Rhaena would not admit it aloud but she was growing worried. Daena and Elaena had been acting extremely strange lately, always making excuses to hole up in their rooms with their cousin Daeron whenever he visited. They were smart enough to make excuses that their ladies in waiting all believed like Daeron simply being like a little brother to them who had dutifully come to keep them company in their confinement with games and reading but Rhaena was their sister, even if they sometimes seemed as if they did not want her to be, and she was not so easily fooled...
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Note: To avoid the chapter being hidden like Chapter 3 was, most of Rhaena's POV has been removed from the Patreon version and can be read over on the website or on Google Docs!
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Sixth Moon, 169 AC
Rhaena Targaryen
Rhaena would not admit it aloud but she was growing worried. Daena and Elaena had been acting extremely strange lately, always making excuses to hole up in their rooms with their cousin Daeron whenever he visited. They were smart enough to make excuses that their ladies in waiting all believed like Daeron simply being like a little brother to them who had dutifully come to keep them company in their confinement with games and reading but Rhaena was their sister, even if they sometimes seemed as if they did not want her to be, and she was not so easily fooled.
She didn’t want to think that they were getting up to sinful or obscene behavior with Daeron, she had more than enough respect for all three of them to believe they would really do that but she couldn’t help but fear and wonder. She didn’t doubt that sometimes at least their excuses were true, but other times Daena and Elaena would just have this strange look of excitement before Daeron arrived and after he left, they’d have this dazed, content expression all throughout the following day until he came again.
Worst of all, Rhaena couldn’t help the part of herself that would understand if they were. Daeron hadn’t been much to look at for many years but in the past few months, ever since he had undertaken his new training as a squire under their cousin, Aemon, he had changed greatly. He carried himself differently now, with more confidence and charm, just like the dashing knights described in the Seven-Pointed Star and all the tales and songs Rhaena grew up on.
He was handsome too. Handsome enough that she could almost believe her sisters would be so reckless and foolish as to sin for him, disobeying their brother and laying with Daeron outside of wedlock.
Rhaena might aspire to be a septa, but she wasn’t one yet, and the Seven-Pointed Star had never said that admiring the beauty of the Seven’s creations was a sin. Daeron had a way of making that withering part of her that still longed to be a wife and mother yearn but Rhaena had long given up on that chance.
She was an old maid, already twenty and two, and who knew how many more years her brother would live? None would want to wed her by the time she left the Maidenvault and with marriage and motherhood closed to her, the Faith was the only path left. Yet even that Baelor denied her.
Rhaena knew it wasn’t her place to question her brother and his decisions but sometimes she truly couldn’t understand why he made the decisions they did or see how they followed the teachings of the Faith. She truly couldn’t. And all her piety and faith, her appearance of being content with her confinement, much of which had been done to please Baelor in the hopes that he might extend her some favor and permit her to leave the Maidenvault had done nothing but distance her more and more from her sisters with every passing year.
She knew they resented her faith. That they simply saw it as her following along with the man who had locked them away. Yet she couldn’t stop. The Faith had been her comfort when their mother had died and their father had neglected most of them. It had been what had connected her to Naerys who had cared for her as if she was her own even though she had been a scant nine years her elder. And once upon a time, it had been what had bound her and Baelor together when Daeron and Daena had been off in their own world with Aegon and Aemon.
Even now the Faith remained her comfort, her hope that all of this waiting and confinement had a purpose, that it meant something, that the years she had spent praying and hoping here in this vault for a chance to do something, anything, meaningful had not been wasted.
That was why she followed after her sisters now. It had been years since she had been close enough to them to simply ask them what was wrong so simply and she couldn’t let it go either way. The same Faith that had comforted her all those years had also taught her to be her siblings’ keeper and her conscience wouldn’t relent until she put the matter to rest.
She was sure there was nothing to worry about. She would just peek into the room and they would be doing something boring like playing games or reading. Maybe she might even ask to join them so she could spend some family time with her sisters and cousin and feel just a little less lonely.
