¹ 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐒 ━━ 𝐝. 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐲𝐞𝐧

xxxii. wailing widows

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

— WINTER, 114 A.C
THE STEPSTONES, NARROW SEA

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. * 　　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .⁺ 　　 ˚
. * 　　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .
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THE moon wept starlit tears upon a lachrymose girl; red tracks scorched into the fair skin of her rounded cheeks, roses sprouted underneath the skin, the bouquet placed upon a gravestone. Against her waterline threatened tears, those that had continuously fallen down her face, carving everlasting heartbreak upon flesh. But her heart had not broken, not fully. In the dark dwelling of her chest it hung, beaten and bruised and weeping tears of blood, strung from fleshy holdings that frayed by the minute. Each nerve-fraying sob that spilled from her cavernous lungs only served to loosen their hold; they would fall, eventually, but Valerys Targaryen had already lost her heart.

Perhaps it was never hers to begin with. It did not feel as though it ever were. Pieces had fallen into the palms of her family and friends, tucked away safely behind lock and key, a treasured artifact. Her heart was a house of cards, pull one away and the entire structure collapsed. And it had fallen as swiftly as her tears. It was no fault but her own, she knew; only a fool would trust self-serving men, only a fool would beguile themselves with visions of grand love. Always the jester, preforming for everyone around her while she remained blissfully aware of the laughs those levied against her — her, the woman who had everything she needed, yet nothing she wanted. The woman who had been scorned by a love of her own fabrication.

Because that's what it was: a fabrication. A lie, one she had conjured in her restless desire to be loved as she loved others, to be wanted for something other than her inheritance, to have a story of adoration the ballads would tell for decades to come. But life was not a fairytale, it was not a story about a knight who came and saved the princess, it was not kind or good. Life didn't end happily, and neither did the two of them. Love was not a house, it was not permanent after being built — it was war, with constant struggle and strife, with new foes creeping from the darkness to strike down a heart. And Valerys did not long for war; she wanted peace. Daemon Targaryen had never been peace.

Valerys was done loving the idea of him she'd made in her head. Because he was not kind or good — just as he'd said himself — and Valerys, in the world she lived in, needed kind and good. She wanted it. And that wasn't him.

The only company to her thoughts was the gentle repetition of lapping waves upon well-worn rocks, and the silent presence of Ser Loren. A starless expanse spanned overhead, vast and unending, deep as the ocean before them and just as unknown. Tales of hidden pictures in formations of stars had always intrigued Valerys as a young girl, and on days when she'd weep to herself in the night, she'd long to join the stars, for they were beautiful and worshipped, extending fingertips of white light upon the slumbering world. Valerys had wanted that, to be useful in the dark, to be unconquerable and untouchable — unfortunately, try as she might, she was neither.

Ser Loren had not spoken since he brought her to rest atop the cliff's edge. Rigid and silent he sat beside her, a stone effigy of temperance, only offering gentle comfort with a brush of his hands against her sodden cheek. It did not anger Valerys, for he was her physical protector; Ser Loren had no power over the war of emotions that waged inside her heart. Unlike many foes, he could not banish it or kill it, and so he did little else.