Chapter Text
Prologue - The One-Eyed Princeling
A young silver-haired boy burst through the doors of his chamber, hot tears of frustration threatening to spill from his eye. His only eye. The princeling tore the black eyepatch from the sunken hollow of where his left eye once sat, running his fingers along the raw seams of the scar that tore through his flesh hairline to cheek, still not yet healed from the recent attack upon him. He gazed at the reflection that faced him in the mirror with utter disdain, shadows catching the jagged scar as the orange light cast from the fireplace danced across his ruined skin. As the night unfurled outside, the rest of the world continued on, impervious to the young prince’s anguish.
He shouldn’t let his craven of a brother’s mere words get to him, but they had cut through his chest like the blade wielded by his nephew had through his skin that fateful evening.
“She will never have you now, brother” Aegon had laughed along with his wretched friends as they had cornered him in the Godswood, “Perhaps I’ll take her as my second wife instead, as my namesake the Conqueror did with his two sisters in the days of old.”
He wished that the fortune he had felt a mere fortnight ago in trading his eye for the biggest dragon in the known world was a constant. Instead, he stood in his empty room staring back at the disfigured image that greeted him with torment in his soul, feeling as much the weak and useless boy he was before his victory over Vhagar. It was doubtless the physical injury had chipped away at his self-confidence these passing days, but Aemond knew in his heart that his main lament was not for the loss of his vision, but the girl who was torn away from his side, whisked off to Dragonstone with his wretched half-sister and nephews after the whole cursed affair between the two sides of their family had come to the melting point that night at Driftmark.
Now, all that remained in his home was his ailing father who cared naught for his Hightower family, a sister, sweet as she was, more than often lost to her dragon dreaming, and worst of all his pathetic drunken brother that his mother still cared more for than her useless second son. He wished he could make profit on the heavy toll he paid and ride Vhagar to that spit of land where his only friend now dwelt, then steal her away for himself and fly the two of them away to lands far across the Narrow Sea. But, loath to admit it, he knew that Aegon was right. His constant childhood companion, much the realm’s delight as her mother was claimed to be in her youth, would not stomach his unsightly visage, his lack of temper and the rage he now felt simmering constantly after his injury. He cursed the old gods and the new as he thought of his niece. What was left for him now?
“No,” he cursed his lack of spine; he refused to be cowed by Aegon, by anyone. He would dedicate his energy to studying the blade, the histories, anything that would better him over his elder brother who drowned himself in cups and whores. This ailment would be the master of him no more. And…and if his niece hated him now, so be it. He remembered her tearful gaze when he had called her and her brothers out for what they truly were, how she did nothing - craven as usual when her brothers and cousins attacked him four against one, how she ran straight to her bastard brother who had maimed him as he sat alone, bleeding, ruined, in the centre of the room.
Yes, he thought - their relationship was tarnished long before anyway. She had made sure of that. She had betrayed him long before when she claimed her dragon behind his back. When she had left him all alone in King’s Landing as her family took flight to Dragonstone. He didn’t need the affection of a bastard girl. He would bury his feelings tonight and remove any thought of the girl with the soft eyes and timid smile that had once occupied so much of his time.
His anguish was soon replaced with a bitterness towards his niece, his nephews, his father, brother.. All who had wronged him. A newfound confidence resurged in his spirit, determined now to better himself to serve his own ends. He would show them all who he was. A fighter, dragonrider, blood of Old Valyria, a trueborn son of the House Targaryen. He would show Aegon. He would show his bastard nephews. He would show them all. He would show her.
He would show her.
Viserya.