several tremendous

It begins with a great fire, gusting out of the black night sky—

“Incredible, isn’t it,” Gwayne says. He stands tall at the tower window beside. His hands feel different when they touch her, beat and worn from the road. “What a beast.”

Oldtown is aflame below, silent and burning into the night; the Ironborn longships, too—candles in a bath.

(Bright above in arcs of light—shocking the cloud-cover sunlit again, like a lightning storm, like a burning star—)

“Dragonflame,” she whispers.

(Once upon a time she was a lady in a carriage, once upon a time getting tossed along the road.

There are a hundred dragons where you’re going, her cousins said.

And then like it never happened—a rider had come from the east and they’d turned right round on the path; made a circle toward the Sun again and she was right back to her room, back with her septa, and her loom, and her books, and Uncle Hobert, and his staring and glaring, and her door, firmly locked.)

Then Gwayne had gone instead.

We were once kings of this High Tower.

(She’d never felt like a king at all.)

She watches it rip down in an arc of light; watches fire plume out onto the waters, puffy and roundish like crème—another roar, another street set ablaze—

Gwayne grins beside her; leans over her shoulder. “They call her the Yellow Death,” he croons. “I heard the smallfolk even pray to it. Isn’t that silly.” Giggles, a little, almost. “Then—there must be something of the truth in it. To make Daemon Targaryen turn and run.”

Flame and flame again—silent as sunbursts. Her face doesn’t move. “I thought the war was over.”

“Not that the Greyjoys remember. But here’s Her Grace to remind them.” He leans to his side. His armour creaks; old along the edges. Father’s. “The last of his dogs—just them and those greasy foreign sellswords he’s stranded. They’ve eaten every goat in Westeros, apparently, worse than the sodding dragons—”

“Goat—?”

“Fiendish for it, sure it reminds them of their sloppy stable of wives—” Rolls his eyes, then, picks at his pauldron. “Searching mad for passage back to them, now, I expect. Seven above, I wish you’d seen how he strode those ratshit floors—Corlys Velaryon, ridiculous name—how he sneered at Father like some common—” He stops, jaw working; waves his hand. “Look now, the mighty Sea Snake.” Smirks again. “A memory.”

The flame reflects in her eyes. She wonders if she can feel it.

“She burned the Velaryon fleet, then.”

“She burned everything. Melted her traitors to a puddle—you could still smell them, you know, smoking on the floor. Father saw them. He beseeched her to hang but there’s no stopping her, they say, in a bloodthirst.” He smirks, again; leans close, by her ear. “Rhaenyra the Cruel.”

(She imagines it, for a moment; blood—like embers—)

Her mouth dries up. She twists her lip. “Seems foolhardy.”

“At least none can say she only warms the chair. They say she speaks without tongues with her dragon, you know. They’re of the same mind. Perhaps you can share your critique, when you see her.” He nods, then, still smirking, back out to the dragon—setting another tower aflame. “Expect she’d receive it with a quiet tranquillity.”

She scoffs. “Sage advice.”

“They call me the Hand of the Hand.”

She works her lip. “I doubt it.”

“Why’s that.”

She raises a brow; doesn’t look. “Have you not been sent back from court?”

“To return to court,” he quips, brows raised. “With very precious cargo.”

She looks back down to her nails—the blood’s dry again, at the edge. She drums them along the stone.

(Looks back out at the dragon; a burst of light in the sky. Protector of the Realm.)

“She’s rejected your offer of marriage, then.”

(And his face, quick as anything, sours at the edges—)

“And here I thought a spinster would sympathise,” he cuts. “Unloved at two-and-twenty.”

(Be kind to your sister, Uncle Hobert used to say, but Father never said it, and so he never did.)

“Because the Queen desired a better alliance.”

The city’s still burning. “Because the Queen has different tastes.”

And then he stares a moment longer.

“You’ve grown quite pretty,” he says.

She watches them load books into a different carriage—with the door open to her own, with summer in bloom in the yard, with her father’s note in her hands.

My comely girl.

Gwayne readies his bridle just beside.

The maesters’ chains rattle. One by one, leather-bound and tied shut tight—

Valyrian myths; Valyrian histories; Valyrian songs.

(Very precious cargo.)

Corenna is adjusting her skirts again; and the gates are opening, at the behest of their knight attendants, and she hears one of them, still rattling, to Gwayne—

—accounted for—translations—at the Lord Hand’s request.

