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(EM Vol. 2: A Wandering Melody) Chapter 9: A Changed Path
🕑 Added 2025-05-31 14:00:35 +0000 UTCChapter 9: A Changed Path
123 AC, King’s Landing
It was almost dark when Rhaenyra finally arrived in King’s Landing, atop Syrax. She hadn’t made such a long journey, not since the Driftmark incident, at the very least. She looked down at the city, still flying, and couldn’t help but feel like an outsider. This was supposed to be the future place of power, where she would rule over the Seven Kingdoms. This had been her home for half of her life. This had been where she had spent time with her mother before she died.
And yet, looking down, she felt like a stranger, an intruder into Alicent’s domain. It was a wonder how much a few years could change things.
Nevertheless, she needed to face this with grace. Daemon was already angry enough because she refused to tell him what Harry Potter had told her. She was tempted to, if she was honest, but she remembered that day, all those years ago. Her father’s sever face, the seriousness in his voice, the damning words he said, of the responsibility of the head of House Targaryen, of the King of the Seven Kingdoms, they were all etched in her memories.
That and Harry Potter’s words, the knowledge he held on prophecy and Aegon’s dream. She needed to tell her father, and no one, not even Alicent or Otto, would stop her.
Harry Potter’s words were still on her mind, the absolute conviction that the darkness would come in the next two hundred years, that Aegon’s dream was not a gift, but a curse. Her father always knew more about the subject and had studied it religiously. Now, she needed his advice, and perhaps, he would need her help as well.
With renewed resolve, Rhaenyra stopped circling the city and landed on the dragon pit. She could feel the tiredness of Syrax through their bond and frowned slightly. It was true that she hadn’t ridden her dragon a lot recently. Five pregnancies and being banished through everything but name had stopped her from riding as much as she did in her youth. She’d have to rectify this.
The Dragonkeepers walked up to her and cautiously approached Syrax. Their leader addressed her, “Welcome back, princess. May I ask if you will be staying long in the Capital?”
Rhaenyra shook her head, “No, I have no plans on staying for long. Just give Syrax some food. She tires from the journey.”
The Dragonkeeper nodded and left her without saying another word. Rhaenyra wasn’t bothered by it. They were always blunt in their duties. It probably had to do with facing dragons every day.
Nevertheless, she made her way through the familiar halls of the Red Keep, and it did not take long before the whispers spread ahead of her like wildfire. She hadn’t sent word. She hadn’t asked for permission. She hadn’t come as a guest.
The Greens were scrambling.
And yet, Rhaenyra wasn’t relishing it. She had grown up within these walls, and yet, the moment Rhaenyra stepped past the gate, she knew that this was no longer her domain.
The corridors had changed.
The rich crimson tapestries of old Valyria, the ones that had once hung like silent sentinels from the walls, were gone. In their place were banners of deep green and gold, trimmed in silver thread, each one adorned with the seven-pointed star of the Faith. Where once the three-headed dragon had watched from mosaic and marble, now came images of saints and knights jousting.
She walked on, teeth clenched behind her smile, and realised something bitter and true.
This was not her father’s castle anymore.
It belonged to Alicent. To Otto.
Every step deeper into the castle was a reminder that her influence over King’s Landing had withered like a forgotten vine. She was not heir here. Not truly. Not anymore.
As if to prove her point, by the time she reached the outer courtyard, a small procession awaited her. Otto Hightower stood in front, face pinched in irritation, his hands folded behind his back. Beside him, Queen Alicent wore a polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Ser Criston stood to the side, hand on the hilt of his sword, flanked by gold cloaks whose eyes never left her.
“Princess Rhaenyra,” Otto greeted coolly. “This is an unexpected visit. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“I’ve come to speak with my father,” she said, without flinching.
Alicent stepped forward, voice gentle but firm. “The king has requested no contact with you, Princess. Not until he is better prepared.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission,” Rhaenyra replied, her tone flat and unyielding.
