Play With Fire // Daemon Targaryen

2.5

Play With Fire: Chapter Eleven

The Funeral of Queen Aemma and Prince Baelon--

112 AL, The Crownlands

Baelon.

 That's what Viserys called his desired son. The son he sacrificed Aemma for. The son who passed not a day after his mother.  Rhaenyra had not been given the chance to know the child that caused the death of her dear mother, not that she really wanted to. All the young Targaryen wanted, was her mother. She no longer wanted to fly with Lyarra and Alicent atop Syrax, to see the wonders that the world had to offer, or to eat only cake. She wanted to see her mother's beautiful smile, to hear her honeyed voice, to feel the warmth radiating off of her. Daenys couldn't not want for the same, she wanted her sweet Aemma back. If not for herself, for Rhaenyra.

Daenys stood between her eldest daughter and her youngest older brother, with Rhaenyra directly infront of her. Daemon had clasped his sister's hand; consoling her, gently and calmly. He, too, would miss Aemma. He would miss her for the jests they shared at the many feasts they were in attendance for. Daenys noticed how Lyarra moved away from her, to stand with Rhaenyra - after Alicent had moved to stand with Otto, her father. She noticed how Lyarra grasped her cousin's hand, in a similar way to how Daemon had grasped her own.  She turned to look behind her slightly. She saw the empathatic looks of Corlys and Alicent, the sorrow-filled look of Rhaenys and the bored looks of Grand Maester Runciter and Ser Otto. She glowered at the two men who hailed from the reach, before turning to look at the wrapped bodies of Aemma and her babe on the pyre. It was only yesterday that both of those wrapped bodies were alive, yet here they were. Dead. Slipping her hand out of Daemon's grasp, Daenys moved to stand behind Rhaenyra. The young princess spoke her words in valyrian, sadness crept its way into the vowels and consonants. "I wonder if, during those few hours my brother lived, my father finally found happiness".

Daenys looked sympathetically towards her neice, before glaring at her eldest brother. He had severed his relationship with his own daughter by uttering the command that killed Aemma. She reset her sights on Rhaenyra, before speaking her own words. She copied her neice, uttering her words in the tongue of their ancestors.

"Nyra, Your father needs you. More now than he ever has."                                                                                "I will never be a son".

Those words broke Daenys' heart. She loved her brother, she really did. She saw how he loved his daughter,  but she saw how he would never truly value her counsel. He had listened to his advisors the same way Jaehaerys had. He would not see her as anything but a little girl, in a role similar to how she herself had. Viserys would not see her potential, he would see her as women were seen in Westeros. Meek, worthless, broodmares, unworthy of power.

Rhaenyra stepped forward. Her eyes glistened with the sorrow of her loss. As the tears built uup, her cheeks turned red. The realm's delight had lost the light in her life, sorrow surrounded her as it did the rest of the realm. She attempted the command, she attempted to tell her dragon to burn the corpses of her beloved mother, and her father's desired son. Yet she could not. Rhaenyra looked towards her father. Viserys looked pale with grief, his eyes were read and his cheeks were stained with tears. She did not believe that he had the right to be upset, to grieve. Especially because he had given the command to kill her mother, he was the reason she was wrapped in white cloth - awaiting cremation.  She finally uttered the word. Hesitation, despair and longing were evident in her command.

"Dracarys"

With that, Syrax stalked further down the cliff. She reached halfway down when she stopped, and let out her majestic, searing red-orange flames. The flames engulfed the corpses of Aemma and Baelon. After sometime, when the flame had truly caught on to Aemma, Viserys turned. He was pained to see the death of his beloved, and truly could not watch as the flames engulfed her body. Not a minute after turning, he walked away. He walked back to the procession that lead them to the cliffside. He was flanked by most of his small council; besides Lord Corlys, Princess Daenys and Prince Daemon. The only kingsguard that remained were Ser Harrold Westerling, Ser Steffon Darklyn and Ser Lorent Marbrand.

Lady Alicent had soon followed after her father, the flames too hot for her andal skin to witness.

When the pyre hastened to embers; Rhaenys and Corlys had taken Lyarra back to the procession with them and Daemon followed not long after them. He held a message, whispered into the orange skies of dusk, to give to the procession. Daenys and Rhaenyra would stay until the coals had cooled, and would return on the growing winged-beast that started the fire.

The people's princess had grasped the hand of the realm's delight, and brought her into a soothing embrace. Daenys cradled her neice, like Aemma would. Rhaenyra grasped at her bodice, unwilling to let go. She whispered her pleas to her aunt, pleas that were heard clearly in the light of the moon and in the ears of the intended. 

"Please don't go. Don't go Aunt Daenys, stay please. I need you, don't leave"

"I won't leave you Nyra. Not now, not ever."

The two Targaryen princesses stood in that same embrace, with pleas and promises floating in the air around them; until the coals cooled and the pyre had released its visitors. They made good of their first promised then, and would continue to make good of the second for many years to come.