CHAPTER X: The Last Light of The Queen

The gods had turned their eyes from the Red Keep that day.

The sky was heavy with clouds, pale and thick as mourning veils, and the winds from Blackwater Bay howled like wolves beyond the towers. Inside Maegor's Holdfast, the halls had grown still, save for the frantic footsteps of midwives and maesters.

Queen Naerys was in labor.

It was a cruel jest from the gods, this last pregnancy. She was far too frail. Her limbs had grown thin, her skin near translucent. Her face, once fair as any maiden's song, was a mask of weariness. But her eyes still held their soft violet hue—deep, sorrowful, and filled with quiet grace.

Daenerys sat beside her bed, her hand clasping her mother's. The air was thick with the scent of lavender water and blood. The Queen's maids had laid fresh cloths over the stone floor, but already they had soaked through.

"Mother," Daenerys whispered, brushing sweat-matted hair from Naerys's brow, "you must rest. Save your strength."

Naerys smiled faintly. "There is no strength left, child. Only memories."

Daenerys squeezed her hand gently. "Then tell me one. Tell me something beautiful."

The Queen's eyes unfocused, drifting somewhere far beyond the walls of the birthing chamber. "Your uncle," she murmured. "My Aemon."

Daenerys stilled. She had heard the name in whispers and old songs, her long-gone legendary uncle, a prince who donned the sacred white cloak, but never from her mother's lips—not like this.

"I was thirteen when he was knighted. He gave me a lily from the Dragonpit gardens. Said it was the only thing in all King's Landing that wasn't ugly or false."

She paused, breath hitching as pain lanced through her. Daenerys steadied her.

"He never smiled," Naerys went on. "But when he looked at me, sometimes I saw it in his eyes. A shadow of joy. He was more than brother, more than knight. But we were Targaryens. And that meant we belonged not to ourselves, but to the realm."

Tears welled in Daenerys's eyes.

Naerys's voice grew fainter. "He died with my name on his lips. Saving your father from the treasonous blades meant for him. Even in death, Aemon was loyal."

Daenerys laid her head against her mother's shoulder. "And you have been loyal every day since."

Naerys smiled once more. "Then I have not lived in vain."

The pain came again then—deep and ragged—and the Queen cried out. Maester Alford rushed forward, midwives scrambling beside him. Blood soaked the sheets. The babe would not turn. Her hips were too narrow. The gods had not made her for childbearing, and yet they had cursed her with it time and again.

Outside the chamber, no one came. Not the king, who lay glutted on sweetmeats in his solar, groaning and sweating. Not Prince Daeron, who had long since grown cold to his father's whims. Only Daenerys remained, her hands reddened, her eyes wide with helpless dread.

Naerys clutched her daughter's hand once more. "Dany," she gasped. "Promise me. Promise you'll remember me not as queen… but as mother."

"I swear it," Daenerys whispered through her tears. "Always."

And with a shuddering breath, Queen Naerys Targaryen, sister and wife to Aegon the Fourth, mother of the realm's truest heir and gentlest daughter, slipped away into the stillness. The babe never drew breath.

The wind howled louder then, as if mourning her.

Daenerys wept long that night, beside the body of the only one who had never asked anything of her but love. She wept for the mother she had lost, for the child who never saw the world, and for the house that seemed to forget how to love at all.

It was said later that Aegon IV did not attend the Queen's funeral, nor did he name the babe who died with her. Instead, he dined that night on quail in honey, and praised the new Dornish concubine who had arrived from Lys.

But in the Sept of Baelor, under candlelight and silent stone, Daenerys knelt alone, and whispered a prayer not to the Seven, but to her uncle Aemon, wherever his soul might rest.

Watch over her. Watch over me. And keep the dragonfire from devouring what little we have left.