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humanpurposes · 8 months ago

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Karma is a God, Chapter 17: Blood is Unambiguous

The Dance of the Dragons begins on a lie, and Aemond owes a debt, one Lucerra will see repaid in Fire and Blood.

Aemond x Lucerra Velaryon (fem!Lucerys)

Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Warnings for this chapter: 18+, spoilers for F&B and future seasons of HotD, canon divergence, descriptions of violence, angst, mentions of death and war

A/n: Realised I copy pasted the whole chapter rather than a snippet, and because I am that lazy, have the whole chapter.

Full chapter is on AO3

A white raven arrives from the Citadel at Oldtown; winter has begun. Luke has felt the shift of the season, the cold mornings in the training yard when she watches Joffrey swing a wooden sword under the guidance of Ser Lorent, the gloomy grey skies and piercing winds. Sometimes she can convince herself she is back at Dragonstone. Blackwater Bay roars as it tosses fishing boats and the ships of the Velaryon fleet on its surface, as it sends waves crashing against the cliff faces along the shore below the Red Keep.

In the early mornings, before she is due to rise for meetings of the Small Council, Luke watches through the eyes of her dragon as he dives for fish and eels. She feels that he is content with the familiarity of the mist and the harsher weather, and she knows that this is not merely a dream.

She’s found books in the library detailing legends from ages long gone by, of the First Men and the Age of Heroes, warring Kings, whispers of demons from the North, the children of the forest, skinchangers, greenseers, men who could see through the eyes of birds, rodents and wolves. She knows these tales from childhood; Harwin Strong knew all sorts of stories and saw lots of strange things growing up at Harrenhal, trees with faces and bleeding eyes, ghosts and living, breathing memories.

She feels the spray of the sea against her scales, the taste of fresh fish on her tongue, her wings steady through the wind as the Red Keep comes back into view…

In her moments of curiosity she hears the delicate voice of Alys Rivers in the back of her head. “Blood is unambiguous.”

When she sits before her mirror and watches her handmaiden twist her dark curls into braids, she tries to imagine herself with her mother’s silver hair, with Ser Leanor’s warm brown eyes and his sailor’s hands. When she looks at herself she sees Jace and Joffrey. She sees the man they were told not to mourn when he perished in his father’s castle. Blood of the dragon, blood of the Riverlands. A bastard in the eyes of some, a Princess in the eyes of others, now heir to the Iron Throne.

Jace had always said their parentage was of no consequence, but he had sounded unsure in that himself. Simply as a consequence of age he knew Harwin Strong better than she did and had clearer memories of him. He knew of the rumours whispered amongst the courtiers when they resided at the Red Keep. “It doesn’t matter what they think,” so long as they had their dragons, so long as they had the protection of the crown.

She’s searched the history books, mythologies and legends. Dragons are a different kind of magic, so maester Geradys says, bound to the Dragon Lords of Old Valyria with ancient blood magic, the likes of which Westeros may never know. Rhaenyra says dragons are a power men should never have trifled with, that they are not to be controlled outright. Yet Luke had been able to tell Grey Ghost to dive into the God’s Eye and pluck a body from the water. No command, no tug on his reins. She hadn’t even been sitting in the saddle, it was as if she was the dragon itself, acting on her own will.

Is that proof then? If she asked Rhaenyra if she has ever lived through the mind of Syrax would she understand? Or would she think she was mad? If she asked maester Geradys if the greenmen had ever seen through the eyes of dragons… it would be an impossibility.

Dressed in a black gown, rubies dripping from a silver necklace like splatters of blood against her skin, she determines she is ready to face the Small Council, Corlys, Geradys, Lord Bar Eammon, Lord Masey, Lord Celtigar, the Manderlys, and standing along the left side of the room, the Dragonseeds, Hugh, Ulf, Addam, Nettles.

She takes her place at the head of the table, standing above her mother’s seat. “Well met,” she says. “What news from the Reach?”

Vermithor and Silverwing had flown over King’s Landing this morning, returning from their errand.

Hugh takes a small step forward. “The Hightowers have Bitterbridge.”

The Lords murmur in concern.

“What of the Caswells?”

“Lord Caswell’s widow surrendered her castle easily enough; her children have been sent to Oldtown as captives.”

“And what of their army?”

“Some have gathered at Tumbleton, along with the Footlys. Our force there is little over half the size of the Hightower host.”

“But you did not fight?” Corlys asks.

“No,” Hugh says.

“I would have thought Silvering and Vermithor would be more than enough to match the strength of one young dragon?”

Ulf scowls. “And if the Northmen had marched when they were summoned, we might have a sizeable army by now.”

With a sharp look from Luke he is silenced.

Jace trusted Lord Cregan enough to think she would be safe with him when her body was still broken, enough to protect her. They swore oaths to each other sealed in blood. She must also trust he will come to her when the time is right.

Master Geradys speaks next. “Rather crucially, Princess, this morning I received a raven from Winterfell. Cregan Stark has begun the march south, with twenty thousand Northmen at his back.”

“At long last,” she says. It will take them a month at the very least, assuming they do not meet any resistance on their journey, which could be very well if the Riverlands are not secured. When Cregan makes it south their fates will be sealed. Armies will collide, the fields of the Crownlands will be watered with blood. The war will be won or lost. And in time she will be made his wife– the thought weighs heavily in her stomach. A month. Can we hold King’s Landing for another month?

“You will be grateful for our Lord’s support when his army comes,” Torrehn Manderly says with a pointed look to Ulf.

Luke turns to a map, upright, carved with the landscape of the continent. It marks King’s Landing, Bitterbridge, Tumbleton, Harrenhal, Casterly Rock, The Twins, Winterfell.”

“What footing are we left with in the Riverlands? Does Sabitha Frey continue to besiege The Twins?”

“She will make quick work of it now,” Lord Celtigar says, “Jason Lannister will receive no relief from the Westerlands now that the Greyjoys are attacking from the sea. By all accounts, Lady Joanna has locked the gates of Casterly Rock and will wait out the raids.”

“The path through the Riverlands should be clear then,” Luke says. While the Lannisters are overwhelmed and Criston Cole’s men are scattered, the Blackwoods and the surviving men of the Riverlands are regrouping, readying to march south.

“We’ll send a raven to Dalton Greyjoy and tell him that Queen Rhaenyra is thankful for his efforts,” Lord Corlys says.

“For raiding innocents at Lannisport?” Luke says.

“For keeping the Lannisters occupied, and so that we may focus our efforts where they are needed most.”

Her chest sinks. She cannot deny that the Greyjoy’s are doing them a service, and it surely cannot be worse than what the Triarchy did to Hull and Hightide. Fire for fire, blood for blood, an endless exchange.

She moves to the map. Her fingers ghost over Storm’s End and Bitterbridge. “Our efforts must go towards ensuring the city’s defence,” she says.

“So we will sit and wait to anticipate an attack?” Lord Celtigar asks.

Doing otherwise was Aemond’s mistake when he held King’s Landing. Without Vhagar, the city was theirs to take. She will not repeat his shortcomings. She cannot afford to. “The throne is ours to defend. We keep our strength here.”

“The dragons,” Hugh says. The eyes of the lords fall upon him as if he has stated some sort of insult.

One dragon remains against their own and armies will burn easily enough.

“Ulf and Hugh, you will go to Tumbleton and ensure the town is defended. Daeron is a capable dragonrider, but he will not make the mistake to challenge Vermithor and Silverwing together now that he is vulnerable.”

The men exchange a curious look.

“If I may be so bold, Princess,” Hugh says, keeping his hands clasped in front of him, still wearing his riding leathers from his flight on Vermithor, his silver hair pulled out of his face. “As Queen Rhaenyra now holds King’s Landing, and we all have valiantly continued to defend her throne, one cannot help but wonder about his own standing.”

“Your standing?” Luke says.

Ulf takes a step forward now. “The realm is full of traitors, Princess; Hightowers, Baratheons, Lannisters. Did Prince Daemon not say he would see an end to their lines?”

“Do you fancy yourself a new Lord Paramount of the Westerlands, Ser Ulf? And you?” she says to Hugh.

His face is not so severe, a little hesitant, but he finds his boldness. “I would have Highgarden.”

“Highgarden!” Lord Celtigar cries. “Now that is an ambition, when the Tyrells have sworn to take no part in this war?”

“The Lord of Highgarden is a boy, and his mother has sat idly while her bannermen have taken up arms against the true Queen,” Hugh says, only ever looking at Luke. “Would it not serve you better to have Lords who are loyal to you?”

Now she feels the eyes of the council upon her, men who need to respect her orders, her authority, her legitimacy. She slowly traces her steps back to the head of the table. “It would disturb the order of the world,” she says.

“And is that not precisely what we are?” Hugh says, letting his insinuation linger for just a moment too long, “us Dragonseeds? The Queen has established a new order, she did the moment she called upon us to claim the dragons.”

“You would do well to remember your place nevertheless,” Corlys says.

Ulf scoffs. “What of the place of your own bastards, my Lord? Would you remind them of their place?”

Addam shifts on his feet, a man with a gentle enough disposition, a fighter nonetheless. Nettles meets his eyes and shakes her head softly. All the men at the table are getting restless.

“Only the Queen has the power to grant you what you seek,” Luke says, “and alas, I am not the Queen.”

Hugh is a man of formidable strength, a blacksmith, with well worn hands that have bent metal to his will. He rides what is now the largest dragon in the world, he has the silver hair of his mother’s house, some might say the image of a King.

Luke remains steadfast. She cannot afford to be anything less. If they all share the same blood then what distinguishes them? She is the daughter of the Queen. Out of right or circumstance, the gods, in their strange workings, have placed her at the head of this council.

Hugh’s shoulders soften. “When would you have us fly to Tumbleton, Princess?” he asks.

Luke ensures that he holds her gaze. “On the morrow. Perhaps the morning will be best.”

“Very well,” he says and strides from the room, Ulf trailing behind him like a dog.

Their business continues in a solemn quiet, as if they are gathered around a grave that no one dares to mention.

Once the council has dispersed, Corlys remains seated and catches his granddaughter’s eye. “I do not trust those men,” he says. “They will keep pushing to see their demands met.”

“They command dragons,” Luke says. He knows as well as her, this cannot be undone.

After breakfast, Luke leads Joffrey down to the entrance yard. He takes up a small wooden sword and puts all his might into swinging at a stack of straw, occasionally corrected by Ser Lorent. He often makes the promise to himself that he’ll be as fierce a fighter as Jacaerys or Daemon.

“You fight well, little knight,” Luke says when he has finally exhausted himself.

He frowns, knowing he’ll be wanted inside for his lessons, a venture he finds far more tedious than swordsmanship. “Couldn’t we stay out a while longer?”

