Chapter Text
Dragonstone is empty and miserable.
Half the servants fear to be called traitors. The other half likely are. All his knights and lords are Renly’s bannermen now. The Citadel has yet to send a maester, but he suspects he will despise the man on sight, simply for not being Cressen.
These are not things he knew that he would miss.
And so he walks the blackened halls, the twisting dungeons, the tunnels that end in seawater. Two days he forgets to eat. He’s accustomed to hunger, now.
It is there, in the depths, that he finds it.
Shards of dragonglass shatter beneath his boots, as thin as eggshells. He bends down, and brings the lantern closer.
Something in the darkness keens.
And then his lantern is attacked.
Bat wings, cat claws. He falls, the dragonglass cutting his hands, and then there is something like a tongue of flame across the lines of blood.
Something very like a tongue of flame.
The dragon clambers over the fallen lantern, pulling its way up his arm. Settling on his shoulder, it bites his ear.
-
He emerges from the darkness in shock. The hatchling has curled around his neck and shoulder, chirping softly to itself. He finds himself idly petting its head, for all it digs its claws back into his shoulder in pleasure. The coal black head is longer and more pointed than a snake’s, with an elongated jaw of teeth that have already left spots of blood across Stannis’s ear and cheek.
A dragon, a dragon, a dragon – his dragon? The second seems nearly as preposterous as the first. He focuses instead on more rational things – the hatchling will want food. The kitchens, he knows from his wanderings, are not far.
Merely a corner from the kitchen, though, a servant nearly runs into him, then starts and stares. Stammered apologies – my lord, my lord – turn into screams.
He can hear more footsteps immediately, and grinds his teeth. The hatchling digs his claws deeper into Stannis’s shoulder and neck, stretching out his body towards the maidservant and hissing. Stannis barely opens his mouth before the maid flees. He squares his shoulders, ignoring the readjusting claws, and prepares to face the approaching footsteps.
“M’lord?”
He recognizes the voice. Davos Seaworth. His ship has docked in twice now, sailing between Dragonstone and Cape Wrath. His sole remaining knight is a common born smuggler, the one man so far who seems not to have realized he gains nothing by following the lord of a barren rock.
Stannis turns. “Ser Davos.” He raises an awkward hand to keep the hatchling on his shoulder.
“Is that- gods.” His smile is a child’s smile, pulling into his cheeks. His eyes are huge. “Maid and Mother.”
“A dragon,” says Stannis. His own voice does scarcely a better job of hiding the awe. “Dragon, this is Ser Davos.” The words are preposterous, and he regrets them immediately. The hatchling clicks its jaws at Seaworth, a motion somewhere between a preen and a bite, and Stannis attempts to steer the conversation back onto practical ground.
“He needs food.”
Ser Davos bows his head, eyes still locked on the dragon. “Then- oh. M’lord. The ship-”
Cressen finds them in the kitchens, giving bits of meat to the hatchling to roast, and Stannis realizes, jolting, that this place could almost feel like home.
-
“Stop that.”
The hatchling gives him a brief glance before setting another piece of parchment aflame. Stannis snatches it up.
Cressen has found a few- a very few- books and scrolls of dragonlore. It seems even the Targaryens consigned most of it to dust. He’s set men to digging out the old dragonpit, but as of yet the hatchling is barely the length of his arm. Consigning it to the depths can wait. Instead, there is this little room, the window long-boarded and the door easy to lock. Cleaning it out had taken barely an hour, even with the hatchling around his neck.
Now, the difficult task begins. He needs to write his brother.
Come to Dragonstone. No, he doesn’t dare command a king. Your presence is requested. He sounds like an anxious mother. I have found a dragon. Even more impossible in ink.
He wastes three candles on four sentences. When the work has done, he takes another look at the hatchling. It slumbers in a nest of parchment, uncaring of the havoc its existence will wreak.
“You need a name,” he tells it, and it twitches slightly in its sleep.
-
Robert comes nearly as soon as the message is sent. He is off the gilded ship before the ropes are tied, pulling Stannis up from his knees and thumping him on the back.
“Brother!”
