Rewriting Targaryen History

Chapter 95: Chapter 95: A Year of Missed Milestones

King’s Landing saw my sails before the Red Keep did.

By the time our ship entered the harbour, word had already run ahead of us through dockhands, sailors, merchants, guards, and the kind of men who made a living by knowing who had arrived before anyone important asked.

The city did not welcome me with one voice. King’s Landing never did anything so cleanly. It muttered, shouted, gossiped, cheered, and watched from windows with equal suspicion and hunger.

Still, they had heard enough.

The Stepstones had held. Bloodstone had not fallen. Grey Gallows had not broken. The Triarchy host had been beaten back, the coves had burned, and the Narrow Sea’s trade had begun moving with less fear.

Men who sold fish, rope, sailcloth, wine, onions, and lies all understood safe shipping better than courtly language. They may not have loved me, but they knew what it meant when fewer hulls returned scorched, and fewer captains spoke of raiders in every channel.

So the harbour gave me noise.

Not all of it kind. Not all of it hostile. Enough of it grateful that I stood at the rail for a moment longer than I meant to, watching the city rise above the water like something unwilling to admit it needed anyone.

Ser Lorent waited at the quay with a royal escort.

He bowed when I came down the gangplank. His face was older by a year, or perhaps I had simply become better at seeing what waiting did to men.

"Prince Othorion," he said. "Welcome home."

Home. The word struck harder than the cheers.

"I trust the city has not improved too much in my absence," I said.

Ser Lorent’s mouth moved close to a smile. "I would not accuse it of such a thing, my prince. Princess Rhaenyra waits in the Red Keep with the children. His Grace has requested your presence in court before the day’s end."

"Requested."

"With the warmth of a father and the impatience of a king who wishes to be seen thanking you before half the court explains why gratitude requires further discussion."

That sounded like Viserys. It also sounded like Otto had already begun measuring the room.

The ride through the city became slower than expected.

People gathered along the streets. Some called my name. Others called for news of sons, brothers, cousins, or ships whose fate I did not know. A woman near the Street of Flour held up a strip of blue-green cloth for Velaryon sailors and shouted blessings toward Driftmark.

A dock boy ran beside the escort until a guard pushed him back, asking whether dragons had truly burned the sea at Bloodstone. One old man spat near the road and muttered something about foreign spears, but he did it quietly enough that he clearly valued his teeth.

I had been praised before. I had been feared more often.

The welcome sat uneasily on me because I knew how much it left out. Men cheered victory because they did not have to see the bodies it had used for steps. Somewhere between the harbour and the Red Keep, I found myself thinking of seven hundred and eighteen names folded in my travelling chest and wondered how many cheers a dead man’s name was worth.

The Red Keep received me more formally.

Banners hung in the outer yard. Targaryen red and black, and the royal gold of court display. I saw Hightower green as well, placed where it belonged and no farther. The arrangement had Rhaenyra’s hand in it, or someone wise enough to fear her judgement.

Knights stood in order. Courtiers filled the galleries. Ladies leaned carefully from balconies. The Kingsguard waited at the foot of the steps, white cloaks bright even beneath a grey sky. Ser Erryk’s eyes found mine first. He bowed with proper restraint, but there was a warmth there no oath could fully hide. Ser Arryk stood beside him, equally still, though his nod carried honest respect. Ser Curtis Crakehall was present as well, polished, silent, and watching as if war had inconvenienced a story he preferred.

Then I saw Rhaenyra. She stood near the top of the steps with our children around her.

For a heartbeat, the yard lost sound.

A year had passed. I had counted it in reports, tides, casualties, letters, storms, and the movement of enemy ships. Yet seeing a year written into the bodies of my children was different.

Jacaerys was taller. Not by a little. His face had sharpened at the edges, and the seriousness he wore sat more naturally now, though not more gently. Lucerys stood beside him, still smaller, still softer in expression, but steadier than the boy I had left.

Rhaegar and Aerion had grown long-limbed in that uneven way children did when time took them in sudden claims. Viserys was no longer small enough to be hidden against a nurse’s skirts, though he still held himself as if the world required careful observation before trust.

And Rhaenyra held Aemma. My daughter was not the swaddled newborn I had left behind. She was a child now, round-cheeked, silver-haired, and bright-eyed, gripping the edge of her mother’s sleeve with one determined hand. She looked at the yard, the knights, the banners, and the returned father she could not possibly remember with solemn suspicion.

I climbed the steps.

Protocol wanted the court first. My body did not.

