Chapter 3: The Lonely Pup Approaches
The dawn was a thief, stealing the deep black and leaving a flat, grey world in its place. The rain had stopped, but the air clung, heavy and damp, to everything. Nera watched the camp stir from her island of warmth and steam, her back still against Cain’s flank. She felt the decision she’d made in the dark hours sitting in her stomach like a stone—familiar, but newly carved.
Movement caught her eye. Not the purposeful stride of a knight or the hurried scamper of a squire. This was a halting, deliberate approach. Aerion.
He picked his way across the churned mud, his eyes not on her, but on the dragon. He wore a dark tunic, high-collared, but no armor. His silver-gold hair was damp and neatly combed, a stark contrast to the wildness of the previous day. He stopped a full ten paces from the edge of the steam-clouded ground, as if he’d reached an invisible boundary. His hands hung at his sides, fingers flexing, then curling into fists, then relaxing again.
Nera said nothing. She let him look.
Cain was awake, his great head resting on the ground, one gold-coin eye half-lidded but watchful. The low rumble in his chest was a constant, like the earth’s own heartbeat.
Aerion’s gaze traveled over the black scales, each one the size of a shield, tracing the powerful lines of the folded wings, the wicked curve of a spine-ridge. There was no cruelty in his face now, no ambition. There was only a hungry, aching wonder. It was the look of a boy who’d spent his life reading about lightning, suddenly standing beneath the storm.
He took one step forward. Then another. The mud sucked at his boots. He entered the ring of warmth, the sudden change in temperature making him shiver. He was within touching distance of Cain’s shoulder. He lifted a hand, fingers trembling slightly, then hesitated, his eyes flicking to Nera.
“Will he burn me?” Aerion’s voice was unlike any she’d heard from him—quiet, stripped of its mocking edge. It cracked on the last word.
“Not unless I tell him to,” Nera said. Her own voice was morning-rough. “Or unless you’re stupid. Are you being stupid, pup?”
He flinched at the name, but it wasn’t the flinch of insult. It was the flinch of recognition. He gave a jerky, almost imperceptible shake of his head.
“Then he won’t burn you.”
Aerion’s hand completed its journey. His fingertips, pale and long-fingered, brushed against a scale near Cain’s shoulder. It wasn’t cold, as he might have expected. It was warm, like stone baked by a full day’s sun, and smoother than it looked, with a texture like polished jet. The moment his skin made contact, his breath hitched. His other hand came up, pressing flat against the dragon.
Cain’s eye opened fully. The vertical pupil contracted, focusing on the young man attached to his side. He exhaled, a slow, deliberate stream of hot air that gusted over Aerion, carrying the scent of deep earth and embers.
Aerion didn’t pull away. He leaned into it. His eyes squeezed shut. His shoulders, which always seemed held rigidly high, slumped. His face, usually a mask of sharp angles and disdain, crumpled. It wasn’t a sob. It was a silent, profound collapse of some interior wall he’d spent years carefully maintaining. A single tear tracked a clean line through the dawn’s grime on his cheek.
Nera watched, her own throat tight. She knew that feeling. The first time she’d touched Cain, after the long, terrifying ritual of bonding, it hadn’t been triumph she’d felt. It had been this: a relief so absolute it was agony. The end of a loneliness so complete you forgot you were in it, until suddenly you weren’t.
“He’s… he’s real,” Aerion whispered, his forehead now resting against the scale.
“Annoyingly so,” Nera said, softening the words with her tone. “He hogs the warmth and judges you silently. You get used to it.”
Aerion opened his eyes, pulling back just enough to look at her. The lilac eyes were bright, washed clean. “How?” he asked, the question vast and unformed. “How do you… talk to him?”
“You don’t, not with words he understands. You feel. He feels back. It’s like shouting into a canyon and having the echo tell you what you actually meant.” She shifted, pulling her knees up. “Your uncle told me he dreamed of flying. Did you?”
