Chapter Text
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One
The Prince Comes Home
***
By the hour of the wolf, the sea had vanished.
Darkness had swallowed the Gullet first and then the horizon beyond it, until black water and black sky pressed together beneath Dragonstone’s cliffs without seam or end. Rhaella had watched until the salt wind left her eyes raw, and still every distant flame made her straighten as though a dragon might emerge from it.
Vermax had not appeared.
Behind her, the Painted Table glowed beneath a thicket of candles. Melted wax gathered in pale rivers around Driftmark and Sharp Point, drowning carved villages and hardened soldiers alike, while abandoned cups of wine crowded the shores of Blackwater Bay. Guards, sailors, maesters, and frightened boys carrying damp scraps of parchment had passed through the chamber all night, each bearing some fragment of the battle and none bearing the news she wanted.
Three Triarchy warships had burned near the eastern straits. Two Velaryon galleys had gone down within sight of Hull. Enemy soldiers had landed upon Driftmark beneath Tyroshi banners, and fires could be seen along the road to High Tide. Dragonflame had illuminated the clouds above the fleet before the smoke became too thick to distinguish one creature from another.
Nobody could tell her what had become of Jacaerys.
Rhaella stood at the western windows with her riding cloak fastened beneath her throat. She had not removed the gloves from her belt or the dagger strapped against her thigh, and her silver hair remained braided for flight. Somewhere beyond the castle walls, Valkyrie waited beneath a saddle that had been secured before moonrise.
No royal command held Rhaella at Dragonstone.
Her husband had asked her to remain, and she had agreed.
That distinction offered little comfort now…
***
The attack had begun while the western sky still burned. Baela had entered the Painted Table chamber wearing dust-covered riding leathers, her breath short from running.
“The Triarchy has reached the Gullet,” she announced. “Their ships came among the trading cogs. Grandfather’s fleet is already engaged.”
Rhaenyra crossed immediately toward the doors. “Have Syrax prepared.”
Jace stepped into her path. “You cannot go.”
The Queen stopped.
Around the Painted Table, every councillor became still. Rhaella stood near the carved shape of Driftmark and watched the understanding pass between mother and son.
“I did not ask your permission,” Rhaenyra said.
“Vermithor, Silverwing, and Seasmoke are west of here because your council believed Vhagar was flying toward Harrenhal. If you take Syrax into the Gullet and the report proves false, Dragonstone will be left with only Valkyrie.”
“Then Valkyrie will defend it.”
“Against Vhagar?”
Rhaella felt the weight of every gaze in the chamber. Valkyrie was younger and smaller than Syrax, though nothing about her was slight or delicate. Powerful muscle ran beneath her pearlescent scales, particularly through her shoulders, hindquarters, and the broad roots of her wings. Her strength did not announce itself through enormous size. It revealed itself when she climbed against violent winds, broke through naval rigging, or changed direction without surrendering speed.
Her scales were white from horn to tail, though sunlight drew pale gold and rose from their pearly sheen, while cloud and moonlight turned her almost silver. Against a bright or mist-covered sky, that coloring could make her difficult to follow until she passed between the watcher and the sun.
Valkyrie flew with an airy, effortless grace that concealed how much force lived within her. She could climb faster than larger dragons, fold herself into a steep descent, and recover with enough power to tear upward before the earth or sea claimed her. Rhaella had shaped her own fighting style around that combination of strength and agility. Secured within specially fitted saddle braces, she could loose arrows during banking turns and strike men upon walls, ships, or opposing saddles before Valkyrie carried her beyond answering fire.
Together, dragon and rider were swift, powerful, and exceedingly difficult to catch. They could harry Vhagar, draw her away from Dragonstone, and survive maneuvers that a heavier dragon could not attempt. They could not defeat the ancient creature alone. No living dragon could.
Rhaenyra’s voice hardened. “My fleet is under attack. My father’s house burns upon Driftmark.”
“Then Baela and I will go.”
“You will remain here.”
Corlys cannot hold the straits without dragons.”
“I will not send my heir into a battle we do not understand.”
“The battle will be lost before we understand it.”
Rhaenyra’s expression hardened. She stood at the head of the Painted Table with both hands braced against the heated stone, her dark riding leathers making her appear already prepared for the sky. “Then perhaps you should remember that command requires more than urgency. We do not know the strength of the Triarchy fleet, nor do we know whether Aemond has truly flown west. He may be waiting for us to strip Dragonstone of every defense capable of opposing him.”
Jace crossed to the opposite side of the table. “We know that Driftmark is burning.”
“We have received one report.”
“Baela saw the ships herself.”
Rhaenyra glanced toward Baela. “She saw smoke and sails from a distance. She could not count their numbers or identify who commands them.”
Baela’s mouth tightened. She remained beside the doors, one hand resting upon the pommel of her sword, but she did not challenge the Queen.
Jace did it for her.
“What difference does the commander’s name make when Grandfather’s fleet is already under attack?” His palm struck the painted waters of the Gullet. The carved ships shifted beneath the force, one toppling onto its side. “They are there. We are here. Every moment we spend discussing what we do not know gives them another ship to burn.”
“It matters if this attack was designed to draw us into another Rook’s Rest.”
The name altered the chamber.
Rhaenyra’s fingers closed around the edge of the table. Baela lowered her eyes, and Rhaella felt Jace become rigid beside her. He did not move for several heartbeats.
“This is not Rook’s Rest,” he said.
“You cannot know that.”
“I know that Grandfather is not riding into a trap alone. He is trapped there with every ship we possess.”
“You see smoke and imagine certainty.”
A short, incredulous laugh escaped Jace. He turned away from the table and dragged one hand through his curls, leaving them disordered. “What further certainty do you require? Must Corlys send us the name of every man dying upon his decks before we decide the danger is sufficiently real?”
“Mind how you speak to me.”
Jace turned back. “I am trying to make you hear me.”
“I hear a young man allowing fear to masquerade as strategy.”
The accusation struck cleanly. Color rose along Jace’s throat, and his hand closed at his side.
Rhaella moved before she had consciously decided to do so. She slipped her hand into his, threading their fingers together between the folds of their dark sleeves. The gesture was small enough that most of the council might not notice it, but Jace did.
He did not look at her. His fingers tightened around hers with enough force to press their rings together.
“If we do nothing, the blockade will fall,” he said. His voice had lowered, but anger sharpened every word. “The Triarchy will take Driftmark and open Blackwater Bay to the Greens. Every ship we possess will burn while Vermithor, Silverwing, and Seasmoke wait beside an empty road for an enemy who may never appear.”
“Vhagar is not an enemy we can afford to dismiss because you find waiting intolerable, Jacaerys!”
“I find losing intolerable.”
Rhaenyra drew herself upright. “You speak as though caution were cowardice, have I taught you nothing?”
“I speak as though caution has a price!”
“A price that you expect me to pay with your life? I will not.”
Jace’s grip loosened around Rhaella’s hand.
The anger remained in his face, but something beneath it faltered. For an instant, he was not the Crown Prince challenging his queen. He was Rhaenyra’s eldest surviving son, and both of them remembered the brother who had not returned.
“This is not only about my life,” Jace said.
“It is to me.”
“It cannot be.”
Rhaenyra stared at him.
Rhaella felt the moment Jace’s restraint began to fracture. His hand pulled from hers, not in rejection but because he could no longer remain still. He paced to the far end of the table, then turned so abruptly that the skirts of his coat struck the carved towers of Harrenhal.
“You named me your heir,” he said. “You placed me upon your council and sent me across the realm to defend your claim. I was old enough to negotiate with the Arryns. I was old enough to face Cregan Stark and ask the North to bleed for you. I was old enough to hold this council together while you were gone.”
Rhaenyra’s face changed at the final accusation. “You presume to question where I went?”
“I presume to remember that somebody had to remain.”
“Jace,” Rhaella said quietly.
He heard the warning, but it could not reach him through the fury he had carried too long.
“You cannot demand that I bear the duties of your heir and then make me a child whenever those duties become dangerous!” Jace struck his palm against the Painted Table. Several carved ships jumped across Blackwater Bay, one tumbling from the stone and breaking against the floor. “You cannot command the realm to follow me while forbidding me from leading it!”
“I can forbid you from throwing your life away because you are angry!” Rhaenyra came around the head of the table, the dark skirts of her riding coat snapping behind her. “You are not proposing a strategy. You are demanding that I send you into a battle because you cannot bear that events have moved beyond your control.”
“I am trying to take control!”
“You are nineteen years old!”
“I was younger when Luke died!”
The words tore through the chamber.
Jace’s chest heaved beneath his coat. Rhaella saw the instant he understood what he had said, but grief had already carried him beyond apology. His eyes shone, furious and wounded, while Rhaenyra stared at him as though he had driven a blade between her ribs.
“Do not,” she said.
“I was old enough to watch him leave this island because you sent him.”
“Do not speak to me of Luke.”
“I waited for him all night!” Jace shouted. “I stood in this chamber while you were gone and waited for someone to tell me whether my brother was alive. I was old enough for that. I was old enough to hear that Vhagar had torn him apart. Do not make me a child now because you are terrified the same will happen to me!”
“I am terrified because I have nothing of him!” Rhaenyra’s voice broke across the final word. “I watched my father wither into nothing. I have buried your sister. I watched Rhaenys burn. Do you imagine that fear makes me weak?”
“No. I think it makes you hesitate.”
The chamber went utterly still.
Rhaenyra’s face changed.
Rhaella caught Jace’s hand before he could speak again. He tried to pull away, too consumed by anger to understand her purpose, but she closed both hands around his and held on.
“Jace,” she warned.
He did not look at her.
“Release me.”
“No.”
His head snapped toward her.
Rhaella stepped close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm. “You have said enough.”
“I have not said half of what needs to be said.”
“Then say the rest when you can do so without cutting everyone who still loves you.”
His jaw clenched. For one heartbeat, she thought he might wrench his hand free. Instead, his fingers closed painfully around hers.
Rhaenyra watched them. “You presume far too much, Jacaerys.”
“Perhaps someone must.”
“Jace,” Rhaella said again.
“No,” He said. “My love, I must.” He tore his gaze from his wife and faced his mother. “You named me your heir. You placed me upon your council. You sent me to the Eyrie and Winterfell to secure the swords you needed, and you trusted me to rule here while you disappeared without telling any of us where you had gone. You do not get to remember that I am your son only when being your heir becomes dangerous.”
Rhaenyra crossed the distance between them. “I am your mother.”
“You are also my queen and I ask that you entrust me with this.”
“Then obey me whilst I command no!”
The command struck the chamber like a blow.