“Your Grace.” Stannis stands awkwardly. Robert is more overwhelming than ever, looking every inch the king they’d seen in Tywin Lannister. The sorrow and the war seem to have left him entirely at the news of a dragon.
“None of that. You’re worse than Ned.” Something seems to darken in Robert’s eyes, but it’s gone in an instant. “To your castle!”
Robert bounds up the stairs, but he waits at the barred door. Stannis opens the locks slowly, struck by a problem. He ought to whistle, as he’s learned to do, to calm the hatchling. But inside him, something snaps and tightens at the thought of looking the fool in front of Robert and his trailing lords.
“Stay back,” he snaps at the men who are starting to crowd him. Three make half a step; the others look to Robert.
“Stay back! I think the man knows his own dragon.” At Robert’s bellow, they finally scuttle away.
Stannis breathes out a long, low note. He hears no response. With a nod to Robert, Stannis slips inside the barely opened door.
The dragon sits atop the ruined desk, wings curled around himself and eyes bright and narrow. As Stannis moves towards him, he hisses at the door, then leaps for Stannis’s shoulder. Claws dig into the velvet he was stupid enough to wear as the dragon regains his balance.
“Oh.”
The door is open. Robert’s face is alight. “It’s real.”
Stannis bristles. “Do you-“ But the accusation withers. Robert ignores it entirely.
“May I?” He’s already reaching out a hand. Maekon stretches his wings.
And he’s going to fly, Stannis knows it. There is nothing in his life – nothing – that his brother will not take from him. Dragons are for kings.
The hatchling resettles. He regards Robert’s hand with interest, and Stannis’s worries abruptly change shape.
“Your grace, he’s going to-“
There is a snap of flame. Robert jerks back, and Stannis goes white.
But his brother is laughing. “A fierce little beast! A new black dread!” Robert resettles, still smiling at the dragon, who, assured of an audience, begins to click and preen. “Not that we’ll name you that, of course. No old names. I was thinking Fury. What do you think of Fury, Stannis?”
“His name is Maekon.”
“Maekon?” Robert scowls in confusion. “Why?”
Because it felt right was a terrible explanation even to himself. He would cut out his tongue before airing it to Robert.
“Our grandmother’s grandfather,” says Stannis eventually.
Robert sighs. “A bloody dragon king.” He would be far less dangerous were he shouting. Now Stannis can’t read him at all. Maekon rubs his head against the tension in Stannis’s jaw, the only movement. After an eternity, Robert speaks again. “Maekar, wasn’t it? See, I do know something.”
“Father of Aegon V, father of Rhaelle, mother of-“
“Steffon, father, yes, yes. I get it, Maester.” Robert holds out his hand to the dragon again. “A dragon of our blood. Just don’t yell the bloody name around at court.”
“At court, your Grace?” He needs this island, now. Exile has suddenly become safety.
Robert thumps his back, careful to avoid Maekon’s tail. “Don’t kneel, Lord Stannis, but I’m naming you Master of Ships.”
-
Robert and his men search the tunnels for days, and Stannis watches his brother lose more of his good humor with every dead end.
“We ought to at least bloody well find an egg!”
Stannis refrains from joining the search. Now he has both Maekon and fleet records as an excuse. The royal navy is in poor shape, and its bookkeeping in poorer. Stannis drags his way through what Velaryon deigns to give him. Maekon nibbles at the edges and swallows one of the seals.
“You can’t go to court yet,” Stannis tells the dragon. It feels like a lie, but there’s a strange lack of guilt in planning to lie to Robert. Maekon stays at Dragonstone, and Stannis stays at Dragonstone. Lord Arryn can send him what he needs of the fleet. For that matter, Lord Arryn can send him ships.
-
And so he waits, and reads. The first trip to court is delayed, and delayed again. It is still a disaster.
Maekon at first seems thrilled with the ship, flying out as high as his chain will allow, then pulling in low above the water, snatching a fish in his jaws. His return to the deck to roast his catch, however, is a disaster barely averted. Finally, Stannis chains him below, and pulls out another stack of naval records to read while the dragon sleeps.
He sleeps very little.
