Chapter notes

Early chapter! Enjoy!

The Iron Throne was gone.

Aegon sat alone in the smouldering ruins of the throne room, watching the boiling, molten mass of iron as it hissed and began to solidify into a puddle of nothing on the marble steps. A freezing wind from the early morning sky above him made him shudder despite the dragon blood that ran in his veins. And he had no words or thoughts for the shame…the wrath…the desolation…none of those words meant anything when faced with this. The eternal symbol of the most powerful dynasty in history; the great throne of his ancestors, forged in the fiery breath of Balerion the Dread; three hundred years of might and majesty destroyed in a single evening.

Aegon breathed deeply and regularly; his mind rising up and fighting the hysteria that was beginning to choke him.

It will not take me as it did my grandfather. I will destroy myself sooner than let it take me. I am a Targaryen, of the blood of Old Valyria. I control the fire, not the other way round.

And yet Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion had not heeded him that night. They had destroyed the fucking Iron Throne rather than heed him.

Perhaps I made a mistake, he thought.

There are no mistakes with dragonfire. It bends to your will, or it consumes you. Nothing in between.

It was still unknown how the dragons had escaped. Aegon's small council, a group of imbeciles more concerned with the apparently-unbearable heat of the ruined throne room than with providing prudent council in the face of disaster, suspected that someone had released them ('of course someone released them!' Aegon had roared at that). But however the thing had been done, it had been enough. There were hundreds of casualties and thousands of injuries across the city, both from the wedding massacre and from the fiery carnage that had followed it. The dragons had destroyed every manse in King's Landing, but had somehow managed to spare the whole of Flea Bottom. Maegor's Holdfast was the only thing presently keeping the Red Keep from being considered a pile of rubble on Aegon's Hill, and the list of persons missing, presumed escaped, grew longer and more alarming by the minute: Daenerys, Barristan Selmy, Loras Tyrell, the Imp, his crippled brother…and Arya, whom Lord Varys claimed had been responsible for the dagger's having entered Daenerys' thigh as opposed to her throat.

A thigh wound is no joke, Aegon thought, Daenerys may yet die.

The people, however, will take it as a sign from the gods. A king rejected by the throne does not long sit it, and there is no rejection more powerful than this. My lords will flock to Daenerys' banner, and the people will flock with them. Rebellion will come soon. Not war. Rebellion. And Arya, no doubt, will be where I cannot protect her; where she has been from the beginning: at the side of the pretender who would take my throne from me.

Aegon would never forget that first parley with Daenerys, before the walls of Storm's End. He had come ready to do what he had spent his whole life preparing for: the son of Rhaegar Targaryen uniting himself to another of his line; readying himself to bend the earth to his will; making dragons fly in the skies again; taking back the Iron Throne; fulfilling his sacred duty to his House and his slaughtered kin.

It had been easy, at first. Daenerys had been sharp, proud and beautiful: everything that a Targaryen queen should be. He had been exceedingly pleased with her. Then a shadow had stepped up to her side; tall and silent in white cloak and armour; dark hair gathered over one shoulder and glistening like a waterfall of ebony silk. He had stared into her eyes – grey, silver, like the wind – and he had found utter emptiness staring back at him; darkness, unease, death. It had been like a firestorm in his soul; the destruction and negation of everything that he was born to be. Because from that moment onwards, he would have given up everything that he had ever worked for; without hesitation; without second thoughts; had he only been able to make Arya Stark smile.

But she never smiled for him. She never laughed. She never spoke, unless spoken to first. She didn't even like to look at him for too long. He had tried, so many times, to talk to her; to get her to say something; anything. He had watched her even when she could not see him; observing her as she was when unobserved. Every day he had wanted to peel off her shell and feel the skin of her true self beneath his lips. He had wanted to know who she was, and what she was running from.

But there had been no getting past her unfailing politeness and unshakable coldness, and that same reserve had never left her; not even in battle; not even in the face of death; not even after a dozen sieges and twice as many battles acting as Aegon's sworn shield…not even on the first night after the fall of Casterly Rock, when she had been deathly pale and beautiful as moonlight, and he had wanted her so much it ached.

He had made a fool of himself, and she had never ceased to make a fool of him from that night to this; standing there in his vision like a stone statue; staring at him and glancing away the moment their eyes met; shifting and swallowing each time they were left alone; making him want to believe that her feelings had changed; making him think that her feelings had changed; maddening him; enflaming him; playing with him in this manner for weeks on end; then stepping back from him in revulsion – revulsion – each time he tried to touch her. The look in her eyes; the cold horror on her face…it was inhuman.

And yet he still wanted her. He would still imagine her beneath him each time he was fucking Sansa; see her face flushed with desire; hear her panting and moaning as he thrust his cock deeper into her; wanting him; begging him. Once, he had screamed her name while he was coming. Sansa hadn't been able to stop laughing for ten minutes afterwards. Apparently the hilarity of his wanting to fuck the glacial Arya Stark automatically pardoned the insult; at least in Sansa's perverse mind.

Eventually, a part of him had come to realise that nothing would ever change; no matter how much he wanted it to. She had allowed the ice to penetrate too deeply into her soul. There was no reaching her; not now, not ever. The realisation had caused him more pain than he would ever have been able to describe; the unfairness of it; the thought that the love of a King of Westeros was not powerful enough; inspiring enough; flattering enough, to expunge years of self-effacement, and whatever else it was they'd done to her, far away across the Narrow Sea.

But then the tourney for Sansa's wedding had taken place, and Jaime Lannister had offered the crown of winter roses to her on the tip of his lance…and like a Northern spring, she had broken through the ice, and breathed.

Her face had been extraordinary. Her eyes had turned to wildfire, and her skin to the colour of blood and snow, and she had glared at Jaime as though she had wanted to murder him where he stood. And there had been no reserve, no coldness, no unwavering politeness, but passion. Fire. Emotion. She had looked at Jaime as she would at a lover; the transformation beautiful; exquisite; alive; and Jaime had stared back at her, looking very pleased with himself; and the piercing silence, and the threat of war, and Daenerys' frantic whisperings had meant nothing to him, because the only, pathetic thought in his head had been: 'why him?'

Aegon had done his best to forget that question the moment it had occurred to him. It was weak, juvenile and unworthy of a king. But when the hunt had taken place in the Kingswood…when he had heard of her injury and gone to her in the maester's tent with his heart in his throat, he had found himself asking it again, and out loud.

He had found her dead to the world, sleeping off a boar attack and half a gallon of milk of the poppy; and the sound of him entering the tent must have awakened some tiny, inexplicably-conscious part of her, because she had shifted slightly, and had murmured softly in her sleep: 'Jaime.'

It was incomprehensible.

Why him? Why in seven hells – him? The man is an empty shell, a cripple, a traitor, an arrogant fool more than twice her age who pushed her brother out of a window, for fuck's sake; who brought one of the greatest Houses in Westeros to ruin because he couldn't keep his cock out of his own sister.

Has she lost her mind?

'Your Grace.'

Aegon jumped at the voice, but relaxed at the familiar sight of Varys looking politely down at him; his eyes tired, but alert.

'I have heard many new songs this past hour,' the eunuch said, 'some more interesting than others. Would Your Grace care to listen?'

Aegon hauled himself to his feet, and brushed the ash from his doublet. Black and red turned grey beneath his hands.

'By all means, Lord Varys,' Aegon said, 'let us hear what your little birds have to tell us.'