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Alicent kneels at the foot of the Father, hands clasped and head bowed. But she cannot pray. She can only think of Rhaenyra.

It was so long ago that the princess had last knelt next to her, here in the palace Sept. Not, Alicent knows, out of any devotion to the Faith. She has never harboured any illusions on that count. No, the princess had not come out of piety or devotion to the Seven, but for her. Once, Rhaenyra would have done anything, gone anywhere, for the sole purpose of being by Alicent’s side.

Such a ludicrous thought, now. It belongs to another life. Another Alicent. One who had walked the halls of the Red Keep arm in arm with the king’s daughter, always smiling or on the verge of laughter at one of Rhaenyra’s foolish jests.

Things are different now. They have been different for far longer than that bright, hopeful time in her youth had lasted. Her reality remains what it has been the past two decades, where she is mother, wife, queen. Most of all, enemy. Enemy to Rhaenyra Targaryen. It is who she must be. It is who she has made herself to be.

And yet, yesterday, an impossible thing happened. Before the family supper had inevitably descended into disaster, Rhaenyra had spoken. She had toasted. Toasted her.

As Alicent kneels, it is not a prayer she hears in her head. No maxims or venerations honouring the Father. It is Rhaenyra’s words, over and over. Words just for Alicent. Words of gratitude. Apology. Acknowledgement.

It is so little. Almost nothing.

It is everything.

For a moment, it was as if the bitterness and animosity between them had never existed. Words had come tumbling out of her in response. A door had opened, one she had not realised existed. A common ground between them. Perhaps, even, a reconciliation. She’d leapt for it. Grasped for Rhaenyra, desperate to keep that door open.

The princess had promised to return. It is a little ember in her breast that Alicent keeps tucked behind her clasped hands as she rises and quits the Sept.

She imagines it warms her as she steps out into a dawn made chilly by a cold front blowing in from the coast. It must be storming over the Blackwater. Hopefully, Rhaenyra arrived in Dragonstone safely. Hopefully, the weather will not delay her return.

“Finished, Your Grace?” Ser Criston waits for her outside the Sept, her faithful shadow in white.

“I have, thank you.”

“Your father sent a runner. He wishes to see you.”

“In his chambers?”

“In the Throne Room. He’s taking petitions this morning.”

“Then I shall not make him wait.”

Criston falls into step at her side and they make their way to the Great Hall, as they have done almost every morning over the past decade. They are creatures of routine; her sworn knight and herself. His stride slows to match hers. She is tired, having spent the night tending to Viserys. The king, as has often been the case of late, was too weak to rise this morning. And so, it is for her and her father to discharge the Crown’s duties on his behalf.

Otto’s face is as stoney as the Father’s had been in the Sept. He sits upon the Iron Throne as he hears requests and complaints from a smattering of courtiers and petitioners. They are few, and the large space swallows them. They speak in a barely discernible hush. Her father’s eyes flick to her as she enters, then back to the man speaking to him; a dismissal. And she knows then that he will make her wait until he has finished, however long it may be.

No doubt he is none too pleased about yesterday’s events. But she is well used to weathering his dissatisfaction. She will wait.

“I hear the servants were several hours scrubbing Vaemond Velaryon’s blood off the floor in there.” Criston’s mouth twists into a bitter smile as he cranes his neck to peer into the throne room. “Such a spectacle. I would dearly love to see it again; him declaring Rhaenyra for the whore she is. A shame the king put an end to it, before Daemon parted Vaemond’s head from his body.”

Alicent shudders, remembering the grisly end to the Driftmark petition. “Enough, Ser Criston. It was the Viserys’ will to intervene. Go and see to Aemond’s training.”

She watches him go. She had thought the same as him, once. Vaemond’s play for Driftmark had been a stroke of political fortune she and her father had intended to capitalise on. But for Alicent, there had also been a personal element to the decision to support his claim. In truth, he seemed to her a grasping and foolish man. But in him, at long last, was also someone willing to openly and vehemently denounce Rhaenyra Targaryen, and her bastard children. Aside from the political advantage of stealing from her an alliance to Driftmark, Vaemond had promised something a savage part of Alicent had always hoped to see; Rhaenyra brought low. Brought to face a rightful accounting for her many indiscretions.

But yet, when the time came, and the vitriol began spilling from Vaemond’s mouth, Alicent had felt no triumph. No sense of justice realised. Instead, it had all seemed so petty. For all the questionable parentage of her first three sons, Rhaenyra had arrived in King’s Landing heavy with child, with two trueborn children in tow and Daemon at her side.

When Vaemond named her “whore,” Alicent had felt a spark of indignation. No, not a whore, she had thought. Mother. Wife.

So while she had been shocked when Daemon drew his sword on Vaemond, she also felt a tinge of satisfaction, too. Even a bit of envy.

If only I could cleave the heads of my enemies, thus. If only someone cared enough to do the same for me.

“Alicent.” Otto beckons, ready to give her an audience at last.

“Father.”

“How fares the king?”

“Well enough, though still abed. The events yesterday taxed him, and he sleeps deeply.”

“The Driftmark business did not fall in our favour, thanks to him. And Daemon, of course. The Prince lacks subtlety, but his brutality is effective, I’ll grant. It is a lesson for us.”

“We’ve always known how dangerous he is.”

“Indeed. And yet the goings on yesterday epitomise why we must oppose him and Rhaenyra. Viserys grants them unlimited protection, due to their blood. They may slay their kin and act with impunity, with none to stop them. We are none of us safe. Your children especially.” A hard look for her, now. “Never forget it. Not even when making conciliatory gestures to them. To Rhaenyra.”

It is as if he can see into her mind. Read her thoughts and intent, to hone in on any perceived weakness. She cannot hide anything from him.

“Viserys wishes for the family to come together. He wishes for a mending.”

“And you take this directive to heart, do you?”

“He is the king—“

“He is. And I understand we must humour his wishes. But consider what they cost us. His intervention on behalf of Rhaenyra and her children robbed us of a formidable ally in Vaemond. It cost us ties to the Driftwood Throne.” He stands up and steps down from the dais. Takes her shoulders in his hands. “You must never forget why we do what we do, Alicent. It is for our family. Your children. Your children’s children. We fail, or prevail, together.”

He is right, of course. He is always right. And if Alicent has had her doubts; about his plan to take on Vaemond as an ally, about the need to honour her family’s ambitions over Viserys’ wishes, about Rhaenyra—well. That is neither here nor there. He knows better than her.

Even if he had failed to predict the possibility that Viserys might drag himself from his sickbed to set the Driftmark matter to rest in Rhaenyra’s favour. Alicent had been unsurprised when he did. She knows better than anyone the lengths the king will go to protect his daughter.

Once, Viserys’ dogged, blind determination to shield Rhaenyra and her children would have driven her to fury.

Once, it had compelled her to take up a dagger and draw blood.

Now, try as she might, she cannot find it within herself to summon the same anger. Her actions at the funeral had done nothing to sway Viserys. In the end, the only thing she had been left with was a maimed son and the guilt-laced image, fixed permanently in her mind, of a red stream flowing from Rhaenyra’s wrist.

What point in expecting more?

She drifts and weaves between scatterings of petitioners and courtiers around the half-empty throne room. They turn and bow or curtsy. Never before has she enjoyed such power. After Rhaenyra’s departure to Dragonstone all those years ago, she and her father had made it their mission to consolidate their power. She had understood, then, that Viserys would never back her or her children. He would not protect them, so she must.

Now the king lies infirm and it is she who sits at the head of the small council. It is she who the courtiers speak to, when they need a favour from the Crown. It is she, and her father, who the high lords approach to discuss matters of the realm. Her influence is writ on all walls of the keep; in the banners of the seven-pointed star, dragon heraldry in Hightower green or argent. The lurid and ungodly Targaryen tapestries have been stowed, replaced by more modest and decent decorations; iconography of the seven, depictions of tales from the Age of Heroes; Westerosi hunting and pastoral scenes.

She is the queen, so they tell her. And so it seems. Yet that is all it is; a seeming. Her power is an illusion. The real power stands at her shoulder in the small council chamber. And here, seated upon the Iron Throne in his muted blacks. Her father, the puppeteer hidden behind the booth. Everyone gazes upon the puppet and not the man making her walk about the stage.