Aerion looked down, his fingers tracing the edge of a scale. “I dreamed of being looked at,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t catch it. “Not for my name. Not because I was my father’s son. Just… looked at. Seen.” He glanced at Cain’s immense, patient head. “He sees me.”
“He sees your heartbeat. Your body heat. The smell of your fear or your curiosity. It’s not the same.”
“It’s better,” Aerion said, with sudden, startling conviction. “It’s honest.”
From across the field, near the lords’ pavilion, Maekar watched. He stood motionless beside his tent flap, a cup of something steaming forgotten in his hand. He saw his son, the boy who strutted and sneered and caused endless friction, pressing himself against the dragon like a child seeking comfort. He saw the curve of Aerion’s back, the vulnerability in his posture. It was a sight that unnerved him more than any act of arrogance. The guilt was a cold knot in his gut, intertwined with a confusing pang of jealousy. He was the father. Why did it take a monster from legend to make his son look so… unburdened?
He couldn’t hear their words, but he saw Nera speak, saw Aerion nod, his head bowed. The woman he’d accused of sorcery had, in a day, done what he had failed to do in eighteen years: she had disarmed his son. Not through threat, but through… what? Understanding? He took a swig of the bitter, cooling tea. The weight of the almost-lance was still in his hand. The phantom impact still vibrated up his arm. He’d slept in fitful bursts, each time jerking awake from the same silent scream: I did not see you!
“Brooding is a solo activity, you know. You’re supposed to do it in a tower, not at a tent flap.”
Maekar didn’t turn. Only Baelor would approach so quietly and speak so lightly. “I’m not brooding. I’m observing.”
Baelor came to stand beside him, following his gaze. A slow smile spread across his face. “Gods be good. He’s not preening. He’s… petting it.”
“He’s making a fool of himself,” Maekar grumbled, but the heat wasn’t there.
“Is he?” Baelor asked gently. “He looks more like a person right now than he has in years. Less like a weapon trying to prove its edge.”
Maekar’s jaw worked. He couldn’t deny it. The sight chipped away at his anger, leaving something raw and tender beneath. “She calls him ‘pup’.”
“And he comes when she calls,” Baelor observed. “Interesting.”
They stood in silence for a moment, two princes watching a third, simpler kingdom of two beings and a dragon.
“She agreed to stay,” Baelor said. “To consider the alliance.”
Maekar grunted. “So we’re to have a permanent dragon-shaped shadow now. And a woman who dreams our deaths for breakfast.”
“A woman who prevented one,” Baelor corrected. “And a dragon who listens to her. That’s not a shadow, brother. That’s… a different kind of sun. The light is harsher, but it shows things as they are.” He clapped Maekar on the shoulder. “Come. Let’s not observe from the shadows. It’s rude.”
Maekar allowed himself to be led, falling into step beside his brother. The path to the dragon felt longer than it was.
As they approached, Aerion straightened up quickly, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand. His mask started to slip back into place, a defensive haughtiness returning to his eyes, but it was cracked now, ill-fitting.
Baelor ignored the young man’s fluster and gave Nera a small bow. “My lady. I see you’ve acquired an apprentice.”
“More of a curious stray,” Nera said, her amber eyes glinting. “He’s not much for conversation, but he’s quiet.”
Aerion looked at the ground, his ears turning pink.
Maekar stopped, maintaining his distance. He nodded at Nera, a stiff, formal acknowledgment. His eyes then moved to his son. “Aerion.”
“Father.” The word was neutral, a wall.
The silence stretched, thick with everything unsaid. The steam from Cain’s nostrils seemed to coil around the words they weren’t speaking.
Baelor cleared his throat. “The camp is packing. The Ashfords are anxious for us to be on our way, though I think they’d pay us to leave the dragon.” He looked at Nera. “Your… Cain. Can he travel alongside a column? Without causing a panic every league?”
“He travels where he likes,” Nera said. “But he’ll follow. From above. It causes less panic if they see him from a distance first. Gives men time to decide whether to shit themselves or pray.”
