CELTIGAR - House of The Dragon

King's Landing

Rhea knelt by her side, carefully placing a gentle hand on the woman's shoulder, nodding her to continue. The grief and pain she felt took all her senses away, she could barely focus on what the woman was saying, her blood rushing to her ears and her eyes blurring.

"They killed all the Targaryens they could find, princess. The children," she let out an agonizing sob again. "The Queen, they killed her last, made her watch as they took her children's lives while she begged for them."

Rhea's heart broke, Helaena did nothing to deserve this, her children were innocent, and so was she, to think they had died in such painful, dreadful conditions filled her mind with revengeful thoughts, and an anger she had never felt before. Nothing would ever make this right, and nothing was forbidden any more, she thought. She would back down from nothing to make Daemon Targaryen pay for what he had done. She vowed that the prince would die in flames, screaming.

Rhea registered what the servant had said, "all the Targaryens". She jerked her head towards the door and all she could think about was Aemond, he had to have been there, and so had Aegon.

"What of the King? And the Hand?" Rhea asked, panic overcoming her. "Were they here?"

The nurse shook her head, she did not know. Rhea promised she would come back and urged her and the Queen Mother to leave the room, find some place where such a gruesome thing had not taken place and keep themselves safe until she would come back. She handed the Queen her dagger and made her swear to use it should she need it.

This time, there was no time to stay in bed and grieve for a month, this time, Rhea would act, and she would act fast. Her niece and nephews' deaths would not be meaningless, she would avenge them, even if that meant breaking the promise she had made to Rhaenyra. Loyalty meant nothing if all the people you were loyal to died.

As she left the room, she realised most of the King's Guard had been slaughtered, their heads thrown carelessly on the floor. It was a dreadful, awful sight. Daemon must have had spies in the Keep, otherwise things would not have been so easy. She got to Aegon's quarters but they were empty and hope suddenly came to her. Maybe him and his brother had fled and they were both safe, away from here. She ran to the Tower of the Hand, out of breath and climbed the stairs quickly. As she opened the door, she heard shuffling behind them and sounds of pain, of struggle. Rhea lifted up her sword and moved forward.

In the room, Aemond lay on the floor, struggling to pick up his sword. Rhea's breath stopped, and she ran to him, sliding on her knees, taking his face in her hands and inspecting every bit of him. He let out pained groans and, soon, Rhea's eyes fell on the prince's hands. They were bloody, and most importantly, they were clasped on his belly. He had been stabbed and left to die. His body was bruised and battered, he had cuts all over his face and arms.

"Daemon-" The prince struggled to say.

"I know, don't speak. Sit back and lift your shirt, let me have a look", Rhea ordered.

She did not know how she kept her cool, how she managed to stay calm as everything in her body shouted at her to collapse under the weight of her nerves. Her prince painstakingly lifted his shirt and revealed a deep bleeding cut. Rhea drew a sharp breath.

"Are they all gone? Is the Keep safe?" Rhea urged her husband to answer.

The prince was starting to loose consciousness and Rhea would not loose him, not today, not ever. She slapped him across the face to keep him awake and he jolted up before his drowsy lids began to close again.

"Aemond," she cried out. "Is the Keep safe?" She insisted.

Her prince nodded slowly. Of course, they had all left when Daemon did. She remembered seeing a small number of boats sailing from King's Landing towards Dragonstone as she flew back, it must have been them. She should have burnt them all alive, she thought. Aemond groaned again and took Rhea's hand in his.

"I hurt him, too," he managed to say. "Hmm, I put my sword through his leg."

He smiled a small, proud smile and winced.

"Aemond, love, I'm going to patch you up, okay?" Rhea said collectedly. "Bite this."

She handed him the sheath from her dagger and he placed it between his teeth, a look of distress in his eyes. He was scared. She put the tip of her sword in the fire burning in the fireplace and let it sit there for a minute.

"This might hurt," she admitted. "I'm sorry."

She knelt back down next to him and brought her sword close to the wound. He had his eyes fixed in hers and nodded. There was a saying that the Targaryens were immune to fire, and while they were indeed a little less sensitive to it than most people, they weren't immune to molten metal. Aemond took her other hand in his and, as she pressed the scorching steel to his wound, he wrung his fingers on her hand, squeezing as tight as he could to help deal with the pain of cauterization. His body went into spasm as she kept repeating how sorry she was. His teeth sank into the leather and slowly released it as she lifted her sword back up.

"This should do it," she said, standing up and cleaning the tip of her weapon. "Are you okay?"

Aemond breathed hard, pain still coursing through his body but, after a while, he managed to get up, leaning against his desk, his hands clamping on the edge of the wooden piece of furniture to steady himself.

"I will be," he breathed out, trying to give her a comforting smile. "Is everyone-"

Rhea let out a sob, at last. She put a hand to her mouth to stop her but, as she turned to the man she loved, and she saw the look he had on his face, she knew he had understood.

"I haven't found Aegon yet, but-"

He walked with difficulty towards her, holding her close to him. Aegon had not been in the Red Keep since the previous night, he had been out in a brothel, which he now frequented almost daily to get drunk and fall into forgetfulness. At least he had been safe, away from the castle.

"Helaena and her children are all dead," she told him in a heart-breaking cry.

He let out a long, pained, furious sigh and tears rolled out of his eye, his fists scrunched the fabric of the shirt Rhea was wearing, the pain he felt was one he had never felt before, and it broke him.

"We will avenge them," Rhea swore to him, a fierce look in her eye, her jaw was clenched and, for the first time in his life, Aemond truly feared what she would do.