Rhaenyra did not move toward me quickly. She was the Princess of Dragonstone before the court, the heir to the throne, and the woman who had spent a year holding herself upright while men counted my absence. But when I reached her, the mask shifted enough for me to see the cost beneath it.

"You came back older," she said.

"So did they."

Her eyes flicked toward the children, and the smallest wound opened in her expression. "That was what I hated most."

I bowed my head and kissed her hand because the court was watching. Her fingers tightened around mine just once before releasing.

Jace was the first of the boys to step forward. He bowed. Properly. Too properly. "Father," he said, voice controlled with effort. "Welcome home. We are glad the campaign has ended."

I stared at him for a moment, then placed both hands on his shoulders. "You have grown into formal greetings while I was away. That is troubling."

His composure cracked. Not fully, but enough to let the boy show through the heir he was practising to be. "Mother said I was not to run down the steps."

"Your mother was correct."

"I wanted to."

"That matters as well."

He embraced me then, hard and brief at first, before forgetting the watching court and holding on longer. I felt how much taller he had become, how much less easily his head fit beneath my chin, and I hated the Stepstones for every inch they had stolen from me.

Luke came next. He did not bow as deeply. He tried, then gave up halfway and stepped into my arms. He held on without apology. "I trained while you were gone," he said into my coat.

"I know. Ser Erryk wrote that you improved."

"He wrote to you?"

"He did. He said you learned to keep your eyes open."

Luke drew back enough to look at me. "I still close them sometimes."

"Then you open them again. That is the part that matters."

His face steadied. "I missed you."

"I missed you too."

The twins approached together because neither wished to be second. Rhaegar studied the cut along my jaw that had healed into a thin pale mark. Aerion looked me up and down with open interest.

"Did pirates do that?" Aerion asked.

"A rock did that."

"That is disappointing."

Rhaegar frowned. "Rocks are dangerous in the Stepstones. Father wrote that more than once."

"I know, but pirates sound better."

"Pirates often sound better than they smell," I said.

Aerion considered that with visible seriousness. "Then I am glad you killed the ones that smelled worst."

Rhaenyra closed her eyes briefly. "Aerion."

"What? I was being glad."

Rhaegar leaned closer to me. "Did the Triarchy truly send fire boats at night?"

"Yes."

"Did you know before they came?"

"We knew they might come. Knowing a thing might happen is not the same as seeing it clearly in the dark."

He stored that answer somewhere behind his eyes. That boy was going to become either very wise or very difficult. Possibly both.

Viserys came last, slower than the others.

He had a small wooden dragon clutched in one hand. Not the old cup-dragon, but another creature carved with more ambition than accuracy. He looked at me as if verifying I matched memory.

"You were gone for a long time," he said.

"Yes."

"Aemma learned biting while you were gone."

"I have been warned."

"She bit Aerion."

Aerion protested at once. "She bit my finger because I put it too close to her mouth, which is different from an attack."

Viserys shook his head with grave disagreement. "It was still biting."

I crouched before him. "Did you keep the household safe while I was away?"

His small chest lifted. "I helped Mother."

Rhaenyra’s expression softened behind him.

"Then I owe you thanks," I said.

He stepped forward and hugged me with one arm, the wooden dragon pressed between us like a witness.

Aemma did not come to me. She watched from Rhaenyra’s arms, silver brows drawn in suspicion. When I reached gently toward her, she leaned back and gripped Rhaenyra’s sleeve harder.

That hurt more than I let the court see.

Rhaenyra saw it anyway. "She knows your voice from letters," she said quietly. "Knowing a voice is not the same as knowing the arms that carry it."

"No," I replied. "It is not."

Aemma stared at me, then made a small sound of judgement and turned her face against Rhaenyra’s shoulder.

Aerion whispered loudly, "She does that to people she does not respect yet."

"I am grateful for the explanation."

Rhaenyra’s mouth twitched. "Come. Father is waiting, and if we delay too long he may begin thanking someone else for your victory by mistake."

The court assembled in the throne room before sunset.

Viserys sat the Iron Throne with more ceremony than strength. He had dressed richly for the occasion, red and black worked with gold, a crown on his head, rings bright on thin fingers. The year had not been kind to him.

Joy over Aemma had given him light for a while, but illness remained patient. It waited beneath colour, beneath robes, beneath the public effort of a king who wanted to appear whole before his realm.

Alicent stood near the throne in green. Otto stood below and to the side, already composed for whatever sentence he intended to use as a knife. Aegon looked bored. Helaena watched a spot of light on the floor as if it had whispered to her. Aemond stood straight, older as well, the eyepatch making his face harder than a boy’s should have been. His gaze moved once to Luke, then away.