Yet as she neared Daena’s room, Rhaena froze in her step as a strange sound pierced through the door. At first she almost thought one of her sisters was screaming in pain before she realized they were screaming for different reasons entirely.
Despite what her sisters seemed to think of her, Rhaena was not naïve. She was still human, still fallible and weak. Even when it shamed her, even she hadn’t been able to stop her fingers trailing down to her womanhood on occasion on the loneliest and hottest nights. Even she had snuck glances at the illicit books that had been smuggled into the Maidenvault when she thought no one was looking. She knew all too well what moans or screams of pleasure sounded like, both from descriptions and from personal experience.
Rhaena’s cheeks burned as those very same sounds came from Daena’s room. A part of her wanted to walk away immediately, to run and tell the guards, tell Baelor, yet she stopped herself. What if she was wrong? What if she was mistaken? What if her fears and paranoia had made her misinterpret what could be a perfectly innocent scenario?
She did her best to control her blush, creeping closer to the door and turning the handle so that it could open ever so slightly. She had rarely ever been thankful that Baelor had not installed locks in the Maidenvault rooms but for once it proved useful to sate her fears. Rhaena peeked into the room and what she saw shocked her.
It was worse. So much worse than she could have possibly feared or imagined. The sheer scale of the depravity was almost indescribable.... TRIMMED - READ THE REST OF RHAENA'S POV ON WEBSITE/GOOGLE DOCS
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Eleventh Moon, 169 AC
Daena
Daena’s face was a mask carved from stone as the child High Septon gave Baelor his last rites. The ceremony was tiresome and tedious, full of all the flowery religious tripe she had long since learned to despise. She was with child for Seven’s sake! She needed her rest! Why were they making her stand out here for this nonsense?
When Aemon and the rest of the Kingsguard finally set their torches down to light his pyre, Daena waited eagerly for the feeling of triumph and pleasure to flower in her heart but to her surprise it never came. She waited patiently for it but it never did. All the while the fire steadily burned, removing every last trace of that cruel, tyrannical fool from this earth as if it was cleansing them all of his presence.
She should have been happy, she thought. She should have been overjoyed. She had been when she had first learnt of his death and realized that she was now free, forever free of her imprisonment in the Maidenvault, free to be with Daeron again after Baelor had kept them apart for over a moon.
She had been so amused by the thought that Daeron might have quite literally cuckolded Baelor to death. The fool had prayed and fasted ceaselessly, refusing even bread or water in the last hours until he had finally collapsed, and nothing, not even the prayers of the peasant boy he had appointed as High Septon, could save him.
The funeral should have been the final capstone of her triumph over her captor. Yet why did the joy never come? Why did she just feel uneasy?
Desperate for answers, Daena looked to her kin all around her, wondering how they felt about the whole matter.
Aegon looked as if he was barely able to hold back a smile of amusement at Baelor’s death and Daena wished she could feel the same. Aemon and Uncle Viserys were grim-faced and impassive, though there were the slightest traces of both relief and grief on their faces.
Naerys and Rhaena were openly sobbing though, both of them tearfully mourning and despite herself, Daena’s heart couldn’t help but feel a little something, for their sake at least. Even Elaena did not have the joy or triumph that Daena was expecting, simply looking numb to it all.
With a start, it finally occurred to her just what it was that was making her uneasy. Something she had a feeling Elaena had realized as well.
For all that they had hated him, for all that he had treated them cruelly, Baelor had still been their kin. Once upon a time he had just been overly preachy and bookish, annoying whenever he went on one of his pious rants but tolerable otherwise. Before Daeron had died, before he had spurned Daena in their short-lived marriage, he had been their brother… and they had loved him once.
The uneasiness that she felt in her heart now, Daena realized it wasn’t because she was mourning Baelor, not as he had been before she had died. She was just realizing the permanence of his death, the final closing of everything that he had been, everything that he should have been, and everything that he could have still been.
