Title: The Unruly Asset

Title: The Unruly Asset

Year and Month: 82 AC - 84 AC

The years between my first and fourth name days were a period of intense, covert growth. To the court, the progression of Prince Aeryn was a subject of quiet marvel. I learned to walk not with the clumsy, endearing stumbles of a toddler, but with a swift, silent purpose that was often unnerving in a child so small. My physical grace was attributed to the Valyrian blood, a convenient explanation for the effects of the serum. My silence, once a defining trait of my infancy, gave way to speech. This, too, was a carefully managed project.

I did not babble. I did not mispronounce words. I listened, my mind a flawless recording device, absorbing the cadence, syntax, and vocabulary of the High Valyrian spoken at court and the Common Tongue used by servants and soldiers. For months, I remained silent, giving the impression of a slow developer, a stark contrast to my twin Gael, who chattered away with the delightful imprecision of a normal child. This disparity was a calculated move, lowering expectations and making my first words all the more impactful.

My chosen moment came during a session with Septon Barth in the spring of 82 AC. I was nearing my second name day. We were in the royal gardens, a beautiful, manicured space that served as my preferred meeting location. Barth was pointing out different species of flowers, explaining their origins and properties, a lesson in biology and geography disguised as a pleasant stroll. He pointed to a deep crimson bloom with thorns along its stem.

"This, my prince, is a Bloodrose from the Dornish Marches," he explained. "Beautiful, but its thorns carry a mild poison. A lesson in itself. That which is most alluring is often the most dangerous."

He was, as always, speaking to the intelligence he knew resided within me. He was testing me, waiting. I decided the time was right.

I looked from the rose to his face, my expression placid. Then, in a voice that was clear, perfectly formed, and devoid of any childish lisp, I spoke for the first time.

"The danger is not in the thorn, my Lord Hand. It is in the allure that makes one forget the thorn exists."

Septon Barth froze. His hand, which had been gesturing towards the flower, dropped to his side. His jaw went slack. He stared at me, his brilliant mind visibly reeling, struggling to process that a child not yet two years old had just offered a philosophical counterpoint to his lesson. The words themselves were profound for a child, but the flawless elocution was what made it truly impossible.

I held his gaze for a moment longer, then broke the spell by toddling over to a butterfly, my face shifting into a mask of simple, childish curiosity. The performance was complete. The "Quiet Prince" could speak, and his first utterance was a piece of quotable wisdom. The report Barth delivered to my father that evening, which I later reviewed from my perch atop the Red Keep, was a masterpiece of stunned disbelief and burgeoning theory. My reputation grew. I was no longer just the prodigy; I was the sage in miniature, a source of gnomic wisdom. I used my subsequent speech sparingly, always speaking in full, clear sentences, often offering simple yet strangely insightful observations that kept the court, and more importantly my father, off-balance and intrigued.

While I managed my own public relations with meticulous care, I was also turning my analytical gaze towards the other assets and liabilities within my family. The most volatile, and therefore the most interesting, was my sister Saera.

By 84 AC, when I was four and she was a young woman of seventeen, Saera was a tempest. She was beautiful, vivacious, and possessed a reckless, defiant spirit that the court found both intoxicating and terrifying. She saw the rules of propriety not as guidelines, but as walls to be smashed through. She raced horses against stableboys, drank wine with guardsmen, and flirted with a brazenness that sent scandalized whispers rustling through the castle like dry leaves.

I knew her story, of course. I knew about her dalliances, the scandal with the three knights, her ultimate flight to Volantis where she would become the proprietor of a famous pleasure house. From a cold, business perspective, her trajectory was a disaster for the Targaryen brand. Her actions reflected on my father, on the family, on me. She was an unruly asset, depreciating in value and threatening to poison the entire portfolio. Her exile was a form of damage control, but I believed a better outcome was possible. A managed asset is always more valuable than a liquidated one.

I began to dedicate my intelligence-gathering resources—namely, Balerion—to her. While the court saw her public defiance, I saw the private reality. Night after night, I would watch through my dragon's eyes as she snuck from her chambers. I saw her climb down trellises to meet with stablehands, not always for romantic trysts, but sometimes just to feel the thrill of freedom. I saw her with her two closest friends, Lady Perianne Moore and Lady Alys Turnberry, giggling over stolen wine and mocking the stuffy lords and ladies of the court.

And I saw her with the knights. The books mentioned a scandal with three: a handsome Cargyll twin, Ser Braxton Beesbury, and the darkly charming Jonah Mooton. My surveillance confirmed it. She was juggling them with a skill that, were it applied to statecraft, would have made her a formidable queen. She met them in hidden alcoves, shadowy gardens, and abandoned storerooms. They showered her with gifts, wrote her terrible poetry, and vied for her affection with a passion that was destined to boil over into violence.

Saera wasn't evil. My analysis concluded that her primary driver was a desperate craving for agency. She was a princess, a valuable broodmare to be married off for political advantage. Every choice was made for her. Her rebellion was a clumsy, dangerous attempt to prove that she was the master of her own fate. This was a critical insight. To manage her, one could not simply impose more rules. That would only cause her to rebel harder. One had to manipulate her core desire: her need for control.