Aerion let out a sudden, sharp burst of laughter, then choked it back, looking surprised at himself.
Maekar’s lips twitched. It was almost, but not quite, a smile. The vulgarity was so matter-of-fact it disarmed him.
“Practical,” Baelor said, grinning. “We’ll ride for King’s Landing by week’s end. There are… arrangements to make. You’ll have an escort. Maekar’s men, if that’s still acceptable.”
Nera looked at Maekar. His dark violet eyes met hers, and she saw the conflict there: the pride, the guilt, the stubborn sense of duty. He was a man holding a hundred conflicting loyalties, each one sharp enough to draw blood. She gave a single nod. “They’re quiet. I like quiet.”
Maekar returned the nod. An understanding. A temporary truce.
“Can I…” Aerion’s voice was tentative. He was looking at Nera, then at his father, then back at Nera. “When we travel… could I ride near the escort? To… to observe?”
“To observe,” Nera repeated, deadpan.
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to keep up, pup. And no complaining about the dragon shit. It’s impressive and he’s proud of it.”
This time, Maekar did smile. It was a small, worn thing, but it was real. He saw his son not as a rival or a problem, but as a young man, eager and awkward, asking a terrifying woman for permission to be near her monster. It was so human it hurt.
“See that you don’t get in the way,” Maekar said, his voice softer than he’d intended.
Aerion’s head snapped up, hearing the change in tone. He searched his father’s face, found no anger there, only a weary caution. “I won’t,” he said, and it sounded like a promise.
Cain lifted his head then, stretching his neck with a series of audible pops and cracks that echoed like breaking timber. He yawned, revealing a cavernous maw lined with teeth longer than swords, his forked tongue lolling. Then he shook himself, a tremendous ripple of muscle and scale that sent a shower of collected rainwater flying, drenching them all.
Baelor laughed, wiping his face. Maekar sputtered. Aerion just stood there, soaked and grinning like an idiot.
Nera patted the dragon’s side. “That means he’s bored. And hungry. The ‘arrangements’ for today had better include several cattle. Unless you want him to go foraging on his own.”
As they turned to make the necessary, surreal preparations for a journey alongside a dragon, the dynamic had subtly, irrevocably shifted. The cracks were still there—in Maekar’s soul, in Aerion’s psyche, in the very fabric of a kingdom unprepared for a living myth. But for the first time, light was getting in. Not the gentle light of dawn, but the fierce, illuminating light of dragonfire, revealing them all to each other, raw and real and terribly, hopefully alive.
Not the gentle light of dawn, but the fierce, illuminating light of dragonfire, revealing them all to each other, raw and real and terribly, hopefully alive.
The column moved at the pace of its slowest wagons, a crawling serpent of men, horses, and dust. Above, a shadow drifted, silent and vast, tracing their path. Cain flew high enough to be a shape, not a terror, but his presence was a constant hum in the teeth of every man below. Conversations were subdued. Eyes flicked upward. The world felt watched.
Aerion kept his word, riding a sleek black courser near the front of Maekar’s guard contingent, which formed a loose ring around Nera. She rode a steady bay palfrey, her posture relaxed, her gaze often on the horizon. For the first hour, he just watched her, stealing glances when he thought she wasn’t looking. She was always looking.
“You’re thinking loudly, pup,” she said, not turning her head. “It’s distracting.”
He nudged his horse closer, the comfortable sneer he’d usually wear feeling like a stiff, foreign mask. He left it off. “You said your house was Phôen. I’ve read every history of Valyria. I never saw that name.”
“You read Targaryen histories,” Nera corrected, her tone matter-of-fact. “Written by your forebears, who survived. The histories of the forty families who didn’t make it out of the Doom? They’re ash. Or they’re carved on stones no one living can read.” She finally glanced at him. “We were the Keepers of the Deep Fires. Not the biggest. Not the most political. We listened to the volcanoes. We understood the pressure.”
