Chapter Text
When Aegon was small, his nursemaids would tell him of monsters. Krakens with tentacles that crushed the masts and hulls of warships to splinters, harpies with dripping tails and mottled wings, even dragons made of living ice, with breath of deadly cold and a hunger for the warmth of human flesh. The tales had made him shiver in his bed, made him fearful for the moment the candle would be blown out and he would be left in the dark with monsters descending all about him with claws outstretched.
Viserys did not fear the dark. Viserys was clever, clever and brave. He did not shiver or shriek at those stories, though he was younger than Aegon. When Aegon whimpered, he would whisper to him across their pillows of the ways they might trick the monsters if they came, how they would escape them to fly safe home to Dragonstone.
Viserys had not been able to trick them. Viserys is dead, and now the monsters have descended upon Dragonstone to feast.
“If the brat doesn’t stop his wailing, I’ll have his tongue out,” one croaks from Mother’s throne. His eyes are white, bleached by fire, the rest of him blackened and weeping red. The gold has melted from his armour, hardening to veins that tear into the meat of his thighs, blood weeping down to puddle dark beneath his seat every time he shifts. The guards that bound Aegon’s hands whispered that his flesh had run like tallow before Moondancer’s flames when Baela rose on the wind to face him.
Moondancer’s corpse is broken on the cobblestones outside. Her wings are torn off, everything above the shoulders gnawed down to the bone by the same teeth that devoured Mother. They have stripped Baela too, so that she stands bloodied and bared in the middle of the hall, no modesty offered by the bandages that Maester Geradys had hastily crisscrossed over her torso and hip, the only care they allowed him to give before they dragged him before those teeth as well.
“Make an end to it, then,” shrugs the other monster from where he circles them both, his one eye moving over them both in a way that drops cold, clammy fear against Aegon’s skin like a wet blanket. There is no hunger there like his eldest uncle’s, just a strange calculation that for some reason feels just as unsettling.
“You have your prize, brother,” the king smiles, and Baela’s fingers clench into blunted fists. His eyes are pooled milk, but they still move in his skull, following her every movement, and Aegon wonders what of her he sees. “I’ll have mine.”
Outside, there comes a groan, a horrendous rumble that quakes the very air. On the throne, the king jerks, milk-of-the-poppy slopping over the rim of his cup as he stares at the wall as if he can see all the way through to where his dragon spasms amidst Moondancer’s corpse.
“Your beast dies slow,” Baela laughs. She gasps when Aemond drives his fist into her belly, keens against the flagstones in a high whine of agony as his boot finds the burn that weeps down her waist and presses. But her eyes roll towards the king where he sits hunched on Mother’s throne, greedily watching every flinch and twitch, and her laugh shudders from her still.
Father would have gloried in her strength if he watched her as Aegon does now. Father would have plucked the knife from Aemond’s belt and slashed his other eye from him for daring to lay a hand on her. Father was fierce as Baela is, fierce and brave.
Father is dead. In his place, Aegon begs for his uncles to stop, for her to stop as she spits up blood over the stones and smiles through teeth dyed red.
“He dies slow, and you do the same, usurper. How soft do you think that flesh will feel against the Iron Throne now?”
The curls on one side of her head were crisped away as Moondancer coiled close in her death throes, her broken wings aflame. Aemond buries his fingers into those that remain and wrenches her to her knees; she cries out, and Aegon struggles desperately against the guards who hold him, his voice breaking as he pleads-
“Was it truly your father that fucked him into the whore’s belly, or some bleating sheep?” the king laughs to Baela as she snarls weakly, hanging almost limp in Aemond's grip. He gestures at his brother without even turning his head to where Aegon struggles. Aegon has only a moment to be grateful when Aemond drops Baela to the floor before those hands are on him, fingers wrapping around his neck and holding him aloft with ease as Aegon’s nails scrabble desperately against them, trying to prise them loose without purchase.
“I tire of his snivelling. Remove him from here, brother.”
“And do what with him?”
“Geld him, as the whore did Jaehaerys,” the king spits. “Then feed him to Vhagar for all I care.”
“The Sea Snake still lives,” his brother replies, his hand digging cold into Aegon’s nape. Baela heaves herself to her knees in a smear of bloodied pus against the stones, her breath rattling as she reaches desperately for him.
