Archive of Our Own ^beta

First, the Prince thought he’d spotted his sister. But Helaena was still suffering Aegon’s dimwitted discussions at the feast his family was hosting for some far from the realm cunt Lord who had annoyed Aemond about his eye and offered him a daughter he didn’t want that he had to deny graciously because of his role. On and on the dinner had gone, making Aemond’s head spin. He’d had to leave. So it wasn’t Helaena, unless she had developed new traits of being stealthier and faster than Aemond. More than most of King’s Landing.

It certainly wasn’t his half-sister Rhaenyra. Since she’d gone to Dragonstone with her husband and his nephews after one had taken his eye upon his claim of the dragon Vhagar, he hadn’t seen them. And if she were to come now, stealthily, to the dragon pit, he only considered bad things to come from it. Was she slaying their dragons? Sunfyre and Dreamfyre and the old Vhagar? Was she spiriting others away? Their eggs as well? She wouldn’t have the extra dragon riders for them even if she did.

Yet he knew it wasn’t Rhaenyra because this girl was taller than his half-sister, almost his own height, and she wore a cloak that was completely black aside from the branding star toward the shoulder of the material. Some kind of face was etched into the star, but he couldn’t make it out. Whatever it was, the whole thing was just… capricious. In a way that intrigued and delighted him, far more than some stuffy dinner with his annoying brother and some Lord and his family.

The girl was certainly a thief. The way she cooed at the dragon, like she was soothing it, coaxing it, he was sure. She was going to take it. Or be flamed and eaten somewhere along in the process.

But her hair.

It made him feel strange. It wasn’t exactly like that of a true Targaryen, like his and Helaena’s. It wasn’t as unkempt as Aegon’s, either, which showed signs of his Hightower heritage. But he knew it was Targaryen enough. She had a dragons blood in her that was pure and rich and it showed. If he didn’t interrupt her, there were chances she would actually escape with the dragon.

She wouldn’t make the escape on dragon back, however. She’d have to try and sneak it through the city or maybe toward the Blackwater Bay. Either way, there were plenty of eyes. She wouldn’t make it far whether he intervened or not. Still… perhaps only because of that intrigue she had burning in him, he had to.

So Aemond stepped from the shadows.

The deep maroon dragon noticed him first. It bared its pointed and almost golden teeth his way in a quiet, angry command. Stop, step back. Another sign that the thing was still growing, still raging like a young dragon was. It wanted not a rider or a conquest but a meal. Aemond had been raised in this environment, for this environment. This girl… whether she had Targaryen lineage or not, had not. She is a fool, he thought decisively.

The dragon made a low whistle-like sound from its throat as the girl slowly turned. For her to be unwise enough to trust a young dragon at her back… she truly was wild and something else, worse. Aemond would find this a fun night after all.

“Rytsas,” Aemond spoke low, in the old tongue, the High Valyrian tongue. The girl’s face was mostly shaded by the night and dark gleam of the pits, but the hair falling over his shoulders and down her back still glowed enough that it accentuated her high cheeks and plump lips. Her lips had been painted black.

“Rytsas, dārilaros,” she spoke quick and just as quiet, in the same High Valyrian tongue that Aemond had used. He was almost staggered, firstly, because she knew who he was, secondly, because she knew Valyrian. He’d heard through the spies and the lip-spittles of his mother’s and grandsires court that even his nephew, Jace, still struggled with his study of the old Valyrian language. “I didn’t expect you to be here,” she continued, her speech, her dilation, perfect. She was preening and he could tell from her dark lips as she smiled at Aemond, sharpening his senses, fueling him farther. This girl, to him, felt like a challenge that had been thrown right at his feet.

“Skoro syt issi ao kesīr, issaros?” Aemond pushed at her, at the challenge.

“Ñuha paktot.”

“Paktot naejot skoros,” he changed easily to the common tongue, “exactly?”

She met his change just as smooth, “A dragon.” The maroon dragon at her back seemed to agree to this girl, the whistle-tone it had made shifting to more of a hum. It felt through the dirt and grime of the ground with steady talons, eyes still trained on the Prince.

“You have no right to the Targaryen’s dragons.”

The girl hummed in succession with the dragon. “Dragons belong to no one.”

Aemond almost laughed. “They belong enough.”

“I have not come to fight, Prince. I will be gone soon.” The dragon continued to dig at the ground. “Let me be, and I you.”

Aemond put his hands together behind his back. He could’ve went for the dagger belted at his hip. Or the sword dangling from his side. But it all sounded boring. She would be dead too quickly. The challenge gone in the blink of an eye. “Or I could drag you to the Red Keep to await the King’s justice for being a thief. A thief from the King and the King’s family, too. A most heinous crime.” He stepped forward, once, twice. The columns of the dragon pit were far and few between this deep within, but they cast long enough shadows that Aemond chose to walk in. She was shrouded and he was too.

