Ice and Fire: Reign of the Dragon.

Chapter 424 Death Follows You
The night was as dark as ink, and the Red Castle in King's Landing cast a jagged shadow in the moonlight. Lady Alessa looked back at the towering castle, and the hem of her long skirt with the family emblem of a three-headed dragon and a seahorse swept across the cold stone ground. Her fingertips were trembling, not because of fear, but because of the chill that seeped deep into her bones.

This is the symptom of black blood fever patients in the initial stage of the disease, before their lives are completely threatened. Their bones are cold, but they have a high fever.

She stopped and held onto the wall, a violent cough tearing through her chest. When her hand moved away from her mouth, the moonlight illuminated the black blood on her palm, like a shadow that could not be dissolved.

"It's not the right time yet. Reg still needs me," she murmured to herself, her voice so soft that even her shadow couldn't hear it.

She still remembered the last time she and Prince Reg saw each other.

In the candlelit bedroom, Prince Reg finally fell into a tired sleep. But Alessa stood in front of the bed, her purple eyes reflecting her husband's frown. She reached out to smooth the wrinkles, but retracted her fingers the moment she touched them. She knew that her chance of contracting black blood fever was much higher than her husband's, and she was unwilling to take the risk of infecting Reg.

So she decided to leave, before she could get sick.

"May the sea breezes and the eternal tides protect you, my love," she whispered, her voice sad, like the sadness of the creatures that depend on the tides when they recede.

In the days after the princess fell ill, Alessa completed a silent battle under the shadow of death. During the day, she went deep into the places where the patients gathered, refused to return to the Red Castle, and even refused to see anyone who came from the Red Castle. At night, the arrangements she left behind were still silently protecting her young husband.

The letters she left behind urged the maids to soak all of Reg's linen shirts in boiling vinegar water, adding dragon crystals with fire magic sent by the Border Princedom, and hot boiling stones. The letters from the south said that this would effectively prevent infection.

The maids of the Red Castle mixed drugs that were said to resist the plague into the honey wine that Reg drank to help him sleep, and used sea salt to scrub everything he touched, including the door knocker, candlestick, quill pen, and even his favorite sword. When Reg wondered where Alessa had gone, the maids would comfort the prince and urge him to take all protective measures.

Until that destined moment.

In the last moments before dawn, the stench of the flea kennels fermented in fever.

Alessa walked between the straw mats and groans, her skirt sweeping over blood and vomit. Her fingertips were already numb, but she still steadily changed the cold compress soaked in mint water for an old fisherman. The old fisherman's skin was as gray as a dead fish, and every gasp was accompanied by a gurgling sound of fluid in his lungs.

"Hold on a little longer," she whispered, pressing the last few drops of precious milk of the poppy into the old man's cracked lips. "The tide will turn. The medicine will arrive in King's Landing soon."

The pain pierced her ribs at this moment.

Alessa bit her lower lip hard, the taste of rust filling her mouth. She saw spider-web-like black lines appearing on the back of her hand that was supporting the wall, like the winding marks of death on the beach after the tide receded.

"Madam?" The old fisherman's cloudy eyes rolled around. The old man wanted to get up but he had no strength.

She smiled the bright smile she had when she was a girl, watching the merchant ships return to the harbor under the Chaotou Island Lighthouse. The medicine jar slipped from her fingers and shattered on the stone floor.

"Save the madam, save the madam!" the old man shouted with all his might.

"Save Princess Alessa!"

The patients in Flea Bottom were agitated. Women and old people rushed to the fallen princess regardless of their own health, using their bodies to prevent her from touching the muddy and dirty ground. The poor people took out the medicine brought by Alessa and Reg, trying to save the princess who stood by them when the plague came.

Alessa stared at the black blood dripping from her palm as Reg's roar pierced through the fog of plague. How ridiculous, she thought, that the daughter of the seahorse would eventually drown in the filth of the land.

"You lied to me." Reg held her face in his trembling hands, his purple eyes surging with the sea before the storm, "You said those scarves were enough to protect them from lying to me. They said you were praying in the cathedral."

Alessa's vision began to blur. She saw the straw stuck in her husband's silver hair, proof that he patrolled the slums all night long; she smelled the mixed herbs and rot on his collar, proof that he had never backed down because of his status as a prince.

