PYROPHILIA ▸ Aegon the Conqueror

23. ( I find your presence rather peaceful )

Chapter 23 

- 

'I find your presence rather peaceful' 

GRIEF WAS INEXPLICABLY and utterly painful.

It stung like a knife - like a thousand knives into her skin. There was no way of escaping the lurking sorrow, the heart-wrenching pain of knowing her son was gone. She had almost died at her birthing bed to bring him to life and now his body lied lifeless and cold on that same bed. She felt the need to gauge her eyes out at the view, to muffle her screams as they carried Torrhen's body away, his hand slipping from her grasp. She cursed at them. She couldn't remember what vile words must have left her mouth, but she knew they had.

Ronell only visited her once, before Torrhen's funeral. He came to his room, the image of Lyarra curled next to the bed still twisting his insides. There were no more cries, no more screams and more curses. She was just laying there lifeless and empty, staring at the wall, her legs too weak to carry her. She was the sheer image of a ghost. Her clothes were sticking to her skin like they were wet, dirty and shredded at the edges, cuts she had caused herself. There was no good in her, no hope. She was just there. And Ronell couldn't even look at her.

"My Lady." He had stopped calling her by her name, the echo of it now too personal for the both of them. "You must rest."

"He is gone." It was like she spoke it for the first time, like she was breaking the news to him. "My boy is gone."

He tried to touch her, to soothe some of her ache or the tension in her body, but she had flinched at his touch. It had felt wrong to touch her. There was nothing between them anymore. They were just two strangers bound by a matrimonial and nothing else. A stranger should not have touched her in such an instance.

"Stand." It was more like an order than a suggestion or even a pleading. Lyarra did not move, the words barely reaching her. "I will not bear a ghost in my house."

These were the last words she heard from him, before she felt his presence vanish from the room. She couldn't understand who Lord Arryn had referred to. She couldn't understand whether the ghost was Torrhen or her.

She stayed curled on the floor for hours and hours. The subtle light that came through the window was soon gone. When it appeared again, a few of her handmaidens approached her carefully, picked her up from the floor and dressed her in a black gown.

They let him go at the river next to the Eyrie. They dressed him in blue and black, brushed his hair and then covered him with a white sheet. Every Lord was there with them, every man from the Vale had come to grieve their late little Lord. Ronell's men were spread all over the land, spears and bows and arrows in their hands. They were dressed like warriors. How ironic Lyarra thought, to come and shed tears like that for her boy, who never got to hold a weapon in his arms. He would become great, she assured herself. Her boy would have been the greatest of them.

Aegon had come first, right at the crack of dawn, along with a few of his soldiers. He was dressed in a black tunic, a colour Lyarra had never saw him wear, with golden embroideries spreading across his chest – dragon sigils. He had approached Ronell and shared his condolences before turning to her, his gaze worried.

He mumbled a few words to her, about how tragic his loss was, about how he hoped her pain would soon subside, but staring down her eyes, they was no more ice to them. There were like mirrors, reflecting his own image. They were scarily empty and just as numb as the rest of her face. She had nodded her head, watching him walk back to his place. His fingers brushed the back of her hand, as he left, an attempt to comfort her, but his touch had felt more out placed than ever. There were no comforting gestures, no comforting words that could ease what it was she was feeling. Aegon should have known that.