The king staggered in, supported by the Kingsguard, his face ashen and his breathing ragged.
His wife, Queen Alicent, followed close behind, her green gown immaculate.
The moment the queen's gaze fell on the scene, her breath caught. Blood streaked Aemond's face, and a dagger was lodged in Jacaerys's eye. She raised a hand to her mouth, stifling her shock.
"By the Seven..." Viserys stared at the sight before him and swayed. "This... What is..."
"Your Majesty!" Rhaenyra turned, still holding her unconscious eldest son. Tears streamed down her face. "Look! Look what your good son has done!"
"He tried to murder my eldest! He drove a dagger through his eye!"
"No, it wasn't like that!" Alicent rushed forward, putting herself between Aemond and the accusing stares.
"Look at Aemond's face!"
"He's injured too! It must have been an accident!"
"An accident?" Daemon's cold laugh echoed off the stone walls. "Your Grace, how many coincidences does it take for a dagger to end up in a child's eye socket?"
"The children were fighting. Anything could have happened!" Alicent's voice turned shrill.
"They must have struck first!"
"They cut Aemond's face! Look, Your Majesty!"
"Lucerys drew the dagger. He accidentally wounded his own brother," Aemond repeated calmly, his violet eyes untroubled.
"That's a lie! I didn't!" Lucerys immediately shouted.
"You did."
"I saw Aemond stab Jacaerys too," the other children chimed in, all talking over one another.
Chaos surged through the Dragonpit like a rising tide.
"Enough!" Viserys's roar cut through the din.
The king's gaze shifted painfully between his second son, his face streaming with blood, and his eldest grandson, barely breathing.
His kingdom, the peace he had worked so hard to maintain, his family, already as fragile as thin ice—all shattered in that moment.
"First... First, save the children," he finally managed, his voice weak. "Maester! Where's the maester?"
The maester and his assistants hurried forward, all drawing sharp breaths at the sight of the injury.
They padded the area around the dagger with cloth and carefully lifted Jacaerys.
The unconscious boy no longer screamed. Only broken moans escaped him, and his body occasionally convulsed.
Each convulsion drained more color from Rhaenyra's face.
Once Jacaerys had been carried away, all that remained on the stone floor was a pool of blood, dark red and nearly black, and a few drops of a clearer, stickier liquid.
Silence fell over the Dragonpit.
Every eye was fixed on Aemond.
Alicent tried to shield her son more closely, but Aemond gently pushed her arm aside and stepped forward.
He stared at the pool of blood, met Rhaenyra's hollow, hateful gaze and Daemon's amused scrutiny, then finally looked at his father, Viserys, whose face was caught between grief, anger, and profound helplessness.
"Father, it wasn't me," Aemond said clearly and firmly. "It was Lucerys..."
"All five children identified you! And you still deny it!" Viserys declared, striking him across the face.
"Would all five children join together to frame you?"
"You're the oldest one here!"
"Smack!"
Aemond didn't flinch. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
"You'd rather believe them... than your own son?" He raised his head and looked straight at his father.
Viserys looked into his defiant son's eyes, where a flame still burned.
For one moment, doubt slithered into his heart like a viper. Could Aemond really have been framed?
"Your Majesty! You would believe these outsiders rather than your own flesh and blood?" Queen Alicent's face flared with anger when she saw him strike his own son.
"Queen Alicent, do mind your words. I am the king's eldest daughter," Rhaenyra replied coldly.
"My sons also have Targaryen blood, and a claim to the Iron Throne."
"I am the king's own brother. Are my daughters outsiders in the queen's eyes, then?" Prince Daemon said indifferently. "Besides, all five children have given the same account and accused Aemond, Your Majesty."
Aemond knew perfectly well that, on Viserys's scales, he had never mattered even a tenth as much as his elder sister, Rhaenyra.
His resentful violet eyes swept over Lucerys. The boy lowered his head, not daring to meet his gaze.
The other children who had lied also looked away.
"Smack!"
Another slap landed.
Viserys was enraged by the hatred in Aemond's eyes, the hatred that refused to die.
"After all this, you still dare threaten them!"
"Aemond! Don't..." Alicent fell to her knees and clung tightly to her son. "Your Majesty, if you must strike someone, strike me!" The queen raised her tear-streaked face.
"You... You..." Viserys looked at the pleading queen, his raised hand frozen in midair. Already frail, he couldn't withstand one shock after another. His body went limp, and he nearly fainted.
"Your Majesty!" The Kingsguard hurried forward.
Rhaenyra shot Aemond one last hateful look. She had no time for anything else now. Jae's life hung in the balance, and she had to hurry to his side.
Daemon watched Aemond, still standing straight despite his mother's tight embrace. He lifted a hand and lightly patted his own cheek, an unmistakable provocation.
He admired the boy's grit, but unfortunately...
He would always stand with Rhaenyra.
They were destined to be on opposite sides.
And this time, the Greens would have to pay for what had happened.
Daemon led the children away.
Just then, heavy, measured footsteps sounded from the other end of the passage. Leather boots and a metal-tipped cane struck the stone floor in turn, each beat like a knock against the heart.
A tall, imposing figure appeared at the entrance to the Dragonpit, blocking some of the flickering torchlight.
Lord Corlys Velaryon had arrived.
