Viserys lay in bed and listened to his own body, checking for the familiar aches.
He found none.
That was the strange part. He'd risen every morning for the past year and a half with a stiffness in his fingers that took the better part of an hour to work loose, and a grinding sensation in his left knee whenever he put his weight on it too quickly, and a dull and persistent ache across his lower back that wouldn't leave. Grand Maester Mellos had given him poultices and draughts and told him to drink less wine and eat more fish, and Viserys had done neither because he was the king.
And then there were the cuts. The Iron Throne had nicked him twice at last week's session, small bites along the heel of his hand where the swords twisted into the armrest, and the cuts had wept and reddened and refused to close the way cuts ought to. His grandsire had bled upon that seat as well, and his grandsire's grandsire before him. The maesters wrote learned things about the sharpness of the blades and the danger of rust, but the smallfolk whispered that the throne itself chose who sat upon it and cut those it found wanting.
But this morning, as on the three mornings before it, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood and felt nothing at all. His knee took his weight without complaint. His fingers opened and closed without the grinding. The ache in his back had gone so thoroughly that he kept pressing his knuckles into the spot where it had been and finding only muscle and warmth. And when he turned his hand over and looked at the heel of his palm, the cuts from the throne had closed clean and pink, the angry redness gone, the skin whole where it had been raw for days.
He dressed himself without calling for a servant, which he hadn't done in months. He pulled his shirt over his head and laced his breeches and bent to reach his boots without his spine making its usual protest. He bent, and nothing happened, and he straightened, and nothing happened. He just stood there in his bedchamber with both boots on and his hands at his sides, feeling oddly grateful.
The small hall where Viserys took his morning meals held a single long table of dark oak, set with bread and butter and cold meats and a dish of boiled eggs that the kitchen sent up every morning whether he wanted them or not. He usually ate alone, or with Alicent if she chose to join him, which she did less and less of late. His queen had her own chambers and her own routines and their children to see to, and meals together had become more duty than pleasure.
But this morning the table held company.
Rhaenyra sat at the far end with her chair pulled close and her elbows on the wood, leaning toward the girl beside her. Her silver-gold hair was loose, falling over one shoulder, and she wore the dark red riding dress she favored for the Dragonpit. She was laughing, and the sound of it reached him in the corridor before he came through the door.
The girl beside her was small and dark-haired and plain of dress, with the sun on her face from days spent out of doors and a straight and refined posture. Lady Amelia Darkwood of Velton, Lord Forrest's eldest, who had turned up at the gates of the Red Keep three days ago with one knight and a traveling pack.
Amelia looked up when he entered and rose at once, smoothing her skirts, and curtseyed with her back straight and her eyes level, the same curtsey she'd given him at the tourney months before, and held it the proper length and came up and met his gaze.
"Good morrow, Your Grace."
"Good morrow, Lady Amelia," Viserys said, and settled himself at the head of the table with a groan. His back didn't actually hurt. He groaned anyway, because the habit outlived the pain. "Rhaenyra. You are up early."
"Amelia wakes with the sun," Rhaenyra said, reaching across the table for the bread. She tore a piece and handed half to Amelia. "She says the fishermen in Velton rise before dawn, and she trained herself to rise with them so she could walk the fields with their maester before lessons."
"A commendable habit," Viserys said, and poured himself wine. He added water, more water than wine, because the morning was young and his stomach had opinions about these things. "I rise with the sun only when the sun has the courtesy to wait until a reasonable hour. In winter I am a far better king."
Amelia almost smiled at that, quick and uncertain, and pulled it back.
"You may laugh, my lady," Viserys told her. "I am told I am funnier than I think I am, though that may be because the people who tell me so eat at my table."
The smile came through properly this time. Amelia Darkwood had a round and open face and dark hair that kept escaping whatever she tried to do with it and brown eyes that didn't miss much. She reminded Viserys, oddly, of his Hand.
"I thank you, Your Grace," she said. "My father tells the same jests and receives the same laughter, and he knows very well his smallfolk are being kind."
"Your father sounds like a sensible man."
"He is, Your Grace."
Rhaenyra watched the exchange with her chin propped on her hand. She looked pleased.
He'd worried about Rhaenyra for years. Of course he had. She was his heir, named before the lords of the realm, and she carried the weight of it well. She was clever and fierce and capable. The Realm’s Delight.
But she was lonely. He knew that. She had handmaidens and ladies-in-waiting and servants. She didn't have a friend.
Aemma had been that for him once, before the court and the crown and the grief. They'd been young together, and they'd laughed at things, and she'd known his face better than any mirror.
