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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Categories:
F/MGenM/MF/F
Fandoms:
House of the Dragon (TV)A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Relationships:
Aerion Targaryen (Son of Maekar I) & Rhaenyra TargaryenAerion Targaryen & Jacaerys VelaryonAerion Targaryen & Lucerys VelaryonHarwin Strong & Rhaenyra Targaryen & Laenor VelaryonAerion Targaryen & Aegon II TargaryenAerion Targaryen & Aemond "One-Eye" TargaryenAerion Targaryen & Helaena TargaryenDaemon Targaryen/Rhaenyra Targaryen
Characters:
Aerion Targaryen (Son of Maekar I)Rhaenyra TargaryenJacaerys VelaryonLucerys Velaryon (Son of Rhaenyra)Joffrey VelaryonLaenor VelaryonHarwin StrongAlicent HightowerViserys I TargaryenAegon II TargaryenAemond "One-Eye" TargaryenHelaena TargaryenDaemon TargaryenRhaena Targaryen (Daughter of Daemon)Baela TargaryenCorlys "The Sea Snake" VelaryonRhaenys Targaryen VelaryonSilverwing | Alysanne Targaryen's DragonAddam VelaryonDaeron Targaryen (Son of Viserys I)
Additional Tags:
Alternate Universe - Canon DivergenceTime TravelThe Dance of the Dragons | Aegon II Targaryen v. Rhaenyra Targaryen EraI've fallen victim to the TikTok edits of twins Jace and AerionAerion Targaryen vs The GreensDragon Dreams (Questionable)Dark HumorUnreliable NarratorNo Beta We Die Like Aerion (The First Time)Dragon Dreams (Literal)
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Published:2025-12-18Updated:2026-07-25Words:386,215Chapters:37/?Comments:7,001Kudos:6,014Bookmarks:1,626Hits:246,098
Burn Them All
Anonymous
Chapter 9: High is the Tower, But a Dragon Has Wings.
Summary:
In a shocking turn of events Viserys remembers he is, in fact, the King. (A lesson is learned: do not, under any circumstances, give Aerion Brightflame a reason to fake-cry in your solar.)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The quiet in Luke's chamber had thickened. Aerion's cheek was still pressed against the dark wool of Rhaenyra's sleeve. He could feel the faint tremor in her arm where it wrapped around him.
He didn't know how long they stood like that.
At one point the door opened with a slow, yielding sound. Laenor entered first, his face a careful blank. The hollows under his eyes were pronounced, but he moved with a sailor's quiet tread. He saw them—Aerion in Rhaenyra's arms—and his step hitched for a fraction of a second before he continued into the room, claiming a space by the cold hearth.
Corlys and Rhaenys followed, close enough to look like one front. The Sea Snake's gaze swept the bed, lingered on Luke, then travelled to mother and son. His face gave nothing away; it was the same expression he might wear staring out over black water. Rhaenys's eyes were sharper. She said nothing.
Jace came last, slipping in behind his grandparents. He stopped near the door, unsure where to put his body, his eyes flicking from Luke to Aerion and back again. He looked stranded. Whatever anger he'd had earlier had burned itself out, leaving him with a raw, bewildered stillness.
Aerion felt Rhaenyra's arm tighten minutely. He drew in a breath that tasted of salt and wool, and stepped back. The movement tugged at his healing thigh, a tight, sour pull that made his knee want to lock. He smoothed his face before anyone could read the hitch.
The warmth where he'd been pressed against her lingered on his skin like a handprint. He kept his eyes lowered. He needed to assemble the pieces of himself before he had to speak. Arrange the face. Find the tone. Not too sharp, not too soft. The bland, acceptable middle.
He didn't have long.
Bootsteps, lighter and more deliberate than Laenor's, sounded in the corridor. Daemon entered with Baela and Rhaena at his sides. Their eyes moved over the gathered adults, then landed on Aerion standing apart from his mother. Baela's brow furrowed, suspicion sharpened by confusion. Rhaena looked straight to Luke, her mouth tightening into a thin line that held pain inside it.
Daemon's eyes found Aerion immediately. He gave no sign of their earlier discussion by the window, his face a mask of casual, detached observation. He leaned against the doorframe, precisely where he'd been before he'd carted Aerion off. The corner of his mouth twitched.
The chamber felt crowded now.
Aerion lifted his head, but made sure to look only at the worn rug between him and the rest of them. He could feel every eye anyway—Corlys's weight, Rhaenys's measuring stare, Laenor's tired sorrow, Jace's strained hope, the girls' bafflement, Daemon's thin amusement.
He began. His voice was clean, stripped of the earlier wire-tight hysteria, the voice he used for courtesies.
"I owe you all an apology," he said. The words were plain and correct. "My words earlier were unforgivable. I was… not myself." He paused, as if the admission cost him. It didn't. "The grief for Luke… it made a stranger of me. I struck out at everyone within reach. It was a waste of good venom, and a poorer showing of kinship."
He turned his head just enough to meet Laenor's eyes. Something in him loosened there, a thread of truth slipping through the seams. "Father. My words to you were the ugliest. They were born of a fury that had no right to your door. You have ever been… constant."
Laenor's expression softened with a deep, familiar resignation. He gave a single, slow nod. Acceptance and not absolution. He knew the shape of Aerion's lies, and loved him anyway.
Aerion's gaze moved to Corlys and Rhaenys. "Lord Grandsire. Princess. I disgraced your hall with my temper. You have shown our family only shelter, and I repaid you with noise." He bowed his head, every motion measured, the angle precise. Empty, but beautifully formed.
Corlys's jaw shifted, slow as tidework. He had lived with storms long enough to respect what they could do, and Aerion's outburst had been a storm all its own. But the boy was offering the correct shape of contrition, and the shape mattered. "The sea is calm after the storm," Corlys rumbled, noncommittal. "See that the next squall blows elsewhere."
Rhaenys's gaze was a needle, probing the seams of his apology. "Your apology is a neat stitch," she observed, her voice cool. "It closes the wound. It does not clean it." She leaned forward slightly, her rings catching the brazier's light. "Beware the wound that festers under a pretty seam, Prince Aerion. It poisons the whole body from within."
Aerion took it without flinching. He'd expected less mercy from her than from anyone else.
He looked at Jace next. He chose his words carefully. This was where the apology could catch on something real and tear. "Jace. I blamed you for following your heart. It was a coward's charge. You acted as an elder brother should. I am sorry."
Jace swallowed, his throat working. He wanted to believe it. He needed to. He gave a jerky, stiff nod, his eyes shining. The forgiveness was for himself as much as for Aerion—a chance to stop the world from spinning.
Finally, Aerion turned his eyes to Daemon. This was the hardest mask to wear. Daemon understood the mummer's art.
Aerion felt his own voice flatten as he spoke, a deliberate dulling. Give him nothing to hook.
"Prince Daemon," Aerion said. "My accusations were baseless and born of a child's understanding. I apologize for the disrespect."
Daemon didn't nod and didn't move. He studied Aerion for a long moment, the silence stretching thin. Then one eyebrow lifted, a fraction.
"You need to practice that one," Daemon said, his voice dry as bone. "The delivery lacks conviction. I've seen better acting in a Lysene pleasure house. "
A hot spark of ire flashed behind Aerion's ribs. He met Daemon's gaze and let a flicker of it show—a quick, venomous glare—before snuffing it out. He looked away, dismissing him. The message was clear: I said the words. We both know what they are. Do not press it.
From the corner of his eye, Aerion saw Daemon's gaze shift from him to Rhaenyra. A silent question hung in the look: Did he?
Aerion didn't turn to see her response. He felt a slight, almost imperceptible shift in her posture, a softening of the tension in the room emanating from her direction. He didn't need to see the nod she gave. He knew it had been offered.
Baela, bold and bewildered, broke the silence. "What happened? What did he do?"
"Nothing of consequence," Daemon said smoothly, his attention now on his daughter. "Prince Aerion was briefly possessed by a particularly loud and opinionated spirit of fire. It has been exorcised."
Rhaena looked from Luke to Aerion, her expression searching, quieter than her sister's. "Did you break something?"
"Only the peace," Rhaenys murmured, not unkindly.
Baela looked unsatisfied, her eyes darting between the adults, sensing the lie but unable to unravel it. She opened her mouth as if to demand more, but a sharp, almost imperceptible shake of Daemon's head stilled her. The subject was closed.
An awkward, fragile quiet descended.
Laenor cleared his throat, grasping for normalcy like a lifeline. "The maester says the swelling is less. A good sign."
"He woke briefly," Rhaenyra added, her hand returning to Luke's. "He knew me."
A fragile, hopeful thing blossomed in the close air. They began to talk, in low murmurs, about Luke's care, about the readiness of the ship, about the wind from the east.
Aerion stood apart, listening to the meaningless music of the small talk. He watched Jace finally peel himself from the door and drift to Luke's bedside.
Corlys's voice was a low rumble. "He promised a judgment by morning. The sun is past its peak. He must know I will not let this pass. A child of my blood, maimed under my roof…"
Daemon gave a soft, derisive snort. "He'll plead for peace. He'll have us all clasp hands and sing a hymn to family. He's spent twenty years turning a blind eye. One more atrocity won't sharpen his vision." He sounded bored.
