— Aelya, late spring, the Red Keep —

The question of an heir came up, as Aelya had known it would, in the small council in the fifth moon of spring.

It came up gently. Tyrion raised it. He raised it in the careful way he raised difficult things, at the end of the meeting, after the day's other business was settled, in the small dry tone he used when he wanted the queens to know he had been thinking about the matter for some time and would not press them.

"Your Graces," he said. "Forgive me. I have a matter that I have been holding for moons. I would like, with your permission, to raise it now."

Aelya looked at Dany. Dany looked at Aelya. They had been waiting for this. They had discussed it, in their bed, on a number of evenings over the past year.

"Raise it, Tyrion," Aelya said.

"Your Graces. The realm has been at peace for a year. The reign is settled. The court is good. The lords are content. The smallfolk are eating. The Wall is being rebuilt. By every measure I can construct as your Master of Coin, the reign is — by historical comparison — the most successful single year of any reign in recorded Westerosi history. I say this not to flatter you. I say it because the realm now has what realms in this position always need to think about, which is continuity."

"An heir," Dany said.

"An heir, Your Grace. Or — more accurately — a succession plan. The realm will tolerate an unanswered question for another five years, perhaps. After that the question becomes louder. I would prefer to give the realm an answer before the realm asks it."

Aelya nodded slowly.

"You have a recommendation."

"I do, Your Grace. I would name Jon Targaryen heir to the Iron Throne."

A small silence around the table.

"Tell me your reasoning, Tyrion."

"He is blood of the line, through your brother Rhaegar. He has been publicly acknowledged in the godswood at Winterfell and is recognised as such by every Northern lord, with Howland Reed witnessing. He is a Targaryen and a Stark, which uniquely positions him to hold the realm. He has demonstrated capacity in the war — Rhaegal flies for him, the men respect him, the Watch likes him, the wildlings tolerate him, which is no small thing. He is twenty-two. He is unmarried, which leaves the question of his own succession open and useful for political alliance later. He is, by every report I have, good. The realm would receive him. The realm would, I believe, welcome him."

"And the disadvantages."

"He has not yet returned from Greywater Watch. He has not yet told us what he wants. He may want to be Lord of Winterfell, which is a path that closes if we name him heir. He may want to be a private man, which is a path the realm will not let him take if we name him heir. The disadvantage, Your Graces, is that we do not yet know what he wants, and naming him without his consent would be — unfair to him in a way I think this reign has been careful to avoid."

Aelya looked at her sister.

Dany, across the council table, was already nodding.

"Tyrion," Dany said. "Your reasoning is sound. Hold the matter for me. I want Jon to come home before we discuss it further. He is due in three weeks. Aelya and I will speak with him then. If he wishes the seat, we will name him; if he does not, we will work the alternatives."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"And Tyrion — for the alternatives, what do you have."

Tyrion tilted his head. "Three options that survive analysis, Your Grace. First, formal Targaryen adoption — a precedent exists in the line, Aegon V did it for a cousin's son, and the realm has accepted such things before. We adopt a kinsman of suitable temperament and raise him at court. Second, naming Lady Sansa's eventual children as heirs through Bran's line, with Winterfell and the Iron Throne carefully separated by codicil — the Stark blood has Targaryen connection through Lyanna, and the realm loves Sansa. Third — and this is my own preference if Jon refuses — we name Aegon, fifth of his name, the practice of appointed succession the early Targaryens used before primogeniture became habit. The Crown chooses, from any qualified Targaryen kin or kin-by-acclamation, the successor most fit to reign. The realm gets continuity without dynastic accident. It is, Your Graces, the most flexible of the options, and it has the great virtue of not requiring either of you to do anything you do not wish to do."

Aelya was quiet for a long moment.

"Tyrion."

"Your Grace."

"Thank you. The third option is the right one if Jon refuses. Even if Jon accepts, we should establish the principle by codicil now. The realm should know that the Iron Throne goes to the most fit, named by the queen, not to the eldest by blood. We will be the queens who fixed succession, Tyrion. Not the queens who left it as a Targaryen lottery. Yes?"

"Yes, Your Grace. I had been hoping you would say so. I have a draft."

"Of course you have a draft."

"I have had it ready for six moons, Your Grace."

"Bring it tomorrow. We will discuss."