Ser Criston tensed, but Otto merely sighed. “He is resting, Princess. The king is unwell. Perhaps…”
She didn’t wait for him to finish. With a flick of her cloak, she swept past them, her boots echoing loudly in the corridor. Her father must still be in his bedroom. She should have guessed that. She knew that his illness had progressed in the last few years, and he was barely able to walk at that time.
They scrambled to follow her, and she could hear Otto protesting loudly behind her. She ignored him completely, each step more purposeful than the last. She wasn’t here for their games, their rituals, their carefully measured pleasantries. She had wasted enough years dancing around their designs. No more.
The guards made to block her path at the threshold of the royal wing, but something in her gaze must have warned them, because they parted without a word. Ser Criston’s boots struck the stone with hurried steps behind her, and Alicent’s voice rang out again, more insistent, more desperate, “Princess, you must understand, the king cannot…”
She glared at Alicent so heatedly that the Queen stiffened. As if to push her point, Syrax shrieked loudly in the distance and breathed fire into the air, illuminating the sky briefly.
Ah, there it was, the fear. For all of the smugness of the Hightowers, it was hard to stay composed in front of a Dragonrider. Normally, she would have been more diplomatic, as Otto would undoubtedly complain to her father about her behaviour, but Rhaenyra knew that he would care much more about Aegon’s dream than some useless courtly manners.
The Kingsguard guarding her father’s room stood in front of her, and she gave Alicent a pointed look. She nodded at them, and they let her pass. She opened the door to her room and gasped as she saw her father’s figure.
He looked like a shadow of the man she remembered, lying in bed, swallowed by layers of silk and fur that only served to emphasise how much of him had wasted away. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent, stretched tight over bone. She could count each rib beneath the linen of his nightshirt. His left arm was gone, cut further back than before, and there were raw, angry patches where chunks of flesh had clearly been carved away. Likely, the Maesters, trying to stop the rot.
And then his eyes met hers, and whatever reservations she had vanished as his eyes lit up when he recognised her.
“Rhaenyra…” he rasped.
“Father. It has been a while.”
“I suppose it has. I have missed you, daughter.”
“And I missed you as well,” she answered back, doing her best to hide the bitterness at the fact that he had been the one who banished her to Dragonstone in everything but name. And yet, looking at the man before her, she simply couldn’t find it in herself to be angry at him.
“Did you bring my grandchildren with you?” he answered in a stronger tone than she expected, given his condition.
“I’m afraid not, Father. I left them in Dragonstone. I have come here, urgently, asking for your advice on a delicate matter. I thought that you would be the most knowledgeable on the subject.”
Despite her father’s smile growing, Alicent scoffed loudly, “What could be so urgent that you needed to come without even sending a raven?”
Rhaenyra gave Alicent a cold look, “This is something that I will need to speak with my father. Alone.”
Otto gave her an infuriating smile, “You are in the presence of the Queen and the Hand of the King, princess. I assure you that if you need counsel, we would be very happy to provide it.”
“This is a matter between the king and his heir only,” Rhaenyra gritted back.
She could see Otto and Alicent stiffen, obviously wanting to protest, but she didn’t let them. Instead, she looked directly at the Valyrian Steel dagger, the one Aegon the Conqueror had commissioned. Her father followed her gaze, and his eyes widened. “Are you certain?”
“This is about the Song, Father. I have news, and you are the king, the head of our house. You need to know and perhaps, even give me some advice,” she simply replied.
The expression on the king’s face was complicated, a mixture of wonder, doubt, and panic. Perhaps he thought that there were signs of the coming darkness approaching, or anything of the like. He just looked at the room and ordered, “Leave us. I need to discuss this with my heir.”
Otto looked like he wanted to protest, but something in her father’s gaze stopped him. He simply nodded, “Yes, your grace.”
The Queen followed him, glaring at her while leaving, and they were followed by the King’s Guard. Her father gave her a severe look, “I trust that you did not use our house’s legacy just to fuel your feud with Alicent, Daughter.”
