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During the confrontation over Vhagar, bastardy and blood spilt, Rhaenyra is enraged that someone would dare call her sons bastards, going so far as to demand that Aemond be questioned “harshly”. Yet there is a moment where amid all the shouting a warning growl reaches her ears and, having heard that tone a time or two back when Laena was Vhagar’s rider, looks at Aemond. Really looks.
Shit.
The fact that someone is telling tales about who might be her boys’ father cannot be tolerated. But Aemond is a child. Luke gauged his eye out. He is bleeding and in pain and afraid. Vhagar is mad. Rhaenyra closes her eyes (her two, hale eyes) and opens them again, breathes.
“Let me question the boy alone,” she says and repeats the words until everyone has heard them. “I must know the truth, but I swear on my own children that I will not lay a hand on him. Here, we’ll go into the caves and I will question him in front of Vhagar, being with his dragon will help him in a moment like this.”
Alicent hates the very thought but Viserys is all for it, even suggesting quite reasonably that Ser Harrold go with them so that they might have an impartial witness. Everyone knows that the Kingsguard won’t be able to go near Vhagar but when Alicent thinks about it a bit more she realizes that if Aemond has gained a dragon, that dragon, he might actually be protected even if she has to let him out of her sight (and cannot have his care continuously overseen by a Maester, much less bundle her injured little boy into a bed.)
So to Vhagar they go. The trembling little boy, whose adrenaline is running out and who is beginning to feel a lot of pain, a crown princess who is fast realizing that bonding to Vhagar (and oh, did Rhaena shoot her a death glare over acknowledging this) means the kid is a dragon-rider and she maybe maybe really needs to accept his Targaryen-ness, and a Kingsguard who is beating himself up over not having been there to prevent the mess the childrens’ fight made in the first place.
A small part of Aemond maybe has the hope that Vhagar will blast Rhaenyra as soon as she gets near. If so, he is disappointed. Rhaenyra is not and has never been Vhagar’s rider, but she has long been Laena’s close friend even if they rarely had a chance of meeting. Also when not caught up in war flashbacks she is quite capable to suss out people’s intent. Rhaenyra is shaken up and still enraged, but she is not the one who harmed Vhagar’s tiny new Bonded nor does she plan to do him harm. Quite the opposite.
They settle in front of the massive dragon’s head, Ser Harrold in line of sight many paces away, Aemond and Rhaenyra on the ground. Aemond flinches when Rhaenyra reaches into her gown and produces a small knife, but Vhagar nudges him gently and he breathes out.
Aemond was utterly sure that Vhagar or not, Rhaenyra would round in on him with “harsh” questions the moment they reached their destination. But instead the woman who is his older sister merely murmurs to Vhagar “May I?” and then carefully scrapes off a small bit of ancient dragon scale.
Then she does the same with an ornament made from one of Syrax’ scales.
Rhaenyra holds out the two bits of scale to Vhagar. Aemond’s new-found dragon (!!) inspects them with one bright green eye, then tilts her head and snorts in Rhaenyra’s direction. The steam coming out of her nose is hothothot, melting the dragon scale in Rhaenyra’s hand, leaving the skin of said hand merely slightly reddened.
Intent matters, with dragons.
Rhaenyra lets the molten dragon-scale mass roll around in her hand until it is cooled. What is left looks like a gem, dark green flecked with gold, small and round.
Next she pulls out a tiny torch she must have picked up back when Aemond was too hurt and scared to notice. He’s still scared now, and hurting, but Vhagar is a solid massive mountain at his back and he is too fascinated by what Rhaenyra is doing to let his fear come out in force. Rhaenyra gets up and moves to the side so as to be out of Vhagar’s immediate reach. “Tell her ‘Dracarys,’” she bids softly. Aemond scoots out of the way (Vhagar burned Laena, Laena who was her rider, Laena whom she loved) and complies.
Ser Harrold has wisely ducked away. None of the two Targaryens seem to remember his presence.
The flame that Vhagar produces is small. Another time Aemond might be disappointed that the first time he asks his new-found dragon (!!) for her fire the result is so pitiful, but while he still doesn’t quite know what Rhaenyra is about he understands that a small flame is all that is needed and wanted at this precise moment. Clearly Vhagar understands this too. Rhaenyra holds out the torch which is quickly lit by Vhagar’s flame. It must have been specially prepared else even this small amount of fire would have consumed it.
