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“Prince Baelon had another cause for celebration as well. His wife, Alyssa, was again with child. This time, he told his brother Aemon, he was praying for a girl.

Princess Alyssa was brought to bed again in 84 AC. After a long and difficult labor, she gave Prince Baelon a third son, a boy they named Aegon, after the Conqueror. “They call me Baelon the Brave,” the prince told his wife at her bedside, “but you are far braver than me. I would sooner fight a dozen battles than do what you’ve just done.” Alyssa laughed at him. “You were made for battles, and I was made for this. Viserys and Daemon and Aegon, that’s three. As soon as I am well, let’s make another. I want to give you twenty sons. An army of your own!”

It was not to be. Alyssa Targaryen had a warrior’s heart in a woman’s body, and her strength failed her. She never fully recovered from Aegon’s birth, and died within the year at only four-and-twenty. Nor did Prince Aegon long survive her. He perished half a year later, still shy of his first nameday. Though shattered by his loss, Baelon took solace in the two strong sons that she had left him, Viserys and Daemon, and never ceased to honor the memory of his sweet lady with the broken nose and mismatched eyes. Still grieving the loss of his wife, Baelon could not take the same solace in his youngest son as he did with the elder boys, and put the child’s care largely in the hands of the aging Queen Alysanne.

The boy grew to be serious and bookish, and when the boy was ten and two, King Jaehaerys decided that young Aegon was best suited for a life at the Citadel, and dispatched him to the care of Archmaester Vaegon.”

- Fire & Blood, Being a History of the Targaryen Kings of Westeros, by Archmaester Gyldayn

Aegon Targaryen was perfectly content with being a third son. There was none of the expectation that weighed down the first born, and no bitterness at almost that second sons so often carried. He would never inherit the crown, but that was more than fine with Aegon. He was as free as any Targaryen could be, to pursue his quiet happiness, to study old scrolls that no one but him and his dearest friend cared for, and to even marry the woman he loved. 

And perhaps the gods punished him for that, for thinking that a Targaryen could ever experience true happiness without witnessing it crumble before him. 

The night breeze came softly through the window, carrying the sound of the Honeywine’s slow waters with it. The night was warm, and his wife beside him was warmer. Elinor had rolled to the far side of the bed, her arms up above her head. She often complained that he was as hot as an oven, and she couldn’t stand to sleep next to him in the summer heat. Aegon would laugh, and offer to sleep somewhere else, and Elinor would pull him close with mock outrage. 

“First it'll be sleeping in separate beds, and then it’ll be separate households, and next thing I know, you’ve taken your other lady and winged your way to the Free Cities, never to be seen or heard from again.” She would kiss his chin, and then his nose. “No, I am wise to your ways. You’ll stay where I can keep my eye on you.” And then she would finally kiss his mouth, and they would both laugh. But she would still kick him to the side in her sleep, throwing off the thin coverlet. The heat had been unbearable in the final month of her pregnancy. Aegon would buy sweet ices and bring her cider from the cold cellar, and have to watch her lick the cold spoon after she finished the ice, suffering from an altogether different heat. 

Elinor had been more than a little morose about her body as the months wore on. “I am afraid you have taken a vain creature to wife,” she would sigh, and Aegon was helpless to do anything but take her in his arms and tell her that she was more beautiful than she ever had been. 

“Isn’t the moon all the more beautiful when it is full?” he whispered into her hair, the colour of a deep wildflower honey, gold and brown and red all at once. 

Then Elinor would shake with laughter, smiling back and saying, “You’ve become maudlin in your old age. Haven’t you heard that poetry’s a young man’s game?”

She was right. He had become maudlin, hopelessly sentimental. How could he not, when he had his two ladies to fill his life? For all that his silver lady, the mount of Good Queen Alysanne, was a beast herself, he loved her all the same. Thanks be to the gods that Elinor was not a jealous woman.

Elinor had always told him he was too quick to love, too willing to hand his heart over to anyone who asked. She had told him so in the first year of their marriage, when winter had come to Oldtown.

“Just for you,” he replied. “What’s the line, that all men are fools and all men are knights, when it comes to women.”

“And more fool I, for loving you.” Laughter had always sparked easily in her eyes.  “I wore widowhood very well.” 

“You were indeed a very lovely widow. Beautiful, wealthy, and young, all things widows aspire to be. Shame you were conned into marrying a wastrel.”

“Oh, but you were so very pretty.”  

Aegon touched his crooked nose, but Elinor brushed his hand away with her own, running a finger down the side. 

“It adds character.” She told him.

He took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Well, I only married you for your money,” Aegon said, with all seriousness. 

“Liar,” she smiled.

“Of course.”

Almost ten years had passed since then, winter and spring and into summer, and by the grace of all the gods, Elinor had never tired of him, had never regretted marrying him. They had no children in those years, despite the lack of trying. And perhaps that was for the best as well. Aegon had nothing for any sons to inherit, save a weighty name and an unclear path. 

When Elinor had conceived again, at the age of four and thirty, they had both been resigned to another miscarriage. But it never came, and they both began to hold their breaths at the thought that perhaps this time luck was with them. 

And on this night, Aegon sat in their bedroom window, listening to the sounds of the river. Eight moons had come and gone, and all had been well. Please, he prayed to the Mother, please let all be well. 

He fell asleep there, among the scent of moon blossoms and honeysuckles. 

Elinor shook him awake, her honeyed hair curling wildly around her. 

“Aegon, it’s time, the child is coming.”

Startled out of sleep, Aegon flailed, managing to avoid stepping on Elinor in the process. “Now? Right now? 

“Yes, now.” His wife cast her eyes up to the heavens. “Call for my sisters, my love.”

Elinor’s family had descended on their manse over the last month. Her younger sister, Septa Alla, lived in a motherhouse in Oldtown and came as often as she could, which was oftener than Aegon would have liked. The septa had a self-righteous menace to her, that she unfailingly turned on him when Elinor wasn’t looking. The other sister, Lady Meggara Florent was far more easy-going, and dare he say it, even fun. The youngest Tyrell daughter had wed the Lord of Brightwater Keep, and laughed whenever Elinor teased her about how poorly she fit the Florent words, Listen Carefully. 

Elinor’s father and brothers wrote regularly from Highgarden, and had extracted a promise of a visit after the child was born. Aegon was more than a little relieved that Lord Matthos Tyrell had decided not to make the visit himself. Truly, Aegon was happy that his good-father was so fond of him, but the smug satisfaction Lord Matthos showed in his daughter’s princely husband, as if he’d arranged the match himself, made Aegon squirm. 

But he was grateful for how steadfastly they all had supported Elinor when she finally felt she was far along enough to tell them she was with child, with both her sisters not only agreeing to be present for the birth, but insisting. Meggara had brought her own young babe with her, a daughter named Emma for the late queen, while her husband and son remained at home. Despite being a mother of two, and lady of her husband’s house, Meggara was still as merry as maid of only fifteen. When she had arrived a fortnight earlier, she had bustled in with countless presents and a mind to meddle. Elinor was both relieved and amused, catching Aegon’s gaze and raising her eyebrows as Meggara chatted on about the coming child. 

“I do so hope it is a girl,” Meggara had said, smiling. “Then they can be as close as sisters.”

“Girl or boy, no doubt they will love their aunt well. I will despair of you spoiling them, I’m sure,” Elinor said dryly. 

Meggara waved her off, and Aegon had to stifle his own laugh as Elinor rolled her eyes. 

Although Aegon had felt like a hunted man in his own house thanks to his good-sisters, with the child coming, he felt nothing but joy at Septa Alla’s business-like manner. 

“Send word to Lorent,” the septa instructed. “We may not need him, but he should be here regardless.” 

Nodding, Aegon dashed down the stairs, taking them two at a time. The kitchen was already rustling with preparation for baking, so Aegon went there first. The cook’s son, a boy of ten and one named Jon, had the duty of building the fires in the wee hours of the morning, and he bolted up from the oven when Aegon flung open the door.

“Do you know where Maester Lorent lodges?” The boy nodded. “Take word that the Lady Elinor’s child is coming.” Aegon passed him a stag, and the boy was off like a shot. 

Aegon took a moment to finish adding the boy’s wood to the fire, not wanting to get him in trouble, before darting back up the stairs. 

He wanted to be in there with Elinor, a hope that her sisters squashed. 

“The birthing bed is no place for a man,” Septa Alla sternly told him. She was directing the maids to strip the bed of linens and to put down old ones more fit for the rag bin, to heat water, to close the curtains to keep out bad air, and a thousand other tasks, as dictatorial as a queen. 

The septa was very like to Elinor, but both taller and thinner, a copy stretched long. Her own hazel eyes were constantly narrowed in some disapproval, as if the world had offended her personally. They turned on Aegon now, brooking no disagreement. 

“The maesters would disagree with you, Septa.”

Septa Alla cast her eyes upwards. “If you were a maester, none of us would be here, would we?”

Meggara patted him on the shoulder. “I am loath to admit it, but I think my sister is right. It’s best that you be outside. It will make it more difficult for Elinor to try to kill you. I believe that’s a kind of treason?”

“Elinor,” He called through the doorway.

His darling wife replied back through what were clearly clenched teeth. “Aegon, I love you, but stay out.”

“Alright, alright. But I’m staying right outside.”

Meggara gave him a serene smile. “As you please, my prince.” And shut the door in his face. 

Lorent came not half an hour later, his unruly brown hair sticking up at all angles, accompanied by an out of breath Jon.  The man, who always seemed to be about to come apart at the seams for the nearly two decades Aegon had known him, was cousin to Elinor and her sisters. His father had been a second son of Highgarden who decided that the best thing for his own second born was the Citadel. He had proven correct, as Lorent had forged his first link at sixteen and never suffered from a moment of doubt, though one would never know it from looking at him, in a permanent state of sad dishevelment. 

Lorent patted himself down, looking for something in his innumerable pockets, before giving up. His grey maester’s robes were on backwards. “How is Elinor?”

Aegon rubbed the back of his neck. “Alright, I think. Septa Alla kicked me out, but Meggara is still unruffled, so nothing horrible has happened yet.” 

“I think I’ll go in, if you’re alright out here?” Lorent leaned towards the door, and Aegon waved him on. 

Aegon stared at the torch across the hall from him, fidgeting with the silver ring he wore on his thumb.

Lorent emerged, and sat down on the stone floor next to him. “All’s well at the moment. I was concerned, since Elinor is, well, old for a first child, but she’s not had too many troubles so far and has always been disgustingly healthy.”

“Still.”

“Still. It is always in the hands of the gods in the end.”

Aegon gestured pointedly at Lorent. “Your robes. You put them on wrong.”

Lorent looked down. “So I did.”

“Are you going back in?”

“I have to, don’t I? But I’m not sure who I’m more scared of, Alla or Elinor.”

“Septa Alla could strike fear in the heart of any sinner.”

Lorent frowned. “Alla has been to far more births than me. She knows what she’s doing. If she were a man, she’d forge a silver link as quick as breathing.” He started patting his pockets again, before once again surrendering to the clothes. “Alright then, Egg. I’d best go make a nuisance of myself.”

The waiting was almost enough to make Aegon wish he was out on Silverwing, wind in his face and high above Oldtown, instead of feeling so utterly useless. But he couldn’t even want to be anywhere else, not with his wife on the other side of that door. 

He jumped up whenever the door opened, usually a maid scurrying in and out. He could see very little through the door, only that Elinor was pacing through her labour, supported on either side by her sisters. 

Turning his ring around and around, Aegon felt thoughts of his cousin Aemma come to him unbidden.

She had suffered so greatly to bring his brother’s children into the world. Aemma had been only a girl of eleven when she wed his brother, a girl too scared to climb trees with Aegon, who cried when she skinned her knees, who loved nothing better than sitting in their grandmother’s lap. 

It was barely three years later, before Aegon left for the Citadel, when she had delivered her first child. How Viserys had wept over that stillborn son. 

Aemma had not had the strength to weep, nor to hold her babe. 

The queen had found it for her instead, rising from her own sick bed. Queen Alysanne fought bitterly with Jaehaerys that day, screaming muffled by the thick doors of the king’s chambers. Aegon could hear it all from his grandmother’s rooms, Gael clutching at his hands and close to tears. Gael would hide under the bed when the king and queen fought thus, and Aegon would crawl underneath with her, and hold his poor, sweet aunt, clasping hands in the dim dark. 

When Elinor told him she was with child, Gael came rushing into his mind. The Winter Child, they called her, born to a woman who should have been left as a grandmother. Septa Alla had been the one who reassured him then, in her brusque fashion, when he broached it with her and Elinor. Queen Alysanne had been ten years Elinor’s senior, already exhausted from years of childbearing, her last three children as frail as their predecessors had been healthy. There was no reason that this child would be like Gael. “And,” The septa had added, “Our own mother had Leo when she was two years older, and she survived that well enough. No one can accuse Leo of being a wit, but that’s likely his own fault.”

Round and round, Aegon turned his ring. The silver glinted brightly. 

Round and round, Elinor walked, moving the child into the world. 

When she started screaming in earnest, Aegon leapt up and battered open those doors. His wife was clutching at a rope tied around the bannisters of their bed, Meggara and the septa holding her up. Alla slid away, as Aegon took her place, Elinor straining against their hands. 

“I hate you so much,” Elinor gritted out. “I am going to kill you as soon as this is over.”

“I love you too,” Aegon said. 

When the babe finally slid into the world, Alla caught it, her hands confident from years of experience. And she laughed. 

“You have your wish, Meg. Elinor has a girl.”

And Meggara was laughing, as she and Aegon moved Elinor into the bed. 

Lorent and Alla were washing the baby, who had begun to cry, as Aegon brushed away the sweat from Elinor’s face. 

“Let’s never do this again.” He pleaded. 

She gave the smallest of nods. “Agreed.”

Together, they looked over at the maester and midwife, who were fussing over the newest addition to the world. 

Aegon kissed Elinor’s hand, and she tightened her fingers on his. 

“I love you,” he told her. 

“I never doubted it,” came her reply. 

Septa Alla brought the babe over, clean and bundled, and slid her into her mother’s arms, already outstretched and waiting.

Elinor’s hair was dark with sweat, and whisps clung to her face, but she had never looked more beautiful as she beamed down at their baby.

“Our baby, Aegon. Look at her.”

They had chosen names years before, when they still had some hope that Elinor would carry to term. Aegon had not spoken it until this moment, so afraid of something going wrong, afraid that any casual acceptance that they were to have a child would curse it. “Alyssa. Our Alyssa.” He squeezed Elinor’s hand. “For our mothers.” 

He had never known his own mother. She had died bringing him into the world, and he thought that perhaps a granddaughter carrying her name might make some amends. It was Elinor’s own mother’s name as well, the mother who she had adored, who had raised up her daughters with a gentle but firm hand.

Elinor shifted Alyssa into his arms, and Aegon could not help it. He began to cry. 

“Oh, my love,” Elinor smiled, tears in her own eyes.

“She’s absolutely perfect.” And she was, her face all red and squashed, completely perfect

Aegon wiped at each eye, and grinned so wide his cheeks ached. “She has your eyes, my love.”

“My eyes? My eyes? Yours have clearly failed you. Our daughter’s eyes are purple.”

“Aside from that. In the shape. She looks like she’s smiling.” 

Elinor stared at him. “I think fatherhood has finally driven the last of your wits from you. I’ll have to send you back with Alla, so you can be looked after like the rest of the motherhouse’s poor charges.”