“No. This is true. I met someone, a traveller. He knew of the Song of Ice and Fire. He had more information on it, and you are more learned on the subject than I.”
That made the king stiffen, “Someone knew of Aegon’s dream.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me everything. Do not leave out any details. Because, let me tell you, Rhaenyra, if you have been swindled into revealing our house’s duty, our legacy…”
Rhaenyra didn’t let him finish that threat, “I haven’t. I swear it by all the gods, I haven’t breathed a word of Aegon's dream to anyone, not even Jacaerys, my heir. Yet, Harry Potter knew more of it than even I did, Father. His knowledge of prophecy was akin to that of a Maester studying his craft, not some charlatan.”
“Then explain, daughter.”
She nodded, “My sword shield found a foreign coin in the hands of one of the smallfolk in a tavern. He asked where he had gotten it from, and he said that he had gotten it from a woman. He thought that it was a forgery of some sort, but no blacksmith or jeweller could scratch it. He tracked down the woman to a manse on the beach, where he met a man and his wife, Harry and Daphne Potter. They had built the manse in days at most, and it looked much like Valyrian Stone. After Daemon paid them a visit, they agreed to meet with me. I had been hoping that they’d found some Valyrian treasures or the like, in their travels, and that they would share their finding with us.”
“And an indestructible coin,” her father stated in a dry tone.
She put the silver coin in her father’s lone hand, “I’ve seen Daemon hit it with Dark Sister. It doesn’t even have a scratch on it.”
The king seemed to look at it with wonder, “What of Aegon’s dream?”
“I don’t know how he knew. In the middle of the conversation, he described our ancestors escaping the Doom as a song woven by fate itself, a song of fire and flames, to battle the coming darkness and ice. I knew in that moment that he knew of Aegon’s dream.”
“These might have just been normal words, Nyra,” Viserys protested.
“Well, the Maester’s lessons I got about prophecies, how Dreamers get their ability from their dragons, the fact that this prophecy has been told and retold for centuries all over the world, confirmed things. Thankfully, I had the mind to ask for some privacy before the man started talking about the Long Night occurring somewhere in the next couple of centuries.”
“The Long Night?” Viserys questioned slightly, “I think I have heard of this before, but it slips my mind.”
“A very old tale. Harwin… Harwin Strong told me of it. It’s well-known in the houses descending from the First Men. It speaks of the Others, creatures of ice and darkness, capable of raising the dead, fighting living before being beaten back by the First Men, the Giants, and the Children of the Forest, with them building a gigantic Wall of ice to stop them from returning. Potter stated that variations of this story exist across the world, even in Essos and Yi-Ti.”
Viserys seemed doubtful for a moment before muttering, “I never considered looking at the accounts of the First Men.”
Thankfully, Rhaenyra had an answer for that: “Harwin told me that most of the stories of the First Men are passed down orally. The very few written tomes were burnt by the Faith or written in the Old Tongue, the First Men’s language before the Common Tongue spread out all over the Seven Kingdoms.”
“You’ve left me a lot to think about, Rhaenyra. You’re right. I am interested in understanding more of Aegon’s dream, but I’m too unwell to research the matter with the discretion that our legacy deserves. Perhaps you could invite this Harry Potter to King’s Landing and let me judge if there is some truth in what he said. What did he ask in return for his knowledge?”
“Nothing. He didn’t seem to care at all. He even gave the children some gifts, although I didn’t get the time to look too closely at them, as I flew here on Syrax as quickly as I could. He even gave me a gift, something that he claimed was far more valuable than most kingdoms put together.”
Her father gave her an incredulous look, and she smiled, removing her new necklace, already missing the warmth and comfort it gave her. She took out the vial, with the drop of the glowing liquid inside it. The king stared at it, with an awed look on his face, and touched it with his lone hand, “It’s warm.”
