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[perzo]

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RHAENYRA

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[perzo]

I cannot change what has already transpired.

[ even then, daemon had insisted — and she had believed him — that his orders had been clear, and that the men who had been paid had acted outside of them. but even then, she would have confronted aemond herself in retaliation for luke, if such a path had been open to her. ]

But he has sworn himself to my cause, under penalty of consequence. He only seeks to stay your son's hand.

[unapparent]

[ the cause that will take my son’s heads? ]

I ask you only not to trust your Lord Husband blindly, when he has rarely shown constancy.

Do not forget the pain he caused your father.

[ when he touched her, ruined her, wed her — went gallivanting off to the stepstones — killed one wife and possibly Rhaenyra’s own husband — it is a lifetime of distrust (and a hint of jealousy) that makes her doubt. ]

[perzo]

We spoke at length of his failings in such matters.

[ even if it had been a conversation cut short by daemon's departure for harrenhal on caraxes, but now, time and distance seem to have tempered his worst instincts. that does not mean rhaenyra has abandoned all sense of caution. ]

Much pained my father, in those final years, including our division.

[unapparent]

[ a well-aimed retort, and it stings. ]

Yet he himself sowed the seeds of it.

[ by marrying her — or by putting a son in her belly? ]

I cannot change what has already transpired.
I will mind my son, and you will mind your husband. No blood will be shed on House Balfour’s lands. You need not trouble yourself over me any longer.

[perzo]

I know, now, that you were a comfort to him after my mother passed.

[ something she never would have understood, or sought to, when she was younger. then, she had hated both of them — alicent, for securing her father’s affections, and viserys, for stealing her dearest friend away from her.

but the response she earns now is as definitive as it’s likely intended, and rhaenyra doesn’t attempt to press the subject further — especially since the words read closer to a dismissal, in her mind, over what they’d shared. ]

We are agreed, then.

[unapparent]

[ it is a return to the impasse they have maintained for decades now, yet it feels like a fresh wound. rhaenyra will fight for all, but not this: girlish fantasies best kept locked in distant memory. ]

We are.
Take care, Rhaenyra.