Rewriting Targaryen History

For several breaths after Moondancer vanished beyond the trees, no one on Honeyholt’s wall moved.

The forest had swallowed dragon and rider together. One moment Baela had been in the sky, pale-green wings fighting against the wound that had broken them. The next she was gone behind the ridge, and the only proof she had ever been there was the echo of that distant shriek sitting in the air like something alive.

Rhaenys stood beside me, rigid as carved stone.

I had seen grief before. I had seen it in halls, fields, bedrooms, and burning villages. I had seen it make men collapse, scream, laugh, pray, and go empty in the eyes. Rhaenys did none of those things. She simply stared at the place where Baela had fallen, and for one terrible moment she looked as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

Then Meleys roared from beyond the wall. The sound broke whatever held her still.

Rhaenys turned from the parapet and moved for the stairs without a word.

I followed at once. "Rhaenys." She did not stop. "Rhaenys, wait."

That made her stop, but only because anger required a target close enough to hear it. She turned on the steps, face pale beneath fury that had not yet found flame.

"My granddaughter is down there."

"I know."

"Do not say that as if knowing is the same as acting."

"I am acting. I am not letting you fly into a forest Ormund has already prepared to kill dragons."

Her eyes hardened into something dangerous. "He shot Moondancer from the sky. He hid machines beneath trees and struck at a girl who was scouting. I will burn his forest around him."

"You may burn Baela with it."

The words hit hard enough that one of the Beesbury guards nearby flinched.

Rhaenys went still again, but this time the stillness was full of violence. "If she lives, she is among enemies," she said. "If she is dead, they will answer for it."

"If she lives, dragonfire through that canopy may kill her before Ormund’s men can. If she is wounded, smoke may finish what the bolts began. If Moondancer is trapped under trees, she may burn too. You do not know where Baela fell. None of us do."

"I know where the forest is."

"And Ormund knows you know. That is why this happened."

Her mouth tightened. She understood. Rage did not make her foolish, but it made understanding feel like betrayal.

We reached the yard. Men moved out of her path without needing orders. Meleys was already half-turned toward the gate beyond the castle, red body tense, wings shifting in agitation. Dragon and rider shared the same grief, and that made both of them more dangerous.

I stepped between Rhaenys and the open way. She looked at me as if I had forgotten who she was. "Move."

"No."

The yard went quiet around us. Every soldier close enough to hear suddenly found a reason not to breathe loudly. Ser Alester Beesbury stood near the gate with his wounded arm bound, eyes moving between us as if he had walked into the path of two storms.

Rhaenys’s voice dropped. "You are ordering me to stand idle while Ormund’s men butcher Baela in the trees."

"I am ordering you not to do exactly what Ormund has prepared you to do."

"He prepared wagons with hidden ballistas. Those machines cannot save him from Meleys if I burn the whole wood from above."

"You do not know that they are the only machines. You do not know where more are placed. You do not know whether Vhagar waits beyond that forest for you to come in rage and low enough to strike. You do not know whether Ormund’s men are dragging Baela toward a place where your fire becomes his proof that Rhaenyra’s kin burn children, prisoners, wounded men, and entire camps when grief touches them."

Her eyes flashed. "Do not speak to me of proof while my granddaughter may be dying."

"I am speaking to you as the commander responsible for this army, for Honeyholt, for Rhaenyra’s cause, and for the girl you love. If you fly now, you may give Ormund everything he wants."

Rhaenys stepped closer. "And if I do not fly?"

"Then we send ground scouts. Careful ones. Men who can move under trees without announcing themselves to every hidden bolt. We close the roads from the forest. We watch the canopy. We deny supplies. We force Ormund to move or starve. If Baela lives, we find a way to reach her without turning the whole wood into a pyre."

She stared at me. For a moment, I thought she might strike me. I would not have blamed her, though I could not have allowed the rest of what might follow.

Instead, she looked past me toward Meleys. "I will not wait in a chamber while she is out there."

"That is exactly what you will do." The words left me before I could soften them.

Rhaenys’s face changed. Ser Alester looked at the ground.

I continued, because retreating now would be worse. "Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, by authority granted to me as Master of War and commander of the queen’s host in the Reach, you are confined within Honeyholt until I am satisfied that you will not take Meleys into the forest against command."

