Chapter Text
character art by the beautiful @haphaziel (@irisdrystan on tiktok)
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Violet
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Violet didn’t know what to do with herself anymore.
Right and wrong blurred together until she could scarcely tell one from the other.
Here she sat inside the bathing pools, letting her sister wash her hair with lavender and rose scented herbs, preparing her for a wedding she did not want.
Would marriage suit someone like her? Could she truly bind herself to a stranger for the sake of an alliance, an army, a crown?
In truth, Violet yearned for neither. She yearned for home. She yearned for fields of flowers and fresh bread. She did not want a husband. She did not want an army and she certainly did not want a crown.
But her siblings did.
Brennan did more so than Mira. Mira reminded her more of a soldier or a knight from the stories she had heard and Brennan the ‘long lost king’ that had his throne stolen by the Baratheons.
Colonel Baratheon sat on the iron throne oceans away but that didn’t matter to Brennan. In his eyes, that metal chair would always belong to the Targaryens.
“Stop the frowning, Violet. Things will be as they should be before too long. Maybe this is our best choice.”
“When has our best choice ever been one that our brother made?”
Mira tried to hide her smile but Violet caught a glimmer of it in the reflection. “He’s just trying to protect us, you know that.”
“Who do we need protection from, Mira? The assassins stopped coming years ago, we have a peaceful life in Essos. We could just stay here.”
“Our name alone makes enemies,” Mira said softly, wringing out Violet’s hair. “At first it is charming to host the lost Targaryen heirs. Eventually, they remember we bring no gold with us.”
Violet hummed as if she understood but she didn’t. Not that it ever mattered. She was just glad Mira was here, that she wasn’t totally alone.
“Sisters, please be pleasant. I have gifts from our gracious host.” Brennan called from the hall.
Mira cast a silk robe toward Violet, and she drew it about her shoulders just as Brennan entered, a lacquered box cradled in his hands. He smiled upon them both, a fond smile, though there was something sharp lurking beneath it. “Ah. She is near ready. You look radiant, Vi,” he said, placing the box in her hands.
Violet lifted the lid. Within lay a gown of near-translucent silk, finer than any she had ever worn. It was beautiful, achingly so but yet the purpose for which it had been given to her stripped it of its wonder. She summoned the gentlest curve of a princess’s smile and inclined her head. “It is exquisite. Pray, give our host my gratitude.”
But Brennan scarcely seemed to hear her. He caught Mira lightly by the arm and drew her outside the door, their voices lowered to muffled whispers Violet could not make out and was almost grateful not to.
She crossed to the looking glass and drew the gown over her damp skin. The silk clung coolly to her frame. Taking up a brush, she passed it through her silver-brown hair, droplets trailing down her back like falling beads.
She could flee, she thought.
Yet the notion withered as swiftly as it came. She would not make two miles before her kin found her.
It was a childish fancy, nothing more.
How was one to know if she chose rightly?
The door opened once more. “It is time, sister,” Mira said softly. “Come.”
Violet regarded herself in the mirror. Perhaps for the last time as she had been. The last time she would see hope unshadowed in her own reflection.
“I am coming.”
She schooled her steps as Brennan and Mira led her through corridor after corridor. She knew these halls as well as her own thoughts, yet tonight they seemed strange, blurred at the edges.
Would her husband prove a gentle man? Would it be folly to hope he might come to love her? Or was that, too, the dream of a foolish girl?
Their host awaited them at the entrance, eagerness bright upon his face. Violet had once believed him kindly. Now she saw more clearly. There was hunger in his gaze, thinly veiled and sharp. Perhaps Mira spoke true. Perhaps when men beheld their faces, they saw not daughters of a fallen house… but coin.
Violet allowed her siblings and their host to pass before her, granting herself a final breath as her nerves sparked and hissed through her veins. Her stomach churned; her feet felt wrought of stone.
When Mira beckoned her forward, she obeyed without thought. She dared not lift her gaze, fearing the face of the fate to which she was being bound.
A man stood beside a horse, waiting, speaking in a tongue she did not know. Their host answered him swiftly.
