Chapter Text
“Is he going to die?”
Delylah Tully’s words were fraught with apprehension, her bottom lip quivering. Her slim fingers reached up for the silver fish pendant around her neck, a gift from her grandfather Hoster for her latest nameday, her fourteenth. That had only been a few moons past, and he had been well enough then, though advancing age had begun to slow him. Now he was confined to his bed, despite the best efforts of Maester Vyman.
Edmure Tully, Delylah’s father and the heir to Riverrun, paced back and forth with such fervour that she wondered if his boots would wear down the stone tiles in the corridor outside Hoster’s bedroom. At thirty years old, he was certainly young enough to wed again and produce a son, yet Delylah remained his only child. When they had lost her mother Orella Blackwood in childbirth, Edmure had adamantly refused to marry again.
“No, sweet girl.” Brynden Tully, Hoster’s younger brother and Delylah’s great-uncle, touched her arm with the gentle affection he reserved specifically for her. Brynden and Hoster had been tense for many years, yet he had returned to Riverrun upon receiving news of Hoster’s condition. Delylah was glad for his presence, yet upset by the reason for it.
“Perhaps you can offer some prayers to the Seven for him.” The reedy voice of Utherydes Wayn, Riverrun’s steward, grated against Delylah’s already frayed nerves. “You’ve been reading to him the past few weeks too, that may help.”
“Help who?” Delylah demanded, her shrill tone causing Edmure to pinch the bridge of his nose as the girl glowered at Utherydes. “Prayers and poetry won’t help any more than Maester Vyman’s tonics and remedies.”
“Delylah.” There was a sharpness to Edmure’s voice as he turned his blue eyes upon his daughter.
“What?” Delylah folded her arms over her chest. She had inherited the Tully features: hair a few shades lighter than auburn, blue eyes, fair skin and a smattering of freckles across her nose. Where most of her family were tall and regal, however, Delylah’s small stature was more reminiscent of her mother.
“Edmure, don’t chastise the girl.” Brynden shook his head slowly as he observed his nephew’s brow furrow at Delylah’s harshness. “We are all struck by this news, her included.”
“If Grandfather…” Delylah couldn’t bring herself to say the words, and swallowed the acidic taste of them instead. “If anything were to happen, Father would become Lord of Riverrun.Then who would be the heir?”
“You, Lyla.” Edmure’s patience was wearing thin, as he exhaled slowly. “You know this.”
“I’m a girl!” Delylah protested, as if they could have forgotten, as if they hadn’t all had to hear about her first flowering the year before. “You could marry again and have a lot of sons, you could have a proper heir.”
“I won’t hear anymore on the matter.” Edmure waved a dismissive hand to cut her off, the same way he did every time she broached the topic of him remarrying. “You are my heir. It doesn’t matter that you are a girl. You are my only child.”
Delylah despaired of it, the fact that the line of succession fell to her. The burden weighed down upon her shoulders, the knowledge that she would have to make a careful match, that she would be the one who had to produce sons. In truth, she resented Edmure for it. She was only fourteen and already had to consider her match with great care. Carmillie Piper, one of Delylah’s companions, was constantly suggesting her older brother Marq. In fact, all around Delylah were suggestions for potential suitors.
It was true that men without sons would sometimes name their eldest daughter as their heir, but that was usually a temporary measure put in place until such time as they did have a son. With Edmure having no wife and no intention to remarry, it was clear that the next male heir would come from Delylah's womb. She hated it.
“No one’s going to accept that!” Delylah snapped, frustration for her situation and apprehension for her grandfather’s condition colliding within her. “Who’s going to listen to a girl? They won’t respect my opinions, let alone my commands. Look at what happened to Rhaenyra Targaryen when her father named her heir.”
Edmure’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the Half-Year Queen. The Dance of the Dragons had been over a century ago, but it had led to the extinction of the dragons for which House Targaryen were known. Now, House Targaryen was no more than a dreaded whisper, a reminder of a fallen dynasty. The dragons were gone. Yet Delylah still had a habit of invoking Rhaenyra’s name like a curse whenever Edmure was stubborn on the matter of her status.
“We are not the Targaryens.”
Edmure had often struggled with discipling Delylah, and had commented that trying to wrangle her when she was incorrigible was like attempting to catch an eel in the waters of the Red Fork. It didn’t help that he had only been sixteen when she’d been born, his wife had died during the ordeal, and he had been left to raise a little girl while still just a boy himself.
