Chapter Text
Dragonstone had woken long before Visenya did.
The murmur of servants and kitchen maids already drifted through the castle, blending with the distant shouts of fishermen in the bay below. By the time Visenya opened her eyes, breakfast had long since been served, which meant her absence had almost certainly not gone unnoticed.
She woke with her cheek pressed into the sleeve of her gown, one arm hanging from the side of the bed, her fingers grazing the floor. For a moment she did not move. The room was too bright. A pale strip of morning light had crossed the floor and climbed halfway up the carved chest near the wall, which meant the hour was no longer early enough to excuse anything.
“Seven hells,” she whispered.
Then she sat up too quickly and pain flashed through her neck.
The night came back to her in pieces. The hidden steps down through the old passage near the kitchens, the cold of the predawn air on her face, Maerax waiting below the Dragonmont and restless enough to rake deep lines through the ground with her claws. Her eyes had been bright in the dark, impatient, and when Visenya had approached she had lowered her head as if she had been waiting all night for her to come.
Her mother had forbidden it.
Not forever, Rhaenyra had said, which was always how mothers softened commands they did not mean to have questioned. Only until Maerax settled and only until the dragonkeepers stopped muttering over her temper. Visenya had to learn that dragons were not hounds to be taken out whenever their riders felt caged.
That was what Rhaenyra had said.
Visenya had nodded, kissed her mother’s cheek, and waited two nights before disobeying her.
Now she was paying for it.
She scrambled from the bed and caught sight of herself in the bronze mirror near the washstand. Her silver-gold hair fell loose around her shoulders in uneven waves, tangled by wind and sleep, with one stubborn braid half-undone near her temple. There was a faint smear of ash beneath her jaw and another along the side of her neck, left behind by Maerax’s scales. It was nothing unusual. Anyone who had spent the night flying would have carried the traces of smoke and dragonfire back with them. Visenya clicked her tongue in annoyance.
She could vaguely remember the servants coming to wake her at a certain point, hours before. One had pulled back the curtains, another had tried to persuade her to rise before the morning lessons began.
She had answered by throwing a pillow at them. Or perhaps two. The details were hazy.
What she did remember was ordering them out in no uncertain terms before burying herself beneath the blankets again.
“Brilliant,” she muttered. Now she had no one to blame but herself.
Visenya washed her face in the basin, rubbing hard at the mark on her skin until it reddened, then pulled on the first decent gown she found, white wool with golden stitching at the sleeves. There was no time for proper braids, and after sending her maids away, she had earned the inconvenience of having to get herself ready on her own. She dragged a comb through her hair, winced when it caught, cursed again under her breath, and gave up. The best she could do was twist the front strands away from her face and fasten them with a pin shaped like a dragon’s wing.
It looked careless, but there was not enough time do better.
By the time she left her chamber, the corridors of Dragonstone had settled into their morning order. Servants bowed as she passed, some with eyes lowered, some with glances quick enough to make her suspect that everyone in the castle already knew where she had been. News moved strangely on Dragonstone. It crept through stone halls faster than rats and always found its way to the people least inclined toward mercy.
Her boots struck the steps too loudly as she descended toward the Chamber of the Painted Table. The great doors were already open, and that was never a good sign.
Voices drifted out into the hall before she reached them, young and familiar, shaped around High Valyrian words with varying degrees of obedience. Lucerys was speaking when Visenya came close enough to hear, his voice strained with effort.
“Ñuha zaldrīzes… kostilus…”
The Grand Maester corrected him at once.
“Not kostilus there, Prince Lucerys. The form is ill suited to the phrase. Again, and with the proper vowel.”
Visenya slowed for half a heartbeat outside the chamber, drew in a breath, then stepped inside.
The Chamber of the Painted Table was colder than the rest of the castle, or perhaps it only seemed so because of the size of it. The long table filled the room. Westeros stretched across its carved surface in ridges, rivers, mountains, and painted holds. Dragonstone lay where it always did, small and proud off the eastern shore. And across the Blackwater bay stood King’s Landing, rising from the coast like a sister land watching from afar.
Candles stood unlit along the edges of the table. In the day, the narrow windows gave enough light, though the chamber never seemed really bright.
Jacaerys stood near the Crownlands, one hand flat on the table, his dark hair neatly tied back. Lucerys sat across from him with a slate and a stylus, his brow furrowed in concentration.
The younger children had been settled on a thick rug near the hearth under the watchful eyes of their nurses. A handful of wooden toys, painted balls, and carved animals lay scattered around them. Little Aegon was absorbed in some elaborate game of his own invention, while Viserys sat nearby, entirely uninterested in the conversations of their elders. Whatever matters occupied the room, they were far less important than the kingdoms they were building, destroying, and rebuilding among their toys.
Her mother insisted they be present during the older children’s lessons whenever possible. High Valyrian, Rhaenyra said, ought to enter the blood before it entered the mind. They would hear it in the room, in the correction of errors, in the shape of commands, prayers and histories. One day, without knowing when they had learned it, they would understand.
Visenya had always liked that. It made the language feel less like a chain of rules and more like inheritance.
The Maester did not look as fond of the arrangement.
He was standing near the head of the table, hands folded before him, the links of his chain resting heavily over his dark robes. His eyes lifted to Visenya the moment she entered. He took in the loose hair, the faint disorder of her gown, and his mouth tightened in the way it always did when she gave him reason to feel proven right. “Princess Visenya,” he said.
Lucerys looked up first, surprised. Jacaerys turned more slowly. A smile touched the corner of his mouth before he mastered it, though not quickly enough.
Visenya dipped her head with as much dignity as she could gather while trying to catch her breath. “Maester Gerardys.”
“You have decided to honor us with your presence.”
“I would not miss the lesson,” she replied, smoothing an imaginary crease from her sleeve.
One of Gerardys’s bushy brows rose. “Only the beginning of it, it seems.”
Jacaerys lowered his gaze to the table. His shoulders moved once in a way that made Visenya suspect he was fighting laughter. Lucerys saw it and looked down too, which made the whole thing far worse.
The Maester’s eyes narrowed.
“You have been late three times this week, Princess. If this pattern continues, I will be forced to speak with your father.”
Visenya could not help it. Her mouth moved before wisdom could reach it. “My father may not be the best man to frighten me with, Maester. From what I have heard, he was not famed for dutiful attention to his studies. I doubt he would find my lateness a matter worthy of great sorrow.”
The silence that followed felt heavy.
Lucerys pressed his lips together. Jacaerys turned his face toward the painted mountains of the Vale, but the amusement in his eyes betrayed him. Even Aegon paused his battle on the rug, sensing the change in the air without understanding it.
Gerardys looked as though several answers had presented themselves to him and none could be spoken safely aloud.
“Your father,” he said at last, “is Prince Daemon Targaryen and—“
“Yes,” Visenya replied sweetly. “I had noticed.”
Jacaerys made a sound that might have been a cough if anyone in the room loved him enough to believe it.
The Maester’s patience, already thin, began to fray at the edges. He straightened, and when he spoke again, he did so in High Valyrian. His accent was clean enough, though no maester ever sounded quite right with the language. They learned it from books and old men. Visenya had learned it from lullabies, arguments, curses, and the way her parents spoke when they wished the servants not to understand.
“You are now seventeen, Princess, and I think you must learn what it means to behave as a lady.”
Visenya felt Jacaerys look at her then.
Her first instinct was to answer sharply. Her second was to remember that she had fought too hard to be in this room to let him drive her from it. Baela and Rhaena would be at their needlework now, sitting with lowered heads while some lady corrected their stitches and praised their patience. Visenya had done those lessons too when she was younger. She had pricked her fingers, ruined hems, and been told that a princess ought to take pride in graceful work.
She had tried. For a time.
Then she had found that the boys were being taught more than grammar. In this chamber, High Valyrian became politics. A lesson on verb forms turned into a discussion of treaties. A passage from an old history became a debate over conquest, succession, rebellion, or the price of mercy. Jacaerys was being shaped here. Lucerys too, though he pretended not to notice it. They were being taught to inherit, to rule, to judge.
Visenya had gone to her father first because she had known her mother would weigh the matter too carefully. Daemon had listened with his head tilted, amused by her fury, and then he had asked whether she truly wanted the lessons or only wanted to annoy the Maester.
“Both,” she had said.
He had laughed for so long she had thought he would refuse her.
The next morning, Visenya had taken her place beside her brothers.
The Maester had never forgiven either of them.
Now she lifted her chin and answered in High Valyrian with the smoothness of someone born to it.
“I know what it means to behave as a lady, Maester. I simply don’t know that I will enjoy behaving as the sort you prefer.”
Lucerys looked down at his slate so quickly that a lock of hair fell over his forehead. Jacaerys did not laugh, but the warmth in his face changed, deepening into something that made Visenya feel both pleased and foolish. He had always looked at her like that when she said the thing others only thought. Half proud, half afraid she would be punished for it.
The Maester drew in a breath through his nose. “Sit down, Princess.”
Visenya obeyed. She took her usual place beside Jacaerys, close enough that their sleeves brushed when she leaned over the table. The wood beneath her fingers was cold and polished smooth by years of hands. Someone had placed a small stack of parchment near her seat, along with a quill and ink. She suspected Jace had done it. She had a habit of arriving to lessons without half the things she needed, and he had a habit of covering for her. He always had.
The lesson resumed, though the air did not entirely settle.
They were translating a passage from the reign of Jaehaerys, some dry account of roads, laws, and settlements that the Maester clearly believed would sharpen their understanding of governance. Lucerys struggled through the phrasing, earnest as ever, and Visenya tried to listen, though some part of her remained above the sea with Maerax beneath her, the world dark below, the wind fierce enough to tear tears from her eyes.
She loved those hours too much.
That was why her mother feared them.
Maerax had grown difficult in the last moon. She snapped at handlers she had once tolerated. She refused meat unless Visenya gave the command herself. Twice dhe had beaten his wings against the ground so hard near the Dragonmont that stones had shaken loose from the slope. The dragonkeepers said it was restlessness. Rhaenyra said restlessness in a dragon could become danger.
And Visenya understood it, truly. She simply did not believe danger was always a reason to step back.
Jacaerys leaned closer while the Maester corrected Lucerys again. “Another night on dragonback?” he murmured, keeping his eyes on the table. “I can smell Maerax on you.”
Visenya bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling too broadly. “You’re one to speak of sneaking out at night. Please don’t begin a sermon you can’t finish.”
His eyes slid toward her. “I don’t come back smelling of dragonfire.”
“No. You’re clever than that. And you’re always on time for your lessons. The perfect prince.”
His mouth tightened, then curved despite his effort. Jacaerys had never learned to be stern with her for long, which was unfortunate for him and useful for Visenya. She knew his faces as well as her own. The one he wore now meant he wanted to scold her because he was worried, but he also wanted the details.
