Burn Together ❖ Daemon Targaryen

Chapter 7

" ... The war in the Stepstones had raged on for years. The Velaryon army had never had enough power to defeat the Triarchy, led by the Crabfeeder, until Prince Daemon joined the war. With him and Caraxes, and Prince Laenor Velaryon and Seasmoke, the Velaryon side were powerful. Still, the Triarchy held on. The war came to an end in a brutal way. Prince Daemon had faced the Triarchy alone, waving a white flag to surrender, and then had taken on hundreds of men on his own. The Prince was shot in the chest and for a moment it had looked like he was dead and the war was lost. Then, the Velaryon army and their dragons descended and the tides changed in their favour. Renewed, Daemon Taragaryen fought his way to the Crabfeeder's cave, arriving bleeding and wounded, and he emerged holding the Crabfeeder's head high. The war had been won. Daemon Targaryen had been victorious ... "

Rhaellanne walked around the halls of the Red Keep as a shell of the former girl she had once been. This castle used to be full of laughter from the two Princesses as they chased each other and ran around their mother's skirts, but now that joy had vanished, replaced by a silence that felt so thick it could drown you.

Aegon's second name day had changed things for the Princesses. They no longer entered rooms like they were trying not to be noticed, or trying to fit into the space the men had left for them. Instead, they walked into every room like they owned it.

Rhaenyra spoke in small council meetings even when not invited to, just to remind the men there that she was her father's heir. 

Rhaellanne had a glare that could silence a man and turn him into a stuttering moron within seconds.

Alicent had learned her new place in the castle too. People cooed over her sons, Aegon and Aemond, and claimed that they would be the future of House Targaryen one day, meanwhile nobody spared their mother a glance.

She tried. She dressed in black and red, Targaryen colours, made polite small talk with noblemen and women, and smiled when appropriate, playing the part of the perfect Queen just as her father had raised her to. Nobody looked at her twice. She was not a Queen, she had been reduced to just the King's second wife and the mother of two Targaryen sons.

She ate meals alone in her chambers and was only visited by the King and her babes while the two girls she had once ago considered friends ignored her existence.

Rhaellanne had not looked at her more than once in the last year. Alicent assumed it was because the Princess was still angry at her for replacing her mother, but the truth was that Rhaellanne could barely stomach to be with anyone but her sister.

Rhaellanne was now nineteen years of age, and as such the words "husband" and "marriage" were whispered behind her by every man. 

Seeing the King was too hurtful because her father remained adamant that Rhaellanne must be wed soon. 

If she waited too long then men of the realm would whisper that something was wrong with her and then she may never find a good match, leaving her a spinster and powerless. Rhaellanne had tried to compromise with him. She spoke to noblemen visiting King's Landing, laughed politely at some jokes, and even shared a dance with one, yet the conversations all ended with Rhaellanne walking away and leaving the men to mutter about her. 

The only man she was capable of giving a genuine smile to was Lord Bennard Stark who had come to visit again in an effort to push them together. He was a kind man, and handsome, but Rhaellanne held no affection for him and he knew it. Instead they remained close friends and nothing more.