Chapter Text
But I could use a friend
To help me on the way
But you don’t listen well
As far as I can tell
Like a captured little bird
This might take a while
It’s like something that you love
Like treasure from the dirt
Her grandmother brushes her hair. It hurts and Jaehaera winces away, for her grandmother is not a gentle woman.
“Hush,” Alicent whispers, and it sounds like a hiss. She pulls her back into place.
They have ladies for this, and usually they attend Jaehaera rather well, but the Queen had insisted. It is her wedding day. She is eight.
“You must smile,” Alicent says, in that mean whisper-hiss. “When you see him. Smile, sweetling, like you have never been happier.”
Jaehaera nods, which upsets Alicent’s hands.
There is something wrong with Jaehaera. Everyone says it, she is not stupid, she knows they whisper about her, but soon she will be queen, like her lady mother. People whisper about her too, when they think Jaehaera isn’t listening. It is the same thing, they say, that carved an emptiness within Jaehaera. An inherited curse. A chasm.
“And you must say the words in your strongest voice, like we practiced.”
“Yes, your grace.”
Her hair must be finished, because Alicent steps away, and Jaehaera can breathe again. The girl in the mirror is pale and wan, and small. She has lank silver hair recently coiffed, and sad purple eyes. She is naked but for her small clothes; the wedding dress is strewn over her bed. She does not much look like a queen.
She is to marry her cousin, Aegon, a boy she has met precisely twice.
“He will wrap his cloak around you,” Alicent reminds her now. “Don’t flinch when he does. Be brave, my girl.”
“Yes, your grace.”
Her grandmother lifts the dress. It is a heavy thing, mostly lace and pearls and little treasures sewn into the fabric. There is silk too, and Jaehaera reaches out a snaky hand to touch it, but Alicent slaps it away.
“You must not mess with it, sweetling. It is precious.” Alicent looks upon the dress with more fondness than she musters towards Jaehaera.
There was talk of her wearing her mother’s dress, but it was much too large. This one has been commissioned especially for Jaehaera alone.
Alicent lifts it over her head. Jaehaera wiggles until the bulk of the gown sits on her skinny shoulders. It is heavier than it looks, but she wiggles even more and twists, and the dress drops to the ground. She is free.
Her grandmother settles the sleeves on her shoulders and tightens up the corseted back. It is uncomfortable but not painful, and this pleases Jaehaera. They told her marriage is pain.
She is used to doing what is required of her, saying what they tell her to, accepting kisses and favors and condolences. She goes where they say, and does what they say, she eats what they tell her, she sleeps on command. And now she will marry the new king. As is her duty.
She wonders, did they tell her mother such things? When she married her king? He was her brother. Jaehaera thinks of her own brothers, and feels that old pang of panic.
“I’m scared,” she tells her grandmother, in a tiny little voice. A mouse whisper.
“Don’t be. There is nothing to fear, my sweet.”
But Jaehaera knows otherwise. Everyone else is dead; it is only a matter of time.
“My wedding day was the happiest day of my life, save the births of my children. It was such joy, my sweet. You are healing the kingdom, think only of that.”
Jaehaera does not know the details, but she remembers… They say it’s over now, but if that is so then why must Jaehaera do this? Why must she heal a kingdom that is not broken? She did not break it and nor, she thinks, did Aegon.
“Yes, your grace.”
“You must promise me something, dear girl.”
“What?” she looks up at her grandmother, those clouded eyes. For a moment she does not look so fierce.
“Take joy where you can find it. Be happy, whenever you can.”
Jaehaera looks back at her reflection. She thinks of the sound of a swinging sword, the hot spatter of blood against her face, the taste of it on her lips. “Yes, your grace.”
Alicent reaches for the final thing: a thick and heavy cloak, which will be replaced by another during the ceremony. They are both Targaryen cloaks, but this one is green. A small defiance, Jaehaera knows, a gift from her grandmother. Green with a thrice-headed black dragon. It looks lush against her dress, like fresh spring grass.
“This was mine,” Alicent explains, “when I wed your grandfather the king. I had it changed, see the dragons sewn on?”
It is not only a defiance. When Aegon replaces it with the black and red, that will be the end of the conflict. Jaehaera will be twice a Targaryen and not a Hightower. The realm will know peace, or so they say.
Alicent rests the cloak around Jaehaera’s skinny shoulders. It is heavy but she does not sag under its weight. She is to be a queen.
“Yes, your grace.”