18

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112 AC

Kingslanding

Daeron Nymeros Martell

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"Let me just say again how lucky I am that my sons are well-behaved, for the most part at least." My father shakes his head as he looks off into space in thought.

"You can stop saying you are lucky and instead thank me for raising them to have a good head on their shoulders. That might help you out in the long run before I get a little angry and have them cause some mischief for you." Mother scoffs and crosses one leg over the other while glaring daggers.

"What do you mean? I put in as much effort into raising them as you did!" He stands up with his hands smacking the table with an aggrieved look.

"It was all mom." Lewyn wastes no time knocking his legs out from under him with a brutal verbal jab.

Mom smiles at him and then looks back toward my father while crossing her arms over her chest. A single eyebrow slowly raises and my father lets out a defeated sigh before waving his hands around.

"Alright, you did a wonderful job, my wife." I sip my wine watching the show in amusement, it's mostly a performance between the two but a little of the helplessness of my father is real.

"I kind of think it was a good idea though, what Prince Daemon did will have all the criminal element shaking in their boots. There are hundreds of Lords and Ladies and their families arriving in the city and he prevented quite a bit of trouble in my opinion. A bit brutal but honestly he didn't have much time to really strike fear so he went with something just short of feeding people to his blood wyrm." Lewyn speaks up with an honest opinion and my father's face scrunches up because of it.

"Please tell me if your brother had you lead the guards you would not go around cutting people's hands off." Lewyn purses his lips and looks toward me before they form a smile.

"Of course, I wouldn't." Father nods happily but the dark look in Lewyn's eyes tells me he is not done. "I would chop off their cocks, if they still have a hand they can still steal but without a cock they will lose the will to live." I snort as father looks like his strings have been cut and his eyes shut tight.

"Maybe we start with a hand and then the cock on the second offense." I chip in helpfully and he nods eagerly.

"As my Prince commands I will see it put into effect, as soon as we return I will let all the guards know." It seems we pushed him over the limit he is willing to deal with as our father chooses to just ignore us.

"So are you all ready for the archery event?" The swift change of subject only makes a foul mood fill the room as Myriah scowls at him.

"Why can I not even participate in archery? I am not fighting anyone and I will just be showing off my skills with a bow. This over-protectiveness is getting old really fast, I could win the archery at the very least." Myriah is not pleased with the way things have turned out, even if their father wanted I don't think it's allowed for a female to enter.

"We went over this, you can enter another one later on down the road when stronger relations have built up. So much as a scratch on you could toss everything we are working for out the window, just give it time." She begrudgingly accepts that and crosses her arms.

"I am heading to take a quick nap, I will see you guys when I wake up." I need to top off on my supplies for the coming days.

----

Sitting on my bed with a rather thick needle in my arm the blood runs out into a bowl, two birds with one stone I call it. I get to practice bending blood and I get Shimmer to experiment with to see what it can do. The first time I did this I didn't even expect to pull them apart but since I can't bend Shimmer for whatever reason the two separated. So blood bending practice was an unexpected gold mine that I can tap into.

I volunteer all the time to heal people and the ones who are too far gone usually have lost hope of ever being healed. So they are willing to drink anything I give them on the off chance I can help them, but I still have kept it to small amounts. Rats drinking even a little bit of the stuff turn into hulking beasts with a craving for violence.

I can only imagine if I gave someone more than a tablespoon of the stuff, they would likely go insane and try to kill people. But with the small amounts I give and using my bending to heal them, their bodies focus entirely on the healing process. Some slight glow to their veins is all the indication they are carrying a super drug and their healing speed skyrockets.

This is the bedrock behind the confidence I have in healing the queen, I have seen some pretty gruesome wounds close with Shimmer working along with my bending. I just wish I could figure out blood bending a bit better to distribute the Shimmer better and keep it focused in one location.

Pulling the needle out I set it to the side, waving my hand over the bowl in circles the blood slowly ripples. A small noodle of blood rises up and I guide it into an empty bowl to the side of the first bowl. The noodle keeps growing and filling the second bowl until there is nothing left in the first other than some glowing pinkish fluid.

One day I might step up my experiments with it but as of right now, there is still a lot to learn about bending. Before I am one hundred percent sure I can beat a hulking behemoth of a crackhead out to drink my blood I will leave it to 'clinical trials'.

I lift the bowl and carefully pour the Shimmer into a wine bottle before putting a cork in it and setting it in my chest. I close the chest and double-check the lock before disposing of the blood out the window of my room. Some poor sap likely will find it and wonder who got murdered, and with all the Lords arriving it might cause a murder mystery.

