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Aerion Targaryen x fem!reader
She did not arrive as a conqueror, nor as a queen. The fire found her anyway.
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I woke up to someone saying my name like it was a problem.
A hand shook my shoulder. My eyes flew open, heart already pounding like I'd been running.
For a second I didn't know where I was. Low ceiling, rough beams, a slit of pale light cutting across the wall. The constant dull thump and hiss of pots and pans from below. The smell of smoke and onion and old stone.
Ashford castle. The room above the kitchens. Right.
"Scarlet," the voice said again, quieter. "Time to wake. His Grace likes the road early."
Sir Duncan stood over my pallet, big shape outlined against the dimness. Behind him, the door was propped open, and I could just see a guard's shoulder and a hint of corridor.
Lana was still curled on her own pallet, blanket up to her chin, eyes open but unfocused. Asher was awake already, sitting with his back against the wall, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing.
"How long did I sleep?" I asked.
"Long enough," Duncan said. "Not half as much as you'll wish, once you've been jounced along half a day."
I pushed myself upright and scrubbed a hand over my face. Every part of me felt stiff, like my body had decided to seize up now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
"Do we have to ride?" Lana asked, voice small. "On horses?"
Duncan's mouth twitched. "You tried that yesterday," he said. "Didn't go well."
My stomach dipped at the memory: the horse beneath me, big and unfamiliar, my idiot body not knowing how to sit right, the way the world tilted with every step. The way the king's men had exchanged looks that clearly said, they're going to fall on their heads and then it'll be our fault.
And that’s how we ended up walking.
He must see something of that on my face, because he added, "His Grace has ordered a wagon for you. Covered. You'll ride in the shade and spare my nerves."
"A royal wagon?" Asher said, raising an eyebrow.
"A royal supply wagon," Duncan said. "Don't start fancying yourselves. You'll be perched on crates, not cushions."
I could live with crates. Crates were better than breaking my neck.
"We leave as soon as you can stand," he said. "There's water in that jug. And this—" he put a hunk of bread and a wedge of cheese on the little table "—will sit better in your belly than an empty road."
He stepped back to give us room.
We dressed in silence, yesterday's scratchy loaner clothes going back on: plain tunics, worn cloaks, boots that still weren't quite broken in, were given to us so we wouldn’t stand out. I splashed my face with cold water and tried to smooth my hair into something less like which dragged through hedge.
We ate standing up—chewing in that half-awake way where your body is doing it but your brain isn't entirely present yet. The bread was hard but fresh. The cheese tasted sharper than anything I'd had back home. Here. Wherever.
When we stepped out into the corridor, the air was cool and smelled faintly of damp stone and cooking fat. A guard fell in behind us immediately, hand near his sword, like we were going to bolt.
Outside, the sky was still more grey than blue. The tourney field below the castle looked strangely vulnerable in this light, the pavilions sagging, banners hanging limp.
The royal party was a storm of motion and sound: horses snorting, harnesses jingling, men shouting to each other. Wheels creaked as wagons were loaded and shifted. A line of covered wagons sat near the end of the train, canvas tops already rolled down.
"That one," Duncan said, nodding.
He led us to a wagon whose canvas was a little less patched than the others. The wooden wheels looked sturdy. Inside, I could see crates lashed down and a narrow bench fixed at the front.
"Luxury," Asher said under his breath. "All the finest stacked boxes."
"Better than walking," I murmured.
Lana swallowed, eyeing the wagon like it might bite. "How long will it take?" she asked Duncan.
"To King's Landing?" he said. "Four days, if the roads are kind."
Four days in a rattling wooden box heading toward a city I only knew as a doomed place in stories.
Duncan helped Lana up first, then Asher, who hauled himself in with more enthusiasm than grace.
I put my foot on the wheel-spoke, ready to climb.
"Not you," a voice behind me said.
I knew that voice. It slid down my spine like a sharp, cold blade.
Prince Aerion sat his horse a few paces away, pale hair catching what little light there was. The animal under him shifted, restless, but his seat was easy, like he was part of it. A few riders hovered near him, but none close enough to intrude.
"I have not finished looking at you," he said.
My mouth went dry. "Your Grace," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "You've had all night to look."
Something flickered in his expression. Irritation, amusement—it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
"You speak as if you've not been locked in a room guarded by my father's men," he said.
