Disclaimer: I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire, and I make no profit writing any fanfiction of it. Further, I'd like it to be clear that in the case of any similarity between anything I write and the future work of any author writing the original work, that I hold no rights to any fanfiction. I make no claim to monetary compensation, and never will. For any intent and purpose, I cede any monetary rights to any fanfiction work to their respective authors.
(AN): Here's to hoping for quick writing! As anyone following over on AO3 knows, I've officially put this into a series. I intend to write some one-shots to flesh out the prior-to-Wildfire history, such as a certain scandal at Summerhall, and even a prequel that would cover the events of the Rebellion, as seen by Rhaegar and Elia. And a reminder, reading at AO3 means you won't be missing the smut that I won't post here.
Valaena
Pentos reeked. There was a golden mask to the city, glittering in the sun like a polished gem. Wealthy traders and merchant princes abounded the harbor and the ivory streets beneath sprawling manses, clad in dazzling silks of every colour. Rich bounty to be found on many a corner.
But it was little more than a facade. Blood and starvation ran in the gutters, mingling into a sea of human misery and suffering. Slaves cringed through the shadows, old and new scars of the lash burning bright crimson on their flesh. It was Flea Bottom writ large, dipped in a pool of hedonistic degeneracy and placed on an alter of greed.
Valaena loathed it, and wished that she had a dragon of her own like her distant ancestors, to burn it clean and rebuild it anew. But there were no dragons anymore – only the thin steel of her rapier in hand and the studied movements of the Braavosi water dance. One woman, no matter how skilled, could not change the face of the Free Cities.
More the pity.
Tossing her shoulder length silver-gold mane, Valaena gave her anxious crew a once over with her hard grey-green eyes. Her first mate gave a solemn nod in return, Ralf's wrinkled face already eager for home and his grandchildren. Valaena spared a last glance for the foul city, caressing the hilt of her rapier longingly before striding up the gangplank.
Taking up trade on the Narrow Sea had infuriated Monford, who'd spent many hours after discovering his young sister had a ship of her own ranting about proper ladylike pursuits. Aurane had merely laughed – the loveable fool. The sea was in her blood, and Valaena never felt quite as home as she did with a shifting deck beneath her boots.
Except tangled in the sheets with Viserys, but that was a different matter all together. And by the Seven, one day she'd convince the man to run away with her. Or at least take up trading at her side. Lord of Ships was a prestigious enough post, she supposed, and Valaena couldn't fairly blame her good-brother for wanting someone to trust in that nest of vipers.
The King was her good-brother, and Rhaegar knew. And approved of their marriage – eventually – Viserys had assured her through raven. Wasn't that just a dizzying thought?
Sea breeze pulled through her hair as The Red Queen picked up speed and wind, the great prow of the ship slicing through the dark waters of the Narrow Sea. Valaena had eventually come to own more than one ship – her business acumen working towards financial success, with a quiet contribution here and there from her husband. But The Red Queen had been her first ship, and was dearest to her heart.
From sweet plum wine of the Trident to herbs painstakingly scrabbled out of the mercantile desert old Tyrell had turned Highgarden into, Valaena traded them all. Dizzying wines from Tyrosh, Lyseni dyes, the finest of Myrish lace. Save slaves, who the Velaryon bought out of pity and freed in Westeros. One freed soul per journey.
And one murdered slave owner every time she walked her gang plank. Viserys knew the most of her mind on the matter. Madzhan of Volantis. Jaqen of Lorath. Alequo Ryndoon beneath the drunk eaves of Tyrosh. Many more names. Many more deaths. Her crew suspected her of something, though Valaena supposed their presumptions would be closer to riding some stranger's cock in the dark alleys rather than stalking the night with bright steel in hand.
As if Valaena would have debased herself so. Westeros was both more and less enlightened than Essos. The Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men that sailed by her word and command, shaking their heads at the unholy effrontery to the Gods that slavery was. But at least the men of Essos did not automatically assume she was a loose whore simply for the sight of breeches about her legs and the calluses of her sword hand.
