Eleventh Moon of 69 AC
Throne Hall, Red Keep, King's Landing
The empty throne room of the Red Keep made for an eerie sight. Empty was not quite the word for it—two figures still occupied the hall. A boy with silver hair, no older than twelve, sat slouched in a chair, his once-black tunic soaked through with blood, the color stark against the pale stone beneath him.
Behind him stood a woman with fire-red hair, her bearing calm, almost indifferent to the carnage spread around her. The room was littered with the remains of men—guards, soldiers, perhaps traitors among them, it was hard to say which anymore. Their bodies lay strewn across the floor in grotesque disarray: limbs scattered where they'd fallen, torsos opened, heads parted from necks. From the wreckage of it all, a slow river of blood pooled and crept toward the great doors at the far end of the hall.
Baelon Targaryen sat at the center of it, cleaning his sword with slow, unhurried strokes, as the thin stream of blood beneath him found its way toward the entrance. Anyone else might have retched at the sight. The boy simply sat there, unmoved, and the woman behind him seemed equally unbothered—she had seen far worse than this in her time.
He could almost hear his father's voice echoing somewhere in the back of his mind: Strength lies in blood and fire, boy. Never forget it.
The door creaked open, and a knot of soldiers stepped through, pale and wide-eyed. They froze at the threshold, taking in the boy and the slaughter surrounding him.
"My prince," one of them managed, his voice trembling despite his best effort to steady it. "We're... we're here at your command."
Baelon glanced up, his violet eyes cold, almost reptilian in their stillness. "Continue your duty," he said, as casually as if he'd asked them to clear away a spilled cup of wine rather than a hall full of corpses. He gestured toward the dead. "This filth needs cleaning. My family returns soon."
The soldiers hesitated, fear plain on their faces, but they nodded and set to the grim work regardless. Baelon rose as they worked, wiping his blade clean on a scrap of cloth that had once been someone's tunic. His boots left crimson prints behind him as he crossed the blood-slicked floor.
He turned to the red-haired woman. "Lady Kinvara. See that a proper room is prepared for you. You are a royal guest now—my savior, no less. You will be treated with the respect that deserves."
He didn't wait for her answer before turning away, his boots marking dark, deliberate footprints in the blood behind him, as though tracing a path toward some certain doom only he could see.
…
Later, Baelon soaked in a warm bath, the heat easing the ache from his muscles even as his mind stayed sharp, turning things over without rest. He stared up at the ceiling, steam curling around him, and let the memory rise—Caesar's treachery, still fresh. He'd sensed something wrong two days past. The tension in Caesar's voice. The way his shoulders had hunched, as though bowed under some private weight. Baelon had seen that particular tell before, in another life, and been too slow to act on it that time.
Never again, he thought, jaw tightening as the bathwater sloshed gently around him.
Flashback
Two days earlier, after seeing Caesar send a suspicious raven
It had been two days past, on the road to King's Landing, when he'd first noticed something amiss in Caesar. He'd murmured his orders to William, a guard he trusted absolutely, telling him to watch Caesar closely—then bid Lady Kinvara good night and thought little more of it, until William returned before long with a small scrap of parchment in hand.
"This was found on the raven Caesar sent, my prince," William said, keeping his voice low.
Baelon unfolded it and found the words waiting inside, plain and damning:
Red witch has joined the journey. Prince is not alone.
The letter bore a star for its seal—unmistakable. Oldtown. The seat of the Faith of the Seven. There was no question who had been meant to receive it.
A cold fury settled into Baelon's chest as he read it over. He'd been careless. He should have known the Faith would work its way into his ranks eventually. His alliance with Kinvara threatened their grip on Westeros too directly for them to sit idle, and they had moved faster than he'd accounted for.
Caesar had been a spy all along.
I was careless, he thought. I should have looked into Caesar from the start—he seemed too perfect from the beginning, and that alone should have told me something. I let it slip past me, never considered the Faith or the Citadel would plant a spy on me this early, and told myself the riots made sense as nothing more than unrest over the roadwork. No. There has to be more to it than that. Caesar must have overheard some of my talks with Kinvara ten moons back and passed word to the Faith. Nothing else explains why they'd move against her return with such force. This never happened in the books, not in my old life. I made a foolish mistake. But—
They're focused on my journey specifically. That means they have something larger planned for me. With Father summoning the High Septon, and the Faith already aware of my meetings with Kinvara, this could be the turning point. I need to correct my error, and quickly—if I don't, we won't see the enemy's next move coming until it's already upon us. It starts with Caesar.
But Baelon had never been soft. Not in his heart, and certainly not in his mind—not given the life he'd once lived before this one. In that other life, men like Caesar had undone him through nothing more than patient scheming. This time, he refused to let history repeat itself.
I lost everything in that life. My family. My career. My dream. My life, in the end. All because I was simply less of a man than my enemies—not ruthless enough, not careful enough, when it mattered. Every world is a cruel place. If I mean to survive this one, I will have to be more than I was.
"Capture Caesar," he'd ordered William. "Bring him to me in chains."
It hadn't taken long. Within minutes, Caesar was dragged into Baelon's tent bound in iron, his clothes filthy, his face twisted with fear.
"Your Highness," Caesar pleaded, his voice shaking. "My prince—forgive me, I am a little confused."
"And what confuses you, Caesar?" Baelon asked, offering nothing more.
"My prince, I have served you and this realm faithfully all my life. Why am I in chains—treated like some prisoner?"
"Ah. Chains." Baelon's tone stayed light, almost pleasant. "That's how we treat traitors. That's why."
