Chapter Text
The Throne Room’s air is heated. Tension is so thick in the air one could cut through it with a knife. Advising lords come and go at the Queen’s side and poison her mind with their opinions. Besides Rhaenyra stands her faithful Lord Hand Corlys Velaryon and her bellicose husband, the Prince Daemon. The one who elaborates their strategies and the one who executes them.
He has returned to Dragonstone for merely three days, but he already misses the freedom the Riverlands offered. Back there, the lands were easily taken, the objectives easily conquered. To this bunch of peasants and fishermen, Daemon and his dragon were plagues sent by the gods. They kneeled before them and every lord from the Trident to the Golden Tooth agreed to support the rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Those who resisted her authority risked the same destiny as Harrenhal, a century ago. When Harren the Black had refused to surrender to Aegon, the latter had laid a curse upon the dark fortress. “When the sun sets, your line shall end.” In the twilight, Balerion blocked the remaining light of the sun and showered Harren’s castle in dragonfire. They cooked in walls of stone until dawn and some said Aegon fed the fuming corpses to his mount. The lesson was learned by all. As they remembered Aegon’s cruelty, lords of the Riverlands did not dare to question the queen’s legitimacy.
Yet Daemon’s face bears the marks of worry and exhaustion. In Dragonstone, he faces more challenges and battles than in the Riverlands. He stands at his wife’s side and leans on Dark Sister, as if it were a cane and him an old man. He remains silent, spares his tongue the effort of contradict her councilors.
Earlier today, a raven arrived from the Capital. It announced the imminent arrival of a Green delegation to Dragonstone. The usurpers were finally ready to negotiate the prince’s liberation. The letter was written by the Queen Mother herself and sealed by her hand. “Rhaenyra,” she pleaded in dark brown ink. “You and I are both mothers. My firstborn is severely injured, my first daughter is mourning her own and my second son rots in your dungeons. Where is your mercy ?” Alicent Hightower’s desperate call had quite the opposite effect — it only enraged the Blacks even more, made them proud and confident. They could already taste the victory on their tongue and hear songs to their glory. Daemon listened as his wife read her old friend’s words but believed none of it. He saw clear through the Queen Mother’s white lies.
Despite his efforts to contain their feverish enthusiast, they played with the pawns on the Painted Table as if they were playing chess. All black pawns crowded the Crownlands, ready to swallow King’s Landing whole. There it was, their infamous plan. Strike when Alicent begs for mercy and bring the Greens down to their knees. When Jacaerys spoke of an attack of the Capital, Rhaenyra agreed to listen. The boy-prince went over the details of his grandsire’s strategy — dragons would lead the armies on the battlefield and besiege the city as long as it is necessary. The Triarchy has been defeated in the Stepstones, which meant they controlled the sea routes as well. The Velaryon fleet would invade the Blackwater Bay to prevent anyone from fleeing the Capital and Rhaenyra would sit her father’s throne for good. She smiled to the idea when Lord Corlys concluded his grandson’s explanations.
Daemon couldn’t repress a derisive snicker, but his peers chose to ignore him and the Rogue Prince sunk into the shadows of the hall. He glanced at his two daughters, standing proud alongside their intendeds and participating to the heated debates and there he understood — he didn’t belong here. He belongs with dragons, not mere mortals. He is not a man fitted for discussions, he is fire made flesh — impulsive, unpredictable, unstoppable.
In all of Westeros and perhaps Essos even, there is only one soul similar to his. Someone with a free-spirit and little morals, someone with bloody hands and a deadly tongue. Someone whose’s soul bears the same marks of infamy, whose eyes have seen enough horrors to freeze one’s heart with terror. There is only one little girl and it’s not Rhaenyra, nor Baela, nor Rhaena, nor Laena Velaryon herself, but Naera Targaryen. The Undead, they call her now when she’s not listening. Three days now that he walks the same hallways as her and spends his nights trying to understand what miracle brought her back to him. Three nights now that he speaks to the flames and thanks his brother’s god. He speaks to R’hllor in the tongue of dragons, in the tongue of fire and the Red God listens. Perhaps he has earned himself another believer.
