“Quite the day, isn’t it?” I said to a pair of young servant girls hurrying past me in the corridor.
They both offered me bright, slightly breathless nods, cheeks flushed, and then dissolved into soft giggles the moment they thought they were out of earshot.
Their footsteps faded quickly around the next corner.
I watched them go with a small, tired smile.
Truth be told, I had half expected Viserys to die the night of the feast.
In the show, that was when the old man finally gave out, overexerted, emotional, and already half-rotted from the inside.
Yet here he was, still clinging to life, merely fallen sick according to the latest reports from the maesters.
How long he would last was anyone’s guess.
A week?
A month?
A year?
I hoped for longer.
I needed longer.
Because the moment Viserys breathed his last, the realm would tear itself in half.
Chaos was coming.
I had already prepared my share of contingencies for it, still, a few more months would be invaluable.
I had other plans in mind, smaller pieces that needed time to settle into place if I wanted anything resembling a smoother transition of power.
Black or Green, it didn’t truly matter in the long run.
Preferably Green, of course.
The benefits would be more immediate, the perks more tangible but Black had its own advantages, the aesthetic alone was something to envy, black and red against the sky, dragons screaming overhead.
The drip would be immaculate.
Even so, I had to admit that remaining on Team Green was exhausting.
Which was exactly why I had politely declined Aegon’s invitation to the pleasure houses earlier.
Reputation was a fragile thing, and I intended to keep mine intact for as long as possible.
I could already imagine the chorus of voices from my old world, the countless men who, if placed in my position, would scoff at the very idea of caring about reputation.
‘Who gives a shit what anyone thinks?’ they would say.
‘You’re a prince.
You’re a Targaryen.
You have a dragon.
Take what you want.’
They would train until their bones screamed and claim they could one day stand toe-to-toe with Arthur Dayne himself.
They would spend weeks searching the Red Keep for some hidden chamber, convinced that a lost Valyrian bloodline trait or forgotten magical artifact waited just behind a secret wall.
They would find some random woman, usually a whore, always conveniently beautiful and loyal and declare her to form a vast spy network that somehow spanned the entire known world within a few moons.
Or worse: they would rely on a magic cock and an inexplicably perfect face, seducing every noblewoman until entire houses bent over backward to do their bidding.
Some would call that kind of thinking a skill issue.
I disagreed.
It’s a physical issue called ‘Lack of brain cell.’
Do you know what happens when you make a clumsy advance on a noblewoman and she decides to scream?
You get gelded.
Then you get shipped to the Wall, if you’re lucky.
Do you know what happens if you decide to silence those screams and continue anyway?
That is called rape.
You still get gelded, only this time the headsman’s axe follows shortly after.
And the swordsmanship… fuck the swordsmanship.
Do you know what the most ineffective weapon against proper armor is?
A sword.
Armor was literally designed to stop swords and lances from cutting through a man.
That’s why my weapon of choice had always been a mace, a flanged mace, to be exact.
You can survive a clean stab if the blade doesn’t find a gap.
But a solid bludgeoning strike?
Your chest caves in.
Ribs shatter.
Bye-bye, life.
Yet idiots still claimed the sword was the superior weapon.
It wasn’t.
Not against men who knew what they were doing.
The sword was never truly a warrior’s weapon in the way the stories liked to pretend.
It was a guard’s weapon, useful for controlling unarmed or lightly protected civilians, for looking impressive on a hip, for cutting down the unprepared.
Against full plate or even good mail and padding, it lost most of its edge.
Literally.
I knew this was a bit of a stretch, I didn’t know the man personally, after all, but if Arthur Dayne himself had ever been surrounded by ten fully armored men armed with war hammers or flanged maces and the knowledge of how to use them, he would have died.
Maybe not instantly.
Maybe he would have taken a few with him.
But in the end?
He would have gone down.
Skill only carried a man so far when the other side was swinging weapons designed to turn armor into a coffin.
That was the part the songs always left out.
The ugly, practical reality of killing.
There is no plot armor in reality.
There is no convenient narrator waiting to justify your every impulse.
There is only consequence.
So yes, I cared about my reputation.
I played this absurd, exhausting game of snakes and ladders called politics because the alternative was dying stupidly and early.
The Dance of the Dragons was already a bloodbath written in the stars.
Walking into it with a reputation for recklessness, lust, or arrogance was simply another way to ensure my head ended up on a spike.
I had spent years in Oldtown preparing for my eventual return.
Learning the histories, studying the houses.
Viserys’s death would be the spark.
Rhaenyra would claim the throne.
Aegon would be crowned in opposition.
Dragons would burn the sky.
Thousands would die.