Then Daemon's head tilted, his gaze slicing across the room to pin Aerion where he stood. "Before you decided to burst into flames earlier, nephew, you were about to explain what my brother wanted with you in his solar. Explain it now."
Rhaenyra sighed, a soft exhale of weary exasperation. "Leave it, Daemon."
Aerion met his uncle's stare. "I already told you. He wanted to talk about dreams."
Daemon's bark of laughter was short and humorless. "Dreams. Of course. The great preoccupation of our house. Did you dream of dancing grumpkins?"
A hot spark flared behind Aerion's ribs. "Dragon dreams are a blessing of the blood of Old Valyria," he said, his voice going clipped and cold. "A gift you clearly lack."
"A gift for madness, more like," Daemon shot back, a cruel twist to his mouth. "My brother clutches at dream-straws because he doesn't whish to grasp the reins of the waking world."
"And you grasp at nothing but your own blade, because you have the imagination of a brick," Aerion retorted, the words out before he could think.
A startled, choked sound came from Laenor's direction. Rhaenyra's lips pressed into a thin line, but a strange light flickered in her eyes.
"Gods be good," Laenor murmured, almost to himself. "It's like watching a viper argue with its own reflection."
Daemon's eyes narrowed, but before he could retort, Rhaenyra cut in, her voice dry. "The resemblance is… alarming. Must you both bare your fangs in a sickroom?"
Aerion and Daemon both turned identical scowls toward them.
"I am nothing like him," Aerion said, coldly.
"The child has a point," Daemon said at the same time, his tone withering.
Rhaenyra and Laenor exchanged a look that was equal parts dread and a weary amusement.
Daemon rolled his eyes, dismissing the entire line of conversation as beneath him. "Never mind that. Did the king, in between interpreting your nursery phantoms, tell you what he intends to do? Or did he just weep and promise you a pony?"
Aerion opened his mouth, the cold promise from the solar—I will set this right—on his tongue.
The knock, when it came, was a sharp, official rap that severed the fragile peace.
Ser Lorent Marbrand of the Kingsguard stood in the doorway.
"Your Grace. My princes. My lords," he said, his voice cutting through the murmured conversation. "His Grace the King commands your presence in the Hall of the Nine. All of you." His gaze swept the room. "Immediately."
The small talk died. Laenor's hand stilled on the water pitcher. Corlys straightened, every inch the Lord of the Tides. Rhaenyra's fingers tightened around Luke's, then slowly, reluctantly, let go.
Daemon tipped his chin at the white cloak, voice light in a way that meant nothing good. "He kept us waiting longer than I expected. Is he standing, or is he being carried?"
Ser Lorent's jaw tightened. "His Grace is already seated in the Hall. The Queen and her party are being summoned as we speak."
Aerion looked at Rhaenyra. She was already rising, smoothing her black gown, her face settling into the serene, unreadable mask of the Heir.
"We shall attend directly, Ser Lorent."
The Kingsguard bowed and stepped back into the corridor, leaving the door ajar.
The chamber held them in place with Luke's quiet breathing and the dull glow of the brazier. Then Corlys pushed himself up. "Come then," he said. "Let us see what justice looks like when it is whelped from regret and infirmity."
Rhaenys rose with him, silent, settled into place beside her husband the way a blade settles into a scabbard.
Laenor looked toward Luke, his expression pained. "Should someone stay…?"
"He will be well-guarded," Rhaenyra said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She smoothed her skirts once—an old habit, a pointless gesture that still claimed control. "Jace. Aerion. You will come with us."
Jace paled, the blood draining from his face until his freckles stood out like scattered copper coins. He gave a jerky, stiff-necked nod, the heir steeling himself for his first true trial.
Aerion didn't answer. His silence carried its own obedience.
In the Hall of the Nine, the King sat the Driftwood Throne.
It was a seat of myth and malice. Ancient pale timber, fused by time and story, knotted into a tangle that looked hauled from the deep. It was said the Merling King himself had gifted it to the first Velaryon lord, a promise of dominion over both wave and rock. Its arms ended in sea-wyrm heads, their mouths frozen mid-snarl, its high back a petrified reef of salt-bleached wood.
Viserys was swaddled in dark cloth and heavy furs, a concession to his failing flesh, but the crown sat steady on his head. That steadiness did something sharp to Aerion's stomach.
Grand Maester Orwyle hovered near the dais. One hand lingered at a small satchel of powders and cloth as if he expected the King to split open mid-sentence.
To his right, a constellation of green. Alicent Hightower stood stiffly, her gown the colour of deep forest shade, her hands clasped so tightly the knuckles were bone-white pearls. Her face was a perfect, pale mask of composed piety, but her gaze, as it flicked to Rhaenyra's party, held the trapped-animal panic of a doe hearing the hunter's bowstring twang. Beside her, Otto Hightower offered pnly grey calculation.
Her children were arranged like ill-set jewels. Aegon fidgeted, his usual swagger replaced by a nervous, sullen energy. His eyes darted from his father's ruin of a face to the floor, and then, for one arrested moment, found Aerion's across the hall. Aegon's gaze held—confused, almost searching—before he flinched and looked away, as if the contact burned. Helaena was slightly apart, her head tilted as if listening to a distant, buzzing song only she could hear, her fingers plucking absently at the sleeve of her grey dress.
Aemond was doing his best impression of the throne itself: rigid, unyielding, staring at a point above the King's head as if it contained the secret to dignity. His broken nose was a satisfyingly dark smudge. Aerion's palm tingled faintly with the memory of the impact. He offered Aemond an empty look in return.Nothing for you here.
They halted before the dais. No one bowed.
Viserys's breath rattled in the quiet before he spoke. His voice was parchment-thin, yet it carried, scraped raw from some deep, agonized well of kingship.
"I have hoped," he began, the words dragging out, slow and grievous. "Time. And time again. I have… hoped. That the squabbles within my own house… these petty, endless resentments… would find their end." His milky eyes moved across their faces, seeing not individuals, perhaps, but the collective failure of his blood. "I have prayed for unity. I have turned my face from discord, believing time, believing family… would heal the rift."
He drew a breath. Grand Maester Orwyle edged forward, a hand half-raised.
Viserys lifted a single, trembling finger.
Stay.
Orwyle froze. His hand dropped.
The King swallowed. The crown sat motionless, but his jaw worked, a slow, visible grind of bone and will. He blinked. When his eyes opened again, the soft, sorrowful haze was gone. Scoured away.
His gaze traveled—Rhaenyra, Alicent, Daemon, Otto—marking each of them.
When those pale eyes found Aerion, they gentled, just for a heartbeat. Aerion kept his face smooth, his breathing even. Inside, the King's private promise echoed: I will set this right.
He waited for the blade to fall.
"But wishes are the currency of fools. Prayers are the refuge of the weak." Viserys continued. "It has not ended. It has festered. And now… now children raise knives against children. Now the blood of princes is spilled." His voice dropped, and the quieter it went, the sharper it cut. "Dragon-blood. Spilled on stone in childish spite."
He let the accusation hang, his shame and fury finding every soul in the chamber.
Then his focus narrowed on his second son. "Prince Aemond."
Aemond's spine straightened even further, if that were possible. "Your Grace."
"Yesterday. In this very hall. I asked you a question." The King's voice was frosty. "I asked you where you had heard that vile… that filthy rumor about your nephews. The poison you spat as you stood over them with a knife in your hand. Do you recall your answer?"
Aemond's throat worked. "I do, Your Grace."
"You said that your brother, Aegon, had said it."
From the green cluster, Aegon jerked as if stung, his face flushing. Aerion saw him glance sideways, one quick, pleading flick, toward his mother. Viserys did not so much as glance his way. His entire, terrible focus was on his second son.
"You," the King said, quiet and flat, "lied to your king."
"Viserys," Alicent cut in, voice controlled but strained, "please—he is only a boy. He is injured. He was set upon—"
Viserys cut through her with the ease of a blade through cloth.
"You will speak when you are addressed, my lady," he said, and there was no warmth in my lady at all. "And no more."
Alicent stopped as if someone had struck her. The color drained out of her face in a slow spill. Her lips parted on something wordless that couldn't find a shape, hurt and disbelief, and then closed. She retreated a step beside Otto, her shoulders rigid.
Aerion watched Otto's face with a hungry stillness. The Hand's expression shifted only a fraction—a faint tightening at the corner of his mouth.
Viserys leaned forward a fraction in the Driftwood Throne. He returned to address Aemond. "A lie to one's King is a grave crime, boy. Do you understand that?"
Aemond stood frozen. The cracks in his stone composure began to show. "I… I understand, Your Grace."
"Then you will answer me now. And you will give me the truth." Viserys said, the Driftwood Throne creaking beneath his weight. "Where did you hear those rumors?"
Aemond didn't answer at once.
He stood there, rigidly. His eyes flicked—so small it might have been a twitch—toward Alicent, then away. His throat worked once. He looked, for the first time since Aerion had entered, like he could feel the floor beneath him.
The hall waited.
The silence deepened.
