Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen

  The winged tiara with rubies, though it looked massive, was in fact light—Valyrian steel made for equally successful swords and jewelry. After she became Daemon's wife, the Tyroshi presented her with a crown of gold and emeralds shaped like Syrax's horns, then a silver circlet with a rge amethyst to match her husband's triple crown, then another golden one with seven multi-colored stones; there were others, but of all the treasury, Rhaenyra preferred the ancient kokoshnik. A snarling dragon with bzing red eyes either folded or spread its wings, forming a tent over her head, and hardly anything more Valyrian could be found in the entire world after the Doom. Mother wore the tiara barely a couple of times, but the very fact that it belonged to Queen Aemma made the adornment priceless in her daughter's eyes.

  Perhaps she should have offered Alyssa to wear it for the wedding, but parting with her mother's inheritance was beyond her strength, and Rhaenyra comforted herself that she would not have given it to either daughters or daughters-in-w in life. Her stepdaughter must have understood her perfectly well, so she did not even gnce at the winged tiara and chose silver with amethyst for the wedding: neutral enough and at the same time meant to remind of her father's regalia. And now, looking at the girl's st preparations on her wedding day, Rhaenyra was once again convinced of the correctness of her decision.

  The maids smoothed the folds and ruffles of the bck brocade dress with red ce on Alyssa for the st time, tucked in the st pins to secure her thick curls more reliably, snapped a neckce of several strands of dragongss around her neck, and checked the earrings with long amethysts once more. Both the bride herself and her outfit represented a strange mixture of Andal and Valyrian, Westerosi and Pentoshi with Tyroshi. Alyssa took after her father in eyes and stature—as far as Rhaenyra remembered her predecessor, Cal Karris was petite. Targaryen blood lightened the light brown hair of the Andals, but there was not a hint of silver and white gold in it. The dress itself, of completely Andal cut with colorful and intricate Essosi patterns, was combined with the jewelry of the dragonlords of the Old Freehold.

  Finally, the eldest of the maids announced, addressing both stepmother and stepdaughter at once:

  "Everything is ready, Princess."

  "Leave us," Rhaenyra ordered.

  The women curtsied and, rustling their dresses, withdrew, and the Princess rose from her chair and approached Alyssa. Her adopted daughter stood before a rge Braavosi mirror in an ivory frame and critically studied her reflection, biting her lip—an old childhood habit the girl either could not or would not break. This gesture, so familiar to Rhaenyra, always seemed charming to her, but seeing such childishness from a tall, stately bride was especially touching. She stood behind the girl's shoulder and caught the gaze of violet eyes in the mirror:

  "Nervous?"

  "No. Well, perhaps a little."

  "When I married your father, I was nervous too," the Princess chuckled. "But at least I had someone to share that anxiety with then."

  She remembered that if not for the dies-in-waiting, she and Laena would have talked the night away then, discussing everything in the world: from suitors, dresses, and jewelry to pns for life.

  "Did it help?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Then there is no sense in double weddings either," the girl shook her head. "You said yourself that the bride is the most important person at the wedding, but what if there are two? Nonsense."

  "Politics," Rhaenyra shrugged. Had she not been sure that most eyes in the sept that day almost fifteen years ago were focused on her and Daemon, she would have agreed with Alyssa.

  "Like my marriage."

  "Yes," the Princess nodded.

  She and Daemon had long ago expined to their daughter what awaited her, so she had time to rid herself of girlish dreams. Alyssa needed to remember whose daughter she was and for what purpose she was being given in marriage. To stifle hopes that shared childhood games and time spent at court after the betrothal would prove a strong enough foundation to build a marriage if not full of love, then at least built on respect and accord, was cruel and pitiful, but necessary. Memories of the crowd of children on Dragonstone caused Rhaenyra to smirk:

  "Funny that you probably know more about my own brother now than I do."

