Maekar watched Daemon pace before the door.
His brother was nervous.
He was right to be.
Everything depended on whether the Maester here would recognise the poison and have the correct antidote in stock.
“What if he hurts him as well, Maekar?” Daemon suddenly stopped in front of him.
“You know we cannot trust them anymore.”
Maekar agreed.
Of course they couldn’t trust the Maesters anymore.
But Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys were currently inside, and after Daemon had threatened the old Maester, they had asked both princes to wait outside.
Either way, if something happened to their father, Corlys would bear the blame.
Maekar knew that.
It was the only reason he was calm.
“I know,” he said.
“But Lord Velaryon has vouched for him.
And what other choice do we have?
Father would not have survived the ride to King’s Landing.”
Daemon nodded slowly.
“If something does happen, it will not only be the Maester who loses his head.”
Maekar’s gaze drifted toward the window.
“I have a bad feeling, Daemon.
Something dark is looming over our House.
Whether it is the Citadel or something else entirely.”
Then the doors swung open.
Both of them turned.
Corlys stepped out.
“Please, enter.”
He gestured past himself.
Baelon lay on a wide bed, an elderly man seated beside him.
When he noticed the two princes enter, he rose, bowing.
“Prince Daemon.”
A slight stutter.
“Prince Maekar.”
Maekar stepped closer and studied his father.
He looked slightly better.
His skin had some colour back, at least.
“How is he?” Daemon asked.
“What have you found, Maester Lorland?”
The Maester cleared his throat, stroking his grey beard.
“The symptoms of your… Prince Baelon are extremely complex, yet I have managed to identify the source.
It is poison, as you said.
An extremely dangerous and vicious one.” He paused.
“Stemming from the far east.
It is called the Long Farewell.”
“Thankfully there is an antidote, which I have already administered to the Prin—”
A silver gleam appeared at his neck.
“You are lying,” Maekar said emotionlessly, his head tilted, studying the old man.
“Prince!” Corlys stepped forward, caught off guard.
“Please, calm yourself.”
Maekar glanced at him.
“Your Maester is lying, Lord Corlys.”
“I speak the truth, my Prince, my Lord!” Maester Lorland protested, his frail hands trembling as his eyes moved between Corlys and Maekar.
“Fine.” Maekar shook his head slowly, the blade still resting at the Maester’s neck, a single drop of blood curling down the steel.
“Then let me be plain.
My father has been poisoned over a long period of time.
More than once.”
He had searched the Maester’s chambers before entering.
The empty vials had told him enough.
That and the dozens of times in the past year when Baelon wasn’t feeling well.
Rhaenys stepped in quietly.
“I am sure there is an explanation for that.
Is there not, Maester?”
The old man nodded, fast and desperate.
“A second poison!
There are symptoms of a large and prolonged influx of Sweetsleep as well!”
“Sweetsleep?” Maekar and Corlys said at the same time.
“Yes, yes.
In small doses over a long period it accumulates in the stomach until it… erupts.
It must be that.
It must.”
Maekar lowered his sword slowly and sheathed it.
His gaze settled somewhere on the wall.
“Hah.”
A single breath.
He was quiet for a moment.
“The Long Farewell caused most of his symptoms, since his stomach did not erupt yet.
Is that correct?”
The Maester nodded.
“Then why would someone administering Sweetsleep suddenly switch to a far more potent poison?” He said it into the room, looking around.
“They wouldn’t.
And they couldn’t.
We stopped them before they even had the chance.”
The silence that followed was answer enough.
“There is a second one.” His voice came out low, his gaze lifting slowly toward the ceiling.
“A second poison means a second poisoner…”
Dragonstone
Ser Clement’s hand came down on the wooden table.
“Do you have access to the kitchen?!”
The maid before him flinched.
She was trembling, tears running freely down her cheeks.
“No!
Please, let me go.”
He studied her for a moment.
Her eyes.
Her hands, kneading at the fabric of her skirt.
Then his gaze dropped to the piece of paper on the table.
Only two months on Dragonstone.