"Yes, Your Grace."

The council adjourned.

— Three weeks later, the Red Keep —

Jon rode into King's Landing on a cool clear morning in the sixth moon of spring, with Ghost at his stirrup and a small Reed escort behind him, and Rhaegal — who had flown down from Dragonstone to meet him on the road — circling overhead.

He had grown, in the six moons at Greywater Watch. Not in height; he had finished growing into his height a year ago. He had grown in the way a young man grows when he has been given the right teacher and the right time. He sat his horse differently. His face was steadier. The closed quiet thing he had been carrying since the Red Wedding had — Aelya saw it the moment he came through the gate — settled, not vanished but settled, into the kind of weight a man carried for the rest of his life and did not flinch under.

He dismounted in the courtyard. He came up the steps. He bowed — properly, but not deeply, because he was family and they had told him not to — and then Dany, on the steps, did not wait for any further formality and pulled him into a hug, and Jon — who had been awkward with hugs a year ago — hugged her back without hesitation, and Aelya, watching from a step above, felt the small clean satisfaction of a woman whose nephew had, in his time away, become himself.

They had supper that night, the four of them — Aelya, Dany, Jon, Howland — in the small private solar.

They did not raise the matter at supper.

After supper, with the table cleared and a fresh decanter of Arbor red on the side table and Ghost at the door from the inside, Aelya said:

"Jon. There is something we need to ask you."

"I know."

Dany looked up. "You know?"

"Howland told me on the ride down. He thought I should have a few days to think about it before you asked. I have had the days. I have thought."

"And?"

Jon set his cup down.

"I would be honoured," he said quietly. "I would be honoured, and I would do it well, but I would not be happy doing it. I have been thinking about it for moons. I do not want the Iron Throne. I want — I want to ride Rhaegal. I want to see my brothers and my sister. I want to spend time at Greywater Watch with my mother's old friend. I want to learn, eventually, what Rhaegal can teach me. I want a life that is — small, in the way the lives of younger sons are small. I do not want a court. I would do it if you asked. But I am asking — please — do not ask."

Dany was quiet for a moment.

Then she rose, came around the table, and kissed him on the forehead.

"Sweet boy," she said. "Of course. Of course we will not ask."

Jon closed his eyes briefly under her hand.

"Thank you, Dany."

"You are welcome, Jon."

Aelya leaned forward.

"Then I have a different question. Tyrion has been working on a thing. We want to fix the succession by codicil, the way the early Targaryens did — appointed succession, the queen names the heir from among any qualified kin or kin-by-acclamation. The realm gets continuity by choice, not by accident. Would you be willing — not to be heir — to be a named alternate? Listed in the codicil as one of the people who could be named, if circumstances required, with your prior consent. Not the heir. A name on the roll. So that if anything happened to the queens, the realm would have you as one option among several, and you could choose in that hour."

Jon thought about this for a long moment.

"Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, I could do that. A name on the roll. That I could do."

"Good."

"Who else is on it?"

Aelya glanced at Dany. Dany nodded.

"Sansa," Aelya said. "If she will accept. Bran, who almost certainly will not, but we will put him on it for completeness. Eventually some children of theirs, if they have any. Your friend Edd Tollett at the Wall, if Mormont releases him from his vows — which I have been thinking about for moons; he is a steady man and the Watch can spare him; we will see. Possibly Tommen, in a decade, when he has grown. The roll will be small. The roll will be good. The queen — Dany or me, whoever is regnant in any given year — will name from the roll when she chooses. The realm gets to be governed by the most fit, not by the firstborn."

Jon nodded.

"That is — that is a good codicil, Aelya."

"Tyrion thinks so. So does Howland. So do I. Dany?"

"I love it. I have always thought primogeniture was a lazy law. The realm has spent too many generations being ruled by accidents of birth. We are going to choose."

Howland, from the sideboard where he had been quietly pouring himself a small cup, said in his dry old voice: "Your Graces. May I add a recommendation."

"Always, Howland."

"Put it to the lords in council. Get them to ratify it by acclamation. Make it a law, not a codicil. The realm will accept it more readily if every great house has signed it. And — Your Graces — let it be known that the new law explicitly permits queens regnant in their own right going forward. Not only when there is no surviving male heir. Always. The realm has had two queens regnant simultaneously for a year, by your wife's polite legal fiction, and the lords have noticed, and they have not minded. Let us make it formal. The Iron Throne can be held by any qualified Targaryen named by the reigning monarch, regardless of sex. It will save the next generation a great deal of trouble."