In the end, Stannis and Ser Davos (the latter armed with meat, the only reason Maekon will now tolerate his presence) take it in turns to keep watch. At least the voyage is short.
On their arrival, Robert proudly presents his plans for a dragonpit, and for further expansions of that pit as more dragons are found or hatched.
“One pit will do for now,” says Stannis. “And he is still too small.”
Maekon still tries some days to climb his back, and has knocked him over more than once. Those claws, too, can now do real damage. Stannis has taken to wearing leathers, even to meet his King.
“A tower room with an open wall and strong chains would do well.” He’s been planning it for weeks.
Robert looks at him. Stannis can’t decipher his expression.
“Well then,” Robert bellows to the craftsmen, “get on it!” He manages to turn it from an order to a cheer.
-
Maekon grows slowly. Stannis pours over every old text Cressen can find, and wonders if the new dragonpit is to blame. By the time Queen Cersei has presented Robert with a son, the dragon that ought to guard his dynasty is still only the size of a small horse.
Stannis leaves Maekon in the half-built open room, and pats at his nose when he hisses. The beast turns his tail and sulks, and Stannis wonders, not for the first time, if Maekon feeds on his own feelings. He does not see the point of being formally introduced to an infant, prince or no.
In Joffrey’s cradle is a dragon egg.
The Queen has her hands constantly on them both, encouraging the babe to unclench his fists and touch the glassy scales. Robert thumps Stannis on the back and utters a number of irrelevant syllables.
“Have you given one to Renly?” Surely he ought to have been told.
Robert laughs. “Jealousy, Stannis? Now?”
Of course Renly has no egg. They’re more than their weight in gold. Stannis has spent enough time with Jon Arryn to know that it wasn’t the babe’s father who’d had the gold for this one. Tywin Lannister wants more than just a king for a grandson.
Maekon snaps idly at him as he returns.
“You may have a brother, dragon,” says Stannis. Pray you don’t.
-
Robert had made him a Prince before he’d left Dragonstone, and, as an afterthought, Renly too. Robert has an heir now, but Stannis is still Prince of Dragonstone. He will never rule Westeros – he has no desire to rule Westeros, to be fed to the bootlicking masses at court – bar some great tragedy. But he is a prince. He has a dragon.
And this has made him a very eligible man indeed.
It is Jon Arryn who most discusses his betrothal. Stannis has acquired a grudging respect for the Hand. He lays out the matches that have been offered, and the matches that the King prefers. They are a motley mix. Younger sisters, aunts and nieces, widows and Freys.
“Delena Florent,” says Arryn, picking up a letter. “A fair maid, and a fair house. Your brother seeks a power base against the Tyrells.”
“Lord Florent’s niece.”
“His eldest daughter is wed and his other yet to flower.”
“Daughter to his youngest brother.”
Lord Arryn sighs.
“I know what Robert wants to do, Lord Arryn. There are no lord’s daughters here save Lord Walder’s. I am loyal to my death, and he thinks me a traitor. He fears me a traitor.” His teeth grind.
“Your grace,” says Lord Arryn, and he uses the words intentionally. Prince. “There are many who leap at the chance to wed a prince of the blood. Who leap at the thought that their grandson might ride a dragon.” He shakes his head. “Your brother would never think you a traitor. He wishes to protect you from others who might.”
“You have a reputation as an honest man, Lord Arryn. Don’t sully it.”
Another sigh, though this one he at least tries to cover. “We need this alliance, your grace. You, more than anyone, should understand the threat the Tyrells can pose.”
He swallows, tasting blood. “Very well.”
-
Lord Florent has brought two nieces, and his youngest daughter, clearly hoping for places with the Queen’s ladies. He and Stannis have a brief conversation, in which Stannis recites phrases he’s learned by rote and suspects Florent is doing the same.
The Florent partys has been at court now for three weeks, weeks Stannis had spent on Dragonstone. He is ill-prepared to bring home a wife. He has left Cressen in charge of choosing her chambers and seeing to what servants she might need. It might be beneath a Maester’s duties, but his steward is flighty, incompetent, and soon to be released from service, and his very brief conversation with the large woman in charge of the maids might as well have been conducted in two difference languages. He can rely on Cressen. Cressen had known his mother.
