Chapter Text
109 A.C.
The wind off Blackwater Bay carried the sharp scent of salt and smoke. Aegon Targaryen stood alone on the stony ridge above the pyre, his small frame rigid beneath the black mourning cloak pinned with a ruby dragon brooch. Nine years old, silver hair whipping across his violet eyes, he watched the flames consume his mother.
Gael Targaryen, once called the Winter Child for her fragile beauty and quiet ways, burned brightly now. The pyre had been built tall and proper, as befitted a daughter of Jaehaerys the Conciliator and a princess of the blood. Her body, wasted by long illness, lay atop the stacked logs and kindling, wrapped in white silk embroidered with the three-headed dragon. The fire roared, greedy and indifferent, sending sparks spiraling into the grey sky like dying stars.
Aegon felt… empty. Not the sharp agony he had expected, but a hollow ache behind his ribs, as if something vital had been scooped out and the wound cauterized before it could bleed. This was his mother burning, the woman who had birthed him in a difficult labor at age twenty, who had read him the old Valyrian tales in her soft, halting voice, who had taught him the courtesies of court and sat beside his bed through every fever and chill. She had been fading for five years, growing thinner and more translucent, shivering even in the warmth of Dragonstone’s hearths. Yet she had always tried. For him.
He knew this day would come. The maesters had spoken in hushed tones of winter’s lingering grip on her lungs, of a heart too frail for her blood. Still, knowledge did not dull the sight of her body blackening in the flames.
His father certainly had no trouble accepting his wife was going to die. The Rogue Prince had sailed away with the Velaryon fleet to make war in the Stepstones, leaving his only child in the care of King Viserys.
Aegon hated him.
The hatred burned hotter than the pyre. Three years earlier, the boy had first seen Mysaria on his father’s arm in the shadowed alcoves of the Red Keep, laughing, clinging, her exotic perfumes cutting through the familiar scent of his mother’s lavender and smoke. She was not his mother. She would never be. When Aegon had protested, throwing the tantrums of a child who saw his world fracturing, Daemon had struck him across the face.
“Men do not cry,” the Rogue Prince had snarled, violet eyes flashing with contempt.
Aegon had not cried since. Not when the letters came telling of his father’s victories. Not when his mother’s cough grew worse. Not even now, as the flames reached up to claim her. He stood worryingly quiet through the entire rite, small hands clenched at his sides, jaw tight enough to ache. The silence was more damning than any wail.
King Viserys I Targaryen stood nearby, heavy and wheezing, his face etched with genuine sorrow. He had loved his youngest aunt dearly. One thick arm rested around the shoulders of his daughter Rhaenyra, who watched the fire with solemn eyes. The princess, already a young woman of twelve, glanced once toward her young cousin, her expression softening with concern. Yet the moment passed. There were lords to console, words to be spoken, and the weight of the crown pressing on her father’s brow. No one stepped forward to lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder. No one noticed how adrift he truly was.
As the pyre began to collapse in on itself, sending a final gust of heat across the ridge, Aegon’s gaze lifted beyond the flames. High above, circling lazily in the overcast sky, was a pale shape, his mother’s dragon, perhaps, or one of the others come to bear witness. The boy’s fingers twitched at his side. One day he would claim a dragon of his own. One day he would not be so small, so powerless.
But today, as the last of Gael Targaryen drifted away on the wind, Aegon stood alone among his blood and felt the first cold stirrings of something sharper than grief.
Ambition. Resentment. And the slow, steady forge of a boy learning that in the game of thrones, even a mother’s love could be taken from him by fire and indifference.
The court began to drift away toward the waiting boats and litters. Viserys beckoned gently.
”Come, nephew,” the king said, voice thick with emotion. “Let us return to the Keep. Your mother is with the gods now.”
Aegon followed without protest, his small boots crunching on ash-strewn stone. Inside his chest, the emptiness hardened into something new.
He would remember this day.
——
The weeks following his mother’s funeral blurred into a grey haze for Aegon Targaryen. He spent most of his days brooding in the shadowed alcoves of the Red Keep, or as much as a boy of nine could truly brood. He avoided the training yard where the master-at-arms called for him, ignored the maester’s lessons on history and High Valyrian, and took his meals in near silence. The servants whispered that the boy had inherited his father’s temperament, dark and sharp, but none dared say it loudly enough for the king to hear.
One afternoon, King Viserys came to him in the small solar overlooking the godswood, his face ruddy and hopeful.
“Good news, nephew,” Viserys announced, smiling as though he carried a gift. “Your father has done it. He has consolidated the Stepstones. The pirates are broken, the Triarchy driven back into the sea. Daemon flies Caraxes over Bloodstone now as its master in all but name. The realm will sing of his victories.”
