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The Dragon Queen
They pushed her forward, her black boots scraping the stones of the inner arena above the dragon pit. The faint echoing of the dragons’ growls and stomps could be heard rustling beneath them. The turn cloaks pushed again, Ser Alfred and his loyal men crowding around her.
Men she had trusted to guard her, to protect those of her family, her house, her reign.
Their hope for her reign soured, seeds planted from the greens blossoming within their feeble minds. Greatness would come to them! Gold! Land! Wives and keeps of their own. No matter, whatever promised had gleaned their greed. They had killed those loyal to her. Stormed the Red Keep while she and her remaining son Aegon had supped.
Aegon, her sweet boy, only six name days old, had kicked and screamed, slashing his dinner knife as he was overwhelmed with men. He had wounded three grown men before they managed to hold him down. He was a dragon that was certain, fire rang through his blood as true as hers.
He was held to her left, bruised cheek, cut lip. The anger inside of her roared for the pain he was dealt! Fury that had simmered and boiled as each of her children were cruelly taken from her, from this world, burned deep in her veins. And pain, oh the pain scraped every nerve. Pain of loss, pain of betrayal, pain of injustice. She prayed to the fourteen flames, to the old gods and the new, that justice would meet those who harmed her and hers.
Aegon, the usurper, her stepbrother, stood tall, surrounded by his kingsguard: Sunfyre, his dragon of gold fiercely at his side. Deep scratches of black marred the beast’s scales from its dance with the Red Queen from so many moons ago. The dragon’s head hung over the usurper’s shoulder, his bright green eyes trailing her.
Stalking her.
For in the dragon’s eyes, she was prey.
Rhaenerya held her head high and stared the dragon and its keeper down. She would not be afraid.
"Usurper!" Aegon called. His face was marred much like his dragon, burns running deep on his face, down his neck, and beneath the stained collar of his tunic.
“Oh, sweet sister, for how it didn't have to come to this! All this hurt, this Goddamned war!"
"If only you had bent the knee to me. You and your bastards would have loved. Mayhaps one of your curs could have married one of my Hightower cousins!"
Rhaenerya seethed, the shackles at her wrists clanking.
"Alas, Rhaenerya Targaryen! For your crimes, I sentence you to die!" Aegon stepped to the left, nodded to his guards who pushed at her knees again.
The shooting pain arched up her knee, the back of her thigh, and deep within her back. The bone held, and still she stayed tall.
Her son screamed, pulling at the heavy-handed grasp of his guards.
The men grunted, pulled back, and pushed her boy to the ground.
"I will NEVER bend to a false king."
Aegon spat at her, his spittle hit the stones near her feet.
"Have it your way," with a wave of his gauntleted hand, “Dracarys."
Rhaenerya glanced up into those green eyes of Sunfyre and hoped that she would not scream.
The fire did not come.
Sunfyre stalked forward; one step, two. Until she and the dragon were nearly face to face. The dragon still did not obey its master’s commands. It stared deeply into her violet eyes. Her Targaryen eyes.
"SUNFYRE!" The usurper yelled, spittle flying from the burned lips that still remained.
The dragon tilted its head, looked from her to Aegon, the usurper, then back to her. The golden dragon let out a low, uneasy growl.
"Do as you must, my darling," Rhaenerya whispered. Her shacked hands clanking as she rose to stroke the nose of Sunfyre.
She would not blame the dragon for following its master’s will.
A moment of silence stretched as the dragon wrestled with something unseen, something ancient.
In a twist that surprised the Seven Kingdoms, the old gods and the new, Sunfyre roared, whipping out his tail, knocking Aegon and his retinue to the ground, whilst simultaneously pushing her sweet boy into her grasp.
Rhaenerya gaped in confusion. Rarely would a bonded dragon disobey its master.
Swords unsheathed as the men around her loomed in bewilderment. Unsure whether to attack their king’s dragon. Flame soon roared from Sunfyre’s maw, and screams of fear and pain rung out as skin blistered and melted to plate armour.
The roar from Sunfyre was echoed deep beneath the dragon pit. Stones burst open, and a great hole opened as the ceiling caved in. Rock and other debris flying at her and her enemies. The great golden wings of Sunfyre flared around Rhaenerya and her boy in protection.
From below, three dragons rose from the pit:
Dreamfyre came first, with Shrykos and Morghul beneath her weathered wings. Down below, the high-pitched shrieks of the queen’s own dragon, Syrax, could be heard. Huge, heavy chains clung to the she-dragon to the ground.
Aegon shouted, stumbling back, hands raised in frantic command.
“Sunfyre! To me! I am your rider—” The dragon did not listen. Sunfyre turned his head, molten eyes towards his rider. With a roar that shook the ground beneath their feet, Sunfyre lashed out. Golden flame washed over, unleashed over the false king; he screamed as fire caught flesh, falling to the ground, swallowed by flame. Screams turning to ash in his mouth.
The three unchained dragons, sworn to the children and wife of Aegon, looked to Rhaenerya and bowed their heads. Something ancient, reckoned within them; this woman with pale hair and violet eyes had fire in her veins, the same fire that rang in theirs. To them, she was a dragon. The dragon queen.
