The Silver Dragon | Aemond Targaryen

Chapter 1: The Bronze Bitch's Daughter

Rhea Royce lay prone on the earth of her beloved Vale. But she could feel neither the cold nor the dampness of the grass and stone as it seeped through her hunting leathers and onto her skin. As the heat of her body met with the chill in the ground, the Runes of protection etched into her pauldrons became fogged over – rendered unreadable.

She knew she should hurt. The pain should be unbearable. Yorwyck was a mighty beast, like the Bronze King he was named for. His whole weight had come down upon Rhea, so there was no doubt he caused her great damage in his fall. She had heard the sharp cracking of her own bones. Yet she felt none of it.

All she could feel was fear.

The cloaked man waited until her steed was out of her sight, and Rhea was well and truly alone, with only the distant ramparts of Runestone peering from between the hills as witness. He approached her slowly, casually, as if he couldn't hear her desperate whimpers. He ran his violet eyes along her body as he approached her head. It was not a gaze of lust. He looked on her with the same disdainful curiosity as one examining a woodland rodent crushed by a cart.

As he stood directly over her, he turned his eyes from her face – he had always avoided looking at the face he found so displeasing. Instead, he turned to her outstretched arm. He took another step, raising his foot above Rhea's lower arm. The ghost of a wicked smile danced in the corner of his mouth, and he stepped down.

Nothing.

He raised and pressed his foot down again several more times. Not to be sure, but to emphasize to his victim that she was truly helpless – exactly as he wanted her. Rhea knew the horrors his men had inflicted on the criminals of King's Landing and the followers of the Crab Feeder. She knew the cruelty he was capable of and of his unparalleled creativity. He had hated her for years. In all that time, he must have imagined countless ways to torture her.

Rhea braced herself for what would come next. At least she would not feel the pain.

But his steps retreated.

All the fear in Rhea's heart evaporated, swiftly replaced by rage. After these long nine years, this was all he had for her? For nine years, he traveled the whole of the Seven Kingdoms, slandering her and her family in the courts, then further insulting her with his brazen whoring. She had lost count of how often he had called her "Bronze Bitch" and accused her of ruining his life. She had been anticipating a reckoning from him.

But this?

This was an insult she could not stand.

Rhea knew she would be signing her soul over to the Stranger, but she would not let Daemon Targaryen have the final insult.

"I knew you couldn't finish," she spat at her retreating husband. He turned back, looking at her face for the first time. Rage twisted his face, but his eyes were wide with shock. He had not expected that. But she was, after all, his Bronze Bitch.

What he said next had Rhea's blood running cold as she thanked all the Seven that she would not feel what was to come. "My dear, lady wife," he said, breath heaving and voice dripping with hateful venom, "perhaps it is time we consummate our union."

-

The Lady of Runestone was dying, nine months on from her "accident."

The people of the Vale were told that it was a miracle from the Seven themselves that she had survived such a devastating fall from her horse. Even more miraculous still, her husband had swooped in on dragonback to rescue her before she succumbed. He had even used Caraxes to find and dispatch the offending horse. A true Targaryen Prince, rescuing his Bronze Damsel. It was no wonder when her cousin and heir, Gerold, announced to the court that she was with child. They cared little that their Lady's rescuer had swept out of the Vale as swiftly as he had arrived.