"We make for Duskendale." Valaena murmured lowly to Ralf, still lost in thought as she retreated to her own quarters and bolted the door behind her. There was little point in returning to Driftmark. Her brother and her mother had never approved of her life choices. Not her decision to seek her own fortune, nor the brazen scandal she'd caused when unhorsing Viserys that distant day at Summerhall.
Though Valaena supposed now that she was set to publicly marry a Prince, her trueborn brother and her lady mother would welcome her back at High Tide with open arms and praise at whatever wiles they thought she'd connived her secret husband with. The hypocrites.
Better to return directly to the seat of her husband. It was nearer to the eventual markets of the goods she was returning with, far less crowded than King's Landing. And if Valaena was lucky, her husband may have returned for his monthly inspection of the estate.
Snorting, Valena poured a goblet of Dornish sour and raised the deep red wine to her lips. If her dead father was still living, the old sot would likely have been thrilled at the increasingly womanly change to her mannerisms through the years.
Viserys had been the only one to never expect anything from her, even from the first time she'd met him as a little girl when Aerys was still King. The little prince hadn't blinked any eye when Valaena had been introduced in the gowns she hated, nor had he balked when she'd come at him with a pilfered training sword in the salle when she could sneak away from the sewing lessons her mother insisted upon. And on that day, she'd loved him.
Loved him with all the deluded passion of a girl with her first crush. Loved Viserys when they were older, barely more than children, and she unseated him in a joust only to have him smile up at her without judgement or resentment. Loved him enough to want to change for him, even when Viserys would never had asked for such a thing.
Valaena had allowed her shorn locks to grow long. Ceased to bind her chest tight to hide her femininity. Softened her skin with the finest of Lysene creams. Learned to trace rouge on her lips with all the shameless delicacy of a high-born courtesan. All to see that shy delight light up his face at the beauty she ceased to hide, for him.
The creak of the ship might have been dearly beloved to Valaena. But she loved Viserys more than that, and home was where he was.
Robb
Stretching his stiff muscles with a low groan, Robb dug the heel of his boot into the soft red clay of Maidenpool. The Riverlands were different from the North, to say the least. Far warmer, far wetter, and far more red. Clay red with the crimson blood split by the Andals and the First Men for the bounty of the River Kings in millennia lost, if Old Nan was to be believed.
There was a liveliness to his mother's features the Robb couldn't find it in himself to resent. How would he have felt to go live in another part of the world for so long? A different realm, with different gods, and different people? The Tullys were people of the Riverlands, and no matter how well his mother had adapted to her life as Lady of Winterfell, there had always been a sad part of her longing for the sandstone walls of Riverrun.
"Cat!" Was bellowed from the milling crowd of smallfolk and merchants of the minor port town. Maidenpool was wealthy for its size, walled and well-fortified, with little poverty or hunger in the streets. But it didn't hold a candle to the apparent grandeur of nearby Duskendale, or King's Landing. "Cat!" came again from a stocky man with a fierce red beard.
There was a certain familiarity to that face Robb thought, as it butted through the crowds. His hand found its way unconsciously up to the auburn unshaven scruff of his face, and realization clicked in Robb's mind. Who else could it be but his uncle, to share so many features with Robb himself?
Catelyn rushed into Edmure's arms, fondness lighting her typically somber features. "Ed!" she laughed, letting her younger brother swing her about they were still children rather than adults grown. Robb's father swept up, grave features bent in friendliness, and the sight of his mother and uncle's reunion was hidden from sight.
"Well this is all very delightfully soft and mushy. " A new voice grumbled as a lad his own age pushed through the crowd, a vaguely exasperated look on his face as he stared at the reunion. Strong features with a square jaw and crowned with sandy-brown hair shifted to stare at Robb, and the Stark heir found his eyes skeptically climbing.
"Beg pardon, but do I know you?"