“Oh, you mark it now, when she’s older, you’ll see it too.”

“You silly, silly man,” Elinor replied. “What am I going to do with you?”

The next day was quiet. The entire manse seemed to have settled, letting out a breath it had been holding for so long. Elinor and Alyssa slept a great deal of the time, exhausted after their collective ordeal. Aegon was content to sit by them, and watch them sleep. His heart felt so full, so much joy being poured into it, that it spilled out and over his face. 

He was smiling with his silly, lopsided grin, when Lorent came up quietly behind him. He pointed to the scroll he held in his other hand, and whispered, “Archmaester Vaegon sent a note.”

Aegon quickly read it and snorted. “He says he’ll see the babe once it’s learnt to stop crying in polite company. So, let’s give it about three years, I think.” His uncle was never one for children, especially ones that couldn’t be reasoned with yet. 

Elinor yawned, and said sleepily, “Yes, it wouldn’t do for the Archmaester to face such a horrid creature in his old age.”

Aegon cringed. “Did we wake you?”

“No.” She shook her head, an indulgent smile on her face. “But you may apologize anyway.”

What could Aegon do but rise to kiss her hand? “My apologies, my lady.”

Lorent laughed as he left the room, shaking his head at the saccharine affection of new parents. 

By the second day, Elinor felt well enough to get out of bed, and she took to sitting in the afternoon sunshine flooding through the bedroom window and humming quietly to their daughter. 

Aegon came up behind her, and rested her chin in her honeyed hair, made true gold in the light. 

“It feels like a dream,” she sighed. “I can’t quite believe it. Every time I close my eyes, I’m afraid she’ll be gone when I open them.”

It was before the dawn of the third day when it happened. The sun had yet to crest, and drive the morning mists of Oldtown away, when Aegon awoke to his wife violently shivering beside him.

“Aegon, I’m so cold.”

Fumbling for his robe, Aegon nearly fell out of the bed. He managed to light the lamp, and turned back to his wife, who was hunched over. Elinor clutched her stomach, her teeth chattering as she grimaced in pain. The bed shook with her, and every muscle was drawn tight, her eyes shuddering with the force of it. 

By the time Lorent and Septa Alla arrived, the cold fit had turned to a raging fever, and Alyssa’s skin was too warm to the touch as well. 

He hoped, desperately, that they would tell him that the sickness that had seized Elinor was not what he feared. 

The pair were grim, examining Elinor, asking her where she felt the pains. Pulling aside the bedclothes, the Septa pressed gently against Elinor’s belly, making his wife let out a blood curdling wail. When Lorent checked her mouth, the despair was palpable. 

Her tongue was white, a tell-tale sign of childbed fever. 

There was very little relief from that great killer, striking days after even easy births.

Septa Alla immediately whisked Alyssa from what was now a sickroom. “Mother and child often catch together, but Alyssa might not have caught the fever yet. There’s a chance, so I’m removing her now,” She spoke, with steel in her voice. 

Elinor deteriorated rapidly, her heart pounding so wildly, Lorent could barely take her pulse with any accuracy. Delirium set in, and Elinor started to beg wildly for her baby, convinced she had been stolen. 

“Where is my baby? Aegon, where is my baby,” She clawed weakly at Aegon’s arm as he held her through another fit of shivers. “Bring back my baby.”

Aegon did not realize he was crying yet again until he tasted his own tears. 

Elinor was dead by the end of the fourth day. 

All Aegon could do was clutch her cold hand, kneeling beside their marriage bed. He was insensible to Septa Alla’s barking commands, until Lorent dragged him up bodily. 

Distantly, Aegon heard the septa demanding that the bedding be burned, and all the clothes that they had worn at Elinor’s sickbed as well.

He took Elinor into his arms, unable to let go of her. She had been burning only moments before. But her skin was already cold to the touch. He did not know how long he sat there on the floor, until Lorent was in his ear, telling him the silent sisters were here and you have to let go of her, Egg. 

And then she was gone. 

Aegon let Lorent strip his clothes from him, sometimes the fever spreads, to be added to the pile for burning. Your daughter, Aegon. You need to see her; she has the fever. 

Aegon stumbled to the opposite end of the manse, where the babe had been moved to the care of her wet nurse, at the septa’s instructions. Despite Alla’s interventions, Alyssa burned just as Elinor had, a fire too hot for such a small body to contain. Septa Alla did not seem to care that the child would likely die as well, a dogged determination that in her that Aegon simply did not have.

While the silent sisters stole into the house, Alyssa continued to linger. So small and weak, she could not suckle at all. The wetnurse painstakingly squeezed each drop of milk in her mouth. 

All Aegon could do was hold his daughter, helplessly watching Lorent and Alla debate what could be done. 

He found no sleep in that horrible sickroom, as his baby lost the strength to even cry. 

Alla was a woman possessed, and she simply refused to accept it. And that was why Alyssa lived long enough for her fever to break by dawn. 

The only one weeping harder than Aegon was Alla. 

“The worst is past?” He begged.

Crouched over in exhaustion, Alla pulled her headdress loose, and ran a hand weakly across her cropped hair. “Yes, yes, yes. She will live.” 

...

The rain was barely more than mist, light drizzles against his wild hair. Aegon left it unbound, uncombed, and it tangled further in the damp air. He looked half a madman. I am, I am, I am mad with grief, he thought as the septon spoke the words of the final rites given to any child of the Faith. 

They buried Elinor in the lichyard that lies behind the Seven Shrines, where graves fill the garden of the Stranger. It was as she wanted, to be buried in her city. To return to the earth she had sprung from, she had said once, as a child of Highgarden. 

Moss crept across tombstones, roses swaying in the rain, the Stranger’s Garden damp and cool. It was so unlike the dark caverns beneath Dragonstone where his ancestor’s ashes were interred, where the only sound is the distant rumblings of the dragons.

Here, a bird sung from a nearby tree, and the grey sky stretched endlessly wide. 

Aegon would forgo the fiery pyres of his ancestors, if it meant he could lie here, in the cool dirt, under the sky, with his love once again. 

Meggara held Alyssa underneath her cloak, shielding her from the weather. 

Aegon could not look at his daughter without weeping, he could barely find the strength to hold her. 

How does one even raise a child? How does one do it alone? 

It was force outside himself that drove him to the drink after the funeral. Aegon could only watch helplessly as his hands refilled his cup, again and again.  Her blood is on my hands. Was that what Rhaena Targaryen had said to Lord Rogar Baratheon, after he had killed her mother, another Alyssa, with his child? Yes. “Her blood is on your hands, her blood is on your cock. May you die screaming.”

Selfish, selfish, selfish Aegon. He was no better than Viserys, no better than Jaehaerys, no better than Rodrik Arryn, or Rogar Baratheon or any other man who carelessly got their wife with child. 

He could not drive Elinor’s dead face out of his head. 

But the wine blurred her, and the whole world blurred with her. 

He dreamt of digging Elinor’s grave, dirt piling up on either side, higher and higher, until he could barely see the sun for the mountains around him. At the bottom of the hole, she lay cold, only her ghostly face visible under the grey shroud. When he laid down next to her, the corpse turned its terrible face, with its terrible unseeing eyes, and opened the black hole of its mouth and screamed. 

He dreamt of his father’s funeral pyre, a great terrible blaze on the beach on Dragonstone. Vhagar’s cries shook the ground beneath him. The smoke from the fire rose up with the fumes of the Dragonmount, until the entire sky was near black. The smoke was in his eyes, in his lungs, in his very core. He could not even breathe for all of it. 

Aegon woke to drowning, his lungs screaming as his face was shoved into icy water. Spluttering, he lashed out at the hand grasped in his hair, and whacked Septa Alla in her knee. She dropped him, and Aegon fell hard to the floor, the wind knocked out of him. 

Septa Alla and Meggara loomed over him, twin faces of stone, as Lorent wrung his hands behind them.

“There will be none of that in this house, you understand.” Septa Alla intoned, colder than the water. 

Aegon lay there on the floor, his hair wildly tangling around him, a nest of silver snakes. He could only stare up. 

He could hear the noise of disgust the septa made, as she and Meggara swept past his prone form.

Lorent crouched next to him, his eyes watery as he took Aegon’s arm to pull him up. 

“I’ve disposed of all drink in the house, and I am sending word to Archmaester Vaegon.”

Aegon could do naught but curse Lorent for setting his uncle on him. Even at his best, Aegon’s uncle was cold. And Vaegon was never at his best when the time called for a moment of empathy.

Vaegon rarely descended from the Citadel these days, and Aegon hardly knew what he should do when his uncle finally darkened his door. 

Hunched over in his chair, Aegon buried his head in his hands, hiding behind his loose hair. 

The Archmaester steepled his hands together, his long and pinched face looking particularly hard. 

“You wallow still, I see.”

“Seven above, Uncle. My wife is dead.” Aegon slammed the flat of his hand against table. “Dead. She is barely cold in her grave, and you say I wallow.”

“She is dead, but you are not.” Vaegon stood, his chain rattling with him.  “You should have forged your chain. I told you that, and you never listened. I told you not to marry the chit, and you did. You made your bed and now you must lie in it!”

Aegon sobbed, the desperate sound of a wounded animal. 

“You must deal with your duties. You have a living child that needs its father!” Vaegon thundered.  “Get up and look to your child.” 

So Aegon did, making the terrible climb up and up the stairs. It was a journey longer than when he had been banished to Oldtown as a boy, longer than when he had gone to Dragonstone under the cover of night, a thousand endless stairs where there had once been only sixteen.  

His shadow darkened the nursery door, and Aegon stood there, all in the darkness, staring at the cradle. 

When he finally moved, it took every ounce of strength in his marrow.

He stared down at his daughter. She was so small, so frail. He could see every laboured breath as the tiny chest moved up and down. Up and down. The down on her head was so pale as to be barely visible.

When Aegon was a boy, he would climb trees by himself. Sometimes he could spend hours up there, hidden and looking down on the people going by, or squirrel up with a book he wasn’t allowed to take out of the library.

He remembered finding a nest, once. It was deep inside a hollow in his favourite oak tree in the godswood. Every day, he would climb up to see if one of the pale ivory eggs had hatched yet. 

They did, on a cool spring day, amidst the rustling leaves. 

The first hatchling had been all pale pink skin and only the faintest whisps of down. Utterly helpless as it cried out for its parent. He had slid down from the tree, to watch the mother bird finally approach.

Hot shame flooded him. He had been a poorer parent than a mere beast.

When his brothers had been born, his mother had swaddled them against her chest, and taken them soaring through the sky on her dragon. 

She had been too weak to do the same for Aegon. Her last child. The one that killed her. 

“You have done nothing wrong,” he whispered to his daughter. “The blame is mine alone.”

They all thought him mad, and perhaps he was. 

Over the objections, the fears, Aegon bundled up his child and set out for Silverwing’s island.

It was night again, and the banks of the Honeywine were lined with lights and the sound of laughter, warm yellow winking out in the blue of the evening. The scent of jasmine lay heavy.

Lonely as a hermit, the Dragon’s Island was a large and empty place upriver. Once, there had been a great septry there, but it had gone to seed more than three hundred years ago, after all the faithful had died in an outbreak of winter fever. Before the crown had bought it, it had been named the Island of Ghosts. 

Did dragons fear ghosts? Silverwing had never paid them any mind, if their shades still walked the earth. And there was one ghost Aegon would embrace without thought. 

Stepping through the ruins of the ancient garden that had stood there once, Aegon called to his silver lady. 

He could always feel her before he saw her, a great presence that shook his bones, an earthquake rattling through him.

She had taken to curling around the crumbling bell tower, her scales flashing brighter than the white stones, all glowing in the moonlight. Silverwing rested her great head, her great yellow eye flicking open, brighter than the Crone’s own lantern. 

 She stretched, sinuous as a cat, the heat spilling from her mighty jaws as she rumbled. 

“Calm, my lady. Calm, Silverwing.”

He had mounted the dragon a thousand times and more, but every time he placed his hand to climb, his heart leapt into his throat all over again, and he was once again the half-grown boy who everyone found wanting. But he dared, as he has dared countless times, just as he dared the very first time. 

He clutched Alyssa to his chest, as Silverwing shook out her wings, her great legs heaving beneath her. There was nothing smooth about a dragon launching straight from the ground, only power and sheer force, and Aegon soothed the child against his chest who began to softly wail at it. 

She quieted as Silverwing’s flight smoothed out, as the she-dragon gain air beneath her. 

Oldtown disappeared beneath them, a thousand houses with a thousand families settling into their thousand beds, the lamps in their windows burning out. 

Higher and higher, he urged Silverwing,

And then they are among the stars, scattered like so many precious jewels across the deep blue velvet of the night. 

There was the moon, reflected in his daughter’s eyes, silver in the dark of her pupils, and Aegon would weep if he had any tears left in him at all. 

“What can I give her?” he asked the wind. How does one raise a child? How does one love a daughter? 

Through the clouds burned the beacon of the Hightower, the nightfire red against the blue night, guiding ships into safe harbour. 

Down, past the tower, Silverwing glided. Back down to the length of the river, back to her island. The silver of her reflection shivered in the river, crossing the face of the moon. 

Aegon sat there, his daughter in his lap, on the fallen pillar on the edge of the island. Perhaps he was even more lost than before. Ten years he had with Elinor, a decade of waking up to her, of falling asleep at her side. All of it, gone, in a matter of days. Is this how my father felt? Is his grief mine now?

He could almost forgive his father. 

I want to go home, he thought suddenly. But I don’t know where that is anymore. 

Where was his place? Where was his daughter’s? Oldtown? King’s Landing? Dragonstone? He had found his in his wife, a woman who carried her roots with her and set them down so easily, but so deeply. She had set them down in his heart, and he had known where he belonged then. But she had unmoored him, left him with only this precious piece of herself, and Aegon feared that he and Alyssa will both be taken by the wind. 

There was no light in her window, when Aegon came back to his lady’s house. He looked up at the dark window, standing in the street below. 

Inside, it was quiet. 

It was quiet in their bed, and cold. 

He pulled down the linens that Elinor had embroidered as a girl for her trousseau, roses and vines and songbirds curling around the edges, slightly worn from years of use. The ones they had slept in the night Alyssa came. He made the bed again, and climbed in. 

For the next week, he slept there still, where the linens smelled of her. Until they no longer did.

That day, he rattled through the house. Everywhere he looked, he saw his wife. Her clothes lay folded in her chests, her shoes under the bed where she kicked them away, her last letter unfinished on the desk. 

It was like she was just in the next room, about to walk through the door at any moment. Waiting for him to call her name. 

He locked the room closed, and slept in the nursery on the opposite side of the house. 

There was nothing for Aegon to do but measure the days by his daughter’s growth. When she first tried to lift her head, when she rolled over the first time, when she spoke her first word. 

And even that was painful. Alyssa was slow to grow, slow to crawl, slow to talk. Every childhood ailment visited their house. Aegon hovered. 

It shamed him how much he needed Alla and Meggara. That he did not know the first thing about babies. ‘What man does,” the septa had said tartly, as she laid Alyssa down. This man will, Aegon vowed.

He kept constant company with Alyssa’s nurses, one a wide-eyed mother of two whose husband died in a storm, who Septa Alla had hired. Jeyne was her name, and she was the one who gave Alyssa suck at her own breast, alongside her infant Tom. She lived in the house with both her sons, and it did gladden Aegon to hear the eldest, Walys, shrieking with laughter below the stairs. The other nurse had also been hired by the septa, a matron of many years named Violet, her own children grown and gone away to sea. 

