The godswood was the only place in the Red Keep that felt honest. The ancient, bleeding face of the heart tree had seen generations of Targaryens live and die, and it did not whisper or scheme. It simply watched. It was here, in the dappled red light of the leaves, that Rhaenyra felt the bars of her cage most keenly. The lords of the council spoke to her as if she were a willful child, Otto Hightower's smiles were as thin and sharp as a razor, and her father was a ghost haunting his own throne.
Harry found her there, her hand resting on the pale bark of the weirwood. He approached not as a courtier, but as he always did: a quiet, steady presence in her tumultuous world.
"They're trying to bury you, Princess," he said, his voice devoid of its usual gentleness, replaced by a firm, serious edge. "They will drown you in pleasantries and protocol until you forget you are a dragon."
"I am well aware of my situation, my lord," she snapped, her frustration boiling over.
"Are you?" he countered, taking a step closer. "You see the players, but not the board. What I have offered you is more than friendship. It is an alliance. And for it to have any meaning, you must see the world as I do. You must see the power you could have."
"You speak in riddles."
"I speak of truth. I am asking you to trust me. Not as a friend, but as a sworn ally. Come with me. Just for a moment. I will return you here, safe, before a single soul knows you are gone. I swear it on my magic."
She searched his face, those unnervingly calm emerald eyes that saw so much. Every instinct she possessed, every quiet conversation that had become her only solace, screamed that he was true. To be a dragon was to be fire and blood. It was to take risks.
"I will," she whispered, the words a leap of faith into a world of shadow and secrets.
Harry offered his hand. She placed hers in it, her fingers trembling slightly. The world did not spin or lurch. It simply… ceased. The scent of damp earth, the feel of the breeze, the red leaves of the heart tree—it all dissolved into a silent, weightless nothing. She felt a profound sense of dislocation, as if she were a word erased from a page.
Then, she existed again.
A cool, clean wind, tasting of salt and pine, filled her lungs. The ground beneath her feet was a polished black stone, cool and solid. She was standing on a balcony, her hand still clutching his as if he were the only real thing in the universe. Below them lay a city. It was a marvel of dark stone and glowing, silver light, nestled in the curve of a harbor where sleek, silent ships rested at anchor.
"Where are we?" she breathed, the question feeling impossibly small.
"My home," Harry said softly. "Welcome to Skagos, Princess."
He led her through the citadel, and the scale of it all chipped away at her reality. She saw the prosperous, healthy people, the workshops where men crafted steel that shimmered with an inner light, the impossible ships she now knew belonged to the Obsidian Hand. "The Patron…" she whispered, the realization dawning. He simply nodded, his silence a confirmation that rocked her to her core.
He was not just a wealthy lord. He was a king of this hidden, impossible kingdom.
Then he took her to the highest spire, a needle of obsidian that touched the clouds. Before them, a great volcano smoked gently. At a silent, unseen command from him, a horn echoed from the valley below, a deep, resonant call.
And the sky began to fill with dragons.
Her breath hitched. She knew them. She knew their stories, their names, their colors. Dreamfyre, a vision of pale blue and silver, soared on the wind. The Bronze Fury, Vermithor, a living legend she thought was lairing on Dragonstone, followed, his roar shaking the very air. One after another they came, the lost dragons of her House, soaring free under a northern sky. They were led by a beast of such impossible size it felt like a mountain had taken flight, a true dragon with four powerful legs and wings that cast a shadow over the entire citadel. A being she knew in her bones was Balerion, made real and perfect.
They were not wild. They were a kingdom. An army. And they moved to the silent will of the man standing beside her.
Her mind fractured. She could not reconcile the quiet, empathetic friend with the man who commanded a power to rival the gods of Old Valyria. A hidden nation, a phantom fleet, an army of dragons… She stumbled back, overwhelmed, pressing a hand to her mouth as the world tilted on its axis.
Harry gently took her arm. "There is one more thing you must see."
He led her from the wind-whipped spire, down through silent, glowing halls to a quiet, sunlit suite of rooms that felt warm and lived-in. Books were stacked on a table. A small silver toy dragon lay on a rug.
A woman sat in a comfortable chair by a window, looking out at the sea. She turned as they entered.
And Rhaenyra's world stopped.
It was her mother's face. Older, with fine lines around her eyes she'd never had, her hair a little longer, but it was her. The same gentle curve of her smile, the same warm, loving eyes. The face she had wept for, the face she saw only in her dreams. In a cradle beside the chair, a baby with a tuft of Targaryen silver hair slept, his tiny chest rising and falling.
The world had no air. Time had no meaning.
"Mother?" The word was a fragile, broken thing, a child's cry lost in the abyss.
Queen Aemma Arryn's face broke into a radiant smile, tears instantly welling, mirroring her own. She rose to her feet, her arms open. "My daughter," she breathed.
The reunion was a collapse, a storm of tears and desperate, clinging embraces. Rhaenyra sobbed into her mother's shoulder, breathing in the scent of her, a scent she thought was lost to memory forever. Her mother was real, warm, solid. Her brother, her little brother Baelon, was alive. Aemma explained it all, the truth of that terrible day, the maester's knife, the impossible choice, and the quiet man who had stepped out of nowhere and remade fate itself.
Finally, Rhaenyra pulled back, her face wet with tears, her heart a painful, joyous drum in her chest. She looked from her living, breathing mother, to her sleeping brother, and then to the man standing quietly by the door, giving them their moment.
She saw him. Not Lord Potter, the enigmatic friend. Not the Patron, the powerful merchant king. Not the Dragonlord of Skagos. She saw the architect of this impossible, beautiful reality. He hadn't just offered her an alliance. He hadn't just shown her his power.
He had given her back her entire world.