ℒove always wakes the dragon (Aemond x OC)

Chasing the clouds

Lia washes her hands once, twice, three times but it feels like she still can see blood — small dried spatter around her nails, in between her fingers, sneaked under her sleeves. She scrubs her hands in Aren's yard, trying to scrape off every little bit of red she can notice until her skin is pink and tingling, and yet it doesn't feel like it's enough. There's no pride in having his blood on her hands, no satisfaction, and Lia has to quell nausea — she succeeds, but the lump in her throat stays. She fears that it's the repugnance she feels toward herself.

She takes his horse out of the stable. The animal seems malnourished but still acts friendly, sniffs and fuffs, and welcomes the petting and some carrots the girl found in the kitchen. Lia washes her hands again — she thinks she saw some blood left on her wrists, then she saddles the horse and rides into the city in the semi-darkness of the early morning. It's quiet and foggy, but her mind is knotted, and each thought thunders in her head, and she can barely pay attention to the road.

Lia doesn't register how long it takes to get to the Dragonpit — it only feels like a couple of minutes, a couple of turns, and the guards pay her no mind, and she isn't sure she can utter a word. She only notices her hands shaking when she gives the reins to one of the dragonkeepers, but wherever he sees that or doesn't, he keeps his mouth shut and only takes the horse away, while Lia stays frozen on the spot. The tremor spreads up her body the way ice crawls on a river surface in the dead of the night.

Her feet bring her into the caves on their own accord. The flickering of the torches is unnerving, and every small sound cuts into her ears, and the tension builds up and pulls at every muscle of hers, and she breaks into running, her breaths shallow and eyes wet. Olwen senses that something is wrong even before she comes in — when she does, his gaze is instantly on her, the frills on his spine moving up as he growls and huffs and tries to grasp something that's beyond his understanding. The dragon follows her out in a hurry, his dilated pupils narrowing in the morn light but never leaving her body, and Lia climbs up at him the second they come out of the pit. Olwen doesn't wait for her command — when he feels her pulling the reins, he rushes to rise up in the air, his white wings piercing the clouds and then disappearing into them.

The empty sky swallows the sounds up by the blanket of silence, and the wind sweeps through her, harsh and freezing, trying to slink down to her very bones. But Lia finds the cold soothing, the gusts of air cooling down her heated skin and numbing the tremor, her tension dissipating into the mist. And yet, the repugnance stays, tight around her neck like a rope she put on herself, and she can't find a knot to untie it.

While Lia sinks into her thoughts, she doesn't notice a shadow following them, glimpses of it appearing through the gaps in the clouds — greenish bronze, with highlights of blue. The shadow ominously catches up to them, and then hangs over, blocking out half of the sky.





Aemond's impatience grows with each passing hour, leaving him restive, agitated and searching — through corridors, rooms and halls, looking for a reason to stumble upon her, to catch a glance at her. Ever since the evening Lia barged into the dining hall, the wish to be in her presence lodges into him like a thorn, and his emotions bear no explanation and bring him no peace — it is something bordering with desire, something he has no real experience with. He avoids the word, he refuses to acknowledge the mere possibility of that feeling; he wants to see her, still.

But Lia doesn't come into his sight, she's always somewhere else, and sometimes he thinks he misses the girl only by a few minutes but he's never sure and he is surely engrossed by her. One day of waiting turns into two, into three — she doesn't come to breakfasts nor to dinners, she isn't in the training yard, and she apparently doesn't feel the need to fill anyone in on her plans. Her maid's face turns pale under the pressure of Aemond's gaze but she swears she knows nothing and only managed to catch Lia in the room once or twice since she comes and goes as she pleases.