She closed her eyes, and the music of her life began to swell in her mind. It was not a song of harps and flutes, but a dark, heavy symphony. It began with the slow, mournful pull of cellos—the sound of her isolation, the loneliness of a woman born to rule in a world that feared her power. Then came the deep, resonant drums, like the heavy tread of dragons walking the earth, a reminder of the raw, terrible power that was hers to command.

The news from the capital had arrived on wings of ravens and whispers of spies. Her father was dead. The crown that belonged to her by right of birth, by royal decree, and by sacred oath now sat upon the head of her half-brother, Aegon. The Hightowers had moved in the dark like spiders, weaving a web of treason while the King's body was still cold.

The drums in her blood reached a crescendo, heavy and absolute. The war for the iron chair had begun.

The smallfolk said that when a Targaryen was born, the gods flipped a coin. But as Rhaenyra stood upon the cliffs of Dragonstone, the wind howling through the battlements, she knew the gods had done no such thing. They had simply handed her a torch and waited to see what she would burn.

But the realm was a cage of men's making, and the bars were closing in.

"They have broken their oaths," Rhaenyra said, her voice cutting through the silence, low and dangerous. "They have stolen my throne. Now, we show them what happens when you wake the dragon."