¹ 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐒 ━━ 𝐝. 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐲𝐞𝐧

xiv. fate can burn

✧˖° 🌑 ೄྀ࿐
━ [ SONG OF SORROWS ] ༉‧₊˚✧
x. act one... the dragon's daughter
fate can burn ━ ✩・*。

— SPRING, 113 A.C
RED KEEP, KING'S LANDING

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PAIN was a friend well-accustomed to the dark chamber of Valerys Targaryen's heart. Persistent as the rising sun, nestling into the lacerated flesh, making a home within her weeping body. Normalcy was a long forgotten comfort, replaced by the dank and cold feeling of ostracism, a sheep cursed with black wool, forevermore a reminder of the isolated pen she found herself in. It would not have mattered, her failed childhood, had the swift approaching marriage of her father not nipped at her heels.

Nigh on five moons had turned since he first announced his egregious intent, one fraught with betrayal and heartbreak; Rhaenyra, for all her grace, had not spoken so much as a word to their father, nor his bride-to-be. The same could not be said for Valerys — she resented the pair, surely, but did not feel the sting of their union as deeply as her sister. After all, Alicent Hightower was not her friend. No, that friend had been lost months ago, duty — or perhaps his own wounded ego — harkening him back to the North, consumed within the sightless blizzards, a painful wound in the collection of scars adorning her heart.

All she had spoken to him was true: she did not desire a marriage, regardless of the groom; her freedom was dwindling, and writing off her life once and for all was not a choice she would make willingly. Alistair was a good man, perhaps too good. For all her selfish appetites, Valerys could not damn him to her own fate. He deserved a life outside the burdens of a ruler, a life in his beloved North, amongst his people, not a valley of vipers.

Even still, marriage was not an entirely forgotten ailment. Day upon day, all dull as the others, her father dutifully reminded his eldest that in two days time, he would be wed to Alicent Hightower. A deep, probing hatred had sparked in her heart for the girl — a girl, deep down, she knew was innocent. Or perhaps not, a temptress disguised in the meager form of a girl. Whatever the cause of her happenings, Valerys did not care. All she cared about was the fact that she, a girl nearly a year her junior, was to be married to her father. Such a cruel thing, so young, trapped within a cage she assumed was not of her own design.

Much to the continued chagrin of Valerys, this day began as all others did, yet it arrived with a gut-wrenching knowledge: the wedding festivities — if Valerys could even call them that — would being soon. And as the King's daughter, his heir, no less, she would be required to attend, no matter how dearly she wished to imprison herself in her chambers.

As she had much over these five months, Valerys found herself wandering about the Godswood, hands tracing the ancient, rough bark of the weirwood tree, etched face a haunting reminder of her own soul. So tortured, forever entrapped within a casing of tough armor. Not far behind, Ser Loren kept a rigid posture, his curly dark hair having grown long in the passing moons; upon the departure of Alistair, Ser Loren had weaseled his way into his former position, though unlike Alistair, held unbendable duty to the young princess, never straying to far over a boundary she desperately wanted him to break.

The spring air was crisp with new life, red leaves of the weirwood tree having come again; such a beautiful, yet sad spectacle. A tree heavily revered by most others, reduced to a strange monument within the encasing walls of the Red Keep. Not a pillar for worship, nor a symbol of salvation — simply a forgotten memory of what used to be. Bending down, Valerys curled a discarded leaf in her hand, gently musing it between her fingers.