“You can leave,” he said, dismissing her with a gesture and leaning back in his chair.
The guards at the door stepped aside.
She was through it before they had fully moved.
Ser Clement sighed and rubbed his face.
He still had not reached the ones in Prince Maekar’s pocket.
The servants the prince had quietly paid from his own allowance, the ones who had been feeding him whispers for months.
They would need to be questioned last, carefully, and without the other guards present.
For now, he stood.
The sound of armour striking stone echoed through the hallway as Ser Clement marched, a retinue of trustworthy guards at his back.
Somewhere in this castle there was someone who had helped the Maester.
The kitchen servants or the maids, most likely, and he knew they would reveal themselves.
Sooner or later.
He was still turning it over in his head when a double door opened at the far end of the hallway.
The small Sept.
A man slipped out of it.
Ser Oswin.
The middle-aged knight had already spotted him and was now walking towards him.
Ser Clement waited.
“Where have you been?
I already sent someone looking for you.”
Ser Oswin nodded slowly.
“I have a habit of praying to the Seven when times feel dangerous.”
Ser Clement studied him for a long moment.
“Come,” he said finally.
“There is much to do.”
He had already turned when he noticed the knight had not moved.
“I believe the Prince gave us both authority here.”
Ser Clement stopped.
“You will not order me around like that, Kingsguard.”
The word landed with particular disdain.
Ser Clement looked at Ser Oswin for a moment.
The man’s chin was high, his jaw set, his eyes carrying something that wanted to look like pride.
Then he kept walking without a word.
He had no time for petty grudges.
Or whatever this was.
Corlys followed the prince outside.
The rain hit him immediately, cold and relentless.
It plastered his hair flat against his forehead.
He pulled his cloak tighter and kept moving.
Around the walls of High Tide, three dragons had arranged themselves.
Caraxes coiled near the eastern courtyard wall, his long neck stretching above it.
Meleys crouched further along the ramparts, red and vast, her wings half-raised against the downpour.
And beyond the walls, barely visible through the curtain of rain, the Cannibal sat on the grass plains like a mountain.
They were not at peace with one another.
Caraxes screamed first, a long piercing shriek.
The Cannibal answered from the darkness, lower and heavier, more a rumble than a cry.
Meleys hissed between them, restless, her tail dragging long furrows through the wet earth.
Corlys had revered dragons his entire life.
They were a symbol of House Targaryen’s absolute power.
Perhaps one day his children would ride them as well.
That was his one true dream.
“Prince,” he called out, raising his voice above the rain.
“Whatever you intend to do, would it not be wise to first inform the King?
Prince Baelon has been poisoned.
He is still in a critical condition.
Surely—”
Maekar stopped.
He did not turn immediately.
He stood in the rain with his back to Corlys, his red cloak soaked through and dark.
His small frame remained utterly still despite the wind pulling at everything around him.
Then he tilted his head.
“Are you not wondering why we brought him here?” he asked, his tone without any of the false courtesy.
Corlys held his gaze for a long moment.
In that moment he finally understood the entire picture.
The suspicion against his own maester.
All of it.
“The maester… he was the one who poisoned him?” Corlys asked in a ghostly tone, trying to grasp the severity of the situation.
Maekar nodded.
A slight smile appeared on his face.
“I beheaded him.”
Corlys widened his eyes.
Yet all he could think about were those eyes.
They were not a child’s eyes.
No.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
He turned.
Rhaenys stood in the doorway, dressed in her riding leathers, dark and close-fitted.
“I will be coming with Maekar,” she said firmly.
“I have already persuaded Daemon.
He will stay behind.”
Maekar seemed suprised yet did not say anything, while Corlys just stared at her.
Besides them, Meleys raised her head toward the storm and let out a long, rolling cry, as if in answer.
But his assumption was wrong.
Corlys instinctively looked at the prince, but Maekar seemed just as surprised.
Then it came.
A roar louder than the other three.
Older.
“Vhagar,” Maekar suddenly said.
Corlys followed his gaze.
In the dark clouds, a massive shadow appeared.
