Chapter Text
Princess Helena gripped the reins of Dreamfyre’s saddle tightly as she approached her destination, her eyes squinting against the stinging salt spray. The wind howled around her, a mournful wail that seemed to echo the cries she still heard in her dreams. The screams of her best friend Amberle and the wet thud of Jaehaerys’ small body hitting the stone floor. She shook her head, forcing the memories away, but they clung to her like damp fog. The Iron Islands loomed ahead, jagged and gray against the restless sea, a place as foreign to her as the depths of her own mind.
She had never been to the Iron Islands, nor did she ever think she’d need to. Ser Criston had always told Helena and her brothers that the Isles were a strange and dangerous place. Their people, the Ironborn, kept neither the Old Gods nor the Seven and despised all honest toil. Before the Conquerors burnt Harren the Black and all his sons at Harrenhal, the Ironmen had ruled as far east as the Trident. They ravaged the western shores—raping, slaving, and putting villages to the torch. It was said that their songs of blood and torment still rang throughout all the islands. They were violent, backwater pirates masquerading as nobles, and their current ruler, Dalton Greyjoy, was said to have many of the same unsavory qualities as his forebears.
Helena did not want to come here. She did not want to leave her life of relative comfort behind, but the treachery and barbarism of the Blacks had left her family with little choice. Helena knew that this was the necessary course, but the weight of that necessity pressed down on her like a yoke. She would never forget the sound of Amberle’s screams echoing through the Red Keep on that dreadful night, nor the sight of little Jaehaerys’ headless body sprawled across the nursery floor, his blood pooling around the toy dragon she’d gifted him on his fourth nameday. The boy took it with him everywhere, clutching it so tightly as if someone would steal it. The memory clawed at her, sharp and unrelenting. She blamed herself—her visions had warned her, hadn’t they? Yet she hadn’t understood them in time.
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**Flashback: The Night of Blood and Cheese**
The vision had come to her two nights before the horror, fragmented and fleeting as all her dreams were. She’d seen a rat scurrying through shadows, its eyes glinting red in the torchlight. She’d heard a child’s laughter turn to a scream, cut off abruptly. A blade flashed, and blood sprayed across a tapestry of a golden dragon. She’d woken drenched in sweat, her heart hammering, but the meaning had eluded her. She’d told no one—not Aegon, not her mother, not even Amberle. What use was a warning she couldn’t decipher?
Then it happened. She’d been in her chambers, brushing her hair, when the screams began. She’d run toward the sound, her bare feet slapping against the cold stone, only to find the nursery door ajar. Amberle was on her knees, clutching Jaehaerys’ lifeless form, her wails piercing the air. The assassins were gone, vanished into the night like the rats of her dream. Helena had fallen to her knees beside her friend, her hands trembling as she reached for the boy’s small, cold fingers. His head was gone—severed clean by a butcher’s stroke. The blood had soaked through the rug, staining her gown as she knelt there, useless.
“Why couldn’t I stop it?” she’d whispered later, alone in her chambers, her voice breaking. One of the cutthroats was a rat catcher. She’d seen the rats, clawing at her mind with malicious intent, invading her every thought. Why couldn’t she piece it together? The guilt was a living thing inside her, gnawing at her bones. She’d sworn to Aegon that she would make Daemon and Rhaenyra answer for Jaehaerys. She would do it with fire and blood, even if she had to sacrifice her soul to accomplish it.
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Now, astride Dreamfyre, the salt wind biting at her cheeks, Helena steeled herself for the task ahead. Her mission was clear: secure a marriage pact with Dalton Greyjoy, the man who ruled these rocky shores, and in doing so, grant her brother access to Greyjoy’s fleet of ships. The Sea Snake’s blockade had proven a massive thorn in the crown’s side, strangling their supply lines and isolating King’s Landing from the western coast. They needed a strong navy to combat it, and the Clubfoot, Larys Strong, had counseled that Dalton Greyjoy had amassed a fleet that could rival Redwyne and Driftmark.
Helena was skeptical. House Greyjoy had never before possessed such a weapon, preferring lightning strikes and shore raids to grand naval campaigns. Yet her grandsire, Otto Hightower, had insisted. “The Red Kraken’s ships are our only hope,” he’d said, his voice firm despite the tremor in his hands. “The ironborn may be an unsavory bunch, but we need them to break Corlys Velaryon’s grip on the sea.” Despite her mother’s pleas for a more suitable and trustworthy alliance, Helena had mounted Dreamfyre and departed Kings Landing all the same, leaving the familiar spires of the Red Keep behind.
