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“...and Prince Lucerys to fly south to Storm’s End.”
He had wanted to perform official duties for the Seven Kingdoms before, ever since he understood what it meant to be a Targaryen prince; even talked about it with Jacaerys in passing. But he did not expect for him to speak now, of all times, to carry out their duties. They had just learned of their grandsire’s passing, were they not expected to mourn the loss of a king?
There is hesitance in his bearing, but he meets his mother’s gaze and he knows that all is well in the world as long as she’s here. So he nods, signalling his desire to carry out their mission.
(In the back of his mind, Lucerys knew how utterly unprepared he was. His swordsmanship unpolished, his diplomatic skills uncharted territory—the only thing he’s confident in is his Valyrian, knowing he’s learned from his mother, the Queen.)
And here is a truth that none else would tell him: his mother cannot always be there for him.
He first understood this when the Sea Snake came to him talking about inheriting Driftmark. He did not want it, not when he was so… incapable. Far inferior to Lord Corlys who had won battles he’s only heard of in tales told to them by their servants. The Velaryon fleet is a force to be reckoned with, and Lucerys knows that it cannot be controlled by someone like him. He is but a child of four and ten.
With the wind gusting through his hair in a faraway tower of Dragonstone, he made a promise to the Queen and the Seven.
He holds her hand firmly in his, grounding himself with her warmth, “Go to it, then.”
✦
Storm’s End looms darkly on the horizon, the concave-like shape of its proud tower casting a pool of dread beneath his stomach. As Arrax flies closer to the castle, his wings cutting through drifting clouds, fire creeps beneath his skin, setting his nerves alight. His shoulders turn taut as he feels the phantom touch of fire dip below his spine.
A sort of impending doom is hanging in the air, the blood in his veins roaring. Turn back, it says.
When Arrax lands steadily on the earth, dirt flies around them like smoke. They say that as Targaryens, we are closer to gods than to men, he jumps off his dragon, and when he meets the eyes of the Baratheon soldiers defending the castle, he feels like he’s burning.
(Targaryens do not burn.)
And then he pauses, halts haphazardly in his steps.
There is a dragon bellowing in the distance, and it is not his.
Hesitantly, he looks for the source of the sound, and there just at the precipice of the shadows and the crashing waves surrounding Storm’s End stood the very thing he’s been looking for. Vhagar. Aemond Targaryen is here—and his head spins.
There is a hand vying away the air from his lungs.
“You will die screaming in flames just as your father did!” A rock is poised to crush his skull, and the spiteful face of a prince undeserving of the largest dragon in the history of the Seven Kingdoms comes into view. “Bastards.”
And he fights it, fights him, the words tumbling out of his mouth come choked, "My father is still alive!"
“He doesn’t know, does he, Lord Strong?”
He hears a dagger unsheathed—the one gifted to his brother by the same man they were mourning hours ago.
“Jace!” A squabble. His brother falls to the ground, and Lucerys trembles.
He crawls desperately on the ground, the desire to protect him bursting through his blood. They were raised by their mother to stay together and defend each other, after all.
Lucerys scrambles for the dagger.
A slash, and then—screams.
Perhaps it’s his nerves acting up, but he feels the air shift—a storm brewing beneath his skin. The clouds heavenward begin to darken as rain threatens to fall, and Lucerys looks away. He pivots around and looks instead at the soldiers waiting for him to present himself so they may escort him to their lord. But if anything, he is no fool.
Lucerys turns back. Ignores the questioning looks the Baratheon soldiers throw his way.
The One-Eyed Prince is here, and he knows he cannot deal with Lord Borros with the usurper’s son in his halls. Borros Baratheon is an eternally proud man, the words of his lady mother ring in his ears as he mounts Arrax, he will be honoured to host a prince of the realm, and his dragon.
But there had been a miscalculation.
Lucerys Velaryon was not the only prince of the realm.
And he knows that no matter how proud Borros Baratheon may be, receiving messages from two second sons of the realm will not please him. If it had been his brother who was sent here, the ever-perfect heir of the Seven Kingdoms, then perhaps, things would have been different.
He knows Jacaerys would not have been frightened by Vhagar; knows that he could take Aemond by the sword, and actually have a chance of besting him.
Jacaerys would not have turned back.
But he’s made a promise to his mother and the Seven—that he’d come here to Storm’s End as a messenger, not a warrior. And he knows that with Aemond, only chaos follows.
So he snugly saddles himself on dragonback, “Sōvēs, Arrax.”
And flies to Dragonstone, where he will always be safe.
✦
“Your Grace,” he casts his eyes downwards, gripping the parchment tight under his cloak. The first actual task his mother gives him—no, the Queen now—and he fails to deliver results. “I have returned with an undelivered letter, and news from Storm’s End.”
He feels the room pause, the silence deafening by the second. He does not dare look up.
The prince feels a warm, delicate hand hold his face gently, “What’s happened, Luke?”
His hold on the parchment loosens, comforted by the kind familiarity of his mother’s touch. Lucerys looks her in the eyes, distracting himself from the burning stares of the lords in the Queen’s Council. “Aemond arrived before me, and he’s brought the late Lady Laena’s dragon.”
He pulls out his mother’s letter from his cloak, handing it to her. He wants to apologize, ask her to give him another mission where he did not have to deal with Aemond, but alas, his mother had always been the best at reading him. “You did good, Lucerys. It was a good call.”
When her hand pulled away from him, he had to force down a shiver from the onslaught of cold air slapping his face. “It would not have ended well, had you stayed longer.”
But despite the Queen’s words, they were refusing to look away from him, as if cursing his very being. And they should. Must. Because it is the stability of the realm that he’s risked—his own lady mother’s claim to her rightful throne. He gingerly shakes his head, impelling himself to keep his wits about him, keeping his eyes trained towards the Queen, and waits for her to speak.
The sound of the heels of her shoes clacking against stone was the only sound in that small hall, “House Baratheon has diverged from its oath, and we will show them the consequences of breaking one made before King Viserys and the Seven, and aligning themselves with traitors.”
When he first heard the news of his grandsire’s passing from his mother who, at the time, had been clutching desperately on the marble columns in her chambers, trying to push out a sister who was not meant to come out that early, his heart had clenched stiffly in his chest; a rigid little thing trying to comprehend hundreds of emotions playing before him. But above all else, he had been angry. And justly so, he would say. The Iron Throne was his mother’s—the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms had sworn to her, and that dastardly traitor uncle of his was no king.
He could not compare to Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen.
In his eyes, his mother was the epitome of perfection. Possessing a brilliant mind and a dragonrider’s courage, the Realm’s Delight—or so what she had been called, as per Ser Harwin’s stories when he and Jacaerys were still children—carved out a place for herself in a succession game dominated by men.
So he could not comprehend what kept her from sending her armies to war after she was crowned Queen. Was she not angry that her throne had been usurped? Or at the very least crossed after her own friend had let his grandsire’s corpse rot away for days as she busied herself with the coronation of her son—one bearing a conqueror’s name but is much of a king as a mouse slithering from pleasure house to pleasure house?
It had not been his throne or his friend, yet it had angered him greatly.
But now that he’s looking at her, standing at the forefront of the Painted Table, her eyes burning with anger as she divulges her plans, Lucerys understands her patience, her staying her hand when she could have struck them where it would hurt, her staying firm despite every lord urging her to plunge the realm into war.
A sated cat will play with the mouse simply because it can.