The Great Hall of the Red Keep had not held so many banners since the days of the Conquest.
They came from every corner of the realm that winter had not completely broken. The direwolf of Stark flew beside the crowned stag of Baratheon. The golden lion of Lannister shared the high walls with the rose of Tyrell, the sun-and-spear of Martell, the twin towers of Frey, and a hundred lesser arms. Even a few wildling chiefs who had chosen to remain south of the Wall stood near the back in hastily cleaned furs, looking as though they still expected the ceiling to fall on them. Outside, the three dragons rested on the heights of the Dragonpit, visible through the high windows whenever the clouds parted.
King Jaehaerys II Targaryen sat the Iron Throne for the last time.
He was too weak to wear the full Conqueror's crown for long; it rested instead on a cushion beside him. When the proclamations were read and the lords had shouted their acclamations, the old King rose with the help of two Kingsguard and placed the lighter crown of Aegon the Dragonbane on Rhaegar's brow himself. His hands trembled, but his voice did not.
"I name Rhaegar of House Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. May he reign longer than the winter that tried to end us."
The answering roar shook dust from the rafters.
Rhaegar did not sit the throne that day. He stood before it with Roberta at his side and spoke only briefly: of the dead who had held the Wall, of the debt owed to the North, of the work still required to feed the realm and mend the roads and keep the next Long Night from finding them unprepared. When he finished, the hall was quieter than before, but the quiet felt steady rather than uncertain.
The wedding followed within the fortnight, as Jaehaerys had commanded.
They were married in the Great Sept of Baelor under the eyes of the Seven and, at Rhaegar's quiet insistence, before a heart tree brought down from the North and planted in the sept's godswood for the occasion. Roberta wore black and gold and a circlet of silver set with a single ruby. Rhaegar wore the Valyrian scale armor he had fought the Night King in, polished now but still bearing the faint scars of frost. The Silver Emperor landed on the plaza outside when the vows were spoken, and the crowd's cheer was louder than the bells.
That night the dragons flew a slow circuit over the city, and for the first time in living memory the people of King's Landing looked up at dragonflame without fear.
King Jaehaerys died six weeks later, in his sleep, with his wife's hand in his and his son's shadow on the wall. The mourning was genuine in many places and carefully performed in others. Rhaegar was crowned a second time, alone this time, on the Iron Throne itself. The crown that had once sat on Aegon's head was heavier than it looked.
The early years of his reign were spent doing the unglamorous work the Long Night had made necessary.
Grain from the Reach and the Riverlands moved north along the black-brick roads under heavy guard. The Gift was reopened to settlement by wildlings who had sworn new oaths, watched carefully by a strengthened Night's Watch that now included more than a few Northern second sons and even a handful of Essosi volunteers. Eastwatch and Farwinter were rebuilt in stone and dragonglass. Maesters and builders from the Citadel and from Myr were paid handsomely to study the remains of the ice throne's crater and the strange blue crystals that still occasionally turned up in the gift of the Free Folk.
In the south, Rhaegar moved more carefully.
He kept Tywin Lannister as Hand for the first three years, using the man's efficiency while quietly limiting his ability to place Lannister kin in every vacant keep. When Tywin at last returned to Casterly Rock, it was with honors, a generous settlement, and the clear understanding that the West would prosper best by remaining loyal. Jaime Lannister stayed in King's Landing as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard—the youngest in living memory, and one of the few who had seen the Night King fall with his own eyes.
Oberyn Martell returned from Essos only long enough to stand witness at the wedding and to deliver a private warning: the Free Cities were restless. Braavos still nursed its humiliation. Certain captains in the Disputed Lands had begun speaking of "the dragon's absence" as opportunity. Rhaegar listened, thanked him, and sent him back across the Narrow Sea with new titles, new gold, and the quiet authority to remind the Free Cities that the Dragonlord's reach had not shortened.
The first child was born in the third year of the reign, in the middle of a summer that felt almost miraculous after so many years of cold. A girl, silver-haired and violet-eyed, with her mother's stubborn chin. They named her Visenya. The second followed two years later—a boy this time, darker-haired, already loud. They named him Aegon, to the predictable delight of the court singers. A third child, another daughter, came later still and was called Rhaenys almost before the maesters had finished their work.
Rhaegar was not a king who lived only for war, but neither did he pretend the world had become gentle.
He flew the dragons every season, sometimes as far as the Wall, sometimes across the Narrow Sea to the Stepstones or the ruins of Ghoyan Drohe. He kept the black-brick roads growing, mile by hard mile. He founded a new order of builders and maesters charged with studying both dragonglass and the older runes that had flared during the final battle. And every year, on the anniversary of the Night King's fall, he returned to Farwinter and stood in silence at the edge of the crater where the ice throne had been.
The realm, slowly, began to believe that summer might last.
One evening in the tenth year of his reign, Rhaegar stood on the roof of the Red Keep with Roberta beside him and their three children already half-grown and arguing about which dragon was fastest. The Silver Emperor dozed on the Dragonpit heights. The city below was loud with ordinary life—markets, arguments, laughter, the sound of hammers repairing a quay.
Roberta slipped her hand into his.
"Do you still dream of it?" she asked. "The throne of ice. The blue eyes."
"Sometimes," Rhaegar admitted. "Less often than I used to." He looked north, though the Wall was far beyond seeing. "The god of cold is patient. So are we."
Below them the bells of the Great Sept began to ring the hour. Somewhere in the city a child laughed. Somewhere else a blacksmith's hammer rang against steel that would one day need to be dragonglass instead.
Rhaegar of House Targaryen, Second of His Name to sit the throne after the Long Night, sometimes called the Dawn King by the singers and the Dragonlord by those who had been at Farwinter, exhaled and let the evening wind cool his face.
The winter had come.
The winter had been broken.
And the work of keeping the dawn continued.
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