There was one month where Aegon felt their house was almost happy, when Meggara’s daughter learnt to play with her new cousin, and Lorent napped in the sunny garden every day, and Alla could be heard singing to the babies in the evening. 

But life moved on, and Aegon was left behind by it. Meggara had her own family, Septa Alla had the motherhouse, and Lorent had his duties and studies. 

The world did not stop turning for him. 

When Viserys announced that Princess Rhaenyra would wed Ser Laenor Velaryon, Aegon stood vigil over Alyssa’s latest cough, one that came deep from her chest and made her struggle for breath. He did not go to that wedding, though he wished he had. He remembered Rhaenyra as a baby, the same soft white hair on her head as Alyssa, the same milky smell. Aemma had placed her in Aegon’s arms, had shown him how to hold a baby, how to carefully hold her head up. Aegon grieved that he was not there in Aemma’s place. 

His own child came first. Would always come first. 

His family’s lives spun on, weddings, children, celebrations.

It was Lorent who finally urged Aegon to return to King's Landing, to his brother and his family. His friend’s eyes were bright with unshed tears, as he held Alyssa. “It would be for the best, Aegon. For you and the child.” He tugged at the links that chafe tight around his neck, the metal jingling together.  “She should be with other children, and you should be with your family.”    

That made Aegon look up, his head so very heavy. “Are we not family, Lorent?”

Lorent gave him a soft smile. “I am a maester, Aegon, with all the duties and responsibilities that entails. I fear that you and I alone are not enough. And I do not think that there is anywhere else you can go. I’d give you a fortnight at Highgarden at most, before you’d be forced to flee again.”

Aegon grimaced. But he saw the wisdom in it. The Red Keep had been his first home. Even after so many years away, he remembered growing up there, under his grandmother, with his own cousins. 

“Do you ever tire of being right?” Aegon ran his hand across his face and managed to smile when Lorent chuckled. 

Lorent’s hand was gentle on Aegon’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t be alone like this. I would have suggested it sooner, but I was afraid that Alyssa could not handle the travel. But she is hale now, so the both of you should leave this house and its ghosts behind. I will miss you both.” 

“Lorent.” Aegon could not help the tears that slipped so easily from him. 

“It’s alright, Aegon. It’s alright to try and find some peace again.” Lorent’s eyes crinkled as he offered Aegon a gentle smile. Elinor’s smile. “Write to the king, and tell him his brother is coming home.”      

It took almost half a year before Aegon could tear himself from Oldtown, finding excuse after excuse to delay the move.  

Viserys assured him that he was most welcome at court, that he would find a position for his youngest brother. Aegon cringed when he read that. Viserys meant well, but Aegon was no courtier, no administrator. The court was its own kind of animal, a kind that Aegon was not sure he even remembered how to handle without being bit. But it was too late to turn back, even before they ever set foot out of Oldtown. 

In the early morning, before the sun crested, and the beacon of the Hightower burned bright in the dark sky, Aegon returned to the Stranger’s Garden. 

He sat on the ground beside her grave, laying down the roses he had clipped from their own garden. Elinor had always favoured a strain of pale-yellow roses, the edge of the petals tinged with red bleeding into pink. She had dug up the roots herself at Highgarden, and had planted them when she first bought the manse, coaxing them up the walls of the inner courtyard. 

“We’re going away, my love.” He dug his hand into the grass, still wet with dew. “I’ll do right by our daughter. I swear it. I won’t be my father.” His head resting on his knees, he watched the sun rise again, the morning bells of the Seven Shrines calling the devout to the first prayers of the day. 

“I swear it.”

…

High above King’s Landing, Aegon and Silverwing circled. 

When Aegon the Conqueror flew west from Dragonstone, there was nothing here but rolling green hills and endless forest and a handful of fisherfolk on the banks of the Rush. 

What had the Conqueror envisioned when he first raised the Aegonfort? A city to rival Oldtown? A new Valyria? The histories said that King’s Landing had never been planned, that it sprung up after the storm of the conquest. That would be true to the city’s nature even now, Aegon knew.

King’s Landing sprawled out and up, hooked into the three great hills, crawling down to the rumbling Blackwater Rush. A hundred quays lined the river, just as hundreds of taverns and inns filled the city, with hundreds of manses and merchant’s homes, hundreds of brothels and septs and graveyards and markets. All piled one on top of each other, with barely room to breathe.   

There on Visenya’s hill was the Great Sept, with its seven ivory towers as slim as a lady’s fingers, mirrored on the sister hill of Rhaenys by the looming doom of the Dragonpit, where at night the light of the beasts shone through the gaps. 

The head of the city sat atop Aegon’s Hill, crowned by the castle the Targaryens built for their dynasty. The afternoon sunlight set the Red Keep ablaze, the pale red stone of its looming seven towers shining as if afire. Red, they named it, for the colour of the stones, and the blood spilled on them.

From this god’s eye view, Aegon could see King’s Landing for what it was. A great sleeping beast of a city. 

High above, it was even beautiful.

When Aegon finally guided Silverwing into the Dragonpit, it seemed that the last years had passed the place by entirely. It still had the same repressive air, meant to mimic the caves beneath Dragonstone, dark and expansive at the same time. Beneath him somewhere lurked Dreamfyre, unclaimed since the death of Rhaena Targaryen, the Black Bride. There was a glimpse of Syrax’s yellow scales in the distance, but the dragon faded into the unseen before Aegon’s eyes adjusted to the dimness. 

Silverwing grumbled as he helped the keepers unsaddle her. His silver lady had grown used to the open space of her island in the Honeywine, where she had made her lair for so many years. Her other favourite haunt had been the Red Lake, often sunning herself in on the wooded island in the center, when she and Aegon flew north. The Dragonpit would not be an improvement in her eyes. 

He spoke to her in High Valyrian, apologizing. “At least you won’t be alone here, my lady. You remember Dreamfyre?” More grumbling. Silverwing puffing out a shot of smoke in warning. Aegon patted her cheek, under her huge, slitted yellow eye. It was rather like petting a fire-warmed brick. “Yes, I don’t always love my family either.” She dismissed him with a slow blink of her eye, already moving off into the bowels of the pit, to make her own lair. 

After speaking to the dragon-keepers, Aegon found one of the large wooden tubs filled with water, and splashed his face. He would have to bathe first thing when he arrived at the Red Keep. The smell of sulphur always lingered after dragon riding. 

To his surprise, Ser Harrold Westerling, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, was waiting outside for him. Tall and gruff, the westerman had served under King Jaehaerys before Viserys, and despite his white beard, he still cut an imposing figure. 

“Prince Aegon. The King awaits your arrival.” Ser Harrold gestured to the rest of the escort, one of the men coming forward with a horse for Aegon. Well, Aegon supposed, he couldn’t really walk from the Dragonpit all the way to the Red Keep by himself. Not that he planned to exactly, but he had rarely merited an escort all by himself before, especially from the Kingsguard. In Oldtown, he had had the run of the city when he had been a young lad willing to dye or cut his hair. When he was only thirteen, he had convinced Lorent to shave his head, and Aegon had relished in the anonymity, no one paying a second glance to the young novices traipsing through the back-alleys and wynds. Even as a grown man with a full head of silver hair, two decades spent in the city had inured many to Aegon’s presence in his favourite haunts. It would be quite a different matter in King’s Landing. 

The escort was thoughtful of Viserys. A mark of respect, even. His brother had truly meant it when he said he wanted to welcome Aegon back. So, Aegon would accept the gesture with all the grace it deserved, and gave Ser Harrold a grin and salute. 

“My thanks to you and the king, Ser Harrold. I am eager to see him, and I’m glad you’ve saved me the trouble of getting lost on my way to the Keep.”

Ser Harrold did not smile exactly, but neither did he glower. A victory, by Aegon’s reckoning. 

“In all seriousness, ser, I trust my brother is well? And my niece, Rhaenyra?” Aegon swung himself up on his horse. While not a great rider of horses himself, most of his relatives by marriage were quite horse mad, so Aegon had cultivated a respectable seat over the years. 

Ser Harrold took to that question better than the jape, mentioning that he often accompanied Princess Rhaenyra to the Dragonpit, and how the princess was in excellent health. Aegon was not surprised. Rhaenyra had always been easy to love, an amiable child, and Ser Harrold had seen her through her childhood. No doubt he harboured affection for the princess he had been so often charged to guard. 

The streets were familiar to Aegon, the same buildings crammed together, shading the roads below them with their overhanging upper stories. The stink of King’s Landing was also as he remembered it. Likely even worse. As they crossed from the Street of the Sisters, Aegon could not help but remember the last time he travelled these same streets, still grief-stricken with the loss of Aemma. 

She had been the only family member who had unreservedly wished him happiness with Elinor. He still remembered the way she took Elinor’s hands in her own, kissed her cheeks and named her “sister.” 

It had been how many years since he’d been in King’s Landing last? Five, no, six years? When he’d sworn to uphold Rhaenyra as Viserys’ heir. Aegon had returned to King’s Landing for that ceremony, at Viserys’ specific request, even though his head had barely hit the pillow in his bed in Oldtown before the summons came. 

Daemon was always ahead of Aegon, had been Visery’s assumed heir for the better part of a decade, but it had been no small gesture for one of Rhaenyra’s uncles to publicly renounce his claim in favour of hers, even if it was the wrong one. Aegon had been the first to kneel and pledge himself to his niece’s claim, publicly submitting to Andal law in front of the realm. A daughter comes before an uncle. Two of House Targaryen’s dragonriders committed against the third, though Aegon knew he could never hope to defeat Daemon in battle, if it came to that. 

It never would, now that Viserys had secured the realm with two sons. 

At the steps of the Red Keep, King Viserys held open his arms for his youngest brother. “Aegon!”

Aegon offered his brother a deep bow, his silver braid swinging across his shoulder as he did. “My king!” 

“Up, Aegon! I can’t see you properly down there.” 

Aegon jumped up, grinning, and returned his brother’s embrace. “I stink of dragon, Viserys.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

Viserys looked old, not just older. Kingship had always weighed heavily on his brother, but these last few years must have been the heaviest yet. 

Hand to his brother’s cheek, Aegon asked “Are you well?”

“I am, I am. You’ve always worried too much. Too much thinking in that head of yours.”

“Well, someone has to do it.”

“Too right. Come, much has changed since the last time you ran away. You must greet my wife, and Rhaenyra and her new husband.”

Despite Visery’s obvious joy at his youngest brother’s return to court, Aegon could not help but feel like the odd man out as he was introduced to Viserys’ young wife and children. 

He and Aemma had sat together at their grandmother’s knee, he had danced at her wedding, he had held her infant daughter. He barely knew Alicent Hightower, who seemed so painfully young, with her two young children and another still a babe in arms. Had he ever actually spoken to Otto Hightower’s daughter? Surely, he had, though he could not remember it. 

He knew that the queen was of an age with Visery’s eldest daughter, but it is one thing to hear it, and another to see it. She looked so slight against her children, with huge, sad eyes the colour of a deep, dark wood. 

“You know my queen, Alicent, and here are our children.” Viserys beamed. “And Rhaenyra is somewhere around here, with her husband Ser Laenor Velaryon.”

“Your grace,” Aegon greeted the young queen, bowing. Queen Alicent extended her free hand, as she shifted the infant in her arm.

Something panged in Aegon at that sight. Would he feel that way every time he saw a mother with her baby in her arms? 

Aegon kissed it before giving it a gentle squeeze. “I hope you are well. Children are a joy, but that does not mean they come easily.” 

Her smile was brittle and did not reach her eyes. She was already turning to push forward her son, a pale boy with near white hair. “This is Prince Aegon, the king’s first-born son.” 

“A good name. I am very partial to it myself.” Aegon winked at his little nephew, who glared back, hiding behind his mother. Aegon knelt down, and offered a smile. “My name is Aegon too. Your Uncle Aegon. We’ll have to be Aegons together, if you don’t mind sharing.” 

Little Aegon gave a jerky nod, but did not seem entirely pleased with this arrangement. The queen pulled the other child out from behind her, a sweet little girl about Alyssa’s age who stared straight ahead with big unblinking eyes, toddling on her small feet. “And this is my daughter Princess Helaena.”

Aegon offers the little girl a theatrical bow. “My princess. As beautiful as your mother.” The child cocked her head, before turning back behind her mother. His niece and nephew both watch him with ambivalent expressions from behind their mother’s skirts. 

“And this is Prince Aemond” 

Aegon reached for the baby. “May I?”

Queen Alicent only hesitated for the barest of moments before nodding and shifting her youngest child into Aegon’s arms. Aegon held him with all the care that such a precious thing deserved. 

“A very healthy child. As handsome as his father, I think.” Aegon smiled.  “All your children are a credit to you and my brother, your grace.”

A little brood of silver Targaryens, pale-haired and as violet-eyed as any old Valyrian, for all their mother was a Hightower.

“Yes, they and Rhaenyra bring me such joy.” Viserys urged him on through the gate. “And your daughter, Aegon? Haven’t you brought her with you?”

“Alyssa is exhausted from the travel. Her nurse has been settling her in the nursery.” He paused, and turned to the queen. “As long as that’s alright with you, your grace? Viserys said that it would be, but I would not impose on you, your grace. Having so many young children can be tiring enough without one more underfoot.”

Viserys clapped him on the back. “Of course, it’s not an imposition. All the children should be together.”

Queen Alicent squared her shoulders back. “There is plenty of room, my prince. You will not be imposing, as my husband says.”

Rhaenyra and Ser Laenor were indeed waiting inside the castle for them, and Aegon was gladdened when his niece moved to embrace him.

“Dear Rhaenyra. It has been too long.” He pulled back to look at her. She had started to truly grow into her features, the last softness of childhood slipping away from her face, and Aegon mourned that he had not been there more to see her grow. “You do look very much like your mother when she was young. And I was very sorry to miss your wedding.” Aegon squeezed her shoulders

“Your absence was noted, and you will be held to account,” Rhaenyra said as she smiled. “You can start by greeting my husband.”

Aegon clasped hands with his niece’s young husband. Ser Laenor had grown into a tall young man, with a good-natured face. “Well met, Ser Laenor. Even I’ve heard of your heroics in the Stepstones. Could barely put them together with the boy I remembered, but I see it now. Congratulations on your marriage.”

“Thank you, Prince Aegon. You were missed,” Ser Laenor looked back at Rhaenyra for a moment. “But we are both glad to see you here again.”

“Yes.” Rhaenyra slipped her arm through her husband’s. “We are.”  

…

Alyssa was absolutely inconsolable when Aegon entered the nursery. She was still blubbering when Aegon picked her up, and she immediately latched on with her little hands, pulling at his collar. In between hysterical sobs, Alyssa conveyed to her father how unhappy she was with current circumstances, mainly by screaming “Home!” and “Papa!” and “No!”

The entire journey had been a trial. Every day, when he left to fly Silverwing, Alyssa cried her little heart out, and would not stop until he returned. Alyssa’s long-suffering nurse Violet, who had accompanied them, was even more exhausted than him, gods bless her

Aegon bounced his daughter, as he wandered around the nursery, feeling like an intruder in what was another family’s home.

The décor leaned heavily into Targaryen reds and black, from the curtains framing the wide windows, to the plush Myrish carpets underfoot.  When Aegon had been a child, the nursery had been almost entirely emptied, and he could not recall what it looked like the last time he had been here, when Aemma and Viserys had hopes for their son. 

