ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀʀᴋ ꜱɪꜱᴛᴇʀ - House of the Dragon

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Before we start, does someone wishes to retire?" I asked, looking at the circle of knights around me.

They exchanged looks, sharing their concerns in an unspoken manner, and I breathed the different emotions that ran through them with a single deep breath. Some were excited, some scared. The truth was, I never thought they would agree to something like that when I proposed it to my stepfather, and I knew he had something to do with it.

Daemon was standing before the open doors of the courtyard, one of his hand in his sword belt as usual. Though there was no sword in it. His violet eyes, glowing under the intense sun of the day, scanned my very movement as if he was taking mental notes.

Our eyes met for a second, and his lips curled up in a smirk as I spinned Dark Sister in my hand.

As if taking advantage of my brief distraction, the bravest (or stupidest) knight ran at me raising his own sword. A scream bounced through the stone walls of the yard, and soon enough every other knight followed the first.

The man, of about my mother's age, grunted as I stopped his blow as easily as I used to peal an orange, using both my legs as support and both my hand as weapons.

Either they were going easy on me, or they were surprisingly weak, since I disarmed three out of the seven in a matter of minutes. It had been a test, asking Daemon for a different partner as I trained. He had done it for six years, the longest who ever did. There wasn't a person who knew my strengths and weakness better than him. I wanted to experience fighting someone that didn't knew me at all, and my stepfather never found the words to deny me something.

I danced around the same area I used to as a child, ignoring the dark pit that was my memories and the ghost of Ser Harwin politely nodding at me as he always did. If he were here he would be standing next to Daemon, doing his best to hide an smile and secretly correcting my slight mistakes. Laenor would be there too, with a chalice in hand. All three of my fathers together, watching over their daughter, proud of the warrior I had become.

I caught sight of Larys Strong from the corner of my eye, gripping his cane with that mischievous smirk I had nightmares with as a little girl. And the rage within myself at the memory of his brother lighted up my gut on fire.

Daemon cocked his head to a side, possibly feeling the anger in my veins as I kept fighting the knights with every inch of strength I found. At some point I forgot about the sword, and the nose of one of the men cracked and broke and the blood stained my knuckles.

And the red only worsened it all.

I felt myself losing control of my body, enjoying it as the fifth man cried and passed out when the handle of Dark Sister hit the back of his head as I had already disarmed him, smirking as one of the two others visibly trembled, eyeing the blood running down my arm there where he had managed to hit me, yet not gaining a single reaction from me. I could not stop, not even as he yield and dropped to his knees.

The last man standing, my stepfather's ten years junior for what I had heard, trembled as much as his companion as I made my way to him, spinning the sword one more time.

Dark Sister was a heavy sword, beautiful and lethal. Yet the valyrian steel made it difficult to many people to truly connect with it. That was not my case. Since the moment I stole it from Daemon's belt after Laenor's poor funeral, it felt like an extension of my arm. Like sailing did to my grandsire Corlys and bugs did to aunt Helaena and flying did to myself. Like it was made for me. Of course, we shared a name, so we were made for each other.

Despite his uncontrollable shakiness, the man was a good fighter.

He managed to stop my blows a few times, but that only worsened my already bad nerves.