  "I should learn even more tonight," Alyssa smirked, and the Princess could not suppress a smile—her love for jokes on the edge of decency came from Daemon and, probably, her grandmother and namesake. Rhaenyra had to make considerable efforts in her time to teach her daughter to understand when such crude humor was appropriate and when it was better to bite her tongue. "But generally it is... strange and unnatural. By Targaryen custom, a brother takes a sister to wife, so Aegon should be your husband, not mine."

  Rhaenyra snorted with ughter in response:

  "As if I would wait fifteen years for a wedding for his sake! Besides, your father would not have let me sit as a spinster. And anyway, do not shift your own wedding onto me!"

  "Pity, I wanted to so much!" Alyssa's reflection contorted in feigned displeasure, but in the next instant the mask fell off, and the Princess ughed.

  "Perhaps my brother is not so bad as Daemon thinks of him," Rhaenyra remarked when the fit of mirth subsided.

  "Perhaps..."

  "Well, and what do you think of him yourself?"

  "I don't know. He seems not a fool, at least not entirely, but... It is so strange that he will be my husband now."

  The Princess sighed, turned her daughter to face her, and squeezed her hands:

  "We will always be nearby, always on your side. Father is not going anywhere from the Red Keep. Even if something goes wrong, we will sort everything out and handle it. Father..."

  "No, no, I won't let him down," Alyssa shook her head and smiled weakly. "It's politics, and I'm just nervous."

  "No need," came from the doors. Daemon in a bck doublet with bright scarlet satin sleeves propped up the jamb, crossing his arms on the hilt of Dark Sister. "If anything, I'll chop everyone up faster than anyone figures out what's the matter."

  Rhaenyra rolled her eyes: her husband's readiness to deal with anyone who took an extra step toward his daughter was undoubtedly touching, but in a couple of hours, he would cease to be the main man in her life, at least formally. Rhaenyra and Daemon did not doubt in the slightest that they would try if not to isote their daughter from them, then at least to limit their influence on her, but the King of Tyrosh believed he had raised his daughter well enough to cope with the turbulent currents of the muddy waters of the royal court.

  Meanwhile, he peeled himself off the door and approached them with a leisurely gait. He carefully examined Alyssa's outfit with his gaze, critically felt and passed the sleeve of her dress between his fingers; judging by the satisfied grunt, he was satisfied with the quality of the golden silk, although Rhaenyra doubted her husband understood anything about it at all.

  "A beauty," Daemon finally pronounced the verdict and kissed his daughter on the forehead, right under the amethyst on her silver circlet. Turning to his wife, he kissed her on the lips, far more sensually, and added: "And you too. At first, I didn't immediately understand which of you is the bride."

  "Papa!" Alyssa was indignant.

  "You're getting old if your eyes don't see," Rhaenyra snorted.

  Usually, in response to such barbs, her spouse would start arguing, get indignant, and provide very convincing evidence that he was young in both soul and body, and often his proofs ended in their bed, but this time he only smiled sadly:

  "Maybe. In the end, my daughter is getting married. Was it long ago that you saddled the Red Dancer? Have the days of the Great Hunt passed long ago?"

  "They haven't ended," Alyssa inserted.

  When the Red Dancer grew so rge that keeping her in the young Princess's chambers became impossible, the young she-dragon, to Alyssa's great displeasure, was moved to the restored ir at the Archon's Pace. She treated the proximity to Syrax quite indifferently at first, but Caraxes made an indelible impression on her. Whether the Dancer sensed a father in him or bowed before an elder male was hard to say; Uncle Aegon (when his opinion was still asked in Tyrosh) leaned toward the first option, while Daemon believed it wasn't all that innocent.

  However, regardless of the reasons, the Red Dancer chose a dragon much older and rger than herself as an idol and henceforth began to pursue him wherever possible. She was jealous of him towards the displeasedly hissing Syrax and even towards Daemon, and only her own rider occupied a little more space in her fiery heart. Caraxes endured the attention of the pesky small fry with the patience of a martyr firmly believing in the bliss awaiting him in the Seven Heavens.

