The scolding had the desired effect. A fortnight later, King Jaehaerys returned at last to King’s Landing, and Queen Alysanne returned from her own self-imposed exile on Dragonstone. What words passed between them we can never know, but for a good while afterward they were once again as close as they had been before.

In the 90th year after Aegon’s Conquest, the king and queen shared one of their last good times together, as they celebrated the wedding of their eldest grandchild, Princess Rhaenys, to Corlys Velaryon of Driftmark, Lord of the Tides.

At seven-and-thirty, the Sea Snake was already hailed as the greatest seafarer Westeros had ever known, but with his nine great voyages behind him, he had come home to marry and make a family. “Only you could have won me away from the sea,” he told the princess. “I came back from the ends of the earth for you.”

Rhaenys, at six-and-ten, was a fearless young beauty, and more than a match for her mariner. A dragonrider since the age of thirteen, she insisted upon arriving for the wedding on Meleys, the Red Queen, the magnificent scarlet she-dragon that had once borne her aunt Alyssa. “We can go back to the ends of the earth together,” she promised Ser Corlys. “But I’ll get there first, as I’ll be flying.”

“That was a good day,” Queen Alysanne would say with a sad smile, through the years that remained to her. She was fifty-four that year, but sad to say, she did not have many good days left.

It is not within the scope of this history to chronicle the endless wars, intrigues, and rivalries of the Free Cities of Essos, save where they impinge upon the fortunes of House Targaryen and the Seven Kingdoms. One such time occurred during the years 91–92 AC, during what is known as the Myrish Bloodbath. We shall not trouble you with details. Suffice it to say that in the city of Myr two rival factions vied for supremacy. There were assassinations, riots, poisonings, rapes, hangings, torture, and sea battles before one side emerged supreme. The losing faction, driven from the city, tried to establish themselves first upon the Stepstones, only to be hounded from there as well when the Archon of Tyrosh made common cause with a league of pirate kings. In their desperation, the Myrmen next turned to the island of Tarth, where their landings took the Evenstar by surprise. In a short time they had taken the entire eastern side of the island.

   By that time the Myrish were little more than pirates themselves, a ragged band of rogues. Neither the king nor his council felt it would require much to drive them back into the sea. Prince Aemon would lead the assault, it was decided. The Myrmen did have some strength at sea, so the Sea Snake would first need to bring the Velaryon fleet south, to protect Lord Boremund as he crossed to Tarth with his stormlanders, to join with the Evenstar’s own levies. Their combined strength would be more than sufficient to retake all of Tarth from the Myrish pirates. And if there proved to be unexpected difficulties, Prince Aemon would have Caraxes. “He does love to burn,” the prince said.

Lord Corlys and his fleet set sail from Driftmark on the ninth day of the third moon of 92 AC. Prince Aemon followed a few hours later, after bidding farewell to Lady Jocelyn and their daughter, Rhaenys. The princess had just learned she was expecting, else she would have accompanied her sire on Meleys. “Into battle?” the prince said. “As if I would ever have permitted that. You have your own battle to fight. Lord Corlys will want a son, I am sure, and I would like a grandson.”

Those were the last words he would ever speak to his daughter. Caraxes swiftly outdistanced the Sea Snake and his fleet, dropping down out of the sky on Tarth. Lord Cameron, the Evenstar of Tarth, had fallen back into the spine of mountains that ran down the center of his island, and established a camp in a hidden valley from which he could look down on the Myrish movements below. Prince Aemon met him there, and the two made plans together, whilst Caraxes devoured half a dozen goats.

But the Evenstar’s camp was not as hidden as he hoped, and the smoke from the dragon’s fires drew the eyes of a pair of Myrish scouts who were creeping through the heights unawares. One of them recognized the Evenstar as he strode through the camp at dusk, talking with Prince Aemon. The men of Myr are indifferent sailors and feeble soldiers; their weapons of choice are dirk, dagger, and crossbow, preferably poisoned. One of the Myrish scouts wound his crossbow now, behind the rocks where he was hidden. Rising, he took aim on the Evenstar a hundred yards below, and loosed his bolt. Dusk and distance made his aim less certain, and the bolt missed Lord Cameron…and struck Prince Aemon, standing at his side.

   The iron bolt punched through the prince’s throat and out the back of his neck. The Prince of Dragonstone fell to his knees and grasped the crossbow bolt, as if to pull it from his throat, but his strength was gone. Aemon Targaryen died struggling to speak, drowned on his own blood. He was thirty-seven years old.

How can my words tell of the grief that swept the Seven Kingdoms then, of the pain felt by King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne, of Lady Jocelyn’s empty bed and bitter tears, and the way Princess Rhaenys wept to know that her father would never hold the child she was carrying? Far easier to speak of Prince Baelon’s wroth, and how he came down upon Tarth on Vhagar, howling for vengeance. The Myrish ships burned as Prince Morion’s ships had burned nine years earlier, and when the Evenstar and Lord Boremund descended on them from the mountains, they had nowhere to fly. They were cut down by the thousands and left to rot along the beaches, so every wave that washed ashore for days was tinged with pink.

Baelon the Brave played his part in the slaughter, with Dark Sister in his hand. When he returned to King’s Landing with his brother’s corpse, the smallfolk lined the streets screaming his name and hailing him as a hero. But it is said that when he saw his mother again, he fell into her arms and wept. “I slew a thousand of them,” he said, “but it will not bring him back.” And the queen stroked his hair and said, “I know, I know.”

Seasons came and went in the years that followed. There were hot days and warm days and days when the salt wind blew bracing off the sea, there were fields of flowers in the spring, and bountiful harvests, and golden autumn afternoons, all across the realm the roads crept onward, and new bridges spanned old streams. The king took no pleasure in any of it, so far as men could tell. “It is always winter now,” he said to Septon Barth one night, when he had drunk too much. Since Aemon’s death, he always drank a cup or three of honeyed wine at night to help him sleep.

In 93 AC, Prince Baelon’s sixteen-year-old son, Viserys, entered the Dragonpit and claimed Balerion. The old dragon had stopped growing at last, but he was sluggish and heavy and hard to rouse, and he struggled when Viserys urged him up into the air. The young prince flew thrice around the city before landing again. He had intended to fly to Dragonstone, he told his father afterward, but he did not think the Black Dread had the strength for it.

   Less than a year later, Balerion was gone. “The last living creature in all the world who saw Valyria in its glory,” wrote Septon Barth. Barth himself died four years later, in 98 AC. Grand Maester Elysar preceded him by half a year. Lord Redwyne had died in 89 AC, his son Ser Robert soon thereafter. New men took their places, but Jaehaerys was truly the Old King by then, and sometimes he would walk into the council chamber and think, “Who are these men? Do I know them?”