"You locked us up," I said. "You didn't gag us."
Duncan made a strangled noise that might have been my name.
Aerion's gaze slid briefly to him, then back to me. "Ser Duncan," he said. "You may attend to the others."
"Go," I said quietly. "It's fine.”
It wasn't. But I didn't want him caught between us.
Duncan grimaced, then obeyed, moving around to the far side of the wagon, saying something to Lana and Asher in a low voice.
We were still within sight of everyone—king's men, camp followers, half the tourney putting itself back into motion. Aerion wasn't going to do anything...dramatic.
He guided his horse a step closer. I felt small next to both him and the animal, like I was on the wrong scale for this whole place.
"Do you know," he said, "that most people tremble when I look at them?"
"And yet you talk," he went on. "Endlessly. No one asked you for your thoughts on maps. Or dragons. Or anything else."
"You asked where we came from," I reminded him. "Your father asked if I knew your name. Would you have preferred I pretended not to?"
His mouth twisted. "I would have preferred you remember your place," he said.
"I'm still trying to figure out what my place is," I said. "Since yesterday I fell out of the sky and today I'm being shipped to your capital like a...what was it? Curiosity."
His eyes sharpened. "You remember that."
"I remember a lot of what people say before deciding whether to be afraid of them," I said.
"You aren't afraid of me," he said.
"I am," I said. "You just don't get to own it."
He stared at me for a long moment.
The horse tossed its head a little, jingling its bridle, but Aerion's hand was steady on the reins.
"You are very strange," he said at last. "You speak truth and insolence in the same breath. Most would at least try to flatter."
"I don't know you well enough to flatter you honestly," I said. "And I don't lie well enough to flatter you falsely."
"No?" His gaze flicked down, taking in the plain clothes, the scuffed boots, the smudge of sleep I probably still had on my cheek. "You could start with the usual. Call me handsome. Strong. Wise."
"You know you're handsome," I said before my brain could tackle my mouth to the floor. "You behave like you've known all your life. I don't know if you're strong yet. As for wise..." I shrugged. "I haven't seen enough to judge."
Duncan was definitely going to die of a heart attack because of me.
Aerion's lips parted, then closed again. He looked like someone had thrown cold water on him.
"No one speaks to me like this," he said, in a tone that wasn't exactly angry. More...bemused. Off-balance.
"I keep hearing that," I said. "Maybe that's why everyone's so tense."
He huffed out a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't died halfway.
"You mistake novelty for safety," he said. "My father keeps you because you are interesting. I let you talk because I am bored. Do not confuse our indulgence with protection."
"I don't," I said. "I'm not stupid."
"No," he said. "You're not. That may be the most dangerous thing about you."
His gaze dropped briefly to my hands, clasped loosely in front of me, then back to my face.
"Tell me, little scarlet thing," he said. "When you look at us, what do you see? Kings and dragons? Monsters? Stories?"
"All of the above," I said.
"And yourself?" he asked. "Where do you fit in that picture?"
I thought of Lana's shaking hands, Asher's speculative eyes, the way the king had said keep as if we were objects.
"I don't know yet," I said. "That's the problem."
He made a considering sound.
"Here is your place, for now," he said, gesturing toward the wagon. "In that box. Under guard. Between my father's will and my city's curiosity."
"The farther we go," he said, "the more eyes you'll have on you. Remember this, Scarlet-who-speaks-of-dragons: you are not a player. You are a piece. If you forget that, you'll be swept off the board quickly."
"Maybe," I said quietly. "Or maybe pieces learn."
"Pieces don't learn," he said. "Pieces break."
There it was. The cruelty, sharp as glass.
It hurt in a way that felt clean.
"I survived falling out of the sky," I said. "Breaking might not be as simple as you think."
His eyes flared, just for a heartbeat.
"Get in the wagon," he said finally. "Before I decide I prefer you buried in Ashford."
"Yes, Your Highness," I said.
I put my hand on the wagon, hoisted myself up, and climbed in. The wood creaked under me.
As I ducked under the canvas, I felt his gaze like a weight on the back of my neck.
I sat down opposite Asher and Lana, on a crate that claimed it once held salted beef. Lana's eyes were wide.
"What did he say?" she whispered.
"Nothing I didn't already know," I said.
