After a forbidden night with Ser Criston Cole, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen is forced by her father, King Viserys, to drink the moon tea and protect her honor. To shield her image further, she weds Ser Laenor Velaryon, and together they move to Drift...
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Present Time
Red Keep, King's Landing
Viserys could scarcely trust what his one good eye beheld. It was as if a vision, conjured from an ancient dream, had stepped out of the mists of memory and into the throne room. Before him stood a young woman, no more than one-and-twenty, her figure wrapped in garments foreign to Westerosi eyes — fabrics and cuts that spoke of another world, yet clung to her like a warrior's second skin.
She was beautiful, but it was not her beauty that stole the King's breath. It was her presence. The long hair streaked with black and silver, falling loose down her back. The mismatched gaze that pierced through him — one eye emerald green, the other a violet as deep as amethyst — the very shade once borne by Alyssa Targaryen, his mother.
The room was drowned in silence. Lords, knights, and ladies held their tongues, waiting for the King's response to the words the visitor Queen had spoken. Slowly, with the weight of his years heavy upon him, Viserys rose from the Iron Throne. He brushed aside the offers of help, gripping his staff and forcing his own unsteady legs to carry him down the jagged steps.
Rhaenyra never once looked away from the young Queen. Tears glimmered in her eyes as she devoured every detail of the girl's face, desperate to carve it into her memory. The lightning-shaped scar carved into her forehead, defiant — a mark that no storm, no doom, could break her. The mismatched eyes, proof of bloodlines denied yet undeniable. The eyes of Alyssa... a grandmother whom the realm had dismissed as less, yet in this daughter's face shone the truest flame of House Targaryen.
At last, Viserys stood before her. He stared, awestruck, as though one of the Valyrian goddesses from his mother's bedtime tales had descended to walk among mortal men. Up close, more truths revealed themselves: the faint bend of her nose, as though once broken in battle. The small scar tugging at the corner of her lip, perhaps the relic of a fight survived. And her stance — proud, unyielding, laced with danger, radiating the authority of one who had already faced death and spat in its eye.
The silence stretched until it was nearly unbearable. Then, with a suddenness that made courtiers gasp, Viserys released his staff to one arm and extended his other hand in greeting.
"The pleasure is mine, Queen Dahlia," he said, his voice trembling but firm. "Welcome to Westeros."
When her hand clasped his, steady and assured, her lips curved into a smile.
Viserys froze. That smile — that very smile — belonged to his beloved Aemma.
The gods were toying with him.
"I wanted to thank you for the invitation," said the young woman once she had released the King's hand. "I hope it will not be seen as discourteous that I brought some of my soldiers. But surely you, above all, understand the burden of a monarch — the duty to protect oneself as much as one's people." Her words were gentle, her tone serene, yet the weight of her gaze carried the quiet strength of someone who had already borne that burden.
