DAMON RAVENSWOOD

Late he was, for the tourney, but the care he had for that was the size of a pickle seed lost in the rage of a flowing brook, a rage he had as well. He would not have bothered to come if it was not the “king’s tourney”. The king’s tourney…? He was to be king, he! It was meant to be his tourney, not that bastard’s own. His loath was never-ending, but even with such a vast overflowing bitterness, he was to be there, as a member of the royal family it was mandatory.

If only there was something to soothe his rage, to calm him down; the crown would be the first thing he wanted to do that, but even he knew how much plausibility that had right now. Very little it was. He needed something else, something that would clear his mind of rage even for a moment. He thought of Melisandre, but she was not an option now, she could not fill him with her warmth at this moment, maybe he would have her come to his bedchamber after, it had been days since he last felt her body, the warmth of her thighs on his palms.

Damon had chosen his fit himself. A black jerkin with gold details and buckles, and a matching leather doublet underneath. A rather plain and unbecoming outfit for him he would say, but his mood would not allow anything else to grace his body. He was dispirited and his look was chosen to fit just that.

The inaudible roars echoing off the walls surrounding him, jumped into cheers, shivering and thunderous as he made his way out of the dim stairwell and the yellow the wall-torches gave it, and into the bright shimmering sunlight of gold that almost blinded him. Splinters, he thought as he stepped onto the terrace, someone is fallen… Maybe he would sight a bit of fun from this tourney after all.

He had even heard from his mother that her nephew was participating. The man had sent word to her of his arrival, but he chose to remain out of the castle walls and stay in the city until today. Today he would be on this tourney grounds beneath the walls of the castle. And Damon saw it as the perfect opportunity to see how strong a man knighted by his grandfather really was, it would help him gauge the strength of the levies the old man had and if they would be of much use to him once he waged war on the one that took his crown.

He espied that person first, the one who took his crown. The blue-haired bastard, garbed in a snow-white brocade coat and a flowing golden cloak, was seated cosily on a low-raised platform with a smile on his face, a stupid smile Damon would call it. The crown on that bastard’s head was his, and so was the seat too. It was he that should be seated there, and to the left where that whore, Thalia sat was to be his mother, while to the right where… Silver hair? He had never seen that silver hair before, who was it? He wondered slightly, before he recalled that Dante had made mention of Zephyr choosing a queen, while angry that he did not attend the court ceremony.

Was she the one? He had heard the serving girls whisper of how beautiful she was; he could now see how much of a truth that bore himself. It is said a smile makes a person’s beauty radiate, but even though she was not smiling, her clear skin painted in gold by the sun made her beauty still most alluring. The bastard chose well… he scoffed.

Closer he walked towards the royal box, and more of those seated he saw. To the left of the whore queen sat the bastard’s brother, the little brat, Thaddeus. Sometimes he wondered what he hated about that bratling more, his childish grin or his annoying and unending avowal of being an adult. What did he know about being an adult? Little child, little sense, Damon clacked his tongue in irritation as he saw the grin he hated on Thaddeus’ face. The boy was enjoying the jousts with a mind he did no harm to anyone, but little did he know that he was doing a lot of harm to Damon.

Behind the low-raised platform to the left of the king’s seat, sat his mother, fair and beautiful and dressed in a lovely velvet gown of green matching her eyes, and from her shoulders down to her arm hung a pine marten shawl, dark-brown and elegant. On his mother’s left sat his sister, her face devoid of anything akin to excitement. He knew her to sooner roam the kitchens and gist with the serving girls than watch men in armour hit themselves with wooden lances for the sake of coins and a place in the Kingsknights, but as he had no choice to be here, so did she. When he becomes king he would let her do whatever she pleased, she just had to bear with it for now, just for a little while. If she manages to get the grand savant to speak, then maybe, just maybe that a while will become sooner than ever.

