Chapter 1: The Shadow on the Eye
Chapter Text
For more than a century, there had been only the cold and the quiet of the lake’s deep places. It was not darkness, for darkness implies the memory of light. It was not silence, for silence is merely the absence of sound. It was a profound and absolute nothing, a void where the concept of self had been erased. He had fallen into it with fire in his lungs and a sword in his hand, a fitting end to a life lived by the blade.
The world, and all the men in it, had faded away. There was no pain, no memory, only the endless, quiet cold where Daemon Targaryen had ceased to be. The Rogue Prince, the King of the Stepstones, the Prince of the City—all titles, all deeds, all loves and hates, had been scoured away by the timeless, dreamless pressure of the deep. He was less than a memory, less than a ghost. He was simply… gone.
He was stirred by a sound.
It was not a sound for mortal ears, but a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated through the mud and the water, a discordant note in the symphony of nothingness. It was the groan of a kingdom shifting its weight, a tremor in the very fabric of the world.
A king was riding north, a fat man in a stag-crowned helm, and the sheer force of his passage, the arrogance of his progress, pulled at the ancient threads of power that crisscrossed the continent. It was a clumsy, brutish pull, but it was enough. The dregs of a dragon prince, long settled in the silt, began to stir.
A flicker of consciousness, the first in one hundred and sixty-eight years, ignited in the void. It was a terrifying sensation, this return to awareness. It was the feeling of a name being remembered after an eternity of being forgotten: Daemon Targaryen.
He did not wake in his own skin. Flesh and bone were a forgotten luxury. He rose as a cold mist from the surface of the God's Eye, a thing of shadow and memory given form on the haunted shore. The process was slow, agonizing. Particles of forgotten rage and ancient pride coalesced, drawn together by the gravity of his newly remembered name. He felt the chill of the lake’s depths cling to him like a shroud, a cold that was not of winter, but of the grave.
The weeping faces of the weirwoods on the Isle of Faces watched him, their ancient magic a silent, knowing witness to his unnatural return. He was a wraith, a distortion in the air where a man should be. He lifted a hand that was little more than smoke and curling mist, and tried to feel for a pulse that was not there. The weight of Dark Sister at his hip was a cruel memory, a limb he could no longer command. The roar of Caraxes was a silent scream in a throat that no longer existed. They were gone, lost to the depths with his body and his bones. He was alone.
And with the waking, the years came for him.
It was an agony sharper than any steel, a violation more profound than any wound. The history of the world since his death did not simply enter his mind; it tore through his nascent consciousness in a torrent of bloody, relentless visions. He felt the death of every Targaryen who had followed him. He saw the last dragons, his house’s glory, born sick and stunted, their fire little more than a candle’s flicker, dying in the dark of the Dragonpit.
He heard their final, pathetic whimpers and felt the magic drain from the world. He saw the black dragon of his own bastard son, one bearing his own name, rise again and again in rebellion, his own ambition mirrored and mocked in the faces of the Pretenders. Each time they failed, each time they were cut down, he felt the sting of their defeat as if it were his own.
He felt the rot of madness take his line, a creeping sickness that ended in Aerys. He was there in the king’s mind, feeling the paranoia, the whispers, the obsession with wildfire. He smelled the scorched flesh of lords who had displeased the king, a stench that clung to his spectral form. He saw Rhaegar, the silver prince, the last true dragon, the house’s best hope, throwing it all away for a wolf maid with winter in her eyes.
He felt Rhaegar’s passion, his obsession, and the profound, world-breaking folly of his choice. He was there at the Trident, feeling the crunch of the Usurper’s war hammer, the taste of blood and river water in a mouth he no longer possessed. He felt the life fade from Rhaegar and with it, the hope of their dynasty. He was in the throne room as red cloaks of blood wrapped the bodies of Rhaegar’s children, their small forms broken and discarded like dolls. Perhaps like him, the one they killed .... Daemon was no stranger to the death of children. He heard the screams of the princess, the cries of the babe, and the laughter of the men who killed them.
He saw it all, and the weight of it was a new kind of death, a death of the spirit. The Usurper’s long, drunken summer, and then, through the haze of blood and failure, he saw three small flames flickering in the dark. A girl, his blood, walking into a funeral pyre on a distant shore and emerging not burned, but reborn, with three scaled miracles clinging to her skin. Dragons. Dragons. The sight was a jolt, a shock of impossible hope. And then, another flame, this one hidden. A boy, raised a bastard in the cold heart of the North, ignorant of the fire in his own veins, the secret son of the fallen dragon prince.
My blood.
The torrent of history slowed, the agonizing visions receding to leave behind a single, burning purpose. He had lived for glory, for a crown, for the love of a woman and the thrill of war. He had lived, always, for himself. Now, in this strange half-life, he would live for his House, House Targaryen. He had been the Rogue Prince. He would now be its shadow.
The journey north was a tedious affair, a slow crawl through a kingdom he no longer recognized. As a being of mist and memory, he was untethered from the physical world, a cruel irony for a man who had lived so completely in the flesh. He could not feel the bite of the wind nor the warmth of a fire. He could not taste the wine the king swilled with such abandon, nor smell the sweat of the horses and men. He passed through them all like a bad memory, a sudden chill that made them look over their shoulders for a source that was not there.
This power was a curse, a profound loneliness that gnawed at the edges of his consciousness. He was a spectator to the world, a ghost at a feast, and the feast was a procession of fools and vipers. This slow, lumbering march was a metaphor for the age: graceless, heavy, and devoid of fire. He remembered riding Caraxes, the world a map unspooling beneath them, the journey from King’s Landing to the Trident a matter of hours, not weeks. This clumsy parade of wagons and horses felt like a mockery of true power.
He spent most of his time drifting near the royal wheelhouse, a monstrous, gaudy carriage that lumbered along the kingsroad. Inside, the Usurper, Robert Baratheon, held court. The man was a walking contradiction, a ghost haunting his own body. In his youth, he had been the Demon of the Trident, a warrior whose fury had shattered a dynasty. Daemon, who had carved out his own kingdom with blood and steel, could almost respect that raw, untamed power. But the demon was long dead, drowned in a sea of wine and regret.
The man who remained was a bloated pig in a crown, his laughter too loud, his japes too crude, his eyes holding a deep, abiding melancholy that only seemed to lift when he was cursing the memory of Rhaegar or burying his face in the bosom of a serving girl. Daemon watched his daily ritual: waking with a groan, shouting for wine to kill the pain of the previous night, and then proceeding to drink himself into a stupor once more. He won a crown and it brought him nothing but misery. Daemon had fought his entire life for power and recognition, had relished every moment of it.
To see this man squander the ultimate prize with such casual disdain was a profound insult. This is the man who wears the crown of Aegon? The thought was a constant, simmering rage. This oaf who mourns the wolf girl more than he loves his own kingdom?
His queen was a different beast entirely. Cersei Lannister was Valyrian in all but name, her beauty a weapon she wielded with practiced, surgical ease. But where Targaryen fire burned hot and passionate, hers was a cold, green flame, the color of wildfire and jealousy. She despised her husband, her court, and the very land they traveled through, her contempt a palpable aura that chilled the air around her.
Daemon, a connoisseur of courtly intrigue, saw it all. He saw the subtle poisons in her words, the ambition that burned in her eyes, and the incestuous rot that clung to her and her twin, the Kingslayer. He had known powerful women, had loved Rhaenyra, his queen, whose fire could warm a kingdom or burn it to the ground. Cersei lacked Rhaenyra’s warmth, her charisma, her capacity for love. She was a creature of pure, distilled spite, a beautiful, venomous snake coiled on the throne.
And the Kingsguard… what a bitter jest. He looked at the men guarding the Usurper and saw nothing but ghosts and cheap imitations. He remembered the knights of his brother's court: Ser Harrold Westerling, the Lord Commander, a man whose honor was as unyielding as a mountain; the fierce Cargyll twins who died on each other's swords for their opposing loyalties. They were true knights, even those who stood against him.
And then there was Criston Cole. The name was acid in his thoughts. Cole, the Kingmaker, the Dornish upstart who had been Rhaenyra’s shield and then her bitterest foe. Daemon had hated Cole with a fire that had outlived his own flesh. Cole was a peerless warrior, a master of arms—Daemon would never deny him that but his honor was a brittle thing, a shield of glass that shattered at the first insult to his pride. He broke his sacred vow not for a kingdom, not for gold, but for spite. He had crowned Aegon and plunged the realm into the war that had killed them all because a woman had slighted him.
Now, Daemon looked upon Jaime Lannister and saw Cole reborn, but in a lesser, more pathetic form. The Kingslayer had the same golden hair, the same swordsman's grace, the same reputation. And he was the same brand of traitor. But where Cole's betrayal had been a conscious, burning act of hate, Lannister's seemed born of casual arrogance and convenience. He saw no conviction in the Kingslayer's eyes, only a bored disdain for the world and a slavish devotion to his sister. He was an oathbreaker without a cause, a traitor without the decency to believe in his own treason. The golden lion was an insult to the white cloak he wore, a walking symbol of the rot that had consumed the Targaryen court and now festered in the Baratheon one.
He swept his gaze over the others. Barristan Selmy was a tragedy. Daemon recognized his name from the flood of history — Barristan the Bold, a man of honour, a legend. To see such a man reduced to this, guarding a drunken lout and his treacherous queen... though Daemon didn't felt much sorry for him, the old cunt has earned it, when he outlived his king.
The rest were not even worthy of contempt. Meryn Trant, a brute with cruel eyes who likely enjoyed his work too much. Boros Blount, a man whose jowls shook when he rode, his appetite for the king's table clearly greater than his appetite for a fight. They were not knights; they were sycophants and thugs given white cloaks to lend them an air of legitimacy. They were a disgrace to the order Aemon the Dragonknight had once graced.
He took measure of the rest of the lions. The Imp, Tyrion Lannister, was the most interesting of the lot. A dwarf, an outcast, a man whose mind was his only true weapon. Daemon watched him read his books by the firelight while other men drank and whored. He saw him trade barbs with men twice his size and win, his wit a shield against a world that despised him. He saw a survivor, a man who understood the world for what it was: a cruel, bloody game. In another life, Daemon might have enjoyed drinking with the dwarf. There was more worth in the stunted man’s little finger than in his beautiful, vapid siblings combined.
Then there was the dog. Sandor Clegane was no knight and made no pretense of being one. He was a scarred, brutal man who served the spoiled princeling, Joffrey, a boy with the cruelty of Maegor but none of the strength, a vicious little tyrant in the making. The Hound was a broken thing, a weapon damaged by the brother who was supposed to protect him. But there was an honesty in his misery, a purity in his hate, that Daemon could appreciate. He was a killer who did not lie about it.
At last, the grim, grey towers of Winterfell rose from the horizon. The castle was an extension of the land itself—stark, strong, and unadorned. It had none of the sublime, terrifying beauty of Dragonstone, which was built of black stone that drank the light and twisted into draconic shapes. It lacked the opulent grandeur of the Red Keep he remembered, a place of soaring towers, hidden passages, and the lingering scent of dragonfire. Winterfell was different. It was a fortress of blunt, unyielding granite, a place built to endure the harshest of winters, not to inspire songs. It was a place of function over form, of strength over beauty. It was, Daemon thought, a perfect home for wolves. As he swept ahead of the party, a cold draft started settling over the castle walls, he could feel an ancient power in the very stones, a magic different from the fire of Valyria, something older, earthier, and wilder.
He watched as the Stark household assembled in the courtyard. The air was thick with the smell of horses, woodsmoke, and baking bread, overlaid with the palpable tension of the moment. The king’s arrival was a clumsy spectacle. Robert Baratheon needed a step to heave his bulk from his horse, his face flushed with wine and the cold. He stomped through the mud, his fine southern boots sinking into the northern earth as if the land itself was trying to claim him. He bypassed the lady of the castle with a curt nod, a gross insult, saving his attention for her husband. He pulled Eddard Stark into a crushing embrace that was more brawl than greeting. "You got fat," the Usurper boomed, and for a moment, the ghost of a warrior stood in the fat man's place.
Eddard Stark was exactly as Daemon had imagined from the histories. His face was long and solemn, a man carved from the same granite as his castle. Honor radiated from him like heat from a forge, but it was a brittle, unbending sort of honor, a rigid sort that left no room for nuance or survival. He was a wolf who thought all other beasts played by the same rules, a dangerous assumption in a world of lions and snakes. A fool, Daemon thought, but a noble one. He will not last a moon in the south. He had known men like this, men whose righteousness was a shield that blinded them to the dagger in the dark. They died bloody.
His lady wife, Catelyn Tully, was another matter. She stood beside her husband, her back straight, her blue eyes sharp and assessing. She was a southerner, a fish out of water, but she was no fool. Daemon saw the immediate distrust in her gaze as she looked upon the queen and her siblings.
Daemon let his gaze drift over the children, the pack of wolf cubs. The eldest, Robb, was a handsome boy, a perfect blend of his parents, already trying to wear the mantle of a future lord. He stood straight and proud, but his eyes kept darting to his father, seeking approval. Sansa was a pretty little bird, her head filled with songs of gallant knights and handsome princes. She looked at the cruel boy Joffrey with stars in her eyes, and Daemon felt a pang of something akin to pity. She was a lamb being led to a house of lions, a perfect pawn for a woman like Cersei. The younger girl, Arya, was the opposite. A scowling, restless creature with a wolf’s wild heart, her eyes darting everywhere, missing nothing. She looked at the proceedings with open contempt, fidgeting under the watchful eye of her septa. Then there were the boys: Bran, already craning his neck to look at the rooftops, his mind clearly on climbing, and the babe, Rickon, a wild thing clinging to his mother’s skirts, his eyes wide with a feral energy.
But his attention was not for them. It was drawn to the back of the line, standing apart from the trueborn children, half-hidden in the shadows of the armory. Jon Snow. The bastard. He stood with the quiet unease of one who does not know his place, his desire to be present warring with the knowledge that he was not truly wanted. And as the boy looked up, his grey eyes so dark they were almost black, Daemon felt it. It was not just a passing resemblance to Rhaegar in the sharp line of his jaw or the intensity of his gaze. It was a tangible thing, a warmth in the cold northern air that his spectral form could feel, a spark of banked coals hidden deep within the boy that called to the ghost of his own fire. The blood of Old Valyria, pure and strong, waiting. To see it here, in a bastard’s name, in the heart of the Stark’s cold domain, was the greatest and cruelest irony of all.
Robert’s pleasantries were short-lived. He clapped Ned on the shoulder, his voice dropping to a low rumble that carried across the silent yard. "Take me to your crypt. I would pay my respects."
The Stark lord nodded, his own face a mask of old grief. The two kings, the dead one and the one who wished he was, turned and walked away from the living, their path leading down into the cold earth, to the tomb of a dead wolf maid who had broken a kingdom.
As they disappeared, Daemon felt a pull. It was not his own will, but an ancient, quiet summons from the heart of the castle. It was the old magic he had sensed in the stones, a power that was curious about the creature of fire and shadow that had come into its domain. He drifted away from the courtyard, a wisp of cold air passing through stone and timber, towards the ancient godswood. The air grew still, heavy with the scent of damp earth and old magic. He came to a stop before the heart tree, its white bark like bone, its red leaves like drops of blood. The carved face wept crimson tears, its eyes seeming to follow his every non-movement.
He felt a strange peace here, a connection to the old powers of this land that he had never known in life. He was a creature of fire and blood, yet this place of earth and water seemed to recognize him. As he floated before the weeping face, a voice rustled through the leaves, a whisper that was not the wind, a sound as old as the tree itself. It was a name, spoken in a tongue he understood better than any other, a name from the life he had lived in the streets and alleys of King's Landing, a name the smallfolk had given him.
Lord Flea Bottom.
Chapter 2: The Shadow and the Ember
Chapter Text
The name echoed not in the air, but inside the very fabric of his being. It was a name he had not heard since he was a living man, a name given to him by the beggars and cutpurses of the stinking alleys he had once called his domain. It was a key to a door deep within him, unlocking memories of torchlight on grimy walls, the taste of cheap wine, and the fierce, possessive pride he’d felt for his city.
A figure began to form on the ancient, weeping face of the heart tree. It was not a true form, but an impression, as if the blood-red sap was bleeding into the shape of a man. A pale, gaunt face with a single dark eye, a shock of white hair, and a blotch of a birthmark like a raven splashed across his cheek. The image was faint, flickering, but the presence behind it was immense, ancient, and powerful.
It has been a long time, the voice rustled again, the leaves of the weirwood whispering the words. I had wondered if you would ever wake.
Daemon’s spectral form coalesced, hardening from simple mist into a more defined shape of shadow and cold fury. He knew this face. The histories had poured through him, and this visage was burned into the story of the Blackfyre Rebellions. The sorcerer, the kinslayer, the Lord Hand who had ruled from the shadows.
“Brynden Rivers,” Daemon hissed, the name a soundless curse. “The Bloodraven. You should be as dead as I am.”
Death is not the end we thought it was, is it? The image on the tree gave a faint, dry smile. I am… elsewhere. Rooted. Watching. I have been watching for a very long time. I watched you sleep in the lake. I watched the stag king’s passage stir you. And I guided you here.
“You guided me?” Daemon’s rage was a cold, sharp thing. “I am guided by no one. I came for the boy. For my blood.”
You came because I allowed it. You are a ghost, Daemon, a whisper on the wind. I am the weirwood, and the wind blows through my leaves. I could have scattered you like dust. I could have let you fade back into the nothing you came from. The single red eye of the carved face seemed to bore into him. But you are useful.
“Useful?” The insult was so profound, so contrary to everything Daemon had ever been, that it almost amused him. “I am a prince of the blood. A king in my own right. I am not a tool to be used by a tree-bound corpse.”
And yet, that is what you are. What we both are. Tools for the war to come. The voice of Bloodraven lost its mocking edge, becoming as cold and serious as the grave. You have seen the past, but you do not see the present. You look at the Usurper and his lion queen and you see the enemy. You see a political squabble. You are a dragon, still thinking of the Iron Throne.
“It is my family’s throne! Stolen by oathbreakers and fat drunks!”
And it will be a throne of ice and bones if you do not see the truth, Bloodraven whispered, the leaves rustling with urgency. The game has changed, my prince. There is a threat rising in the true North, beyond the Wall. A thing of ice and death, an enemy that does not care for crowns or titles. The Great Other. The Night King.
Daemon recoiled. He had heard the stories, of course. Old Nan’s tales to frighten children. Grumpkins and snarks, and the Others who came in the dark. “Fairy stories. The fantasies of wildlings and fools.”
Were dragons a fairy story? Is your own un-death a fantasy? The world is not as you left it. Magic is returning, and with it, the things that magic holds at bay. The Long Night is coming again. And the world of men has forgotten how to fight it.
