Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Author’s Note

Rhaegar Targaryen is a mystery history never lets speak. This au fic keeps every canon event but slips into the spaces to imagine the love and motives that might have steered him there. Enjoy the gaps between the lines..
Doesn’t redeem Rhaegar, it reveals him..

High Valyrian phrases appear throughout

Summoning the Scribe (From the Childhood of Rhaegar Targaryen) — King's Landing

In the early year of 276 AC, apart from tourneys and his knighthood, Rhaegar continued to pore over ancient manuscripts, chasing answers to questions that haunted him. The prophecy, the visions, the Ghost’s riddles.

One afternoon in the Red Keep’s royal library, Rhaegar made a discovery that would change the course of his journey. He had been sifting through a bundle of old scrolls recently brought from the archives at Dragonstone. These scrolls were part of the lost collection of his great-grandfather and Rhaegar hoped they might contain clues left.

Most were mundane records or Valyrian poems he already knew. But one scroll, yellowed and bound with a faded blue ribbon, caught his attention.

Its title in High Valyrian was nearly illegible, but he discerned the words for “Lys” and “account.”

Intrigued, Rhaegar carried the scroll to a sunlit table and unfurled it. Lines of spidery Valyrian text filled the page, but not in a style he recognized.

The phrasing had a rhythmic, almost lyrical quality, unlike the dry chronicles he was used to, as if the writer were recording prophecy in poetry.

It was archaic, with some words abbreviated or oddly spelled, and the imagery was rich with metaphor. Rhaegar was impressed by the writing, style, and cadence of this story.

Although archaic language made translation challenging, but Rhaegar discerned that this explorer-archivist claimed to have visited Asshai and even the fabled Five Forts of Yi Ti in search of knowledge.

In one verse, the writer spoke of standing at the edge of the Shadow Lands to learn “the song of darkness and dawn.”

Rhaegar had never encountered such vivid, poetic Valyrian, each line felt like part of a song or spell, hinting at secrets just out of reach.

What stunned Rhaegar most was a name that appeared several times in the scroll. “Arthur.” At first he assumed it might refer to some Westerosi knight, but the context suggested otherwise.

Rhaegar soon realized that the author of these accounts was named Arthur.

Rhaegar searched tirelessly for additional scrolls penned by Arthur. He discovered two others, one on the culture of Old Valyria and another on the dragons they bred.

Enthralled, he requested additional works by Arthur from Essos and pored over them all night, until the first light of dawn.

Though he consulted countless works by other maesters and historians, including treatises on the shadowbinders of Asshai and the greenseers of the North, none matched Arthur’s clarity.

One scroll, written in archaic High Valyrian, baffled him; he kept returning to Arthur’s manuscripts, comparing linguistic words to make sense of the older text, but each attempt left him more frustrated.

At last, he summoned a lesser Maester named Callys.

“Your Highness,” the maester said, bowing low, “we have traced a living correspondent of this Arthur to Lys.”

Rhaegar felt a spark of excitement at the discovery. “Thank you, Maester”

That evening, Rhaegar hurried to his chambers and secluded himself. There he composed a letter, asking Arthur to help him decipher the ancient Valyrian texts.

Rhaegar sealed the letter with plain wax with no sigil, not wanting to draw official attention, and dispatched it through Varys’s secret network to ensure it reached Lys swiftly and discreetly.

Weeks passed with no word. Rhaegar’s princely duties nearly made him forget the letter, the tourney to attend, training squires, and the celebration of his long-awaited brother, Viserys.

Late one evening, just days after returning from Lannisport. Rhaegar was studying by lamplight when a raven arrived, bearing a letter from Lys.

He broke the seal at once, and Arthur agreed to his aid.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Rhaegar felt no sorrow for what lay ahead, only a conviction that the gods were leading him on the right path.

Early 276 AC — Lys

The letter arrives on a windless evening in Lys, sealed with a plain wax bearing no sigil. Yet the parchment itself speaks of power. Only nobility writes in such a way, ink mixed with silver powder, the script elegant and exact. Aelyria holds the parchment in her hands for a long while before breaking the seal.

Inside, it is a request. A commission for scholarly aid in deciphering several ancient Valyrian texts held in a private royal collection. The sender does not sign their signature, but the tone is unmistakable, an entitlement masked as politeness. She reads it twice, then sets it aside.

Weeks pass, she ponders on whether to go.

Over the years, there have been other letters, some requests, summons, and even a few threats. They all arrived regularly since she began documenting the lost culture, stories, and politics of Old Valyria. She has ignored them all, especially those from the west. Aelyria built a life for herself, a mundane existence born from decades of hardship. At last, she found peace in simplicity and solitude.

But this letter is different. It carries a sincerity she recognizes, a formality steeped in genuine respect. It tugs at something deep in her chest, igniting emotions she had thought long buried.

She hesitates. And then she finally decides to leave yes, I shall go.

Aelyria travels light. Her robes, her scrolls, her head wraps. The current style in Lys, and it also keeps her distinct silver-gold hair hidden.

The ship that carries her to Westeros is old but swift. She keeps to herself, eats little, and does not sleep well. The air is colder on this side of the world.

When she arrives in King’s Landing, the city is different yet somehow the same as she remembers before. Targaryen banners hang across the walls and ramparts. Upon reaching the Red Keep and stating her purpose, a steward promptly escorts her to a room within the royal archives, offering neither titles nor explanations. She assumes the arrangement is meant to be private, and indeed it is.

The room is cavernous, lined with towering shelves, and lit by high stained‑glass windows that turn the late‑morning sun into patches of various colors on the stone floor.

She lays out her scrolls, adjusts her head wrap, and waits to see who exactly has summoned her.

When the door opens, she does not rise. She hears light footsteps enter the room.

“You are the scribe from Lys?” a voice asks. It is a man’s voice, clearly young and noble.

“I am,” she replies simply.

He steps closer, and she looks up.

He is taller than she imagined. Pale skin with silver-gold hair, similar to hers, and clad in princely black and red. His expression is one of visible confusion.

He regards her with a surprise, clearly taken aback to find a woman standing before him. After all, the work he has read was published under a man's name.

“I was expecting your father,” he says carefully, “or perhaps your grandsire. He wrote the first translations we received, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Aelyria answers just as carefully. “He passed some years ago. I was trained in his stead. The knowledge has remained in our family.”

His brow furrows slightly as he takes in her presence, her hair covered, the assurance and confidence of her voice. Then, as if remembering courtesy, he straightens.

“I see. My apologies,” he says. “I am Prince Rhaegar.” He pauses, observing her carefully. “I read your kin’s work, The Dragon's Blood Games. I found the Valyrian dialect quite complex, and I had hoped to understand it better. Forgive me, I sent the letter anonymously.”

She bows her head. “Aelyria, Your Highness. I am glad you read those accounts. The language can indeed be challenging, especially for those unfamiliar with Valyrian politics.”

Then, meeting his dark violet gaze directly, she adds in High Valyrian,“Zaldrīzo Lentor daor ūndegon va moriot syt, yn naejot rhaenagon se vāedroma zaldrīzes.”

The Dragon's Game was not meant to be won, but to discover the prophesied dragon.

A small smile forms on Rhaegar's lips. More quietly, he says, “You speak the old tongue well.”

“It was spoken in our house long before it was written.”

He studies her for a moment longer. “Would you be willing to assist further?

“There are more texts, many more. I’ve been studying them, but… the language resists me.”

“Of course,” she replies.

He nods once, slowly, and gestures to the table.

“Then let us begin.”

They start with a scroll, weathered and brittle.

She recites the words she'd written in. Occasionally, she pauses, offering clarity on the text to ensure he fully understands its meaning.

He listens intently, head inclined, brows knit in concentration as he absorbs every word.

Now and then, they pause, so he can repeat phrases back to her, to ensure his pronunciation is correct.

She corrects him when needed, and she notices a slight smile touch his lips. He nods, satisfied by each improvement, then urges her to continue.

The room remains quiet save for the sound of her voice and the delicate turning of pages.

Soon, an easy rapport unfolds between them as they read, pause, and converse. Time becomes fluid and irrelevant.

Hours pass unnoticed, the sun’s journey fading across stone and parchment.

They speak little beyond the text itself, but every word exchanged is meaningful.

An natural ease falls between them, unexpected for a first meeting. Their conversation flows effortlessly, until a knock interrupts them. A Kingsguard enters, announcing the king has requested Rhaegar's presence.

Yet Rhaegar's gaze remains fixed on her, even as the Kingsguard delivers his message. "Forgive me," he murmurs to her. "I would very much like to continue this on the morrow."

Aelyria dips her head in agreement and begins to pack her scrolls. She takes her leave, and as she walks away from the archive, she knows deep in her bones that her life will never be the same again.

Chapter Text

Early 276 AC — King’s Landing

The stone corridors of the Red Keep darken long after she leaves the archive. The air smells of torch smoke, parchment, and the ocean beyond the city walls. She walks slowly, until she reaches her quarters, a small, windowed room tucked into a modest corner of the upper keep.

The room is sparse but functional. A cot dressed in dark woollen sheets, a single desk cluttered with scrolls and wax tablets, one oil lamp guttering low.

Through the window she sees the eastern slope of King’s Landing, rooftops pressed shoulder to shoulder; far off, the Sept throws its silhouette over the sprawl twisting down toward the Blackwater Bay.

Aelyria drops the latch behind her and rests her forehead against the door taking one slow breath.

So it is to be the prince.

She did not expect that, exactly

Westeros…again

The last time she had crossed the Narrow Sea, she had stayed only a fortnight.

That first journey in the west had been memorable, though not kindly. She had boarded the first tide out and sworn never to return again.

She has lived many lives, worn many names, always avoiding the name Targaryen when she could. Not out of fear but from memory of what was lost.

This was meant to be a brief arrangement, a translation, a task for her to complete and return. Yet when she looked into his eyes, when she heard him speak the old tongue, which was halting, imperfect and earnest. She recognizes, he will ask more of her, and she will give it.

She sits at her desk and unrolls one of her own scrolls, fingertips brushing the brittle edge. The prince is young, yet sharp; there is hunger in him, not for power but for understanding. He seemed sincere in their first meeting, and she has no reason to be weary of his presence.

She wonders if she will be of use to him. If she is, how he will grow under her guidance, and if, perhaps, if she has been brought here not by fate or chance, but by purpose.

Aelyria cannot help but shake a prickle of unease at the prospect of remaining in King's Landing, tutoring a prince, and not just any prince, but the Targaryen heir. All the while knowing of her own history's importance.

Would it be best if I leave tonight? she wonders, apprehensive of the thought of staying in King's Landing. She does not wish to expose herself. The West is not kind to outsiders such as herself, and the Targaryen madness is much well known in the east. Yet Rhaegar shows no hint of it, he was thoughtful and kind.

She reminds herself that it is neither prudent, this return, this involvement, but some force more permanent than reason drives her to remain. Perhaps it is duty. Perhaps it is curiosity. Or perhaps, just perhaps, it is time.

She lights a second candle, opens a new page, and begins translating a text she had long ago abandoned.

Outside, the bells of the Sept toll once.

And the city turns into evening.

Tomorrow, she decides, she will meet him again.

Chapter Text

The next day arrives with gray skies and a light breeze curling over the battlements. Aelyria receives a polite summons in the morning. The prince has requested her presence once more in the royal archives.

She does not hesistate.

When she enters, the room is quieter than before. A single candle burns on the long reading table, and Prince Rhaegar stands near one of the windows, arms folded behind his back. He turns when she steps through the door.

“Good morrow,” he says with a short nod. “I hope the accommodations provided have been sufficient.”

He wears a somber black velvet doublet bordered with the narrowest braid of red. His silver gold hair is tied back with a red ribbon and he carries a small wax tablet and reed pen, instruments of a prince bent on learning parchment, not just sword play.

“They are,” she replies simply.

He gestures to a stack of scrolls arranged in careful order. “I’ve had these prepared. They’re fragments from the original collection—what remains of the oldest translations we possess. I’d like to understand them better. Truly understand them.”

She walks over, studying the aged pieces. “They’re in a dialect even the eastern scholars hesitate to touch. Some of the words don’t exist in modern tongue.”

“Then it’s fortunate you agreed to come,” he says. There is no arrogance in it, only sincerity.

He waits as she selects a scroll detailing the coastal harvest of Valyria in the years before the Doom. It feels a sensible and familiar subject to begin with. She takes her seat and carefully, he does the same.

Before picking up his quill, he turns to her.

“I am grateful that you remained with me so late yester-eve.

Rhaegar observes the careful grace of her hand as it traces the worn script.

“I read many of your… your father’s work,” he says, looking up to meet her gaze. “The earlier translations, the annotations—I’ve always admired them, they held a clarity I've rarely seen. I have, in fact, nearly committed some of the verses to memory, especially the passages on the differently bred dragons, those were the lines I annotated most.”

Her hand pauses briefly above the parchment, her eyes lift, surprised that he is so familiar with her work. “Thank you. He was thorough.”

Rhaegar watches her fingers move along the ancient lines. “You sound very much like him. His tone, the care.”

She does not correct him. Instead, she offers a slight nod and begins to read aloud, her voice flowing through the royal chamber.

He listens as she recites, astonished by the fluency of her High Valyrian, it rings truer than anything his mother, father, or tutors have spoken. Inwardly he thanks the gods for sending that letter. Captivated, he lets their eyes cross, then respectfully looks away at once. At the age of seventeen, he carries himself with the drilled precision of an heir meant to continue a dynasty, yet at that moment, something in her demeanor, just the weight of her presence, sets him slightly on edge.

They spend the morning like this, reading, discussing, comparing notes. She corrects one of his translations gently, and he takes no offense. Instead, he smiles, just once, almost to himself.

When the sun reaches its highest point, he rises.

“I will send for you again,” he says. “If that would be acceptable.”

Aelyria closes the scroll she had been reviewing. “It would.”

He inclines his head. “Until then.”

She stands without fuss, gathering the loose parchment in hands that never once fumble. He doesn’t rise, he only watches as she gracefully turns toward the door, her silhouette briefly caught in the candlelight.

The door clicks shut behind her.

He lets out an exhales, realizing belatedly, that he’s been holding his breath.

End Notes:

• Dialect note: The scroll fragments use the optative verb ending -lȳs, a relic of pre‑doom High Valyrian poetry. Standard HV would replace it with -lis.
• Thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

Several moons pass after Aelyria arrives at Kings’s Landing. The royal archives grow heavier with ink, notes, and a fresh start that has taken place. And somewhere in the space between parchment and candlelight, Aelyria begins to build a life.

She is granted a residence just beyond the walls of the Red Keep, a modest flat nestled near the Maester’s Walk, a narrow street lined with scribes, bookbinders, Maesters, and herbalists. The building is of old stone, unremarkable but sturdy, with ivy curling up one side and a narrow balcony that overlooks a quiet courtyard. It is more space than she needs. But it is hers.

She keeps to herself. Walks the alleys at dawn. Listens more than she speaks. And each week, she is summoned back to the archive.

The prince is always waiting.

At first, their sessions are formal. Both focused. Rhaegar arrives with scrolls and questions, eager to learn. He reads the old tongue aloud now with more confidence, sometimes glancing to her for subtle corrections. He is thoughtful, restrained, and precise.

But he is not what she expected. He is neither cold nor cruel, and lacks the arrogance gossiped in the east, the very traits she once witnessed in others with the bloodline of the dragon that survived the Doom.

He is sensitive and quiet, almost painfully so. Yet there is fire in him, he is a dragon after all, reserved beneath the duty of a prince's expectation. He is careful in what he says, pausing to consider each thought; he listens more than he speaks, and when he does ask a question, it is never idle curiosity but the genuine hunger for knowledge.

He is also painfully beautiful, his features all fine-edged angles yet softened by an ancient Valyrian grace.

His gaze is striking, set with eyes of near-black indigo, faintly rimmed with violet, the color clearest when caught by firelight or dawn. Thoughtful, watchful, and old in ways that defied his youth. There was something melancholic and noble about him, like a statue weathered not by age, but by inherited burdens.

He reminds her of something she long buried. Of a life once filled with open skies, the sea, and warm voices. Of family, now lost to time and ash. His eyes do remind her of one person in particular, but memory she keeps sacred and long buried within.

One afternoon, as they pass through a narrow side hall of the Keep, he glances at her without warning.

“Is your family still in Lys?”

She does not pause. “No. They’re gone.”

He doesn’t pry and she doesn’t indulge. On quieter days, they took their sessions into the gardens, wandering shaded paths where the air was easier to breathe and the court felt further away.

It was there, amid the vines and silence, that the language began to loosen.

They begin to speak of other things. Literature. History. Music. Rhaegar quotes old poetry with startling fluency. He speaks of dreams, though never his own. He does not ask her personal things again, not directly. But once, when the edge of her wrapped head scarf slips and a single glinting strand of silver hair escapes, she catches him glancing and looking away just as fast. That evening, she grinds herbs into oil and dyes her hair a muted yellow-blonde, just in case.

Time drifts by quietly, days merge into weeks, then months. The archives cram with new notes and scrolls, candle wax drips along their edges, each page marking the hours spent together.

Outside the archive sanctuary, King’s Landing changes. Summer’s heat fades, bright blooms give way to orange-edged leaves. Streets sing softer in crisp air.

In her modest flat by the Maester’s Walk, Aelyria develops into a routine. Shelves fill with books, pressed herbs, and manuscripts. Ivy creeps higher along the stone, reclaiming the balcony rails.

Each dawn she strolls half-sleeping streets, tradesfolk greeting her with a nod, accepting the quiet scribe as their own.

At the archives their weekly meetings continue. Formality fades into ease. She soon recognizes the tilt of his head when he hesitates, the small crease between his brows when he puzzles over a phrase. He, in turn, learns to expect her corrections, catching her fingertip poised above the text before she speaks.

In the fourth moon, she brings him an untranslated poem from Yi Ti; an aged scroll recounting a palace guard’s witness to the usurped Empress  Amethyst. He reads the verses aloud in YiTish, then tries to recite it back in Valyrian

“It’s strange,” he says one afternoon, eyes still on the page, “I thought I understood these texts. But your voice gives them meaning I missed.”

She smiles faintly, adjusting the scroll between them.

She remain longer in the archive that day, translating and reciting verses, rendering each tongue into High Valyrian.

By the time they part, they move slowly, Rhaegar lingers by the table; Aelyria does not hurry to gather her scrolls. They walk together toward the door, reluctant to separate despite having spent the whole day side by side since dawn. At the threshold she bows, bids of farewell, and slips from the keep. He remains, watching her go, feeling as though something has been tugged from beneath his ribs.

They do not name what is is, or what it may become, but whatever name it earns tomorrow, tonight it is the first clear note of fate unfolding.

Chapter Text

Aelyria rises before the sun, each morning, she opens the shutters of her Residence to let the sea wind wash through. The small hearth remains cold, but she prefers it that way. She eats little, just a bit fruit, a crust of bread, a tea brewed from dried ginger root. She starts her day writing in a narrow book bound in faded leather, a habit she’s never broken. Today her page holds three High Valyrian verbs she means to test in conversation, and a brief note of a dream filled with stone towers and colosseums, that still remain in the deepest parts of her memory.

By midday, she walks the garden paths that circles around the upper terraces of the city. She listens to the market's rising bustle, to the bells of the Sept, to the rhythm of life beyond the Iron Throne. A vendor wheels past with candied figs, she buys one, warming her palms more than her appetite. When the summons arrives from the Red Keep, it’s never abrupt. Just a soft knock at the door and a folded note sealed with wax seal she no longer examines.

By now, she knows the winding steps to the Red Keep well enough to walk them blindfolded. Before each visit, she wraps a gray headscarf carefully around her head, tucking away her hair. She keeps it dyed a pale yellow that doesn’t suit her, but it draws less attention, and that makes it safer if anything unexpected where to happen.

She meets Rhaegar most often in the smaller private room now, a quieter, secluded space in the palace library. The guards outside the door recognize her by sight, though none speak a word as she slips inside.

Inside, the prince is invariably already there, standing by the open casement window with his gaze turned outward to the gardens. His long fingers tap patiently on the stone sill as he waits, a gentle impatient rhythm that abruptly ceases only when she appears.

Their lessons together have grown longer and more fluid as the weeks pass. Rhaegar no longer flushes with embarrassment when he stumbles on a phrase; instead, he asks her directly for the correct phrasing or pronunciation. He listens with the unwavering focus of someone determined not to miss a single nuance. On occasion, he even brings music, verses of his own, lyrics scribbled in the margins of old scrolls. He reads these aloud in High Valyrian and waits for her to help fine-tune his cadence.

Over time, they have fallen into a friendly pattern. She no longer minds how the hours slip by; she lets the sun’s slow shift across the floor tell her when it’s time to leave.

He no longer introduces himself with rigid greetings, and she has ceased any formal bow. They converse as a student and tutor might over a shared passion for language, but there is an unexpected warmth beneath their words now, a growing familiarity. It is not romance, but rather a subtle blossoming of mutual understanding, each finding comfort simply from the other's presence.

One afternoon, as she is mid-sentence correcting his syntax, she hears the strain of a harp being tuned from across the room. The lilting notes are so unexpected that she stops, quill poised above the page, and looks up in surprise.

Rhaegar has retrieved a harp from a corner of the room and now cradles it against his shoulder, a slightly shy smile on his lips. “It’s hard to read so much about ancient poetry without wanting to try writing some of my own,” he admits. “Would you like to hear?”

She lifts an eyebrow. “If you must subject me to that,” she replies, her tone dry as parchment.

His grin broadens a fraction, and then he lowers his gaze to the strings and begins to play. The tune that pours forth is simple and tender, a melody barely more than a sigh, but lovely all the same. Aelyria finds herself holding her breath as the soft flutter through the air. When the song ends, the final chord hovering like a held breath, he looks to her with hopeful eyes

A faint flush colors the prince’s cheeks. "You won’t hurt my feelings."

"Then I won’t lie," Aelyria replies, a hint of laughter in her voice as she strives to keep a straight face. "The first half was passable. The ending was almost good."

Rhaegar throws back his head and laughs, a rich, unguarded laugh, the first she’s ever heard from him. The bright sound bounces off the shelves and walls, and Aelyria can’t help but laugh in return too. His sudden boyish glee catches her off guard, sending warmth blooming in her chest.

Evening light gilds the rooftops by the time Aelyria finally departs the Keep. To her surprise, Rhaegar rises and insists on escorting her back to the modest dwelling she keeps along the Maester’s Walk. She makes a token protest that it isn’t necessary, but he only offers a shrug and extends his arm. So they depart together into the dusk.

One of his Kingsguard, Ser Barristan, follows a few paces behind, silent and watchful as ever. The streets of the city are calmer at this hour, lit by the glow of lamps. Rhaegar and Aelyria walk side by side, he is quieter than usual, as though words hover in his throat and refuse to form. Aelyria keeps silent, tilting her face into the chill mist that drifts off blackwater bay, to any passerby they are only a cloaked nobleman and his companion.

At her door, Aelyria turns to bid the prince good night. A lone lantern hangs above, its flame quivering in the breeze and casting shadows across Rhaegar’s face. His dark indigo eyes, almost black in the flickering lamplight, meet hers and hold. There is a new softness in his expression, though his gaze remains as inscrutable as ever. She can sense a bit reluctance there, as if the act of saying farewell is costing him more than he expected.

Chapter Text

It begins with rain. Not a storm, just a quiet, persistent rain that covers the cobbled streets and turns the narrow alleys of the Maester’s Walk to soft gray corridors. Aelyria lights the small hearth and lets it burn low, just enough to push back the chill seeping in from outside. She does not expect visitors. She rarely does.

So when the knock comes, soft, and unexpected, she assumes it must be a neighbor, or perhaps a confused commoner seeking shelter. Still, Aelyria rises and pads to the door. She opens it without pausing to don her head-scarf.

And then freezes.

The crown prince stands beneath the archway, cloak soaked with mist. Barristan waits a discreet distance down the alley, a gaunt figure in the rain, politely turned away to grant a semblance of privacy.

Rhaegar looks, for once, like a man and not a prince. Water droplets cling to his silver hair and run down the angled features of his face. His eyes move to her hair, muted yellow waves tumbling free down past her shoulders, unbound and slightly damp from the hearth’s heat, and for a moment, he forgets to breathe.

“You’re—” he begins, but the words vanish. His expression shifts, caught between awe and something else she cannot name. He has never seen her unveiled like this.

Aelyria tilts her head, an amused smiled on her lips. “You’re staring.”

He blinks out of his trance. “Forgive me. I’ve never seen you…"

“Unwrapped?” she offers dryly, one eyebrow arched.

He manages the ghost of a smile. “Undisguised.”

“It was not my intent to disturb you,” Rhaegar says softly. He glances aside, as if embarrassed by his own boldness. “I was walking. And I kept walking. And I… ended up here.”

She folds her arm, “There are a thousand directions in King’s Landing. You took a very specific wrong turn.”

A moment of silence passes between them. The only sounds are the patter of rain in the alley and the distant drip from the eaves. His eyes, weary beneath the torchlight, nonetheless search her face for a sign, of welcome, of permission. Water pools at his feet, and he looks almost looks like a commoner underneath the archway, a traveler lost seeking refuge in her presence.

“It’s quiet here,” he says at last, almost in apology.

Aelyria’s heart gives a curious little twist. She knows what he means. It is quiet here, far from the Red Keep and its endless demands. Still, she hesitates, fingers tight on the door’s edge as she weighs the question in his eyes. If she invites him in, if she crosses this line, there will be no going back to polite distance.

Finally, she exhales and steps aside in invitation.

Rhaegar lowers his head in thanks and slips past her into the room. She closes the door behind him. Inside, the air is warm and tinged with the scents of parchment and lavender from her oils. For a moment, neither of them speaks. The crown prince of Westeros stands uncertainly in her modest home, rainwater trailing from his cloak onto the stone floor.

He glances around, taking in the narrow room. It is quaint, a bed draped in plain red linen at the far left of the room, a hearth lit low with coal near the doorway, scrolls and books cluttering the table, and another table lined with teas, scented oils, and fruits. A small canvas leans by the balcony.

“You paint?” he asks, surprised he never knew this of her.

She nods, brushing a damp strand behind her ear. “Since I was a girl.”

“I would like to see one. One of yours.”

Aelyria looks at him for a moment. “When I have a reason to paint,” she says, “you will.”

She clears her throat then, gesturing to the hearth. He moves toward it, shedding his sodden cloak. In the glow of the coals he looks young, almost shy, as if unsure what to do with himself. They exchange only a few halting words that first night. Aelyria offers to brew tea, he kindly declines with a grateful smile, content simply to stand by the fire. He holds his hands out to the heat, shoulders dropping with ease.

When at last the hour grows late and duty calls him back, he thanks her. Then he slips out into the misty dark. After the door shuts behind him, Aelyria remains there for a long moment, unsure what to have make of his encounter. Before, she had never invited anyone into her space, she enjoyed her solitude, yet as she turns back to the room, her eyes landing on the little canvas in the corner. A secret, hopeful smile graces her lips as she imagines the day she might have a worthy reason to set paint to canvas again.

He returns two nights later with a bundle of dried apricots and a vague excuse about a delayed shipment at the archive. Aelyria doesn’t press him for details. She only nods, lights the hearth, and lets him stand by the fire like a man remembering a language he used to speak. He comes again the next week. Then again. Not frequently, not predictably, but always intentionally. Each visit begins with that gentle knock at her door and a smile, a shared hour snatched out of the whirlwind of his princely life and ends with a lingering silence hanging in the air after he departs.

Sometimes he brings a dusty tome or a scroll from the archives, and they pore over its contents together by the fire’s glow. Other times no books are opened at all. Sometimes he reads aloud or studies some ancient text while she sits nearby, stitching the fraying edge of an old veil. Other nights, she brews a pot of mint tea that she barely drinks, and they simply share the space in companionable quiet, the crackle of the hearth and their breaths saying more than words could.

Once, he brings a new harp string to replace one that snapped during an earlier visit. Another time, he brings nothing at all except himself and the unspoken hope that she will welcome him in. He never stays too long, yet he never leaves quickly either. And when he leaves, he lingers in the doorway, one hand on the doorframe, eyes on her as if she might disappear if he glances away too fast. Each time, Aelyria busies herself with the latch or the hem of her sleeve, pretending not to notice the yearning in his look, that is easier than admitting how much it matters to her. But when the door finally shuts, the room always feels just a little too still and empty.

They don’t speak of it, not openly, but the reason for these visits sits plainly between them. They both know why. Here, within her humble stone dwelling, among scattered scrolls and mismatched teacups, he isn’t the dragon prince. He isn’t the Crown’s heir or the realm’s chosen son. He is just Rhaegar. And he looks lighter in that truth than he ever does wearing the weight of gold.

As the weeks pass, Rhaegar even begins to embrace the simpleness of her world. He learns how to boil water properly. He learns how to grind herbs with the mortar and pestle without bruising them. He learns that mint leaves should be torn, not cut. He welcomes these lessons with an eagerness, determination furrowing his brow. Aelyria watches him fumble and grumble, quietly cursing under his breath when he inevitably singes a finger on the kettle or spills tea across the table. She just laughs and corrects him, not with the stern precision of a tutor, but with the affection of someone delighted by how thoroughly unprincely he can be.

One night, Rhaegar accidentally knocks over a dish of dried rose hips, sending the little red berries skittering across the table and floor. He jumps back with a startled oath, looking so distressed at the mess that Aelyria can’t help but chuckle. Shaking her head, she calls him a “clumsy southern ghost.”

He looks at her, startled by the teasing name, then he laughs. A real laugh, without restraint, bright and youthful. It surprises her; it’s the second time she’s heard him laugh so freely. For a heartbeat, they simply grin at each other through the dim firelight, both marveling at the unexpected joy that bubbles up between them. In that moment his dark violet eyes dance with mirth, and Aelyria realizes with a slight ache that she wishes she could make him laugh like that more often.

Eventually, the rain returns to King’s Landing on another evening. So does he. They sit together on the floor near her open balcony. The rain drums against the panes, and the city beyond is lost in fog. Rhaegar has brought his harp this time, and the melancholic notes he plays from the strings mingle with the patter of the rain. Aelyria sits with her knees drawn up beneath her chin, cradling a cup of tea in her hands. She listens to his song in silence, eyes half-closed, lulled by the music and the sound of the weather outside.

Mid-song, Rhaegar’s fingers stop on the harp strings. The final note hangs in the air as he gathers his thoughts. “There is something I would ask of you,” he says unexpectedly.

Aelyria straightens slightly, setting her tea aside. “Of course,” she says. Across from her, with his harp still his hand, he looks down, becoming suddenly solemn.

He is quiet for a long moment, choosing his words with care. Finally, in a voice barely above a whisper, he asks, “Do you believe in prophecy?”

Aelyria does not answer immediately. The question runs deeper than it seems, and she can tell by the way he avoids her gaze that he isn’t really asking for her simple opinion. She waits, heart thumping in her chest, giving him the space to continue.

Rhaegar swallows, his throat working. “My great-grandfather…” He pauses, and she sees the flash of pain that crosses his face. “Most of my family perished at Summerhall.”

He doesn’t meet her eyes; his gaze has fixed on the low-burning hearth. Aelyria knows of Summerhall, who in Westeros doesn’t? but she says nothing, letting the crackle of fire fill the space his words leave. Outside, the rain taps against the window like distant applause for the dead.

“They sought to wake dragons,” Rhaegar continues at last, and now his tone is bitter. “With blood. With death. And what rose from the ashes… was me.”

He falls silent. He doesn’t elaborate, Aelyria understands the heaviness of ghosts, an entire dynasty’s hopes and horrors resting on the slim shoulders of the man before her.

After a moment, he inhales shakily and goes on, his voice a murmur. “I have dreamt,” he says, and Aelyria can hear the small tremor in his words. His fingers still hover on the harp strings as if for comfort. “Not visions—not clearly. Only fragments. I dream of a cold that seeps through the stones of the Red Keep… a darkness I can never quite make out… and something vast buried deep beneath the world, waiting to be unleashed upon it.”

He lowers his head, silver hair falling over his eye, Aelyria studies him quietly, her own breath caught in her throat. She can feel a chill skitter down her spine at the images he describes. These are not the fears of a mere man; they are the burdens of a prince born in fire and tragedy.

“You believe it is what you were born for,” she says at last, her voice gentle. It’s not really a question, just a truth spoken aloud.

Rhaegar hesitates, his jaw tightening. When he speaks, his voice is so soft that she has to lean in to hear. “I think…” he begins, then falters. “…I think I was born from it.”

Thunder rumbles in the distance. Then, so quietly that Aelyria almost misses it, he adds, “And I am not certain that is the same thing.

At that, he leans his head back against the window frame and closes his eyes, as if admitting this has drained him. His harp rests forgotten against his knee. In the dim glow, with his guard down and sorrow etched on his face, he looks terribly young, much younger than the stern prince the realm knows. Here, he is just a man, frightened by the possibility that all the blood and prophecy that ushered him into the world might not give him the strength to face what’s coming.

Aelyria gazes at him, and in this moment she truly sees him, perhaps for the first time. She sees not the aloof dragon prince or the realm’s distant heir, but Rhaegar, a man haunted by destiny, burdened by the hopes of the future. A man searching for answers in the refuge of her home and possibly within her. The truth of who he is stands unarmored before her.

She reaches out then, acting on instinct. Gently, she lays her hand over his where it grips the harp. His skin is cold to the touch. Rhaegar opens his eyes at the contact, and they shine with unshed tears that he blinks away quickly. “Prophecy isn’t a promise, Rhaegar,” she says. “It’s a warning.”

He stares at her, violet eyes wide and searching. The rain beats steadily against the glass, and for a long moment neither of them speaks. Aelyria doesn’t offer hollow comfort, and she doesn’t take back her words. She will not lie to him with pretty reassurances. What she offers instead is understanding, the kind that asks no questions and tells no lies. In that understanding, he finds a glimmer of solace. She can see it in the way his shoulders loosen and in the sigh that slips from his lips.

Aelyria realizes now, without a doubt, why she is here, why fate or the gods or sheer chance brought her into his life. Perhaps it was for this very moment, to speak the truth he needed to hear and to share the weight of what is yet to come.

Outside, the rain continues as if keeping their secrets. Rhaegar’s hand turns under Aelyria’s, his fingers curling around hers. He doesn’t speak, but no words are needed. In his eyes she sees gratitude, fear, hope, and affection all tangled together.

Aelyria stays, as the fog wraps the world outside. She stays, hand in hand with the prince who is just a man within these walls. And when dawn comes and the rain at last fades, she will still be there. Without a single doubt, she stays.

Chapter Text

By the end of the week, the scrolls are moved to a smaller reading room.

It is explained as a matter of preservation “less light exposure,” a steward mumbles but Aelyria knows better. Too many eyes have wandered past their table in recent days. Too many silences break under the wrong kind of footsteps.

Something else has entered the Red Keep.
A rumor, quiet at first, but spreading all the same.

At court, the gossips have taken another form of life.

They never mention her name. At least, not Aelyria’s. Not outright.

Rather she becomes “the Lysene woman,” “the mute scribe,” “the prince’s ghost.” They wonder aloud what keeps the prince so long in the archives, and why no maester is ever present.

One lady of the court remarks at supper that Prince Rhaegar is “well-read enough for a man who seems to be studying a single scroll for months.”

Behind closed doors, the King and his council begin to speak strategies of alliance and of expectations for the crown prince.

A marriage is not yet arranged. But the word has been spoken. And once spoken it lingers in her mind like smoke that will not dissipate.

Aelyria tells herself she should not be surprised. Rhaegar is the crown prince; alliances orbit him the way ravens circle a harvest field. Yet surprise is not the same as acceptance. Somewhere behind her ribs lies an unreasonable hope that the realm’s demands might pass her by.

Varys finds her in the Red Keep’s herb garden one late morning during her customary stroll.

She does not ask how he knew where to find her, Varys always knows things best left unsaid.

The scents of mint and lavender curl in the air, but when the Master of Whisperers approaches, the sweet note of his lilac perfume overwhelms the rest.

“Lady Scribe,” he greets smoothly. “A curious title for a curious woman.”

She stands still, hands loosely clasped, eyes on the sprigs of lavender swaying in the breeze.

“The court,” Varys continues, tone mild, “is a place of great tradition. It does not take kindly to new shadows falling across familiar walls.”

She does not look at him.

“They’ve started to notice,” he says, voice low enough for her ears only. “How long the prince lingers. How often you are summoned. The Keep has seen many affairs, but few that hide in plain sight.”

Aelyria’s throat tightens, but she holds her silence.

“Whatever this is,” he adds, stepping closer, “it has reached its limit of invisibility.”

He offers a small, courtly bow.

“Be cautious, my lady. The things that are not spoken are always the first to be punished.”

With that, he turns and leaves, the hem of his robes gliding over the stone.

That evening, Aelyria returns to the little reading room to find a small wooden box waiting on the corner of the table. The chamber is dim and close, lit by a single lamp. Heart fluttering with curiosity, she glances around to ensure she is alone, then lifts the box’s lid.

Inside, nestled on a scrap of midnight-blue velvet, lies a quill of polished ivory—bone-white and capped in silver. It is simple, elegant, and beautifully made. Aelyria draws it out with careful fingers. She runs a gloved thumb along the base of the nib and catches her breath. There, etched into the metal in precise High Valyrian script, is an inscription in lettering she knows all too well.

“Words remember what men forget.”

Her heart gives a single heavy thump. She recognizes that line. Weeks ago, in a margin of one of the prince’s scrolls, she jotted down those very words, a private thought she never meant to share. Yet here they are, engraved in silver by a hand that is not her own. He noticed, she thinks, a slight heat rising to her cheeks. He remembered.

Her brow softens, and she allows herself the smallest ghost of a smile.

The door suddenly creaks ajar. Aelyria’s fingers curl protectively around the quill as she turns.

Prince Rhaegar slips into the room without fanfare, shutting the door behind him. A stray lock of silver hair falls over his forehead, and his breathing is still rough from the training yard. He pauses when he sees the box in her hands.

“You left this,” he says, by way of greeting.

“I didn’t,” she replies, still looking at the box.

“Well,” he says, “I pretended you did. So now it’s yours.”

She looks at him, mildly amused. “That is not the custom.”

“Nor is that how gifts are given,” he counters, pulling up the chair across from her. “Too late. You return it, and I’ll have grounds to start a diplomatic war with Lys.”

“You are not at war with anyone.”

“Exactly,” he says. “Let me win one thing.”

Mutual silence reigns between them, intimacy coming from having spent a year with one another.

Rhaegar almost speaks again. The words are there on his tongue, perhaps to tell her that he remembers the way her hand moved across the page, or to confess that he chose this quill weeks ago with her in mind. But he swallows them back. He only looks at her.

Gently, Aelyria lays the quill back in its cushioned box and closes the lid. She rests the gift beside her pile of parchments.

“Thank you,” she says, barely above a whisper

He dips his head in acknowledgment. A brief tender smile flitting across them before it’s gone.

They do not speak of the rumors circulating through the castle halls, nor of the distant clamor of court politics pressing against the door.

They speak only of poetry. And grammar. And the curious notion that even beloved is too large for a single meaning.

Chapter Text

Almost a year has passed since the scribe from Lys first stepped into the archives of the Red Keep.

The court no longer questions her presence. Not aloud. Not where it matters. But the whispers have grown more bold, carried by stewards and septas, swallowed with wine behind their curtains. Aelyria sees it in the quick lowering of eyes when she passes them, in the tightened smiles of ladies who once nodded freely. Once, she catches a steward’s whisper trailing off at her approach, his face paling as she passes silently by.

No one says her name.

They don’t dare. Rhaegar’s quiet protection makes questions costly, the last servant who tried was reassigned beyond the Blackwater by morning.

Yet Rhaegar still summons her, not as a prince demands, but as a man reaching for the only peace left to him. Their work continues, scrolls opened, ink spilled, discussions shared, but the nature of their time has changed. So has he.

Their evenings stretch far beyond what the maesters deem appropriate. Lamps burn low, casting long shadows that blur the edges of the room, but neither moves to end their work. She does not protest the late hours, nor does he apologize for them. Gradually, their sessions drift from structured study to exchanges, subtle confessions hidden beneath layers of old Valyrian script and shared whispers.

Sometimes, he pauses mid-sentence, eyes lingering on the careful movement of her fingers as she smooths a page or dips a quill into ink. Sometimes, she looks up unexpectedly, catching his stare, feeling the space between their chairs grow smaller, though neither has shifted.

In their hours together, Rhaegar grows to memorize her without even expecting to. He notes the form of her hand, the rotation of her wrist, her elegant fingers at times smudged with ink. He studies the slight pout of her lip when she ponders a word, how a loose strand of her hair escapes its braid and brushes against her cheek when they are alone. Her lavender scent takes hold in his mind; even her breath’s rise and fall starts to reverberate within his own chest.

He summons her more and more, until their days and evenings become an unspoken rhythm as if it exists only between them. The castle moves and folds around them, silent corridors and empty chambers unaware of the bond that deepens behind closed doors. When the evening presses to late, he walks her to her dwelling and if he’s unable to spend time with her that day in her space, he remains near the door, always just a moment longer than necessary, as if reluctant to relinquish the peace he finds in her presence.

Now, when they pore over texts, Rhaegar’s fingers stays a moment too long on each word, tracing the graceful arcs of Valyrian script. He repeats the ancient phrases quietly after her, mimicking the cadence of her voice, savoring each syllable as if it holds a secret melody. One day, one fragment flutters toward the floor, his hand shoots out to snatch it at the same instant as hers. Their fingers collide over the scrap. A flash of contact, before they both pull back. He clears his throat as she reassembles the parchment, but the pulse in his heart echoes the thrill of that accidental touch.

”Words sound finer when you speak them,” he says, eyes fixed upon her lips as she speaks, as though the meaning matters less than the sound of her voice shaping the ancient language into something beautiful and alive again.

He no longer asks questions with urgency. Now, he asks them like confessions.

"Do you think a crown is a burden a man chooses, or one that chooses him?"

"What would Valyria have become, if it had burned slower?"

"If I weren’t a prince, would you still suffer my questions?"

She answers him without flattery.

That is why he keeps speaking.

One afternoon, as the sun dips low enough to touch the towers of the Keep, Rhaegar looks up from a scroll, his eyes thoughtful.

"Do you ever wonder," he says softly, "what becomes of us when the songs are forgotten?"

Aelyria pauses in her writing, her quill suspended. She considers carefully.

"Perhaps we become more ourselves. Without verses to shape us, we’re free to be as we truly are."

"And what if that is not enough?" he asks quietly. "To be only yourself?"

She meets his gaze steadily. "Then perhaps we were never truly known at all."

Silence roots between them once more. He turns back to his scroll, ink trailing thoughtfully across parchment.

"I think," he murmurs after a moment, "I would rather be known to one than sung by thousands."

"Even if it meant losing the song forever?" she questions gently.

His eyes lift to hers again, softened with certainty. "Especially then."

Sometimes, she watches him train. From the edge of the yard, half-covered in morning fog or cloaked in evening shadow. He does not ask her to come. She never says she will.

But he sees her… always.

She notices the respect of the other knights, their courteous nods acknowledging his Highness, the careful distance they keep. She notices how he pauses between bouts to glance upward—not to the dais, where others would look, but to the low stone wall shaded by ivy, the place he knows she prefers to sit and watch.

Once, she overhears a young squire whisper in awe, 'The prince never misses, not when she’s here.' She wonders if Rhaegar hears it too.

And knowing she watches changes something in the way he moves, less like a warrior performing, and more like a man remembering his own body.

He fights with elegance, not violence. Precision, not power. There is no flair to his strikes, no glory in the way he disarms his sparring partners. He does what he has to. He always has.

When the spring tourney is announced as a diversion for minor houses, an idle distraction while the king still shuns the lists, the court assumes he will decline.

He rides anyway.

Aelyria receives no official summons.

But a folded parchment appears on her desk the day before. No seal. No name. Just the drawing of a single feather in the corner.

She attends, covered of course. Far from the dais. She sits among the scholars and maesters, their talks buzzing softly around her like bees in a hive. Trumpets sound clear through the crisp morning air, banners ripple brightly beneath the blue sky.

Rhaegar rides with that same precision, black plate chased with a dragon of rubies flashing scarlet each time sunlight touches steel. His horse under his command beneath him, disciplined, mirroring its rider perfectly.

She feels rather than hears the collective gasp each time his lance strikes true. After the third tilt, applause rises like thunder, yet Rhaegar remains unchanged, his expression calm, save for the briefest glance toward her hidden corner. Her heart quickens, and she knows, somehow, that his does as well.

Later, after the tourney has ended and the banners are lowered, she finds him beside the fountain that runs near the edge of the practice field.

His armor is half removed, his tunic damp with sweat and stained at the collar. He holds a small linen cloth, idly dampening it beneath the falling water and running it along his neck.

“You ride clean,” she says, breaking the silence.

“And you watch,” he replies, turning slowly, his eyes bright.

“I noticed the Lord of Darry nearly unhorsed you,” she teases gently.

“Nearly.” A faint, amused challenge glints in his eyes. “But nearly isn’t enough, is it?”

Her laughter is soft, caught briefly in her throat before slipping free. He smiles slowly, and for just a moment, the rest of the world fades.

He begins speaking of his family more often. Not with affection. Not with scorn, but with clarity.

“My mother used to sing,” he says one afternoon, fingers absently tracing an old map spread across her table. “Simple melodies, lullabies passed from the Targaryen line.” His voice dips lower, a thread of wistfulness caught there. “She stopped singing years ago.”

Aelyria watches the shadow cross his face, sees the boy he might have been, waiting beneath the prince he has become. She does not interrupt him, just lets the memory live between them until he lifts his gaze again, clear-eyed once more.

He does not speak of the future as much.
But she sees how often he stares out windows these days, toward the east, toward the sky.

She does not ask what he is looking for.

She already knows him well enough to understand darkness that clouds him on certain days.

They are closer now than they have ever been.

Not in any way that can be charted on a map or gossiped in a hall. But in the quieter sense. The kind that forms into their days without asking permission.

He still comes to her dwelling. More often than necessary, perhaps, but never without cause.

He no longer knocks. He opens the door before she even reaches it.

Sometimes he comes with fruit, always perfectly ripe figs, pears from the Arbor, or blood oranges imported from Sunspear, which he places without comment upon her desk. She has come to expect them, just as he has come to expect the shape of her smile when she finds them.

Sometimes he arrives with song verses half-scribbled, lines crossed through and rewritten so many times that the parchment is soft. She reads them silently and nods in critique, and he revises again. On days when he only brings himself, silent and exhausted from duties of the court, he sits down into the chair opposite her like he belongs nowhere else.

Once, a cracked mug he claims is the only one in the Keep that doesn’t leak. She takes it from him skeptically, turning it over. A line runs visibly through its glazed surface.

“It’s hideous,” she says bluntly, returning it to him.

“And yet it has its charms,” Rhaegar replies smoothly, filling it to the brim with tea. He holds it up, watching a small droplet form along the crack. “See? Reliable.”

“That,” she retorts dryly, “is precisely why it leaks.”

Still, each time he visits thereafter, he reaches for the mug, pours tea, and watches her with mock seriousness as a single, stubborn drop slides slowly down its side.

He jokes with her. She accommodates none. But she smiles more.

Whatever binds them has deepened, as sure as the turning of the tide.

They move around each other like people who have long since memorized the other’s shape. She notices when his shoulder is stiff from training, preparing warm oils steeped with herbs she learned to blend years ago. She never offers openly, leaving the small vial where she knows he will find it later, empty and cleaned by the time she returns.

In turn, he notices when she eats little and moves slower, secretly placing fresh bread and cheeses, wrapped carefully in linen, where he knows she’ll discover them later in the evening.

Another ritual forms without their acknowledgment. Candles. She keeps them burning long into the night, thin towers of wax dripping onto their holders. At first, Rhaegar teased her about her endless supply of light, calling it a waste of good wax. Yet soon after, he begins to leave small boxes of fresh candles on her table. He never says a word about it, and neither does she. But now, whenever she lights a new wick, she thinks of him.

They do not speak of these things have been unfolding. They do not have to. Their is something particular about their care between them, that has woven into their days as if it has always belonged.

There is no need for pretense now. No use in it. Pretense has already been broken by time, by trust, and by the rituals they have made of each other.

Rather, a bond has formed between them, too deep to name, too strong to break. It lives in how he searches for her in every room, even in those where he knows she will not be. It shows in how she holds his eyes a moment too long, unwilling to look away first, allowing unspoken words to pass between them like hesitant breaths and pounding hearts. Their silences, once wary, now press warmly and comfortably around them, wrapping each interaction in reassurance, like a well-loved cloak that keeps away the chill of the Red Keep.

But what tethers them now is stronger than vows, and far more perilous in a place built on masks.

Chapter Text

He does not tell her where they are going. He simply appears outside the archive near dusk, hair wind-tousled and his harp slung carefully across his back, as if he has just stepped out of another life.

“Come with me,” he says, and offers his hand. He wears no sigil, no princely brocade, just a plain, loose grey tunic with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, and dark riding trousers, damp at the hem where they brush dew-laced grass. It is the kind of clothing a common bard might wear on the road, not a prince. But on him, it looks like freedom.

Aelyria blinks. “I’m working.”

“You’ll drown in ink at this rate.”

She stares at him, amused.

He grins, barely. “It’s not far. And I promise there are no scrolls.”

Against her better judgment, she takes his hand and follows.

They ride out through the city’s winding back paths, through forgotten gardens and the crumbling bones of old stone towers swallowed by ivy.

The narrow deer trail that threads toward the hidden grove is slick with evening dew. Aelyria dismounts, skirts the damp moss, and her slipper suddenly twists on a root. She lurches, then steadies as Rhaegar drops to one knee, catching her ankle in a sure grip.

“Hold still,” he says softly, his fingers quick and deft. He reties the leather strap, double-knots it, then smooths the curve of her instep with the back of one knuckle as if checking his work.

She finds her breath somewhere above them. “It would be easier,” she teases, “if princes watched where they walked.”

“Impossible,” he answers without looking up. “I was watching you.”

For a beat he remains kneeling in the crushed violets, all silver hair and attention on her, a man unhurried by crowns. Then he rises, dusts the damp from his palm, and gestures onward as though the tumble of her pulse were as ordinary as a birdsong.

The place he brings her to is quiet with no one in sight, a grove tucked behind a rise of trees where a thin stream cuts through the earth and birds murmur in the canopy above. A single flat stone lies at the water’s edge, worn smooth by time, shaded by low, reaching branches. The kind of place one stumbles upon and keeps secret.

She steps into it carefully, eyes tracing the natural curve of the land. It does not feel royal. It does not feel hidden.

It feels his.

“I come here when I want to play without being heard,” he says, unslinging the harp from his back. “No guards. No ears. The court forgets this place exists.”

“You’ve never brought me here,” she says quietly.

“I’ve never brought anyone here.”

He sits on the stone, fingers drifting across the harp’s strings—soft, idle, a song not yet formed.

She sits in the grass, robes drawn beneath her knees. She removes her head scarf, letting her long, dyed blond-gold hair fall loose around her shoulders, strands catching the breeze and shifting like threads of light.

For a while, he plays.

Then, between notes he turns his attention to her.“There’s a tale I’ve always liked. I heard it when I was a boy, during a tourney at Storm’s End. A musician played it for the court, said it was from my grandfather’s time.”

She turns toward him, listening to the melody.

“It’s about a prince who wrote a song he never played. He carried it with him his whole life. Some said it was a gift. Others said it was a curse. But he only meant it for one person.”

He looks down at the strings. “And they never heard it.”

Aelyria remains silent.

He plucks another chord. “I once thought it a tragedy—that he ought to have played it, ought to have sung. Yet of late…” He stops. “Of late I wonder if guarding the song was the only way he knew to love her.”

The breeze shakes the trees. The harp rings like water.

Aelyria’s voice is barely a whisper. “And do you still deem it sad”

Rhaegar looks at her. “No,” he says. “Now I think it was unfinished.”

She turns toward him, eyes tracing his profile in the fading light.

He is quiet, fingers brushing the strings of the harp with no real intention of playing. Then, almost absently. “The night I was born, they claim a red star streaked the sky, perhaps no more than cinders riding the wind, yet the tale clings…”

His voice is different now, softer, but hollowed. “My mother barely escaped the fire. And the rest of them… ashes in the ruin. It was meant to be a hatching. A rebirth. They thought they could bring the dragons back.”

He does not look at her, only stares at the sky, where the stars have begun to shiver. “They thought prophecy would be enough. Fire, blood, sacrifice, all of it to wake something ancient. But instead, it broke something. In the realm. In my house.”

His fingers pluck a discordant note, and he winces slightly. “Some say I was the dragon. That I was born from the fire to fulfill what they started.”

He turns his gaze to her then. “They call it the Song of Ice and Fire. A child born of dragon blood to rise in the darkness. To bring back the dragons. To stop what’s coming.”

She stays silent, her thoughts circling while his words continue

“I don’t know if I believe it,” he says. “But I dream things I cannot explain. I hear wings in the silence. I feel… watched. As if history itself is waiting to see what I’ll become.”

He exhales slowly, allowing silence to fill once more. “But when I’m with you,” he continues, his voice softer now, “I forget what blood made me.” The harp grows quiet.

She reaches over, brushing her fingers over his wrist where his heartbeat throbs like something held on a short leash. “You are more than what they claim, more than what they need,” she says.

His eyes close for a moment. Then he leans forward—not to kiss her, not yet—but just to rest his forehead against hers, like a boy who has carried fire too long and finally found water.

They step into the grass alongside the stream, side by side. Words seem superfluous at this point, the evening draws down over them, the murmur of water occupying the air.

Aelyria stares up at the sky, her breath has become slow as though the world held its breath for a moment to let them exist in it. Beside her, Rhaegar remains motionless. The only sound between them is the movement of the stream.

He does not look at her at first, his gaze on the sky, far away. But then she feels it—the turning of his head, his eyes on her. An almost imperceptible shift. But something about his eyes pin her, draws her in like an unseen tide she is powerless against.

