Enigmas | Aemond Targaryen

THIRTY SEVEN

Loss. Despair. Grief. They made themselves known to me as never before. The raw pain that nothing in this world held a candle to raked my body as I thrashed in the air, mindless and mad and stricken, cursing the skies, the clouds, the wild dragon out of nowhere that caused the swift release of death to elude me. I challenged him to drop me, to toss me into the smoking cone of the volcanic Dragonmont as we flew by so that I might burn and melt away in the roiling magma and be free of the most unendurable of agony and sorrow consuming and hollowing out the rest of me.

When my body smashed against the ground, instinctively I wrapped my protective arms around the abdomen and curled up into a fetal position. A fit of coughing so violent that it seemed I would never get my breath back spurted from my parched lips as clouds of dust and grit were stirred up by the crashing impact and struck my face.

When it eventually died out, I sprawled out on the cavern floor as if already dead, compliantly waiting. Waiting for the wild dragon who pillaged me into this dark, spacious cave somewhere within the volcanic Dragonmont to bask me in a scorching blast of flame then clamp its jaws around me, taking all the unbearable loss and despair and grief away. "Jikagon va, sagon adere nūmāzma ziry." Go ahead, be quick about it. I let out a sobbing whimper like the last dying breath of some wounded creature. "Morghon kessa sagon tepilla. Rȳ mōrī kesan sagon lēda ñuha muña arlī." Death would be merciful. At least I shall be with my mother again.

A succession of harrowing tableau vivants flashed across my mind as I lay absolutely still, eyes staring at the void vacantly, waiting for my ultimate demise. My mother, my mother who loved me so much that she would willingly relinquish the crown for me, fell limply into a pool of blood right in front of my own eyes. And I was so fucking useless that I couldn't save her. All I did was standing there and crying like a fucking stupid child. Why am I so fucking useless? The hurtful words kepa hurled at me... I had been called worse names. Viler names. But when kepa named me a slut and a whore... I felt that hot tears were surging up inside my sore eyes again even though I fought hard to force them back, to not lend my tremendous pain, heartbreak and vulnerability free rein, and make myself even more useless.

The Greenseer sends his regards.

Clenching my fists so hard I could almost hear the knuckles cracking, an inextinguishable fire of fury, of wrath, an unquenched thirst for righteous vengeance suddenly flamed in my veins. The Greenseer sends his regards. The smile that curdled at the corner of Arryk Cargyll's mouth. A final mockery. A taunt. Whoever this fucking Greenseer is, I will find him. If it means I must rain dragonfire down to the Old Gods themselves, then so be it.

I couldn't die. I couldn't die just yet. If I did, then the real culprit behind it all won. There would be no justice for my mother. Daemon would burn the entire realm down for nothing. And my children... The sickness of dread snaked through me as my maternal, natural mothering instincts finally kicked in to remind me that I almost killed the unborn child within my womb by giving in to a moment of tremendous shock, grief and impulse. Placing a hand over my stomach for comfort, I murmured apologetically. "I am sorry, my little one. I reacted without thinking."

I must live, and be the queen my mother wanted me to be. Needed me to be. She didn't yield her throne to a weakling. She yielded because she trusted me, had faith in me, believed in me. I mustn't let her down.

Sitting up as swiftly as possible, I searched for my abductor.

The air within the dark, colossal cave was stagnant and torrid, rented by a foul stench of roasting flesh. The light was non-existent, but oddly my eyes could see through the impenetrable pitch blackness. A long sinuous body covered in shiny scales as dark as the shades of night... crawling... slithering... horns, wing bones, spinal crest and eyes a vivid, supernormal phosphorescent green that glowed ominously in darkness...