Viserys's voice dropped, becoming almost conversational, and all the more terrifying for it. "If you cannot find the truth within you to gift your King, I will make you a promise, Prince Aemond. You will never mount the Bronze Fury again. Not while I live. I will have the Dragonkeepers chain him in the deepest pit on Dragonstone, and you will rot on the ground, a prince without a mount, until the day the Stranger takes me, and you remember what your lies cost you. Do you believe I do not have the power to command this?"
That did it.
Aemond would sooner chew off his own hand than lose that beast. The King had found the only lever that could move him. Clever, for a corpse that hasn't finished dying.
Otto shifted then, taking one step, careful and respectful. "Your Grace," he began, smooth as oiled wood, "forgive me, but His Grace's health—this is not a matter to be handled in such a public—"
Viserys's head snapped toward him. The movement was too sharp, too violent for the ruined body that made it. A spasm of pain twisted his features before he swallowed it, his eyes never leaving Otto's face.
"That," Viserys said, the word quiet and absolute, "is enough."
The hall seemed to stop breathing. Even Daemon's studied nonchalance sharpened into something alert.
The King held Otto in his gaze a moment longer, a silent, corrosive dismissal. Then he turned back to his son.
Aemond swallowed. His jaw worked, a visible grind of bone and will. He was trying to find a path that didn't lead off a cliff, and finding only sheer drops.
"I…" he began, careful enough to betray him. "I heard… talk. In the castle. The households… servants…"
"Whose household?" Viserys's voice was a whip-crack. "Which servants? Name them. We will have them fetched. We will have them confirm your story before this assembly. Name. Them."
Aemond's nostrils flared. He looked caught between two terrors: betraying his mother and losing his dragon. His pride kept trying to stand up and face the king like an equal. His body remembered who held the crown.
Aerion's shoulders stayed relaxed. Inside, he leaned forward, intent as a hound. Say it. Say her.
"Answer," Viserys said. A single word, stripped bare.
Aemond cast a fleeting look toward his mother, but Alicent was a statue of pale dread, offering no shelter. Otto Hightower's face offered only blankness.
He looked, for a heartbeat, like a boy in the Dragonpit again, small beneath stone, desperate beneath laughter. Then his eyes hardened.
He made the choice.
"In… in the chambers…" Aemond forced out, the words dragged from him. "The… the Queen's chambers. I heard it… there."
Aerion did not move. He did not blink.
Something low and dark eased through his chest.
He felt Rhaenyra's breath change beside him—one controlled pull in, one controlled release. He kept his gaze forward anyway, because he wanted to see.
Alicent's face went bloodless. Her clasped hands tightened until the tendons stood like cord beneath pale skin.
Otto's composure held, but not perfectly. A fissure opened in his calm, a flicker of reassessment behind his eyes, swift and cold. Recalculate. Retreat.
Viserys went very, very still.
Then—slowly, grindingly—he shifted on the driftwood throne to face Alicent Hightower.
Aerion had seen Viserys furious before, weeping before, pleading before. He had rarely seen him cold.
"And you, my lady?" Viserys asked, his voice now soft, deadly soft. "What do you have to say?"
Alicent did not crumble. Fear sat plain in her posture—too tight shoulders, hands clasped like a prayer—but her chin remained lifted. Whatever else she was, she had never been a woman who believed herself wrong.
"Your Grace," she said. "I will not pretend last night was anything but disgrace. A knife drawn on kin is a horror. If you mean to punish your son for it, I will not stand between you and justice."
Aemond's jaw tightened. Aegon's fingers twitched at his sides. Helaena remained still, eyes lowered, as if she were watching something fall in slow motion.
"But do not ask me to swear that the realm is blind," Alicent continued, and there it was—piety sharpened into policy. "You can command this hall into silence. You cannot command every lord in Westeros to forget what they think they see. I came to you because uncertainty is tinder. I begged you for clarity, for a public end to the whispers, something stronger than private reassurances behind closed doors."
Rhaenyra didn't move. The stillness around her turned dense, like air before lightning. Jace's face tightened, his mouth compressing hard enough to blanch. Aerion felt his own jaw set, the muscles behind his ears aching with restraint. He kept his face smooth. Courtly. Let her hang herself, he told himself, and listened.
Alicent drew strength from the sound of her own conviction.
"I have come to you before. On my knees, I have begged you to see reason. To look, truly look, at the sons of the Princess and acknowledge what the entire kingdom sees."
Her gaze swept over Jace, then Aerion, a look of grievous, righteous pain. "They are not Velaryons. They carry the mark of Harwin Strong in their bones, in their very bearing. To insist otherwise is a folly that undermines your succession. I have sought only to protect your legacy. Your true line."
"You have sought to undermine my heir!" Viserys cut in, and for the first time his voice rose.
Alicent did not rise to the bait. "I have sought to keep the realm from ripping itself apart the moment you are gone," she said. "You named the Princess your heir. I have never disputed your right to name. I have disputed the folly of leaving the realm room to dispute with you."
Viserys shook his head, one gnarled hand gripping the arm of the driftwood throne. "Time and again, in the privacy of our chambers, you raised these… these doubts. And time and again, I answered you. I answered you, Alicent."
The memory seemed to gut him. His breath hitched. "I told you Rhaenyra's children were my grandsons. I told you they were Velaryons by law, by name, by the word of their father. I told you the matter was closed. I asked you. As your king, I commanded you to let it lie."
He stared at her, his eyes pools of bewildered betrayal. "But you did not. You fed your poison to my sons. You let this fester in their hearts, this rot, until it has now cost a child his eye. You heard my command, and you chose to disobey."
Alicent took a single step forward. Her hands were clasped, a mimicry of prayer, but her voice held the edge of a blade. "I chose to worry," she said. "And I chose to speak to you. To see a truth is not poison! To speak it is not disobedience! It is loyalty to the realm! Look at them, Viserys. Truly look. Can you, in your heart, deny what stands plain before us?"
She was pleading now, and not with a king, but with the man she had shared a bed with, whose children she had borne. "Find the strength to admit it. For the sake of your true blood, for Aegon, for Helaena, for the future of your house, admit that your loyal wife has spoken truth all these years!"
"Loyal?" The word was a whisper that somehow filled the hall. Viserys's head tilted, a grotesque parody of curiosity. "A loyal wife obeys her husband. A loyal subject obeys her king. You have done neither."
He shifted his weight, and a tremor of pain crossed his face. Aerion saw the tightening around his ruined mouth, the wet, choked breath. A spike of alarm shot through him. Don't fold. Not now. You promised.
When he spoke again, his voice was low, each word a carefully placed stone in a sentence of condemnation.
"What I wish to know, my lady, is what gave you the mind… what arrogance of blood or faith… to believe you had the right to question the legitimacy of the Crown Princess's heirs?"
He let the question hang, his gaze boring into her.
"Was it the fervor of your prayers? The belief that your Hightower blood grants you a clarity of sight that your Targaryen king lacks?"
His eyes flicked coldly to Otto, who remained a statue, his face impassive.
"Or was it your father's whispering?"
Otto's mouth tightened. "Your Grace, by law and custom, an accusation of treason—"
Viserys cut him off, gaze never leaving Alicent. "Not a word unless I ask for it."
Otto's jaw worked once, a small involuntary movement—annoyance, or surprise, or both—then stilled.
Alicent opened her mouth. For a long moment, nothing emerged. Aerion watched her throat work, watched her fingers crush together as if to wring speech from the air. Her piety, usually a solid, polished shell, now seemed brittle, a clasp straining under pressure.
"The realm," she said at last, and her voice snapped back into place. "The realm gives me that right. The law. The gods. A throne cannot be built on a lie, Viserys." Her green skirts hissed over the floor like leaves dragged in wind. "A lie breeds war. It rots the very timber it rests upon. I sought only to cut out the rot before it consumed us all!"
Viserys's sunken eyes were pits of cold disappointment. "And yet," a murmur, soft enough that Aerion had to lean into the sound, "it was your lie that put a knife in my son's hand."
Aemond's face remained a carved mask. Yet Aerion caught the subtle tell—the minute flex of his jaw, the twitch of fingers at his side.
"It is no lie!" The cry was raw, stripped from her. "Look at them! See the truth!"
Beside Aerion, Jace went rigid, a tremor of fury or dread passing through him.
"I have heard your truth, Alicent. A thousand times." Viserys's voice grew heavy, wearied by the endless circuit of this argument. "A child is born a bastard in the eyes of gods and men for one of two reasons. If it is born outside the sacred bonds of marriage. Or if, within that marriage, the husband and father does not recognize the babe as his own seed." He paused. "Which of these, pray tell, applies to my daughter's sons?"
Alicent's mouth worked soundlessly.
Viserys did not wait for an answer she could not give. His gaze, heavy as a millstone, shifted. "Ser Laenor. Come forward."
A ripple of tension passed through the Black faction. Rhaenyra's gaze cut to Laenor—a swift, silent blade of a look. Laenor met it for a fragment of a second, gave a near-imperceptible nod, and stepped from the ranks. He looked pale, but his stride held no hesitation.
He moved to the center of the floor, the space between the throne and the Greens, and bowed deeply.
From the corner of his eye, Aerion saw Daemon's mouth curl into a small, ugly smile. If Laenor's next words were not the right ones, Dark Sister would ensure he never spoke again.
