𝗕𝗟𝗢𝗢𝗗𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 || Cregan Stark

30 | Appeasement

CHAPTER THIRTY
A P P E A S E M E N T

-

The riverlords arrive in the midst of the night.

Viserra does not view their entry, but hears their scornful voices echo through the walls of the keep. She sits unmoving in her quarters, listening as muffled accusations erupt from the great hall, the distant sound reverberating through stone like an unseen tide.

Slowly, she moves to sit by the window, peering down at the courtyard where torches flicker against steel-clad men and their accompanying retinues. Her fingers tighten against the stone ledge.

She had known this moment would come—Daemon's relentless pursuit of power could only last so long before it stirred resentment among those he sought to rule.

Perhaps it ought to gladden her to see his defiance be challenged, but no such joys find her. Rather, as the discord rises, a strange weight settles in her chest. The night is cool against her skin, but her blood is warm, thrumming with an unspoken uncertainty.

-

The night is cool and dark, pouring into her a strange otherness.

She finds him in the godswood, seated at the foot of the heart tree.

Daemon sits with his head slumped back, as though half asleep— his sword draped across his knees. Viserra approaches quietly, her cool, tired eyes finding his. He looks up at her with that same dull, docile look, born from neither fear nor ferocity.

He is harmless. For now.

"The jewel of Dragonstone herself," he hums, his tone dry and weary.

She stares at him in silence, her features devoid of much reaction. She notices the subtle slump of his shoulders, the way his hand lightly grips the hilt of his sword, as if prepared for something that might never come. The sight, though familiar, makes something in her stir—a strange combination of pity and disdain, both equally unsettling.

"Go on," he continues, glancing away. "I did not raise you to spare me."

Pursing her lips, Viserra quietly glances up at the solemn face carved into weirwood.

It is said that the old gods punish those who tell lies before the eyes of a heart tree.

"I came to see what remains of you," she murmurs, lowering herself to the ground next to him.

"Surely you hoped I was dead."

She shifts slightly, her eyes flickering toward his profile. Even at a distance, the smell of arbor red fills her nostrils.

"The riverlords are too duty-bound to do such a thing," she says, her tone quiet and calm, almost imaginative.

Daemon exhales a short, humourless breath, tilting his head back against the gnarled bark of the heart tree. The pale wood, veined with deep red, casts its judgmental gaze upon him, its carved eyes bleeding like figs in the moonlight.

The riverlords had not sought to oppose him tonight, but their warning had been clear. He is treading in shallow waters, and such footing does not hold for long.

"Duty is a fickle thing," he says.

Viserra studies him, the flickering torchlight from the distant hall barely reaching them here, leaving his face half-veiled in shadow. He does not look defeated, not entirely, but there is something in his stillness that unsettles her—a quiet acceptance, or perhaps merely exhaustion.