(The Vale of Arryn, 115 AC)
The day began with a lie. The sky over the Vale was a brilliant, cloudless blue, promising a warmth that the wind did not possess. It was the kind of day that made one forget how sharp the rocks could be.
Lady Rhea Royce rode her destrier at a leisurely pace, far from the main roads. She wore her bronze armor, not out of fear, but out of habit. In front of her, sitting securely in the saddle, was Aeryn.
The boy was two years old now, a bundle of curiosity wrapped in a fur cloak. He pointed a gloved finger at everything he saw—a hawk circling the thermal currents, a patch of purple wildflowers clinging to the cliffside, the distant shimmer of a mountain stream.
"Bird," Aeryn announced, his voice muffled by his scarf.
"A falcon," Rhea corrected gently, her chin resting on top of his head. "The sigil of House Arryn. They watch over us from the Eyrie."
Aeryn went silent, his violet eyes tracking the bird's flight path. In his mind, the image was frozen instantly: the angle of the wings, the brown feathers, the blue backdrop. It was filed away in the vast, growing archive of his memory.
"Mama," Aeryn said, turning to look at her. "Where does the road go?"
"It goes to the sea," Rhea said, smiling down at him. "And beyond the sea, to the world. But you don't need to worry about that yet. Today, the road just goes to the old cairns. I want to show you where the First Men sleep."
She felt a profound sense of peace. The letters to Viserys remained unsent on her desk, but the anger in her heart had cooled. She had her son. She had her land. Daemon Targaryen was a ghost story told in the south, a nightmare that had finally faded with the morning sun.
Or so she believed.
They rounded a bend in the pass, a narrow canyon known as the Giant's Gullet. The walls of rock rose high on both sides, creating a corridor of shadows.
Rhea's horse whinnied nervously, its ears pinning back.
"Easy," Rhea murmured, tightening her grip on the reins. She sensed it before she saw it. The air had changed. The smell of pine and earth was suddenly overpowered by a scent that made her stomach turn—sulfur and ash.
A figure stepped out from behind a jagged outcrop of rock.
He was cloaked in a heavy grey hood that obscured his face, but Rhea knew the way he stood. She knew the arrogant tilt of his shoulders, the hand resting casually on the hilt of a sword she had seen him polish a thousand times.
Dark Sister.
Rhea pulled the reins hard, bringing the horse to a halt. Her hand instinctively went to Aeryn's chest, pressing him back against her armor.
"Husband," Rhea said, the word tasting like bile.
Daemon Targaryen pulled back his hood. His silver-gold hair shone in the gloom of the canyon, a stark contrast to the grey stone. He looked older than she remembered, harder. The war in the Stepstones had carved lines into his face, but his eyes were the same—cold, amused, and utterly cruel.
"My dear wife," Daemon drawled, his voice echoing off the canyon walls. "And... company."
He took a step forward. Rhea's horse danced sideways.
"Stay back," Rhea warned, her hand drifting toward her dagger. "You have no business here, Daemon. You are exiled from the Vale."
"Exiled?" Daemon laughed softly. "I am a Prince of the Realm. I go where I please. And I heard such interesting rumors. They say the Bronze Bitch has whelped."
His gaze shifted to the child in the saddle. Aeryn stared back at him. The toddler didn't cry. He didn't hide. He looked at the stranger with those intense, unblinking violet eyes.
Daemon's smile faltered when he saw the boy's hair. Black. Pitch black.
"So it is true," Daemon spat, his amusement vanishing. "A mongrel. A little sheep-stealer with a head full of soot."
"He is your son," Rhea said, her voice trembling with rage. "He is Aeryn Royce-Targaryen. The King himself has acknowledged him."
"The King is a fool who loves to play happy families," Daemon sneered, stepping closer. "Look at him. There is no dragon there. Just a common mud-blood wrapped in my brother's charity."
"He has your eyes!" Rhea shouted, the horse panicking now. "He is more dragon than you deserve!"
"He is a Bronze Bastard!" Daemon roared.
The shout spooked the destrier. The massive horse reared up, hooves flailing. Rhea fought for control, one arm wrapped tight around Aeryn, the other sawing at the reins.
"Mama!" Aeryn cried out, the world tilting violently.
Daemon didn't help. He didn't reach for the bridle. He simply watched, a cruel smirk returning to his lips as the horse lost its footing on the loose scree.
The beast collapsed sideways.
Rhea threw herself to the side, twisting her body to cushion Aeryn's fall. They hit the hard, unforgiving ground with a sickening thud. Rhea groaned, the wind knocked out of her, her leg pinned painfully under the animal's flank before the horse scrambled up and bolted down the pass.
Aeryn had tumbled free. He landed in the dirt, scraping his hands. He began to wail, a terrified, high-pitched sound that grated on Daemon's nerves.
Rhea tried to stand, but her leg gave way. She dragged herself between Daemon and her son, gasping for air.
"Don't..." she wheezed, reaching for her dagger. "Don't touch him."
