Chapter 50: Chapter 50: The Music Kept Playing
Alicent’s green did not leave the room after she sat.
It remained there like fire beneath cloth, reflected in cups, caught in jewels, whispered across glances, carried from table to table by those who understood too quickly and those who needed the meaning explained into their ears.
The feast continued because the King wished it to continue, and because courts were very good at pretending a wound was only decoration until blood reached the floor. Servants returned to their routes, musicians found their courage again, and lords resumed conversations that had become thinner, sharper, and much less about what they claimed.
Viserys tried. That was the mercy and misery of him.
He spoke to Alicent with careful warmth, asked after her health, praised her gown as if green were merely green, and turned every possible edge aside with the desperate grace of a man who had spent too many years mistaking avoidance for peace.
Alicent answered him properly. Not coldly enough to be accused. Not warmly enough to heal anything. She sat beside him in the colour of her father’s house, young and pale and resolved, while Otto Hightower watched the room recover from her entrance with the patience of a man who knew a banner did not need to move once raised.
Daemon enjoyed it too much.
He had settled into the feast as if he had been expected all along, drinking my nephew-by-marriage-to-be’s wine, answering Viserys with affectionate irreverence, and making every Hightower in the hall wish he had remained in the Stepstones.
For a while, he amused himself by speaking with Corlys, a conversation conducted in tones polite enough for public hearing and edged enough that Rhaenys watched both men as though deciding which one would bleed first if pride were given a knife.
Then Daemon drifted toward Laena Velaryon. He did not rush. He did not need to. Men like Daemon made movement feel inevitable, as though the room arranged itself around their impulses and only later remembered it had not agreed.
Laena had been speaking with a Tyrell lady near the edge of the dancing space when he approached her, silver hair still wind-tangled, black and red travel cloth exchanged only partly for courtly ease. He bowed over her hand with just enough respect for House Velaryon and just enough insolence to make respect look like flirtation.
Laena smiled. Corlys noticed. Rhaenys noticed more.
I saw the future shifting in that smile, or perhaps only remembering an older road. Daemon and Laena were meant to be something in the world I knew. Marriage, daughters, dragons, grief. In this altered hall, with Laenor dead too early and Rhaenyra beside me instead, that old path had not vanished. It had merely been forced to find new ground.
Rhaenyra saw them too.
Her expression did not change much, but I knew her well enough now to read the slight tightening near her eyes. Daemon’s attention had once been a thing she could not entirely ignore, even when she judged it, resented it, or used it. Now he stood smiling at Laena Velaryon beneath the same roof where Rhaenyra’s wedding week had begun, and whatever that stirred in her, she placed it behind composure before anyone else could feed on it.
"Your uncle enjoys arriving late," I said quietly.
"He enjoys being noticed arriving late."
"That is an important distinction?"
"With Daemon, distinctions are often the only armour."
I looked toward him again. He had said something that made Laena laugh, not loudly, but enough for Corlys’s jaw to shift by the smallest amount. "Should I be concerned?"
Rhaenyra’s gaze returned to me. "About Daemon flirting with Laena Velaryon?"
"Among other things."
"You should always be concerned about Daemon. It saves time."
That was good advice.
The music changed then, softer at first, then quicker, inviting the next set of dancers to the open space beneath the Iron Throne’s shadow. Several pairs moved forward quickly, young nobles eager to be seen before fatigue, wine, or politics ruined their grace. Rhaenyra rose before anyone could ask her, and when she turned to me with one hand extended, the hall seemed to sharpen again.
"We should dance," she said.
"I was afraid of that."
"You have faced worse."
"Not in these shoes."
Her smile almost became wicked. "Then try not to disgrace the purple."
There was no refusing her, and no reason to try.
We stepped into the centre of the hall as the music gathered around us. The space had been left open for dancing, but it felt narrower now, bordered by long tables full of houses pretending not to watch too closely.
Lannister gold flashed at the edge of my vision. Baratheon black and yellow shifted beyond it. Tyrell green and gold moved like garden silk, Redwyne burgundy caught torchlight, Celtigar silver watched from old Valyrian pride, and Hightower green sat near the royal table like a second signal fire.
Rhaenyra moved well. She had been trained for halls like this long before I woke in Othorion’s body. Her steps were controlled without looking stiff, graceful without yielding ownership of the space.
Dancing with her felt less like moving through music and more like being drawn into a public argument conducted through posture, distance, and timing. Every turn said we were unashamed. Every measured closeness answered Alicent’s green without speaking of it.
I did not move badly. That surprised me.
Othorion’s body knew rhythm in ways Heinrich Adler’s had not. Not courtly dancing perhaps, not in the way lords learned beneath tutors and bored mothers, but balance, turn, weight, recovery. A battlefield had its own dance, and while court music lacked screams, it still demanded a man know where his feet were before someone else decided for him.
