Chapter 2 Title: The King's Dilemma

Title: The King's Dilemma

Year and Month: 80 AC, 6th Moon

The silence in the Dragonpit was a living thing, heavier and more terrifying than the roar that had preceded it. It pressed in on all sides, thick with the dust of ages and the ozone of impossible magic. In that silence, every eye was fixed on one of two things: the infant prince in the queen's arms, or the resurrected god of death standing in the pit below, radiating heat and a vibrant, terrifying new life.

King Jaehaerys I stood framed in the great doorway, the legendary Valyrian steel sword Blackfyre a mere ornament on his hip. He did not need to draw it. His presence, his sheer, undisputed authority, was a weapon in itself. His face, usually a canvas of thoughtful composure, was hard granite. His gaze flickered from the impossibly vital Balerion to me, held against my mother's chest. The connection was obvious, undeniable. The cause, and the effect.

From my vantage point, with senses so sharp they felt like a form of clairvoyance, I dissected his reaction. The initial shock had given way to a mind moving at immense speed, the mind of the Conciliator, the wisest of kings. I saw the flash of fear—not of the dragon, but of the unknown, of the power my existence represented. I saw the dawning awe, the recognition of a miracle. And beneath it all, I saw the cold, hard glint of a politician and strategist. He was already calculating, weighing the implications, assessing the threat and the opportunity.

"Seal the pit," Jaehaerys commanded, his voice perfectly level, betraying none of the storm I could see raging within him. "No one enters or leaves. Send for the Lord Commander." He looked directly at the head Dragonkeeper, a man whose face had gone as slack as a wet wineskin. "You and your men saw nothing but an old dragon stirring in his sleep. Your lives, and the lives of your families, depend on the truth of that statement."

The threat was delivered with the dispassionate finality of a headsman's axe. The keepers fell to their knees, babbling assurances. Jaehaerys had already dismissed them from his thoughts. His eyes found my mother's on the balcony.

Queen Alysanne met his gaze without flinching, her arm a band of steel around me. Her protective stance was as fierce as any she-dragon's. For a moment, the two monarchs, the pillars of the realm, stared at each other over the head of their impossible child. It was a silent, powerful clash of wills.

Then, the king's gaze dropped to me again. I allowed my head to loll to the side, my breathing to deepen, feigning the exhaustion that should have followed such a cataclysmic event for a normal infant. I needed to be underestimated. My consciousness was a fortress, and its walls had to be the illusion of infantile weakness. Behind those walls, my mind was a whirlwind of activity, processing the flood of new data from my enhanced body and the nascent, thrumming connection to the colossal beast below.

The bond with Balerion was… extraordinary. It wasn't a master-servant connection. It felt like a fusion of consciousnesses. I could feel the fiery vigor coursing through his ancient veins, the sheer joy of his newfound strength. His age was still there, a deep well of memory and wisdom spanning two centuries, but the decay, the weary slumber, had been burned away. He felt my awareness of him, a tiny, impossibly sharp point of light within the vast, fiery cathedral of his mind. There was no resistance, only a deep, resonant sense of acceptance and shared purpose. He had been dying. Now, he lived. He owed his new life to me, and his ancient, primal mind understood this with perfect clarity.

Kingsguard, their white cloaks pristine against the soot-stained stone, now surrounded my father. Ser Ryam Redwyne, the Lord Commander himself, was there, his expression grim. Jaehaerys gave a series of quiet, rapid-fire commands. I was to be returned to my nursery immediately. The queen would accompany me. He would handle the… situation here.

The return to the Red Keep was a tense, silent affair. My mother held me with a grip that was both possessive and protective. She said nothing, but I could feel the tremor of adrenaline in her hands, the fierce resolve solidifying within her. She had followed her intuition, and it had led her to witness a miracle. She was now my shield, my first and most essential line of defense. My internal ledger marked her as my primary asset.

Back in the quiet serenity of the royal nursery, the world felt deceptively normal. The scent of lavender and clean linen replaced the sulphur of the pit. My twin, Gael, slept peacefully in her adjacent cradle, a picture of innocence, oblivious to the fact that her brother had just fundamentally altered the course of history. Looking at her, I felt a strange, detached sense of responsibility. In the books, her gentle nature led to her doom. She was a lamb in a world of wolves. Now, she was my sister. Her fate was a loose thread I would have to manage. Her weakness could not be allowed to reflect on me. She would be protected, not out of affection, but out of a cold, calculated need to control all variables associated with my name.

