131 AC. The dawn of a new year.
At Dragonstone, the Cannibal crouched low upon the scorched stone, its vast body coiling with restrained violence, every sinew drawn tight as it prepared to take the sky.
For Prince Aegon, only two matters required his attention on the island.
The first was flight. Flight without end. To ride the Cannibal again and again, through wind and cloud, until rider and dragon moved as a single will. Only through constant flight could their bond be honed to its sharpest edge.
The Cannibal was no common dragon. It was ancient, battle-scarred, and cruelly clever, a creature shaped by endless survival. Of all living dragons, none could match its ferocity.
Yet raw might alone did not decide wars. Harmony did. Precision. Instinctive understanding. Aegon needed the skies, needed the rhythm of wingbeats and fire, to draw forth the Cannibal's full terror.
The second task was patience.
Rhaena's dragon egg had yet to hatch.
Dragonstone burned from within. Heat seeped through its black stone, fire stirring deep beneath the mountain. Such a place might hasten the egg's awakening.
"Stay close," Aegon said quietly.
Rhaena nodded and climbed up behind him.
"Hold fast."
"I am."
She wrapped her arms around his waist as Aegon settled into the saddle.
"Soves, Cannibal," he commanded.
The great black dragon snorted, displeased. Two riders were improper. Yet it scented blood and kinship, the shared fire of the rider it had accepted.
With a thunderous beat of its wings, the Cannibal surged skyward. Wind screamed past them as the dragon tore a black scar across the blue, rising from Dragonstone's outer yard into the open heavens.
Few dragons remained in the world now, scattered and distant.
Silverwing had fled south to Red Lake in the Reach. Sheepstealer haunted the Moon Mountains of the Vale. Only the Cannibal still ruled Dragonmont, unchallenged and feared. If Rhaena's egg hatched, there would be four once more.
High above the sea, the Cannibal circled Dragonstone before streaking outward, a shadow ships never noticed as it passed over sky and water alike.
The world below seethed with chaos. Upon a dragon's back, there was only calm.
Dragonstone itself had become a forgotten place. With so few dragons left, its strategic worth had withered. Since King Aegon the Second had departed for King's Landing, the island had been largely ignored.
All power and ambition now churned in the capital. Schemes nested there like vipers, and swords were never far from hand.
Above it all, the Cannibal flew unbound.
There would be no second Dance of the Dragons.
Only a solitary dragon king.
"I think the egg is close," Rhaena said at last, her voice tight with certainty.
"Then watch it closely," Aegon replied. "And the hatchling as well. Cannibal has noticed it."
"Have you chosen her name?"
He smiled. He already knew.
"Dawn," Rhaena said.
"A beginning," she went on. "After night comes dawn. It is hope. It is what comes after ruin."
"If she hatches," Aegon said with a quiet laugh as the wind tangled her silver hair across his face, "the world will grow louder still."
"She will not be ready for war for many years," Rhaena said gently. "But the Cannibal… once it appears on a battlefield, the war ends."
"I will call Silverwing home," Aegon said. "Then we will have three."
Rhaena smiled faintly, cradling the pink-and-black egg. "Knights always dream of conquering the world. Maidens are left to fear the cost."
"It will not be long," Aegon said, gazing toward the distant horizon, toward King's Landing. "Let the Greens devour one another. We will take what remains."
Suddenly Rhaena stiffened.
"Land," she said urgently. "Now. I can feel it."
"Cannibal, down."
The dragon growled but obeyed, banking sharply and descending toward the eastern slope of Dragonmont, settling before its lair amid scorched stone.
A sharp crack sounded.
Rhaena drew the egg free. The shell fractured, pink veined with black, smoke curling as something small and living pushed its way into the world.
"Dawn," Rhaena whispered. "Good morning."
The hatchling emerged in a spill of heat and steam, delicate and exquisite. Black and red glimmered beneath newborn scales. The bond was immediate. Rhaena knelt, and the dragon knew her at once. Partner. Blood of her blood.
Fragile as a kitten, yet unmistakably a creature of magic, Dawn spread her wings. Their membranes were translucent, stretched wide upon slender bones, already three times the length of her body, shimmering faintly in the light.
She clambered forward and perched upon Rhaena's shoulder, winding her thin neck beneath her chin.
Most of her scales were pink, but her eyes, claws, and horned crest were black as night.
She lifted her head to study Aegon, dark eyes fixed upon him with unsettling intensity.
Rhaena rose carefully. Dawn hissed, a soft sound, white steam drifting from her nostrils as her wings fluttered.
"She will need cooked meat," Aegon said. "A great deal of it. Hatchlings grow swiftly."
"She is so small," Rhaena murmured. "But she is mine."
The Cannibal roared, furious. Had it not been restrained, it would have devoured the hatchling without hesitation.
Dawn recoiled at once, scrambling back against Rhaena's neck. The vastness and savagery of the Cannibal awakened an ancient fear within her.
Yet when dragons cry together, their voices surpass any song.
Time did not slow.
Aegon felt the shift within himself as the bond deepened. The Cannibal's presence flared like living fire within his blood, its instincts sharpening, its awareness widening. It sensed danger more keenly now, every threat before it could take shape.
Dragon and rider grew closer still, flame answering flame.
Fire was not Aegon's foe.
It was his ally, reshaping him as steel is shaped in the forge.
"Cannibal," he said at last. "soves."
"We return to Dragonstone. Dawn's birth will be known. Let the Seven Kingdoms feel it."
Rhaena smiled. "That alone will shake the Greens."
She secured the hatchling behind Aegon as the Cannibal lifted them once more toward the castle.
The wings thundered.
Dawn was too small, too fragile. Her hatching was a promise, not a weapon. Years would pass before she could bear a rider.
Hatchlings were the most vulnerable of all dragons.
As Aegon watched her, he thought of Stormcloud, and of the egg that had never hatched for King Viserys. Once, the Greens had mocked the Blacks for it.
Now a single newborn dragon was enough to throw them into fear.
Because the Green king had no dragon.
And the Blacks had gained one more.
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A/N:
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