Chapter Text
The sky hangs heavy with clouds, the woods dead and silent in the hush before dawn.
Bathed in the pale light, Alicent slips from the silk slippers that swaddled her feet, stepping barefoot onto the cold grass. A gust of wind rises, and she tilts her head back beneath the weirwood, its bark white as bone, with dark red leaves that look like a thousand bloodstained hands. Mercy, she thinks, mercy, mercy, mercy. This is the garden beneath the Tower of the Hand, she realizes, not Maegor’s Seven-forsaken Holdfast, where she had been caged. Alicent sobs, uncontrollably, starting to shake and hiccup. She is crying so much, gasping for breath, not being able to bear the agony any longer.
She clutches her side, muffling her mouth with the other hand. Her prayer has been heard. The gods have answered.
Then she blinks, her gaze falling to the grass beneath her fingers—dewy, cold, and meticulously kept. But it is not the grass she is truly seeing. It is the pale ring on her hand, clenched tight in the blades. A ring she had long forgotten. A gift from her brother, sweet, dutiful Gwayne, for her fifteenth name day.
She had stopped wearing it after her marriage, favoring Viserys’ gifts instead—the queen’s jewelry, so many of them, that Gwayne’s simple ring had been lost in the pile. Yet here it is.
On her knees, Alicent presses the back of her hand to her damp cheeks, forcing herself to look—truly look. This is not a dream. The wind is cold against her bare shoulders, sharp and real. She is wearing one of her mother’s gowns, a soft lilac that brings out the auburn in her hair, slashed with burgundy velvet. She remembers now—her father had paid a seamstress to tailor it to her more slender form, rather than leaving it for the septas.
A gown she had worn before. A ring she had lost. And yet, here they are.
Her stomach roils and heaves
She breathes in, then out. Her legs are unsteady, but she forces herself to stand, the gown already ruined at the knees, stained with mud.
“Child,” a voice calls.
Alicent looks up and freezes. Septa Melessa stands before her, sharp-eyed and severe as ever, the sour old crone from House Fossoway. Her gaze sweeps over Alicent’s disheveled state, assessing, calculating. But Septa Melessa is dead. She had died before Helaena was even born. Alicent remembers sending her body to Oldtown herself. Yet here she is, stepping forward warily, her face has gone the color of curdled white.
“What’s the matter?” the septa asks. “Has something happened?”
Alicent draws her hands to her chest, her fingers instinctively picking at the edges of her nails. But at Septa Melessa’s disapproving glance, she stills.
Despite nearly twenty years as queen, she suddenly feels small again.
She stops peeling, forces herself to meet the septa’s gaze—really look at her.
“I don’t know…” Tears run down her puffy red face, “Either I’ve lost my wits to grief, or the gods have finally answered me.”
Septa Melessa stares at her for a moment before pulling her forward—half-dragging, half-embracing—toward the soft slippers discarded in the grass. She presses them onto Alicent’s feet, firm but gentle, then leads her back to her chambers.
Once inside, the septa drapes a warm blanket over her before disappearing. When she returns, it is with tea—tansy, mint, and wormwood, sweetened with a spoon of honey and laced with a single drop of pennyroyal. By then, Alicent has already settled, calm, gazing around at the familiar space of her girlhood room in the Tower of the Hand.
Slowly, carefully, Septa Melessa begins undoing her plait.
It takes time. Alicent sits in silence, watching the tea, her hands curled around the cup. When the last strand is loosened, she shakes her head, and her hair spills free behind her, a gleaming river of auburn and oil.
“My father wants me to be a queen,” she says, staring down at her hands.
Septa Melessa sits before her, quietly threading a needle through cloth, resuming the sewing she must have set aside earlier. She does not look up, only hums—a soft, wordless prompt to continue.
It is a bittersweet sight, so achingly familiar that Alicent has to swallow back a sob. She feels hollow, emptied of everything.
“He told me to go to him,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “To offer him comfort. In my mother’s dresses.”
Septa Melessa stills, then sets the cloth aside, meeting Alicent’s eyes.
