Dragonstone, before dawn. Black as coal.
But the western pier burned—the royal fleet had begun its landing in the grey hour before sunrise.
The air stank of sea salt and sulfur.
More than three thousand soldiers descended the gangplanks. Their iron-shod boots struck the stone pier with a dull, heavy rhythm.
«So quiet…»
Ser Erwin Redwyne stared at the empty docks, the burned-out storehouses. He had expected worse.
They have destroyed everything of use, he thought. They mean to withdraw to the castle. Make their stand there.
He looked up at the fortress that crowned the island—a dark mass of fused black stone, its towers like claws reaching for the sky. The causeway that led to its gates was a narrow spine of rock, flanked by sheer drops.
How many men will die climbing that path?
Then the sound came.
From above.
The clouds tore apart.
Vhagar's three-hundred-foot wingspan was not so much a flight as it was a movement of mountains. She rolled through the sky like a slow avalanche, her bulk blotting out the fading stars. Night dew condensed in the crevices of her scales and streamed behind her in ribbons of white mist.
Aemond Targaryen knelt in the dragon's saddle, one hand gripping the worn leather, the other resting on his thigh. His silver hair streamed in the wind. His single violet eye studied the dark of Dragonstone below.
«Aegon.» He called to his right.
The clouds parted. Sunfyre emerged.
The golden dragon's scales flowed like molten gold in the first light of dawn. His radiance was near-blinding; men on the ships below raised hands to shield their eyes.
Aegon Targaryen clutched his saddle. His face was pale.
Aemond turned. His eye swept the sky again.
Something is wrong.
His instincts, honed through years of war and flight, screamed at him.
Too quiet.
Too still.
No movement from the castle. No arrows. No scorpions.
WHERE—
The clouds directly above them exploded.
Vermithor fell from heaven, his jaws already open, fire already kindled in his throat.
The Bronze Fury. One hundred thirty feet of muscle, scale, and rage. Second only to Vhagar among living dragons—and in his prime. His scales gleamed dull bronze, scored by old battles; his wingspan stretched two hundred feet from tip to tip.
But it was his speed that was terrible.
One moment: hidden in the clouds.
The next: upon them.
«DIVE! FULL DIVE!» Aemond roared.
Vhagar rolled.
A century of battle instinct had already seized the old dragon. The moment the clouds moved, she knew. Her body twisted, her great wings folded, she fell—
But mass is a tyrant. Speed does not come easily to those who weigh a thousand tons.
The bronze fire caught the trailing edge of her left wing.
It was not the orange-red of common flame. It was the color of brass in a smith's deepest forge—gold-white, furious, ancient.
The fire missed Vhagar's body by a span of three feet.
It struck the sea less than three hundred yards from the harbor mouth.
The water screamed.
Steam exploded upward in a column that reached the clouds. Salt spray, superheated, blasted across the pier like a tidal wave. Men were thrown from their feet. Those caught in the spray—their leather boiled, their flesh blistered and sloughed—fell to the ground, shrieking, rolling, cooking in their own armor.
Where the fire had touched the sea, a crater yawned—thirty feet across, the water rushing back to fill it in a white fury of foam and dead fish. Their bellies turned to the sky, cooked from within.
«VERMITHOR?!» Aegon screamed. «There's someone on his back!»
Aemond did not answer.
His eye was fixed on the figure in the bronze dragon's saddle. Black armor. Cropped silver hair. The visor of his helm was raised, and his face—hard, grim, the face of a man who had already killed today—stared back at Aemond with a murderer's calm.
Aemond laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.
Bastards.
The blacks actually did it. They put baseborn blood on dragonback.
Rage kindled in his chest, hot and bright. He forced it down.
Focus.
His eye swept the island below.
There will be more.
And then he saw them.
From the Dragonmont's smoking peak—from the hidden caves along the cliffs—dragons.
Silverwing, rising on pale blue-green wings.
Grey Ghost, a wraith in the morning mist, already curving around for an attack run.
And higher still, almost lost against the dark sky, a fourth shape. Smaller. Quieter. Waiting.
Sheepstealer.
Four dragons.
Four riders.
A perfect ambush.
Vermithor engages Vhagar head-on. Silverwing and Grey Ghost isolate Sunfyre—overwhelm him with speed and numbers. Sheepstealer holds altitude, waits for an opening.
Aemond's mind raced.
«Aegon.» His voice was calm. Flat. «Take Vermithor.»
«WHAT—»
«I will hold Vermithor. You take the other three.»
«Do not fight. Survive. That is your only command.»
«Three dragons!» Aegon's voice cracked. «They are all coming for me! Sunfyre cannot fight three! We should retreat—now—»
«DO IT. »
Aemond's voice cracked like a whip.
«If we run, they will chase us down. They will surround us. Tear us apart in the air.»
He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. Almost gentle.
«You are a Targaryen. Have you forgotten what that means?»
«If I die, I will make them bury me.»
Aegon stared at his brother. Then, slowly, he nodded.
He has a chance to escape, Aegon thought. Vhagar is too slow. They will catch her.
No matter how strong Vhagar is, she cannot fight four dragons at once. Not with Vermithor in his prime.
He is buying me time.
Aemond leaned forward. Pressed his palm flat against the rough scales of Vhagar's neck.
«Vhagar,» he whispered. A voice for her alone. «Now. »
Vhagar turned her great head.
Her amber eyes—ancient, slit-pupiled, the color of old gold—regarded Vermithor. Silverwing. Sheepstealer.
These dragons had once been her children.
Do dragons remember?
Do they feel kinship?
Scholars had debated the question for centuries. Aemond did not know.
He only knew that, in this moment, Vhagar hesitated.
«Today,» he murmured, stroking her scales, «we remind them who rules the sky.»
Vhagar lifted her head.
She did not roar.
She inhaled.
The sound was like a thousand bellows drawing at once. The air around her great maw bent—a visible vortex, drawn into the furnace of her throat.
Vermithor's attack faltered.
The bronze dragon's jaws, opened wide to loose another stream of fire, closed. Not fully—but enough. The dark gold light in his gullet dimmed. His wings beat once, twice—slower now, uncertain.
Mother.
The thought was not words. It was older than words. It was the memory of warmth, of the nest, of the great golden she-dragon who had ruled the sky when he was young and small and hers.
Varros felt the hesitation. Felt it in the shift of Vermithor's shoulders, the falter of his wingbeats.
«NOW!» he roared. «VERMITHOR—NOW!»
The bronze dragon's eyes cleared.
The hesitation passed.
He opened his jaws.
The dark gold light in his throat kindled again—brighter, fiercer, hungrier than before.
And he burned.