With the amount of Shimmer, I have I can likely arm a good portion of Flea bottom to destroy a well-trained army. I sometimes wonder if I should try to sell it as a high-end drug to rich people and get them hooked on it. imagine a Lannister hooked on Shimmer, might hand over the keys to Casterly rock for a bottle of the stuff.

I swish some water from the water jug and heal the tiny bleeding hole on my arm and then toss it out the window with the blood. I don't need to have blood smears on my bed and someone thinking I deflowered someone. With the announcement coming soon enough of my engagement to Rhaenyra the last thing I need is rumors of me taking maidens virginity.

----

"I am going to die of boredom." My sister whines on my side as we watch the archery contest begin.

"It's not so bad, some of them are pretty good." I try to cheer her up and she ignores me to whine a little more.

I shake my head and look around the crowds of Lords and Ladies watching the man take his five arrows and walk to the line. Small cheers each time he hits the target are all he gets and shows most everyone has only a vague interest in this part of the tourney. It will no doubt get exciting when it narrows down to the final competitors but as of now we have hours of people hitting the target before then.

We are sitting in the Royal box as the very important people we are, but the King did not bother to show up. The Queen has been having trouble even walking around and has been laying on her back for the past day. I think that might be one of the problems she has with birthing in canon, I see doctors make pregnant women walk all the time. I guess it's supposed to help get the baby to start working its way out or something, but she is laying down half-dead with servants fanning her.

My mom and dad are sitting with the Velaryons and have been laughing and carrying on since Corlys first sat down. The man seems pretty cool if I am honest but I have not talked much to him, but I expect that to change once the war in the Stepstones starts. His wife Rhaenys is a mystery, she seems kind and happy but none of it ever reaches her eyes and makes her look like she is soulless half the time.

Laena is sitting beside Lewyn talking about the time he claimed his dragon and for the first time, Lewyn seems interested in talking with her. Laenor is supposed to be getting to know Myriah but she is a stone wall and he would rather listen to Lewyn's story. I do not blame him, she can be a pain in the butt at the best of times let alone when she is annoyed.

His dragon Seasmoke is brought up numerous times and I can tell Laena feels left out quite a bit. I know she will claim Vhagar but she seems so helpless as they talk about flying and how much they enjoy it.

"Have you ever tried to claim a dragon?" I ask across the row of people to the youngest Velaryon and she looks at me in surprise.

Probably thought I was not listening or that I did not care.

"Not yet." She practically whispers and looks around the box cautiously.

I snort, I wonder if she was even 'allowed' to approach the biggest living dragon when she did. Did Vhagar visit Driftmark or something and she happened to claim her before she flew off? I know she is not in the Dragon pit because I went inside to look at how they store the dragons, it was sad.

Little Syrax whined like a puppy when I walked by her and did not let her free and I felt my heart break. The young dragon wants to be in the sky and not chained in the dark like a disobedient hound.

I get slapped on the arm and turn in time to where Myriah pointed and see the entrance curtain is pulled to the side to reveal Rhaenyra and Alicent. She looks around the box and smiles before walking toward me with her friend hot on her heels.

"Good afternoon Rhaenyra, how has your day been thus far?" She takes the free seat at my side in the middle of the row.

"Could be better, I thought my mom was finally going to birth my new sibling. She was just in pain for a long period and it faded as she went back to sleep, my father is staying at her side today." I nod and catch her looking toward my pack I have sitting at the foot of my chair.

"Curious?" She nods and finally stops staring at it to meet my eyes once more.

"What did you bring?" I chuckle as I bring it up to my lap and unbuckle the strap.

I open it up to reveal plenty of snacks to make it through the boring slugfest that is happening before our eyes on the tourney grounds. Before I can start showing off my goodies a tanned hand slips into the bag and grabs a strip of jerky and hurriedly pulls it out.

"Hey!" I turn to see my sister tear into my jerky without any remorse and I am left feeling betrayed. "You could have at least aske-." Movement in the bag pulls my attention back and I find a pale hand digging through the bag this time.

I watch in surprise as Rhaenyra harvests the whole loaf of angel cake and looks very excited about it once she unwraps it and sees what it is. She turns to look at Alicent on her side and holds it out to her for her to grab a piece. Alicent gives me a pitying look but still breaks off a piece before Rhaenyra tears herself some.

I am left with half a loaf and no jerky so I quickly shut the bag before I take more losses.

"It is really good!" Alicent seems to have heard of it from her friend and Rhaenyra nods with a smile on her face before she takes a bite.

I look over my shoulder and see my amused mother watching the whole thing and when she sees me looking she holds her hand up flat. A universal gesture of wanting something so I turn back around and forget I even saw anything. The loud huff I hear must have been the wind because I won't be losing any more of my goodies to these vultures.