The image of Bloodraven on the tree seemed to lean forward, the single eye burning with intensity. A prophecy was made. The Prince That Was Promised, born of the line of Aerys and Rhaella. The song of ice and fire. He is the one who must unite the living against the dead.
“Rhaegar’s whelp,” Daemon breathed, the pieces clicking into place. “The boy. Jon Snow.”
He is the one, Bloodraven confirmed. And he is in mortal danger, surrounded by enemies who do not even know what he is. He needs a guardian. A shield in the shadows. Someone who is not bound by the rules of men, who can see the threats others cannot, who can kill without leaving a trace. Someone who has a vested interest in seeing a Targaryen king win the ultimate war.
The implication was as clear as it was galling. “You want me to be his nursemaid.”
I want you to be the weapon you always were, Bloodraven corrected. But aimed at the true enemy. Protect the boy. Keep him alive until he is ready to face his destiny. Guide him. Be the shadow that slays his enemies before they can strike. Do this, and you will not only save the world, you will see your house restored. Refuse, and you can watch him die, and then fade back into the cold of the lake, knowing you failed them all a second time.
Daemon was silent, the cold fury within him warring with the undeniable logic of the sorcerer’s words. He had been given a purpose, a chance to undo the damage of his own bloody life, to serve his house in a way he never had before. It was not the glorious charge on dragonback he would have chosen, but a war fought from the shadows. It was a role for a rogue.
“I will protect the boy,” Daemon finally conceded, the words feeling strange and heavy. “Not for you, kinslayer. Not for your prophecies. For my blood.” Daemon never liked one-eyed men.
The image on the tree smiled, a final, fleeting expression. It is all for the same cause in the end, Lord Flea Bottom. Now go. Your watch has begun.
The presence receded. The face on the weirwood was once again just carved bark and weeping sap. The voice was just the wind. Daemon Targaryen, the shadow of the Rogue Prince, was alone again, but now, he had a purpose. He had a king to guard.
The yard was a welcome escape. Inside the castle, the air was thick with the scent of southern perfumes and the sound of false laughter. The king was drinking, the queen was smiling her sharp, brittle smile, and Jon felt like a ghost at the feast before it had even begun. His father had looked at him with a sort of pained apology before going to the crypts, and Lady Catelyn’s eyes had been colder than the wind off the Wall. Here, with a sword in his hand, none of that mattered. There was only the weight of the steel, the burn in his muscles, and the familiar rhythm of the training dummies.
He moved through the forms Ser Rodrik had taught him, the blade a blur in the grey afternoon light. Parry, thrust, pivot, slash. He lost himself in the motion, the sting of his otherness fading with each strike. Robb was inside, playing the young lord. Sansa was probably dreaming of the golden prince. Arya was likely hiding somewhere. But he was here. This was his place.
He was in the middle of a lunge when it happened.
A chill, sudden and profound, washed over him. It was a cold that had nothing to do with the northern air; it was a deep, grave-cold that seemed to seep into his bones and still the very air in his lungs. The sounds of the yard—the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, the shouts of the guards on the wall, the barking of dogs—all faded into a dull, distant hum. He was suddenly, utterly alone.
He felt a presence at his back.
It was not a sound, not a sight, but a feeling. A pressure. The feeling of being watched by something ancient, powerful, and utterly lethal. His heart hammered against his ribs, and the practice sword felt heavy and useless in his hand. He froze, every instinct screaming at him not to turn around. The shadow that fell over him was not cast by the sun. It was a patch of deeper darkness, a void in the light.
Then, a voice spoke, but it was not a voice he heard with his ears. It was a thought, a feeling, a word that blooms in the center of his mind like a drop of blood in fresh snow.
Dracarys.
The word was foreign, yet he understood it on a primal level. It meant fire and death. And beneath it, he felt a wave of something else, something he had never felt in his life: a fierce, unwavering, possessive protectiveness. It was the feeling of a predator claiming its own, a silent vow that nothing would ever harm him again.
Just as quickly as it came, it was gone.
The sounds of the yard rushed back in, deafeningly loud. The chill receded, leaving him shivering in its wake. He stumbled, whirling around with his sword raised, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
There was nothing there.
Only the empty training yard, the impassive grey stone of the keep, and the distant figures of guards who hadn’t noticed a thing. He stood there for a long moment, his heart pounding, trying to make sense of what had just happened. A trick of the mind? A sudden fever?
He lowered his sword, his hands trembling slightly. He felt… different. The gnawing loneliness in his gut had been replaced by a strange, unfamiliar warmth, a flicker of banked coals deep within his chest. He looked down at his hands, then up at the great keep of Winterfell. He was still a bastard, still an outsider. But for the first time in his life, he didn't feel entirely alone. He didn't know why, but he felt as though a shadow had fallen over him, and for some reason, it felt like a shield.
Unsettled, Jon sheathed his practice sword. The warmth in his chest remained, a confusing counterpoint to the lingering grave-chill on his skin. He needed quiet. He needed a place to think. He needed the godswood. He gave a low whistle, and a moment later, Ghost trotted silently from the shadows of the armory, his red eyes fixed on Jon.
Together, they walked away from the noise of the main castle and passed through the small iron gate into the ancient wood. Here, the sounds were muted by the dense canopy of sentinel trees and ironwoods. The air was still and cold, smelling of damp earth and decaying leaves. Usually, this place brought him peace. Today, the quiet felt watchful.
He led Ghost towards the heart of the wood, to the small, dark pool that lay before the heart tree. The great weirwood stood like a pale giant, its bone-white bark a stark contrast to the gloom, its red leaves like a thousand bleeding hands. The carved face watched him with its sad, weeping eyes, and Jon felt the familiar sense of being in the presence of something immeasurably old.
He knelt by the water’s edge, the cold seeping through the knees of his breeches. Ghost, however, did not relax. The direwolf stood stiffly at his side, his white fur bristling. A low, guttural growl rumbled in his chest, a sound Jon had never heard from him before. The wolf’s crimson eyes were not fixed on the heart tree, but on a patch of deep shadow beneath the boughs of a gnarled old oak.
“What is it, Ghost?” Jon whispered, his hand going to the hilt of his sword.
He followed the wolf’s gaze. At first, he saw nothing but darkness. But as he stared, he realized the shadow there was… wrong. It was too deep, too absolute. It did not shift with the faint light filtering through the leaves. It was a void, a hole in the world. And it was growing.
Slowly, like smoke coalescing in still air, a figure emerged from the unnatural darkness. It was tall and slender, garbed from head to foot in robes of black so deep they seemed to drink the light. A great hood shrouded its head, leaving its face in complete shadow. No features were visible, not a hint of a chin nor the glint of an eye—only a pit of absolute blackness where a face should be. The air around the figure grew impossibly cold, and the surface of the pool before Jon began to frost over at the edges.
Ghost’s growl intensified, but he took a half-step back, a clear sign of fear. Jon’s own blood ran cold. This was no man. It was a specter, a thing from the crypts, one of Old Nan’s tales made real. His hand, slick with sweat, drew his sword. The rasp of steel was loud in the sudden, dead silence of the wood.
The hooded figure took a silent step forward, making no sound on the damp earth. When it spoke, the voice was not a human sound. It was like the grinding of ancient stones, the whisper of a winter wind through a graveyard, a voice that had not been used for centuries, yet it resonated directly in Jon’s mind.
“The wolf fears what it does not understand,” the voice rasped, a sound of rust and ruin. “But the dragon in you is not afraid. It is… curious.”
Jon’s breath hitched. “Who are you? What are you?”
The figure tilted its hooded head, a gesture that was unnervingly human. “I am a shadow of a memory. A vow given form.” It took another silent step, the cold intensifying. “I am here for the fire that burns in your veins. It is a lonely fire, hidden in the cold. It needs to be tended, lest it go out.”
The figure raised a hand from the depths of its black robes. It was not a hand of flesh, but of shifting shadow, gauntleted in what looked like dark, ethereal steel. It pointed a single, smoky finger at Jon’s chest.
“You are more than the bastard of a wolf, boy,” the voice whispered, the words now laced with a dangerous, possessive heat. “You are the last ember of a dying flame. And the cold winds are rising to snuff you out.”
The figure held his gaze for a long, terrifying moment. Jon stood frozen, sword in hand, caught between the instinct to run and the inexplicable urge to listen. This creature spoke of a fire inside him, the same fire he had felt a flicker of in the yard. It knew something about him. Something no one else did.
He found his voice, though it was a strained, thin thing. "I don't know what you're talking about. Tell me your name."
The hooded head seemed to offer a silent, mirthless laugh. "My name is ash and memory. It is of no consequence. Your name, however… that is a lie. The name they call you is a lie." The figure paused, letting the words hang in the frosted air. "Does the lie sit well with you, Jon Snow? Or does the question of your mother burn in you, late at night when you are alone?"
The question struck Jon like a physical blow. It was the question that had haunted his entire life, the one he dared not ask, the one his father would never answer. The sword in his hand suddenly felt impossibly heavy.
"What do you know of my mother?" he demanded, his voice cracking.
"I know everything," the voice of ruin whispered. "Just as I know of your father. The honorable Lord Stark has kept his secrets well, to protect you. But secrets are a poison. They fester." The figure took one final, silent step, until it stood just on the other side of the small pool. The cold it radiated was so intense Jon could feel it burning his skin. "My identity matters little. Would you not rather know your own? Would you not rather know her name?"
The world seemed to narrow to the space between them. The growling of Ghost, the rustle of the weirwood leaves, the distant sounds of the castle—it all faded away. There was only the pit of darkness beneath the hood and the question that had defined him. All his life, he had been Jon Snow, the bastard. A name that was an absence, a void where a mother should be. This creature, this terrifying specter, was offering to fill it.
He couldn't speak. The words were trapped in his throat. He could only give a single, sharp nod.
The hooded figure seemed to straighten, a sense of ancient, terrible satisfaction emanating from it. The voice, when it came again, was no longer a rasp, but a clear, cold pronouncement, a statement of fact that shattered the world.
"Her name was Lyanna," the shadow said, and Jon's heart stopped. "Of House Stark. Your father's sister."
Jon staggered back, his mind reeling. No. A lie. It has to be a lie. His aunt… but the king was here to mourn her. His father… the sorrow he carried…
Before he could even process the first blow, the shadow delivered the second, its voice laced with the pride of a forgotten dynasty.
"And your father… was not Eddard Stark. Your father was Rhaegar. Of House Targaryen. The last dragon. And you, boy… you are no bastard. You are Aemon Targaryen, the First of His Name, the true heir to the Iron Throne."
Chapter 3: Dreams and Shadows
Chapter Text
The lie of his life had been shattered, and the truth was a weight of crowns and ashes. For seven days, Jon had walked through Winterfell as a ghost, the name ‘Aemon Targaryen’ a constant, silent scream in his mind. He was a prince. He was a king. He was the son of the man King Robert had killed to win his throne. Every booming laugh from the Great Hall, every glimpse of the golden-haired Lannisters, felt like a threat. The world he had known was a thin sheet of ice, and he had fallen through into the freezing, dark water below.
He found his only anchor in the training yard, the familiar weight of a sword a comfort against the unravelling of his world. But he was no longer alone here. A second shadow clung to him, colder and sharper than his own.
“You swing that sword like a farmer threshing wheat,” a voice of ruin rasped in his mind. “Did the honorable wolf teach you that? I’ve seen freeriders with more grace.”
Jon gritted his teeth, ignoring the spectral figure that now haunted his every waking moment. The creature, Daemon, he called himself, was a constant, mocking presence. He had spent the week testing Jon, not with a blade, but with words, each one a sharp prod at his identity.
“Robb would have you on your back in three moves,” Jon muttered aloud, parrying a blow from an imaginary foe.
“Your cousin?” The voice was laced with an ancient, arrogant amusement. “The boy fights with honor. Honor gets you a pretty tomb, boy. Nothing more.”
Jon spun, his practice sword whistling through the air. “And what would you know of honor?”
He felt the figure coalesce in the corner of his eye, a tall, hooded void of black robes. “I know that it is a luxury. A song for lords to sing while men like me win their wars.”
There was no point of arguing with this …. this … Demon. So Jon thought of other things.
The feast a few nights prior had been a special kind of torment. He had sat at the back, as always, watching the high table. He saw King Robert, fat and drunk, pinch a serving girl’s bottom. He saw Queen Cersei’s cold, beautiful smile. He saw Sansa staring at Prince Joffrey with foolish, hopeful eyes. A week ago, he would have felt the familiar sting of being the outsider, the bastard in the corner. But now, he saw it all through a different lens. He was not just an outsider. He was the enemy. He was the secret that could bring all this crashing down. The thought was both terrifying and thrilling.
He had watched his Uncle Benjen, his heart aching. The plan had been simple: join his uncle, go north, and take the black. The Night’s Watch was a place for bastards and broken men. A place where the name Snow wouldn’t matter. But he wasn’t a Snow. And the Wall was a prison, an exile. Was that his destiny? To throw away a crown he never knew he had and freeze at the edge of the world?
“The Wall is for fools and criminals,” Daemon’s voice cut through his thoughts, as if he’d plucked the doubt from his mind. “A place to forget who you are. You have just learned who you are. Do you mean to throw it away so quickly?”
“I am Jon Snow,” Jon said, his voice low and fierce, trying to convince himself as much as the specter.
“Are you?” The shadow drifted closer, the air growing cold. “Is that why the direwolf, the beast of your mother’s house, follows you and not the other pups? Is that why you feel the cold, but it does not truly bite you? Is that why you heard my call when no one else could?”
Jon stopped, leaning on his sword, his chest heaving. Everything the creature said was true. Ghost was different. He had always felt a strange kinship with the cold. And the voice… the voice had spoken a truth that resonated in his very bones.
“Why are you here?” Jon asked, turning to face the void beneath the hood. “Why me?”
“Because the blood of Old Valyria is in you, boy. My blood. It is a fire that has been sleeping for a generation, and it is my duty to see it kindled into an inferno.” The shadow seemed to loom larger. “The world is a nest of scorpions, and you are a newborn dragon. You are fragile. You need a guardian.”
“I have a father,” Jon retorted weakly.
“You have an uncle,” Daemon corrected, the words sharp as dragonglass. “A good man who has lied to you your entire life to keep you safe. His protection is a cage of love and honor. It will not save you from what is coming. I can teach you how to survive. I can teach you how to fight, not like a wolf, but like a dragon. I can teach you how to rule.”
Jon looked across the yard, at the grey walls of the castle he had always called home. It was a home built on a lie. A loving lie, but a lie nonetheless. To stay here was to remain Jon Snow, the bastard, forever looking in from the outside. To go to the Wall was to run from the truth. But to accept this… to accept this shadow, this ghost of a long-dead prince… was to become someone else entirely. Someone dangerous. Someone powerful. Someone who might one day claim what was his.
He thought of Lady Catelyn’s cold eyes, of Theon’s mocking japes, of the future he had resigned himself to. And then he thought of the fire in his chest, the secret warmth that had been there all along.
He straightened up, his shoulders squared. He met the black void of the hood without flinching.
“Teach me,” Jon said.
From the balcony of the guest tower, Eddard Stark watched the boys in the yard below. It had been a week since Robert and his court had descended upon Winterfell, and the castle felt smaller, louder, and more dangerous with every passing day. His eyes found Jon, as they so often did. The boy was sparring with a wooden dummy, but there was a new intensity to his movements, a sharp, focused gaze that Ned had not seen before. The melancholy that usually clung to Jon like a winter cloak seemed to have lifted, replaced by a quiet, burning determination. He looked less like a boy playing at war, and more like a man preparing for one. It was a subtle change, but to Ned, who had watched him every day for fourteen years, it was as stark as a banner on a battlefield. It unnerved him.
He thought of Robert, holding court in the Great Hall, his voice a constant boom of laughter and complaint. His friend was a ghost, a memory of the warrior he had once been, now trapped in a king’s body. He had come north with two propositions, each one a heavier burden than the last. The first was a betrothal: his son, Joffrey, for Sansa. Ned had seen the cruelty in the prince’s eyes, the spoiled petulance that masqueraded as strength. To give his sweet, summer daughter to that boy felt like handing a dove to a cat. But to refuse the king was unthinkable.
The second offer was worse. Robert wanted him to be Hand of the King. He wanted Ned to ride south with him, to the pit of vipers that was King’s Landing. “I’m surrounded by lions and flowers and sheep,” Robert had slurred one night, his breath thick with wine. “I need a wolf by my side, Ned. I need you.”
The plea was genuine, but the thought of the capital made Ned’s stomach clench. He thought of Jon Arryn, his other father, dead so suddenly. The official word was a fever, but the letter from Lysa, smuggled to Catelyn, had screamed a different word: poison. The Lannisters. The queen, with her sharp, knowing smile. The Kingslayer, with his arrogant swagger. They had their claws in Robert, in the throne, in everything. To go south was to walk into their den. But to refuse was to abandon his friend, his king, to the very people he feared.
His gaze drifted back to Jon. The boy moved with a predator’s grace that was suddenly, chillingly familiar. He saw it then, a ghost in the boy’s posture, in the turn of his head. He saw Rhaegar Targaryen. The truth of Jon’s parentage was a secret he had carried for fourteen years, a promise made to his dying sister in a tower that smelled of blood and roses. It was a secret that had cost him his honor in the eyes of his wife, and had forced a wedge between him and the boy he had raised as his own. He had done it to protect him, to hide him from Robert’s all-consuming hatred for all things Targaryen. And now Robert was here, under his roof, watching Jon from afar with a drunken, dismissive gaze, never knowing he was staring at the son of the man he hated most in the world.
A cold fear gripped Ned. Had he done the right thing? Had he raised the boy to be a wolf, when he was born a dragon?
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him until a voice, tight with panic, broke the silence.
“My lord!” It was Maester Luwin, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps, his chain of office rattling. “Lord Stark, you must come. Quickly!”
Ned turned, his heart seizing in his chest. “Luwin? What is it?”
The maester’s face was pale, his eyes wide with horror.
“It’s Bran,” he choked out. “He’s fallen from the Broken Tower.”
The journey south was again a dreary, miserable affair. They crawled through the Barrowlands, a grey, windswept expanse of rolling hills and ancient tombs under a perpetually overcast sky. The land was dead, and it deadened the spirit. Daemon, a creature of fire and passion, felt the oppressive emptiness of the place as a physical weight. It was a land of ghosts, and he was just one more among them.
He spent his time watching the boy. Aemon, he refused to think of him by his bastard name. The seeds of doubt and truth Daemon had planted were taking root. The boy was quieter now, more watchful. He spent his days riding with the men-at-arms, his eyes sharp, his questions few but pointed. At night, when the camp was quiet, he would practice in the dark, away from prying eyes. Daemon would watch, a shadow among shadows, offering silent, mental corrections. Lower your stance. The blade is an extension of your will, not a club. A true kill is silent and unseen. The boy was learning. The wolf was shedding its skin, and the dragon beneath was beginning to stir.