  The apogee of everything was the joint flights of fathers and daughters. Once in the sky, Alyssa and the Red Dancer fully became one soul in two bodies, and, using the agility, speed, and nimbleness characteristic of youth, swirled around the older comrade like midges around a warhorse. The consistency and persistence with which the Dancer tried to impose her company on the adult dragon, their games among the clouds, simir to endless chases, became known in their family as the "Great Hunt."

  The dances, amusing everyone except, perhaps, Caraxes himself, did not always go without dubious consequences. Several times Alyssa nearly got caught in a jet of fme released by the pyful Dancer, and once the young she-dragon, apparently tired of flying, came up with nothing better than to grab Caraxes' tail with her mouth. Thus the mighty and ferocious Blood Wyrm acquired a small but very humiliating mark for his self-esteem.

  There was nothing special in the fact that a father decided to recall his daughter's childhood years on the eve of her wedding—before her own, Rhaenyra spent a couple of hours with the sighing King, constantly mentioning her mother, whom she resembled so much. However, such nostalgia was not characteristic of Daemon, and it was fit to be concerned; Rhaenyra asked half-jokingly:

  "Who are you and where did you put my husband?"

  A moment ter, general ughter filled the room.

  "Can't even ment anymore," Daemon grumbled, but his eyes were ughing.

  "Lamentations and memories of the past are signs of old age," Rhaenyra flicked him on the nose. And even though at forty-four her husband could easily compete with twenty-year-olds, the Princess sometimes could not deny herself the pleasure of walking over a sensitive spot for him. Naturally, fully realizing that she would have to pay for every word ter.

  Her spouse chose to let her comment pass his ears, although he undoubtedly remembered it, and, looking over his daughter again, inquired:

  "Will you be able to fly in this?"

  "I will, of course," Alyssa shrugged, smoothing the hem of her dress.

  After the wedding in Queen Aemma's Sept, the newlyweds were to proceed to Rhaenys's Hill and fly around the capital on dragonback. They tried to adapt the cut of the dress to the dragon saddle as best they could, but it was far from the doublet and trousers Alyssa was used to.

  "The question is what will remain of the dress after such flights," Rhaenyra remarked.

  "You should have let me go to the altar in a flight suit, not in this cocoon, and there would be no problems."

  "A bride in trousers—the Queen would have had a stroke," Daemon drawled dreamily.

  "Agreed, a tempting prospect," the former friend, current stepmother, and soon-to-be mother-in-w managed to infuriate the Princess several times with her demands during the wedding preparations.

  There was nothing reprehensible in the fact that the groom's mother wanted a perfect wedding for her firstborn, but endless fault-finding and conditions could deprive even a saint of patience. Moreover, in Rhaenyra's view, Alicent was trying more for herself and the abstract "good of the state" than for Aegon, quite skillfully substituting his interests with the "interests of the house." Against the background of ostentatious concern for children, this looked like unbearable hypocrisy, and after every meeting with the Queen, Rhaenyra was seized by a feeling of disgust and contempt. How could she consider this woman her friend? Yes, they were both younger then and, frankly, stupider, but a person cannot change so much. All this must have already been in her when they listened to old Elysar and Uncle Aegon, when they stayed with Lady Jeyne Arryn in the Eyrie...

  When it came to herself, Rhaenyra tried to take into account the interests of the children where possible and appropriate, so when Alyssa expressed a desire to go down the aisle in a dress embroidered with Pentoshi towers, she took her side, although Daemon immediately saw this as groveling before the Hightowers. The pattern had to be made intricate and generously interspersed with red-and-gold dragons, but the daughter was satisfied.

  With the other friend of her youth, the situation was slightly different. Rhaenyra did not want to follow her husband's example and completely break off all retions with Laena intuitively at first, and then consciously did not take drastic steps. Leaving Daemon to bear the silent resentment against his younger brother on his manly shoulders, his wife tried to maintain a connection with her uncle's wife. Of course, there could no longer be the former warmth between them, but she managed to keep it at the level of polite communication between two noble dies whose children are to marry.

