Jonquil's earliest memory was of Derryk.
It was at his insistence, as she later learned, that she had stayed in the castle at all: her mother died soon after childbirth, and Father wanted to give Jonquil to some nice smallfolk family in Duskendale or in a village.
"I only thought you'd be happier that way, growing up with two living parents," Father (he was the one who told her the whole story) assured her, and, quite possibly, believed these words himself, though Jonquil suspected that in truth, he mostly wanted to avoid the anger of Lady Darklyn.
Anyway, thanks to several talkative servants, Derryk got wind of Father's initial plan, and went to see him immediately.
"She is my little sister, and she will be raised here!" he declared, standing near Jonquil's crib and in full earshot of the steward, the maester, and several of Father's guards.
He repeated the same to Lady Darklyn when she tried to dissuade him. When she shouted at him, he shouted back that he didn't even have any other siblings and that he wouldn't eat a bite unless Jonquil stayed.
(In hindsight, Jonquil – and Derryk himself, for that matter – knew that the last part wasn't very nice. Lady Darklyn had lost several children in the womb or in early infancy, and she was constantly afraid for Derryk's health).
It wasn't just a child's momentary fancy, as many in Dun Fort had initially supposed. Derryk didn't just watch over Jonquil's nurses to make sure they were doing a good job or give her herbs and mixtures when she was sick. He also rocked Jonquil on his knee, brought her biscuits from the kitchen, made toys for her, and played with her himself.
This was her earliest memory: her and Derryk sitting on a windowsill, her listening to his stories about great kings and knights and mages of the past.
"I want to be a knight," she recalled herself mumbling quietly.
As soon as Jonquil was steady enough on her feet, she discovered the delights of exploring. She had always been skinny and light, and after a couple of years of practice she mastered the skill of walking and running around Dun Fort so quietly that barely anyone noticed her. One day, she scared a cook half to death by jumping out of hiding and letting out a pretend roar, but that earned her a heavy scolding from Father.
"If you pull a stunt like this again, you'll be working in the kitchens yourself in no time!" he warned her.
A short while later, Derryk found her crying in her room and explained about courtesy and why it was important.
"But courtesy's for noble ladies," Jonquil sniffed. "I'll never be noble."
"No, it's not just for them! You want to be a knight, don't you? Knights are supposed to protect maidens, not frighten them."
That day, Jonquil learned two valuable lessons. First, indeed, she never crept up like that on anyone. Second, she knew for sure that Father didn't love her the way Derryk did. Father would only love her if she was on her best behavior.
Around the same time, Maester Raynald taught her to read. She read Florian and Jonquil and was sorely disappointed: the girl whose name her mother gave to her apparently did nothing except bathe and chatter a while. She was going to be different, she was certain of that.
Jonquil wasn't going to resent her name, though. It was the only thing she had left of Mother.
She continued to sneak around the castle – without frightening anyone, of course, but this way it was even more exciting, to know that she could see almost every corner of Dun Fort and escape unnoticed.
(Or so she thought at first. Derryk, by that point a squire of one-and-ten, told her that he had assigned two guards to watch over her, and they often did so when she ventured to dangerous places such as the castle wall. Jonquil was very offended and didn't speak to him for a while – until she nearly fell into a treacherously shallow-looking pond in the garden).
"Oh, this girl," Father said one day when he saw her crawling through the gooseberry bushes. "Jonquil, come here."
She instantly burst out of the bushes (it cost her several pieces of her cloak): the old threat of getting kicked out into the kitchens lingered in her mind.
"I will talk to our master-at-arms. He will assign someone to train you with the sword, bow and lance."
"Father, truly?" Jonquil exclaimed. Even Derryk had only recently told her that women couldn't really be knights (she cried herself to sleep afterwards).
"If you had a natural inclination towards courtesy, I'd have convinced Photinie," that was Lady Darklyn's name, "to take you on as a handmaiden. But I don't think she'd want to deal with your penchant for sneaking."