“A Prince has other duties than battle,” she says.

“Couldn’t we go to the Dragonpit? Tyraxes must miss me terribly.”

The thought makes her heart sink. Tyraxes has spent his life on Dragonstone, by his rider’s side or roaming the Dragonmount. He is still young, grieved to be alone as all children are.

“Perhaps another time.”

“Why not now?”

It can be heard in the sounds of the city. The markets are desolate. No food has come from the Reach since the outbreak of war. The Velaryon blockade has been lifted and allowed trade in from Essos, but the sea is depleted of fish and many in King’s Landing do not have the coin to pay for food. Ser Luthor Largent of the City Watch says the people of the city are becoming like dogs tearing each other apart for scraps.

Luke leads her brother back towards the Keep. “It is safer for us inside the castle walls. These are dangerous times.”

“But you still get to ride Grey Ghost.”

“Grey Ghost is wild. I do not think I could command him to go to the Dragon Pit if I tried.”

Joffrey’s head hangs as they climb the steps to the entrance hall. “Tyraxes doesn’t like to be apart from me.”

“You’ll be returned to him soon enough, I swear it.”

A distant roar pierces the air. On the battlements and beyond the walls are cries of “dragon!”

Joffrey clings to Luke’s side. She turns her gaze to the sky, unsure of what to expect.

“It is Vermithor and Silverwing!” a voice cries from the castle walls.

There is a sense of relief amongst the men, the scorpions positioned towards the sky are eased in their aim. The panic has dispersed but Luke’s grip on Joffrey’s hand tightens. On the morrow, she said, but Hugh and Ulf have brazenly disobeyed her orders.

The doors open twice a day, once as Geradys enters, and again when he leaves. The guards watch Aemond from within their armour, hands on their swords. He stares back as if he knows he could kill them with his bare hands. At least they fear him.

Geradys sees to his wounds, brings him broth boiled from bones and gritty, dry bread. He has asked for proper meat only to be old there is none for him. He might as well starve, at least he would not have to have such a poor excuse for food pass his lips.

He is restless, pacing the room, lying in his bed, sitting on the edge of it and staring down at his hands. Sometimes he stands by the window to remind himself that there is life beyond the walls of this chamber. He counts the tiled roofs and watches people moving through the streets like Helaena watches her pets through the bars of their cages. By the time he left King’s Landing he was hated by the smallfolk. What of it? They are made to obey, to revere Kings and Princes. What sort of life can Rhaenyra offer them that he could not when he wore the crown?

Otherwise he has taken to tormenting himself to pass his hours of isolation, because all he can think of is Lucerra.

She is in the same castle as him, wandering the halls, making commands of those around her, her mother’s heir. Every time he hears footsteps outside his door he holds his breath, waiting to see if the door will open and if she will enter his room.

Days pass since that first night and she does not come.

At night, when he tells himself the gods will turn their eyes from him, he clutches his hand over his throat, imagining it is hers. He feels the weight of her on top of him and pictures her legs straddled on either side of his body. He traces his fingertips along the same path down his chest, over the array of bruises around his ribs, stomach and navel.

She had been so delicate, ghosting over his skin like a gentle breath. His lips had been so close to her. If he had not been so startled he might have kissed her. An unusual impulse, one he had entertained the night his father died, and then some.

He can picture that less clearly with time, her sighs of pleasure as she slowly gave into him, the heat of her tight, wet cunt around his fingers. It made sense, didn’t it? Everything she had taken from him, wasn’t he owed something from her? He supposes now they are far past the constant exchanging.

“How many dead?” Rhaenyra asks from her throne. She keeps her hands in her lap, shrinking into herself so no part of her skin can touch the blades she sits upon.

A matter of days into winter and the violence has already begun.

“We lost at least twenty men,” Ser Luthor says, helm under his arm and his gold cloak splattered with blood. “We anticipate perhaps a hundred smallfolk have lost their lives, either in the crush or at the hands of the city watch. There may be many more injured.”

Rhaenyra remains unchanged in the face of the tragedy, beautiful and cold.

The crown’s coffers were empty when they took the capital at the orders of Tyland Lannister, as he confessed under sharp questioning. He sent the gold to a number of Green strongholds and he is yet to admit exactly which. What does it matter where the gold is? If it is in the Reach or the Westerlands, they have no hope of retrieving it.

Daemon said from the outset, the city cannot be held without gold. The war cannot be fought without gold.

Under Rhaenyra’s orders, tithes have been taken from the people of King’s Landing and the rest of the Crownlands, gold, weapons and armour, food, livestock for the dragons, all in the name of protecting the realm, ending the war, defending the throne.

This is what it has come to. A cart containing stores of grain and enough gold to pay Rhaenyra’s men-at-arms had been brought through the city and the people descended upon it like vultures to a carcass, only there were more than scraps to be had, more than slivers of rotten flesh clinging to bones. Not even the horses had been spared, ripped apart for their meat in the frenzy.

“How can the captains of the city watch have allowed this to happen?” Corlys demands, standing at the foot of the throne. Luke stands beside him.

“My Lord, we are commanded to bring order to the city. Those who attacked the cart were not deterred by our threats. Something had to be done.”

“And you chose to deal them death,” Corlys says.

“We did what we could to protect the crown’s property.”

Corlys brings his hands in front of him in defeat and disgust. He turns to the Queen and says with no amount of subtlety, “this cannot go unanswered.”

Rhaenyra turns her head, her eyes full of fire. “I will put this right by ending the war.”

As the court is dismissed and disperses, Corlys leans into Luke’s ear and hisses, “a war she herself refuses to fight.”

An uncertain feeling flashes through her heart. Corlys’ doubt feels like a betrayal. “You would not suggest our Queen put her own life at risk, I hope,” she says gravely, carrying a warning in her voice.

He gives her a questioning look. “My ships still defend the city, my men are sworn to the true Queen.”

“And with your support, we shall prevail,” she says.

Rhaenyra descends the steps of the throne, the crown set upon her head, her gown heavy and scaled like the hide of a dragon, save for a cut of red fabric in the skirts, like a tear through flesh. “Come, daughter,” she says solemnly, reaching out her hand for Luke to take.

With a final look to her grandfather, and a check to make sure Ser Lorent was indeed out of earshot of their musings, Luke obeys her mother.

They walk through the castle and return to the Queen’s chambers. A handmaiden waits to remove Rhaenyra’s crown. She cannot get it off fast enough, nor her gold rings and her heavy necklace while Luke waits by the door.

“You sent Vermithor and Silverwing from King’s Landing,” Rhaenyra says.

“The Hightowers took Bitterbridge. They could be weeks way. Hugh and Ulf will hold Tumbleton and deter the approaching army.”

Rhaenyra says nothing, taking a seat at a desk by the window, facing the daylight.

“Seasmoke and Grey Ghost will defend the city well enough if Daeron tries to attack, but he will not risk it I think, not without an army.”

“What of our army?”

Luke hesitates, unsure of what Rhaenyra will know, how far she has been briefed by Corlys or maester Geradys. “Cregan Stark has left Winterfell, the Rivermen are regrouping. I thought I might send Nettles and Sheepstealer north to encourage our allies.”

Her mother has been silent for days, even a simple hum of agreement feels like a victory.

“And Baela remains on Dragonstone, we could easily summon her should we need another dragon.” In her mind it all comes together easily, as long as their allies do not delay, as long as the Baratheons continue to wait, as long as they have the dragons, as long as the city holds.

There’s a nauseating feeling in her stomach, the scent of blood lingering in her nose. Blood on a golden cloak. Blood stains at the foot of the Iron Throne.

“You are so like your brother,”

Something inside of her shatters, crumbling foundations. The space behind her eyes burns but her hands are cold and the grip she has learned to have on her own mourning slips through her fingers like water.

“He was like this too. When you were gone he knew what to do. How did he know what to do? He was scarcely a man, he had seen no battles or wars.” When Rhaenyra looks over her shoulder, the dying daylight burns like a fire behind her, catching in her silver hair. “The two of you, so pragmatic.”

Luke took no fall for Jace, no sword in her gut. No fire burned her to charred remains. Her skin was not left bruised after he died, but the pain has lingered for far longer than any other she has known. She can’t stand it, the anger it fuels. Why remind me? Why remind me he is dead?

“You should meet with the Small Council on the morrow, mother. Your Lords may begin to rue your absence.” They already have.

Rhaenyra’s silhouette against the light does not seem to shift.

Geradys comes as he always does. Aemond drinks the vile bone broth and forces stale bread down his throat. His bandages are changed, some strong smelling oil placed on his temples, honey lathered over the cut on his lip.

Then he is instructed to stand, to raise his arms as though a squire is about to dress him in armour. Instead he winces at the aching in his chest. Geradys pats his hands around the bandages. “You are making progress, I think. How is the pain?”

It is easing, little by little. “Tolerable,” Aemond says.

When night comes and he is alone, he waits for sleep to claim him so he can see the faces of his family, but even his dreams have abandoned him now. He is restless for hours, fading in and out of darkness until the first glimpses of sunrise.

What would Alys say to that, dreamless sleep? She might say the gods have forsaken him. She might say he is nothing now, a being of purely organic existence, mechanical like the life of an insect, an animal kept captive.

But what did any of his dreams mean to her? “Retribution will come with fire and fury,” she said, but in the end she meant it to come at the point of a knife wielded by her own hands. Why? Why taunt him with her visions? Why had he allowed himself to be tempted?

He had thought it meant Lucerra. If anyone should claim retribution in the ending of his life, surely it would be her.

He is not absolved and he knows this, but perhaps he has outlived his usefulness. Helaena and his mother are in the same castle as him and now their enduring lives are a matter of strategy, as Lucerra had made clear. In a silent prayer to the Seven, he wishes– begs that his brother can stay hidden, dead or alive. Just until Aemond can regain his strength, until he can fight his way out of this room, or to find some other advantage.

Since when did a locked door render him powerless?

There are two people left in the Red Keep who may know where Aegon is.

Alicent Hightower stays in her chambers. Rhaenyra allows her to keep a Septa in her company and the guards say she does nothing but weep and pray. Maester Geradys says her knees are bloody and bruised where she kneels on the stone floor, clutching a pendant of the seven pointed star until that too pricks at the flesh of her palms.

When Luke enters Helaena’s chambers the air is stone cold. No fire is lit despite the turning weather. Helaena sits on the floor amongst a collection of pillows and furs, deeply concentrated on a piece of embroidery. When she hears footsteps, her head lifts to the door, eyes are wide and more alert than they have been for months. “You’ve come to ask something of me,” she says.