“Have it your way.” Delylah gathered the velvety soft folds of her sapphire blue nightgown in her hands and whirled on her heel, marching off through the corridors of the keep. She did not have prayers for the Seven on her lips, and she would not visit the Sept as Utherydes had suggested. Instead there was something deeper and darker within her, a craving for the prayers that House Tully and their household disdained.
Delylah had only been to visit her Blackwood family a handful of times throughout her childhood. Her mother’s eldest brother, Tytos, always welcomed her with a fierce embrace and a ruffle of her red hair. His oldest sons were close in age to Delylah, but she had always been closest with Lucas, who was a year younger than her.
It was Lucas who had shown Delylah how to pray to the old gods, with the Blackwoods being one of the only houses left in the Riverlands who followed the old religion. The godswood in Riverrun was used for relaxation and recreation, but Delylah often went there to pray to the old gods in secret, usually under cover of darkness away from prying eyes. There was a sensation that she found difficult to describe, a connection to her mother blossoming within her as she stared into the sad face of the heart tree.
The night air caressed Delylah’s face and hair as she slowed her steps, moving from the keep into the welcome shadows of the godswood. The wind whispered through the trees like they were telling one another secrets. Delylah had spent many a day in the godswood, tumbling through the trees or splashing about in one of the streams. Her early enthusiasm for water was what had caused Brynden to start tossing her into the Red Fork when she was a toddler, much to Edmure’s horrors.
“She’s a true little fish.” Brynden had commented as Delylah gleefully treaded water, paddling around with peals of laughter. “She won’t sink, she’ll swim.”
Brynden had later admitted that Delylah had never been in any danger; had she struggled to stay afloat, he would have jumped in after her. Yet Delylah had proved she didn’t need his help, proving even as a small girl that the water was where she felt at home. The days of happily leaping into the Red Fork grew more scarce, for Delylah was a little lady now. Courtly manners and sweet words had replaced climbing trees and swimming in the river.
Once, Delylah’s ancestors would have said their prayers to the heart tree, but now the weirwood wept blood-red sap without any to pay heed. Gathering her skirts, Delylah moved through the gardens with the practised ease of a girl who had delighted in its depths for many years. Her slippers crunched over dry twigs and across the dirt as she reached the heart tree and sank to her knees before it.
Sap dribbled from the mouth of the heart tree as its cold eyes stared down at Delylah. She bowed her head in prayer. She murmured her prayers before the Seven under the watchful eye of Septa Amrette as was her duty, but she found the truth of her prayers lay in the depths of her heart. She exposed them to the weirwood now, and hoped the old gods were listening.
“Please, let my grandfather live. My family needs more than just my father and I to continue its line. We need safety and security. A girl can’t…the Riverlands require an heir that’s something more than me.”
How was she to tell if the gods were listening or not? Would there be a change? Would she feel it? The only thing Delylah felt was the moisture of the grass bleeding through the fabric of her nightgown and she clasped her hands together tighter.
“I need to know that you’re listening. I know most of the Riverlands has forsaken you, but I haven’t. I am my mother’s daughter.”
Cool silence met her desperate plea, and impatience surged through Delylah’s veins. Her jaw clenched and she stared up at the coldly indifferent weirwood. Delylah had always hated the quiet, always found herself restless and unable to sit still. Patience was a recently acquired skill, one that she often found herself forsaking.
Anger poured through her, quick and hot, and Delylah reached up to remove her necklace, examining the small silver fish as she clenched her fingers around it. The metal bit into her palm, only enough to cause discomfort. She wanted more than that and, driven by impulse, she pressed the fish’s tail deep enough into her palm that it pricked through her skin, blooding well beneath its point.
Grimacing, Delylah dragged the fish across her palm until a thin line of blood appeared into the pale moonlight. Satisfied with her work, she repeated the process on her other hand, dropping the pendant into her lap as both of her palms were afflicted by the slow ooze of blood, just like the sap pulsing from the weirwood.
“I will make you see me.” Delylah hissed, reaching forward to press her bloody palms against the heart tree. “I will make you hear me.”
Delylah’s blood mingled with the sap from the heart tree, until she could no longer tell one from the other. She could not have said what possessed her to attempt such a cursed thing, and she was aware that Edmure and Brynden would have been horrified to have her desecrate a holy relic in such a manner. Yet a deep sense of satisfaction replaced Delylah’s frustrated anger, and a light breeze billowed at her hair when she removed her hands from the tree, examining the crimson stain on her palms.