Jonquil didn't know what "inclination" or "penchant" meant, but listened on.
"Warriors are better than whisperers, my girl. Stop creeping around the keep and go to the training yard tomorrow morning."
"Yes, Father, I will! Thank you!" Jonquil beamed.
"Strange girl," she heard him mumble as she silently tiptoed away (well, old habits did die hard...).
On the very next day, her training indeed began. At first, it was nothing but enjoyable – she thought she was making progress with every hour of it. Any guard ordered to spar with her told her she was picking up the skills with lightning speed, and she parried every stroke with barely any effort.
Things went on like this for a couple of months until Derryk was sent to Stonedance, to squire for Lord Triston Massey. When Jonquil learned of it, she was devastated: without him, there was nobody in the castle whom she could truly call family. Father, as she often mused, was like the sun – distant and majestic, sometimes scorching, sometimes nice and warm, – and Lady Darklyn was like the moon, polite but cold.
"Don't worry, forest child," Derryk had taken to calling her that ever since she perfected her skills of quiet movement. "I'll return before you know it. I'm the heir, after all – when I earn my knighthood, Lord Massey will have to send me back. And I'll write to you and tell you all about Stonedance."
"I hope Lord Massey manages to rein you in," Father told Derryk sternly when they were seeing him off.
Looking back many years later, Jonquil could see the wisdom of Father's decision to send Derryk to squire someplace else (apart from the necessity to keep up the political ties with the Masseys, of course). An only son and long-awaited heir, coddled by his parents, and wilful by nature, her brother, in his childhood, had been an utter terror to Dun Fort. Lady Darklyn, as Jonquil eventually realized, tolerated her presence in the castle precisely because she was the only one who brought out responsibility and patience in Derryk. For instance, after telling Jonquil to be polite to others, he had no choice but set an example for her, while before that, he had pulled much worse tricks on many more servants.
But as a four-year-old, Jonquil hadn't known or understood any of that. All she knew was that her dear, kind brother was being sent somewhere far away across the sea for no reason that she could discern. For several days, she could barely muster an interest in anything, even in sparring.
And speaking of sparring...
After Derryk left, it dawned on Jonquil that the guards had only gone easy on her for fear of angering her brother, who was usually practicing in the same yard and often right next to her. Now that he was gone, the real training started.
Oh, nobody beat her as punishment (curse words in the training yard, as she soon figured out, were an everyday matter, though, and basically replaced punctuation marks). There was no need to: after every practice, her whole body was numb with pain anyway. Even the wooden sword seemed to weigh a ton after her arm got tired, and her arm got tired very soon.
She had begun to learn to write in the evenings, but she could barely move her hand, and it earned her endless dressing-downs from Maester Raynald.
Derryk's letters arrived regularly, always including a part intended for her, but with her atrocious handwriting, she wasn't permitted to reply to him for a long time ("Don't make me ashamed," Father said when she asked about it after the first letter came, and Jonquil knew better than to press the matter further).
A year and a half and many rigorous writing lessons later, another letter arrived, and Jonquil smiled wistfully as she read the lines addressed to her (Derryk had won a squires' tourney, and he told her at length about the joust and the melee, knowing that she would be interested). Suddenly –
"You can send a few lines to him too," Father said. "As long as you manage to keep them somewhat intelligible."
Jonquil's first impulse was to tell Derryk how horrid it had been for her since he left. He would certainly be angry, write to Father, and maybe she would be sent to Stonedance rather than stay here where the guards in the yard seemed intent on beating the living daylights out of her.
But what would it be like in Stonedance?
Derryk had a lot of work, he wrote so himself, so he wouldn't be there to play with her all the time, and Jonquil had no wish to become a handmaiden to Lady Massey.
She wanted to be a knight... and from what she saw in the yard, every boy was trained to fight in the same way as she was.
Carefully moving her quill, Jonquil wrote about how she missed Derryk too, and how she could write now, and how Father's favorite greyhound gave birth to seven puppies, and how she had accidentally taken a bite from a Dornish pepper – but she never complained once about her fighting lessons.
