SEE HOW IT SHINES

II.

120 AC.

Viserra was having the loveliest dream. She was seated on the floor of a glass-walled garden, surrounded by sweet-smelling flowers and leafy vines, with a dragon hatchling in her lap the color of sugar. She sang to the hatchling, an old lullaby of nonsense words, and the dragon nuzzled at her hand. It was a nice dream. And then—

Someone stole Vhagar, the twins whisper at the edge of her bed, shaking her awake. Luke's eyes are wide in the darkness beside her, his head resting on her shoulder and fingers curled into her hair. He must've crawled in with her at some point during the night, as he often did as a babe. She doesn't want to get up. She wants to dream a little longer. But she's the eldest, and she has to go—she has to be brave, to calm the fears of motherless cousins and baby brothers. It matters not that fear fills her own heart and dread floods her senses. It matters not that she feels a weight of foreboding in her stomach, telling her something dark awaits them. She pulls a robe over her nightgown, wipes the blood from beneath her nose, and grabs a knife from the fruit plate on the table by the door, slipping it up her sleeve when Lucerys isn't looking.

Why? Why, why? To fight Vhagar herself? To fight whoever dared to claim her? Surely whatever madman mounted the great war dragon would throw his head back and laugh at the sight of a little girl with a little blade, would brush her aside as easily as an eyelash fallen down a cheek. She wonders and wonders as to who it could be as she follows the twins and her brother down, the cool metal of the dagger burning into her flesh. And it's—

It's him. She should have known.

He fights back. She should have known.

He calls Lucerys a bastard. She should have known.

She should have known there was more of a dragon inside of her than she thought. The fire in her blood is cooled by the gentle waves of the sea, but...by the gods, it's still there, brought to a raging blaze when she calls on it. And the sea may be soft, yes, but isn't it also filled with storms and terrors and a fury of its own?

His hand is around her brother's throat. A dragon rises from the depths of the sea. She lurches forward, and as she runs she feels the knife fall from her sleeve—for the better, she thinks. And then she's shoving him, kicking him, pinning him down, her vision red and bloody. Leave him alone.

He turns his awful eyes to her, nearly black with an ancestral rage; he's one with Vhagar now, she can see in his stare. He doesn't know, does he? Poor little Prince Strong.

Of course he doesn't know, she wants to scream. He's a child, not yet eight, of course he thinks the father that raised him is the father that made him, just as he is to me, and why should I tell him any different? There will be time to unravel their little lives, but for now let him be a child, let him think the last man of House Strong was sent up in flames with the knight that served our mother. Let my brother be my brother, my mother's son; what else matters? Sweet boy, sea-pearl, darling Lucerys, beloved prince—that's all he needs to be.

Unlike him, with his angry blood and black heart. Silver, silver, silver. For a moment, she hates him as much as he hates her. She realizes her foot's pressure on his arm has weakened and she wants to dig her toes into him and watch him crumble beneath her like sand for making her brother bleed—she turns ever so slightly to see the river streaming from Luke's crooked nose and the wave rises in her again. And then she—

She doesn't see the rock. She should have known.

Strangely, it's the sound of her name from his lips that strikes her more powerfully than the rock. Her vision is blurring and her head hurts to the point of bursting, but all she can think about is the way he said her name. Nine shared years they've lived together, tied by blood and birth—and she could swear that that was the first time she'd heard him say her name. Viserra. She likes the way it sounds almost like a whine, like his voice is thickened and weighed down by the same guilt that floods his eyes. The stress on the second syllable, the drag of the e , the way it settles on his tongue like sunlight. She blinks slowly, shadows closing in on the edges of her sight, and almost laughs; she should have known she'd liked the way he said her name after so many years of angry silence. Vi—