The brunette's lips curled, itching wicked even as he spared a glance for where Joffrey was eagerly flirting with a gaggle of fisher's daughters. "I suspect not. But I think I know you." Shoving a hand out, blue eyes met blue eyes with a touch of challenge. "Robert Arryn of the Vale cousin. I'd like to think you knew of me."
Meeting the hand with a forearm clasp, Robb smirked back with a wolf's grin. "Oh I think I might have heard of you, once or twice. Sometimes we get stories full of hot air up North. You know how it can be."
Robert only laughed at the faint mocking, dropping Robb's arms and staring over at where his aunt and uncle were speaking. "Gods know it's probably the only heat you bear shaggers get up there. Glad to be of service."
"Wolf shaggers."
"Of course, of course."
Folding his arms over his chest, Robb frowned over the milling crowds. "I thought you'd have been to the Vale by now. Not traipsing about with our good uncle."
"Well I would have been, but Uncle was so very excited to hear his sister was coming down from the North. Why, I heard little else from the man when I arrived at Riverrun. I suppose I wanted to come see what all the fuss was about. T'was no hardship to delay my journey a few weeks."
Silence stretched between them as shouts came distantly from sailors milling about. An idea sparked in Robb's mind, and grinning wickedly, he turned to stare at his cousin. "Care to see something interesting?" Without waiting for a reply, Robb gave a sharp whistle.
The Arryn heir cursed foully when Grey Wind came bounding down the gangplank, the direwolf pup having grown swiftly in the few months since the direwolves had been found in the snow. Grey Wind reached to Robb's knee – not even yet half of the direwolf's likely eventual height.
Laughing, Robert cocked a brow in question. "Adopting wolves now, Stark? Fitting, I suppose."
"Grey Wind is no wolf." Robb pointed out, scratching the direwolf beneath the jaw. "He's a direwolf. My older brother found them in the snow a few months back. My half-brother." He added after a look of confusion found its way onto his cousin's face. Jon was a few months older, according to their father – and would have been Lord of Winterfell one day if Jon hadn't been baseborn.
Strange, how little more than an accident of birth could change so much for half the Kingdom.
"Come." Robb decided after it looked as if his parents and Edmure weren't going to part anytime soon. "I'll introduce you to my sister and her betrothed."
"Baratheon, is it?" Robert mused when Robb made a quick introduction between his cousin and his friend. "So how many bastards have you got so far? One for every year I hear."
Fiercely frowning in return, Joffrey crossed his arms over his thick chest and stared down at the other lordling. "Nay." Then the somber mask cracked. "I think you're mistaking me for my father. I've only got one for every two years."
"Of course." Robert allowed, a smile of indulgence on his face. "Got the first one on your wet nurse when you were still in the crib, I suppose?"
The sound of Robb's laugh was one only the young and free could make.
Daenerys
Silver-gold strands twisted beneath the sunlight as Daenerys pulled a comb through them. Frowning slightly at her reflection in the mirror, Dany considered a few of the different styles popular in King's Landing before leaving her straight hair to hang straight and free. It was one of the few things she remembered from her mother, the Dowager Queen having died young from a sickness that swept Dragonstone.
Rhaella Targaryen had a fondness for wearing her hair long. Apparently, it was the Targaryen thing to do. Rhaegar always left his hair free. Viserys either wore it unbound or in a ponytail. Rhaenys wore her wavy midnight strands nearly down to her waist. Even her Martell good-sister only rarely wove her hair into braids. Not a one of them had hair shorter than their shoulders, save Aegon alone, who trimmed his hair at the jaw.
Apparently her nephew did it as a jest to resemble old paintings and tapestries that depicted the first Aegon. Dany would have laughed along with him, if the similarity between the image of the Conqueror and her betrothed wasn't close enough to be chilling. Or thrilling. Dany hadn't decided which yet.
Rising to her feet, Dany smoothed the fine black silk gown over her curves. Daenerys was vain enough to admit that she cut a flattering figure. Delicately short with ivory skin, pert breasts that filled a hand, blazing violet eyes, and soft hair that looked like it was spun of mingled moonbeams and sunshine. Or so the minstrels said. She'd been pleased the first time a nobleman complimented her beauty. She's been far less pleased when the man thought to seduce her.