Set aside for the moment the frippery and courtly trappings. Beyond the fine gowns and the ornamentation of her office—her rings and seven-pointed star and jewelled clasps and fine slippers.

Look beyond her appearance, and at the woman herself. What is there? What exists?

Nothing, she thinks. Nothing at all.

Later, she tightens the clasp on the curtains in the King’s Chambers, securing them shut. Viserys does not tolerate the light these days. Or, indeed, much of anything, such is the pain he is in. She makes her way back to the room’s lone candle, fixed on a side table next to his great canopied bed, and folds herself neatly into the seat next to it.

The candle burns down to its next mark, and she adds milk of the poppy to his cup. The king can barely swallow, but he sups his oblivion obediently. She waits for it to work and wonders what he dreams of, when the dreamwine takes hold. A better world than this, perhaps. One without pain. One that feels more real.

When she sleeps, she does not dream, and she is thankful for that at least. Sleep is the blessed escape, the great nothing that provides respite from the unending cycle of duty. Such peace, when she slips beneath her sheets at night and has no choice but to close her eyes and rest. It is the one thing she looks forward to when she wakes up the next morning.

Well, until now.

There is always—

No. She refuses to think about Rhaenyra. Her father is right; she is the enemy. She cannot let herself get caught up in what was just a simple gesture of goodwill for the ailing man lying next to her.

Once, she would have read to pass the time. But that was the pastime of a younger self, and she has long since given up on it. Besides, stories and songs are always too predictable. They always end the same; in either triumph or tragedy.

The hero slays the monster and good triumphs over evil. The hero fights for a mighty cause but dies in the attempt.

The young dispossessed heir takes the throne, and the kingdom is saved from calamity. A pretender betrays the young heir and takes his life.

The lovers reunite and live happily until the end of their days. The lovers are torn apart by circumstance and all ends in heartbreak and death.

It is always one or the other, with stories and songs.

When she was young, she always thought the dichotomy foolish. The world, she’d told herself, is far greyer than the stories allow. Reality charts a course through light and dark; good and evil, triumph and tragedy. It is far messier and mundane than any bawdy romance or grim fable.

She’d shared the thought with her father and felt proud when he’d hummed in approval, patting her shoulder.

“Very good, Alicent. I see you grasp the reality of it.”

She’d felt very wise in that moment. Fourteen, but mature enough to see the world for what it really was. Fully prepared for the challenges of life and ready to leave behind the girlish pastimes so enjoyed by others; giggling and swapping daydreams about favourite heroes and songs and books.

And if young Alicent secretly indulged herself by continuing to read those self-same books—the romances especially—it was in the knowledge that she knew what they were; a frivolous fiction. A temporary escape. Nothing more.

Rhaenyra would tease her about them; the books. She had an uncanny ability to know exactly where Alicent put them. Not that she hid them from the princess. Not exactly. She simply placed them out of direct view. Yet Rhaenyra would always find them, brandishing them with an impish grin.

“What have we here?” she would tease. “The Highgarden Affair? What happened to Passion at Storm’s End?” And Alicent would glare and snatch them out of her hands and stow them elsewhere.

Rhaenyra.

Alicent of today sits in the dim room where her husband lies dying, and her heart constricts.

She’d asked Rhaenyra once about the sagas from Old Valyria. What were the stories from her homeland about? Love? Betrayal? Tragedy? War? The princess had laughed and responded, “All of it. Simultaneously. Usually on dragonback.”

Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra at the supper.

Alicent closes her eyes and lets the words wash over her again. Pathetic, the hold they have on her. The way she cannot ignore how they make her feel. How she cannot help but relive them, over and over.

She pushes the words away and focuses on her father’s. Thinks in his voice. Rhaenyra is the enemy. You hate each other. Rhaenyra will kill your children.

Her father’s voice is powerful in this quiet room.

You cannot trust Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra, who is dangerous. Who betrays you. Who is selfish and arrogant. Who will kill your children.

Rhaenyra, who had said those kind words at the hostile supper. Who had looked down at their clasped hands and had rubbed Alicent’s wrist so tenderly. Who had banished the little voices and worming doubts eating at Alicent with a simple promise.

For the briefest moment, Alicent had felt warm. Alive in her own body. Like pulling back a curtain ever so slightly and seeing a brilliant sliver of light cut through the dark. Knowing that there is more. That beyond the curtain, there is a sky of brilliant light just waiting to be revealed—

It is hope. A terrible thing. So distressingly fragile, spinning into a thousand delicate possibilities. The possibility of more clasped hands, more kind words. Rhaenyra, back in her life. Not an enemy, not at odds with her. Maybe… maybe impish Rhaenyra, stealing her books. Telling her about Old Valyria. Her dearest friend. A light beyond the curtain.

She idly rubs her wrist where Rhaenyra touched it at the supper.

“Rhaenyra.” Viserys stirs fitfully. His daughter’s name the faintest rasp from his lips. “Where is Rhaenyra?”

“She’ll be here soon.” Alicent brings the cup of dreamwine to his lips. Her heart thuds in her chest at her own words. “She promised.”

***

Rain lashes the stone edifices of Dragonstone. The storm blows in from the east, off the hills of Old Andalos, gathering momentum across the Narrow Sea before it hits the Dragonmont and buffets Syrax as Rhaenyra brings her around to the keep.

She is soaked through by the time Syrax alights in the shelter of the slopes of the Dragonmont near the keep.

Her sons touch down on their dragons moments after. Tyraxes, who is still young and small, is knocked into an undignified sprawl by a gust of wind as he and Joff land.

“Demās. Embrot,” she commands Syrax, and her dragon dutifully lowers herself to the ground. She’s not quite far along enough in her pregnancy that she needs help to get in and out of the saddle, but it’s an ungainly dismount, especially with little Viserys in her arms.

Jace is at hand to help her when her feet hit solid ground, little Aegon in tow, while Luke helps Joff disentangle himself from Tyraxes.

Her sons are as sodden as she is; bedraggled and tired from the past few days. They wordlessly step back as the Dragonkeepers converge and shepherd their dragons into the warren-like caves within the Dragonmont.

She bows for a moment under the weight of it; their collective exhaustion and all that had happened in King’s Landing. A part of her wants to follow Syrax into the warm depths of the Dragonmont. Lie against her warm scales and sleep. But she cannot.

“My dear girl,” her mother used to say, “when things get unbearable, we put one foot in front of the other. We keep going.”

So that’s what she must do; keep going.

She gathers her sons into a huddle and starts guiding them along the slender path to a side-entrance of the keep. It is then that Daemon swoops down on Caraxes.

He barks orders to the waiting Dragonkeepers before he’s even dismounted, sliding down his dragons’ sinuous body and blowing past them all as he stalks into the keep.

Rhaenyra frowns as she and her sons follow, lagging further and further behind his long, determined strides. Daemon’s moods ever run mercurial, and it seems his has soured on the trip back from King’s Landing.

How quickly things turn, with him.

Back in the hostile environs of the Red Keep, shorn of its Targaryen trappings, it had been all too easy to cleave ever closer to him. Watching him take Vaemond’s head on her behalf put her in mind of the early days of their marriage, when she believed that he and only he would ever truly fight for her and her children. That she would need him to help her face all the enemies arrayed against her; the Greens. The whole keep. The whole realm. And he had cleaved to her in turn; shocked at his brother’s condition.

But now, back home, things revert to usual. He charts his own solitary course and she—well. She must see to her boys.

It is to the sound of the churning sea and the storm booming against the keep’s walls that she and her sons ascend the Stone Drum.

Visenya kicks, restless, and Rhaenyra strokes her stomach.

“One foot in front of the other, my sweet girl,” she murmurs her mother’s words as she takes the winding stair to her sons’ rooms.

She bids Joff and Luke goodnight. Jace waits outside his room.

“Mother.” He twists the hem of his tunic, a habit from when he was a little boy and feeling guilty about some misadventure or other. “About dinner… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let them provoke me.”

“It’s alright, Jace.” She smiles and pulls him into a hug, which he accepts stoically. She sometimes forgets that he is a young man now, often awkward with a mother’s affection. “You tried to be gracious. I am proud of you. As for the rest—well. It was always going to go to shit at some point.”

