jhguppy123
Ellyn Thatch was never meant to matter to history.
She is only the daughter of a royal groundskeeper, one child among many in a crowded commoner's home where every coin matters and winter must be prepared for long before the first snow.
But Ellyn remembers another life.
A life where she was a botanist, Marine, field medic, forest ranger, survivalist, forager, and cook.
So she adapts.
She gathers what others ignore, preserves food before it spoils, makes soaps, medicines, dyes, salves, and survival foods, and quietly helps keep her enormous family fed and cared for.
She expects that to be enough.
Then Princess Helaena Targaryen finds her in the gardens.
What begins with flowers, insects, and an unlikely friendship slowly pulls Ellyn into the orbit of House Targaryen.
Soon princes are seeking her company, young lords are noticing her, letters arrive from Oldtown, and invitations begin looking suspiciously like courtship.
Ellyn may know how to survive the wilderness, treat wounds, and prepare a household for disaster, but apparently recognizing when someone is in love with her is another skill entirely.
Yet romance will not be the only thing tying her to the royal family.
As tensions rise and the realm moves toward war, Ellyn's knowledge, loyalty, and refusal to abandon the people she loves will place the groundskeeper's daughter far closer to history than anyone expected.
Kings will know her name.
Queens will trust her.
Princes will seek her heart.
And when the dragons begin to dance, Ellyn Thatch may become one of the people who changes who survives the fire.
History remembers dragons.
Perhaps it should have remembered the groundskeeper's daughter.