To Love A King || Maegor Targaryen

24 • THE FUNERAL

Time passes in a vacuum, the tournament was stopped abruptly. King Maegor sits beside his queen's birthing bed, which is empty but for the bloody bedding left behind. It looks as if someone were slaughtered in the white sheets.

Rhaenyra arrives in the doorway, but she does not cross the threshold. She refuses to come inside, but sees Alicent crying profusely at the entrance, they both held each other's gaze.

"I'm sorry princess." Alicent mutters her condolences.

Rheanyra ignores her and gently approaches her aunt's door, entering she sees her uncle's head buried in his hands, whimpering and shedding tears.

Alicent follows her to check on the King but it seems the man was merely a shadow of himself, she wished she could go to console him, but they weren't acquainted, so she stood in the cellar silently weeping for his loss.

Maegor sits in his chair in a black fog, either unaware of niece's presence, Rheanyra goes him and offers him comfort as they both weep.

Alicent sighs, pulls herself out of the room, running past the doorway, then flees, crying.

When she is gone, the Grand Maester enters with the King's new born son, the child was still breathing and wailing softly, but as Mellos approaches the King, the infant, began choking.

Rheanyra goes to collect the infant from the Grand Maester. "Your son is here uncle." she whimpers, sniffing looking down at the fine babe who instantly gave up the ghost in thin air.

"Baelon?"

"Baelon?"

"Baelon?" Rheanyra gently shook the baby, but nothing is heard. "He- he's dead..... Maester Mellos?" she turns to the old man to do something.

Devasted, the Grand Maester lowers his head. "I'm so sorry Your Grace."

Rheanyra blinks and stared down at the dead child in her arms before looking back at her uncle with glassy eyes.

Maegor looks up to meet the gaze of his niece, then down at dead infant in his arms, the extension of Mellario died within him, and his love became ash and bone. Fickle as dust.

•••••••••
Approximately a week, the morning sun rises over Rhaenys' Hill. The Bells of the Grand Sept ring out in mourning.

Valérion, stands at the peak of the hill, attended by ten dragonkeepers: ten Elders, ten Acolytes. The growls rumbled like thunder, she purrs in agony, feeling her riders grief.

Outside the city walls beside the Black Water Rush, A throng of hundreds of lords and ladys have gathered on the mound, all of them dressed in mourning, paying their last respect to Queen Mellario of House Martell and her dead son, Prince Baelon the Second.

The king's small council stands at the front of the crowd. The lords and ladies of all the houses who were in King's Landing for Viserys' great tournament attend, including Velaryon, Arryn, Hightower, Baratheon, Strong, Lannisters, Darklyn, Beesbury and the households of the Martells were in attendance.

All stood in black, silently as the wind whipped around them, waves crashing against the shores. Rheanyra stares at her aunt and nephew corpses, waiting to be burned.

Baby Baelon is cremated along with Queen Mellario's body and laid upon the stone. On a smaller, adjacent bier lies a second, tiny funeral shroud that is so small that it could be easily missed. Their corpses wrapped in a white shroud of separate bundles, doused in flammable material, on a funeral pyre.

As per Targaryen custom, it is mandatory to burn their dead. The dead is burned by dragon fire and their ashes in interred deep beneath the Red Keep in their crept.