The air of the room is fragile. Luke’s heart races in her chest knowing what her question will bring. She steps towards Helaena cautiously, smiling as kindly as she can, lowering herself to sit beside her.

Helaena’s hands are frozen in her work, sewing black thread into green and gold fabric, in a pattern like winged insects.

“I wish to know how you are,” Luke says.

Helaena tilts her head. Her lips are fallen and her brow is focused. Luke had never thought there was much of a resemblance between her mother and her aunt, and now she sees it. “Last night I dreamt that my son was in my arms. I rocked him though he was already sleeping and when I placed my fingers against his cheek, his skin was cold.”

“Do you know where Maelor is?”

Helaena presses her lips together. Her eyes have dropped to the fabric in her hands and she shakes her head.

“Did someone take him from you?”

“I cannot say,” she picks up her embroidery with trembling hands, tracing her fingers over the black thread. “He wasn’t with me. I couldn’t bear to look at him, not after– all I’d see when I looked at him was blood.”

After the twins, after she watched them die.

“Rhaenyra has called for his return to the Red Keep. It is our hope he will be returned to you.”

Helaena snatches her hand around Luke’s wrist. Her grip is fierce and unrelenting. It hurts and all Luke can do is look at her reddened, glistening eyes. “You’re lying.”

“Helaena, If it is in my power, I will see your son kept safe.”

“But I saw…” she frowns to herself, dragging her hands over her eyes to dry them. “Perhaps I have been mistaken.”

“Your dreams,” Luke says. Blood and water, green and black, blue and green, dragons and ghosts. The trail of blood.

“I cannot make sense of them sometimes. I saw the rats, I knew they’d want the boy but they took both.”

“When you dreamt of Maelor, where were you?”

“I saw Aemond’s death, I saw him swallowed up in the God’s Eye, and yet you tell me he is alive. I saw you at the Weirwood, with that woman, the Rivers woman.”

“Heleana please,”

“Do you think I would direct you to him even if I knew where he was?” she says sadly, sharply.

It takes Luke by surprise. “I swear, I would never wish harm upon him.”

“His life is a threat to your mother’s rule. Perhaps you would not seek to hurt him, he is only a child, he is your kin, but Rhaenyra has claimed the lives of two of my children already.”

“She never meant for them to die.”

“Should I not grieve them then?”

Luke can hardly find breath to speak. “Yes, yes of course you should. They were children.”

“But you didn’t come here to mourn Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. And if you seek Maelor then you seek his father.”

Luke knows she shouldn’t press her. She loathes herself, her own cruelty to torment her aunt in the face of her grief.

Helaena frowns, but then all the rage and sadness fades from her face. She looks to Luke with such honesty and sincerity. Her voice is a harsh whisper. “Aegon will be King again. He is yet to see victory.”

Luke had not thought Helaena capable of bluffing. She could be lying. Her dreams could have misled her. She could have said it in a moment of anger, of desperation. What does she have left? She doesn't even know where her last remaining child is, if he is safe, if he is dead or alive.

She leaves Helaena to her embroidery. The winged insects were flies, she realises.

What Helaena said cannot be true. Rhaenyra has seven fighting dragons at her disposal. Their allies are marching. The Hightowers may be inching closer to King’s Landing but the rest of the Green forces are scattered. Their King is missing, their Regent is her prisoner…

Her skin tightens at the very thought of seeing him again, braving that confining little chamber once more. To feel his eye burning into her.

But who would be able to make sense of Helaena’s musings better than her brother?

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humanpurposes · 7 months ago

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Karma is a God, Chapter 18: Traitors

The Dance of the Dragons begins on a lie, and Aemond owes a debt, one Lucerra will see repaid in Fire and Blood.

Aemond x Lucerra Velaryon (fem!Lucerys)

Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Warnings for this chapter: 18+, spoilers for F&B and future seasons of HotD, canon divergence, descriptions of violence, angst, mentions of death and war, impure thoughts

Read on AO3

When the sky beyond the windows is black and he is sat upright against the wall, the door unlocks.

She’s returned to taunt him. It’s like a gust of air giving new life to a fire. Sparks and embers in his blood come alive and he is eager.

She’s brought more tapers with her tonight. She places one on his bedside table, one on the mantle over the empty hearth. The light is sparse but it is better than utter darkness. When she has done this she stands before him, knees barely touching the edge of the bed, hair loose, curls casting shadows on her skin. He wants to reach out and brush the loose strands from her face.

His throat and his lips are dry. “Must I assume you have come for the pleasure of my company, Lucerra?” he says.

Her jaw tightens. “Hardly.”

But she is here nevertheless. “How dire you must be for company, to come to my chamber in the middle of the night. Have Daemon’s daughters abandoned you?”

She pauses with her lips parted. There, he has her.

He stops himself from smiling. She might think he’s mocking her, but he feels it too, in his gut, the weight of his losses, the loneliness.

The difference is that Aemond has always known he was meant to be alone. Aegon wanted playthings which he found in Jace and Luke. Helaena was lost in her own head. Daeron, the brother he might have loved, he only knew through the markings of ink. For a long time Aemond had nothing and no one, then he had Vhagar, and even she came at a cost.

Luke had her brothers, her adoring mother, her doting father. She had the love of the King. She had a dragon egg placed in her crib and carried around her hatching like a kitten while it was too small for the dragon pit. For a long time he envied her for all the warmth she seemed to attract. He hated her. And now the fearsome little Princess is learning how to be alone too.

Read the full chapter on AO3

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humanpurposes · 7 months ago

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Karma is a God, Chapter 19: Bloodied Hands

The Dance of the Dragons begins on a lie, and Aemond owes a debt, one Lucerra will see repaid in Fire and Blood.

Aemond x Lucerra Velaryon (fem!Lucerys)

Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Warnings for this chapter: 18+, spoilers for F&B and future seasons of HotD, canon divergence, descriptions of violence, angst, graphic violence, death of a child

Read on AO3

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humanpurposes · 1 year ago

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Karma is a God, Chapter 15: The Lakeshore

The Dance of the Dragons begins on a lie, and Aemond owes a debt, one Lucerra will see repaid in Fire and Blood // Main Masterlist

Aemond x Lucerra Velaryon (fem!Lucerys)

Warnings for this chapter: 18+, spoilers for F&B and future seasons of HotD, canon divergence, descriptions of violence, angst, mentions of death and war

A/n: We're back after five whole months!! I've been deep in the brainrot for this fic recently, and I'm so happy I've come back to it. I've had this series planned out since December 2022 and I'm really excited to see it through.

Also, psa I guess, this series is no longer going to be updated on Tumblr, all future chapters will be posted on AO3.

I do want to say thank you to everyone who's shown this fic some love on here, it makes me so happy seeing it come up in my notifs, I can't wait for you all to continue reading it :)❤️

Full Chapter on AO3

The voice in Luke’s head whispers again. Blood.

It is everywhere, in the colour of the sky, in the clouds and the setting sun. It’s in the water, spilled from the bodies of two dead dragons. Watery red waves ripple over the lakeshore, rushing over her boots, running back to the lake and seeping through the pebbles into the earth.

Aemond is covered in it. He is on his knees before her, an arrow lodged in the shoulder of his sword arm, his riding leathers sodden, his silver hair soaked and stained pink. She wonders if he can taste it, the blood of Caraxes and Vhagar on his tongue.

Even when she takes up Dark Sister and places its point to his throat, he is staring at her with the intent of a hunter. His seeing eye is wide, his eyepatch washed away and his sapphire almost black in the absence of light. The scar that frames it, the scar carved by her hand, is inflamed, furious and red.

The last time she had seen it, he was holding a knife against her cheek, demanding retribution, seeking payment for her debt.

It seems like another lifetime ago, before Arrax, before Shipbreaker Bay, before she had clawed her way through endless, agonising pain to find her way to Jace, before she had buried two of her siblings, when Rhaenyra was her mother and not her Queen.

The sword– Daemon’s sword, feels wrong in her hand, but then it should not be hers to have.

“Remember all he has taken from you,” her step-father had said.

And she does. She remembers it all.

Aemond’s arrogance to not weep and grovel and beg for his life, after everything, is an insult.

She had never felt so sure of herself, so determined that she knew what path the Gods had mapped for her. Aemond would not have a noble death or the burial rites of their family. He would be lost to the lake with an arrow pierced through his black heart, remembered as a traitor and a kinslayer. She would be his end. It was only right.

Daemon had trusted her, handed her the bow she would use to kill him, told her to stay hidden amongst the trees and wait for the right moment to strike.

In the blur of battle, as night engulfed the sky and poisoned the air with its cold, she had missed her mark. She knew it the moment the arrow left the bow that it would not be enough to kill him.

The danger in that was Vhagar. The dragon howled in fury and surged towards her atop Grey Ghost. Aemond had his chance then. He could have finished what he began at Storm’s End, claimed her life, seen his debt fulfilled.

Then Vhagar had steered away.

It was hard to see what became of them in the final struggle. The dragons were a single mass of bloody flesh, joined with teeth and talons. Daemon leapt from his saddle, sword in hand. She might have screamed, either way it would have gone unheard.

Aemond must have realised what was happening when he started to fuss with his chains. He released himself and then they were falling.

Aemond and Daemon were lost to darkness but Vhagar and Caraxes plunged into the God’s Eye with a colossal splash that reached so high it appeared to match the height of Harrenhal itself.

She was standing on the lakeshore before she found herself in the mind of her dragon.

She watched through Grey Ghost’s eyes as he flew towards the lake and dived beneath the surface of the water. In that void his claws curled around a body.

She was standing on the shore again, inside her own mind again, waiting for Grey Ghost to deliver what– who he had found.

Grey Ghost set the body down. He may have had stained silver hair and Dark Sister clutched in his hand, but she knew right away it wasn’t her step-father. There was still life in him– in Aemond.

What will her mother think now?

She feels Aemond swallow against the blade, the movement of his throat piercing his skin. A droplet of blood trails down his neck, below his collar.

She knows what she has to do– what she should do: push forwards, watch him choke on blood and steel.

He draws his tongue between his lips. His voice is almost a whisper, thick and strained. “Please.”

Her hold on the hilt falters. Perhaps she should feel some semblance of pride, now that she has him at her mercy, breathless and broken.

“Please.”

She watches the blood trail from the small cut she has made in his neck. She imagines it spraying from a larger wound, coating Dark Sister, seeping through his teeth and his lips.

“You can beg better than that, surely,” she says...

