We left Cider Hall with its gates behind us and its sons in our care.
Lord Owen Fossoway had submitted, but submission did not make the road gentle. His banners still flew over his walls beneath Rhaenyra’s dragon, his men still watched us with the hollow anger of defeat, and the orchards around Cider Hall still held too many shallow graves for anyone to pretend the matter had ended cleanly.
His two boys, Martyn and Garth, travelled with my household under guard and honour, dressed now in plain but good clothes, with duties light enough that no one could mistake cupbearing for punishment.
Martyn watched everything.
He counted spears, horses, banners, officers, and dragons with a seriousness that would have suited a boy twice his age. Garth spent much of the first morning clutching his wooden horse and trying not to cry whenever Cider Hall disappeared behind a hill. I did not blame him. Seven years old was too young to be a symbol of obedience, but war rarely waited for children to become the proper age for suffering.
The march to Highgarden would take four days.
The road eastward, as Lord Footly’s men described our route, cut through country that grew richer with every mile. The Mander’s influence lay everywhere, not always in sight but always felt, in the breadth of the fields, the green of the pastures, the fatness of villages that had known more harvest than hunger.
It was a dangerous beauty. Men who marched through starving lands understood war quickly. Men marching through abundance began to imagine how much could be taken, burned, or bargained with if discipline failed.
I made discipline visible from the first hour.
No foraging without written order. No entering villages without officers. No buying supplies without clerks present. No taking fruit from orchards merely because branches leaned near the road. It seemed a small thing until the third Footly man was whipped for stealing apples and every surrounding village heard that the queen’s army punished its own. After that, doors opened a little wider. Not warmly, but enough for old men to stand outside and watch rather than hide indoors with knives beneath their cloaks.
Rhaenys approved of the punishments, though she did not say so directly. "You are making yourself less loved by your own men," she said on the first evening, as fires were being arranged across a broad meadow.
"I would rather be disliked before battle than despised after plunder."
"Some commanders learn that too late."
"Some never learn it because other people pay the cost."
She looked out over the camp, where Unsullied lines held their strange calm beside the more human disorder of the Dread Legion and Reach levies. "Highgarden will hear of this before we arrive."
"That is the purpose."
"The Tyrells will also hear that you took Lord Owen’s sons."
"They will hear I took hostages instead of burning Cider Hall. If Lord Matthos is sensible, he will understand the difference."
"And if he is not sensible?"
"Then Highgarden’s beauty will become inconvenient."
She glanced at me with a look that carried warning rather than amusement. "Try not to sound too much like Daemon when you say things like that."
"I will take that as correction, not insult."
"It was both."
Baela continued to scout with Moondancer, though after the sighting of Tessarion near Highgarden her flights were more tightly controlled. She did not like that, but she obeyed. That mattered more than whether she liked the order.
Each morning she flew ahead along the permitted line, high enough to watch the roads and low enough only when Rhaenys allowed it. Each time she returned, she reported first to me and then answered Rhaenys’s questions, which were usually sharper and more useful than mine.
On the second day from Cider Hall, Baela reported riders near a southern ridge, but no dragon. On the third, she saw Highgarden’s outer lands in the distance and smoke from camps that did not look like common farm hearths. On the fourth morning, she saw no blue wings, which did not comfort me as much as it should have.
A dragon unseen was not a dragon absent. Dravvaxx knew my unease.
He flew nearer to the column than he had before, dark and vast against the pale Reach sky. Sometimes he circled wide, sometimes he vanished beyond a ridge to hunt, but he returned whenever I called.
I had begun speaking to him each evening, not because I believed words could train him for dragon combat, but because our bond worked through more than saddle and command. He understood readiness. He understood the shape of my fear.
"If Tessarion comes, we do not chase unless we must," I told him on the third night, one hand resting against the warm scales of his neck. "We guard the army. We guard Meleys. We guard Baela. We answer only what we have to answer."
He huffed smoke across the grass and lowered his head until one silver eye watched me closely. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. A rider. A companion. A source of commands he sometimes disliked. Perhaps only a fragile creature who worried too much before flying toward fire.
The raven from Harrenhal reached us near noon on the third day.
It came by relay, first to Longtable, then to our column through a Merryweather rider who had nearly ridden his horse lame to catch us before night. The message bore Rhaenyra’s seal, but a smaller note from Vaeron was tied beside it, which usually meant the news was either complicated, expensive, or both.
I opened Rhaenyra’s letter first.
Jacaerys had succeeded.
He had reached Winterfell, treated with Cregan Stark, and secured three thousand northern men under Lord Roderick Dustin to fight for Rhaenyra. They were not the full strength of the North, not yet, but they were the first hard answer from beyond the Neck.
Three thousand men from a land that did not spend lives lightly. Men who would march slowly by southern standards, endure weather that broke others, and remember oaths as if oaths were bones.
For several moments, pride outweighed everything else.
Jace had done what we sent him to do. He had flown alone into the North, stood before Cregan Stark, and brought back men rather than courtesy. Sixteen years old, and already he had bound one of the realm’s greatest regions more firmly to his mother’s crown.
Then I read the rest.
The Twins had been opened for a northern army, but House Frey had named its price. Harrenhal. Ownership of Harrenhal.
I closed my eyes.
Rhaenyra’s letter was restrained, which told me she was furious. Jace had secured passage, and the condition would be reviewed and formally answered, but the Freys were already speaking as if the promise had been accepted in principle.
Worse, Jace had not returned to King’s Landing after completing his mission. He had flown to Harrenhal and remained with Daemon, saying that the heir to the throne should be seen beside the queen’s Hand while the Riverlands gathered.
That was not what his mother had ordered. It was also not entirely foolish.