He chuckles softly and leans into the hug a moment before withdrawing and bidding her good night.

Then, all that remains is to see to the little ones. At long last, sinking into a chair next to little Viserys’ crib, she can stop awhile. Allow the maidservants to fuss over her and the babes.

At rest at last, the enormity of the past few days washes over her. The weight of the terrible burden of her future, the overwhelming responsibility she has so thoroughly done her best to ignore, threatens to drown her.

It had been unavoidable in the Red Keep. It had been everywhere. Even in the very stones of the castle; oppressive and looming, ready to loosen and bury her alive. Faced with her ailing father, so suddenly, shockingly close to death, her unasked-for fate had seemed to catch her at last. She is mere breaths away from sitting upon the Iron Throne, the unwanted queen of Westeros.

Gods curse King’s Landing. As soon as she had landed, she had wanted to escape. Get back on Syrax and fly away, never to return.

Except…

Except for Alicent, at the family supper.

It is almost a jape. Rhaenyra has to laugh at herself. Despite everything, she is ready to go back to that terrible place.

And for what? The briefest glimmer of warmth in the queen’s eyes. The open gratitude on her face when Rhaenyra had finally let herself rise above her own pettiness and raise a cup to her.

Alicent has been many things in their long years of enmity—supercilious, distant, even cruel. And in the chaos of Laena’s funeral, full of anger and hatred that had cut. Drawing blood, dagger in hand, her disdain for Rhaenyra had reached a fever pitch. A mother’s fury had given way to an older wound; the unresolved bitterness between them becoming an irrevocable schism.

Rhaenyra has lost count of the times that she’s told herself to put it all behind her and move on. Yet at night, deep into the hour of the wolf when she can no longer ignore it, when she cannot pretend not to care that it happened, when Daemon lies asleep and she cannot distract herself with him, Rhaenyra thinks on it.

On Alicent’s face, after the knife had come down. There had been regret there. And beyond the anger, a sadness. A despair that mirrored Rhaenyra’s own. She has lingered on that moment, and Alicent’s turmoil, and whether there might be a way to mend things between them.

But no. Hope is foolish. Even if there were tender feelings mixed with the bitter, a line had been crossed that night. What point is there in seeking something Alicent will never countenance? She is so very single-minded. Especially with her disdain of Rhaenyra.

Yet this very night, at the family supper, some of the sharpness had left the queen. Some of her edges smoothed, perhaps by the passage of time. She had sat there looking as beautiful as ever in her house greens, decolletage framed by her dress, curls spilling down her back as she listened to Rhaenyra’s toast, eyes soft and grateful.

Rhaenyra can’t fault herself too harshly for being struck by Alicent anew in that moment. For reacting with barely contained delight to Alicent’s own toast:

“You will make a fine queen.”

For a moment, she had been fourteen again, ducking her head with a bashful grin as her heart’s desire pays her the simplest of compliments.

No, she cannot fault herself. Alicent always had such an effect on her. And time seems to have not diminished that in the slightest.

It had been an effort for Rhaenyra to remind herself that it was just a single moment—a temporary thing. Alicent simply being diplomatic, for the sake of Viserys’ wish for peace among his family. Ever the dutiful wife. Rhaenyra refused to fool herself into thinking the words were truly for her.

But then Alicent had sought her out, afterwards. Reached out and clasped her hand. Rhaenyra had done her best to remain stoic, to not read too much into the action, the way Alicent had gripped her so desperately.

Yet, in the moment, she couldn’t help rubbing a little circle on Alicent’s wrist. The first time they had touched since the funeral, the second since Alicent’s wedding. It had felt like so much and nothing at all.

Why do I still hope? Rhaenyra had thought as Alicent had smiled up at her when she promised to return, and had answered herself; Because there. That smile. How long since I’ve last seen it? I hope because I’m a fool. Because I’d do anything for her to smile at me like that again.

She’ll return to King’s Landing when the storm blows itself out. She’ll return, and maybe this time Alicent will be waiting for her with that smile.

The thought makes Rhaenyra smile herself. Offers a reprieve from the crushing weight of her future. She falls asleep in the chair next to her sleeping sons, imagining Alicent rushing to her as she lands Syrax in the Dragonpit; breathless with excitement, like when they were young.

***

Alicent waits. It is her lot.

Lying abed, she thinks of her mother; how she sleeps eternally in the Hightower family crypt. How peaceful it would be to close her eyes and not have to wake. Rest where it is not just dim, but dark—the purest dark, the holiest absence of light. How welcoming. How nice to be among the dead, who, eternally patient, do not need to be waited upon.

So unlike the living.

She taps her foot, as Aemond explains that Aegon has gone again, to gods only know where, for gods only know what purpose or specific act of lechery or debauchery. She will have to await his return to administer another reckoning for his behaviour. Beneath her mask of maternal dissatisfaction, she panics. He is spiralling ever beyond her control, in ways that make her want to weep.

Dyana. The girl’s name was Dyana.

She waits in front of the door of Helaena’s room, knocking, pleading to be let in. But her daughter is having one of her difficult days and responds with muffled sobs. Much like her father, at times Helaena cannot tolerate the light, or sound, or smells or tastes or, it sometimes feels like, anything at all. There is no peace for her even when she sleeps. No respite from her strange dreams that she feels so keenly, that seem so real to her. They haunt her, day and night, until she feels she must hide from the world, including her own mother.

A nursemaid passes by, with Jahaerys and Jahaera holding onto her skirts. On such days, Helaena cannot tolerate her children either, and for a moment, Alicent has the urge to go to them. But no, she should not. It is for their own good that she stays away.

She waits, gorge rising, to see if today Larys will choose to creep up from the dungeons and into her private chambers, all obsequious smiles and gifts of exotic, bruised flowers.

She waits for the prayers to come to her as she kneels in the castle Sept. She has spent her life cleaving to the Faith, and the gods’ own laws. So often she has sought guidance from the pages of the Seven-Pointed Star, or the teachings of her childhood Septas and Septons. There is comfort and clarity in the unchanging character of the Faith and its rules.

There has also been, recently, some disquiet. She has ever been a devoted servant of the Seven. Yet why is she not happy? Is she not the model queen? The model wife? Why does it feel like it is never enough? She expects no earthly reward for her piety. Her faith is not so feeble that it hinges on comfort. But is it too much to ask that she be content? To breathe freely, without guilt, without loneliness, without regret. Are her failings as a mother enough for the gods to deny her this?

She lights a candle for the Mother. Kneels. Admonishes herself. She’s being selfish. The Mother counsels patience, in all things. Perhaps she must merely wait.

And so, she does. She waits on all these things, these disparate threads that make up the tapestry of her life.

It takes five days for her to admit to herself that she is waiting for Rhaenyra, too.

She takes to pacing on her balcony. Heart hammering, she scans the sky like she used to long, long ago, for the first hint of Syrax bursting through the clouds. When she would sprint, as fast as she could, across the keep, to the yard and the stables. Cross the city in the royal wheelhouse, to the Dragonpit, waiting for Rhaenyra to land. To be the first to greet her.

The storm. The storm must have delayed her.

She waits a week, feeling more and more like a foolish child with every clear-skied, sunny day that passes.

“She won’t come.”

Her father steps out from between the double doors opening onto her balcony sometime after the dinner bell, eyes nowhere near the sky, but on her, as if celestial matters are beneath his notice. She doesn’t ask how he knows who she is waiting for. She takes it for granted that he knows everything. There is no hiding from him.

“She said she would.”

He simply raises an eyebrow. Alicent clutches the seven-pointed star hanging around her neck. She wishes he would leave, but he stays at her shoulder, like a vulture, watching her while she watches the moon rise.

She spends days after dithering and deliberating before she finally capitulates and sends a raven to Dragonstone. A short polite inquiry to the Princess Rhaenyra asking after her health. A single, almost throwaway line at the end that Alicent had agonised over for several hours, asking if Her Highness has any plans to return to King’s Landing.

Nothing.