"You look less terrified than expected," Rhaenyra said as we turned.
"I have discovered the secret."
"What is it?"
"Pretend everyone watching us is an enemy archer."
"That cannot help."
"It keeps my shoulders honest."
She laughed, and the sound warmed the space between us. For a while, I let myself be held by the music.
Not safely. Never that. But enough. Rhaenyra’s hand rested in mine, her other hand light against my shoulder, and the hall blurred at the edges as we turned beneath the throne that had shaped both our lives before either of us was old enough to understand the cost. The feast had been arranged to watch us, judge us, measure us, but in that narrow circle of movement, I could almost believe we were also taking something back.
Then the room reminded me it had teeth. I saw Gerold Royce near the Vale table. He had risen again. Not fully. Not boldly enough to draw the King’s eye at once. But he had pushed his chair back, one hand braced against the edge of the table, his face pale with anger held too long.
His gaze was fixed toward Viserys, or perhaps toward Daemon, who still stood near Laena with a smile that had become less careless now that Rhaenys had joined the conversation. An older Royce leaned toward Gerold, speaking urgently. Another kinsman caught his wrist beneath the table.
Gerold did not sit. For three turns of the dance, I watched him fight his own blood. He wanted to go to the King. I could see it in the angle of his body, in the way accusation had already reached his face before words could carry it.
Rhea Royce’s name was not spoken, but it stood at that table more clearly than some living guests. A dead cousin. A suspicious fall. A prince who smiled too easily. A room full of witnesses and a king desperate to believe his family could be whole for one week.
Rhaenyra followed my glance when the dance brought us close. "Royce," she said softly.
"Yes."
"Do you think he will?"
"I think his kin know he might."
That was all I could say without saying too much. She understood enough.
The dance turned us away from Gerold, and when we came around again, he had been pulled back into his chair. Not defeated. Delayed. His older kinsman leaned close, mouth tight, while Gerold stared into his cup as if imagining it was Daemon’s throat. The tension remained at the Vale table, contained only because family hands had closed around it before it could become public blood.
Across the hall, Otto had drawn Alicent and an older Hightower man into quiet conversation. Horbert Hightower, if Vaeron’s endless notes had not failed me. Older than Otto, broader in face, carrying the comfortable authority of a man whose house stood behind him even when the court did not.
The three of them sat close enough that their words did not travel, heads inclined, expressions controlled. Alicent listened more than she spoke. Otto spoke sparingly. Horbert’s gaze moved between the royal table, Rhaenyra, me, Daemon, and the Hightower kin seated around them.
They were not reacting now. They were arranging. Green had entered as a banner. Now the hands beneath it were finding the pole.
Rhaenyra’s fingers tightened lightly in mine as we turned. She had seen them too. "They are pleased with themselves."
"They have reason."
"Do they?"
"They declared war and received applause from everyone too cautious to clap."
Her eyes hardened. "Then let them watch us dance."
So we did. The music quickened, and the hall leaned into it, grateful for movement that could pretend the evening had become only celebration again. More dancers joined. Silk and colour filled the centre, turning in patterns that obscured and revealed the room in pieces. That was how I saw Emeric.
Not fully at first. A flash of dark purple near the edge of the hall, away from the Galeris seats.
He had strayed toward the section where several Kingsguard and court knights stood near the wall. That did not alarm me immediately. Emeric was the most likely of my officers to move quietly, observe, and speak without making every conversation a challenge. He was cautious, serious, and less given to obvious contempt than Jasper or Landrey. If one of my men could cross a dangerous room without starting a fire, it was him.
He stood near Ser Criston Cole. The dance carried me away before I saw more. When Rhaenyra and I turned back, Emeric was speaking. I could not hear him. That would haunt me later.
The music was too loud, the hall too full, and the distance too great. I saw only the shape of the exchange. Emeric’s posture was careful, shoulders level, one hand loosely at his side, the other lifting once in what looked like polite emphasis. He was not challenging. Not from what I could see. He looked like a man trying to speak across a boundary without stepping over it.
Criston Cole stood very still. That was the first wrong thing.
Men often mistook stillness for control, but on Criston it looked like something locked too tightly. His white cloak fell clean from his shoulders, untouched by the feast’s colour, his face turned toward Emeric with an expression I could not read through the moving dancers. Then Emeric inclined his head slightly, as if offering clarification or apology.
Criston stepped closer. The music carried us away again.
Rhaenyra felt the change in me. "What is it?"
"Emeric."
Her eyes moved, searching, but the dance turned us, and the bodies between us thickened. A Tyrell cousin spun past, laughing, green sleeves flashing. A Baratheon girl missed a step and recovered with flushed pride. Jason Lannister bowed too deeply to his partner and nearly struck another man’s shoulder. The hall remained alive, colourful, loud, unaware.
