She is not afraid.

Her brother's queens had always been kind to her. Elia was everything Daenerys dreamed a mother would be, warm and kind, remembering all of her favorite treats and sending them to her at dinner, there to scold her when she misbehaved and to wrap her in her arms when she needed comfort. Elia raised her and Viserys alongside her own children, toddling after Rhaenys and Aegon, given the same presents, same kisses, same care as a child of her own blood. Dany remembered calling her mother once, and though Elia had corrected her she had done so kindly, as though she were sad for it too.

Lyanna as well, though it was clear to all she was unhappy, though all of them had to suffer through her dark moods, learn when they could crawl into her lap and share stories and when they should keep their distance, leave her to her memories and her sorrows. Dany was of age with Jon, even shared a wet nurse with him, learned to walk and talk with his hand in hers, and though Lyanna's affections were not given as freely as Elia's, she was never cruel, merely distant at her worst and willing to part with a few smiles and caresses at her best.

When she flowers, she is made to leave King's Landing and though it is done with kind words and promises of a reunion soon, she can read the lines of Elia's face and the grief in Lyanna's lies.

It made no sense to her, she had explained to Viserys, having to leave when she finally became a woman, when she was finally able to become a wife for her brother.

He had smiled, that smile of his that meant he knew things she didn't, "You will not be ready to marry for years yet. What wives wish to look on as their husband courts a younger woman in their own house?"

She had wrinkled her nose at that, could not imagine her older brother, so dour and quiet courting anybody. I have to marry him anyway, she'd thought, why would he bother courting me? And the day her king, her brother, announces to the realm that she will be his third queen, a fact she had known since she was a child but which the kingdoms did not, the women who may have been as mothers become her sisters and a veil is cast between them. It is Rhaegar who speaks to her of it, coming to her in Dragonstone, after Viserys had left for his own wedding in Sunspear,

"You were beneath them as a princess," He explained, "Now you will be as their equal. It will be provoke them as it would provoke anyone to share love or power. You must remain distant and do you duty."

Her duty as a queen, she knew, but more importantly as a wife. Viserys had whispered to her of it, the princess her brother desired, the Visenya that his wives' ruined wombs could never give.

Her brother leaves soon after that, and there is no courting, no letters, not until she is summoned to King's Landing for the wedding, where she does not see her king nor the queens until she stands in the Sept of Baelor and he is in front of her, vowing himself to her and pressing his dry lips against hers.

It is only when she looks at Elia and Lyanna, standing solemnly by their children watching the proceedings, sorrow in their eyes rather than hate that she is afraid. Not of him, not of her brother, not of marriage when she has been taught her duty so well. Rather of a future where she might be the one in the crowd watching.