“Did anyone see you?”
Visenya reached for the quill beside her parchment and rolled it between her fingers. “Maerax saw me.”
Jace let out a quiet breath through his nose. “That isn’t funny.”
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “It was a little funny.”
“Visenya.”
She glanced toward the Maester, who was now bending over Lucerys’s slate and speaking in a low voice. Then she looked back at Jacaerys. “No one saw me.”
His expression remained unconvinced. “That you know of.”
Visenya pressed a hand dramatically to her chest. “What a comfort you are.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” he replied, lowering his voice even further.
She arched an eyebrow. “How noble. Does Mother know of this sudden devotion to obedience?”
His gaze sharpened with warning, though there was still humor beneath it. “Careful, sister.”
Visenya leaned back in her chair, looking entirely unrepentant. “I am always careful.”
This time Jace didn’t even pretend to consider the statement. “You never are.”
For as long as Visenya could remember, Jacaerys had been beside her. In the nursery, in the yards, on the cliffs when they were children and had been forbidden to climb too near the drop. He had been the first to follow when she dared him, the first to pull her back when she went too far, the first to take blame when she did something too reckless to hide. They had grown together so closely that even servants had stopped speaking of one without glancing for the other.
The Maester hated it.
He had said, more than once, that the future heir to the Iron Throne could not afford distraction. The word had landed on Visenya like a slap the first time she heard it. Distraction. As if she were a loose thread on Jacaerys’s sleeve, something to be cut away before he could be made presentable. Rhaenyra had not liked the comment, though she had hidden her displeasure behind a measured face. Daemon had liked it even less and had asked the Maester whether he had made a habit of speaking foolishly or whether Dragonstone had inspired him.
Yet nothing truly changed. The Maester still placed Lucerys between them whenever he could. He still found reasons to send Visenya away. He still watched Jacaerys whenever Visenya spoke, searching for the smallest sign that the prince’s attention had wandered from duty to her.
He was searching now.
Jacaerys must have noticed too, because he straightened and reached for his parchment. A moment later, his hand slipped under the table and pinched Visenya lightly at the waist.
She flinched, then shot him a look of outrage. He did not look back. The innocence on his face was so false that she wanted to laugh in spite of herself.
Visenya brought her hand down and slapped his fingers away. The sound was small, the Maester heard it anyway.
“Princess Visenya. Prince Jacaerys.”
Both of them looked up. Gerardys stood with one hand braced on the table, his patience now visibly burdened.
“If the two of you have finished amusing each other, perhaps we may return to the language of your ancestors.”
Jacaerys bowed his head. “Of course, Maester.”
Visenya managed the same a heartbeat later. “Of course.”
Lucerys glanced between them, he did not look surprised. He knew his siblings well enough to recognize their familiar rhythm. On the rug, little Viserys had lost interest in his painted ball and was trying to chew the hem of one of Aegon’s wooden banners.
Then Baela entered.
She came through the open doors without haste, dressed in deep blue with her silver hair drawn back from her face. Baela had always possessed a confidence that seemed effortless, the sort that made people listen when she spoke. Visenya had loved that about her once. She still did, though loving Baela had become more complicated with every passing moon.
Her gaze drifted across the room and settled on the Painted Table. Jacaerys and Visenya sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning over the same piece of parchment. Their heads were bent close enough that a stranger might have mistaken them for conspirators. Nearby, Maester Gerardys looked thoroughly displeased, while Lucerys seemed to be enjoying the spectacle far more than he should have.
Baela’s face did not change much, but Visenya saw enough. A chill moved through her that had nothing to do with the chamber.
“Princess Baela,” the Maester said, sounding relieved by the arrival of someone who carried herself as a princess ought to.
She inclined her head. “Maester Gerardys.” Her gaze moved to Visenya.
“The seamstress has asked for you. Your gown for tonight is ready, and she wants to be certain no more alterations are needed before the banquet.”
Visenya felt Jacaerys still beside her.
The banquet celebrating her seventeenth nameday. She had almost managed to forget it.
“Now?” she asked.
Baela’s expression cooled a fraction. “That is what I was told.”
There had been a time when Baela would have added something sharp under her breath, perhaps about Visenya being dragged from one torture to another. There had been a time when Visenya would have made a face, and Baela would have rolled her eyes, and the two of them would have left together while the Maester pretended not to hear their laughter in the hall.
Now Baela stood at the threshold as if she did not intend to remain a moment longer than duty required.
Visenya rose. The legs of her chair scraped softly over the floor. “Forgive me, Maester.”
His mouth thinned. “See that you return prepared next time, Princess.”
She gathered her parchment, though she had written almost nothing, then paused when Jacaerys reached for one of the loose sheets and placed it neatly atop the others. Their fingers brushed. It lasted less than a breath, yet Visenya felt Baela’s eyes on them as if the touch had been a flame.
She did not look at Jacaerys. That made it worse somehow.
When she turned toward the doors, Baela had already stepped away. By the time Visenya reached the corridor, her sister had vanished around the bend, leaving only the faint sound of retreating footsteps.
Visenya stood still for a moment.
The corridor outside the chamber was lined with dark stone and old torch brackets shaped like dragon heads. Morning light fell through narrow slits in the wall, cutting thin pale lines across the floor. Somewhere below, she heard the sound of a door closing.
Baela was avoiding her again.
There was no use pretending otherwise. At first Visenya had told herself that Baela was merely busy, that the betrothal to Jacaerys had given her more duties, that Rhaena needed her, that the household was preparing for too many visits and too many dinners with too many smiling lords. All of that was true enough, which made the lie easier to hold.
It did not change the way Baela looked at her now. As if she were trying to solve a riddle she feared she already understood.
Visenya tightened her grip around the parchment until the edges bent. Then she forced herself to move.
She had grown skilled at not thinking about certain things. Dragonstone helped. There was always something to keep her busy, always some duty waiting in another room. If a thought became too heavy, she could outrun it for a while. If she could not outrun it, she could fly.
That was the better answer. Flying made every feeling smaller.
She climbed toward her chambers by the eastern stair, taking the steps faster than was dignified. The higher levels of Dragonstone were quieter at that hour, though not empty. A pair of guards stood near an archway that led toward her mother’s solar. One wore the black and red of Rhaenyra’s household, the other the white cloak of the Kingsguard assigned to Dragonstone, though Visenya still found the sight of white cloaks in her mother’s service strange at times. So much of the realm insisted on pretending the future was distant, as if the Iron Throne would never pass from Viserys to Rhaenyra simply because enough men frowned at the thought.
Her father stood with the guards.
Daemon Targaryen had his back half turned when Visenya came up the stairs, one hand resting on the pommel of Dark Sister, his silver hair loose over his shoulders. He was speaking quietly, which with Daemon usually meant the matter was serious or the threat was meant to be savored. The guard before him held himself very still.
Visenya tried to pass without drawing notice. She should have known better.
Daemon’s eyes cut toward her as she slipped by. He let her go two steps beyond him before he stopped speaking. Then he turned. “Visenya.”
She closed her eyes briefly.
When she faced him, he had already dismissed the guard with a slight movement of his fingers. The man bowed and left quickly, perhaps grateful for any excuse to be elsewhere.
Daemon studied his daughter.
That was worse than anger. Her father could read guilt the way others read letters. His gaze moved from her loose hair to the collar of her gown, then to the faint ash she had failed to scrub entirely from the curve beneath her ear. His mouth softened in the smallest possible way.
He came closer.
Visenya lifted her chin, prepared for the reprimand. She could endure one from him. Daemon’s scoldings were quicker than Rhaenyra’s and far less polished. He did not speak of responsibility for a quarter hour, nor of how every careless act by a princess became a weapon in the hands of those who hated her mother. He usually called her foolish, asked whether she meant to break her neck, and then told her exactly how he would have done the same thing better.
Instead, he took her face in both hands.
His palms were warm. His thumbs rested lightly at her jaw as he tilted her face toward the light. “You rode Maerax again last night, didn’t you?”
Visenya bit her tongue.
For one foolish instant she considered lying. One look into her father’s eyes was enough to abandon the idea. “Yes.”
Daemon held her gaze for a moment. Then he smiled, and it was warm enough to loosen something in her chest. “Wash before your mother sees you,” he said. “Unless you want another lecture.”
Visenya blinked. “That is your counsel?”
“My counsel is to stop getting caught,” he replied dryly.
“I wasn’t caught.”
“You are standing in front of me smelling like dragon and disobedience.”
A laugh escaped her before she could prevent it. Daemon’s smile deepened, and for a heartbeat he looked younger, like the man from the stories she had grown up hearing in whispers, half scandal and half legend.
He brushed a loose strand of hair away from her face. “You cannot keep doing this every night.”
There it was. Visenya lowered her eyes. “Maerax is restless.”
“So are you. One of you must learn sense.”
She snorted. “She listens to me.”
That earned her a look. “She may,” Daemon said. “That doesn’t make her tame.”
“I don’t want her tame.”
Daemon’s thumb paused near her cheek. “No,” he said, quieter now. “I know.”
There was something in his voice that made her look back at him. For all his mockery, her father understood certain hungers better than anyone. The need for open air, the fury of being told to wait.
But that did not mean he would save her from consequence.
“If your mother asks,” he said, “I didn’t see you.”
Visenya smiled despite herself. “If Mother asks, you never see anything.”
“I see more than is good for anyone.”
She took one of his hands between both of hers and squeezed. It was a childish gesture, or it would have been on anyone else. With Daemon, affection had always been made of brief things. A hand on the back of her neck, or a shared glance across a table. A sword placed in her palm when she was too young to lift it properly and a voice telling her that if she wanted to learn, she should stop complaining about its weight.
“Thank you, father,” she said.
He gave her chin a light tap. “Go.”
She went, faster than before. By the time Visenya reached her chambers, the seamstress and her assistant were already waiting inside. So was the gown, it had been laid across her bed with reverence.
The first thing she saw was the red. Deep Targaryen red, darker where the fabric folded, richer where the light touched it. Black edging framed the bodice and sleeves, worked with fine thread in a pattern of scales so subtle that it only revealed itself when she moved closer. The overskirt was heavier than she had expected, made to fall in clean lines, while the underlayer shimmered faintly like embers beneath ash. Along the neckline, small black stones had been sewn into the fabric, not bright enough to seem gaudy, only enough to catch the candlelight.
It was far richer than anything she had worn in months.
Once, she would have loved that.
Visenya had always enjoyed beautiful things. Fine gowns, glittering jewels, lavish feasts, all the excess that came with being born a Targaryen princess. She had never understood people who pretended otherwise. There had been a time when she would have spent hours choosing ribbons, gems, and fabrics, eager for any excuse to wear them. Lately, however, she had begun avoiding such occasions whenever she could.