When I saw Emeric again, his hand was raised, palm open. Not surrender. Not fear. Calming.
A man used that gesture with startled horses, angry recruits, and officers who had misunderstood tone as insult. Emeric had spent half his life keeping archers steady under pressure. He knew how to soften a moment without lowering himself. I watched him do it now, watched the open palm, the slight backward shift of his weight, the careful way he kept his face composed.
Criston struck him. For one heartbeat, I did not understand the movement. The dance had shown me too little. A white arm moved, dark purple jerked, and Emeric staggered back against the edge of a serving table. A cup fell. Wine spread red across white cloth. The nearest servant froze, eyes wide, and then the turn of dancers swallowed them again.
"What happened?" Rhaenyra asked.
I released her hand too slowly. That would haunt me too.
Only half a heartbeat. Less, perhaps. A delay born of music, confusion, ceremony, and the stupid disbelief that a Kingsguard knight would strike one of my officers at a wedding feast in the throne room beneath the King’s own eyes. My fingers slipped from hers as the dance pattern pulled against us, and for that smallest slice of time, I was still inside the dance while Emeric was already outside safety.
Then I moved. The dancers were in the way.
Silk, jewels, bodies, laughter turning to irritation as I pushed through too hard. Someone protested. Someone stumbled. Rhaenyra called my name, not in warning but in sudden understanding. I caught sight of Criston again between two turning couples. He had Emeric by the front of his dark purple coat.
Emeric did not draw steel.
He could have had a knife. Most of us had ignored courtly preferences in small, practical ways. But his hands were up, one gripping Criston’s wrist, the other still trying to ward him off without making it a fight. His face had changed now. Not afraid. Shocked. The expression of a disciplined man realising the person before him had crossed a line that rules should have held.
Criston drove him backwards. The second blow landed before I reached the edge of the dancers. It was not a duel. That was the horror of it.
No challenge. No drawn blade. No space cleared, no witness named, no equal readiness. Criston struck like a man who had stopped seeing the hall around him. Emeric hit the stone, one knee folding beneath him, and the music carried on because half the room still thought a cup had spilt, a dancer had stumbled, a brief scuffle had broken and would be handled by guards.
Criston followed him down. I saw white cloak and dark purple twist together near the wall. Then bodies closed between us again.
I shoved through them. Too slow. Everything was too slow. The musicians played, though the rhythm wavered. Dancers faltered in uneven pockets, those nearest the disturbance looking toward it with confusion while those farther away continued turning because the pattern had not yet told them to stop. The feast did not understand its own violence.
Not yet. A woman gasped. Not screamed. Gasped.
That was the first crack.
I forced past a Baratheon girl and saw Emeric on the floor.
Criston was above him.
His white cloak had fallen forward, hiding too much, but I saw his arm rise and fall once, hard and ugly, saw Emeric’s head strike stone, saw the white sword within its crescent wreath twist half beneath him as if the cloth itself were trying to crawl away from what was happening. Blood darkened the side of his face. More marked Criston’s hand.
Still, the music continued. That was the part my mind fixed on.
Not the blood first. Not Criston’s face. Not the court still turning around us in bright silks and polished jewels. The music continued, ragged now, uncertain, but alive, and for three terrible heartbeats the Red Keep danced around a man being beaten on its floor.
Then someone screamed. The sound tore through the hall cleanly enough to kill the song. One instrument stopped. Another stumbled on alone for half a bar, then died in shame or fear. Chairs scraped. Cups fell. A second scream followed the first, higher, closer, and the dancers broke apart in a rush of colour and panic. The space opened at last, too late to be mercy.
Jasper moved first.
His chair overturned behind him with a crash I heard even through the rising chaos. He came from the Galeris table like a siege engine given legs, face transformed by a rage so immediate it seemed almost pure.
Landrey was behind him, shoving through dancers with none of his courtly grace left, one hand already reaching beneath the fold of his formal coat. Rollis rose more slowly, horror carved into every line of his face as he gripped his cane and forced his bad leg to obey. Vaeron did not run at first. He stood, and the coldness that came over him frightened me more than Jasper’s rage.
Rhaenyra’s hand was no longer in mine. I did not know when she had let go.
The court scattered back from the fallen man in purple, and at last every eye in the throne room turned toward the blood on the stones. Criston Cole stood over Emeric in a white cloak no longer clean, chest rising hard, while my archer-lieutenant lay twisted beneath him with the crescent wreath on his breast half-hidden and darkening.
Jasper roared his name. Landrey broke into a run. Vaeron moved then, fast and terrible in his silence. And as the screams spread beneath the Iron Throne, the Dread Legion rushed toward Emeric.
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