Chapter Text
Flame for the Dawn
Book one
The dragons road
Chapter 1 — Ash and Storm
Rain came in off the bay before the sun had gathered the courage, a fine, needling drizzle that turned the courtyard stones slick and made everything smell of salt and smoke.
The sky reflection her feelings as Rhaenyra Targaryen stood among those who attended her mother’s —the Queen Aemma Arryn of House Targaryen’s funeral. Beside the queen lay the small body of the son Aemma died for: Baelon Targaryen, heir to iron throne and prince of Dragonstone. Her brother outlived their mother for a few hours before his heart gave out. Before his breath grew weak.
Rhaenyra wanted to cry, for her mother, for her brother, and, treacherously, for herself. But she could not, not here, not now. Not surrounded by the vipers circling her family, at least of what remains of her family. A dragon does not fracture where the realm can see.
Her gaze slid to the grieving King.
Her father did not turn to her. King Viserys Targaryen chose to stand alone, no Otto next to him to whisper his poison into his ears, not even the king’s brother to shoulder a part of the burden.
No, her uncle Prince Daemon Targaryen — once more bearing the title of Prince of Dragonstone- stood beside her. He lend his strength to the daughter who had lost her mother, his gloved hand resting on her shoulder, a quiet promise that she was normt untethered.
The familiar scent of smoke and dragonfire clung to him, warm even in the chill drizzle. His presence anchored her when the world felt as if it might slip into the sea.
The septon’s voice rose over the wind, reciting the Andal burial rites. Her mother had been raised under the Faith of the Seven-who-are-One, and so the court honored that creed.
Rhaenyra listened, hollow, remembering every time she and Aemma had sparred over belief.
Like her uncle, Rhaenyra felt the stronger pull of the old Valyrian gods- the fourteen flames, the power that had given their bloodline dragons and a tongue of their own.
Even the Old Gods of the First Men left tokens of their presence: greenseers, wargs.
But the Seven?
Never had she seen them grant proof of their existence.
Aemma had prayed anyway- through each pregnancy, each lost babe- until the last prayer ended in blood.
If the Seven were real, what kind of mercy was this?
Anger coiled through her: at her mother for leaving, choosing a potential son over the daughter she already had, at her father for letting it happen, for pressuring her mother for a male heir, at herself being born a daughter and not the son who might have spared Aemma endless pregnancies and births. Would her mother have suffered less if Rhaenyra had been born male?
Would the Queen have been allowed to be a mother, instead of a vessel?
And under the anger, a shameful pulse of relief.
Relief that her mother no longer suffered. Relief that the long dread of the birthing bed was finished.
It was a thought Rhaenyra tried to crush, but it beat on in time with her heart.
A deep, impatient rumble reached her even through the hymn- the sound of Syrax in the distance.
The golden dragon sensed her rider’s turmoil and waited for the command that would send fire over the pyre.
Daemon’s fingers pressed lightly against he shoulder, a gentle nudge.
“They are waiting for you,” he said low enough for only Rhaenyra to be able to hear.
“Syrax is waiting for you to give the command.”
She did not turn to him, her gaze wandering to her father.
“Do you think, that for the few hours my brother lived, father found happiness?”
“Your father needs you. Now more than he ever did before. You are all that it left of the woman he loved.” The high Valyrian flowed like a melody between them.
“Did he though? Love her, I mean,” Rhaenyra asked the bitterness slipping free before she could cage it.
Daemon had no answer.
For years everyone had believed Viserys adored Aemma above all else, but belief did not quiet the memory of her mother’s pain.
Rhaenyra drew a sharp breath and turned to Syrax, her golden lady, her truest companion. She hesitated only a heartbeat.
“Dracarys,” her voice was steadier than she felt.
Flame answered.
Golden fire rushed over the pyre, devouring wood and flesh alike, heat blooming against the cold rain.
The smell of burning pitch and salt meat filled the courtyard.
Rhaenyra stared into the blaze, watching the flames reach for what remains of her mother and the brother she had barely known.
Time blurred.
Minutes, hours- she could not tell.
Rain thickened, running down her cheeks until she no longer knew which drops were tears.
Daemon stayed beside her, a black silhouette against the fire.
Ser Harrold Westerling stood a respectful distance away, helm tucked beneath one arm.
Neither men spoke of the tears she could not hide.
The crowed thinned to nothing.
Only when the sky darkened to the colour of forged steel did Daemon step closer.
“It is time,” he said quietly, not a command but a steady truth.
