Black and crimson, pale and cream, green and bronze. She knew every contour of every angle of the prized possession of House Targaryen, every slight variation in the feel or color of their smooth shells. She knew the exact way to turn the forest green egg to show the most blotches of pure bronze. She knew how, in the right light, the cream egg became almost white, its golden streaks all the more radiant when it did so. The black egg, as fierce and foreboding as any inanimate object could be, held its own ferocious beauty in the brilliant streaks of red that engulfed it, and though she knew it had been petrified long ago she could swear it held an unnatural heat when she held it close.
They had been her fascination since she had been a small child, and all these years had not changed that fact. She would die before she would abandon them, so there they sat in a chest she held in her lap.
She was deep within the safety of the Red Keep, surrounded by the high walls of Maegor's Holdfast and hundreds of Targaryen loyalist—chief among them Ser Roland Storm of the Kingsguard, the brother of the dead Lord who had nearly won her heart—but Daenerys didn't know what to feel. Her youngest brother was nearing to try and take the city, and by default her as well. She knew that was Viserys' intent; her elder brother Aelor had tried to shield her from it, the intense obsession Viserys held for Daenerys, but a blind man could see it. He was of the traditional mindset, the mindset that likely would have seen married, while Daenerys and blessedly Aelor were not. Part of her wanted to hate Viserys, the man who had lusted and pined for her despite the fact that she didn't return the sentiments, the man that had murdered the suitor she had been so enamored with. Daenerys wished she could hate him.
But no matter how hard she tried, the hate would not come.
Every time the Princess relived that moment on the beaches of Duskendale, when Viserys couched his lance upwards and Bryce's lifeless body flipped over the back of his courser, she was suddenly assaulted by images of she and Viserys when they were children. He'd always dotted on her, bringing her whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it. He would play dolls if she so desired, sing off-key to woo her when she pretended to be a Queen…he would even go around on all fours, neighing like a horse, as she sat on his back and laughed until she could hardly breath. It had been a beautiful, wonderful time in both of their lives.
The tear splattering against the black shell of the largest egg brought her back to reality.
The calls and bleat of the trumpets, warning that the enemy fleet was approaching, had prompted the soldiers to shepherd the noble children into the Queen's Ballroom. Ser Roland and ten guardsmen—old men and young boys—stood guard, and the pox-scarred Kingsguard periodically warned the huddled children and teenagers to be ready to move at any moment. Unlike most of the others here, Dany knew that if the battle outside went the wrong way they would be ushered into the hidden passages, to flee as Princess Elia Martell and her own nephew Aegon had years prior. She had recruited several of the nobles around her to assist her with the eggs should that time come.
Of course, if that time truly comes, all may well be lost.
Rhaella sat beside her, snow-white hair brushing the cream egg as the future Queen of Westeros held little Alyssa in a desperate hug. Her niece was a sweet girl and smart as a tack, but she was of a gentle nature; the fear of the coming fight had reduced her into a quivering mass, her terror affecting the baby she held in her arms. Dany secretly worried for her future as the Queen, as Rhaella had inherited none of the steel resolve that her father—and mother—possessed. She would excel at hosting balls and flattering nobles and their ladies, but as for the rest…well, time would tell. None could deny that Rhaella was a good-hearted girl who would make a kind Queen someday in any case.
Dany just hoped she had the chance.
Her handmaiden Aemma Arryn settled in on Dany's other side, heavily favoring the Tully's in her coloring. Four and ten, she was the eldest child of Lord Paramount Jon Arryn and his wife Lysa Tully, born a full five minutes before her twin brother Artys. The heir to the Vale was currently marching to Seagard with his father to counter the Ironborn, leaving his mother Lysa and the third and final Arryn child—sickly Robin, whom Aemma affectionately referred to as 'Sweetrobin'—in charge of the fortress of the Eyrie. "If only they were real, Princess. They would be quite the boon on the walls."