"As your king," Viserys intoned, "I command you to speak nothing but the truth. Do you understand the weight of this oath?"
"I do, Your Grace," Laenor said, his voice steady. The sailor-prince was gone. In his place stood the Lord of the Tides' heir.
"In your marriage to my daughter, the Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, have you begotten four sons: the princes Jacerys, Aerion, Lucerys, and Joffrey?"
"I have, Your Grace."
"Do you recognize them, before gods and men, as your sons? Your trueborn heirs?"
Laenor did not glance at his children. He looked straight at the King, and his voice carried a sharp, unshakeable pride. "I am proud to recognize the Princes Jacerys, Aerion, Lucerys, and Joffrey as my sons. By blood. And by law."
Aerion's own chest clenched, a sudden, painful pressure. By blood. The words were a fiction, a shared story, he knew, but Laenor said them like they were the truest thing in the hall.
Rhaenyra's shoulders eased, a minute release of breath.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aerion saw Jace. His brother seemed to deflate into a wet, wobbling relief that threatened to dissolve him into a puddle of grateful tears right there on the Sea Snake's floor.
Oh, for the love of—
Discreetly, his own face a mask of solemn attention, Aerion shifted his weight and drove the edge of his boot heel down onto Jace's foot.
Jace jolted, a sharp intake of breath hissing through his teeth. The wobble vanished, replaced by a stunned, sideways glare. Aerion kept his gaze forward, on the King, his expression one of respect.
Corlys watched his son, and something like grim approval flashed in his eyes before he banked it. Rhaenys's gaze was pure assessment, measuring the weight of the claim.
A small, choked sound came from Alicent.
Viserys did not let her have it.
He leaned forward slightly on his throne. "Are you completely sure, Ser Laenor? They do not bear your… look."
A faint smile touched Laenor's lips. It was not a pleasant smile. "They carry the colors of my grandmother, Your Grace. The Lady Jocelyn Baratheon. King Jahaerys and Queen Alysanne's own half-sister." He let the lineage hang. Baratheon black hair. Baratheon strong features. "The seed is strong, they say. It often skips a generation, only to re-emerge with vigor. My sons carry her legacy."
Viserys nodded slowly, as if remembering a portrait in a dusty hall. "Yes. My aunt Jocelyn. A formidable woman." He looked past Laenor. "You see it too, do you not, Lord Corlys?"
Corlys answered from behind Laenor. "I do, Your Grace. The resemblance has always been a comfort. A touch of my dear good-mother in my grandchildren." He didn't blink.
Viserys's gaze slid to Rhaenys. "And you, Princess? As a daughter of House Targaryen, and their grandmother. Do you see the mark of our shared blood in these boys?"
A beat of silence. Aerion watched Rhaenys. The Queen Who Never Was did not look at her son, or at her husband. Her sharp, flinty eyes swept over Jace, then him. They didn't feel like a grandmother's look. They felt like she was weighing them on a scale only she could see, measuring their worth against some private tally of loss and victory.
She inclined her head once. "My mother descended from the blood of the First Men, through lines older than the Conquest." A pause, deliberate. "Such blood carries its own stubborn features. Strength of bone. Darkness of hair. It does not fade easily, nor does it bow to the expectations of Valyrian breeding."
Her gaze slid over them again, quick, almost dismissive. "My grandchildren bear the same legacy of that ancient blood. It is plain to see."
Clever, Aerion thought, and the thought was a small, mean satisfaction. She hadn't lied.
Alicent shook her head, breath coming faster.
"Viserys," she pleaded, voice thinning into something raw. "Viserys, please, you cannot simply wish it so! Look at them! See the truth!"
Viserys's hand struck the arm of the throne.
The sound cracked through the hall. Aerion saw Helaena flinch, a tiny, private recoil. Aegon's whole body jerked. Aemond didn't move, but his throat convulsed in one hard, ugly swallow.
Across the hall, Daemon didn't move at all. His stillness sharpened anyway, as if his amusement had been folded away and put out of reach.
"I tire of this, Alicent!" Viserys snapped. The shout rasped out of him like something torn from a wound. His face twisted—anger, yes, but something deeper under it, a long sickness of waiting that had finally turned mean. "I tire of your piety used as a cudgel. And I tire of your father's velvet counsel."
Silence swallowed whatever Alicent had been about to say.
Viserys drew a slower breath, visibly forcing the tremors from his voice. When he spoke again, it was with the cold, flat tone of a royal decree.
"The issue regarding my grandsons' legitimacy is concluded. I, Viserys of House Targaryen, First of His Name, confirm Jacerys, Aerion, Lucerys, and Joffrey Velaryon as the trueborn sons of the Princess of Dragonstone, and heirs to the Iron Throne and Driftmark."
He let the decree echo. Then his burning eyes swept the room, passing over his wife, his younger sons, his Goodfather.
"And if any man, woman, or child speaks that filth again—questions their birth, their name, their right—I will have their tongue. And then their life." His gaze pinned each of them in turn. "None of you are excluded by this. Not you, my lady. Not you, my children. And not you, Lord Hand."
Alicent found her voice, thin and strained as worn wire. "You would threaten your own wife," she whispered. "For speaking what is plain." Her eyes held a wounded outrage, but under it, Aerion saw a deeper, colder shock. She truly hadn't expected this. She'd thought her truth was armor enough.
"For disobedience," Viserys corrected, and his voice held no pity. "For treason carried in prayerful hands, and for feeding my son words that turned into blood."
"I have done this for the realm—"
"You have done it for yourself," Viserys said. "And for your father."
Otto did not flinch. Aerion hated him for it—hated the way Otto's composure made everyone else in the room seem messy and unseemly in comparison. It was deeply offensive.
Viserys's gaze stayed on Alicent.
"You will not speak on this again," he commanded.
Alicent's mouth trembled. She tried once more, a softer, desperate appeal, "And if the realm refuses to swallow it?" she asked. "If the whispers grow louder? If—"
Viserys's expression did not shift.
"Then I will make them choke," he said, quiet as a prayer and twice as deadly.
The hall held its breath. Rhaenyra's head dipped for a moment, her eyes fixed on the floor, the barest tremor at the corner of her mouth the only sign of the smile she hid.
Aerion stood very still beside his mother, feeling the King's decree settle over the room like a sudden, heavy frost.
"And now, my lady," Viserys said, voice measured, "we will speak of a greater treason."
Alicent went very still.
"The night my daughter, the Princess Rhaenyra, wed Ser Laenor Velaryon," Viserys began, his gaze locked on Alicent as if they were the only two people in the hall. "A night of celebration. Of union. Do you recall that night?"
A faint, wary line appeared between her brows. Her hands tightened within each other. "Of course."
"You arrived at the feast," Viserys said, the words dropping one by one like stones into a still pool, "…in a gown of green."
A beat.
"Green," Viserys said again, his voice soft, almost reflective. "An innocent enough hue, I thought at the time. Though I never knew you to prefer it. You favored blue, as I recall. Softer colors. Silvers, whites. The colors of peace, of prayer." His milky eyes fixed on her, unblinking. "But you chose green that night. You chose it deliberately."
He leaned forward, the driftwood groaning beneath him. "It is the color they light at the top of the Hightower in Oldtown, is it not? That great beacon. They light it when they mean to call their swords. When they mean to go to war."
Alicent's breath hitched, a tiny, trapped sound. Her clasped hands were so tight the skin stretched parchment-thin over bone.
"Why?" Viserys asked. The question was simple, stripped bare. "What banners were you calling that night, Alicent? What sort of war did you think you were already fighting, in my hall, at my daughter's wedding?"
She drew herself up. Aerion watched, fascinated, as the fear was forcibly tucked back behind her ribs and the steel step into its place.
"I was fighting for the truth even then," she said. "The Princess had shown me earlier the kind of queen she would be. Spoiled. Reckless. She had…" Her eyes flicked to Daemon—fast, like a hand snatching from a hot pan—then away again, cheeks coloring with something old and sour. "She had shamed herself, and the crown, in the most sordid manner imaginable. She proved then what I had long feared—"
"I told you to stop." Viserys's interruption was a cold slap. "That very day, in my solar, when you came to me with your… concerns. I told you to let it lie. I had to send your father away because he would not stop whispering the same poison in my ear. Do you remember?"
Alicent's face flushed with angry color. "My father never once failed to think of the realm! He told you truths no other dared to speak! He served you faithfully!"
"He served his own ambition," Viserys shot back, his voice gaining a sharp, cutting edge. "He thought of his blood on the Iron Throne. He sought to replace my child—my chosen heir—with your son. Do you deny it?"
Otto Hightower's lips parted, finally stirred to break his silence. "Your Grace, I must—"
"Be quiet," Viserys cut him off, turning that same, chilling gaze upon him.
Otto's mouth snapped shut, his eyes burning.
Viserys turned back to Alicent, relentless. "The green dress. Tell me why. What sort of war?"
Alicent looked at him, and for a heartbeat, the queen-face slipped. Aerion saw the younger woman underneath, the one who looked cornered, like a doe boxed in by hounds. Her voice thinned.
"When you sent my father away," she said, "I was alone. I needed allies in this court. I needed to show those who still valued duty, who saw the same dangers I saw, that they were not alone."
