The thing that shook her awake was her brother's, small and insistent scratching at her hand. Alyssane had been deep in some dream she could not quite recall, something blue of the sea, and the red of the sky when Monterys pressed his fingers against her shoulder and pulled her back into the wake. The candle he carried was guttered low, a nub of tallow drowning in its own pool. Outside the narrow window of her chambers the sky was still dark though the light still seeped in, the hour between the last watch and the dawn when even the gulls kept silent.
"What is it?" she asked, as sleep clung to her deeply. "Is it the Redwyne fleet? What happened?"
Her brother's eyes were bright with the new mischief she had learned to dread and love in equal measure. It meant trouble for servants and her family alike, something their father had expressly forbidden for Monterys to do.
"No, sister," Monterys murmured, dropping his voice to the low conspiratorial register he reserved for plans and plots. "The King has been sighted. Do you want to come and see the dragon with me?"
"Yes." She had said it before she knew she would. Her brother let out a shrill little cry and did a half-turn of triumph that nearly toppled the candle. She looked at herself in the looking glass, hair disheveled across the pillow, and bedclothes tangled as she swung her legs to the cold floor.
"Give me a moment to dress. Wait for me outside my chambers."
She dressed quickly, choosing practicality over vanity: a gown of deep grey wool, a cloak lined with seal fur against the salt wind. Her hair she bound with a simple cord. There was no time for braids, nor for the silver pins her septa had always insisted upon. She was seventeen, not seven. She could go about with an unadorned braid for once if she chose.
Monterys was in the passage, dancing his impatience from foot to foot. He seized her hand the moment she appeared, and they went together through the dark and sleeping halls of Dragonstone, past the drowsing guard at the great door and out into the night.
The wind off the sea was cold and smelled of salt and smoke. Above them, Dragonmont rose against the sky, one of the handful active volcano of Westeros as she had read, and from somewhere near its base far below the peaks where the old caves opened to the tunnels deep in the mountain, came a sound that Alyssane heard before her eyes registered it. A slow, rhythmic roar, too vast for any living thing she had ever known.
She gripped her brother's hand more tightly than she had intended. They reached the parapet above the Dragonmont's tunnel entrance, as the torches below flared to life. There were men on the ground, her father and his household guard, the Maester in his grey robes, a lord she did not yet recognise, but her eyes did not linger on any of them. She looked instead at the King.
She had seen paintings and arts of Targaryen kings of old. There had been a paintings of Aegon the Conqueror and many other brought by the merchants from across the Houses of dragon loyalists, which her father had kept rolled in his solar and occasionally unrolled them with the expression of a man that has not repaid his debt yet.
Though the beauty of paintings had not prepared her for truth. He was young, she knew that, younger than her by three years, which made him a boy by any reckoning, or ought to have. Yet there was nothing of the boy in the way he stood. He was tall for his age, taller than men of her father's household who had been grown-ups for decades, and there was no softness to him. The lamp light threw his silhouette into sharp features: beauty resided in his jaws and snowy skin, eyes fiery red that contrasted with calmness and pallor of his face. He had the silver hair of his ancestry that came off as white when seeing from a distance, worn loose about his jaw, and when the wind off the sea lifted it Alyssane thought it almost looked smoke rising off still water.
He was speaking to the dragon when they reached there. The beast itself she had not seen until that moment. It stood tall, wings folded, neck curved low to the King's chest to receive whatever words its rider offered. It was red in color, not the red of autumn leaves but the red of blood. Its golden eyes were enormous, slit-pupiled, and wholly without warmth as they looked to all those standing in the King's welcome. She became aware that she had stopped breathing the moment those eyes passed over her.
Below, a lord was walking away from the King toward her father, tall, dark-cloaked man with red-gold hair. She recognized him moments after seeing his breastplate of dull black steel which displayed a forked purple lightning bolt, Lord Beric Dondarrion of Blackhaven, the Stormlands' famed lightning lord. Whatever counsel he had exchanged with the King on the ride here had evidently concluded. He moved toward her father and the Maester with the confident steps.
She barely noticed him, her attention again returned to the King. Sinewy. That was the word that came to her mind unbidden. Not build in the way the knights in the yard were, thick-necked and round shouldered and voice loud as roar. There was quietness in his nature, his movements economical, as though he moved only as much as was necessary and never a finger more. The hand he pressed to the dragon's jaw was steady. He certainly was not afraid of the history of the dragon he caressed. She had always supposed that riders were not afraid of their own mounts, but she had not imagined what it looked like, that absence of fear before so vast a creature that was also known among maesters and smallfolk to eat its own kind.