He looks around the near-empty hall. As always in such circumstances, he spots the knots of whisperers, and wonders what about him displeases them now. Each group he’s approached has grown silent.
“Your grace.”
This is one of Lord Arryn’s creatures, the Lord of the Fingers – Baelish, that was it. Lord Baelish.
“Your grace, might I discuss something with you in private?”
Stannis glances around. Eyes emerge from the whispering clumps, and he grinds his teeth.
“Speak.”
Baelish shakes his head. “Your grace, I bear ill news, not meet for… common ears.”
Stannis begrudgingly follows.
-
“Don’t speak to me.”
Robert holds up his hands. “Stannis…”
Stannis doesn’t answer. He doesn’t trust his own tongue. He looks away from his brother, and stares instead at a patch of wall as though perhaps it will burst into flame.
“She came to me! Threw herself at me! You can’t honestly think – I’d never have let her marry you, not afterwards. And anyway, better you know now than –“
“Than when? Than when you’d fathered me your bastard as an heir?”
Robert reddens. “Godsdammit, Stannis! I’m trying to apologize.”
He cannot stay in this room. He cannot stay in this castle.
“Don’t speak to me.”
-
Lord Arryn finds him.
He has retreated to Maekon’s chamber. It’s the only place here, now, that feels anywhere close to safe. He strokes Maekon’s nose as the beast crunches on the remnants of a sheep, and they both turn to glare at the Lord of the Eyrie in unison.
“Stannis.”
He does not remember granting Lord Arryn the right to address him by his first name.
“I’m marrying Selyse Florent.” The words start to come more easily. “You’ll have your precious alliance. Lord Florent won’t flap off in disgrace. And then I’ll go home, and my lord brother can bed any whore he chooses.” Is that good enough for you?
Lord Arryn closes his eyes. Maekon perks up at the shift in posture, pressing his weight from foot to foot.
“Well?” Stannis demands, eventually.
“You have my thanks.”
As though he wants them. Lord Arryn is not his father. Lord Arryn was a father to Robert, and the whole court can see the results of that.
And then it worsens.
“You mustn’t press your brother.”
“I mustn’t-“
Maekon tenses again beneath his hand at the force of Arryn’s gaze. “You don’t understand the power you hold now. House Baratheon cannot be seen to be in conflict –“
“Then tell that to Robert.”
He cannot bear this anymore. Not these red stone walls, not all the lying crowds, not bowing and scraping and your grace your grace your grace. He cannot, and yet he must.
“Go,” he says, finally. “I fear our anger rouses my dragon.”
-
He marries Selyse Florent. They have scarcely a conversation once he has placed the cloak around her shoulders. He can feel his face burning all throughout the feast, though with rage or shame he isn’t sure. Every man at court knows about Robert and Delena, has known for weeks. Selyse has likely known, he realizes suddenly, but even if he wished to talk to her, she’d never hear his voice over the din.
The Queen, beside Robert, is as still as stone. She dances only with her brother. Robert goes quickly from dancing to drinking, but more women surround him all the same. He searches in vain for a face he knows, but Lord Estermont is ill again, Renly too young, and so he is surrounded by Florents and Reachmen. Ser Davos is somewhere, down at the far end of the hall, but he might as well be in Yi Ti.
And then –“a bedding! A bedding!” – and a miserable eternity of laughing women, and, somehow, the boom of Robert’s chuckles above it all. He slams the door as soon as they toss him through it.
His wife sits on the edge of the bed, her face crimson.
Robert would have something to say, would tell her she was beautiful or whatever nonsense he’d fed to her cousin. But his hands shake as much as hers.
It is easier the second time, in the morning, when at least the positioning is less awkward. She even kisses him, not on the mouth but on the cheek. “Thank you.”
“For what?” They’ve both done their duty. Hopefully an heir will follow.
“For not saying I’d look better in the dark.”
She has the trace of a mustache on her upper lip, and her features are as awkward and squared-off as his own. She came to him a maid – at least so far as he could tell – so he cannot imagine who might have told her this before. Or are women as cruel to each other as men?