He nods, and when he does he looks older in his face; some sort of Father-imitation.

She watches them rattle away.

“Father’s planning something,” she says.

He saddles up. “The sky’s blue,” he replies.

Corenna puts a blanket on her. It’ll get colder along the road.

(It was always summer in the Reach, they said; something like Spring-Summer, if there were such a thing, always warm, and wet, and always blooming.

Her father, once. This is a wide and violent country.

But there’s no one along the great fields by the road; no one but the grass and the skies, stretching long into the distance, and when she cranes her neck to peer over the latticework she can see Gwayne on his white horse and wonders how it is he hasn’t grown since he was fifteen. Or maybe she’s grown with him.)

The Queen knighted me herself, with Blackfyre, he said, when he’d arrived at her rooms to remove her to their train. And then he’d pulled down his shirt—shown her the scarry indent, where she’d dubbed him blade-down.

She once asked Septa Agnes do you have dying dreams and then she’d switched her wrist with a rule. Ladies don’t speak that way.

She dreams it all the time.

We all do our duty, Father had said, when she was nine, before he had left. We do our duty and yours is to your family. Little girls without family are worth very little in this world. Little girls who heed their fathers are given life’s rewards.

Once, by the hearth, where the fire illuminated him. Little girls who shirk their duty are eaten by hounds.

(That was the first one, maybe maybe—where she’d run through the forest on bare feet, and bare legs, and then she’d fallen into the riverbank and couldn’t move further, crying and screaming herself hoarse and she’d wet herself, and the first one approached and she’d held her hand out Father! and it took it in one bite—)

Sometimes she brushes red curls back and drowns in the river; sometimes in real life she lays in the bath and feels the underside of her breast in her hand—am I allowed to touch this?—and dreams of Father, and Hobert’s wife speaking (too pretty, like Alyrie, too dumb like her too) and Gwayne, that time he’d stood in her door and gone what in seven hells are you doing and she’d looked up from the study and said I’m reading and he'd screwed up his face and gone why.

(Sometimes she throws herself from the tower, all her books and stories first, so they’re no longer trapped in the dark, too, so they can be in the open air, for that sweet split-second.)

(She imagines Rhaenyra the Cruel, sometimes, with a gnarled face and a witch’s nose. Her eyes are screwed up with the iris sideways, like a snake’s, and she never speaks, and wears the crown of the Conqueror, and Alicent screams and screams and screams.)

There are other dreams, too.

Only on the quietest days, and those quietest nights—when the rain falls and beats the stained glass, and she stares up, long enough, when they’ve scrubbed her nails and skin and teeth, and she’s alone—

My summer knight.

Wearing a suit of gleaming gold, steel, thrice-gilded; waving a black sword and standing tall upon the mountain, and offering her a hand—

And whenever she takes it there’s a suited arm around her waist, gentle as ever; and she rests her hands upon the gold breastplate and it’s warm, like a hearth; and she lays her cheek atop it and when the dogs come the arm tightens, and she closes her eyes, and the sword swings, and then they’re gone; and she’s warm, and half-asleep, and her knight is there, on the mountain, beside her.

She’s thrown forward.

Her forehead hits the woodwork first; and she glances her fingers upon it, dazed, and there’s shouting, mad shouting outside—the horses screaming and somewhere, Gwayne’s voice, too—looks down—her fingers covered in blood—

Corenna screams outside her carriage door but she can’t quite hear it and then it’s thrown open.

“My lady,” she pants—behind her a knight is thrown ten feet onto the grass with a thunk; amid clanging and shouts, pursued by a man with the strangest armour she’s ever once seen—“Sellswords—loot—we must run!”

Corenna pulls her out and away, sort of half-dragged down the steps—their retinue is engaged—something like fifty strange-armoured men surround and it’s barely twilight and when Corenna says please and then she looks up and it’s Beric, she remembers, Ser Barric—his lips are blood-red and someone runs him through with a sword—

(She’s read this story before.

Not safe along the roads since wartime. Daemon’s sellswords. Hungry men. Rape and slaughter. Innocent journeys, innocent trains. Innocent girls.)

Corenna’s gripped onto a horse—apparently thinks she can hoist Alicent onto it (she can’t) and then something’s in her eyes and she wipes it away and her blue sleeve is deep red, bloodred—it’s loud and then it’s not—Corenna’s tugging at her shoulder, screaming—and then screaming—

She wipes blood from her brow, and then it’s like a dream, when she looks toward the sky, and it has to be, it is.

