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Chapter Text

I awoke on packed ground, nestled between twisting roots, as blood-red leaves on sparse branches fluttered and sighed against a steel-grey sky above my head.

Which was pounding in time with my pulse.

Or perhaps the lapping of waves somewhere nearby.

I sat up, clutching my temples, and looked around.

Laid out before my feet was a tumble of rocks and tangled roots papered with those disquietingly sanguine leaves, descending down in ruinous tumult toward the shadow of an enormous crenulated structure that resembled nothing better than a castle: except many of its tallest towers looked almost melted, like sad birthday candles. 

My brain did what it always does: jumped to some obscure literary connection and promptly blurted it out of my mouth: “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” I murmured to myself, regretting the ensuing chuckle that made my head feel like a struck gong.

It’s really not funny; not funny at all.

Because I had no idea where I was.

The last thing I recalled was padding barefoot out into the woods in the middle of the night, seeking to investigate the brightly bobbing lights I’d seen through the diamond-mullioned window of my historic rental bedroom in the English countryside. Faerie lights, I’d thought. How charming. I’d expected to find nothing more than some locals indulging their own silly romantic notions, as I’d done mine.

I glanced down my body: feet still bare, poking out of the long white empire-waisted nightgown I’d felt compelled to purchase for my ramble through the lesser-known and less-frequented vacation destinations in England and Wales that I’d be promoting formally for a travel and leisure magazine and less formally on my Instagram. 

Selfie-worthy, historically inaccurate nightwear? Check.

Except there was a glaring disconnect between the gently rolling, tree-blanketed hills of the countryside I’d been touring and the craggy, desolate place where I now found myself. 

The ache in my head had subsided somewhat, and I managed to twist around. Behind me, the wide expanse of a body of water stretched up to the horizon, dim in the fading light. I started when my gaze landed unexpectedly on a face staring back at me - the corners of its eyes weeping reddish ichor - carved into the trunk of the tree whose gnarled roots extended in all directions like frozen rivulets. Hurriedly, I stood and stumbled gracelessly over root and rock alike, practically pitching over the edge of a precipice of stone: a meter-high drop down to hard dirt. It was full dark now, and the only light came from a thin sliver of moon occasionally revealed through dense cloud cover. And, apparently, a beckoning golden flicker inside the castle that lay across the crumbling courtyard where I’d awoken.

“What in the bloody hell…” I muttered, equal parts annoyed and intrigued.

At least there were signs of human life.

Carefully, I picked my way over the uneven ground, noting the remnants of high walls with stone arches that lined what appeared to be a promontory jetting out into the water. The ghosts of other trees haunted this derelict garden - desiccated branches, crumbling stumps - a sad, forsaken place. Mist was beginning to settle into cracks and corners.

I shuddered in the quickly descending chill as I stepped into the glow of torchlight. 

A man was resting his weight against a huge fireplace with one straight arm, gazing into the crackling flames. He glanced up as a stray, kicked pebble heralded my arrival, clattering across the cobbles.

An extraordinary-looking man.   

His long hair was an otherworldly shade of pale silver, but his face was young - relatively young, anyway - not the wizened visage that I might have expected from that shock of white hair. Perhaps a little more than two decades on top of my twenty-four years. His clothes were strange: the shine of a leather doublet that trailed down to his knees glinted in the firelight. Tall boots. Metal clasps, and a sword belt complete with an authentic-looking blade in its scabbard. He seemed equally surprised by my attire, his sharp eyes scanning me from head to toe.

“Nice costume,” I said, suppressing an admittedly somewhat condescending smile. “What is this, a Lord of the Rings set?” I glanced around. “I don’t remember there being any haunted castles in Middle Earth, but – artistic license, am I right?”

His heavy brow furrowed, but he said nothing.

“Dol Guldur, perhaps?” I tried again, dredging up my dusty store of LOTR lore. “No one told me they were filming nearby.”

I stepped a little closer to get a better look at him. “You forgot your elf ears.”

“Elf?” he asked, his voice low and resonant. 

I pursed my lips. “Whoa, you’re really in character, huh?” I was searching the space for someone else. Maybe this guy didn’t speak English. “Is the director around somewhere? I’m lost.”

He pushed off from the fireplace with a palm and stalked toward me with a gait that could only be described as predatory. I took a hurried step back.

“Harrenhal is currently under my control, and unless you make your loyalties clear - and quickly - I will assert my authority.”

Okay, so he does speak English. The undercurrent of threat in his tone was apparent, however. I held up both hands, palms out. 

“Hold up, buddy. Like I said, I’m lost.” Then I froze. Harrenhal. Relief washed over me. “Oh! Is this a Game of Thrones sequel?” I took in his distinctive white hair. “Must be a prequel. Lemme guess - you’re a Targaryen?”

He drew himself up straight and arched a nearly invisible eyebrow. “Daemon Targaryen,” he confirmed, seemingly temporarily willing to indulge my curious ignorance.

“Oh, bravo costume designer!” I applauded. “Okay, well, I just need to find my way back to Kedleston. Any idea which way that is?”  

“There is no such place,” he sneered, looking down his straight-bridged nose with an expression of obvious scorn.

Holy Method acting, Batman. “Look, it was nice meeting you. I’ll let you get back to … whatever it is you were doing. Is there anyone else I could speak with?”

“No,” he replied, taking a step toward me instead of away. “What is your name?”

A needling worry was spreading through my veins. I knew a little something about set design, and constructing an entire ramshackle castle on location - no green screens, no sound stage - would be an unusual move, to say the least. Prohibitively expensive, to start. This man claiming to be Daemon Targaryen was still approaching, his gaze unblinkingly intent and his hand resting on the hilt of his very convincing blade. 

I made a snap decision.

Wracking my brain for a likely answer, I blurted out the first name that came to mind when I thought of Harrenhal during the height of the Targaryen age: “Alys Rivers.”

“Rivers,” he growled contemptuously. “A bastard, then?”

And I realized that in the world I’d just fallen into, the only Alys Rivers that existed was, apparently, me.  

Chapter Text

I shamelessly eavesdropped as they talked in low voices by the fire: the man who called himself Daemon Targaryen and an older, squat, slightly rotund man with his hair and beard gone properly white with age. 

“She might be mad,” Daemon was saying, his eyes flicking over me from under his heavy brow. “She was talking in riddles.”

I sighed deeply. I’m not the mad one here. 

My disquiet was building, though. From what I could tell, the castle had no electricity or modern conveniences of any kind and perfectly matched the literary descriptions I could recall. The older man - Ser Simon Strong, according to Daemon - was dressed in similarly anachronistic garb. If this was some kind of prank or LARP set, it was a fantastically convincing one. 

But what all these clues pointed to was impossible. 

One does not simply… fall into fully realized imaginary worlds. Or walk into Mordor.

I huffed a discreet laugh and both of the men looked over at me, clearly concerned by my apparent madness. This time, I couldn’t exactly blame them as I suppressed a nervous giggle. Must.stop.making.absurd.literary.references that amuse only me. I straightened up and cleared my throat, trying to look intense and clear-eyed and most definitely not crazy. I didn’t remember much about the world of Westeros; it had been years since I’d read the books and I’d only half-watched the show version of Game of Thrones, but one thing was certain: I should play by the rules. Westeros was - by all accounts - a barbaric place where death (and worse fates) waited around every corner. Thinking about it seriously made me feel as mad as they thought I was.

Ser Strong was watching me as Daemon talked. Finally, he approached me warily, looking me up and down. I was distinctly aware of my naked body under the white nightgown, which was fortunately weighty enough not to be transparent. I hoped.

“You say your name is Rivers, girl?”

“Alys Rivers,” I confirmed. I looked the part, I realized. My long black hair had been wanting a trim for months now, and I’d been letting it grow for years with a kind of morbid curiosity to see how long it could get before it started to look stringy. It was waist-length and still stubbornly thick. I usually braided it down my spine to keep it out of the way, but now it hung loose. I had yet to see any women in this world, but I highly doubted short hair was the fashion, so in that regard I fit in.

Ser Simon turned back to Daemon, his voice loud enough that there was no hope of the discussion being private, “There are whispers of a bastard daughter sired by Lord Lyonel in his youth.” He glanced over his shoulder at me again. “I was told she died in the cradle, but…” He trails off, studying me as he assessed the possibility. “The girl looks very young,” he added, skeptically.  

Being a bastard daughter of an important lord would certainly improve my position above being a raving lunatic nobody found wandering barefoot in the garden - godswood, I mentally corrected, since that was most likely what it was - at night, so I took a step forward and seized on that possibility. “My mother told me my father was an important man. She never spoke his name. She raised me alone, but the secret of his identity died with her, so I know little of my origins.” I was rather impressed with my own invention and the way I matched their speech. Or nearly enough.

Daemon’s brows lifted, and he asked, “What brings you to Harrenhal?”

Think fast. “I need to secure a livelihood. I have some talent with herbs. Not the formal learning of a…” I searched my memory desperately for the word, “maester, but passable skill.” As long as I can stay alive until I figure out what the hell is going on, I might stand a chance of getting back home.

Ser Simon considered this.

“I can also cook,” I added, figuring this was a more practical skill, though the prospect of pretending to be either a healer or putting together passable meals with unfamiliar ingredients and archaic tools was daunting. Can’t think about that now.

Daemon scoffed. “We have no maester and anything would be an improvement on the gruel flowing from the kitchens.”

Ser Simon acknowledged this with a shrug. “Harrenhal does not endear itself to many. It is difficult to keep servants.”

That could be true enough. The echoing ruin around us had a poisonous vibe. A cursed place, from what I remembered, built with blood mixed in its mortar, mostly destroyed when its arrogant lord was burned alive by dragonfire for claiming his castle was unassailable. I froze. Dragon fire. Daemon Targaryen lived during the age of dragons. Pretty much the only thing that might dismiss the last of my doubts would be seeing a dragon. That would be a difficult thing to fake.

 “We will house you,” Daemon decided. “And…” he narrowed his eyes, “clothe you as best we can.”

I bobbed an awkward curtsey, hoping that sort of thing was done in Westeros. “You will find I can make myself useful.”

“Your Grace,” Daemon said firmly.

I looked up, momentarily confused. 

“I am your king, girl. You will address me as Your Grace,” he insisted.

Oh shit. More details were emerging from my muddied memory. Not only did I seemingly land in the middle of Westeros, it happened to be a Westeros caught in the throes of a devastating war of succession for the Iron Throne. Daemon might claim to be king, but he was a contested one at best. And by pretending to the identity of Alys Rivers, I’d quite possibly aligned myself with one of the most fearsome Targaryens: Aemond the one-eyed, second son of Alicent Hightower, Prince Regent, nephew of Daemon, and by most accounts a total sociopath. Who - in a matter of months - will end up at the bottom of the Gods Eye, the lake lapping at the foundations of Harrenhal, and take his uncle with him.

And I’m the only one who knows it.

Daemon was watching me expectantly, arms crossed over his chest, his frown deepening. For a flash, I saw him as if he was floating underwater: extended limbs weightless, long silver hair caught in little eddies, illuminated only by the unmistakable glow of dragonfire on the surface above his head. The vision was so startling and so clear that I went a little weak in the knees. 

“Yes, of course, Your Grace. Thank you, Your Grace,” I hurriedly replied, dropping my eyes, my curtsey far less controlled this time. I managed to keep my feet, but just barely.

I could feel Daemon’s eyes following me as Ser Simon Strong escorted me out of the glow of the fireplace and into the echoing dark. We wound through twisting hallways of such complexity that finding my way back alone would be nearly impossible. The scale of this place… I could think of no equivalent in my world. The inescapable reality of my situation began to settle in my chest like a lead weight.  

I kept to Ser Simon’s heels, reeling, until he opened a wooden door composed of thick boards bound together with iron bands. Through the arched doorway was a small chamber, fortunately intact, with a narrow bed opposite a cold fireplace and windows lining the far wall. A pile of desiccated wood lay on the stone hearth.

“You can make a fire, I assume?” Ser Simon asked, his voice kindly.

“Yes,” I confirmed, though I was not certain in the absence of a lighter or matches.

“Very good. I will leave you to rest and acquaint you with your tasks in the morning.” As he turned to go, he added, “I will lock you in tonight.” He poked an almost friendly face through the crack between door and stone frame. “Just a precaution.” Then he was gone, and the sound of a key grating in the lock set my teeth on edge.

I lowered myself onto the mattress, which seemed to be stuffed with straw and held up with a network of ropes wound around the frame that protested with disuse when they accepted my weight. The bedclothes smelled musty.

I contemplated my plight. What felt like mere hours ago, I was tucked comfortably into a modern bed in a quaint thatched-roof cabin in the English countryside, mentally composing a write-up for the Instagram post to accompany my picture of a steaming cup of tea in a delicate china cup on the deep stone sill of a window overlooking a field of wildflowers. 

Now? 

Prickly straw, the persistent sound of dripping, a creeping chill, and moonlight cast through tall, narrow windows on the bare stone floor of a room that is little better than a prison cell. An impossible place with impossible people that merely contemplating with any degree of credence made my grip on my own sanity slip. And no idea how to find my way back.

I am well and truly fucked.

I couldn’t sit with my despair, however. Standing on the edge of that precipice gave me vertigo, so I surged to my feet and peered out one of the windows. This side of the castle faced away from the lake, and I squinted through the cloudy glass when movement caught my eye.

With the hem of my nightgown, I scrubbed a neat circle and watched in disbelief as a creature that was very unmistakably a dragon took wing, its otherworldly call as haunting as a loon’s. I did not look away until its silhouette blended with the night-dark sky.

With loose joints, I took a few jangling steps and collapsed in front of the fireplace, mindlessly loading logs onto the metal grate as I searched without success for matches or flint stones or anything familiar that could be used to make a spark.  

Resigned, I stared at the shadows between the rough-hewn wood, willing them to light. The barest flicker glowed, then faded. I leaned forward, mentally conjuring all the details of a roaring fire: heat on my cheeks, the crackle of wood consumed in a blaze, the sharp tang of smoke. A single, guttering flame sprang to life in the middle of the pile and quickly spread through the dry fibers.

I almost laughed. Another impossibility to add to a rapidly growing list.

I added a few more logs, dragged the mattress off the wooden frame, and curled up on it a safe distance from the fireplace, eschewing the musty bedclothes. 

This is all some absolutely bonkers dream, I told myself. I’ll wake up tomorrow in my rental cottage and make sure to include in my travel article that it’s a place highly conducive to remarkably detailed lucid dreaming. 

I closed my eyes in anticipation.

Chapter Text

The smell of woodsmoke, the crinkle of straw, and a persistent banging woke me.

You’re getting dinged on the ratings for hospitality, folks, I thought grumpily, rolling over with stubbornly closed eyes.

“Alys!” a muffled voice. 

Alice, my half-awake brain repeated stupidly. Alice. Who the fuck is Alice?

I chuckled to myself until I remembered.

My eyes flew open as a key grated in a lock.

“Still abed?” Ser Simon Strong bustled into my room with a thick swath of fabric draped over one arm, averting his eyes from my mussed hair and makeshift bed on the floor in front of the fireplace, which had long since gone cold over the course of the night. He flung the fabric on the bare ropes of the bedframe. “Some dresses,” he explained. “Find one that suits you quickly. I’ll be waiting in the hall to show you the way to the kitchens. Fortunately, His Grace sleeps late.” With a thoughtful expression, he added, “His sleep is troubled here.”

He closed the door behind him.

I lay on the mattress as if he’d knocked me flat with a blow, trying to catch my breath.

Not possible. It’s not possible that I’m still here.

Shakily, I got to my feet and made a quick circuit of the room. The view through the windows was hopelessly blurred by a steady drizzle under an iron grey sky, but the floor under my bare feet was solid, and the wet chill permeating the air had taken up residence in my bones. Quickly, Ser Simon had said. 

There would be time to reflect on my fracturing sanity later. For now: survival.

I shivered as I sorted through the stack of dresses and chose one. I pulled a faded blue thing with long sleeves and laces down the front of the bodice over my head and overtop of the long nightgown for an extra layer of warmth, ignoring the distinctly breezy feeling of the skirt without undergarments of any kind. Ser Simon had brought none. Maybe they don’t wear any in Westeros , I mused, though that seemed unlikely, even in this heathen place. I resolved to ask the first girl or woman I encountered. 

When I emerged from my room, Ser Simon looked me up and down, a pleased smile on his face until he saw my bare toes.

“Shoes,” he muttered, almost to himself. Clearly something he forgot when he brought me the dresses. “Follow me, carefully, and I’ll see what I can find for you.” Ser Simon busily marched down the hall, turning back over his shoulder to ask, “Who wanders around the countryside without shoes?”

A valid question, to be fair, albeit probably a rhetorical one. It had been shortsighted to wander outside barefoot in the dark, even if the only place I thought I’d end up was a clearing in an English wood where people were cavorting around supposed faerie rings in elaborate pretend-play. 

I didn’t answer in part because I had no idea what to say. It was advisable to play my cards close to my vest from here on out; I’d already raised Daemon’s suspicions and the very last thing I wanted to be in this world was conspicuous. 

The stone under my feet was chillingly cold, and it wasn’t long before my toes were practically numb, so I was grateful for the sudden, enveloping warmth of another large fireplace in a stone kitchen blessedly free from the leaks that seemed to haunt Harrenhal as thoroughly as its supposed ghosts. 

A harried older woman who was kneading bread looked up at our entrance.

“I’ve brought you some assistance, Nolla,” Ser Simon announced proudly.

“Gods be praised,” she answered without pausing.

Ser Simon pushed me forward with a steady hand against the small of my back. “Best get to work. I’ll see what can be done about the shoes.”

Dutifully, I took my place alongside the woman named Nolla, hurriedly braiding my hair to keep it out of the food. I cast about for something to tie it off with, but, finding nothing, just looped a loose knot into the end and hoped for the best. Next: find a sink. 

Modern notions of food safety flew out of my mind as Nolla turned and dumped a different ball of dough directly into my hands. 

“Form it, score it, then get it in the oven,” she instructed, dusting her own flour-covered palms against her skirts and pointing to a round clay vessel and the rounded opening of a small alcove near the fireplace proper. 

I had a general idea of what she meant, so I plopped the dough into the container, patted it until it was roughly oval-shaped, then cut a few leaf patterns into its surface with a small blade before carrying it to the alcove she’d pointed to.

“What is your name, girl?” she asked as she put me to work on the task of frying an approximation of bacon in an iron skillet on a grate above an open flame.

“Alys Rivers,” I told her. 

“And where’s your family from?” She talked as she bustled.

“The woods,” I said, gesturing vaguely in the direction I thought was away from the lake.

She frowned at me then, but continued, “So you have some skill with herbs, then?”

“A little,” I replied as vaguely as possible.

“Our maester fled as soon as the Rogue Prince arrived,” she reported. That must be Daemon.

“I’ll do what I can,” was my only reply. 

I listened carefully to her chatter as we finished breakfast and placed plates and steaming food onto serving platters, trying to pick up as many details as I could about the current state of Westeros. It seemed the war of succession for the Iron Throne between the Green faction and the Black faction of King Viserys’s children was heating up, especially after Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys were killed and King Aegon II injured at Rook’s Rest. So Aemond Targaryen is ruling from King’s Landing, I reminded myself. And it will not be long before he and Ser Criston Cole march for Harrenhal.  I wondered how much time we had.

Admittedly, the details of what I’d read about this conflict were muddled in my memory, and I wasn’t entirely sure what rules this place followed. Would things play out exactly as written, or - once unleashed - was this reality unfolding in accordance with the free will of its actors? Various lore converged and collided in my head: Fantasia from The Neverending Story: a realm created by the collective imagination of the world, the multiverse of Spiderman where an infinite variation of realities could coexist, the Outlander books where people fell through time. Which kind of magic brought me here? I recalled with sudden clarity the way the flames in my fireplace had sprung to life apparently at my bidding last night. There was magic in Westeros, but it was shrouded in mystery. Alys Rivers herself was reported to be a witch with supernatural abilities. 

This thought made me freeze in my tracks as I recalled Geillis Duncan and Claire Beauchamp from Outlander, both modern women in Jacobite Scotland who were persecuted by superstitious villagers as witches. Since there seemed to be no fictional version of Alys in this Westeros, I wondered if perhaps Alys had always been me, and this world was just awaiting my arrival to begin to spin tales of strange powers around me to explain how I did impossible things and saw glimpses of the future. I swayed on my feet, suddenly dizzy. It seemed - thankfully - that Westerosi people were not as inclined to put odd women on trial and attempt to throw them into lakes or burn them at the stake for witchcraft, but I’d still have to tread lightly. Better to align myself more closely with maesters than witches, at least until I could figure out the extent of my abilities. 

“Move, girl!” Nolla nudged me from behind, then passed me quickly, leading the way. 

Hurriedly, I stumbled behind her, carrying a heavy serving platter in one hand and a jug of something like mead in the other. I wished fervently for coffee.

We deposited the food on a round table but did not linger to eavesdrop on the conversation between Ser Simon and Daemon, which I found wildly frustrating. All I caught was that Daemon was struggling to bring the fractious Riverlands under one banner because the old and ailing Lord Grover Tully still controlled the houses but was too infirm to properly negotiate. 

The rest of my day was similarly exasperating, as I was directed through a variety of boring, utterly mundane tasks around the vast expanse of the ruined castle in ill-fitting boots with no socks, still painfully aware of how completely naked I was under my long skirts. Nolla had told me about smallclothes but was not immediately forthcoming with them. I bore it all with gritted teeth, trying to imprint the castle’s layout into my mind so I didn’t have to be led around it like a toddler. Trying, too, to absorb as much about the manner of daily living as I could to avoid the inevitable embarrassment of ignorance. There was no time to mourn the comforts I’d lost or wonder how to return to them.

At least I knew where the privy was.

When darkness fell, I knew my way around sufficiently well to creep out of my room - not locked, this time; apparently a day’s worth of compliant servant labor was all Ser Simon needed to verify I was not a threat - and make my way down to the former maester’s workroom where I could finally experiment a little with the hints of small magic I'd seen last night without being observed. 

That is, until Daemon Targaryen found me.

Chapter Text

Daemon was not in search of me, that much was clear. Instead, he sort of stumbled into the maester’s chamber with haunted eyes, blinking owlishly at me as if he was uncertain if I was real or not. 

You and me both, buddy.  

I remembered Ser Simon’s comment about how Daemon’s sleep was troubled here. Apparently so. He was wearing nightclothes but carrying a sword, unsheathed, as if he was under immediate threat.

“Are you conjuring visions, witch?” he demanded, still clearly rattled by whatever he’d seen.

“Conjuring anything is a bit outside my wheelhouse,” I admitted, then added hurriedly, “Your Grace.” My eyes fell on the wickedly sharp edge of his blade. “Though if it’s visions you’re seeing, I doubt that would do much good.”

“Just a dream,” he answered dismissively.

Who’s the crazy one now? I thought, though I didn’t dare let the words slip my lips. 

“Troubled times for us all,” I said instead, dropping the honorific since he seemed too preoccupied to care. He had no idea how true the statement was. I gestured to a stool in front of the large half-circular stone table near yet another fireplace that was tall and wide enough for someone of my stature to stand upright or lay down flat in.

Somewhat to my surprise, Daemon sat. 

Immediately my hands started moving almost of their own accord, selecting unfamiliar herbs and grinding them in a mortar with a gray stone pestle that matched the walls of Harrenhal. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was enough simply to look busy.

How exactly does one make small talk with a fictional character in an imaginary world? I wondered fleetingly. 

Daemon Targaryen looked real enough now.

Real and anxious, his enigmatic eyes darting around the dimly lit chamber as if he expected some phantom to manifest out of the walls. 

“What haunts the dreams of a king in the dead of night?” I asked, probably a bit too dramatically. Reel it in, I reminded myself. 

Daemon, however, was not phased, but nor was he forthcoming. “My dreams are not far removed from what troubles me waking,” he confessed. 

I ventured a guess. “Aemond?”

His startled expression confirmed that my intuition was more correct than either of us expected. “Westeros would suffer if he were to wear the crown. Pray that you never meet him. He would cut you down as soon as look at you.”

I bit my lip, knowing - if things in this world followed the fictional pattern - that the opposite would be true. “And yet there is more of you in him than you care to admit.”

Again, he stared at me with unsettling intensity. “You are a curious kind of woman,” he told me. “What is it that you see?”

I shrugged, steering clear of witch territory. “I do not see so much as… shrewdly speculate.” 

Impatiently, he added, “What do you speculate, then?”

Clearly, he was in want of guidance, or - at the very least - reassurance. I had very little to offer him; my memory of the details of the Targaryen civil war was limited, and what I recalled ended badly for pretty much everyone. Such a needless waste of life. Perhaps it was my modern sensibilities that balked at accepting the inevitability of war. So I told him the truth. “Ruin. For you and Rhaenyra as much as for Alicent and her children.”

Daemon’s eyes went wide, but I was not finished. “And for the dragons. Most killed in the conflict, then gradually dwindling in size until they are nothing but crumbling bones and the mighty dragonlords no more than a story whispered around the fire.”

Daemon gaped at me, his imagination seemingly insufficient to grasp such an end. 

I shrugged with deliberate dismissiveness. “Merely one possibility,” I qualified. Then, “Did dragons battle dragons when you fought for the Stepstones?”

“No,” he replied, thoughtful.

“And how many were lost at Rook’s Rest?”

He had gone perfectly still. “Meleys fell. And Sunfyre was grievously wounded and might not survive.” 

I asked lightly, “Meleys was your mother’s dragon first, was she not?”

Outside, a high keening call rose above our quiet voices. Caraxes. Daemon’s expression was pained. I did not have to remind him that to ride a dragon is a privilege as much as a power.

Instead, I circled the table silently and reached for a steaming iron kettle that hung suspended over the fire. The herbs I’d dumped into an earthenware cup swirled as I poured from it, releasing a strangely calming aromatic scent. I stood beside Daemon and held it out.

“Drink this,” I offered. 

He took the cup from my hands without question, the hard lines of his face blurred in the firelight. It wasn’t until he raised the rim to his lips that I realized I had no idea what I’d prepared for him. Yet I felt no misgivings - no fear that it would taste sour or that I’d inadvertently poisoned him. It was a strange certainty, and I wondered if I had any agency at all in this world, or if I was merely going through the motions of a role that had been written for me.

I rebelled against the idea the same way Daemon Targaryen shrank from the prospect of all his machinations ending in ash.

But I knew no better than he did how to tug the various threads of this complex tapestry to bring them to a different resolution. Not yet, anyway. I thought of the way I’d coaxed the fire in my room to light by intention alone. I needed time alone to explore what that meant.

“Sleep now,” I urged Daemon, tipping the dregs of the brew I’d given him into his mouth with gentle fingers under his cup. “Your dreams will not be troubled.”

He complied, rising from the stool like a man bespelled, and the deep dark beyond the maester’s chamber swallowed him.

I turned to the fire, gazing into its depths. Suddenly, I recalled the iron kettle and how I’d lifted it from its hook without a second thought, heedless that it might be hot. Yet it had not burned my hand. Curious, I extended my fingers above the crackling logs. I could feel the heat, but it did not intensify with closeness. I watched in detachment as the flames licked my fingertips. There was no pain. I lowered my hand toward the glowing coals. There was only a silky caress like eddies of warm wind as the flames curled and teased between my fingers. A fingertip brushed the cracked bark of a log. I removed my hand, marveling. Only a dusting of ash on my skin - even the pale hairs on my forearm were intact.

“Impossible,” I breathed.

With the other hand, I reached directly into the fire and closed a fist in the hottest part, then drew it back toward me. When I unfurled my fingers and looked down into my palm, a guttering flame cast shadows in the crevices between unburnt skin, fed by some invisible kindling. I tipped my palm into the other, and the flames flowed like liquid into my cupped hand.

All I could say was, “Holy shit.”

I stood, the fire pooling in my hands, and dripped the fire - molten gold - into a shallow basin full of water. Like a burning oil slick, the flames skittered over the surface, unquenched. I studied this improbable combination for a few astounded moments, then bent over the basin and blew lightly like I was making a wish over birthday candles. 

Unexpectedly, the rim of the basin crystallized.

I leaned back and bit my lip. It couldn’t be. Then, resolved, I leaned forward again, took a deep breath, and blew harder. The flames winked out as the water froze in tiny cresting waves until the surface of the basin was a solid sheet.

“I’ll be damned,” I said to no one but myself. “The song of ice and fire.”

Chapter Text

Despite his sleepless nights, Daemon did not laze about the ruin of Harrenhal like a spoiled princeling. He kept himself busy summoning various heads of Riverland houses to demand – then entice, then bargain - for their support. When he wasn’t in council, he was schlepping wheelbarrows full of rubble under the pretense of fortifying the castle with a degree of vigor that reflected his growing impatience alongside the small crew of soldiers he’d thus far acquired. Admittedly, it was a daunting task. The sprawling devastation of what had briefly been the mightiest fortress in Westeros would not be put to rights without a veritable army of experienced builders, a considerable amount of gold, and at least a few decades.   

Nolla had strong opinions about Daemon and the intensifying conflict that she was careful not to reveal to the Rogue Prince or to Ser Simon. Gradually, though, she opened up to me. “He’s as haunted as the castle, he is,” she murmured, her plump body soft against my right arm as she leaned close enough not to be overheard. We were in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a great cauldron of stew and gossipping about Daemon. Well, Nolla was gossiping and I was listening like a starving orphan for whom any information was as nourishing as bread. 

“Why is he here, of all places?” I whispered back. 

Nolla’s eyebrows went up; they were a reliable bellwether for the degree of scandal she was about to disclose. “Officially, to establish a foothold in the Riverlands and sway the Riverlords to Rhaenyra’s banner,” she explained as she tipped a bowlful of chopped carrots and celery into the steaming pot. Then she siddled up close again and handed me a potato from a heaping bowl. “But I hear he was the one who ordered the death of the little prince.”

“What prince?” I hissed, so eager that I forgot caution. 

Nolla looked at me askance and tsked like I was some kind of cave-dwelling troglodyte to be ignorant of such a thing. “Aegon’s little boy,” she explained quietly. Then she added, unable to resist sharing the gruesome details, “They say the men who did it lopped his head right off and tried to carry it out of the city in a bag.”

My nerveless fingers instinctually released the chopping knife with a clatter. I swallowed hard. I’d forgotten the whole Blood and Cheese affair. It was bad enough in fiction, but the reality of it was a chilling reminder that Westeros was a barbaric place under its thin veneer of civility.

Nolla prattled on unawares. “Dowager Queen Alicent blamed Rhaenyra, of course. A son for a son. But it’s Daemon who knows the City Watch of King’s Landing and the ins and outs of all the ratcatcher tunnels.” She nudged me again with her soft bulk. “And he hasn’t sent a single raven out to Dragonstone since he’s been here. Not one.”

Son for a son. I recalled the battle over Shipbreaker Bay then, too. Lucerys and his young dragon Arrax never stood a chance against Aemond and Vhagar, the oldest and fiercest dragon in the realm. Oddly, my skin tingled at the thought of Aemond. I brushed it off; what need did a modern woman have for a murderous sociopath? 

Later, I watched Daemon Targaryen haul rubble, his silver hair damp around his temples and his black leather breeches dusty. He didn’t look like someone who could order the cold-blooded murder of an innocent child, but he worked like a man possessed, heedless of potential injury or fatigue.

I wondered if he was driven by anger or remorse or ambition, or some combination of all of them. No doubt he’d intended his assassins to kill Aemond, but I couldn’t remember the details. Maybe he’d been deliberately vague so if they did their worst he could dodge accountability. Fire and Blood’s somewhat unreliable narrator recounts varying reports from a variety of sources, anyway, so nothing was presented as absolute truth. That, at least, left some room for interpretation or perhaps, even, influence. I pondered that as I wandered away from the cacophony of stonework. I wasn’t even sure I cared to influence the events of this world. I needed to find my way back to my own, but thus far I hadn’t the slightest clue how to accomplish that. I’d spent hours now at the base of the weirwood tree in the decimated godswood to no avail, scraps of refrains from Algernon Charles Swinburne’s bleak poem “A Forsaken Garden” echoing through my head. 

My feet fell now with the rhythm of its meter like the lapping waves of the Gods Eye:

            In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,

                   At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,

            Walled round with rocks as an inland island,

                  The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

I had a few hours to myself in between the preparation of the noon meal and the evening one, so I made for the most disused part of the ruins in search of enough privacy to test the extent of whatever powers were at my disposal.

I stumbled through a narrow arched doorway and into a walled courtyard open to glowering skies that were threatening rain again. There was a pile of uneven rubble at my feet, and when I secured my balance, I raised my gaze to see I was not alone.

Coiled in the courtyard was a drowsing Caraxes.

The dragon raised his great horned head on a sinuous neck and opened his jaws, the telltale glow of dragonfire illuminating the back of his throat.

“Oh, fuck me,” I said aloud.

The glow intensified.

“Nice dragon,” I said, flattening myself against a nearby wall in a blind panic when any reasonable person would have just ducked back through the archway and gotten the hell out of there.

When I didn’t promptly vanish, Caraxes shot a warning blast at my feet. It was almost lazy: the flames spilled out of the dragon’s maw like a river, flowing over the uneven rocks I belated realized were the remains of the arched roof that used to enclose this space. 

I cringed away instinctually, but what should have been blistering heat even from a distance was nothing more than the stirring of a warm breeze. 

Caraxes watched me with intense gold eyes, sensing that something was amiss. He tried again, practically engulfing my skirts and worn leather boots with liquid flame. My dress caught immediately and the toes of my boots were consumed, leaving my bare feet exposed as I beat at the licking flames creeping toward the bodice of my gown. There was no pain, no sensation of intense heat.

“Stop that!” I yelled thoughtlessly. “I don’t exactly have a closet full of clothes, you know!” I glared at the dragon like he was a wayward pet and sighed deeply once the fire was contained. “How am I going to explain this to Nolla?”

The majority of the front of my dress was ash and what remained of my boots around my shins was cracked and blackened. The rather embarrassing amount of skin that was revealed, however, was unmarked. But once it became clear that the only casualty of Caraxes’ dragonfire would be my clothes, the relief was immense, and I started thinking rationally again.

Slowly, I extended a hand in the space between myself and the dragon. I visualized fire the way I’d done looking at the fireplace on the first night, and as if summoned a teardrop of flame appeared in my open palm. 

“Dracarys,” I whispered, as much to myself as to Caraxes. 

In answer, the Blood Wyrm threw back his head and let loose a column of flame directly into the sky. Raindrops sizzled as the first pattering of the coming deluge began to fall. I heard echoes of approaching feet and quickly closed my fingers around the flames, snuffing them. 

I cast my eyes over my shoulder at the dragon one last time in a kind of kinship as I turned to go… and ran directly into Daemon Targaryen’s chest.

“Foolish girl!” he scolded, his fists closing around my biceps as he dragged me forcibly away from the courtyard. Only when we were several paces away did he hold me at arm’s length to survey the damage. A few tatters stood between my bare skin and Daemon’s searching gaze.

He seemed astounded that only the blush on my cheeks colored my skin.

“How…?” he began, but I wrenched myself out of grip and covered myself as best I could. 

“Just lucky,” I hurriedly answered. 

Daemon’s frown only deepened, but he grabbed my upper arm again and started hauling me toward the more populated parts of the castle. “Stay away from this wing,” he ordered sternly. “You won’t be so lucky next time if I’m not here to protect you.”

“My hero,” I spat back petulantly, jerking my arm out of his grasp again. My modern sensibilities didn’t take kindly to being manhandled, even if his intentions were good.

When Daemon wheeled to glare at me, I planted my fists on my hips and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Hands off.”

A flash of fury crossed his expression, then he seemed almost amused. Slowly, he took a step toward me, capturing my gaze with the gravity of his, then bent at the knees, slammed into my hips, and tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of flour, pinning the backs of my knees against his chest with a firm forearm.

I was so astonished I didn’t even object. 

I could feel his voice rumble through my whole body when he growled, “Can’t have you walking around the castle half-naked anyway.”

Fuming, I dangled against his back. He was not wrong. At least this way, the missing parts of my dress were hidden.

Daemon carried me all the way back to my room, a not-inconsiderable distance.

By the time he lifted me off his shoulder and practically slammed me against the closed door of my chamber, I was dizzy and disoriented. 

He propped himself with one forearm against the wood behind my head, his face needlessly close even though he was more than a head taller than me. “Stay away from my dragon,” he murmured, lips nearly brushing mine. “Unless you like to play with fire.”

He spun on a heel and was gone, leaving me breathless and seething.

“You have no idea,” I murmured into the emptiness of his wake before turning to enter my chamber to slip into another gown. 

I stared down at my bare toes poking out of the blackened leather of my what remained of my ill-fitting boots and sighed. 

Alys of House Rivers, First of Her Name. The Unburnt, but Scorched. Shoeless. Queen of the Kitchens and Hearths and Protector of Absolutely Nothing. 

But as I went in search of Nolla, I cupped a fistfull of flame.

Chapter Text

I awaken abruptly as heavy boots pass outside my chamber door. 

As if compelled, I surge up out of my tangled bedding on the mattress in front of the fireplace and swing the door open just in time to see a black-clad figure with a head of long silver hair turn the corner.

Daemon: wandering Harrenhal sleeplessly again.

I follow, leaving my chamber door open behind me.

There is enough distance between us that I can trace his steps without alerting him to my presence. The stone floor is cold under my bare feet, but at least my tread is silent.

Daemon makes for the godswood – or what remains of it.

I duck behind a jumble of rocks as he strides toward the ancient weirwood tree in the bright light of a full moon. He stands there for a long time, motionless, as the chill creeps into my bones and I wonder if I should just leave him to his mysterious agenda. 

Finally, he sinks to one knee in front of the tree, his left hand resting on its pale bark like a supplicant.

Uncertain, I wait.

When he does not move for what feels like an eternity, I slowly approach, climbing the twisted roots to stand behind him. He is still, though surely he heard the whisper of my shift or the hurricane of my breath that is so loud in my own ears. I place a hesitant hand on his shoulder.

Daemon turns, but it is not his heavy-browed face with its shrewd gray-blue eyes that I see.

Instead, it is a hauntingly beautiful and youthful profile with a straight-bridged nose and a sharply outlined jaw. The eye turned closest to me is scored with a vertical scar, and a rough-cut sapphire sits in the ruined socket, unseeing.

I stumble back in surprise.

The world goes dark.

“Gods, woman,” a deep voice chided. “What are you doing sleeping out in the cold?”

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision of a steely sky heavy with clouds behind the silhouette of a long-haired head.

“Huh?” I blurted without pretense.

Daemon Targaryen stood over me with arms crossed over his broad chest in disapproval. “Do you even know where you are?”

I almost laughed at that because my sleep-addled brain knew enough to realize he meant where in the castle, but my thoughts jumped far beyond those limited confines. Where indeed? I wondered as I sat up and groaned, pressing the heel of my hand against my temple. Once again, I found myself disoriented and under the blood-red leaves of the weirwood tree. “I’m not drunk,” I proclaimed defensively.

“Just fond of frigid tree roots over proper bedding?” he mocked, extending a hand to help me up. 

“I followed you here!” I complained as he hauled me to my feet with a calloused hand. Shaking my head to clear it, I reconsidered. “Well, I thought it was you.” 

He narrowed his eyes at me then. “Do you dream of him as well?”

I had a suspicion who he meant, but I’d never actually seen Aemond Targaryen, so I questioned my own conviction. “Tallish fellow? Long, straight silver hair? Short one eye, and wears a sapphire in its place like a goddamned anime villain?” I demanded snarkily, still unfiltered as fatigue clung to me like a mist. I wondered how much of what had transpired last night had been a just dream. Clearly, the-leaving-my-room part wasn’t.

Daemon quirked an invisible brow at me and I noticed for the first time that he either had no eyebrows or they were so pale that they faded entirely into his skin. “I won’t pretend to know what an anime villain is,” he pronounced it carefully, like each word was a foreign delicacy on his tongue, “but that is assuredly my nephew, and I am pleased to know it is not just me he haunts.”

He glanced upward as if expecting Aemond to descend on us from the sky that very moment. I unthinkingly followed his gaze, but the glowering skies were silent and empty. Suddenly, Daemon took hold of my arm and started dragging me toward the castle proper. 

“Hey!” I objected, wrenching myself out of his grip once more. “What is this, the twelfth century?”

Too late, I realized how nonsensical that was. 

“I only mean,” I quickly corrected, “that I am perfectly capable of walking on my own. Your Grace.”

Daemon surrendered, stepping back with palms extended innocently and both nonexistent brows upraised. 

“Thank you,” I said haughtily, and promptly tripped over a root. My feet were practically numb with cold. How had I not awoken? My sleep must have been preternaturally deep.

Obligingly, Daemon steadied me, then swept me up into a bridal carry this time, his voice rumbling through my entire body as he teased, “Are you certain you aren’t drunk?”

I sighed dramatically and went slack in his arms, utterly exasperated and determined to necessitate him putting me down by becoming dead weight. 

Daemon Targaryen, as it turned out, was stubbornly strong.

He deftly navigated the rocky terrain all the way back into the wide arched doorway leading back into Harrenhal. Resigned, I let him carry me. This, at least, was a little more dignified than being slung over his shoulder like a sack. He was warm as well, and after uncounted hours passed out under a tree, my extremities were doing their best popsicle impression. Almost immediately, I started to shiver. 

He placed me back on my feet once we were under cover of the looming stone walls. I smoothed my shift and refused to meet his eyes. “What time is it? I should help Nolla prepare the morning meal.” 

Daemon nodded, adding smoothly as he stalked away, “You should. And after you’re done, you should find me to explain why you see Aemond in your dreams… and why you seem to be immune to dragonfire.” He turned to cast a penetrating look over his shoulder. “Though you might want to dress properly first.” His gaze scoured me up and down shamelessly.

Then he was gone.

“Savage,” I muttered under my breath and turned to make my way back up to my room to dress and hopefully find a pair of replacement boots. My magic - if that is indeed what it was - apparently did not allow me to manifest just anything that I could visualize; last night, all of my attempts to mentally command my boots to mend themselves or to conjure a new pair out of thin air had failed. So I’d have to throw myself on the mercy of Ser Simon Strong yet again or resort to stealing a pair from one of Daemon’s reluctant recruits, who seemed as dubious about following Rhaenyra’s banner as her husband did.

The individual facets of Aemond’s sightless sapphire and the heat of Daemon’s gaze haunted my steps as I prepared a breakfast quiche and strove to avoid any prolonged conversation with the occupants of Harrenhal’s round dining table while I served it. 

I had no answer to either of Daemon’s questions, after all. Not any I could readily share at least. I’m dreaming of Aemond because this world is nothing but an elaborate imaginary construct and in some version of this reality he’s my lover? That wouldn’t go over well. And I couldn’t even begin to explain the powers I’d only stumbled upon by accident – to myself or to anyone else. 

The last thing I needed was to be drawn into a civil war because the Rogue Prince thought I might have a talent he could use.

Despite my attempts to evade him, Daemon cornered me as I tried to barter with a Blackwood soldier for a too-large pair of worn footgear, standing beside his tent under the skeleton of the Great Hall with my bare toes poking out from under my skirts. 