"What sort of allies?" Viserys pressed, peeling at her words like scabs. "And why?"
"Allies who understood that the Seven Kingdoms would never accept her!" The answer burst out hot. "After what she showed me—her disregard, her arrogance—how could they? How could the lords of Westeros kneel to a queen whose first thought was not duty, but her own pleasure? I needed to protect Aegon. Your son. Your firstborn son. The one every lord in the realm looks to as the King's true heir. It was not a war I started. It was a wall I built. To protect your legacy when you would not!"
As she spoke, Aerion's mind scrabbled for purchase. The words were clear, but the history behind them was a locked door. What she showed me. Disregard. Arrogance. A secret shame, a personal betrayal that had happened when he was nothing but a possibility. He saw the understanding pass between the adults who held the key: his mother's face was a mask of frozen contempt, but her gaze was distant, fixed on a memory. Daemon, beside her, looked… entertained. His mouth held the smallest curve, like he'd heard this tale too many times and still liked the cruel parts.
Aerion's ears burned. The heat crawled up his neck, hot and stupid, as if everyone could smell that he didn't understand.
Feeling adrift, Aerion glanced at Jace. His brother's brow was furrowed, his eyes darting from their mother's stony profile to Alicent's impassioned face. Jace gave a minute, almost imperceptible shake of his head. I don't know either.
Aerion's gaze flicked across to Baela and Rhaena, standing with Daemon. Baela looked puzzled, her head tilted. Rhaena met his look and offered a slight, confused shrug. They were all in the dark.
He looked to his grandparents. Corlys went sea-still, his expression flattening into the kind of calm that came before a storm hit shore. Rhaenys's gaze sharpened, then went distant, as if she'd just been made to remember the taste of old salt and old insult. Laenor's mouth tightened; pain flickered there, before he smothered it under court composure.
They all know, Aerion realized with a cold spike of frustration. The green dress, the festering hate—it all sprouted from some rotten seed planted on a night years ago.
Viserys listened, and the longer she spoke, the colder the silence around him seemed to grow.
"There are no factions," he stated, his voice carrying to every corner of the hall. "This nonsense I have been forced to hear—of 'Blacks' and 'Greens.' There are no factions." He leaned forward, the Driftwood Throne groaning in protest. "Because there is no war. There is only my will. And my will… is the law."
Across the hall, Aegon shifted, restless, caught between relief and dread.
Viserys's gaze, heavy as a fallen stone, shifted from Alicent to include Otto in its condemnation, two parts of the same treasonous root.
"Once again," he began, his voice a low, grinding roll of gravel and pain, "I must make myself clear. As I have had to do, it seems, for the better part of two decades. For the slow of mind. For the ambitious of heart."
He paused, sucking in a breath that rattled in his chest. "I made the line of succession clear. Years ago. In the sight of gods and men. I named Rhaenyra Targaryen Princess of Dragonstone. My heir." His milky eyes fixed on Alicent, unblinking. "I did not change my mind when you gave me a son. I did not stumble when you gave me another. I never… doubted."
The last word was pointed, aimed directly at Alicent's earlier plea for him to 'find the strength to admit the truth.' He had never lacked strength in this. Only in curbing the vipers at his feet.
"This conflict you seem to think exists," he went on, and his voice dropped into something close, almost private, the way a father might speak over a cradle—if the cradle held a snake. "This desperate, grasping struggle for my throne… there is none."
Aerion watched Alicent's mouth tighten, watched the skin at her throat jump once as she swallowed it down.
"It is a phantom you have conjured," Viserys said. "A shadow-play performed by green candles and whispered psalms."
Viserys leaned forward. The Driftwood Throne creaked under him, old wood protesting old bone. The crown caught the torchlight and threw it back cold. "Upon my death, Princess Rhaenyra will be queen. You have always known this. In your chambers, in your prayers, in the secret councils you hold when you think the crown is not listening… you have always known."
His eyes burned into Otto. "And yet you grasped. You reached. You planted the seed of a lie in my son's ear and in my wife's fears, hoping it would grow into a challenge. Hoping the realm would see your green banner and forget my black-and-red decree."
Alicent's eyes flared. "Viserys—"
"Silence," Viserys said again.
Alicent went pale.
Viserys turned his gaze back to Otto.
"You returned to court," he said, "and the air soured again."
Otto's mouth tightened, a minute fissure in the marble of his composure.
"I told you to stop," Viserys said. "I told you to leave my daughter's succession alone. I told you I would hear no more of it."
His voice rose.
"And still you whispered," Viserys said. "Still you gathered allies. Still you taught my wife to light war-flame in my hall and call it protection."
Alicent's chest rose sharply.
Viserys leaned forward again.
He swept a trembling hand towards Aemond, who stood rigid, a monument to his mother's teachings. "And all of this… this garden of poison you have so carefully tended… it beget that."
Aemond's gaze finally flicked, one quick dart toward his mother, as if she might catch him before he fell.
The King's voice cracked, the sound too large to fit inside a failing body. "It beget last night. My son… my son… raising a knife against my grandsons in the dark. You taught him—you fed him—the poison that their very existence was an insult. That their blood was lesser. That their birth was a crime to be answered with steel."
He looked from Alicent's ashen face to Otto's rigid mask. "You did not put the knife in his hand. You are too careful for that. You put the reason in his heart. You made him believe he was defending a truth, a legacy, a right that you invented. That I never gave him."
The words hung in the hall and did not drift away. Aerion felt them settle like dust after collapse, coating everything, making the air taste older.
"This," Viserys whispered, the word carrying in the terrible quiet, "is the fruit of your loyalty."
A beat passed.
Then another.
In that space—where Viserys usually softened, where he usually reached for peace like a crutch—something held.
His eyes slid to Rhaenyra.
It was only a glance. A thin, aching thing. Yet Aerion saw the change it made: the way the King's shoulders steadied by a fraction, the way his jaw set as if he'd bitten down on pain and found it useful. As if looking at his daughter reminded his failing body what it was supposed to be doing.
The King did not retreat into regret. He stayed forward in it, eyes fixed, voice steadying instead of breaking.
Aerion's stomach gave a small, stupid lurch, like he'd missed a step on a stair.
He might actually do it.
Do it. Cut.
He stole a glance toward Daemon.
Daemon had gone still in a different manner than before. There was no lounging ease, nor lazy cruelty in his stance. His attention had narrowed to a blade point. He wasn't blinking. He looked… caught. As if some part of him had expected the same old Viserys to fold, and was being forced to recalibrate in real time. It was the closest Aerion had ever seen his uncle come to startled without moving a muscle.
Across the hall, the Greens held their shapes. Alicent's chin stayed up, though her throat bobbed once, betraying her. Otto's composure remained intact, but Aerion saw the minute shift in his eyes: calculation tightening, the way a man's mind begins counting exits when the room's doors start closing.
Viserys, propped against the bleached bones of the Driftwood Throne, seemed to draw a final, rattling strength from some deep, bitter well.
His hand—spotted, thin, still a king's hand—curled around the arm of the Driftwood Throne. The driftwood creaked, sea-worn and stubborn, as if it resented being used for judgment.
"I will speak of my own failures first," Viserys said. "So none of you mistake what comes next for impulse."
Alicent's throat bobbed. Otto's eyes stayed steady. Aerion watched the old man's mouth shape each word carefully, as if he were choosing stones for a foundation.
"When Lord Lyonel Strong died," he began, his voice a dry whisper that somehow commanded the vast space, "I was in grief. For a good man. A friend. In my weakness, I allowed myself to be swayed. I allowed my wife's counsel to recall you, Otto, as Hand." His eyes, like chips of milky ice, fixed on the older man. "It was a mistake."
Otto opened his mouth, a protest forming on his lips, but Viserys spoke over him. "I sent you away once because your interests had diverged from the Crown's. You were already guilty of treason then—treason of the heart, of ambition. But I had a debt to you, or so I told myself. I let you go with your life and your honor. And how did you repay that mercy?"
He didn't wait for an answer. "Your daughter declared war on my child on her own wedding night."
"Your Grace, if I may explain—" Otto's voice was calm and reasoned, the perfect voice of a Hand.
Viserys ignored him completely. "I should have acted then. The fault is mine. I did not want to see. I told myself the green dress was nothing. A spat between two girls who had once… who had once held dear love for one another." A spasm of real pain crossed his ruined face. "But I was wrong. That love was already rot. And I, in my weakness, should have cut it away. I admit it."
He turned his head back to Otto, the movement slow and painful and smiled sadly. "But now I see it. And now, before this sickness takes more than my grandson's eye, I must cut."
His smile sharpened, and for an instant Aerion saw it: the ghost of the king Viserys might have been, if he had ever enjoyed power.
He pointed a trembling, skeletal finger. "Your treasonous words to your daughter have borne this fruit. This moment. This violence. My grandson maimed." His lips stretched into a ghastly, humorless smile. "And now the treason is plain. Even for a dying, blind old man to see. Ser Otto Hightower, you are guilty of treason against your king. Your treason has cost my house blood. The penalty for treason is death."
