“She thinks she has won,” Aegon whispers. “Let her come. I will give her a throne of ashes.”

Aegon speaks, his voice a rasp: “Rhaenyra has Harrenhal. She has the Riverlands. She has the North. And what do I have? A dragon that cannot fly and a brother who smiles while I rot.”

The water explodes. Then silence.

The air smells of rain and rust. DAEMON TARGARYEN stands alone in the God’s Eye tower, his hand pressed against the bleeding, carved weirwood tree. His vision blurs—not from fatigue, but from the trance he can no longer escape.

Daemon receives a raven. He reads it twice. Then he calls for his armor—not his golden war plate, but the simple black scales he wore in the Stepstones.

“And you have never lived at all.”