Above the Salt and Sea | HOTD AU. Lucerys Velaryon ✅

Chapter 1: God's Tides

Lord Corlys Velaryon POV Starts.

"Gods be good. Lucerys!" My voice cracked across the shore, raw with a hope I'd sworn to abandon a day ago.

There he stood—the boy we'd mourned, the prince who'd plunged from the skies to drown in the merciless sea. Alive. Alive. My chest tightened. This couldn't be. I'd seen Arrax's remains myself—the shattered bones, the scraps of Velaryon blue clinging to them. Yet here he was, whole and breathing, dressed in coarse-spun wool like a common fisherman.

But, no. Look closer, Corlys, your old eyes might fooling you.

I forced my feet forward, the salt-crusted pebbles grinding beneath my boots. A month lost to the waves would have leached the life from any man, let alone a boy of four-and-ten. But his face—gods, that face—was Lucerys's in every detail: the slope of his nose, the way his too-long hair curled at his nape. Even the way he stood, shoulders hunched as if braced against a gale.

"Lucerys?" I shouted again, softer now, my hand half-raised—to reach him or ward him off, I couldn't say.

But the boy didn't stir—not even a flinch at my shout. That stillness chilled me more than any winter gale.

I stepped closer, each footfall heavy with doubt. This is madness, I told myself. A month and a half of empty searches, of sleepless nights, and now my weary mind was playing tricks. Yet... There he stood. Not a specter, not a shadow—flesh and bone. The wind tugged at his fisherman's tunic, the salt spray glistened on his skin. Real. Too real.

"Lucerys!" I called again, louder now, forcing steel into my voice. The name tore from my throat like a prayer and a challenge both. If this was a phantom, let it fade. If it was truth, let the boy turn.

By the Fourteen Flames, the boy turned.

Gods. That face—those wide dark eyes, the slight crook in his nose from when he’d fallen in the Driftmark courtyard at six namedays—it was undeniably him. Lucerys. My grandson. My heir.

I didn’t think. I strode forward and crushed him against me, my arms locking around his shoulders like ship’s ropes. The boy stiffened. No laughter, no relieved sob, not even a hesitant pat on my back. Just... stillness.

I pulled back, gripping his arms. "Lucerys?"

His expression shattered me. Not joy, not recognition—just blank, dazed confusion, as if I were a stranger. As if he were the one seeing a ghost.

"Excuse me, my lord, but who are you?"

The question struck like a harpoon to the chest. That voice—light but stubborn, with the same faint lisp from when he'd lost his front teeth—was undeniably Lucerys's. The very voice that had once pleaded with me in my solar. Yet, now it addressed me as a stranger.

Then, it hit me.

Of course, it was possible that Lucerys had lost his memory. But that didn’t change the fact that he was my grandson and Driftmark’s heir.

So, I began to tell him what had happened over the past month. While apparently, this boy—who bore Lucerys’s face—didn’t even remember his own name, and for over a month, he had been cared for by a fisherman’s couple in one of their huts. Naturally, I needed to meet the saviors of my grandson and heir, so I asked Lucerys to bring me to them—a request he agreed to in a heartbeat.