Dragon Dreamer and Greenseer (part 6)
Aerion Targaryen x f!reader - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (See part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here)
Summary: Aerion and Daeron, both dragon dreamers, have a vision of ravens and dragons. Aerion, obsessed with Targaryen legacy and envious of Bloodraven's supposed ability to change forms and wield magic, decides to wed a Blackwood himself, so his children will too possess powers.
Warnings: unprotected sex, obsessive behavior, breeding, talks about killing, Aerion has insane ideas, blood, pregnancy, childbirth.
a/n: Reader is a Blackwood but no physical descriptions are given.
Aerion Targaryen, for all his tempers, was a surprisingly competent father.
You had not expected it. In the early days of your marriage, when you had lain awake at night wondering what kind of man would raise your children, you had imagined the worst. A distant patriarch who saw his offspring as extensions of his own ambition. A harsh disciplinarian who demanded perfection and punished any deviation from his impossible standards. A man who would look at a crying infant with the same cold impatience he turned on servants who displeased him.
You had been wrong. Not entirely wrong, Aerion was still Aerion, still prideful and quick to anger, still capable of the casual cruelties that had marked your first encounters in the forest. But with his sons, he was patient in a way he was with no one else. He was attentive. He was, in his own fierce and overwhelming way, loving.
"I will take them," he would say, on mornings when the twins were restless, your head ached and the prospect of another day of chasing two four-year-olds through the corridors of Summerhall made you want to bury yourself in the bedclothes and never emerge. "Go back to sleep. I will keep them occupied."
Aerion had an energy that seemed inexhaustible, a restless vitality that had once driven him to the fighting pits of Lys and now found its outlet in fatherhood. He could chase the twins through the gardens for hours, play at swords with wooden blades until his arms ached, carry one boy on each shoulder up and down the terraced steps of the keep until they shrieked with laughter. He taught them to ride, first on ponies, then on the gentle mares he had brought from the royal stables. He taught them to swim. He told them stories of Old Valyria and the dragonlords, his voice dropping to a dramatic whisper for the battles and rising to a triumphant roar for the victories.
When he returned from these expeditions, he was always smiling.
"They are magnificent," he would say, settling beside you with the boys already drowsy and content in the arms of their nursemaids. "Maegor climbed the old oak by the eastern wall, all the way to the third branch. I spotted him, of course, but he did not need my help. His grip is remarkable. Those scales give him purchase on the bark."
"He climbed a tree? He is four years old."
"He is a dragon. Dragons climb." Aerion's smile widened. "And Aeryn, you should have seen him with the gardener's son. The boy was crying over a dead bird he had found, and Aeryn sat beside him and talked to him until he stopped weeping. He is four years old, and already he knows how to comfort the grieving. The lords of the realm will eat from his hand one day."
You looked at your husband, flushed with exertion, his silver hair disheveled, his eyes bright with paternal pride.
"Come here," you said.
He came. He always came when you called him, these days. You cupped his face in your hands and kissed the grin off his lips.
"I want another," he murmured against your mouth. "I want a dozen more. A brood of little dragons to fill these halls with laughter."
"You always want more."
"I always want you." His hands found your waist, pulling you closer. "You are the only woman who has ever given me trueborn children. The only woman who has ever given me heirs. Every time I see you with our sons, I want to fill you with more. I want to see you round with my child again. I want to watch you grow heavy and slow and beautiful with my seed taking root inside you."
He was not always the demanding lover he had been in the early years of your marriage. Sometimes, on nights when the twins had run him ragged, when even his inexhaustible energy had finally flagged, he let you take the lead.
"Ride me," he would say plaintively. He lay beneath you on the great bed, his silver hair spread across the pillows, his violet eyes hazy with exhaustion and desire. "Use me, go on. Let me fill you."
You would straddle him, sinking down onto his length with a slowness that made him groan, and he would grip your hips.
"Take all of me," he would whisper, his head falling back, his throat bared. "Take my seed. Let it catch. Let me give you another child."
Aerion Targaryen did not plead. Aerion Targaryen demanded, threatened, cajoled, charmed.
His hips were rising to meet yours. "I want to see you round again. I want to see you heavy with my child. Let me, my love."
The daughter came a year later.
Her birth was easier than the twins' had been, only one child, smaller than Maegor had been, less stubborn about entering the world. The labor was shorter.
She was perfect. No scales. No strange markings. No visible sign of the dragonblood that had manifested so dramatically in her eldest brother. Just a thatch of silver-gold hair, a rosebud mouth.
"A girl," the maester announced. "A healthy princess, my prince. My princess."
Aerion did not respond.
He was standing at the foot of the birthing bed, his face frozen in an expression you had never seen before. Not the fierce joy he had worn when Maegor was born or the satisfaction he had shown when Aeryn followed. He looked like he was experiencing terror.