That made it harder.
Rhaenys saw my expression and came closer. "Bad news?"
"Jace succeeded, which in this family means he also found a way to create another problem."
She took the letter when I offered it and read carefully. "Three thousand northern men under Roderick Dustin," she said. "That is no small success."
"No."
"The Freys asking for Harrenhal is bold."
"It is theft wearing a bridge toll."
"Harrenhal has eaten greater houses than Frey."
"That may be my preferred argument for granting it."
Her mouth curved faintly. "You sound like you are beginning to admire the curse."
"I admire anything that makes grasping men hesitate."
She continued reading. "Jace remains at Harrenhal with Daemon."
"Against his queen’s wishes and his mother’s fear."
"Those are not always the same thing, though in this case they likely feel identical to her."
I took Vaeron’s smaller note and broke the seal.
His handwriting was sharp enough to make irritation visible.
Jace completed his mission well and then chose usefulness over obedience. Rhaenyra is proud enough to be angrier than she would be if he had failed. Daemon has not sent him back, which I assume means he finds the boy’s presence politically convenient and personally amusing. The Frey demand for Harrenhal is being considered with the respect due to extortion performed at a vital river crossing. Do not make a similar habit of success accompanied by disobedience. I am surrounded by enough of that here.
I read it aloud to Rhaenys. She looked far too amused by the end. "Vaeron loves your family."
"He has an abusive way of expressing it."
"He has an accurate way of expressing it."
That was less easy to refute.
I dictated a reply that evening, though I knew it would not reach King’s Landing quickly enough to change Rhaenyra’s first anger. I wrote that Jace had done his duty well and that remaining at Harrenhal, while against instruction, had strategic value if Daemon could keep him from needless risk.
I wrote that Harrenhal should not be promised lightly to House Frey, but passage for northern forces could not be lost out of offended dignity. I suggested language that granted future consideration and temporary rights tied to performance, not immediate ownership carved in panic.
Then I wrote a private line to Rhaenyra: He is becoming the heir you raised him to be. I know that does not make you less afraid. It does not make me less afraid either.
I sealed that part separately.
The news moved through the army by morning.
Jace had secured northern swords. The Twins would open. A Stark-backed force under Roderick Dustin would come south if the roads held and the Freys stayed bought. Men liked that kind of news.
It was simple enough to be cheered. They did not know the price attached, or that Jace had chosen Harrenhal over home. Soldiers did not need every complication. Sometimes command meant choosing which truth would help men march and which would only give them new ways to worry.
Lord Footly, when told privately, whistled under his breath. "House Frey asks high."
"House Frey asks like a man who owns the only dry bridge in a flood."
"Will the queen grant it?"
"She may grant them enough to open the crossing and not enough to let them believe they own the Riverlands."
Footly looked doubtful. "Men who smell Harrenhal may not settle for the scent of it."
"Then they can learn that curses are patient."
He decided not to ask whether I meant that literally.
By the fourth day, Highgarden rose before us.
Our army halted before entering the deeper approach. I would not crowd Highgarden’s gates with fourteen thousand men unless forced. The main host formed a controlled camp beyond the outer lands, with Unsullied at the centre, Dread Legion flanks, Reach allies arranged where their banners could be seen without becoming a mob. Footly and Merryweather men stood visibly beside Caswell and Ashford detachments. Rhaenyra’s banner flew above mine.
Meleys landed on a long rise where she could be seen from the castle but not felt as an immediate threat to every horse within the walls. Moondancer circled once, then descended near Baela at Rhaenys’s command. Dravvaxx remained in the sky longer than either, his dark wings casting a slow shadow across the fields before he settled beyond the road.
Highgarden’s gates did not open immediately. That delay was expected.
Lord Matthos Tyrell would want dignity, and perhaps he needed time to decide whether receiving me looked like wisdom or surrender. I allowed him the courtesy of a measured wait. Not too long. Long enough for pride. Not long enough for insult.
Then the gates opened.
A party rode out beneath Tyrell banners, green and gold bright in the afternoon light. There were knights with polished helms, men-at-arms in fine order, and several household officers dressed more for court than field. I expected Lord Matthos Tyrell at their head, perhaps cautious, perhaps smiling too much, perhaps prepared with phrases about peace and royal cousins.
Instead, the rider at the front wore Targaryen colours touched with green.
Daeron Targaryen came toward us on a pale horse, his silver hair visible beneath a light helm, his posture straight, his face young and controlled in a way that reminded me painfully of the meeting outside Oldtown.
For a moment, no one around me spoke. Rhaenys saw him and became still. Baela’s eyes went to the sky, searching for the blue dragon before anyone gave the order. I did the same. No Tessarion. Not visible.
Daeron rode within speaking distance and halted. Behind him, Tyrell men remained carefully arranged, not hostile but far from relaxed. His gaze moved over our banners, our soldiers, Meleys on the rise, Moondancer near Baela, and finally Dravvaxx beyond the field. He had courage enough not to look away quickly from any of them.
Then he looked at me.
"Prince Othorion," he said, voice carrying across the road. "Highgarden receives you under guest peace and asks that words come before steel."
I kept my hand away from my sword, though every part of me had tightened.
"Prince Daeron," I replied. "I came to speak with Lord Matthos Tyrell."
Daeron’s expression did not change, but something in his eyes told me Highgarden’s answer would not be simple.
He inclined his head. "Then you and I should begin before he joins us."
The wind moved softly through the fields between our armies.
I looked once toward the empty sky where Tessarion might yet appear, then back to the boy standing between his sister’s crown and the men who wished to make his brother king.
The conversation had not begun. Already, it felt like a battlefield.