Chapter Text
PROLOGUE: GILDED BLOOD & BONES
It began with Elissa Farman.
To those who wished to keep their heads, they merely called her the “good friend” of Prince Rhaena Targaryen. Friends since she had been released from that accursed marriage to Maegor and sold into another union that was drafted before she could truly understand what her life had become.
To the rest who refused to stay blind, Elissa Farman and Rhaena Targaryen were lovers.
But both groups were wise enough to not say anything of it to the rider of Dreamfyre.
Truly, no one knows how it happened.
The dragonmount was heavily guarded by dragonkeepers. She should not have been able to even look at the mount without the keepers looking back with warning in their eyes and their hands tight on their spears.
Many believe she had permission from Rhaena to go anywhere on Dragonstone.
That is where the true tragedy had begun.
Once granted leave from her beloved princess, Elissa had collected three dragon eggs and ran off like a thief in the night.
Oh how Rhaena was furious.
She felt used. Again.
Gaslit. Again.
Mentally tortured by the one person she had hoped she could trust.
But Elissa was long gone, no matter how many royal decrees had been sent out. Not even Jaehaerys could stretch his hand across the Narrow Sea and drag the girl back, only infuriating and embarrassing House Targaryen.
Rumor spread that Elissa sold the eggs to pay for her voyage to Braavos.
And that she made a pretty coin from it because she had sold them to House Antaryon, one of the big ruling families of Essos with the biggest investments in the Iron Bank.
King Jaehaerys ordered that as the eggs were of Targaryen property and belonged to a Targaryen dragon, they should be returned at once.
All they received was a burning feeling that House Antaryon laughed at such a demand before tossing it into the flames.
The eggs were gone.
Lost to careless hands and misplaced love.
House Targaryen had not forgotten the slight, even as the years passed. It was merely not a concern anymore since their spies had learned that the eggs were cold to the touch and now used as baubles for the family to show off.
No one outside of House Targaryen would ever gain a dragon.
One must need to be Valyrian, of course.
Of a dragon riding family of Old Valyria, and House Targaryen was the only one to survive.
So naturally, the mistreatment of these dead eggs became a distant memory as years passed and kings died, each Targaryen passing down a crown that showed the realm their purity and true dragon blood.
But the dragons were dying.
After The Dance, it was clear that the dragons had begun to fade.
Each one born was sicker, thinner and mutated beyond belief.
The dragons who survived the thoughtless war were long gone to places they had no influence.
Silverwing was said to have made herself a home on an island near the Reach before dying after the reign of King Aegon III.
Sheepstealer and his bastard rider, Nettles, had fled to the Vale of Arryn. They had been cornered by Ser Rowan Robert’s men before Nettles and Sheepstealer left them dead or wounded, and descended further into the mountains.
The men of the realm prayed for the beast to eat her and die quickly.
The Cannibal was never a dragon to take a rider.
Rumors of his flee to Skagos was the only word to spread back to Westeros, but it was a folly to the Targaryens.
What made them kings was dying.
And it ended in 153 A.C. when the last dragon died. A green and sickly little thing, who had a clutch of five eggs herself, though they never hatched.
The magic was gone.
It seemed like a punishment from the Gods, and many believed it to be true.
For how could it be a coincidence that a woman is denied her right to the Iron Throne, the dragons go to war? When Princess Rhaenyra had to fight for what was hers by law, the dragons laid no more eggs and died as easily as kicking a newborn pup.
A fertile woman of rich Valyrian heritage dies and so do the rest of the dragons.
But men do not learn quickly, or else they would not be the ones in charge.
It was only in 206 A.C. that the realm held its breath.
Westeros and Essos alike had gone still for a dragon had hatched.
It was not sick or mutated.
Black of scales and green of eyes, it was. A slithery little thing that was hatched by a hearth and immediately claimed its master in a terrified and screaming girl.
Because she had not expected a dragon. No, she had merely been given the choice of eggs for her nameday because the ornaments had been collecting dust in the Antaryon vault, and she picked the one that would look prettiest on her vanity.
Daen Antaryon was just as startled as his daughter.
For they are not Targaryens.
None of them are Valyrian.
Instead, the girl is of Myr.
A Myrish girl with no Valyrian blood in her had managed to do what House Targaryen had failed to do in the last eighty years, and it was an accident.
Still, the dragon had claimed her. It imprinted and followed her around, as if she had birthed him.
And word of this does not stay idle, especially because the Targaryens had been built upon the statement that they control the dragons because of their Valyrian heritage.
Yet a girl with brown hair and tanned skin hatched a healthy dragon, defying what the Targaryens had believed as fact that only a Valyrian could command a beast so great.
And in 206 A.C., the girl would receive a letter with a red wax seal asking for her lineage and to ‘congratulate’ her on such a feat, all while cooing her into either giving up the dragon or going to Dragonstone.
She would do neither.
And if a Targaryen cannot command a beast with the same blood flowing through their veins, then. . .
Was it all a lie?