Author note at the end.
It’s 70 dollars now.
That’s the most amount of money I have ever seen in my account.
So… thanks don’t cover it.
You have given me something to look forward to.
I love you guys.
The Bloody Gate was not merely a gate.
It was a fortress, deliberately raised between two sheer ridges of mountain so that any army foolish enough to try for the Vale proper would first have to break itself against stone and steel.
The man who held it carried the title Knight of the Bloody Gate.
In practice he ruled the place like a castellan or a minor lord in his own right, appointed directly by the Lord Paramount of the Vale and answerable to almost no one else.
I have been stuck here for three days.
The only reason I stayed was Tessarion.
I needed to be certain the bleeding had stopped and that the deep punctures in her hind leg were not being infected.
So far the wound looked clean.
No dark streaks, no swelling that suggested infection.
She was healing slowly.
The Maester of the Gate had been almost entirely useless.
Which, in fairness, was not entirely his fault.
Dragon biology was not a subject taught in Westeros.
That was both understandable and completely insane when you thought about it for more than five seconds.
Dragons were the closest thing the common people had to living gods.
Studying one too closely, cutting into a corpse, measuring bones, writing down how the fire worked, bordered on blasphemy and the Citadel had never been eager to challenge that particular taboo.
That was mostly why even my ideas regarding Balerion’s hide were considered absolute madness before they finally admitted once the King himself agreed.
Most maesters preferred to pretend dragons were pure magic and therefore outside the proper bounds of their order.
If the Citadel ever adopted house words, they would probably be something like: ‘Magic does not exist.
We are going to pretend it never did.
Science is supreme.’
I scratched the warm scales along Tessarion’s neck and watched her limp in a slow circle across the courtyard, testing the leg.
She was still in pain and very much pissed about the whole Sheepstealer incident.
But she was recovering and that was enough for now.
I leaned back against the cold stone wall and exhaled.
“On the eve, girl,” I muttered.
“We get the hell out of here.”
Tessarion rumbled in agreement.
I had never expected much help from the servants and they had delivered exactly on that expectation.
Every man and woman in the fortress looked at Tessarion the way smallfolk looked at a sudden plague with wide eyes, short breaths, and a desperate urge to be somewhere else.
None of them came within twenty feet of her unless ordered, and even then they moved like men walking toward the gallows.
Food was left at a careful distance and water was poured into troughs and abandoned.
Clothes and salves were set down and fled from, while I did the rest myself.
Three days of cleaning the wound, checking for heat, changing the crude dressings the maester had reluctantly provided, and listening to Tessarion grumble every time I touched the injured leg.
On the morning of the third day, Ronnel Arryn finally decided he had tolerated my presence long enough.
Ronnel was a broad, solid man whose hair had begun to abandon him in uneven patches while what remained stood stubbornly straight.
That guy clearly needed a hair transplant.
His beard grew thick and dark, the kind that looked like it had never met a proper comb and saw no reason to start now.
He carried himself with the permanent irritation of a man who had spent too many years watching the same stretch of road and listening to the same wind.
He almost resembled the abusive uncle from Harry Potter.
I offered him a friendly smile.
“Ser Ronnel,” I called.
“Knight of the Bloody Gate, guardian of the Vale’s throat. I was beginning to think you intended to ignore me until I starved.”
He stopped a respectful distance away, respectful of the dragon more than of me and gave a short, unsmiling nod.
“Prince Daeron.” The title left his mouth like something he had been forced to swallow.
Whatever courtesy he showed existed only because I was a prince of the blood.
Beyond that, the man clearly would have preferred me and my blue dragon anywhere else in the world.
“The accommodations have been adequate,” I continued lightly.
“Your people have been… cautious, which is understandable, of course.”
Ronnel’s jaw tightened.
“When do you plan to leave my gate, my prince?”
You just came, who the fuck starts a conversion like that.
But very direct, I can respect that, even if the tone suggested he would have been happier throwing me over the nearest cliff.
“In a hurry to be rid of me?” I asked.
“I have no desire to face an army for the sake of sheltering a pious princeling behind my walls,” he said flatly.
“The longer you remain, the more likely banners appear on the road below. I would prefer they never have reason to.”