The matter of the other Stark boy, Bran, was a clumsy piece of work. Daemon had felt the disturbance, the brief, sharp spike of malice from the old tower. He had not seen the act itself, but he knew the players. The Kingslayer and his sister, their grubby secret threatened by a climbing boy. It was pathetic. In his day, a problem like that would have been solved with a quiet word and a cup of poisoned wine, not by throwing a child from a window. It was artless, and it left a witness. The boy lived, and a living witness was a loose thread that could unravel everything. The lions were growing sloppy.
They had been camped for two nights near the ruins of a barrow king’s tomb when the news arrived. A rider from a merchant cog that had made port in White Harbor, carrying letters and gossip from the Free Cities. Daemon drifted near the king’s tent, a cold draft that made the guards shiver, and listened.
The news was of Essos. Of the last two Targaryens, the Beggar King Viserys and his sister, Daenerys. A fat magister of Pentos, some Illyrio Mopatis had brokered a deal. Daenerys, a girl of thirteen, was to be wed to a savage Dothraki warlord, Khal Drogo, in exchange for an army of forty thousand horselords to retake Westeros.
A cold, black rage, the likes of which Daemon had not felt since his own death, consumed him. To sell a daughter of Valyria, his own kin, to a barbarian for a mere army of savagaes… it was an unthinkable betrayal. Viserys, the sniveling, mad whelp, was trading his sister’s body for a crown he was not fit to wear. A fierce, protective urge surged through him. He had to stop it. He had to go to her, protect her, whisper in her ear of her true worth, of the fire she carried.
He reached out with his consciousness, stretching his spectral form eastward, across the rolling hills, across the sea… and felt it snap back like a frayed rope. The world grew dim, his form thinning to little more than smoke. He was weaker here, in the south. The ancient magic of the North, the proximity to the Wall and the weirwoods, had given him substance. Here, in the lands of men, he was fading. The thought that Bloodraven had planted in his mind returned with chilling clarity: Fire needs wood to burn. He was the fire, but Aemon was the wood. He was tethered to the boy. To leave him would be to extinguish himself. He could not cross the sea. He was a ghost bound to the land of his death.
Frustration was a bitter, phantom taste. He was a dragon chained. But there were other ways. He had been a man of many talents. If he could not fly to her, he would find another path.
That night, as the camp slept under a sliver of moon, Daemon focused. He let go of the dreary Barrowlands, of the sleeping form of the boy king, and cast his mind across the sea. It was a strain, a pulling at the very essence of his being. He sought out the weak, arrogant mind of Viserys Targaryen.
He found him in a lavish manse in Pentos, in a dream of past glories. Viserys stood on the deck of a ship, the three-headed dragon banner snapping above him, an army of cheering men at his back. He was wearing Aegon the Conqueror’s crown. It was a child’s fantasy.
Daemon entered the dream not as a shadow, but as a memory. He took the form he had worn in his prime: a warrior in black scale armor, his silver-gold hair unbound, Dark Sister sitting at his hip. He stepped before Viserys on the dream-deck.
“You are a fool,” Daemon said, his voice the one he remembered, sharp and commanding.
Viserys stumbled back, his dream-crown slipping. “Who… who are you?”
“I am the blood of the dragon. And you dishonor it.” Daemon’s eyes burned with cold fire. “You would sell our sister, a princess of our line, to a savage who lives in a tent of grass? For what? An army of horselords who cannot cross the sea? They will laugh at you, use you, and discard you.”
“I am the king!” Viserys shrieked, his dream-courage failing. “She will give me my army! It is her purpose!”
“Her purpose is to be a queen, not a brood mare for a barbarian,” Daemon snarled. “You are weak. You trade our legacy for a quick path to a throne you could not hold for a week. A true dragon takes what is his. He does not beg for it.”
He advanced on Viserys, his form radiating power and menace. “Call off this wedding. Find another way. Or the ghosts of our house will drag you down into the hell you are so eagerly building for yourself.”
He had planted the seed of doubt. It might not be enough, but it was a start. As he began to pull his consciousness back, to withdraw from the dream, he felt another presence. It was at the very edge of the dreamscape, a silent, watchful observer. It was a woman, her face hidden behind a lacquered mask, her eyes like stars seen through indigo silk. She was not a part of Viserys’s dream, but a visitor, like himself. She was in Daenerys’s dream, a silent guardian at the edge of the girl’s sleeping mind.
Their spectral gazes met across the impossible distance. There was no sound, but a clear, cold understanding passed between them. It was a challenge, a question, and a warning. Who are you that walks in the dreams of dragons?
The masked woman gave a slow, deliberate nod, an acknowledgment of his power, and then she was gone, fading back into the girl’s dream.
Daemon snapped back to himself, a cold wisp of air hovering over a sleeping camp in the Barrowlands. The game was more complex than he had thought. There were other players in the shadows, other guardians watching over the last of his blood.
Chapter 4: A Web of Whispers
Chapter Text
The Red Keep was a creature of stone and secrets, and Varys was its master. From his quiet, unassuming chambers deep within its bowels, he tended to the web of whispers that was the true nervous system of the Seven Kingdoms. The threads stretched from the frozen North to the sun-baked sands of Dorne, and far across the Narrow Sea, to the canals of Pentos and the slow, meandering river Rhoyne. It was on that river, hidden somewhere was his most precious secret. Drifting under the watchful eye of a disgraced lord and a lady of stars.
His nephew, the last scion of the female line of House Blackfyre, raised to be a king in all but name. The boy was his life’s work, the culmination of a plan decades in the making. The plan was elegant in its simplicity. The boy would be revealed to the world not as a Blackfyre pretender, but as Aegon Targaryen, Rhaenys’s brother, saved from the slaughter, a babe swapped for another in the dead of night. He would have the unwavering loyalty of Dorne. The Martells would give them their army, their wealth, their righteous fury. The Crownlands and Reach would rally to the memory of Rhaegar’s son. The pieces were all in place.
All they needed was a catalyst. A bit of chaos in Westeros to soften the ground. And that was where the Beggar King, Viserys, came in. The plan had been for Viserys to marry his sister to the Dothraki, to unleash a savage horde upon the eastern coast. A terrifying, but ultimately undisciplined, threat that would make the lords of Westeros cry out for a savior. A savior that Varys would provide. And then Aegon would marry his aunt, Daenerys, a true Tagraryen, cementing his legitimacy and, more importantly, binding together the Targaryen and Blackfyre line.
But now, a knot had appeared in his web. A most vexing and unexpected knot. He held a slip of parchment, the ink barely dry, delivered by a little bird who had flown all the way from Pentos. He read it for the tenth time, his powdered hands perfectly still.
“The Beggar King stalls,” the message read. “He speaks of ill omens, of unworthy savages. He claims the dragon must have a worthier match. Magister Illyrio grows impatient. The Khal will not wait forever.”
Varys sighed, a soft, silken sound. Stalls? Viserys, who had spent his entire life consumed by a singular, burning desire for the throne, was now balking at the final step? It made no sense. The boy was arrogant, cruel, and foolish, but his greed was a reliable constant. To suddenly develop a sense of propriety for his sister’s honor was so out of character as to be unbelievable. It was a variable he had not accounted for, a a sudden madness that threatened to unravel the first, crucial stage of his great work. What had changed? What whisper had reached Viserys’s ear that had not first passed through his own? The uncertainty was a rare and unpleasant feeling.
He carefully burned the parchment, watching the ashes curl into nothing. The problems in the east were troubling, but the ones in the west were escalating at a pace that was both exhilarating and alarming.
The game had begun with the death of Jon Arryn. A quiet cup of poison, the Tears of Lys, administered by his own wife at the behest of Littlefinger. A clumsy move, but effective. It had created the power vacuum he and Illyrio had needed. Robert’s decision to ride north and name Eddard Stark his Hand was the predictable, foolish, sentimental response of a man desperate for a past he could never reclaim.
Then came the fall of the Stark boy. Varys’s little mice in Winterfell had sung him the whole song. The queen and her twin, their sordid secret discovered by a climbing child. The push from the window was an act of panicked arrogance. The subsequent attempt on the boy’s life with a Valyrian steel dagger was even more so. It was sloppy, the work of amateurs trying to play the game of thrones. They left too many witnesses, too many questions. They were creating chaos, yes, but it was a clumsy, brutish chaos, not the controlled burn he preferred.
And now, the latest news from the Kingsroad, a tale of two children, a wolf, and a lion. The butcher’s boy dead, the Stark girl’s direwolf executed on the queen’s order, the other wolf cub vanished into the woods. It was a small thing, a petty squabble, but Varys knew it was the spark that would light the wildfire. It was no longer about politics or power. It was about blood. Cersei had wounded Robert’s oldest friend through his child. Eddard Stark was a man of honor, but he was also a father. An insult to his pack would not be forgiven.
The wolf and the lion were now at each other’s throats. The quiet war of whispers was about to become a very loud war of swords. Robert, bless his drunken heart, would try to keep the peace, but he was a dying star, his pull weakening by the day. Soon, the beasts circling his throne would tear each other apart.
This accelerated timeline was a danger, but it was also an opportunity. With the great houses of Westeros bleeding each other dry, the path for his boy, for his king, would be that much clearer. But Viserys’s sudden hesitation was a storm cloud on the horizon. The Dothraki were meant to be the first wave. Without them, the plan was hobbled.
Varys looked out his window, at the stone heart of the Red Keep. He had to adapt. He needed to understand what had spooked the Beggar King. He needed to ensure the war between Stark and Lannister burned hot enough to consume them both. And through it all, he needed to protect the boy on the river, the true key to the future. The game was afoot, and the board was more treacherous than ever.
Sweat, cold and slick, beaded on Viserys’s brow. He stared at his reflection in the polished silver mirror, but he did not see himself. He saw the ghost from his dream. The warrior in black armor, with silver-gold hair so like his own, but with eyes that burned with a power Viserys could only imagine. The dream had felt more real than his waking life. The weight of the ghost’s words still pressed down on him, a suffocating mixture of terror and a strange, thrilling validation.
“You are a fool,” the ghost had said. “A true dragon takes what is his.”
“A true dragon…” Viserys whispered to his reflection. He had always known it. He was the true dragon, the rightful king. He had been telling people for years, but they never truly listened. Not the magisters, not Illyrio, not even Daenerys. But the ghost had listened. The ghost knew. It was a sign. A message from his ancestors.
A soft knock came at the door. “Your Grace?” It was Illyrio Mopatis, his voice smooth and cloying as honeyed wine. “Khal Drogo’s bloodriders grow restless. They ask when the wedding will be confirmed.”
Viserys spun from the mirror, drawing himself up to his full, unimpressive height. He tried to channel the menace of the dream-warrior. “The wedding will be confirmed when I say it is confirmed! The dragon does not dance to the tune of savages.”
Illyrio entered, his bulk filling the doorway, his face a mask of practiced patience. “Of course, Your Grace. But the Khal is a powerful man. To insult him is… unwise.”
“Unwise?” Viserys scoffed, pacing the room. “What is unwise is selling a princess of the blood for a mob of horselords who smell of sour milk! What is unwise is giving the key to my kingdom to a man who cannot read or write his own name!”
This was new. Illyrio’s smile tightened at the edges. “But Your Grace, the army… Forty thousand screamers. It was your desire.”
“My desire is for my throne, Magister, not to be the brother-in-law of a barbarian!” He stopped, his lilac eyes wide with a feverish light. “I have had… a vision. A message from our ancestors. They are not pleased. They told me that this match is beneath us. That Daenerys is destined for a greater purpose than to be a savage’s brood mare.”
He was embellishing, of course. The ghost had been terrifying, its message a threat more than a prophecy. But in the light of day, fear had curdled into a kind of divine arrogance. He was not just Viserys Targaryen, the Beggar King. He was Viserys, the Chosen of the Ancestors, the recipient of sacred visions.
Illyrio stroked his forked, yellow beard, his eyes narrowing. “A vision, Your Grace?”
“Yes. A vision,” Viserys snapped, daring the fat man to question him. “It was made clear to me. We will find another way. A better way. A path worthy of a true dragon. Send word to the savages. Tell them the dragon requires a greater tribute. A sign of their worthiness. Until then, my sister is not for sale.”
He turned back to the mirror, his heart hammering. He had done it. He had defied the fat magister. He had acted like a king. The ghost in his dreams would be pleased. He was taking what was his, on his own terms. He was waking the dragon.
What he did not see, was the calculating look in Illyrio’s eyes, nor did he understand that in trying to prove himself a dragon, he had just become a useless, broken piece in a game far larger than he could ever comprehend.
Today was his fifteenth nameday. There would be no celebration. No quiet words from his father, no rough jest from Robb, no small, carved gift from Arya. His nameday had been spent on the Kingsroad, and had ended here, in the belly of the beast. King’s Landing stank. It was a city of half a million people, and Jon could smell every single one of them. The stench of sweat, dung, cheap wine, and something vaguely rotten hung in the air, a thick, cloying perfume that clung to the back of his throat. Winterfell smelled of woodsmoke, bread, and cold, clean air. This place smelled of decay.
He rode beside his father, no his uncle, through the Gate of the Gods, his eyes wide. The sheer scale of it was overwhelming. The noise was a constant roar, a chaotic symphony of shouting merchants, crying children, hammering blacksmiths, and the rumble of a thousand wagons. He looked up at the Red Keep, a monstrous silhouette of towers and battlements against the hazy sky. The seat of his ancestors. The throne that was supposed to be his. It felt as alien to him as the moon.
“This is a city of lies,” Daemon’s voice whispered in his mind, a cold counterpoint to the city’s heat. “Every smile is a knife, every bow a calculation. Your grandsire Aerys burned men in that castle. The lions butchered your brother and sister in its halls. Never forget where you are.”
The journey south had been a long, waking dream. The memory of Bran, pale and broken in his bed, had been a constant, aching wound. Jon had felt a helpless fury then, a feeling that had only sharpened into a cold, hard certainty on the road. “Children do not simply fall from towers,” Daemon had whispered to him one night as he stood watch. “Especially not a boy who climbs better than a monkey. He saw something he should not have. He was silenced.” The words had chilled Jon to the bone, planting a seed of suspicion that had since grown into a thorny vine of hate directed squarely at the golden Lannisters.
Then came the incident at the inn. He had seen the fire in Arya’s eyes, the arrogance on Joffrey’s face. He had felt a surge of pride when Nymeria defended her, and a wave of sickness when he’d had to help Arya drive her away. The hearing that followed was his first true lesson in southern justice. Joffrey lied, Sansa prevaricated, and the Queen demanded blood. When they killed Sansa’s wolf, Lady, in Nymeria’s place, he had not felt sorrow. He had felt rage. It was a profound, burning injustice, and as he watched his father carry out the sentence, he heard Daemon’s voice, cold and clear in his mind. “See? This is their honor. This is their justice. The strong devour the weak, and the powerful write the truth. The wolf was innocent, but the lion prince’s pride was wounded. And so, the wolf died. That is the only rule in this game.”
He was no longer Jon Snow, the melancholic bastard. He was Aemon Targaryen, a king in hiding, and every face in the crowd was a potential threat or a potential ally. He thought of his family, this new, strange family of ghosts and exiles. He thought of Daenerys, his aunt, a girl his own age, about to be sold like chattel to a barbarian. The idea was a vile thing. He felt a fierce, protective instinct, a desire to sweep across the sea and burn the horselords and the magisters who had brokered the deal. He felt contempt for his uncle, Viserys, a man who would sell his own sister for a crown. “He is the last of my brother’s line,” Daemon had told him, his voice laced with disgust. “Weak, grasping, and foolish. He has the Targaryen name, but none of the fire. He is a pale imitation, a beggar pretending to be a king.”
And then there was Maester Aemon, his namesake, now blind and frail, alone on the wall. His family was a collection of ghosts and secrets, scattered across the world. And it was his duty to find them. To unite them.
That night, he found a secluded spot on the battlements of the Tower of the Hand, overlooking the sleeping city. The stench was still there, but muted. Ghost was a silent white shadow at his feet.
“You lived here,” Jon said to the empty air.
The air beside him grew cold, and the familiar hooded shape of Daemon coalesced. “I did. This was my city. I knew every tavern, every brothel, every secret tunnel beneath these streets. I was the Prince of the City. The smallfolk loved me.”
“Why?” Jon asked, genuinely curious. “What did you do?”
A dry, mirthless chuckle echoed in his mind. “I gave them a show. I walked among them. I drank their cheap wine. I bloodied the noses of merchants who cheated them and knights who abused them. I made them feel like the dragon saw them. Power is a shadow on the wall, boy. A very big man can cast a very small shadow, and a very small man can cast a very large one. I cast a very large shadow.”
“You were a prince. You fought wars. You rode a dragon,” Jon said, the words feeling like a myth on his tongue. “What was it like?”
The hooded figure was silent for a long moment. When the voice returned, the usual mocking tone was gone, replaced by something ancient and hollow. “It was like being a god. To fly on the back of Caraxes… the world was a map beneath you. The wind was a song, and the fire… the fire was a prayer. It was a power that could burn the world to ash. My brother, the king, he feared that power. He was a good man, but a weak king. He let the vipers in his council rule him. He let them poison him against me, against his own daughter. That is a lesson you must learn, Aemon. A king cannot be a good man. A king must be a king.”
“Is that why you fought your war?” Jon asked. “For the throne?”
“I fought for my wife. For my queen,” Daemon corrected, a flicker of the old fire returning. “Rhaenyra was the rightful heir, and they stole her crown. I fought for her. And I burned the world for her.” The voice turned cold again. “And in the end, we all burned. Remember that. The fire inside you is a weapon, not a toy. It will keep you warm, or it will consume you. There is no in-between.”
Jon looked out at the city lights. He had so many questions, so many fears. “What do I do now? My father, Ned, he wants to find out who killed Jon Arryn. The queen wants him dead. I’m… I’m trapped here.”
“You are not trapped. You are learning,” Daemon countered. “You are in the heart of the enemy’s camp. Watch. Listen. Learn their weaknesses. The queen’s pride. The Kingslayer’s arrogance. The Usurper’s drunken sorrow. These are the cracks in their armor. I will teach you where to place the dagger.”
A comfortable silence fell between them, the living boy and the dead prince. For the first time, Jon didn’t feel like a student being lectured. He felt like he was with family.
“Daemon,” Jon said quietly. “The other ghost… Bloodraven. He showed me a vision. Of my aunt. Daenerys.”
The shadow beside him went utterly still. The temperature dropped several degrees. “What did you say?”
“He didn't said anything. But you should know about it? You see everything.”
