Rewriting Targaryen History

Chapter 105: Chapter 105: To The Sky

Vaerya left her bed the morning the question ended.

Not far. Only from the mattress to the chair by the window, carried by Celeste and watched by a maester who behaved as if the floor itself had become an enemy. Still, when her feet touched the rug, and she sat wrapped in blankets with a silver ribbon poorly tied in her hair, Dragonstone seemed to breathe a little easier.

Aegor stood beside her chair with the seriousness of a sworn shield. "You should not look too pleased," he told her. "The maester said this is only a short sitting."

Vaerya looked at him over the edge of her blanket. "I am sitting longer if you keep talking."

"That is not how healing works."

"You are not the maester."

"No, but I listen to him better than you."

Celeste closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, there was relief there instead of fear wearing a calmer face. I stood near the door and watched the argument as if it were a council victory.

Vaerya noticed me. "Are you going to see the dragon again?"

Celeste’s relief thinned immediately. I should have lied. "Yes," I said.

Vaerya nodded, accepting it as obvious. "Do not get eaten."

"I will try to avoid it."

"You should do more than try."

"That advice has become popular in this family."

Aegor frowned. "If the dragon lets you touch him and come close, does that mean he likes you?"

"No."

"Then what does it mean?"

"I am going to find out."

Celeste looked at me with the expression of a woman who had endured fever, fear, and Galeris men in the same week. "That is not comforting."

"No," I said. "It is honest."

She did not argue. That was worse than argument. When I left the chamber, she followed me into the corridor.

"You mean to finish this today," she said.

"I think so."

"That sounds like you are trying to make a decision before the decision is made for you."

"Perhaps."

"Vaeron would hate this."

"Vaeron hates most things before breakfast."

"He would hate this properly."

I looked back toward the chamber, where Vaerya’s thin voice had risen again in complaint. "I came because she was ill and he was gone. She is better now."

"She is not well."

"No. But she is better, and I have delayed the question long enough to know it will not leave me alone."

Celeste folded her arms. "If you die, Rhaenyra will never forgive any of us."

"If I die, Rhaenyra will have other concerns."

"That is exactly the sort of answer that makes women wish men had been born quieter."

I almost smiled. She did not. So I let the humour go.

"I will take Maeron. Grey Roach will be near. The keepers will do what they can."

"What can they do against him?"

"Very little."

"Then why does that sound like preparation?"

"Because very little is still more than nothing."

Celeste’s jaw tightened. "Come back."

"I intend to."

"That is not enough."

"No," I said. "It never is."

Maeron waited for me below the outer stair.

He had two younger keepers with him, Grey Roach, and six Unsullied who were all pretending not to question the wisdom of their prince. Maeron carried no weapon. Only a coil of dark rope, a knife, and the permanent disappointment of a man who had warned royalty and been ignored by history too many times.

He handed me a plain leather strap with knots set into it.

"What is this?"

"Something to keep your hands from becoming useless if you are foolish enough to mount without a saddle."

"If?"

"I am preserving the last dignity of pretending you may choose otherwise."

I took the strap. My mouth had gone dry.

Maeron noticed. "Fear is useful if it keeps your hands careful. If it moves into your feet, stop."

"I know."

"You have been told many things. Knowing is what remains when the dragon lowers his head."

We climbed in daylight. Until then, the Amethyst Shadow had belonged to moon, cliff, and half-seen colour. Day made the rocks harsher and the sea clearer. It gave fewer places for imagination to hide. The path to the upper shelf wound through black stone, past vents breathing faint warmth, toward the high ridge where wind cut clean across Dragonstone.

The shelf waited empty. No dragon. No shadow. Only cracked stone, old scorch marks, and the long drop toward water that looked very far away.

Maeron set the keepers back near the path. Grey Roach remained with them, though his eyes stayed on me. The Unsullied spread without needing instruction, not to fight, but to keep fools from wandering into the wrong death.