He wondered if Alicent Hightower had decorated it this way. She must have. For the alternative, that this was how Aemma had left it, was too awful to contemplate. 

Finally, he felt Alyssa start to calm. She was clearly exhausted from all her wailing. Even after she finally fell asleep, Alyssa still had a death grip on his tunic. Aegon plopped down into the nearest chair, and stroked the back of his daughter’s head. He listened to the tiny sound of her breathing, and finally caught his own breath. 

Since her birth, the near-white hair had begun to change into a light gold, and now Alyssa had a full head of soft, bright curls. Aegon could not help but run his hand over them, to feel the gentle warmth of his daughter’s head. 

“Issa qeldlie riñnykeā,” He whispered in High Valyrian. My golden child. It’s almost an answer to a riddle: what is the most precious thing in all the world? A child in their parent’s arms. 

And he remembered again, the last time that he had been in the Red Keep. Elinor and him arm in arm in his childhood haunts. It was under that same oak tree he had loved to climb, where she told him she was with child again. 

“Perhaps the gods will let this one stay.” She had said, their fingers curled together, her other hand on the gnarled bark. The wind smelled of summer. 

They had not. 

Elinor had wanted her own child, her very own, after she had mothered her sisters and brothers. She had wanted a daughter.

How cruel the gods were. 

The tears dripped down Aegon’s cheeks and his nose as he curled over his baby. “I am sorry, I am so very sorry.” 

He did not know how he was to do it, to be mother and father both, when he had barely had either himself. Already, he felt himself floundering under the ever-coming waves of grief. Just when he thought he had his head above the water, another came to knock him down again. 

Thank the gods that the doors were so heavy that it was impossible to miss when they creaked open. It gave him enough time to wipe his face and compose himself. 

It was the queen and her three children. Of course, it was. This was their place. Aegon would have to insist that Alyssa’s bed be moved into his quarters. That was how they had slept in Oldtown, in any case. 

Behind the queen was one of the Kingsguard, a man with the look of Dorne about him. Aegon flipped through the names of the whitecloaks, trying to place him. It had been a while since Aegon had truly kept up with news at court. Thankfully, he did not come up short.

“Your grace.” Aegon greeted the queen with a nod. “Ser Criston Cole.” The knight’s own nod meant that Aegon had managed the correct name. A relief. 

 “Prince Aegon,” the queen said, attempting a polite smile before giving up and letting the exhaustion sweep down her face. She placed her youngest, Aemond, in his own cradle, while little Aegon kept his grip on his mother’s skirts. Ser Criston had circled the room, before going back to stand by the door, eyeing Aegon with suspicion. That was amusing. Aegon, a threat!

Rocking the cradle gently, the queen asked, “Your daughter?”

“Yes. Alyssa.” He stroked his daughter’s hair and offered up a tired smile to the queen. “It was a very long journey. We found out that travel does not agree with her.”

“It does not agree with mine either.” The queen glanced back at Helaena, who had become preoccupied with unraveling the carpet, and then at little Aegon who had already opened the toy chest and was tossing things out.

“Aegon, would you like to see your cousin?” the queen politely prompted.

“No.” The boy looked back and glared. “I’m not sharing my toys!” The boy proceeded to inform them all that it was a crime that he already had to share with Helaena, who wasn’t even fun, and the new baby, who also wasn’t even fun, and he would not be putting up with anymore of this nonsense. He clutched at a wooden dragon. “I will push her! It’s mine!”

Aegon covered up his laugh with a cough, but he wasn’t successful based on the way he could feel Ser Criston’s eyes burning into the side of his head. The queen merely said, in the flattest tone of voice, “We’ll discuss this later, my love.”

 Violet returned at that moment, pausing to curtsey to the queen, and took Alyssa gingerly from Aegon. Taking this out, Aegon excused himself to his own rooms. He needed to take that much needed bath.

 Sinking into the hot water, Aegon rolled his neck in an attempt to relieve the tension there. If Viserys had not asked him to dine privately with him that night, Aegon would have simply called it a day, and sunk into bed. It was delightfully plush, piled high with pillows and coverlets. The queen did not skimp on hospitality, evidently, and Aegon appreciated that. 

Aegon was still eyeing his bed as he combed out his hair, considering how rude he could actually be to Viserys. He resigned himself to merely sunning in the window, drying his long silver hair in the last rays of the afternoon sun. Silverwing had the right of it, he thought. Nothing better than lying in the sun. Viserys had placed his rooms in Maegor’s Holdfast, another kindness to mark Aegon as a close family member. Viserys’ and the queen’s rooms were just up the hall, the nursery across from Aegon’s and down one. Rhaenyra had moved after her wedding, apparently, since her childhood chambers were empty when Aegon looked in on them. Or perhaps she had moved even earlier, when Viserys took his new wife. That would be understandable, Aegon knew. It would have been difficult to live directly atop your new stepmother, so soon after your own mother had died. 

Sighing, Aegon dressed for dinner, and remembered the letter Uncle Vaegon had given him to pass to Viserys. The old man had told him that “I will have my piece to say to the king, and he can ignore it all he wants, but I’ll say it. And no-one will be able to accuse me of not doing my duty by my family.” Vaegon had always taken a curious view on family responsibilities, to say the least. He had ground his heels in the dirt and outright refused when the position of Grand Maester had been tentatively offered to him, but letters with badgering advice? That was merely his due and his duty. And mayhaps even his pleasure. Aegon slipped the letter in a pocket of the dark blue robe he pulled over his tunic, glancing down at the rod and ring seal used by archmaesters. No doubt whatever was in it would make Viserys unhappy. That was always the case with Vaegon’s advice: it was both needed and unwanted. 

The journey was a short one, merely down the long hall. But it felt like half a hundred leagues to Aegon, weighed down by every time he had ever made the same trek before.

Aegon hesitated before stepping into the King’s chambers. These had been King Jaehaerys’ rooms first, where the Old King had spent the waning days of his last years. Aemma would sometimes go to read to him then, children’s tales and children’s histories.

Aemma had told him, once, that the king mistook her for her aunts. That he called her Daenerys, Alyssa, or sometimes even Saera, thinking that his last daughter had come back from beyond the Narrow Sea. 

Pushing aside one of the doors, Aegon could not help cringing at the sound. And that made him feel shame. I am a man grown, and these are my brother’s rooms, he told himself. Jaehaerys had been dead and laid to rest beneath Dragonstone for years. His brother had welcomed him, and invited him to sup privately. The very least Aegon could do was brave his boyish fears he should have banished years ago. 

Still, Aegon trod lightly. The high vaulted ceilings were pierced by the last of the afternoon light, dust motes dancing above Viserys’ model of old Valyria. 

Aegon peered over at his brother’s toy kingdom. He recognized the great towers marking the volcanos where Fourteen Flames burned, the delicate palaces of the dragonlords, even the great spaces for the dragons to lounge, all recorded in various histories with wildly different degrees of accuracy. It was all curiously colourless, wrought in near white stone, and Aegon thought, not for the first time, that his brother was creating a poor shadow of Valyria’s glories. He supposed that black would have made it harder to see the detailed work. 

“Aegon.” The last of the day’s rays hit Visery’s hair, casting him in gold and red. His brother looked smaller, fragile as one of his stone figurines, as he stood in the sun’s fading light. One more blow would shatter him, Aegon thought. He would never envy Viserys the crown; it had taken so much from his brother already. His father, his wife, his lost children. And yet his brother soldiered on. 

“Admiring my great work, I see.” Viserys ran his hand along the edge of the table. 

“Very impressive, brother. When do you suppose it will be done?”

“Oh, likely never. There is always something new to add. Always something to be corrected.” The king took up one of the small dragon models and examined it for a moment. Aegon wondered idly if there was one of Balerion somewhere. Would Viserys wish to be reminded of his own dead dragon? Perhaps not.

The noise of the servants from the next room over broke the silence, and Aegon chuckled with relief, just as Viserys did.

“Shall we sup, then?” His brother asked, extending an arm in the direction of the doorway. 

The table was already set when the two entered the next room. A rack of lamb dotted with mint sat next to a whole roasted capon accompanied by carrots glazed with honey, and spiced with what smelled to Aegon like nutmeg.  Between the main dishes, there was salted greens, fine white bread, and flagons of wine beside.  It was far too much food for a mere two people, but Aegon smiled at the thought of the servants below taking the lion’s share for their own supper that night. It had long been his grandmother’s policy to share out the leftovers to the servants, and Aemma had continued it. No doubt the new queen had as well, she seemed like a thoughtful girl.  “It costs us very little to be generous, and they will remember it well,” Queen Alysanne had said, her soft dry hands running over Aemma's hair. 

Aegon considered the wine, a fine Dornish vintage, if he was not mistaken. In Oldtown, they had drunk mainly Arbor gold, from Elinor’s own vineyard that she had shipped in for their household. Those were Alyssa’s vines now, Aegon supposed. He poured himself water instead. He had already wept today, and had no more in him. 

Viserys had already carved himself a king’s portion of the capon, and Aegon helped himself to the lamb, the bread and the salad. He puckered his mouth at the vinegar used to dress it, before taking another bite. Aegon had always enjoyed the sour and the bitter. 

“So, you’ve returned for good this time, if I’m not mistaken,” Viserys asked in between bites.

Aegon swirled his water contemplatively. “Yes.”

The silence was deafening. 

Aegon cleared his throat. “I was very sorry to miss the wedding, but events being as they were, perhaps it was for the best.”

“Yes. The wedding, it was not what we had hoped for.” Viserys’ shoulders slumped as he brought a hand to his head. “It still weighs on me. The horror of it. It was not a good start to any marriage. But,” Viserys brought his head up and sighed, “I suppose that only the gods know what they have in store. And even we are not quite gods.” His brother had that faraway expression again, the one he had so often worn after he had become Jaehaerys’ heir. Viserys came back to himself, and fixed his brother with their father’s eyes. “I was sorry to hear about Elinor. I know how much you loved her.”

Aegon’s smile was grim. “She was a better woman than I deserved. I only hope I can be a better father to her daughter, than I was a husband to her.”

“Perhaps…” The king trailed off, before shaking himself. “Maybe tonight is not the time to speak of such things.”

Aegon raised his cup, and took that chance to move the conversation along. “Yes, let us speak of happier tidings. A toast to your daughter’s marriage.”

Viserys smiled, and answered with his own raised cup. “To the future of House Targaryen.”

After they both set down their cups, Viserys seemed to have found his footing in the conversation, and began to speak earnestly.  “I cannot tell you how relieved I am that Rhaenyra is finally settled. I thought she was going to spurn every lord in Westeros before she was done. Kept me up at night, dreaming she’d have to marry the pig boy.”

That brought a lopsided smile to Aegon’s face. “She did very nearly spurn all of the lords, you’ll find. Amusing that she ended up finding a husband so close to home. But I think that Grandmother would be pleased with such a match. She was always fond of Rhaenys.”

That made Viserys groan. “She was always the favourite! Bold, clever Rhaenys! Here’s to hoping that Laenor will prove just as formidable.” The king leaned in. “Speaking of the Velaryons, you haven’t had any word from Daemon, have you?”

Aegon rolled his eyes. “I never have any word from Daemon, you know that. I am aware of the marriage, but not from him.”

“Good, good. I thought not, but you never really know with Daemon. He always manages to find some new way to try and drive me into an early grave. That’s part of the reason I was so concerned about Rhaenyra, Daemon asked me for her. It’s why I sent him away again. When he came back for the wedding, I-.” Viserys stopped. “Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s wed Laena Velaryon. A good match for him.”

“Yes, especially after Jeyne Arryn refused his petition for Lady Rhea’s inheritance.” Aegon could not help himself. “Perhaps we should make a Widower’s Law, to prevent such an injustice from occurring again.”

“Aegon. You’ve not even been back a day, and already you harp on Daemon. May I remind you that you’ve never been the model of duty either.”

“No.” He glanced down into the cup.  “No, I have not.” Aegon heaved a great sigh. “But none of us are young anymore. And Daemon has never done more than play at being grown-up.”

“You have always judged Daemon too harshly.”

And you have never judged him harshly enough. Aegon had been there when Daemon had finally pushed too far, too hard. Heir for a Day. 

But Viserys had forgiven him, as he always had.

“You were just speaking of Daemon trying to wed Rhaenyra, I’m hardly harping on-“

Viserys cut him off with a wave of his hand, and Aegon felt his jaw snap closed with a click. 

“Enough talk about old quarrels, Aegon. And to prove it, I will name you the master of laws.”

Aegon did not spit out his drink. As a result, it went down the wrong way and for a moment, he thought this is how I die. Aegon managed to recover with only a small coughing fit. “I don’t see how I’m qualified to fill such a position.”

“Lord Lyonel Strong served commendably, but he now serves as my Hand. Lord Rosby has been trying his best, but frankly, he’s not that young anymore, and he’s always been more loyal than clever.”

“I’m still not sure that I would be best suited to it.”

“Why not? You studied at the Citadel. I know you have strong opinions about the codification of the laws under the Seven Kingdoms.” Viserys sat back and laughed as Aegon grimaced. 

“Of course, you’d bring that up.”

“How could I not? You were a mere boy, and decided that you simply had to present a list of all the laws you needed further reasoning on to our kingly grandfather.

“I had questions! And I thought I should ask the man himself! I was only two and ten! And an idiot!” And I thought it might impress him.

“That’s why you got shipped off to the Citadel.”

“I know, Father and the king practically threw me down in front of Vaegon, with nothing but a note reading ‘He’s your problem now.’”

“How is the venerable archmaester?”

“Crankier than a dragon in an ice storm.”

“So, exactly the same.”

“His knees have gotten worse. He used to make me run up and down the stairs for him, with the shortest messages, just to get rid of me.” Aegon paused. “I say ‘used to’ but he made me do it the day I came to say goodbye.” Aegon dug into his pocket, where he’d remembered to place the letter. He slid it across the table to Viserys. “He wanted me to give you this.”  

His brother’s brow creased as he read, and Viserys swore. “Damn that meddling old man.” Viserys threw the letter to the table, his chest heaving in anger. “More grievances about the succession! I have made it perfectly clear that Rhaenyra is my heir, and I will not replace her, even with half the realm breathing down my neck.”

Aegon threw up his hands helplessly. “I take no blame for whatever Vaegon has said. He certainly doesn’t ask my opinion.” So, the rumours were true. Viserys planned to somehow pass over his sons to install Rhaenyra as heir. He had not really believed it, but here it was from the king’s mouth. Aegon felt unbearably tired. A problem for another day. 

Viserys continued, saying “I doubt he asks anyone’s opinion. Thinks himself above them. Our grandfather used to say that Archmaester Vaegon was born sourer than old vinegar.”

Aegon chuckled. “He does grow on you. Rather like a mould.”

That made the king laugh again. “I had forgotten that you have such a wicked tongue, Aegon.” Viserys pointed his finger at Aegon, and said, “But I mean it. The position is yours, but if you don’t want it, I can find someone else.

Aegon floundered. “I wasn’t saying no. I was just- I’m not-“ He took a deep breath. “I am honoured. I am honoured by your trust in me.” Aegon looked Viserys in the eye, and put all his heart in his words. “I will do my utmost to serve you.” I pray that you will not find me wanting.

“Then it is settled. We will speak with Lord Lyonel tomorrow. He’ll sort out all the details.” Viserys drained the last of his glass, and Aegon noticed the stiffness in his brother’s hand as the king grasped the cup. He frowned. 

