Rewriting Targaryen History

Chapter 107: Chapter 107: Dravvax

I left Dragonstone from the upper cliffs, not the harbour.

The ship still sailed below with Grey Roach, my escort, and enough baggage to make it look as though I had not simply decided to abandon ordinary travel for the back of an ancient dragon. It would reach King’s Landing after me, carrying letters, reports, and the few servants who had not yet become comfortable with the idea of their prince arriving by sky.

Celeste stood with Aegor and Vaerya near the sheltered path below the shelf.

Vaerya was wrapped in a cloak despite the mild morning, pale but upright, her silver ribbon tied better than usual. Aegor stood beside her with one hand hovering near her arm, pretending he was not ready to catch her if she swayed. Celeste noticed. Vaerya noticed too, but allowed it because recovery had made her generous in small and temporary ways.

"You should not let him fly too fast," Vaerya called up to me.

The Amethyst Shadow lowered his great head at the sound of her voice, silver eyes moving over the small group below. He did not rumble. He did not draw back either. That was progress of a kind, though not one I wished to test with children too close.

"I will pass along your instruction," I said.

Aegor looked up at the dragon with solemn interest. "Does he have a proper name yet?"

"Not one he has accepted."

Vaerya frowned. "You cannot keep calling him the Amethyst Shadow forever. That sounds like something frightened guards say when they do not want to admit they hid behind barrels."

Several guards nearby became extremely interested in the rocks.

Celeste touched Vaerya’s shoulder. "You are recovering, not commanding the naming of dragons."

"I can recover and be useful."

"That is the most Galeris answer you have given all week," I said.

Vaerya looked pleased with herself, which was dangerous but encouraging.

Celeste’s eyes met mine. "Return carefully."

"I will."

"You have said that before and then found new ways to make it less reassuring."

"I will return carefully, with the dragon, and without attempting anything that would make Maeron throw himself into the sea from professional despair."

Maeron, standing beside the dragon’s shoulder, gave me a look. "My despair is stronger than that, my prince."

Celeste almost smiled. "Then I suppose that is the best promise I will get."

I climbed. It was easier now.

Not easy. Never that. A dragon was not a staircase simply because a saddle had been fitted to him. But my hands knew where to grip, my feet knew where the straps sat, and the Amethyst Shadow no longer shifted beneath me as though deciding whether my clumsiness deserved punishment. The saddle creaked under my weight. I settled, fastened myself properly, and looked once toward the family below.

Vaerya lifted one thin arm in farewell. Aegor raised his hand as well, more restrained, as if dignity had to supervise affection. Celeste did not wave. She only watched until I nodded.

Then I gave the command. "Fly."

The dragon stepped toward the edge and launched.

Dragonstone fell away in a rush of black rock, white water, and cold air. The first downward sweep still took the breath from me, though I no longer made the mistake of fighting it. I leaned with him as Maeron had taught me, grip firm, body low, fear present but no longer given command of every limb.

The Amethyst Shadow climbed over the eastern water.

The island spread beneath us, dark and smoking, old as conquest and cruel as memory. For a moment, I looked back. Celeste and the children were already small figures against the stone. Vaerya’s cloak flickered pale in the wind. Then the dragon turned, and Dragonstone became fortress, mountain, and history behind us.

The sea opened ahead. The flight to King’s Landing was not long by dragonback, but long enough for the question of the name to return.

Vaerya was right, irritatingly. The Amethyst Shadow was not a name. It was a description built by those who had seen him from below and preferred poetry to proximity. It suited rumour. It did not suit the creature beneath me, whose wings beat steadily through the sea wind and whose silver eyes occasionally turned just enough to remind me he had opinions I would never fully own.

I tried the first name halfway across the bay.

It was an old Valyrian-sounding thing that had lived in my head since the night he allowed the song. Harsh, smoke-heavy, grand enough to flatter any creature with wings.

The dragon gave no response. Not a twitch. Not a rumble. Not even the courtesy of displeasure.

"That was my opinion as well," I said into the wind.

The second name was worse. I knew it as soon as I spoke it aloud. Too smooth. Too courtly. It sounded like something a prince would choose for a dragon he wished to display on banners.

The dragon dipped slightly, whether from wind or judgement I could not say.

"I withdraw that one," I told him.

The third name came near the broken line where Blackwater Bay widened toward the city. It had weight, but not enough shape. The dragon continued flying, indifferent.

Perhaps names did not matter to dragons. Perhaps he had known himself long before men needed a word to point at him. Perhaps this was another human habit, placing sounds upon the world so we could pretend we had understood it.