Banquets meant attention. Attention meant eyes. And Visenya knew all too well why those eyes had started following her wherever she went.
“Princess,” the seamstress said, rising at once. She was a narrow woman, with her hair starting to get grey at the roots. Her assistant, younger and round-cheeked, clutched a tray of pins. “The gown is ready. We wished to be certain no further alterations were needed before tonight.”
Visenya looked at the dress for a long moment.
Tonight.
There would be lords at the table. Great lords and heirs from some of the most powerful houses in the realm. Men eager to win their mother’s favor and secure a place closer to the future queen. They would cloak their intentions behind wine, smiles, and flattering words, but Visenya knew exactly why they had come. Few men looked at a princess of House Targaryen without seeing an opportunity.
“Very well,” she said.
The seamstress glanced at her hair, wisely chose not to comment, and gestured for the screen to be moved.
Visenya allowed herself to be undressed and fitted. The assistant unlaced her gown, helped her step into the red one, and drew the fabric up over her shoulders. The bodice fit closely, though not indecently. The sleeves fell long and elegant, splitting slightly at the wrist to reveal black lining. When the seamstress fastened the back, Visenya felt the gown settle perfectly to her body.
She looked down at herself.
The neckline sat lower than most of the dresses she usually wore, revealing more of her throat and collarbones than she was accustomed to. It was not improper, but it was certainly noticeable. Combined with the fitted bodice and the rich fabric, it made her look older. More grown.
For a moment, she hardly recognized the girl staring back at her.
“Turn, Princess.”
She turned. The hem whispered over the floor.
The seamstress knelt to check the fall of the skirt, smoothing a fold near the hem before leaning back to inspect her work. Then she gave a small nod, apparently satisfied.
Visenya stood before the mirror and watched a young woman stare back at her.
Seventeen.
It sounded different when spoken by others. On the tongues of lords, ladies, and her mother’s councillors, seventeen became a door that should have already opened.
A wife’s age, they called it.
Visenya had bled first four years ago. She remembered the day because her mother had come to her chamber herself, kissed her brow, and spoken softly of womanhood, blood, inheritance, and caution. Rhaenyra had looked proud and sorrowful at once, which frightened Visenya more than the blood had. After that, the whispers began. Quiet at first, then bolder as moons passed without a betrothal.
The princess is of age. The princess remains unpromised. The princess cannot be kept forever at Dragonstone.
She had heard versions of it from visiting ladies or from the wives of men who sat at her mother’s table. Even servants had their own silence around the subject, a pause whenever marriage was mentioned and Visenya entered the room.
At first, she had resented the delay.
As a child, she had imagined marriage as children do, with more attention given to feasts and gowns than to the man involved. She had pictured a castle of her own, a household that answered to her, children with silver hair and dragon eggs in their cradles. There had been a sweetness in the idea then because she had not understood the cost. A little girl could dream of being chosen without thinking of being sent away.
Now she understood.
Marriage would likely mean leaving Dragonstone.
Leaving her mother’s halls. Leaving the sea winds and the Dragonmont. Leaving her siblings, whose lives were tangled so closely with hers that the thought of distance made something in her chest tighten.
Leaving Jace.
The thought rose too quickly. Visenya looked away from the mirror.
“Is it too tight, Princess?” the seamstress asked.
“No.”
The woman’s fingers paused at the back of the bodice. “You moved as if it troubled you.”
“It doesn’t.”
The seamstress was too wise to question a princess twice.
Visenya smoothed her hands over the front of the gown. The fabric was beautiful, but that almost made it worse. Beauty had its own form of obedience. A sword could be raised or lowered by the one who held it. A gown like this was made to speak before its wearer did, and tonight it would tell every man in the hall that Princess Visenya Targaryen was ready to be considered.
A knock came at the door.
Before Visenya could answer, it opened. Rhaena stepped in, already speaking.
“Have you seen Baela? I’ve been looking for her since the embroidery lesson and she’s being impossible ag…”
She stopped. Her eyes widened.
“Oh, gods,” Rhaena breathed. “Visenya.”
Visenya looked at her through the mirror. “That terrible?”
Rhaena came forward with both hands pressed to her own heart, as if the sight had genuinely wounded her. “You’re beautiful.”
Visenya rolled her eyes, though a smile tugged at her mouth before she could restrain it. “I was hoping for something more sincere.”
“That is sincere. Don’t be modest, sister. It doesn’t suit you.”
Rhaena reached for her hand and turned her gently toward the light. She had always been softer in manner than Baela, though Visenya knew better than to mistake softness for weakness. Rhaena noticed things. She felt shifts in rooms before others named them. Her kindness had edges when someone she loved was hurt.
Now her face lit with open delight as she examined the gown.
The deep red suited Visenya better than she had expected. It deepened the bluish violet of her eyes and made her silver-gold hair look brighter even in its unbraided state while the black scale-work along the bodice gave the dress a martial grace, making her look more mature.
“Oh, gods,” Rhaena said again, smiling this time. “You are so beautiful, little sister.”
She moved behind her and wrapped her arms around Visenya’s waist, resting her chin lightly on her shoulder. In the mirror, the two of them looked like a royal painting, all silver hair and fine fabric. Rhaena smiled at their reflection. “You’ll make every lord’s son fall in love tonight. I’m certain of it.”
The words were meant sweetly. Visenya smiled because she knew she ought to, but the smile felt delicate on her face, like something that might break if held too long.
A knot formed in her throat. Every lord’s son.
Sooner or later, one of them would matter. One would be chosen. One would be named suitable by her mother, acceptable by her father, and useful by the council. Rhaena had Lucerys. Baela had Jacaerys. Their futures had been joined to the boys they had known all their lives, which did not make marriage simple, though it made it less unknown.
Visenya had no one.
That was not entirely true. She had someone, and that was the heart of the trouble.
Rhaena’s arms loosened, perhaps because she felt the change in her. “What is it?” she asked. “You’ve gone quiet.”
Visenya shook her head. “Nothing. The gown is very fine.”
She turned toward the seamstress, grateful for the excuse.
“No further alterations are needed. It’s perfect.”
The seamstress bowed, visibly pleased. “You honor my work, Princess.”
The assistant began gathering the discarded pins and folded cloth. Rhaena stayed close, watching Visenya with concern.
“You know,” she said after a moment, “you shouldn’t be afraid.”
Visenya glanced at her. “I didn’t say I was.”
“No. You never do.” Rhaena took her hand again, gentler now. “Father favors you more than anyone, even if he pretends otherwise. Rhaenyra adores you. They won’t give you to some cruel old lord with bad teeth and a keep full of damp rooms.”
Visenya laughed despite herself. “That’s a comfort.”
“They will choose well,” Rhaena said. “The best and sweetest man they can find. You must not doubt that.”
The seamstress and her assistant had the good sense to busy themselves near the screen, though Visenya knew they heard. Everyone always heard. Dragonstone was built of stone, yet secrets passed through it as if through linen.
Rhaena meant to soothe her. Visenya knew that. She could feel the love in every word. It almost made her angry.
The best man. The sweetest man. The gentlest, noblest, most suitable man her parents could place before her.
None of it mattered.
A sweet man could still be a stranger. A noble man could still take her away from everything she desired.
Visenya looked into the mirror again. The girl in red looked ready for a banquet and for songs, ready for some lord to bow over her hand and call her radiant while measuring how close marriage to her might bring him to the Iron Throne.
Deep in her heart, where even she tried not to look too long, Visenya knew the truth. No one they chose would ever be the right one.
By evening, the sea wind had risen again. It pressed at the shutters and slipped through the older cracks in the stone. Visenya could hear it even through the warmth of her chambers, beneath the softer sounds of women moving around her and the scrape of a comb passing through her hair.
Candles burned on the mantel, on the dressing table, on the narrow ledge by the window where the black glass reflected small trembling flames. Their light warmed the red of her gown and made the rubies scattered across the table gleam like drops of fire.
Elinda Massey stood behind her with both hands in Visenya’s hair.
A daughter of House Massey, Elinda had come to Dragonstone years ago in hopes of finding a husband among the knights, courtiers, and younger sons who passed through the princess’s court. None had ever become her match. Instead, she had remained in Rhaenyra’s household and, in time, had become one of the ladies-in-waiting at her service.
She was more than ten years older than the princess. Even so, she was the closest thing Visenya had to a friend.
“Hold still, Princess.”
Visenya obeyed for nearly a full minute before shifting again.
The woman sighed. “You used to sit more quietly when you were ten.”
“I just breathed,” she complained.
“Then breathe less.”
Visenya met Elinda’s eyes in the mirror and almost smiled. She had served her long enough to speak with a freedom other ladies would never have dared, though always softly, always within the safety of closed doors. She was quick-handed and patient, which was fortunate, because Visenya had never made the work easy for her. Her hair had been washed, oiled lightly, and combed until the tangles from the previous night had surrendered, though some stubborn waves still resisted being made obedient.
Two other ladies hovered nearby. One held a small dish of rubies and garnet beads. The other adjusted the folds of the gown where the skirt spread over the chair, careful not to crease the fabric before Visenya had even reached the hall. A third had been sent to fetch a cloak and had not yet returned.
“There,” Elinda murmured.
She gathered two sections of hair from Visenya’s temples, weaving them back into small braids that joined at the crown. The rest she left falling down her back in loose waves. Into the braids, Elinda fixed small red stones with delicate golden clasps. Each ruby caught the candlelight when Visenya turned her head.
“It’s too much,” Visenya said.
Elinda smiled without looking up from her hair. “It’s your nameday feast, after all.”
“As if anyone would let me forget it.”
One of the younger ladies gave a nervous little laugh, then lowered her eyes when Visenya glanced at her.
Elinda placed one last ruby near the crown of her head and stepped back to study her work. “You look very well, Princess.”
Visenya lifted a hand toward the pendant at her throat. “Very well sounds like something said of a horse before sale.”
Elinda’s face flickered. “My lady, I didn’t mean…”
“I know.”
Visenya lowered her hand, ashamed at once of the sharpness in her voice, but before she could say more, the door opened. The ladies turned at once.
Rhaenyra entered without announcement.
The room seemed to settle around her. Even heavily pregnant, even with one hand resting beneath the curve of her belly as she crossed the threshold, she held herself with the certainty of a woman who had been born beneath too many eyes to flinch from them now. Her evening gown was black velvet with red at the sleeves and a collar that framed her face in old Targaryen fashion. Gold glimmered at her throat. Her silver hair had been braided carefully and wound back from her face, though a few loose strands softened her temples.
The child within her had grown large. She was near her time, and Visenya could see it in the slowness of her steps, in the way one of her ladies lingered just behind her, ready to help if needed. Yet Rhaenyra still looked every inch the Princess of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne, and daughter of kings.