“Your hand, Viserys?” Aegon may not have finished forging his silver link, but he had eyes to see, and something was wrong with those fingers. 

Viserys pressed his mouth closed, and shook his head. The king brooded a moment, before speaking in a low voice. “The throne. It has… not been kind to me as of late.” Aegon opened his mouth to speak, but Viserys waved him off once again. “It is of no concern to you, Aegon. I am well enough.” 

This was not a problem for another day, but Aegon was interrupted by a loud knock. The brothers turned to see Rhaenyra poking her head through the door. His niece managed a sort of sheepish, yet unrepentant look, as if saying “you can’t possibly be mad at me,” one she had used often as a small girl on her mother. 

“I was just hoping to speak with Uncle Aegon for a moment. 

“No, no, we were just about done here anyway.” Viserys rose, and smiled at the two of them. “I will bid you both good night. Alicent awaits.”

It was impossible to miss the way Rhaenyra’s face tightened, her mouth going into a flat line. 

“Goodnight, Father.” Rhaenyra watched her father amble out of the room, finally turning to Aegon.  “I just wanted to speak to you about tomorrow’s dinner. I’ve been planning a small, family affair. To welcome you back.”

“Thank you, Rhaenyra, that sounds delightful. As thoughtful as your mother.” Aegon gestured at the table and empty chairs, asking for her to sit with him. “I was hoping to speak to you before I also retired for the night as well.”

Rhaenyra slid into Viserys’ empty seat, settling herself on the edge of the chair. 

“How are you, my child?” Aegon smiled at his niece. “How has marriage been treating you? Well, I hope?” Aegon knew very well that there were some things you could never really say in front of your father, especially when that man was also your king. He hoped that Rhaenyra would feel free to speak her heart to him, without her father hovering over her shoulder. 

“I am well enough, Uncle.” She shifted, and her eyes darted away for a moment. Was it from the awkwardness of her uncle prying into her personal matters, or something more? Aegon decided to take a lighter tack

“I mean it, Rhaenyra. I’m not much when it comes to swords, but I reckon Silverwing would eat Ser Laenor happily enough if it came down to it.” He looked up, contemplatively. “Though I wouldn’t want to give my lady indigestion, it’s a risk I’d be willing to take.”

That did crack a smile from Rhaenyra, no doubt at how ridiculous he was, rather than at the jest itself. “No, nothing like that. Laenor is good and decent man, and a good and decent husband.” She looked down again, the smile slipping away.

“I am heartened to hear that. And yet, you are not happy?”

“This was not the marriage I wanted. It was not of my choosing, Uncle.”

“Well, such things rarely are, among people like us. My grandmother used to say that there were too many people in her marriage: her, the king, and the entire realm.”

“You married for love.” It was not an accusation exactly, but Aegon can feel the sting in Rhaenyra’s words. 

“I did. But I was not the heir to the Iron Throne.” Aegon raised his brows meaningfully. “I was merely the king’s youngest brother, and I had the good sense to fall in love with the eldest daughter of the Lord of Highgarden. And your father was very wroth with me indeed. The only reason he forgave me for not asking his permission was because your mother stepped in for me.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I’m not too surprised. It is not Viserys’ favourite memory of me. But your mother did intervene, and convinced him there was no harm done. She told him it was an excellent match, even if we had gotten a little ahead of ourselves. We were very close as children, your mother and I, and neither of us ever forgot that. When I left the Citadel, and when I married my wife, she defended me to King Jaehaerys and then to your father.” Smiling, he closed his eyes for a moment, and remembered. When he opened them, Rhaenyra was watching him, leaning forward, her violet eyes bright in the torch light. Ah, what a poor child. I recognize that look. Aegon had worn it many times himself. 

“Your mother was wed to your father on account of her Targaryen blood,” Aegon continued. “But she never forgot her house words. As High As Honor. She took her own very seriously, even when it set her against the easiest course. Even when it meant she gainsaid her husband. She was very much like our grandmother in that. She had a certain mettle to her, as I’m sure you know.”

“Yes.” Rhaenyra looked down at her hands, and they sat in silence for a moment, before the princess looked up. “She told me that the childbed was our battlefield. Back before,” Her voice cracked, and she struggled for a moment to clear her throat. “Before she died. 

Aegon reached out, and took Rhaenyra’s hand. “The world lost a good and brave woman that day. And you lost your mother, and for that, I am sorriest of all.” He gave her handle a gentle squeeze. “She loved you very much, Rhaenyra, and she would be so, so happy to see you now.”

“Thank you, Uncle.” She returned the squeeze, and smiled despite the tears in her eyes. “I am glad you are back. Sometimes,” The girl sighed, “I find it difficult to speak to my father about such things. Especially when it comes to Mother. He never talks about her anymore.”

“We all grieve in different ways. Your father has always found it easier to bury it. He’s like your grandfather in that way, I think.”

“Yes.” Rhaenyra nodded, with a resigned quirk of her lips. “You and Daemon have always been easier to talk to.”

“Well, we are your uncles. We’re supposed to be indulgent. Being the father is generally considered the hardest part.” And the gods help Aegon there. That brought a wave of exhaustion down on Aegon, and Rhaenyra saw it. 

“I’ve kept you too long, I fear. I should let you retreat to your rooms for the night.”

“You can never keep me for too long, Rhaenyra. But you are right. I’m afraid I don’t have the same energy I did in my youth. Enjoy while you can.” Aegon slapped his legs and stood. “So, I am very glad to see you again, and I am very glad to hear that Laenor is a good husband, even if you would not have chosen himself for yourself.” He waved a hand around. “I am always here if you want an ear, even if it is just to complain and have someone nod sympathetically. I am very good at that.”

“Complaining?” She asked, cocking her head.

“Nodding sympathetically.”

Rhaenyra smiled, and laughed.

 Feeling lighter than he had in weeks, Aegon walked by himself to his rooms, humming off-key to himself. That did not last long, once he opened his door.

Violet was still sitting up in the front room, not quite dozing off.

“Is Alyssa not abed yet?” He asked with a frown.

“Begging your pardon, milord, she would not sleep in the nursery. She’s in your bed, milord.”

Aegon sighed. “Thank you, Violet. That’s likely for the best.” He didn’t mind. Alyssa had often preferred to sleep next to him, rather than in her own bed. She had done it almost the entire way from Oldtown, frightened of the strange places they stayed at. 

“If you’d like, you could have the afternoon off tomorrow, after Alyssa’s been made ready for the day. To see your son.”

The matron was an Oldtown native, but her eldest son had wed a King’s Landing lass, and had made the capital his port of call. Her other sons were all sailors as well, only returning to Oldtown to see their mother, so when Aegon told his household he was returning to King’s landing, Violet had agreed readily to come with her employer. 

“Thank you, milord. I will, then, if it please you.”

He dismissed Violet to her own bed, and went to his bedroom. There was indeed a lump under the coverlet, and Aegon gently pulled it down to see his daughter’s face. Sleepy eyes blinked up at him.

Lying down next to her, Aegon smiled. “Look what I found. A little lady stealing my bed.”

Silence, accompanied by an accusatory stare.

“Are we not talking anymore?” 

“I want home.” 

“I know, sweetling.” He pulled her to his chest, and they lay with their foreheads touching. “I know you want to go home. But this is our new home. 

“Don’t want.” 

“I know.” He stroked her hair. “I know. Would you like a story, then? Before we go to sleep?”

Alyssa nodded, and settled her head on his arm. 

Aegon cleared his throat and began. “In a land very far away, many years ago, there lived a man with three sons. One day, he said to them ‘it is time you go out into the world and seek your fortune’…”

She was asleep before they got to the end. 

…

Aegon spent the better part of his day in the gardens with Alyssa. 

She was perched on his shoulders, reaching up to tug on the leaves of the great oak at the center of the godswood. That made Aegon smile. 

The sun shone the same as it had in Oldtown. Warm and bright, and there was the green scent of the godswood, the same as their own little garden at the manse. If Aegon closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was there again. He could hear Elinor humming, as she clipped her espaliered pear trees, the winding branches heavy with blossoms. 

Would that he never had to emerge. When he had been a boy, he had had fantasies of disappearing into the kingswood to become a wild hermit. Like the greenseers rumoured to live on the Isle of Faces, lurking among the ancient weirwoods. Aemma had crushed that dream by pointing out that it would be many years until he could grow a beard long enough to fall to his knees, and no would take him seriously as hermit until then. 

And here he was again, contemplating it. 

He was not hiding in the godswood exactly, he was just… a little out of place. He not actually lived at the Red Keep since he was a boy, and here he was, trying to fit himself back into a place that no longer existed. 

No wonder Daemon had been so restless. His brother had always strained at the bit, even as a boy. Unable and unwilling to be consigned to his place as the second son. At least Aegon had his own life in Oldtown, his own friends, his own family, his own purpose. What had Daemon had in King’s Landing? His whores? Certainly not his wife. 

Poor Lady Rhea. 

That rumour kept Aegon awake at night. 

It came to him by way of his good-father, who wrote regularly to one of the Shetts of Gulltown. The Short Thorn had friends everywhere, and they all seemed to adore gossip just as much as Lord Matthos did.

It had pained Aegon that his good-father seemed to know more about Daemon’s exploits than Aegon himself did. And it also pained Aegon to admit that it bothered him. When Lord Matthos had informed him of the rumour that Daemon had killed Lady Rhea, Aegon had been shocked that Viserys had not so much as mentioned it in his letters. A hunting accident, Viserys had said. The lady’s head had been bashed in! A mere day after Caraxes had been sighted by fishermen off of Gulltown! Daemon had not even mourned his lady wife, his “bronze bitch,” before he took Laena Velaryon to wife. 

If Aegon had been the Sea Snake, he would have thrown Daemon from the cliffs of Driftmark before handing over his own daughter, a maid of sixteen, to him. And that would be before Daemon had slain her betrothed, the son of the late Sealord of Braavos. 

Though, the word was that Lord Corlys had been looking for a way out of that betrothal, after the Sealord had died and left his son penniless and dependent on charity. Aegon still thought that Daemon was the least elegant solution the Sea Snake could have contrived. 

But what did Aegon know of Corlys Velaryon? What did Aegon know of Rhaenys’ own mind on the matter? Perhaps Daemon had fallen wildly in love with Laena, and swept her off to Pentos in a whirlwind romance. Stranger things had happened. If any maid could have stolen Daemon’s heart, why not the one who had claimed Vhagar, the very mount of Queen Visenya?

What did he know of his brother’s heart? 

“Down,” came the request by his ear. 

“Down, please.” He corrected his daughter, as he lowered her to the ground. 

She let go of his hand to toddle a little way up the path, looking back for him with every step. 

Aegon was so tired. Was he always going to feel this tired? Should he have stayed in Oldtown? Likely, yes, but it was far too late. What had Viserys said? That he ran away? Was that what he’d been doing, running away?

They sent me away first, he thought bitterly. They were the ones who didn’t want me.

But Viserys did want him now. And so did Rhaenyra. That would be enough for Aegon. It would have to be enough.

They dined early that night, so that all the children could join them. Aegon did the rounds with Alyssa, who had been introduced to many lords and ladies during their journey, and did not seem particularly impressed with her royal relatives. 

“Say hello to your Uncle Viserys, sweetling.”

Alyssa gave an imperious “hello,” and allowed herself to be held by Viserys without protest. She kept her eyes on Aegon, and one hand on his sleeve, to make sure he couldn’t escape and abandon her with this strange man. Viserys found this funny, judging by the way he had chortled.

“She looks a little bit like Rhaenyra did when she was a child. Though,” Viserys turned to his daughter. “You were never that clingy. Always wanted to go off and meet new people.”

Rhaenyra touched one of Alyssa’s curls, and smiles. “Was I?” she murmured. She turned to Aegon. “Tell me, uncle, who do you think your daughter resembles? My father says me.”

Aegon was capable of speaking about Elinor without weeping, so he cleared his throat and soldiered on to answer the question. “I think she resembles my wife, and my family by marriage mostly agree with me. Except for her eyes and hair, of course.” Aegon thought them wrong. Alyssa had Elinor’s wild curls and smiling eyes already. But everyone saw the Targaryen colouring first.

“I think she looks like you,” Rhaenyra declared. “The blood of the dragon always comes out strong.”

“If you think so,” Aegon agreed pleasantly. Rhaenyra likely did not remember Elinor all that well, and no doubt she saw her own family in Alyssa, where Elinor’s sisters had seen theirs.

Viserys gave Alyssa back, and Aegon set her on the floor next to Helaena.

This time, Alyssa was awake enough to properly meet her cousins, and she seemed more willing to take to them than they did to her. Alyssa had played with other children before, her Florent cousins, her milk brother, and she knew the rules of engagement. 

Helaena seemed more interested in trying to take off her shoes, and young Aegon, well, he was far more interested in being the center of the adults’ attention. He had been eyeing the fireplace, when Ser Criston intervened, and pulled him gently back with a whisper. Viserys had the children all dismissed as the food made its entrance, something that pleased neither Alyssa or young Aegon, who could be heard screaming in the hallway as they were carried away.

At the head, Viserys presided over his family, and dictated the flow of the conversation. Aegon sat to his right, with Rhaenyra on his other side. The queen sat across from him, and Ser Laenor next to her, opposite of Rhaenyra. At the small table, it felt almost cozy, especially with Viserys constantly leaning in and reminding his little brother of something foolish he had done once, and Aegon could only laugh at himself.

Rhaenyra set a generous table, to say the least, and Aegon found he was indeed hungry. A suckling pig had been carried out to great fanfare, and Viserys carved them all a portion himself.

Before they began to sup properly, Rhaenyra stood, clasping her goblet in both hands, a shy smile on her face. “Since we have the pleasure of Uncle Aegon being back with us, I have asked you all to join me tonight to celebrate our family. To my dear uncle and his daughter.” She raised her cup to Aegon, with Viserys calling “Hear, hear!” as he did the same.

“And,” She continued, her eyes sparkling bright violet in the candle light, “Laenor and I have an announcement. I am with child.” She held out her free hand, jerking her head at Ser Laenor to stand with her. Her husband stood up, the chair shrieking as it was pushed back, and the young man grasped Rhaenyra’s free hand across the table.

“Yes! We are so pleased that, uh, our houses’ future is secured.” Laenor looked from Rhaenyra to Viserys, who was already rising to embrace his daughter, back to Rhaenyra again.

Viserys was absolutely beaming, wasting no time in pulling his daughter into his arms. “How wonderful, my dear girl. The heir’s heir already! Well done, the both of you!”

That was the only topic of conversation then, the queen quietly congratulating her stepdaughter and Ser Laenor, and Viserys already thinking ahead to the babe’s birth. Rhaenyra was already three months along, so the child would be born before Rhaenyra and Laenor had been married for even two years. Sometimes, gods are good, Aegon thought. What a relief it must be to his niece, that she had accomplished this duty so quickly. She was glowing, all smiles and good cheer, and Ser Laenor had plain relief written on his face, though he accepted the congratulations awkwardly, shoulders coming up around his ears.

“A full nursery, then, I expect,” Aegon commented to the queen, who was watching Rhaenyra silently.

It took her a moment to respond. “Um, yes. I suspect so. Excuse me.” The young queen waited until Viserys had pulled away to say something in a low voice to Rhaenyra that Aegon could not hear.

Rhaenyra looked down at the queen’s hand, and brushed her own against it and made a reply that Aegon could not hear either. Aegon remembered suddenly that the queen had been Rhaenyra’s companion once, the little girl with russet hair he had seen in the gardens with her years ago.

