Alicent Hightower raised a bastard - The Stranger's Child.
Except she didn't.
Naenyra looked nothing like the Targaryen beauty that her father expected. She was, as her mother always wished, a Hightower at heart, and how she looked only proved it...
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Nyra found that the King's gaze would linger on her longer than it would any of her other siblings, his light eyes focusing on the features of her face. He would observe the shape of her eyes, the arch of her eyebrow, how her nose would scrunch or how her teeth would dig into her lips. It didn't matter if they were sitting and breaking their fast, or dining at a feast in celebration of something; he was always watching her. Like at any minute something was going to give, and the dark rumour would suddenly become truth.
While she could do nothing about her eyes, she had taken to covering her hair, styling herself in gabled hoods to conceal the shade. Nyra hated that she couldn't have the strands free to dance around her waist like her sister Helaena or to have them pulled back with a braid like her brother Aemond. No, Nyra had found that the King was more tolerable the less she looked like herself. So gabled hoods, black dragon gowns, and traditional Valyrian jewellery were the only things allowed to adorn her body. It had almost killed her to turn down her mother's necklace, to let it remain in its case unworn.
Of course once she finally sat down at the table, that was when the questions would come flying in. Questions that felt too personal to answer in front of the family over dinner. Questions that asked where she had been, what her teachers had been teaching, what she had been talking to so-and-so about. Aegon would watch it silently, drowning himself in his cups as the family did nothing but quietly mummer over food. Nearly two years had passed since that fateful nameday, and the family hadn't quite been the same since.
Nyra could still remember sitting beside her mother in the Sept after her eighth nameday, her hands clenched and her mind too busy to focus on praying. Alicent had expected it, she had every right to ask, after all. "Why did you not tell me?" She questioned after a moment, quietly muttering against the silence of the Sept.
She hadn't opened her eyes, and didn't want to look at her mother at that moment. "You were young, I wanted to keep you as ignorant as I could." Ignorant. To be blissfully unaware of life around her. "There was no point worrying you before your time, Nira. What good would it have done?"
Nothing, she supposed. "Why did you lie when you said he loved me?"
"I never lied to you, sweet one." Alicent said truthfully, watching her hands before laying her own over the top. "When I was carrying you, he did love you. More than the other pregnancies, he was excited for you." She admitted. "You were his golden child, why I don't know. I'd never seen him like that before."
"So what changed?" Why did Viserys no longer love her? Surely it could not just be because of how she looks.
Alicent swallowed, looking at her daughter. Beneath the light of the Sept, Nyra looked ethereal; the soft look on her face, the posture she held. She was a gift from the Gods, and if her hair had been free, Alicent would have even dared to have called her a Goddess of Fire. She knew that Nyra was beyond her years, that she had far too much understanding thrust upon her shoulders in such a short amount of time. She had to be made aware what caused it, and it couldn't be Alicent's hate that fueled them this time.