Read the rest of Chapter 15 on AO3

Tags (comment to be added to either)

Series taglist: @adragonprinceswhore @toodlesxcuddles @arcielee

General taglist: @randomdragonfires @theoneeyedprince @targaryenrealnessdarling @jamespotterismydaddy @tsujifreya @blackswxnn

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humanpurposes · 2 years ago

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Karma is a God

Chapter 14: The God's Eye

The Dance of the Dragons begins on a lie, and Aemond owes a debt, one Lucerra will see repaid in Fire and Blood // Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Aemond x Lucerra Velaryon (fem!Lucerys)

Warnings for this chapter: spoilers for F&B and future seasons of HotD, canon divergence, descriptions of violence, angst, grief, death

Words: 3.5k

A/n: Also available to read on AO3.

It comes to him in a dream first; the ghost. Faceless, colourless and shapeless, he knows it is coming for him. It follows him wherever he goes, until he can hardly tell the difference between waking and dreaming.

He can scarcely remember his burning of Pinkmaiden. He remembers heat, screams of terror and then agony, the light of Vhagar’s fire, burning as bright as the sun and banishing the darkness of night. He was reminded of how his brother had sounded in the aftermath of Rook’s Rest, his raw, throaty screams as his flesh mingled with his melted armour. Which would be a worse fate, dying or surviving to endure the pain for so long?

Where Aegon’s suffering had made Aemond the equivalent of a King, Pinkmaiden had only made him more of the monster that he is.

He feels it, settled on the edge of a cliff overlooking Ironman’s Bay, the empty feeling in his chest, as though the Gods are withholding fragments of his soul.

He doesn’t know where his brother is now. Perhaps Aegon had found some sense after all and crossed the Narrow Sea to seek refuge in the type of life he always wanted, far from the Keep, far from the crown. He doesn’t know why their men fight for a King who could be dead, or who could have abandoned them altogether. And yet he knows his role in this war has been set out for him, one which he follows mindlessly. He is his family’s terror, the only one who can give Daeron and Cole enough time to rally their forces.

He hears so little as of late. He hasn’t seen another person’s face for weeks. For a time he allowed himself refuge in a tavern with his hood over his hair and his sapphire eye hidden in shadow but eventually he decided comfort was not worth the risk.

Daemon is in the Riverlands, he knows that much, hunting him but never able to catch up to him. So far his uncle has not thought to look this far north, where he can see the Iron Islands clustered in the west and Seaguard to the east. Ships pass the sea before him but he remains unnoticed, as does Vhagar, buried on the shoreline amongst dirt, sand and rocks. If she is hungry she will find a flock of sheep or a herd of cows, but for now she is content to lull herself into a long slumber, occasionally letting out a low grumble as she breathes.

He hunts rabbits and does little to shelter himself from the harsh sea air, the rain and the spray of the sea when there is a storm. He is numb to the cold and the discomfort, retreating into his dreams in the hopes he might find some comfort in a vision of his mother or his sister.

More than that, he prays the Gods will show him an image of Lucerra. He would take anything. The small, stubborn girl disturbing him in the library, grinning as she presented him with a winged pig. Her furious little face when he held her by the throat in the cave below Hightide. He would take the tears she shed in the Hall of Nine, her silent, wide-eyed pleas for forgiveness. He would take the woman who stood before him at the Red Keep, at Storm’s End, the feeling of her skin, the sound of her breath.

Her voice is less than an echo in his head after so many moons. The memory is elusive, he fears he will never picture it clearly, but he can remember her words. My blood is precious, uncle, if you want it you shall have to earn it.

In Rainwood, they say a ghost circled Shipbreaker Bay in the days after his niece’s apparent demise.

When the dragon with pale grey scales finally comes to him, he knows what it means. Not a ghost, not the one he had been imagining. Grey Ghost, the wild dragon, the beast that attacked Daeron and Tessarion in the Reach, now the second mount of Princess Lucerra.

He mounts Vhagar as the sun sets, its light bleeding across the sky like an open wound, spurred on by desperation and something hungry, like bloodlust. Grey Ghost is quick, flying out of his view but he can guess where the dragon is leading him, southeast, towards Harrenhal. Aemond does not know if they fly to death or salvation.

There is hardly any blue left in the sky when the five towers of Harrenhal fade into view. The setting sun burns in the west like dragonfire, licking at the darkened clouds and shining down onto the surface of the God’s Eye.

The black banners of the pretender, Rhaenyra, hang over the gates to the castle. Below its walls, by the lakeshore, is not the opponent he had expected to meet.

Caraxes rears his head to the sky and lets out a shrieking roar, teeth bared and eyes ablaze. He can feel Vhagar lurch in anticipation. All of her battles, save for Rook’s Rest, have been like bloodsport to her. She wants to fight, wants to rip her talons into flesh, sink her teeth around something larger than a farm animal. But he feels something else, a slight hesitation, a sad sort of growl sounding in her throat,

Daemon has donned his riding leathers and stands beside his dragon. He holds Dark Sister before him, resting his hands on the hilt.

He sees no sign of Grey Ghost, nor his rider.

He lands Vhagar along the lakeshore, keeping Caraxes out of reach to avoid premature violence. He is determined this will be done properly. His boots land with a crash against the pebbles once he climbs down, his hand lingering on Vhagar’s saddle.

He remembers the night of the dinner, Viserys’ final hours, as his uncle had stood between him and Jace, eyeing him like a parent stares down a petulant child, a faint smile on his lips. It had amused him, watching the bickering of boys.

Now there is no amusement in Daemon’s eyes, no sense of excitement. They have all suffered too many losses for anything other than pure hatred.

Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were slaughtered at his order, Helaena left to rot in her grief, to leave her last living child motherless. What were the children to Daemon Targaryen? They were his kin, his brother’s grandchildren. Their deaths didn’t put him closer to the throne, didn’t win him any allies, but it wasn’t about strategy, was it? It was about pain.

Aemond doesn’t care to count the seconds or minutes they spent in a silence, broken only by the rush of the waves and the hisses and growls of their dragons.

It is like standing face to face with a wild animal, anticipating what he may do, which move he may make.

He sees Daemon’s eyes flicker momentarily to the sapphire that sits in his left socket, and smirks. In some cruel twist of fate, a dull pain blooms at the base of his skull, but he endures it.

“You’ve come out of hiding at last,” Daemon says.

An unease pools in his stomach. For a moment he thinks he sees movement in the sky above him, but when he looks, there is nothing.

“I was under the impression I was being hunted,” Aemond retorts.

Daemon laughs. He means to mock him but it’s not quite careless enough to be convincing. “Do not flatter yourself, boy,” he says. “Your whore said you would come.”

An unsettling feeling washes through him, like he is being watched.

Alys. He had left her in a cell with the bloody remains of the rest of House Strong, evidently not long enough for her to starve before Daemon’s return to Harrenhal. “Did she care to say why?”

Daemon’s lips curl into a sneer. “Do you still believe you are owed a debt?”

He recalls a cold thrill that had come with killing Rhaenys. It hadn’t been enough to justify the anguish he had seen his family suffer, how they have continued to suffer. He wonders if killing Daemon will satisfy him.

Still, his uncle is not the reason he followed Grey Ghost to the God’s Eye.

She must be here somewhere and he doesn’t want to wait any longer. He hungers for her like a man starved. He wants to feel her, her heat, her blood, his hand around her throat and her heartbeat under her skin. He wants to see her eyes again, full of fire and fury.

He can feel Vhagar’s urge to fight beginning to boilin his blood. He welcomes it, lets it fuel his anger and his grief, pounding in his chest like a war drum. “You have lived too long, uncle,” he says.

Daemon sheathes Dark Sister and reaches up to grab at Caraxes’ saddle, ready to mount. His voice is solemn but his eyes are dark with vicious intent. “On that much we agree.”

And so Aemond mounts his own dragon, fastening the chains that secure him to the saddle. He looks to the sky, then to the castle, waiting for a flash of pale grey scales, a dragon’s cry or a girl with dark hair. He finds nothing. Grey Ghost must be here and yet there is no trace of him or his rider. He clenches his fists around Vhagar’s reins and digs his teeth into his lip. His patience is wearing thin.

Caraxes moves first, leaping from the ground with an ear splitting screech, breathing a stream of fire into the air as he flies.

Vhagar is slower to follow, scrambling over the pebbles to push off from the ground. He feels the force of her wings against her own body, hauling her to ascend, pursuing Caraxes into clouds of grey and red, the sea of flame.

He braces against the fire, roaring in his ears as they break through the clouds and come into the vastness of the sky. Daemon and Caraxes are nowhere to be found. Through the spaces in the clouds and the fire below them, the God’s Eye watches, bathed in red by the setting sun. Soon enough it will all be black.

Vhagar roars, deeply and furiously. A bait, a call to battle.

As suddenly as a thunderbolt, the red dragon breaks through the clouds. Caraxes surges towards Vhagar with eager teeth and talons. She breathes a plume fire unlike anything Aemond has ever seen. Caraxes avoids the stream as he goes for her side, slashing at her belly with his claws and screeches as he rears his head, ready to strike her neck.

But Vhagar gets there first. Aemond’s jaw clenches instinctively, the taste of blood pooling on his tongue as Vhagar sinks her teeth into Caraxes’ shoulder. The dragons writhe and thrash in a deadlock, unrelenting in their attacks but determined to escape each other.

They start to fall. It is a chaotic struggle, beating their wings, screaming in agony and rage, pulling away and ripping at each other.

There’s nothing Aemond can do. He tries to urge Vhagar with the reins, tries to scream at her to let go, to obey, but his efforts are all lost to the wind, the spurts of dragon’s blood rushing through the air, desperate bursts of flame.

Until Caraxes wrenches his claws away from Vhagar’s side. His wings struggle as they fall but he scratches at Vhagar’s head, urging her to release the grip on his shoulder. She does, only to close her jaw around his neck with another snap of her jaws.

The lake is getting closer.

For a moment he wonders if he could jump before the dragons hit the surface of the water. He probably wouldn’t survive the fall, and even if he did, his riding leathers and the chains that keep him fixed to Vhagar’s saddle would weigh him down.

They will die with their dragons then.

He hears the call of a dragon, not the aged roar of Vhagar, not the piercing cry of Caraxes.

Through the haze of blood and fire, his eye finds a pale figure on the lakeshore, another dragon.

His heart stops.

Grey Ghost darts into the air, and glides around Vhagar and Caraxes, coming clearly into view.

And he sees her.

He can hardly make out the details of her face and he feels all the more deprived of her. A silver breastplate glimmers on her chest like dragon scales, catching the final crimson glow of the sunset. Dark hair flies behind her with the force of the wind.

Her hands aren’t on the reins, her arms are outstretched. At first he thinks she is reaching for something, until he realises she’s holding a bow when she reaches for an arrow from a quiver strapped to her back.

He feels frozen, helpless as he watches her position the arrow and pull back the bow string. It would be a quicker death than drowning, and it would be by her hand. He might find peace in it, if only he could see her face on final time.