“It is a joyous day, indeed!” Viserys clapped Aegon on the back, tearing him away from watching the young pair.

“Yes! Indeed!” Aegon clinked his glass against Viserys’.

“We must plan something,” His brother began to ramble. “Not a tourney. No, certainly not that, but a feast? A ball, perhaps? I will have to put it into Alicent’s hands. Perhaps Rhaenys will have an opinion.”

“She usually does.” Aegon replied.

The rest of dinner went about as he expected, Viserys unable to talk of anything else, while Rhaenyra basked in her father’s attention. Perhaps this will bring them back together. Aegon hoped it would. Viserys had loved each and every one of the children Aemma had lost, and now his eldest child was about to make him a grandfather. Between his children, and now his grandchild, Viserys would finally have what he had spent so many years seeking. Aegon smiled behind his glass. Sons, daughters, grandchildren. What king could ask for more?

When the party broke up, Viserys had insisted on dragging Aegon to see the newest foundation for his model, while the queen and Rhaenyra lingered behind them.

Aegon almost feel asleep in the king’s room, as his brother rambled on about the integrity of the tower bases or something along those lines. It was Ser Harrold who rescued him, by loudly offering to escort the king’s brother back to his rooms.

 It took several days for Aegon and Alyssa to settle in properly, and Aegon had just about written the nursery off, when Alyssa declared that she wanted to sleep with the other children. Something about her cousin Aegon saying she was a baby for sleeping with her father. Or that’s at least Aegon had gathered from the string of words she had put together. Well, they’d see how long that lasted. It was good that Alyssa had something to occupy her as Aegon dove back into court, hoping he could tread water as the new master of laws.

Aegon had his first small council meeting the next day, and it felt like the first time he had ever attended one of the archmaester’s lectures. It was good thing that he had mastered years ago a solemn expression of contemplation that made his silences appear weighty, rather than the result of his mind trying to cobble some coherent thoughts together.

That was something Vaegon had taught him. If you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, shut up and listen. Of course, Vaegon was of the opinion that Aegon never had anything worthwhile to say, but that was the archmaester’s prerogative.

At least the children wouldn’t notice when Aegon said something inane. Or if they did, they couldn’t properly eviscerate him like his uncle would have. So, he found himself spending his free moments in the nursery with his daughter, and his brother’s young children.

The queen, for all that she might have minded it, never said a word against him being there. And she seemed warmer when her children were with her, like she had back some missing piece when she was with them.

It was also just about the only conversation that Aegon felt completely at ease making with his brother’s young wife. Bringing up the weather was not a long-term strategy, but the children? Always something new.

Today, Aegon was rocking the youngest, making various faces at him.  Aemond’s arms snaked out of the swaddling and started waving at his uncle.

“Energetic young lad, aren’t you.” He glanced back at the queen. “Is he holding his head up yet?”

“Some. He practises all the time.” The young woman had sunk into one of the chairs, but had sat up straight again when Aegon picked up the baby. 

“I don’t suppose his cradle egg has hatched yet?” 

“Cradle egg-“ The queen furrowed her brow as she stopped, and then something dawned in her eyes. “I did not-“ She tried again. “I am not a Targaryen, my prince. I am not familiar with your customs. Last time anyone spoke of dragon eggs to me was when Prince Daemon had stolen one.”

“I had heard of that incident. Your father and Rhaenyra retrieved it, as I understand.” Aegon looked down at Aemond, at his sleepy violet eyes. “There is a custom of placing an egg in the cradles of new-born Targaryens. If they hatch, they form a bond with the child. It is thought to be safer than claiming a dragon when they are older. Am I to take it that none of your children had one?”

“No. Neither Helaena nor Aegon received one. I had not even thought to ask.” The queen’s hands twisted in her skirts. “There is much I do not know about my husband’s house.”

“Well,” Aegon considered what he would say next carefully. “It is a tradition of our house, but it is not always followed rigidly. I believe it started when Rhaena Targaryen placed an egg in her brother’s, the future King Jaehaerys, cradle with him.” He cleared his throat. “I, myself, did not receive one, for example.” His own father had not even thought of it in his grief, according to Viserys. Daemon had claimed that Baelon had refused to do so for the murderer of his wife, but Daemon always lied. “I don’t believe my Uncle Aemon did, or my father, either. Jaehaerys meant for them to claim a grown dragon. But I had thought that Viserys would do so for his own children. He did for Rhaenyra, and there had been one selected for…” Aegon cleared his throat again. Gods spare him from his own mouth. “I am merely surprised. Rhaenyra plans to select one for her own child, so I had assumed…” He had really put his foot in it now. 

The queen was struggling to contain herself, a small tremble in her lip. One of her small hands came up to her mouth, and Aegon noticed the dried blood on the beds of her fingernails. Oh, child. That made Aegon decide to say what he said next. 

“Your grace, why don’t we bring this to Viserys? I’m sure he will agree to it for Aemond. The boy is still young enough for one. In fact,” Aegon dove on recklessly, “Viserys and young Aegon could even select it together. An older sibling helping to choose is the done thing, afterall.”

Queen Alicent slowly nodded, bringing her hand down. “Yes, that is an excellent suggestion.”  

She requested Aegon join her as she approached her husband on the matter, taking her little son by the hand. Viserys had been surprised, but agreed, as Aegon expected. It had merely slipped his mind, especially since little Aegon had come so soon after…. Well, it was understandable. 

Queen Alicent had given him the first true smile he had seen from her, her eyes scrunching up as her eldest son whooped at the prospect of a trip down to the Dragonpit with his father. 

Aegon was a little surprised himself, when Viserys took it for granted that he would be coming along. He was far from opposed to it, he just thought Viserys might have made it into something special for his eldest child, just the two of them. But perhaps Viserys just wanted his son to get on well with his uncle. That thought warmed Aegon’s heart.

They all trundled off to the wheelhouse that day, the queen waving them off, with her son taking it as the grandest adventure he had ever been on, promising to tell his mother everything when he came back.

Young Aegon chattered the whole way to the Dragonpit, practically hanging out the wheelhouse window. 

Viserys looked on contentedly with his hands folded across his lap as Aegon attempted to wrangle his nephew. The boy was ecstatic at every new sight, and there was the constant question of “What’s that” on his lips. 

“Whatsthat”

“That is a man of the city watch.”

“Whatsthat”

“I believe that is a wagon, with cabbages in it.”

“Whatsthat”

“That’s a horse.” 

They got to the Dragonpit before little Aegon managed to escape his uncle’s grasp and go head first through the window onto the Street of the Sisters. A small mercy, since Aegon would surely have to flee into exile after that, and he didn’t fancy having to live with Daemon.

The bronze doors of the Dragonpit shuddered open for the king, light chasing away the oppressive dimness that the dragons made their homes in. 

Somewhere below, Silverwing rumbled. Aegon hadn’t been to take her out flying since they had arrived, and no doubt she would let him know her displeasure soon enough.

 Viserys was standing, looking up at the vast archway. “I never spent too much time here,” he commented. “Balerion was too large for it.”

It was easy to forget that this was the same Viserys that had been the last to ride the Black Dread, a beast so large an auroch could ride down its throat, whose flame could melt stone itself.

The first time Aegon had seen his father and Viserys fly together, it had nearly stopped his boyish heart, when Balerion and Vhagar blocked out the sun entirely, the horses’ screams ringing in his ears. He could still feel the coolness of their shadows on his skin, and a shudder came over Aegon.

“Yes,” Aegon said through his dry mouth. “He was, wasn’t he.”

Viserys looked back, grinning, and Aegon saw then his invulnerable older brother, tall and proud, Baelon’s heir, rider of the Conqueror’s mount, who knew the answer to every question. And then a cloud passed overhead, a shadow, and he was Viserys the king again, smaller and older.

Little Aegon was fidgeting, and Aegon grabbed him by the back of his shirt before the boy went charging directly into the dark expanse of the Dragonpit.

“Your mother would not appreciate it if I let you get eaten the first time I take you someplace,” he told the boy. The child had the audacity to roll his eyes at him!

Grumbling, Aegon called over the dragonkeepers and had a long conversation with the eldest about what eggs were available. There were four from Dreamfyre’s last clutch, two of which remained in King’s Landing, the other two having gone to Dragonstone where they might hatch beneath the dragonmount. And there were another three from Syrax, making five for little Aegon to select from.

While his nephew began his very serious and important inspection, Viserys came up behind Aegon, having listened to the entire conversation thoughtfully.

“When was the last time Silverwing laid a clutch?”

Aegon hummed for a moment. “Eight years ago, I think? Practically had to beat the maesters off with a stick. I thought for sure that at least one of them would manage to abscond with an egg for study. I was actually glad to see Daemon when he came to retrieve them.” They both laughed. 

 Little Aegon came running up, hands and knees dark with mud, and jumped up and down before Viserys. “Father! Father, I want to show you-“ 

Viserys frowned, and cut the boy off, chiding, “I am speaking with your uncle at the moment. It does not do to interrupt your king.”

His nephew wilted, his head sinking, and all the bounce went out of him. 

“Oh, Viserys, he’s just excited. Children are meant to be a little rude, I think. That’s part of being children.” Aegon said dryly. He turned back to little Aegon. “Have you found any that will do for your brother, yet?”

That perked the boy up. “Yes! I want to show my father first!” He turned back to Viserys, hands clasped in contrition, but his head up again. 

Aegon grinned at his brother, and gestured at him to answer the boy. Viserys sighed. “Very well then. Show us.”

His nephew looked nervously from the king to his uncle and back again.

“You heard your father. Lead the way, my prince,” Aegon encouraged. 

It was a very nice egg, and Aegon had seen enough of them to feel he could make that judgement. He told young Aegon as much. It was a lovely deep blue, almost black in the dim light. 

The boy had insisted on placing in it his brother’s cradle himself, his mother hovering behind him to make sure he didn’t drop it on the baby.  Hanging onto the wooden side of the cradle, Aegon looked up and asked, “When will it hatch, Uncle?”

“In a few days mayhaps. Or more likely in a few weeks or even months.”

“I want it to hatch now.”

“You’ll just have to have some patience then. Can’t exactly rush a dragon.”

Little Aegon hung his head back and groaned. 

He began to rattle the cradle in anger, and his mother pulled him off. “None of that please, my heart.”

“But I want it to hatch now! Now! Then the baby wouldn’t be so awful!”

“You have to be patient,” The queen pleaded. “You heard your uncle.”

“I hate him! I hate Aemond! I hate you!”

Prince Aegon, eldest son of the King of Westeros, dropped to the floor and began screaming his head off, and his mother the queen burst into tears

It took Aegon half an hour to sort out both mother and child, taking his nephew outside to scream himself out and returning with a glass of watered-down wine for the queen to sip while she finished crying. “Nothing wrong with a few tears,” he told her, feeling utterly ridiculous saying this to a mother of three. But it sounded like something Septa Alla might say, so he did.  He then sent them both to take naps, channeling Septa Alla’s brusque manner, and neither had resisted.

He had no doubt that the queen would return to see him, with a dignified and sincere apology on her lips, but at that moment, she let him shepherd her back to her rooms, promising her all the while that he had the children and that she was not to worry.

Aegon had terrible feeling that he was about to spend a great deal of time with the children in his charge.

Gods have mercy on him.  

…

Aegon was only resting his eyes for a moment when the queen entered. 

If he had thought Alyssa was a fussy baby, the last months with Aegon and Helaena had proved he knew nothing about such things. Aegon was nearly impossible to untangle from the queen, especially when the poor thing was near run to exhaustion and barely had a moment to herself. Little Aegon had made it clear that his uncle, the Other Aegon, was a poor substitute for his mother, which was fair enough, and seemed to resent every moment with Uncle Other. He especially persisted in calling Aegon that when the queen told him it was rude. Privately, Aegon thought it was very funny, but he had no wish to undermine the queen in front of her son, so he very seriously nodded with her. 

Helaena was very sweet when calm, but it was very difficult to predict what would set her off and when, and if she started crying around Alyssa, there would very quickly be two bawling children. The little princess was not fond of crowds, noisy rooms, or strangers, so Aegon was doubly relieved when he somehow passed the line between unknown, unacceptable personage, to familiar and tolerable. Helaena would allow him to pick her up now, and had even once pressed a dead beetle into his hand. It had taken all Aegon’s self-control to not giddily show it to the queen and Ser Criston. 

That morning, the queen was extremely apologetic when she arrived hand in hand with young Aegon, Helaena on her hip. 

“I’m so sorry to inconvenience you like this, my prince. But there is so much to do, with the celebrations for the birth, and Lord Velaryon and Princess Rhaenys expected any day now, and Aemond is teething, and…” She looked up helplessly. “Aegon is having a morning, and he won’t be left alone.”

“Say no more, your grace. Shall we trade?” Aegon smiled as daughter came dashing over. Alyssa had been darting around the room, having acquired a loose silk tunic that flew out delightfully when she ran, but had rushed over as soon as she heard the queen’s voice. 

“Or shall I squire both a prince and a lady today?'

There was a chorus of “I don’t want Uncle Other” and “Hel! Hel! Hel!” and Aegon moved to rescue the queen from the two children tugging on her skirts. He gently pulled Alyssa away, who had a look in her eye that said she was about to jump for Helaena (never mind that she was barely bigger than her cousin and certainly not up to catching her). 

“Alyssa is fine. She and Helaena always play nicely together.” Unlike young Aegon, who had discovered his new calling as a hair puller. 

“Well, my young prince,” Aegon turned to his nephew. “It seems that we will be causing trouble in the library on this fine day.” The law of the land prevented the archivists from killing either Aegon, and that cheered the elder immensely. 

Little Aegon perked up at the word trouble. And then he yanked on his uncle’s braid. 

Aegon took his nephew to the largest set of stairs in the Holdfast, and pointed them out to the boy.

“You see those stairs. I bet that I can get up them first.” The little prince had taken the challenge, and every other challenge his uncle issued that morning with the full force of his little body.

It was bad of Aegon to take the young child and let him run between the stacks as he searched out the proceedings of the Grand Council, but who was going to stop him? Certainly not the young master, who still had the weedy, nervous look of an acolyte, who looked like he was going to start crying when he saw them.

After that exciting morning of terrorising the young maester at the library, and then running young Aegon up and down as many stairs as he could find, Aegon was prepared to admit defeat. He had also had to run up all the stairs. Thankfully, his young nephew was willing to call a truce. 

He had stretched out on the floor, next to his sleeping nephew, who had sunk into a nap the second he hit the Myrish carpet. 

Aegon had only meant to close his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them, the light had shifted from the late morning well into mid-afternoon.

Ser Criston was not laughing at him, but the knight was certainly amused by the grown man groggily sitting on the floor.

The queen had covered her own smile with a hand, and Aegon sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. The young prince beside him had his mouth wide open in sleep, and his pale blonde hair was absolutely a tangle. 

“I suppose we missed nuncheon, then?

The Kingsguard scooped the little prince into his arms, little Aegon grumbling in his sleep. “You did.”

“I’m sure we can find something for the both of you,” the queen said lightly. “Helaena and Alyssa are resting in my room. I do appreciate you wearing Aegon out. Thank you.”

 Aegon waved his hand. “I don’t have any meetings until this evening, and I am always glad to see Aegon. Although,” he added, “I’ve never felt so old before.”

“Perhaps it is time for Aegon to start in the training yard,” Ser Criston offered, Aegon’s head dangling over one of his arms.

