THE 7TH MOON [Aemond Targaryen]

Thirteen - Fatherhood.

"You are but a girl, you cannot know that."

"And yet I do."

"Quiet now. Tis time."

"Daemon-"

"Quiet Laenora!" He hissed. "You will try."

Laenora knew there was no point in arguing, not when it came to the dragon that was her uncle, and so despite herself she fell into silence and listened to the sweet melody he unravelled before the long forgotten beast, easing its woes.

If a beast could ever have any woes.

Daemon had only ever sung to Laenora once in her short life, when she was just a girl, when her mother had been just a girl herself and had birthed her third child in the span of a few short years, Lucerys.

Laenora had stared on in such wonder at the small babe, Jace's chubby fingers gripping at her small hand, babbling away at her side as Luke suckled on their mother's breast. That was before Harwin Strong ushered them out the door, right into the arms of one Alicent Hightower. The woman had been in waiting for the pair and quickly passed them off to her husband Viserys at her soonest convenience, whom of which upon the demand of his presence elsewhere had passed them onto his brother, Daemon.

That was the first case in which the bastard girl could recall the harsh sting of unwant. She had been so small, hardly three, with so much blame and childishness to give, and yet she never blamed her siblings, nor her forebears, she blamed herself. She blamed that she was so small and so young as to be able to understand, blamed that she simply hadn't been born sooner, that she couldn't support and help her mother the way the adults in her life could, that was why she was so unwanted, that was why she had been cast away by all she loved. The notion alone was enough to ripple immense upset in her small body, and yet the moment she greeted Daemon's arms, utterly hysterical, she settled, just like that. As if she'd been born to him and him alone. His blood.

As if there was an understanding between the two.

Jace was already snoring soundly in his cot by the time Daemon had begun to sing to the young boy's sister, lifting her upon his armoured shoulders and stifling her woes.

Lae was yet to understood high Valyrian, however she was among the first to understand her great uncle.

The melody in his tone remained the same as all those years ago as he sung to the great beast.

Daemon's torch flickered shapes across the cave, and upon Vermithor's eyes as it prized itself open, narrowed on their insignificant figures before him as the warriors melodies unwound.

"Daemon." Laenora hissed

The creature bellowed a belly full of fire upon the structures high ceiling, and on his reflex, Daemon shoved the girl behind him, his body her shield as he had always been.

"This beast will never be mine." Lae commanded, her grip tight upon her stepfather's shoulder. "We both already know it."

Laenora and Daemon.

Daemon and Vermithor.

Laenora and Vermithor.

"The fact is no secret."

*****

An hour of the sun had turned before Laenora and Daemon had even made it down a semblance of the mountainside of which they'd previously ascended. The pair had been locked in a heated bout of bickering, revolving the claims of dragons and that of traitor princes, that of which halted them in making any progress which they should have. When Daemon held a bitter taste on his tongue, the whole keep ought to know about it, and when Laenora did, the keep may aswell have burnt to the ground. Together? A dragon fire of which not an individual within the seven kingdoms or the greater world had ever known, came to be. They were much too alike for their own good.