Jace’s fingers went still within Rhaella’s hands. For several breaths, the only sound came from the fire and the wind pressing against the windows.
He looked down at the Painted Table. Driftmark lay beneath his free hand, its stone towers no larger than the first joint of his thumb. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped, but the anger within it had become colder.
“If the blockade falls tonight, we lose the fleet. We lose Driftmark. We lose the passage into Blackwater Bay, and every soldier gathering beneath your banners becomes useless because we will have no ships to carry them to King’s Landing.”
“I know what is at stake.”
“Then why do you condemn us to wait!”
Rhaenyra recoiled, more from fury than hurt. “You forget yourself.”
“I remember precisely who I am.”
“Do you?”
“I am the prince you expect to inherit whatever remains after everyone else has died defending you!”
Rhaella tightened her grip upon his hand once more. “Jace.”
“Lord Corlys—my lady wife’s father, father to your first husband, and my grandsire—has given your cause his fleet, his fortune, and the strength of his name. Laena and Laenor are gone. Rhaenys died fighting for your throne. Driftmark is burning, and still you would have him wait while we debate whether the danger is sufficiently certain!
“I am not abandoning Corlys!”
“Then what do you call this?”
“I call it refusing to sacrifice my last son before I understand what waits in those waters!”
“I am not your last son.”
“You are the last son standing before me!”
The force of Rhaenyra’s answer silenced him.
Her breath came unevenly. Tears stood in her eyes, but none fell. She looked less like a queen than a mother who had reached for her child and found a prince standing beyond her grasp.
Jace swallowed. His anger faltered, but it did not vanish.
“Lord Corlys may be dead by the time you understand,” he said.
“Enough!”
Rhaenyra slammed both hands against the Painted Table. The candles shuddered in their holders, and Baela flinched near the doors.
“You will remain upon Dragonstone,” the Queen said. Each word emerged hard and distinct. “Baela will remain with you. Ravens will be sent recalling the dragonseeds, and we will act when we possess more than smoke, fear, and the judgment of a prince too angry to distinguish courage from recklessness.”
Jace stared at her.
Rhaella felt the argument continuing through the hand she held. His pulse hammered beneath her thumb. Every part of him strained toward the doors, as though Vermax were already calling him from the yard.
She pressed her fingers into his palm. “Do not do this here.”
He looked at her at last.
Rhaella did not ask him to agree. She asked him to recognize the councillors watching, the guards listening, and the fragile thread of authority stretched between mother and son.
His breathing slowed. The fury did not leave his face; it merely withdrew behind something far more controlled.
Jace turned back toward Rhaenyra.
“As you command, Your Grace.”
The words were faultless. They contained neither apology nor surrender.
Rhaella knew him well enough to understand that the argument had not ended. Jace had only decided that he would no longer fight it with words.
The words were faultless.
His submission was not.
Obedience had become performance and Rhaenyra’s attention had already shifted toward Ser Lorent Marbrand and the guards stationed beyond the doors.
“Have Syrax saddled,” she ordered. “Send ravens west recalling the dragonseeds. If they have not reached Harrenhal, they are to turn back immediately.”
No words passed between them. None were necessary.
Rhaenyra left the chamber with Mysaria and two guards behind her. Baela remained beside the doors, unease plain upon her face.
Jace waited until his mother’s footsteps had faded.
“Ser Lorent,” he said.
The knight looked toward him.
Jace waited until his mother’s footsteps had faded beyond the corridor before turning toward Ser Lorent.
“The Queen is not to leave her apartments,” he ordered.
For several seconds, the knight merely stared at him. Ser Lorent’s hand shifted toward the pommel of his sword, although he did not draw it. The movement was instinctive, Rhaella thought, born from the terrible contradiction of being commanded by the heir to betray the sovereign he had sworn to protect.
“My prince?” Ser Lorent asked carefully.
“You will place guards outside her doors and prevent her from reaching Syrax,” Jace replied. His voice had lost the wildness it carried during the argument, but the composure was false. Rhaella saw the tension beneath his jaw and the pulse beating rapidly along his throat.
Baela stepped away from the wall. “Jace, you cannot mean to imprison her,” she said.
“I mean to keep her from flying into a battle that may already be lost,” Jace answered without looking at her. “They killed my brother, Baela! I will not allow them to kill her as well.”
“She commanded you to remain upon Dragonstone,” Ser Lorent reminded him.
Jace’s eyes flashed. “I heard her.”
Rhaella felt the full shape of his intention settle over the chamber. The confrontation with Rhaenyra had not changed his mind. It had only taught him that permission would never be given.
“You planned this,” Rhaella said.
Jace turned toward her.
She saw the answer in his face before he gave it. He had not formed every detail, perhaps, but the possibility had existed within him long before he bowed to his mother.
“You planned this before you said, ‘As you command,’” Rhaella continued. Her voice remained quiet, though her heart had begun to pound. “You never intended to obey her.”
“I intended to make her understand,” Jace said.
“And when she did not, you decided that her authority no longer mattered.”
“That is not what I decided.”
“What else should I call it?” Rhaella demanded.
Jace took one step toward her. “Call it saving our fleet.”
Rhaella retreated before she could stop herself. The movement was small, but Jace noticed. Pain crossed his face and disappeared so quickly that someone who knew him less intimately might have missed it.
“You brought me into that chamber knowing what you meant to do,” she accused. “You let me stand beside you while you challenged your mother because you thought my presence would make you appear reasonable.”
“That is not why I wanted you there,” Jace said.
“Then why did you?”
“Because Valkyrie must remain at Dragonstone.”
The answer struck her with almost physical force.
Rhaella stared at him. “You brought me here to stand between you and your mother—the Queen, Jace, my Queen—because you knew I would understand why.”
Jace took another step. “Do you understand?”
“I understand that Dragonstone and my father cannot be abandoned,” Rhaella replied. “I understand that Syrax cannot be risked while Vhagar’s position remains unknown. I also understand that you intend to turn the Queen’s own guard against her.”
“If she reaches the yard, she will follow us,” Jace insisted.
“You cannot know that.”
“I know my mother.”
“She is also your queen,” Rhaella said, placing deliberate weight upon the final word.
“And Corlys is her Hand,” Jace shot back. His restraint frayed, and anger roughened his voice. “Those are her ships in the Gullet. Her people are burning upon Driftmark.”
“That does not grant you the right to confine her.”
“It grants me the obligation to act when she will not.”
Rhaella recoiled. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes,” Jace snapped.
“I do not think you do.”
She turned toward the doors. She did not yet know whether she meant to find Rhaenyra, order the guards away, or merely escape the chamber before Jace asked something of her that she could not refuse.
Jace caught her hand.
“Ser Lorent, I believe you have heard my command. Baela—” Jace gestured toward the doors which Rhaenyra had left from. “Please.”
Jace’s fingers closed around Rhaell’s rather than her wrist, leaving her free to pull away. The distinction mattered, but it did not absolve him.
Rhaella tore her hand from his.
“Do not touch me,” she warned.
Jace’s hand remained suspended between them for a moment before falling to his side. “Rhaella,” he said, her name carrying a plea he would never have permitted the council to hear.
“You have made your decision,” she said. Her voice trembled now, and she hated him for hearing it. “Do not reach for me because you want someone to tell you that it is righteous.”
“I do not need you to call it righteous,” Jace replied.
“What do you need from me?”
Jace looked at her as though the answer should have been obvious. “I need you.”
The words quieted something inside her and enraged something else.
Rhaella shook her head. “You need Valkyrie.”
“I need both of you.”
“No,” she said sharply. “You need Valkyrie guarding the island, and you need me to understand so that you do not have to leave believing your wife thinks you a traitor.”
Jace flinched.
Rhaella saw that she had found the truth. It lived in the sudden uncertainty behind his eyes and the way his mouth opened without producing an immediate defense.
“This is treason,” she whispered.
“I know,” Jace answered.
“You say that very easily.”
“Gods, nothing about this is easy,” he said, his voice breaking around the words.
“You are ordering sworn men to imprison their queen.”
“I am ordering them to keep my mother alive.”
“She did not ask you to save her from herself.”
“No,” Jace said bitterly. “She ordered me to stand here while Driftmark burns.”
The anger drained from the final words, leaving grief beneath them. Rhaella watched his shoulders rise with a breath he could not seem to finish. His eyes remained bright from the confrontation with Rhaenyra, and the hand hanging beside him had begun to tremble.
The sight weakened her resolve, which only made her angrier.
Jace raised his hand toward her face.
Rhaella caught his wrist before his fingers reached her. His pulse hammered beneath her thumb.
“Do not use my love to make this feel less like treason,” she said.
Jace became utterly still.
For the first time since his mother left, something resembling fear entered his expression. It was not fear of battle, punishment, or death. It was the fear that Rhaella might withdraw the one form of loyalty he had never doubted.
“I am not asking you to absolve me,” he said quietly. “I am asking you to understand why I must do it.”
“I understand too much,” Rhaella replied. Tears burned behind her eyes, blurring the hard lines of his face. “That is why you came to me.”
“Yes,” Jace admitted.
The honesty wounded her more cleanly than a lie would have done.
“You knew I would understand the danger to Dragonstone,” she said. “You knew I would understand why someone must remain with Valkyrie. You knew I would not leave the island undefended merely because you were flying into battle.”
“I knew I could trust you,” Jace said.
“You knew you could use me.”
His brow furrowed. “That is not fair.”
“Neither is what you are asking.”
“I did not choose where Vhagar flew. I did not send our dragons west. I did not bring the Triarchy into the Gullet.”
“But you are choosing which of us will pay for it,” Rhaella said.
Jace looked away. His throat moved as he swallowed.
She still held his wrist. She became aware of it slowly, along with the warmth of his skin beneath her fingers. When she released him, the absence felt immediate.
“If you tell me that I am wrong, I will still go,” Jace said.
Rhaella stared at him. “Then why are we speaking?”
“Because I need you to know that I am not leaving you behind because I doubt your courage,” he explained.
“That does not make it better.”
“I know.”
“I could help you in the Gullet,” Rhaella insisted. “Valkyrie and I could keep the scorpions from Vermax. I could strike their crews before they loosed. We could protect the fleet together.”
“I know what you can do,” Jace replied. His voice softened, which made the refusal more painful. “I have seen you loose an arrow from Valkyrie’s back while she was falling through cloud. I know precisely what you would be beside me.”
“Then ask someone else to remain.”
“There is no one else.”
“Syrax remains.”
“My mother will not. She loves you dearly, and mayhaps she will listen when you ask her to remain. She will hear nothing more from me tonight.”