At any rate, he had left the lights on as a practical measure. He has certainly earned none of the thanks he is receiving.
But perhaps there are some he can earn.
-
His lady wife stares at Maekon, who, as always under the attention, preens, fanning out his spikes.
She murmurs out a prayer, and then: “He’s beautiful.”
Stannis supposes the dragon is, at that. “Don’t show fear.”
But he hardly needs to say it. Her back is straight, and her eyes wide only with delight. “May I touch him?”
“Wait.” Stannis moves forward, taking the chain around Maekon’s neck and unlocking it from the wall. “I’ll hold his head.” He keeps up a soothing rub to the soft scales beneath the chin. “Easy,” he says. “Easy.”
Selyse steps forward, and Maekon grumbles low in his throat.
“No fear.” He isn’t sure which of them he’s instructing.
Finally, his lady wife lays a hand on Maekon’s forehead. The scales there are thick enough not to burn her, but she still withdraws from the heat after a moment, keeping each movement slow.
“Do you ride him yet?”
“Soon.” Men at Dragonstone are working on a harness.
“I should like to see that.” Her eyes are already somewhere far away, like a warrior planning for battle. “Will our children ride?”
“I don’t know.” Now it’s his eyes, perhaps, seeing a son named for his father, seeing some foolish fantasy. He shakes himself back to reality.
-
Maekon paces the dragonpit, and sulks, but three sheep get him still enough for Stannis to fasten the harness on. There is a fresh-blackened place on the new-blackened walls that he wills himself not to look at.
“A thief, most likely,” Othar had said. He rebuilt the pit, and knows it as well as any man but Stannis. Stannis trusts his words. And no one from the castle is missing, nor anyone from the village save a fishingboat lost at sea.
He had waited for some change in Maekon, now that he’d more than likely tasted man. Nothing seemed forthcoming. The dragon was as he always was, and perhaps that was what sent foolish chills down Stannis’ back.
He’s still small enough that they can take him up on a long chain, and let him fly. Down, and Up, and Flame! Soon Stannis will fly with him. The harness seems to still be one his back, even as Maekon twists and dives and tests the give of the chain. It’s the strongest they have, and soon it won’t be enough.
Stannis blows sharply on a metal pipe, and Maekon turns. Slowly, he descends, increasing his speed when he sees the cow laid out by the edge of the pit.
“Flame!” calls Stannis, and Maekon roasts the cow as he comes in to land. He crunches at it contently.
Stannis walks over to the dragon’s side, examining the harness. It seems to have held up. He runs one finger along a leather strap. It’s smooth to his touch, not singed at all. This one, finally, looks to hold up to a ride.
Then Maekon flinches with a growl.
Stannis barely sees the boy, walking where he shouldn’t. He barely sees the jaws begin to open. And he flings himself in front of the flame, and he sees only red, and light, and red.
-
He must have screamed. His throat is dry as charcoal. Pain fades in and out across his arm and shoulder – but it’s the wrong shoulder, isn’t it? Something is holding him down.
Some things.
“…nor the good, the bad.” Cressen has too many teeth, and his eyes are brown. He holds a meat cleaver. The walls around are Storm’s End, but Stannis sees his own hand, lying limp and bloody on the Painted Table.
“Your grace… your grace…” The words are drowned out by the storm.
He wakes, and dreams, and wakes again.
“Stannis.” A woman. Not his mother. Not a serving maid. Selyse.
He tries to croak something, and finds that his jaw is tied. Bandages. Half his body seems to be bound with them. He realizes his wife was holding his hand only when she pulls away.
“Cressen!” she calls, standing. “Cressen – you, Seaworth, Waters. Fetch the Maester!”
There’s movement at the door. He can barely see it. His neck has the bandages worse than his jaw, and only one eye is free. His mind is muddled – dreamwine or sweetsleep – and it takes him a moment to realize why. He might well have lost the other. He might well –
He can feel his arm. Or can he? He is certain he’s clenching his left fist, but there’s no pull in the sheets, and something about it all feels off.
