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“Uncle, what is this word?”
Rhaenyra sat at the base of the weirwood tree, knees tucked up against her chest. She had been there for much of the day, hiding from the septa. In the middle of the godswood was not the best hiding place; she was in plain view after all. Like as not, the old bat would have come to retrieve her if it weren’t for her uncle’s presence. Septas usually avoided Daemon, though Rhaenyra didn’t know why.
It wasn’t often that Daemon spent time in the Keep these days. Rhaenyra had overheard her father telling her mother he would have to find him something to do, if he wanted to stop Daemon from causing more trouble. Rhaenyra didn’t know what trouble it was that he caused, but she wished he’d take her with him when he caused it.
But he was causing no trouble today. He’d found her in the godswood an hour before, and when she’d badgered him, he traded the book of legends she’d received from Alicent for the one he’d carried, some old, old book about dragons written in High Valyrian.
But it wasn’t those words she was asking about.
Daemon turned his head toward her, the light breeze in the godswood ruffling strands of his pale, silken hair. (Courtiers often said she was the most beautiful in the kingdom, but truly, Rhaenyra thought that was Daemon.) His smile was gentle and his eyes bright as he gestured for her to pass him the book.
She did so, and scooted closer to him. “It’s a poem,” she said unnecessarily, pointing to the loose page tucked between two drawings of a long-dead dragon called Vermithrax.
“So it is,” he replied.
Most of it she understood.
I have crafted a monument more lasting than dragonsteel, and loftier than the Harpy’s pyramids,
A thing which neither rain’s gnashing teeth nor the heavy fists of the north wind can crush,
Nor the procession of countless years or the flight of that thief Time.
But a note was scrawled beside the poem, messy script in old ink. She could not quite make it all out.
“Our deeds make us…” she trailed off. There was one last word there.
“Namorghulilare,” Daemon finished. “Immortal.”
“Immortal?” she repeated.
“What we make lives after us, the poet says,” Daemon continued, “and thus we do not truly die.”
“Do you believe that?”
Daemon did not answer right away. She knew he had an answer, and generally, he did not shrink from giving them to her (though sometimes her parents wished he did). She wondered if he was hesitating because of her latest dead brother, delivered too early. It had been Caraxes who burned his tiny, tiny body, not two moons before.
She had heard of the Andal’s Seven Heavens and Seven Hells, and of the realms where dragonlords feasted after their deaths. But each time her mother birthed a dead babe, that did not seem to comfort either of her parents.
This would not either. If what they made gave them life after death, then what afterlife did her dead baby brothers have? They had done nothing, not even breathe.
What afterlife would she have?
“I think the only afterlife is memory,” he said finally. “We cannot know if the gods exist, but we know that our ancestors did. The Conqueror himself may have written this note, and their deeds did live on, did they not? We sit inside Aegon’s castle, on land he forged into one kingdom. The legacy we leave is what’s immortal.”
Legacy. She thought of her father’s throne, her father’s crown, and wondered again what she would leave behind. Rhaenyra peeked up at her uncle, and found him looking back at her, his face full of thoughts that she could not read. What would he leave behind?
“Will you read it to me?” she asked.
He nodded, his lips curling up in the smile he mostly saved for her, and she leaned into him.
“Not all of me shall die,” he read, his Valyrian as pleasing as a song, “and the best of me will outlast even Balerion’s maw, as long as the stars shine down on the Fourteen Flames.”
She rested her head on her uncle’s shoulder and let his voice wash over her.
Daenerys sat in the corner of their tiny cabin, eyes closed, trying to let the motion of the ship settle the curdling in her stomach and the ache on her cheek. Usually, waves gentle rocking lulled her to sleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the girl.
She was not much older, maybe fourteen to Dany’s ten, but she’d sounded younger when the man had grabbed her. Dany had seen the tears in her eyes and heard the pain in her voice, and then she’d done something so stupid—
The cabin door slammed open.
They were lucky to have a door, the captain had told them when they’d come aboard this ship. Their coin didn’t stretch far enough to get them two beds or three meals each, but they had a door, and Dany liked the little hammock a kind sailor had rigged up for her in the corner, and even though she was so hungry she sometimes dreamed of a boy stealing lemon cakes for her, at least they had bread twice a day.
Viserys did not have any such fondness for their little cabin. He didn’t even have that much fondness for her anymore, Dany thought helplessly as her brother slammed the door closed behind him.
“You’re making trouble again.”
He towered above her. He’d grown a lot in the last year, while they were guests of a family in Volantis that claimed some old allegiance to one of their ancestors. Dany had liked it there, but then Viserys had gotten into a fight with someone who claimed to have Targaryen blood at dinner; the liar had struck him, and Viserys said he was paid to do worse by the Usurper. They’d had to run again, this time to Lys.
They were only two days into their journey. She’d known he would be angry the moment she’d spoken, only—
“The man was hurting a girl, Viserys,” she said. “Dragging her off, and—“
“That’s not your business, Dany! Who cares if some sailor takes his pleasure?”
She wrinkled her nose. She didn’t like the sound of that, like pleasure was something to be stolen. “But it’s not right.”
“Daenerys.” Viserys was losing patience with her, but she felt as though her tongue was full of sparks and she had to spit them out.
“It’s not right, Viserys! You said!”
“When did I say that?”
