Game of Thrones: The Ruler

"What do you mean by complete loyalty to you?" Rhaenys asked after a long silence, her brows furrowing in apparent confusion.

"I mean what I said. Complete loyalty," Jon replied evenly.

"I am already completely loyal to you, my Lord," Melisandre said without hesitation. Her voice carried certainty, almost reverence. "You can command me to do anything, and I will obey without question. I am a mere servant of the Azor Ahai."

Jon's eyes lingered on her as he noted, "We will find out about that in a few moments."

Both women looked at him in confusion. Find out? How? How can one find out if someone is loyal to them or not?

"I still do not understand," Rhaenys said at last, slight frustration edging into her tone. "What do you even mean by complete loyalty? Do you want us to serve you? Be subordinates? Slaves? What do you mean exactly?"

Jon shook his head slowly.

"No. Technically you could call it being a subordinate, but not in the way you think. I want assurance that neither of you will stab me in the back. That is all."

Rhaenys frowned, still unconvinced. Jon leaned back slightly as he explained.

"You would not be my servants. You would be partners of a kind."

He continued, "But you will not live the life of isolation you have clung to until now. That would end. You will have to join the power politics, capture cities and rule them."

Rhaenys did not take capture cities and rule them in the literal sense as she felt in her own thoughts.

She understood one thing clearly about not being able to live her life in isolation any longer. Jon or Aegon was already ruling three cities, and it went without saying that he would try to expand his kingdom even further.

Now that he had a dragon, his task would only become easier. What army in the world had the strength to face a fully grown dragon? Killing such a beast without another dragon was almost entirely dependent on luck. The only known incident was when a scorpion had a lucky hit in the eye of a dragon.

And perhaps Jon could even hatch more dragons in the future.

Though she had lived much of her life in isolation, it was not as if she had never craved revenge. She had craved it, at times, but she had always been helpless. Her only option had been to turn to her uncles. Yet she had refused, unwilling to be made a mere political tool. Would Jon not try to use her in the same way?

The chances, she realized, were almost none. He had no need of it. His own Targaryen blood was enough to make her presence valuable without reducing her to a bargaining chip.

But the matter of loyalty, that she was less sure about.

Despite the strangeness and the awkwardness, she felt around Jon, there was also something else, something she could not explain. A sense of kinship. A sense of familiarity. She felt a wave of comfort in his presence. The very same connection that had drawn her recklessly from Braavos to Meereen.

It had been not been more than four days since she had settled in Jon's manor, and already she felt a strange sense of security.

That constant anxiety which had always haunted her when living alone, the gnawing fear that something terrible might happen had almost vanished. For the first time in years, she had been at peace. She had slept well.

Yes, she thought, she could be very loyal to Lord Aeos. Somehow, the very bond that had drawn her here seemed to call her to follow wherever he asked her to go.

When she had left for Meereen, she had not known about what she would be doing there. But now it seemed to her that she probably had an idea.

And maybe, she will have her revenge. Revenge of what had been meted out to her mother and her brother.

"I agree," Rhaenys replied at last, after the long storm of thoughts within her.

Jon nodded, "A wise decision, if I may say."

"How are you going to ensure our loyalty?" Rhaenys asked.

Melisandre's eyes burned with the same question, fixed intently on Jon.

"I have my ways," Jon said evenly.

"Is there something that you want to ask before we move to ensuring that loyalty part?" Jon questioned.

Rhaenys nodded, "While I have had a lot of questions, I will ask just this one."

"About the other two Targaryens, Viserys and Daenerys. Are you in some form of contact with them? And if not, then why did you not seek them out? They are our kins, after all."

"I am in no form contact with them," Jon replied calmly. "And I will seek contact with them, in future."

"While they are not living a comfortable or luxurious life for now, they are not in any kind of danger," he added.

Rhaenys knew that Jon was hiding something but she did not press further. She simply nodded in response. Everything would be revealed in its due time.

"We will do it one by one," Jon said, a moment later. The loyalty part.

"Who will go first?" he asked.

Without hesitation, Melisandre rose to her feet. "I want to go first."

Rhaenys did not object.

"Rhaenys, could you please wait outside?" Jon asked.

She gave a quiet nod and slipped out of the chamber, leaving the two of them alone.

Jon turned fully to face Melisandre. His voice was calm but carried an edge of command.

"Melisandre," he began. "Loyalty to me means loyalty only to me. I will not demand you abandon the worship of your Red God, but my commands and my will must weigh more than the tenets of your faith. If your god commands one path and I command another, you will follow me. Do my words make sense to you?"

Melisandre's smile was radiant as she nodded, full of certainty.

"My lord," she said, her voice brimming with conviction. "Among my faith, we worship the Red God, but in truth, there is nothing greater for us than Azor Ahai himself. For many of us, the Red God is but the flame that lights the way to the wielder of the lightbringer."

"We are meant to serve Azor Ahai, to follow him to the world's very end if he wills it."

She lowered herself to both knees, her eyes shining as if lit by fire from within.

"After this moment, my loyalty belongs to you alone. What you speak will be the only command I follow. You are Azor Ahai reborn and I am your servant."

Her voice echoed like a vow etched into stone.

Jon had not expected this dramatic undertone but he did not mind. He took a deep breath as he prepared himself to hand the blood essence to Melisandre.

[This action from Jon might seem to be taken in a hurry but you will learn about his POV and reasoning soon enough.]

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