BLACK SHADOWS [HOTD]

7. confessions

year 112 ac

There was one thing Rhaelena noticed about the Eyrie that she couldn't help but love.

Silence.

The quietest of sounds, even as insignificant as a fly circling the thick columns, echoed through the halls. The princess found it very much to her liking. She could hear neither clinging of swords, nor desperate screams of serving girls nudging each other to get to work. The corridors were never filled with packs of self-obsessed noblemen. It was just herself, her cousin Jeyne, and the gusts of the wind washing like giant heavy waves over the Moon Door - its part that was never visible to the naked eye.

Rhaelena would wander around the main hall of the Eyrie for hours (whenever nobody was around, indeed). Her presence seemed to be haunting the abode of House Arryn.

Wearing nothing but a long black dress - the awkward baggy thing and the only garment piece she brought in her little bag, - her loose golden hair streaming down her chest and back, dark circles framing her purple orbs, she resembled a weary ghost much more than a living being. The princess was frequently found drifting around the halls, her mouth always closed, her eyes staring blankly at random objects.

This was her way to grieve. There were no more tears left in Rhaelena's eyes. Her mind, the field of dried hardened soil, couldn't be resurrected even with the downpour.

Her mother attempted to teach her many virtues, and most of these attempts ended up fruitless.

Rhaelena never mastered modesty. Instead, she mastered acting modestly.

She never mastered patience. Instead, she mastered leashing her impatience and keeping it locked inside her heart, like a mad hound.

However, she did master acceptance.

Rhaelena learned quite early that there were things that simply couldn't be fixed. Like a candleholder, made of beautiful clear glass, that fell on the stone floor and shattered due to the unintended, ill-calculated movement of Rhaenyra's hand. It happened when they were but seven summers. Time couldn't be brought back. The candleholder would never stand graciously at the mantelpiece. All that was left to do was to accept it.

Rhaelena was slowly coming to terms with what happened. The lingering thought of her mother's body turning into ashes in the funeral pyre did not wet her eyes anymore. However, many questions remained daunting in her mind, leaving her tossing and turning in the soft sheets at night.

The princess was sitting at the very edge of the Moon Door. Indeed, it was sealed shut, and her feet were only feeling the freezing cold of the marble surface instead of swaying in the wind. Rhaelena found it simply fascinating. Oh no, not the door itself, but how different noble houses had their own sophisticated ways to punish the undesirables.

The Arryns would push the traitors to meet their death through the Moon Door, their screams blending in more and more with the stormy winds every passing second of them falling to the ground. The Targaryens fed inconvenient personas to dragons, leaving nothing but scattered ashes and the reeking of the burning flesh.

"There is only one way for a person to be born, yet why are there so many to perish?" A barely audible whisper slipped off Rhaelena's lips.

"Because sometimes there is more sense in death than in life," her question was swiftly answered.

Rhaelena saw no point in turning around. She knew the voice well enough not to turn her head. A slight smirk tugged at the corners of her lips. He found her a lot faster than she expected.