Writ in Ink Invisible

Chapter 2

Quills and parchments, that was what great romances were made of, as much as rumours and songs. Made purer than what heart produced, as well, for it produced love. Love were sad and grand, and tearing noble hearts in two, and leading to the ruin of nations because of the heartache of the ones leading them – according to parchments. Aelinor knew it to be a lie. Love was not like this at all. Love was cruel and predatory, love was selfish, grief-inducing but also soaring on the wings of ecstasy. Love took out a person's worst traits, as well as their best. And love left them so very vulnerable. Quills and parchments did not reflect this. Sometimes, they outright lied, as Daenerys Martell could testify.

Sometimes, they erased a love by never seeing it. Which was for the best. Like in Aelinor's case.

Was it not what archivists and bards loved? A princess in black and red and a white knight?


He entered her life when he entered the Red Keep. Unlike any other Kingsguard, he had a recognized child – or rather, he had had. He had left the Vale because he had been unable to pass by the two tombs, one for his wife and one for his young son, every day. He came to King's Landing to find oblivion. He found Aelinor instead – at the time, the rumours that Aerys had never even consummated the marriage were already abundant and when he first bedded her, about a year afer they first met, he looked surprised, as if he expected that at nineteen, she was still a maid. Aelinor turned her head away, the bliss of his embrace darkened by the stark realization just how humiliating her situation was.

She set about analyzing her attraction to him calmly and unbiasedly, as she tried to do with all things. He was a great warrior but he was not the only one. He was handsome but there were others who were more handsome still. He was smart and book-inclined but not nearly as much as Aerys.

But he knew that life was to be lived in full and not confined to reading about other people's lives and futures. He was one who had had it all before and knew what he was giving up by donning the white cloak.

He was the only man of Aelinor's acquaintance who considered the white cloak vastly inferior to other things, had sought it only after he had lost the things that had given his life his meaning and colour.

Lady Courage, he called her, caressing her hair as tenderly as he did Lady Forlorn and even more, and this kept surprising her. She saw her life as enduring. Enduring was what one did. But she did not mind that he considered her strong.

Perhaps Aerys had strength in his own way as well. He had stopped visiting her bed when conception did not happen but he kept caring for her, discussing books and scrolls with her as often as before and discreetly looking at the other side when she sought to fill the void in her life elsewhere. He might not have done it and no one would have as much as thought badly about him.

She did not think he would suffer a child born to her by someone else, though. If he even entertained the idea that the fault might lie with him. This was one of the things they never discussed. But once or twice, she forgot to drink her moon tea after lying with Gwayne but nothing happened. Perhaps she was not particularly fecund. This was another question that parchments could not answer.

Would not answer.

So many omissions.


She started begging the Mother to bless her with child once she was crowned Queen. She did not have much hope, for her best years had passed but she had some. Aerys had started visiting her bed again and her fears had turned baseless: Gwayne's ghost did not appear to haunt her marital bed, although she longed for him with ever increasing despair after each passionless bedding. But not during. Sometimes, she dreamed of him as he was in their last night together, in the storm of Daemon's rebellion. Never the gaunt, unable to walk shadow that had been returned from Redgrass Field only to die from his wounds.

She had never desired another man. Yes, sometimes she felt a pang of lust towards young knights but it was not desire. Just a spur of the moment thing. She had never bedded another after his death, so she had little to compare her nights with Aerys to. She just prayed for a child. And people thought her as stupid as not to know what was needed to obtain this child. The Mother was useless, as shocked as it would leave her septa to hear her say, if Aerys did not do his job. He did. But this child would still not come.

Her prayers became even more feverish as the lords petitioned Aerys to repudiate her, find someone whom he could feel desire for. If he did, she would likely kill herself, rather than live with the humiliation.

"You're a fool," Maekar said curtly. "And your fears are unfounded. You know how Aerys is and you know he's a just man. The fault isn't yours and you're wasting your time thinking that he'd ever shift it onto you."

"Oh, so he's a just man now?" she fired back. "Is this why you're storming off to sulk? Because you believe he's so just?"

He glared at her before storming off to sulk for a good number of years. But at least he turned out to be right.


He turned out to be right about something else as well: he had predicted that the one wielding all the power would not be Aerys but Brynden Rivers. Lord Bloodraven. And while Aelinor gladly acknowledged his great talents, she vehemently disagreed with the realm being basically left to fend for itself as he focused on Bittersteel and his possible intentions. But her disagreement meant nothing to him, as long as it did not come from Aerys. And Aerys could not be bothered with such things as he read on and on about his prophecies. Aelinor fumed at finding herself inhabiting the role of a mere decoration through ceremonies but that was what she was. Everyone flocked to Brynden and Shiera Seastar and the wiser ones curried favour with Alys as well. Alys who enjoyed her status of queen in waiting a little too openly for Aelinor's taste.

She did not feel sorry for Alys when Rhaegel died – she was hard enough to be able to hate without compulsion and anyway, it was her husband's status that Alys loved, far more than the man himself. But she grieved for Aelor and Aelora, as bitter as she had been when they had been openly declared heirs because this was equal to declaring her uselessness openly while Aerys had tried to convince her that this was a mark of his great esteem for her – after all, he might have just left the matter open, letting everyone believe that in the event of her death, he could remarry to a young woman who might give him an heir.

"Perhaps I'm too simply made to grasp this peak of thought," she spat and stormed off. Aerys, left behind, undoubtedly thought she was behaving like a petulant child, much like he had thought of Maekar years ago.

Maekar…

Now, there was one who did not like being proclaimed heir any more than she liked it. "I know I'm not perfect," he spat just in the night before the ceremony, "but did he really need to punish me like this?"

At this time, she had become so used to her uselessness being rubbed in her face like this that she did not even care anymore. She did not tell him that Aerys did not see this as a punishment. He already knew it.

At the time, this was mere formality; at Aerys' unexpected death just a few years later, it became her chance to make something of herself. Something that would make her more than a mere footnote in parchments written by others.