She turns her head to look at him. His dark indigo eyes, looking closely to midnight colors, at this hour holding the dying light of the day. His eyes are not glowing, but deepening.

He looks into her warm honey colored eyes and both their heartbeats stumble, then drums faster.

His face is close now, so close she can savor his breath on her skin, warm, with a subtle minty flavor and something earthier; like cedar and rain.

And then there, he leans in, touching his lips to hers—light as a feather, unhurried, growing surer by heartbeats, as if they’re finally admitting what both have known for a long time.

When they draw apart, neither of them hurries to cover the distance. Rhaegar’s eyes remain on her, softened by something unguarded and bright. He reaches up and removes a strand of hair from her face, tucking it into place at her ear with painful gentleness, as if even the act of touching her requires softness.

No apologies. No “I love you” hanging in the air. Only the transition of the relationship between them.

Chapter Text

277 AC — King's Landing

The next morning, neither of them speaks of the grove. When Aelyria enters the archive, Rhaegar is already seated, a scroll unrolled before him, posture flawless. He greets her with a formal nod, voice proper.

“My lady.”

“Your Highness,” she returns, just as poised.

They work like that for some time, polite, yet unexpectedly careful.

Their fingers meet gently over the page, barely touching, yet the sensation sparks between them that travels softly up her arm.

She doesn't immediately pull away, nor does he.

Instead, their fingertips linger delicately, neither pressing nor retreating, suspended in shared hesitation.

She feels her heartbeat quicken, senses a mirrored fluttering in his breath.

Only after a careful, lingering moment does she slowly withdraw her hand, still feeling the ghost of his touch.

She decides to finally look up. He does too.

And then, like lightning cracking the air, she laughs. A short, surprised sound that slips out before she can stop it.

He stares at her for a moment, and then his mouth curves into a smile.

He leans forward slowly, pressing a kiss tenderly to her forehead.

His eyes drift closed for a moment, hovering against her skin as if he wishes to pause time there, inhaling her scent, to imprint it into his marrow.

When he finally moves back, the faintest smile touches his lips, and a soft glow remains behind, a promise persisting in the moment between them.

Neither of them have words to say what has just transpired.

But they do not need to. Because whatever has, it has always been.

The moons go by silently.

The winds become soft. The city unwinds into spring with the touch of a place that is left behind, in a time the pressing of the chiller air that came and gone.

The gardens flourish. Petals fall from the trees. And beneath it all, something blooms between them, not suddenly, but completely.

It is not declared. It is yet not named.

But it takes over their days like dust upon old scrolls.

They continue to return to the archive. But things have changed.

Now, when he leans across the table, he doesn’t reach for a book.

He reaches for her.

He presses a kiss to the nape of her neck when no one is watching, his lips not leaving her too soon, and he takes a moment savoring her heat.

She whispers in Valyrian, half invocation, half teasing, and barely intelligible, just to watch the way his smile that lies soft on her nape responds in secrecy and in pleasure.

They try to read. They fail, miserably.

Their eyes stray from the parchment too often, drawn instead to the glances in their eyes and their fingers brushing against each other and intertwining them together beneath the table. Constructing a language more compelling than any written word.

One lazy afternoon, sunlight streaming golden and warm between the tall shelves, he corners her unexpectedly, the space narrow and intimate.

He whispers against the sensitive curve of her jaw, quoting an old epic line blurred into something far more personal.

She shivers slightly, her pulse beating hard. “If you do not move,” she says breathless, yet teasing, “I’ll curse you in six dead languages.”

His smile deepens, the targaryen eyes brightening playfully of the false threat. He doesn’t move, instead, he leans further in, daring her, “kiss me,” he says.

She dares not to curse him. Instead, she tilts her head gently, pressing a kiss to his lips, granting permission, feeling his lifts lift into a smile against hers as he continues whispering words far older than themselves.

They return to his grove often, the hidden place near the stream where the city cannot reach them.

One day she brings parchment, claiming she means to sketch the old ruins.

She draws him instead. As she sketches, her eyes lift to study his face.

Without thinking, she reaches forward, gently brushing away strands of silver-gold hair that have fallen across his forehead.

Her fingertips lightly touch his temple. His eyes flutter closed briefly, taking in her touch and intimacy of the touch, a peaceful sigh escaping his lips.

He then tries to copy her.

What he produces is… alarming.

“You made my face look like a squashed turnip,” she says, biting back laughter.

“It has soul,” he replies, genuinely offended.

“You gave me three noses.”

“One is metaphorical.”

She throws a leaf at him. He retaliates by lunging at her, graceless and grinning.

They end up in the grass, tangled and breathless, her laughter dissolving softly into his mouth as he kisses her.

It isn’t hunger, it isn’t possession. It is joy, pure and bright and unapologetically alive.

Her fingers curl gently into his hair, his hand cradles her cheek with a tenderness that makes her heart ache sweetly.

When he pulls away at last, reluctantly and slowly, he rests his forehead against hers, eyes closed, her breath mingling softly with his own.

“You’re cruel,” he whispers, voice filled with gentle accusation and barely hidden affection.

“You’re dramatic,” she counters softly, smiling against his lips.

He sighs quietly, thumb stroking her cheekbone. “You’ve ruined me.”

“You started it.”

They kiss again anyway, surrendering once more to the simple, joyful inevitability of each other.

On other days in the grove Aelyria would lean back against a tree, her eyes shining with mischief.

“Seven hells, Rhaegar,” she teases, letting her fingers brush his sleeve, “you’re a sweet summer fool.”

He laughs, tilt­ing his silver head. “A fool, is it? Then a fool I’ll gladly be—so long as I remain yours.”

A smile tugs at her mouth. “You’ll never hear the end of it, my prince.”

“Then may your scolding be my music,” he murmurs , drawing her hand to his heart. “And may it play all our days.”

After their evenings in the archive, their steps are always too slow, drawing out their walk.

The corridors are dim, lit only by flickering torches. He purposefully slows, subtly leaning closer, his shoulder brushing her arm.

When her foot catches slightly against an uneven stone, he steadies her instinctively, his hand protectively cupping her elbow.

They exchange a tender glance, without a word spoken, both silently appreciating this wordless expression of intimacy.

Sometimes when the weather permits, they disappear into the city.

Rhaegar disguises himself, his cloak pulled low, powdered dye smudged into his silver-gold hair, his harp slung casually across his back like an afterthought.

Ser Barristan sometimes follows at a distance, never interfering, only watching.

He finds a tavern or a forgotten corner of a square and plays.

He doesn’t play for coin.

He plays because it frees something in him nothing else can.

Between songs, he walks the market stalls with her, rummaging through the scent of roasted nuts and old books, of candlewax and crushed fruit.

He buys her trinkets—simple things, a silver ring etched with intricate designs, a pressed flower in a glass locket, a ribbon the color of the twilight sky.

Things she might never wear but keeps anyway.

Once, he buys a tiny jar of saffron just because she lingers near it.

A side lane opens onto a courtyard where a single peach tree leans over a cracked fountain.

Rhaegar pauses, reaches up, and twists one sun-warm fruit from the branch.

With his small eating knife he halves it, wipes the blade clean on his sleeve, and offers her the sweeter side.

Juice beads softly at the corner of her lip.

He pauses, watching her intensely, their eyes meeting, holding the moment in suspense.

Only when he senses her consent does he carefully raise his thumb, brushing the drop away.

His touch moves across the corner of her lips, tracing the plumpness, in which he has memorized by heart, before withdrawing slowly, he dipped his head, tasting the sweetness on his fingertip in thoughtful action

“Too ripe?” she says.

“Just enough,” he answers, giving her the second half.

They finish the peach in bites.

He sets a copper coin on the fountain’s rim, as a silent payment for borrowed fruit, and threads their fingers together as they step back into the market’s noise.

He holds her hand, always. Not with the furtiveness of a man hiding something, but with the ease of someone who has nothing to prove.

To any commoner watching, they look like a poor married couple lost in their own quiet world.

They never care to correct anyone.

She never lets go, either.

Aelyria stands at the edge of the crowd each time, cloaked and quiet.

No one ever looks at her twice.

But she never looks at anything else.

One evening, as he plays in a shadowed corner of a market square, a man beside her leans in and asks, “Do you know who he is?”

She shakes her head, just slightly. “No.”

The man chuckles. “Shame. He plays like someone who does not belong down here.”

She doesn’t answer. Because she knows the truth. He plays for her. His beloved.

Her eyes stay on Rhaegar’s hands, each note with care, every chord precise, like a truth he cannot say aloud. But he lives in every breathing moment.

She watches him train sometimes, from her usual place beyond the courtyard edge.

He moves like a song. He continues to fights with precision, not brutality; his style favours razor accuracy over brute force.

One afternoon, she arrives late, her head wrap loosened in the spring heat, revealing more of her features than usual.

He sees her, always, but this time, he falters.

It is only a moment.

But it is sufficient.

His opponent’s wooden blade catches him square in the ribs, hard enough to drop him to a knee with a grunt.

Aelyria shakes her head from the shadows, laughter quiet behind her hand.

Later, he passes by her with a faint limp and mutters, “You’re dangerous.”

He tells her, “You make it impossible to focus.”

“You need the practice,” she replies, hiding her smile.

He shrugs. “Then watch me again tomorrow.” He brushes his knuckles against her cheek

And yet, it isn’t peace. Not quite.

Because even joy, in his world, comes with shadows.

He slips past Ser Barristan with increasingly elaborate lies. “Meeting with the High Septon.” “Consultation with the maesters.” “Rest in the royal gardens.” Lies Barristan never challenges but always notes.

Rhaegar learns to avoid familiar routes, enter through old service halls, change the direction of his cloak, moving like a ghost.

The more time he spends with her, the more careful he has to be.

But not once does he hesitate.

They never speak its name, words feel too small, too breakable.

They do not yet utter the simple three words which suspend themselves in mid-air.

Instead it lives in the effortless curve of her body against his shoulder while they read by guttering candle-glow, and in the feather-light kiss he sets between her brows whenever silence says more than speech.

It breathes in the moments of shared special moments that follows the last trembling harp-note, sometimes his, sometimes hers, when their fingers trade the instrument back and forth and their eyes hold on each other as if the other were the rarest thing ever held, a treasure the world might snatch away at any moment.

It slips into smaller ones, too. The absent way he tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. The almost-ritual grace with which she spoons honey into his tea and pretends it is for sweetness, not solace. The shy brush of their hands when he passes her a quill, neither quite willing to break the contact. The peaceful evenings when they stand at the window watching gulls wheel over Blackwater Bay, time itself slowing out of courtesy.

Some nights it is muffled laughter behind a closed door; other nights, shared exhaustion, heads bowed over the same scroll until dawn stains the city pink and gold.

On the hardest days, when the crown bears heavier pressure than prophecy and the Red Keep bristles with more rumors, it is simply the certainty that her lamp will be lit and she will answer his knock.

One evening when the moonlight streams through Aelyria’s open window, embracing around them. In a moment of vulnerability.

“Are you sure?” he asks gently, his voice barely above a whisper, fingertips tracing her jaw with infinite care.

She nods slowly, eyes clear, voice with want and love. “With you, always.”

Rhaegar’s lips meet Aelyria’s gently, in a tender, almost reverent kiss. He cups her face with trembling fingers, as if afraid she might break under too sudden a touch. Aelyria can feel his heart pounding as she presses closer, her own excitement rising at the sweetness of his hesitation.

Their lips move slowly at first, until Rhaegar’s nervousness begins to melt into need. With a shaky breath, he deepens the kiss, letting his tongue brush against hers, and feels a moan escape her throat in response.

He lifts one hand to the laces of Aelyria’s dress, fingers fumbling slightly in his inexperience.

She places her hand over his to guide him, smiling against his mouth to reassure him. Encouraged by her guidance, Rhaegar slowly loosens the laces and draws her dress down off her shoulders.

Aelyria shrugs the garment the rest of the way off, letting it drop to the floor and leaving only a thin slip clinging to her hips.

Rhaegar’s breath catches as more of her smooth skin is revealed, and he pauses to admire at the sight of her breasts now bare before him.

He reaches out to cup one soft mound in his palm. Aelyria gasps at his touch, arching into his hand as his thumb brushes over her nipple, which hardens at the contact.

Desire rises between them, growing more intense. Aelyria tugs at the hem of Rhaegar’s tunic, and he breaks the kiss just long enough to help pull the garment over his head.

Her hands roam over his exposed chest, fingers splaying against the hard muscles of his torso and the rapid thud of his heart beneath.

Rhaegar shivers at her touch, his body alive with both nerves and desire beneath her exploring hands.

Gaining confidence, he lowers his head to scatter kisses along her jaw and down her neck. His lips wander lower, brushing hesitant kisses across the slope of her breast. Aelyria murmurs encouragement, tangling her fingers into his silvery-blond hair as he at last closes his mouth around her nipple.

He suckles gently, drawing a moan from her that sends a wet heat gathers between her thighs. 

Aelyria’s fingers drift down to the waistband of Rhaegar’s breeches and begin to unlace them. Rhaegar sucks in a breath when her hand brushes the rigid bulge beneath the fabric. She pushes his breeches down over his hips, freeing his hardened length.

Rhaegar lets his hand glide over the curve of her hip and hooks into the waistband of her last remaining garment. Slowly, he draws the thin slip down her legs, leaving Aelyria naked for him.

For a moment they stand pressed together, naked skin against naked skin. Rhaegar pulls her into his arms, and she melts against him, the press of her breasts and belly against his own body making them both sigh.

Aelyria cannot recall the last time her heart beat so fiercely before making love. It has been so long, and now, as she looks into Rhaegar’s eyes, bared in both flesh and soul, her own eyes fill with tears.

The feel of her warm, smooth flesh against him, her curves fitting so perfectly to his angles, is almost overwhelming. Aelyria feels the hard length of his arousal pressed against her lower stomach, making her heat grow wetter.

Aelyria guides Rhaegar down onto the bed, and he settles himself between her parted thighs. she places her hand over his heart, feeling how intensely it beats against her palm.

He braces himself on one arm and his length grazes her damp folds, the touch drawing a gasp from them both.

"Ñuha jorrāelagon, iksā sīr gevie." My love, you are so beautiful. 

He whispers these words against her mouth. In return she presses her lips to his, her tongue teasing over the seam of his lips.

Rhaegar sighs against her lips, then takes her mouth with his own, parting her lips to meet him in a devouring kiss.

He breaks the kiss and lifts his head. His eyes find hers, silently asking permission to continue.

Aelyria answers by reaching between them, her fingers wrapping around his shaft and guiding him to her entrance.

Swallowing hard, Rhaegar begins to press forward, entering her tight heat inch by inch.

A ragged groan escapes him at the wondrous sensation of her body yielding around him. As he sinks deeper, he groans, “Ao eman iā sȳz.”  You feel so good.

Aelyria whimpers at the sweet stretch of him filling her, her nails sinking into the muscles of his shoulders, though her gaze never falters from his.

At last he is sheathed wholly within her, their hips joined together. He lingers there, chest rising and falling, overcome by the feeling of being bound so intimately with her.

They cling to one another in that moment, bodies trembling and hearts racing in unison, savoring the consummation of their bond.

She feels him pulse deep inside her, every throb of his cock making her shiver. He is well-endowed, and the long abstinence she has kept before this moment makes the stretch achingly sweet, as though she is being taken for the first time.

Aelyria’s lips trail to his neck, kissing and sucking at the skin as Rhaegar begins to move. He pulls back just enough to leave the tip before sliding into her again.Her arms wrap tight around his back, her hips lifting to meet each thrust, moans spilling from her lips to plead him on. Sweat beads at his temple. Their eyes catch, his lips parted, mouth forming a breathless “O.”

She rises to meet his kiss, mouths joining hungrily, and Rhaegar begins to quicken his pace, each stroke becoming deeper.

Rhaegar feels a tight coil of pleasure winding low in his belly, the strain near unbearable in its force. He strives to hold fast, desperate to prolong the moment and give her all the pleasure he can.

Aelyria is already near, he knows it in the way her breath falters and the clutch of her inner walls flutters around his cock, drawing him deeper, holding him tighter.

Her nails score down his back as her body tenses. With a final roll of her hips, Aelyria arches beneath him and cries out.

She clenches around him in pulsing waves, and the ecstasy of it drives him past control.

His rhythm falters, a raw groan tearing from his throat. He drives into her one last time and yields, spilling his seed deep within her as his body shudders in release. He gasps her name against her mouth, while she gathers him close and bears him through the flood of his release.

For a long moment afterward, neither of them moves, still entwined in the aftermath.

Rhaegar remains atop her, his face buried in the crook of her neck, unwilling to release her.

Aelyria runs her fingers through his hair. At last, Rhaegar shifts onto his side and gathers her with him so they lie face to face. He brushes a few damp strands of hair from her brow and presses a kiss to her forehead. Aelyria nestles against him, her cheek resting over his heart as their breathing slows.

“You are the only peace I've ever known,” he says, voice soft and raw with sincerity.

She lifts her head and kisses him, silently agreeing, knowing she feels precisely the same.

Their days are not perfect, never tidy, never safe. It is fragile as glass, perilous as wildfire, fated to end in either dust or legend.

Yet it is theirs.

And for one fleeting, fragile-held season, the world is merciful enough to let them keep it.

He never says it where others can hear. But now the words have become more frequent, with her face in his hand and his thumb brushing her cheek, he whispers.

“Ñuha jorrāelza.”

My beloved.

Chapter Text

278 AC - King’s Landing

Nearly a year has passed since the Prince and the Scribe’s bond first blossomed.
Aelyria awakens to the first golden light of morning warming her bare skin. A sigh escapes her lips as she shifts, straddling the man beneath her. Rhaegar's eyes flutter open to the most exquisite sight.

Aelyria above him, her lashes low over eyes that shine with love and desire. Her thighs hug his hips, and she presses herself down onto him, drawing a groan from him.

They move together slowly, savoring the intimacy of dawn. Aelyria braces her hands on Rhaegar’s chest for balance. He lies warm and solid beneath her palms. He watches, mesmerized, as her head falls back in pleasure. Loose strands of her hair escape the braid she slept in, tumbling around her shoulders as she rocks her hips against his.

The morning light turns those stray locks to gold, a halo around her form. To him, she looks like some goddess out of the old tales, riding him with confidence and grace.

Aelyria gasps as Rhaegar thrusts up to meet her movements, his hands sliding over her body. He lets his fingers roam up her sides. When his palms cup her breasts, she arches into his touch with a whimper.

Rhaegar’s thumbs circle about her sensitive nipples, teasing them into firm points. Aelyria bites down on her soft lip, a shudder of pleasure coursing through her at the friction. She opens her eyes again and meets Rhaegar’s smouldering gaze.

“Mmm… jorrā…” she moans, rolling her hips as she takes him deep, his length pressing against her wall. They both shiver, and Rhaegar’s grip on her waist tightens. He has ever desired her—yet never so fiercely as now, with sunlight painting her in hues of gold and rose. Every gasping breath she takes, every flutter of her lashes as pleasure claims her, only fans his desire to greater flame.

Witnessing the rosy flush spread across Aelyria’s cheeks and the way her breaths turn to soft cries, Rhaegar realizes she is as close as he is. Determined to feel her climax in his arms, he slides one hand down between them. His fingers find the sensitive bud at the apex of her thighs and trace slow circles

Since they have started making love, Rhaegar has grown surer in giving her pleasure, the two of them now perfectly attuned to each other’s bodies.

Aelyria cries out in startled ecstasy; smiling, Rhaegar strokes her in time with his thrusts, watching her unravel above him. Her nails press into his chest as her body tenses.

“Kesy iksā, ñuha jorrā. Lanta.”

That’s it, my love. Let go.

With a final roll of her hips, Aelyria shatters, waves of release breaking upon her as a cry escapes her lips. Her heat flutters around Rhaegar in a pulsing grasp. The force of her climax nearly claims him as well, but he bears down and holds fast, determined to prolong their pleasure a moment longer.

In one fluid motion, he wraps his arms around Aelyria and rolls with her across the featherbed. Aelyria gasps as she suddenly finds herself on her back amidst the tangled sheets, with Rhaegar above her. He remains nestled deep inside her, and the altered angle sends a fresh surge of pleasure through them both.

Rhaegar seizes her wrists and pins them to the pillows on either side of her head, his fingers threading through hers. His gaze burns into hers.

Aelyria’s body still quivering from release. She lets out a soft laugh of surprise at his boldness, winding her legs around his waist to draw him closer. Rhaegar moves, slowly at first, languid strokes that make them both moan.

The oversensitivity of Aelyria’s recent climax only intensifies each sensation, and she arches against him, biting her lip as he continues to thrust.

That sight of the woman he loves laid out beneath him in bliss, shatters Rhaegar’s last restraint. He drives into her urgently, Aelyria clings to him, rising to meet every stroke.

Within moments Rhaegar’s rhythm turns erratic. A groan tears from his throat as he buries himself one final time, spilling his seed inside her.

Spent and breathless, Rhaegar lies over Aelyria, bracing his weight on his forearms. Their bodies still tremble, hearts hamming as one. Aelyria brushes a damp silver lock from his brow and meets his gaze. He rests his forehead to hers, smiles, then claims a kiss.

“Rytsas, ñuha vēzos.”

Good morning, my sun.

“It is now,” she answers, and presses a kiss to his brow, “we should rise. The archives await.”

Rhaegar kisses her hair, unwilling but resigned. “If we linger, we may never leave this bed.”

They dress unhurriedly, trading touches and smiles. Outside duties call, yet for this dawn and so many others before, they remain only a man and the woman in love, carrying the promise of an ordinary day spent together.

By mid-morning they sit in a corner of the royal archives. Aelyria bends over a leather-bound tome; Rhaegar pretends to read, yet his gaze moves on her every frown of thought, every idle twist of hair.

Across the table she turns a page. He remembers the day he first set eyes on her, how startled he was when a woman arrived in place of Arthur, the scribe he had summoned, though his kin had come in his place.

Rhaegar himself is formal and reserved, at that time he was uncertain how to act around the intelligent young woman who had so unexpectedly stepped into his life. Prior, his whole life he had only buried himself in scrolls and duty.

Now with her, he forgets the dreams that haunt him. He is able to escape free of formality and become simply Rhaegar — Rhaegar to his Aelyria.

Since then he has given thanks to the gods a dozen times that their paths crossed.

He realizes he hasn’t turned a page in several minutes. Rhaegar forces his eyes back down to the book before him, a treatise on ancient dragonlore. The faded Valyrian glyphs on the parchment seem to blur together as his mind wanders again, recalling Aelyria dancing barefoot in the grass one evening within their grove.

“Rhaegar,” Aelyria’s voice pulls him from his daydream. He blinks and sees her regarding him amusedly, “You haven’t turned a page in a while, finding the accounts of the Dance of Dragons particularly riveting, are we?”

Rhaegar leans back in his chair and admits with a smile tugging at his lips. “I fear the black and the greens cannot hold my attention today. Even when they caused my house such misfortune.”

Once, the burden of his family's sins had filled him with shame; with her beside him, that burden becomes almost forgotten.

She rolls her eyes in playful exasperation. “Flatterer. We came here to study, remember?”

“I recall something of the sort,” Rhaegar says lightly. Under the table he stretches out his leg until his boot brushes her ankle. “Forgive me, my lady, but my mind seems determined to wander.”

She bites back a grin and shuts her book. “Perhaps we both need a respite. I have read the same sentence three times and still make no sense of it.”

She sighs and arches her back to ease the stiffness of long sitting.

Rhaegar tries—only half-successfully—to keep his eyes from the motion that lifts the curve of her bosom beneath her dress.

Aelyria notes his gaze and lifts a brow. “A respite, I said,” suppressing a laugh. “Before you decide to ravish me among the scrolls, Your Highness.”

Rhaegar chuckles, hands raised in surrender. “Tempting, yet I suspect the Archmaester would never recover if he found his precious library put to such use.”

Aelyria hides a giggle behind her hand; the picture of a scandalised maester leaves them both flustered. When the laughter fades, Rhaegar rises and offers his hand. “Come, let us take some air for the rest of the sunlight. The manuscripts will await our return upon the morrow.”

She closes her book, stacks it with the others. “Do you have something in mind?”

“Perhaps.” His smile turns secretive. From a wall niche he draws his traveling harp.

Aelyria’s face lights with delight. “Your harp! You brought it?”

“I hoped for a moment of music.” He slings the strap over his shoulder. “Shall we return to our grove?”

No further persuasion is needed. She gathers her satchel, squeezes his free hand. “Lead on, my prince.”

Years of harsh wandering have hardened Aelyria, yet in these recent years she feels herself returning back toward the girl she once was.

They reach the grove beneath the late-evening sun, ancient oaks encircling a clearing carpeted with grass and wildflowers.

Rhaegar sits on a fallen log and lifts his harp into his lap. Aelyria stands before him, unfastening her headwrap, letting her hair tumble free down her back. Rhaegar’s breath catches, whether he has seen it a hundred times or a thousand, the sight of her uncovered beauty always strikes him anew.

Her hair lies in a muted yellow color coaxed from dye. Now and then Rhaegar glimpses an uncolored strand of silver, yet he keeps the knowledge to himself, content to wait until she chooses to share that truth.

Rhaegar begins to play, an unfinished song he has written for her:

Half of my soul walks unseen,
a pulse I’d know with sight denied.

I’ll know that step though daylight dies,
and follow on, through flame and rust.

As Rhaegar plays, Aelyria’s own eyes shine, partly for the beauty of the moment, partly for the memory of a time when she felt the gods had forsaken her. Now someone she loves offers light where darkness once ruled.

Once the last note fades, Rhaegar sets the harp aside. Aelyria crawls into his lap and presses her ear to his chest, listening to the music of his heart. Eyes closed, she prays the gods slow time for them…for her. He holds her close, chin resting atop her head.

They linger in silence until his stomach rumbles; Aelyria chuckles and teases him, and together they agree to return to the city for ingredients and share a meal in her dwelling, leaving hand in hand.

The market teems as they move through the stalls, Rhaegar cloaked and hooded, Aelyria guiding him by the hand. Among the cries of vendors, the hawker—fond of Aelyria—slips them two apples; she thanks him, teasing Rhaegar that the man must think him an over-protective brother.

Rhaegar closes the door behind them, first nodding to Ser Arthur Dayne stationed down the lane, while Aelyria lights a single oil lamp.

“It feels good to be back,” Rhaegar says, setting the food on the table. Rhaegar feels more at home within her modest room than anywhere in the Red Keep; if he could vanish into this place and remain at her side, he would.

“Rest, I’ll start the stew,” she offers.

“Oh no you don’t,” he replies, rolling up his sleeves. “You promised to teach me.”

They work side by side—she at the hearth, he slicing carrots under her teasing eye. The room soon smells with the scent of meat, onions, and herbs.

Aelyria opens the balcony door, letting the aromas drift into the night air. At the hearth they trade jests.

Rhaegar’s cooking has somewhat improved under her watch, yet his knife still carves vegetables into odd shapes. When he flicks a drop of water her way, she waves the ladle in mock threat.

When the stew is ready they eat by lamplight, bread and two apples awaiting. Rhaegar savours a spoonful. “No feast in the Red Keep can match this.”

“How am I to eat when you speak so?”

“Do not stop on my account, we have apples yet, my love.”

Once they finish eating, wash and dry the plates. Aelyria curls on the divan, book in hand. Rhaegar sits beside her, arm around her shoulders.

“What tale tonight?” he asks, breathing the scent of her hair as she opens the worn pages.

“One of my favourites from Essos,” Aelyria replies, her fingers finding a well-read passage. “It tells of two lovers in ancient Valyria, I think you will enjoy it.”

Rhaegar smiles and rests his cheek atop her head as she begins to read. Though she reads in the Common Tongue, now and then a musical Valyrian word slips through, lending the story added poetry. Rhaegar listens, mesmerized less by the tale itself than by the sound of Aelyria’s voice.

In the story, a young dragonlord forsook his titles and riches for the love of a simple shepherd’s daughter. Together they fled across mountains and seas, chasing a dream of freedom, only to learn that one can never truly escape the doom of Valyria.

Once, such tales would pierce Aelyria with grief, now she finds comfort in the way Valyria’s poetry endures. The tale is bittersweet, yet she can cherish its song.

When she closes the book, Rhaegar tightens his arm around her, bringing her closer. She gazes up at him through her lashes.

“Do you miss it?” he ask, thumb brushing along her shoulder. “Lys, your home.”

She hesitates, lost in thought for a moment. She misses home, but Lys was not home.

“I miss the heat of the sun, the way it bakes the stone to a pale lime light, the shining sea, the scent of the lemon tree by the red door…” She pauses, considering if she is revealing too much.

“And the sound of merchants bartering in a dozen tongues,” she safely includes.

Rhaegar watches her profile as she speaks. A faraway cast rests on her expression, as though she sees those memories dancing among the stars.

Rhaegar’s heart aches for her, he understands a sorrow akin to his own. Yet until she chooses to speak, he does not pry. Instead, he gathers her close and presses a kiss to her brow.

“But,” she continues, smiling, “the warmth I find in your arms outshines all of that. The warmth of your love is my home now.”

“Oh, Aelyria…” Rhaegar’s throat tightens. He lifts her hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. “You are the very reason my heart beats, you alone are my home.”

They stay embrace, gazing into the night. Here no royal title burdens on Rhaegar, here he is only a man who is in love, and loving in return.

He marvels that a single meeting. Chance, or perhaps fate. Brought her presence, brought him joy, ones he never truly had before.

Aelyria tilts her face up to his, “What moves your thoughts?” she asks.

He lowers his gaze once more, captures her lips in a kiss, then whispers—

“If ever I wake dragons from stone, I shall fly us far from here.”

Chapter Text

Mid 278 AC — King's Landing

The doors of the small council chamber close with a deep groan, sealing the room in heat and dust and the tension that always precedes a royal whim.

Sunlight claws through the narrow windows, streaking across the long table. Aerys sits slouched at its head, the armrest of his chair clutched in one hand, fingers twitching like a man mid-fever. Ever since his rescue from Duskendale, the King's moods have grown darker, his whims more unstable, his cruelties less predictable.

Across the chamber, Tywin Lannister stands rigid, the golden Hand’s draped over his broad shoulders. He might as well be a statue cast in Lannister gold. Tywin’s hard green gaze flickers over the room but returns always to the king, observing in scrutiny. He does not sit; he does not so much as shift.

Around the table, Grand Maester Pycelle clears his throat for no reason other than to be noticed. Master of Coin, Qarlton Chelsted busies himself with his wine cup, eyes downcast as he swirls the red contents. And Varys, the Master of Whisperers, merely sits with hands calmly steepled, smiling to himself, serene as a well-fed cat in a room full of mice.

“Blood,” Aerys says, staring not at anyone but at the carved dragon’s head before him. “That is what holds the realm. Not alliances. Not castles. Blood.”

Tywin does not move a muscle. “And yet, Your Grace, blood must be bound to endure.”

Aerys’s gaze snaps to him.

“Your daughter,” he hisses, “is a lioness dressed for a feast.”

Tywin’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. He allows himself a single slow blink. “She is noble. Educated. And has never once overstepped her station.”

“And yet,” Aerys says, “you bring her up again. How many times must you dress her for my son before you understand—I see your ambition.”

A taut stillness claims the room. From the corner of his eye, Tywin can see Grand Maester Pycelle watching intently, wringing his hands. The gold-chain links around Pycelle’s neck chime as he shifts. Tywin himself remains stock-still. When he speaks, he inclines his head a mere inch.

“My only ambition, Your Grace, is that the realm outlive us both.”

King Aerys’s smile sharpens to a razor’s edge. His nails dig into the arm of his chair. “Then remember your place, Lord Tywin. Hands that grow too proud may find themselves lopped off.”

The threat hangs in the air. There is a beat of stunned silence. Tywin’s chin lifts by a fraction, the only hint that he even registered the insult. His large hands remain clasped behind his back,

When he responds, his voice is like ice. “As I have always done, Your Grace.”

No one dares to breathe, let alone speak. The other councilors sit frozen, eyes darting between the King and his Hand. Finally, Grand Maester Pycelle musters the courage to intervene. He clears his throat again—meek this time—and ventures in a wavering tone,

“There are… other options, Your Grace. Noble houses, loyal ones.”

Aerys does not even deign to turn his head toward the Grand Maester. The King’s glare remains locked on Tywin, as if trying to peel away the Hand’s implacable mask. Pycelle wilts under the lack of response, his cheeks reddening.

Into the silence Varys’s finally speaks. “Your Grace, it is true that the blood of Old Valyria runs purest in the Targaryen line. In fact, the last truly noble Valyrian blood in the world sits upon this very throne.

He inclines his bald head respectfully toward Aerys. The Free Cities offer only silver-haired pretenders, and alas, you have no daughter to keep the line unsullied. Yet… another path remains. If I might be so bold...House Martell of Dorne has never risen against the Crown. Their blood is ancient Rhoynar, seasoned by two centuries of dragonfire and diplomacy.”

At that, Chelsted hurriedly nods and leans forward in his chair. The Master of Coin seizes the idea. “Just so, Your Grace. House Martell has ever kept the peace,” he adds eagerly. “Their line is old, their loyalty long tested. And Princess Elia…”—he wets his lips—“Princess Elia is as yet unspoken for.”

The prospect dangles in the air. Elia of Dorne, a bride for the Prince.

Aerys pauses, considering this, but his face remains hard. The councilors exchange cautious looks. Tywin’s expression does not change; his green eyes stay fixed forward, distant, as if none of this concerns him. The Dornish offer carries no Lannister advantage; Tywin’s silence is deafening. Then a chuckle breaks among the room.

Varys allows himself a sly smile. In a buttery tone he says, “Far from court… and far from certain distractions.”

A secret no longer secret. The council looks glances around the table, anticipating if one dares speak the truth, that a certain scribe at court might be a dangerous distraction.

Aerys’s cracked lips twitch into the ghost of a cruel grin, as though the words had escaped his comprehension.

“Dorne,” he says, rolling the word on his tongue. “A crucible of sun and sand… where fire may mate with fire, and no gilded lions prowl to gnaw at my throne.” He almost laughs, a sudden bark of sound that makes Pycelle flinch.

Chelsted clears his throat and speaks up. “Would Your Grace wish us to send a raven to Sunspear? To open discussions of a betrothal?”

“When I wish it, you will know. Not before,” Aerys snaps.

“Has… has Prince Rhaegar been consulted on this matter, Your Grace?” One asks.

“The boy was born to obey, not to question, he forgets what blood made him.”

The King’s words disdain for his own son is unquestionable. Not even Rhaegar, it seems, will be permitted a voice in his fate.

At last, the council starts to disperse, Tywin Lannister is the first to depart. In his wake, Grand Maester Pycelle fumbles to gather up his scrolls. Chelsted lingers only long enough to pour himself another cup of wine.

Varys remains seated at the table for a moment, watching the Hand’s back disappear through the doorway. An inscrutable smile plays on the Master of Whisperers’ lips, as though he has just been reminded of something he already knew.

Chapter Text

The sky above King’s Landing that morning was the color of old steel, hard and unforgiving. Aelyria turned off the main road and into the crooked lanes near Maester’s Walk. Her satchel weighed heavy at her side. Inside, wrapped in cloth, lay the dried orange-blossom tea Rhaegar favored, and a small parcel of almond pastries from an ancient baker by the harbor who alone remembered the recipe. She had waited longer than she cared to admit.

They are meant to meet in the archives, but a steward comes with a message, Rhaegar has been called to his father’s council. No word on when he’ll return. He doesn’t need to explain, she knows how days like this end.

So she goes to the market.

She opens the door to her flat, sets the satchel down with care, and lights the hearth. The scent of mint and lavender drifts through the stone, homely and faintly wistful. Evening gathers in the corners like a waiting thing. She doesn’t bother with the second lamp.

The knock comes softly.

She opens the door to find him, his hair mussed, shoulders damp with mist, face unreadable. He steps inside without a word.

He looks tired.

She nods toward the kettle. “I bought your favorite tea. And the pastries. Almond. From the old baker.”

He manages a wan smile, shedding his cloak. “You always know.”

“You’ve had a long day,” she says.

She pours the tea, lets it steep, and hands him the cup. He accepts it but barely drinks. He paces, a prince caught between fury and fatigue.

“The council has begun talks with Dorne,” he says at last, voice clipped. “They think a Martell bride would... be the right alliance.”

She says nothing at first. She has expected it, but expectation doesn’t soften the blow.

“Your blood, not your heart, that is what they guard. To them you are a vessel, a length of Targaryen thread they must keep unbroken.”

He gives a bitter laugh. “For my father the thread is everything. If it remains intact, the man wearing the crown can fray as he likes.”

“You are the crown prince,” she says gently. “They will demand you play the part.”

“And what would you have me do, Aelyria? Stand silent? Bow? Take the hand of a stranger who will never know me, who cannot share the burden of prophecy I carry, and who will be cursed to find my heart already sworn elsewhere?”

Aelyria flinches at the heat in his words, but she forces her voice to stay even.

“I would have you live, Rhaegar,live long enough to make sense of the prophecy that hound you. Defy your father and he will shatter more than this betrothal; he will tear the realm and grind you beneath it. Marry the princess, hold your crown, and keep breathing. Prophecy is of little use to a dead dragon.”

Rhaegar’s jaw tightens. “You speak with the councils tongue”

“No,” she says. “I sound like someone who understands what it costs to be seen in these politics—and how high the price if you misstep.”

He curls his hands into fists. “Would it be so impossible? If I told them I wished to wed you?”

She stills. “Rhaegar...”

He refuses to yield. “You said it yourself, Lys carries Valyrian blood, a legacy older than half the great houses. Why not you, then?”

Aelyria exhales.

“Because names weigh more than blood when thrones are balanced. I am no princess of Lys, only a scribe who crossed the Narrow Sea on a merchant deck. Marrying me would give the realm nothing it understands—no banners, no swords, no promise of armies in the eventide.”

He opens his mouth again, frustration raw in his eyes, yet the logic of her words hovers, undeniable and cruel, between them.

She steps closer until only he can catch her whisper.

“I cannot give the realm what it wants, Rhaegar. Not alliances… not heirs.The Targaryen line depends on you, and I cannot bear children.”

Her confession hangs. Before he can respond, she continues,

“You would forfeit everything for a match the realm would never abide. I will not be the reason they break you.”

He stands silent, caught between rage and heartbreak.

“ So this is what’s left to us...stolen hours in shadow, while I stand before the realm beside a wife I do not love and love another all the more?”

She steps forward, just enough to place a hand against his cheek. Her thumb brushes the edge of his cheekbone.

“We call it truth,” she says. “And we let that be enough. Because anything more would destroy you.”

He blinks then, as if her silence strikes him harder than any spoken refusal could. The anger in him cools, not into peace, but into something nearer to grief than rage.

A ragged sound escapes his throat, not quite a sob, yet not quite a laugh. His hands shoot out, gripping her upper arms hard enough that she gasps.

“Don’t say that as though it were simple,” he chokes. “They would carve my life into treaties and heirs and call it duty, and expect me to smile while it bleeds.”

She opens her mouth, but he hauls her nearer, forehead pressing to hers.

“You are the song the prophecy never spoke,” he says, voice broken with urgency. “The only truth that does not cut.”

His grip softens, thumbs brushing her cheeks. Then both hands rise to cradle her face, still shaking.

“Ñuha prūmia,” he breathes— my heart. “Know this. I would love you beyond any crown, beyond any queen who might bear my heirs. I would burn the world to keep the note of your name from falling silent.”

He pulls her fully into his arms, as if sheer closeness might solder fate shut.

Then, in High Valyrian, his voice fragile but also full.

“Nyke jorrāelan ao se drēje. Issa ao hen ñuha prūmia.”

I love you, and always. You are of my heart.

Her gaze trembles, an ache stirs in her throat. When she speaks, it’s not with restraint, but with truth laid bare.

“Avy jorrāelan. Kesīr. Kesy. Līr.”

I love you. Here. You. Still.

She sees the tears in his eyes as a matching tear slips down her cheek. Every wall between them has crumbled. There is nothing left to hide.

She leans in. He bends his head to meet her. Their lips touch in a feather-light kiss. Aelyria’s eyes flutter shut. For a heartbeat, neither of them moves, both savoring that sweet press of mouth against mouth. Then need overtakes them. The kiss deepens, tender turning to hungry and all-consuming. Rhaegar tilts his head and captures her lips more firmly, and she opens to him with a sigh.

Rhaegar’s arms wrap around her, crushing her body to his. She can feel the heat of his chest even through the fabric of his tunic, the strong thud of his heart against her own racing heart. He holds her as if he can never get close enough, one hand splayed against her back to press her fully against him. Aelyria’s fingers thread into his silver hair. She clings to him, pouring the years of longing and love into the way her hands roam over him. Her palm skims along the line of his jaw, then down the column of his neck. She grips the collar of his tunic, desperate to keep him here, to keep this moment from ever slipping away. If touch alone could stop time, she would etch this moment into eternity.

He breaks the kiss for a heartbeat, only to tilt her head and capture her lips from a new angle. His mouth moves over hers with aching slowness. Not to claim her, but to know her, to memorize the taste and shape of her lips and the gasps that spill from them. Aelyria answers in kind, kissing him back with equal passion.

When his tongue glides against hers, she gives a stuttering moan and presses closer. A low sound rumbles in Rhaegar’s throat as her eager response stokes his desire. One of his hands slips down from her back to her hips, then around to the backs of her thighs. In one swift motion, he bends and scoops her off her feet. Aelyria yelps against his mouth as the floor falls away. Instinctively, she loops her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. He’s carries her as though she weighs nothing, their lips never parting

When Rhaegar reaches the bed, her legs untangle from his waist. He draws back from the kiss, both of them panting. Their eyes meet for a moment, and then he kneels, lowering her onto the mattress.

Rhaegar rises just enough to stand at the bedside, gazing down at her. Firelight from the hearth dances over them both. In that moment, with his chest heaving and his hair falling in tangles over his eyes, he looks every inch a dragon prince; dangerous and beautiful and completely hers. Aelyria’s breath catches at the intensity in his face.

Slowly, she reaches up and takes his hand, intertwining her fingers through his. “I’m here,” she whispers.

He brings her knuckles to his lips, kissing them tenderly. Then he climbs onto the bed beside her, never letting go of her hand.

They lie facing each other on the coverlet. For a long moment neither of them moves, they simply regard the other. The flush upon Aelyria’s cheeks, the rise and fall of Rhaegar’s chest, the twine of their fingers between them.

At last, Rhaegar peels the bodice of her dress down over her shoulders, planting a kiss on her exposed shoulder as he bares it. Aelyria shivers at the feel of his lips on her skin. Slowly, her dress is eased down. Rhaegar’s fingertips graze her arms as he slides the garment off.

Aelyria reaches between them to undo the fastenings of his tunic. Rhaegar shrugs out of the tunic and pulls his undershirt over his head, tossing both to the floor.

They continue undressing one another with care, shedding the layers of cloth that separate them. His own trousers are the last barrier between them. Finally they lay bare between each other.

He reaches for her first, easing himself down beside her on the narrow bed. Their bodies align naturally, bare chest to bare chest, legs tangling together. His naked body against her own is intoxicating.

Rhaegar cups her face, brushing strands of hair away from her face as he kisses her. Her fingers trail down his back, feeling muscles ripple beneath his smooth skin, moving to his hips. He hums into their kiss, a sound that sends shivers through her.

When their mouths part, Rhaegar shifts onto his elbow, tracing tender kisses along her body; her collarbones, her breasts, pausing to press his lips to the skin above her heart. His hand skims along her waist, cupping her breast, thumb circling her nipple until she gasps and arches beneath him. He meets her eyes briefly, before taking her breast into his mouth, drawing another trembling cry from her.

He moves lower, leaving kisses along her body, pausing near her navel, pressing his lips there, honoring every inch of her. Rhaegar guides her thighs apart, kissing her inner thigh that makes her hips lift, pleading for more. He rises again, his body sliding along hers, the firmness of manhood brushing her thigh, that sends heat rushing through her. She draws him fully atop her, legs wrapping around him to feel him more.

Their foreheads rest together, eyes meeting, as Rhaegar says, “Nyke jorrāelan ao.”

She answers wordlessly, her legs now parting to invite him to take her. He shudders, guiding himself to her entrance and pressing forward. She gasps as he stretches her, urging him deeper with her legs tightening around him. When he finally sinks fully inside her, they both moan.

He kisses her deeply, his tongue plunging into her mouth, tasting her fully. With a groan, he withdraws and slowly pushes back into her again. Aelyria cries out and rises to meet him with each thrust, her body slick and wanting, her legs tightening around him, her nails slightly scratching his back. He groans her name into her pulse, into her mouth, into her skin.

“Aelyria—”

“Don’t stop,” she gasps, her hands twisting frantically into his hair. He changes his angle, he starts to thrust deeper, harder, then excruciatingly soft, so she can feel every inch, every pang of his hunger, so she can touch his very soul.

His fingers slip between them, circling her sensitive bundle. Aelyria cries out as she releases, a sacred, gasping cry muffled by the frantic closing of his mouth over hers.

He soon shudders, spilling into her, hips grinding flush, his length pulsing deep as her wall flutters around him, his body collapses against hers like he can’t bear to be anywhere else.

Afterward, they remain tangled together, hearts gradually slowing. Their foreheads press close as Aelyria strokes his damp hair. He buries his face in the curve of her neck, their intertwined limbs creating a refuge from the world beyond. Outside, duty awaits, but here, wrapped tightly in each other's arms, there is only this sanctuary.

Chapter Text

Aelyria wakes with her cheek rising and falling to the rhythm of his chest, Rhaegar’s chin nestled in the crown of her hair as though he, too, has nowhere else to rest. Dawn creeps past the shutters, the sheets lie tangled around their hips, holding the warmth of their lovemaking from the previous night.

For a time they say nothing. Just being present with each other. His fingers trail patterns across the curve of her shoulder, careful as a harpist making a last note from a fading string. She listens to the drum of his heart and wills the moment to expand, to swallow everything that waits beyond these walls.

But the question is a tide she cannot keep out. Her lips brush the skin just below his collarbone.

“When?” she whispers.

His hand stills; his breath hitches, once. Then, against her hair, so quietly she feels it more than hears it:

“Soon.”

The lone word drops between them, keen as unsheathed steel. She lets it set, before she answers, only by curling closer, winding an arm around his waist as if to anchor him to the present. He tightens his hold in return, a pledge that neither crown nor council has yet pried from him.

For a heartbeat she considers telling him everything, the fire that burns in her blood, what she has lost, the years of wounds and terrors marked not on her skin but on her heart. But dawn feels too fragile to bear such truths, and the moment between them is still warm with hope. The words wither on her tongue. Not yet.

He shifts suddenly, pulling her beneath him, his hair spilling against her skin. His mouth finds her neck, kisses trailing downward to her shoulder, then lower, until his lips close over her breast.

She gasps, arching into him, her hands burying into his hair. His voice rumbles against her skin:

“Ao henujagon ñuha iemnȳ.”
You will always be mine.

Her heart clenches at the words, not for fear of loss, but for the knowledge of what waits beyond their sanctuary. Duty, alliances, a marriage not to the woman he loves. Yet his vow makes the present sacred, and she holds it fast. They cherish the hours the realm cannot touch, knowing the weight that lies ahead.

Outside, the city wake, gulls crying, bells tolling the hour. Inside, they lie entwined, hearts and lungs keeping pace as though the world beyond has no claim.

Duty hovers like a bell yet unstruck; no one knows when it will toll, only that it will. So they count the days they have fashioned together, days stolen whole for love, days more real than crowns.

There are mornings when he lingers too long in her narrow bed, sunlight striping his back as though even the light seeks to hold him there. Each passing moment pulls him further from the throne and closer to something he should not claim but cannot surrender. And there are nights when he comes cloaked in mist, exhausted by the day's expectation, yet always he comes. He leaves with the first bell, reluctant, the press of her kiss still burning at his throat.

He tries. Gods, he tries dodging meetings, shortening audiences, dismissing the flatterers and sycophants that court life requires. All so he can slip into her embrace again. He still sits in the corner with his harp, plucking chords meant for her ears alone; he still reads by her side in the archives, their shoulders brushing as they trade quills and hidden smiles; he still touches her like a man trying to memorize every hour, every breath, before the world comes to collect its due.

When time allows, they continue to wander the city’s crooked lanes. She watches him press coins into barefoot children’s palms, listening not as a prince but as a man determined to be kind. He threads his fingers through hers in the press of the crowd and drops a kiss on her cheek, even with his guards near enough to see. He does not care.

And in those tender, heart-caught moments, neither does she.

Late in one afternoon, he borrows a weather-stained skiff from the dockmaster and brings her down the narrow ladder to the Blackwater’s glass-still surface. The city towers behind them like a painted backdrop; ahead, the river mouth widens toward open sea.

Aelyria sits at the bow, hair wrap tucked away, wind teasing loose strands of her yellow-dyed hair. She cradles the travel-harp she keeps hidden in her satchel, smaller than his but sweet-voiced. Her fingers know the strings as if time never passed.

Rhaegar rows at first, silent, the oars dipping with perfect rhythm. When they drift beyond the sound of bells, he rests the oars and turns sideways on the bench.

“Play,” he asks.

She answers with a minor Valyrian hymn, notes low, the water carrying each tremor back to them. Halfway through, he closes his eyes, as if he’s tracing the music’s contours against the inside of his mind

Aelyria lets her fingers drift across the strings, a soft ripple of sound spilling into the night, fragile as mist. When she begins to sing, her voice rises, each note carrying a piece of her heart.

“I have walked where mortals wander,
Felt the grass beneath my feet,
Seen the colors, bold and fleeting,
Yet my heart beats incomplete.

I’ve held fire, tasted freedom,
Known the warmth of love’s embrace,
But a yearning still unspoken,
Keeps me reaching for this place.

In your world, I am tethered,
Caught in tides that pull me near,
All the dreams I dared to whisper,
Now I breathe them with you here.”

Her voice trails into silence, her harp’s last note fading into the darkness around them. She raises her gaze slowly, finding Rhaegar’s eyes filling with emotion.

When the last chord fades he speaks, voice soft, almost startled at its own honesty. “I cannot think of home without this song now.”

She sets the harp aside. “Then bring the song with you.”

He shakes his head, his pale hair flashing like moonlight against the grey sky. “I mean...” He stops, struggles. “I cannot think of home without you.”

The river rocks them. A gull cries overhead. All the courtly scripts they usually hide behind sink into the water between the planks.

She slips her fingers into his. “Home isn’t a hearth of bricks,” she says, voice low. “It’s the story we choose to tell. Let's begin a new one.”

He threads their fingers together, thumb brushing the inside of her wrist where a pulse betrays the age she never shows. “Promise you’ll be in every chapter?”

Her smile is small, “I walked the first steps already, my prince. It was you who thought the page still blank.”

He laughs, breathless, then leans forward. The kiss is soft, a secret kept between water and sky. When they part, he rows them back with renewed purpose, as if the river itself has offered absolution.

On rare, precious days, when the weather holds and the court looks the other way, they slip away to the grove. Not often, and never without risk, but enough that the trees begin to remember them. It becomes their sanctuary, a small, forgotten patch of green untouched by duty, untouched by fate, untouched by anything except the pulling gravity between them.

There, their words come easier. He will read aloud from the old tomes he carries in his satchel, and she will answer with fragments of Valyrian verse half-lost to time. They drift into talk of kings and crowns, of choices made and mistakes repeated, weighing the lessons as though they were scrolls unrolled between them.

She lies with her head on his chest, his cloak spread beneath them, and listens to the drumbeat of his heart, beneath the rustle of leaves. His fingers draw slow, thoughtful circles over her shoulder, as if tracing time backward. In that grove, with no eyes, no thrones, no waiting hallways, they are not prince and scribe. They are just Rhaegar and Aelyria, two bodies, two names, lying still in a world not built for them.

And sometimes, when evening falls and all grows still. They make love there, not like in her bed, not with firelight or folded sheets, but under the open sky and watching leaves. There love making is slower here, the kind of joining that feels more like surrender than desire.

She pulls him down onto the moss with a laugh caught behind her smile, their half-loosened clothes barely separating skin from skin. His hands tremble as he bares her slowly, kissing the bend of her knee, the curve of her ribs, the corner of her mouth, each touch filled with meaning he doesn’t know how to speak.

When he enters her, it’s with a low, aching groan, like a man who knows the world is ending and still chooses to feel. The wind brushes their skin; the trees above sway like old gods pretending not to look.

They move together as one, bodies locked, and earth underneath them, her thighs cinched around his hips, his hand tangled in her hair as he drives into her with long and deep strokes. When she comes, her body clenches hard around him, breath caught, her hands gripping his back and he bends, pressing his mouth to her throat, groaning low against her pulse as if her release is something he has to feel with more than just his body. For a moment, the grove holds nothing else. Nothing but them.

One afternoon, as she braids his hair by the window, he catches her hand, steadier than a sword, and slips something onto her finger.

A ring, dark with age, forged from the pale, ghostly steel only the Freehold once shaped. Old, and filled with ancient memories./p>

The three-headed dragon coils delicately around the band, not roaring, not crowned, but twines in a perfect, endless knot. The carving is so fine it seems to move with the light, as if the dragons themselves breathe through the metal.

Aelyria stills, her breath catches. “What is this?” she asks.

He doesn’t look at her. “It belonged to Aenar. Before the Doom. It was passed through the line quietly. It isn’t worn at court.”

Her hands freeze. “I can’t—” she begins.

“You can.”

“I won’t wear it.”

“Then don’t. Hide it. Carry it.”

“Rhaegar…”

“If the day comes you are hunted, if the crown turns against you, show it. It will buy you shelter, or mercy.”

Rhaegar’s gaze does not waver. “I would sooner tear the crown from my own brow than see you hunted,” he says. “But if it comes to it, let them know you carry more than their contempt. You carry me.”

She stares at it. “It is mine now,” she says. “It will not be bartered.”

