Dravvaxx’s jaws tightened around Sunfyre’s throat as both dragons tumbled through the smoke above Honeyholt. The golden dragon convulsed between his claws, wings striking wildly at the air while his talons scraped across Dravvaxx’s blackened scales.
Sunfyre tried to breathe again, but the fire died within his crushed throat and escaped instead as smoke pouring between Dravvaxx’s teeth. His strength had not yet abandoned him entirely, though every movement was becoming weaker and less precise.
Aegon remained strapped to the saddle, his bright armour stained with soot and dragon blood. He screamed something into the wind, perhaps calling to Sunfyre or cursing the beast that held him, but the words were torn apart before they reached me. His sword remained clenched in one hand.
He swung it once at Dravvaxx’s forelimb, only for the blade to glance uselessly from the scales. There was nowhere else for him to strike. The dragons were locked too tightly together, their wings colliding as they fell toward the battlefield below.
The ground rushed upward with terrifying speed. Men beneath us abandoned the fighting and ran in every direction, no longer caring which banner stood beside them. Unsullied, Hightower soldiers, Reach levies, knights, and archers all fled from the widening shadow.
Horses tore free from their riders, some dragging men caught in their stirrups, while others plunged straight through formations that had held only moments earlier. Those too deep in the press to escape could do little except look upward and pray that the falling dragons landed somewhere else.
Dravvaxx bit deeper. I felt the force pass through his body before a wet crack reached me through the wind. Something inside Sunfyre’s neck had broken. His head jerked violently to one side within Dravvaxx’s jaws, and the desperate beating of his wings lost its rhythm. One foreclaw remained hooked against Dravvaxx’s breast, but the talons no longer tore at him with any purpose.
Sunfyre’s body went heavy between us.
The weight dragged Dravvaxx downward faster than his wounded wings could correct. His right wing folded beneath the strain, and the sudden drop wrenched the saddle straps against my legs. For several breaths, the golden dragon hung below us like an anchor, pulling all of us toward the earth while Dravvaxx refused to release the enemy he had defeated.
"Let him go before he takes us down with him!" I shouted, striking Dravvaxx’s neck with my palm when the reins failed to reach him through his fury. "Sunfyre is finished, and you must release him now."
Dravvaxx’s jaws remained closed for another heartbeat. Dragons did not understand surrender as men did. They did not recognise that an enemy had ceased to be dangerous merely because its body had stopped fighting.
Sunfyre had burned his face, torn his wing, and driven claws beneath his scales. Until the golden dragon was beyond the reach of his teeth, Dravvaxx still regarded him as something that needed to die.
I pulled at the reins again and repeated the command. At last, Dravvaxx opened his mouth. Sunfyre fell away from us.
For a fleeting moment, the golden dragon appeared almost suspended beneath the clouds, his broad wings spread wide enough to catch the broken sunlight. Blood streamed from the four wounds across his chest and poured more heavily from the ruin of his throat. His head hung at an unnatural angle, connected to the body by little more than torn flesh, shattered bone, and the golden scales that remained unbroken around the wound.
Aegon was still fastened to the saddle. His sword slipped from his hand and turned through the air beside him, flashing once before disappearing into the smoke below. One of his arms hung loose, while the other remained wrapped around the front grip. His armour still shone where flame and blood had not dulled it.
Sunfyre made no attempt to recover. There was no final beat of the wings and no instinctive effort to level his descent. The great golden limbs folded beneath their own weight while the dragon rolled slowly onto his side. Aegon was thrown against his restraints, his body bending violently as Sunfyre began to turn faster.
He looked upward once.
The distance between us was widening, yet I saw the pale shape of his face beneath the open helm and the gold of the armour he had chosen for his victory. Whether he saw me or only the dark silhouette of Dravvaxx above him, I could not know. Whatever thought passed through him in that moment was taken by the fall.
Gold spun through smoke. Aegon disappeared beneath Sunfyre’s wing, returned for a heartbeat, and vanished again as dragon and rider fell together. The ruined neck moved loosely with every turn, leaving a dark spiral of blood suspended behind them.
Dravvaxx fought for height above the falling body. His injured wing opened, trembled, and nearly collapsed. We dropped hard before the membrane caught enough air to slow us. Pain passed through our bond so sharply that the edges of my sight darkened, but he managed another uneven beat and pulled us away from Sunfyre’s descent.
Only then did I look toward the field. The battle below had begun to stop.
