𝐎𝐅 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐒𝐇, hotd

CHAPTER ONE

   She did not fear such monsters.

   A silence fell around her. No sound of birds or the distant sound of the sea, no flies buzzing around the burnt carcasses. Her heart hammered against her ribs and threatened to push its way up her throat to spill onto her mouth. A slow breath left her mouth as she lowered her hands and opened her eyes.

   In front of her stood the beast, a great thing that reminded her of the grand stone dragon that circled the Wyndworm tower at the keep. Its scales were darker than the night, as if they swallowed the hint of sunlight that reflected on them; only a few glittered like a gemstone on her mother's finger. Its horns and spinal plates were just as dark as its scales, pure darkness just like the midnight sea.

   On its face, above sharp blood-stained teeth, two brilliant green eyes met her green and violet ones.

   She smiled.

   The young princess always knew she wanted to claim a great and terrible beast as her own, to mirror her father in his youth when he claimed Balerion. She ignored the hatchlings in the dragonpit, the small and youthful dragons that were only as large as the domed structure they were kept in would allow them to grow. The little princess, the bony and scraggly thing that always had grass-stains knees and muddy hands, wanted a beast to claim as her own dragon, just like her ancestors in Valyria had done.

   She held out a hand toward the beast. A growl left the dragon's throat rippling through the ground like an earthquake. Long and sharp teeth the length of her entire body faced her as the dragon opened its mouth, its red throat raw with pure fire. It was green, bright and brilliant just like its eyes. 

   And then, the dragon shut its maw, stared at the young princess for a silent moment, and bent its neck.

   She stared at the beast, eyes wide as a triumphant smile began to form around her mouth. Her hand shook as she stepped closer to it and touched its snout. The heat that surged through her hand was like she had stepped too close to the fireplace in her chambers and allowed the flames to lick her skin. Hands inside boiling water; the heat from the beast was hotter—the very fires of the Dragonmont become flesh—but it didn't bother her.

   It called for her, begged for her to come closer and allow herself to burn alongside the wild beast.

   With its neck bent, the young princess stepped onto the dragon to become its first rider. She held on to its horns, two small hands tightly wound as she hoped the dragon would take her above the canopy of dead trees. It flapped its wings several times, its body rippling beneath her, and it took off to the sky. The wind rushed against her, it took her hair out of its braid and her eyes watered and her very breath got taken from her lungs the higher they went.

   Over the Dragonmont.

   Away from Dragonstone.

   Above the clouds.

   The sky was a mixture of night and day. Above her, the sky was dark and deep like the beginnings of the night. Below her, the lands she had walked among and the sea that had carried her on a ship from King's Landing to Dragonstone. It was heights that no mere mortal had been, a sight no one had seen and air no one had breathed.

   Laughter bubbled out of her mouth as she spread her arms at her side like wings, shut her eyes and threw her head back. The wind rushed against her skin like a harsh caress the higher the dragon flew. At that shere moment, the young princess thought she was at the top of the world.

   She could see Dragonstone below her, a dark and smokey jewel in the centre of the blue sea. Her family's keep at the mouth of the Dragomont, a shapely thing that covered the village below in a soft shadow like the beast she rode. To the west of the island, Driftmark. The largest island in Blackwater Bay, the green of the island a vast difference from its dreary cousin. Between the two islands, ships dotted the blue sea like countless ants making their way to their hill. They seemed to barely move from where she was, stationary in the centre of the deep sea where many other ships and bones made their eternal rests.