It didn't come as a sudden breakthrough, of course. Only Jonquil, when she was about seven, realized that she could hold off a boy her age in the training yard and still have enough energy to continue the practice. Even sparring with grown guards, while naturally still ending with her falling down into the mud, was no longer as much of a torment as before.
I'm becoming a knight! Jonquil thought happily.
Father's second cousin once removed Ser Davos was visiting them, and he sparred a little in the training yard that day. Jonquil wouldn't have paid the matter too much attention, but at supper, she heard him talking to Father (probably from her early sneaking practice, she had a better hearing than many, which led to many things not intended for her ears reaching them anyway).
Father and Ser Davos were discussing the new king – Aenys, the son of the Conqueror. Ser Davos scoffed that "the boy" was weak and pathetic and perhaps not the Conqueror's son at all.
"He leaves all the fighting to Prince Maegor!" Ser Davos said. "Honestly, Arnold, I've been to the training yard – your bastard girl is more ferocious than Aenys!"
"Jonquil, you say?" Father chuckled. "Yes, she's like that. I think it's all Derryk's influence – he was pretty wild too before going to squire for Massey."
"I've heard he's making a fine progress," said Ser Davos, and the talk switched to Derryk and the goings-on in Stonedance.
Even back then, Jonquil had a faint suspicion that Father deliberately steered the conversation away from King Aenys.
Derryk came home when Jonquil was ten. She barely recognized him – he used to be plump and pale, so when a lean sunburnt young man came to the yard, she thought it was another Darklyn cousin visiting.
"Forest child!" he grinned. "You're almost as tall as me now!"
And that's when she recognized him, and he scooped her into a bear hug.
It was an odd feeling to have Derryk back. Jonquil was happy, for sure – she had missed him terribly – but she wasn't certain how to behave around him. There would be no more old storytelling, or playing hide-and-seek, or making toys of clay together. With a pang, Jonquil realized that it wasn't just Derryk who had grown up, but she had lost her taste for all that too.
She hadn't fully known it before. With the sparring practice and the evening lessons with Maester Raynald filling most of her day, every day, she barely sensed the passage of time.
The first couple of hours after Derryk's arrival was mostly full with laughter and "do you remember"s, but then Jonquil quickly learned that it wasn't good fortune that led him to come here.
"I was planning to get home this year," he said, "but later than now. I was," he blushed faintly, "I was courting Jalline Massey, and we hoped Lord Triston would give a formal approval to our union."
"But that would be wonderful, son!" Father said. "House Massey is of noble, ancient lineage. Why are you talking of your plans in the past?"
"Because they are in the past," Derryk said sadly and launched into a further explanation. Now that King Aenys was dead, war was inevitable between the Faith Militant and the Targaryens. Lord Triston may have listened to reason, but he died of old age even earlier than the king, and his son, Jalline's older brother and the new Lord Massey, allied himself with Maegor Targaryen.
"Davos and his father are with Maegor too," said Father. "Should we fight, what do you think?"
"On the one hand, the Targaryen incest is disgusting, and any sane person would rather see it gone," Derryk replied. "On the other... Father, I truly don't know how one can argue with dragons and if it's even wise to do so."
"Dorne did," Father reminded him.
"Dorne has deserts and mountains to hide in. With the watery ground around here, we can't even dig proper cellars. I suggest we limit ourselves to guerrilla war."
"Guerrilla? No, Derryk, in this case we should keep out of the fights for as long as we can."
"But why can't we make stealth minor attacks?"
"Sooner or later," Father shook his head, "they would be traced back to us. It's not that difficult... As much as I hate it, we have to stay neutral. I won't in my life support these damned practices of the dragonfolk, but you are right: we can't hide from them if they want to burn us."
Derryk looked at Lady Darklyn, then at Jonquil, then at the window from which one could see the entirety of Duskendale, and lowered his head.
