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Jon - Tower of the Hand - Early Morning
Jon hadn't moved in hours.
He sat on the edge of his bed with the empty chest open on his lap, fingers tracing the wool lining for the hundredth time, pressing into the corners where the egg used to rest. The fabric was still warm. Or maybe he was imagining that.
The candles had burned to nothing. Grey dawn bled through the window, thin and cold, turning the stone walls the color of old bone. Outside, somewhere far below, the city was waking.
His ribs throbbed. His shoulder ached where the Mountain's flat blade had broken something that Maester Pycelle said would take months to heal. The gash above his eyebrow itched beneath its stitches.
None of it mattered.
Daemon Targaryen.
The name had carved itself into his mind. Every memory he had was reshaping itself around this new truth. Every time Ned...his uncle, not his father, never his father...had looked at him with that particular sadness in his grey eyes. Every time Lady Catelyn's gaze had cut through him like a winter wind. Every time Robb had called him brother.
I am the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. I am trueborn. I was never a bastard.
And someone had stolen his dragon egg while the truth was being pulled from the earth like a root.
Jon did not know what to think about this...This Daemon Targaryen, it felt like someone else...sometimes he caught himself that what happened last night was all a dream, but he knew it wasn't, it was not a dream, and he was not Lord Stark's son.
Jon dug deep and thought about all the times something odd had happened in Winterfell. Jon knew he wasn't bad in the eyes, he remembered the many times servant girl had said something about his eyes, about his face, but Jon had been sure it was because of who his mother was, because Jon knew his...face could have never come from Lord Stark.
"You are my blood, never forget that."
Jon remembered something. Lord Stark had never called him son, not once. Jon felt foolish... No... I'm wrong, he did, didn't he? Jon dug deep, trying to remember if he ever did.
You are my blood, Jon.
You are a Stark Jon.
You have the blood of the North in you.
You are as much of a Stark as Robb is. Winterfell is your home as much as it's theirs.
He thought harder. Pushed deeper. There had to be one time. One single moment in fourteen years when Eddard Stark had looked at him and said the word son with Jon's name attached to it. In the training yard. At the dinner table. During the long nights when they sat by the fire and Ned told stories of the rebellion. In the godswood at Winterfell, beneath the real heart tree, the one with the face that wept red sap and watched with carved eyes that actually saw.
Once. Just once. Please.
Nothing.
The memories came and came, a river of them, and in every single one, Ned's love was there. But the word wasn't. You are my blood. You are a Stark. You have the North in you. Winterfell is your home. Every phrase a bridge built to span the gap where the truth should have been, strong enough to hold Jon's weight, close enough to the real thing that Jon had never thought to test the boards.
But he was testing them now. And they were hollow.
Jon let out a long, slow breath. It shuddered on the way out.
He couldn't say it. Not once. Not because he didn't love me... he did. He does. But because Eddard Stark does not lie.
Jon thought about what this means, this Daemon Targaryen. Jon Snow knew who Jon Snow was, but Daemon was a stranger wearing his face.
Jon knew he would not find the answers here, not in the Red Keep, not in King's Landing, but in his mother's letters. Perhaps the truth was there, and he just needed to read her letters to get a better understanding of what it means to be a Targaryen, even if his mother was a Stark, not a Targaryen.
Jon forced himself to stop thinking about Daemon; he needed to think about the present
The room felt enormous without Ghost. Jon had sent the direwolf down to the cellar after returning from the Godswood, unable to bear the thought of RedHeart alone in that darkness all night without protection. Ghost had gone without complaint. The wolf had spent most of the past week being climbed on, bitten, and used as a living pillow by a creature that weighed a quarter of his size and had twice his temper. And now Jon was asking him to guard that same creature through the cold hours while Jon sat here staring at an empty box.
Good boy.
The door opened.
Ned stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Jon could see the worry in his eyes, but Jon was surprised to see...Lord Stark has never seen so untired...he wasn't sure how to say it, but Lord Stark seemed like someone had just lifted a weight from his shoulder, and he was allowed to breath again. There was still worry; they were still in the Red Keep, but Lord Stark seemed relaxed and more at ease than he used to be.
He carried a wooden tray: bread, cold mutton, a cup of ale. He set it on the table beside Jon's bed.
"You should eat," Ned said.
Jon looked at the food and felt nothing. "I'm not hungry."
"You need your strength."