Aelya stared at him.

"Howland Reed. You have been waiting to drop this on us for a moon."

"Three moons, Your Grace. I have had the draft language ready for three. I was waiting for the right hour."

Dany laughed, properly, the first real laugh of the evening, and said: "Lord Howland, you are terrible, you have been holding quiet bombs for two years and I love you for it. Bring the draft tomorrow. We will pass it within the moon."

"Yes, Your Grace."

He bowed slightly and refilled his cup with the small contented air of a man who had been waiting seventeen years to remake a kingdom's law of succession and was, at last, allowed to do it.

— The law passed —

The law passed within the moon.

It passed with surprisingly little resistance. Olenna Tyrell — when written to in advance by Aelya as a courtesy — had read the draft, written back within a day, and said: Your Graces, I have been waiting for this law for sixty years. Sign it. Sign it with both of your seals on the same parchment, and let me sign as a witness, and let Lady Sansa sign as a witness, and let the Dornish sign without anyone having to ask, because Dorne has had this law for three centuries and is going to be insufferable about it, and let the realm at last grow up. — O.

The Dornish had indeed signed without being asked. Doran Martell, who was old now and increasingly tired but whose mind was as steady as it had ever been, had written: Cousin. Welcome to the law Dorne wrote. I told you it was a good one. — D.

Sansa had signed as a witness. So had Olenna. So had Cersei Lannister, on her own quiet request, from Darry — a small surprise, that one, but Aelya had granted it without hesitation, and Cersei's signature was, on the parchment, in a careful even hand that looked like the hand of a woman who had rebuilt herself with great care over the past year and who had wanted, for once, her name on a thing that fixed something. Aelya had been moved, when she had seen it. She had kept the parchment.

Jon had signed as one of the named alternates.

So had Sansa, and Bran (with great reluctance, because Bran did not want to be on any rolls, but he had agreed to be on this one because his sister had asked), and Edd Tollett (whom Mormont had, when written to, released from his Watch vows under the Crown's pardon clause with a small approving note that said aye, Your Grace, Edd's a good man and the Watch can spare him; he had a face for ruling all along, he was just too miserable about it to mention; Edd had ridden down to King's Landing the next moon and had taken his place quietly on the Crown's roll with the same dolorous calm he had brought to every prior duty of his life). Tommen would be added in five years, when he was of age. The roll was, as Aelya had said, small and good.

The realm received the law calmly. The smallfolk did not particularly notice. The lords noticed and adjusted. The Citadel published a long stuffy commentary on it that nobody read.

Aelya and Dany — having spent six weeks on the law — did not, after it passed, raise the question of children between them again. They had discussed it once, gently, in their bed, the night before the law passed, and Dany had said: my love. We do not need to. The line is fixed by the law. The realm has continuity. We can — we can simply be, now. Yes? You and me. The dragons. The court. Our nephew flying around on his green-and-bronze. Our nieces and nephew at Winterfell. The realm. Us. We have enough. Aelya had said, yes, my love. We have enough.

They had slept.

In the morning the law had passed, and the realm had taken its small new shape, and life had moved on.

— Late summer, the high terrace, Dragonstone —

In the eighth moon of spring — which had become, by then, the first moon of summer — Aelya and Dany rode down to Dragonstone for two weeks of rest.

They had not been to Dragonstone in over a year. The court, with Tyrion and Missandei and Howland holding the seats, could spare them. The keep at Dragonstone had been kept up by a small loyal household. The Dragon Yard was as they had left it. All six dragons came up onto it in the first afternoon and arranged themselves in their old hierarchy — Morghon at the centre, Drogon south, Rhaegal central platform (with Sōvegon now, who had grown closer to him in their time on Dragonstone), Viserion drifting, Ēdrugon at Aelya's bench by the parapet — and Aelya and Dany sat on the bench with cups of cool wine and watched them.

"My love."

"Yes."

"Do you remember the first day."

"Which first day?"

"The first day we sat on this terrace. The three of us — you, me, and Arianne. After the morning at the Water Gardens. You were teasing me about looking at her cousins."