It was a strange thing, being neutral. Formally, they were Maegor's people: Father had answered his summons with a declaration of loyalty, and members of the Faith Militant were forbidden from entering Dun Fort and Duskendale. On the other hand, no one hunted down the Warrior's Sons or Poor Fellows, and Father only sent a token force to King's Landing, to avoid accusations of outright disloyalty.
By listening to what people spoke in Duskendale (old sneaking habits did die hard), Jonquil knew that ardent followers of both sides denounced the Darklyns and similar neutral (ish) houses as cowards and/or traitors.
"Derryk, I'm sometimes worried they are right," she confessed one evening. Of course, she wouldn't dare share such fears with Father.
"We give Maegor the smallest possible support," Derryk said thoughtfully, "and in return for that, he spares our castle and the town we protect. The smallfolk of Duskendale who shares those rumors... what do they think?"
"As far as I heard, they are mostly on our side. At least, hardly anyone want to die in dragonfire."
"Then we go on as before," Derryk concluded. "That's the terrible thing about being a high lord, Jonquil. You can't even make your own decisions, not truly. You have to balance them to appease your king, your neighbors, and your people."
It made Jonquil feel more at ease to know she wasn't the only one disheartened. To fully get away from the horrid feeling of helplessness that seemed to suck out her very heart, she threw all her strength into perfecting her fighting skills. To his astonishment, Derryk found out he lost many a training fight with her.
"You are truly a knight now, sister dear," he said proudly, and Jonquil was besides herself with happiness.
(The "forest child" nickname was gone. With Jonquil growing taller fast, it sounded ridiculous, but she couldn't help but feel sad about that, about another sign that the old times weren't coming back).
One day, more than two years after Maegor was crowned, she saved Father's life during a hunt – well, when it happened, Jonquil didn't think much of it, didn't even realize what it was: she simply managed to shoot a lynx that was preparing to strike. But when they came back from the hunt, Father and Derryk practically lavished her with praise, repeating that without her, Father would certainly be dead.
Lady Darklyn, her icy demeanor that she adopted with Jonquil breaking for once, said, her voice trembling:
"You should be rewarded, child. What do you want?"
What did she want? At first, Jonquil was baffled. She had been taught to fight and had already bested many knights. She already had a fine steed from Father's stables, good weapons and armor, and cozy living quarters right in Dun Fort. She really wasn't sure what more she could desire.
Then it dawned on her. She had always been annoyed by the pitying, condescending or outright irritated looks she saw whenever people announced or introduced her as "Jonquil Waters". When Derryk called her his "sister dear", others often chuckled in a mockingly understanding way, as in: oh, we see, the noble young man is being charitable.
"My lady, I would like to get a trueborn's name, please!" she said.
Lady Darklyn's lips clenched into a tight line, and even Father and Derryk raised their eyebrows and exchanged surprised glances. For a moment, Jonquil was worried she had overstepped.
Father discussed something with his wife in a whisper, and finally she nodded, and he smiled, turning to Jonquil:
"You will get the name of Darke, and I'll grant you a piece of our lands. Both the name and the land would pass to your husband, should you marry, and your children."
The land turned out to include a couple of fields, a forest, and a village called Lightbreeze, but Jonquil didn't care: with Derryk's help, she hired a steward and, after a single visit, left Lightbreeze in the latter's care. It was only the name she had really wanted.
Father also gave her a place in Dun Fort's guard as junior captain. She protested that, at thirteen, she was hardly worthy of serving there, let alone have a rank, but he was firm about it:
"My dear girl, I don't know how long I'll be around to protect you. There's been terrible news from the riverlands. The king has slaughtered the entire House Harroway and everyone with Harroway blood."
Jonquil gasped, and he continued:
"If one day Maegor's displeased with me, your only hope is to disappear among the commoners, and you can't do that if the commoners don't know you. Lightbreeze is too far away from Dun Fort for you to properly hide there; you need to find allies among those who serve right here."
