Pentos, 297 AC, Sixth Moon
The night tasted of salt and lemon and distant smoke. I stood on the balcony of my borrowed chamber, palms flat against the warm stone balustrade, letting the breeze pull my hair across my face like a curtain of white fire. Below me the manse slept, or pretended to. Guards in polished half-plate paced the gardens with the lazy arrogance of men who believed the only threats came from outside the walls. Somewhere in the east wing Viserys snored off another skin of wine. In the west wing Daenerys dreamed whatever dreams a thirteen-year-old girl still dares to dream when the world has spent her entire life teaching her that hope is a luxury she cannot afford.
I was wide awake.
The serum still sang in my blood, a low, constant thrum of power that made the marble under my bare feet feel like packed sand. Every heartbeat reminded me: you are not dying anymore. Every breath reminded me: you are not powerless anymore. And every thought, every single one, circled the same red-hot core.
The Iron Throne is mine by right.
Not Viserys's. Never Viserys's.
I loved my brother the way you love a house that is already burning: with helpless nostalgia for what it once was and the grim certainty that the only mercy left is to stop the fire spreading to the homes next door. Viserys was Aerys reborn, but without even the excuse of wildfire dreams or voices in the walls. He was cruelty without grandeur, madness without vision. If I put him on a throne he would sit it for six months at best before someone shoved a dagger through his eye. And the realm would cheer. They would cheer the death of the last dragon, and the name Targaryen would die with him, spat out like poison.
No. The realm had spent fifteen years telling itself that silver hair and purple eyes meant only one thing: burn them all. I would not hand them another Mad King to prove the story true.
And then there was the other claimant, the one the wolves had hidden in plain sight.
Jon Snow.
Rhaegar's son by Lyanna Stark. I knew the truth the way I knew my own name now, because Ethan Carter had read the books and watched the show and argued on Reddit until four in the morning. I knew about Rhaegar's annulment, about the Tower of Joy, about the wet nurse and the harp wrapped in rags. I knew Jon would kneel in the snow one day and swear his life to a girl who would ask him to bend it, because that was who he was.
He was a good man. Maybe even a great one.
He was also a Stark in every way that mattered. Raised on honour and winter and "the pack survives." He despised politics the way monks despise sin, and he despised the Targaryen name the way you despise the drunk driver who killed your parents. He would never claim the throne. He would never want it. And if someone forced it on him he would sit it like a man wearing a crown of thorns, miserable and dutiful and utterly convinced he did not belong there.
I wanted a dragon on the throne.
Not a wolf in borrowed feathers.
So the math was brutally simple.
Viserys could not be allowed to lead. Jon would not lead. That left me.
Daeron Targaryen. Third son of the Mad King. Nineteen years old. Healthy. Rich beyond counting. Bonded to a dragon that could swallow Balerion's skull and still have room for dessert. And (this was the part that made me grin into the dark like a wolf) I knew exactly how the next five years were supposed to play out.
I knew when Robert would die. I knew when Ned Stark would lose his head. I knew when the ravens would fly announcing that Joffrey Baratheon, sadistic little shit that he was, wore a crown two sizes too big for his empty skull.
I knew the realm would tear itself apart in the War of the Five Kings: Joffrey, Renly, Stannis, Robb, Balon Greyjoy, all carving pieces out of each other while the Lannisters laughed and counted their gold.
Chaos is a ladder, Littlefinger would say.
No, my lord of useless nipples. Chaos is a runway.
And I intended to land the biggest fucking dragon anyone had ever seen right in the middle of it.
But first, foundations.
An army does not appear because you snap your fingers, even if your fingers can now crush stone. A navy does not sail because you wish it. Allies do not swear fealty because you have pretty eyes. Everything costs. Everything takes time.
Three moons until Khal Drogo rode through the gates of this perfumed prison with forty thousand screamers at his back. Three moons until Viserys tried to trade Daenerys for a promise written in horseblood and arrogance.
I could stop it. One thought and my dragon would tear the sky open above Pentos, turn Illyrio's manse into a bonfire, and carry Dany and me west before the ashes cooled. Tempting. But premature. A single dragon, even mine, could not hold the Seven Kingdoms. Aegon had needed all three of his, plus sisters, plus armies. I needed more than spectacle. I needed legitimacy. I needed men who would follow a Targaryen who was not mad, not a child, not a beggar.
So Drogo would come. And Viserys would die.
Not by my hand. Never by my hand. Fratricide is the one stain even dragonfire cannot burn away. But khals have tempers, and Viserys has spent thirteen years practising how to make powerful men want to strangle him. All I had to do was nudge. A word here. A reminder there. Let the Beggar King dig his own grave with his mouth, then let a braid be cut.
But all of that was for later.
Tonight there were more immediate concerns.
I left the balcony and crossed the chamber in three silent strides. The Myrish carpet swallowed the sound of my feet. At the wardrobe I stripped out of the silk robe and dressed for work: loose black linen trousers, soft leather boots, a sleeveless tunic the colour of fresh blood. No embroidery. No jewels. Nothing to catch a blade.
