The Passion of a Thousand Suns | Aemond Targaryen

Thirteen: a princess & her vengeance

KING'S LANDING

It was lucky that those who lived in the Red Keep never bothered to learn languages outside of the common tongue.

If they heard the vile threats from her household, Hira would certainly be an enemy of the crown—though it wasn't as if she wasn't intending to become one after the mistreatment she was forced to witness.

"Stripped of lands and titles as if Jin's life was worth only that," Raki fumed, his lip curled in disgust. His hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, eyes burning with unspent rage. "Say the word, princess, and I'll kill him. I'll kill them all."

Hira didn't respond immediately. Her gaze flickered to the banners lining the hall, the crimson dragon of the crown, stark against the golden tapestries. She hated it. She hated all of it.

"Stay your hand, Raki," Emica warned, ever the voice of reason. "One move against them is a move against all. We have no allies here." Her tone was measured, but beneath the calm, there was a trace of anger.

"We have no need for allies," Raki insisted, his hand tightening into a fist. "Our swords are enough. We can—"

"Hira," Jade's quiet voice cut through the arguments, silencing them instantly. The others turned toward her. Her face was impassive, her eyes unreadable, but there was something in her tone that demanded attention. "I was promised my due."

The room fell into a tense stillness. Jade's words were a reminder of the countless promises Hira had made. Promises to her people, to her family, to those she had sworn to protect. And one by one, she had failed in every one of them.

Hira closed her eyes, the weight of it all settling over her like a shroud.

"I know," Hira said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. "I haven't forgotten."

"You don't have the luxury of forgetting." Jade's eyes narrowed, her voice dropping lower, darker. "I have stood by you loyally, when no one else would. I left my family, my home, to follow you. And yet here we are—beggars at the mercy of a crown that spits on us."

Hira opened her eyes, a flicker of shame passing through her, but it was brief, swallowed by the growing bitterness inside her.

She wasn't the only one who had sacrificed—the only one who had lost. But she had borne the weight of leadership, the burden of decisions no one else had wanted to make. Decisions that could cost them everything.

Hira only knew of fury inthat moment. What was once bubbling inside her threatened to erupt and lay waste to everything surrounding her.

She wanted Zhurong to burn Oldtown to the ground until all that was left was ash and bone. The king unrightfully stole her justice, so she will take justice into her own hands.

"He was mine, sister," Jade wept in the dim corridors of the Red Keep, her shoulders trembling as her grief poured forth.

The echo of her sobs was swallowed by the cold stone walls, but outside their private misery, life continued as if nothing had changed.

Servants scurried by, casting sidelong glances but keeping their distance. Noblemen and women in their fine silks gave them crude looks, whispered behind raised hands, as though Jade's broken heart was an inconvenience, a spectacle unworthy of more than passing disdain.

Life went on for them, but not for the ones who bore the Han standard. For them, time had frozen. Their hearts were shackled to this moment, weighed down by grief, humiliation, and the simmering rage that came with dishonour.

A kingdom they had once sought to ally themselves with had betrayed them by spilling their kin's blood. And for what? For the colour of their skin, for their differences, for reasons they could not change. Jin had been slaughtered without a second thought, and the killer roamed free, shielded by the crown's indifference.