death doesn't discriminate
Rhaegar is dead.
At first, it was a distant buzz, something too ridiculous to be true. She shook off the words as she descended into the hall. They weren't true. They couldn't be true. She didn't - couldn't - believe them, though her heart was hammering beneath her chest and her thoughts were racing. Panic set in, thrumming through her veins and by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, all adrenaline was gone. Gone as quick as it had come.
Rhaegar is dead.
There he was, lying, regal, still, dead. Something built up in the back of her throat, something heavy and constricting. Her lips parted in a wordless scream and her legs gave way. She grabbed the railing to keep herself upright but everything within her was chanting: break; break; break; break. And every hitched breath brought her closer and closer to the ground, hand curled into the fabric at her breast.
Rhaegar is dead.
There wasn't a word that fit the numbness that swept through her body and tightened a grip around her heart. Agony was the closed fitting that she could think of. And even then, that wasn't even close to what she was feeling. This world that she lived in was cruel, crueler than she had ever imagined and her husband had been her tether. When she thought the walls were crumbling, he would wrap his arms tight around her shuddering frame and remind her that she hadn't lost it all.
Rhaegar is dead.
Now her reason for belief lay stone cold and dead upon what would become his funeral pyre. She struggled up and clambered the rest of the way to his side. She draped herself against him, fingertips brushing his cold cheek. Her bottom lip trembled and a sob fell loose from her lips. She couldn't muster the strength to say any words. She dropped her head down against his chest, her hand searching and clutching to his clothes. Her shoulders hiccuped and then began to shake as though someone had grabbed them as though to knock sense into her.
Rhaegar is dead.
The words rattled around and around in her brain, knocking together again and again. Through her broken sobs, she managed one word. One cliche word that every broken wife would speak when clutching to her husband's murdered body. "No." It wasn't even loud. It was a moan, a shattered moan of a woman searching for the nightmare in her hellish reality.
Rhaegar is dead.
She lay nearly as broken as her husband. Her tears had been spent. The guards had left her alone. No one dared bother the queen as her heart shattered across the floor like a pushed vase. Now, she heaved herself up to her feet, suddenly, her twenty years weighed heavily on her shoulders like never before. She looked down upon her husband and her lip trembled. Her eyes did not fill. She felt numb as though someone had reached in yanked out every ounce of feeling she had in her.
Rhaegar is dead.
Three words had ruined her life but one man had caused them. One man she had once upon a time been betrothed to. She would kill this man if it was the last thing she ever did.