Rhaegar’s smile deepens. “Good,” he says. “Then I have given it well.”

She closes her fingers around it and says nothing more.

It is a few days later, in the softness of late morning, when she gives him something of her own.

A necklace, its cord a rough braid of dark thread and worn leather, frayed in places where desperate hands have worried it over time. The pendant is small, hammered into the shape of a rising silver dragon, the color dulled by years of salt and skin.

Aelyria was given it many years ago, in a market in the East, during a time when she had no name worth protecting and no home to return to.

“I carried it with me for years,” she says, placing it in his hand. “It was with me when I crossed the sea. When I had no one.”

Rhaegar turns it over between his fingers.

“It isn’t gold,” she adds, her voice quiet. “But I made the braid myself. It will hold.”

He looks at her, then slips the necklace over his head, letting it settle against his chest. For a moment, he only touches it, his fingers brushing lightly over the worn metal. Then, without a word, he bends his head and presses a kiss to the pendant where it lies above his heart.

“I shall not take it off,” he says quietly. “Not for anything.”

“And I swear to you, if the day ever comes when duty tries to weld me shut, I’ll break before I let it close the door between us.”

Aelyria seals that promise with a kiss.

That night, they do not speak much. They lie together in the low light of the hearth, bodies close, words few. When he reaches for her, it is gentle, a quiet need, not a desperate one.

They undress each other without speaking. Not rushed. Just hands moving with purpose, pulling, loosening, slipping fabric aside until nothing remains but their naked skin. They are bare before each other now in physical and emotional sense, stripped of robes, rank, and every pretense the world demands. Entwined together, they lie close, leg over leg, heart against heart, the space between them folded into nothing.

The firelight casts them in bronze. Her pendant hangs against his chest, its metal catching the glow. His eyes drop to it for a breath, then back to hers.

He takes her face in both hands, not gently, but firmly, like he needs her eyes to reassure something inside of him. She meets his gaze, unblinking. There’s no softness in it. Just knowing. Just the love between what’s now and what’s coming.

When he speaks, it’s a confession. Meant only for her.

“Ziry jorrāelagon nykēla. Lo ānogrose, kesīr naejot emagon issa.”
You are my only love. If I am ever lost, let this be where I was.

She doesn’t answer. She just presses her palm flat to his chest, over the pendant, over his heart.

They stay like that. In each other’s arms. Not touching further. Not needing to.

Outside, the city moves. Inside, neither of them does.

Chapter Text

Early Harvest Tide, 279 AC— King’s Landing

The Small Council meets at mid-morning, heat already gathering beneath the dragon-skull vaults.

The chamber is blinding. Sunlight pours through the high windows and pools on the marble table, throwing sharp glare across its surface. The heat clings to the stone, rising heavy. Above them, the skull of Balerion dominates the room, it’s massive, blackened, and hollow-eyed, its jaws stretched wide as if frozen mid-roar.

Rhaegar steps inside, spine straight, his boots echoing over the ground.

King Aerys II slams a gauntleted fist on the table the instant his son enters.

“Close the doors,” he snaps. “If any rat wants to hear this, we’ll roast it after.”

The oak doors boom shut, iron bolts drawn. The chamber seals like a tomb.

Lord Tywin Lannister lowers himself into his seat with studied calm. He does not glance at Rhaegar. Pycelle fumbles with a cloth to dab his lips, muttering something about the heat. Rossart stares at the far wall, unblinking, hands folded in his sleeves like a corpse prepared for burial. Lord Chelsted watches the prince with calculation, eyes sharp beneath thinning hair. And Varys does not speak, but his gaze moves constantly, spiderlike, between them all.

Aerys points a finger at Rhaegar.

“The realm has waited for its heirs long enough. I will not have the line end with a minstrel prince who’d rather pluck strings than quicken wombs.”

Rhaegar’s jaw tightens, but his voice is measured. “Your Grace, I have never shirked—”

“Silence.”

The word cracks through the chamber like a whip.

“You think to lecture me? You, who traipse about in brocade and melancholy, who dreams of books and songs while the blood of kings dries to dust? Do you know what they whisper in the alleys of Flea Bottom? That the dragon line weakens. That you’ve no taste for women. That your seed is poetry, not fire.”

Rhaegar’s hands curl at his sides. “My duty has never wavered—”

“Do not speak of duty.” Aerys rises abruptly, pacing behind his chair with the twitch of a man who hasn’t slept in days. His voice lowers, almost amused.

“I know about the gossip.”

He glances sidelong at Rhaegar, lips curling.

“Your Lysene whore, the one with ink-stained hands who keeps your bed warm when the realm grows cold.”

He stops pacing.

“It would be a shame… if she were mistaken for a traitor. Or a torch.”

Pycelle coughs uncomfortably. Chelsted shifts. Rossart smiles faintly.

Rhaegar’s expression freezes. A flash of shock crosses his face, quickly buried beneath a thin mask of princely calm. His lips part, as if to protest, but then he hesitates. The words die in his throat. He says nothing, not out of fear, but to keep her safe.

Tywin Lannister speaks at last, voice cold and clipped. “The Martells expect proper formality, Your Grace. A royal envoy, sealed documents, an escort—”

“Spare me your Lannister graces!” Aerys snarls. “Dorne is nothing merely sand and snakes and sour fruit. If they won’t give her freely, we’ll take her. A dragon does not beg for brides.”

He turns back to Rhaegar, eyes gleaming.

“You’ll ride south at dawn. You’ll secure a marriage alliance with Princess Elia, Dorne will bend or break, I care not which. Then you’ll take her to bed, rut her like a beast until her belly swells with fire. You’ll give me grandsons with silver hair and burning eyes… or I’ll name another heir who will.”

His tone drops, turning even more venomous. “And if you hesitate... if your mind wanders from your duty—” Aerys’s smile spreads, slow and terrible. “I will remind you what it means to be my son.”

Varys fidgets, a hand smoothing his robes. “Your Grace, perhaps some… delicacy. There are ways to encourage—”

“Delicacy?” Aerys laughs. “Should I feed him grapes and whisper lullabies? No. He’s had enough softness. What he needs is purpose. Fire.”

He leans forward, breath sour with wine and rot. “You are the heir to Dragons, boy. If you fail to burn, I will see you buried in ash.”

Rhaegar remains utterly still. The only movement is in his fists, clenched so tightly his knuckles shine white through his skin.

“I will depart on the morrow,” he says. “Lord Connington and Ser Richard Lonmouth will ride with me.”

Aerys does not nod.

“Good,” he spits, flinging a rolled parchment across the table. “Take the Dornish banner. Let it hang from your saddle so all the realm knows where you go, and why.”

He turns away, sweeping his robes behind him.

“Meeting adjourned. The rest of you, count the barrels, polish the silver, bleed the rats. Let the kingdom know we have a prince with a purpose.”

Then, to Rhaegar alone, softer, and crueler:

“Do not fail me again. Dragons that can’t breed… deserve the pyre.”

Back at the gardens, mint and sun-warmed thyme drift on the air.

Aelyria kneels by a raised stone bed, clipping blossoms petals into a clay dish. She had been told to wait for him here, that he would come when the council adjourned. The palace wall throws a long, cool shadow; cicadas trill somewhere beyond.

Bootsteps crunch on the gravel walk. She looks up.

Rhaegar stands beneath the arbor, travel cloak draped over one arm. His hair is slightly mussed, his face too pale. She sees it at once, the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes avoid the sun, the breath he doesn't quite catch. He is shaken.

Lines of tension bracket his mouth. “May I sit?”

She nods, shifting to make room on the low bench. He settles beside her, silent for a moment, watching the gardeners far off among the oleanders.

“Council’s decided,” he says at last. “I leave at dawn.”

Aelyria rolls a crimson petal between thumb and forefinger. “For Sunspear.”

They lapse into silence. Bees fuss over the blossoms, and a sparrow flits across the path. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolls tierce.

Then, carefully, Rhaegar turns to her. He reaches for her hand, intertwining their fingers together with desperate intent. His grip is warm, his touch almost trembling.

His voice comes, but it is low and trembling. “Come with me.”

She blinks.

He leans closer, his grip tightening as if the thought has broken through every wall at once.

“We don’t have to wait. We’ll ride ahead of the escort...tonight if we must. We’ll cross the Prince’s Pass before they notice we’re gone.”

His words come faster now, tumbling over each other.

“We can sail from the Stepstones. Reach Essos. Disappear. I’ll find a name for us, a place, a vow, anything you want. We’ll marry in Myr, or Lys, or beneath the stars if we have to.”

His eyes search hers, wide, pleading, desperate for any kind of hope.

“My fate was written before I ever drew breath… but I want to choose the rest with you. I have nothing if it isn’t you.”

Aelyria meets his gaze and for a moment, all the strength she’s built threatens to buckle. His indigo eyes plead, beautiful and exposed, and hers begin to fill with tears. She blinks them back, but they slip free anyway, hot against her skin.

Rhaegar goes still. The sight of her crying seems to undo him. His own breath falters, and she sees it then, moisture rising in his eyes too, quickly blinking them away. The prince of Dragonstone, trembling like a boy.

Gently, he brushes her cheek with his thumb.

“Avy jorrāelan,” he whispers. “Let us choose our paths together.”

She shakes her head slowly, tears slipping down unchecked now.

“You know I can’t.”

She draws a breath, composing herself. Her eyes shine.

“If you leave now, your father wins.”

She holds his gaze.

“The realm will tear itself apart. The line will fall into madness—and no one will stop it.”

Her hand tightens around his.

“You’re the heir, Rhaegar. The only one left with sense, with mercy.”

She pauses for a heartbeat, then continues.

“You don’t get to run. Not now.”

Her eyes searches his face.

“What happens when the realm begins to burn because you chose a scribe over a kingdom?”

She inhales, “You’ll lose more than your crown. The realm. The ones who still believe in you. And the last piece of yourself that hasn’t burned.”

Rhaegar lowers his eyes. His shoulders sag, not from weakness, but from the weight of everything he already knew… and didn’t want to hear. He nods, just once. Resigned, but aching. Then he exhales, long and low, the last of his hope draining with it.

Wordlessly, he presses several coins into her hand, folding her fingers around them.

“Stay away from court while I’m gone.” he warns, “Don’t linger in the archives. Don’t let them see you.”

He hesitates, struggling with the words. Finally he whispers, “If anything happens… take these to Blackwater Bay. Find a ship. Don’t wait.”

His voice is strained as he continues. “One moon at most. Two, if the gods delay me. I’ll ride hard, sail swift—whatever it takes.”

He hesitates, then leans closer.

“Vezof jin azantys iā sȳndror. Jorrāelagon nyke. Ezīmagon skorion nyke rhaenagon.”

Wait for me, my love. I will return. I’ll find a way.

She stares at him a moment longer, heart fracturing. She knows all too well the politics of the west, Rhaegar being the hope for the kingdom, and maybe for the world if he remains on the right path. As much as she loves him, she also reminds herself she is meant to guide him.

She brings his hand to her cheek, cups it, kisses his palm without caring who is watching, and finally turns and leaves.

Rhaegar remains on the bench, watching her leave, his hand still outstretched, empty now.

His heart, too.

That night, Rhaegar does not rest.

Sleep overtakes him suddenly, violently, pulling him downward into a depthless dark.

He stands in a frozen field—a frozen field with no snow, just ice-covered frozen earth, breaking underfoot. Endless desolate country stretches before him as far as he can see with nary a sign of life. Over him a stern grey sky lies stretched flat and barren.

Nothing moves. There is no sun, no fire, no stars. There is only wind, dry and distant, cracked through the open air like a whip

But then, a noise overwhelms the scene.

It's not near, but unmistakable. A tortured wail, raw and painful, squeezed out of something weary and old, something too long between death and life.

A low, broken cry, as if torn from the throat of something that has waited too long to die.

A dragon.

He turns toward it, unsure why his heart beats faster. He can see nothing. But the cry sounds again, louder, closer.

And then—across the plain—he looks at it.

Cloaked in black from crown to heel, its shape cuts stark against the white. Its face is hidden with no features, only shadow beneath a high, ridged helm of strange, dark metal. Unmoving, he is untouched by wind.

Not a man. Not anymore.

Rhaegar steps forward once, compelled by something he doesn’t understand. The figure lifts its head, and find its eyes find his.

But they aren't eyes.

What stares back at him in this haunting dream are two lights, like distant stars frozen under ice. Unfeeling and bottomless, irrevocable.

They stare at each other across the plain. And in that moment, Rhaegar feels as if every fire he has ever known, his warmth, his name, his purpose, is being remembered by something that outlives him, and slowly, piece by piece, unmakes. At his feet lie winter-blue roses, scattered like offerings, fading things blooming in the snow, where nothing else should live.

And in that instant, something dies silently, a spark quenched, perhaps so easily that it may never even have lit at all.

Rhaegar jolts awake, sitting bolt-upright, gasping as if he has just come up from drowning. Sheets soaked with perspiration, skin slick with moisture, hands contorted agonizedly into twisted sheets.

He sits up, blinking into the dark. He fingers clutches at the necklace on his chest that Aelyria had given him, trying to draw her warmth, trying to anchor himself from the nightmare.

Outside the window, the wind passes through the stone of the castle.

It makes no sound.

It merely waits.

Chapter Text

The tea has gone cold.

Aelyria sits in the far corner of her flat, legs tucked beneath her, a book open in her lap that she hasn’t turned a page of in nearly an hour. Outside, the fog hangs heavy over King’s Landing, draping the city in a thick mist that makes even the street dogs quiet.

She traces the edge of the parchment with her thumb.

She has told him no.

She has said it because she had to. Because love is not stronger than legacy. Because she knows the political consequences.

And still—

What am I now?

What use is she to a prince burdened with duty? She cannot bear him heirs. She cannot protect him from the growing madness of his father. She does not even understand the dreams that haunt him. Or perhaps she does, more than she wants to admit.

There is a burden inside her, not born of books or blood or even love. But of an unsaid truth that she has buried long ago.

It awoken when Rhaegar spoke of dragons and doom. Now the memory of pain that once lived in her bones, the language of a time before this world wore crowns, has resurfaced.

Could this truly be her purpose? An end to this curse? Not to only guide him but stand beside him. To awaken what has been lost. What might yet return. The Valyrian prophecy from her time had spoken of this.

If she can help him. Stand by his side—if her history, her knowledge, her blood can give meaning to prophecy—then maybe… maybe she isn’t a distraction. Maybe she can be his key.

But still, a dreadful thought comes to the back of her mind. When will be the right time to tell him my truth?

Her hand tightens around the spine of the book.

A soft knock stirs her door, not the prince, only a page in half‑livery, clutching a square of cream‑coloured parchment.

Mistress,
An extract from your Lyseni folio has been located among the Queen’s scriptorium reserves. Kindly present yourself before night‑bell to verify the hand and reclaim the leaf.
— Maester Olidor, Archives

She has been warned to stay and almost obliges.

But the habit of recovered words proves stronger than caution.

The Red Keep unnerves her still, there are too many walls, too many curious eyes. She ensures her dead scarf is tightly covered, she walks like one who belongs, following the silent handmaid who has materialized to guide her through the royal wing. Footfalls seem louder here, shadows, longer.

They reach a small solar adjoining the scriptorium. A single folio lies on the edge of the table, her initials faint in the corner. She slips it into her satchel and means to depart—

“Miss Scribe.”

She turns at the voice.

Queen Rhaella awaits her by a narrow window that looks over the city roofs. Ser Jonothor Darry stands sentry at the door, white cloak bright against the gloom, eyes fixed on some middle distance that promises discretion. Only one lady sits at the embroidery hoop, head bowed.

“If you have a moment,” the Queen says.

Aelyria bows her head. “Of course, Your Grace.”

Rhaella gestures toward a stone bench near a small interior garden where orange blossoms cling to wintered vines. They sit.

“I imagine you didn’t expect to be stopped,” the Queen says.

Aelyria folds her hands in her lap. “I came only to retrieve something I left.”

“I know.”

A beat of silence passes. Rhaella watches the curling vines sway.

“My son speaks of you,” she says, plainly. “Not often. But enough for me to worry.”

Aelyria’s chest tightens.

“He hasn’t given me your name, but it wasn’t needed. I saw it in his face. Heard it in his voice. There was something in him, I hadn't seen since he was a boy, it appeared when you crossed his path.”

Aelyria blinks, unsure whether to respond.

“I don’t think you understand what you are to him,” Rhaella says. “Or what he is to you. That frightens me.” She pauses. “I am his mother. I have seen the change in him since your arrival.”

Aelyria straightens slightly. “I never mean to do harm, Your Grace.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” Rhaella turns her gaze back to her. “Which is why I’m going to speak plainly.”

The softness leaves her voice.

“My husband is becoming more unstable. He thinks his own council are plotting against him. He accuses the walls of listening, the floors of moving beneath him. He’s begun asking questions, about the archives. About the scribes. And more recently… about you.”

Aelyria says nothing. Her hands curl tighter in her lap.

“My son is sensitive, he always has been. He bears burdens far heavier than the crown, whether he has confided them to you or not. You are no ghost; I see you clearly. But you come with no great name, no blood of ours no titles. I do not say this to diminish you, only to warn you. You could be dangerous to him if he follows you instead of his destiny.”

Aelyria meets the queen’s gaze and wonders at the irony of the warning. “I have no wish to be a threat, Your Grace. And I do not intend to become one.”

“My son is in love with someone he was never meant to love.” She meets Aelyria’s gaze in return. “At court, that’s all it takes.”

Rhaella’s voice drops close to a whisper. “When the Martells arrive, you will be in danger. If the King suspects you’ve had Rhaegar’s ear, or worse his heart. He won’t ask questions, he will act. Whether it’s the dungeons or the pyre will depend on the hour.”

She looks away, just briefly. “I would never wish that pain upon my son.”

Aelyria whispers in response, “What do you wish me to do?”

“If you love my son—even a little—leave the court. Step away from him.”

There’s a pause. Then, without hesitation, the queen reaches into her sleeve and draws out a small coin pouch. She sets it gently on the table between them.

“I can arrange passage to Essos. Quietly. No one will follow.”

Aelyria looks at it for a moment, then slides it back toward the queen.

“There is no need, Your Grace, I have the means to make such arrangements, should they become necessary.”

Rhaella studies her a moment longer. “I do not know who you are, but I know you matter a great deal to Rhaegar. And I know this city has never been kind to women who matter.”

The queen rises, slow and composed. Aelyria stands as well, smoothing her skirts with care. She offers a courtly nod.

Rhaella turns to go, but then stops as if wishing to say something else. Instead, she walks away with her attendants.

Aelyria does not remember the halls after that. Only the cold. The iron on her tongue. The scroll clutched against her ribs like a secret begging not to be lost.

Chapter Text

Rhaegar’s dreams continue on the second night on his way to Dorne.

These dreams are cold, distinct, and a terror that cling even after he wakes.

In one, he stands in the halls of the Red Keep, but they twist like roots around him. He cannot find the door. Screams passes through the stone; women, children, all distant and rising. He runs, but the corridors change. The sounds grow muffled, as if drowning beneath the walls. A child cries out for someone, he knows it is to him. It makes his blood turn cold. Then darkness.

The second vision comes on a restless afternoon beneath sweltering skies.

He dreams of a throne room wrapped in snow; vast and cold, its pillars warped by heat or time. From behind the Iron Throne, a single dragon rises. It is enormous, deadly, even beautiful.

It has three heads.

The first is pale as bone, its wings nearly translucent, like old snow under moonlight. Its eyes burn red. Frost clings to its throat, and when it opens its jaws, no flame comes, only a breath of winter, thin and quiet as a ghost. The air turns frigid around it. The scent of ice and ash lingers on its wings.

The second head is black as midnight, streaked with deep red across the snout and horns. Its scales glint like black tar, rough-edged and battle-worn. Fire bleeds slow between its bared teeth, as if the heat lives in its very breath. Its eyes are fierce, the color of blood.

The third head is the strangest. Gold-tinged scales. A long, sinewy neck draped with braids, each strand knotted with tiny bells that chime softly when it moves. Its eyes are wild, untamed. And somehow, painfully familiar.

All three heads turn toward him.

And when they roar, it is not in warning.

It is in mourning.

They sail at first light, no banners, no trumpets—only a lean war-galley sliding past the Misty Gate with one small three-headed dragon on her sail. Rhaegar had insisted.

He stays on the prow. He refuses the stern-cabin, the wheelhouse, every comfort the captain offers. Salt stings his eyes; he keeps them open anyway. The dream still sits behind them. Ice plains, the three distinct dragon heads, a child screaming. It trembles in his pulse, louder than the wind. He wishes Aelyria were here to read it, to tell him what it means. She would have tried. No one else dares.

On the fourth night, Connington speaks.

“You’re elsewhere, Rhaegar,” he says. “Far beyond the seas.”

Rhaegar does not answer.

Jon’s jaw tightens. “There’s always someone behind that look. Who is she?”

The prince turns, slowly. Moonlight catches the thin line of steel in his eyes.

“You will do well and not ask such questions, Jon.” he says.

Connington looks away. The olives creak in the wind. Beyond them the Narrow Sea keeps its own counsel, the waves rising and falling like a distant, unvoiced warning.

The galley flies south on a hard northerly. Spray rises white against her bronze-shod bow. Ten days blur—oars, wind, grey water, the hiss of Connington’s boots on wet planking, the maester’s quill scratching in the dark. Rhaegar sleeps little. Each time his eyes close the frost returns, and the scream.

They sight Sunspear at noon on the eleventh day, copper domes flashing in the heat. Rhaegar disembarks with the same cold precision he offers his father’s court. A brief exchange of courtesies, fresh horses wait on the quay. They ride at once for the Water Gardens, dust lifting behind their column.

They reach Sunspear under the red-sun, gold-spear banners.

Past the dusty harbor, Sunspear unfurls—a maze of three sand-yellow walls that spiral inward like a conch. To seaward, the bright flatness of the Sea of Dorne glitters, landward, the Shadow City’s alleys breathes of hot air. Beyond the sun-dazed terraces the golden Spear Tower leans skyward, yet the mud-brick Old Palace within lies muted, its shaded colonnades cool despite the flagstones outside that could blister through a boot-sole.

A row of date palms guides Rhaegar’s company to the Spear Tower. The fronds rattle in a dry wind laced with salt and orange blossom. Bronze basins spill a constant trickle of water, each drop ticking on warm stone. High shutters blink open, shut, open again.

Inside, the ruling Princess of Dorne waits. She wears plain dun robes edged with orange. Her gray hair is wrapped tight. Her face shows nothing. To her right stands Prince Doran, one hand resting lightly on the head of his signet-ring while the other folds over the small of his back. To her left, Prince Oberyn, hands behind his back, dark eyes bright with interest and warning.

Princess Elia holds her place a step behind her brothers, her dark orange dress catching the stray light. Her greeting is brief, her voice soft, her smile small and cool.

Close by stand Lord Anders Yronwood, sun-browned and broad-shouldered. Lord Franklyn Fowler, his cloak the color of sand. And the Lady of the Tor, narrow-eyed and silent. Their presence says what no one voices. Dorne is watching.

Two files of spearmen kneel, copper helms lowered, spear points upward.

Rhaegar steps forward and delivers each courtesy as protocol demands, bow to the ruling princess, trade nods to Doran and Oberyn, a softer one Princess Elia. His voice does not waver. His face does not slip. The Dornish lords answer in kind, polite phrases under the Dorne's hot sun.

But behind his eyes the frozen field lingers. White ground cracking under his boots, a dragon’s broken cry, two icy lights watching him from a helm of black ice. He forces the image down, buries it beneath duty, arrangements, and the heat of Sunspear.

Not now. Later.

He lets his gaze settle briefly on the orange silk of Elia’s sleeves, then drift higher, to the high, bright windows and the slice of sky beyond. Somewhere far north of that sky thyme and ink might still cling to Aelyria’s skin. Somewhere her hand still holds the coins he pressed into her palm.

One moon. Two at most. Hold fast.

He draws a longer breath, feels the scorch of the day in his lungs, and shapes his next words to fit the moment. Just another prince, in just another hall, promising friendship, peace, alliance.

And all the while he tells himself the same thing, over and over, like a private promise no court can hear:

Dreams can wait. She can wait. The realm cannot.

Beyond comes the fountain’s splash...

Chapter Text

Harvest Tide, 279 AC

Later in the evening, Rhaegar is summoned to a private council in the upper halls of Sunspear.

The passage that leads to Sunspear’s council chamber feels more like a kiln than a corridor: sandstone blocks baked all day by the Dornish sun still radiate a slow, living heat. Carved wooden screens filter the light into the lattices that crawl across the tiled floor. Somewhere unseen, a fountain ticks, dropping water into water, as though reminding every listener that time here moves to Dorne’s rhythm, not the Iron Throne’s.

Rhaegar inhales. Dorne blossoms mingles through the corridor, edged with coriander and of steel—and he wonders if a room can smell of courtesy and caution in the same breath. He runs one thumb along the ridge of his own knuckle, grounding himself the way Aelyria once taught him. Feel the bone, remember the flesh, hold to the moment.

Then the doors swing wide on its hinges, and he steps into civility’s oven.

Present are the ruling Princess of Dorne, Prince Doran, Lord Anders Yronwood, and Oberyn Martell, relaxed in his seat with wine in hand. Perfume sweetens the air, yet a chill threads beneath the courtesy.

The princess occupies the high-backed chair at the table’s head, steel-gray hair pulled out of her unreadable face. Beside her, Doran greets him with the slow courtesy of a man who measures every word.

“Prince Rhaegar,” he says. “Dorne is honored to receive you.”

“I am honored by her grace,” Rhaegar replies, offering the princess a brief incline of the head.

Lord Anders Yronwood, broad-shouldered and sun-scarred, clears his throat.

“Honor is a fine shield, Your Highness, yet wildfire burns through shields. The Stepstones crawl with Lysene sellsails again, and the Reach still counts its losses from last autumn’s grain blight. If King’s Landing unravels.”

He lets the threat hang.

Rhaegar meets the Warden of the Stone Way squarely. “Dorne will not weather that storm alone. I have already sent ravens to Lord Tyrell. Grain convoys under crown escort, and a pledge of silver to subsidise new plantings come spring. In addition, the crown grants Lord Qorgyle full charter to patrol the Greenblood down into Stepstones waters. Any pirate banner he strikes will answer to me.”

A flicker—surprise or respect—passes through Yronwood’s eyes.

Doran rests both hands atop his cane. “Such measures are… thorough.”

“Not generosity, my lord,” Rhaegar answers. “Stability.”

Oberyn tilts back in his chair, wine glass turning lazy circles while he studies Rhaegar from beneath half-lidded eyes; mischief blooms at the corner of his mouth. “They say the air in King’s Landing smells of smoke and madness these days… ”

There is a brief pause.

Rhaegar doesn’t flinch. “His reign is troubled. But it is not without structure.”

Oberyn raises an eyebrow, swirling his wine.

“Structure can still collapse if the foundation is soaked in wildfire. And forgive me, but Elia is meant to marry a king, not walk barefoot through ruins.”

A uncomfortable silence falls.

The Princess lifts a hand, her voice calm and sand-warm.

“Prince Oberyn speaks from worry, but our purpose here is clarity, not quarrel,” she says, eyes on Rhaegar. “Tell us, your Highness, what certainty you bring against the storms gathering in King’s Landing.”

Rhaegar meets their eyes, hands clasped at the small of his back.

“I do not ask Princess Elia to be shackled to the winds on the Iron Throne,” he says. “I ask her to stand beside me. What I offer her is not token alliance, but honour beneath one banner. I will grant her every courtesy my station affords, and guard her name as fiercely as my own. She will never be made small by gossip or by fear.”

The words ring true enough. They must.

Inside, a more truthful unspoken promise hangs. His own pledge already sworn in silence and love, where no one here can see.

Ser Lewyn nods, grave approval in the set of his shoulders.

Prince Doran studies Rhaegar a moment longer, then lets a small, thoughtful smile kindle.

“Plain words for so great a matter,” he murmurs. “Perhaps, Prince, this match will bloom into more than duty, if not of the heart, then of shared purpose.”

Rhaegar inclines his head, accepts the courtesy, and lets the chamber settle into diplomatic calm. But behind the calm, that hidden promise tugs like a harp’s last vibrating string felt, yet never voiced, and bound to another name entirely.

The meeting begins to dissolve, chairs scraping gently across the tiled floor, the weight of formalities lifting. Prince Doran approaches, voice low and courteous. “Your Highness,” he says, “if you are not too weary, I would be honored to walk the gardens with you awhile.” Rhaegar inclines his head. “The honor would be mine, Prince.”

They leave the council chamber by a side stair and step into the Water Gardens just as the late sun bronzes every tiled archway.

Prince Doran sets the pace between them unhurried, his cane tapping, while two paces back, Jon Connington whispers below his breath something to Ser Richard Lonmouth that earns a brief grin and swift silence. Orange trees cast long bars of shadow across the sand-hued paths. Fountains spring with water cooling the airs heat.

Doran breaks the silence first, voice pitched for no ears but Rhaegar’s.

“From the Arbor to the Stepstones they whisper of your father’s temper. I will not feign ease. Elia must be more than a jewel for the realm’s crown—she must remain safe in body, name, and hope.”

Rhaegar’s stride falters by the breadth of a heartbeat. He studies the nearest fountain as though memorising the pattern of light on water, then lifts his chin and finds Doran’s gaze.

“I understand,” he says, the words measured but low. “I swear she will be protected more closely than the gates of the Red Keep itself. Should danger rise, I will place myself between her and every sword.”

Mist beads on Doran’s cuffs as he rests both hands atop his cane. His answering nod is slow, but the dark eyes above it stay searching.

“Safety is a fortress raised stone by stone, my prince. Words are only the mortar.”

The warning came mild, but it lay between them all the same.

Rhaegar inclines his head in acknowledgment. “Then let my deeds lay the stones.”

They turn beneath a colonnade where children splash at ducks. The light breeze carrying jasmine and sand Rhaegar draws a deeper breath.

Prince Doran speaks first, “The Water Gardens are the heart of Dorne, not its walls. Peace lives here, in ways even swords can’t disturb.”

Rhaegar nods but does not speak. His gaze lingers on the fountains, on the laughter, the warmth. Children dart between the columns, their laughter carried on the fountain’s spray.

His thoughts drift to Aelyria. He imagines her walking these same paths, laughter glinting like sunlight on still water, wind teasing strands from her hair. She would belong to this light far better than I.

The private vision then widens. Aelyria barefoot on mosaic tiles, breeze tugging loose wisps from her braid, the sun bronzing angles the Red Keep kept lifeless. In that moment the fantasy deepens—she bends to scoop up a toddler with silver-gold curls and honey colored eyes, their child, who squeals and splashes careless arcs into the pool. A life conceived in love, not treaty. Raised beneath citron trees, not cold banners. Carrying no weight but wonder.

The sweetness of it aches. The image fades as quickly as it bloomed, leaving a tender ache beneath his ribs before duty draws him forward once more.

Ahead, Connington clears his throat, courtesy’s reminder. Rhaegar steadies his shoulders, matching Doran’s pace as the first feast-bells ripple through the gardens, calling them back toward sun-washed halls where diplomacy will once more don its braided mask.

That night, the court gathers to honor the prince.

Rhaegar wears black silk shot through with loose beads, the sheen of a dragon’s scale when torchlight strikes. A narrow crimson sash knots at his hip, its tail stitched with tiny silver flames that wink as he moves. His silver-gold hair hangs loose, falling just past his shoulders and brushing the upper curve of his back, a fluid sheet whenever he turns.

Elia wears rose silk, the gown’s slim sleeves traced with pearls that shine on each gesture. A diaphanous mantle the color of sunset drapes her shoulders, fastened by a small eight-pointed sunburst brooch. Her dark hair is braided and tightened high, threaded with fine strands of gold that catch the candle-light.

From the open arches behind them comes the mingled breeze of the fountains mist, flowering citrus, and desert air. Courtiers mingle below, bright as scattered petals. The Martell minstrels are tuning softly near the fountain.

Rhaegar takes the central seat on the dais, Elia at his right hand, granted the place of honour for the night, while the ruling Princess of Dorne seats herself at his left.

Elia speaks first, her tone as gentle as ever.

“Your Highness, my brothers tell me the smallfolk of King’s Landing still sing of your tourney at Storm’s End. They credit you for half the coin on the Street of Silk.”

She smiles to show the jest is harmless.

Rhaegar answers with the careful courtesy the moment demands.

“The smallfolk are generous with their legends, Princess. Too generous, more oft than not.”

He adds a nod of respect to Prince Doran at her other side, mindful of the eyes that watch for any mis-step between crown and Dorne.

Elia turns back to him, dark eyes soft.

“I hope you will find Dorne as generous with its welcome.”

She means I hope you are happy here, and Rhaegar hears it. Kindness, offered without guile.

Prince Doran stands, goblet in hand. The light catches on the sunburst ring at his finger as he raises his glass.

“To Prince Rhaegar and Princess Elia, may their union be a pillar of strength in troubled times, and their names spoken with honor in years yet written.”

Polite applause rises, tempered but warm. Elia lifts her goblet with practiced grace. Rhaegar follows a beat later, fingers tightening on the stem just slightly before he drinks.

A pang catches beneath his ribs. She deserves more than a husband whose heart drifts north on every quiet breath.

Aelyria’s name does not surface, but it consumes all the same, silver-inked, honey eyes, plush lips, and indelible. He forces his attention to the princess beside him, the slight stoop of her shoulders from a day of courtly greeting, the calm courage with which she meets the capital’s wary regard.

“I have already found as much,” he says, and means the gratitude even while remorse shadows the words.

They speak a little of politics, the Dornish levies on Stepstones shipping, the rising grain prices in the Reach. Elia listens keenly, offers measured thoughts, never overstepping. Each time her hand brushes the table’s edge, Rhaegar notes the fine tremor she hides. She is braver than the songs will ever mark, he thinks, and the knowledge weighs heavier than his pauldrons.

A call rises from below. “A song, Your Grace! Let the Dragon sing!”

Rhaegar’s fingers tighten on the goblet stem. For an instant he means to refuse. His music belongs to someone else now, wrought of moonlight over black water and a woman who waits beyond the horizon of duty. Then Elia lays a gentle hand upon his sleeve, no demand, only hopeful encouragement.

He inclines his head.

The hall quiets as a servant presents a finely strung Dornish harp; Rhaegar accepts it with a nod, placing himself along the unfamiliar instrument against his shoulder.

He plays and sings a melody none have heard before. His voice is low, uncertain for one moment, then sure as tide as a tide among the ocean. The notes rise, lingers, and fall, carrying words that feel less like verse than a loved confession:

Half of my soul walks unseen,
a pulse I’d know with sight denied.
By ink and thyme their trace is gleaned,
a quiet breath where silences hide.

If night devours the burning skies
if crowns are ash and thrones are dust
I’ll know that step though daylight dies,
and follow on, through flame and rust.

When starfall fades and oceans freeze,
when bones of kings are ground to loam,
their heartbeat threads the distant seas,
a muted drum that calls me home.

Let walls collapse, let banners burn,
let titles fade to wind-worn stone
their whispered name will mark the turn,
the compass point I call my own.

So hold the coins, remember time,
count slow the moons we promised true;
no crown, no doom, no vaulted rhyme
will break the vow that leads to you.

It is not a song of war. Nor of pride. It is sorrow shaped like music, and longing given voice.

When he finishes, the hall falls silent.

Several ladies wipe their cheeks; even the older men sit stunned.

Elia does not cry. She watches him, face calm, and unreadable. When the applause begins, she does not join it.

There is no reaction.

And in the silence before the next courtly murmur, Rhaegar feels the unspoken apology settle between them—too fragile for words, yet heavy as any crown.

The private salon opens like an opened shell, pale gold walls chased with fine scarlet tracery, and arched windows draped in orange linen that lifts on the desert breeze. Low cushions in sun-soft ring a cover on the white-marble table. On it steam two slim goblets of sweet Dornish wine beside plates of figs, sliced blood-oranges, and thin wafers of almond pastry.

Only Elia waits within. She rises as the door closes, offering a gentle nod of welcome, Rhaegar answers with a measured incline of his head, and the quiet that settles carries its own kind of diplomacy.

She is in orange silk shining against the morning light, her dark hair braided and looped with fine golden thread. A single sun-burst pendant rests at her throat. The curtsy she gives is deep enough for grace yet never servile—a desert princess’ measure balancing against a dragon prince.

“Your Highness,” she says, voice low and melodious. “I pray the desert night has not stripped you of courtly appetite?”

Rhaegar inclines his head, a ghost of a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

“On the contrary, Princess. Dorne’s table is more civil than half the northern halls I have broken bread in.”

They seat themselves on opposite cushions, a polite span of marble between. Outside, doves coo somewhere in the warm alcoves, within, the air tastes of citrus and clove.

They begin, as diplomacy demands, with trade.

Elia lifts her goblet, fingers light on the stem. “The new convoy edicts should cut corsair activity along the Stepstones. Lord Qorgyle has already sent word, the Greenblood patrols are holding.”

Rhaegar inclines his head slightly. “The Crown has an interest in Dornish vintages reaching Oldtown unmolested. It’s a matter of taste… and strategy.”

A flicker of amusement tugs at Elia’s mouth.

Next, harvests.

She folds her hands in her lap as she speaks of the Palestone Hills’ olives, he counters with word of the Reach’s late frost. The exchange is civil, bloodless—as dry as a maester’s weather log—but her timing is sharp, her phrasing deliberate. He notices.

Then, portents.

A comment on the blazing red dawn earns a faint, arched brow from Elia.

“A Lyseni captain once told me a scarlet sunrise smooths the waves,” she says, sipping slow and dry. “Winterfell’s old chronicles swear it promises blood.”

She lets the contrast hang, then adds with a quiet laugh, “I suppose it depends who’s reading the sky.”

Rhaegar allows a smile, small but genuine. “Prophets say every red sky is a page half-read. Sailors see safe tides, Starks see blood; perhaps the truth waits between the docks and the crypts, until the rest of the page is turned.”

She tilts her head, studying him. “And what do dragons make of red skies? Your ancestors must have kept their own councils.”

His smile fades into something thoughtful.

“My family’s chronicles say a red sky is never just weather. Dragons keep watching—waiting to decide which omen is worth their fire.”

Elia’s eyes sharpen, intrigued. “Do you believe that?”

“A dragon remembers truths we’ve chosen to forget,” he answers—, the formality between them thins, lighter than the desert air beyond.

Yet beneath each exchange lies the appraisal of her weighing his sincerity, him testing the quiet strength beneath her frail frame. Rhaegar finds himself uncomfortably aware of how gentle her hands are when they pour wine, hands that may soon cradle the heir of two realms.

And still, unbidden, another image drifts across his thoughts. Aelyria at a slanted writing-desk in the Red Keep’s library, candlelight painting auburn sparks through her hair. He drags his mind back, ashamed of its wandering. Attend, he tells himself; honor begins with attention.

Elia sets her goblet down and, to his surprise, leans ever so slightly forward.

“I read once—some florid ballad out of the Reach—that your silver harp is strung with the hair of maidens. Truth, or the kind of moon-calf fancy that makes singers swoon?”

The question is light, but her eyes are keen. Rhaegar cannot help laughing—soft, almost rusty with disuse.

“A fancy, Princess. Though the Reach has much to answer for in matters of overwrought verse.”

A smile flickers across her lips, then she tilts her head, studying him as though gauging a rare gem’s cut.

“And yet you played last night as though every string bled.”

“Only a song.” /p>

“One can tell much from a song. You carried sorrow as deftly as any knight bears steel.”

Heat crawls up the back of his neck, part embarrassment, part guilt.

Elia picks up a slice of blood-orange, but does not eat it. Her gaze drifts to the window, to the pale sky above the Water Gardens.

“We all carry crowns we never asked for,” she says, so quietly the breeze might claim the words. “Some of us dance beneath them, some hide beneath titles, some…," a quick glance to the harp case beside his chair, "sing in the dark.”

Rhaegar sets his wine aside. There is a gentleness in her he had not expected, and it twists deeper than Connington’s blunt camaraderie or even his own flint-edged duty. She does not deserve a hollow throne, he thinks, and remorse pricks like a thorn.

“If we must bear them,” he answers, matching her softness, “let us at least shoulder them side by side. With understanding, if not ease.”

Elia studies him for a long moment, as though searching for hairline fractures beneath polished marble. Whatever she finds does not ease her gaze; the slight curve of her mouth stills, thoughtful rather than tender.

“Understanding,” she repeats, “It is a sound foundation.” A moment of silence follows. “And perhaps, between two crown-bearers, mercy may follow, if the ground does not shift beneath us first.”

She lifts the orange slice at last, tasting the bright flesh. Rhaegar notices the feeble tremor in her fingers—ill-health gossiped of in court corridors—and a fresh wave of protectiveness rises in him, tinged with regret that his heart, already promised to someone else, cannot offer more.

Their talk drifts back to safer shallows, the layout of the Water Gardens, Maester Cassander’s remedy for Dornish cough, the prospect of inviting bards from both Sunspear and King’s Landing to play at their wedding feast.

Yet when Rhaegar finally bows farewell and descends the stair, he is less certain of the neat compartments he has tried to draw around duty and longing. Elia is no pawn; her kindness makes the cost of his hidden vow ache like a hidden fracture.

That night, he stands alone beneath the lonely desert moon, its pale sister of legend long since shattered in Qarthine tales, while the moons light washes the dunes.

The wind is light. One hand drifts to the braided necklace hidden beneath his tunic, fingers closing around the cool metal pendant Aelyria gave him, worn always, never removed, its reminder a thrum against his heart. He does not think of the crown his son might wear, nor of the quills waiting in the Red Keep library. He thinks of a song unplayed, and of the music that waits after the final chord, a melody wide enough to swallow even dragons.

Chapter Text

King’s Landing

Rhaella warned her to run.

Aelyria is still here.

Tonight the fog has returned, dragging itself through King’s Landing like a funeral shroud. Wrapped in wool, hair hidden, she lets her boots find the wharves again. She tells herself she comes for the cleaner air and the sound of water against pilings. She knows she comes because her chest aches and the bay gives that ache a horizon.

Blackwater Bay lies flat and pewter. Barges drift like ghosts, sails limp in the fog. Somewhere beyond all this, beyond the tide and the fog, lies Dorne and sun kissed Sunspear..

From her pocket she palms Rhaegar’s ring.

In her pocket she keeps his ring. She never wears it. She turns it with her thumb until the metal warms and holds that warmth in her palm, as if she could keep a living piece of him there.

She had not thought she would love again. Least of all a man of her own blood.

Yet she does.

Rhaegar Targaryen, the dragon prince, the soon to be king. He showed me his burden and in return he let me believe that I had none.

She pictures him now. Silver-pale hair under the Dornish sun, Elia at his side, courtiers ranked like painted shields. He will smile with grace, speak the right words, bend to duty because that is the expectation carved for him at birth.

Aelyria feels a pain she is not accustomed to. She has endured many trials, many hardships, yet this wound is of another kind. It is jealousy and grief, knowing she cannot give him what he longs for.

The pain cuts deeper than she ever expects, and it shames her even as it burns.

When he comes back, already bound to another, will I still be whole?

No letters will cross the Marches. Treaties leave no room for love notes. When he returns, still trembling to touch her, still whispering High Valyrian into her mouth when they make love, can she endure it? Can she live as his shadow?

Yes, she answers to herself. She must.

Yet shame coils, the Princess of Dorne, is sunlight and courtesy and a house that kept its honour through bad years, unaware that part of her future is already half-claimed. Aelyria tastes the word thief and does not spit it out. Can I live on a love that robs another woman’s tomorrow?

Love, cruel and sovereign, does not ask. It simply is.

Her heart is already his, and his answers in kind, burning for her, needing her near.

Rhaella’s warning still resonates through her bones. Go while you can. The coin for passage Rhaegar gave, still sits, untouched on her desk,

She remembers Rhaegar’s confession in the archives, eyes alight with myth.

There is a prophecy, Aelyria. The prince that was promised.

She had not laughed. The tale was older than Old Valyria, older even than the Freehold’s first dragon. Once she believed such fire could remake the world, until the century of grief proved otherwise. Belief became unbearable.

Then came him.

He was born into a story and does not know how to step out of it. Perhaps the story waits for him. Perhaps it never was a lie and she is the one to help him.

The thought glows like a coal in her throat.

She can go tonight. She can leave a note that says only forgive me and walk to any pier and hold out the purse and vanish into dark water and strange ports. She would save herself a life of waiting in rooms no one names. She would save Elia the insult she cannot see.

It is not what she does.

Fog devours the last lantern on the bay. She presses the ring to her lips. She will take the lesser name and the hidden door and the knowledge that some loves are wrong and still true.

“Iēvale ābrar.” — Come home soon.

Scarf drawn close, Aelyria turns from the water and walks back into a city no safer than the sea. But it is his. And therefore—irretrievably—hers.

Chapter Text

They arrive in King’s Landing beneath a sky turning the color of stormlight, the hour late, the harbor lamps flickering like scattered cinders.

The Royal galley barely finishes mooring before Rhaegar steps onto the quay. He moves fast, past stewards, guards, and Connington, who lengthens his stride to match.

“Shall I inform the court you’ve returned?” Jon asks, voice lowered against the damp air.

Rhaegar does not slow. “No. They’ll be told in the morning.”

Connington glances sideways. “Your father—”

“Tomorrow,” Rhaegar snaps, harsher than intended. The word cuts the night clean in two.

He does not go to the Tower of the Hand. He does not pass through the great halls or enter the castle proper.

Instead, he makes his way down from the eastern gate, slipping into the city’s outer ring, past lamplighters, closed stalls, and the lingering scent of rain on stone.

He walks quickly, cowl up, head low.

He is heading for Maester’s Walk.

He knows the steps by feel, the worn stones, the corner where the ivy creeps too low, the curve in the path where her shutters first come into view.

He does not hesitate.

His boots hit the street harder than usual. His breath is short.

His heart is already ahead of him.

Aelyria sits curled in a tapestried chair by the hearth, a battered codex open across her knees, lips moving soundlessly with the lines. She does not hear the door, but when she glances up—

He is already crossing the floor, cloak flaring. The book slips from her lap. Rhaegar gathers her in both arms, hauls her close as though half-afraid she will turn to mist. He breathes her in, the scent of ink, wool, the faint resin of candle smoke, and the tension of a month away and saddle releases in one long exhale.

His palm frames her cheek; fingertips memorize the curve as if checking a half-remembered melody. Then he lowers his mouth to hers, slow, devout but certain, a kiss that tastes of rain-cooled air and homesickness soothed at last.

“Aōma ozmijen,” he whispers against her lips, every syllable a contained tremor.

I missed you

“Se nyke aōma ozmijen,” she breathes back, her lips brushing softly against his.

And I you

He holds her a while longer, heartbeat settling to the rhythm of hers. No talk of councils or prophecies intrudes; the only sound is the crackle of fire and the muted roll of thunder beyond the arrow slit, as if the sky itself stands guard over this small, reclaimed piece of peace.

They eat on the floor, cross-legged like children, sharing slices of bread and roasted pears. He plays the harp softly while she hums an old tune, and they laugh when he stumbles over a chord. He tells her how the Dornish sun clings to the skin, how the wine never stops flowing, and how every conversation feels like a dance, familiar, intentional, and never without meaning.

Then his voice dips, softer. "The Water Gardens," he murmurs, almost to himself. "They were quiet that day. The air was warm, and the fountains whispered. I thought of you." He hesitates, breath catching just slightly. "I could not stop thinking of you."

Aelyria glances up, sensing the shift. His gaze has drifted, softened by memory. Something in his tone is tender, almost sad, it draws her closer. She reaches out and places her hand gently on the side of his face.

He looks at her, eyes shadowed with feeling, and then turns his head, slowly, to press a kiss to the inside of her palm.

At one point, she lets a piece of pear fall back onto the plate, honey slipping over her fingers. Absentmindedly, she brings them to her lips, but before she can, he leans in and kisses the sweetness away.

She adores when he is like this. She smiles, her eyes warm and half-lidded. "You always kiss the sweetness away," she says, as his lips brush her fingers.

His laugh is gentle, his forehead pressed to hers. For a long while, the silence of their reunion settles comfortably around them, broken only by the pop and hiss of the dying fire.

Then they continue, eating with fingers, talking between mouthfuls, trading stories in soft tones. The night unwinds slowly around them, gentle and familiar, the comforting rhythm of old rituals reclaiming lost time.

When they finish, they lie together on the rug, Aelyria rests her head against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart beneath his ribs. Her hand rests over his heart, his fingers covering hers protectively.

They say nothing for a long time.

Then she looks up at him, eyes searching his face.

“So it is done?”

He doesn’t speak. He only nods.

The room shifts.

They fall silent, but the stillness between them is no longer light. It hums, charged, expectant, like breath held too long.

He shifts first, turning to face her. She mirrors him, and the quiet between them deepens, filled now with the weight of days, the ache of distance, and the sweetness of reunion long awaited."

Their hands find each other, intertwining in promise. He leans in, but not in hunger. In tenderness. Their lips meet softly at first, then tentative and trembling. The kiss lingers, then deepens. It is not rushed, not desperate. It is unhurried, known, and quietly sacred.

He cups her face gently, thumb brushing the edge of her cheekbone. Then he kisses her there, softly, again and again, her forehead, her cheeks, the tip of her nose, the corner of her mouth. She melts beneath it, her breath hitching as he trails kisses down her jaw, her neck, the place where her pulse speaks.

"Avy jorrāelan," he murmurs, voice slightly shaking. I love you.

"Se nyke jorrāelan," she answers, and presses her forehead to his. And I love you.

Their bodies move together without haste. Her shift slides down her hips like falling roses. His hands trace her skin, her back, her waist, her hips, as though learning the body he already knew by heart.

He lays her down slowly on the bed, never looking away. Instead of entering her at once, he lowers himself to his knees between her thighs.

His mouth presses kisses along the inside of her legs before he buries himself against her heat. His tongue parts her folds, licking and suckling until her hips arch from the bed.

Aelyria moans, hands clutching at the sheets, then tangling in his hair as his mouth works her with tenderness. One hand slides up to cup her breast, thumb circling her nipple as he groans into her.

“Nyke ēdruta istan… ao issi sȳz rȳbagon.”
I missed this so much… you taste so sweet.

She gasps his name, pulling him up to her mouth, kissing him fiercely. Desire pushes her to turn, pressing onto her stomach, arching her backside. She knows how he loves this. He follows, draping his body over hers, and with one thrust he enters her from behind, filling her utterly.

His chest presses to her back as he moves, his hand sliding gently to her neck, turning her head so he can kiss her lips as he drives into her. Then his mouth trails down, kissing her shoulder, the back of her neck. 

“Let me see you,” he whispers, before shifting her onto her back. His gaze locks with hers as he positions himself between her thighs. She winds her legs around him, ankles crossing at his hips, keeping him deep inside her.

“Nyke belongs iā ao,” he breathes, moving his mouth to her throat. I belong to you.

“Se nyke belongs iā ao,” she answers, And I belong to you.

He continues to thrust, meeting her gaze with each movement, his eyes burning with love and hunger. Their fingers tangle above her head, lips finding each other between gasps, the pace building into a storm neither can resist.

She arches, crying out his name as her body breaks in waves around him. He follows with a ragged groan, spilling himself deep within her, kissing her as though he would never let her go.

Afterward, he remains inside her, their skin damp, their bodies trembling in the aftermath. Their lips continue to seek one another, unable to part. Fingers still clasped, hearts still joined, they hold the fragile dawn at bay for one more sacred moment.

Because here, staying with her, within her, is the only place the world cannot reach him.

Chapter Text

The bells of the Great Sept toll before sunrise, three slow peals that roll through King’s Landing like distant thunder.

Iron-shod wheels rattle over the cobbles as wagons bearing Dornish cloths and casks of summer-wine grind into the city. Goldcloaks steer the traffic with practiced shouts. In the Street of Silk, brothel windows bloom with sun-banners; on the Street of Flour, bakers knead sweetbread in the shape of suns and spears. Smallfolk gossip at every corner: The Dragon Prince will wed at last. A cradle will not be empty long. The blood of old Valyria will swell again.

Inside the Red Keep, servants air unused suites, stable-boys polish Ser Lewyn’s saddle silver-bright, and septas measure the Great Hall for garlands of orange blossom. Courtiers discuss of alliances, dowries, children, always—children.

Far from the bustle, Aelyria’s dwelling lies shuttered against the morning glare. The only light is a sliver that cuts across tangled linen and two bare bodies intertwined. Their clothes lie where they fell—his cloak over a chair, her shift at the bed's foot, like flags lowered before a siege.

Rhaegar’s palm traces the slope of her hip, tender and slow, as though reminding himself she is still here, still his. They steal hours whenever they can, never in the archive any longer (no longer safe), but in this modest room that smells of parchment dust and her lavender soap.

In the days since he returned from Dorne, they’ve seized every moment the court begrudges them, afternoons that blur into lamplit evenings, fevered nights dawn cannot rinse away. More often now, he stays through the night, retreating only when the castle demands him, or excuses run thin. To the court he is studying late, composing, pacing the citadel steps in solitude. To Ser Barristan and the guards, he speaks of restlessness and dreams that refuse sleep. To her, he once confessed in a whisper pressed against her spine:

“I do not sleep without you,” he says. “I only close my eyes and ache.”

Tracing idle patterns across her ribs, Rhaegar warns that King’s Landing will soon choke them with watchful eyes.

“But Dragonstone is mine to command.” He pauses, tongue skirting the harsher words—wedding, marriage—and decides on diplomacy’s softer cloak. “When the alliance is sealed, we’ll sail east. You’ll be with me there. Safe. Unseen by those who would question us. And for a time, at least...we’ll have peace. We can be together.” He speaks as it is a vow. “And when I am king, ñuha jorrāelītsos, you will not live in shadow. The realm itself shall know your name.”

She answers with a kiss that tastes almost of a promise, and for a moment the future feels almost kind.

He speaks first now, voice low against her neck.

