Chapter Text
“Love is the bane of honor, the death of duty. What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms ... or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
~ Maester Aemon
It was a warm day. The Reach was never cold, if one were to be honest, but Alyssa still treasured days like this, sitting at the windowsill that she so often frequented. The view was always lovely, from high up in the Hightower, overlooking the splendours of Oldtown, the spires of the Citadel looming at the edges. Lovely but lonely. Separated from the mainland as they were – atop Battle Isle – Alyssa had very rarely walked the streets she knew so well by sight.
A bastard was not to be seen, her father’s Lady wife had whispered flatly, especially not in Oldtown, the city of the Faith. Alyssa could not change her nature – could not make her name be Hightower instead of Flowers. And so she had stayed, hidden, out of sight, growing up in her father’s ancestral seat, all too aware of Lady Hightower’s hateful gaze.
The mystery of her was a favourite subject of the smallfolk of Oldtown, carried out by the Hightower’s servants into the streets, whispered about at markets and in septs. If even Lord Hightower fell slave to his lust, here in the shadow of the Citadel, then who could blame the common man for doing the same? Was there truly such a difference between Lord and man? Dangerous words even in the mouth of babes.
She could not quite blame her father’s wife for her scorn. Alyssa’s birth had shamed the Lady, the fact that it had been within these very walls, in her own household while she could only watch – beholden to her husband’s wishes – even more so. Her own son had been just a child of eight summers, golden-haired like his sire, clutching at his mother’s skirts, not understanding why his father had been with another woman, why he had brought her into their home.
Lord Garmon Hightower had loved her mother, her maid Myra had always said, more than he would ever love the Lady Rheya Florent who bore his name through the oaths of marriage. It was not a bold claim to make, rather a truth that should not be spoken of too loudly. The gods knew that Lord Hightower, agreeable man though he was, held only the most basic fondness for his wife, united only in their love for their shared son.
But where Lord Garmon wished for his children to love each other, Lady Rheya kept Abelar Hightower close to her – apart from his natural-born younger sister. It was fortunate that he had their father’s mild nature; there was no spite in her brother’s heart, only a careful indifference.
His regard for her was as his abilities as a knight – middling at best. Unmemorable. Perhaps not an embarrassment and yet he would not soon crown his Dondarrion wife as Queen of Love and Beauty at any tourney or bring his own young son any pride in the yard.
It was by Garmon’s love alone that Alyssa continued to be with them, had not been sent to live out her days as a Silent Sister or marry some merchant and bear him sons. In truth, she was long due for marriage – would have almost been considered a spinster, had she been a trueborn daughter. Alyssa was glad for her father’s cloak of protection, for this freedom, though it came at the cost – as all things did.
The more he protected her, the longer he kept her at his side, the fiercer the protests became. Lady Rheya’s voice had long been joined by Lady Gwyneth’s, a Dondarrion by birth, younger cousin to the Princess Jena.
When the marcher woman had joined their household, she had been careful with her husband’s bastard sister, the golden-haired gangly child on the cusp of girlhood, even polite when her new good-father could see – but the birth of Alyssa’s nephew, her brother’s heir, had emboldened the noble woman. By now, Quenton was a sweet boy of seven summers, golden-haired – as were most of their family since Rhaena Targaryen’s daughter had married her cousin Jon Hightower, some fifty years ago. There was surely some irony to be found in the fact that Hightowers now descended from a daughter of Daemon Targaryen’s loins when their ancestor had hated the Rogue Prince enough to go to war against him.
Your heir should not suffer your father’s mistakes, Lady Gwyneth would murmur in her husband’s ear, her voice growing louder each passing summer, he should have sent her away years ago.
In front of the servants of the castle, she liked to boast that she had her cousin’s ear. She all but elevated herself to near sainthood – the very image of the Mother herself – by the fact that she had not written to the Princess to intervene in Garmon Hightower’s foolishness, as though it were her grace alone that kept Alyssa in good standing.
To herself, Alyssa always wondered if her hesitance did not stem from the fact that she did not know for certain whether Princess Jena would truly step in on Lady Gwyneth’s behalf and did not want to risk mortification if such were not the case. It was an untested boast – and untested it would remain. A woman such as Gwyneth Dondarrion – of the marches, the most steadfast bastion against Dorne for many years – would not suffer even the possibility of such embarrassment.
But such thoughts were not to be spoken aloud, astute as they may be. Myra, for all her love and indulgence of her late mistress’s daughter, had made sure that the young Flowers knew what she could and could not do, even protected by her father’s love. Give them no reason to scorn you, she’d lecture, other than the circumstances of your birth – it will infuriate them more than anything you could ever say to them. Always be courteous.
It was easy for the older woman to say, Alyssa thought. She was not the one being glared at like an ugly bird, like a weed in an otherwise beautiful garden.
Of course, even for this complaint, her companion, the woman who had raised her, had a retort. You have your mother’s wilfulness, the stubbornness of the great trees of Goldengrove. She’d speak of it with a wistful look in her eyes that filled Alyssa with guilt, knowing that there was a great part of Myra that wished to return there, to the golden fields, instead of staying for the ghost of a woman in a place of dusty stone and prayers that at times became all too loud.
She ought to have offered to let Myra go, at least once – free her from this duty sworn at a deathbed – but the little girl inside of Alyssa would not let her, selfish when she should not have been. Who would braid her hair with such love, listen to her musings on the books she’d read in the Hightower’s extensive library – if not Myra? Alyssa had no one else. Garmon Hightower might have loved her, but he had no time for the frivolities of a young woman when he had the duties of a lord.