The Dragon's Legacy

Chapter Eighty

Trigger Warning:

Graphic descriptions. Read at your own risk.

Daemion was sitting on his bed. His hands were still red with the dried blood of the petty thife he had slain...

He never thought the first blood he would spill would be... so much.

The blood had even gotten in her shoulder-length raven hair. The tip of his sword was broken for it hit the man's spine. But worse than that, the image of his dead body did not leave his eyes.

As the man's skin became pale. His eyes reddened with his own blood as he tried to press his wound so he could stop the bleeding...

Ser Gawen always made it look easy, and he was a fool to believe that it was as easy as it appeared... And his heart pounded in his chest. Not for the blood he had spilled...

But of what he might say...

Will he be disappointed? Angry? Disgusted?

Daemion didn't know, and that worried him. That scared him. Perhaps he should have allowed the man to walk away. Perhaps he did not need to die.

Perhaps...

So many perhaps. So many for what was already done. He could not change what was done, only for him to own what he did.

The door was opened and he walked inside.

His father.

Maegor stood tall as he towered over his son of four and ten, and looked at him with a deep and lost look behind his deep violet eyes.

Daemion quickly stood up as he looked down at his black boots and the blade of Dark Sister on his father's waist as he muttered. "Father... I..." But the words were stuck in his throat.

But Maegor remained silent and only looked at him with no words as if he was seeing his son in a new light.

Daemion's hand began to shake as he again looked at his boots and tried once more.

"Father... I didn't mean to kill him. Well, I did... But..." Daemion didn't know what to say and only avoided his father's gaze.

Maegor remained silent but he calmly took a few steps toward Daemion, stood in front of him.

Daemion only looked down even more terrified, tears threatening to fall from his eyes.

But Maegor did not yell. He did not raise his hand to strike him...

Maegor put his hand behind the back of his shoulder-length raven hair, and gently pressed Daemion's forehead to his muscular chest as he calmly rubbed Daemion's short raven hair a calmly as he could.

"You did good, kid." Maegor whispered in High valyrian.

Daemion closed his tearful eyes as he rested his forehead on his father's chest as his teeth kept clacking to one another as he wished to keep his voice steady, but yet he could not.

"But seeing him die... It felt empowering... But the look of helplessness upon his face... It made me feel dirty. As if I had no true manpower over what was coming to him..." Daemion whispered back in High Valyrian. "In the strangest way, it pained me."

Maegor calmly pulled Daemion's head away and put his hands on Daemion's smaller shoulders as he leaned down to look directly in Daemion's deep violet eyes with his own deep violet eyes. "The true meaning of pain is when you see one, whom you love with even the smallest parts of your heart, die and yet you are powerless and can do nothing but to watch it as it happens... For it is not in your hand..." Maegor said softly as he put his hand on Daemion's head and stroked his raven hair... and looked at Daemion's raven hair with a hidden sorrow. "But you will never know such pain. Not while I live, boy."