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CHAPTER FIFTEEN. ━━━━━━━━━ Under love's heavy burden do I sink.
ROMEO AND JULIET, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ━━━━━━━━━
A CROWN IS ALWAYS PAID for in blood. And Elia would always remember how it began — a crown of winter roses, blue as frost, ice-blue, ice-cold, laid upon the lap of a daughter of the north. Could a crown of flowers change the world so?
She decides that Rheagar cannot have everything the Seven Kingdoms have to offer. Not this time.
Her children belong to her as much as they do him. She will not shrink herself so that her children may claim his dragon blood, his follies, his faraway dreams. While Rhaegar took three Kingsguards with him to wherever he is hiding the Stark girl, only Ser Jaime is left to guard her children. Sweet, brave Jaime, who Elia knows would try his best but he is a green boy, no matter what he might want the court to believe. Rhaegar must know this as well as her and still, he had left them without a second thought—he could've sent them to Dorne, to Dragonstone, anywhere.
Rhaegar had loved his children, yes, in his sad, sullen way but there had been disappointment as well. Rhaenys is prone to laughter, so alive, bursting with impatience and Aegon is an infant still, but the glint in his mischievous eyes bears no resemblance to the lonely Prince. Those are her children more than they are his — more sun than dragon.
No spirits of Summerhall come to visit their dreams, no prophecies of doom ever capture their childlike imaginations. They can play at being sullen but their lilac eyes laugh and laugh and laugh.
"She smells Dornish," Elia remembers the king hissing when Rhaenys was presented to him. Everyone had thought it a grave insult except for Elia. He thought to humiliate me, yet gave me the biggest compliment.
Astoria begs for Elia not to send her away but it is the only way. "It took me a day and a night to bring Aegon into the world — through it all I have never lost faith, and I won't lose it now. I can't," she tells her quietly. "He must live."
"He will. But you must come with us," Astoria insists fiercly.
"You know that I cannot. I will not risk my son's life so that I am safe. This way no one shall ever know of this. He will be safe somewhere far away from here and he will live a good life," she says. "And one day he will be told of the sacrafice his mother and sister made so that he would live."
Astoria's face twists as if someone has emptied her lungs of air. She loves Elia's children dearly. "I know, Elia. But I can't bear to leave you. If the Holdfast should fall —" she whispers and suddenly there are tears in her eyes. Astoria doesn't want Elia to send her away. She wants to keep her close, comfort her with tale or song while the world falls apart around them, hug her tight and never let go.