Rhaenyra gave the fire one last look.
The world seemed to tilt: grief, fury, and guilty relief pressing against her ribs until she could hardly draw breath.
Then she placed her hand in Daemon’s offered palm.
The courtyard was nearly deserted.
Carriages had carried the king and his courtiers back to the Red Keep, leaving only the hiss of rain on stone and grass.
Daemon lead her to the waiting horses, his cloak swinging like a shadow of Caraxes wings.
He did not rush her; each step felt deliberate, grounding.
They mounted in silence.
The city’s streets were dark and wet, torchlight breaking on the rain-slick cobbles like scattered stars.
Smallfolk peered from doorways and bowed their heads as the dragonriders passed.
The hoofbeats echoed off shuttered shops and dripping eaves, the rhythm slow and sure.
Rhaenyra kept her eyes on the road ahead, but she felt her uncle’s presence like a wall of heat beside her- steady, unyielding, the only fixed point in a night that threatened to wash her away.
She said nothing and neither did he.
Words would have been too small for the weight between them.
When the Red Keep finally loomed through the mist, its towers dark against the storm, she realized she had not once loosened her grip on the reins- or on the thought that Daemon’s silence was the first kindness she’d been offered all day.
By the time they reached the Red Keep, the storm had soaked her to the bone.
Rain streamed from her hair, pooling in the folds of her black cloak before dripping to the floor, turning the cobble stones of the royal stables slick beneath their boots.
Daemon swung down first, then offered a hand. She took it without a word, the warmth of his fingers startling after the cold ride.
Inside the keep, servants scattered like startled birds at the sight of the princess and her uncle dripping water onto the rushes.
Annora, her youngest handmaid, was the first to recover. The young woman was not much older than the princess, only nine and ten. Annora’s dark braid clung to her back as she dropped into a nervous curtsey.
“Princess- gods, you are trenched,” she said, worry in her voice as she stepped toward the princess.
“We should get you into a hot bath before you catch a cold.”
A taller figure stepped behind them: Merynella, the senior maid, who had watched over Rhaenyra since infancy. Silver threaded through her dark brown almost black hair, while her face bore the calm of someone who had seen every kind of courtly storm.
She set her hands on her hips, assessing the soaked princess with a healer’s eye. Her gaze softened.
“Strait to the solar, your Highness,” Merynella said firmly, but not unkindly. Her voice held warmth despite the authoritative tone.
“If you keep those wet clothes on you’ll wake with a fever. Better we do not take the risk.”
Rhaenyra might have refused- might have claimed she wished only for sleep- but despite the kindness in Merynella’s voice, her tone left no room for argument.
Merynella gaze turned to Daemon, the prince being equally as trenched as the princess.
“The same goes for you, my Prince.” Her tone did not change, still filled with warmth and authority.
Daemon gave a nod, his eyes meeting his niece’s, obey her, his gaze seem to say.
Rhaenyra was surprised, her uncle did not argue with Merynella.
As she watched Daemon leave for his own chambers, Anita and Merynella herded Rhaenyra to her solar.
Steam soon filled her bathing chamber, heavy with the scent of lemon balm and rose oil.
Annora knelt to pour heated water from a brass ewer, her hands quick and careful.
Merynella worked at the laces of Rhaenyra’s sodden gown, fingers deft despite the fabric’s dampness.
The silk clung stubbornly to her skin: when it finally slipped free it landed with a wet slap on the tiles.
“Sit, child,” Merynella murmured, the endearment gently but unyielding.
To a normal person the bathing water would have been too hot, not to Rhaenyra. To her the temperature was almost perfect.
The princess lowered herself into the water with a sigh of contentment. She let the warmth seep through the ache of cold muscles. Steam rising like the breath of a dragon around her.
Her eyes drifted close, while the days event lingered in her mind.
Faces floated through the haze: Lady Redwyne with her lemon-scented hands, Lord Corlys Velaryon, eyes already measuring the line of succession; Otto Hightower with his voice as smooth as polished stone.
The realm mourns with you, he had spoken as thought he was mourning the queen’s loss were a duty to be performed, a mask like any other.
Beneath all the courtesies she had felt it- a memory of every whispered jest about her mother’s empty cradle, the sly gazes when another babe was lost. They had mocked the Queen Aemma for years, calling her womb barren, her body a failure to a wife’s duty. Rhaenyra had heard it all, too young at first to truly understand, old enough later to burn with helpless fury. Only her mother’s ladies, the maids serving both princess and queen, Ser Harrold and her uncle Daemon treated the Queen with the respect she owed to a woman of her rank.
