When Aerion opened his eyes, the familiar yellow-scaled dragon was visible in the sky. The she-dragon's screeching roused him from his slumber, and he could feel his own snarl. With his back to Silverwing's massive frame, she let out a screech to greet the other dragon that was coming down.
"You are an idiot to be sleeping on an open field, valonqar." Rhaenyra greeted with a smug look on her face as she dismounted Syrax.
"And approaching a Targaryen prince with a dramatic dragon serving as a resting place would only be foolish." Aerion closed his eyes once more and hummed. He felt his dragon companion's warmth as his hands rested behind his head. "How did you find me?"
"It's not so hard, knowing you…" Rhaenyra smiled as she sat beside him, "poor Alfered had been pacing around the courtyard for your return."
"Is this the part where I ask of you not to tell your father where I was?"
"My father trusts you more than me, it seems, doesn't matter what you are doing with your day…" The princess looked at her cousin, who had the book open across his stomach and his eyes partly open.
It had been weeks since Aerion had talked to his father, and she saw his weary glance across the field at Syrax. More than anyone, she recognized the expression in his eyes. Aerion Targaryen, who frequently gazed toward the horizon where the Vale was located, had been thinking about returning home to his mother. To Runestone.
"A dragon for your thoughts, cousin?" Rhaenyra mumbled as she waited for his answer.
"Magnificent, are they?" He whispered with such sincerity as if observing Syrax's beauty, "they filled people with wander and awe… and we locked them up in the dragonpit. Now people often see them as either monsters or weapons to be controlled, slaves to a controlled ideal by man who crave for more than they should."
"Do you think we can control them?" Rhaenyra asked. Recalling the very words her father once told her, "the dragons, I mean."
"No, you can't tame or control dragons," he said. "Many people in the realm still consider our dragons to be nothing more than curiosities, and those who do see them for themselves would either attempt to capture or destroy them."
"You would have made… an excellent king," Rhaenyra muttered, possibly expressing a long-standing insecurity that she didn't want to acknowledge.
A subtle yet bitter smile tugged at his lips as he looked from the golden scales of Syrax to the princess. His amethyst hues flickered as it reflected a sense of weariness, he didn't seem too keen to share with the people around him, and yet, Rhaenyra could. She always did. They both knew that.
"A king sits on a chair closer to land than the skies, Rhaenyra," Aerion replied softly. His voice is hardly audible above the dragon's deep, steady heartbeat. "I don't wish to be shackled down on land with a burden that would eventually kill me."
"You'll be Lord of Runestone one day."
"One day," he repeated with a light chuckle, "but what is a lord's seat compared to a king's?"
Rhaenyra could feel the subtle gush of wind against their skins, whipping his silver hair across his face with a smile made only for her. The kind where he was so willing to share his burdens, his worries, his… volubility. There was wisdom in his words that she intends to heed – regardless of if these plans of marrying them to one another would push through or not.
If Aerion could not be her consort, then she would make him her Hand. Anything to simply keep him by her side.
"They say that Targaryens are closer to gods than to men," the princeling continued.
"But they say that because of our dragons," Rhaenyra contradicted, "without them we are just like everybody else."
"A Septon would say that monarchy is a calling from the Seven Gods, which is why the Faith, turn a blind eye to our little queer customs. If someone else were to hear me, they'd call me a heretic… burn me alive as punishment, but for Targaryens, burning is an honor of some sorts, a dragon rider's death."
"Your point, cousin?"
"Dragon or no, we will never be among them," Aerion answered, his eyes looking directly at her as if he had found her very soul, "A king is predictable, dependable, reliable, and frigid. A chair constructed of the conqueror's foes does not immediately grant anybody the right to govern, nor is a crown only an object lying permanently on one's head. But me and you? We are the dragon's blood. A crown on your head does not imply that you may be broken, nor does a saddle on a dragon imply that we can compel them to do everything we want."
Rhaenyra looked down at her hands, remembering her father's comments that commanding the dragons is only an illusion and that a Targaryen king or queen will bring the Seven Kingdoms together to fight a common foe during a harsh winter. "But, if we cannot control them… if we are just riding the gale, then what are we? Truly?"
Aerion eventually turned to face her with a piercing intensity. "We are the only ones brave enough to look into the eye of the storm and call it kin," he said with the kind of confidence Daemon would show to any lord who tried to intimidate him. "Control is merely an illusion created by men who are afraid of the dark. We do not control the fire, Rhaenyra. No one can. We simply learn how to live within the flame without being consumed by it."
Control is merely an illusion created by men who are afraid of the dark… he said.
