Chapter 1

Daenerys streaked across the skies over the Capital of Westeros striking terror into the Lannister forces below. She was dressed in her finest silver and white Targaryan regalia. Her garment was embroidered with silks from Mareen and adorned with jewels and wealth. She looked every bit the Legendary Targaryan Warrior Queen striding atop the Dragon Drogon to turn the tide of battle in her favor and retake the city.

Her Dragon swooped down into the streets and grabbed a Mercenary from the Golden Company like a rag doll and shook him furiously before dropping him into the streets of Fleabottom below. Drogon’s fiery breath was unquenchable and unending as Daenerys ordered him to purge the city below and punish it for its defiance.

It had stopped mattering if the forces below were Lannister. The citizens of King’s Landing should have overthrown Cersei. The Lannister whore was not their rightful Queen come to return as their salvation. The very sight of a Targaryen on the back of a dragon should have made them jubilantly ring the bells of surrender hours ago and submit to her benevolent rule.

Instead, it was as if even the peasants were daring to ridicule her for coming all this way and doing so much to be their Queen. She had been sold to a Dothraki warlord by her brother and made to fornicate in front of his other concubines like a breeding horse. She had lost her firstborn child to a witches curse for the love she felt for the Warlord when she bargained with mystic forces to save his life. She had burned the Crone Council of Dothraki warlords and earned the respect of the Barbarians to follow a woman for the first time in their history. All to earn the Iron Throne that should have been hers by birthright. She crossed the Iron Sea and through her own cleverness freed an entire army of Unsullied Elite Warriors from their slave masters. They followed her not because she owned them but because she freed them. She freed city after city in Mareen only to be betrayed by the nobles who sought to continue the wheel of oppression that she came to destroy.

Once in Westeros, she put her war with Cersei to take back her Kingdom on hold to ride north to save the entire world from domination by the Undead Night King. If not for her dragons the battle would never have been won, but everyone cheered for Arya Stark and her brother Jon. Arya had slain the Night King, and she deserved praise, but it was only made possible with the aid of Daenary’s armies and dragons! Jon Snow had ridden Drogon’s sister Rhaegal into battle, and everyone praised him as a savior because he rose from the dead through some strange magic of the Red Witch Melisandre. She was jealous of their admiration for Jon. She too admired and loved him, but that was when she thought he was simply the valiant bastard son of a noble. She had been ready to declare him Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North for his service. She had been ready to consider him as her consort and marry him for the good of Westeros.

However, she learned he was actually her nephew and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Once this became common knowledge, his legend would only grow and the people would demand he sit upon the Iron Throne.

Daenerys had done so much and come so far, and now she was gripped with rage and jealousy.

Her Father Aerys was called the Mad King because he was going to burn the city of King’s Landing during the rebellion against him before he would surrender. The taint on her honor of being his daughter was going to be removed when she returned as it’s protector and defender and rightful ruler.

Now, she would punish the city for mocking her. Her brother Viserys had been gripped with a madness that drove him to make shocking bargains and sacrifices. She thought it was merely narcissism when she was but a girl, but now she believed her brother had been gripped with her Father’s madness overruling.

It was said that when a Targaryen was born the God’s flipped a coin in the air and one side madness and the other side greatness. Had she been tricked by the God’s into thinking her side was greatness? Was this the prank of the ages by the Seven Divines?

Drogon swooped down to a marketplace and destroyed the tents and ramshackle carts with his breath. The people would pay for if she was mad then the mad Queen she would be. She had destroyed almost half of the city, and she would destroy the other half if it quenched her all-consuming rage.

An hour earlier the bells of surrender had sounded in King’s Landing. The Lannister commanders seeing Euron Greyjoy’s fleet destroyed and the Trebuchet on the towers burning had accepted their inevitable fleet and sought to save their own lives.

They had managed to bring down Rhaegal during the battle near its beginning. The Dragon fell in the city, and it looked like victory might still be within their grasp, but it was the loss of her precious Dragon that started Daenarys indiscriminately burning allies, civilians and enemies alike for a vengeance that could not be sated.

Jaime Lannister had infiltrated the Red Keep with his brother’s help. His intention was to talk sense to his sister. The twins were to escape in a boat and live out their lives anywhere, but King’s Landing as lovers and raise their child together.

Jaime had fought Euron Greyjoy to get to his sister. Euron considered himself his sister’s suitor, but he was simply one of her many puppets. She may claim Euron had sired the child in her belly to make it legitimate, but Jaime knew the child like all of Cersei’s children was his.

