-Chapter 31-

-Chapter 31-

-POV MC-

"Cousin," I said with a small warm smile, like a cousin happy to see his cousin whom he hadn’t seen in so long.

"No more princess?" Rhaenyra asked in an arrogant tone, like someone proud of having exposed a hypocrite.

'Which I am,' I thought, keeping my small smile.

"Since you didn't call me Lord Royce, I thought we could skip the formalities, but I might be wrong. I apologize if that’s the case…"

"Stop that right now," Rhaenyra said, losing patience and revealing her true intentions.

I stayed silent, still with my fake smile, which was slowly turning into a real one, amused by her childish and immature reactions, as well as by her subtle attempts at manipulation, which she barely mastered before trying to test them on me.

'Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra, you’re not clever enough to destabilize me. You’re not up to the task in this kind of little games,' I thought, amused by her behavior.

"I know everything you're doing, and Daemon won’t support you anymore once you’ve allied with the whore of Oldtown."

"I haven’t seen many whores in the castle since I arrived. They seem to be rather scarce, though not particularly discreet."

Hearing the sound of steel being slightly drawn, I smiled at Ser Harwin Strong, who was advancing, draped in his golden cloak.

'The cloak my father gave him, which he now uses to assert his small authority.'

'Dracarys,' I thought softly. Urrax, who had landed in the largest courtyard of the Red Keep, formerly the home of Vermithor and Silverwing, suddenly stood up and roared before projecting flames directly at Rhaenyra and her party.

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-POV Viserys Targaryen-

DRAGON ROAR

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah"

I turned around, hearing the piercing scream of Jessamyn Redfort and the angry roar of Urrax. What I saw completely froze me.

I couldn’t react or even speak to give an order to Aemon to regain control of his dragon.

I raised my arms to shield myself from the heat of the flames that had nearly reached us, and I heard Aemon shouting instructions to his dragon in High Valyrian:

"Urrax, that's enough!"

As soon as the heat subsided, I rushed forward, thinking I would find the charred corpse of my daughter, but there was nothing.

A few meters from her, everything had melted under Urrax's breath, even the stone, which deeply surprised me, as few dragons had a breath as powerful as his.

"AEMON!" I shouted, furious, but what I didn’t expect was the small, calm smile plastered on Aemon's face, who seemed to be joking with his dragon, lightly tapping its snout.

Hearing my shout, he turned to me and said:

"Sorry, Uncle Viserys. Urrax got a bit carried away; he can't stand it when I’m threatened with living steel. But I’m the son of the Hand of the King and wouldn’t want to slay a Prince of House Targaryen, just as I would never allow anything to happen to my dear cousin."

I couldn’t believe my ears. I felt like I was dreaming, that someone would tell me to wake up, but no. After I blinked, I was still there, in the same place, in the middle of a ruined courtyard, facing Aemon, who, with his characteristic smile, was threatening me without hesitation.

'He dares to threaten his king so openly because I have no dragon, because his fiancée, who will soon be his wife, rides the largest dragon there is, and because Daemon is his father,' I thought.

'I didn’t realize how dangerous he was back then, but now I understand the danger he poses to Rhaenyra.'

Another thing in his speech made me frown, and I turned to Harwin Strong, who was still in shock from his near-death experience, but who was trying to hide it as much as possible.

Then, I focused my attention on Rhaenyra, who, although less panicked than the others, wasn’t in a good state of mind. I said:

"We’ll discuss this another time. Since Urrax isn’t able to control himself, have him locked up in the Dragonpit."

Just as I finished speaking, Urrax suddenly took off, and I frowned even more before sighing and rejoining the nobles, shocked by the scene that had just unfolded.

'For now, there’s nothing I can do. I absolutely must speak to Daemon before his son becomes uncontrollable,' I thought, regretting, for the first time in years, the death of Balerion.