Kinslayer | Aemond Targaryen ☾

Chapter 1

The clouds block the view of everything ahead of us. We are flying so high that my ears are clogging from the pressure and my eyes won't stop watering from the wind. I force myself to keep my lips shut, concentrating on breathing through my nose. It wasn't long ago that I lost track of Vermax and Arrax, so they cannot be that far behind. I grip the ropes tighter and adjust my legs around the saddle.

I need to go faster.

We flew past Duskendale's harbor and the Dun Fort right before I decided to part ways from Jace and Luke. If my timing is right, we should be above the apple orchards of Rosby at this precise moment, which means King's Landing is less than half an hour to the north, and I have to make it to the Dragonpit before any of the two of them do.

It's no easy task to figure out their exact location without any other lead than the low screeches of their dragons, but it is not the first time I manage to pull off the trick. They already know how it's done. I remember explaining how the weight and the length of your dragon changes everything you need to consider in order to choose the right moment to descend and land directly into the spot. And they still fall for it, every single time. It's not a fair game though, given that none of their dragons is fully grown and the effort of carrying their weight doesn't play in their favor.

I could simply be a good sister and let them taste the victory.

But not today.

This is probably the last time I have to get some fun before our stay in the capital.

Returning to King's Landing is something I have avoided for too long. Ten years, exactly. As a child, I enjoyed wandering alone around the castle. I would go to the library and pick a book to carry with me all day. There was no putting it down until I had finished it, nothing could make me stop reading except for our daily lessons. I remember playing hide and seek with Jace and Luke in the gardens, sneaking down with them to the crypts with the excuse of visiting the skull of Balerion The Dread and running my hands on top of the candles. Asking for more stories of the Old Valyria in my grandfather's lap even though I knew he had run out of them and he started to narrate them all over again. And best of all, training with father. My real father, the man who taught me how to wield a sword and aim for the guts.

I had fond memories of my time there before it all turned upside down. The loss of Ser Harwin Strong has been unbearable for all of us, but especially for me and Jace. King's Landing is the last place where we last saw him without knowing it would be the last, and even though his ghost haunts me every night reminding me that he is truly dead, I know that I will be looking for him everywhere inside the castle walls.

Little did I know back then that life as I knew it to be was going to change, that I would lose both of my fathers in the short span of a week, or that I would be used as a bargain to fix the damage I had not caused.

Ten years ago, before my mother married Daemon and we moved to Dragonstone, my hand was offered in marriage to Prince Aegon. It was a decision led by the events of aunt Laena's funeral, the night my nightmares began. Vhagar was an unclaimed dragon after her death, and Rhaena did not stand a chance to at least try before Aemond claimed her. I didn't blame him. I couldn't. I understood what it meant for him to not have a dragon. But her rage was so deep that she went to confront him, and we followed.

The exchange of insults that took place made it easy to start a physical fight.

"Bastards," he had called us. Again and again. I begged him to stop. Instead, he looked at me. "You should be mourning the loss of your father," he said.

"Ser Harwin Strong is dead. He burned alive in a fire at Harrenhal." I tried to fight back the tears and asked him not to lie, though he told nothing but the truth. Mother hadn't told us. Not yet, she hadn't.