“Any remedy you need, I can prepare,” I was insisting when he startled and stared pointedly over my shoulder. I knew instantly who was behind me. Slowly, I spun and scowled at Daemon. 

“If it’s boots you require, I can assist,” he told me curtly, then turned on his heel as if he expected me to follow like a dog. 

Rolling my eyes, I did. 

Daemon did not speak to me as he retraced my steps from the day prior; it soon became clear that we were headed straight for the courtyard where Caraxes waited, and my heart started hammering. 

What if yesterday was a fluke? What if Caraxes reduced me to an ashy pile in a fit of dragonly pique?

I didn’t have time to let my fears get the better of me, however. As soon as we entered the courtyard, Daemon pushed me in front of him with a steady hand on my lower back, and I found myself climbing onto the saddle atop the withers (withers? what does one do in the absence of any vocabulary about dragon anatomy? ) of the huge beast, who surprisingly didn’t try to incinerate or devour me. 

Daemon settled himself into the seat behind me, pinning my ass against his crotch as he reached for the handles in front of us. It was awkward; the dragon’s back was too wide to sit on astride, so I hiked my skirts above my knees and tried to ignore the press of Daemon’s body against mine. Fortunately, I’d managed to acquire some smallclothes from Nolla.

Despite this, my rebellious mind went straight into the gutter.

It had admittedly been longer than I wanted to acknowledge since I’d gotten laid, and apparently being literally swept off my feet on multiple occasions was sufficient cue for whatever unfortunate alchemy of evolution made my body respond to Daemon’s proximity.

Mercifully, terror overtook every other emotion the moment Caraxes swept into the sky. It was a roller coaster drop and airplane takeoff and a freefall plummet over a cliff all at once, and when a high-pitched shrill escaped my lips, Daemon Targaryen promptly clapped his hand over my mouth. 

Only when we were at a relatively stable - again, my brain grasped for elusive words it had never before required - cruising altitude did I dare to remove a white-knuckled hand from the saddle. I pried at Daemon’s fingers, but he held firm as Caraxes flew high above the ruin of Harrenhal, which was even more sprawling from the air. Daemon rumbled into my ear, “If I let go, are you going to deafen me?”

I murmured something against his palm that I hope he understood to mean “no” and he removed his hand, curling his forearm around my waist instead to steady me. I took deep breaths and found myself clutching his arm closer as I dared to peek over Caraxes’ crimson scales at the unfamiliar landscape unraveling beneath us.

Daemon didn’t understand all of the terms in the string of curses I unleashed, but he got the idea and huffed a laugh laden with grudging respect, apparently impressed that my response to riding a dragon was to curse like a sailor rather than pass out or vomit or worse. He was testing me.

“Caraxes won’t carry just anyone,” he told me. 

“Where are we going?” I replied, ignoring his implication.

Surprisingly, he answered me without dissembling. “There’s a market near the Inn at the Crossroads.”  

“I don’t have any money,” I warned.

He only grunted. “I can spare the coin for proper footwear.”

I waited, convinced Daemon Targaryen would hardly help me out of the goodness of his heart. 

“In exchange for some information, of course,” he finished.

“Of course,” I echoed, trying to withhold the sarcasm that positively dripped off my lips. At least he only wanted information, though I worried that my traitorous body wouldn’t object if he demanded different payment. I shifted in the saddle, very conscious of his arm around me and his chest against my spine. His only response was to clutch me tighter. It was oddly comforting to be so close to another person after the profound isolation of being a stranger in a strange land, but it was unclear if Daemon’s relentless physicality was just par for the course for him or if he took liberties with me that he would not presume with others. 

I knew Daemon was feuding with Rhaenyra. Nolla had said he hadn’t sent a single raven to Dragonstone since he’d arrived at Harrenhal. I wondered if he thought that meant he had license to stray; the Rogue Prince I remembered Fire and Blood was not exactly faithful. But then I remembered why Daemon had likely earned his wife’s ire and went cold.

Fundamentally, he was ruthless. I could not allow myself to forget that.

I shifted my thoughts away from Daemon and took in the scope of Westeros from dragonback. The Riverlands were still clothed in shades of green despite the fact that there was enough chill in the air to indicate that summer was long past. I had no concept of latitudes in Westeros, but it seemed that the Crownlands were a more equatorial climate. This led down a rabbit hole of speculation about what planet, exactly, Westeros occupied, and what relationship it might have to Earth if all of this was not just the last gasps of my dwindling sanity, and that thoroughly confounded me until Caraxes started to descend over a field within walking distance of a three-story structure that could only be the Crossroads Inn. I held fast to Daemon and the saddle as we landed and once again let him assist me off the dragon’s back rather than tumble down his hide on my unsteady legs.

Distantly, I heard the screams of the inn’s occupants and the people in the nearby market; apparently, Caraxes’s arrival was not a cause for celebration in the Riverlands, and the small village was practically a ghost town by the time we made our way between the marketplace stalls looking for a cobbler. 

Daemon seemed unperturbed by this; he strode confidently into the small thatched hut on a corner from which hung a crude wooden sign bearing a shoe. The wide-eyed proprietor was so nervous that he willingly handed over a pair of boots he’d apparently just repaired for a lady with assurances that he could just make new ones without difficulty it is no inconvenience at all Your Grace and it is an honor to serve. Daemon hardly batted an eye at his terrified obeisance and handed over a paltry sum that the man obligingly took because he clearly had no other choice. I shot the cobbler a sympathetic glance as I laced the boots up to my knees, infinitely grateful despite myself to finally have some that fit properly. I’d watch my step around Caraxes from here on out.

“They are very fine,” I announced as I stood and twisted my toes, admiring the tracery of dark green embroidery that crept up the shaft of the leather like climbing ivy. I pinned Daemon with a pointed glare. “Perhaps a little more is merited.”

Shrugging, he tossed me a small leather pouch that jingled with coins. I opened it and peered inside. Rather than acknowledging my complete ignorance about the value of any of them, I picked the largest and heaviest and handed it over, gratified by the shock in the cobbler’s expression when he quickly slipped it into a pocket and nodded in silent thanks. Daemon didn’t even glance into the pouch to see what I’d paid when I returned it to him. I scurried after him as he left without a word.

There was no point in criticizing him for his lack of courtesy; Daemon Targaryen had the manner of a man born to privilege. Not only was he a prince and arguably a king, he was a dragonrider and a fearsome warrior; he expected deference and not a small amount of fear. Perhaps that was why he seemed to enjoy the challenge I presented – my refusal to cower around him was a refreshing change. 

“My thanks,” I said as we strode back toward the field where Caraxes waited.

Daemon acknowledged me only with a sideways glance and the slightest inclination of his head. “Now tell me what you know of my nephew.”

I took a deep breath. “Very little,” I confessed honestly. “I have never seen him, except in dreams. I mistook him for you.”

“What was he doing in your dream?”

“Kneeling at the base of the weirwood tree,” I explained, opting for the more literal interpretation of that question. Surely there was no harm in telling Daemon since I had no knowledge of why Aemond had been so interested in the tree.

“That’s all?”

I nodded. “Yes. He stood there for a long time just looking, then he knelt and touched the bark. That was all I saw.”

Daemon considered this in silence. “You must tell me everything any time he visits your dreams.” He stopped and whirled on me, grabbing my upper arms in his fists. “Do you understand?”

I nodded mutely, though I had no intention of complying if I thought the disclosure might compromise me.

“Good,” he replied. Then, with a swordfighter’s speed and deftness, he spun me so my back was flat against his chest, held me firmly around the waist with one arm, and growled “Dracarys,” as he flung my extended left arm outward.

Instantly, Caraxes released a bout of flame that singed the both of us head to toe but entirely engulfed my hand. 

I bellowed a protest, but it was just surprise and objection - no pain - because once again my skin was unmarked; Daemon stared in unabashed wonder when the dragonfire ceased as quickly as it had started, holding me at arm’s length again to inspect me like a museum specimen. 

“Impossible,” he breathed as I used my right hand to pat out the lingering flames threatening to creep up what remained of my sleeve and set the whole bodice alight. 

“You owe me a new dress now, too,” I spat. 

“What are you?” Daemon murmured with a wildly curious and blatantly covetous expression on his face that unexpectedly triggered my fight or flight response.

I confess, I panicked.

And ran.

I had only taken about ten strides when Daemon was upon me, wrestling me to the ground as I kicked at him with the boots he’d bought me. 

“I can’t explain it!” I was yelling, desperate to get free.

But Daemon rolled me onto my back and slammed his chest into mine, his searchlight eyes intense. “Why not?” he demanded, trapping my wrists and pressing them into the ground beside my head. 

“Because I don’t know!” I wailed, the impossibility of the whole situation hitting hard for the first time. I didn’t know why any of this was happening, or what I was supposed to do about it. My distress was so obvious that Daemon relented, releasing me to sit back on his haunches and regard me with profound skepticism. 

I lay flat on my back panting, half-crying and half-laughing at the absurdity of this whole encounter. Every moment was like a grab-bag of trite romance novel tropes. 

There’s simply no way this is real life, I thought for perhaps the hundredth time since awakening in Westeros.

In a moment of temporary insanity, I tried to assert some control. “You really have to stop doing this,” I announced as I watched the clouds break and reveal a sliver of blue sky. 

“Doing what?” Daemon Targaryen growled impatiently.

I sighed. “All of this!” I sat up, gesturing wildly between us in an attempt to encompass all the carrying and tackling and general manhandling.

Daemon only scoffed. 

“It’s sexist!” I yelled at him.

His brows went up again, and I belatedly realized my mistake. One does not use modern feminist terms with medieval-equivalent dragon-riding, sword-wielding prince-kings. Especially feminist terms that have an inconvenient resemblance to other words that have a decidedly different meaning both in my world and this one, apparently. I watched the wheels turning behind his eyes.

“Does that mean you like it?” he inquired with genuine puzzlement.

Grumbling, I got to my feet, dusting my skirts. “No, I do not like it,” I corrected, glaring at him. “No means no.” But there was no sense at all in trying to school him in a hundred years of women’s rights history, so I just said, “Nevermind.”

I was rattled and my guard was down. 

I knew it. 

I took a few deep, calming breaths. Daemon might know one of my secrets, but I would closely protect the others. Besides, being immune to dragonfire was probably the least useful of the abilities I was just beginning to understand. 

He had apparently come to the same conclusion.

“This is a rare gift,” Daemon said. “Perhaps an entirely unique one. But until I can discern its source and its purpose, you will stay by my side.”

Great. The last thing I needed was the unrelenting scrutiny of the Rogue Prince.

“Willingly, I hope,” he added, “though I think we both know that I can compel you if you refuse.” He dropped his chin and gave me a meaningful look. 

My blood boiled.

In retrospect, I was being an idiot. 

But I stepped closer, my head tilted so far back to look up at him that my bravado faltered, and hissed through my teeth, “Try to compel me to do anything and see what happens.” That’s right, Daemon Targaryen. Fuck around and find out. I reached out my unburnt hand to brush the hilt of his sword in subtle threat.

The vision that gripped me as soon as skin met steel was an unstoppable wave: Dark Sister singing from her scabbard, her edge glinting in the sun against a cloudless sky. Gouts of dragonfire and heat like a forge. The blade upraised in Daemon’s hand and its wickedly sharp tip descending hard and fast onto the upturned face I’d seen in my dream: driven straight through the blind eye of Aemond Targaryen all the way to the hilt. 

The pain that cleaved my chest was so real it left me staggering. Breathless and reeling, I collapsed entirely, and the last thought that crossed my mind before I passed out in Daemon’s arms was: fucking hell – not again.

Some badass heroine I was proving to be.

Chapter Text

That first vision, as it turned out, was just the beginning.

When I awoke in the field outside the Inn at the Crossroads with my head pillowed on Daemon’s lap – my first instinct was to lie.

“I have fits sometimes,” I told him in explanation, hoping that they had some equivalent of narcolepsy in Westeros. “I lose consciousness and awake disoriented - sometimes with no memory of the time between sleeping and waking. It’s why I found myself at the base of the weirwood at Harrenhal in only a shift.” I sat up, holding my head between my hands. 

“Do you dream in those moments?” Daemon asked urgently.

“No,” I replied, trying to sound earnest. “Nothing that I can remember, in any case.” Hastily, I embellished. “It’s happened since I was a girl. And every time, I lose part of my memories. My past is… a blur.”

Pretty decent cover for why I couldn’t explain where I’d been before I took up residence in Harrenhal, I congratulated myself. My strange abilities had already awoken Daemon’s curiosity about me and I needed an excuse to keep certain things to myself. 

He regarded me with narrowed eyes. “You will inform me if you recall any dreams or visions that come to you.” 

“Yes, Your Grace,” I answered dutifully, if untruthfully. 

Daemon clearly didn’t trust me because from that moment onward, he made good on his threat to barely let me out of his sight. Which was fortunate, actually, because the visions happened more frequently and without Daemon haunting my steps and cushioning my fall every time my knees buckled and some preview of future events played out behind my eyes like movie film, I would have been perpetually concussed. 

No longer was I allowed to assist Nolla in the kitchen. Instead, I stood by Daemon’s side as he went about his business, incidentally learning much more about the state of the realm than I ever could have by casual eavesdropping. And I now had to confess that - despite my best intentions - Daemon Targaryen was growing on me. He was refreshingly direct and his dark humor matched mine. I often found myself amused by his sharp tongue, and the absolute confidence he projected was an intriguing contrast to the more vulnerable side of him I saw in private.

And I saw a lot of Daemon in private. 

Primarily because I now spent my nights in the grand bedroom that he had claimed, though I refused outright to sleep alongside him in the weirwood bed. A touch of sexual tension was titillating, but I knew better than to act on it – despite the fact that it would have been easy, given that I still felt markedly detached from reality. I hauled the mattress from my old chamber all the way to my new quarters, making a considerable show of it so no one in Harrenhal was under the impression that I was sharing Daemon’s bed - platonically or otherwise. He scoffed the whole time, insisting he was the king and had no one to answer to for his choices, so he could do what he pleased and people could conclude whatever they liked.

“Your wife the queen might think otherwise,” I reminded him as I wrestled my mattress into place at the foot of his bed. Rhaenyra's claim to the throne was already precarious enough. I was sweaty and breathless, but I gave him a defiant look. “Is it not her banner you’re recruiting supporters for?” 

He stepped up close to me and dropped his voice even though there was no one nearby to overhear. “She cannot succeed, Alys. Even if I willed it to be so. The people who support her will not be led by her. They look to a man for strength. Who’s better suited to it? Aegon is a fool and Aemond is a threat. When I take King’s Landing, Rhaenyra is welcome to join me there and take her place by my side - king and queen, ruling together.” 

I sighed heavily. Westeros, in that regard, was not unlike the America I’d left – too backwardly misogynistic to accept a female leader. I couldn’t afford to take sides in this conflict, but I almost wanted Rhaenyra to win just to prove men like Daemon wrong in some reality.

“How do you know, unless she has a chance to try?” I spat back at him. “She might–” Before I could finish, my vision went dark. 

Daemon’s face melts into Aemond’s: his patched left eye half-turned away from the table. Listening stoically as Jasper Wylde prattles about war strategy until a growing din in the streets of King’s Landing draws his attention away from the Small Council. Larys Strong looks almost guilty as Aemond throws open the doors to the balcony and sees a silver dragon with an unknown rider in the sky above the Red Keep. The Prince Regent runs for the horse that will carry him to Vhagar. His pursuit ends in the skies above Dragonstone, where he muscles the fiercest dragon in the realm into retreat upon finding a rival host circling the island above Rhaenyra’s head. 

Daemon’s blurred face sharpened suddenly. I was on my back on the mattress at the foot of his bed, and he was sitting beside me. “She might what?” he demanded, impatient with what appeared to be my poorly timed fainting spells.

Frantically, I searched my memory for what we’d been talking about before the vision interceded. I smiled secretly, remembering Aemond fleeing at the sight of the gathered dragons behind Rhaenyra. “She might prove to be a more effective leader than you think,” I finished, too satisfied to maintain the illusion of lost memory. The dragonseeds. Rhaenyra would turn the tide in her favor far more boldly even than Daemon, and she’d chase Aemond away with his tail between his legs. Take that, men of Westeros.

Snorting in derision, Daemon got to his feet. “Come,” he commanded. “There is work to be done.”

I followed, though the image of Aemond’s sculpted features half-lit like a goddamn Vermeer canvas in the shadows of the Small Council chamber lingered stubbornly in my mind’s eye far longer than I wanted to admit as I helped split wood and haul broken stone.

That night - and for many nights thereafter - Daemon Targaryen’s cries startled me out of sleep. His dreams were as troubled with visions as my waking hours. 

“What a pair we make,” I murmured as I crawled onto his bed in the darkest hour of morning to shake him awake. Except he was still in the grip of his dream, and as soon as he felt my touch, he flipped me under him with a deftness I had not anticipated, and his lips descended onto mine. 

It was not a tentative kiss. 

His hips ground into mine and his arms closed around me, crushing me hard against him as he swallowed my breath. There was nothing sloppy or inexpert in his lips - just the right amount of pressure and his darting tongue in my mouth when I opened it to protest. I almost lost myself in it, but the rational part of my mind prevailed; I managed to break away and call his name directly into his ear.

His wild eyes opened, unseeing.

Instinctually, his heavy hand closed around my neck.

He squeezed.

I felt the merest hint of his withheld strength and freaked out a little. I managed to get one hand free and slapped him across the face, hard.

Daemon let go and reared back.

“What the fuck?” he roared.

I dragged myself upright, scowling at him through my lashes. “Oh, it’s just me. Trying to wake you up when you started thrashing and yelling. And in return you practically crush me to death and try to strangle me.” I twisted my head on my neck, my fingers brushing the echo of his around it. “My bad. Clearly that wasn’t a nightmare.” I let my eyes rest momentarily on the tented crotch of his breeches, too angry for pretense. 

Daemon was not abashed. He stared down his torso at the evidence of his arousal, then his eyes flicked up to me under his heavy brow. He seemed almost relieved to see it was me in his bed. 

Are things that bad between him and Rhaenyra?

“My dreams are jumbled,” Daemon muttered, turning his hands back and forth in front of his face as if he expected to see them drenched in blood.

“Okay, Lady Macbeth,” I grumbled grumpily, uncaring if the allusion confused him; he understood sarcasm well enough. “If you’re done trying to murder me, I’d like to get back to sleep. It’s still dark. I won’t do you any more favors.”

He nodded, unhearing, his expression troubled – clearly still processing whatever he’d been dreaming about. I started crawling toward my own mattress, but as I was passing, Daemon took hold of my arm and dragged me back.

“Why do I taste you on my lips?” he asked, fingertips brushing his mouth.

I barked a surprised laugh; I would be mortified except that I’d been meticulous about oral hygiene since finding myself in Westeros; I’d even made a paste of sorts with peppermint oil to scrub my teeth with. “That’s not totally creepy or anything,” I scoffed, rounding on him. We both faced off against each other on our knees. “If you must know, you kissed me.” 

“Did I?” he mused. “I don’t recall.”

“You did,” I confirmed, planting my fists on my hips in defiance. 

“Like this?” he asked lightly, snaking an arm around my waist as the other feathered against my cheek and slid up under my hair at the base of my skull to hold me still as his lips closed over mine again. I strained against him for a moment, my hands hovering in indecision in the air by my head, then surrendered as Daemon deepened the kiss. I pulled away after a few breathless moments, pushing back hard on his shoulders with just the heels of my hands.

“This is not a good idea,” I told him, cursing my good sense. 

“That’s never stopped me before,” he rumbled, tilting my head back as he ran soft lips over the sensitive skin of my neck. The grate of his unshaven chin sent sparks down my spine. 

“Rumors will spread,” I objected, trying to sound resolved as one of his heavy hands cupped my breast through the thin cotton of my shift and his hot breath made my skin prickle with goosebumps. 

“Fuck the rumors,” Daemon growled, and the word zinged through my whole body like a lightning strike as his trailing lips found their way to mine again. This time, he scooped his mouth against mine insistently, pressing me hard against the flat plane of his torso and the scorching heat of his erect shaft.

Heroically - if I must say so myself - I pulled back. “Rhaenyra has six dragons,” I told Daemon bluntly. “Seven, with Caraxes.”

He actually stopped cold. “What?”

“She found riders for Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing. Or, if she hasn’t yet - she will.”

Daemon held me at arm’s length, staring unblinkingly into my eyes. “Where?”

I gave him a meaningful look. “It seems that you’re not the only Targaryen who has been tempted to sow his seed outside of the marriage bed.”

He released me and sank back onto his folded legs, his brow furrowed. Then his gaze shot back up to me. “How do you know this?”

I sighed again, acutely feeling the lack of his warmth. Why was I cursed with a conscience? “I lied,” I confessed. “I do see things sometimes, during my… fits.” I deliberately avoided the word spells. 

He surged upright again, fists balled around my arms for the hundredth time. “You lied to me?” His forehead was millimeters from mine, the lips that had lately been kissing mine stretched over bared teeth.

“Careful,” I warned, all goodwill burnt to ash in my sudden anger.

He shook me once, so hard my teeth rattled against each other and my head snapped back on my neck. “You will do as I say, woman!”

Oh, there it is. A man accustomed to getting his way. Well, screw him. And not in the way he intends. 

“You,” I began slowly, raising one open palm in the air beside us, “do not command me, Daemon Targaryen.”

His eyes followed mine as I focused intently on my hand. 

In the darkness of the echoing chamber before dawn, an intense flame sprang to life in my palm. Daemon’s jaw hung open. I narrowed my eyes and the flames climbed hungrily upward, licking toward the ceiling in a bright column of light with a hot blue core. 

Daemon released me and tilted backward, the angles of his face stark between shadow and light. His gaze found mine, and I held it unblinkingly until I closed my fist around the fire and cast us back into darkness. 

Neither of us slept again that night.

Despite my best efforts to keep the scandal to a minimum, the rumors spread insidiously. They passed through the ranks of the workers toiling on the hopeless ruin of Harrenhal, into the villages nearby, and all the way to the Red Keep, where Larys Strong whispered them into the Prince Regent’s ear:

“Daemon keeps close company with a mysterious witch he found at Harrenhal. She shares his bed and his council.” 

The upward flick of a shrewd Targaryen blue eye. “Make certain this information finds its way to Dragonstone. It may be that my uncle’s loyalty to his wife is wavering, but even if it isn’t, knowing this will sow doubts in Rhaenyra’s mind.” 

“Yes, my Prince.” 

I blinked, returning to myself. I was managing the visions better now: often, I could stay on my feet, desperately clutching anything within reach, as they played out behind my eyes. None of the gathered River Lords had noticed when my body stiffened and my eyes went blank. They were all focused on young Oscar Tully - newly minted head of his house - as he simultaneously humbled Daemon Targaryen and delivered the Riverlands to him on a silver platter. Soon, Harrenhal would began filling with Tully soldiers and the combined forces of all House Tully’s bannermen. 

Daemon would have his army.

And soon, Rhaenyra would be on the warpath. I could not afford to have Daemon’s jealous wife descending on Harrenhal to put a stop to whatever shenanigans she thought her wayward husband was engaged in. 

Or… maybe that was precisely what I needed.

If Rhaenyra could be enticed to Harrenhal, I could set the record straight and maybe spare some lives in the process.

The Battle of the Gullet and the Fall of King’s Landing were looming, and my visions were full of fire and blood. I was no closer to finding a way home, and if I was to remain in Westeros, I had a vested interest in minimizing the damage of the two warring factions of Green and Black before I got swept up into the chaos. 

Already, Daemon was scheming about how to use me. Though he did not demand that I conjure flames for him like a performing monkey (in large part because he realized he was powerless unless he could persuade me), I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes every time he looked at me. 

Like my visions, my powers were only intensifying. I did not dare show Daemon the extent of what I now knew I could do, but I was beginning to suspect that - not only did I have the ability to influence events - I might have a duty to.

Chapter Text

Rhaenyra arrived on Syrax, trailed by a second dragon and its rider.

I watched the burnished gold dragon alight on the long, crumbling causeway leading up from the growing camp of soldiers with growing anxiety.

Before this moment, I was a pawn in this game. 

I was about to become a player.

Not only that: the woman currently making her relentless way up to the gates of Harrenhal was under the impression that I had been - at best - screwing her husband, and - at worst - screwing her husband while conspiring to turn him against her when the most powerful seat in Westeros was on the line. 

By design, I was nowhere to be seen when Ser Simon came out to greet Rhaenyra, and I watched from a shadowed alcove as she strode into what remained of the Great Hall to confront Daemon. 

He played his role well - just as we had discussed - when she demanded to know who he was sworn to, if the assembled company was pledged to him. After a low whispered exchange in High Valyrian, Daemon took a knee in front of Rhaneyra, and those behind him followed suit. When it was again clear where his loyalties lay, he raised a rousing cheer from the assembled men for their united cause. 

Hopefully, it would cool her anger enough to prevent her from calling for my head like the Red Queen the moment she saw me. 

When Rhaenyra swept into the makeshift council chamber with the round table where Daemon and Ser Simon took their meals, she narrowed her piercing blue eyes at me immediately. 

“This is Alys Rivers,” Daemon said without preamble. 

He’d insisted I be dressed to be in the company of a queen, so I was clad in a green gown that had once belonged to Ser Simon’s wife. Although it was of good quality, it was old, a little musty, and somewhat too big; I felt fittingly inferior facing off against Rhaenyra’s impeccable black riding ensemble with hints of blood red lining. Her hair - the same luminous silver-white as Daemon’s - was intricately braided, but her serene face had a hard edge. 

“I have heard of you,” Rhaenyra said coldly, lifting her chin and staring at me with unflinching intensity. She certainly had the bearing of a queen. That, and an ethereal beauty as striking as it was delicate.

“And no doubt much of what has been conveyed to your ears has deliberately misrepresented or omitted the truth,” I replied, as confidently and steadily as I could manage. “If you will allow it, I would like to rectify that.” Daemon shifted behind her and gave me a meaningful look. “Your Grace,” I added, after a moment’s confusion, dipping a curtsey that I desperately hoped didn’t look as awkward as it felt.   

Rhaenyra stood perfectly still for just long enough to make me break out into a cold sweat before she inclined her head slightly and replied, “I will allow you to try.”

Daemon pulled out a chair for her, then took his own seat at her side.

I sat near the fireplace, not quite opposite them but far enough away that the table felt enormous. Now that they occupied the same room, the electricity between Daemon and Rhaenyra was palpable. Even from a distance, it shivered with tension and an unmistakable undercurrent of desire that made it easy to forget - even for my modern sensibilities - that they were uncle and niece. Their combined beauty was almost blinding.

This must have been what Bilbo and the dwarves felt like in Rivendell, I mused to myself. Only the painfully long silence that followed alerted me to the fact that Daemon was waiting for me to speak.

I cleared my throat and sat taller in my chair, feeling very much like an extra on a film set suddenly thrust into a speaking role. “Your Grace,” I began. “I have certain… gifts… that allow me to glimpse future events.”

“Events or possibilities?” Rhaenyra demanded immediately, seemingly unimpressed. She does, after all, come from a line of dragon dreamers, I recalled. Hopefully that meant I would end better than Cassandra: doomed both to know the future and to have her knowledge disregarded.  

But her question gave me pause. Events or possibilities: Therein lies the rub. “Everything is merely a possibility, Your Grace, until it comes to pass,” I replied.

She seemed to accept this, and Daemon regarded me approvingly.

“And what do you foresee?” Rhaenyra prompted.

I took a deep breath. “That this war will not be won by either side. That it will end in fire and blood and set in motion both the ruin of House Targaryen and the end of its dragons.”

Rhaenyra stared at me wide-eyed for several moments, then scoffed loudly, glancing over at Daemon for support.

His stoic profile was not reassuring.

“You believe this?” she said to him, aghast.

“The dragonrider who accompanied you on Seasmoke,” Daemon intoned, “is Addam Velaryon.” 

Rhaenyra started, the sapphire rings of her irises perfect circles of surprise. 

Daemon held her gaze. “And two others - Ulf riding Silverwing and Hugh on Vermithor - await your command on Dragonstone.”

She had sent no ravens. Only Aemond had seen her newly assembled host. She did not need to ask Daemon how he knew. Slowly, her eyes rotated to me.

“A fourth rider will join you,” I said, and it was Daemon’s turn to be surprised. I had not yet told him about his daughter. “Your sons now journey from the Eyrie to the coast without Rhaena. She and Sheepstealer will rally to your cause.”

“Eight dragons,” Rhaenyra breathed, cutting off Daemon’s questions. I could see her doing the mental arithmetic. Eight dragons against Vhagar. Surely it would be enough.  

“But not for long,” I cautioned. 

Instantly, both pairs of Targaryen-blue eyes swiveled to me.

The moment of truth. I’d convinced Daemon to entice Rhaenyra here so I could speak to both of them about this. There is much I had seen and had not yet told him. “You must not send Aegon and Viserys to Pentos. As we speak, a Triarchy fleet is sailing toward the Gullet to break the blockade at Aemond’s behest, and - if battle is joined there - it will spell disaster for your family.” Rhaenyra just blinked at me, so I added, “Jacaerys will fall, and Viserys will be lost to you.” Horror fell across Rhaenyra’s face like a veil - a shadow of the remembered grief of Lucerys’s death. Her hand clutched Daemon’s on the tabletop. He, too, looked stunned. He had told me nothing about his children.

“As soon as our council is concluded, you must fly to Gulltown - faster than a raven - and stop their ship,” I told her gravely. “And then,” I leaned forward, forgetting entirely that I was essentially ordering a queen around in my urgency, “You must send Addam to warn Corlys of the Triarchy fleet and return to Dragonstone to await the arrival of Alicent Hightower.”

“Alicent?” Rhaenyra hissed in disbelief. “Why?”

“She will propose… an opportunity. A way for you to take control of King’s Landing without bloodshed.” Instead of explaining further, I turned to Daemon. “And you must lead your host away from Harrenhal.” 

Daemon put it together first. “Cristen Cole is marching for the Riverlands.”

Rhaenyra added breathily, “And Aemond will follow on Vhagar.”

I nodded. “Leaving King’s Landing undefended.”

Slowly, Rhaenyra leaned back in her chair as the full import of the situation became clear. “We could keep our eight dragons and take the Iron Throne.” But her iceberg eyes narrowed again. “Why would Alicent allow this?”

I sighed. “She will explain her reasons.”

Rhaenyra was too wise to let her sudden advantage blind her to the threat of treachery. “And why would you tell me?” Her implication was clear: can I trust you? Her gaze slid over to Daemon again, suspicious of what he might have done to win me to their cause. “You owe me no loyalty.”

“No, I do not,” I acknowledged, perhaps with clumsy honesty. “But nor do I have any desire to see the realm consumed by a devastating war.” I turned my haunted gaze to Daemon and Rhaenyra. That had been the worst of it: visions of the Riverlands aflame, wholesale slaughter on countless battlefields, and perhaps worst of all, the terrible wailing cry of a mortally wounded dragon. I swiped at suddenly swimming eyes: the dragons always got me in the feels. I’d staggered away from the episode of Game of Thrones where Viserion was brought down so traumatized that I never even finished the series. Besides… it was easier to admit that I’d mourn for the dragons than acknowledge the lance of agony in my chest when I replayed the vision of Dark Sister cleaving through Aemond Targaryen’s blind eye. The grief for dragons and innocent people dying made sense; mourning for a veritable stranger - and a murderous one at that - didn’t. “If I can stop it, I will.”

Frankly, I had no idea if anything I was doing would help. For all I knew, it might make it worse. But after being shaken awake by Daemon for a change as I cried out in the grip of vivid nightmares, I figured I had to try. I couldn’t escape the echo of a Yeats line ringing in my head: “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.  

Rhaenyra regarded me solemnly. “It has troubled my own conscience to think the price of my crown would be countless innocent lives. If I can claim the inheritance as my father intended for me without needless bloodshed, I will.” 

I nodded. “Then let us waste no more words. You must fly to Gulltown then Dragonstone and Addam to Driftmark, and Daemon must lead his assembled soldiers along the southwest coast of the God’s Eye and circle back to King’s Landing.”

Immediately, Daemon bristled. “If Criston and Aemond are bringing a host here, I will face them.”

Rhaenyra and I gave him simultaneous withering looks. “Your great army may still yet be needed,” she reassured him, trying valiantly to keep the condescension out of her voice. “When he realizes King’s Landing is lost to him, Aemond’s rage will be terrible.”

“Leave Aemond to me,” I heard myself saying.

Again, I felt their twin gaze heat my skin.

Luckily, Daemon spoke up for me. “Visions are not her only gift,” he asserted.

Despite herself, Rhaenyra scoffed again. “But Aemond rides Vhagar.”

I shrugged with as much indifference as I could feign. “Dragonfire cannot harm me,” I told her, then unfolded my fingers. A flame flickered to life on my outstretched palm. I stared at it as it intensified, then I snuffed it with a quick gesture. 

Rhaenyra opened her mouth, but Daemon only rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t know how, or why.” The exasperation in his voice told his wife all she needed to know about the extent of my relationship with her husband. She was content to leave the other questions unanswered for now.

“So be it,” Rhaenyra announced, getting to her feet. Only then did she command me. “When Aemond’s threat is contained, you will send me a raven in King’s Landing. If all you’ve said is true, there will be a place for you on my Small Council.”

“I will,” I acquiesced, though I wasn’t sure I wanted any place she was offering.

As she turned to go, Rhaenyra said, “The truth of you, Alys Rivers, is much more intriguing than the lies.”

The only reply I could think to make was, “Thank you, Your Grace.”

When they were gone, I sat down heavily and put my face in my hands. There was no going back now… and if I’d truly turned the tide of events, I had no idea what was coming.

Chapter Text

My first glimpse of Aemond Targaryen was from afar: dismounting from Vhagar, naught but a lean black sliver and a swish of long silver hair.

He was shouting in High Valyrian as Criston Cole’s men swarmed Harrenhal, but next to his mount he looked insignificant. Vhagar, on the other hand, was fucking terrifying: a mountain of a dragon with sharp-toothed maw that opened unsettlingly wide like something out of nightmares. 

Aemond drew his sword, but fortunately the castle was mostly deserted. I’d sent Ser Simon Strong and his grandsons to Raventree Hall to spare them the fate I’d known was in store for them if they stayed, so Aemond had no one to vent his frustration on. He was stalking around the echoing ruin, taunting his uncle as if he could manifest him with spite alone.

But Daemon, Rhanyra, and their army were long gone. 

I let Aemond burn off some of his rage before I stepped into his path in the tumbledown Great Hall with about ten feet separating us. He stopped abruptly and looked me up and down, giving me a chance to get a proper look at him in turn.

Aemond Targaryen was tall and slender, but his presence loomed. An unadorned black leather tunic fell from his broad shoulders down to his waist, where an empty scabbard hung from his left side as he held his blade; on the right, a curving dagger with no guard and a deep red stone set in the hilt glinted in his belt. His breeches and boots were simple black. He moved with a certain grace, his long limbs as elegant as a dancer’s and with the same latent athleticism: like he could leap his own height into the air with only the slightest flex of his knees. And he was young - perhaps younger than me by a handful of years.

His features were utterly unique: strong chin, impossibly sharp jaw, bladelike nose shadowing devilishly curling lips with a sharply peaked cupid’s bow, high, angular cheekbones, and one wide, crystalline blue eye deep-set in pale, perfect skin: a face of remarkable beauty that was somehow distinctly masculine. He was enhanced rather than marred by the scar that started above the brow on the left side and ended midway down his cheek and the patch that shielded the sapphire I knew stood in place of his lost eye. It was a face Dante Gabriel Rosetti might have favored: one that the paintbrush or the camera would love equally. 

Aemond Targaryen was - unfortunately - beguilingly handsome.

He was taking my measure, too, and I was momentarily grateful he had only one eye, as it was more than enough to make me feel practically naked under his scrutiny despite my trailing black gown. I wondered what he made of my slight frame, long, loose hair the color of dragonglass, and canny emerald gaze. 

“Who are you?” he demanded, though we both suspected that he already knew.

“Alys Rivers,” I replied.

“Ah,” he said, staring haughtily down the length of his nose with that single piercing eye. “My uncle’s whore.”

I gaped at him, but my answering objection was steady: “I am no such thing.” 

The angle of his head shifted just a little. “My uncle’s witch, then.” He strolled toward me as if to emphasize that he was not intimidated but stopped just short of his toes touching mine.

I squared my shoulders and glared up at him even though I knew it was probably foolish to goad him. “I belong to no man,” I countered in my best Eowyn voice.

The slightest serpentine smile crept across Aemond’s sculpted lips, banishing the shadows gathered in the deep well between the peaks of his upper lip. “Wrong. You belong to me,” he intoned like some cartoonish villain.

I almost laughed in his beautiful face. 

To be fair, I’d walked right into that one.

But Aemond Targaryen - for all that he was giving me Lucius Malfoy/King Thranduil vibes right now that made it difficult to stay grounded in reality - was deathly serious, had two more blades than I did, and could easily feed Vhagar the pieces he’d carve me into with either if his reputation as a swordsmen had any merit. The thought of the dragon’s serrated maw was sufficiently sobering.

So I closed my lips over my snarky retort and said only, “Perhaps I could be of use to you.”

Aemond sneered. “Like you were of use to my uncle?” His emphasis was deliberate. It took all my strength not to roll my eyes. Enough with the slut-shaming, already. He took a step closer to me in challenge, and our height difference was all the more apparent. “Why did he abandon you here then?” Before I could answer, he finished dismissively, “I have no use for my uncle’s discarded playthings.” He turned his back to me.

Well, now he’d gone and done it.

He’d actually pissed me off this time.

“Your arrogance will be your undoing,” I cautioned, wielding the same warning my mind’s eye had seen his sister bring him low with on a night-dark balcony in King’s Landing when he’d tried to recruit her into his war: “All your scheming and your skill count for nothing at the bottom of the God’s Eye.”

Slowly, Aemond spun on his heel, turning over his right shoulder so he could fix his remaining eye on my face. “What did you say?”

Bingo.  

When I did not answer, Aemond rushed at me, closing his fingers around my upper arms like manacles as he dragged me against his chest. “What did you say?” he growled in my face. 

He really was remarkably similar to Daemon. It occurred to me in another moment of ill-timed amusement that their names were anagrams. I briefly wondered if he was going to pitch me over his shoulder next. Quickly, I gathered my scattered thoughts. I couldn’t afford to be distracted.  

“Helaena was wrong about one thing,” I met Aemond’s gaze without betraying my inner turmoil. “You can change how it ends.”

He took a few staggering steps back, fury and terror in equal measure reflected in his eye. His chagrin did not last long. Aemond was a practiced fighter, and he’d suddenly found himself in a sparring match, so his defenses went up. “I put no stock in visions or prophecy,” he spat. “A man makes his own destiny.”

I inclined my head in agreement. “As does a woman.” I let him ponder that for a moment before adding, “Daemon did not abandon me. I persuaded him to leave.”

Aemond blinked at me then smirked knowingly. “You knew I was coming.” He added with derision, “I doubt my uncle required much persuading. He is afraid to face me.” 

I neither confirmed nor denied. Instead, I spread my arms wide. “And now Harrenhal is yours.”

His upper lip curled. “An empty victory.” Aemond glanced around in the gathering dark. “It matters not. Tomorrow, Vhagar and I will hunt my cowardly uncle down.” He grabbed my wrist and started towing me toward the only intact portion of the castle. “And you will tell me what you know of his plans.”

Instinctively, I dug in my heels, and Aemond rounded on me with a savage fury. 

Just like that, I found myself dangling over his shoulder, tempted to shoot a gout of flame straight at his unsurprisingly shapely ass. But I had to play the long game, so I only huffed and let him carry me, trying to ignore the heady combination of leather, musk, and a hint of ozone that clung to him like cologne. Even through the layers of our clothing, I could feel every movement of muscle and bone with a strange intimacy.

Criston Cole was commanding the roughly four thousand men he and Aemond had led from King’s Landing as they set up camp, leaving the Prince Regent free to interrogate me. Seeking the privacy of an intact room in the castle’s ruin, he unknowingly chose the bedroom Daemon and I had shared; only when the door was closed behind us did he lower me onto my feet again. He was not winded in the slightest, and his hands around my waist were strong and sure. His sharp eye took in my rumpled mattress at the foot of Daemon’s bed immediately.

“What is this?” he demanded.

“My bed,” I told him plainly. “As I said - I did not share Daemon’s.”

His expression shifted slightly, though he seemingly ignored my comment. “There is evidence that my uncle gathered a significant force here. Where has he fled?”

“I know only that he marched his host south along the western lakeshore. You’ll see his path plainly enough.”

Aemond approached me slowly. “If you share my sister’s dragonsight, I doubt that is all you know.”

I held my ground and kept my mouth closed. 

“Why are you protecting him?” Aemond accused. 

“Daemon does not require my protection,” I replied stiffly.

He stepped into my personal space again, and I confess – his physicality was imposing. “But you might require his,” Aemond said softly, toying with the lock of hair that had fallen over my shoulder with thumb and forefinger. “Does my uncle care for you? Would it entice him back, if I hurt you?”

My skin prickled at the implication, but I raised my chin defiantly and called his bluff. “How would he know if you did? He is not here.”

Aemond’s nostrils flared and he bared his teeth just a little. His fist curled into the hair at the nape of my neck and he wrenched my face up to his. “No, he is not.” His voice was almost silken, despite its malice. “So he cannot stop me.”

Though my heartbeat took off like a racehorse, I refused to be cowed. I didn’t want to reveal my powers immediately, but knowing I could blunted the edges of fear. “Daemon knows that I can take care of myself.” 

Aemond only laughed darkly, supremely confident. “We shall see,” he murmured with subtle threat, bending over me until his lips brushed mine. I was momentarily relieved; at least the hurt he insinuated would not come on the edge of a blade. Admittedly, I was curious to see if he’d actually follow through or if he was just seeing if he could intimidate me with words alone. His single eye was searching my face for fear, and when he didn’t see it, he slammed his lips down onto mine with sudden violence, holding me fast against him. Not just words, then.

Warm, velvety lips with a hint of steel. A slightly honeyed taste on his tongue, heady like mead. Nothing hesitant or asking.

There was something almost familiar in it - the tilt of his head, the press of his body against mine, the warmth of his breath - that tempted me to yield to him. It was clear that he expected me to writhe and protest, but instead I answered in kind. 

Our dynamic shifted instantly. 

What started as a means to subdue me became an equal exchange. Aemond stiffened in surprise, but I could feel the moment his hesitation snapped loose under the tension, releasing him to fall upon me with abandon. As our lips found a rhythm, we both surrendered. His hands were in my hair and my fingers were balled around the seams of his leather tunic, and when we staggered away from each other breathless and wide-eyed, neither of us was fully in control. 

His single eye flashed danger. “Witchcraft,” Aemond murmured, as if he was trying to convince himself.

“You started it,” I countered, rattled and consequently utterly tactless. Indeed, there was no indication that my complement of powers included the ability to bewitch murderous princes. What had sparked between us was - as far as I could tell - just good old-fashioned chemistry… though some sort of fictional fate was not entirely out of the question, either. 

Fleetingly, I wondered if Aemond Targaryen would be the greatest test of my free will in Westeros because I had no intention of following the script but my body clearly had other ideas.

The door banged open behind us, and we both simultaneously took a step back. 

