The Dragon's Legacy

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Aerea's knife cut the chicken, but another cut down her mind...

The magnificence of Balerion, the Black Dread.

She had seen it taken the sky the day her Grandfather, Maegor, took him to Storm's End to face the Dornish invaders. When she and her useless sister, Rhaella, were escorted away by her great-grandfather, Aethan Velaryon, when her grandfather took the crown and went to face the Hightowers in the Sept of Remembrance for one last time, of the way Balerion darkened Kingslanding with his own shadow...

She was just a girl then. No longer, Aerea thought to herself.

She could see as her Mother fed Visenya on her lap and as Valarr sat on her father's lap, as her father put small pieces of his food in Valarr's mouth and the young boy received them as he kept throwing peas at his twin sister, Visenya, to which Visenya only ignored him.

On the other side of the table, Rhaella ate as gracefully as ever as if she was dining with thousands of eyes on her in the presence of the King and Queen.

Nay... As if she was the Queen.

Perhaps she and Rhaella were once the only children born of the blood of likes of Visenya the Conqueror, Maegor the Mighty and their father Daemion the Black Dragon... But now she had a baby brother and sister.

One who was named after Visenya the Conqueror herself. One that Visenya the Conqueror herself clearly favoured for the small girl was named after her...

She would not allow two youngsters who cannot wipe their arses without the supervision of their nurse to overshadow her.

They were nothing. Less than nothing.

Even less than Rhaella. Self-righteous bastard of a girl Aerea cursed Rhaella in her mind angrily.

She knew she was the greatest of all her siblings. The true blood of the dragon. The true heir to her family's legacy. Heir to Daemion the Black Dragon. Heir to Maegor the Mighty... Heir to the woman who was her heroin and whom she wanted to be, Visenya the Conqueror.

It was she who was heir to Daemion Targaryen's legacy, who himself was the heir to the legacy of Maegor the Mighty and Visenya the Conqueror.

She was the heir to this legacy. It has to be her. Or what else will she be?

She needed to demonstrate it to everyone, even herself, that indeed she was worthy of her family's blood. Indeed she was the the only true choice.

What more perfect way to prove that fact besides claiming the greatest and largest dragon in the known world? Which dragon was more worthy of her than Balerion himself???

"When you know what you are truly capable of, do not bound yourself for lesser..." The words of Maegor the Cruel echoed in her head as she had watched Balerion a week ago.

She knew what she was capable of... She knew what she wanted... and she was looking at what she wanted... The ride of her grandfather. The ride of two kings...

The ride of Aegon the Conqueror.

She was Aerea Targaryen. Daughter to Daemion the Black Dragon, Granddaughter to King Maegor the Cruel, the blood of Visenya the Conqueror herself.

No hatchling was worthy of her.

Not the long-necked weakling Caraxes who nearly chokes on his own water because of his own neck. A dragon who surely will not see the next five years, much less a decade.