"Let me hold her," his voice was strange, hoarse. "Give her to me."
The midwife lifted the infant from your arms and carried her to Aerion. He took her with hands that trembled, Aerion, who had never trembled in his life, whose hands had been steady through battles and duels and the bloodiest excesses of his exile. He cradled the tiny bundle against his chest and stared down at her, and his eyes, his fierce, fiery, violet eyes, filled with tears.
"She is beautiful," he whispered. "She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
He did not say that she looked like a dragon. He did not say that the gods had blessed him with another miracle. He did not speak of prophecies or legacies or the dreams that had driven him for so long. He simply stood there, holding his daughter, weeping silently as though some great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"What will you name her?" you asked.
"Visenya," he said. "After the warrior queen. After the dragonrider." He paused. "But we will call her Senya. A shorter name for a little dragon."
"Visenya." You tested the name on your tongue. "Senya. I like it."
He brought the infant to you and placed her back in your arms. Then he knelt beside the bed, knelt, Aerion Targaryen knelt, and pressed his lips to your sweat-soaked brow.
"Thank you," His voice cracked. "Thank you for my daughter."
The competence that had marked his fatherhood with the twins, the easy confidence, the rough-and-tumble play, the patient instruction, transformed. With Maegor and Aeryn, he had been a teacher, a guide, a companion in adventure. With Senya, he became a guardian. A protector. A dragon coiled around its hoard.
"She is so small," he said, the first time he held her after the birth. He was sitting in the chair by the window, the infant cradled in the crook of his arm, and he was staring at her with an intensity that would have been unsettling if it had not been so tender. "So fragile. How can anything be so fragile?"
"She is a healthy infant. She is not fragile."
"She is." He touched her cheek with one finger, the gesture so gentle it was barely a caress. "She is the most precious thing in the world."
Aerion had loved his sons fiercely, protectively, possessively. But with Senya, the possessiveness had a different quality. It was not the pride of a dragonlord looking at his heirs. It was the terror of a man who had been given something infinitely precious and was paralyzed by the fear of losing it.
Everyone in the household was required to praise her. That was not a request; it was a decree. When visitors came to Summerhall: lords and ladies, knights and courtiers, emissaries from King's Landing and beyond, they were brought to the nursery and expected to admire the little princess. To remark on her beauty, her grace, her evident intelligence. To acknowledge, in whatever words they chose, that she was the most perfect child ever born to house Targaryen.
"Tell me what you think of my daughter," Aerion would say, his voice pleasant but his eyes sharp as knives.
And they would stumble over themselves to praise her silver curls, her rosebud mouth, her bright and curious eyes. They would compare her to the maidens of legend, to the beauties of Old Valyria, to the loveliest princesses in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. And Aerion would listen, and nod, and smile a smile that did not reach his eyes.
But no one was permitted to hold her. No one but you, Aerion, and the wet nurse he had personally threatened and terrified into absolute loyalty. When visiting ladies reached for the infant with cooing sounds and outstretched arms, Aerion interposed himself like a wall of steel.
"She is not to be handled," he would say. "She is a princess, not a doll for your amusement."
When lords leaned too close to the cradle, hoping to catch a glimpse of the child who had so enraptured her father, Aerion's hand would move to the hilt of his sword.
"You are standing too near," he would say. "Step back. The princess requires space."
When servants lingered in the nursery longer than necessary, and it was hard not to linger, because Senya was a beautiful child and drew the eye like a flame drew moths, Aerion dismissed them with a curt word and a warning glance.
"You are here to serve," he said. "Not to stare. Do your duties and go."
It would have been suffocating, if it had not been so strangely endearing.
"She has your eyes," he said one evening, watching you nurse Senya by the fire. He was sprawled in the chair across from you, still dusty from the training yard, his silver hair in disarray. He had spent the afternoon drilling the household guard, but his attention was entirely on you and the infant at your breast. "Your stubborn chin, too. She will be your mirror when she is grown."
"You are not disappointed? That she was born without scales?"
He looked at you as though you had suggested something mildly blasphemous. "Disappointed? She is perfect. She is the most perfect thing I have ever seen."
"You said the same of Maegor."
"Maegor is a miracle. Senya is a treasure." He rose from his chair and crossed to where you sat, lowering himself to the floor beside you. He rested his head against your knee, his eyes fixed on the nursing infant. "My beautiful girls. My pretty bird and our little hatchling."
"She is not a hatchling. She is a baby."
"She is a dragon. And she is beautiful. And I will kill anyone who ever makes her weep." He said it matter-of-factly, as though discussing the weather. "Any man who courts her will have to pass through me first. Any lord who asks for her hand will have to duel me. I will challenge them all: every suitor, every admirer, every fool who looks at her too long."
"You cannot duel every man who looks at our daughter."