The answer silenced her.
Rhaella looked toward the doors through which Rhaenyra had disappeared. If the guards released her before Vermax and Moondancer took flight, she would go to the yard. She would mount Syrax and follow her son into the Gullet, leaving Dragonstone defended only by Valkyrie.
Jace stepped nearer. “If Vhagar appears while my mother is gone, this castle falls,” he said. “Joffrey, Aegon, and Viserys lose their refuge. Our council loses its queen. Everything we have fought for ends before Baela and I can return.”
“And if Vhagar does not appear?” Rhaella asked.
“Then I will spend the rest of my life grateful that you remained here for nothing.”
Her vision blurred. She blinked, but one tear escaped and traveled down her cheek. Jace lifted his hand again. This time, he stopped before touching her.
“May I?” he asked.
The question nearly broke her.
Rhaella should have refused. She should have walked past him and opened Rhaenyra’s doors. Instead, she loosened her grip upon the anger holding her upright.
Jace touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers.
His hand was warm. The tenderness of the gesture felt unbearable after the violence of the council chamber. Rhaella turned her face away, but his palm followed the movement and settled carefully against her jaw.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
“I cannot,” she whispered.
“Please look at me.”
Rhaella raised her eyes.
The desperation in his face stripped the last of his princely composure away. He looked young, furious, and terrified, although she knew he would carry all three emotions into battle before allowing anyone else to see them.
Jace slid his other hand around her waist and drew her toward him. Rhaella resisted. Her palm flattened against his chest, holding a narrow distance between their bodies.
“You do not get to hold me until I forgive you,” she said.
“I am not asking for forgiveness,” Jace replied. His hand remained steady at her waist, but he did not pull harder. “I am asking for one moment.”
“Before you commit treason?”
“Before I go where you cannot follow.”
Her breath caught.
Jace waited. He did not force her past the resistance of her hand, but he did not release her either. His thumb moved once against the fabric at her waist, a small, almost unconscious plea.
Rhaella felt his heartbeat beneath her palm. It was too fast. He was frightened despite every furious word he had thrown at his mother.
The pressure of her hand gradually weakened.
Jace brought her closer by degrees, giving her time to pull away after every inch. When her fingers curled into the leather of his coat instead of holding him back, he gathered her against him.
Rhaella remained rigid within his arms. She would not embrace him, but neither could she make herself leave. Jace lowered his face into the space between her cheek and temple and breathed deeply, as though he meant to carry the scent of her hair and skin into the smoke of the Gullet.
His hand spread across the center of her back.
It was trembling.
Rhaella closed her eyes. The discovery wounded her more than his fear ever could have if he had spoken it aloud.
“I need Valkyrie here,” Jace whispered against her hair. “I need you here.”
“You need me to make your betrayal possible,” she said.
“You may already carry our child.”
Rhaella went still within his arms.
Jace felt it. His hand spread more firmly across her back, holding her as though the possibility alone had made her newly vulnerable.
“You cannot know that,” she whispered.
“Neither can you.”
Rhaella drew back and looked at him. “Will you make a prison of every possibility, then? Must I remain behind whenever there is some chance that your child grows inside me?”
Pain tightened his face. “Tonight, yes.”
“You have no right.”
“Perhaps I do not,” Jace admitted. “But if I fall in the Gullet and you follow me into it, my mother may lose her heir, my grandsire, his daughter, and our house whatever future we might have made together.”
“Do not speak as though you are already dead.”
“I am trying to ensure that something of us survives if I am.”
Tears filled Rhaella’s eyes again. “Something of us?”
Jace’s composure finally fractured. He brought his forehead to hers, his breath unsteady against her mouth.
“A son. A daughter. I do not care which,” he whispered. “A child with your eyes and my stubbornness. Someone who might inherit the world we are trying to save. If there is even the smallest chance that child already exists, I cannot carry the thought of both of you into that battle.”
“And what am I meant to carry while you are gone?”
Jace closed his eyes. “Me.”
“That is not enough.”
“It is all I have left to give you. I need to know that Dragonstone will still stand when I return.”
“Do not speak as though returning is certain.”
His arms tightened around her. “I have to believe it is.”
Rhaella turned her face into his neck before he could see another tear escape. He smelled of leather, smoke from the council fire, and the faint clean salt that always clung to him after flying above the sea.
Jace drew back when he felt the wetness against his skin. His thumb brushed the tear from beneath her eye.
Rhaella caught his hand. “Do not.”
“I cannot leave you like this,” he said.
“You are choosing to leave me like this.”
Pain tightened his mouth. “What would you have me do?”
“Stay.”
The word left her before pride could stop it.
Jace closed his eyes.
For one fragile instant, Rhaella believed he might surrender. She felt his breath leave him and his forehead descend toward hers. Their noses nearly touched, and the intimacy of the familiar gesture made the chamber around them seem distant.
“If I stay, Corlys may die before dawn,” he whispered.
“And if you go, your mother may lose another son.”
“I know.”
“What happens to her then?” Rhaella asked. “What happens to me?”
Jace’s brow remained pressed to hers. His breath moved unevenly across her mouth.
“I do not know,” he admitted.
The answer finally destroyed her resistance. Rhaella clutched the front of his coat and pulled herself against him. Jace released a shaking breath before holding her more firmly, one arm secure around her waist and the other cradling the back of her head.
For several moments, neither of them spoke. There was no forgiveness in the embrace and no true agreement. There was only terror, love, and the knowledge that history might judge this as the moment both of them betrayed their queen.
“You are frightened,” Rhaella murmured into his neck.
“Yes,” Jace confessed.
It was the first honest admission he had made since Baela entered the council chamber.
Rhaella drew back enough to see him. “You had better come back.”
“I will,” he promised.
“Do not promise me something the gods may take from you.”
“Then I will promise only what belongs to me.” Jace pressed his forehead to hers again. “I will fight with everything I possess to return to you.”
Rhaella swallowed against the ache in her throat. “That will have to be enough.”
Jace kissed her. The kiss was brief, desperate, and absent of hunger. It tasted of salt from her tears and the farewell neither of them would name.
When he pulled away, his lips lingered near hers. He breathed her in once more before forcing himself to release her.
The loss of his hands left Rhaella cold.
She turned toward Ser Lorent, who remained waiting near the doors with Baela beside him. Both had looked away from the private exchange, but neither could pretend not to understand what had been decided.
“The Queen is not to be harmed,” Rhaella ordered. Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. “I will be permitted to enter her apartments whenever I choose. The doors will be opened as soon as Vermax and Moondancer are beyond recall.”
Ser Lorent bowed his head. “My Prince?”
“You heard your Princess.”
Ser Lorent looked up, “As you command, Princess.”
Rhaella looked back at Jace. “Do not mistake my understanding for approval.”
“I would not dare,” he replied.
“You have already dared far too much.”
Jace reached for her hand one final time. His thumb passed over her wedding ring before their fingers separated.
“I love you,” he said.
Rhaella’s throat tightened. She wanted to withhold the answer long enough to punish him, but she could not let him carry uncertainty into the sky.
“I love you,” she replied. “That is what makes this so difficult to forgive.”
Jace held her gaze for another heartbeat. Then he turned toward Baela and the waiting doors.
Rhaella watched her husband leave, knowing that she had chosen him over her queen. History would remember the treason, but it would never understand how desperately she had fought him before love pulled her across the line.
***
Rhaenyra emerged from her apartments half an hour later.
By then, Vermax and Moondancer had become little more than shadows against the eastern sky, already too distant for Syrax to overtake before they reached the Gullet. Rhaella had watched until both dragons disappeared into the darkening clouds, one hand pressed against the cold stone beside the window as the final glimpse of Vermax vanished.
She had remained outside Rhaenyra’s apartments ever since.
Her palms felt clammy inside her riding gloves. She removed them, only to discover that her bare hands were worse, damp with sweat despite the cold air moving through the corridor. Rhaella rubbed them against the leather covering her thighs and immediately hated herself for the nervous, childish gesture.
She had faced armed men from Valkyrie’s saddle without feeling this kind of fear. Battle possessed a brutal simplicity. An enemy approached, and she answered with flame or an arrow. There was nothing simple about waiting outside the chambers of a woman she loved after helping that woman’s son commit treason against her.
There was nothing simple about it being the Queen, either.
Rhaella could still feel Jace’s forehead against hers. She could still hear him promising that he would fight to return. Beneath those memories lived the quieter, more poisonous knowledge that she had allowed him to leave because she believed he was right.
That belief would not protect her from Rhaenyra.
Ser Lorent stood beside the doors with his gaze fixed ahead. Shame had settled over every man in the corridor, visible in their rigid shoulders and their refusal to look directly at the princess who had helped confirm the order.
“Open them,” Rhaella commanded.
Her voice sounded steady. She did not feel steady.
Ser Lorent hesitated only long enough to draw a breath before giving the signal. The guards lifted the bar and pulled the doors inward, hinges groaning through a corridor that had become painfully silent.
Rhaella’s heartbeat climbed into her throat.
For one irrational moment, she wanted Jace beside her. The desire was followed immediately by anger. He had begun this rebellion, pressed the burden of its aftermath into her hands, and flown away before the Queen’s doors opened.
Rhaella curled her damp fingers into her palms. Her nails bit into her skin beneath the edges of her rings.
Rhaenyra stood beyond the threshold in dark riding leathers, one hand wrapped around the dagger she had used to cut herself free of her abandoned gown. Her silver hair hung loose around her shoulders, and fury had stripped every trace of warmth from her face.
The Queen’s eyes found Rhaella first.
Rhaella’s stomach turned. She forced herself not to step backward.
Rhaenyra crossed the threshold slowly, her gaze moving once toward the windows at the end of the corridor. The sky beyond them was empty.
When she looked back at Rhaella, whatever lingering hope she had carried disappeared.
“How long did you know?” Rhaenyra asked.
Rhaella did not pretend to misunderstand. “Long enough to stop him.”
“And yet you did not.”
“No.”
“You permitted my son to turn my own guard against me.”
“I opened your doors.”
“After he had flown beyond my reach.”
“Yes.”
Rhaenyra stepped into the corridor. Ser Lorent knelt, but the Queen did not look at him.
“You chose your husband over your queen.”
“Tonight I believed they wanted the same thing.”
“You believed that you knew my cause better than I did.”
“I believed your fleet would not survive until morning without dragons.”
Rhaenyra’s gaze moved over Rhaella’s riding leathers. “Why did you not accompany him?”
“Because one dragon had to remain at Dragonstone. Jace believed it should be Valkyrie.”