This was the kind, somewhat reckless boy she loved.

"Stay away from me." She didn't dare to touch Reg, so she could only use her eyes to signal the people around her to take her away from the prince, "Stay away from me."

The Red Keep, top floor of Maegor's Holdfast.

Meka's knuckles were already bleeding.

He rammed his shoulder against the oak door for the third time. The chain rattled, but the door only trembled dully. Outside the window, the death knell of King's Landing echoed in the twilight, the death knell of the king's death. "Let me out, Garin!" His voice was hoarse like a rusty knife scraping bone, "Father is dead! Aerys and Rhaeg need me!"

There was no response from the other side of the door, but the small window on the door opened.

When he saw the person outside the door, Meka almost didn't recognize Garin. The black-haired boy had lost weight, and there was a deep dark blue under his purple eyes, but he was holding a silver bowl filled with medicinal soup steadily in his hand.

"Drink it." Garin's voice was colder than iron. "Or I'll have the Kingsguard force you to drink it."

Meika stared at the turbid liquid in the bowl and suddenly sneered: "Who gave you the courage to imprison a prince?"

"By order of your brother Aerys." Garin looked at Maekar expressionlessly. "He said: 'If Maekar dares to step out of this door, break his legs.'"

Maika grabbed Galen's wrist fiercely. "Where is he now? Why doesn't he come to see me?"

Garin's eyelashes fluttered. "He just arrived in King's Landing."

Aerys, who arrived in King's Landing from Dragonstone, is not in a good situation now.

Prince Aerys knelt on the muddy ground, and the roar of Tyrexu came from the clouds.

He had just cut open a boil on a dying old woman when the dagger slipped across his thumb. The wound was shallow, almost bloodless, but deadly enough.

No one knows why the blood of the dragon king is immune to all diseases. But when Jaehaerys I lost his daughter, people have witnessed the fall of the Targaryen bloodline.
It’s not that they don’t have disease.

"Your Highness!" The scholar rushed over in fear, "Use the potion quickly!"

Iris shook her head and pushed the last bottle of potion to the child beside her: "It's not necessary. Black blood fever can't even resist death from the Prime Minister's blood. There's no need to use it on a dying person. The next batch will have to wait for the tide. It will take some time for the ship to arrive."

His fingertips were already starting to turn gray.

When Rhaeg arrived, he saw his brother being carried on a stretcher. Aerys's purple eyes were still clear, and even had a strange calmness: "Let Maekar send Aegon away, and Daenerys ask the Prime Minister for help."

Before he finished speaking, Telekshu suddenly swooped down, and his dragon wings overturned the tent. The purple dragon used its tail to wrap up its master, soared into the sky, and flew rapidly towards the south.

Over the mouth of the Blackwater River.

Prince Baelor sat on Dreamfire's dragon saddle, and below him followed six cargo ships loaded with herbs. The sailors on the deck were all wrapped in linen soaked in vinegar.

No one can stop the prince riding on the dragon.

"Faster!" He slapped Dreamfire's scales. The blue dragon growled in dissatisfaction, but still flapped its wings faster.

As the outline of King's Landing emerged, the first cluster of torches were lit along the street. They were not candlelight, but piles of burning wood. As the last dragon in King's Landing whose master could still give orders, Star Song was showing off his majestic figure in the air, and piles of corpses were burning under the dragon flame.

The first news he heard when he landed made Baelor stagger: "Your Majesty, I have been summoned by the Seven Gods today. Earl Benson will come first. Earl Daemon, Earl Tully, Lady Alessa has passed away."

The second piece of news shattered his last bit of calmness: "His Highness Iris accidentally contracted the virus, and the Prime Minister was also infected. The Prime Minister stayed in the Dragon Cave and refused to leave."

Dreamfire seemed to sense the rider's despair, and suddenly spurted out a dragon flame that spanned the sky. The flames illuminated the sky of King's Landing, and even Star Song screamed in pain.

"No!" Beile's roar mixed with the dragon's howl resounded throughout the Blackwater River, "It shouldn't be like this, it shouldn't be now."

(End of this chapter)