Chapter Text
Ser Harwin and Lord Lyonel were dead.
Rhaenyra Targaryen clutched the message in her fist, the parchment crumpling. Tears blurred her vision as she read the missive again. Twice more. Mayhaps if she read it enough times over, the ink would shift and transform, and what had happened would be undone.
She must have read the terse message half a hundred times, but the words did not change.
Killed in a fire during the night, a relation of the Strongs wrote. Set quickly, spread quicker. The new castellan of Harrenhal did not think they felt much pain. They died in their sleep, bodies found in the charred remains of their beds.
Fire, in that damp place.
The Greens had moved. All the while, she had fled like a scared child to this cold, dreary island.
Rhaenyra set the parchment down and pressed a hand to her forehead, taking a trembling breath. She let her tears fall, but only for a short while. There was no time to weep and mourn her sworn shield, her –
She did not expect the Hightowers to be so brazen while her father still drew air.
Sniffling, Rhaenyra pushed the missive aside and opened one of the drawers of her desk, drawing out a wooden box. She opened it and flicked through the letters within, glancing at the neat little waxen stamps sealing each message.
There were great beasts on the envelopes – golden lions and blue eagles, stags in crowns and lone wolves, even a wriggling squid – but lesser beasts, too. Ravens and griffins and swordfish and foxes all fought together for the honour of a royal spouse for their various daughters and sons, and various hands and flowers and even towers besides. The last had been quickly discarded: Rhaenyra would rather die than give up her only daughter to the Hightowers, no matter how great their house or distant the relation to her stepmother.
There were some fifty letters within the box, and all were unopened. Rhaenyra knew well enough of their contents, though. It was an unspoken rule that, in times of peace especially, men would wait until the persons in question were at least nearing adolescence before putting their pens to paper. All of her children had yet to reach double digits, and usually, one would wait until at least a boy had gone to squire and a girl had flowered to send marriage suits.
But it seemed the Lords of Westeros had scented the blood in the water.
The Princess of Dragonstone rubbed a hand across her mouth, then took out a letter near the top of the stack, hardly glancing at the seal before breaking it open and unfolding the parchment.
Princess Rhaenyra , the letter began. Sam Tully’s penmanship was stern and precise, and the words in said script were similarly no-nonsense. My grandson, Kermit, is of an age with your daughter, the Princess Valaena…