Caesar's face went carefully blank. "I am no traitor, my prin—"
Baelon cut him off, tossing the raven's message down in front of him. "Tell me, then. What should I do with you?" He rose slowly from his seat as he spoke.
Caesar's eyes fell on the parchment, and dread washed over him in a single cold wave. He had been a loyal servant all his life, an excellent spy besides—but these past days had worn at him more than he cared to admit, the sense that this long chapter of his life was drawing to its close. Anxiety had made him careless, and in one final moment, the mask had slipped.
Still, he tried to salvage what he could. "My prince, I know nothing of this parchment."
But Baelon had no patience left for lies. He drove his dagger straight through Caesar's hand, pinning it to the ground. The man's scream tore through the tent—a sound that still echoed in Baelon's ears now, hours later, as he lay soaking in his bath.
Every guard in the tent flinched back at the suddenness of it. William, a man who had seen his share of bloodshed over the years, still felt something cold settle in his gut at the sight of Baelon's eyes in that moment. So, he thought. This is the Targaryen temper they speak of.
"Torture me all you like," Caesar spat through the pain. "I will never betray the Faith. I'll die a thousand deaths before I give you a single word, you heretic!"
Baelon only smiled, and drew the half-buried dagger slowly along the length of Caesar's palm, never once breaking eye contact. It was exactly what he'd expected to find—a blind fanatic, hatred for him burning behind every ounce of pain on the man's face.
"Oh, I know you won't tell me willingly," Baelon said. "Torture? Why would I bother, when it's plain enough you're halfway to suicide already? No. I don't need you to tell me anything. I already know what's coming."
Caesar stared back at him, confusion breaking through the pain.
"You see, Caesar," Baelon went on, his voice gone cold as still water, "if you refuse to tell me the Faith's plan, I'll ride for Dragonstone myself. I'll bond with Vhagar—oldest and most fearsome dragon left in the world—and fly her straight to Oldtown. I'll burn the Citadel to its foundations. The Starry Sept along with it. I'll turn the Faith's seat of power to ash and be done with it."
Caesar paled at that, his defiance cracking under the weight of it. "No—you can't. You cannot destroy an entire city! The realm would never forgive you for it!"
Baelon allowed himself a private, satisfied thought. He had Caesar exactly where he wanted him. A man of Caesar's devotion would sooner die than become the reason his own faith burned to the ground—and that was a lever Baelon intended to use. "Perhaps I can. Perhaps I can't. But I can just as easily send word to my father instead. He's already summoned the High Septon to answer for crimes against the Crown and the realm. What's one more charge added to that list? Let him see to the destruction in my place. Sending a spy to murder a prince ought to be reason enough for it, don't you think?"
The words dropped Caesar to the ground, anxiety overtaking him entirely. He understood now, with sudden clarity, just how little could be done against a house that commanded dragons. And yet he could not let this happen—not at the cost of betraying his faith to a heretic, whatever the threat.
Caesar had received a raven from Oldtown only that morning: five hundred of the Faith Militant would strike the prince's party within the day, on the road to King's Landing. He could not bring himself to condemn five hundred of his brothers in faith to die for nothing. But could he truly risk the dragon's wrath instead?
If the prince died, the King's retaliation would be swift and merciless—of that much, Caesar had no doubt. He knelt there in shock and confusion, staring at the ground, until he lifted his eyes and found Lady Kinvara standing among the onlookers, watching the scene unfold in silence. She must have come to see what had drawn Caesar's scream.
Baelon caught sight of her and smiled, calling out, "Lady Kinvara. My apologies for disturbing your rest." The words drew every eye in the tent toward her—Caesar's included, though his carried nothing but unhidden hatred. Kinvara only inclined her head. "No apology needed, my prince. I came only to see if there was some emergency." She stepped forward, unhurried.
"Then what will it be, Caesar?" Baelon asked again.
Caesar made his choice—he would trust the High Septon's judgment. If His Holiness had ordered the prince's death, he must have already weighed the consequences of it. As for the prince's threat to claim a dragon and burn a city on nothing but his own whim—Caesar didn't believe it. No prince, however furious, could destroy a city without facing consequences for it.
So he answered, "I will say nothing. Kill me if it pleases you. But I will not bow to a heretic and his red witch." The words sent a ripple of shock through the two hundred guards gathered to watch. Calling a prince a heretic was treason plain and simple—even among men who held no love for the red priestess themselves, wary as most of them were of her, being believers of the Seven in their own right.
None of those guards knew, of course, of the bargain struck between Baelon and the Red Temple—the very bargain Caesar had overheard only in broken fragments, enough to condemn without ever understanding fully.
A flicker of unease moved through Baelon at Caesar's answer. That the man would refuse to name Oldtown outright, that he seemed to trust the Faith's own defenses so completely—it was troubling. It suggested the Faith might command more in the way of arms, or noble backing, than anyone in King's Landing yet realized. With his father dragging an entire religion before the court, that possibility alone could prove disastrous. But Baelon needed certainty, not speculation.
No. No, no, no. I will not lose everyone I love again to my own carelessness. This life will not end the same way the last one did. I have learned what that failure cost me. I will do whatever must be done, face whoever must be faced. I did not choose this family by blood, but I have come to love them all the same, difficult as they can be. I will protect them. I will be their strength. I will make them untouchable.
Baelon held his silence, his eyes burning with quiet resolve. Caesar's anxiety only deepened in the stillness, certain now that his life hung by a thread—until Kinvara broke the silence herself.
"My prince, if I may?" she asked, waiting for his permission before going further.
Baelon said nothing, only nodded.
"If you wish to know what this man knows," she said, "I can help with that."
To be continued...