Chapter Text
195 AC
“Aerys, did you hear a single word I said?” Maekar demanded, patience finally fraying.
Aerys lifted his gaze from the ancient book in his hands, its pages yellowed and brittle with age. “Hm?”
Maekar shut the book with a sharp thud. “For fucks sake, are you incapable of acting like a normal man?”
“Ahem.” Baelor’s voice cut in, calm as ever. The eldest of the four sons stood by the tall windows, hands clasped behind his back, sunlight tracing the lines of his face. “Do try not to curse in front of the children.”
Maekar exhaled slowly and turned toward the far end of the chamber.
Chaos.
His sons, Daeron and Aerion, were once again locked in a heated dispute with Baelor’s boys. Valarr looked profoundly bored by the entire affair, while Matarys was very clearly at the end of his patience, glaring at Aerion like a child contemplating murder.
Maekar rubbed a hand down his face. And then he noticed her.
Viserra sat slightly apart from the others on the floor, quietly drawing. Her long hair caught the light, turning almost gold where the sun brushed it. She paid no attention to the shouting behind her.
For a fleeting moment, Maekar almost felt sorry for the girl.
“My apologies, dear brother,” he muttered, returning to his seat. But he still slid Aerys’s book decisively out of reach. “No, no…conversation with your brothers won’t kill you, Aerys. I promise.”
“The older you get,” Aerys replied dryly, leaning back in his chair, “the more insufferable you become. A feat I once believed impossible.”
Maekar smiled. “Ah. He speaks. Which means he can finally tell us whom he intends to marry.”
Aerys stiffened. “What? No one. I have no intention of remarrying. One wife was quite enough.”
“Father will disagree,” Baelor said mildly. “As will the council. And the maesters.”
“I don’t care.” Aerys gestured sharply toward the children. “I fulfilled my duty. I married Aelinor. I produced an heir.”
“Yes,” Maekar said. “But it’s a girl. That doesn’t count.”
“It counts to me,” Aerys said coolly. “Viserra is clever. Well-read. Thoughtful. All qualities I would want in an heir.”
“You can’t have a girl as heir,” Maekar countered. “Do you remember what happened the last time a girl was named the heir of Iron throne?”
Aerys raised a brow. “Of course I do. Unlike you, I actually am capable of reading and know our family history.”
Baelor turned from the window, fingers absently twisting his ring. “And you know that if anything were to happen to me or my sons, may gods forbid just the idea of it, you would be king. And she would not be accepted.”
Aerys’s jaw tightened. “Times change. But if it ever comes to that…only then will we discuss it. Until then, I refuse to remarry or have another child. Seven hells, I didn’t even wanted this one.”
“And you,” Maekar looks at Baelor. “Call me the stubborn idiot,” Maekar muttered.
Baelor chuckled.
Across the room, Viserra sighed dramatically. Her cousins had moved on from arguing to shouting about dragons. Again.
“I would ride Vhagar,” Aerion announced, puffing out his chest. “Or Caraxes! Yes, Caraxes. I’d be better than Daemon ever was. Whole armies would tremble.”
Viserra rolled her eyes. Truly, Aerion’s ego was impressive for someone who still struggled with his letters.
Valarr groaned. “You desperately need a history lesson.”
“And a reality lesson,” Daeron added, yawning. “Dragons are gone. Accept it.”
“They will return!” Aerion shouted, hurling a wooden dragon at him. “I feel it. One day I’ll have one. You’ll see.”
“They will return,” Viserra said calmly. “For the daughter of a madman.”
The boys stared at her. All except Daeron, who smiled like he was in on a secret.
“I don’t know whether to be glad someone agrees with me,” Aerion said suspiciously, “or deeply concerned about how strange you are.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Matarys frowned. “That’s rude.”
Aerion spun on him. “What did you just say?”
Daeron sighed. “Calm down, brother. You’re only an ass because you skipped your nap.”
Valarr snorted.
“I don’t need a nap!” Aerion shouted. “And I don’t need you or him or some weird girl telling me what to do!”
“Apologize,” Valarr said, standing. “You are a guest and this is her home.”
Aerion rolled his eyes, but stomped over to Viserra. She looked up, unimpressed.
“I apologize,” he muttered. “For saying the obvious.” He tugged her hair.
She shoved him hard.
Within seconds, the boys were shouting, pushing, and very nearly wrestling.
Maekar buried his face in his hands. “One minute,” he muttered. “One fucking minute of peace. Is that truly too much to ask?”
Baelor smiled faintly. “Now you know how I’ve felt since you guys were born.”
“Love you too,” Aerys and Maekar said together.
Maekar stood abruptly and slammed his hands on the table. “Enough.” He crossed the room and grabbed Aerion and Daeron by the backs of their tunics. “Clearly, my lessons on gentlemanly behavior have failed spectacularly. Come. Now.”
As he dragged them toward the door, Aerys smirked. “And that,” he said lightly, “is precisely why I won’t have more children.”
“Hm,” Maekar shot back. “At least I have sons. Now I don’t need more children.”
Baelor folded his arms. “Am I mistaken, or isn’t your wife expecting another?”
Maekar paused mid-step and glared over his shoulder. “You,” he said darkly, “should really learn when to shut up.”
And with that, he hauled his sons out of the chamber.
202 AC
Viserra had taken refuge in the library. It was the only place in the Red Keep where her grandfather’s family days could not quite reach her. It always went the same way.
Spending time with her cousins was either a battlefield or a punishment. Only Daeron or Valarr could be trusted with tolerable conversation and they were also great companions with plans they most certainly should not be making. Sneaking into secret corridors, hidden doors. Once they had even slipped beyond the castle walls and into the city itself.
She had never felt more alive.
And yet, she was still left behind more often than not. All because she was a girl.