“During Dorne, the dreams came harder. More memorable. As if I walked inside the snow. And I cannot make sense of them.”

“Tell me.”

“I stood in a corridor of ice,” he murmurs, “as if the Red Keep has been swallowed by winter, frozen from tower to cellars. The walls were covered with frost. The torches long dead. Everything felt like a tomb.”

He swallows, eyes far away.

“And somewhere beyond the white… a dragon wept.”

Aelyria feels the walls closing in.

His voice drops lower.

“Then I saw him. Tall. Cloaked. Eyes blue as drowned sapphires, cold, and hollow. He looked at me and I knew him, though we have never met."

He glances at the wall, before he continues—

“At my feet lay winter roses. Blue as dusk. Scattered like offerings across the snow.”

She lifts a hand to his cheek, attempting to calm the tremor.

“And the dragon?”

He nods.

“One skull of bone-white, one of coal-black, and the third… gold, hung with tiny bells.”

Aelyria’s brow furrows. “Three heads.” She turns the picture in her mind. “They’re so distinct, almost like heraldry stitched in bone.”

Rhaegar’s gaze narrows. “Meaning?”

“If the dream sets them apart by color and sound” she nods toward the imagined bells “perhaps it isn’t death you’re seeing at all, but three different forces waiting to be claimed. Dragons that haven’t drawn their first breath yet… or powers that sleep until the right hand wakes them.”

“Born… or woken,” he says, hope and worry threading together. “If they only sleep, could we awaken them?”

She thinks of cracked eggs sung back to life in old Valyrian hymns, of pyres and blood and the price fire demands. But aloud she says only, “Nothing is impossible. Only untried.”

They lie still a moment, the room filled with the silence of things not yet dared.

Rhaegar shifts beside her, voice lower now, “The line of dragons, we are born with fire in our blood. But fire forgets mercy.”

He turns his head, gaze fixed on the ceiling. “My great-great-uncle drank wildfire, believing it would make him a dragon. My great-grandfather nearly burned his house to ruin at Summerhall, trying to hatch prophecy from fire. My father…”

He trails off, swallows. “My father now sees traitors in visions and hears things from the walls. He trusts me with nothing, yet I know his sleep is haunted the same as mine. His fascination with wildfire continues to grow. And I—” He turns to face her. “I fear I am not different. Not enough.”

He finds her hand beneath the linen, their fingers brushing. “I do not want to be another prince history must survive. Another name they burn from scrolls to save the rest.”

He shakes, voice trembling like a harp string about to snap.

Aelyria lifts her hand and places it gently against his cheek. The touch eases him more than words ever could. He leans into it, unthinking and instinctual, his eyes falling closed as though the burden of prophecy can’t reach him while her hand is there.

His lips brush her palm in a kiss. He breathes her in; her signature lavender soap, ink, the trace of sleep warm skin, and when he speaks again, it’s much softer and clearer.

“There is a woods-witch who dwells in the Riverlands. My mother once brought my to her when I was still a boy, and she named the reason for prophecy long before I ever dreamed of it.”

“I have summoned her again, this time to Summerhall, she will come. And I need you with me when she arrives.”

He intertwines their hands together, thumb brushing her wrist. “If the dreams speak, you will hear them first. You catch what I miss, always. Come with me, līr bravȳrīmy little flame.”

Aelyria’s gaze drifts to the shuttered window. The witch might read more than dreams, might see the long road she has walked, the secrets buried under her own skin. Yet Rhaegar’s plea is quiet, desperate for meaning and with fear he seldom shows.

She hesitantly agrees. “Very well. We will seek your witch.”

Relief softens every line of his face. He bends, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist, a promise. For a moment, she lets herself believe clarity waits beyond those burned arches.

Then promise turns to touch again, and they cling to each other once more, slow, unhurried, drinking in every sigh and shiver until they lie breath-stilled and sated in the wash of morning light, still unable to have their fill of one another.

They rise at last, dressing in near silence: she smooths her braid while he fastens the ruby dragon clasp at his throat. Just before unlatching the door, he turns back, reaches for her, and presses a slow kiss to her brow then another to her mouth, soft and lingering.

“The world hasn’t claimed us yet,” he murmurs against her lips. “A few stolen hours are still ours.”

She exhales, fingers curled in the wool of his sleeve.

“I will return tomorrow night,” he promises. “The court cannot cage me at every turn.”

Outside, the bells of the Great Sept tolled again, brisk, celebratory, counting down to a royal wedding. Inside, two lovers count heartbeats.

The world moves on,
but for this light of afternoon
they hold it still.

When he is gone, Aelyria leans against the door, palms flat to the wood, and wonders which truth will burn brighter at Summerhall. The prince’s prophecy… or the secret she can no longer keep locked in the shadows.

She drifts to the narrow window and cracks the shutter. Down in the lane, children dart between puddles, trailing ribbons of red, gold, and orange. Dorne’s bright sun-and-spear colors whipping behind them like little banners. Hawkers wheel carts of oranges and sweet-wine, shouting prices over one another, and seamstresses hurry past with baskets of yellow blossoms. From the distant Sept rolls the slow boom of rehearsal drums. Joy, noise, color. The city feels suddenly too close, its celebration tightening around her like a noose. She lets the shutter fall, presses her brow to the cool wood, and listens until the drums fade to a dull, uneasy pulse in her chest.

— The Hill of Hearts, Riverlands —

Mist rises along the lonely ridge above Acorn Hall, where the Hill of Hearts lies half-forgotten, its weirwoods long ago hacked to splintered stumps. Beneath a waning moon, the Ghost of High Heart paces the largest bole. No taller than a child, white wisps of hair blowing wild, eyes the red of banked coals, seeing more than night should hold.

Two riders in plain brown cloaks rein in at the slope’s edge. Behind them creaks a shuttered wicker litter, sturdy as a grain cart yet light enough for river paths; iron studs are muffled with rawhide, and the light of a single lantern leaks through the slats.

“Smallfolk call you the Ghost,” the elder rider says, voice low and respectful. “Prince Rhaegar Targaryen petitions your wisdom at Summerhall.”

The crone tilts her head, nostrils flaring. “Dragon’s blood on both your boots,” she rasps, “and wildfire smoke tangled in the reins. Summerhall still reeks of burned princes. Why would an old woman set foot in those bones?”

“He seeks your counsel, my lady of the trees, his nights give him no peace.”

She taps a gnarled finger against her breastbone, tallying omens. At length she nods, a rare concession; she has not left this bald hill since the queen summoned her for the young prince, and that she agrees at all is omen enough but only after naming her price: a sealed litter with curtains bound tight so the ghosts along the Trident cannot barter for her hair. A skin of sweet Arbor red, and a single song. “Her Jenny’s song, and no other "to wet a “tongue gone dry from speaking doom”; plus the promise of silence, no man may touch her or look upon her bare face once they leave this hill.

They will ride west to the Kingsroad, cross the Trident at Lord Harroway’s Town, and from there follow the southward mile-markers toward Summerhall.

The riders swear it and lift her into the darkened box. As the litter rocks forward, the crone’s whisper slips through the wicker, caught by the night wind and carried back a riddle for the prince who waits:

“Tell this to the dragon singer. When his harp has wept its third lament, the snow shall stride forth with winter in its wake, and when the city’s bells die into silence, the dragon’s shadow will eclipse the sun.”

Then the litter vanishes into river mist, creaking south toward the ruined castle where dreams and cinders wait to be awaken again.

Chapter Text

They slip from Maester’s Walk at early dawn, too late for drunkards, too early for fishmongers. Aelyria closes her door with a soft click, satchel stretched across her chest. Two quills, lamp-black, an apple wrapped in linen, the brown-glass inkpot Rhaegar once said matched her eyes, nothing she cannot carry at a gallop.

Rhaegar waits at the foot of the stair, hood pulled low, storm-cloak shrinks his silhouette, almost ordinary, though moonlight still finds the pale in his hair. Ñuha prūmia, he whispers and extends his gloved hand, guiding her into the maze of lanes that thread south of the Great Sept.

They walk, not ride, through back alleys filmed in mist. A baker’s boy dozes against a doorway, a lone lantern swings above the fish-market gate. Cleon Waters glides a dozen paces behind, boots soundless on the cobbles, scaled cloak, black as the river.

At the abandoned postern by the King’s Gate, three horses wait in a shadowed arch. Cleon touches his brow in silent report, all clear. Rhaegar releases her hand, steps to the smallest mount, and folds its reins into her palm.

“A gift from the royal stables,” he murmurs. “Fleet and sure-footed.”

Rhaegar draws his cloak tighter, then leans across the space between their saddles and trails his gloved knuckles gently along Aelyria’s cheek, a silent I’m here.

She nods once.  Answers with her own gloved touch, I know.

A slender chestnut mare noses Aelyria’s sleeve, breath warm in the cold air. She swings astride. Rhaegar mounts the tall grey beside her, Cleon settles onto a rangy bay.

Their lone escort rides a length behind. Ser Cleon Waters, Driftmark bastard, silent as low tide. His eyes reveal nothing, not even curiosity. Cleon was chosen for one talent only, he forgets what he sees before dawn, and that is worth a lord’s ransom this morning.

Rhaegar left word to council that he would ride south at dawn, carrying a small relic blessed by Septon Barth to the newly consecrated sept at Felwood and spending a night in vigil there for his bride’s good health. The cover was tidy, a short ride, and no need for a retinue. Lord Connington grumbled but could hardly deny the heir a pilgrimage on the Faith’s business. Only Ser Barristan raised a brow, even he accepted that one quiet Bastard of Driftmark was guard enough for a relic and a prayer.

They follow the river road in silence. The sky lightens from purple to grey, and mist rises slowly from the Blackwater. To their left, barges drift toward the city. Ahead, the dark Kingswood stands silent. The horses fall into an even pace, and the steady hoofbeats ease their breathing.

Aelyria glances sideways. Rhaegar’s face is half hidden, but the tension in his posture has eased and for the first time since he returned he looks like a man escaping a crown rather than a prince wearing one. Ease finally spreads through her, light and sure.

They fall silent during the trip. Their horses breathe the cold air. Hooves tap the road, and the first light of dawn appears on the eastern horizon.

They reach the Kingswood by midday, winding beneath green vaults where lark-song swallows any rumor of the city. Ser Cleon Waters now rides twenty paces ahead, his scaled cloak glinting in the sun. He never glances back. Rhaegar has already bought that discretion with a purse and a promise.

When darkness comes they make a small camp beside a dry streambed. Cleon takes the horses downhill to a fallen oak, far enough for privacy, close enough for steel to answer if danger creeps. He lays his saddle beneath the trunk, sword across his knees, eyes on the narrow game-trail that serves as an approach. From that perch he can watch both road and the fire-glow, yet spare his prince the courtesy of distance.

At the fire, Rhaegar strikes flint while Aelyria feeds cedar bark until the flame burns brighter. A hot sap-pop sends a spark against Rhaegar’s thumb; he hisses, wipes it on his cloak, and keeps working. The Kingswood smells of pine and distant rain, with no banners or courtiers in sight, only the crackle of the fire and the slow beat of two steady hearts.

Rhaegar unlaces his travel harp, then sets it aside and captures her hands instead, thumbs brushing the pulse at each fingertip.

He bends close, voice low. “No walls around us tonight, no hiding.”

She answers with a soft smile. “No curtains, no pages, no pretense. Just us and the trees.”

He lifts her knuckles to his mouth, brushing one, then the next with an unhurried caress that would scandalise a septa but means nothing in the company of trees and the declaration of the simplest truth, that he loves her.

The firelight paints copper along his cheekbones, the hair at his temples glints like frost. She threads the stray strands through her fingers.

“Already gathering worry-lines, Your Highness?” she teases.

He huffs a small laugh. “Dreams are unkind,” he says. “Reality is kinder.” He captures her lips in a soft kiss that tastes of relief.

Rhaegar spreads their cloaks beside the fire, easing his harp and saddlebag down as makeshift pillows. When Aelyria settles, he stretches alongside her, one arm brace at her back. Smoke drifts upward; hoofbeats soften into the noise of crickets. She listens to his breathing slow, feels the press of his warm hand, and lets her own eyes fall closed.

Hours later, sometime after the moon has climbed to its last quarter, Aelyria wakes to a single, somber melody drifting through the clearing, low and strangely new. Rhaegar sits a few paces ahead, near the fire on a fallen pine-trunk, head bowed over his harp as if coaxing words the strings won’t give. Firelight and moonlight together trace the tight set of his shoulders.

She crosses on bare feet, rests a hand on his back. The music falters. He exhales in relief, sets the harp aside, and draws her onto his lap. He slips an arm around her waist and cups the back of her neck with his other hand. He kisses the spot behind her ear, the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. With each touch, the lingering worry that sired the tune bleeds away.

“Sleep and I barely nodded at each other,” he murmurs.

“Then close your eyes,” she answers teasingly, smoothing a lock from his brow. “I’ll keep watch, and chase the dreams away if they dare come back.”

He sighs, a quiet sound of acceptance and surrender, then lowers with her onto the cloaks beside the fading fire. Her head fits the curve of his shoulder, his palm settles warm at her spine. The harp rests silent a few feet away, and whatever haunted melody it holds is gentled by her nearness.

Their faces uplift to the scattered stars, they trade slow breaths until his lashes droop and his breathing evens. Down the slope, Cleon shifts once, satisfied, and resumes his silent vigil, faithful to coin, kinder to romance than any gold-cloaked courtier.

The Kingswood folds them into pine-scented dark. For these few hours crown, prophecy, and wedding bells are nothing but distant rumours beyond the trees.

After two days’ ride they clear the Kingswood and climb into the dry border hills the Stormlanders call the Dornish Marches. Pines give way to broom, and the old highway crumbles to a rut scarcely wide enough for two horses.

They rein in at a toppled milestone half-buried in gorse. Rhaegar swings down first, reaches up, and lifts Aelyria from her saddle as though she weighs nothing. Setting her gently on the ground, he steps onto the fallen block and brushes soot from the carved dragon head while she steadies her mare at his side.

“My great-grandfather Aegon had this road widened,” he says, running his thumb over the blackened granite. “He wanted Summerhall to shine like a second court.”

Aelyria’s gaze drifts over the weed-choked verge.

“And yet Summerhall burned the night you were born.”

“Aye.” His smile is small, rueful. “Long before I met you, I rode south again and again, hoping the ashes would speak. They never did.”

“Cinders keep their own counsel,” she replies, and the smile widens a little.

After a quiet moment he offers his hands again, boosting her lightly into the saddle before mounting his own grey. They ride on in easy silence. To the east a roadside sept lies gutted, its bell cracked in the grass. A sour thread of smoke drifts on the wind. Rhaegar’s shoulders stiffen, then relax when Aelyria falls silent, and the horses carry them south in steady rhythm.

By the time the sky purples toward nightfall, they decide to set up camp in a field of yellow flowers, about a league from the ruins. Cleon takes the horses down to a patch of brush below the hill and settles in quietly, watching the empty road.

Aelyria swings down and at once kneels to rub feeling into a stiff knee. Rhaegar is beside her before she draws a second breath, working the joint with warm, careful thumbs until the ache loosens.

“Better?”

“Better,” she admits, and the relief in his smile is almost boyish.

He spreads a cloak upon the grass for her, tucks another beneath her knee, then sets a small fire crackling. The broken towers of Summerhall faintly glow on the horizon, sharp as a crown of ruins.

While the warmth builds, Rhaegar settles and lays the travel harp across his knees.

“The song you played last night,” Aelyria says, tilting her head. “I’ve never heard you use it before. Where did it come from?”

Rhaegar glances toward Summerhall, then back to her.

“When I was young my mother took me to see the Ghost of High Heart. On the ride she hummed a fragment, no words, just a few notes. She said it was Jenny’s song and told me the ghost would want to hear it whole.”

He fingers the harp’s strings lightly.

“I worked out the missing bars that same night and rode back the next day to play it. The crone listened, nodded once, and said, ‘That will do.’ I expect she’ll ask for it again tomorrow.”

“So the ghost named her price early,” Aelyria says, brushing a finger along the harp’s rim.

“A ghost’s price,” he agrees, “and a promise I intend to keep.”

He adjusts the harp and lets the first notes of Jenny’s song rise soft into the night air.

When the final chord fades, the silence between them deepens. Rhaegar lowers the harp gently beside them and turns to her. They sink together onto his cloak, the wool padding the cool meadow grass. Moonlight bleaches the yellow flowers to silver as Aelyria pulls a cloak over her.

Their mouths meet, and then the kiss deepens. Rhaegar’s hand slips to the back of her neck, thumb tracing the line of her jaw. She answers by threading her fingers through his hair, drawing him closer until their breaths, bodies, and heartbeats seem to share the same space.

He kisses the curve of her throat, lingering, and murmurs against her skin, “Jaelza ao… jaelza ao” — I cherish you, I cherish you.

Aelyria’s reply is a whisper “Issa ao” — I am yours. The words pass between them, soft but fully understood.

They lie together beneath the cloak, Rhaegar curling behind her, one arm wrapped around her waist. His breath brushes her neck, and then his lips follow, planting slow kisses just below her ear, then along the curve where shoulder meets throat.

Aelyria closes her eyes and lets herself melt into the warmth of his body, into the steadiness of his touch. They don’t go further. Cleon’s quiet movements down-slope are still too near, and there is something sacred in this moment that neither wants to break.

This is peace, she thinks. And yet, beneath it, she still feels a bit of worry

The Ghost of High Heart waits. And whatever she reveals, Aelyria hopes it brings Rhaegar clarity, even if it offers her none. She hopes it gives his dreams shape, something he can hold that does not burn.

He whispers something she doesn’t quite catch and tucks her closer. She listens to the quiet rhythm of his breathing, matches it with her own, and eventually sleep steals over them at last, cool and deep.

A firm hand on his shoulder wakes Rhaegar while the sky is still black.

“Dawn’s an hour off, Your Highness,” Cleon murmurs. “Road’s clear.”

Rhaegar nods, rouses Aelyria with a whisper, and helps her to her feet. Cloaks are shaken free of dew; the small fire is stamped out. Within moments they’re mounted and moving again, hooves dull on wet earth as they leave the meadow behind.

The world is pared down to rain-soft air, the creak of leather, and the distant rush of surf along the Stormlands coast. A pale line of grey appears on the eastern rim; dawn is less than an hour away when the broken silhouette of Summerhall crowns a low hill ahead.

They leave Cleon at the gate and step into the ruins, boots crunching cinders that have slept here for twenty years. Rain beads on charred stone; weeds push through flagstones once polished for dancing. Aelyria scans the blackened timbers and the collapsed galleries, and feels the ache that clings to Rhaegar’s silence.

He was born in this ash, she thinks. First breath, first cry, surrounded by fire and ruin.

Almost similar to her.

Rhaegar moves ahead, fingertips trailing a scorched wall as if reading a half-erased sigil. He pauses where a cracked column frames the empty ballroom, its floor littered with clay tiles split by heat. His eyes gloss with memories of unspoken loss—guilt she cannot name.

Aelyria slips her hand into his. He closes around it firmly, grateful, and leads her deeper through a roofless corridor where ivy drapes like funeral cloth, past a fountain bowl filled now with rain instead of water, beneath what remains of a grand arch, its dragon carvings blistered but still proud.

A faint, wandering melody drifts on the damp air, almost a lullaby. Rhaegar tilts his head. They follow the music up a cracked stairwell, through a doorway sagging on one hinge, and into a courtyard overgrown with wet grass.

Aelyria blinks against the drizzle, letting the ruin sharpen around her. A toppled wall, the scent of wet soot, and—on a waist-high slab—a figure scarcely bigger than a ten-year-old. Her spine is straight as a spear despite her size. Hair the colour of chalk spills in wisps, and beneath the fringe two eyes burn a dull, unsettling red, like coals banked for the night. Bare feet rest in the dew, toes curling slightly with each note of the low tune she hums, the same haunting strain that led them here. Aelyria feels the air tighten, every raindrop suddenly cold on her skin.

Rhaegar gently frees his hand and steps forward, boots crunching the ruins.

“Ghost of High Heart,” he says, “I have come again.”

The crone tilts her head, sniffing the wet air. Her hand lifts, then pauses as her red eyes slide in his direction. The pupils flare like live coals.

“Silver prince,” she rasps, voice dry as wind through dead reeds. “You’ve grown tall, yet the thing you chase still rides your shadow—a song half-formed and hungry.”

She starts to reach for him, then hesitates, eyes sliding past his shoulder. The red pupils widen.

“And you…” Her gaze locks on Aelyria, narrowing in sudden clarity and fear. “You bring the Doom with you, girl. Grief walks beside you, out of time and out of place.”

Aelyria’s stomach drops. She feels Rhaegar shift, stepping forward, his body shielding hers.

“Ghost of High Heart,” he says, firm but respectful, “she is under my protection. We seek counsel for my dreams and nothing more.”

The crone’s stare lingers on Aelyria a heartbeat longer, as if reading pages behind her eyes. At last she clicks her tongue.

“Very well, silver son. Ask, and I will answer, although it shames me to tell aught but the truth.”

She turns back to him, red eyes bright, and for a moment the shattered courtyard falls silent.

Rhaegar’s mouth firms. “I see a three-headed dragon every time my eyes close, and a shadowed king whose crown is frost. Tell me what they demand of me.”

The crone tilts her head, red eyes glinting. “Dragons and winter crowns, big riddles for such a young prince.” She waves a knotted hand, brushing his plea aside. “But old ears don’t work for free.”

Her bony finger taps the air between them. “First, the song, Jenny’s ghosts and flowers in her hair. Play it true, and then I’ll speak to your winter king and your three heads of fire.”

Aelyria feels the heaviness in the air; the request is half-command, half-yearning. Rhaegar unfastens the small travel harp from its wrappings. He braces one knee on a charred step, settles the instrument on his thigh, and the silence of the ruined hall grows expectant.

He begins to play.

High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts…

The notes drift through the roofless archways, brushing soot-scarred walls before escaping to the stars. The Ghost of High Heart closes her red eyes. Her lips move, counting steps remembered only by the dead. Bits of ash tumble from a fractured cornice and vanish in the grass.

The song ends. Silence thuds like a closing door.

The crone opens her eyes again, damp and luminous. “That will do,” she whispers, almost kindly. Then her gaze hardens, prophecy surfacing once more.

Aelyria’s stomach hollows. She feels suddenly exposed, as if the crone’s bloodied stare has peeled back every borrowed year.

The Ghost inhales a sharp breath, and a chill rides the exhale she lets out. A wind snakes through the broken hall, scattering the dust below. Then her words fall crisp:

Three heads has the dragon,
yet the wolf howls for one.
When winter roses bleed their scent through a knight’s shattered shield,
the harp shall cease, the north wind keen,
and the watch’s blades shall drink the hidden dragon’s heart-blood.

The northern man must choose between the duty of honour’s spear and sister’s plea.

Aelyria feels the prophecy wrap around her like a tight ribbon. The crone’s red eyes pin her next.

Grief in your hair, child of doom. But you know the tales.
The world will name you fire, blind to the frost beneath.
Hold fast to the singer’s heart, it will burn, yet guide. I say no more.

She plucks a decaying petal from the ground, lets it crumble between her fingers, and turns back to Rhaegar.

“Silver prince, you chase answers, but answers chase you. The song of ice and fire is not for one throat alone. Seek the weirwood whose red sap bleeds at command,
there choose your confirmation or your calamity, for roots remember every vow sealed in blood.”

With that she slips from the stone as silently as mist, vanishing with only the lingering of her voice on charred pillars.

“Ghost of High Heart—wait! Speak plainly. Whose shield, whose blood? How do I know which choice spares us?”

The Ghost halts beneath a splintered archway, half swallowed by shadow. A dry laugh scrapes her throat.

“Clarity? A candle in a tempest, bright for a blink, lost the next. Wheels care nothing for the names of their spokes. Choose, silver son, and the rim remembers. Stand still, it yet crushes you all the same.”

Rain hisses through the roofless ruins. When Aelyria blinks, the crone is gone, as though the stones themselves had swallowed her, leaving only a fading echo.

“Turn the wheel, dragon… or be turned.”

Rhaegar stands frozen, harp slack at his side, eyes fixed on the spot where the Ghost had been. Aelyria waits, pulse quick, thinking they came to untangle his dreams and instead left with knots they can’t begin to loosen.

At length he exhales, sets the harp against his shoulder, and walks back to the horses without a word. Residue clings to his boots, each step prints a gray smudge on the wet stones. She follows, unsettled and strangely sad.

As they step back through the shattered gate, Cleon rises from where he waits beside the tethered horses. He doesn’t ask what passed inside.

They leave Summerhall and walk to their horses from the ruin, cloaks dark with drizzle. Neither breaks the silence.

Aelyria is shaken as she mounts her horse. Rhaegar mounts his and rides with his shoulders hunched and eyes fixed on the road’s path, watching, as if every rill in the mud might hold an answer.

She keeps pace beside him, studying him from the corner of her eye, he’s silent, more unreadable than she has ever known. Her fingers lie slack on the reins, but her pulse refuses to settle.

By dusk they reach a stand of alder beside a sluggish creek. Cleon finds a dry patch beneath the leaning trunks, hobbles the mounts, and settles a respectful distance away. He keeps his back turned, polishing his sword in the dying light.

Rhaegar crouches by the fire-pit, coaxing sparks into the bark shavings. The orange glow sharpens every line of tension in his face. He hasn’t spoken a word yet.

Then he lets out an exhale and speaks at last.

“Ash in your hair, child of doom,” he murmurs, still staring into the rising fire. “What did she see?”

Aelyria hesitates, weighing what she can reveal. At last she offers a careful half-truth.

“It’s a riddle looking for tinder,” she says, settling opposite him. “It latches onto the first spark that pauses to listen.”

His brow creases. He breathes the next fragments like questions he cannot answer or even comprehend.

“Wolf howls for one … winter roses bleed … the northern man must choose.”

He shakes his head. “A shield shattered, a blade that drinks dragon blood, what am I meant to do with that?”

Aelyria ponders her reply and then rests her forearms on her knees. “Prophecies tangle if you tug at every thread. Pull too hard and you only tighten the knot.”

He looks up, searching her face. Confusion, worry, a flicker of fear.

“Rhaegar,” she says softly, “none of it has happened yet. The words aren’t chains, they’re road signs. We decide whether to follow them.”

He lets out a long, drawn-out breath, as if trying to ease a weight from his shoulders, and sits back on his heels.

“Don’t let it consume you,” she adds, voice steady. “Dreams can guide, but they can also devour. Choose what you keep.”

Rhaegar stays kneeling only for sometime. Then he finally rises, walks a few steps past the fire, and tips his head to the sky where a wash of stars pushes through the thin clouds. The ash still dusts his cloak, the harp hangs slack at his side.

Aelyria watches him struggle in silence and sees the familiar pull of prophecy in his eyes, the weight he has carried since boyhood. He rubs a thumb across the harp’s neck as if weighing two paths, one carved by riddles, the other by his own choosing.

At last he lets the harp drop gently to the grass and blows out a slow exhale, as though exhaling years of prophecy in one push. She notices the sudden change in his posture. He turns back, crosses the fire, and offers her his hand. For a heartbeat he studies their joined fingers carefully, firelight catching beneath his nails, and then when he speaks his voice is low but steady.

“Dreams and ghosts have led me long enough,” he says. “If I chase them tonight, I will never stop.”

He pauses.

Then he lifts her hand to his chest; she feels his heart beating fast.

And as a confession he speaks, “The living matter more … you matter more.”

His shoulders then start to loosen, as if something heavy inside him has finally let go. His thumb sweeping the inside of her wrist, he murmurs in High Valyrian:

“Nyke urnen. Ao jemagon.”
I choose. I choose you.

Aelyria’s breath catches, the fire pops softly between them. Behind, Cleon’s whetstone falls silent, he will not intrude on a moment he was never meant to hear.
Rhaegar’s free hand finds her cheek, gentle but certain with truth.

“Jenny and her ghosts can sing without me, for now,” he whispers. “Tomorrow may press its questions, but tonight or the next, I will not answer them.”

He draws her into the embrace of his arms and presses a gentle kiss to Aelyria’s lips. The night starts to feel lighter, and the future, for whatever it may hold, pushes a little farther away.

Then Rhaegar spreads the cloak across the grass and pulls her down with him, his hands already moving to the ties at her throat. He undresses her slowly, sliding the linen down her shoulders, past her breasts, and finally off her hips until the garment lies pooled beside them and she is completely bare. Aelyria shivers as the cool night wind sweeps over her bared skin. She is bare before him, her skin, pale as milk, gleaming beneath the moonlight.

Rhaegar lifts his head and simply looks at her, with longing and also something almost mournful, as though he already fears the moment’s passing. His gaze travels the length of her, now gentle and intent, drinking her in not with hunger but a fierce, piercing, quiet love.

He then bends and takes one breast into his mouth, lips closing warm around the peak. His tongue circles, lingers, draws a sharp gasp from her. She arches beneath him as his other hand strokes down her side, anchoring her.

He leaves a trail of kisses along her ribs, lower, to the curve just above her belly. Then his mouth returns the way it came—slow, pressing each kiss into her like a mark—until he reaches her throat. She shudders beneath him, hands tangling in his hair, thighs spreading around his hips.

He rises over her, the night air wrapping around them, and looks down—really looks—his face drawn and so full of something wordless that it steals her breath.
He cradles her face in both hands, thumbs brushing over her cheeks as if steadying her and himself.
Then he enters her.

One smooth, deep thrust. Her back arches. Her legs tighten around him. Her breath comes out in a broken moan she didn’t mean to make.

Rhaegar holds there for a moment, forehead to hers, eyes open. She sees it all in them—the letting go, the choice made, the prophecy set aside.

He starts to move. Slow, deep strokes. Every motion with meaning, every press of his body against hers a confirmation. Her nails press into his shoulder blades. His mouth finds her again—her throat, her jaw, the corner of her lips.

They let out soft gasps and moans that spill between their mouths. Cleon might be down the hill, keeping watch, but the world beyond the meadow has no weight here.

The rhythm builds, her hips rising to meet him, his breath quickening against her ear. The tension winds tighter with every thrust. When release comes, it crashes through them both, his groan caught in her mouth, her body locking around his.

He doesn’t pull away.

He stays spent inside her, hand tangled in her hair, the other still holding her face. His lips press against her temple, her shoulder, anywhere he can reach. Her chest rises under his, breath still shaky, and she strokes his back, slow and open-palmed.

Eventually he lifts his head, brushing damp strands from her face. They lie tangled together, neither willing to let go, both breathing the same air, each of them knowing the choice he’s made.

Chapter Text

Late 279 AC

King’s Landing receives them near midday. The Sun sits high, heat lifts the street dust. Martell banners already hang along the River Gate, bright against grey walls.

Cleon Waters reins the horses close to the curb. Sweat darkens the bastard’s collar. Rhaegar presses two gold dragons into Cleon’s palm—one for the stable, one for silence—then dismisses him with a nod. The guard wheels the horses about, vanishing into wagon traffic.

Rhaegar then reaches up and gathers Aelyria out of the saddle and keeps her tucked close beneath his cloak. His own hood is pulled, shielding his silver hair from careful watchers. They cut through an alley where the river breeze carries tar and cloves. His free hand never strays from her back.

At her door he lowers the latch. Inside, the air is cool and still. She sets her satchel on the table. He drops his gloves beside it. The travel-harp stays at his hip, the strap creaks when he turns.

He takes her hands. The room is dim except for one slice of sun across the floor.

“I must present myself to the king and his council in the Tower of the Hand. They will speak of the future alliance and tariffs and other matters that mean no delay. Too many eyes watch tonight, so I dare not return, but tomorrow before the noon bell I shall be here.”

He bends, presses a kiss to her knuckles. “Sȳz ñomi, ñuha jorrāelagon,” he murmurs. Rest well, my love, for the both of us.

Aelyria lets his fingers go, a small wry smile tugging at her mouth.

“Return to me with calm dreams, my prince.”

He kisses her mouth, gentle and brief, then presses a second kiss to her forehead. He steps back, pauses in the doorway for one last look, and is gone. The door clicks shut.

Aelyria keeps her palms upturned, the warmth from his touch fading. Travel dust clings to her hem. The room smells of river fog and dried and damp wood. The ache is familiar but she lets it settle.

She sets to small arrivals, unbuckling her satchel, stacking linen on the shelf, sliding her quills into their jar. Last, she swings a dented kettle onto the hearth-hook and coaxes a fire beneath it.

Only then does the thought return, the journey south has eased him. No ghost-omens spoken on the way back, no frantic talk of prophecy. Good. Her own secret, the one that might drag him deeper into that fire, remains buried for now. She will guard it until the burden on his shoulders grows lighter.

For now, waiting feels like mercy.

The next day, the early afternoon light slants through the shutters when Aelyria returns from the market. She nudges the door open with her hip, the basket on her arm brims with figs, late pears, and a piece of saffron bread. Familiar harp-notes linger in the air.

Rhaegar sits near the hearth, hood pushed back, small harp resting against his side. He looks up, offers a smile caught between pleasure and longing. She answers in kind, sets the basket down. He rises and pulls her into a quiet embrace, his cloak still holds a hint of the Keep’s chill.

“Sȳz issa, jorrāelagon?” he murmurs All is well, beloved?

“Yes. The streets are loud,” she says. “Stallkeepers shout about orange dye and Dornish spices. They speak as though the wedding were tomorrow.”

His smile shifts, rueful. “Not yet. It was only revealed last evening, my father has ordered a masked ball, three nights hence, for Viserys’s name-day. A public salute to Dorne, set in the Great Hall, with wildfire lanterns, music, and what feels like half the Crownlands on the guest list."

“A masked ball? In the Red Keep? Before the Princess even leaves Sunspear?”

“It is no mere revel,” Rhaegar murmurs, lightly letting go of her. “My father’s hunger for wildfire grows by the day, he has summoned the Pyromancers to bathe the hall in green flame. The lords will praise the spectacle, yet the glow is a warning, all who stray from loyalty may find that same fire turned upon them.”

Aelyria crosses her arms. “And you want me there.”

“I do.” He squeezes her hand once more, thumb brushing her knuckles.

“Masks and crowds are safer than empty corridors. Dayne will stand guard and he will not let anything happen to you. Neither would I.” He lifts her hand to his lips, a small grin escaping. “And no one will question a masked lady along the wall, although she may be the most beautiful among them all.”

“Is it wise?”

“Perhaps not.” The corner of his mouth tilts. “But it is safer than leaving you alone while half the realm pours through the gates. I need you close...please.”

He lets his fingers drift up towards her face. His thumb skimming softly along her cheek.

“Nyke daor jāhor ao ūndegon,” he says softly. I will not let anything happen to you.

She studies the tension at the corners of his eyes, then inclines her head. “Very well. I’ll choose the mask.”

Relief flickers over his face. He draws her in and presses a soft, steady kiss to her lips that deepens with each slow breath. Heat starts to gather, her answering sigh stirs him on.

He draws back just long enough to unfasten the clasp at her shoulder, letting linen slide to her waist. His lips return to hers, urgent now, then drifts to the quick pulse beneath her jaw, down to the soft line of her throat. She releases a soft moan as his tongue grazes the swell of her breast and then grazes the newly tightened peak.

Without breaking the line of his kisses, her fingers find the laces of his doublet. Knot after knot yields; cloth slides from his shoulders and pools behind him. She skims her palms along the firm muscles of his back, feeling the answering shiver ripple through him as his lips wander lower.

He continues kissing down her sternum, he kneels, his lips follow the curve of belly to the crease of her hip, then to the tender skin inside her thigh. She steadies herself on his shoulders, head falling back as a low sound escapes her.

“Ñuha,” he murmurs against her skin—mine.

He parts her gently, breath warm, and presses a slow kiss to the slick heat between her legs. Her knees tense, another soft cry fills the quiet room. He lingers, mouth and tongue coaxing, until her fingers tighten in his hair.

She arches beneath his mouth, voice slipping.“Ñuha prūmia… kessa.” The plea trembles between them, and he answers with a deeper kiss, heat rising under her roaming hands.

He rises, pressing his forehead to hers before lifting her gently and carrying her the few steps to the bed. As she lies back, his trousers fall, she guides him into the cradle of her hips. One deep thrust and he sheaths himself fully, his groan meeting her soft moan For a heartbeat neither moves. Just feeling the joining of their bodies. Then they find a gentle rhythm, fingers entwining, breaths quickening, the world reduced to the creak of the bed.

“Nyke iā ao issa,” he groans. I belong to you.

She answers by wrapping her legs around his hips, guiding him deeper until every slow thrust nudges the warm center of her. He buries his face in the curve of her neck, and she arches to meet him, a soft cry caught between them.

The rhythm builds, slow at first, then quicker, matching the ragged pull of their breath. He drinks the sound from her lips while heat unfurls low inside them both. Fingers clutch his shoulders, nails marking half-crescents, and he slips a hand beneath her thigh, tilting her to welcome him deeper still. The world dissolves to linen whispers and the muted creak of wood as their rhythm tightens, relentless and tender all at once.

Release takes them in one long, trembling wave, leaving them slack. He buries his face in her neck while she clings tight, arms and legs locking him in place as the tremor rolls on. When the echoes fade, he remains inside her, breaths mingling, her heartbeat thudding steady beneath his palm.

Outside, the sept bells toll.

The following morning light, with Rhaegar already away to his duties, the morning light slants across the floor when the knock comes. Aelyria ties her robe and lifts the latch.

A small woman steps in, a personal seamstress of the queen, arms full of fabric swatches—deep red silk, cream damask shot with gold, a length of black lace. “From His Highness,” she says. “We have two days.” She squeezes past Aelyria.

Pins click between the seamstress’s teeth as she circles, measuring shoulders, waist, wrist. Aelyria stands still, half-smiling at the quick, competent hands. She cannot recall the last time anyone fussed over hems and color palettes; the novelty feels almost wicked.

“Theme is sun and spear…and wildfire,” the seamstress scoffs. “But the prince asked that yours be of a different kind. Dark red silk, perhaps, with a sunburst only on the mask.” She holds the fabric to Aelyria’s collarbone. “Yes. This glows against your skin.”

They settle on a simple cut, loose bell sleeves, slim through the middle, a skirt that will move when she turns. A light half-mask of black lace, the eye rims stitched with tiny garnets.

Before the woman packs away her tapes she pauses, lifts a small wooden box from her satchel. “A gift from his Highness,” she says, passing it over.

Inside lies a fine gold chain set with a single tear-shaped ruby. The stone is small but flawless, in full light it would burn.

Aelyria touches the gem with one fingertip. Heat rises in her chest. Part delight, part unease. “Thank you,” she tells the seamstress, though the words are meant for him. The woman nods, gathers her tools, and promises to return tomorrow for a final fitting.

When the door closes, Aelyria sets the necklace against her throat. The ruby catches the sun and sparks. She feels abruptly seventeen again, laughter echoing through the halls, while her brothers dashed between chambers, arguing over which shade of blue best matched their house colors for the feast held on the eve of the Games. An event that changed everything.

The vision fades; King’s Landing returns. She fastens the clasp, smoothing the chain against her skin, and lets the small, dangerous pleasure of anticipation settle in her chest.

On the night of the masque ball, Aelyria readys herself and slips the ruby chain into place, smoothing the clasp against her skin.

Three quick knocks come at the door.

She opens the door to Ser Arthur Dayne, the Kingsguard knight Rhaegar trusts above all others.

“My lady,” he says. “The prince asks that I see you safely to the Red Keep.”

They walk the short lane in near silence. Oil-lamps passing them by; the ground catching shards of torchlight. Arthur keeps to her left, one hand resting on Dawn’s pommel, guiding but never crowding. At the postern gate a guard steps aside without question. Up a narrow stair, through a servants’ passage that smells of damp stone and roast boar, and then—

The Great Hall unfolds.

Wildfire braziers burn green above the nave, casting long, uneasy shadows. Marble saints look sickly in the light.

The air smells of spiced Dornish wine, wildfire smoke, and a thread of frankincense from the altar. Masks drift past: flowered Reach rose, antlered Stormlands stag, House Crabb of Crackclaw Point.

High on the ring gallery above the hall, King Aerys wears a silver dragon mask that gleams green in the wildfire glow and lets out a sharp, sudden laugh. Queen Rhaella sits stiff at his side while little Viserys leans over the rail, clapping each time the flames flare.

Aelyria stops at the threshold and draws in the green-washed air, holding the silence before the next note. Her fingers touch the small ruby at her throat once, a steadying habit, and she breathes. She braces herself to step into the storm of color, searching eyes, and hidden names.

Rhaegar stands under a torchlit arch, motionless. A plain black mask with three small rubies hides half his face, but the muscle in his jaw keeps ticking. He scans the hall—banners, faces, exits—waiting for one face only. When a cup-bearer passes he half-turns, then stills; his gloved hand closes and opens once at his side.

A violinist scrapes a note too long. Quiet ripples out across the floor.

He knows she has arrived before he sees her; the shift in the room’s breath tells him.

She comes down the stairs alone, wearing the dark-red gown—and at her throat, the slim gold chain with Rhaegar’s ruby catching the light. She lets it tilt beneath her fingertips as though answering a question only he would ask.

Her mask is plain black lace, a thin row of garnets along the brow—enough to hide her features, nothing to draw extra notice. Below it, hair she has dyed a bright gold falls straight down her back, changing her profile just enough that few would link her to the Red Keep’s quiet scribe.

People stare.

Dornish?

Blackfyre?

Some envoy’s girl?

Aelyria pauses at the foot of the stair. Across the floor, Rhaegar stands beneath a torch, mask shadowing his eyes. Their gazes lock. For a heartbeat he does not move, does not even seem to breathe—only watches her as if the room has fallen away. Her mouth softens by a fraction; he inclines his head by the same measure. She lets the stare hold, then turns aside, leaving a span of marble and murmured courtesies between them.

She moves among the swirling crowd, letting the current eddy around her. Wildfire lamps line the walls. Masks glide past in quick succession. She takes a glass of wine but does not drink. Three men ask her to dance, and she accepts two. The first is a young knight of Caron whose hands will not stop shaking; she steadies his grip with a light touch and a quiet word. The second is a shy Redwyne cousin who keeps glancing toward the king’s dais; when he treads her hem she only smiles and lifts the fabric clear.

She moves with care, measuring each step. She never once looks Rhaegar’s way, though she feels when he enters a line of sight and lets the crowd veil her again.

He answers with the same restraint. One dance with the Redwyne girl, another with Lady Nyra Qorgyle. He makes small talk, smiles once at a jest he does not hear, and waits.

The fifth tune starts. Up in the royal gallery, King Aerys lets out a sharp laugh, savoring the sorrow in the melody.

Rhaegar crosses the floor. Guests shuffle aside. He stops before Aelyria and offers his hand. “May I?” The word is scarcely more than breath.

She studies it for a heartbeat, then rests her glove in his. Her fingers press his knuckle once, a quiet signal he returns in kind.

They start to dance.

Rhaegar’s right hand rests at her waist, his left meets her right, fingers linked. Aelyria’s free hand settles just below his shoulder, fingertips light against the black cloth. Her perfume carries a ghost of lemon and ink; his breath finds its rhythm against her temple.

For a turn or two he keeps his eyes on anything but her face—the edge of a bannister, the sweep of a bright Martell banner. If his father glances down he must see only a courteous prince at a dance, nothing more. Yet her nearness wears at his control. She fits against him as if this place was always hers; her thumb traces the seam of his glove and he swallows once, hard.

“You are the most beautiful,” he says, voice low.

Then, hardly more than a whisper in High Valyrian.

“Ñuha jorrāelagon.”

He guides her through a slow turn. “Thank you for the rubies,” she whispers, voice pitched for his ear alone.

“They warmed the instant they touched your skin,” he answers.

“I wasn’t trying,” she murmurs, allowing herself the faintest smile.

“That,” he says, “is why you are.”

On the third turn his hand slips a fraction lower. She lifts her chin. Their eyes meet, and the crowd, the music, even the green fire seem to fall away. In his gaze she reads desire, apology, and a promise he is not free to make, while he sees wonder and rising hurt in hers. Her fingers tighten once; his hold answers, then eases.

You are the only true thing in this room.

I love you beyond my own comprehension.

They do not look away, and the ache in her eyes glints like the ruby at her throat.

The music slows. One more turn. His thumb brushes her hand, apology, promise, farewell. When the final note dies, they stay still an instant longer, heartbeat loud in the crowd.

He lets her go. She dips her head; he bows. The crowd rushes back in. Rhaegar blends into the throng. Aelyria presses a hand to her ribs, steadying her breath, and the chain at her throat cools against her skin.

High above, the king’s silver dragon mask watches them intently. The revel continues, but the night’s sharpest moment is gone.

Aelyria is swept into a brisk galliard with Lord Paxter Redwyne’s cousin, who spends half the dance guessing whether she is a Dornish envoy or a lost Blackfyre. Across the hall, Aerys leans close to Lord Tywin; a wildfire orb pulses behind them, painting both men green. Barristan Selmy edges two steps left, never taking his eyes off the king. Laughter grows louder as wine takes hold. From the edge of the floor Ser Arthur Dayne keeps quiet watch.

Rhaegar looks up, catches Aelyria’s eye, and tilts his head toward the side doors that climb to the clerestory. Masks and swirling skirts hide the brief exchange; she adjusts her glove as if that were all.

They meet on a narrow stone balcony lit by one smoking lantern. Music from the nave drifts up, muffled by the height. Below, couples form for another slow set. He reaches first, steadying her elbow as she steps onto the chill stone; she answers with the barest brush of her fingers against his sleeve.

“I don’t have long,” Rhaegar says, voice low. Wildfire light flickers off his mask.

She nods. “The green fire unsettles me.”

“It unsettles much wiser men than the king,” he answers, a shadow of a smile. From inside his sleeve he draws a small silk pouch and places it in her palm. “To match the necklace, my beloved.” His knuckles linger against her wrist before he lets them fall.

She opens the pouch just enough to see the twin rubies, then closes it and slips everything into her sleeve.

From the stairwell, Varys—white porcelain mask—pauses, eyes on them for a split second before moving on.

“I should leave before anyone notices,” she says.

“Ser Arthur will see you back,” Rhaegar tells her. He starts to release her hand, then stops, thumb brushing her knuckles as if not ready to let go. Only after a moment does he yield. She turns and vanishes down the stair while the lantern flame gutters behind them.

Ser Arthur is waiting at the foot of the service stair, white cloak gathered tight against the cold.

“Allow me to see you home, my lady,” he says formally, as if he has never seen her anywhere but court.

They leave by the novices’ door and walk the short river-lane side by side. Arthur sets a steady pace leading her down to Maester’s Walk. No one lingers this far from the Red Keep at midnight; only guttering torches and the faint hiss of wildfire echo behind them. Green light still stains the clouds, but the music is already a memory.

Two turns later her narrow doorway comes into view. Arthur sweeps the lane with a quick glance, then inclines his head. “Safe night, my lady.”

“Thank you, ser.”

She slips inside and drops the bar. Silence greets her—no viols, no masked laughter—just the beat of her own pulse. The lace mask comes off first. She lays it on the table. Next, the slim gold chain and the pouch with Rhaegar’s ruby earrings. She hides them in the cedar box on the high shelf, behind a row of ledgers no one else touches.

The room feels too large after the crush of the hall. She unlaces the high collar and lets the gown fall to her hips. The noise drums in her ears: a violin note, Viserys’s happy clap, Aerys’s cutting laugh.

A knock, three quick taps. She had not dared hope, yet her heart jumps all the same.

Before she can answer, the latch turns. Rhaegar steps inside, cloak already off his shoulders, and closes the door behind him.

He does not wait to be invited in.

Chapter Text

Early 280 AC, King’s Landing

Aelyria sits by the narrow window, elbows propped against the ledge, a half-read scroll curled forgotten in her lap. Outside, the courtyard is dim. The last lanterns flicker in their iron hooks. A pair of stablehands cross through the shadows, speaking low. Rhaegar had said he would come tonight, early evening, he’d promised.

It’s well past.

She doesn’t panic, not at first. He is a prince, after all. He has duties, obligations, a hundred eyes on him. But this is the first time he’s not kept his word. That worries her.

She lights another candle. She reads two more chapters. The wind passes beyond the walls. Hours pass.

It’s near midnight when the latch finally opens.

Rhaegar enters in a rush of cool air and heavy silence, his cloak damp at the hem, his hair pulled back but windblown. He’s flushed, his breath uneven—not from running, but from not running when everything in him likely wanted to.

“Nykeā jorrāelagon,” he says.

He crosses to her and doesn’t kiss her. He takes her hands, tender as if measuring her pulse.

“You need to gather your things,” he says. “We must depart at once.”

Aelyria stands. The scroll falls to the floor.

“What’s happened?”

Her voice low. “What is it?”

“I meant to come earlier,” he says, “and I saw one of the Gold Cloaks, one of his.”

His tone tightens. “Not just any guard. One of the ones my father trusts. He was posted just across the lane.”

He lets the words hang. Aelyria’s stomach tightens.

“You deem he spied on me?”

“I think he was sent,” Rhaegar says. “I dare not trust he will tarry ere he brings word. I turned as soon as I saw him and made arrangements. Arthur has been watching your door since.”

He looks down, jaw clenched. “I should have moved you earlier. I should have seen this coming.”

Aelyria exhales, her voice softer than how her heart feels. “I knew this could not endure. I just didn’t think the end would come tonight.”

He looks up, as if someone had struck him, the words catching him off guard. For a moment, he’s frozen.

She adds, “It was the masked ball. We knew it was a risk. We hoped only it might go unseen.”

That softens him. He cups her cheek tenderly. “Trust me,” he says. “Only until the wedding is done. A fortnight, no more. Then we leave for Dragonstone.”

She sees the strain in his face, the furrow in his brow and the rush in his words, and she nods. “Very well.”

She moves without another question. She folds her few scrolls and slips them into a satchel, then takes the narrow cedar box that holds Rhaegar’s gifts, buries it beneath the parchment, and cinches the flap tight. Rhaegar helps her gather the rest, packing away the small, ordinary life they built between courtyards and caution these last few years.

When they reach the doorway Aelyria pauses, turning back once to take in the room. The sloped ceiling, the narrow bed, the cushion by the fire where they sat reading until dawn. All the memories they carved from the chaos. Now, it’s already fading.

Wordless, they step into the night. At the end of the alley, under a sagging arch, Ser Arthur Dayne awaits. His cloak is drawn up, shoulders squared, eyes sweeping the street. He gives a single, curt nod as they approach. Everything is clear.

Rhaegar takes her hand, not to guide her path, only to keep her close as they step into the night. They walk silently, never once looking back. The Red Keep rises above them in the dark, looming and imposing like a beast at rest. And the city, unaware of a lover's secrecy, goes on breathing.

Rhaegar leads, carrying nothing but a shutter-lantern which casts a narrow beam of light along each step. Following him is Ser Arthur Dayne, Dawn folded and tucked away under common-folk robes. Between them walks Aelyria, her cloak fastened high, her face half-concealed in the night’s shades.

They move along the goat-path that winds down Visenya’s Hill, skirting kitchen yards and drying yards until the cobbles turn into hard-packed roadway. The air changes as one goes down, carrying the chill of fog, scents of docks, and a sharp tang of lye from the fullers’ yards. Ahead, the distant looms clatter steadily, like muffled hammers on wood.

When they reach Ragman’s Way, the crooked, worn road unfurls just inside the Mud Gate. By day it belongs to dyers, dockhands, and fishwives. Now it belongs to cats and the wind off the river. Most shops are shuttered, their doors barred and windows dark, but the loom-sheds remain open. The night air smells of lint and loose threads, and the clatter inside goes on unabated.

Tucked behind the largest shed squats a two-aisled plaster sept scarcely taller than a city inn. It bears no gold or glass, only a slate roof, a chipped statue of the Mother above the door, and a narrow unlit cloister enclosing the rear. Rhaegar guides Aelyria into the side alley. Arthur raps twice on a postern barely wide enough for a man. An elderly septa opens. “The cell is ready, your Highness.”

Aelyria’s pulse quickens at the word. A cell? She glances at Rhaegar, but his nod is calm and certain, so she swallows her unease and follows. Arthur remains outside in the passage, his watch begins the moment the door shuts. Rhaegar ducks beneath a low arch and leads Aelyria through the cloister.

Their footsteps echo against the cobblestones, the corridor smelling of limewash and the smoke of yesterday’s candles.

Waiting at its far corner is an oak door heavy with iron bindings. Rhaegar raises the latch. The hinges groan open, and lantern-light pours over a small stone room. Aelyria moves in three strides across space no bigger than eight feet by ten, the ceiling just shy of seven. Thick stone mutes every scrape and whisper, rendering the room intimate and utterly isolated.

In front of the window, the looms the night in the weaving shed outside. Within, the room is plain. A trestle cot with a clean feather mattress and gray blanket, a coarse oak stool, and a small alcove in the wall that holds a tin icon of the Seven where a candle burns out by morning.

A brazier glows in the corner, warming her feet but not the rest of the chamber. Shadows gather at the margins, and once the lantern is extinguished the darkness seems to come alive.

A basket rests beside the stool. Within are a jug of water, the Seven-Pointed Star, and Rhaegar’s silver harp wrapped in cloth.

Rhaegar closes the door behind them, the iron latch settling with a soft click. He sets down Aelyria’s belongings, then steps closer. She takes in the rough brick, the cot, the small brazier; he sees the tight set of her shoulders.

“Why here?” she asks at last, “It feels like a cell.”

Rhaegar’s mouth twitches, the truth stings him as sharply as her words. “Forgive me, Aelyria. This is the smallest, safest corner of the city I could claim at short notice,” he replies.

She lifts a brow. “You plan for every blade in the city, yet spare no thought for how a woman breathes in four feet of stone.”

He takes the blow without flinching, it is the flaw she has named before, the way his mind leaps to strategy and leaves consequences for later, if ever. “Aerys has eyes in every passage of the Red Keep. Servants, guards, even boys in the rafters. Had I hidden you there, word would reach him by sundown, and once Varys hears, my father will know.”

