Chapter 4.4- The Seadragon's Roar

“You don’t worry me like that ever again” She whispered in his hair as she held him close— not even dully cognizant of how she had covered the space between them— breathing in his scent. He smelled like dragon dung and charcoal but most importantly, he smiled alive.

XXXXX- LAENOR

In all honesty, I should have seen this coming. With hindsight on my side, it as clear that it was inevitable. What was a parent’s instinctive solution for fighting children— separation. That must have been doubly so with the whole one half of the feud being a basically invulnerable and unstoppable collossus capable of breathing flames strong enough to melt metal into ash. Needless to say, the next day was not a pleasant one.

There was Igneel being irritable as all hells about not being allowed to get back at Vhagar for tossing him into the sea. He probably saw it as just another step in the prank war between two of us and the Centuries-old dragon. The only problem with that was that my mother was pissed and another stunt like slightly flooding Vhagar’s cave with ale would be much harder to pull off in this case. So that meant we had to let her get away with the last hit.

And then there was Laena who had been grounded just as surely as I was. Her inability to control Vhagar was being used against her, nevermind that she was less than ten and five and Vhagar was over ten times as old, and magnitudes more stubborn. I felt the whole thing was unreasonable, but Laena seemed to care little that I was on her side and only saw it as her getting punished for my shit.

If Laena was bad, then the situation with Rhaenys was untenable. After the whole hugging me thing when she saw I was alright, she’d retreated into a shell of fury. She watched everything I did like a hawk. Already, my rooms had been taken away and I’d been unceremoniously tossed back into my infant chambers adjoined to her room. No more skipping sessions with the Maester or getting to leave weapons training early. It was like she had given up all her other duties as Lady of High Tide to focus on a single assignment: Leanor-watching. And she was much better at it than any of the guards that they’s used to sick on me.

She’d already caught me trying to sneak out twice and something— her very audible threats— told me that if I tried again then that would be the last time I did. Okay, slight amendment— if I got caught again then that would be the last time, I thought as I crawled through the chimney. Each room had a fireplace and they all needed some sort of outlet. That meant there was a chimney barely large enough for a preteen to squeeze through that led to the Castle’s roof. Once I got there..e it would just be a matter of calling Igneel over with or bond, I thought top myself as I continued to climb.

This body needed to be in the sky. It needed to feel the wind against its skin. The itch of being confined half one from irritating to unbreakable in no time at all, and now I was going to finally do something about it.