Damon looked further to the right of his mother which was graced by his brother, Dante, his face ridden with… a lour…? That was not right, he always had a smile on his face, Damon noticed, but there was something far more worrying than the demeanour his brother wore and what had plunged him into such a state, that thing being the dearth of a seat for him where his family sat. There were none. It did not take right to him, and when he looked closer he saw why. It was not hard to miss.

Beside Dante sat a plump and suety woman, her body as heavy as her face. She was the one that took his seat, he descried, but there was nothing to be done, even he knew that. He savvied who she was, his bedchamber guard had made mention of her arrival to him after he had returned from his mother’s chambers, Lady Eira of Blackwood, that much was a sight plain and obvious the same as her unmissable framework. If only he could somehow get her on his side, he began to think, then he would be able to wage war for the throne that was by right his.

To the right of the plump lady of Blackwood sat another, a lady svelte in figure, she was the utter opposite of the high-lady. That must be her daughter… Damon observed based on what his guard had told him. Her daughter came with her, slim and different from her mother, the guard had said, trying to sound as courteously subtle as possible. Damon saw the daughter now, and he praised the guard’s courteous acquaintance. It was a hard feat to achieve when trying to tell them both apart to someone, at least to him, he could not do it.

On the svelte lady’s right was a free seat, the only one, and no one had to tell Damon that that was where he would sit. His nose was still wrung up in spite as he passed the two gilded Kingsknights who stood outside the royal box with a silver long-cape hanging from their shoulders. They bowed as they caught sight of him. “My prince,” they had both echoed in greeting, one with a sharp and fairly older face and a different voice than the other, the two of them unhelmeted and hand on the pommel of their sheathed longswords. He knew them, Ser Calix and Ser Aaron, the Kingsknights of his late father, and he had spite for them as well. How dare they call him “prince” when they knew he was the rightful heir to the throne? Such insolence. He gimlet-eyed them then waved their greetings away curtly.

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His anger was a tidal wave on its way to crash the things in its path, but he made do to hold it in. Their greetings had made eyes’ turn to look back at him, his mother not one of them, but his sister, his brother, and even that bastard and his brat of a brother turned for a short while to watch him. He hated the glint of that silver eyes, it would never look upon him again once he had the throne, soon enough, he would make sure to pick them out himself.

Damon shook his thoughts free from anger as he arrived at the only seat that awaited him. “Pardon me, my lady,” he called the young lady of Blackwood to him with a smile. She was enjoying the jousting he could see, the bridge of her nose was flushed and her mouth curled into a smile. Quite pretty he would say she was, but Melisandre was far prettier and so was Zephyr’s lady; he wondered what her name was. “Mind if I sit?” He was still angry but it was not something a lady of Blackwood should see if he hoped to have their levies. A king should not look weak before his subjects, he told himself.

Another roar came and filled the air from the throng crammed on the erected crescent gallery on the opposite side of the terrace. Damon was taking his sit when they shouted, after the young lady had given him a deft nod in reply, and as soon as he was done sitting, he turned his head to look at the tourney field below, then he saw a rider caught by his leg to the girth of his saddle, struggling to free himself as his jet-black destrier galloped to the end of the lists, dragging his body through the dirt. When the horse slowed to a trot, a bony boy ran to help the rider free from the saddle-girth. The man’s helmet had been lost somewhere on the field, his brown muddy hair muddied further by the blood that ran down his forehead.

“A freerider.” Damon tsked. Someone like this could never become a Kingsknight, why bother…?

“The one that unhorsed him is even lesser,” the young lady of Blackwood told Damon of her own accord as if she had heard his thoughts, and he turned to look at her clapping jollily with a fine smile on her face. “He has unhorsed a few already, even knights. Look,” she pointed, “he’s a peasant.”

