Chapter 42.4- The Seadragon's Roar

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“Is everyone here?” I asked Declan. He nodded. I turned to the line of former slaves. The people whose freedom I had purchased only for them to be enslaved by my man. As far as they were concerned, I had bought them, freed them, and then enslaved them again. I must have seemed so cruel to them. The kind of cruel that people wrote books about and told their children to fear. That was the worst part of it.

“Good day” I said to them, speaking in high Valyrian before it clicked that they would struggle to understand that version of the language.

“Does any of you speak?” I called, and it took a while for one of them to step up. It was a man with olive skin that glinted in the sun from the sweat that gathered on his skin.

“I speak, master”

“I am no master of yours” I said, shocking the man.

“You are your own master. When I bought you, I freed you. And if these men have made it seem otherwise, then it was without my knowledge and against my will” I said. He nodded, even if I could tell that he was far from convinced. This but have seemed some sort of cruel joke to him. A prank I was playing on them. Oh Balerion above.

Fuck it.

I needed to do something bold to sell this. And so I made a choice.

“Kneel Declan” I told him in the common tongue, and the man to his credit did so without hesitation. The dragon that waited not far out of sight probably helped smooth over any qualms he would have had. Well that and the fact that Ben and I had killed all his friends without sustaining a single wound probably wasn’t giving him any additional fires of resistance, for sure.

“What is your name, my good man?”

“Vealos, master”

“I told you I am no master of yours. You may call me My Lord, if you must” I said. The look on his face said he didn’t see much of a difference between the terms. I just sighed.

“Translate the words I speak to your people” I said, and he nodded.

“ I am Laenor Velaryon of House Velaryon. I am the breaker of chains. I freed you moons ago, and these men who bastardised my will enslaved you again. I stand here before you to tell you that they are dead. I have killed them with my own hands. The only one who remains alive is this worm who kneels at my feet now. Him, I leave to you. Take your revenge as you wish. For you are free men, and you must defend that freedom against all who seek to enslave you” I said.