the thaw. [arya stark]

xxi. a done deal.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE:

A DONE DEAL.
hearts/haunts
｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

...VALERIA TARGARYEN was helpless, her usually blazing existence dampened to nothing but a fleeting whisper as she toyed with her fingers, trying her very best to ignore the bleak chill that had so suddenly consumed her. Where once her skin had radiated warmth, it was now pale and lifeless — an outward sign of her inwardly blue, withering, heart. The first time she'd been here, Dragonstone had constituted a most glorious prospect — the place she and hundreds of Targaryens before her had been born, or perhaps more simply — her home. She'd once been promised safety, even happiness there, yet now it was the object of her absolute ire — her terror, spite and hatred, and in the wake of Euron Greyjoy's vicious attack — her fear.

Valeria had been journeying alongside Tyrion when the Iron born had come for them, forced to leap head first into the blackwater and swim to shore as Euron himself had seemed to spot her from across the way, disbanding his ruthless men unto countless small skiffs in the hope of capturing the Queen's notorious sister. Valeria had spent what felt like an age in the water, swimming, killing and then killing again as she waged her miniature war towards Dragonstone, where the ever precarious promise of safety lay.

Bloodied and bedraggled she'd risen from the tide unto Dragonstone's obsidian beach, her anger soon vanishing as a far more vexing thing caught her usually fleeting attention — Rhaegal, falling from the sky, condemned to drown under the bitter salt of those pernicious waves with mighty crash. She'd screamed as her sister's guards had found her, dragging her up those slated steps, knowing that with Rhaegal's end her very freedom hung in the balance. Her barely skirted hopes of stealing a Dragon and fleeing Westeros altogether were quickly put out, as were her other notions of escape — and so, she was left with one last option, a final resort in the face of this civil war — bloodshed.

And it was with that thought that Valeria counted her days there, ever—weary of the inevitable conflict that hung, waiting, on the horizon. She clung to her chambers like a child to its' mother, fearful that even the walls had ears there, and all too cautious of her sisters' wondering, omniscient, gaze.