The room quieted when I approached. I knelt because the throne required it and because Viserys needed the gesture more than I did.

"Rise, Prince Othorion," Viserys said, voice carrying with effort but not weakness. "You return to us after a year of service in the Stepstones, where you held the King’s peace, defended the trade of the Narrow Sea, and stood against the Triarchy under royal command."

I rose.

Viserys leaned forward slightly. "The realm knows something of what was done. I would have it know more. Bloodstone held. Grey Gallows held. The enemy host was broken. The coves that fed them were cleared. Velaryon ships sail safer because of the men who fought there, and every merchant who passes those waters owes a debt whether he has the manners to admit it or not."

A murmur moved through the hall. Corlys was not present, still in the Stepstones with Daemon, but Velaryon men in attendance lifted their heads at the acknowledgement.

Viserys continued. "The Crown thanks you, Othorion Galeris, for service given with loyalty and courage. The Crown also recognises the Unsullied who died in that service. Their names will be entered into the royal rolls of the campaign, not as hirelings, not as foreign shadows, but as soldiers who fought beneath my command."

That touched something I had not expected. I bowed my head before my face could betray too much. "Your Grace honours the dead by naming them honestly."

"I do what should be done," Viserys said. "Gold from the Crown will be set aside for the sworn brothers of those who fell and for any kin they named. You will see it distributed properly."

"I will."

Otto moved then, not forward enough to challenge, only enough to enter the moment.

"Your Grace," he said smoothly, "none would deny that the Stepstones required attention, nor that Prince Othorion rendered notable service. Yet perhaps care should be taken in how the realm speaks of armies not raised by Westerosi lords, lest private forces grow too comfortable wearing the language of royal honour."

The room tightened. There it was, cleanly placed and dressed as caution.

Viserys looked at Otto for a long moment.

Something in his face changed. Not anger in the way Daemon wore it. Not sharp or hot. A tired king’s refusal, drawn from a place deeper than temper.

"Private forces did not disobey me in the Stepstones," Viserys said. "They went where I permitted them to go, fought where the realm required them, and bled where many Westerosi lords were grateful not to stand. I will not have service under my sanction dressed as suspicion in my own hall."

Otto bowed his head. "I meant only to preserve proper distinction, Your Grace."

"You may preserve it by remembering that I am the king who made the distinction today."

Silence followed. Rhaenyra stood still, but I knew the satisfaction in her without needing to see it. Alicent’s expression did not move. Aemond watched Viserys now, not me. That interested me more than I liked.

Viserys turned back to the hall. "Let it be known. Prince Othorion is returned with the gratitude of the Crown. Let the dead be named, the living honoured, and the peace they defended not be forgotten merely because it was won on rocks far from this hall."

The court applauded because the King had made it safe. Some meant it. Some did not. I had learned to accept sound without trusting it.

The feast afterwards was smaller than a victory feast and larger than I wanted.

Lords spoke to me of trade, courage, duty, and the Narrow Sea as if they had spent the year personally holding a spear above Bloodstone’s lower beach. Ladies asked after Caraxes though he had been Daemon’s terror, not mine. A Redwyne cousin congratulated me on "a tidy conclusion," and I nearly asked him which part of seven hundred and eighteen dead he considered tidy.

I did not.

Rhaenyra’s hand found my arm before the words became worth regretting. "You are tired," she said.

"I am polite."

"You are tired enough to confuse the two."

"I did not stab anyone."

"The evening is young."

She rescued me before my courtesy failed completely. The children had already been sent ahead, though Aerion had protested that victory feasts should include those who wanted dessert. Viserys had laughed at that, and for a moment the room had seemed almost gentle.

Rhaenyra took me not to our chambers first, but to the nursery wing. "I have something to show you," she said.

Her voice had changed. Not secretive. Not playful. Something more careful.

We entered a warm room lit by low lamps and guarded by two household men I knew and one Unsullied who bowed deeply enough to make me wonder what lay within. Aemma sat on a thick rug near her nurse, stacking wooden rings with the concentration of a commander arranging siege lines. She looked up when we entered, judged me again, and returned to her work.

Then I heard a scrape. Soft claws against stone. Near the hearth, half-curled on a heated slab, lay a hatchling.

For a moment, I only stared.

She was small, no larger than a hunting hound, though her wings made her seem larger when they shifted. Her scales were a light shade of salmon pink, soft at first glance, almost delicate until the lamplight caught them and showed the living strength beneath.

Rare strokes of silver ran along her neck, the edges of her wings, and the taper of her tail, like thin lines of moonlight drawn by an impatient hand. Her head lifted as I entered, and her eyes fixed on me with bright, clever suspicion.

