Night had fallen over Pentos.
The gilded doors of the banquet hall swung shut, their heavy carved wood meeting the frame with a sound like a coffin lid closing. The last of the Pentoshi nobility had gone—fat merchants in silk robes, their fingers heavy with rings, their mouths full of flattery and their hearts full of fear.
Rhaenyra Targaryen sat the throne they had given her.
It was a Pentoshi thing, this chair—inlaid with mother-of-pearl and beaten gold, its high back carved with waves and trading cogs. The Prince of Pentos had once sat here, receiving tribute from lesser men.
Now she sat here.
And they called her queen.
Candlelight caught the silver-gold of her hair, spilling it like molten metal across her shoulders. She had closed her eyes. The compliments still echoed in her ears: Queen of Pentos. Ruler of the Free City. Your Grace, Your Grace, Your Grace—
Such a sweet poison. Such a tempting lie.
«You did rightly,» Daemon said.
He stood at her side, as he had always stood. His voice was calm, certain—the voice of a man who had never doubted his own choices and did not intend to start now.
Rhaenyra opened her eyes.
«Did I?» she said. Her voice was soft. Tired. «I refused a kingdom, Daemon.»
«A kingdom that was never truly mine.»
«A kingdom of merchants and slaves,» Corlys Velaryon said. He paced slowly before the dais, his dragonglass cane tapping against the marble floor. «The moment you accepted the title Queen of Pentos, the lords of the Seven Kingdoms—those who still support you—would have abandoned you.»
«In the eyes of the Andals, of the Faith, you would have become a queen of heathens. A barbarian queen. Your claim to the Iron Throne would have been all but forfeit.»
Rhaenyra knew this.
Knowing and accepting were not the same.
«How long?» she asked. «How long will the tax concessions hold them?»
«Long enough,» Corlys said. «The Pentoshi nobility are merchants at heart. They calculate. We offer them autonomy, low tariffs, protection from Volantis. They will tally the sums and find us the better bargain.»
«Without us, Volantis will swallow them whole. They will become a conquered province, a vassal state. Their wealth will be stripped, their ships seized, their sons conscripted.»
«We offer them what they had before—only with a different master.»
He paused. His voice was flat, practical.
«And we have dragons. As long as dragonriders patrol their skies, they will not dare to rise against us.»
Dragonriders.
The word struck Rhaenyra like a blow.
She thought of Jacaerys. Her firstborn. Her solemn, stubborn boy, who had taken her words to heart and acted. Who had sought out the bastards with faint traces of dragon blood and taught them to ride.
She had only learned of his work today.
Today, when she had also learned that his riders had been defeated at Dragonstone.
«They are here?» Rhaenyra asked.
«Waiting in the side chamber,» said Lucerys.
Rhaenyra rose. Turned to face her second son.
Lucerys Velaryon stood at the edge of the candlelight, half his face lost in shadow. But even so, she could see it clearly: the fresh, pink scar tissue that crawled from his cheek to his jaw to his throat, like the skin of a peeled fruit.
Dragonfire.
He saw her looking. He tried to smile. It was not a convincing effort.
«Bring them,» Rhaenyra said. Her voice had softened, almost against her will. «Lykirī. »
Lucerys nodded.
When the doors opened again, they brought two.
The contrast was stark.
Sara wore a simple linen gown, coarse but clean. Her belly was rounded, prominent—five months gone, perhaps six. Her silver-gold hair was braided back from her face, and her violet eyes held a mixture of fear and hope and pride.
She carries Jacaerys's child, Rhaenyra thought. Dragon's blood in her womb.
Nettles was her opposite in every way. Twelve years old, perhaps younger. Her hair was black as ink, her eyes brown, her skin weathered dark by sun and sea. She wore a fisher-girl's rough-spun tunic and smelled of salt and smoke.
She did not want to be here.
«Raise your heads,» Rhaenyra said.
Sara obeyed at once. Her chin lifted; her gaze met the queen's. There was no defiance in her eyes—only the desperate hope of a mother who wanted her child to be more than what she was.
Nettles hesitated. The guardsman at her shoulder nudged her; she flinched, then slowly, reluctantly, raised her face.
Rhaenyra studied them both.
«Tell me of Dragonstone,» she said. «Every detail. Every moment. I would hear it all.»
Sara began to speak.
She told of the ambush, the dragons rising from the dragonhold, the fire and blood and chaos of the sky. She told of Vermithor's charge, of Grey Ghost's assault, of Sheepstealer's desperate flight. She told of Varros's death—Aemond's blade through his skull, his body falling to the black rocks below.
She told of the Cannibal's emergence, and his retreat.
And she told of Grey Ghost, lying broken on the ash plain, and Aemond feeding him his own blood.
Three dragons lost, Rhaenyra thought. Vermithor and Silverwing fled east. Sheepstealer vanished. Grey Ghost wounded, perhaps tamed.
