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em-writes-stuff-sometimes · 11 months

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gevivys (beauty) │ Chapter 4: Love

terms of endearment ‘verse: see my Masterlist for the correct series order!

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 (COMPLETE!)

Synopsis: Daemon returns to King's Landing after ten years in exile, intent on rekindling his affair with Rhaenyra. He wasn't expecting you - the revelation changes everything.

Here be the fourth chapter of the rework - you’ll all recognise this one! There’s some minor changes made to flow on with the previous stuff, but beyond that, it’s the OG third chap. Thank you to @ewanmitchellcrumbs, my slap daddy lobster Ange, for reading through this chapter for me and making sure I’m not uploading total shite!

TRIGGERS: incest, purity culture, objectification of women, age gap.

Daemon supposes it is true what they say about Targaryens—that they are proud and violent and easy to incite to desire and madness. He lives up to the name, he supposes.

Now that his want has come to light, he cannot erase you from his mind. He withdraws to his chambers for the next few days, making his presence around the Keep as scarce as he can so that he might avoid you. The prospect of looking at you—your wide-eyed innocence, trusting open expression, still his littlest girl beneath all that ripening—and recalling the depths of his degeneracy each time he meets your eye seems an insurmountable task.

But a new issue arises. He finds he quite literally cannot rid the image of you from his musings, the enemy that is his own thoughts discovering some new wretched path to you in all he does to seek distraction. His books remind him of your love for old Valyrian histories and poetry, of sitting with him, a great tome spread out further than your little arms could extend and reciting the letters in a halting tongue. Training with the sword strikes memories of how you’d fiddle with the pommel of Dark Sister whenever you stood by him, alerting him to your presence far easier than his own eyes ever could. Attempting to govern a bout of cyvasse is utterly dull with only himself as an opponent, and—blast it all—prompts reminiscence of how you’d choose to sleep soundly in his lap as a tot, wet smacking mouth darkening the front of his doublet as he’d match minds against Viserys with only one hand free, the other keeping you chained to slumber with gentle pats to the bottom.

Resistance is fruitless. And so, he gives into the desire. For the first time in years, he unfastens his breeches and takes his cock out with the intention of spending in his own hand.

How mightily I have fallen, he thinks drolly, spitting in his palm, grasping his shaft and allowing his imagination to conjure the likeness of sweet eyes and full mouth and shapely breasts, a precious little gift just waiting for the right recipient to unwrap and play. He thinks of your soft little hands and soft little voice, how darling you would look with those same hands on his cock and your stare wide and trusting, whispering his name in naïve question as he coaxes you to his completion, gifting you a pretty pearl necklace for a pretty little girl—

“Fuck!” he moans, seed splattering over his fist.

It stains his breeches and drips over his boots, inspiring sudden gladness that he hadn’t thought to revisit Sirille’s whore or seek out another of his old haunts, for not bending some meaningless fuck over and exerting his lusts on a cunt worth mere coppers in coin. The speed of his release would have been thoroughly humiliating. Wiping his hand distastefully upon his shirt, he wonders at how best to resolve his growing problem.

It is a problem. How you have unmanned him! How insipid it is to long for a girl of seventeen as though he is some pockmarked, upstart lad of lesser standing! If he were dull-witted, his ire at himself might very well drive him to rail at you for the manner in which you’ve ensorcelled him. But doing so will not aid his particular malady.

The brothel…Perhaps the answer lies in the past. The instant he thinks it, he wishes he hadn’t.

No. He shouldn’t ruin you. He will not ruin you. Besides, you had been deterred rather than encouraged by even his lightest provocations, his half-hearted flirtation failing utterly. In the face of his veiled innuendos and covetous stares, you had retreated into yourself, pulling away and levelling him with that soft, reproaching little mouse-glare of yours. Any other maiden and he would double down, pursue until he had overrun them and given them little choice but to lift their skirts and let him steal away their virtue. Yet, this brings him distinct discomfort. He cannot abide the notion of despoiling you so ignobly.