Every lady in the room curtsied. Rhaenyra barely noticed them at first.
She remained near the door for a breath, looking at Visenya through the mirror. A small smile touched her mouth. Then she came closer.
Elinda moved aside at once.
Rhaenyra placed both hands on Visenya’s shoulders and bent to kiss the top of her head. The gesture was so familiar that for a moment Visenya was a little girl again, sitting before her mother after a bath while Rhaenyra worked a comb through her hair and told her stories of Old Valyria.
“My daughter,” Rhaenyra said softly. “When did you become a woman without my noticing?”
Visenya smiled, though it did not quite reach the place inside her where fear had settled. “I suspect you noticed. You notice everything.”
“Not everything.” Rhaenyra’s eyes lifted in the mirror and met hers. “If I did, certain dragons would be less frequently ridden in secret.”
Heat rose to Visenya’s face. Elinda became very interested in arranging the jewel tray.
“I don’t know what Father told you,” Visenya said.
“Your father told me nothing. He’s very gifted at telling me nothing when he thinks silence will spare someone trouble.”
“That sounds unlike him.”
“It sounds exactly like him.” Rhaenyra’s mouth curved, but the gentle scolding faded quickly. Her fingers tightened on Visenya’s shoulders, then loosened again.
“It’s your feast,” she said. “Are you not happy tonight?”
Visenya had prepared for this question without knowing she had done so. She had been answering versions of it all day, in smiles, nods, and little evasions. To Rhaena, to the seamstress, to herself.
She made her face bright. “I’m the happiest girl in the realm,” she said. “I’m only a little nervous.”
Rhaenyra studied her reflection. “A little?”
“A little,” Visenya insisted.
Her mother moved around the chair and touched her cheek. The contact was warm, and Visenya had to fight the sudden, childish urge to lean fully into it and confess everything. That she did not want the feast. That she did not want the men waiting below. That she did not want to be watched as if she were a prize being slowly brought into reach.
Rhaenyra’s thumb brushed once along her cheekbone.
“There’s nothing you need fear, my girl. You’re like the sun. Wherever you go, the room changes around you.”
Visenya looked down, embarrassed by the tenderness of her mother’s words. “I’m not sure suns are often allowed to choose where they rise.”
Rhaenyra heard the bitterness in her tone. A brief silence settled between mother and daughter before she finally sighed.
“No. Not often. Yet even a princess has more power than men expect her to have, if she learns how to use patience without letting it become surrender.”
Then Rhaenyra held out her hand. “It’s time. Come. We will go down together.”
Visenya hesitated for a moment, then she rose. The ladies moved in at once to smooth her skirts, adjust the fall of her sleeves, and ensure every jewel sat properly. Elinda looked close to tears, which Visenya found so unbearable that she pretended not to see it.
At the door, Visenya glanced once more toward the mirror.
A Targaryen princess looked back at her, crowned with rubies, wrapped in red and black, bright enough to be admired and valuable enough to be traded.
She lifted her chin and followed her mother out.
Two white cloaks waited in the corridor.
Ser Steffon Darklyn stood to the right, one hand resting near the hilt of his sword. Ser Lorent Marbrand waited beside him, as watchful as ever. Both bowed as Rhaenyra approached, then inclined their heads to Visenya.
“My princess,” Ser Steffon said.
Rhaenyra acknowledged them with a nod and began the descent.
Dragonstone at night belonged to flame. Torches burned along the walls, caught in iron brackets shaped like open dragon mouths. Music rose from below as they descended. Pipes, strings, drums, the murmur of many voices gathered.
Near the doors of the great hall, a herald waited with two servants in black and red livery. The sound from within swelled when the doors opened slightly. Heat came out first, then the smell of roasted meat, wine, and too many bodies dressed in heavy cloth.
Rhaenyra looked at Visenya one last time, smiling faintly, then turned.
The doors opened and the herald struck his staff against the floor. “Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, Princess of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne.”
The hall rose for her.
Lords, ladies and knights bowed as Rhaenyra entered beneath the glow of a hundred candles. Dragonstone’s great hall was smaller than the throne room in King’s Landing, yet there was a severity to it that Visenya preferred. Its walls were dark stone, hung with banners of red and black. Braziers burned along the sides, sending tongues of fire upward and filling the chamber with heat. Long tables had been arranged below the dais, crowded with guests loyal to her mother or eager to appear so. Above them, the rafters vanished into shadow. At the far end of the room, behind the high table, the Targaryen dragon had been worked in black against red cloth so large it seemed to watch over the feast like a living thing.
Rhaenyra took several steps into the hall. Then the herald called again. “Princess Visenya Targaryen.”
Visenya entered.
For all her life, she had known what it meant to be watched. She had been born into a family that drew eyes even when standing still. She had never been a timid girl, and in the privacy of her own thoughts she had sometimes admitted that she enjoyed attention more than she was supposed to. Admiration could be a warm thing when one felt in command of it.
But this felt different.
Lords and ladies from the most powerful houses had come from every corner of the realm. Some had brought sons. Some had brought nephews. Some had brought widowed cousins polished clean for presentation. They all watched now, their eyes caught on the rubies in her hair, the red of her gown, the line of her throat where the pendant rested against her skin.
Only her Grandfather, who had grown too frail to travel to Dragonstone, and the royal uncles and aunt from King’s Landing were absent.
All had been invited, because propriety demanded it and because Rhaenyra would never give Queen Alicent the satisfaction of claiming discourtesy. Ravens had gone to Prince Aegon and his wife Princess Helaena, Prince Aemond, and even to Prince Daeron in Oldtown. All had refused, politely, and with reasons that sounded different while meaning the same thing. The language of court was skilled at making rejection wear silk.
Rhaenyra had not been surprised. There had never been much warmth between her and her half-siblings, and Visenya suspected her mother had expected nothing else.
In truth, Visenya was relieved.
Aegon had always made her uneasy, even before she had been old enough to understand why. Aemond was worse. He looked at people as if he were measuring where best to place the knife, and the loss of his eye had not softened him. Helaena alone had been kind to her, in her distant, drifting way, speaking to insects as often as she spoke to people and sometimes making more sense than anyone else in the room.
Visenya kept walking. She had been taught how to move through a room. Slowly enough to be seen, steadily enough not to seem eager, with her head high and her hands composed. She did all of it. Every step felt like something learned by another girl and borrowed for the evening.
Then she saw Jacaerys.
He had been speaking with a nobleman near the edge of the open floor, his head slightly inclined, the proper prince attending to some proper compliment. Whatever answer he had been giving faded the moment his eyes found her.
Visenya stopped breathing for half a heartbeat. He looked like one of the princes from old songs that septas pretended were harmless for girls to hear. The black and red of their house suited him almost cruelly well, making his curls seem even darker where they fell in ordered disarray near his brow. There was a firmness in the line of his shoulders, in the way he held himself among lords twice his age. He looked older in the candlelight. Nearer to the man the realm expected him to become.
His look passed through Visenya with dangerous warmth. She forced herself to look away first.
Rhaenyra had taken her place at the high table, while Daemon stood near her chair. Visenya saw him glance once around the hall, as if daring any man present to look too long at his daughter and survive the attempt. That almost made her smile.
Then Lucerys appeared at her side. He offered his arm with exaggerated solemnity.
“Dear sister,” he murmured, “from your face, I believe you are in need of rescue.”
Visenya took his arm before he could think better of it. “You’ve never been dearer to me.”
“Try to remember that the next time you mock my High Valyrian,” he murmured, trying to hide a mischievous grin.
“Don’t grow ambitious.”
“I’m a prince. It is expected.”
That drew a reluctant smile from her, and Lucerys looked pleased enough.
He led her toward the dancers just as the musicians shifted into a formal canon. Couples arranged themselves in lines across the center of the hall, each pair joining hands, turning, parting, and passing to the next partner in a pattern that allowed half the court to touch one another under the protection of music. It was a useful dance for mothers with daughters and lords with sons. No one remained with anyone long enough to be accused of intimacy, though everyone remained long enough to be noticed.
Luke bowed. Visenya curtsied.
“You looked very meek when you came in,” he said as they began the first steps. “I confess I was startled.”
“I was not meek,” she protested.
“I thought, surely this cannot be my little sister, mistress of that insolent Maerax. Some timid lady has stolen her gown.”
Visenya gave him a look of deep offense. “Maerax is not insolent.”
“I heard she nearly took a dragonkeeper’s hand off.”
Her expression did not change. “He tried to prod her with his spear. He earned what he got.”
Luke laughed, and Visenya felt some of the tightness in her chest loosen. He was older than she was, though younger than Jace, and by the measure of Westeros already a man. Still, there were moments when she could see the child he had been lingering in his smile. Some last trace of innocence.
It made it strange to think of him as Rhaena’s future husband.
Rhaena, with her calm eyes and gentle hands, already seemed far more grown than Luke did. Yet there was genuine affection between them. Visenya had seen Rhaena soften when Lucerys entered a room, and he grow steadier beneath her attention. They would be happy, she thought. Perhaps not grandly. Perhaps not in the way singers would care to remember. There were worse things than a gentle marriage.
The dance turned.
Luke’s hand slipped from hers as the pattern sent him toward a lady in green silk, and Visenya found herself facing a young man from House Staunton.
He was tall and thin, with an aquiline nose and eyes too small for his face. He bowed with considerable confidence. “Princess.”
“My lord.”
His hand met hers. His fingers were cool, his grip too eager.
“You are enchanting tonight,” he said as the steps brought them together. “The very image of the maiden.”
Visenya kept her smile in place. “You honor me, my lord.”
He seemed encouraged by that, which was unfortunate.
The dance moved them apart, then together. His hand brushed her waist once, as the figure permitted. The second time, it lingered. The third, his fingers rested with too much certainty. Visenya’s hands tightened.
Across the floor, Jacaerys was dancing with Baela.
Her head tilted back as she laughed at something he said. Jace smiled in answer, warm, and for a moment the sight struck Visenya harder than Staunton’s hand. Baela looked right at his side. They had been promised to one another since childhood. Years had passed since that arrangement had first been made, and Visenya could scarcely remember a time when it had not existed. Their future together had always been treated as a certainty, and she should have been accustomed to it by now. Lately, however, the thought had gained teeth.
Visenya looked away.
She concentrated on the steps, on the turn that would free her from Staunton. When the dance finally passed him onward, she nearly sighed with relief.
Her next partner was a boy barely older than herself. Judging by the stiffness of his posture and the way he avoided her eyes, he seemed far more nervous than she was. His palms were damp, and when he bowed, he nearly struck his forehead against her hand. “P-Princess.”
Visenya softened despite herself. “My lord.”
“I… I am honored.”
“So am I.”
He blushed so fiercely that she pitied him. He barely spoke after that, and by the time the music came to its close, Visenya was grateful to both the gods and the musicians.
