Raegor forced open his heavy eyelids.
The amber pupils that had once burned like a morning sun were now clouded beneath a thick, milky film.
The scales along his flank, once bright as molten gold, had dulled to the color of tarnished bronze.
His crown of sweeping, stag-like horns no longer pierced the shadows of the cave; it hung low, weighed down by centuries of exhaustion.
Coiled within the dark cavern like a dying ridge of stone, his whiskers lay limp and unmoving across the hardened muck.
Every breath shook his massive ribs, shuddering through the cavern floor like a distant tremor.
The great leather of his wings, which once caught the high winds above the clouds, lay crumpled against the stone, clouded like dusted amber.
The end had come.
The old beast strained to lift his snout, but centuries had ground down his massive spine.
The great dorsal spines that could have punched through master-forged plate ten years ago were brittle, snapped, or driven inward into his own muscle.
Gaps showed between his worn plates.
Even the slight movement of raising his neck sent searing pain tearing along his flank.
Three hundred and forty-two years had passed since Raegor hatched in the deep nurseries beneath the Ninth Flame of Valyria.
Seventeen riders of the dragonlord blood had sat upon his back.
Two hundred and twenty-three years ago, in the grand fighting pits of the Freehold, he and his master had brought down seven rival dragonlords in succession.
Those were the golden days of House Targaryen.
Yet those days were long dead.
Caught in the venomous feuds of the Freehold, their house had lost its patriarch and its greatest knights in a single stroke.
Raegor still remembered the hollow panic of that morning.
The moment the psychic bond snapped between him and his rider, a rival house attacked their roosts.
Deprived of riders, the dragons had fought wildly to defend their nests, but when the surviving Targaryens finally arrived, two great elders were slain, and their clutches of eggs lay crushed or stolen.
House Targaryen never recovered its standing among the forty families.
Weakened and diminished, the family could not produce a rider strong enough to claim the golden beast again.
When the dream of doom prompted Aenar Targaryen to gather their remaining beasts and flee, Raegor followed across the salt water to this mist-wrapped rock.
The volcanic heat of the Dragonmont sustained him, yet it was never the roaring belly of the Fourteen Flames.
Old wounds gathered deep within his bones, festering until age caught up with him.
Five dragons had made the journey west; one by one, they fell.
Kalyrion, the fiercest among them, succumbed to festering scars twenty-one years after reaching the island.
Eleven years later, ancient Gulaeros, who had watched over their line for centuries, crashed into the cold sea.
Eight years ago, Gaeleros, a purple beast Raegor had watched break from its shell, died alone in the upper crags.
Raegor’s vision blurred.
Memories drifted through the gloom.
He saw Kalyrion ripping into the throat of a rival mount, roaring triumphs into the smoke; heavy-bodied Gulaeros basking lazy beside the boiling springs while hatchlings dried their wet wings upon his back; his own golden wings banking under the blazing sun, while heralds across the Freehold sang the glory of the Solar Crown; slender Gaeleros skimming the crests of the waves; and young Balerion growing steadily in the dark.
The fading light in his eyes sank lower.
Gaeleros…
purple lightning…
to think I follow you into the dark.
A small shadow suddenly scrambled through the opening of the cave.
The old dragon stared with clouded confusion.
“Gods above, that nearly broke my neck.”
Raegon dropped to his knees at the edge of the pit, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Every bone in his seven-year-old frame felt as though a warhammer had tapped it.
A sharp copper taste lingered at the back of his throat, his ribs ached, and his heart pounded like a kettle drum against his ribs.
“Lord Raegor…
do you know how many guards I had to duck just to see you?”
Raegon managed a wry grin despite the burning in his chest.
Constant fevers and the doting care of his siblings had given him an easy disposition.
Aside from the occasional quiet worry about whether he would survive another winter, he remained cheerful enough.
Looking upon the ruined beast, Raegon swallowed the roughness in his throat.
A deep pang of grief flickered behind his mismatched eyes.
So this is how the great ones fall.
Hold on, old one.
I accepted what lies inside me just moments ago.
It may be strange, but there is a way to pull you back.
Raegor strained to bring the small shape into focus.
His failing eyes caught only a blur, prompting him to draw a long, wheezing breath through his nostrils.
