Chapter Text
The Dragonpit loomed above Rhaenys' Hill, a vast dome of stone and bronze. Caraxes, the Blood Wrym, landed with a shriek, the sand of the pit rising in a storm around him. Daemon Targaryen swung himself from the saddle, and rolled his stiff neck.
The roar of a second dragon split the air. Vermithor thundered through the gates, each step shaking the stone beneath him. His scales glittered like molten bronze and his eyes were fixed with terrifying purpose.
Daemon paused, hand brushing the pommel of Dark Sister. The prince's sharp violet gaze traced the dragon's passage, noting the weight behind each stride, the sheer size that could crush a city without effort.
Vermithor passed him and Caraxes with no sign of recognition, then vaulted skyward with a purpose and speed that belied his massive frame.
Caraxes twisted his neck, smoke curling from his nostrils as Daemon's gaze followed the other dragon's ascent and a small, tight smile tugged at his lips.
He had not seen Vermithor leave for the hunt in years.
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The cobblestones of Rosby’s market square were slick with last night’s rain, but Alyria knew every uneven dip and loose stone by heart. Basket hooked over one arm, she moved between stalls in her usual quiet way, exchanging coin for cuts of pork and salt-fish. Meat was a rarer treat, and today the butcher’s boy Robert had given her a half-smile instead of a sneer. A small victory.
“Careful there, White Wyrmling.” A passing fishmonger called, voice thick with laughter. Alyria kept her gaze on the wet cobble. They never said it cruelly, not exactly, but that glint in their eyes was always there. The name had followed her since she was old enough to run errands. The 'white' for her hair, a shade too pale for the riverlands, the ‘wrymling’ for the dragon-blood she carried through her mother, faint and untested.
Her jaw tightened. They could have chosen worse. There was an uglier name whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear; bastard. She didn’t know her father’s name, or even his face. He was a patron of her mother’s in Lys, one of the hundred nameless men who had sought out Saera Targaryen’s seductive smile.
Her eyes prickled despite herself. She blinked hard, adjusting the weight of the basket in her hands and rearranging the meat so it was balanced. It was silly to care, to let it affect her, after all these years. She told herself that every time.
She was halfway across the square when the air shifted, a harsh wind swept through the market.
Then came the sound, low and thunderous, like a mountain groaning in its sleep. A shadow rolled over the cobbles, blocking the pale sunlight. Chickens squawked in panic scattering, a cart horse screamed and bolted. Above them, vast and slow, a shadow circled. Not a bird or a storm cloud...
“DRAGON!” Someone screamed. Alyria’s head snapped up. Against the bright morning sky, a immense shape wheeled, bronze wings stretched wide. The downdraft of its passage rattled the awnings and sent bunting spinning across the square.
“Seven save us, it’s the Bronze Fury!” Robert yelled, picking up a pitchfork. Alyria frowned, wondering what he planned on doing with what would be a fork to the dragon. A woman stumbled beside her, losing her grip on a sack of grain. Alyria grabbed her by the elbow, steading her before the press of the crowd swept her away.
“What the fuck did you do, bastard? Summoned it, have you?” A voice shouted from somewhere behind her. She turned sharply but whoever had said it was already swallowed by the knot of people craning their necks at the sky.
Everyone held their breaths, waiting to see if the titan dragon would reduce their village to the dust. What was the point of hiding in houses when its fire could melt steel?
And then the dragon banked, wings slicing the clouds and began to descend towards…
Her stomach lurched as she saw its line of flight.
It was heading for her cottage.
She ran back along the street and down the path to her cottage. Branches snagged at her hair and birds erupted from the trees as she tore through the underbrush. She could smell smoke before she reached the clearing. Then-crack. A timber snapped like a bone.
“No, no, no-” She broke through the last tangle of undergrowth, brambles catching at her skirts, and stopped dead.
Her cottage was flattened. Well, half of it was flattened. The other half stood stubbornly, walls tilted like a drunkard’s wobble. The roof had caved in, her herb garden was flattened into splintered green mush. The smell of burnt wood, crushed thyme and a strange metallic tang of hot stone hit her nose.
A low, disgruntled huff vibrated through the earth.
Vermithor shifted his enormous head, the sweep of his horns scraping against the blackened rafters. The dragon loomed like an ancient mountain over the wreckage, crouched awkwardly among the trees, his vast wings lay sprawled, one bent at an awkward angle across her ruined roof and the other trailing in the churned earth like a fallen sail.
Bronze scales, burnished like hammered coin, caught the sunlight in hard, glinting flashes and the air around him shimmered with heat.
Vermithor blinked, slow and deliberate, the weight of that gaze pinning her in place as if he was assessing how best to eat her whole.
“You landed on my house,” Was all she could say.
A deep rumble rolled from his chest like shifting stones, the noise reverberating through the ground into her own chest. Pebbles trembled under her feet. Smoke curled lazily from his nostrils, the crackle of smouldering timber filling the silence.
Alyria took half a step back. “I have m-meat,’ she tried. “Please don’t burn me.” Her gaze flickered to the crushed garden, “Or eat me.”
Vermithor tilted his head, the movement slow and impossibly graceful for something so huge. His eyes, molten gold ringed with black, met her amethyst ones and seemed to see right through her, leaving her feeling utterly exposed.
He took a step toward her and the earth shuddered. Her arms swung widely as she tried to balance. Why hadn’t he eaten her yet? Then a terrible thought struck.
“You’re not mine,” She whispered, “I’m not a proper Targaryen, I can’t have a dragon. Go back to Dragonstone or wherever you came from. Go pick a prince or knight or something.”
He lowered his head slowly until his snout was in line with her chest. The ancient heat coming off him was staggering, as if she’d stepped into a forge. His eye, massive, intelligent, met hers. A warm wind tousled her hair. Beneath her ribs something strange stirred, an answering warmth, fierce and alive, threading through her blood like wildfire.
A roaring filled her head, not pain but pressure, presence. Not just seeing him but feeling him, ancient and endless, inside her skin.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no, don’t you dare!” Alyria breathed, “Don’t you imprint on me like a ginormous baby duck.” The dragon blinked and huffed a breath that sent her hair whipping around her face.
“You want food?” She tried again, voice a little hysterical. “Meat for the road?” She grabbed a handful of salted venison she’d been saving for winter and lobbed it with all her strength into the woods. “FETCH!”
Vermithor didn’t so much as twitch. Instead, he folded his limbs beneath him and lay down the with inevitability of a mountain settling, his bulk crushing what little remained of her cottage. The massive head rested against the earth, nostrils flaring in a slow, steady rhythm as if the entire exchange was boring him.
“Are you…going to sleep?” Then, with unnerving gentleness for something that weighed several hundred tons, he lowered his torso, wing fanning out and knocking out the rest of her garden, revealing the curve of his massive bronze back.
“Absolutely not. I am not getting on your back.” Vermithor rumbled low in his chest, then stretched his neck slightly.
She froze. Heart pounding and denial screaming in her chest.
Alyria spun on her heel and fled, terror propelling her through the underbrush.
But suddenly the ground shook and a massive claw scooped around her waist, lifting her into the air with staggering speed. The wind tore at her hair as her ruined cottage fell away beneath her.
Vermithor had claimed and, it seemed, kidnapped her.