The Small Council chamber was warm with the scent of beeswax and old ink. A heavy silence lingered beneath the vaulted ceiling, broken only by the slow turning of parchment and the scratch of a quill.
At the head of the table sat King Aerys I Targaryen, robed in soft black velvet stitched with silver thread. His pale hands held a leather-bound tome, and his violet eyes scanned its pages with rapt focus. He neither looked up nor spoke.
In his stead, it was Lord Brynden Rivers, Hand of the King and Master of Whisperers, who commanded the room.
Brynden sat in cold silence, his single red eye fixed on the flickering flame of the council chamber's central lantern. Where once an eyepatch had covered the hollow of his left eye, now there was nothing to obscure the empty socket. It gave him the aspect of a corpse half-raised from the grave—a warning in flesh and bone.
Around him sat the other lords of the realm, a tapestry of titles and tempers.
Lord Arryck Massey, Master of Ships, grey-bearded and bluff, leaned forward first. "We have word from Lys, My Lord Hand. Bittersteel gathers men again. Gold flows into his coffers. It is said he has made contact with the Golden Company."
Brynden's brow did not move. "He always gathers men. He always trains them. Gold, steel, oaths, and dreams. And yet the sea between us remains."
Massey grunted. "It may not remain forever. The Blackfyre boy is with him—Daemon, the second of that name. The bastard knight may raise him. The sellswords will rally to a dragon. They call him 'the rightful king' in the east."
"And what would that boy do with a crown?" Brynden murmured, folding his long pale fingers together. "Drape it in lace and serenade it with a harp? He is not his father. Nor were his brothers."
"The boy may not be a swordsman," came the voice of Grand Maester Mellaen, "but he is a dragon nonetheless. Blood calls to blood."
"Blood once spilled rarely rises," Brynden said. "The boy plays at being king in taverns and brothels. He prefers song to sword, and his lovers to be of a more delicate persuasion."
A few of the lords exchanged glances. The implication was known well enough—Daemon the Younger was no warrior. Nor was he his father's son in the ways that mattered most in war.
Still, Lord Massey pressed on. "Even so, Lord Hand... charm is its own weapon. So was Rhaenyra's once. And the first Daemon Blackfyre, for all his rebellion. What if the boy dreams of conquest? What if he dreams of flying the black dragon's banner over the Red Keep?"
Brynden's voice was flat and cold. "Then let him dream. When he wakes, remind him of what dreams bought his father—death in the dirt, a black dragon broken on the Redgrass Field. Remind him of Aemon and Aegon, cut down before they'd known true battle. Remind him that even Bittersteel's fury could not keep their blood in their bodies."
"And if the dreamers gather swords regardless?" asked Ser Oswald Wynch, the new Master-at-Arms, his voice gravel rough.
Brynden stood slowly, placing both hands on the table. His red eye gleamed like the last ember in a dying hearth.
"Then we shall meet them, as we did before. On field or in shadow. Let Bittersteel come, let Daemon sing of thrones and destiny. The Iron Throne does not weep for ghosts, nor tremble before songs."
The room fell still.
From his throne, the King turned a page. Without lifting his gaze from the book, he spoke for the first time.
"History is a wheel. And dreams often lie."
Then, silence again.
Brynden sat, expression unchanged.
"Then we must keep watch," said Grand Maester Mellaen. "Eyes in the east. Spies in the Golden Company. If dreams stir the sea, let us be the storm that drowns them before they land."
The council murmured assent. The meeting moved on to other matters—coin, ports, unrest in the Riverlands—but the shadow of black dragons flying from Essos lingered in every corner of the room.