Desires Be Damned • Aemond Targaryen

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dyaena

What a body could accomplish when adrenaline was at the helm was just short of miracles. It was a power that only surfaced when one was in dire need and desperate, triggered by a sixth sense that recognized when danger was about to forfeit one's life, or at least when insurmountable paranoia convinced them of as much. It was a mental release where instinct took precedence, a sensation that set every nerve on edge, a last ditch effort that pushed passed limits that shouldn't be crossed. It was what was coursing through the abducted princess the moment she had regained her bearings and was terrifyingly aware of her situation. There, lying on a foreign beach, shivering under a long, black jacket strewn over her, along with a slumbering dragon to her left whose maw had nearly been her bane what felt like moments ago, did she feel the spark of overwhelming self-preservation.

Looking around as she slowly rose to sit, the smell of the salty sea and the sounds of waves crashing gave little away in regards to their location, but she doubted they had strayed too far from Storm's End. Two things became glaringly evident as her mind reeled: she had lived, but save for Vhagar, she was completely alone, for Luke was nowhere to be found as her bleary, rapidly blinking eyes urgently looked all around her in the dimming daylight. What she did see was in her company, however, was her bow lying in the sand nearby and thick foliage lining the edge of the forest behind her. In a decision that was deemed best by an instinctual sureness, Dyaena hastily removed the coat with rather clumsy movements as her stiff muscles resisted, molded a mound of sand to make it appear as though she was still laying unconscious, and replaced the coat before snatching her weapon and making her way to the forest's edge. Once crouching within the brush, she carefully pulled the arrow she had stowed inside her boot and nocked it onto the bowstring, holding it at the ready to draw as she waited to catch any hint of her captor's presence. She was shaking, but if her body was cold or screaming from exhaustion, she was none the wiser as energy surged through her limbs, silencing senses that would have normally made her yield.

It was all she could do to keep her breathing quiet and steady. Once more would the element of surprise be the greatest weapon in her arsenal. Even more so now, she thought as her mostly numb fingers grazed over the arrow's fletching, itching to pull it back as her widened eyes scanned her unfamiliar surroundings while chaos ensued in her mind. Pushing through tangled thoughts in order to place her mental foothold on solid, undeniable memories, the conclusions that inevitably stemmed from them made a lump form in her throat that her tongue couldn't succeed in swallowing.

Dyaena had pushed Luke from Arrax's saddle, and her fall had begun shortly after his. Surely Aemond must have seen her brother too, leaving only two possibilities for Luke's absence. The first was that Aemond had indeed rescued him as well, and had dragged him elsewhere to enact his long sought after revenge, far enough away so that Dyaena wouldn't be woken by her brother's screams. Given their uncle's state during their encounter at Storm's End and then in the skies, Aemond was far from the embodiment of sanity and utmost morality, so she sincerely hoped his bloodlust had not driven him so far that this was indeed the case.

The second was that Aemond had seen Luke, and chose to pretend as though he hadn't, to let the fall do his dirty work for him, a fall that could be blamed entirely on her, given that it was by her hands that he fell from Arrax, something Aemond could likely attest to. It would be the perfect crime and revenge of the sweetest flavor. Perhaps that was why she had been saved, so that she would live out her days labeled as a kinslayer, cursing her family for generations to come while Aemond wallowed in satisfaction with clean hands. Dyaena couldn't lie by testifying she hadn't been the one to kill her brother--fibbing had never been her forte, and after living a lie for all of her childhood did she care much for it--and it would matter little if she could give her reasons as to why she had done it. Aemond was the pretender king's loyal brother, a prince of the realm, and a doubtless Targaryen to anyone's eye. Surely, when he would take her back to King's Landing, it would be his word against hers--if she would even be given the chance to speak at all--a perfect opportunity for the Greens to paint a pretty picture to spread across the realm, particularly Dragonstone: Dyaena had thrown Luke from his dragon and begged Aemond to take her back, to which he mercifully accepted, making her out to be a lovesick turncloak and kinslayer while setting the precedent that not even Rhaenyra's own daughter thought her cause of reclaiming her crown a worthy enough one to stand by.