“And you accepted his command while rejecting mine.”
The accusation found its mark. Rhaella felt it and refused to look away.
“I accepted the necessity of defending this island.”
“You accepted the necessity he chose for you.”
Rhaella had no answer that did not sound like an excuse.
Rhaenyra passed her and continued toward the Painted Table. “If Vhagar appears, you will meet him before he reaches the castle.”
“I will.”
“If Jace returns, he will answer for what he has done.”
“He will.”
The Queen stopped without turning. “If he does not return, you and I will have the remainder of our lives to decide which of us failed him.”
Rhaella followed her into the chamber.
They had remained there ever since.
***
Now the fire had sunk low, and the final hours before dawn gathered against the windows. Rhaenyra stood on the opposite side of the Painted Table, still dressed to fly, her father’s crown resting beside her hand.
Ser Lorent entered with rain glistening upon his shoulders. His expression betrayed the news before he spoke.
“A cog belonging to Lord Celtigar has reached the eastern quay. Her captain reports that the Triarchy’s center has broken and their remaining ships are fleeing east.”
Rhaenyra gripped the table. “Does the blockade hold?”
“Lord Corlys’s surviving vessels have closed the straits behind them, Your Grace.”
Relief moved through the chamber in a low exhalation. Somewhere beyond the doors, a guard repeated the report, and the words traveled outward through Dragonstone.
The Triarchy had broken. The blockade held. After Rook’s Rest and Duskendale, after ravens carrying nothing but the names of the dead, the Blacks had won something worth winning.
Rhaella could not feel that victory while Jace remained missing.
“Has the prince been found?” Rhaenyra asked.
Ser Lorent’s eyes lowered. “No ship has brought word of him.”
“Has Vermax been seen?”
“He has not been sighted since sunset.”
Rhaella placed one hand upon the Painted Table. Heat passed through her glove while the room seemed to move beneath her feet. Rhaenyra dismissed Ser Lorent and the remaining guards. When the doors closed, she removed her crown and placed it beside the carved shape of Dragonstone.
For a while, neither woman spoke.
The anger between them had not vanished. It had merely been forced to share the room with fear.
“So it appears…” Rhaenyra spoke slowly. “That my son has won.”
Rhaella looked up at her mother-in-law, her Queen, “Jace was right about the fleet.”
Rhaenyra raised her eyes. “Do not ask me to bless his betrayal because it succeeded.”
“I did not ask you to bless it.”
“He placed guards at my door.”
“I know what he did.”
“You helped him do it.”
“I know what I did.”
Rhaenyra’s mouth tightened. “Do you regret it?”
Rhaella looked toward the black windows. “Ask me after he returns.”
“And if he does not?”
The question entered the chamber quietly.
Rhaella forced herself to answer. “Then I will regret every moment for the rest of my life, and some part of me will still believe the fleet had to be saved.”
Rhaenyra closed her eyes. When she opened them, the Queen’s anger remained, but something inside it had changed.
“Sit,” she said. “You have been standing all night.”
Rhaella wanted to refuse. Her legs decided otherwise.
She sat near the fire without removing her cloak. Rhaenyra remained beside the Painted Table, looking toward the windows whenever the wind shifted.
Rhaella intended to rest only until the next messenger arrived. Exhaustion claimed her before she could bargain with it.
***
Hours earlier, the sea had shone like beaten gold.
The setting sun lay so brightly upon the water that Jace could not look east without narrowing his eyes. From Vermax’s back, the Gullet appeared crowded but orderly: the dark hulls of Corlys’s blockade strung across the straits, trading cogs anchored nearer Driftmark, and fishing boats fleeing toward shore beneath patched brown sails.
One of the merchant ships dropped its painted sides.
Canvas fell away to reveal ranks of black oars and scorpions already drawn. Before Jace could call a warning, the first bolt crossed the water and struck a Velaryon galley below the mast. Oak burst outward in a cloud of splinters, sweeping men from the deck as the mast folded across the rowers and dragged half the sail into the sea.
The horizon filled with enemy banners.
They emerged from the glare in three great columns, their hulls painted in the brilliant colors of the Free Cities. Tyroshi purple crowded beside Myrish red and Lysene blue, while bronze rams carved the water beneath snarling figureheads. Archers stood shoulder to shoulder along the decks. Clay pots of pitch swung from cranes, and between the larger warships raced low boats laden with iron chains and folded nets.
Bells sounded across the Velaryon fleet. The notes collided with shouted orders, hammering drums, and the grinding of ships struggling to turn before the attack reached them.
Vermax screamed beneath Jace.
The sound passed through saddle and bone alike. Jace bent low over the dragon’s neck as the first storm of arrows rose, thousands of dark shafts briefly eclipsing the sun.
“Climb, Vermax!”
The dragon surged upward. Arrows whispered past Jace’s cheeks and struck the iron plates protecting his thighs, while others glanced from Vermax’s scales or vanished through the thin edges of his wings. Below them, Baela urged Moondancer into a turn so sharp that the smaller dragon’s pale-green wing nearly brushed a Velaryon mast.
The Triarchy meant to annihilate the blockade before Dragonstone understood that the battle had begun.
Jace pulled Vermax into a high circle. The enemy center drove toward Corlys’s flagship, while a second force curved south to close the straits behind the Velaryon fleet. To the north, ships were already lowering boats beneath the cliffs of Driftmark.
Flames climbed among the roofs near Hull. Farther inland, smoke rose from the road leading to High Tide.
Jace had known the attack would be terrible. He had not understood its size until the Gullet disappeared beneath enemy sails.
For one heartbeat, his mother’s order returned to him. He imagined Rhaenyra behind the guarded doors, heard the fury that would await him if he survived, and wondered whether he had mistaken fear for conviction.
Then another Velaryon ship broke beneath a bronze ram.
Men fell into water already burning around them.
Jace found the largest Triarchy warship driving toward Corlys beneath three purple sails. He pressed his knees against Vermax’s sides.
“Dracarys!”
Green-gold flame poured across the sky.
It struck behind the warship’s mainmast and ran forward with the wind, engulfing rigging, sails, and the men stationed beneath them. A line of scorpions vanished inside the fire. The ship continued under its own momentum after its helm began to burn, striking broadside against a Myrish galley whose rowers could not reverse quickly enough.
Men leapt between the burning hulls and disappeared into the churned water. Others remained trapped below, their fists striking against hatch covers as smoke flooded the rowing benches.
Vermax passed through the rising heat. Jace’s armor grew hot enough to sting through the leather beneath it, and the air filled his mouth with soot. Moondancer’s answering flame bloomed farther south, turning a line of archers into writhing silhouettes before the smoke concealed them.
The enemy did not break.
Scorpions rotated across a dozen decks, their crews tracking Vermax’s flight while captains shouted calculations from the stern. The men below were afraid, but they had faced dragons in the Stepstones and learned how Valyrian creatures might be brought down.
Two low boats raced apart beneath Vermax, dragging a chain through the water. Winches released from both decks and flung hooked lengths of iron into the air.
Jace saw the trap an instant before it closed. He pulled hard upon the reins, and Vermax rolled until one wing pointed toward the sea. The first hook tore through the outer edge of his wing membrane. Another caught the iron guard beside Jace’s boot and ripped it from the saddle, while the chain passed beneath them close enough for him to see rust upon its links.
Vermax climbed in furious, uneven strokes.
A scorpion bolt struck along the dragon’s ribs. It failed to pierce the scales, but the impact threw Vermax sideways and drove Jace against the harness. His teeth met hard enough to fill his mouth with blood.
Below them, the fleets collided.
Bronze rams opened hulls beneath the waterline. Oars shattered between passing ships, and men were crushed where decks ground together. Grappling hooks crossed the narrowing water until vessels became locked in struggling masses, allowing armored soldiers to leap over the rails with swords and axes drawn.
Fire moved faster than men. Pitch ran down decks and through rowing ports, carrying flames into holds crowded with wounded sailors. A burning mast collapsed between two ships and briefly joined them beneath an arch of fire.
Corlys’s flagship disappeared into the press.
Jace guided Vermax toward the last place he had seen it. A flight of arrows rose from an enemy deck, forcing the dragon higher before he could descend.
Moondancer passed below them.
Baela pointed north.
A vast, ragged shape had emerged from the smoke above Driftmark.
Jace recognized Sheepstealer an instant before he saw Rhaena clinging to the saddle. She had claimed the wild dragon in the Vale only days earlier, and no one had expected her to appear over the Gullet. Whatever fragile authority she possessed over him had not survived the scent of blood, burning livestock, and the chaos beneath them.
Rhaena pulled desperately upon the reins. Sheepstealer ignored her and descended toward the nearest ship, where cattle taken from Driftmark bellowed within a burning pen.
The Triarchy sailors loosed their scorpions.
One bolt passed beneath Sheepstealer’s belly. Another tore through the edge of his wing.
The wild dragon changed direction with terrifying speed.
He struck Vermax from above.
Jace saw jaws, ragged brown scales, and Rhaena’s horrified face before the impact threw him sideways. Vermax snapped at Sheepstealer’s throat. The two dragons twisted together, falling toward the masts while their riders fought to separate them.
“Turn him!” Jace shouted.
“I cannot!”
Sheepstealer’s claws raked across Vermax’s back. Vermax rolled beneath him and broke free, but the maneuver carried him directly between two Triarchy net ships.
A horn sounded below.
Weighted nets unfurled from both sides. The first spread across Vermax’s chest as iron hooks caught beneath his scales. The second wrapped his hindquarters and closed around his right leg.
Vermax fought for height, but the weights dragged at his torn wings while the two ships sailed apart to stretch the net between them. One chain twisted around his right hind foot and snapped taut against a submerged anchor.
The bones broke beneath the strain.
Vermax’s scream overwhelmed every other sound in the Gullet. His body convulsed in the air, and the harness wrenched Jace sideways with enough force to tear one hand from the reins. He drew his sword and severed one rope before another tightened across the dragon’s shoulder.
An archer on the nearest ship raised his bow.
Jace saw the man draw and tried to turn, but the arrow passed beneath his left collarbone and tore through the outer muscle of his shoulder without striking the joint.
The impact drove the breath from his body. Pain spread from shoulder to spine as the shaft shuddered with Vermax’s movements.
A second bowstring snapped.
The next arrow entered his right flank from behind, slipping beneath the bottom edge of his cuirass. Its point traveled shallowly along the outside of his lowest rib rather than entering his belly, but the force folded him over the saddle.
Vermax fell.
The sea rose to meet them in a rush of black water, fire, and shattered sky.
