The sea winds still lingered in the stone halls of High Tide when Lord Monford Velaryon and his half-brother Aurane led Aemon Targaryen through the winding corridors. Ghost padded silently at the boy's side. The great direwolf unnerved even the most battle-hardened guards who had stood watch over the Velaryons for years.
At last, they came to the solar. A long table of polished oak dominated the chamber, its surface cluttered with sea charts and ledgers. Tapestries of ships and seahorses hung upon the walls. Monford gestured for Aemon to sit, yet his own hands betrayed him, twitching against his tunic as if to wring out the words he dared not speak.
Aemon settled into the high-backed chair, Ghost lying at his feet, his massive head resting on his paws. The boy's gaze, the deep, blood-red of a Valyrian sunset, fixed on Monford with a quiet intensity.
"You wish to ask me something," Aemon said at last, his voice level, almost gentle. "Then ask."
Monford exchanged a glance with Aurane, the bastard shifting uneasily beside him. The lord drew a steadying breath, a sound that seemed loud in the quiet chamber. He leaned forward, clasping his hands on the tabletop.
"Your Grace… do you know which dragon it is you ride?"
The question from his mouth was, like a challenge and a curse all at once. Aurane tilted his head, frowning, as though his brother had just blasphemed a sacred oath. Aemon's brows knit together, then he gave a small shake of his head.
"I found her in the Riverlands," he said. "Or perhaps she found me. From that day, she has been with me."
"She?" Monford repeated quietly, his eyes flicking to Aurane. "You name the dragon as if…"
"Is there a problem?" Aemon's voice cut softly through the air.
Monford rose, restless, and crossed to a tall cabinet of carved ebony. He pulled open the iron latch and drew out a heavy volume bound in cracked leather, its clasps darkened by age. He carried it with reverence back to the table, laying it before Aemon with both hands.
"Your Grace," Monford began, lowering his voice as though telling a secret he didn't wish anyone to know about it, "House Velaryon has seen many dragonriders among its blood, only because of marriage to Targaryen's. My forebears, understanding the weight and importance of that history, maintained this book which had an accounting of every known dragon, bonded or wild, that lived in Westeros."
Aemon leaned forward, curiosity stirring despite himself. He opened the book, its pages dry and yellowed with time, the ink had faded but it was still legible. Illustrations of dragons spread across the parchment, some in bronze, some shiny as gold, some monstrous in size. He turned slowly, the direwolf's head following the movement of the pages.
"And?" he asked, without lifting his eyes.
Monford's hand shot out, halting the pages at one in particular. The drawing leapt up from the parchment—inked black scales, sharp, cruel angles in its jawline and wings. The dragon was vast, a terror even in mere likeness.
Aemon's breath caught, fingers tracing the rough lines. He lifted his gaze and saw, scrawled above in bold script, a name: The Cannibal.
His head snapped toward Monford, eyes narrowing.
The lord nodded, grave. "I have grown up hearing and reading the tales of the old dragons. The moment I looked upon the dragon in the courtyard, I knew it for what it was, though it had different colored scales now. The Cannibal. They say no king, no prince and certainly no dragonseed, however bold had dared approach the black beast's lair. Though it vanished after the Dance, never to be seen again. Until now."
The words lay heavy. Even Aurane had paled, his mouth set in silence.
Aemon looked again at the illustration, the monstrous depiction meant to inspire dread, then remembered the warmth of scales beneath his palm, the strange tenderness in those now golden eyes he felt with the bond they shared. He closed the book with a sharp thud.
"It does not matter," he said, his voice iron. His gaze found Monford's and did not waver. "She is my bonded. She is mine, and I am hers. Whatever name men gave her in fear, whatever tales they spun, it changes nothing. Meleys is my dragon. And she shall remain so… until the day she wishes otherwise."
As if to answer, a roar split the skies above Driftmark—louder, nearer, shaking the glass panes in their frames. The stone of the keep seemed to tremble. A sound that made Monford Velaryon, the Lord of the Tides, go pale beneath his rich silk-green clothes. Even Aurane, the roguish bastard with too much boldness in his veins, lost his cocky smirk. He was a man who laughed at storms and squalls, but this sound was something else entirely.
Yet Aemon did not flinch. He sat in the high-backed chair, a closed book resting on the table, his hand still on its cover. Ghost, his massive direwolf, had merely lifted his head at the first tremor, and now he settled back down with a soft huff, his red eyes gleaming with a kind of shared, primal contentment.
"Meleys," Monford whispered. He had grown up on tales of the Cannibal, tales his father had told him, tales his grandfather had told his father, tales of a monster that fed on the blood of its own kind. And yet, this sound… it was not a monster's roar. It was the sound of a queen proclaiming her allegiance.
Aemon lifted his chin, his red eyes meeting the lord's. "The past is a story," he said, his voice as calm as the deepest part of the sea. "And stories can be rewritten. She is Meleys, my dragon."
Monford bowed his head slowly, a deep one, an inclination that was more than just a gesture of courtesy. It was an acknowledgment of the moment a man of history saw the future, about to written by the boy sitting before him.
"As you say, Your Grace," Monford said, his voice now filled with a strange sort of awe. "She is yours."
Aemon rose, the book still under his hand, and looked out the window at the twilight sky. The last of the sun rays painted the clouds in hues of orange, but to the east, a darker, grander shadow was already blotting out the stars. It was a shape he knew, a shape that was as familiar to him as his own reflection.
Aemon started, his voice soft, almost to himself. "There is much to speak of, Lord Velaryon. Of alliances… and of a journey that must begin soon."
Monford Velaryon, the Lord of the Tides, had been a proud man, rightfully so, he is a man whose lineage stretched back to the blood of old Valyria. But as he looked at the boy standing before him, at the great direwolf at his feet, and felt the power of the beast outside, he knew that something new had entered the world. He was no longer just the Lord of the Tides. He was the host to a living legend. And with that thought, he felt a thrill, sharp and cold as a valyrian's sword edge, of what was to come.