Daenerys quickly corralled her emotions, forcing her voice to come out calm and collected. "If only, Aemma. As I'm sure Aelor would say, the fear of them would be a great boon in and of itself."
She didn't miss the flicker of anger that crossed her handmaids face at the mention of Dany's older brother. Aemma had taken a moral outrage to the Dragon of Duskendale's past methods, a sentiment shared by many, but the Arryn girl had always kept that opinion to herself. Still, Dany supposed others who thought the same were part of the reason they were in the situation they were now. "I believe I would prefer their affinity for fire-breathing and devouring their enemies."
A melodic laugh joined from a few feet away. "I would have to agree with Lady Aemma, Princess Daenerys," said a smiling Margaery Tyrell, the infant Daena Waters—daughter of the very man sailing to attack the City—in her lap. The Reachwoman was new to King's Landing, only recently having travelled to the capital as a handmaiden to Princess Rhaella. Though her smile was completely confident, Dany could see the conflicting emotions in her eyes; her brother Loras had not sent word to her or her family of Renly Baratheon's intended moves or his own part in them. While nothing had been said to the other nobles of Alysanne's and Tyrion's doubts of the Baratheon's motives, Margaery was passing intelligent; she had gleamed that something foul was afoot, and that she and her brother were on opposite sides of whatever it was. While Daenerys didn't agree with Margaery's flamboyant and flirty mannerisms, she felt a ping of sympathy for the girl from Highgarden; there was a distinct possibility that she would find herself in Dany's shoes, with a brother in the army facing her own.
"As would I," chimed in Elia Sand, Prince Oberyn's daughter. Known as Lady Lance, the copper-skinned, boyish Dornishwoman was perhaps Daenerys' favorite lady-in-waiting in all of King's Landing. Several other voices, including young Ben Cuy, squire to Ser Roland, and Liane Vance of the Vance's of Wayfarer's Rest, gave their own agreement, and a ripple of laughter broke through the huddled nobles.
A ripple that died instantly with the massive boom that shook the very stones of the Red Keep beneath them.
Ser Roland called down the panicked exclamations, voice firm and fierce. He turned to the guard nearest him, giving him hushed orders before the man turned and rapidly exited the room. A tense few minutes passed before, with a ferocity that caused several of the noble women to shriek in fear, the door was kicked open.
Daenerys was on her feet, the chest of dragon eggs on the ground in front of her, before the familiar, boulder-like voice crashed through the ballroom. "On your feet!" Ser Manfred Darke, short and stout with the neck of a bull, stomped into the chamber with Alysanne and Tyrion Lannister hugging his heels. That ugly, scowling face from her childhood was even angrier than usual, no mean feat. The other nobles instantly obeyed the aging Kingsguard, each rising hastily.
Alysanne's voice was much more subdued than Manfred's barked command, but her tone said she would broker no argument. "All of you need to follow Ser Manfred and Lord Varys quickly and quietly. All will be explained, but for now you must follow our instructions to the letter." The de facto Queen strode forward, taking her youngest child from Rhaella's arms, the future Queen near frozen in fear. Young Daemon tried to rush towards her but Aemma stopped him, stooping to comfort the little boy.
The Spider had materialized out of nowhere at the mention of his name, Manfred stomping to join him at the front of the rapidly forming procession of noble children and teenagers while Ser Roland silently moved to take the rear. Daenerys stooped to take one handle of the chest containing the dragon eggs, and to her utmost surprise Rhaella became unfrozen and took the other.
The procession moved quickly as the distant, the muffled sound of steel meeting steel and screams growing steadily closer as they moved from chamber to chamber. Daenerys' knew this castle nearly as well as she knew the dragon eggs, but even she found herself getting turned around due to the rapidity of their movement and the struggle of carrying the chest. None of the guardsmen or Ser Roland moved to help her, instead staying on high alert as if they expected to suddenly be in the middle of combat at any moment.