She had scarcely stepped away from the dance before Maester Gerardys appeared at her side.
“Princess,” he said, and he looked like he had been sent rather than inspired. “Your presence is requested.”
Visenya’s stomach sank. “By whom?”
“Your father.”
That surprised her enough to make her follow.
Daemon stood near one of the side tables, holding a cup of wine and looking as if he had just endured the longest conversation ever inflicted upon man. Before him was an old lord Visenya recognized after a moment as Beesbury. Beside him stood a young man with dirty blond hair. He was handsome, and carried himself like someone who knew it.
Daemon’s eyes flicked toward Visenya as she approached.
There was amusement there. That did not reassure her.
“Ah,” Lord Beesbury said, turning at once. He bowed. “Princess Visenya. The years have been most generous. Prince Daemon, you have a daughter of rare beauty. A true gem.”
Daemon gave the smallest nod, as if acknowledging a comment about the weather. “So I am told.”
Visenya resisted the urge to step on her father’s foot.
Lord Beesbury did not notice, or chose not to. He gestured to the young man at his side. “May I present my son, Alan Beesbury.”
Alan bowed with grace. “Princess. I don’t know whether you remember me, but we were often companions in childhood when my family visited Dragonstone.”
Visenya looked at him properly.
There was nothing familiar about him. Handsome, yes. He had clear skin, a pleasing shape to his mouth, and eyes that lingered a shade too long. His smile carried the confidence of a man accustomed to being received well.
“I fear I don’t remember,” she said. “Forgive me, my lord.”
“There is nothing to forgive. Many years have passed.” He stepped a little closer. “I’ve heard that you are a great pride to your tutors.”
Beside her, Maester Gerardys avoided Visenya’s eyes.
She glanced at Daemon. Her father was already looking at her. There was a shared amusement in their eyes.
“Is that so?” Visenya asked.
“Indeed. I have also heard you’re accomplished in embroidery and produce tapestries of remarkable delicacy.”
This time Daemon almost smiled. Gerardys looked as if he would have preferred to be elsewhere, or dead.
Visenya folded her hands before her. “I believe your informants have played you false, Lord Beesbury. For this once, I shall take no offense.”
Alan blinked.
Daemon drank from his cup to hide his expression.
“With your permission,” Visenya said, lowering her head in a polite farewell that allowed no answer, “I must return to the hall.”
She left before anyone could stop her. For half a dozen steps, she felt a wicked little pleasure in the escape. Then she turned her head and saw her mother watching from the high table.
Rhaenyra’s face was composed, but there was something in her eyes.
Visenya understood at once. The introduction had not been chance, her mother had asked Gerardys to bring her. Her father had been made to stand with the Beesburys like bait, however bored he looked while doing it. Perhaps Alan Beesbury had not been chosen. Perhaps he was only one possibility among several, one name placed quietly beside hers in some conversation she had not been allowed to hear.
The thought made her throat close.
Alan Beesbury, with his handsome face and smug little smile. He was so full of himself that he looked almost ridiculous. Had her mother truly looked at that man and thought he might be a husband for her?
She did not make it five steps before another man approached. He was much older than she was, with a beard touched by grey and a smile that tried too hard to seem reassuring.
“Princess Visenya, might I claim the next dance?”
The hall tilted unpleasantly. Before Visenya could answer, Rhaena appeared at her side.
“My lord,” Rhaena said with a sweet apology, “you must forgive us. Princess Rhaenyra has asked for her daughter.”
The man bowed at once. “Of course.”
Rhaena took Visenya’s hand and drew her away. Visenya released a breath. “I owe you my life.”
Rhaena did not smile at that as much as Visenya expected.
“The evening is still young,” she said quietly. “You must learn to hide your feelings better. Anyone could see your discomfort from across the hall.”
Visenya looked down, twisting her fingers together. “I’m trying.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.
Rhaena’s face softened at that, but she did not press.
When Visenya looked back toward the crowd, she found Jacaerys near their mother. Baela stood close at his arm, her hand resting there with confidence. Jace listened as Rhaenyra spoke, dutiful and attentive. Baela, however, seemed to be looking directly at Visenya.
Caught, Visenya turned away.
Rhaena noticed. She said nothing.
Instead, she led Visenya toward one of the long tables and took a cup. She filled it with wine from a flagon, then pressed it into Visenya’s hand. “Drink.”
Visenya eyed the cup doubtfully. “Wine makes my head spin.”
“It will loosen your limbs. Trust me.”
Visenya looked into the dark red surface of the wine as if it might answer her. Then she lifted the cup and drank.
She emptied it too quickly. The taste was strong and sour beneath the sweetness, and she had to blink when it hit the back of her throat.
Rhaena stared at her. “I didn’t say to drink all of it at once.”
Visenya lowered the cup. “Too late.”
Rhaena laughed at that, but the sound had barely faded before another young man approached them. Visenya recognized his face, though his name escaped her. He looked to be near her age.
He bowed and offered his hand. “Princess. May I have this dance?”
Rhaena, standing behind him, gave Visenya a small encouraging nod. Over the young man’s shoulder, Visenya saw her mother watching.
So she breathed in, placed her hand in his, and allowed herself to be led back to the floor.
At first, the wine made her body feel strangely distant. Her cheeks warmed, and the candlelight blurred at the edges. The music became easier to follow because she stopped thinking so much about each step. The young man spoke, and she answered. If she laughed once when she should have only smiled, he seemed pleased enough by it.
Perhaps Rhaena had been right. Perhaps a little wine was all that separated terror from courage.
When the dance changed, she passed from one partner to another with less dread than before. A Celtigar cousin asked whether she found the evening pleasing. She told him the music was fine. A boy whose name she never learned stepped on the edge of her gown and nearly died of embarrassment. She told him no harm was done and meant it, mostly.
After a time, she found herself near the table again. The wine did not taste better the second time. She drank it anyway.
Across the hall, Jacaerys was now looking at her.
Concern had gathered between his brows. He did not come to her. Perhaps he knew that if he did, she would lose the little balance she had managed to gather.
Visenya drank again. Time became difficult after that.
The hall grew louder, warmer. The candles stretched tall and golden in her vision. Faces came and went. She danced when asked, refused when she could, laughed too easily at something Lucerys said, then almost stumbled when Rhaena caught her hand and spun her. Her mother’s gaze found her more than once, and each time Visenya straightened, smiled, behaved for a little while, then forgot again.
At some point, she found little Aegon with his nurse near the edge of the dancers, watching the movement with wide eyes and a sticky mouth from some stolen sweet.
“Would you like to dance?” she asked him.
Aegon looked up at her, his eyes wide. “With you?”
“With me.”
He nodded so hard his silver curls bounced against his cheeks.
Visenya took both his hands and drew him onto the floor. He was delighted, stepping wherever he pleased while she tried to turn his chaos into something resembling a dance. He laughed when she spun him. She laughed because he did. For a few blessed moments, there were no lordlings, no mothers arranging introductions, no Baela watching from across the hall, no Jace with careful eyes and a future that did not belong to her.
There was only Aegon’s little hands in hers and the absurd joy of moving badly in a room full of people trained to move well.
“You’re terrible,” she told him.
Aegon immediately burst into laughter. “You’re terrible,” he echoed, pointing a finger at her as though he had come up with the insult himself.
Visenya gasped in mock outrage. “That’s treason.”
The boy blinked up at her. “What’s treason?”
She leaned closer as if about to reveal a great secret. “Something you should never say near Mother.”
Aegon’s eyes widened again. For a heartbeat he looked genuinely concerned. Then Visenya smiled, and he realized she was teasing him.
He dissolved into giggles once more, flushed and breathless from dancing, his curls damp against his temples.
The idea came to her suddenly and foolishly. She bent to lift him. Perhaps she meant to swing him onto her hip as she had done when he was smaller. Perhaps she only meant to make him laugh again. The movement was too quick, her balance already too uncertain, the hem of her gown too near her foot.
The floor vanished beneath her. She fell sideways with Aegon half in her arms, hitting the cold stone with enough force to send pain through her hip and shoulder. Aegon slipped from her grasp and landed beside her.
The music stopped. Or perhaps it only seemed to.
For one dreadful moment, all Visenya heard was the ringing in her ears and Aegon’s breath catching before he began to cry.
Then a hand seized her arm, pulling her attention back to the hall. “Visenya.”
Jacaerys knelt quickly and helped Aegon sit up, then offered her his arm. His face was pale with worry, but his voice remained gentle. “Come. Up you get.”
“I’m fine,” she whispered.
“I know. Stand anyway.”
She let him help her rise. Aegon had begun to sob, more from shock than pain, and Visenya reached for him at once.
“Aegon, sweetling…”
A nurse appeared and gathered him away, murmuring comfort. The boy looked back at Visenya through tears, and the sight made her feel even worse.
Around them, the hall finally remembered itself.
Voices resumed. Loudly. The musicians began again while the Lords turned back to their conversations, pretending nothing had happened.
Visenya lowered her eyes and smoothed the front of her gown. The skirt was not torn, but one sleeve had twisted. Her palms were damp, her face burned.
A hand caught her arm, and when she turned Rhaenyra stood right beside her.
She was clearly trying to keep her composure for the sake of the guests, but the tension in her face left little doubt about how she felt. When she spoke, her voice was low enough that no one else could hear. “You’re drunk.”
Visenya said nothing.
“You’ve covered me in shame. Look at yourself. You’re flushed, sweating, stumbling through the hall like a tavern girl. Tonight of all nights, you chose this?”
Visenya’s eyes stung. She bit down on the inside of her cheek and fixed her gaze on the floor, determined not to cry.
Rhaenyra’s fingers tightened on her arm. “Was it necessary to make a spectacle of yourself? Was that what you wanted?”
The girl pulled her arm free.
For a moment, she thought she might answer. She might say that she had not meant to shame anyone. That she had not meant to make her little brother cry or humiliate herself in front of half the castle. But the words would not come.
She could not bear for Rhaenyra to see her cry, so she turned away.
“Daughter,” her mother hissed.
Visenya did not stop, she slipped quickly into the crowd. Guests and servants alike stepped aside as she passed. She could feel eyes following her, but kept her gaze fixed ahead.
The doors were ahead.
She passed through them into the corridor, and the cooler air struck her face like water. Only then did she breathe.
The music dulled behind the stone walls as she climbed the stairs toward her chambers. She forced herself to walk straight, one hand brushing the wall only when the steps seemed to shift beneath her feet. Her head still spun and her hip hurt where she had fallen. A ruby slipped from her hair and bounced once on the stair behind her, but she did not stop for it.
She held the tears back until the hall was far enough away that no one could see.
Then, halfway up the last flight, Visenya pressed a hand to her mouth and began to cry.
Back in the hall, the feast slowly found its rhythm again.
