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nashiriel · 6 months

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Just reading the Black and Greens’ reactions to baby Luke claiming the Cannibal…I honestly could read 100 chapters, because can you imagine how the Greens would panic when Rhaenyra turns up in King’s Landing like “please meet my most loyal supporter and his dragon?” It would be truly heartwarming stuff.

And I would love to see the Rhaenys/Luke bonding. I wonder if her visibly getting on with Luke more would help head off Vaemond’s challenge (though he’d have to be pretty bold to be challenge Luke’s claim in the hall, knowing the Cannibal is waiting outside).

I am once again asking you to please, please forgive me for taking so long to get back to you. I am trying to work my way through my inbox, I swear!

But in the festive spirit…it’s not 100 chapters, but I hope you enjoy the below snippet from that AU! A very merry Christmas to you (if you celebrate!)

It is Prince Daemon who greets them as they dismount, teeth flashing in the curve of that cocksure grin that Rhaenys remembers of old. There is still much of that boy left to him, she sees. No grey dulls the silver of his hair, and the lines on his face are softened now, smoothed by contentment as he stands amongst the smoke and skies of his new consort’s domain.

Marriage to the Princess of Dragonstone suits him well, it seems. Fury burns Rhaenys’ throat, mingled as it is still with bitter grief.

Three moons. Her children, her grandson, have been dead for three moons.

“My brave girl,” Daemon beams as soon as Baela’s feet have touched the ground, sweeping her into his arms with an exuberance that sends her laughter pealing through the air. “Your sister has missed you.”

“How is she?” Baela demands excitedly, wriggling like a pup in his embrace. “How are her burns? Has she flown-”

“She is resting,” her father laughs, pride clear on his face. Laena’s letters had not spoken of such when she wrote of he and Rhaena in that last, lingering year.

“The maesters say the burn is healing well, sweetling, and she asks me every day when the dragonkeepers will let her back down to the beach. She says that she can still thread her needle, and that a set of reins are nothing compared to that.”

His eyes find Rhaenys’ then, amused. “You would be proud of how brave she has been, cousin.”

“I have always been proud of Rhaena,” Rhaenys says curtly. She has not come here to bandy pleasantries, not when Rhaenyra’s letters had made clear through their increasing urgent pleas that there was a matter that duty could not let her ignore. “As proud as I was of her mother. The day is short, Daemon. Where is the boy?”

The mirth falls away from Daemon’s face.

The valley that Caraxes and Meleys alight upon is not quite at the foot at the Dragonmont, but it is close enough that the restless murmurs of the volcano as it turns in its sleep rumble through the air. In comparison, the dragon whose coiled bulk blots out the sky and rocks from her sight is unsettlingly quiet, its scales a motionless dark sheen over the ground like oil laid over placid water.

Rhaenys’ steps do not falter, even as Caraxes’ whistle shrieks in the air above her. Meleys had loomed larger in her girlhood’s eyes as she sang to her in the dark of the Dragonpit. She had seen Balerion’s wings blacken the sky, a majesty that even age could not rob from the greatest glory their blood had ever known. What is this shadow that she should fear it, no matter large it hulks with its butcher’s reek?

Rhaenys might think it asleep were it not for the gleaming eye that watches her approach, gaze green and hungry as wildfire. With a sharp intake of breath, she sees the small form nestled against its black talons, not even half the size of those knife-like curves. As Rhaenys draws closer, he lifts his head from where it was bent over the long object clutched in his fist, dark eyes wide with astonishment.

“Grandmother?”

“Lucerys,” Rhaenys says evenly, refusing to allow herself a flinch as a growl splits the air, loud enough to shake the stones from Dragonstone’s parapets. A black tail lashes the air in a brutal snap, heavy enough to cleave a castle wall in two, as the dragon coils itself closer still around Luke, teeth glittering in evident warning. It could crush him as easily as Rhaenys could an ant beneath her heel; Meleys bellows behind her as the whip uncoils in Rhaenys’ hand.

“Cannibal!” a voice pipes up behind the ripple of the dragon’s wing, high-pitched and aggrieved rather than terror-stricken. “No! I said no!”

Ash lies thick as snow on the ground. Feet away, a cracked thigh bone protrudes from it, flesh brittled black and crumbling where it still clings. There had been guards watching over their play when the Cannibal’s shadow suddenly descended upon the sands, Rhaena had written in a wobbling sprawl so unlike her normal perfect lettering. With spears and trident, they had tried to draw him off. The precious seconds before they were charred to sprawls of greased meat might have meant the difference between life and death to her grandchildren, at least.

“Easy,” Daemon calls down, his voice strong and stern as winter even as Caraxes’ wings beat the air. “It is your worry feeding his, Lucerys. Calm yourself.”

“I am calm!” comes the indignant squeal, shrill with a fury that Daemon’s words alone cannot have provoked. The Cannibal’s muscles go taut as a bowstring, the dark curve of his jaw shifting as a noise like a mountain cracking apart rumbles between his teeth.

This one will not be brought to bay by a whip, nor soothed with the lullabies of Old Valyria. Rhaenys sees that clearly in this moment, that and the reason why Daemon has proved insufficient to manage this.

In all the history of Dragonstone, there is only one thing that has held any sway over the Cannibal, and - still to Rhaenys’ utter disbelief - it is the voice of the child who sits tear-stained and trembling in sullen rancour as the Cannibal looms above him, stretching up and up into the darkened sky.

