Chapter 2: Beneath the Throne's Shadow
The summons came not with a page, but with the Queen’s own lady, a woman whose smile was as stiff as her embroidered collar. “Her Grace thought you might enjoy the view from the throne room at this hour,” she said, her tone leaving no room for refusal. “The light through the high windows is quite… instructive.”
Naerys closed her book, the dry words of lineage still itching at her mind. Instructive. Everything here was a lesson. She followed, the rustle of her own grey dress too loud in the quiet hallways.
The throne room was empty of petitioners, but it was never empty of its own presence. The great skulls of long-dead dragons watched from the walls, shadows pooling in their hollow eyes. The high windows did indeed spill twilight, but it was a drowned, dusty light that did little to warm the cavernous space. It bled across the vast floor, stretching towards the dais.
And there it was.
The Iron Throne. A monstrous, asymmetrical heap of black blades, melted and hammered by dragonfire a century past. It wasn’t beautiful. It was a threat given form, a carcass of conquest. The gold veins in the obsidian dais gleamed dully, like old scars.
At its base, two figures were silhouetted.
Queen Alicent stood with perfect posture, a green pillar against the crimson tapestries. Beside her, slouching against a jagged sword-blade that formed part of the throne’s base, was Prince Aegon. Even from across the room, Naerys could see the loose set of his shoulders, the way he leaned his weight.
“Ah, there she is,” Alicent’s voice rang out, sweet and clear. It echoed slightly in the vastness. “Come closer, child. Don’t be afraid.”
Naerys walked forward, her slippers whispering on the stone. The air was cool, smelling of old smoke and cold stone. With every step, the throne seemed to grow, to loom. It was a physical weight, a crush of history.
“Look at it,” Alicent said, as Naerys reached them. She gestured elegantly toward the twisted metal. “Aegon the Conqueror forged it with Balerion’s fire. A reminder that power is not given. It is taken. And held.” She turned her serene gaze on Naerys. “With the right allies.”
Aegon pushed himself upright. His doublet was fine, but slightly askew. A flush colored his cheeks, and his eyes, the same clear green as his mother’s, were bright but unfocused. He smelled of expensive wine and sour sweat.
“Cousin,” he said, the word a little slurred. He offered a loose, waving gesture. “You look… you look very… Targaryen today.”
“She is our blood, Aegon,” Alicent chided gently, as if correcting a minor error. “Of course she does.”
Aegon took a wobbly step forward, closing the distance Naerys had instinctively kept. “It’s the hair,” he said, peering at her. “Like moonlight. Makes the rest of us look… dun.” He laughed, a short, breathy sound. “Even me.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Alicent said, but there was no real reproach in it.
Aegon’s gaze drifted from her hair to her face, lingering too long. “Mother says you’re to keep me company. Now that you live with us.”
“I am a ward of the court, my prince,” Naerys said, her voice carefully neutral. She took a subtle half-step back, her shoulder blades pressing against the cold memory of Helaena’s words. A pin through you.
“A ward,” Aegon repeated, as if tasting the word. He grinned. “Sounds lonely. We can’t have that.” He reached out, not for her hand, but to brush a stray strand of her silver hair behind her ear.
His fingers were damp. They grazed her temple, her cheekbone. Naerys froze, a cold spike driving through her stomach. She didn’t recoil, not visibly. Every muscle locked. She looked past his shoulder, to the Queen.
Alicent was watching, her face a calm mask of observation. Calculating. She said nothing.
Aegon’s hand didn’t withdraw. It cupped her chin, turning her face back towards him. His thumb stroked her jaw. “See? Not lonely at all,” he mumbled, his breath warm and wine-sour against her skin.
Revulsion, hot and immediate, rose in her throat. She wanted to slap his hand away, to bolt from the room. But the Queen’s silent gaze was a chain. The entire Red Keep was a chain. To insult the Crown Prince was unthinkable. To pull away would be to reject the Queen’s unspoken design. She was trapped between the cold blades of the throne and Aegon’s drunken leer.
Her pulse hammered in her ears, louder than the silent dragon skulls. She forced herself to look into his green eyes, to not flinch.