Ser Cristen Cole spared me only a suspicious look before he announced, “A raven from King’s Landing!”

Oh shit.

Chapter Text

I knew what the message said. Not the exact words or even the sender - but I knew what tidings it bore. I heard Rhaenyra’s words echoing in my memory: When he realizes King’s Landing is lost to him, Aemond’s rage will be terrible. 

And I’d told Rhaenyra to leave Aemond to me in some fit of imbecilic bravado. Now, I needed to make certain he didn’t take that rage out on innocent people. The only difficulty was that I had no idea how to do that. I had a moment of panic, feeling utterly out of my depth and cursing my own arrogance. I wondered briefly if Aemond had felt the same way with the weight of responsibility on his shoulders; the temptation to wield whatever power I had loomed. But I had to tread carefully: with great power comes great responsibility. Thanks, Aunt May. I almost laughed at the absurdity of that contemporary juxtaposition alongside my strange new reality. 

As Criston handed over the tiny scroll, I reached out my hand and rested it on Aemond’s. Startled by my strangeness, both men stared at me.

“What is more important: the crown, or the lives of the people you love?” I asked.

Criston’s wide brown eyes fixed on me with intense curiosity, but Aemond only shook off my hand dismissively and unrolled the parchment. In his mind, the crown and his family were one in the same.

“She is safe,” I told Criston - low and urgent because I needed an ally and I knew who his first thought would be of - as Aemond read intently in silence, ignoring us. “Alicent.” I clarified, and met Criston’s astounded gaze as it dawned on him that, somehow, I knew about what had passed between him and the Dowager Queen. He had the look of a man who had just been run through on the battlefield: golden skin blanched, brow knit as if in pain. “Helaena and Jaehaera, too. That was the exchange.” 

I took a few steps back, away from the Prince Regent in preparation for the explosion. Criston’s eyes never strayed from my face as he tried to make sense of what I meant and how it related to the scroll in Aemond’s long-fingered hands. 

“Impossible,” Aemond breathed even as I saw the realization of his strategic miscalculation dawn over his features. “Impossible!” he bellowed, balling up the scroll and tossing it onto the floor. Then he bent over the table in front of us and swept its entire surface clean with the back of an arm in a cacophony of overturned candlesticks and shattered earthenware and the hollow clang of pewter. When he threw his head back and roared, fists clenched at his sides, I could see each individual sinew of his graceful neck above the leather collar of his tunic. Hurriedly, Criston retrieved the crumpled parchment off the floor and read, too.

“By the gods…” he groaned, then gaped at me as the pieces fell into place. 

Aemond wheeled on me, fingertips digging into the flesh of my shoulders until they bruised against bone. “What do you know of this?” he seethed, his face millimeters from mine. 

“It is not my doing,” I replied, as calmly as possible, trying not to wince. “I only know that King’s Landing fell without bloodshed.”

“How?” Aemond hissed through clenched teeth. 

“Your mother opened the gates,” I told him. 

“She would never betray me!” he protested, and for a moment he was nothing more than a confused, wounded boy. 

I reached up and rested my hand on his cheek almost tenderly. “She was trying to save you. And your family.”

“From what?” Aemond demanded, single eye fiery as he twisted away from my hand, releasing his iron grip on my shoulders.

“From what you are becoming,” I whispered, as if speaking quietly could force him to dial down and match my volume. “And from the consequences of her mistake.”

“I have only done what was necessary! I’m the only one willing to do what is necessary!” Aemond growled, though we all knew that was not strictly true. “She has ruined us!” 

I took a deep breath, but I had no volition over the words that spilled from my mouth. “Not this mistake. I mean putting your brother on the throne. Viserys never wanted Aegon to be king. As he died, your father spoke only of Aegon the Conqueror and his dream of the Song of Ice and Fire.” I blinked as images flashed behind my eyes: rapid-fire like stop-motion animation. Viserys thrusting a blade into hot coals. A youthful Rhaenyra lifting it up and reading the spidery words. The wasted king repeating them brokenly as he died. Alicent, with resolve on her soft features: “I understand, my king.”

Aemond stalked toward me again, his beautiful face a mask of fury. “Enough of your riddles, witch!” 

But as he approached, I grabbed for the dagger in his belt - the one with the red stone in its black and gold hilt - and held the flat of the blade out between us at his eye level, hoping it wouldn’t seem like a threat. “It’s here!” I cried out desperately. “Carved by the last pyromancers!” 

“I see nothing,” Aemond sneered, reaching for the hilt of his sheathed sword.

“The words are only revealed in fire!” I added wretchedly, casting around. But the hearth in the bedroom was cold, and I realized there was only one recourse. Clenching my jaw, I opened the palm of my free hand under the dagger’s wickedly sharp edge and thought of flames.

Aemond froze as a tiny conflagration glowed in my outstretched hand. I watched it flicker in the smooth orb of his single eye. Behind me, Criston Cole stumbled backward against the table in shock, and the guard of Aemond’s sword rang against its scabbard as he let go.

When the words on the blade started to glow red, Aemond leaned forward, eye narrowed, and read. “The Prince That Was Promised,” he muttered. “What does it mean - the Song of Ice and Fire?” Then his gaze shifted to me as I closed my fist and snuffed the flames. “What are you?” Daemon had asked the same thing.

“Not a witch,” I retorted, now that my death courtesy of Aemond’s clutching hands didn’t seem imminent. “Or a whore.” I glared at him, and his face hardened. I couldn’t very well tell him the whole plot of Game of Thrones in the next breath, so I only said, “Aegon the Conqueror’s dream has been passed from king to heir for generations. Viserys told Rhaenyra. He never told Aegon. Alicent misunderstood, and she knows it. This war should never have begun, but there is still a chance to end it.”

It was a gamble: to offer him an out. I wasn’t sure if it was self-defense or ambition that drove Aemond to do what he did, and I didn’t know if he knew, either. 

“I will not leave my family to be butchered!” Aemond objected. Not all ambition, then.

“You said –” Criston began.

“Yes,” I cut him off and repeated impatiently. “A bargain was struck between Alicent and Rhaenyra. In exchange for King’s Landing, the Queen Dowager, Helaena, and Jaehaera will have safe passage to Essos.”

“Aegon?” Criston asked.

I looked up at him through my lashes and shook my head slowly. There would be no reprieve for the usurper. Criston looked stricken as the extent of the deal Alicent had struck sunk in, but Aemond was stoic. I knew why - I’d seen what Heleana had said to him on the ramparts of King’s Landing. He’d been willing to sacrifice Aegon, too. I felt a little sorry for him: Alicent’s eldest son had never wanted to be king; he was just a pawn on everyone else’s board. 

“Rhaenyra cannot be trusted to keep her word,” Aemond warned. 

“Not everyone is a bloodthirsty backstabber,” I snarked, but Aemond just sneered at me and took a step closer. 

“Did my uncle know of your abilities? If so, he was foolish to leave you behind.”

I glared up at him. “Daemon had no choice in the matter.”

“All is not lost,” the Prince Regent announced, his jaw set. “We have four thousand men, the largest dragon in the realm, and perhaps something of greater value still.” His fist closed around my bicep possessively.  

“And you’ve got a target on your back as long as you try to claim the crown. Rhaenyra has eight dragons, Daemon’s army, and the Iron Throne.” I attempted to tug my arm out of his grasp to demonstrate that he did not - in fact - have me, and failed. Awkward.

Aemond ignored me except to tighten his grip. “Keep this news from the men until we decide how to proceed. Set them on watch in shifts.”

Criston knew when he was dismissed, though he gave me a meaningful look as he left. I wondered how long his loyalty would last. Perhaps I could persuade him to abandon his army and follow Alicent to Essos. I wondered if Aemond knew the nature of his mother’s relationship with his Lord Commander. That was not necessarily a second bombshell I wanted to drop on a volatile Aemond right now. When Cole closed the door, I was alone with him again. 

“What, exactly, are you defending?” I asked him bluntly. I didn’t say what I thought next: Harrenhal is a pretty accurate analogy for whatever it is – a haunted, crumbling ruin built by hubris and destroyed by it, too. Before he could answer I added, “After what you did at Rook’s Rest, I know it isn’t Aegon, or his claim to the throne.” 

He spun me to face him, never releasing my arm, his fury and shock carefully guarded. “I could ask you the same thing,” he growled. 

No reason to lie, really. I tilted my head back defiantly. “I’m defending the lives of the innocent people who would die in this war. And, as it so happens, your family. Your dragons, too.” And you, you arrogant prick.

“No outcome is certain!” he raged. 

“Not anymore!” I retorted. “Depending on what you do.”

He shook me, hard. “What have you seen?”

“Your death!” I shouted back at him. “And most of House Targaryen, taking thousands more along with them. Ruin and suffering. And do you know the greatest price? Dragons. They die and dwindle until the great dragonlords of old are nothing more than a story.” 

Again he only sneered at me, disbelieving.

But I blazed forward. “If it’s only survival you’re concerned with – back down. Your mother protected herself, and her daughter and granddaughter along with her. They don’t need your sword to do that for them.” I couldn’t stop the undercurrent of pride in my tone: two women had outmaneuvered men’s violence with diplomacy. 

“That remains to be seen,” Aemond brooded, clearly still skeptical that Rhaenrya and Daemon would honor the terms of whatever deal Alicent had struck. He wasn’t giving up any advantage until that, at least, was certain.  

The lines on his perfect face, though, were deep with unacknowledged pain as he realized Alicent had willingly laid her sons on the altar in exchange for the promise of freedom. Aemond had always seen their mother’s disdain for Aegon, though it had mellowed to pity as she watched him writhe in the shackles of power and then in the unrelenting agony of his broken body. But had she given up on her second son, too? It must feel like the worst betrayal. Aemond’s love for Alicent is so tangled up in longing and resentment, too. 

I watched him in silence as he wrestled with his thoughts. I could not know them, but I could guess well enough after seeing him through visions in the past few weeks. The unexpected surge of empathy I felt for him was disarming.

I spoke fast, so his anger would not silence me. “She would have saved you, too, if she thought she could. But you have strayed so far away - she hardly knows you anymore. All she could give you was a chance to save yourself.”

Predictably, he reeled away from me as if my words were a blow. “Get out of my head!” he bellowed. 

“It doesn’t work like that,” I murmured in reassurance. “Your thoughts are your own.”

“How does it work, then?” Aemond spat venomously. Whatever it was. 

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. Again, I felt that shiver of kinship with him: both of us adrift in a tempest – just seeking a harbor. Of course, Aemond might be the type to burn it to the ground, though, once he found it. I lifted my hands just a little, palms out. “But I’m not a threat.” 

“You’re a fool not to use whatever power you have to your advantage.” His voice was heavy with disdain. 

I tamped down my annoyance; it made sense in his Darwinian world: survival of the fittest. “The greatest power is the ability to choose when to wield it.” I gave him a wry smile. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already.” I glanced at his sword. “Same for you. So – truce?”

“You are my prisoner,” he replied stubbornly, determined to keep some semblance of authority. 

“I am your willing guest,” I corrected gently. “Let’s leave it at that and maybe we can trust each other just enough?” One glance at the tension in his shoulders told me he wouldn’t get much rest tonight regardless, but I didn’t need to be on guard all night worrying he might throttle me in my sleep or order my execution in the morning.  

Aemond was not easily convinced. “I have no reason to trust you.”

“I have no reason to harm you,” I countered. “Unless you try to harm me.”

He really looked at me then, as if for the first time. I could see the wheels turning behind his single eye as he tried to determine how he could wield me: this strange weapon that came in the form of a slender girl with fingertips of fire. 

“Alys Rivers,” Aemond turned my name over on his tongue. “Are you a Strong bastard, then?” The question dripped contempt as his gaze raked over my dark hair.

I stifled the urge to roll my eyes yet again. “I was content to let Simon Strong believe that.”

“So you’re not?” he pressed. 

“No,” I told him honestly. “I am not.”

“What is your parentage, then?” Aemond demanded haughtily.

“I am not from Westeros, so it hardly matters.”

“Essosi, then?” His eye narrowed. 

“No.”

He waited for me to elaborate, and when I didn’t, his curiosity grew. “Sothoryos?”

“No.”

That was all the answer he needed. Somewhere else then. 

“How did you come to Harrenhal?” he asked guardedly.

For the first time, I was compelled to be truthful. “I awoke at the base of the heart tree in the godswood with no memory of how or why.”

This gave him pause. “What is your loyalty to my uncle?”

I scoffed, remembering the echo of Daemon’s lips on mine. “None.”

“And yet he left you as his emissary.”

“Hardly,” I reiterated. “It was my choice to stay.”

For once, Aemond didn’t ascribe some invented motivation to me and instead simply asked, “Why?”

It caught me off guard. All the possible explanations cycled through my head: To hold you back from torching the Riverlands. To make sure you don’t fly off the handle. To try to talk some sense into you. For you, Aemond. I stayed for you.

I said nothing, but my eyes must have told him enough.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

Not what. Who.

But I had no answer to give him that would satisfy either of us. 

Chapter Text

If sleeping alongside Daemon was tumultuous, it was nothing compared to Aemond. 

I was not certain if his dreams were always haunted or if Harrenhal coaxed all the Targaryen mens’ demons to the surface, but he’d hardly been asleep for a half-hour when the nightmares began. I jolted awake immediately and lay wide-eyed beside him, listening and occasionally daring to fix my gaze on the silver-gilt edge of his profile in the moonlight. 

Aemond had refused outright to let me sleep on the mattress at the foot of his bed. Instead, he’d bound my hands together and secured them to the bedpost above my head, insisting that I must sleep next to him (and that he’d wake in an instant and stab me through the heart if I tried anything). I’d complied only because I knew I had to earn his trust and did my best to ignore my positively depraved inner monologue as he tied me to the bed.  

When the dreams started, I didn’t try to wake him because he was sleeping in full kit with the Valyrian steel dagger still tucked into his belt… well, belts, if I was being perfectly accurate: a thick swath of black leather that looked like dragonskin under a thinner and smoother one – both practically bristling with blades. At least he’d done us both the favor of removing his sword from its scabbard. But I wasn’t about to kick him awake like I might have done to Daemon when I had the threat of being run through hanging between us and the means to make good on it within his grasp. 

So I watched Aemond scowl and mutter in the throes of imagined battles. At first, his words were unintelligible.

“Daor! Dohaerās!” Nonsense, blurred by sleep, half-opened lips, and a clever tongue that still managed to roll the last R.

But I narrowed my eyes when he repeated, “Daor, Vhagar!” More clearly this time. Desperate. The gibberish started to sound intentional - more like language. 

He started thrashing, his low voice a chant that rattled my bones: nononononononono

Crisply uttered this time: “Serve me, Vhagar! Dohaerās! Dohaerās!”

More thrashing, his arms grasping at the air like he was tugging on invisible reins.

Then, utter stillness and breathless silence.

Aemond surged upright at the waist, gasping, then catapulted off the bed in one fluid, powerful leap. I didn’t dare move. 

He was pacing agitatedly around the room before he remembered I was there. The drawn look of horror on his face shifted to anger as he realized I’d witnessed this moment of weakness. His hand rested to the hilt of the dagger as his eye narrowed. He had slept in his eye patch. 

“Daemon’s sleep was troubled here, too,” I began hurriedly.  “It’s this place.” I glanced around. “This bed,” I added with a touch of theatrically exaggerated disgust.

Aemond’s hand dropped and I relaxed just a little.

“Daemon dreamed of you many times,” I added, trying to give him back some of his power.

Aemond scoffed loudly. “Soon enough his nightmares will become reality.”

I rolled my eyes, but gently asked, “What do you dream of?” Better that he thinks I overheard nothing.

“Not my uncle,” he spit dismissively, scowling at the bed. I followed his gaze.

“It’s made from the wood of a felled weirwood,” I told him. “Cursed, like Harren the Black who cut it down along with many others to clear the land to build this place.”

“Doesn’t it trouble you?” Aemond demanded. 

“There’s more than one reason I preferred the floor,” I shrugged.

He regarded me for a silent, contemplative moment, then strode purposefully to my side, unsheathing a dagger as he advanced. My heart leapt immediately to my throat and I tensed, not certain that I was ready to incinerate him even if he made good on his threat of murdering me.

But instead of bringing the blade down into my supine body, he started sawing at the cord securing my hands to the bedpost. When it gave way, he hauled me upright by the frayed end, dragging me off the mattress abruptly and towing me away from the cursed weirwood frame. My arms ached and prickled with a thousand sharp pinpricks as blood flow returned to normal, and my feet fought for purchase. He must have felt me stumble because he turned just before I lost my balance and slammed directly into his chest. 

The moment our bodies touched, I was lost in a vision of surprisingly clarity.

I could feel the pelting rain on my shoulders… feel the wind’s numbingly relentless pressure on my cold-numbed skin. Blackness filled with the sound of thunder and a terrible fear as oppressive as an airless void. Then – light and calm, quick like the flick of a switch. I saw what happened next as Aemond had seen it: hurtling toward a silhouette of dragon wings: dark as a keyhole against white cloud and blue sky. Vhagar’s jaw closing around the much smaller dragon and its rider. The crunch of bone followed by dread: both frigidly cold and as hot as a brand pressed to my bare skin, marking me forever. 

I awoke, shuddering, in Aemond’s arms.

His single eye was staring down at me intently as if trying to read my thoughts.

I swallowed hard, biting back any inclination to hint at what I’d seen through his eyes. It was an accident, I realized. Lucerys. Vhagar had slipped her rein. I knew instantly that it was not something Aemond would readily admit to.

“You fell into a trance,” he reported clinically.

“Stood up too quickly,” I explained lamely. Aemond frowned at me like he couldn’t quite reconcile that degree of fragility with my ability to conjure flames on my bare skin, but he didn’t question it. Instead, he carried me to the mattress at the foot of the bed, tossed me onto it, then dragged it a short distance away from the weirwood bed for good measure.

Somewhat to my surprise, he flopped down next to me almost immediately. On his back, he stared up at the ceiling wordlessly.

“I’d sleep more comfortably if I didn’t have to worry about rolling into the point of a Valyrian steel blade,” I announced as casually as I could.

 Aemond bit his lips flat - in annoyance or consideration, I couldn’t tell - then swiped the daggers out of his belt and tossed them across the cold cobbles far from both our reach. They skittered over stone with an eerie cacophony. Then he seized the end of the cord around my wrists with one hand and my jaw with the other, wrenching my face closer to his.

“Make any wrong move and you’ll find I don’t need a blade,” he growled.

“I have no desire to harm you,” I reminded him.

He released me, clearly not satisfied, and tugged hard on my bound wrists as he wrapped the loose end around his fist. 

“Sleep,” Aemond commanded me. “We have a throne to recapture when day breaks.” Stubbornly, he settled onto his side facing me and shut his remaining eye. 

I obeyed, but my thoughts wandered behind my closed lids. We. I hastily pushed aside the implications of that word. 

There had been a strange quality to my latest vision. All of the others had been like watching a scene from a movie: strictly third-person perspective on the unfolding action. But this time, I’d felt what Aemond felt, seen what he saw. I could still detect wisps of the fiery rage that goaded me onward in pursuit of Lucerys, the sharp fear that arced through my veins like lightning when Vhagar’s rage bled between our bodies and engulfed my own, the echoes of an icy hand closing around my heart when Arrax’s shredded wings tumbled from Vhagar’s maw, and the steely resolve that followed to play it all off as intentional.

I had to bite back a hysterical laugh when I glanced at Aemond’s snowy head and the words conceal, don’t feel flashed into my mind. It’s not funny, truly. Because we are both holding back so much. I clenched my fists of fire against my chest and thought of Vhagar’s terrifying strength. When we lose control, we risk destruction. 

And just like that, it was all I could do not to cup Aemond’s lean cheek in my hand and press my forehead to his in profound empathy.

My own dreams were of a different character altogether. 

My eyes flew open just as the faceless man who’d been teasing me toward climax raised his silver head from between my spread thighs and grinned, his tongue gliding suggestively over a glistening lower lip. A blue sapphire winked in the socket of his left eye.

I gasped audibly and sat bolt upright.

Aemond and Criston Cole, who stood at the table in the chamber with their backs toward me, slowly turned over opposite shoulders to regard me with unmistakably judgy stares. Instantly, I blushed so deeply I could feel my cheeks flame with more intensity than dragonfire.

The way Criston looked away and cleared his throat without meeting my eyes as Aemond stood there smugly smirking made me suspect that they knew exactly what I’d been dreaming about. 

Absolutely fucking mortifying.  

God, if I’d been actually making any of the wanton noises the Aemond-proxy in my dream had coaxed from my lips, the real Aemond wouldn’t even have to kill me. I might die of embarrassment on the spot. 

Feigning indifference as best I could, I crawled off the mattress and got to my feet, loudly dusting off my skirts one side at a time with my bound hands as Aemond and Criston resumed their discussion in hushed tones. I overheard enough as I managed to loosen my bonds and free myself:

“The Triarchy fleet should be entering Blackwater Bay as we speak,” Aemond was saying. “With the blockade broken and most of Corlys’s ships destroyed or disabled, King’s Landing will be vulnerable from the sea.”

I didn’t dare tell him that Rhaenyra had been alerted to the approach of the Triarchy armada and Corlys and Addam were probably waiting in ambush on Driftmark with all of the assembled might of the Velaryon fleet and at least five dragons.

“If I fly behind the advancing Triarchy ships with Vhagar, we stand a chance of recapturing the city,” Aemond asserted with stern determination.

Criston Cole looked pale but stalwart. “It is a risk, Your Grace.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “You are our greatest asset. Even against Vhagar, Rhaenyra’s dragons are formidable.”

I stepped up boldly alongside them, remembering flashes of the Game of Thrones finale episodes that I’d seen in news coverage of audience outrage. “And if dragons battle over King’s Landing, there’s a good chance the city will be destroyed.” I turned my green-eyed gaze meaningfully to Criston, then Aemond. “We do not know if Alicent, Helaena, and Jaehaera are safely away.” Nevermind the smallfolk, I thought to myself, though I didn’t dare bring up the risk to the common people.

Aemond ignored me, though I could feel Criston’s eyes lingering. “My family is in greater danger the longer they remain in Rhaenrya’s control,” Aemond asserted sharply. Clearly, he still didn’t trust that his half-sister would honor the terms of the deal she’s struck with Alicent. I had a momentarily acute longing for the instantaneous communication of text messaging so we didn’t have to speculate and had to muscle my stubborn brain away from the rabbit hole of imagining what texting with Rhaenyra might look like. What up bish? corlys smoke the triarchy yet? is the package free and clear?  

Even without knowing what he was walking into, Aemond was clearly committed to this plan. I had to stop him somehow.

“Let me go with you,” I pleaded impulsively. 

The shock on the Prince Regent’s face was plain. “I’m flying to battle, woman,” he sneered. “What use could you possibly be?”

Well, that pissed me off just enough to show him.

With a defiant scowl, I held out my arm, snapped my palm upward like Ironman, and shot a blast of flame toward the offending weirwood bed. It instantly burst into a crackling conflagration, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t purse my lips, blow across the unmarked skin of my palm like a sharpshooter clearing a gun barrel, then plant my fists on my hips with a brow cocked in challenge as I turned back to the gawping men.

Take that, you arrogant pricks.

“When are we leaving?” I asked lightly.

After a moment of stunned silence, Aemond’s nostrils flared and his lips flattened to a thin line, but he grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the door. 

“Now,” he growled.

Chapter Text

The sight of Caraxes - an actual dragon existing outside of a screen or my imagination - had been shocking enough, but as Aemond dragged me toward Vhagar’s mountainous bulk, I realized that the Blood Wyrm was only about the size of one of her wings. 

This ancient beast was something out of myth made flesh.

Vhagar raised her head as we approached, one golden eye fixed on our progress as her snout slowly rotated. I froze when both of the sun-bright eyes seated in the forest of spikes scattered over her brow ridges converged on me. There was something elemental in her unsettlingly intelligent gaze, but instead of the overwhelming urge to run screaming that I expected, I felt something more like affinity.  

Vhagar watched unblinkingly as I jerked free of Aemond’s grip and climbed the rope lattice trailing over the dragon’s hide that was the only means to reach the saddle atop her back. It looked almost laughably small until I was seated astride it, still in my trailing black gown. Aemond slid into place behind me.

He was slighter than Daemon and he did not loop an arm around my waist and tug me close against him the way his uncle had done. Instead, he just leaned forward and pinned me against the unusually high pommel. There was just enough space for both of us between the scoop of the seat rise and the cantle, and I could feel every detail of the buckles of his belts and the hilt of the daggers he’d retrieved along with his sword on the way out of the bedchamber pressing into my spine. His calves settled over mine alongside the seat; the dragon’s neck was far too broad to allow our feet to swing below us. 

“Hold on,” Aemond commanded me, and I reached for the handholds in front of the pommel as his fists closed around the set where the horn would be on a horse’s saddle, draping his arms over mine, too. 

“Could you get any closer?” I snarked, feeling slightly claustrophobic. At least there was no chance I was falling off. Aemond ignored me.

“Sōvēs, Vhagar!” 

I was about to make another snide comment as his voice rumbled through my back, but I was momentarily stunned into silence as the dragon’s enormous bulk shifted beneath us and her great wings spread. Vhagar lurched forward, heavy claws hooking into the perpetually damp soil under the brittle shale scattered around the ruins of the castle, then leapt toward the sky with explosive power. My stomach dropped as we rocketed upward with one slow sweep of wings that cast a shadow of truly terrifying proportions on the rapidly disappearing ground. I could feel the astonishing strength of those tattered wings dragging through the air, heaving us skyward with surprising grace. 

“Fuck me,” I murmured admiringly, belatedly remembering Aemond only when he snorted in amusement directly into my ear. He shifted his weight slightly. It was probably just a coincidence that he ground his pelvis against my backside and practically rested his chin on my shoulder as Vhagar banked and headed east.

I remembered almost nothing about Westerosi geography, so I swallowed hard and asked, “Where are we going?” turning my head just enough that Aemond’s lips almost brushed my cheek.

“My forces still control Rook’s Rest,” he replied, his voice tight. “We’ll fly south from there. The Triarchy fleet will have breached the Gullet, and we can follow them into the bay toward King’s Landing.”

Don’t count on it, I thought grimly, trying to visualize what I knew about Blackwater Bay. Dragonstone and Driftmark were near Rook’s Rest, weren’t they? Somehow, I was going to have to convince Aemond not to get close enough for Rhaenyra’s dragonriders to catch sight of him. The last thing we needed was a battle in the skies. I knew I’d be safe from dragonfire, but Aemond wasn’t even wearing armor. Cocky bastard.

I scanned the ground beneath us, hoping fervently that Daemon’s forces were still on the southwest shore of the Gods Eye; from what I could tell, we were flying in the opposite direction: straight east with what must be the Trident to our left. I breathed a sigh of relief as the lumpy black silhouette of Harrenhal disappeared behind us. 

“You’ll do as I say if battle is joined,” Aemond growled into my ear; his right hand left the handle on the saddle and I felt it settle over the hilt of one of his daggers in latent threat. 

I nodded, though I had no intention of doing anything except what was least likely to get us both killed, which probably didn’t involve following any of Aemond’s orders. 

The flight was long and increasingly silent as the subtle friction of our bodies inevitably led to awkwardness that we both refused to acknowledge. We quickly became absorbed in our own thoughts and the tension of being hyper-attuned to one another’s every movement. Sometimes, if the wind shifted, a strand of my hair would tickle his face; once, as the crumbling towers of a damaged keep against the backdrop of the bay began to take shape ahead of us, Aemond twisted his head to escape a wayward strand and ended up nuzzling hard against my neck to scratch the itch. We both froze as he breathed in the oil of crushed lavender behind my ear and sudden heat crept up my lower back where his groin was pressed against me. I tried to create some space between us and only succeeded in rolling my hips against his suddenly erect shaft. The low, resonant sound he made was probably supposed to signal annoyance, but it felt like frustrated longing. 

“Is that Rook’s Rest?” I asked breathlessly, desperate for a distraction.

“It is,” Aemond confirmed. 

“Will we stop?” I prompted. My empty stomach growled loudly. 

“No,” he answered shortly, directing Vhagar to bank south over the battle-blackened fortress. 

After that, we both forgot the building tension between us. Above the glistening expanse of the Blackwater Bay, a column of black smoke curled its grasping fingers toward the sky.

“Naejot!” Aemond roared to Vhagar, and I marveled at the musicality of High Valyrian on his tongue. He was eager to confirm the victory of his forces, but as we flew past a low-lying, forested island on the left, Aemond stiffened.

“Driftmark,” he murmured, seemingly perturbed that it wasn’t aflame. 

I braced myself. For what exactly, I wasn’t sure. Maybe just for Aemond’s rage.

Past the island, there was a channel of open water – except it was choked with ships forming a blockade. When he saw that they were flying seagreen flags and their sails were not the lateen style of the Triarchy, he let loose a tirade of High Valyrian curses. 

Aemond flew us past the Gullet and wheeled north again over a narrow peninsula, single eye searching. At last we spotted the remains of the Triarchy fleet: just a handful of ships limping south toward the Stepstones, leaving the bulk of their force - already aflame and foundering - to watery graves.

I could feel the current of steadily increasing fury coursing through Aemond’s body behind me as he circled wide around the solid wall of Velaryon ships, flying at a safe distance. His silence was more terrifying even than his volatile reaction to the raven about the fall of King’s Landing. His fists around the handles of the saddle near my face were white-knuckled.

I was relieved to see that Rhaenyra’s dragonriders seemed to have returned to the Red Keep or to Dragonstone, leaving the Sea Snake to clean up what was left of the Triarchy fleet, but I didn’t dare speak. Aemond growled something in High Valyrian, and Vhagar answered with a deep cry that vibrated my bones like an earthquake even through her armored hide. She hurtled northward.

A craggy, bleak island manifested on the horizon, and as we got closer with breathtaking speed, I saw a bladelike fortress perched near one rocky edge. Dragonstone.

We swept low on approach, and Aemond crushed the air from my lungs as he leaned forward and shouted with a raw throat, “Dracarys!”

Vhagar let loose a cataract of searing flame, utterly engulfing the uppermost levels of the keep; the stone glowed red as we circled for another devastating pass before wheeling northward for a final sweep. 

“Enough, Aemond!” I pleaded, but it was too late – I could see a pair of great bronze wings followed by flashes of silver and red emerge from an unseen tunnel under the fortress. 

Very soon, we’d have three dragons on our tail. I pointed, and when Aemond leaned back slightly to get a better look, I dove sideways, sliding off the saddle and grasping for the latticed rope that covered Vhagar’s neck. 

Aemond shouted something that I couldn’t hear as I held on for dear life, clawing my way behind him to prop my back against the cantle of the saddle and get a clear shot, the trailing ends of the rough rope balled around my left fist to keep me from sliding off. 

The biggest of the dragons - Vermithor, I realized - closed the gap between us quicker than I expected, and when his enormous maw opened around a throat glowing ominously red, I clenched my teeth, sent up a silent prayer to powers I couldn’t even begin to name, and extended a hand. 

This was an aspect of my newfound abilities that I’d only begun to explore. I had no idea if this would even work. 

As Vermithor let loose a gout of flame, the air between us - laden with invisible water vapor from the surface of the bay that we were still flying low over - crystallized in a shield of ice. 

Aemond, half-turned in his saddle, scrabbling to drag me back with the grasping fingers of only one hand, went utterly still as the frigid blast quenched Vermithor’s fire. The bronze dragon faltered, then tried again.

This time, the fire he belched barely made it past his tongue, and his mouth snapped closed as the tips of his teeth suddenly ached with bitter cold. 

“Fuckin’ A!” I bellowed as Vermithor and his rider slackened their pace, widening the gap between us. Perhaps a little drunk with power, I let go of the rope netting, stood up, extended both hands, and froze a solid wall between us and our pursuers. “Take that, motherfuckers!” I shouted with glee as the sheet of ice fell into the waves and broke apart, then turned over my shoulder to grin at Aemond. 

And that was the moment that I lost my balance.

It happened in slow motion.

Aemond’s single blue eye went wide and he actually launched himself off the saddle and took a few steps down Vhagar’s spine as he reached for me, but I tipped backward faster than he could move. Our fingers briefly touched before I was tumbling past Vhagar’s wing and through thin air. 

Fortunately, we hadn’t gained much elevation since our pass over Dragonstone; Vhagar had spent her energy on forward momentum rather than an upward climb, otherwise the fall would have killed me.

I had the presence of mind to cross my ankles and point my toes as I hit the surface of the water, then I was clawing back toward the light until my lungs were burning. I burst through the surface just as I thought my strength was spent, gasping and flailing. 

My first rational thought was don’t turn back. I tried to project that to Aemond and to Vhagar: keep going; don’t come back for me! Frantically, I looked toward Dragonstone. The two smaller dragons - Silverwing and Vermax, most likely - were still in pursuit, but keeping a cautious distance. Their riders probably hadn’t seen me fall. 

Vhagar was still headed for the coast, which thankfully wasn’t far off. 

My unspoken command arrowed through the air between us: Fly, Vhagar. Sōvēs. Carry him to safety. That last part surprised me. I shouldn’t care what happens to Aemond Targaryen.  

I dragged my attention back to where it belonged: my own predicament. Hoping fervently that there weren’t sea monsters equivalent to dragons in the waters of Westeros, I started swimming for what looked like a narrow beach on a long promontory. I’d thrashed around in the surf for about five minutes, contemplated stripping off my dress and the beautiful embroidered boots Daemon had bought me so they didn’t drag me to the bottom of Blackwater Bay, then realized I might not have to swim. 

I extended my hands, froze a platform of ice in front of me, and crawled onto it in a thoroughly undignified struggle, grateful that Rhaenyra’s dragons had apparently given up the chase and that Aemond and Vhagar were nowhere to be seen. Once I was standing, however, I just froze the next ten feet or so before me and walked… then jogged… then ran with increasing confidence across my makeshift ice bridge, which broke apart and melted behind me as I approached the sand.

Panting, I fell to my knees on dry land and rested there, jittery, on my hands and knees as the adrenaline cleared out of my system.

Finally, I got to my feet - slapping ineffectually at the sand on my wet skirt - to get a look around. The sun was low on the horizon, so the black mouth of an enormous sea cave not far from my narrow stretch of beach on the right looked particularly threatening. I shivered, contemplating the sheer cliff walls in front of me. To my left, the beach ended in a pile of jumbled rocks.

“Now would be a good time to come back, Aemond,” I muttered, but the sunset skies were empty. The prospect of crossing in front of the cave to try to find a place where I could climb up to proper land was daunting, but so was the alternative: spending the night on a beach that might disappear when the tide came in. With a resigned huff, I started squelching toward the cave in my wet boots as the sun set. 

The wet leather must have announced my presence because when I was standing on the last of the sand trying to gather my courage to make another ice bridge to cross in front of the echoing blackness of the cave’s entrance, a low growl issued from its depths.

“Oh shit,” I whispered. “What fresh horror is this?”

Echoing splashes, and from the deepening dark of the cave, a horned head on a sinuous neck slowly appeared. The dragon was black as my hair, but when it turned its baleful green gaze full on me, the telltale threat of dragonflame didn’t cut through the gloom of quickly descending twilight. 

Instead, we just stared at each other with matching emerald eyes.

Vaguely, I remembered something about wild dragons. Particularly one they called the Cannibal because it was rumored to feed on smaller dragons and dragon eggs. Hopefully not crunchy human snacks all salty from the sea? I almost laughed.

“You’re supposed to be on Dragonstone,” I found myself observing stupidly. 

The island was just across a narrow strait behind me. 

As if reading my thoughts, the dragon raised its head and looked toward the distant outline of Dragonstone. Another low growl issued from its chest. I couldn’t get a good look at the beast because it was still mostly inside the cave, but its head was at least as big as Vhagar’s. Two symmetrical horns extended back from its skull, and another matching set sprouted from the same place and curved toward its mouth. 

I should have been terrified, so it made no sense at all that I said, “How ‘bout giving me a lift back to Rook’s Rest?”

It made even less sense that the dragon’s head whipped back toward me, stilled, then slowly lowered onto the sand at my feet.

Chapter Text

I wouldn’t call my instantaneous bond with the dragon telepathic; I couldn’t hear his thoughts in words, and I’m fairly certain he didn’t interpret mine through language, either. (Which was fortunate, I realized somewhat belatedly, because the only word I’d picked up in High Valyrian was dracarys, which didn’t exactly suit either of our needs at the moment, especially given that I wasn’t entirely sure a wild dragon even understood the language of the dragonlords.) Instead, I could somehow think my intentions to him the way I summoned fire and ice: without any verbal conjuring. I visualized, and what my mind’s eye saw became reality. It was similar with… 

I paused.

My dragon needed a name. The Cannibal - while duly intimidating - just didn’t seem right. I toyed with a few possibilities. Smaug certainly fit him better than Falkor, though I couldn’t help but consider him lucky given that our fortuitous meeting had simultaneously given me my own means of transport and armed me with one of the most valuable assets in Westeros. Toothless was out of the question, given his maw of serrated fangs, despite the color coincidence. Though I wasn’t quite sure how dragon genders worked, Tiamat didn’t fit, either. Draco just felt lazy. Fafnir, however, was appealing. 

“Fafnir?” I murmured as I sat astride the smooth glasslike scales between his wings. The dragon growled, a low, murderous sound. “Okay, okay!” I quickly capitulated, wracking my brain.

I tried again. “Viserion?” That was the only one of the dragon names Daenerys Targaryen had used that I remembered. The dragon shook tail to horned head like a wet dog, as if casting off the moniker.

“Smaug?” I said, trying to make it sound appropriately fearsome. All of the Peter Jackson film images collided with the animated Hobbit from my childhood in my head. 

One of his emerald eyes fixed on me. If a dragon could glare, that’s what he was doing. 

“Picky, picky!” I chided, patting him stupidly on a shiny black scale the size of my whole hand. 

An absurd idea crossed my mind, and before I could bite it back, it rolled off my tongue as a single image of a young Gaspard Ulliel with a diabolically handsome grin on his blood-streaked face flashed behind my eyes. “Hannibal.”

A different kind of growl answered me this time, and a strange euphoria rushed through my veins. 

“Of course,” I signed in resignation. “Hannibal the Cannibal. Because that isn’t completely ridiculous.” 

I glanced around us. As I suspected, the narrow strip of beach in front of the sheer cliffs was narrowing as the tide came in and the last of the dying light of the sun faded. A wholly unfamiliar sky of stars winked to life. 

“How the hell do you get out of here?” I asked aloud even though I knew I’d get no answer. Instead, I felt a powerful urge to crawl back down Hannibal’s neck toward the curving horns that sprung from his skull, and after a moment’s consideration, I realized that was probably the safest place to ride. I’d automatically seated myself between his wings since that was where both Daemon and Aemond had ridden, but they’d had the advantage of a leather saddle. I had none, and at least the forest of spikes around Hannibal’s head gave me something to hold onto. 

And hold on I did – because as soon as I had the image of the outline of Rook’s Rest as seen from Vhagar’s back alongside the intention to fly there in my mind, Hannibal turned away from the bay, dug his claws into the cliffside, and dragged us straight up its face with herculean steps that dislodged boulders and a hailstorm of smaller stones that rained down onto the beach in a cacophony.  His vast wings spread and strained against the cooling air with a sound like a hurricane, and just as he cleared the edge of the cliff, he hurtled vertically into the night-black sky with stomach-churning speed. The only thing that kept me from tumbling straight down to my death on the rocks below was the slightest curve of his powerful neck and a ridge of upright spines that my back flattened against with what felt like the G-force of a shuttle liftoff. 

When I could breathe again, I cursed a blue streak, clutching fast to any available bony spine with jittery hands that vibrated with what could only be described as dragonly amusement. 

“Very funny, Mister,” I spat, though any effort to save face was lost on a dragon who could literally feel what I was feeling.  

Being a passenger on dragonback was trippy, but riding solo was something else entirely. I had no expertise to trust – just the guidance of my own instincts, which I honestly expected to be pathetically bad. 

Not for the first time in Westeros, I underestimated myself. 

After the initial stark terror faded, flying started to feel almost… intuitive. Undoubtedly, it was the magic of whatever had bonded me to this enormous, elemental creature. Under normal circumstances, I was desperately afraid of heights. Like, sewing-machine-leg-ten-feet-off-the-ground-on-a-climbing-wall-even-when-securely-belayed kind of afraid of heights. Atop Hannibal, I feared falling about as much as I feared forgetting how to walk: the sky became an extension of the ground I trod with practiced certainty. As flight secured our bond, I could feel the dragon move beneath me like another limb – I’d lean slightly to the left and he’d bank smoothly in response; I’d tilt back and he’d climb. It was pretty heady at first, like driving the world’s most powerful and responsive sports car, except this one could belch flame.

I urged Hannibal higher - up above the cloudline - and bellowed “Dracarys!” just for the hell of it, pairing the command with mental images of dragonflame.

Below us, he let loose a gout of strange greenish flame like wildfire: so searingly intense even I could feel its warmth.

“Holy shit!” I crowed, then stared at my own hand before extending it out between one of Hannibal’s curling horns and his wing, concentrating all my attention on imagining a similar blast bursting from my palm. 

To my astonishment, it worked. It wasn’t as powerful as the golden dragonflame I could conjure, but I suspected I could improve with practice.

“Nobody better cross us!” I whooped, but then quickly sobered.

A dragon was a bit like a crown: an invitation to a challenge. And despite the fact that I had all the makings of a formidable adversary, I had no desire to draw attention to myself. Not in a world where the rule of the day seemed to be kill or be killed. I didn’t particularly want to do either. My instinct from the beginning was to keep my abilities close to the vest, and I wasn’t inclined to flaunt them now. 

Besides, I still had a different dragon to tame, and one that was potentially even wilder. I shuddered to imagine Aemond’s rage at his own helplessness: with King’s Landing now lost to him twice over. I wondered if he considered me a loss as well; he’d certainly seemed covetous of my power and what it might mean for the balance of the scales. I didn’t dare presume I meant anything more to him than leverage. 

As we approached Rook’s Rest - a dim bright spot on a nearly lightless coast - I directed Hannibal toward the dense forest surrounding the fortress, uncertain. For all I knew, Aemond had flown straight back to Harrenhal, but I wasn’t about to descend on any occupied fortification atop an unknown dragon and provoke an armed defense. I sincerely hoped the images of Vhagar that flashed through my mind were sufficient warning to Hannibal if Aemond’s mount was also lurking in the woods. 

We landed uneventfully in a clearing, and I silently gave my permission to hunt or wander but to come at my call. This wasn’t met with any sense of simmering rebellion, so I could only trust that I’d know how to summon my dragon if the need arose. 

I began the long slog toward the glowing silhouette of the stone keep. Fortunately, dragonflight had dried my gown, my hair, and - for the most part - my boots, so every step wasn’t uncomfortably damp and I wasn’t shivering in the rapidly cooling night air. As I approached the walls of the fortress - still blackened and tumbledown in some places - I could hear some kind of commotion in the inner courtyard. A pair of tall wooden doors swung wide to release a torrent of mounted soldiers who were riding hard until they saw me walking alone down the road.

Confused, they reined in their horses and the leader of the men called to me. “Who goes there?”

In my exhaustion, I almost chuckled. People actually say that?