Alicent gasped, a sharp, wounded sound. Otto's composure finally fractured and he took a sharp, incredulous intake of breath. This was beyond the pale of his calculations.
The fracture was brief. Otto's poise tightened, like a knot pulled hard. He stepped forward half a pace, not deigning to bow—never truly bowing—his voice resuming its smooth, wooden tone.
"Your Grace," he began, "with respect, Driftmark is not King's Landing. By custom and law, a lord accused of treason is owed—"
Viserys's hand lifted again.
"Owed?" Viserys asked softly. The word was almost curious. "My grandson is owed an eye. Shall we speak of what is owed?"
Otto's mouth tightened. He tried again, "As Hand, I must insist upon proper—"
"You are not my Hand," Viserys said, and the sentence landed like a door slamming. "Not anymore."
Aerion's blood turned to fire in his veins. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of shock. He's doing it. The old fool is actually doing it. He felt a sudden, violent pressure on his hand. Jace had grasped it, his brother's fingers cold and vise-tight. The contact was so shocking that Aerion didn't pull away. He held still, let Jace cling, both of them rooted by the same thunderstruck disbelief.
He looked up. Rhaenyra and Daemon had turned their heads slightly, their eyes meeting across the charged space. No words passed, but a current of stark, mutual understanding flashed between them. Corlys watched, his seafarer's face set in lines of grim, attentive satisfaction. Laenor's face held a faint, pained, almost incredulous smile. Only Rhaenys remained unchanged, her expression one of cold, unsurprised acceptance. She looked like someone who had read the final line of a tragic scroll long before the parchment was unfurled for the rest of them.
"Ser Harrold," Viserys commanded, his voice gaining a shred of its old royal timbre. "Arrest him. In the name of your king."
For a heartbeat, the hall did not move. Even the Kingsguard seemed to hesitate, from sheer disbelief.
Alicent made a strangled sound.
"Viserys—!"
Ser Harrold stepped forward. His white cloak brushed the driftwood dais as he moved.
"Lord Hand," the knight said, voice low, devoid of all pity, "you are commanded."
Otto's eyes flicked once to Alicent. A look that was almost gentle. Then he inclined his head.
"As you wish, Your Grace," Otto said.
Alicent swayed, one hand flying to the edge of the dais for balance.
Aegon lurched toward her on instinct, then stopped short, caught between the urge to support his mother and the terror of being stained by her fall. Helaena's eyes had gone distant and glassy, her fingers plucking at an invisible thread on her sleeve. She murmured something too soft to hear, a secret verdict for the spiders in the walls. Aemond did not move at all. His stillness was stubborn and furious.
Jace's grip on Aerion's hand went hard. Aerion's own fingers spasmed in response—one brief, involuntary squeeze—before he forcibly stilled them, as if he'd caught himself committing a kindness in public.
As Ser Harrold took Otto by the arm, Viserys looked down from the throne and spoke again, voice cold.
"Lord Corlys," Viserys said, turning his head slightly. "I ask the use of your cells to hold my former Hand until we return to King's Landing."
Corlys Velaryon's satisfaction was a cold, deep-running current, though his face gave away nothing but duty. "The darkest cell in Driftmark is yours, Your Grace."
The doors shut behind the Hand's retreat. The sound felt final in a way no spoken sentence could match.
Alicent surged forward a step, the composure cracking at the edges. She lifted her voice so it would carry, so Driftmark would hear.
"This is cruelty," she declared. "In a lord's hall, before children—before the realm's eyes—this is not justice."
Her gaze swept the Blacks, then the Velaryons "Will you have every lord in Westeros learn that a king's mercy is a tide that recedes in a morning? That one fevered breath can turn lawful judgment into vindictive slaughter?"
Viserys's face tightened. The effort of sitting upright made his throat click wetly. For a moment, it looked as if her words had found the old softness.
Then his ruined mouth pulled into something like a smile, and it was worse than any snarl.
"Mercy," Viserys repeated, tasting the word as if it had gone sour in his mouth. "You have mistaken my mercy for permission."
He leaned forward again, and pain flashed over him before he crushed it down and spoke through it anyway.
"This is me finally paying the cost I spent a lifetime avoiding. "
Alicent's breath hitched. The hall heard it.
Viserys looked Alicent.
She stood very straight. Her face had drained to something almost waxen. Her eyes were wet. She looked less like a queen and more like a woman about to be swallowed by the consequences of her own certainty.
"As for you, my lady," he said, and his voice held a profound, weary finality. "You are my wife. You are the Queen. And you are also guilty of treason. You schemed. You plotted. You sought to have my daughter removed from her rightful place. You poisoned my children's minds as your father poisoned yours."
His eyes slid, briefly, to his children by Alicent—Aegon, pale and panicked; Helaena, quiet as a trapped moth; Aemond, rigid as iron. Aerion felt Jace's fingers tighten again, as if the sight of them made the whole hall colder.
Viserys took a labored breath. "I can forgive my children. My own blood. They are young. Young minds are soft, easily shaped. But I cannot forgive you."
Alicent's lips moved soundlessly. Tears brimmed, then did not fall, caught on anger.
"You cannot—" she whispered.
"I cannot have you executed," Viserys continued, as if stating a regrettable fact. "But I can have you confined. You will retire to your chambers here. Under guard. When we return to King's Landing, a proper place will be found for you."
He paused, his gaze turning inward, seeing the public story he must now spin. "I will inform the court that my loyal wife, stricken with grief over her father's treason, has begged me for a period of spiritual retreat to atone for the sins he cultivated within our household. That she has asked to repent, and that I, in my… generosity, have granted it."
He let the fiction hang, a beautiful, brutal cage woven from her own piety. "You will retire to a motherhouse. For a period of… seven years. One for each of the gods you so often invoke. There, you may pray that they forgive you what your king cannot."
Alicent's lips moved soundlessly. "You would… spin my imprisonment into a… a pilgrimage?" The whisper was scalding.
"I would give the realm a story it can swallow," Viserys corrected, his voice like stone. "Instead of the bitter truth of a queen's treason. Be grateful I offer you this cloak. Now, you will retire, my lady."
He motioned with a slight twitch of his fingers. Another Kingsguard, ser Lorent Marbrand stepped forward, his face a polite, implacable mask. "Your Grace," he said softly to Alicent. It was not a request.
Alicent's hands clenched, the bones standing out sharp and white beneath her skin. Her gaze flew to her children in a silent, wild plea.
"Aegon—"
Aegon flinched as if struck. A half-step forward, a spasm of aborted courage, and then nothing. His mouth opened and closed on empty air.
Helaena's gaze drifted to her mother. A quick glance, blank and bright at the same time, as if she were observing a moth already pinned to a board in some other, inevitable reality. Then her gaze slid away again, back to the torches.
Aemond didn't reach for Alicent. He didn't even look at her. But his jaw tightened so hard the muscle jumped, and Aerion saw the anger split clean down the middle: one half aimed at Viserys for stripping his mother's power, the other aimed at Alicent for letting it happen without drawing blood.
Then, for a reason Aerion could not fathom—stupidity, desperation—her gaze darted past them, seeking Rhaenyra.
Oh, Aerion thought. Don't you dare.
Alicent was looking for a crack. A sliver of the girl she'd braided hair with. A flicker of shared history, of that sentimental rot that had allowed all this to fester in the first place. If she found it—if she saw even a tremor of the forgiving, politically-stupid girl in his mother's face—Aerion knew, with certainty that he would burst into flames. Not a metaphor. He would simply combust where he stood, and the resulting inferno would be everyone's problem.
He looked at his mother.
Rhaenyra did not move.
She stood as she had since entering the hall: a pillar of mourner's black, her face a mask of serene, unblinking judgment. The torchlight caught the planes of her cheeks, the line of her jaw. Her eyes, fixed on Alicent, held no pity.
She was not that girl in the godswood. She was the Princess of Dragonstone. The Heir. The woman who had walked across the Keep bleeding to present her newborn son. The mother whose child now slept with half a face in a room above.
In her stillness, Aerion saw no weakness.
Alicent must have seen it too. The last hope in her eyes guttered and died. Her shoulders slumped by the smallest fraction, the final, invisible thread of expectation severed.
Aerion let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Good.
Alicent's eyes slid back to Viserys again, pleading and furious.
"You cannot do this," The plea frayed at the edges, revealing the raw thread beneath. "I am your wife."
Viserys's gaze did not soften.
"I am your King," he replied.
That was all.
She went without a word, her green gown a fading smudge of defiance against the grey stone, her head held high in a last, desperate mimicry of dignity.
Finally, Viserys's gaze, heavy with exhaustion and lingering fury, found Aemond. The boy stood rigid, a monument to shattered pride, awaiting his judgment. "And you, Aemond."
Aemond's eyes flicked once, quick and sharp, to where Rhaenyra stood with her sons. Aerion saw it. So did Daemon. So did Rhaenys, judging by the slight narrowing of her gaze.
"Yes, Your Grace," Aemond said, voice controlled.
Viserys's voice dropped.
"You drew a knife on your kin," he said. "You spilled prince's blood. You maimed my grandson."
Aemond did not speak.
