"Do you know what makes Targaryens so dangerous?" Daena asked, taking a moment to stare around at the sept's interior.
The High Sparrow remained wordless.
She turned to him with that violent look in her eyes, "We have the Blood of the Dragon, fire r...
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The Queen had been in labor for hours. Her agonizing screams echoed off the dark stone walls of Dragonstone's royal apartments.
"One more push, your grace," Grand Maester Pycelle encouraged from his seat at the foot of the Queen's birthing bed.
Rhaella could have sworn he had said that an hour ago. A servant came and dabbed her brow dry of sweat.
She often knew the names of the servants and wet nurses, as she had dealt with many of them after Rhaegar's birth.
However, following the string of stillbirths and miscarriages she'd endured, her husband had hired entirely new staff in his growing paranoia that she had been the reason for their children's deaths. That was how she found herself on Dragonstone for the birth.
She gathered up the little strength she had left, taking a deep breath and pushed, screaming as she did.
"I can see the head, your grace!" Pycelle called from the other end.
She bared down again, releasing another guttural scream as she did. Her child would be here soon and this agonizing labor would be over.
After several more excruciating pushes, she felt the child finally slide from her womb.
A babe's cries pierced the room a moment later, "A princess, my Queen!" Pycelle announced with subtle happiness.
The babe's cries were loud, a sign of good health.
"She's strong," Rhaella murmured, tears filling her eyes at the birth of a living child.
One of the midwives handed the Queen the new Princess.
Though utterly exhausted, Rhaella cooed at her new daughter, who didn't calm in the slightest and continued to cry loudly.
The doors to her chambers opened a moment later and Aerys entered, eager to see his new child.
The room fell silent as the staff around Rhaella bowed to the King approaching her bedside.
"A daughter, husband," she said, softly, presenting the crying babe to Aerys.
She was prepared for Aerys to berate her for the birth of a daughter, but she wasn't prepared for him to take the babe from her arms and look at his daughter with... tenderness? No, she was not prepared for that at all.
"What is she called?" He asked, still enraptured by the babe in his arms which had begun to calm, opening vibrant violet eyes that seemed to sparkle.
"I was thinking, Rhaena or... Daenys?" She suggested, demurely. While Aerys asked, he rarely liked her proposals for names, always being one for traditional Targaryen names.
"Daena," Aerys stated, "Daena Targaryen, Princess of the Seven Kingdoms."
He returned the babe to Rhaella and promptly left the room. The Queen released a breath she did not know she was holding and stared at her daughter.
Daena... There had only been one Daena in their family. And this babe had the same defiant look in her eyes as was told in the histories.