“Alys Rivers!” I called out, fully expecting an unknown bastard’s name to have absolutely no impact. But a murmur of surprise went through the assembled company, and one rider immediately made for me while another turned and galloped back toward Rook’s Rest after the shouted command rang out: “Inform His Grace immediately!”

I just gritted my teeth and stood still as a man on horseback swept me up onto the saddle in front of him with one powerful armored arm, barely slowing before he wheeled and rode hard with me back through the open gates. 

He stank like sweat and iron and woodsmoke and sour breath, and it occurred to me how unusual it probably was in this world that both Daemon and Aemond smelled more like the men I was used to: clean with only the barest hint of leather or whatever sorcery of medieval shampoo that made Targaryen hair so goddamn perfect. I leaned away not-so-subtly as he roared, “Prince Regent! She is found!”

Aemond was already halfway down the stairs that spilled into the cobbled courtyard when we clattered to a stop. Instantly, I slid down the side of the horse of the soldier who’d grabbed me and took a few steps forward so I could face him. He strode forward purposefully - somehow managing to look unhurried - and grabbed me by the upper arms, his single eye searching for an explanation for my sudden appearance. 

“Call off the hunt!” he commanded the men over my shoulder, then dragged me close enough to whisper in my ear. “Can you fly as well, witch?” he hissed. 

“In a manner of speaking,” I told him coyly as he held me at arm’s length again, inspecting me. I studied him in turn, doing my best to hide my surprise that I'd found him here. There could be only one reason for why he hadn't returned directly to Harrenhal -- he refused to leave without me. I reminded myself that I was probably nothing more to him than a strategic advantage, but I couldn't stop the prickle of electricity that crept over my skin.

“Come,” Aemond demanded, dragging me toward the keep. I resisted, opening my mouth to insist I could walk perfectly well without his help, thank you very much, but he turned and swept me into his arms before starting back up the stairs.

With a sigh, I let him carry me across the threshold of the castle proper, trying to ignore the cultural associations which he was probably completely unaware of. 

“You planning on carrying me up all of the stairs in this place?” I teased. The keep was at least six stories tall. Only then did he set me down with a scowl.

“I insist that you tell me how you managed to get all the way from the waters of Blackwater Bay to my door before the men I dispatched to find you even departed the keep,” he growled.

So did my stomach, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten all day.

“Not until after dinner,” I practically pleaded. 

Aemond’s eye narrowed. “You!” he called out to a servant standing with her head bowed near an archway that led deeper into the fortress. “Fetch a platter and bring it to my chamber.” She nodded, dropped a quick curtsey, and fled the hall, hopefully in the direction of the kitchen.

“Your chamber?” I blurted, wide-eyed, as Aemond towed me by a wrist up another set of stairs wordlessly. 

“Isn’t it rather unseemly for us to talk in your chamber?” I whispered, trying to maintain a pretext of decency around all these strangers who must be wondering who I was to the Prince Regent… or whatever his title was now that he no longer controlled King’s Landing. I didn’t exactly need rumors swirling that I’d share the bed of any willing Targaryen prince.

“Would you rather the dungeon?” he retorted without slackening his pace. 

We emerged on a small landing on the top level and I followed Aemond past two armed guards into a large space with a huge, curtain-draped bed on a raised dais. My gaze drifted around the rest of the room: a heavy wooden table with six chairs beneath a mullioned window presumably overlooking the night-dark bay, high walls hung with beautiful tapestry, and a semi-circular fireplace as tall as I was with a glowing blaze that filled the room with welcome warmth. Immediately, I sank down on the woven rug in front of it. 

Aemond stood behind me, arms crossed over his chest. “Tell me how you came here,” he began again. It did not escape my attention that he barred the door from the inside first.

I rolled my eyes and looked at him over one shoulder. “Aren’t you more interested in why I came here? I could have gone… oh, I don’t know. Literally.anywhere.else.” I glowered at him in the firelight.

His nostrils flared. “Why then?”

There was no point in lying, really. I couldn’t think of anything clever to say. “To reason with you.”

He sneered. “I alone will choose my path.” Then, softly, under his breath: “I cannot even trust my own kin.”

I felt a little sorry for him. Too sorry to rub salt on the raw wound by trying to convince him it was probably for the best. To deflect his curiosity about me, I asked, “What will you do now?”

He paced in front of the fire, hands clenched behind his back. It must be a habit for him; he did it unthinkingly, uncaring that he had an audience. “Return to Harrenhal. Hunt down my cowardly uncle. Send word to my grasping grandfather Otto Hightower of his daughter’s betrayal and rally him and my brother Daeron to our cause. Fight my way across the Riverlands with Cole and retake the Iron Throne in dragonfire like Aegon the Conqueror, or die trying.”

I yawned. “Sounds very exciting.”

Aemond stopped, spun abruptly on a heel, and grabbed my throat with one cool, long-fingered hand. “Don’t mock me, witch.” 

I swallowed hard. It was rather cruel of me to be so flippant. His smooth skin was etched with lines of real pain, and it blazed in his single blue eye: the hottest flame. I rested my hand on his wrist and his fingers slackened just a little. “Forgive me,” I whispered. “I’m tired, and hungry. I’m not myself.” A weak excuse, but he bought it.

A knock sounded at the door, and Aemond strode over to unbar it, holding it open as the quiet, obsequious young servant shuffled inside, deposited a steaming tray on the table, and backed deftly out of the room in a low bow. Again, Aemond barred the door behind her.

I got to my feet as he returned to the table and poured two cups of wine. He drank his in a few gulps before refilling the cup and brooding over it in silence. He did not touch the food even though there was more than enough for two. I pulled out a chair and fell upon a bowl of what appeared to be beef stew: potatoes, carrots, peas, and chunks of savory meat in a brown soupy gravy. When it touched my lips, I could have sworn it was better than ambrosia. 

I’d been greedily spooning it into my mouth for about two minutes, blissfully unaware, before I noticed Aemond watching me. Leaning back, I raised a brow and held out a heel of bread. “Hungry?” I offered.

He shook his head no, sipping at his wine haughtily.

I reached for my own glass but put it down again after a few long pulls. It was vaguely sweet and remarkably strong. I hadn’t touched a drop of Westerosi wine in my time here, and I could tell it was not a vintage for lightweights, as I had likely become.

Still, since it was seemingly the only beverage available, I drained my goblet and Aemond refilled it before I decided I’d eaten my fill of the stew. Eating had been something of a secondary concern since I’d found myself in Westeros, and my stomach had shrunk accordingly; its contents were probably half wine by the time I stood and braced myself on the edge of the table, unsteady.

Aemond stepped forward and cupped my elbow to prevent me from stumbling. I craned my head upward to look at him: past that curtain of silver hair and bladelike jaw that made my breath catch in my throat. I didn’t realize quite how drunk I was until I boldly asked, “So, you planning on tying me to the bed again?”  

He was not rattled in the slightest. Instead, he simply replied, “I don’t think that will be necessary.” But his heated gaze swept up and down the full length of my body. “However, you cannot wear that filthy thing.”

“Filthy?” I echoed, affronted. “I just went swimming!”

His lips curled as he stared at the muddied hems of my trailing skirts. “And then dragged yourself through a forest and gods-know where else.”

I planted my hands on my hips and glared at him. “Fine. What should I wear then, Your Majesty?”

“Your Majesty?” Aemond repeated curiously. 

Quickly, I corrected. “What would Your Grace have me wear instead?” 

For the first time, he looked uncertain. I stamped my foot audibly, then abruptly lost my patience and started tugging at the laces on the bodice of my dress. “Fine. Fine. As you wish!” I loosened the dress just enough to wriggle it off my shoulders and over my hips, then stepped out of it, wearing only knee-high embroidered boots and the loose-fitting linen smallclothes I’d managed to procure. They consisted of a short blouse-like chemise gathered under my breasts with a drawstring closure to provide some modicum of support and bloomer-like shorts cinched at the waist and thigh. “Happy?” I demanded stubbornly before it occurred to me to be self-conscious. 

His single eye opened just a little wider before one corner of his mouth lifted just a little. “Those are filthy, too,” he observed before very deliberately turning his back to me and unbuckling the first of his belts.

I propped my booted foot up on the arm of one of the dining chairs and hurriedly unlaced it, keeping an eye on him. Aemond was disarming himself with deliberate slowness, so I managed to get both of my boots off and dart to the side of the bed before he turned over one shoulder to look at me.

“I meant the smallclothes.” 

I gaped open-mouthed at his back for a few stunned seconds. Malicious compliance it is, then. I pulled the generous layers of bedding on the four-poster bed open, crawled under them, and rolled around very deliberately as I untied the little bows holding the last of my clothing on. Then, I balled the linen in my hand, waited, and tossed it directly in his face as he turned back toward the bed. It fell just short.

He only raised the eyebrow above his intact eye and approached the opposite side of the bed. He was still wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and his leather pants.

“Oh, I see how it is,” I scoffed as he peeled back the bedding on his side and slid under it without looking at me. The bed was more than large enough to accommodate the both of us – in fact, there was room for another person entirely to fit between us without anyone even touching. Aemond was walking a thin line of decorum while still giving himself an advantage. I refused to be intimidated. I could still incinerate him at my whim – naked or not.   

“On the morrow, you will accompany me back to Harrenhal,” he declared, staring up at the curtained roof of the bed.

I pressed my lips together and took a calming breath before answering. “You cannot compel me, Aemond. If I come with you, it is because I choose to.” 

I could see his jaw clench in frustration, but he did not acknowledge my reply except to say, “I did not compel you to sleep beside me, yet here you are.” Only then did he turn to fix me with his single eye. “Does that mean you chose to?”

Suddenly flustered by the intensity of his gaze, I fired back, “Do you always wear your eyepatch to bed?”

Again, he answered with unflappable calm and a sinister knowing. “Would you rather I did not?” Without waiting for a reply, he reached up with one hand and peeled off the patch. Underneath it, a rough-cut sapphire gleamed deep blue in the ruined socket of his eye, unmarked even as the echo of a phantom blade cleaved through his forehead, over his brow, and halfway down his cheek. 

He expected me to flinch away. I didn’t. 

Instead, I leaned closer.

It was terrible and beautiful, the glowing stone in the ruin of his face. Somehow, it did not detract from his beauty. He froze as I reached out and traced the full length of the scar with a gentle fingertip. Just as I brushed the end, he seized my wrist in a clenched fist. 

“How did it happen?” I asked softly, again pretending ignorance.

“Lucerys,” he breathed the name like an incantation, and I understood in a flash what might have driven him to chase the younger boy down over Shipbreaker Bay. 

“Rhaenyra’s son,” I affirmed. 

“Not anymore,” Aemond spat bitterly, but not without some gratification. 

I knew it had not been his intention to kill the boy, despite the hatred I could feel through his grip on my wrist. 

“Doesn’t it hurt?” I ventured, squinting at the rough edges of the stone in the dim light of the fire. He still held my hand firmly away. 

“It reminds me,” he replied stonily.

It’s a kind of penitent’s belt, then, I realized, but not one of repentance. Instead, it was a subtle, intentional, self-inflicted torment to keep the edge of his anger sharp.

“Even when you sleep?”

“Always.”

There was a kind of twisted conviction in his voice: something utterly foreign in my experience. Doubtless there were men like him even in my world – men who suppressed trauma or forged it into weapons of revenge with relentless discipline. But I didn’t know them. The men I called friends or lovers were of a gentler sort: raised on emotional intelligence and almondmilk cappuccinos after the gym and talk therapy and healthy boundaries. A safer, more evolved kind that any sane woman would prefer. 

But something in me was drawn to the dangerous Heathcliffs, the repressed Mr. Darcys, the hopelessly tangled ones with the big, waving red flags.

Well, fuck.

I, apparently, was the kind of girl who walked barefoot into the woods chasing faerie lights and fell through worlds instead of staying in my comfortable bed.

I, apparently, was the kind of girl who spoke up when she should have just shut.her.stupid.mouth and volunteered herself to stop a war without the first clue of how to go about it.

I, apparently, was the kind of girl who didn’t turn away from the scarred dragonrider with his devouring resentment and blind sapphire eye, but instead leaned over his prone body and pressed my lips onto his. 

And that kind of girl always managed to get herself into all kinds of trouble.

Chapter Text

At first, Aemond went perfectly still and it was awkward as hell. 

I drew back a little, explanations and apologies competing for an opportunity to fill the silence between us. 

But then he flipped deftly, tipping me onto my back as his mouth closed greedily over mine and his lean body molded against me in a breathless confirmation of mutual wanting. His hands were everywhere: one coarse and calloused from uncounted hours in the yard swinging a sword and the other only slightly less so, raising goosebumps in their wake. There was no hesitancy in the way he ground the swell of his shaft into the hollow of my belly and shamelessly explored my bare skin. 

It had been a moment of wine-fueled compassion that compelled me to kiss him: my modern sensibilities driving an emotional connection that I understood far better than he did. His response was - in many ways - like Westeros was proving to be: far beyond my illusion of control. Once again I found myself trying to impose my understanding of the rules of the world onto circumstances that followed their own mandates. As I reeled inwardly, Aemond whipped his shirt off with one hand so quickly that I barely had time to suck in a breath before he was on me again, tongue pushing past my teeth with bone-melting intensity.

Despite the urge to lean into him, my stubborn brain spiraled down a wormhole of imagined cautionary consequences, and I wrenched my face away from his and gasped, “Whoa, buddy!”

The unfamiliar term was just enough to pump his brakes. “Buddy?” he repeated, pulling back to study me skeptically. He understood whoa well enough. 

My heart stuttered as I gazed up at one narrowed blue eye and its glowing sapphire counterpart in his singular, sharp-edged face. It was so surreal that he was a flesh-and-blood person, his heartbeat thrumming against my chest.  

“Um,” I began, but lost the thread of my thoughts as I became distinctly aware of that he was shirtless and I wore nothing at all. “I just meant that I need you to slow down.”

He sneered. “Your boldness would suggest otherwise.”

I gave an exasperated sigh. “I know. That was presumptuous of me.” I grasped for the words. “I just…” Hopeless. My thoughts were a maelstrom. “It’s… complicated.”

Aemond Targaryen leaned back just enough to peel his chest off of mine and give me a very deliberate once-over that said everything he didn’t as I blushed under his gaze: doesn’t seem that complicated. But he was perpetually on guard, so he mastered himself with admirable restraint. “Your sorcery has no hold on me," he declared with arrogant confidence.

I slid out from under him, propping myself up on one arm as I dragged the sheets up to cover myself. “It’s not sorcery,” I objected, raising my chin in defiance.

He only scoffed. “The oldest kind. One both my brother and my uncle are beholden to.” He fixed me with that unblinking blue eye. “But I am not.”

“You’re the one who insisted I take off my clothes!” I countered.

Cooly, he replied, “I made no such demand.”

I stewed. Technically, he was right. He was testing my boundaries. Everything with Aemond was a game of strategy, and he’d outmaneuvered me. Still, I’d seen that his attraction was genuine. That was a card I could play. I tilted my head coyly and answered his unflinching gaze with my own. “I’m not trying to manipulate you,” I reassured him, though I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. “But I do feel drawn to you.” It wasn’t a lie, at least. More of a calculated confession: I suspected his weakness was to be seen by someone after being overlooked and underestimated for so long.

Aemond’s expression shifted slightly before he masked it with practiced stoicism. I leaned toward him, both by design and because I couldn’t resist the urge to watch the subtleties of his face. “It’s why I came back.” I trailed a fingertip down his sternum, barely touching, then let my eyes widen deliberately as I drew back and dropped another truth, or near enough to one: “But you frighten me, too.” Only then did I cast my gaze down and tug modestly at the edge of the sheet. “I’m… confused.” I snuck a glance up at him through my lashes, wondering how well my coquette act was landing. 

Aemond was watching me thoughtfully, assessing to what extent my apparent vulnerability was genuine.

After a beat of silence, he slipped one hand behind my hair and drew my lips toward his. For the first time, his kiss started almost tenderly: his mouth, slightly open, just brushing mine, then scooping with a careful curiosity: a slow build that ended unexpectedly in his fist balled at the back of my skull, dragging my face upward as he straightened onto his knees beside me and hissed through bared teeth, “Enough of your games, witch. Tell me how you came here.” 

“Ugh, fine,” I groaned in resignation. I’d managed to put him off about as long as I could. It was either tell him the truth or fuck him, and - despite the fact that I’d rather do the latter - it felt cheap, using sex as a distraction.

His fingers were still tangled in my hair as he loomed threateningly over me, so it was almost fun to casually drop, “A dragon.”

Aemond’s nostrils flared and his fist tightened. “Which dragon?” Perhaps he thought I’d hitched a ride with one of Rhaenyra’s supporters – who might be patiently waiting outside for my signal to attack. 

“My dragon,” I retorted, twisting my head and flinching. “Do you mind?”

Somewhat to my surprise, he instantly released me. I reached for his discarded shirt and pulled it over my head almost blithely as he processed this revelation in thin-lipped silence.

Finally, Aemond sprung off the bed, grabbed my wrist, and wrenched me to my feet. “Show me,” he demanded.

“Now?” I asked incredulously even as he towed me toward the table and the floor-to-ceiling window it fronted - which, as it turned out - was not merely a window. Aemond twisted a small handle and opened a glass-paned door, shoving me out onto a narrow balcony with a stone parapet.

“Summon your dragon,” he challenged smugly, fully expecting to call my bluff. 

“It’s dark,” I objected, thinking of Hannibal’s coal-black scales. 

Aemond’s answering snigger was low and mocking, and that - once again - pissed me off. Since I really had no idea how to call a dragon, I stuck two fingers in my mouth and made the loudest noise I could: a whistle that echoed over the still bay and the surrounding forest with unexpected clarity. Meanwhile, I cast out a silent plea into the aether as I visualized Hannibal swooping across the silver-gilt surface of the water a safe distance from the balcony. 

Aemond’s head whipped toward me, a look of abject disgust twisting his elegant features. Obviously, he disapproved of me whistling for my dragon like a dog. I shrugged innocently, like I’m making this up as I go.

For a few agonizing moments, it seemed that Hannibal wouldn’t comply. Aemond crossed his arms over his bare chest as he waited with brows raised, and the smirk on his face was downright infuriating despite the undeniable badassery of the glinting sapphire in his scarred left eye. 

But just as his fist was closing around my wrist again to drag me through the narrow doorway and back into the chamber - no doubt to berate me for my flagrant lies - an enormous shadow whipped around the rectangular tower, momentarily blocking our view of the entire glittering bay. Instinctually, Aemond’s grip tightened, and the bones in my wrist whined in protest.

Hannibal banked and turned, and when he approached the tower again, a menacing greenish glow burned in his half-open maw. Immediately, Aemond let go of my arm, his hair whipping in the hurricane that Hannibal’s wings raised as the dragon raced past the tower on a fly-by that would have put Maverick to shame. 

“You can be my wingman any time!” I called after him, laughing with irrepressible glee. I wheeled on Aemond smugly. “The plaque for the losers is down in the ladies room.”

It was almost a pity that he had no idea how funny that was, even if it was stupidly misogynistic, all things considered.

The shock and confusion on Aemond’s face was colored with something else now: respect, and not a small amount of wariness. It took only a split-second, however, until his eye glinted with cunning, and I knew immediately what he was thinking: if he could convince me to fight alongside him, we could turn the tide in his favor.

I planted my fists on my hips and stared him down. “We are not for hire,” I warned, fully aware of how incongruous my bravado was when I was at least a head shorter than him, barefoot, and wearing nothing under his loose linen shirt. 

But for the first time, Aemond seemed inclined to negotiate with me like an equal rather than merely bullying or coercing me into following his agenda. 

When we stepped back inside, I cocked a dark brow at him. “Oh, is a dragon all it takes to be granted a little courtesy around here?” I was reminded keenly of Daenerys, whose three dragons were often not enough to earn her an equal place alongside men: a fiction remarkably close to my reality.

Aemond grudgingly conceded. “Power only acknowledges equal or greater power.” 

In the world he knew, I realized, that was unequivocally true. It is what goaded him onto Vhagar’s back when he was just a child – no matter what it cost him. He would have risked death rather than be powerless. Even losing an eye was worth gaining a dragon. Again, I was disarmed by a sudden wave of empathy for him. 

“Why do you want the throne so badly?” I whispered. 

He opened his mouth to answer dismissively, but closed it again, considering. Clearly, it was not a question he’d ever been directly asked. Then his face hardened. “Because I cannot trust anyone else to sit on it.”

“So you’d rather become a tyrant than be ruled by one?” I prodded, ungently.

He stepped closer to me – so close, I had to drop my head back on my neck to see his face. That fine, aquiline nose flared again with suppressed emotion. Instead of answering, he asked, “Have you ever had to fight to survive, Alys Rivers?” 

It took me down a notch, too, because the honest answer was no. Not really. And Aemond had been fighting all his life, though I wasn’t sure if it was for something, or against everything. 

He reached out as if to stroke my cheek, but his hand closed around my neck instead. He squeezed. “Because when you’re looking death in the eye…” I pulled desperately at his wrist as his fingers tightened. “...all you care to be…” Black crept into the borders of my vision and my lungs screamed for air. “... is alive.” He squeezed harder.

Tendrils of flame burst from my fingers, and Aemond released me with a hiss of pain. I gasped and staggered, falling to my knees as the euphoria of drawing deep, ragged breaths wracked me. 

When I recovered enough to whip my head up and glare at him, he was laughing: a mirthless sound. He held up his wrist: angry, blistered skin encircled his wrist. “See?”

“You’re a bastard,” I rasped through a raw throat. 

“Speak for yourself,” he retorted, and I groaned inwardly because, in this world, bastard only had one meaning, and it didn’t apply to Aemond Targaryen.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” I insisted, getting to my feet. 

“But it is,” he countered harshly. “And pretending otherwise will get you killed.” Aemond rested his burnt wrist on a folded cloth on the table and poured cool wine over it, his face impassive.

Seething, I watched him: the contrast of perfectly articulated muscle bunching under marble skin with the frustratingly smooth curtain of hair that fell around his shoulders like starlight. He was beautiful and terrible – as betwitching as I imagined Milton’s Lucifer might be.  

But it was stubborn determination to prove him wrong that drove me to his side. I tore a strip of clean linen off the hem of his shirt; the hand-stitched seams gave easily as I furiously ripped it free and grabbed Aemond’s hand. He watched me in turn as I covered the burn carefully and tied off the ends.

“I’ll grind some herbs to soothe it in the morning,” I told him. 

He nodded absently, indifferent to the pain. I realized that he’d proven his point the same way he’d done with Vhagar – another scar was a sacrifice he was willing to make. There was a softness in his one-eyed gaze, though, when he brushed the fingertips of his other hand over the marks he’d left on my neck, as if he regretted the necessity. I shivered.

Aemond had been taught hard lessons. It was the only way he knew how to teach what he needed me to learn: that I could not afford to be naive. 

As if he was reading my mind, he caught my gaze with the gravity of his own, and warned, “To be a dragonrider is to put your piece on the board.” His hand found the curve of my cheek. “And if you play the game of thrones, Alys,” he drew my face closer to his: so close his lips brushed mine again. “You must play to win.” 

“Even against you?” I retorted.

“If it comes to that.” His lips were trailing down my neck now, feathered kisses like wordless amends. “But think of what we could do together.”

Chapter Text

We slept next to each other in an unspoken truce: me in his torn shirt and him in only his black leather breeches. I wasn’t sure if Aemond wrestled with his thoughts as long as I did. I turned my back to him and he lay still as death beside me and stubbornly refused to even glance his way. 

Eventually, dreamless sleep claimed me.

I awoke alone in the vast bed, its curtains drawn so completely that I was momentarily disoriented in the almost-total darkness. A burst of eye-wateringly bright light greeted me as I swiped desperately at the heavy fabric and practically tumbled out of the bed onto unsteady feet like a drowning person suddenly cast onto solid ground. 

A fully dressed Aemond raised his head from where he sat at the head of the rectangular wooden table and regarded me with a single unblinking eye. He had replaced the patch over the sapphire in his ruined left socket, but I could still feel its unseeing gaze on me like some kind of mute variant of the tell-tale heart.  

Serenely, he watched me regain my footing, tug awkwardly at the now-uneven hem of his ripped shirt, and try to smooth my hair. He just sat there, his frustratingly perfect face lit from the side with all the dramatic contrast of a goddamn Vogue cover. You look so cool, my absurd brain observed with the barest hint of Daisy Buchanan’s southern lilt: dripping with a kind of privilege and ease that I’d never known. You always look so cool.

Somehow - by the grace of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ghost - I managed not to say it, though even if I had, the associations would thankfully be utterly lost on Aemond Targaryen. 

I cast about for my discarded dress and smallclothes with as much dignity as I could manage, privately berating whatever bonkers part of my subconscious had dredged up that particular association and all it implied.  

I’d prefer to avoid adding vapid female protagonist besotted with toxic antihero to my growing list of humiliating tropes: excessively clumsy and awkward but somehow irresistible heroine and fainting damsel. Let’s focus on the kickass dragon-riding superhero, thank you very much. 

With a sigh, I turned to Aemond after a somewhat cursory but fruitless search. “Where are my clothes?” I demanded. Correction: half-naked, kickass dragon-riding superhero.

“Eat,” he replied instead, gesturing to a covered dish in the center of the table. “I sent for a fresh gown.”

I dragged the platter over to the opposite head of the long trestle, scowling at him, and took a seat before peering under the rounded silver dome that still retained a hint of warmth. Breakfast consisted of some kind of porridge and a bowl of fresh berries which I tucked into gratefully. After a few bites, I looked up at Aemond across the polished expanse of the tabletop. “Do you ever eat?” 

When he didn’t reply, I stood my spoon up in my bowl, balancing it with the tip of a finger, and cocked a brow at him. “You more of a black coffee and cigarettes kinda guy?” 

His eye narrowed, like he was unsure if I was mocking him. 

I only waggled the end of my spoon at him knowingly and gave him an exaggerated wink, like he’d just spilled all his secrets.

A knock sounded at the door, and Aemond stood smoothly, accepting a neatly folded bundle from the same obsequious serving girl who had brought the food last night. She snuck a covert glance at me before Aemond closed the door on her retreating back.

“Fortunately, Lady Staunton did not take her entire wardrobe with her to Duskendale,” Aemond announced, placing the black-and-grey bundle on the tabletop between us. “When you are dressed, we will fly for Harrenhal.”

“Will we?” I snapped saucily, but Aemond didn’t take the bait, so I finished my breakfast in moody silence and stood, giving Aemond a long look. “Staying for the show?” I taunted lightly as my fingers worked at the buttons of the ruined shirt.

He only tossed my balled smallclothes at me lazily.

I swiped them from where they fell at my feet, tugging the ruffled shorts on first, then turning my back to him as I shrugged out of his shirt and pulled the chemise over my head, dragging my long, heavy train of hair up through the neckhole before I tightened the laces under my breasts and whirled back around to pick up the dress. 

Aemond was still watching me, his expression unreadable except for the lively interest in his single eye. I ignored him, diving into what I thought was the bodice of the gown head-first. Somehow, I managed to find my way out of the veritable parachute of voluminous fabric only to discover that Lady Staunton must be significantly taller and rounder than me – and her gown laced up the back. With the barest hint of mirth, Aemond came to my aid as I tried to see behind me to locate the tangled ends of the laces. 

I went still as he stood behind me, resisting the pull of his heartless gravity. He swept my hair over my shoulder, fingertips brushing my bare neck with frustrating electricity, then tugged roughly at the laces like some kind of vindictive handmaid, managing to cinch the gown tightly enough around my torso that there was no danger of it slipping off. Still, the skirt was a good foot too long, so I had to ball it in my fists in order to walk without tripping.

Aemond stepped back to appraise me critically. “It will do,” he concluded.

I glanced down at myself, pleasantly surprised. The bodice and skirt were made with a jet black, heavier-weight fabric that was still soft and had a subtle sheen like raw silk, but the sleeves were grey and gauzy: fitted at the top but opening into trailing panels heavily embroidered with intricate patterns in black thread. A matching panel of several layers of the lighter fabric was sewn into a deep v-shape on the front of the bodice, ending just above my belly button. It would have been scandalous except that the embroidery was dense enough to only hint at the bare skin beneath it. I tucked the hint of my white linen chemise under the scooping neckline, feeling more than a little like Morticia Addams. It was a wholly impractical dress, especially for dragon-riding, but an undeniably beautiful and finely made one. Hurriedly, I laced up my boots, keeping one eye on an increasingly impatient Aemond. There was some slinky underlayer whispering against my legs as I followed him out the door of the chamber.

I managed not to trip as we wound down the stairs and out into the courtyard. As soon as the men saw Aemond emerge, a groom was waiting with a saddled horse at the ready, and Aemond swept down the last flight of stairs and swung up onto its back in one remarkably fluid movement, silver hair flying.

“Oh, come on,” I said under my breath, half-exasperated and half-impressed as that particular montage played on a loop behind my eyes. As if he knew my own attempts to mount a horse in trailing finery would end in disaster, Aemond just wheeled the horse around to the foot of the staircase and dragged me onto the saddle in front of him, holding me fast around the waist with one arm.

We clattered out of the courtyard without so much as a thank-you to the force of men apparently still holding Rook’s Rest for the Prince Regent. I wondered briefly if they were even aware of the fall of King’s Landing. I held on for dear life as we galloped toward the thick forest surrounding the fortress; I was not an accomplished horsewoman on the best of days, much less riding side-saddle in a trailing gown on the back of a horse that became increasingly skittish as it scented dragon. 

Finally, Aemond reined the horse in, slid off its back, and pulled me down onto the ground beside him with his hands firmly around my waist before sending the horse back to the castle with a sharp strike on its haunches. 

Obligingly, I hiked up my skirts and followed Aemond into the trees, where we came upon the veritable mountain of Vhagar’s bulk. She lifted her jowled head almost lazily as Aemond wordlessly pushed me in front of him and we climbed the rope net that allowed us to reach the saddle. On several occasions, I nearly lost my footing or my grip as I juggled the billowy skirts of my gown, and Aemond caught me with an arm around my waist, a steadying fist around my bicep, or, once - mortifyingly - with his palm flat on my ass. Once we were settled in tandem on the saddle with his pelvis once again jammed against my back, Aemond gruffly commanded, “Sōvēs, Vhagar.”

No mention of my dragon, as if we’d both simply imagined him yesterday. So that’s how it is, huh? I thought to myself and let out a loud whistle as Vhagar lumbered to her feet and launched us into flight. 

From the trees on the eastern side of the keep, a massive, coal-black silhouette stirred. Aemond turned to watch as a dragon the size of his own flattened the upper canopy with the downdrafts from wings that were grey like the sleeves of my dress in the daylight. As my dragon took to the skies behind us, it was all I could do not to belt out the opening chorus of the opera rehearsal from Phantom: The trumpeting elephants sound; hear Romans, now, and tremble. Hark to his step on the ground: hear the drums! Hannibal comes!

“Atta boy,” I whispered instead.

Aemond and I both felt Vhagar rumble her displeasure, but she didn’t pick a fight. 

“I sent a raven to Cole,” Aemond unexpectedly volunteered once we’d flown high enough to disguise our dragons-of-unusual-size. His hot breath against my cheek was sufficient distraction to temporarily drag me out of the lighting sand of my thoughts before I got utterly swallowed by the slightly hysterical hilarity of DOUSs and the coincidence of the fire swamp and dragons. “He’s rallying the men for a ground offensive, though he’ll be pleased to discover that we now control the two largest dragons in the realm.”  

“Inconceivable!” I chortled with the slightest hint of a lisp… and then I absolutely lost it.

Aemond’s arm tightened around my waist as I dissolved into breathless laughter. He grew increasingly stiff and irritated as I gasped and hiccuped like a raving lunatic.

“Are you finished?” he asked coldly when I finally got ahold of myself.

“Finished, finished…” I cast about. “I suppose my mirth has… diminished.”

Aemond clenched his teeth and balled his fist at my waist as I fell apart again, pounding my own palms on my thighs as I shook with gales of laughter. It was so much worse than getting the giggles in church; the more I could feel his rage building, the funnier it all became until I was almost certain he’d pitch me off Vhagar’s back in disgust.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I panted, leaning my head back so it fell against Aemond’s collarbone as I gulped in air and rested the side of my forehead against the sharp edge of his jaw. “I’m just a little…”

My eyes went wide as a bolt of profound homesickness hit me like a gut punch. “Emotional,” I finished lamely. No Gatsby here. No black coffee and cigarettes. No Phantom of the Opera or Princess Bride inside jokes. Just me: trying to stop a gorgeous sociopath - who’d just as soon throttle me as kiss me - from incinerating half of a kingdom to salve his bruised ego and compensate for all his unresolved trauma. And just like that, the tears of laughter turned bitter and stinging in my eyes, and I was crying for real - and, as it turned out, uncontrollably - for the first time since I’d found myself in Westeros.

It took Aemond a moment to discern that I wasn’t laughing again when I shuddered and covered my face, trying hard to hold back the wracking sobs with about as much success as I’d had suppressing my previous hilarity. 

When he figured out I was crying, he stiffened again. 

“Alys,” Aemond murmured, almost chidingly.

It wasn’t my name, and that just made it so much worse. 

“Alys!” He repeated sharply, this time as a firm command: not one to stop with whatever sentimental foolishness had possessed me, but to yield to him as he dragged me around in the saddle, first bending my legs flat against my ribs then settling my open thighs atop his and pulling me hard against his chest as his arms went around me like a vise.

For a moment I thought he might be trying to squeeze the life out of me just to get me to shut up already, but I quickly realized this rough comfort was the only thing Aemond could offer, so I tucked my head under his chin, hooked my ankles behind his spine, and clung to him as my skirts whipped in the wind around us, temporarily forgetting that he was anything other than a warm body. He didn't ask me what was wrong or try to convince me that everything would be okay. He bore it the way he probably bore... whatever it was he felt when he wasn't consumed by anger.

Eventually, my hitching breaths smoothed, and I actually found myself nodding off in his arms until we began the descent toward Harrenhal, feeling utterly spent and altogether too humiliated by my outburst to speak to him. If he didn’t think I was crazy before, he definitely did now. And I wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong.

I stirred and was peering over Aemond’s shoulder to make sure that Hannibal landed a safe distance away from the ruin of the great castle when Vhagar jolted us roughly together as she dug her claws abruptly into the rocky expanse before the entrance gate and folded her wings. 

I pulled back in awkward silence, trying to figure out how to extricate myself from our mutual tangle of limbs, but Aemond slid deftly away with all the trained grace of a fighter, leaving me to make my much slower way down to solid ground with flushed cheeks and shaking hands.

Aemond was already conferring with Criston Cole, who’d emerged from the gate with a small contingent of men. He was clearly talking about me: the wide-eyed expression on Cole’s face as his gaze swiveled between my face and Hannibal on the shore of the Gods Eye was unmistakable. 

“Alys!” Aemond called again, this time to summon me. Sighing, I wiped fruitlessly at the dried streaks of tears on my cheeks, smoothed my dress and my windblown hair, and approached with stoic determination. I was Alys Rivers here, after all, and could be no one else.

And Alys had a job to do.

Chapter Text

I sat through what felt like hours of tedious war councils as Aemond and Criston weighed the options left to them, interjecting only enough to convince them not to blaze out of Harrenhal that very afternoon to hunt down Daemon and his force of Rivermen – wherever they were on their progress back to King’s Landing. Instead, I counseled, it would be better to survey the land, consolidate support through diplomacy, and get a sense of what other forces are on the move: the Hightower army with Aemond’s brother Daeron, the Stark contingent, the Lannister host, or more. I remembered very little of the specifics of the Dance of the Dragons, but it was enough to know that the Blacks and the Greens were not the only factions that fielded men and the succession was just a pretext for many of the noble houses to act on their own long-standing grudges. 

Admittedly, my prudence was primarily a tactic to stall Aemond until I figured out what to do next, so it was fortunate that Criston at least was sensible enough to be convinced. 

Although he wouldn’t own it, I could intuit that part of Aemond’s urgency to act was driven by his need to know the fate of his family. When he dismissed his Lord Commander from our makeshift council table, I stayed at Aemond’s side. 

“I don’t know if I can command my visions,” I began. “But I could try to see what’s become of Alicent and Helaena.”

Aemond started like I’d struck him, then masked his surprise that I’d read him so clearly. His jaw visibly bunched and he swallowed hard. “Tell me of my sister and her child,” he replied through a tight throat. He was clearly warring with himself - torn between a desire to secure his mother’s safety and the knowledge that she’d sold out her sons. 

“Very well,” I replied, then closed my eyes, feeling - once again - a little foolish as I realized I had no idea how to conjure whatever second sight I had. After sitting for a few moments in awkward silence, I sighed, opened my eyes, and reached for Aemond’s hand. “Think of her,” I ordered, dragging his hand into my lap, clasped firmly in both of mine. “Picture her face in your mind.”

It worked with surprising speed, though the Helaena that Aemond led me to was not the adult one – at least not right away. 

I see her as he’d seen her when she was a child: a strange, ethereal girl, mesmerized by the progress of a small brown spider crawling across the backs of her fingers. As I watch, her face sharpens and lengthens - becoming a woman’s - and the spider’s legs morph into trailing tendrils of a toddler’s wispy white hair as she brushes it, singing a quiet song.

“Where, mama?” the girl asks. 

“Pentos, my love,” Helaena repeats without a hint of impatience.

“‘haerys?” the princess lisps, almost pleadingly.

“Sleeping, sleeping across the sea,” Helaena soothes, blinking back tears as her eyes rise to an open window where a cool breeze flowing off the water lifts sheer curtains dyed the colors of sunset. A sleek dragon in flight - scales glinting silver to match the sun reflected off the waves - passes by with a high, keening cry.

Excitedly, Jaehaera springs to her feet to peer out the window, calling for Alicent and her father, uncomprehending that only her mother can command the dragon that had borne them across the Narrow Sea. 

“Not yet,” Helaena tells her as she comes to stand beside her daughter, resting one hand on Jaehaera’s silken head and another on the slightest swell of her own belly. “In time,” she whispers with a knowing, almost contended smile.

My sight follows Helaena’s gaze across the sea, where Alicent stands at a similar window facing Blackwater Bay in a tower of the Red Keep, fear and yearning pinching her still-youthful features as she kneads her hands in front of her. 

Rhaenyra sweeps through the door. 

“Any word?” Alicent asks anxiously, spinning to face her.

Rhaenyra raises a sculpted brow. “You ask as if you do not already know.”

Alicent’s face crumbles. “Truly, I do not.”

“Then you will remain here under guard until the usurper is found and executed for his crimes,” Rhaenyra replies haughtily. She hesitates for the barest moment, considering, then exits, ordering the door barred behind her with a harshness that hides some buried emotion. 

I blinked and let out a burst of surprised breath, reorienting myself to my whereabouts. Aemond was seated beside me, his expression intent, seemingly indifferent to the fact that I was still squeezing his hand in mine.

“Helaena and Jaehaerya are safely in Pentos with Dreamfyre,” I assured him without meeting his eye. I did not know how to tell him of the possibility that Jaehaera might not be Aegon’s only surviving child. Then, after a slow inhale, I looked up at Aemond through my lashes as if they could offer some kind of protection from his inevitable fury. “But Alicent is Rhaenyra’s prisoner. It seems that Aegon has escaped, and Rhaenyra will not release your mother until he is found and brought to… justice.”

“Did Alicent conspire to send Aegon away?” Aemond demanded, the only indication of his simmering rage in the flare of his nostrils. 

“She claims to know nothing of his whereabouts,” I shrugged, truly uncertain. Alicent’s ignorance had seemed innocent enough. 

I glanced back down at my lap as Aemond leaned back in his chair, contemplating. The makeshift bandage I’d made for his burned wrist the night before was loose, and I saw the angry red skin under it.

“Let me tend to this,” I said absently. It was something concrete, at least, that I could do. 

Dociley, Aemond followed me as I made my way through the ruin of the castle to the maester’s chamber. He sat staring into the fire as I mashed herbs that my fingers found without conscious awareness to a pulp with mortar and pestle and bound his wrist with a fresh poultice. 

He looked down at it with a kind of confusion, then glanced up at me. None of it made sense to him: his mother’s betrayal, Aegon’s will to live in his broken body, the healing touch of the same hands that burned him, his own role in any of this. The impenetrable shield of his coldness momentarily flickered, and I saw the lost, lonely boy behind it. 

Abruptly, Aemond stood and swept from the room. I knew that he fled more from his own uncertainty than from me, and I watched his back with that nagging sense of kinship that had haunted me since I’d first seen him in a vision months past. 

I let him go - probably to mount Vhagar and survey his position as we’d agreed.

And I went in search of a craftsman who might be able to fashion a saddle for a dragon.

I awoke sometime in the dead of night. I’d fallen asleep on the pallet on the floor of the chamber since I’d reduced the weirwood bed to ashes, and to my surprise, Aemond Targaryen was sleeping next to me. 

He hadn’t returned by the time night fell, so I’d thanked the leathersmith for the progress he’d made on Hannibal’s saddle and retired for the night alone after helping myself to a small bowl of leftover soup still simmering in a kettle in the empty kitchen.  

Somehow, Aemond must have crawled onto the mattress without waking me. I wasn’t certain what had roused me now; my sleep, as far as I could remember, had been dreamless, and the castle with its population of ghosts and soldiers was silent. Aemond’s breath was long and regular. 

He lay flat on his back with one hand resting on his chest and the other extended along his side on the pallet between us. He was shirtless again; he probably hadn’t bothered to replace the one I’d ruined and had been wearing his leather outerwear over bare skin. His hair was loose and his eyepatch lay on his discarded tunic, draped over the seat of a nearby chair, but the sapphire still glinted menacingly in the moonlight: ever-vigilant even as he slept.

I kept my own breath shallow as I lay on my side studying him: the remarkably straight bridge of his nose in perfect symmetry with a strong brow, thin lips with a pronounced cupid’s bow, a chin that would have looked out of place on a face with less aggressive features. Every part of Aemond was dominant, competing for attention in ways that created harmony instead of being jarring as they would have been in isolation. There was nothing blandly handsome about him; instead, he had a kind of appeal that defied imagining - an accidental collision of utterly unique features that somehow exceeded the original design: a reminder of all the unexpected ways that men could be beautiful. I’d never seen anything like him.

His bare skin glowed in the dim moonlight: pale and luminous with an almost pearlescent sheen. Definitely not sparkly, I thought, suppressing an admittedly condescending snigger. No, he had more of a Pygmalion vibe than a Twilight one: marble made flesh. Even his hair was that of an animated statue: inexplicably soft on the pillow beside him as I watched my fingertip move as if it belonged to someone else and press one lock experimentally into the linen bedcovers.

Aemond’s eye snapped open and his head rotated to face me.

“Oh shit,” I gasped, then tried to recover my dignity a little. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

His eye narrowed. “You simply meant to go on watching me?”

I flushed and stuttered, grasping for an explanation. “I’m… trying to understand you.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it sounded a lot better than admitting I was staring at him like a total creep. 

He scoffed, but it was a half-hearted sound that lacked the bitterness he intended. Aemond fell silent, gazed back at me with unsettling intensity, and turned the tables. “What upset you? As we flew to Harrenhal?”

