The Dragon's Legacy

Chapter Eighty-Three

Daemion never thought he would ever return to Oldtown.

When Daemion held Rhaena's hand as she got off the ship, he could feel the air in Oldtown tightening.

Lyle Hightower quickly put his hand on Daemion's shoulder as he walked in front of him, as he had noticed the looks of hate in the eyes of his people.

Perhaps he should have at least brought Modread along or even Dreamfyre... But yet he knew to settle the tension between Oldtown and him was for him to step on the same hard ground as them.

Visenya clung to his leg, for she too was unnerved and worried just as her father as Valarr clung in Rhaena's arms as they all walked to the carriage.

But once seated in the carriage... It was only the beginning to the horror of the atrocity he had unleashed upon Oldtown...

The streets of Oldtown were narrower than Daemion remembered, the shadows cast by the towering structures deepened by the late afternoon sun. The city had been rebuilt since that fateful day, but the scars remained. He could feel the weight of them, etched into the stone of the buildings, and in the faces of those who lined the streets as his carriage passed by. They watched him with a mixture of fear and hatred, their eyes burning with memories of fire and death.

Daemion sat stiffly in the carriage, his fingers unconsciously gripping the hilt of Dark Sister. Beside him, Rhaena held their daughter, Rhaella, close as the twins Valarr and Visenya looked at the might of the city that their grandmother, Ceryse Hightower came from. Across from Daemion sat Lyle Hightower, the man who was soon to be his son-in-law, and the embodiment of the fragile peace that had brought him back to this city of ash and bones.

As the carriage rattled over the cobblestones, Daemion's gaze drifted out the window. The sight of Oldtown, the city he had once set aflame, brought a bitter taste to his mouth. The air felt heavy with the weight of the past, the scent of smoke lingering in his memory as if it had never truly dissipated. He could still hear the screams, the desperate cries of the innocent as Modread's fire rained down from the sky. He had been their doom, their destroyer. And now he returned, not as a conqueror, but as a Father.

That day he had heard none of it. That day he had gone deaf and blind with rage. But now he could hear... Now he could see.

Guilt gnawed at his insides, an incessant ache that no amount of time could dull. He had done what he had to do. That much he knew. Rhaena had been in danger, a prisoner in a tower not unlike the one they now approached. He had acted to save her, to protect his family. But the blood of innocents stained his hands, and no amount of righteous intent could wash it away. The knowledge that his actions had saved the woman he loved did little to ease the burden on his soul.

A ghost who returned after ten years, only bringing with himself the words of his father's house; Fire and Blood.

He could see the blackened roofs and the blackened street, proof of Modread's firey breath. He could remember as clearly as the day Valarr and Visenya came to this world, with screams. Screams of hundreds he burnt in.

Every burnt street that even the repairments could not wipe what had happened that day. Every single burnt and blackened brick brought as sense of shame to him with only one question as the faded face of his mother appeared in his eyes:

What did I do?

But as he looked at Rhaena, her face serene despite the tension that hung between them, Daemion felt a flicker of defiance, for this was the very city that Aegon in its walls... But Daemion knew that he had done what any husband would do—what any man with the power of a dragon at his command would have done. Martyn Hightower had not hesitated to use Rhaena as a pawn, and he had responded in kind, with fire and fury. Yet, the justification felt hollow in the face of the smoldering ruins he had left behind, ruins that still lingered in the hearts of the people of Oldtown.