The silence that followed was heavy, filled with a cold fury that was not directed at Jon. “The kinslayer…” Daemon finally hissed, the words dripping with venom. “He plays his own game. He holds his cards close. He gives me a purpose but keeps the true prize for himself. He seeks to control all the pieces on the board.” The shadow turned its empty hood toward Jon. “The raven is no friend to our house. He serves only himself. And if he has Daenerys, he means to use her. We must be cautious.”
Before Jon could ask more, he felt a shift in Daemon’s presence. A flicker of surprise, of attention drawn elsewhere.
“The board changes again,” the voice of ruin whispered, a new note in its tone. “Word comes from the North. Your cousin, Bran… he has woken up.”
Chapter 5: The Wolf and the Dragon
Chapter Text
The training yard of the Red Keep was a pit of baked earth and casual cruelty. It was nothing like the damp, familiar ground of Winterfell. Here, the sun beat down relentlessly, and the air was thick with the arrogance of the south. For weeks, Jon had been a ghost in this yard, the quiet northern bastard, ignored by the squires with lions and stags embroidered on their tunics. They saw him as a relic, a savage from the snows, and their japes were as sharp as their blunted tourney swords.
Today was different.
“Look, the Snow is melting,” Ser Amory Lorch’s squire, a lanky boy with a cruel mouth named Cleos, sneered as Jon took his position. “Best be quick, Stark’s bastard, before you turn into a puddle.”
Jon ignored him, his eyes fixed on the squire opposite, a brawny youth sworn to the Crakehalls. He centered himself, the noise of the yard fading away, replaced by the cold, clear voice in his mind.
“He is bigger than you,” Daemon whispered, a presence at the edge of his thoughts. “He will come at you with a bull’s rush. He thinks his strength is his weapon. Show him it is his weakness.”
As the master-at-arms called for them to begin, the Crakehall boy did exactly as Daemon predicted, charging forward with a roar, his sword raised for a powerful overhead blow. The old Jon would have tried to meet it, to block with all his strength and likely be driven back. The new Jon did not.
“Strength is a vulnerability,” Daemon’s voice echoed. “Never meet it head-on. Flow around it.”
At the last possible second, Jon sidestepped, not back, but in, towards his opponent. The Crakehall boy’s sword slammed into the empty air where Jon had been, the force of the blow throwing him off balance. Jon didn’t use his sword. He slammed the pommel of his own blade into the back of the boy’s knee. The squire grunted in pain, his leg buckling. As he stumbled, Jon brought his foot up, kicking the boy’s shield arm aside, and laid the flat of his blade against his throat.
The yard went silent. The fight had lasted less than five seconds.
“Yield,” Jon said, his voice quiet and cold.
The Crakehall squire, red-faced with shame and pain, threw his sword down.
Cleos and his friends were no longer laughing. They stared at Jon with a mixture of shock and newfound animosity. He had not fought like a northerner. He had not fought like a knight. He had fought like a street killer.
“Good,” Daemon’s voice was laced with approval. “Pride is a wound. You have just given them one. They will not forget it.”
He was right. For the rest of the afternoon, they came at him with a new viciousness, but Jon, guided by the ghost of a long-dead warrior, was always a step ahead. He used their aggression against them, turning their strength into a liability, their anger into a weakness. He didn’t win every bout, but he lost none in the way they expected. He was no longer the quiet wolf cub. He was something else, something they didn’t understand, and it frightened them.
Later, as he cleaned his gear, Daemon’s presence returned, a familiar chill in the warm air. “You learn quickly. But the games in the yard are child’s play. The real players are moving.”
“What do you mean?” Jon asked, not looking up.
“Your stepmother has come to the city. The Lady Catelyn. She arrived this morning, in secret, like a thief in the night.”
Jon froze, his rag still in his hand. Lady Catelyn? Here? Why? “Does my father… does Lord Stark know?”
“He does now. She was taken to a brothel owned by the little lord, Baelish. A curious place for a lady of her standing to find herself. She comes with a warning, and she brings a war with her.”
Jon felt a knot of dread tighten in his stomach. Lady Catelyn had never loved him. Her presence here could only mean trouble.
He left the armory, his mind racing, and as he crossed the main bailey, he saw a flash of movement that made him pause. It was Arya. She was in a small, secluded corner of the castle, with a slender, Braavosi man holding a thin, rapier-like blade. Syrio Forel. Her “dancing master.”
He watched from the shadows as they moved. It was not like the clumsy hacking of the squires in the yard. It was a true dance. Syrio was a water spider, his movements fluid and precise, and Arya, for all her childish energy, was trying to mimic him. She was focused, her small face a mask of concentration.
“You are not listening, boy,” Syrio’s voice drifted across the yard. “You are looking, but you are not seeing. The seeing, that is the heart of it.”
“Now that is a true sword,” Daemon’s voice was filled with a rare, genuine respect. “Not a brute’s chopper. That is the kind of blade that kills kings. Your sister has chosen her weapon well.”
Jon felt a surge of pride for Arya. She had found her own way to fight, a path that was not about strength, but about speed and grace. A path for a wolf who had to be as clever as a cat.
That night, he returned to his place on the battlements. The conversation with Daemon had become a nightly ritual, the only time he felt he could truly breathe in this suffocating city.
“She is in danger,” Jon said, looking out at the lights of the city. “Arya. And Sansa too. This place… it will swallow them.”
“The little wolf can bite,” Daemon replied, his form coalescing beside Jon. “It is the pretty bird you should worry about. She is still singing songs about a cage she does not yet see.”
“And Lady Catelyn?”
“She brings news of the dagger, the one used to try and kill your cousin. She believes it belongs to the Imp, Tyrion Lannister. She is a fool. A grieving mother lashing out at the most convenient target. She will start a war out of ignorance and pride.”
Jon fell silent, the weight of it all pressing down on him. A war was coming. A war between the Starks and the Lannisters. And he was a Targaryen, caught in the middle.
“Tell me about them,” Jon said quietly, changing the subject. “My other family. Viserys and Daenerys.”
Daemon was quiet for a moment. “Viserys is my brother’s namesake, but like him, he is weak, no strength. He is a boy who has spent his life begging, and it has hollowed him out. He sees a crown, but he does not see the kingdom. He would burn the world to rule over the ashes.”
“And Daenerys?”
The voice of ruin softened, a barely perceptible change. “She is the last of her line. Raised in the shadow of her brother’s madness. I do not know what is in her heart. But she has the blood. Our blood. To sell her to the Dothraki… it is a crime I would have killed him for.”
“You killed for less,” Jon said, remembering the histories.
A cold chuckle. “I did. I killed for pride, for love, for boredom. I started a war because my brother chose a Hightower snake over me as his Hand. Do not look to me as a model of restraint, boy.”
“But you fought for your queen,” Jon pressed. “You said you burned the world for her. Was it worth it?”
The silence stretched on, longer this time. The chill from Daemon’s form seemed to deepen, filled with a profound sorrow. “We lost. We lost our children. We lost our dragons. We lost the kingdom. And I lost her. No, it was not worth it. But I would do it all again.”
Jon finally understood. This creature, this ghost of vengeance and ambition, was also a ghost of love and loss. He was a warning. A lesson in what happened when the fire of the dragon was allowed to burn without control.
“I will not be like them,” Jon said, his voice firm. “Not like Aerys. Not like Viserys. And not like you.”
The hooded figure turned its empty gaze to him. “No,” the voice whispered, and for the first time, it held no mockery, only a quiet, solemn agreement. “You will be better.”
The Red Keep was a tedious place to haunt. In life, these halls had echoed with intrigue, passion, and the threat of dragonfire. Now, they were filled with the plodding machinations of lesser men. Eddard Stark spent his days poring over account books and his nights brooding over a murder he was ill-equipped to solve. The queen plotted with her brother, their ambition as obvious and artless as a charging bull. It was all so… dull. A man or a shadow, everyone needed some amusement.
And the Usurper was a tempting target.
Daemon began subtly. He drifted through Robert’s chambers, a pocket of grave-cold in the stuffy, wine-scented air. He watched the king toss and turn in his drunken sleep, muttering names in his dreams. Lyanna. Always Lyanna. Daemon would whisper her name back, a sound like dead leaves skittering across stone, just at the edge of hearing. Robert would stir, his brow furrowed, but he would not wake.
He took to souring the king’s wine just as it touched his lips, turning a fine Arbor gold to vinegar in the space of a heartbeat. He watched with grim satisfaction as Robert spat it out, cursing the servants for incompetence. He would make the hunting trophies on the walls - the stags, the boars, the bears seem to turn their glassy eyes to follow the king as he paced his chambers.
The servants began to whisper of a chill in the king’s chambers, of a sorrowful ghost. Robert, for his part, simply drank more. He was a man drowning his ghosts, and Daemon was happy to give him a few more to contend with.
The true sport came at night. When Robert was deep in his cups, his mind a sluggish, unguarded swamp, Daemon would slip into his dreams. He did not appear as himself. That would be too simple. One night, he took the form of Rhaegar, but not the handsome prince of the songs. He was a corpse dragged from the Trident, his chest a gaping wound, the rubies of his armor replaced by glittering clots of blood. He stood at the foot of Robert’s dream-bed and simply pointed, his dead eyes filled with a silent, eternal accusation. Robert woke with a scream that brought the Kingsguard running.
Another night, he became the wolf maid herself, Lyanna, her face pale and sad. “You promised,” she whispered, her voice the winter wind. “You promised to keep him safe.” Robert would thrash and cry out, his guilt a raw, open wound that Daemon took a grim pleasure in prodding.
His masterpiece, however, was a more elaborate affair. He crafted a dream of the Iron Throne, but not the one that sat in the throne room. This one was made of twisted, melted swords, yes, but it was also covered in a layer of frost. Robert sat upon it, his great warhammer in his hand, but he was old and withered, his beard white as snow. And all around him, the great lords of Westeros stood, their faces blue, their eyes shining with an cold, dead light. Tywin Lannister, Eddard Stark, even the fat Lord Manderly, all silent and frozen. Then, from the shadows, a figure emerged, a king in black armor with eyes like blue stars. The Night King. The dream-king walked to the throne, and Robert, the Demon of the Trident, could not lift his hammer. He could only watch as the cold king reached out a frozen hand and touched his cheek. Robert woke up not with a scream, but with a shuddering gasp, the sheets soaked with sweat, his eyes wide with a terror he could not name. It was a petty cruelty, but it served a purpose: to unsettle the man who sat on his family’s throne.
His amusement, however, was secondary to his purpose. He spent most of his time as an unseen shadow at Eddard Stark’s shoulder. He watched the Hand of the King slowly, painstakingly, put the pieces of the puzzle together. He followed him to the armorer, listened to his conversation with the smith. He was there when Stark read the great lineage book, his finger tracing the Baratheon line. Black of hair. Black of hair. Black of hair. And then, Joffrey. Golden-haired.
Daemon felt a cold, intellectual curiosity as he watched the truth dawn on the honorable wolf’s face. The queen’s children were not the king’s. They were the Kingslayer’s. They were incest-born bastards. His first reaction was not moral outrage. Targaryens had been wedding brother to sister for centuries but a sharp, clinical assessment of the political reality. It was a fatal weakness. A truth that, if revealed, would shatter the Usurper’s line and plunge the kingdom into a war of succession. It was a weapon of unimaginable power, and it had fallen into the hands of a man who would not know how to wield it.
“He will try to reason with them,” Daemon thought, a sigh of frustration. “He will confront them with the truth, expecting them to confess and flee. He thinks this is a tourney, with rules and honor. He does not see that it is a knife fight in a dark alley.”
The game escalated before Stark could even make his move. A crow, a man of Night's watch, telling the Hand all that transpired on the Crossroad Inn in the north. Daemon drifted through the stone walls of the tower to watch Ned. The wolf’s face, already grim, hardened into a mask of cold fury. The Lady Catelyn, that impulsive, prideful fish, had done something monumentally stupid. She had taken the Imp captive.
“And so it begins,” Daemon whispered to the empty room. The grieving mother had just declared war on the richest house in the Seven Kingdoms on the word of a liar and the evidence of a dagger. The fool. The glorious, predictable, catastrophic fool. The chaos he and Bloodraven had been waiting for was about to be unleashed, not by the careful machinations of a spider or a sorcerer, but by the rash act of a woman who had let her heart rule her head.
He left the Hand to his brooding and sought out the boy. He found him on the battlements, the weight of the world on his young shoulders. It was time for the next lesson. The lesson of how quickly the games of lords could become the wars of kingdoms.
Chapter 6: Hand's Tourney
Chapter Text
The tourney grounds were a riot of color and noise, a world away from the grey silence of Winterfell. Silken banners snapped in the breeze, a hundred proud sigils proclaiming the might of a hundred noble houses. The roar of the crowd was a physical thing, a wave of sound that washed over Jon as he stood in the shadow of the stands. It was a grand spectacle, a song of summer and chivalry, and Jon felt utterly detached from it, an observer from another world.
He watched as knights in ornate, enameled armor thundered down the lists, their lances shattering against each other’s shields in a spray of splintered wood. Sansa was in the stands, her eyes shining, lost in the romance of it all. His father sat beside the king, his face a mask of grim duty. But Jon saw none of the glory. He only saw the cold, cynical commentary scrolling through his mind.
“Look at them,” Daemon’s voice rasped, filled with a profound, ancient contempt. “Peacocks in steel. They spend more on their armor than a farmer earns in a lifetime, all to break sticks for the amusement of fools.
He paid close attention when the Northern men rode. He felt a surge of pride as Jory Cassel, his father’s captain, rode with a steady, no-nonsense competence. He broke lances cleanly against Ser Horas Redwyne and a nervous Frey knight, unhorsing them both with workmanlike precision.
“Your man is a soldier, not a show horse,” Daemon’s voice was a clinical assessment. “He rides to win, not to please the crowd. There is a difference.”
But Jory’s run ended against a grim-faced freerider named Lothor Brune. For three tilts, they rode as equals, their lances shattering squarely on their shields. In the end, the judges awarded the victory to Brune on points. Alyn and Harwin, two other Winterfell guards, were not so fortunate. Alyn was unhorsed by the polished Ser Balon Swann, and Harwin fell to the sneering Meryn Trant of the Kingsguard.
“Your men fight with the strength of the North,” Daemon observed, as Harwin was helped from the field. “But these southron knights live for this. Their armor is finer, their horses are bred for the tilt, and their honor is a silken cloak they wear for show. Do not mistake this for a true measure of a man.”
The rest of the day was a showcase of the great knights of the south. He watched Ser Barristan Selmy, the Bold, a living legend, dispatch two younger knights with an ease that belied his age. He saw the Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister, ride with a fluid, arrogant grace, easily defeating Ser Andar Royce and the fiery Lord Bryce Caron. The two greatest knights in the kingdom seemed destined to meet. And they did. The crowd roared as Selmy and Lannister took their positions. They broke three lances, each a perfect strike, but on the fourth pass, Jaime’s aim was a fraction truer, his impact a breath harder. The Lord Commander’s shield splintered, and he was sent tumbling to the dirt. A gasp went through the crowd.
“Even legends fall,” Daemon whispered. “The lion is a supreme warrior. Never forget that. His arrogance is his weakness, but his skill is undeniable.”
Then came the Mountain. Ser Gregor Clegane was a monster. He rode through his first opponent as if he weren't there. His second was the young Ser Hugh of the Vale. On the first pass, Gregor’s lance rode high, and a splintered shard of ash and steel punched through the boy’s gorget. It was over in an instant. A fountain of blood, a gurgling scream, and a promising young knight was dead. A chill silence fell over the grounds.
“That was no accident,” Daemon’s voice was cold as the grave. “The beast enjoys his work. That is the difference between a warrior and a butcher.”
The day ended with the Hound, Sandor Clegane, riding against the king’s own brother, Renly Baratheon. The Hound, grim and silent, simply overpowered the younger, more flamboyant lord, sending him crashing to the ground. There was no joy in his victory, only a grim satisfaction. Jon looked at the two brothers, the Mountain and the Hound, one a monster who killed for sport, the other a monster who had somehow kept a sliver of honor in his scarred soul. The world, he was learning, was not made of heroes and villains. It was made of shades of grey.
That night, Jon found his way to the battlements overlooking the Blackwater Rush. The noise of the city had faded to a distant hum, and the air was cool. He needed the space, the quiet, to process the day. The pageantry, the violence, the casual death of a boy not much older than himself—it all felt like a fever dream.
“They are all fools,” Jon said to the empty air.
The familiar chill coalesced beside him. “They are,” Daemon’s voice agreed. “But they are fools with swords and castles. That makes them dangerous fools. You saw today what happens when a butcher is allowed to play at being a knight.”
“Ser Hugh…” Jon’s stomach turned. “He was Jon Arryn’s squire.”
“And now he is a corpse. A loose end tied up by the Lannisters, I’d wager. A convenient accident. This city is full of them.”
Jon leaned against the cold stone of the crenellations. “You spoke of your brother, the king. Viserys. You said he was a good man, but a weak king. My father… Ned Stark… he is a good man.”
“He is,” Daemon conceded. “And that is what will get him killed. He thinks he can bring the honor of your frozen wasteland to this pit of snakes. He will show them his throat, expecting them to admire his courage, and they will rip it out.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Jon asked, turning to face the void beneath the hood. “Did your brother’s goodness get you killed?”
The shadow was silent for a long moment. “My brother’s weakness was a part of it,” the voice of ruin finally admitted, the usual mockery absent. “He listened to Otto Hightower, a man who hated me, who saw my ambition as a threat to his own. My brother loved me, I think, but he feared me more. He named his daughter Rhaenyra his heir, and I supported it. She was the rightful queen. But when he died, the vipers he had allowed to nest in his council crowned my nephew instead. They stole her throne.”
“So you fought for her,” Jon said.
“I fought for her,” Daemon affirmed, a flicker of ancient fire in his tone. “I fought for our children. I fought because they had broken the king’s law, and because I had spent my life fighting for what was mine. And Rhaenyra… she was mine. She was the other half of my soul. To see them deny her, to call her a traitor in her own home… I would have burned the world to see her on that throne.”
“And you did,” Jon said quietly.
The chill intensified, a profound, sorrowful cold. “Yes. We all burned. Dragons fought dragons in the sky. The fields were salted with ash. Brother turned against sister, son against mother. We tore the house of the dragon apart. And for what? In the end, we both lost. Rhaenyra was fed to her half-brother’s dragon. And I died in the sky above the Gods Eye, taking my own nephew with me into the water. We destroyed everything we were fighting for.”
Jon looked out at the dark water of the bay, trying to imagine it. Dragons dying in the sky. A kingdom tearing itself apart. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “You tell me I am a king. But I see what happens when dragons fight for a throne. How do I win without becoming… like you? Without burning everything to the ground?”
