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AEMMA. This was my father's doing, wasn't it? [Beat. ALYSANNE begins to cry.]
There is no war so hateful to the gods as a war between kin, and no war so bloody as a war between dragons.
Alysanne Waters has always bent to the will of the gods... And the will of dragons. Long before Viserys was King, when she was still his handmaid, she would travel with him to the Dragonpit and stare at the hulking form of Balerion.
The Black Dread. Alive, breathing in front of her, sizing her up with one beady eye. The same dragon mounted by Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel.
While Viserys strode up to Balerion and ran a gloved hand along his scales, Alysanne pressed herself to the rock wall of the Dragonpit. She heard what her prince murmured to his steed: Lykirī. Dohaerās, Balerion. And she did not trust the idea that a language could ever be enough to tame such beasts. The Targaryens may have been closer to gods than men, but their dragons were as fearsome as any deity.
Twenty years pass, and Alysanne is still a handmaid under the crown's employ. But she is now a midwife, tasked with bringing the little dragons of House Targaryen into the world. The children are adorable, and Viserys― no longer a prince, but her King― treats her kindly, but she leaves King's Landing anyway.
She returns bearing a little dragon of her own, passed off as anything but. Her sweet daughter, she vows, will have a better life. She did not spend decades serving the crown only for the crown to fail her now, when she needs its aid most.
But a war is brewing, and she knows that it will be bloody. She has read the histories― wars fought with dragons always are. And so, with the promise of a later meeting, she sends her daughter away, and prepares for the horrors that will come when the dragons take to the skies.
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High above the clouds, the crow drifts on gusts of wind, equal to dragons in its flight. Except the Crow is a lady, and her domain is not the sky, but the Red Keep.
Lynora Lannister may be a lioness, but she is better known as a Crow. The Crow. She is an omen― where she appears, pain is sure to follow. She flies ahead, collecting her tidbits of information from one source or the other, and returns to an eager master.
Larys Strong rewards her well for her services. She does not complain. His protection is more than enough recompense for the trickery that comes so naturally to her.
