The flight west proved quicker than Damon had expected, six hours of open sky and steady wind before the jagged silhouette of Casterly Rock finally rose on the horizon, the great western headland unmistakable even from this height, Lannisport sprawling along the curve of the bay beneath it, ships crowding the harbor in numbers that told Damon, before he'd even landed, that Kevan's preparations had already begun in earnest.
Both dragons seemed to sense the nearness of their destination before Damon himself fully registered it, a subtle change in the rhythm of their wingbeats, an eagerness creeping into the low, rolling growls that had accompanied most of the journey. As the Rock grew larger below them, Caraxes let loose a roar that seemed to shake the very clouds around them, Dreamfyre answering a heartbeat later, and together the two dragons folded their wings and dropped, plunging through a thin bank of cloud before leveling out above Casterly Rock itself, wings snapping wide once more, another pair of earth-shaking roars rolling out across the castle and the city below it.
Inside those ancient walls, chaos bloomed instantly, however much the household had told itself it stood prepared.
Every soul within Casterly Rock had known, for three days now, that the King intended to arrive on dragonback, that Lord Kevan had been given warning enough to gather men and ships before his brother's liege lord descended from the sky. Knowing a thing and witnessing it, Damon would later reflect, were never quite the same experience. Maids dropped linens where they stood. Soldiers on the battlements froze mid-stride, hands white-knuckled on spear shafts they suddenly seemed to remember were useless against what circled above them. Somewhere below, a horse screamed in its stables, and several more answered it in kind. Every window in the castle that offered any view at all filled quickly with pale, upturned faces, servants and lords alike drawn by the same instinctive, helpless need to see the thing that had just blotted out half the sky above their home.
Kevan Lannister was among the first to move rather than simply stare. He had been in the solar reviewing muster lists when the first roar hit, and he was already on his feet and moving for the door before the second roar finished rolling across the courtyard, calling for his steward, for the gates, for every man of sense in the castle to make ready, his mind working quickly through the particular etiquette of greeting a king who happened to be arriving astride two of the most dangerous living things in the known world. He allowed himself perhaps three heartbeats of pure, human awe as he crossed the yard and caught his first full glimpse of the two dragons circling above the castle, red and pale against the bright afternoon sky, and then set that awe firmly aside in favor of the more immediate business of not embarrassing his family in front of the Crown.
Tyrion Lannister, fourteen years old and considerably less burdened by any such immediate business, made no effort at all to set his awe aside.
He had claimed the highest window he could reach the moment the first roar sounded, a narrow slit meant for archers rather than spectators, and pressed himself against the stone to see as much of the sky as the angle would allow. What he saw stole the breath clean out of him. He had read of dragons his whole life, in every book the Casterly Rock library could offer a boy hungry enough to read anything at all rather than face the household waiting for him beyond its shelves, dry histories and half-mythical accounts written by maesters who had themselves only ever imagined what a living dragon might actually look like. None of it, he understood now, watching Caraxes bank low enough that Tyrion could make out the individual ridges along the beast's spine, had come anywhere close to the truth of it.
There was something in the sight that struck him harder than simple fear, though fear was certainly present, thrumming beneath his ribs at the sheer, impossible scale of the two creatures wheeling above his home. Beneath the fear sat something closer to hunger, a fierce, private longing that Tyrion recognized, with the particular clarity of a boy long accustomed to being overlooked, as something he had rarely allowed himself to feel about anything. Here was power that owed nothing to height, or strength of sword arm, or the easy grace so many others in his family carried without ever having to think about it. Here was power that simply was, undeniable, absolute, answerable to nothing except the will of the man clever and disciplined enough to command it. Tyrion's eyes, fixed on the two shapes descending toward the courtyard below, shone with something he would have been embarrassed to name aloud to anyone in his family.
By the time the dragons touched down beyond the gates, the ground trembling with the impact even at this distance, Kevan had reached the courtyard himself, two soldiers falling into step behind him as he strode toward the gate, already composing in his mind the words he intended to greet his king with.
The gates swung open, and Kevan stepped through them, and stopped.
Both dragons' heads turned as one, four great eyes, gold and violet-gold, fixing on him and the two soldiers at his back with an attention that felt, in that moment, entirely too personal to be comfortable. Caraxes's nostrils flared, a low sound building somewhere deep in his massive chest, not quite a growl, but close enough to one that every instinct in Kevan's body screamed at him to retreat several dozen paces and reconsider his life's choices. He held his ground anyway, jaw tight, because a Lannister of Casterly Rock did not flee his own gates in front of his household, whatever enormous, fire-breathing reason presented itself for doing so.
