For almost her entire life, Daella Targaryen has lived as Mellara Rivers, the bastard daughter of Arnold Arryn and cupbearer of Lady Jeyne Arryn. First and trueborn daughter of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, Daella had but slight contact with her fami...
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E I G H T
Giddy with delight, seeing what's to come ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
Daella stared critically at herself in the mirror in her bathroom, biting the inside of her lip as she did so. Helaena had braided her hair this morning in a loose braid and when the maids had come to dress her for dinner, they had been disappointed to find Daella already wearing a Bordeaux red gown. She had dismissed them and they disappeared just as silently as they had appeared, reminding Daella oddly of an organised pack of mice. Pinching her cheeks one last time to bring some colour into them, she left the bathroom and her chambers for the royal apartment.
A knight followed suit, the clinking of his metal armour the only thing audible in the corridors. Daella didn't have to look over her shoulder to know that the man was unfamiliar to her, because the same knight was never stationed at her chambers twice. At first, she had tried to get to know her guard, to start a conversation with him, but after a week she had given up, partly because of the lack of response and mostly because she never saw them again.
When she arrived at the apartment, everybody was already seated and much to her surprise, the King and the Hand were present as well. Daella curtsied deeply for her grandfather and smiled at him, before taking the leftover seat in between Aemond and Helaena. "I apologise for being tardy," she said softly.
"No reason for, child," King Viserys said, almost launching into a coughing fit from those couple of words. Daella stared up at him from underneath her eyelashes, her eyes gliding over the small sores covering his face and the bones protruding from his chest. "Punctuality was never your mother's strongest trait either."
At the mention of her mother, Daella looked down at her plate. She had been at Kingslanding for three weeks now, and yet she had not heard a word from her mother, who was safely residing on Dragonstone with her husband and children. It made Daella wonder if her mother had forsaken her, accepting her losses and moving on with her remaining sons. She knew it was not fair to entertain such thoughts, but she could hardly help it. From the corners of her eyes, she watched as the servants carried in the dishes and set the table, distracting her.
"Bronze and silver will be commanded by the true heir," Helaena stated all of a sudden, breaking the silence and earning several surprised glances. She looked up, seemingly breaking from her trance and smiling. "After dinner, Daella and I are going to ride Dreamfyre."
Raising her eyebrows in surprise, Daella looked up at the woman she had grown to genuinely like, despite her original plan to only get close to her for information. "We are?" she asked.
"We are," Helaena confirmed, nodding once in confirmation.
"That sounds like a wonderful plan," the King said at once, overvoting whichever protest the Queen was about to deliver. He nodded to himself, let out a wheezing breath and nodded again. Helaena's statement seemed to light up his face in a way that Daella had not seen since she had been introduced to him in his solar. "Is it not time that you should become a dragon rider yourself, granddaughter?"