Cold struck hard enough to empty Jace’s lungs. The harness held him below the surface while Vermax’s weight dragged the saddle deeper. The arrow through his shoulder caught against the leather with every convulsion of the dragon’s body, tearing the wound wider, while burning pitch drifted across the waves overhead in blurred orange rivers.
Jace reached for the buckle at his waist, but his left arm would not move. He clawed at the leather with his right hand while blood unfurled from his wounds and vanished into the dark water.
His fingers slipped.
The cold pressed deeper. His chest convulsed around the breath he could not take.
For the first time since leaving Dragonstone, Jace no longer wondered whether he had made the correct decision. Queens, fleets, and crowns receded from him. He saw only his mother’s face when she realized what he had done and Rhaella’s expression as she warned him not to make promises he could not keep.
He had confined one and left the other behind.
He could not make both acts the final thing he gave them.
Jace forced his fingers beneath the buckle and pulled until skin tore from his knuckles. The leather released him from the saddle. He floated free, disoriented by darkness, before the wavering light above showed him the direction of the surface.
He emerged beneath a roof of smoke and drew in half a breath before seawater filled his mouth. Burning wreckage rose and fell around him. Men clung to overturned boats or fought for pieces of timber, while armored bodies disappeared beneath the waves.
Vermax surfaced twenty paces away.
The net had slipped from his shoulders, leaving bleeding hook wounds beneath the green scales, but iron chain remained wound around his shattered foot. He beat his torn wings against the water, each attempt weaker than the last, while submerged wreckage pulled at his leg.
Crossbowmen gathered along the rail of the nearest ship.
Jace caught a broken spar with his good arm. A bolt struck beside his face, spraying splinters across his cheek as the waves rolled the arrow in his side against the wood.
Moondancer swept through the smoke at the height of the masts. Her fire passed so low that the surface of the Gullet appeared to ignite beneath her. The crossbowmen vanished inside the blast, and burning bodies fell from the deck.
Baela circled once, searching for some way to reach Jace. Moondancer was too small to lift a grown man from the water without risking being dragged into it, and the surrounding ships left nowhere for her to land.
Jace released the spar and swam toward Vermax with one arm. His boots and armor pulled at his legs, and each stroke ground the arrowhead against his rib. Twice the waves rolled over him. When he surfaced the second time, he vomited seawater before forcing himself onward.
Vermax lowered his neck.
Jace caught one of the ridges behind the dragon’s jaw. Vermax lifted him from the water with a violent movement that nearly tore the injured shoulder apart. Jace dragged himself across the scales and remained there until his lungs stopped convulsing.
The saddle had slipped beneath Vermax’s body, leaving neither harness nor reins. Jace crawled toward the rigging twisted through the chain around the dragon’s broken foot. His left arm hung uselessly, and his right hand had begun to shake, but he managed to draw the dagger from his belt.
He sawed at the swollen rope while arrows struck the water around them.
Moondancer burned the deck of one anchoring ship. Its crew abandoned the winch, but the chain remained fastened around Vermax’s leg.
Jace’s vision doubled. He closed one eye and continued cutting until the dagger and rope became distinct again.
“Remain with me,” he said, although he no longer knew whether he spoke to Vermax or himself.
The final strands parted.
Vermax surged upward, only to collapse when his wings failed to lift his waterlogged body. His injured foot struck the waves, sending another violent tremor through him.
Baela drove Moondancer across the second ship. Fire consumed its sails, and heated air rushed upward from the deck. Vermax spread his torn wings into that rising current.
The first three strokes carried them no higher than the mastheads. The fourth lifted them above the smoke.
Jace locked his right arm around a ridge in Vermax’s neck. The battlefield opened beneath them in broken glimpses. Sails burned from mast to deck, bodies drifted among wreckage, and Velaryon ships had nearly disappeared beneath swarms of Triarchy boarders.
Corlys’s flagship emerged from the smoke with its foremast gone and its ram lodged inside a Lysene galley. The Sea Snake stood near the prow with blood covering his armor, directing the men around him while Alyn of Hull led an assault across the enemy deck.
The Velaryon center was collapsing. Ships had become trapped between the Triarchy’s southern line and burning wreckage to the north. If those ships broke, the blockade would die with them.
Jace could turn west and attempt to reach Dragonstone. Nobody would call the retreat cowardice after seeing Vermax’s broken foot and the two arrows lodged in his rider.
If he left, however, his mother’s fleet would burn. His act of defiance would become nothing more than a prince’s fatal arrogance, and every accusation Rhaenyra had ever feared would be proven true.
Jace turned Vermax back toward the battle.
Baela brought Moondancer alongside him. Her face was black with soot, and blood ran from a cut at her temple. Jace pointed toward Corlys’s position and then toward the southern channel between the Triarchy fleet and the shoals.
They had flown the Gullet together since childhood. She understood.
Baela descended toward the Velaryon flagship while Jace guided Vermax above the southern ships. The dragon could no longer turn quickly enough to evade concentrated fire, so Jace waited until the enemy crews loosed at Moondancer and began the slow work of drawing their scorpions again.
Vermax fell upon them before they could reload.
Flame swept across three decks in one continuous pass. The first ship burned where it stood. The second veered away and struck the vessel beside it, locking both hulls together. The third attempted to reach open water, forcing the ships behind it toward the shoals off Driftmark.
A Triarchy fireship emerged from the smoke with its deck piled high with oil casks, burning pitch, and dry timber. Its crew had already abandoned it. Wind and current carried the vessel directly toward the trapped Velaryon center, where half a dozen friendly ships remained bound together by enemy grappling lines.
Jace tried to turn Vermax toward it, but the dragon lost height with his first wingbeat. Jace’s right hand slipped from the neck ridge. For several heartbeats, he could hear Baela shouting his name without understanding why.
He forced his fingers closed again. The fireship had drawn too near the Velaryon vessels for dragonflame; igniting its cargo would consume both fleets together.
A battered Velaryon galley broke from Corlys’s line.
Most of its mast was gone, and fewer than two dozen men remained upon its deck. Instead of retreating, its captain turned toward the fireship. The surviving rowers drove forward while soldiers hacked wreckage from their oars.
The ships struck prow to prow.
Velaryon sailors swarmed aboard the burning vessel. They cut its steering lines and forced the rudder east while Triarchy arrows fell among them. The galley pulled away with only seven men returning to its deck.
The others remained upon the fireship as it drifted into the enemy line.
Its cargo ignited.
The explosion lifted both ships from the water. Burning timber crossed the sky, and the force struck Vermax from below. A tower of flame consumed four Triarchy vessels and sealed the southern channel behind them.
Jace did not know the name of the captain who had turned the ship. He saw only the Velaryon banner disappear beneath the fire.
Corlys understood the opening purchased for him.
The Sea Snake’s horns sounded across the Gullet, three deep notes answered by every surviving Velaryon ship. Captains who had been withdrawing turned their prows east. Archers climbed whatever rigging remained, and rowers drove their battered hulls against the exposed Triarchy flank.
Alyn’s men captured the enemy flagship deck by deck. The Triarchy admiral met him near the broken mast with two curved blades in her hands while fire consumed the sails above them. Jace did not see the final blow through the smoke, but he saw her fall across the rail with Alyn’s blade buried beneath her jaw.
The purple banner above the flagship came down.
One enemy captain broke east, and another followed. The ships trapped nearest Driftmark attempted to force their way through the shallows. The first struck rock beneath the waterline and rolled hard enough to cast men from its deck. A second rammed the sinking hull, while a third became trapped when burning wreckage gathered against its bow.
Vermax’s strength was failing. Jace felt each unsteady beat of his wings and every tremor passing through the muscles beneath him. The dragon answered when Jace turned him toward the remaining center, although the command came out as little more than a breath.
They descended one final time.
Flame struck the Triarchy line from above as Velaryon rams struck it from the west. Moondancer swept across the fleeing vessels, burning sails so that the wind died within them. The straits filled with stranded ships unable to turn, their decks bright beneath the approaching fire.
The surviving enemy captains abandoned the battle. Purple, red, and blue sails fled east, leaving slower ships and landing parties behind.
Corlys’s horns sounded again. This time they were answered from the shores of Driftmark, from the battered fleet, and from men standing upon decks that had nearly become their graves.
The blockade held.
Jace heard the victory declared, but he could no longer see it clearly. Smoke and darkness folded together until every ship became a shadow. He remembered lowering his face against Vermax’s neck and promising that Dragonstone lay just beyond the western horizon.
He did not remember leaving the battlefield.
Baela remained beside him until they reached Driftmark. Whenever Vermax lost height, Moondancer passed beneath his injured wing. Whenever Jace sagged against the dragon’s neck, Baela shouted until he responded.
They descended near Driftmark’s harbor long enough for Baela to learn that Corlys and Alyn had survived. The beach below the castle had become a field hospital, crowded with wounded sailors, overturned carts, and strips of sailcloth darkened by blood. Men called for water and mothers while healers moved among them with basins already stained red.
Vermax landed beyond the crush of bodies. His uninjured foot struck first, but the broken right limb touched the ground before he could prevent it. The dragon collapsed against one wing with a roar that sent nearby horses fighting their reins.
Jace nearly fell from his neck.
Baela reached him before the waiting maester. She climbed the ridges behind Vermax’s shoulder and caught Jace beneath his right arm as he attempted to slide down.
“Slowly,” she warned. “You will tear them deeper.”
Jace’s boots touched the ground, but his legs did not hold. Baela and two Velaryon soldiers took his weight and lowered him onto a folded sail.
The maester knelt beside him and reached immediately for the arrow beneath his collarbone.
Jace caught the man’s wrist. “Do not pull it.”
“My prince, it must be removed.”
“Not here.”
“You are bleeding beneath your armor.”
“Then stop what bleeding you can without opening the wounds.”
The maester stared at him. “If either barb has caught an artery, leaving it in place may be the only reason you have not bled to death. I cannot know what has been struck until I remove your armor.”
“Then cut the armor away,” Jace said. His breath hitched as Baela helped lower him against a bundled cloak. “The arrows remain.”
Baela crouched beside him, her face black with soot and blood drying at her temple. “Dragonstone is across open water. You may not survive another flight.”
Jace looked toward the west. Dragonstone lay beyond the smoke, hidden beneath the darkening horizon.
“If he removes them and cannot stop the bleeding, I will die upon this beach,” he said.
“And if you fly, you may die above the Gullet.”
“Then Vermax will carry my body home.”
Baela’s expression twisted. “Do not speak that way.”
Jace turned his face toward her. Exhaustion had hollowed the anger from his eyes, leaving the fear beneath it visible. “I will not die here without seeing Rhaella. I will not leave my mother to hear of it from another messenger.”
