CRISTON COLE
From the ground, it looked like madness.
The bastard—Ulf—ran toward the king's broken body while Meleys descended like a falling star. No weapon that could touch a dragon. No shield that could stop dragonfire.
He's going to die. They're both going to die.
Criston screamed orders. Archers nocked. Scorpion crews aimed.
Too slow. All of it too slow.
Then Ulf did something impossible.
He jumped.
Not a normal jump. A blur of motion that carried him thirty feet into the air. Then another blur. And another.
He was running on nothing. Climbing empty space like it was a staircase.
What in the Seven Hells—
Meleys opened her jaws. Fire building.
Ulf's final leap carried him onto her back.
ULF
Scales beneath my hands. Muscle shifting under scales. The furnace-heat of a dragon's body.
Rhaenys twisted in her saddle, saw me, and her eyes went wide.
"What ARE you?"
No time for answers.
Meleys rolled, trying to throw me. I spiked my weight to 10,000kg—became an anchor on her spine.
She screamed. The sudden imbalance killed her dive. We leveled out, three hundred feet above the battlefield.
Rhaenys drew a knife. Slashed at me.
I caught her wrist. Squeezed.
The knife dropped.
"Yield."
"Never." She spat in my face. "The Blacks will—"
"The Blacks aren't here. Vhagar is. Yield, and I'll let you live."
Fury in her eyes. Pride. Defiance.
But also fear.
Good.
Below, Vhagar rose. Coming to finish what we'd started.
Rhaenys saw her death approaching.
"My husband," she whispered. "My children. My grandchildren. All of them taken. Now you'll take me too?"
"I don't want to."
"Then don't. Let me go."
"You'll keep fighting. Keep killing Green soldiers. Keep threatening Helaena's children."
Her jaw tightened. "I do what I must."
"So do I."
I released her wrist. Stepped back.
"You have three seconds before Vhagar reaches us. Use them however you want."
Rhaenys stared at me. Understanding dawned.
She wasn't going to beg. Wasn't going to run.
She turned to Meleys. Stroked the dragon's neck.
"We die together, old friend. As it should be."
I jumped.
Geppo kicked off air. Silverwing caught me mid-fall.
Behind us, Vhagar's jaws closed.
The sound—wet and final—echoed across the sky.
Meleys and Rhaenys, the Red Queen and the Queen Who Never Was, fell together.
The battle was over.
ULF
Aegon lived.
That was the only victory worth counting.
I stood beside his broken body while maesters swarmed. His legs were shattered—both of them, multiple fractures. His armor had caved in, crushing ribs against lung. Burns covered half his face where dragonfire had caught the edge of his helm.
He would survive. He might never walk again.
The king is crippled. The power structure just collapsed.
Criston Cole appeared at my shoulder.
"That was..." He struggled for words. "What you did. I've never seen anything like it."
"Neither have I."
"What ARE you?"
The question everyone kept asking.
"Just a man who trained very hard."
"No man runs on air."
"This one does."
He stared at me. Questions burning in his eyes. Questions he was smart enough not to ask out loud.
"The queen will want to know you're safe," he said finally.
"Which queen?"
"Both of them. But I meant Helaena."
Of course he did.
I touched Jaehaera's ribbon. Still tied to my wrist. Singed at the edges now, but intact.
"Send word to King's Landing. The battle is won. Meleys and Rhaenys are dead. Sunfyre is crippled. Aegon—" I looked at the broken king. "Aegon will need months to recover. If he recovers at all."
"And Aemond?"
We both looked up.
Vhagar circled overhead. Aemond had landed briefly to confirm Rhaenys's death, then taken off again. Celebrating. Gloating.
His grandmother's blood still fresh on Vhagar's jaws.
"Aemond is regent now," I said. "Until Aegon heals."
Criston nodded slowly. "Gods help us all."
AEMOND
Victory.
The word sang in his blood.
Vhagar banked over the battlefield, and Aemond surveyed his handiwork. Meleys's corpse—massive even in death. Rhaenys's body—broken and small beside her dragon. Sunfyre—crippled but alive. Aegon—breathing, barely.
Brother. You were always too weak for this.
But the bastard...
Aemond had seen it. The impossible jumps. The landing on Meleys's back. The weight that held the dragon down.
That's not training. That's something else.
He would find out what. Eventually.
For now, there were more pressing matters.
I am regent. Vhagar answers to me. The war continues.
He turned Vhagar toward King's Landing.
Time to tell his mother that he'd killed grandmother.
ULF
Night fell over Rook's Rest.
Fires still burned. Soldiers still groaned. The dead still lay where they'd fallen.
I sat alone on a broken wall, watching Silverwing sleep in the courtyard below. She'd taken a few minor burns during the battle—nothing serious. She'd heal.
We won.
It didn't feel like winning.
Rhaenys's face kept appearing in my mind. That final moment. The pride. The acceptance.
"We die together, old friend."
She'd been someone's grandmother. Someone's mother. A woman who'd watched her family tear itself apart, who'd fought for the side she believed was right.
And I'd helped kill her.
This is the Dance. Everyone loses.
I pulled out Jaehaera's ribbon. Studied it in the firelight.
Come back to me.
I would. Tomorrow, I'd fly back to King's Landing. I'd hold Helaena. I'd tell her about the battle—some of it, anyway. I'd play with the children, let them tie ribbons around my wrists, pretend the world wasn't drowning in blood.
But tonight...
Tonight I sat with the dead and wondered what I was becoming.
A soldier walked past. Stopped. Stared at me.
"You're the one who jumped on Meleys."
"Yeah."
"How?"
"Practice."
He shook his head. "You're touched by the gods. Must be."
"I'm touched by something."
He walked away. Probably going to tell stories that would grow more impossible with each retelling.
The White Demon. The man who walked on air. The bastard who rode dragons and killed princesses.
I stood. Stretched. My muscles ached—good aches, the kind that meant I'd pushed hard and survived.
Tomorrow, King's Landing. Tonight, rest.
I found a patch of dry ground near Silverwing's warmth. Lay down.
Sleep came slowly. When it did, I dreamed of fire and falling and a grandmother's eyes asking questions I couldn't answer.
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