The goodness of the little queen, the silence of the Starry Sept, and the exhortations of the Seven Speakers had won over most of the Faithful for Jaehaerys and his Alysanne…but there are always some who will not be moved, and amongst the sisters who tended Jonquil’s Pool were three such women, whose hearts were hard with hate. They told one another that their holy waters would be polluted forever were the queen allowed to bathe in them whilst carrying the king’s “abomination” in her belly. Queen Alysanne had only slipped out of her clothing when they fell upon her with daggers they had concealed within their robes.

Blessedly, the attackers were no warriors, and they had not taken the courage of the queen’s companions into account. Naked and vulnerable, the Wise Women did not hesitate, but stepped between the attackers and their lady. Septa Edyth was slashed across the face, Prudence Celtigar stabbed through the shoulder, whilst Rosamund Ball took a dagger in the belly that, three days later, proved to be the death of her, but none of the murderous blades touched the queen. The shouts and screams of the struggle brought Alysanne’s protectors running, for Ser Joffrey Doggett and Ser Gyles Morrigen had been guarding the entrance to the bathhouse, never dreaming that the danger lurked within.

The Kingsguard made short work of the attackers, slaying two out of hand whilst keeping the third alive for questioning. When encouraged, she revealed that half a dozen others of their order had helped plan the attack, whilst lacking the courage to wield a blade. Lord Mooton hanged the guilty, and might have hanged the innocent as well, save for Queen Alysanne’s intervention.

Jaehaerys was furious. Their visit to the Vale was postponed; instead they returned to the safety of Maegor’s Holdfast. Queen Alysanne would remain within until her child was born, but the experience had shaken her and set her to pondering. “I need a protector of mine own,” she told His Grace. “Your Seven are leal men and valiant, but they are men, and there are places men cannot go.” The king could not disagree. A raven flew to Duskendale that very night, commanding the new Lord Darklyn to send to court his bastard half-sister, Jonquil Darke, who had thrilled the smallfolk during the War for the White Cloaks as the mystery knight known as the Serpent in Scarlet. Still in scarlet, she arrived at King’s Landing a few days later, and gladly accepted appointment as the queen’s own sworn shield. In time, she would be known about the realm as the Scarlet Shadow, so closely did she guard her lady.

   Not long after Jaehaerys and Alysanne returned from Maidenpool and the queen took to her bedchamber, tidings of the most wondrous and unexpected sort came forth from Storm’s End. Queen Alyssa was with child. At forty-four years of age, the Dowager Queen had been thought to be well beyond her childbearing years, so her pregnancy was received as a miracle. In Oldtown, the High Septon himself proclaimed it was a blessing from the gods, “a gift from the Mother Above to a mother who had suffered much, and bravely.”

Amidst the joy, there was concern as well. Alyssa was not as strong as she had been; her time as Queen Regent had taken a toll on her, and her second marriage had not brought her the happiness she had once hoped for. The prospect of a child warmed Lord Rogar’s heart, however, and he cast off his anger and repented of his infidelities to stay by his wife’s side. Alyssa herself was fearful, mindful of the last babe she had borne to King Aenys, the little girl Vaella who had died in the cradle. “I cannot suffer that again,” she told her lord husband. “It would rip my heart apart.” But the child, when he came early the following year, would prove to be robust and healthy, a big red-faced boy born with a fuzz of jet-black hair and “a squall that could be heard from Dorne to the Wall.” Lord Rogar, who had long ago put aside any hopes of having children by Alyssa, named his son Boremund.

The gods give grief as well as joy. Long before her mother was brought to term, Queen Alysanne was also delivered of a son, a boy she named Aegon, to honor both the Conqueror and her lost and much lamented brother, the uncrowned prince. All the realm gave thanks, and no one more so than Jaehaerys. But the young prince had come too early. Small and frail, he died three days after birth. So bereft was Queen Alysanne that the maesters feared for her life as well. Forever after, she blamed her son’s death on the women who attacked her at Maidenpool. Had she been allowed to bathe in the healing waters of Jonquil’s Pool, she would say, Prince Aegon would have lived.

Discontent lay heavy upon Dragonstone as well, where Rhaena Targaryen had established her own small court. As they had with Jaehaerys before her, neighboring lords began to seek her out, but the Queen in the East was not her brother. Many of her visitors were received coldly, others turned away without an audience.

   Queen Rhaena’s reunion with her daughter Aerea had not gone well, either. The princess had no memory of her mother, and the queen no knowledge of her child, nor any fondness for the children of others. Aerea had loved the excitement of the Red Keep, with lords and ladies and envoys from queer foreign lands coming and going, knights training in the yards every morning, singers and mummers and fools capering by night, and all the clangor and color and tumult of King’s Landing just beyond the walls. She had loved the attention lavished on her as the heir to the Iron Throne as well. Great lords, gallant knights, bedmaids, washerwomen, and stableboys alike had praised her, loved her, and vied for her favor, and she had been the leader of a pack of young girls of both high and low birth who had terrorized the castle.

All that had been taken from her when her mother carried her off to Dragonstone against her wishes. Compared to King’s Landing, the island was a dull place, sleepy and quiet. There were no girls of her own age in the castle, and Aerea was not allowed to mingle with the daughters of the fisherfolk in the village beneath the walls. Her mother was a stranger to her, sometimes stern and sometimes shy, much given to brooding, and the women who surrounded her seemed to take little interest in Aerea. Of all of them, the only one the princess warmed to was Elissa Farman of Fair Isle, who told her tales of her adventures and promised to teach her how to sail. Lady Elissa was no happier on Dragonstone than Aerea herself, however; she missed her wide western seas and spoke often of returning to them. “Take me with you,” Princess Aerea would say when she did, and Elissa Farman would laugh.

Dragonstone did have one thing King’s Landing largely lacked: dragons. In the great citadel under the shadow of the Dragonmont, more dragons were being born every time the moon turned, or so it seemed. The eggs that Dreamfyre had laid on Fair Isle had all hatched once on Dragonstone, and Rhaena Targaryen had made certain that her daughter made their acquaintance. “Choose one and make him yours,” the queen urged the princess, “and one day you will fly.” There were older dragons in the yards as well, and beyond the walls wild dragons that had escaped the castle made their lairs in hidden caves on the far side of the mountain. Princess Aerea had known Vermithor and Silverwing during her time at court, but she had never been allowed too close to them. Here she could visit with the dragons as often as she liked; the hatchlings, the young drakes, her mother’s Dreamfyre…and greatest of them all, Balerion and Vhagar, huge and ancient and sleepy, but still terrifying when they woke and stirred and spread their wings.