“But he’s a Targaryen’s own son.”
Alysanne didn’t hesitate for even a moment.
“And he only tamed the dragon to save us.
If Quenny hadn’t claimed Moon Crown when he did, Daemon, and the rest of us besides, would all be dead right now.
Rhaenys, perhaps this was simply the will of the gods.”
“The gods…”
Rhaenys looked ready to say more, but Daemon cut her off.
“I don’t care whether it’s the gods or whatever else.
All I know is Quenny’s saved my life twice now.”
Daemon thumped a fist hard against his own chest, his soot-blackened face split by a startlingly white grin.
“That’s where I stand on it.”
In truth, Daemon had no real idea what was actually going on.
He only felt, in the moment, that it was time for him to plant his own flag on the matter.
A Targaryen’s own son…
a Targaryen’s own son…
Something clicked at once in Rhaenys’s mind.
Ah.
So that was the meaning behind it.
Rhaenys’s whole manner shifted at once.
The Red Queen, still tense only a moment before, settled as well, the great dragon stretching out on the ground to rest.
“What are the casualties?” Rhaenys asked, changing the subject at once.
The two white-cloaked knights had already brought the queen’s ladies-in-waiting back to her side.
Thick smoke still hung over the whole harbor.
The Wandering Husk’s sails had long since burned to ash, and the sickly green dragonfire had proven impossible to douse by any ordinary means.
Still, the ship’s own Pentoshi captain had kept his head, ordering the crew to abandon ship at once, and so, in the end, there had been remarkably little loss of life.
Even the unlucky lookout had come away with nothing worse than a lungful of smoke and a mouthful of seawater.
The only two casualties of the whole dragon attack had been the pair of dragonkeepers.
“Two dragonkeepers were lost, Your Grace.” Lady Maya Manderly, one of the queen’s own companions, said, her voice still shaking with the shock of it all.
“See that their families are given a widow’s pension.” Queen Alysanne said with a heavy sigh.
“Send for the Silent Sisters.
They deserve a burial worthy of their courage.”
A sudden wave of relief washed over Quentyn, loosening the tension in his own muscles right along with it, as though whatever threat had been hanging over them had finally passed.
He quietly filed away the shift, both in his own body and his own mind.
It hadn’t been his own doing, not directly.
It was Moon Crown, sensing that neither the Red Queen nor Silverwing posed any threat any longer, who had let her own body ease, and Quentyn, still her rider, had simply eased along with her.
So this, it seemed, was the shallow end of whatever bond truly ran between a dragonrider and their dragon.
He couldn’t stay mounted on the dragon’s back forever.
But at least, for now, this much was already clear: Daemon, Alysanne, and Gael would all stand firmly on his side.
Quentyn quickly ran through the situation once more.
Rhaenys, surely, would come to see soon enough that his claiming a dragon actually worked in her own favor, and in her children’s as well.
If she could reason her way there on her own, she would become an asset to him too.
With that thought, Quentyn, looking thoroughly exhausted, patted the great beast beneath him.
Moon Crown’s folded wings unfurled, and Quentyn slid down along the membrane to the ground below.
He stumbled forward a few unsteady steps.
Daemon bounded over at once, catching him with one arm and landing a light punch on his chest.
“Fuck, that scared the hell out of me.” Daemon threw an arm around Quentyn’s shoulders.
“Heh.
You’ve gone and saved my life again.”
He looked up at the now-calm, moon-silver beast and clicked his tongue in open admiration.
“You’re taking me flying on that thing later.”
“Count on it.”
Quentyn managed a tired, worn-out smile. Get faster updates on g.com.
Watching the exhaustion and weakness written plainly across Quentyn’s face, Alysanne felt her own heart soften with fresh tenderness for him, but before she could act on it, Gael had already gathered up her skirts and thrown herself into Quentyn’s arms first, nearly toppling both him and Daemon together.
The girl buried her face against Quentyn’s chest and burst into loud, unrestrained tears.
“Wuahh—”
The air rang with nothing but her sobbing.
Quentyn couldn’t make out a single word of what Gael was actually trying to say, only her broken, hiccupping cries.
Alysanne’s own heart melted completely at the sight.
Whatever look she turned on Quentyn and Gael now held nothing but pure, unguarded affection.