She isn’t the same as before, in both body and spirit. She is slimmer, but her skin is darker — there is a subtle tan to it, but no red to adorn her cheeks. Sun has revealed the freckles and dried her lips. Rhaenyra said that she spent most of her days on the beaches since her return, watching at the dragons flying above the sea. She said that his niece fled the crowds and the loud discussions of the Throne Room and preferred the song of the waves, that perhaps it soothed her mind. She had always been a loner, Daemon thought, but it is true that she is colder now, so calm and quiet it is almost disturbing. As if she’d been drained of her emotions, her body is like a hollow shell of flesh. She’s like cold embers in the hearth when morning comes — she has survived the night but has no warmth, nor light left to give. In his joy to retrieve his niece safe and sound, he also felt saddened by her icy touch and temper. Daemon held her for long minutes and kissed her forehead, but felt no heat coming from her skin, no bliss fill her heart. It felt like holding a ghost.
The audience stops talking and the silence drags Daemon out of his contemplation. All eyes turn to the stairs and the silhouette that hurtle down the steps, dressed in dirty clothes and a riding attire. Naera paces the distance to the Painted Table and faces the rest of her kin with her impassible stare.
“I have come to claim what’s owed Your Grace.”
Rhaenyra grimaces as she brings her hands over her belly, still healing from the wounds dead Visenya inflicted on the way out. But it is not reminiscing pain that makes her face twitch, but distress. She turns to Corlys for assistance with her puppy violet eyes and avoids Daemon’s piercing glare at all cost. If she meets his mulberry coloured eyes, she’s afraid of what she might find.
Naera cocks her head to the side and her glance goes from the Black Queen to her husband. “Has my uncle made up his mind yet ?”
It is Daemon’s turn to pull a face, but his grimace is more amused than Rhaenyra’s. He straightens his spine, using Dark Sister as a symbol of his indubitable might as he walks into the light. Gleaming dark amethysts stare back into his niece’s lilac beacons and a smirk comes to adorn his face. “About what ?” the Rogue Prince inquires.
Rhaenyra chooses honesty over a dangerous lie. Her silence has done enough to conceal the truth. Had they been alone in a room, Daemon would have crushed her for this and deep down inside she knows it. Queen or not, he’ll punish her for her imprudence. “The Princess Naera considers her service to the Crown a debt to be paid. She has saved Lucerys’s life and sacrificed a dragon for his safety. She wants to candidate.”
Apart from Naera and the Queen herself, no one knew about their little conversation. In Rhaenyra’s mouth, her demand sounds impudent but when the words come to Daemon’s ears, it only makes his grin grow in intensity. Whispers rise in the room but Naera doesn’t let them cut through her thick scales. She stands tall and proud, fortified by the the blood of the dragon running through her veins.
“You put bastards and peasants on dragonback but you refuse your own kin,” Naera hisses. “I am the blood of Old Valyria, Your Grace. I have an equal claim to greatness.”
“Who would you claim ?” the Lord Hand intervenes, trying his best to ignore Daemon’s insisting gaze. “Hugh Hammer has Vermithor, Ulf the White Silverwing, Hull Brothers have Seasmoke and Grey Ghost. Who would you go to war with, sweet child ? Sheepstealer ?”
The man snickers and carries the rest of the audience with him. Rhaenyra starts to speak and puts an end to their mockery.
“As I have said before, this decision is not mine to take Naera,” the Black Queen answers, tight-lipped.
“It is now,” the silver-haired princess mutters as she slams her hand on the table.
When her delicate fingers retire, a small rounded stone rolls over the Painted Table. It follows the course of the map and stops in a pond of fire where the Trident begins. The gleaming sapphire lands in the God’s Eye and draws a dreadful whimper from the audience. Rhaenyra stares at the purple-blue jewel and its unfathomable depths, likeness to an eye that seems to stare back at the queen. She wavers and looks away, but Daemon doesn’t. This time, his smile is too big to be concealed — it reveals two rows of white pointy teeth and hints of pride.