The silence after that was absolute. Rhaenys looked at me with disbelief first, then fury so cold it seemed to strip sound from the yard.

"You place me under arrest?"

"House arrest, with honour, and under my personal responsibility. You will not be chained. You will not be insulted. You will be guarded because grief has made you ready to spend fire before we know what it will cost."

"My granddaughter is gone from the sky, and you speak to me as if I am an unruly knight."

"I speak to you as someone I respect too much to let Ormund use."

That landed, though not kindly. Her breath shook once. "I will remember this."

"I expect you will."

"And if Baela dies because you waited?"

The question found the softest place and drove itself in.

"Then I will carry that too," I said.

For a moment, the fury in her face trembled. Beneath it was the woman who had watched too much of her family vanish into politics, childbirth, ambition, and dragonfire. Beneath the rage was terror. I had no answer for that part. No command could make it better.

Rhaenys turned away from me. "Put your guards where you like," she said. "If Meleys takes wing without me, pray you can command dragons better than you command grief."

She walked toward the keep.

No one stopped her. No one needed to. Two Dread Legion veterans and four Beesbury men followed at a respectful distance once I nodded. Not close enough to shame her. Close enough to make the order real.

Meleys roared again when Rhaenys disappeared inside. The sound shook the yard.

I felt Dravvaxx answer beyond the wall, a deeper rumble carrying through stone and bone. The dragons knew something had broken. They did not know law, optics, politics, or the difference between necessary fire and massacre. They knew pain moving through their riders and enemies hidden in trees.

That was dangerous enough.

I turned to Ser Alester. "No one opens the outer gate for Princess Rhaenys without my direct order. No one approaches Meleys except her handlers, and only under watch. If the dragon becomes agitated enough to endanger the castle, send for me immediately."

He swallowed. "Yes, my prince."

"Find Landrey, Grey Worm, and Black Rat. Now."

The yard came alive after that, not with panic, but with the ugly focus that follows catastrophe when command does not collapse. Mounted scouts were pulled back from the southern edge.

Legion woodsmen and Footly guides were gathered. Beesbury men who knew the surrounding lanes marked the forest on rough parchment. Baela had defied orders and paid for it, but I would not let her disobedience become excuse for ours.

We needed to know where she had fallen. We needed to know what Ormund had hidden. We needed not to die discovering either.

By late afternoon, the first ground scouts returned.

They had not reached the crash site. Ormund’s outer screen was too thick, and the forest too full of wrong silence. They had seen tracks, men dragging something heavy, and three wagon shapes partly concealed beneath cut branches near the old timber road. One scout had glimpsed the long arm of a machine being lowered under canvas before he withdrew.

Ballistas. Three at least. Hidden in wagons, waiting for a dragon to come low. The report spread through the command tent with grim confirmation rather than shock. We had guessed enough. Now we knew.

Landrey stood over the map, mud to his knees. "The machines can be moved if they have teams ready. Slowly under trees, but enough to change position before night."

"Then Ormund may still have more than three," I said.

"Likely."

Grey Worm translated Black Rat’s assessment. "He says the forest is now a fortress with no walls. If we enter blindly, we bleed. If dragons fly low, they are targeted. If we attack with fire, we may kill our own and make the enemy’s story."

"Black Rat is correct."

Landrey looked toward the keep, where Rhaenys had been confined. "Will she remain?"

"For now."

"And if she does not?"

"Then I will have a larger problem than Ormund."

No one laughed. I did not expect them to.

We spent the next hour shaping the waiting game.

The army would not storm the forest. Not yet. Not while Baela’s fate was unknown, not while Ormund’s hidden machines remained uncounted, not while our men were still arriving and arranging themselves around Honeyholt. Instead, we would contain him.

Outer roads would be watched. Mounted patrols would hold distance. No supply wagons would reach the forest from the south or west if our riders could stop them. Footly and Beesbury guides would mark streams, wells, and lesser paths.

The Unsullied would build controlled lines around the approaches rather than plunge into trees. The Dread Legion would send small teams at night, not to fight, but to listen, count fires, cut pickets where possible, and find signs of Baela or Moondancer.