It is just, surely. He threatened her, demanded she repay her debt with her body and then her eye, pursued her through a storm and watched as she fell through the clouds with the pieces of her dragon.

He tells himself he deserves it, for the way his mother looked at him when he returned from Storm’s End, the way Helaena couldn’t stand to be near him, the screams echoing in his memories, for all the pain he has caused.

The anticipation doesn’t have a chance to set in. He feels himself knocked back by something lodging itself in his shoulder and even then he cannot take his eye from her.

Vhagar lurches, screaming in pain as something hot and wet seeps through his leathers and the shirt underneath.

The shock takes a matter of seconds to wear off, then there is just a searing pain.

His dragon releases her jaws from Caraxes’ neck. Caraxes’ claws continue their assault on her head, aiming for her eyes, but she is almost indifferent to it as she turns her attention to Grey Ghost.

Vhagar can hardly move from underneath Caraxes, but she can drag him with her. Grey Ghost seems to be larger than Arrax was, but it will only take Vhagar a single snap of her jaws to claim both dragon and rider.

He can’t watch Luke die again. He will not.

He can scarcely breathe, can hardly think straight or see anything clearly, but he musters all the force his lungs can manage and wrenches on the reins. “Daor, Vhagar!” he commands. “Ziry daor!” Not her.

Against her desire for blood and her own stubbornness, Vhagar obeys. She turns her head once more to Caraxes. With a slash of her talons, she makes another tear in his belly. Blood gushes from the wound like a river, streaming through the air as the black surface of the God’s Eye comes closer, and closer.

This will be a battle with no victor. As Vhagar delivers her blow, Caraxes twists his neck and sinks his teeth into her throat. She tries to cry in pain, but it is muffled as she gargles on the blood that floods her gullet.

Aemond tries to look for Luke and Grey Ghost again, but he cannot find them. He sees blood, he sees flames, he sees the colours of sunset in the sky and the lake.

He has to get out of the chains, but he does not know if he has the strength.

He looks up, or what he thinks is up, following along Vhagar’s neck, to where Caraxes’ jaws are clenched around her flesh, along his red hide, to his back.

Daemon is standing in the saddle, Dark Sister unsheathed and poised before him. He should be falling– in fact he is, falling with the dragons, down, down, down, his sword ready to strike.

Daemon means to kill him, before they can meet the water.

He would give his life to Luke, but he will not allow his uncle the satisfaction.

He doesn’t stop to consider if he has the time, he knows he has to act. First he takes hold of the arrow in his shoulder, snapping off as much as he can of it, bearing his teeth through the pain. Then he heaves the heavy chains to unhook them from the saddle.

As the point of Daemon’s sword comes to meet him, Aemond hauls his body out of its path. With his left hand he reaches for the hilt, and clasps his fingers around it.

With the force of Daemon’s falling, the Princes are dragged from Vhagar’s back.

Aemond has one final chance and seconds in which to take it.

He grips the hilt of Dark Sister as harshly as he can, crushing Daemon’s hand under his grip. He twists his uncle’s wrist, driving the point of the sword into his stomach and driving it forward into his flesh, as far as it will go.

He doesn’t hear a cry of pain, a final grunt or an exhale of breath before the treacherous waters of the God’s Eye consume them.

The noise of their battle, of screaming dragons and roaring fires, are engulfed in a cold, black void. Everything drags him down, his leathers, the force of two dragons hitting the water, and the weight of the limp body run through on Dark Sister.

Aemond does not fight it. He feels the sting of cold water against his skin and in his nose and throat. On his tongue he tastes blood but cannot decide where it is from, torn between icy numbness and pain. It is everywhere, his shoulder, his limbs, his chest…

Vhagar is gone. For the first time in so long he feels incomplete.

But even then the thought of grief fades into the cruel quiet of the lake.

Perhaps his end will be peaceful after all. He is not sure he deserves it, but he wants it all the same.

He hears his heart now, pulsing in his ears, echoing through his veins.

He thinks of Helaena and his mother and wonders if they are being kept together or apart. He thinks of Daeron, fierce, young, vulnerable, the only dragon rider their family will have left. He thinks of Aegon and Maelor and can only hope they are safe. He thinks of Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, little white nightgowns seeped with blood, and tightens his grip on the hilt of Dark Sister.

Something disturbs the water above him.

He can see their faces through the darkness, a thousand and one, constantly shifting. Without saying a single word they tell him he is safe.

Something like a limb curls around his torso and grabs him. The pressure on his chest is excruciating but he cannot scream with water in his lungs. It hauls him up. He feels the break through the surface of the lake but he still cannot breathe.

He wonders if this is the Stranger himself crushing come at last to claim his life and face whatever judgement the gods will pass on him.

Until he lands on solid ground, though not quite solid. It shifts beneath him, cold and sharp under the palms of his hands and the side of his face. With his heart drumming frantically in his ears, his body acts for its own survival, pushing him up onto his hands and knees, retching up blood and water, gagging on the taste it leaves in his mouth.

He hears something land on the ground before him and knows it is a dragon. Through his own struggle he recognises the sound of footsteps against the pebbles, slow and cautious.

His vision is blurry and the only light the sky can offer is a gloomy red. He can see the gleam of it against Dark Sister, the sword of Visenya, Maegor and Daemon, just beyond the reach of his fingertips.

A hand that is not his own closes around the hilt and brings it out of his line of sight, the point coming to rest at his throat.

Retribution will come with fire and fury…

He drags his body back to rest on his haunches so he can look up at her.

She’s covered in red, her skin under the sunset, her skirt and the sigil of the three headed dragon embroidered on her riding leathers. But she is unmarred by blood, either her own or another’s.

She looks eerily peaceful, a quiet rage simmering under the surface of tired eyes and a soft, rounded face. He does not take his eye from her and she meets his gaze without shame, without fear or pride. He thinks then, he would be content to die at her hand.

He waits for the blade to pierce through his throat, for whatever warmth is left in his body to fade and for the world to go dark again. He waits for the pain to finally end.

… and so it will be your salvation.

Tags (comment to be added to either)

General taglist: @randomdragonfires @jamespotterismydaddy @theoneeyedprince @tsujifreya @dreamsofoldvalyria @targaryenrealnessdarling

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humanpurposes · 2 years ago

Text

Karma is a God

Chapter 13: The Riverlands

The Dance of the Dragons begins on a lie, and Aemond owes a debt, one Lucerra will see repaid in Fire and Blood // Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Aemond x Lucerra Velaryon (fem!Lucerys)

Warnings for this chapter: spoilers for F&B and future seasons of HotD, canon divergence, descriptions of violence

Words: 7700

A/n: Also available to read on AO3.

The skies over Blackwater Bay and Crackclaw Point are clear. There are no clouds to hide in and Grey Ghost makes quick work of the distance from Dragonstone to Maidenpool.

The Queen had ordered that she fly straight back to King’s Landing after accompanying Baela and Rhaena to Dragonstone, but as much as she fears her mother’s wroth, she fears what might happen if she sits idly.

To the south, Borros Baratheon has summoned his banners to Storm’s End. To the west, the Lannisters clash with the Iron Fleet. The Tyrells have taken a neutral stance, but the Hightower army is rebuilding in the Reach, rallying behind Prince Daeron and Criston Cole.

As for the Riverlands… the reports they receive are harrowing.

For almost two moons, Aemond has terrorised the Riverlands, unleashing dragonfire and death upon all those he deems to be traitors. Everything in his path turns to ash; towns, cities, castles, crops, and too many lives to count.

They fly high enough that the world spreads out below them like a map. As they approach the southern shore of the Bay of Crabs, she can see where the green fields turn to black. Smoke rises from the ground, trees reach against a grey sky, charred and bare. No life remains where Vhagar flies.

Could he hear the screams as he did it? Was he blind to the suffering, or did he bathe himself in it?

She had heard the cries of dying men as she burnt the Tyroshi war ships by Driftmark, but they were distant, a noise lingering in the back of her mind. All she remembers of that night is the smell of smoke, flashes of golden flames blurred through her tears, emptiness and rage. Thousands of lives ended, for the sake of avenging two already lost.

It is not the same, she tells herself.

They were soldiers. Any one of them could have been the man who released the quarrel that killed Jace, or manned the ship that sunk the Gay Abandon and young Viserys with it.

Aemond kills because he is cruel.

And I…

Death could not save the people who died at Hightide and Spicetown, it could not bring back her brothers, or any other lives lost at The Gullet. That thought has lingered in her mind ever since, a parasite draining the warmth from her body, the life from her soul.

But this is war. Either she will die a martyr, like Jace, like Rhaenys, or survival will chip away at the person she once was.

Maidenpool is nothing compared to the grandeur of Dragonstone or the high walls and towers of The Red Keep. Its keep and battlements are grey and cobbled, covered in moss and ivy so it blends in seamlessly with the surrounding greenery and the backdrop of the sea.

The castle is not the first thing she spots though, rather the blood red dragon that lies before the outer walls. Caraxes is curled in on himself, in a rare moment of peace as he sleeps. But he stirs as they land, rearing his head and glaring at them through wide, golden eyes.

Grey Ghost is uneasy, and not without cause. The Bloodwyrm is monstrously large, bloodthirsty and chaotic.

She remembers the first time she saw Caraxes, as their families gathered on Driftmark for the funeral of Laena Velaryon. Jace had flown on Vermax, while she, too small to ride Arrax, rode in a carriage with her mother and father. They reached Hightide and suddenly she heard a thunderous roar and a whistling, rippling shriek. What a sight they were, Caraxes and Vhagar, soaring from the East with the sunrise. They terrified her in different ways. Vhagar was colossal, and though Caraxes was smaller, he was swift, with piercing eyes, sharp teeth and a serpentine neck that she couldn’t help but follow as it swayed and slithered.

The gates open before she has dismounted. Daemon leads an escort of guards to meet her, dressed in his riding leathers rather than his armour. He knows not to come too close to Grey Ghost.

Her dragon is steadfastly steady as she dismounts, his head fixed on the men who have dared to approach his rider.

Strangers, hisses the voice in her head. Danger.

“Princess Lucerra,” Daemon says, resting his hands on the hilt of Dark Sister which hangs from his hip. “What a pleasant surprise.” His voice is calm but in a way that makes her nervous.

“Your Grace,” she says, keeping a gloved hand against Grey Ghost’s hide, stroking along his scales to calm him.

Daemon observes this with a small smile, and a turn of his head towards the guards, who relax their stances. “You should know better than to announce on dragonback unannounced.”

“And yet you were able to determine I was not an enemy,” Luke says. “I came from Dragonstone.”

His amusement fades into something more concerned. “Baela and Rhaena?”

