𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄

𝐎𝟐 - 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒

┌── ☄ ──┐

 
  Half a year had passed since the tragic death of Rhaella's mother, Queen Aemma. The realm suffered without having a Queen, and Rhaella suffered without having her mother. Rhaella's daily routine consisted of catering to her pregnant mother before attending to her studies or simply testing other's patience just for the thrill of her mother catching and scolding her for it— nothing was the same without her mother. Who else would she go to and complain of her troubles? Who else would listen and give the advice she needed— no one could replace Queen Aemma.

  During the past six months, Rhaella had been having constant dreams— more like night terrors, all of which were mere glimpses of what seemed to be the future and within those quick images were scenarios Rhaella couldn't quite understand. Rhaella was like a visitor in her own dream, just a person passing by and catching a glimpse of whatever vision she was in, as if she were truly there.

  The sun grew warm against Rhaella's face and blurred her vision as she looked up. She focused on Zerxes soaring through the smoke and ash filled skies, trying to get a clearer image of her red dragon, but the clarity didn't come. As Rhaella struggled, a darkness slowly swallowed her vision.

  A large dragon's shadow loomed between the steel gray sky, casting a dark radiance across a vast body of bloody water. A blood red fog that smelled of sulfur and burning vegetation tumbled along the uneven and jagged shores.

  Rhaella blinked.

  Then, the image shifted and moved, and so did Rhaella.

  She felt the heat working through her boots and the churning begin in her stomach from the vile smells that issued from the rot and decay around her.

  This seemed too real to be a dream. The ill sensation in Rhaella's stomach made her want it to be no more than imaginary. Before Rhaella could see what caused such foul odors, her vision darkened and brightened to a room she spent too much time in to forget its image; the throne room. She stood inside and watched from the crowd at the events before her, feeling a vague tugging at the base of her spine.

  Rhaella saw an unrecognizable young man with silvery blonde hair being crowned, and then the person's body morphed into her future self, recognizing the blood red hair immediately, and the Valyrian steel that was forged to a crown being placed atop her head. Wrong, all of this. This was nothing like anything Rhaella would ever imagine— she wouldn't possibly usurp Rhaenyra! Why did this vision come to her?

  An ache started in her chest, like her heart was trying to pound but couldn't find the energy to move. The crowd around her was still and no one clapped, too in awe and speechless to acknowledge the future Rhaella being crowned.

  And as Rhaella moved forward in her vision, her hands clinging to the people beside her to get their attention after hearing a blood curdling cry that seemed to go on for ages, is when the princess jolted up from her feverish dream. Eyes snapping open, Rhaella was covered in a cold sweat, her body shaking whilst her heart pounded. Rhaella looked around her and Rhaenyra's shared chambers, suspicious and paranoid that the horror from her dream may have followed her here.