I stood alone on the shelf. For a while, nothing came. That was nearly worse. A man could prepare himself for a dragon. He could not prepare himself indefinitely. Fear spent itself badly when made to wait. It searched for other shapes, became irritation, then doubt, then the ridiculous thought that perhaps the dragon would not come and I would need to walk back down with everyone politely pretending I had not summoned an empty sky.

Then the clouds moved over the sun. The wind shifted. Maeron lifted his head first. I heard the wings a heartbeat later.

The Amethyst Shadow descended from above the ridge, vast against the pale sky. In daylight, he looked darker than before and more clearly violet when the sun struck his scales. Not purple like silk or banners. Deep amethyst beneath black, old colour trapped under smoke. His silver eyes were visible even before he landed.

The stone shook beneath him. He folded his wings slowly and looked at me. No roar. No hiss. No display for the men behind me. That silence was worse than threat because it had nothing to argue with.

I began the song.

Hāros Bartossi left my mouth low and steady. I did not sing to impress the keepers, the guards, or whatever part of myself still remembered a screen in a dead world. I sang because the dragon had heard it before and had not answered with fire. The song was the only bridge I possessed, and even that might have been made of smoke.

The Amethyst Shadow lowered his head as the final line faded. I stepped closer. One pace. Then another. My hand lifted. He watched it. Heat moved from him in slow waves, carrying smoke, salt, and the dry mineral scent of old stone. I placed my palm against the side of his jaw where the old scar vanished beneath scale.

The low vibration began in his chest. I closed my eyes for half a breath, then opened them again because closing one’s eyes beside a dragon was the sort of poetry that got men killed.

"I do not know why you allow this," I said in High Valyrian. "I have tried to make sense of it, and I have failed." His silver eye remained fixed on me. "I do not know whether you hear blood, song, memory, or only a man too stubborn to leave the question alone."

The vibration deepened slightly. Behind me, no one moved.

"I will not command you like a slave," I said. "I have seen enough chains for one life and bought too many men out of them with hands that will never feel clean. But if you allow me the sky, then I will ride with you. Not above you. Not over you. With you."

The words felt inadequate the moment they existed. Dragons did not need speeches. Men did.

I stepped back, then raised my hand toward his neck. "Calm," I commanded softly in High-Valyrian.

The Amethyst Shadow did not move away.

I took another step along the line of his jaw toward the base of his neck. Every instinct screamed that I was entering the part of danger where survival depended less on courage than on the mood of something ancient and enormous.

His eye tracked me until I passed beneath the line of his horn. The scales along his neck were ridged and warm, each one large enough to make my hand seem absurdly human. He lowered himself. Not all the way.

The wing nearest me shifted outward and down, making a dark slope of membrane and bone, a terrible path offered without promise. My heart struck hard enough that I nearly forgot to breathe.

Maeron’s voice came from behind me, low but clear. "My prince, if you do not mean to mount, step away now."

That was the cleanest warning he could give.

I looked up at the dragon’s neck. There was no saddle. No straps fixed into place. No familiar grip shaped by craftsmen who expected men to survive their own ambition. Only scale, ridge, heat, and the raw fact of a dragon allowing me near.

I thought of Rhaenyra on Syrax. Daemon on Caraxes. Jace above the yard on Vermax. Luke clinging to Arrax through a poor landing. My sons would one day be asked by war to climb into the sky. My wife had been born with that expectation already wrapped around her.

I had spent years planning beneath dragons. The time for beneath had ended. I gripped the leather strap Maeron had given me, looped it once around my wrist, and climbed.

The first movement was clumsy. No song made that graceful. No Valyrian blood taught a man where to place a boot on a living mountain. My hand found a ridge. My foot slipped once against scale, and my stomach dropped before I caught myself. The Amethyst Shadow rumbled beneath me, not pleased, not angry, but aware.

"An apology would be difficult to make if I fall," I muttered.

The dragon did not help. That seemed fair.