It did not happen everywhere at once. Men near the centre continued fighting for several breaths because the crush of bodies prevented them from seeing the sky. Swords still struck shields, spears still drove between armour, and men died while those nearer the western flank had already fallen silent. Then the stillness spread through the ranks as one soldier after another turned his eyes upward.
A Hightower knight lowered his sword halfway through a strike. The Unsullied soldier facing him kept his spear poised beneath the knight’s throat, but did not thrust. Both men stared beyond one another at the golden dragon falling from the clouds.
Archers forgot the arrows drawn against their strings. Riders slowed their horses or allowed them to circle beneath slackened reins. Even the wounded ceased crying out for a moment, as though every voice on the field had been taken by the sight above them.
The drums stopped. Ormund Hightower remained beneath the green tower banner near the centre of his army. I found him among his household guards, mounted and facing the western sky.
One arm was still raised, caught in the middle of an order that had never been completed. He had been sending more men against Black Rat’s centre when Aegon arrived, believing Sunfyre would break the army where his infantry could not.
Now he watched his king fall.
Ormund did not lower his arm at first. He scarcely seemed to breathe. Aegon had come as his salvation, descending in gold above an army that had spent a week trapped and starving beneath the trees.
The sight of Sunfyre had restored strength to men who had already begun wondering whether surrender was the only road left to them. Their king had appeared above the field, and with him had come the promise of dragonfire, victory, and a return to Oldtown.
That promise was falling with him.
Sunfyre struck the earth. The impact sounded less like a body hitting the ground than a tower collapsing under its own weight. The golden dragon came down upon his shoulder and chest, driving soil outward in a wave.
Bones broke beneath him with cracks loud enough to carry across the field. One wing folded under the body and disappeared, while the other struck the ground a heartbeat later, sweeping men, shields, and broken weapons aside.
The force lifted part of Sunfyre’s body from the earth again. Something so large should not have been able to bounce, yet momentum raised his hindquarters before the weight came down a second time. His broken neck twisted beneath his chest, and the head struck separately, jaws opening as blood and soil filled his mouth.
Aegon remained bound to the saddle for the first impact. The straps did not save him. His armour struck Sunfyre’s back with enough force to bend his body around the saddle. The bright breastplate crumpled along one side as though struck by a siege hammer. Before he could fall free, Sunfyre rolled, carrying the rider and the shattered saddle beneath the golden body.
Dragon and king vanished inside a cloud of dust.
Men close to the crash fled blindly while pieces of broken scale, saddle fittings, earth, and blood rained across the western field. A section of Sunfyre’s damaged wing tore loose during the roll and crashed through a group of Hightower archers. Several disappeared beneath it, while others crawled away with crushed legs or arms bent beneath them.
The cloud rose high enough to hide everything beneath it. Dravvaxx circled above, his breathing ragged and uneven. Blood ran from the reopened tear in his wing, from the claw wound beneath his shoulder, and from the scratches across his breast. The scales along his face and neck had been blackened by Sunfyre’s flame, and smoke escaped his jaws with every breath.
He wanted to descend.
I could feel the urge in the turn of his head and the tension passing through his body. Sunfyre had fallen, but Dravvaxx wanted to land beside him and finish the destruction with tooth and claw. Victory meant little to a dragon while an enemy remained whole enough to recognise.
I held him back. "You have killed him, and there is nothing left for you beneath that dust. We will not descend into reach of another hidden machine merely so you can tear apart the dead."
Dravvaxx answered with a deep growl, but he obeyed the pressure of the reins and remained in the air.
The dust slowly cleared.
Sunfyre’s unbroken wing emerged first, spread across the ground with its pink membrane torn and coated in soil. His body rested upon one side, exposing the deep claw wounds that crossed his chest.
Blood gathered beneath him and flowed into the shallow ruts left by horses and wagon wheels. The neck had been destroyed. Dravvaxx’s bite had broken it in the sky, and the fall had finished what remained. Sunfyre’s head was partly trapped beneath his own breast, the golden eyes open but empty.
His chest did not rise. No breath disturbed the dust around his nostrils. The most beautiful dragon in the realm lay dead in a trampled field outside Honeyholt.
Aegon remained caught within the remains of the saddle. The seat had twisted almost completely around Sunfyre’s body during the roll. One restraint had torn loose, but the others held Aegon at an angle no living man could have endured. His helm had been thrown aside. Pale hair showed through the blood and earth coating his face.
