Cough.
Cough.
It was dark.
Quiet, apart from the coughing.
The throne room of the Red Keep stretched out before him, vast and empty..
Torches burned low along the walls, their light too weak to reach the ceiling.
In the center of it all stood the Iron Throne.
Maegor had always thought it ugly.
A great hideous mass of melted steel and twisted blades, forged from the swords of his father’s enemies.
Aegon had called it a reminder.
That kings should never sit easy.
It was a trophy nothing more.
He had won it after all.
Cough.
He felt the blood before he saw it, warm and thick against his palm.
He stared at it for a moment without expression.
It reflected his purple eyes.
He had seen enough blood in his life that the sight of it no longer moved him much.
Even his own.
Poison, he thought simply.
Cowardly.
He did not know who.
It did not particularly matter now.
His body was heavy.
The kind of heavy that meant something was ending.
He had felt it once before, on a battlefield long ago.
Maegor the Cruel, they called him.
Maegor the Tyrant.
He had heard every name they had for him.
Had collected them, almost, the way other men collected titles or lands.
He had never bothered to argue with any of them.
Were they wrong?
The thought came quietly.
He looked down at his hands again.
At the blood.
His vision was darkening at the edges now.
Slowly.
He raised his eyes one last time to the throne room.
No one had come to watch him die.
Of course.
Then, at the far end of the hall, something moved.
A figure.
Still distant, but coming closer.
Maegor squinted.
“Who…”
The word barely left him before his strength gave out entirely.
His head dropped forward, yet he had already realised.
“So it was you.”
The blades of the Iron Throne did not distinguish between enemies and kings.
44 Years later
Daemon Targaryen was panting, his breath coming in short, uneven bursts as he glanced down at his feet.
They moved as fast as they could carry him, striking against the cold stone floors of the Red Keep, yet it never felt fast enough.
The corridors seemed longer today, stretching endlessly.
Servants and maids pressed themselves against the walls as he rushed past, their whispers trailing behind him.
Some curtsied, others simply stared.
But Daemon did not care.
To him, only one thing mattered.
And then he saw it.
The great double doors stood at the end of the corridor, carved from dark oak and reinforced with black iron.
Two members of the Kingsguard stood watch before them, clad in traditional white armor, hands on their sword hilts.
To Daemon, they looked like giants.
He did not slow and ran straight into one of them.
“Ouch.”
The knight did not even shift.
It was like colliding with a wall of stone, and the realization only made Daemon’s frustration flare hotter.
“Let me through, Ser Clement!” he demanded, his voice sharp and breathless.
He tried to mimic the authority he had observed whenever his grandfather had been speaking.
A gauntleted hand came down, stopping him before he could reach the door.
Ser Clement sighed, his expression softening slightly as he looked down at the boy of merely eleven.
“My prince, I am sorry, but your mother is delivering.
You cannot enter.”
Daemon’s brows drew together, his small hands curling into fists.
How was that fair?
Inside those doors, his mother was in pain, and he was expected to stand here and do nothing.
His father was in there.
His father, who rode Vhagar, the mightiest dragon in the world, who feared nothing, who could face fire and war alike.
Daemon wanted to be like him.
He wanted a dragon of his own one day, large and terrible, with wings that could darken the sky.
He wanted to stand beside his father, not be kept away like the child he was.
A woman’s scream tore through the doors.
It echoed through the stone corridor, raw and filled with agony, sending a chill down Daemon’s spine.
“Ser Clement!”
He pushed forward again, struggling against the restraining hand, his voice rising as the sounds from within continued.
The muffled shouts, the hurried footsteps, the tension in the air that even a boy could feel.
And then suddenly, the doors flew open.
They slammed against the walls with a force that made everyone in the corridor fall silent.
Baelon Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, known throughout the realm as the Prince of Spring.
A warrior without equal, rider of Vhagar, a man whose very presence commanded respect and admiration.
In Daemon’s eyes, he had always seemed larger than life.
Unbreakable.
Untouchable.
But the man who stood before him now was none of those things.
“Father,” Daemon said, the anger still in his voice.
Baelon did not answer.
He did not even look at him.
His face was pale, almost lifeless, the strength that usually defined him replaced by something hollow.
His violet eyes seemed distant, as if he were still standing somewhere far away.
Even the Kingsguard shifted uneasily.
“Your Grace?” Ser Clement asked carefully.
Baelon raised a hand, dismissing him without a word.
Then, at last, he looked down, his gaze meeting Daemon’s.
And in that instant, a cold weight settled in the boy’s chest.
Something was wrong.
“Ser Ryam,” Baelon said, his voice low and strained as he turned to the other knight.
“Escort Prince Daemon back to his chambers.”
The knight obeyed at once, placing a firm but careful hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Daemon resisted.
“Father, what about Mother?” he asked, confusion and fear breaking through his defiance.
Baelon did not answer.
He simply stood there, unmoving, his silence heavier than any words could have been.
And in that silence, Daemon’s gaze drifted past his father, through the still-open doors.
At first, he saw only shadows and movement, figures shifting in hushed urgency.
Then his eyes settled on the bed.
Not on her face.
Lower.
A pale hand hung limply over the edge, fingers still.
Daemon’s breath caught and only then did he understand.