Daemon wonders at the hesitation, for it had brought him little pain to do the same to his eldest niece. He considers that because it had always been his intention to shore up his own succession—by either wedding Rhaenyra or destroying her reputation, getting her out of his way—the thought of doing the same to you had never crossed his mind.

Hm. What can he do, then? Wait for this—this feeling—to pass? He is the blood of the dragon, true; and, like the flame from which those winged beasts were born, he burns hot and bright and stinging—until the flame flickers away, doused by the merest brush of air or touch of water. In moments of want, it becomes a need, something he would kill and die to possess, and then another obsession takes hold. Men of passion—men like him—are so rarely faithful to their fancies.

Alas, you are no ordinary woman; it stands to reason that his lust is no ordinary yearning. You are everything he has ever envisioned in an ideal bride. The right bloodline. The right family name. The right temperament. These things alone…

It does not even take into consideration the simplest fact—that, though time and circumstance has changed so much, there is nothing that can destroy his deepest affection for you, his sweet little niece.

No closer to devising his way forward, Daemon does what he can to evade encountering you. It is hardly an effort, for you seem to perpetually cycle between the same activities and yet, simultaneously, are nowhere to be found. He shuns the obvious places—the library, your Hightower siblings’ rooms, Rhaenyra’s solar, the courtyard, the garden—and even deigns to add the training yard and the kitchen to the list. Luckily, he seems to have either frightened you off or had simply chanced upon a rare occurrence in which you were discoverable.

After four more mornings, he is unsurprised to see you absent once more from your father's table to break your fast. You have missed the previous occasions, too. A sennight and a day had been more than enough time for him to decide that he detested these mealtimes. Quite obviously an attempt on his brother's part to foster unity between the squabbling factions in his family, he is usually faced with the choice of either indulging in the bickering of the children or pretending he gives a fuck about anything the Hightower woman has to say. Not that Her Grace has been particularly interested in engaging him in conversation. Instead, she carefully plays the part of ignorance, watching him from directly across the table with her beady little eyes each time he so much as moves. Loathsome bitch. She must have a magical cunt for Viserys to have managed to pump four of those wretched spawn into her.

This is why he is startled when Rhaenyra and Laenor enter with their two boys, followed swiftly by you and that idiot Cole. You have an air of irritation about you, as though you had been interrupted at your leisures when your elder sister had come to collect you for the first proper meal you would see in days.

The sight of Rhaenyra—as lovely a sight as it is—sends a weak thud of hurt through his chest. But it is the sight of you that inspires a far greater reaction.

You are no less striking in the morning light that streams in from the open balcony. Garbed in a short-sleeved gown of powdered blue and wild hair pulled back in a simple braid, the adjustments only serve to emphasise the parts of you that had changed in the ten years since he had last seen you. Half-convinced that his first meeting with you was an inexplicable fever-dream sent by the gods to taunt him, he is once more besieged by the sight of your rose-bloom lips, your bare throat—why the fuck do you not wear jewels to cover up all that exposed flesh, the sight is positively lewd—and charming little tits peaked in maiden's flirtation. The dress does little to hide your endowments from his rapacious gaze, for all its modest bodice and looser fit.

He does his best not to let his turmoil play out on his face as you move further into the room. Laenor drops into the empty seat beside him, narrowing his eyes in a manner that suggests he’s noticed where Daemon’s attention has been focused. The lad’s fair to suspect him—his exploits in the Stepstones hadn’t been limited to warfare, after all.

“Father, Daemon,” Rhaenyra greets, settling herself down next to her husband.

He finds the noted absence of greeting to the Hightower woman wildly entertaining. While it is not lost on her, the Queen has deigned to overlook the arrival of her once-best friend. Instead, she turns to survey her ailing King in an affectation of care. He decides it is only polite to return his eldest niece’s salutation. Rhaenyra smiles in response to his well-wishes, an acknowledgement of his words and nothing more.

"Good morrow, daughter!” Viserys says to his eldest, looking fondly down the table as his grandsons are settled in at their seats. His gaze moves to you. “Ah, child! We haven't seen you in an age!"

He has brightened in excitement at his first glance of you, and you smile sweetly at him as you pass by to press a kiss of greeting to your father's balding head.