Still, riders named dragons. Or dragons accepted the names that survived being spoken.

I looked along the dark curve of his neck, at the way sunlight struck amethyst beneath black scale. He was not gentle. He was not ornamental. He was old fire, shadowed colour, silver eyes, and a silence that made men confess fear without being asked.

The next name rose from somewhere deeper. "Dravvaxx."

The dragon’s wings held steady for one beat. Then a low sound moved through him. Not loud. Not dramatic. A rumble felt first through the saddle and into my legs, then through my hands where they rested near the front strap. His head turned a fraction, not enough to break flight, enough that one silver eye glanced back along the line of his neck.

I said it again. "Dravvaxx."

This time he answered with a stronger rumble, and the next turn came cleanly beneath me before I gave a command. The movement was not obedience. It felt closer to recognition. A word had struck something and not been refused.

I let out a breath that became almost laughter. "Dravvaxx, then."

The dragon flew on.

By the time King’s Landing came into view, the sun had risen higher, and the city lay beneath a pale wash of morning light. The Red Keep crowned Aegon’s High Hill, red walls stark against the sky. The Dragonpit sat on Rhaenys’s Hill, broad and familiar, its great dome waiting like a memory of old power turned into architecture. Smoke rose from the city in thin columns. Ships moved slowly through the bay.

They saw us before we reached the harbour. That was unavoidable.

A dragon the size of Dravvaxx did not approach quietly in daylight, no matter how little he cared for display. The first ships slowed. Then men pointed. A sail turned badly as half the crew abandoned work to stare upward. On the docks, movement faltered in visible waves. From above, the city looked as if a hand had passed over it and disturbed every smaller motion.

King’s Landing knew dragons. But it did not know this one.

Syrax was familiar. Caraxes was infamous. The royal dragons had names, colours, habits, riders, and places in the city’s understanding of itself. Dravvaxx descended from the east like something dragged from older stories. Dark, immense, amethyst flashing beneath black when the sun caught him, silver-eyed and silent beneath a rider whose hair and features made the picture worse for anyone inclined toward prophecy.

I could almost feel the meaning forming below. The war hero returned. The foreign-born Valyrian prince returned. The husband of the heir returned. The dragonlord returned. That last one would spread fastest, because it was the simplest and least true.

The smallfolk did not know Heinrich Adler. They did not know that the man seated on the dragon’s back had once learned these names from fiction, had once lived with pain in a world without dragons, had once watched Targaryens destroy themselves from the safety of distance and arrogance. They saw silver hair, purple eyes, a dark ancient dragon, and the sky bending around us.

They saw what stories had trained them to see.

Dravvaxx lowered toward the city.

A shout rose from somewhere below, then another. Not cheers exactly. Awe did not always know which sound it wanted to become. Some people ran. Others crowded windows. A woman on a rooftop dropped a basket, sending cloth scattering across tiles. Gold cloaks below tried to clear a path no one had asked anyone to walk.

I directed Dravvaxx toward the Dragonpit. He did not like the city. I felt it before he showed it. His body tightened beneath me, flight becoming sharper. Too many sounds, too many smells, too much smoke of the wrong kind.

Dragonstone smelled of salt, rock, sulfur, and dragon. King’s Landing smelled of people: meat, waste, river mud, tanneries, fires, horses, sweat, and fear rising quickly now that he passed overhead.

"Calm," I said, keeping my voice low.

He did not settle at once.

He climbed instead, lifting us higher above the nearest rooftops. Not panic. Refusal. A dragon’s version of distance. I let him have it for a few breaths, then guided him in a wider circle around Rhaenys’s Hill rather than forcing a straight descent.

That helped.

The Dragonpit’s keepers were already moving below. Someone had sent warning from the harbour, or perhaps the sight itself had been enough. The great doors were opening. Men in dark robes cleared the outer yard with more efficiency than the gold cloaks managed in the streets.

Onlookers were pushed back. Torches were doused near the entrance. A line of fresh meat was dragged well within, not displayed as bait, but set where a dragon entering would find reward rather than pressure. Good. Someone there had sense.

Dravvaxx circled once more. I gave the command for descent. He ignored the first angle. He chose a wider approach, crossing above the dome before dropping toward the cleared yard from the side where the wind favoured him. I did not correct him. I had learned enough not to mistake my preferred path for the safer one.

The landing shook the yard.

Dust rose around us. Men stepped back, though most held their places. Dravvaxx folded his wings slowly and lifted his head toward the open doors of the Dragonpit. The crowd beyond the barriers fell into a silence more complete than cheering would have been.