"I can. I will." He pressed a kiss to your knee. "I will be the most fearsome father in the history of Westeros. They will sing songs about my vigilance."
"Those tales will not be complimentary."
"They will be true." He tilted his head to look up at you, and his expression softened. "You are happy, are you not? With her? With all of them?"
It was such an unexpected question, so vulnerable, so unlike him, that you did not answer immediately. You looked down at Senya, who had fallen asleep at your breast, her tiny mouth slack and milk-wet. You thought of Maegor, solemn and strange, with his scales and his silence and his fierce, rare smiles. You thought of Aeryn, bright and charming, who could make anyone laugh and who already showed signs of the diplomatic skill that would serve him well at court. You thought of Aerion himself, impossible, infuriating, terrifying Aerion, who had somehow become the man kneeling at your feet, asking if you were happy.
"Yes," you said. "I am happy."
He closed his eyes and let out a breath. "Good. That is good. I have not always beenâŠ" He paused. "That is good."
You leaned down and kissed him. It was an awkward angle, you were still holding Senya, and he was still kneeling on the floor, but he kissed you back with a fervor that made your heart ache.
"Then let me put her in her cradle." He rose and lifted the sleeping infant from your arms with a gentleness that still surprised you. He carried her to the cradle, a magnificent thing of carved weirwood, commissioned from the finest craftsmen in the Riverlands, and laid her down with the reverence of a man placing a sacred relic on an altar.
"Sleep well, little hatchling," he murmured.
The matter of succession was not supposed to be complicated.
Maegor was the elder twin. He had emerged first from your womb. By all the laws of gods and men, he was Aerion's heir, the firstborn son, the prince who would one day inherit his father's titles and claims and the heavy weight of Targaryen legacy.
But laws, as you had learned over the years, mattered less than perceptions.
The whispers began when the twins were still in the cradle. Servants who cooed over Aeryn's silver curls and perfect skin would fall silent when Maegor was brought into the room, their eyes sliding away from his scales as though looking at them too long might invite a curse. Visiting lords who bounced Aeryn on their knees and remarked on his sweet temper would glance at Maegor with poorly concealed unease and make excuses to leave the nursery early. Even the household guards, who were loyal to Aerion and would have died for his children, handled Aeryn with casual affection and Maegor with careful, wary respect.
They were only infants then. They did not notice. But you noticed.
Now, the twins were old enough to understand that the world treated them differently. And the world had only grown more vocal in its preferences.
"Prince Aeryn is a delight," Lady Dondarrion declared at the feast celebrating Maekar's nameday. She had spent the better part of an hour watching Aeryn charm a circle of noble ladies with a song he had learned from the septas, his voice high and clear and sweet. "So gracious. So well-spoken for his age. He will make a fine prince one day."
The whispers continued, spreading through the hall like ripples in a pond. The scaled prince. The dragon boy. They say he is clever, but so strange. So unsettling. Have you seen him stare? It is not natural. The younger one is much more suitable. A proper Targaryen prince. Not like his brother.
Maegor heard none of it. He was standing beside his father, watching the musicians with that unnerving intensity that made people uncomfortable. He did not fidget or chatter or seek attention the way other children did. He simply stood, watched, and listened, his pale violet eyes tracking every movement in the hall.
Aerion had one hand on his shoulder, he was smiling.
They did not see what you saw. They saw the scales and the silence and the strangeness, and they called him difficult. They did not see the way he helped Aeryn with his reading when the septas grew impatient. They did not see the way he cared for the stray cats in the stables, bringing them scraps from the kitchen and sitting with them for hours, his scaled hands gentle on their matted fur. They did not see the way he tried so hard, so determinedly, to be worthy of his father's impossible expectations.
But you saw. You saw all of it.
And you saw, too, the way Aeryn looked at his brother sometimes. Not with jealousy, exactly. Aeryn was too sweet-tempered for true jealousy. But there was a flicker of hurt, quickly suppressed. A small, quiet longing for the attention that Aerion lavished so freely on Maegor and so sparingly on him.
"Papa took Maegor to the training yard again," Aeryn said one afternoon, his voice carefully neutral. He was sitting beside you in the solar, a book of Valyrian history open in his lap. He had not turned a page in ten minutes. "He said I was too small for the longsword."
"Maegor is only minutes older than you."
"Maegor is bigger." Aeryn's jaw tightened, a tiny, subtle movement that was pure Aerion. "And he has the scales. Papa says the scales make him strong."
You set aside your embroidery and opened your arms. Aeryn hesitated for only a moment before climbing into your lap, burying his face against your shoulder.
"Your father loves you," you murmured, stroking his silver hair. "He loves you very much."
"I know." The words were muffled against your gown. "But he loves Maegor more."