Rhaenyra needed a dragon to protect the island and patrol the sea, if necessary. It couldn’t be Tylesys, Sheepstealer was still weak from the encounter with Tessarion, and she wanted Seasmoke, Vermithor and Silverwing to stay in King’s Landing. By the slight frown in Daemon’s face, he has some trepidation about Baela being the one to take on such a burden. But she is brave enough for it, and besides, Dragonstone is defended by water and the Velaryon Fleet. So long as Daeron and Tessarion remain in the Reach, the girls will be safe.

“Your daughters are safely delivered,” she says.

Daemon looks between her and her dragon. “Does your mother approve of you being here?” he asks.

Her breath catches effortlessly in her throat. “She does not know.”

He smiles again. “I have to admit, I did anticipate you might find your way here.”

The small council met the very day they received the first letter from Riverrun.

Prince Aemond has declared a one man war on the Riverlands, intent on burning all those who align themselves to Queen Rhaenyra.

The sight before her eyes was dull and gloomy. She winced at flashes of lighting and rumbles of thunder that were not there to be seen or heard. She saw only him, the scar she had left him, the sapphire set within the socket. His voice drifted through her, just out of earshot but there nonetheless.

“I want you to put out your eye, as payment for mine.”

“Do this, dōna ilībōños, and I will consider your debt fulfilled.”

“My nephew must not be left unchecked,” Daemon’s voice said.

Suddenly the other faces in the room materialised into view. Rhaenyra’s eyes were down, fixed on the golden ball placed before her. Lord Corlys’ brow was twisted in contemplation and concern. The other men of the Small Council were watching Daemon, who in turn had his eyes on her.

He watched her for the entirety of their gathering, and she knew what he was looking for. She gave him nothing, not the smallest movement in her face or a hint of an expression. She had become rather well practised at this.

But the moment she was back in her chambers, the moment she was alone, she gave into the fury and fear simmering inside of her. She only managed to seat herself on the edge of her bed before the tears began to stream down her face. She caught them in her palms as she wept.

Aemond was rarely cruel as a child, if he was it was because he had been pushed too far, by Aegon, by Jace, and by her own doing. She had expected him to hate her when she returned to the Red Keep, and she had been right in her assumption. A debt was owed, one he had wanted her to pay with her life.

Whose fault could it be but hers that Aemond had grown into he had become?

A weight hung heavy in her chest. She hadn’t been the one to mount Vhagar or utter the command that scorched the Riverlands, but she knew she had a part in this, in some twisting of fate, in the overlaps and knots in the threads of life.

Two moons passed and hardly anything came from Daemon’s hunt. News would come of a castle or town left in ashes, farms and fields obliterated, whole herds of livestock lost to the dragon’s jaws, but Daemon could not fly fast enough. By the time word reached him of an attack, there would no traceable signs of Aemond and Vhagar but the devastation they left behind.

The night before she left to escort Baela and Rhaena to Dragonstone, she took supper with Lord Corlys and her siblings, which included Alyn and Addam. Moments like this were the closest she came to feeling she had a home in the Red Keep, despite the notable absences. She forced herself to smile as Joffrey tried to imitate everything about Lord Corlys, the way he held his cutlery, the way he leaned back in his chair and kept his cup close to his lips. Her brother was to be the future Lord of the Tides afterall.

Rhaena kept her little pink dragon, Morning, on her shoulder. She and Addam fed her scraps of beef and praised her when she cooed.

Baela sat beside Alyn, with perfect posture and a tight smile on her lips at everything he said. But her resolve was slipping. With every joke Alyn whispered in her ear, she leaned a little further into him and laughed a little louder.

At first the sight made Luke’s stomach churn, as if she could still see the distant battle at The Gullet, like she could still smell the smoke as the Tyroshi ships were bathed in Grey Ghost’s fire. Until she wondered if Jace had ever told Baela of his time at Winterfell, why he had a scar on his palm and why, if she travelled north to see for herself, Cregan Stark would have one to match.

Alyn was charming, Luke supposed, gracious, with a smile that sparked excitement.

What did it matter where Baela chose to seek happiness? Surely it was better that she did not dwell on memories and live her life with the burden of the past. What would that bring but grief and regret?

After seeing young Aegon to bed and allowing Joffrey one game of Cyvasse, Luke visited her mother. Rhaenyra could be found where she usually was, in her father’s chambers sitting by a dying hearth and gazing over the model of Old Valyria, coated with dust and cobwebs after so many years of neglect. Luke sat by her side, tracing her fingertips over her hands and the cuts along her skin. Some were red and fresh, some were older and clotted, others had faded into thin scars.

“They are meaningless,” her mother whispered without turning her eyes to her daughter. “A consequence of our ancestor choosing to forge his throne from the swords of his enemies. My father suffered the same.”

Watching her mother was like watching a warm and golden autumn fade into a desolate winter. She could not endure it for long.

Her back fell against the door as she returned to her bedchamber, frozen in place by what she saw. Another envelope, sealed with a winged insect stamped into amber wax, left on the floor by her bed, exactly where she had found the last one.

She held her breath for a moment, waiting for any kind of sound, a footstep, a voice, a scuttling of a rodent, but whoever had delivered it must have been long gone.

Once again, she reached for the knife by her bedside, slicing through the envelope to save the seal.

There was just one line, and no signature.

Search for him and he will find you.

She knew what had to be done. She could not sit idly, not while her mother’s allies burned and she had a debt of her own to claim.

Daemon steps towards her. “You want to be the one to do it,” he says.

She often has this feeling, like she’s drowning in her own skin. Like the world around her is cold and dark and she cannot breathe. She sees only one way to save herself from it.

“I have to be.”

The castle is quiet, filled with servants who scurry through the halls with their heads down, and knights and Lords who offer no looks of warmth to their Prince and Princess. It is unusual that Daemon does not reprimand them for it.

He sees that she is brought to a chamber that overlooks the sea and is given supper. It is no great feast– many of the crops and livestock of the Riverlands have been lost to Vhagar’s fire, but she is given a plate of shucked oysters and another with white fish and potatoes. Daemon does not eat with her, or visit her once she is finished.

The sounds of the waves roar in her ears as she lies in the bed and pulls the sheets around her. Each time she starts to fall asleep she feels weightless, and suddenly she is slipping from Arrax’s saddle and hurtling through to storm into the waves of Shipbreaker Bay–

But she wakes before her body meets the water.

A maid comes to her early in the morning just after sunrise. She bathes and dresses in her riding leathers, firmly fixing her sword to her hip, letting her fingertips linger on the golden seahorse hilt.

“He should be taken as a prisoner,” was Lord Corlys’ counter to Daemon’s pledge to find Aemond. “If he is dead, the Greens will make a King of Daeron and rally behind him.”

Rhaenyra at last looked up when he said it. “My brother forsook any chance of mercy when he tried to claim the life of my daughter,” she said.

Grey Ghost and Caraxes wait for them beyond the castle walls, restless the way dragons always are before they take flight.

“I have word from Sabitha Frey,” Daemon says before they mount their dragons. “She has recaptured Harrenhal along with the Blackwoods.”

“I can’t imagine it was difficult,” Luke says. “It was left completely undefended.”

Daemon chuckles as he hauls himself into Caraxes’ saddle, a much steeper climb than it is for her to mount Grey Ghost. Aemond would have further to climb than either of them, a thought which she tries to dismiss.

“We have our hold in the Riverlands once more,” he calls to her as Caraxes starts to move. The dragon whistles like a dolphin and bellows a screeching roar as he lurches forward, bounding off the ground and swiftly ascending into the air with powerful beats of his wings that shake the trees. Daemon steers him west, over the burned landscape.

Danger, whispers the voice in her head.

She drives Grey Ghost forward nonetheless.

As they fly, the air around them is hazy and thick. Luke keeps her sleeve over her nose and mouth. She is used to wind and rain rushing against her face, but smoke is a different beast altogether. It stings in her eyes, burns in her throat, seeps into her lungs and her bloodstream.

Heat lingers even after the fires have died and eaten everything away to ash. She feels it through her leathers.

Harrenhal is not out of place among this scorched wasteland. She sees the lake first, as vast as an ocean, black water glimmering under the sun’s early rays, splashes of white foam with the waves. In the centre is an island, so thick with trees she cannot see the ground underneath.

She feels unsettled, as though she is being watched. This must be the famed God’s Eye.

Standing over the water, shrouded in smoke and mist, is Harrenhal. She can see the path of Balerion’s fire through the five towers, where the stone is melted, twisted, and crumbled to ruins.

Harwin Strong once told her of the curse of Harrenhal, that every family who dared to hold it was doomed to meet a terrible end, and now her mother’s banners hang over the front gates.

Caraxes lands on the lakeshore where Daemon waits for her to dismount. This is a place familiar to him. This is where he was when news came of Arrax’s demise above Shipbreaker Bay. This is where he gave the order to seek justice for the deaths of his daughters. He remained here while Rhaenys burned at Rook’s Rest, as the Triarchy sank the ship that carried his son, as the Velaryon Fleet held The Gullet, as Jace and Vermax were lost to quarrels and treacherous waters.

Now is not the time to unleash her anger, but Daemon has always had a way of seeing right through her.

He leads her up the slight slope to the gatehouse, into the castle itself. The soldiers they pass bear the sigils of the Freys and the Blackwoods, proud and powerful houses of the Riverlands. Unlike those they passed at Maidenpool, the men and women here look upon their Prince with reverence. Daemon, with Dark Sister by his side, his short, silver hair braided away from his face, looks nothing less than a force of nature, a warrior, a would-be-King, the kind of man to inspire fear from both his enemies and his allies.

And when the fearful eyes come to her, they become curious. It is a question that has haunted her all her life; what do they see when they look at her? A Velaryon, a Targaryen or a Strong? A Princess, an heir, or an outlier, an insult to custom and duty? Perhaps now they see what she has become.

She follows Daemon through quiet hallways, through archways and holes in the walls where there should be doors, until they come to a cavernous hall. The light hardly reaches through the glassless windows on the far side of the room, but she makes out arches and buttresses hundreds of feet high, hearths untouched for decades. On the walls there are carvings of the sigil of House Hoare, images of the sea, krakens and sea monsters, men bathing– or drowning, under the dim light of the braziers, the last remnants of the Iron Islanders who once made this their home.

In the centre of the hall, still quite a distance away, is a table, around which a man and two women are gathered. Candlelight flickers against their faces as she and Daemon approach.

A woman stands at the head of the table, studying a map of the Riverlands and the Crownlands. Her chestplate bears two sigils, one of a black toad, one of two, blue towers. Her hair is pulled tightly from her face. Despite the soft, round edges of her cheeks and jaw, there is a stern look about her, a sharpness in her eyes and the thin line of her mouth.