Viserys continued, his voice softening into something no less terrible for its lack of volume. "You wielded the knife. You carry the guilt of the act. But you also carry the guilt of a pupil who learned his lessons too well." He studied his son's bruised face. "You sought a dragon to make you a man. It seems you found only a blade to make you a monster."
He paused, the weight of the crown seeming to press him deeper into the throne. "You will not return to King's Landing with us. You will remain here on Driftmark, as a ward of Lord Corlys. You will serve him. You will learn the ways of the sea, of trade, of governance that does not spring from whispered grievances. You will look upon the damage you have done to your nephew every day, a living reminder. And you will not attempt to mount Vermithor for a year. Your dragon will remain under the watch of the Dragonkeepers. Do you understand?"
Aemond flinched. The control cracked for the briefest instant—the first real reaction Aerion had seen from him in this room. It pleased Aerion in a small, ugly way.
His satisfaction curdled a moment later.
Driftmark was his inheritance. It was the seat he would one day have to learn to rule from Corlys himself. The idea that his future stronghold would now be permanently infected with Aemond's bitter presence was deeply irritating. He'd have to share his corridors, his training yards, possibly even his lessons, with the boy who'd carved up his brother. Grandsire's justice was a blunt instrument. It solved the immediate problem by creating a permanent, petty nuisance.
Aemond's lips trembled once. Then he forced them still.
"Yes, Your Grace," he said, voice tight.
Viserys kept his eyes on him a moment longer, like he was deciding whether the wound would take.
"And you will apologize," Viserys added. "To Lucerys. To his mother. To your kin whom you hunted in the dark."
Aemond's throat worked.
"You will do it today," Viserys said. "Before you leave this hall."
Aerion felt something in himself tighten, pleased and sick at once. An apology did nothing. An apology did not undo a missing eye. But forcing Aemond to shape the words—forcing him to kneel his pride for all to see—felt like a lever pried under the world.
A moment stretched, thin and taut. Then, with a stiffness that seemed to pain him more than his broken nose, Aemond turned. His storm-violet eyes found Aerion first, before sliding away as if the sight burned him. He took two stiff steps toward where Rhaenyra stood.
He did not kneel. But he bowed his head, a sharp jerk of the neck. "Princess Rhaenyra," he forced out, the words grating. "My actions were… dishonorable. I offer my apology." He spoke to the floor at her feet.
Rhaenyra said nothing. She merely inclined her own head, a bare quarter-inch, an acceptance that granted no forgiveness, only acknowledgement of the performance demanded by the King.
Aemond's shoulders were wire-tight. He turned next, his gaze sweeping past Jace's pale, set face to land, reluctantly, on the doorway through which they had come—the direction of Luke's chamber. "To Prince Lucerys," he said, louder now, as if volume could substitute for sincerity. "I regret… the injury done."
Finally, his gaze flicked to Baela and Rhaena, who watched him with identical expressions of cold contempt. "And to my cousins. For the… pursuit."
It was done. The words hung in the air, hollow and sour. They changed nothing. They healed nothing. But they had been spoken, and in the court of the King's justice, that was the currency required.
Viserys watched it all, his breath a shallow, rhythmic scrape. He seemed to diminish further into the throne, the act of will that had sustained him through the pronouncements now spent.
His clouded eyes moved over the faces below—the shock, the satisfaction, the anger that had nowhere to go—and he gave a tired little sigh that barely reached the floor.
"This is my judgment," he said, and his voice sounded like dry parchment rubbed over stone. "This is my will."
He paused, drawing up whatever was left in him the way a drowning man claws for air.
"And it will be made manifest. Ravens will fly. I will call every Great Lord of Westeros to King's Landing. They will stand before the Iron Throne, and they will renew the oaths they swore to me… and to my daughter, the Princess Rhaenyra, as heir. They will bend the knee again, and they will understand the cost of forgetting."
Viserys's mouth tightened, and his eyes slid—briefly—toward the empty space where Otto had stood. "And the boy in Oldtown, my son" he said. "He must be recalled at once. I shudder to think what vintage of loyalty he has been drinking there, among his Hightower kin. He will come home. He will stand before me, and I will hear his mouth for myself."
Aerion's skin prickled. He had forgotten the existence of his youngest uncle.
"Let it be known from the Arbor to the Wall that the line of succession is, and ever shall be, as I have decreed. The matter is settled."
Then, slowly, the king's attention turned—at last—to his other children.
His eyes went first to Helaena. They softened by the smallest margin, as if her quietness cost him less to look at. Then his gaze slid to Aegon—
—and stopped just short of meeting him.
He can't even look at him, Aerion thought.
Viserys spoke anyway, voice even, each word placed like a stone laid over a grave. "Aegon. Helaena. Forget whatever… fancies your mother may have planted in your minds. They were weeds. They are now pulled. You are my children. You will have honors, holdings, matches befitting your birth. But you will never be king. You will never be queen."
Aegon's face, which had been pale with shock, flushed with a sudden, startling vehemence. He blurted out the words as if they'd been trapped behind his teeth for years. "I never wanted to be king. She's the heir, not me! And what sort of man steals his sister's birthright?"
It was less a statement of loyalty and more a sullen disavowal of the burden he'd never truly wanted. Aerion accepted it, and Viserys did too.
Helaena's head tilted. Her voice was a soft, eerie singsong. "The blood would have prevailed anyway. The red thread was always stronger." she murmured, her voice a soft, discordant chime. "Through fire and loss… blood finds its way ... at the end of all the dancing."
Aerion's mind flew to two small, somber boys with their mother's eyes. Aegon the Younger. Viserys. Blood prevailing through the dancing, just as Helaena said. The accuracy of her madness made Aerion narrow his eyes at her.
Viserys only looked more weary, as if Helaena's riddles were a fever he was too tired to interpret. He gave a single, slow nod.
He turned his face back to the hall at large, his energy clearly failing. "Now that this… unpleasantness is resolved. I will retire to my chambers. I find this has been… especially draining."
As he moved to rise, his body betrayed him. A tremor went through his legs, and for a heart-stopping moment, it seemed the King might crumple back onto the bleached driftwood or pitch forward onto the stones.
Grand Maester Orwyle surged forward, hands outstretched. "Your Grace, please, allow me—"
Viserys's free hand lashed out, a weak but definitive swat that sent Orwyle stumbling back with a wounded, clinking protest from his chain.
Daemon was already moving. He detached from Rhaenyra's side and closed the distance in three swift, silent strides. One hand slipped beneath Viserys's elbow, the other bracing the King's back, taking the weight before it could fall.
Viserys's hand came up and closed around Daemon's forearm. The grip looked weak. It landed heavy anyway.
No words passed between them.
Then Daemon turned them both toward the doors.
Thus supported, Viserys Targaryen, First of His Name, allowed himself to be led from the Hall of the Nine, his steps slow and shuffling, leaning on the brother who had always been both his greatest scourge and his most unshakeable pillar. The oppressive silence held until the great doors closed behind them, swallowing the last whisper of the King's robe.
The rot, as the King had promised, had been cut away. The bleeding, for now, had been stopped. But the scars, Aerion knew, would never truly fade.
The walk back to Luke's chamber was made in a heavy, shared silence. The grand pronouncements of the Hall of the Nine had dissolved into the quiet, salt-damp corridors of High Tide, leaving them all feeling hollowed out and strangely light, as if the severity of the keep had lessened with the expulsion of the Hightowers.
Corlys was the first to break the heavy silence, his voice a low rumble that seemed to weigh the new reality. "He will need a new Hand. And soon. A king does not rule from a sickbed alone."He sounded like he was reminding himself as much as anyone.
Rhaenys stood motionless beside him, but her eyes were sharp. Baela and Rhaena hovered close to their grandparents, wide-eyed and silent.
"He will," Rhaenys agreed, the words coming slowly, as if retrieved from a great distance. Her gaze found Rhaenyra. "And the court … will be a beast startled from its den. For years, it has been fed on Hightower whispers and green certainty. That trough is now empty. It will be hungry, and it will be fractious."
Laenor shifted, the dazed wonder on his face giving way to a flicker of unease. "You mean to… influence the appointment?"
"I mean to ensure the next Hand is not another Otto Hightower," Rhaenys said, her tone leaving no room for debate. "There's a window. A narrow one, while the King's resolve is still hot from the forge. We must convene. All of us." She glanced around at them all. "We must decide how to fill the spaces he has just cleared. The Hand. Every position of influence that green shadow touched. This victory is a fortress to occupy at once."
Rhaenyra gave a single, slow nod. The Princess was reasserting herself over the stunned mother. "Tonight. After we have seen to Luke."
Corlys grunted, the sound more like an exhale than approval. "The Sea Dragon's study. It is secure."
With that, the two groups parted ways in the corridor. Corlys and Rhaenys turned toward the heart of High Tide with their granddaughters, already speaking in low tones of logistics and loyalties. Aerion's family continued on, the brief interlude of politics making the return to the sickroom feel even more like stepping from one world into another—from the map of a conquered kingdom back to the single, wounded boy who had been the cause of it all.
They slipped back into the dim, herb-scented quiet of the sickroom. Luke lay as they had left him, a small, bandaged mound in the vast bed.
For a long moment, they simply stood around him, a fragmented circle of shared exhaustion. Then Rhaenyra sank onto the stool, her composure finally cracking at the edges. She reached out and took Luke's limp hand, her thumb stroking his knuckles.