“By being smarter,” Daemon’s voice was sharp, cutting through the melancholy. “By being better. I was a warrior. Rhaenyra was a queen. But we were proud. We were arrogant. We underestimated our enemies. We thought our blood and our dragons made us invincible. You do not have that luxury. You have nothing but a name you cannot speak and a ghost for a mentor. You must be a wolf as well as a dragon. Cunning, patient, and ruthless. You must learn to wear a mask, as I am learning to wear this shroud. You must be Jon Snow, the quiet bastard, until the moment you are Aemon Targaryen, the king. And when that moment comes, you must not hesitate.”
The tent was stifling, thick with the scent of crushed roses, sweat, and oiled steel. Loras Tyrell stripped off his gauntlets and threw them onto a velvet-covered chest, the clang of the metal a jarring note in the relative quiet. Outside, the roar of the crowd was a distant beast. Inside, there was only the weariness of the performance and the dull ache in his shoulder.
His squires moved around him with practiced efficiency, unbuckling the intricate pieces of his armor. He hated this part. The slow release from the beautiful, suffocating shell. Out there, he was the Knight of Flowers, a living legend from a song. In here, he was just Loras, a third son of Highgarden, his ambition a constant, burning fire that the pageantry barely concealed.
“A brilliant victory, Ser Loras,” one of his cousins, Alester, said breathlessly. “The way the mare turned… genius!”
Loras offered a tight, weary smile. “The gods were good to us today, Al.”
Let the boy think it was luck. The truth of the trick was his alone. Secrets were weapons, and he did not share them.
Not with anyone but Renly.
His thoughts, as they always did, turned to him. He was doing all of this for Renly, crafting a crown for him out of his own glory. The court was a mire, and the king was sinking into madness before their very eyes.
The whispers had grown louder in recent weeks. It was more than just Robert’s drunken stupors and whoring. Servants spoke of screams tearing through the royal apartments in the dead of night. Not screams of rage, but of pure terror. They said the king woke thrashing, drenched in sweat, shouting at ghosts only he could see, babbling about the Trident and a woman’s promise.
Robert Baratheon, the Demon of the Trident, was being haunted into an early grave. The Usurper’s throne was becoming unstable, and Renly, charming and beloved, did nothing but placate the dying beast.
He gritted his teeth as a squire pulled at a stubborn buckle. Renly had the charm, but he sometimes lacked the necessary ruthlessness. That was where their family came in.
He thought of his sister, Margaery. She had the same cunning he did, but wrapped in a disarming smile and the scent of summer roses. She saw the game as clearly as he did. “Cersei plays with a hammer when she should be using a stiletto,” Margaery had told him once, her eyes sharp as she watched the queen across a crowded hall. “She thinks fear is the same as loyalty. A woman like that will burn the kingdom before she lets another woman be more beautiful or more beloved.”
Margaery was different. She was a builder, not a destroyer. He pictured her beside Renly on the Iron Throne, her clever counsel tempering his easy nature, their combined charisma a force that could unite the realm. A Tyrell queen and a Baratheon king. The thought was a heady wine.
The final piece of armor was lifted away. He ran a hand through his damp brown curls, the weariness settling deep into his bones. He despised King’s Landing, but this was the center of the web. He had to be here.
“Ser?” It was Alester again, his face hesitant. “There is someone here to see you.”
“I am not receiving visitors,” Loras snapped, his patience worn thin.
“He is insistent, ser. He is Lord Stark’s bastard son.”
Loras froze. Jon Snow? He had seen the boy shadowing the edges of the tourney, a quiet, watchful presence with unnervingly intense eyes. This was a deviation, an unexpected move. What game was the quiet wolf playing?
“Very well,” Loras said, a dangerous intrigue replacing his weariness. “Send him in.”
He sat on the edge of a chair, deliberately affecting an air of casual boredom. The tent flap was pushed aside, and Jon Snow entered. And the air in the tent changed.
He was not alone. At his side, moving with an impossible silence for a creature its size, was the white direwolf. Loras had heard tales of the Stark children’s beasts, but the stories did not do it justice. It was enormous, its fur the color of bone, and its eyes were a deep, unsettling crimson. It did not pant or fidget; it simply stood beside its master, a statue of latent violence, its red eyes fixed on Loras.
But it was more than the wolf. As the boy stepped inside, a palpable chill washed over the tent, a cold so profound it seemed to leech the warmth from the air. It was a deep, grave-cold that had nothing to do with the north; it raised the hairs on Loras’s arms and made his squires take an involuntary step back. It clung to the bastard, a shroud of unseen frost, a presence that was ancient and utterly alien.
Loras kept his composure, but he was no longer bored. He was on high alert. The boy moved with a predator’s quiet grace, and his grey eyes, so dark they were almost black, swept the tent once before landing on Loras. They held no awe. They were the eyes of an equal.
“Ser Loras,” the boy said, his voice low and even. He gave a curt nod.
“Snow,” Loras replied, his own voice tight. “A bold move, bringing your pet into the flower’s bower. I trust you are not here to complain about my victory.”
“Your victory was yours,” Jon Snow said, and his gaze was so direct it was almost a physical blow. “The wolf is with me. He will not be trouble.” As he spoke, the unnatural chill seemed to deepen. “I am not here to complain.”
“Then why are you here? If your father has a message, he has men for that.”
The boy took a steadying breath. “My father does not know I am here,” he said. “I came for myself. I wish to squire for you.”
The silence that descended was heavier than before, weighted with the cold presence and the stare of the red-eyed wolf. Loras stared, utterly nonplussed. It was preposterous. He wanted to laugh, but the sound caught in his throat. He was unnerved. This wasn’t a northern boy making a foolish request. The stillness around him, the cold that seemed to emanate from his very shadow, suggested something else entirely.
He forced a short, sharp laugh. “You wish to what? Boy, have you been in the sun too long? Why, in all the hells, would you wish to squire for me? And why would I ever take on a savage from the snows, and his beast besides?”
Jon Snow did not flinch from the insults. The direwolf remained unnervingly still. The cold did not recede. The boy’s dark gaze was unwavering, and his answer, when it came, was as quiet and sharp as the edge of a razor.
“Because you are the best at what you do, and I wish to learn. And because you, more than anyone else in this city, understand that this,” he gestured vaguely toward the sounds of the tourney outside, “is a game. And I want to learn how to win.”
The Sept in the Red Keep was quiet in the hour before the dawn. Barristan Selmy knelt before the Warrior, the flickering candlelight casting long shadows on the marble floor. He was not praying. He was standing vigil. The body of Ser Hugh of the Vale lay on a bier before the altar, dressed in his dented armor, the splintered hole in his throat neatly covered by his cloak. He had been a good lad, Jon Arryn’s squire, full of dreams of glory. Now he was just another ghost in a city full of them. Barristan felt a profound weariness settle in his bones. He had seen too many good men die for foolish reasons.
He returned to the tourney grounds as the sun rose, his white cloak a stark contrast to his dark mood. The second day was for the challengers, and the violence was less brutal but no less telling. He watched Lord Beric Dondarrion, a fiery young lord, ride against a hedge knight. The hedge knight, in his desperation, spurred his own horse into Beric’s, a disgraceful move. Beric unhorsed him and, as the man begged for mercy, snapped his own lance over his knee in contempt. Then, the red priest, Thoros of Myr, his robes flapping, rode against Beric with a flaming sword, a cheap mummery that nonetheless won him the day as Beric’s horse shied from the fire.
He saw Lord Jason Mallister ride with the skill of a seasoned warrior, and the Royce boys prove their Valeman’s courage. Then came the Knight of Flowers. Ser Loras Tyrell was a vision in silver and green, and he rode like a song. One by one, he defeated three of Barristan’s sworn brothers in the Kingsguard, his skill and showmanship undeniable. Barristan felt a sting of professional shame, but also a grudging respect. The boy was more than just a pretty face.
The semi-finals were a study in contrasts. The Tyrell boy rode against the Mountain. It should have been a slaughter. But Loras, as clever as he was skilled, rode a mare in the peak of her heat. Gregor’s stallion, a notoriously ill-tempered beast, went mad with the scent, refusing to charge straight. Loras unhorsed the Mountain with ease. The giant’s subsequent rage was a terrifying thing to behold, and Barristan had been ready to intervene before the Hound stepped in to save the boy.
The other semi-final was just as surprising. The Hound, Sandor Clegane, faced Ser Jaime Lannister. It was a brutal, grinding match. Jaime was the more skilled swordsman, but the Hound was stronger, and he fought with a desperate, furious energy. After three passes, they were even. On the fourth, Jaime’s lance struck the Hound’s shield, but the Hound, through sheer brute force, held his seat while the Kingslayer was sent tumbling.
The final was meant to be between the Hound and the Knight of Flowers. But as they took their places, Ser Loras raised his lance and yielded the match. “He saved my life,” the boy announced to the silent crowd. “The honor is his.” The smallfolk, who had seen the Hound’s act of courage, roared their approval.
Barristan watched as Sandor Clegane, a man who despised knights and their vows, was declared the champion. It was a fitting end to this farce of a tourney. An honorable monster had won the day.
Later, as he stood his post outside the king’s chambers, he saw the Stark’s bastard again, walking the battlements with his white wolf. The boy’s presence was a constant, low-level disturbance, a note that was off-key in the song of the court. The air around him was always colder, and his eyes, when they swept over the castle, held an unnerving intelligence. He looked at the Red Keep not with the awe of a boy from the provinces, but with the critical eye of a man assessing a fortress. It reminded Barristan of someone… of Prince Rhaegar, in his final days, when his melancholy had sharpened into a grim, focused purpose. It was a foolish thought, a trick of the light. But it would not leave him.
The boy was a ghost at the feast, a silent observer who saw too much. And Barristan, of all people, knew what it was to be haunted by ghosts. His own were never far. The ghost of his failure at the Trident was the most persistent. He had been wounded, yes, but he had been the Lord Commander. He should have been at his prince’s side. He remembered Rhaegar that morning, strapping on his black armor, the three-headed dragon gleaming on his breastplate. He had not looked like a man who had stolen a woman and started a war. He had looked like a man going to his destiny, a sad, noble, and terrible destiny. “The dragon must have three heads,” Rhaegar had told him once, his eyes distant, lost in prophecy. Barristan had not understood then. He did not understand now. He had only known that he had failed to protect his prince from Robert’s warhammer.
And now he served the man who had wielded it. He served a king who had ordered the murder of Rhaegar’s children, and now sought to murder his last living kin across the sea. He served a man who had become a bloated, drunken parody of the warrior he had once been. The shame of it was a constant, bitter taste in his mouth. Every time he strapped on his white cloak, he felt like a mummer playing the part of a knight.
That night, the screaming started again. He pushed into the king’s chambers to find Robert cowering in his bed, his eyes wide with a terror that was not of this world. The room was freezing.
“Your Grace?” Barristan said, his voice sharp.
Robert didn’t seem to see him. He was staring at the foot of his bed, at something only he could perceive. He let out a pathetic, whimpering sob and scrambled back against the headboard, pulling the sheets up to his chin like a frightened child.
Then, the smell hit Barristan. Sharp and foul. He looked down at the great, dark stain spreading across the king’s bed linens.
Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, looked at the man on the throne. The Demon of the Trident. The conqueror of the Seven Kingdoms. And he was not just haunted. He was broken. The kingdom was in the hands of a terrified, incontinent child, and the long, dark night was only just beginning.
Chapter 7: Smoke and Roses
Chapter Text
The ghost had not come to him in three nights, and Viserys was beginning to grow impatient. He paced the cool, marbled floors of his chambers in Illyrio’s manse, the silk of his robes whispering against his skin. He was a king, and a king required counsel, even if that counsel came from the spirits of his ancestors. He had done as the ghost commanded. He had acted. He had refused the savage’s offer, had put the fat magister in his place. He had shown them all the first glimpse of the dragon’s fire.
And what had it earned him? Silence. Illyrio had become distant, his smiles thin and brittle, his visits brief. Daenerys looked at him with a fear that was now mingled with a pity he found infuriating. She did not understand. None of them did. They saw him as the Beggar King, a boy playing at power. They did not see the visions, did not hear the whispers. They did not understand that he was in communion with the very soul of their house. The ghost, the great warrior prince from the Age of Dragons, had chosen him. It had appeared in his dreams, a confirmation of his own innate greatness. The spirit had spoken of weakness and taking what was his, and Viserys had understood perfectly. The ancestors were testing him, waiting for him to shed the skin of the beggar and emerge as the dragon.
He paused before a tall mirror, its frame carved from some dark, oily wood. He saw a king. His hair was the silver-gold of Old Valyria, his eyes the violet of amethysts. He was thin, yes, but it was a wiry, predatory thinness. The thinness of a dragon. He placed a hand on his chest. He could almost feel the fire banking there, waiting for the moment to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.
“A king acts,” the ghost had commanded. But how was he to act? He was a guest in this gilded cage, surrounded by merchants and sellswords who bowed to him but did not fear him. He needed a plan, a grand gesture that would prove his worthiness to the ancestors. He would not crawl back to the Dothraki. No, his new path would be one of fire and glory. He would demand a ship from Illyrio, a fast ship, and he would sail to the Disputed Lands. He would offer his services, the last blood of Old Valyria, to one of the Free Cities. They would see his worth. They would give him a command, an army. He would carve out a kingdom there, just as the ghost had done in the Stepstones. He would build his power, and then, when he was ready, he would return to Westeros not as a beggar with a borrowed army, but as a conqueror in his own right, a new Aegon come to reclaim his birthright.
The thought pleased him. It was a kingly thought. He was so lost in the fantasy of landing on the shores of Dragonstone, of the lords of Westeros flocking to his banner that he did not hear the door to his chambers open.
“Viserys!”
He spun around, his hand flying to the hilt of the sword Illyrio had gifted him. Daenerys stood there, her face pale as milkglass, her eyes wide with a terror that was not her usual, timid fear. This was something sharp and immediate. She was breathing in short, ragged gasps, her fine silks disheveled.
“What is the meaning of this?” he snapped, his anger rising to mask a flicker of unease. “You do not burst into a king’s chambers without being announced!”
“There was no one to announce me,” she said, her voice a strained whisper. “The guards are gone. Illyrio’s men… they’ve fled.”
“Fled?” Viserys scoffed, though a cold knot was tightening in his stomach. “Nonsense. They are probably drunk on the magister’s wine. I will have them whipped.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She took a step closer, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Jorah was just here. He spoke to a man at the docks. Khal Drogo is coming. He is not coming for a wedding, Viserys. He is coming for us. He has been insulted. Illyrio has abandoned us. We have to leave. Now.”
The words were a torrent, a wave of panic that threatened to break against the shore of his royal composure. He felt a tremor of the old fear, the fear of the hunted boy who had run from city to city, always one step ahead of the Usper’s knives. He crushed it down with a force of will.
“Lies,” he hissed. “The horselord would not dare. I am the dragon. He would not dare to wake me.”
“He is not afraid of you!” she cried, and for the first time, her voice held not fear, but a desperate, furious frustration. “He is a Khal of forty thousand men, and you are a guest in a house that is no longer safe! We have to run!”
Before he could strike her for her insolence, the door burst open again. Ser Jorah Mormont stood there, his weathered face grim, his hand on the hilt of his longsword. Behind him, Daenerys’s handmaiden, Doreah, looked terrified.
“Your Grace, the princess speaks the truth,” the exiled knight said, his voice a low rumble. “My sources say the Khal’s bloodriders were seen on the edge of the city at dusk. They are not coming for a feast. Illyrio has taken his ships and sailed for Tyrosh. He has left us to the wolves.”
The world seemed to tilt. Illyrio… gone? The fat magister, with his promises and his smiles, had abandoned them. The gilded cage had become a trap. The cold fear returned, stronger this time, and it was all he could do not to let it show.
“The ancestors…” he stammered, his mind grasping for the ghost, for the power he had felt. “They would not allow this.”
“The ancestors are dead, Your Grace,” Jorah said, his voice blunt. “And we will be too, if we stay here. We must make for the docks. There may still be a ship we can buy passage on.”
Suddenly, from outside, a sound drifted through the night. A low, rhythmic chanting, punctuated by the high, ululating cries of women. It was the sound of the Dothraki. And it was close.
Panic, sharp and blinding, finally broke through Viserys’s pride. He looked around the room, at the silks, the tapestries, the silver. His treasures. His kingly possessions.
“We must take what we can,” he said, his voice a high, thin thing.
“There is no time,” Jorah said, grabbing him by the arm. “Your life is all you can take.”
They stumbled out into the corridors of the manse. It was eerily silent. The usual torchlight was gone, the halls lit only by the faint moonlight filtering through the high windows. The place was a tomb. As they rounded a corner, they saw the first sign of the horror to come. Two of Illyrio’s household guards lay on the floor, their throats cut, their eyes wide with surprise.
A scream tore from Doreah’s throat.
“Quiet!” Jorah hissed, pulling her back.
They were lost. The manse was a labyrinth of corridors and courtyards, and in the dark, every turn looked the same. The chanting outside was growing louder, closer. Then, from the shadows ahead, a figure emerged.
It was a woman, her face hidden behind a lacquered wooden mask painted with red and black tears. She wore the robes of a shadowbinder from Asshai.
“This way,” she said, her voice a low, melodic whisper that seemed to cut through the rising panic. “If you wish to live.”
“Who are you?” Viserys demanded, though he was too terrified to do anything but follow.
“A friend,” the woman said, without looking back. She led them not towards the main entrance, but down a narrow servant’s staircase, into the bowels of the manse. The air grew damp and cool. She moved with a silent, unnerving confidence, as if she had walked these hidden paths a hundred times.
As they descended, the sounds from outside grew more distinct. The roar of voices, the splintering of wood, the high, terrified screams of men and women. Then, a new smell reached them. Smoke.
They emerged into a small, dark alleyway behind the manse. The night sky above was no longer black, but a hellish, flickering orange. The top floors of Illyrio’s home were on fire. The roar was deafening now. It was not just the manse. The city of Pentos was burning.
Viserys stared, his mind unable to comprehend the scale of the chaos. His plans, his visions, his kingdom… it was all turning to ash. This was not how it was supposed to be. The ghost had promised him a crown, not a back-alley escape from a burning city.
“The docks,” the masked woman said, her voice calm amidst the chaos. She pointed down the alley, towards the harbor. “There is a ship. It will take you to Qarth. Go. Now.”
Jorah grabbed Daenerys’s hand and pulled her along. Viserys stood frozen for a moment, his fine silk robes covered in grime, the smell of smoke and slaughter filling his lungs. He was a king. He was the dragon. And he was running for his life through the filth of a foreign city, his only guides a disgraced knight and a masked witch.
He stumbled after them, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He had woken the dragon, he thought, a hysterical laugh bubbling in his throat. He had woken the dragon, and it had burned his whole world down.