“You’re very quiet,” Aegon murmured, his thumb moving again. “My sister Helaena talks to her spiders. Maybe you just need… livening up.”
“Aegon,” Alicent’s voice cut in, smooth as polished steel. “Do not overwhelm your cousin. She is still in mourning.” It was a dismissal of his behavior, but also a reminder of Naerys’s place. Vulnerable. Isolated. Hers to direct.
Aegon dropped his hand with a shrug, as if he’d lost interest in a toy. “Right. Mourning.” He stumbled back a step, grabbing one of the lower sword hilts for balance. The throne seemed to swallow his slight frame.
“You may go, Naerys,” Alicent said, her smile returning. It didn’t reach her eyes. They were the color of a deep forest, and just as dark. “Thank you for humoring us. We shall see you at supper.”
It was a command cloaked in courtesy. Naerys dipped into a curtsy, the motion automatic, hollow. She couldn’t look at Aegon again. She turned and walked back across the long hall, each step measured, each breath a conscious effort.
The tapestries seemed to writhe as she passed them, scenes of conquest and submission. The dragon skulls watched her go. She could feel their stare, and the Queen’s, and the ghost of Aegon’s damp fingers on her skin, long after she had fled the cavernous chill of the throne room.
She didn’t stop until she reached a narrow, deserted balcony overlooking the city. The evening air was hazy with smoke and the distant sounds of life. She gripped the stone parapet until her knuckles ached, trying to scrub the feeling from her face with the heel of her hand. It didn’t work.
Below, King’s Landing sprawled, a chaotic, stinking tapestry of its own. From here, she could see the Dragonpit, its great dome a broken silhouette against the dusk. A dragon’s prison. A different kind of cage.
Helaena’s words came back, sharp and clear. Mother wants Aegon to look at you.
He had looked. He had touched. And the Queen had watched, approving the inspection.
Naerys leaned over the balcony, the wind whipping her silver hair—the hair that marked her, that made her a target. It wasn’t just her Targaryen blood they wanted. It was her silence. Her compliance. Her value as a piece to be moved next to the drunken, entitled prince. To blend her silver with their green.
A hot, rebellious anger began to burn through the cold shock. It was a clean feeling, sharper than the disgust. She was not a butterfly. She was not a stone in their cyvasse game.
She looked toward the Blackwater Rush, toward the sea. Somewhere beyond it, on an island of smoke and stone, was Dragonstone. And Daemon.
The anchor, however violently ripped away, was still out there. He watched through the stones, Helaena had said. Naerys didn’t know about stones. But she knew, with a certainty that calmed her racing heart, that if he knew what had just happened under that twisted throne, the Red Keep would tremble.
She lifted her chin, the city sprawled beneath her like a map of possibilities. The game was not over. She had just learned the price of her piece. And she had no intention of paying it.
She stayed on the balcony until the last of the sun’s warmth bled from the stone. The phantom feel of Aegon’s fingers on her jaw lingered, a grease-stain on her skin no amount of wind could scour. Supper was a thought that turned her stomach.
Inside, the Keep’s corridors felt narrower, the walls leaning in with their whispered secrets. She heard the clatter of armored boots before she saw them—a double column of gold cloaks, their spears startlingly loud on the marble. They moved with a purposeful urgency she hadn’t seen since the last coronation anniversary.
They passed her without a glance, a river of black leather and steel heading toward the throne room. Their captain’s voice was a low grumble. “He landed not a quarter-hour ago. Went straight to the King.” The man sounded tense.
Naerys stopped walking.
He.
Only one person arrived unannounced and went directly to the King without pausing for ceremony. Only one person commanded that kind of fearful haste from the guards. A wild, impossible hope tightened her chest. She gathered her skirts and changed direction, moving not toward the family dining hall, but toward the smaller, private audience chamber adjacent to the throne room.
She could hear the raised voices before she saw the door. The guards there were stiff, eyes forward, pretending not to hear the arguing leaking through the heavy oak. “—cannot simply appear and make demands, Daemon!” That was King Viserys, his tone wheezy with strained authority.
“I can. And I have.” Daemon’s voice was a blade sliding from its sheath. Cool. Sharp. Ready. “Did you think I wouldn’t hear of it? That I wouldn’t come?”
