ALL THE THINGS SHE SAID

-0-

The Great Sept of King's Landing still smelled of summer wax and crushed roses.

Morning light spilled through panes of colored glass, breaking against the marble floor in fractured hues of sapphire and amber. The statues of the Seven loomed vast and pale above the worshippers, their painted eyes severe and gentle all at once.

Princess Rhaenara Targaryen knelt at the foot of the Mother.

Not because she was commanded to.

Not because it was expected.

But because she chose to.

Her fingers, slender and ink-smudged from a habit of annotating her lessons, moved over the small crystal beads looped around her wrist. They were not true prayer beads, those belonged to septas, but she had fashioned her own from broken fragments of a shattered Myrish bracelet, insisting that devotion did not require permission.

She wore yellow that morning, soft, pale, nearly cream in the morning light. The silk gown was cut modestly at the bodice, long fitted sleeves tapering at her wrists, embroidered at the cuffs with silver thread in the faintest suggestion of dragon wings. The choice of color had been deliberate. Yellow for the Mother. Yellow for gentleness.

Her silver-gold hair fell in a heavy braid down her back, though smaller braids were woven along her temples, tied with narrow ribbons the same color as her gown. Unlike her sister, she rarely wore it loose in sacred spaces. She said it felt improper, though no one had told her so.

She bowed her head.

"Grant her strength." she murmured quietly. "And grant my father sense."

A cough echoed across the sept.

Not the dry cough of an old septon.

A familiar, impatient one.

Rhaenara did not turn at once.

She finished the prayer properly. She pressed her fingers first to the Mother's marble foot, then briefly to her own lips.

Only then did she rise.

Rhaenyra Targaryen stood halfway down the aisle, sunlight caught in her unbound silver hair. Most of it spilled freely down her back in shining waves, but two narrow braids had been drawn from her temples and clasped behind her head with a delicate dragon-shaped pin of gold. She wore riding leathers beneath a half-fastened surcoat of crimson trimmed in black.

And she smelled unmistakably of dragon.

Sulfur, warm stone, the faint metallic scent of scorched air.

Rhaenara tilted her head.

"You flew."

Rhaenyra's mouth curved. "Good morning to you as well."

"You flew low." Rhaenara corrected mildly, stepping toward her. "Syrax is restless, I can smell it in your sleeves."

Rhaenyra lifted her arm and sniffed it, then wrinkled her nose. "You cannot."

"I can."

"You imagine it."

Rhaenara leaned closer, deliberately dramatic, inhaling near her sister's shoulder. "No. That is definitely dragon. And smoke. And arrogance."

Rhaenyra snorted. "That last one is yours."

They regarded each other for a long moment, mirror faces, same sharp Valyrian cheekbones, same lilac eyes. But where Rhaenyra's gaze was bright and blazing, Rhaenara's carried something steadier. Watchful. Calculating, even at fifteen.