What IF

Chapter 23

The Princess Who Was Promised

Quaithe or Shiera removed her shoal revealing her features.

She had a bracelet with a red ruby that shined brightly and glimmered in the dark candlelight of the ship.

Lyanna noticed that they had similarities, their silver hair and their porcelain skin was of one accord. Though her eyes were blue and Lyanna's were grey like her father.

'You're awake' Shiera commented, her voice was husky and raspy, something Lyanna found curious. A nod was her only response.

Shiera gave her a small smile before her face became serious.

'How is your cousin?' Shiera asked.

Lyanna grimaced as she thought about Sandor. In some moments he was fine and in other moments he was plagued with a melancholy from his recent bout of morning sadness.

'His mother is dead, he is doing as well as expected' she replied sharply.

Truth was that they were both reeling from the loss. Aunt Arya had raised them both and now she was gone. Gone because of her, gone because of who her parents were and that by rights all the kingdoms that they profited from were hers by rights and they wanted her gone. Some of those people were family.

Lyanna would never forget the faces she had seen when her Aunt Arya took her last breath, there was a large contingent of armed knights with shining armor and a raven tinted as their sigil. Her uncle's sigil.

Her aunt was a formidable fighter so she wasn't felled by a large group coming for her, no, she had been felled by trusting them. By trusting family.

Just like her father had trusted family, all the while that family had been betraying him and her mother. Her aunt had accepted their parlay with grace and she would not forget the look of betrayal on her face nor the pained look that the tall blonde female knight had when she stuck the blade in her heart.

'You feel anger and sadness' Shiera commented after her sharp response.

Lyanna huffed.

'What do you know of it?' she asked.

Shiera gave her an empathetic look.

'More than you know my dear, though your suffering is more magnified than my own' Shiera stated.

Lyanna regarded her.

'My aunt died because of me? Didn't she?' Lyanna asked the woman.

Shiera nodded. And Lyanna felt her heartache. Why did people keep dying on her?

She had been marked for death the day she was born and it was worse because it was her family that was hunting her.

'Why are they hunting me, I don't care about the bloody six kingdoms or the North' she stated.

'It's your blood my child and who you are' Shiera responded in kind. 'And those people aren't your family, maybe your aunt, the queen in North remains who she has always been but I suspect the raven sent her on a horrible path to ensure the worst of her would come to light. Your enemy isn't House Stark but the Three Eyed Raven, my former love Brynden. He was a complicated man, whose heart I broke too many times and I fear his heart became sullen.'

Shiera stood up and began crushing herbs that Lyanna could smell from here.

'That is why you are here and why I am helping you. You have power Lyanna Targaryen. You have the blood of the mother of dragons and the king of crows. Your magic is even greater than any deity I have ever seen and we can defeat the man that caused this.'