"My apologies, Papa," you say to Viserys warmly. “I have been ever so preoccupied with my studies, you see. I did not wish to fall behind.”

“Studies, my girl? I had rather thought you were avoiding Lord Denys again!”

He has to grit his teeth at the mention of that idiot. What in the Seven hells is Viserys thinking, allowing a lackwit like the Rose of Highgarden anywhere near you? To think that he’d be willing to ship you off to so ordinary an existence as the Lady Tyrell. The blood of the Freehold, forced to mingle with farming stock. What dishonour!

At the mention of the lord, your earnest little stare transforms into a myriad of quick-vanishing demonstrations of your distaste for the man. Daemon is savagely glad to see it.

“That, too.” You beam when your father laughs. It is a most pleasing expression on your features, a guise that erases the lingering pensiveness clinging to you like a second skin—one that you should always bear.

Would that he could replace the gloom that reclaims you so soon after.

“Darling.”

Alicent frowns at him from her position at his brother’s side. She appears to have caught him looking, not that he cares overmuch for her judgement. It intrigues him that she appears to be addressing you. He had thought the family quite divided by old and new—and as Aemma’s last living child, that places you firmly in the former category.

She smiles up at you, gesturing you toward her. “Come sit by me.”

Clearly, his assumption is incorrect. You happily proceed around your father to sit in the empty seat beside the Queen, placing you next to the youngest one, Daeron. He can only remember the name due to its similarity to his own. You grin fondly down at the boy, and it is easy to imagine you doing the same one day with his own son. You ruffle his hair when he makes an exclamation of your name, disregarding the snide glances offered to you by the older two. Ah, that is more like it.

“What are you working on currently, sister?” Rhaenyra interrupts his musings from next to Laenor, wordlessly reminding young Lucerys to pause his chatter while eating.

His mouth upturns when he sees you brighten, stopping in the middle of selecting fruits and cheese and pastries to pile on your plate. The shame feels like a distant memory as he watches you, dish aloft in your hand while you enthusiastically turn to engage with your older sister.

“I have been consulting with Ser Lysan on writing a compendium of the Dothraki language,” you say excitedly.

Who the fuck is ‘Ser Lysan’? And what in the Seven hells is she doing learning Dothraki? Daemon’s brow raises sceptically as he mulls over the fact that you—a sweet little untouched princess—appear to have dealings with horse-fucking, barbarous brutes in the East.

“There is some debate as to how we will proceed,” you add, carefully side-eyeing the oldest of the Hightower boys as he snickers at your pronouncement, “as our letters do not correspond correctly with the phonetics of their speech. We will have to either take creative liberties or devise additional symbols to signify these sounds.”

Perhaps he has woefully underestimated you. You seem to possess an intellect that may well be formidable—at least when it comes to your philosophies and languages. A fascinating paradox of a girl, he thinks, to be so clever and unknowing all at once. For all your book learning, there is much about the world you lack understanding of. It is tempting to remedy this in the most depraved manner possible.

Not here. Not now.

“That sounds… interesting.”

Rhaenyra sounds anything but interested. Does anyone take interest in your pursuits? Anyone at all? Looking around the table at the uncertain faces of those you call family, it appears not. No wonder you seem so alone.

“Dothraki, of all the languages to learn?” he asks. “An interesting pursuit for a princess.”

You make direct eye contact with him, arranging your features into a facade of polite courtesy; it is closed off, withdrawn, and you return your plate to its place upon the table.

“I am learning, yes.” You absent-mindedly reach across the little one beside you to remove a silver-handled knife from the second-eldest boy—Aemon, is it not?—and place it out of his reach. It is a good call; he had been poking the surface before him with the tip, gouging small divots into the wood. You disregard his protestations, continuing your line of thought. “I would not claim to be proficient, however. It is a complex language, and I have not studied it for long enough to consider myself fluent.”

“It is a savage language.” The eldest of the Queen’s sons has an expression fixed in what Daemon can only assume is meant to be a look of disdain. As ugly as the boy is, the effect is rather lost on present company. “No wife of mine will occupy herself with such things.”

