"Laenora... My daughter."

"Father?" The princess mumbled into the cold dark.

In the dim light for a simple second the heiress had seen the shadow of Laenor Velaryon; the father who had both raised and abandoned her, the father who she had loved so dearly his alleged death had very nearly almost destroyed her. She'd never come to know him again, nor would she come to know her trueborn father if her mother had any say, but just as quickly as she had shuffled Aemond's letter beneath her featherbed and her eyes adjusted did she see the only father who remained.

The one who she knew she was far too alike with for her own good. The same one who had posed as her great uncle for a half of her life.

"Daemon?"

She quickly found it was he who hung over her bedside, a lantern beneath his arm, his hooded cloak up, and her grandfather's dagger in his lap.

Gods.

"Where did you get this?" He asked, twisting the tip of the blade along his fingertip. "This was-"

"Viserys's, I know."

"Then how has this come to be in your possession?"

Cole gave it to me. She almost blurted but something in the bastards bones told her that any answer would resolve more than the truth ever could, especially when it came to her connections to the sworn shield. And so instead a lie slipped off of her tongue.

"Grandfather gave it to me. On his deathbed."

"And you are sure this simply was not a stolen gift from your betrothed?"

"No, Twas not. Aemond was with me, but it was never taken, only gifted."

Lae knew better than anyone that Daemon could see straight through her, so it came as a pleasant surprise when her untruths seemed to remain undetected. Instead, he chose the task at hand and climbed to his feet, clutching his own weapon divulged beneath his cloak.

"Bring it with you. Come now Laenora."

"Where are we going?"

"Here." He ignored her plea, instead he removed and wrapped his own cloak around her shoulders before tying it beneath her chin, just as any doting father would do.

But Daemon was anything but doting, and just as he could see straight through Laenora, she saw through him too.

"Do not make me scream for my mother." The princess hissed. "Where are we going Daemon?"

"To awaken the beast."

***

"What is this place?"

"Jahaerys, the king who gave our bloodline the right to the iron throne, the very same who laid that crown on your mothers head, once rode the most formidable beast the seven kingdoms has ever laid witness too. More agile than Balerion, perhaps fiercer than Caraxes."

"Vermithor."

"Yes." He nodded, eyes averting hers beneath the flickering flame of his torch. "One of the eldest living dragons there is."

"Besides Vhagar."

"Yes, besides that brute."

"Why did you bring me here uncle?"

"Do I have to say it?"

"You wish for me to claim him."

"Yes."

"No."

"He will be yours to claim and that is the last I shall hear of it Laenora."

"I have read of many dragons, near and far, a creature like Vermithor will not take me."

"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.

"However many times must I tell you this? That dragon would have eaten us alive-"

"You still do not listen! I do not mean the dragon Laenora! Aemond - tis he, he and his cunt of a brother who would have eaten you if they had had their way!"

"Vile insults you levy against me!"

"I levy the truth!"

"If I had a dragon now, one as fierce as my betrothed holds, as fierce as he himself, I would have it take your head-"

"Not before I would have Caraxes rip his bastard from your belly!"

"There is no bastard!"

"Please - an uncle to this family? He has preyed on you your entire life!"

"Just as you preyed on my mother it seems?"

"That boy has had you on your knees like a dog, and now he and his kin take your mother's throne and it is I you quarrel with?"

"What is there to quarrel about? Aemond sent me a letter. I did not claim the dragons you wished of me. You are unleashing your woes on the only person in the seven kingdoms who understands you Daemon."

"You do not know me Laenora."

"I know you! I know your loss for it is a shared one, Laena, Viserys, Visenya - the sanity of my mother. No one will ever know yourself as I do you, Daemon. Tis why you call me your daughter, when we both know where else I hail from. You push your hurt on to me because you know, if not yourself, I am the only other who can take it!"

Daemon fell silent, for the first time in his life words would not greet him. But the moment Laenora's palm fell upon his own, with a tight grip, he settled.

"I may not be yours, but in spirit matters are different. So give me all."