Even Silverwing, off to one side, softened her own gaze toward Moon Crown.
News travels like the wind.
More than that, Dragonstone and Driftmark were separated by nothing more than a narrow strait, and King’s Landing itself lay no more than half a day’s sail away.
A raven launched from Dragonstone needed less than an hour to reach King’s Landing’s own ravenry, carrying word of Quentyn’s dragon-taming straight to the king’s own writing table.
And to the desk of one uninvited guest besides.
“Your Grace, that isn’t at all what you told me, back when you sent me to hunt down Elissa Farman!”
The Red Keep.
The Long Table Hall.
The small council’s own long table stood at the center of the hall, marble columns rising in careful array around it, sunlight pouring in through the tall windows and falling across the pale weirwood tabletop, catching the small council’s own ceremonial orbs and setting them gleaming.
Jaehaerys sat with his head propped against one hand, idly turning his own king’s orb over and over.
The Hand of the King, Septon Barth, sat hunched over his great, half-man-tall tome, scribbling away.
Baelon sat at the king’s side, fingering his own orb, turning it slowly between his fingers, its color shifting with the light.
At the sight of all this, Corlys Velaryon strode forward sharply, his voice grim.
“Your Grace, dragons belong only in the hands of dragon-blooded nobility.
If just anyone can tame a dragon now, I hardly dare imagine what might follow.”
“The Sea Snake” Corlys Velaryon was forty-one years old this year, and remained, even now, Westeros’s own greatest navigator, still every bit as handsome and striking as ever.
His silver beard was trimmed with meticulous care, his long hair worn loose.
Nine great voyages under the harsh sun had bronzed his once-pale skin, yet left remarkably few lines upon it.
Even his build had kept much of the strength and vigor of his younger years.
“Choose your words carefully, Lord Corlys.”
Baelon set his own orb back in its groove and spoke evenly.
“We respect the sea and salt that run in House Velaryon’s own blood.
But House Qoherys carries smoke and fire in its veins, just as House Targaryen does.
Quentyn is my own aunt’s son.
House Qoherys’s own ancestors were a cadet branch of House Targaryen itself, and his blood is Targaryen blood, the same as any other.”
“I know that well enough!
But it isn’t fair!”
Something of the fight went out of Corlys’s own voice.
Two years before, when the king had named Baelon Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne, stripping his own wife Rhaenys Targaryen of her claim to the succession, Corlys had resigned his own post as Master of Ships in furious protest.
But once Laenor was born, early this year, something in Corlys’s own thinking had begun to stir once more.
Laenor was, after all, his own son, and more than that, the son of a Targaryen princess.
Little by little, Corlys’s own ambitions had begun to take root again.
Which was why he had made a point of returning to King’s Landing now.
Jaehaerys held real respect for this legendary navigator, this legendary commander of fleets, but Corlys could feel, all the same, a faint, persistent distance in the old king’s manner toward him.
Fair enough, perhaps.
In a very real sense, Corlys’s own existence stood as the most important pillar behind Rhaenys’s own claim to the succession.
When word of Quentyn’s dragon-taming had first reached Corlys’s ears, his first reaction had been shock, and close behind it, fury.
As the pride of House Velaryon, he had always harbored no small resentment toward House Qoherys.
In matter of rank, House Qoherys had followed House Targaryen to Dragonstone from the very beginning, and compared to the local nobility, House Velaryon and House Celtigar, was, in that sense, genuinely closer to House Targaryen, bound by blood as well as history.
But so what.
The original House Qoherys had been nothing more than a vassal to House Targaryen, while House Velaryon stood proud as the Lords of the Tides, masters of sea and salt, masters of the greatest fleet in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Whatever closeness House Qoherys claimed with House Targaryen, hadn’t it been House Velaryon, over this past century, that had actually intermarried with the Targaryens themselves?
When House Qoherys had very nearly fallen to ruin, it had been House Velaryon that sheltered Lady Isolde Velaryon and the young Aenys Qoherys.
And once Corlys himself had completed his own nine legendary voyages, elevating House Velaryon into the wealthiest, most powerful house in all the Seven Kingdoms, his own contempt for House Qoherys had only deepened further still.
“What is it you want, Lord Corlys?”