Euron fought valiantly and managed to wound Jaime Lannister. Euron considered it one of his greatest accomplishments because Jaime’s prowess on the battlefield had once been legendary. He was a one-handed man now, and Euron was a skilled warrior. They were both wounded in the fight, but Jaime emerged victoriously. He did not stay to finish Euron and instead ran to his sister to convince her to leave.

Queen Cersei was watching the devastation of her city from a high tower with Qyburn her Grand Maester and the Mountain, her undead Captain of the King’s Guard. She was in denial that the war was lost and had just been informed her fleet was burning in Blackwater Bay.

“We must leave this place,” Jaime said to his sister while clutching his bleeding wound.

Cersei turned to him as if she expected him to be there in her final hours and wasn’t surprised that he had risked his life against impossible odds to infiltrate her tower and find her. She had always assumed they would die together when the time came. “King’s Landing is my home; why should I leave?”

“Sister, the city is falling! We can return one day and conquer it together. For now, let’s get you out of here,” he said.

Qyburn set to dressing his wound and caring for him while Jaime implored his sister to leave. Qyburn had already made contingency plans to escape if events did not go as he had hoped. He was not worried about dying because he had made contingency plans for that as well. He studied the necromantic arts and had taught his apprentices to revive him should it come to that.

Jaime could see that his stubborn sister intended to die here today as Queen and not to cower or surrender. She was so much like her Father that it made it impossible at times to love her, and yet at times it made her impossible not to love her. They were connected in a way that no other woman had connected with him.

He was one of the most handsome and wealthiest men in Westeros. He could have had any whore or noble born lady willingly without paying should he have desired, but he wanted his sister more than life itself.

Jaime had left the bed of the only other woman he admired to be here today. He left Brienne of Tarth crying for him because he knew his sister needed him. It had hurt Jaime to leave her. He told Brienne that he was a bad person as consolation. If she thought of him as the murdering, lying person, then she could not love him and spare herself the conflicted agony he was feeling about leaving her.

He simply had no choice but to save his sister and be by her side. She needed him, and he had vowed when they were children to come when she needed him most. He would kill the Mountain and Qyburn if it came to it to get his sister out of the Red Keep safely. He would kill the entire Lannister and Targaryen army if it came to it. He would sacrifice all of the people in Westeros for his sister if she would but leave with him. His arguments fell on deaf ears.

The Captain of the Golden Company dashed into the tower. His golden armor was impressive and ornate. His weapons not bloodied or dented with battle. He looked every bit as handsome and virile as Jaime Lannister himself as he strode towards the Queen with news of the battle.

“If it is news of the failure of your company failing to fulfill your obligations to the Iron Crown do not waste your breath,” Cersei said scornfully as she stood behind the Mountain. The Mountain was an impressive warrior fully covered in articulated King’s Guard regalia from head to toe. You could only see his dark, foreboding dead eyes behind the plated helmet staring back at him.

“My news is critical,” the Captain said.

Jaime realized something was amiss when the Captain spoke. He had met this man once. He was a bore and a dandy. He was favored by Ser Loras Tyrell as a lover, and his manner was off. The Captain moved with a feminine grace, but this man moved like a soldier.

Jaime grabbed a candelabra and struck the Captain hard from behind just as they produced twin daggers to plunge into Cersei’s heart.

The door burst open just as the attempt on his sister’s life was foiled. The Hound charged in with a two-handed sword. He wasn’t coming for his sister he was coming for his brother the Mountain. The two had a long-standing history, and Jaime had no love for either man. He would let them fight and get his sister out of here.

He grabbed Cersei and held her close to him. Jaime had saved damsels in distress before, and he always looked dashing in the process. Unfortunately this time the Captain’s gloved hand reached out and pulled him to the ground forcing him face down on the floor.

This man fought like no one Jaime had ever fought before. They had cat-like reflexes and were just as deadly. Jaime and the Captain traded jabs at one another, but Jaime had already been wounded and knew this warrior was far more than a match for him.

“I yield, I yield!” he brought his sister down to her knees with him as he presented his sword to the Captain. “Please do the honorable thing and accept our surrender. King’s Landing is yours!”

Qyburn quietly escaped through a hatch he had prepared into the bowels of the red keep while the Mountain and the Hound fought an epic battle pitting their strength against one another.