Salt wind whipped off the sea, slapping Braavos's stone walls and stinging Daemon Blackfyre's face.
He stood in the shadow of the docks, fingers twisting the hem of Viserys's threadbare tunic, violet eyes burning with a rage that had never belonged to this boy.
Six months since the soul-crossing.
Ser Willem Darry's cough grew wetter every night; the cabin reeked of cheap medicine and mildew. That stench was his first real memory in this broken life.
He had once been the Sword King of the Redgrass Field, Blackfyre in his fist, ten thousand men screaming his name.
Now he was a penniless Targaryen exile with one frightened little sister and a handful of loyal but useless hangers-on.
"Your Grace, the wind is fierce. Come back to the cabin," Illyna said, worry thick in her voice. She still saw the timid boy everyone expected.
Daemon didn't turn. His gaze swept the Braavosi waterfront—city of the Faceless Men, nest of sellswords and cutthroats.
Redgrass arrows. Aegon's death. Bloodraven's scarlet eyes. They rode his dreams every night.
He couldn't hide in a ship's belly forever, and he sure as hell wouldn't live out his days as the beggar-king Viserys the Third.
"Where's Ser Willem?" His voice still carried the raw edge of youth, but the steel beneath it was pure king.
"Resting below. The maester says his lungs won't last much longer." Illyna's voice dropped. "Coin's almost gone. The Braavosi merchants won't extend credit anymore. If we stay, we'll have to head farther south."
Daemon closed his eyes and breathed deep.
He knew the truth: when Darry died, this ragged little band would scatter like crows. Daenerys would end up in a slaver's bed, and he'd die nameless under some alley knife.
He had to seize control. He had to plant his feet in Essos and grow roots of iron.
Three days later, Ser Willem Darry coughed his last.
At the end he clutched Daemon's hand and rasped one thing only: "Protect the princess. Keep the Targaryen blood alive."
Daemon stared at the old man's cold fingers. No grief stirred in his chest.
Targaryen blood?
He was Daemon Blackfyre, leader of the Blackfyre Rebellion, traitor to the very name he now wore.
Yet that name was the only ladder he had left.
The burial was cheap—two spadefuls of dirt, an unmarked stone in Braavos's outer fields.
That same night the exiles started bickering. Some wanted Myr, some Lys, one loud bastard suggested selling Daenerys to the Dothraki for enough coin to eat.
Daemon stood in the center of the cabin, violet eyes glittering with murder.
He remembered the warriors of Redgrass, the men who had died for him.
He looked at these cowards and felt fire claw up his throat.
"Anyone else mentions selling the princess," he said quietly, "I'll cut his tongue out and feed it to the crabs."
The words were soft, but the battlefield weight behind them froze every man. "From today, you answer to me. We sail for the Disputed Lands."
They stared. The timid boy they knew had never spoken like this.
One fool opened his mouth to argue.
Daemon's hand shot out, seized the wrist, and snapped it like dry kindling. The crack echoed through the cabin.
"I said, you answer to me."
He let go. The man dropped, howling. No one else made a sound.
They didn't know the boy's body hid a king who had clawed his way out of mountains of corpses.
The next morning Daemon led the remaining seventeen exiles aboard a leaky merchant cog bound for the Disputed Lands.
The passage took Darry's last silver stag. The hold stank and swayed; Daenerys huddled in a corner, watching him with wide, frightened eyes.
He knelt beside her, awkward but gentle, and brushed silver hair from her face.
For the first time he felt a thread of real attachment.
He had lost Aegon on the Redgrass. He would not lose this sister too. She was his leverage, his blood, the only family he had left in this strange new world.
"Don't be afraid," he murmured. "Big brother will protect you."
The ship crawled across the Narrow Sea for half a month before spitting them out at a dusty border town in the Disputed Lands.
Sellsword paradise, cutthroat hell. Blades on every hip, curses and steel ringing from every tavern.
Daemon found the cheapest rat-hole inn that still had four walls. Their coin would last three days.
He had to find work fast or they'd all starve.
He walked the streets alone, eyes scanning every mercenary.
He was hunting the same kind of broken, dangerous men he had once gathered under the black dragon banner—knights and lords who hated Daeron's rule.
He spotted a huge, dark-skinned Summer Islander being tossed out of a tavern, broken sword in his fist, eyes hollow with despair.
Daemon flipped him a copper star.
"You know how to fight?"
The big man looked up at the silver-haired boy, surprised, then nodded. "Five years in the Slaver's Bay. Killed Yunkish pit fighters."
"Come with me," Daemon said. "Food, wine, and loot if we win."
The man grinned, pocketed the coin, and fell in step behind him.
First recruit. First claw of the Dragon Claw Company.
Over the next month, using everything he had learned in his first life—battle instinct, how to read men, how to turn desperation into loyalty—Daemon gathered two dozen more: broken sellswords, escaped slaves, exiled knights.
He fed them. Armed them. Drilled them in formation and killing the way he had once drilled his Blackfyre loyalists.
He named the band Dragon Claw. Their sigil: a single black talon on red.
Small now, but claws could still rip out an enemy's throat.
And one day those claws would tear open the sky of Essos and drag him back to Westeros.
A year later the Dragon Claw Company numbered over two hundred, already carving a name in the small wars of the Disputed Lands.
Daemon still led every charge himself. Even in Viserys's slender frame, his sword work was lethal. He carved paths of red wherever he rode.
Men no longer saw a beggar prince.
They saw a leader.
They called him the Dragon Claw Prince.
He had learned the tongues of Essos, the rules of the free companies, the cold arithmetic of merchant princes.
He was building wealth. Building power.
And in his violet eyes there was nothing left but cold, patient ambition.
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