I'll tell you a story one that the bards no longer sing about, one silenced by fear and gold. A story of three great houses, three seemingly great boys, now all turned men, a story of how Tywin Lannister became the Great Lion, Aerys Targeryen the Ma...
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"Please!" She cried out her silver mane disheveled as she gave birth to her second child only a few days before. "I just want to see her!"
"Rhaelle." Prince Duncan sighs, looking at his sister's husband, but he knew Orumund would give into his wife's demands. Love may not have been there at first, but like waves crashing against a rock it kept wore down their distaste for one another until they shared a bond.
"Alysanne would rather her marry the lion than a Tyrell thorn!" She rages like the dragon she is, "How can you keep your promise to Alysanne if you hand her daughter off like a prized cow to those who want her head!" His sisters anger he chalks up to her maternal instincts, and he knew from his brother that Shaera too felt the same ache inside her for the child their sister died birthing.
"She will come here to Storms End to live until her marriage occurs." Duncan counters as a way to make his sister forget about the attended betrothal.
"Tywin why must you sulk?" Gwyneth says as she whips her long rose gold hair around to face him.
"I do not sulk." His green eyes are pointed furiously at her own, but unlike his that are more leafy green. Gwyneth's eyes are like emeralds plucked from the minds and set into her eye sockets, they even glitter.
Her nose scrunched up, "Then little lion, what do you do?"
"Brood." He says with a low growl.
"Because you shall miss me while I am away at Storms End?" She asks him with a small smile on her delicate features.
"I treasure the quietness."
"Yes of your lonely life." She chides.
"Lords-"
She interrupts him, "Who have friends have more enemies, you cannot trust anyone but yourself."
"Exactly." He says with a small grin at his words coming out of her mouth, though he would never admit it. Not aloud.
"Good thing I never wanted to be your friend."
For the next eight years those are the words she leaves him with, but he realizes that perhaps they could never be friends.
Steffon Baratheon felt excitement spark though him as his mother told him that he would soon have a playmate his own age.
The day came when she arrived with pomp and circumstance only a Targeryen born could muster, though he knew from his mother, she did not look like the average Targeryen princess. Like him, they shared a Targeryen mother but a father with stronger genes. Finally, he would not feel left out for having the Baratheon genes.
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And when he saw her, he saw a girl with more confidence than a grown man! He knew she lived in the lions den for years, but he did not know she garnered their easy confidence. Something over the years, he too would acquire.
But it was not until he talked to her at the feast that night, that he knew the girl behind the emerald eyes and curtain of red hair. As they talked all night, mother let them share chambers for this occasion of Gwyneth's fostering was indeed monumental and special. So for one night she allowed them to stay up talking, if she only knew the monsters she created.
They grew inseparable, when one saw a head of red swaying in the salty air, it was expected that a head of thick black hair was not to far behind.
She was the one thing he ever wanted.
As the sun rose, their Septa would often find the curled up in the same bed and they continued this routine until his mother told them that if the Tyrell's knew of it, his dear sea-star, as he called her would be ruined and shamed.
"Why is it our boys want the one girl they can never have?" He heard his mother ask his aunt when he was only one and ten. At first, he did not know what she meant but as he grew he realized that he competed for his cousins affection with Prince Aerys.
"Is that not the Targeryen way? To love what destroys you?" His aunt says to his mother one day when she thinks no one is listening. But, he is. He always is.
"I am afraid so." His mother says sadly, before continuing, "Shaera did you know the Lannister heir, he thought so highly of our rose?"
"Jaehaerys mentioned that his father asked for a betrothal between the two, but Duncan did not think the Lannister boy would be fit for her."
"But the Tyrell heir would?" His mother cringes at the idea of handing off the niece she loved like a daughter off to those who would probably kill her if not for the prosperity and peace she would bring to them.
"Our children are paying for the sins of their parents. Aerys knows he can never have her, though he acts like he can. And Steffon he distances himself from any feelings. But, she knows." His aunt Shaera says with a sad glance over to Aerys and Gwyneth running around the gardens, not a care in the world. And he knew then, Aerys would not be like him. He would not stop until he got what he wanted, and he wanted Gwyneth. But would the lion be the problem, he could not stop?