She did not notice her brother was gone until she heard her father's voice below. Monterys had descended somehow, by the servants' stairs she thought, the little wretch, and was now at their father's side with his hands clasped before him in his best impression of a respectful heir. Even from here she could see his lips moving. Even from here she could tell he was pleading. Her father's face tightened in the particular way it did when he was choosing between his dignity and his love for his son.
It seemed as the King had heard his brother's pleading too for he then turned towards Monterys. He looked at her brother, and something passed across his face, not a smile in itself, and he beckoned him forward with his single hand.
Monterys walked towards the King his usual cheeriness now gone, his steps losing their usual boyish joy with every foot of ground covered. The men in the area watching laughed at the young lord's feigned rigid composure a warm sound to her ears, not unkind and even her father's mouth bent upward at its corners. Alyssane found herself laughing too, softly, into her hand.
And then she saw the King's lips. He was not laughing, she had been told often enough that he was not given to laughter, her father had said as much across the dinner table more times than she could count, usually when making the point that the new King was a serious young man with serious young intentions. And yet the corners of his mouth had moved, barely, just enough to suggest that somewhere beneath the composure, his emotions were watching her brother's terrified approach and finding it quietly and privately, funny. Something that did not need an audience.
Below, King Aemon took her brother's wrist with a gentle firmness and guided his hand to the dragon's neck. She could see Monterys shaking. She could see the dragon's eye tracking the King and not the boy, unbothered by the small trembling thing at its jaw. And she could see the moment when Monterys understood that he was not going to die, something going out of his shoulders, a long exhale she was too far away to hear but could see in the collapse of his chest, and she felt it move through her heart like a warm hearth.
House Velaryon had bled for House Targaryen since before the Conquest and for almost three centuries of Targaryen reign. Her father had not merely given his loyalty to this new king, he had emptied his treasury, his ships, and had betted the future of his House Velaryon in war against Westeros. To make my name in the histories, he said sometimes, at dinner, when he'd had enough wine to speak of such things. That men will remember Lord Monford Velaryon funded the rightful King to his rightful throne. Alyssane had always accepted this as her father's dream and not her own. She had not thought overmuch about the King himself.
She thought about him now. Her father had never once spoken of a marriage. It was a strange thought. She knew it was as soon as it came to her, knew it for the kind of thought that proper ladies were not supposed to have uninvited, and still she could not entirely dismiss it. She was seventeen and not unlovely or so her septa had always assured her, and her septa had no particular reason to lie. She was the eldest child of one of the oldest houses in the realm. And her father, who loved for his name to get recorded in the histories above all things, had not once raised the subject.
Perhaps he thinks the King too young, she told herself, perhaps he thinks himself beneath the consideration. But she looked at the King below, the torchlight turning the silver-white of his hair to something brighter, and she was not entirely sure she wanted to believe either answer.
The dining hall was smaller than it would have been, had many known that the King was coming. The table was laid plainly, bread and salt and roasted sea-bird, old vintage wine from the Arbor that her father had been saving for a long time. Lord Dondarrion sat to the King's left. Her father sat to his right. The Maester Cressen occupied his usual chair at the table's end, his chain of links catching the candlelight, his old face watching King's acction.
Alyssane stood in the doorway a moment before anyone marked her. The King looked up first with his red eyes boring into lilac of her own. She had known of his eyes, she had heard it spoken of, in the careful way people spoke of Targaryen traits they did not quite know how to classify but knowing it and meeting them across a dining table were different. They were the color of red like the banner of his own, and they settled on her with a directness that was not rude but was entirely without pretence. He was not the sort of man, she sensed, who had learned to look away to make others comfortable.
"My lady?" he said, a question without preamble.
"My daughter, Your Grace." Her father rose, gesturing. "Lady Alyssane Velaryon."
She curtsied. When she rose, the red eyes were still on her. "Lady Alyssane." His voice was steady, a tilt of warmness in his voice. Then he returned his attention to the table, and she sat, and told herself her heart was not beating faster than it had any reason to be.
It was over the roast bird and the Arbor red that her father broached what he had evidently been building toward since the King's arrival. She had seen the look on him all evening, fearing the worst to come.
"There is news from across the Narrow Sea, Your Grace," Lord Monford said at last. "News that concerns you more nearly than it does any man in this room."
The King set down his cup. "Tell me."
"Daenerys Targaryen is in Pentos, Your Grace." He let that sit a moment. "She has made acquaintance of a young man calling himself Aegon, claiming to be the son of your father Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. The Golden Company stands behind this claim. no less than ten thousand swords, Your Grace. And with Daenerys Targaryen, a Dothraki khalasar of no small number."