“Perhaps,” Aegon agreed thoughtfully, looking to see the queen’s reaction.

“He is so young still.” She said, going over to tenderly brush her son’s hair from his face.

“Most boys are around his age when they begin,” Ser Criston argued. “I was, and besides, he wouldn’t be ready for a real blade for many years. It would be a way for him to use up all his energy.”

“Especially since he should start learning his letters soon. He’ll need to be able to sit still for that. I could start with him as soon as Ser Cristons begins training him.” Aegon interjected.

The queen looked between the two of them, putting a finger to her lips in thought. “I’ll consider it.” She said finally.

“Your grace, I assure you I would let no harm come to the prince.” Ser Criston’s solemn vow was undercut by the open-mouthed child sleeping in his arms, but the queen smiled softly at him, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I know, Ser Criston. Perhaps we can discuss this tomorrow, after I’ve asked the king his thoughts.”

While the whitecloak moved to put his charge to bed, the queen turned back to Aegon, the same thoughtful look on her face.

“You spend a lot of time with the children. A great deal, and it seems that you are volunteering to educate Aegon as well.”

“Mmm.” He rubbed the ring on his thumb. “I suppose I do. I was meant to be a maester, and that’s one of the duties you train for. To care and teach for children.”

“It is, isn’t.” The queen looked at him, her arms crossed loosely across her front. “My brother Leyton is studying at the Citadel. He told me something similar. Though he has ambitions to be an archmaester.”

“Ah, well, there is a difference between a maester and an archmaester. Most of the archmaesters I know would make terrible maesters. That’s why they keep them locked up at the Citadel, you know, to prevent them from inflicting themselves on the rest of the realm.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen an archmaester’s attempt at bedside manner. My Uncle Vaegon, in particular, has a reputation for his… sensitivity. Hence why he is an archmaester, not a mere maester.”

“Did you have any ambitions to be an archmaester?”

“No. Just a maester. Though I had my doubts. Clearly.” He gestured to his lack of chain.  “It’s a life of service, your grace. You learn to set broken bones, to be a listening ear, to comfort the sick and dying. Not all men have it in them.”

“And you did not wish to serve?” If that question came from someone else, Aegon might have taken it as pointed. He might even be offended. But he can hear the honest curiosity in the queen’s voice, so he answered in kind. 

“No, I did not mind the service. I may even have been suited for it. I left that life for a different reason entirely.” He half-smiled. “And, I may have left it, but clearly it hasn’t left me.” Aegon rubbed his chin, and chuckled. “Daemon calls me ‘Lord Maester’ still. He was always of the opinion that I never should have gone to the Citadel in the first place.” The only one, in fact. Even Viserys had thought it for the best. “But Daemon has always been the fierce one.”

When he looks up, the queen had turned her eyes to the open window, where a soft breeze was fluttering the curtains.

“Yes. You really are nothing like Prince Daemon.” She murmured, almost to herself.

“Thank you.” Aegon closed his eyes and laughed a little. “Thank you, your grace.”

She turned back to him, her hands held elegantly in front of her. “If the king agrees, I would like you to start teaching Aegon his letters. He might listen to you more than one of the maesters.”

“A tall order, my queen. But not impossible.” He already began to consider it. Letters, and heraldry, and High Valyria, and histories, and half a dozen other things that any prince should know. And, perhaps, a king.

 That was to be the subject of his evening, the question of kingship. Or rather, queenship. He had already sought out the Hand to speak privately on certain matters of the law, and Aegon spent his remaining time sorting through his notes.

Lord Lyonel Strong had the look of a brawler, rather than a scholar. He had fathered Ser Harwin, who men named Breakbones, after all. But when Lyonel Strong spoke, the force of an intellect that had forged not one, but six links at the Citadel (two more than Aegon had) became clear. 

He had been the master of laws before being appointed Hand of the King, when Viserys had dismissed Ser Otto Hightower, and Aegon had been impressed by the thoughtful organisation of Lord Lyonel’s records. He was also fairly certain that Strong was the author of a coveted set of notes that had been circulating at the Citadel when Aegon was an acolyte. Lorent had spent four night’s worth of drinking money to get his hands on them, and Aegon felt almost giddy that he had access to the bulk of Lord Lyonel’s work of the last decade. He had already written to Lorent with a choice selection of copies. 

So, it was with no small amount of hesitation that Aegon decided to approach Lord Lyonel with his concerns. He had no interest in disrespecting someone clearly more experienced than him, and while he knew that the chances of Lord Lyonel pummelling him were next to none, he still harboured a small tinge of irrational fear that he just might. 

“I wanted to broach this subject with you first, Lord Lyonel. Before I do so with the king.” Aegon took a deep breath. “I am well aware of your own expertise in the law, so I hope that you will have an answer to my concerns.”

“I will endeavour to try, my prince.”

“It’s about the Princess Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne.” Aegon watched as Lyonel Strong leaned back, a look of exhaustion coming down on his face. 

“Of course, it is,” muttered the Hand. 

“I know, I know,” Aegon gestured helplessly. “But I have done my own due diligence in the matter, as your successor as Master of Laws, and I am,” Aegon paused to consider his words. “Unsatisfied with the legal strength of the princess’s claim?” He made it a question, in effort to avoid offending Lord Strong, and the man folded his hands across his stomach, clearly waiting for Aegon to continue. 

“It’s just that,” Aegon riffled through the papers, “Viserys’ own claim was predicated on the agreement that the lords of the realm preferred him over Princess Rhaenys. That the throne would not pass to a woman, nor through the female line, elsewise it would have gone to Laenor Velaryon.”

“Those same lords agreed to Rhaenyra over Daemon.” Lord Lyonel replied dryly. 

“Yes, but there is precedent for that. Andal law states that a daughter comes before an uncle.”

“King Jaehaerys was willing to go against that same law when he chose your father Baelon as Prince of Dragonstone over Rhaenys.

“Jaehaerys always favoured a male claimant over a woman. And, in any case, Andal law places a son before a daughter. None of these cases help Rhaenyra, not when she has trueborn brothers. The entire reason Rhaenyra was even considered heir in the first place, was because the king’s infant son had died.” Aegon fiddled with his ring as he continued. “And there is of course, the matter of Jaehaerys’s own claim. His elder sister, Rhaena Targaryen, contested the throne briefly. And insisted that her own daughter should be the next heir to the Iron Throne. They were both passed over in favour of Jaehaerys and his male line. Again, a son before a daughter.” Aegon looked up, and met the Hand’s eyes. He would cease his cowardice, dancing around what he meant to say. “That is the heart of the problem. Never, in the history of the six kingdoms, has a daughter come before a son. We are not in Dorne.”

The Hand merely stroked his beard, his dark eyes bright with consideration. That was a hawk’s gaze, Aegon thought. But he was no prey. 

Aegon pressed his hand to his papers, letting his own displeasure show on his face. “And yet, the king does not seem to realize it. That all of our laws set his son above Rhaenyra. Tell me, Lord Strong, what is my brother’s plan? Does Viserys propose to change the laws of succession? For the whole realm, or even just for the Targaryens? Does he mean to add to the Doctrine of Exceptionalism? To make absolute primogeniture the law for our house? If so, he will face a mighty resistance. How many lords have an elder sister? How many sons would be unseated by an older daughter? Is this the mountain that Viserys is proposing we summit?”

Lord Lyonel waited for Aegon to finish before speaking. “He has named Rhaenyra his heir, and he will not unname her in favour of young Aegon.” He paused, meaningfully, letting the silence stretch out between them.

“Is that all? Is that all he plans to do?” Aegon was truly baffled. “That is not enough, it will not be enough. Surely, he knows that.” The Hand slowly sat up, stroking his beard again. Aegon dove on. “We must be honest with each other, Lord Lyonel. I do not mean to unseat Rhaenyra, it is just that you cannot, in good faith, tell me that most of the nobles in the realm do not expect for Viserys to be succeeded by his firstborn son, now that he has one. They swore that oath when Rhaenyra was his only child, and the only other option was Daemon. And yet,” Aegon tapped the table, “And yet, Viserys does not seem to realise this.”

“All these concerns and more have been raised with the king, my prince.” Lord Lyonel fixed Aegon with his steely gaze. “By Ser Otto Hightower. The king dismissed him for it.” Aegon sat back in shock. Viserys had dismissed Ser Otto, who had served as hand to Jaehaerys, who had been Viserys’ dearest friend, above even Daemon, for telling him that he was running headlong into a succession crisis. Aegon had thought, well, he had thought that perhaps Viserys had finally gotten tired of Otto always hovering over him, or even taking liberties as the king’s new good-father, but for doing what Otto had always done, giving infuriatingly sensible advice? Well, Aegon was at a loss.

Lord Lyonel gave him a small, twisted smile. “You see the predicament I am in. As Hand, I must needs inform my king when there is trouble on the horizon. Yet, my king dismisses any and all who gainsay him. He has named Rhaenyra his heir, oaths have been sworn, and that is enough for him.”

“By the gods,” Aegon marvelled. “We’re fucked, aren’t we.” It was not a question. 

“Perhaps not. You are the king’s brother. You can speak the truth to him. To him, and to Rhaenyra. If she recognizes the weakness of her own claim, and willingly steps aside, that would avert any bloodshed.”

“If not…” Aegon spun the ring on his thumb. Rhaenyra’s seat would never be secure when she had legitimate brothers, not if Viserys left matters as he had. The law dictated Viserys would be succeeded by his son. Rhaenyra would never put her own brothers to the sword, but…. others might. Would she be willing to war for the throne with her own kin? 

The bad mood lingered with Aegon, and he held his daughter closer that night, when he tucked her in. Elinor had told him he had a voice fit only for lullabies, so he used it for that, dredging up the Song of the Seven from his boyhood memories. All he could remember was the start.

“The Father's face is stern and strong,

he sits and judges right from wrong.

He weighs our lives, the short and long,

and loves the little children.”

His dreams came ill that night. He dreamed the funeral dream again, of digging the grave with the horrible not-Elinor at the bottom. And when the pyre burned, it was not the Prince of Dragonstone on it, but Aemma, her silver hair burning up around her as her flesh charred. 

When he awoke, Aegon could still taste the smoke in his mouth. 

He flung open his curtains, and sat a while in the sunrise, letting day chase away the remnants of the dream. Running his hand down his face, Aegon tried to banish his darker thoughts, to think of lighter things. Like the weather. So he did. 

The sky was perfect blue, where it was not tinged pink by the last of the sunrise, dotted with white fluffs of cloud, and there was a hint of a breeze on the horizon. A perfect day for flying. Aegon knew he had been neglecting his silver lady as of late. In Oldtown, he had flown her nearly every day. He would usually try to take her up the Honeywine, where they had become accustomed to the sight of Silverwing, and avoid startling the countless ships that sailed into the Whispering Sound daily. 

But no matter. He would put it off until later in the day. Aegon had already promised Rhaenyra he would visit with her this day, and he was loath to break a promise to her. 

His niece hid it well, but as her pregnancy approached its end, it was clear she feared the outcome. She had taken to pacing wherever she could, slowed down by her belly but no less fretful. 

It was at the suggestions of the maesters that she started taking the air in the gardens regularly, something which Rhaenyra had seized upon with some relief. She had confided in Aegon how desperately she missed flying Syrax.

She did not like to walk alone, and would invariably have some companion, usually Ser Laenor, her sword Ser Harwin Strong and, on rare occasions, Viserys when he could spare the time. 

Rhaenyra was already waiting for him, dressed in somber black, pacing.

“We should set you to making new roads if you keep at that.”

“Oh, not now, Uncle. I’m in no mood for your japes.” She put one hand on her hip, her mouth stern, but the affect was undercut when she rolled her eyes. “I was promised a sympathetic ear, and you are late!”

“You have my full apology, and my very sympathetic ears; two in fact.”

Rhaenyra huffed in indignation, but she let him take her arm and escort her as they moved into the gardens.

She had taken him at his word, when he had promised to nod along to her complaints, from the general horridness of being almost nine-months gone with child, to the specific problem of being unable to sleep anyway on but on her back even though that was immensely uncomfortable, to her husband having left her jaunt off to High Tide yet again. Aegon nodded, and made understanding noises. There were very few people that Rhaenyra could confide her thoughts to, and she seemed to visibly lighten as she poured out her complaints.

It was when she began to complain about her father that Aegon truly began to think about what he should say to her.

“My father never listens to me. He barely acknowledges me when I do sit in with the small council. I did my duty, I have done as he asked, and yet,” She screwed up her nose. “And yet, he still treats me as if I am still a mere cupbearer.”

Aegon could not help his sigh. Rhaenyra glared at him. 

“Not you too, Uncle. I am not a child!”

“Peace, Rhaenyra. I know you aren’t.” She could not know why he was so frustrated. He tried to think of the way to say it. Aegon hummed for a moment, before speaking again. “I just think that you should be prepared to spend most of your time listening. Watching. Learning. You cannot pick up kingship in a day. Viserys spent a great deal of time at King Jaehaerys’ side, before he came to the throne, and you should attempt to do the same.” Otherwise, you have no chance.“There has never been a ruling queen of Westeros, Rhaenyra. It is not fair, but you must understand that you will always be held to a higher standard. You must rise to meet it.”

 He gave her arm a pat. The way her mouth twisted, Aegon knew instantly that had been a mistake. She had just told him she did not wish to be condescended to as if a child. Well, if Rhaenyra wished to be treated as a woman grown, Aegon would have to speak the truth of the matter to her. Thinking back on his conversation with the Hand, Aegon wondered if now was the time to broach the subject with Rhaenyra herself. If she was to have any hope of being queen, she had to recognize the shakiness of her position as heir, and do her best to strengthen it. “Have you considered that you may not be queen?” He tried to keep his tone light. 

Rhaenyra halted, and glared at him. “I am my father’s heir. He named me heir, the whole realm swore to uphold my claim.”

“That was before you had a brother. Now-“

“My father gave me his word that he would not replace me with my half-brother. His word. The word of your king.” She rose up then, one hand on her belly, her eyes aflame. The dragon in her was rising to the surface “You would speak against your king’s own word? There is a name for that.” 

Aegon did not drop her arm, but turned to face her. He was the blood of the dragon, same as her. She could not cow him, not when she needed someone to speak the truth to her. “I,” he intoned, “will always have the king’s, and yours, best interests at heart. That is a heavy accusation you wield,” Aegon warned, “especially against your own kin.” Rhaenyra was not placated. The fire burned in her violet eyes, and she opened her mouth to speak.

Aegon pinched the bridge of his nose, and cut her off before she could say more. “The mark of a great king is being able to listen to what he does not wish to hear. The truth is not treason.” 

Rhaenyra was the one to throw his arm down, turning away from him. “Uncle Daemon always did say that you were a prideful fool who knew nothing of the world.” Her face was scornful. “I will be queen. My father has decreed it, and I will hear no more about this from you.” 

Aegon made no answer, but Rhaenyra was not waiting for one. 

“I forgive you, Uncle. But next time, I will speak to my father. 

Aegon watched her go, her long black gown sweeping the ground behind her.

At the stop of the stairs that led down into the garden, waited Ser Harwin Strong. The Hand’s son ambled down them, while Rhaenyra looked up at him, one hand shading her face from the morning sun. Aegon sighed. At least there was someone else to help her up those stairs. 

Aegon took his time wandering back to the Holdfast, walking beneath the cool shade of the green trees. 