It is Aemond’s eye she has brought to the Painted Table. She has captured the murderous prince and robbed the Blacks of their most precious asset. A cruel, daring yet brilliant plan.
With one wave of her hand, Rhaenyra commands her queensguard to seize the girl but before they could lie hands on her, she speaks again.
“The One-Eye is my prisoner now. You’ll never find him without me,” she threatens. “Touch me and he is gone forever.”
“What have you done to him ?” Corlys blurted. “Princess, you cannot play with so many lives. Much is at stake here—”
“Oh, I am not playing Lord Hand,” Naera refutes, grinning to match her uncle’s expression. “An eye for an eye, a dragon for a dragon. Pay your debt now my Queen, or I’ll come back with another eye.”
The night is dark and full of terrors, but tonight he is visited by sweet dreams only.
Aemond lies in the damp grass under a warm summer sun. An apple tree casts its cool shade over his head and when he rises from his bed of lush herbs, he is blinded by the light. His eye slowly accommodates to the dazzling sunlight and catches glimpse of tall stained-glass windows and grey-stone walls, surrounded by mountains and orchards, ponds and flowers. Summerhall lies before his eyes, as splendid and sweet as he remembers it. This place is the closest thing to heaven on earth. As a boy he used to run around the orchards and play hide and seek with the rest of his cousins, or bathe in the refreshing waters of the blue-coloured ponds while their mothers drank tea. Summerhall has always been a blessed place but when the awe has passed, melancholy takes over his heart. He thinks of the lively little princess that used to follow Helaena everywhere and he mourns her once more.
However, she has not deserted his dreams. This time, she doesn’t emerge from dark waters of a troubling lake. She dances alone barefoot on the grass under the setting sun, silver hair turned to gold by the dimming light. She wears the same white dress as before, but the crown on her head has blossomed. The dead laurels and thorns have turned to thistles and marigolds, bay leafs and daisies on top of her head. She smiles and laughs, more dazzling than the sun could ever be. Aemond runs to her and she doesn’t run, nor vanish. He holds her tight, filling his nose with the honey-scented smell of her summer skin. She has come like spring after a long winter — her sacred touch breathes life into his dead limbs, a beat to his numb and heavy heart. He kisses the irresistible curve of her neck and climbs its delightful slope all the way to her heart-shaped lips, his panting breath fanning over her sunkissed skin. It seems to him that he is climbing a mountain, a stairway to heaven. He comes to her kisses with the fire of an unchained meteor, spilling tears of gold against the tenderness of her face.
They feverish embrace seems to last forever, he cannot let go of her. Still, she finds a way out of his arms and captures his hand in her grasp. She grasps his hand yes, and grasps his heart in same time. She pulls on his arm and drags him across the meadows where the mountains begins to rise high. The sky darkens above their heads and day turns to night. They reach a clearing and she lets go of his hand.
She turns to him with playful eyes and a soft smile, but when she speaks her voice has nothing tender to it. It’s thundering and hollow. “Why don’t you run away ?”
When he wakes up from his dream, he feels damp clothes sticking to his skin. A cold wind sweeps across the room and Aemond realizes this is not his solars surrounding him, but a gloomy cavern made of dark stone. The prince observes and wonders if the queensguard have come during the night to take him to a bleaker dungeons. He lowers his gaze to his hands and feet, still shackled by heavy chains. He tries to get up but hears the metallic sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath. Cold steel meets with his neck and forces his chin up.
“I guess my dear sister has finally decided to put an end to my misery ?” Aemond blurts out, unable to glance sideways at the bearer of the blade.
He ears a chuckle first. “No, but I have.”
Aemond turns his head to the side and the blade draws blood from his milky skin, but the pain is moot compared to what his eye sees. She stands in the daylight, in the entrance of the cave, silver hair twirling and dancing in the wind. The sword she holds casts its glow over her face and reveals lilac eyes full of contempt. She has traded her white gown for a dragonriding armor, swords and daggers. In Summerhall, she wore attires dedicated to leisures and pleasures, here in the dusky cave, she wears breeches, boots and silver plates. For a moment he stares with his mouth agape at the apparition and wonders if he isn’t still dreaming.