"I need my egg."
Lord Stark's eyes widened, and only now did he look at the empty box on Jon's bed and realise what this meant.
"What happened?" Ned asked worried.. "Where is it?"
"Gone." Jon's voice sounded flat and far away. "It was there before we left for the Godswood. When we came back, it wasn't."
"The Kingslayer." Lord Stark said quietly. "He suggested the Godswood. He knew we would all be gone. He knew this room would be empty."
Jon shook his head. "No."
"He could have had someone waiting, Jon. A servant, a sellsword. While we stood beneath that oak pouring out secrets, someone walked in here and—"
"It wasn't Ser Jaime."
Ned turned to him. The look on his face was the same one Jon had seen a thousand times growing up. I know the world better than you, boy. Listen to me.
But Jon wasn't a boy anymore. He wasn't sure what he was, but he was done being silent.
"Fa—" The word caught in his throat like a fishhook. He swallowed. "He could have gone to Robert. At any point since he figured out the truth, Jaime Lannister could have walked into the throne room and told the King that Rhaegar Targaryen's son was sleeping three floors above him. Robert would have had my head on a spike before sunset, and Jaime would have been rewarded for his loyalty." Jon held Ned's gaze. "He didn't. He came to us instead. He surrendered his weapons. He told us Cersei ordered my death. He swore himself to my service."
"I rode into the throne room at the end of the war," Ned said softly. "The Mad King's blood was still wet on the floor. And there sat Jaime Lannister on the Iron Throne, sword across his knees, golden and smiling, with the body of the man he swore before gods and men to protect cooling at his feet." Ned's grey eyes were hard as flint. "He did not look like a man burdened by what he'd done. He looked like a man who had been waiting for the chance." A pause. "You cannot build a house on the oath of a man who butchers his own king, Jon. Whatever words he spoke last night, however pretty they sounded in the dark — he has broken every vow he ever took. His word is smoke. It looks solid until you reach for it."
"Maybe." Jon reached for the cup of ale on the tray and took a slow sip. It was weak, watered, and tasted like tin. "But he doesn't know about the eggs. He doesn't know about RedHeart. Everything in the Godswood was about my parents, my name. Dragons never came up. If Jaime wanted an egg, he'd have to know one existed first."
He probably thinks I'm a scared boy with a wolf and a Targaryen name, Jon thought. He doesn't know about the fire made flesh sleeping in Balerion's eye socket.
Ned was quiet, and Jon knew from his face that Lord Stark did not agree with him, but he didn't seem in the mood to argue with him.
"Then who?" Ned asked.
Jon set the ale down. "You already know."
"Varys."
The name settled between them like poison poured into a well. Jon thought of the mysterious woman's warning, spoken in darkness with her cold fingers wrapped around his wrist: The Spider sits in the dark and spins his webs. He hears everything.
"If the Spider knows about the egg," Ned said slowly, "then he may know about the dragon. And if he knows about the dragon..."
Then he knows about me. What I am. What my blood can do.
"We can't confront him," Ned continued. "Confronting Varys would confirm whatever he suspects. We cannot search the Red Keep, we cannot send men to ask questions, and we cannot—" He stopped, pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose, and exhaled through his teeth. "The egg is gone, Jon."
The words landed like stones on a coffin.
"We have to accept that," Ned said. "We focus on what we can protect. We leave in two days. We take your sisters, we take your dragon, and we sail for White Harbor. Everything else—" He gestured at the empty chest. "—is a loss we survive."
Jon stared at the chest. The bare wool. The ghost of warmth that wasn't really there. He thought of the egg, black as midnight with veins of white running through it like snow through obsidian. He thought of the way it had pulsed in his hands; it was alive, and trying to talk to him, and now, it was gone. RedHeart would never have a sibling, not like Ghost with Nymeria and the other direwolves.
Jon felt like he was betraying RedHeart, felt like he was hurting Ghost; he wanted to have the Dragon Egg back, it was his, and the creature inside deserved to live, it deserved to feel the sun on its scales, not the cold and loneliness. Leaving the Egg, Jon did not want to, but how could he ever find it? He didn't know if it was Varys who took it, and he would leave in two days. He didn't have time to find it, and if he tried to stay longer, he would endanger everyone; his whole family could be killed. No...He could not risk that. As much as it hurt, Jon knew he needed to abandon this egg, so RedHeart, Ghost, Arya, and his family could live.