She folds her arms. “And no quiet house in the city? A room that does not feel like this?”

“Any respectable manse needs servants,” he answers. “Servants talk. In the capital a single whisper reaches Varys before a candle burns out. On Dragonstone a rumor must cross the bay first, by ship or raven, and that delay keeps you safe. Until we can go, I need you where chatter dies before it walks five steps.”

He taps the slit window high in the wall. “From the alley below it is three turns to the Mud Gate. If Aerys demands you, Arthur can put you on a river barge before the Gold Cloaks have their boots laced.”

Aelyria’s gaze slips to the mattress, the cracked niche with its lone candle. “It holds no comfort.”

“No,” he agrees, managing a thin smile. “It’s meant to be forgettable. Dockhands pray in the front of this sept, loom-workers pound cloth next door, no one of note ever comes back here. My father despises small septs. He won’t look.”

She sighs, exhaustion more than anger. “How long?”

“Fourteen nights,” he says. “I’ll come tomorrow after midnight. Arthur takes first watch, Barristan second—no changing of watches, no whispering. You’ll be uncomfortable for but a short while, yet you’ll be invisible, and that matters more than cushions until the wedding bells stop. When they do, we sail straight to Dragonstone, where the servants answer to me, not to Varys.”

He takes her hands cautiously, holding her gaze. “These walls aren’t punishment, Aelyria. They’re a shield against my father, against talks, against harm.”

She searches his face for doubt but finds only fear, and beneath that fear, unwavering love.

“If this is the best way,” she whispers, “I’ll bear it.”

“It is,” he says, voice firm but light. “It will keep you safe and grant me peace of mind until we sail.”

He draws her into his arms then, embracing her warmly. His lips brush her temple, lingering delicately as he murmurs into her hair, “This is not forever, Aelyria. A few days, no more, and then Dragonstone. You will be safe, you will be free. I promise you this.”

When he draws back, he presses a small packet into her hands, bread and a honeycomb.

Then, reluctantly, he slips from the room and closes the door behind him. The iron bar falls into place with a soft, final note, and the alley outside grows silent save for Arthur Dayne’s steady footsteps.

Aelyria sits upon the cot, the candle flickering beside her.

You will be free.

His words echoes in her mind.

But I was once free

But she loves him. He loves her. These thoughts she chants in her mind over and over again.

She then remembers a different type of love, in which was open, open as the sea.

She pushes the memory away, for it is sacred. But that was then, and Rhaegar is her now.

This is what Aelyria tells herself. Rhaegar is her now, and he needs her like breath, and she needs him equally.

A fortnight. Fourteen candles. Then the river. Then the open sea.

Aelyria wakes the next day, the room still dim, morning light thin through the narrow window. The walls press close around her, suffocating in their confinement. Her heartbeat quickens at the realization. Another day in this cramped room, another long wait in the shadows.

She rises abruptly, restless. This confinement feels unbearable. She cannot, will not, remain imprisoned within these walls today.

Moving swiftly, she pulls a cloak around her shoulders and slips to the door. It creaks open beneath her hand, revealing Ser Arthur Dayne on guard, posture impeccable, eyes instantly alert.

“My lady,” he says with care, stepping before her. “I do not think it wise. I have orders from His Highness.”

She meets Arthur’s gaze squarely, determined. “I cannot be a prisoner for a fortnight, Arthur. I promise I will return safely, only grant me a breath of free air.”

Arthur hesitates, duty warring with sympathy behind his reluctant eyes. At last he sighs and nods. “Very well. But I must accompany you, at a distance at least.”

She dips her head gratefully and steps forward while Arthur follows at a respectful distance, ever watchful.

The market bursts with color, a tapestry woven by eager hands preparing the city for its prince. Everywhere banners dance in orange, black, and red, vivid shades promising joy—a bright contrast to the ache beneath her ribs. King’s Landing laughs with life, buoyed by distant drums and lutes, laughter spilling through the city.

Aelyria moves meticulously through the crowd, hood drawn low, stepping around children darting between stalls and couples pausing beneath flowered arches. The new room had felt too tight today, its silence heavy, yet now, standing amid vibrant joy, her loneliness feels sharper, clearer.

A nearby vendor calls brightly, voice warm and inviting to the crowd. “Fresh bread! Dornish cakes fit for a prince’s wedding board!”

She approaches, mindful of her anonymity, choosing a small loaf and a bundle of dried fruit, placing coins in the vendor’s palm. Beside her, two women linger over the stalls, voices bright with anticipation.

“Did you see Prince Rhaegar ride through the River Row yesterday?” one woman whispers eagerly, half in awe. “I heard he wore the Martell princess’s colors openly, never have I heard such gallantry, and from a Targaryen prince no less!”

Her companion nods, a satisfied smile playing at her lips. “Aye, it’s a wonder, truly. They say Prince Rhaegar chose Princess Elia himself, not merely for alliance, but out of love. Like something from the singers’ tales.”

Aelyria’s pulse quickens, each kind word pressing deeper, small wounds hidden beneath her hood. Not bitterness, but sadness, a sadness tempered by years of wisdom and silent truths held close to her heart.

Love, she thinks cautiously, turning the word gradually in her mind. The city sees beauty, a tale spun by minstrels and whispered from lip to ear, kinder than truth. They cannot know the moments he returns to her night after night, the place where love does not proclaim itself boldly beneath banners and bells, but lives deeply, beyond reach.

"Gods be good, it shall be something to remember," the first woman continues warmly. "The realm has long needed joy, and what joy could be finer than a royal wedding?"

"Aye, and children, gods willing," her companion agrees. "Imagine the heirs they might grant the realm. Martell suns and Targaryen dragons. Truly, a blessed union."

Aelyria turns silently away, tightening her grip around the bundle of dried fruit. Each word settles like a stone at the pit of her stomach, heavy yet accepted.

Returning to her cell, she slips into the narrow room, closing the door behind her. Here the silence greets her mildly, not oppressive now, but almost soothing even in its melancholy. She leans against the wall, eyes closed, breath steadying as she releases the bright laughter and innocent dreams echoing beyond her refuge.

Let them have their songs, she thinks. Their sweet lies hurt no one but her. The truth, the unseen truth, belongs to her alone. Perhaps, she reflects with grace, that is enough.

Yet as her eyes reopen, the bare stone walls press close around her again, cold and small. Enough or not, the truth remains. She is still confined, still hidden away, still alone in the prince's shadow. Aelyria exhales as the weight of reality settles over her once more.

Evening comes unhurried, measured by the drip of candle wax and the distant echo of looms that never cease their rhythm. Aelyria lies awake, eyes fixed on the ceiling as sleep evades her. She listens as footsteps occasionally pass in the alley beyond, muffled voices fading like ghosts into the dark. Outside, King's Landing settles, its sounds softening, surrendering gradually to night’s embrace.

Hours stretch on endlessly. She counts them by heartbeats, by shallow breaths, and by the flicker of shadows. Eventually, exhaustion claims her, dragging her down into shallow dreams haunted by muffled laughter and distant music.

The door creaks softly at midnight, interrupting her restless sleep. Aelyria lifts her head from the thin pillow, heart quickening as the door eases open, admitting the faint scent of the night's mist.

Rhaegar steps hesitantly into the room, a bundle clutched beneath one arm, silver-gold hair dampened slightly from rain or regret, perhaps both. His eyes, weary and tired, seek hers across the space.

"I did not mean to wake you," he says low, closing the door behind him with care. He sets the bundle down atop the stool, a small flask of wine and a small wheel of cheese wrapped in linen. Beneath his arm he carries two soft woolen rugs, placing them reassuringly near the cot.

"I was not truly sleeping," she admits, voice small. She rises, bare feet touching the cold floor. His eyes follow her every movement as she approaches, tension and apology mingling in his gaze.

A faint tremor moves through his jaw, an unspoken sorry written plainly in his expression.

"Forgive me," he whispers, his voice breaking slightly. "For yesterday, for every day I must leave you in this place."

She reaches out, fingertips brushing the sleeve of his tunic. "Shh," she whispers. "Do not speak."

When his gaze meets hers again, something fragile softens in his expression. He draws her close, hands cupping her face as if she might vanish at the slightest touch.

"Avy jorrāelan," he breathes against her temple, the words brushing over her skin.

Slowly they shed their clothing, each motion careful and tender. Rhaegar’s touch is gentle as he presses warm kisses to her neck, her shoulder, her lips.

When he positions himself between her thighs, entering her, his eyes fixes on hers, seeking connection. Yet as he moves above her, her gaze falters, drifting toward the bare stone walls.

He pauses, sensing her agitation. "Aelyria?" His voice is barely more than a whisper, worried and tender at once. "Tell me."

She keeps her eyes on the rough brick. "You see all of me here, and I see nothing but walls," she says, voice tight. "I feel small, trapped. If I look at you, I will start counting mortar lines again, and I cannot bear it."

Rhaegar slips his hand beneath her chin, guiding her gaze back to his own. "Look at me, not the wall." His lips brush the corner of her mouth. "You are not the one trapped. The walls are." Another kiss, softer still. "You are the only thing that matters in this room, the only thing kept safe."

She swallows hard. "It yet feels like a cage."

"Then let me be your door." His fingertips brush a strand of hair from her forehead. "Thirteen nights remain. Each time you look at me, count one less. Let the days dwindle, not you."

Slowly, tension eases from her shoulders. Her eyes lift to his fully, and she reaches upward, hand settling at the back of his neck.

“I will,” she whispers. “I will look.”

He begins moving again, eyes locked with hers, rhythmic, each soft thrust feeling like a whispered promise. Twelve nights… eleven… ten. And as her eyes finally drift closed, it is no longer the walls that surround her, but the comforting heat of his touch.

Later, when they lie tangled in the dim, peaceful stillness, her head resting against his chest, he whispers into the dark, “This chamber is but a stopgap, until something better.” His thumb traces soothing circles along her shoulder. “And when we leave, we leave together. The stone stays here, cold and empty without us.”

She nods against his heartbeat, her breathing finally calm. “I’ll remember.”

For the first time since he brought her to the hidden room, she slips into sleep without hearing the looms, without counting bricks, aware only of the even rhythm of his breathing beside her.

The days drift by, marked by the bells of the sept and careful glances. Sometimes Aelyria leaves the cell behind, not for the crowded streets of the city, but for the shores near Blackwater Bay. She sits upon a smooth stone overlooking the water, pages of a book turning beneath her fingertips as the sea breeze whispers around her.

Ser Barristan keeps a mindful watch some days, standing at a respectful distance, silent yet comforting. On others, Arthur Dayne, solemn and vigilant, shadows her path. They guard her solitude without intrusion, silent sentinels who understand or even pities her to some extent.

Each evening, as dusk paints the sky, Rhaegar comes to her. He gathers her into his lap, her back against his chest, a book balanced across her knees. She reads in High Valyrian, while at times he presses his cheek against her back.

He seldom interrupts. His arms rest around her waist. Now and then his lips brush her shoulder, but mostly he is silent, content to listen as she recites ancient lines. 

One day, as she turns the page, he speaks.

“In seven days we sail for Dragonstone,” fingertips brushing her shoulder. “The princess, her ladies, the Maester, and some of the court will sail with us from the Blackwater docks, before dawn.”

She remains silent a moment before asking, “Will I be a shadow there too?”

“No.” His answer is immediate and firm. “You’ll be mine, without fear. I’ve arranged a role for you in the archives, under a Maester’s protection. You’ll continue your work, your studies. No more hiding. No more cramped chambers.”

She nods to his promise, then looks around, and for a moment she does not recognize herself. It dawns on her that she has allowed this. To be here, hidden in this cell of a chamber, allowing herself to become his mistress. Has love truly blinded her?

She used to wield a sword, to fight beasts and monsters. She leapt and ran along rooftops. What is she now?

Rhaegar senses her lost in thought, kisses her back, and asks, “What is wrong?”

Aelyria stares at the candle, then shakes her head, pulling herself from the trance. “It is nothing.”

“Do not worry,” Rhaegar says. “I will take care of you. We belong to each other, always.”

She nods, hope mingling with relief. Each word he speaks becomes a promise; each evening is a reminder that their future waits just beyond the walls of King’s Landing.

When they make love, his touch is even more tender. He still whispers to her in Valyrian, words of devotion that no one else will ever hear.

“Nykeā prūmia jorrāelagon ao ēva se mērī,” he murmurs at her ear. My heart will love you always and only.

“Sȳrī aōha iksan, se morghon aōha sȳrkta.” He groans against her neck. I am yours, and death itself cannot sever that.

In these moments, the world beyond fades away. The walls no longer feel like barriers, but a sanctuary that shelters them from a realm that cannot yet understand.

The nights count down, seven, five, three, and with each fading day, hope blooms brighter, tempered only by the lingering ache of secrecy.

And then it is one night before the wedding.

Rhaegar stands before the polished mirror in his solar, candlelight pooling around him. The room is empty now, the servants dismissed, leaving behind the smell of incense and the touch of silks that feel softer than armor, yet no less weighty.

He adjusts the cuff of his sleeve absently, gaze distant. The noise of wedding preparations drifts through the open window, a reminder of duty and expectation. But here, in this solitary moment, his mind travels elsewhere.

He thinks of the dragon dreams that haunted him for so long have dimmed of late, less vivid, less insistent. Yet even their absence grants no peace, merely a different ache. Emptiness where certainty once stood.

He thinks, briefly, of the laughter and murmurs beyond these walls, Dornish guests and courtiers, musicians and fools, all celebrating an illusion, a song spun from half-truths. They call him gallant, a prince who chose dutifully. He wishes he could tell them that duty had no place in this choice. Love, he has learned, rarely aligns itself with duty.

His thoughts then move upon Aelyria, locked away in the cramped, shadowed cell beneath Ragman’s Way. 

A deep ache pangs him. His one true love is kept hidden when she should stand in the sunlight at his side. She deserves his men to bow to her, to protect her and guard her as fiercely as they guard him. He would run with her, cross the Narrow Sea, and live in their love with prophecy and crown forgotten, if only she had permitted it.

I should let her go, he thinks, an unwanted pain shooting through him. What am I providing her, truly? Only secrecy and silence. Yet even as the thought rises, he knows he cannot, will not, release her. He loves her too deeply, too much, to let her slip from his grasp. She is the life sustaining him, the only truth he trusts. He would die without her, he knew he would.

Forgive me, he pleads in silence, as though the words might somehow reach her, hidden within the Red Keep’s walls. It will not always be so.

Yet beneath the pain lies the lightest of hope. Dragonstone. There he will be able to shield her, provide the comfort and freedom King’s Landing could never offer. Even if their love must remain hidden, at least it will not be confined. He imagines those days to come, her working in the archives, her hair falling over ancient scrolls, golden eyes alight with purpose. They will share something closer to peace, truer than secrecy allows here.

And though Elia will be there—gentle Elia—he resolves sincerely to offer her honor, comfort, and kindness. Even without love, he will protect her dignity, shield her from harm. He owes her this much.

Rhaegar exhales slowly, closing his eyes against the ache. He wishes he could shield them both. Elia from this hidden truth, and Aelyria from the pain of secrecy. Yet duty, ever relentless, permits no such kindness today.

A knock at the door. Ser Arthur Dayne’s voice. “My prince, the sept awaits.”

Rhaegar opens his eyes, drawing a breath before turning. Calm returns to his expression. “Of course,” he replies. “I am ready.”

He moves toward the door, cloak shifting against his shoulders, heavily, yet carried without complaint.

As he steps from the room, his heart holds both women: one in open pity and respect, the other in unconditional guarded love, each deserving more than he can give. And as he walks toward his waiting duty, his promise remains unshakable within him.

One day soon, we shall find peace. Until then, forgive me.

Morning brought restlessness. Aelyria knew staying within those walls would only sharpen the pain, so she ventured out once more, this time not to the quiet shores, but into the crowded, celebratory streets of King’s Landing.

The city had awakened early, brimming with anticipation. Crowds gathered along the broad avenues, faces bright and eager. Yet Aelyria turned aside from the royal procession, choosing smaller streets and quieter alleys instead. She kept her head low, stepping around puddles and the remnants of celebration. Still, the city’s energy met her wherever she walked, impossible to escape.

Then the wedding bells cracked across King’s Landing like iron hammers, rolling from tower to tower until the whole city seemed to shudder under their weight.

They did not sing, they summoned, to duty, to grandeur, to an ending already written.

Aelyria felt the vibrations before she truly heard them, a bruise of sound trembling through the cobbles beneath her boots. She had strayed far from the procession, yet the bells poured through every alley mouth the way flood tide swallows a gutter, unstoppable and salt-sharp with inevitability.

King’s Landing had dressed itself for joy. Banners of Targaryen and Martell snapped overhead. Dornish brocade veiled fruit stalls, and children raced between barrels of wine, their laughter so bright it hurt the ear. Grease smoke from skewered boar tangled with wafts of spice until the air itself felt feverish. Somewhere close, a reed-pipe trio chased a wistful Dornish melody, each high note snagging in Aelyria’s ribs like a fishhook.

She forced herself onward past a vendor rolling lengths of Martell cloth the color of desert dusk, past a juggler balancing citrons like severed suns, until a thin voice cut through the din.

“Northern roses for the prince’s bride! Last wreaths, rare and fair!”

The flower-seller could not have been more than ten. His arms, full of freshly woven circlets, wobbled under their weight. One blue-petaled crown slipped free, tumbling end over end until it landed at Aelyria’s feet.

It lay there, crushed-ice blue against stone, dew pearling on each petal like unshed tears. A memory emerges behind her eyes, a crone’s voice whispering, When winter roses bleed their scent through a knight’s shattered shield.

Without a second thought she stepped over the fallen wreath and walked on, each toll of the bells driving the petals deeper into the mud, each stride carving the promise of their love farther into her chest.

The cell felt hollow when she slipped inside, the laughter from the city still ringing in her ears. She left the hearth dark, the cloak still clinging to her shoulders, and sat by the narrow casement, listening while the wedding bells tolled themselves empty. They rang until dusk bled across the city and only the pain within her chest remaining.

Midnight arrives again, bringing an almost unbearable silence. The wedding had come and gone.

“Was she kind to you?” she asks, scarcely audible.

“Yes. Gracious, as a princess ought to be.”

Aelyria nods slowly. It stings, yet she had known this day would come. Best, perhaps, to grow familiar with the pain.

“Aelyria,” he murmurs in apology.

At last she looks up. Rhaegar closes the small distance. He reaches; his fingertips brush her cheek. She turns her head, not in refusal, only a plea for patience.

He understands and his hand falls. He sits on the cot beside her. After a moment she leans into him. He wraps his arms around her until her head rests against his chest. 

Tears spill down her face. He looks at her. Seeing her like this pains Rhaegar more than any wound. His eyes redden, and he leans in to kiss the tears away. They sink back onto the bed and he holds her tight. When she finally drifts to sleep, he whispers into her hair, “I will take care of you. I promise.”

Chapter Text

It is late midday. Aelyria sits at her narrow table, copying a Lyseni charter while candle smoke drifts through the room. The air is cool that day and the city, at last, has quieted. In the distance, she can hear the waves brushing against the quays.

A soft knock comes at the door. Aelyria rises and lifts the latch.

Ser Arthur Dayne waits by the door, rain still clinging to the edges of his cloak.

“My lady,” he says evenly, “the prince departs for Dragonstone at first light with a small retinue. You are to sail with them.”

He hands her a sealed parchment and steps back into the alley.

Inside her room she breaks the wax carefully. The letter is written in the neat, precise hand of Maester Aladar himself. He greets her warmly, welcoming her as his new assistant, and clearly lists the duties she is expected to perform. She will help maintain the archives, assist with sorting and translating valuable texts, and lend her skills for political translations. Aelyria lets out a slow exhale, relief settling through her shoulders. At last, there is clear direction—something to busy herself by.

She begins packing. She places two plain gowns carefully into the satchel, followed by her best quills wrapped safely in oiled cloth, a Lyseni penknife, and a notebook with well-thumbed pages. At last she kneels before the chest at the foot of her cot and opens it gently. Inside lies a cedar box containing the private gifts Rhaegar has given her; his ring, the ruby necklace curled upon its chain, and the two matching ruby earrings. She holds the jewels for a moment, feeling their weight and value against her palm, before returning them to the box. Closing the lid, she tucks it securely among her belongings.

Before dawn, she steps into the courtyard. Rain glosses the cobblestones, and the air smells faintly of damp stone and faded wedding garlands. These four years she has spent in King’s Landing, hidden among archives and the city, sharing secrets and whispered promises. Now she is leaving it behind, the crowded city and its endless eyes, following a path laid down by her prince—by her lover. Her pulse quickens at the thought of it, and her chest grows tight with anticipation and nervousness.

Aelyria stops at the edge of the royal quay. Dockhands shove crates and caged ravens up gang-planks, gulls screech over the rigging, and guards in crimson cloaks keep the handful of early-rising courtiers from getting too close. Beyond the dawn haze the Red Keep glows soft pink, its walls reflected in the Blackwater below.

Aelyria steadies herself with an exhale and steps toward the waiting ship, aware that each stride carries her toward a future she cannot yet see clearly, yet she willingly moves toward it.

Aelyria spots Maester Aladar waiting near the gangplank. He is a trim older man who stands nearly eye to eye with her. Gray hair frames a face marked by a badly crooked nose, yet his broad easy smile softens every line and makes him look warmer than the sharp dawn air. He lifts a hand in greeting and waves her forward.

“I am pleased to have you with me, Lady Aelyria,” he says, his tone light amid the bustle of loading crates and caged ravens. “Your translations in King’s Landing earned praise all the way to the Citadel.”

“Thank you, Maester,” she replies, returning his smile as she steps onto the gangplank beside him. “The pleasure is mine.”

“You will help me catalogue the Valyrian and Lyseni scrolls. You will keep the reckoning ledgers and handle any diplomatic translations we need.” He adjusts the heavy chain at his throat, links clinking softly. “Tell me, did you attend the royal wedding?”

Aelyria’s gaze flicks to the planks underfoot. “No, Maester,” she answers after a breath.

“A pity,” Aladar says, shaking his head. “It was a fine ceremony, Dornish musicians beside Targaryen heralds, carved banners along every arch, the prince and princess standing together like they had been born for that moment. Even Aerys’s absence could not dim the mood, though many said it was a shame the king did not attend.”

Aelyria offers a small smile, adjusting her head wrap. “It sounds memorable.”

“It was,” the maester agrees, motioning her toward the hold. “But now, scrolls await us. Come, let us follow.”

Aladar hands her a sealed parchment. She tucks it into her satchel beside her quills and closes the flap.

They stand together while the ship takes on stores. Dockhands roll casks and crates aboard. Servants follow with trunks and caged ravens. Then a silence settles once the royal party arrives.

Elia’s ladies-in-waiting gather near the gangplank. Indigo velvet cut with gold thread glimmers each time they shift. One is taller than the rest, slender as a young willow, midnight hair pouring straight down her back, eyes the shade of amethyst. She smooths a sleeve that needs no fixing, and the small gesture draws a low whisper from her companions. Another hides a laugh behind a gloved hand. A third frets that the salt wind will spoil their coiffures. The tall lady answers in a soft Dornish lilt that nothing ruins Dornish velvet. Their laughter flutters out, before they remember the eyes upon them and lift their chins in perfect poise. Behind them the guards and dockhands instinctively straighten, shoulders squared and faces sober, as the trunks are secured and the quay falls completely quiet.

Princess Elia steps into view. She moves with a dancer’s balance although her figure is slight. A single coral pin glows in her dark hair. The ladies drop into curtsies and rise again, respectful and precise, hands ready to assist her if she wavers. Elia thanks them in a soft voice and the warmth in her words sets the youngest lady blushing.

Rhaegar follows a moment later. Ser Arthur Dayne keeps pace at his right and Ser Lewyn Martell walks at his left, both in white cloak and bright enamel. Plate flashes in the early sun. Courtiers step back to clear a path. Rhaegar nods once to Arthur, then offers his arm to Elia. She accepts with grace, resting her gloved hand on his sleeve. Her ladies fall in behind them, whispers now low and careful, as the royal party moves toward the gangplank.

Aelyria watches from beside Maester Aladar. Elia’s beauty is clear. Her composure is even clearer. Yet the stiff angle of her shoulders looks learned, not natural, as though she wears the stance like armor. The thought of her being unwell, causes Aelyria to feel sympathetic to the princess. Although she knows she is now Rhaegar's lawful wife/

Rhaegar turns his gaze and finds Aelyria. The moment hangs. One slow heartbeat, no more. He lowers his eyes, turns back to his wife, and guides her up the gangplank. His cloak snaps once in the wind before it flaps back against him.

At the top of the ramp he takes position by the rail and greets each new passenger with a respectful nod. Courtiers dip their heads. Officers touch fists to breastplates. Now and again his eyes drift to the queue still waiting on the dock,

Maester Aladar waits until the last crate thuds on deck. Then he steps forward.

“Your Highness, the archives team is assembled as you directed. My assistant Aelyria of Lys and I are ready to begin our duties whenever you call upon us.”

Aelyria bows. Rhaegar inclines his head to Maester Aladar, then a fraction lower to her. His gaze lingers on her face longer than courtesy allows. His fingers flex against the rail, knuckles whitening as though he means to speak. Aelyria’s throat constricts, but she fixes on the open hatch that leads below deck and lets the moment pass.

She feels, rather than sees, Ser Arthur shift beside the prince. Without another glance she nods to the maester. Aladar turns, chain links clinking again, and guides her across the deck toward the companionway. Sailors roll casks past them, but no one blocks their path. Aelyria steps through the hatch and descends into the low-lit passage, determined to reach her assigned cabin before court eyes can draw her into anything beyond duty.

Maester Aladar touches Aelyria’s sleeve. “Come. We should stow our ledgers before the cabins grows crowded.”

She nods, and together they descend further through the cabin, past crates of ink and stacked scroll chests, toward the narrow cabin assigned as their workroom. Aladar sets the ledgers on the small desk, straightens one quill, and offers a kind smile.

“I must see the purser and review the passenger list,” he says. “Settle yourself, my lady. I will return once we are properly underway.”

Aelyria bows her head. The maester departs. Alone now, her chest loosens with relief, she then lets the thrum of the oars drown every thought but duty.

Aelyria keeps below for most of the journey. She tries to busy herself, instead of letting her thoughts wonder to the Prince and Princess. She reads when she can, though the sway makes the words swim. Instead, she memorizes. Charts, phrases, fragments. She makes sure she is prepared for her duties, once they arrive to Dragonstone./p>

Rhaegar doesn’t come, not openly. There are too many footsteps on the planks, too many names who might wonder. But near dusk on the second day, she hears a knock on the door.

She lifts the latch and finds Rhaegar in the corridor. A plain cloak hides most of his silver hair. A single lantern behind him throws long shadows up the planks. He speaks no greeting. Instead he holds a small tray, a tin of celon-bloom tea, and a twist of candied citron folded in linen.

His eyes hold hers.

He offers the tray. Their fingers touch. Heat flashes through her wrist. She carries the tray inside and sets it on the narrow table by the cot.

When she turns back he is still there. He lifts one hand and brushes the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. He then turns his head down the corridor and bends his head to kiss her.

Aelyria gives him a look that speaks, Do not do this here. There is a slight pause between the two of them and then Rhaegar gives a quick nod, he steps away and leaves.

Aelyria peers into the passage. It’s empty, no footfalls, and no one in sight. She closes the door, heart beating hard, and thinks him sweet but impractical. If anyone had seen, things could go terrible wrong before even reaching to Dragonstone.

The voyage proceeds to take longer than expected. In fair wind a ship can reach Dragonstone in two days. This time the sails sag and snap without finding a steady current. Four days crawl by. The sea lies smooth, but the air moves in fitful gusts. Oarsmen pull when the wind dies and the hull shudders at the strain. No one complains. Voices drop low because sound slides too easily across the water.

Aelyria proceeds to spend her hours in her room. She attempts to read, but being on a ship has never fell easy on her. Her mind drifts to a distant memory, where she had been in chains on a ship. Not once but twice.

She shakes her head at the memory, instead she decides to rest on her cot.

Then again another knock on the crate startles her.

“Come, child,” Maester Aladar says from the ladder. “A chart is nothing unless you meet the sea that shaped it.”

She hesitates. He waits. With a hesitant nod in agreement, she rises and follows him up the steps.

Daylight slams into her eyes after the dim hold. A keen wind sweeps the deck. Above, the sky spreads wide, and the sea runs on until it meets a thin band of brightness at the horizon.

A small court has gathered by the weather rail. Princess Elia stands near the prow, her cloak lifting as she leans toward the prince. One gloved hand rests on his arm.

Rhaegar remains motionless. His shoulders are squared and his jaw is set. Aelyria tries not to look at him, but fails to do so.

Three attendants in Martell colours wait behind Elia. Two Kingsguard stand by the royal pair. Ser Lewyn bears the sun-and-spear on his gorget, while Ser Arthur Dayne stands beside him carrying his greatsword across his back. Two gold-cloaked officers brace themselves a few paces off.

Rhaegar turns first. His indigo gaze meets Aelyria and hold. Aelyria feels her breath hitch. The moment lengthens, one split moment, then a second, before she lets her eyes fall to the grain of the deck and forces herself to swallow her churning emotions.

Maester Aladar approaches the prince and princess, he clears his throat. Aelyria's heart drops, for she has no other choice but to follow Aladar.

“Your Highnesses, pardon us. Maester Aladar and my assistant, Aelyria. I wished her to observe the coast past Massey’s Hook, the shoals have shifted since the Oldtown tide charts were last updated.”

Elia turns to him and lets a kind smile reach her lips. “You disturb nothing, Maester Aladar. My lord husband and I were just studying the headlands. Dragonstone benefits when scholars know the tides better than the helmsman. Please, show Miss Aelyria whatever she must see.”

Rhaegar’s jaw flexes and his hand tightens by his side before he schools his expression. He inclines his head, yet his eyes drift back to Aelyria and linger an moment too long.

Aelyria’s lungs fill deeply. She forces a calm nod, then steps beside the maester. Her heels tap in rhythm with her pulse. She fixes on the map he spreads, names depths and currents in a proper voice, and keeps her gaze on the parchment until the lesson ends. But somehow, she feels the tears swell up, she tries to blink them away.

Ropes shriek through blocks. Sailors talks sounds down the line. At the prow Princess Elia lets out an exhale of awe. Rhaegar offers no reply, instead his gaze remains on the isle ahead and his shoulders draw tight, as if the black stone calls him by name.

Dragonstone arrives against the horizon. Wings of black rock spread around the harbour mouth. The ship heels on the turning tide and the sea behind them start to close like a page being shut.

Aelyria follows Maester Aladar toward the narrowing point of the bow. Wind knifes off the water and snaps her kerchief against her neck. She keeps her head low. Each moment feels too large for her ribs.

The maester spreads a salt-softened chart across the rail. He points out shifting currents, hidden reefs, and the eastern shoals that have edged two cables west since the last survey. His words carry evenly on the wind, steady enough to rise above the creak of rigging.

Aelyria hears only the rush of blood in her ears. She continues to fix her eyes on the map. She does not glance toward the rail.Do not look at him. Yet, she feels the weight of his presence behind her and knows it is real. Heat builds between her shoulder-blades. Bile crawls up the back of her throat.

She steadies herself with a palm on the chart.

Rhaegar still stands where he has stood all morning. His hand resting on the rail beside Elia’s. The princess asks about sea lanes and the nearest deep-water berth at Driftmark. His answers come half a moment late. His eyes wander past her shoulder. Not far. Just enough to look at the figure in grey, head wrapped in a plain kerchief, who never once turns to meet his attention.

Elia soon notices. She studies the prince’s profile while he speaks. Her chin travels to where his attention is caught and sees its set on the scribe that was introduced earlier. Her voice remains smooth. Only the edge of her smile draws tight.

Wind rises. The water darkens to the colour of slate. The maester’s chart snaps against his fingers.

Aelyria stays silent and never looks back. Dragonstone waits ahead, but it could come sooner.

As the ship nears the harbor, Aelyria finds herself gripping the rail more tightly. Dragonstone looms larger, its black towers growing clearer through the lifting mist. A sense of relief settles over her, and anxiety into one single sharp sensation. She lets out an exhale, preparing herself for the life waiting beyond the ship.

The gangplank then drops with a heavy thud and chains clatter through iron rings. The royal party moves down to Dragonstone’s outer yard. Rhaegar walks first with Elia on his arm. White-cloaked guards spread around them in measured arcs, and Dornish banners ripple behind. Sailors heave trunks onto their shoulders while gold cloaks call orders that echo against the basalt walls. Only after the last banner slips under the portico does Aelyria step ashore.

Aelyria falls in beside Maester Aladar as the line of servants winds up the sloping yard toward the gates. Basalt towers rise on every side, shaped like the necks and wings of dragons caught mid-roar. Volcanic heat moves through the cracks in the stones, and bronze braziers glow beneath archways that seem carved from night itself. She lifts her eyes along a scaled buttress and feels the weight of Valyria’s memory on her shoulders. For the first time in a long time, Aelyria feels a pang of nostalgia.

They step beneath the portcullis. A servant in Dragonstone grey appears before her.

“Maester’s assistant?” he asks, bowing as he speaks. “Your chambers are ready, my lady, if you will follow me.”

Aelyria pauses beside Maester Aladar while the servant waits three paces off. The maester closes his ledger and tucks it under one arm.

“We start sorting the first trunks at first light,” he tells her. “Rest while you can. I will see you on the morrow.”

She dips her head in acknowledgment. The servant bows again, then turns down the torch-lit corridor. Aelyria follows him into the castle’s halls of black stone, each footstep carrying her deeper into Dragonstone’s history.

A lantern rocks in the servant’s hand as he guides her along a rising passage. “Your quarters are kept near the library for Maester Aladar’s ease.”

At the third landing they stop beside large iron doors carved into dragon heads. “His Highness’s apartments,” the servant says.

They turn left into a covered gallery facing the sea. After twenty paces, they reach a narrow archway. A key turns, the servant steps aside, and she enters.

An inner door hangs ajar, opening onto the shadowed shelves of the main library. Across the same gallery, no more than twenty paces off, the prince’s study stands close enough for a secret summons yet far enough that a passing servant would not link the doors at a glance.

“It was readied on His Highness’s instruction,” the servant says, placing her trunk on a carved stand. “Ring the bell if you require aught else.” He bows and retreats. His footsteps dissolve into the halls.

After setting the last book in its place, Aelyria sits by the fire and waits for Rhaegar. She knows he must see the princess settled and see to other duties before he comes. She looks around and lets the thought form: so this is Dragonstone.

As a girl she heard of it often, how her own kind scolded the Targaryens for keeping to this black rock in a cold sea, how they laughed at them; yet theirs is the only house that remains. The dark stone reminds her of Oros and the games she once watched there, the sheen of obsidian under harsh light, so unlike the pale limestone of her home by the coast. Tonight she would give anything to see that chalk-bright shore again, the sea breaking white against it.

The chamber is quiet. The broad window holds the sound of the wind and the smell of salt. So this is where Rhaegar places her. Chambers a few doors from his, larger than she expects. She sits by the hearth, listening for his step in the passage, knowing he will come when he can.

The sun withdraws and Dragonstone has grown calm. Even the ocean feels distant.

Suddenly a knock sounds against the doorframe.

Before she can answer, the door opens.

Rhaegar enters with control. He doesn’t rush, and at first, says nothing. He shuts the door behind him and turns the latch. For a moment, he lingers by her door, watching her as if the wrong movement might break something fragile.

His cloak is damp. His hands are bare.

When he crosses the room, each step seems practical. He stops at an arm’s length. His gaze drifts over her, noting the loose hair, the tense shoulders, the wary expression that cannot decide between anger and relief. He reaches to unfasten the clasp at his throat, setting aside the last layer of formality.

Only then does he move closer.

One hand settles at her waist, the other hovers near her cheek, waiting for permission. When she does not step back, he touches her, gently, without haste or possession.

He pauses and draws back just enough to speak.

“Nyke epagon iā prūmia. Ñuha dāria jorrāelagon daor hen lenton, yn hen ñuha prūmia.”
“I have fulfilled my duty. I do not wish to love for the realm, but for myself.”

Aelyria looks up at him, her heartbeat quickening. She places her hand at his chest, resting over the beat of his heart.

“Hen ao jorrāelagon,” she whispers.“Hen daorūbagon.”
For you, I love. Not for the world.

Her hair is already down, but as she shifts, more of the silver-white strands catch the firelight. The last traces of gold, muted and faded, seem to vanish, until the color is wholly hers again.

Rhaegar watches, transfixed.

He reaches out, takes a strand of her hair in his hands, letting it slide through his fingers.

He smiles, as if waiting for the moment she no longer bore the truth from him, or as if he’s seeing her again after a thousand lifetimes.

He steps forward.

His hands find the edges of her bodice. He doesn’t rush. Each movement is patient, like he’s undoing something the world was never meant to fasten. A fluttering sensation rises in her chest, as he bares her, inch by inch. He kisses her as he works, her collarbone first, then her collarbone, the rise of her breast. His mouth is gentle, but there’s hunger behind it.

She moans when he takes her nipple between his lips, suckling once before his tongue trails downward, over her ribs, the flat of her stomach, the place just below her navel. Her fingers slip into his hair, threading there.

He then kneels.

And when his mouth finds the place between her thighs, to her center, she gasps, head tilting back, one hand fisting in the fabric of his shirt. She tries to stay quiet, but her body answers louder than her voice. Her hips shift forward. She presses her hair back from her face, eyes half-closed, chest rising with each drawn moan.

His tongue moves deeply within her, gently coaxing pleasure.

Then he stands again, rising with that same grace, and lifts her in his arms.

She doesn’t resist. Her legs wrap around his waist, her arms around his shoulders. He carries her across the room like the weight of her is the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

He lays her on the bed.

His clothes fall next, his tunic, shirt, belt, then trousers. She watches him, eyes dark with want and softer than lust. Her gaze holding her ache and desire in equal measure.

He climbs over her, skin to skin, his body fitting against hers.

Their mouths find each other again. This kiss is deeper.

And when he slides into her, slow and full, her breath breaks on a moan that he swallows into his mouth.

They move together. Not fast. Not frantic. Every thrust is slow. She clings to him, legs wrapped tight around his waist as his length withdraws, dragging against her with unbearable care, only to sink back into her, filling her again.

Her breath stutters. The stretch, the weight of him, the way he moves inside her, it’s everything she remembers, everything her body can never forget.

He cups her cheek, watches her face.

“Jorrāelagon nykēla,” he murmurs. You are my love.

She gasps, her hands trembling at his back. He lowers to her throat and begins to nibble, lips and teeth tracing the skin beneath her ear. She tilts for him, offering more. Her mouth finds his shoulder and she bites lightly, a claiming touch that draws a rough sound from his chest.

His lips travel down the line of her collarbone, over her breasts, then lower to her stomach, where he kisses and softly bites along her flesh. One hand rises to cup her breast and squeezes it, while he moves in and out of her at a quicker pace.

She answers in kind, lifting her hips to meet him, nails raking his back, marking him as he marks her.

He breathes her name against her skin and presses his mouth to her neck, then to her shoulder again, sucking until purplish marks blooms there.

His hand comes to her throat, guiding her face back to his so he can kiss her while he thrusts, his body bearing her down into the bed as if to prove she belongs to him and he to her.

She becomes slick that he guides himself in and out of her with ease. On a deeper stroke he slips free, and both of them groan at the loss. He grabs her hip with one hand, finds her again, and sheathes himself to the hilt. The wet sound of their joining carries through the chamber.

He stays inside her long after, their breaths slowing together, skin pressed close as sweat cools between them. His forehead rests on her shoulder, his lips brushing slow, promises against her neck. Her fingers remain tangled in his hair, no longer gripping, but holding. An anchor to keep him there, within the warmth of their joined bodies.

The fire cracks . Their skin both flushed and damp, his chest rising and falling against hers as sleep enfolds them. The scent of them hangs in the air. Salt, sweat, the trace of their release.

And for now, nothing else matters.

The next morning comes peacefully. The light creeps across the chamber, shining on the stone walls and the folds of tangled sheets. Rhaegar’s arm is still draped over Aelyria’s waist, his breath even against her hair. When he moves, there is a rare brightness in his face, the kind that softens the lines of worry that usually weigh upon him.

He dresses slowly by the window, fastening buckles and leather without being rushed. Aelyria lies on her stomach, cheek tilted toward him, watching him in silence. Their eyes meet now and then, a wordless language of glances they both understand.

When he is nearly ready, he returns to her, sitting at the edge of the bed. His fingers smooth her hair, and he bends to kiss her bare shoulder. “Do you like the chamber?” he asks.

Aelyria nods. He smiles, answering, “It is better than mine. I think we shall spend most of our time here.”

Her hand curls into his tunic and she pulls him down to her. He laughs and mockingly groans as she turns, naked beneath him, pressing herself against the hardness straining under his clothes.

He fumbles at the fastenings, eager to free himself, but she stills his hands, kissing him, deep and lingering, before breaking away.

“You must go,” she says. “And I must attend my first day with Maester Aladar.”

He groans, resting his forehead to hers. “Cruel,” he murmurs, though his lips curve with fondness. Then he sighs, brushing her hair from her face. “I will return before the evening bell.”

She reaches for his hand. “Do not hurry on my account, Your Highness. The scrolls will keep me occupied.”

“I would sooner have you occupy me,” he answers so softly, then bends to kiss her brow. His fingers rests in her hair, before he gets up and slips through the door to councils and garrison rounds.

Aelyria soon readies herself, ties her head-wrap and crosses the gallery to the western part of the castle, where the archives brood behind iron-shod doors. At the central table Maester Aladar waits, quills aligned, candles guttered to pools of wax.

“Ah—Aelyria,” he looks up, smiling. “Good. You are prompt. We have treaties from Driftmark to render into High Valyrian before the prince convenes his harbor council. And a clutch of Lyseni charters that must be copied verbatim. A mountain, but your hand is steadier than mine.” He gestures to a stack of tablets—not orders, but seed for whatever negotiations the Prince means to harvest here.

The High Valyrian ledgers await us, and Prince Rhaegar wishes the figures copied before dusk.”

Aelyria rolls her sleeves and takes her seat, letting ink and parchment steady her thoughts while the sea calls beyond Dragonstone’s walls.

Hours of copying pass. Wax pools at the candle stubs, ink darkens beneath Aelyria’s nails, and dust moats drift through the single shaft of light above the table. When the midday bell tolls and Maester Aladar pauses to stretch his fingers, she closes her ledger, blots the last line, and rises.

Noon finds her in the lower hall, a long vaulted chamber beside the scullery. She could have food sent to the workroom; Rhaegar offered that on her first evening, but the servants’ benches yield more truth than any parchment. Bread and broth buy clearer answers than titles ever will. She slides onto a bench with a plain wooden trencher, listening while stewards and kitchen girls trade news over ladles and salt.

“Seen the princess’s solar?” a pot boy says, sawing crust from a heel of bread. “Prince had braziers shipped in from Myr, silver-worked, hot as a kiln. Says cold air is no friend to Dornish bones.”

“A healer from the Disputed Lands too,” a scullery maid adds, brushing onion skins from her palms. “Rare syrups, saffron poultice, snake-venom draughts. Costs a fortune, but Martells swear by it.”

“Martells swear by bright cloth and hotter peppers,” someone else says, and the steam lifts on a ripple of laughter.

A steward leans closer. “Did you notice the tall one with the violet eyes? Lady Dayne, they call her, Ashara. Walks like she is a goddess in flesh. Guards nearly tangled in their cloaks when she passed.”

“Aye, and their finery,” a cook remarks, stirring broth. “Gold, orchid, sunset, nothing in the keep shines like that party. Even the dragon skulls seem dull beside them.”

Aelyria sips her stew, silent behind the rim. The talk shifts again—Dornish musicians rehearsing in the yard, dates and spiced wine arriving from Sunspear, a new nurse who refuses to leave the princess after dark.

Then the current bends.

“Prince’s scribe, the library girl, has decent quarters they say,” the pot boy notes. “Fire lit before they arrived, tea tins replaced without asking. Never seen the like for a copyist.”

“Prince keeps scholars well,” the scullery maid replies, curiosity lining her words.

Aelyria offers a faint smile that reveals nothing, sets her trencher aside, thanks the cook, and draws her cloak close. A thin ache settles in her chest—years spent standing unbowed, yet here she walks the corridors as little more than a shadow. She slips back toward the upper halls.

Night falls, and Rhaegar comes to her chamber.

Aelyria is still at the desk, quill moving in tidy High Valyrian. Candlelight gilds her braid.

Rhaegar steps up behind her and bends to kiss her cheek. The kiss lingers. He draws in the scent of parchment and the faint jasmine oil she favors, as if memory could be stored.

He feels tension in her shoulders and notices the slight hesitation in her next stroke. These are small tells only he would catch. He whispers against her skin in Valyrian. “Kostilus, ñuha jorrāelagon?” What troubles you, my love?

Aelyria pauses just long enough to blot the line. “Only learning Dragonstone’s hours,” she answers in an even voice. She offers a small smile over her shoulder, present and polite, a paper shield.

He studies her for a moment. His fingers rise and brush a loose strand of silver-white hair behind her ear, hair she no longer cares to dye. “Biarvose. It suits you better,” he says, almost worshipful. Her smile softems.

He touches his lips to her forehead in a gesture that feels like promise and apology together.

They move to the low divan near the hearth. The stone base is piled with deep cushions the color of storm clouds. She sits sideways on his lap with her knees drawn up. He places a small harp against his thigh. His fingers test a string and a single note shivers in the air.

Another note follows, then a line of melody he once played in the hidden corridors of the Red Keep. It is soft, lilting, half remembered. She sets her hand over his and guides him to a minor chord that darkens the tune. Their shoulders lean together. Her head rests lightly against his temple. His exhale stirs the loose hair at her crown.

Outside, surf pounds the cliffs in distant thunder. Inside, his harp string and heartbeat weave. It feels like an echo of nights before crowns and courtyards, before duties split daylight from desire.

He plays. She listens. Both content and at peace with being together, where he no longer has to slid away from her at the first bell.

For a time that is enough. Yet after each fading chord she feels the space where a wife’s tower lamp burns somewhere across the keep, and he feels the weight of a crown he has not set aside no matter how close he holds her.

He finds her fingers on the final cadence and twines them among the strings. She lets them stay until the last vibration fades.

A moon slips by. Aelyria falls into a routine in Dragonstone. Each evening Rhaegar comes to her chamber and does not leave until morning. They make love at night and sometimes again when first light touches the castle. Between moments of lover's passion, laughter has begun to weave itself into their days, playful touches and teasing whispers adding a fresh intimacy to their new proximity. Sometimes he jolts awake beside her, pulse quick, eyes momentarily wide. When she asks about it, he smiles gently, whispering, "A dream I can faintly remember," before pressing a kiss softly to her lips. At daybreak he returns to councils and garrison rounds while she ties her head-wrap and walks to the archives.

This morning is no different. She crosses the courtyard, climbs the narrow stair, and steps into the tall room lined with scroll racks. Maester Aladar waits at the central table, fingers resting on a sealed note.

He moves toward her eagerly. “A message from the princess,” he says brightly, placing the parchment in her hand. “Her ladies have confirmed she is with child—a new heir for the Targaryen line! She invites the keep’s principal retainers to supper this evening. Your name is included.”

Aelyria feels as though a blade has been driven into her chest. She knew this day would come, it was only ever a matter of time. But to be invited? What cruel jest was this.

Her name is included? Rhaegar would never subject me to that.

She opens her mouth to object.

“My place is here, Maester. The charters—”

Aladar shakes his head. “Courtesy before quills. Refusing would offend.”

Aelyria lowers her eyes to the wax seal, its imprint cool against her skin. “Very well, Maester.”

That evening the great hall of Dragonstone glows with torchlight. Long tables form a horseshoe below the dais. Commanders sit on the right, officers and maesters on the left, merchants and Velaryon captains along the center. Banners of the red dragon hang beside the sun-and-spear. Casks of Dornish wine scent the air.

Elia enters on Rhaegar’s arm in a sand gown. The room stands. White cloaks take position behind the high table while musicians strike a bright chord. Rhaegar guides Elia to the central chair and takes the seat beside her. His fingers tighten once on the armrest before he smooths his face.

She forces her eyes away from Rhaegar, away from the princess seated beside him. Nausea coils in her stomach. Only the night before they had been wrapped together, bodies joined in desperate love, and now she sits in the same hall as her lover and his wife...his wife, already with child.

Aelyria’s throat tightens. It is something she can never give him, no matter how he swears his love belongs to her.

Rhaegar feels her presence. His gaze drifts toward the maesters’ table then returns to Elia. The glance repeats when a servant refills Elia’s cup and again when the musicians change the tune. Elia notes his pattern and lowers her gaze. Two of her ladies follow the line of his eyes, their expressions darkening into disdain as they spot Aelyria. Their fans rise, whispering among each other behind their fans where their eyes linger, as though they know precisely where the prince spends his nights.

Plates arrive one after another. Fish and seasoned goat. When the herald calls for a word from the prince, Rhaegar stands. He raises his cup and the hall falls silent.

“Friends of Dragonstone, thank you for your loyalty. Tonight we celebrate new life and the promise it brings to every heart in this keep. May joy grow within these walls as surely as it does within my princess. May our houses stand together in peace and strength from this day forward.”

He drinks. Cheers rise and tankards clash. Elia rests a hand on her midriff and answers the roar with a low smile.

Rhaegar’s toast ends. The words my princess circle in Aelyria’s mind and her stomach knots. Wine turns sour on her tongue. Once she feels no one is paying much mind, she pushes from the bench, thanks Maester Aladar in a whisper, and slips past the servants before the final platter lands. Although she tries to leave unnoticed, she feels Rhaegar’s eyes follow her, and from beneath lowered lashes, she senses Elia’s observation as well.

The torches burn low when she reaches the gallery. She keeps her head down and walks the long passage until her door clicks shut behind her. The chamber is quiet, lit only by the banked hearth. She removes her head-wrap and sits on the edge of the bed. Her muscles aching along with something in the pit of her stomach. 

She begins to cry.

Later that evening she hears a knock.

She knows the cadence even before the latch turns. Rhaegar steps inside. Firelight rims his cloak and regret shows on his face.

“Aelyria.” His voice wavers. “I heard of the feast only when they informed me. I only learned of the princess's condition today. If I had known I would have spared you.”

He crosses half the room until her retreating stops him. “I never meant for you to bear that hurt.”

She meets his eyes, “I understand your duty. Tonight I wish to be alone. Please leave.”

Shock widens his pupils. His mouth opens then closes.

He lifts a hand as if to touch her cheek but she steps further back and he lets it fall against his side. The movement seems to drain the strength from his shoulders, and his eyes start to gloss. 

“My beloved,” he pleads in Valyrian, voice rough. His gaze flicks to the hearth then back to her face, searching for any sign of welcome.

She turns her back and moves toward the basin. The distance between them seals like a door.

He breathes once, shallow and piercing, as though his ribs ache.

“Very well,” he says. He bows his head, prince stripped to penitent, turns, and walks out.

The latch clicks shut and the chamber now silent as if holding its pain.

Aelyria remains standing a long while after he leaves, the emptiness of the room aching in her chest. She moves to the fire, but finds no warmth in it. Every crackle and spark reminds her dismissing him, of boundaries she herself set. Yet as the hours drift toward midnight, she begins to wonder if solitude is any kinder than the hurt of seeing him with another.

Night drags on. Aelyria still finds no sleep. She walks back and forth across her room. She keeps telling herself this was her idea. She pushed Rhaegar toward duty and swore she could live with the cost. The thought gives no comfort now.

Then a small knock comes late after midnight.

She opens the door.

Rhaegar stands in a loose linen tunic. His hair is tousled and dark rings shadow his eyes. He looks younger and smaller than a prince.

She steps aside. He enters and closes the door without speaking. For a long moment they only look at each other

Rhaegar then makes the first move. He lifts his hand. She gives him hers. Their fingers lace. He pulls her close and rests his forehead against her neck. His breath warms her skin.

Words feel useless at that moment. Still joined, they cross to the bed. The one candle gives the only light. They lie close, palm to palm, breathing in each other. He plants kisses to the corner of her mouth then forehead. Outside the sea keeps its slow beat. Inside they keep their own, choosing for this night not to be alone.

Chapter Text

Days pass at Dragonstone. Then a week, then another. The sea keeps its own count outside the windows, and the castle learns their quiet routine.

Since the unexpected feast, Rhaegar is true to his vow. He keeps Aelyria safe. At times Ser Arthur walks her to the archives or paces a few steps behind when she takes her stroll along the sea wall. The white cloak is a comfort to Rhaegar and a flare to every curious eye. Before long she asks him to stop.

“It is not needed,” she tells him, “It draws notice. Why should a scribe have one of the realm’s finest at her side? It looks like a rebuke to the household. The Dornish here will think you do not trust them.”

Rhaegar tries to argue. Safety, he says. Appearances, he says, can be managed. Aelyria does not bend. At last he nods, displeased but respectful of her wishes. Ser Arthur does as he commands and keeps his distance, a shadow at the far end of a corridor rather than an emblem at her elbow.

Her days are peaceful. In the mornings she works with Maester Aladar among ledgers and scrolls. When the weather clears she copies by the window to let the light find each stroke. In the afternoons she walks the yard and the curtain wall without an escort, speaking with the islanders who mend nets and with the girls who card wool. She never tells Rhaegar this, for she knows he would soon have Ser Arthur escort her once more. 

This independence grants her happiness. She learns their names. They learn hers.

Rhaegar has had a trunk sent up from Lys. Silks in sea tones, a gown that catches light like water, a narrow-belted dress cut to the city’s fashion. 

She never wears them beyond the door. In their chamber she does. When the wine loosens them, she will slip into one, twirl once for him by the hearth, laugh when he watches her as if she were a star he has called down. 

She never wears the silks for long. His hands are quicker to remove them as soon as she puts it on.