Naerys pressed herself against the cold wall, just around the corner. Her breath fogged slightly in the air.
“It is a prudent alliance,” Viserys argued, but his words lacked conviction. “The girl is of our blood. Aegon needs a wife who strengthens his claim, who embodies the legacy of the Conqueror. Her hair alone—”
“Her hair is a death sentence if tied to that drunken worm you call a son,” Daemon cut in. There was a sound of something clattering, perhaps a wine cup set down with too much force. “You send a lamb to lay with a disease. Alicent plots, and you nod along, brother. You always did prefer the comfort of your chair to the discomfort of truth.”
“You speak of my Queen—”
“I speak of a viper in your bed. And now her son lays hands on what is mine.”
The word hung in the air, violent and possessive. Naerys’s heart hammered against her ribs. Mine.
There was a long silence. When Viserys spoke again, he sounded tired. Defeated. “What, then, would you have me do? The offer is all but made. Lord Tyland expects it. The Queen has planned it.”
“Unplan it.” Daemon’s voice dropped, becoming more intimate, more dangerous. “There is a simpler solution. One that secures her loyalty, keeps her safe under a roof I control, and does not sever your precious alliance with the Lannisters.”
“What solution?”
“Give her to me.”
Naerys’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a gasp. The cold stone bit into her back.
Viserys spluttered. “To you? As a ward? Daemon, you are not a settled man, you cannot possibly—”
“As a wife.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Naerys could hear the rush of her own blood in her ears.
“You are… you are her uncle,” Viserys finally whispered, scandalized.
“I am her blood,” Daemon corrected, his voice steady. “And blood should keep its own. You think Tyland Lannister loves the girl? He sees a key to the throne. You think Aegon would? He sees a pretty doll. I see her. I know her. She will be safe on Dragonstone. She will be honored. And the Lannisters cannot protest; the bond between crown and rock remains, just through a different strand. Stronger, even. For who is more loyal than me?”
His words were a political argument, clean and logical. But the undercurrent, the one that vibrated through the door, was pure, unadulterated fury. Fury at Aegon’s touch. Fury at Alicent’s scheming. Fury at the thought of her being given away.
“The girl… Naerys… she has not agreed,” Viserys said weakly, a final defense.
“She will,” Daemon said, and there was no doubt in his tone. It was not a question of her affection, but of inevitability. Of protection. “Do you believe she prefers the alternative? After today?”
Naerys remembered the damp thumb on her jaw. The calculated gleam in the Queen’s eyes. The feeling of being a piece on a board.
“You know of today?” Viserys asked, sounding suddenly small.
“I know everything that happens to her.” Daemon’s reply was soft, final. “Make the decree, Viserys. Or I will take her anyway, and your alliance shatters with the sound of Caraxes’s roar. Your choice.”
Another pause, heavy with the weight of a kingdom and a brother’s will. Naerys heard the slow, pained exhale of the King. The creak of his chair.
“Very well,” Viserys said, the words dragged from him. “I will announce it. The marriage will take place here, in a fortnight. Before… before other arrangements can be made.”
“Good.” There was no triumph in Daemon’s voice. Only a grim satisfaction. The sound of boots on stone followed, decisive and approaching the door.
Naerys slipped back, around the corner, just as the chamber door groaned open. Daemon emerged, his leathers still dusted with the soot of Dragonstone. His silver-gold hair was wind-tossed, his violet eyes scanning the hall with a predator’s focus. They passed right over the guards, over the tapestries, and landed on her.
He saw her immediately, as if he’d known she was there all along. He stopped.
The world narrowed to the space between them. The anger that had crackled in the chamber was gone from his face, replaced by something more complex. A fierce, weary relief. He looked at her, really looked, as if checking for damage.
She couldn’t speak. She just stared back, her mind a whirlwind of throne rooms and unwanted touches and now this—this sudden, shocking anchor.
He gave a single, slow nod. It wasn’t a smile. It was an acknowledgment. A promise.
Then he turned and strode down the hall, his cloak sweeping behind him, leaving her alone with the echo of his words and the terrifying, exhilarating shape of her future.