I hauled myself onto the base of his neck and settled where the ridges gave the nearest thing to a seat. Heat rose through my legs. The world looked immediately wrong from there, too high and too alive. There was no saddle to hold me, no stirrup, no crafted reassurance. I wrapped the leather strap around one ridge as best I could and gripped with both hands until my fingers hurt.

Below, Maeron had gone very still. Grey Roach looked as if every oath he had ever sworn was being personally insulted.

The Amethyst Shadow lifted his head. The ground fell farther away. My body informed me that this was an excellent moment to dismount and return to a life of councils, soldiers, and other survivable horrors.

I did not move. "Calm," I said again, though whether to him or myself no longer mattered.

The dragon shifted. One step. Then another. Each movement rolled beneath me with enough force to prove how little my balance mattered if he chose otherwise. He turned toward the edge of the shelf, and the sea opened below.

A cold wave of terror went through me. Not fear. Terror. The honest kind. The kind that stripped titles, marriages, armies, cleverness, and left only a man clinging to scale while the world prepared to drop away.

The Amethyst Shadow spread his wings. They filled the sky. I had seen wings from the ground. That had taught me nothing. From his back, the motion felt like the world changing shape around me. Bone and membrane unfurled on either side, violet-black against the light, casting shadow over stone and men.

Maeron shouted something. I did not hear the words.

The dragon leapt. For a heartbeat, there was only falling.

My stomach vanished. The cliff dropped. The sea rose. Wind smashed into my face with such force that my eyes watered instantly. My hands tightened around the ridge and strap until pain became the only proof I had not already been thrown free.

Then the wings beat. The fall became flight. The Amethyst Shadow climbed over the harbour, and Dragonstone opened beneath us.

I had imagined dragonflight before. Of course I had. Heinrich had watched it on screens and read it in pages until the idea became familiar enough to mistake for understanding. Othorion had stood beneath dragons in war, watched them burn ships and turn battlefields into panic.

None of that had prepared me for being carried by one.

The first turn nearly tore me sideways.

I leaned late, badly, and only the desperate grip of both hands kept me from sliding against the ridge. The Amethyst Shadow corrected without kindness. His body rolled beneath me, vast muscles moving with the wingbeat, and I realised that riding without a saddle was less command than negotiation with every breath.

"Fly," I shouted before I meant to. The command vanished into the wind.

The dragon did not need the instruction. He was already flying. Yet something moved through him at the word. Not obedience, exactly. Recognition. A thread pulled tight between my voice and his movement. He climbed higher. Too high.

"Calm," I gasped, because calm was the only word left to me.

This time, I felt the answer.

Not in my ears. In the shift of his body. The climb eased. The wings settled into a steadier rhythm. We crossed above the harbour, and men below became small dark marks looking upward. Ships rocked under the force of the wind that followed us.

A bell began ringing from somewhere near the lower yard, then stopped abruptly, perhaps because someone remembered Dragonstone did not need a panic bell for a dragon doing what dragons did.

The Amethyst Shadow turned along the coast.

The island stretched beneath us in black ridges, smoking vents, jagged paths, and towers carved like something between fortress and beast. The Dragonmont rose ahead, vast and scarred. Clouds clung to its upper slopes. Steam moved from cracks in the stone. The sea battered the island’s base on every side, white against black, endless against ancient.

I laughed. It came out broken by wind and fear, but it was laughter.

Exhilaration struck so hard it became almost painful. The sky was not empty up here. It was force, cold, speed, and space enough to make every hall I had ever stood in feel like a box. The Amethyst Shadow’s wings carried us past a tower where guards stared open-mouthed. He banked, and the whole world tilted.

The terror returned at once. I flattened myself against his neck, dignity forgotten, and held on.

"Do not mistake joy for skill," I told myself through gritted teeth.

The dragon gave a low rumble that I felt through my chest. If dragons laughed, I suspected I had just been mocked.

We swept around the eastern side of the island, where the cliffs dropped sheer into the sea. Far below, waves broke into white spray. Above, gulls scattered before us like torn paper. The Amethyst Shadow flew with a power that did not feel hurried. He was not racing. He was showing me what ordinary movement meant when the creature moving was born to rule air.

