The warmth of the volcanic air faded, replaced by the damp, oppressive chill of the stone corridors as Daemon crossed the threshold of Dragonstone's inner keep. The castle was a labyrinth of gargoyles and shadow, quiet in the late morning, its halls swallowing the distant scuttle of servants and the rhythmic murmur of the tides below.
He had almost cleared the great hall, moving with the practiced, predatory silence he had honed on the black sands, when a voice caught him.
"Daemon."
It was calm, but it possessed the resonance of a royal decree. He stopped mid-stride.
Alysanne Targaryen stood bathed in the pale light of the high windows. Her silver hair was caught in the sun, gleaming like a crown of spun silk that needed no gems to assert its authority. There was no anger in her eyes only a soft, searching intelligence. To Daemon, the lack of fury was far more dangerous.
"Where were you this morning?" she asked.
Daemon's response was immediate, his face a mask of youthful innocence. "In one of the castle rooms, Grandmother."
"He was not in the castle."
The voice was tiny, sharp as a glass shard, and entirely unwelcome.
Daemon closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, a silent sigh echoing in the void of his mind. Of course.
From behind the Queen's heavy velvet skirts, Gael Targaryen stepped forward. Her small face was set with that absolute, terrifying certainty only children and zealots possessed.
"He went outside," she added, her tone helpfully treasonous.
Daemon stared at her, his violet eyes narrowing. Is she truly snitching on me now?
"No, Grandmother," he said, his voice smooth, shifting just enough to carry a hint of wounded pride. "You may ask Viserra if you wish. She will tell you I was occupied."
Alysanne studied him for a long moment, the silence stretching until it felt thin and brittle. Then, to his mild horror, she bent at the knees, lowering herself until her gaze was level with his.
""Daemon," she said gently, "I know you do not enjoy being watched. But your grandsire insists for your safety.The world is not as kind to princes as it is to birds."
Daemon held her gaze, violet eyes steady.
"I understand, Grandmother," he replied. "But I do not require protection."
A pause. Then, with the deliberate calm of a strategist making a necessary sacrifice:
"But for your peace of mind, and for his I will not leave unescorted again. In future,If I must go anywhere, I will take Ser Ryam Redwyne with me."
It was a brilliant concession. By choosing the Lord Commander, the most honorable man in the realm, he bought himself a shield of legitimacy that few would dare question.
Alysanne seemed satisfied, but her gaze had already shifted. It wasn't fixed on his face anymore. It had drifted to the shape hidden beneath his travel-stained cloak.
"And what is it you carry there?" she asked.
"A bow," he said simply.
"I can see that." Her voice remained soft, yet the curiosity was whetted. "From where did you get it? It is not of the castle armory."
Before he could offer a curated explanation, she stepped forward. With the effortless grace of long habit, she reached out and slipped the protective cloth from his shoulder.
The moment her fingers closed around the bone-pale wood, Daemon felt a jolt.
A faint, almost imperceptible pulse thrummed through the air. The Weirwood responded to the touch of the Queen.Alysanne turned it in her hands, her brow knitting as she felt the unnatural warmth of the material. The wood was bone-white, its grain flowing like veins beneath a translucent skin.
"This is no common make," she murmured, her thumb tracing the elegant, predatory curve of the limb.
For an instant, the air in the hall seemed to go still, as if the castle itself were holding its breath. Daemon watched her every movement, his violet eyes measuring the depth of her realization.
"It was in storage," he said, his voice a steady, clinical beat. "Old. Forgotten. I found it in a chest near the lower vaults."
Alysanne's eyes flicked to him, sharp and piercing, before returning to the pale wood. "…Perhaps," she said softly.
But the word was heavy with doubt. Not yet suspicion, but the first cold shadow of it.
"He is lying!" Gael's voice rang out again, delighted by the chaos she was sowing.
Alysanne exhaled, a weary smile tugging at her lips. "Gael…"
But the spell was broken. Daemon turned his head slowly, fixing the five-year-old girl with a flat, dangerous stare the gaze of a wolf being nipped at by a puppy.
Gael froze for a heartbeat. Then, she grinned, spun on her heel, and bolted.
"Get back here..."
She shrieked with laughter, her small shoes slapping against the stone as she darted down the corridor. Daemon moved after her instantly, his composure discarded for the sake of the chase, his black cloak snapping behind him like the wings of a crow.