  They wrote non-committal letters to each other, such as retives exchange, met occasionally in the Red Keep, and st year Rhaenyra even represented the Bcks at Lady Jocelyn Baratheon's funeral. Rhaenys and Laena were quite touched, although Daemon ground his teeth for a week about what he called "fawning before the Whites." Rhaenyra only waved him off then: if he does not wish to listen to his brother, well, she will listen to his wife. Of course, none of them allowed themselves the former degree of frankness anymore, but even what could be gleaned from social chatter and accidental slips of the tongue could be used to one's advantage. However, this worked in the opposite direction as well.

  At that moment, a hubbub and stomping were heard outside the door—evidently, the children waiting for them had already become bored. Instead of a polite knock, the door was shaken by a blow, as if someone were trying to break it down, and then it flew open, and Baelon and Daemon tumbled into the room, grappling and ughing.

  "I'm first!"

  "No, me!"

  Scarcely had the sons taken a step when Viserys flew into them; the ball of unruly boys dangerously approached Alyssa, threatening to ruin the hours of work of seamstresses and maids.

  "Boys!" the bride gathered her skirts and recoiled.

  "Calm down!" Daemon barked at his sons. Baelon, as the eldest of the troublemakers, received a cuff on the back of the head, Viserys was pulled out of the general heap by the colr and set aside. "What in the Seven Hells (Peklo) have you arranged here?!"

  "Why did they run away from me?" Viserys inquired in an offended tone.

  "You should yawn more," Baelon snapped, rubbing the crown of his head, which had suffered from paternal upbringing. His hair, already disheveled, was in complete disarray, and the son now looked more like an ordinary boy than a prince of House Targaryen. Rhaenyra picked up a comb left so opportunely by an absent-minded maid with a sigh, pulled him to her, and began to put the crow's nest on his head in order.

  "This isn't Tyrosh! Who are you making me out to be?! A Summer Isnder prince or a circus master?!" Daemon was not easy to appease.

  "What does a Summer Isnder prince have to do with it?" Rhaenyra muttered under her breath in bewilderment, combing Baelon's hair. The son wanted to squirm away but yelped when the comb touched the skin on his head. "Endure it or look after it yourself, or you look like a garden scarecrow. What will the Tyrells think?"

  "I don't give a damn about the Tyrells," the Prince grumbled, and Rhaenyra immediately hit him on the long-suffering back of the head with the comb.

  "Don't let me hear those words again. The Tyrells are our allies and your future retives. What will Lady Meredith think when she sees her betrothed is such a slob?"

  "She won't think anything. She's stupid and sees nothing beyond her flowers."

  "That is exactly what we women pay attention to first of all. If you continue to behave like this, she will simply run away from you, and all our efforts with Father will go to dust. Do you want that?"

  For some reason, the threat of paternal disappointment worked fwlessly on all their children, and Rhaenyra did not disdain to use it from time to time when there was no strength or time to reason with the numerous offspring otherwise, like now.

  Arranging the marriage of the second son with the eldest daughter of Lord Lorent Tyrell and Lady Alynne, née Bckbar, the Princess felt she was acting basely towards Baelon, depriving him of the opportunity to marry for love. Her own father was forced to swear in his time that he would accept any chosen one of his daughter, and kept his word. The Princess herself hoped for a long time that she would be able to grant each of her seven children (eight, counting Alyssa) the same privilege, but changed circumstances demanded countermeasures. If they had no allies left at court, they should be sought outside it, and the Tyrells, concerned about the excessive strengthening of the Hightowers, readily accepted the offer to intermarry.

  Besides the masters of Highgarden, through this betrothal the Bcks secured the support of their numerous retives, starting from the brother-in-w of the Warden of the Reach, Lord Bckbar, and his cousin, Lord Fossoway, and ending with the Tarlys, Rowans, Merryweathers, Costaynes, and a whole brood of smaller houses, representing a considerable force in aggregate. Rhaenyra also pinned hopes on the current festivities in the capital: Lord Elmo Tully had arrived at court with his family, and agreeing with him on a marriage for Viserys or Daemon the Younger should not be difficult, considering that he fought with Daemon in the Stepstones. The union of a dragon and a trout, despite its comicality, would strengthen the influence of the Bcks in the Rivernds, allowing their lords not to look back at the shadow of Dragon’s Heart weighing over them.