On the same night, far to the south, the first dragon in over a hundred years emerged from fire and smoke.
Aegon Targaryen, sixth of his name (or perhaps there had been more, for people only ever counted kings) sat on the shore looking over the Summer Sea and sulked. It was a beautiful location to sulk, in truth. The walls of Sunspear cast an evening shadow across the brown sand, the scent of salt thick on the wind and Aegon’s thoughts only intruded upon by the cries of the gulls.
As children, he and his cousins had settled upon the shore and watched the ships sailing out from the Planky Town, attempting to guess their destinations. Aegon’s guesses were often based on the size of the ships and the colours of their sails. He had never been to the Planky Town, a settlement on the Greenblood made up entirely of old ships, but Quentyn had.
In truth, Aegon had never really been anywhere special, cooped up in Sunspear for his own good. He and his cousins had made the occasional visit to the Water Gardens, but Prince Doran had expressly forbidden Aegon from undertaking the same sort of adventures that his cousins delighted in.
Aegon’s brooding was typically accompanied by a glass, or even a bottle, of the finest Dornish red wine. Today, he had traded a bottle for an egg older than anyone alive. Not just any egg: a dragon egg, the physical proof that Aegon was who his family claimed he was: a Targaryen prince.
Yet the Targaryens were gone, ashes scattered to the wind. To anyone aside from the Martell family and their household, he wasn’t Aegon at all; instead he was Solis Sand, one of Oberyn Martell’s bastards and the only boy among them. Stories varied as to whether his mother had been a Dayne or a Velaryon, for those houses possessed the violet eyes that Aegon had been gifted. They looked darker and more close to blue with his silver hair dyed jet-black, erasing any hint of his true identity.
Aegon knew, though. He was the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell, smuggled out of King’s Landing as a babe along with an ancient dragon egg, swapped for a peasant babe whose horrific fate was meant to be his. Aegon dyed his hair to hide how closely he resembled his father. Although he had the almond-shaped eyes of his mother, Aegon strongly favoured Rhaegar’s appearance.
Fucking Rhaegar. Aegon picked up a flat stone and skipped it across the surface of the ocean, his lips twisting bitterly. His mother Elia and his older sister Rhaenys had been savagely butchered in their own home, and where had Rhaegar been? He had run away with Lyanna Stark. Whether the girl had been taken or whether she had gone willingly, Aegon did not lay blame with her. Rhaegar’s selfishness had cost the Targaryens as much as Aerys’ madness had, and he was ashamed to share blood with them.
He was proud of the blood he shared with the Martells. After he had been smuggled to Dorne, it had been his mother’s family that had raised him. Doran was the cautious voice of reason, the one who always reprimanded Aegon when he was a little too wild. Oberyn, on the other hand, encouraged his recklessness. When he and Doran quarrelled about it, Oberyn would say: “The boy’s half-dragon, half-Dornish, and all hot blood. What did you expect?”
Aegon’s cousins were all too eager to encourage his antics. He was closest to Quentyn, who was only a year his senior. He and Arianne did share a certain wickedness, and Aegon possessed a certain fondness for young Trystane. Then there were the Sand Snakes, who were as quick to cuff Aegon around the ear as they were to invite him to a game of cyvasse and a drink of firewine.
Aegon picked up the yellow-gold egg he had smuggled to the seaside with him, turning it over in his hands. It was a relic of a time long past, when Targaryens had ridden mighty dragons, until the Dance of the Dragons had led to their extinction. Now, the egg served merely as a symbol of his identity, that beneath the mask of ‘Solis Sand’, there was a Targaryen.
Aegon had often asked Doran when they planned to reveal the truth of his identity, when he would take back the Iron throne, but his uncle constantly preached caution. Aegon was sixteen now, a man grown. Certainly the time for waiting had passed. Yet Doran was insistent: they needed time to forge alliances in secret, for once the Iron throne learned of Aegon, they would do their utmost to have him killed.
Aegon rapped his knuckles against the egg, as if the sound would wake a dormant dragon. Whatever alliances were being formed, he had no part in them, and the lack of action frustrated him. He did not care for the throne itself, in truth. He did not care for his Targaryen bloodline. What he did care about was that the Lannisters had slaughtered Elia and Rhaenys, and faced no repercussions for doing so.