A few times, she witnessed as her uncle defended Aemma infront of the small council, when the topic of a male heir rose again.
The court is a nest of vipers.
She could not agree more with her uncles words. And on this very night, those words coiled through Rhaenyra’s mind and settled there.
She had walked through that nest since her mother’s death while they pressed their perfumed condolences upon her.
Annora’s soft voice broke the silence, pulling Rhaenyra from her thoughts. “Shall I fetch more oils, Princess?” She spoke low as though she did not wish to startle the princess from her own mind.
“No,” Rhaenyra’s answer came softer than she intended. “This is enough.”
Merynella took a cloth to the water, wrung it out and gently pressed it against Rhaenyra’s neck.
“You did well, your Highness,” her voice was low but firm. “Standing as you did.”
“Did I?” Rhaenyra opened her eyes as she spoke, her gaze turning to the maid. “It felt like I was wearing another one’s face.”
“Thus is the burden of royalty,” Merynella’s reply came swift, her finger treading through the princess’s hair, freeing it from from knots and tangles.
“To carry the mask until the world believes it is your truth.”
The words might have stung, had Rhaenyra not heard the respect hidden in Merynella’s voice. Rhaenyra let her head rest against the tub’s rim, when Merynella was done with her hair.
For the first time since she had given Syrax the command to set the funeral pyre aflame she let her thoughts and feelings roam freely- grief twisting with anger, and beneath it all that small, shameful relief that her mother’s death ended her suffering.
Steam gathered on her lashes, undistinguishable from tears.
Annora refilled the brass ewer, and the hiss of the steaming water was the only sound for a while. Rhaenyra listened to it and to the steady beat of her own heart, and thought about how the lords and ladies had bowed today, not in sorrow but in calculation.
Not so Daemon. No her uncle had given her the kindness of silence. He stood by her side without speaking empty words.
When the bath began to cool, Merynella tapped the rim with a practised hand.
“That is enough, princess. The water loses it’s warmth.”
Reluctantly Rhaenyra rose. Steam curled from her skin as Merynella wrapped her in a length of fine-woven linen, the cloth warm from the brazier. Annora followed with another towel and together the two women began their work. They moved with the unhurried precision of long habit, blotting rather than rubbing so the damp fabric drank the water without bruising skin. The scent of rose oil clung to the steam, softening the chill that lingered in her bones.
Merynella fetched a second stripe of linen and drew it gently along Rhaenyra’s hair, pressing, not scrubbing, her motion steady as the tides. Annora stood ready with a wide-toothed comb carved of pale bone. Once most of the wet has been coaxed away, she began to part the silver-gold strands into long ropes, easing the teeth through each section until it fell smooth and gleaming over her shoulders. The brazier hissed when a sudden gust rattled the shutters and flung one window wide, letting a spray of cold rain patter across the sill. A few drops struck the coals with a sharp sizzle, sending up a casing breath of lemon balm from the rinsing water. Wind moaned through the narrow seams of the stonework, as though the whole castle exhaled.
When Annora reached for the nightgown of soft black silk, Rhaenyra lifted a hand to stop her.
“Not the nightgown,” she said quietly. “I…don’t think I’d be able to sleep.”
Annora hesitated, the garment poised between her hands. “Then what will you wear, princess?”
Rhaenyra crossed to the cedar chest by the dressing-room door and knelt to open it. From within she drew a pair of pale, sand-colored leather trousers and a loose tunic the color of a clear summer sky. “These,” she decided, speaking more to herself then the maid.
Daemon had brought them from Essos moons ago, insisting that every dragonrider should own clothing fit for flight and travel.
The faint spice of foreign dye still lingered in the leather, a whisper of far ports and restless winds. She had never worn it beyond her chambers, until tonight. A nightgown would only invite sleep and the dreams she dreaded; she needed the steadiness of boots and trousers, something that promised movement rather than stillness.
The storm’s voice pressed at the keep from all sides- howling in the chimneys, sighting through the gaps of ancient stone. It was as though the whole castle breathed around her, waiting to see where she would go.
The storm still prowled the Red Keep when Rhaenyra stepped into the corridor. Wind whistled through unseen seams in the stone, carrying the sea’s brine and the faint copper tang of wet iron. A lone torch guttered in its sconces, its flame bending under each draft. Behind her, Ser Harrold Westerling fell into place with the soft scrape of mail, but tonight his tread stayed a careful distance back.