It was not true. Or rather, it was not that simple. Aerion loved both his sons, you knew that with a certainty that had been hard-won over years of marriage. But his love for Maegor was different. It was fierce, consuming and tangled up in all the dreams and prophecies and obsessions that had driven him since before the twins were born. Maegor was not just his son; Maegor was the fulfillment of everything Aerion believed about himself and his blood.
Aeryn was only his son. His perfect, silver-haired, sweet-tempered son. And to Aerion, that was never quite enough.
"You do not love him more," Aeryn said, pulling back to look at you. His eyes, so like his father's, were wet but resolute. "You love us the same."
"I do."
"You are more lenient with Maegor."
The observation caught you off guard. "Am I?"
"You let him stay up later. You let him skip lessons when he is frustrated. You do not scold him when he is rude to the septas." Aeryn's voice was not accusing; it was simply factual. "You are harder on me."
You opened your mouth to deny it, then closed it. He was right. You had not realized it, but he was right.
"Maegor has a harder road than you," you said at last. "The world is not kind to him. The lords and ladies who praise you call him strange and unsettling behind his back. The expectations placed on him are heavier than any child should bear. I am lenient with him because I am trying to give him something the world will not."
"I know." Aeryn leaned his head against your shoulder again. "I understand. I do. It is onlyâŠ" He paused. "It is only that sometimes I wish Papa would look at me the way he looks at Maegor."
Your heart clenched. "Your father looks at you with pride."
"He looks at me with satisfaction. He looks at Maegor with wonder." Aeryn's voice was very small. "There is a difference."
You held him close and said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was a perceptive child, both your sons were perceptive, in their different ways, and he had put his finger on a truth you had been trying to ignore for years.
Maekar, at least, saw no issue with the succession.
"Maegor is the firstborn," he said. He was watching the twins spar in the training yard, their wooden swords clacking together in the afternoon sun. Maegor was taller and stronger, his scaled arms lending him an advantage in reach and grip; Aeryn was faster, more agile, darting around his brother's defenses with quick, clever strikes. "He is strong. He is intelligent. He is a good fighter. What more do the lords want?"
"They want a prince who does not make them uncomfortable," you said.
Maekar snorted. "Uncomfortable. They were uncomfortable with my grandfather's bastards, too, and those bastards became the finest warriors and administrators in the realm. Bloodraven is Hand of the King, for all that he makes people uncomfortable. Comfort is not a qualification for leadership."
"Try telling the lords that."
"The lords will accept Maegor or they will face the consequences." Maekar's voice was hard. "Aerion is next in line after me, and Maegor is next in line after Aerion. That is the law. If the nobility cannot stomach a prince with scales, they are welcome to take their complaints to the king, and Aerys will tell them the same thing I am telling you now."
You watched Maegor disarm his brother with a clean strike to the wrist, Aeryn's wooden sword clattering to the ground. Maegor did not gloat; he simply lowered his own blade and offered his hand to help Aeryn up. Aeryn took it, grinning ruefully, and the two of them walked toward the water barrel side by side.
"They are best friends," you said. "Aeryn does not resent him."
"Aeryn is a good boy. He knows his place." Maekar glanced at you. "You have raised them well. Both of them."
"I have tried."
"Keep trying." He turned away from the yard. "The realm will not make it easy for them. But that is the burden of princes. They must learn to bear it."
The boys were indeed best friends.
It was one of the few things that gave you comfort, in the midst of the whispered criticisms and the sidelong glances and the endless, exhausting politics of succession. Whatever the world thought of them, whatever preferences the lords and ladies expressed, Maegor and Aeryn were devoted to each other.
They shared a bedroom still, though they were old enough to have separate chambers. They refused to be parted. They studied together under the maester's tutelage, Maegor helping Aeryn with his sums while Aeryn helped Maegor with his letters. They explored the gardens and the woodlands beyond the walls together, Aeryn chattering about everything he saw while Maegor listened in comfortable silence. They defended each other fiercely against any slight, real or perceived.
"He is my brother," Maegor said once, when a visiting squire had made a comment about Aeryn being "too pretty to fight." The squire had found himself flat on his back in the dirt, Maegor's scaled fist connecting with his jaw before anyone could intervene. "Say it again, and I will break your teeth."
The squire did not say it again.
"The succession is not a problem," Aerion said, when you raised the subject one evening. He was still flushed from the training yard, toweling sweat from his hair. "Maegor is my heir. Aeryn is his brother. They will rule together, as Aegon and his sisters did. Maegor will be the conqueror, and Aeryn will be the diplomat. It is perfect."
"The lords do not think it is perfect."
"The lords are sheep." Aerion tossed the towel aside. "They will follow whoever is strong enough to lead them. And Maegor is strong. Have you seen him in the yard? He disarmed a boy twice his age yesterday. His reflexes are extraordinary. Those scales give him an edge no ordinary fighter can match."