Rhaenyra leaned into Amelia's shoulder and said something low that made the Darkwood girl duck her head and press her lips together against a grin, and something loosened in Viserys's chest.
Let her have this, he thought.
He ate his bread, his eggs and his cold meats, and drank his watered wine, and Rhaenyra talked about the Dragonpit and Syrax and the dragonkeepers and the way the bronze doors sounded when they closed at night. Amelia listened fully, with her whole body, with her eyes firmly on Rhaenyra. They spoke of anything and everything, though Viserys noted the lack of reception on the part of Lady Amelia when the subject turned to handsome knights. Odd, but not abnormal. Not every lady was fortunate enough to actually see many such knights and, while Velton was the home of the Titan himself, Ser Tolan was not much of a looker.
The meal ran long. Servants came twice to clear and were waved off both times, because the girls were deep in a conversation about the old Valyrian dragonlords and whether their methods of breeding had been lost or merely hidden. And Viserys found himself listening with genuine interest – far more interest than Rhaenyra herself if he was being honest; his daughter was many things, but scholarly was not one of them. Still, when the young Darkwood talked, she did her best to listen.
When Amelia said, "If the Valyrians kept their knowledge in the Fourteen Flames and the Doom took the Fourteen Flames, then the knowledge went with them unless someone carried it out before the end," Viserys set down his cup and leaned forward.
"That is a question my grandsire asked," he said. "And his grandsire before him. The maesters say the knowledge is lost. The Citadel spent two centuries looking for it and found nothing. But the dragons are here, and they live and they breed and they bond, and nobody alive can say with certainty how any of it works."
Amelia considered for a moment before she spoke.
"Perhaps, Your Grace, the knowledge is not in books or scrolls. Perhaps it is in the blood. The dragons know what they are. The riders know what they feel. The bond itself may carry what the Valyrians never bothered to write down, because they never needed to."
Viserys looked at her. She held his gaze and didn't flinch.
"You are a thoughtful girl, Lady Amelia."
Later that morning Viserys walked the gardens with them.
He hadn't planned to. He'd planned to spend the morning with his small council. But the council had sent word that Lord Strong was delayed, and the sun was warm, the roses were beautiful, and his daughter's laughter carried across the yard from the garden's entrance. Viserys told his steward to push the council to the afternoon and went out.
They were walking the path between the rose beds when he found them, Rhaenyra on the inside and Amelia on the outside and the knight Ser Tolan trailing behind at a respectful distance. The knight was taller than any man in the Red Keep save perhaps Ser Harwin Strong, and he moved quietly. Viserys had watched this man hold Daemon in the air at the tourney and ask him to yield, and he still smiled when he thought of his brother's face.
"Your Grace," Amelia said, curtseying. Rhaenyra turned, surprised and then pleased, and took Viserys's arm.
"Walk with us, Father," she said, and drew him into step beside them.
They walked three abreast down the crushed shell path and, once again, the two ladies spoke of anything and everything under the sun.
Viserys listened as much as he could, though committed very little to memory.
At the end of the path where the hedge opened onto the lower terrace, a voice called from behind them.
"Brother."
Daemon leaned against the archway with his arms crossed and his weight on one leg, silver hair falling across his face. He hadn't bothered to tie it back, which meant he'd either just woken or hadn't yet slept. With Daemon, both were equally likely.
"Daemon," Viserys said. "You are upright. That is more than I expected."
"The night was long," Daemon said, pushing off the wall and walking toward them. His eyes passed over Rhaenyra, settled on Amelia for a moment, and moved on. "Is there food inside, or have your cooks abandoned their posts?"
"There is food," Viserys said. "There is always food. I am told my kitchens never close. It is the single greatest achievement of my reign."
Daemon snorted and fell into step beside him, and the four of them walked back toward the hall together, Daemon on one side and Rhaenyra on the other and Amelia slightly behind, hands folded and back straight.
Daemon glanced back once.
"Rhaenyra's curious little friend," he said, low enough that only Viserys could hear. "The one from the fishing village. Is she still here?"
"She has been here three days."
"Mm." Daemon scratched his jaw. "And how long does she intend to stay? I trip over her at every turn. In the gardens, in the corridors, at the breakfast table."
"She is a guest," Viserys said. "And she is welcome."
"I never said she was unwelcome." Daemon said. “In fact, that she holds the loyalty of the Titan himself makes her interesting.”
“I’m surprised you’ve gotten over that defeat so quickly, brother.”
“T’was humbling.”