He seemed to understand she wanted the illusion of solitude.
She walked without aim, leather soles whispering over rush-strewn floors. The keep breathed around her: doors groaning in the wind, shutters banging like distant drums.
From somewhere deep below came the muted roar of waves striking the cliffs, the sound rising and falling like a giant’s sigh.
Her thoughts drifted as the corridors turned.
Father will wed again, she heard herself think.
Another queen. Another heir.
Otto’s patient voice followed: For the stability of the realm…
And her own future- bartered to some lord for alliances and sons- tightened around her ribs until every breath felt borrowed. She quickened her pace as if she might outrun it.
A sharper scent cut through the damp air. Iron. Soap. The acrid ghost of blood scoured with lye. Rhaenyra slowed, her heart kicking against her ribs. Only when she saw the soft spill of lamplight across the soft rushes did she realize where her steps had taken her.
Her mother’s chambers.
The heavy door stood a hand’s breadth ajar. Beyond it lamplight flickered over shadows of women at work. Their voices carried clearly through the hush.
“…the babe was turned wrong,” whispered a maid, voice trembling. “The head midwife would have tried to turn him- said it. Ould be done.”
“Aye, but Maester Mellos cut her short,” another answered, voice thick with tears. “Said cutting was the only chance.”
“And the king agreed,” a third said bitterly. “Ser Otto at his side, saying it was for the good of the realm. They never even let the midwife speak again.”
A wet sound followed- the wring of a bloody cloth, the slap of water in a basin. Someone stifled a sob. “Seven help her soul. She never even screamed.”
Rhaenyra pressed her back to the cold stone. The words struck harder than the wind. The king agreed. Her father. Her breath came shallow, the corridor tilting as if the sea beneath Dragonstone had risen to meet her.
She tasted iron on her tongue and did not know if it was from the storm or the memory of blood.
Behind her, Ser Harrold’s boots shifted. He said nothing. Whether he too heard the women or simply chose silence, she could not tell. His presence felt distant, a shadow respectful of of her need for this cruel knowledge.
Inside, the women continued their work, unaware of the princess standing just beyond the door, every word they spoke cutting another thread. Rhaenyra’s fingers dug into the stone until her nails ached.
Her mother’s chambers had prayed to the Seven for mercy. Her father had given the word for the knife.
A gust of wind slammed another shutter somewhere down the hall. The women startled but did not look to the door. Rhaenyra turned away from the queen’s chambers, cloak snapping in the draft, and walked away on legs that barely felt the ground.
The storm swallowed her footsteps, but the words she heard would not be drowned.
The king agreed.
Each repetition was a blade, cutting deeper.
The corridors of the Red Keep seemed endless, shadows stretching like claws across the stone. Rhaenyra walked without knowing where her feet carried her, only what she had overheard—her mother’s death bargained away with a nod, her suffering dismissed as the price of a son.
Her hands trembled as she pushed open the door to her chamber. The storm had eased to a steady rain, wind sighing through the shutters. The air smelled of. Salt and smoke, of the sea beyond the walls.
She stepped onto the balcony. Blackwater Bay churned below, restless and dark.
She pressed her palms to the damp stone railing and lifted her gaze to the storm-broken sky.
“Syrax,” she whispered, tears and rain mixing on her cheeks. The word not spoken as command but as plea.
A plea for what, she could not name yet.
For a moment nothing seemed to answer but the wind.
Then a golden shape tore free of the clouds, vast wings scattering rain in sheets. Lightning flared along her scales, painting her in fire.
Syrax circled once before aligning on the balcony. Stone cracked beneath her talons, sparks hissing where her claws scraped the balustrade. Her great head lowered, eyes whirling, breath a hot rush that smelled of smoke and iron.
Rhaenyra did not flinch. She pressed her forehead to Syrax’s snout, her tears lost in the rain.
“They took her from me,” she whispered. “They will take everything, if I let them.”
Syrax shifted, wings mantling against the wind. She needed no further urging.
Rhaenyra climbed into the sattle with practised ease her cloak whipping in the gale. One sharp word—“Sōvēs”—and Syrax launched skyward.
The balcony fell away in a spray of scattered water, the keep shrinking to a smear of torchlight against the storm.
The city vanished beneath clouds, and with it the weight of her father’s court. Ahead lay only rain, wind, and the black silhouette of Dragonstone waiting beyond the bay.
For the first time since her mother’s death, Rhaenyra breathed.