Three weeks after the supper and nothing. Clear, dragonless skies. No raven of reply from Dragonstone. She reaches a nadir. The curtain drops back and the sliver of light recedes. Hope and its various possibilities retreat, leaving the lonely, bitter truth:

Rhaenyra is not coming.

Alicent sips her wine to wash down the bile in her throat. Beside her, Viserys mutters in his sleep. Nothing has changed. Her life follows its allotted course. Forever the wife of a man on the cusp of death. Forever the queen in her own father’s shadow. Forever a failure of a mother.

She takes another sip; a heady mix of despair and anger.

Rhaenyra is not coming.

How predictable.

Of course she is not. Alicent was foolish for even entertaining the idea that she would. After all, why would she? It was nothing, that moment after the supper. Just the princess offhandedly offering to make a return. Alicent is foolish for caring as much as she does; clearly Rhaenyra does not. Clearly, she has forgotten or deemed the matter unimportant. Alicent has once again waited in vain.

Her father doesn’t gloat. She wishes he would. Anything to break that unassailable paternal assuredness that makes her want to scream. Everything is as he says it will be, always. She wishes he was wrong, just once.

At the start of the fourth week, he pulls her aside.

“It is time to think of your children, Alicent,” he says. “It is your responsibility as their mother. You want to do what is best for them, surely? Viserys clings to life, but for how long? Aegon should be on the throne. Rhaenyra is no queen; she is ill-suited. Highborn and smallfolk alike will not have a woman for a ruler, it is just the way of things. And besides, she is not here. She said she would be, but she isn’t, is she Alicent?

“The realm, its people, and you deserve better than to be treated with such negligence, hm? Of course, it is only natural that you’re angry with her, but we must act with cool heads now. There are plans in place, allies we can rely upon. Not a coup, nothing like that. Merely a facilitation, to ensure the correct person succeeds Viserys. Aegon is the rightful heir, after all. A firstborn son. It is for your children’s safety, Alicent. Rhaenyra and Daemon are ruthless. They will kill them all to secure the throne, unless we take it first. Successions can be violent, but we can make this one calm and orderly, yes?

“I know you can do this, my dear daughter. You understand the world as it really is. And so, you must do what it takes to protect your family. You will make me proud, Alicent. When the time comes, I know you will be ready. It is time to put this foolishness with Rhaenyra behind you.”

She nods mutely as he talks, studying the wine cup in her hand. The crisp white liquid sloshing against the gold filigree glints like the light catching Syrax’s scales. After he leaves, she puts the cup down.

He is right. She must put this foolishness behind her. She must let her life take its course. Continue on as she has since the day Viserys took her to wife and she lost her dearest and only friend.

She puts her head in her hands and weeps.

***

Rhaenyra looks down and sees the realm engulfed in flames. She flies over the top of a patchwork land of ash and charred trees, corpses and smoke and blood-red rivers. The sky is a bruised and sickly green. It roils, a tumult of cloud and lightning and thunder. Dark shapes collide and tumble in the maelstrom. As she wings closer, she sees that it’s her family; brothers, sisters, cousins, children, all of them. They twist through the air, scales glinting, black blood leaking from claw-rent hides, snapping teeth and breathing fire as they fight and burn and devour each other.

She panics, because she cannot find Syrax. Where is Syrax? She swoops down, lands in a cloud of soft ash, brittle bones crunching under her claws, but she cannot find her. Around her, the corpses of her family rain down, mute thuds on the grey earth, but she cannot find Syrax. Where is she?

Rhaenyra wakes with a start. Where is she?

Her heart pounds and her chest aches. A profound sense of loss yawns in her, cavernous. Her hand flies to her stomach. There is a moment of terror at the stillness there, a second where she does not dare to breathe. Then Visenya kicks and she inhales deeply in relief.

A dream. Just a dream. Her sons sleep soundly next to her. Syrax is safe, tucked deep in the warmth of the Dragonmont.

Just another dream, to go with all the others.

When she was young, she would have waking dreams of her favourite things; lemon cakes fresh from the kitchens, the wind ruffling her hair as she flies atop Syrax and the warm brown of Alicent’s eyes in the sun.

It was only later that the darker dreams came in the night; deep silent lakes and dead mothers and rotting fathers and the flat, hateful black of Alicent’s eyes when she brings the dagger down.

She sees the latter dream in the day too, sometimes. She needs only look at the scar on her wrist to feel the pain of it. Not the actual cut itself; even at the time, she had barely registered it. The real wound had been the naked hate in Alicent’s face, the realisation that Rhaenyra will never see the warm brown again.

But maybe there is something that can be done about that.

Alicent. I will see you soon.

She heaves herself out of the chair and winds back down the Stone Drum, the storm still crashing relentlessly outside. Leans against the wall to catch her breath. Fuck these stairs.

On the way back to her and Daemon’s wing of the keep, she crosses the Chamber of the Painted Table. She runs her hand over the engraved wood, the map of Westeros inert under her fingertips. A realm of towns and forests and rivers and kingdoms.

The same realm that had been reduced to fire and ash in her dream. A sense of disquiet settles over her.

Daemon isn’t abed yet. Instead of consigning herself to battle dark dreams in an empty, cold bed, she finds a high-back chair, drags it over to an open window and settles in to watch the rain. Night gives way to sunrise, and she waits for the sense of dread to cease.

It does not.

It follows her through the morning. Lurks as she attempts to buoy her spirits with her sons. She teases Jace for his poor Valyrian. Reassures Luke that he will be a fine Lord of the Tides and fleet Captain, ruffling his hair as he frets. Smiles as Rhaena escorts Joffrey to feed Tyraxes in the caves of the Dragonmont.

She sits on the floor of the nursery with little Viserys and Aegon, and together they arrange small figurines of dragons and ships and castles. The rug they sit on is patterned in squares of lush green and yellows. A ripe little realm of fields and forests, ready to be burned to nothing. She shudders. Cold sweat prickles her neck.

Maester Gerardys checks her for agues and clucks at her like a mother hen, lecturing her about pregnancy and flying and storms and staircases and unnecessary exertions.

“You need to rest, my princess,” he says, exasperated.

“I know, Maester,” she responds, feeling every single hour of lost sleep dragging at her feet and eyelids. “I know.”

Tomorrow, Alicent she promises. I will return tomorrow, after I’ve rested.

The dream changes that night. When she swoops down onto the ashen ground in her search for Syrax, she notices two things in the distance. The first is a small glinting thing. And beyond that, a wall of white as far as the eye can see, rumbling towards her. It becomes a race to get to the glinting thing. She takes off, propelling herself on powerful wings, screeching a challenge at the advancing wall. As she closes in, she sees it is a giant sheet of ice and snow. The sky goes black. Her breath freezes in front of her. Ice crusts over her scales. Still, she powers on. The glinting thing sits upon a chair. It is a crown. Jahaerys’ crown. Her father’s crown. Her crown. She’s close, close enough to reach—

The wall sweeps over.

It is just snow. It is just ice. It is just the dark. Fire prevails against all these things.

But there is no fire left in the world. Her family lie dead on the ground, destroyed by each other. The world is grey ash, leeched of heat and light. There is only her left to fight the long, cold night.

She opens her jaws and roars a defiant jet of flame, but it is not enough. It is a candle in the void. The crown shatters, and her flame is snuffed out.

Then there is only the heavy, oppressive dark, and the bitter cold, and high-pitched crackling, like the snapping of frozen bones.

Rhaenyra wakes, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling. She lies still as, for the second night in a row, her heart thrashes in her chest. Hears her father’s words, as if he is right beside her, holding the Conqueror’s dagger:

When this great winter comes, Rhaenyra, all of Westeros must stand against it. And if the world of men is to survive, then a Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne. A king or queen, strong enough to unite the realm against the cold and the dark.

Aegon’s prophecy.

Surely these are not dragon dreams? For all that she has dreamed vividly her entire life, she has never experienced such a thing. She is no Daenys, who dreamed the Doom. Or her sister Helaena, gifted and cursed with prophetic insights.

Outside her window, the storm has picked up again and lashes the tower with a fury. The night is dark and angry. Visenya kicks, unhappy, and she shivers as the cold sweat sticks her shift to her skin. She gets up.

