¹ 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐒 ━━ 𝐝. 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐲𝐞𝐧

xxiii. new person, old mistakes

✧˖° 🌑 ೄྀ࿐
━ [ SONG OF SORROWS ] ༉‧₊˚✧
x. act one... the dragon's daughter
new person, old mistakes ━ ✩・*。

— WINTER, 113 A.C
KING'S LANDING, CROWNLANDS

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. * 　　　 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 .
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TO Valerys Targaryen, there was always a certain beauty in the months of winter. The freezing air that stung each time it was inhaled, to be wracked with shivering rather than heated sweating, and the end of lush foliage, making way for new growth and change. Winter was a month for rebuilding, to pave the way for regrowth. It was a time when plants died in order to come back stronger, to be reborn amongst the greenery that would come with the warm hands of spring. A month she was borne into, one she both dreaded and adored. In a strange way, Valerys believed herself to be in her own winter.

She wouldn't go so far as to claim the loss of herself had remade her, nor broken her down so far to the point where she needed to be rebuilt, but it was a catalyst for change in her life. Fate took lives, ushered people into a dank darkness of isolation, but before, those lost in the crossfires and in the shadows were nameless to Valerys, people she watched on with curious eyes, their stories unknown and therefore mattered very little to the girl... but now, now one of those lost souls was herself.

    Grief had been a welcomed friend these last months, clung to her ankle like a child to their mother, afraid to part with her for fear of losing the one thing she continuously clung to for support, for structure. For without something to meld her life around, to sew patchily into the gaping hole in her heart, who was she? Who was she outside of the emotions she projected, outside of the ones she fed into? Without a reason to continue, to wrestle with life that had shoved her further into a grave, Valerys truly had no sense of who she was.

    On the morn of her seventeenth name day, Valerys admitted — while an active participant in fixing this issue — she still did not know. Reparations had been made; each morning she broke her fast with her family, ignoring in vain the snappy eyes Rhaenyra projected towards Alicent, or the snarky comment she threw in towards their father. Where once Valerys would have agreed with, and even encouraged this behavior, she no longer had interest in the petty drama her younger sister so often indulged in. If Rhaenyra was anything, she was not one to kiss and forget. Valerys had come to play the harlot and lay her lips upon the poisoned skin of those around her.

    A cool breeze roused the hair lain upon Valerys' shoulders as she stabbed her fork absentmindedly into the roast duck before her, suddenly uninterested in her breakfast. Across the table, Aegon cooed in his mother's lap, toying with the laces done up the front of Alicent's gown. As had been since the birth of his son, Viserys dutifully avoided most all contact with the newborn, instead inclining to indulge in idle conversation with his younger daughter, who — if Valerys noticed correctly, which she did — could not bring her eyes away from Alicent and Aegon, fingers rapping against the wooden table.

    Where once eating amongst her family brought comfort and joy to Valerys, she had now come to dread it; she felt a stranger with them, a drop of scarlet blood in the freshly-fallen snow. If anyone around her sensed her clear displeasure, no one made mention of it — or looked her way, really. Perhaps it were better that way, Valerys thought. Then they could not see her absolute discomfort regarding her name day ceremony and what was to come of it.