#exists

What affection you had for him, though – fantasized and imagined, grown alone in bedchambers too small for your parents’ ambitions, based on heroic tales and songs – soon dwindled, and in only a matter of months.

Sharp was his tongue, and quick was his temper.

And that superior air you had once found handsome ? You now wished you could erase from his face.

Yes, the Rider of Elkor, the largest dragon at that time, was as handsome and strong as we was cold and inaccessible. You were taken aback by his many flaws : the perpetual distance he cultivated – even with you – and the lack of emotions he displayed with some kind of barely hidden pride.

Flaws you endured, first without a word, without outrage nor scandal. Flaws you had been taught to forgive, to look past, to consider great strengths.

Never did he utter an insult, never did he raise his hand. Yet, in his lack of inclinations toward you, in the way he ignored you, in the moments he always missed and in the loneliness he made you face, each night, you felt all the promises made at the Sept crumble into fine dust. And when perched on your balconies, deep in thoughts, wind blowing your hair into a halo around your face, you felt pieces of you go with it, falling like frozen petals on the dark blue waters of the Blackwater Bay.

Soon with them, you too – the beautiful, graceful, charitable, kind-hearted noble lady – faded, becoming more jaded and bitter with each passing day.

“ ‘Tis only fresh grief, my dove. See in his distant behavior, the dignity of a a honorable King ; who, in front of a watchful court, wishes only but to respect the memory of a beloved Queen.”, “two decades shan’t be erased in barely two years daughter, perhaps is he trying to spare his son from enduring further pain”, “give yourself grace, time is your ally”, “I’m sure he is fond of you”, your mother would write you. Always the same reassuring words, the same tempering tone ; trying to appease your wounded heart with what you believed were but empty promises. To your parents, their Queen consort of a daughter, which they had managed to marry to the most important man of the realm, could not be anything but happy ; grateful for the political moves she and your father had taken great efforts into making.

You were Queen, you were the winning one. You were living the dream you had fiercely dreamt, the life every girl wanted – what could you want that you already did not have ?

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