Baelon put the question in Jaehaerys’s own place. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Baelon himself felt no real surprise that Quentyn had managed to tame a dragon.
In all honesty, given Quentyn’s own bloodline, it would have been stranger still if he hadn’t.
The only real trouble was that both he and Jaehaerys had originally expected the matter to play out differently: Valera’s own egg would hatch in time, and Quentyn would come away with a young dragon of his own.
That way, Alysanne could be soothed, House Velaryon’s own position could be balanced out in turn, and the whole matter could stay quietly beneath the surface, understood by everyone, spoken aloud by no one.
“Laenor is Rhaenys’s own son.
I love Rhaenys more than I love my own Sea Snake, and I love Laena and Laenor no less.
As a father, it falls to me to secure the best possible future for them both.
I trust you feel the very same way, Your Grace.”
Corlys drew a deep breath and seated himself in the Master of Ships’s own chair, still standing empty these past two years.
King Jaehaerys’s own strength had been fading these past two years, and the greater share of the realm’s own governance had already begun shifting, little by little, into Baelon’s hands.
At present, the only man in the realm truly suited to the office of Master of Ships was Lord Rickard Redwyne of the Arbor, but he remained, for now, a young man still consumed by troubles of his own estate, and had already turned Baelon’s own invitation down once.
“If Quentyn Qoherys can tame a dragon simply by right of being Princess Valera’s own son, then surely my own son, as your own great-grandson, deserves no less than the rights owed to him.”
“You mean to claim a dragon for your own son?”
Jaehaerys lifted his head, weary, his eyes burning fierce, his voice hoarse.
The Sea Snake didn’t deny it.
He only looked back at the king.
Septon Barth set his own book down hurriedly and reached out, as though meaning to help steady the king.
Jaehaerys waved him off and rose to his feet, his long beard flaring outward, for all the world like some enraged old lion.
Corlys met the king’s gaze without flinching.
“No.
I am claiming what is rightfully owed to Rhaenys’s own son.” The Sea Snake said, calm and even.
“You stripped his mother of her rights, Your Grace.
Do you mean to strip him of his as well?”
“Quentyn saved my wife.
My daughter.
My grandson.
He proved his own blood through his own courage, proved himself worthy to take up the sword of blood and fire on his family’s behalf.”
Jaehaerys’s voice dropped to a low growl.
“Can your own son say the same?”
“Laenor is still an infant!” Corlys held the king’s gaze without giving an inch.
“But I believe that, given time, he too will take up a sword for this realm, and for his own mother’s sake.”
While the council chamber in the Red Keep still rang with argument.
Dragonstone.
The wild volcano.
Moon Crown came down to land partway up the slope, her call soft and melodic now, nothing at all like the savage fury she’d shown before.
The Red Queen had already carried Rhaenys back to High Tide.
The ones who now accompanied Quentyn to Moon Crown’s own lair were Alysanne, Daemon, Gael, and the two travel-worn white knights.
Silverwing circled overhead, letting out a bright, ringing cry now and then.
“So this is Moon Crown’s own nest?”
Daemon looked around, curious, while Gael huddled close against her mother, stealing the occasional nervous glance toward Quentyn.
Quentyn nodded.
Ever since Rhaenys’s departure, Moon Crown had grown steadily more restless, and Quentyn, giving way to her own wishes, had come along with her back to her own lair.
Just then, a soft, gentle cry rose up from somewhere deep within the nest.
A young green dragon lifted her head, as though greeting Moon Crown’s return, but the instant she caught sight of Silverwing overhead, and of Quentyn and the others, she froze visibly, then drew back at once.
She was a strikingly beautiful young dragon.
Her jade-green scales caught the light like polished gemstones, gleaming even in the dim, filtered light of the lair.
A ridge of lake-green spines ran along her back, matched by a pair of lake-green horns, while her wing-membranes shone a lovely water-blue.
At first glance, she looked something like a smaller Silverwing, though far smaller still, no more than half of Moon Crown’s own size by rough estimate.
The green dragon let out a low, hissing growl from within the nest, and Moon Crown answered with a low, rumbling growl of her own.
Slowly, the green dragon’s own cries quieted.
She stretched her head out, testing the air, her blue eyes shy and wary as they settled on the people gathered outside.
“Hisssss—”