Rhaenyra could tell there was a strong sense of certainty in his eyes, as her father is required to have a new wife as king… as Princess of Dragonstone, she knew her duty. Her father was right at the end of it all, their line… is vulnerable, too easily ended.
For her father to marry again, he may begin to ensure that they were better defended. Them. As a family.
But not her. Never only her.
She too, needed to ensure that she was better defended against anyone who would dare challenge her.
"You're quiet, cousin," with a whisper, Aerion took her hand in his and placed a tiny flower on her palm.
"Are you afraid?" Rhaenyra nodded, unable to admit it out loud. But Aerion's hand was warm, his gaze reassuring. "There's no need to be afraid… for whatever our souls are made of, yours are mine are the same. I will never abandon you."
"I do not wish for you to be unhappy," was her most honest answer.
"Have I given any indication that I would be unhappy with you?" The tone of his voice told Rhaenyra that he was intrigued. She raised her eyes to look at him.
What the freedom of her privilege grants her was the equivalent of his own misery. He viewed marriage as a shackle not because he would not have his freedoms, he's a man. He knew he had certain liberties with his life to be born a Targaryen Prince and heir to Runestone.
Like her, he was simply afraid.
Afraid that his eventual marriage would become the misery of matrimony that were his mother and father.
Aerion is a kind man, a loving man. Any woman who would wed him would receive the decency, respect, and trust that they didn't think they would deserve.
She did not wish to bury him with her in duty.
"No," she finally answered, "I believe I would be at my happiest."
And yet, by the morning calls of the Small Council, Rhaenyra saw Aerion's face – the face that often wore a stoic mask crumbled. It was neither shock nor disbelief but rather, a look of a lad watching the very bridge he stood on burn. And he was in the middle of it all when King Visery's had uttered Alicent's name to be his bride to be.
It was unlike him. To turn on his heel and leave his place without a word of apology or a bow to the crown after the Sea Snake made his own leave. The council fell into a moment of silence, her eyes never leaving the heavy oak door until finally she began to follow him.
"Rhaenyra?" With a voice tinged with the shame he was so desperately trying to mask, her father shouted out.
Rhaenyra did not answer. All she was able to think was Aerion's current state.
Aerion, who was normally calm under pressure, was discovered slouching by his solar desk. His breathing was strained, a sharp contrast to the gentle prince who had only spoken of happiness the day before.
"Aerion," she said softly, closing the door behind her, giving them space. Just the two of them with no interruptions.
Aerion didn't look at her.
"He chose her," he said in a calm tone with an unsettling hint of rage, "out of all the houses in the realms, out of all the noble daughters…"
With her heart pounding against her ribs, Rhaenyra moved closer and asked, "You think he knows?" She could sense Aerion was grieving something even more explosive, but she was thinking of her own betrayal—of a closest friend who became a stepmother. "About your... feelings for her?"
"It doesn't matter what he knows or what I feel," Aerion spit out as he violently got up from his seat as the chair collapsed from behind. His body language was rigid as he wiped his face with his palm and moved to the window to gaze at whatever view may soothe him. If one existed at this time. "He has turned a sanctuary into a battlefield and instead of protecting you he has condemned you to fail!"
"Aerion—!"
"What?!" He snapped. Finally turning to face her, eyes widen with a twinge of danger that she had only seen in one person in her life. Daemon. The unstable energy surrounding the normally grounded princeling… Aerion's patience was being tested and Rhaenyra was not one to poke the bronze dragon of Runestone.
Aerion had frequently sought safety in the Red Keep, and Rhaenyra felt a chill that had nothing to do with the solar. She recalled the argument he'd had with his father, the yelling altercations that had forced him to spend days hiding in his tower or the Dragonpit.
Loyalty was the foundation of his upbringing, and today all of his allegiances had been tightly knotted.
"Forgive me, Rhaenyra, I just…" Aerion immediately apologized, trying to flatten out the wrinkles on his forehead."
"…this isn't about Alicent anymore, is it?" Rhaenyra whispered, carefully approaching her younger cousin.
"No," he responded. His tone dropped to a ragged, low tenor. In that moment, as she gently tilted his chin for his gaze to look at her—and only her, she saw it. The reflection of her own grief inside of him. They were children wrapped in a false sense of security and broken promises who constantly watched their fathers to have fires be blasted into their futures for the sake of duty.
"What will you do?" She asked.
Aerion took a deep breath as if the mask he had always worn slid back into place. As if it had always belonged. As if the Aerion she often wanted to see did not exist.
"What I must," he finally answered. "Stand by your side. Even if it kills me."