Aerion chewed on that. “So you weren’t dragonlords?”
“We were dragon-hearers.” A faint, sad smile touched her lips. “Your ancestors shouted commands. Ours… interpreted whispers. A Phôen bond was quieter. It was why our dragons were often the last to rage, and the first to mourn.” She looked up, though Cain was a speck. “He’s not quiet. But he listens. It’s a remnant.”
“The last of the quiet ones is a monster who blots out the sun,” Aerion said, and it wasn’t an insult. It was awe.
“He has feelings about that,” Nera said. “Mostly pride.”
Later, when Baelor took a turn riding beside her, the questions were different. He spoke of governance, of legacy, his brown-and-indigo eyes thoughtful.
“A house that listened,” he mused. “We could have used that. We shout so much. At each other, at our lords, at the world.” He shifted in his saddle, a comfortable, familiar creak of leather. “My father’s court is a chorus of shouted wants. A single listener would be a radical thing.”
“Listening implies you might change your mind based on what you hear,” Nera said. “Are you prepared for that?”
Baelor laughed, a short, genuine sound. “I am. My father, King Daeron? He listens to reason, to logic. But a new voice, an ancient voice with a dragon… he’ll hear a tool. A magnificent, unprecedented tool to be slotted into his plans.” His smile faded, became something more cautious. “He will want to secure you. Permanently.”
Nera knew what that meant. She stared ahead at the dusty road. “I am not a cup to be passed around a wedding feast.”
“No,” Baelor agreed softly. “You are a tidal wave. But he will see only the harbor he hopes you’ll fill.”
Maekar watched it all from a dozen horse-lengths back. He saw Aerion’s eager lean, the way his son’s hands gestured as he asked another question. He saw Baelor’s easy, conversational posture. He saw Nera’s profile, the way her silver-streaked hair escaped its braid in the wind. She was a pivot point, and his family was tilting toward her. The guilt was a cold companion, but under it now stirred a sharper, more present unease. This was changing things. Faster than he could calibrate.
At midday, they halted in a broad meadow beside a rushing stream. Men scattered to tend to horses and fill waterskins. Cain descended a half-mile away, landing with a thud that sent birds screaming from distant trees. He promptly curled up in a sunny spot, becoming a strange, scaled hill.
Nera dismounted, walking to the stream’s edge alone. She knelt, cupped water in her hands, and drank. Aerion made to follow, but a look from his father stopped him cold. Maekar merely shook his head once. The boy scowled, but stayed put, turning his frustration on a piece of hard cheese instead.
Baelor came to stand beside Maekar, both of them leaning against a mossy fallen log. They watched Nera, a solitary figure of grey and silver against the green bank.
“She asks the right questions,” Baelor said quietly, peeling the bark off a twig.
“She asks dangerous questions,” Maekar corrected, his voice low. “She makes Aerion think there’s value in something other than strength. She makes you think a listener is what we need. She makes me…” He trailed off, the unspoken feel hanging in the air.
“She makes you see the boy, not the weapon,” Baelor finished. He followed Maekar’s gaze. “I think she’d be good for our family. A stabilizer. God knows we need one.”
Maekar grunted, unconvinced.
“But knowing our parents,” Baelor continued, his tone dropping further, becoming almost confidential, “it will become political faster than Cain can bank in a turn. Father will hear ‘last scion of a Valyrian house’ and ‘unbound dragon’ in the same report. His first, second, and third thoughts will be consolidation.”
He flicked the twig into the stream. “He’ll want her to marry into the family. To not lose her. To make that dragon officially a Targaryen asset. He’ll be drawing up a list of suitable bachelors before we’ve even passed through the city gates. Probably starting with whatever unmarried son or cousin he deems most pliable.”
Maekar’s stomach tightened. He imagined it instantly, the cold machinery of royal matchmaking swinging into motion. It felt vulgar. A transaction laid over the raw, real thing they were all just starting to navigate.