Thankfully, Maegor never had reasons to be displeased with House Darklyn: Ser Davos and his father had been killed fighting on his side. However, his enormous taxes, growing larger with almost every turn of the moon, and the additional tribute of gold Father had to pay drained the land, and people were steadily becoming angrier. Every morning, going on duty, Jonquil feared that today, the smallfolk would rebel and she would have to cut them down – to kill those who were simply driven to despair by hunger and fear.
She went to the sept daily and prayed to the Warrior to spare the Darklyns' people and keep them from rebelling. (And for something in the Targaryen rule to change, but she wasn't going to say it aloud).
In the forty-sixth year after the Conquest, Derryk found himself a bride – Elmire Rosby, six years his junior. The Rosbys were fiercely loyal to Maegor, so the choice was mainly motivated by a desire for additional safety, but Elmie herself, a slim freckled girl with curly reddish-brown hair and a sunny smile, quickly won Derryk's heart as well after she came to Duskendale.
He made sure to give her time to know his family before the actual wedding, and that, of course, included Jonquil.
"My sweet sister, Lady Jonquil Darke," Derryk said, as Elmie tried and failed to hide her shock at the sight (Jonquil came to meet her in her usual guard's armor).
"Also a junior captain of Dun Fort's guard," Jonquil added (Derryk had obviously omitted that part to avoid it looking like she was a servant rather than family). "I'm the one responsible for your safety."
"M-My lady," Elmie said, still surprised but her face already splitting into her usual smile.
Her eyes were rather kind. Jonquil decided she could trust the girl with her brother's happiness.
The last year of Maegor's reign was the worst. When it was announced the king wanted to marry again, this time some lady of proven fertility, both Lady Darklyn (at forty, she was still in her childbearing years) and Elmie, who had just discovered she was pregnant, were in panic. Jonquil was the one who thought up a solution:
"Let Elmie and me switch places if the king ever comes to Dun Fort. With my narrow hips, he wouldn't look twice at me."
"Jonquil, I'm not letting you do that!" Father exclaimed. After that incident during the hunt, he had grown more protective of her than he had ever been – which was ironic, because now, with her battle skills, Jonquil was the one who needed protection least of all.
"What choice do we have?" she argued. "Would you rather he killed Derryk and married Elmie?"
After the long, tortuous waiting and several visits from the king's messengers (Jonquil duly greeted them in the guise of Elmie), they heard the word from King's Landing: three women at once had been chosen, but Lady Darklyn and Elmie weren't among them. But even this way, they weren't spared from harm: from the strain and fear, Elmie miscarried.
Duskendale was sunk in melancholy: everyone feared that Lady Darklyn's history of miscarriages would be repeated all over again. Jonquil had to stand guard near Elmie's door, since the concerned (and, occasionally, plainly curious) visitors only distressed her good-sister further.
With the suffering Derryk and Elmie were going through with the lost baby (and Jonquil, too, though she tried to hide it, had so longed to hold a little niece or nephew in her arms), the realm's global troubles were somewhat pushed into the background. When, early in the morning, Maester Raynald hurried from the rookery to Derryk and Elmie's quarters, Jonquil didn't even think he was bringing any news from outside Duskendale.
"What's the matter, Maester?" she exclaimed, figuring he might have forgotten to give Elmie a medicine or something like that.
"A raven from King's Landing, my lady," he said, the relief in his face palpable. "The cruel king's dead. Prince Jaehaerys has taken the crown."
It didn't register at first. For the past six years, Maegor had become a painful but unyielding fixture in their lives, and to consider that he could just go and die would have been... strange at the very least.
No more Black Brides. No more extra tribute. No more slaughter.
Jonquil leaned against the wall and, for the first time in several weeks, smiled widely.
The War for the White Cloaks wasn't something she planned seriously in advance. Rickard, another junior captain, was having a drinking contest with her, and it somehow turned into comparing each other's martial prowess, until finally Rickard announced that he was going to fight for a place in the Kingsguard and bet Jonquil that she wouldn't dare to do the same.