Daemon is once again not abed. The state of her father must have truly shaken him, for him to seek such solitude. He is loath to show or admit anything he perceives to be a weakness. Daemon does not respect death. He has always laughed at it, courted it, inflicted it. But when confronted with its inevitability in his brother in the Red Keep, she had seen something turn in him. His is a temperament not suited to being reminded of the restrictions of mortality.

Nonetheless, she risks seeking him out. The dreams feel like a warning. He must be told.

She finds him at the Painted Table.

“Can’t sleep either? Bloody storm.” He says, propped up on his knuckles somewhere over Tarth. There is a tension in his shoulders, his eyes sunken as they rove over the landmarks and markers in front of him. His usual glibness is absent; his insouciant vitality wound into something tight and dangerous.

“I’ve been having bad dreams these past few days.”

“Mm.” Daemon flicks a wooden ship with a three-striped sail representing the Triarchy, knocking it over and sending it skittering across the Stepstones. “Corlys is back in Driftmark, and making a recovery. Got a raven from Baela this afternoon. We should attempt to remake an alliance with him if he lives.”

“You heard Rhaenys. She took our offer. Luke and Jace will wed Rhaena and Baela. Our connection to the Velaryons is secure.”

“That’s only one side of the coin. We need his pledge, too.”

“It would be a tall ask, after what happened with Laenor. And even more so now you’ve beheaded his brother.”

Daemon looks up at her with a sardonic smile. “He shouldn’t have called you a whore.” Then it drops, and he refocuses on the table. “Nevertheless, we must secure Corlys. We’ll need his ships in the coming months.”

“What for?”

He chuckles. “War, of course.”

The realm burned. Covered in ash and bone. Rhaenyra shudders, tries to banish the image. “We don’t want a war.”

“You saw my brother. He’s a corpse already, albeit one that breathes occasionally.” He flexes his fingers, picks up another wooden ship—this one sporting House Velaryon’s seahorse sigil on its sails—and places it in Blackwater Bay. “The Hightowers will be making their moves already, preparing for the moment he takes his last breath. Assuming they aren’t already hurrying the process along. You saw the change in décor. They rule in all but name, and all those lickspittle lords in the Red Keep support them. My brother is finished. We must begin our own preparations to take the Iron Throne.”

Dread, gripping her heart. A wall of ice and snow. A darkness covering the land, and no dragonfire to stop it. “It must not come to conflict.”

Daemon laughs hollowly. “Tell that to Otto Hightower and the rest of his Green supporters. He’ll do anything to get his grandson on the throne. I detest the underhanded snake, but at least his ambitions have always been consistent.”

“It need not come to it. I’ll speak to Alicent. We may yet reach an understanding.”

“Based on what? Those empty platitudes at dinner between you and Her Grace, the royal nursemaid? Do be serious, Rhaenyra. The woman is like her father; poison and deception and ambition. Granted, it’s been a few years since she’s last tried to stab you, but she seems the type to always have a knife tucked up her sleeve.”

Visenya kicks violently, and Rhaenyra’s stomach twists. She grits her teeth and leans over the table. “I believe Alicent was quite sincere. I know I was. I will meet with her.”

Daemon’s eyes flick to her, then back to the table.

“It is pointless. The Hightowers and their allies are the enemy, Rhaenyra. They always have been. War is inevitable. In fact, it is preferable. They will do everything they can to stop your claim.” His eyes gleam in their sunken sockets. “We have the opportunity to draw them out into the field and crush them. Wipe them out, every single one of them.”

Her family, falling out of the sky. Hitting the grey earth with muted thumps. “We would put our entire family at risk. Our children and dragons could die.”

“We are Targaryens. Risk and daring and dragonfire are in our blood. It is how we will make you queen.”

“Then perhaps I shouldn’t be queen.”

Daemon stares at her, crouched low, dangerously quiet. “You cannot be serious,” he says after a tense pause.

“I’ve been having a reoccurring dream. In it, our family fights each other, and are destroyed while Westeros burns.”

“A dream,” he scoffs, pushing off the table and stalking around to where she stands. “Are we dictating our future based on such things now? Shall we give our blood to a fortune teller to see what direction we should take a piss in?”

“I’m serious, Daemon.”

“As am I.” He looms over her. The lines in his face seem deeper, since their visit to King’s Landing. There is a glint in his eyes that is sharp enough to cut. “You dream of what will be a necessity. We cannot be weak now. You will be queen. My brother named you his heir; it’s his will and I’ll see it done. It will take fire and blood and conquest, but it will happen. Even if we need to burn the Seven Kingdoms to the ground to make it so.”

“No. I won’t have it.”

“No?” He grabs her arm, fingers digging into her flesh. “You cannot run from this anymore, Rhaenyra. It is time to fight for your birthright. Where is your conviction? Where is your sense of purpose? What have we been doing here all these years if not waiting for the right time to strike against our enemies? They must fear us. We must be capable of anything. You have said this yourself.”

She wrenches her arm out of his grasp, glaring. It is dangerous, courting his ire like this. They are made of fire, the both of them. But she is always the first to back down, to cool things when it burns too hot, when their arguments threaten to turn dangerous.

But she cannot about this. She will not. “Words I spoke years ago, about my own safety. This is more important than that. Westeros cannot burn, Daemon. It cannot become ash. Our family cannot destroy each other. For the good of the realm. That is father’s real wish. That is how we must honour him.”

“And he told you this, did he?”

“Yes. The prophecy. The Song of Ice and Fire. Aegon the Conqueror's dragon dream. The need for a united realm, against the long winter. Father shared it with me when he named me heir.”

“A prophecy.” He sneers. “What a farce. Is this what moves you to capitulate? A mere handful of dreams; yours, Viserys’ and now apparently the Conqueror’s too? Pitiful.”

“Did he not tell you of it? The Song?” asks Rhaenyra and Daemon’s eyes go flat and dark. She pauses, almost in disbelief. So, her father truly only trusted her with it, then. He only ever intended her to be his heir. She takes strength from that. Enough to square her shoulders, lift her chin and say, “I see he did not. You are right. He named me his heir. Me. Not you. He entrusted this matter to me. It is for me to see his will done. It is my decision to make, not yours. War amongst our family is the last thing he wanted. I will go to King’s Landing. I will speak to Alicent. I will speak to him. And we will see what we can do to avoid this calamity.”

“And what would you give to achieve that end, Rhaenyra?” Daemon asks, soft and dangerous. “Would you bend the knee?”

“If it comes to it. For the good of the realm, I’d need to consider it.”

Sudden, snakelike, his hand is at her throat. “You will do no such thing! My brother is weak. Mazed by portents from the past. He, and now you, refuse to use our family’s power, our dragons, to our benefit. I’ll not see our crown pissed away and the Hightowers prevail because you both choose to hide behind your pointless omens. I will not.”

“Unhand me.” Rhaenyra hisses.

He lets go, eyes burning, and she glares at him, taking ragged breaths, speechless with fury, with the urge to tear at his throat with her teeth. “It is not for you to command me in this matter, Daemon,” she rasps. “It is not for you to decide. If I am to be queen, you must kneel to me. You must abide me when I tell you to curb your bloodlust and your vainglorious pursuit of conflict. Tell me, husband, are you capable of such? Or will your love of war compel you to lay hands on me instead of obey?”

His lip curls. He towers over her, glowering, and there is a moment where Rhaenyra does not know what he will do, what she will do, what violence they might unleash upon each other.

Then he turns on his heel and leaves.

She slumps against the table once he’s gone. Shaking, she tries to get her breathing even. Gulps in air. In. Out. In. Out.

Visenya kicks and her stomach twists in pain this time. It shoots through her lower body. She feels faint. She staggers back to bed, head spinning.

Then the doom comes upon her; the darkest of dreams.

In it, the sheets are sticky and cling to her. Somehow, there is blood everywhere. Somehow her body endures the agony; the lancing, lingering pain that wipes her mind blank.

It takes a while for her to understand what is happening.

Elinda Massey runs in, alarmed by her screaming.

Rhaenyra sends her loyal lady out, ignoring her teary-eyed pleas: “Please let us help you, Your Highness.”

But she wants no help. This pain, this impending loss, is a private thing. She won’t share it.

One foot in front of the other. We keep going.

