?! Silverwing, let us-!”
“The Cannibal must be found, Alysanne,” Jaehaerys soothed the younger of them before Alysanne could make a suicidal run after the foul beast. “But so our children must be cared for too. Aegon has the only grown dragon of them. If Rhaena would- Maeve could come with.”
Once again Jaehaerys fell silent as Maeve looked at him, clicked her tongue, and nodded. “Then I will pursue – mayhaps Vaegon is with the beast. Mother, if you would guard our ladies and the remaining children.”
“Wait, Maeve, how would you-”
Call it boldness, call it madness, call it fortune or the will of the gods or the caprice of dragons. Rhaena knew not what it was, as she saw her brilliant daughter leap to mount the Black Dread under her own power. Balerion roared, lurching to his feet as his wings spread, the ground underfoot trembling… then he took to the skies in flight, the silhouette of a slender figure distantly made out against the light of the shining sun.
And Princess Maeve Stark of Winterfell joined the ranks of dragon-riders.