Ruin Me

Chapter One

(A/N: Happy birthday to me! And welcome to our annual birthday book, a gift from me to you. I hope you enjoy the first few chapters of Ruin Me because I think that this is one of my favourite stories that I've ever written. Also major trigger warnings because as we know GoT and HotD cover a lot of potentially trigger topics like rape, murder and miscarriages. Please don't read if this applies to you. For everyone else I hope you enjoy it. XxD)

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The name Targaryen alone carried a lot of weight. If you identified yourself by the name Targaryen, you would already have people bowing at your feet. However, it was your first name that determined whether or not people bowed out of fear or loyalty.

Daenyra and Rhaenyra Targaryen, were the twin girls and only living children of King Viserys and Queen Aemma. Yet, there was always one big thing that separated the two girls, despite the fact that they had always done everything together. Two. As there were two of them, and two dragon eggs in their cradle, two minutes of time divided Rhaenyra from Daenyra.

Rhaenyra was the firstborn. She was the apple of their father's eye and while Daenyra was indeed loved by him, she was never as valued as Rhaenyra was, never as celebrated. It was the small things that really helped her make that determination. The way he spoke about Rhaenyra as if she could do no wrong, the way he would raise his wine goblet to her at the dinner table. The way he gave her the responsibility to be his cupbearer. Her sister was trained to be the perfect lady at court, the perfect princess, whilst Daenyra had more freedom to pursue other interests, so yes, while she was a little bitter about the preferential treatment of their father, it wasn't all bad either. She never resented her sister for it. In fact, the two girls were rather close as you would expect twins to be.

At the ripe age of 5 and 10, both girls were already well-settled into their respective roles, Rhaenyra as cupbearer and Daenyra as a simple court lady. Well, simple to the untrained eye. The blind eyes were the ones who had been trained to ignore the interests of the second-born princess. She was only recognised as the second-born because of the only physical feature that defined her from Rhaenyra. Daenyra was the only princess and perhaps the only Targaryen to be born with eyes the colour of amber, like the flaming heat of a dragon's breath. It would make sense, seeing that she was a daring dragon rider and that her dragon was far from the twin of Rhaenyra's.

While the dragon's egg that nestled beside Rhaenyra in her cradle had yielded Syrax, a yellow female, a rare creature in itself as female dragons were hard to come by, the silvery grey egg that had laid contently next to Daenyra had yielded a creature completely different to her sister's. It was perhaps the only other difference between the twins. The dragon Daenyra rode on was male and named Myrrax, for the mirror-like shine his scales had. Not to mention the fact that at the tender age of 15, Myrrax was three times the size of Syrax. The Dragonkeepers said that he could possibly grow to be the size of Vermithor, but he still had many years before he would even be a contender against The Bronze Fury.

That should have been Daenyra's first clue as to what her future would hold. It was prophetic, perhaps, that whilst Rhaenyra's dragon was smaller and likely wouldn't grow bigger until long after her lifetime, Daenyra's was a rapidly growing creature, prime for battle. A huge dragon with scales that gave him the ability to shroud himself in shadows and smoke and attack with stealth before their enemies even knew they were there – not that Daenyra was allowed to have enemies being a Targaryen Princess. So similar and yet so different. Seemingly equal but not.

The twin girls had just enjoyed a morning flight above the skies of Westeros before being escorted back to the castle to speak to their mother. It was not an unfamiliar sight to see Queen Aemma with a swollen belly, but there was something so completely tragic about the fact that her belly was always teeming with life that never quite seemed to survive outside her body. Rhaenyra never counted but Daenyra did. It was five. Five chances they had to have another sibling, but yet, the two girls were forever cursed to have only each other as company. Not that they complained. Rhaenyra and Daenyra were as close as twins could be as the blue-eyed and amber-eyed princesses made their way through the palace.