Somehow, she ends up on the floor. She presses her face against the cool dark stone, seeking relief. Was this what her mother felt, that final time? Did she keep repeating her own words to herself?

We keep going.

Visenya is a storm inside her.

Her son’s face is at the door. Jace, pale as a ghost. Her eldest, a man now, but his horrified “Mother?” Makes him sound like a boy of six.

She sends him away too.

My sweet boy, you don’t need to see this.

Agony comes in waves, at various levels of unbearable.

But the worst is when it stops.

Later, sitting in the aftermath, she thinks, You stopped, Mother. You could not keep going.

She grimaces and pushes herself off the floor. Unfortunately, it seems I must.

Collapses.

***

The Red Keep, Alicent muses, should have more balconies. Her one is large but not very private. It is, however, pleasingly high.

Pleasingly, dizzyingly high. Below her King’s Landing roils in a mess of tiny buildings, haphazard and scattered, like when her grandchildren’s toy blocks are disturbed by a pulled carpet. She can barely hear the hustle and bustle of the roiling city up here, nor smell the stench of it. Just wind and the cries of birds.

A raven from the rookery flaps overhead, but Alicent only has eyes for the doves, wheeling and circling over the Grand Sept, the crystal set in its dome refracting in the morning sun.

Doves. Alicent takes a sip from her goblet, winces at the bitterness on her tongue. Everyone loves doves. How perfect that they all float around the Sept. The commonfolk see it as an auspicious sign; favour from the Seven. But Alicent knows it for the lie it is. People do not appreciate doves for their holiness, or as the harbingers of good fortune. It is because they are that specific combination of things that she hates most; pretty, obedient, and docile.

The sharp edges of the engravings on her goblet dig into her fingers when she squeezes them. She ignores the sensation. She is distracted by the thought that doves are only pretty, anyway, from far away. They are as much a farce as she is. The reality up close is parasite and disease-ridden, bent feathers, mad eyes. Why be a dove? Far better to be a dragon; dangerous, unreliable, but free.

She takes another swig, imagines a dragon circling the Sept instead, breathing fire, burning it down in a giant, glorious conflagration. A horrible thought for a pious woman to think! She giggles, then wobbles, temporarily losing her footing, and the crowd of servants behind her gasp in unison.

“Your Grace, please. Come down.” Her maidservant Talya begs.

They have gathered behind her like an anxious clutch of hens, clucking and squawking whenever she moves, but not daring to approach her. It is, after all, a very long way down.

“Your queen—” she responds, dangling one exquisitely slippered foot off the edge of the balustrade and enjoying the chorus of horrified gasps the action incites, “—is in perfect command of the situation.”

She realises her speech is slurring. Perhaps it should bother her. She mentally shrugs and takes another sip. She has been practicing perfect poise under her father’s critical eye for as long as she’s been able to walk. A balcony edge is a trifle to navigate in comparison.

Besides, the bitterness in the dreamwine is almost gone now. It’s almost pleasant to drink.

“I’ll get the Hand,” says one of the onlookers. That new maidservant with the nasal voice who she is reasonably certain is spying on her for someone. Her father, by the sounds of things.

“Do that, and I’ll jump.” She responds airily.

She isn’t going to, of course. She’s a mother, for Seven’s sake! She has duties, the never-ending duties. To her children, to Viserys, to her father, to the realm. She’s the queen, isn’t she? Her life is not her own to take. Not for her the luxury of a quick escape and the painless oblivion of the afterlife. Not for her any kind of freedom, except for when she sleeps. She is trapped in this cursed city, in this cursed keep, in this cursed body, in this cursed life. Alas, it must all go on.

But the servants don’t know that. And she would rather not have to endure her father’s dour, paternal displeasure at her current behaviour. It’s enough that she can already imagine him standing at her shoulder, saying,

You’re making a scene.

“So what if I am!?” she declares, while another servant whispers behind her,

“Get Ser Criston.”

“No Ser Criston!” She has sent her sworn knight away on some errand. She forgets what. Details are becoming difficult now, through the growing fog in her head. Anyway, the present circumstance would only upset him. No doubt he would try to do something rash, thinking she was in danger.

Perhaps he would be right.

After all, she is no Targaryen. She has no dragon. She is no Rhaenyra, who can soar wherever and whenever she pleases. To and from, but mostly from. Mostly away. Always flying away. Rhaenyra, who will always land safely. Any flights Alicent takes would be short and fatal.

Rhaenyra… Rhaenyra gets to be free, always. Rhaenyra gets to escape. Live impulsively and without consequence. How carelessly she threw away her virtue. How little she cared to preserve their friendship, the single bloom of colour in Alicent’s life. No, Rhaenyra always follows her own desires, selfishly, without thought. While Alicent grimly endured her duty, Rhaenyra cavorted, ruined good people with her carelessness, flying away from Alicent, always away.

Always to someone else.

“You’re jealous,” the goblet of dreamwine whispers in her ear.

Jealous? Of Rhaenyra? Laughable. Why would she be jealous of someone so without virtue, without decency, without faith or piety? Who ruins lives with her impulses, breaks hearts as she breaks her promises? Who has never cared who her actions hurt? Oh, if only Alicent could have acted so. If only she could do a fraction of what Rhaenyra is allowed, rather than gritting her teeth and doing her lonesome, cursed duty?”

“Not what I meant,” giggles the goblet and Alicent hurls the impudent receptacle over the edge. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Rhaenyra left her to deal with it all alone. Always alone. Even when she was right in front of her. How could Rhaenyra have done that to her? To have never noticed. To have never cared. To have cared so suddenly at the family supper. To have promised to return, then flown away and never come back.

Rhaenyra. Her beloved enemy. Her entitled princess. How Alicent hates her. What she feels is hate, surely? This virulent, physical thing that relentlessly intrudes on Alicent’s detached world of carefully curated thoughts and touch; that twisting feeling in her gut when thinking of her. The way she feels hot all over when she looks upon her. How her breathing hitches and her palms itch and bile rises in her throat. How she wants to wrap her hands around that elegant pale neck and sink her teeth into her shoulder.

Rhaenyra makes her feel like an animal trapped in her own skin. It is disgustingly visceral, and Alicent hates at how addicted she is to it, this violence of feeling.

It has to be hate.

And yet, when she made Rhaenyra bleed, she felt nothing but remorse and guilt. The Alicent animal bared its teeth and slashed at Rhaenyra with that stupid knife and it didn’t make her feel better. The animal was not satisfied. It did not quench the violent feelings, and Alicent could scream. She does scream, in fact, because what will make it stop? She wants it to stop.

She wants Rhaenyra here so she can beg her to stop, stop this thing. So she can grab Rhaenyra’s hand and make sure she never leaves again. Sink to her knees and beg forgiveness.

I’m sorry she wants to whisper to Rhaenyra as they cling to each other, like they used to when they were little. I had no choice. I cannot join you. I am not a dragon, but a bird in a cage that never learned how to fly.

“Alicent.”

Rhaenyra’s voice. Low and smooth like Arbor gold.

Alicent fixes her eyes on the horizon beyond King’s Landing and refuses to turn around. Impossible. Rhaenyra left. She promised to come back and never did. Rhaenyra cannot be here, because Rhaenyra doesn’t care. Rhaenyra cannot be here, because it’s too late for anything to change. Rhaenyra cannot be here, because Rhaenyra is dangerous. Rhaenyra cannot be here, because Alicent hates her. Rhaenyra cannot be here, because then she’d see Alicent like this.

“Alicent.” Soft. Right behind her now.

Alicent turns slowly. Sways in relief. The dreamwine has done its work, and she is in a lucid delirium. One where she has conjured to herself a Rhaenyra of her own imagining. The open concern on the princess’ face proves it. It’s an expression that could never exist in the real world, not with all that has passed between them. For years her face has been an unreadable mask, like a stranger’s.

But this one, with its worried frown and furrowed brow, is straight from her memories. Remembered over and over again late at night in the secrecy of her bed, that happy time just before sleep when she can give herself over to small secret fantasies.

It is the time she can think of the “thens.” The happy memories of a childhood with Rhaenyra, before ambitions not of their own making created the rift between them. The real “thens” and the fantasy “thens”, the “what-ifs”.