Everyone waits until Vhagar has settled down again. The ancient dragon is watching Rhaenyra with an argus eye. Aemond is so glad to have her here for whatever this is. Her presence is the reason he doesn’t try and run when the woman holding the torch steps toward him. “This will hurt, but it will help,” she promises. Aemond looks from her torch to Vhagar to her earnest face and back to the flames. Vhagar gives off a soft huff. What counts as “soft” for a dragon of her size.
Swallowing hard, Aemond takes a step forward even though part of him wants to step back. So far Rhaenyra hasn’t been burned, and Vhagar is Aemond’s dragon. Not hers. He repeats this thought again and again in his mind as Rhaenyra pushes the torch with Vhagar’s fire closer and closer to his face. Until he cannot even see the flame anymore, only feel it, and then there is nearly unbearable heat where until an hour ago Aemond still had an eye.
Somewhere at the edge of perception he hears Ser Harrold stepping closer. Nice to know that the Kingsguard is noticing what is happening to him. Even if –
– even if Aemond is not getting hurt this time.
Rhaenyra takes the torch away. Leans it against the side of the cave. Vhagar shuffles forward the tiniest bit, rubs her snout against Aemond’s side. Aemond has no idea how much time passes, but when he comes back to himself again, Rhaenyra is sitting cross-legged on the ground, rolling the dragon-scale marble around in one hand, and there’s still a dull ache, but for the first time since Aemond smashed a rock and Lucerys slashed a knife, his face doesn’t hurt anymore.
“Much better,” Rhaenyra says and smiles. For what is probably the first time in his life, if rather shakily, Aemond smiles back at his sister.
The fear doesn’t return even when he once again sees her handle her knife. She briefly holds it out to Vhagar and lets the blade be heated up by her breath’s steam. Then she takes it to her own skin to make a shallow cut on her forearm. “This is the blood of our father, blood that you and I share, that Luke shares,” she says. Aemond doesn’t even bristle at the mention of her brat, too intrigued as she lets one drop fall onto the marble resting in the palm of her hand. She waits until Vhagar has breathed on it again and then hands him the knife hilt-first, and Aemond takes it, cuts into a finger (which, come to think of their father, he might come to regret) and adds his own drop of blood to the marble and hers.
Taking her knife back, Rhaenyra reaches back for the torch and bids him hold it. She fearlessly thrusts her hand into Vhagar’s flame, counts to fourteen in Valyrian, then retrieves it, unburned. The torch is leaned against the wall of the cave once more. All three dragons, human and not, lean forward to watch the marble until it is cooled.
It is black, and red, and green, and gold.
It is beautiful.
At last, Rhaenyra’s free hand reaches for Aemond’s face. Vhagar rumbles with approval. Somewhere in the back of his mind Aemond still knows he shouldn’t, but after everything that’s happened he trusts her too much to struggle now. He lets his sister hold him still as she places the dragon-scale marble into his eye socket. Lets her hold him still as she leans in and plants a kiss at his brow. “Father’s blood, my blood, your blood, Luke’s blood,” she murmurs.
When she leans back, Aemond’s two eyes see her do it.
Vhagar’s rumbling is a comfort and Ser Harrold’s witnessing is forgotten while he lets Rhaenyra hold him as he cries.
*
“How did you learn about all this?” he dares ask.
“I learned much while trying to find something to help heal Father,” Rhaenyra answers.
In less than two hours, Rhaenyra has healed her younger brother from a grave injury. King Viserys’ injuries are many, grave as well, but surely –
“He has no dragon,” his sister whispers wetly. “All the things I’ve learned, the wonders I have read about, they would not work because he has no living dragon.”
Vhagar’s steaming breath. Vhagar’s flame. Vhagar’s scale. Aemond’s blood, the blood of the person to be healed, the blood of Vhagar’s rider. Syrax’ scale and Rhaenyra’s blood because she was the one shaping Aemond’s new eye (“Father’s blood, my blood, your blood, Luke’s blood,” echoes in his memory) – but Vhagar’s heat, Vhagar’s fire most of all.
Balerion has been dead for more than two decades now.
