A Bond Between Dragons

blasphemous rumours [006]

The room was suffocating, thick with a silence that carried more weight than any words could. Lyonel Strong stood at one end, his posture rigid, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, while Harwin stood across from him, back turned, his jaw set. His eyes staring defiantly into the empty space. The tension was palpable, filling the chamber like a slow-moving fog. Neither man moved; the air itself seemed to have frozen, trapped beneath the enormity of what had transpired.

Harwin could feel the bruises on his knuckles, the remnants of his fury still pulsing through his veins. He knew—he knew—what he had done, what his actions had unleashed. Yet he would never admit it. Not to his father. The silence stretched on, punctuated only by the faint crackle of a fire in the hearth, its flickering light casting shadows that danced mockingly around them.

"It fills me with unrelenting shame," Lyonel finally spoke, his voice low but trembling with restrained fury. He did not meet his son's gaze, his eyes fixed on the floor as if the weight of their family's dishonor was too heavy to look up from.

Harwin let out a sharp, bitter laugh, breaking the stillness. "So that's what this is about then...? Your shame."

Lyonel's eyes snapped up, the sudden ferocity in his gaze like a blade being drawn. "Our shame, Harwin!" His voice thundered through the chamber, filling the space with a violence that had been simmering beneath his controlled exterior. "Shame on the whole of House Strong."

Harwin turned abruptly, his fists clenching at his sides, defiant. "Because I laid my hands on that insufferable Cole, the son of a steward?" His voice carried the same bitterness, a sneer curling his lips as he stared his father down.

Lyonel's face hardened; his jaw tight. "He is a Knight of the Kingsguard now, a defender of the crown."

Harwin scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. "He assailed Prince Jacaerys, the future heir to the throne."

Both men were shouting now, their voices clashing like swords in battle. "You have laid us open to accusations of an uglier treachery!" Lyonel roared, stepping forward as if the distance between them was something he could no longer tolerate.

Harwin's face darkened, but there was a flicker in his eyes, a hesitation that belied his bravado. "And what treachery is that?" he asked, though they both knew the answer, knew it with a certainty that hung unspoken in the charged air.

Lyonel's breath was heavy, the silence between them now heavy with unspoken truths. "Don't play the fool with me, boy." His voice was quieter now, yet sharper, cutting through the space like a razor. "Your intimacy with the Princess Rhaenyra is an offense that would mean exile and death... for you, for her, for the children!"

Harwin flinched at the words.

For the children.

Jace and Luke. His boys. Their wild laughter, the way they looked up to him with innocent eyes, unaware of the treacherous path their mere existence had placed them upon. They were Targaryens in name, Velaryons in appearance—or at least they were meant to be. But the world wasn't blind. People had eyes, and those eyes saw Harwin in them. He knew it, and so did his father.

But it was Vaella that gripped his heart the most. His daughter, with her fierce spirit and quick wit, who moved through the world with an understanding far beyond her years. She knew. Harwin had seen it in the way her eyes lingered on him when they were alone, the way she studied his face in the mirror. She was clever—too clever. And that realization had torn at him, made every tender moment between them both precious and painful.

Vaella, with her brown curls that framed her face, the same face that mirrored his own. When she looked at him, it was like staring into the reflection of all his failings and all his love. She had understood before he had even uttered a word, and that, more than anything, haunted him. She had never said it aloud, but her gaze was enough. She was old enough to know what it meant to be "different," to see the whispers in court and the veiled glances. She carried it with a grace he couldn't muster, and that broke his heart.