Daenora, though a Velaryon in name, was born from seeds so tainted that even the blood of the dragon could not fully cleanse them.
As the issue of the affair of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Criston Cole she is the heir of a twisted legacy - of everything...
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CHAPTER 25 - FAMILY LINE -
128 AC
King Viserys had collapsed.
The news echoed through the Red Keep like the taunting melody of crows when they came to feast on a corpse. Every member of the court who could not pick at the rotten flesh with their own curious eyes, carried the knowledge further in search of someone who did.
Usually, Otto Hightower would have smothered the whispers before they spread into a raging wildfire. He was used to pulling the strings woven into the realm. If people got trapped within knots they could not untie, they had been sown there deliberately.
This time, however, the flames of gossip had grown so quickly, almost explosively, that they had bitten into his hands before he got the chance to rob them of their source.
Inevitably, talk would reach Daemon and Rhaenyra on Dragonstone; then the Hightowers were left at their mercy.
Suspicious of the colour green as he was, Daemon would assume Otto had wound his invisible threads around Viserys' neck. And for a good reason. Ever since the Hand had returned from Old Town, the king's health deteriorated drastically.
Nevertheless, the Hand of the King ensured Viserys lived long enough for him to arrange all the pieces on the board in his favour. Even if the light shining upon the great game was tinted greener with every day, he could not dispose of him yet.
Much to Aegon's displeasure.
The moment the prince set foot into the castle after circling its walls on Sunfyre for hours, he was dragged into the turmoil. Servants and healers scurried around, as if their wild mingle of footsteps was blurring the trails. Yet, their behaviour only raised suspicion.
Hope licking the wounds inside his bosom, he climbed the serpentine steps to the royal apartments — the servant's passages, where he was shielded from most hungry lords begging to be fed information. The king's chambers were the cemetery of his childhood. Treading on their cold grounds felt like digging up a penetrating loneliness long buried beneath.
As a boy, all Aegon had craved was for his father to look at him the same way he did at Rhaenyra. Whenever Alicent had taken him to the sept in the city, the young prince had sent prayers to the gods above. Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra. Let me be like Rhaenyra. Clothe me in her skin, burn my throat with her blood, so that I might taste what it feels like to be Rhaenyra.
Sometimes he caught himself staring at his mother, begging silently to be shoved back inside her womb and be born again looking like Rhaenyra.
His pleas remained unanswered for so long that he had lost his faith.
Although — as a young boy, he had laid in Viserys' arms, pressed to his chest like the most precious thing in the world. Aegon was the son he had always wanted. An heir for the realm. And yet, he became neither heir, nor loved. He became just Aegon, the forgotten eldest son.
