The Realm's Fright | HOTD S1 | Fem!OC x Aemond Targaryen Fanfiction

Chapter Eleven

It had come at last: the day Alysanne Velaryon would leave the Blacks behind and join the Greens, the day she would wed the man who despised her and her brothers, the boy they had maimed so many years ago. Duty. The word was a heavy chain around her neck, binding her will to her grandsire's wishes, her family's ambitions, and the fragile hope for unity in the House of the Dragon.

Duty was why she traded the sword for the quill, the ringmail for silk and ribbons. It was the reason why, at the first red spot on her bed, she had mourned, not celebrated, marking it as the beginning of the end of her freedom. She was not ready—not for this. Not to see her girlhood slip through her fingers like sand, to say goodbye to the days of running wild through Driftmark's halls and besting boys with wooden swords. Yet, she knew, as surely as she loved her grandsire, that she would not disappoint him.

No more Blacks. No more Greens, she thought, the words drifting through her mind like a prayer. Would it ever be so? Could this union truly mend the rift that had torn their family asunder, or was it but a fool's dream?

She stood now in her wedding dress, a masterwork of House Targaryen's colors. Black scales, sewn to resemble dragonhide, clung to her figure, the rubies at her waist glittering like embers in a dying fire. A three-headed dragon, embroidered in red silk, spread its wings across her chest, a stark reminder of the legacy she bore.

Murmurs drifted through the great doors of the throne room. They grew louder as the door creaked open, revealing her mother's second husband, her uncle, the Rogue Prince himself. Daemon Targaryen stepped inside, his lilac eyes sliding over her with a deliberate slowness that made her skin crawl.

"You look like your mother," he said at last, his tone as detached as ever.

Alysanne stood silent, unwilling to grant him even the faintest acknowledgment of his compliment. Tall and menacing, he loomed beside her, a dragon clothed in human form. It was no secret that her mother loved him, had always loved him, but Alysanne had never understood how. Her heart twisted at the thought of developing even a fraction of such feelings for Aemond. The mere idea made her stomach churn, and she entertained, for a fleeting moment, the fantasy of escape to Essos, far from dragons and their quarrels.

"You are a princess," Daemon had once told her, long ago when he had taken her sword and handed her over to a new septa. "Princesses do not train for the battlefield. They train for the birthing bed."

"I am a princess," she had snapped back at him, her voice sharp with the defiance of youth. "But I am also a princess of the sky and the sea." They were the last words she had spoken to him, and she had kept her distance ever since.

He studied her now, his unreadable expression setting her teeth on edge. He loved her, she supposed—loved all of Rhaenyra's children, bastards or not—but Alysanne could not bring herself to see him as a father. Ser Laenor had been more than enough in that regard, and though his blood did not run in her veins, his memory was hers to keep.

She offered him a curt nod, the barest civility she could muster, and looked away. Let Baela and Rhaena love him as he was. Let them overlook the cruelty in his eyes and the restless violence in his hands. There was a reason he rode Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm, and it was the same reason Alysanne resolved to sleep with one eye open if she were ever forced to share a bed with him.

She turned her gaze to the great doors, beyond which her destiny awaited. Whether it was to unite the family or to doom them all, she could not yet say. But she would not falter. Not today.

The throne room was alive with a restless energy, filled with more people than Alysanne could recall seeing even during her last visit. The doors creaked open, and every head turned as one, a tide of unrecognizable faces flowing together in a sea of expectation and judgment. Their gazes bore down upon her, their scrutiny a weight that seemed to double with every step she took. Daemon walked beside her, his presence as commanding as it was unnerving, yet even he could not shield her from the sting of those watchful eyes.