"The lords care about more than fighting."
"Then Aeryn will handle the rest. He has a gift for charming people, you have seen it. He could talk a Dornishman into surrendering his water rights. Between the two of them, they will be unstoppable." Aerion crossed to you and cupped your face in his hands. "You worry too much. The succession is secure. Our sons are strong. The realm will accept them because they will have no choice."
"And if Aeryn decides he wants to be heir?"
Aerion's hands stilled. "He will not. He knows his place."
"He does not know anything yet. But one day, he will be a man. And men do not always accept the places assigned to them."
"Then I will deal with it." Aerion's voice was hard. "But Aeryn is not a fool. He loves his brother. He will not challenge him."
You wanted to believe him. You wanted to believe that the bond between your sons would hold, that the whispers of the court and the preferences of the lords would not poison what was between them. But you had seen what ambition did to families. You had seen what happened when succession was disputed. You had seen the Blackfyre Rebellions tear the realm apart.
"Just promise me," you said, "that you will not make it worse. That you will not favor Maegor so openly that Aeryn has no choice but to resent it."
Aerion's expression flickered. "I do not favor..."
"You do. Everyone sees it. Aeryn sees it."
For a moment, he was silent. Then he pulled you against his chest.
"I love both my sons," he said, his voice muffled against your hair. "But MaegorâŠ" He paused. "Maegor is the dream made flesh. The prophecy fulfilled. When I look at him, I see everything I have ever wanted. Everything the gods promised me. I cannot help it."
"You must help it. For Aeryn's sake."
He exhaled, long and slow. "I will try."
It was not a promise. But it was, you supposed, a start.
Then there was Senya.
Sweet, beautiful Senya, who was exempt from all the tensions and disputes and whispered criticisms that swirled around her brothers. She was Aerion's littlest princess, his precious hatchling, and she lived in a world of her own making, a world of dolls and songs and games with her aunt Rhae, who had come to Summerhall to serve as her companion and tutor.
"Again, aunt Rhae!" Senya commanded, clapping her small hands. "Sing it again!"
Rhae laughed and obligingly began the song once more, a Lysene lullaby she had learned from a traveling singer, full of soft vowels and gentle rhythms. Senya swayed in time, her silver curls bouncing, her small voice joining in on the chorus with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
She was simply a happy, curious, ordinary child who loved sweets and stories and chasing butterflies in the gardens. The septas adored her. The servants spoiled her. And Aerion, for all his obsession with Maegor, melted into a puddle whenever his daughter was in the room.
"Papa, look!" Senya would cry, running to him with a flower she had picked or a drawing she had made or a ladybug cupped carefully in her small palms. "Look what I found!"
And Aerion would kneel in the dirt to examine a ladybug with the solemnity of a maester studying an ancient text.
"It is beautiful," he would say. "Almost as beautiful as you."
Senya would beam, Aerion would beam back, and for a few moments the weight of Targaryen legacy would fade into insignificance.
"She is good for him," Rhae said one afternoon, watching Aerion push Senya on the swing he had built for her in the gardens.
"He was not always like this," you said.
"I remember." Rhae's voice was quiet. "Before Lys, he was cruel. Not just ambitious or proud, but cruel. He used to pull my hair and call me worthless because I was a girl. He told Egg he should have been drowned at birth." She paused. "He is different now."
"He grew up, matured."
"Perhaps." Rhae smiled as Senya shrieked with laughter, the swing soaring higher. "But I think you had something to do with it too."
Senya would be free, in a way her brothers could never be. Perhaps, in the end, that freedom would be the greatest gift you could give her.
The news of King Aerys's death arrived in the morning, carried by a raven whose wings had beaten through three days of steady rain. You were in the solar with Senya when the maester brought the message, his face grave, his hands trembling slightly as he handed the scroll to Aerion.
Your husband read it in silence. Then he rolled the parchment carefully, set it aside, and said, "My father is king."
Maekar had not expected to inherit. He had been the fourth son, the soldier, the man who spent more time in armor than in courtly silks. But Aerys had died without issue, Rhaegel had choked on a pie years before, and the Great Spring Sickness had taken the rest. The throne passed to Maekar by default, and Aerion, Aerion the exile, Aerion the disgraced, Aerion who had once been shipped off to Lys in shame, was now the heir to the Seven Kingdoms.
The appointment to Dragonstone came swiftly. Aerion was named prince of Dragonstone, the title traditionally granted to the heir apparent, and with it came the expectation that he would take up residence in the ancient Targaryen seat. But King's Landing was where the power lay, where the court gathered, where the Iron Throne cast its long shadow over every political calculation in the realm. Dragonstone could wait. The Red Keep could not.