He stops sleeping in his own chamber. Without remark, his life crosses to hers and stays. A harp rests on its stand by her window. His books lean against hers on the shelf. A spare sword belt hangs from her chair. Clean shirts, a plain doublet, a traveling cloak, all folded into her chest as if they belonged next to her items. 

At night he comes in late, he lies beside her, sometimes they make love, sometimes they sleep entangled. 

They keep to simple habits. Bread and stew at the table by the window. A cup of wine divided in two. A page read aloud, then passed to the other’s hands. Now and then he will lift a curtain and name a far light on the water, a fisherman’s fire or a beacon on the headland. She will answer with a line of an old verse that fits the hour.

When he must leave for audiences, council, or to check on the Princess. He will press a kiss to her brow and says he will return before the bell. All nights he keeps his word. She stacks his pages neat and trims the lamp and waits without complaint, knowing he always returns to her.

By the second week the servants stop asking where to set his tray. They know. The prince’s chamber stands vacant. Hers has become theirs. His clothes and small things are stored with hers, and he does not sleep anywhere else.

At times they read in his private library. The window looks on the water. Aelyria sits in his lap with a book, his arms around her waist. She reads in Valyrian, as he listens. The same ritual they had back in Kings Landing.

They soon make a game of the language. She writes a single line on a fresh page, he answers with a second; she returns with a third, and so on, until a full verse poem is created. 

Aelyria:
“Jorrāelagon nykēla, ao iksā ñuha ābrazȳrys.”
You are my love, you are my flame.

Rhaegar:
“Hen ñāqes gēvives ñuha mōris, se lēda sȳz.”
From the deep my heart lives, and it is sweet.

Aelyria:
“Nyke vēzos syt ao, se vēzos daor ēbrion.”
I am the sun with you, a sun that will not set.

Rhaegar:
“Ao henujagon ñuha iemnȳ, se ñuha ābra sȳrī issa.”
You will always be mine, and my flame is sweet.

By the end of the fortnight they have a slim gathering of scrolls tied with ribbons, a book of their own making.

They smile at the roughness of their script and the way the lines fit. When another page dries in the draft. Another scroll is added to the ribbon.

Their lovemaking changes too. Over the weeks they grow bolder together. Sometimes she takes the lead, holding his gaze as she puts him in her mouth. 

The first time, his control breaks too quickly; in time he learns to hold longer, as she licks around the tip, then fully takes him her mouth as she bobs up and down his shaft.

At times he would release in her mouth, as she swallows it all, and at others she would climb on top of him and ride him until he releases inside of her. 

She had never done this for him before. Not because she lacked the knowledge, but because she feared he might see in her ease a reminder of what he did not yet know.

Aelyria had long been well-versed in the arts of pleasure, yet with Rhaegar she had wanted to let him discover her in his own time, to learn her without the shadow of comparison. 

Only now, with their love now feeling safe, did she dare to show him all of herself.

Living together calms him. He no longer has to slip out before dawn or worry about his father’s guards watching the door.

Though they grow closer, Aelyria misses parts of King’s Landing, the markets, their grove. He does too. They both miss it the most. 

Because Rhaegar is wed, they cannot be seen together in the morning light. Aelyria is mindful of this. It aches them both, yet in the evenings, when they are in each other’s arms, the ache loosens and they have one another.

Aelyria never imagined her life would become this. Once she crossed seas on her own will, choosing what she wished and living as she pleased. 

Now there are limits. But love, which she thought she would never know again, is here at last.

It feels soul bond. She remembers a distant dream of Rhaegar’s silhouette; then she did not understand, now she does. 

Their paths were meant to cross. The gods have not forsaken her. They have given her another chance.

Rhaegar always wears her pendant. At times he teases that she never wears his gifts, the ring and the rubies. Aelyria answers that there is no formal occasion for such finery. He only smiles, slips the ring onto her finger, and sets the ruby necklace at her throat. She wears them for him, and only then, jewels against naked skin while he makes love to her.

For a while they live in a world of their own. They do not speak of matters beyond her chamber. 

At night they are free to love each other completely, even if the day cannot hold them.

Two silver-haired souls, bound by one heartbeat.

Chapter Text

Rhaegar stands in the throne room of the Red Keep, or what remains of it.

The ceiling is gone, and cold air pours through broken vaults. Stone lies scorched, pillars cracked, the Iron Throne a black heap of melted blades.

How did I come here? The question echoes as snow drifts across the floor.

A low howl rises behind him. He turns.

A white direwolf waits a few paces away, frost clinging to its coat. Blue winter roses beneath its feet. Its eyes glow red, unafraid, seeming to offer a warning.

A dream, he tells himself. It must be.

A dragon answers the howl with a roar that shakes the broken walls. Wind surges, lifting flurries into a white mist until the hall becomes a swirl of drifting ash and ice.

He raises his hands to shield his face.

When the storm settles, he is no longer in the Red Keep. A wide tundra stretches beneath a vault of black sky, the air razor-thin, the horizon endless.

Before him stands the same tall, figure he has seen before, blue eyes lightless and fixed upon him, frost clinging to its armor like hoarfrost on steel.

Then he sees what lies beyond. An army covering the plain. Row upon row of dead men stand silent, spears lifted to a sky that offers no mercy, faces locked in frost.

Dread seeps through his bones.

The direwolf pads to his side, fur bristling. The undead figure lifts a single hand. The ground trembles, fissures spreading like dark veins through the ice.

Terror grips him. He reaches for the wolf—

—and the ice opens beneath his feet.

He wakes, gasping for air, sweat drenching his neck and back. His heart pounds wildly as his gaze darts through the dark room, struggling to distinguish dream from reality. Gradually, familiar shapes form. Aelyria’s chamber is quiet, save for the distant crash of waves against Dragonstone’s cliffs.

Beside him, Aelyria pushes herself up, eyes heavy with sleep. She sees him clearly now, panting, his chest heaving, drenched in sweat. Her sleep fades instantly, replaced by worry. She touches his shoulder, voice low and urgent. "Another dream?"

“Yes,” he breathes, voice hoarse. “The white wolf from the crone’s prophecy. Ice… snow… the Red Keep burning, falling. And the same man—no, not a man. Something else entirely. Something unnatural.” He pauses, closing his eyes tightly. “Behind him was worse… gods, there was something worse. But I cannot—I cannot remember.”

He turns to sit at the edge of the bed, shoulders heavy with lingering dread. Aelyria moves close, wrapping herself around him. Her breath is warm against his neck.

"It's all right," she whispers reassuringly. "Only a dream—for now. The Red Keep burning could mean many things."

Rhaegar turns his head sharply, voice strained and raw with urgency. "My father—he has wildfire stored beneath King's Landing. But even he—surely even he isn't mad enough to burn the Red Keep itself?" He drags his fingers through his hair, desperation edging into his voice. "And ice, the throne room—why ice? It doesn't make sense. But why ice? We are yet in spring!”

Aelyria tightens her arms around him, her voice gentle but firm. "Rhaegar," she says, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, "write it down. Put the dream onto parchment. Give it shape so it can leave your mind."
She pauses, smoothing her palm down his back. "Dreams are never as frightening in ink as they are behind closed eyes."

Rhaegar lets her guide him toward the desk, settling into the chair heavily. His hands tremble slightly as he picks up the quill, he writes, words shaky across the parchment. When he finishes, he lets a deep exhale, his shoulders sagging.

He turns toward her suddenly, cupping her face in his hands and pressing his forehead softly to hers. "I wish to forget these dreams," he whispers hoarsely, desperation heavy in his voice, "but I do not know how."

Aelyria’s fingers curl around his wrists, anchoring him to her. She holds his gaze. "Then remain here, with me," she says softly. "Leave the dreams for tonight, Rhaegar. Prophecies can wait. Tonight, it's just us."

Slowly, Aelyria leads Rhaegar back toward the bed. She settles against the pillows, guiding him down beside her, and wraps her arms around him, drawing him close. He exhales softly, the tension in his body easing bit by bit as her warmth surrounds him.

He turns his face toward her neck, breathing her in, finding comfort in the softness of her skin. Gradually, his heartbeat steadies, his breathing slows. Her fingertips traces along his back, reassuring him that he is safe, that the dreams cannot reach him here.

The morning creeps suddenly, sunlight filters through the windows, illuminating the chamber. Rhaegar sleeps deeply, his breathing now steady, the night's unrest now smoothed from his features. Aelyria watches him for a moment longer, now reassured by his calmness.

Then a small knock interrupts her thoughts. Quickly, she rises and crosses to the door, opening it just slightly. A young servant stands in the corridor, holding a tray filled with fresh fruit, bread, and steaming tea.

“My lady,” the servant says softly. Her eyes flick briefly beyond Aelyria, spotting Rhaegar still tangled in the bedcovers, his hair spilling across the pillows. The girl’s eyes widen for an instant before she swiftly lowers her gaze. “Apologies, I—I did not mean to intrude.”

Aelyria accepts the tray calmly, offering a nod. “Thank you. That will be all.”

The servant dips her head respectfully. “Good day, my lady,” she whispers, stepping quickly away.

Aelyria closes the door quietly, setting the breakfast tray on the table nearby. With another glance toward Rhaegar, still lost in his peaceful sleep, she dresses, gathers her papers and slips silently from the chamber, heading toward the archives.

As Aelyria walks along the corridors toward the archives, her mind drifts back to Rhaegar's dream, the white wolf, the ice, the Red Keep aflame. She thinks of the desperation in his voice, the helpless confusion in his eyes, and feels worry for him. Dreams, she knows, are rarely meaningless, especially not Rhaegar’s.

Yet the Crone’s prophecy haunts her, and she hesitates. If she seeks answers, will it push him further toward some unknowable fate? Or could untangling the meaning of his dreams give him peace instead?

She presses her lips together, determined. There must be something hidden in the pages of the archives, some subtle clue or forgotten history, that might ease Rhaegar’s burden without binding him tighter to prophecy. She would be careful, cautious. For now, she would look, and watch, and wait.

Aelyria then pushes through the tall oak doors into the Dragonstone archives. Maester Aladar is halfway up a rolling ladder, parchment in hand, eyes alight.

“Child, come here. Look at this,” he calls, sliding down the rungs with surprising agility. “Hidden behind a warped shelf near the ceiling, I found personal journals, Daenys the Dreamer’s own hand, I believe. Pages written before the Doom.”

Aelyria steps closer, noting the strange coincidence of timing, the leather covers are cracked, she reaches out on instinct.

“Careful,” Aladar warns, clutching the bundle to his chest like a scandalized septa. “Gods be good, girl, one careless finger and the text will crumble into air!”

“I understand, Maester,” she replies amused. As if she does not know the fragility of centuries-old vellum.

Aladar spreads one folio on a cushioned board. “See here. A passage describing fire sweeping the Fourteen Flames. She claims the dream came twelve years before her family fled Valyria. If not for this vision, no Targaryen blood would remain.”

Aelyria studies the words. Most characters bleed into the fibers, barely legible. She has read mentions of Daenys’s prophecy, yet in her youth she knew of Valyrians whose sight ran even deeper, bloodlines steeped in stronger magic, seers who swore they too had glimpsed ruin boiling beneath the mountains. Why, then, was House Targaryen the only one to cross the Narrow Sea? She remembers rumors that the family had not fled at all but been exiled to Dragonstone. Perhaps some hidden cause lies behind that story. The thought flickers, then fades. The Doom still came, the Freehold still burned, her family is gone. No secret will undo that.

“Remarkable find, Maester. What do you need?” she asks, steadying her voice.

“Patience,” he says, eyes bright. “A steady quill and your sharpest eye. We must copy what can be saved before time eats the rest.”

Aelyria nods and sits at the desk beside him, her gaze briefly drifting across the crowded shelves. If these journals existed, perhaps others remained hidden in the suite, waiting to be discovered. Perhaps in those forgotten texts, there might lie a clue, something to help unravel the sense of Rhaegar’s dreams.

Outside, waves batter the cliffs, but here, in the archives, the past waits to answer the questions that still matter most.

Aladar and Aelyria continue working through the morning, carefully copying the delicate script of Daenys’s journals onto fresh parchment. The maester talks as they work, his voice animated as he discusses Aegon the Conqueror, his tactical genius, his mastery of dragons, the lasting strength of his reign. Eventually, his talk turns to the current prince.

“The Prince will make a fine king one day,” Aladar remarks thoughtfully, carefully avoiding any mention of Aerys. “He has a scholar’s mind, balanced by compassion and strength. A rare combination indeed.”

Before she can reply, another servant enters the archives, delivering a sealed parchment from Essos. Aladar unrolls it carefully, scanning the contents before passing it to Aelyria.

“A trade agreement from across the Narrow Sea,” he explains, tapping the parchment lightly. “The language is tangled, likely an attempt to obscure terms. See what you make of it. We’ll have it translated before the day is out.”

They work together until midday, when Aelyria finally excuses herself, stomach growling in hunger. She descends to the servants' hall for a quick meal, but as she steps through the doorway, the lively chatter abruptly dies. Every head turns toward her, eyes widen briefly, then shift quickly downward.

The cook, usually warm and cheerful, lowers her head acutely, giving an overly deep nod. Uncertain, Aelyria takes a seat among a small cluster of servants at the nearest table. The atmosphere remains tense, conversations around her resuming only in stilted fragments, each word cautious and overly polite, talk of weather, chores, careful and bland.

Discomfort prickling at the back of her neck, Aelyria eats quickly, conscious of the strained silence that has settled over the chamber. When finished, she rises quickly and leaves, feeling the weight of their guarded eyes follow her from the room.

Instead of returning immediately to the archives, Aelyria chooses a longer path, passing by the castle's training yard. The rhythmic clash of swords draws her attention. Pausing briefly, she sees Rhaegar training rigorously with Ser Arthur Dayne, their blades flashing beneath the midday sun. Rhaegar moves with sharper intensity than usual, his strikes more with intention, each motion more focused than she remembers. He glances up briefly, catching her gaze. A faint smile softens the edge of his concentration for a moment, acknowledgment passing silently between them. She smiles in return and continues on her way.

Crossing through a small garden toward the Sea Dragon Tower, Aelyria notices a gathering of noblewomen, Princess Elia’s ladies-in-waiting. Among them stands the tall woman, Ashara Dayne, beside her Lady Jynessa Blackmont and Lady Nyrella Santagar, their fans snapping bright as banners in the breeze. Conversation falls to silence as Aelyria approaches.

She keeps her back straight, pace even.

Lady Jynessa’s fan dips, her voice pitched to carry. “Seven save us, one would think a mistress might flaunt her hair, not hide it beneath that drab kerchief. Plain must be plain.” The fan snaps shut, her lips curl disdainfully. “And yet she has the gall to show herself, walking among us as though decent women should feel honoured by the…dishonour.”

Lady Nyrella’s thin laugh slices the air. “Bold creature. Perhaps she believes sharing the prince’s bed excuses her common cloth, though one might pity her, bedding a prince while his princess carries his heir.”
Ashara says nothing, her violet gaze lingering on Aelyria, curious, weighing, but void of malice, as though studying a page of unfamiliar script.

Aelyria neither slows nor quickens. She inclines her head the barest fraction, courtesy met, invitation denied. Yet Lady Nyrella’s final remark stings more deeply than she cares to admit. She keeps her spine straight, her expression carefully blank, continuing toward the archway. Behind her, their silk rustles, whispers now scattering into the wind. Ahead lie the cool stairs and the solitude of the small archive. She steps into the archway, leaving the thorns to those who wield them.

She arrives back among the rows of shelves and parchment rolls. Maester Aladar is already at the central table, spectacles perched low on his nose. Beside him stands an unfamiliar young man in cadet-grey robes, copper and lead chain links visible at his throat, half-forged and not yet sworn. Tall and poised, his dark hair curls slightly, a faint scar cutting across one brow.

“Ah, Aelyria,” Aladar says, setting aside his quill. “May I introduce Jon Mallister? Fresh from the Citadel, here to assist with our backlog, and perhaps learn from Dragonstone’s finest hand.”

Jon inclines his head respectfully. “An honor, Mistress Aelyria. The Maester speaks highly of your Valyrian translations.”

“Welcome, Jon,” she says, placing her parchments on the table. Her smile is polite, genuine. “Another careful eye is always welcome here.”

Aladar claps once, satisfied. “Good. Scrolls from Essos await copying. The prince wishes them by evening. Aelyria, set him the margins. Jon, follow her lead exactly.”

They settle into work. Jon’s hand is elegant, his attention focused on matching each line. Occasionally, she feels his glance, not intrusive, but observant, respectful of craft.

After a stretch, Jon suddenly speaks. “Your hand is good. High Valyrian isn’t forgiving, at the Citadel, novices blot more than they copy.”

“My family has kept the tongue alive,” Aelyria replies carefully. “Scholarship runs in our blood.”

“From Lys, the Maester said?”

She nods lightly, inviting no further questions. “Books and ledgers were our trade. Languages endure when they earn bread.”

Jon acknowledges her subtle boundary with a nod and returns to his page. After a moment, she glances up briefly. “And you, a lord’s son, choosing chains is rare enough.”

“Second son of Seagard,” he says simply. “No castle to inherit and little interest in swords. My father prefers ledgers, though the Maesters say words can cut deeper.”

Aelyria allows a small smile. “They’re not wrong.”

He considers the ceiling thoughtfully. “How do you fare here, in Dragonstone’s gloom?”

“Familiar yet distant,” she answers. “As though I know the echoes but not the voices.”

Jon chuckles. “Strange to sleep where dragons once roamed, I admit. But interesting to live where history still lives.”

Aelyria pauses, looking toward the carved dragon pillars before returning to her task. “History never truly sleeps. It only waits for someone dares to disturb it.”

Their eyes meet briefly, mutual understanding, but nothing more. Soon their quills resume, writing flowing beneath silent stone dragons that watch, listening without judgment.

By evening, Maester Aladar leans back heavily from the desk, flexing cramped fingers. He grimaces, pressing a hand to his side. "Forgive me," he sighs. "My joints aren't as youthful as yours. Would you two kindly deliver this parchment to Prince Rhaegar? He should still be with his council in the Chamber of the Painted Table."

Aelyria suppresses an internal groan, as if this day has been eventful enough, but she merely nods, taking the parchment carefully. Jon rises beside her, ready to assist. Together, they leave the archives behind, footsteps echoing along Dragonstone’s corridors.

When they reach the council chamber, Jon steps slightly ahead to open the door. A wave of voices quiets instantly as they enter. Rhaegar stands at the head of the great carved table, surrounded by members of his small council, their expressions grave.

"We must remain cautious," a councillor says carefully. "The king grows increasingly unsettled at the Red Keep."

Rhaegar turns sharply toward the door, surprise flickering briefly in his eyes. His gaze settles first on Jon, cautiously assessing, then shifts to Aelyria, settling for a moment longer. An unspoken question passes behind his carefully neutral expression, Who is this stranger beside you?

Jon moves forward respectfully, extending the parchment. "From Maester Aladar, Your Highness. He asked us to deliver this immediately."

Rhaegar accepts the document, nodding slightly. His eyes lift again briefly to Aelyria and then back to Jon. "Thank you."

Jon inclines his head respectfully. Beside him, Aelyria offers a subtle, wordless nod, her expression composed.

The prince's attention returns swiftly to the parchment, councilors whispers continue as discussion resumes. Quietly, Aelyria and Jon retreat from the chamber, leaving behind only the lingering question and tension unspoken in Rhaegar’s gaze.

In the evening, after bathing, Aelyria sits painting, a habit she's resumed since their arrival at Dragonstone. She pauses as the door opens behind her, Rhaegar stepping inside and carefully closing it. He shrugs out of his outer garments, movements with a sort of tension

"Jon Mallister," he says finally, his tone deceptively mild. "The young maester who accompanied you to deliver the translation earlier."

She sets her brush down, turning to face him, amusement flickering beneath her careful expression. "Maester Aladar's newest assistant. Skilled enough with ink and scrolls."

Rhaegar moves closer, eyes narrowing slightly as if reluctant to voice his unease. "He seemed... attentive."

Aelyria rises slowly, biting back a faint smile. Privately amused by his unease. As though the prince were not already married, a princess carrying his heir. "Attentive to parchment and accuracy, perhaps," she answers evenly, meeting his gaze. "But nothing more."

He exhales slowly, tension leaving him as he closes the remaining distance. "Forgive me," he says softly, tracing his fingers along her cheek. "This night my thoughts wander dark paths."

She leans subtly into his touch, her expression softening. "Then let me keep you here," she whispers, now guiding him towards the bed.

Rhaegar lies back against the pillows, his hair now tousled, chest rising slowly with each exhale. Aelyria loosens the last ties of her gown, letting the fabric slip from her shoulders, while Rhaegar pulls open the remaining laces of his tunic and pushes it aside. She straddles on top of him, her knees pressing against his hips, her palms resting against his chest.

He grips her hips, guiding her to slide slowly onto him, careful as if afraid the moment might vanish.

She sinks onto him with a gasp, thighs tightening around him. His hands find her waist and slowly trace upward along her sides, thumbs brushing beneath her breasts. She moves over him in slow, rhythmic motions, hips moving slowly in rhythm with his. Rhaegar hands settle at her hips, guiding her.

Rhaegar lifts his head, pressing his lips against her neck. His exhale comes hot and uneven against her skin. “Aelyria,” he groans softly, voice strained with pleasure.

She presses herself deeper onto him, hands moving around the back of his neck, pulling him closer. He kisses her deeply, fully, tongues meeting softly, their moans mingling. Foreheads pressed together, both of their skin warm and damp.

They move together, bodies rolling in a deep pace, her hips lifting and falling as they press closer, harder. Rhaegar watches her face, absorbed in every subtle shift of her pleasure, the soft parting of her lips, the tremble of her breath, the tightening of her fingers against his skin. He listens closely to each gasp and moan that escapes her throat, savoring every sound as if committing it permanently to memory.

“I love you,” he says, words raw and honest.

Her palms cup his face, thumbs caressing his cheekbones. “Then don’t stop.”

He now moves more urgently, their gasps quickening together. She moans softly into his shoulder, his answering groan low and unguarded.

Then a sudden knock sounds at the door.

“Your Highness,” calls Ser Arthur’s voice from beyond. “Forgive me, but you are urgently needed.”

They both freeze instantly, bodies still joined. Rhaegar exhales heavily, his jaw tightening.

Another firm knock follows.

Rhaegar kisses her one final time, and carefully lifts her from him. His hands linger at her waist before he releases her. Dressing quickly, he watches her the entire time, tension still rippling through his frame.

Before he opens the door, he pauses briefly. “I'll return soon,” he promises, and then he's gone, leaving only the warm imprint of him in the bed.

Hours pass by and Aelyria cannot find sleep. She wraps a shawl around her shoulders, tends to the fire, and waits. The night continues to pass, marked by distant sea winds. The candle burns low and must be relit twice before the door opens again.

Rhaegar slips back inside, tunic hastily laced, his expression troubled and weary.

Aelyria meets him halfway across the room. “What happened?”

He sighs heavily, voice heavy with exhaustion. “My father burned four men tonight.”

Her pulse quickens. "Who?"

“Two dockside smiths accused of aiding rebels. A septon who spoke out against tyranny. And, Seven help us, a messenger's boy who stammered when speaking the king’s name.” He drags a hand tiredly across his face.

“Fear grips King’s Landing more each day. The people are calling out to me," he says, "praying for the next dragon to protect them, yet fearing the one who wears the crown."

She guides him toward the hearth. "The realm sees clearly who you are," she says softly. "When you become king, you will set things right."

He nods grimly. “I’ll call a council with our trusted banners. We must show mercy, reason, before my father burns more than traitors. Before he burns the throne itself.”

She touches his face, they no longer speak. Instead, they lie side by side, her arm resting across his chest, their fingers intertwined.

Sleep finds them both, yet later in the night, Rhaegar grows restless again, shoulders tensing, brow damp from another dream.

Aelyria's eyes open. She smooths back his damp hair, feeling the restless tension beneath her palm. "I must do something," she speaks to herself. She keeps her hand resting lightly above his heart, ready to soothe him the moment he wakes.

Chapter Text

Season of the First Bloom, 280 AC — Dragonstone

Dawn turns the windows of Aelyria’s chamber in light. Rhaegar slips from the bed, presses a silent kiss to the crown of her hair, and dons a plain black doublet. In the outer solar another raven waits on the perch. The parchment, second message in as many hours, bears the broken seal of King’s Landing.

Four deemed traitors burnt alive, by royal command. Crowds kept back by the Gold Cloaks. Send no censure. His Grace will have none.

Rhaegar exhales, folding the letter once, twice, each crisp edge tugging the ache behind his temples. Father makes corpses, but I must make alliances.

An hour later he stands at the rim of Aegon’s vast wooden map, where lacquered rivers glint and ripple in the shifting torchlight. Lord Ardrian Celtigar arrives first, his crimson mantle edged in silver thread. Lord Monford Velaryon follows, gauntlets stuffed in his belt, knuckles bloodied from dawn drills. Maester Pylos comes last with parchment rolls.

“Lord Stannis sends regrets,” Pylos announces, settling his inks. “Heavy seas off the Broken Arm have delayed him.”

“Then we decide without him,” Rhaegar says, unfurling the smudged raven letter. “Four smallfolk burned on the steps of the Great Sept—crowds penned back by Goldcloaks. My father forbids censure.”

“Word will reach every dock between King’s Landing and the Arbor. Sailors love scandal more than silence. By the next full tide, they’ll be drinking to treason they only half understand.”

Celtigar shakes his head. “Stormlander or Reachman—makes little difference. Fear breeds rumor faster than ravens. We cannot dull His Grace’s fire, but we might draw noble eyes elsewhere.”

“And how, pray?” Velaryon snorts. “A sermon? The king sets men alight. I doubt a prayer quenches that blaze.”

Rhaegar traces a finger from Dragonstone’s carved promontory to the open sea. “We host them here—midsummer. A tourney for the heirs, a council for their lords. If Great Houses sleep beneath this roof, they sleep away from King’s Landing—and perhaps see the realm through clearer glass.”

“Beds?” Velaryon counters. “Dragonstone’s guest wing houses fifty at best. Are we to stack lords in the cellars like kegs?”

“Ships can anchor in Blackwater Bay,” Rhaegar replies. “Your own Merling King has cabins enough, and the outer ward will take pavilions. Celtigar vintages for the feast, Velaryon oysters for the lesser houses, my coffers for the purse.”

Celtigar taps a polished fingernail on the map. “And if the king forbids his bannermen to answer?”

“Then their absence brands him fearful,” Monford says, surprising them. He meets Rhaegar’s gaze. “Better to risk his anger than invite silence. The realm already talk of wildfire under every cobble.”

Maester Pylos clears his throat. “Your Highness, the treasury—”

“Is cheaper than civil war,” Rhaegar cuts in. “Gold spent on jousts is gold we do not spend on levies.”

Velaryon folds his arms. “And when the lists are ridden and the wine casks empty? The king’s temper will not mellow with harp music.”

“No,” Rhaegar agrees, voice low. “But every pledge sworn here is one more shield between the realm and madness. I will not wait for the flames to dare touch Dragonstone’s gates before I act.”

Silence settles across the room, only wax drips onto the map’s painted Stepstones.

Celtigar bows first. “House Celtigar will furnish wine and twenty cots.”

Velaryon follows, half-smiling despite himself. “House Velaryon will provide ships, fish, and if need be—oarsmen to pitch tents.”

Pylos dips his quill. “Then I shall draft the invitations—careful script with gentle words, and no mention of councils.”

“Use the word celebration,” Rhaegar says. “By midsummer the princess will be far enough along for us to announce her confinement. Let that serve as our cause for feast and tourney, every lord in Westeros will want to honor the child yet to be born.” He presses the king’s letter flat against the map, remembering the Ghost’s prophecy, the white wolf and frozen figure flickering at the edge of memory. Father makes corpses, he reminds himself. I must forge alliances before whatever stands in that ice finds its way south.

The council then bows out one by one. Their footsteps fade. Rhaegar stays, palms braced on the painted table of Westeros. Prince that was Promised, three heads has the dragon,… the phrases circle like restless ravens, but he forces them back. Prophecies can mutter in the dark corners of his mind, but today belongs to living men and the peril his father kindles. First the realm must be steadied, then, perhaps, he will have strength left to wrestle with ghosts.

Ser Arthur Dayne then steps through the doorway, white cloak sweeping the floor.

“Your Highness, the yard is ready. The men wait for you.”

Rhaegar tucks the letter into his belt, nods once, and follows Arthur down the passage toward the clang of practice steel.

Aelyria wakes alone. The pillow beside her is cool and the coverlet on that side of the bed lies smooth, most likely tucked by Rhaegar before slipping by dawn. She blinks at the ceiling beams, recalls the letter from King’s Landing and the sharp smell of soot on Rhaegar’s cloak, and feels a little heavier than she did yesterday.

She washes in the basin, lets the chill water clear the fog, and wraps her hair with quick fingers. The gown she chooses is simple wool the color of dove feather. She belts it tight, then rests both palms on the table while she steadies her thoughts. Four people burned, she reminds herself. Four families left with nothing but ash remains. The prince met his council long before the sun rose and she must play her part in whatever comes next.

The corridors are quiet. A pair of guards nod as she passes. From an arrow slit she sees the training yard where blunt swords flash under the morning light, but she heads downward instead. Stone steps curl to the level where Dragonstone keeps its small store of history.

She pushes the heavy door and steps inside. Maester Aladar and Jon Mallister sit at the main table, parchment already spread between them. Aladar looks a shade paler than usual, though the set of his mouth is still sharp as a quill point.

“So you have heard,” he says by way of greeting. He lifts an eyebrow that tries to pretend amusement but fails. “Reports from the capital reach us faster than a gull when they smell of fire.”

Jon inclines his head to her. “Good morning, Mistress. The maester was just scolding me for blotting a line.”

“Not scolding,” Aladar replies, though his voice is thin, “merely improving your penmanship through shame.”

Aelyria lays her satchel on an empty chair. “What else did the reports say?”

“Nothing pleasant.” Aladar taps one scroll with his index finger. “Four smallfolk, tongues too bold for the king’s ears, burned alive on the steps of the sept. The Goldcloaks held the crowd at sword point. And the Septons kept silent.”

Jon shakes his head. “Hard to keep a realm whole when its king lights pyres in the city square.”

Aladar sets down his quill. “The prince will steady the realm,” he says in a firm tone. “His judgment is sound, his heart is true, and he listens before he strikes. That is the strength we need now.”

The maester’s unexpected optimism draws a half smile from Aelyria. “What work needs doing?”

Aladar gestures toward three square chests stacked against the wall. Red ink on the lids reads Dragon Dreams, and a smaller line beneath names Aerys the First. “The prince wants a new index of every scroll on dreams and prophecy. We will give it to him.”

A flicker of unease runs through Aelyria. More dreams, more prophecy. If Rhaegar is circling that path again, the least she can do is guide him through it.

Jon lifts the lid of the first chest. “Titles aloud, Mistress copies, I sort. Simple enough.”

Aelyria draws a ledger close, sets her quill to the page, and steadies her breath. “Begin.”

Jon reads. She writes. Aladar follows with light notes and the occasional dry comment. The pace settles among them. Candle flames shiver but hold and outside the open slit window a gull cries where a dragon once roared.

Two hours pass in studious labor. They move from one chest to the next. Aelyria lists each title, marks the language, and notes any obvious copies. Soon the duplicates pile high. Jon stacks them on a side table. A few times he hesitates, frowning at two scrolls that look almost the same. Aladar answers each hesitation with a nod or a curt yes and they continue.

Midday nears. The bell in the yard rings once to call the garrison to bread and goat stew. Jon straightens his back and rolls his shoulders.

“I will fetch food,” he offers. “Maester? Mistress?”

Aladar waves him off. “Bring two crusts and a cup of watered wine for me. I have no wish to lose the page I was counting.”

Aelyria closes her ledger for a moment, flexes her cramped fingers, and shakes her head. “I will stay. There is more here than I thought. I want to finish the last chest before the candles burn down.”

Jon gives her a worried look but leaves without argument.

As soon as the door closes Aelyria moves the smallest chest to a side table. She lifts each scroll in turn. Most repeat lore she can already recite. Daenys the Dreamer’s flight from Valyria, a traveler’s tale from the Shadow Lands of a city swallowed by night, scattered notes on wandering stars. One by one she lays the duplicates aside. The pile rises.

The twelve scroll crackles at her touch. The ink has run in long tears where damp once crept along the edge. She squints, reading what she can. Another dream of flame boiling under the Fourteen Flames of old Valyria. Still nothing new.

She places it on the copy pile. Her frustration builds. Every title promises some secret, yet every scroll tells the same stale tale. How many scribes have scratched the same prophecy on new parchment just to feel important.

She readjusts her head wrap, breathes slow, and digs deeper. Near the bottom a thin packet, no bigger than her hand, lies between two larger rolls. She unties the faded ribbon. Inside are five cramped lines, edges stained, ink almost gone. Only the title is clear enough to name.

A Song of Ice and Fire

Her pulse quickens. Rhaegar spoke that same title to her in the hidden grove at King’s Landing. Squinting she can still make out two half-legible words, blood and the dead, before the rest of the script dissolves into blots. If the fragment connects to his dream then it matters. She folds it carefully, tucks it into her belt, and moves on while her heart beats faster.

She glances across the room. Maester Aladar bends over a ledger, quill scratching. Quick as a thief she folds the packet, slips it beneath her belt, and smooths her head wrap. The chest holds nothing else so small. She lowers the lid and returns to the table, face calm, heart racing.

She hears the door. Jon returns with a small tray. Bread, cheese, and a jug. He sets it down. Aladar tears a piece, murmurs thanks, and keeps writing. Jon slides a heel toward Aelyria. She shakes her head. Her hunger has turned sour.

Maester Aladar returns to the table, dusting his hands. “Anything worth placing before the prince?”

Aelyria shakes her head. “Nothing he has not seen.”

Aladar studies her for a breath, then shrugs. “Very well, the rest can wait until morning. Inkpots closed, pages sanded, the day is done.”

They store the chests, snuff the lamps, and step into the corridor. Jon heads for the kitchen. Aladar climbs toward his own tower chamber. Aelyria turns the other way, choosing the long passage that leads to the outer wall.

She walks through Dragonstone alone. The sea wind slips through arrow slits. Her boots carry her to the great arch that once opened onto the cavern where the earlier dragonlords kept their mounts. The torches burn low here now, and only a few stable boys move about with buckets and rags. Far below, surf pounds the base of the cliff.

She looks across the empty vault and imagines scales rustling in the dark, great wings scraping basalt. Names rise unbidden, half-remembered, then fade before they form. A sense of loss settles on her shoulders.

In her belt the thin packet presses against her hip. Part of her wants to run to Rhaegar, hand him the verse, and speak the secret that has followed her many yeas. Another part fears what his eyes will hold once he knows. He already carries his father’s burdens and the weight of prophecy, and now the realm teeters on the edge of war. If she adds her truth, will it steady him, or will it send him chasing signs until he is lost?

She closes her eyes and listens to the sea. Not tonight, she decides. He fights too many battles already. She will help him decode the fragment but her own secret will remain her own for now until the moment ever comes.

The wind becomes colder now. She turns back toward the stair, climbs slowly, and heads for her chamber.

Aelyria pushes open the chamber door. Rhaegar sits near the hearth, a sealed letter in one hand, a half-drained wine cup in the other. Weariness drapes his shoulders, yet the lines at his mouth soften when he sees her.

“My beloved,” he greets her in High Valyrian.

She crosses the rug and lays a hand on his arm. “Tell me it is good news.”

He rises, slips his free arm around her, and kisses her brow. “News, of a sort. A raven from great-uncle Maester Aemon at the Wall.”

Her pulse quickens. “I have brought something as well. Not much, but worth your eyes.”

His own eyes lift with cautious interest. “Come.”

They walk the short passage to his private study. Lamps burn low, throwing calm light across ledgers and a small harp that waits untouched. He closes the door and breaks the black wax seal again, smoothing the parchment on the desk.

“Aemon writes that the fuller words of the prophecy died with my grandsire at Summerhall,” Rhaegar says. “He keeps only the parts we already know. Born amid smoke and salt under a bleeding star. Waking dragons from stone.”

Aelyria pulls her chair closer. “If Maester Aemon is north of the Wall he will feel the first tremor before any southerner. He will send warning the moment that darkness moves.”

Rhaegar sighs and rubs his brow. “He tells me to stay ready yet warns that fear can conjure false signs. He also writes that he once believed, as I did, that I am the prince who was promised. Now he is less certain. I share that doubt. There are no dragon eggs here, no clear sign, besides from the one at my birth. I do not know what to believe anymore.” He folds the letter but keeps it in his hand. “You said you found something in the archives.”

She unhooks a thin packet from her belt and sets it before him. “A fragment buried in an old chest. The ink is weak. It speaks of a Song of Ice and fire. Nothing more than a couple of lines. It may be nothing.”

Rhaegar studies the brittle page, thumb resting on the title. “A Song of Ice and Fire. The phrase has remained in the family’s tales but always wrapped in riddles.” He leans closer, reading the scraps that survive. “Blood, the dead. Ice has haunted my dreams. Perhaps the threat in those visions ties to this very song. We may be looking at the missing piece.”

He meets her eyes and slips his fingers over hers. “Thank you for finding it.”

Aelyria looks into his tired face and decides not to speak of her deeper secret tonight. “We can copy it neatly and compare it with Aemon’s words,” she says instead. “Fresh eyes may see what mine did not.”

Rhaegar nods. “We work after supper, then send our reply to the Wall at first light.” He gently draws her hand to his lips. “For now, stay with me a moment longer.”

She agrees, and they sit side by side while the hearth crackles, the letter from the Wall resting between them.

A knock breaks the moment. A servant enters with a tray of bread, olive oil, and roasted fish, sets it down, and slips out again. They pull their chairs close to the small table. The study is warm and still except for the hearth’s soft crackle.

Rhaegar pours wine into two small cups, sets the flagon aside, and leans back.

“I told the council I wish to host a midsummer celebration here at Dragonstone,” he says. “Lords and ladies from every corner together under this roof.”

Aelyria pauses, bread in hand. “Dragonstone is Targaryen to the bone. These walls brood. Would summoning every great house here seem bold, or only threatening?” Her voice stays gentle but the question carries weight. “A warmer shore might welcome them more easily and ease the king’s curiosity as well.”

Rhaegar considers, cup poised at his lips. “You speak true. Dragonstone speaks of conquest and dragons. Perhaps Riverrun or even Gulltown might draw calmer eyes.” He smiles, the weariness in his face softening. “You keep me from trading certainty for wisdom.”

He sets the cup down, draws her forward, and presses a brief kiss to her lips. “Thank you.”

Aelyria tears a piece of bread. “I miss our grove she says. “The sunlight that slips through the ivy arches. Even with the city clamoring around us, it felt as though the world fell quiet there.”

He sips his wine, thoughtful. “When I wear the crown and we are back in the capital, we will wander that grove whenever we wish. I will cut away the dead vines, set fresh jasmine for summer scent, roses for spring, anything you fancy. We will make it ours and fairer than ever.”

Aelyria’s gaze softens. “Jasmine and spring roses,” she repeats, smiling. “I would like that very much.”

They finish the simple meal, the promise of sunlight and flowers lingering between them, and at last return to the desk to work side by side, copies laid out and quills poised for their reply to the Wall.

They spread the fragment on his desk and place a fresh sheet beside it. Rhaegar lights an extra lamp. Aelyria leans close, tracing faded letters with the tip of a clean quill.

“Here,” she says, “I can still read my blood. Then this curve could be prince.”

Rhaegar studies the blur that follows. “This smear begins with an N. The line may speak of the North.” He rests a finger on the page. “A white wolf haunts my dreams, and the Starks bear the wolf in their banner. There may be a link.” He straightens, thinking aloud. “I should review our lineage scrolls, old marriage ties, any Stark names that touch Targaryen. Something else might wait in the library.”

Aelyria nods at once. “I will keep searching the scroll chests. If I find even a hint of Stark ink I will bring it to you.”

Rhaegar lifts her hands and kisses her knuckles, gratitude softening the tension in his eyes. “Your help and your faith mean more than any crown.”

They copy what they can, leaving wide blanks where ink has vanished.

Aelyria rubs her eyes. “We can do no more tonight.”

“Agreed,” he says. “Better to leave gaps than imagine words.”

He sets the fragment aside and takes a new sheet. The quill moves.

Maester Aemon
I thank you for words sent over the wall.. The crown my father bears grows heavier by the hour, yet your counsel is a truth I always honour. I must confide what I have not set to parchment before. Nights I often dream of a threat that rises in ice and darkness. Always it seems to come from the North.
Tell me if the darkness moves. Send me word of any star that bleeds.
I shall answer with all the fire still left to House Targaryen.
In honor and hope,
Rhaegar, Prince of Dragonstone

He sands the ink, folds the letter, and presses his seal into black wax. When it cools he places it on the tray for the rookery.

“Come,” he says, closing his fingers around Aelyria’s. “Air will do us good.”

Together they slip down a servants’ passage and climb the tight corkscrew of the Sea Dragon Tower. Midway, Ser Jonothor Darry waits at his post.

“Remain here,” Rhaegar says.

“As you command, Your Highness.” Jonothor bows and does not follow.

At the top hatch a gust of salt wind snuffs the lantern, and moonlight spills over the basalt. They step onto the narrow wall-walk, alone beneath the stars.

Rhaegar rests his palms on the cold merlon. “No servants, no scrolls, no locked chambers,” he murmurs. “Only us, sea and sky.”

Aelyria’s cloak snaps in the wind. “And no prophecy,” she adds, voice soft.

He turns to her, the torchlight catching the indigo in his eyes. “You once said the sea calms you.” He looks outward, where moonlight scores a path across the water. “It calmed me too when I was a boy visiting here, before I first understood the words of the prince that was promised. I buried myself in parchments until my eyes bled, chasing meaning that always moved one page farther. When the letters blurred I would climb up here and breathe the salt and listen to the waves. The water kept me earthbound.”

He lifts her hand, presses it to his chest. “Now you keep me steadier than any tide. You are my harbor, Aelyria—my home.”

Her fingers curl over his heartbeat. “And you, mine.”

He draws her close, foreheads touching. “All my life fate has felt carved. Yet with you beside me I believe it might bend. You are the best thing the gods have given me, and when I am with you I feel I could meet any prophecy, or break it, and still be worthy of a crown.”

Aelyria reaches up, brushing wind-tossed hair from his eyes. “Then let the stars judge us later. Tonight they can watch and keep silent.”

Rhaegar smiles, a rare, unguarded curve of his mouth. He wraps his cloak around her shoulders and guides her to the stone dragon gargoyle that guards the corner merlon. They sit together upon its broad back, legs dangling over the black drop, his arm around her waist, her head against his chest. Below, the surf booms against the cliff, above, the stars constellations wheel slowly westward.

And far below, Ser Jonothor stands his lonely watch.

They stay until the wind moves heavier and the watch bell sounds below. Only then do they climb down, hand in hand.

A moon passes.

Rhaegar meets twice each week with his small council. At the last sitting he sets aside Dragonstone as the host seat. He proposes a gathering next summer at Harrenhal under Lord Whent. Lord Celtigar nods at once. Lord Velaryon looks doubtful but agrees when Rhaegar explains that distance from the capital and dragonstone will cool the king’s suspicions. A discreet sum of gold moves first through a Lysene banker in Driftmark and then into Whent coffers. Celtigar arranges a Braavosi loan in his own name to cover repairs on the outer ward. Trusted builders ride north with sealed orders and begin counting broken stone and rotted beams.

Aelyria gives Rhaegar reports each night. She spends her days in the archive copying trade compacts from Essos. Whenever her ink dries she searches again for any scrap that repeats the words Song of Ice and Fire or hints at the dead. Nothing new appears. She asks Jon Mallister if he can reach a friend at the Citadel who studies tales from Asshai. Jon promises to write without delay. He does not pry and she thanks him for his tact.

News of her place in the prince’s life now circulates through every corridor. The servants’ hall grows stiff when she enters. After two strained meals she chooses to eat alone in the archive or in her own chamber. Jon adopts a more formal edge when they work yet remains kind beneath it. Maester Aladar never changes. He still calls her child and raps the desk when her mind drifts. She finds that constancy comforting, knowing she is in truth many years older than he is.

On clear afternoons she leaves the castle walls and walks the cliff path that overlooks the sea. The wind bites, nothing like the warm breeze of Lys, and she wraps her cloak tight while remembering oranges on the branch and sun on marble. Dragonstone is barren but she has begun to call it home because Rhaegar’s harp rests in her chamber and his spare tunics hangs beside her items. He prefers her rooms for the fire that never dies and the south-facing window that gathers rare sunlight.

Their nights take on a richer heat now, he presses her against the glass on some nights, moving inside her in deep strokes. Their joining fogs the glass and his low groan spills against her shoulder. When they finish he gathers her close and holds her while the sea hammers the rocks below.

Other evenings they share a steaming bath. She leans back against his chest while his palms glide beneath the water, guiding her folds into pleasure that sends ripples lapping the edge of the tub.

On colder nights he turns her toward the bed.

As she lies naked before him, Rhaegar kisses every inch of her body, whispering softly against her skin. "Your spine is perfect," he murmurs, pressing gentle kisses along her back. "Your bottom is perfect," he breathes, lips brushing tenderly. "Your waist is perfect... your breasts are perfect."

She sighs breathlessly, whispering into the sheets, "You only say that because your heart beats for me."

"No," he replies softly, pressing his lips lovingly against her shoulder. "I say it because it is true."

Then he enters her slowly from behind, drawing a deep moan from her lips, muffled into the sheets. He groans deeply as he begins to move, her heat glistening, their bodies joining in a rhythm both primal and intimate. The sounds of their passion fill the room, raw and undeniable.

He gently turns her head toward him, capturing her mouth in a tender, urgent kiss, before driving deeper, harder, until they both shatter in release, collapsing afterward into a warm, satisfied embrace.

Since these nights began he sleeps more deeply. When a dream still jars him awake she draws his head to her shoulder and speaks of gardens and sunlit days until sleep returns.

Morning light shines in the corridor as Aelyria makes her way to the archive. Inside she finds Maester Aladar and Jon Mallister bent over a ledger, their heads close in low conversation. Aladar’s voice drops even further when he sees her.

“Aelyria, I must leave for a time and lend a hand to Maester Pylos.” He glances toward the stair, then back to her. “Princess Elia has taken a turn. Bleeding, just after sunrise. Gods be good. Pylos wants every worthy hands he can find.”

Shock tightens her throat. “Is it serious?”

“Serious enough,” Aladar answers. His usual humor is gone, replaced by concern. “Jon, help Mistress Aelyria with the lists. I may return by tomorrow if the gods are kind.”

He gathers his satchel and hurries out. The room feels hollow in his wake.

Jon closes the ledger. “Shall we continue?”

Aelyria nods, though her thoughts drift to Elia, pale and frail in her chamber somewhere above. Until now Elia had always seemed a figure on the edge of her life, distant as a name in a chronicle. Rhaegar rarely speaks of her and Aelyria never asks. Now the reality settles with a heaviness. A pregnant woman bleeds in a home that is not hers, while her husband is only present in duty.

She opens a fresh scroll but the words blur. Regret pricks at her. Almost as if a mirror has been presented in front of her. Elia is flesh, not an obstacle in a tale. Rhaegar cares for her health and wellbeing, yet what comfort can he give when the world keeps pulling him elsewhere. And what comfort can Aelyria offer, her presence perhaps another reason for the princess’s ill health.

She straightens her spine and forces her attention to the page. Jon resumes reading titles aloud. Ink scratches, they continue their work silently, yet each distant cry of a gull reminds her that somewhere above, a princess fights to keep her child and her life.

___

Rhaegar stands at the narrow window, arms folded, watching the sky from the Princess’s chamber window. The room holds a mix of damp cloth and Maester Pylos’s sharp camphor. Elia sits propped on pillows, slim hands curved over the small rise of her belly.

Pylos straightens, his fingers leaving her wrist.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he says, “but your body is in a precarious state. You must remain abed, no climbs along Dragonstone’s stairs, and no turns through the courtyard. Keep your ladies and a healer close. We would not tempt a loss.”

Elia inclines her head, composed though her lips are void of colour. “Your caution is understood, Maester. I thank you.”

Pylos gathers his satchel. As he bows to depart, his eyes flick once to Rhaegar, just long enough to register the prince’s unspoken authority. The door clicks shut behind him. Tension lingers in the air.

Rhaegar crosses to the bedside. “I have sent for a healer from Lys,” he says, voice cautious. “She is famed for easing difficult births. She should reach us within a fortnight. If you lack for anything, herbs, attendants, tell me.”

Elia’s dark gaze lifts. “You are generous, husband.” A false smile touches her mouth, brittle as an eggshell. “Yet generosity is no substitute for presence.”

His shoulders tense. “I am here now. And when duty pulls me away, I return as swiftly as I may. Our child, our realm’s future—”

“Needs more than a phantom at only daylight.” Her tone never rises. “I hear the torches outside another solar burn late. If I would have known, I wouldn’t have stitched a third color into my wedding cloak, Rhaegar. At least honesty would have been a courtesy, before gossip did the telling.”

He looks away, the words striking deeper than any shout. “I never meant to wound you. I married for duty, yet duty has grown… tangled.” His hand tightens on the bedpost. “The realm expects much of me, visions I can scarcely ignore.”

Elia’s reply is steady, yet sad. “Duty is a fine shield, pray it does not ring hollow.”

Rhaegar bows his head. In High Valyrian he says, Nyke ēdruta ao. I swear to you.

“Whatever else awaits, I will guard you and our children. This I vow.”

Her hand folds over her belly. “Guard us, yes. But see that the word ‘honour’ still means something when the singers pick up their harps.”

Outside a sudden gust of wind rattles the arrow slit. Inside, Rhaegar’s thumb turns the ruby in his sword belt until it loosens in its hold. The silence that follows offers no forgiveness, marked only by the slow roll of ocean water and promises already coming apart.

Rhaegar enters Aelyria’s chambers in the late evening and closes the door with care. He sets his cloak on the stand, his eyes dull with worry.

“Elia is resting,” he says. “The bleeding has eased, though Pylos will watch her through the night.”

Aelyria rises from the hearth stool. “Will she be safe until dawn?”

“No maester will promise that. I have summoned a healer from Lys.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I stood beside her bed and felt like a stranger wearing borrowed vows.”

She crosses the room and takes his hand. “You are not idle. You sent for the healer from Lys, you pay for the best herbs, and you sit with her yourself. Duty and kindness can live in the same heart.”

“I hope you are right. If I fail her the realm will lay the blame at my feet.” He draws a slow breath. “She bleeds while I weigh omens and love another in the same breath. I do not regret what you and I share, it began long before these burdens—but I still wonder what sort of man that makes me.”

Aelyria gives a small nod. “I feel the weight as well. I love you, yet I cannot ignore her suffering. She steadies her voice. “I will go through the Essosi herbals again. Pylos may have missed something that could assist.”

Rhaegar cups her face in both hands, his thumbs gentle at her cheeks. “Aelyria, I never want you to think of yourself as a burden. You are the better part of my heart. I cannot imagine a life without you, and I will love you always.” He guides her fingers to the pendant that rests against his chest. “I carry you here, wherever I go. My only wish is to be worthy of you and of the realm that depends on me.”

Her eyes shine, almost spilling tears, and she covers his hand with her own. “Then let my heart calm yours as well. Whatever comes, we meet it side by side.” Her voice wavers but holds. “I will search those herbals until I find something useful, and if I do not, I will search again.”

They sit on the edge of her bed. He leans into her shoulder, the tension in his frame easing bit by bit. She strokes his hair while the fire settles.

“If she worsens I will visit again before dawn,” he says.

“I will have notes ready for Pylos,” she replies.

He pulls her under the blanket. They breathe in the same cadence while the waves hit the cliffs. Before dawn he will go back to Elia, but for now they lie together, taking what moment they can.

A moon turns and others follow.

Elia’s bleeding finally stops. She stays in her chamber, weak but slightly better, while midwives count each heartbeat of the child. Rhaegar visits daily, he speaks softly, and leaves fresh roses on the table before he departs.

Far from Dragonstone, near Harrenhal, small crews clear the overgrown outer ward, digging drainage for new tilting lanes. Stonecutters shore up King’s Pyre Tower, calling it routine repair. Wagons of timber roll through the gates at dawn, drawing only mild curiosity from the fisherfolk below. In King’s Landing a trusted smith forges a suit of a golden champion’s helm, payment routed through a Braavosi note in Celtigar’s hand.

Rhaegar writes personal invitations beneath Whent’s helm seal. Each scroll promises a grand celebration beneath Harrenhal’s towers and carries a hidden note offering private counsel with the prince. Ravens fly north and south, their wings stitched with secrecy.

Aelyria sets prophecy aside while she copies Essosi treaties, but one evening Jon delivers a crate of Asshai texts that she had requested. She stores them in Rhaegar’s study and locks the door, deciding to sift through them when time allows.

Whispers drift in from the capital. King Aerys rides through the streets behind wagons of wildfire casks, daring any voice to speak against him. The rumors reach even Dragonstone’s kitchens, causing nervous talk among the servants.

Through it all Rhaegar and Aelyria keep to their routine. They dine late, share laughter over tea, and fall asleep in each others arm will the world seems to turn without their permission. On many nights he lifts his harp and lets new music fill the chamber.

“Sea takes the moon, night guards the fire,” he sings in a clear voice.
“Yet I rise at your voice, my heart to your name.”

Aelyria pauses in her copying, eyes shining. He moves into the second verse.

“Jasmine in shadow, roses in rain,
Your hand in mine still quiets all pain.”

When the last note fades she crosses the floor, and climbs onto his lap. Her mouth finds his in a loving kiss, his harp still resonant against both their chests. Their love does not dim, if anything it burns clearer.

Sleep drags Rhaegar into the same vision.

The same dragon that has three heads.

The first head is white as bleached bone, wings thin as frost on glass. A roar of ice drifts from its open jaws and kills every spark around it.