“The Conqueror himself never hatched a dragon,” she had overheard Laenor soothe Lucerys once in a shadowed corner of High Tide, cradling him close as they watched Vermax playfully char the meat Jace was throwing in the air.

“You’ll claim a mount one day. Like your aunt, like your grandmother. And I promise, it will be a dragon worthy of you.”

The Cannibal. How by all the seven hells had the boy ever managed to even attract his attention, never mind claim him?

“Lucerys,” she says again, sharp and swift as her whip.

He flinches at her tone, but Rhaenys does not care; the time for coddling him was before the gods in their folly put the Cannibal in the hands of a child.

“None are here to harm you or him, child, and you must make him know that. Remember all that the dragonkeepers have taught you. Breathe deep, and speak loud and clear. Lykiri-”

“I’m trying,” Lucerys says plaintively, one hand scrubbing at his dirtied face. She wonders how long he has been here, how often the Cannibal is pleased to let the human he has bonded with leave his sight. “He doesn’t know what they mean, he won’t listen-”

“Do you think any dragon is born knowing them? The words alone do not have meaning; they are there to clarify your intent, so that he does not blindly follow what you feel instead. You have claimed him, Lucerys. He will listen, but only if you are strong enough to ensure that he understands.”

There comes a choked sob, almost lost in the sulphurous blast of hot breath rolling across Rhaenys’ skin as the Cannibal turns its great head towards her. She does not break its gaze as she coaxes Lucerys to breathe deep, to gather himself together (a memory comes unbidden, of the song she sang to Laenor as a child to soothe his night terrors, and she bites down against another unexpected welt of grief).

Eventually, mercifully, the dragon settles, though covetousness still burns in those eyes like the distant stars as he watches Lucerys leave his shadow to come forth to her.

“Prince Daemon is right,” she says after the Rogue Prince has taken his leave at her sharp gesture.

“That dragon is a part of you now, child, and his rage is strong enough without you feeding it. If you cannot control yourself, what chance do you think you’ll have commanding him? If he tells you to calm yourself, listen.”

“Why? He’s not my father,” comes a furious sniffle, those dark eyes blinking ferociously in a bid to hold back tears. For the first time, she sees what it is he is holding so tightly; a broken spear, the snapped shaft still bearing the remnants of the crest of Dragonstone’s royal guards.

“He is not,” Rhaenys says tightly; that much, at least, they can agree on. “but when it comes to dragons, you’d be a fool not to heed him, boy. And if you’re a fool with this beast, you won’t live long enough to know it. He is dangerous, Lucerys. You should never have gone to him.”

”But I didn’t,” the child says, lip quivering. “It was the Grey Ghost we went to the beach for, me and Rhaena. We brought fish-”

“Fish,” Rhaenys repeats coldly.

“From the kitchens, lots of them. Cook gave some to us every day; he’d thought we’d found some kittens. We had to hide behind the rocks the first few times; he only came out when he thought no one was there. We had to get him used to Rhaena’s smell. Aemond thought it’d work-”

He stops, small face suddenly stricken.

Well. Rhaenys had never imagined that the queen’s and Rhaenyra’s dragonless children might once have felt close enough to venture ideas of luring a mount between them. It matters not now, she supposes. If ever there was ever friendship between the two, it died that night on Driftmark. Rhaenys had not needed to see the poisonous glare levelled at Luke from Prince Aemond’s remaining eye as she thrust him safely beyond Queen Alicent’s reach behind her to know that.

“I didn’t mean for the Cannibal to come,” Luke insists, and an odd look comes across his face, almost hopeful as he looks back over his shoulder to where the dragon watches him with that unblinking, terrible gaze.

“But he must’ve been meant to find us. He’d never come to that beach before, the dragonkeepers said. It was Father, it must’ve been. He heard my prayers and sent him to me.”

No, Rhaenys thinks, and does not know if it is cruelty or kindness that keeps the words from her tongue. If my son could have sent you a dragon, he would have brought you his own Seasmoke.

“So he fell upon the Grey Ghost,” she says instead. “How did that lead you to claiming him? You could have been killed. Rhaena could have been killed. What were you thinking, boy, to get so close?”

“Meraxes,” Luke mumbles, so low Rhaenys thinks she misheard him. She bends closer, acutely aware of the shadow rumbling in warning before her.

”What did you say?”

“Jace told me,” Luke says, fidgeting; behind him, the Cannibal’s tail ripples black, spikes flexing with the motion.

“The only way a man can stop a dragon. Grey Ghost was trying to crawl away, but he couldn’t…he couldn’t move, and Rhaena was screaming, and…the Cannibal had to drag him back with his teeth with his head bent down like that, and I thought if I threw it-”

The spearhead gleams sharp as dragon teeth. Luke looks up at her, pleading, his confession coming in a quavering whisper.

“I tried to get his eye.”

#house of the dragon #lucerys velaryon #cannibal the dragon #carrion #lucemond #asks #I really need to come up with a name for this AU #rhaenys targaryen #The Cannibal and Grey Ghost have been shoved into a ‘This is Our Get Along Shirt’ for the holidays #Luckily once they arrive at King’s Landing they discover the true meaning of Christmas is teaming up together to bully Sunfyre

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