In the corner of the room stood the practice dummy Illyrio's master-at-arms had provided when "Prince Daeron" had suddenly expressed an interest in swordplay three moons ago. Old Daeron had been lazy, content to wave a blade around until his arms tired. New Daeron had different ideas.
I drew the castle-forged longsword the weaponsmaster had reluctantly handed over (Viserys had thrown a tantrum at the idea of his little brother being armed with anything sharper than a fruit knife) and tested the balance. Adequate. Not Valyrian steel, but it would serve.
I began slowly. Footwork first. The basic forms Ser Willem Darry had drilled into us on Bravos when we were children. Advance, retreat, lunge, parry-riposte. My body remembered more than I expected. Muscle memory from a childhood spent fleeing across the Narrow Sea.
The serum made it effortless now. Where old Daeron had wheezed after ten minutes, I could feel the strength coiled and ready, lungs deep as forge bellows, legs steady as castle walls. I increased the tempo. The blade hummed through the air. Sweat beaded on my skin and soaked the linen, but it was clean sweat, the kind that comes from work instead of sickness.
I lost track of time. There was only the rhythm: steel singing, heart thundering, feet dancing across the carpet. I imagined opponents. Ser Gregor, seven feet of mailed madness. Barristan Selmy, old but faster than thought. Jaime Lannister, arrogant and beautiful and deadly. I fought them all in the dark, parried blows that existed only in my head, countered with strikes that would have taken their heads if they had been real.
When I finally stopped, the moon had slid halfway across the sky and my arms shook, not from weakness but from the delicious burn of muscles pushed to their limit and beyond. The dummy was in tatters, stuffing strewn across the floor like snow.
I cleaned the sword with a silk cloth, movements precise, almost reverent. Then I set it aside and did something I had been delaying all night.
I opened the first door.
The world folded.
One heartbeat I stood in a perfumed chamber in Pentos. The next I stood on grass still warm from a sun that did not exist in any sky mortals knew.
The pocket dimension stretched endless in every direction: rolling hills, a sky the colour of molten sapphire, a forest of weirwoods and dragonbone trees that had never known winter. A river cut through the meadow, silver with fish. And above it all wheeled the reason my heart tried to claw its way out of my chest.
He was beautiful in the way earthquakes are beautiful.
Black as the void between stars, scales edged with blood-red like fresh wounds. Wings that blotted out half the sky when he spread them. A chest deep enough to park a war galley in. Horns like a crown of spears. Eyes, molten gold and ancient and already, impossibly, fond.
Little fire, his voice rumbled in my skull, warm as a hearth and sharp as Valyrian steel. You come at last.
I took one step, then another, until I stood directly beneath him. He lowered his great head until one eye, larger than a wagon wheel, filled my entire world.
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," I said aloud. My voice cracked like a boy's.
He snorted, a gust of wind that nearly knocked me over, and the amusement in it was unmistakable.
I reached up and laid my palm against his snout. The scales were hot, almost too hot to touch, but I did not flinch. Beneath them I could feel the furnace of his heart, the thunder of wings that could carry me across the world before breakfast.
"What should I call you?" I whispered.
I thought of every great dragon in history. Balerion. Vhagar. Meraxes. Vermithrax. Cannibal. None of them fit. This was not a dragon out of legend. This was something new. I choose name snydor which means shadow flame.
"Zaldrīzes Snydor," I said at last. Dragon of Blood. "Because we are going to paint the world red if we have to."
A roar split the sky, loud enough to shatter mountains in the real world. Here it only made the grass bow and the weirwoods tremble.
He lowered his shoulder. A wing joint the size of a siege tower formed a perfect ramp.
Climb, little fire. We have much to do.
I climbed.
The scales were perfect handholds, ridges fitting my palms like they had been carved for me alone. I settled at the base of his neck where the spines formed a natural saddle. No chains. No words of command. Just will and bond and the understanding that we were two halves of the same flame.
We flew.
There is no describing a dragon's first flight to someone who has never felt it. The wind tears the breath from your lungs and gives it back as joy. The world falls away until you are the only real thing left, rider and dragon become one thought, one motion. We climbed until the pocket sky turned violet and the stars came out early just for us. We dove until the river was a silver thread and the hills were toys. He barrel-rolled just to hear me scream laughter into the void.
Hours passed, or minutes. Time is slippery when you ride a dragon.
Eventually we landed on the tallest hill. I slid down his shoulder and sat, legs dangling over a drop that did not exist, and stared out at a world that was mine to shape.
When I finally stepped back through the door into my chamber, the sky over Pentos was turning the colour of bruised plums. Dawn in less than an hour. I was exhausted in the way only flying can leave you, muscles trembling with exhilaration rather than weakness, mind wide open and sparkling.
I stripped off the sweat-soaked clothes, washed quickly in the basin, and fell into bed still damp.