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THE ARCANE QUEEN From the memories and sources collected by Grand Maester Samuel Tully 282-294 A.C
The servants of the Red Keep—those few who lived long enough to speak—remembered Visenya Targaryen with a mix of fear and pity. They said she had inherited her mother Elia of Dorne’s grace: delicate features, skin the color of Greenblood sand, and deep violet eyes carved in indigo. But where Elia had borne dignity even in sickness, Visenya seemed hollow. There was no fire in her movements, no light in her voice. She walked like a shadow and was silent like one who has heard too much.
Some called her “the mute maiden,” others deemed her a “living corpse” for the manner of her birth. She grew under the court’s watchful eyes—unseen, yet never unnoticed. She was punished when she spoke, punished if she stayed silent, punished if she too openly reminded them of her bloodline. She did not rebel, did not cry. She endured.
And yet, those who watched closely swore there was something in her silence, something waiting—like an ember that refuses to die. A threat that had not yet learned to name itself.
In the years when men divided the spoils of war, Visenya was seen more as a problem than a prize. But blood is a dangerous currency, and the girl bore the blood of the dragon. Some highborn counselors suggested marrying her to Renly Baratheon, or perhaps to one of Robert’s bastards, should he ever be named. But at court, they whispered that Visenya was a coin with two faces—and no one dared to toss it.
In 294 A.C., when Visenya "came of age"—to use the phrasing of the time—a Small Council was convened to decide her fate. Lord Protector Jon Arryn, ever measured, proposed that she be wed to a sterile or impotent man, so that the Targaryen line would end in the silence of a cold bed. But neither Tywin Lannister nor Robert Baratheon wished to take chances.
It was then, according to sources kept hidden for decades, that the king consented to an act so vile it was omitted even from Grand Maester Pycelle’s records. Ser George Chaster—the same knight who had slain little Rhaenys—was given a new task: to destroy what remained of the sister. The act was carried out with cruelty, and without shame.
The following day, Visenya vanished from the court’s halls.
For weeks, no one saw her. She didn’t eat, didn’t speak. She had taken refuge in a remote chamber where even light seemed afraid to enter. The maids who tended to her said she lay like a statue, eyes open but empty. Some believed her dead. Perhaps she truly was.
But something changed.
Those who saw her in the days that followed spoke of a different gaze. Her violet eyes, once dimmed by fear, had gained a new depth—sharp as shattered glass. She began to speak little, but with words that seemed to come from another mouth, perhaps another life. She dreamed. She dreamed of fire. She saw ruined cities and dragons above starless skies. Her nurse, a woman named Kezia, wrote in a letter that “the flame of the old gods was within her. She was no longer a child.”
Over the course of that year, Visenya disappeared.
There was no uproar, no intricate conspiracy. Grand Maester Pycelle noted simply that the girl “fled with the resolve of one who has already seen death and chosen otherwise.” According to Kezia, she found refuge in the secret tunnels built centuries earlier by Maegor the Cruel, and through one of them she left the Keep, carrying with her a dragon’s egg. The last one, it was said, still to exist in Westeros.
Oldtown, the City Watch, Varys’s spies—they all searched for Visenya. None found her.
Rumor claims she hid for weeks near the Red Keep kitchens, cloaked in smoke and beams, secretly fed by the ever-loyal Kezia. And when the search waned, it was Kezia herself who led her out of the city.
The moon was pale that night, the sky veiled and starless. Beneath the northern walls, Kezia guided her along an abandoned viaduct, thick with damp and cobwebs. The sea's waters barely caught the sky’s reflection, and the sound of waves was like a lament.
“This way,” the woman murmured, her voice steady.
“How do you know where it leads?” asked Visenya.
“Because I’ve lived many lives before I was your nurse,” came the reply.
The shore greeted them with the scent of salt and rotting seaweed. A small boat waited, solitary among the wrecks. Visenya stared at it. “Who gave it to you?”
Kezia smiled, bitter. “There are more people than you think who want you free.”
Visenya hesitated. “Why should I trust you? You taught me to bow my head. Now you ask me to run?”
“Bowing your head kept you alive,” Kezia said. “But now it’s time to raise it.”
They climbed aboard. Kezia took the oars, then passed them to the girl. “You’ll row too. We won’t get far if you don’t learn to fight for yourself.”
In the silence broken only by the splash of water, Visenya rowed. The Red Keep receded in the distance. The past, heavy as it was, remained behind.
“You’re not from the Stormlands, are you?” she asked.
Kezia did not deny it. “My land is far away. It’s not on this map. And it doesn’t matter—yet.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Isidro. A refuge. A beginning. Then, if you wish, to your uncles.”
Visenya looked at the egg cradled in her arms. She could feel it pulsing, as if something inside were breathing.
“What if I don’t want to sell it?” she whispered.
Kezia watched her. “Then you won’t sell it. But coin buys freedom in this world.”
The boat glided through the water. The moon climbed. The world slept, unaware.
