"I cannot describe it, but you will know it when you feel it."
Danelle Dayne had nothing. No family, no friends, no connections left on this world that knew she was alive. Aside from a mayhaps septon, though I doubted the man was going to talk to anybody for a while. Starfall was not a castle to be easily accessed after having its bridges burnt.
No, the girl had nothing to tie her to this world, nothing to give her life meaning besides vengeance, nothing she could truly call her own. Over time, I could help her with all of them. For now, however, I could only resolve the last one. At the crown's expense, too. Really, everybody won.
Except for the treasury, but that was overflowing with gold anyways. In no small part thanks to me. And coin was meant to be spent. A coin locked in a vault was a coin that was not turning the wheels of the economy.
Leaving the girl with the servants, and the servants with a lengthy list of instructions, I chose to defer any emotionally taxing conversation with the traumatized child until a later hour. I was under no illusion that trying to bribe my way to forgiveness was an exercise in futility, but this girl was going to be a lengthy guest. She deserved to have a few things of her own.
And this was my fault.
And I was getting impatient.
There was someone far more important waiting for me.
Within Maegor's Holdfast, I made my way to my apartments- the apartments I shared with Maegelle and, however indirectly, our children. But if I knew my children, they were busy wiling away the afternoon hours with childish adventures. It had been far too long since I had been able to do the same. More than a lifetime, in fact, but that only inflated their value in my mind.
It was a minor curse hidden within a greater blessing. One life ended and another began. What was a little childish innocence in the bargain? The Seven had my gratitude for that much and would have it until the day I no longer drew breath.
The Seven were good, for I am here. Words that had guided me since I had been able to understand them.
The door to our apartments opened slowly, revealing the isolated figure. Silver-gold hair struck a vivid contrast to the plain white of her dress and her pale skin. As her eyes tracked up to look at me, however, it seemed like they were the only source of color in the world. Pale violet they were, their luster unmatched by anything around her.
Her eyes widened as she realized who had returned home at long last, and the tome in her lap was cast aside without so much as a glance as she rose to her feet. My feet moved without a mind of their own as my mind was too busy drinking in the image of the woman before me.
My arms wrapped her in a gentle embrace, drawing her close as I felt something familiar press against me. Something I had not felt in almost five years.
"Maegelle," I said, my voice breathless as I beheld the woman whom, despite all laws of nature, I loved. The woman who was ever so slightly pregnant. As was so often the case, my tongue acted without my mind's input. "I see you have already extracted the price for my absences."
"A month of leave at that is the first thing you say?" Maegelle asked with a slight laugh that made my heart dance within my chest. "You are late, Vaegon."
"I said it would be a few weeks, did I not?" I asked jovially, picking her up and spinning her with all the ease with which I handled our children, earning a few more giggles and a flutter in my heart. A month apart, a month filled with self-recrimination and doubt, and yet a few brief moments made it all seem so much less weighty. "And here I am, a few weeks later."
By the Seven I loved that woman.
"Do not try to hide from the spirit of your vow behind its letters," she warned me, leveling a finger at my chest. Unfortunately for her, the action came off as more endearing than threatening. Fortunately for her, however, I was in a very good mood.
"You wound me," I exclaimed, clutching at my heart like an amateurish mummer that had yet to discover the meaning of subtlety. Which, in a way, was not too far from the truth. "And here I thought you would be happy to have me back, however briefly."
"Briefly?" Whatever good cheer had filled the air around us promptly evaporated as her gaze promptly sharpened. Her once soft eyes, usually so filled with love and kindness, suddenly contained nothing but suspicion. "Please tell me you jest."
"I wish it were a jest," I sighed, all good cheer evaporating in an instant as I all but collapsed in one of the large and comfortable chairs in the room, my armor clattering with the movement. After constantly wearing it for a month, I was beginning to grow more than a little annoyed with its presence. Its weight, though negligible, had been impossible to escape for far too long. "I leave on the morrow. Father's orders."
"Your distaste… it's not just because you need to take your leave, is it?" Maegelle did not return to the seat she had occupied before my return, opposite my current perch. Instead, she came to a halt behind me, fiddling with the buckles on my armor. "Something happened during your time in Dorne."