Dany realized they were.
She was not as surprised as the others were when a wall suddenly rotated out of the way to reveal a hidden passage, and obediently entered the dark, foreboding passage, she and Rhaella having fallen to the back of the convoy of nobles. They moved quickly through the passages, each individual barely able to see the one to their front in the dark, and Daenerys had started to feel a flicker of hope when it all went to shit.
Suddenly there was a roar of rage and the clash of steel, and amidst the screams of those in front of her she heard Manfred's voice. "Run, scatter!" A man cried in pain, a woman screamed in terror, and without knowing what she was doing Daenerys was moving down a side passage, Rhaella following obediently, the chest between them. It wasn't until they were far down it, the sound of whatever battle happening in the passages having faded considerably, before the two Targaryens realized they were alone.
Rhaella whimpered, and Dany found herself barking at her to be silent, the back of her mind wandering at the strong, choking scent of fish and how much more slippery the stone of this passage was compared to the others. Her arms burned, the chest having grown more and more cumbersome and heavy as they fled, but she refused to leave it behind, and Rhaella at least seemed to agree on that point. The Princess had no knowledge as to where she was, but she knew backwards was not the way to go. Dany's mind raced, trying to recall the mapping of the passages both ancient and recently constructed at Aelor's order, and realized with a pang of desperation that it didn't help; they were truly lost in these passages, with no known way of escaping and—judging by the skirmish they'd just fled—enemies somewhere with them. And then, as if all of that wasn't enough, they came across the body of a child, her tiny throat slit in a grisly smile, her body soaked with both blood and the source of the scent.
One of Varys' little birds, and...oil. With a tremor of terror, Dany realized the plot. "Turn, Rhaella, run!" Yet before the two Targaryen Princesses could even begin, the roar of flame and a sudden burst of light greeted them, as the fish oil coating the secret passage ignited, its steady flame rushing towards them.
Both women ran, neither abandoning the chest either through sheer determination to not or being too terrified to realize how much it slowed them down, back the way they came. Each adjoining passage they came across—Dany hadn't realized in the darkness how many there were—was likewise slowly being consumed in fire, flushing them towards the scene of the battle.
She felt the heat on her heels, the light in the passage becoming more and more intense, and she knew without looking back that the oil was lighting faster than they could run. With a scream of terror Rhaella fell, the chest hitting the passage floor and sending the eggs jostling across the burning floor. Daenerys stumbled forward as well, thrown off balance, and turned to help her niece.
She turned in time to see Rhaella Targaryen catch alight, the oil that had soaked into her clothing from their flight in the passages bursting the cloth and silk and lace, catching her white hair and flawless skin, Rhaella's terrible screams overpowering the roar of the flame, the very stone itself seeming to burn.
Daenerys knew it was over even as her own clothing caught flame. Aelor had once told her death lost its sting when a man believed without a doubt that he had met his own, and in a moment of clarity she understood perfectly what he meant. The Targaryen Princess dove forward into the fire, feeling the flame engulf her, wrapping her arms around her dying niece and her dragon eggs as the blaze overtook all.
Ser Manfred Darke was a failure.
He had served Aelor Targaryen loyally, ever since that day decades ago when the young Prince, five and ten and still all arm and legs, had found him dying in a gutter of Duskendale with a blade under his ribs and the blood of three of his attackers coating his hands mere days after the Darklyns and Hollards had been exterminated. Manfred was of a distant relative branch to the Darklyns, his House founded hundreds of years ago by a bastard of that line, and as such had hidden among the citizens of Duskendale when the roundup of his far distant kin had occurred, drowning his sorrows and anger at his own cowardice in a tavern. The fight he had picked had been a foolish one, even for him, and it had nearly granted him the death he desired.
