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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There was one thing Nyra had always hated about her lessons at the Starry Sept, something that had not been shared by the other girls, and that was the strictness of her Septa.
Septa Muriel was an old woman with enough wrinkles on her face that even though the girls once insisted on trying to count them when she’d fallen asleep at the desk, even they struggled to produce a number. She must have been the Starry Sept’s oldest resident, perhaps even old enough to have seen the coronation of Aegon or the Doom of Valyria. Nyra’s lip quirked at the thought, watching the small and frail woman bumble around the classroom, a wooden stick in hand.
Today, however, she had been rattling on about something or other, Nyra couldn’t be sure what exactly. The growing pain that had sprouted along her back was causing a distraction, and despite her dark eyes going from Septa Muriel to her book and back again, none of it seemed to make much sense.
She could see the other girls, Rosie eagerly engaged as her hand shot up and down; Ilaria offering insight every once in a while, and some of the smallfolk that sat around them giving their own recounts. She knew they couldn’t read, but the girls had been teaching them on a couple of their free afternoons. She knew eventually that the Septa would pick on her, so her head turned towards Ilaria. “What are we talking about?” She asked softly, her eyes kept on Septa Muriel.
Ilaria shot her a look. “We’re still on the judgement of the father.” She hissed, pointing to the page that Nyra had been staring at for what felt like the past day. How could they not have progressed? How was the Septa still talking about this small detail?
“Princess Naenyra.” There was a mardy tone to her voice, a smugness within there that had her back straightening, her eyes lifting. “Seeing as you feel so obliged to look at your book rather than me, can you draw me the symbol we use to represent judgement within the Faith of the Seven.” Nyra didn’t even realise that there was a symbol for judgement in the Faith, she thought it was just a concept.
But Septa Muriel had drawn it? Nyra blanched, all eyes looking on her as she quickly looked between the page and her. “Right. The symbol for judgement.” She said, nodding. She reached for her piece of paper, holding a quill in hand before beginning to move her hand across.
The wooden stick came down hard on her knuckles, Nyra hissing as burning erupted through them. This was her favourite thing to do with the Princess, and only the Princess. “There is no symbol for judgement, you half-wit. Perhaps use your ears and your eyes next time.” The skin blossomed with red, welts already appearing as the image of the stick became burned into her hand. Before the Septa had hit her enough times for her to bleed, claiming it was what the Faith demanded but no one else had walked away like it.
Nyra swallowed the thickness in her throat. “Forgive me, Septa Muriel.” The woman hummed, giving her another one for safe measure. Nyra clutched her hand tight to her, cradling it with her other one as blood blossomed beneath the skin. She hated Septa Muriel, today being one of her harder days.
