The ship flew the crowned stag of House Baratheon, and she came into the harbor of Dragonstone at noon on a bright cold day.

Aelya watched her from the high walk of the seaward wall with Ēdrugon coiled warm around her shoulders, hidden beneath the heavy grey cloak she had taken to wearing. The dragon was six weeks old and already the length of a large cat, and he had taken to her in a way that unsettled the maester and delighted Dany — he would not be separated from her for more than a few hours, and when he was displeased he hummed, low in his throat, a sound like a kettle about to boil.

He was humming now.

"I know," Aelya murmured, lifting a gloved hand to stroke under his jaw. "I see them. Be still, my love. Not yet."

The envoy was Ser Arryk Connington — a cousin, Aelya remembered dimly, of the exiled Griff who would one day matter; but this Connington was a Baratheon loyalist, a cautious man of middle years who had been chosen because he was not famous enough to provoke and not young enough to be rash. He came ashore with twenty men-at-arms, which was polite, and no maester, which was not.

Aelya received him in the great hall in a gown of plain black wool, her hair unbound, no crown. She had thought a great deal about the staging. A crown would have been a provocation. Bare silver hair was a fact.

Dany stood at her right hand. The old castellan at her left. Behind them, ranged along the walls, stood forty of Dragonstone's garrison in polished mail — every man Aelya had been able to arm, and every man whose loyalty she had secured over the past weeks through a combination of High Valyrian oaths, solid coin, and the careful showing of a certain green-and-bronze dragonet who was, at that moment, asleep under a table in the kitchens and snoring loud enough to be heard in the pantry.

Ser Arryk bowed. Not deeply. But he bowed.

"My ladies," he said. "I come in the king's name."

"You are welcome in ours," Aelya said. "Sit. Drink. Eat. And then we shall speak of what your king wants."

He wanted, it transpired, rather a lot.

He wanted their persons, for transport to King's Landing, where His Grace would consider their disposition. He wanted the garrison of Dragonstone to stand down. He wanted the castellan relieved and a new one installed. He wanted, in short, everything — delivered politely, over wine, with the faintly apologetic air of a man who knew he was asking the impossible and had been sent anyway.

Aelya let him finish. She drank her wine. She set the cup down.

"No," she said.

Ser Arryk blinked.

"No to which part, my lady?"

"All of it. We are not going to King's Landing. The garrison is not standing down. The castellan is not being relieved. You will take ship at dawn, Ser Arryk, and you will carry a letter from me to your king, and you will tell him what you have seen here."

"And what have I seen here, my lady?"

Aelya smiled at him.

She reached up and pulled back the collar of her gown — just at the throat, just enough — and Ēdrugon lifted his long black-and-red head from the hollow of her shoulder and looked at Ser Arryk Connington with eyes like coals in a forge, and hummed.

Ser Arryk's wine cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

"A dragon," he said. Very quietly.

"One of six," Aelya said. "I would not trouble His Grace with the others. One is sufficient, I think, for his imagination to work with."

The hall was very still. Forty men-at-arms stood motionless along the walls. Dany, beside her, did not move a muscle — but Aelya could feel her sister's hand find the small of her back under the cloak, steady and warm.

Ser Arryk lowered his cup.

He was, Aelya saw with some respect, not a stupid man. He did not shout. He did not reach for his sword. He looked at the dragon for a long moment, and then he looked at Aelya, and then he looked — for longer — at Daenerys, who stood silver and still at her sister's side like a second flame.

"My lady," he said at last. "May I ask a question. Not as the king's envoy. As a man."

"You may."

"Do you intend war?"

Aelya considered this honestly.

"Not today," she said. "Not this year. I have six dragons the size of cats, Ser Arryk. I am not a fool. But tell your king this, and tell him plainly: we are the last of our line, my sister and I, and we have come home, and we will not be moved. If he leaves us in peace upon this rock, we shall not trouble his throne. If he sends swords against us — any swords, Ser, in any number — we shall burn them in the sea, and then we shall come for him. And by the time we come for him, the dragons will not be the size of cats."

Ser Arryk inclined his head.

"I shall convey the message," he said. "Word for word, if you wish it written down."

"I wish it written down."

He sailed at dawn with the letter sealed in red wax and the careful, thoughtful look of a man who was going to spend the whole voyage back deciding how much of what he had seen to actually tell his king.

Aelya watched his ship out of the harbor from the same high walk. Dany came up beside her in a fur-lined cloak, cheeks pink with the cold, Drogon already grown heavy on her shoulder.

"He won't tell Robert," Dany said.

"No. Not all of it."

"Why not?"

"Because he is a clever man, and he has just realized that there is a new power in the world, and clever men do not rush to tell mad kings about new powers. He will tell Jon Arryn. Arryn will tell no one. They will watch us, Dany. For a year. Perhaps two. And in that year —"

"In that year we go east," Dany said.

Aelya turned and looked at her sister.

"You have been thinking."

"I have been thinking. The dragons must grow. We must have men. Real men, Aelya, not forty guards and a drunk castellan." Dany's jaw set. "I have dreamed a city of brass where children are sold. I think we should go and put it to the torch."

Aelya stared at her.

"You dreamed it."

"Perhaps it runs in the blood after all," Dany said, and smiled — a small, fierce, entirely new smile — and took her sister's hand.