A. N. This is meant to be a series of one or two chapters about each character. I hope to keep it short but well, I can't promise a thing.

Ladies of the Iron Throne

Lyselle

Some pitied her while others looked at her with horror. "It's true, she grew up locked up in a tiny chamber with no company but her lady mother," she often heard being whispered behind her back. With time, she had learned not to let that bother her. She could hardly shut people up. And she really couldn't make them understand that it had not been the terrifying ordeal they all imagined. Even Baelor couldn't understand, no matter how many times she tried to explain it to him. He was the only one she truly wanted to understand, the one who mattered most in her world. But he could only see her bursts of weeping, her irrational fears, her terror of locked doors – and she could never express the complexity of her feelings adequately. She desperately tried not to make a spectacle out of herself, so he would have no reason to be ashamed on her behalf. But she could not always get a hold over herself.

They had all expected that she'd be overjoyed at finding herself free – but how could she?

Sometimes, she still dreamed of the chamber she had spent the first twelve years of her life in. The time when hour glasses meant nothing to her because there was nothing in her life that demanded timing. Decades later, she was still terrible at keeping times – she had not built the habit for it when it had been the time. She was just a few months old when her day became measured by daylight. There was no reason to but neither was there a reason not to – she and her mother never left that room, never did anything that needed to be done at specific time. They rose with dawn and went to bed at moonrise. Year after year.

They ate whatever they were brought. She couldn't say they were ever left hungry or served a bad meal. Meals arrived regularly, three times a day, brought by women who always looked down and were eager to depart, just like the woman who came to clean their room once a week. Her mother never tried to involve them into conversation. Probably, she had tried and failed when Lyselle was too young to remember. But the possibility of them being capable of speech never even entered the girl's mind. The woman who came twice a year to fit them for gowns and underwear also never uttered a word. That was just how it was.

"It won't last forever," her mother often promised. "Sooner or later, Aegon will die and we'll be free."

Freedom. A word that meant nothing to Lyselle.

She saw the change of seasons and the sea beyond their small terrace but they mattered just as little to her as her mother's tales of mountains, young trees, animals, and birds. It was all a tale, something that had nothing to do with her world of a single, richly furnished room, day measured by the arrival of dawn, moon, and meals, and their books and embroideries. Lyselle could match every needlewoman with her skills and by the time she was eight, she had read every one of the many books they were provided with.

A few times.

"That's a good thing, that you want to be educated," her mother claimed. "When we leave here, you'll be well learned. Book knowledge is all I can give you now."

When she looked back, Lyselle could see that the thing that had tormented her – the only thing that had tormented her – had been the boredom she hadn't known to define as such. Too much time with too few things to do. Such was her life.

Until they came along.

All her life, Lyselle never forget the day she heard the voices – the first voices in her life other than her mother's and her own. Later, she would realize that they had been children's voices but then, they had been only new. Curious, she stepped outside and looked over the iron-wrought railing of the terrace at the huge courtyard that no one ever came in.

Sunlight danced over them, wrapping them into clouds of radiance, their hair turned gold. They were chasing each other around, peeking into the stone with a round hole her mother called well, climbed the gnarled black trees of the courtyard, talking animatedly to each other. Or rather, shouting.

Lyselle drew back, stunned. It was not only that they were new, it was that they were…

They were like her.

She stared at them, unable to move, wondering at the ease they were running around with. It seemed so strange to her.

All of a sudden, the girl looked up. Her eyes traveled over all the three floors of the building and found Lyselle. She smiled widely and showed Lyselle to the boy, waving at her, beckoning her to join them. Lyselle wanted it so much that she almost headed for the door she had never set a foot beyond and at the same time, she was so scared to go out. It was almost a good thing that she was behind locked doors.

"Come!" the girl cried. "Come and play with us."

But Lyselle couldn't move at all.

Soon, they were over with their game and they headed for the rusty gate leading out of the yard. "Don't go away!" Lyselle wanted to cry out but the words caught in her throat. She had never addressed anyone else besides her mother.

Maybe they had forgotten about her.

But the next day, they came back. She had been waiting the entire morning and now emerged on the terrace to watch them. Again, they beckoned her to come to them and again, she wanted to and didn't want to, and couldn't anyway.

That became their ritual.

When they didn't come, she felt bereft; when they returned, it was a joy. The only thing in her daily life that was not measured by daylight or meal time.

Until, one day, the unthinkable happened.

The noise came in an hour that was neither of the established times. And it was uproarious. Something that Lyselle had never heard before; scared, she pressed her back against the farthest wall and waited, her heart thumping. Unlike her, her mother looked eager, alert. The book fell out of her hands and she murmured, "What happened? Could it be that?..."

Lyselle's wide dark eyes fixed on the thick wood of the door. For the first time in her life, someone opened it in the midafternoon. Threw it open, actually. No one had done it. Ever.

The hallway was crowded with people. Outside, there was something ringing, ringing. "The bells of Baelor's sept," people murmured.

So many people. So many faces. Long and short noses. Fair and dark hairs. Thick and slender fingers. So many everything. Lyselle drew further back, pressed herself flat against the wall, overwhelmed. Her head pounded. She looked helplessly around for her mother who was standing tall and straight.

The crowd parted and she came forward – the girl from the courtyard, dressed in silks Lyselle itched to get her needles on. Now she could see the girls's almost white hair and the indigo of her eyes.

"I am Aelinor," the girl introduced herself and there was a broad smile on her face. Lyselle was so stunned by her first spoken contact beside her mother that she actually forgot to reply and didn't even think to smile back.

Fortunately, the girl didn't pay her any mind. Instead, she took both Lyselle and her mother in and went on, "The Stranger came for King Aegon. In this moment, His Grace my father is traveling for King's Landing to claim his crown. And you are free, my lady. Things have changed."

Free. The word scared Lyselle so much that she felt cold. Freedom meant leaving this room that had been her entire world. Freedom meant meeting new people… how could she remember all of them? Freedom meant speaking to people, and she could not find her voice.

When her mother caught her by the hand, Lyselle felt that Alaena's hand, too, was shaking.

Outside, sunlight hurt her eyes. It was not that she had not been outside before – she had stayed on the terrace for hours – but today, the sun was different. It burned so brightly that she couldn't see a thing as she crossed for the first time the courtyard she had seen every day in the twelve years of her life. Then, she started to see too many details that overwhelmed her, like the grooves in the trunks of the black trees and the slits between the stones of the courtyard walls.

They crossed a garden that had her gape with wonder. Such vivid colours, such perfect flowers, more beautiful than everything she could ever hope to embroider. Myriad of hallways in the building; staircases that she didn't know how to climb. Tears poured down her face and blurred her vision further. She let herself be led around, wishing for freedom to end or at least, give her some rest.

Finally, they were in a hall greater than everything Lyselle had read about in the books. Lyselle looked at the huge body lying down on a magnificent bed with carved dragons and blinked. None of the people she had seen today had been this big. His size almost dwarfed the bed!

"Who is this?" her mother asked, uncomprehending.

"Go to your knees," Aelinor whispered in Lyselle's ear and she did so, honouring the man who had held her prisoner all her young life.

A. N. For those not acquainted with my other stories, this one is a part of an AU where Lyselle has Targaryen blood through her mother but Alaena's relationship with Aegon the Unworthy was never this good, so he had both of them confined as soon as he mounted the Iron Throne.