I began to understand the danger of dragonriders then. Not the fire. Not only the fire. The danger was that the sky made men forget the ground had claims on them.

From up there, fear became clean. Problems became small. Castles became shapes. Ships became toys. Men became marks that could vanish beneath flame before their voices reached you. A weak man might mistake that distance for truth. A cruel man might call it destiny.

I tightened my grip. The Amethyst Shadow turned toward the Dragonmont.

Heat rose as we passed near the smoking slopes. The air changed, thickened by sulfur and old fire. From below came answering cries. Other dragons, disturbed by the passing of a great male above their territory. One roar rolled from a cavern mouth, deep enough to shake the air. The Amethyst Shadow answered with a cry of his own.

It tore out across the island. Not rage. Not challenge exactly. Declaration.

The sound went through me so violently that for a moment I forgot I was afraid of falling. The dragon beneath me was not mine in the way a sword was mine, or a ship, or a command written on parchment. He would never be that. But he had taken me into the sky and answered my voice.

The claim was not ownership. It was bond. Terrible, conditional, alive.

We circled the Dragonmont once. By then my legs ached from gripping, my hands burned, and my face had gone numb from wind. I had no idea how long we had flown. It could have been minutes or an age of the world measured in wingbeats. Dragonstone turned below us, familiar and entirely changed.

Then the Amethyst Shadow began to descend. That was worse than climbing.

The ground rose with cruel patience. The harbour returned. The shelf appeared ahead, far too small for anything of his size and speed. I realised I had given no command, no instruction, no useful contribution to the process beyond continuing to cling to him with the desperation of a man unwilling to become a cautionary tale.

"Easy," I said in High Valyrian, because I did not know whether he needed it and I certainly did.

The dragon extended his wings, slowed, dropped lower, then struck the stone shelf with a force that drove breath from my lungs. His claws scraped deep marks into the rock. The landing jolted through my body so hard my teeth clicked.

But we were down. Alive. I remained clinging to his neck for several breaths, unable to convince my hands their work was finished.

The Amethyst Shadow turned his head enough for one silver eye to look back at me. There was judgement in it. Or perhaps I had earned judgement and placed it there myself.

"I am aware," I said hoarsely. "That was not elegant."

The low rumble came again. I chose to believe it was tolerance.

Dismounting was worse than mounting because my legs had forgotten how to behave like legs. I slid down with more haste than grace, landed badly, and nearly fell to one knee before catching myself against warm scale. The dragon did not move away.

My hand stayed there.

For a moment, the world narrowed to breath, heat, and the impossible fact that I had flown around Dragonstone on the back of the Amethyst Shadow and returned with all limbs attached.

Maeron approached slowly. The old keeper’s face had changed. Not softened. He was still Maeron. But the anger, warning, and professional despair had shifted into something quieter.

He bowed, "My prince," he said. "He has accepted you."

The words should have made me feel powerful. They did not. They made me feel small in a new way.

Grey Roach came next, eyes moving over me for injury before he allowed himself any other reaction. "You are unharmed."

"I may never unclench my hands again."

"That is not a wound."

"It feels like one."

His gaze flicked to the dragon, then back to me. "The men saw."

"I expect half the island saw."

"Yes."

"That will complicate things."

"Yes, my prince."

The Amethyst Shadow shifted behind me, drawing every eye at once. He lowered his head slightly, not to me this time, but toward the path beyond, as if the business had concluded and men should stop staring before he revised his generosity.

I stepped back. "Thank you," I said in High Valyrian.

The dragon’s silver eyes held mine a moment longer.

Then he turned, spread his wings, and launched from the shelf. This takeoff was gentler only by comparison. Wind struck us, dust rose, and several younger keepers stepped back quickly enough to surrender pride without being asked.

He climbed toward the higher cliffs and vanished beyond the ridge. The shelf felt impossibly empty without him.

Maeron looked toward the sky. "We will need to prepare a saddle."

