𝕿he 𝕿hroned 𝕺ath chapter six. within the castle walls
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── ୨୧ ──
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Six years That was how long it had been since Saera Targaryen last laid eyes on her half-sister, Rhaenyra.
Six years since that violent night when Aemond lost his eye and the bonds of family were torn as sharply as flesh.
The memory had not dulled with time. If anything, it had etched itself deeper like a wound that refused to scar, reopening with every whispered insult, every sideways glance, every moment the realm creaked under the weight of a looming succession war.
In those six long years, King Viserys had begun to wither. Once a giant in her eyes commanding, just, beloved he now resembled a ghost that haunted the Red Keep. His body thinned, his voice grew raspier, and his presence drifted between this world and the Stranger's.
Saera, too, had changed. She had grown into a woman not just by years, but by fire. No longer the soft-spoken girl who trailed behind her siblings with wide eyes and unsure steps, she now carried herself with quiet strength and a gaze sharp enough to cut.
Her beauty was of the Targaryen kind violet eyes that held both warmth and warning and red hair falling to her waist, but there was something of her mother, Alicent, in her stillness. A watchfulness. A contained fire.
And yet, it was her relationship with Alicent that had shifted the most.
Where once they had been bound tightly by affection and shared devotion to the Faith, distance had grown. Not a sudden rift but a slow, creeping fracture, like frost over glass.
Alicent still clung to her, fiercely protective, unwilling to let go. She fended off Otto's proposals of marriage, declaring that Saera's worth was too great to waste on some minor lord of the Reach or Westerlands. But even Saera had begun to wonder was her mother's love a shield, or a cage?
Only with Helaena did she feel entirely herself. Saera remained a constant by her sister's side through marriage, pregnancy, and the quiet tragedies Helaena bore alone.