The cries had long since stopped.
A heavy silence now filled the corridor, pressing in from all sides.
He did not fight as Ser Ryam led him away.
Baelon remained where he stood, staring at the empty space his son had left behind, trying and failing to gather the pieces of himself.
He had known, of course.
Any man of sense knew the dangers of childbirth.
Even for dragonlords, even for Targaryens, death came all the same.
Years ago he had already lost one son.
Aegon had been stillborn and never drew breath.
Alyssa had barely survived that birth.
The maesters had strongly advised against another pregnancy, warning that her body might not endure it.
Yet fate had other plans.
But Alyssa had been strong.
She had given him two children already before Aegon, had laughed in the face of fear, had burned brighter than any flame he had ever known.
His Alyssa.
And now…he did not know.
At last, Baelon turned.
He ignored the concerned glances of Ser Clement.
Slowly, he stepped back into the chamber and closed the door behind him.
The noise of the world vanished.
“Oh, Alyssa,” he whispered.
Grand Maester Elysar stepped aside at once, lowering his head as Baelon approached the bed.
The prince sat down beside her with soft care.
She looked as though she were sleeping.
As beautiful as ever, her features calm, untouched by the pain she had endured.
Only the faint sheen of sweat upon her skin spoke of the struggle that had transpired.
Baelon reached for her hand.
It was still slightly warm.
Outside, rain poured relentlessly against the walls of the Red Keep, drumming against stone and glass as the sky darkened, as though the heavens themselves mourned her passing.
Within those walls, the last warmth of Alyssa Targaryen faded slowly into memory.
The storm beyond the castle seemed to grow in strength, wind pressing against shutters and distant thunder rolling across the sky, until another sound came.
It was a cry.
Baelon straightened abruptly, his head turning toward the source as both the Grand Maester and the lone maid froze in place, their gazes drawn to the small cradle resting upon a narrow table near the bed.
“Impossible,” the Grand Maester murmured under his breath, though the word carried little conviction as he hurried forward, his composure slipping.
Baelon followed close behind, his pulse quickening, scarcely daring to believe what he was hearing as the sound grew clearer, stronger, undeniably real.
The child was crying.
Not weakly, but with desperate strength, as though it was fighting for breath, life, and presence all at once.
There could be no mistake.
The babe was alive.
Baelon stared down in stunned silence as the tiny chest rose and fell, small limbs shifting with restless energy, the cries filling the chamber with a sharp, insistent sound that stood in stark defiance of everything the maester had declared only moments before.
It made no sense.
The child had been pronounced dead.
And yet here it lay, breathing, moving with defiance almost.
Defiance against it’s original fate.
Baelon slowly reached out for the child, his fingers brushing against its soft cheek, as if it might disappear at any moment.
At the touch, the crying faltered slightly before the baby opened its eyes, deep purple irises locking onto Baelon’s own.
For a moment, he simply stared.
“Your mother had a wish.”
His gaze drifted back to Alyssa for a brief moment.
A loud crack of thunder tore across the night sky.
Baelon looked back down at the child.
“You shall be called Maekar,” he said.
“Maekar of House Targaryen.”
It was deep into the night, at the hour of the wolf, yet a faint light still burned within Grand Maester Elysar’s chambers, its glow slipping beneath the door into the dark corridor beyond.
“The year ninety-three after Aegon’s Conquest,” he murmured, the quill scratching steadily across the parchment.
Scrolls and documents were scattered across his table, but at its center lay a heavy book bound in dark leather with red details, a record containing the lineage of House Targaryen.
A work he had tended to for many years now.
“A son, born to Prince Baelon Targaryen and Princess Alyssa Targaryen.”
“Maekar.”
“Silver-blond of hair.”
“Purple of eyes.”
The ink settled into the parchment, final and unchanging, even as the memory of the child’s cry still echoed in his mind.
Alive, where it should not have been.
It was strange.
Something he had not witnessed in all his years as a maester, not in Oldtown, nor at court, nor in the countless births he had overseen.
A child without pulse or breath, only to awaken several minutes after being taken from the mother’s womb.
For a brief moment, his hand slowed.
In his youth, he had been taught that such things had explanations, that the world followed order, that life and death were lines not easily crossed.
And yet tonight…
He continued writing.
“Believed stillborn, yet…”
A faint smile touched his lips.
“…defied fate.”
Finally, he placed the quill back where it belonged.
His fingers brushed slowly over the fresh page before he began turning the pages, one after another, his gaze growing more tired.
“Alyssa Targaryen, born 60 AC.”
“Died 93 AC, summer”
“Cause… childbirth.”
The ink was still fresh.
Slowly, he turned another page.
“Aegon Targaryen.”
The entry was older.
“84 AC….Stillborn.
”
For a moment, Elysar’s expression tightened.
Then he turned yet another page.
“Aemon Targaryen.”
“Died 93 AC, spring.”
For a moment, Elysar’s expression tightened ever so slightly.
He still remembered the day the news had reached the Red Keep.
How unfortunate that was.
How broken the King and Queen were.
Prince Bealon too.
First the child.
Then the brother.
Now the wife.
He closed the book with a quiet motion.
Indeed.
Loss seemed to come swiftly for House Targaryen of late…