At its height Old Valyria held the Free Cities of Essos as its own.
The land under those lords ran wider than Westeros.
Forty dragonlord families sat at the top of that power: rich, high-blooded, thick with sorcery, astride dragons, making war.
House Targaryen ranked low among them.
Five thousand years of breeding had made other kinds of Valyrian houses: lords without dragons, sorcerers, smiths, and blood that had been stripped down to smallfolk.
A little more than two hundred years back, Celtigar and Velaryon—lesser names—tied themselves to the dragonlords of House Targaryen and crossed to Dragonstone.
That was how they lived through the Doom.
“Have you got that?” Rhaena had his head in her hands and was twisting it.
“Celtigar and Velaryon are the closest allies we have.
You will not pick a fight with them.”
The corpses on the poles had done their work.
Travelers and merchants praised her for a hard, clean hand.
No one spent her name behind a door now.
Rhaegar had not gone quiet.
Any guest who wore steel got asked to the yard.
He hit more often than he should have.
He got hit more often than that.
He came back black and blue and took Rhaena’s noise for it, and the road made a story of him.
He pulled her fingers off his skull.
“I’m not mad.
Why would I start a war with them?
It’s sparring.”
They were on Dreamfyre’s saddle, bound for Dragonstone.
Rhaena already knew he could take the air.
She put the reins in his hands and her arms around his waist.
“Show me.”
“Hold on.” He took the leather and patted the scale behind the neck.
A horse you turn by the bit.
A dragon is too much beast for that.
The reins keep a rider on the seat.
The rest is the head and High Valyrian.
There was a pull between him and Dreamfyre.
He did not know how to use it.
He used his throat instead.
“Dreamfyre.
Hepās vēzot!”
She left the long, idle glide, lifted her head, put muscle into her back, and drove the wings.
They went up into cloud.
Dragonstone was a volcanic island under a year-round reek of sulfur.
The highest peak smoked.
The ground was poor stone.
Anything that walked that mountain without dragonlord blood went down a throat.
They burned the trees out around a nest.
What was left was black fused rock and weed in the cracks.
The people who had always lived there kept sheep and worked the water.
They treated a Targaryen on a dragon as a god.
The Seven Kingdoms had put the first night in the ground decades ago.
On this island a wedding still asked a Targaryen man to take it.
The bride was called blessed.
A child from that night was called a dragonseed.
It was an island only in the name.
A horse needed a full day to run the coast from south to north.
The castle stood on the slope in the shape of a dragon, raised in dragonglass.
Ships and the fisher-folk kept to the village under it.
The maester on the rock had the wind high these next days.
Sailors liked that.
Wind took the fog off the water and kept keels off the stone.
Dreamfyre came down out of cloud over the yard.
Only Vermithor and Silverwing lay on the slope.
Aemon and Baelon had not claimed.
Rhaegar went down the net behind Rhaena and looked back.
Both dragons were watching him.
Something in his chest jumped.
He did not see those two often.
Perhaps Rhaena had the right of it, and it was not only Dreamfyre.
Jaehaerys had made no move in all this time.
That meant he still trusted her.
What had not happened could still be prevented.
No open fondness in front of men.
No open flame.
He put his collar and his buttons in order and followed her in.
The king and queen had called the guests.
The day belonged to Prince Aemon Targaryen and Jocelyn Baratheon.
It was their betrothal.
The sun stood high.
The feast was hours off.
The company drank in Aegon’s Garden and took the light.
A steward’s pinch of salt and bread, then the black wood around the garden, then a small maze cut from wild rose and briar, full of pine.
Gold cranberries hung at the turns.
You had to walk out of it to reach the postern by the garden.
Rhaegar made his bow with Rhaena to the king and queen.
The three siblings had talk that had no door for him.
“Hardbar.
Wait.”
Baelon.
The boy put an arm across Rhaegar’s neck, bright with it.
“I heard you killed six bandits with your own hands.
True?”
The child who had blown bubbles was as tall as Rhaegar now.
Hair to the ear.
A black doublet with the three-headed dragon on it.
“I took old soldiers and cooks.”
He wanted it small.
A boy of ten putting six of ten sellswords in the dirt alone would pull a look.
A look could pull a dragon into the open.
“You led.
They weren’t knights.
They weren’t lords.
The name sits on the man who led.” That was how Westeros counted a fight on the road.
“Tell it.
Lance or sword?” Baelon liked steel.
He was already pulling for the yard.
He meant to play the thing over.
Rhaegar could not get the arm off.
He went.
“You didn’t see the dog.
Up on its hind legs it came to a shadowcat’s shoulder.
Teeth like a dagger.”
He had a practice sword with no edge and he used it to draw in the air.
“It jumped.
Mouth opening.
You know what I did?
I went to the dirt and slid.”
Baelon started hungry.
Then the story turned.
The iron in his fist began to complain.
“Hardbar.
Found you.
Take your punishment.”
The voice was a man’s.
A shape filled the little postern: six feet and more, a warhammer in one hand and then two.
Hard face, dark hair with a wave in it, leather strained over arm and chest.
He shouted and came on.
“Seven hells.
Baratheon men grow too fast.” Rhaegar put Baelon aside and lifted the blunt iron.