Wings large enough to be the sails of his ships swung back and forth with majestic grace as the largest living dragon in Westeros descended.
“It followed us.
It followed his rider,” Maekar muttered.
He suddenly lunged forward.
He ran toward his dragon, who seemed the most restless, spreading its wings as a sign of power.
Rhaenys ran in a different direction toward Meleys.
“Dohaerās, Cannibal!” Maekar shouted from a distance.
Calm, Cannibal.
He finally reached his dragon.
The Cannibal was fuming with anger and bloodthirst.
Maekar could see it in those glowing green eyes.
No, he could feel it through their bond.
He climbed up quickly.
“Sōvēs!” Maekar shouted.
Fly.
The Cannibal spread his massive wings.
His muscles tensed.
He shot forward a few paces before launching into the air with a powerful beat of his wings.
Maekar could feel it clearly through the bond.
Boundless greed.
Hunger.
Sovereignty.
These instincts were carved deep into the arrogant mind of his dragon, shaped through countless fights and the fact that he had won them.
All of them.
He would have held him back, but Vhagar was flying straight toward them.
The old she-dragon was clearly angry and confused by the situation of her rider and infuriated by the other dragons.
He would have held him back.
He would.
But those instincts of his dragon.
He knew them all too well.
He just couldn’t help it.
“Fine!” he shouted.
He rose slightly from his seat between the sharp fins, his chin rising as the distance between the two dragons closed rapidly.
A clash was now inevitable.
The Cannibal seemed to sense his rider’s rising excitement.
The great black dragon parted his jaws slightly.
Thick drool and spit flew from his mouth as he gained more and more speed.
Green fire slowly gathered at the back of his throat.
The rain hitting it turned instantly into steam.
Maekar clenched his teeth.
For the first time in this life, he spoke the command.
“Dracarys, Cannibal!”
His hands tightened around the horns in front of him.
And then it erupted.
A massive beam of bright green fire, far stronger than anything Maekar had seen before, shot straight toward Vhagar like a roaring river of death.
The night sky lit up in emerald flames.
For a moment everything became green.
The clouds, even the rain.
Vhagar roared in fury.
She turned her enormous body at the last second.
Most of the green fire missed her, but some still caught the edge of her left wing.
The old dragon screamed in anger.
The sound was so deep and loud that Maekar felt it in his bones.
The Cannibal did not slow down.
He charged forward with a thunderous roar of his own, full of hunger and pride.
Vhagar answered.
She opened her jaws wide and unleashed a huge torrent of orange fire while diving straight at them.
At the same time, she snapped her massive jaws, trying to bite down on the smaller black dragon.
Maekar leaned hard to the side, clenching his teeth while trying to communicate with his dragon through their bond.
The Cannibal understood and rolled sharply at the last moment.
Vhagar’s flames rushed past them, close enough that Maekar felt the burning heat on his face.
The old dragon’s teeth snapped shut just inches away from the Dragon’s tail with a terrifying crack.
Maekar’s heart hammered in his chest as both dragons turned once more, preparing for another attack.
Then suddenly a red silhouette shot between them.
“Meleys!” Maekar shouted in surprise.
The Cannibal had already gathered green fire in his throat again.
Maekar stopped him at the last second, as the beam of green flame shot high into the clouds.
“Maekar!” Rhaenys shouted across the distance.
Her voice was sharp and commanding.
It was exactly the wake-up call he needed.
He had sunk too deep into the battle frenzy and almost forgotten where he needed to be.
Dragonstone.
He pulled the Cannibal around and turned east.
The black dragon obeyed after a few moments of hesitation, though he let out an angry roar of protest.
The Cannibal and Meleys were both faster than the giant Vhagar.
Within moments they left the old she-dragon behind in the stormy sky.
Vhagar’s furious roars grew quieter as the distance increased.
On his right, Meleys flew closer.
She truly was incredibly fast.
Rhaenys looked at him with clear anger in her eyes.
Maekar met her gaze for a moment, then simply shrugged as if nothing had happened.
He turned back toward the front, the cold rain running down his face.
Now only one question remained.
How deep did the rot truly go?