“The Sea Snake is a craven, and I hold two - well, make that one - of his blood already. I don’t need another to hold him at bay, or any other that would rally under a dead bitch’s banner. Do as you will with him.”
Baela screams his name as Aemond drags him from the hall, and Aegon wants to be strong as her, he does, but he cannot help but weep as he sees the dragon looming above Dragonstone’s walls, its breath thundering louder than the fires which sleep beneath the Dragonmont.
Grandmother would not have whimpered at the sight of it. Grandsire said that she had not flinched even when it fell upon her with Sunfyre in its wake. She had turned to meet it with her head held high, her back unbowed until the end. Grandmother had been proud. Grandmother had been brave.
The dragons had descended upon her and Meleys and charred them to cooked meat. Grandmother is dead, and Aegon sobs as he is flung over the scarred leather of Vhagar’s saddle.
He thinks that his uncle will shove him off the side to splatter over the frothing rocks, or into the sea as the waves roll black far, far below the dragon’s wings, that he will die sinking in a cloud of blood as Jace did.
Instead they fly on, hour after hour, until Aegon’s face is numb with cold and all he can hear is the icy breath of the wind as it laps at his hair. Then Vhagar roars, her wings angling down, and a familiar reek catches at his nostrils.
King’s Landing.
“No,” Aegon whispers, bile coming sharp and ripe up his throat as he starts to struggle, heedless of how rope bites against his wrist as he hurls himself to one side, suddenly not caring if he smashes against the stones below.
“Hush now,” his uncle croons, hauling him back up one-handed with a strength that Aegon doesn’t possess in his entirety. “Don’t you want to see your brother?”
Joffrey had wanted to help the dragons. Joffrey had ridden to save them when Aegon had cowered under his bedsheets, no matter the knights Mother sent to stop him. Joffrey had been relentless. Joffrey had been brave.
Syrax cast Joffrey from her back and the mob tore them both to pieces. Joffrey is dead, and surely the crows pick now at anything that is left. Aegon screws his eyes shut as Aemond slings him over his shoulder and climbs down into the empty, echoing depths of the Dragonpit. Mad panic froths in the pit of his stomach with every step his uncle takes, but he won’t let himself open them now. Joffrey, gods, Joffrey, he doesn’t want to see-
But Aemond does not take him to the battlements, nor to the carrion stink of the city’s gates with their rotting heads, nor even to the groaning dark of the dungeons. Instead there are stairs, flights and flights and flights of them, and then a small door, locked and barred with a stone-faced guard that steps aside without a word as his uncle fits the key to the door.
“Bastard,” he calls out, and Aegon gives a surprised yelp as he is thrown to the floor. The stone jars his knee as he rolls, and he is still blinking away the tears when he looks up at Aemond’s next words.
“See what I have brought you.”
The room is empty of all but a large bed tucked in one corner, the curve of a chamber pot barely visible behind the discrete drape of the sheet. Dangling in front of this are the slender ankles of a boy. A boy who is blinking down at Aegon in abject horror.
“Egg?” he whispers, rising from the bed. His hair curls thick and dark around his head, but his skin is snow-white, snow-soft against the faded green of the thin shift he wears, and his large eyes look wider yet in the painful gauntness of his face. “Egg, is that you?”
Aegon stills on the floor, his eyes roving desperately over his face. For a moment, the features swim before him, familiar and yet unplaceable - doe-eyed, pug-nosed, rabbit-teethed, all kinds of animal in a face that can only be a dragon, that can only be-
One morning on Dragonstone, Aegon had broken his fast with his older brothers whilst Viserys still curled sleepily in the nursery. Jace had eaten with perfect, princely precision that Aegon had done his best to copy, and only succeeded in overturning the milk jug with his elbow. Luke had scolded Joff for his sniggers, mopped Aegon up with one hand and ruffled his hair with the other. He barely seemed to be listening when Joffrey sulked that Tyraxes was just as strong as Arrax and could make the trip in half the time if Mother would only let him go too.
It is a memory unremarkable in every way save for one; it was the last time Aegon’s family was whole before Lucerys left for Storm’s End and the world became a nightmare from which he could not wake.
“Luke?” he says, voice quavering, hardly daring to believe it. He is older than Aegon’s blurred memories, taller and so very, very thin, but his smile is still how Aegon remembers it, even with the bruises darkening his cheekbone and eye socket, and all that Aegon wants is to be comforted by it as he was when he was small. He tries to scramble forward, to go to Luke, but a leather-clad arm comes up, barring his path.