And the bastards—Varros dead, Mirax dead. Only these two remain.
Jacaerys's riders. His army of dragon-knights.
Broken before it ever truly began.
Daemon's face was grim.
He had seen Vermithor that morning—the Bronze Fury, wounded and bleeding, flying east with Silverwing at his side. The great dragon's flight had been labored, his wings heavy with exhaustion and pain.
It will take years for him to recover, Daemon thought. Years before he can fight again.
And Vermithor was the only dragon we had who could match Vhagar in open combat.
Sara had said Vhagar was wounded as well. But Vhagar had still been on her feet, still fighting, still winning, when the battle ended.
If Rhaenys and I had returned to Dragonstone. If we had taken Vhagar from the skies while she was still weakened…
We might have killed them both. Aemond and his ancient bitch.
We might have ended this war in a single day.
The regret was a physical weight in his chest.
Sara stepped forward. Her hand moved to her belly—a protective gesture, unconscious and fierce.
«Lord Jacaerys swore an oath,» she said. Her voice trembled, but she forced the words out. «He promised that when my child was born, he would give it a name.»
«A Targaryen name.»
Silence.
Corlys stirred. His cane tapped against the marble; he took a step forward, his weathered face grave.
«Rhaenyra,» he said. «This child—boy or girl, it matters not—is the only blood of Jacaerys that remains. House Velaryon will acknowledge it. Will claim it.»
«When the babe is old enough, we can—»
«Acknowledge? » Daemon cut him off. His voice was silk over steel. «Claim? »
«You are not particular, Lord Corlys. Any scrap of dragon's blood will do, will it not? Any bastard whelp, so long as it might one day sit the Driftwood Throne?»
The Sea Snake's face reddened. The hand gripping his cane went white-knuckled; blue veins stood out against his weathered skin.
«Prince Daemon—you will choose your words with care!»
«Jacaerys was my grandson. His mother's blood matters not—his blood was Velaryon, and this child carries his blood!»
«His blood,» Daemon said, each word a hammer-stroke, «is bastard blood. Jacaerys was born of adultery, raised in false legitimacy, and died a traitor's death. His get is no different.»
Sara's head had dropped. Her silver-gold hair curtained her face, hiding her eyes.
But her shoulders shook.
Rhaenyra looked at her.
Jacaerys, she thought. My firstborn. My heir. My son.
What did you want?
Why did you train these bastards? Why did you put dragonsteel in their hands and dragonfire at their command?
Did you want an army bound only to you? A host of dragon-knights who owed their allegiance to no one but their prince?
Did you mean to challenge me?
Or did you only want to give these baseborn children a chance to be something more than what the world had made them?
She would never know. Jacaerys was dead, his head rotting on a spike above the Red Keep's gates.
But his child lived.
Rhaenyra spoke.
«Raise your head.»
Sara obeyed. Her violet eyes were red-rimmed, but she did not weep. Not yet.
«Your child,» Rhaenyra said slowly, «will not be Targaryen.»
Sara's lips parted. A sound—a small, wounded sound—escaped her throat.
«Nor will it be Velaryon.»
The wound in Sara's eyes deepened.
«But,» Rhaenyra said, «if you serve the blacks well enough—if you serve me well enough—I will give it a new name. A noble name. A name it can bear with honor.»
Sara's voice was barely a whisper.
«Will it… will it be allowed to ride?»
Daemon laughed. It was not a kind sound.
«Bastards do not ride dragons,» he said. «That is Targaryen custom. Targaryen law.»
He looked at her as one might look at a servant who had presumed too far.
«Jacaerys made a mistake. He is dead now. The mistake ends with him.»
«When you die—and you will die, girl, in battle or of age or of the pox, as all men do—your dragon will be reclaimed by the House.»
«No bastard will ever sit Silverwing's saddle again.»
Sara's face went white.
The light in her eyes—the desperate, flickering hope that had sustained her through battle and flight and the long journey across the narrow sea—died.
Her child would be nothing. A bastard's bastard. A name without honor, a life without purpose.
Condemned before it ever drew breath.
«Go,» Rhaenyra said.
Sara curtsied. Her movements were stiff, mechanical—a doll pulled by strings. She turned and walked toward the door.
At the threshold, she passed a tall man.
Hugh Hammer.
The bastard knight stood in the corridor, his silver hair catching the torchlight. He had been waiting, as he always waited, patient and watchful. His eyes—dark violet, unmistakably Targaryen—followed Sara as she walked past him.
He did not speak.
He did not need to.
She knows the secret, he thought. She and Varros and Mirax. They found a way to tame dragons that even the Dragonkeepers do not know.
And Varros and Mirax are dead.
Only Sara remains.
Only Sara… and me.
The doors closed behind her. Her footsteps faded into silence.