"The blood of the dragon runs deep. You are my blood. It does not matter which man you came from."

"And yet I am also your punishment."

For being the same. For not being his child. For being born of house Cole.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

"We are too alike it seems."

"On that much we can agree."

"I can take your woes uncle."

"Let us not take... but share in them." He pulled her upon him then, her head upon his chest as the pair unravelled in their grief, sobbing before one another for the first time in the entirety of their lives.

Their cries soon became lost in the wind as the atmosphere rumbled around them, soaring and swirling. Even shrieking.

Shrieking?

"Laenora." Daemon's sobs grew dry, dying at his throat. "Do you feel that? The earth is moving beneath us."

"Vermithor?"

"No. Something larger."

Laenora would later hate herself for thinking it, but the first idea that surfaced at the forefront of her mind was Vhagar. Aemond. Come for her finally, to quarrel and apologise and take her to wife.

Something was not right in her brain for thinking as such, and she knew it. It could only be the death of her grandfather that drew her so desperately to him, that was at least the lie she told herself.

"Vhagar?" She whispered, feeling the earth split in two and what could only be described as a high pitched shriek invade her senses.

"Do not move." Daemon pleaded. "Laenora do not move."

The dragon's eyes were on her like the hand of the stranger on her family, threatening at the point of a knife. Snapping jaws and sharpened claws, a bleeding maw threatening to chew them in two at the slightest movement. Laenora had read of this brute before, studied him, dreamt of him. This was the connection Aemond had spoken of.

The Cannibal.

The future queen made her choice then, if the Cannibal was not to be hers, after so many years of willing it to be so, then she needed no dragon.

This was her time.

"I must." She pulled herself away from him, staring the beast between the eyes.

"Laenora!" Daemon hissed, to which the creature stepped around the girl and snapped its jaws, almost catching the prince. "Tell it to command you! Tell it!"

"Likhiri taoba." She forced a hand upon the creatures snout, but still it lunged for her father uncle.

"Likhiri Cannibal!" The raven haired girl finally snapped, taking a dangerous step towards the dragon, to which, to her utter shock, he too stepped back, bowing his head to her.

Obeying.

"Impossible." Daemon whispered, disbelief infected his every word.

"Mi Taoba." Her hand reached out for him then, resting on his lower jaw. And just like that, the dragon leaned in, revelling beneath her touch. "I know you." She told him. "You won't hurt me."

"Vermithor could never have been yours. This beast was already waiting in the lurch."

"The right one will find you." Aemond's voice rang out in her head.

And he'd been right.

*****

"Lucerys has already been sent to Stormsend. In the event that Borros Baratheon does not adhere to his promise to your mother then you shall go as a reassurance of so, and an assurance of your brother's safety."

"Lucerys is perfectly capable-"

"Not as capable as the child who claimed the largest living wild dragon. Protect him, protect your blood. And tell Borros that your father sent you."

"I have barely ridden him."

"Lae, Cannibal is not the only dragon among the two of you."

And still, she hesitated. Her new saddle upon her new dragon, her fingers ragged and shaky upon his great horned spine, her palm upon his reigns. Her boy, the cannibal had always been hers, they were connected, and the moment she grew wary he did too, she knew as much from the feel of his shaking body kneeling upon the ground beneath her form.

The two may have been dragons together, but they could only be so much of one as the other would allow them to be. And that was hardly at all.

Daemon would not allow this. He was as connected to the child as she was her dragon, as he was caraxes, like a symphony, and so it was he who had to be the one to lift them both. To push.

"But-"

"You are the heir daughter, not him. Lucerys may be capable, but your mother is a fool if she believes they will listen to just a boy. Prove to the Baratheons that the fury is not theirs but yours."

"Ours." Laenora nodded, Cannibal raised upon his hind legs.

Pushed.

"Then prove it."

"I won't steer you wrong, father."

"Farewell, daughter."

And for the first time in her life, as a dragon-rider, Laenora Targaryen took flight, the Cannibal's wings around her body like a crown of death.

"Ours."