ℒove always wakes the dragon (Aemond x OC)

Unescapable feelings

Lia wakes up with a sharp inhale — and then springs to her feet at the sight of a dragonkeeper standing too close for her liking. He yelps in surprise, instantly taking a few steps back.

"My apologies, I didn't mean —"

"No need, I was the one who scared you," she rebuts politely, shaken out of her sleep, scraping the remnants of it off herself. She picks up the cloak, she puts back the armor of her vigilance, and focuses on the man in front of her. He's thin, with a pattern of scars on his arms, face dirty with ash, soaked in tiredness. Lia knows he poses absolutely no threat and yet she glances at him with distrust. It's an instinct, a lesson she's learned all too well: not to trust anyone, just in case.

He almost crumbles under her gaze, quickly muttering the answer to the unasked question:

"I only came to feed the dragon."

"Feed him?" Lia raises her brow. "He does know how to hunt."

"Hunting in the nearby woods is forbidden, my lady," he sounds very apologetic although she's quick to guess that the rules were not made by him or anyone of his kind. "Hence why we bring them goats and sheep ourselves."

"But not all the dragons live here," Lia thinks of the one she saw yesterday, so big it seemed to take half of the sky.

"Only Vhagar doesn't, Prince Aemond's dragon, since she's long outgrown the Dragonpit. Some say she feeds mostly on fish these days."

When he mentions it, the image of the enormous beast in Lia's head is replaced by another memory, a happier one, filled with the splashing of a wild river cutting through the mountain.

"Olwen loves it, too," she says with a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "If given a chance, he can catch fish for hours and —" she stops herself from telling more, the veil of the past drawn down at the realization of how much time has passed since then, how much has happened. Now all of her good memories are locked away and guarded, and she puts this one away, too.

"Goats and sheep sound great," Lia comments drily, and he hurries to fetch the meat, fearful of the dragon or maybe of its rider, she can't tell.

Lia helps him out of guilt, dragging the bodies with more ease than he does, while Olwen finally stirs awake. He's confounded upon seeing the prey — no emotions get through his scarred, scaled face but a range of them is reflected in his eyes: emerald wonder, green bewilderment, specks of curiosity. Olwen tilts his head, touching one of the sheep with his paw as if to make sure the animal is dead. He does it with all of them, then looks between Lia and the dragonkeeper, getting up with a huff, peaks of his folded wings balking at the ground. The dragon waits for them to get to a safer distance before turning to the pile of carcasses — and in the next second fire leaps from his mouth, and the air fills with the smell of freshly roasted meat. Only he doesn't immediately pounce on food and instead goes to where they are standing, making the dragonkeeper flinch. His face assumes a death-like pallor but Lia grabs the man by the arm before he can get fully scared:

"Olwen never flies on a full stomach," she clarifies — and fear gives way to regret that paints his face.

"I should've brought the food later on," he drops his gaze to the ground, and Lia feels empathy hatching in her chest. She knows he's meant to spend his life cooped up in caves, serving giant beasts as well as kings — and both are equally bloodthirsty.

"I didn't want you to come twice. Your work is already hard as it is."

He gives her a look of gratitude that he can't voice, bound by the sacred duty that he was born to fulfill. Straightening his back, the dragonkeeper moves from their way, and Olwen follows Lia out of the cave, his head ducked down but gaze attentive. Only when the dragon steps into the dimly lit space, the man notices a faint glow that emanates from his thick skin, and the beast gleams dully as they walk further away, leaving the dragonkeeper perplexed.