FROM THORNS WE RISE-JACAERYS VELARYON

epilogue

The Princess' cries were heard all over the Red Keep. They taunted the Queen in her sleep, the howling of an injured dragon that feigned new wounds over their body tormenting the Queen in her nightmares. Truth was, Rhaella Targaryen only cried when the darkness clouded her room and the silence was unbearable, where her mind bore into the drapes of deep emerald and her nails dug into her pillows, clawing the stuffing as she yelled for it all to stop.

She didn't scream when the false King Aegon slithered into her room along with the former Commander of the King's guard and Prince Aemond, nonchalant, as they attempted to make her speak.

Aegon was always first, in his mad desire to have something more to hold against Jacaerys, the pure bliss it granted him to fuck the princess to tears. His movements, rough and sloppy, bruised the princess and sent her head into the pillow, but she wouldn't dare to let a word slip from her tongue.

The King's brother was next, easy to overstimulate the princess as he fucked his brother's seed into her, holding her hair and pinching her skin; the name of Lucerys Velaryon always on the tip of his tongue.

Last was Sir Criston, who fucked the princess the gentlest as guilt riddled his throat. He was the only one that looked into her eyes and held her to her chest to smell the sweetness of her hair. But no, not even he could make her utter a word in displeasure or angst.

She wouldn't betray her mother, wouldn't speak no matter what. As weeks went by, the hand maids realized the usual symptoms, the morning sickness, the growing appetite, and the slowly swelling belly. Rhaella gritted her teeth as she swore it was Jacaerys' child, defending the months and the time she had arrived. It certainly was, but the Queen still blindly hoped the child to have striking blonde hair and vibrant violet eyes.

Rhaella spent her nights restless and her days holding onto her womb, not drinking anything the maids would bring and barely eating. Her hair stuck thin to her face as did her skin to her bones, eyes turned grey and dull as she shivered from the cold. What kept her alive, the Maestre spoke, was her will to live for the little life growing inside of her.

It was one night when Aemond had wrapped his hands around her throat out of sheer frustration that she raised her hands to stop him, that the usurper chuckled. Not out of pleasure or amusement.

"The Princess is still loyal to a man that would rather lie with another bastard whore than to come rescue his wife."

Rhaella's brows furrowed, and the one eyed soldier stopped in his tracks.

"He knows you are here." He explained, and it sparked the idea she had denied for months; her family certainly believed she was dead, after the remains of Lucery's mount washing up on Dragonstone, as she had been taunted by the men, they surely though she had the same fate. "But he wouldn't care enough, he's in the north with that bastard girl of Rickon Stark."

"They have secretly wed," Otto Hightower added, and his somber ghost like appearance sparked shivers along her back. "I heard they are expecting."

Tears formed in her eyes, but she still wouldn't speak.

Rhaenyra had collapsed when she learnt she had lost her son and her last daughter, screaming in the Chamber of the painted table. She was going to climb onto Syrax and burn the whole of King's landing if it wasn't for Daemon forcing her to compose. A letter was shortly sent to Winterfell.

Jacaerys Velaryon had lost her. They came into the world together, and he had always innocently believed that was how they would leave too. But she was the first blood to spill, far before from the war to have started. She had bled under Aegon, but this time, he had taken too much.

The legitimate heir to the Iron Throne had destroyed his room in Winterfell as the Lord's awaited for him outside to give him their condolences. The idea that his child was growing inside of her made the pain insufferable, like an acid pit in his stomach that swallowed him completely.

Three days passed and the prince wouldn't leave his chambers until Lord Cregan's sister gently opened the door near dawn. The prince saw her dark locks glinting under the moonlight.