When Jaehaerys had gone to Dorne, Vermithor had only made the ordinary noise.
The last time a dragon had cried the way Dreamfyre cried last night was ten years back, when Balerion came home.
The cooks heard it and came.
Together with Rhaegar they dragged the three old soldiers into Harrenhal.
Guests woken in the middle of the night held the window-ledges and looked at a wood on fire and Dreamfyre turning over the towers.
They stayed in their rooms.
The household waited in the hall.
Rhaegar pushed the door in a cook’s cloth.
“Rhaegar.” Anger in it.
Joy in it.
He came to her with nothing on his face.
“I’m whole.
The old men are dead.”
A fat maid went down on one of them and howled.
Crying ruined the words.
They got enough of it.
She was with child.
The child was his.
“Bedroom.
Now.”
Rhaena gave the woman one look and took Rhaegar with her.
The cook’s cloth hit the floor.
He stood naked at the table.
The long-handled duster started on his back.
He kept his feet and his mouth shut and let her spend it.
The back was nothing beside the dead.
They had been old and thin.
They had done the work that was in them.
The swords were still in the belts.
They had walked into a dark wood looking for him and died for it.
That was the vow: keep the lord.
Harrenhal did not hold many souls.
Those three had watched him grow.
Ten years in the same stones.
There was no way not to feel it.
He had been stupid.
He had put the cheat on like plate and called himself finished.
He had counted other men as fools who would walk where he pointed.
The world was meat.
However hard he was, he could not stand at every shoulder every hour.
A knife, a bow, a drop in a cup, a stone on a path when he was somewhere else: any of it would do.
The duster made a sound the maids at the door could not bear.
They had raised him too.
They would not put a hand on Rhaena.
They wiped their faces and went.
She was not done.
“A soldier’s work is to keep his lord.
Dying at it is the honor in it.”
That was the realm’s arithmetic.
War ate men.
“You took Dreamfyre.” Her voice had started to go.
The handle snapped.
She found a woman’s belt in the wardrobe and used that.
“She is mine.
You slip out at night and fly her and think I don’t know.”
He looked back.
He had thought the beating was for the three dead men.
It was this.
The belt was louder.
Red welts widened into bruise.
“A dragon takes one rider.
It has been that way for thousands of years.
I am alive.
How do you sit her?”
Tears on her face.
The belt harder.
“If this leaves these walls Jaehaerys will kill you.
The next king will kill you.
Any Targaryen but me will kill you.
Do you hear me?”
The thought closed a hand in him.
The kingsroad was close.
Men came to the Gods Eye for clean water.
Dreamfyre was the size of a keep.
Someone up in the night to make water could see the rider was not Rhaena.
If he could take her beast, then Vermithor.
Then Silverwing.
Then the unclaimed on Dragonstone.
He would not.
Other men would not believe that.
It went to the root of Targaryen rule and the peace that sat on it.
If he had been the head of the house, or the king, he would have cut that piece out of the board before morning.
“I—” He looked at her and had no sentence.
She was afraid for him.
The belt came away wet and left her hand.
His back had started to run.
She pulled him in and cried into him with her whole throat.
He was the one doing the comforting then.
He patted the back of her gown.
“I only lived like a lord because I lived with you.
I am a bastard.
I can keep off the king and off the game.
I can go east.
Essos.”
“No.
You are the blood of the dragon.
A true dragon of a different kind.”
Westeros grew brown hair, gold, red, black.
As he got taller the foreign face and the straight black hair sat wrong on the air.
She had wondered, more than once, if he was Aerea’s at all.
Then one night Dreamfyre left the tower for the lake and the weight on her back was Rhaegar.
That settled the blood.
The fear arrived in the same hour. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Her hands took his face.
“The blood does more than ride.
It has made dreamers.
Centuries back there was a girl named Daenys.
She saw the end in her sleep and wrote it in a book, Signs and Portents.
Her father believed her.
That is why the house was not in Valyria when Valyria died.”
“Is the book still here?” The question came out tight.
She had been dead for hundreds of years.
That was a mercy.
Another dreamer who dreamed a man fallen between worlds would make a joke no one would laugh at.
He would have to see the pages first.
“Dragonstone.
The library.
It does not leave.
It is High Valyrian.
I will teach you.
Then you read it.”
He nodded.
He had a handful of words from her mouth, the ones you pointed at a dragon.
He could not read a book like that.
“If the house made a dreamer, it can make you: a man who can sit another rider’s dragon.
No one can know.”
She was moving too fast.
She remembered the talk that he was simple and feared a slip.
She had forgotten he was only quiet.
She said it again.
And again.
“I understand.” He gave it back as many times as she needed.
“When you want the air, you tell me.
I go with you.” She wiped her face, found a pear in the drawer, put it against his chest, and went through his hair with her hand.
Maester Naelin came in with a salve that smelled like a lie.
The back was nothing.
He would not put fire on it and give her a new fright.
He did not ask other people for their private stores and he did not offer his.
Not flying alone.
Not putting skin on open flame.
Every soul in Westeros already lived inside those two rules.
In the morning Rhaena called every guest into the hall and made a statement of it.
Five sellswords had insulted her.
That was a tongue.
After the duel they kept the grudge and brought robbers to take what Harrenhal held.
Last night Rhaegar had taken the castle’s soldiers and cooks and put six in the dirt.
She had taken Dreamfyre and burned the four who ran.
She put the night on her own name.
Rhaegar stood at her shoulder making faces until she remembered the dog.
The guests found their outrage and shouted for a hanging.
They went into the wood and brought back six corpses and a dead hound.
They stripped the men, nailed the hands and feet, and hung them on the poles outside the gate.