Dragonstone, 129 AC

There was no wind the morning the raven came, only the low hum of the sea against the cliffs, as if the gods had grown tired of screaming.

The bird arrived soaked and shivering, its wings sticky with blood, and it died before it could caw a second time. Maester Gerardys opened the scroll with trembling hands, but he need not have read the words. The Queen already knew.

Mothers always know.

She had dreamt of a storm. Of wings and teeth and her boy’s small hands reaching through a sky torn to ribbons. She had awoken choking on salt, her mouth filled with sea brine though she had not left her bed.

When she saw the maester’s face, she only nodded.

Lucerys was dead.

He had taken Arrax into the skies above Storm’s End and never come down. Vhagar had found them, and Aemond had let her. Or commanded her. The songs would say one thing, the histories another, but Rhaenyra knew: her child had died screaming, his body torn midair, cast into the sea like refuse, devoured by a beast older than the kingdom itself.

She did not scream. She did not sob. That had come years ago, with her mother’s death, her father’s silences, the small betrayals that grew like rot in the floorboards of the Red Keep. The tears had been spent then, emptied like a cup too often poured. What was left was something thicker.

She walked to the sea tower and stood alone for hours, veil torn from her hair by the gusts. Below, the waves clawed at the rocks. She imagined his bones dashed against those jagged fangs, imagined his eyes opening in the deep, filled with salt and silence.

And still, she did not cry.

When the sun fell and the torches were lit, you came to her. You said nothing. You stood in the doorway, watching her with those same pale Valyrian eyes, though yours held none of her fire. Only ice.

You were his sister. You had played with him in the Hall of Painted Tables, had stolen sweetcakes with him from the kitchens, had fallen asleep on his shoulder beneath the weirwood trees at Dragonstone’s godswood. He had whispered his dreams to you. You had buried yours with him.

You did not ask for a mourning feast. You did not ask for the septon. You did not ask where his sword had fallen.

You asked only when the killing would begin.

Rhaenyra looked at you, her only daughter, her true mirror, and did not answer. She walked past you. She moved like smoke, not touching the walls, her feet silent despite the storm that clawed outside.

In the great hall, the high lords and sworn knights rose when she entered. Their eyes were hollow with fear. They had not seen her thus—not since the gold cloaks crowned her on Dragonstone and Daemon called her Queen with his sword bared.

Now they saw something else.

Not the girl once promised the Iron Throne. Not the grieving mother. Not the dragonrider.

Something broken. Something made of grief and steel. Something that did not burn—but smoldered.

They did not kneel. They collapsed.

That night, she burned the green banners in the courtyard. She had the sigils of House Baratheon flung into the sea. She ordered the ravens loosed—not with pleas, but commands. Any lord who bore green would be named a traitor. Any who supported Aemond would be marked for death. And when she takes back the Iron throne those who caused her greatest grief will die screaming.