From the corner of my eye, I saw faces.

Dockmen. Fishwives. Children on shoulders. Gold cloaks with mouths half-open. A few richly dressed men who had clearly come too near out of curiosity and now regretted receiving what they had sought. They stared at the dragon first, then at me.

I dismounted with more grace than I had managed two weeks earlier. That was a low standard, but progress deserved acknowledgement.

The nearest dragonkeeper approached with deep caution. He was not Maeron, though he had the same weathered patience around the eyes. He bowed, but his attention never fully left Dravvaxx.

"My prince," he said. "We were told a dragon might be coming, but not that he would arrive before the ship."

"I travelled lighter."

The keeper did not smile. Sensible man. "He may dislike the crowds," he said.

"He already does."

"We have cleared the main chamber and opened one of the darker vaults. There is space, warmth, and meat. No chains unless required."

"No chains."

The keeper accepted that without argument. "Then we will give him distance."

Dravvaxx looked toward the doors again.

For a dragon called shy by those who had watched him avoid crowds, he did not behave like a frightened creature. He behaved like a creature that preferred the world to keep an appropriate distance and saw no reason to explain himself when it failed. His head lowered slightly as he scented the air from within the Dragonpit. Smoke curled from his nostrils. The nearest keepers froze until the smoke thinned.

I placed a hand against his jaw. "Calm," I said. "Inside."

He did not move. The crowd held its breath. I waited.

Commanding again immediately would only sharpen refusal. Maeron had beaten that lesson into me with words, wind, and two weeks of surviving my mistakes. Dravvaxx was not a horse to be tugged forward because men watched. If he entered, he would enter because he accepted the space.

I touched the edge of his old scar with my thumb.

"Inside," I said again, quieter.

His silver eye shifted to me. Then he stepped forward. One step. The ground answered. Then another.

The dragonkeepers moved with him but did not close around him. That was likely why it worked. No crowding, no ropes, no desperate men trying to prove control in front of witnesses. The great dark dragon crossed the yard, passed beneath the open doors, and entered the Dragonpit as if he had decided the matter before any of us thought to worry.

The silence outside broke only after his tail disappeared within. Then the city found its voice.

A hundred sounds rose at once behind us: shouting, prayer, laughter, fear, excitement. Gold cloaks barked orders. Children cried out to be lifted higher though there was nothing left to see. Somewhere a man began loudly insisting that he had never doubted the prince would return on dragonback, which told me he had doubted it very much.

Inside the Dragonpit, sound changed. The city dropped away behind stone.

Dravvaxx moved into the main chamber slowly. His head turned toward the high walls, the shadowed vaults, the old scent of dragons layered deeper than human memory. Other dragons stirred in the distance. A low rumble answered from somewhere within. Dravvaxx paused, silver eyes narrowing toward the darkness.

I did not speak. The keepers waited.

After a long moment, he moved toward the vault prepared for him. It was large, dark, warm, and set away from the busiest passages. Meat lay near the inner wall. Dravvaxx entered, lowered his head, and sniffed once. Then he took the meat between his jaws with a single clean motion and settled near the back as if the entire arrival had been a minor inconvenience.

The keeper beside me let out a careful breath. "He is easier than expected," he said.

"He dislikes fuss."

"That is a useful dislike in the Dragonpit."

"He is not tame."

"No, my prince. No one here will make that mistake twice."

I looked at Dravvaxx resting in the shadowed vault. In darkness, the amethyst beneath his scales faded almost entirely. Only his eyes remained bright, silver and watchful.

The bond between us hummed faintly, not as sound, not as thought, but as a kind of awareness I was still learning not to fear. He knew where I stood. I knew he had not withdrawn from me, even now in a place thick with other dragons and human scent.

That was enough. For now.

I left the vault only after he settled fully.

Outside the Dragonpit, the city still churned with the news. It would reach the Red Keep before I did, if it had not already. By the time I climbed the hill, every person inside those red walls would have chosen a meaning for what had happened.

Rhaenyra would be waiting. So would the children. So would Viserys, Otto, Alicent, Aemond, and every courtier who understood that a new dragon did not simply enter a city. It rearranged the air around power.

I looked back once toward the Dragonpit. The great doors remained open, keepers moving carefully within. Beyond them, in the dark, Dravvaxx had accepted his place without roar, flame, or spectacle.

The spectacle had been the flight. The quiet was more important.

I turned toward the Red Keep. Meetings could wait for the next breath.

King’s Landing had already seen enough for one morning.