🕊️The Green Flame Burns Quietest Before It Consumes🕊️

They watched her like they always had—from a polite distance, never too long. Visenya Targaryen, younger sister to Rhaenyra, was seen as delicate where Rhaenyra had been defiant, reflective where her sister had been bold. The court called her a songbird, a shadow, a second bloom. A quiet girl, not quite a girl anymore, but still easy to overlook.

They were wrong.

Visenya had spent her life listening. Watching. Learning. She knew how to smile the right amount, speak only when prompted, and feign the kind of innocence men found useful. She had seen what they did to women who reached too quickly for power: called them mad, dangerous, unfit. Even her sister, with her blazing spirit, had been reduced to whispers and warnings.

So she waited. She learned how to dress herself in stillness, how to pace her curiosity, how to lower her eyes without lowering her mind. She memorized the shape of every game piece on the board.

When Alicent Hightower was married to Viserys before her mother’s scent had faded from her chambers, Visenya had remained silent. She’d mourned while green silks swept through her mother’s corridors and watched flowers wilt in the vases that had once held her mother’s favorites. She wept in private and learned in silence. And then, quietly, she began to understand how the Hightowers moved.

They dressed ambition as duty. They polished hunger until it gleamed like virtue. And they had taken everything.

Now, they wanted more.

Otto had begun to circle her—politely, of course. His questions were measured. His compliments understated. But she could see it plainly in his eyes: he wanted her on his board. Another daughter to use. Another marriage to broker. Another legacy to shape. Perhaps he even imagined her as the perfect compromise—Targaryen blood, but pliable. Unthreatening.

He had no idea what he was inviting in.

Visenya had no interest in the throne. She didn’t crave a crown or courtiers. But she had lived in the long, quiet shadow of her sister and watched her own mother vanish without a fight. She knew how House Hightower operated—and now she wanted to see what happened when you broke a tower from within.

Not with fire. With something slower. Smarter. Quieter.

Her opportunity came in the form of a letter, delivered under the guise of diplomacy. A meeting in the solar. An offer to mentor her through “the expectations of court.”

Visenya arrived alone.

She wore soft red silk—the Hightower’s new favored shade—though the color dulled against the cool violet of her eyes. Her pockets were heavy with dried apricots and candied ginger, tucked there as always. An odd fashion to Otto, but one he’d come to find curiously endearing. He had asked once, mildly confused, and she’d only smiled and replied, “My thoughts work better when I’m not hungry.”

He stood by the window when she entered, the afternoon light turning his hair to silver and age. He looked at her not as a threat, but as something to shape.

“My lady,” he said, nodding once. “You honor me with your time.”

“I’m told your guidance is a rare gift,” she said, folding her hands. “I intend to learn from the best.”

Otto offered her tea and theories. She offered patience and carefully placed praise. And when he asked her what she thought of the realm’s future, she tilted her head sweetly and replied, “I think the future will belong to the ones who know when to listen.”

He smiled.

Good.

Let him think she admired him. Let him believe he was already winning.

She would let him court her with politics, with power. She would say yes, if asked. She would bear his children—not for his legacy, but for her own.

Because what better way to bury a house than from the root?

And what sweeter justice than to let the kingmaker fall… because he believed she could never become one?