However, after sobering up, Jonquil thought over the idea, and the more she thought, the more it really appealed to her.
She was of course loath to leave Derryk and Elmie. However, Father and Lady Darklyn had been lately speaking – more and more often, in fact – that it was time for her to marry, that she could easily snatch some minor noble's second son and give him her name of Darke, and that it was very strange for a young woman of eight-and-ten not to be at least considering some betrothal.
But Jonquil was in no hurry to wed. She knew that minor nobles' second sons (and third, and fourth, and so on) were in abundance in the Kingdoms, and many would jump at the chance to found their own House, even with lands as tiny as hers. Precisely for that reason, she wanted to wait. Not necessarily for love, of course – one could stay a maid forever waiting for that – but at least for affection and friendship. Jonquil wasn't going to marry some pompous fool who'd forbid her to wield a weapon.
The Kingsguard, though, was an ideal alternative. If she got accepted there, it would certainly pacify Father and Lady Darklyn! Not even the most advantageous marriage could compare to being hand-picked to guard the king.
"But what if you fall in love?" Derryk asked.
"The Kingsguard knights swear to take no wives," Jonquil smiled. "Nothing in their vows mentions husbands."
"And if they amend the vows for you, to include husbands?"
"Then I'll politely explain everything and decline," she admitted. She wasn't certain she would ever marry, but swearing off marriage for good wasn't a vow she was ready to take.
The melee was unlike anything she had had to deal with before. In Dun Fort, she had – at most – broken up small brawls. But this mess, with swords clashing all around her, dust sticking up her nose, and with her barely able to raise her own sword, made her wonder anything got out in one piece.
She was defeated, and when her mask (the Serpent in Scarlet – quite an elegant name, in her opinion) went off, Jonquil half-expected yells of indignation and anger. Instead, the smallfolk exploded into cheers, and despite the dust forming almost a shell on her skin, her ears ringing with the noise, and her joints aching, Jonquil grinned and waved at them, feeling she hadn't dishonored Duskendale.
Little Desmond Darklyn was born close to the end of the forty-ninth year after the Conquest, and Jonquil finally got her wish to hold her infant nephew in her arms. He was very red, wrinkled, and tiny, and despite all her training that included handling all things fragile, she was afraid she could drop or crush him.
With the main line of succession secure, Father and Lady Darklyn had stopped pestering Jonquil about her marriage, at least for now. Father had in general grown a lot milder and quieter, but Jonquil didn't think anything about it until one day, he fell down in a faint while standing up after breakfast.
Jonquil's throat clenched. For all his faults, Father had been the one who sired her, and he took her in after Mother's death, even though it was only at Derryk's insistence, and he allowed her to hone her fighting skills, and now he was fading fast.
He still mustered the strength to visit King Jaehaerys on Dragonstone – King Jaehaerys had a rift with his mother and regent Queen Alyssa, and the realm was divided again – but Lady Darklyn went with him to be by his side in case anything happened, and when he returned, he went straight to bed and never rose again.
Several weeks later, he summoned Derryk and Jonquil to his bedside.
"My children..." he spoke fondly. His voice was faint and croaking, and it hit Jonquil all over again that he didn't have long left. "Forgive me for all I did you wrong. I spoiled you, Derryk, too much in your early years, and you had a hard time in Stonedance because of me."
"Oh, father," Derryk tried to waved it off, but a small movement of Father's hand stopped him.
"And you, Jonquil, I never paid you the attention you needed."
Jonquil remembered his threat of sending her into the kitchens. All these years later, it still stung a bit, like an old wound.
"Well, between the two of us, things have turned out just right," she attempted to joke, but it rang hollow.
Father smiled and took each of them by the hand:
"I'm glad you stayed friendly... would hate to see you fight... Derryk, provide for Jonquil like I've done. Jonquil, and you give Derryk your support..."