"We leave in a fortnight," Aerion announced, striding into your chambers with the scroll of appointment still clutched in his hand. His eyes were bright, feverish with ambition. "The king wants me at his side. The small council, the court, the lords paramount, they all need to see me. To know me. To understand that I am not the same man who was sent away in disgrace."
"Aerion..."
"I know what they say about me. I know what they whisper." His jaw tightened. "But I am the heir now. My father is king, and I am his successor, and I will not let the realm forget it."
You set aside the book you had been reading. "What of the children?"
He paused. The brightness in his eyes dimmed slightly, replaced by calculation. "Maegor comes with us. He is the heir's heir. He must be seen at court. He must learn the politics, the alliances, the game. One day, all of it will be his."
"And Aeryn? Senya?"
"Summerhall." He said it as though it were obvious. "They will remain here with Egg and his family. Aeryn can continue his studies. Senya is too young for court. They will be safe here."
Safe. The word echoed in your mind as you thought of your second son, your sweet-tempered boy who had spent years trying to earn a fraction of the attention his father lavished on Maegor. Left behind at Summerhall while his brother was paraded before the court as the future of House Targaryen.
"Aeryn will be disappointed."
"Aeryn will understand." Aerion's voice was firm. "He is not the heir. He does not need to be at court. But Maegor...Maegor needs me. He needs to be prepared for what is coming."
The move to King's Landing was as chaotic as any royal relocation. Servants packed trunks, guards organized escorts, a flurry of letters flew between Summerhall and the Red Keep and Dragonstone, coordinating the complex logistics of transplanting a princely household. Through it all, you watched your children and tried not to let your heart break.
Aeryn was silent when you told him. He listened to the news with the careful composure he had learned over years of being the second son, the spare heir, the one who was loved but never quite enough.
"I understand," he said, when you had finished. "Maegor needs to be at court. He is the heir."
"You are both heirs. You are both princes."
"I am the second prince. It is different." He smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. "I will take care of Senya. She will miss you terribly, but I will make sure she knows you have not abandoned her."
"Aeryn..."
"It is all right, mother." He stepped forward and hugged you, his arms wrapping around your waist with a fierceness that belied his calm words. "I know you love me. I have always known."
You held him close and blinked back tears. Already he was learning to swallow his disappointments, to smile through his hurt, to be the gracious second son the world expected him to be. You hated it.
"Write to me," you told them both, kneeling to look them in the eyes. "Write to me every week. Tell me about your lessons, your games, your dreams. I want to know everything."
"Even the boring parts?" Senya asked.
"Especially the boring parts."
She giggled and threw her arms around your neck. "I will write you so many letters you will need a whole rookery to keep them all!"
You held her tight and did not cry. You waited until you were alone in your chambers, the trunks packed and the wagons loaded, before you let the tears come.
King's Landing had not changed.
It still stank of waste, smoke and too many bodies packed too tightly together. The Red Keep still rose above it all, a monument to Targaryen power, its towers and battlements silhouetted against the grey sky like the spines of some vast, sleeping dragon.
But you had changed. You were no longer the uncertain girl who had arrived here years ago, betrothed to a man who had cornered her in the forest with threats and demands. You were a woman now, a mother, a princess of the realm. You walked through the gates of the Red Keep with your head high and your eldest son at your side.
Maegor was taking in everything with his usual intense, watchful silence. The lords and ladies who lined the courtyard to welcome the new heir apparent stared at him openly, at the gleam of scales on his hands and neck, at the way he moved with a predator's grace despite his youth.
Maegor glanced up at you, and for just a moment, the corner of his mouth twitched. It was the closest thing to a smile he ever gave in public.
Aerion was in his element. He attended small council meetings with Maekar, accompanied the king on inspections of the City Watch, made himself visible, indispensable and impossible to ignore.
"I am not the same man they sent away," he said to you one night, lying in the great bed of the heir's chambers. "They thought I was a madman, a disgrace, a liability. But look at me now. I am the heir. My son is the heir's heir. My blood will sit the Iron Throne for a thousand years."
"You are still a madman," you said, but there was no bite to it. "You have simply learned to hide it better."
He laughed and pulled you against him. "You know me too well, my love. It is one of the many things I adore about you."
But the dreams had not stopped. You learned, over the years, to keep him away from the Alchemists' Guild. He had developed an unhealthy fascination with wildfire during his time in Lys, and the dreams only fed it. He spoke of the substance with a reverence that made your skin crawl, describing its properties and its power and the beautiful, terrible light it cast when it burned.
You did not argue with him when he was like this. You had learned that argument only made him more certain, more entrenched, more feverishly convinced of his own prophetic insight. Instead, you held him until the mania passed, until his breathing slowed and his eyes cleared and he became, once again, the husband and father you knew.
But you did not forget. And you did not let him near wildfire.
The vision came to Maegor on a stormy night, six moons after you arrived in King's Landing.
You woke to the sound of screaming.