Both of her brothers were dead now, and Daena was uncertain what the future held for her and her sisters. By all rights, the throne was hers but the Dance had left bad memories for most of the realm, tainting even the idea of a ruling queen. Not to mention, both Aerea and Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, had been passed over for their uncles in the succession. Precedent did not favor her.
Daena had few if any allies among the nobility after her years of imprisonment in the Maidenvault. Especially since she could no longer offer her own virgin hand in marriage to win support. If her uncle Viserys, the successful Hand of the King for nigh over thirty years, sought to take the throne, would the realm really favor her ascent over him?
And if he did become King, what would happen to her and her sisters? That scared Daena more than anything. The fear that even with Baelor dead, she might still remain powerless and unable to control her own fate or protect her sisters.
Would their uncle just cast them all aside? Leave them all with bastards while he forced Daeron to still honor the betrothal to Myriah Martell? Worse yet, would he simply choose Daena as Daeron’s wife to unite their claims and smoothen the ascendance of his own line while sending Rhaena, Elaena, and their bastards off to the Faith just as he had disposed of some of Aegon’s mistresses and bastard children?
The thought was paralyzing. She was responsible for this. In her ravenous lust and desire to spite Baelor, she had not just allowed but encouraged her own lover to claim her sisters for his own. Everything that happened to them would be her responsibility and Daena hated that she didn’t know if she would even have the power to safeguard them.
Her worries must have shown on her face because Daeron intertwined his hand with hers and she felt her heart calm ever so slightly. She turned to look at him and saw the reassuring gaze in his eyes and felt her worries put to rest. She knew what he was saying without words. That no matter what, he would make sure to look after her and her sisters.
It had been many long years since she had been willing to trust her fate to someone else. Even Daeron’s namesake had betrayed her in the end, dooming her to a loveless marriage she had never wanted. But Daeron, Daeron was her light. The love of her life. If there was anyone that she could trust, anyone that she could believe in, it was him.
Daena was certain of that. It was one of the few truths she had left. She didn’t know what she would do if it ended up being wrong just like all the others had been.
Maybe if her egg had hatched, she wouldn’t be in this situation, Daena thought bitterly. But no matter how much she had hoped and even prayed, no dragon had ever come forth for her or any Targaryen since the last dragon had died in her father’s reign.
She looked at it balefully as it burned on the pyre with Baelor’s and their sisters’ eggs. An honor she hadn’t thought he deserved but something she had gone along with nonetheless because Daeron had convinced her.
It was a fool’s hope for sure. In her heart, Daena hadn’t truly believed that anything would come of it but she had known what he had been trying to do. Even when things seemed hopeless, he was fighting with everything he had to ensure they controlled their own destinies for once. It was part of why she loved him so much.
Yet as the pyre burned until nothing remained but ash, Daena couldn’t help but feel that sliver of foolish hope fade away.
What had she been expecting, she thought to herself? Nothing had ever gone right for her in her life. Why would it start now? Even Daeron might soon be taken away, if not from her then certainly from her sisters at least.
Downcast and upset, Daena clung tighter to her lover, intent on taking him away from here so he could take her mind off things while they could still comfort each other like that.
Yet just as they were about to leave, she heard it.
Crack.
She froze in her step as the same noise sounded again. Daena turned around in disbelief, and her eyes widened in shock, her mind simply unable to accept the sight of cracking eggs and tiny wriggling scales and the sound of quiet chirps and cries.
Yet what her mind could not accept, her heart knew to be true as she felt the fire within her burst to life, feeling warmer and stronger than she ever had in her life. As if a missing puzzle piece she had always been looking for had finally slotted right into place.
Amidst all the ash and smoke, four writhing little hatchlings squirmed out of their eggs as they all looked on, awestruck. And for the first time in sixteen years, the world was filled with the music of dragons.
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Author’s Note: Huge thanks to Raging Smurf for his help with the chapter, hope you guys enjoyed it! It was a long time coming but I hope Rhaena’s spicy entrance into the quartent and the dragons hatching were well worth the wait!
Please let me know your thoughts, suggestions, and questions in the comments below or over on Discord!