“And Mother?” Maekar asked, though he knew the answer.
Baelor’s face was a study in pained understanding. “Queen Myriah will wish her gone as soon as possible. A foreign woman of unknown loyalties, with more inherent power than anyone except the king himself? A woman who commands absolute attention from her sons and her grandson?” He shook his head. “Mother rules the inner court. She is its sun. Nera is a comet, blazing through her sky. Comets are chaos. They are omens. She will see a threat.”
They stood in silence, the cheerful sounds of the camp around them a stark contrast to the future taking dark shape between them. It was a familiar tension—their father’s calculating ambition versus their mother’s protective, possessive love for the family’s structure. Nera, and Cain, would be tossed into the center of that old, quiet war.
Across the meadow, Nera stood, wiping her hands on her trousers. She turned, her amber eyes finding the two brothers instantly, as if she’d felt the weight of their discussion. She held Maekar’s gaze for a beat too long, a look that was neither friendly nor hostile. It was assessing.
Then Aerion, unable to contain himself any longer, broke away from the guards and strode toward her, holding out an apple. “For your horse,” he said, his voice carrying across the distance.
Maekar watched his son’s earnest, unguarded face. He watched Nera accept the apple with a nod, her severe expression softening just at the edges. He saw the inevitable collision ahead: the pure, desperate need in Aerion’s eyes, the complex refuge Nera offered, and the crushing political machinery of King’s Landing waiting to grind it all into manageable dust.
Baelor was right. It was already political. And they were all riding straight into the teeth of it.
And they were all riding straight into the teeth of it.
The woods finally thinned, giving way to the rolling, farm-dotted hills of the Crownlands. Then, one afternoon, they crested a rise and there it was, sprawled across three hills like a beast itself: King’s Landing. The smoke from a thousand hearths hazed the sky, and the distant, salt-tinged scent of the Blackwater Rush met the stench of humanity. It was a grey, buzzing hive of a city. Cain’s shadow, drifting overhead, seemed to pause, to stretch, as if measuring it.
Baelor drew his horse up beside Nera’s, his easy smile gone. “We’ll make camp here,” he said, gesturing to a cleared pasture a half-mile from the walls. “It’s best.”
Nera looked from the city to his face. “Best for whom?”
“For them.” He nodded toward the walls. “And for you. Riding Cain through the Mud Gate would cause a riot. Panic. Crushed children.” He met her amber gaze. “Let them get used to the idea of you from a distance first. Let my father hear the reports before he sees the reality. It gives him room to be a king, not a startled man with a city at his back.”
She understood. Control.Presentation. She was a surprise to be unwrapped slowly. “And him?” She glanced up.
“He’ll find a hill. He’ll be fine. We’ll send cattle. Many cattle.”
Aerion, who had ridden close, looked crestfallen. “We’re not going in together?”
“No,” Maekar said, his voice firm as he joined them. He’d been quiet for miles. “We are not.” His eyes were on the Red Keep’s towers, a distant cluster of stone claws scraping the sky. He was already there, in those halls, feeling the weight of judgment. “We go in as we left. A royal party. Alone.”
Nera dismounted, her boots sinking into the soft grass. She looked at the three of them: the heir, the soldier, the proud pup. “Go on, then. Do your explaining. I’ll stay with the dragon.”
She didn’t wait for their farewells. She walked away from the column, towards the tree line where Cain was already descending, drawn by the promise of rest and the massive, nervous herd of cattle being driven into the adjacent field by wide-eyed drovers. The distance between her and the city felt solid, a moat not of water, but of intention.
The silence in the Small Council chamber was thick enough to choke on. King Daeron II, the Good, sat at the head of the table, his hands steepled. He was a man of books and quiet words, but his gaze, a paler version of Maekar’s violet, missed nothing.
“A Phôen,” he said, the word a delicate fossil on his tongue. “The Keepers of the Deep Fires. I have a fragment of a text… Volantis… it mentions a schism over dragon-bond philosophy weeks before the Doom.” He looked at Baelor. “And she simply arrived? Prophetic dreams?”
