A Dance Of Blood And Water

ONE

The castle loomed far and wide across the black waters of king's landing, rain puttering against its strongholds as the ferocious wind threatened all who was inside with  permanent entrapment. The sun had disappeared long before the eve of the day, surrounding the castle and its landings in a perplexing colour of grey.

Alys stood, frozen within the courtyard, her dress smothered by the heavy rain, sticking to her frail body as she found herself unable to move, unable to reach the warmth of the colossal building just a breath away.

'Father...' she trailed off, her eyes glued to the man stood nonchalantly in front of her. A man of great height and stature, a man of fear yet love. Brown shaggy hair down to his broad shoulders, his knights armour glistening in the downpour. 'I have warned you Alys.' He simply stated, with no little of a bat of an eyelid. 'Warned me of what father?' Alys inquired, her voice croaking as her body froze. Playing the innocent game, the only one she knew she could win.

'You are not a princess, nor are you a prince.' Her father turns his back to her, dignity however clinging to his body, a body that was built to withstand the cold, however his daughters, not.

'I may only be ten and four father, but I know how to protect myself.'

Harwin Strong fathered a daughter fourteen years ago, to a whore in a brothel. A whore some say he had fallen in love with, others speculating that he had argued with the princess Rhaenyra and sought out revenge. Accusations aside, he now had a permanent woman in his life. Alys waters. A bastards name for that was what she was. It was all she would ever be and all she would ever amount too.

He had sought to protect her best he could, but it was to no avail. The girls stubbornness always preceded Harwin's concerns and berates. She had a will power that rivalled her fathers. In close proximity to the royal family, Alys had been raised in the castle, her grandsire the hand to the king, and her father the head of the city watch. Luxury and pleasure what harwin had tried to provide for her, yet she remained restless. Stoically frozen outside of the castle he had tried so hard to raise her within, all because of her fascination with the Targaryen boys.

'You are to stay away from prince aegon,' Harwin demands and alys scoffs behind his back. Acting like an infant. Prince aegon was a dashing young man, with proclivities unbeknownst to alys. But harwin saw it all, he saw it within the boy, his troubled mother and court had raised the boy with a green spoon in his mouth and a troublesome taste for younger girls. Which is exactly what Alys was.

'Now come inside daughter, before i must make my leave.'

Alys watched as he walked forward, her toes dug deeply in the ground, the bottom of her dressed stained brown. The gold no longer a spectacle to the item of clothing. Instead how she had disgraced it.

'Make haste alys, the princess expects me.'

Alys only stopped her movement more. Her fathers obsession with rhaenyra had spoiled her childhood more than he could fathom. He was prone to abandoning his work to care for her, to be there when her husband laenor couldn't. Alys had heard the whispers amongst court, her ears as sharp as the blades the knights carried. How Rhaenyra's sons where her brothers. How her father had an addicting taste for fathering bastards.

'Alys, if you do not move. I will drag you inside myself.'

He stared into the girls eyes, his own looking back at him. Her long draping black hair dampened as it covered her face, mud on her hands. He knew what she had been doing out here. Watching Alicent's children train with Ser Criston, joining them. Losing to them. He despised how he was forced to use threats to get his daughter to listen to him, and he feared he had been far to absent in her life. His spare time devoted to the princess, to her sons. To his sons.