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Two days had passed since she had taken flight once again.

two days of fleeting freedom, like a dream slipping through her fingers.
Every moment of it had felt like a release,
a gift she hadn't known she needed until she tasted it.

But all of it— every second of that brief escape—crashed down on her as she stepped into an inn, her heart thudding at the whispers that filled the air like poison.

The tragedy at King's Landing. Her nephew was dead.

Sweet Jaehaerys, the little boy who once crept into her room after a nightmare,
his eyes wide with fear, now dead.

The killers had taken his head, leaving nothing behind but the empty space where his joy once shone.
They couldn't even find his head.
The thought of it made her blood run cold, and yet it wasn't the killers who haunted her thoughts.

It was herself.

How could she have stayed away? How could she have flown so high above all of this, leaving her family to suffer?

Her mind churned with guilt, sharp and painful.
She had been soaring, blissfully ignorant in the clouds, the past two days. She'd convinced herself she deserved it— deserved the freedom, the peace, the distance.
But now? Now, it felt like the cruelest joke the gods had played on her.

Her sweet, innocent nephew. Stained in blood because of her neglect.
Her throat tightened as memories of Jaehaerys flooded back— his innocent laughter, the warmth of his tiny hand in hers when he would cling to her, seeking comfort.

And now he was gone.

The thought twisted inside her, squeezing the breath from her lungs.
she couldn't even grasp the depth of it.
Her sister helaena would be broken, Rhaenyra's heart would be shattered.

But Valyssa couldn't bring herself to blame her elder sister.
The real blame, the real cruelty, lay in the hands of those who had orchestrated this.

Daemon.
Of course, it had been Daemon. He would kill a child without hesitation if it suited his needs.

Yet she was weak when it came to her family, she couldn't ever bring herself to hate them
That didn't stop the cold, bitter fury that surged through her, however..

It was the youngest who always suffered first in these wretched wars.

The gods had shown their true faces— evil and heartless.
They revelled in their own cruelty, and she was their unwilling instrument.

She could feel it in her bones now. She had tried so hard her whole life to appease them, to earn some mercy. But it was all a farce; A lie.

As she stormed through the skies, the anger roiling in her chest, she couldn't help but think of how it had all gone wrong.

She had been foolish to think there was any escape from this world of bloodshed.
She had allowed herself to believe in the illusion of freedom, the fantasy that maybe, just maybe, there could be peace in her fractured heart.

But now, the sky felt like a cage, the wind sharp and biting against her face, as if mocking her.

And then she saw them.
Baratheon ships.
In her sorrow She had convinced herself they were the ones that had let Luke die.

And she wasn't going to let them get away with it.
Her hands clenched into fists, and before she knew it, her rage and anguish had overcome any rationality she had left.

She didn't care what the ships were carrying. Soldiers, supplies, innocent's
it didn't matter.

All that mattered was making them feel the weight of the grief she carried.
The weight of the dead.