Naera wipes the small drops of blood pooling at the ends of her blade and puts it back in its sheath. She crouches down to his level, not faltering a little. His lips trembles with a thousand questions and his heart throbs erratically in his chest, so loud he is afraid she might hear it go mad within his bones.
He has seen her fall across the sky and sink into an ocean of grey clouds. He has watched and begged Vhagar to stop, thrown his body into the void to reach for her hand. He was ready to dive into the sea and follow her, if only Vhagar had allowed it. He has cried her name into the storms, broken his voice in the process. He has wept for this dead princess every day of his life since her fall and blamed himself for her death.
And yet, there she is staring at him with unfathomable pale violet eyes and tight lips. The more the moments pass, the less unreal she seems. Is this some cruel joke from the Gods, Aemond wonders. But he is naive to think the Seven have a power of life and death above all things, for it is R’hllor who brings light upon the darkness and fights the long night. It is R’hllor who pulled her dead body from the cold sea and filled her loins with his heat. It is R’hllor who has saved her, guided her to this very moment, gifted her with some of his powers. She is one of them now, one of the Red Priests — kissed by the shadows, blessed by the fire. A blanket of darkness wrapped around a heart of flames.
She is a warrior of light — a Lightbringer.
The silver-headed princess cocks her head to the side and rivets her gaze on him. She lingers on his features for a brief moment, observing the dark circles around his eye and the bruises running along his skin. It bears the marks of Rhaenyra’s guards’s cruelty, guilt perhaps and exhaustion. For months now, he has been atoning for his crimes. Imprisonment looks awful on him.
He sits on the damp ground, breeches sullied by the mud and eye glinting in equal parts terror and fascination. She wonders how he feels now. Does he think he has finally gone to madness ? For the first time ever, she is the dragon and him the prey.
Yes for a moment, she holds him whole in her claws but the shock quickly dissipates. Aemond gathers what remains of his broken spirits and put the pieces back together. He thinks of stolen kisses first, and forbidden touches in the hallways and alleys. He thinks of her face drenched in tears, body twitching in pleasure, mean words and eyes bidding farewell. He thinks of the many letters he has thought of writing and the gift he has passed onto Ser Erryk for her. Sapphires suit you better than rubies, he had written on a tiny piece of parchment with his own ring. The same ring returned to him with a disturbing note. It’s coming for you too.
She has never died, nor succumbed to the tremendous sea. It was her from the start, playing with his sanity, plotting her vengeance from whatever dim chamber of Dragonstone. He ignores everything of the ordeal she’s been through to return home and to her kin, what she has sacrificed to be here. She has crawled at the surface of the earth, bloodied her hands, frozen her heart, doomed her soul — not for glory nor personal satisfaction, but for peace. Her sole desire comes in the shape of wings strong enough to take her to the ends of the world, where she’ll happily live the rest of her days in the purest oblivion.
“It cannot be. This cannot be you,” the One-Eye stammers, gaze trembling to match his tone. His erratic eye crazes at the sight of her face, intact and bewitching. “This cannot be, you fell. I saw it Naera, you died.”
He has called her by her name — the first time in months he has dared to utter it. Naera. He forbade himself to bring this dreadful word to his lips. Naera. A forsaken memory fading into the waves and washed up by the tides. Naera. The one who lights the way.
The warrior princess crouches down, a cape of silvery hair draping her shoulders and the wind brings the sweet smell of her skin to his nose. Ashes and roses merged together, with touches of smoke and salt from the air. It arouses so much memories he has to look away to keep the tears to his eye.
“You and I have unfinished business,” she mutters, laying a scornful glare on him.
Something crumbles in his chest and a vivid pain flares and spreads to his entire body like a scorching fire. With one glance, she has set his soul ablaze.
He scrambles to get on his knees and like a beggar in the ruin, he lends supplicating hands in her direction. “You shouldn’t have been here. It should have been Lucerys, not you. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to, I only wanted to frighten the boy, I—”
“This is a lie,” the resentful princess interrupts.
