Flowers of the Bride || Daemon Targaryen

Chapter One

  
Rhaenyra avoided the eyes.

     They light lavender eyes of the two boys across from her. The three eyes that matched perfectly to the youthful girl's who had past seventeen years before. The faces that resembled her cousins so much. The smirks on their faces that reminded Rhaenyra of her.

     She could not face it. Could not face their way.

It was her damned reality. When she'd sleep at night, she'd dream of herself back in her cousins arms, sat under the Godswood tree, the trees leaves a sickened blood red as they fell off of the branches due to the strong wind. She'd braid her cousins hair as the girl read, leaning against the oak-white bark, humming a soft tune to herself.

But then morning arose, and Rhaenyra would be forced to awaken from that dream. The dream she so wished could be real once more. She would sit through endless council meetings, watch her sons play on the sand on Dragonstone's beach, nurse her baby boys in their nursery, all the while humming that same tune to herself.

     All the while, thinking of the two boys standing across from her who would never know their mothers laugh. Who would spend their lives, and have spent their lives, believing themselves unloved and uncared for when it was very truly the opposite.

     And her heart, mind, and soul was overflowing with the feeling she had so hating ever since she was old enough to understand it : guilt.

     Guilt for not taking in the boys when she had the chance. They reminded her too much of her cousin. Guilt for allowing the court, her father, and Alicent to erase every memory of her cousin from history. She was grieving and did not understand. And guilt for marrying the man whom loved her cousin. She would have never held it against her.

     So she avoided the eyes. Even though they were staring daggers into her own as she focused on Vaemond's words.

     They still did not know.

     How could they? Alicent had put herself forward as their mother the moment Rhaenyra's cousin passed, the moment she became Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. And Viserys would never speak the truth, for if he did, his title  'The Good King'  would be no longer. And Otto... he would never speak the truth. After all, it was his idea to erase it.

     The people of Kings Landing knew about the former Queen. The kindness, love, and generosity she offered them never went unnoticed. But they would never speak against their King, for when one once did, his tongue was cut from his throat and his hands from his body.

     So, the whispers stopped altogether.

     And Alicent Hightower was known now and forevermore as the mother of Prince Aegon II and Prince Aemond. Her daughter Helaena, born to the King when he and Alicent were not yet wed, when she had betrayed her closest friend in Viserys marriage bed, was the only true child of the current King and Queen, and the current rider of her cousins former dragon and close companion, Dreamfyre.

     Rhaenyra despised everything about her former friend.

     The confidence she once loved about Alicent had transformed into jealousy, the color green she dons on her body and feet representing the obvious envy she felt towards Rhaenyra and her cousin.

     The kindness had that she had once wished to possess had made her realize every word the red-headed woman had spoken to the two Targaryen girls were truly the words of spite and villainous treachery.

     In truth, the only emotion Rhaenyra felt towards her step-mother was pity. Alicent felt that the only when she could enter the world of nobility and importance of character, other than being known as the daughter of the Hand of the King and second born son of Lord Hightower, was to betray those who cared so deeply for her in every possible way.