This one too? Unbelievable. It would make more sense to betroth you to your brother than to the Lord of Highgarden. If only the brother in question wasn’t so… pathetic. Pathetic now—but when he becomes a man, a true peril to any chance she may have at happiness.

He swallows back bile at the thought. However would you survive being bound to a sneering wretch who sought to stifle any joy you might experience, and all for the sake of control? It is too harsh a fate for someone so pure.

You frown softly, shoulders squaring off in your disapproval. “Just because their culture is different, Aegon”—ah, yes! No wonder he was such a disappointment with a name such as the Conqueror’s to try and fail to live up to—“does not mean they are savages.”

His nose flares with the necessity of suppressing his own amusement. Such guilelessness; such gullibility! You really are too sweet.

“They fuck their horses, don’t they?” Aegon asks disparagingly, echoing exactly what he had been thinking only moments prior.

The younger boy titters beside him. You open your mouth to respond, brow wrinkled in affront, when the Queen cuts across you.

“Aegon! That’s enough!” she says sharply, and the boy abruptly withdraws, tucking his head down and quietly resuming his meal with a muttered apology.

As a lull falls across the remaining occupants of the room, all that can be heard is the scraping of utensils over dishware and the hissing remonstrations of the Queen to her eldest, whispered reminders of how princes ought to treat those they are courting. Given that the recipient is three places down from her—and you are, in fact, between them—her words are neither quiet nor tactful. Your head bows, lower lip quivering only once, pretending not to hear as you pick apart the remnants of food on your plate.

“An intellectual, my daughter is.” Viserys breaks the stillness with forced joviality, engaging him in conversation once more.

He had paid little attention to the spat—no doubt avoiding his fatherly responsibilities as he has done since time immemorial, long since used to ignoring the conflict that sparks beneath his very nose. Daemon is simultaneously fond and contemptuous of his brother, the years having done little to change the spinelessness so central to his personality as man and monarch both.

“Always learning something new,” the man says merrily, “always needing books and tutors to satisfy that mind of hers. She would be a maester of the Citadel, methinks, had she been born a man.”

She would be Prince of Dragonstone if she had been born a man, Daemon snorts to himself, and I’d not need be sitting here with the Hightower bitch and her offspring.

“Papa!” A pretty flush reddens your exposed ears and the apples of your cheeks.

He trails the path of the blush as it spreads to your chest, most assuredly travelling down to kiss the shy swell of your breasts under that damned raised neckline. He has never hated an item of clothing quite so much as he does your gown.

“That Ser Lysan Marios of hers,” the King explains. “A man from the Free Cities, do you know? She was ever so delighted when I solicited his services.”

A tutor, then. But what is his place in your life? This is what Daemon wishes to know.

“He is a respectable gentleman,” Rhaenyra says, no doubt having witnessed his perplexity. “Though it’s quite amusing, really; for an old man like him, he is rather adept at making his way about the Keep unnoticed. You’d think someone with such poorly knees would be easier to find.”

He hadn’t truly believed your tutor to harbour untoward feelings for you, but relief suffuses him, nonetheless. An elderly man with weak joints could hardly muster the energy nor stamina to seduce his young charge—especially a burgeoning little nymphet like you, so reserved and restrained, desperate for release from the bonds of propriety. His gut tightens at the image he has conjured.

“We always leave a note, ’Nyra,” you say, your posy-petal lips frowning.

“And by the time I send someone to find you, you have moved off elsewhere.”

You hum an agreement, picking still at the remainder of your meal. Daemon spies the Hightower woman’s pointed glare over you, the quailing of the eldest boy. The lad clears his throat and turns to you.

“Sister. Would”—he pauses to clear his throat again—“would you… care to take a turn around the garden with me? At, er—the hour of the boar?”

How the fuck has he managed to make it worse?

Daemon almost preferred his snobbish spite over this pitiful attempt at flattery. If he’d been uncertain as to the boy’s success at winning you over, he’s not anymore. There’s scarce to be any maiden who would accept such a snivelling offer.

You appear rather baffled. “Oh. I appreciate the offer, Aegon… but I am afraid I have plans then.” A polite smile of contrition curves your lips.