Elia had been the least pleased of all, and Dany rather suspected it had been her good-sister's schemes that eventually had Lord Rosby's legitimized bastard shipped to the wall. Despite merely being her brother's wife in name, the Martell woman had been Dany's mother since she was four years old. And no matter how much the Dornishwoman doted on her collection of children, even Daenerys could admit she was daunted by her good-sister's anger.
It was a common mistake of the court Dany saw, Rhaegar's hand on her shoulder as he whispered in her ear and pointed the cues out for her. So many thought that simply because she smiled beautifully, and laughed so brightly, and sympathized with the smallfolk, that Elia was soft of heart and soft of head. Few could see the burning poisonous darkness in the Queen's eyes.
Daenerys admired Elia for her control. But she couldn't imagine living with such seething passion and rage beneath a polite exterior. Rhaenys was just as poisonously sweet as Elia was, if stronger of body. It made Dany feel like a bit of an outsider amongst the women in her family – to forgive slights and not nurse her anger like a weapon.
Sighing aloud, Dany sucked a delicate lip as she held open her nephew's letter. It was less a letter from Aegon specifically so much as both of the siblings on Dragonstone, expressing their excitement at the upcoming nuptials. She tried to picture Dragonstone, and only conjured up foggy memories of black stone, the smell of the sea, and her mother's voice.
Thoughts of marrying her nephew always conjured shame mingled with arousal, and apprehension. It was not that she did not want to marry Aegon - because she did - but entering fully into the world of women seemed to touch on the fear of the unknown. But it also warmed her blood – and she questioned if her nephew-husband would make her feel as good as her own unpracticed self-exploration did, or if Rhaenys would also be there to touch her carnally.
Which just made her squirm in thoughts of shame. Unbounded lust was a sin in the eyes of the Seven, and their bigamous marriage would be even more of an atrocity to the Faith. But Dany knew enough to recognize the feelings that wrapped her when she thought of her marriage bed as arousal.
Dropping the letter back to her bed, Daenerys gave herself on last look over in the mirror, smoothing out a few wrinkles before regally sweeping out into the hallway. Privacy was the rarest of sanctuaries Elia had told her once, and it was rarer in the Red Keep than anywhere else in the realm. So every step, every movement, every blink and smile must be as perfect as Dany could make it.
The scuttling of Ser Tully behind her as the Kingsguard knight almost made her smile in wicked amusement, but she refrained. The riverlord was fair enough as a man, and faithful to his vows. There was no need to unduly torment him. "Do you happen to know where my good-sister would be, Ser Tully?" Dany asked, struggling to reach the solemn tone that Rhaegar seemed to always hit so effortlessly.
"I believe she would be with the King at the moment, for a meeting of the Small Council."
Nodding slowly, Dany changed her direction from Elia's solar to the council chamber. It was not so unusual for her good-sister to sit on the King's council. Both because Rhaegar valued her opinion more than any hearty man should, the ignorant might sneer, but because Elia herself took an almost unwomanly interest in the affairs of the realm.
Descending a stairwell, Daenerys acknowledged her bored looking pseudo-uncle Oberyn with a regal curtsy. Ignoring the wink the saucy Dornishman gave, Dany stepped into the small council's chambers.
Daenerys fumed silently at the vaguely lewd look Maester Marwin gave when she curtsied again, apologizing for the disturbance. Floating over to sit beside her good-sister, Dany spared a moment of amusement at the disgruntled expression that flash over Lord Lannister's face.
It was most unfortunate that the man wasted so much time and energy nursing disapproval over her and Elia's 'unwomanly' occasional presence at small council meetings. Nursing a grudge over something unchangeable seemed pointless.
Dany would be Queen one day, and the Lord of the Rock could hardly gainsay her presence then, could he?