One arm was trapped beneath his body, while the other stretched across Sunfyre’s scales with the fingers open, as if he had tried to hold on after the world had already ended beneath him. The golden armour that had gleamed so brightly in the sky was crushed inward across the chest and side. There was no movement in him.
Aegon was dead.
No Hightower guard ran to his king. For several breaths, the men nearest Sunfyre merely stared. They had seen the fall and heard the impact, yet advancing toward the body required them to accept that the figure lying across the ruined saddle would not rise again. Their king had not landed to save them. He had been broken upon the earth in front of them.
The silence reached Honeyholt’s walls. Beesbury men stood along the battlements, too far away to see Aegon’s crushed armour clearly but close enough to recognise the motionless golden dragon. Their banners stirred in the wind above them, yet no cheering rose from the castle.
I had expected triumph. Aegon had stolen Rhaenyra’s crown, allowed Oldtown to raise armies in his name, and flown onto the field intending to burn thousands of our men. Every soldier beneath the queen’s banners had reason to celebrate his death. Still, they remained quiet.
Perhaps the sight was too terrible to welcome. Perhaps watching a dragon die stripped victory of anything that resembled joy. Sunfyre had been magnificent despite the man who rode him, and the golden dragon had never chosen which claim to the Iron Throne was lawful. He had followed his rider because that was what dragons did.
Aegon had chosen the war. Sunfyre had fallen with him.
Black Rat stood among the bloodied Unsullied ranks, a short sword in one hand and another man’s blood across his armour. The Hightower soldiers before him remained within reach of his blade. Neither side had withdrawn, but neither side resumed the killing. Grey Worm reached him and spoke quietly, though no command moved through the formation.
Landrey’s cavalry had also halted on the eastern flank. Some riders were already dismounting to pull wounded men from beneath dead horses. Others remained in their saddles with swords in hand, staring across the field at Sunfyre’s broken wings.
The battle was not truly over. Ormund still commanded thousands of men, and much of his centre remained capable of fighting. His wings had been battered, but they had not collapsed. The Unsullied vanguard had suffered heavily, and the Dread Legion had already committed most of its second line. Nothing in the placement of the armies made surrender inevitable.
The sky had changed everything regardless.
Dravvaxx circled lower, and his shadow passed across Sunfyre’s corpse. The Hightower soldiers nearest the golden dragon recoiled, some raising shields even though they knew wood and iron offered no protection from flame. No ballista fired. Every visible machine had been destroyed, and any remaining crew hidden among the wagons seemed unwilling to reveal itself beneath Dravvaxx’s gaze.
I guided him away from the fallen dragon and toward the centre of our army. His flight had become heavy. Each beat of his wounded wing carried another tremor through the saddle. He could remain aloft for a little longer, but the fight had cost him dearly.
If Ormund renewed the attack, I would have to choose whether to spend what remained of Dravvaxx’s strength or preserve him for the greater danger that might still come.
Vhagar had not appeared. Aemond did not yet know that Aegon and Sunfyre were dead. When the news reached him, the war would no longer be fought for an older brother seated upon a stolen throne. Daeron had gone to Rhaenyra, and Aegon had died above Honeyholt. Aemond would be the last of Alicent’s sons still carrying the Green cause in open war.
Grief would not make him merciful.
Ormund finally lowered his arm. The movement was slow, as though the command he had been preparing had become too heavy to hold. His horse shifted beneath him, but he did not react. Ser Jon Roxton’s banner approached through the Hightower centre and came to rest among Ormund’s guards, yet neither man appeared to speak.
Ormund removed his helm and stared at Aegon’s body. Grey showed within his hair beneath the afternoon light. Around him, Hightower soldiers began lowering their weapons. They were not yet surrendering. They lowered them because the strength that had carried them into the battle had vanished with Sunfyre.
Dravvaxx passed over the field, wounded, burned, and bleeding, but alive. Behind us lay the golden dragon with his wings broken across the earth. Between those two sights stood a truth no Hightower command could hide.
The king Ormund had chosen was dead. The army raised in Aegon’s name had watched him fall.
Aegon had entered the battle believing his arrival would decide it. He had not reached the Unsullied, broken Black Rat’s line, saved Ormund’s host, or opened the road to Oldtown. Dravvaxx had forced him away from the fighting and killed Sunfyre before the golden dragon could change the battle below.
Now Aegon Targaryen lay crushed across Sunfyre’s ruined saddle. Neither king nor dragon breathed, and for the first time since the armies met outside Honeyholt, the whole field stood still.