Caelyra: Sister-Wife and Dragonborn

15: Rhaegar's Demands

Caelyra's arm still hurt as she left the Maester's rooms with Susanna Tully, who had come to keep her company  while the Maester checked her over to determine if the babe in her belly was fine and to see what ailed her arm.

A sprain. A bloody sprain. That was all.

She was lucky. Extremely so. It could've been broken or pulled from its socket. She should be grateful; yet she were not.

She worried about  her brother's swift retreat after handing her off. If he went in search of Odahviing, it could mean something dire for him. Odahviing isn't someone to bother with trivial things.

Her heart warmed at the thought of her dragon friend. She had missed him and everyone in her life.

The warmth vanished from her heart, replaced by a deep sorrow. 

More than a century and a half are a long time. Some of her friends, the human ones at least, must be dead and gone by now, unless they had survived by some great miracle; or some of them, that is, at the very least.

She know that not all of them could've survived the passage of time, nor the danger that lurked around every bend in the roads that dotted the landscapes of her former homeland.

Faces of each dear friend of her flashed through her mind, starting with Ralof of Riverwood whom she had known as a child, visiting Riverwood with her Breton aunt on her mother's side.

She heard his child voice in her mind, listened as it became rougher, deeper with age when he became a man and later a Stormcloak soldier in the rebel forces.

He had survived the Civil War in Skyrim. Married a woman from Markarth, had a child or two.

The last time they met....

She swallowed, feeling a coldness creep all over her heart. She didn't  remember their last meeting.  Why didn't she?

What happened that she didn't remember?  She couldn't even remember how her last day in her former life went.

She don't even know what happened that caused her to be reborn in Westeros as a princess that would be later forced into a marriage to her own brother, a brother that seemed to be bipolar most of the time.

Oh, how she wanted to know, and yet didn't  at the same time. For what would she uncover if she learned what had made her presence disappear from Tamriel? 

Did  an enemy of hers do some foul magic to get rid of her?

Odahviing said she didn't die, so how did she end up here in this life?

She shook herself  mentally to dispel the feeling of dread eating at her. It worked not. It grew in intensity and she found herself walking far more swiftly to get to her and Rhaegar's rooms as if something unseen were chasing her.

Susanna Tully complained half-heartedly as she too picked up the pace to follow her.

Caelyra wanted to send her away so that she could be left alone in her thoughts, but she didn't; she had no energy to waste her breathe on it.

When she finally reached her destination, Rhaegar came walking  from the opposite direction of the hallway, a look on his face that made her falter in her steps and  pause by the entrance to their rooms.

She did not like that look. It reminded her too much of the King.

"Lady Susanna," he said far to overly politely when he joined them by the door. "Please leave us, I would speak to my wife in private."

"Of course,  Your Grace," she heard Susanna's reply and the rustle of her skirts as she curtsied and then hastened away with quick steps that sounded loud in the silent hallway.