The sentence made it real in a way flight somehow had not.

"A saddle," I repeated.

"You cannot cling to neck ridges like a frightened boy every time you fly."

"I was not clinging like a frightened boy."

Grey Roach said nothing. Maeron said nothing. The silence was unkind.

"I survived," I said.

"That is not a style of riding," Maeron replied.

For some reason, that made me laugh.

Once I started, it took a moment to stop. Not loud. Not uncontrolled. Only enough to release something that had been held too tightly from the instant the dragon descended. Maeron watched with the wary patience of a man wondering whether first flight had damaged my wits. Grey Roach looked relieved in the smallest possible way.

When the laughter faded, I looked out across Dragonstone. The island was no longer only beneath dragons I commanded from the ground. I had claimed one. No. He had accepted me. That distinction mattered and would continue to matter if I had any sense at all.

By the time we returned to the castle, the news had outrun us.

Servants stood straighter in the halls. Guards tried not to stare and failed with varying degrees of discipline. Somewhere below, a cheer began and died quickly, either from uncertainty or because Grey Roach’s men had reminded the household that shouting near royal corridors remained unwise.

Celeste met me near the upper landing.

She took one look at my face, my wind-tangled hair, and the dust on my clothes. "You flew."

"I did."

Her hand went briefly to her mouth. "You absolute fool."

"Yes."

"Vaeron is going to be furious."

"Also yes."

Then she embraced me. Hard. Not because she approved. Not because fear had vanished. Because I had returned, and in a week shaped by fevers, cliffs, dragons, and absent husbands, returning mattered more than being sensible.

When she released me, her eyes were wet but steady. "Vaerya will demand the whole story."

"She may have to settle for the shortened version."

"She is recovering, not stupid."

"That is unfortunate for me."

Celeste almost smiled. "It usually is."

I went to Vaerya’s chamber before washing. She was awake, propped in her chair by the window, Aegor beside her. Both children looked at me as if I had returned from stealing the moon.

"You flew," Aegor said.

"I did."

Vaerya’s eyes widened. "Did you fall?"

"No."

"Did you almost fall?"

I thought of the first turn, the bank over the cliffs, the landing that nearly rearranged my bones. "Yes."

She looked satisfied by the honesty. "Was he frightening?"

"Very."

"Was it wonderful?"

I looked toward the window, where the sea flashed grey beneath the afternoon light. "Yes," I said. "It was that too."

Aegor leaned forward. "Is he yours now?"

I considered the question. The easy answer was yes. The true answer was larger and less obedient. "He has accepted me."

Vaerya frowned. "That means yes, but more dragon."

"That is one of the better explanations I have heard."

She sank back into her pillows, tired but pleased. "Father has to bring better gifts now."

Celeste groaned softly from behind me. I laughed again, quieter this time.

Later, when Vaerya slept, and the castle settled into the strange new knowledge of what had happened, I stood by the window of the adjoining solar and wrote to Rhaenyra.

I kept the letter brief because there was no way to make the truth gentle.

Rhaenyra,

Vaerya continues to improve. She sat by the window today and has begun planning what Vaeron owes her for being absent, which I take as a strong sign of recovery.

I claimed the Amethyst Shadow this morning. Or he accepted me. That is the better wording, though the court will prefer the first.

We flew around Dragonstone. It was terrifying. It was magnificent. I am alive, and before you ask, yes, Maeron is already preparing to lecture me for every mistake made without a saddle.

I will return when Celeste no longer needs me, and Vaerya can leave her bed for longer stretches of time. Tell the children their father has survived his own foolishness for another day.

I stopped there. Then I added one final line.

Tell Aemma that Aeggel is no longer the only dragon in the family with unusual colouring.

I sealed the letter before I could over-explain.

Outside, high above the ridge, a dark shape crossed briefly through the light. Not circling. Not waiting. Only flying where he wished to fly. This time, when I looked up, I did not feel like a man beneath him. I felt the pull of sky in my bones.

And that frightened me almost as much as it thrilled me.