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ALTERNATE ENDING. ━━━━━━━━━ If suddenly you do not exist, if suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living. I do not dare to write it, if you die, I shall go on living.
PABLO NERUDA, THE DEAD WOMAN ━━━━━━━━━
THREE YEARS HAVE GONE BY SLOWLY. Astoria still looks no day over twenty but the child beside her has grown from an infant to a boy of four namedays.
In Pentos no one makes a distinction between bastard children and those born withing a marriage. So the choice had been an easy one. Playing the part of a mother however, had been harder. Still, she loves the boy more than life. Not because he reminds Astoria so much of Elia that it pains her to no ends — the almond shaped eyes, the slightly crooked smile, the loose curls — no, that's not it. He's all she has now. The only reason to keep on living, and not simply living but living happily, for his sake.
Only her mother and father know of the true heritage of Aegon Targaryen, for the rest of the world, he will be Iain Lhazar for many years to come. She named him after the brother she'd lost years ago to the sea.
Every first day of each month she dyes the silver hair of Aegon a rich black to hide the locks that would surely reveal his Targaryen descendants. Yet, the bright lilac eyes cannot be concealed or hidden from preying eyes. But Astoria finds a solution for that, too. She had not wanted to dishonour her slain knight but she is sure Arthur had rather wanted Elia's boy to live than for his name to be clean of any shame. And so she had named him his son, conceived whilst she was still residing in the Red Keep.
FATE, MEN INSIST, IS INEXORABLE. So much followed the gift of a crown of blue roses, blue as frost. So many died. There was so much heartache, so much blood and so many tears that together they would have made a great river, yet, in time, the eddies smoothed, new rivers joined, and the tears went down to the great wide unknowable sea, and people forgot how it ever began.
It is a day as any other, as Astoria ponders all this. She has a few hours to herself and she enjoys them, considering they have become a rarity. Aegon, as she still calls him in the hidden depths of her head, is at his midday lessons. That such a thing must exist at the age of four already seems ridiculous to Astoria, but she reckons that her parents know better about the upbringings of a child.
As she turns to leave her little spot in the gardens of her childhood home, she stops.
Astoria does not see him and think, how handsome you are. Astoria does not look at him and think, you should be dead. Astoria does not gaze upon him and think, this is what I have prayed for.
Astoria does not think any of these things, though they are all true, they are all of them true. She looks at him and thinks, it's been two years. Where have you been all this time, leaving me to suffer on my own?