The young Prince, authoritative and fierce even at that age—and a much happier man then than he ever would be again—had ordered Ser Barristan to assist Manfred despite his fierce objections and demands to be left to die. Aelor had ordered him patched back up, protected him from Aerys through means Manfred had never learned, and when he finally stopped wishing to die, Manfred had joined his still-forming retinue. Years later that position would grant him an honored spot on the Kingsguard, a position held by only one of his House in the history of Targaryen Kings. Aelor Targaryen had given him a purpose, a life; he, Elia Martell and Alysanne Lefford had given Manfred Darke a family.
And he had repaid all that debt with nothing but failure.
He had let Elia Martell die those years ago, the memory of her lifeless body curled in on itself in a pool of her own blood revisiting the Kingsguard knight every time he slept. He had saved Alysanne and Renlor years later, it was true, but now it seemed he was doomed to let another Targaryen die under his care.
Manfred didn't know how these men, arms covered in golden rings, had gotten into the secret passages. It didn't matter, as the nobles behind him shouted in fear as they leapt at him from within the passages themselves. Manfred had failed; he had lead Alysanne and the Princesses into a trap, set by an enemy that had called their move. Men were pouring towards them, jostling with each other in the tight quarters.
Manfred did the only thing he could. He shouted for the nobles to scatter even as he impaled the first man to draw near, hoping they would be wise enough to take a variety of different passages. Many of them would become lost and be captured or killed he knew—there likely was more men in the maze of other passages lying in wait—but there was a chance some of them might escape.
As they did so, their shouts and the scuffle of their feet scattering behind him, Manfred did what he knew he had to do.
He became what he had always been jokingly called.
He became a boulder in a river of enemy, holding them off as his family fled behind him.
There were more men in these passages than the ones facing him, Ser Manfred knew, but he couldn't stop those; these, however, he had the ability to slow down, and slow them down he did.
At most two could come at him at once, and Ser Manfred parried and struck and roared, buying time for the family he had failed to flee. He cut ones throat, smashed another's head to a pulp with his shield, called those still coming everything from Lyseni whores to swordswallowers to 'bloody stupid cunts' as they clamored over their dead companions to come at him. He taunted, he fought, he spat and roared.
The first blade slipped through his guard to dig into his shield arm, but still Manfred Darke fought on even as that limb went limp. The second burst into the gap in his armor at the thigh, but still Manfred Darke cut its wielders throat and stood like the stone he was as his lifeblood pumped out the room. Even as the passage, alight now with the torches of his foes, went dark again with the loss of blood, he stood his ground.
His sword finally clamored from his numb fingers sometime later, and Manfred sank to the ground as two swords were instantly sunk into his chest. Warriors slipped around him, giving chase to the nobles who had fled a second or minute or hour earlier. As the owner of one of the swords in his chest leaned forward to withdraw the blade Manfred wrapped his sausage-like fingers around the man's throat, using his remaining strength to lock his strangling grip. The Lyseni flailed and pulled and panicked, but Manfred didn't let go even as he sank sideways to the ground, dragging the choking man down with him.
He spoke through bloody lips one last time, spitting phlegm and frothy bubbles as he did so. "You're coming too, you fucking whelp of a whore."
And with that one last insult, Manfred Darke died.
The City of Kings was hell.
Kin's Landing had suffered a sack nearly two decades earlier, one that had seen the slums of Flea Bottom become a raging inferno and eventual funeral pyre, seen a King die at the hands of his bodyguard, and seen a Royal Family flee in terror. This one, seventeen years later, seemed much the same, though he doubted a King would be killed this time around.
If one did, his whole plan went to shit.
