Tale of Two Queens

[047] ravyns and ravens

four years later

"Are you listening my prince?"

Luke blinked as he cleared his throat and looked to Maester Gendarys with his large brown eyes. He nodded quickly and regained his composure before answering in High Valyrian. "Uh, the princess was betrayed and as a result...died?"

The room he sat in was terribly uncomfortable with a rather blunt chair and no cushion whilst the fireplace was too far for his own comfort. He liked to think this was the reason he couldn't pay attention but his sister did just fine and excelled quite well in this room.

"Disappeared. Not everyone dies in every story my prince."

Luke nodded as he looked back to his valyrian history book. He dozed off into space, his shoulders slumped and his energy at a low as he couldn't help but think about the day it was.

Today would have been Mera's nameday and because of it, his mother spent the morning crying and the rest of the day on dragon back.

It was already tirering enough to worry for her and now he had to worry about his studies? Sure his mother would have told him to put himself first and that he was a sweet boy but with Jace gone all the time, who was here for his mother other than Daemon?

His mother never lost hope and he himself liked to believe Mera was still alive but nothing gave him any hope or sign that she was. His mother clung to the idea that she might be still alive and so pleaded for anyone to come forth if they knew about her and while many came forth over the years, dressed as a parody of her with dyed hair that lacked the blue shimmer or a scar on the wrong side of the face, she always turned them away with a roll of her eyes.

Besides, she could always tell if they were her or not regardless of the attire they had. Mera wouldn't behave the way those pretenders did and she was sure, she would have been both flattered and disgusted at the idea of someone cosplaying as her.

"It's time for your mathematics now my prince."

Luke blinked out of his daze as he quickly nodded and got up from his chair to grab his mathematic book from the shelve only to tilt his head as he grabbed his own book. A busted up, broken spine, barely hanging on for dear life sort of book seemed to rot away in the corner as the paint on the cover had began to flake.

He grabbed it as well, abandoning his own book as he opened it to find mostly elegant handwriting but occasional chicken scratch. There was only one person to write like that and when he flipped to the first page of the book, the name Meranyce Velaryon was written there with a slight smudge of the letters.

"Prince Lucerys?"

Luke turned and brought the book over, gingerly, afraid to break it as he placed it down on the table. "This is my sister's."

Maester Gendarys took a moment as he flipped a few pages of it. The thing had been annotated the fuck out of as most of the ways to take on a question were crossed out and replaced with her own reasoning and equations. He found sketches of the cats that wandered Dragonstone while an occasional sketch of Joffrey or some maid could be seen at the corner of the pages.

It'd been so long since he saw that handwriting of her's, it almost made him tear up as he couldn't believe he forgotten it there for that long. "Yes, this is your sister's. As you can see she had a certain love for this book but I think she abandoned it quite early on."