"How long do we have to wait?" Daenerys asked her mother with a tilt of her head.
"I do not know, dear. Let us get back home for now," Rhaella answered.
She shook her head before teleporting them both back to the children's room. Rhaella called for the caretaker and handed the girl over to her before leaving to find Viserys.
She found him by the hearth. He was looking at the fire intently, his hair damp from the bath he had taken after his training.
"You have been staring at the hearth so long I fear you have gone into the flame. Come back to the room, son," Rhaella said as she sat beside him and looked at him with curiosity.
Viserys jolted from his musings and looked at her intently before taking a deep breath.
"Can't we not go back home now?" he asked. He leaned in toward his mother with hope in his eyes.
"And where is home?" Rhaella answered with a question of her own although she knew exactly what Viserys had meant when he mentioned home.
"King's Landing, mother. Our home, our lands, our kingdom," he said in a steady voice. "My throne that the Usurper is sitting on," he added in a whisper.
"How is it that we will go back home?" Rhaella inquired with a raised eyebrow.
"You are a dragon, mother. Balerion himself would be a child in front of you," Viserys answered.
A frown grew on his face as he wondered what was going on in her mind.
"That is true, my love," she nodded softly. "Should I go burn them all then? The Usurper and his children and his army?"
She asked the question calmly, though her words seemed to make the fire in the hearth burn with sudden intensity.
Viserys gained a look of realization. He shook his head before getting up and kneeling in front of his mother, placing his hands on her lap.
"You need only show yourself, mother. And they will kneel to the dragon, just as they did three hundred years ago," the boy whispered softly.
He looked up at Rhaella's face with absolute conviction. Rhaella brought her hand closer to the boy's face before holding it gently and caressing his cheek with her thumb.
"We are home, son. A home warmer than the dead walls of the Red Keep," Rhaella said softly.
She moved her hand to gesture all around her.
"The people of the Seven Kingdoms are suffering, mother. They await me, their king," Viserys insisted.
He held her hands tight as if trying to force her to see reason. Rhaella sighed in her heart.
Ser Willem had filled her son's head with all of this because the man was loyal to a fault that bordered on delusion. She suspected he actually believed the things he told Viserys.
She knew the people's lives were no better with a Baratheon sitting on the throne than with a Targaryen on that iron chair.
And even if they were suffering, she found it difficult in her heart to give a fuck. The customs and so called honor of those people had caused her to suffer under Aerys for years.
Her protectors were nothing but door guards in glorified white cloaks who stood in front of her door and listened to her cry and suffer all in the name of honor.
"Let them," she said out loud in a low voice.
"What?" Viserys asked. He thought he had heard wrong.
"Let them suffer," she said more clearly. She stood up, breaking the contact.
"We will talk of this matter no more," she said when her surprised son opened his mouth to speak.
Viserys could only look at his mother, whom he considered the kindest person in the world, with wide eyes. He felt the ghost of her caress on his cheek as she left.
As Rhaella moved farther from the room, her fury increased. She thought about her suffering, the people that caused it, and the small folk they ruled over.
The more she thought of these things, the more she just wished to burn it all down to the ground and watch the ashes scatter into the sky.
She teleported far from Nightshade and appeared in the sky above the sea. In a burst of magic, she transformed into her dragon form. Her wings stretched wide as she used her immense strength to propel herself through the air, soaring between the clouds.
She observed the ocean below as her mind began to cool. The flap of her wings became softer as she let the air glide over her scales.
She swooped down toward the water, feeling the sounds of the world fade around her as she dove beneath the surface.
Aquatic life fled from her presence immediately. Her body heat was so potent it was raising the temperature of the water around her to a boil.
An hour or so passed in the deep silence before a large area of the ocean rippled and bubbled.
With a massive splash, the red dragon emerged from the sea with a shark clamped in her jaws. She tossed the shark into the air.
A stream of red hot fire erupted from her maw, incinerating the creature instantly before it fell back into her mouth to be eaten in one bite.
Rhaella took a deep breath and flapped her wings again, climbing until she found herself above the clouds once more. She was about to turn back toward Nightshade but paused when she spotted three ships moving through the sea below.
She decided to check them. She moved closer while staying hidden above the cloud layer. She channeled magic into her eyes, enhancing her already powerful vision to see the people aboard the ships clearly even from this height.
She found people moving across the deck. Many of them had tattoos on their faces. Some of the women had tears tattooed beneath their eyes, while others bore the marks of jugs, crossed hammers, or fish on their cheeks.
It did not take her long to deduce the ships were Volantene in origin. The majority of the crew were slaves, as was common in Volantis where slaves did almost everything.
'Was my life not just like theirs not so long ago?' she mused to herself.
She observed the female slaves with tears under their eyes, signifying they were bed slaves.
She scoffed at herself from the sky at her previous thought. The lives of these slaves were much worse compared to hers.
She could not even fathom the number of men these women would be forced to service every day. She had not considered the number of lashings the men endured for the smallest of mistakes.
She made a decision as she witnessed a young slave being grabbed by one of the free men aboard. He bent her over the railing and was about to take her right there in front of everyone, while everyone just went about their business.
Rhaella swooped down. She created a violent gust of wind around her to seize the attention of everyone aboard.
The people on the ships looked up to find a massive figure diving toward them. They jolted in panic. The free men started barking orders to the slaves to reduce the sails as they noticed the sea water in front of them churning as well.
Just as the ships slowed down, the sea split open. A massive structure of rock rose from the depths like a jagged mountain peak, standing like a wall in front of the fleet.
A moment later, the sky seemed to split open as well when they heard a mighty roar above them.
To their awe and horror, a dragon bigger than any story they had ever heard perched itself on the newly formed peak. It looked down on the ships with eyes like burning coals.