Chapter Text
Rhaenyra felt it when Syrax died. Felt it the way she’d thought she would feel Daemon's death. In the way she thought a mother should with Jacaerys, Lucerys, Viserys, and Joffrey.
She'd waited in agony for the news of each death—torn between hope and despair as battle commanders returned and witnesses emerged. Even after hearing the truth, she’d tried to deny it. Perhaps Lucerys leapt safely from Arrax’s back, or Daemon swam to the shore of the God’s Eye. Maybe Viserys disguised himself as a common cabin boy, and escaped to live in peace in the Free Cities.
But for Syrax she knew immediately. The flame that had resided within her, that steady twin burn of Syrax's soul next to hers, was torn from her in an unmistakable moment of loss. Rhaenyra felt her oldest friend's pain and her panic and her sorrow. And finally, she felt Syrax's determination. Rhaenyra could not stop her cry when the feeling was snuffed out. It was somehow worse, she thought, to feel a dragon die with determination in its heart, rather than despair. Wrong, that such a creature could fail when they were so certain of their success.
It is this wrongness that Rhaenyra thinks of, as she watches the maester prepare Joffrey’s body. They will not stay to see him burn so she must honor him now, in this final way she can.
She clutches Aegon, too tightly, to her breast and hopes her last son sleeps well. He must find the rest he can; they all must.
They will have to leave early tomorrow, just after dawn. The riot will be quelled by then, and they should have enough time to escape, before her usurper of a brother descends with his own dragons upon Kings Landing. He will come soon, she knows, once he hears of their losses.
She wonders if history will remember her as she remembers Syrax. Too blinded by her determination to see her death in front of her.
No one is close enough to see the panic she feels, nor her surety of her fate. Her death looms near. All she means to prevent is her son's following shortly after.
Aegon shifts, clinging to her in sleep as tightly as she clings to him, and Rhaenyra rests her cheek atop his silver hair.
Perhaps her son will not be king, but she must do all she can to ensure he lives.
What Rhaenyra does not think of, what she does not remember in her final days, is that she named her dragon for a goddess of Old Valyria.
The same goddess that Daenys' own dragon had been named for.
The same goddess that gifted their family the talent they were known for in Valyria—not dragon riding, but foreknowledge.
Syrax, the goddess of Dreams.