The canvas dropped, cutting off the light. Outside, someone shouted, "Move out!" and the wagon lurched as the oxen—or whatever poor beasts were hitched to it—took the strain.
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It was four days of dust and rattling wheels and the constant creak-groan of wood in motion. Four days of the canvas flapping just enough to let thin strips of light in, of glimpses of countryside through half-tied flaps: fields and copses of trees and little clusters of houses that looked like they'd been there forever.
When we stopped, it was like being unplugged.
We'd climb down on stiff legs, squinting in the light, blinking at whatever village or field the royal party had decided to spill into for the night. Someone would shove food into our hands: bread, stew, once a surprisingly good apple. The king's tent went up somewhere grander; we were placed near the center of the encampment, watched by guards who pretended not to stare.
On the second night, I saw Egg at a distance, arguing with a septon twice his age. On the third, I caught Duncan's eye across a fire and he gave me a brief, tired nod. On the fourth, just before dawn, I woke in the wagon to the sound of gulls.
The air smelled different. Less like earth, more like salt and rot and tar.
"Are we..." Lana sat up blearily. "At the sea?"
"Near it," I said. My heart had already started to pound, because I knew what this meant.
As the morning brightened and the wagon trundled on, the sounds grew: more voices, more animals, a deeper, constant hum that felt like a hive stirring.
When the canvas finally rolled up halfway and I stuck my head out, I saw it.
At first it was just a smear on the horizon, a bruise along the coast. Then the shapes sharpened: crooked lines of houses climbing the hills, thin threads of smoke curling into the sky, the glint of water where the Blackwater Rush met the sea.
The walls came into focus next.
They weren't smooth. They were a patchwork of stone and old repairs, but they were high, marching around the city like a scar. The closest gate loomed, iron teeth of the portcullis up for now.
Beyond everything, rising above the jumble of roofs on Aegon's High Hill, was the Red Keep.
I'd seen it all before, on screens and book covers from my nan. None of that had prepared me for how it looked in real light.
The walls really were red—not painted, but built of some stone that had drunk in the color of old blood and dried brick. Towers stabbed at the sky, narrow and tall. Banners snapped in the wind, dragon sigils bright against the morning.
This was the place where kings burned people alive and called it spectacle. The place that would someday explode under blue fire.
My hands were shaking. I curled them into my cloak so Lana wouldn't see.
We passed through the city gates in a jolt of sound. People pressed back to let the royal train through: dirty-faced children, women with baskets on their hips, men in stained tunics. Some bowed. Some stared. Some just tried to keep out of the way of hooves and wheels.
The smell hit then, full-force. Human waste, horses, fish, smoke, something sweet rotting too long in the sun. It was a punch in the face after four days of open road.
"This is..." Lana swallowed hard. "A lot."
"Big," Asher said. His eyes were everywhere, trying to drink it all in. "Christ."
We rattled up through the city, the wagons groaning as they climbed. The streets narrowed and widened, bent around markets, curved past steep drops where you could glimpse the glitter of the bay below.
The Red Keep got bigger and bigger, until it was all I could see when I craned my neck.
At last we turned through another gate. Guards in better armor than any we'd seen so far stood at attention, lances in hand. Our wagon rolled under the archway into the outer yard of the Red Keep.
Inside, the noise changed. Still busy, but more controlled. Stablehands ran back and forth leading horses. Servants hurried with baskets and bolts of fabric. Men-at-arms drilled in one corner.
The Red Keep's inner walls rose around us, red stone climbing to those dizzying towers. Up close, the bricks weren't a uniform color; some were darker, some lighter, all of them stained with time and smoke and weather.
The king's wheelhouse turned toward a side entrance, guarded by men in cloaks trimmed with fine fur. We were directed elsewhere.
Our wagon stopped in a smaller courtyard, tucked between two ranges of buildings. A set of doors led into what looked like a service corridor. A stair rose to an inner gallery.
I climbed down, legs rubbery. Lana followed, clutching her cloak tight around herself. Asher hopped down with a grin that was starting to look too at-home on his face.
A woman waited for us in the archway. Her hair was braided neatly, her dress plain but well-made. She looked us over with the assessing gaze of someone used to fitting people into spaces.
"By command of the queen," she said, "you are to be given chambers in this wing." Her eyes lingered on our faces. "Separate chambers," she added. "Close together. For convenience."