“There would be no justice in bringing me to your King.” She spoke like she was almost annoyed. Like she could tell Aemond was more playing with this situation than taking it seriously, and it was pissing her off. He wanted to laugh again.

“So says you.”

“I know.”

“How would you know?” Aemond was almost upon her now. The dragon at her back whined and warned him about his closeness, but he did not care.

She took one step from the dragon, and another step toward Aemond, reaching him in a stride that forced him to wait. This close, he saw all her features. Her lips were indeed painted a gleaming black, a taunting black, and her cheeks were high and pretty, giving her a delicate edge that she didn’t have in her voice, in her words. She had mystifying eyes, some shade between grey and blue that Aemond didn’t realize would haunt him forevermore. Clips sat in her hair at either side, forcing it back from her face. Because she nearly matched his height, she barely had to look up at him. He almost wanted to step back. But that wasn’t like him.

“My name is Aelyssan, Prince. Can you keep a secret?”

She was toying with him. Farther than he was toying with her by a small margin. Some strange part of him felt like putty. Like he needed to fall into her now. “Well enough,” Aemond answered. He needed to know. He fisted his hands behind his back. She smiled like she could tell, what she was doing, what he was feeling.

Even he was barely aware.

“My mother sends me from Volantis to claim what I’ve wanted most since I was a child. Since I knew it existed, here.” She brought a hand out from under her cloak, rings gold and silver and ruby gleamed on her fingers as she motioned all around, at the pit, at the dragon behind her.

Aemond said nothing for a moment, not until he was sure, in his own mind. “Saera Targaryen.”

The girl laughed in a quick and loud way that made even the dragon behind her hesitate. “You’ve very smart, Prince. Or should I call you cousin?”

Aemond had barely remembered Saera’s existence. She was his grandaunt or something of the like. Sister to his father’s father, once upon a time, before she turned rogue and crazed for passion. He’d read a bit about her, had even heard some things from his mother that the old King had once told her on his deathbed. She had sons who had shown up for his great council, when he’d been pondering his succession, one had looked just like the old King, if the reports were correct. This girl… she couldn’t be more than twenty, if that. And Saera by now was surely reaching toward her six and tenth name-day. To think she was still birthing children, and bastards at that, was a bit irritating for Aemond. He felt a phantom pain beneath his eyepatch and clenched his fists harder.

“You’ve come to claim a dragon.”

“I’ve already claimed,” she mused almost wistfully. Aemond kept himself from staring at her black lips.

“You should know it won’t be allowed.”

She rolled her blue-grey eyes at him and stepped away. The air seemed to shift around Aemond at the lack of her close presence. He shifted his weight carefully between his feet, in such a calm and minuscule way that even the most trained eyes wouldn’t have been able to tell. Aelyssan, still walking away from him, barely paid any attention. She was over their encounter. He clenched his jaw. Something slighted and like fury pounded in his chest.

“You can’t take a dragon. Your mother decided that when she ran from her name, her titles. When she became a whore.” He’d meant it as an insult but Aelyssan—

She laughed again, this time more light, and reached up to pat the maroon dragon’s head. It eased its maw into her palm. Aemond knew almost the whole truth of it then. This girl had come here before. She might’ve been at this for weeks, months, bonding with the dragon. And those stupid keepers had never noticed anything amiss. Or at least never reported it. Some rogues were still in line with Saera in one way or another, he was sure, since her bastard sons had walked away from the great council unharmed and someone had to have noticed this girls similarities to the Targaryen line. Peoples silences were annoying, Aemond decided that years ago. He hated not knowing things, he hated not having a step up on others. Probably just something his Hightower family had dripped into him. Aemond ground the thoughts away.

“Some people chase their pleasures, their happiness,” Aelyssan mused. She wasn’t even turning back to look at him as she spoke. She’d caught the dragon’s attention fully again. He could almost see the bond. It was like a palpable line between them, stretched and thin and still wary but growing. And fast. A line of stark gold. He felt the same with Vhagar, enough at least. “That’s why I came. That’s why my mother left this place. I don’t mean to insult you or your ways, Prince.” She glanced at him, barely.

Aemond wanted to grab her jaw, force her to look at him starkly, to see into the black pit that he was and some other remnants of his old self that he’d buried. To make her see fear. But that was only part of him.

The rest, the better parts, with less chipped edges, stared at her. She didn’t buckle, didn’t say anything else. He spoke first, “And how do you intend to take the dragon? It’s not large enough to ride, and you’d be spotted if you did. You’d be spotted just walking it out of here, too.”

She seemed to assess Aemond’s words and he was baffled. It was as if she hadn’t considered the full scope of her scheme. And she cared little about the chances of being spotted or caught, anyway. Both the intrigue and fury in him grew. He tried to bottle it and shove it away.

“Do you have any ideas?”

Aemond tensed. She just looked to him, one hand still resting on the dragon’s mouth. He damned the consequences. “Maybe one.”

