Return
Alone, I stand submerged within a patch of sun in the Tower of The Hand.
The sunshine against my budding breasts is warm, and my father is looking at me as though he has seen me in a new light.
His mouth is tight, but mine is tighter. His fingers pick at the quill in his hand.
With my hands, I pick myself apart.
“I thought you might go to Viserys…offer him comfort,” Otto suggests. “The loss of his newborn son and wife is a heavy burden.”
I think of Viserys. I think of the stubble greying his chin and the ragged coils of his limp hair. I think of how his eyes are upturned at the edges, just like hers.
Rhaenyra. I do not dwell on the kiss we have never spoken about, or the tilt of her lips when she finds something funny.
This, she will find no humor in.
“In his chambers?” I ask my father. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”
Otto tilts his head at me. “Our King will be glad of a visitor. You might wear one of your mother’s dresses.”
My hands twist against each other. I feel blood slickening my knuckles. My stomach drops.
This, I think, is my cue to put up a fight.
I do not want to wear a dead woman’s dress to comfort the king. I do not want the king to think of me as anything but Rhaenyra’s.
Rhaenyra’s closest friend. Her sister in all but blood.
More than that, I want to remind Otto that slipping into one of Mother’s dresses would be akin to stepping into the ruins of a once great cathedral. I could not do it without seeing only that which has been lost.
“Be a good girl,” my father says, sensing my reluctance.
It is not a request.
I wish I were a good girl again, I think. I wish I were a small, innocent thing—simple with smiles and gilded by the light of The Seven.
“Alicent,” Otto says mercilessly.
He uses my own name like a knife. With it, he threatens to wound me.
I can not rebuke him. I can not answer him. I have lost my voice. It rots inside me, turning sweeter and softer each day. It will decay until it disappears.
At last, I look at my father. I look for myself in his face. His eyes are not mine. His hair is not mine.
I look like my mother, and I wonder if he wishes he still had her rather than me.
I am just her dilute. I am what remains of her in her absence, like perfume that sticks in the air even after the one wearing it has drifted away.
I wonder if the sight of me makes my sire sad. I wonder if that is all it takes to be a family—the same sort of sadness.
“As you wish,” I manage.
***
I hold up a dark dress before me. I run a ringed finger across the thick neckline. I lean into the fabric, searching for her scent. Dust tickles my nose.
Even from this, she has faded.
I try to remember my mother. I try to remember the last time I saw her wear this dress.
My thoughts are wind, howling across grim moors and empty oceans.
The greatest punishment is this—I can not remember how this dress looked on her. I can not remember the swoop of her hips or the lengths of her arms. I can not remember the shade of her skin or the way her veins twisted inside her wrists. I can not remember the softness of the flesh beneath her ear or the heavy shift of her hair.
How, I wonder, will I know when to stop missing her?
Then, I think of Rhaenyra. Whenever I think of things I miss I can’t help but think of her too.
We have spoken less since that mistake of a moment, that catastrophic kiss.
Still, she darts around my dreams and I stumble after her, greedy hands outstretched.
My longing has gone on for too long.
Eyes closed, I step into my mother’s dress. The silk settles over my shoulders. It is a cold kiss.
I move to the mirror and look at myself. I am frightened to find that the dress fits.
My girlhood is gone, and with it, all my goodness. It has been pried from my fingers like a pearl from its shell.
***
She is standing at a distance, watching me weep.
Beyond the window at Rhaenyra’s back, dawn is coming in quickly. The clouds paint red scars across a violet sky.
She stands before the dawn of the day, resilient and stubborn as a moon that refuses to set.
“Rhaenyra,” I say. “I swear…I didn’t know-”
Rhaenyra holds up a hand, putting a wall between my weakness and her wrath.
I choke. I hold myself back from her.
We stand at opposite ends of my room, a single candle burning atop the table between us.
Rhaenyra does not weep. Her jaw is a clenched fist. She breathes out hard, and the candlelight stutters in time with my heart.
“But you didn’t say no, did you?” she asks. “You didn’t object when my father announced that he’d take you to wife. You just stood there. You let things happen to you, as you always do.”
“How could I say no?” I sob. “He is the king- ”
“He is my father first, Alicent!”
She brandishes the words my father at me like a sword. I am reminded, once again, that she is not my sister. She never could be.
I thought you’d be the one to understand me, to weep with me, I think. Now, I know I am wrong.
The shame of my stupidity writhes within me.
I rub at my red eyes. “It is not my fault, Rhaenyra. This is an honor I do not desire. I never asked for your father to choose me.”
"Then ask him to undo it."
Why? So we can continue to drift apart? So you can keep pretending that you never kissed me back? So you can keep the leash of my love clenched in your pretty hand?
"I can not, Rhaenyra. This is my duty now," I say miserably.
The purple fires of Rhaenyra’s eyes burn so low that they almost become black. “Fine. Make yourself a martyr. I hope you find someone who pities you someday.”
She steps back from me. Her shoes scrape across the floor. I feel the thread of our friendship unraveling. I feel her slipping from my grip and I am afraid.
I am afraid that if I lose her now, she will stay lost.
“Rhaenyra,” I say. “Don’t go. Please don’t say that-”
I wish it were you. I wish you pitied me.
Rhaenyra does not look at me. She pulls off her ring, the one that I gave her so long ago. She tosses at my feet and blows out the candle between us. She walks away, slamming the door behind her.
I stand in the sudden dark, crying.
Return and rage at me. Return. Return.
The sun rises higher. The light shifts across the floor.
I wait. I wait.
I wait, even though I know she has left me to swing from the gallows of this grief forever.