Today they were in the yard, training with swords under the watchful eye of their grandfather and his best knight. She was not permitted anywhere near it. Her father had made that quite clear..she would either get “ideas” or return covered in mud and bruises.
Unacceptable for a princess. How ridiculous.
Viserra traced the edge of a page absently.
How she wished Daella and Aelora were older. That she had a companion who understood the quiet humiliations of girlhood in a world that worshipped sons. But they were barely more than babies, all giggles and sticky fingers.
“Hiding in the library,” came a familiar voice from the doorway. “How very predictable. “Like father, like daughter.”
Viserra did not look up. She merely sighed.
“I am surprised you found your way here,” she said smoothly. “Or that you know what a library is.”
Aerion stepped inside, letting the door fall shut behind him. He moved along the tall shelves, running his fingers over the spines as though considering them. “I might say the same of you and the concept of amusement, dear cousin.”
“Why aren’t you outside?” she asked coolly. “Surely swinging a sword and imagining yourself victorious is far more suited to your talents than standing among books.”
“I was curious,” he said. “Wondering what my strange little cousin does when she isn’t predicting the end of the world.”
“We are the same age,” she replied. “Though mentally, you lag several years behind.”
For a heartbeat, he simply stared at her. Then he laughed. “Perhaps I have misjudged you. You can jest. I had assumed you were only capable of muttering your stupid dreams.”
Viserra closed her book with deliberate care and rose from her chair. “Call them what you like.” She slid the book back into its place. “They tend to come true.”
“Is that so?” Aerion said lightly, though he had stepped closer without seeming to notice.
There was little space between them now.
“Tell me, Viserra,” he went on, voice lowering just a fraction. “Do you ever dream of me?”
She tilted her head. “Oh, constantly.”
His mouth curved. “And what do you see? Me grown and glorious? Strong? Girls sighing wherever I pass?”
He leaned in slightly. “Are you among them?”
Viserra smiled sweetly.
“In my dream,” she said, “you were exactly as you are now.”
His brows lifted. “Handsome beyond reason?”
“Arrogant beyond measure.” The sweetness vanished from her expression. “Loud. Rude. A boy mistaking ignorance for greatness.”
Aerion’s jaw tightened, but there was something almost impressed in his eyes. “Careful,” he murmured. “One day I may prove you wrong.”
“I would like to see you try.”
She reached the door just as it opened, nearly colliding with Prince Maekar.
“Uncle,” she said, dipping into a small, perfect curtsy before slipping past him without another glance.
Maekar watched her retreat down the corridor, then turned slowly toward his son.
“What,” he asked evenly, “have you done this time?”
Aerion shrugged, folding his arms. “Exist.”
Maekar studied him for a long moment. “Yes,” he said at last with a weary sigh. “That would explain quite a great deal.”
The corridors stretched endlessly before her. Viserra walked slowly, her steps whispering against cold stone, her gaze drifting over the portraits that lined the walls. Generations of Targaryens watched her from dark frames. Their pale eyes, sharp noses, expressions ranging from kind to ruthless.
They followed her every move.
She stopped before one painting in particular. Aegon II stood at its center, already crowned, Helaena beside him. Sister and wife both. Her delicate face distant, almost translucent. At their feet stood two small children, twins, dressed in pale green silks.
Yet it was not them that held Viserra’s attention. It was the wall around them. The shade was lighter there faintly, but undeniably so. As though the painting on this wall had once been larger. Or different.
She stepped closer.
“There was another portrait there once, my dear.”
Viserra turned around startled, breath catching. She had not realized she had spoken aloud.
Her grandfather stood a few steps behind her, hands folded behind his back, watching her with quiet amusement. “I did not mean to frighten you,” Daeron said gently.
“What hung there?” she asked, turning back to the wall. “And why was it replaced?”
He moved to stand beside her, resting a heavy but warm hand on her shoulder.
“If memory serves,” he began slowly, “there once hung a grand portrait of King Viserys the First. His wife, Aemma. And their only child-”
“Rhaenyra,” Viserra finished softly.
Daeron’s lips curved. “Exactly.”
For a moment, he said nothing more.
“When Aegon was crowned,” he continued at last, voice quieter now, “the Greens removed nearly every trace of the Blacks from these halls. Portraits taken down. Tapestries and jewels destroyed. Their names erased from the books…History is fragile when men are afraid of it.”
Viserra studied Aegon’s painted face again.
“Only those who lived through Viserys’s reign remember how this castle once looked,” Daeron added. “We know it now only through their stories which they passed on.”
She imagined how different everything could have been. Different colors spilling through stained glass. A different heir standing where Aegon stood now in paint.
“But enough of ghosts of our history,” Daeron said lightly, though something in his eyes lingered on the wall a heartbeat longer than it should have. “Your father must weary you with tales all the time.”
He stepped toward the nearby window and looked out.
“Would you look at that,” he murmured. “The sun graces us at last. I had begun to think the clouds meant to claim the sky forever lately.”
Viserra joined him.
Beyond the glass, the sky shifted, pale gold fighting through thick, brooding gray.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “But still…the shadows are returning.”
Daeron glanced at her. “Shadows?”
“Either with doom,” she went on, her gaze fixed far beyond the horizon, “or with blessing. It depends which side will win this time.”
Daeron studied her profile, the stillness of her posture, the distant focus in her pale blue eyes. He knew that look.
He had seen it before.
The gift, they called it. A blessing from old Valyria…He knew better.
Dreamers in their house did not live easily. And rarely peacefully. A flicker of worry passed through him. He rested his hand once more upon her shoulder.
“Come,” he said gently. “It is time for dinner.”
She allowed herself to be led away, but as they walked, she cast one last glance over her shoulder at the painting. Aegon’s eyes following her.