Damon, already dismounted and standing calm between the two dragons, seemed entirely unbothered by his partners' scrutiny. He said something low, too quiet for Kevan to catch, and both dragons settled, their attention easing from open assessment into something closer to watchful patience, and only then did Damon start forward across the open ground toward the gate.
Kevan bowed deeply the moment Damon came within a few paces of him. "Casterly Rock is yours, Your Grace."
Damon inclined his head. "Lord Kevan." His gaze moved briefly past him, toward the harbor visible beyond the castle walls, ships and men moving in the organized chaos of preparation. "Are the fleet's preparations complete?"
Kevan straightened, choosing honesty over comfort, the way his brother had taught him decades ago that a Lannister ought to when speaking to power greater than his own. "Not entirely, Your Grace. The time between your raven reaching us and your own arrival proved shorter than I'd hoped for. The fleet is gathering, and the levies with it, but I would need three more days to have both fully ready to sail."
Damon considered that a moment, unsurprised. "Three days, then." He glanced briefly skyward, toward his dragons, both now settling more comfortably onto the open ground, wings folding against their long bodies. "I'll continue on to Pyke myself this evening, once they've rested from the flight. There's no reason for me to wait three days simply because your ships need them."
Kevan's brow furrowed sharply at that. "Your Grace, forgive me, but that hardly seems wise. To arrive alone, ahead of the fleet, with no support beneath you should something go wrong—"
"I appreciate the concern, Lord Kevan," Damon said, in a tone that made plain the matter was not open for further debate, "but my mind is settled on it. I'll strike what I can from the air while your fleet finishes gathering, and we'll bring the whole of it together once you arrive." He let that stand, unquestioned, before adding, in a far more practical tone, "Have your men release four cows and six goats for my dragons before I leave this evening. And make certain none of your men come close while they feed. Curiosity has killed better men than dragonfire ever needed to trouble itself with."
"Of course, Your Grace. I'll see to it myself." Kevan hesitated only a moment before adding, in a considerably warmer tone, "You should at least stay for lunch before you go, Your Grace. It's the least Casterly Rock can offer its king."
Damon considered that, and found no reason to refuse it. "Lunch, then. Lead the way, Lord Kevan."
They walked together through the castle's outer yard and into the great halls beyond, servants pressing themselves flat against the walls to let them pass, wide-eyed still from the spectacle outside, and arrived at last in a smaller dining chamber where the remaining members of House Lannister had already gathered, drawn there by whatever warning had preceded the King's arrival by mere minutes.
Kevan made the introductions with practiced ease. "My wife, Dorna. My sons, Willem and Martyn." Two boys, close in age, bowed properly, their eyes betraying the same lingering awe that had gripped the rest of the household. "And my nephew, Tyrion."
The boy stood slightly apart from the rest, smaller than his cousins despite being older than at least one of them, his mismatched eyes lifted toward the King with an expression that mixed caution and undisguised curiosity in equal measure.
Damon greeted each of them in turn, courteous, unhurried, and then his gaze settled on Tyrion and did not immediately move on the way it had for the others.
The room's attention sharpened all at once. Dorna's hand tightened faintly at her side. Kevan's expression grew carefully neutral in the particular way of a man bracing himself against an insult he had heard leveled at his nephew more times than he cared to count, from men of far lower standing than the King himself. Even Tyrion's own face settled into something resigned, the small, practiced stillness of a boy long accustomed to absorbing whatever cruelty came his way and refusing to let it show on his face until he was alone again.
Damon crossed the room instead, and to the visible shock of every adult present, lowered himself down to Tyrion's eye level rather than looking down at him from his full height.
"I see pride in your eyes," Damon said, quiet enough that it felt, for a moment, as though the words belonged only to the two of them. "And intelligence besides. It seems your father hasn't missed with any of his children, whatever else the realm may whisper about it." A faint, genuine smile touched his mouth. "Study hard, Tyrion. I may have a position for you in the years to come, if you continue to grow into what I can already see plainly enough standing in front of me."
The room went utterly silent. Dorna's hand had lifted halfway to her mouth. Kevan simply stared, some old, protective tension draining visibly out of his shoulders. Willem and Martyn exchanged a wide-eyed glance; neither of them seemed to know what to do with.
Tyrion himself blinked once, twice, something bright and startled moving behind his mismatched eyes before he found his voice at all.
"Yes, Your Grace," he said, and the smile that broke across his face was small, but entirely unguarded, the first such smile, Kevan realized with a small, private ache, that he had seen from his nephew in a very long while.
Damon straightened, offered the boy one last nod, and turned toward the table, where lunch, and the long evening flight still waiting beyond it, called for his attention next.