"I need to check on RedHeart." Jon pushed himself to his feet. Pain flared through his ribs, bright and vicious, but he breathed through it. "If they took the egg, they might know about her. She's down there alone."
"Ghost is with her."
"Ghost is a wolf. If someone comes with a crossbow and a grudge, he can't stop a bolt." Jon grabbed the crutch leaning against his bedpost. "I need to see her. I need to know she's safe."
"Take two guards. Alyn and Harwin, they won't ask questions." He paused. "And Jon."
Jon stopped at the door.
"If anyone asks, you are stretching your legs on the Maester's orders. Nothing more."
Jon held his uncle's gaze. The man who had raised him, who had called him his blood for fourteen years, who had carried a dead sister's secret like a millstone around his neck and never once complained. The man who was not his father and had never been his father and had loved him anyway.
"Thank you," Jon said. "For everything."
I should have said it last night. I should have said it years ago.
Ned's face did something rare in that moment; it softened, and a smile grew on his face. Jon felt a bloom of warmth in his chest. He would treasure this moment.
"Go," Ned said. "Be careful. And be quick."
The corridors of the Red Keep were a maze, and Jon navigated them on crutches that bit into his armpits with every swing. Each step rang hollow off the flagstones — thunk, drag, thunk, drag — a rhythm that announced his presence to every empty hallway he passed through.
Behind him, Alyn and Harwin trailed at a respectful distance.
Neither spoke. Neither asked where they were going, or why the Lord Hand's son, nephew, was dragging himself through the lower corridors of the castle instead of resting in bed. They were Northmen. They carried their swords, watched the shadows, and kept their mouths shut.
Southern guards would have sent word to someone by now, Jon thought as he rounded a corner and felt the air change, cooler here.
He was grateful for the North in ways he hadn't been before last night.
The corridors thinned as he moved deeper into the castle's underbelly, away from the painted halls and polished floors where courtiers gathered. Down here the stone was rougher, the torches fewer. Cobwebs laced the corners of archways. A mouse darted across the floor ahead of him and vanished into a crack in the wall.
Most of the castle was elsewhere today. Servants bustled toward the tourney grounds hauling casks and cushions. Lords and ladies were dressing in their finest silks. The jousting was the only thing King's Landing cared about this morning, which meant the lower levels of the Red Keep were as close to deserted as they'd ever be.
Jon stopped before the heavy iron-bound door. He remembered Arya pulling it open two nights ago, her small hands straining against the weight, and he thought: She's braver than half the knights in this castle, and she's nine.
He turned to the guards.
"Wait here," Jon said. "I want to go down alone."
Alys looked at his crutches, and he seemed like he didn't agree with this idea, but it was not his place to question him. The two guards exchanged a glance. A shrug passed between them.
They took their positions flanking the door, hands resting on sword pommels.
Jon heaved the door open. Cool air rushed up to meet him, carrying the scent of bone dust and something else, something faintly sulfurous and warm underneath the cold.
She's down there.
He could feel her. Not clearly, not the way he felt her when she was on his shoulder, but the bond was there; it felt like she was a fire in a dark forest, pulling him towards her.
Jon tucked the crutches under his arms and began to descend.
The stairs spiraled down into blackness, each step worn smooth by a thousand forgotten years of feet. The walls pressed close. His crutches scraped against stone, and the sound traveled ahead of him, announcing his arrival to whatever waited below.
Then he heard it.
A shriek echoed from below like a beast of darkness waking up.
RedHeart exploded out of the darkness.
Jon saw her eyes first, twin points of molten gold, burning in the black like fallen stars. Then the rest of her materialized: wings half-spread, neck extended, claws click-click-clicking on stone at a dead sprint. She was a blur of black scales and crimson veins, moving faster than an arrow.
She hit his chest like a small battering ram.
"Nngh—" Jon staggered, crutches clattering as his hands came up instinctively to catch her. Pain lanced through his ribs, bright and sharp and immediately irrelevant, because RedHeart was scrambling up his torso, talons snagging linen, and she was making sounds he'd never heard from her before: chirps and hisses and a frantic, scolding chatter that sounded absurdly like a little sister angry that her brother had taken so long to come.
She reached his shoulder and shoved her head against his jaw so hard his teeth clacked together.
"Prrrrrrrr."