Something in my chest tightened at that, even though the room we'd shared so far had been anything but comfortable.
"You will be served as...honored guests of His Grace," the woman said, the slightest pause around honored making it clear she knew exactly how precarious that honor was. "You will remain within this wing unless summoned. You will not wander. Do you understand?"
Lana nodded quickly. Asher said nothing, but his jaw shifted.
"Good," the woman said. She gestured to a young maid standing behind her. "Eliana, take this one." Her hand flicked toward me. "See her settled. The other two will be seen to."
She was maybe eighteen, with chestnut-brown hair braided back from her face and tied off with a bit of red ribbon. Her eyes were dark and quick. She dipped a curtsy so smooth it had to be muscle memory.
I almost looked behind me to see who'd entered.
She straightened, eyes flicking up to my face, then down again. "His Grace has ordered you treated as gentle-born," she said. "So you're 'my lady' until someone with power decides otherwise."
"Well," I said. "Okay then."
Her mouth twitched, like she almost smiled.
"Come," she said. "I'll show you your room."
I shot one last look at Lana and Asher. They were already being nudged toward different doors, different corridors.
"We'll see each other later," I said to them. It came out as more of a hope than a promise.
Then I followed Eliana inside.
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That's the first thing I noticed. The second was that it was mine.
Or, at least, allotted to me.
A narrow bed sat against one wall, covered in a thin mattress and a wool blanket dyed a faded red. A tiny fireplace crouched opposite, only embers glowing in its belly. There was a washstand with a chipped basin, a little table and chair, and—luxury of luxuries—a window.
The window was narrow and latticed, but when I stepped up to it I could see a slice of the inner courtyard below and, beyond that, the top of a tower.
It was more than my apartment back home had offered.
"This is temporary, my lady," Eliana said. "Until His Grace decides where best to put you." She spoke in the tone of someone who had heard that phrase many times.
She blinked. "Lovely?" She looked around like she hadn't considered the room could be called that.
"It's mine," I said. "That helps."
Her gaze settled on my face properly for the first time. There was something like curiosity in it.
"If you need anything," she said, "you may ring that bell." She nodded to a little rope by the door. "Or, if I'm nearby, just call my name. I'm to be your maid."
"Eliana," I repeated. The word felt strange in my mouth, like something from a book.
"I can bring food, water, baths. Clothes." She hesitated, then added, "Advice, if you want it."
"I think I'm going to need a lot of that," I said honestly.
That got me the ghost of a smile.
"Then we'll start with clothes," she said briskly. "His Grace doesn't want you walking around the Red Keep looking like you rolled out of a hedge."
"Technically I fell out of the sky," I said.
She gave me a look that said, very clearly, and you think we don't all know that?
"The whole castle is talking," she said. "They say you appeared in a holy ring like the Stranger spat you out. Some say you're demons. Some say you're signs of dragons returning." Her eyes flickered to my hair, my face. "You don't...look like a demon."
"Thanks," I said. "I think."
She moved to a tall, narrow chest by the wall and opened it. From inside, she drew out a folded bundle of dark fabric.
"This came from the queen's stores," she said, laying it on the bed and flicking it open.
Not a queen's dress. No heavy brocade or dripping jewels. But it was beautiful in its own quiet way.
The underlayer was a long, black gown of some cheap but soft silk or very fine wool—smoother than the scratchy linen I'd been wearing, but not so slick it shone. The bodice was cut to fit close over the chest and waist, lacing up the back. Skirts fell straight and long to the floor, enough fabric to move in but not enough to get swallowed in.
Over the bodice, a pattern of deep red had been stitched—thin lines curling like stylized dragon tails across the ribs, subtle unless the light hit them just right.
The sleeves were what made me catch my breath.
They were long and fitted at the shoulder but widened slightly at the wrist, made of a sheer black fabric that showed a hint of skin beneath. On them, in tiny careful stitches of red thread, were dragons—little three-headed shapes twining and looping down the arms, subtle but unmistakable.
"It's..." I ran my fingers over the embroidery, careful not to snag it. "Wow."
Eliana watched my face, something like pride flickering there even though she obviously hadn't made it.
"It's not silk like a princess would wear," she said quickly. "Not velvet. But it's good cloth. Strong. The colors are...fitting."