I rotated my face toward the vaulted ceiling high above us. “Memories,” I answered evasively.

“Of things you lost?” he prompted.

I nodded. “Things I loved. And little things that made me laugh. And now, I might never get them back. Suddenly, that was sad instead of funny.”

Aemond considered this. After several beats of silence, he said, “Find something to take their place.” 

It was my turn to scoff. Of course he’d offer a solution vs. empathy. Besides, the dragon I got in exchange for modern comforts waited outside and my fingers tingled with ice and fire, but a simple swap was not enough to forestall any sadness. “Like what?” I challenged.

Aemond didn’t answer in words. Instead, he rolled on top of me and pressed his lips onto mine. I let him kiss me once, twice, with increasing ardor, before I broke away and raised a skeptical brow. “Is this a replacement or a distraction?”

“Whichever you prefer,” he murmured against my mouth, clearly seeking one or both of those things for himself. I was feeling indulgent, so I silenced the rational part of my brain and just surrendered, telling myself I wouldn’t let it go too far.

Because, admittedly, it felt damn good. He felt damn good. 

His lips and hands were sure but not demanding. Aemond did not fall upon me like a starving man, sloppy and grasping, paranoid that I’d stop him too soon. He was slow and sensual, enticing me to let him keep going with the absolute confidence of someone who knows he is good at something.

He didn’t kiss so much as drink from my lips: alternating delicate sips with long gulps that somehow left me thirsty. That was a joke Aemond wouldn’t get, I reminded myself, amused, as I let my fingers slide into his hair. It was soft as cornsilk but weightier, trailing over his shoulders to prickle my skin with subtle arousal when he moved. His tongue picked up the hint of mint on mine, a mingled sweetness. I couldn’t imagine there was anything approximating orthodontia in Westeros, so straight white teeth must be a genetic blessing of the Targaryens, like dewy fucking skin and portrait-ready hair 24/7. 

I’d fetched one of the long white linen shifts that Ser Simon had procured for me to sleep in, so I was modestly covered until Aemond plucked at the drawstring closure at the neck with pinched fingers. The bow unraveled with a steady tug, and then he was bending over my bare chest, drawing one of my nipples into his mouth as his hand closed over the opposite breast. I arched my back and let out an unmistakably wanton moan, and Aemond rotated his head upward, the tip of his tongue trailing over my skin as he caught my eye and gave me a positively lascivious open-mouthed grin. It should have been macabre with his scarred face and the glowing sapphire in the socket of his missing eye, but – what can I say? – I must be fucked in the head because it was wildly hot instead.

I seized his face with both hands, slamming his lips onto mine, and he growled approval with a low rumble against my chest as he balled his left fist around my shift and wrenched it upward. Since it was mostly trapped under me and between our bodies, it tore loudly, splitting halfway up one hand-stitched and rather worn side seam.

Both of our heads swivelled toward the sound.

“You tore my shift!” I observed, astonished.

“I did,” he acknowledged, still holding onto the ragged edge, dripping thread.

I fell silent, bit the corner of my lip with a canine, and then added in a low voice, “Do it again.”

Aemond’s head snapped back so he could fix me with that single blue eye. When he saw the mischievous glint in my answering gaze, a slow smile spread over his lips. He tilted his body, supporting his weight on one bent arm, and exerted a steady pressure, slowly popping the remaining stitches on the seam. It hung up where the bodice met the sleeve, but instead of letting that stop him, Aemond slid a knee between my thighs to leverage himself upward, grabbed the neckline of the shift nearest my right shoulder with both hands, and ripped it open with spectacular strength. The linen shredded with a pained shriek, but it took the brunt of the force, sparing me entirely except a certain degree of shock. 

Once again, what probably should have turned me off had the opposite effect, especially as Aemond bent over my prone body and scraped his jaw over my ribs, his breath hot against the bite of cold air on my suddenly exposed skin.  

I reached for him, baring my neck, and he dove into the hollow above my collarbone with searing lips as he wrestled the intact left arm of my shift off, pulled it out from under me, and cast it aside impatiently.

I wasn’t about to be the only naked one, so I let my palms slide over his torso and search for some sort of closure on his breeches. Turns out I had to tug blindly at laces, and it did it so inexpertly that he pinned my wrists firmly beside my head and gave me a taunting smirk rather than endure it. Then he propped himself up on one elbow and scooped my lips into a kiss as he deftly unlaced and slid his breeches over his hips one-handed.

“Show-off,” I teased as I felt his skin meet mine. My heartbeat accelerated so quickly that my vision swam. 

Aemond huffed a throaty laugh against my cheek and shifted our bodies expertly, folding my knee upward in the crook of his elbow as he slotted his hips between my open thighs. 

“Oh,” I breathed, and before I could decide if I wanted him to stop, he slid his arms under me, drew my chest up to his, and surged into me with a single smooth thrust. 

I tensed and Aemond stilled. 

He drew back so he could attempt to read my face. 

I shifted, trying to adjust. I wasn’t what anyone would call prudish, but apparently it had been long enough or he was big enough that my experience counted for nothing. I hadn’t exactly gotten a good look at him to prepare myself. 

“Fucking hell,” I gasped, and Aemond gritted his teeth as I squirmed around him in a vain effort to relieve the intensity. It didn’t work at all, but it quickly became apparent to both of us that whatever I was seeking, stopping wasn’t it.

Aemond’s mouth closed over mine and he rolled his hips until I shotgunned his breath with a shuddering inhale, grinding against him as I crossed over from pain into pleasure. His rigid length pushing me to the very limit was agony I now unabashedly craved. He felt me yield and began to thrust in earnest: slowly at first, then with increasing abandon as I tossed my head back, arched my back, and clutched at him in desperation. 

He worked me over the way he did an opponent in the training yard - winding me up to a frenzy while he remained in perfect control. I was sweat-soaked and shaking, three successive climaxes in and practically begging for mercy by the time Aemond gave himself over to his own release. 

It didn’t even occur to me to take any precautions when his rhythm abruptly shifted and his features sharpened with each snap of his hips until he planted his forearms on either side of my ribs, bowed his head over my sternum, and slammed so deep we both cried out. I hooked my ankles in the small of his back and pressed my lips onto the crown of his silver head as his shaft pulsed in endless waves like the incoming tide. When it was over, Aemond collapsed on top of me, breathing hard with his open mouth against my cheek, all his rough edges worn smooth to fit against the curve of my body.

I lay boneless under him, every nerve a live wire, breathing in his strangely heady scent.

Despite the risk, I couldn’t regret it. With Aemond, I’d discovered, too far was not enough. 

The herbs in the maester’s chamber could wait until morning. I knew I’d find the ones I needed.

When he rolled onto his back, he dragged me halfway across his chest, and I fell asleep listening to the steady rhythm of Aemond Targaryen’s heart.

Chapter Text

Waking up tangled in Aemond Targaryen’s arms was surreal, to say the least.

My body still ached with subtle reminders of his attentions, so it was impossible to forget that this was a morning unlike any of the others that had come before. 

I had very little time to make sense of what I’d do next because almost as soon as I awoke, Aemond did, too. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t linger or cuddle. Instead, he stood smoothly and utterly without shame, apparently unphased by the prospect of pulling on his clothes in my full view.

I watched him openly, determined to be as casual about it as he was.

He certainly had no reason to be shy. His body was lean and as beautifully sculpted as the statues he so resembled: every sinew articulated as if designed to be appreciated. It struck me for perhaps the first time how objectively beautiful the human form can be when it is honed as finely as Aemond’s. There wasn’t even anything lustful about my gaze; it was purely admiring. I knew it was not vanity that had motivated whatever discipline that crafted him. He was a creature of necessity: all superfluity winnowed down so he existed only in the purest form. 

He balanced effortlessly on one bare foot as he drew his leather breeches back on; the muscles of his back rippled when he fed one hand through a sleeve; the corrugated plane of his abdomen disappeared behind black leather, and it was like a cloud covering the sun.

I let out a long breath.

Aemond looked at me.

His expression was not judgmental. He was not studying me in relation to himself, but as an entirely separate being, the way I’d watched him. The intensity of his single eye should have made me self-conscious, but I didn’t shrink from his gaze. I wondered what he saw. I knew what I looked like, but that was not the same as seeing myself as he did. There was nothing objectionable about my appearance, but it was hard to imagine there was as much to appreciate about my messy bedhead, bare limbs, and overlarge green eyes - still blinking away sleep - as there was in his effortless grace. Still, his one-eyed gaze lingered. 

“I’ll fly to Oldtown today,” he told me matter-of-factly when he was fully clothed again.

Okay, it’s like that then, I thought. Clearly we weren’t going to be talking about how we’d passed the night. I didn’t exactly expect a heart-to-heart with Aemond, but I suppose I’d anticipated more than for him to act like nothing happened. Still, I’d imagine one sweaty tumble didn’t exactly merit a declaration of love or a pledge of monogamy in Westeros. “To rally the Hightower army to your cause,” I answered, resigned to discussion of strategy. Apparently that was Aemond’s version of pillow talk.

He nodded, replacing his eye patch with his back to me.

I felt obliged to reciprocate with some report of productivity. “I’ve recruited a leathersmith to fashion a saddle for Hannibal.”

He froze, then turned slowly over one shoulder to regard me with his intact eye under an upraised brow. “Hannibal?” He repeated the syllables slowly, as if they scorched his tongue.

“My dragon,” I answered. My attempt not to sound defensive failed utterly.

He made a low sound of disgust. “The naming of dragons is a sacred ritual undertaken in accordance with the customs of Old Valyria,” he said, slowly and deliberately.

 Something inside me bristled stubbornly. “I’ll call my dragon what I please,” I told him. “And he will answer to the name I choose.” At that moment, it didn’t matter that I found the moniker ridiculous, all things considered. Then I threw up my hands and looked pointedly around. “Besides, last I checked there were no dragonkeepers - or whatever you call them - hanging around. It was all I could do to find a craftsman willing to attempt a saddle.”

Aemond huffed in contempt but let the matter drop, so of course I had to goad him. “And when it’s complete, we can accompany you,” I added, even though we both knew that I could ride without one.

Somewhat to my surprise, he didn’t argue. Beggars can’t be choosers. A second dragonrider at his side could only improve his position. His eye flicked over my bare skin.

“Keep your distance from the men while I’m away,” he advised. 

It was my turn to scoff. He knew firsthand that I could protect myself. “Are your soldiers so undisciplined that they might threaten me in your absence?”

“Threaten, no,” he answered simply. It took me a moment to understand what he was implying: that they would not touch me, but he didn’t want them looking. 

I should be insulted. 

It was downright possessive.

Instead, I thrilled a little like a lovesick teenager and immediately felt foolish. I nodded, too flustered to figure out what to say, and tugged the remnants of my torn shift up under my chin.

Satisfied, Aemond swept from the room, closing the door firmly behind him. The sound echoed in the vast, empty chamber.

I sat alone on our makeshift bed, processing.

Objectively, I was an idiot. 

Aemond was the last man I had any business getting involved with. He was volatile, probably deeply emotionally troubled, and highly likely to die in a fiery conflagration over the God’s Eye in the next few months. Not to mention younger than me, though only by a handful of years. 

I pounded my closed fist lightly and rhythmically on my forehead, silently repeating idiot idiot idiot while trying unsuccessfully not to grin as I mentally replayed the way he tore off my shift.

I groaned and fell backward, helpless against my own weakness. “Fucking hell,” I muttered at the distant ceiling.

As I moved, my abdomen twinged a little, a subtle reminder that my first errand should be a trip to the maester’s chamber to mix some moon tea. Hopefully its composition was something I would know as intuitively as the other remedies. 

Steeling myself, I rose from the sheets that still smelled like the heady new mix of Aemond’s scent with mine. I flung the black gown he’d given me at Rook’s Rest over my head and tried awkwardly to pull the laces down my spine tight. It was a spectacle that bore no resemblance to Aemond’s graceful display earlier, and I was thankful there was no one around to see. Belatedly, I realized I’d forgotten my smallclothes, but I was not about to repeat my awkward performance to rectify the lack. The sheer v-shaped bodice of the gown was significantly more scandalous without a chemise, but as I was intending to avoid the army proper and spend the day with Hannibal, I shrugged it off. A dragon didn’t care about my visible underboob or lack of undergarments. 

I encountered no one as I made my way to the maester’s chamber, and I drank the bitter tea I brewed alone. I avoided the ruin of the Great Hall: soldiers’ tents spilled out of one side like their number had swelled it to bursting. I could hear Criston Cole calling out the day’s orders as I made my way down the eastern face of the hill leading up from the lakefront to the walls of Harrenhal, searching the glittering expanse for any sign of Hannibal.

I navigated carefully around the shore as broken shale gave way to sand and the oppressive weight of the castle lightened as it shrank behind me. I was carrying only a long leather cylinder strapped across my body like a quiver and a drawstring bag full of charcoal nubs retrieved from the fireplace. I planned to repurpose a scroll with some unintelligible scrawl on one side that I found stashed in deep recesses of the walls of the maester’s chamber as a sketchbook: my leathersmith would need to know something of the dimensions of Hannibal’s body to figure out how to attach the saddle to his back. I cursed myself for not paying any attention to how Vhagar’s was secured. Although Hannibal was roughly the same size, his neck was less bulky, which hopefully made things easier?

Fitting dragon saddles was a significantly less glamorous process than riding in them, but I was still struck dumb when Hannibal emerged from a stand of trees - some of which he’d flattened to clear a path - and fixed me with his emerald eyes. 

I sank down onto my knees in the sand and just looked at him.

What is my life? I wondered stupidly. 

I’d gone from trying to exchange my mundane office job for a profitable travel-writing gig to fucking princes, riding dragons, and commanding ice and fire. If I’d explained this to my middle school self, she would have been ecstatic, but the reality - I curled slightly around the dull ache low in my belly and inhaled the distinctive brimstone smell that masked the more objectionable odors of my dragon’s maw - was significantly more… visceral. 

Despite having to reconcile myself to the uncomfortable realities of living this particular adventure instead of just fantasizing about it, I passed the day pleasantly enough. After a quick cleansing dip in the waters of the God’s Eye, I sketched Hannibal from every angle, testing the extent of our bond. Unlike with Aemond - where so much was guesswork - I fell into a comfortable rhythm with Hannibal almost immediately. It wasn’t a friendship like with Hiccup and Toothless; it was something more elemental than that. We communicated without words: a curious symbiosis like water working the shore or trees bending in the wind. We both retained our nature and sometimes tenaciously resisted the will of the other, but part of us yielded just enough so we could move together. The nagging loneliness of my transported reality retreated.

When I returned to the castle - driven primarily by hunger when I realized I’d neglected to eat breakfast and lacked the foresight to bring any food with me - and Hannibal took to the skies to hunt his own meal, I knew I could call him to my side without needing to whistle. 

I paid a quick visit to the leathersmith and handed over my drawings (with myself rendered as a crude stick figure for scale), then went in search of food. I retreated back to the room I’d shared with Daemon and was now sharing with Aemond with a pitcher of water, heel of crusty bread, a hunk of cheese, and an apple after eschewing the lines of soldiers waiting their turn for a bowlful of steaming stew at several cauldrons hanging from cooking tripods around the makeshift camp – despite the tantalizing smell - after I noticed their eyes following me curiously. Alone, I gnawed my bread and tried not to think about scurvy or when Aemond might return with news. I wondered anew what that might mean. Did he intend to go on ignoring our new intimacy? Should I?

I remembered Rhaenyra’s words, too: When Aemond’s threat is contained, you will send me a raven in King’s Landing.

I wasn’t entirely sure I could safely say the danger Aemond presented was contained, and I wondered if I wanted a place on the Small Council of the Black Queen more than I wanted to stay with her wayward half-brother. The more sensible course was clear: Rhaenyra was - at present at least - the victor, and she had Daemon’s army of Rivermen backing her claim. But I was quickly discovering that I rarely made the sensible choice, as evidenced by how I got here: wandering barefoot into unfamiliar woods in nothing but a nightgown.  

A nightgown.

I looked over at the pallet on the floor, where the one I’d retrieved from my old chamber last night lay shredded. The memory zinged through my body like reliving my tryst with Aemond in fast-forward.

Pink-cheeked and sighing, I made my way through the branching corridors in search of a replacement so I wouldn’t have to sleep either in my dress or in the nude. The nature of my relationship with Aemond was hardly established enough to presume the latter would be welcome. 

Night was falling, and darkness was gathering in the corners of Harrenhal. My pace quickened.

I didn’t hear Aemond return, so I wasn’t expecting it when I rounded a corner with a selection of clothing draped over my arm and practically ran into him. 

At first I thought he might be angry with me, and I was busily wracking my brain for anything I could have done to set him off as he wrenched the dresses off my arm and backed me against the wall of the corridor. 

But then his silver head descended over my bare neck and his hands were grappling with my long skirt, and I realized he was not overcome with rage but something else entirely.

His lips burned against my skin in the evening chill. 

Aemond went still when he realized that there was nothing under the dress I wore, but only for a moment. With a low growl, he clutched my hips and lifted me off my feet, parting my thighs around his hips as he braced me hard against the cold stone of the corridor and deftly unlaced his breeches.

He moved so fast and with such surety that he felt like a force of nature. I could no sooner hold back the tide or the rising of the sun than resist him when he dropped me onto his hard length and pinned me against the wall with the first thrust. His chest was flush against mine and his hands were planted on either side of my head as he rolled his hips to drive himself still deeper and closed his lips over mine. It felt consuming, like he would push into me until our bodies merged entirely. 

Rather than being suffocating, it was wildly arousing. It took no effort at all to match his energy: my fingers twined through his hair and I wrapped my legs around his waist, answering his kiss with the same mindless ferocity. 

It didn’t matter that the skin caught between my spine and the lacing of my gown slammed against the wall with bruising force. It didn’t matter that I could hardly draw a full breath between Aemond’s relentless thrusts. It didn’t matter that his fingers grasped at the cold stone and the soft swell of my breasts with the same desperation. I hardly felt it around the crescendo of my own completion when his teeth sank into the muscle above my collarbone as his hips stuttered and he drove into me with the vigor of a jousting opponent. 

It wasn’t until I collapsed against his shoulder like a broken doll and drew a shuddering breath that sensation returned all at once. My abraded skin protested and my body vibrated with aftershocks. Aemond was breathing hard, supporting almost my full weight as he stepped away from the wall of the corridor. Deftly, he slid me entirely over his shoulder, adjusted his clothing, and retrieved the dresses I’d been holding from the deep window alcove where he’d shoved them. Then he was carrying me back to the chamber we shared with steady steps. I was too boneless to protest, even as the rush of blood to my head made my consciousness drift. 

Aemond deposited me with surprising gentleness onto the mattress after shifting me into his arms with a slight toss. He bent over me and smoothed my hair back from my face appraisingly with both palms, his elbows braced beside my head, before getting to his feet again.

“Welcome back,” I managed to say when I found my voice. It was hard to discern if the visit to Oldtown had gone well or poorly, so I waited.

“Ormund is awaiting orders from Aegon to move the Hightower army past the Honeywine. They’ve been fighting their way through the Reach against… unexpected… resistance.” His fists clenched subtly at his sides. “It seems Larys Strong is responsible for Aegon’s disappearance from King’s Landing, and he’s been communicating on my brother’s behalf,” he reported, pacing.

I swallowed, wincing as I propped myself up so I could meet his eye. It sounded like good news, but his expression was pinched. I considered, then observed with sudden insight, “So he’ll come when Aegon calls, but not when you do.”

Aemond nodded once, stiffly. There was an old bitterness in the set of his mouth. 

“At least you’re on the same side?” I offered. In truth, I wasn’t entirely sure if Aemond was fighting for Aegon’s claim or his own, and it didn’t appear that he was certain, either. “I can try to see where he is,” I volunteered. “Aegon.”

“Not tonight,” Aemond responded curtly, and it was clear he needed to think. He stripped off his leather doublet, unlaced his tall boots, and dropped his breeches off his hips: a replay of this morning’s performance in reverse. It became apparent how he intended to process the day’s events when he knelt at my feet and ran his palms along my legs, under my skirt, and pressed me flat into the pallet with his bare chest. His insatiability was an assurance I secretly craved.

It wasn’t until he sank into me again that I put a restraining hand over his heart. “Go slowly this time,” I pleaded, adjusting around his hard length with a hiss of indrawn breath.

He complied, rolling his hips smoothly as his eye stayed on my face, intent.

At the end of each thrust, Aemond stopped short of my uppermost limit, advancing further only occasionally with a slowness that was almost soothing after the battering he’d delivered earlier. The sharp pain I’d expected never came, and the tension drained from my muscles as I began to move with him. His lips sought mine, alternating between an intensely passionate claiming and the barest brushing against my mouth, his breath mingling with mine as his awareness shifted to our joining. He edged along the precipice of his finish for longer than I thought he had patience to do, coaxing me to two teeth-rattling climaxes before spilling himself deep with steady, rhythmic pulses like a heartbeat that filled me with warmth. 

I was so spent by the end that when Aemond rolled our bodies and draped me over his chest that the pull of sleep was a force like gravity. I battled to keep my eyes open, but when he rested one hand on the back of my head and smoothed my hair with the flat of his palm, I surrendered to oblivion, sensing that - however Aemond Targaryen had quieted his racing thoughts before - now he preferred to lose himself in us.

Chapter Text

I awoke to a featherlight touch along my spine. My first instinct was to shriek and roll away from whatever crawling things it must be, but something about the sensation assured me it wasn’t a host of spiders creeping over my skin, so I went still and waited.

Behind me, Aemond was brushing his fingertips over the bruises on my lower back, then across the outline of his teeth above my collarbone. Slowly, I turned over my shoulder to look at him. His brows were drawn together and his eyepatch was gone, his frown tugging at the smooth scar that crossed over the empty socket with its sightless sapphire. 

He said nothing, but his fingertips were ghosting over the discolored blotches and his expression was stormy, so I read his thoughts easily enough. 

“I’m okay,” I told him – because admitting that I liked it made me question my own sanity a little.

I rolled toward him and drew in a breath through my teeth. Well, I liked it last night at least. Jury’s still out on whether I like it this morning. 

His palms were on my shoulders now, gliding in alternate directions: one down my body and one up the side of my neck. I leaned into his palm when he cupped my face; his thumb swept back and forth across my cheekbone and I closed my eyes under the spotlight of his unblinking scrutiny.

I let him explore me. 

He seemed fascinated by the tiny details of my body, lingering over the places where his touch had marked me. His lips brushed over the bruises and abrasions as if he was gently tattooing them: imprinting them permanently onto my skin.

It was silent, methodical, and oddly arousing. A ritual of claiming.

I opened my eyes again when his mouth closed over my breast and arched my back into his seeking mouth. My skin prickled as his long hair fanned out against my bare skin, ticklish and teasing as he ran the tip of his tongue around a nipple. The sensations were overwhelming: hot breath and the simultaneous coolness of air against moistened skin. I watched his bowed silver head and let out a low moan when one of his hands slid between my thighs, stiffening in anticipation as the pad of one strategically placed finger paused to rub. He did it again, slowly and deliberately, glancing up at me with a knowing glint in his piercing blue eye as I instantly flushed and strained against him. 

Aemond’s sharp chin trailed down the concavity of my belly. He pushed my thighs wider and settled his face between them, curving two long fingers into my aching core as his tongue went to work. It was only a matter of seconds before I was shaking and rocking my hips against him in helpless release - and, goddamn him - he laughed: a low, throaty sound of satisfaction that hummed against me in torturous ways. 

Then he reared backward, the whole of his corrugated abdomen on display, and leaned against the inside of one of my thighs, bracing his weight on one straight arm near my hip as he ran the opposite hand along the back of the other thigh and folded it against my torso, holding me open to him. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks when I saw his single eye trained unblinkingly on the sight of his thick shaft slowly sinking into me. It was wanton and shameless, but I followed his gaze, mesmerized by the subtle rise of my lower belly as he scooped his hips and seated his full length, withdrew halfway, and repeated the motion.

All with silent intensity.

It was captivating to watch him, knowing I could not predict anything. 

Aemond moved with careful restraint, his eye never leaving our joining. Only after he’d looked his fill did he guide my bent leg over his head and back onto its opposite without ever withdrawing, gently turning my hips so I lay on my side. Then he lowered himself down behind me, dragging my back against his chest and folding me in his arms. He curled against me, wrapping around me as he hilted himself with firm, steady thrusts. In any other position, it would have been too much, but he held his palm flat under my bellybutton, its soothing warmth seeping into my skin. 

The slow build was the only agony. 

I writhed against him as his fingers teased at the peak of my thighs, and when I finally tumbled over the edge of the precipice again, he followed – his finish a steady rhythm so deep it thrummed through my bones. 

We lay curled tightly as a nautilus shell, drifting between sleep and wakefulness, all our boundaries blurred, his body still inside mine as if our very blood was mingling.  

It was a degree of tenderness I never expected from Aemond Targaryen. The whole thing felt oddly like a ceremony only he understood the significance of: a wordless induction into his inner circle. It moved me more than I dared to admit to myself.

When he finally stirred, he did not acknowledge it. 

Instead, Aemond merely brushed his lips over my shoulder and rolled onto his back. But we both felt the subtle difference: a new closeness, an extension of self, akin to the bond with a dragon. In some ways, that’s exactly what it was.

“Can you see him? Aegon?” he asked, acknowledging that the rest of the world existed again with a kind of reluctance. 

I closed my eyes, seeking with my second sight, which seemed to have morphed beyond the ability to glimpse the future and into a kind of clairvoyance. I recognized the silhouette of the castle seen from the narrow window of a wheelhouse only because I’d been there before. “Rook’s Rest,” I breathed.

Aemond’s eye narrowed. “Seeking Sunfyre, no doubt. He was wounded in the battle.”

I had forgotten about Aegon’s dragon. “But, when we were there – I didn’t see him.”

“He can’t fly; he stays where he fell: on the ruined side of the castle, to the west,” Aemond answered dismissively. “If he still lives.”

Vhagar and Hannibal had been in the eastern woods, though there’d been no indication of any animosity between the dragons, despite Hannibal’s fearsome reputation. He certainly hadn’t taken the opportunity to snack on Aegon’s wounded mount. 

I suppose because we are all on the same side?

Are we, though? Was this still a standoff between the Greens and the Blacks, or had I only succeeded in fracturing the conflict into three claimants: Rhaenyra, Aegon, and Aemond?

Presuming on our new intimacy, I asked him boldly: “So – will you rally your forces to Aegon’s cause, or will you finish what you started at the Battle of Rook’s Rest?”

Aemond stiffened as he realized I knew his secret, but once he realized that there was no point in denying it, he answered honestly. “Aegon never wanted to be king, nor is he fit to be. But he remains stubbornly… alive.” It wasn’t really an answer, probably because he didn’t yet have one.

I thought of Daemon and his assertion about Rhaenyra: The people who support her will not be led by her. They look to a man for strength. Daemon, too, fights for himself under the guise of protecting someone else’s claim.  

“Then why not let Rhaenyra rule?” I prodded. “If it was your father’s wish?”

Aemond scowled. “My mother insisted it was not.” He glanced over at me in silent acknowledgement of what I’d told him about Aegon the Conqueror’s dream the day we met. “Even if she was wrong, my family was in danger. A queen has never sat the Iron Throne. The realm was not united behind her. Rhaenyra would have had to put Viserys’s sons to the sword - Helaena and her children, too - to secure her claim.”

“Maybe not, with Daemon by her side,” I countered. Softly, I added, “Until Storm’s End, at least.” I wondered if Rhaenyra would insist on exacting vengeance for Lucerys’s death if she knew it was an accident.

The truth of that, Aemond did not confess. 

Into the silence, I asserted, “Helaena is safe in Essos. You and Daeron are far from the Red Keep. Even Aegon lives. This could end here.” 

“Rhaenyra has my mother,” he insisted. 

“And Alicent has proven herself a capable negotiator,” I retorted, blunted the edge of my voice. “She and Rhaenyra were friends as children, weren’t they? Doesn’t that count for something?”

Aemond’s face was hard. “As long as we live, Rhaenyra’s succession is uncertain at best.”

“Only if you challenge it!” I argued, exasperated. I turned toward him, resting a hand on his bare shoulder. “Fly to Rook’s Rest. Speak to Aegon. And Larys – whatever his interest in this is. Convince them to give up the fight.”

He shook me off and got smoothly to his feet. “It’s not that simple! The Seven Kingdoms are divided, and the forces of the great houses are mobilized for their chosen side.” 

I pushed, facing off against him. “So tell them to stand down!”

Aemond fisted his hands at his sides and raised his voice. Finally, we’d gotten to the heart of the matter. “I did not spend countless hours in the yard training with Criston to tell those who would fight for us to stand down. I did not waste my youth studying history and philosophy to follow a spoiled and wanton woman who has never properly ruled herself. I did not exchange my eye for the largest dragon in the world to sit on her back and do nothing!”  

I sighed. 

Put that way, I could understand his vehemence. 

He had spent his life preparing to defend the throne or occupy it. For Aemond, this was not a logical choice; it was existential. 

I rested my cheek on his chest in concession and let the subject drop for now, still hoping the seed I’d planted would gradually take root. I just had to convince him that all-out war wasn’t the answer: that part of being a capable ruler was diplomacy. His discipline and study had prepared him for that, too.

Aemond mastered his anger and pulled me against him once, hard, resting his lips on the top of my head before releasing me so we could both dress for the day. I wasn’t sure if he was reassuring me or himself.  

My thoughts went to Larys Strong as I pulled my gown over my head. If the rumors were true, his nephew Jaehaerys might one day wear the crown. What interest might he have in advancing Aegon’s claim instead of Rhaenyra’s? Was it as simple as jealousy of his brother Harwin’s legacy? Had he, like Aemond, orchestrated a fiery end for his brother – but, unlike Aemond – succeeded? Did he hope to preserve his own proximity to power through Aegon? 

Larys, I decided, would very likely prove a wrench in the gears I was trying to turn.

And I’d be foolish to underestimate him.

The day was long and the aftereffects of several rough couplings multiplied as the hours stretched on; I felt battered by afternoon, but the ache did nothing to ground the growing current of need connecting me to Aemond. Although he was occupied all day in taking stock of our forces, writing messages to be sent by raven, and talking strategy, he found any excuse to brush his body against mine or press against my side as we both bent over the maps and scrolls spread across the round dining table that had become command central. 

The building craving was maddening. 

Especially because all of my resolve to resist Aemond and his highly problematic… well, everything… seemed to have vanished entirely, and I was having difficulty reconciling myself to that.

If I was fated to be bound to Aemond Targaryen, I wanted to ensure that - at least - it could be on my own terms. But my body did not get the memo. Every movement brought a cascade of memories of the past twenty-four hours, and it was all I could do not to let them sweep my thoughts away entirely. I felt like an addict: pale and sweaty and battling the urge for another hit. Apparently, I looked it, too.

I was so absorbed in my own inner turmoil that I didn’t notice Criston Cole watching me.

“My lady,” he murmured, standing beside my chair as Aemond studied a map intently. “Are you well? Have you eaten?”

Aemond glanced up at me as we both simultaneously realized we’d neglected that detail. He never seemed hungry – he seemingly subsisted exclusively on rage, scheming, and sex; no wonder he was so lean. “She has not,” he answered for me. 

“No,” I confirmed. “I’ll fetch something from the kitchen for all of us.”

My head swam a little when I stood, but I brushed off Criston’s hovering hands, trying not to grimace as I made my way through now-familiar stone passageways to the kitchen on wobbly legs. I’d sent Nolla away with the remaining Strongs before Aemond and his forces descended, but the men still used the vast ovens to bake bread in addition to what they concocted in the deep cauldrons scattered around the cooking fires of various units – or whatever they called the subdivisions of vast fighting forces in Westeros. 

Two young men were tending a similar cauldron over the fire in the central hearth - obviously assigned to cook for the men of rank - and they stood deferentially aside as I slopped several ladlefuls into a shallow bowl and reached unsteadily for a loaf of bread. I ignored their whispered conversation after I caught only a few words: dragon, Aemond, witch, bedchamber. Distracted, I crushed my thumb between the heavy bowl and the countertop.

“Fucking hell!” I yelled, trying not to drop everything.

The young gossips exchanged alarmed looks and simultaneously dashed forward, taking the bowl and the bread from my hands just as Criston strode into the room. I was sucking on the edge of my smarting thumb and muttering curses, so he gave sharp instructions to the boys to carry the food back to the Prince Regent in the small dining hall. One of them grabbed butter on the way out, watching me curiously out of the corner of his eye as if I might bespell him.

“My lady?” Criston asked solicitously, turning back to me. 

“I’m fine,” I spat back, then apologized. Clearly, I was hangry. “I’ll be better after soup,” I explained. He nodded, then stretched out a hand, indicating he’d follow me. I swept past him with a nod – then everything went black.

I awoke only a few moments later in Criston Cole’s arms.

I strained against him, so he lowered my feet back to the ground hesitantly. My dress had slipped down my shoulder; I saw him quickly avert his eyes from the discolored skin over my collarbone.

“You swooned,” Criston explained, and there was a hint of disapproval in his tone. 

“I’m fine,” I insisted again, but as I stood straight, a sharp pain lanced through my abdomen and I flinched, balling my fist against my lower belly. 

Criston’s dark brown eyes narrowed.

“I’m just hungry,” I finished lamely, tugging my dress back over my shoulder and patting my abdomen in a rather ridiculous attempt to pass the pain off as a hunger pang. Before coming to Westeros, I’d never passed out before, but now - between visions and hypoglycemia and marathon trysts with a very vigorous young prince - I was apparently making it a hobby. 

Criston hesitated, then blazed forward with resolve. “Temptations of the flesh can… cloud the mind,” he advised. “I do not know what interest you have in this conflict, but the prince needs to think clearly. Our situation is… precarious.”

My jaw dropped, but I managed to compose myself and answered smoothly, “My interest is what it’s always been: to prevent the loss of as many lives as I can.”

“Whose lives?” he probed, his face carefully expressionless.

“Everyone’s!” I retorted stubbornly. 

The look he gave me was almost pitying, like I was hopelessly naive. “And you plan to do that by warming the prince’s bed?”

I ground my teeth and lost the battle to maintain my cool this time: “And what exactly did you intend to accomplish in the former queen’s?”

Cole froze, dragging me savagely against his armored chest with a mailed fist clamped above my elbow. “Hold your tongue,” he hissed.

I sighed, twisting in his grip as my affront gave way to empathy. “We might suffer from the same affliction, Ser Criston.”

His iron fist relaxed somewhat. “And what is that?”

I bit my tongue again, not yet willing to say love. “We became entangled without intention and against our better judgment, but we lack the will to extricate ourselves. And now there is no clear path forward.”

He hesitated before releasing my arm. “You have not bewitched him, then?” 

“No more than Alicent has bewitched you,” I replied quietly.

The corner of Criston’s mouth twitched in a doleful half-smile of miserable confession. “I have made a mockery of all of my vows.”

That one actually gave me pause. “Have you?” I challenged. “Because it seems to me that a great deal of suffering could be averted if everyone cared more about one another than they did about duty or position.”

He blinked, as if the thought had never occurred to him. 

I blazed forward, unfiltered rather than strategic. “Perhaps Alicent’s course is the wisest. She spent most of her life in service to duty, and for what? At last, it seems like she’s choosing for herself.”

I brushed my hands down my skirts and raised my chin in defiance. “Maybe you should, too.”

With newfound clarity, I left him there and walked very deliberately back to Aemond.

Might as well take my own advice.

Chapter Text

Aemond was standing with his head bowed over the round table, weight resting on his balled fists. It was a posture of simultaneous rage and defeat, and I knew instantly that something had changed.

“Did you know?” he asked in a low voice.

Truthfully, I didn’t. So much for my foresight. “I still don’t,” I replied. “What’s happened?”

“A raven from Rook’s Rest,” he said, gesturing toward the thin scroll, still curled at the edges.

I picked it up and read: King Aegon II orders the Lord Commander and his men to meet Daeron and the Hightower army at Tumbleton. The King requires that his brother hold Harrenhall. Any departure from these commands will be considered an act of war. Aegon remembers.  

I looked up sharply and met Aemond’s eye. “Aegon remembers,” I intoned. We both knew what that meant. 

“He has cut me off,” Aemond muttered. “Abandoned me here to guard an empty ruin while he mounts an offensive to retake the throne.”

“Rhaenyra still has eight dragons,” I reminded him. “Without Vhagar, Aegon only has a wounded - and possibly dead - Sunfyre and…” I paused, realizing I knew next to nothing about their youngest brother. “Daeron’s dragon,” I finished lamely.

“Tessarian,” Aemond spat.

“Even with superior ground forces,” I reasoned, feeling a little ridiculous because I also knew next to nothing about military strategy but was determined not to show it, “It would be foolish to attack Rhaenyra when she has such an advantage by air. There’s still time.” Time for what - I wasn’t sure. Aegon was alive and seemingly functional enough to conspire with Larys, and that meant his claim to the throne superseded Aemond’s. To me, it was a relief, but to Aemond… I knew it was complicated. “Aegon doesn’t know about me, or Hannibal,” I added meaningfully, hoping he wouldn’t fly off the handle if there was some hope that Aegon would come around when he needed support badly enough. And anything could happen when dragons dance, even a more permanent accident for a sitting king... 

I could hear Aemond’s teeth grinding. His nostrils flared and his jaw bunched, but he took a long breath. “There’s time,” he repeated.

Criston Cole returned, and Aemond stood straight and collected himself. “A raven from Rook’s Rest,” he announced. “Aegon has escaped King’s Landing and is rallying the Hightower army. You are commanded to lead the men to meet Daeron and Ormund’s forces at Tumbletown.”

Criston stops, stunned. “And you?”

Aemond’s face hardened subtly. “Hold Harrenhal and await orders.”

Criston’s gaze held Aemond’s for the barest moment, then he nodded. “We’ll march tomorrow at sunrise. I’ll prepare the men.” Cole spun on a heel and left, but not before glancing at me with an unreadable expression.

Did Criston know what happened between Aemond and Aegon at Rook’s Rest? He’d been there – surely he suspected, at least, but he hadn’t said anything. Would his loyalty shift back to Aegon – if it ever existed? And what of Alicent, still a prisoner in the Red Keep? Which vows would Criston honor now? I hoped my visions could give me some insight, since I had far more questions than answers. 

I turned back to Aemond. “What next?” I asked.

“Eat,” he instructed, pushing the bowl of stew and breadloaf that the young soldiers had left on the table toward me. Fortunately, there was also a pitcher of wine.

I did, distractedly, after insisting he do the same. Aemond chewed and swallowed methodically, like eating was a chore he could barely tolerate. We both had little appetite, and before long Aemond turned away from the bowl, took a long swallow of wine, and got to his feet. I stood with him, and after a few agitated paces, he backed me into the edge of the table.

“What can you see?” he demanded, one hand cupping my cheek; he peered into my eyes intently as if he could watch the future play out across my irises.

I slid onto the tabletop to steady myself and shut my eyes, but the future was a jumble, with none of the clarity I’d seen before I’d begun my meddling. After several attempts, I sighed in frustration and opened my eyes again. “Nothing!” I complained. “Nothing definitive, anyway.” 

Aemond planted his hands on the tabletop on either side of my hips and turned his head to stare into the guttering flames in the hearth, leaning toward me as he thought. It was unexpected; instead of retreating into himself as he processed this development, he seemed drawn to me, grounding himself in my proximity. My heart fluttered a little behind my ribs and my body zinged with anticipation, but I silently cursed my own folly. Nothing about the way Aemond made me feel made any logical sense, but I’d given up fighting it. Our fates were bound together. And, at least for the time being, there was no imminent threat of him flying to war. The mere possibility twisted in my chest like a blade.

I rested a palm over Aemond’s heart, and his face snapped back toward me. 

“Whatever happens,” I told him, “We’ll face it together.”

There was something pained in his expression, and I almost regretted saying anything until I realized it was a kind of fierce tenderness: the recognition that he’d lost all of his family, but I was still by his side. It was something Aemond would never acknowledge with words.

So he communicated the only way he knew how.

His hands slid onto my thighs and upward as he scooped his chin and caught my lips, trapping them against his with fingers tangled in the back of my hair. An iron tang mingled on our tongues as his mouth claimed mine. It was a devouring, possessive kiss: a confirmation that my offer of loyalty had been accepted – a compact written in blood and sealed by fire. When I reciprocated, it only fed his frenzy, and he held my head in both hands, tipping my upper body onto the table as he slotted his hips between my thighs. I clawed at my skirts until one of his hands joined me, scrabbling to get the fabric out of our way and working at the laces of his breeches. His lips never left mine as he dragged my hips to the very edge of the table and slammed into me with a deep-chested rumble of need that made every inch of my skin tingle. 

After that first initial desperate thrust, Aemond wrapped an arm around my lower back and cradled my head with the other hand as he dragged me upright and crushed me against his torso, his breath hot against my neck while he rocked into me slowly. I wrapped one leg around him and let the other dangle over the edge of the table, draping my arms loosely over his shoulders and resting my cheek on his collarbone. The urgency dialed down, but the intensity dialed up. His fingers dug into my skin and he was breathing hard as he tightened his grip, squeezing the air from my lungs and stealing it with his. I clung to him even as black crept into the corners of my eyes, rolling my hips to meet him, seeking the dull agony of the blunt head of his shaft at my uppermost limit. 

We were heedless of the movements of the men in the Great Hall even as their voices echoed nearby. Everything felt distant except where our bodies joined and our breath mingled. Time lost its anchor; we were adrift in each other. I’d given up all sense of propriety or obligation. In fact, I welcomed whatever Aemond did, eager to watch how it transformed him. 

Inevitably, his rhythm shifted, and he pitched forward again, cushioning the back of my head with a hand so he didn’t knock me out on the table before his fingers shifted to my wrists, pinning them down by my ears with the full weight of his torso as he leaned over me and his pace quickened, hips snapping with each thrust. I watched his elegant face - patched and scarred and somehow more beautiful for being imperfect - and his expression was as intent as a marathon runner edging ecstasy with exquisite pain. He was bathed in sweat: it gathered around his hairline, flattening his silver hair against his temples, but his skin somehow turned burnished gold instead of ruddy. Damn Targaryens, I mused with grudging admiration, dignified even in full rut.  

I knew he was close. I wasn’t far behind. 

I squirmed around him, seeking, and he threw his head back - I could see all the sinews standing out in his neck; since he was still mostly clothed, glimpses of bare skin were all the more tantalizing - and slammed me onto his length with a satisfied groan. Slowly, his head descended over my sternum as the steady, regular pulses of his finish gradually diminished like he was bleeding out with each beat of his heart.

Aemond didn’t collapse on top of me. Instead, he reanimated with a gasp, released my wrists, and slowly pulled back, his eye trained on the juncture of my splayed legs. He held them apart when I tried to close them with sudden shyness, and I flushed as I felt a river of his spend follow his withdrawal. Without looking up, Aemond grinned - a savage, lean-cheeked smirk - swept up the escaping dribble with the thick head of his cock, and sank deep again, driving it back in. His thumb teased my clit as he thrust repeatedly, almost gently, until I shuddered and clenched hard around him. He never relented, keeping a rhythmic pace as I fell apart over and over.

“Jesus Christ,” I swore, only vaguely aware enough to wonder if it was still irreverent in Westeros.

