"Okay, thanks!" I said with a bright, almost too cheerful smile that seemed to catch Olyvar completely off guard. I turned on my heel and began the long trudge up the main path toward the Great Door.
I could hear his armored boots scuffing against the stone behind me. He wasn't staying at his post. The sound of his approach was hesitant, like a man following a strange animal into a den.
"Aren't you a prince?" Olyvar's voice came from behind me, rough with genuine confusion. "Shouldn't you be angry? Should you not be screaming for vengeance at having to beg for attention like some common street rat?"
I paused for a second, half turning to look at him. For a moment, I genuinely didn't understand what he meant. Then it clicked. To a man raised on songs of dragonlords and divine right, a prince who walks up to a gate like a petitioner is an impossibility an insult to the very blood in his veins.
But I wasn't the prince he expected. I was a modern man who knew that pride didn't put food in your stomach or a roof over your head. And the old Vaegon? He'd spent his childhood begging for scraps of attention and training hours; this wasn't a fall from grace, it was just Tuesday.
"Anger doesn't open doors, Ser Olyvar," I said simply, turning back to the path. "Hunger and persistence do."
"You're a strange one," he muttered, but he kept walking, close enough that his presence felt like a shield against whatever other desperate souls might be lurking in the shadows of the castle walls.
The Great Door loomed ahead, ancient oak reinforced with blackened iron. It looked like it hadn't been properly oiled in a decade. I reached up, my small hands grasping the heavy iron ring. The metal was ice cold against my skin.
Here goes nothing.
I took a breath, steadied my nerves, and hammered the ring against the wood. The sound echoed through the empty courtyard like a thunderclap.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I waited, my heart thudding in time with the echoes. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the distant scream of a gull and the wind whistling through the dragon carved battlements. Then, from somewhere deep within the bowels of the castle, I heard the slow, dragging sound of footsteps approaching. This chapter was taken from novelping . com without permission.
Olyvar leaned in close, his breath warm against my ear as he whispered with urgent warning. "Lord Kellan hates your family. Thinks the Targaryens left this island to rot and die. He won't take kindly to seeing that dragon blood on his doorstep."
I groaned, pressing my palms against my temples. The headache from the climb was now joined by the headache of political complications. "Fuck my life," I whispered under my breath. I had come here for sanctuary, not to immediately piss off the local landlord.
The heavy door creaked open, revealing a man who looked as though he had been carved from the same volcanic stone as the castle itself. He was middle aged, with dark hair streaked through with premature gray, and eyes that held the bitter exhaustion of a man who had been fighting a losing battle against decay for years. He didn't look like a lord; he looked like a warden of a prison.
His gaze swept over me the oversized coat, the dirt under my fingernails, my small frame and then shifted to Olyvar with unmistakable irritation.
"Ser Olyvar," the man said, his voice like grinding gravel. "What did the head of my guard bring to my doorstep? A beggar? A child?" He didn't wait for an answer, his frown deepening as he looked back at me. "We have no charity left in these walls, boy. Try the village if you're looking for scraps."
He started to close the door, his movements efficient and final.
"Wait!" I said, stepping forward before he could shut me out. I couldn't afford to be polite anymore. I had to be direct. "I'm not here for scraps, Lord Kellan. And I'm not a beggar."
I straightened my spine as much as my seven year old frame would allow, forcing myself to meet his weary stare with as much conviction as I could muster. "My name is Vaegon Targaryen. I've come to claim my place as Prince of Dragonstone."
The silence that followed was deafening. Olyvar made a sound that might have been a choked cough, and Lord Kellan simply froze, his hand still gripping the edge of the heavy oak door. For a long moment, he didn't move, his expression shifting from irritation to something far more dangerous: genuine, cold suspicion.
"Look at me!" I demanded, stepping fully into the light filtering through the doorway. I didn't cower. I pointed directly at my own face, at the sharp line of my jaw, the bridge of my nose, and those unnaturally clear eyes. "Look at my face, damn you!"
Lord Kellan didn't move at first. His eyes narrowed, scanning me like a man examining a suspicious wound. He studied the shape of my cheekbones, the way the light caught the silver black sheen of my hair, and the unmistakable aristocratic tilt of my head. Slowly, something flickered in his expression not hope, but a grim, reluctant recognition.
"I served the court before the rebellion," he said quietly, his voice losing some of its gravelly bite, replaced by something more unsettling: nostalgia tinged with bitterness. "I saw King Rhaegar in my youth... before he became obsessed with his songs and his stars. You..." He paused, his gaze lingering on my eyes. "You do look like him. The features are unmistakable."
For a heartbeat, I felt a surge of triumph. I had done it. I had broken through the first layer of his defenses. But then he spoke again, and the triumph turned to ash.
"But Rhaegar's son died three years ago," Kellan said flatly. "Or so the ravens said. If you're a changeling, boy, or some mummer's trick sent by the Lannisters to spy on my dwindling stores, I'll have you thrown from the Dragonmount myself."
I froze. Then, something hot and bitter boiled up in my throat. The frustration of the journey, the exhaustion, the centuries of Targaryen incompetence, and the sheer audacity of this man it all came crashing down at once. Get faster updates on NovelPing.
I spat on the stone floor between us, the wet smack echoing in the doorway.
"You do know how to anger someone, don't you?" I growled, my voice cracking but dripping with venom. "Three years of being a ghost, and the first thing I hear when I walk through your door is that I'm a lie."
I stepped closer, forcing him to either flinch or stand his ground. "I am not a mummer, and I am not a Lannister spy. I am the prince you were supposed to protect, and I am starving, I am tired, and I am here."
I didn't wait for him to respond to my outburst. I took a step closer, my small frame dwarfed by his shadow, but my voice carrying a weight that belonged to someone decades older.
"Look," I said, my tone shifting from rage to something colder, more pragmatic. "You can hate the throne, or the cunt King, or the cunt Queens for all I care. Believe me, I'm not exactly proud to carry this name." I gestured vaguely toward the castle walls and the miserable, wind swept village below. "But this castle and this territory... they are mine by right."
Kellan's eyes narrowed, but he didn't interrupt.
"I have no place at court," I continued, "no place in King's Landing, and no place anywhere else in this gods forsaken realm. I'm a ghost to them. But that means I'm free of them." I looked him dead in the eye, letting the desperation and the ambition show through. "I will strive to make this territory breathe again. Not for Rhaegar, not for my family, but because I need to live here. If this rock dies, I die with it."
The silence that followed was different this time. It wasn't the silence of suspicion, but the silence of calculation. Lord Kellan looked at me really looked at me and I could see him weighing the options. On one hand, I was a child with a claim to a throne he despised. On the other, I was the first person in years to speak about Dragonstone as something worth saving.
He let out a long, weary exhale that sounded like a death rattle. "You speak like a man who has already been gutted once," he muttered. "Most Targaryens think the world owes them everything because of the blood in their veins. But you... you're asking for nothing but a place to exist."
He stepped aside, opening the door wider. The interior of the castle was dark and cold, smelling of damp stone and old smoke.
"Come in, boy. Before the wind carries you back to the sea."