If Ormund wished to hide, I would make hiding hungry. If necessary, I would starve him out.

It sounded slow because it was. It sounded cruel because it could become so. But starving an army in a forest while allowing surrender was not the same as burning thousands of men alive beneath trapped branches. One preserved choice. The other erased it.

And Rhaenyra’s cause needed that difference to remain visible.

When the orders were written, I walked outside.

Honeyholt had changed again. The castle was no longer merely relieved. It had become the centre of a ring forming around danger. Men dug, marked, carried, whispered, watched. The forest sat in the distance, ordinary to the eye and monstrous to the mind, its trees holding Ormund’s army, hidden machines, and perhaps Baela.

I found Rhaenys in the chamber assigned to her near the western side of the keep. It was not a cell. It had a bed, a table, a window, and guards outside. House arrest with honour, as promised. That did not make it less a cage.

She stood by the window, looking toward the forest. "I heard men moving beneath my door," she said.

"Orders are being carried."

"Do they include searching for Baela?"

"Yes."

"By men on foot, moving like mice beneath trees while Ormund’s army holds her."

"By men who can find signs without offering another dragon to hidden ballistas."

Her hands were clenched at her sides. "You speak as if patience is wisdom. Sometimes patience is only fear wearing a scholar’s cloak."

"Yes," I said. "Sometimes it is."

She turned then, surprised by the agreement.

I continued. "Sometimes haste is courage. Sometimes it is grief looking for someone to punish before it has to admit it is helpless. Neither of us gets to pretend our preferred answer is pure."

Her face twisted. For the first time since Moondancer fell, Rhaenys looked less like fire and more like a grandmother standing in a room too small for the pain inside her.

"I saw her fall," she said.

"I know."

"I told her not to go low."

"I know."

"She looked back when the horn sounded. She heard it. I know she heard it."

There was nothing useful to say. So I did not fill the silence with cruelty disguised as comfort.

Rhaenys looked away first. "If she dies, I will not forgive Ormund."

"I would not ask you to."

"If she dies, I may not forgive you."

"I know."

That answer cost me less than it should have, perhaps because part of me had already decided I might not forgive myself either.

She looked back toward the window. "How long will you keep me here?"

"Until I believe you can stand beside Meleys without taking wing for vengeance."

"And if that never comes?"

"Then I keep you here until Rhaenyra sends another command or until necessity changes."

"You would dare."

"Yes."

The anger in her rose again, but it did not break free this time. She turned back to the forest. "Leave me."

I did. Outside, one of the Dread Legion guards looked at me with the carefully blank face of a man determined not to have heard anything.

"If she tries to leave?" he asked.

"You delay her and send for me. You do not lay hands on her unless she is about to reach Meleys, and even then you use sense before force. She is a princess of House Targaryen, not a drunken camp follower."

He nodded. "Understood."

The first night of containment began badly.

Ormund’s forest stayed dark. Too dark. No great fires. No songs. No visible disorder. A commander who had just brought down a dragon might have allowed celebration, even quietly. Ormund did not.

That told me he understood the value of the blow and the danger of inviting rage. He had hurt us and then gone still, waiting to see whether we would spend ourselves trying to answer.

Three of our night scouts returned before midnight. Two did not.

The ones who returned brought no word of Baela, only signs of disturbed ground near the deeper trees and the sound of men working where they could not see. One reported hearing a dragon in pain, but he could not tell whether it was Moondancer or his own fear turning wood and wind into meaning.

I sent no dragon.

Dravvaxx remained near the wall, awake and restless. I stayed with him for an hour before dawn, one hand against his scales, feeling the power there and the temptation that came with it. I could end the waiting. I could set the forest alight, drive Ormund from cover, and punish every man who had cheered when Moondancer fell.

I could also kill Baela. I could burn levies who had never seen the girl before the bolts fired. I could prove every whisper about Rhaenyra’s faction true enough to spread. So I held the fire back.

Morning came without answer. The forest remained. Rhaenys remained under guard. Baela remained missing.

And I began the ugliest work of command: waiting while every instinct screamed to act, because acting wrongly was exactly what the enemy had prepared.