Your brother does not like this. With a barely restrained sneer, he begins to respond. “But—”

“—I am intending to visit Athfiezar,” you cut across, placid as ever. “You are welcome to accompany me there, if you wish?”

The boy blanches. “No!” He says, shaking his head.

You make a soft noise of acknowledgement, allowing your focus to drift to the small one immediately beside you. And, with that, the conversation ceases entirely.

Rhaenyra was right in asserting her inability to pronounce the name of your feral mount. The guttural inflections in your honey-sweet voice speak to something wild and untamed, a spark of the magic that had brought his line to life so long ago.

“Interesting name.” Daemon is unable to help himself. You blink disconcertedly at him as he speaks. It is the second time in as many occurrences that he has seen your countenance alight with startlement at his address. A nervous little morsel, you are. “A Dothraki word, is it?”

He can only assume this. Based on his few dealings with the horde of savages during his time in Essos, the word sounds similar to the harsh utterings of the khalasar.

“Yes,” you say, a pleased look crossing your visage. “It means ‘love’.”

What a name for such a monstrous creature. A little girl christening her first barn cat, all soft skin and sweet smile and doe-eyed delight. You squint at Rhaenyra when she chuckles softly. It seems he isn’t the only one to have such a thought.

You turn back to him. “He does not take well to others, I fear.”

That is an understatement. From all his existing knowledge of the wild leviathan, from his experiences with the beast growing up, from tales he had gleaned from around the capital, from accounts of old acquaintances and the from gossip of his family, your dragon—the fucking Cannibal, and isn’t that a story he’d like to hear—was an utter lunatic, as unhinged and vicious as he always was. Except, it seems, with you.

“A right bastard, too,” Laenor murmurs under his breath, just within Daemon’s earshot. “Do you know how many Keepers we’ve had to replace since that thing came to King’s Landing?”

He can imagine. Dragon, livestock and human alike, the dragon had little care for what it slayed, seemingly fulfilling itself on the blood-and-gore high of butchery. The thought of laying eyes upon such a creature thrills him to the bone.

You levy him with an inquisitive look, head tilted slightly. “Would you like”—you hesitate—“would you like to meet him, Uncle?”

Only a fool could refuse a proposition like that. Not in the least because of the Cannibal—well, so few would ever have the opportunity to come close to the beast and live to tell the tale. Through you, it may well be possible that he would get that chance.

But, moreover, how can he say no to your timid, earnest entreaty, the proverbial hand of offering held out and just waiting for yet another rejection? Hope draws your brows in a pleading arch, lips wet and parted, and it calls to mind the face of a much younger you, far freer in begging for his attention. Who could possibly deny you?

His mouth settles the matter before his mind has decided.

“I’d be glad to,” he says, warmed by the sunny beam that stretches across your face, bringing bright light to your eyes and a merry flush to your skin.

It occurs to him then that he has just invited himself to an entire span of unaccompanied time alone with you. You—the object of his waking reveries, his darkest deliberations, his filthiest wants.

Perhaps this will be what finally drives him mad.

The wheelhouse ride is a revelation—and not quite for the reason he expected.

You are surprisingly easy to converse with; high praise, coming from him. He is not one to enjoy casual discussion, finding most people utterly insipid, especially those of suitable station. Princes and lords and magisters are always far too concerned with crowing of their riches to be of much interest—and the women are hardly worth engaging with unless it is to persuade them to drop their smallclothes and let him bend them over in some abandoned hall.

It might just be his fixation upon you that makes you so fascinating. He cares not for the reason. Instead, he chooses to enjoy the rarity of the moment, listening to you talk about the weather, the food, the changes made to the city since his departure.

“We have been getting an increase in grain from the Reach, I believe, in return for silks and spices from Driftmark,” you say, filling the transport with the dulcet tones of your pretty little voice.

He wonders at how you have come to know this information.

“Papa allows me to be his cupbearer during Small Council sometimes.” Pride overtakes your expression. “I am not present often, but it is nice when he asks.”