The purr hit him like a wall of warmth. It vibrated through his collarbone, through his cracked ribs, through his sternum and into the hollowed-out cavity in his chest that had been empty and aching all night. The bond between them, that thin, distant candle-flame he'd sensed from his cold bedroom, roared back to full strength like a forge door thrown open.
Relief. Loneliness. Joy. Fury. All of it hers, flooding through the connection.
You left me. You left me in the dark with the bones and the rats and I didn't know if you were coming back. You left me and I was alone and it was cold without you even though I am fire and nothing should be cold for me but it WAS—
"I know," Jon murmured against her scales. He pressed his face into the ridge above her eye. Her scales were furnace-hot, almost scalding, and he didn't care.
"I know, little one. I'm sorry. I'm here."
RedHeart bit his ear. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to make a point.
Don't do it again.
Jon laughed. It hurt his ribs. He didn't care about that either.
Her presence, Jon felt like he was healing already, he felt like he could run right now, fight the Mountain all over again.
The fog of exhaustion that had wrapped his thoughts since the Godswood thinned and cleared.
She heals me, he thought, stroking the ridges of her spine. She actually heals me.
He whispered into the dark, the syllables rolling off his tongue like water over river stones: "Aōha dārilaros iksan. Nyke jāhor daor māzigon naejot ao."
I am your dragonlord. I will not leave you again.
RedHeart purred louder.
A soft chuff drew Jon's attention deeper into the cellar. Ghost lay beside the massive skull of Balerion the Black Dread, a pale smear against the ancient black bone. His red eyes caught the faint light like rubies in the gloom. Dust coated his white fur, belly, flanks, the feathered plume of his tail, and he looked really annoyed, giving RedHeart a long look.
He hadn't moved from the spot all night.
Jon crossed the cellar floor, crutches abandoned at the base of the stairs, walking under his own power. Ghost rose when he approached, pressing his cold nose into Jon's palm.
All is well. She is safe. I did my duty.
"Good boy," Jon said, scratching the thick fur behind Ghost's ears. "You did well."
Ghost's tail moved once. Not a wag but a slow sweep, an acknowledgment. His red eyes tracked RedHeart on Jon's shoulder with that familiar expression of strained tolerance, as if he were waiting for the day someone would acknowledge that asking a wolf to babysit a reptile was fundamentally unreasonable.
RedHeart noticed Ghost looking. She leaned down from Jon's shoulder and ran her rough, hot tongue across the inside of Ghost's ear.
Ghost flinched, and he gave RedHeart a cold look, telling her not do it again, or he would sit on her.
Near the base of Balerion's skull, Jon found the remains of Arya's delivery: stripped beef bones arranged on a square of linen, gnawed clean, the cloth spotted dark with old blood. She'd come through.
He'd thank her today.
Then Jon's eyes drifted to the far corner of the cellar, and he went still.
A pile. Small bones, dozens of them.
Rats. Scores of them. Picked clean, cracked open, stripped to the bone.
Jon stared. RedHeart had been down here less than a full day and night, and she'd built herself a charnel pit.
He lifted her from his shoulder and held her out in front of him.
She'd grown. Not by much, but enough that he could tell. She was bigger than a full-grown cat now, heavier too, and her wings had lengthened — the membranes thicker, stretched over bones that didn't look fragile anymore. Her scales were darker than he remembered, a deep black that swallowed the dim light, and the red veins beneath them burned brighter than they had a week ago. Her claws were thicker. Her teeth were sharper. The small horns above her eyes had come in harder.
Jon looked at the skulls around him and didn't need to guess what she'd look like in a year. The answer was staring back at him from every direction, hollow-eyed and enormous.
"Soon," he told her quietly. She tilted her head and blinked at him with those golden eyes. "Soon you'll hunt in the North. Open sky, forests, rivers full of fish." He ran his thumb along the warm ridge between her eyes. "You'll never be caged again."
RedHeart chirped and pressed her snout into his palm, and Jon decided that was close enough to a promise kept.
Jon sat against Balerion's skull. The bone was cool and smooth at his back, older than anything he'd ever touched. RedHeart settled in his lap, warm through his breeches. Ghost came and lay beside him, heavy head on Jon's thigh.
Wolf on one side. Dragon on the other. It felt right.
"I found out who I am," Jon said quietly. The cellar walls carried his voice further than he expected. "Who I really am."
RedHeart looked up at him.
