Winds of Hatred, Glimpse of Sun

The Little Princess

As the little girl walked down the halls, the sound of weeping startled her – loud, disconsolate, keening that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. At this moment, she still didn't know that she was hearing the despair of someone who had lost the only anchor in their life, love and loss that had broken a heart beyond mending – but she could feel enough to be scared. She caught the eye of a servant and beckoned her close, the woman leaving her load of linens to offer her curtsy. "What happened?" she asked. "Why is my lady mother crying like this?"

The woman looked uneasy but she answered truthfully, "Your uncle Prince Aemon is dead, Princess. The Queen… she isn't taking it very well," she finished and Daenerys couldn't shake away the strange feeling that it had been something else that she had meant to say. Her fear grew and turned to panic when she entered her mother's solar and Naerys looked at her as if she wasn't there. Right through her.

"Do you want to starve yourself to death?" Daenerys' father asked roughly at the evening feast a few days later. "Such mourning is too much for a brother."

The woman at his other side laughed but Naerys did not reply. She just shot them both a look that made Daenerys shiver, it was so withering. But it had no effect on them.

"Do you want me to take Daenerys to Dragonstone?" Daeron asked a few days later and Daenerys stopped before opening the door, for some reason surprised to hear her own name. "You aren't well, Mother. Let us take care of her until you get better."

Yes, Daenerys thought jubilantly. Her mother still wasn't seeing her and even if she had, it was far more amusing with Daeron, Mariah, and the boys. They weren't so devoted to the Seven and Mariah's harp always sang with joy, unlike the sad weeping of Naerys'.

"Did you discuss it with your wife?" Naerys' voice sounded unusually harshly before she returned to her new, broken tone. "I expect that you did, in fact."

"Of course I did," Daeron confirmed and Daenerys wanted to shout with joy because she knew that he had their mother convinced, yet the day they set sail for Daeron's seat pain sliced through her when she saw how grateful Naerys looked at giving her over. If she were older, she would have found the word – pathetic. Her mother was pathetic in her relief. Daenerys tried to hide her tears, and then Naerys embraced her and held her as tight as she never had before.

"Have good time at Dragonstone, my dear," she said. "I'll send for you as soon as I am better. I know Mariah and Daeron will take good care of you until then."

But she never got better. And Daenerys never returned from Dragonstone. For years to come, she stayed with Daeron and his family because mere months after her leaving, her mother died, along with the babe that never came into the world. And her father didn't care where she was. "Too consumed by women and other pleasures to care about a little girl," Daenerys once heard Mariah say, scornfully. "Especially when she isn't a son that he can use against…"

Here, she noticed that Daenerys and Baelor had stopped playing dragons and were listening intently. She didn't finish.

In time, Daenerys' life entered a certain rhythm. Once a year, they sailed for King's Landing to take part in the celebrations of the King's nameday. A few times, they did when His Grace decided that he wanted to celebrate her own nameday with a tourney as well. It was at one such occasion when she realized that the sword she saw hanging on her cousin Daemon's hip was none other than Blackfyre, and she gasped.

"Yes," Mariah said flatly next to her. "He isn't your cousin Daemon anymore. He's your brother now… you mean you didn't know?" she asked and Daenerys quickly shook her head.

"No, no, I knew, of course…"

She didn't want to bring trouble to her septa. The old woman and Mariah's ideas of bringing up a girl clashed quite often.

"So Daemon Waters isn't a bastard anymore? Or is he?" she asked that night as she combed her hair, and Septa Asara gasped in dismay.

"He is a bastard," she said energetically. "He will remain a bastard, no matter how many swords His Grace gives him. But that shouldn't concern you. You don't need to socialize with him more than you already have. Surely the King will never force you into accepting Ser Daemon?"

"Mariah thinks that everything concerns me."

The red lips of the septa clasped into a dark thin line. "Princess Mariah has had a different upbringing. Sometimes, her ideas of what is proper for a lady do not quite align with reality. I am trying to raise you the way your lady mother…"

But my lady mother isn't the one overseeing my upbringing anymore, Daenerys thought. Mariah is. She now had less education in the Faith of Seven and more lessons taken with the boys with the maester. She couldn't quite say why she took them because she'd never be a ruler in her own right and she was only a girl but she enjoyed them nonetheless. She attended meetings at Daeron's side with Baelor and although that was a thing she didn't enjoy, it still gave her a thrill because girls weren't supposed to go there. Daeron asked about her opinion on different matters as often as he did the boys – he was testing all of them. All in all, she was treated as if she were in Dorne, as Septa Asara noted sourly, which would have horrified her mother.

Sometimes, Daenerys woke up at night in panic that she had started to forget Naerys' face or voice. Mariah couldn't replace her mother but she was there, warm and stable. And loving. Yes, Daenerys could say that Daeron and Mariah loved her – and that her father didn't. Later, she would hear the rumours that he actually loved Daemon Waters but she couldn't say either way. Aegon's affections were fickle and she didn't know him or Daemon well enough to say.

"Would you like to be wed to him?" the King asked her one day as they watched the doings in the practice yard. Surprisingly, Daemon Waters wasn't as good as she had been led to think. Baelor can positively unhorse him, for all that he isn't a knight yet.

"A bastard?" she exclaimed, only belatedly realizing that she might have driven him to ire. But instead of enraged, he looked amused, laughing uproariously and telling her that she was a real Targaryen through and through. But when she told Septa Asara about this, the woman looked at her with concern not this different from Mariah's when she came to know.

"What does he have in mind?" Mariah wondered and then looked at the girl. "Did anyone hear the two of you? Was someone close enough?"

Daenerys who had dismissed the whole accident as one of her father's japes, was suddenly alarmed. "He cannot think of wedding me to his bastard, can he?" she asked urgently. "Can he?"

All that she knew about Daemon was that he was Princess Daena's bastard – her father's bastard now – and that Daena and her own mother had barely tolerated each other. That was all she needed to know.

Daeron reached out, touched her hand the way he did with his boys when he wanted to reassure them. "Never fear," he said. "You won't be wed to him. Not as long as I draw breath."