"Targaryen colors," I said quietly.
"You do know that much," she said. "About colors and sigils."
"My grandmother liked history," I said, before I could stop myself. "And stories. She used to tell me about...old kings. Dragons."
"Your grandmother knew of us?" Eliana asked, baffled. "From across the sea?"
I hesitated. I couldn't exactly say from hundreds of years in the future when these stories are written down in novels.
"From books," I said. "From somewhere that isn't here. She loved those stories. I only half-listened back then. I wish I'd listened more."
Eliana's expression softened. "Mine told stories too," she said, almost to herself. "About how it was before the war. Before the king...well." She cut herself off.
"Before the king what?" I asked.
Her gaze snapped back to me, alarmed. "I shouldn't say," she said quickly. "Not in here. Not with anyone you don't know." She gestured to the walls. "Stone has ears in this place."
I thought about that, about the way everybody we'd met so far seemed to measure their words.
"Okay," I said. "Clothes first, dangerous politics later."
That got me a real smile, quick and bright.
"Take off what you're wearing," she said in a more professional tone. "You can keep your smallclothes. The rest goes over."
"I can do it myself," I said automatically.
Her brows rose. "You can," she agreed. "But you shouldn't. You're a lady guest now. A lady has a maid. That's how it is."
"It seems like a lot of work for you," I said.
"It's my work," she said simply.
Arguing with that felt wrong, and also pointless. So I peeled off the lent-out tunic and trousers, left in my own bra and underwear that suddenly felt indecent in this world, and let her help me into the gown.
It was heavier than it looked, but the weight settled in a comforting way. Eliana tightened the laces at the back with practiced hands, drawing the bodice snug but not suffocating. The fabric hugged my waist, skimmed over my hips. The skirt brushed the tops of my feet, whispering when I shifted.
I looked...not like me and also very much like me.
Some version of me that had existed in my grandmother's voice, long before any of this happened.
"The sleeves suit you," Eliana said, stepping back to admire her work. "Your arms are slender. The dragons make them less bare."
"I never thought about my arms needing...company," I said.
She snorted, quietly. "You'd be surprised what men will complain about," she said. Then she caught herself, lips pressing together. "Forgive me, my lady."
"You can just say what you think," I said. "I promise I'm not going to have you thrown in a dungeon for noticing men are weird."
"That's not up to you," she said softly. "But thank you."
She guided me to the little stool at the table by the window and pushed me gently down.
"Sit," she said. "Hair next."
She unbound my makeshift knot and let my hair fall loose. It tumbled over my shoulders and down my back in black waves, longer than I'd realized when it wasn't trapped in elastic.
"Eliana..." I said, watching her hands move in the faint reflection of the window glass. "Why is everyone so...careful here? With how they speak. How they move."
She lifted a section of my hair, ran a comb through it with slow, practiced strokes.
"Because we've seen what happens when people aren't," she said quietly. "Because our king is merciful when it suits him and terrible when it doesn't. Because his son has a temper and a long memory. Because this castle has seen too much blood not to expect more."
She met my eyes in the rim of the glass.
"And because you," she added, "have landed in the middle of all that with strange talk and stranger eyes. People don't know if you're a miracle or a curse."
"What do you think?" I asked. "Miracle or curse?"
She considered, then shrugged one shoulder.
"I think you're a girl as lost as anyone," she said. "I think you're kinder than most. You say 'thank you' when I help you. You look at me, not through me. That's more than half the lords and ladies here."
It shouldn't have made my throat tight, but it did.
"Thank you," I said again, because apparently that was my thing now.
She twisted two small sections of my hair from my temples, wove them into thin braids, and drew them back to meet at the back of my head, fastening them with a simple strip of leather. The rest of my hair she left loose down my back.
"It's not court fashion," she said. "But it suits you. Makes your face clear."
"I'm not sure that's a good thing," I said. "The prince seems determined to study it like a bug pinned to a wall."
Her hands stilled for a fraction of a second.
"The prince," she said. "You should be careful with him."
"I noticed," I said drily.
"He..." She searched for the words. "He was born knowing the world belonged to him. That's how he walks. How he looks at people. It makes him...cruel, sometimes. Not always. But often enough."
"He doesn't like me," I said.
"He doesn't like being challenged," she replied. "And you...don't know how to be small."
