Game of Thrones: Red Dragon

Rhaegar Therys. A royal bastard dropped into Jaehaerys’s Westeros the day Balerion came home bleeding. For adult readers who want court, plague, and dragons—not a system menu. Timeline: 56 AC → toward 101 AC. Opens on the canon return of Balerion and Princess Aerea. Childhood under Rhaena on Dragonstone; Jaehaerys still on the Iron Throne. The long game is the decades before House of the Dragon episode one. In 56 AC, Balerion the Black Dread returns to King’s Landing with a dying girl on his back and a nine-foot wound still smoking. Strapped beside the saddle is a nameless infant. The realm calls it omen. Rhaena Targaryen calls him Rhaegar Therys and takes the bastard home. He remembers another life. He also remembers what this century does to bastards, to girls who steal dragons, and to kings who mistake peace for permanence. Plague follows the Black Dread’s landing. Court follows the plague. Jaehaerys wants order. The dragons want a rider who will not flinch. Rhaegar learns the lesson Westeros teaches first: a surname is armor, and he was born without one. So he takes what the blood will give him—more than one dragon, a butcher’s name, and the long, ugly work of surviving until the Dance is no longer someone else’s prophecy. Fire and blood do not ask who your father was. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Game of Thrones: Red Dragon — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