Ambers || Jacaerys Velaryon

21. Miara

"The babe is gone," Ser Steffon had whispered in her ear, his words like a death knell. "It never even lived."

Afterward, he asks her, in desperation, to do what neither the ladies-in-waiting nor he could manage-- to speak with the queen. Since the failed birth, Rhaenyra refused to see or talk to anyone. Steffon suggested sending the princes, thinking their mother might respond to her sons. But he pleaded with Miara first, hoping she could reach the queen, sparing the princes from seeing their mother in such a broken state.

The halls leading to Rhaenyra and Daemon's solar are eerily empty, any servants and guards are long dismissed. Miara suspects it was Steffon who excused them, but part of her knows they also left out of fear and grief, unwilling to remain in a place so thick with the scent of blood.

The echoes of labored breaths and muffled sobs have faded, leaving only a suffocating quiet in their wake.

As Miara steps into the room, she pauses. Rhaenyra sits on the stone floor near the open arches, staring out toward the sea. A cold breeze sweeps through the chamber, indifferent, but Rhaenyra doesn't shiver. She rocks gently, her body caught in a rhythm that seems to move on its own. A hollow hum escapes her lips, barely audible.

Miara approaches cautiously, and reality strikes her harder than she expects. In Rhaenyra's lap lies a small, grey bundle-- a fragile heap of limbs. Underneath the improperly formed features that twist scaled skin is a child. Their little Visenya. Still and silent.

"Your Grace," Miara croaks. She waits, hoping for some response, some acknowledgment. But there is none. Rhaenyra is trapped, her gaze fixed on the lifeless babe cradled in her arms.

Miara kneels beside her, close but not overbearingly so, respecting the distance mourning demands.

"Rhaenyra," Miara whispers again, her voice trembling with sorrow.

At last, the silver woman stirs. Her eyes, pale and vacant, shift toward Miara, glistening with unshed tears. Her face is drawn, haunted as lifeless as the babe she holds.

"It's a girl," Rhaenyra murmurs. "She's my girl."

There is no joy, no motherly warmth-- only the deep, endless misery of a future that will never be. Miara knows there are no words that could mend this wound, no comfort that could ease Rhaenyra's torment. All she can do is bear witness to the queen's grief and to the stillness of the child who never took a first breath.

"I'm so sorry," Miara utters, her throat tight, the words barely escaping her lips.

Rhaenyra's gaze falls, and the tears spill over, breaking free at last, falling upon the scaled babe below. Miara, unsure of what else to do, settles on the floor beside her, offering her presence. She will not leave her queen or the princess. Not like this.

For a long moment, they sit there together in the overwhelming quiet, the queen's soft, broken hum continuing again. Miara watches her, and it reminds her of something-- her own mother, retreating into herself, shutting her out. Miara had spent years grappling with that distance. Her mother had never wanted to bear a child, but she had loved Miara's father enough to do it. That love, though, had never extended to her. It had taken time to try and forgive her for it, or at least, to understand why it had happened in the first place.

Miara wonders what she might do if she were burdened like her mother, or like Rhaenyra now-- watching her body change and grow for a life she may never truly know, or perhaps learn to love only because of how it breaks her. It all feels like a cruel joke. She feels a sense of relief that, as a lowborn woman, she will likely never be forced to endure such a fate. That's one blessing for women like her. Their wombs aren't royal, and they aren't owned by fathers or husbands, at least, not always.