"Your Highness! Why have your tastes been getting stranger lately? You always seem to want strongly flavored food."
Inside the castle at Kingsgrave, Bethany watched in astonishment as Danyla nearly finished an entire plate of sour jujubes.
Danyla sheepishly withdrew the hand she had been about to reach out.
"Well! Perhaps I've been growing too quickly lately. And Dorne's climate is so hot that I haven't had much appetite, so I prefer things with stronger flavors!"
Though suspicious, Bethany did not give it much thought.
"So many strange things happen to you, Princess, that I've almost grown numb to them!"
Bethany piled Danyla's beautiful silver-gold hair high on her head and placed the Valyria Gem Crown, a gift from the Sealord of Braavos, upon it.
"Not only have you suddenly shot up in height, but your hair has grown far too quickly, too. It's even longer than Princess Rhaenyra's, and she's been growing hers for over ten years!"
"And it's turned silver-gold again. I've never heard of anything like that!"
"The true dragon bloodline is naturally a little different!"
Since arriving at Kingsgrave, Bethany had fussed over Danyla's drastic change in appearance countless times. Left with little choice, Danyla had brushed her off with the excuse that meeting Rafa might have awakened her true dragon bloodline.
Danyla had suddenly grown five or six centimeters taller, leaving many of her clothes no longer fitting properly. Bethany had therefore summoned a number of noble ladies-in-waiting and tailors from the borders of the Reach to hastily make her new clothes.
"Your Highness, Earl Tarly and Lord Swann have written to say that they have cleared out most of the Dornish remnants in the Red Mountains. They ask what further orders you have."
Over this period, Mungo and Ser Roxton had led two thousand