Aegon looked up from the window where he had been staring at nothing. His violet eyes were flat. “He can stay there, for all I care,” the boy said, voice laced with childish venom. “May the crabs take him.”
Viserys blinked, the smile faltering. “Aegon… he is your father. Blood of your blood.”
The boy turned back to the window without another word. Viserys lingered a moment longer, then sighed and left, muttering something about giving the lad time to grieve.
Daemon did not return. Letters came, sparse, formal reports addressed to the king rather than his son, but the Rogue Prince lingered in the Stepstones, carving out his own petty kingdom amid salt and blood. Each passing week was further proof of what Aegon already knew: his father’s love was a fleeting thing, given only when it suited him. The hurt festered beneath the boy’s silence, twisting into something colder.
Yet not all was shadow. The Velaryons, having achieved their aims in the Narrow Sea, were sailing home at last. Their great fleet made port in King’s Landing to cheers from the smallfolk, and Lord Corlys and Princess Rhaenys took up residence once more in their sprawling manse in the Valyrian Quarter, the wealthiest district of the city, where the first Valyrian settlers had raised marble halls and dragon-carved columns reminiscent of old Valyria.
Rhaenyra, ever restless and kind in her own willful way, decided action was needed. She found her young cousin sulking in the library and took his hand with the easy confidence of a girl who knew her place in the world.
“Come, Aegon,” she said, tugging him along. “You cannot hide in the Keep forever. Let us go to the sea.”
The Velaryon manse rose proud and elegant along the shore, its white stone walls veined with mother-of-pearl and its gardens heavy with the scent of salt and blooming weirwood. Princess Rhaenys Targaryen—called the Queen Who Never Was—received them warmly enough. Though her own ambitions had long been set aside, she bore no grudge against the children of her kin. She greeted Rhaenyra with a fond embrace and studied young Aegon with thoughtful violet eyes.
“You are welcome here, son of Gael,” she said simply, a faint smile touching her lips. “My children will be glad of new company.”“Here, cousin,” Rhaenyra said, still holding his hand as she led him into the sunlit courtyard where a fountain sang. “This is Laena, and Laenor.”
Laena Velaryon was fifteen, already blooming into a striking young woman. Tall for her age, she possessed the full Valyrian grace, silver hair braided with sapphires, skin like polished ivory, and eyes the deep purple of amethysts. There was fire in her, a restless energy that reminded Aegon of the tales of warrior queens. She was beautiful, more developed than Rhaenyra, with the confident posture of one who had already flown her dragon, Vhagar, across the skies.
Beside her stood Laenor, twelve years old and still growing into his features. Slim and quick, with the same Valyrian look, though his face held a boyish softness and his laughter came more easily. He watched the older boy with open curiosity, a wooden training sword still in his grip from earlier sparring.
Aegon eyed them both up and down, cautious as a stray cat. For a moment the old wariness flared, he had grown used to disappointment, but something in Laena’s easy smile and Laenor’s enthusiastic wave eased the knot in his chest.
“Prince Aegon,” Laena said, dipping a graceful curtsy that somehow felt teasing rather than formal. “We heard you ride no dragon yet. That must be remedied. The skies are lonely without kin.”
Laenor grinned. “I’m Laenor. Want to see my new blade? Father had it made in specially for me! Or we could go down to the docks, there are ships from Qarth with sails like clouds.”
Aegon hesitated, then gave a small nod. “I… suppose it would be good to have friends,” he admitted quietly, the words awkward on his tongue. He glanced back toward Rhaenyra, who offered him an encouraging smile.
As the afternoon wore on, the children wandered the manse grounds together. Laena spoke of her flights on Vhagar with a wild joy that made Aegon’s heart stir with envy and longing. Laenor challenged him to a mock duel with blunted blades, laughing when the younger boy nearly tripped over his own feet. For the first time since the pyre, Aegon felt something other than emptiness.
The friendship between the four cousins of House Targaryen and House Velaryon did not bloom overnight, but it grew steadily under the warm spring sun of King’s Landing, like weirwood saplings pushing through cracked stone.
…
In the wide, sun-drenched courtyard of the Velaryon manse, Laena stood like a silver-haired captain, arms crossed over her chest as she watched the chaos she had orchestrated.
“Again!” she called, her voice firm but warm. At fifteen, she had already claimed the role of elder sister to the younger three, and she wore it naturally.
Laenor and Rhaenyra were a whirlwind of shouts and laughter. The two circled each other with blunted training swords, kicking up fine white sand. Rhaenyra lunged with reckless grace, her braid flying behind her like a banner. Laenor parried, grinning wildly, then countered with a spinning move that nearly sent her stumbling.
“Too slow, cousin!” Laenor crowed.
“You fight like a crab!” Rhaenyra shot back, laughing as she pressed the attack.
