Chapter 4: The Price of Peace
The Red Keep was no longer a home. It was a gilded cage, its bars forged from my father's guilt and the Hightowers' ambition. The coldness between me and the King curdled into something darker, more potent: a quiet, seething hatred. Every glance he sent my way was laden with a disappointment I mirrored right back at him. Every attempt Alicent made at a semblance of family unity—a suggested ride, a shared meal—was met with a wall of icy silence from Rhaenyra and me.
Otto Hightower's presence was a constant poison. He was always at my father's elbow, his voice a low, insidious murmur in the council chambers, in the halls, even in the gardens. His counsel was a masterclass in manipulation, always dressed in the finery of reason and statecraft.
"The prince's grief is profound, Your Grace," I heard him say once, his tone dripping with false sympathy. "Yet his… open disdain for the Queen undermines your authority. It gives others license to question the stability of your house."
He didn't mean others. He meant himself. He meant the lords who watched the dragon tear at its own limbs.
The final breach happened in the throne room. It was not a planned confrontation, but a spark landing on a bed of dry tinder. Alicent had suggested, sweetly, that it was time for Rhaenyra to begin accompanying her on her charitable visits to the city, to learn the duties of a queen.
"My daughter's education is not your concern," my father had said, though not unkindly.
"She is to be Queen," Alicent replied, her voice gentle yet firm. "Should she not learn from the one who currently holds the title?"
I saw Rhaenyra's jaw tighten. I felt the heat rise in my own chest.
"She had a mother," I said, my voice cutting through the tense air. "She does not need lessons from her replacement."
The throne room fell silent. My father's face darkened. "You will hold your tongue, Aemon. You will show respect."
"Respect?" The word was a laugh, cold and hollow. "You speak of respect? You, who shoved my mother's memory aside for the first pretty girl who read you a history book? You, who let her die for a son you never even got?"
It was the truth we all knew and never spoke. I had unleashed it, naked and brutal, in the heart of his power.
Viserys rose from the Iron Throne, a shard of metal slicing his palm in his agitation. Blood dripped onto the steps. "You dare…!"
"I dare everything!" I shouted back, my voice no longer that of a boy, but of a man filled with a lifetime of rage. "What will you do, Father? Have me executed? Drag your own son to the block? Go on! It would be a fitting end! Another body to add to the pile you made for your throne!"
Alicent gasped. Otto Hightower's eyes gleamed with a cold, calculating light. He saw the division widening and liked the view.
"You are my son," Viserys said, his voice trembling with a mixture of fury and pain.
"I am your greatest failure," I spat. "The second son who couldn't even hatch his egg. The living reminder that your line is fragile. You look at me and you see him. The son who died with my mother. You've always wished it was me instead."
The color drained from his face. I had struck the deepest nerve.
That night, the war began in earnest. It was a cold war, fought in whispers and withheld affections. I made myself a specter at his court, a silent, glaring judgment in every room he entered. I began to whisper my own truths to the courtiers who would listen, to the knights who remembered my mother's kindness. The stain on the King's honor began to spread.
A week later, I demanded an audience. I did not request it. I demanded it.
I stood before the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra a solid, silent presence at my side. Otto and Alicent flanked my father.
"I am leaving," I said, my voice flat, devoid of any emotion that he could use against me.
"Leaving?" my father echoed, weary and confused.
"You want peace in your house? You want your reign to be untroubled by the son you despise? Then you will pay for it."
Otto took a step forward. "You speak to your King, Prince."
"I speak to my father," I said, not taking my eyes off Viserys. "And I am giving him a choice. You will name Rhaenyra your official heir, before all the court. You will reaffirm it with oaths from every lord present. And you will give me one million golden dragons."
The audacity of the demand sucked the air from the room. Even Rhaenyra looked at me, her eyes wide.
"One million…?" Viserys breathed. "For what?"
"For my silence. For my absence. For me to take my hatred and my claim—yes, Father, my claim, for I am your son just as much as she is your daughter—and I will bury it on Dragonstone. You will give me the coin, you will publicly secure my sister's rights, and I will go. I will be your problem no longer."
"And if I refuse?" he asked, his voice a whisper.
I smiled then, a cold, terrible smile. "Then I will become your nightmare. I will stand on the walls of the Red Keep and tell every smallfolk, every knight, every lord who will listen how you killed my mother for a son and then married her lady-in-waiting. I will not rest until the name Viserys Targaryen is synonymous with weakness and betrayal. I will make you so despised that the throne itself will reject you. And if that is not enough…" I looked him dead in the eye. "I will take a knife and open my own wrists in the middle of the court. My blood will be on your hands, a final, eternal stain. The King who hounded his own son to suicide. Is that the legacy you want?"
I saw the terror in his eyes. He was a weak man who prized peace above all else. He would pay any price to make the conflict end.
Otto Hightower was silently ecstatic. He was getting rid of two rival claimants in one move, and all it cost was gold from a treasury he did not yet control.
With a voice choked with shame and defeat, King Viserys I agreed.
The ceremony was held the next day. Lords swore fealty to Princess Rhaenyra of Dragonstone, the Heir to the Iron Throne. And a fortune in gold was loaded onto a ship.
As we boarded the vessel that would take us to Dragonstone—Rhaenyra, myself, and Yohanna, our mother's steadfast companion and now our most loyal protector—I took one last look at the Red Keep. I felt no triumph, only the cold satisfaction of a necessary victory.
My father stood on a balcony, watching us go. I did not wave.
The war was over. The battle for the throne had just begun. And I had secured our first, crucial victory not with a dragon, but with the weapon I knew best: the ruthless exploitation of a weak man's greatest fears.