At the age of nine, however, Rhaena was presented with a hatchling from the pits of Dragonstone, and she and the young dragon she named Dreamfyre bonded instantly. With her dragon beside her, the princess slowly began to grow out of her shyness; at the age of twelve she took to the skies for the first time, and thereafter, though she remained a quiet girl, no one dared to call her timid.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

Maegor was not yet a dragonrider, however. Though a dozen hatchlings had been born amidst the fires of Dragonstone in the later years of Aegon’s reign, and were offered to the prince, he refused them all. When his young niece Rhaena, in only her twelfth year, took to the sky astride Dreamfyre, Maegor’s failure became the talk of King’s Landing.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

“The princess did not seem to want to be there, nor did she approve of anything she saw or heard. She scarce seemed to eat, would not hunt or hawk, and when pressed to sing—for she is said to have a lovely voice—she refused rudely and returned to her chambers.” The princess had been most loath to be parted from her dragon, Dreamfyre, and her latest favorite, Melony Piper, a red-haired maiden from the riverlands.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

She preferred to spend her days with her siblings, her dogs and cats, and her newest favorite, Alayne Royce, daughter to the Lord of Runestone…a plump and homely girl, but so cherished that Rhaena sometimes took her flying on the back of Dreamfyre, just as she did her brother Aegon. More often, though, Rhaena took to the skies by herself. After her sixteenth nameday, the princess declared herself a woman grown, “free to fly where I will.”

And fly she did. Dreamfyre was seen as far away as Harrenhal, Tarth, Runestone, Gulltown. It was whispered (though never proved) that on one of these flights Rhaena surrendered the flower of her maidenhead to a lowborn lover.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

Wiser perhaps than her father, Princess Rhaena asked his leave to bring her dragon, Dreamfyre, with them, but Aenys forbade it. As Prince Aegon had not yet ridden a dragon, the king feared that the lords and commons might think his son unmanly if they saw his wife on dragonback and him upon a palfrey

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

Aegon had never ridden a dragon, they pointed out, whereas Maegor had claimed Balerion, and the prince’s own bride, Princess Rhaena, had been flying Dreamfyre since the age of twelve.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

Emerging at last from Casterly Rock, Aegon the Uncrowned and his wife, Rhaena, raced across the riverlands with a handful of companions and entered the city concealed beneath sacks of corn. With so few followers, Aegon dared not seat himself upon the Iron Throne, for he knew he could not hold it. They were there for Rhaena’s Dreamfyre…and so the prince might claim his father’s dragon, Quicksilver.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

All that is known for certain is that Rhaena remained at Pinkmaiden Castle with her daughters when Aegon marched…and with her, Dreamfyre. Would the addition of a second dragon to the prince’s host have made a difference when battle was joined? We shall never know…though it has been pointed out, and rightly, that Princess Rhaena was no warrior, and Dreamfyre was younger and smaller than Quicksilver, and certainly no true threat to Balerion the Black Dread.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

No such escape was possible for Rhaena Targaryen herself. Though she could change her name, dye her hair, and garb herself in a tavern wench’s roughspun or the robes of a septa, there was no disguising her dragon. Dreamfyre was a slender, pale blue she-dragon with silvery markings who had already produced two clutches of eggs, and Rhaena had been riding her since the age of twelve.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

And soon three. When word reached the Red Keep that Jaehaerys was gathering his forces at Storm’s End, Rhaena Targaryen mounted Dreamfyre and flew to join him, abandoning the uncle she had been forced to wed. She took her daughter Aerea…and Blackfyre, stolen from the king’s own scabbard as he slept.

- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"

Nine days after the coronation, the young king departed Oldtown for King’s Landing. Most of his court traveled with him in what became a grand pageant across the Reach…but his sister Rhaena stayed with them only as far as Highgarden, where she mounted her dragon, Dreamfyre, to return to Fair Isle and Lord Farman’s castle above the sea, taking her leave not only of the king, but of her daughters.

- Fire and Blood "Prince into King: The Ascension of Jaehaerys I"

The continued presence of Dreamfyre on the island was also creating problems. Glimpsed every few years, a dragon was a wonder and a terror to behold, and it was true that some of the Fair Islanders took pride in having “a dragon of our own.” Others, however, were made anxious by the presence of the great beast, especially as she grew larger…and hungrier. Feeding a growing dragon is no small thing. And when it became known that Dreamfyre had produced a clutch of dragon eggs, a begging brother from the inland hills began to preach that Fair Isle would soon be overrun by dragons “devouring sheep and cows and men alike,” unless a dragonslayer came forth to put an end to the scourge. Lord Farman sent forth knights to seize the man and silence him, but not before thousands had heard his prophecies. Though the preacher died in the dungeons under Faircastle, his words lived on, filling the ignorant with fear wherever they were heard.

- Fire and Blood "A Surfeit of Rulers"

A lavish feast was held in their honor, an entire stable was given over to Dreamfyre, and Queen Rhaena, her husband, and her companions of the Four-Headed Beast were assigned a regally appointed suite of apartments deep in the bowels of the Rock itself, safe from any harm. There they lingered for more than a moon’s turn, enjoying the hospitality of the wealthiest house in all of Westeros.