His conversation with Rhaenyra weighed greatly on his heart. He was at fault, for broaching such a serious matter with a woman heavy with child. Everyone knew that their emotions ran high, and they should not be inflamed. Aegon was, as she said, a prideful fool! One who could barely see past the end of his nose, and he had just proven it yet again. He should have waited until after the birth, after she had a few months to settle in with her new child. Children always did change one’s perspective. Made one consider more carefully. He would speak to her again in the future, but with tact and respect, Aegon resolved. With Viserys as well.  He just had to figure out how he was to go about it. Aegon grimaced. No doubt he could solicit an opinion from Lord Matthos. 

His correspondence with Lord Matthos was one of his most frustrating endeavours, but he knew no-one better than his good-father to discuss such weighty matters with. Men named him the Short Thorn, as much for his sharp mind as his sharp blade. The diminutive man’s mind was still racing in his old age, and he had far too many opinions about the succession. Aegon would have to write to him, leaving out the details of his quarrel with Rhaenyra. 

He needed a drink. He would not get one.

Finally, Aegon began to make the climb up back to the royal apartments. He wondered exactly how he would apologise to Rhaenyra. That thought was broken off as he heard the soft clatter of silverware against plates through the open doors of the queen’s rooms. Aegon smiled. 

Aegon had taken to breaking his fast with Queen Alicent and the children in the queen’s rooms. The first time he had done so, he had confessed to the queen that it reminded him of his own childhood, when he would spend the mornings with Queen Alysanne, his aunt, and his cousins. The queen had smiled gently, and suggested that perhaps they could make it a routine? Alicent Hightower was a gracious woman, indeed, Aegon could not help but think whenever he saw her with Alyssa and her own children. 

Alyssa and Helaena sat together, whispering into each other’s ears, dressed in matching pale-blue dresses, with blue ribbons in their silver-gold hair. The queen must have dressed them herself that morning. Aegon dropped kisses on both their heads, before taking a seat by little Aegon. 

Little Aegon was stabbing half an orange, spraying juice everywhere, including on his uncle. That was about right, Aegon thought, considering where this day seemed to be heading. 

Ser Criston was just out of range, luckily for his pristine white cloak. 

“How was Princess Rhaenyra on this lovely morning?” the queen inquired, as she attempted to cajole little Aegon into actually eating the orange. 

“In fine form, I think. I was less than good company, I’m afraid. Being appointed to the small council has turned me into a right nuisance these days. 

That made Queen Alicent look up. “You were speaking of politics to the princess?” Her question was sharp, and Aegon bowed his head with no small amount of shame. 

“Yes, it was very ungallant of me to agitate a woman in her state. I regret it greatly, your grace.”

“Yes, perhaps it was.” Her voice was thoughtful, not scolding. “She has been feeling stronger, hasn’t she? I know the morning sickness finally abated.”

Aegon had no business sticking his nose into whatever tentative truce the princess and the queen had managed to come up between them, but he had often been on the receiving end of one asking questions about the other, so he was vaguely aware of whatever… they had come to agreement on. If he had to guess, he would say it was one woman sympathizing with another while she prepared for the dangers of the childbed.

“I believe so,” He answered lightly, “She mentioned something about the herbs you sent a month ago aiding in sleep.”

The queen nodded, seemingly content with his message.

Aegon changed the subject, glancing at the empty seat they always kept open for his brother. “Will Viserys be joining us today?”

“I think not. The king…. slept ill last night.”     

It has not taken Aegon long to discover the truth behind Viserys’ health. He could hardly hide it from a persistent brother who knew just enough of physick to make himself a nuisance. Of course, Aegon understood exactly why the king wished to keep the matter quiet. The Iron Throne was a fearsome thing, and the site of many superstitions. Even now, it was whispered that Aegon the Dragon’s great seat had slain Maegor itself. More likely that one of the countless recipients of Maegor’s wrath had pushed him on the swords but still…. Stories like that always lingered. 

And the king being cut upon his own throne? A bad omen even for a king as peaceful as Viserys. 

The queen’s hesitation told him that today was likely to be one of Viserys’ bad days. They were still few in number, but they had become more and more frequent in the last few months. 

Selfishly, Aegon was glad he did not have to face his brother this morn. He regretted his words to Rhaenyra, in part because they should have been aimed at his brother. 

“Well, when he’s feeling up to it, I’d like to speak to him.”

 The truth was that Aegon would rather pitch himself from the White Sword Tower than confront his brother the king, but needs must. He can imagine exactly how it will go. Why yes, brother, I’ve come to bother you about the succession, the very thing you banished your dearest friend and advisor for speaking of. Yes? I can return to Oldtown immediately, just let me pack.

 He peeled his orange with rather too much force, and he can feel Ser Criston watching him as he accidentally squashed part of it. Aegon sighed.

 He ate it in silence, brooding on what he wants to say, listening to the queen talk quietly to the children.

And there it is, the question that Aegon cannot give voice to, though he longs to. To speak it to his brother’s face. 

Why did Viserys marry Alicent Hightower if he never intended for her sons to be his heirs? 

Aemma had not been dead even a year when Viserys married Queen Alicent. For the good of the realm, he had claimed. A king must have heirs. And yet…. And yet, Viserys did not regard his sons as his heirs. 

 Why?

What had it all been for, then? Aemma, Alicent, little Aegon?

Why had Aemma died, if Viserys could just wave his hand and place Rhaenyra on the throne after him?

 Aegon looked at the empty chair, anger bubbling up from deep inside him.

 He wanted to throw it out the window, to scream, to do anything but sit here and eat his damned orange like everything was alright.

“Is something wrong, Prince Aegon?”

“No, your grace. Nothing is wrong.”

He ate the damn orange.

…

Rhaenys and the Sea Snake came from Driftmark for the birth of their first grandchild. Lord Corlys was in fine form, as always. He carried the confidence of countless seas voyages with him, bolstered by his ancient name and his pride in his wife.

Aegon had always thought Rhaenys made a fine choice in her husband. Corlys was still as tall and handsome as he had been in his youth, when Princess Rhaenys had flown her own dragon to tell King Jaehaerys that she would wed the dashing sea captain. She knew very well that the king had been planning to marry her to Viserys, but when the princess had declared that she would wed Master of the Tides for all his lords to hear, the king had conceded. What a wedding it had been! It was one of Aegon’s earliest memories, half the realm dancing attendance on the daughter of the Prince of Dragonstone and her new husband. There had hardly been a quiet spot in the Red Keep, filled to the brim with strange voices and strange faces. Aegon had snuck into the Tower of the Hand to see the endless procession of all the banners he had only read about in books flashing above countless knights, men-at-arms, and great ladies. Gael had wept with delight at the sight of all the singers.  At the wedding feast itself, Princess Jocelyn had kept the dancing going past the hour of the wolf, only stopping when the sun itself appeared and bade them all to bed. 

Corlys and Rhaenys, Lord and Lady of Driftmark, cut proud figures as their son and their daughter by marriage welcomed them. 

Hoisting Alyssa up in his arms, Aegon mock groaned. “You’re getting a little too big for this,” he told her. That made Alyssa’s eyes go as big as little Aegon’s did when the queen told him she had to leave. 

“No, ‘m not,” came the pitiful wail. 

Perhaps this had not been the best time to tease her. “I was jesting, sweetling.” He kissed her scrunched up forehead. “You’re just the right size.”

Tears averted, Aegon carried her over to greet the Princess and Lord Corlys. Queen Alicent had brought Aegon and Helaena, and the former executed a very gallant bow for a five-year-old. The queen smiled at her son, and told him how well he had done, but Aegon was watching the Sea Snake. The man’s bright Valyrian eyes slid contemplatively over the king’s first-born son, and Aegon could take a guess at what he was thinking about. No one could ever accuse Corlys Velaryon of being unambitious; he meant to put his own grandchildren on the throne, the throne his wife and son had been denied. How far would Lord Corlys go to further that ambition? Aegon could not say. For all Viserys’ bluster, young Aegon was, in the eyes of many, his rightful heir.

Aegon muttered to Alyssa. “Be thankful you are so far down in the succession, sweetling. I’ll find you some nice, fat country lord to wed, and you can be free of this wretched mess.” His daughter took that chance to pull on the ring in Aegon’s ear. He was batting her clumsy hands away when Rhaenys approached him. 

“Nothing delighted Laena more than pulling on hair. She was particularly fond of yanking on her father’s.” Rhaenys had always held herself like a queen, and even her smiles were regal. But her eyes, the same stormy ones as her mother’s (for all that Jocelyn’s had been dark where Rhaenys’ were violet) had always betrayed her. There was a clear nostalgia in them now, she gazed at the child in Aegon’s arms. Her gaze flicked up to Aegon, her smile still warm. “Hello again, Little Aegon.”

“Hello to you as well, coz.” Aegon gave her his biggest, most lopsided smile, the one he had always used as a child. 

Rhaenys chuckled. “You always look a great deal like Aunt Alyssa when you do that.” She looked back down at Alyssa. “You named your daughter for her, didn’t you?”

And for Elinor’s mother. “I did.” He wiggled his eyebrows in Rhaenys’ direction. “Go on, mind your manners, sweetling.” 

Alyssa gave the princess a solemn nod. “Hello, Cousin Rhaenys.”  She carefully articulated each syllable, and looked back up her father for approval. 

“Well met, Lady Alyssa.” Answered Rhaenys with equal gravity, only laughing when her husband guffawed behind her. Lord Corlys placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder, and leaned over to greet Aegon himself. 

“Always a pleasure to see you, Prince Aegon. Though,” The Sea Snake’s eyes roved back to the queen and her children. “There’s bound to be some confusion now that the two Aegons are at court together. How to tell which one is being spoken about?”

“Hmm. My nephew has taken to calling me the ‘other Aegon,’ but I find the sound of ‘Aegon the Old’ very amusing.”

“And what would that make us, coz? The ancient?” The corner of Rhaenys’ mouth quirked up. 

“Well, I’m not the one about to welcome their first grandchild.” 

Corlys let out a booming laugh, but Rhaenys merely tilted her head. “You’re not half as funny as you think you are, Aegon.” It was a gentle reprimand, a true one. 

Aegon merely shrugged. How could he explain that that was the joke? That he himself was the jape? 

Rhaenys opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could, chaos erupted in the courtyard.

People crushed around them, as someone called that the princess’s water had broken. All Aegon could see was Ser Harwin’s dark head as he cleared the path for Rhaenyra, booming for everyone to make way. Alyssa was trying her best to climb up his head to see what was going on, and managed to knee Aegon in his nose. Aegon whipped his head around to see Ser Criston carrying Helaena away, the small girl already in tears at the commotion while Queen Alicent dragged Aegon behind her.

Aegon decided his best course of action was to follow them, especially as Rhaenys and Lord Corlys were already following in Rhaenyra’s wake. 

They all regrouped outside Maegor’s Holdfast, the queen dispatching Ser Criston with the children and their nursemaids, while she and Aegon joined the rest of the king’s family near Rhaenyra’s quarters.  

Aegon wished he had the queen’s ability to project serenity. The only sign of any agitation was the way her brows kept coming together, creasing in the middle, no matter how many times she smoothed it out. But keep smoothing it out she did, and she was able to great her husband with a gentle smile, as he gestured for them both to join the rest of the party. It was an intimate one. The three grandparents, plus the expectant father, alongside with Aegon and the queen. Lord Lyonel had taken up a post at the window, and somehow Lord Beesbury had found his way in, as much to his surprise as anyone’s else judging by his befuddled expression. At the doors were Ser Harrold and Ser Harwin, to keep out any courtiers who thought to nose their way in without the king’s invitation.

Viserys was calm, joyful, and it nearly drove Aegon from the room. He always struggled to understand his brother, but rarely did he want to grab him by the collar and shake him. His stomach was so sick with fear that if had eaten anything, Aegon knew he would vomit. And Rhaenyra was not even his own child! How could Viserys be so calm in the face of a woman’s most dangerous task, something that his own child clearly feared?

Sitting with Viserys and Corlys, Aegon felt like something of a madman, as the two made leisurely conversation. At least there wasn’t another tourney. That would have driven Aegon into his cups for certain. Aegon had restrained himself from going for the bottle. He could not be drunk if something happened. He had to be sober. 

So Aegon spun the ring on his thumb, trying not to think about Elinor, about Aemma. 

The hours dragged on, and occasionally Grand Maester Mellos would come out and tell them it would be longer yet. Ser Laenor was staring at the doors more often than not, and even Ser Harwin was agitated by the tension in the room, judging by the way he kept shifting back and forth. Only Corlys and Viserys were immune to it, but as the day slipped from late morning into the afternoon, and then into the evening, the two grandfathers began pacing together, taking in each other’s confidences.

They all jumped up as one, Aegon included when Mellos returned, hands outspread. “The princess has been delivered of a healthy boy.”

Viserys clapped his hands together, and Rhaenys went to her son to kiss him on the cheek, her hand on his head, as the young man returned his mother’s embrace.

“Well? Go see your son and give thanks to your wife!” The Sea Snake was smiling as well, his broad face split in the biggest smile possible. “Go on, then!” He gestured for Ser Laenor to follow the Grand Maester back.

Sheepishly, Laenor did just that, running one hand up the back of his head. Rhaenys and Corlys came back together, husband and wife united in joy and pride. “Our prince,” he told her. The Sea Snake turned to Viserys. “Our grandson, the heir’s heir. Velaryon and Targaryen blood united once again!”

Viserys rose, the queen following him, and the king stretched out his arms. “To the heir’s heir. To the future king!”

The rest of the room followed in the cheers, and clapping and calls of celebration started to echo outside in the hallways.

“Ser Harwin,” Viserys commanded, “Send word that the bells must be rung for the new prince!”

The commander of the gold cloaks hesitated, his eyes moving between the king and the door of the princess’ quarters.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” The Hand glared at his son. “The king gave you an order.”

“By your leave.” Breakbones bowed stiffly, and left the room.

Lord Corlys laughed. “No doubt he wanted to tell his men that he was the first to meet the new prince.”

“Yes,” Lord Lyonel said, his jaw working stiffly. “A story to tell his children, perhaps.”

Aegon took that opportunity to pour himself a glass of wine and sink back into his chair. Viserys turned to him, smiling. “Oh, happy day,” His brother crowed. “A son! A prince!” He put one arm around the queen, and kissed her cheek, then went to embrace Rhaenys. The queen dropped her smile as soon as the king’s back was turned, and she pressed a hand over her mouth as she stared at Rhaenyra’s door. “Do you think she’s well?” she whispered to Aegon. “They’ve been in there an awful long time.”

“Well, you would know better than me how much time it takes for a lady to be presentable after such an ordeal.” He remarked quietly.

“Yes. I am just…” She paused, before settling on “I hope that all is well.”

As if the queen has summoned her with her words, Rhaenyra emerged arm in arm with Ser Laenor, her hair combed and dressed, in a red and black gown. Her eyes darted around the room, searching, before finally settling on her father. Viserys was already moving to hold his grandson, wrapped up in a blanket embroidered richly with Targaryen heraldry. Aegon and the rest of their party followed behind him, Viserys taking the bundle into his arms. “Let me see my darling grandson,” he said, smiling as he pulled back the blanket from the baby.

Then Viserys stood stock still, and Aegon feared that something had happened to the babe, that the child had somehow passed away, and he came up behind Viserys, grasping his brother’s elbow, checking that the babe was still breathing.

Aegon froze too, and he could feel Corlys and Rhaenys behind him doing the same thing.

When he looked up, Rhaenyra met his gaze with a defiant raise of her chin. 

 Across the room, the smiles died.