Burn me • Aemond Targaryen

The Last Thing

Chapter Thirty-Seven~ The Last Thing

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

One moon had passed since Aerys had been stolen to the Gods.
Rhaella had found some form of comfort on the shores, by the home den of her dragon.

Talk of war and battle had been circulating the red keeps walls for weeks. But neither side had yet made a move. Both still mourning the loss of son.

"I wonder what would happen if we were all dead." Rhaella said breaking the scilence.

Aemond turned to her, confused. "What?"

"Well the only reason our Mother and our Grandsire were able to do this is because we have the Targaryen name." She explained. "Without it what use would any of us be."

"Well we aren't Hightower's." Aemond replied as if it was an obvious thing to say.

"Well we're certainly more Hightower than Rhaynera." She told him.

"Rhaynera's Mother was an Arryn through her father." Aemond stared down at her when she lay down into the sand. The growing light in the dawn sky, let him see the dim glow of her purple eyes, she was the most majestic creature he had ever seen.

"But Targaryen through her mother." She shot back. "Rhaynera's blood runs thicker than ours." Her logic was correct, but to tell anyone but him would he seen as treason.

"We have the blood of the Dragon, it doesn't matter how thick it runs." Aemond told her. "We are Dragons."

"Then why do we let Hightower's dictate our dynasty?" Rhaella questioned.

"We, you, are Targaryen." He said to her. "So where are you going with this?"

"Nowhere unless I wish to lose my head." She laughed, but it was bitter. "What of Helaena?" She questioned turning her head so that she could see him.

"She will not leave her chambers." Aemond told her. "Jaehaera enters every morning with a trey of tea, but they sit in scilence, sometimes Helaena will call her by her sons name and then she begins to scream when she realizes." He sighed. "They've advised Aegon to have her and Maelor taken away, but Maelor won't see her anyway."

"You should've seen his face." Rhaella mumbled, staring solely at the ground. "I've never seen a child of three bare emotion the way he did." The memory of her nephews face flashed in her head. "When she called his name, he knew what it meant." Rhaella felt ill thinking about it. "Maybe she didn't expect him to understand, but he did Aemond, he knew that she'd said to kill him."

Aemond pulled her closer to him, a vain attempt to try and shield her in the horrors that were coming.

Coming for them.

Though history will say different. Rhaella thought her sister to be brave. Of course it had not gone the way she had been forced to choose, but it was still a brave choice. To name one of your children to be put to slaughter to save another child, no matter how barbaric was a courageous thing to have to do.

And it made Rhaella feel a coward.

It had been her Aerys that made the choice.