Mother above.

(Something above.)

Dragon.

From somewhere else, as though it materialised from the air, a dot along the clouds and then more, a bird, a falcon, larger still, and louder, and she knows the word— swoops down across the sky at a speed she’s never seen—and then bright light, and the air is white-hot, and she closes her eyes, and it lands with an earth-shattering thud and through the smoke (sellswords aflame, sellswords screaming) armour approaches.

She can see it clearly through the ash and dust, the beast, through the air vibrating with flame and light—

Yellow.

It’s another dying dream, she whispers.

Corenna’s gone, when she looks. Screaming and steel and swords through the mist; a body on its back, in the dew, and eyes open, and they’re blue, and she closes her own, and finally.

It severs her arm from her wrist, it feels like, how she’s yanked.

She screams—

And then there’s an arm around her waist—panting through her mouth with blood in her eyes, in the dizzying daze—but there’s an arm around her waist. And no blade against her skin. And her hand is upon a breastplate. Warm.

She lifts her head with the great strength of the Father—

Silver hair, like beaten silver, that gleaming silver, like Mother’s favourite spoons; blue eyes, sky-blue, like she dreams it should look when she tosses her tomes to the air, when she jumps out after—

(A nose so perfect in the ringing silence that she almost reaches out a bloodstained hand to touch it.)

Black armour across her chest, her shoulders. Warm in the dew.)

A gloved hand comes up. Wipes blood from her eye.

(She can’t really breathe. Her head lulls to the side.)

“Shall you bring me to the Seven Heavens?” She whispers.

The image blinks back.

“King’s Landing,” she says. “Way worse.”

And then she looks down—where her fingers are tracing it, without knowing, that indentation—

The dragon of three heads—

(Her jaw falls open and her stomach drops and her hairs stand on end and something comes out of her mouth—like an oh—she tries not to urinate on herself—behind her—dragon dragon dragon—and something throngs up her spine; lodges itself in her chest—)

And then it comes up and out of her throat and Alicent fucking screams.

(Rhaenyra the Cruel is beautiful; and perhaps, if Alicent only screams loud enough, she’ll disappear.)

But the Queen apparently doesn’t quite seem to clock why, and then frowns and turns and looks behind her (as if she’d be screaming at anything else) and then a sword emerges out of the ash and Alicent’s tossed onto the ground (with a thud, into the grass) and that unbelievable Valyrian steel launches buttery through the helm; lodged happy through soft neck. And then withdraws; dead-silent.

The Queen thwacks blood from her blade. It rings against fallen armour.

And then—like the gods fucking divined it—the ash clears.

(Off to her right, the front of the train—Gwayne, on a bloodstained white horse, shouting angrily to more of their retinue, exhausted but numerous and clearly alive—maids and servants, emerging from under carriage-wheels—)

(And further still—still leaning on sail-size wings, Yellow Death—

Who looks open and easy like a cat; with a great big blue eye, who seems bored, most of all.)

I wonder if Oldtown’s still burning.

The Queen peers down at her.

“Your Grace,” she murmurs.

“You’re pale,” the Queen replies.

And then she’s leaning down again—this time with two hands, lifting up under her arms like a puppy—her arms wind round her shoulders without a thought, and gods above I can’t breathe, and her eyes are closing—

Your Grace, she repeats, as her head hits cold metal, Your Grace, Your Grace.

Close by her ear. “You’re this Alicent, are you.”

She nods with closed eyes.

And then a glove sets gentle on her forehead, again; comes away and her eyes flutter and those blue ones are looking, looking at her (and then looking at her, in a different way, quite strangely) and then frowning back at a bloody glove again and then her head cranes somewhere else.

Where is the Maester, the Queen calls, and it’s deep, and low, and final, and with authority.

And scares her.

The Queen seems to feel her jolt. A gloved hand presses firmer to the small of her back.

(She burned them—his voice from elsewhere, then—they were smoking along the floors—)

Those eyes look down again. “You’ve got a little cut.”

(That glove touches gentle, the side of her face.)

Her chest rises and falls. Mercy, Your Gra—

“I’ve asked for your fucking maester!”

(Shouted over her head—echoing out across the road and the fields and it shocks her so clean that a sob erupts and she bites her lip bloody—)

“Oh.” And then she’s there again; looking down. “Worry not. He shall come.”

