#midqueenally

‘Like father, like son it seems,’ she teased, ‘howling at the moon.’

Only when Aemon’s crying had faded to sparse whimpers did her husband reply. ‘What’s this, Dany?’

‘That’s what you wolves do, isn’t it? Howl at the moon, hunt in the snow, sniff each other’s … hindquarters.’

Jon snorted where once he would have bristled, ‘Only at family reunions.’

Dany chuckled, rooting around in the cot for something for Aemon to chew. He was teething, and the canines that were coming through were already sharp as a Stark’s. The grip on the lion teething toy she gave him was supernaturally strong. Despite inheriting the star-bright hair of the Targaryens, Dany’s blue-green eyes, the wolfblood was strongest in him.

Jon seemed to map the path of her thoughts. ‘He’s a dragon too.’

‘In name only.’

For the other great superhero families, Stark and Tully, Lannister and Tyrell, power was a shared bond, but the blood of the dragon was something to bear alone, only kindling in the womb of a Targaryen mother after the previous Dragon died. It had been a lonely path to master her flames, her flight, poring over her long-dead brother Rhaegar’s notes for clues on how to control her gifts. But Rhaegar had died young with his observations incomplete, awaiting a revision that never came.

‘It’s not just about the powers,’ Jon insisted. ‘Otherwise, what would I be?’

Dany was feeling stubborn tonight. ‘Still a Stark. You have the wolfblood.’

Raising his eyebrows, Jon summoned a perfect sphere of ice and balanced it on the tip of his finger. He rarely acknowledged it, this strange twist to his Stark heritage: an unknown mother and ice powers.

Aemon gurgled in delight, grabbing at sphere with his tiny fingers. It was too cold for him, and he cried out when the shock of it went through his arm.

‘Yes, shiny, but cold bad.’ Jon passed the baby to Dany, whose skin was always warm.

‘I suppose he prefers the heat,’ she allowed, watching Aemon curl into her with a cheek-aching smile.

‘So do I,’ Jon’s low rumble was behind her, then tucked into her neck. Wrapping his arms around his family, he kissed up her face, paying special attention to the black scales that emerged at her temples whenever she stoked her inner fire. ‘How couldn’t I?’

Dany sagged back into him, admitting to herself that she preferred how fresh and cool he always felt. ‘You know, it seems pretty quiet out tonight. After we put Aemon back to sleep, we could…’ She reached back and slid a meaningful hand down her husband’s thigh.

‘Aye, we definitely could…’

The warning blare of their phone cut him off immediately, not the normal handset she kept for social calls and dentist appointments, but the one with their police liaison waiting on the other end, ready to disclose which of Dany’s enemies had scuttled out of the shadows this time.

‘Of course,’ she said, kissing Aemon on the top of his curly head before lowering him back into his cot.

‘Bet it’s the Hero Flayer.’ Jon shrugged out of his jumper, slipped out of his jeans. ‘Only he would be enough of an arse to start something on Christmas Eve.’

‘Don’t validate that stupid name.’

‘What should I call him then? Pinkie? Creeper? Git we should have pegged as a murderous psychopath from the first day of Hero School?’

‘The last one,’ Dany murmured as she picked up their work phone. Jon searched the room for his personal mobile, and an eyeful of the back of him in his skintight super-suit made her miss Missandei’s first words.

‘Sorry, Missie. Dragon Queen is ready to go. White Wolf is also on standby. How can we help?’

Missandei’s voice was oddly terse. ‘We have a hostage situation at the Wall.’

‘The Wall? That’s Stark territory, and very far for us here.’

‘The Starks are there, but the situation requires Team Winged Wolf’s specific talents.’

‘Who is it? The Mountain. Crow’s Eye? … Hero Flayer?’

‘Someone new, unlike anyone we’ve ever seen before. He can summon blizzards wherever he goes. And there's something else, though this has been harder to verify. Something about … corpses … reanimating.’

‘Corpses?’ She tried to match Missie’s sober tone and imagine an opponent formidable enough to summon her so many leagues north. But all vague thoughts of danger dissipated in this warm room, where her family was safe and Jon played with his son’s feet as he made his own phone call.

‘It sounds … fantastical, but there are hundreds of eyewitnesses and almost as many casualties. The number is growing. Dragon Queen, the Starks – in their full capacity as wardens in the North –  have declared a state of emergency. They need your flames. Please, hurry.’

‘Understood, we’re on our way.’ She set the phone down with a heavy click.

Jon approached, reclaiming her attention. ‘Gilly answered. She promised to drag Sam up to our floor in a couple of minutes.’ The look on her face was enough to make him pause. ‘How bad is it?’ he asked.

‘Trouble at the Wall, we need to be quick.’

‘The Wall?’

‘I’ll tell you on the way.’

They donned the rest of their armour with practised efficiency: gloves, boots, masks and, in Dany’s case, a rich, red cape. Sam and Gilly arrived quickly, still in their pyjamas, their own little boy sleeping in his mother’s arms. And knowing that their son was watched, they took the stairs up to the roof.

On the rooftop, despite the tapestry of Christmas lights unfurling far into the distance, she noticed the dark most, the dark and the bitter cold. The idea of undead creatures held a little more power out here.

‘And so do I,’ she reminded herself, letting her flames spread within her, then without. Jon sighed beside her, drawing closer to her heat despite his indifference to the cold. ‘My love, we’re about to face something a little different today. Something in the North is waking the dead. Your family are fighting, but they need us.’

There was no doubt from him, no smirking scepticism. He just stared at her with those dark, wolf-wild eyes and nodded, ice collecting in his palms. ‘All right, let’s go,’ he said.

Dany was and would always be the only dragon in her lifetime. She had grappled with her gifts on her own, spent long, lonely years fighting to suppress them before she could even bring herself to accept, explore and master them. But she had found her match in Jon, the man who never flinched from her flames. The man who could follow her off the edge of rooftops, skating through the sky beside her on rivers of ice. The man who stood with her when Goldcloak searchlights stamped dragons and direwolves across the blackening sky, mask on, claws out, as hungry for the blood of his enemies as she was. And when the fight was over, he was the man who could melt into her arms without hesitation, who would hold the little dragon-wolf they had made together with the gentlest hands. With Jon at her side, she could do anything.

 The last of her fear slipped away. 

The Wall glimmered on the horizon long before they reached it, and the dark, formless mass that churned beneath it, she saw that too. Her rage burned hot. How many lives had already been stolen tonight? How quickly could she end these enslavers of the dead? Could she defeat them all in one night?

As they sped closer, she took a deep breath, running through the plans she and Jon had tossed between them on the flight over, picking the ones that best fit the situation sprawling beneath them. Jon called out to her, catching his siblings roving along the top of the Wall. It was nowhere as tall as it was once claimed to be in hyperbolic, semi-historical textbooks, but it was a great vantage point to slash at the undead citizens that climbed up to kill them. Unfortunately, they were not alone up there. Strange, tall creatures encrusted in ice stalked them along the Wall, taking their time, waiting for the Starks to tire themselves out. 'They’re like the White Walkers of old,’ Jon whispered. ‘I heard stories about them as a child. I thought they were just stories.’

‘Let’s see what fire does to them,’ she said.

‘Give them all the seven hells,’ Jon growled.

She dove towards her goodbrothers and sisters like a silent spear. Jon’s family were giving the Others a wide berth, but an uncontrolled strike could still hit them, burn them, kill them. Still Jon had sent her off with nothing more than a vicious smile, his trust absolute. The knowledge gave her power, precision and just a little spark of joy, despite the bleakness off the night.