The second is coal-black, scarred by streaks of fire red. Heat leaks through its teeth in slow bursts of smoke, as though it inhales fire more than it exhales it.

The third shines with a wash of gold. Braided strands hang along its neck, tiny bells chiming whenever it shifts. Its eyes blaze with a wild familiarity that claws at his chest.

The three heads swivel toward him together and their cry echoing sorrow.

From the dark the crone’s voice rises once again.

Three heads has the dragon
yet the wolf howls for one
When winter roses bleed their scent through a knight’s shattered shield
the harp shall cease, the north wind keen
and the watch’s blades shall drink the hidden dragon’s heart-blood

Rhaegar jolts awake, sweat cold on his skin. Aelyria sits upright beside him, hand already on his shoulder.

“The dragon has three heads,” he whispers, voice shaking as the words echo through the fading fragments of the dream.

Aelyria keeps her hand on his arm. “The dragon has three heads,” she echoes, trying to catch the shape of the riddle. “Three forces, three fates, perhaps three lives. I do not know.”

Rhaegar pushes to his feet and crosses the chamber in quick strides. “Three heads,” he mutters. “Ice, fire, and… bells?” He stops by the window, hands spread on the stone. “Ice that kills flame, fire that burns through steel, gold bells I have heard before but never understood.” His gaze drifts to the dark sea beyond the glass. “What binds them, and why do they mourn?”

Aelyria rises and joins him, laying a steadying hand on his back. “Whatever it means, we will unravel it piece by piece. First seek the heads. Then the cry.”

He nods, still fixed on the horizon, the words three heads turning over and over in his mind.

Aelyria steps to his side and rests a hand on his back. “I will look for some meaning,” she promises. “We will find it in time.”

Inside she resolves to begin the Asshai scrolls at dawn. If answers lie anywhere, they lie there. Beside her, Rhaegar keeps his eyes on the dark horizon, whispering the same words again, three heads, trying to fit ice, fire, and the rattle of unseen bells into one meaningful interpretation.

They move themselves beneath the blanket once more. Rhaegar drifts back into an uneasy sleep. Aelyria lies still instead, eyes open to the ceiling, her thoughts circling the dream’s three heads and the scrolls waiting in the study. Dawn feels a long way off.

The morning arrives into the solar where Elia’s ladies sit around a low table. Ashara Dayne stirs a cup of tea.

“I miss home,” she says at last. “Dorne’s heat, everything free and better smelling. This island feels like a coffin.”

Lady Jynessa Blackmont shivers in her chair. “Dragonstone is nothing but a cold and unfamiliar territory. The princess should be glowing by now, yet each day she looks thinner.”

“Her color fades,” says Lady Nyrella Santagar, voice edged with worry. “I fear the baby drains her strength faster than the maesters can restore it.”

“And where is the prince while she withers?” Jynessa snaps. “He must be dragged to her bedside whenever there is trouble.”

Nyrella leans close, lowering her voice. “Dragged from the library, you mean. From that whore who is always covered. Gods you would think he would actually have a beauty instead.”

Ashara lifts a brow but remains silent.

Jynessa’s fan flicks open. “The mistress keeps herself snug enough. She fills his nights while our princess suffers. It is a disgrace!”

Nyrella’s fan meets hers in sharp agreement. “Perhaps someone should send word to King’s Landing. If the princess’s health fails, distractions must end for the sake of the heir.”

Ashara sets down her cup. “Whispering won’t fix anything. Passing gossip will only make her situation worse.”

Nyrella shrugs. “So be it. If honour will not move a husband, perhaps a louder voice might. Someone must pay for dishonoring Elia.”

Ashara’s gaze cools, yet she speaks no more.

Nyrella lifts her chin. “Very well, then. If no one else will act, I will.” She pushes back her chair and leaves the solar without looking back.

Aelyria slips into the archive after breakfast with two thin Asshai scrolls tucked inside her sleeve. Maester Aladar and Jon Mallister are already at work, comparing ship manifests from Pentos. They greet her with a nod and soon the room falls to the scratch of quills and the faint pop of the hearth.

They work until the noon bell. Jon rolls his shoulders and asks if she will join them in the kitchen. Aladar raises an eyebrow in the same invitation. Aelyria thanks them but says she has letters to finish. When they leave she spreads the Asshai scrolls on a side table and bends over the faded lines. Nothing new surfaces. No echo of a Song of Ice and Fire. No clue to the three heads.

A boot scuffs at the doorway. She looks up and sees Princess Elia, one hand braced on a guard’s arm, breath coming hard. Aelyria rises at once and bows low.

Elia steps inside and closes her eyes for a moment as if preparing herself. When she speaks her voice is soft but clear.

“So. It is you.”

Aelyria keeps her head bowed. Elia stops within arm’s reach, the rise of her belly almost brushing the edge of the table. Aelyria’s eyes lift briefly to the rounded curve, then drop again.

Elia catches the glance and lets out a faint, sad smile.

“He sang of you in Dorne,” she says, voice low. “I sensed another presence then, though I did not know how near it truly stood.”

She straightens a fraction, lifting her chin as if gathering the last of her strength.

“How blessed I should feel,” Elia whispers, palm resting on the curve of her belly. “The gods granted an heir our very first night.” Her voice falters. “At first I thought the prince had simply found warmth elsewhere… but it is not only warmth, is it.” Her voice breaks, near tears. “It is something more, what I can hardly wish to name.”

Aelyria’s throat tightens. She searches for any words that might ease the hurt, but nothing rises that would not sound hollow. A terrible guilt sets heavy in her chest. At last she lowers her head even further.

Elia draws a slight trembling exhale.

Aelyria wishes to speak but words still seem to fail her. She only remains bowed, the only apology she can offer.

“I will remember your silence,” she says. “Remember also that a woman’s instincts seldom mislead.”

She turns almost faltering in her steps, seeking the help of her guard, she moves back toward the stair, one hand on the guard's elbow.

Aelyria remains by the table until their footsteps fade. Only then does she sit, staring at the Asshai script and feeling each line of Elia’s sorrow worse than what she expected.

A single tear falls unexpectedly , Aelyria wipes her eyes, smooths her skirts, tucks in the scrolls, and crosses to the main table. She pulls a scrap of parchment from her pouch and writes in a steady hand.

Maester,
I feel unwell and must take the afternoon for rest. I will return to the ledgers at first light.
—A.

She weighs the note with an inkwell and slips from the archive before Jon or the Maester return.

The corridors feel longer than usual. She reaches Rhaegar’s private library, shuts the door, and presses her back to the oak panels. At last the tears she held in spill down her cheeks. She loves Rhaegar, that truth stands unshaken. Yet Elia’s sorrow echoes every cruelty Aelyria has known, women bartered, bruised, and left to endure in this cruel world.

She paces between shelves, fingers trailing the spines of histories and herbals. Suddenly her own memories crowd in. A slave market’s din, the crack of a whip and the taste of blood on a march that seemed endless. Now she sees a princess clinging to hope while her husband’s heart beats elsewhere. Different walls, yet same grief.

Aelyria sinks onto the window bench, draws her knees close, and lets the tears run until her heartbeat slows. When they finally stop she wipes her face on her sleeve. She will search the Asshai scrolls again, because knowledge is the only shield she can raise for those who cannot defend themselves. But for this last second she sits in the library, mourning for the princess above and for every woman who has ever wept alone.

Chapter Text

Aelyria wipes her cheeks dry. Once composed, she unlocks and lifts the lid of the chest she stored the Asshai scrolls in. Inside lie more than a dozen, all bound with red twine. She opens the first bundle. The angular ink names Azor Ahai. It tells the myth of the smith who forged three blades before tempering the third through the heart of his beloved, Nissa Nissa. Lightbringer blazed and drove back a night that lasted a generation. The margin notes claim some in the West called the return of the same saviour by a different name, the Prince That Was Promised, perhaps. She finds similarity in the Long Night and the fragments from Rhaegar’s dreams.

She continues to read, turning another brittle page before settling on a single line of High Valyrian in red ink. Her heart drops.

Zaldrīz Arlinta
The Dragon Reborn

That name belongs to a prophecy revered and feared only among the high families of Old Valyria. She recalls that she once believed it lost, proven untrue when the Doom destroyed everything in the Freehold. Yet here it is, written on parchment. She continues reading and notes that the similarities among the prophecies are no mere coincidence. The same signs appear: a bleeding star, smoke, salt, dragons.

Could Azor Ahai, the Prince That Was Promised, and Zaldriz Arlinta all name the same entity? She wonders. Is Rhaegar the fulfilment of this prophecy? Will he fulfill it in the future, and what role must she play in all of this?

Before she can think further, footsteps sound in the corridor, heading toward the private library. It must be Rhaegar. She rolls the scrolls and moves them aside. The door opens.

Rhaegar enters the private library with a lifted mood and greets her. “Prūmia, I hoped to find you here.”

She takes his whole frame as if looking at him for the first time. His silver-gold hair passes over his shoulders. His indigo eyes, almost violet in the ray of light from the window, still carry the same melancholy that first drew her in. High cheekbones, a thoughtful mouth, and a tall, slender frame make him seem less prince than a memory recalled—too ethereal, too beautiful, just as he appeared on the first day they met. She wonders if loving that lost homeland that seamlessly lives in his face has dulled her sense of cost. Awe and forgiveness blur together, and each time those indigo eyes meet hers the boundary slips further away.

He crosses the room, cups her cheek, and studies her face. “Aelyria, something troubles you. Tell me.”

“Only the tidings we know too well,” she answers, forcing a small smile. “It weighs more than I expected.”

He brushes his thumb across her lips, then kisses her softly. “Whether you wish for words or quiet, I am here,” he says. “I bring a small gift to lift your spirits.”

Rhaegar links his fingers with hers and guides her to her solar. In the centre of the chamber stands a tall easel, draped in linen. He pauses only long enough to see the surprise in her eyes, then lifts the cloth in one smooth motion.

An unrolled parcel rests on the easel’s shelf. He sets the linen on the table. “I asked a craftsman in Myr to weave the cloth,” he says. “The cedar frame comes from Qohor. A Braavosi ground-maker laid the gesso. Each part travelled in a different crate so no harbourmaster would see the full design.”

He raises the canvas so the hearth-light touches the tight flax. “It is yours alone. When you finish a piece, I will hang it in my chamber and in the archive. Let every painting remind the court whose hand shaped these halls.”

She studies the surface. Pure flax carries three coats of gesso mixed with fine marble dust, bright enough to keep colour true even in Dragonstone’s salt air. Beside it lie seven glass vials of different colours: lapis blue, fire-red, sea green, and one the colour of warm honey. At the base of the frame, her initial A is carved.

Rhaegar lifts the honey vial and brushes its edges. “Apothecaries in Tyrosh ground this shade. It mirrors the light in your eyes.”

His hand glides along the cedar. “The wood will darken over the years, but will remain intact and steady.” He steps back.

Aelyria carefully approaches the canvas; she traces it with gentle fingertips. “This is a grand gift,” she says. “You thought of everything. Thank you.”

The words, she shapes them with care, yet they waver on her lips. She wonders to herself, How can he stand so calm and loving when he sees Elia weaken each day? Does his devotion to her truly blind him?Sadness and guilt make their way behind her smile.

Rhaegar instantly sees the change. He sets the brush box aside, cups her face, and searches her eyes. “Something has happened. I feel it. Tell me, and I shall make it right. None shall harm the lady I love. Speak, I beg you.”

She shakes her head, fingers now splaying over his back. “I love you too much. It pains me; that is all.”

As if sensing the weight of her place, and all that moves above them, he brushes his lips to her temple.

“You are the one choice I ever made for myself. I shall not let you go.”

“Evādrughis, ñuha jorrāelagon.” Be patient, my love.

His eyes shine. He kisses her. “Know this. Our fates are bound. Any wound dealt to you is a wound dealt to me.”

He kisses her with urgent need, lips claiming hers until guilt loosens its grip on her chest. She wants only to feel his love, to let that certainty crowd out every sorrow. He unlaces her gown and draws it from her shoulders; she steps back toward the bed, lying where the lamplight lights her naked skin, where she feels a slave to her own desires.

Rhaegar never looks away. He strips off tunic and breeches, the training in his shoulders and chest clear in every line. His arousal stands ready, hard as ever for her. She reaches, guiding him closer, and her own body answers at once, grief forgotten in the rush of heat blooming the moment he touches her.

He climbs over her, mouth tracing the rise of her breast before sliding lower. Then he enters her, and she arches in welcome. One hand slips beneath her knee, lifting her leg so he can press deeper.

He whispers, “Ao gevives ñuhys.” You undo me. Their pacing grows fiercer, every motion desperate, each thrust a promise that no hurt will outlive this love.

They come apart in a quivering hush. Rhaegar collapses onto her, his lips grazing her collarbone, her collapsed thighs on either side of his hips. His hand moves in slow circles over her breasts until their breathing steadies.

After a time she shifts onto her side, searching for a cooler patch of linen. He follows, fitting his frame to her back and sliding an arm around her waist. With his free hand he draws the fur coverlet over them.

A kiss presses to the back of her neck. “Rest now,” he murmurs. His heartbeat now beating calmer against her spine. Sleep gathers, and she laces her fingers through his in silent thanks before the darkness claims her.

They wake tangled together, dawn creeping across the chamber. Rhaegar’s arm curves around her waist; he greets her by pressing a soft kiss to the back of her shoulder.

“Rhaegar, I must tell you something,” she whispers.

He hears the strain in her voice and lifts his head. “My heart, tell me.”

Words churn in her thoughts. You know only a fraction of me. I survived things I dare not name. If you know the truth you may never look upon me the same way again. The cost of speaking feels too sharp.

“I found a thread of truth in the scrolls,” she says instead. “I need to study further before I can be certain.”

He exhales, brushing a thumb along her ribs. “Then seek that certainty when you will. For now, I want to be with you.”

He eases her onto her back and kisses a path from her collarbone down. She arches beneath the spread of his hands, each touch scattering her resolve. I am weak, she thinks, yet she pulls him closer all the same.

After, Rhaegar rises first, dresses, and presses a gentle kiss to her brow before he departs.

Once Aelyria fully wakes, she leaves the chambers once dressed and heads to her daily duties. Once inside the archives, she finds Aladar hunched over a long table. He looks up, bright-eyed. “Ah, Aelyria. It seems we are to send ravens for a grand tourney at Harrenhal for the following year, spring of two hundred and eighty-one after the Conquest.” He waves a parchment. “The prince wishes every great house placed according to rank and rivalry. Pavilions, guest wings, viewing stands—our ink decides it all.”

She sets her satchel down. “A full map of the grounds, then.”

“Letters of invitation have already been received.” He taps the list. “From the lakeshore to the Reach lords, the Gods Eye ridge to the North, and the pavilions in the outer ward for the Isles—a maze to keep swords from crossing before the celebrations.” He leans closer and lowers his voice. “But be discreet; these instructions come straight from Lord Whent to mark the nameday of his maiden daughter.” His brow lifts with teasing mischief. “They say such a gathering could herald a brighter reign. A new age, perhaps.” He winks, already reaching for new parchment.

Jon Mallister slips into the archive while Aladar is still talking. He waits until the clerk bends over his ledger, then settles on the chair beside Aelyria and lowers his voice.

“I believe I have discovered something that may please you,” he whispers. “Another crate accompanied the Asshai scrolls. The porters will bear it here before sunset, that you may examine it before any other eyes.”

Aelyria’s brows rise in surprise. “That is quite a surprise. Thank you,” she murmurs.

Jon’s tone shifts, more guarded. “Soon after you departed yester-morn, a raven arrived. I withheld the message from the maester.” He passes her a folded parchment, sealed in red wax.

She breaks the seal at once. The script is Queen Rhaella’s.

Rhaegar’s lady,

Aerys’s temper flares again. He probes the maesters for any cause of the princess’s failing strength and now asks pointedly about “the Lysene scribe” housed at Dragonstone. Courtiers whisper that her decline follows every mention of you.

I beg you to weigh the danger. I do not wish my son to take any rash course should blame take root. Act with prudence.

—R.

Aelyria closes the letter, pulse quickening, and nods once. Jon squeezes her hand and rises before Aladar can glance their way.

Aelyria folds the warning and slips it into her sleeve, mind racing over who might have carried this truth to King’s Landing. Servants know more than suppose, yet they have guarded Targaryen secrets before. Perhaps a voice from Elia’s own household whispers the rumor, or some lesser courtier eager to climb. She fears for Rhaegar rather than herself; Rhaella’s word ring true. As calm as he appears, he will act if provoked, and she alone knows that resolve too well. She tucks the scroll into her sleeve, meaning to burn later.

The afternoon passes in Aladar’s company as they finish Harrenhall’s list. Near sunset she and Jon wait outside the postern gate for the crates from Asshai. A soft wind blow the torches. Jon speaks first.

“Forgive me if I speak plain,” he says. “I am told the Princess’s ladies mutter over your presence.” He offers no further detail, trusting she will understand.

“It is not the first time my name has wandered through gossip,” she replies, keeping her gaze on the horizon. “Yet the truth is wider than they guess.”

Jon inclines his head, accepting that boundary. Hooves clatter then; the wagon rolls in. She oversees the tally, and when the last seal is confirmed she directs two steward to carry the crate to the prince’s private library.

Her duty finished, she turns to Jon. “Farewell, till the morrow,” she says.

“Till the morrow, then,” he echoes. He watches her across the ward, boxes of shadow follow the lattern she carries toward the keep.

Once Aelyria reaches the prince’s private library, servants settle the heavy crate near the chest with the other scrolls. She lifts the lid, sets the new Asshai scrolls beside the worn ones, and stands a moment in uncertainty. Scrolls laid on top of each other, too many to choose a starting place.

Rhaegar arrives without warning. His gaze sweeps the table and chest. “I thought I alone was consumed by prophecy,” he says, surprise bright in his eyes.

“I wish only to confirm what the questions ask,” she answers, yet her fingers linger on a sealed roll.

He steps closer. “Not tonight. Tonight I want no talk of dreams. Paint for me.”

She hesitates, then smiles. They leave the library for his solar. She changes into a robe, tucks the warning letter from her sleeve into her desk, and joins him by the fire. He has exchanged court clothes for a plain shirt and breeches, loose at the throat.

They sit before the low flames. She props a fresh canvas and begins painting their grove, light strokes of lapis and honey shaping the stream and bending trees. Rhaegar, seated next to her, lets his harp play beneath her brushwork. He speaks of Harrenhal plans, of Arthur Dayne’s harsher drills, of how badly he wants her at Harrenhal next year. She agrees, tucking bare feet beneath her as the talk drifts to easier things. A sly remark from him brings a smile from her.

She laughs, sets the brush aside, and gently presses him back onto the rug. He yields with a chuckle as she straddles his hips. His harp lies forgotten at his side. She removes her robe and pulls his breeches down to his knees. Leaning forward, she guides him into her and moves slowly up and down. His hands on her waist, eyes never leaving her face. Their breaths grow ragged, the hearth the only witness, until both fall into release.

She stays astride him, legs collapsed on either side of his hips. His arms circle her waist, keeping them joined while the fire dims. They drift into sleep on the rug.

Unexpectedly a knock sounds well past moonrise. Ser Arthur stands behind door. “My prince, the princess is in labour.”

Still intertwined, they jolt awake at the knock. Rhaegar gathers himself, presses a final kiss to Aelyria’s hand, and rises. “I will return when I can.” He steps into the corridor with Dayne. Aelyria watches him go.

Sleep does not come again for Aelyria. The thought that she and the prince made love while the princess labours gnaws at her; surely the gods shall strike her down. A dull weight plants itself in her stomach, and at last she rises, robe pulled tight, and makes her way to the prince’s library. She spreads the newly arrived Asshai scrolls across the long table and begins to read. One, a personal collection of the Bloodstone Emperor from the Great Empire of the Dawn; another, a Valyrian contest that took place in the Freehold during the golden age, she remembers quite well; a third detailing Aegon’s conquest from recollection of the servants. Then her eye catches a fourth scroll that sends her heart beating fast.

Three narrow columns run the length of the parchment: broken Asshai glyphs on the left, High Valyrian in the centre, and an archaic Westerosi hand on the right. Her breath catches at the Valyrian margin:

…Azor Ahai, Zéltys Vautítir, and Zaldrīzo Ārlinta all name the same figure…

The verse repeats in each tongue, sign for sign. She sets the scroll aside and unwraps another slate. The Valyrian commentary declares the prophecy speaks not of a beast but of a spirit that will rise, one fire that may unite all for a larger threat. The true soul shall command the living to face death, and then its return can rouse the beasts from stone.

A map fragment follows, inked on yellowing parchment. It shows the coast beyond Asshai, a cave marked Naggher’s Hollow. A note in the margin states, Three stone hearts lie here, waiting for the awakening.

Aelyria stares at the slate, her breath caught in her throat. The clues lock together at last: Rhaegar’s fevered dreams, the Ghost’s riddles, the eastern verses now apparent in her lamplight. It is real—one prophecy wearing many names, pointing toward a coming darkness far greater than dynastic quarrels. A tremor runs through her as she realizes the path forged by her curse may lead to its true purpose.

If he must remain in Westeros, she will go in his stead. Aelyria rolls the scrolls tight and folds the map. Lantern light trembles on the desk, yet her resolve holds absolute. The road that begins in this room runs through Essos, and she means to eventually follow.

Aelyria’s pulse hums, yet the rush soon fades. To follow the map east would mean leaving Rhaegar. The thought alone knots her heart. There is still time, she tells herself; no darkness has risen, no omen sounds at the gate. Perhaps she can learn more before she sails.

A new worry stirs. What if someone else has already discovered the stone eggs? The idea unsettles her, but her thoughts skid back to Dragonstone. Elia labours even now. Rhaegar waits beside his wife. If Aelyria shares what she has learned, he will never let her depart alone. He would cast aside every duty to follow. She knows him this well.

She exhales and presses a hand to her breast. She must weigh each path with a clear mind. Tonight she will keep her counsel, study the scrolls again, and choose with care rather than haste.

The morning sun creeps across the shutters. Aelyria must return to the archives soon. Exhausted, she bathes, dresses, and ties her hair for the day. Rhaegar has not returned, and she does not expect him yet.

At first light she walks to the library. Aladar and Jon wait inside, bent over the long table. Aladar looks up, eyes red. “The princess has been delivered—praise the gods, all is well,” he says, pressing a cloth to his temple. “I was with the other maesters; the travail was harsh, and she bled much, yet the prince never left her side.” He exhales. “A daughter—Princess Rhaenys, no larger than a sparrow. I fear only for Her Highness’s strength; the labour was sore. We must watch how she mends. By your leave, I have not slept these two nights. I shall beg a cup of wine lest I topple where I stand.” He slips out, robes along the stacks.

Jon turns to Aelyria. He knows too much to pretend. “Are you well?” he asks quietly.

She nods. “I only pray the princess recovers quickly.”

Aelyria waits until leaves the library. Jon Mallister is setting books back on the upper shelf when she calls him down with a quiet word.

“Forgive me, Jon. I would seek your counsel on a delicate matter.”

She lowers her voice. “I must know the surest way to reach the Shadow Lands. Which ports, which winds, which hazards lie between here and Asshai?”

Jon’s expression sobers; he nods for her to continue and listens in readiness.

“My uncle captains trade galleys,” he says after she sets out her question. “From Driftmark to Qarth each season.”

“How dear is such a voyage?”

“For a single passenger, with cabin and stores, two hundred golden dragons to Qarth,” he answers, voice low. “From Qarth to Asshai, the price doubles. Few dare that coast. A chartered vessel direct from Dragonstone would cost near a thousand dragons, and twice that if you demand speed.”

She thinks of the coins in Rhaegar’s strong-box, of her own modest purse. “How long upon the water?”

“A moon and a half to Qarth, if winds favour. Another moon to Asshai. Longer homewards, for the currents run ill.” He folds his hands behind his back. “You would need provisions in Qarth—obsidian beads or Myrish lace make good gifts east of the Jade Gates. Silver holds less worth there.”

“And crew?” she asks.

“A Lysene crew will take coin and keep counsel,” he says. “Braavosi sailors boast, then gossip. Westerosi tongues sell secrets too quickly in the shadow ports.”

She studies his face. “If I required such passage, could your uncle be trusted?”

“He sails for profit, not kings,” Jon replies. “Gold has ever been his compass. Offer enough and he will carry a silent cargo to the ends of the world.”

Aelyria thanks Jon for his counsel and for the discretion he has shown. He nods once—understanding sealed between them—then returns to his catalogues.

The day stretches long. She walks the corridors of Dragonstone, servants hurrying past with whispers that the princess has delivered a girl; some speak of it as though it were a pity. Back in her chamber, Aelyria opens the small lock-box beneath her bed. Inside lie the coins she has earned indexing scrolls for Aladar, a few rubies Rhaegar once pressed into her palm, and the rings he left in her keeping. She cannot sell the rubies—not without betraying both him and her own heart—but she has enough silver to carry her from Dragonstone to Driftmark, and perhaps as far as Qarth. The rest, she will find a way; she always does.

A gentle knock breaks her reverie. Rhaegar steps inside. Exhaustion drags at his posture, yet worry keeps his gaze sharp. He crosses to her, she retreats a pace without thinking, and his expression falters.

“Do not step away from me—please,” he says, the plea raw in his voice.

“Will the princess live?” she asks.

He nods. “Yes. It was hard, but she will live. She is beautiful—Princess Rhaenys.” His eyes shine with emotion he cannot quite name. He lifts a hand to touch her cheek, then lets it fall, perhaps he senses the distance in her stance, born of the knowledge she has gained and the fear Elia’s labour has stirred.

Suddenly he drops to his knees. “You have been shutting me out. I feel it. Please, I beg you—do not. You are the only one who keeps my darkness at bay. I love you more than any crown. I cannot bear this distance. At least I have given the realm an heir, but I cannot live without your heart.”

Her own heart cracks. She kneels and threads her fingers through his hair. “No, my prince. I will always love you. Only—have compassion for the princess. Spare some kindness for her pain.”

“I will,” he whispers, burying his face against her skirt. “I swear it.”

She lifts his chin until he rise, then she kisses him softly. Together they lie on the bed, arms wound around each other. Weariness steals over them at last. He drifts into sleep. She lies wakeful at his side, the weight of maps and prophecies pressing against her thoughts as the candles gutter low.

Chapter Text

Rhaegar walks the Red Keep again, it lies in the same ruin as his previous dreams. Blanketed in snow, the corridors dark with ash. The walls are cracked and broken. He hears the scream of the same child he heard before in past dreams. The sound high and terrible, it was screaming out for him, he knew it.

Without thinking twice he runs towards the sound, echoing through the shattered halls.

He reaches a large door and hears the cries intensify. Dread lances through him. The child. He throws his shoulder into the wood, and bursts inward.

But beyond the threshold is not the Red Keep anymore. The ground beneath his feet become sand, the air tight with salt and smoke. He finds himself standing at the edge of a barren desert, heat encompassing on the horizon-somewhere of the east. He cannot place an exact location. He turns slowly.

Where am I? Where is the child?

Then far ahead, through the haze, a small figure moves. It is not him. It is not a dream echo of his own life. He only sees the back of the person, ash clinging to their skin, flame circling at the bottom of the figure. Bald, sexless at first glance. But something about the shape, speaks of youth.

A child? He thinks. Is it my child?

And then the figure turns just enough-only enough that Rhaegar sees what has been passed from his line. Generation to Generation. The visions stands before him.

Three dragon hatchlings appear in the distance. One on each arm of the figure. A third perched on its shoulder. They let out a screech.

It is not me, he realizes. Is it not my child, My son, the Prince that was Promised

He jolts awake, his breath coming in heavy heaves. Sweat clings to his whole body.

Aelyria wakes with a start, Rhaegar beside her in the dark. She grips his shoulder. He turns, eyes wide and dazed.

“It is my son,” he whispers. “The Prince That Was Promised. The Song of Ice and Fire.” He rises at once, strides to her writing table, and begins scribbling fragments of the dream before they fade.

Aelyria follows, watching the quill scratch across the parchment. Rhaegar pauses, his breath quick, and faces her. “I saw the child amid smoke and salt,” he says. “Three dragon hatchlings on his arms—three heads for three dragons, for my children,” He exhales, shaken.

Aelyria feels the wheel of prophecy turn. No longer able to be ignored. This is it, she thinks. Three heads. Three eggs waiting in the cave near the end of the world. A sign that she must one day go east to help him make the vision real.

Rhaegar cups her face, hurt shadowing his gaze. “Once Elia recovers, I must conceive again. Forgive me, my love. I beg you. I shall do only what is required, no more else.”

“I understand,” she answers. “This is greater than us.”

He mutters, half to himself, “Where shall I find dragon eggs? There must be some in the east.”

Aelyria stills for a second, not daring to add more tension at this moment. “We have time,” she says carefully. “The signs will come. You have seen fragments of its truth.”

He sinks into a chair, hands slack. “Why must the gods lay this weight upon me? I would surrender crown and kingdom to see you bear my children for love alone—yet I also wrong the wife I swore to honour and future children that will carry the same burden.”

Aelyria runs her fingers through his hair. “Do not force prophecy,” she says with a heavy heart, as if she has not already decided to chase it east. “We are all bound to chains we do not wish, let prophecy unfold in its own hour.”

Rhaegar rests his forehead against her stomach. “Then we shall wait. I will not rush Elia back to the marriage bed. If the signs hold, we shall face them together.” He laces his fingers with her.

An ache blooms in Aelyria’s chest. She squeezes his hand in returns and thinks, I shall wait—until the moment I must fly.

Aelyria finally stirs when the morning seeps through her window. She kisses his cheek; he murmurs and sinks back into sleep while she rises, rings for a tray, and slips off to her daily tasks once the tea and bread arrive.

Rhaegar wakes alone an hour later, the scent of tea and cheese waiting on the table. Dressing quickly, he swallows a few bites—there is a noon council over Harrenhal—but other duty tugs harder. Before the council he must see Elia and the child.

He crosses Dragonstone’s hall, mind drifting beyond stone and sea. Inside Elia’s chamber a Lysene healer and Maester Pylos confer in hushed tones. Elia lies still and pale on the bed, too thin, propped against pillows she has not risen from since birthing Rhaenys.

The master draws him aside. “Your Highness, Her Princess’s health is steady, yet she must remain abed for some time. The princess Rhaenys thrives.”

Rhaegar thanks him and approaches the bed, Guilt gnaws as Elia lifts her gaze; they eye each other as if strangers still bound by duty. He places a hand on hers. She gives him a weak smile.

“Is there anything you require of me?” he asks,

Elia shakes her head, then whispers, “Only look upon our daughter with love. The ladies and the healer tend to me well enough.”

He nods, throat tight, and turns to the cradle. Tiny Rhaenys sleeps, dusky hair soft across her brow. He studies her truly for the first time: An innocent born of his seed, one day a head of the dragon. Peaceful, unaware of the world into which she has come.

He lifts her with care, cradling her against his chest. Rhaenys yawns, and in that small sound he feels new space open in his heart.

Rhaegar leaves the princess’s chambers at a measured pace and wends his way to the chamber of the Painted Table. His council are already seated. Lord Celtigar, with quill in hand, Lord Velaryon beside him, and Maester Pylos arranging parchments.

Celtigar lifts his head first. “Your Highness, we were appraising the cost of the archery lists. Lord Whent has ordered twenty butts and asks whether the crown shall supply the fletchers.”

“The crown shall,” Rhaegar says, taking the high seat. “Have the Braavosi and Lyseni factors deliver whichever is finest. The crown will bear the cost.”

Velaryon taps the margin of a parchment. “There is also the matter of feasts. Lord Whent has proposed five lavish banquets. Wine from Lys, swan from the Trident, silver harps hired from Braavos.”

“Agreed,” Rhaegar replies. “If Westeros must gather, let it gather in splendour.”

Maester Pylos’s brows rise, “And the tilts, Prince? Will your Highness ride?”

“I shall,” Rhaegar answers. “The list would seem poorer should the dragon shrink from the lance.”

A quick smile tugs at Pylos’s mouth. “Then a purse grows richer, for men will pay dearly to unhorse you.”

Celtigar clears his throat. “One last schedule, Your Highness. The melee is set for the sixth day, but there is room for an archery spectacle at dusk—should you wish to patronize the northern bowmen.”

At that word a thought pricks Rhaegar’s mind—the dream of the white wolf and the figure robbed in snow. Ice and fire must meet, he tells himself. “Lord Celtigar, see that the Starks receive place of honour in the archery yard,” he says aloud. “And note me a private hour with Lord Rickard towards the end of the tourney. There are matters of mutual defense I would discuss.”

Celtigar scribbles the order. “As you command, my Prince.”

They pass next to the squire’s tourney, the kitchens, the singers gallery. Each detail falls into place, and every lord nods assent. At length Celtigar lays down his quill. “All proceeds according to your Highness’s design.”

Rhaegar rises, gaze lingering on the painted wolves that prowl the northern edge of Aegon’s great map. A pact between ice and fire, he thinks, forged in alliance, sealed in flame. If the dream speaks true, the Starks must stand beside him in the days to come, whichever role they must play.

Across Dragonstone, Aelyria sits beside Aladar, her voice kept low. “Master Aladar, I am grateful for the coin—truly. But is there more work I might undertake?”

Aladar pauses, tapping his ink-stained fingers against his brow in thought. “Well… there are a few Free Cities scrolls in the eastern alcove, translations quite apart from what we’re doing now. I’ve been meaning to see to them, but I am no longer the scribe I once was, not by candlelight.” He eyes her, half-amused. “If you’ll do the work, I shall see you paid more than half my share.”

Aelyria nods. “I would be glad for it. I shall begin tonight.”

At the same table, Jon Mallister glances up from his own stack of records. “You may be the only soul on this island eager to seek more labour,” he says dryly.

Aelyria smiles faintly. “Idle hands do not suit me. And the mind quiets in motion.”

Later that day, the three remain in the archive, parchment and vellum stretched between them like a tide. When her hands begin to stiffen, Aelyria leans back and says, “I’ll take a turn about the yard before dusk. The air may untangle my thoughts.”

“I’ll accompany you,” Jon offers before Aladar can speak. “I would have said the same.”

They set their quills aside, careful to leave notes for Aladar. Together they cross the lower hall and emerge into the cold light of afternoon, making sure not to pass the training yard—Rhaegar is often there, and she does not wish to stir his worry or jealousy.

In the garden near the lower terrace, they come across a cluster of Princess Elia’s ladies. Ashara Dayne and Lady Jynessa Blackmont are among them. Jynessa’s eyes follow Aelyria and Jon as they approach, and a whisper passes between two of the younger women.

Lady Jynessa’s gaze sharpens the moment she sees Aelyria and Jon walking side by side. “Seven save us,” she says, just loud enough to be heard. “She dares show her face—and on the arm of another man. One wonders what secrets she keeps.”

Ashara turns her head with slow precision, her voice firm. “Speak such words again, and you may find the worth of your own tongue measured.”

Jon notices. “That will suffice,” he says. His voice isn’t loud, but it leaves no room for doubt. The ladies turn their gazes elsewhere.

As they pass out of earshot, he murmurs, “Forgive me. I know little of court manners, but I know you to be a true woman. Not some tale spun for idle mouths.”

Aelyria answers with a quiet laugh. “I have walked among the most competitive women in Essos. At times, I daresay a woman’s tongue or body may be more perilous than any blade—but I am no stranger to peril.”

She smiles, light but unbothered. Jon smiles back. They say nothing more as they walk toward the archive stairs, a kind of wordless understanding between them. Trust may not come easily to her—but it is coming. And Jon, at least, has earned it.

Two moons have passed since Rhaenys’s birth. Elia remains bedridden, her body slow to heal, her strength a shadow of what it once was. The maesters speak cautiously of her recovery, but even the softest words cannot hide the worry in their eyes. She has not risen from bed.

Rhaegar grows more strained with each passing day. The shadows under his eyes deepen. His silences stretch longer. He dreams more now—always vivid, burning dreams from which he wakes gasping, body slick with sweat. They come always in pieces: white wolves, bleeding stars, a child’s screams, dragons awakening in fire. He no longer tells Aelyria of them; their love is too sacred for such burden. But she notices. She sees the way he stops mid-sentence, the way his hands grip the edge of the table just a moment too long. She sees the way he looks straight into the air as if he were seeing something real in front of him. He always looks away as quickly.

He is breaking in front of me, she always thinks.

He says nothing to her. But the weight of the prophecy and his dreams presses on him. The demands from court do not relent. Harrenhal draws closer with each raven—endless adjustments to the guest lists, sponsors to appease, houses to seat. Every noble wishes to be seen. Every wrong glance threatens to ignite. And above it all: the prophecy, the dragon, the song. His father’s throne looms behind every conversation, behind every breath.

He tries to keep it from Aelyria, tries to wear his composure like armor. But she continues to notice. She always notices.

One evening, she finds him in her chamber. The painting of the grove rests on its easel, newly finished. She has captured it exactly—the bend of the trees, the soft green of the moss beneath them, the stream of the water. It looks like peace. It looks like something the world has not known in a long time.

Rhaegar sits beside it, his harp string resting against his knee. He plucks the strings lightly, letting the notes drift like falling leaves. He eyes never leave the canvas.

He smiles, faint but true. “Ñuha jorrāelagon,” he says lovingly. “My love, it is the most beautiful painting in Westeros.”

He turns to her, his eyes still tired but warmer now. “It keeps me looking forward. When I am king, we shall return to our place—the grove. When the realm is steadied, when it finally knows peace, it will know I loved you.”

Aelyria sets her brush aside. She smiles, hesitant. She believes him. Every word. But her heart pulls in another direction. If she tells him what she is planning—if she tells him she will go east to seek the stone eggs for his children—he will stop her. Or worse—he will go with her. He cannot. The realm needs him. Elia is still recovering. Rhaenys only a babe.

She holds the truth behind her mouth and says nothing. Instead, she leans into him, and the two of them sit by the lit hearth. His harp on the floor now. Her painting drying behind them. Their thoughts curling slightly through the air.

They are content. Whether speaking or silent, whether playing music or painting or simply breathing side by side, it is the same. Two souls in rhythm. One heartbeat. No court. No prophecy. No fear.

He brushes her hand with his. “Where shall you have it, my love? Pick any place in Dragonstone. It belongs there now.”

She tilts her head. “In your private library, my Prince,” she says. “Where we study. Let it live beside the moments we are trying to remember.”

He nods. “It will be done by the morrow.”

Then he leans in and kisses her—lightly at first, then deeper. Her hands rise to his face. He kisses her cheek, the corners of her mouth, her throat, her lips. They fall into the bed together, robes loosening. They have made love many times throughout the years, too many to keep numbered, but something about tonight is different—slower, more sacred. He touches her all over. She pulls him close as if she is already missing him.

He presses into her, filling her completely, and says in High Valyrian, “Ñuha belma. Ñuha ābrar. You are mine. Always.”

She arches, wraps her legs around him. “My one and only,” she breathes. “Always.”

They move in unison, and when they come together, they stay pressed face to face, his nose brushing hers. He kisses her eyelids shut. She falls asleep in that way—held and holding.

The morning comes gently. They wake tangled. They tease. He moves the painting himself to the private library as she watches, amused. When he returns, she tugs at his tunic playfully, and they fall to the floor, laughing. They make love again—quicker this time, grinning into each other’s mouths. It’s not passion but love. The rarest kind.

He helps her dress. She buttons his sleeves. The sun warms the stones.

Then—three sharp knocks.

They freeze.

Rhaegar’s eyes flick to the door. “Ser Arthur?”

The voice comes muffled. “My prince. Another urgent message.”

Aelyria’s heart skips. She’s already afraid. Some part of her knows.

He kisses her forehead. “One moment,” he says, already gathering his belt.

He opens the door. Ser Arthur’s voice is low. Rhaegar listens, then nods slowly. The weight settles again on his shoulders. Duty has returned.

He glances at her one last time—regret in his face, love in his eyes. Then he is gone.

Aelyria remains. Still. Breathless.

A tear slips down her cheek.

It was too good to last, she thinks.

And knows that soon. Very soon. She will have to let him go.

Chapter Text

Aelyria is asleep when Rhaegar enters her champers way into the night. With only dawn an hour away. The bed shifts gently beneath his weight, waking her just enough to feel a warm press of his lips on her bare shoulder.

She turns slightly, but Rhaegar slides under the covers behind her, pulling her body close against his chest. He buries his face into her hair, inhaling deeply as if to draw strength from her scent alone.

“What happened?’ she whispers.

Rhaegar exhales slowly against her neck. “My father has burned more people.”

“Gods, who?”

“Servants. Lesser folk. Does not matter,” he says bitterly. “His madness deepens by the day. Summerhall will soon approach, and it will change everything. My father will not be in attendance, his paranoia sees enemies everywhere, even greatly so now. I must act soon.”

She lies frozen , feeling every tension in his arms, in his voice. The realm needs him now more than ever, thinks to herself.

“You are my dawn,” Rhaegar whispers as he nuzzles her hair. “My light amidst all this darkness.”

“I will carry you through the darker days,” she promises. She turns to face him. His indigo eyes burning with sorrow, she gently touches the pendant she has given him, feeling its shape beneath her fingertips. She had carried that same pendant from earlier days, when she had lost hope in the world, when it had carried her through many phases, many names, many faces. It had anchored her. It was her reminder that she must not lose faith. Now she hopes that same reminder will seep through him.

When dawn finally filters through the windows. Rhaegar remains asleep, while Aelyria rises early gathering the Asshai scrolls from Rhaegar’s library. She returns them to Jon, the parchments feeling heavy and fragile in her grasp. Jon meets her gaze with understanding as she places them gently upon his desk.

“I found what I was looking for,” she says simply.

Jon nods solemnly. “Then I shall return these to their resting place. They are too ancient, too valuable, to belong here.”

“Thank you, Jon.”

She steps away, her mind already racing forward. Even with Jon and Aladar in her presence, surrounded by the rustles of scrolls, and the days due work of placing ink to parchment, she instead begins carefully gathering maps, frayed and faded depictions of the enigmatic Shadow Lands. Her eyes trace uncertain routes through deadly mountains and dark forests. She searches, methodically, for any trace of Naggher’s Hollow, the cave mentioned in the scroll she uncovered, but finds nothing concrete, nothing reassuring.

The Shadow Lands stretch vast and terrible, teeming with perils far beyond imagining. It is said they rival even the cursed ruins of Valyria. She fills a chill ripple through her body. The irony of her fate is bitter. She cannot die, no matter the pain inflicted. Her curse and blessing both. But torment–the torment she knows too intimately. Her memories pulse raw beneath the surface of her thoughts, scars etched in her spirit but not in skin. She had endured what some could not even imagine.

Yet she straightens her shoulders, her decision hardening within her chest. She is a fighter. She has faced horrors beyond reckoning and emerged stronger each time. She will endure whatever awaits her in those shadowed lands. She will find the dragon eggs. She will survive and she will return to Rhaegar, equipped to face whatever darkness to claim them.

This, she vows silently to herself.

Two moons pass. Elia remains bedridden, struggling but alive, while Princess Rhaenys flourishes. Rhaegar spends his early daylight hours visiting them, tenderly whispering stories of Aegon the Conqueror and the courage of his sister-wife, Rhaenys, into his daughter’s soft curls. “You shall be brave, too,” he says gently, pressing kisses to her brows. He fills their chamber with the sweet melancholy of his harp, hoping perhaps to shield the child from the storm brewing in his dreams.

Yet as composed as Rhaegar is by the day, in training with Ser Arhur, in council chambers, he grows increasingly haunted by night. Only Aelyria witnesses these hours of torment. His dreams darken, visions filled with ice and death, the white wolf with blood-red eyes. He always wakes up trembling.

She holds him through those nights, allowing his desperation to manifest in their lovemaking. He moves into her feverishly, as though seeking refuge from nightmares within her body. She whispers in Valyrian:

“Nyke vestās ao rȳ gaomagon.” I trust you completely.

“Ziry issa drēje gīmigon.” It is only a dream.

“Ao issi ñuha vēttan.” You are my life.

She tugs gently at the pendant, and Rhaegar brings it worshiply to his lips before returning his kiss to hers, seeking solace.

Meanwhile, Aelyria devotes herself increasingly to work, often remaining late in the archives. When Rhaegar questions her, she says it is for Harrenhal’s preparations. Secretly, though, she plans her own departure, saving coins, even as her heart wars with uncertainty about the timing. After Harrenhal, perhaps? Months? A year? She postpones the thought, burning it beneath duty and love. But mostly love.

Between moments with just Rhaegar and her, she returns to painting. She begins a portrait of Rhaegar, capturing him in thoughtful detail. While she paints, he sits beside her playing melodies on his harp. Melodies he has written for her and her alone. He steals glimpses of the canvas, always met with playful slaps and her teasing reprimands, though she secretly delights in his curiosity,

One evening, he halts playing, gazing pensively into the distance. “What if we had run away together, before the dawn I departed to Sunspear?”

Aelyria pauses, her brush suspended mid-stroke. She turns slowly to face him, startled yet understanding. “Then the realm would have lit in wildfire,” she says lightly, though truthfully.

His stare is serious, nearly piercing. “But we would have been happy. A small house in Lys, sunshine warming your skin, your hair free and uncovered. You would paint, and I would tend a garden barefoot in the earth.”

“Rhaegar,” she whispers, sadness heavy in her voice.

“It’s true,” he insists, gently and firmly. “Nameless, perhaps, but free. I would have searched all of Essos for the wisest healers, anyone who could grant us children.” His eyes glisten with longing.

“That life sounds beautiful.” she admits, her voice catching.

Rhaegar shakes his head slowly, eyes clearing as reality intrudes. “But you are right, the realm needs me, and my fate was written long before I drew breath. My children’s fates, too, even those unborn.”

Aelyria remains quiet, allowing him to express the burden pressing upon him.

He leans forward suddenly, taking her face in his hands, his lips brushing hers. “But hear me, my beloved. After Summerhall, events will quicken. You shall stand beside me as my other queen, as Aegon the Conqueror once chose.”

She meets his gaze, intensity mirrored in her own eyes. The grandeur of his love swells her heart, yet for the first time his words spoke sweetly, she feels a sharp pang of unease.

“My prince,” she whispers, her hand resting over his own beating heart. “I am yours. My heart beats only for you. Always. In this life.”

“Swear it,” he commands gently

“I swear it,” she breathes, truth heavy and bittersweet on her tongue.

He lifts her easily, carrying her to their bed. She straddles him, hips moving to feel every deep thrust within her walls, his hands possessive on her waist, her breasts. He rises, kissing and biting gently at her neck, claiming her fully. She moans as he captures her breast with his mouth, biting softly yet firmly enough to mark.

Something shifts in him, a subtle urgency, and he lays her back beneath him, her leg raised over his shoulder. Their pace deepens, their moans blending into a shared intimate chorus. Then abruptly, he slows, his hands tenderly cupping her cheek.

“Look at me,” he whispers.

She obeys, eyes brimming with profound love and sorrow. Their movement slows further, deepening in intimacy. Aelyria cups his face, emotion surging, unbidden tears slipping down her cheeks.

Rhaegar stills, heart aching. He leans in gently, pressing kisses to her tears, gently kissing them away. She meets him with tender kisses against his lips, reassuring yet full of sadness.

In that fragile moment, their gazes speak truths neither voice dares to utter, and slowly, together, they begin to move again.

Aelyria wakes early. She dresses quickly and makes her way swiftly to the archives, her thoughts already turning over plans and dangers.

As soon as she steps inside, Jon swiftly approaches, pulling her gently aside into an alcove lined with dusty tomes.

“Aelyria,” he whispers urgently, his expression tense, “this arrived late in the evening. I kept it aside for you.”

He presses a folded parchment into her hands. The moment her eyes touch the rough handwriting, her pulse beats hard, dread knotting in her stomach.

I shall see you burn next.

No signature, no crest. But she knows instantly whose hand it is. Her fingers tighten sharply around the message, crumpling it before slipping it quickly into the hidden pockets of her skirts.

She lets out an exhale, eyes hardening with determination. Turning to Jon, her voice lowers, becoming firm yet quiet. “Jon, I must make a passage to Driftmark. Discreetly.”

He watches her closely for a lingering heartbeat, as though weighing what remains unsaid, before nodding slowly. “I’ll help make arrangements.”

She hesitates, voice dropping even softer. “I can pay you more— I have rubies, for your discretion.”

Jon makes a soft sound of protest, almost insulted. His gaze warms. “I have known you only briefly, Aelyria, but in that short time, I have seen your true character. You do not need to ask for my discretion. We are friends, and your secrets are mine to carry, until the end.”

Emotions tightens her chest, gratitude rising swiftly. She reaches out, squeezing his hands in a heartfelt thanks. Tears threaten, blurring the edges of her vision. “Thank you Jon.”

Across Dragonstone, within the stone walls of the council chamber, Prince Rhaegar meets with his closest advisors. Lords Celtigar and Velaryon, and Maester Pylos. The wide map of the realm stretches across the table, marked with notes and plans, weighted down at each corner with polished stones.

“The final preparations for Summerhall are complete, my prince,” Lord Velaryon says, his tone confident yet grave. “We have confirmation. King Aerys will not attend.”

“Good,” Rhaegar replies, his eyes unreadable and distant. “It is better this way. The less volatile his presence, the safer our efforts.”

Maester Pylos clears his throat gently, adjusting a parchment before him. “The motions are set, my lords. This shall be a grand tourney—one remembered for ages to come.”

Lord Celtigar nods firmly, fingers tapping thoughtfully on the table. “Indeed. And the crown for the Queen of Love and Beauty?”

“Winter roses,” Maester Pylos answers solemnly. “I took the liberty. I thought it fitting, given your words on the North, my prince. To honor House Stark.”

Rhaegar feels a subtle shiver of destiny slide down his spine. When winter roses bleed their scent through a knight’s shattered shield.The old crone's words echo softly in his memory. Prophecy begins to weave tighter, clearer threads, he sees it coming together, piece by inevitable piece.

“Good,” he says at last, his voice low, heavy with unspoken thoughts. “We shall see how the tourney unfolds.”

Rhaegar meets each of their gazes in turn, his expression briefly softening. “Let us pray brighter days lie ahead.”

A knock interrupts their meeting abruptly, and the chamber door opens swiftly, revealing Ser Arthur Dayne. His normally composed features are tight with urgency.

“My prince,” Ser Arthur says quickly, stepping forward. “Princess Elia—her fever has worsened significantly. You must come at once.”

Rhaegar rises sharply from his seat, heart pounding as unease floods through him. With a crisp nod, he dismisses the council swiftly, barely sparing them a glance as they rise and leave the room.

“I'll come immediately,” he says, voice strained yet controlled.

Ser Arthur leads the way through the stone corridors of Dragonstone, their hurried footsteps echoing sharply off the walls. Rhaegar’s mind spins with anxiety, the shadows he has feared so long now growing deeper, darker.

He reaches the princess’s chambers swiftly, steeling himself before stepping inside, bracing against whatever may await.

In the glow of late evening, Aelyria sits painting, carefully adding the final touches to her portrait of Rhaegar. Indigo and violet blend gently with subtle hues of brown, capturing his depth, his strength. He is beautiful, she thinks with pride. He will like it.

The door creaks gently open, and she quickly turns the canvas aside, hiding it from immediate view.

“My love,” Rhaegar murmurs, stepping wearily into the chamber, shadows heavy beneath his eyes. “Forgive my delay. The princess’s fever worsened suddenly. I had wished deeply to be here—but I must remain by her side tonight, to be certain she recovers.”

Aelyria regards him softly, eyes gentle with understanding. “Of course. You must do what is right, what is good and true.”

His gaze falls on the turned canvas, curiosity sparking despite his exhaustion. He moves closer, his voice warm and hopeful. “Let me see.”

She hesitates, then carefully turns it around. Rhaegar’s eyes widen in awe as he studies the portrait, seeing himself rendered with tenderness and beauty and with her eyes.

“Is this truly how you see me, my love?” he asks softly, almost unbelieving.

Aelyria smiles gently, her voice sincere. “It is how everyone sees you, my prince.”

He steps closer, reaching to cup her face gently. His lips brush hers tenderly. When he pulls away slightly, his voice is low and heavy with quiet conviction. “If I am ever to die, let it be by your side, your name upon my lips. Gods, I do not deserve you.”

“Do not speak such foolish things,” she whispers fiercely, touching his cheek. “I am yours, and you are mine.”

She kisses him again, gentle reassurance against his doubts. Then, pulling back slightly, she asks, “Is the princess in grave danger?”

Rhaegar’s gaze lowers, pain evident in his voice. “Her health is fragile. More fragile than I ever expected. I must ensure she is safe—especially after all I have done.”

She nods slowly, gently encouraging. “Then go to her. Be by her side. She is a woman— and women endure far more than men see.”

He sinks slowly to one knee before her, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, then one to each of her cheeks, his touch sanctified.

He rises, casting one last glance filled with longing and gratitude before departing, leaving Aelyria alone in the candlelight, heart heavy yet resolute.

She carefully places Rhaegar’s portrait in the sanctuary of the library, standing a moment longer to admire the beauty captured there—the warmth in his eyes, the strength of his features. Then, with a heavy breath, she turns and returns to her chamber.

As the door closes behind her, she thinks of Elia, lying sick and frail from just one child, when prophecy demands two more. Her heart sinks painfully. Her own presence has only added more worry, more hurt. She understands now with clarity. This is it. Summerhall approaches soon, and he needs every measure of focus. Elia needs every ounce of his attention.

"My gods," she whispers brokenly to the empty room, "I must leave now, before my heart delays further."

Resolutely, she moves to her desk, trembling as she reaches for parchment and quill. With each careful stroke of ink, tears blur her vision, falling to stain the page. Each word feels like a betrayal, an unbearable ache.

He will hate me, she thinks, her chest tightening painfully. He will believe I've abandoned him. But she must craft every word so carefully, so precisely, that he never thinks to follow. Any hint, any trace would drive him to her—and in doing so, doom the realm.

