Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. ━━━━━━━━━ The weight of the world is heavy in your trembling arms, but the heaviest burden to bear is not the sins of your life, it's the devil inside you.
ALLEN GINSBERG,HOWL AND OTHER POEMS ━━━━━━━━━
THE SERVANTS IN PENTOS HAD a game that seven-year-old Astoria did not understand.
If you were to be born again, what would your second life be like? one servant would ask another; when they were ferrying heavy jugs of wine through the corridors towards a feast of drunken men with wandering hands, or when they passed each other by in the hallways carrying bedpans that splashed their feet, or mucked out the stables of a horse that kicked them bloody.
Astoria didn't understand then because she was blind to the hardship of their lives, and because she was young and thus any dreams she had — that of travelling the world, marrying a handsome knight, or bearing the heirs of a noble house — were still possible for the future; she did not have to wish to start again when she had barely even begun.
But she understands that game now that she is older, because she has played it every day in King's Landing and she plays it in Dorne, as well.
She thinks it as men burn and turn to ash before the court; she wakes with the same question every morning and drifts to sleep each night thinking of its answer; she murmurs it to herself in her rooms after Elia has informed her that she is to flee with Aegon, that she is to leave her oldest friend behind. And when Doran informs her of the sack of the captiol, she cannot help but wonder — in a haze of unspeakable grief and fury at the gods who would leave her alive to bear this pain — whether they too played the same game in the scant few moments before their deaths.
If I were to be born again, what would my second life be like?
She does not ever expect to find a true answer to this question, because that would be impossible — you can never have a second life; the gods have only given you one to use as you see fit, to ruin.
Astoria does not shed a tear for a very long time. Only waiting for the nightmare to be over, to awake and find that it was naught but a bad dream. The thoughts of Elia are burning her mind, burning up everything, burning up the castle. Closing her eyes is never enough, but she always tries it even so. Everything reminds her of Elia. Everything she has done for the last years, she's done with Elia by her side, and everything she hasn't, she told Elia about. That, or she found out some other way. How did she always manage to do that, anyway?
And Rhaenys. Rhaenys, who would never grow up. Rhaenys, who would forever be a child. Rhaenys, who would never have the chance to love songs and silks and chivalry and gallant knights. Innocent, soft-spoken Rhaenys.