He grinds his jaw, pulling at the cloth and plaster. Selyse comes towards him again, and sits. He wonders who has sat vigil in that chair, for how long. Cressen, of course. He would not have believed it of his wife were she not there before him.
“How,” he manages. Pain is everywhere, like the sound of the ocean, but now it stabs into his raw throat. “How… bad?” My arm. The boy. My dragon. What happened to them? How long have I lain here useless?
She squeezes his hand in both of hers, and he stares at the mesh of their fingers. “We had to take your left arm to the elbow.” We. As though she’d been responsible. “You may yet lose the eye. That little fool you… I had him sent away. He lives.” She spits it. Now her knuckles are white. “They lured the beast back to the pit with a cow.”
-
The beast.
The words eat at him as Cressen comes, as the days pass, as he sits and stands and stares at the stump of his arm. Twice a day, they take the bandages from his eye, to clean it and test what he can see.
“How is it, your grace?”
There’s genuine interest in Davos Seaworth’s voice, and so Stannis forgives him what he might not another man.
“Light and shadow.” He grits his teeth, ignoring the twinge in his jaw. The bad eye plays havoc with the good. Even if rot doesn’t set in, he’ll likely need a patch. The beast. It’s the truth, and he’d refused it until nearly too late. The beast, and he’d been treating it like a charming, willful child. He looks away from Seaworth, and down.
The hook is a practical thing in black iron. He has no objections to it. It simply is.
But it is not a hand. He has objections to that, and to-
“Do you still feel them?” Because he does, sometimes, the hand and fingers burning just outside his gaze.
Seaworth starts at the question, then raises his maimed hand in recognition. Stannis remembers that hand, flat on the table, the tension in the wiry arm as Davos had tried not to jerk away.
“Not much to feel,” he finally says. His eyes are warm. “But yes. Sometimes.”
-
There are still bandages over half his head and shoulder when he returns to the dragonpit. Maekon clicks his jaws at him, as eager as a hound. The heat soaks into him.
He must not flinch away. He must not break his gaze. The dragon still knows him, but that could all change in an instant. If he becomes prey in the beast’s mind, then everything has been for naught.
Fire licks edges of the pit. Maekon twists, stamping his feet in the chains. Then his head lifts, very slowly.
The jaws are half open, barely a foot away. I must not break.
Maekon bumps his nose into Stannis’s cheek, once, twice. Once, that had been a hatchling’s affection. Now, he does not know what to think. He remembers the stark black words in the books, and the stark black ash of the bodies. They seem worlds apart.
“Hold,” he says. The head lowers. He remembers how to breathe.
He removes the chains as Maekon chews on the remnants of a cow. The dragon is as calm around him as ever. It seems it was only Stannis changed by the flames.
“Hold,” and “down,” and “flame.” He exhausts four sheep and the limits of their caged repertoire. Maekon stays in the pit, but his eyes are on the barely visible crack of sky. Finally, he stretches his neck along the ground, and Stannis realizes he is waiting for the saddle.
He has a thousand reasons not to. His skin crawls and cracks, and he clenches the hand he no longer has. Maekon waits.
Above them, the flash of sky is very, very blue.
-
They leave the pit behind them in an instant.
The black wings beat, and the dragon calls, a long, unanswered note. Stannis grips for his life with hook and hand.
He had dreamt of this, once, when he was a boy. He’d remembered those dreams at times, unasked for, on a leaping horse or in the wind on his face at sea.
A gale could scarcely have prepared him for this wind, ripping the bandages from his face and screaming louder than the dragon. Beneath him, the sea is a painted map, smooth and endless. Dragonstone is a black gash vanishing behind him.
Maekon spirals, diving, and Stannis realizes belatedly that he ought to be exercising more control. The lash is tied behind his leg, if he can just let go to reach-
But there’s nothing alive beneath them. No ships. No thieves or assassins or stable boys.
He cannot let down his guard. He’s learned that lesson. It’s seared into his very flesh. But now, at this moment, he feels none of it.
He’s flying. And he’s smiling.
And he’s free.
-
It is three months later, to the day, that Balon Greyjoy crowns himself, and war begins anew.