  "Where is Jaehaerys?" the King of Tyrosh asked his sons meanwhile.

  "And we ran away from him," Viserys continued to betray his brothers.

  "He wanted to impress Bae," Daemon the Younger, who had managed to nestle in his mother's chair, expined in an adult manner.

  Baelon meanwhile somehow broke free from his mother's grip, immediately "correcting" the result of her care with his five fingers. Rhaenyra suppressed a sigh, resigning herself to the fact that the obstinate Prince would appear before all the Seven Kingdoms in the image of a squire of some begger hedge knight.

  "There is nothing wrong with that," she hastened to forestall her husband's displeasure, but he was in no hurry to give up.

  "Better he tried to impress her at the tilt-yard yesterday. If he practiced more with a sword or nce than with a book and lute..."

  To Daemon's great displeasure and disappointment, their firstborn did not inherit his martial talents to the extent he had counted on. The husband undertook teaching his son the art of handling a sword himself, hoping to raise him a worthy heir to Dark Sister, but Jace clearly fell short of his father's level, which infuriated him.

  Rhaenyra noticed what Daemon did not pay attention to: the persistence, bordering on stubbornness, with which their eldest son trained and, despite everything, raised his sword again and again or ordered a new dummy to be set up to csh with it at full gallop. At the tilt-yard, he was as diligent a student as at the table in Maester Gerardys's lessons, and this bore fruit—Jace was no worse than many, fought bravely, and could compete for a pce in the top seven at a tournament. But Daemon needed not just a good knight—his son was supposed to be a cross between himself and Aegon the Conqueror, and Jaehaerys was far from these heights.

  Rhaenyra could not help her son master the martial art in any way, although she sincerely wanted to, so she tried as best she could to smooth over the dissatisfaction of her husband, who constantly felt his heir was zy and not giving his all. Daemon's dissatisfaction was also fueled by the fact that Aemond, being only a year younger than Jace, demonstrated great success and threatened to grow into a much more dangerous opponent, and not thanks to, but rather despite all the efforts of his mentor.

  Daemon could also be understood in his desire to raise a great warrior from the heir, and from the other sons too. In the difficult conditions in which they found themselves, any weakness threatened to turn into a catastrophe far greater than they experienced five years ago. Considering that the Bcks did not intend to reconcile and forgive, every sword counted, and the Tyroshi princes had to surpass their cousins in all qualities. Suffice it to say: when Daenerys was born to them, he did not put a dragon egg in her cradle, counting on putting her on an adult dragon in the future.

  Ambitions and goals gave birth to severity with which their children had to reconcile, and high standards they had to meet. Rhaenyra herself grew up in a completely different environment and therefore sometimes reined in her husband when he went overboard—she did not want her children to live only by their father's dream of power over the Seven Kingdoms.

  "And where is Aemma?" Alyssa suddenly inquired. "I promised to go with her."

  "Visenya tore her dress," Viserys reported carelessly, simultaneously making faces at Daemon; the tter did not remain in debt and made horns at his brother.

  Oh, gods...

  "That's all we needed!"

  "But how..."

  "I'll go check on them," Rhaenyra announced and, before anyone had time to react, hastily left Alyssa's chambers. Daenerys also needed checking, who due to her young age would not be dragged to the ceremony by anyone.

  Only in the corridor did the Princess catch her breath and instinctively check if her winged tiara had slipped, but it sat like a glove. She did not doubt that Daemon would quickly calm the sons down, but whether he would manage not to make Alyssa even more nervous because everything was allegedly going wrong remained an open question. Sighing again, Rhaenyra asked the gods for this day to end sooner.

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