"In this place?" She sighed. "Sometimes it keeps you alive. But sometimes it gets you stepped on. There's no winning answer."
She tied off the braid and smoothed a stray strand behind my ear.
"You asked why we're careful," she said. "Here is my advice, my lady, for whatever it's worth: never lie to the king if you can avoid it. Never defy him if you can't win. Never, ever embarrass him in front of his court. And if the prince wants something from you..." Her mouth tightened. "Make sure you know the cost before you give it."
"I don't plan on giving him anything," I said.
"You already have his curiosity," she said. "Sometimes that's worse."
A knock sounded at the door before I could ask what she meant.
Eliana straightened. "Enter," she called.
He was tall—maybe not quite as giant as Duncan, but close—and dressed in plate polished to a dull sheen. A white cloak fell from his shoulders, fastened at his chest with a simple clasp. His hair was short and brown, his eyes a clear, watchful blue.
He was handsome in a solid, clean way. Not the dangerous, knife-edged beautiful of Aerion. Something steadier.
He bowed his head in my direction.
"My lady Scarlet," he said. His voice was low and even. "I am Ser Twinning. His Grace has commanded that I escort you to the throne room."
White cloak. So: Kingsguard. Or some local equivalent. An actual sworn royal knight.
"Ser Twinning," I said, rising. The dress swished around my ankles. "Thank you."
Eliana ghosted around behind me, fussing with a crease at my shoulder that didn't actually exist.
"You look well, my lady," she murmured. "Remember what I said."
I squeezed her hand briefly. "I will."
Ser Twinning stepped back to let me pass him into the corridor. His face didn't show any reaction, but his eyes did flicker once over the dress, registering the colors, the cut.
He inclined his head again and set off at a measured pace.
We walked in silence at first.
The corridors of the Red Keep were different from Ashford's. The stone was smoother, the tapestries richer, the air cooler. We passed servants carrying trays and scrolls, guards standing at intersections, a lady in a green gown who gave us a look that said we were already a story she'd heard and didn't quite believe.
My shoes clicked softly on the flagstones.
"You've served the king long?" I asked, because the silence started to feel like a weight.
"Long enough," Ser Twinning said.
"That's not an answer," I said. "Not really."
"It's the only one I'll give," he said, but there was a hint of humor in it.
We turned down a broader hall where the floor was laid in patterned stone. Light filtered in from high, narrow windows.
"Do you like it?" I asked. "Serving him."
"I swore an oath," he said at last. "To protect His Grace and his blood. It's not a matter of liking. It's a matter of doing what I said I would do."
"That's very knightly of you," I said.
"That's the idea," he replied.
We walked a few more steps.
"You should answer his questions truthfully," he added, almost as an afterthought. "The king. He values that, even when he doesn't show it. He has little patience for obvious lies."
"I don't know very much," I said. "About why I'm here. About how we came. That's the truth."
"Then say that," Ser Twinning said. "Let the maesters pull their hair out over the rest."
"And if he asks for something I don't want to give?" I asked.
"Then remember you are under his roof," he said. "And that sometimes survival is giving a piece of yourself you'd rather keep."
"That's...ominous," I said.
We reached a pair of huge doors banded with iron. Two guards in better armor than usual stood there, halberds crossed. They straightened when they saw Ser Twinning.
"The king waits," one said.
Ser Twinning nodded. To me, he said, "Head high. Don't stumble. Don't speak until he bids you."
"Got it," I said. "No tripping, no blurting. I'll do my best."
He gave me that almost-smile again, quick and gone, and signaled the guards.
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The throne room was...a lot.
Light knifed in from high, narrow windows, catching motes of dust in the air and turning them into floating sparks. The ceiling vaulted far above, lost in shadow. Tapestries hung between great stone columns. At the far end, on a raised dais, the Iron Throne crouched like something that had grown there by accident and been too dangerous to move.
It looked worse than on the books.
The swords weren't neat or elegant. They were jagged, twisted, half-melted into each other. Edges jutted at odd angles, some honed, some blunt, all of them wrong. It looked less like a chair and more like a metal tumor.
The king sat on it like he was carved from the same stone as the walls.
Aerion stood to his right, a few steps down, arms folded behind his back. A handful of courtiers lingered farther away, like fancy birds perched, watching.