Aegon
Sweat beaded on his brow as Aegon ducked under the stab of his sister's blunted spear. Hefting his own dulled longsword, the Prince of Dragonstone twisted into a backhand swing. Steel shone in the afternoon sunlight as his olive skinned sibling leapt back.
Rhaenys looked only vaguely annoyed as Aegon continued to drive her back, forcing his sister to give ground. His sister had tutored at the knee of the Red Viper, and few could stand against her spearplay when the princess wished to be truly formidable.
Aegon was one of the few. His uncle had taught him as well to have passing familiarity with the spear, even if the Prince took to the sword far better than he had to the spear. And as unfair as it was, while Aegon could practice freely and often against men skilled with different weapons, Aegon himself was the only warrior on Dragonstone willing to meet his sister in the field and honestly test her.
It was just one of the many things Rhaenys spat fire at through the years. Not that he could complain all that much about her spirit, Aegon considered dreamily. If not for the constantly stoked fury at her restrictions, he doubted his sister would be such a passionate lover.
A jarring club to the gut that drove the wind from him was the price Aegon paid for his distraction.
"Come brother!" Rhaenys laughed, dancing back away. Sweat plastered the young woman's dark strands to her face. "I thought you were going to win the battle today?"
Striving to close the distance, Aegon laid a blow with the flat of his blade that would surely bruise later. Sparks glinted in his sister's purple eyes, and the Prince almost groaned at the flash of lust that automatically accompanied it. Sometimes, when the mood struck her, Rhaenys enjoyed pain.
Aegon, without exception, always lost those bouts.
Rhaenys' spear clattered as it dropped to the ground and the princess dove in close. Unencumbered by the weight of her weapon, his sister easily dodged his hurried and clumsy stab. Steel pressed into his stomach as his sister 'killed' him with her swiftly drawn training dagger.
"I win." Was breathed in his ear, Rhaenys' tongue darting out to lick the lobe while her free hand fondled over his genitals through the thin practice leathers. Then she pulled back, any trace of lust vanishing from her face as she screwed her expression into innocent mock thought.
Aegon groaned as he sheathed his blunted blade. The Prince was already nodding along, more than accustomed to Rhaenys' typical terms on winning their practice wager. Obeying a single command without question had been used rarely for the sake of amusement or for carnal enjoyment – especially on Aegon's part.
Rhaenys just preferred to order him to perform all her duties for a full day. "Oh." His sister breathed lowly as she leaned back in, brushing a carefree hand through his sweaty locks. "And come to my room and fuck me tonight."
Smiling as she leant back, Rhaenys spared a heated glance for the obvious hardness between her brother's legs before she drifted off. There was an exaggerated limp to her step, and Aegon shook his head ruefully at his sister's retreating figure. Rhaenys would be looking for something rough in the night.
Squinting up at the noonday sun, Aegon made his own way off the practice field. Stripping the leathers from his flesh in a hurry, Aegon took the bucket a hovering manservant offered him and promptly dumped the chilled water over his naked flesh.
Aegon shivered as he hastily toweled the moisture away, pulling on worn but fine dark wool before he wandered off to the kitchens in search of a quick lunch. If the morning bout with Rhaenys hadn't lasted as long as it had, Aegon would have retreated to his rooms for a proper cleaning and fine clothes to wear to a public meal with his councillors.
As it was, the Targaryen prince was simply too ravenous to bother waiting. The cooks were used to him coming and going at odd hours, depending on the day, and wouldn't bat an eyelash at finding him some bread and a few hunks of cheese to eat.
Waving silently at the rather corpulent cook hunched over a boiling pot, Aegon turned to nick a ready basket of bread and a plate of cheese. Tucking a few apples in amongst the bread, the Prince spared a beatific smile for the cook. The matronly woman coloured slightly, before waving him off with a laugh.
Aegon dodged back through the halls, arms laden with food as he swiftly hurried up to Rhaenys' chambers.
The door swung inward at his kick, Rhaenys eying him with an amused expression. "Couldn't wait to get your hands on me, brother?" Indigo eyes darted down to the bounty of food before she pulled him inside.