Not Aerion's screams, you had grown accustomed to those, the night terrors that seized him in the small hours and left him shaking and sweat-soaked. This was a child's scream. High, terrified and utterly, heartbreakingly young.
You were out of bed and running before you were fully awake, your bare feet slapping against the cold stone floors of the heir's apartments. Maegor's chamber was at the end of the corridor, you burst through the door and you found him sitting bolt upright in bed, his eyes wide and unseeing, his scaled hands clutching the blankets.
"Maegor. Maegor, sweetling, I am here." You gathered him into your arms and held him against your chest. "It was a dream. Only a dream. You are safe."
"No." His voice was raw, hoarse from screaming. "No, it was not a dream. It was a vision. Like the ones Brynden taught me about. Like the ones you taught me to listen for."
You went very still. "What did you see?"
"Summerhall." He was trembling now, his whole body shaking with the force of whatever he had witnessed. "Fire. Green fire, everywhere. The towers burning. The gardens burning. The great hall collapsing. And screaming, so much screaming. I could hear them, mother. I could hear them dying."
Green fire.
Your blood ran cold. "Aerion's dreams."
"What?"
"Your father has been dreaming of green fire for years. But he has never seen where. He has never seen when." You cupped Maegor's face in your hands, forcing him to meet your eyes. "Are you certain it was Summerhall? You are certain?"
He nodded, his pale violet eyes still glassy with the horror of what he had seen. "I saw the white walls. The terraced gardens. The great hall with the dragon banners."
Your heart stopped.
"They were burning, mother. They were burning, and I could not reach them. I tried to run toward them, but the fire was too hot, and the ceiling was falling, and I could not...I could not..."
He broke down sobbing. You held him close, rocking him back and forth, murmuring the same soothing nonsense words you had used when he was an infant and the world was too loud and too bright for his sensitive, strange, beautiful mind.
But even as you comforted your son, your thoughts were racing.
Green fire. Summerhall. Aerion's dreams.
The letter from Aeryn arrived three days later.
Mother,
I must tell you something, and I pray you will believe me. Three nights ago, I had a dream. Only it was not a dream. It was a vision, like the ones you taught me about, like the ones Maegor used to tell me about when we were small. I saw Summerhall burning. Green fire everywhere. The towers falling. The gardens turning to ash. And I heard screaming. So much screaming.
I have never been so frightened in my life.
I do not know what it means. I do not know if it is a true vision or only a nightmare born of my own fears. But you always told us to trust what the trees showed us. And the trees showed me fire.
Please tell me what to do.
Your loving son, Aeryn
You read the letter three times. Then you folded it carefully and went to find your husband.
Aerion was in the small council chamber, reviewing trade reports with his father's ministers. You pulled him aside without ceremony, ignoring the irritated glances of the lords whose business you were interrupting.
"Read this," you said, thrusting the letter into his hands.
He read it. His expression shifted from annoyance to confusion to fear.
"Maegor had the same vision," you said, before he could speak. "Three nights ago. He woke up screaming. Green fire consuming Summerhall."
"Wildfire." Aerion's voice was barely a whisper. "My dreams. All these years, I have been dreaming of green fire, and I never knew..."
"You never knew where. Now we know."
He stared at the letter as though it might burst into flames in his hands. "Summerhall. My father's favorite seat. Egg's home. Our children's home."
"We have to evacuate it."
"How?" Aerion looked up at you, for the first time in years, you saw genuine helplessness in his eyes. "How do we evacuate an entire palace? How do we convince my father the king, to empty his beloved Summerhall over a child's nightmare? The lords will think we are mad. They already think I am mad."
"To seven hells what the lords think. I do not care." You gripped his arm, your fingers digging into the fine silk of his sleeve. "Our children are in that palace. Aeryn and Senya. Egg's children. Your brother's family. If there is even a chance that the vision is true, we cannot leave them there."
Aerion was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded. "I will speak to my father."
King Maekar listened with the stony patience of a man who had spent his life dealing with his son's eccentricities. He did not laugh. He did not dismiss them. But neither did he agree.
"You want me to evacuate Summerhall," he said flatly, "because two boys had the same nightmare."
"They are not ordinary boys," Aerion said. "They are Greenseers. Like Bloodraven. Like their mother. They see things that have not yet come to pass."
"Bloodraven is a law unto himself. And your wife, forgive me daughter, has never claimed to see the future with much clarity." Maekar leaned back in his chair, his hard face unreadable. "The boys had a nightmare. Children have nightmares. It does not mean the palace is going to burn down. And even if it did, you do not know how far in the future it might come to pass. Could be two hundred years from now."
"Father..."
"I will not empty a royal seat and displace hundreds of people over a child's bad dream. The lords would laugh me off the throne." Maekar's voice was final. "If you have evidence, real evidence, bring it to me. Until then, Summerhall remains as it is."