"Lucerys," she said, her voice hushed, as if speaking in a sept. "Can you hear me, sweet boy? It is done." She swallowed, her throat working. "We have justice for you. The King… your grandsire…He cut the rot out. For you."
Laenor moved to the other side of the bed. He stood for a moment, just looking. Then he reached out and carefully, so carefully, took Luke's other hand between both of his own, his large, calloused fingers dwarfing the child's.
"You are a Velaryon," he said, the words firm, an anchor thrown into turbulent water. "My son. The Sea Snake's grandson. No one will ever say otherwise again. You have the word of a king." He promised. Then he leaned down, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper meant only for Luke. "And when you wake, we'll go to the docks. I'll show you Seahorse's new rigging. The sails are… they're the color of a winter sea at dawn. You'll like them."
Jace shuffled forward next, awkward and earnest. He didn't touch Luke, just stood staring at his brother's shrouded face. "I'm sorry," he whispered, the words meant for the sleeping boy but audible to them all. "I should've… I'll be better. I'll protect you. Properly." It was a vow, clumsy and true.
All eyes shifted to Aerion.
He stared back at the ring of expectant, red-rimmed faces. What do you want from me? A lullaby? A poem? He was not built for the wet, whispering work of solace.
He took a step closer.
"They won't touch you again," Aerion said to his sleeping brother. "The Hand is in a cell. The Queen is a prisoner. The one who did this is now bound to sea to contemplate his own stupidity." He paused, then he added, because it felt important to be thorough, to close the ledger completely: "And I hit him. Quite hard. In the face. For you."
A strange, choked sound escaped Laenor.
Rhaenyra's own shoulders shook once, a silent release of something too tangled to name—grief, vindication, a terrible, weary love. She didn't look at Aerion, but her grip on Luke's hand tightened, and a fresh tear fell, this one landing on the blanket.
A fragile, new silence settled over them, threaded with exhaustion and a dazed, wary peace.
Rhaenyra's fierce, willed tension finally left her. She seemed to shrink into the chair by the bed, one hand still resting on Luke's leg, the other coming up to press her fingers to her temple as if holding her thoughts inside. Laenor let out a long, slow breath, the sound of a man surfacing from deep water. He kept his son's small hand cradled in his, his head bowed.
Jace finally moved, sinking to sit on the floor beside the bed, his back against the carved wood, his own exhaustion pulling him down. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
The door blew open.
Daemon stepped in without knocking, because Daemon did nothing that asked permission. He looked… spirited, for lack of a better word. The hard, lazy ease from the hall was back in his limbs, but it crackled now with something bright and hungry.
His eyes swept them. Took in Rhaenyra at the bedside. Jace's pale face. Laenor's tense stance. Then snapped onto Aerion like a hawk sighting movement in grass.
"Well," Daemon said, voice low and amused, "someone fed my brother a spine this morning."
Rhaenyra closed her eyes for a beat, a slow, exhausted blink. "Daemon."
He ignored the warning folded into her tone. He walked closer, gaze never leaving Aerion.
"What did you tell him?" Daemon demanded. "In the solar. What did you say that made him do that?"
Aerion didn't move. He kept his face smooth, his hands at his sides, the good little prince again. He let his eyes drift over Daemon's shoulder as if Daemon were a passing gust.
"This again?" Aerion said, flat as old stone.
Daemon's mouth twitched. A smile almost happened.
He crossed the last step and reached for Aerion.
Aerion's instinctive recoil pulled his thigh too hard, and the muscle snapped with a sharp warning that made his breath catch.
Laenor's posture snapped tight. "Daemon."
Aerion barely had time to inhale before Daemon hooked both hands under Aerion's armpits and lifted him clean off the floor.
Aerion made a noise that did not belong to any prince in any history—a startled, affronted sound that cracked in his throat.
Jace made his own strangled sound in response, half shock, half a laugh he swallowed too late.
Rhaenyra sighed, a long-suffering sound. "Must you?"
Daemon held Aerion up at eye level like he was inspecting a troublesome cat. Aerion dangled. His tunic rode up slightly, indignity layered neatly on top of indignity. Daemon's grip was iron and casual, which was somehow worse.
Aerion glared at him, violet eyes cold.
Daemon stared back, unblinking. "I am not jesting, boy," he said. "Tell me the truth."
"Put me down," Aerion hissed, and the words came out sharper than he intended, because he really didn't like being handled like a sack of grain.
Laenor stepped forward, face flushing. "Put down my child, Daemon."
Daemon didn't even glance at him. "He's not a babe. He can answer."
Rhaenyra rubbed her temple once, slow, as if trying to press back the beginning of a headache. "Daemon. This is Luke's room."
Daemon shifted Aerion slightly, shaking him once, not hard, but enough to rattle Aerion's teeth together in his skull. It was the same movement he'd used earlier. The jolt made the tight muscle seize, a brief cramp that tried to fold his leg inward. He locked it straight out of spite.
Aerion's head snapped back to glare harder. "I told you already," he spat. "He wanted to know about dreams."
"I have known my brother longer than you have been alive. You poured something into his ear. I want to know what."
"I told you!" Aerion snarled, wriggling in the iron grip. "He asked about my dreams!"
"Dreams," Daemon repeated, derisive. "My brother has spent a lifetime hiding from reality beneath a blanket of them. He ignored a green-clad declaration of war for a decade. I have shouted at him to purge that Hightower rot since the day he let Otto slither into the Red Keep. He did nothing." He leaned closer, his breath warm. "Then he spends a quarter of an hour with you, and emerges ready to behead his Hand and imprison his Queen. So. What. Did. You. Say?"
Aerion glared up at him, his patience visibly fraying. "I told him the truth. He asked for dreams. I gave him one."
"A dream that beheaded a Hand and confined a Queen?" Daemon's laugh was short, humorless. "You must have dreamed him a seven-act mummer's farce. Tell me the truth."
"I am," Aerion snapped. "Put. Me.Down."
"Not until you stop lying through your pretty little teeth," Daemon said, his voice low and intent. He gave Aerion a small, brisk shake.
"I TOLD YOU!" Aerion yelled, his composure shredding into pure, childish outrage. "He asked about dreams! I told him about dreams!"
"What kind of dreams?"
"Bad ones! About green crowns and gold fire! Are you happy? Now put me DOWN!"
Daemon stilled. His eyes searched Aerion's face, looking for the cracks of a lie. He found only furious honesty. A slow, incredulous breath escaped him. "That's it? You… you painted him a nursery nightmare, and he finally stirred himself to act?"
Aerion's eyes narrowed further, and his voice dropped into something cold and taunting. "Are you going to burst into flames uncle? Should we find a window?"
The insult landed exactly where Aerion aimed it: right in the space where Daemon's temper lived.
Daemon shook him another time, harder, a quick, sharp rattle. Aerion's breath punched out in another undignified little sound. Jace let out a startled bark of laughter this time, unable to stop it; it burst out of him like a hiccup and then died when he saw Rhaenyra's face.
Daemon's eyes narrowed. "You insolent, vicious little—"
"DAEMON!" Rhaenyra was there. She inserted herself between them, her hands closing around Aerion's torso. "Release him. Now."
There was a brief, tense standoff—the Rogue Prince holding the boy-prince aloft, the Princess-heir demanding him back. Then, with a slight, contemptuous curl of his lip, Daemon let go.
Rhaenyra pulled Aerion to her, setting him down firmly beside her. He immediately straightened his tunic, his face a mask of furious dignity.
Daemon looked from Aerion's glare to Rhaenyra's stern face. He shrugged one shoulder, the picture of unrepentant mischief. "He's fine. Tougher than he looks." His gaze lingered on Aerion for a moment longer, that unsettling blend of annoyance and assessment in his eyes. Then, without another word, he turned and left the room, the door closing with a soft click behind him.
The silence he left behind was ringing. Aerion scowled at the closed door, his arms folded tightly again.
A slow, incredulous breath whistled out from near the bed. Jace was staring at Aerion, his mouth slightly open. He blinked, then his gaze slid to Laenor.
"Gods," Jace whispered, the sound full of awe and horror. "It really is like watching a viper argue with its own reflection."
Laenor ran a hand over his face. "Tell me about it," he muttered, exhaustion and a thread of amusement in his voice.
Rhaenyra didn't laugh. She put a hand on Aerion's shoulder, her grip firm. When he reluctantly looked up, her eyes were bright and smiling.
"Next time he asks," she murmured, for his ears alone, "give him a dream about dancing grumpkins."
Aerion held her gaze for a moment, then gave a single, serious nod.
Notes:
So. That happened.
If you'd told me two months ago that my TikTok-induced brain-worm about a guy who drank wildfire and got yeeted back in time would culminate in Viserys Targaryen suddenly developing a backbone and going full Caesar on his own family, I'd have asked what you were smoking. And then asked for some.
As we stagger into the aftermath, remember: cutting out the rot is the easy part. Governing the scarred, suspicious body that remains? That's where the real fun begins.
Thank you for reading, for laughing, and for tolerating the sheer volume of dragon-related hubris contained herein. Onwards, to the inevitable complications.
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