I think I’ve soiled my skirts, she ponders.

(Then she closes her eyes against the metalwork, and that’s the last thing she thinks.)

 She has a dream, a strange dream.

The Queen wears beautiful metals; the Queen is young, with a beautiful face.

The Queen lays her down slow in the summer grass, kneeling with her arm behind her shoulders; her forehead sears with pain and she reaches up to push him away—the maester, with his burning salve—the Queen catches her hand; says close your eyes, my lady.

(And their hands are clasped together.)

The Queen lifts her slow into a padded carriage; the Queen throws wide furs across her lap.

The Queen says your father shall make no more complaint about my sportive rides, I think.

(It’s as though her terror is running through her under water; as though she’s feeling like someone else.)

I’m very sorry for your troubles upon my road, my lady. The Queen steps out; the door is closing. See you in a fortnight.

The city gates fall open for them, like arms almost; Gwayne smiles and waves—raises their banners and blusters—and then seems to grow tired of it, after long; dismounts, climbs into her carriage, too.

He points at her face. “The bump’s bigger, I think.” Her fingers trace the edge of the bandage. His head tilts. “It’s not terribly ugly.”

(Once they’d been children, and Father told her you’re pretty, like Mother, and Gwayne said am I pretty like mother? and Father said you shall rely on other talents.)

She stares back out the window and doesn’t say anything.

The roads grow dark at the overhang of buildings; and the stench grows, turning her stomach—the roads rise and fall slowly, and the people undulate too; from silks to clothes to rags and back again—a child defecating in the street, a child clean as a running stream—

It feels like night-time, when the Keep eclipses the sun.

(That great red shadow, Father said, that blood-brick—)

“Look,” Gwayne says, and he’s smirking.

They look like road-marks at first.

And she looks up—up—up—up to the tippy-top—

(Ormund poked Gwayne with real steel once; said have you ever seen inside a man? And Gwayne had yelped—Ormund laughed, and Ceryse, and she’d been so young, and she’d laughed, too—Gwayne had rounded on her, betrayed. One day a man will see inside you.)

Heads and heads and heads and heads, like tulips in a field.

“Rhaenyra the Cruel,” Gwayne whispers, near-giddy.

I will not be sick in this carriage.

She picks the edge of her thumb. “I thought she burned them.”

Gwayne shrugs. “Sure you get tired, as a dragonrider, of the same old.” Then he points further out; glint in his eye. “See that pyre, dear sister?”

She peers out back, further from the road, on the hill—

She doesn’t move her brow. “Yes.”

(Still and charred, with a solemn lonely post; with boards stacked high and higher below, a great ashen pile.)

The carriage jostles, a little.

“Behold,” Gwayne smirks. “Lord Corlys’ proud flagship.”

(She can make out the bend to the planks, eventually, as it rolls ever closer.)

“They say the Queen feasts atop the skull of his son’s dragon, you know. In her private quarters.” He pulls at a vambrace, smug. “The Yellow Death ripped it open tongue to tail. Like pulling pigeon off the bone.”

She hums.

“Do you think that’s right?” He badgers. “Now that you’ve met?”

She looks back at him, then. “Now that we’ve met.”

The carriage begins to slow.

“Oh yes.” There are smile lines to his eyes, almost strange. “Well, then—” And he looks off in thought; dimples his chin. “Does a cat meet a mouse?”

There’s a real white cloak around a corridor, a storybook knight—a candied pig on a platter whisking off somewhere, larger than she’s ever seen. Grand arching hallways, arching bowels, bending corridors—

(And there are other things, too; tapestries of every prurience, a woman with two men in her mouth, a woman with two men in her—)

She keeps her eyes on the floors.

(One day a man will see inside—)

(There are rats, silent, at the corners.)

It’s a small room, with a high window; not unlike her own. The sky’s blue outside. And it smells clean.

Her books are brought and left, and her clothing, and her mother’s loom, still yet to be re-set, and then women come in white and crimson dress with oils, and brushes, and bathwater.

She’s scrubbed red-raw. Her gums bleed when she spits clove and salt away.

Her father doesn’t come.

She sleeps under silks and furs; dreams of the Queen again—entering her bedchamber in a fury; ripping her open, tongue to tail.

Looking down, again, with snake’s eyes. You’ve got a little cut.)

The door bangs open to her room. The sun’s not risen.

