«AEMOND! »
Aegon's scream was raw with despair.
«I CANNOT HOLD! Sunfyre cannot fly—his right wing is torn! We—he is going to fall!»
Aemond looked back.
Sunfyre was losing altitude. Each wingbeat was a labor; each beat sent a spray of golden blood misting into the air. The dragon's molten-gold body was scored with claw marks, blackened with burns.
Aegon lay flat against the saddle. His face was white as parchment.
Minutes, Aemond thought. He has minutes.
Minutes before Sunfyre loses too much height and crashes into the black cliffs. Minutes before Silverwing and Grey Ghost tear him apart.
And on his side…
Vhagar and Vermithor had entered the death-grind. Both dragons were wounded. Both bled. Both fought through pain.
But Vhagar was old. Old meant cunning. Old meant efficiency. She inflicted maximum hurt at minimum cost.
Vermithor fought on brute strength and fury alone. The wound on his neck still bled; his movements were slowing.
If this continues, Vhagar wins.
But it will take time.
Aegon does not have time.
Aemond's body was slick with dragon's blood. The heat of it made his own blood boil.
Time seemed to slow.
Vhagar and Vermithor were locked together now—chest to chest, forelimbs grappling, wings beating furiously to maintain altitude. Their jaws snapped at each other's faces, each trying to find a killing hold.
Primitive. Savage. A contest of pure strength.
Aemond roared—in Valyrian, the High Valyrian of old, the tongue that dragons knew.
«CLOSE! NOW! I WILL KILL HIM! GO—KILL THE OTHER TWO!»
Vhagar understood.
The old dragon did not retreat from her bite. Instead, she drove forward, her foreclaws seizing Vermithor's shoulders. Not to attack—to hold.
Her ancient strength was enough, for a moment, to lock the bronze dragon in place.
Twenty feet separated the two riders.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Aemond jumped.
Varros saw the silver-haired prince launch himself from Vhagar's back.
His first thought was not fear.
It was absurdity.
A jump?
At three hundred feet? Between two fighting dragons, both of which could fall at any moment?
This is madness.
Complete madness.
But the absurdity lasted only a heartbeat.
Because Aemond made the jump.
He landed on Vermithor's back, both hands gripping Blackfyre, and drove the blade into the seam between two scales!
The Valyrian steel punched through dragon hide like silk. Aemond used the sword to anchor himself, his body swinging wildly as Vermithor shrieked.
The bronze dragon bucked. Rolled. Tried to throw this insect from his back.
Aemond held on.
One hand gripped Blackfyre's hilt. The other clawed at the raised edge of a scale. His fingernails cracked; blood welled beneath them. He did not let go.
His entire body swung in the air, suspended over a three-hundred-foot drop.
Vermithor could not maintain level flight while twisting like this. He began to roll, to dive—anything to dislodge the thing on his back.
Aemond pulled Blackfyre free. Dragon blood sprayed across his face, hot as forge-fire.
He began to climb.
Up Vermithor's spine. Hand over hand. Gripping scales, digging his boots into the gaps between plates, hauling himself toward the saddle.
Vermithor's roars became frantic.
Varros watched the blood-soaked madman crawl toward him.
This man—this monster—was scaling a dragon in mid-air, while two beasts rolled and dove and fought for dominance.
Varros's hands went to his safety chains. Thick as a man's thumb, wrapped thrice around his waist, locked to the base of the saddle.
He fumbled at the locks.
Too slow.
Aemond rose to his feet, swaying on Vermithor's spine. Blackfyre gleamed in his hand.
He was smiling. His face was a mask of dragon's blood.
«You die now,» he said.
«Bastard.»
He took a step forward.
Varros screamed. His fingers tore at the chains, at the locks, at anything—
Aemond reached him. Seized his helm. Yanked.
The helm came away. Varros's face was revealed—thirty years old, silver hair plastered to his brow with sweat, violet eyes wide with terror.
«Wait—!» he begged.
Blackfyre thrust.
Straight through the open mouth.
The point pierced the soft palate, drove through the brain cavity, burst out the back of the skull. Half the blade's length emerged from the nape of Varros's neck.
*Ssssshk. *
A soft sound. Almost gentle.
Varros's body went rigid. His eyes bulged. The light in them—fear, fury, despair—drained away in an instant.
Aemond twisted the blade. Once. Twice.
Then he pulled.
Blood and brain matter streamed from the wounds. Varros's body went slack. The chains held him upright, propped against the saddle like a doll. His head lolled forward; a waterfall of red poured from the hole in his nape.
His corpse twitched once. Twice.
Then stillness.
Aemond did not look at him.
He seized the saddle's rim with his left hand. Blackfyre rose and fell in his right.
*CHINK. CHINK. CHINK. *
Three strokes. Valyrian steel sheared through iron links like a scythe through wheat.
Varros's body slid from the saddle.
It fell, spinning, toward the black coast below. It struck the rocks with a wet, meaty smack. A small red cloud bloomed against the stone.
Then the waves took it.
Aemond did not take Vermithor's saddle.
He knew better. Vermithor was a grown dragon, battle-tested, savage. Without a rider, he would become more dangerous—uncontrolled, unbound, a beast of pure rage.
But Aemond did not need to ride him.
He only needed him riderless.
«BROTHER! »
The scream came from Aemond's right.
Mirax had seen everything.
The bastard had been pursuing Sunfyre, driving Grey Ghost hard, lost in the bloodlust of the hunt. Then he had looked up.
And seen his brother die.
Something broke inside him.
His face contorted. Not with fear. Not with grief.
Hate. Pure, incandescent hate.
«KILL HIM! » Mirax shrieked in Valyrian. His hands wrenched the reins. «GREY GHOST—BURN HIM! BURN HIM FOR ME! »
Grey Ghost felt his rider's fury.
The pale dragon's shriek was a knife across the sky. His wings snapped taut; he carved a savage arc through the air and dove—straight at the silver-haired figure on Vermithor's back.
Thirty yards.
Grey Ghost opened his jaws.
The light in his throat kindled—orange-red, the fire of a young dragon, hungry and hot.
And he loosed.
The flame came down like a waterfall. It washed over Vermithor's spine, over the empty saddle, over the man who stood there alone.
Aemond Targaryen disappeared in the fire.