Daemon looked down at her. He looked at the pathetic sight of the woman he had been forced to marry, crawling in the dirt, defending a child that was a living insult to his bloodline.
"You are a tragedy, Rhea," Daemon said coldly. "And you have made me a laughingstock."
Rhea glared up at him, her fear replaced by the sheer defiance of the Royces. "I made you nothing. You were born small, Daemon. You will die small."
The insult snapped something inside him. The years of frustration, the failure in the Stepstones, the mockery of the court—it all focused on this one woman who refused to break.
Daemon didn't draw Dark Sister. That would be too noble.
He reached down and picked up a heavy, jagged rock from the path.
"No!" Rhea screamed, realizing too late what was in his eyes.
Aeryn stopped crying. He sat in the dust, five yards away. He watched.
His eyes, wide and violet, recorded the scene with perfect clarity.
He saw the man with the silver hair raise his arm.
He saw the sun glint off the obsidian ring on the man's finger.
He saw the rock descend.
CRACK.
The sound was wet and terrible. Rhea's scream was cut short.
Aeryn's mind, the mind that never forgot, tried to process the data. Mother. Blood. The man. The rock.
It was too much. The image was too horrific for a two-year-old soul to hold.
Inside Aeryn's head, something snapped. It was like a mirror being struck by a hammer. The memory didn't disappear; it shattered. The image of the murder was fractured into a million jagged shards of white noise and static.
Safety protocol engaged.
Aeryn blinked. The world went grey. He stared at the body of his mother lying still in the dirt, blood pooling around her head like a halo, but his mind refused to recognize the cause. She fell, his mind whispered. The horse fell. The rocks are sharp.
Daemon stood over her, breathing heavily. He dropped the bloody rock. It clattered against the stones.
He looked at his hands. He hadn't planned this. It was messy. It was crude.
Then, he looked at the boy.
Aeryn was sitting there, silent now. He wasn't looking at Daemon with accusation. He was staring at the air, his eyes glazed over, lost in the shock.
Daemon took a step toward the child. His hand drifted to the rock again. Loose ends, a voice in his head whispered. Kill the bastard. Say they both fell. It happens in the mountains.
He loomed over Aeryn. The boy looked up.
Daemon saw his own eyes staring back at him. The same violet. The same shape.
He hesitated. To kill a wife was a crime. To kill a child... his own child...
Daemon looked at the blood on the ground, then at the pristine, untouched boy. If he killed the child, it would look like murder. No horse throws a rider and then bashes the babe's skull in separately. It would be an execution.
And despite his darkness, Daemon Targaryen was not a butcher of children. Not yet.
"You saw nothing," Daemon whispered to the boy, though he knew the child couldn't understand. "Just a tragedy. Just a fall."
Daemon pulled his hood back up. He turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows of the canyon as if he had never been there. He left his wife dead in the dirt and his son alone in the wilderness.
...
Time lost its meaning for Aeryn.
He sat by his mother for a long time. He tugged at her hand, but it was cold. He tried to wake her up, whispering "Mama" over and over again, but she wouldn't open her eyes.
The wind picked up, howling through the pass.
Eventually, the sound of hoofbeats thundered against the stone.
"My Lady!"
Ser Vardis Egen and a dozen guards galloped around the bend, their horses frothing. They had found the riderless destrier miles down the road.
They pulled up short, horror dawning on their faces.
"Seven Hells," Vardis breathed, sliding off his horse before it had even stopped. He ran to Rhea's side, checking for a pulse that wasn't there.
The old knight let out a ragged sob. He looked at the bloody rock nearby. He looked at the unnatural angle of her neck.
"An accident," one of the younger guards stammered, his face pale. "The horse... she must have been thrown."
Vardis looked at the scene. He was a seasoned warrior. He saw the rock. He saw the way she had fallen. He felt the shadow that hung over the place. But there was no one else there. Just the mountains and the wind.
He turned to the boy.
Aeryn was shivering, his lips blue from the cold. He looked at Vardis with eyes that seemed empty, stripped of the light they had held that morning.
"Little Prince," Vardis whispered, kneeling in front of him. He wrapped his own cloak around the boy. "Aeryn. What happened? Did you see?"
Aeryn blinked. The shattered mirror in his mind reflected only fragments. A horse rearing. The sky spinning. The ground hitting hard.
The man in the hood was gone. The rock in the hand was gone. The murder was erased, hidden behind a wall of trauma that no key could open.
Aeryn looked at the body of his mother, then back at the knight.
"Mama fell," Aeryn whispered, his voice hollow. "Horse fell."
Vardis closed his eyes, tears streaming into his grey beard. He pulled the boy into his arms, lifting him away from the carnage.
"Yes, lad," Vardis lied, his voice breaking. "She fell. It was... just an accident."
He carried the heir of Runestone back to the horses. As they rode away, Aeryn looked back one last time. He didn't see a crime scene. He saw only the place where his world had ended, and the place where the silence began.