“You are intelligent, well-read, pious, and gracious,” she says. “You have never turned away from your responsibilities, never shied from duty. If ever there was a woman fit to be queen, I can think of none more deserving than you.”
Alicent exhales sharply. “A war will follow,” she murmurs. “The realm will never accept Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne, even if she were Jaehaerys reborn.”
“That is the order of things,” Septa Melessa agrees, solemn as a prayer.
Alicent’s fingers tighten around the fabric of her gown. “Then what is the point of being queen if my son cannot be named heir? What is the point of obeying my father—when the price is too heavy to bear?”
“You don’t know—”
“But I do.” The words cut sharp, brimming with anger. “I know he will never name Aegon heir as long as Rhaenyra draws breath. No matter how many bastards she spawns so brazenly, no matter how many lords she offends, no matter how much she takes and takes without consequence.”
She lets out a bitter laugh, sneering, unladylike in her fury. “That, Septa, is the order of things. And my children—my sons—will always come after her. Because she is Rhaenyra. The realm’s delight. Maegor come again.”
Her voice breaks as she presses a trembling hand to her chest. “And what of me? I who have given the king three sons and a daughter—a beautiful daughter!”
The sobs rip from her throat, unbidden, unstoppable. She barely registers the look of horror on Septa Melessa’s face, nor does she care. “I have made my sacrifices.”
A sharp slap snaps her head to the side.
Alicent freezes, stunned. Tears spill hot down her cheeks, but she makes no move to wipe them away. No one has ever raised a hand to her—not even after she was caged.
“Have you lost your wits, child?” Septa Melessa’s voice is firm, but there is something else beneath it. Worry.
Blinking, Alicent turns back to her, still reeling. Over the septa’s shoulder, she sees her father standing just at the entrance.
“Watch your tongue, Alicent,” the septa warns. “You speak of the king’s daughter—his heir. This is madness. What sons? What daughters? You are an unwed maiden. Speaking such things aloud will only tarnish your virtue.”
Then, softer, she cups Alicent’s face, searching her eyes. “What has happened to you?”
Alicent locks eyes with her father, drinking in the sight of him.
He is clean-shaven, almost smooth-skinned—younger. His hair is a soft, mossy blond, with only the faintest traces of gray. And his head… his head is still attached to his neck.
He looks so young, and her heart aches with the urge to throw herself into his arms, to weep against his shoulder as she had when her mother died.
He is her father. The man who shaped her, who ruined her. And yet, by the Seven, she loves him—so much that it hurts to meet the cold disappointment in his gaze.
Swallowing hard, she lifts her chin, lips shaking.
“When the king marries me,” she says, “he will never change his successor. Not for one prince. Not for twenty. Then what is the point of everything?”
She had been caged in a bare chamber—a mother with no living children, no allies to call upon. Her father and brother, dead. Their bodies branded around as traitors on spikes, left for the crows. Her children and grandchildren, gone. Slain. Maelor—torn apart, piece by piece. Daeron—burned, reduced to nothing, not even a body left to mourn. Aemond, dutiful Aemond, dragged to the depths of the lake to be picked apart by fish.
And Aegon, her firstborn, her king. First poisoned by sorrow for his heir who had been slaughtered beneath their very roof. Then poisoned by the rats. Helaena, her sweet girl, lost to the madness of grief and threw herself onto the spikes. Jaehaera, too, cast from the heights. Alicent had no doubt whose command had driven her to it. He’s his father’s son after all.
History would remember them as usurpers, upjumped men who reached too far above their station. It would remember her, too—not as a grieving mother who had lost everything, not as a woman who had done her duty, but as a high-handed, grasping, cold-hearted queen. Greedy for power. Brought to ruin.
A villain. Defeated.
“You don’t know that,” the septa repeats.
Anger coils tight in Alicent’s belly. She wipes her tears, her gaze turning steely as she meets her father’s eyes—unblinking, unyielding. The grief dries from her face as though it had never been there.
“But I do,” she says, voice cold. “He told me so himself. Even if he were to marry Laena Velaryon—or anyone else, for that matter—and sire a dozen sons, none would replace Rhaenyra. He made that clear.”