And somewhere in the middle of that carnage, I would have to choose how much of myself I was willing to sacrifice just to survive.
Reputation was not vanity.
It was armor.
It was the difference between being seen as a useful piece on the board or a threat that needed to be removed early.
It was the reason I smiled at servants, declined Aegon’s invitations, and measured every word I spoke in front of Daemon or Aemond or Otto.
I was not the strongest.
I was not the most skilled with a blade.
I was not blessed with prophetic dreams or magical blood beyond the ordinary Targaryen fire.
What I had was knowledge of how the story was supposed to go and the stubborn determination not to die exactly the way the books said I would.
That knowledge came with its own burden.
Every conversation carried extra weight.
Every smile had to be calculated.
Every alliance had to be weighed against the future bloodshed I already knew was coming.
And yet… there were moments, small ones, that still felt almost normal.
The servant girls giggling as they passed.
The way Orys had smiled when I poked his nose.
Cassandra’s quiet dignity in the face of her husband’s crude dismissal.
Even Aegon’s ridiculous, self-satisfied grin when he claimed the whores compared him to a steed.
It was real.
The people in it bled and laughed and suffered and hoped, just as I did.
I reached the end of the corridor and paused, looking out through an open archway toward the courtyard below.
The afternoon light was beginning to soften.
Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled the hour.
‘A few more months,’ I thought.
‘Just give me a few more months.’
I needed time to move the right pieces into place.
Time to figure out whether I would stand with Green, or Black, or try to carve some impossible third path through the middle of the coming war.
“You are late.” Otto looked up from the heavy book open on the desk before him.
I had heard that he often spent his mornings in the Hand’s Tower buried in ledgers and old records, but this was the first time I had actually found him here like this.
“I was rather preoccupied with my uncle,” I said, pulling out the chair opposite him and settling into it.
“A graceful fighter, my uncle. In his own way.”
Otto scoffed and closed the book with a soft thud.
A low, disgruntled smirk settled on his lips.
“He was four-and-ten when he had a maid whipped for spilling wine on him,” he said after a long breath.
“Arrogant, vain, cruel, he has the mind of a rowdy child who never grew up, reckless, undisciplined, he is undeserving of the word knight, there is nothing graceful about him.”
I blinked, then let a slow smile spread across my face.
“I see the love you hold for my uncle,” I replied lightly.
“Very touching.”
Otto shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching with something that almost resembled amusement.
“The realm has already suffered a cruel king,” he said quietly.
The meaning behind the words was not subtle.
“It does not need a cruel consort to follow the same example.”
I leaned back slightly in the chair.
“It was you who pushed for my sister to be named heir. And now you wish it were otherwise.”
He let out a long, weary sigh.
The deep wrinkles in his forehead tightened, the years of service and calculation showing clearly on his face.
“When I first pushed for her,” he said, voice low and measured, “she still had time. Time to grow into the role. Time to accept her duty. Time to become the heir the realm needed and to keep Daemon far from the throne.” He shook his head, as though looking back on an old and costly mistake.
“But what do I see now? A pampered princess with little sense of duty to her people or even to her own marriage. Her children pass for what they are not, and she walks through the court with no regrets, as if she has done nothing wrong. The King cannot see it. He has never been able to see fault in his daughter. And once more, that red snake has coiled itself around her neck, whispering, guiding, puppeteering her in ways she does not even understand.”
The room fell quiet for a moment.
The candle between us flickered.
I studied the old man carefully, my Grandsire was many things, ambitious, calculating, ruthless when necessary but at that moment he simply looked tired.
Tired of watching the realm drift closer to the edge and tired of a king who refused to see the storm gathering, tired of a future that no longer matched the one he had once tried to shape.
“You speak as though the path is already set,” I said at last.
Otto’s pale eyes met mine.
“Paths can still be changed, Daeron, but not for long. And not without cost.”
“I wish the other claimant were better than I hope,” I said dryly, giving a small nod.
Otto rubbed his temples with two fingers, the gesture slow and weary.
“He… could still be shaped,” he admitted after a moment.
“But I will not lie to you. The prospect looks rather bleak.”
His pale eyes narrowed as he shifted forward in his chair, the candlelight catching the sharp angles of his face.
“But enough talk of tomorrow’s uncertainties. I wish to know why you have returned so suddenly.”
I shrugged and rose slowly from my seat, stretching the lingering stiffness from the spar.
“For a few reasons. I wished to see my family gathered in one place and I have done so. Beyond that…” I paused, meeting his gaze evenly.
“I have been thinking of ways to strengthen the Iron Throne.”
Otto’s brows arched slightly.
“And how do you plan to do that?”
A small, deliberate smile touched my lips.
“How it is always done,” I said.
“Marriage, of course.”