From the cold quiet of his spectral existence, Daemon observed the consequences of his meddling. He had not intended for Pentos to burn. A simple whispered word in a fool’s dream, a nudge to his pride, and the boy had gone and kicked a nest of horselords. The result was a city in flames and his kin fleeing into the night. It was clumsy. It was chaotic. But Daemon found he could not entirely disapprove. Viserys and the girl, Daenerys, were now free of the magister’s gilded cage, their path violently wrenched from the spider Varys’s control. And the masked woman… she was a new piece on the board, an unknown. He would have to watch her.
He drew his consciousness back from the smoke of Essos to the familiar stench of King’s Landing. His focus was on Aemon. The boy was a quick study, his newfound ruthlessness in the training yard a source of grim satisfaction. But the steel in his spine was still coated in the frost of the North, in the honorable foolishness of the wolves who had raised him. When Daemon had first instructed him to seek a squireship, the boy had immediately suggested Ser Barristan Selmy. It was a child’s choice, born of songs and tales. The boy wanted to learn from a legend.
Daemon had dismissed the idea with contempt. Barristan the Bold was a monument to failure. A living legend who had outlived his king, his prince, and his honor, all to guard a drunken usurper who pissed the bed in terror of ghosts. Selmy could teach Aemon how to die bravely, nothing more. Loras Tyrell, on the other hand, was a weapon. A vain, ambitious, and arrogant boy, yes, but he was the key to Highgarden, to the endless armies and granaries of the Reach. Placing Aemon at his side was not about learning the joust; it was about placing a dagger at the throat of the south’s greatest power. It was a lesson in politics, not piety. A lesson the boy was slowly beginning to understand.
Bored with the plodding machinations of Eddard Stark’s investigation, Daemon had taken to shadowing the more amusing players in the game. He drifted through the gardens and halls where Renly Baratheon held his shadow court, a gaggle of peacocks in steel plotting their gentle treason. He found their ambition quaint, their methods artless. They planned to wait for Robert to die and then seize the throne. A simple plan for simple men.
But one evening, drifting through Renly’s chambers, he found something more interesting. Renly was meeting not just with Loras, but with a quiet, unassuming man whose tunic bore ... bore that fucking tower that damned lighthouse of the Hightowers of Oldtown. A cold, ancient hatred, sharp as dragonglass, pierced the veil of Daemon’s spectral calm. Hightower. The name was a curse. He remembered Otto Hightower, the grasping, second son who had leeched off his brother’s weakness, poisoning his ear against his own blood, against Rhaenyra. The upjumped lord whose ambition had plunged the realm into the fire of the Dance. They were a plague of merchants and schemers who used their daughters as keys to the throne room. And here they were again, still whispering in the shadows, still trying to supplant the dragons.
He drew closer, his cold fury a focused point, and listened. It was not a plot to crown Renly. It was a formal proposal from Mace Tyrell, delivered by his Hightower kin. They were not waiting for Robert to die. They planned to offer the king a new queen: Margaery Tyrell. They would use Eddard Stark’s investigation as their casus belli, providing their own "proof" of the queen’s incest to the king. They would see Cersei and her brood disinherited and disposed of, and a rose queen planted on the Iron Throne.
The audacity of it was breathtaking. It was the same old game. The same Hightower ambition, wrapped in the sigil of a rose.
A new plan, sharp and cold, coalesced in his mind. The game had changed. The Tyrells were not content to be the power behind the throne; they wanted the throne itself, through a daughter. But Renly, he knew, wanted it for himself. Their goals were not as aligned as they believed. The Hightower envoy spoke of making Margaery queen to King Robert. Loras and Renly spoke, when they were alone, doing their own thing, of Renly wearing the crown himself.
There was the fracture. There was the weakness.
The honorable wolf, Stark, would never see this. He was focused on the simple truth of a crime. He did not see the complex web of ambition that surrounded it. Daemon would use it. He would use Aemon, his perfect listening post at the heart of the Tyrell camp, to widen that fracture. The boy would learn what his lord protector, Renly, truly planned for the Tyrells’ ambition. He would let the seeds of doubt be sown, not with the king, but within the conspiracy itself. He would let the roses see that the stag they backed was leading them to a cliff. And he would take a grim, personal satisfaction in seeing a Hightower plot burn to ash for a second time.
And when they were sufficiently terrified, when their grand plan was about to collapse, he would present them with an alternative. A better one. A dragon. It would be Aemon's first, true lesson in power. A lesson Stark could never teach him. A lesson written not in honor, but in fear and fire.
The solar in the Tower of the Hand had become a prison. Eddard Stark sat behind the heavy oak desk, the Grand Maester’s book of lineages open before him, its spidery script a testament to a truth so monstrous it threatened to unmake the world. Black of hair. Black of hair. Black of hair. The words were a death knell. Joffrey, Tommen, Myrcella. Golden-haired. Abominations born of incest, wearing the name of a king they had no right to.
He felt a weariness so profound it was a physical ache in his bones. He had come south to serve his friend, to find justice for Jon Arryn, and instead he had stumbled into a pit of treason and lies that made the cold, clean honor of the North seem like a child’s fairy tale.
His thoughts, so often these days, drifted to his own Jon. The boy was a constant, unsolved puzzle. When they had left Winterfell, Ned had been baffled by his sudden change of heart. Jon had been determined to go to the Wall, to take the black with Benjen. It was a hard life, but an honorable one, a place where the name Snow would not matter. Ned had thought it a fitting path. But then Jon had announced he was coming south, and Ned had seen a new, steely resolve in his eyes that he did not understand. Now, that resolve had sharpened into something else entirely. Jon’s decision to squire for Loras Tyrell was the most baffling of all. Why would a boy of the North, raised on honor and duty, seek out the Knight of Flowers, a southron peacock known more for his vanity and tourney tricks than for any real battle? It felt like a betrayal of everything he had been taught. It was as if the southern sun had burned away the sullen boy he knew and left a stranger in his place.
Ned had seen it in the yard, in the way he now moved with a cold, deadly manner that was unsettling in a boy of fifteen. He fought with a brutal, pragmatic efficiency that was not the honorable style of Winterfell. He fought to win, not to please the onlookers. He had seen it in his eyes, the familiar grey of the Starks now holding a watchful, calculating depth that made Ned’s skin crawl. The melancholy was gone, replaced by a quiet, unnerving confidence. The air around the boy even seemed colder, a pocket of winter in the stifling heat of the capital. It was a concern, a puzzle he could not solve, but in the face of the truth in this book, it was a distant one. A candle flame next to a raging inferno.
And his daughters… they were being consumed by this city. Sansa was lost in a dream of a golden prince who was a monster, her head so full of songs she couldn't see the bars of the cage being built around her. And Arya, his wild little wolf, was learning to dance with a sword. He was proud of her spirit, but terrified of where it would lead her in a city where girls were meant to be silent and obedient. He had brought them to a viper’s nest, and he felt the weight of that failure every single day.
His greatest problem was the king. Robert was unraveling. The man who had once been his brother, the laughing warrior who had shattered a dynasty, was now a frightened, angry child trapped in a king’s body. The nightmares were a nightly occurrence now, leaving Robert pale and trembling, his days a long, desperate search for oblivion in the bottom of a wine cup.
The small council meeting two days ago had been the breaking point. Robert had stormed in, his eyes wild, his face blotchy with drink and lack of sleep. “Another dream!” he had roared, slamming his fist on the table so hard the wine cups jumped. “The ghosts won’t leave me be! It’s them! The dragonspawn! They haunt me from across the sea!”
He had turned his bloodshot eyes on Varys. “I want them dead! The girl, her brother, the Beggar King! All of them! Send your knives, Varys. I want their heads!”
Ned had tried to reason with him, to speak of honor, of the madness of murdering a child. But Robert had been beyond reason. “Honor?” he had spat, his face inches from Ned’s. “Did Rhaegar have honor when he stole your sister? Did the Mad King have honor when he burned your father? They are a plague, Ned! And I will see every last one of them wiped from this earth!”
He had ordered Varys to carry out the assassinations. And yesterday, when the Spider had returned with the news that Viserys and Daenerys had vanished from Pentos, that Illyrio’s manse had been burned to the ground by Dothraki, Robert’s rage had curdled into a kind of madness. He had swept the maps and parchments from the table, screaming that the ghosts were mocking him, that they were hiding from his justice.
And then, this morning, he had announced he was going on a hunt. “The boar calls to me!” he had bellowed at breakfast, his voice too loud, his eyes too bright. “I need to kill something!”
It was an escape. The only thing that could quiet the demons in his head was the shedding of blood. He had left Ned to rule in his stead, to sit in this cage and guard his stolen throne. The news that Jaime Lannister had fled the city after hearing of Tyrion’s capture had only tightened the knot of dread in Ned’s stomach. The Kingslayer was not a man to run from a fight. He was a lion retreating to gather his pride, to sharpen his claws for the attack that was sure to come.
Ned looked down at the book again. The truth was a fire in his hands. He had to tell Robert. It was his duty. But how could he tell a man on the edge of madness that his entire life, his rebellion, his crown, was built on a lie? That the children he called his own were the spawn of the man he despised most in the world? The shock would kill him, or it would drive him to a rage that would consume them all.
He felt trapped, surrounded by enemies. The queen knew he was close to the truth. He could see it in her eyes, in the way her smile never quite reached them. Littlefinger whispered poison in his ear, and Varys watched him with those soft, knowing eyes, a spider waiting patiently in the center of his web.
He had to get his children to safety. That was the only clear thought in the morass of fear and duty. He would find a ship, the Wind Witch, and book passage to take Sansa and Arya back to Winterfell, back to the safety of its grey walls. He would send a letter to Catelyn, telling her to release the Imp, to try and quell the fire she had so foolishly started.
And then? Then he would do what a Stark of Winterfell must. He would face the lioness in her den. He would confront the queen with the truth. He did not know if he would survive it. He only knew that winter was coming, and he was a long, long way from home.
Chapter 8: Smell of Death
Chapter Text
The king was sleeping. It was not the peaceful sleep of the just, nor the dreamless slumber of the content. It was the heavy, suffocating sleep of the damned, a plunge into an abyss of wine soaked regret. Robert Baratheon, the Demon of the Trident, lay sprawled on his sweat drenched sheets, his great chest rising and falling in ragged, snoring breaths. His mind, unguarded and drowning in alcohol, was a landscape of ruins, the perfect playground for a ghost.
Daemon drifted through the stone walls of the king's chambers, a current of grave-cold air that made the torches flicker and dance. The Usurper's mind was his most potent weapon. The man was a fortress with its gates left wide open, his subconscious a swirling mess of guilt, rage, and a singular, pathetic longing for a dead wolf maid. It was all so easy.
Tonight would be different. The nightly torments of dead princes and sorrowful ghosts had served their purpose; they had eroded the king's sanity, making him volatile and afraid. Now, it was time to direct that fear. It was the night before the royal hunt, a foolish escapade the king was undertaking to feel like a man again. It was the perfect opportunity. He would not simply haunt Robert tonight. He would enlighten him.
He slipped into the morass of the king's dream, not as a phantom of the past, but as a friendly, familiar face. It was the most insidious form of poison. He took the shape of the king's own brother, Renly. The charming, handsome, beloved Renly, whose smile was as bright and false as a gilded crown.
The dreamscape coalesced around them, a place of fond memory for Robert: the sun-drenched gardens of Storm's End, the salt spray of the Shipbreaker Bay scenting the air. Robert, younger and happier, was drinking from a horn of ale. Daemon, wearing Renly’s handsome face and perfect smile, approached him, a carefully constructed mask of brotherly concern on his features.
"Robert," he began, his voice a perfect mimicry of Renly's light, easy tone. "You look troubled."
"The dream" Robert grunted, taking a long pull from his horn. "The crown is heavy, little brother. And the bed is cold."
"Is it the queen?" Daemon pressed, his voice soft with feigned sympathy. "Or the whispers in the court? I worry for you. The vipers grow bold."
"Vipers," Robert scoffed. "Let them strike. I'll crush them with my hammer."
"Some vipers are too beautiful to crush," Daemon-as-Renly said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Brother… I came to you because my loyalty is to you. To our house. But others… they see your sadness. They see a king's bed grown cold, and they see an opportunity. He looked away, as if wrestling with a difficult truth.
"We all know what Cersei is. The Tyrells know it too. I… I have been meeting with them, Robert. In secret. They see the lions for what they are, and they see Cersei is not fit for the queen. They have made an offer. A treasonous one. But perhaps a necessary one."
Robert’s eyes began to flash with anger. "Get on with it."
"They want to make Margaery your new queen," Daemon said plainly. "They will help us against Tywin...Reach is too rich even against the lannisters. We would disinherit them, cast the lions out, and you would wed the Tyrell girl. She would give you true sons, Robert. A new line. A secure one."
The king was silent for a long moment, his face a thunderhead of conflicting emotions. Rage at the treason warred with the clear appeal of the proposal. To be free of Cersei, to have sons of his own... Daemon could feel the temptation pulling at him.
Then the dream-ale horn in Robert's hand stopped halfway to his lips. His face, which had been relaxed till now, began to cloud over with suspicion and rage. "A new queen? While I still have one? And what foolishness you saying with this true sons. I already have two sons. To say otherwise is treason." Robert roared, his dream-voice echoing through the peaceful garden. "Damn their ambition! I am the king! No upjumped steward will choose my queen for me!"
Daemon watched the king’s subconscious react. The sky above the dream-garden began to darken. The salt spray in the air began to smell of rot. The seeds of doubt were taking root. Now, for the poison.
"We plot to save your legacy!" Daemon-as-Renly insisted, pressing the advantage. "But there is more. You must understand the true danger." He leaned in closer, his dream-eyes wide with earnestness. "Brother… you hunt for stags and boars in the woods, but the most dangerous beast in the kingdom sleeps in your own bed. And once the Lannister children are proven bastards, you have no heir, Robert. None. Stannis? The lords despise him. The realm would bleed the day you die."
He let the words sink in, watching the fear flicker in Robert's eyes. "The line is broken. It needs a strong hand to mend it, to protect the throne from the vultures. Until you have a new son, you need someone to stand as your rock, your declared heir. Someone the people love. Someone strong enough to hold the Seven Kingdoms for your trueborn son."
He didn't need to say the name. The implication was clear. Me. I, Renly, should be your heir. He had just laid out a plan not only to replace the queen, but to supplant the entire line of succession with himself at the top. It was a confession of the highest treason, wrapped in the language of loyalty.
The dreamscape began to shift violently. The sun vanished behind dark clouds, and the scent of salt was replaced by the smell of decay. Robert stumbled back, his face a mask of horror and dawning comprehension. "You... you would put yourself before Stannis? Before my own..." His voice trailed off as the beautiful gardens of Storm's End dissolved into the cold, claustrophobic stone of the Red Keep. They stood in the shadows of a dark corridor, outside the queen's chambers.
"What is this?" Robert snarled, looking around in confusion.
"A truth you've refused to see," Daemon said, his voice as Renly losing its warmth, becoming a cold, accusatory whisper. From behind the queen's door, came a sound. Laughter. Cersei's laughter, high and sharp, but not for him. It was answered by a man's deeper laugh. A familiar laugh.
The oaken door became translucent, a ghostly screen. Through it, Robert saw two figures, two golden heads, tangled together on the bed. His bed. The Kingslayer and the Queen. The dream did not show the act itself, but something worse, more intimate. It showed the aftermath, the lazy, satisfied smiles, the shared whispers.
"He'll be drunk by now," Jaime's voice echoed, distorted and cruel. "He'll not even notice. He never does."
"He is a fool," Cersei's voice replied, dripping with contempt. "A drunken, whoring fool. Not a king. Not like you, my love. My lion."
A new image burned itself over the scene. The great book of lineages, its pages flipping in wind. He saw the entries: Robert Baratheon, black of hair. Steffon Baratheon, black of hair. Renly Baratheon, black of hair. Then, the royal children: Joffrey, golden-haired. Myrcella, golden-haired. Tommen, golden-haired.
Robert stumbled back, his face a mask of horror and dawning comprehension. This was his deepest fear, the ugly truth he had drowned in wine for fifteen years, now given form. "No," he breathed, the word a pathetic whimper. "Lies…"
"Is it?" Daemon's voice was merciless. "Look at them, brother. They are not yours. They are the Kingslayer's spawn. Your crown sits on a bastard's head. Your whole life, your rebellion, your victory... it was all for nothing. You won a kingdom for another man's children."
The king let out a guttural roar of pure agony, a sound not of a man, but of a great beast wounded to its very soul.
The dream shattered again. The corridor vanished. They were in the dark, oppressive tangle of the Kingswood at night. Robert was alone, dressed for the hunt, his spear in his hand. The laughter of the lions still echoed in the trees around him.
From the undergrowth, a shape emerged. A boar of monstrous size, its tusks like curved daggers, its eyes glowing with a malevolent, golden light. A Lannister light. It pawed the ground, not in animal rage, but with a cold, calculating purpose.
Robert raised his spear, but his dream-arms were heavy as lead. He was frozen, helpless. The boar charged. He saw the tusks coming for his belly. He felt a tearing agony. As his dream self fell to the forest floor, the last thing he saw was the boar's golden eyes staring down at him, and the last thing he heard was the sound of Cersei's laughter, intertwined with the triumphant roar of a lion.
Daemon withdrew, pulling his consciousness from the ruin of the king's mind. He hovered in the chill air of the bedchamber as Robert Baratheon woke up, not with a roar, but with a choked, terrified scream that clawed at his own throat. The great king, the Usurper, the Demon of the Trident, curled into a ball, weeping like a frightened child.
The work was done. He had not just given the king a nightmare. He had shown him a world where every single person he trusted: his wife, his children, his brother; was a traitor. The man who rode out on the hunt tomorrow would not be a king seeking sport. He would be a broken man, haunted by betrayal and death, seeing lions and roses in every shadow and who would kill them. He was a primed keg of wildfire, and Daemon now had only to wait for the spark.
The morning brought with it a sense of grim finality. Ned had barely slept, the words from the lineage book burning behind his eyes. He had resolved to send his daughters away, and then, to face the queen. It was a plan born of honor and desperation, and he knew, with a cold certainty that settled deep in his bones, that it was likely to be his last. He was composing a letter to his brother Benjen on the Wall, his words a poor substitute for a conversation he wished he’d had, when Jory Cassel burst into the solar, his face pale.
“My lord, the king is asking for you. Urgently.”
Ned’s heart grew heavy. Robert would be in his cups already, roaring for his hunting party. He would have to endure his friend’s drunken japes before seeing him off to the woods. He rose, buckled on his sword belt, and followed Jory.
The king’s chambers were not as he expected. There was no boisterous laughter, no smell of spilled wine. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn tight, plunging the room into a gloomy twilight. The Kingsguard stood at attention outside the door, their faces like stone masks, but it was Ser Barristan Selmy who stepped forward.
“Lord Stark,” the old knight said, his voice low and troubled. “The king is… unwell. He has dismissed the hunting party. He will see no one but you.”
