Rhaegar dropped from the Silver Emperor's saddle, landing in a crouch on the sun-baked stones of Sunspear's plaza.
The crowd roared.
He straightened, adjusted the silver headband in his hair, and looked around with a calm, unhurried gaze. Sunspear was noisier than he remembered. The second visit had stripped away the novelty but replaced it with a clearer eye for detail.
The city was built of grey-brown mud brick, practical and honest, utterly unlike the pink marble of the Water Gardens. It clustered on its crooked spit of land, the Shadow City pressing against it from the west like a needy sibling.
The Spear Tower stabbed the sky, its gilded iron tip catching the sun like a second flame. The Tower of the Sun spread its golden dome above the plaza, beautiful and alien. And the Sandship, that enormous, ship-shaped hulk of ancient stone, squatted to the east like a beached whale turned to rock.
Strange wonders for a strange people, Rhaegar thought.
The procession of the Iron Throne made its way through the Threefold Gate in a river of silk and gold. Prince Aerys rode at the head, resplendent in black velvet and rubies, every button a gilded dragon. Beside him, Tywin Lannister wore crimson and gold, and Steffon Baratheon gleamed in black and antlered steel.
The Dornish lined the winding walls, calling out names.
"Rhaegar! Rhaegar!"
It was the dragon-riding prince they cheered loudest for. His feet had barely touched the ground before the shouts began.
The Ruling Princess led her household down the steps of the Old Palace to meet them. She wore the gold and orange of House Martell, layers of silk as rich as the desert at sunset.
Beside her stood Doran Martell, his expression grave, one hand on a carved walking stick. Next to him was a girl—young, perhaps sixteen, with olive skin, wide dark eyes, and a cascade of black curls. She was petite but vividly pretty, with the full features and jeweled ornaments of an Essosi woman, not a Dornishwoman.
Mellario of Norvos, Rhaegar identified immediately. Doran's foreign bride.
She was watching the dragons with wide eyes, one hand pressed to her lips in undisguised wonder.
The Princess stepped forward, gesturing to Elia. "My daughter has a gift for the Prince."
Elia Martell stepped forward, her dark eyes downcast, cheeks flushed crimson. She was holding a small object on a velvet cushion.
"For you, my Prince," she said softly, without looking up. "To wear, if it please you."
It was a brooch—a red dragon wrought in gold, scales picked out in tiny rubies, wings spread wide.
"It is beautiful," Rhaegar said gently. He accepted it and pinned it to his cloak. "I will wear it in honor of your artistry, Lady Elia."
Elia looked up then, just briefly, and her eyes were luminous.
From the corner, Oberyn Martell watched with barely concealed irritation. A crowd of Dornish girls had stopped paying attention to him entirely.
"You are too popular, young Prince," the Ruling Princess laughed. "Your parents will have their hands full."
Then Rhaegar noticed him.
He stood behind Prince Doran like a piece of the wall that had decided to become a man.
Areo Hotah.
He was enormous. Not the grotesque, tumor-like bulk of Gregor Clegane, but a massive, architectural solidity—thick through the shoulders and chest, with arms like ship's timbers. His skin was pale gold, his hair a dense black mane. He wore chainmail over leather, practical and unadorned.
In his hands he held a longaxe.
The haft was a full six feet of ashwood, polished smooth by years of grip. The axe head was broad and heavy, the edge gleaming like a mirror. It was a weapon built not for dueling but for cleaving through shields, helmets, and anything else that stood between its wielder and his charge.
Hotah's eyes met Rhaegar's. Flat. Neutral. Like a man looking at the weather rather than the heir to the Seven Kingdoms.
He has been well-trained, Rhaegar thought. He fears nothing and recognizes no rank but Doran's.
He had read about the Bearded Priests of Norvos. They were a secretive religious order who purchased slave children and raised them from birth to be holy warriors, conditioned through years of ritual, pain, and devotion. Each guard completed his training at sixteen, bonded to his longaxe in a ceremony the Priests kept secret, and was branded with the image of his weapon on his chest.
They bind men to weapons the way the Valyrians bound men to dragons, Rhaegar mused. Is there a rune involved? An axe rune—strength, authority, crushing weight?
He studied Hotah the way he had studied Dawn. There was a density to the man that went beyond muscle. He radiated solidity, like a boulder that had learned to walk.
"That is Doran's captain," Oberyn murmured at Rhaegar's elbow, having appeared beside him with his typical quiet menace. "Areo Hotah. From Norvos. Doran trusts no one else."
"I can see why," Rhaegar said.
"Would you like to fight him?" Oberyn asked, with a smile that was half malice, half curiosity.
"Perhaps," Rhaegar said. He looked at the longaxe, thinking about what he had learned from Dawn. Different weapon. Different philosophy. What can he teach me?
Meanwhile, the courtly ritual continued around them.
"I must introduce my son's new wife," the Ruling Princess said, guiding Mellario forward. "Mellario of Norvos, daughter of a magistrate."
"Your dragons are magnificent," Mellario said immediately, ignoring protocol and looking directly at Rhaegar. Her Common Tongue was accented but clear. "I have never seen anything so beautiful. Or so terrifying."
Doran touched her arm, a subtle correction. Mellario subsided, though her eyes kept drifting skyward to where the dragons still circled.
"Norvos must seem very far from here," Rhaegar said politely.
"It is cold there," Mellario said. "Here it is hot. But the people are the same—proud and stubborn." She gave a small, wry smile that suggested she wasn't entirely sure this was a compliment.
Rhaegar smiled back. He liked her directness.
But his attention kept returning to Hotah.
The Axe Rune, he thought. Strength. Authority. Heaviness. If the Bearded Priests have been stamping their warriors with magical conditioning for generations, Hotah is not just a soldier. He is a weapon with a man inside him.
And every weapon had something to teach.
He would find a way to test the Norvoshi guard. Not out of arrogance, but because the best way to understand power was to stand against it and feel where it pushed back.
Besides, Rhaegar thought, watching Hotah's motionless vigil over his master, a man that loyal is either a saint or a slave. I want to know which.