The man is young, dressed in armour, marked by the sigil of a weirwood surrounded by ravens. He has a head of curly black hair, to match the second woman, only hers reaches below her waist. She is breathtakingly beautiful, tall and broad, dressed in white and black with a red cloak hanging from her shoulders.

“Princess Lucerra,” Daemon says, ushering Luke to stand at the other end of the table, overlooking the Kingswood and the Rose Road past Tumbleton and Bitterbridge. “Lady Sabitha Frey, Lord Benjicot Blackwood of Raventree Hall, and Lady Alysanne Blackwood.”

Only now do they look at her, with the same curiosity that she is used to.

“What an honour it is to be acquainted with you, Princess,” Lady Sabitha says, stiffly.

The two Blackwoods bow their heads, and Lady Alysanne offers her a small smile.

“We are glad to have you join us, Prince Daemon,” says Lord Benjicot.

Daemon hums in acknowledgement as he sets Dark Sister down on the table. “It seems a far more convenient base than Maidenpool,” he says, darkly.

A gust of wind howls in the distance. It is quiet, but with the echo through the hall it sounds monstrous and unnatural.

Lady Sabitha seems to have command of this gathering. Luke has heard rumours of Lady Frey’s character, most of them from Daemon. He says she is merciless and efficient. She finds she agrees with this assessment, but rather admires her for it. She has lost her husband in this war, and now her seat. The Twins, along with her son, have been taken by the Lannisters, who now block the road south.

“The Riverlands are loyal to you, Your Grace,” she says to Daemon, “but we have little chance of mustering more men than we have here.”

“What of the Tullys?” Luke asks.

Lady Alysanne sighs. “They cannot be relied upon. Elmo Tully would pledge their banners to the true Queen, but he will not act against Lord Grover’s wishes.”

“The Lord of Riverrun is as decisive as he is young and spritely,” Daemon says. “We cannot afford to wait for the old man to die while the Hightowers recover their strength.”

“But with Jason Lannister at the Twins, the Starks will have to fight through an army to reach us,” Alysanne says.

They fall into quiet, studying the map and the figures upon it, the hightower in the Reach, the stag at the edge of the Stormlands, the lion and the wolf to the north.

“And then there is the more pressing issue,” Lord Benjicot says darkly.

Luke counts the dragons upon the map. Tessarion in the Reach; Moondancer at Dragonstone; Syrax, Vermithor, Silverwing, Seasmoke, Tyraxes and Dreamfyre at King’s Landing. Lady Sabitha moves Caraxes and Grey Ghost to Harrenhal. Two figures remain, a golden dragon for Sunfyre, kept at the edge of the map, and Vhagar, hovering over Pinkmaiden, seat of House Piper.

“He was last seen here?” Luke asks quietly, reaching out a finger, but stopping herself before she touches Vhagar’s figure.

“Not three days ago,” Benjicot says. He places the tip of his finger over Riverrun first. “He began his assaults here, after Harrenhal was abandoned. He won’t directly attack the Tullys, but he targeted the lands that surround them.” Then he traces east, over the towns along the River Road, marking Aemond’s warpath.

“I went to Darry,” Daemon says, “by the time I got there, Vhagar was feasting on whole farms of sheep at the border of the Vale.”

“We think he might be seeking shelter here–” Lord Benjicot points to the mountain range that marks the border of the Westerlands. “Out of Prince Daemon’s reach, close enough to continue his attacks.”

“And he was not seen after Pink Maiden?” Luke says.

“He attacked at nightfall. Even with Vhagar’s size, it was impossible to tell where they went.”

Her eyes follow as he moves Vhagar’s figure to the mountains, and a heavy hand lands on her shoulder. The weight strains her neck.

“Perhaps I could ride out on Grey Ghost and search the mountains?” she says.

Daemon does not give the others a moment to consider. “I will not allow you to use yourself as bait.”

What is the difference? He would be happy for her to meet him in open battle, but not to seek him out as she had done with Daeron?

She knows better than to test the patience of Daemon Targaryen, but her own has been wearing thin for far too long.

“And how else do you intend to find him?” she asks. “You have searched for Aemond for moons and to no avail. Do you expect him to come to us willingly?”

“He is proud enough to do so,” Daemon mutters.

“Then where is he? Why has he not sought you out?”

“Enough.” He does not need to shout. His anger is apparent enough for her to bow her head and listen in to the rest of the gathering in silence.

There is nothing for her in Harrenhal but death.

She takes an abandoned servant’s quarters as a bedchamber, by the kitchens in Widow’s Tower, until Daemon tells her of the horror found in the crypt underneath.

Their bodies were left in the cellar, slaughtered within a cell, some simply run through, others slashed to shreds. There was no sense to it, no reason for Aemond to kill his prisoners or bring such a bloody end to House Strong– well, almost.

She wonders why he did it and how he can live with himself in the aftermath. He had not even spared the children. She pictures them cowering, helpless to watch as their family were picked off, one by one, before Aemond at last set his one, violet eye to them.

But Aemond kills because he is cruel, and soon that cruelty will be ended.

She cannot stay in the tower knowing what lies underneath. So she takes her sword and climbs the staircases, past empty chambers and passageways. She doesn’t know what she is expecting. Whatever was left of Ser Harwin or his belongings would have been removed years ago, and while Harrenhal may belong to his family, he always said he never felt at home here. She sees why for herself.

Her legs burn as she climbs higher, where the tower becomes decrepit. The stairways are treacherous now, she wonders if they might crumble under her boots and yet she carries on, passing rubble never cleared and gaps in the tower where the walls were lost to the Black Dread’s fire.

She comes to a bridge, high above the courtyard leading into the castle’s tallest tower, the Kingspyre. There are at least some signs of life in this part of the castle, servants, lit torches and hearths.

She passes a chamber with a great oak door, adorned with carvings of sea creatures with grotesque faces, waves and ships, the three rivers of the Trident and, when she looks closely, pairs of eyes hidden amongst the images.

She expects it to be locked, but tries the handle, only for it to open, seamlessly and silently.

It is a grand chamber, to be sure, perhaps intended for the Lord of the castle. There are no belongings in the room, no sign of ownership, and yet it is well kept. The sheets are clean, the logs of the hearth set and ready to be set alight It smells stale and stagnant, but not like the lingering smell of smoke found in the rest of Harrenhal.

She hesitates, then smooths her palm over the bedsheets to find they are cold. This chamber must have been in use recently, but not recently enough to warrant immediate attention.

She wanders to the window, overlooking the courtyard, the gatehouse and the God’s Eye beyond the walls. The figures in the courtyard are distant but still distinct. Daemon’s silver hair is obvious as he stands with a woman. At first she mistakes her for Lady Alysanne; she is seemingly tall and slender with dark hair, but something about her posture is different, the way she tilts her head as she leans closer to Daemon.

The wind wails beyond the walls of the tower and for a moment it sounds soft, like a breath.

The woman turns her gaze up, to the very window Luke stands behind. She can make out the colour of her eyes– green, brighter and paler than Lady Alysanne’s. They must be truly striking at a ground level, because from here they are piercing.

A sick feeling floods Luke’s stomach. She should not be here, not in this room, perhaps not even at Harrenhal, but she cannot find the courage to leave.

When she makes her way down the stairs of the tower and into the courtyard, Daemon and the woman are gone. Instead she finds the castle’s Godwood, following the small stream that runs through it, to the heart tree.

The faces in the bark are nothing like those in King’s Landing. These faces are full of anguish, twisted, mouths open as if they are screaming, in pain or fury.

A chill slips down her spine and she knows she is being watched– not by the eyes in the tree. A footstep treads softly in the grass behind her. She turns her head over her shoulder, just enough for them to know she has heard them.

The footsteps are less careful now, unabashed in their approach.

She sees a flash of dark hair, at first believing it to be Lady Alysanne, only to find herself disappointed, and then a little on edge.

It is the woman from the courtyard, the woman with unnaturally bright eyes.

“Do you often find yourself seeking the comfort of a weirwood, Princess?” she asks. Her voice is surprisingly low, rich and seductive.

She never used to, but she seems to have noticed them more since they took King’s Landing. She passes the weirwood in the gardens of the keep, sees the image of one above her bed, finds her mind wandering to memories of afternoons she spent under the shelter of red leaves and her uncle’s arm as he read from a history book.

“What business of it is yours?” Luke says sharply.

The woman hums a low laugh and lets it fade to silence.

Night is beginning to creep in. Beyond the walls of the castle, the sight of the sunset over the lake will be beautiful, a red sky over the water. She hears the waves and the wind as if she is standing on the shore.

“It is a terrible thing to lose one’s family,” the woman says, bringing her hands before her. Her dress is made of simple black fabric, with no patterns or distinctive embroidery, but the sleeves are long, draped over her hands and lined with green satin.

Luke catches a piece of flesh between her teeth. “You have lost family in this war too?” she says, uncaring at her shortness.

The woman tilts her head. Luke watches her as she takes a step towards the tree, placing her palm against the white bark, beside one of the faces. “The family I have lost was never mine to begin with. In truth, I do not feel it,” she says.

A hollow feeling lodges itself in Luke’s chest and twists like a knife in an already fatal wound. She wishes she could say the same.

The woman drops her hand from the tree, and turns to her. “Do you feel your losses, Lucerra?”

The absence of her brothers becomes a little more subdued each day, but she still carries them with her, the memories, the pain of knowing that their deaths were anything but peaceful, and the burden Jace has left her with.

She was so fearless as a child, she realises. She was secure, the daughter of a Princess, the granddaughter of the King, with Aegon, Helaena, Aemond and Jace to guide her, protect her. But all of that is gone now, the life she used to enjoy, and she fears the things she used to love.

Tears prickle in her eyes, heavy and close to falling.

How much can the woman read from a single look from her eyes?

She steps forward to take Luke’s hands in hers. Her skin is rough and dry. She opens Luke’s palms, running a slender finger along the lines in her skin. “A powerful combination of blood flows through your veins,” she utters. “The blood of the dragon, and of the First Men.”

Daemon has taken heads for such an insinuation.

Luke raises her brow. “Do you question my legitimacy?”

The woman scoffs. “ Laws are made by men, but we are made of flesh and blood alone. Legitimacy has no meaning in the natural order.”

“And yet without it, my position will never be secure,” Luke says.

The woman stares at her, amused or mocking, it is difficult to tell.

“It was not by right of birth that Aegon the Conqueror claimed rule of the Seven Kingdoms.”

She thinks of all the history lessons she used to sit through, never taking in a word. All the hours she would make Aemond read to her– did he hate her back then? Would he have refused her if he felt he had the choice? “No. But he won it, and had the strength to hold it.”

