Targaryens of 41 AC

Lying bows. Empty toasts. Hateful eyes. Faux smiles.

The Small Hall of the Red Keep was a cavern of red stone and lengthening shadows, the air heavy with the scent of damp lime and the iron-scent of a coming storm. Only the King and his youngest daughter—sweet Alysanne—seem oblivious to how utterly failed this attempt at a family reconciliation is. Aenys is weak. He is withering. Not from a wound, but from the sheer weight of a crown that feels more like a leaden yoke with every passing moon. He looks at his family—his brother returned from exile, his children dressed in their finest silks—and sees a garden he hopes to tend. He is blind to the fact that half the plants are nightshade and the other half are ready to burn. Why must there be blood when there could be songs?

There will be blood.

On one side of the table, sitting in a gown of Velaryon silver that feels as stiff as plate armor, sits Queen Alyssa. Her hand, resting on the table, is as still as a frozen sea, but her violet eyes are constantly in motion, tracking the ghost of a movement from the man sitting opposite her. Beside her is Aegon, her eldest, the Prince of Dragonstone. He sits with his shoulders pulled back, a squire trying to play a King, his hand twitching toward a dagger that isn't there. To Aegon’s side was Rhaena, her face a mask of pale porcelain, her fingers twisting a loose thread on her sleeve. She has been dressed in the Targaryen black and red, a direct provocation to the Faith, and she wears the colors as if they were a funeral shroud.

'Usurper,' Alyssa thinks, her gaze flickering to the black steel of Maegor's gorget. She remembers the way he looked at her when he first returned from Pentos—not as a sister-in-law, but as an obstacle. She knows the rumors of his new wife, Alys Harroway, and the way he treats the High Septon's decrees as mere flies to be swatted. He is a man who takes what he wants and burns the rest, and now he sits at her table, his shadow looming over her children’s birthright. She feels the urge to reach across the table and claw that smug indifference from his face, but instead, she merely adjusts the silver pin at her throat.

'She-wolf,' Maegor thinks to himself, his gaze lingering on the heir she birthed. He watches the way Aegon tries to puff out his chest and finds it pathetic. The boy has the look of a dragon but the heart of a poet, just like his father. Maegor tears into a loaf of crusty black bread with his bare hands, the sound of the crust snapping like a bone in the silence. He didn't come back for the venison or the forced conversation. He came back for the throne that his brother is too soft to defend. He sees the "Poor Fellows" in his mind's eye, thousands of them, and he imagines how they will scream when Balerion’s fire finds them.

Resentment is their only connection, and although they keep it beneath a thin veneer of courtly manners, both understand just how deep and how vile their mutual suspicion runs; no wedding dinner will make it go away now. But they will keep quiet. For now, at least. The King’s health is too fragile for a scene, and the wedding progress is too close to risk a public fracture.

Near the Crown Princess is sat her large family—a brood of dragons in a cage of their father's making. Aegon, the heir, keeps up the facade of a proud, dutiful prince, although he’d very much like to punch his uncle Maegor in the mouth for the way he looks at Rhaena. Aegon feels the heat of his uncle’s presence like a physical burn. He wants to prove he is a warrior, that he doesn't need a "Protector," but every time Maegor speaks, Aegon feels his own voice shrinking back into his throat.

Beside him, Rhaena is just... tired. She is tired of the Septons' screaming, tired of her father’s apologies, and tired of being the center of a storm she didn't ask for. She catches the eye of her brother Viserys, who is smirking at some internal thought as he watches the servants. Viserys is twelve and has already learned that the best way to survive this family is to be the one who notices everything and says nothing. He watches how the light accents the heavy, scarred knuckles of his uncle Maegor, and how utterly funny it is that the servants placed a massive, blood-rare roast right in front of the King, who can barely stomach leek soup. Hilarious for a boy who finds humor in the macabre.

Jaehaerys, the young 'Conciliator', is well... quiet. He is only seven, but he has the eyes of an old man. He watches the way the wine sloshes in his father's cup, and the way it sits perfectly still in Maegor's. He is engaged in a silent conversation with himself, weighing the logic of his uncle’s returned presence. If Uncle Maegor is the sword, he thinks, and Father is the shield, why does it feel like the shield is about to be cut in half? He sports the silky soft hair of silver and eyes like amethysts, just like his brothers. No doubt the "Poor Fellows" will bring it up, no doubt. They will call them "abominations" and "monsters," and Jaehaerys wonders if they are right.

Alysanne, though, oh sweet soul, the innocent little bug, oh, she of all people seems cheery tonight! Currently, the princess is busy showing her elder brother, Jaehaerys, the ribbon she found in the gardens; it is a bright, hopeful yellow, the color of a summer sun that hasn't shone on King's Landing in months. For once, the boy actually looks as if he might smile, for Jaehaerys listens keen and watches close as his sister describes the "magic" of the garden. It almost seems as if they are a family at peace. The possibility earns a snorting scoff from Prince Maegor at the other side of the table, and that quickly earns the Rogue Prince himself a harsh glare from the Queen.

The King is oblivious to all of that tension. He sits at the head of the table, his fingers nervously shredding a piece of bread he has no intention of eating. He is trying to conjure a memory of Dragonstone, of a time when the world was simple and his father was alive. He wants to tell a joke, or perhaps a story of the Conquest, but the words feel like ash in his mouth. He looks at Maegor and sees the brother who once protected him on the battlefield. He looks at Alyssa and sees the woman who has held his hand through every night of fever. He wants them to love each other. He needs them to love each other.

"It is... a fine meal," Aenys said, his voice a thin, reedy thing that barely carried over the crackle of the hearth. "Is it not, Maegor?"

Maegor didn't look up from his bread. He merely chewed, his jaw working with a rhythmic, grinding intensity. "The bread is dry, brother," he finally rumbled. "But the wine is strong. Perhaps that is the way of things now."

He did not finish his statement, but he thought it to himself, and perhaps, he was not the only one. 'A strong drink for a weak house'

The Queen's hand tightened on her goblet until her knuckles turned white. Aegon felt the blood rush to his face, his hand finally gripping the edge of the table. Rhaena closed her eyes, praying for the meal to end before the first blow was struck. Peace, Aenys thought, a single bead of sweat rolling down his temple. We only need peace.

But there was no peace in the Small Hall. There was only the sound of the wind rattling the shutters and the distant, rhythmic chanting of the "Poor Fellows" outside the castle walls, a sound that grew louder with every heartbeat of silence. The dragons were gathered, yes. They were sitting at the same table, yes. But they were not a family. They were a collection of grievances held together by a dying man's wish.

This dinner is doomed.

It is a dragon readying to explode in rage and flame.

Everyone understands it but King Aenys Targaryen, who merely wanted a quiet family eve at the ending of his strength. He reached out to pat Alysanne’s hand, his own hand shaking so violently that he nearly knocked over his wine. The girl giggled, oblivious to the fact that she was sitting in the middle of a funeral pyre that hadn't been lit yet.

"Eat, my children," Aenys whispered, his eyes glassing over. "Eat and be merry. For tomorrow, we show the realm who we are."

Maegor finally looked up, his flinty eyes locking onto his brother's. "They already know who we are, Aenys," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low pitch. "They are just waiting to see if we have forgotten."

The silence returned, heavier than before. The servants moved like ghosts, placing plates of honeyed duck and roasted roots on the table, but no one reached for them. They all sat there, frozen in their resentment, waiting for the first crack in the facade. The "Two Heads of the Dragon" were back together, but they were not looking at the enemy—the true enemy. They were looking at each other, and in that look, the future of the Seven Kingdoms was being written in fire and blood.