What if her mother never died, and the untrammelled ambition that fills the void in her father’s heart never existed? What if, somehow, improbably, she and Rhaenyra had never drifted apart? What if Viserys had never married her, and Rhaenyra had flown them away on dragonback instead?

Now, dream-Rhaenyra takes her hand gently. “Alicent. Please come down.”

Guilt washes over Alicent. “I lost my cup. It went over the edge.” She feels tired and muddled. Why is she up here again? Her throat feels hoarse, and her eyes hot, as if she’s been crying. She has no reason to cry. She’s the queen.

She allows her princess to lead her down. Dream-Rhaenyra dismisses the servants, and Alicent is relieved, their pale and ghostly faces feel out of place in this reverie.

“Where are we going?” She stumbles and dream-Rhaenyra puts an arm around her. The princess guides them through the maze that is Maegor’s Holdfast. Then, through arches and arcades and gardens across the Red Keep. The walls and floors tilt crazily, like Alicent is on a ship, and the swells keep building higher and higher, rocking the floor under her feet.

The sconces are too bright. The sun is too intense. Her head aches. The only comfort is the woman next to her, keeping her upright when she staggers. Caring dream-Rhaenyra, who isn’t real. She wants to sleep. She can’t sleep, because then she’ll wake up and things will be back to normal and Rhaenyra will be gone.

She clings to the dream princess. Don’t go. Don’t leave. Sags against her shoulder. Her vision blurs, then goes dark.

***

Dreamwine, for the pain.

Rhaenyra wraps little Visenya in a shroud and gives her to the flames. She is distantly aware of her sons next to her. Daemon lurks somewhere in her periphery. But they are as insubstantial to her as the fog that rolls in from the sea.

More doses of milk of the poppy. And then it is just the grey fog, rolling outside her window, into her thoughts, a jumble of indistinct thoughts and memories.

Faces skip and jump and freeze in place, like a wall of tapestries. Maester Gerardys, weathered and grim as a weirwood. Her sons a parade of worried frowns. Jace a fixture by her bedside, looking ashamed, although she cannot fathom why.

Some amount of time later, someone takes something from her hand.

“Enough, mother.”

Later still, when she’s still low and tired but awake now, and the pain has lessened enough that her thoughts sharpen, she looks at the veiled sun outside her window. Gets up and staggers to it, shocked at the weakness in her legs.

The sea and sky are a blur through the mist that perpetually clings to Dragonstone. Out there, somewhere beyond any ken, Visenya rests in the afterlife. Rhaenyra hopes she is at peace.

Rhaena appears and tugs gently at her elbow.

“Good-mother, go back to bed. You must rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not.”

And the young woman sounds so exasperated that it makes Rhaenyra smile ever so slightly.

“I’m through the worst of it, I think.” She pats Rhaena’s hand and allows her to lead her back to bed. “You need not worry.”

Gerardys, waiting at her bedside, disagrees. “Your Highness, your constitution remains formidable. But I have concerns. This was a considerable travail for both your body and your mind.”

“I can manage, Maester.”

“I am concerned about green-sickness, and lassitude. There is a physick that I think would be helpful to your recovery. But the ingredients for it are rare, and we do not have them on Dragonstone. I have sent for them from the Citadel—"

“It’ll take too long,” Rhaena cuts in. “Send Jace or Luke on their dragons. I’d go, but, well. No dragon. But if Rhaenyra needs something for her recovery, she should get it as soon as possible.”

Her good-daughter’s concern is touching, and Rhaenyra squeezes her hand. Rhaena squeezes hers back, a little desperately, and it reminds Rhaenyra of someone.

Alicent.

“Oh!” It’s like a lance of sunlight cutting through the grey fog. She sits back up.

“What’s wrong?”

“I made a promise to Alicent Hightower. To return to King’s Landing.” Memories bubble to the forefront of her mind, growing clearer by the second. She remembers— “My dreams! I must speak to her about the succession. And to father.”

“Your Highness, you need rest—" Gerardys begins, but Rhaenyra is already pushing herself back out of bed. A purpose. A purpose, when she has lain here useless, weak, disparate as the fog. A purpose that takes her away from Dragonstone.

“I made a promise. I should do something. I need to do something.” She winces as pain lances through her when she pulls a shift over her head. “Send a raven. Yes. No! Better yet, I shall go in person.”

Gerardys trails behind her as she dresses. “Your Highness, I really don’t think—"

“I’ll go today. I—" It comes back to her fully then, from beyond the fog. Echos becoming a cacophony of recent memories. Alicent. The night at the Painted Table. Daemon, with his hands at her neck. Sheets and blood. The Song. Her father, half-dead. The succession. A realm of ash and bone. Alicent.

She sinks into a chair, dizzy. “I must go.”

“You are in no state to travel. You require rest, care and treatment. Wait until the ingredients arrive for your physick, at least.”

“There will be such ingredients in King’s Landing, won’t there? The Grand Maester must have ample supplies to treat my father. I can arrange for him to make it.”

“And so you will just leave? So soon after your loss? What does Prince Daemon have to say about this?

Rhaenyra freezes. “Daemon.” She touches her neck, still tender, and wonders if he has marked her. The way Baela bites her lip and the Maester slides his eyes away in shame answers her question.

She fixes the latter with an icy glare. “Daemon has no say in what I do or where I go. Now, or ever. Is that clear?”

“It is, Your Highness.”

“So I’ll go.”

The Maester deflates, knowing there is no arguing with that tone of voice. “As you say, my princess.”

Rhaenyra softens. “Thank you, Gerardys. For your good counsel and your care. Truly, there is no finer healer in the realm. Draw me up a list of ingredients, and I’ll see Maester Orwyle about the physick.”

“I can see you are determined to go. But at least rest a few more days before you do, Good-mother. For my peace of mind.”

“I must do this, Rhaena. I must go now. I cannot stay on Dragonstone, at this moment.”

The young woman bites her lip again, glancing furtively at her neck, then down to her stomach. Nods.

“I understand. In that case, go, and leave the boys to me. I’ll explain things to Jace and Luke. And between us and Elinda, we’ll keep our little brothers out of mischief. Just promise to do what is best for yourself, and return to us stronger for it.”

Rhaenyra hugs the young woman, pressing a fond kiss at her temple. She looks past her shoulder, out the window. Sun and sea and sky, covered in grey mist. She must escape it.

Syrax is saddled and they are airborne before she can think too closely about it. Before she can admit that she is fleeing again, this time from Dragonstone. Daemon. Dark dreams. A little bundle wrapped in linen and given to the fire far too early.

At least she flees towards a good purpose, this time. She’s made Alicent wait long enough.

It is an uncomfortable ride to the Red Keep; to sit in the saddle is painful despite Gerardys’ best efforts at healing. Her vitality feels at an ebb. Yet the wind in her hair, and the pure joy of flying lifts her spirits for a moment. She draws strength from the great dragon under her and the sun above her; her golden guides, warm and true.

And yet, as ever, when she closes in on the sprawling mass of King’s Landing she feels her energy wane. By the time she comes in to lands at the Red Keep she is tired, so tired. She flies Syrax straight into the lower yard and leaves her there. No Dragonpit today. She has neither the energy nor inclination to wait upon a trip across the city in a wheelhouse. Besides, there is no point in settling Syrax in. They’ll both be gone again before too long.

She pulls her high collar up around her throat as she dismounts. Makes her way through the keep without bothering to announce herself. She opts to see Alicent before her father or the Maester and heads directly to the Queen’s Chambers. The queen deserves an explanation and, if Rhaenyra is honest with herself, the chance of warm eyes and a smile from her would be an even greater balm than Syrax and the sun.

There is a commotion outside the queen’s door; a group of maids fretting. They start as she approaches.

“Your Highness!” exclaims one. “Thank the Gods!”

“What’s wrong?” Rhaenyra asks, looking around at the wide-eyed, flustered faces.

“It’s Her Grace. She—“

There is a scream from beyond the door.

Rhaenyra shoves them aside and enters the room, fighting panic, fighting exhaustion, the grey fog. Scratching desperately in the ash with her claw for something important.

Where is she?