Aelya laughed. "I remember. You were appalling."

"I was observing."

"You were observing."

"And we sat here, and you pointed at the stones, and you said one day there will be six of them up here. Do you remember? You said it as though you were planning a small dinner party."

"I do remember."

"And here we are."

"Here we are."

Morghon, in the middle of the terrace, sighed enormously. He had, in the past year, grown again. He was now larger than the great hall of Winterfell, in body length, and his folded wings, when they spread, cast a shadow Aelya could see from a mile off. He was — by every maester's measure — within a few years of being the largest dragon since Balerion the Black Dread, and on track to surpass him. He was also, still, the laziest dragon in the realm. He had spent the past hour on the warm flagstones of the central terrace, occasionally cracking one yellow eye open to check that everyone was where he had left them, and sleeping again. He had eaten an entire cow at lunch. He had complained, in a small rumbling chuff, about the absence of a second cow.

Drogon, on the south wedge, was still the second-largest. Drogon had calmed considerably in the past year. The brief adolescent attitude problem of his fourth year had passed; Drogon at five was a steady disciplined dragon with a settled relationship with Dany and a careful respect for Morghon. He flew well. He hunted well. He was, by all reports, loyal in a way Targaryen dragons had not always been; he had, in the war, sat beside Dany at the river for nineteen days and had not left her side once. He was, Aelya thought, the dragon her sister had always deserved.

Rhaegal had become Jon's. Rhaegal lived on Dragonstone now, with Sōvegon, and Jon flew him whenever Jon was in the south. Rhaegal had developed, in the past year, a thoughtful streak that the maesters had begun making careful notes about — he watched things. He learned things. He had once, by all reports, opened a stable door with his nose to get at a bag of feed, which had alarmed everyone and which had become, in Tyrion's running history of the dragons, a small section heading: Rhaegal Begins Solving Problems.

Sōvegon was the same Sōvegon — fast, restless, vain, beautiful. She had bonded loosely with one of the younger Dragonstone handlers and would carry him on short flights, but she was, in essence, her own dragon, and had been since hatching, and Aelya had decided long ago that Sōvegon would be free or be no one's, and the decision had served her well. Sōvegon brought back fish from the bay sometimes and dropped them in the Dragon Yard as gifts. The household had stopped finding this charming after the third pile, but they had, on Aelya's instruction, learned to remove the fish gracefully.

Viserion was the most social. Viserion bonded with everyone. Viserion followed the household around the keep. Viserion had, the previous summer, taken to landing on the back of a particular elderly fishing-boat in the harbour and accompanying it to its fishing-grounds, and had become, against everyone's expectations, a kind of patron of a small Dragonstone fishing co-operative whose nets had improved markedly in the past year, on the grounds that fish near a cream-and-gold dragon tended to come to the surface in panic and could be netted more easily. The fishermen had named the boat the Viserion and had presented Dany, the previous autumn, with a very small ceremonial keg of pickled herring as thanks. Dany had eaten the herring herself and had pronounced it excellent.

Ēdrugon was the same Ēdrugon — Aelya's particular dragon, the one who slept on the bench by her hearth, the one who had been around her throat as a hatchling and now lay along the parapet beside her with his great horned head on his forepaws, watching the sea. He had grown into a long elegant black-and-red dragon of moderate size with a thoughtful disposition, and he was, of all the dragons, the one Aelya could speak to most easily; he had picked up some thirty High Valyrian command words and responded to them with the patient attention of a deeply attached cat.

Six dragons on the terrace, in the warm summer afternoon, with the sea glittering below.

Two queens on the bench.

A realm at peace.

Dany leaned her shoulder against Aelya's.

"Sun and shadow," she murmured.

"Sun and shadow."

"My love."

"Yes."

"I think this is the best afternoon I have ever had."

Aelya thought about it.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I think it is."

They sat on the bench for a long while, with their cups in their hands and their fingers laced together between them, and Morghon snored, and the sea ran on, and the realm — which had been bracing itself for ruin since before they had been born — discovered, around them, that it had been wrong about the future, and had, in fact, been ruled, for a year and a season, by the right hands.

The afternoon held.

The afternoon — Aelya allowed herself to know — would hold for many more.

She had stopped counting them at last.