The scent hit him clearly.
Pure and familiar.
A child of the blood.
The dragon looked away with weary resignation.
Had he been young and fierce, any intruder, thrall or prince, would have met a wall of white heat.
But this scent belonged to the frail boy who rarely left his bed.
A pity.
In his younger years, the boy might have made a fine rider, but there was no strength left in these old wings.
He had nothing left to give the sky.
Then the dragon took another breath.
The scent was shifting.
Behind the familiar smell of Valyrian blood lay something vast, warm, and strange.
Raegon let out a long breath, wiping the grime from his knees.
Sneaking out of his chambers, picking the latch on the side door, slipping past the kitchen staff, ducking under the blind spot of Master-at-Arms Quenton Qoherys, and darting through the Dragonmont’s lower tunnels had taken every scrap of his energy.
His small size had saved him; the guards still assumed he was asleep beneath his furs.
A warm sensation spread through his limbs, soothing the strain in his muscles.
The fatigue from his dash through the dark corridors faded in a handful of breaths.
The Untainted Vessel was already working, restoring his stamina far faster than any normal body allowed.
I have to keep this quiet, Raegon thought, rolling his shoulders.
If Ser Quenton, Visenya, and Aegon realize I recover this fast, they will stop going easy on me in the yard.
“Old grandfather,” Raegon murmured, walking toward the beast with open steps.
Among the dragons still lingering on the island, Raegor had always been his favorite.
When he was four, watching Aegon circle the towers atop Balerion, he had dreamed of the day he might take the reins of the golden sovereign.
Raegon let his breath settle, calling upon an instinct that felt older than the stones beneath his feet.
Wyrm’s Aura.
The gift required no incantation or complex artifice; it was an innate authority woven into his presence.
The old dragon shifted uneasily.
The scent of the Targaryen boy remained, yet the aura rolling off him felt like that of a kindred sovereign, radiant, ancient, and warm.
The first step is done, Raegon thought, recalling the details of the healing rite.
In the memories of the Sun-Shepherd, dragons of this realm were classified as creatures of elemental flame, biological vessels knit together by living magic.
“Blood calls to blood,” Raegon whispered, reciting the core requirement of the rite.
“Fire gives life to fire.
The blood is the spark; the flame remakes the beast.”
Does that mean I offer my blood to wake the fire within him?
Before he could work through the thought, his boot slipped on the slick stone.
“Whoa!”
Raegon tumbled forward, sliding down the rocky incline directly between the massive front talons of the beast.
The dragon startled, its colossal head shifting down until its snout hung directly over the boy.
Sallow saliva dripped from between yellowed teeth, running over chipped jaw scales and broken whiskers.
Raegon scrambled to his feet, rubbing his sore knee, only to feel a warm drop splash across his silver hair.
“Come now, grandfather.
I came all this way, and you greet me with spit?”
He wiped his brow with a laugh, looking up into the immense shadow.
Raegor was colossal.
Standing beside the beast’s snout, Raegon was barely the height of one of its serrated fangs.
A deep rumble vibrated through the boy’s mind, translated instantly by the ancient tongue resting in his memory.
Leave, child of man.
The dragon no longer cared why the boy smelled of the sun.
He wanted only to die in private, away from the eyes of men.
The Solar Crown, sovereign of the open sky, would not be gawked at as a rotting carcass.
Leave.
The command fell flat as the dragon’s neck gave out, its massive jaw crashing heavily against the stone floor.
The ground shuddered.
A clouded golden eye, larger than Raegon’s entire chest, stared back at him with vacant sorrow.
“I am here to help you, old one.”
Raegon stepped closer, resting his small hand against the rough scales of the dragon’s cheek.
Two years ago, when Aegon brought him here, Raegor still had the strength to nudge him with a whiskered snout.
Now, the beast could barely lift an eyelid.
“Blood calls to blood…”
Raegon set his jaw.
“If my past self left this in my head, it has to work.”
He pressed his right palm against the sharp, jagged edge of a broken horn scale, dragging his flesh across the ridge.
The expected sting of the cut never came.
In that instant, a blinding flare of solar fire erupted between his hand and the ancient dragon’s flesh.