It is expected of Rhaenyra as the heir to attend in her youth, but no such presumption falls upon you. How interesting that Viserys has chosen to allow his second daughter to be involved in the running of the Realm, small a part as that may be! Daemon had not thought his brother observant of you in any capacity whatsoever. In this, he’s happy to be wrong.

When you arrive at the Dragonpit, your faithful guard-dog Cole is waiting for you, having ridden ahead to secure the location for his young charge. Daemon rolls his eyes as the knight offers you his arm, assisting you down the steps and to the ground. You gratefully thank the Kingsguard—he has to clench his jaw tightly to resist saying something snide at the look of slavish devotion on the whoreson’s face—and take out leather gloves of deep black, a stark contrast to the blood red of your riding habit. You wear the Targaryen colours exceedingly well.

“Now, Uncle,” you say seriously, turning to him. “I do not usually meet Athfiezar at the Pit, so it is imperative that you do as I say.”

It makes sense that the dragon seeks refuge outside of the Dragonpit. The beast did not seem one to willingly enshrine itself in chains. His brow quirks in entertainment at your command, a war general in the shape of a little girl with a woman’s body, but tips his head regardless.

“Of course.” He has no wish to die for the sake of pride.

The Dragonkeepers have already begun to shift nervously in the open, unprotected space. What follows illuminates him as to why. He is startled when you stop in the middle of putting your gloves on to place your fingers at your mouth and release a loud whistle. The sound echoes toward the cavernous entrance of the building before you and sets off a cacophony of ringing screeches and roars from within. He cringes as the blast of noise assaults his ears and wonders what in the hells you were intending by doing such a thing.

Suddenly, a low rumble resonates through the air. He casts around for the origin of the din, seeing nothing cresting the horizon. Out of nowhere, there is an unearthly shriek. A hulking black shape tumbles from the cover of cloud, rapidly gaining size as it approaches.

The Dragonkeepers bark panicked orders to each other, rushing to clear the space before his little niece. “Inkot selās! Inkot selās!” Move back! Move back!

Daemon wonders through a wave of sheer panic if he ought to follow the Keepers’ example and dive for shelter, dragging you with him. The dragon isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. It is now close enough for him to make out the grim scores of scars marking its head, the eerie verdigris orbs glowing ominously within its immense skull, the sheer musculature forming one of the largest specimens of Old Valyria alive today. The dragon is quite dissimilar to the other Targaryen specimens, he notes, stouter and stockier and yet more serpentine than the winged creatures the Conqueror had brought to Westeros some hundred years before. He wonders if it is true that this one is from a different lineage entirely. He had never gotten close enough to survey it before now.

The great lumbering thing alights upon the dome of the Dragonpit, crawling with surprising agility to the edge of the structure and peering down. It sends a clatter of rubble spilling from the sides of the great dome as it crackles under the weight of it. At the sight of the Keepers huddled behind dragonglass shields, curled to the ground in vain protection of themselves, the Cannibal opens its mouth and screams. It is a haunting, hair-raising resonation that sends chills down his spine and near freezes the blood in his veins.

“Athfiezar!”

His gaze, having been transfixed upon the most terrifying entity he had witnessed in years, shifts to you. You have stepped forward, seemingly without a care, arm outstretched and calling happily up to the reptilian brute. He is about to pull you back toward him when he observes what might be the most deranged, impossible scenario imaginable.

The dragon stops.

It stops.

“Kesīr māzīs, Athfiezar!” you call again, bouncing lightly on the balls of your feet. Come here!

Emitting a deep keening, its eyes split to you, pausing its rampage as it takes in the sight of you below. Daemon huffs an exhilarated laugh as the winged serpent cocks its head, pauses, and then begins scaling its way down the stone formation. It is heedless of the damage it is doing to the establishment as it tears its way through rock like parchment, wiggling down to touch down upon the ground before the mouth of the Pit. The beast is surprisingly light upon its feet for its sheer size, second only to the great she-dragon, Vhagar.

He can only watch on in amazement as you stride forward to meet your mount. The famed Cannibal bends its massive frame down so that you may lay your hand upon its snout and coo something tender and indeterminable from a distance away. The wyrm growls softly, slowly pressing itself against you as you talk. The Dragonkeepers have not yet moved from their protective stances, spaced out around the yard and cowering behind obsidian safeguards.