I lay in my own cradle, swaddled and trapped, but my mind was soaring. The serum had finished its initial work on my body. While outwardly I was still a babe, I could feel the latent power coiling in my muscles, the density of my bones, the sheer efficiency of my nervous system. I experimented, sending a precise command to my left hand. Beneath the blankets, I curled my index finger, then my middle, then my ring finger, in a perfect, deliberate sequence. It was a minuscule action, invisible to any observer, but to me, it was a monumental victory. I had control. The process of mapping and mastering this new body had begun.

Later that evening, the heavy oak door to the nursery opened, admitting the King. He had dismissed the servants. It was just him and my mother, who rose from a chair where she had been watching us.

"The Dragonkeepers are confined to the pit. They will not speak," Jaehaerys said, his voice low and weary. He walked over to my cradle, his shadow falling over me. "The official word, should anyone have heard the roar, is that Vermithor and Silverwing had a territorial dispute. It is a thin story, but it will have to suffice for now."

"It was not a dispute," Alysanne's voice was firm, imbued with the conviction of a true believer. "It was a rebirth. You saw it, Jaehaerys."

The King ran a hand over his face. The weight of his fifty-five-year reign seemed to press down on him. "I saw something I cannot explain. Something that frightens me more than Maegor ever did." He looked down at me, his violet eyes, so like my own, searching for answers. "He lay still in your arms. He did not cry. He did not even flinch when Balerion roared."

"He was… connected," Alysanne said, coming to stand beside him. "I felt it when I held him. A pull. A need. He drew me to the pit. He drew Balerion to him."

"A babe of two moons does not draw the Black Dread to him, Alysanne. He cries for milk and his mother's teat."

"Our children are not like other children," she countered softly. "And this one… this one is different again. You have seen it since his birth. The way he watches. The silence. You named him Aeryn, a new name for a new kind of prince."

Jaehaerys was silent. He knew she was right. His cautious, logical mind was at war with the evidence of his own eyes. I continued my charade of sleep, slowing my breathing, listening to the debate that would shape my future. This was my first trial by fire, a corporate boardroom negotiation where my very existence was the subject.

"This power…" Jaehaerys finally said, his voice barely a whisper. "To rejuvenate the oldest and most powerful creature in the world. To bind it to him from the cradle. This is the power of the gods of Old Valyria. A power we have not seen in centuries. Such power breeds monsters as often as it does kings, my love. It breeds tyrants."

He's thinking of Maegor, I realized. But also of the Doom. He fears unchecked power. This was the core of his dilemma. He, the Conciliator, who had built his reign on law, compromise, and stability, had fathered a living cataclysm.

"He is our son," Alysanne insisted, her hand resting on Jaehaerys's arm. "He is not Maegor. He has your blood, but he has my heart."

I almost scoffed. She had no idea what lay in my heart. My heart was a cold, empty vault where I kept my ambition. But her belief was a powerful tool, and I would leverage it for all it was worth.

"He will be watched," Jaehaerys declared, his tone leaving no room for argument. "The Grand Maester, Septon Barth, and myself. We will guide him. We will temper him. The bond with Balerion will be kept secret for as long as possible. Let the world think the old dragon is simply enjoying a late resurgence of health. For now, Prince Aeryn is just a babe. And he will be treated as such."

It was a temporary solution, a king playing for time. But it was also a victory for me. He hadn't ordered me separated from Balerion. He hadn't locked me away. He had chosen to observe. And as any good businessman knows, during the observation and due diligence period, you have the opportunity to shape the narrative.

The next day, my father convened his inner circle in the Small Council chamber. I was not there, of course, being confined to my nursery. But the bond with Balerion provided an unexpected advantage. The dragon was sleeping in his revitalized body, but his senses, ancient and vast, were a part of me now. He could feel the vibrations in the stone, the subtle shifts in the air currents of the Red Keep. And my mind, now a super-charged processor, could interpret these subtle cues. I couldn't hear the words, but I could feel the resonance of the meeting, the tension, the long silences. And my knowledge of the players allowed me to construct the conversation with near-perfect accuracy.

Jaehaerys would have presented the problem, stripped of emotion. The prince, my son, Aeryn, has bonded with Balerion. The dragon, by all accounts, has been revitalized to a state of health not seen in fifty years. This occurred in an instant, by proximity to the child. I seek your counsel.

Grand Maester Elysar, a man of logic and reason, a servant of the Citadel that famously distrusted magic, would have been deeply disturbed. His argument would be one of caution and fear of the unknown.