Dany folded her arms across her chest and recited the story she knew by heart. “When he was commander of the City Watch, Daemon the Rogue Prince took his men into the city and rounded up those who had broken the king’s laws. He took the hands of thieves, and the heads of murderers, and the cocks of rapers. All I did was kick one.”
“Dany,” he breathed. The anger rushed out of his face and he looked so sad. Sometimes when he looked this sad, she wanted him to be mad again. At least he didn’t look as defeated when he was mad.
But Daemon would have stopped that man. She knew it. Viserys always said they were dragons. Shouldn’t she be a dragon?
“Dany, we can’t—“ He stopped talking abruptly and his eyes flashed angry and she knew he’d seen her cheek. She wished she could take back the desire for anger. This kind of anger was dangerous.
She was on her feet in an instant. “It doesn’t hurt!”
His hands were balled up at his sides. “Who did it? Was it the man you kicked?”
She nodded but rushed to say, “It’s hardly a mark, Viserys. Please.” If he confronted the man, the result would be worse than a slap and some jeering. Viserys’ temper had gotten them thrown from palaces. She didn’t want them to be thrown from a boat.
He reached and grabbed her shoulders roughly, dragging her toward him and staring at the mark on her cheek with narrowed eyes. “He dares touch my sister. He dares touch the blood of the dragon.”
“Viserys—“
“I should kill him,” Viserys said, but before he could say anything else, she threw her arms around him.
“No,” she begged. “Please.”
She could feel it when he decided to listen, and the tension drained from her body.
“Daemon would have killed anyone who laid hands on his Rhaenyra,” Viserys whispered into her hair.
Dany knew that was true. Daemon was fearless and bold and strong. And one day, she thought, pressing the cheek that wasn’t sore against her brother’s chest, she wanted to be just like him.
“Certainly someone must know who his mother is.”
Jon froze one stride before the entrance to the kitchens.
He came down here for lemon cakes sometimes. They were Sansa’s favorite, and when there had been but one left at dinner tonight, he had let her have it, little thought she appreciated it. So now, as the most of Winterfell settled in to sleep, he crept toward the kitchens, in hopes he could steal a cake of his own, for they were his favorite too.
“That isn’t something you want Lord or Lady Stark to hear you speaking of,” another voice cautioned. He hadn’t recognized the first woman, but this one he knew—Alys, who had worked in the kitchens for as long as he could remember.
“I won’t let them hear me speak of it,” the other woman said, “but someone must know the answer! What a mystery it is! It looks as though she left not a bit of herself in him. He’s all Stark.”
“He’s all Snow,” Alys replied sharply. “Don’t you forget that either.”
All Snow, Jon thought bitterly, slipping away before he could be seen. He might look like a Stark but he wasn’t one. And as for what else he was… he did not know.
He wondered often who his mother was. Was she lovely, kind and good? Was she highborn? In his darkest moments, he wondered if she was just some whore who had traded the care of her child to his father for a bag of gold.
The thing he wondered most was if she loved him.
He did not sleep well that night, tossing and turning and fitfully dreaming of a sad girl on a boat. He thought of her the next morning, when he went to his lessons and found himself facing a book on the early Targaryen kings. The girl in his dreams had been tiny and as blonde as a Targaryen.
(Had his mother been blonde? He had no idea.)
Jon was the first to arrive. While Luwin wrote spindly letters into his ledger, Jon opened the heavy tome. The pages were filled with portraits of unnaturally beautiful dragonlords, and Jon felt his anger spike. Why should he know what the Good Queen looked like, but have no image of his own mother? How was that fair?
He flipped pages quickly, the parchment crinkling as he carelessly moved forward.
Until he stopped still, letting his hands fall to the table.
They were, perhaps, the only dark haired people in this book. There were three of them, all standing around a woman wearing a jeweled tiara. He knew who she was instantly—Rhaenyra Targaryen.
And those had to be her Strong boys.
The first time he had heard that a bastard had been in line for the Iron Throne, he had remembered Robb telling him a bastard could not be lord of Winterfell. Jacaerys Velaryon had been heir to all of Westeros, and he was spoken of with respect by all who knew him. Why couldn’t he be like that? Respected, not a stain on a good man’s honor, with a mother as removed from him as Rhaenyra Targaryen herself.
He looked away from Rhaenyra and to each of the three boys in turn. They all had brown hair, a little curly, and dark eyes. He thought again about what the kitchen girl had said: his mother had left not a bit of herself in him. Had Rhaenyra Targaryen felt that way when she looked at her sons?
No, he thought, looking down at their faces: confident, clear-eyed, clever. She had left herself in them, even if not in their features.
And maybe, he thought, his mother had left something of herself in him. He only had to find it.
The door opened loudly, and Robb strode inside. “Jon,” he said, “you skipped breakfast.”
Jon closed the book after one last look at Queen Rhaenyra’s face. She had been proud of her sons. Maybe his mother was as well.
“I wasn’t hungry,” he said.
“You’re always hungry,” his brother said, and sat down beside him.
Maester Luwin began their lesson shortly after. They had stopped, last time, before Viserys I’s death.
“And who ruled after Viserys, First of his Name?” Maester Luwin asked.
Robb answered with Aegon II. Jon held his tongue, but the name on the tip of it was Rhaenyra.