My chosen agent for this delicate operation was my mother, Queen Alysanne. My father, the King, would respond to Saera's rebellion with law and fury. He would see the transgression against his authority, and his response would be punitive. My mother, however, saw the troubled child beneath the defiant young woman. She loved her children fiercely, even the difficult ones. Her heart was the battlefield where this war had to be fought. Her actions were driven by a desire to protect, and I would use that desire to my own ends.

I needed to create the right opportunity. It came one afternoon in the Queen's private garden. It was a beautiful, secluded spot where my mother often retreated from the pressures of the court. She had invited me to join her, a common occurrence. She doted on me and Gael, her 'twilight children'. I was sitting on a bench, meticulously arranging colored stones into complex geometric patterns—an activity that was seen as another of the "Quiet Prince's" strange hobbies, but was in reality an exercise in focus and fine motor control. Gael was chasing butterflies nearby. My mother was watching me, her expression a familiar mix of love and wonder.

"Aeryn, my sweet boy," she said, her voice soft. "Septon Barth tells me you spoke of the nature of allure and danger. You have your father's mind."

"The Hand is a good teacher," I replied, my voice clear and childishly high-pitched, a carefully practiced tone. I looked up at her. "He teaches me to see what is there."

"And what do you see, my little dragon?" she asked, smiling, indulging what she thought was a child's game.

This was my moment. I let my gaze drift from her face, across the garden, as if noticing something for the first time. My target was in sight. Princess Saera, holding court with her two ladies-in-waiting by a fountain on the far side of the garden. She was laughing, a bright, defiant sound, purposefully loud enough to carry. She had unlaced the top of her dress in a way that was subtly scandalous, and her hair was unbound. She was putting on a performance for the benefit of any watching eyes.

I stared at her, my face a mask of childish concentration. I let the silence stretch. My mother's smile faded, replaced by a frown of concern as she followed my gaze.

"What is it, Aeryn?" she asked. "What do you see?"

I turned back to her. I arranged my face into a look of profound, childlike confusion, an expression I had practiced in the reflection of a silver platter. "Sister Saera…" I began, letting my voice trail off as if I didn't have the words.

"What about your sister?" my mother prompted, her full attention now captured.

I looked down at the stones in my hand. "She is… very bright," I said, choosing my words with surgical precision. "Like a fire. But the fire… it moves too much. It wants to burn the house down."

My mother's breath caught. It was a child's metaphor, simple, direct, and utterly chilling. It was not a prophecy. It was not an accusation. It was an observation, framed in the innocent language of a four-year-old, but carrying the weight of a maester's diagnosis. I had just described Saera's core nature—her brilliant, self-destructive energy—in a way Alysanne would understand on a primal, maternal level.

"What do you mean, burn the house down?" Alysanne asked, her voice tight.

I looked up, my eyes wide and earnest. "She wants to be the only fire," I said simply. Then, to complete the effect, I reached out and patted her hand. "But you are the sun, Mama. The sun is a bigger fire. The sun makes the garden grow."

I had just handed her both the problem and the solution. Saera's fire was dangerous. But Alysanne's power—her warmth, her influence as Queen and mother—was greater. I had empowered her, framed her as the only one who could manage the situation, appealing directly to her pride and her love. I also subtly warned her that Saera's ambition was a threat to her own position as the central female figure in the family.

My mother stared at me, her mind clearly racing. She saw not a warning from some divine source, but a moment of terrifying, intuitive clarity from her strange, gifted son. To her, this was not an oracle speaking of the future; it was her child seeing the present with eyes unclouded by denial.

"Alysanne! There you are!"

The booming voice of my brother Baelon broke the spell. He strode into the garden, grinning, my sister-wife Alyssa on his arm. Saera and her friends immediately fell silent, their defiant laughter cut short by the presence of the Spring Prince. Baelon was one of the few people Saera seemed to respect, or at least fear.

"Father requires you in the council room," he said to my mother. Then he winked at me. "Still playing with rocks, little archmaester? One of these days you'll build a castle with them."

I gave him a small, shy smile, the mask of the child snapping perfectly back into place. My mother rose, her movements stiff. She glanced one last time at Saera, who was now pretending to be deeply interested in the fountain, and then back at me. The look she gave me was filled with a new and troubling awareness. Her love was still there, but it was now tainted with the same fear and awe that I saw in my father's eyes. She understood that my "gift" was not limited to matters of state. It saw the rot within our own house.

As she walked away with Baelon, I remained on the bench. I had planted my seed. I had not told her about the knights, or the sneaking out. That would have been a tactical error, positioning me as a simple informant. Instead, I had given her a psychological profile, a strategic overview of the problem. I had armed her with a new perspective. She would start watching Saera differently now. She would see not just a rebellious girl, but a fire that threatened to consume them all. She would be more vigilant, more proactive. She would try to manage the unruly asset before it was too late.

I picked up one of my stones, a smooth, grey piece of river rock. My intervention was a gamble. It might alter the timeline, preventing Saera's exile but creating new, unforeseen problems. But from my perspective, it was a necessary risk. A powerful, wealthy ex-princess running a pleasure house in Volantis was a loose cannon. A managed, if still spirited, princess within the fold of the family could, in time, be turned into a valuable piece. My goal was not to save Saera for her own sake. It was to optimize her for the long-term benefit of the corporation that was House Targaryen. And, more importantly, for the benefit of its future CEO: myself.