FIRE IN OUR EYES ✧ AEMOND TARGARYEN

✧ CHAPTER TWO ✧

Haera's fingers danced over the feverfew, sweat beading on her brow like morning dew. Stonedance's herb garden stretched before her, a tapestry of greens and purples beneath a sun as merciless as a Dothraki khalasar. Salt and herbs mingled on the breeze—sage, rosemary, the ghost of her own uncertainty.

The ring on her finger caught the light, three rubies winking like fresh-spilled blood. Dragon scales or flower petals? Time had worn away the truth, leaving only questions and tarnished metal. Haera imagined pale hands—Targaryen hands, touched by the divine—slipping it into that weathered pouch. A father's gift. A stranger's promise. A riddle wrapped in Valyrian steel.

When a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin and the world holds its breath.

Haera snorted, startling a sparrow into frantic flight. As if the gods had spared her even a copper penny's worth of consideration.

Her hand hovered over the dragonswort, its leaves as red as the rubies adorning her finger. She was a child of ghosts, truly. Mother and father existed only in whispers, in tales spun by Septa Eurdena and the other crones who'd borne witness to her entry into this cruel world. They painted her mother with words the way a mummer paints his face: a healer, plain as grain but with ambition that burned hotter than wildfire, dreams vaster than the Dothraki sea.

Sometimes, in the hush before dawn, Haera swore she could almost feel it—phantom hands cradling her, a love as fleeting as summer snow. One final push, one last ragged breath, and the Stranger stole her away like a thief in the night.

The mortar ground herbs to paste, pungent and green as the Reach in springtime. Her father? He was smoke and mirrors, a riddle cloaked in silver hair and perhaps-purple eyes. Prince Vaelon, they murmured behind goblets of Arbor gold. Youngest son of Alyssa and Baelon Targaryen. But who could say for certain? Lord Massey swore by the old gods and the new that he'd glimpsed those telltale Valyrian eyes, a flash of the otherworldly beneath a travel-stained hood.

But Massey would swear the Wall was made of Tyroshi cheese if his coffers grew heavy enough, and heavy they did grow—a fortune in jewels, they said, for the promise of her safe upbringing under his watchful eye.

Haera's eyes flutter shut, the sun painting the inside of her lids red. She grasps for the face of the man who sired her, but all she catches is moonlight on the Narrow Sea, a half-remembered dream already dissipating like morning mist over the Blackwater. Instead, she sees the ship that carried him away, imagines him at the stern, violet eyes fixed on a babe he'd never truly know.

Years later, when whispers of Prince Vaelon's fate in the smoking ruins of Old Valyria slithered across the realm like so many vipers, Haera felt... nothing. How does one mourn smoke?

The ring pulses against her skin, familiar as a scar, foreign as Valyrian steel. It, and one other treasure, were all that leather pouch held. A nameday gift from a father who knew he'd never see her grow. Haera wonders what he'd make of her now, knees stained with soil, fingers green as summer grass. Would he see the coin the gods never bothered to flip? Would he find madness there? Mercy?

Or just a girl with dragon's blood and a healer's hands?

A shadow falls over Haera. "Still at it, then?" Neryne's voice slices through Haera's reverie.

Haera squints up, shielding her eyes against the sun's assault. "These herbs won't harvest themselves," she says, lips quirking. "Besides, Lord Massey's headaches are getting worse. I thought I'd brew up some willow bark tea. He can take it when he sails for Dragonstone again."

Neryne kneels beside her, fingers dancing over lavender stalks. "You're too good to him, you know. He'd work you to the bone if you let him."

"He's been fair to me," Haera murmurs. "Fairer than most would be to a..." The words stick in her throat.