Chapter 11: The Hunt
The return to King's Landing was a descent into a gilded cage. The air in the Red Keep was thick with the cloying scent of flowers trying to mask the odor of intrigue. The "family hunt" was a farce, a pantomime of unity orchestrated by a king desperate to believe his own fiction.
Our arrival caused a stir. Rhaenyra was a vision of Targaryen pride, sharp and unyielding. I was something else entirely. I had grown, my frame filling out with the hard muscle of constant training. But it was the change in my demeanor that silenced the courtiers. The boyish bitterness was gone, replaced by a chilling, watchful stillness. I moved with the predator's grace I had learned from Shadowwing, and my eyes, once full of fire, now held the cold calculation of a banker assessing a defaulting lord. I saw the way they looked at me, the whispers that died when I passed. They had heard the stories. Now they saw the man—or the thing—the stories had created.
The hunt itself was a tedious affair. Lords and ladies on horseback, chasing stags through the Kingswood while the real beasts circled each other in polite conversation. I rode beside Rhaenyra, our Velaryon guards and a contingent of Dragon's Teeth following at a discreet distance. Their presence, in their distinctive black tunics with a subtle dragon-tooth pattern etched on the collar, was a silent declaration. We were not merely guests; we were a foreign delegation entering potentially hostile territory.
I found myself riding near Ser Harrold Westerling, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, a man of honor who had served since my grandfather's time.
"Your men are… disciplined, my prince," he observed, his eyes on my guards who moved with a unison that spoke of relentless drilling.
"Loyalty inspires discipline, Ser Harrold," I replied, my tone neutral. "They protect what is precious to me."
He nodded slowly, his gaze thoughtful. "A fine quality in a guard. Though some at court whisper that Dragonstone fields more sellswords than bannermen these days."
I offered him a thin, cold smile. "I find hired knives to be less reliable than men whose loyalty is earned, not purchased. Don't you agree?"
Before he could answer, a cry went up. A boar, a massive, furious thing, had broken from the undergrowth and was charging straight toward the royal pavilion where the younger children and Queen Alicent were seated.
Chaos erupted. Knights fumbled for lances. Guards scrambled.
Time seemed to slow. This was not a calculation. It was instinct, the fusion of the white light's gift and the dragon's fury in my blood. I kicked my horse forward, but it was too skittish. In one fluid motion, I dismounted at a full gallop, hitting the ground running.
The world narrowed to the boar and the throne. My body moved with an impossible blend of speed and power. I vaulted over a low fence, my enhanced strength propelling me farther than any man could leap. I saw Ser Criston Cole finally get his horse under control and lower his lance, but he was too far, his angle wrong.
The boar was seconds from the pavilion. I could see Alicent's wide, terrified eyes, the green of her dress a vivid splash of panic.
I didn't have a weapon. It didn't matter.
I closed the last few yards in a blur. As the boar lunged, I dropped into a slide, kicking up dirt and leaves. I didn't try to stop its charge. I redirected it. Planting my feet, I grabbed one of its tusks with one hand and the thick muscle of its shoulder with the other. The impact was brutal, a jarring shock that would have shattered the bones of a normal man. My enhanced body absorbed it, grit grinding against the strain.
With a raw, guttural roar that sounded more like Shadowwing than a man, I twisted. Using the beast's own momentum, I hauled it off its feet and slammed it sideways into the hard ground with a sickening crunch of bone. It lay there, dazed and broken-legged, squealing in pain and fury.
In the dead silence that followed, the only sound was my own steady breathing. I stood up, brushing the dirt from my clothes. My heart was pounding, but not from exertion. From rage. The Cannibal's bloodlust sang in my veins, thrilled by the violence.
Ser Criston Cole finally reached us, his lance now pointless. He looked from the crippled boar to me, his face a mask of stunned disbelief. The other knights stared openly.
I ignored them all. I walked over to the boar, drew a dagger from my belt—a simple, utilitarian thing—and ended its suffering with a single, precise thrust.