Damon looked then and saw. A peasant he was undoubtedly, and… a boy. A boy with dark-blonde hair he would say was no more than the range of one-and-four to one-and-six. The boy flung down from his horse, throwing his plain targe shield to the floor and began to wave to the crowd, while his other hand held his helmet which had old dents and scratches, close to his breastplate that suffered the same fate as his helmet. That was all he wore, a brown tunic and a mismatched helmet and breastplate, both which looked to have been rented from a cheap armourers shop, the same as the shield. His lance was on the ground all broken into splinters, the same as the pride of the freerider who was bloodied and out cold even as they had begun to drag his body out of the grounds.

Damon turned back to the young lady who was still clapping giddily with a flushed smile on her face. “Might I ask your name, my lady?”

“Valora,” she answered, a little bit too quickly.

“I’m Damon. Do you find the peasant attractive, my lady Valora?” He asked, and as soon as he did, he had an idea storm his mind, a one good enough to pinch his eyebrows.

She did not turn to face him but answered nonetheless, “I find myself to be more attractive.” She had pride. Good, he thought.

“That I agree to be the truth,” he smiled, a soft smile tainted with a lustful look at her side face. “I find myself to be very attractive as well…” A tongue honeyed and spiced for the ladies, Damon knew that was something home to only he, and it was something he knew how to make use of. “But I have had the grace to see someone who glows brighter than I.”

She stopped clapping then and her eyes finally turned to him. Lavender, he saw, and pretty, he thought, in all truth, they were. “And would my lord tell me who that person might be? I seem to have found myself curious.”

Damon side-eyed a glimpse of the lady, Eira of Blackwood, watching them for a while, but that did not stop him, if his idea was to work, then this had to pan out well. “Why, you, my lady,” he said with a beguiling smirk. “Enchanting is the only word that my mouth feels to befit you.”

The tip of her nose reddened, but she acted oblivious to it that anyone might think she did not even know it was a deep red at the moment. She turned her face away from Damon’s and to the grounds as another rider rode in, this one well clad in an enamelled brass armour from head to feet, his red cape which had a black panther running across it, well behind the hind of his spotted mare. Waynwood! This one had shouted, lifting his spear and his blood-red shield, which had the same panther as his cloak, into the air, and knight everyone knew he was.

“Is that what you say to all the ladies you’ve come across, my lord?” The young lady had begun to clap for this rider now, this Waynwood knight, but a softer clap it was, nothing like the one she had had for the peasant.

“Maybe… and it might be that you’re the only one who has ever heard me say such words, my lady.” He saw her smile before he turned again to look down at the field and the second rider who now made his way into the grounds. This rider was without a shield; cocky, Damon would have called him, until he saw the garnet-engraved golden tiger head on the chest of his dark-grey banded mail, his golden cloak emblazoned with the same tiger head, shimmering with the breath of air as he grabbed a lance from a boy-squire. House Lockeheart’s sigil… Damon hooted deep within. Is that he…? Mother’s nephew…?

The riders readied their lancies at once as their horses both trotted to a stop on the opposite ends of the lists. There was a shout to begin, and next came the cries of the crowds and a slightly excited shift of Damon on his seat as the riders both spurred their horses into a ferocious gallop. It was all fast paced and ended too quickly, but it no doubt filled the throng with excitement. Splinters had scattered into the air, and the crowd roared WAYNWOOD!… in nothing else but mockery.

A mare had come to a stop at the end of the lists, but its rider was not seated atop it. Damon smiled. One swift thrust… he announced to himself. He watched the rider arrive atop his destrier to the foot of the terrace where they were all seated, no lance in hand. The man pulled off his helmet for all to see. Dark-copper skin with pale yellow hair ruffled by the helmet he had worn, Damon saw him to look vastly different from his mother, but something matched them for him, their eyes. The rider’s was the same green as his mother’s, the same lovely green.

The rider smiled. “Long live the king!” He bellowed. “The name’s Maurin of House Lockeheart, Your Grace, and I ask you pardon me to ask my niece to grace me with her crown of flowers.”

“You may ask,” Zephyr answered him. “And who might this your niece be?”

“The queen. Ophelia Ravenswood, Your Grace.”