Strings of Silk / Aemond Targaryen

The Coiled Dragon

The egg emanated an aura like ringing voices that seemed to reverberate within me. There was something under there, curling, burning, living.

I trembled under the first touches of a haunted ecstasy. High lonely towers. A beat of leathery wings. A freefall into a starry night.

But my visions were quickly strangled by memories. The shadows of dragons over the cobblestones, their piercing shrieks. The cloud of smoke that engulfed the city, the flicking flames and the distortion of heat over Visenya's burning hill.

I saw the egg as it truly was-an embryo of destruction, a gaping infant that could cast the city into the inferno.

I would not tell him. I remembered Rhaenys's hill, his glittering smile when Vhagar called to him. I did not want to see the flames beneath his eye ignite, to hear that unearthly laugh. I almost felt as though the power of his joy might hatch the thing, and bring the sticky yawning beast to the surface.

"Go ahead," he nodded encouragingly. "Touch it."

I felt faint. I shook my head and mouthed my entreaties but no sound came out. My fingertips nearly brushed the surface. I could feel the pulsing heat and hushed whispers seemed to fill the room.

I yanked back.

"I don't understand." He blinked gently, though his eye was dilated. "It's only an egg. What exactly do you fear?"

My hand pulsed. I studied it intently, certain I had been burned, but there was no mark.

"Prince Aemond." Would he even listen to me in this state? He seemed so happy, and yet so dead to the world. I shook my head. "You told me I came here for a betrothal. I have little to offer but I have tried. Do not..." I looked down and the brimmed tears fell. "Do not ask me to be what I am not."

His breathing was heightened. He seemed so taut, that with the wrong movement he might pounce.

"You hear it, don't you?" He was smiling, and it was all the worse as I doubted he could even help it.

"No," I lied. I had to be more convincing. "I don't know what you mean."

He ran his hands over the top of the egg as though it were a child's head. "We say we are blood of the Dragon. It is not an empty boast." He lifted on appraising eye. "There is a shared memory between us and the dragons. A longing, really."

I leaned against the wall and the wood panels dug into my shoulders as I slid to the floor. I remembered the weirwood, the golden hour I had nearly felt at ease with him, now dead and gone. I pressed my eyes close and tears fell over my cheeks. "I hear nothing."

He merely nodded, but his expression was distant. "I never hatched an egg. I wanted to, of course, but merely as an expression of my worth, to stop the mockery. And finally, I gave up hoping." He looked out the window, towards the gathering clouds. "And then I heard her. Mournful, older than I could understand at my young age. She had known Old Valyria, a land destroyed. I could never have hatched an egg, not while she lived."

I wiped my eyes, and watched him. Vhagar was more than a weapon to him. She was a conduit to something. Something I had just glimpsed, a yearning far older than I was and beyond my every instinct. I was too weary to understand, too overwhelmed by the ferocity of it.

"She called to me. Others just hear her roar, but there's a song beneath, a beckoning." He spoke with nervous energy, but there was a strain of something sweeter, an intensity that stemmed from passion, not greed. "I had my ambition, Marai, I have never denied it. I longed for her power and the status it would grant me, but there was more. I had no choice but to seek her."