He hadn't rushed over in haste. He was fully dressed, wearing a dark blue velvet coat embroidered with a silver Seahorse Sigil, his white hair perfectly in place.
Every wrinkle on his face looked carved by the sea wind, his expression as hard and cold as a reef.
Corlys didn't immediately look at the grandchildren who were leaving, nor at Jacaerys being carried away.
Though whispers circulated among the nobles of the Seven Kingdoms that Rhaenyra's three sons were bastards fathered by a Stron, Jacaerys was still his eldest grandson in name, a bond between House Velaryon and the Iron Throne.
His keen gray-blue eyes, sharp as an eagle's, first swept over the appalling blood and mucus on the ground.
Corlys's gaze briefly met Daemon's as the prince prepared to leave.
Some things needed no words between the two men.
They were both of the Blacks, the staunchest supporters of Princess Rhaenyra.
The amusement at the corner of Daemon's mouth deepened, while Corlys's face remained as still and unreadable as the sea before a storm.
The Kingsguard had just helped the unsteady king to his feet. Queen Alicent was still weeping, and the scene was a mess.
Corlys's steady voice cut through it like a blade.
"Your Majesty."
Viserys looked at him in anguish. "Corlys... You saw it all..."
"I saw the heir of House Velaryon suffer an injury that cannot be undone."
Corlys's voice was not loud, yet the Dragonpit fell silent at once. "I also saw that the perpetrator is still here."
Alicent jerked her head up. "Lord Corlys! It was an accident! The children were fighting and one of them lost control... Lucerys accidentally hurt his brother, Jacaerys."
"Your Grace," Corlys said with a slight, perfectly courteous nod, though his tone allowed no argument, "when a weapon is driven into a prince's eye socket, it has gone far beyond childish roughhousing."
"This was an act of violence. A grave assault on the future of the kingdom, on Tidepool Island, and on the king's bloodline."
He took a slow step forward, his cane tapping the ground. "Princess Rhaenyra is my daughter-in-law, and Jacaerys Velaryon is my eldest grandson."
"Targaryen and Velaryon blood runs through his veins, and he bears the name of the sea."
"To harm him is to openly defy Tidepool Island, the entire Velaryon fleet, and the Kingdom Navy."
"Your Majesty," he said, turning to the tottering Viserys, "this happened on Tidepool Island, beneath a Velaryon roof."
"As lord of this place and head of the injured family, I now demand—and must be involved in—a full investigation and a just trial."
"The honor of House Velaryon, and even the stability of the kingdom, depend on it."
He didn't explicitly demand that Aemond pay with his life or suffer punishment, but the words "a just trial" carried immense weight.
Queen Alicent's face went as white as paper.
As a daughter of House Hightower, she understood all too well: this tragedy had escalated from a family dispute into a political storm between the two most powerful vassal houses beneath the Iron Throne.
Even if her son Aemond was telling the truth, every other child present said he had done it.
As far as witnesses went, her side had already lost...
In his mother's arms, Aemond understood what this meant.
He regarded the old man known as the "Sea Snake" with cool eyes.
The old man hadn't come to mourn. He'd come to collect.
He wanted to turn the price of this one eye into something more: a stronger alliance, more favorable promises, and a greater voice in the future king's court.
After speaking, Corlys gave the king another slight bow, as though he had said nothing more than what duty required.
Then he stopped looking at Aemond and Alicent, turned, and strode steadily in the direction Rhaenyra had gone.
After he left, the weight of unbearable grief, anger, and naked political coercion finally overwhelmed King Viserys, and he fainted completely.
"Your Majesty!" cries rang out once more.
In the Dragonpit, only Alicent, her maidservant, and Aemond remained.
The queen held her son tightly, feeling not only his trembling but also the despair of someone plunging into an abyss.
Aemond let his mother hold him as memories surged through his mind. In the original timeline, he had lost his eye, and his mother had gone mad with a knife in her hand, while the Greens rallied behind him more firmly than ever.
The Blacks had left with a flourish, in exchange for no longer pursuing his claim to Vhagar.
In all of this, his father Viserys's favoritism toward Rhaenyra had been decisive.
But now, Jacaerys had lost an eye.
The result would be a hatred between him and his elder sister Rhaenyra that would never die.
It would give House Velaryon the perfect pretext to make its move.
And he, Aemond Targaryen, only twelve years old, would be branded with the shame of attempted kinslaying, his reputation destroyed throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
Alicent turned and cupped his face in her hands. Her fingers were cold and trembling slightly.
"Does it hurt, my child... What have they done to you..." Her voice was breaking, tears welling in her eyes.
Aemond didn't answer.
He looked at his mother's anxious face and sighed silently in his heart.
How many calamities had his father Viserys, always trying to mend every rift, brought upon House Targaryen?
Giving dragons to the Velaryons had fed their ambition.
Lusting after Alicent's youth, he had married his daughter's friend, driving the former friends apart.
He had also let House Hightower glimpse a path to the Iron Throne.
The Great Council had established male-preference succession years ago, and Viserys himself had ascended the throne by that very principle.
Yet the king now insisted on naming his eldest daughter Rhaenyra as Crown Prince, defying the Great Council's decision.
He had planted the seeds of civil war.
Every act of kindness and every compromise from Viserys had pushed all of House Targaryen toward the abyss.
And this time, too, his father's favoritism had changed nothing.
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