This was new. A knot of unease tightened in Ned’s stomach. He pushed open the heavy oak door and stepped inside. The room was a mess, a wine jug overturned on the floor, its contents a dark stain on the Myrish carpet. And on the edge of his great bed, Robert sat, not in hunting leathers, but in his rumpled bedclothes. He was unshaven, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his face the color of curdled milk. He looked not like a king, but like a man who had stared into the abyss.
“Ned,” Robert rasped, his voice a dry, cracking thing. “Thank the gods. Get them out.” He waved a trembling hand towards the door. “All of them. I need to speak with you. Alone.”
Puzzled, Ned did as he was asked, closing the door on the stoic faces of the Kingsguard. When he turned back, Robert had risen and was pacing the room like a caged, terrified animal.
“They know, Ned,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “They all know.”
“Who knows what, Robert?” Ned asked, his concern deepening.
Robert stopped and grabbed Ned by the shoulders, his grip surprisingly strong. His eyes were wild with a terror Ned had never seen in him, not even on the Trident. “I had a dream, Ned. A dream that was more real than this life. Renly… my own brother… he came to me. He’s plotting with the Tyrells. They want to put their girl in Cersei’s bed, make her queen.”
Ned felt a chill. Renly and the Tyrells were ambitious, he knew that, but this…
Before he could process it, Robert plunged on, his words a panicked torrent. “And Cersei… the dream showed me… her and Jaime. Together, Ned. In my bed. Laughing at me.” He let go of Ned and stumbled back, his face a mask of utter shame. “It showed me the children. Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen… golden-haired. Golden-haired, Ned. Not mine. They’re not mine. They’re the Kingslayer’s bastards.”
Ned stood frozen, the breath knocked from his lungs. It was the truth. The same monstrous truth he had uncovered in a dusty book, now delivered from the king’s own mouth, a product of a vivid dream.
“Robert…” he began, but the king held up a hand, his face crumpling.
“Don’t say it,” Robert pleaded, and his voice was that of a broken boy. “Don’t say it’s true. They’ll laugh at me, Ned. The whole world. Robert the Usurper, the Demon of the Trident, the Great Cuckold. She’s been rutting with her own brother under my roof for fifteen years, and I was too drunk and blind to see it.” He sank back onto the bed, his great shoulders slumped in defeat. “The dream… it ended in the woods. A boar with golden eyes… it killed me, Ned. It tore my guts out. She’ll kill me. Now that she knows I know… she’ll kill me.”
Ned stared at his friend, his king, and saw not a warrior, but a timid, terrified man, paralyzed by shame and fear. All thoughts of confrontation and duty flew from his mind, replaced by a single, urgent need to calm the storm. “Robert, you are the king. We must act. We can…”
“Act?” Robert let out a short, hysterical laugh. “And do what? Announce to the Seven Kingdoms that my wife is a whore and my children are abominations? That my reign is built on the Kingslayer’s cock? Tywin Lannister will raise his banners before the ink is dry. My own brother is plotting against me. I am surrounded.” He looked up at Ned, his eyes swimming with tears. “I am alone.”
For hours, Ned tried. He spoke of duty, of justice, of the strength of the crown. He urged Robert to call the small council, to send riders to Stannis on Dragonstone, to dispatch the City Watch to arrest the queen. But every suggestion was met with a fresh wave of fear.
“She’ll have me poisoned before they reach the steps,” Robert would mutter, staring at the door as if expecting Cersei to burst through with a dagger. “The Kingslayer will cut his way through the entire guard. You saw him in the tourney, Ned. He is a demon with a sword.”
The morning bled into the afternoon. A servant who brought food was sent away with a string of curses. The gloom in the room deepened, a reflection of the king’s own despair. Finally, Ned’s patience, worn thin by hours of coddling a terrified king, finally snapped.
“Damn it, Robert, be a king!” he said, his voice hard as northern iron. “You wear the crown. You wield the power. Or has the lioness truly unmanned you, perhaps take a look into your breeches?”
The insult struck home. A flicker of the old Robert, the warrior Ned had grown up with, sparked in his eyes. He stood up, his fists clenching, his face flushing with a hint of its old, furious red.
“She has not,” he growled, the word a low rumble in his chest. “No. She has not.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and seemed to grow a few inches taller. “You are right, Ned. You are right. We will act. We will act now. Summon the guard. We will take the queen into custody, and then…”
Before he could finish, the chamber door burst open without a knock. Alyn, one of his own Winterfell guards, stood there, his face ashen, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
“My lord!” he choked out, his eyes wide with panic. “Your Grace! A message from the master of laws, lord Renly!”
“What is it?” Ned demanded, his heart sinking.
Alyn looked from Ned to the king, his fear palpable. “The queen, Your Grace. Queen Cersei. She has left the city. Her royal barge was seen leaving the Blackwater Rush at first light. With her were the children… Prince Joffrey, Princess Myrcella, and Prince Tommen.” He swallowed hard. “And Ser Jaime Lannister.”
Silence descended upon the room, heavy and absolute. Ned looked at Robert. The flicker of rage in the king’s eyes died, replaced by a look of utter, hollow defeat.
While the king had been cowering in his chambers, paralyzed by fear and shame, the lions had made their move. They were gone. And it was too late.
He awoke to the monotonous groan of timber and the sloshing of bilge water. His bed was a narrow, lice-infested bunk, the wool blanket coarse and scratchy against his skin. For a moment, suspended in the hazy twilight between sleep and waking, he expected to see the silken canopy of his bed in Illyrio’s manse. The reality, the cramped, dark, and foul smelling belly of the merchant cog Sea Snake was a daily disappointment.
The fine silk robes he had worn in Pentos were long gone, traded to the ship's captain for the clothes he had worn for a week, a simple woolen tunic and breeches that smelled of tar, fish, and the salt that seemed to permeate everything. On deck, the morning was grey and damp. The sea was a vast, indifferent churn of slate-grey water, stretching to a horizon that promised nothing. Viserys leaned against the rough-hewn rail, the cold spray misting his face, and let his mind drift.
For days, he had stared into the churning water, his thoughts a storm to match the sea. He thought of the ghost. For so long after their escape, he had been consumed by a frantic, furious search for meaning. Was it an ancestor sent to test him? A demon sent to trick him? The ghost had spoken of waking the dragon, and Viserys had listened. He had roared, and his world had burned. He had been left with nothing but the clothes on his back and the bitter taste of failure in his mouth.
Now, in the endless, tedious days at sea, a more humiliating truth had settled in his soul. Perhaps there had been no ghost at all. Perhaps it had just been a dream, a figment of his own desperate, wine-addled mind. He had been so starved for a sign, for a confirmation of the greatness he believed was his birthright, that he had conjured a phantom from his own pathetic longing. He had wanted to wake the dragon, and his own madness had answered the call. The thought was so profoundly shameful it made his stomach clench. He, Viserys of House Targaryen, the Third of His Name, had been tricked by his own foolish pride. The city had burned not because of a god's wrath, but because of a fool's vanity.
His entire life had been a series of such failures. He saw it now with a clarity that was both agonizing and liberating. He saw a scared little boy on Dragonstone, watching the dark storm that had birthed his sister and killed his mother. He saw a youth in the back alleys of Tyrosh and Myr, his fine Valyrian features a curse that drew the eyes of the Usurper's assassins. He remembered the constant, gnawing fear, a cold serpent coiled in his gut. That fear had been his master. It had made him cruel, paranoid, and shrill. It had made him strike his sister, the only person left in the world who shared his blood, because her quiet strength was a mirror to his own weakness.
The Beggar King. The name no longer felt like an insult. The name the fat magisters and mocking sellswords had given him... it wasn't a slander. It was the truth. It was a title he had earned. He had begged for shelter, for food, for gold, for an army. He had begged the world for a crown he now knew, with a certainty that hollowed him out, that he would never have the strength to hold. The dream was dead. The fire was out.
He was so lost in the depths of his despair that he didn't see it coming. A small, leather-bound ball bounced off the rail and struck him squarely in the chest. His first instinct was the old one: a surge of violent, humiliated rage. His hand flew up, ready to strike, his lips curling into a snarl.
"I'm sorry, my lord!"
He froze. A little girl, no older than seven, stood a few feet away, her eyes wide with fear. She was Ella, the ship captain's daughter, a whip-smart child with a cascade of dark curls and an insatiable curiosity. She clutched a book in one hand, her toy forgotten.
Viserys looked at his raised hand, then at the girl's frightened face. He saw a flash of his own sister in her eyes, the same fear he had put there a hundred times. Slowly, his hand lowered. He unclenched his fist. He bent down, his joints aching, and picked up the ball.
"Be more careful," he said, his voice quiet, devoid of its usual venom. He tossed the ball back to her. She caught it, offered a small, hesitant smile, and scurried away to where Daenerys was sitting, mending a tear in her cloak.
Dany had found a friend in the little girl. They spent hours together, Dany teaching her the bastard Valyrian Tongue of free cities, Ella showing Dany the strange constellations of the southern sky from her book. He watched his sister now, a quiet calm about her that he had never seen before. Daenerys sat on a coil of rope, watching Ella with a small, genuine smile. His sister looked... different. The perpetual fear in her eyes had been replaced by a quiet calm. She was no longer a frightened girl waiting for the dragon to wake. She was simply a woman, finding a moment of peace in a world that had given her none.
He felt a sudden, unfamiliar urge to speak with her. Not to command or chastise, but simply to talk. He walked over, his steps hesitant on the damp deck.
"Daenerys."
She looked up, her violet eyes meeting his. There was no fear in them now, only a quiet watchfulness. "Viserys."
His gaze fell to the heavy, iron-strapped chest beside her. "The eggs," he said, his voice softer than he intended. "I still do not know how you managed to save them." In the chaos of their escape from Illyrio's burning manse, she had somehow found the presence of mind to save the one thing of value they will ever own.
"There was no time for treasure," she said simply. "But I could not leave them. They are mine."
"They are our future," he corrected, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. He had already spent countless hours planning this new, smaller future. "One egg, sold in Qarth, will buy us a house with a red door and a garden of lemon trees. The second will provide a lifetime of comfort, of safety. The third... the third will ensure we are never beggars again."
He expected her to argue, to speak of destiny or birthright. Instead, she just looked at the chest, her expression unreadable. "And what of you, Viserys? What will you do, in this house with the red door?"
The question caught him off guard. He had never thought past the acquisition of comfort. "I... I will be at peace," he stammered. "We will be safe. I will find you a good match. A wealthy magister, perhaps. Someone who can protect you." He was still thinking of her as a pawn, he realized, but the game had changed. The prize was no longer a throne, but a quiet life.
Before she could reply, Malo, the captain’s charming younger brother, approached with two cups of watered-down wine. "My lord. A little something to ward off the morning chill."
Viserys took the cup, grateful for the interruption. A strange friendship had grown between them on the long voyage. Malo was the first person in years who had looked at him not as a beggar or a madman, but as a man of knowledge.
"I was just telling my sister of our plans in Myr," Viserys said, trying to regain some of his old authority.
"Ah yes, Myr is a beautiful city," Malo said with his easy smile. "But a man of your knowledge... you should write a book, my lord. A history of the great Targaryen kings. The magisters would pay a great price for such a work, written by a true dragon."
Viserys felt a flicker of the old pride. A scholar. A historian. It was a respectable life. A life he could almost imagine. "Perhaps I will," he said. "I was telling you of Baelor the Blessed, was I not? A fool, but a pious one. He once tried to hatch a dragon egg himself, did you know? Prayed over it for a year. Nothing happened, of course. The magic is gone from the world." He looked at the chest beside Daenerys. "Now they are just beautiful stones."
The journey neared its end. The air grew thick and earthy. Viserys stood at the rail, Malo at his side, looking towards the hazy coastline that had appeared on the horizon.
"That is not the coast of Myr," Viserys said, a flicker of confusion in his mind. He knew the maps. Myr was a city of glass towers and canals, its shores dotted with watchtowers. This was a flat, desolate expanse of grey sand and dry grass.
Malo's easy smile did not falter. "The winds were unfavorable, my lord. My brother had to seek a closer port. We will arrange passage to Myr from here."
But it was not the coastline that truly unsettled him. It was the smell. A new scent on the wind, thick and cloying. It was not the smell of a city, not of fish and waste and perfumes. It was the smell of a thousand campfires burning dried dung. The smell of leather and sweat. The smell of horses. A world of horses. Beneath it all, there was another scent, a faint, coppery tang that he remembered from the alleyways of Pentos. The smell of a Dothraki khalasar.
His blood ran cold. He looked from the shore to Malo, whose charming face was now a placid, unreadable mask. He knew that smell. He had spent a lifetime running from it.
It was the smell of death. And they were sailing right into its heart.
Chapter 9: Knights and Dragons
Chapter Text
The Roseroad was a long, winding insult. It stretched through the heart of the Reach, a verdant, sun-drenched land of rolling hills and endless fields of flowers. The air was thick with the cloying scent of summer roses and honeysuckle, a perfume that seemed to mock the cold, sterile reality of Daemon's existence. He was a creature of fire and shadow, condemned to drift through a mummer’s farce of chivalry and song.
Renly Baratheon’s procession was less a diplomatic envoy and more a traveling tourney. Silken banners of emerald green and gold snapped in the breeze, emblazoned with the proud stag of Baratheon and the golden rose of Tyrell. Knights in polished, enameled armor rode destriers draped in equally fine silks, their laughter too loud, their conversation a meaningless stream of gossip about tourneys past and hunts to come. Lutes played, wine flowed, and the entire affair crawled towards Highgarden at a pace that made Daemon’s spectral form ache with impatience. It was everything he had despised about his brother’s court: the triumph of style over substance, a kingdom of peacocks ruled by a smiling fool.
He drifted, a pocket of winter in the summer air, his attention fixed on the one part of this farce that mattered. In a clearing by the camp, the sounds of steel on steel rang out, sharper and more purposeful than the rest of the camp’s lazy din.
Jon Aemon, he corrected himself, the name feeling more earned with each passing day, was sparring with Loras Tyrell. This was not the clumsy exchange of boys playing at war. Aemon’s movements were economical and powerful, his blade a blur of direct, brutal efficiency born of the North. He fought with the cunning of a wolf, all forward pressure and killing intent. It was a style Daemon had been honing, sharpening its edges. Against him, Loras was a whirlwind of motion, clanging, artless bravado of a tourney knight, still the boy did had some talent with sword.
“You’re too stiff, Snow!” Loras called out, his voice bright with the thrill of the contest. He sidestepped a powerful overhand chop that would have splintered a lesser man’s shield and tapped the flat of his blade against Jon’s backplate. “The mountain does not move, but the river flows around it. You must be the river!”
“The river freezes in winter,” Jon grunted, spinning faster than Loras anticipated. He didn't swing his sword, but instead slammed its pommel into the back of Loras’s gauntlet, forcing the knight to grunt and nearly drop his blade. “And mountains break swords.”
Loras laughed, shaking his tingling hand. “Well struck! By the gods, you learn quickly. A few more months and you’ll be unhorsing me in the lists.”
From a nearby pavilion, seated on a plush velvet chair, Renly Baratheon applauded gently. “He has a wolf’s spirit, Loras. Be careful he does not mistake you for a sheep.”
Jon offered a faint, respectful smile in Renly’s direction before turning back to Loras. “It’s the company I keep, my lord. Your feints are predictable after the third pass. You rely too much on your speed.”
The boy had them. He truly had them. He had done more than simply become a squire; he had infiltrated their inner circle. Loras, the vain but not unkind Knight of Flowers, saw in Jon a prodigious and earnest student, a welcome respite from the fawning sycophants who usually surrounded him. Renly, ever the collector of charming and loyal men, saw a handsome, capable youth with the unimpeachable honor of his Stark name. They saw a wolf cub, loyal and fierce. They did not see the dragon learning to wear a wolf's skin.
For the first time since his unnatural awakening, Daemon felt the bitter, restless knot of his own failures begin to loosen. He was at peace. After a life defined by the fire of war and the thrill of ambition, and an eternity of cold nothingness that followed, this was a new and strange sensation. To watch his young kin not just survive, but thrive, was a soothe to his ancient, wounded spirit.
That night, the main camp was a riot of noise and light, but Jon had found a quiet spot for himself on the edge of the woods. He sat by a small fire, meticulously cleaning his armor, the flames glinting off the polished steel. Ghost, the white wolf, lay at his feet, a silent statue with eyes like burning coals. Daemon coalesced in the shadows behind him, the air growing still and cold, the chirping of the crickets falling silent.
Jon didn't look up from his work. “I was wondering when you’d speak.”
“You seemed occupied with your new friends,” Daemon’s voice whispered in his mind, a sound like rustling leaves.
“They think I am one of them,” Jon said, his voice low. “They trust me. And they talk. Of ambitions. Renly believes he will be the new king soon. Loras believes his sister will be queen.” He finally looked up, his grey eyes seeming almost black in the firelight. “I read what I could of the histories before we left King’s Landing. About the Dance of the Dragons. The scrolls said it was your queen’s pride, and your own ambition, that started the war. Is that true?”
The question was blunt, the innocence of it almost painful. Daemon’s spectral form seemed to darken. “The histories are written by the victors, and by maesters in grey robes who think the world can be understood through ink and parchment. They speak of pride, but they do not speak of the twenty years of insults that fed it.” His voice was cold, a relic from a forgotten tomb. “They do not speak of Otto Hightower, a second son with the ambition of an emperor, who dripped poison into my brother’s ear until he trusted his leech of a Hand more than his own blood. They stole my wife’s birthright because they feared her, because they feared me. We had more dragons,” he finally answered, the words hollow. “But they had the treasury, the Faith, and Oldtown. We burned the world to see her on her rightful throne, boy. And in the end, we all burned with it. Our children, our dragons, our house. Ambition is a fire that consumes everything. Remember that.”
“I will,” Jon said quietly. He set aside the piece of armor he was polishing. “Your plan for the Usurper. It was a good plan. The dream you sent him… it was the truth. It should have worked.”
Daemon felt a flicker of rage. “It should have. I gave him the truth, a weapon to destroy his enemies. I showed him his wife’s treason, his brother’s ambition, his children’s bastardy. And he chose to hide under his bed like a frightened child. The man is a cuckold and a coward. He was more afraid of the word 'cuckold' than the word 'traitor'. His fear has stalled everything.”
Jon stared into the fire, his face grim. He was silent for a long time, the only sound the crackling of the logs. Then he spoke, his voice dangerously soft. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
The words surprised Daemon. “Best? The lions fled. The traitor Renly is now the king’s trusted envoy. The board is a mess.”