"You said you would not go outside!" she taunted over her shoulder.
"I said nothing about chasing you!" Daemon called back.
Their footsteps echoed through the hall one light and chaotic, the other fast, precise, and deceptively strong.
Behind them, Alysanne watched the two children disappear into the shadows of the castle. Despite her lingering questions, she couldn't help but smile. It was a scene of normalcy that she fought so hard to preserve.
But then her gaze fell back to the bow resting in her hands. Her fingers brushed the ivory surface once more. It felt... humming. Alive.
A strange thing. Old… and yet, somehow, brand new.
The Painted Table chamber was a cavern of shifting amber and deep obsidian, the great carved map of Westeros stretching beneath the fitful dance of candlelight. Shadows clung to the painted coasts and mountain ranges as if the realm itself were huddled in the dark, holding its breath.
Jaehaerys I Targaryen stood at the table's edge. One hand rested near the carved crags of Dragonstone, his face a landscape of hard lines and heavy thought.
A servant approached, footsteps swallowed by the silence. "Your Grace?"
Jaehaerys gestured toward a low pedestal. Upon it rested a bundle wrapped in heavy, blood-red silk. "Take this," he commanded, his voice like velvet over iron. "Deliver it to Prince Daemon's chambers. Personally. See that it is not mishandled, and see that you are not delayed."
"Yes, Your Grace." The maid bowed low, lifting the bundle with a reverence usually reserved for crown jewels before retreating into the gloom.
The heavy oak doors had barely clicked shut when a second presence manifested from the shadows. Alysanne Targaryen moved with the quiet grace of a predator and the sharp, knowing eyes of a queen who missed nothing.
"You sent a gift to the boy," she stated. It was not a question.
Jaehaerys exhaled a long, tired breath and turned to her. "Is everything prepared for the ceremony?"
"All is in motion," Alysanne replied, though her gaze remained fixed on his face. "The lords and ladies will begin arriving within days. Dragonstone will be full soon enough,at least until Saera and Rickon Stark are wed and gone to the North." She took a step closer. "Now answer me. What did you send to Daemon?"
Jaehaerys was silent for a moment longer than was comfortable. "…Petrified dragon eggs."
Alysanne blinked, her composure momentarily fracturing. "Dragon eggs?" she repeated, her voice dropping to a whisper. "For what purpose?
Jaehaerys' jaw tightened. "He believes he can wake them."
"With what?" she asked.
A beat.
"With magic."
Silence settled between them like falling ash.
"And you agreed?" Alysanne's voice was incredulous, bordering on sharp. "You would give those stones to a child to play with? To let him obsess over a lost art?"
Jaehaerys turned away, his gaze drifting across the Painted Table past the Narrow Sea, past the Wall, to lands shaped and broken by fire. "He is not like the others, Alysanne. You have seen it yourself. "
Alysanne said nothing, her fingers twitching at the memory of the humming, bone-white wood.
"He is… something more," Jaehaerys continued, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly timbre. "A legacy we do not yet understand."
"What has he told you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.
Jaehaerys hesitated, the memory of the boy's clinical, violet gaze reflecting in his mind. "Days ago, he came to my solar. He spoke of a dream."
Alysanne stiffened. In House Targaryen, a dream was never just a dream. It was a warning from the blood.
"He said that within forty years," Jaehaerys went on, his voice eerily steady, "House Targaryen would command twenty dragons. A sky full of wings and fire."
A flicker of something perhaps hope, perhaps a terrifying sense of scale crossed Alysanne's face. "And after?"
Jaehaerys' expression darkened, the candlelight casting deep pits where his eyes should be. "Six years later… only one would remain."
The chamber felt suddenly, impossibly colder. The wind howled outside the thick stone walls, sounding like the scream of a dying beast. Alysanne drew in a slow, jagged breath.
"And you believe this?" she asked. "You believe a four-year-old child has seen the end of our house?"
Jaehaerys turned to face her fully. He thought of the way mana felt when Daemon was in the room not like a flicker of a candle, but like the pressurized heat of a forge. After watching his magic… how can I not?
"After what I have seen…" he said aloud, "I would be a fool to dismiss it."
A long silence followed, the only sound the crackle of the hearth. Then Alysanne spoke again, her voice soft and heavy with the weight of the crown.
"And if he is wrong?"