It was a strategic move, to be sure. The kind that has been so consistent with her grandsire’s usual schemes, but it was also risky. The Greyjoys and the Ironborn weren’t known for their willingness to cooperate with the crown. They prided themselves on their defiance and they governed themselves in all but name. Sending just enough taxes to Kings Landing so as not to be bothered. There was also the issue of Lord Dalton himself. Still only a young man—barely past twenty, but he had a fearsome reputation that begun spreading throughout the realm like wildfire. Dalton was said to have rowed at age five and reaved at ten, sailing with his uncle to plunder the pirate towns of the Basilisk Isles. By fourteen, Dalton had sailed as far as Old Ghis and fought in a dozen actions. He claimed a Valyrian steel longsword, which he named Nightfall, off a dead corsair. At five and ten, while fighting in the Stepstones as a sellsail, Dalton avenged his uncle after watching his death. His men began calling him the Red Kraken after he emerged from the fight drenched in blood from more than a dozen wounds, laughing as he cut down his foes. Later in the same year, Dalton returned to the Iron Islands to claim the Seastone Chair after hearing of his father's death. These reports had reached the ears of Larys and soon to her grandsire. If there was any truth to them, Greyjoy would be a worthy ally; providing her could be managed. He was said to be as daring and bloodthirsty as the iron kings of old and the tales of his endeavors impressed even Helena, but it was the other parts to him that gave her pause. Dalton was said to have claimed four salt wives. Helena recoiled at the very words—salt wives.
Such a pretty Ironborn phrase, lilting and almost romantic, the kind of term men might murmur over ale while the longships rocked at anchor. A euphemism wrapped in poetry, designed to soften the truth until it sounded like something a woman might choose. But Helena knew better
Those women were not wives. They were not free to rise and fall with the tide, nor to crash where they wanted. They were slaves—captured, broken, and claimed. Thralls to be used for whatever pleasure their captors saw fit: a warm body on a cold deck, a soft mouth when the ale ran dry, or a convenient vessel for rage and lust when the reaving went poorly. Salt wives. The term made her stomach turn. It dressed brutality in silk and called it beauty.
And every time she heard it, Helena’s blood burned hotter with the same quiet, furious vow: she would never let them turn her into one and she would do away with such indignities when she became the lady of Pyke. The Red Kraken is said to only love three things: the sea, his sword, and women. Helena had been sent to the Isles to capitalize on that last weakness and she would make the most of her task.
Her maidenhead for a fleet. The thought was demeaning, a bitter pill that lodged in her throat. Hers was the blood of the dragon, the legacy of Old Valyria coursing through her veins. She was meant for more than being a broodmare for a kingdom of savages. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve cursed her grandsire to the Seven Hells for condemning her to this fate. She would’ve flown off with Amberle and Dreamfyre to live out her days somewhere in the Free Cities—perhaps Lys, with its perfumed air and silken pleasures—never to be burdened with the indignities of her station. Alas, these weren’t normal circumstances.
Aegon and Aemond had done their duty for the good of the realm. Why should she be any different? Aegon had wed Amberle despite wanting naught but the pleasure of drinking and fucking himself into an early grave, and Aemond was betrothed to one of Lord Borros Baratheon’s daughters, a match that secured the loyalty of the Stormlands. Helena had made a promise—to Aegon, to her mother, to herself. She would do this. She would do it to protect her family from her treasonous half-sister and her psychotic uncle. She would do it in the name of her innocent nephew, little Jaehaerys, and for her dear friend, Amberle. She would do it for the good of the realm.
But it wasn’t just duty driving her now. It was the dreams—the relentless, maddening dreams that had plagued her since Jaehaerys’ death. They came unbidden, slipping into her mind like thieves in the night, and she could no more control them than she could command the tides.
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**The Vision: Red and Heathens**
The first time it happened, she’d been asleep in her chambers, the fire burned low in the hearth. The dream began as they always did—hazy, disjointed, a kaleidoscope of images she couldn’t piece together. She saw a young man, his face obscured, standing alone on a rocky shore. He was drenched in red, blood streaming from wounds she couldn’t see, pooling at his feet in the black sand. Around him stood figures cloaked in shadow—heathens, she thought, though she couldn’t say why. Their voices were a low, guttural chant, rising and falling like the waves. Then the sea itself churned, and from its depths rose gargantuan, squid-like creatures, their tentacles writhing like serpents, their eyes glowing an unearthly green. They loomed over the faceless man, and Helena felt a surge of dread so powerful it woke her, gasping, her shift soaked with sweat.
The vision returned night after night, each time sharper, more insistent. The man never spoke, his face never revealed itself, but the blood and the squid-things haunted her waking hours. She’d tried to dismiss them as nightmares born of grief, but deep down, she knew better. She was a dreamer, like the tales of Daenys the Dreamer who’d foreseen the Doom of Valyria. Yet unlike Daenys, Helena’s gift—if it could be called that—was a fractured, unwieldy thing. She saw, but she did not understand. Not until it was too late.
Was this faceless man Dalton Greyjoy? Was the blood his own, or that of his enemies? Were the heathens his Ironborn, and the squid-creatures a symbol of his house? She couldn’t be sure, but the dreams felt like a warning—or a call. After Blood and Cheese, she’d vowed never to ignore her visions again, no matter how cryptic. She would act on them, even if it meant flying into the jaws of the Kraken himself.