The woman hums. She runs her hand further up, to the thin, blue veins running along Luke’s wrist. She presses her thumb against her skin, letting the colour fade and run again.

Her harsh green eyes come to Luke’s. “Blood is unambiguous,” she whispers.

Why must it all come back to blood?

The woman seems to note some kind of change in Luke’s face, squinting her eyes and furrowing her brow just a little. What does she think she might find in the frightened and furious mind of hers?

“Helaena said something to me,” Luke utters before she can stop herself.

“She spoke of blood,” the woman says, assuredly.

There is a trail of blood. It flows to you. It ends with you.

Luke breathes slowly. She has tried to decipher Helaena’s words for weeks, moons even.

Her aunt used to mutter strange musings often, always to Aegon’s insistence that she was stupid and freakish. Jace’s stance was that he would not burden himself with things that did not make sense to him, and so she did the same.

Blood– blood she shares with her mother and the line of Kings that have come before them. Blood she shares with her brothers, with her father. Blood she shares with Helaena and her uncles. Blood spilled, lives ended or left in ruins. This war has seen too much of it already.

“What did she tell you, Princess?”

She whispers the words that have haunted her since she heard them, but where Helaena’s voice was gentle and wistful, she feels a tremble in her own throat. “There is a trail of blood. It flows to you. It ends with you.”

The woman frowns, keeping her gaze on Luke’s eyes as though the answer lies within her very soul. The longer she looks, the duller her eyes seem to become.

“What do you believe this means?” the woman asks.

Daemon says killing Aemond will end the war, or at least determine the outcome. Corlys says it will weaken their enemies, but give them cause to regather their strength. Her mother would say it is justice.

Kill Aemond and the threat of Vhagar will be removed. What remains of the Riverlands will be spared, Daeron and Tessarion will stand alone. Then they need only wait for Cregan Stark to march south to secure their victory.

It should all be so simple.

So why does she feel the wind running through her? Why does she feel so restless and furious that her body trembles and her nails press into her palms? Why does she hear the crashing of waves morphing into distance screams? Why does she feel so wrong?

The woman’s voice is perhaps the one thing that sounds true, clear and low. “Mercy is a weakness.”

She knows she has no reason to trust this woman, but the rage inside her tells her she is right. She may never know the number of men she has killed from atop her dragon, so what is one more? One more life lost, a fair exchange for what he has taken from her.

But it will be different to know the name of the man whose life she will claim, to know his face and his voice. To share his memories and his blood.

Mercy is a weakness– it sounds like something Daemon might say.

“What are you doing here?” The command in his voice as he approaches startles them both. Luke tears her eyes away from the woman, to the head of silver hair gleaming in twilight.

She begins to panic. Was she supposed to stay in the castle? The hour is getting late, perhaps he was concerned… but he doesn’t so much as look at Luke. His gaze is clearly on the woman.

“I was beginning to worry you might be dead,” he says.

The woman’s lips curl into a half smile. “I was spared by his Grace, the Prince Regent.”

Daemon scoffs, utterly unamused. Only then does he turn to Luke. “What poison are you inflicting on the poor girl?”

“Poison?” she echoes with a sly expression.

“That is your way, is it not, witch?”

This does not seem to phase the woman.

Daemon hums a short laugh, but his expression remains dark. “You were supposed to deliver my nephew to me…”

She hates this, not knowing the whole truth of what is happening around her, the secret devices and plots. The familiarity between Daemon and the woman is beginning to infuriate her, until her chest feels heavy with the weight of the breaths she takes to calm herself.

“...But by the sounds of it, it seems all you’ve succeeded in doing is keeping his cock wet.”

Suddenly her chest and stomach twist into a tight knot.

It is not an image she wants in her head, but it appears nonetheless. The woman standing before her is a beautiful one, and Aemond is a Prince, a warrior, hot-blooded and demanding when he wants to be.

Her imagination is vivid and visceral. She has felt his lips against hers, his breath on her skin, his hand tracing down the front of her gown and slipping beneath her skirts. She had almost expected him to take her fully that night, in the hidden corner of the Red Keep while their families failed to make amends. She often wonders if she should have let him.

Does he ever think about that night? What he did to her— what they did together, or was it all forgotten the moment he saw the pair of eyes bearing into her soul this very moment?

“He will come,” the woman says.

Daemon chuckles to himself. “For his paramour?”

Her piercing gaze falls once more to Luke. Her eyes are dark now and almost bloodthirsty. “He will come for what he believes he is owed.”

And so they wait.

Thirteen days pass. Daemon marks each one with a slash of Dark Sister in the trunk of the heart tree in the Godswood. Each strike bleeds red sap.

She tries to make use of each day, but there are only so many arrows she can shoot into targets and tree trunks, only so many times she can sharpen her sword before she will damage the blade.

All the while there is no word of Aemond and no sightings of Vhagar. Whenever she gathers in the great hall with Daemon, Sabitha Frey and the Blackwoods, she scours the map as if she will somehow know where to find him.

Daemon refuses to let her ride Grey Ghost, not even to circle the lake. He says the risk is too great, but since when did he ever burden himself with risks?

This castle was built on blood and is haunted by the Stranger. In another life Harrenhal might have been her home, but she fears she may not be able to stay here much longer. Her sanity cannot bear it.

She tries to find a new chamber to sleep in each night, but rest never comes easily. When she wakes she recalls dreams of the lake. In these dreams, she does not walk along the shore or try to find her way back to the castle. She lies against the pebbled beach, her head cradled in scaly limbs, a longing for blood in her belly and an ominous feeling that keeps her grounded.

Search for him and he will find you.

Luke rises with the sun. From the battlements, she can see Daemon in the godswood, carving his fourteenth strike into the weirwood tree. To the lakeshore she makes out the shape of her slumbering dragon. Grey Ghost blends in almost perfectly with the morning mist, until she spots one of his yellow eyes, wide and bright enough to spot from the castle.

She retreats to her little bedchamber in the Tower of Dread, tucks herself under the bedsheet, rough and scratchy with age, and shuts her eyes.

She stares back at the castle, and knows she will be safe within its walls— for now at least.

Her body is not her own, but she settles in it. This is not a brief moment of madness as with Tessarion. This feels like an extension of her dreams, something natural and familiar. Her movements are deliberate as she rises and spreads her wings.

She leaves Harrenhal behind, darting up towards the sky with all the speed she can gather, until the lake and the lands around Harrenhal are set out before her.

Aemond has not followed a particular path, so it stands to reason his hiding place may not be where she expects it to be. He could be in the mountains southwest of Pinkmaiden, or he could be somewhere else entirely.

If he has not been seen since then, perhaps he is somewhere more isolated.

By the time the sun has reached its peak in the sky, she has flown over most of the western Riverlands, over Raventree Hall, Acorn Hall, Pinkmaiden and Stone Mill. She can see she is approaching Riverrun, the seat of the Tullys. They do not fly any banners, and yet their men are gathered and preparing for war.

Where to then? Along the Red Fork to the Trident, to the mountains that border The Vale? Or over Whispering Wood, where the mountains meet the sea along Ironman’s Bay?

Intinstic drives her north with a swift beating of her wings.

A swirl of storm clouds looms over the Iron Islands, but the rain has yet to reach the mainland. A fearsome wind threatens to blow her off course and below her the waves beat against the base of the cliffs, crashing and roaring against the rock with flurries of white foam. Grey Ghost does not fear the sea and for now, neither does she.

She flies high, sweeping her eyes along the slivers of shoreline that have not been claimed by the tide, searching for any sign of another dragon, a nest, a charred carcass of an animal. That’s when she hears a growl, like a rumble of thunder, echoing through the air as if the very sky seeks to unleash its fury.

Vhagar rises from her hiding place, half-buried in damp sand and the rest of her hide blending in with the rock. She feels the heat coursing through her blood when the dragons meet each other’s eyes, the fire rising in her gut, the urge to sink her teeth and talons into flesh.

But she looks up to the clifface, to the figure standing on an overhang. His sapphire eye gleams through the dull daylight, the ends of his silver hair drift with the wind and the beating of her wings.

Aemond.

He knows what Grey Ghost’s presence means, she can see it in his face, the awe and the anger. She would be a fool to think he would feel anything else.

He will come for what he believes he is owed.

And what of the debt he owes her now?

When does it end?

When she opens her eyes her skin is drenched in sweat. She tosses the sheet off her body and hurries to dress herself in her riding leathers. Grey Ghost will fly swifter than Vhagar, but she needs every second she can claim. With her boots pulled over her feet and her sword on her hip, she yanks the door open, sprinting through the halls and the courtyard. She doesn’t stop when some of the soldiers stare at her in confusion, or when Lady Alysanne tries to stop her and ask what’s wrong. She couldn’t answer them if she tried.

She feels her heart beating at all her pulse points, the wind slicing over her skin, the howling of the wind coming off the lake.

Daemon is in the Godswood, under the heart tree, resting his hands on the hilt of Dark Sister. He turns to face her as she approaches.

She is breathless, but her voice has never sounded clearer. “He’s coming.”

“How?”

How did he know to come? How do you know?

“I saw it,” she says.

Daemon frowns. In fairness, she herself would not trust such a vague answer.

She follows him back to the courtyard. The castle is in a panic now; the men are restless. Daemon fetches something from the armoury, a bow and a quiver of arrows. They are slim, not enough to pierce the hide of the dragon, but enough to shoot through the flesh of a man.

“Remember everything he has taken from you,” he says before he hands them to her. “Aemond may share your blood, but he is not one of us.”

She nods, and fastens them over her back.

Grey Ghost flies over the castle as the sun begins to set.

Luke and Daemon both know what they must do. She joins her dragon, hiding amongst a line of trees on the eastern shore of the lake, while Daemon waits in the open, and calls for Caraxes.

From the shadows of the trees, she watches the sky turn from blue, to gold, to red.

A shape flies before the sun and for a moment the world goes black.

She has never forgotten the fear she felt when she heard Vhagar’s call at Storm’s End, as she saw her shape through the clouds and stared into her open jaws. That same fear ripples through her body and makes her blood run cold, but she does not shy from it.

A thousand voices cry out in her head. Screams of the men she condemned to burn. Cries of anguish and mourning. Raised voices, calls for justice and retribution.

Mercy is a weakness. She finds herself wishing the world had more mercy.

But one voice appears clearer than the rest.

Blood– her heart in her chest.

Blood– the sky through the branches, illuminating the lake.

Blood. Blood she shares with Kings, Princes and dragons.

She has seen Aemond’s blood before and felt it against her skin. She is sure she will see it and feel it again before the night has reached its end.

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