A dragon. Aemma’s dragon.

Rhaenyra stood beside me, watching my face instead of the hatchling. "Her name is Aeggel," she said.

I did not answer quickly.

Aeggel stretched, claws clicking lightly against the stone. A tiny hiss escaped her, more offended than frightened. Aemma looked toward the sound and babbled as if offering correction.

"When?" I asked.

"Four months after Aemma’s birth."

The answer landed exactly where she knew it would.

I had missed Aemma learning my absence. I had missed her first teeth, her first laughter, her first reaching hands. Now I knew I had missed this too, the hatching of the dragon that would follow her name through history if history allowed either of them mercy.

"You did not tell me," I said.

"I wrote it three times."

"And burned the letters?"

"Yes."

I looked at her. Rhaenyra’s face held pride, guilt, anger, and a tenderness she did not wish to make easy for either of us.

"I wanted to see your face when you met her," she said. "I also hated you for not being here when she hatched, and I did not want that hatred travelling by raven where it could do nothing but wound us both."

"That is fair."

"It is not fair. It is only true."

Aeggel rose on delicate legs and moved toward Aemma with the uneven dignity of a creature too young to know she was awkward. Aemma abandoned the wooden rings and reached for her. The nurse shifted anxiously, but Rhaenyra raised a hand. The hatchling stopped just beyond Aemma’s fingers and lowered her head.

Aemma patted her snout with open-handed delight. Aeggel endured it like a queen receiving tribute from a very small subject.

Despite everything, I laughed.

Aemma looked up sharply at the sound. This time, she did not turn away at once. She studied me, then smiled with two small teeth visible and a wet hand resting on Aeggel’s head.

Something in my chest eased and hurt at the same time. "She likes the dragon more than she likes me," I said.

"She has known the dragon longer."

"That is a cruel advantage."

"You may earn your place."

I crouched slowly, not too close to Aemma, not too close to Aeggel. The hatchling watched me with a stillness that belonged to dragons of every size. I extended one hand, palm down, and waited.

Aeggel sniffed once. Then she sneezed a tiny curl of smoke across my knuckles.

Aemma laughed. Not politely. Not softly. A bright, sudden laugh that filled the room and made Rhaenyra close her eyes for half a heartbeat as if the sound had answered a prayer she had never said aloud.

I looked at my daughter. "There you are," I said quietly.

Aemma slapped one hand on the rug, pleased with herself, and leaned against Aeggel’s warm side. The hatchling settled beside her, salmon-pink scales and silver strokes gleaming in the lamplight.

Rhaenyra lowered herself beside me with care, still mindful of a body that had carried more than court ever understood. "Father wept when he saw them together."

"I believe it."

"He called it a blessing. Otto called it fortunate."

"That sounds restrained of him."

"It sounded painful."

"Good."

She looked at me then, and the humour faded into something older. "All our children have dragons now. Some at court speak of it as proof the gods favour us."

"And what do you say?"

"I say gods are often credited for women’s pain, children’s survival, and eggs kept warm by servants who actually did the work."

"That sounds more accurate."

"It is also less useful in court."

I reached toward Aemma again. This time, she considered me, then grabbed one of my fingers with surprising strength. Her hand was warm, damp, and impossibly small.

Rhaenyra watched the gesture. "She does not know you yet."

"No."

"She will."

"I know."

"You missed much."

"I know that too."

The room settled around us. Outside, King’s Landing continued breathing its smoke, ambition, rot, and restless hunger. Somewhere in the Red Keep, Otto was likely already deciding how to turn Viserys’s praise into concern by morning.

Alicent would be measuring what the King’s public gratitude meant. Aemond would be training. Vaeron was on the sea toward Astapor. The Amethyst Shadow haunted Dragonstone’s cliffs. War was not gone from the world because I had returned to a nursery.

But for that moment, I sat on the floor with my wife beside me, my daughter’s hand wrapped around my finger, and her salmon-pink hatchling curled close enough to warm us both.

The realm had called me victorious. Viserys had named me loyal. Otto had been silenced for an afternoon. None of it mattered as much as Aemma laughing at smoke on my hand.

I had spent a year holding rocks against the sea.

Now I had come home to children who had grown without waiting for me, to a wife who had carried crown, court, and cradle in my absence, and to a daughter who had a dragon before she had a proper memory of her father.

Aeggel tucked her silver-stroked wings against her sides and closed one bright eye. Aemma did not release my finger.

For the first time since leaving the Stepstones, I let myself be still.