He broke into a cough, and Maester Raynald, who had been waiting outside the room, opened the door and motioned for Derryk and Jonquil to get out.
Dun Fort was strange and almost alien without Father. Many times, Jonquil caught herself thinking along the lines of I'll have to tell Father about the new recruit's bad discipline or We need to ask Father's opinion about repairing the southern bridge, only to realize Father wasn't there anymore, and unbidden tears came to her eyes.
Strange, she mused. Father didn't love me much, at least until that incident with the lynx... I, for one, am not even sure the lynx was attacking him... And yet it's so hard to feel that he is gone.
Slowly, though, the grief grew lighter. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and Jonquil found herself settling into the new life. Concerning her job, there wasn't much difference – she was still junior captain (Derryk offered to raise her to captain outright, but she declined – the current captain, Aldon, was a seasoned warrior in his forty-fifth year who could best her easily, and she was only going to take the position if she felt there was nobody else more suited for it), and there wasn't anything more serious than drunken fights, often involving her own subordinates.
Little Desmond was learning how to stand and walk without support and practicing his first words and phrases. ("Aunt Jo-ki" was the nearest he managed when he tried to address her). Lady Darklyn, pale and withdrawn after Father's death, was no longer icy towards Jonquil; in fact, especially when watching over Desmond together, they got on quite well.
Failing to get into the Kingsguard had been a disappointment, but not a serious one – with how many contestants there had been, Jonquil had never held any real hope. Now, her life was pretty much sketched ahead of her, and in her opinion, it was quite a good sketch.
She would serve in Dun Fort's guard and maybe even become captain ten, or twenty, or thirty years later. One day, she perhaps would wed, some minor noble or landed knight who wouldn't mind taking her name. Maybe she would have children of her own, or maybe she'd just look after Desmond and whatever nieces and nephews (hopefully) came after him. Maybe she'd go to some tourneys and even bring home a winning purse or two: in the War for the White Cloaks, she had acquitted herself fairly well, and few melees were as numerous as this one.
And then, the summons from King's Landing arrived.
"Not the Kingsguard, but a single personal Queensguard," Derryk quipped as they read the letter. "You earned your place at court after all, sister dear."
Jonquil was dumbfounded. Now that the opportunity she had half-jokingly competed for actually presented itself, and without the Kingsguard vows to boot, she was suddenly at a loss on what to do.
Was it so necessary for her to leave? Lady Darklyn wasn't pushing her to marry anymore. She could be certain that here, in Duskendale, she would live the happy life she had imagined sketched in front of her. In King's Landing, in the schemes and plots of the court, away from her family, she would hardly even be fully content.
But she remembered Queen Alysanne – from the Golden Wedding, when she hadn't even become a queen yet. A smiling girl with bright keen eyes, so easily making allies and working hard to undo the damage Maegor had caused... Now she had almost been slain, in Jonquil's Pool of all places (that was the trouble with rare names – Jonquil felt weirdly guilty about it, though the Pool had nothing to do with her). If someone managed to get to her after all... who would come in her place? What if Jaehaerys married someone as cruel as Maegor? What if Jaehaerys became as cruel as Maegor if Alysanne died?
You can't even make your own decision, not truly, Derryk's words from ten years ago echoed in her ears. Serving the queen, she was doing her duty to keep the realm at peace. Of course, she could (and probably would) earn glory and riches, but would she ever be as happy as she had been here in Duskendale?
"I will go," she said, resolved.
Derryk and Elmie looked at her with sadness, and she knew that they understood.
When they said their goodbyes, Jonquil wanted to invite them to come to court whenever they can, but immediately berated herself for such selfishness. She was going there because of her duty, but she had no right to drag them after her as well just because she'd feel lonely otherwise.
"We'll come to visit you whenever we can," Elmie promised as they hugged for the last time.
"I promise we will. Best of luck, sister dear."
Jonquil Darke, junior captain of Dun Fort, dressed in her finest scarlet armor, rode slowly away to become the sworn shield of Queen Alysanne.