“Why rely on a drunken fool to do our work?” Jon asked, his voice now a low and cold thing, utterly devoid of the boy who had left Winterfell. “You wanted him to start a war. He won’t. He’ll make his alliances and drink himself to death, and the Lannisters will return stronger than ever.” He turned his gaze from the fire to Daemon’s shadowy form, and his eyes held a chilling, northern fury. “So let him. Let him make his alliances. Let him bring the Tyrells and the Stormlords to his side. It will just bring our enemies closer.”
A dangerous light flickered in Jon’s eyes, a reflection of the fire within. “When the time is right, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill them all. The Usurper, for what he did to my father, Rhaegar. The Kingslayer and the Queen, for what they did to Bran, for trying to murder a child to hide their filth. Tywin Lannister and his dogs, for Elia Martell, and for the brother and sister I never knew, Rhaenys and Aegon, butchered in their own beds.”
Daemon was utterly still, the cold that defined him deepening with a profound, predatory shock. This was it. This was the moment. The wolf was gone, and the dragon had taken its place. The boy’s anger was not the hot, fleeting rage of Robert Baratheon. It was a cold, patient, unforgiving fire, banked and waiting. This was a fire that would not consume itself. It would burn his enemies to ash. A deep, chilling contentment filled him.
“Good,” Daemon whispered. “That is the Targaryen way.”
The boy had the fire, but he did not yet have the cunning. “So the fire is in you,” Daemon pressed, testing him. “But fire without direction is just a wildfire, burning everything without purpose. What is your plan for Highgarden? How will you use this friendship you have so skillfully forged?”
Jon’s answer was that of a warrior, not a prince. “I will earn their trust completely. I will become indispensable. When they see me as a brother, not a squire, they will be useful alliance when we strike against the lannisters.”
Daemon let out a soundless chuckle. The boy still had much to learn. “A fine plan for a wolf hunting sheep. But these are roses with thorns, surrounded by spies. Your trust is not a shield for you to hide behind while you wait. It is a key. It is used to open doors they do not know are locked. And friendship,” he said, his voice a cold caress, “is the sharpest knife of all, because it is the one they never see coming. When we arrive, I will show you which secrets to find, and how to use them to make our 'friends' our puppets.”
Later that night, when the young wolf was asleep, Daemon couldn't help but feel the sting over his failure.
His great instrument of chaos turned out to be a whimpering, pathetic creature. He had spent the night crafting a masterpiece of psychological terror, layering truths and fears into a dream designed to forge a weapon of royal fury. He had expected the king to wake with a roar, to storm through the castle demanding the heads of his wife, her lover, and his own traitorous brother. He had wanted a bull, instead, he had gotten this. A coward.
He watched as Robert Baratheon, the man who had slain Rhaegar on the Trident, confessed his shame to the honorable wolf.
Fear of being laughed at? Shame? The man had won a crown through blood and rebellion, and he was brought to his knees not by the treason itself, but by the fear of ridicule. He was not afraid of losing his kingdom; he was afraid of losing face.
How did this oaf ever win a war? Daemon seethed, the cold in the room deepening. Rhaegar, the silver prince, the last dragon, was felled by this? This sack of wine and regret who weeps because his wife prefers her own brother?
He listened as Ned Stark tried to reason with the king, trying to instill some measure of courage in the broken man. It was like watching a mason try to rebuild a crumbled wall with sand. Robert was lost, drowning in his own self-pity.
And so now Daemon must endure this as the Oaf's brother finds a new queen for him.
Stewing in a rage that had no physical outlet, he let his consciousness drift. Jon was a long-term project, a sword that still needed much time at the forge. He needed another, a quick move, another piece to place on the board now.
His thoughts turned back to the Red Keep, to the figures left behind. To one in particular. Ser Barristan Selmy. He had dismissed the man as a relic, a monument to failure, a knight whose honor was a gilded cage. But failure, Daemon knew, left deep wounds. And guilt was a powerful lever. Selmy’s honor was not a cage; it was a crack in his soul, a fissure that a skilled hand could widen until it shattered the man completely.
Perhaps this knight, haunted by his own betrayals, could be proved useful in other ways. A new plan began to form in his mind. Daemon let go of the scent of roses and the clang of steel. He turned his spectral senses away from the boy and back towards King's Landing, focusing his will on the cold, lonely silence of the White Sword Tower. It was time to see if the Boldest of knights still had a soul left to break.
The White Sword Tower was a place of ghosts, and tonight, they were restless. Barristan Selmy stood before the White Book, its heavy pages open to his own entry, the ink chronicling a life of service that felt, in this suffocating silence, like a long and elaborate lie. The portraits of the great knights of the past—Aemon the Dragonknight, Ryam Redwyne, the Demon of Darry stared down at him, their painted eyes seeming to hold not respect, but a cold, weary disappointment.
He had dedicated his life to this order, to the pristine, sacred ideal of the white cloak. But the order was as dead as the heroes on the walls. He looked at his sworn brothers now and saw not paragons of chivalry, but a gallery of fools, cowards and degenerates. Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, a man whose skill with a sword were matched only by his bottomless arrogance and lack of honor; he was the face of the modern Kingsguard. And the others… Meryn Trant, a brute who enjoyed cruelty for its own sake; Boros Blount, a man whose appetites were a disgrace to the cloak he wore. They were not knights. They were thugs and sycophants, a fitting guard for the king this realm had chosen.
The whispers from the court were a constant, corrosive tide. The queen was gone. Vanished with her children in the pre-dawn gloom, a flight so sudden and panicked it could only be an admission of guilt. And the king… the king was unraveling. The servants spoke in hushed tones of nightly screams, of a terror so profound that the conqueror of the Trident had pissed his own bed in fear. They said he saw ghosts.
Barristan knew of ghosts. He had spent fifteen years trying to silence his own. But Robert’s madness was a different beast entirely from the one he had known in Aerys. Aerys’s madness had been a wildfire hot, unpredictable, and terrifying in its clarity. He remembered standing in the throne room, the heat of the pyre on his face as Rickard Stark was cooked alive in his armor, and the only sound was the Mad King’s high, thin laughter. It had been the madness of a dragon, terrible and absolute. Robert’s madness was a pestilence. A cold, wet rot of guilt and self-loathing that festered in the dark, stinking of stale wine and regret. He was as mad as the king he had overthrown, but his was a coward's madness, and that, Barristan was beginning to realize, was infinitely more dangerous.
He was running a cloth over the immaculate surface of his helm when the temperature in the room plummeted. It was not the simple chill of a draft, but an invasive, unnatural cold that seemed to emanate from the very stones, a cold that felt like an open grave. The candle flames on the table shrank and sputtered, their light turning a sickly, spectral blue. The ink in the White Book seemed to frost over at the edges.
A voice whispered from the shadows, a sound like dead leaves skittering across a tombstone. “Barristan the Bold.”
Barristan was on his feet in an instant, his sword, a familiar weight, leaping into his hand. The room was empty. Yet he was not alone.
“So bold,” the voice hissed, seeming to come from all corners of the room at once, a chorus of accusation. “Bold enough to stand by in your white cloak while your king burned men alive. Bold enough to let your silver prince ride to his death alone on the Trident.”
The words were dagger thrusts, each one twisting in a wound he had carried for decades. "Who’s there?" he demanded, his voice tight, betraying none of the cold fear that was now gripping his heart. "Show yourself!"
“You swore an oath,” the voice continued, merciless, seeming to quote the very vows from the book on the table. “To defend the king from his enemies. You bent the knee to the Usurper while the bodies of your prince’s children were still warm, and called it duty.”
“You swore to protect him from harm. And for fifteen years, you have stood guard while he poisons himself, body and soul.”
A shadow in the corner of the room coalesced, deepening from a simple absence of light into a tall, man-shaped void. Two points of cold, white light ignited within the darkness where a head should be.
“For fifteen years, you have called it honor,” the specter’s voice now boomed in his mind, a sound of ruin and command. “You have called it duty. But you and I know it for what it is. Betrayal.”
The air shimmered, and for a heart-stopping second, the shadow took on a familiar form: a tall, slender prince in black armor, his chest a gaping, bloody wound from which river water and blood seemed to flow, his dead eyes filled with a silent, eternal accusation. Rhaegar.
Barristan cried out, stumbling back against the table. The vision vanished, leaving only the shadow and the suffocating cold. His sword felt impossibly heavy. The ghost was right. Every word was true. He had hidden his cowardice behind the word ‘duty’. His honor was a threadbare cloak he used to hide his shame. He had failed his prince. He had failed the children. He had failed his vows, all of them.
“What do you want of me?” Barristan whispered, his sword arm trembling.
The shadow seemed to offer a cold, mirthless laugh. “I want nothing. But you, Barristan Selmy, must decide if the story of your life will end as a traitor’s footnote, or as a knight’s redemption.”
The cold receded as quickly as it came. The shadow dissolved. The candles burned brightly once more. But the ghost’s words remained, seared into his soul. His decision was made.
The Small Council was in session, the air thick with tension. Robert sat slumped in his chair at the head of the table, his face a blotchy, haggard mask. Varys was a picture of calm, while Littlefinger seemed to be enjoying the chaos, a slight smirk playing on his lips. Grand Maester Pycelle dozed.
Barristan’s entrance was an interruption of steel and purpose. The guards at the door stepped aside as he strode in, his armor gleaming, his face set like stone.
"Ser Barristan," Varys murmured. "An unexpected..."
"Your Grace," Barristan said, his voice ringing through the chamber, cutting the eunuch off. He walked to the foot of the table. "I come before you not as your Lord Commander, but as a knight of the Seven Kingdoms, to speak of the rot that has consumed this court."
Robert glared at him, his bloodshot eyes narrowing. "Rot? The only rot I see is an old man who has forgotten his place."
"My place is to defend the realm," Barristan countered, his voice unwavering. "And the realm is in peril. Not from foreign enemies, but from its own king. You have driven your queen to flight. You have ordered the murder of children. You scream at ghosts in the night and have abandoned the governance of the realm to your own despair. This is not kingship. This is madness."
The accusation hung in the air, sharp and deadly. Robert’s face went from blotchy red to a deep, apoplectic purple. He surged to his feet, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. "MAD? YOU DARE CALL ME MAD?" he roared, his voice cracking with fury. "You, who served the Mad King for twenty years and did nothing but polish your pretty sword while he burned good men? You were Aerys’s dog then, and you’re my dog now! And dogs do not question their masters!"
"An old dog, it seems, whose teeth have gone soft," Petyr Baelish added, his voice a silken, cutting drawl. He looked Barristan up and down as if he were an amusing piece of furniture. "Honor is the armor of a fool, Ser Barristan. It is heavy, cumbersome, and the wise man knows when to set it aside to save his own skin. A lesson you, it seems, have never learned. Perhaps it is time for a younger, more… flexible Lord Commander."
Goaded by Littlefinger, Robert pointed a trembling, sausage-like finger at Barristan. "He's right! You're a relic! Get out of my sight, or I swear by the gods, I will have Meryn Trant cut that cloak from your back and use it to wipe my arse!"
A strange, final calm settled over Barristan. He looked at the fat, broken man on the throne, at the smirking lord of coin, at the whispering spider, and he felt nothing but a profound pity.
Slowly, deliberately, he unbuckled his sword belt and laid it on the polished surface of the table. The heavy thump silenced the room. Then, he reached up and unclasped the heavy, silver suns that held his cloak to his shoulders.
"The Kingsguard is a sacred brotherhood," he said, his voice clear and steady. "Its cloak is not yours to give, Your Grace. Nor is it yours to take."
He let the heavy white cloak, the symbol of his entire life, slide from his shoulders. He held it for a moment, then threw it onto the table, where it landed in a heap of pristine white wool.
"I served House Targaryen, and I have served you," he said, his gaze sweeping over every man in the room, a final, damning judgment. "I will not serve a tyrant, a madman, or a fool." He looked Robert squarely in the eye. "There are still dragons in this world, Your Grace. And they are more worthy of a knight’s protection than you ever were."
Without another word, he turned his back on the stunned council, on the sputtering king, on the life he had known. He walked out of the chamber, his armor feeling lighter than it had in fifteen years, his path finally, terribly, clear. He would go east. He would find the children he had failed to protect. And this time, he would not fail.
The world returned with a jarring lurch. One moment, he was on the deck of the Sea Snake, then friendly, treacherous smile of Malo turning to stone; the next, he was being dragged through filth by men who smelled of sour milk and old leather. His fine Valyrian features, once his only source of pride, were pressed into the mud and horse dung that paved the way for a sea of grass. Terror, the old, familiar serpent, was coiled so tightly in his gut he could not breathe.
They dragged him and the unconscious form of Jorah Mormont who was hit on head by ship's captain when they were captured; through the sprawling, chaotic heart of the khalasar. It was a city of smoke and screams, of half-naked children with cold eyes and women who looked at him with open contempt. He was a thing of contempt here. A pale, strange insect to be crushed underfoot.
They were thrown at the feet of a bronze-skinned giant who sat on a mound of mismatched cushions in a great, open-sided tent. The man was a mountain of muscle, his black hair oiled and braided into a queue that hung to his thighs, adorned with ringing bells. Khal Drogo. Beside him, looking smug and victorious, stood Malo and his brother.
Drogo looked down at Viserys, his dark, almond-shaped eyes holding a profound boredom. He spoke, his voice a low, guttural rumble, like stones grinding together.
Malo smiled, his charming face now a mask of cruelty. He translated. "The great Khal Drogo asks if this is the mighty dragon king who hides behind a fat man's robes and breaks his bargains. He says you have the soft, pale hands of a woman and the courage of a mouse that has stolen a crumb of cheese."
Viserys wanted to spit, to scream, to declare his royal blood. But the words were frozen in his throat. He could only tremble.
Drogo spoke again, gesturing with a lazy hand towards Daenerys, who was being held between two warriors, her face a pale, stoic mask.
"The Khal is a generous man," Malo translated. "He says that since you could not honor the gift of your sister, he will take her as a slave, to serve in the Dosh Khaleen. It is more than a lying Westerosi beggar deserves."
One of Drogo's bloodriders, a scarred man with a cruel mouth, stepped forward and spoke, his words sharp and angry as he pointed at Daenerys.
"Qotho says the silver-haired one has strange eyes, the color of the poison flower that grows in the Shadow Lands," Malo said, his voice laced with satisfaction. "He says she is a *maegi*, a witch. He says she should be given to the flames, to cleanse this khalasar of her western sorcery."
A murmur of agreement went through the other Dothraki. Viserys saw the flicker of fear in his sister's eyes and something inside him, something long dead, stirred. Before he could speak, Drogo gave a short, bored command.
Two Dothraki grabbed Viserys. Another kicked Jorah, who had begun to stir, back into the dirt. The beating was impersonal, methodical. Fists and booted feet rained down on him. He felt a rib crack, tasted the coppery tang of his own blood mixing with the filth of the floor. It was the deepest humiliation of his life, and through the haze of pain, he saw them drag his sister away.
Night fell like a shroud. They were tied to a thick, wooden post near the edge of the camp, left exposed to the cold wind and the mockery of passing Dothraki. Jorah, now conscious, was a stoic silhouette of pain beside him, his breathing labored. Viserys ached in every part of his body, the rough rope chafing his raw wrists. This was the end. His grand destiny, his crown of fire and blood, had led to this: to die of exposure in a savage wilderness, tied up like an animal for slaughter. The Beggar King. He had never been more worthy of the name.
He was drifting into a state of numb despair when a small figure emerged from the darkness. It was Ella, the captain's daughter. She moved like a little ghost, her face pale in the moonlight, a stolen skinning knife clutched in her hand. She went straight to Daenerys, who was tied with them, and began sawing at her ropes.
"My father is a bad man," the girl whispered, her voice trembling. "He did this for a chest of gold. You were kind to me. You have to go. Run away."
"Ella, no," Dany whispered back, her voice hoarse. "They will kill you. And what of Ser Jorah? My brother?"
The little girl looked at Viserys, and her face, which had been full of pity for Daenerys, hardened with a child's simple, honest hatred. "No," she said firmly. "He is cruel. He shouted at you. I saw him. You are kind. Only you."
The words struck Viserys harder than any Dothraki fist. *He is cruel.* It was the simple, unvarnished truth, spoken from the mouth of a child. It was his epitaph.
"Stealing things again, are we?" a voice purred from the darkness. Malo stepped into the faint firelight, a wineskin in his hand, his charming smile a predatory slash. "First the kitchen knife, now the dragon's sister. You are a little thief, Ella."
"Leave her alone!" Daenerys hissed, her bonds finally falling away. She stood, placing herself between Malo and the child.
Malo laughed. "And what will you do, witch? Your brother is a beaten dog, your knight is half-dead. You have nothing." He lunged, not for Daenerys, but for Ella, grabbing the girl by the arm. "The Khal will want his knife back. And he will want to punish the thief."
A desperate, primal scream tore from Daenerys's throat as she shoved Malo with all her might. He stumbled back, surprised by her ferocity. Ella, still clutching the knife, was thrown off balance. She fell backward. Daenerys, reaching out to catch her, to save her, only managed to push her further. There was a soft, wet thud. The little girl gave a small gasp, her eyes wide with shock. The hilt of the skinning knife protruded from her own small chest. She had fallen on it.
For a moment, the world was silent. Then Malo let out a roar of pure, animal grief and rage. "You killed her! Witch! You killed my niece!"
He flew at Daenerys, his hands outstretched like claws. And in that moment, Viserys acted. He wasn't a king. He wasn't a dragon. He was just a brother. With a surge of adrenaline he did not know he possessed, he threw his entire body weight against the post, again and again, grunting with pain and effort. The wood, old and sun-bleached, splintered. He was free.
He launched himself at Malo's back just as the man reached Daenerys. They crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Malo was stronger, his hands finding Viserys's throat, squeezing the life from him. Viserys clawed at his face, his vision tunneling, black spots dancing before his eyes. His flailing hand found something hard and sharp on the ground. The knife. He gripped it, and with the last of his strength, he drove it upward, into the soft flesh of Malo's side. Once. Twice. Thrice. Again and again and again.
Malo gave a choked cry, his grip loosening. He rolled off, staring at Viserys with eyes full of disbelief before falling still.
The commotion had brought Dothraki running, their arakhs drawn. But Jorah, who had broken his own bonds in the chaos, was on his feet. He make a quick work of the savage dothraki guards, giving them a feq precious seconds of rest.
Viserys lay on the ground, gasping for air, the dead man's blood warm and sticky on his hands. He had killed a man. He looked at Daenerys. She was staring at Ella’s small, still body, tears streaming down her face, her body shaking with silent, racking sobs. She was broken.
Then, she looked up. And the tears in her eyes were gone, her face a mask of cold, terrible resolve. She was a ...... a queen, forged in blood and grief in the space of a single heartbeat.
"They will be here in moments," she said, her voice not a whisper, but a clear, cold command. "Ser Jorah, get their horses. Viserys, the chest. The dragon eggs. And here's what you two shall do....."
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