PLAY WITH FIRE, helaena targaryen

001

PLAY WITH FIRE

"How have your lessons been?"

Darik slouched in the chair he had all but threw himself on when he arrived, a book between his hands as his finger occasionally turned a page. Of all things he enjoyed doing, and that of boys his age, reading was his calling. He was more intelligent than any of the Princes he was surrounded by and he prided himself in such a fact.

"Fine, Mother," He responded, knowing the true meaning to her curiosity. Beneath the surface of his lessons sat the question about the sons of the Princess, heir to the Iron Throne. And like always, his answer was the same.

Lady Celia, born from her Baratheon Mother and Bracken Father, smiled tightly at her only child's shortness. She was many things — a beautiful woman, a smart woman, an envious and bitter one at that, and a Mother. But a Mother, she was not naturally born to be, for even with her son, her heart never really softened.

Her hands were never gentle. They were a burden. Her words were poison. Her actions were calculated. Everything she seemed to do, she did with purpose and her loyalty lied with the Queen who dressed in green. A beacon of war. An political act, a statement, that had been made years ago, when Darik had only been an infant himself.

He wasn't a child to have a temper. But when his Mother, who had wore the Queen's favourite colour of green, had attempted to lay out a green attire for him to wear upon the King and Queen's anniversary, he had been intolerable.

"And?" Lady Celia pressed, sitting opposite him now. Her hands laced together over her red and white dress-covered legs, an eyebrow raised. More than a simple word was expected of him, but in truth, Darik knew nothing of the heir's children. "How have they been during this turn's time spent in King's Landing?"

Closing the book, the boy of eleven knew he'd process nothing more of it until his Mother stopped with her questions.

"I know the eldest wishes to head back to Dragonstone sooner rather than late," Darik stared at the cover of his book. He was learning about the histories of the North, of the Old Gods, and such that he was not taught much of yet in King's Landing unless seeking more out. "But the Princess Rhaenyra is making this stay more permanent."

That was something that pleased his Mother to hear, her eyes lighting up for a second. He dares to look at her, the only person in the world who could make him feel small. And he's glad, proud even, that she looks the way she does — happy for something — then and there, before she focuses again and Darik is reminded it wasn't for him.

No. Never for him.

He was too much his Father for her to ever see past it. He did not see the resemblance outside of the colouring of his hair and eyes, but those were the first things any noticed. Those were the two things his Mother was stuck on.

"Fleeing the mess she has created will not solve them," Celia shakes her head with her fingers now curling over her knees. "She does as she pleases."

Darik thinks that's awfully funny coming from her. His Mother had been running from her marriage since the moment he'd been born, since the moment she had known her child would not die in her womb, and her duty to provide Ser Harwin Strong with an heir for Harrenhal was done. Over with it.

But, despite his own hurt — that he buries deeply within him, just as his Uncle Larys had once told him to do — over the way his Mother treated him, he understood where her anger came from. He understood everytime he heard a whisper that involved his Father.

And he could not ignore it when he saw the same mop of hair on Lucerys Velaryon's head that was on his own.

"Do her sons bother to speak with you?"