“Greetings, Khal Aetos. It is my honor to serve you. As agreed, I present your bride, eighteen years of age. She has dwelt beneath my roof these past five summers.”
The man replied, his voice low and measured, though Violet scarcely heard him over the pounding of her own heart.
“Yes,” their host continued eagerly, “the agreed sum, along with safe harbor for her two siblings.”
Brennan stepped forward then, answering in the same foreign tongue, his speech fluid and assured. Mira’s quiet translation followed at Violet’s side.
“A bride in exchange for a crown, an army, and alliance. I am Brennan Targaryen, rightful heir to the throne. This is my sister Mira, Hand to the future king. And here—” he gestured toward her, “—is your bride. Violet.”
At last, Violet raised her eyes.
She was met with a man of pleasing countenance. Not extraordinary, yet not unkind. His gaze rested upon her with measured appraisal, and when he smiled, it was not cruel.
After a moment’s hesitation, she returned it.
The man spoke in halting Common, his accent thick yet clear enough for her to understand.
“Hello, Violet. I am Dain.”
She stepped forward and placed her hand in his. His grip was firm, steady, as he guided her toward his horse. He mounted first, then drew her up behind him. Mira and Brennan followed while his men secured their trunks and belongings with efficient haste.
They rode for hours.
Far longer than Violet would have preferred, though she did not dare voice complaint. It was not as though she had been granted a horse during her confinement within their host’s estate.
When at last they reached the encampment, she forgot her discomfort entirely.
Tents and wooden stalls stretched along the packed earth road. Men honed blades beside low-burning fires while women tended children and simmering pots. The air smelled of leather, smoke, and steel.
“So… you are their king?” Violet asked softly, breaking the silence between them.
“I am,” Dain replied. “And you will be their queen.”
The word struck her harder than the wind.
“I did not know I was to be a queen,” she confessed. “How can you know I am suited for such a thing?”
“I do not,” he answered simply. “It is hope.”
Violet fell quiet at that, her gaze drifting over the vastness of the camp.
They halted before the largest tent of all. Dain dismounted first and reached up to steady her as she descended, catching her when her legs faltered from the long ride. He smiled at her before his captains gathered round him in a flurry of foreign speech.
She could not follow their words, but that mattered little.
Drawing upon every lesson she had ever been taught, Violet composed her most convincing princess’s smile, praying her unease did not betray itself in her violet eyes.
Where were Brennan and Mira?
A cluster of women approached, their garments rich though practical. Violet stiffened instinctively.
One stepped forward with a gentle incline of her head.
“Welcome, Khaleesi,” she said. “We are to serve as your ladies.”
Violet nearly laughed, though there was no mirth in it. Had her siblings truly thought it unnecessary to warn her?
She glanced toward Dain, who remained deep in counsel with his captains, and gave a hesitant nod.
One of the women took her gently by the arm and guided her to a tent set just beside the largest.
“This shall be your tent whilst you prepare for the wedding,” the woman said. Her gaze fell to the gown in Violet’s hands. “Will you wear this?”
Violet considered the few modest garments she had brought with her and knew she possessed nothing else worthy of the occasion. “Yes,” she replied softly. “This will suffice.”
The women descended upon her in a flurry of careful hands and murmured words. They wove her hair into an intricate crown of braids, threading small dark berries through the strands before crushing others between their fingers and staining her cheeks and lips with their juice.
Violet attempted polite inquiry, seeking some understanding of the customs into which she was stepping. “You called me khaleesi. What does it mean?”
One of the women smiled. “Khaleesi means queen. You are our queen.”
The word settled heavily upon her shoulders.
She answered their questions as best she could and offered a few of her own, though her nerves gnawed at her still.
Marriage was daunting enough but queenship?
In truth, perhaps her siblings had told her all along. An army. A crown. An alliance. How else could she have secured such things for them, if not by becoming a queen in another man’s land?
Yet she was no ruler.
She was meant for ink-stained fingers and music in the evenings, for dancing in sunlit courtyards, not for command.
And still, these people regarded her as though she were deliverance itself. As though she were the missing piece to their future.
How could she tell them she was not whole?
She had left parts of herself scattered in every place she had ever fled.
What remained, would it be enough?
Would she?