Aegon sat on a low marble bench in the shade of a lemon tree, watching them with solemn violet eyes. His own wooden sword lay across his lap. He had joined their bouts earlier, mostly because the others had pulled him in, but his movements were stiff, his heart not fully in the game. Every clash of wood reminded him of the training yard his father had never bothered to share with him.
Laena noticed. She walked over and sat beside him, bumping his shoulder gently with her own.
“You observe well, little cousin,” she said softly. “That is a rarer gift than swinging a sword like a madman. But you must practice too. Come.” She stood and offered her hand. “I’ll spar with you. Slowly.”
Aegon hesitated, then took her hand. For the next half hour he moved through the forms under Laena’s patient guidance, while Laenor and Rhaenyra continued their noisy duel nearby. By the end, the smallest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, barely there, but real.
…
A few days later, the four ventured down to the bustling docks of the city. The air smelled of salt, tar, and exotic spices from the Summer Isles.
Rhaenyra and Laenor raced ahead, darting between sailors and merchants, pointing at strange figureheads and arguing over which ship looked fastest. Laenor wanted to climb the rigging of a Myrish vessel; Rhaenyra dared him to do it.
“Laena will box your ears if you fall and break your leg,” Aegon muttered, trailing behind with the older girl.
Laena laughed, a bright, clear sound. “They never listen. That is their charm… and their curse.” She glanced down at Aegon, who walked with his hands clasped behind his back, observant and quiet. “You don’t say much, but you see everything, don’t you?”
Aegon shrugged. “People talk more when you stay quiet.”
Laena’s expression softened. She reached out and ruffled his silver hair. “Wise little dragon.”
At the end of one pier, a captain from Pentos gifted them a strange, speckled egg after recognizing their Valyrian features. Laenor and Rhaenyra immediately began arguing over whose dragon it might hatch for.
“It’s clearly for me,” Rhaenyra declared.“You already have Syrax!” Laenor protested.
Aegon stared at the egg in silence, fingers brushing its warm, scaled surface. “That’s not a dragon egg.”
Laena, stifling her laughter, nodded, “Aye, he’s right, that there’s an emu egg.”
…
One golden afternoon, Viserys allowed the four to fly out to Dragonstone under Rhaenys’ supervision. Laena rode Vhagar, the great she-dragon’s wings casting an enormous shadow over the water. Rhaenyra flew Syrax, singing at the top of her lungs as she looped through the air. Laenor followed on Seasmoke, whooping every time he dove low enough to skim the waves.
Aegon rode pillion behind Laena, small arms wrapped tightly around her waist. The wind whipped at his face, cold and exhilarating. He was quiet during the flight, but his eyes drank in everything, the endless sea, the smoking Dragonmont rising ahead, the other dragons wheeling like bright arrows.
When they landed on a grassy slope bathed in sunset light, the older three immediately began a game of chasing one another through the wildflowers, shouting Valyrian insults and laughing. Aegon sat on a black rock, knees drawn up, watching them. The sun painted everything in hues of rose and gold.
Laena eventually broke away from the game and dropped down beside him, slightly breathless.
“You’re still carrying it, aren’t you?” she asked gently. “The weight of your mother’s pyre.”
Aegon didn’t answer at first. Then, in a small voice: “Father didn’t even come back for her.”
Laena said nothing for a long moment. She simply leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder, the way a big sister might.
“Some men are storms,” she said finally. “They destroy and move on. But you do not have to be like him. You have us now. And we are not going anywhere.”
Rhaenyra and Laenor came tumbling back, collapsing in a laughing heap at their feet. Soon all four were sprawled on the warm grass, watching the sky turn crimson as the sun sank into the Narrow Sea. For the first time in months, Aegon laughed, quietly, almost reluctantly, when Laenor told a ridiculous story about a crab trying to fight Seasmoke.
…
Not every day was wild. On rainy afternoons they gathered in the Red Keep’s library, surrounded by scrolls and tomes smelling of ink and salt. Laena would read aloud from the histories of Valyria, her voice rich and commanding. Rhaenyra and Laenor interrupted constantly, acting out the dramatic parts with exaggerated flair until everyone was laughing.
Aegon usually curled up in a window seat, listening. Sometimes he asked quiet questions about dragonlore or old battles. Laena always answered patiently. Rhaenyra would drag him into their reenactments, refusing to let him remain a spectator for long.“You’re one of us now,” she told him once, poking his cheek. “No more brooding in corners.”
Aegon tried to scowl, but the corners of his mouth betrayed him.
In this way, as spring gave way to summer in 110 A.C., the four cousins became nearly inseparable. Laena guided them with steady affection. Rhaenyra and Laenor filled the days with noise and mischief. And Aegon—still sullen at times, still watchful—followed where they led, slowly learning how to laugh again, even as the shadow of his father’s neglect lingered in the back of his mind like a distant storm on the horizon.