- Fire and Blood "A Surfeit of Rulers"

Borne on the wings of Dreamfyre, Rhaena Targaryen had flown in to see her siblings wed…and to visit her daughter Aerea.

- Fire and Blood "A Time of Testing: The Realm Remade"

They murmur of the cost of keeping me and mine, but it is Dreamfyre who excites them. Some fear her, more want her, and it is those who trouble me most. They lust for dragons of their own. That I will not give them, but where am I to go?”

- Fire and Blood "A Time of Testing: The Realm Remade"

Princess Aerea had known Vermithor and Silverwing during her time at court, but she had never been allowed too close to them. Here she could visit with the dragons as often as she liked; the hatchlings, the young drakes, her mother’s Dreamfyre…and greatest of them all, Balerion and Vhagar, huge and ancient and sleepy, but still terrifying when they woke and stirred and spread their wings.

- Fire and Blood "Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"

"Should the dragons turn up, anywhere from here to Yi Ti, we will demand their return. They were stolen from us, they are ours by right. If that demand should be denied, then we must needs go and get them. Take them back if we can, kill them if not. No hatchlings can hope to stand against Vermithor and Dreamfyre.”

- Fire and Blood "Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"

He had scented the approach of another dragon. Moments later Dreamfyre descended, silver crests flashing along her back as her pale blue wings beat against the red dawn sky. Rhaena Targaryen had come to make amends to her mother.

- Fire and Blood "Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"

All such preparations were thrown into disarray by the sudden and unexpected arrival of Rhaena Targaryen from Dragonstone. “It may well be that dragons somehow sense, and echo, the moods of their riders,” Septon Barth wrote, “for Dreamfyre came down out of the clouds like a raging storm that day, and Vermithor and Silverwing rose up and roared at her coming, suchwise that all of us who saw and heard were fearful that the dragons were about to fly at one another with flame and claw, and tear each other apart as Balerion once did to Quicksilver by the Gods Eye.”

The dragons did not, in the end, fight, though there was much hissing and snapping as Rhaena flung herself off Dreamfyre and stormed into Maegor’s Holdfast, shouting for her brother and her sister. The source of her fury was soon known

- Fire and Blood "Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"

Departing Oldtown, Dreamfyre took the queen northward, first to Highgarden, then to Crakehall and Casterly Rock, whose lords had welcomed her in days gone by. Nowhere had a dragon been seen, save for her own; not even a whisper of Princess Aerea had been heard.

- Fire and Blood "Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Their Triumphs and Tragedies"

After Fair Isle, history loses track of Rhaena Targaryen. She would not return to King’s Landing or Dragonstone for the rest of the year, nor present herself at the seat of any lord in the Seven Kingdoms. We have fragmentary reports of Dreamfyre being seen as far north as the barrowlands and the banks of the Fever River, and as far south as the Red Mountains of Dorne and the canyons of the Torrentine. Shunning castles and cities, Rhaena and her dragon were glimpsed flying over the Fingers and the Mountains of the Moon, the misty green forests of Cape Wrath, the Shield Islands, and the Arbor…but nowhere did she seek out human company. Instead she sought the wild, lonely places, windswept moors and grassy plains and dismal swamps, cliffs and crags and mountain glens. Was she still hunting for some sign of her daughter, or was it simply solitude she desired? We shall never know.

- Fire and Blood "Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Their Triumphs and Tragedies"

Though no stranger to dragons, she had never ridden one before…and for reasons we may never understand, she chose Balerion as her mount, instead of any one of the younger and more tractable dragons she might have claimed. Driven as she was by her conflicts with her mother, mayhaps she simply wanted a beast larger and more fearsome than Queen Rhaena’s Dreamfyre.

- Fire and Blood "Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Their Triumphs and Tragedies"

Little and less need be said of the return of Rhaena Targaryen from Estermont after her daughter’s death. By the time the raven reached Her Grace at Greenstone, the princess had already died and been burned. Only ashes and bones remained for her mother when Dreamfyre delivered her to the Red Keep. “It would seem that I am doomed to always come too late,” she said. When the king offered to have the ashes interred on Dragonstone, beside those of King Aegon and the other dead of House Targaryen, Rhaena refused. “She hated Dragonstone,” she reminded His Grace. “She wanted to fly.” And so saying, she took her child’s ashes high into the sky on Dreamfyre, and scattered them upon the winds.

- Fire and Blood "Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Their Triumphs and Tragedies"

Those who were fortunate spoke of glimpsing her on the castle battlements, or seeing her coming and going on her dragon, for Rhaena continued to ride Dreamfyre until the end, just as she had in the beginning.

- Fire and Blood "Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Their Triumphs and Tragedies"

Helaena now flew Dreamfyre, the she-dragon who had once carried Rhaena, Maegor the Cruel’s “Black Bride,” whilst her brother Aegon’s young Sunfyre was said to be the most beautiful dragon ever seen upon the earth.

- Fire and Blood "Heirs of the Dragon: A Question of Succession"