Viserys sat, though he perched on the edge of the chair rather than settling into it, the posture of a man too full of his own argument to allow his body any real stillness while his mind raced ahead of it.
"The Iron Islands have raided our coasts for years, brother," he said, leaning forward slightly, hands gesturing as he spoke, warming further into the argument with every word. "Since before either of us was born. Fishing villages burned. Women taken. Every Storm lord and Reach lord along that coastline has buried someone lost to an Ironborn longship at one time or another, and every time, the Iron Throne has done little more than scold whichever Greyjoy happened to be sitting the Seastone Chair that year. Quellon has tried harder than his fathers before him, I'll grant him that much, but even he could not keep his own son from raising the old banners again. The Greyjoys have proven, generation after generation, that they cannot be trusted to govern that place." He drew a breath, and something bright and eager moved behind his eyes. "I have spent two years in your small council now, brother. Watching. Listening, the way you always tell me a king must listen before he acts. I understand what needs to be built there. Ships answering to the Crown rather than to raiding captains. Lords who profit more from trade than from reaving. I could build that. Give me the chance, and I will prove it to you."
Damon let the silence stretch a moment after his brother finished, unhurried, weighing each word Viserys had spoken and finding, as he so often did lately, more ambition in them than substance.
"I have no intention of changing who rules the Iron Islands," he said finally, evenly, "unless Lord Quellon dies. And even then, brother, it would not be you."
The words landed cleanly, without cruelty in their delivery but without softness either, and Damon watched them settle over his brother's face, watched the eager brightness there falter, just slightly, before Viserys forced it back into something steadier.
"You said yourself I've spent two years learning in that council."
"You have spent two years sitting in that council," Damon corrected, "which is not the same thing as learning from it, whatever you may believe of yourself. I doubt you've learned very much at all, Viserys, beyond how to arrange your face into something you believe passes for patience." His violet eyes did not waver from his brother's. "You are not nearly so skilled at hiding what sits beneath that face as you think you are. Not in a room full of people who have spent their whole lives learning to read exactly what men like you try hardest to conceal."
The chair scraped hard against the stone as Viserys shoved back from the table and rose, sudden and sharp enough that the sound of it carried clearly through the solar's heavy door. A heartbeat later the door itself swung open, two of the Kingsguard stationed in the corridor beyond stepping quickly into the room, hands already moving toward Viserys' shoulders.
Damon raised one hand, unhurried, and the guards stopped where they stood, uncertain, caught between the King's silent command and the sight of his own brother standing in open, visible anger before him.
Viserys ignored them entirely. His eyes had not left Damon's, not for a moment, something raw and unguarded finally breaking through the careful composure he'd spent two years constructing.
"Is having ambition a crime, then?" he demanded, voice rising, echoing faintly off the solar's stone walls. "Is that my failing, brother? That I want something more than standing behind your chair pouring wine for lords who barely see me at all?"
"No," Damon said, and his own voice remained level even as his brother's climbed. "Ambition isn't the problem, Viserys. I have no quarrel with your wanting more than what you have. Every capable man wants that, in some measure, and I would think less of you if you didn't." He rose slowly from his own seat, unhurried, meeting his brother's height across the table between them. "What I have a problem with is the ego that's grown alongside that ambition. The conviction, however carefully you try to hide it, that you are simply better than the men and women around you. That things, land, titles, my trust, ought to belong to you, simply because of who you are, rather than anything you've actually done to earn them. That is what troubles me, brother. Because I know exactly where convictions like that lead a man, given enough time and enough power to indulge them."
"You don't trust me," Viserys said, and the words came out sharper now, wounded in a way he clearly hadn't intended to let show. "Why? What have I done, beyond ask for the chance to prove myself?"
"Trust is earned," Damon said simply. "It is not owed, not even to blood. If you were anyone else in this realm, Viserys, if I had even the faintest suspicion in some other lord that he harbored the same thoughts I suspect you harbor, that man would already be dead, and I would not lose a single night's sleep over the decision." He let that settle, plain and unadorned, before softening it, only slightly. "You are my brother. That means something to me, whatever else stands between us tonight. It means I am giving you every chance a lesser man would never receive, to prove to me that you are worth trusting with the things you say you want. But you have not proven it. Not in two years, and certainly not by storming into my solar at this hour, shouting at guards who were only doing their duty." His eyes held steady on his brother's. "You want land. You want responsibility. You want my trust. Then earn it, Viserys. Prove to me you're worth it. That is the only path that has ever been open to you, and it remains open now, if you're willing to walk it properly instead of demanding I simply hand you the destination."
Viserys opened his mouth, some retort already gathering behind his teeth, but before a single word of it could escape him, the door swung open again, harder this time, and Rhaella Targaryen swept into the room with two more guards trailing close behind her, her expression thunderous in a way neither of her sons had seen in a very long while.
"Enough," she said, and the single word cracked through the tension in the room like a whip. Her eyes found Viserys first, sharp and unyielding. "Enough, Viserys. Whatever this is, it ends now."
She turned to the guards who had followed her in. "Escort my son to his chambers. See that he remains there for the rest of the night."
The two guardsmen stepped forward without hesitation, one closing a firm hand over Viserys' shoulder. For a moment it seemed he might resist, his jaw tightening, his eyes flicking once more toward Damon as though searching for some final word, some reprieve. None came. Damon simply watched him go, expression unreadable, and Viserys, finding nothing there to argue against, allowed himself to be turned and led from the room, his footsteps fading down the corridor beyond.
Rhaella waited until the door had closed fully behind them before she dismissed the remaining guards with a short, tired gesture, and they too withdrew, leaving mother and son alone in the candlelit solar.
She crossed to the overturned chair Viserys had abandoned, righted it with brisk, practiced hands, and settled into it across from Damon, studying him for a long moment in silence.
Damon exhaled slowly, some of the careful tension he'd held through the whole exchange finally easing from his shoulders now that the room held only the two of them.
"I leave for Casterly Rock tomorrow," he said before she could speak. "You'll hold the city until I return."
Rhaella's eyes searched his face a moment longer. "Don't you want to speak of what just happened here? With your brother?"
"No," Damon said. Then, after a pause, quieter, "Brothers fight."
"And they make up," Rhaella said gently, though something uncertain moved behind her own eyes as she said it, as though she weren't entirely convinced of her own reassurance.
Damon looked at her a long moment before he answered, his voice even, tired, and entirely without cruelty, though no less final for it.
"Only if one of them recognizes what he must do."