“She saw a tragedy, Father,” Baelor said, standing easy but alert. “She saw me dead. She saw Maekar’s lance in the cause. She prevented it. Her word is sound.”
The King’s eyes shifted to Maekar, who stood like a statue by the window, his back to the room. “Maekar.”
Maekar turned. He said nothing, just gave a single, sharp nod. The confirmation was more powerful than any oath.
“And the beast?” the King asked.
“Obedient to her,” Baelor answered. “Intelligent. Not a dumb animal. A partner. He responds to her will, not specific commands. Their bond is… profound.”
Queen Myriah, dark-eyed and sharp-featured, spoke from her seat beside the king. Her voice was cool silk. “Profound. A profound bond with a weapon that can burn cities. And this woman, her loyalties are to what, exactly? A house of ghosts? Her own whims?”
“Her loyalty was to preventing needless death within our family,” Baelor said, a slight edge entering his tone. “That seems a compelling start.”
King Daeron tapped a fingernail on the polished oak. “Is she bound? To any other family? By marriage, by oath?”
The question hung there. Baelor had predicted this exact calculus.
“She is not,” Maekar said, the words rough. He hadn’t moved from the window.
“She is the last of her line,” Baelor added, carefully neutral. “Unbound.”
“Splendid,” King Daeron said, and a thin, tactical smile touched his lips. It did not reach his eyes. “That is… auspicious. A woman of pure Valyrian descent, of a noble, if extinct, house. In possession of a unique and formidable asset. And unbound.” He let the word resonate in the quiet room.
His gaze traveled slowly from Baelor to Maekar and back. The meaning was as clear as a shouted order. Baelor, widowed for five years. Maekar, widowed for over a decade. Both with sons, but no wives. Both theoretically… available.
Baelor’s polite mask solidified into something rigid. Maekar’s back, already straight, tightened until the muscles stood in cords beneath his tunic. He stared out at the city, his jaw a hard line.
The King continued, musing aloud as if discussing a tract of land. “Such an alliance must be made permanent. For the stability of the realm. To fully integrate such a power into the fabric of the dynasty. Marriage is the obvious solution. A splendid idea.” He looked at his sons, his expression one of benign reason. “It would secure the dragon to the crown irrevocably. It would give her a proper place, a true family. It settles everything neatly.”
Queen Myriah’s face was a carefully composed blank, but her knuckles were white where they gripped the arm of her chair. A foreign dragon-witch, one of her sons’ potential wife? The disruption was immeasurable.
“Father,” Baelor began, his voice strained with the effort to remain diplomatic. “She is not a prize to be secured. She is a person, with a will as formidable as the dragon’s. To approach her with a marriage treaty as our first act of good faith would be… a catastrophic misstep.”
“It would be politics,” the King corrected gently. “And she is now a political entity. The most significant one to arrive in Westeros since Aegon’s sisters. We must be practical.” He smiled again. “Think on it. Either of you would be suitable. Or, if she is resistant to a match of her own generation, there is always the younger line. Your son, Maekar. Daeron is, what, twenty? A betrothal could be made.”
Maekar turned from the window. The violence in the movement was contained but palpable. His dark violet eyes burned. “No.”
The single word was absolute, final, and vibrated with a father’s ferocity. It wasn’t just about Nera. It was about Aerion’ hungry wonder, about Daeron’s quiet bookishness, about not selling another one of his boys to the crown’s cold machinery.
King Daeron raised a placating hand. “We are only exploring possibilities, Maekar. No decisions are being made today. But the principle stands. She must be bound to us. Permanently.” He looked at Baelor. “You have her trust. Sound her out. Gently. Discover her inclinations.”
Baelor felt sick. He’d brought her here to offer an alliance, not a marriage bed. He saw the whole, beautiful, fragile understanding they’d built on the road—the unburdening of Aerion, the tentative truce with Maekar, Nera’s wary consideration—threatened by this blunt, transactional thinking.