Her father’s lips thin. Then, to the septa’s surprise, he speaks. “Words are wind, Alicent. When he holds a son of his own blood in his hands, he will change his mind.”
Alicent wants to laugh, to scoff, to mock him for his foolish hope—but she restrains herself. Instead, she glances at the septa, who hastily rises at the presence of her father, then turns back to him.
“Words are wind, yes,” she echoes. “But if he doesn’t? And mark my words, Father—the king will not name my son as his heir. Then what?”
Her father opens his mouth, preparing to respond, to offer some clever, reassuring answer. Alicent, however, sees the arrogance in him for the first time—an arrogance that blinds him to the true cost of his hopes.
She does not give him the chance to speak. Instead, she turns to the septa. “What do the gods say of kinslaying, Septa?”
The woman hesitates, wary, then answers carefully. “Old gods or new, it makes no matter. No man is so accursed as the kinslayer.”
Alicent smiles then, sweetly. “There is no war so hateful as a war between kin,” she says. “And no war so bloody as a war between dragons.” Her gaze flickers back to her father, “But I will not live in fear of Rhaenyra’s blade. I will not watch you be beheaded. Or Gwayne.” Her voice steadies, sharpens to a blade’s edge. “I will not be chained for a crime, nor for another’s. I will not.”
At her tone, both seem taken back. Good, she thinks vigorously, fear me.
She looks once more at the septa, her posture regal, a queen of twenty years standing in full command of herself.
“Draw me a bath,” she orders. “I wish to speak to my father. Alone.”
The septa bows and quickly skitters away.
Alicent moves to the corner of the room, where a flagon of Arbor gold rests on the table, rich and fruity. She knows her father’s eyes are on her as she fills a cup, then another. Without a word, she walks to him and offers one.
He takes it, gaze sharp. “What’s the meaning of this, Alicent?”
She does not answer immediately. Instead, she crosses the room to the fireplace, lowering herself gracefully into her chair. She sips once, then twice, before glancing at the door to ensure it is shut. “No man is so accursed as the kinslayer,” she muses. Then, lifting her gaze to meet his, she lowers her voice. “But Rhaenyra is no kin of mine.”
The look on her father’s face as he gawks at her is so utterly droll that Alicent almost laughs.
She’s mad. She must be.
She had dreamt of this once—of returning to her girlhood home, of wandering the meadows of Oldtown, of swimming in the honey-warm waters, of wearing petal-colored dresses instead of green. Of resting. Of being loved. And loving in return.
But she is a girl no longer. And yet, here she stands, at the edge of her girlhood, at the point of a sword’s tip.
Her father, it seems, had already made his choice. He had sent her to the king, to his chambers, wearing her mother’s dress—a dress for a woman grown, not a maiden. What kind of father does that? She had asked herself that question many times. But she remembers, too, how he cupped her face, how his voice had dropped to a whisper as he told her: “Everything I have done, I have done for you—to see you wear a crown.”
She hates him. And she loves him. In the same breath, in the same heartbeat.
She misses him.
She loves him.
And if the gods had not already chosen her, then why was she here? Standing at the sword’s edge, caught between two fates—to be unremarkable and unremembered, or to become the mother of a dynasty.
Otto crosses the room and seats himself in front of her. “You speak of treason.”
“No one is here,” she replies flatly, taking another sip of her wine. “Tell me, father, what is one life in the face of thousands—millions? It’s simple math.”
She watches him carefully, noting the way his expression tightens.
“She’s your girlhood friend,” he says, voice tinged with disbelief. “What changed?”
Her hands are already drenched in blood—why would she look away now?
A small part of her wants to. Just as she had when her father ordered the deaths of Rhaenyra’s misguided supporters, those who refused to bend the knee. But she will not. She will not look away. She was a queen. And she will be one again—the mother of the next king, if the gods are good. The grandmother of the king after him. This is not a dream. She has pinched herself countless times while the septa was away, paced the chamber frantically before forcing herself to sit. But no matter how many times she blinks, he remains—her father, alive and breathing, looking at her with something like awe. Not a head on a spike for the crows to feast upon. Not a ghost over her shoulder. Not an illusion.