My relief that Aemond was not someone who narrated his way through intimacy was as profound as my climax. His silence and the subtle humming or growling noises he made spoke volumes, and I’d always found partners who dirty-talked to be comical at best and total buzzkills at worst. 

Aemond uses his mouth exactly as much as I want him to, I affirmed as his lips moved against mine. His tongue probed past them as I felt him grow erect again. The prospect was simultaneously thrilling and a little terrifying, and I briefly wondered if he’d had to abstain for an extended period or if he was… always like this.

At least there’s moon tea, I thought as he lifted my right leg and guided it in front of his torso, effectively flipping me onto my stomach as he stayed lodged inside me. I clawed at the tabletop, unsure if I wanted to object or beg for more as his hands encircled my hips and he renewed his thrusts – mercifully slowly to start.

Aemond was just beginning to increase his pace when there was a loud sound in the hallway, and we both froze. 

He moved before I could think what to do, dragging me backward off the table as he sat in one of the chairs we’d pushed out of our way. I landed hard in his lap, and he clapped a hand over my mouth to muffle my cry as his rigid shaft bottomed out. He swung my knees to one side of his closed thighs, then he was scooting the chair forward until our legs disappeared under the table and the rounded edge dug into my hip, effectively trapping me. 

Instinctively, my hands went to my tousled hair, smoothing it flat as best I could. Aemond, damn him, didn’t have a single silver lock out of place. 

He reached for his wine glass and I reached for mine, affecting a flirtatious laugh as the leathersmith who’d been making Hannibal’s saddle stepped into the room and bent in a low bow before looking at us.

Apparently, he didn’t see much amiss with me sitting in Aemond Targaryen’s lap, my trailing skirts seemingly innocently cast over one side of his thighs and my face flushed from drinking wine, because he launched into an explanation without batting an eye.

“The Lord Commander insisted that I update you on the saddle for your dragon before we depart, my–” he swallowed hard, uncertain, then finished, “my lady.”

I tried to pay attention, truly I did. But I’d never felt less like a lady than I currently did: impaled on Aemond’s cock under my voluminous skirts, thoroughly debauched and regretting precisely none of it. 

The leathersmith was nervous in Aemond’s presence, so he babbled on a bit longer than necessary, recounting the process thus far with meticulous detail as my cheeks grew hotter. It wasn’t until Aemond asked a series of questions that I looked over at him out of the corner of my eye and realized he was enjoying this and drawing the conversation out deliberately.

I pursed my lips and squeezed my inner muscles hard around his thick shaft. His single eye widened just a little, then he scooted forward in the chair, withdrawing slightly and dropping me down onto him again. I squeaked, then played it off as a dainty sneeze. 

“I’ll work all night if I need to,” the leathersmith was saying earnestly. “But it will be complete before we depart.”

“Please, don’t overextend yourself,” I urged, trying to keep my voice level, but added, “And thank you, truly. I will make certain you’re well-compensated for your work.” I had no idea how I’d do that, but it was difficult to think straight in my compromised position.

 The man dropped his head deferentially, but I saw his eyes dart up once, questioning - as if he’d just realized there was something odd about this interaction - before he scurried back down the hall. 

As soon as the leathersmith was gone, I whipped my face toward Aemond and smacked him lightly on the cheek. “How dare you,” I whispered with mock affront.

He only leaned in and breathed against my lips, “You’ll pay for that.” There was no real threat in his voice, but a chill swept through me regardless, imagining for just a moment how his enemies felt when he was serious. 

I shuddered and playfully tried to twist away.

Aemond stood smoothly and pinned me facedown on the tabletop again, holding my wrists firmly against the small of my back. He wasn’t rough, but he wasn’t gentle, either. It surprised me again that what should have raised a red flag had the opposite effect. I strained against him a little, testing his strength. His grip didn’t budge, and he answered with a long, slow thrust. I tried again, curious, and he clamped down on my wrists and thrust harder.

This time, I surrendered, cowed by the edge of panic that loomed when I realized how utterly helpless I was against him. Aemond Targaryen, I decided, would be a formidable enemy.

As if reading my thoughts, he leaned over my prone body and brushed his lips across my cheek before rearing back and beginning his relentless rhythm again. He made quick work of it this time, but when he finally withdrew and pulled me to my feet, I slumped against him, suddenly exhausted and wobbly on unsteady legs. 

Aemond fed me a full cup of wine, then scooped me into his arms and carried me back to our chamber with my head lolling on his shoulder. I was asleep before we even crossed the threshold.

Chapter Text

I slept deeply, and - if I dreamed - I could recall no details when I finally clawed my way back to wakefulness as if from being underwater.

I was alone in the vast bedchamber. The pallet beside me was empty and cold.

I groaned and shifted, my body protesting in a thousand subtle ways. Everything ached, but I couldn’t stop myself from testing like I’d always done after a thorough gym session: I worried my soreness like a bruise, unable to resist the pull of the memories every twinge aroused.

They reminded me of Aemond.

His absence was the worst hurt of all. I wondered where he was.

Gradually, I got to my feet. I was still wearing yesterday’s gown, so I tugged it over my head and replaced it with one made of a heavy green fabric that most closely resembled velvet. I didn’t bother with underclothes of any kind.

Harrenhal was eerily still and silent. The army must have departed while I was still abed, so there was no need to stand on ceremony. I could have prowled the empty halls naked if I chose. I had no idea what time it was, but the sun was high in the sky, banishing only some of Harrenhal’s stubborn cold and damp. 

After making my way to the maester’s workshop, I brewed the same bitter tea I’d made before with some intuitive recipe and swallowed it down. 

Then I went looking for Aemond, uncertain if I’d find him.

He might have left with Criston after all.

I padded barefoot around the ruins of the largest castle in Westeros, the edge of my skirt growing heavy with the condensed dew on the flagstones. 

Aemond was in the Great Hall, seated on the musty, tattered chair where Jaehaerys the Conciliator had once declared Viserys his heir, holding court in an empty room. His chin rested on his knuckles as he leaned onto one elbow, and his single eye was unfocused, fixed on some point in his past.

I hesitated to interrupt his reverie, so I stood in the shadows and looked at him. 

Not long ago, he had been a stranger, but now my body quickened at the memory of every detail of his. He sat unnaturally straight, his lean outline threatening even in repose, with a dramatic profile fit for an artist’s study: all contrast of light and dark, the bridge of his nose perfectly straight and the angle of his jaw as sharp as a blade. 

He looked like a king, absent only his crown.

I took a step forward and my damp skirts dragged audibly on the stone.

Aemond’s trained ear alerted him to my presence immediately, and his single eye found me with the accuracy of a sharpshooter.

“Alys,” he murmured, his lips barely moving. His wrist rotated on the armrest of the wide throne and he beckoned with two long fingers, so I climbed the dias, stopping only when my knees brushed against his.

Aemond turned toward me then, resting both hands on my hips, and pressed his lips against my belly. I set my own hand gently on the top of his bare silver head.

“You needed sleep,” he insisted, then raised his face and replaced his lips with a flat palm. His eye was silently asking.

“I did,” I agreed, climbing onto his lap without hesitation, straddling his closed thighs.

“Criston and the men are gone,” he told me absently, warming my chilled skin wherever he touched. 

I hummed acknowledgement, running my fingertips down the side of his cheek. “So we are alone.”

Aemond bent and nuzzled his face between my breasts, the tip of his nose like the point of a dagger against my skin.

“How shall we pass the time?” I asked in challenge.

He did not answer except to push the fabric of my dress down off one of my shoulders and run the edge of his tongue along my collarbone. I shuddered, weaving my fingers through his hair as I closed my eyes and let my head fall back. 

“The leathersmith left a saddle,” Aemond said, breath hot on my skin. “Now, we can ride together.”

“Yes,” I answered unthinkingly, grinding my hips against his groin as I thought: we already do. 

“Atop the two fiercest dragons in the realm,” Aemond growled into my mouth.

I bit his lower lip, nearly drawing blood as I pulled it between mine in affirmation.

Aemond wrestled with my skirts and his breeches, managing to free his cock without ever breaking our kiss. I pulled back as his fingers slipped between my thighs.

“We shouldn’t,” I warned, knowing it was an incentive rather than a deterrent.

“Hm,” Aemond replied – giving me only that ambiguous, maddeningly noncommittal sound that could be interpreted in a thousand different ways as his fingers tightened around my hips and he pressed me down onto the head of his shaft. 

I sighed in equal resignation and gratification as I allowed myself to be lowered, bracing my hands on his shoulders so I could control the depth of penetration. I’d lost the battle against my better judgment, but I wasn’t mad about it.

So of course Aemond wrapped his arms around me and dragged me against him, seating himself so deep it felt like he was rearranging my body to suit him. He held himself there, lips moving against mine, until the tension bled out of my taut stomach. I hooked my ankles behind him and let my full weight rest on his thighs, trusting to him not to go too hard.

He seemed content just to be joined to me, teasing toward climax.

I tested his lips, diving deep and then easing off. Letting him lead, then pressing my advantage. We traded control back and forth like a handle of vodka, getting increasingly drunk.

“Alys,” Aemond finally groaned.

“You’ll be the death of me,” I confessed as tears pricked my eyes.

He guided my hips until I scooped them against him without direction, then he closed his arms around me and snapped his own upward to meet each arc. I yielded, crumpling onto his chest.

My quick breaths against the shell of his ear only encouraged him, and before long Aemond slid down until just his shoulderblades were braced against the backrest of the throne, leveraging me upright so he could use my weight to drill himself into me as his hands clutched through layers of fabric, desperately seeking purchase on my skin. Mine - braced on his chest - found their way to the clasps of his leather tunic. Somehow, I released them and let my fingers run over the ridges of muscle bunching on his abdomen. 

As he neared the end, Aemond bared his teeth, clamped both fists around the neckline of my gown, and tore it abruptly in half down to the waist. His arms snaked under the tatters, pulling me hard against him as he spilled himself inside me again with an intensity approaching violence.   

Our hearts thundered together with only the thinnest division of skin and bone between them, as if straining to merge along with our bodies. His bare skin against mine was electric.

Wildly, I wondered if this passion might actually kill me. I had no will to resist Aemond, even when it hurt.

He slid upright again, cradling me against his heaving chest. 

When I raised my head, hot rivulets streaked down my cheeks unbidden. It wasn’t pain so much as a strange transcendence.

Aemond clutched my face between his hands. He murmured my name again, his eye searching between both of mine. He brought my cheeks to his lips, blotting my tears. Slowly, steadily, he tipped me back into his arms, supporting my full weight with remarkable ease. When he withdrew, I made a pitiful sound, and he grimaced as he shifted me into his lap, laying my closed legs over the right arm of the throne and settling my back in the cradle of his left elbow. He rested his right palm consolingly, possessively, on my lower belly. 

I felt hollow without him inside me.

We sat silently, mutually shocked by our own ferocity. Trying to make sense of what it meant.

“Can you stand?” Aemond finally asked. Even if he’d reached some kind of conclusion, he wasn’t the type to put it into words.

I gave him a withering look and almost laughed at the implication, but his expression was grave, so I sobered – with some effort. When I nodded, he got to his feet, carefully lowering me onto mine in front of the throne. Instinctively and fruitlessly, I clutched my thighs together and bit my lower lip when a warm trickle slid down the inside of my leg. 

I plucked at the damp skirts and torn bodice of my gown, then shot Aemond an accusatory glare. “You’re a savage,” I goaded him, recovering some of my levity.

Instead of being contrite, he slid his hands under the velvet tatters, cupped my breast, and kissed me. It felt like bribery, and I was sorely tempted to sell my soul.

“You’ve ruined another dress,” I insisted, pulling away and trying to re-establish some modicum of dignity.

“There’s no one here but us,” he replied in a honeyed voice as he adjusted his own clothing. With a flash of insight, he shrugged off the tunic he was wearing and held it out to me.

I took it only because it would mean he’d have to walk around shirtless – simultaneously fair recompense for him and eye candy for me - and let my torn dress slide off my hips and pool at my feet.

The way that Aemond looked at me when I stepped out of it wearing only his tunic, a silver strand of his spend glistening down the length of my inner leg, almost doomed us both.

He settled for closing his fists around both of my biceps and slamming his lips down onto mine until I was breathless. Then he stalked away.

I followed after a cursory cleanup with what remained of my dress.

Fitting a dragon saddle was not a one-person job.

Hannibal let Aemond approach, the High Valyrian he was murmuring almost like a song. I suspected my wild dragon allowed it - not because he was beholden to the language of the dragonlords - but because he could smell Aemond on me. Perhaps our insatiability had a secondary advantage I hadn’t anticipated.

Hannibal bowed his great head so we could tug the heavy leather collar that held the front of the saddle in place around his neck, navigating around his horns. I wondered briefly where my craftsman has possibly acquired enough leather as the scale of it set in. The hardest part was tightening the secondary straps that secured the back of the saddle. They dangled behind his wings and had to be buckled under the barrel of his ribcage just tightly enough to hold it firmly on. The leathersmith had matched the angle of the collar perfectly, but he had made the chest strap adjustable, and securing both sides to the huge iron buckles attached to the band that connected to the collar across what I thought of as the dragon’s sternum required more strength than I had. I watched the sinews strain in Aemond’s arms and bare chest as he wrestled them taut. 

“An ingenious design,” Aemond acknowledged as he returned to my side. “A proper saddle is affixed to the scales, and over time they grow over its edges, making dragon and saddle nearly inseparable,” he explained.

I stared at him, wide-eyed. 

“It’s painless,” he assured me. “But we have no dragonkeepers here with the proper skills.”

He stood back to study Hannibal, assessing. 

Unsettled, I probed. “I won’t fall off, will I?”

“No,” he assured me. “This is an adequate substitute.”

I doubtfully caught my tender lower lip between my teeth and was instantly reminded of his kisses. “Adequate?” 

“Satisfactory,” Aemond corrected. “The leathersmith had the foresight to add stability chains.”

After that, there was nothing left to do but test it.

We flew above the clouds so we could not be observed from the ground.

By the time we’d fitted the saddle, found a functional pair of breeches for me, paused for a belated midday meal, and strapped me into the saddle with twin chains that affixed to a belt at my waist, the sun was low in the sky.

I soared with Aemond above a carpet of white in a kaleidoscope of sunset pinks, oranges, and purples, and when I closed my eyes I could almost forget we were astride the oldest and fiercest living dragons in Westeros: winged annihilation, not some cuddly furred beast from a fantasy story. I felt like Bastian on Falkor anyway. 

All I had to do was glance over and see Aemond - his lean silhouette dwarfed by Vhagar’s bulk - to ground myself in reality.

But still – there was no denying it was magical.

To climb with dizzying speed, smoothly bank, and soar effortlessly was a heady power, and I almost forgot the thrill of commanding fire and ice with my bare hands as my will manifested instantly in Hannibal’s flight.

We chased the sun until the chill of descending night numbed my extremities, and when we landed, I slid shivering into Aemond’s arms, giddy and grinning and half-frozen.

Hannibal trundled into the woods, seemingly unbothered by his saddle, and Vhagar settled into her own nest of felled trees and forest detritus as Aemond led me back toward the sad ruin of Harrenhal. 

I must have asked Aemond a hundred questions as I wrestled out of my riding gear and into a long, trailing white dressing gown that had previously belonged to the lady of the castle. When I stretched out on the pallet, I fully intended to close my eyes only for a moment, but I was asleep before Aemond was fully undressed.

I awoke with a creeping sense of dread sometime in the middle of the night. A storm was gathering, and flashing lighting threw the sparse furniture of our chamber into stark relief. 

Aemond’s side of the pallet was empty.

Abruptly, I sat up, gathering my skirts around me as I lit a candle and carried it through the echoing hallways. The inky blackness retreated only around the sphere of my flickering light, and when the candle proved insufficient, I cast it aside and held up a ball of flame on an open palm.

“Aemond!” I hissed, wary of raising my voice louder than a strained whisper.

He didn’t answer.

Sometimes, I thought I saw glimpses of floating silver hair or heard the tread of heavy boots, and I followed.

I found him at the base of the weirwood tree in the forsaken godswood, on one knee with his left hand on the pale bark, his back to me – just like in the dream where I’d mistaken him for Daemon. A chill ran through me that was quite different from the blustery air that frosted my breath. The wind was picking up, swirling my skirts and teasing at Aemond’s long, unbound hair.

I approached slowly and put a hand on his shoulder, and he started as if I’d woken him from a trance. He turned to look up at me with a haunted expression, his unpatched sapphire eye flashing in the oddly silent lightning. His intact eye glistened with the threat of unshed tears.

“What is it?” I demanded anxiously.

He twisted at the waist, grabbed my hips, and pulled me against him, resting his cheek on my abdomen with a shuddering breath. 

“Aemond?” My fingers brushed the top of his snowy head hesitantly.

He rose to his feet, his gaze slowly shifting from my face to the black expanse of the God’s Eye, and an icy fist closed around my heart.

Chapter Text

“I saw it,” Aemond intoned, looking out across the void of darkness that was the surface of the lake beyond the broken walls of the godswood. Flashes of lighting threw the landscape into stark relief before casting it back into tenebrous black.  

“Saw what?” I urged softly, my fingers twining through his, uncertain if I was seeking comfort or giving it. I squinted into the distance as if it held his secrets.

“What Heleana saw.” His head swivels toward mine. “What you saw, too.”

“The battle over the God’s Eye?” I prompted, glancing over at the weirwood tree with sudden suspicion. 

Aemond nods. “Hm,” he hums in acknowledgement, low and melodic, a sound I’ve come to associate with him exclusively. “That, and other things.”

“What other things?” I asked, afraid to push him too hard but desperately curious. I’d come to rely on my own inner sight, but the future was hopelessly muddied now. What had he seen when he rested his hand on that pale bark?

He didn’t answer at first, just turned to me, backlit by flashing lighting - terrible and beautiful as an avenging angel - and thunder echoed between the hills for the first time, rumbling through the ground beneath our feet. Aemond’s intact eye fixed on me, unblinking, and the sapphire that took the other’s place seemed to glow with an otherworldly luminescence in a shadowed socket. His scar was a harsh rift cleaving his brow and trailing down his cheek like an inky tear. I took a step back, uncertain. 

He moved - faster than I thought possible - and lunged for me.

I cried out, momentarily terrified. I felt the full extent of his strength as he bore me to the ground, heedless of the uneven, rocky terrain and the twisted roots of the tree I’d woken under when I first found myself in this world. I braced myself for a hard landing, but his perfect control forestalled it even as his body covered mine. 

“Aemond!” I pleaded, half-convinced his hands would close around my neck and squeeze the life from me next, animated by some horror he’d seen in a weirwood vision.  

Instead, he pulled back, shoved his unlaced breeches that were the only clothing he wore down over his hips, and tore at the trailing skirt of my dressing gown with desperate hands. When he muscled between my thighs and sheathed himself in me in one rough thrust, he took a gasping breath like he was drowning and he’d just broken the surface. 

Aemond had been ferocious before, but this was something new. I strained against him, pushing back on his shoulders warily as he started to pound into me. He stopped just short of hurting, but it was not a coupling so much as a frantic taking. His face was a mask of concentration: the way he must look in battle or training in the yard, and his nostrils flared with exertion as he set a punishing rhythm. His mouth never sought my lips: he bent over my chest and bit at my breast through the fabric of my gown, or buried his face between shoulder and ear so his jaw rasped harshly against the sensitive skin of my neck, or pressed his forehead against mine, teeth bared as he held my hips firmly in place with both hands and drove himself deep.

I didn’t dare interfere, and it was oddly hypnotic to watch him ravage me as the approaching storm blew in across the God’s Eye. Above us, the branches of the weirwood shook with gusts of wind, the leaves a sighing chorus of shameless voyeurs, and the only light was the occasional flash of lightning followed by the rolling thunder that reverberated through the embracing roots that seemed to curl around us. Aemond’s unbound hair was wild in the rising gale, matching his increasing intensity.

The storm broke above us just as Aemond shuddered with release, drenching us with frigid rain as his seed pooled inside me like a banked fire. I writhed in his arms, clamping down on his shaft in the throes of a correspondingly powerful finish that blindsided me. When it was over, we clutched each other, panting and utterly spent, in the midst of the downpour. 

Aemond cradled me in his arms, our bodies still joined, sheltering me from the worst of it, and I knew it was the only explanation or apology he’d offer.    

He was still rocking his hips slightly, soothingly, consoling strokes with a semi-hard shaft, when the sheeting rain turned to a lighter drizzle. His cold lips pressed onto my forehead, my cheeks, and finally my mouth. 

“Gods, Alys,” he murmured.  

I wanted to ask again what he’d seen, but I waited to hear what he’d volunteer.

“Every path I might take to the throne ends in the God’s Eye,” he growled. “In fire and blood.”

I closed my eyes and wrapped him in my arms.

“Death does not frighten me,” Aemond added, and I tensed, holding him tight as if he would vanish with the admission. 

“You can’t leave me,” I entreated, my voice breaking, suddenly terrified that acceptance of his inevitable death had been the impetus behind his urgency. 

He made that low sound again, hm, like his own mortality was a matter of little consequence, and let the backs of the fingers on one hand brush against my cheek in sympathy.

“Aemond,” I whispered imploringly, wrapping my legs around his waist to keep him close. “A crown is not the only thing worth having.”

He looked down at me, angular face stark in the moonlight sneaking between clearing clouds, hair dripping like melting snow. Fuck, he was beautiful. 

 I could feel his yearning as tangibly as his body inside mine. To yield the Iron Throne would demolish him, but we could build something better on that razed ground. If only he could see that. He’d been fixed myopically on ambition for so long, he’d forgotten how to look beyond it.

“They were weeping,” he said distantly.

“Who?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Rhaenrya, on the beach. Helaena, over an empty cradle. Alicent. Thousands more. Mothers, sisters, wives, lovers. An ocean of tears, but not enough to quench the flames.” He was turned inward, remembering. 

I clenched my jaw. “War is terrible.”

“So is tyranny," Aemond spat bitterly. 

I cupped his face in my palm. “Are you so sure Rhaenyra will be a tyrant?”

He shook off my hand, bracing himself above me as his gaze slid down my body. My white dressing gown was drenched; it clung to me translucently like a second skin, a wholly insubstantial covering. “You carry my son,” he murmured, fingertips trailing over my flat belly, above where the head of his shaft was lodged.

I went utterly still. The words surged up from our joining like a wave, cresting at the crown of my head. I sputtered, gasping for breath as if suddenly submerged. But… the moon tea! a silent inner voice argued. My rational mind chided me: you have no idea what you brewed. Not really.  

Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

The thought of childbirth without the intervention of modern medicine was a chilling prospect. I clapped my hand over my mouth, feeling suddenly sick. Admittedly, I panicked a little, dragging myself backward and trying to ignore the gush between my thighs as we separated. Aemond’s face twisted as I sat opposite him, clutching my folded legs against my chest and reeling. The nausea passed, and I relaxed a little. Maybe he was wrong.

We sat for a moment regarding each other in the drizzle as night gave way to the barest hint of dawn on the horizon. He was reconciling himself to the possibility that he had a purpose beyond the throne, and I was wrestling with the sudden recollection that Alys Rivers had borne a boy she’d claimed was the son of Aemond Targaryen.

Fucking fictional fate, I quietly raged. But the shock was slowly yielding to something softer I wasn’t ready to acknowledge. He’d been looking into the future after all. He might not mean now.

Aemond stood smoothly, tucking himself back into his breeches and giving the laces a cursory tug. The leather still hung low on his hips as he turned toward me, and I flushed with rebelliously stubborn lust. He held out a hand to me.

I took it without hesitation, letting him pull me to my feet and brace me against his torso as I wobbled. I leaned into his chest, oddly comforted. He held me, stroking my hair down my back with a flat palm as his chin rested on the top of my head. 

Then he swept me into his arms, the long, dripping train of my dressing gown dragging behind us, and carried me back into the roots of the ruined castle. I was his, and he was mine; that was all the truth I knew or needed to know for now.

Chapter Text

Aemond was broody and silent throughout the next day. 

He didn’t want to discuss his thoughts, but nor did he want to be alone. Every time I made to leave any space we occupied together, he would grab my wrist and tug me onto his lap or follow me shortly after I was gone. 

It did not bother me that he haunted my steps. I craved his presence, too. Aemond was simultaneously the source of all my problems and the single solution… even though my highly inopportune brain ensured that the refrain of Sabrina Carpenter’s Please, Please, Please was a perpetual intrusive thought. 

I have a fun idea, babe.

Maybe just stay inside.

We could live so happily if no one knows that you’re with me.

I’m just kidding… but really. Really.

Really.

Clearly, absurdity was part of how I processed. 

Aemond did not speak again of the last part of his vision, and the possibility didn’t deter his lust in the slightest, though he was more careful with me than he’d been for the past few days. 

For me the idea still seemed remote, a chapter in someone else’s story: that other Alys. 

I didn’t feel any different. 

I didn’t want anything to change between us.

If Aemond’s vision was true – well, that was a knot for future me to untangle. 

So I accepted him when he slid a hand under my skirts.

I let him tease at the crown of my thighs like a consolation prize.

I mouthed his neck in mindless pleasure when he slipped two fingers inside me and curled them upward, beckoning. 

I arched against him in asking when he replaced his fingers with his cock.

I moved with him when he thrust, slowly and patiently.

I fell with him, and - after - lay curled into the curve of his body as his fingertips traced invisible whorls on my bare skin and his shaft slowly softened inside me.

“The Iron Throne seems far away,” Aemond observed, almost to himself, voicing his thoughts for the first time.

Tears stung my eyes; my previous reality felt like another life, too. I may never be able to crank a new Sabrina Carpenter song in the car with the windows down. 

I pushed the thought aside and realized that Aemond had grown up in King’s Landing and rarely left it; it’s all he’d ever known. He’d been caught in the web of his family’s intrigues all of his life, circling the Iron Throne like a murder of crows. No wonder his scope was so narrow. “There’s a whole world outside the Red Keep,” I reminded him. 

Please, please, please. Don’t prove I’m right.

Somehow, it was easier to speak openly when we weren’t looking at each other.

“What if Rhaenyra rules no better than Aegon?” Aemond asked, voice grating with the effort of forcing the words out. 

“What if she rules like your father did?” I countered, then sighed. “If she loses the faith of the people, she will be easy to replace.” I hoped that was true. This world hadn’t seen the French Revolution; it didn’t have a Declaration of Independence asserting that it was the right of the people to overthrow a system of government that didn’t serve their needs. No one had seen Hamilton. “And we still have the two largest dragons in Westeros,” I added. “She’s no threat to us.” I tamped down the image of Rhaenyra strutting about on a stage singing da-da-da-da-da like Jonathan Groff’s King George. My brain was straight-up bonkers. Focus. Aemond was serious.

“But we are to her - as long as we live,” he argued.

I countered, “Not if you relinquish your claim.”

“I won’t bend the knee,” Aemond said vehemently. Gradually, his harsh breath regulated. “She’ll have no choice but to kill us to secure her crown.”

I held out a hand so we could both see the tendrils of flame that sprung from my palm. As we watched, they morphed into icy fingers before vanishing. “Not if she can be persuaded that we are more valuable alive than dead.”

I could hear Aemond’s teeth gnashing. “What about Aegon?”

“He’s an invalid,” I said. “A puppet for the ambitions of Larys Strong.” I wasn’t entirely sure that was true, if I was honest with myself. Aegon was still a wild card.

“But Helaena. Daeron!” he objected.

“We can at least attempt diplomacy,” I shot back, exasperated. “Only if it fails will violence be necessary.” Finally, I turned over my shoulder to look at him. “Rhaenyra has eight dragons, Aemond. Even if we challenged her directly, victory is not guaranteed.” If you wanna go and be stupid, don’t do it in front of me. 

He subsided, brooding again. 

“We could start with Aegon,” I suggested. “Discern his intentions, at least. To mount any kind of challenge, your forces would need to be united… even if your support is only a temporary pretense.”

Aemond rolled away from me, onto his back, and stared at the ceiling. Whatever devil’s inside you – don’t let him out tonight.  Finally, he said, “I’ll send him a raven.”

I let out a long breath. And I’ll send one to Rhaenyra - I added wordlessly, since she might not take kindly to a long silence - assuring her that Aemond was not planning an imminent attack and ensuring she doesn’t send any ravens herself that he might intercept as she awaits word from me of further developments. That was the best I could do for now to keep them all from each other’s throats. 

Aemond was open to my council, but that was no guarantee he would heed it when the time came for action. 

I beg you: don’t embarrass me, motherfucker. 

Please, please, please.  

Aegon - or Larys on his behalf; it was difficult to say who - accepted the offer of a meeting on the condition that Aemond fly only as far as the coast between Duskendale and Rook’s Rest and be escorted the rest of the way by an armed guard, dragonless and unarmed.

“You’ll ride with me on Vhagar,” Aemond insisted, energized by the prospect of a task. He’d vacillated between intolerable and insatiable in the intervening days between sending his message and receiving an answer. He was not the type to sit idle long, even when he had ample distractions between my thighs. “It’s better Aegon doesn’t know you’ve claimed a dragon until we know his intentions.”

I nodded, gratified that it hadn’t even occurred to him to leave me behind.

I climbed into Vhagar’s saddle, trying to ignore the fact that Aemond rested a possessive palm over my flat belly as we took to the skies. It was a short flight that I spent scouring what I could see of the terrain for evidence of the movements of armies -- though the possibility of making sense of any that I found was probably naively optimistic.  

Vhagar bellowed in protest when we left her at the edge of the forest and walked to the contingent of men Aegon and Larys had sent as our escort. 

They were not expecting a lady, so there was no wheelhouse, they explained haltingly, exchanging uncertain glances.

“She will ride with me,” Aemond cut them off harshly.

He lifted me (with an ease that shouldn’t have been surprising anymore) onto a huge chestnut stallion, held my ankles together with a warning glance when I tried to swing one leg over the other side, then climbed on behind me, tugging me hard against him so I didn’t slide off. The overland ride felt infinitely longer than our flight; sitting sidesaddle was awkward, and the horse’s plodding gait was insufferably slow after soaring on dragonback. 

I was almost giddy with relief when we finally arrived in the familiar courtyard of Rook’s Rest. Aemond dismounted first, reaching up to help me down as he surveyed the space with a warrior’s eye. The guards at the threshold searched Aemond for weapons, but he gave them such a threatening glare when they turned to me that they hastily retreated and motioned us through the doors with downcast eyes.

At the end of the long, dim hall, a dais had been raised. On it, Aegon slumped, the black crown of the Conqueror with its glinting red jewel at a jaunty angle on his head, favoring the side that still had hair. Larys Strong stood at his right hand, and a pair of men in tattered white cloaks flanked them: an improvised kingsguard of two.

As we approached, I felt more than a little like Gandalf in Edoras, intent on freeing King Theodan from the malign whispers of Grima Wormtongue. Familiar words echoed - fortunately - only in the confines of my brain: The courtesy of your hall is somewhat lessened of late.

“Bow before your king,” Larys advised.

I glanced over at Aemond, dipping a curtsey only when he sank to a knee at Aegon’s feet. Aemond played obsequiousness convincingly when it served him, I observed. Probably a skill he’d practiced as frequently as he trained in the yard. Slowly, he rose again.

It surprised us both when Aegon addressed us with a clear, steady voice. “I recall summoning my brother,” he said, eyes fixed on my face: one intact and the other watery and red, narrowed by heavily scarred lids that looked almost melted. “And no one else.” If Aegon II had once been as handsome as Aemond, it was hard to tell. 

“Alys Rivers,” Aemond explained without elaboration. 

Aegon’s brows - well, technically the one that remained - went up, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he asked, “Have you both come to pledge your service to your king, then?” Larys leaned toward him, but Aegon only waved him away. “My brother rides the largest dragon in the realm, and he’s not bad with a sword,” Aegon drawled, then his eyes shifted to me. “What do you have to offer?” His gaze felt oily, and I tried not to shudder.

Aemond shifted his weight to put himself subtly between me and Aegon. It escaped the attention of exactly no one. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes as he marked his territory with no chill. 

“We came to discuss strategy,” Aemond began.

Aegon raised his chin as Larys whispered in his ear. “If I recall correctly,” Aegon answered, “Rhaenyra holds King’s Landing because you marched all our forces to Harrenhal then followed on Vhagar, leaving the Iron Throne undefended.” He tsked, then added, “So I’d suggest you leave the strategy to us.”

Aemond’s jaw bunched.

“Alicent conspired with Rhaenyra to surrender the city,” I blurted. “In exchange for Helaena and Jaehaera’s lives.”

“And her own skin,” Larys sneered. This was hardly news to them; Larys had been the Master of Whispers in King’s Landing.

“Our own mother – can you imagine?” Aegon’s mirthful facade crumbled. He was looking hard at Aemond now. “Seems betrayal is a family trait.” His mismatched eyes shifted to me again. “You can see why my trust demands loyalty now,” he explained, gesturing to Larys. “My Hand is most loyal.”

Larys stood with his chin slightly raised, gaze resting on Aemond steadily; I looked back and forth between them, wondering what sort of history they had.

“Aegon,” Aemond growled, ignoring Larys. “Rhaenyra has eight dragons at her command. Even with Vhagar and Tessarion, we are outmatched.”

“And Sunfyre,” Aegon added lightly.

“He lives?” I asked, too shocked to censor myself.

“In a manner of speaking,” Aegon scoffed, scanning his broken body. “Much like myself.”

“I have counseled against a direct attack,” Larys insisted.

Aemond faltered. “What, then?” 

“We wait,” was Larys’s clipped reply.

Aegon’s expression said otherwise. “The Hand of the King is convinced Rhaenrya will botch her rule badly enough that the people will call for their rightful king in time.”

“And yet, you muster the Hightower army and call Criston to join their ranks,” Aemond responded darkly.

“Larys is not the king,” Aegon pouted. “I am. And Mother’s family is appalled by her treachery,” Aegon shrugged. “Rightly, they wish to fight for my just cause.”

“There is another way,” I said.

Aemond’s eye slid closed in resignation. 

“When your father Viserys died,” I continued before I could lose my nerve. “Alicent heard him speak the name Aegon, and the words the Prince that was Promised. She thought he meant you. But she was wrong.” 

Larys and Aegon were watching me with intense curiosity despite themselves, so I blazed forward. “There is an ancient story. A prophecy about a Long Night and the end of the world of man. Aegon the Conqueror saw it in a dream, and it’s been passed from king to heir since his reign. That is what Viserys spoke of, a secret he shared with only one of his children. Viserys never wavered from his chosen heir.” 

Aemond reached out a restraining hand, but I said it anyway. “Aegon, Rhaenrya is the rightful Queen. Alicent knew it. That’s why she opened the gates.”

Silence followed, so deep it was like drifted snow.

Then, Aegon laughed.

“Oh, that’s fucking rich!” he howled in genuine mirth. Then he turned his streaming eyes to Aemond. “And you believe this?” He beat on the armrest of the wooden throne, cackling. “So what do you propose, Aemond the Fierce? That we just… give up?”

Aemond’s mouth was a grim line.

When he didn’t answer immediately, Aegon drawled with mock surprise: “My warlike brother suddenly suing for peace?” He touched his widespread fingertips to his chest in affected shock. “Why the abrupt about-face?” He leaned forward, eyes narrowed as he glanced between us. 

I had to give Aegon credit - it took about three seconds flat for him to put the pieces together.

He laughed ruefully, his gaze appraising. “You must have a magical cunt, witch.”

Aemond tensed, and I gave him a warning look. Don’t let him bait you. 

Aegon was leaning back against his throne, addressing the ceiling. “If I’d known all it would take to quench my brother’s ambition was to sow his seed in a Strong bastard, I might yet be a whole man.” He turned to Aemond, eyes flashing with that old maliciousness. “Shame Rhaenyra only bore Harwin sons, otherwise you could have fucked one and prevented a war instead of killing one to start it.” 

This time, I laid a restraining hand on Aemond’s arm as his fists balled.  

But Aegon couldn’t resist. “Though, admittedly, your chosen bastard is comely. I bet she’d be hard to top,” he laughed as he inclined his head toward me, amused at his own double-entendre. “If I still had my cock…” he trailed off as his eyes raked the length of my body shamelessly. He held up a hand and wiggled his fingers: “Still, I reckon these alone could satisfy you better than my brother can. Come here and I’ll show you.” 

Aemond surged forward, and I dragged desperately on his arm as Aegon’s makeshift kingsguard jumped to block him. The fact that he was unarmed was their only advantage.

Aegon just laughed. “Still so easy to rile, little brother,” he taunted. 

“I did not come here to play games,” Aemond growled through his teeth.

“Honestly!” Aegon jeered, his scarred face twisted into a grotesque mask. “It’s just a bit of fun.” His voice shifted, became low and dangerous. “And more than you deserve, Kinslayer.”

“You’re not dead,” Aemond hissed.

“No, I’m not,” Aegon sneered with deliberate emphasis that reminded Aemond that the moniker was not unjustified after Storm’s End. “And that means I wear the crown.” 

Aemond’s nostrils flared. “Rhaenyra sits the throne.”

Aegon looked around. “But she is not here, now – is she?” He rested an elbow on the throne in a posture of affected contemplation. “I can’t trust you, brother, but perhaps you’ll be more cooperative if you have an incentive to obey my commands.” His eyes slid to me. “Seize her.”

Aemond shoved me behind his back and extended a protective arm, but he needn’t bother. Aegon had pissed me off. I sidestepped Aemond and held out a hand, staring Aegon down.

“You remember the bite of dragonfire, don’t you?” I asked lightly as an orb of flame sprung into being above my open palm. 

The broken king’s eyes grew wide - as wide as the melted lids on his left side would allow, at least.

“Let us pass, or you’ll feel it again,” I warned.

The kingsguard hesitated, looking to Aegon for guidance, but he said nothing as we backed away, the guttering flame reflected in his fearful gaze. He sat rooted to his chair, no doubt caught in the throes of remembered agony.

“Stay back,” I warned.

As we crossed the threshold, Aemond swung a fist and decked one of the men stationed at the doorway, pulling his sword from its scabbard with a loud scrape as he guard went down. He pushed me behind him again and cut through several of the soldiers who rushed us as we bolted for the horses even though I shouted at him to stand down, holding the rest at bay with flaming hands. 

The men - muttering prayers to their chosen gods - backed away enough to allow us to mount and clatter through the gates. They did not follow, and Aemond rode hard south, holding onto my horse’s reins with one hand.

I clung to the saddle desperately, grateful that a full-out gallop was the smoothest gait since I wasn’t anything approaching a horsewoman. We’d barely ridden for ten minutes when Vhagar’s massive silhouette appeared above the treeline. Aemond slowed his blowing mount gradually and got us both to the ground before the horses bolted and Vhagar’s landing dusted us with a fine mist of soil uprooted by her massive claws. 

Aemond dragged me onto her back, silently raging. “Sōvēs, Vhagar!” he commanded, pulling me savagely against his chest as we turned toward Harrenhal.

Well, I thought, bracing myself for the fallout. That could have gone better.

Chapter Text

Although the flight back was ominously silent, Aemond didn’t even wait until we got inside the walls of Harrenhall to lose his shit.

As soon as we dismounted on the shores of the God’s Eye, he grabbed my bicep and whirled me around to face him as I marched toward the castle. “I had the situation in hand!” he seethed. 

I set my jaw, then blurted, “Oh really? Which part? The part where Aegon discovered his spine even though he has no balls? The part where you two bickered like schoolboys? Or maybe the part where he tried to have me abducted? What exactly did you have in hand except your ass when Aegon handed it to you?” Aemond looked momentarily stunned. I snarked, “Do me a favor, huh? Just leave me behind next time if you want me to stand next to you like arm candy!” 

Aemond’s brow bunched in equal parts rage and confusion - probably because he had no idea what arm candy was - but he didn’t let the latter stop him. A fist closed around my other arm and he dragged my face upward toward his. “I never agreed that Rhaenyra is the rightful heir,” he hissed.

I rolled my eyes even though he wasn’t wrong. I’d only gotten him as far as entertaining the possibility. Damn Targaryens and their utter imperviousness to reason. “Then you’re just as pig-headed as your brother!” I answered hotly as I tottered on my tiptoes in his grip.  

Aemond shook me, once, hard, his fingers digging into my arms and his jaw clenched. “You know nothing,” he hissed.

I barked a laugh he wouldn't understand, then twisted violently in his arms, fighting to free myself as my rage built. “I know your fixation on the Iron Throne will end at the bottom of the God’s Eye! You know it, too! You’ve seen it! ” 

“I am not afraid to die!” he bellowed, as if I’d forgotten.

I shouted back, “Bravery won’t make you any less dead!” My fury was a runaway train now, so I added, “Last time I checked, the Iron Throne isn’t at the bottom of this fucking lake, so what - exactly - is the point?” I managed to wrench my arms from his grip and grabbed the front of his tunic. “You might be willing to die so Aegon can wear the crown, or Daeron – but I won’t let you!” I shouted in his face. “You’re not allowed to throw your life away for control of some stupid chair, do you hear me, Aemond Targaryen?” I was beating on his chest now with both fists. “You.are.not.allowed.to.die!” My voice grated, then broke. “You can’t!”

He cupped my cheeks with both hands, his expression suddenly tender. Tenderness on Aemond’s face looked more than a little pained, like gentle feelings hurt him.

I wasn’t done. “I don’t want anyone to die in this senseless war: not the soldiers you rally or the smallfolk caught in the crossfire or any more of your deranged family – or the dragons you ride, either! But you’re the only one I really care about, Aemond. You!” I poked his chest vehemently with a fingertip, my eyes shining with unshed tears as I confessed the truth to myself as much as to him. “So if letting Rhaenyra sit the throne is what it takes to keep you alive, so be it!”

He blinked. Then Aemond launched himself at me, his lips crushing mine with bruising force. I wasn’t at all sure I’d convinced him of the rightness of my position, but at least I’d managed to quicken his lust instead of his temper.

We collapsed onto the sand, tearing at our clothes with clawed hands, heedless of everything except our desperate need. My fingers tangled in his hair and Aemond wrapped his hands around my bare waist under my skirt and dragged me toward him when he was free of his breeches. I threw my head back and gasped as he fell onto me, hilting himself in one thrust with his full weight behind it. Surprisingly, there was no pain, as if my body was learning to anticipate his intensity. The next few minutes were a blur: snapping hips, grasping hands, nipping teeth, and flung sand that my skirts mercifully kept far from our joining – not that either of us would have noticed.

He finished with one hand lightly around my neck and the other curled over my head to keep from crushing me, lips over mine and tongue between my teeth, pumping his shaft through the resistance of my body clenching hard around him. 

Aemond drew back just enough to let out a string of High Valyrian curses. At least, I assumed he was cursing. The words were unfamiliar: harsh and musical at the same time.    

Then he pitched backward, chest heaving, and braced himself on arms extended behind him, discretely covered again by his tunic but sweaty and rakish and dusted with sand. I sat up, smoothing my skirts down over my splayed legs, and met his eye.  

Aemond ran a hand over his face and took a few deep breaths, collecting himself. 

 “It was foolish to reveal that you can command fire,” he observed, launching straight back into our argument as if I hadn’t just essentially confessed that I loved him and he hadn’t just fucked me wildly on the shore of the lake he was supposed to die in.