“And if her inclination is to remain unbound?” Baelor asked.
King Daeron’s benign expression didn’t flicker. “Then we must be very persuasive. For the good of the realm.”
The audience was over. Maekar was the first to leave, his boots striking the stone floor like hammer blows. Baelor followed, feeling the weight of the new, ugly task settled on his shoulders.
Out in the corridor, away from the guards, Maekar stopped. He turned, and the raw, angry anguish on his face was shocking. “He sees a breeding program. For dragons.”
“He sees security,” Baelor said, but the argument was ash in his mouth.
“He sees a thing to be owned!” Maekar hissed, keeping his voice low. “And he will use us to do it. You saw his face. He was already weighing you against me. Which widower is the better stallion for the mare?”
“Don’t,” Baelor warned, a headache beginning to pound behind his eyes. “Don’t make it crude. We won’t let it happen.”
“How?” Maekar demanded, his voice breaking. “He is the King. And she is… what is she? A dreamer with a monster. She doesn’t know the cage he’s already building for her in his mind.”
They stood in the dim corridor, the sound of the city a distant murmur. The relief of Ashford was gone, erased by a colder, more familiar dread. They had to go back out there, to the camp, to Nera. They had to look at her, talk to her, with this new, secret pressure hanging between them.
Outside the walls, the sun dipped, painting the sky in bruises of purple and orange. Cain was a dark mound on a hill, sated and sleeping. Nera sat by a small fire, poking the embers with a stick. She felt the decision before she saw the torchlight. Felt the altered rhythm of their approach.
Baelor and Maekar emerged from the gloom, their faces etched with the grim news of the city. Aerion trailed behind, looking lost. They smelled of incense, stone dust, and tension.
No one spoke for a long moment. The fire cracked.
Nera didn’t look up. “Out with it.”
Baelor sat heavily on a log. “My father is… intrigued. And grateful.”
Maekar remained standing, a shadow. “He wants details. All of them.”
“He asked if you were bound,” Baelor said, the words forced out. “To any family. By marriage.”
Nera’s poking stopped. The amber light of the flames caught her eyes as she lifted them. She looked from Baelor’s pained honesty to Maekar’s rigid anger, and finally to Aerion’s confused stare. She understood. It unfolded in their postures, in the unsaid words choking the air.
A soft, incredulous sound escaped her. It wasn’t quite a laugh. “Ah.”
“He thinks it would be a splendid idea,” Baelor said, the king’s phrase tasting foul, “to marry you into the Targaryen line. To make the alliance… permanent. Unbreakable.”
The silence was absolute, save for the fire. Nera looked into the flames, her face unreadable. She thought of the cold fortress of her ancestors, of the silence she had chosen. She thought of the warm, chaotic, fraught humanity of these past few days.
“He looked at you,” she said quietly, finally meeting Baelor’s gaze. “And he looked at you.” Her eyes shifted to Maekar. “And he probably looked at the boys. Weighing options. Political stock.”
Maekar flinched.
“I am not a damn tapestry to be stitched onto your banner,” she said, her voice low and venomous. The stick in her hand snapped.
On the hill, Cain lifted his head. A low, questioning rumble traveled through the earth to the soles of their feet. He’d heard the snap. He’d felt the shift in her.
Nera stood, brushing off her trousers. She looked toward the city, its lights beginning to prick the twilight. “You can tell your king I am unbound. And I intend to stay that way.” She turned her molten gaze on them all. “The dragon is not a dowry.”
She walked away from the fire, towards the massive black shape on the hill. Her silhouette merged with the deepening dark.
Aerion found his voice, small and hurt. “She’s angry.”
“Yes,” Maekar said, the word a sigh of exhaustion. He watched her go, a strange, protective fury warring with his own resentment. His father’s “splendid idea” had just turned their fragile new sun into a potential wildfire.
And it was pointing back at them.