The wind at Dragonstone always carried the scent of sea salt and sulfur.
On the western side of the castle, in the chambers of Jacaerys Velaryon, Jace stood before a silver mirror.
Contained fury stared back at him through his remaining eye.
He hated the name—Valyrian though it was.
It was the name of the Sea Snake, the name of Driftmark, a name forced upon him like a fig leaf to hide the truth.
Softly, he spoke to himself.
"I am a Targaryen."
He whispered it into the air.
His mother's words had echoed in his ears for as long as he could remember:
"You are a Targaryen, my eldest son, Jacaerys.
The blood of Aegon the Conqueror runs in your veins.
One day my life will end, and you—you will be crowned king."
But mirrors did not lie.
Brown hair. Brown eyes. A blunt nose.
Those traits were nailed to his face like a curse.
At every court gathering and noble feast, the looks were the same—questioning, mocking, pitiful.
He heard the unspoken words:
Strong bastards.
Die.
Let me die.
You mongrels—die!
The image of Vaemond Velaryon's aged, snarling face flashed through his mind—the spittle flying as he denounced bastardy before the Iron Throne.
The cold contempt in Aemond's eye.
Aegon's careless snort.
Daeron, smiling and dancing through the feast at Storm's End.
And Helaena… gentle, distant, unreadable.
And the Hightowers—Otto, Alicent… all of them Greens.
They all deserved death.
Usurpers.
Thieves.
They stole everything that belonged to his mother.
Everything that should have been his.
He was not weak.
He had bonded with Vermax, and the green hatchling had answered his call.
Dragons answered only to Targaryen blood.
That was iron law—law written by the gods themselves.
So why did those arrogant silver-haired, purple-eyed bastards dare to doubt him?
Just because they looked more like Targaryens?
How much humiliation had he swallowed over the years?
He learned to smile, to bow, to straighten his back while fingers pointed at him.
He had believed that if he married Helaena, the king's daughter—a pure Targaryen—
The doubts would end.
Their children would have silver hair and violet eyes, and the whispers would finally die.
But now?
The marriage pact was broken.
King Viserys I had withdrawn his consent.
He and his brother were discarded like refuse—cast aside by both Targaryens and Velaryons.
Even his dragon, Vermax, had been confined to the Dragonpit in King's Landing.
Now he lived as a laughingstock across Westeros—
A bastard prince, rejected in marriage, stripped even of his dragon.
No.
This could not end as a joke.
He would make them pay.
All who mocked him.
All who doubted his blood.
All who supported the Green faction.
He would wait for the war.
Wait for dragons to burn armies to ash.
He would silence them.
Silence them with fire and death.
"My prince."
The voice came softly from the doorway.
Jacaerys turned, his single eye fixing on her.
Sara stood there, silver hair shining like moonlight, violet eyes deep in shadow.
Behind her stood her two elder brothers, Varos and Myrax, straight-backed, silver-haired, violet-eyed.
The bastard children of Princess Saenera…
He still did not know how the three had come to Dragonstone, only that his mother Rhaenyra had taken them in.
And then… entrusted them to him.
Rhaenyra had noticed the growing darkness in her eldest son and hoped their presence might ease it.
Jacaerys understood her intent.
Only his mother truly cared for him.
Sara was twenty-five—ten years his senior—and had once been a famed courtesan behind the black walls of Volantis, skilled in every art of pleasing men.
With silver hair and violet eyes, she bore the most classic Targaryen features—features he would never possess.
Seeing his own brown hair reflected in those violet eyes, he felt as though he were trampling something sacred.
Defiling something.
He wanted revenge on the silver-haired, violet-eyed Targaryens of the Greens.
The blood you worship is nothing but my toy.
"My prince," Sara said again softly.
"You have been standing in the wind too long. The sea air is cold."
Jacaerys stared at her.
This woman read words and expressions too well—a skill learned in Volantis, a means of survival.
"Sara," he said quietly.
"I am very angry."
A brief pause.
Sara's expression did not change. She turned to her brothers.
Without a word, they left the chamber and closed the heavy wooden door behind them.
When their footsteps faded, Sara returned her gaze to Jacaerys.
She did not touch him at once.
First, she untied the silver silk net from her hair, letting it fall like a waterfall down her back.
Disgust?
Desire?
Or something darker—something he refused to name?
He did not push her away.
A quarter hour later, Jacaerys left the chamber, his clothing once more carefully arranged.
Sara followed, hair bound, cheeks flushed.
Varos and Myrax waited in the corridor, calm as stone, as though nothing had happened.
Jacaerys sometimes wondered whether the brothers cared about their sister at all—
Or whether survival in Volantis had taught them to treat everything as currency.
"I am going to see Lady Mysaria," Jacaerys said.
"You will follow."
They descended the spiral stone steps, boots echoing on ancient stone.
The three bastards followed silently, their footfalls light as cats.
Jacaerys sometimes wondered—
If those three were ever allowed to claim dragons, would they be just as quiet… and just as deadly?
Mysaria's chamber lay deep beneath Dragonstone.
Once a cellar for cured meats and wine, it had become the heart of a modern intelligence web after her flight from King's Landing.
When Jacaerys pushed the door open, a layered scent filled the air.
Mysaria lifted her head to look at him.
She did not rise. She did not use titles.
It was her right.
For years she had been Prince Daemon's lover—or partner.
She was also one of Princess Rhaenyra's few true confidantes.
The White Worm—the spider at the center of King's Landing's shadows.
She had earned the right to treat him plainly.
"Lady Mysaria," Jacaerys said, remaining still.
The three behind him melted into the shadows.
Mysaria's gaze flicked over them.
"Leave us," she said.
"Close the door."
Sara looked to Jacaerys.
He nodded.
The door shut. Only two remained.
"Sit," Mysaria said, pouring a dark green liquid into a cup and sliding it toward him.
"Mint tea, with a little honey."
Jacaerys did not touch it.
Mysaria—no more than thirty, still dangerous in her charm—wore a plain dark-gray dress. Around her neck hung a crude string of colored glass beads.
A gift from the first man who ever paid her in a pleasure garden in Lys.
She wore it always.
So she would never forget where she had crawled up from.