“I swear on my life it’s no lie !” the poor man refutes, his tortured expression betraying whatever sentiments his heart harbours. “You must believe me.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. What matters now is that I don’t have a name, nor a home, nor a dragon anymore because of you.”
Aemond stays with his mouth half-opened and the words refuses to pass the threshold of his lips.
“It is only justice you help me reconquer it all,” she continues. “I want you to put out your eye in payment for my life.”
His heart skips a beat. She draws the dagger from its sheath. The blade dances between her fingers, curved and gleaming like a dragon’s fang made of steel. Aemond feels like a child all over again, beaten black and blue by his cousins and fighting for his survival. He sees Lucerys’s knife again and his body remembers the searing pain his cruelty has aroused. His face twitches with fear as he pushes on the ground with his feet, rearing back until he hits the cold wall of the cave.
She stares at him and reads the limpid terror his in dark mulberry eyes. It draws a faint grin from her. “I don’t butcher princes. The sapphire will do.”
Aemond nods without a word. She casts the dagger aside and surges forward, kneeling on the mud herself to reach for his face. “Let me help,” whispers in a breath. Soft fingers smelling of flowers come for the straps of his eye-patch and loosen its hold, until it falls in the palm of her hands. Her touch is so dear to him. He recalls of the first time she has ever cared to touch his face, when she used her mother’s remedies to wipe away the blood of his wounds and soothes the bruises on his skin. The very moment he realized that perhaps, a part of him had always loved her and would always do so. The very moment he realized he wanted her to touch him over and over again and take away his fears, pains, sorrows and shames.
He can’t help but to capture her hands in his fingers, now calloused and quivering. He raises his face towards her with his scar completely revealed to her eyes for the first time. She sees what him for what he is now. A broken boy with a broken face, and nothing to brag about.
“I should have never let you go. I thought you would be safer here, that you would be happier with Baela. I know how much you love her. You are like sisters, aren’t you ? You have always been, I remember it well still. I wanted you to be happy, not dead.” He apologizes for the bluntness of his revelation, when in truth, he regrets none of it. For a brief moment, her eyes glint with something close enough to tenderness and he sees her soul shudder behind her mask of indifference. “You were right,” he mumbles. “I have never hated you. Not even a little.”
“The eye,” she insists, choosing to ignore his words. “Give it to me now.”
There is nothing he can do or say to make her change her mind.
Not without pain, he removes the shimmering sapphire from his maimed eye socket and drops it in the palm of her hand. She is quick to get on her feet, capturing the small treasure between her clenched fingers. With her other hand, she throws a bag at his feet. “Victuals,” she blurts. Before she leaves the cave, she unties her cape and gives it to the prince. “I’ll be back soon enough, get warm and don’t move. Dragons hate the sound of chains.”
“I’ll wait for you then”, he responds with a weak smile.
Before the day ends, she returns to the cave. The sun has already begun to fall from his height in the sky and the dark stones around them are now bathed in golden hues. Her arms are loaded with an heavy rope and there is no sword hanging from her belt anymore — only the dagger, inherited from her father. She paces the distance to the cave, slightly panting from all the effort. She follows a white haired man, invisible to the eyes of mere mortals. Only the dead can see the dead.
Aegon leads the way and takes her into the depths of the Dragonmont, where Aemond waits with no knowledge of where he stays, nor what fate awaits him. She walks in her forebear’s steps and none of them dare to speak a single word. In the dying light of the days, dragon cries fly thick and fast across the sky.
Aegon stops before the entrance of the cave and turns to the girl below. He narrows his eyes and his thundering voice resonates in the stormy air. “What are you ready to forsake to gain a dragon ? What are you willing to sacrifice, little warrior ?” He asks, landing a burning hand on her shoulder. “Everything,” she answers, admitting with a great bitterness that she is indeed ready to throw anyone into the dragon’s lair if it meant she would become his mistress. The blood of her ancestors thickens and burns in her veins, it calls for greatness and she’s ready to answer. It calls for its kindred spirits, hiding in the misty peaks of the eastern side of the Dragonmont.
