The Dragon's Heart Is Mine || Geralt Targaryen

23 • YENNEFER: PRINCESS IN THE TOWER || PART 2

The princess was left alone to pace, and weep, and nurse her wounds.

During the day light hours she would try to read the ponderous old histories and geographies, annotated maps, a dry-as-dust study of The Laws of Dorne,The Seven pointed Star and lives of the High Septons, and Ten Thousand Ships or The Loves of Queen Nymeria ,anything to occupy her thoughts and leather escape her tower for an hour or two, but such amusements were denied her.

From her window seat, she had only to glance out to see the great dome of gold and colored glass below her, where her father satin state. He will summon me soon, father will come, she told herself.

No visitors were permitted her beyond the servants; Bors with his stubbly jaw,
tall Timoth dripping dignity,the sisters Morra and Mellei, pretty little Cedra,old Belandra who had been her mother's bedmaid.

They brought her meals, changed her bed,and emptied the chamber pots beneath her privy, but one would speak with her.when she required more wine, Timothy Ould fetch it.

If she desired some favorite bread and chicken sauce or pie or food, figs or olives or peppers stuffed with cheese, she need only tell Beandra, and it would appear. Morra and Mellei took away her dirty clothes and returned them clean and fresh.

Every second day a bath was brought for her, and shy little Cedra would soap her back and help her brush her hair.

Yet none of them had a word for her, nor would they design to tell her what was happening in the world outside her sandstone age. They only turned his back on her and walked away.

"Have you all gone stupid, are you deaf?" Yennefer snapped at them.

"Come back here and answer me. I command it!"

Her only reply was the sound of a door closing.

"Belandra," Yennefer said,a few days later.

"If you ever loved my late lady mother,
take pity on her poor daughter and tell me when my father means to come and see me. Please. Please. I'll give you anything you want"

But Belandra never said a word. Is this my father's notion of torment? Not horizons or the rack, but simple silence?

That was so very like Doran Martell that Yennefer had to laugh. He thinks he is being subtle. She resolved to enjoy the quiet, to use the time to heal and fortify herself for what must come.

Mellario will pay for this, Yennefer swore, her and her children, even though she loved them, they will all pay for stealing her birthright.

However Yennefer missed her cousins so much. The more she thought about her cousins, even the bastard ones, and Lord Oberyn Martell's children, everyone, the more the princess misses them.

That night Yennefer tried pounding on the floor with the heel of her sandal.

When no one answered,she leaned out a window and peered down. She could see other windows below, smaller than her own, some no more than arrow loops."

"Can anyone you hear me?"

The princess spent half the night hanging out the window, calling till her throat was raw, but no answering shouts came back to her. That frightened her more than she could say.

"Why didn't anyone answer? If father has done them harm, did he cut out their tongues, if he kills my handmaids or servants I will never forgive him, never." She told herself.

By the time a fortnight had passed, her patience had worn paper-thin.

"I will speak with my father now!" she told Bors, in her most commanding voice.