“It’s supposedly the tear of a bird of fire, one that is reborn from the ashes every time it perishes. It is said that it could cure anything, other than death itself. The moment he gave this to me, I knew that I used to give it to you, that it wasn’t meant for me, not truly,” she finished, voice low, as she placed the vial gently into his palm. “You once told me that a ruler must bear the burden for those they love. Well, this is mine, Father. But it was meant for you.”
Viserys looked down at the vial resting in his remaining hand, its golden glow casting faint light across the pallor of his skin. His fingers curled around it slowly, almost reverently, and his breath hitched.
“You would give me this?” he rasped.
“There was never a choice,” Rhaenyra answered. “You’re the king. My father. You deserve more than to waste away, helpless in a Maester’s care. I wish for you to see my children grow, and the realm needs to see the king at his strongest. This is the correct choice.”
Rhaenyra took the vial from his hand and opened it. A lone glowing tear dropped slowly into her father’s mouth, and then, for a few seconds, nothing happened. She was about to say something, only to notice that the flesh around his cheek began to shift.
It was so subtle that Rhaenyra almost thought she had imagined it. But the change didn’t stop. Slowly, the colour of his skin warmed, the greyish tinge fading away. Slowly, the pale, paper-thin skin began to regain a touch of colour, as if warmth had returned to blood that had been stagnant for far too long.
And then his hair began to grow, not in length but in fullness, strands thickening, the brittle silver turning more lustrous. It reminded her of the man he had once been, still frail, still tired, but no longer a walking corpse. He looked younger, impossibly so. Not as she remembered him at her tenth name day, perhaps, but close. Stronger. Healthier. Alive.
Even the rot, which had eaten into his arm, his back and side, was fading. She watched with disbelief as the discoloured patches lightened, the angry skin knitting itself, slowly healing, with the flesh that the Maesters had cut returning.
The scars around his amputated arm started to heal, and his breathing deepened, steadied. His spine straightened slightly. The tremor in his fingers calmed, and he was staring at them, as if not believing what he was seeing.
Rhaenyra didn't blame him. She had some trouble believing it as well, despite Daphne Potter's words on the tear's effect.
Magic.
This was undeniably magic, impossible magic that she had seen with her two own eyes, a magic that had healed her father.
Slowly, her father turned away from his bed, stood up without the help of his cane, and smiled widely at her. He walked up to her, each step steadier than the last, until he stood right in front of her, and wrapped his good arm around her shoulders, holding her tightly. She leaned into it, allowing herself that single moment of comfort.
“Thank you, Rhaenyra. And you were right to come to me with this. I suppose that a trip to Dragonstone is in order. It has been some time since I met my grandchildren after all.”
Rhaenyra smiled. Harry Potter's gift had bought her time, had saved her father. She had never expected the effects to be so extraordinary, so powerful, and despite her happiness, she knew that she needed to be careful when dealing with the man. After all, if he could heal her father from the brink of death, then what else could he do?
AN: I’m not sure about this chapter, to be honest, especially Viserys’ portrayal. It took more time than I expected, and I didn't have time to re-read it properly. I wanted to show the repercussions of Harry making decisions on a whim more than anything. There’s more to his decision, and that will be explained in the future. As usual, I don’t mind rewriting this depending on your feedback, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
Comments
Marius Petrauskas
nice
Sukhraj Singh
Viserys returning to full health and no longer wasting away thus extending his life by a decade or two make a huuge difference in terms of the upcoming civil war should it happen. I'm guessing Otto and Alicent will be very shocked with Viserys return to health. While Viserys was ill they could do as they liked in the Red Keep and change it as they like but Viserys for all his faults is also proud of his Targaryen heritage, I suspect he will be very angry with the Green changing the decoration of the Red Keep to making it look like Oldtown. I am curious what changes a returned to health Viserys will cause. He might be wilfully blind to the divisions within his family but when he puts his foot down, he does so with all the authority of a King. With him returned to full health, he will be more active and will take part in actively ruling his kingdom again things will change drastically.
Garri Sarkisov
Miracles of Phoenix tears are impossible to replicate in this world
