green lies, black hearts

XVI

a/n - couldn't leave y'all hanging. anyways, this chapter is rated E for everyone (explicit)

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Shaera

If Shaera Velaryon were to die, she thought she would need at least three things from whatever gods there were before she would be content to go: the promise that her family would be more than alright without her, one last embrace from each of those she loved most, and one last good story that she could lose herself in.

It seemed that she would get none of those things, for she was surely doomed to die on a dragon-her uncle's dragon-in a cruel way that she could only hope was swift and without pain-slipping from the leather saddle and falling to her demise into the Blackwater hundreds of feet below.

"You need to open your eyes, Shaera!"

"I think not!" she screeched. Her grip on the rope and the saddle's pommel was white-knuckled, and she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter.

Laughter rang out in her ear. On her ear. Aemond's lips were close to her ear and he was holding her so tightly to him that she was certain his grip was the only reason she had not died yet. But his laughter...she latched onto it. It was more a cackle in nature, one that relished in her terror, in her torment as Vhagar's wings boomed into thunderclaps with each slow pump as they ascended higher and higher and higher still. But past the wind and Vhagar's raucous ascent, Shaera's ears rang with that lovely laughter.

With his chin digging into the crook of her neck and shoulder, Shaera could feel his smile pressed against her ear and whipping hair, for it was the only way she could possibly hear him when the wind battered them so. Aemond pinched her side. "Look to the sky niece and feel the clouds upon your pretty face, hmm?"

"T-the clouds?"

"Open your eyes, Shaera."

"I'll faint!" she weakly argued. "And...and I'll fall!"

"I promised no harm would come to you," he told her, tightening his grip as if to remind her that he was holding her. He was holding her so tightly that her back was burning against his chest. "Did I not?"

"Y-yes."

He chuckled, hand spreading wide over her side, fingers flexing into her corset. Shaera swallowed hard.

"Then open your eyes."

Open your eyes. She could do it. Open your eyes. All she had to do was open them, right? Just open them?Open your eyes. He was holding her. He promised he wouldn't let any harm come to her. He promised. Open your eyes, Shaera.

Shaera bit her cheek-hard-and despite the cruel beat of the wind upon her face, she ever so slowly opened one eye. Just one. Just one that fought bravely against the vapor and rough bite of the clouds that Vhagar flew through. Sunlight streamed past her lashes and lit up the entire world around her, and her breath caught in her chest as the other eye quickly followed its partner.

Her grip tightened, but not of fear. Not of distress. Not with the need to cling even closer to Vhagar's reins and saddle because she was about to faint.

No, no, Shaera felt as if she was a mere child again, seated in front of her mother on the back of Syrax.

It began with a cloud of her own, expanding in her chest as if it were filling with rain, ready to drop a torrential downpour. Her heart jumped to her throat and she struggled to breathe. Her lips parted as she slowly looked around at Vhagar's massive green body. At the flapping of her scarred and thin wings that somehow managed to propel such a beast. At the shades of grey and white that shifted as they climbed higher and higher, the feel of the clouds both soft and rough like the fine sands on the beach of Dragonstone. Sunlight spilled through the cracks of the clouds and the sea was far, far, far away-a mere darkness that Shaera couldn't even spy around the thick neck of Vhagar.