Lucerys had watched his sister disappear through the doors and for a moment he considered following her himself. Even Rhaena’s gaze lingered on the doorway, worry plain upon her face.
Across the hall, Baela was standing near one of the pillars, quiet and stiff, her eyes not on the doors, but on Jacaerys.
But that, Luke thought, was another trouble entirely.
Then he glanced toward their mother.
Rhaenyra stood now near the high table again, one hand resting beneath the weight of her belly while she spoke quietly with Daemon. Her attention remained fixed on the feast, though the tension in her face suggested her thoughts were elsewhere.
Only when she turned away did Lucerys move. He squeezed Rhaena’s hand.
“I’ll be right back.”
She looked at him at once. “Luke.”
“I know.”
He did not wait for her to ask anything more. He crossed the hall quickly, slipping between a pair of servants and a cluster of young lords who were doing a poor job of pretending they were not whispering about Visenya. His jaw tightened as he passed them. One of them had the sense to look away.
Jacaerys stood near the edge of the dancing space, half turned toward the doors. He had not followed Visenya, though every part of him looked as if he wanted to. His hand rested against the back of a chair with unnecessary force. The knuckles had gone pale.
Luke came close enough that no one else would hear him.
“You need to go after her.”
He did not look surprised. Perhaps Jace had been waiting for someone to command him into doing what he had already been fighting himself not to do.
“I’m not sure I am the best person to fetch her right now.”
Luke stared at him. “That’s unfortunate, because I’m not stupid.”
Jace turned his head, his gaze drifting aimlessly across the hall. To anyone watching, it might have seemed as though something in the crowd had caught his attention. Lucerys knew better. His brother was simply avoiding his eyes.
He lowered his voice further. “When she is like this, when she’s angry enough to hurt herself rather than admit she’s hurting, you’re the only one who can get near her.”
“She may not want me near her.”
“She never wants anyone near her until she does.” Luke glanced toward the high table, where their mother had taken her seat again with a face composed too tightly to be calm. “If she stays gone for the rest of the evening, Mother will take it as another insult. The hall will notice, the ladies will talk, the lordlings will talk more. It will become worse than it needs to be.”
At that, Jace said nothing.
Luke’s expression softened slightly, though impatience still moved beneath his words. “She doesn’t need a lecture. She needs someone to help her pull herself together and come back before this becomes another wound between her and Mother.”
From her place beside the stone pillar, Baela was watching them.
Jace felt it before he saw it. When he turned, her gaze met his from beneath the candlelight. She did not smile. There was no accusation in her face, not openly, which only made it harder to bear. He looked away first.
“Go,” Luke said.
Jacaerys released a slow breath, then nodded.
He left the hall without haste, because haste would draw eyes, though every step felt too slow.
The music followed him into the corridor and faded as he climbed. Dragonstone held sound strangely. Laughter from below became a murmur, then a throb, then nothing but the sea and the wind. By the time Jace reached Visenya’s door, the feast seemed like something happening in another castle.
He paused with his hand near the latch. Then he entered.
The room was dimmer than he expected. Several candles still burned, though one had guttered low enough that wax had spilled down the side of its holder and hardened in uneven trails. The chamber smelled of wine and the rose oil of her hair. One of the windows had been left unlatched, and the curtain breathed inward and outward with the wind.
Rubies lay scattered across the floor.
At first Jace only noticed one near his boot, bright against the dark floor. Then he saw more. A few had fallen beside the bed, one had rolled beneath the dressing table. Her red slippers had been kicked off in opposite directions, one near the hearth, the other lying on its side by the bedpost.
Visenya lay across the bed still in her gown.
She had torn half the pins from her hair. Some strands remained braided, tangled with a few stubborn rubies. The rest spilled over the pillow and her shoulders, wild from her hands. She covered her face with both palms, breathing slowly.
When she heard him, she spoke without looking. “Rhaena, leave me alone.”
“It’s not Rhaena.”
Her hands fell from her face. For a moment she stared at him in silence.
Her eyes were swollen from crying, and tears still glistened upon her cheeks. A few loose curls clung stubbornly to her face, damp and tangled from her weeping.
Jace simply looked at her. The sight hurt more than he cared to admit.
Visenya had always worn her feelings openly. When she was angry, the whole castle knew it. When she was happy, she laughed loud enough for everyone around her to hear. Seeing her now, so visibly wounded, made something twist painfully inside his chest.
Then, for the briefest instant, a different thought slipped uninvited into his mind.
Even like this, with her hair half undone and her face blotched from crying, she was beautiful.
Jacaerys drew a slow breath and forced the thought away as quickly as it had come. Every instinct urged him to cross the room, kneel beside her bed, take her face between his hands and pull her against his chest until the tears stopped.
Instead, he remained where he was.
Visenya wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, the gesture sharp and embarrassed. “Go away.”
Jace remained where he was. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Her mouth tightened. “I said leave me alone.”
“I heard you,” he replied.
“And?”
“I am refusing.”
She gave him a look of such pure irritation that he almost felt relieved. Anger was easier than tears.
Jace crossed the room slowly. “We need to get you put together and take you back downstairs.”
She laughed once, without humor. “I’m not going back down.”
“You cannot disappear from the feast held in your honor.” Rather than scolding her, he maintained a gentle tone. It was useless.
“I can. I have.” Visenya continued, avoiding his eyes.
“Sister.”
She turned onto her side, giving him her back. “That hall can burn for all I care.”
He stood beside the bed for a few moments, watching the stubborn line of her shoulders. Then he moved to the washstand, dipped a cloth into the basin, and wrung it out. The water was cold enough to sting his fingers.
When he sat beside her again, Visenya did not move. “Turn over.”
“No.”
He sighed and leaned over enough to touch the damp cloth to her cheek.
She jerked away at once. “Gods, that is cold.”
“Nya, don’t be a child.”
She struck at his hand.
He caught her wrist only long enough to keep the cloth from falling, then released her. She glared at him, but did not turn away again. That was permission enough, or the closest thing Visenya ever gave when wounded.
He dabbed the cloth gently along her face. The heat of her skin met the cold water beneath his fingers. Her lashes lowered. For one breath she seemed to surrender to him, tilting her face ever so slightly toward the touch before seeming to realize she had done it.
The movement was small, barely noticeable. Jace noticed anyway.
Gods help him, he noticed everything.
The way her lips parted as she exhaled. The way the candlelight caught upon the dampness along her lashes. The faint tremor that passed through her when his thumb accidentally brushed the edge of her jaw.
A shiver ran along his spine. He lowered his gaze immediately.
The cloth paused against her cheek.
For a moment they both stayed still. Then awareness seemed to return all at once.
Color rushed into Visenya’s face. She pulled back sharply.
“Enough.” The word came out quieter than she intended. Jace withdrew his hand at once.
The space between them felt larger now. Colder. Neither seemed willing to acknowledge why.
He folded the cloth between his fingers.
“I could send for your maids. They could help with your hair.”
Jacaerys’ eyes flickered briefly toward the scattered rubies on the floor and the half-undone braids falling across her shoulders.
She looked away, swallowing hard.
“Mother won’t forgive you easily if you stay here.”
Visenya’s hands clenched in the bedclothes. “Mother won’t forgive me anyway. What difference does it make?”
He heard the tremor beneath the anger.
“My sweet sister...”
She refused to look at him.
Jace reached out, slowly this time, and touched her hair. He found a braid half undone near her temple and smoothed it back with care. He had done that when they were children. When Visenya woke from nightmares and came stumbling into the chamber he shared with Luke, cheeks wet and feet bare, Jace would make room in his bed before she had to ask. He would tell her she could stay until she slept. He would stroke her hair until her sobs grew quiet, and when she was truly asleep, he would carry her back to her own bed if he could do it without waking her.
Visenya remembered too. He saw it in the way her eyes filled again.
“You’re always so stubborn,” he murmured. “There’s nothing I can say to convince you, is there?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Jace looked toward the door, then back at her. He had come here to fetch her, not sit beside her while the court below counted the minutes of her absence. He had meant to be sensible. That was what was expected of him.
Then Visenya turned away and curled into herself, drawing her knees slightly toward her chest as though she could somehow make herself smaller.
The sight twisted something inside him.
He ought to have stood up. Ought to have returned to the feast and left her to her stubbornness. Ought to have remembered every reason why remaining here was a mistake.
Instead, he made a decision he knew was foolish.
With a quiet sigh, he stretched out behind her on top of the coverlet. After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped an arm around her waist and gently drew her back against him.
She turned at once, startled. “What are you doing?”
“If you won’t go down,” Jace said at last, settling more comfortably against the pillows, “then I suppose I won’t go down either.”
“You cannot possibly think those childish games still work on me.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “I wasn’t certain. I thought it was worth trying.”
She let out a sound halfway between a scoff and a laugh, though there was little amusement in it. “They don’t.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to endure Mother’s anger for nothing.”
Visenya rolled onto her back and stared up at the canopy above the bed. “You’re being insufferable.”
Jace failed to hide the faint smile on his lips. “I’m being loyal.”
“To whom?”
“To you, unfortunately.”
Visenya made an offended sound and shoved at his shoulder. It might have ended there if he had let it, but Jace caught her hand and tried to pull her upright. The motion was light at first, almost playful, the sort of struggle they had fallen into as children when she refused to get out of bed for lessons.
“Up,” he said. “Don’t make me force you.”
She gasped and hit him with a pillow. The blow caught him across the chest. Jacaerys looked down at the pillow, then back at her.
“That was unwise.”
“Try to drag me again and I’ll do worse.”
He tried to reach for another pillow but Visenya snatched it away before he could take it, clutching it stubbornly against her chest as she shifted farther across the mattress. A few silver curls slipped loose in the process and fell across her face. Jace had the absurd urge to brush them aside.
“Give it here.”
“No.” The answer came immediately.
Something in her expression made him forget, for a moment, the feast continuing below them. She looked infuriatingly determined. Visenya had always been at her most impossible when cornered.
He leaned forward anyway.
She twisted away from him and the mattress dipped beneath their weight. Blankets tangled around their legs. Visenya shoved at his shoulder again, clearly intending to send him away from her entirely. Instead, she succeeded only in throwing them both off balance.
Jace caught her wrist before she could push him again.
“Let go,” she hissed.
“Then stop trying to hit me.”
The movement happened so quickly that neither of them truly thought about it until it was already done.
Visenya landed heavily against the mattress, her hands trapped beneath his. The coverlet had twisted beneath them during their struggle. Silver hair spilled across the pillow in tangled waves, half hiding her flushed face.
Jacaerys had ended up above her.
And for a brief moment they stayed like this. The position itself was nothing new. Gods knew they had wrestled often enough as children. There had been countless afternoons spent chasing one another through Dragonstone’s halls.
