Chapter Text
“Where have you been?” Her voice sounded… foreign. Unfamiliar to herself. Tired and cold. Who was this person speaking through her lips?
Her arms tightened around the small, stone-cold body lying motionless in her arms. The fire of the fireplace and the blankets wrapped around it did nothing to warm it up.
It was storming outside.
Good.
It was storming inside her head, too.
“I was tending to the realm.” He said evenly as he approached slowly.
She huffed out a scoff. Tending to the realm. What a joke.
The footsteps stopped behind her. He stood still. Didn’t make an attempt to sit or to look at her. “She was a girl.” She said in that same foreign voice.
He didn’t answer that. “How are you feeling?” He asked in a measured voice.
Tired, hateful, angry, murderous.
Cold.
It was her turn to stay silent.
He let out a sigh at her lack of response. “The silent sisters will be here soon.” He said before he began to walk away.
“You won’t see her off with me?” She asked with no expectation. There was no answer. It seemed that they were taking turns avoiding each other's questions.
What a twisted pair they made.
“We are at war. I mustn’t divert my attention.” He said back.
“Not even for your wife?” She finally turned to look at him. His back was turned to her, and he stood right in front of the chamber’s doors.
“Not even for my wife.” He concurred.
“Is it everything you have ever wanted then?” She asked before he had the chance to leave. “Sitting on that fucking chair?”
He didn’t speak for a while. He stood motionless, like a statue. And perhaps that’s what he was now. A statue.
Cold and unfeeling.
“You are tired. You should rest.”
“Don’t tell me what I am!” She shouted, standing up. “How would you know? You weren’t here! I screamed, and I cried, and I bled, and you weren’t here!” Tears ran down her face, her hands clutching the blankets, hugging what could have been her child.
“I couldn’t be here!” He finally turned to look at her. “There were matters at hand! Things that needed my attention!”
“More than me?”
“More than everyone! This is my duty!”
“Duty? So it’s your duty to slay our kin and to burn thousands of innocents by destroying Sharp Point?”
“What would you know?” He said, taking a few steps closer. “A woman with a lost mind hugging a dead child.” He stood in front of her, his eye looking into hers.
She used to love his eye, it always seemed to hide a special kind of affection meant for her and her alone.
“All I know is that you commit sins, and I am the one who keeps paying for it. Me and the children we could have had, pay for the blood you spill.”
He pressed his lips together, his mouth forming a thin line as he stared at her. “Watch your tongue.” He seethed.
“Or what? You will cut it?” She said back, unaffected.
They stared at each other. Tired and pained against angry and empty.
He could maybe still be there. The person she had loved when she was younger. Or maybe that person never existed. Maybe this was all her husband ever was. Angry and empty.
He turned to leave again. She didn’t stop him this time. She knew how to deal with the Silent Sisters on her own just fine.
She sat back down, her eyes returning to the fire. She would have to wear black and stand back, and the Sisters dressed her child in clothes it had never worn and placed stones over its eyes while its tiny body was put on display in the sept. And she would pray, and she would cry to the Stranger to protect her child’s soul before it reached the embrace of the Father.
And then her mother would encourage her to find solace in prayer and to ask for strength from the Mother. Again.
She would have to go through all of this. Again.
Her eyes landed on the three-headed dragon in the middle of the fireplace. One of the few Targaryen symbols her mother couldn’t replace with ones of the Faith. Carved in stone and unmovable. Probably much to her mother’s dismay. Alicent felt such a surge of power when she twisted the customs of the great ruling house to ones befitting her beliefs.
‘Fire and Blood,’ She recalled, was her family's motto. The great saying of House Targaryen. Well… She had given enough blood, time for the fire.
She stood up, looked down at the body in her arms. One that never took its first breath. And maybe that was for the best. Maybe it is better that this small child never has to carry its father’s sins on its shoulders.
She opened the doors and looked around.
No guards. Typical. Perhaps Ser Cole was warming her mother’s bed. Or was he and his men with her uncle in some faraway battle?
No matter. It wouldn’t change anything.
She walked slowly towards the only place that would give her solace. Far from the sept and the prayers that were forced down her throat day after day. She has had enough of the Faith’s funerals.