She pushes forward, elbowing through another throng of panicked servants. Then, she is beyond them. Alicent is on the balcony. Up on the balustrade.

What in the name of the Gods is going on here?

She calls out softly to the queen as she approaches, slow enough not to startle. Keeps her voice even and gentle as she repeats her name.

Alicent turns. Her eyes are glazed. Her cheeks are flushed. She has been crying. She smiles. Rhaenyra, having just herself spent time lost in a maze of dreamwine-induced deliriums, suspects she knows what she is seeing. The grey fog vanishes. All things of concern, past, present, and future, fall away until there is only a single defining thought drawing her forward; Alicent is in trouble. Alicent needs help.

She takes her hand. Helps her down. The queen is babbling and insensible. Rhaenyra decides to take her to Maester Orwyle. Alicent collapses halfway there so Rhaenyra must half drag, half carry her. Normally it would be an easy labour. At any other time, she might throw Alicent over her shoulder or else pick her up with ease. The queen is light and fragile, like a little bird. But now Rhaenyra struggles. Cursing her own weakness, she staggers the first few steps. Even under such a delicate burden, she becomes dizzy and light-headed. A sharp pain lances within her from sternum to groin. But she grits her teeth and

One foot in front of the other

She gets them both there.

What has happened here, Alicent? She thinks as she holds the semi-conscious queen upright with one arm and hammers on the Maester’s door with the other.

He opens it, eyes wide and owlish. With the last dregs of her strength, Rhaenyra scoops Alicent up in her arms and barges past him to enter the room.

“What in the Seven—?”

“Something is wrong with Her Grace,” she grunts, laying Alicent on the Maester’s bed.

He shuffles over to the supine queen and frowns. “What happened?”

“She was acting strange, wandering the edge of her balcony. She seems drunk, or mazed. I think she’s poppy-addled.”

“Good Gods.” He places his hand on Alicent’s brow. “Feverish. Muttering. Possible delirium?”

“I don’t know. She mentioned a cup, lost over the balcony.”

“A cup?” He frowns. “Poppy-addled, you say. Was she confused?”

“A little. Staggering like a drunk in an alley.”

“Hm.” The Maester runs a hand over his skullcap. “Dreamwine, then? I wonder…” He shuffles past her to his desk. Opens the top drawer. Withdraws a sleek black box and opens the lid. “Ah.”

“What?”

“It seems I am missing one vial of my milk of the poppy. Used in making dreamwine. I’m usually the one to mix it for the king but—“

“—sometimes Her Grace does it.” Rhaenyra puts her hand over her eyes. Alicent. What possessed you?

“She has been looking after him for a very long time. She would have a good sense of the dosages, and what amounts to mix. And she knows where I keep it.”

“Why would she take it herself? Has she an illness? Some sort of affliction?”

“Not to my knowledge. We will have to ask her.” He heads over to a large cupboard at the back of his chambers and opens several drawers containing strange vials and dried leaves and flowers. “We’ll need to give her an emetic to expel the concoction from her system. It will not be harmful to her, but there will be some mess.”

They get to work, mixing some foul-smelling herbs into water and pouring it down the queen’s throat. Then they wait.

***

Darkness. Rocking. She must be aboard a ship. She opens her eyes, and it’s true; she’s in a great galley, like the one that had sailed her away from Oldtown. The motion of it makes her nauseous. There’s a bitter taste on her tongue and at the back of her throat. She retches over the side, into the choppy sea. It’s awful, especially when it happens again and again.

Eventually, it stops, and instead of plunging over waves she’s bouncing in a wheelhouse over ill-made roads. She looks out the window. King’s Landing squats in the distance, huge and dusty and sprawling under the shadow of its two hills and colossal keep. So unlike Oldtown, with its tall, secretive towers and muggy air sweet with the scent of night-blossoms. Her hand is tiny in her father’s. The Hightower signet ring on his fourth finger—a gift from her mother—could engulf three of hers.

He looks down at her with a smile.

“Would you like to meet a princess, Alicent?”

Now she sits with her legs neatly tucked under her at the window of her room in the Red Keep, reading.

Rhaenyra runs in, wanting to play. The proposed game is Knights and Ladies, with the princess offering to act as her sworn sword for the day. Perhaps they could simulate a duel for Alicent’s honour, or engage in a daring rescue of her from a tower?

Alicent lowers her book and regards the princess cooly. She is twelve years old—a woman, practically!—and beyond such childish games. “Don’t be foolish, Rhaenyra,” she admonishes. “We’re too old for that now. I don’t need you to rescue me.”

Now she is lying in a dim room. Rhaenyra is older, and arguing with Maester Orwyle.

“She is in no state—“ the princess says angrily.

“Precisely, Your Highness. They will need to know.”

“According to whom? You haven’t asked her!”

“They’re her family—"

The words wash over Alicent. Her thoughts move lazily, like spilled honey. Then Rhaenyra is at her side, frowning.

“Alicent. Are you awake? Listen to me. He’s gone to get, oh, half the court by the sounds of things. Do you want that? I don’t know what has happened here but is this… is this a private matter for yourself only?”

“What—what matter?” Alicent frowns. Speech is difficult. Words catch on her tongue or evaporate before she can form them. Why is older Rhaenyra angry? This is meant to be a happy dream. She recalls the crushed look young Rhaenyra had given her just moments ago, when she’d refused to play. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” says Alicent. “I was just trying to be strong.”

A gentle look from Rhaenyra—her dream-Rhaenyra. “It’s alright, Alicent. Can I take you somewhere else? Back to your chambers, perhaps?”

Her chambers. The balcony. Shame washes over her. “No. No, no.”

There is a commotion from somewhere beyond the door. Boots on flagstones, the clanking of armour, the echo of opinionated voices.

Alicent cringes. She wants to be left alone. She wants to continue to dream of Rhaenyra, soft and kind. The princess is looking fierce now. But not at her. At the door. A dragon guarding the threshold, protecting her. Alicent wants to wrap herself in the comfort of it.

“Well, here they come.”

“Who?”

“Your father, and the others.”

Her father. You’re causing a scene. Always right. Always asking terrible things of her. Heavy ambitions like a stone on her chest.

“No. Not him,” she whispers and shrinks into the mattress. Perhaps if she wills it hard enough, he’ll disappear. But no. There’s nowhere she can hide from him. Not in the keep, not in her own thoughts. Not in her own dreams. Somehow, she must escape. “Not here.”

“Where to then, Alicent?”

She doesn’t care, as long as it takes her away. Anywhere where she can dream in peace. Anywhere—

“Anywhere but here.”

Rhaenyra looks at her, still and intent and poised. So much like a dragon. But there is no fire in her gaze, no anger or violence. Just ferocious intensity. Alicent knows the look well, from their youngest years. It is the harbinger of Rhaenyra about to make a decision, usually something astoundingly, breathtakingly reckless. “Alicent,” she asks, slowly and deliberately. “Do you want me to take you away?”

“—confined to her rooms. For her own safety,” someone’s voice echoes down the hall, to mixed reception. Alicent turns to the sound and her mouth twists. Why must it come to this? Others determining her fate even in her dreams. When does it end? Where is the escape?

She turns back to Rhaenyra, who is holding out her hand. The glint in her eye, the stubborn set of her jaw says: decision made.

Alicent the queen, Alicent the wife, Alicent the mother would be too sensible and too afeared to take her hand, in the waking world. But this is her dream. And in her dream she is brave, and not afraid of dragons, or flying, or the gods, or angry fathers.

In her dream, she can choose to be free.

She takes Rhaenyra’s hand.

They are through the Maester’s door and around the corner before anyone sees them. Alicent feels light and unreal as Rhaenyra whisks her through the keep. She floats behind the princess, tethered to reality only by Rhaenyra’s hand holding hers.

They are in the corridors; they are on the battlements; they are across the bailey. They are in the yard in front of Syrax. Rhaenyra does not acknowledge the Dragonkeepers or castle guards watching nervously as she hoists Alicent onto the back of her dragon and clambers up behind her.

We escape, Rhaenyra. Together. At long last.

Alicent closes her eyes and sighs, leaning back into the contours of Rhaenyra's frame before Syrax tenses her muscles, unfurls her wings, and leaps.