Baela looked away.
The maester cut through the leather straps securing Jace’s cuirass and removed the damaged plates without shifting either shaft. When the final piece came free, blood-soaked linen clung to Jace’s skin beneath it.
The first arrow had passed through the muscle below his left collarbone, its iron head lodged near the back of his shoulder. The second had entered his right flank from behind and traveled at an angle along his lowest rib. Neither wound poured blood freely, but both seeped steadily with every breath.
“The arrow in your side may have passed outside the belly,” the maester said as he examined the angle. “I cannot promise it. If it pierced the gut, no flight will save you.”
“Can you keep the shafts from moving?”
“I can shorten them and bind them, but cutting the wood may disturb the heads.”
Jace closed his eyes. “Do it.”
Baela took his right hand while the maester worked. Two soldiers held the shafts steady as he cut away their remaining length with a small toothed blade, leaving enough wood for Gerardys to grasp during removal. Each vibration traveled through Jace’s body. His fingers crushed Baela’s, and sweat gathered along his brow despite the cold wind moving off the water.
Once the shafts had been shortened, the maester packed folded linen around each wound and bound the remaining wood firmly against Jace’s body. One bandage crossed his shoulder and chest, while another wrapped tightly around his ribs without restricting his breathing.
“These bindings will slow the blood and keep the arrows from shifting,” the maester said. “They will not protect you if you fall again.”
“I do not intend to.”
The maester held out a cup. “Milk of the poppy.”
Jace turned his face away. “No.”
“You will scarcely feel the flight.”
“I may not wake from it. Give me watered dreamwine or nothing.”
Baela’s grip tightened around his hand. “Take enough to dull the pain.”
Jace looked toward Vermax.
Sailors had approached his injured foot, but Vermax snapped at their poles and forced them backward with a warning burst of heat. The iron chain still hung around the shattered limb, dragging broken rigging across the stones. Each time someone moved toward it, the dragon turned his head frantically until he found Jace.
“Help him first,” Jace said.
“You cannot go near him,” Baela replied.
“He will not permit them to touch the leg unless I am there.”
With Baela and two soldiers supporting him, Jace crossed the short distance to Vermax. The dragon lowered his head when Jace placed his palm against his snout, though a tremor continued through his body.
The sailors worked while Jace murmured to him. They cut away the trailing rigging and removed the final lengths of chain without attempting to set the broken bones upon the open shore. Thick leather straps were passed beneath the injured limb and secured loosely against Vermax’s body so that the foot would not drag during flight.
“This will not hold for long,” the eldest sailor warned. “He must be properly splinted before he attempts to stand again, I imagine.”
“Dragonstone has the stronger chains and the deeper caverns,” Jace said. “He will allow our keepers near him once Rhaella settles Valkyrie.”
Vermax exhaled against Jace’s chest, filling the air with heat and sulfur.
Jace pressed his forehead briefly against the dragon’s scales. “One more crossing,” he whispered. “Bring me home, and I will ask nothing more of you.”
Baela caught Jace’s right hand before he climbed. “I should fly with you.”
“Your grandsire needs you here.”
“You are asking a crippled dragon to carry a dying man across the Gullet.”
Jace looked at her. “I am asking Vermax to take me home.”
Neither of them said that the journey might be the last thing dragon and rider ever did together. Baela caught Jace’s right hand before Vermax took flight again.
“You cannot cross alone, Jacaerys.”
“Your grandsire needs you here, Baela.”
“You are bleeding through your armor, Jacaerys.”
“Baela, Dragonstone is nearer than the fleet, and Rhaella will come searching if I remain gone much longer.”
Baela looked ready to strike him. Behind her, wounded men were being carried from the harbor by the dozens, while Corlys’s remaining ships limped through water crowded with bodies.
“I will follow when the wounded are ashore,” she said. “You must remain awake until you reach the island.”
“I will.”
“You must give me your word.”
Jace tried to answer, but the words tangled with a cough that brought seawater and bile into his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
“I give you my word.”
He did not remember the moon rising during the final crossing. He remembered Vermax’s heartbeat beneath his chest and the rough edge of a scale beneath his fingers.
He remembered Rhaella warning him not to make promises merely because he knew she wished to hear them.
***
Valkyrie’s cry woke Rhaella.
She came to her feet so abruptly that the chair overturned behind her. Firelight, painted stone, and the bitter taste of fear surrounded her before memory returned.
The white dragon called again from the eastern yard. The sound was lower than a challenge and carried none of the violence of a territorial warning. Rhaella had heard that note only once before, when Valkyrie’s unease awakened her hours before news of Meleys reached Dragonstone.
Rhaenyra was already standing near the windows. Footsteps thundered beyond the chamber as a bell began to ring from the eastern tower.
Ser Lorent entered without waiting to be summoned. “The watch has sighted a dragon approaching from the Gullet, Your Grace.”
“Have they identified it?” Rhaenyra asked.
“The clouds are too thick.”
Rhaella fastened her cloak while entering the corridor. Guards fell in around her and Rhaenyra, their boots striking the stone in uneven rhythm. Servants emerged from doorways as they passed, while soldiers ran toward the outer wards carrying torches, poles, and coils of rope.
The castle awakened around a single question. Rhaella descended the sea stairs quickly enough that Ser Lorent warned her about the rain-slick stone, but she did not slow until the doors opened before her.
Wind swept across the outer yard, carrying salt, sulfur, and the distant stench of burned ships. Torches bent in their brackets. Dragonkeepers hurried across the black ground below, struggling to lead Valkyrie away from the landing field.
The dragon resisted them. Her pearlescent scales caught the torchlight, and her half-open wings doubled the breadth of her body while the long spines along her neck lifted. She faced the sea, drawing the wind through her nostrils as though blood carried upon it could reveal what human eyes had not yet seen.
Rhaella followed her gaze.
A shape passed beneath the clouds. One wing dipped, followed by the body, and for a sickening moment the creature appeared certain to fall below the cliffs.
Moonlight caught green scales.
“It is Vermax,” Rhaella said.
He climbed over the cliff upon laboring wings. Blood darkened his chest and the right side of his neck. Hooks had opened wounds beneath the scales along his shoulders, and ragged tears marked both wing membranes. His right hind foot hung beneath him, twisted beyond recognition.
No saddle remained upon his back. A man lay across the ridges of his neck with one arm locked around them.
“Clear the landing ground!” Rhanerya shouted.
The dragonkeepers dragged carts and water barrels from Vermax’s path as he struggled through the final descent. His left wing failed to hold the air beneath it, and he struck the edge of the yard before he had fully folded either wing.
His uninjured foot touched first. The broken limb struck stone an instant later. Vermax’s roar shook ash from the walls.
He collapsed sideways, and the force of his shoulder against the ground cracked the stone beneath him. One wing swept through the yard and knocked three dragonkeepers from their feet. His head lashed as fire glowed behind his teeth.
Valkyrie answered with enough force to make the walls tremble. She lunged against the keepers’ ropes, wings spreading as Rhaella’s fear passed into her through the ancient and unknowable bond between them. Men shouted commands in High Valyrian. One keeper dropped his pole and fled from the sweep of her tail.
“Give her room,” Rhaella ordered. “Do not strike her!”
She crossed the yard toward Vermax until Ser Lorent caught her arm.
“The dragon is injured, Princess. He may not recognize you.”
A faint voice rose from Vermax’s neck. “He knows her.”
Rhaella stopped.
Jace moved among the ridges, trying to push himself upright with one arm. His armor was black with seawater, soot, and blood. A broken shaft protruded beneath his left collarbone, while another jutted from beneath the lower edge of his cuirass.
He raised his head.
Even across the yard, she felt the moment he found her.
His dark eyes fixed upon her face. The ghost of a familiar smile appeared beneath the blood dried around his mouth, and the sight of it hurt more than his wounds.
Rhaella freed herself from Ser Lorent and crossed the yard. She forced herself not to run until the dragonkeepers had reached Jace, for Vermax’s wing still shifted dangerously against the stone.
Two men climbed along the dragon’s lowered shoulder and received Jace when he slid down the scales. His legs folded the moment his boots touched the ground. The keepers took most of his weight beneath his arms while Rhaella steadied him at the waist.
His body shook with cold and exhaustion. Blood had soaked the clothing along his ribs and dried down his thigh, while seawater continued to drip from his hair. His breathing sounded shallow and uneven.
Rhaella touched his jaw and then the side of his throat. His pulse beat beneath her fingers. She moved her hand to his chest and felt it rise.
Jace watched her checking him. He did not interrupt until her eyes returned to his.
“Why are you dressed to fly?”
The question nearly undid her. She had spent the night imagining his death in a hundred different forms, and her wounded husband had returned demanding an account of her clothing.
“I was preparing to break the last promise I made you.”
His eyes closed briefly. “I am glad that I was not later.”
Rhaella placed her palm against his cold cheek. She needed the roughness of his skin, the warmth slowly returning beneath it, and the movement of his breath against her wrist.
Only then did she believe that he stood before her.
“You came back,” she said.
“I promised that I would.”
Rhaenyra reached them with her guards behind her and stopped.
Jace saw her. The faint smile left his face, and he forced himself upright between the keepers. Fresh blood spread beneath the binding at his side.
For one suspended moment, mother and son stared at each other across the command he had broken and the death he had narrowly escaped.
Rhaenyra closed the distance and seized his face between her hands. Her thumbs moved over his cut cheeks, urgently confirming warm flesh.
“My boy,” she breathed. “You came back.”
Jace went still beneath her touch. “The Triarchy has broken. Lord Corlys holds the straits. Driftmark remains ours.”
Her grip tightened.
“You locked me in my chambers,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You turned my own guard against me.”
“Yes.”
“You flew into battle after I commanded you to remain.”
Jace’s breath shuddered. “Your fleet was dying.”
“You could have died with it!”
“But I did not.” His voice strengthened despite the keepers bearing his weight. “I saved it.”
Rhaenyra looked at the blood running beneath his armor, but she did not release his face. “You are my heir. You are not some piece upon the board that I can replace once it is broken.”
“I am not only your heir,” Jace said. “I am your prince.”
“You are my son!”
“And they were dying for your throne.”
The words struck her silent.
Pride, fury, and terror warred openly across Rhaenyra’s face. For the first time, she seemed to recognize that the son who had defied her had returned from the Gullet as something more dangerous than a disobedient boy.
“We will settle what you are to your queen,” she said, lowering her voice, “when you are no longer bleeding into her stones.”
Vermax tried to rise behind them.
