[ a mild correction. she lets him pick at his hands for a brief moment, before she closes her ruined fingers over his own. indeed, she sent aemond away, even though his eye begged her for something more — to grieve him as he lives? to help him face a death she would rail against?
she blinks any lingering dampness from her eyes, willing herself to remain here. koby speaks of a fate even darker than her own, imprisoned not in a royal keep but aboard a slaver’s ship. ]
Alvida could not see you. Perhaps her vileness blinded her. [ she does not say: if you are those things, then so am i. not when she very well might be. a trembling girl, missing her father’s guiding, brutal grip. a wanton wretch, toiling in service of men, with no mind of her own, as alina saw her true. worthy for naught but her womb.
alicent unfolds his hands with her own, thumb pressing into his palm. ]
If you were my boy, I’d have sent you to our greatest halls of learning, the Citadel in Oldtown, where I was born. [ would she? if he were spare to a spare, like daeron. ] You have not had such advantages in your life — and yet you are cleverer still than most of the learned men I have known. I would call what that woman thought naïve by another name: Kind. A trait even rarer than intelligence. A jewel few have in their crown.
[ she does not say. my own sons do not possess it, and it is too late for them to learn. doomed by the court or their mother. ]
no subject
[ a mild correction. she lets him pick at his hands for a brief moment, before she closes her ruined fingers over his own. indeed, she sent aemond away, even though his eye begged her for something more — to grieve him as he lives? to help him face a death she would rail against?
she blinks any lingering dampness from her eyes, willing herself to remain here. koby speaks of a fate even darker than her own, imprisoned not in a royal keep but aboard a slaver’s ship. ]
Alvida could not see you. Perhaps her vileness blinded her. [ she does not say: if you are those things, then so am i. not when she very well might be. a trembling girl, missing her father’s guiding, brutal grip. a wanton wretch, toiling in service of men, with no mind of her own, as alina saw her true. worthy for naught but her womb.
alicent unfolds his hands with her own, thumb pressing into his palm. ]
If you were my boy, I’d have sent you to our greatest halls of learning, the Citadel in Oldtown, where I was born. [ would she? if he were spare to a spare, like daeron. ] You have not had such advantages in your life — and yet you are cleverer still than most of the learned men I have known. I would call what that woman thought naïve by another name: Kind. A trait even rarer than intelligence. A jewel few have in their crown.
[ she does not say. my own sons do not possess it, and it is too late for them to learn. doomed by the court or their mother. ]