Back then it had meant nothing. But this did.
Visenya’s hands suddenly felt very small beneath his. He became aware of the warmth of her body through the layers of fabric separating them. Aware of how close they were. Far too close.
His breath caught.
Visenya seemed to realize it at the same time, because the fight drained out of her all at once.
Her chest rose and fell unevenly beneath him. She did not try to pull away. Neither did he.
The room had gone strangely quiet.
Jace could hear the distant crash of waves below the castle together with the faint sound of her breathing. Nothing else.
His gaze drifted downward before he could stop it. Her mouth was slightly parted. Perhaps from breathlessness. Perhaps from something else. The thought made his stomach tighten.
Visenya felt the weight of his stare and her pulse stumbled. Heat flooded her face.
For a brief, terrible moment she forgot why they had been arguing. Forgot everything except the fact that Jace was looking at her.
He swallowed. His hands loosened around her wrists.
He should have moved. Instead he remained there for one heartbeat more, studying her face as though seeing it differently for the first time.
A faint smear of blood marked her lower lip. Somewhere during their struggle Visenya had bitten down on it hard enough to break the skin. The sight caught Jace’s attention at once.
Without thinking, he almost reached for it.
The impulse startled him enough to break whatever spell had settled over the room. He released her immediately.
The absence of contact felt almost as noticeable as the contact itself.
Neither of them spoke.
Visenya remained perfectly still against the pillow. Jace sat back slowly, putting distance between them before either of them was forced to acknowledge what had just happened.
“I wasn’t going to force you to go,” he said quietly. “Not really. I would never force you to do anything.”
She turned her face away, ashamed of the sudden ache his distance left behind. She hated herself for it. Hated the wine still clouding her thoughts. Hated that part of her wanted him to stay near when she had spent the whole night trying not to need anyone.
“I know.”
Jacaerys started to rise. She caught his sleeve. “No.”
The gesture was so instinctive that it seemed to surprise even her.
He paused.
Visenya’s eyes were full again. One tear slipped down before she could wipe it away. “Don’t go.”
“Visenya...”
“Please.” Her voice broke around the word, and the sound seemed to embarrass her the moment it left her mouth.
A flush crept into her cheeks. She knew she sounded ridiculous. A part of her wanted to snatch the words back before he could answer, to pretend she had never said them at all. Yet when she looked at the door and imagined him walking through it now, a tightness settled painfully in her chest.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered again, her fingers tightening around his sleeve. “Just… stay a little longer.”
He looked at her hand on his sleeve.
She held him like she had when she was small and feverish, refusing to let him fetch a nurse because she feared that if he left, some monster from her dream would find the space he had abandoned.
Only until she sleeps, he told himself. Only that.
“I will stay until you fall asleep.”
She nodded quickly and wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
Jace removed his boots and set them near the foot of the bed before lying down behind her. When he felt her shiver, he reached for one of the lighter blankets and drew it over her shoulders before slipping an arm around her waist once more. Visenya curled instinctively against him, though whether she sought comfort or simply lacked the strength to resist, he could not tell.
“You can rest now,” he said.
For a long time, she did not sleep. The wine made her heavy, yet her mind would not quiet. She could still hear the hall falling silent when she fell. She could still feel her mother’s hand on her arm, the hissed words, the shame.
But Jace stayed. He did not speak much after that, he only remained close enough to make her feel his warmth. And it soothed her, somehow.
The candle flames, at that point, had guttered one by one until only two remained, thin and wavering in the dark.
At last, Visenya’s breathing slowed.
Jacaerys waited for several more minutes, meaning to rise once he was certain she slept. His own body had other plans. The night had been long, and the warmth of the chamber combined to the steady rhythm of Visenya’s breathing beside him slowly wore down what remained of his resolve.
He told himself he would close his eyes for a moment. Only a moment.
But when morning came, it found them still asleep.
The first grayish light entered reluctantly through the narrow window, touching the floor before climbing the side of the bed. The candles had burned themselves to wax and smoke. The room looked different by day, stripped of the gentle lies of flame. Rubies lay duller on the stone. The discarded slippers seemed childish. The gown Visenya had worn so proudly the night before was wrinkled from sleep, its skirts twisted beneath the blanket.
Visenya slept deeply, one cheek pressed into the pillow, loose hair spread around her in a pale tangle. A stray beam of light touched her face and she wrinkled her nose in her sleep and turned slightly away from it, unconcerned.
Jacaerys slept beside her, one arm bent beneath his head, the other still around her waist.
Neither heard the first steps in the corridor.
The footsteps came slowly up the stairs. Heavy enough to belong to someone tired, careful enough to belong to someone trying not to wake the household. They paused once outside the door.
Rhaenyra had not slept much, and the Gods knew she did not wish to have this conversation. The memory of the previous evening was still fresh enough to make her jaw tighten. Visenya would argue. She always argued.
Still, before the maids came bustling into the chamber and turned a private reprimand into court gossip, she had wanted to speak to her daughter alone. It was a small mercy, perhaps, though Rhaenyra doubted Visenya would appreciate it.
For a moment, the princess rested a hand against the door. Then she pushed it open and stepped into the chamber.
The sight that greeted her rooted her to the threshold.
Her daughter was still asleep, still in last night’s gown. Rubies lay on the floor. Jacaerys was in her bed.
Her face changed before she spoke “Jace?”
The name cut through the room. He woke with a violent start.
Jacaerys pushed himself upright at once, hair falling into his eyes, confusion plain on his face. That movement woke Visenya more than her mother’s voice had. She stirred, blinking against the light, then saw Rhaenyra standing in the doorway.
Sleep vanished.
“Mother,” Jace said.
Rhaenyra stared at him in stunned disbelief, though anger was already beginning to sharpen her features. “What are you doing here?!”
Jace swung his legs from the bed and stood, suddenly aware that he was barefoot, rumpled, and caught in a situation where no explanation would sound clean enough. He looked toward Visenya, then back to Rhaenyra.
“Mother, I swear to you, nothing happened.”
The words were a mistake. Visenya knew it as soon as he said them.
Rhaenyra pressed one hand to her brow, closing her eyes briefly as if fighting dizziness or fury. Her other hand rested beneath her belly. The child she carried seemed to make every breath cost more, yet anger gave her voice a hard steadiness when she opened her eyes again.
“Leave this room.”
“Mother…”
“Leave it now! I will speak to you later.”
Jace stood frozen.
Rhaenyra’s gaze hardened. “Do you mean to ruin your sister? Is that what you want?”
The color drained from his face. “No.”
“Then leave before anyone sees you.”
He lowered his eyes. There was nothing else he could say that would not make it worse. He reached for his boots with clumsy haste, pulled them on without properly fastening them, and left the room with his shoulders stiff.
The door closed behind him.
Visenya sat up slowly. Only then did she see herself.
One strap of her gown had slipped low on her shoulder during the night. The bodice had shifted enough that she had to seize the blanket and pull it up over her chest. Her skirt had ridden high on one side, exposing one bare foot and part of her calf.
They had only slept. It was true.
Yet she knew it looked like a lie.
Shame rose through her so fast she could hardly breathe. “Mother,” she said. “You must believe me. I didn’t dishonor myself.”
Rhaenyra’s expression twisted. “For your sake, for his, and for your sister’s, you had better be telling the truth.”
“Baela…”
“Yes, Baela.” Rhaenyra stepped closer, though the movement was slow, burdened by her pregnancy. “He’s promised to your sister. Have you forgotten that? What sort of woman does this to her own blood? What sort of woman throws her honor into the mud like this?”
Visenya flinched. “I didn’t …”
“I came here to speak to you about the disgrace of last night,” he mother said, her voice rising despite the effort she made to control it. “This goes beyond that.”
“Mother, please.”
Rhaenyra lifted a hand. The gesture stopped her. “I can’t even look at you right now.”
The words struck harder than any slap.
Rhaenyra turned and left, one hand braced against the doorframe for half a heartbeat before she forced herself onward. Her steps retreated down the corridor, slower than they would have been months before, but still swift enough to make clear that anger was carrying her.
Visenya remained in the bed. For a while she did not move.
The room seemed to close around her. The twisted blanket, the shame of her bare skin, the memory of Rhaenyra’s eyes. She wanted to disappear beneath the stones of Dragonstone and be forgotten there.
Then pride came.
It did not heal the shame. It merely stood on top of it and refused to kneel.
She had not dishonored herself. She had not done what her mother believed. She would not allow Rhaenyra to think the worst of her without doing something to defend herself.
Visenya threw back the blanket and rose.
The gown was ruined for wearing now. She unlaced what she could with impatient fingers and pulled herself free from it, leaving it pooled on the floor like shed skin. She found a plain dark dress from the chest, simple enough to manage without assistance, and dragged it over her head. Her hands shook as she worked the fastenings.
The last rubies came out badly. One snagged in her hair and hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes again. She cursed beneath her breath, freed it, and threw it onto the dressing table with the others. Then she combed her hair in angry strokes until it lay loose over her shoulders.
Once ready, she left her chambers before courage could desert her.
The corridors were colder now. Morning had not yet fully warmed the stone, and the feast’s remnants lingered below in smells of old wine and extinguished candles. Servants moved quietly, gathering what the night had left behind. A few bowed as she passed. She did not slow.
When she reached the corridor outside her mother’s chambers, she heard voices.
Rhaenyra’s first. Then Daemon’s. They were arguing.
Visenya stopped. She should have knocked. Instead, she moved closer to the door.
Daemon’s voice came low, edged with anger rather than surprise. “It was foreseeable. We all have eyes. They have been circling each other for months, Rhaenyra. Did you truly believe nothing would come of it?”
There was a pause. When her mother’s voice answered, it carried a bitterness that had not been there before. “You speak as if this is simple.”
“I speak as if it should have been addressed before it came to this.” Daemon’s reply came without hesitation. “Jace should have been promised elsewhere, or wed already, or kept from hovering around her like a moth near a flame.”
The silence that followed lasted only a breath. “The betrothal to Baela was a decision we made together.”
“I know what we decided,” Daemon replied.
“Then don’t stand there and pretend it was mine alone!”
For a moment no one spoke. Through the thick wooden door, Visenya could only hear the distant crackle of the fire. Then Rhaenyra exhaled, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded tired.
“I love our daughter. You know I do. But Visenya is not suited to sit beside Jacaerys as queen. She doesn’t have the temperament for it. She challenges every command, questions every decision, and seems determined to test every limit placed before her. Last night she made a spectacle of herself before half the realm, and this morning I find her in bed with Jacaerys, without a single thought for who might find them there or what people might say. As though reputation, decency, all the things that protect a woman’s name, simply don’t apply to her.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “He was foolish, certainly. I’m angry with Jace as well. But at least he has some sense. Some shame. Visenya…” She paused. “Visenya is like you. She follows her own will wherever it leads her and expects the rest of the world to keep pace. She listens to no one once her mind is made up.”