The gods of Valaryia had answered her prayers.
Far from King’s Landing, the final reckoning unfolded over the vast waters of the Gods’ Eye.
Aemond Targaryen, the one-eyed prince, soared upon Vhagar’s back, his sapphire eye gleaming with fury. Below, Daemon Targaryen rode Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm, his face dark with the grim purpose of a man who had always known his fate. The sky was thick with the smoke of battle, the air pulsing with the roars of dying men and burning steeds.
The two dragons met in a cataclysm of fire and claw. Caraxes’ serpentine body twisted around Vhagar, his jaws snapping at the old she-dragon’s throat. Aemond bared his teeth, his bloodlust shining through. “You die today, uncle!”
Daemon did not answer. He laughed.
The battle was brutal. Caraxes coiled around Vhagar like a constrictor, his long body squeezing, his claws raking deep. Vhagar roared, twisting in agony, her vast wings struggling to keep them aloft.
Then something in the air shifted. A great wave rippled across kingdoms from the epicentre of King’s Landing.
Vhagar froze and trembled beneath Aemond’s grip, her great head turning not to Caraxes, but toward something unseen, something she felt in her very bones.
Daemon understood, for the ripple of power spoke to the very heart of him. To the dragon blood that rang through his veins. His queen had conquered.
Aemond snarled. “No! Obey me, Vhagar!” He yanked hard on the reins, but Vhagar did not answer.
For the first time in over a hundred years, Vhagar defied her rider.
Daemon seized the moment. With a sharp pull, Caraxes lunged, jaws clamping onto Vhagar’s wing. The old dragon roared, twisting in the sky, but it was too late. Daemon leapt from his saddle, sword in hand, and with a warrior’s final cry, plunged Dark Sister deep into Aemond’s eye.
Aemond fell.
And Vhagar, the mightiest of all dragons, let out a final, mournful roar before turning away. She flew south, to her queen.
King’s Landing burned with the fury of dragons. The streets still smoked; the stones wept black soot and red blood where men had died screaming. Aegon II was gone, his ashes a whisper in the wind.
The Greens had scattered; those not burned had bent the knee or fled.
The throne room had been torn open to the sky.
Great rents split the vaulted roof where dragonfire and talon had sheared stone from stone. Through the jagged opening above, daylight poured down in blinding columns and with it, shadows vast and alive.
Rhaenyra Targaryen walked alone.
She was fresh from the back of Syrax, who had taken part in the great cleansing of King’s Landing.
The court that remained watched in terrified silence.
Behind her, the dragons moved.
Syrax coiled along the shattered marble like a living wall of gold and shadow, her wings half-furled, her great head lifted high behind the Iron Throne itself.
Caraxes clung to the broken pillars above, red coils winding through stone and air, his long neck arched like a drawn blade. From the open roof, the thunder of wings announced the rest: Dreamfyre, Morghul, Shrykos, and at last Vhagar, ancient and immense, settling upon the Keep with the sound of rocks grinding together.
The throne room belonged to dragons now.
Rhaenyra climbed the steps slowly.
Each footfall rang like a hammer on an anvil as she ascended. When she turned, her face was lifted to the light, her expression fierce and incandescent. No longer the woman they had chained, no longer the queen they had mocked.
She was victory given flesh.
Daemon stood before the steps, soot-streaked and bloodied, Dark Sister still at his side. He looked at her as if he had always known this moment would come.
Without ceremony, without flourish, he knelt.
“You are my queen,” he said, his voice low but carrying. “Born of fire. Chosen of dragons. Now and always.”
He raised Viserys’s crow.
Rhaenyra took it from him. For a heartbeat, their fingers brushed—blood, heat, history. Then she placed the crown upon her own brow and turned back to the throne.
As she sat, the dragons answered.
Syrax lowered her head until it loomed above and behind Rhaenyra like a living sigil. Caraxes screamed his triumph to the sky, and Vhagar bowed her vast head, submitting at last to the Queen she had felt in her bones.
There was one dragon missing from the roar.
Sunfyre lay in the courtyard beyond the throne room, his once-glorious gold charred to dull brass, wings torn, breath coming in wet, shuddering pulls. He had crawled there on broken limbs after the burning of his rider, dragging himself back toward the Keep as if by instinct alone. Blood steamed where it touched the stones.
When Rhaenyra rose from the throne and stepped to the edge of the shattered hall, Sunfyre lifted his head.
Their eyes met.
The dragon made no sound. With the last of his strength, he bowed—hisgreat neck lowering, the crown of horns scraping stone. Not in fear. Not in pain. In fealty.
Rhaenyra inclined her head in return.
Sunfyre exhaled once, a faint wash of heat that stirred her cloak, and then the light went out of him. His great body stilled, curled toward the throne he had helped reclaim, a fallen sun at the feet of the Queen of Dragons.
The throne room shook with the voices of the living dragons above and behind her.
The Blacks had won.
And all of Westeros would remember the day the dragons chose their Queen.