His shattered foot folded at once, and his body struck the ground hard enough to tear a broken saddle strap loose from his scales. The roar that followed brought Jace upright despite the men supporting him.
He pulled against them. “There is still chain around his leg.”
Rhaella caught his right hand. “You cannot help him while you are unable to stand.”
“He pulled us from the water.”
“Let the keepers free him while you remain where he can see you.”
Vermax’s head turned toward Jace. One green eye found him through the confusion of torchlight and moving bodies, and the dragon’s nostrils widened.
Jace extended his right hand.
Vermax lowered his head until the edge of his jaw rested upon the stone. His breath passed over them in a wave hot enough to draw steam from Jace’s armor.
“You brought me home,” Jace murmured, pressing his palm against the scales above the dragon’s nostril. “My greatest friend. You may rest now.”
The tension gradually left Vermax’s neck. When his eye closed, the dragonkeepers moved behind him with heavy cloth, ropes, hooked blades, and wooden splints. Two covered his head while the others approached the broken foot to remove the remaining chain.
Across the yard, Valkyrie had stopped fighting her handlers. She stood perfectly still, her narrow head lowered as she watched the wounded dragon.
Jace sagged between the keepers.
Maester Gerardys entered the yard with half his robes improperly fastened and his chain twisted around his neck. One glance at Jace’s wounds erased whatever rebuke he had prepared.
“You must come inside immediately, my prince.”
Jace looked toward Vermax once more before allowing the keepers to carry him from the yard.
***
The arrow beneath Jace’s collarbone had passed through the outer muscle without striking the joint. Gerardys cut away the leather surrounding the shaft and removed the broken wood from the front, after which the barbed head had to be pushed through the back of his shoulder.
Jace refused dreamwine because ships carrying wounded men were already entering the harbor. Gerardys did not waste time arguing.
Gerardys cut through the remaining buckles of Jace’s armor and pulled the ruined leather aside. His linen shirt had dried to the wounds beneath it, and when the maester attempted to lift the cloth, Jace’s body tightened.
“Hold him,” Gerardys ordered.
Rhaenyra moved before either attendant could answer. She braced one hand against Jace’s uninjured shoulder while Rhaella stood between his knees and held his right hand.
Gerardys passed a pair of shears to the Queen. “Cut from the collar downward. Do not disturb the shaft.”
Rhaenyra obeyed. Her hands remained steady as she cut through the blood-soaked linen, although her mouth tightened each time more of her son’s skin was exposed. When the last strip fell away, she stared at the bruising spreading across his ribs and the blood still gathering around the arrow in his side.
“Tell me what you require,” she said.
“Clean linen and the heated wine.”
Rhaenyra took both from the waiting attendant. She pressed folded cloth around the wound while Gerardys examined the angle of the arrow, her fingers becoming red almost immediately.
The barb beneath Jace’s collarbone had to be driven through the back of his shoulder. Gerardys placed the pincers, then looked toward Rhaella.
“Keep him still.”
Jace’s grip closed around Rhaella’s hand. Rhaenyra moved behind him and steadied his shoulders against her body, one arm braced carefully across his chest.
When Gerardys forced the arrowhead through, Jace’s entire body locked between them. A strangled sound escaped him, and his head fell back briefly against his mother’s shoulder.
“I have you,” Rhaenyra whispered against his hair. Whatever punishment awaited him had no place in her voice now. “Remain with me.”
The iron barb struck the bronze basin with a sharp sound.
Gerardys worked quickly, washing the wound with heated wine before packing it with clean linen and a poultice of crushed yarrow and honey. Rhaenyra held the dressing in place while he bound Jace’s shoulder tightly across his chest.
The arrow at his side proved more difficult. By the time Gerardys drew it free, Jace’s grip had weakened in Rhaella’s hands and sweat had soaked the dark curls along his brow.
Rhaenyra pressed fresh linen against the wound before the maester asked. “He is still bleeding.”
“Less than he was,” Gerardys replied. “Keep the pressure steady, Your Grace.”
She did not move her hand until he replaced it with a thick dressing and wrapped the binding around Jace’s ribs.
Once both wounds had been secured, Gerardys offered Jace a cup of watered milk of the poppy without naming its contents. Jace drank half before recognizing the taste.
“You deceived me,” he accused, his voice dulled by exhaustion.
Gerardys took the cup from him. “As you deceived your queen, my prince—and your mother besides.”
Rhaenyra’s bloodstained hand paused over the fresh binding.
Jace looked at her, but she kept her attention upon the knot she was fastening at his shoulder.
“The casualty reports will arrive before midday,” he said.
“The dead will remain dead until you have slept,” Gerardys replied. “If you insist upon joining them, you will only give me another body to tend.”
Jace attempted to rise. Pain seized his side and forced him back against the pillows.
Rhaenyra caught him by the uninjured shoulder. “For once in your life, you will do as you are told.”
Jace met her eyes.
The Queen had not forgiven him. His mother was merely ensuring he lived long enough to face her. The beginning of a smile moved across Jace’s mouth before someone knocked.
Ser Lorent entered. “Lord Corlys and Alyn of Hull both live. Lady Baela has landed upon Driftmark and is expected here shortly. The Triarchy’s remaining ships are retreating toward the Stepstones.”
Rhaenyra’s shoulders lowered slightly. “How many ships have we lost?”
“The count is not complete. Lord Corlys believes nearly a third of the fleet has been destroyed or rendered unfit to sail. Hull has suffered heavily. High Tide was breached, but the castle did not fall.”
“The dragonseeds?” Jace asked.
“Hugh, Ulf, and Addam received the recall after nightfall. They reached the Gullet too late to join the main battle, but Seasmoke is searching the waters for survivors. Vermithor and Silverwing are burning the remaining Triarchy landing parties upon Driftmark.”
Jace looked toward his mother. “If they had remained here—”
“They did not,” Rhaenyra said. “That decision belonged to my council.”
“And the decision to save the fleet belonged to me.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Do not mistake your victory for my absolution.”
“I do not.”
The answer was quiet enough that its sincerity silenced the room.
Rhaenyra looked at Ser Lorent. “Have the bells rung for the victory?”
“Not yet, Your Grace.”
“Then ring them. Let Dragonstone and every surviving ship know that the Gullet remains ours.”
Ser Lorent bowed and left.
Jace watched his mother. “You will claim the victory.”
“I am the Queen.”
“I only meant that you should.”
Rhaenyra’s expression shifted, “The realm cannot hear that your heir imprisoned you and fought against your command,” Jace continued. “Tell them I flew upon your order.”
Rhaella understood what he offered. Jace had broken Rhaenyra’s authority in private and now proposed restoring it in public, even if it meant surrendering some portion of the glory he had won.
Rhaenyra understood as well.
“You acted in my name while denying my command,” she said.
“I acted for your cause.”
“And if you had died?”
“Then you could have condemned my disobedience without contradiction.”
Pain entered her face. “You speak too easily of leaving me to bury you.”
Jace looked down at his bandaged side. “It did not feel easy in the water.”
Silence followed.
Rhaenyra crossed to him and touched his hair. The gesture was too gentle for a queen and too wounded for forgiveness.
“The bells will ring for the victory,” she said. “We will decide what tale accompanies them after you have slept.”
She bent and kissed his brow.
“When you wake, you will answer to your queen.”
Jace met her eyes. “I will.”
“And your mother.”
“I will.”
Rhaenyra left with her crown held beneath one arm.
The chamber gradually settled around them. Beyond its walls, Dragonstone swelled with the sounds of victory and ruin. Harbor bells rang beneath shouted orders, carts groaned beneath the weight of wounded men, and somewhere in the eastern yard Vermax called once before falling silent.
Maester Gerardys remained beside the bed. He worked without speaking, counting Jace’s pulse with two fingers pressed against his wrist before placing a hand against his brow. He examined the bruising along Jace’s ribs, listened to his breathing, and pressed carefully around the wound at his side until Jace flinched.
“Pain?” Gerardys asked.
“No,” Jace answered.
Gerardys pressed the same place again.
Jace’s breath caught. “Some.”
“As I thought.”
Rhaella carried a basin of clean water to the bedside and sat near Jace’s uninjured shoulder. Blood covered him beyond the wounds Gerardys had dressed. It had dried beneath his jaw, along his throat, across his chest, and between the fingers of the hand that had held Vermax through the flight home.
She soaked a clean cloth and wrung it out over the basin.
Jace watched her. “You look angry.”
“I cannot imagine why.”
“You have always possessed a temper.”
Rhaella pressed the cloth against the cut above his brow with more force than necessary.
Jace hissed. “That was deliberate.”
“I am cleaning you.”
“You are punishing me with a wet cloth.”
“If I were punishing you, my prince, Gerardys would require a larger basin.”
The maester’s mouth twitched, though he continued examining the bruises along Jace’s side.
Jace looked back at Rhaella. Weariness had darkened the skin beneath his eyes, but amusement warmed his expression. “I crossed the Gullet with two arrows in me only to be murdered by my wife.”
“You should have considered that before returning.”
“I did consider it.”
“And you came home anyway?”
“I have always been drawn to danger.”
Rhaella moved the cloth down his cheek, wiping away soot and salt. Beneath the filth, he looked younger than his nineteen years. The sight pierced through her anger, leaving the terror beneath it exposed.
She lowered her gaze before he could see too much.
Gerardys lifted Jace’s right hand and inspected the torn skin along his knuckles. “You have swallowed seawater.”
“A considerable amount,” Jace replied.
“Have you vomited since reaching shore?”
“Upon Baela’s boots.”
“Once,” Gerardys concluded.
“Twice,” Jace corrected. “She moved the first time.”
Rhaella’s laugh escaped before she could prevent it. The sound felt strange after the long night, but Jace turned toward it as if he had been waiting to hear it since landing.
She narrowed her eyes. “Do not look so pleased with yourself.”
“I won a battle and made you laugh. I am entitled to some satisfaction.”
“You committed treason, nearly drowned, broke your dragon, and returned with two arrows lodged in you.”
“The arrows were not my idea.”
“I am relieved to hear there remain limits to your ambition.”
Gerardys moved his hand beneath Jace’s jaw, turning his head toward the light. “His color is improving.”
Rhaella dipped the cloth again. The water had already begun to turn pink.
Jace followed the movement. “You helped me.”
“Yes.”
“You knew what I intended, and you helped me.”
“I remember. I was there.”
“My mother may never trust either of us again.”
“No.”
His eyes shifted toward her. “Do you regret it?”
Rhaella wrung the cloth between her hands. Blood ran from it in thin red streams before disappearing into the basin.