My feet felt very loud as I walked up the long strip of carpet leading to the throne.
Every gaze was a weight on my shoulders.
I stopped where Ser Twinning touched my elbow, maybe ten paces from the dais. Then I dropped into what I hoped was an acceptable curtsey.
He looked at me for a long few seconds. The silence stretched.
"In decent cloth, you look less like a hedge-witch," he said at last. "Sensible of the queen to see you dressed."
"You're grateful for many things, it seems," he said. "Life. Food. Shelter. Clothes." His eyes narrowed. "One begins to wonder what else you'll be grateful enough to give."
My throat tightened. "I don't have much to give, Your Grace," I said. "Not beyond the truth."
"That is precisely what I want," he said. "You told me in Ashford you don't know how you came here."
"Repeat it," he said. "From the beginning. All of it. Leave nothing out for fear I'll think it foolish."
I told him again about the hike in Scotland; I didn't say Scotland, just "far off, where the air is cold and wet." I told him about the stone circle, the humming in the air, the way the world had cracked around us. I told him about the fall that didn't break our bones.
I told him about waking in the grass under a too-bright sky, people staring at us like we were demons.
I left out one thing: that I knew any of their names before they gave them to me.
Everything else, I gave him. There was nothing to be gained from inventing details, and everything to lose.
When I finished, the room was very quiet.
The king steepled his fingers.
"No sign of strange symbols on the stones," he said. "No voices in the air. No one else present at this...transition."
"No, Your Grace," I said. "Just us."
"Three of you," he said. "Always together, from your own land."
"Friends," I said. "Not by blood."
His gaze sharpened. "You have left your family behind?"
"Yes," I said, around the tightness in my chest. "My parents. Others."
"Do you believe you will see them again?" he asked.
The question knocked the breath out of me more than any shove.
"I don't know," I said. "I haven't...had time to believe anything. It happened too fast."
He watched my face. Whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him more than any clever answer would have.
"You say you knew our name," he said. "Targaryen. From tales. Your grandmother, you told the maid."
I tried not to flinch at the fact that he knew what I'd said in what I thought was a private room.
"Yes," I said. "She liked stories."
"What did she say of us?" he asked.
"Not much I remember clearly," I said. "Kings. Dragons. Fire." I hesitated. "She said once that your house's words were 'Fire and Blood.' I thought it sounded...dramatic."
Aerion's eyes narrowed. "You know our words," he said. "Yet you claim ignorance."
"I didn't know they were yours until I heard them here," I said. "I thought they were just a phrase from a story. I told you—we have tales where I come from. That doesn't mean they're true in the same way here."
"Convenient," Aerion said.
"Do your tales say anything of our future?" he asked.
My heart stopped for a second. Then started again, too fast.
A murmur rustled around the room.
"Do they say how I die?" the king asked.
My mouth went dry. "Not that I remember," I said honestly. "Only that there are many kings. Many wars. Many deaths."
He held my gaze, weighing the words, the spaces between them.
"And do you think," he said slowly, "that speaking such tales aloud makes them more likely? Or less?"
"I don't know," I said. "Where I come from, we argue about that. Whether knowing a thing changes it. Whether trying to avoid something makes it happen anyway."
"Prophecy," Aerion said with clear contempt.
"Prophecy," the king echoed. "A dangerous word."
For a moment, my breath caught; some part of me expected the swords to snag his cloak, cut his skin, drag him down. But he moved with the cautious ease of someone who had spent years learning exactly how to get up and down from a chair made of blades without bleeding for it.
Every instinct told me to stay planted. I forced my feet to move.
Up close, the Iron Throne was even worse. I could smell the faint tang of old metal. Some of the blades were rusting. Some had edges still keen.
"These swords," the king said, "are said to be the swords of Aegon's fallen enemies. Melted and twisted. Forced to serve as his seat." He rested a hand on one hilt near his elbow. "Do you see them?"
"You said yesterday that you read of a city of red stone under dragon kings," he said. "You stand in it now. You stand before the chair they say was made when dragons still flew. Is this what you expected?"
"No," I said. "It's...worse. And more real."
"Go on," he said. "If you are some omen sent by gods or demons, a little bit of steel won't change that."
The sword nearest me jutted out at chest level, its hilt half-swallowed by other blades. I laid my fingertips lightly on the flat of it.