He remained on the shore until the sun dipped below the horizon, the star-spangled cloak of nightfall settling over him. The lights of a ship sailed out into the distance, most likely heading toward the Free Cities to trade. Setting aside the egg, Aegon pieced together some twigs and leaves from the dry parts of the sand to cobble together a fire. He even managed to locate some larger logs, until the fire he started grew large enough and warm enough to lick at his skin, heat washing over him.
Aegon’s attention turned back to the egg, stubbornly silent as it had been for centuries. It had been a gift from his father Rhaegar to Rhaenys. He didn’t even know if his sister had even seen the egg before her untimely slaughter, and a lump itched at his throat. It didn’t matter how many years had passed, the sheer injustice of Rhaenys’ fate sat like a rock in the pit of his stomach. She had been three years old and died in a more gruesome manner than most grown men on the battlefield.
Rage seared through Aegon, his fingers tightening around the egg. Rhaegar had not been there to protect his wife and children, because Rhaegar had been away fucking a Stark girl instead. There would never be room for love in Aegon’s heart when it came to his father, for the man had forsaken them. It didn’t matter to him that Robert Baratheon had killed Rhaegar at the Trident. What mattered was the fates of the innocents he’d left behind.
Aegon’s fury ran hot and quick, as was the way with both his Dornish family and his Targaryen ancestors. What hope was there for an even temperament, with the blood that flowed through his veins? Gritting his teeth, he picked up the egg and tossed it into the fire amongst the logs and twigs. What good was it? It hadn’t protected Rhaenys. It was nothing more than a token of Targaryen vanity, of which he wanted nothing to do with.
Aegon settled before the fire with his knees tugged to his chest, observing the egg aglow amongst the flames. Would the fire melt it, he wondered, or would it simply tarnish the egg’s surface? As Aegon contemplated the egg’s fate, something entirely different happened instead: the egg started to crack. At first the snap was barely audible above the crackle of the flames, but when it sounded louder and clearer, Aegon was instantly on alert.
Shifting to kneel in front of the fire, he observed with a mixture of horror and wonder as the scales began to move and part, something moving inside them. Aegon sat frozen, for there were none alive who had ever seen a dragon before. Was that what was emerging from the egg? Or had him tossing it into the flames created…something else? The egg cracked open in a burst of sparks that flew upward into the dusk sky, making Aegon raise a hand to shield his face.
A creature tumbled from the fire with a high-pitched shriek of protest, almost falling into Aegon’s lap. For a moment, he was too stunned to move, observing the tiny thing before him. It was yellow-gold scaled as the egg had been, complete with the smallest wings he had ever seen and beseeching green eyes that blinked up at him. The newborn dragon cocked its head to the side as it observed Aegon curiously.
“What the fuck?” Aegon whispered, a sense of awe tingling across his arms and down his back as he realised that he’d hatched a dragon, a real one, for the first time in over a century. He reached out a tentative hand, fingers shaking as he wondered whether the tiny dragon would try to bite them off. Instead the dragon nuzzled at his hand, chittering as it examined its surroundings. Was it a boy or a girl? How was Aegon even meant to tell?
A laugh of disbelief escaped from between his lips. He had been smuggled away to Dorne with an egg, a token of his heritage so that none could dispute his claim. Now he had something even better: a live dragon. The creature was small now, but Aegon had heard tales of how large some of his ancestors’ dragons had grown, like the mighty Vhagar who had once been ridden by Visenya but had perished at the God’s Eye with Aemond Targaryen.
Doran had spent years waiting, and they would need a few more before the dragon was big enough to ride. Yet they had a weapon beyond anything that their enemies could use upon them, a means to win any wage that Aegon may wage.
“You need a name.” Aegon muttered as he traced his fingers over the dragon’s scales, which were still warm to the touch. An idea came to him, the stories of the woman who had ruled Dorne when the Targaryens had first arrived.
Princess Meria Martell had been an ancient, odious woman who had refused to bow to Aegon Targaryen and his sister-wives. Though Dorne had since come into the fold, Meria’s resistance was commendable, since all of the other kingdoms had fallen to the Targaryens. There were many who had given her the nickname ‘Yellow Toad of Dorne’.
“Toad.” Aegon tested the name on his lips, and when the hatchling looked up at him again, a feeling of certainty came over him. “I’m going to call you Toad.”
On the same night, far to the north, a desperate little fish pressed her bloodied palms to a heart tree and begged for her family’s safety.
Neither of them had known that she would get far more than she had bargained for.