Another silence followed. “Perhaps that’s why you always defend her.”
Daemon answered at once. “You, of all people, speak to me of decency?”
“Don’t.”
He ignored the warning in her voice. “Do you not remember our flights from the palace? The brothels? The streets? The places I took you and the things we did because you wished to taste a freedom no one would give you?”
“This is not the same!”
“No,” Daemon agreed, and for the first time his voice softened. “It isn’t. The difference is that now you’re the mother standing on the other side of it.”
This time, Rhaenyra took longer to answer. When she finally did, her voice was quieter. “She was found in bed with the man promised to her sister.”
The silence after that was different. Visenya leaned her forehead close to the wood.
“Baela is her sister,” her mother continued. “Does that mean nothing? Does my daughter owe no loyalty to anyone when her heart is crossed? No restraint? No shame?”
“You think I have no care for Baela?” Daemon asked. “She is my daughter.”
“Then act like a father.”
“I do care. That is why I hate watching her grow miserable while everyone in this castle pretends not to see what is happening before them. Baela sees it. Half your ladies see it. You keep speaking as though this appeared from nowhere. It didn’t. You simply hoped it would disappear if you ignored it long enough.”
“It will pass. It must pass.” Rhaenyra’s voice shook now, though whether from anger, exhaustion, or the child she carried, Visenya could not tell. “With Visenya it is rebellion. With Jacaerys it is infatuation. A dangerous one, perhaps, but still one that can be ended. Baela is good for him.”
“Then why is he not wed to her already?” Daemon’s tone did little to hide the irony in his words
“Because there has been no need to rush.” Rhaenyra’s answer came immediately, though there was a strain beneath her words now, the sort that suggested she had already repeated the argument to herself many times.
“Jacaerys has found reasons to delay. You know it as well as I do.”
“Lucerys and Rhaena are not wed either.”
“Lucerys waits because his elder brother had not married yet,” Daemon said. “It would hardly be proper for him to wed before Jace, and you know that. Luke is not the source of this problem.”
Rhaenyra made a sound of frustration. “To break the betrothal now would damage them both. Jacaerys’s honor, Baela’s standing, and the peace of this family. You think I can undo such things with a word?”
“I think waiting may cost more.”
“And what would you have me do?”
Daemon’s voice lowered. “I don’t know. But keep pretending this can be ignored, and one day we won’t be discussing betrothals or wounded pride anymore. We’ll be scrambling to find ways to hide Visenya from the realm because she is carrying Jacaerys’s bastard child.”
Visenya went cold.
Rhaenyra’s voice cut through the door. “Don’t speak to me like that.”
“I am speaking plainly.” Daemon sounded unmoved by the rebuke. If anything, his answer came with a frustrating calmness that only seemed to make the tension worse.
“I know what the danger is.” The princess’ reply followed immediately. There was no hesitation in it now, only weary certainty. “They must be separated. At once. We have waited too long already.”
Visenya stepped back as if the words had burned her.
Separated.
The corridor seemed suddenly too narrow.
Before she could move away, footsteps sounded from the stair. Ser Lorent Marbrand appeared at the far end of the passage, white cloak falling behind him, his face grave with purpose. He saw Visenya outside the door. His eyes flicked from her to the closed chamber, then back again.
To his credit, he said nothing.
Visenya’s face burned.
Ser Lorent knocked. Inside, Rhaenyra stopped speaking. “Who is it?”
“Ser Lorent, Princess.”
A brief pause. “Enter.”
The door opened.
Rhaenyra stood near the hearth, pale and furious. Daemon was by the window, one hand resting against the stone frame, his face drawn into a hard line. Both looked toward the door.
Rhaenyra saw Visenya at once.
For a heartbeat, mother and daughter stared at one another. Then Rhaenyra looked away.
The dismissal hurt worse than the anger.
“What is it, Ser Lorent?”
The knight bowed. “Princess Rhaenys has arrived at Dragonstone on dragonback. She asks to speak with you urgently.”
The name changed the room.
Daemon turned fully from the window. Rhaenyra’s hand moved to her belly. Visenya, despite herself, stepped closer.
Rhaenys did not often come to Dragonstone now.
Since Laenor’s death, the warmth that might once have existed between her and Rhaenyra had cooled into something formal and watchful. There had been visits, letters, obligations observed, yet no ease. The Queen Who Never Was did not cross the water for idle talk, and she certainly did not arrive unannounced at dawn in riding leathers unless something grave had driven her there.
Rhaenyra understood that as quickly as the rest of them. “Where is she?”
“In the Chamber of the Painted Table, Princess.”
Rhaenyra nodded once. “Take me to her.”
She moved toward the door with Daemon at her side. Visenya should have remained behind. She knew it. After everything that had happened and after the way her mother had refused to look at her, following them was foolish.
She followed anyway. No one told her to stop.
They descended through Dragonstone’s morning shadows in silence. Servants bowed quickly and moved aside as Rhaenyra passed, their eyes lowering at the sight of her face.
The doors of the Painted Table Chamber stood open. Rhaenys Targaryen waited within.
Visenya had not seen her closely in some time. There were deeper lines at the corners of her mouth, and something more severe had settled in her gaze. Age had touched her, but it had not diminished her. She remained beautiful.
The princess turned when they entered.
Rhaenyra stopped near the edge of the table. “Princess Rhaenys.”
The doors closed behind Visenya and Rhaenys did not waste herself on courtesies. “Viserys is dead.”
Visenya’s breath caught.
For an instant, she thought her mother had not understood. Rhaenyra simply stared at Rhaenys, motionless, her face drained of all expression as though her mind refused to accept what her ears had heard.
Behind her, Daemon’s jaw tightened.
No one spoke for a while.
King Viserys had been dying for years. Every raven from King’s Landing seemed to bring some new tale of illness, weakness, pain, or another maester summoned to his bedside. Even so, the finality of death was something else entirely. It transformed a possibility into certainty. It closed every door forever.
Visenya had known her beloved grandfather could not live much longer. She had simply never imagined the world without him.
Slowly, she watched understanding settle over her mother’s face. First disbelief. Then grief.
Rhaenyra lowered her eyes. “My father…” she whispered. The words barely reached the others.
Rhaenys regarded her quietly. “My cousin possessed a kind heart,” she said. “Few kings have ever been loved as deeply by those closest to them.”
That seemed to wound Rhaenyra more than the news itself. Her eyes filled at once.
Visenya looked away. She suddenly felt as though she were intruding upon something private.
The death of a king belonged to the realm. The death of a father belonged only to a daughter.
Then Rhaenys drew a slow breath. “There is more.”
The change in her tone made Daemon straighten. Visenya felt a knot tighten in her stomach.
Rhaenyra lifted her head. Rhaenys met her gaze directly. “Aegon has been crowned as his successor.”
For several heartbeats, nobody spoke.
Visenya had the strange sensation that the room itself had fallen still around them. The waves still broke against the cliffs. The wind still pressed softly against the glass. Yet all of it felt distant now, as though the world beyond these walls belonged to someone else.
Aegon.
The name echoed through her thoughts. It took a moment for its meaning to truly reach her.
Aegon had been crowned. Her uncle sat the Iron Throne.
The idea felt so absurd that her mind resisted it at first. For years she had heard of her mother’s claim. Lords throughout the realm had sworn their oaths. King Viserys himself had defended her rights again and again despite every challenge raised against them. Even when tensions between the two branches of their family had worsened, Visenya had never truly believed anyone would dare set aside the king’s wishes so openly.
And yet someone had. Someone had waited for Viserys to die and placed a crown upon Aegon’s head.
The realization struck her with such force that she almost forgot the grief she had seen in her mother’s eyes only moments before.
It was Rhaenyra who broke the silence. A small sound escaped her lips, scarcely more than a breath, and one hand moved instinctively to the swell of her belly. The other found the edge of the Painted Table, her fingers tightening around the carved coastline beneath them as though she suddenly needed something solid to keep herself standing.
“No,” she whispered. The word sounded fragile. “No.”
Daemon crossed the distance between them immediately. “Rhaenyra.”
Visenya had never seen her mother look so vulnerable.
Rhaenyra Targaryen had spent her life defying expectations, enduring insults, and carrying burdens that would have crushed weaker people. Even her enemies rarely questioned her strength. Yet now she seemed, for the first time, like a woman standing before a wound too large to comprehend all at once.
“Alicent demanded you declare for Aegon,” she said quietly.
Rhaenys inclined her head. “She did.”
Rhaenyra swallowed. “And...”
The older woman did not look away. “I refused her.”
Visenya watched her mother’s face and saw the truth sink deeper with every passing second. The king was dead. Her inheritance had been stolen. The realm she had spent her entire life preparing to rule now belonged, at least in the eyes of King’s Landing, to someone else.
Then another sound cut through the silence that had settled over the chamber.
Rhaenyra drew in a sudden, sharp breath and doubled over, one arm wrapping instinctively around her swollen belly while the other remained braced against the edge of the Painted Table.
“Mother?”
The word had barely left Visenya’s lips when another gasp escaped Rhaenyra, harsher than the first. Daemon reached her at once. “R–Rhaenyra, what—”
She seemed to try to answer him, but whatever words she meant to speak were lost as pain seized her. A cry tore from her throat and echoed across the chamber’s stone walls.
Visenya froze.
For the briefest moment she caught sight of her father’s face, and what she saw there chilled her more than any scream could have. Fear. Genuine fear.
Then Rhaenyra’s knees gave way.
Daemon caught her before she struck the floor, though only just, and together they sank to the cold stone.
“Mother!”
Visenya rushed forward and dropped beside them, scarcely noticing the chill of the floor beneath her knees. Her mother’s face had gone pale, almost bloodless, and already beads of sweat glistened along her brow. Another spasm seemed to seize her entire body. Her hand searched blindly for something to hold and found Visenya’s.
The grip was so fierce that pain shot through Visenya’s fingers.
“Mother,” she whispered again, her voice breaking despite herself. “Please, look at me.”
Rhaenyra did, and for a heartbeat she seemed impossibly fragile. The Princess of Dragonstone suddenly looked like a frightened daughter who had just been left on her own.
Then another wave of agony crashed through her. Her scream filled the Painted Chamber.
Daemon swore beneath his breath and moved closer, one hand supporting her shoulders. “No,” he said, the word rough with disbelief. “No. It’s too soon.”
Rhaenyra cried out again and bent forward, clutching her belly. The pain had stripped away every trace of composure. Visenya felt her mother’s nails digging into her skin and, in that moment, she understood.
Outside, dawn continued to spread across the Narrow Sea. Inside the Painted Chamber, Rhaenyra Targaryen screamed once more, and this time there could be no doubt.
The babe was coming.