Desires Be Damned • Aemond Targaryen

Chapter Nineteen

Rhaenyra

It is often the want of every parent to give their child what had been denied to them in their own adolescence, to ensure that past mistakes were not repeated in the hopes of a better future for them, and Rhaenyra was no different. For years, she was forced to repress her love for Daemon as her duty, propriety, and father constantly sought to sunder them. She often wondered what her life might have been like if her father had permitted them to wed back then instead of forcing her to marry Laenor. There surely would have been no need to stray in order to fulfill her desires, she thought as she affectionately cradled her swollen belly, and the prospect of someone calling the legitimacy of her children into question would have only been an absurdity passing through maddened lips.

But that wasn't her life. Hers was full of perseverance and hard choices, of consequences and lies, of great joys ever threatened to be eclipsed by greater sorrows. She and Daemon had found one another again and bound themselves in marriage later than she would have preferred, but only after very costly and bloody tolls had been paid. Daemon had lost Laena and their third child on her birthing bed, and Laenor's escape had required an innocent to be sacrificed. Though she didn't regret her decisions, for they had all led her here and gave her seven beautiful children and an adoring husband along the way, she would not wish for her daughter to suffer as she had, if she could help it, by forcing her to marry for the sake of politics.

Marriage was a union that bound two to become one. It can be the ultimate expression of love, a proclamation of commitment, and a solemn promise, but when that bond was loveless or hostile, it could be one's own personal hell--particularly for the woman, for men could frequent a brothel to seek pleasure between a whore's legs without so much as a sideways glance--especially when the "what ifs" and "if onlys" constantly dangled before them as though fate itself was playing a sick taunting game, dooming them to eternal maddening retrospection. It was why Rhaenyra was so adamant on finding proper suitors for her daughter to choose from and then trusting in Dyaena to choose well.

But try as Rhaenyra might, none appeared to turn her daughter's head, and after what seemed like the hundredth had been swiftly denied--a handsome son from the long-standing and noble House Tyrell that turned the heads of the other ladies and serving girls wherever he wandered--it became glaringly obvious that no suitor that would present themselves at Dragonstone, no matter how perfect a match, would ever have Dyaena's hand as long as Aemond still had her heart. Her devotion to her uncle--even if it was subconscious or suppressed and something she would surely deny if Rhaenyra had ever inquired--was indeed admirable, but nonetheless puzzled Rhaenyra. Aemond had showed no signs of remorse when it was brought to light that he had called Jace and Luke bastards that night at Driftmark, and by extension Dyaena, so why was it that her daughter still harbored affection for him, affection that completely blinded her to seeing the possibility of finding happiness elsewhere? Rhaenyra already knew the answer to that as she felt Daemon rest his arm on the back of her chair while her eyes looked deeply into violet ones so similar to her own, filled with the desperation to hear her mother's thoughts on the Queen's proposal, and something else, something that she hadn't seen glint in Dyaena's eyes in a long, long time.

Hope.

Please, she could practically hear her say.

Love could not be explained away, nor reasoned with, nor controlled. It was like a flower that could take root, persevere, and bloom even in the most unlikely and harshest of conditions, and if it were true, it would not simply wither and die should a storm seek to test its strength.