Chapter 20.3- The Seadragon's Roar
Added 2025-08-18 05:33:45 +0000 UTC“I knew you did not hate me, Ser Borros. If you hated me, I would have climbed my Dragon, and I would have returned to my home. I am— was the heir to House Velaryon. I took your cruelty both because I knew you did not intend it so, and because I knew in some ways it would make me stronger. It had made me a stronger man” I said, sliding my blade against his hammer’s handle, and then twisting myself at the last moment so said blade was resting against his neck. I’d beaten him. It would have taken the force of a hundred men to stop my lips pulling apart into a wide smile that split my face in twain. Even more men would have been required to stop the glint of joy I could see in my eyes— reflected on his sharp blue orbs.
Instead of the rage and disappointment I would have expected at losing the spar, the Baratheon Knight instead began to laugh. I snatched my blade away. Blunted or not, there was the potential for accidentally ending the Baratheon line in the male.
“Ho! A stronger man indeed. I yield, Laenor. Now let’s go again, and this time I won’t hold back” He said with his boisterous voice, and I could feel the standard Baratheon charm doing its work on me. I felt pleased to have beaten him, pleased to have him be pleased as well. I allowed that much to show on my face, while hiding that I knew I would never fully trust this man. He had treated me as less than— whether he had. Truly meant to or not, he had done it regardless. I would still hold him as an ally— a Great Lord was a powerful ally to have— but I would know to gaurd my back around him.
Then, what he had said clicked in my mind. Holding back? I felt my skin pale against my will as he stared at me like prey. Needless to say, I did not win a single other duel that day.
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“A siege or a storm?” Mother started, looking at the map of Bloodstone that the cartographers we’d seen brought over had been kind enough to populate. It was the age-old question when faced with a mighty castle.
“You brought the storm, did you not, Cousin?” Borros asked with a loud laugh. His contingent of Stormlander knights laughed with him.