"I love you too dearly," she whispers as she writes, anguish burning in her throat. "But if you follow me, you abandon everything. You abandon the realm that not only deserves you, but needs you."

She continues, heart fracturing word by word, until at last the quill slips from her fingers. She sobs openly now, overwhelmed by sorrow and guilt.

"How can I do this?" she weeps into the distance. "He will never forgive me—not now, not after this."

Yet she promises herself fiercely. One day, when the darkness has drawn near, she will return and tell him everything. Her truth, her story, every hidden secret. But for now, she must write to break his heart—to save him, to ensure he becomes the king he was always meant to be.

Finally finished, she seals the letter with shaking hands, sliding it into her pocket. Later, she will place it carefully within his harp, knowing there he will surely find it.

With determination, she begins packing lightly, only the barest essentials. She moves quick, discreetly, until finally she finds herself standing outside the chambers of the maesters. She knocks gently at Jon’s door, praying fervently she chose correctly.

The door opens, revealing Jon’s surprised face, quickly replaced by understanding as he sees the anguish in her eyes.

“Jon,” she whispers urgently, her voice trembling with emotion, “I think it is time. You must help me.”

Jon escorts her silently through the shadows toward the docks, the cool pre-dawn air filled only with the lapping of the sea. When they finally reach the dockside, Aelyria turns to him, the wind lifting strands of her hair at her temple.

“I wish to see you again soon,” she says, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

“Be careful,” Jon replies gravely, concern clear in his eyes. “The voyage is long, and filled with dangers.”

She offers him a faint, determined smile. “I’ve known many dangers, Jon.”

He nods, a gentle admiration entering his gaze. “Then when you return, I shall hear of all your adventures. You are a woman, yes—but I see a force to be reckoned with. You shall return, I have no doubt.”

Her expression softens further, gratitude in her eyes. “If the prince asks you… please, I beg of you, do not tell him. Not a single word.”

Jon meets her gaze squarely, sincerity etched deep in his face. “I promise.”

Aelyria holds his eyes for one more heartbeat, silently thanking him, before turning resolutely to the ship awaiting her. She steps aboard, her figure silhouetted against the dawn as the vessel slowly pulls away, slicing through the waves toward the distant horizon.

Jon watches her departure, standing firm as morning begins its climb over Dragonstone, the woman who sails away disappearing steadily into the unseen—departing for the shadows, for the promise of hope, for Rhaegar.

Rhaegar returns late in the morning, exhaustion carving deep shadows beneath his eyelids. The night has been long, yet relief had come when the princess's fever steadied. He had imagined returning to Aelyria's comfort, her calm presence, her love, the soothing touch of her voice. But as he steps into the chamber, something is terribly, achingly wrong.

The air is empty, cold—way too still. A chill threads its way through him. "Aelyria?" he calls, his voice strained and thin. Nothing answers.

He moves quickly, his heart beating faster, fear sparking and crackling into something sharper and darker. The wardrobes are bare, missing her familiar gowns, her robes. "Where are her clothes?" he murmurs desperately. "By the gods, where are her clothes?"

He turns sharply, almost stumbling as he rushes towards the library. "Aelyria!" he calls louder now, voice echoing off the walls. No reply. His eyes land briefly on a portrait propped carefully against the table, its colors vibrant—but he cannot stop to admire it, cannot pause to understand.

Rhaegar hurries to his chambers, flinging open doors, desperate to see her form seated by the window, perhaps lost in thought. But again, emptiness mocks him cruelly. He rushes out, footsteps now loud through the corridors. Breathless, he searches the archives, frantically running down each aisle, fingers trembling as he pushes scrolls aside, as if she might be hidden among them.

"This cannot be," he mutters desperately to himself, heart pounding violently in his chest. Fear claws through him, primal and raw. He runs from room to room, corridor to corridor, catching servants by their sleeves. "Have you seen her? Mistress Aelyria?" They avert their eyes, shaking their heads, saying apologies.

He storms toward the Maesters' chambers, panic rising to choke him. He pounds upon Aladar’s door until the man opens it, startled, clutching at his robes.

"Mistress Aelyria," Rhaegar gasps, eyes wild, "have you seen her?"

Aladar blinks, startled. "I—I saw her yesterday, but—"

Rhaegar does not wait, spinning to Jon’s door, hammering his fist against the wood. Jon opens it, brows drawn together in worry.

"Where is she, Jon? Is she here?"

"Your Highness—no, she has—"

He brushes past roughly, calling her name, tearing through the room, desperation driving him. Nothing. Rhaegar turns again, racing through the halls of Dragonstone, his breathing ragged, heart shattering more with each empty corner, each vacant space.

He stumbles back into her solar. Nothing has changed. It is empty, hollow. "Where are you?" he whispers brokenly, anguish strangling his voice. The room spins around him, grief beginning to burn like wildfire through his veins.

Lost, he runs again, with no destination but her. Maester Pylos emerges suddenly, stepping into his path. "My prince—you are early—"

"Have you seen her?" Rhaegar demands, gripping Pylos’s arm fiercely. "Aelyria—the scribe—where is she?"

Pylos looks confused. "Who?"

Rhaegar snaps, anguish twisting into anger. "You know SEVEN HELLS WHO! The woman who is covered. WHERE IS SHE?"

"Forgive me, my prince," Pylos stammers hurriedly, "I only saw a gathering at dawn, heading toward the docks, but—"

Rhaegar does not let him finish. He turns sharply, sprinting toward the courtyard, heart slamming painfully against his ribs. He grabs the nearest horse, swinging up into the saddle, heedless of whose animal it is, his urgency drowning all other thoughts.

He rides with reckless speed, wind stinging his face, tears blurring his vision, heart throbbing like a drum of war. She cannot leave me, he thinks, nearly sobbing aloud. She promised—she promised.

At the courtyard, Ser Arthur Dayne sees him flash by, frantic and wild. Without hesitation, Arthur mounts another horse swiftly, galloping after his prince.

Rhaegar reaches the docks breathless, dropping from his horse, staggering to the dockmaster. "Have you seen her?" he pleads, voice cracking, desperate. "A woman—covered—or uncovered, with white-gold hair—tell me now."

The dockmaster bows, his voice low with apology. "Your Highness, no."

"What ships have sailed?"

"Many departed this morning, bound for Dorne, Driftmark, the North, King's Landing. They left at dawn, the seas were favorable."

"Make them return!" Rhaegar commands, voice raw, almost breaking with desperation.

"Your Highness, it is not possible—"

Rhaegar stumbles backward, vision swimming. He turns towards the sea, wild impulse urging him to leap into the waves, swim out to find her, catch the ship with his bare hands if he must. But the ships are already distant specks, fading swiftly toward the horizon.

A hand falls upon his shoulder—Ser Arthur has arrived, silent and steadfast. Rhaegar collapses slowly, sinking to his knees, body trembling, strength gone. He bows his head, eyes closing as grief consumes him.

"She left me," he whispers, voice shattered, broken beyond repair. "She left me."

Ser Arthur says nothing, only stands at his prince’s side. Rhaegar's shoulders shake violently, the agony of loss pouring forth uncontained. His fists clutch uselessly at sand, grief and confusion twisting him, tearing at him.

When finally he looks up, eyes bloodshot and filled with profound despair, he whispers hoarsely, "She promised me."

The words, barely audible, break the morning air like fragile glass. The waves lap at the shore indifferently as Rhaegar stares numbly out to sea, heart utterly shattered, left behind in the aching emptiness of her absence.

She left me

   Aelyria Maeryxon stands at the ship’s bow, silver-white hair whipping in the brine-laden wind. She once rode dragons. She survived the Doom. She has walked battlefields where the earth drank blood. Now she sails into the unknown once more.

   The sea stretches endless ahead, but her thoughts fly to Dragonstone, to indigo eyes that will never forgive her absence. Let Rhaegar rage. When she returns, she will carry dragon eggs the color of midnight embers, a spark for a world on the brink.

   Prophecy calls. The realm will need her fire. And when she comes back, it will be with fire and blood.

Chapter Text

Moons have moved past since Aelyria slipped away, and Rhaegar walks Dragonstone as a shell of a prince. He summons every maester, every sworn steward, every fisherman who puts to sea beneath the black cliffs, questioning them until their voices crack. No one has seen a woman with silver-white hair, no one has glimpsed a Lyseni sloop, no one has heard a rumour worth a copper.

In the little chamber where he keeps his harp, he finds her farewell folded between the strings, as if the instrument itself had swallowed the note to spare him. Do not follow me. He reads those four words again, and again, and again, by candlelight, in daylight, in darkness, beneath the cruel wash of dawn, until the parchment softens beneath his touch, until it frays and wears thin like cloth handled too roughly, too often. Still, he reads it. Again, and again, and again. He carries the scrap against his heart, hoping desperately that some hidden path might leap forth from between the letters, some whispered secret caught in the loops of her familiar hand, the same hand that once traced Valyrian verses softly across his shoulders in the deep of night.

The morning after her flight he took refuge in her solar. The air still held traces of her scent, faint and fading, like roses dying in shadow, like candles just blown out. For hours he sat on the edge of her narrow bed, the linens still holding the ghost of her shape. He stared blankly at the far wall, where dawn and dusk had painted twin stains of gold upon stone, memories of hours they had shared, wrapped in whispered secrets, love and laughter, and of tangled limbs.

At first his face was carved stone, an expression of numb disbelief etched across marble features, eyes empty of light. But slowly, relentlessly, grief cracked through him, breaking apart the cold mask he had so carefully built. It started quietly, one tear slipping silently down his cheek, then another, until the pain came roaring forth like a tide. Hot tears spilled freely now, blurring his vision, dripping onto his shaking hands. He pressed both palms hard against his eyes, shoulders heaving, and sobbed without restraint, weeping openly like the boy he had never been permitted to become. Years of restraint, years of sacrifice, crumbled into nothing beneath the unbearable weight of her loss.

When finally the well of sorrow ran dry, a different heat flared within him, a fire born of helpless rage, frustration, and a bitter, wounded pride. The room around him felt suddenly oppressive, mocking, filled with her absence, and the empty promises of forever echoing cruelly in his mind. He smashed his harp against a chair-leg, wood and catgut flying. He seized the last portrait she had painted, his own dark eyes caught in sunset light, and ripped the canvas from its frame. “How dare you paint me and leave?” he shouted at the torn face. “How dare you speak of love, promise of forever, and vanish?” The pendant she had given him lay cold against his throat, he broke its chain in one savage jerk and meant to hurl it toward the balcony doors. At the threshold his fingers closed. He stood there, shaking, and could not let go. Whatever choice she had made, their love had been true. It had been true. He slipped the chain back over his neck and felt its burden hanging like a solemn pledge. He promised her, even when she forgot hers, he shall never remove it from himself.

Night will not give him rest. Each time he shuts his eyes he clutches a pillow in place of the woman who once curled against him, and darkness flowers into the same three terrors. A white wolf with red eyes howling beneath a red sky, a dragon with three tormented heads, and the tall, faceless figure cloaked in ice and fear. He wakes each dawn more hollow than the last, the dream’s fraying corners cutting into his skin, and still he searches. He tries to search for the answers.

He was ready to forsake it all, the crown, the realm, the prophecy, if it meant finding her. Where have you gone? Why did you leave me? These questions haunted him endlessly, thoughts that circled his mind like carrion crows. Twice he summoned the royal cartographer, spreading charts of the Narrow Sea across the table in desperate search. One long night he paced his solar until dawn stained the horizon, plotting frantic courses, Dragonstone to Lys, Lys to Pentos, Pentos to distant Volantis, anywhere she might have fled, retracing routes again and again until ink blurred beneath beads of sweat dripping from his brow.

In his haunting desperation he summoned a Braavosi shipmaster, pressed a ruby-studded clasp into the man's palm, and gave urgent orders for a swift galley to be readied, crewed, and provisioned in secret. For one fevered hour he allowed himself to picture standing upon the deck as it cut eastward through the ocean, through salt and storm, fierce wind scouring grief from his lungs, his heart racing toward an impossible reunion waiting somewhere beyond the horizon in the Free Cities, waiting, always waiting, searching for her, but never closer.

Then the ravens came, their messages black-winged omens darkening his dreams even further. His father's madness has grown more dangerous, spiraling beyond reason. Aerys had burned two petty knights alive, their screams silenced beneath tongues of the green flame the realm has grown fearful from, and he heard his father had ordered the same for a young Bracken cousin accused vaguely of sedition. Lords began talking, no longer whispers, but of fear, anxiously behind closed council doors, making its way all the way to Flea Bottom, their talks poisoned with fear and suspicion. Bannermen speak openly now of caches of wildfire hidden beneath the very foundations of King's Landing, awaiting only of the Mad King's whim to ignite them.

More troubling still, some lesser houses have already begun withdrawing their sons from the capital, secretly sending heirs and younger knights home, fearful of the sudden violence erupting from the Iron Throne. Courtiers he had trusted warned him of deepening divisions, of tensions rippling across the realm like cracks through thin ice. The maester has spoken of Elia's health faltering again, his daughter needs him, and his unborn child hung precariously in the balance. These tidings press upon him, heavy as chains forged of duty, pulling him away from desperate dreams of escape.

He stands torn between the heart's relentless yearning and the crown’s bitter demands, knowing each passing day drew him closer to a destiny he no longer wished to claim, but which, without him, might tear the Seven Kingdoms asunder.

Without her beside him, to soothe his restless spirit, to unravel the tangled meaning of prophecy and madness, he finds himself adrift. He buries himself deep in ancient scrolls and faded texts, poring over each word with fevered intensity, desperately seeking answers, pathways, outcomes he might yet control. Nights become endless vigils lit only by candles, mornings blurred into dim afternoons as he looses himself in parchment, driven by an aching need to quiet his thoughts.

Elia has improved greatly, a rare mercy in these troubled days. He tries earnestly to spend more hours at her side, offering the gentleness she deserves, hoping perhaps they might soon conceive the second head of the dragon. Yet, each touch he offered felt hollow, each whisper word lacked conviction, and though he smiles dutifully, the sorrow that he cannot keep at bay lingers behind his eyes. Elia notices , though she never speaks of it, he catches glimpses of sadness and knowing pity when she thinks he is not looking.

With Rhaenys, he makes an even greater effort, reading to her, holding her tenderly each night before sleep. But whenever he gazes into her wide, innocent eyes, he sees what is reflected back at him, the life fate that has been stolen, the life he so desperately wanted but could never claim. Her laughter, pure and bright, pierced him more sharply than grief, and each smile reminds him cruelly of what he has lost. Guilt gnaws ceaselessly at his heart, heavy, relentless, and never letting go. He feels unworthy of the babe who adores him, unworthy of the wife who remains steadfast despite his obvious withdrawal. Yet still he presses on, determined to shelter and shield them, to make their world comfortable and safe, even as his own was slowly falling apart.

He sends ravens across the Narrow Sea, dispatching messages in frantic haste, to Lys, to Braavos, to Pentos, any place she might have lived, any person who might have known her name. But every raven returns bearing nothing of news. Nothing, not even a whisper of her passing, as if she has simply vanished from the world—or worse, as if she never existed at all. No family. No friends. No past. He never pressed her deeply about her life before King's Landing, sensing the grief she carried, yet now he curses himself bitterly for never having asked more, for never peeling back the shadows that guarded her secrets.

He interrogates Aladar and Jon again and again, each session colder and harsher than the last, especially with Jon, for he hates him, hates the thought that he knew something hidden of her heart. But nothing emerges, no clue, no hidden truth. They know nothing, or refuse to speak if they do.

In the weeks after her departure, Rhaegar becomes thin, hollowed out by grief and neglect. He forgets meals entirely, pushing away trays untouched, loses track of days and time. He no longer cares to bathe, moving numbly through empty chambers that feel more tomb than home, his eyes sunken and haunted. It isn't until Ser Arthur finally comes to him, stepping gently into his darkened solar with the determination of a friend instead of a white cloaked, he mentions he is pulled back from the brink.

“My prince,” Arthur says softly, voice careful, “I know the pain you endure is immense. I see your grief, and I share in your sorrow. But Harrenhal approaches swiftly. We must depart soon. Your father’s madness deepens daily, the realm continues to tremble on the brink of ruin. We need you—now more than ever. The realm needs you. It is a heavy burden you bear, but please…”

Rhaegar looks up slowly, meeting Arthur’s gaze. A moment of harsh silence hangs heavy between them before he nods quietly, rising with effort. He places a hand gently upon Arthur’s shoulder, the gesture a pledge. “I will see to my duties, Arthur,” he says hoarsely. “You have my word.”

From that day forward, Rhaegar forces himself back toward life, piece by careful piece. He begins to eat again, though food tastes like dust upon his tongue, forcing small mouthfuls down to sustain himself. He returns to bathing, to training, each swing of the sword feeling heavier than the last, yet gradually strength returns to his limbs. He attends council meetings with composed dignity, speaking clearly and authoritatively, the prince once more, the king he must now become.

Aelyria would want this of me, he tells himself, repeating the words over and over again like a prayer his mind does not wish to forget. But the moment he thinks of her name, he tries desperately to push her memory away, a cruel reminder of the abandonment that left him so utterly broken.

Yet, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot escape her. Every moment, waking or dreaming, her presence haunts him. The clear beauty of her face, the beautiful timbre of her voice, the softness of her lips against his, the graceful movement of her fingers across his skin, lingering in memory like the ghost of a love he cannot forget.

In public he remains composed, the prince all expects him to be, the image of grace and authority that the realm demands. Yet privately, behind closed doors, he is a shattered man, a broken man beyond repair, drifting deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of dreams and prophecy. He pores endlessly over scrolls that mention the names of Rhaenys, Aegon, Visenya and he wonders desperately which of these names shall belong to the child who will fulfill the destiny he himself can no longer claim. The child who will awaken dragons once more, who will rise against the darkness gathering beyond the Wall. The three heads of the dragon, they will come, he knows it, believes it now more fiercely than ever before. They must.

And so, when the time comes to depart for Harrenhal, he lies once more with Elia, his body moving mechanically, fulfilling his duty as husband and prince, even while his heart and mind remain far away, lost in the depths of his mind and of great regret. Afterward, shame fills him, deep and heavy, he feels terrible, disgusted by his own hollow actions, guilty for treating her as merely the vessel of his dreams. Yet he says nothing, offering her gentle words that feel empty, though she accepts them with strained gratitude.

Then the tourney at Harrenhal arrives at last, a moment long-planned, a chance to gather the great lords discreetly, to speak quietly of plans, to weave alliances beneath banners and banners fluttering in the spring wind. But fate twists the blade once more, his father unexpectedly decides to attend, descending upon the tournament grounds in a storm of paranoia and suspicion, surrounded by guards cloaked in gold, eyes sharp and watching.

Suddenly the air at Harrenhal grows heavily with tension, talks fading into silence beneath Aerys’s mistrustful glare. Lords grow hesitant, their confidence shaken by the Mad King's volatile presence. Meetings planned carefully for months unravel quickly, conversations break off abruptly, and trusted allies turn wary and distant.

Rhaegar watches his carefully-laid plans crumble like sand between his fingers, frustration mounting with each passing day of feasting, jousting, and false smiles. The pressure of his father's madness looms heavy, choking off his hope, strangling the dreams he thought would set the realm right again. Yet even in this turmoil, he keeps his mask carefully in place, standing tall before the realm. Inside, his grief grows darker, and heavier, an ache he cannot ease.

The first night at Harrenhal, a grand feast fills the cavernous Hall of a Hundred Hearths, flames roaring in vast stone fireplaces, banners of great houses draped proudly along the walls. Stark, Baratheon, Martell, Tully, Arryn, Tyrell, Greyjoy. Rhaegar sits at the high table beside his wife, Elia, the assembly of noble families laid out before them, voices raised in laughter and gossip. Yet amid this lavish gathering, he feels utterly alone, the burden of expectation pressing heavily upon him.

Soon, eager voices call for him to play. Lords and ladies alike clamor for the dragon prince’s renowned talent, their voices rising to a chorus he cannot refuse. He wishes desperately to decline, his heart holds no melody tonight or ever, only gloom and hurt, but he knows he must play, must uphold the princely image expected of him.

He takes up his harp with reluctance, feeling the coolness of the strings beneath his fingertips like memories of another life. As he begins to pluck softly, his grief and longing flow into the instrument, raw and unguarded. He plays a melody of sorrow and heartbreak, of love found and lost, of farewells in secret and dreams shattered like glass. It is the first time he has ever allowed himself such openness before the realm, and each note seems drawn painfully from his own very bones, each phrase echoes the anguish he has hidden beneath composed smiles and courteous nods.

When the song finally fades, silence falls over the great hall, close and suffocating. No applause greets him, instead, he sees damp eyes and glassy tears upon the faces of the court. Ladies dab gently at their cheeks, lords gaze into their cups to hide their emotion. He sees a wolf maiden with dark hair sniffle quietly across, brushing tears from her eyes with the back of a slender hand. The hall trembles briefly beneath the shared grief, unspoken yet deeply felt.

Then, suddenly, applause and laughter breaks the heavy spell from somewhere far down the tables, a lady has poured wine over her kinsman’s head, and voices rise again, amused and teasing. But Rhaegar does not turn to look, the laughter feels distant, unreal, an intrusion into the mourning of his heart.

In the midst of this, a young lion, a golden-haired Lannister barely fifteen, is knighted before the assembled lords. The boy kneels solemnly, swearing an oath to the Kingsguard, a new white cloak draped across his shoulders. Yet scarcely has the oath been sworn when the king orders him away, back to King’s Landing to guard the queen and prince, a bitter command that shadows the lion’s proud moment. Rhaegar watches briefly, pitying the boy’s lost chance for glory, but his thoughts quickly drift back inward, swallowed again by sorrow.

Then the jousts begin, banners snapping in the wind, heralds calling out the names of knights in proud voices, trumpets echoing beneath the spring sky. Among the many knights who tilt this day, one captures the crowd’s attention immediately, a figure unusually small of stature, yet commanding, the voice booming strangely through the polished helm, strong and resonant as steel rings against steel. This mysterious knight carries a shield painted boldly with the image of a laughing tree, its branches stretching wide in a gesture of playful defiance.

To the astonishment of all, the Knight of the Laughing Tree easily unhorses three knights in succession, each one the very men who earlier tormented Howland Reed. Cheers erupt from the spectators, applause roaring like thunder as common folk and nobles alike delight in this unknown champion who fights with both courage and justice.

“Teach your young squires honor. That shall be ransom enough.” the knight says with a booming voice.

Yet the king does not share in their joy, Aerys takes the knight’s victories as a personal insult, a deliberate slight aimed at the Iron Throne itself. Furious, Aerys demands that the knight be found and unmasked at once, ordering severe punishment for this perceived defiance.

Robert Baratheon, proud and eager for glory, and Ser Richard Lonmouth swiftly swear to uncover the knight’s true identity, promising to drag the mysterious champion forward into the king’s wrathful gaze. Rhaegar, watching from the sidelines, feels dread coil deep within his chest, he knows all too well what fate awaits any knight deemed treasonous by his increasingly volatile father. The flames of wildfire burn all too easily in Aerys’s eyes, and innocent blood already stains his father's hands.

Determined to prevent yet another senseless death, Rhaegar swiftly steps forward, hesitantly but insistently offering to seek the knight himself, his voice calm but carrying the authority of a crown prince. Aerys begrudgingly agrees, eyes narrowed in suspicion, but allows him to proceed.

Rhaegar sets off across the muddy grounds, weaving through tents and banners fluttering in the evening breeze. The night dusk lengthens, twilight stains the horizon in hues of deepening violet. Just as his hope begins to falter, he glimpses a small figure slipping hurriedly toward an armor tent hidden among clustered trees at the edge of the tournament field. Moving silently and swiftly, he follows, pulse quickening with every step.

When he pulls back the tent flap, the sight that greets him steals the breath from his lungs. The knight he sought is not a man at all, but of a girl, young and slender, her dark hair falling loose around her shoulders, eyes wide with sudden fear. Not merely any girl, but Lyanna Stark herself, the wolf maiden from the North, face flushed with shock and defiance as her hand trembles at the hilt of her sword.

He stands frozen, staring at her, the world spinning as though something deep inside him has finally clicked sharply into place, a puzzle solved, the weight of prophecy suddenly vivid and undeniable. The Crone’s words rise again in his memory, whispering with eerie certainty.

Three heads has the dragon,
yet the wolf howls for one…
When winter roses bleed their scent through a knight’s shattered shield—

Lyanna watches him warily, fear slowly fading into wary curiosity as Rhaegar remains silent, heart pounding, the implications of this encounter echoing through him like the tolling of a distant bell. He sees now the movements of fate woven clearly before him.

The wolf-maiden, the winter roses, the three heads of the dragon,

Rhaegar knows that nothing will ever be the same again.

The white wolf from his dreams stands before him now, not the grizzled beast of sleep-visions, but a defiant girl with wind-tangled hair and a Stark’s clear gray eyes. The carefully laid plan to approach Lord Rickard in a council chamber lies in ruins, destiny sends the daughter instead, as though the world itself has begun to pivot on an unseen axle.

Rhaegar steadies his breath and keeps his voice low, promising that no word of her disguise will reach the king’s ear. A spark of relief brightens her gaze, but suspicion lingers. To seal the pledge, he takes the battered shield, the laughing tree still grinning through dents and scrapes, and carries it outside. With intentional care he hangs it upon a slender birch at the edge of camp, letting the painted face sway in the evening breeze for all to see, as if it were a signpost pointing toward some hidden path.

In that small, solemn act, something vast clicks into place. Echoes in his mind. Do not force prophecy. let it unfold. Aelyria’s warning returns. And yet here it is, prophecy unfurling of its own accord, wolf and dragon together beneath the eyes of gods old and new. Rhaegar feels the world tilt, the pattern of his dreams sharpening into living truth, and for the first time since Aelyria vanished, purpose floods his veins hotter than grief or fear.

If Aerys already scents treason on this wolf-girl, she will not see the next moon unless his heir girds her openly with favor. Rhaegar knows it the moment he withdraws from her tent, secrecy alone will not shield her from wildfire.

So he rides.

One tilt at a time brings him to this moment, lances lowering in rhythm with the thunder of hooves, banners snapping above the lists. Knights fall, splintered and churned sand marking each victory, until only Ser Barristan Selmy remains between him and the gate prophecy seems to hold ajar. Trumpets blare, the crowd’s breath draws tight. He urges his grey forward, meets Selmy in the center with an impact that rattles bone. Oak cracks like lightning. A white cloak tumbles through dust, Barristan rolls clear, alive but unhorsed, honorable to the last.

Hundreds of voices surge, yet Rhaegar barely hears them. He leans from the saddle, spears a fallen wreath of blue winter roses on the ragged tip of his lance, petals shivering like the pulse at his throat. Winter roses, the dream whispers, winter roses and the wolf that howls for one. Crone-sung lines knit together in his mind. The three heads, the bleeding blossoms, the shield now shattered.

He wheels his stallion. Elia sits in the royal box unmoving, her hands folded against her belly. The uproar falters, drops to a silence as he passes her, every eye tracking prince and princess in a brittle stillness that feels like bare blades. He does not pause. Duty drives him forward, north along the railing toward the Stark standards where a young maiden waits, hair dark as brown, courage bright as new-forged steel.

Vāores nyke, ñuha jorrāelītsa. Forgive me, my love, he says to himself, words meant for Aelyria, lost to wind, harp-strings, and duty. He understands the scandal he is about to kindle, they do not know what he knows. The realm will judge him now, thank him later, if prophecy proves true.

Reining in before the wolf banners, he lowers the lance. The wreath slips free, settling into Lyanna Stark’s lap, blue petals stark against her gown. Surprise flashes in her eyes, then something fiercer. Recognition, perhaps, or the first flicker of a shared fate. Rhaegar inclines his head, a secret pledge of protection and of purpose.

Around them the lists erupt, cheers, gasps, cries of outrage, but the sound feels distant, as if carried on some other wind. In that small circle of wildflower scent and battered armor, history tilts. One heartbeat passes, then another.

And nothing in Westeros will ever be the same again.

Chapter Text

Early, 282 AC

Almost a year has passed since Aelyria's departure. Rhaegar stands upon his balcony, fingers absently tugging at the pendant he has never taken off. He gazes toward the horizon, lost in reflection about all that has unfolded since Harrenhal.

The realm had not taken his actions kindly. What he had done caused a tremendous scandal, yet Rhaegar saw it as a necessary step. Upon his shoulders rests the future of Westeros and all of Planetos. Though they might never understand his actions now, when darkness descends, the world will finally grasp the gravity of his choices.

His father’s paranoia has escalated dangerously, manifesting in the burning of minor courtiers accused of disloyalty. Aerys has even replaced the sellswords guarding King's Landing with pyromancers, a troubling shift that weighs heavily on Rhaegar’s mind.

Since Harrenhal, Rhaegar has looked beyond the immediate threat posed by his father. Soon enough, he will sit the Iron Throne himself. But far more pressing, far more critical, is the birth of the saviors he intends to bring into the world—the children who will fulfill prophecy.

His thoughts drift to Lyanna Stark, the wolf maiden. They have corresponded often by raven over the months. She is wild and restless, deeply unhappy with her betrothal to Robert Baratheon. Through their messages, she and Rhaegar have grown nearly confessional, though Rhaegar always chooses his words carefully, masterfully guiding their correspondence. He subtly urges her to join him, to embrace the destiny he foresees. He speaks carefully of a great threat, of a necessary pact between ice and fire, hinting that he will need her strength.

Lyanna responds in her spirited, eager manner, anticipating an adventure she imagines will be grand and free. Yet Rhaegar knows better. He admires her fierce independence and courage, yet his appreciation extends no further than that. His actions now are driven purely by calculation. His heart remains frozen, left behind when the woman he truly loved walked away.

He has sent his best men to search for Aelyria, ravens dispatched to trace any possible whereabouts, yet no news has ever returned. At times, he wonders if he imagined her entirely, a fleeting ghost conjured by dreams. But when his fingers brush the pendant around his neck, he knows she was real. The painting of the grove reminds him constantly of their whispered promises.

When he attempted to mend the portrait of himself, torn apart in grief, he recognized again the tenderness with which she painted him—so different from how he perceives himself. The man in the painting seems noble, worthy, far removed from the emptiness he feels within.

His grief never left, instead, it calcified deep inside, settling into his very marrow. He no longer weeps, his sorrow hardened into an aching part of him. When Aelyria departed, she took with her his soul and heart, leaving behind only a vessel, driven by duty, shaped by the future that belongs solely to his children.

Then Maester Pylos arrives, his presence gentle but urgent.

“Your Highness,” Pylos begins respectfully, “the heir to the Iron Throne has been born—a healthy male, with all the dragon features.”

Rhaegar exhales slowly, having anticipated this news, he glimpsed the bleeding star, a sign of prophecy fulfilled at the child's conception.

Maester Pylos continues carefully, his voice tinged with regret. “But, Your Highness, forgive me—I must inform you that Princess Elia had a difficult birth. Though she lives, she is frail, and she will bear no further children. Her health remains fragile, yet both she and your son survive.”

Rhaegar nods slowly, absorbing the news. "Thank you, Maester Pylos. I will see to her at once." The revelation does not disturb him greatly, he senses that destiny has already begun shifting toward another path.

He touches the pendant around his neck one final time before turning away from the balcony, heading purposefully toward Elia’s chambers.

He stands beside Elia, cradling their newborn babe gently against her breast in the great wooden bed. "Aegon," he whispers solemnly. "What better name for a king?" Yet even as he says this, he feels the whole future of destiny upon the infant, knowing the great burden his son will carry.

“Will you make a song for him?” Elia asks softly.

Rhaegar looks thoughtfully at their child. "He has a song," he replies quietly. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire."

He glances upward, suddenly perceiving a figure shrouded in shadow. His breath catches as he struggles to discern the vision clearly. Silver-gold hair gleams faintly, illuminated as if by moonlight, and the unmistakable silhouette of a dragon perches upon its shoulder. His heart quickens desperately, could it be...be...my...Ael…? For a fleeting moment, hope flares bright, fierce and painful in his chest. Yet clarity returns swiftly, extinguishing that brief spark. No, this figure is different, yet powerful in their own right. His heart whispers a name, his Visenya. The sight of her standing amongst the shadow, dragon at its command, strengthens his doubts and renews his certainty of the prophecy.

“There must be one more,” he says. “The dragon has three heads.”

With these thoughts heavy upon him, Rhaegar moves quietly and moves to his harp. Fingers brushing tenderly over the familiar strings, he begins to play, a haunting, melancholic melody filled with longing and sorrow, echoing softly into the distance of the room, carrying with it all the grief and hope he cannot voice.

Chapter Text

Rhaegar stands in King's Landing, prepared at last to depart for the Riverlands and toward the fulfillment of a destiny he has long foreseen. Yet, the night before he is to set out, sleep overtakes him heavily, and he falls into a dream so vivid, so piercingly clear, that it etches itself permanently into his consciousness, terrifying him beyond measure.

In the dream, Rhaegar finds himself standing upon a windswept plain of ice and snow, the world stripped bare beneath a sky devoid of stars. Before him looms a figure shrouded wholly in white, the same figure he has seen again and again. Yet every time he dreams of the figure, he remembers the details more than before. This time the dream is crystal clear. Cementing every doubt he had before. The figure is taller than any man should be, with eyes like blue fire blazing coldly from a deathly visage. The dead’s presence alone is suffocating, its essence more deafening than any shout could be.

This is no ordinary specter from the winter corners of his nightmares. The white figure before him is undeniably regal, wearing a crown of ice and bones, marking it as a king among the dead, an ancient sovereign whose very existence challenges all that Rhaegar understands about the world. Dread spirals like frozen serpents within him, tightening with every heartbeat, every breath, every thought he has ever known.

Then, from behind this grim monarch, Rhaegar sees an army rise, a relentless tide of death marching forward. Rank upon rank, row upon row, thousands upon thousands of the dead move together and inexorably toward a singular goal. Beyond the Wall. Their footsteps, synchronized perfectly, echo in an unnatural harmony that seems to shake the world itself.

Rhaegar awakens sharply, breath ragged, sweat chilling upon his skin, his heart pounds violently, as if it might burst through his ribs, hammering relentlessly until he feels each beat echoing through his skull.The vision lingers with terrible clarity in his mind, far surpassing any dream he has ever endured. He knows, deep in his bones, that this is not mere nightmare, it is a prophecy far darker and more perilous than any he has yet glimpsed. The true threat reveals itself fully at last, and it is coming sooner than he has ever imagined.

Shaken yet his mind absolutely made, Rhaegar leaves King's Landing at dawn, accompanied by only a few trusted companions, chief among them Ser Arthur Dayne, whose unwavering loyalty and strength lend him reassurance in the face of the chilling vision that haunts him still.

They ride swiftly, cloaked in secrecy and urgency, toward the Riverlands. Weeks of careful correspondence, between the prince and the wolf maiden, have prepared for this moment. Secret ravens have flown back and forth under the cover of darkness, carrying messages sealed with caution and hope. A meeting place has been arranged, a secluded location outside a modest tavern, remote enough to evade unwanted eyes but close enough for swift rendezvous.

Lyanna Stark, the wild hearted wolf maiden, travels with her family's retinue toward Riverrun, to celebrate the betrothal of her brother Brandon to Catelyn Tully. Yet, amidst the celebrations and the revelry, Lyanna has planned her escape meticulously. Her heart, restless and yearning for adventure, is already set upon a different path, a path entwined in the fated promise of destiny that Rhaegar has so carefully woven.

Rhaegar has ensured the safety of his wife and children at Dragonstone, far from the reach of his father's madness. He carefully crafted excuses for his absence, managing the councils and courtiers before his departure. Where once his mind was overwhelmed by grief for lost love, now it is singularly focused on destiny, his own and that of the doom yet to unfold. This purpose alone sustains him, propelling him forward when nothing else can. His soul has already departed, and in its stead remains only a vessel, driven to fulfill the ancient destiny handed down through countless generations.

When Rhaegar and his small company ride toward the tavern, he catches sight of Lyanna in the distance, her slender figure cloaked and hooded, waiting quietly. His heart quickens, and he spurs his stallion onward with urgency, one singular thought consuming him entirely.

My Visenya awaits, yet to be born, the wolf maiden its passage, the one who will awaken the dragons and fulfill prophecy.

As he draws closer, he notices the small sword at her hip, a mark of readiness and eagerness for the adventure she believes lies ahead. In that moment, Rhaegar feels a sharp pang of regret mingled with pity. She does not yet know the truth—that the gods have already woven her fate as surely as they have woven his.

But I will tell her, he vows silently, I will show her the path, and in time she will come to see all that I have foreseen.

As Rhaegar urges his steed onward through the countryside, he feels an overwhelming weight settle upon his shoulders. He rides not toward mere desire or selfish impulse, but toward prophecy itself, toward the future that is now inexorably bound to Lyanna. Her courage and strength will be essential. She will bear a child, a savior, a child, along with his others, will stand against the icy tides of death he has glimpsed so vividly.

He knows his actions will be misunderstood, perhaps reviled, but it matters little. What matters is the fate of all the living, the future, and the relentless march of the white dead king and his silent legions. He rides on, driven by purpose, by necessity, and by the deep conviction that only through great sacrifice can the world itself be saved.

As he closes the distance between them, she lifts her head and meets his gaze with a proud, defiant smile. Rhaegar does not return it, his expression remains stark, engraved with urgency, consumed by a purpose far greater than either of them. Without a word, he spurs his horse forward, bringing it swiftly alongside her. He reaches out his hand, silently commanding her trust. Lyanna grasps it firmly, accepting his touch without hesitation.

In that instant, their fates are sealed.

Chapter Text

Two namedays had come and gone since Aelyria vanished from Dragonstone. In that time she has erased every trace of the woman the court once knew
Before she departed to the Shadow Lands…

Her first stop is Volantis, where she disappears into the pitch-black arteries of the Black Wall.

She stores her remaining items in a forgotten storeroom above a spice cellar, she tucks away the last markers of her Westerosi life, the silks she once wore as a scribe, and the travel-worn scrolls she pored over during her voyage, each verse and margin note already committed to her memory, no longer needed in her hands. The only item she keeps is the map that will guide her to a hidden cave. The only other thing she keeps is the slender ring Rhaegar had slid onto her finger, the Targaryen heirloom said to have belonged to Aenys himself. She now suspended the ring on a thin chain beneath her tunic, lying cool against her sternum, the only part of him that will be alongside her in spirit, and the promise that she will return to him with purpose. 

She closes the lid gently, hoping no one will ever uncover the relics of the woman she used to be.

She slips upriver, skirting the baking edge of the Red Waste, then barters passage aboard a freebooters galley bound for Port Moraq. The ship, its sails black as ink, journeys the maze of jungle-ringed inlets before catching the trade winds across the Jade Sea. Every league carries her closer to the Shadow Lands, and to the hidden cave her map promises. In the cramped holds she trades stories with smugglers, gleaning scraps of lore about Asshai, an ebony city where daylight shrinks and every alley barters in dark magic that is practiced more freely and more dangerous than the rest of the world knows. 

On the River Ash, oily and black, she meets a red-robed pyromancer who sells her a stoppered vial of liquid fire, “in case deeper shadows close in.” Beyond him, she encounters a masked shadowbinder that tests her with riddles and half-seen phantoms, only when Aelyria speaks a phrase in High Valyrian does the woman step aside, whispering, “Follow the river until it forgets the sun.” Farther upriver, a necromancer offers passage in exchange for a single drop of her blood, an offer she refuses, slipping past his corpse-lit barge under moonless skies. At the city gates she confronts a gaunt blood mage who demands a tithe of memories for safe entry, she barters away a childhood lullaby, feeling its absence like a hollow note in her mind, but the gates of Stygai swing open.

She makes  her way through Asshai’s temples, bazaars, hovels, and high-walled palaces, all hewn from the same oily black stone. The masonry feels greasy beneath her fingertips, as though it sweats shadows of its own, swallowing the glow of taper, torch, and hearthfire alike. Even at noon, the streets brood in a half-light, come nightfall, they plunge into a darkness so complete it seems to smother sound itself. In Asshai, starlight feels distant, moonlight frail, and every exhale carries the taste of ancient coal and secrets unspoken from the last society before the first long night.

Each meeting tests her purpose. Some aid her, some hinder,  yet all sharpen her focus on the cave marked on the map tucked against her breast. 

On days when things get hard and hopeless, Aelyria takes Rhaegar’s ring that hangs around her neck and presses it to her lips, a reminder that she must return to him.

Await me, ñuha jorrāelagon.

Even if he never forgives her, she hopes at least he will understand that everything she has done was made out of love, out of purpose for him. 

Whatever waits in that cave, the dragon eggs, the answer to Rhaegar’s prophecy, or the beginning to free her own curse of immortality, she knows the path grows darker with every step, and still she presses on, certain that only in the heart of this shadow can she claim the power to reshape the future.

If Aelyria’s flesh were not blessed with its healing powers, the Shadow Lands would have claimed her ten times over. The black-water rivers and fetid canals teem with rot that can birth greyscale at a single touch, the wind off the jagged peaks is colder than any memory she has encountered that could sap a traveler’s strength in hours, not days. Any mortal woman, lacking her gift, would already have starved among these desolate gorges, or died outright the night she slipped on a razor shale and felt bone grind against rock.

Yet she endures and presses north, into a plain where ghost grass grows taller than a warhorse. The stalks glow like pale milk, waving like drowned lanterns beneath a moon the color of tarnished silver. Each step flows against her boots, each tastes of frost and old embers. 

For days she follows that eerie, silent sea of blades, guided only by the half-charred map pressed to her chest. Hope begins to fray, she almost becomes hopeless, as if going an endless circle. She fears the cave may be nothing more than a forgotten rumor scrawled in a dying tongue.

That is when the raven appears. A single, throaty croak catches her attention immediately. She turns and sees the bird perched beside her, black feathers limned by the grass’s ghostly glow. At first she thinks hunger has conjured it.

Begone, crow. I’ve no need of your ill omens

Then she notices its three eyes, the third eye in the middle of its forehead, shining a deep blood-red.
The three-eyed raven croaks at her, not frantically, but with an insistent cry that feels almost like a summons. With no other trail to follow, Aelyria pauses only long enough to catch her breath, then she steps after it. Raven, crow, omen, whatever name the creature bears, she lets it lead her into the wavering sea of ghost grass.

I lay my trust in you raven

After days of hard, clawing progress, the land itself seems to turn against her, sheer ridges shutter the eastern path, and the three-eyed raven doubles back, wings flicking impatiently as if to correct her course. Trusting its uncanny guidance more than the fading lines on her map, hoping it doesn’t leave her astray, Aelyria retraces her steps, then veers north, skirting the foothills and climbing into the jagged mountain range that crowns the far-eastern edge of Essos.

Aelyria finally reaches the Mountain of the Morn, following closely behind the raven as it leads her toward a hidden cave. She halts before its mouth, small and tucked away—a place so inconspicuous no traveler could ever hope to stumble upon it alone. But the raven had led her here with purpose.

Stepping closer, her eyes trace ancient carvings etched carefully above the entrance. Naggher’s Hollow in High Valyrian, the inscription declares. Beneath these words, a further phrase emerges from the weathered stone. The hidden cave from the Bloodstone Emperor. Her pulse quickens. “This must be it,” she whispers to herself, certainty blooming within her chest. One step closer.

Taking a deep breath, she steps forward into darkness. Immediately, the gloom swallows her vision. Her eyes strain against the blackness, able to make out only vague outlines, shadows shifting within shadows. She feels a chill creep down her spine, fear clawing at the edges of her skin.

As she moves deeper into the cave, shapes begin to clarify, gigantic skeletal remains, monstrous dragon bones hanging inverted from the cave ceiling, looming  overhead like guardians frozen in time. Their eerie silhouettes make her breath hitch, stone and bone merge into an ancient tomb.

Soon, even these forms disappear into absolute darkness. Her vision is useless now. Yet the raven’s low croaking continues ahead, guiding her further into the abyss. Trusting blindly, she follows the sound, heart hammering in her chest, knowing each careful step brings her closer to what she seeks.

In the distance, through the thick curtain of darkness, Aelyria spots a faint glow—a single candle burning steadily, its flame impossibly bright yet utterly still. Standing before the candle is a figure cloaked and mysterious, its face concealed behind a smooth lacquered mask that gleams in the candlelight. At the figure’s feet, resting atop the ancient stone, the flame illuminates three polished stones.

Her breath catches as she hesitantly steps closer, her pulse quickening with every cautious footfall. As she approaches, the masked figure lifts its head slowly, the flame of the glass candle reflecting across the lacquered surface. When the figure speaks, the voice is unmistakably a woman’s, her voice rich but strangely reassuring, despite its enigmatic tone.

“Welcome, child of Doom,” she says clearly in High Valyrian, the words resonating like a bell through the cave. “Destiny has finally guided you to your purpose. Destiny has brought you here to find the answers you seek.”

The woman pauses briefly, letting the silence settle, before continuing in the same cryptic voice.

“To go north, one must journey south.
To reach the west, one has reached the east.
To go forward, one has already gone back.
And to touch the light, you have passed beneath the shadow.”

As her final words fade into the darkness, Aelyria remains frozen in place, her eyes fixed on the glass candle, its flame illuminating secrets yet to unfold.

“Who are you?” Aelyria breathes, her voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

The masked woman regards her for a moment.
“I am but a guide,” she answers, her voice echoing gently in the darkened cave

Aelyria steps forward cautiously, her gaze lowering to the stone pedestal. Her heart nearly stops. There, bathed in the unwavering light of the glass candle, lie the three dragon eggs she has searched the world over to find.

The eggs were beautiful—more beautiful than Aelyria had ever anticipated. It had been so very long since she’d seen dragon eggs, she had nearly forgotten their mesmerizing allure. One egg was deep green, flecked richly with burnished bronze. Another was a pale cream, streaked with gold. The last was black, as dark and deep as the midnight sea, yet marked by scarlet ripples and swirling patterns that caught in the single candlelight.

The masked woman turned her gaze directly toward Aelyria, her eyes hidden yet unmistakably intent behind the lacquered facade.

“Before you claim these eggs,” she says, “you must face a choice. Two paths lie before you.”

She pauses, carefully letting the words of the shadowbinder’s words hang in the air.

“Which one shall you choose?”

Chapter Text

The waters of the Trident ran saturated with mud and blood, churned relentlessly by a thousand hooves and a thousand screams. Spears splintered like dry branches, shields cracked and shattered, their painted sigils rendered meaningless. All around, the banners of storm and dragon twisted violently in the wind and rain, their vivid colors dulled beneath a sky that offered no judgment, only silent, oppressive gray.

Rhaegar sat astride his warhorse, encased in armor black as night, adorned with rubies that gleamed fiercely despite the grim day, droplets of flame in a world turned cold and colorless. He felt less like a living prince and more like a figure from a mournful ballad, tragic, distant, beautiful, and doomed. Beneath the polished metal, sweat chilled against his skin, the prince’s heart thudding unevenly, each beat heavier than the last.

Everything he had done, every choice, every sacrifice, he had made believing it was right. Prophecy had guided him, revealing  truths so compelling he had surrendered all doubt. The prince had been certain. He had been relentless.

But now, in the choking chaos of battle, clarity cut him deeply. Lyanna was far from him, heavy with child and wounded by the losses of her family—losses he had indirectly caused. The kingdom he had sworn to protect lay bleeding at his feet, the realm splintered because of his decisions. Elia, gentle Elia, haunted him as a shadow he could never escape, her trust betrayed by every step he’d taken away from her. Each consequence now rested on his shoulders, a burden too immense, crushing the bones beneath the prince’s royal armor.

Across the field, Robert Baratheon appeared through the mist, like thunder given flesh. His warhammer was held high, rage and vengeance carved upon his face, his massive figure charging forward, unstoppable and without mercy.

“Come and die, dragon prince! You’ve stolen my wolf, now I’ll have your head!”

Rhaegar never anticipated this. He had only tried to do what he believed was right. But as he charged toward Robert, he felt hollow—nothing more than a shell of a man, cracked and crumbling from within. He had clung desperately to prophecy, believing it would justify every painful choice, every harsh sacrifice. Prophecy was all he had left, a fragile lifeline he grasped tightly, praying it would prove true, praying it would redeem every loss, every betrayal.

Time slowed down immensely, and suddenly he saw every mistake laid bare in excruciating detail. A part of him, long buried beneath the crushing curse of destiny, rose sharply to the surface, whispering bitter truths, he could be wrong. Terribly, irreparably wrong. Yet even as doubt pierced him, he held onto the prophecy fiercely, hoping beyond reason that it would not fail him now, that the path he had chosen was the only true way forward.

Each hoofbeat of Robert’s charging steed echoed in Rhaegar’s ears like the pounding drums of judgment, reverberating through every fiber of his being. His breath caught sharply, his throat tightened painfully, and grief surged hot behind his eyes, threatening to spill forth. Yet he made no sound. No battle cry escaped his lips, no plea for mercy or whispered prayer for forgiveness. Instead, he raised his weapon silently, grimly resigned to meet the wave that was about to break upon him.

Robert reached him with unstoppable force, and their clash was deafening—a brutal collision of metal, vengeance, and fate itself. In that instant, as the storm swirled around them, Rhaegar felt a profound, consuming sorrow. Every mistake he had ever made weighed heavily upon him, too great and numerous for his soul to bear. He had believed himself a hero, a prince destined to save his people, but now he saw himself plainly—a broken man, whose good intentions had paved a path straight to ruin.

Robert’s warhammer struck his chest. The rubies on his armor scattered into the river like bloody tears as Robert’s hammer found its mark, each gemstone breaking free and falling away, sparkling briefly before disappearing beneath the dark, turbulent waters. 

Rhaegar fell from his steed, the impact as cold and final as death itself, the river embracing him gently, its current pulling him down with an almost forgiving touch, as though it sought to absolve him of sins he knew he could never forgive himself.

He fell without a cry.

The blow struck him in the chest, without remorse, with hatred. The world tilted violently, the horizon dissolving into smudges of darkness and stormy gray. Sound fell away piece by painful piece—first the clash of steel, then the agonized cries of men, and finally the drop of rain. All that remained was the river, tenderly lapping at his sides, inexplicably warm as a forgotten summer.

And for a breathless moment—

He was not dying.

He was elsewhere.

Sunlight poured through tall trees, their leaves shimmering gold in a sacred grove preserved only by memory. The air felt rich and alive, sweet with the fragrance of jasmine and roses he promised her, untouched by war or grief. The grass swayed beneath a forgiving breeze, promises of peace.

And she stood there.

Aelyria.

Just her—as radiant as she had been that first morning they kissed beneath the shelter of the Grove. Beautiful and barefoot, laughter spilling effortlessly from her lips. The breeze caught her silver-white hair, transforming it into living fire, soft and warm as he had once touched, inviting him closer. She smiled at him with the innocence of untouched memory, as though she had never vanished from his life.

As though she had never shattered his soul.

He yearned desperately to go to her, to close the distance separating them, to lose himself forever in her embrace. He tried to reach out, his fingertips trembling with longing.

But the warmth faded cruelly, replaced by bitter cold.

The river returned, merciless and uncaring.

He was cold—so terribly, irreversibly cold.

“Ael…yria,” his final whisper escaped, broken and fragile, carrying every regret, every love lost, every dream unfulfilled. A single tear slid silently down his cheek, a final, helpless offering to the woman he loved beyond life itself.

The river current took him, carrying him downstream past the reeds and bones and shattered helms, each relic of war bearing witness to his failures. Still, the fighting raged on, indifferent to the death of one broken prince.

Later, when they dragged his lifeless body from the shallow waters, there was no crown to mark him king, no sword to speak of valor, no rubies to tell of sacrifice.

But around his neck, half-hidden beneath the battered ruin of his armor, was a simple necklace—worn smooth from years of devotion.

It lay unforgotten against his chest, still clasped, as though protecting the last remnant of a love that even death could not diminish.

Chapter Text

For those who read the story until the end…thank you.

Thank you for staying with it. For staying with the nuance, the heartbreak, the complexity of Rhaegar Targaryen.

This was never meant to be a story that glorified him, or excused him. And it was never meant to condemn him either. It was meant to understand him to give him depth, contradiction, tenderness, and ruin. To show the soul of a man we were never really allowed to know in canon.

With that being said, 

Now, we return to Aelyria.

It may—or may not—come as a surprise that Aelyria is my alternate universe version of Daenerys Targaryen. And before you roll your eyes or wonder why I’d want to “replace” Dany, let me say this outright. 

I love Daenerys. She is my Girl. My Baby!

I loved her in the books. I loved her in the show. And I still love her. She is complex, fierce, tragic, radiant, everything a true queen should be. And when Season 8 aired… when they stripped her of everything she had earned, warped her arc, and reduced her to a cautionary tale. I was sooo heartbroken.

Since this is a canon-adjacent story, I chose to leave Aelyria’s ending in the Shadow Lands somewhat open-ended intentionally.

As a reader, it’s up to you to decide what she becomes after the cave. Maybe you imagine her rising again to help Daenerys in the future. Maybe you see her reborn as Daenerys herself (yes, I considered that possibility too). Or maybe with how I intended her story to develop...

I wrote Aelyria to honor the mother of dragons ending. Aelyria’s story is one I’ve fully built, her lore, her past, her future, and how she integrates through the canon of Asoiaf and Daenerys’s arc. 

In shaping her, I drew from Daenerys, of course, from everything I loved about her before the show lost her, but still honours her from the books. She is drawn from Katniss Everdeen, from Aelin Galathynius, from Rand al’Thor, and even from Paul Atreides (minus, you know, the worse stuff). Aelyria carries pieces of all of them. Love and Lost. Will and Tragedy. Growth and Resistance. She is a synthesis of every woman, and every chosen one, I’ve ever wanted to see walk away from the fire, not just alive, but a force to be reckoned with.

If you’re interested in reading that version of the my Aelyria. I’ve already started posting her origin story, the Song of Dragons and Destiny, and we shall see where it takes us.

This is for all the women who walk through the fire unscorched. Thanks for Reading!