Aerion opened his mouth to argue, but you placed a hand on his arm. "Your Grace," you said, your voice carefully measured, "I understand your position. Truly, I do. But I would ask one thing."
Maekar raised an eyebrow. "Speak."
"Let me bring my children here. Aeryn and Senya. They have been at Summerhall for six moons, they are unhappy, and I miss them. Let me send for them. I do not believe that separating the children was a good idea. Let them stay with us in the Red Keep for a time."
It was not an evacuation. It was not an admission that anything was wrong. It was simply a mother wanting her children close.
Maekar's expression softened, just slightly. "That is reasonable. Send for them."
"Thank you, your Grace."
You pulled Aerion from the chamber before he could ruin the moment with further argument.
The children arrived two weeks later, escorted by a company of Targaryen guards and accompanied by their aunt Rhae. Senya threw herself into your arms the moment she descended from the wheelhouse, her small face alight with joy.
"Mother! Mother, I missed you so much! Is it true there are dragons' skulls in the throne room? Aeryn says there are dragons' skulls, and I want to see them, and also I want to see the knights and..."
"Slow down, little hatchling." You laughed, holding her tight. "You will see everything. I promise."
Aeryn was more reserved. He hung back, waiting his turn, his dark eyes scanning the courtyard with the careful vigilance you had taught him. When he finally stepped into your embrace, he was trembling slightly.
"I saw it again," he whispered against your ear. "The fire. Three more times since I wrote to you."
"We will talk later," you murmured. "For now, you are safe. Both of you are safe."
That night, after the children had been settled into their new chambers and the household had quieted, you went to find Brynden.
He was in the Tower of the Hand, as he always was, surrounded by ravens. He looked up when you entered, his one red eye gleaming in the candlelight, and his thin lips curved into a phantom of a smile.
"I wondered when you would come," he said. "The boys have been dreaming."
"You know about the dreams."
"I know about many things." He set aside his quill and turned to face you fully. "Wildfire. Summerhall. A vision shared by three: Maegor, Aeryn, and your husband, though Aerion would never admit that his dreams are anything other than dragon dreams." He paused. "It is a powerful omen."
"Then you believe it."
"I believe that when three people, two of them Greenseers, the same dream, it is worth taking seriously." He rose and crossed to the window, his pale hair stirring in the draft. "But Maekar will not evacuate Summerhall. He is too practical, too suspicious of prophecy. He has no patience for them."
"Then what do we do?"
"Nothing." Brynden turned back to you. "You have already done what you can. You brought your children here. They are safe. Whatever happens at Summerhall, they will not be caught in it."
"And Egg? Betha? Their children? All the servants and guards and..."
"If the vision is true, they will burn. But Maekar was right when he said that it may not come to pass for centuries yet." His voice was flat, emotionless. "I cannot prevent it. You cannot prevent it. Maekar will not act on a child's nightmare, and we have no other evidence to offer him. The future will unfold as it unfolds."
You stared at him.He looked older now, older than his years, the weight of a thousand secrets and a thousand schemes etched into the lines of his face.
"I want your oath," you said.
His eyebrow rose. "What oath?"
"I want you to swear, on the old gods, on the weirwoods, on whatever you hold sacred, that you will not harm my children."
He went utterly still. "Why would I harm your children?"
"Because they are Aerion's children. Because a succession dispute may one day arise. Because Egg is your great-nephew as well, and I know you have watched over him and his family, and I know you may one day have to choose between his line and Aerion's." You stepped closer, your eyes locked on his. "I want your oath that you will not choose against my children. That you will protect their rights. That you will advise them to the best of your ability, regardless of who else sits the throne."
Brynden was silent for a long moment. Then he laughed, a dry, rustling sound, like leaves stirred by a winter wind.
"You have grown fierce, little bird."
"I have grown protective."
He studied you with that unblinking red eye. You felt the weight of his scrutiny like a physical pressure but you did not flinch. You had faced Aerion Targaryen in a forest, alone and afraid. You had faced childbirth. You could face your cousin.
"Very well," he said at last. "I swear it. On the old gods and the weirwoods and whatever else you would have me swear by. I will not harm your children. I will protect their rights. I will advise them to the best of my ability, for as long as I draw breath."
"And if it comes to a choice? Between them and Egg's line?"
His expression flickered with what might have been pain, or regret, or the shadow of a future he had seen but could not change.
"Then I will pray that the choice never comes," he said. "And I will do what I must."
It was not the answer you wanted but it was expected.
"Thank you," you said.
He inclined his head. "Go back to your children, little bird. Hold them close. The future is uncertain, but the present is still yours. Do not waste it."
a/n: Another long one. Thoughts? I wanna wrap this series up in the next chapter but I've no idea how to continue and what to do with the plot.
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