After supper, Aegon and Rhaena stood side by side before the painted map table.
Aegon had already told Princess Rhaena of his ordeal. Even spoken in his calm, measured voice, she could hear the thunder beneath the words. Of ten who attempted such a thing, nine died. That was the price of claiming the Cannibal.
To hatch a dragon egg, or to bond with a young dragon, was the safest path to becoming a dragonrider.
To attempt an unclaimed adult dragon was far more perilous.
But what Aegon had done was something else entirely. He had tamed the Cannibal, the eighty-year-old king of the wild dragons. It was not recklessness but something closer to madness. Like stepping into an abyss and surviving the fall. Like walking into hell and returning alive.
Before him, others had coveted the Cannibal's power. Without exception, they had ended as meat and ash.
What had happened tonight felt torn from the oldest songs. A knight who bends a demon dragon to his will.
Rhaena's heart stirred. Perhaps a living legend stood beside her.
"You were right not to rush on King's Landing," she said at last. Relief colored her voice. Her greatest fear had been that her brother would throw himself at the capital, with ruinous consequences.
An untested dragonrider could bring disaster as easily as victory.
"We move with the tide, Sister," Aegon replied. "The advantage is ours. There is no need for haste or excess. More than that, I need time to truly bond with the Cannibal. Only then can I enter the war at full strength. And King's Landing is no prize. The mob, the former Green loyalists, they are killers who strike from shadowed alleys. If they prefer Green rule, let them choke on it."
Rhaena nodded. Half of her wanted to curse the Queen herself. Alicent's fury and instability had thrown the Blacks into disarray.
"The Greens only appear to hold King's Landing," Aegon continued. "Their strength is hollow. We command the Riverlands, the North, and the Vale. Three great hosts ready to march south. The Greens have only House Baratheon, and that crafty stag Borros. The Westerlands and the Reach are ruled by widows and children, watching the seas for ironborn sails. They will not stir. The Crownlands are already bled white. If war breaks out now, three armies will fall upon one. What choice will the Greens have then?"
Rhaena's eyes brightened. "My anxious uncle will panic. He will squeeze the Crownlands and squeeze King's Landing. He will levy men and demand coin. The pretender will bleed the realm of what little goodwill remains."
"Just so," Aegon said, a thin smile touching his lips. "He is as hot-tempered as my mother, worse now with his body broken and Alicent whispering poison into his ear. The city will learn what true rage looks like."
"So we wait," Rhaena said softly. "Until the armies advance, and dragons fall from the sky."
King's Landing was a city that demanded caution.
"You have changed," Rhaena said after a moment.
"Have I?"
A heart tempered by trial, no more than wind and frost.
"You were once a quiet child," she said gently. "Now you are a warrior, and a politician. Bright, aggressive, cunning. A many-faced Targaryen."
"War steals our youth," Aegon replied. "Those carefree days are gone. Let the scarred and broken guard what little beauty remains. And you…"
He lifted her hand and pressed a light kiss to her fingers.
"You will always be the most beautiful princess."
She laughed, warmth softening her smile, as if time itself had slowed. "Very well, my knight. Just let your hair grow back first."
In King's Landing, the temper of the newly restored King Aegon II was far darker.
The city lay in ruin. Streets stood empty. Houses were abandoned. Shops had been stripped bare.
The riot had shattered all order. The so-called flea kings were gone, and the rightful king had returned. Yet none of it mattered. Everyone knew the Black Queen waited in the Vale, poised to descend.
Vale knights in blue, grim northmen, river lords bearing trout banners. The threats were real and close.
"The Tullys are nothing but wine-soaked fools," boasted Lord Borros Baratheon. "Let me crush them first. Then I will ride for the Vale's old maids and the North's wolf pups."
No one dared offend the illiterate lord. His host was the largest in the realm.
Aegon II was only three-and-twenty, yet his body was broken. Bones shattered, legs twisted beyond use. He ruled from a carved wooden chair set at the foot of the Iron Throne, his ruined limbs hidden beneath thick blankets.
"Your Grace, it is time," said Ser Marston Waters.
Aegon nodded. His first acts upon reclaiming the city had been the destruction of the three pretenders. Trystane had died beneath Blackfyre. Five-year-old Gaemon Palehair had been spared. And now there was the Shepherd.
The fall of the Dragonpit and the death of so many dragons had been a calamity for all Targaryens, black and green alike. Aegon hated the Shepherd beyond measure.
Ravens had brought word that his golden dragon Sunfyre was dead. The maesters, now held under guard, had not told him the truth. Sunfyre had not merely died. He had been devoured by another dragon.
Aegon had expected the loss. It still left him hollow.
His only comfort lay in the seven dragon eggs brought from Dragonstone. Perhaps the purple-and-gold one would hatch.
The king was carried from the Red Keep on a litter.
Nine-and-twenty corpses hung from the castle walls. Gaemon's mother Essie, Dornish whores, thieves, mummers, beggars. Their faces were frozen in agony.
From Cobbler's Square to the Dragonpit, two hundred and one-and-forty men known as the Barefoot Lambs, the Shepherd's most fervent followers, were chained to posts and drenched in pitch.
As the litter passed, torches were raised. One by one, the Lambs were set alight.
The city was too broken even to gather for executions.
On Rhaenys's Hill, the Shepherd was bound between five great dragon skulls. He was soaked in pitch, his tongue torn out, still cursing in wordless rage.
"I, Aegon of House Targaryen, Second of My Name," the king proclaimed, "sentence you to death by fire, for treason against the realm."
Supported by the Kingsguard, twisted and trembling, he set the pyre alight.
Hostages from Rosby, Duskendale, and the surrounding lands watched in horror.
Brother and sister, they thought. No different at all.
The Crownlands were bled dry. Oaths were sworn. Ransoms were paid. Hostages were taken.
"No mercy," King Aegon II declared. Urged on by hatred, by fear, and by his mother's voice, he squeezed the realm for coin and men, racing toward a final reckoning.
He savored his last flicker of glory.
At three-and-twenty, King Aegon II already looked like a man standing at dusk.
-------
A/N:
Read ahead on Patreon, 23 advance chapters available, with the first 2 free.
patreon.com/Captain_Lag