"Later." Aegon promised, and meant it. His purple gaze followed Rhaenys when she stripped the sweaty practice leather from her body before sitting opposite him at the small table in the corner of her chambers, shamelessly naked. As much as he enjoyed the sight of her dusky skin and the taut muscles of her lithe abdomen, he did have duties to be done. And her duties to be done, since he'd had to go and get distracted.
Nibbling at the corner of a slice of cheese, Rhaenys hummed noncommittally before pouring them each a goblet of Dornish sour. "I suppose. Duty, duty, duty. How droll."
"It is droll." Aegon agreed, breaking a loaf of bread in half and handing her the other. "But it needs be done. I'll be King one day, and you a Queen. Such is the lot of the rest of our days."
"Queen along with Aunt Dany." Rhaenys smiled lasciviously, and Aegon didn't even have to ask to know the lewd contents of her mind.
"Do you ever stop?"
Rhaenys laughed, eyes half lidded as her bare foot came to stroke over his cock in his trousers. "Never, brother dearest. Never."
Theon
Theon clenched his jaw as he strode past his father, ignoring the contemptuous expression on the older Greyjoy's face. Years of neglect and built up misunderstands, and the young Kraken was so far beyond giving a fuck what Balon Greyjoy thought.
There were only so many times that Theon could lean back and listen to his father rant. Cursing Theon for being too soft and weak to be his true son. Raging that because Theon didn't obtain his every desire by force and rape that he wasn't Ironborn enough to hold the blood of the Grey King in his veins.
Placing a guiding hand over the cool stone wall, Theon followed the spiraling stair up to his grandfather's study. Quellon seemed to prefer to remain at the top of his tower for most of his days, the old man's slowly fading eyes staring out over the grey islands he'd striven so hard to change.
It seemed a doomed effort. The recently freed thralls and salt wives supported old Quellon well enough, and the watching presence of the dragon king's soldiers kept the peace. But it was the peace of a slow simmering kettle, growing ever more ready to boil.
There was too much of the Old Way bred into the Islands for them to change so easily. The most treasonous agitators were given to the God, but Quellon could hardly silence everyone. Over generations, the viciousness of the Ironborn might have been tamed into the more civil ferocity of the most Northern of the First Men.
But Balon would follow Quellon, and Rodrik would follow Balon, and the grey stone would run red with blood and iron.
"Hello grandfather." Theon greeted as he slid into the Lord of Pyke's study. Quellon's wrinkled face lit up in greeting, and the unabashed affection in the old lord's face sent warmth filial thrums through Theon's own veins. 'I would wish this man for a father, rather than the one I have.' The younger Greyjoy thought, not for the first time.
"Theon." Thin hands beckoned him closer, and Theon shuffled into the nearest chair to his grandfather. Small, wrinkled hands he realized, for all the strength they'd once had. The bones jutting up from Quellon's old, thin skin looked more like the bones of a bird than those of a man. "How goes it, Rock of my Rock?"
Theon repressed a grimace. Only his mother's elderly brother spoke to him with such a diminutive child's nickname. The Reader seemed half-convinced that his nephew was still the child of his memory, when the Lord of Harlaw could be bothered to pull his nose from his books at all. Quellon did it simply to annoy him, the young Kraken decided at the familiar smirk tugging his grandfather's lips. "Well enough."
Quellon nodded absently, a fond smile on his face before he launched into further questions. They all seemed innocuous enough, at first. Theon answered the Lord of the Iron Islands as best he could. Some of the responses were simple enough – the health of his crew, the prices of fish at market, the currents to the West and the coldness of the sea spray.
Others were stranger, and it seemed his grandfather's thought turned to the welfare of those he had not met in many a year. Innkeeps who had not seen Quellon in since the old lord became too frail for extended travels. Young lordlings and captains from nearby isles that Theon met only the seas. Sailors that returned from the bizarre corners of Essos but once a season.