Bodies clogged the ramparts, men in gold and crimson cut down in droves, their corpses nearly upholding the formations they had once stood in. More filled the blood-strewn streets, joined by the occasional man in Buckler blue or Payne purple…and the occasional innocent. Screams filled the air, shouts of rage and terror and pain. The clang and scrape of steel meeting steel sporadically joined them, pockets of King Aegon's men still putting up resistance, but he knew the most of the shrill shrieks filling the air didn't come from the hundreds of men in the streets. Many of his soldiers had turned from the battle, forsaking their orders against pillaging and raping and instead tearing into the defenseless homes and businesses around them to do just that. He hadn't even attempted to stop them, knowing that for every one he managed to halt ten more were doing it anyway. He gritted his teeth at the shrill cry of a child coming from the building he was walking by, followed closely by the guttural laugh of their tormentor. He sealed his mind from wandering at just what exactly was happening and strode on, his guard close by his side with drawn steel. These soldiers were wolves among sheep, savaging the soft peasants and merchants of King's Landing.
And Renly had let them into the pasture.
He was ambitious and power-hungry, but Renly wasn't Aelor Targaryen. He wouldn't slaughter civilians and write it off as collateral damage to the destruction of his enemy. So as he passed the burning homes and dead bodies of innocents, their bodies strewn in the street, Renly couldn't help but wonder if it was all worth it.
The future Lord of the Stormlands had nearly been knocked off his feet by the aftershock of the blast that had decimated the first dozen or so ships of the Golden Company, but he had seen to his relief the dozens more behind it start lowering boats full of soldiers, their men intent on landing farther up the beach, away from the roar of green flame. The smartest of King Aegon's followers had taken the shock and disarray following the explosion to flee towards the Red Keep, but there was a lack of sounds of battle coming from that direction, and Renly surmised that it had been taken. He was following well in the wake of the vanguard lead by Loras, the streets cleared of enemy soldiers long before he got there, and he had been told that there were additional plans as to how to tackle the Keep if his men didn't gain access peacefully. As he neared he found that to be the case, dead Targaryen men in heaping piles and the gates open and drawbridge down.
His coup had worked, it appeared. Renly wondered why he felt none of the elation he had expected.
As he entered the courtyard, he saw Loras arguing furiously with a tall man in Golden Company rings. As he approached, his lover's frantic words became clearer and clearer.
"You set them alight!? You fool, my sister was one of their number! I was promised her safety!"
The tall man, a commander it seemed, was unmoved. "I was ordered to enter the passages with my best men and kill whoever lurked there, as well as soak it with fish oil. If the false Targaryen family entered, I was to light that oil and drive them back into our custody. I had no orders to discriminate whom I was driving."
Renly came to a stop beside them, and Loras whirled. "They burnt the passages. They lit them on fire, trying to herd any escaping into certain passages where they waited to apprehend them. The fucking fools; they might have burnt Margaery to bits! I must find her!"
Renly couldn't afford to show too much affection towards Loras' pleas, but he spun on the Captain of the Company with more anger than he otherwise might have. "On whose orders did you act?"
The man met his eyes evenly, unafraid. "Laswell Peake's. My brother."
"Did King Viserys know of this?"
The man—a Peake, apparently—smiled cruelly. "We figured His Grace might find…objections to that command. We thought it wise to leave the oil bit out when he explained the cove entrance to the passages to us."
Renly gritted his jaw, containing his anger even as he placed a calming hand on the blubbering Loras. "Did your plan at least work?"
The Lord of the Stormlands—soon to be, anyway—felt a jab of pain at the betrayed look Loras shot him, but he kept his blue eyes on Peake, noting how the man's grin disappeared. "We captured several nobles hiding in passages after we cleared out the Keep from the inside and the fires burned out—a Vance and a Bulwer and a Sand, among others—but we haven't found any live Targaryens'. There were more tunnels, more than even King Viserys knew of…and we've found several burned corpses. We don't know who is who yet."
Renly didn't even try to stop Loras as he drew his blade and drove it into a surprised Peake.
That was not the agreement.
The full weight of his actions crashed down on Renly Baratheon's shoulders. What have I done?
Alysanne Targaryen nearly wept when Aemma Arryn arrived with Daemon and Varys.