“If I were a queen,” Alicent responds, “she’d be nothing but a constant threat. We are guests in this court without Viserys’ favor, and the king loves her daughter too much to cast her aside. Even if we were to take the throne, the proud lords would march for her in his dying breath.”
Alicent, stone-faced, leans back in her chair, her eyes cold as she meets her father’s. “That is the truth, and you know it. Our only choices were to smother her before she became too dangerous or ruin her beyond salvation in the eyes of the realm. Perception means little when the high lords believe they have seen the truth with their own eyes.”
Her father fills her cup. “And what truth would that be?”
“That she is wanton. That she will give herself to the handsome Dornishman, only to discard him. He will admit it without the need for torture.”
He stares at her, baffled. “Ser Cole?”
Alicent considers Rhaenyra’s allies—one by one, they must be cut from her bed. “To hasten it, we must bring Daemon back to court. He lusts after her, but he cannot have her without Viserys’ permission. And when he is denied, she will turn to the one who desires her most—her sworn shield.”
She pities Criston, the man who once offered her comfort, but if forced to choose, she will always choose her family, her unborn children, and the security of her future crown.
She mulls it over, trying to recall the details. “But he cannot lust after her if his desires are occupied elsewhere. Kill his whore—force his focus back on his niece. Viserys chose Rhaenyra to keep Daemon away from the crown, but if he catches them together, he may reconsider.”
He had been at his worst when he first heard of their marriage. Had it not been for the milk of the poppy, he might have disinherited them then and there. But by that time, Rhaenyra already had her plain-faced bastards—the ones the sword-swallower claimed as his own—and Viserys was not yet willing to risk slighting the Sea Snake again.
Her father pauses, studying her, his gaze searching. “I’ve never seen this side of you before, my daughter. I even doubted it existed…”
Pride. The realization strikes her with a sharp pang. Tears well in her eyes, and he leans forward, wiping them away with a tenderness that almost undoes her.
And to think she had once considered trading this—for what? A sliver of the spoiled harlot’s mercy?
What mercy?
Alicent exhales a quiet laugh, the irony settling deep in her chest. The words echo in her mind, words that had once been spoken to her, in a different time, a different life. She repeats them back to him with a knowing calm. “We play an ugly game. And now, for the first time, I have the determination and the means to win it.”
She tilts her head, leaning into his touch, pressing a kiss to his palm—once, then twice. “You are my father, and I love you,” she murmurs. “But you will treat me as an equal. I have done my duty. I have Viserys’ ear—he listens to me, he’s fond of me. I have more than earned your trust and respect.. You want me to be queen? Then allow me to be one. Promise me, Father. I will be more than just the mother of the next king. Let me light the way for us. The only alliance you should have is with me.”
“You are my daughter—you already have me at your side.”
She presses another kiss to his palm, then another, and another, before finally leaning back in her chair. “I can’t marry Viserys this soon.”
The pride in her father’s eyes dims. “You don’t know what you’re saying. If you don’t act quickly, Laena Velaryon will take the crown.”
“She won’t,” Alicent says with quiet certainty. “Viserys fears the Sea Snake will move against Rhaenyra. Because of that, he will not choose Lady Laena. He will choose someone he deems harmless—someone he believes will not threaten his daughter’s inheritance. I’m her girlhood’s friend.”
Her father studies her, his expression unreadable.
“When he speaks to me of marriage, I will ask him to wait until the mourning period ends—until we rid ourselves of her, or at the very least, see her disinherited. That will bind him to me even more. Father, I don’t wish to wear green or dance with the dragons.”
Her father toasts for her.
The next day, Alicent seeks out Rhaenyra, a book about Queen Visenya in hand. Her chamber door is shut, and truthfully, Alicent has no idea how Rhaenyra spends her mourning period. She imagines she might be fussing, riding her beast, or indulging in cakes. If her father’s watered-down poison arrives from Oldtown sooner than expected, she will need to establish a habit of sharing those cakes with her regularly.