Jaehaerys' gaze hardened into something irrevocable. "If Aenar Targaryen had doubted Daenys the Dreamer when she spoke of the Doom of Valyria… we would not be standing here. We would be ash beneath the Fourteen Flames."
He let the words hang in the air, a grim reminder of their history. Fire and prophecy had built the Iron Throne. Now, those same forces were converging in a small boy who didn't play like other children.
Alysanne looked down at the Painted Table, her fingers brushing the carved outline of Dragonstone. "…Then we are trusting the fate of our house to the dreams of a child."
Jaehaerys did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was a ghost of a whisper.
"No," he said. "To what that child may become."
The Painted Table chamber remained heavy with the weight of their spoken truths, the silence pooling in the corners of the room like liquid shadow.
Then, Jaehaerys I Targaryen's gaze shifted, sharpening as it fell upon the object his wife held. "To what end," he said slowly, his voice carrying the rasp of dry parchment, "are you walking the halls of castle with a bow in your hands?"
Alysanne Targaryen glanced down, her expression flickering as if she had only just remembered the weight in her grip. "Oh...this?" she said, her tone deceptively light. "I took it from Daemon."
That alone was enough to draw Jaehaerys's full attention. The King moved, the candlelight catching the silver threads of his beard. "From the boy?"
Alysanne nodded, offering the pale arc of wood forward.
Jaehaerys took the bow. The moment his fingers closed around the ivory-pale surface, a stillness settled over him a sudden, profound quiet that only those who have felt the pulse of power could truly recognize. He did not speak. He simply turned the object in his hands, his thumb tracing the grain. The lines were too smooth, too deliberate, flowing beneath the surface like the veins of a living thing.
"This…" he murmured, his voice trailing off into the gloom. "This is no common timber."
Alysanne stepped into the circle of light, her eyes searching his face. "You recognize the make?"
Jaehaerys exhaled a long, soft breath that seemed to vibrate in the still air. "I do." He lifted the bow, weighing it as if he were measuring the gravity of an entire age rather than a few pounds of wood. "Weirwood."
The word lingered, cold and ancient.
Alysanne's brows drew together, her hand instinctively drifting toward the ruby at her neck. "Weirwood? On Dragonstone? The soil here is ash and sulfur, Jaehaerys. Nothing grows here but obsidian and pride."
Jaehaerys nodded, his eyes never leaving the bone-white arc. "Before the Age of Heroes, before our House ever dreamed of the sky…" he said, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper, "the Children of the Forest shaped such things. They did not forge as we do, with hammer and tongs. They grew their weapons from the earth… or perhaps they convinced the trees to become them."
Alysanne listened, the flickering candlelight casting long, distorted shadows across the map of the realm beneath them.
"They fought the First Men with tools like this," Jaehaerys continued, his fingers lingering on the silk-smooth finish. "Living wood."
A pause. His tone hardened, the weight of the crown returning to his shoulders. "But time is not kind to the old gods, Alysanne. After the coming of the Andals, the weirwood trees were put to the torch. Burned, desecrated, erased in the name of the Seven until the gods themselves were forced to flee."
He lowered the bow, the pale wood gleaming like a ghost in the dim light.
"And now?" Alysanne asked, her voice hushed.
"Now," Jaehaerys said, his eyes lifting slowly to meet hers, "they survive only in the North and beyond the Wall. Far from the reach of men who fear the sight of a face in a tree."
The silence stretched between them, thin and taut as a bowstring.
"And yet," Alysanne whispered, the realization settling like frost, "your grandson walks our halls carrying one. Fully restored. Whole."
Alysanne's fingers curled at her side. "He told me he found it in storage. In a chest, forgotten among the old relics of the vaults."
Jaehaerys did not reply immediately. Instead, he looked down once more at the weapon. He felt it then a faint, subtle hum beneath the wood. It wasn't magic as the Valyrians defined it; it wasn't the roaring heat of the dragon or the sharp light of a glass candle.
"…No," Jaehaerys said at last, his voice a low, final toll. "I do not think he found it."
=============
Hey guys, who should I choose as the FML? 👀
Gael
Viserra
Alicent
Rhaenyra
An OC from the Green Men race
I'm really curious to see what everyone prefers, so let me know your thoughts!
And just to be clear before anyone assumes the wrong thing about the two unborn characters 😏romance isn't happening anytime soon in the story. I'm just curious about long-term preference.
If you are interested in reading chapters ahead, read here
patreon.com/Abyssvoid