"Your Grace, this is an anomaly of the highest order," I could almost hear his dry, rustling voice. "Magic is a sword without a hilt. The bond itself is not unprecedented, but its nature, its spontaneity, and its… restorative effect on the dragon? That defies all known principles. We are dealing with a force we do not understand. The child may be a conduit for something dangerous. He should be studied, isolated from the dragon until we can comprehend the nature of this power. To allow this bond to deepen is to risk raising another Maegor, but one whose power could potentially dwarf his."

Then would come Septon Barth. The blacksmith's son who became the greatest Hand in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. A pragmatist, a scholar, but a man who had not forgotten the existence of the divine.

"Or," Barth's deeper, more thoughtful voice would cut through the maester's fearful prognosis, "it is a gift from the Fourteen Flames themselves. A sign that the blood of Old Valyria has not run thin. That the gods have not abandoned your house. To fear a gift is to insult the giver, Your Grace. The boy is not a monster; he is your son. The dragon is not a curse; it is the single greatest symbol of your family's right to rule. Maegor was a brute who ruled by fear alone. You are the Conciliator who rules by law and wisdom. You will teach the boy wisdom. You will temper his power with justice. This is not a threat to the realm, Your Grace. This is the means by which you secure it for your grandchildren and their children after them. A prince bonded to a rejuvenated Black Dread? Who would dare challenge the Iron Throne for a century to come? Not the Faith, not Dorne, not the Ironborn. No one."

Elysar would have argued back, speaking of precedent and the dangers of hubris. Barth would have countered with the practical realities of power. And Jaehaerys, my father, would have sat between them, listening, the fulcrum upon which the fate of the realm, and my own, rested.

He trusted Barth more. Barth's counsel had guided his entire reign. I knew this from the histories. The Hand's argument, appealing to both divine providence and ruthless pragmatism, would hold more sway. He was advising the king to treat me as an asset, albeit a volatile one, to be managed and groomed. This aligned perfectly with my own plans.

My attention shifted from the imagined council meeting back to the here and now. I focused on the bond, reaching out with my mind, not with a command, but with a query. I sent a wave of calm, focused curiosity towards the slumbering giant in the Dragonpit.

The response was instantaneous. A feeling, not a thought in words, flooded my consciousness. It was a sense of immense gratitude, of ancient contentment. I saw through his closed eyelids, sensing the darkness of the pit, the warmth of the fires in his belly, the solid strength of his own form. He was aware of me, constantly. I was the anchor of his new reality. His mind, ancient and alien, was a repository of memory. I brushed against a fleeting image: the sky over the burning fields of Aegon's conquest, a sky thick with smoke and other dragons. I saw the face of the Conqueror himself, stern and focused, felt the pressure of his hands on the saddle. These were not my memories, but his, and through the bond, I had access to them. It was a library of unparalleled historical value. Another asset.

I pulled my consciousness back gently. This was a power to be explored cautiously. A complete merger of our minds would be dangerous, I could lose myself in that vast, ancient sea. For now, the link was a tool, a communication channel, a source of data.

That night, as the castle slept, the King returned. He came alone, a single candle in his hand, its light casting long, dancing shadows on the walls. He moved with a quietness that belied his age, his steps sure and steady. Alysanne was asleep in their chambers. My sister Gael was breathing softly. The nursery was my domain.

He stood over my cradle for a long time, his face a complex mask of emotions in the flickering candlelight. I saw the king, weighing the fate of his kingdom. But I also saw the father, looking at his son. There was fear, yes, but there was also a deep, abiding love. And hope.

"Aeryn," he whispered, so low it was barely a breath. "What are you? A blessing or a curse? A saviour or a second Doom?"

I did not stir. I gave him no sign of my awareness. Let him wonder. Let him project his own hopes and fears onto me.

He reached a hand into the cradle, his fingers gently brushing against my cheek. His touch was warm, calloused from years of wielding both the sceptre and the sword. It was the touch of a father. A part of me, the long-dormant human part from my past life, registered the alien sensation of paternal affection. I cataloged it, filed it away as another piece of data. It was a potential lever, a potential weakness in his otherwise formidable composure.

"Septon Barth believes you are a gift," he murmured. "A new age for our House. I pray to the gods, both old and new, that he is right."

He stood there for a moment longer, then withdrew his hand. He looked from me to Gael, his expression softening slightly. Finally, he turned and left, as silently as he had come, leaving me alone in the darkness with the weight of his decision.

He had chosen Barth's path. He had chosen to embrace the power, to try and shape it. He would watch me, test me, teach me. He would try to make me into his son, a wise and just prince.

A small smile touched my lips in the darkness, an expression no infant could possibly make. He would try to shape me. He had no idea that I was the one who would be shaping him. The king had made his first move in a new game. But I had read the book. I knew the rules. And I had already changed them all.