The fires of King's Landing were bright in the night sky as the survivors staggered into the hidden washout on a side creek of the Blackwater Rush a mile from the taken capital. Horses and provisions had been waiting in this hidden cove, ordered by Varys. When Alysanne had stumbled out into the storehouse outside the City's Gates, clutching Alyssa to her breast and followed by Tyrion, the halfman struggling to pack along a crying Saera, she had thanked the Seven profusely. They had discovered the route more by blind luck rather than any memory of one of Aelor's newly constructed passages, both of them having mindlessly fled down the side passage at Ser Manfred's bellowed cry of warning.
She didn't know where the big boulder of a knight was; he hadn't arrived.
All the troops in the area were fighting or looting King's Landing, so making their way to this hideout had been relatively simple due to the darkness and cover of the thousands of fleeing peasants. They had found Ser Roland, Beony Farring of Farring's Cross and Margaery Tyrell awaiting them with the retainers and horses, the Highgarden girl with tear tracks on her beautiful cheeks and a squalling Daena Waters in her arms. Alysanne had demanded they wait longer for more of the fleeing party, desperately praying for her other children.
Those prayers had been answered in part when Aemma, clearly exhausted, entered the cove with her baby boy in her arms.
"Are their others behind you?" Alysanne demanded of the Spider when she finished clutching and fawning over her silver-haired son.
Varys shook his head, reeking of fish oil. "I know of no others. They lit the passages aflame."
Tyrion's voice was sharp and mean. "We saw that, eunuch! How did they infiltrate those passages?"
The spider turned on him, for the first time in Alysanne's memory allowing some measure of emotion into his voice. "Viserys, I'd wager."
"Your little birds…"
"Are dead. Their throats were slit, one by one, their little bodies littering the passages we fled down. Even I can't hear songs sung by the dead, Imp."
Ser Roland stopped their bickering. "We need to move. We need to take advantage of the time it takes them to realize we aren't captured or dead."
Alysanne turned to face him, face horrified. "But Daenerys, Rhaella…"
Ser Roland's eyes were sorrowful. "I'm sorry, Lady Alysanne, but they ignored my order to follow me and fled down the very chamber the Golden Company entered. They're captured or…"
"No," Alysanne nearly roared. Roland would tell her later that she had reminded him of Aelor in that moment. "I will not abandon them!"
"We must ride, my lady. We need to escape while we can."
"My daughters are back there!" Alysanne could barely speak, the knot of terror that something had befallen Dany and Rhaella in the confusion of the flight that she felt like folding in on herself and dying.
Roland's voice still held sorrow, but it held no small amount of steel either. "They are captured or dead, my lady. There is nothing we can do about it now."
Margaery spat a curse at the man who had lead her out of the passages, apparently forgetting in her anger that it had only been his memorization of the new additions built by Aelor that had saved them. "How dare you say such!"
She was so engrossed in the following argument, Roland, Varys and Tyrion calling for hasty departures while the rest demanded they stay, that she nearly didn't notice her until she spoke. "I am sorry, mother."
Alysanne turned at that sweet voice, and saw stumbling through the shallow sidewater of the Blackwater Rush the pale form of Daenerys. Her heart soared as she charged towards her daughter in all but blood, so thankful of her life that she saw nothing else for a long moment.
She pulled up short, however, when she realized what she was seeing. Her daughter was as naked as the day she was born, her hair burnt away. Her skin was covered in grim and dirt, yet none of it had so much as a single blemish. Simultaneously to those realizations was the one that Rhaella was not with her.
Alysanne felt the choke of fear again. "Rhaella?"
Dany shook her head absently. "She…she's gone."
The grief Alysanne Lefford felt was so great that she collapsed to the ground, tears she had left unshed pouring out of her in soul-wrenching sobs. Her daughter, the future Queen of Westeros, dead. She didn't know how long she stayed there, sobbing, before something cold nuzzled her face.
She looked up into the reptilian eyes of a tiny…
Dragon.
Hundreds of miles north, seven Targaryen's jerked awake.