“Oh, so I should have just let Aegon’s men drag me away?” I retorted.

“It wouldn't have come to that,” he insisted.

“Well, I didn’t exactly want you to lay waste to the entire company of soldiers between us and the horses, either,” I sassed.

He cocked his head and narrowed his eye. “Where are you from, Alys?”

I sighed. “A place where violently killing people is rarely a necessity.”

His brows went up, as if the idea was entirely novel. Then he sobered. “The Seven Kingdoms are dangerous, Alys. If you cannot trust me, I cannot trust you.”

I snorted in derision but considered his point. “I suppose we should agree on some guidelines before any future negotiations.” 

It was enough of a concession that he nodded, getting to his feet and arranging his clothing: dignified and imposing, as always, lacking only his many blades. 

He turned to me and held out a hand. 

Grudgingly, I took it and let him haul me to my feet.

We trudged up the long walk to the gates of Harrenhal side-by-side. I felt wrung out. 

There was enough bread, hard cheese, and fruit to make a meal. Eventually, one of us would have to bake more bread and cook some of what Criston left behind - and it would probably be me - but not today.

I returned to our chamber with every intention of taking a nap as Aemond bent intently over his maps and plans again, but found myself unable to sleep, so I closed my eyes and tried to reach into the future. 

My visions were still frustratingly obscure. I could catch glimpses, here and there, of events - but none long or clear enough to make sense of. It seemed the more I meddled with and became entangled in events, the less I could predict. 

Looks like I’d have to rely on good old-fashioned strategy.

One thing was clear: Aemond and I could not make an attempt for the throne alone. Our two dragons were enough to protect us, but not enough to take on Rhaenyra’s eight, especially since I had no real battle experience. Aemond might be tempted to fall on Aegon at Rook’s Rest with Vhagar - especially after today’s events - but I wasn’t sure Criston and the Hightower host would immediately rally to his cause if he removed his brother so blatantly from the line of succession. Kinslaying, as far as I could tell, was one of Westeros’s few taboos. And without Aemond and his dragon, Aegon didn’t stand a chance against Rhaenrya, either. Let him follow Larys’s advice, and perhaps the Blacks will hunt him down in time.

So we were in a bit of a stalemate.

I thought of Aemond, pacing around the round table, trying to salvage what he could. The Green front was fractured - perhaps permanently - and without a united effort, it would be foolhardy to challenge the Blacks.

I wondered if the smallfolk of Westeros would accept Rhaenyra as queen. Perhaps – if she could keep their bellies fed and their livelihoods safe. The loyalties of the great houses were probably the most problematic piece of this puzzle, and Aemond could navigate that web far more knowledgeably than me.

I sighed and rolled onto my side, hyperaware of the echoes of Aemond’s hands on my skin. Everything else felt utterly familiar, I assessed, gratified by the comfort of relative normalcy. It was enough to calm my racing mind, and before long, sleep claimed me.

Time passed tolerably.

Aemond spent his days training - usually shirtless, damn him, his blade flashing in the sun and his infernally perfect hair flying - and trying to teach me the basics of hand-to-hand combat. I was a fairly incompetent student, but he persisted with tenacity. 

What soundtrack would accompany our training montage? I wondered as “You’re the Best” from Karate Kid and “Eye of the Tiger” competed for space in my brain and Aemond swung a wooden blade at me with an almost comically intent expression. Some Mr. Miyagi I’d found. 

We flew together, too, and I took to that with significantly more aptitude.

I cooked, Aemond sent messages by raven, I tried to use my muddied sight, he cornered me in unexpected places and took out his frustrations between my thighs. 

It was oddly domestic, but Aemond was not content.

He was restless and brooding, and I knew he would not be resigned to being the de facto lord and lady of Harrenhal forever. This was a stolen season.

At least he wasn’t torching the Riverlands, I told myself.

On many nights, I awoke to an empty pallet: Aemond was pouring over his maps or scrawling messages or just walking the echoing halls, thinking. 

About a fortnight after we’d met with Aegon, I stirred and reached for him only to find his side of our makeshift bed empty again. Usually, I could settle back to sleep, but tonight I lay awake, counting days. I’d probably been in Westeros for close to two months, but it felt like a lifetime.

I went still.

Nearly two months - at least one of them with Aemond - and one aspect of my typical biology had been conspicuously missing.

Stress, I reassured myself. It’s just stress. There’d certainly been no lack of that, not to mention a strange diet and all kinds of unusual exertions. I’d been drinking my moon tea recipe intermittently just in case. If I’d learned anything from my own visions, it was that the future was not set. No fate but what we make, Sarah Connor-style. 

Shakily, I got to my feet and made my way to the maester’s chamber.

I mixed up another draught and was sipping it when Aemond walked in.

He took a seat opposite me, reached for my steaming cup, and sniffed. “Are you in pain?” he asked.

“Uh, no,” I replied, puzzled, trying to discretely get the tea back. 

He sniffed it again, then took a sip. “This is a mild remedy; when I was a boy, I used to insist upon it instead of dreamwine or milk of the poppy when Criston’s lessons in the yard were particularly harsh.” He set the cup back on the table between us. “Those cloud the mind,” he clarified. Then his eye narrowed and his voice dropped. “Have I hurt you?”

I didn’t answer even though I knew the question wasn’t entirely unjustified given the frequency and vigor of our trysts. I was preoccupied; the implications of what he said were just beginning to dawn on me. I’d been trusting to my seemingly intuitive knowledge of remedies; when I thought moon tea, my hands had seemingly found the proper ingredients confidently, and I’d never questioned what I was making.

But apparently my subconscious had decided that I didn’t need moon tea after all: I needed a mild painkiller. Fucking hell. Whatever irresistible compulsion that had drawn me to Aemond was apparently also guiding my hands; I might be able to exert some control over the outcome of the Dance, but apparently I couldn’t escape certain other aspects of Alys’s narrative. 

I must have looked absolutely gutted because Aemond’s expression turned stormy.

“Alys,” he commanded. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Maybe I could throw myself down the stairs, I thought absently. There’s no shortage of steep and dangerous steps in Harrenhal. But as I considered it for more than a second, I knew I couldn’t do it, and not only because I lacked the willpower. 

I raised my head and gave Aemond a tremulous smile. “Nothing, nothing. I thought it might help me sleep.” Then I dropped my chin and looked up at him meaningfully through my lashes. “But I can think of a better alternative.”

If there was no way to escape my fate, I might as well embrace it.

Chapter Text

Once again, I awoke in the middle of the night to find Aemond missing from our bed. 

Sighing, I rose, too, and peeked a head out of the door.

He was just turning a corner, so I followed: out of curiosity more than anything else, so I didn’t call out to him to wait. I wanted to see where he was going.

Aemond was always a step away from being out of sight, but I didn’t lose him even though he was leading me into parts of Harrenhal where I hadn't ventured. He never once noticed that I was following him. I was about to congratulate myself on my spying skills when he opened a small door that - to my surprise - seemed to lead out of the castle entirely. 

I hesitated, then poked my head out after him, hoping he’d be striding away across the open ground without turning back so he didn’t see me. 

“Fucking hell!” I hissed when I almost bumped foreheads with none other than Daemon Targaryen. “Daemon?” I gasped, simultaneously shocked and annoyed that I’d apparently confused him with Aemond yet again. “What are you doing here?”

I glanced around anxiously; if Aemond saw him, the outcome would not be pretty, and it suddenly occurred to me that Aemond could have been stalking me through the corridors in much the same way I thought I’d been stalking him. Fortunately, the darkness behind me felt empty. Hurriedly, I stepped outside the castle walls and closed the door behind me.

Daemon leaned closer and whispered, “Rhaenyra needs to speak with you.” I recalled my last communication warning her not to send any replies by raven that Aemond might intercept and again fervently missed text messaging.  

“She’s not here, is she?” I wheezed breathlessly.

Daemon’s thoughts were clear on his face: I was a simpleton for even suggesting it. Clearly, he’d come as her emissary. “I’ll bring you to her. It’s not far.”

I looked down at my feet. Once again, I was barefoot, and the broken shale around the castle was sharp.

Daemon watched me weighing my options, then sighed deeply and pitched me over his shoulder once more, carrying me until we reached grass. I bumped against the length of his body, grateful that most of my weight was balanced on my protruding hip bones. 

When he lowered me down again, I cocked a brow at him. “We keep meeting like this.”

It momentarily struck me as strange that he didn’t razz me about the absence of the boots he’d bought me or my seemingly perpetual shoeless state, but I figured he was just focused on the task at hand. I looked around and demanded, “Where’s Caraxes?”

“Couldn’t risk alerting Vhagar,” Daemon replied. “We’ll ride to where I left him.”

Great. More horses.

There was only one, as it turned out, tied to a tree near the forest line. 

Grumbling, I let Daemon pull me onto the saddle in front of him. I noticed he was not quite as handsy as he’d been in the past, and I wondered briefly if it was because things between him and Rhaenyra had improved. I didn’t ask.

We rode.

And rode.

And rode.

Fast and without talking, since we’d have plenty of time to speak when we got to our destination. Except it never seemed to arrive.

Finally, I tugged on the reins myself and looked over my shoulder at him. “You said it wasn’t far,” I accused.

But instead of an answer, I got a swift blow to the side of my head.

Everything went black.

I came to in a small cell, head pounding. 

Daemon was sitting just outside the bars. 

“What the hell, Daemon?” I moaned, clutching my temples. 

He didn’t answer.

Instead, a slumped figure in the shadows stood. 

“He’s not Daemon,” an oddly familiar voice softly asserted.

I blinked, uncertain whether I could believe the evidence of my own eyes. How hard did he hit me? 

“What?” I said stupidly – because unless Daemon had an identical twin, the man seated in front of me was unmistakably Daemon Targaryen.

He stood as the second man held out a bag of coin. “Thank you for your services,” that soft voice said. Silently, Daemon took the bag, and then - suddenly - he wasn’t Daemon anymore. His face sort of stretched, then lifted away, and a stranger with nondescript features and sharp grey eyes was standing in his place. “The last installment will be waiting for you in the Iron Bank when you make your way back to Braavos.”

At first I felt like I was going crazy. Can head injuries cause hallucination?

Then I remembered Arya Stark and the Faceless Men. Of course. 

I took a step forward, fingers glowing red.

“Ah-ah-ah,” that melodic voice chided, shaking a finger at me as he shuffled forward into the light. He was leaning on a crutch of some kind. Larys Strong. Fuck. 

He inclined his head to the right and I turned to look through the bars on that side of my cell. Standing in the bare cell next to me was a tall, scraggly man I’d assuredly never seen before. I turned back to Larys with the universal expression for so what? He only stared pointedly at the wall next to him, so my gaze followed his. Opposite the front of the stranger’s cell was a blank wall with a tiny nocked arrow peeking through a narrow slit. 

“Rafe is an unerring marksman,” Larys observed blithely, like he was talking about the weather. “If you attempt to escape using your… powers…” he paused over the word before continuing, “Otto, here, is a dead man.” He must have read the conflict on my face: on one hand, I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of anyone. On the other, who the fuck is Otto and why should I care? Larys stepped aside a bit awkwardly. Behind his head - another archer concealed behind a thick stone wall - and this time, his target was me. “And if, by chance, he misses, Aryk won’t.”

Grinding my teeth, I subsided, already weighing whether I could melt both arrows simultaneously with enough accuracy to try anyway.

“There are other precautions as well,” Larys added. “A rather ingenious device of my own design, if you’ll forgive my immodesty. It will trigger the release of a particularly potent poison into the air if the temperature in your cell shifts abruptly.”

Dammit. He had me there. 

It was foolish to reveal that you can command fire, Aemond had said. I rolled my eyes. No shit, Sherlock. It was rapidly becoming apparent that I had vastly underestimated the Westerosi propensity for cutthroat tactics. 

Fortunately, no one knew I could command ice, too, but the temperature gauge foiled that plan, if indeed it actually existed. My head ached. I needed time to think my way around this.

“What do you want with me?” I demanded with false bravado.

Larys shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just for you to stay here safely while Aemond recaptures the throne for his brother.”

“You said you wanted to wait it out!” I objected. 

He shrugged again. “Circumstances change.”

I practically shouted, “But Vhagar alone is no match for eight dragons, you idiot!” 

Larys’s eyes narrowed, and I immediately discerned that he hated nothing more than to have his intelligence mocked. It made sense - his intellect was probably his greatest asset, given his broken body. And, as I shortly discovered, he still had the upper hand. “Nevertheless, she is formidable enough to make a dent in the enemy’s forces before the end.”

 Understanding dawned quickly. He was going to use me as leverage to send Aemond on a suicide mission. Him dying was probably the point. 

“Fuck.you,” I spat.

He gave me a look of distaste that pointedly implied he had no interest in sloppy seconds. Great, and a misogynist, too. 

“You’ll be well cared for provided you behave,” Larys cautioned, hobbling away. “And when the rightful heir again sits on the throne, it would be to your advantage to remain on his good side.”

“Which one is that?” I snarked at his retreating back. Admittedly, it was petty, but I was pissed off – at him, at Aegon, and at myself most of all for falling into his trap, especially since I’d put Aemond in danger. Aemond. His words echoed in my head again: Have you ever had to fight to survive, Alys Rivers?

In that moment, thinking of his death, I found a part of myself that would cut through anyone to save him. I understood him better than I ever had, but it scared me so much my knees went weak and I sank to the floor.

“Are you alright?” a whispered voice asked. 

I’d forgotten about Otto-whoever-the-fuck-he-was. I waved a hand in his direction dismissively. 

“Who are you to Aemond Targaryen?” he pressed.

“Who are you?” I retorted angrily.

“Oy! No talking!” one of the archers behind the stone wall commanded.

I went silent, glaring at Otto. 

Otto. Otto. I searched my mental archives. Otto Hightower? Aemond had mentioned him once. His grandfather. I studied the ragged man imprisoned with me. He was gaunt, his beard scraggly and unkempt. But Aemond had been convinced Otto Hightower was in Oldtown. Surely this wasn’t the same one.

After a few more silent minutes passed, the man whispered, “I am Otto Hightower.”

Of course he was. “What are you doing here?” I hissed back, as softly as I could.

He glanced over at the wall, his answers clipped and so quiet I had to strain to hear him. “Dismissed by Aegon. Captured on the Roseroad to Oldtown. Larys thinks I am a threat.” He shakes his head. “Aegon. Poor excuse for a king. But – family.”

I pondered this, trying to read between the lines. Otto Hightower had been a Hand to several kings, if I remembered correctly. He’d also been instrumental in putting Aegon on the throne, but had no doubt seen firsthand how ill-prepared Alicent’s firstborn had been to rule. Maybe Larys just didn’t want Otto carrying his knowledge back to Oldtown where it might influence Ormund’s support. Aegon and Aemond had another brother, after all: Daeron – by many accounts, the noblest among Viserys’s sons, raised in Oldtown by the Hightowers. Perhaps Larys worried that Otto would conspire to see to it that the Dance ended with Daeron on the throne: an outcome Larys could not abide since it was Aegon who was beholden to him. He was a nobody to Daeron.

I was already exhausted trying to untangle all the intrigue. My head throbbed and I felt nauseated. Probably a concussion, I noted distantly, crawling over to the sleeping pallet that was the only thing in my bare cell other than me. It was thin enough that it couldn’t possibly stop an arrow fired in close proximity, even if it was folded over on itself. Larys really had thought of everything, damn him.  

I lay on my back and stared at the stone ceiling blindly.

I had no idea what time it was. Our cells were windowless.

I wondered if Aemond had discovered I was gone.

If he’d think I’d simply abandoned him when he did.

I didn’t dare call to Hannibal, not when I had no idea where I was and had no sense of whether a rampaging dragon descending on it would trigger whatever booby traps Larys had rigged my cell with.

My eyes stung with tears and my head was still pounding in time with my pulse.

Not for the first time, I considered whether all of my attempts to influence the outcome of the Dance had just made things worse. 

“Let me sleep, Otto,” I whispered, despairing. “When I wake up we can figure out how to Shawshank Redemption this place.”

I could sense his utter confusion.

The moment I closed my eyes, I was out like a light.

Chapter Text

Rhaenyra sits at the head of the Small Council table in the Red Keep. Unblinkingly, she stares Daemon down. “Alys said to leave Aemond to her, and you implied that she would use her other gifts to resolve the threat he presents. So why isn’t he dead?”

Daemon drops his chin and raises his brows meaningfully. It’s a look that clearly says that he suspects that the *other gifts* Alys is using aren’t her powers of destruction. There’s a complex interplay on his rough features: amusement, some admiration of Alys’s boldness, a little vicarious pride - since Aemond shares more than a few qualities in common with Daemon himself - and perhaps even a hint of jealousy. 

Rhaenyra scoffs loudly. “So is she an ally or a liability?”

Daemon only shakes his head. “She warned us about the Triarchy fleet,” he drawls thoughtfully. “But truthfully, I cannot say for certain.”

The queen grits her teeth. “Solidify our defenses. Until Aemond is dead and Aegon is executed as a pretender, we must be prepared for anything.”

“And Daeron?” Corlys reminds her.

Rhaenyra stews, her expression distant. “That remains to be seen.” 

Coryls exchanges a glance with Daemon: Rhaenyra is not bloodthirsty enough to desire the deaths of all of Alicent’s sons, though she may yet have to reconcile herself to the necessity.

Daemon stands and exits the Small Council chamber. Across the plains to the east of the city sprawls a vast army encampment dotted with banners from the great houses of the Riverlands and the grey wolf of House Stark. Above it, Caraxes circles.

***

“She promised us lands, riches, titles!” Ulf is complaining. “But has been forthcoming with exactly none of them.” He takes a long swig of wine and locks eyes with Hugh. “Are we fools to trust her?”

“Keep your voice down,” Hugh mutters. “She ensures you are well-supplied with wine, at least,” he sneers. But then he adds, “Rhaenyra has claimed the throne, but she must hold it long enough to be able to keep her promises.”

Hugh refills his goblet. “Can she?” he asks. Then he muses, “Should she?”

“Give her time,” Hugh counsels, though he looks thoughtful. 

“Vermithor and Silverwing are second in size only to Vhagar,” Ulf reminds him, staring darkly into his cup. “Our dragons can turn the tide any direction we choose.” He looks out the window at King’s Landing. “Including to our best advantage.”

***

“You’re brooding,” Baela says, looking at Jacaerys askance as she comes to stand beside him on the balcony.

He clenches his jaw, like he’s readying himself to deny it, then turns toward her and unloads: “It’s just that Ulf and Hugh and Addam are in King’s Landing, and I’m stuck here doing nothing! I’m the heir to the throne, and they’re just…”

“The heir to the throne has always controlled Dragonstone,” Baela reminds him.

“But King’s Landing needs defending!” Jace argues. “At least until Aegon and Aemond are neutralized.”

“And there are five dragons defending it,” Baela counters lightly. She puts a hand on his arm. “Dragonstone needs defending, too.” She raises her elegant brows. “What if the Greens tried to claim it rather than scorch it in anger?”

Jace seethes, eyeing the blackened towers of the island fortress, still marked by Vhagar’s retaliation after the aborted Battle of the Gullet, like he knows the sense of it but dislikes it anyway.

“The dragonseeds can’t be trusted,” he objects.

“Is that it?” Baela asks. “Or are you unwilling to trust them?” 

He opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. “Both,” he confesses. 

Baela’s smile is indulgent. “We are only a short flight away,” she assures him, simultaneously acknowledging his point and assuaging his worry. “If the need arises.”

***

An enormous, slow-moving train of armed men and horses winds its way toward a dense forest bearing banners of a white tower on a green field and a black stag on a yellow one. At the vanguard are two armoured figures mounted on colossal steeds, deep in conversation. Above them - high in the distance - circles a dragon. 

Further down the line, a cloaked figure - armourless, unmounted - breaks away from the column and slips into the forest as soon as the trees encircle the road. In the shadows under the dense foliage, he raises a white scrap of fabric to his lips and breathes a name: Alicent.

Criston Cole abandons the Hightower army, swelling now with the ranks of Baratheon reinforcements, and makes his solitary way toward King’s Landing.

I awoke from vivid dreams. 

Not dreams of the future – but insight into the present at least. 

I almost cried with relief as I mentally sorted through them. 

So, Daemon had swelled his force of Rivermen with Northmen under the banner of House Stark and they were defending King’s Landing from any potential overland attack. But inside the walls of the Red Keep, all was not well: Rhaenyra was questioning my loyalties and her newest dragonriders were demanding greater and greater rewards that she wasn’t yet ready to give. I wondered if Hugh had told Rhaenyra anything about how I’d repelled his pursuit of Vhagar from Dragonstone. He’d flown close enough to experience it, though perhaps not close enough to determine who exactly was responsible. Still, if he knew the Greens could somehow control ice and fire, it might give him pause about which side he should throw his support behind. I did a quick mental accounting of the dragons in King’s Landing: Caraxes, Syrax, Vermithor, Silverwing, Seasmoke - where was Rhaena with Sheepstealer? - with Jace and Baela a short flight away. Still a formidable force, though at least two of the dragonseeds were of questionable loyalty. 

And the Hightower army had picked up the Baratheons and was marching up the Roseroad with Daeron and Tessarion; if they met the gathered forces around King’s Landing, it would be an absolute massacre, even without Criston Cole. His vision showed some promise: was he deserting the army to rescue Alicent? It seemed likely, and that might be her only hope of surviving whatever was about to descend on King’s Landing.

So much depended on Aemond’s next move.

And I’d seen nothing of him. 

My heart ached around his conspicuous absence.

I took in the bare stone walls of my prison as my anxiety ratcheted up exponentially. Absent any insight from my fickle visions, I began to worry about Aemond in earnest. I had to figure out a way to get back to him before he flew off the handle.

I noticed that Otto Hightower was also resting on his pallet on the side of his cell that shared bars with mine, and as soon as he noticed I was awake, he started talking, low and quiet.

“Don’t move,” he cautioned, eyes darting to the opposite wall behind which the archers stood. “Pretend you are still sleeping.”

It was reasonable enough advice; our guards would be less likely to hear our whispered conference if they assumed we were asleep.

“What is the purpose of the device Larys made that measures temperature?” he hissed.

I shook my head subtly. “Long story,” I told him because I had no idea how to explain my powers succinctly enough. “Suffice to say it means we can’t get out. If he was telling the truth, that is.”

Otto did not look inclined to test the possibility. He kept grilling me impatiently; clearly, he’d spent however long I’d been asleep mentally listing off his questions. “And Aemond - what is he to you, if you would be willing to meet with someone you thought was Daemon?”

I remembered that Otto was Aemond’s grandfather and felt suddenly self-conscious. Besides, that was not a question I could easily answer even for myself. I settled for, “He is dear to me.”

“Aemond?” Otto repeated, clearly somewhat flummoxed by the possibility. “And are you… dear to him as well?” he asked.

I frowned, uncertain yet again. Aemond had been by turns possessive, manipulative, insatiable, intense, and covetous, but not particularly affectionate. It’s like he had no emotional middle ground at all: it was all fiery passion or fierce hatred. I wasn’t sure anything or anyone was dear to him – not the way they were for other people, anyway. 

Otto noticed my hesitation. “Apparently Larys thinks so,” he said into my silence. I could feel his eyes on me, studying me, taking my measure and weighing it against what he thought Aemond might value. “What is your name, girl?”

Girl. Should I be flattered or insulted? “Alys,” I muttered. 

“And your family?” Otto pressed.

I shook my head again. “Rivers,” was all I said in reply.

Otto continued, undeterred. “Where is he? Aemond?” 

“He holds Harrenhal,” I said.

Otto considers this for a moment, then nods. “And Aegon still holds King’s Landing?”

I narrowed my eyes, wondering when Aegon had sent him away – and how much he’d missed while he was trapped in this cell. “Rhaenyra holds King’s Landing.”  

Otto froze. “How?” Okay, apparently he missed a lot.

I turned the questioning around. “Where are we?”

He shook his shaggy head. “I do not know.” Then he hurriedly resumed his inquiries, glancing nervously toward the archers’ wall again as if calculating how many questions he could ask before we were discovered. “How did Rhaenyra take the city? Where is Aegon? Alicent?”

I sighed. Alicent was his daughter, and if I remembered correctly, he’d been instrumental in ensuring she married Viserys so his bloodline might sit on the throne. For all I knew, Otto manipulated her into insisting the dying king had changed his mind about the succession. All of this might be his fault. Once again, Otto’s urgency was his undoing. He grabbed the bars between us and hissed his questions louder.

“No talking!” a gruff voice ordered through the narrow arrow slit. “Move to the other side, Hightower!”

When Otto didn’t comply, the voice repeated the command louder, banging something loudly against the stones and threatening to deny him food. Grudgingly, Otto dragged his pallet to the stone wall opposite our shared bars, his gaze simultaneously pleading and furious. He didn’t look like he could afford to miss many meals. 

I only scowled at him, then deliberately ignored him as I looked around. Our two cells were roughly rectangular in shape – longer than they were wide. There were bars on two sides only: the long wall we shared and the much shorter sides with chained doors that were parallel to the wall the archers sheltered behind – with only a narrow aisle between them where Larys and the Faceless Man had stood when I first awoke, but empty now. The back and the other long side of both cells were solid stone, as was the low ceiling. It was a dank, almost claustrophobic place with no natural light, lit only by torches on the far wall near the arrow notches. I had no idea if our cells were the only ones, or if they were part of a larger complex. 

In the dim light, a fine tracery of thinly hammered metal was just visible: tucked between the stones and wrapped around the bars. I followed the wires with my fingers back to where they converged and fed into a small chink in the mortar between stones in the corner at the back of the cell. Well, I thought with a sinking heart, Larys wasn’t lying about the temperature gauge. Trying to blast through the stone or the bars with fire or ice would surely trigger the device as the heat or cold was transferred through what was probably a hyperconductive metal. I got down on my hands and knees and circled the floor, which was lined with small, neatly drilled holes to admit whatever gas Larys had threatened. A slightly larger hole in the corner opposite my bed clearly had a different purpose since there was no chamberpot.

“Fuck,” I muttered. 

Otto looked up at me, startled. I waved him away with a lazy hand, offering no explanation.

I checked the lock, pressed on all the stones, even tried jumping up to touch the ceiling, testing for loose mortar. No luck. Finally, I sank back down to my pallet.

“No way out,” Otto whispered. Clearly, he’d been trying to find one for months to no avail. 

“I said no talking!” the archers instantly intervened, clearly alert to our potential scheming. 

Otto and I were momentarily distracted when a scraping sound - a door opening - drew our attention. A man shuffled in, depositing round bread loaves between the bars of our respective cells. I leaned closer to mine and discovered the center of it had been hollowed out and filled with a thick stew, still steaming. It smelled delicious, but it turned my stomach. I dragged it toward me anyway. 

Before departing, the man held out tankards of water to both of us, then took them away as soon as we’d drained them. We were left with no utensils - nothing we might use to attempt escape. Otto ate quickly, but I picked at my food, trying to convince myself to eat it. I couldn’t afford not to, I knew. Judging by Otto’s state, I wasn’t sure how frequently we could expect to be fed. As soon as he finished his meal, he watched me curiously. 

“No poison,” he assured me as quietly as possible. 

I swallowed a chunk of carrot and clapped my hand over my mouth as my stomach rebelled. Otto’s eyes narrowed. I gestured to my head in explanation; surely people in Westeros were concussed often enough for him to understand that nausea was a common side effect. I rested my hands over my stomach, too, just in case he didn’t get it. 

Instantly, the walls of our prison rushed away.

***

Aemond stands at the round table in Harrenhal, unrolling a scroll. He looks haggard - his face pinched, his deep-set eye shadowed, and his hair unbound. Something falls from the scroll, and Aemond picks it up off the tabletop and holds it at eye-level. It’s a small coil of black hair. His nostrils flare and his upper lip curls, then he’s reading the message intently:

Alys was lured out of Harrenhal by Daemon under a pretense. 

She’s being held in the black cells. 

Rhaenyra will blame Aegon, but it is a ruse meant to provoke you into killing him. 

- An ally in the Red Keep

Aemond clenches the tiny paper in his fist and slams it hard into the tabletop without flinching. Then he presses the soft ebony coil against his lips, his eye closed, before spinning on a heel and calling for Vhagar.

I came back to myself on my hands and knees, my forehead resting between the bars at the front of my cell.

“Alys!” Otto was hissing. “Alys!” Then, he raised his voice. “Guard! The lady is ill!”

“I’m not!” I objected, though I was reeling a little. “I’m fine!” I turned to Otto with a scowl. “It’s fine!” I told him through clenched teeth.

He looked almost offended. “You were not fine. I was concerned. You didn’t answer me.” He leaned toward me, looking very much like a doting father. “And you’ve gone pale.”

I waved him away again, preoccupied. 

That raven had clearly come from Larys. I ran a finger through my hair just as a bluntly cropped chunk framing my face fell into view. Son of a bitch. Larys was covering Aegon’s ass even when all of this was their design. The message said I was being held in the black cells – from what I recalled, they were deep in the roots of the Red Keep, probably protected from any attack from the air. I knew it instantly for what it was: an incentive for Aemond to attack King’s Landing directly and likely die in the process so he’d never have an opportunity to discover it was all a lie. 

I mentally replayed how he’d held the lock of my hair to his lips. In any other circumstance it would be almost sweet, but now – any feelings he had for me were a weakness. Aemond could be coldly calculating, but when strong emotions were concerned, he was a wild card.  

I realized I didn’t have time to conspire with Otto to bust out of our mutual prison Shawshank-style. Aemond could be on his way to King’s Landing - and the combined might of five dragons plus a massive ground force - now.

I raised my fingers to my mouth and whistled so loudly that Otto clapped his hands over his ears, looking scandalized. 

Hannibal was too far away to hear, of course, but I knew he’d come. 

Even the strongest iron bars are no match for Hannibal's claws. And, hopefully, no one would be expecting a dragon.

Chapter Text

Hannibal’s arrival was announced by a chorus of intensifying screams and the general sounds of panic: running feet, shouted orders muffled by stone, and the din of what I hoped were wholly inadequate preparations for defense. 

I stood and backed into the most sheltered corner of my cell as Otto watched me with wide eyes. “What’s happening?” he demanded, since it was clear that I knew what he didn’t.

I only shrugged and said, “Take cover,” as a blast of bright sunlight practically blinded us. Hannibal had ripped out the wall where the archers had previously stood; I could only hope they’d left their posts before one of the largest dragons in the realm landed on them. 

“Hey, buddy,” I said as Hannibal’s huge head lowered so he could peer at me with one electric green eye through the entrance of my cell. “Mind helping me out with the door?”

Dragonfire was out of the question, so one enormous clawed foot threaded through the bars fronting my cell. I took a deep breath. Hannibal tugged. The entire wall - door and all - ripped free of its stone housing, fortunately without bringing the ceiling down on top of my head. Still holding my breath in case my prison break had triggered whatever device Larys had rigged, I climbed out of the cell.

“Alys!” a voice called. Otto was reaching through the remaining bars of his cell with a pleading expression. I gave Hannibal a quick nod, and he wrenched the front wall of Otto’s cell open next. Otto emerged hurriedly, stumbling over jumbled stone and twisted iron as he blinked and squinted in the full light of day for what must have been the first time in months. I tried to get a look around Hannibal and see what kind of defenses we were up against. A hail of arrows was bouncing ineffectually off his thick hide and leathery wings; if the soldiers had any more substantial bolts, they’d yet to employ them. More likely, though, they hadn’t thought to prepare for the arrival of a dragon. No one knew about Hannibal except Aemond, and Larys had thrown him a red herring that they all believed would lead him (and Vhagar) far away from wherever I was being held. 

“What dragon is this?” Otto was yelling, shading his eyes as he stared up, open-mouthed, at the coal-black monstrosity I’d unleashed. I gritted my teeth, resisting the urge to throttle him along with his endless stream of questions. Honestly, the man had no sense of timing. It’s not like I could just hit a pause button and explain everything to his satisfaction. 

I was climbing up onto Hannibal’s back with urgency; I needed us to get out of here as soon as possible – both to avoid increasing the bodycount if we had to mercilessly fight our way free and so I could hopefully beat Aemond to King’s Landing, if indeed that was where he was going. I hoped fervently that we weren’t too far away since I still had no idea where I was and couldn’t exactly spare the time to hunt around Westeros for a rampaging dragonrider.

The higher I climbed, the more necessary it was to deflect falling arrows: once again, I found myself barefoot and wearing nothing more substantial than a white dressing gown. Talk about full circle, I noted wryly, contemplating my options. Finally, I resorted to crafting a shield of ice to huddle behind atop Hannibal’s back until he could get us out of range.

“Go! Go!” I exhorted – no fancy Valyrian commands needed; I didn’t know any and Hannibal likely wouldn’t respond to them anyway, though it didn’t feel particularly badass to scoop my hips against the saddle like an impatient toddler on a rocking horse in order to drive the message home while I clung to the handles with one hand and blasted ice between me and the arrows with the other. 

Belatedly, as Hannibal spread his enormous wings, I thought of Otto. I couldn’t very well leave him here with his captors only to be imprisoned again. Sighing, I yelled a command to Hannibal, who managed to swipe Otto up in a claw as he took to the skies. 

Only when we were circling above the half-collapsed castle did I dare look down and try to orient myself. Little good it did me - I didn’t recognize anything. Meanwhile, Otto was wailing like a banshee, so I directed Hannibal toward an open field far enough away from the ruin of the castle to delay any pursuit. 

We descended so I could - absurdly - ask Otto Hightower for directions.

Hannibal dumped the former Hand rather unceremoniously a few feet from the ground so he could balance on both feet when he landed, so Otto was rather winded when I dismounted and helped him to stand.

“Where are we?” I demanded.

Otto reeled a little, eyes rolling as he braced his weight against me and straightened his back with a groan. “That was Antlers,” he said hollowly, turning back as if he could see the castle through the trees. “It belongs to House Buckwell.”

Somehow, I managed not to lose my patience entirely as I got to the heart of the matter. “Which way is King’s Landing?”

Otto looked at me quizzically before pointing to his left.

“Thank you,” I said with an exasperated sigh, striding back toward Hannibal.

“Wait!” Otto called out, and I could see the questions warring on his face as he tried to pick which one to ask first.

“Not now!” I shouted over my shoulder, pulling myself up Hannibal’s side; the leathersmith had added small rope loops to the heavy collar holding the front of the saddle on to be used as hand- and footholds. He’d really thought of everything; I’d really have to figure out some way to adequately reward him, if any of us survived this.

“What will you do?” Otto called after me, looking rather forlorn in his filthy, tattered clothes, his hair and beard scraggly, standing alone in the middle of an empty field like Gandalf stricken with memory loss after his tussle with the Balrog in Moria. 

“Try to stop a war!” I replied, urging Hannibal into the sky again. I didn’t hear Otto’s response amidst the hurricane of Hannibal’s wings, but it was almost a certainty that he kept stubbornly asking questions until I was entirely out of earshot. 

I’d done the best I could for him - he would have to fend for himself now.

We turned south, the direction Otto had pointed, and rocketed toward King’s Landing.

I was trying to come up with a plan, but the truth of the matter was that I had no idea what to expect. I’d have to wing it when I arrived.

Please, Aemond, I recited silently. Don’t do anything too stupid. It wasn’t lighthearted this time. His life was at stake.

But as soon as the towers of the Red Keep came into view, I knew I was too late. 

Huge gouts of flame filled the sky above King’s Landing as a dragon that was unmistakably Vhagar circled a much smaller serpentine dragon with red scales. Caraxes. I momentarily despaired – had I only succeeded in relocating the Battle Above the God’s Eye to King’s Landing, where it could do significantly more damage? Already, there was a steady flow of fleeing smallfolk streaming out of every gate of the walled city, and columns of smoke rose from scattered fires among the red-tiled roofs. Above the Dragonpit, a familiar bronze silhouette took to the skies with a bone-shaking roar, followed by a silver beast only slightly smaller than Hannibal. Hugh and Ulf were coming to Daemon’s aid, and even Vhagar didn’t stand a chance against three dragons. 

I was screaming Aemond’s name frantically even though I was still far enough away that there was no chance he could hear me. As I watched, Vhagar and Caraxes tangled in the air, tumbling hundreds of feet amidst a conflagration of flame. They narrowly recovered without crashing to the ground, though Vhagar flattened a swath of buildings as she dipped low and used the crumbling rooftops of the tallest among them to launch back into the air. 

Vhagar wheeled, circling back for another pass as Caraxes tried to lead her out over Blackwater Bay and away from the city.

That must have been that moment that Aemond caught sight of Hannibal approaching from the north.

Vhagar’s confident flight suddenly looked halting as her rider tried to decide what to do. 

Caraxes bellowed a challenge, and Vhagar turned toward the Blood Wyrm as Vermithor and Silverwing made to flank her on either side, coming up fast. 

“Aemond!” I wailed, waving my hands above my head wildly on the off chance that he could see me astride Hannibal’s back. If he did, Aemond would have to abandon Daemon and the fight he’d been preparing for all his life. He’d have to turn away from his ambition for the throne and the pull of a glorious death, too. He’d have to choose me, and then he’d have to master his dragon at the height of her bloodlust when he’d failed to do so over Storm’s End. It was a longshot on many levels, I knew.

Please, Aemond. 

Vhagar’s great jowelled head dragged through the air, shifting north instead of east across the bay where Caraxes waited. She dipped almost gracefully and flew under Vermithor as his headlong pursuit carried him past her when she suddenly shifted her trajectory.

Aemond was coming for me.  

I whooped in joy, but the elation didn’t last long. 

I hoped desperately that Vhagar could be faster than Caraxes, Vermithor, and Silverwing: that we could simply outfly them and make a clean getaway so I didn’t have to drive them back with fire and ice of my own. Hugh and Ulf were still inexperienced riders – maybe the necessity of turning around would buy us some time. 

But Vermithor and Silverwing didn’t turn. They hurtled toward Caraxes without slowing, and I watched in utter disbelief as they attacked Daemon simultaneously. 

I went cold. 

Jace had been right not to trust the dragonseeds. 

Vhagar was close enough now that I could see Aemond turn to look behind him at the clash over Blackwater Bay. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined he was as stunned as I was. He was closing the distance between us faster than I realized; over great distances, dragonflight looked almost leisurely, but up close it felt like Top Gun – so dizzyingly fast that quick reflexes were essential to avoid catastrophic mid-air collisions. 

I had my mouth open to urge Hannibal to go to Daemon’s aid - he had been my first… friend… if I could call him that… in Westeros, and I wasn’t about to watch him die if my powers could diffuse this conflict - but I was distracted by a second set of dragons rising from the Dragonpit: one golden and the other grey. They could only be Syrax and Seasmoke. They were half the size of Vermithor, but they bore down on the battling trio as it careened over King’s Landing again. The riders were secondary: this was a dance of dragons now.

Aemond rocketed past, his voice raw as he roared a command at me: “Down!” Vhagar swept across my path, cutting Hannibal off, and Aemond bellowed, “Embrot, Vhagar!”

Reluctantly, I directed Hannibal to land on the fields north of King’s Landing, following Vhagar. “Move!” I screamed, gesticulating wildly at the smallfolk fleeing through the Old Gate who scattered under us just before we landed.

Aemond practically flew by himself as he dismounted, and he was halfway up the handholds on the collar of Hannibal’s saddle before I managed to swing a leg over the side of it. Heedless, I just let go and gravity carried me down Hannibal’s smooth black scales like a playground slide; Aemond caught me with one arm that curled around my ribcage and slammed my back against his chest to stop my descent, swinging wildly as our combined weight concentrated on his left side where he still clung to Hannibal’s collar. He held me there as Hannibal lowered his neck closer to the ground, then Aemond sprang backward and managed to shift me to a bridal carry and land in a solid lunge, my legs draped over his bent knee. 

Behind us, the sky above King’s Landing was aflame. 

Five dragons and their riders were tangled in a desperate struggle: Caraxes, Syrax, and Seasmoke against the much larger Vermithor and Silverwing. 

I threw my arms around Aemond’s shoulders, in disbelief that he was whole and alive and that he’d actually come for me. His lips were on mine, then they were at my ear, practically deafening me as he near-shouted, “You were in the black cells!”

I shook my head vehemently. “It was a lie!” I yelled back at him over the din of screaming smallfolk and battling dragons. “Aegon and Larys! They tricked us!”

I saw Aemond’s face then – his beautiful features stark, streaked with smoke, and twisted in rage as understanding dawned. His head snapped up toward Rook’s Rest and his single eye narrowed: all of the fury that had lately been concentrated on Daemon and Rhaenyra was now directed at his brother and the last place he’d seen him. Aemond stood smoothly, putting me back on my feet, and it was clear in the set of his impossibly sharp jaw that he intended to hunt Aegon down and kill him with his bare hands if he had to.

“Aemond!” I objected, dragging on his arm and looking behind us. Half of King’s Landing was aflame, and the terrible screams of wounded dragons tore at my heartstrings with an acute agony. 

He held my tear-streaked face between his palms and shook his head. “There is nothing we can do,” he insisted, gazing over my shoulder. “That is no longer our fight.”

“But I could–” I began.

“No!” Aemond cut me off. “It is too dangerous, Alys!” He held me fast as he surveyed the carnage with a warrior’s eye. “Rhaenyra has sown the seeds of her own destruction. Let her handle the lowborn betrayers she enticed to her cause. I have a traitor of my own to reckon with, and it may be that he should answer for this, too.” He tipped his chin toward the building inferno. 

My jaw dropped, but then I remembered Ulf’s drunken complaints in my vision – Aegon could easily have offered the dragonseeds a better deal if they turned on Rhaenyra. It would be a rather masterful plan: send Aemond in first to die under a pretense, hopefully taking Daemon out with him over Blackwater Bay, and if not – finish the job by ensuring Ulf and Hugh mopped up whatever was left of the Black faction, either in the sky or by treachery within the walls of the Red Keep. Aegon probably promised the dragonseeds their choice of any of the strongholds of the Great Houses that had supported the Blacks: that would track with his grandiosity, regardless of whether he actually intended to follow through. And he’d still have me: either a threat he could neutralize or a force of indeterminate influence that he could use to defend his crown. 

I doubted it had been the intention for a battle of this scale to happen over King’s Landing, but this was the principal danger of involving dragons in warfare: the outcome was unpredictable. I despaired again. My intervention on Aemond’s behalf might very well have been the first domino to fall in the chain reaction now unfolding over the city. And it was looking increasingly likely that when it was all over there might not be an Iron Throne for anyone to sit on. 

I’d managed to save Aemond - at least temporarily - but failing to anticipate Aegon’s ambition or the depths to which he - or more likely, Larys - would sink had been disastrous for Daemon and Rhaenyra. The guilt was crushing. 

All of this was so entirely fucked. 

I could feel the heat from outside the city, a blush on my pale cheeks. It dragged me out of the maelstrom of my thoughts.

A sixth dragon had joined the fray, and I saw Aemond flinch for the first time. Daeron and Tessarion. If Aegon had indeed been behind this, he would have sent word to the approaching Hightower force to ensure the third Green prince was at the ready. And if this Daeron was anything like his book counterpart, he’d no doubt bravely (and rashly) join the fight even absent a direct command to do so as the initial plan deteriorated into chaos and he saw a need.