I glanced toward Tessarion, she laid stretched along the far wall of the yard, blue scales dull in the morning light, injured leg carefully tucked beneath her.
She lifted her head at the sound of raised voices and fixed one golden eye on the Knight of the Gate.
I made a small, almost lazy gesture in her direction.
“I already have an army,” I said.
“She flies, should trouble arrive, Ser, you need not protect me at all. I will simply leave the way I came.”
Ronnel snorted immediately, shaking his head with a rare smile.
“Of course a green boy would choose flight over a fight. That beast of yours has already eaten half the rations meant for this garrison. I cannot sustain a castle like this indefinitely.”
I raised both brows in mild mock surprise.
“Is the Vale running out of sheep, Ser Ronnel?”
His face darkened.
“I have no obligation to feed any dragon, least of all one ridden by a puny prince of the realm who brings nothing but risk to my gate.”
Is this some form of ragebait?
I let the silence stretch just long enough to become uncomfortable, yeah I like to do that every now and then.
“Is it me you dislike, Ser… or is it that you do not acknowledge my brother as king?”
Ronnel’s mouth twisted.
“I care little who sits the Iron Throne,” he said.
“Black or Green, the name on the chair changes nothing for the men who hold this gate. What I care about is that your presence here paints a target on these walls. Red and black banners, they will come the moment word spreads that a dragon is being harboured at the Bloody Gate. I will not have my men dragged into your family’s quarrel because a princeling decided to linger.”
“And whose banners would you raise, Ser?” I asked quietly.
“Black or Green?”
He gave another humourless snort, rolling his eyes with it.
“The only banner I will ever raise is the blue and silver of the falcon, not that three-headed abomination.”
A low, building heat began to gather in her throat, the soft sound of fire waking.
I smiled without warmth.
“That is a great deal of bold talk,” I said, “for a man standing well within burning distance.”
Tessarion’s jaws parted and blue light flickered between her teeth.
The temperature in the courtyard climbed several degrees in the space of a breath.
Ronnel’s hand went to the hilt of his sword on pure instinct.
The steel had not yet cleared the scabbard when I lifted one hand and Tessarion’s head lowered.
The glow in her throat faded, though the threat of it remained.
I turned fully toward the Knight of the Bloody Gate, still wearing that same thin smile.
“For a man so proud of his house,” I said, “you are not even an Arryn of the Errye. You are an Arryn of Gulltown, acknowledged for little more than the Red cloak you wear and the gate you are allowed to hold.”
I knew I was diminishing the post, the Knight of the Bloody Gate was no small honour.
But the jab landed exactly where I intended.
Ronnel’s face went rigid and for a moment I thought he might actually draw but the anger settled into something colder.
He looked like a man who had heard every variation of the same insult for most of his life.
“I have listened to petty lords throw those words at me since I was a squire,” he said.
“I still stand as guardian of this gate. Most of the men who spoke them are dust now. I am not.”
I shook my head slowly.
“You will never see the lands beyond these mountains,” I told him.
“You call this castle your keep, but it is a prison. Your duty is the chain that keeps you here. You will die watching the same road, listening to the same wind, while the world changes without you.”
Ronnel said nothing.
His hand had left the sword hilt, but the tension in his shoulders remained.
I adjusted the fall of my cloak and took a step back.
“I will be gone by eve,” I said.
“I have no interest in remaining inside another man’s prison any longer than necessary.”
I turned away before he could answer and walked toward Tessarion.
She rose carefully and lowered her head so I could rest a hand against the warm scales of her snout.
Behind me I heard the soft scrape of Ronnel’s boots as he left the courtyard without another word.
“The North is awaiting us, Dear Girl.”
A/N: OK, let’s not pick up the pitchforks and torches and call me a witch, a liar and burn me on a stake.
I know I haven’t been uploading for two or is it three days now and I have a Good reason, I promise.
Or it’s a bad reason, it’s actually on how you take it.
Ok anyway, your boy is moving to Russia in a couple weeks.
Yay?
Nay?
Death by drones?
Death by bears?
I have no clue.
Anyway I promise I’m not getting lethargic, I’m just slightly busy.
I’ll update the chapters everyday when I can, ok.
(╥﹏╥) I’m sorry.