It was cool. Not cold, not searing—just a steady, indifferent coolness. It had no opinion on me. It had outlasted men who'd held it once; it would outlast me.
"Yes," I said. My fingers stung faintly where I'd brushed an edge without meaning to.
"Remember that," he said. "Remember, when you think of kings and of crowns, that they sit on things like this. Not on cushions."
He stepped down from the dais, coming to stand almost beside me.
"You are far from home," he said. "You know pieces of our story. I will have those pieces. You will give them willingly, or I will find other ways to take them."
"I don't know enough to be useful," I said softly. "Not yet."
"Then you will learn," he said. "Maester Harl will see you in the library tomorrow. He will put books in your hands and questions in your head. You will answer the ones you can."
I blinked. The library. Books. The idea made my chest tighten in a different way.
"Yes, Your Grace," I said.
He studied me one last time.
"Do not speak of dragons in court unless asked," he said. "Do not speak of prophecies at all. Not yet. The realm does not need more things to fear."
"You may go," he said. "For now. Eat. Rest. Learn how to walk in those clothes without tangling your feet. We will speak again."
It was as much of a dismissal as I was going to get.
I stepped back, bowed my head, and turned toward the long stretch of the hall.
People were watching. They always were.
Halfway to the doors, I realized Ser Twinning was no longer at my side.
I wasn't alone, exactly—guards stood at intervals, and courtiers, and the prince on the dais—but there was a long moment where it was just me and the vastness of the throne room, and the sound of my own heartbeat.
Aerion descended the steps with the feline grace of someone who knew the whole room pivoted around him whether he moved or not.
His pale hair caught the high light; his eyes were unreadable.
"You touched the throne," he said.
"You think that makes you closer to us," he said. Not a question.
"No," I said. "It makes me more aware of how easily it could cut me."
He smiled without warmth. "Good," he said. "You're not entirely stupid."
"I keep hearing that," I said. "It's almost flattering."
He circled me slowly, like a hawk considering whether something is prey or pest.
"The dress suits you," he said. "A black crow wrapped in dragon colors."
"Well," I said. "If someone insists on dressing me like this, I might as well not trip over the hem."
"You wear our colors," he went on. "You speak our name. You stand before our throne and talk of stories where we are already written." His head tilted. "Do you fancy yourself one of us?"
"No," I said. "I know I'm not. That's what makes it dangerous."
"Dangerous for whom?" he asked. "You? Or us?"
He studied my face, searching for something. I don't know what he found.
"You told my father your grandmother spoke of us," he said. "Old kings. Dragons. Fire and blood." His voice wrapped around the words like he was tasting them.
"What else did she say?" he asked. "About us. About me." There was a sharp hunger in that he probably wasn't aware of.
I thought of years of house lore and wiki entries, of timelines that might not even match this world exactly. Of Aerion "Brightflame" in the books—a different Aerion, but still Targaryen, still cruel and mad.
"Nothing," I said. "Nothing about you. I didn't know your name until I heard it here."
"You have a way of making truth sound like insult," he said.
"I'm sorry," I said. "That's not my intention."
"Listen carefully," he said. "You are under my father's protection, which means you are under my eye. You will not use what scraps of half-knowledge you have to twist my court. You will not whisper into ears and call it wisdom. If you play at prophecy, I will burn the game out of you."
The words were quiet. The threat in them was not.
"I don't want to play games," I said. "I just want to stay alive."
"Then next time my father calls you," he said, "remember what you are. A stray dog he finds amusing. Not a dragon. Not a queen. Not a player."
"You keep saying that," I said. "About pieces and players."
"Because it's the only truth that matters here," he said. "Everything else is story."
He stepped back, letting the distance grow.
"For now," he said, "read your books. Let the maesters prod you. Learn our ways, if you insist. But do not think that wearing our colors and knowing our words makes you part of our house."
"Good," he said. "It will make the day easier if my father decides he's done with you."
He turned away before I could answer, cloak snapping behind him as he strode back toward the throne.
I stood there for a moment longer, feeling the hollow weight of the thousand twisted swords behind me and the sharper weight of his gaze, even when it wasn't on me.
Then I squared my shoulders, gathered my red-detailed skirts so I wouldn't trip, and walked out of the throne room.
And that, in itself, was going to change something.
