“Make the water a bit hotter,” Rhaenyra instructed Elly.
She had noticed recently that her body seemed more tolerant of heat.
Water that ordinary people found scalding felt only lukewarm to her.
It was a far cry from the Mother of Dragons’ true fire immunity, the kind that had allowed Daenerys to walk through flames unscathed.
Rhaenyra suspected that the strange sensations she had felt in recent days were the work of Valyrian blood magic.
There was another change as well: her bond with Syrax had grown stronger.
The dragon could now sense and respond to her emotions in ways it hadn’t before.
It was less a new gift than a reawakening of an old one.
The dragonlords of old Valyria had been capable of far more than this, but even so, she was only at the level of an ordinary dragonrider.
Achieving Daenerys’s level of mastery would not be easy.
The Mother of Dragons had awakened a grand sorcerer’s talent, one that even the ancient Valyrian dragonlords would have coveted.
She had revived extinct dragon eggs from stone and carried the weight of prophecy.
If she had grown in power, she might have become a true avatar of fire and blood.
Rhaenyra was not the prophesied prince.
That was a pity.
But perhaps she could find answers among the remnants of Valyrian treasure?
She soaked in the hot bath for a while, then gathered her silver hair and let the handmaidens dry her with warmed towels.
When Rhaenyra returned to her chambers, she found her former handmaiden, Vivienne Tann, deep in conversation with a striking young woman.
The woman wore a court gown, her hair styled in the fashion popular among noble ladies.
She wore no jewels save for a necklace of black stone shaped like a towering citadel, and on her left finger, she wore an emerald ring bearing the sigil of House Hightower, a gift from her brother, Ser Hightower, brought all the way from Oldtown.
Whatever Vivienne had said, the woman smiled with reserved grace and gave no reply.
When they saw Rhaenyra enter, both rose and performed a half-curtsy.
“Rhaenyra, congratulations!” The girl’s face was bright with a sweet smile, suggesting she had already heard the news circulating through the Red Keep.
Her father was none other than Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King and the realm’s most powerful lord.
There was no mistaking her identity.
This was Rhaenyra’s dear companion, Alicent Hightower.
Rhaenyra had known Alicent for years.
What Otto Hightower was plotting was plain to every lord in King’s Landing.
Alicent was not only Rhaenyra’s childhood friend and companion but also a frequent visitor to the widowed King Viserys’s chambers, at her father’s urging.
Rhaenyra smiled, though inside she felt a familiar wave of exasperation.
What was this, a family drama?
Her best friend becoming her stepmother?
She had thought they were friends, and now Alicent wanted to become her mother-in-law?
No.
A stepmother.
Rhaenyra did not want another woman claiming that title, and she knew the drama it would spark.
But the lords of Westeros would not accept a king who remained widowed and unmarried.
And her father, for all his love for her, was still a man who longed for companionship.
He was miserable alone in the Red Keep, and when the Hightowers offered their daughter, he did not refuse.
It had cost him the Velaryons.
Lord Corlys’s youngest daughter had been the presumed candidate for queen, and when the Hightowers supplanted her, the Sea Snake’s resentment toward the Iron Throne only deepened.
The Great Council of 101 AC had already denied his wife, Princess Rhaenys, the crown.
Now this was a further insult.
But all that lay in the future.
For now, Alicent was still her dear companion, standing there with a bright smile and seemingly genuine happiness at Rhaenyra’s good fortune.
Rhaenyra could not tell whether her friend’s feelings were sincere or calculated.
The Hightowers’ scheming, however, was undeniably real.
In the original text of Fire & Blood, it was written: Marwyn settled into a chair.
‘Valyrian magic is rooted in blood and fire…
Do you think dragons died out because of some sword-wielding hero?
He spat.
‘The Citadel envisions a world without magic, prophecy, or glass candles, and certainly without dragons.’ Alicent had more than succeeded in her family’s mission.
After the Dance, only four dragons remained, and they soon died out as well.
The Targaryen dynasty’s fortunes were shattered in a single blow.
Why did the Citadel hate dragons and the magic they represented?
Had the Andals and the Valyrians once been enemies?
Or did the old gods have their own designs, ensuring the prophesied prince would be born?
Rhaenyra accepted Alicent’s congratulations with an equally warm smile, playing the part of a girl letting down her guard before her best friend.
“We have House Hightower’s loyalty to thank for this.
My uncle Daemon is a brave warrior, but he knows nothing of governance.” Rhaenyra spoke ill of her uncle without an ounce of guilt.
He was not there to hear her anyway.
Truth be told, if Alicent were doing all this purely for her family, Rhaenyra could accept it.
But what she could not understand was how Alicent seemed to struggle with herself, at once resisting her father’s plans and yet eagerly using the bond between them to wound Rhaenyra.
Alicent knew that once she bore a son, their friendship would shatter.
And yet, in the end, she would don the green dress that summoned her bannermen to war.
Rhaenyra thought wryly, You might not know this, but some of your own bannermen are staunch Blacks.
Even some of your in-laws support me.
Lord Lyman Beesbury, the Master of Coin, was one of them.
He was an old vassal of House Hightower, yet when the small council met after Viserys’s death, facing hostile eyes from a chamber full of Greens, the old lord stood firm in defending Rhaenyra’s claim.
“I am old, but not so old that I will sit idle while you usurp the throne.” — Lord Lyman Beesbury, at Viserys I’s small council And then Criston Cole murdered him.
Rhaenyra felt a cold surge of anger at the memory.
Her gaze flickered to the white knight standing dutifully nearby.
This man had assassinated Black loyalists, engineered a coup, and plunged the Crownlands into chaos.
A chill ran down Criston Cole’s spine, as if a dragon’s eye had fixed upon him.
He glanced around but found nothing amiss.
Strange.
Rhaenyra suppressed her emotions and sighed softly.
If Cole follows the same path as in the original history, I will have no choice but to send him to meet the Stranger.
Sensing the shift in atmosphere, Alicent broke the silence.
“I heard a maester from the Dragonpit has joined the Red Keep.
Rhaenyra, do you know anything about that?” “I asked Father to approve it.
Maester Ramos is learned.
He can teach me about the history of House Targaryen.” “Then we shall study together again!” Alicent looked delighted.
She took Rhaenyra’s arm.
“Come, let us go to our lesson.” As they walked, Vivienne Tann cast a discontented glance at Elly, who remained close to Rhaenyra’s side.
Alicent gave the handmaiden a subtle look, and Vivienne lowered her eyes.
“Rhaenyra, you seem so different lately.
You never talk about Nymeria’s glories, or Ser Criston Cole anymore.” Alicent knew Rhaenyra had once admired the Rhoynar warrior queen and would often use the subject to draw her out.
Ser Criston Cole, too, was a favorite topic among the maids of the Red Keep.
Rhaenyra answered with a lightness that belied her caution.
“Because I am no longer a maiden.
I am the heir to the Iron Throne.” She knew Alicent was deflecting, that her interest lay not in idle conversation but in Vivienne Tann.
Rhaenyra had already deduced that Vivienne was a plant from a family close to the Hightowers.
There were many such servants in the Red Keep.
Rather than uproot them all at once and alarm the snakes, Rhaenyra had chosen to freeze them out, to let them grow anxious and reveal themselves.
And here was proof that her strategy was working.
She hoped dear Alicent would be wise enough not to press further about her household affairs.
The Hightowers lived in Oldtown, not along the Narrow Sea.
They had no business meddling so far from home.