Desires Be Damned • Aemond Targaryen

Chapter Twenty-Six

Dyaena

The flight to Dragonstone was filled with the powerful beating of Meleys's wings, the cool whip of the wind biting at Dyaena's ears and nose, and the heavy silence between her and Rhaenys. Neither made any effort to break it at first, for the unspoken weighed heavy and stayed their tongues.

It was a necessary evil, she kept telling herself as the screams echoed in her mind over and over, scratching at her sanity with sharp, bloodstained claws.

He and I cannot be, was what she repeated each time the look on Aemond's face flashed behind her eyes, a cycle that deepened the cracks wounding her heart with each turn. She kept glancing behind her in fear that she would see Vhagar giving them chase, but even if Aemond had been foolish enough to try, Meleys was far swifter than the emerald behemoth.

After roughly an hour of undisturbed flight, Dyaena accepted that their journey would be unencumbered with one last look over her shoulder to see only clouds and the calm waters of Blackwater Bay once again. But the ease that that notion brought could not quell all of the anxiety plaguing her; they were returning to her home, but bearing news that will swiftly smother this farce of peace--a peace she could have helped to maintain, but at the cost of abandoning her family and whatever remained of her morality. How was it that the right choice was the one that stained her hands in blood, the one that will rob countless children of their fathers, the one that made her sacrifice the future she always wanted with the prince that her heart craved?

"Grandmother," she said, her voice crackling from disuse, "all those people... at the pit--"

"Close your heart to it, lest you be driven mad," Rhaenys said firmly. "War is all but inevitable now, and this is its heavy toll. A debt, I'm afraid, that is far from paid. There was no other way, my child."

Something heavy dropped into the pit of her stomach. How much more will I have to numb myself to just to survive from here on?

"Though I suspect you have more to forget than the blood we've spilled today," Rhaenys added, a tinge of pity in her voice.

"I know what duty demands of me," Dyaena asserted, steady and emotionless, but she knew she was still far from indifference towards him. "My mother needs me now, and I could not stay where I would be made a hostage of, no matter how sweetly they coated the cage."

"They meant to use you to force your mother's hand? Of course, now your betrothal makes sense," Rhaenys said with a shake of her head.

"How do you mean?"

Rhaenys turned so that her gaze met Dyaena's. "You are grown now, and we are alone, so I will speak plainly. Your parentage is a muddy dispute at best, and the challenge over the succession of the Driftwood throne proved that the Greens still hold firmly that you and your brothers are illegitimate. Your betrothal was meant to bind you in place, but never to Aemond. They never would have married you to him, not without ulterior motives to benefit them, and if their treachery was as long laid as I suspect--"

"A marriage elsewhere would secure far greater benefits should war arise, something they doubtlessly knew they needed to prepare for," Dyaena finished for her, and Rhaenys affirmed with a nod as she turned back. Though it painted a cruel reality, there was nothing within the reasoning that was flawed. It was an acceptance that equally pained her further and relieved her, for remaining there would have meant the unattainable was to be eternally dangled in front of her, just out of reach but never out of sight. Had she stayed, not only would she have been a hostage and a traitor to her family, but the court's fool as well.