What the fuck.

And then, you are walking back toward him, an air of contentment unlike any he had witnessed about you emanating from your person and echoed in the radiant joy upon your visage. With your giant beast as a formidable backdrop, you look every inch a Targaryen conqueror. It is a most unexpected evolution in the child that had preferred to entertain herself by reading than by journeying to the Pit to see Syrax or Caraxes. The sight makes him breathless.

You are glorious.

“Kepus,” you say, reaching out to him. He is somewhat amazed to see you are the same person, the same girl with the same charming eyes and delicate features and alluring form, that you have not somehow metamorphosed into a goddess from ancient Valyria. “Would you like to meet him?”

His answer is immediate, wordless. When he grasps onto your hand, he notes that your grip is much firmer, more solid and more real than it had been the week before. You are in your element here, at peace within yourself and with the dragon feared by the entire world. You pull him gently with you towards the creature, unfaltering even in the wake of the chitters and low hisses it emits when it observes a newcomer heading its way.

“He will not hurt you,” you say kindly. “You are with me.”

The affirmation warms him. When you are a small distance away, you release his hand, stepping in front of him to murmur softly to your mount once more.

“Ñuha kepa bisy issa, ñuhus taobus,” you call mellifluously, once more extending your palms to stroke along the dragon’s head. It nudges you lightly, and you laugh in response. “Ziry ōdrikō daor.” This is my uncle, my boy. Do not hurt him.

There is an absurdity in hearing you kindly entreat this monstrosity as though it were a prize hound, born and bred to spend its days on the lap of a noblewoman at high tea. What’s more is that the wyrm appears to enjoy it, nuzzling into your touch like a kitten.

Athfiezar growls in warning as Daemon approaches, soothed only by the quiet humming you are making and the light affirmations of peace you are whispering. Shifting its weight around, it grumbles in irritated obeisance as it allows him near. When he is close enough to hear the beat of its heart, feel the waft of its breath on his skin, smell the typical scent of dragon stink upon the air, he stops and takes in the view.

From this angle, he cannot see the beast’s hind legs, so vast is the length of its anatomy. The dragon’s powerful front legs and sinuous snake-like neck occupies his vision, the head bowed low to the ground in cooperation with its mistress’s will. Its sable scales ripple like onyx in the sun, flashing shades of coal and silver and gold as the light dapples upon their surfaces. The creature is maimed in several places, no doubt from its long history of aggression against its own kind, but the old injuries serve to heighten its aura of petrifaction.

It is a horrifying representative of its kind. It is everything he had ever adored stories about as a child. And it is yours.

“How is this possible?” he breathes, stepping closer to you. You glance back at him, mouth quirking gently at the expression of wonderment on his face.

You lightly entwine your fingers with his. When his eyes snap to yours, you tug him forward easily, placing his hand upon the Cannibal’s snout with your small hand laid on his own. He laughs quietly at the sensation of dragon-scale under his palm, a mixture of bewilderment and disbelief and sheer childish awe colouring his tone. For a man to lay his hand upon the Cannibal and live… It is the stuff of dreams.

“Raqnon jorrāeltas—hegnīr ūī zijot irughin. You stare wistfully at your mount. He needed love—so I gave it to him.

Though it is a relief to hear his ancestral tongue spill from your lips once more, a reminder that the years had not washed away all that is familiar, Daemon wonders if there is more to this unlikely pair than anyone had assumed. Both isolated, both starved for affection, both cleaving to each other for warmth and surety. The notion makes him unhappy.

My poor, lonely little girl… You never need be lonely again now that he had returned.

He looks back up at the beast, Athfiezar the Cannibal, this wretched saviour of desolate maidens and broken dreams. The creature snorts, a puff of smoke jettisoning out of its nostrils in a sneeze. He jumps out of the way, startled. You giggle, laying your head fondly against its snout.

“Kara iksā,” he says. You are magnificent.

You smile as you look up at your dragon, your hand lightly caressing its colossal jaw—but Daemon’s eyes remain firmly affixed on you.

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