Gods and Men

P R O L O G U E

It was a perfectly calm night in Kings Landing, not a single breeze disturbing the trees nor a drop of rain to be seen. The clouds seemed to have disappeared, the bright moon casting a pale glow on the world beneath it.

Screams echoed through the dark halls of the Red Keep as Rhaenyra pushed down with all her might, determined to birth her first child. Laenor cried out with her, his free hand attempting to loosen her vice grip on his fingers but to no avail. 

"A girl, Princess!" Rhaenyra's midwife held up her daughter, smiling proudly at her. Rhaenyra wept in relief knowing that her first child had come into the world. Laenor wept tears of joy as he kissed Rhaenyra's sweaty brow, brushing a matted lock of hair out of her face.

"I want to hold her." Rhaenyra held her arms out for her child, and the midwife gently placed her in her arms. "Shh, it's alright." She soothed the crying baby, holding her close to her chest. 

"She's perfect. Absolutely perfect." Laenor shook his head in disbelief. "A perfect woman made a perfect child."

Rhaenyra peered down at her daughter's face and her heart swelled with so much love she thought it would burst. She missed her mother more than anything at that moment, and she wondered what she would have said about the situation.

"Have you thought about a name at all?" The midwife asked. Rhaenyra looked to the midwife and shook her head.

"There's so many to choose from, what if I choose wrong?" She asked.

"I like Laenora," Laenor suggested. 

"Absolutely not." Rhaenyra looked at her daughter's face; Laenora did not suit her, and she thought it was rather egotistical to name the firstborn child after her own father. Her mind raced with names until she decided to just pick one.

"Elaena." Rhaenyra nodded to herself proudly. "Her name is Elaena Velaryon."

"Elaena. I love it." Laenor beamed at his daughter, Elaena, and gently kissed her head. "Me, a father. Who would have guessed?" He was giddy with excitement. 

"Certainly not your mother." Rhaenyra laughed with her husband. "She looks fit to be the future Queen."

"She will be." He assured her. 

Ser Harwin Strong was posted outside the door, smiling to himself in the darkness as he heard his daughter cry from within. He was a father finally and nothing could take that victory away from him. 

Elaena Velaryon had been a sickly babe; Maesters of all different backgrounds and experiences hovering over her crib day and night trying to save the life of Rhaenyra's heir. Surgeons from Essos had even made the journey from across the Narrow Sea to try and tend to her but to no avail. Rhaenyra had refused to leave her daughter's side, praying to every God above for her survival. 

The egg that had been placed in her cradle had never hatched, and the Valyrian worshippers that resided in the Dragonpit felt that the Princess would soon follow her egg into death. Defeated, Rhaenyra mounted Syrax with little Elaena in her arms and took to Dragonstone alongside her husband, determined to show her daughter their ancestral home before she left this world. 

Rhaenyra stood with her husband on the cold beach, the water lapping at their shoes as they showed the castle in all its glory to the babe in their arms. It was a cold, damp day and Rhaenyra worried that the end was near, that the Stranger would soon walk her daughter into the release of death.

Instead, a shriek tore through the sky and a shadow was cast over them. A dragon landed several paces away, covered in horns that looked sharp as knives and scales as black as night. He threw his massive head back into the air and spewed dark flames before looking down at the frightened couple clutching their only child and did the one thing neither of them had expected; he bowed his head to peer at the sickly, thin babe and let out a huff of hot air and a sound that could only be described as approval. The Cannibal had chosen his first and only rider.