It was not a question.
Maegelle had always been a clever person. It was one reason, one of many, that had drawn us together, I supposed. And I was never more grateful for that quality than then.
"I… lost control," I admitted, shifting in my seat to give her better access to the armor's buckle. While she worried on the right side, I fiddled with the left. The pauldron, that had to go first in order to expose the mountings for the upper cannon covering my upper arm. "Starfall. Anger at Baelon's death combined with a desire for vengeance and a hunt to blame someone – anyone –for what had happened. And they presented a convenient target."
"How badly?" she asked, freeing my right shoulder just a moment before my left pauldron came loose as well.
I opened my mouth, unsure of what to say, but the words would not come.
A castle destroyed, rendered inaccessible by land, and half of it turned into a puddle of molten stone and man.
Servants, guards, attendants, guests, squires, and men-at-arms, all dead in a quest for mindless vengeance.
An innocent family all but wiped out.
The lord of one of the most ancient houses in Westeros slain by my hand for no better reason than failing to prevent his liege from starting a war. The first man I killed with my own hands, slain in such a brutal and meaningless fashion. A reminder of my foolishness still weighed on my belt, one I was unwilling to part with until I could forgive myself.
The words would not come, and Maegelle noticed. Her hands stopped trying to free me from my armor, pausing in their action. No longer was she working to get my armor off of me, no, she moved around the comfortable chair to be able to look me in the eye.
"… all of them." Those were the words I managed to say, my eyes downcast. "Dead. Burned. Fed to the Cannibal. All save two. A septon and a little girl."
I expected a slap.
Words of reprimand.
A demand that I explain my actions.
"I understand." That, I did not expect. My head rose, meeting violet eyes a bare hand's breadth from mine. "What you did was monstrous, but I understand why you did it."
"…what?" I asked.
"Even if I did not see Baelon die, I did see his body when they gave it to the flame," she said, a gentle hand reaching out to cup my cheek. "I know what was needed to recover that body, what our nephew had to endure to bring his father home for burial. Were it not for our children, I would be joining you in war without a moment's hesitation."
The hand resting on her belly made it clear that she did not merely mean the twins.
"Even after what I did-" I began to speak, only to be cut off.
"You were grieving," she said softly. "Any man who would not have been tempted to do the same is a heartless beast not deserving of being called a brother. Monstrous it might have been, I understand why you did it."
"That does not make it right."
"No," she said, moving forwards to rest her forehead against mine. "No, it does not. But I will not hold it against you."
Gods be good I loved that woman.
"Whatever would I do without you?" I asked, a grateful smile cracking my solemn features.
"Make bad decisions and fail to learn from them?" She asked in turn, the corners of her mouth quirking up. As her face shifted ever so slightly to the sly end of things, I could not help myself. A brief chuckle of laughter escaped my lips, followed by another, longer one soon joined by another from the star of my life across from me.
"Why must you bring the truth into this?" I asked once I regained my composure, once we had drifted apart.
"Because one day you might learn from it," she responded, pulling me back to my feet as her hands returned to my armor.
"Doubtful," I said, busying myself with yet more straps and rivets that kept my armor in place. Within seconds, I found myself freed from yet more of the pale plates. "Where are the children? No doubt they have found no shortage of adventures now that the keep is half empty?"
"With Mother," Maegelle revealed. "She has been loath to part with the children since the funeral. And Viserys…" her voice trailed off. Our nephew had lost his father to war and his mother was busy exacting vengeance. Busy doing as I had done. No doubt the boy was lonely.
Wait, funeral?
"The funeral?" I asked, wrinkling my brow in confusion. "I know you mentioned it earlier, but how did they recover the…" Seeing Maegelle's pained expression, the pieces dropped into place.
Our brother had been strapped to his saddle when he died. There was only one way to recover that body. Only one way to bring him back before the rot set in and reduced him to a puddle of rotten sludge contained by a shell of steel.
A curse upon Morion Martell. A curse upon his house.
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