The wind lashed at Aemond’s uncovered face. He would’ve normally embraced it, would’ve normally wanted it, but here upon Vhagar, the girl from the pit ahead of him on the dragon’s back, the night sky closer than the speck of King’s Landing below them, he was doomed and he knew it. He knew it nearly more than anything else.

The girl’s maroon dragon flew low, close enough to Vhagar that Aemond was sure no one could spot the speck that it was from the ground. It had hesitated at first, after Aemond had awoken Vhagar and the girl had led her dragon near. She’d spoken calmly in Valyrian to the thing, with fuller sentences than Aemond had ever even heard someone use with a dragon. He considered the chances that the girl may just be mad.

He was torn from his thoughts by her moving, she was a bit unsteady and she had unclasped her cloak. “What’re you doing?” He called above the wind. Vhagar shifted, feeling not only Aemond’s wired nerves but also the girls boots pressing sharply into her scales. She was readying to stand. Like she’d jump. “Wait!” He called again.

Aelyssan only turned to him. A flame burned beneath her eyes. She was more dragon than Targaryen and it stunned him. Almost as if he could see it, the golden dragon’s blood from within her, swirling around her veins, pushing her past her limits. She had been robbed, being raised away from court, away from the dragons, he thought.

She screamed into the night air, nothing meaningful, nothing specific. She just screamed, happily, crazed, and stood completely up. Even Aemond hadn’t tried such a feat. Especially not on Vhagar, the oldest and largest and one of the most temperamental of all the dragons. But now, looking at her, he wanted to do the same. To throw himself at the skies, at his dragons, mercy.

He couldn’t look away from her. Not as her hair lashed, the clips thrown free and whizzing away. She was wearing a muted gown that almost matched the color of the cloak she’d thrown off in front of Aemond and it whipped toward him. He had to move a bit farther back to keep from being struck by the fabric. She looked like she was embracing the sky, the moon, everything. Like she was tasting true and complete freedom. Something he had never had even a glimpse of knowing.

He didn’t know how long she stayed that way, yelling into the night, taking the lashing air against her in earnest, but eventually she collapsed, heaving breaths causing her chest to jump up and down. She was smiling wickedly and looked toward her dragon. It flew almost completely beneath one of Vhagar’s wings now.

She fell back into Aemond, who gripped the leather binds on Vhagar tighter. She was without a care, a worry. “It’s incredible,” she spoke, barely a whisper against the wind. “There’s nothing like it.”

Aemond knew exactly what she meant. “There never could be.”

They didn’t speak again, not until they reached the edge of Blackwater Bay, far from prying eyes, beneath Red Keep and even farther from that. And even if a few stumbled upon them, Aelyssan had already offered Aemond the knowledge that most around here knew her well enough. Knew her mother well enough too, and she’d be able to find some form of passage across the sea, safe for her and the young dragon.

The dragon seemed more worried than its future rider, but she shushed and soothed it before turning toward Aemond. He stayed close to Vhagar, one hand gripping one of the thick strips of leather tied around the dragon. Vhagar was almost readying to sleep, content and old. He’d have to rile her again to make his way back to the pit and then the Keep. His mother and grandsire Otto and the King would all have a lot to say to him about his suspicious flight. He didn’t know what he’d tell them, yet. Probably something between the truth and a lie.

He didn’t really care, in that moment. “Will you return?” Aemond asked and continued, “Soon?” All the blood within him he felt was actually boiling over in anticipation, fascination, too many things. He wanted to see her again. He wanted to see that gleam in her face that proved they were more than mere men. He wanted, oddly, condemningly, to ride alongside her in the skies. One day.

She was stroking her dragons thick neck. “Not soon, Prince. But if you wish it, as a return for the favor and gift you’ve given me tonight, I will return.”

The sun was rising at the cusp of the horizon and all her features continued to glow under its rising hue. Everything about her seemed sharper, more alive, after her flight upon Vhagar. He knew he had to see her again, knew there was no other option for him. “I wish it.”

“When is your next name-day?” She tilted her head one way, all her white-blonde hair cascading. It was wild after their flight.

“Four moons from now.”

“Meet me here, then.” She stopped petting her dragon and instead grabbed at the reins Aemond had taken from the pit and placed onto the thing. He’d already warned her that they wouldn’t last long. Her dragon was far from grown. She made like she was about to lead it off, toward an alcove off the rocks by the rush. Aemond felt stupid for never noticing the path before. “Geros ilas, dārilaros.”

“Se ao, issaros,” Aemond answered.

He watched her stalk away, the maroon and black dragon following contently even as it still raised its head to the sky every so often, like it was checking for the dome of the pit. Aemond waited until she was fully gone from his view before he mounted Vhagar and roused the she-dragon from sleep. He gave her the usual command, and with a last look at where he’d meet the girl again, Aemond flew home to the Red Keep.

Translations for the High Valyrian: I do not speak it! And if translations are off, I apologize