Chaos rippled through the royal encampment long before the hunting party's banners appeared among the trees. Squires shouted, hounds barked, and soldiers scrambled to clear a path, some crossing themselves as though warding off a miracle, others whispering in disbelief.
A boy rode at their head.
Silver hair caught the afternoon sun, pale and bright as new-forged steel. His eyes, deep violet and strangely calm, fixed on the camp ahead. And atop his small brow rested a circlet wrought of unknown metal, thin as dawn's first light, yet unmistakably a crown.
He sat astride a creature out of legend.
A white hart.
Its coat glimmered like fresh snow, its great antlers spreading above him like the boughs of a winter tree. Each step it took was unnervingly stately, as if it alone set the rhythm of the approaching host.
Prince Baelon Targaryen made no effort to hide himself. He rode tall, slight for his six years, but poised, too poised. Many saw it at once.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
And he knew what it would cost.
Uncle will not thank me for this, Baelon thought, a flicker of tension tightening his small fingers around the hart's fur. But there is no other chance. Not for me.
He had little place in the court, no heritage beyond whispers, no allies but two sympathetic women and a handful of servants. Whatever fate had decided for him before his birth, it had left him little to stand on.
But fate had offered him a hart.
And Baelon would not waste the gods' gift.
If he let this moment slip, he would be nothing more than the words traded behind tapestries and over cups of wine. That old, bitter title clung to him like smoke:
The whore's son.
Not today, he swore. Not ever again.
"Your Grace," Otto Hightower murmured beside the king, bowing just enough to fulfill courtesy. "The boy wears a crown. It should be removed at once. No child should be allowed such presumption."
Viserys I Targaryen stared at the approaching procession, blinking as if his eyes deceived him.
Baelon, his young nephew, rode the mythical white hart as though born upon its back. The crown glinted above silver hair unmistakably of the blood of the dragon.
"He is but a child, my Hand," Viserys said softly. "A child sees only a shiny thing and thinks it fine. He knows nothing of crowns." The king exhaled, slow and tired. "I will speak with him. But not here… and not now."
Otto bowed again. "As you command, Your Grace."
He straightened with a courtier's smile, but it never reached his eyes. His gaze locked on Baelon, lingering on the boy's ease in the saddle, on the way the hart yielded to his slightest touch.
Otto's jaw tightened until his knuckles whitened within his sleeve.
A child who can win the hearts of smallfolk and nobles alike. A child blessed by a symbol of kingship itself. Too dangerous. He is far too dangerous.
Rhaenyra burst into the clearing with Ser Criston Cole and half a dozen riders at her back. Dust clung to her braids, and her cheeks were flushed from the chase. She reined in hard, and froze.
Her violet eyes widened.
"Seven hells…" She swung down before her horse had even stilled. "Baelon, where in the world did you get a white hart? And what is that on your head?" She looked toward Viserys as if expecting him to be apoplectic. "Does Father know?"
Baelon barely had time to answer before she swept him into her arms, checking him from scalp to boots as though fearing broken bones.
"I'm fine," he muttered, expression flat as she tugged at his sleeves and spun him around. Only minutes ago he had been a figure of awe, riding through the Kingswood with a creature of legend beneath him, the breeze in his hair, chants of blessing echoing in his mind.
Now he was once more his cousin's favored plaything.
"I met the white hart in the woods," he said. "And I found the crown. Uncle knows of it."
Rhaenyra opened her mouth, perhaps to scold, perhaps to laugh in disbelief, but the arrival of Lord Jason Lannister and several other nobles forced her to swallow whatever she meant to say.
They all bowed, eyes alight with something between reverence and calculation, and discreetly withdrew.
What they had witnessed today would be whispered in halls from Lannisport to Oldtown.
A prince crowned by fate itself. A hart kneeling as though before a king. A child who rode it as though chosen.
Not Aegon. Not even Rhaenyra.
Baelon.
The Dawn Prince.
"Take the prince's white hart and house it separately," Rhaenyra ordered once the nobles withdrew. She pointed sharply toward the stables. "Tell the stablemaster to feed it only the finest fruits and grasses. If anything happens to it, I'll have his head."
Ser Criston bowed. "Yes, Princess."
He approached, only to stop mid-stride as the hart stamped and lowered its antlers, the hair along its neck rising. Criston froze.
"Easy," Baelon said, slipping from Rhaenyra's arms. "He doesn't like strangers."
He placed a small hand against the beast's neck. The hart's rigid posture softened at once. It nudged him gently before dipping low, lifting him back onto its back as though performing a practiced gesture.
The watching soldiers murmured.
"Gods… is it truly that clever?"
No one answered.
Because no one knew.
That night, Viserys gave his command.
The hunt was ended. They would rest one more day, then return to the Red Keep.
And Baelon… Baelon was to ride at the head of the procession.
Not beside Rhaenyra. Not behind the kingsguard.
At the very front, white hart beneath him, the sight a living proclamation of Targaryen legitimacy.
But he was forbidden from wearing the Dawn Crown.
At least, not in public.
Viserys did not take it from him, though. He let Baelon keep it, hidden away in the boy's saddlebag, shining faintly like a promise not yet fulfilled.
A compromise... a dangerous one.
The gates of King's Landing yawned wide as the royal party approached. Curiosity had drawn thousands to the streets, fishmongers and smiths, washerwomen with wet hands, children perched on rooftops.
When the white hart appeared, a wave of gasps washed over the crowd.
"That's the white hart!" "By the Seven… blessed be the gods!"
Baelon rode tall in black hunting leathers stitched with the three-headed dragon of his house. Sunlight gilded his hair. His eyes, those unmistakable amethysts, swept over the crowd, calm but keen.
Behind him marched Ser Cantell Rosby and a column of Red Keep knights.
"Is that a Targaryen prince? But Prince Aegon is only a babe-"
"You blind fool, that's Prince Baelon! The white hart chose him!" "They're calling him the Dawn Prince!"
The name leapt from mouth to mouth, catching like flame in a dry field.
"Dawn Prince!" "Dawn Prince!"
To the smallfolk, the hart was no mere beast. Every storied king of Westeros claimed a glimpse of it once in their life, a vision of the gods' favor. But a child who rode one?
Such a boy, they decided, was destined for glory.
Inside the cushioned warmth of the royal wheelhouse, Viserys stiffened. The chants seeped through canvas and wood with the persistence of storm rain.
His fingers curled on his knee. He looked toward Rhaenyra, then away, jaw tight.
Rhaenyra, oblivious to her father's unease, smirked slightly as she peered out through the curtains.
Baelon was hers as much as anyone's, her little brother in all but blood. The cheers meant nothing threatening to her. When she flew Syrax above the city, crowds had called her Realm's Delight.
Her name had echoed even louder.
And opposite her, Queen Alicent watched her stepson with a soft smile, one hand resting upon her swelling belly.
Baelon was not hers by blood, yet she had raised him, soothed him, prayed for him. Hearing the city chant his name warmed her in a place deeper than bone.
Outside, the chanting grew, swelling like a tide.
Inside, three destinies began to shift.
And Baelon, astride the white hart at the head of the royal procession, felt the weight of thousands of eyes upon him.
For the first time since the gods returned him to this world, he felt seen.
Not as a rumor .Not as a stain. But as something more.
Something that might, one day, change the realm.
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A/N- If you're liking how the story starts, trust me, the best parts are only beginning. Baelon's journey gets far wilder in the next arc.
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