Sorry for the two-week break, I was working on a new story that will be released soon on Patreon.
Please feel free to check out my new story about The Walking Dead universe, which should be released sometime today on Webnovel.
Thank you all for your loyalty, and I wish you a good day or night, depending on your time zone.
Ghostrider0002
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-Chapter 199-
-POV Aemon Targaryen-
"Aemon!!!" my mother-in-law shouted behind me, furious, and I could understand her, but it would not change anything about my decisions.
I stopped and turned, completely calm, unlike the woman before me who was growing older but whose beauty had not been smothered by the years.
'And who will have to end her life alone because she married someone far too ambitious,' I thought, recalling the few conversations I had had with the Sea Snake, a man who, I had to admit, deserved all my respect despite the few disputes we might have had.
Unlike me, who was reincarnated with powers and possessed a dragon from my earliest years, he had not had that luck, yet he had still raised his House high enough to tower above all the other noble Houses of the realm, no matter the length of their history in Westeros.
'High enough to have almost brushed against the Iron Throne.'
"Did you want to tell me something?" I asked my mother-in-law, who looked at me but couldn't form a single word.
"I am so disappointed," she said, frustrated.
"I imagine you are," I said, fully understanding her disappointment.
It was not so much that I was pushing Rhaenyra's bastards out of her husband's succession, no… What truly struck her was that I was using Vaemond, who had never liked her since, as a woman of power, she had "stolen" what he considered his due, to evict her and send her back to our House like some pitiful, weeping widow.
In Westeros, once the previous lord died, if the new lord did not take responsibility for the widow, she was sent back to her family of birth.
It was a public humiliation, yes, but the time when I had to constantly compromise was over.
I am the richest, the most powerful man, and the one who possesses the greatest dragon in the known world. I owed no one anything.
"Laena will never forgive you for what you've just done to me."
'The more I compromise because of my feelings for Laena, the more she will keep demanding of me.'
"I doubt that very much. She is loyal," I said as I turned away, before stopping for an instant to add: "Unlike some, who prefer to consort with scum. And for what? Vengeance?"
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"How was it?" Laena asked me, her back turned, watching the harbor from our terrace.
I could feel the forced tone in Laena's voice, I could sense the anger simmering beneath the cold mask she wore, but she was like me.
She is ambitious, intelligent, and, in normal times, even bolder and crueller than I am.
'But this situation was anything but normal,' I thought as I slowly approached her, placing a hand on her waist once I was close enough.
"Viserys has been confirmed as your father's heir and will take his place at the age of twelve," I said to my wife, who still had her back to me.
"The king accepted it?" she asked, surprised, casting a small glance out of the corner of her eye. I shook my head to show her that was not the case, then answered when she gave me an inquisitive look:
"I am the one who decides all of this."
"I forgot, you decide everything these days… even who has the right to die and who has the right to live," she said. And faced with the calm look I wore, she took a few seconds before finally saying: "Sorry."
I stayed silent for a few moments before saying, as I pulled her toward me and cupped her face in my hands so she would look me straight in the eyes:
"I understand that you're upset — upset by the way I govern this realm, and upset by the consequences it has on your family. But don't forget, never forget, that everything I do, I do for our family — the one we are building together, you and I."
"And Jeyne," she added, no longer looking away from me.
"And Jeyne," I added with a smile on my lips, touched by her thoughtfulness toward a woman she could have easily hated or belittled as a rival.
'And instead…'
"I know, and I don't hold it against you," she said before adding softly: "My mind is simply searching for someone to blame."
"We won't stay here much longer," I told Laena, who was already much less tense than when I had arrived. But no matter how she tried to hide it, I could feel her grief at the loss of her brother and father.
'We must return to the Vale,' I thought, for only in a safe environment like that could she truly relax and heal.
"But before that… Dorne," said Laena, never losing sight of our objectives.
I nodded, pleased to see her regaining her composure, and said:
"Hmm, once Dorne is subdued, we will leave."
"Very well," she said, and I could see that she was eager for that moment to come.
'Taking back control of the realm "gently" has been far too tedious.'
"I await that day with impatience, then," she said with a small smile before rising on her toes to kiss me.
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-POV Daemon Targaryen-
"It's time for us to take a firm position," said Johanna, pulling me from the train of thought that had carried me away from our conversation.
I frowned, then asked Johanna: "You know what he's planning to do, don't you?"
Johanna rolled her eyes and placed a pin in her hair, finally finishing her coiffure, before saying: "Yes, I know, but he didn't tell me."
"How do you know if he didn't tell you?" I asked her, raising a questioning eyebrow.
"We women must rely on other things than swords to rule this world," she said in a mock-arrogant tone that made me smile faintly, watching her magnificent curves.
"Your arrogance will be your downfall," she said, pretending to be offended, though she knew I was right.
'She literally built her entire fortune thanks to her courtesans,' I thought, though inwardly I praised the intelligence of my future wife, for despite everything that had happened to her in life, she had managed to rebound every time, freeing herself from the chains of slavers and returning to the Red Keep on her own.
'And through the grand gates.'
"You wouldn't betray him if you told me what you found out," I said, trying to know what she had discovered on her own.
"Don't even try," said Johanna before adding: "He will surely need you and Caraxes in the coming moons."
"Mystery does not suit you, my dear," I said, and Johanna only smiled without saying anything more before leaving me, with a flood of hypotheses and questions colliding endlessly in my mind. But one thing was certain:
If Aemon needed me to wage war, it would be my chance to prove to him that not only could he count on me, but that I was also the only one who would follow him into war with my eyes closed.
'This is my chance to become his father again.'
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