Seasmoke was the first to fall. Vermithor’s massive jaws closed around his slender grey neck – then, dragon and rider dropped like a stone between the two high hills crowned with the sept and the Dragonpit into a grave of crackling flames. I wailed and leapt for Hannibal’s saddle even though I’d never even set eyes on Addam Velaryon except from a distance, but Aemond’s arms closed around my torso like a vise and he wrestled me backward. 

“No!” he was bellowing in my ear. “No, Alys! Gods be damned!” 

“We have the largest dragons! I can command ice!” I was shrieking, remembering how I quenched Vermithor’s flames before and clawing at Aemond’s restraining arms. “We can stop this!”

“You’ll only get yourself killed!” Aemond growled, though I could tell the only thing preventing him from joining his youngest brother to strike against Daemon and Rhaenrya was the risk that I’d follow and he wouldn’t be able to protect me. It was likely that he did not share my intent to bring an end to the fighting – that his goal was only to ensure his side prevailed, and he was shrewd enough to know that might happen without his immediate intervention. For the first time, the Blacks were outnumbered. I fought harder and stilled only when Aemond rested a protective palm on my belly. 

That was an implication I still refused to acknowledge the possibility of.

“Let go of me!” I keened, renewing my struggles. I’d lost the thread of reason, I distantly observed. This is not something either of us had anticipated – that it would be Aemond holding me back. But for once, his logic and his superior strength prevailed. He held me firmly, grinding his teeth, as Caraxes furiously defended Syrax and her rider from the simultaneous assault of three dragons. 

Rhaenyra refused to flee, though she was not a skilled fighter. A foundering Caraxes was taking the brunt of the attack; he’d been wounded already in the fight with Vhagar, and it was clear his strength was fading. In a last desperate bid, the Blood Wyrm crashed into Silverwing as Daemon leapt from his dragon’s back practically on top of Ulf. Caraxes ricocheted toward the bay with such force that his limp body slammed into the uppermost towers of the Red Keep. An avalanche of broken red stones and a matching dragon crashed into the steaming sea. 

Behind me, Aemond hissed. It was a sound of simultaneous triumph and loss as he watched his uncle’s dragon fall. Part of him still craved a contest against Daemon – the only truly worthy adversary in Aemond’s eyes. But still, he grimly held me fast.

As Daemon grappled with Ulf, Vermithor closed in on Rhaenyra. Too late, Daemon realized his mistake. Alone and undefended, Syrax and her untested rider succumbed quickly. 

They fell directly on the roof of the Great Hall in an explosion that rocked the city and practically leveled the remaining towers of the Red Keep. Rhaenyra Targaryen, first of her name, died at the foot of the Iron Throne, her bones plated by the melting forest of blades lining the dais. 

I sank to my knees and covered my face, suddenly lightheaded. Aemond stood behind me, his single eye trained on two dragons approaching from across the bay - Vermax and Moondancer - as my world went dark.

Aemond, as I saw when I came to, had rushed to his younger brother’s defense as the last of the Blacks made their final stand. 

But by the time I got to my feet and onto Hannibal’s back, it was over.

Chapter Text

Devastation. 

The city of King’s Landing was a smoking ruin.

All my life, I’d seen secondhand coverage of wars around the world and been appalled, but nothing prepared me for the real thing. It was a gut-punch, untethered from any loyalties. I grieved everyone equally. I grieved that such carnage was even possible. I mourned the extent of my ignorance and realized just how sheltered I’d been.

Jace, Baela, and their dragons had fallen between the Hills of Visenya and Rhaenys, and the Red Keep was mostly rubble. Fire was spreading unchecked through Flea Bottom and Cobbler’s Square, consuming everything in its path. 

Hugh Hammer had turned Vermithor on Aemond and Daeron when the Blacks were defeated – perhaps, riding a dragon who was comparable in size to Vhagar, he had thought himself a contender for the throne and seized on an opportunity to eliminate the remaining competition. Like Ulf, his body was now being reduced to ash somewhere in the smoking city while Silverwing and Vermithor flew for Dragonstone to tend their wounds, riderless again. 

Fortunately, most of the citizens of King’s Landing had fled before the worst of it, although they were homeless now, milling outside the walls of the city in shock.

I flew through columns of smoke, quelling the worst of the blazes with ice, as Aemond and Daeron went west to reunite with the Hightower host, presumably to ensure the battle didn’t spread to the encampment of Rivermen and Starks that Daemon had commanded. 

Daemon.

His name was an arrow in my heart.

He’d leapt from Silverwing’s back near the ruin of the Great Hall after he’d run Ulf through with Dark Sister. It was probably not a survivable fall, but I looked anyway. Hannibal landed in the largest of the tiered courtyards leading up to the Red Keep so I could search on the ground.

I found Daemon on his back, propped up against a tumbledown wall, his legs bent at odd angles. Even dirtied with soot, the beacon of his silver hair was unmistakable.

As I approached through the smoke, my white dressing gown streaked with ash and worse things, my bare feet peeking out under the hem, Daemon Targaryen looked me up and down with a wry expression that somehow conquered the pain that was written all over his face.

“Do you never wear shoes, woman?” he growled, but when he coughed, a gout of blood painted his breastplate. “Where are the boots I got you?” I cursed myself for not listening to my instincts back at Harrenhal – the real Daemon would never miss an opportunity to tease me. 

I sank to my knees beside him, taking his mailed hand in mine.

“You look like the night I found you,” he mused, eyes already going dark and distant.

I laughed a little, tears streaking my cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Daemon,” I whispered, his hand pressed to my chest. “I tried.” I meant everything: to stop the war, to save them all. 

His lip curled a little, as if I’d promised to hold back the tide. To Daemon, war was inevitable, and maybe he was right. Maybe I had been the foolish one to try to avert it. He said only, “I fought for the throne all my life. Fitting that I should die for it.” His acceptance didn’t make it any easier for me, but Daemon’s mind was already elsewhere. His eyes scanned the skies before momentarily focusing on my face. “You have a dragon now?”

I nodded, then shrugged, then barked a wet laugh, struck by the absurdity of it all.

“It was you he was chasing,” Daemon almost smiled, remembering the moment Aemond had turned away from the battle. He seemed amused that a woman had finally gotten the better of his nephew. “Him, I understand. But you…” He looked at me from the corner of one eye with almost theatrical disapproval. Then a passing bittersweet sadness wiped away the mirth, and I knew he was thinking of Rhaenyra, who he’d set aside his own ambitions for… and who died at the foot of the Iron Throne not far from where he lay. Although they’d been bitter rivals, Daemon and Aemond were more alike than they were different. 

“Yes,” I admitted, trying to find the words to explain everything, to excuse Aemond somehow, when I knew Daemon’s time was short. “Aegon and Larys. They lured me away from Harrenhal. They told Aemond you and Rhaenyra had me. They must have bribed Ulf and Hugh, too.” 

Daemon tried to take a deep breath but only shook with a suppressed cough that was clearly agony. I squeezed his hand as he looked up at the sky. “Burn the fuck out of them, will you?” He almost winked. “For me?”

“They deserve it,” I told him with a clenched jaw. “But…”

He had enough strength to wave a dismissive hand: I know, I know. He had little tolerance for my tenderheartedness. Daemon was Daemon even as he lay dying: cynical, snarky, and largely unsentimental. He wouldn’t be giving any wise speeches about the importance of good food and cheer instead of hoarded gold. Still, I’d miss him: this relentlessly ambitious and cutthroat Thorin Oakenshield. He was patting the ground beside him, and I realized he was looking for Dark Sister. I reached out a hand and guided his searching palm to the Valyrian steel hilt. Daemon’s hand closed around it and he pulled the blade against his chest. Then, unexpectedly, he grabbed my hand and put it on the grip. “Justice,” Daemon ordered. He was giving me the opportunity to choose what that meant.

Overcome, I leaned over his prone body and pressed a kiss against his cheek.

Daemon Targaryen looked up at me with a fading streak of mischief under those heavy brows. “Once more.”

I rolled my eyes and complied. He was not being disloyal to Rhaenyra. She was gone now, like he soon would be, and he would die as he lived: true to his roguish nature. Daemon turned his face just enough that my lips landed on his. When I drew back with a knowing look, he grinned: a macabre sight, his teeth stained red. “Don’t let my nephew see,” he whispered. “He’d kill me with his bare hands.” He actually laughed at his own joke, no matter how it pained him. Blood bubbled over his lower lip. 

“Daemon,” I chided, but my tears were flowing freely now. I’d never seen anyone I knew die.

“The boy,” he murmured. “I told them to kill Aemond, not the boy.” 

He meant Jaehaerys, Aegon’s son. My tears were a hot flood. “I know,” I said, even though I hadn’t known – not for certain, at least, until now. I pressed my lips to his ear. Might as well go for broke. “And – Lucerys. It was an accident. Aemond didn’t mean for it to go that far.”

Daemon only nodded, as if none of it mattered now. His eyes drifted to the ruin of the Red Keep. “My boys…” He seemed to have little hope that Aegon and Viserys had survived. “Burn us all together,” he requested, closing his eyes again. “Vhagar can do it. Like Laena.” It was almost sweet that Daemon didn’t begrudge the dragon who had once belonged to his wife, despite her new rider. I wanted to give him some glimmer of hope in his last moments. Baela was gone, but he had two daughters…

“Rhaena and I will see it done,” I told him, though I couldn’t be sure he heard. His fingers went slack in mine, and he didn’t draw another breath. 

Aemond found me by Daemon’s still body, sobbing unabashedly: as much for his loss as for the tragedy of everything else and my powerlessness within it. What good was my control of ice and fire if I couldn’t save everyone? I felt like the Rockbiter in The Neverending Story, lamenting his inability to prevent the Nothing from taking his friends: they look like such big, strong hands, don’t they? I stared at my own hands, turning them over and over in front of my face until I couldn’t see them through the tears. Another storm of sobbing: that association only made things infinitely worse. If the Swamps of Sadness had been a thing, they would have swallowed me, too. 

Aemond didn’t rebuke or scorn me. He just bent and lifted me into his arms, carrying me away with a stern face as I slung my arms around his shoulders and bawled against his chest. 

We were surrounded by death, so it made sense that we gravitated toward what made us feel most alive.

At least, that’s what I told myself afterward.

Because we didn’t make it much farther than the scorched godswood before my lips sought his. I kissed him with a desperation that matched his on that stormy night at the base of the weirwood at Harrenhal. 

Aemond staggered when I kicked out of his embrace and dragged him atop me as I collapsed. He read my intent immediately. His hand tore at my long skirt, and my fingers freed him from his clothing more expertly than either of us expected.   

It should have been shameful, the way he fell upon me and the way I craved him. Anyone watching would have seen us rutting like animals in the ruin of King’s Landing. Teeth broke skin, nails carved runnels dotted with blood, and we had no conscious awareness of the sounds we were making. By the end, my dress was hopelessly torn and ruined and Aemond’s pale face was flushed with exertion, his only concession to our wild coupling. We lay in the rubble of the Red Keep, our limbs entangled and our bodies joined, and came back to reality gradually.

“Where is Aegon?” I asked.

Aemond made a sound low in his throat that sounded almost like a growl. “When I find him, he’s a dead man.”

I bit my chafed lower lip. Aemond was alive - against all odds - and that was a balm on my righteous anger for his brother’s deception. A plan was taking shape amidst what felt like the tattered fragments of my brain. “Is that wise? As long as he lives, he is still the heir. To kill him would make you a kinslayer twice over… at least to those who would oppose you.” I had the surprising presence of mind to add, “That was what Daemon wanted.”

Aemond scoffed with a kind of grudging admiration. “To pit us against each other from the grave?” 

I shrugged because the Greens at each other’s throats is exactly what Daemon would want - dead or alive. 

I could feel Aemond’s anger for his brother the way I could feel his unyielding length inside me, but reason was beginning to prevail. I saw him hesitate.

“I would avenge you,” he objected, delicate nostrils flared. 

“For what?” I asked. “A few inconvenient days in a dank cell? Nothing worse befell me,” I assured him. My heart ached for the cataclysm that deception had caused, but I knew it would not move Aemond, so I downplayed it, then took a deep breath and one a step farther: “In fact, you might owe today’s definitive victory to Aegon’s machinations, though he didn’t intend for you to survive it.” I let him process that one before adding, “I met your grandfather, by the way. Otto. Aegon had imprisoned him in the same place.”

Aemond’s eye narrowed; I could almost hear the grinding of mental gears as he considered the implications. Aegon saw Otto Hightower as an enemy, which might be an advantage to a second son. Otto was a veteran Hand, a master manipulator with very few scruples: someone worth having in our corner. 

I didn’t want Aemond to sit on what remained of the Iron Throne, but I wasn’t opposed to him assuming I did.  

“Let Aegon take the crown uncontested,” I said, my voice carefully controlled for his benefit as much as for mine. “And see what happens.” It was not lost on me that I was suggesting to Aemond the same course that Larys had once suggested to Aegon. 

His beautiful face twisted. “Heleana,” he whispered. Clearly, the thought of compelling his sister to return to her ruined husband was as abhorrent to him as it would likely be to her. 

“She can decide,” I cajoled, though I had no idea if that would prove true. Women had less agency in this world than I often assumed. 

“But Aegon will never trust me. Or us,” Aemond cautioned, glancing down at the joining of our bodies. His implication was clear, though neither of us voiced it: or any male issue we might have together that might challenge Jaehaerya’s claim. 

I swallowed hard, still very much in denial about that possibility. “We command the largest and fiercest dragons in the realm, and I have powers at my disposal that Aegon would be unwise to pit himself against.” That syntax was tortured enough for me to add simply, “He’ll leave us alone if he knows what’s good for him.” I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request, my absurd brain intoned as I tried to keep a straight face. 

I cupped Aemond’s scarred cheek in a palm. “It’s the wisest course,” I pleaded. “And in time – things may change.” I hoped they wouldn’t. Aemond hoped they would. 

He gritted his teeth, but he saw the sense of it. Slowly, Aemond withdrew and we made ourselves as presentable as possible in mutual, silent agreement. 

Aegon would take the throne unopposed. 

I doubted I could prevent Aemond from taking his revenge on Larys, but that was a price I was willing to pay. Aemond would do what I could not. I could almost picture a smile settling in the corner of Daemon’s mouth. It would be justice of a certain kind, after all.  

Chapter Text

King Aegon Targaryen, second of his name, rolled back to King’s Landing in a wheelhouse, but he managed to strike an impressive figure on the back of Sunfyre - flightless now, but alive - as he gave a rousing speech about his legitimacy to the refugees of the ruined royal city outside the Dragon Gate. From a distance, his scars were almost like a badge of honor, and on dragonback he was not subject to the indignity of limping on the twisted ruin of his imperfectly healed broken leg. He wore the crown of the Conqueror, which his Hand had smuggled out of King’s Landing along with Aegon himself when they fled the city. 

Of course, Aegon claimed as his the victory that his brothers had won, insisting, “Now, you see me as I truly am: dreadful in vengeance; righteous and glorious!” Sunfyre raised his golden head and shot a gout of flame into the sky, but it was Aemond on Vhagar, me on Hannibal, and Daeron on Tessarion - an assemblage of the most formidable dragons in Westeros - that convinced Cregan Stark to bend the knee and lead his army of greybeards back to the North. Oscar Tully and his Rivermen weren’t far behind.

None of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s sons had survived. Only Rhaena and Joffrey, safe on Dragonstone, had outlived their parents, and neither had a stronger claim than the firstborn son of Viserys. 

The Black faction had no one to follow. 

The Dance was over. 

Its aftermath was a different kind of conflict. It was a quiet war – one of will and whispers.

Though the rift between Aegon and Aemond was far from healed and neither trusted the other, there was a mutual, unspoken agreement that they would play the roles they’d been cast in: Aegon, the triumphant king restored to his rightful throne, and Aemond, the dutiful younger brother who fought to win it back. None of us spoke of how Larys had me kidnapped or how he and Aegon had tricked Aemond into attacking King’s Landing single-handedly with the clear expectation that he’d die in the attempt – but no one forgot it, either. 

There were more people at the table now who were not privy to our private feud, so we let it simmer unacknowledged.

Since I’d learned my lesson about playing the cards of my abilities too quickly, Hannibal was the only clout I had. He was the reason the power players tolerated my presence at the table -- a black-haired dragonrider with questionable motives, no family, no stake, and no declared loyalties except the most obvious one: Aemond’s to me and mine to him. 

Aemond offered no explanation for my presence, but nor did he allow me to be shut out of any negotiation. The two of us consulted behind closed doors, and occasionally I heard my words on his lips, but no one else knew it was my counsel he shared. In public, I haunted Aemond’s steps like a silent shadow while everyone looked at me askance and whispered behind their hands after I passed. Witch, they said. Enchantress.

I was living up to the enigmatic reputation of my namesake, but I felt like Chani in Dune: sidelined because no one knew where I fit into the hierarchy. 

Especially when Larys reminded Aemond that he was betrothed to Floris Baratheon.

It was after Aegon demanded that I attend him instead of his brother. “The king is only mindful of your reputation, my Prince. It is not seemly for you to be so attached to this… woman,” Larys explained with a falsely innocent tone, stopping just short of calling me a bastard, or worse. “You agreed to marry another, and you must honor that vow.”

Aemond stiffened beside me, a more inflexible posture even than the rigidity that overtook him any time he was forced to be in Aegon’s presence: barely withheld contempt and rage like a steel rod through his spine. I could almost hear his teeth grinding.

“No,” he said simply.

Seated at his makeshift Small Council table in Maegor’s Holdfast, the only part of the Red Keep that had survived undamaged, Aegon’s eyes went wide, then narrowed as he practically rubbed his hands together with anticipation of the standoff to come. His eyes - one clear Targaryen blue and the other dull, red, and watery under its half-melted lid - darted back and forth between his brother and his Hand.

“We no longer have a need for the Baratheon forces,” Aemond replied with seeming calm. Only I could see how much it was costing him not to leap for their throats with clawed fingers. 

“But we do need their fealty,” Larys reminded him.

Aemond’s lips were a thin line. “And the Stormlands will bend the knee to the rightful king regardless of any marriage pact.” After a pause, he added, “If Borros insists, there is a third prince. No doubt the Lady Floris would find Daeron a more suitable and… comely match.” He touched the tip of his finger to the patch over his eye as if it didn’t make him so much more than merely comely. 

I was as tempted to swat him for throwing Daeron under the bus as I was to jump him on the spot. That’s how it’s done, Paul Atreides. Aemond had chosen me over both the throne and his revenge, and though I suspected he was merely biding his time, I knew he wasn’t about to give me up now.

“If not Floris,” Larys countered, “Prince Aemond should marry Rhaena to ensure her loyalty and live with her on Dragonstone to keep a close eye on Driftmark while Corlys lives.” 

I was stunned, then elated. They did not intend to kill Rhaena or Corlys, then, though I could not imagine Daemon’s remaining daughter being any more kindly disposed to this particular alternative than Aemond was. 

Smoothly, Aemond switched into High Valyrian, his eye fixed on Aegon. I could understand the words he used no better than Larys or the rest of the Small Council, but I could decipher his meaning clearly: I will support your rule on one condition only – that my life is my own. Alys and I ride the largest dragons in the world. It would be wise to ensure we’re on your side. Subtly, I shifted my hands to the tabletop, reminding Aegon and Larys of what my palms could conjure.

Aegon blinked, then a slippery smile spread across his melted face to mask the flash of fear. “My brother insists he can serve his king best outside of a marriage bed. Perhaps he is right. You always gave a better showing with a sword,” Aegon taunted, letting his gaze linger meaningfully on Aemond’s lap before turning to Larys. “We shall marry Rhaena to Daeron.” 

A window of opportunity opened so suddenly that I didn’t think before I dove through it:  “Perhaps Borros Baratheon would consider a match with House Strong.” 

Everyone turned to face me, aghast at my audacity.

Larys’s jaw dropped; clearly, he assumed I meant him.  

“Not you, my Lord Hand,” I clarified. “Your nephew.” My eyes shifted to Aegon, waiting for understanding to dawn. If marriage would save Daemon’s daughter, perhaps it might save Rhaenyra’s youngest son, too. I owed her that at least.

It didn’t take long, and when Aegon realized what I meant, his expression was positively gleeful. As I suspected, he couldn’t resist the chance to humiliate the boy. “It’s high time little Joffrey took his proper place,” Aegon crowed. “We all know he’s no son of Laenor’s, and now that our dear sister cannot insist upon her false claims, his true family can embrace him.”

“King Aegon the Magnanimous,” Aemond intoned flatly. He, at least, seemed to have lost his desire to torment the last of Rhaenyra’s sons.

Better to live as a Strong than die as a Velaryon, I tried to reassure myself. The boy was still young. He might forget the worst of the Dance and come to embrace a new life.

Larys looked affronted but quickly masked it, and I wondered if the rumors were true – if he’d orchestrated the fiery deaths of his father and brother. I pivoted, sensing danger.

“Harrenhal is the seat of House Strong,” I declared, “and my home,” I added, though nothing was further from the truth. “Since the Hand is needed here, I can bring the boy with me until a wedding can be arranged.”

Aemond immediately seized on the opportunity that proposal presented. “I will accompany Alys. Harrenhal is the best location from which to defend the crown against any threats of insurrection as,” he swallowed hard, “the king reasserts his rule.” 

He wasn’t wrong. The God’s Eye was directly in the middle of Westeros – and far enough away from King’s Landing to keep Aemond and Aegon from perpetually being at each other’s throats. Hesitantly, I glanced around the table. Many of the councilors were nodding thoughtfully. 

“It would doubtless cool the blood of the Great Houses that sided with the usurper if King Aegon is merciful to her children,” Tyland Lannister mused. 

I bit my lip and waited.

Larys seemed inclined to object, but Aegon spoke first. “So be it.” He turned to his Hand. “Send a raven to Borros Baratheon proposing the match. The boy has Targaryen blood, after all.” Then he added, almost offhandedly, “And someone send for my wife.”

–

The second coronation of Aegon II Targaryen was a rather sad affair. The roof of the Great Hall was a yawning void and the Iron Throne looked almost lonely on its raised dais, cleared of the forest of blades that had previously surrounded it. Most of them had melted in the conflagration that Rhaenrya and Syrax had become. All evidence of their pyre had been carefully erased, but the Red Keep would need years of repair. 

Already, Aegon and Larys were plotting to put the smallfolk to work to raise it taller and grander than ever before: Aegon II was determined to surpass his namesake.

Aemond said nothing when his brother made no plans to allocate funds toward the rebuilding of the city itself.

Aemond said nothing when Aegon insisted on a second coronation so there would be no doubt of his ascendency.

Aemond said nothing when the scents of feasting and the sounds of revelry made their way down to the smallfolk camped in a makeshift shantytown outside the walls of King’s Landing. 

Aemond only went through the motions and watched with a shrewd eye. 

After the coronation, he flew to Essos – purportedly to collect Helaena, though I knew he had no intention of compelling her to return if she refused. 

I pretended to follow Aemond, but I turned northeast as soon as I was out of sight of the Red Keep – bound for Dragonstone with Daeron and his betrothed – to keep my promise to Daemon.

Chapter Text

Daeron Targaryen was a fucking sweetheart, I decided. Like, for real. Heart of gold. Far too good for this vale of fucking tears.

I was standing beside him as the pyre where Daemon’s body (and what we could find of Rhaenyra and the others) caught and burned under the shadow of the fortress on Dragonstone. Rhaena sobbed, and Daeron leaned toward her, murmuring comfort in her ear. She did not push him away, though she pulled little Joffrey closer as they mourned their parents.

Even Rhaena couldn’t hate Daeron, though he’d joined Aemond in bringing down her sister and Jace over King’s Landing. That was a detail I didn’t linger on when I told Daemon’s only surviving daughter that she should marry the third Green prince without protest if she meant to stay alive. That led to a highly inopportune connection that had me I shaking with the effort of not bursting into crazed laughter at the thought of Daeron Targaryen holding out a hand to Rhaena and intoning in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice, “Come with me if you want to live.”  

Luckily, the sound of Rhaena’s grief and the heat of the roaring pyre were sobering enough to keep me in check.

We stayed until it was nothing more than smoldering coals on the bare stone. 

Then, Rhaena dried her tears, lifted her head, took Joffrey’s hand, and marched back into the fortress with a dignity that belied her youth: Daemon’s daughter through-and-through, I thought.

It was clear that Rhaena was conscious of her precarious position as we sat down to dinner that night. King Aegon had insisted - on a condition of his clemency in sparing her - that her dragon Sheepstealer be shot down, but thus far the beast had proven elusive. He was still half-wild, though apparently obedient - or savvy - enough to stay hidden. Still, the necessity of protecting her hard-won mount left her essentially dragonless.

Rhaena knew, too, that if she refused to marry Daeron, Aemond was the alternative. Aemond, who had killed Lucerys - her first betrothed - over Storm’s End.

So she sat dutifully next to Daeron at a table that now had far too many empty seats. It was late, and Joffrey had already eaten and been escorted to bed under the watchful eye of the contingent of gold cloaks that had been sent to Dragonstone to keep custody of the only surviving Blacks after the battle over King’s Landing.  

As the night went on, Rhaena warmed to the Green prince despite herself.

Because Daeron was everything his older brothers weren’t: noble, chivalrous, sensitive, loyal.

“It is not my place to question the commands of the king,” he insisted when Rhaena asked him bluntly whether he agreed to their betrothal. Cautiously, he put a hand over Rhaena’s on the tabletop, glancing at her askance with the slightest hint of a blush on his cheeks. “But under any circumstances, it would be my honor and privilege to marry such a brave and beautiful lady.”

He managed to say it without sounding coerced or saccharine, bless him. It was highly likely that he was genuine. Daeron, I’d found in our short acquaintance, was utterly uncalculating.

Rhaena regarded him quietly, probably mentally asking exactly what I was: is this kid for real?

Immediately, Daeron pulled his hand back, all apologies. “Forgive my presumption, my lady.” 

After an awkward silence, she murmured in reply, “Rhaena.” Their eyes met. “Call me Rhaena.”

Seated across from them, I sighed inwardly as I watched them turn subtly toward each other, their faces shining with youth, their silver heads nearly touching: two refugees from a terrible war. Two households, both alike in dignity, my absurd brain declared, stuttering a little over the first word like Henslowe’s tailor in Shakespeare in Love. I could only hope Daeron and Rhaena ended better than Romeo and Juliet. Watching the first sparks fly between them felt a little like directing a teen Netflix drama. In Westeros where we lay our scene…

As if scripted, Daeron added, “We are both beholden to powers greater than we are, Rhaena.” Her name was soft on his lips. “But our happiness can be our own.”

It was simultaneously the cutest and corniest thing I’d ever heard. I resisted the urge to groan aloud, especially since Rhaena seemed utterly charmed. Suddenly, I felt decidedly like a third wheel. But since nothing I ate was agreeing with my stomach lately anyway, I stood and folded my napkin over my nearly untouched plate.

“Forgive me,” I announced. “I must leave early in the morning.” 

Daeron respectfully stood, too, and inclined his head. “Goodnight, Lady Alys.”

I circled the table so I could bid Rhaena farewell. She extended a hand, and I took it without hesitation. 

“Thank you,” she whispered as tears threatened in her eyes again. 

“I promised him,” I told her, and we both knew I meant Daemon. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” I added as I brushed a kiss across her cheek European-style. “Daeron is one of the good guys,” I said quietly into the shell of her ear. Then I squeezed her hand, met her gaze, and left them to write their story.

Alone in my chamber, I thought of Aemond. He’d be in Pentos by now, delivering the news of Aegon’s summons to Helaena. I lay on the bed, trying to conjure a vision of him by force of will. Nothing. 

I sighed in frustration, then hesitated. I bit my lower lip, thinking of the cell where I’d been kept at Antlers. Aemond had been absent from my visions there, until… The possibility that had suddenly occurred to me only intensified the near-constant nausea that I’d attributed to being concussed. I rested a shaking hand on my flat belly. 

Once again, my present reality rushed away.

Aemond sits across from Helaena in chairs flanking a tall window. Gauzy yellow curtains stir in a light breeze as sunlight streams across the sandstone floor beneath their feet.

“Aegon is king again,” Helaena says dreamily, her face turned toward the open sky. “It is as I saw it.” Her face swivels to Aemond now, and her blue eyes narrow and sharpen. “At least… in part.”

Aemond returns her gaze unblinkingly but offers no explanation. They can both plainly see that he is not, in fact, at the bottom of the God’s Eye. “Wanting is the curse,” Helaena murmurs. 

“Aegon summons you back to King’s Landing,” Aemond tells her.

Helaena only tilts her head and smiles at him softly, knowingly. “I was happier before I was Queen.” Her gaze slides over to her young daughter, playing on the floor between them. “Aegon didn’t want it before, but now he does.” She pauses. “Caught in the web. Only a matter of time.” Her eyes shift to Aemond again. “Not me.”

“None of us will return,” a different voice asserts.

Aemond looks over Helaena’s shoulder, where Alicent suddenly appears with Criston Cole at her side. They are dressed simply: fine clothes, but not the attire of a Queen Dowager or a Kingsguard knight. Almost youthful, though Alicent’s brows are still pinched together.

“That life is over,” Aemond’s mother insists as she threads her fingers through Criston’s boldly and without apology, claiming what *she* wants for perhaps the first time in her life.

“Hm,” Aemond hums – that familiar, noncommittal sound.

“Stay with us,” Alicent begs her second son. “Bring Daeron.”

“He is betrothed to Rhaena,” Aemond says shortly. “It is necessary to seal the breach.”

Alicent bites her lip and her eyes shine with tears. “Just you, then,” she pleads. Once, he was the son dearest to her. Once, she had demanded justice for his lost eye with a loving mother’s vehemence. Once, long ago.

Aemond shakes his head no. “Aegon might believe that Helaena and Jaehaera cannot be found.” He turns to Alicent. “And as far as he knows, you did not survive the attack on King’s Landing.” His eye rests on Criston last. “And you – you are nothing more to him than a deserter.” Cole drops his head as if he’s ashamed. “But if I were to disappear… Larys would grow suspicious. He has spies in Braavos.” Aemond sits taller. “No. If you have no intention to return, I must. And Aegon cannot know that any of you are alive.”

Criston raises his head again. “I will protect them.”

Aemond only answers, “More than that. You must ensure that they disappear. And their dragons with them.” Dreamfyre and Jaehaera’s Morghul, hardly more than a hatchling. 

Criston looks stubbornly hopeful. “Essos is vast and wild.”

Aemond stands, resolute. “So be it.”

Stiffly, Aemond crosses to brush his lips across Alicent’s cheek. “Mother,” he says in farewell. She cups his cheek with a palm, eyes shining. 

Aemond does not linger. He does not look at Cole.

As he strides out of the room, Helaena calls out, “Wanting is the curse, brother. You’ll see.”

Over his shoulder, Aemond’s single eye rests on his sister for a long moment.

Then he is gone.

I jerked back into awareness in my own body. 

Instantly, I knew Helaena’s words for the warning they were. Anyone who pursued the throne at all costs ended in fire and blood: Daemon, Rhaenyra, and - in time - Aegon, too. Aemond had avoided his fate once by turning away from ambition. But death would find him if he sought the crown again. 

Those who strive for it are the least suited to wear it. 

The throne is not a prize to be won, but a burden to bear. 

Aemond would resist that narrative, I knew. 

But I had time to change his mind.

And I might have more than just time. I turned on my side and pulled my knees against my chest. You carry my son, Aemond had told me. It was still, admittedly, a terrifying possibility. But one that it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

I pushed the thought away, focusing on tomorrow only.

I’d fly for Harrenhal with Joffrey and await Aemond’s return.

Chapter Text

Joffrey wept as we mounted Hannibal early the next morning, though he was trying to put on a brave face. Technically, he was mourning his mother, the only father he could remember, his brothers, a stepsister, and his dragon Tyraxes, who Aegon had insisted be held in what remained of the Dragonpit in King’s Landing, far from his rider. He was saying goodbye to his home, to a second stepsister who had been like a mother to him during the Dance, and his identity. By royal decree, he was no longer to be known as Joffrey Velaryon: he was Joffrey Strong, a legitimized bastard bound for Harrenhal with only me, a stranger - though I supposedly shared his Strong blood if not his name - to accompany him. 

But he was still so young: little more than ten. I wasn’t sure all of that was really computing. He was just alone and scared.

I knew Ser Simon Strong would welcome him, now that it was safe for the kindly old man and his grandsons to return. And Joffrey would even have playmates his age.

In the meantime, I didn’t know how to comfort Rhaenyra’s only surviving son. 

I didn’t have any siblings, much less any younger ones.

I’d never been particularly fond of children.

I tended to treat them like little adults.

It was awkward to wedge Joffrey in front of me on Hannibal’s saddle, secured with leather straps since I didn’t trust myself not to let him slide off when I was trying to avoid touching him. 

Daeron, with Rhaena standing solemnly at his side urging Joffrey to be brave, inclined his silvery head in farewell. I did the same before Hannibal leapt into the sky. 

Fortunately, the wonders of dragonflight did more than I ever could to dry Joffrey’s tears. Soon he was absorbed in watching Westeros unfold beneath us, pointing to various places while I made approving humming noises to mask my utter ignorance of Westerosi geography. 

His chatter dried up as the ruin of Harrenhal loomed on the horizon.

This was a place he had never been. It was the place where his true father had died.

“We can restore it,” I said as lightly as I could when we circled the melted towers. “It used to be the greatest castle in Westeros. And now it is your home.”

Joffrey said nothing. 

Larys was still Lord of Harrenhal; grudgingly, he had named Harwin’s newly legitimized bastard as heir – but only to protect his own claim. Technically, a son of his elder brother might challenge his place, so Larys had squashed any debate by placing Joffrey firmly beneath him in the Strong family succession despite the fact that he had no affection for the boy. 

To my profound relief, Ser Simon immediately took Joffrey under his wing, hustling Joffrey off to an intact wing of the castle to get settled and meet the rest of his new family. 

I turned toward my own chamber. As I closed the door behind me, it struck me as exceedingly odd that it felt more like a homecoming for me than for Joffrey. Harrenhal was the most familiar part of Westeros to me: a comforting place, despite the fact that slipping back into it felt like tugging on an ill-fitting cardigan. I was starting to develop a kind of fondness for the leaky old ruin: it was taking on a personality of its own like Wuthering Heights or Allerdale Hall from Crimson Peak.   

My offhanded comment about restoring the castle had been just a whim meant to comfort Joffrey, but as I stood in the vaulted chamber listening to an echoing drip like a heartbeat and the wind blowing against the bleak stone walls, I considered the idea in earnest.

I had no idea where I’d find the coin necessary to undertake a project of such enormous scale, but my thoughts drifted immediately to the abandoned godswood. A garden, I could handle. 

Like Mary Lennox, that’s where I would start to bring Harrenhal back to life.

And that’s where Aemond found me when he returned from Pentos via King’s Landing: kneeling in the godswood, tucking bulbs into the rich brown earth beneath the still-frosty humus, in anticipation of summer. 

I heard him approaching and leaned back on my haunches, watching him with an objective eye. We’d been apart for the longest time since our paths had crossed – surely long enough for whatever alchemy that quickened between us to subside – but the moment I saw him, it was like no time had passed at all.

My heartbeat accelerated smoothly as I watched Aemond make his way confidently over the rocky ground: lean and tall and agile, his infernally perfect hair swinging with his long-legged strides. Elf-pirate, my absurd brain announced, and I bit my lip to keep from giggling.

I quickly forgot my levity as he knelt, swept me into a standing position with an iron arm around my lower back, and closed his mouth over mine. His kiss left me breathless.

“What are you doing in the dirt?” he chided when he broke away, lips still hovering in preparation for the next opportunity. 

“I want to restore the castle,” I said stupidly, my head still spinning a little. “So I started here.”

Aemond snorted amusement, then indulged me when he realized I was serious. “The Riverlands are full of able-bodied men seeking employment,” he insisted. “We’ll put them to work.” He was nuzzling my neck with building urgency. 

“I needed something to occupy my time while you were away,” I protested. 

He swept me into his arms and said only, “I am here now.”

Aemond carried me back toward the castle, stopping only to let me scrub my hands clean in the kitchen before he bore me toward our chamber and kicked the door closed behind us.

He was intense, but more restrained than I expected, and I would have been disappointed had I not been astounded by his self-control. His body was a taut string: all corded muscle and bared teeth and latent strength held in check like a drawn bow. Somehow, he managed to blunt his steel-sharp edges and make violence gentle. 

I didn’t fully understand why until after our mutual finish, when he lay on his side, dragged me into the curvature of his body, and rested a palm over my lower belly where his length was still lodged within me. His long-fingered hand was hot against my skin, but arms prickled with goosebumps.

I knew what he was thinking.

I pushed the thought out of my own mind.

“Is Helaena in King’s Landing?” I asked, changing the unspoken subject even though I already knew the answer.

His breathing was harsh in my ear, but he managed to whisper. “No.” After a pause, he added, “As far as my brother will ever know, she is lost in the wilds of Essos.”

I grinned, remembering my vision. “She refused to return then.”

Aemond nodded against my shoulder. 

“Aegon probably didn’t take that well,” I observed. That interaction I had not seen.

“He did not. My return here is, in part, an exile.”

I rested my arm over his. “It’s for the best.”

Aemond held his tongue, though I could tell he was angry; no doubt Aegon had made a scene, called him a failure and a disappointment and raged at Helaena, which Aemond would have taken harder than any criticism flung at him. Rather than describe it, he shifted the topic again. “Borros Baratheon has agreed to a match between Floris and Joffrey, now that Larys has named him heir. It seems you aren’t alone in your ambitions to restore Harrenhal.”

My heart leaped a little. “Will he help pay for it?” I asked. I still had no idea where the money might come from otherwise; Larys himself hardly seemed inclined to invest in his own family seat, and Aemond had no claim to the revenue of the crown.

He answered only with one of his characteristic noncommittal hums. Still, the prospect was inordinately exciting. I glanced around, imagining the possibilities in this chamber alone. We’ll get you spruced up, old girl. I paused. “We should start by getting a proper bed.”

Behind me, Aemond only shifted his hips, reminding me with his rapidly hardening cock that our makeshift pallet served our purposes well enough. 

“I suppose we should give this one a proper send-off,” I murmured. 

With a rumbling growl, my pirate elf obliged.

We first got word of it as the first workers began to trickle in from King’s Landing along with a wheelhouse from the Stormlands containing chests of gold and a directive from Borros Baratheon to ensure that Harrenhal was fit for his youngest daughter to be lady of when she wed Joffrey Strong in a few years’ time after they both came of age. 

“We heard there’s work here,” the men explained, shifting their hollowed eyes and kicking at the broken shale around Harrenhal as they waited outside the gates. They were skinny and grubby, so we fed them and listened as they talked.

There was work in King’s Landing, too – more than enough to go around as King Aegon rebuilt the Red Keep and the smallfolk tried to cobble their city back together. But the wages were a pittance for hours of hard labour, and the workers toiled like slaves only to go home to their own ruined houses that they had neither energy nor resources to rebuild. Trade was slow to resume even though the blockade of Blackwater Bay was ended; the markets were in disarray and every able-bodied man (and many women) were called to work on the castle. Crime was rife and the pleasures of the Street of Silk and even Flea Bottom were expensive, but coin was in short supply. Life in King’s Landing was hard, and resentment against the king was growing.

“Take them in,” I counseled Aemond. “Hire them. Pay them well and feed them better.”

My motivation was kindness: it was the best I could do for the refugees of the city I felt responsible for destroying. Aemond did not argue, though his motivation was perhaps more shrewd. Once, he had wielded the power of intimidation. Now, he was discovering that princes need not rule by fear alone. Take that, Machiavelli, I thought. 

Outside the towering walls of Harrenhal, a makeshift village sprang up to house the workers. There was plenty of game in the woods to the east of the castle, fish in the God’s Eye, and land to cultivate. Men brought their families, and the shadows of Harrenhal receded as the sounds of merriment were carried on the wind at night. 

Aemond watched it all.

And I watched him.

He was a stern taskmaster: demanding and meticulous. But he was fair, and - when he could be - generous. He was transforming slowly from a scarred and wounded boy - reactive, vicious, and mistrusting like a beaten dog - into something else entirely. I wasn’t sure he was even aware of it, the way he hadn’t been fully aware of what necessity had made of him before.

Aemond Targaryen was nothing if not a chameleon. His first instinct was survival, and for the first time in his life, he had an incentive to be loved instead of feared.

He would never be benevolent like Jaehaerys or as complacent as his father, but he was quickly developing a more competent reputation than Aegon, who continued to bleed King’s Landing dry for his ambition, as if raising the Red Keep more gloriously than ever before would somehow restore his broken body. Aegon was changing, too, and not for the better. 

The battle over King’s Landing became the stuff of legend, told around the fires in Harrenton, as the village in the shadow of the great castle came to be called. In it, Aemond and Daeron were praised as white knights – the trueblooded dragonriders that put an end to the threat of the betrayers Ulf and Hugh Hammer, who became the real pretenders. Rhaenyra’s trust in them had been her downfall: evidence that she did not have the judgment to be a queen, the smallfolk whispered. By that standard, I surely would have become suspect, since I, too, rode a dragon and was not a Targaryen. But because I treated the men raising the ruin of Harrenhal to its former glory with respect, they invented their own stories to justify trusting me. These I only heard secondhand because no one dared speak them in my presence, but my favorite was that I was not a woman at all, but a dragon in human form: hatched alongside Hannibal, transformed with blood magic, and as long-lived as he. It was convenient that my hair was as black as my dragon’s scales and my eyes as luminously green. The awe of the smallfolk only grew when some of the men swore they’d seen me flying over King’s Landing in the aftermath of the battle, quelling fires with ice from my fingers. Magic, they murmured. Instead of being suspicious, the possibility made them fiercely loyal, like I was a weapon they could wield against their enemies at will. 

Sometimes, I would stoke the rumors deliberately. One morning in Harrenton, I let loose a river of fire over coals a blacksmith’s apprentice was struggling to light. His bleary, panicked eyes had gone wide, reflecting the licking flames, but - as he’d been the only witness - no one fully believed him. 

When the summer days grew hot, I would brush my fingertips unseen across the aqueduct system the townspeople had built to bring water from the God’s Eye so the next person to drink would find it as crisply cold and sweet as snowmelt. 

As the weeks turned to months and the melted towers of Harrenhal were demolished and slowly raised again, the whispers only increased when I vanished from the streets of Harrenton for the space of a few days and returned with a pink scar on my lower lip and a bandaged hand, draped in a voluminous shawl despite the summer heat to conceal the roundness of my growing belly.

The blood oath, they murmured excitedly behind my back, though no wedding had been announced. When they thought they could not be overheard, the smallfolk called me the Princess of Ice and Fire. I knew only because I saw them in my visions, speaking my new name with worshipful eyes raised to the towers of Harrenhal. 

Aemond did nothing to discourage the wave of grassroots adoration I inspired. If I was the Princess of Ice and Fire, he was my Prince. The devotion of the smallfolk was a kind of armour for him, and Aemond never missed an opportunity to secure his position and protect the people he loved. 

It was no accident that by the time our son Aerys was born, Aemond had ensured he would be a trueborn Targaryen, though we agreed he would remain a carefully guarded secret while Aegon still ruled.