She doesn’t shy away from Criston, refusing to think of his heated touch, his fevered kisses, his betrayal—or the fleeting comfort he once offered. She does not dwell on the way he carried himself before marching to his death, blinded by hatred. She steels her heart. She is to be queen, and happiness is the one thing she can never have.
“Ser Criston,” she greets the knight with a pleasant smile. “I assume the princess has not yet awakened?”
“She is breaking her fast, Lady Alicent.”
Alicent frowns—it is nearly midday.
Ser Criston opens the door, announcing her presence, and she steps inside to find Rhaenyra seated at the table, idly playing with her food. Her eyes are red-rimmed, heavy with grief. She glances up, blinking as if just registering her presence.
“Alicent…” Rhaenyra murmurs, then gestures for her to sit. “Join me.”
Alicent tears her gaze away from the bed. In some cruel jest of the gods, this was the very chamber where she had once been confined—though in her time, it had been far barer, lacking the opulence of the cloth-of-gold tapestries that now adorned the walls.
Her eyes catch on one in particular—a depiction of Harrenhal, with Balerion bathing it in black fire. Streaks of dark red thread shoot through the silk, making the castle’s towers glow like five great candles, their stone twisted and melting beneath the dragon’s wrath.
To the side, a collection of lavish gowns hangs in wait. Rich velvets in shades of deep purple and maroon, golden Myrish lace woven in intricate patterns, bodices glittering with pearls and diamonds.
She notes, with some mild interest, that Rhaenyra has yet to favor the black of her followers or any of those rich gowns. Especially in this time after her mother’s death, before Aegon’s birth or her marriage to Ser Laenor, she has preferred riding leathers, studded, scale-like, and dyed in Targaryen black.
“A gift from my father,” Rhaenyra mutters, sullenly.
Alicent tightens her grip on her book. “And you don’t like them?”
“He’s trying to buy me,” Rhaenyra says flatly, shoving an egg into her mouth.
Alicent sets the book aside and lifts the gowns for inspection, searching for something bold, something scandalous. She avoids any gown with the pale blue of House Arryn, finally selecting a deep maroon samite gown. The tight-laced bodice bares her shoulders and the top of her bosom, daring in its design.
Leave it to Viserys to dress his daughter like a harlot, she scoffs inwardly, before presenting it to Rhaenyra. “That would bring the colour of your eyes,” she says.
After they have eaten, Alicent dresses Rhaenyra, savoring the fleeting sweetness of her girlhood before everything inevitably falls apart. It is, unfortunately, the way of things. She leads her through the godwood, and as they walk, Rhaenyra suddenly asks, twirling a dragon’s breath flower between her fingers, Alicent braces for a tantrum, for anger, but Rhaenyra only steps away, her gaze lingering on the flower she placed in Alicent’s hair. Then, without a word, she takes her hand and leads her beneath the sun.
“Either they bend the knee, or they die.”
Alicent digs her heels into the ground, yanking Rhaenyra to a stop. “Are you truly willing to throw the realm into war? To turn it all to ashes?”
Rhaenyra pauses, then turns, meeting her gaze with an arched brow, eyes gleaming with challenge.
“What is the point of oaths if they are not kept?” she asks coolly. “What would be said of me if I leave a threat unanswered? That I was weak? That I was unfit to rule?” She steps closer, her voice burning with conviction. “No, Alicent. I am the blood of the dragon. My words are law and truth. They will bend and obey—or I will make Harrenhal out of their homes.”
Alicent stands frozen, her breath catching. She stares at Rhaenyra, mouth slightly open, suddenly seeing her in a way she never had before.
Seven save us all, you will. Rhaenyra likes to fancy herself Visenya reborn, donning riding leathers, dreaming of knighthood, playing at swords. But Visenya had been stern, serious, and sharp as a blade. Unforgiving, yes. Bloodthirsty, certainly. Those were the only traits she and Rhaenyra truly shared. For Rhaenyra was childish and ill-tempered, proud and stubborn, none of the first queen’s discipline and all of a Targaryen’s petulance.
“The people…” Alicent begins.
