Aelya woke at dawn to her sister sleeping on her chest.

For a long moment she did not move. The eastern sky beyond the balcony arch was going pink over the Skahazadhan and the room was full of that particular dry golden light that belonged to Meereen at sunrise, and Dany's silver hair was spread across Aelya's collarbone like spilled moonlight, and Dany's breath was warm and slow against the hollow of Aelya's throat. Somewhere on the terrace above, Ēdrugon was humming.

Aelya had, she realised, been afraid of this moment. Not of the night — she had not been afraid of the night — but of the morning. Of what her sister's face would look like in daylight. Of whether Dany would wake and be shy, or ashamed, or quietly appalled at what they had chosen.

Dany stirred.

Dany opened her eyes, saw where she was, saw Aelya watching her — and smiled. A slow, sleepy, entirely unguarded smile, the smile of a child who has gotten exactly the nameday gift she wanted.

"Good morning, Aelya," Dany murmured.

"Good morning, wife."

"Mm." Dany stretched, catlike, and resettled. "Say it again."

"Wife."

"Again."

"Wife. My wife. Dany —"

"Again."

Aelya laughed — a helpless wrecked laugh — and pulled her sister up and kissed her, and Dany kissed her back without hurry, and they did not rise for another hour.

They had to rise eventually, because the world did not stop being the world.

Missandei was waiting in the antechamber when Aelya finally emerged, fully dressed and only somewhat presentable, and if Missandei noticed anything unusual about the fact that her queen had evidently slept in her sister's chamber, her face gave no sign of it. She inclined her head. She offered a stack of parchments.

"Ravens overnight, Your Grace. Seven of them. Four are routine. Three are not."

"Give me the three."

Missandei handed them over. Aelya read.

The first was from Illyrio in Pentos. Robert Baratheon is dead. A hunting accident, the ravens say. The Lannisters have taken King's Landing in all but name. The boy Joffrey is crowned. Eddard Stark of Winterfell has been taken as a traitor. The Seven Kingdoms are sliding into war. I await your command.

The second was from Dragonstone. My lady, Stannis Baratheon has declared himself king and is mustering a fleet at Storm's End. He has sent to this island claiming his right as the late king's brother to its seat. I have stalled. I cannot stall much longer. The garrison is yours; the smallfolk are yours; but the lords of the Narrow Sea will come when Stannis calls, and we are sixty men.

The third was unsigned, and written in a hand Aelya did not recognise, and had come by a raven that had arrived without a capsule — the message tied to the bird's leg with a scrap of black silk. It said only:

The dragon has three heads. A friend in the North remembers. When you come west, come by way of the Wall.

Aelya read that one three times.

"Missandei," she said. "Who sent this."

"We do not know, Your Grace. The bird is of a Northern breed. That is all the maester can tell us."

"The dragon has three heads." Aelya looked up. "Dany. Come and read this one."

Dany had come into the antechamber behind her, braiding her hair with damp fingers. She took the scrap of parchment. Her brow furrowed.

"A friend in the North remembers," she read. "Who in the North would remember us? Who in the North would even know we are alive?"

Aelya knew.

Aelya had known, distantly, for a long time — had carried the knowledge folded up small in the back of her mind, one of the pieces of her other life she had not yet looked at in full sunlight. She had been putting off looking at it. She looked at it now.

The dragon has three heads. Rhaegar. A friend in the North remembers. Ned Stark had kept a promise, once, to a sister dying in a tower of blood.

Jon.

Aelya sat down on the edge of a divan, rather abruptly.

"Aelya?" Dany came over quickly. "Aelya, what is it, you've gone white —"

"I need to tell you something," Aelya said. "I should have told you long ago. I was — I was not sure how. I was not sure when. I think the moment has chosen itself."

Dany sat down beside her and took her hand.

"Tell me."

"Rhaegar had a son," Aelya said. "Not by Elia. By a Northern girl. Lyanna Stark, who was not stolen — who went with him, who loved him, who died bearing his child in a tower in the red mountains of Dorne. Ned Stark found her. She made him swear to hide the child, because Robert would have killed it. Ned took the babe home to Winterfell and called it his own bastard. He named him Jon. Jon Snow."

Dany was very still.

"A nephew," she whispered.

"A nephew. A Targaryen. Raised a Stark. He does not know. Ned has kept the secret for seventeen years."

"How do you know this, Aelya?"

Aelya looked at her sister.

She had told Dany, once, that she dreamed. It was the only lie she had ever told her. She had kept it for fifteen years because she had not known how to say the truth, and because she had been afraid — simply afraid, in the cowardly way one is afraid of a cliff's edge — that Dany would look at her differently.

They were married now, in every way that mattered to them. There were no walls left between them.

"Dany," she said. "There is something else I have not told you. Something I should have told you when we were children. I will tell you tonight, when there are no ravens and no wars. I swear it. I will tell you everything. But not in this hour. Not with Stannis at our door. Will you trust me until tonight?"

Dany searched her face for a long moment.

Then she lifted Aelya's hand and pressed it to her lips.

"I have trusted you since we shared a cradle," she said. "Tonight, then."

Aelya let out a breath she had not known she was holding.

"Tonight," she agreed. "And in the meantime — Missandei. Summon Grey Worm. Summon the captain of the Balerion's Shadow. We are going home."

"Home, Your Grace?"

"Westeros." Aelya stood up. Her hand was steady again. "The realm is at war. Stannis wants my rock. The Lannisters have murdered a king and broken the peace. The North is rising. And somewhere under the Wall there is a boy who does not know his own name."

She smiled, slow and sharp.

"It is time, my love. We are going to take the throne."