The silence that followed was deafening that made everyone present understand severity of the situation. Lord Dondarrion looked at his wine, maester Cressen looked at the King and Alyssane too looked at the King.
His face gave a small smile hearing that something that struck her and all other present. His face retaining same calmness moments later as if he had heard exactly what he feared to hear, and had prepared himself to hear it so completely that even now the mask did not slip into shock. One hand rested flat upon the table. The other was in his lap, and she thought she could see, just barely, the tendons in the wrist.
"The boy is a Blackfyre," he said at last. It was not a question but answer in certainty.
Maester Cressen turned a parchment in his hands. "The evidence is suggestive, Your Grace. For the Golden Company was also founded by—"
"I know who founded the Golden Company, maetser" He was quiet a moment. "I have been dreaming of a black dragon. I thought I understood the dream, I did not." He then turns to her father, "I have had Lord Jojen Reed look into the matter, the truth will resurface eventually."
Realization dawns upon her father, which then brought out a soft smile on his face. Something she understood not but no one spoke on that matter anymore.
"What else," the King said, and it was Cressen who answered.
"Ser Gerold Dayne marches under the Golden Company's banner toward Starfall, Your Grace. A portion of their strength, perhaps five thousand moving through the Dornish Marches. House Martell sends ravens asking for your aid. They cannot hold that pass alone if Dayne means to take the mountain castles on Prince's Pass and Starfall."
She noticed as a muscle moved in the King's jaw. Alyssane had the sense that she was watching a man think, truly think, not merely perform the theatre of it and she found herself leaning very slightly forward.
He knew of Ser Arthur, she realised. He would have been a newborn when the Kingsguard died at the Tower of Joy, but he would have known the man had they lived. He must have grown up in the shadow of death of good and loyal men, the way orphans grow up in the shadows of their fathers.
"Maester Cressen," the King said. "Send this to Sunspear. Tell Lord Martell his men should make ready to Grandview, to march to Storm's End. Tell him House Targaryen does not leave its bannermen to bleed alone." A pause. "Tell him I will come to the aid of their lords."
Her father looked up sharply, denial on his lips. "Your Grace-"
"I will fly to Blackhaven first then to Summerhall." He glanced at Dondarrion, who gave a small nod, as though this had already been discussed. "They may have heard rumour of the Golden Company by now. They will be afraid and fear is the beginning of surrender. I will not have it."
Maester Cressen inclined his grey head, understanding the words of the King. "As you command, Your Grace."
Her father reached for his wine, and Alyssane could see in his face the thing he would not say, that it was bold move, perhaps too bold, or perhaps magnificent, she could not tell which her father thought and suspected he could not either.
"The Vale," her father said after a moment, turning the conversation to pleasant topics. "We hear different things, Your Grace. What truth of it can you give us?"
The King settled back. Something eased in him, slightly. This ground must have already been conquered. "The Eyrie has fallen and so has House Arryn. Lady Lysa and her son had been captured and wait for justice to be delivered. The boy is too young to rule. House Royce has bent the knee and now acts as regent. The Vale is mine."
"And the Riverlands?"
"My army marches towards House Darry as we speak. Lord Tarly and Lord Rowan will soon show their true colors to all those who lay claim to my throne and crown." He said it without cruelty, merely as a man names a fact about weather. "The rest will follow."
Alyssane understood all at once, the shape of what he was building. The pieces arranged themselves in her mind the way pieces arrange themselves when you have been looking at them long enough without quite seeing. The Vale taken. The Stormlands will soon be brought into fold. The Lannisters soon to fall together with Riverlands and the North too, as collateral to war they started.
"The North," she said in realization, before she had decided to speak. "And the Riverlands both, that is what you mean. When your army reaches Darry, together they will launch unprecedented attack on rebels with leal men of Reach, an-"
She stopped. Everyone at the table was looking at her. Lord Dondarrion with something like approval. Her father with the expression he wore when she surprised him, which was not often but which she treasured. Maester Cressen with simple interest.
And the King with those red ruby eyes, steady and direct, and the ghost of that same private almost-smile she had seen on the parapet.
"Yes," he said, just that. Yes.
The warmth that moved through her then was different from the warmth of wine or fire. She did not have a name for it. She was not sure she wanted one yet.
Three years younger, she thought, and thought it meant something different now than it had before today. She reached for her cup so that she would have somewhere to put her eyes, and told herself that was quite enough thinking for one evening, and was not sure she was right.
Outside, beyond the hall's high windows, the sky had finally begun to shine. Dawn was coming, as it always did, indifferent to the plans of kings and the hearts of lords' daughters alike.