Foreboding built slowly in Theon's veins, until he could bear it no longer and held a hand up for silence. "Grandfather." Theon spoke haltingly, black eyes glinting suspiciously. "Do you look to the fathomless deeps?"
"What is dead may never die." Quellon responded with all the air of one speaking by rote, before the lines of his face sagged with weariness and age. "But aye grandson, I look to the Halls. I am not long for this world. A turn of the season perhaps, and then the sea will bear me away."
Theon's lips were drawn and tight on his pale face as he turned to stare into the heaving coals of the study's grate. "Then why are you speaking to me about it? Shouldn't you be spending your time with your heir?"
Quellon laughed, not angry and bitter but fond. "Oh Theon, you are my heir. My blood runs truest in you. Balon clings to all the ignorance of our forefathers. Victarion is little more than a dutiful simpleton. Aeron is more than half mad. Euron..." here Quellon's eyes shone with an old, old shame. "I have no understanding of where I went so wrong with that boy."
"But you!" Sudden emotion blazed in that old voice, and Theon found himself responding to it. "You are quick and clever, most like me in thought and deed. I would have hope if you were Balon's eldest, rather than having those brutes of his your elders. Asha is better than them, but still too wrapped in her pride and set in her ways."
"You underestimate her grandfather." Theon sighed, thinking of quick smiles in the dark and the redness of her maidenhood on his cock when they were little more than children. "Everyone always does."
"Perhaps." Quellon agreed, chipped nails combing through his grey beard. "If you have faith in her, perhaps you might take her with you."
"Take her with me?" Theon queried, now utterly lost to the strange fey temper of his grandfather. A warm old hand covered his, and Theon gave his grandfather a disturbed frown.
"My truest son, you are still so young. Ironborn may not shed the blood of Ironborn, but my eldest living son doesn't see you as one of us. You know this."
Theon yanked his hand back, stung. "So what, you're saying he's so ashamed of me that he'd become a kinslayer?"
"Does Balon consider you any kin of his?"
There was no reply that Theon could have made to that beside a quiet 'No' that wouldn't have tasted like a lie. So the young Greyjoy said nothing at all.
"I have quietly arranged a ship in your name, Theon. It's a large vessel, sturdily built, and crewed by men loyal to me – and thus you." Quellon sighed, old and drawn and defeated. "I urge you to flee – to find a greater destiny than that which your father and brothers would offer you here, before it is too late. Take your sister with you, if you think you can trust her."
Fisting his hands until his knuckles turned white from the loss of blood, Theon turned away. Long memory and apprehension hung thick on him until Theon wondered if he might choke beneath the weight of it.
'No son of mine!'
'Too much greenlander in you.'
'The Grey King's blood runs thin, I see.'
'You have too much faith in the blasphemies of my father, and not enough in the glory of the God.'
"Yes." Theon growled after a moment, his voice strange and foreign to his own ears. "I will."
(AN): 5400 words. All scribbled out in the space of a night, yippee. This chapter has been a bit Targaryen heavy, and gives us two new POVs. Our lovely ladies Valaena and Daenerys. You can thank Axular for the Theon POV. If he hadn't mentioned the man in his review, I likely wouldn't have thought to put him in this chapter. Or finished it tonight, I suppose. Dany's POV can be credited to .
I wanted to strike Dany as different than Rhaenys, or Elia or Valaena. A softer personality compared to those more fiery and unforgiving women. Not only because I want the three heads to superficially resemble the original triumvirate (Aegon as Aegon, Dany as Rhaenys, and Rhaenys as Visenya [ironically]), but because I don't want to saturate the story with women that are too similar (or men that are similar, but I've got different sketched out end products for each of them, even if at the moment many of them are still in that annoying "frat boy" sort of teenage male personality).
Speaking of Aegon, I've selected the cover image of this story as what I'm picturing him like if you've got curiosity.
A bit more exposition on Elia in this chapter – I suppose I'll have my work cut out for me when writing Past The Desert Wind to transform her from that to this.