“Your mother is dead, my Lord Strong,” Aemond announces with a relish that feels like a hot knife sliding into Aegon’s belly. “The Sea Snake bent the knee to Aegon, and the North will soon follow. There is no one to come for you now.”
Aegon gives a tiny, tearful nod when Luke looks at him, and then stares at the floor rather than his brother’s red eyes and quivering mouth. He can still hear the sobs tearing their way from Luke’s chest, and from the pleased hum of their uncle’s chest, he can too.
Out of the corner of his vision, Aegon sees Luke’s fists flex, wasted muscle pulling tight against the skin, and thinks with a lurch of Baela.
“Uncle,” Luke says, and though his voice chokes around his grief, there’s still an urgency forcing through that knots Aegon’s guts with fear. “He’s got nothing to do with this. With us. You can let him go. He’s only a boy-”
Mother had called Jace a boy when he mounted Vermax to burn the fleets for Viserys. Jace was older then than Luke must be now, five and ten and grey-faced as he looks at their uncle looming above them both.
“He’s a traitor’s son twice over,” Aemond says sweetly. “Aegon wants him gelded, did you know? I could have him torn to pieces like that other bastard runt, mount a piece above every gate to greet the northmen as they come-”
“Why did you bring him here?” Luke asks, his voice little more than a cracked whisper. “What do you want?”
Hunger coils in that one, glittering eye, and Aegon’s mouth dries, sweat trickling cold as ice down his spine.
“Aegon is near death,” his uncle murmurs, and Aegon starts before he realises it is not him Aemond refers to. “And I alone in the seven kingdoms fly a dragon now. It is my word, and mine only that rules this city. Do you understand, Lucerys?”
Though the room contains so little, it suddenly seems far too small, the walls pressing all about them as Luke shakes and shakes and does not answer. The air is close, choking Aegon’s lungs, and still his brother and uncle stare at each other.
“Yes,” Luke says finally, broken and harsh as bone grinding on bone. “I understand.”
“Then I can be clear, nephew,” Aemond smiles, and his hand reaches up to brush a curl away from Luke’s eyes, just like their mother used to. Luke doesn’t flinch, only closes his eyes tightly, and the hand drifts lower, grasping Luke’s jaw and drawing his face close to his own, close as Aegon would hold his mirror.
“Every meal that you refuse now, I’ll have him flogged thirty lashes beneath your window. If you try to take a blade to yourself again, you can choose which limb he loses first. And if you give up your life, my Lord Strong, I’ll have him kiss your bones on your pyre before I tie him to it.”
“Luke,” Aegon says, his voice trembling, and Luke tears himself from Aemond’s grasp, lurching for Aegon with his arms outstretched-
“Ah, ah, ah,” Aemond chides, and then his hand bites into Aegon’s shoulder, dragging him up and away from his brother. Luke’s fingers close around empty air.
“You haven’t earned that yet, Lucerys.”
Luke rears back, hate seared across his face, and it turns his features to the Stranger’s, something alien and wholly unknowable, nothing like the Luke who had flown from Dragonstone, whose smile was sweet as spring, the gentlest of Aegon’s brothers and the most loving-
“I can call for the headsman if you wish,” their uncle continues, and the fury on Luke’s face is doused, his clenched jaw the only break in the blankness of his features. “Or you can convince me otherwise. Prove to me that there are no traitors here, only obedient subjects to the Crown.”
“Don’t,” Aegon says, dread clawing at his stomach. He doesn’t even know what it is he’s protesting, what it is that his uncle is commanding. Only that the look on Luke’s face is worse than that which Mother wore when they pricked her breast with steel before a dragon, worse than Jace’s when he climbed upon Vermax for the last time, worse than-
Luke gives a stiff, single nod. He does not look at Aegon while he does it.
Luke, Aegon realises in a clutch of icy terror, is loving still. Loving and brave.
“Take him,” Aemond orders, and Aegon once again finds himself being hauled from the room, his flailing limbs efficiently pinned to his side by the guard, the guard who doesn’t even look at Lucerys as his brother sinks to his knees, his eyes burning.
“Come then, my lord Strong,” the monster’s voice drawls out even as the door closes shut on Aegon’s yells. “Time is short. Prove to me your gratitude, and you may yet still have one brother left to you by the time your king returns.”