“I have not decided,” she said.
“You told her to ask you after I returned.”
“You returned with two arrows in your body and half your dragon held together by linen. I require more time to consider the matter.”
Jace’s mouth curved. “That seems fair.”
Rhaella pressed the cloth to the dried blood beneath his collarbone.
He winced. “That does not.”
“You ordered me to remain before you asked what I would choose.”
“Valkyrie was needed here.”
“I know.”
“Then what would you have chosen?”
“The same thing.”
Jace waited.
Rhaella scrubbed more firmly at a streak of blood along his shoulder. “That does not mean you were entitled to choose it for me.”
Gerardys glanced toward her hand. “The blood will come away without removing the skin, Princess.”
“I am aware.”
“I thought you might require reminding.”
Jace looked unbearably pleased by the exchange.
Rhaella pointed the bloodied cloth at him. “You should not smile. He will leave eventually.”
“I take comfort in knowing someone here is concerned for my safety.”
“I spent the entire night concerned for your safety.”
The playfulness vanished.
Jace’s smile faded, and the chamber seemed to contract around the words neither of them had yet said. Gerardys continued working, but more quietly now, loosening the dressing at Jace’s side to check whether fresh blood had soaked through.
“I was afraid you would follow me,” Jace said.
“I nearly did.”
“I knew you would.”
“You used that knowledge.”
“Yes.”
His honesty wounded more cleanly than an excuse. Rhaella cleaned the blood beneath his jaw. Her hand remained steady until she reached the pulse beating at the side of his throat. She paused there, holding the damp cloth against his skin simply because she needed to feel proof of life beneath it.
Jace understood. He always did.
“I stood at the window until I could no longer distinguish fire from starlight,” she said. “Every time the doors opened, I believed someone had come to tell me that you were dead.”
His eyes closed.
“I was furious with you,” Rhaella continued. “I was furious with Rhaenyra. I was furious with myself because I knew why you had gone and why I had remained. None of it mattered while I was waiting. I would have burned every ship in that strait merely to see Vermax return over the cliffs.”
Jace opened his eyes again. “You would have regretted that once the fleet was gone.”
“I would have regretted it with my husband alive.”
His gaze moved across her face, resting upon the tears she had not entirely managed to hide. Gerardys pressed two fingers to the pulse in Jace’s wrist again. Jace did not look away from Rhaella.
“I thought of you beneath the water,” he said.
Rhaella lowered the cloth. “You told me.”
“I did not tell you all of it.”
Gerardys glanced at him. “You should conserve your strength.”
“I have never shown any talent for that.”
“Your wife may strike you again if you continue.”
“She has been threatening me since childhood. I find it comforting.”
Rhaella touched the cloth to the cut upon his lip.
Jace flinched. “There it is.”
“What did you think of?” she asked.
His humor quieted.
“The harness would not release,” he said. “Vermax was dragging me deeper, and I could not tell which direction led to the surface. I remembered your face before I left. I remembered you telling me not to promise what the gods might take from me.”
Rhaella’s fingers tightened around the cloth.
“I thought that if I died there, you would believe my last act was choosing the battle over you,” His voice had softened beneath the pull of the poppy. “I needed you to know that I was trying to return with every breath I had left.”
Tears blurred her vision. She looked down at his hand resting upon the coverlet, the knuckles torn and swollen from fighting the harness.
Rhaella took it between hers and cleaned the blood from each finger.
“You came very close to making me despise you forever,” she whispered.
“I could not permit that.”
“Death would have made your objection difficult to enforce.”
“I would have haunted you.”
“You would have been an insufferable ghost.”
“I would have remained devoted.”
“You would have watched me take another husband.”
Jace’s fingers closed around hers. “Now you are merely being cruel.”
Rhaella looked up. “Does the thought trouble you?”
“I would burn the realm before permitting it.”
“You would be dead.”
“Vermax would understand my wishes.”
Despite herself, she smiled through the tears. “There is the future king the realm has been waiting for.”
Jace lifted her hand weakly toward his mouth. “There is the future queen determined to torment him.”
The title settled between them with more weight than the jest had intended.
Gerardys replaced the dressing over Jace’s side. His expression remained carefully neutral, though he had certainly heard.
Rhaella’s smile faded. “Do not call me that yet.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother still lives, and she has not forgiven either of us.”
“I did not mean her crown.”
“I know what you meant.”
Rhaella leaned closer and cleaned the remaining blood from the corner of his mouth. Jace turned his face slightly into her touch, his lips brushing the inside of her wrist.
“She cannot punish you without revealing that you defied her,” Rhaella said.
“She can punish me privately.”
“She may.”
“She cannot reward me without teaching every lord in Westeros that victory excuses treason.”
“No,” Rhaella agreed. “She cannot.”
Jace watched her. “You have already considered this.”
“I am Corlys Velaryon’s daughter. I know the moment a battle becomes politics.”
“What do you see?”
Rhaella looked toward the windows. The harbor bells continued to ring, their sound carrying above the wounded men arriving at the quay.
“I see sailors who will tell every tavern from Hull to White Harbor that Jacaerys Velaryon fell into the Gullet and returned to the sky. I see men who questioned your blood now owing their lives to your courage. I see lords praising the prince who acted while his queen remained upon Dragonstone without knowing that you confined her here.”
Jace’s expression tightened. “The victory belongs to her.”
“That may be the tale the court tells.”
“It is the truth.”
“It is one truth.”
“It is my truth,” he said.
He studied her in silence. Rhaella returned the cloth to the basin. Red rippled outward through the water.
“You left Dragonstone as the Queen’s heir,” she said. “You returned as a prince men will follow through fire. Those are not always the same thing.”
“I do not want her throne.”
“That will not stop other men from deciding what they want from you.”
Jace looked toward the sound of the bells. Pride moved through his exhaustion, quiet but unmistakable. He had earned it. The Gullet had not been an empty triumph or a defeat disguised by survival. The Triarchy had broken. Corlys lived. Driftmark remained theirs. Thousands of men would see another dawn because Jace had refused to wait.
“I wanted to save my grandsire,” he said.
“You did.”
“I wanted to prove that we could still act.”
“You did that as well.”
His gaze returned to hers. “Was I right?”
Rhaella did not answer immediately.
Gerardys placed a hand against Jace’s brow again. “No fever yet.”
“Your confidence inspires me,” Jace muttered.
“It should inspire you to sleep.”
Rhaella looked at her husband. “You were right that the fleet could not wait.”
“But?”
“You were wrong to decide that being right placed you beyond your queen’s command.”
His fingers tightened around hers. “Would you have stopped me?”
“I might have tried.”
“You did try.”
“Not hard enough.”
“You understood.”
“I loved you,” she corrected.
“Past tense?”
Rhaella pressed the cloth to the bruised skin beside his wound.
Jace sucked in a breath. “Present tense.”
“Your understanding improves remarkably under instruction.”
He smiled, though pain and exhaustion quickly drew it from his face.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“You sleep.”
“I meant with my mother.”
“I know what you meant.”
“And after I wake?”
Rhaella traced her thumb carefully across his knuckles. “You survive what you proved.”
The answer seemed to settle somewhere deep within him.
Gerardys began counting his pulse again. The poppy had made Jace’s eyelids heavy, and his breaths came more slowly beneath the fresh bindings.
“What have the keepers said about Vermax?” Jace asked.
“They removed the remaining chain and bound his right foot. The hook wounds are bleeding less, and the tears in his wings may heal.”
“Valkyrie frightened them.”
“Valkyrie frightens everyone.”
“She has never frightened you.”
“She possesses excellent judgment.”
Jace released a quiet laugh before turning his hand within hers. “Come closer.”
“I am already beside you.”
“That is not what I asked of you, princess.”
Gerardys cleared his throat without looking up from the supplies he was arranging.
Rhaella glanced toward him. “The maester is still here.”
“I am a married man grievously wounded in service to the crown,” Jace said. “Surely I am permitted to hold my wife.”
“You are permitted to sleep.”
“I can do both.”
Rhaella surrendered with a softness she would have denied anyone else. She leaned over him carefully, avoiding the bindings, and allowed Jace to press his forehead against hers.
His breath warmed her mouth. For one moment, the victory bells, the wounded men, and the reckoning awaiting them all receded.
“I love you,” Jace whispered.
“I know.”
His brows drew together. “That is a poor answer to give a man upon his deathbed.”
“If this were your deathbed, you would be considerably less pleased with yourself.”
“Rhaella.”
She kissed the uninjured corner of his mouth. “I crossed into treason for you, waited through the night believing you dead, and have spent the better part of an hour washing the Gullet from your skin. If you cannot infer love from that, the arrows have done more damage than Gerardys believes.”
Jace’s eyes closed, but his smile remained. “It is still a poor answer.”
Rhaella brushed the damp curls from his brow. “I love you too, my impossible prince.”
“Better,” he murmured.
His fingers gradually loosened around hers as the poppy drew him beneath sleep. Gerardys waited until Jace’s breathing deepened before checking his pulse once more and drawing the blankets higher without disturbing the bandages.
“Will he live?” Rhaella asked.
The question stripped every trace of humor from her voice.
Gerardys examined Jace’s face and then the clean linen covering his wounds. No fresh blood had appeared, and some color had begun returning beneath the pallor of his skin.
“If the bleeding does not begin again and no fever takes him, I believe he will,” the maester answered.
Rhaella bowed her head over their joined hands. The breath she released trembled against Jace’s knuckles.
She remained beside him for several minutes, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, before easing her hand from his and crossing to the window.
Dawn spread across the Gullet beneath a veil of smoke. The first surviving ships entered Dragonstone’s harbor below, some beneath torn black sails and others without masts, pulled toward shore by longboats through water crowded with wreckage. Men gathered along the battlements as the victory bells rang above them.
The Blacks had shattered the Triarchy. Their blockade held, Driftmark remained unconquered, and thousands of men who might otherwise have died were coming home. The victory had been purchased with ships, dragons, and lives, but it remained a victory.
Along the quay, wounded sailors began calling Jace’s name.
The cry passed from one ship to another, gathering strength as sailors, soldiers, and smallfolk took it up. It climbed from the harbor toward the castle until even the stone chamber could not keep it from him.
Rhaella turned from the window.
Jace slept beneath clean blankets with blood staining the bandages across his shoulder and side. One hand remained curled against the place where hers had rested, while the bells and voices below proclaimed the victory he had torn from the sea.
He had left Dragonstone as Rhaenyra’s heir. He had returned as the prince who saved her fleet.
The sea had failed to take Jacaerys Velaryon. In giving him back, it had changed the war.