"My name is Daemon Targaryen. I'm the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark."
It sounded different down here than it had in his head. Saying it to her, surrounded by the skulls of dead dragons, made it feel real in a way that thinking it alone in his chamber hadn't. Like the words needed fire to witness them before they could be true.
RedHeart didn't react the way a person would. No gasp, no questions. But something changed in her face, as if she'd been waiting for him to figure out what she already knew.
"I don't know what it means yet." Jon glanced at the skulls watching them from the dark. "Almost everyone who carried this name is dead. Except me."
RedHeart climbed his chest and pressed her head under his chin. Her purr filled his throat, his ribs, his bones. He wrapped his hand around her and felt her heartbeat.
"I suppose it changes one thing," he said. "I know why you chose me now."
Because I am the blood of the dragon. And so are you.
His thoughts drifted.
The girl.
Purple eyes in candlelight. A silver pendant shaped like a falling star. Fingers that RedHeart nuzzled instead of bit. Valonqar. Little brother. She'd called him Daemon when he was still Jon. She'd seen RedHeart and cried, whispering Zaldrīzes like it meant something holy to her. And she'd known where the eggs were hidden, because she was the only person besides Arya who'd ever seen them in that room.
She called herself his sister.
But Jaime said Rhaenys was dead. Three years old. Murdered during the Sack. Jon's jaw tightened at the thought of a little girl with dark hair and purple eyes, killed alongside her mother and baby brother by men too large and too cruel to call human.
A girl who chased a cat. Just like in his dreams.
The ugly black cat with the crown of wilting flowers. The dress of black and red. Found you. I finally found you.
Jon stared at the dark and let himself wonder. The stories were wrong about Lyanna. Every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Rhaegar stole her, and every man was wrong. So maybe they were wrong about Rhaenys too. Maybe someone hid her the way Ned hid Jon, a different name, a different story, a life built on a lie that kept her breathing.
Or she was someone else. Ashara Dayne's daughter. That would explain the eyes and the resemblance without needing a miracle.
Jon pressed his thumb against the bridge of his nose. Too many questions. Not enough of anything that looked like an answer. But one thing kept settling at the bottom of every path his mind wandered down.
She took the egg.
She knew where it was. She moved through the Red Keep the way smoke moved through a cracked window. And she had the blood. Whatever kind, whatever source, it was Valyrian. If dragon eggs answered to blood the way RedHeart answered to his, then she had every reason and every means.
If she stole it, I'll find her and I'll have the truth out of her.
But if she really is my blood...
He thought of RedHeart pressing her snout into the woman's open hand. The dragon who'd nearly taken Arya's finger off. The dragon who hissed at Ghost and wouldn't tolerate any living thing near Jon, that same dragon had purred for a stranger like she'd known her all her life.
...then maybe I've got a sister who's just as mad as I am.
Jon opened his eyes. The cellar hadn't changed. The skulls said nothing.
"Time to go," he said.
RedHeart dug her claws into his tunic and hissed. Jon lifted her off his chest and set her back on the ridge of Balerion's eye socket. She perched there glaring down at him, golden eyes bright with accusation.
"Tonight," he told her. "I'll come back tonight. And I'll bring something better than rats."
She hissed again, but quieter. More sulk than fury.
Jon looked at Ghost. The direwolf met his eyes and huffed through his nose. Ghost was telling him Same post, same duty, I understand, but I would like it noted that I am tired.
"Guard her." Jon knelt and pressed his forehead to the broad flat bone between Ghost's ears. "I'll bring you the biggest bone in the kitchen."
Ghost grinned like a puppy and looked up at RedHeart with a smug expression. See, he loves me more than you.
Shut up, you overgrown snowflake. Just wait until I can fly, then we will see who he loves more.
Jon took his crutches and climbed. Each step stole a little more of the warmth RedHeart had given him. The ache crept back into his ribs. His shoulder stiffened. By the time he reached the top he was leaning hard on the wood and breathing through his teeth, and the last three steps nearly put him on the ground.
Alyn and Harwin hadn't moved. Same positions, same faces, same silence.
Neither of them asked where he'd been. Neither mentioned the sulfur smell on his clothes, or the scorch mark on his collar where RedHeart's tail had rested, or the fact that he'd gone down barely able to stand and come back up walking almost straight before the stairs undid him.
They fell into step behind him and followed him back toward the light.
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