Then I turned to the pavilion. Alicent was pale, her hand over her mouth. Her children, little Aegon and Helaena, were clinging to her skirts. My eyes met hers. There was no gratitude in her gaze. Only a new, profound, and terrifying fear. I had not saved her. I had demonstrated a power that made her schemes and her father's plots look like children playing with sticks.
King Viserys rushed forward, his face ashen. "Aemon! By the gods, your strength… are you hurt?"
"I am well, Your Grace," I said, my voice flat, wiping my blade clean on the grass. "The Queen is safe."
I looked past him, to where Otto Hightower stood at the edge of the crowd. His expression was unreadable, but his knuckles were white where he gripped his goblet. He had not seen a heroic prince. He had seen a monster he could not control, a variable that shattered his carefully balanced board.
The hunt was over. The game had changed. I had not just saved the queen; I had shown my fangs to the entire court. I was no longer just a claimant with a dragon and money. I was a physical force of nature. And everyone, from the lowest stableboy to the Hand of the King, now understood that the most dangerous beast in the Kingswood had not been the boar.
The silence that followed my display of power was heavy, thick with whispered glances. The feast that night in the hunting camp was a mere formality. All anyone could see—the nobles, the knights, the servants—was the teenage prince who had taken down a raging boar with his bare hands. Eyes were on me, full of fear, awe, and for some, dread.
But amongst that sea of faces, one gaze mattered more than all the others. Rhaenyra's.
She was quiet throughout the entire ceremony. It wasn't until we returned to our designated pavilion—a larger, well-guarded one erected for us—that the tension broke. The servants left. Our Dragon's Teeth guards stood watch outside. And it was just the two of us, in the flickering candlelight.
For a long moment, we just stared at each other. The sound of our breathing was the only noise.
Then, she spoke. "Today..." her voice broke. She, who was always so strong and determined, looked vulnerable. "Today, I saw you, and I was afraid."
My heart clenched. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. "Rhaenyra—"
"No!" she cut me off, her voice sharp, and she took a step forward. Her violet eyes, usually filled with fire, were now bright and wet. "You don't understand. I wasn't afraid of you. I was afraid for you."
She placed her hands gently on my arms, as if making sure I was still all there. "This power... this rage... Aemon, it's changing you. It's eating you alive. I'm losing my brother to the shadow you ride."
All the cold walls, all the precise calculations, melted under the pain in her gaze. In that moment, I wasn't a crown prince or a fearsome dragonrider. I was just a brother whose sister was worried about him.
I placed my hands over hers. "Rhaenyra, this power—"
"—isn't wealth, Aemon. It's not a weapon. It's a burden. And you're carrying it alone." It was as if she could hear the scream in my mind. "But you don't have to carry it alone."
She took a deep breath. "Our father left us. Daemon left us. But I will never leave you. And you will never leave me. That was our childhood promise, remember?"
I closed my eyes. A faint image surfaced of two children in the Red Keep gardens, behind a statue of a stone dragon, promising to always stick together.
"I remember," I whispered.
"Then listen," she said, her voice both commanding and pleading. "Share it with me. Not just your plans. Not just your coins. This burden. The anger. The fear. When that monster screams in your mind, tell me. When you feel yourself getting lost in that rage, tell me. I am here. I will listen. I will remind you of who you are."
She cupped my face in her hands, forcing me to look into her eyes. "You are Aemon Targaryen. Son of Aemma Arryn. My brother. And you are going to be my Queen."
Tears welled in my eyes. Tears I thought had dried up years ago in the darkness after our mother's death. I rested my forehead on her shoulder and, for the first time, let the weight of it all—the dragon, the plots, the betrayals, the loneliness—settle on her shoulders too.
She held me tightly, her arms wrapped around me. "Always," she whispered, her voice soothing and strong. "Always together."
In that tent, in my sister's embrace, the shadow receded for the first time. And I, for one precious moment, was just a boy. A brother. And I was not alone.