*
They stay silent for a moment while Aemond tries to process everything that’s happened and slowly gets used to the feeling of a magical stone-eye in his head. Vhagar only blinks a giant eye when both humans shift nearer towards her warmth the longer they sit.
“Your mother asked for Luke’s eye in retaliation,” Rhaenyra murmurs eventually, stroking a finger alongside Aemond’s face. “I cannot allow it, of course. I could not have allowed it even if the two of us – the three of us – had not been able to restore your sight.” Aemond grumbles at the thought, but Vhagar’s warmth is soothing and Rhaenyra is here with him and not holed up somewhere with Luke. It helps a lot. “Now, without maiming – what do you think would be a fitting punishment?”
She doesn’t wish to think about Baela’s accusation that Aemond had been about to attack Jace with a heavy stone. The grave injury that could have come from that didn’t happen; Aemond getting his eye gauged out did. Rhaenyra is of a mind that all the children ought to be punished for fighting. The Kingsguard need to be interrogated in regards to their fateful absence. But Alicent’s ire had been exclusively for Luke and Rhaenyra’s son had used a knife where a fist or a tackle would have done. It hurts her heart to think it, but some form of punishment is called for here. Especially if any of them are ever expected to move on.
Aemond thinks. Inside his cocoon of Vhagar’s warmth and Rhaenyra’s emergency care, he is surprised that the possibility of Luke being punished is even out in the open, much less offered to him. Earlier when everyone was screaming it seemed that Rhaenyra’s sons’ actions would be swept under the rug, and even with everything his older sister has done to restore Aemond’s sight he’d still half believed that would still be the case because, after all, Aemond could see again.
What would be a punishment for Luke that would satisfy him, Aemond?
“When Arrax is big enough to fly with, he is not allowed to fly for a year,” he brainstorms aloud, thinking back to the slights that started all this. Mocking him because Aemond was the only one of their peers without a dragon of his own, yes, that fits. Not being allowed to fly with Arrax when it’s all the others are looking forward to will hurt. Will it hurt too much? He chances a look at Rhaenyra who has stated clearly that she will not allow any of her sons to be harmed.
However, Rhaenyra is thoughtfully nodding at the daring suggestion Aemond has made. “He will not be kept from Arrax. Arrax has done nothing wrong,” she says, and Aemond agrees. Aemond has Vhagar now and so he knows that hurting a dragon for something their rider has done is vile.
“And he will not be allowed to fly with you or anyone else outside an emergency,” he proposes. After all, Arrax won’t be big enough to fly for years yet and Aemond needs the punishment to set in now.
“Alright,” Rhaenyra agrees. “No non-emergency dragon flights until a year after Arrax is big enough. After that, this whole affair is over with.” From this, she will not budge. Her son is but a boy, a boy who was provoked, and nobody except Alicent and Otto Hightower want their family to be at odds.
“Yes,” says Aemond.
“As for the others…” Rhaenyra thinks. “They are all to write a scroll on how bonding with a dragon works. Yes, your timing could have been better, but Vhagar has known Rhaena all her life. If she’d been waiting for Laena’s daughter to be her new rider… maybe she wouldn’t have roasted you alive, but neither would you have been successful in your attempt to forge a bond. A dragon is not a slave.”
Aemond hums. It’s less that he would have hoped for, maybe, but the girl will have her incorrect assumptions shoved into her face, and her sister and Jacaerys most of all will know that Aemond is bonded to Vhagar because Vhagar made a choice.
(Rhaenyra doesn’t say it, unsure of how Aemond will react and anyway it’s not really his business, but she will endeavour to ensure that Aegon will be grounded from flying with Sunfyre for at least a moon. As will Aemond. Trying to smash in Jace’s face with a rock, it cannot be borne. Yes, the loss of his natural eye can be seen as a punishment paid, but that was a Luke-induced accident, not a consequence for his actions that any adult had doled out. And apart from all that, spending time with Vhagar on the ground before the two were allowed to fly together once more would help them get to know each other and hopefully also remind the old war dragon to have some patience.)
*
“I must know who spoke to you about my children’s father,” Rhaenyra murmurs. Her eyes are on Vhagar, not Aemond. Her back is firm, not tense. Her voice is calm, soft. Not a threat.
Aemond hesitates for only a moment longer before he leans harder into his new-found dragon and speaks.
.