Her feet scraped against the stone of the Dragonpit.
She was greeted by a few Dragon Keepers. There to keep watch over the beast and her family’s greatest asset, even while the rest of the world slept.
“Sȳz bantis, Dārilaros.” The familiar words of what was supposed to be the mother tongue of her ancestors left the lips of the Dragon Keepers much easier than they had ever left her own.
“Good evening.” She said back in the same tongue. She wasn’t sure how she sounded. Definitely not pleasant though. “I wish to see my dragon.” She said slowly. She knew that sentence like the back of her hand. This one she had mastered over the years.
She was content to ever know this one. This and the few words needed to speak to her dragon. But Aemond wouldn’t have it. It would be a dishonour to his name if his wife could not speak High Valyrian fluently. To know less than their half-sister’s children.
“So late, my Princess?”
“Yes. No saddle.” She requested. The keepers nodded and began to move. “And no chains.” She added a moment later as she followed behind them.
They stopped moving and turned to face her again.
“Princess…”
“Please…” She begged in the common tongue. The one she grew up speaking.
The keepers exchanged looks before nodding. She wasn’t sure what they saw in her eyes or what thoughts they shared, but she was grateful she wouldn’t have to fight them over this.
It was easy to go through the dragon keepers once their orders were placed and executed. Even easier once she entered the tunnels, and they left them.
A small smile graced her lips as the familiar head neared her as she entered the cave.
“Hello, sweet one.” She spoke softly. She placed her hand on the snout of her only comfort in this cold and dying place. “I wish this could have been an introduction… but alas.”
The fires on the walls did little to illuminate the beautiful creature in front of her. Suneater. That’s what she named him. His scales were so black it always felt like he had eaten the sun.
Black scales and golden eyes. Not yellow. Golden. As golden as her mother’s jewelry, perhaps even more pure. That’s why he was the sun eater. He ate the sun, and now his eyes shine in its light.
Her dragon let out a sad sound. Something akin to a whine.
A few tears left her face. She didn’t want this. But she was tired. Too tired for this war. Too soft, her twin brother would say. She missed her brother. She wondered if he was eating well. Or if his dragon was growing well. Was he taller than her? Had he found love in the embrace of Oldtown?
She wondered if her dragon would ever forgive her. If her half-sister would find it in her heart to hate her a little less with this…offering. Would her nephews care? Would her brothers weep? Her mother? Would poor Helaena see this coming?
It mattered not now. Too late for apologies or inquiries.
“You must leave this place,” she said softly. Her head fell against that of her dragon’s, rough scales rubbed against her soft skin. “Go to Dragonstone. I hear there will be no chains there.”
The dragon let out another sound, something akin to denial.
“You must. This place is not safe.” She said quietly.
It took a lot more coaxing and even more gentle pushing before her dragon was flying out of the cave. How nice it must be to blend with the night sky. No one will know until it is too late.
And just like that, she will have her small revenge, the tiniest act of defiance against her brother and husband. Against her mother and queen. Against her grandsire and the instigator of her misery.
One more dragon for the Blacks. One less dragon for the Greens.
She walked further into the tunnels, looking for one of the caves she had been adamantly warned against entering.
The warning growl vibrated through her body as she reached her destination. She stood in the entrance of the cave, contemplating her actions. Maybe this meant nothing to anyone. Maybe this would be a meaningless death. But what is one more meaningless death among the thousands that have already taken place?
“I hear you like to burn people, much like your rider.”
And perhaps that was for the best.
“Even your kin.”
She had let many things about her life be decided by other people.
“So you will like this.”
This, she decided, this she would choose for herself.
She wondered if this would go down in history. If anyone would choose to remember this moment. What would they write? How would they depict this moment?
Perhaps they would focus on her grief. She became conscious of the weight on her arms. Perhaps they would choose to call her foolish. That sounded more fitting.
‘Here lay the ashes of Daena Targaryen. Struck by grief, she perished at age seventeen along with her stillborn child because of a foolish decision from a foolish girl that should have known better.’
She can already see the flame forming in Vhagar’s mouth, so she doesn’t know why she says it. It wouldn’t change anything. Accept the fact that this was her decision until the very end.
“Dracarys.”