Naera enters the cave and disappears into the darkness of the tunnel. Aemond is there, pacing the length of the cavity and dragging his chains on the ground. She eludes to his inquiring gaze and the sight of his sorry, shattered, tortured slender face. She ignores the thorn in her heart that twitches every time she glimpses at the bruises blooming on his pallid skin or the down-turned curve of his lips. She blinds herself to his despair and unlocks the shackles that bind his hands and feet. The metal chain fall heavily to the ground and she is sure their loud clinking will summon the infamous dwellers of the Dragonmont.
She flees him and he begs for her attention and for answers perhaps. He cannot look away from her. He cannot look away from the Dragonwitch, so desperate to be whole again that she is willing to torch down the Seven Kingdoms for another pair of wings. He contemplates the disaster he has created and his guilty conscience strikes again.
“I could take you away from here.”
This time, the princess cannot ignore his presence nor play the card of indifference. She turns to him with dark eyes, scarcely brightened by hints of fury. Aemond reaches for her a wild strand of hair that has escaped her braid, twirls it around his fingers before tucking it behind her ear. She watches as he plays with the silver of her hair, breath suspended in time.
“We could go wherever you want, flee this land of woe. Volantis, Meereen, Qarth, Sothoyros, Asshai,” he whispers, boldened by his newfound freedom. “We could fly over Valyria and contemplate its ruins,” the prince continues as their foreheads collide against one another. She’s so close he can smell the tart and sugary scent of the tea she has drank before, the tangy signature of the lemon cakes she must have devoured. They seem to call his name, these plump heart-shaped lips. “Name it Naera, and I’ll take you there. I’ll do anything for you. I’ll give you anything you want. Name it,” he insists, capturing her hands in his grasp and kissing her smooth fingers. “A word from you and I’ll give you the world.”
Like many times before, she’s impassible and yet she does not run. She is frozen when she stands and Aemond doesn’t know if her revealed neck in an invitation or a trap. He yields anyway. His chapped lips come for her creamy skin, skimming over its surface with the tip of his nose. When they meet the object of their desire, they stop and utter their prayer once again. “Take everything from me,” he murmurs in a hot breath. “It has always been yours anyway.”
“What would I do with it ?” she responds, sharp tongue cutting clean through ego.
He grins to her insolence, her undying insolence and kisses the biting lips that speak such harmful words. For a good handful of seconds, she refuses to succumb to the temptation. She denies it all, dismisses the soft warmth that fills her belly up and breathes life into her lungs. It melts her from within, until she cannot resist his feverish touch anymore. It reminds her of the girl she used to be when days were simpler.
But she knows that there is no destiny where the Rogue Princess and the Kinslayer could live together in peace. They are mortal enemies now, not forbidden lovers.
A hot tear rolls along her cheek as she pulls away from his embrace. She wipes it before he can see it and points out the northern entrance of the cave.
“They’ll be waiting for you on the beaches and the hills,” Naera mumbles. “Walk down the path and you’ll risk capture, but if you walk south, you might find Vhagar.”
The prince nods, and she resumes. “Do whatever you like with your life One-Eye, but do not give it to me. I do not want it.”
It takes Aemond the world not to collapse, as if she reached for the beating heart in his chest and fed it to the famished dragons. She fastens the rope around her arm and begins to walk in the opposite direction, without ever casting a glance over her shoulder.
If she does, she’ll run back to him and beg him to take her to whatever land lies behind the Shadows.
She refuses to give satisfaction to the man that slaughtered her mount and sent her into the appalling abysses of the Narrow Sea. Whatever affection her heart harbours, she must go past it.
Whatever life he has imagined for them, he must forget. For she will not turn back, nor falter.
Her destiny awaits at the end of this tunnel. It sleeps on a bed of bones, dark and dreadful. But she is not afraid, for she walks with a conqueror and a heart of fire.
The night is dark and full of terrors, but for those who believe in the flames and the shadows, it is a playground — not a hell.