Rhaenyra cuts her off with a flippant wave. “Are sheep. And I am a dragon. When has a dragon ever answered to sheep? By what right does a sheep think it can defy a dragon?”
She was never made cruel by the deaths of her bastards or Daemon’s influence. That was never what turned her into Maegor with teats. The Cruel it seems is a well-earned sobriquet.
Alicent smiles pleasantly, though she feels her eyes go cold, her face stiff with disappointment and something dangerously close to hatred. But she looks away, feigning a flinch from the sun’s glare as she gently hooks her arm through Rhaenyra’s, guiding her forward.
Dragons don’t plant trees.
“You are right,” she says smoothly.
Viserys sits before her, carefully sanding the surface of a dragon head sculpture, his voice droning on about how it once rested upon the Temple of the Fourteen Flames at the heart of the city.
Alicent barely listens.
She had been reading to him from Archmaester Gyldayn’s writings, detailing the legitimacy of King Maegor’s rule—how it was unjustified by his descent from Visenya, Aegon’s elder sister, wife, and first queen, and whether taking the throne by the sword granted him the right to rule through conquest. She had pressed upon him the dangers of disregarding the laws set forth by gods and men, of how abandoning the order of things had only ever led to conflict—unnecessary conflict.
It has always been this way with Viserys. The key is to make him believe the idea is his own. Only then will he act.
It’s hard to imagine that this man had ever ridden the Black Dread.
He is barely even the shadow of a snake, Alicent muses. But she knows him too well—she has been his wife for over twenty years, longer than the late Aemma Arryn ever was. Viserys is a man of peace, one who despises conflict and longs to appease those around him. He has never been strong-willed, yet neither is he easily swayed or indecisive. Once he sets his mind to something, he does not waver.
That is why she must tread carefully this time.
“How is Rhaenyra?”
Alicent hesitates, making a show of studying her cup of wine—rich and red, not from the Reach, but from Dorne.
“Wary, I’d say,” she finally answers.
Viserys’ head snaps toward her, his brow furrowing. “Why? Has something happened?”
“She spoke to me in confidence, Your Grace,” Alicent says gently, lowering her gaze. “I cannot betray her trust.”
Viserys pauses, his expression tightening. “I am her father, my lady. Anything that troubles her troubles me. Surely you can see that.”
Alicent sighs, tilting her head as if in reluctant contemplation. “Men, by nature, do not always understand the language of girls—even fathers, I’m afraid. And I fear that if I tell you, you may act in a way you’ll come to regret.”
“Have faith in me, my lady,” Viserys says, his tone gentler now. “Your counsel is always appreciated, but this—I ask not as a king, but as a father. I need to know.”
Alicent exhales slowly, her fingers tracing the rim of her cup. “The matter concerns both the father and the king, Your Grace.”
Viserys sets the sandpaper aside, his gaze sharpening. “Then I must know,” he says, firmer this time. “Your king commands it, Alicent. What troubles her?”
She lowers her gaze, letting her expression soften into one of sorrow and hesitation. “Forgive me if my words trouble you, Your Grace,” she murmurs. “But Rhaenyra has been my girlhood friend, my companion. We grew up together under this roof, and it pains me to see her so burdened.”
She pauses, as if weighing her words carefully, then continues, voice quiet and laced with concern. “She told me the weight is crushing her. That she feels watched—judged at every turn. That there are ears pressed against the walls, waiting for her misstep. She sees herself not as your heir, but as a target… one placed upon the board the moment you set the crown on her head.”
She picks up the dragon head, its shape strikingly like Helaena’s Dreamfyre. As she stares at it, a deep ache settles in her chest. “She wants to fly, to see the world… to eat only cake.”
“What would you have me do?”
“I believe you already know the answer to that, your grace.”
She meets her father that night in his solar, the servant cleaning nearby as he casually says, “A tragedy occurred in the Street of Silk today,” pausing at the corner leading to her chamber. “A brothel was set aflame. Twenty died.”
“All of them?” Is the worm is dead.
Her father meets her gaze directly. “No survivors.”
She nods, “I will pray for the Mother to grant them mercy for their sins, and rest their souls.”
And ours.