“Get up.” Gwayne leans on the doorframe, in his padded greens, this time, his ceremonial armour. “We’ve been called.”

She doesn’t see her father in the shuffle of highborn lords and ladies out of their beds and through the corridors—her new maidens help her into a loose dress, from her trunks, barely laced over her shift and a robe thrown over that—not terribly different from the rest of the court, it seems, half-dressed and half-awake and half-bewildered, all.

Gwayne keeps close beside her, expressionless.

“Where are we going?”

“Outside.” He holds out his arm, somber. She takes it. “Say nothing.”

Past the outer yard, through the gates—through the Traitor’s Walk—

She looks back up to him—lower, still—“I don’t understand—"

And then she sees her again.

Upon a hill, with beaten silver tousling in the wind, glowing white in the mist, and down, and shining—a billowing black cloak, embroidered and silken and laden with jewels—red rubies on a black crown, his crown, gleaming like maidenblood—

Resplendent.

(So unlike—

You’re this Alicent, are you.)

The morning wind whips and punishes. The court mills out before her, knights prodding behind them; silent as the dead. Her queensguard, beside her—

Rhaenyra, First of Her Name.

Only the sound of the wind, again.

(And then the Queen turns—and she swears, for a moment, that singular instance, she’s looking at her—

Alicent looks right down.)

A cry cuts shrill through the air. Gwayne looks up.  

Beating, then, from the heavens; one swoosh, two. And then another—larger and louder and sharp—

It lands twenty paces behind her like a shadow before they know it; some courtly lady shrieks, when it thunders onto the earth, and quiets quickly, and it climbs further up the hill, Yellow Death, rumbling and nasty.

It seems angry.

(The Queen seems angry.)

From somewhere else, the other side of the crowd, two guards emerge through the gates, again—

Dragging a man in blue silk nightclothes, whisps of hair whipping, an older man, wriggling and crying and shrieking like a girl—knees buckling and feet peddling to find purchase, dragged along the stone and gravel and rock and then the grass and Rhaenyra doesn’t look but someone starts screaming among the courtiers—another guard moves quickly into the crowd, and Gwayne seizes the top of her arm—drags her off to his other side, stands closer beside, leans to her ear and whispers shut up as though she’s the one screeching—

(It’s an older woman in blue, too, and now a guard’s got her by a bony wrist in a vice—)

The Queen points Blackfyre earthward; leans forward on its pommel.

“Some of you must dearly miss my uncle,” the Queen says.

(Her knights force him to his knees—he looks up and one beats him with the back of a hand, and his head whips back, and the woman screams—)

“Some believe if they could, they should share my secrets,” she continues. “Such that one day he might return.”

One unlatches at his belt—produces a dagger—

“This is a falsehood.”

Cuts at his clothes—sawing and he jumps and jerks—he comes away naked, the knife comes away bloody—his fingers are worn as he paws at the rags, white-haired—

“Don’t be so naïve,” she sighs.

And then she turns—lifts a hand and the dragon—once still as a statue—begins to move—

“Gyles Rosby is sentenced to die,” the Queen says. Gyles Rosby screams for mercy—his wife, wailing and wailing—

(Alicent turns her head away.)

After it’s done Lady Rosby paws at the ashes. The Queen unsheathes Blackfyre; takes her in a single swing.

And then she looks upon it, for a moment.

“A thousand golden dragons,” she calls, “For the man who brings me Dark Sister.”

She’s read The History of the Ironborn and the Kings-Beyond-The-Wall; The Rhoynish Wars and the Horse Tribes, the Jade Compendium and TheSong of the Sea, The Kingdom of the Sky.

(And worn her fingers along the edges and thinned up the pages of her very favourite—forever untied and undusty by her bedside, loved and dreamed of—how she’d trace the cover sometimes. Ten Thousand Ships.)

I miss you so dearly, my love, Nymeria said of Mors; sleepy and toward the end of her life.

(Come back to me.)

Her father was in his study once, with the dogs at his feet.

Mors should have let them traverse the Boneway, she’d said. Twisted her nail; her little blue dress. And felled them at the narrow mouth. He hadn’t said anything. Because the Martells had less men.

Nymeria should have wed Yorick Yronwood, he’d said; pressed his signet to green wax. Because the Martells had less men.

Still, he’d looked at her.

(And more books arrived to her chambers, the following morning.

She’d walked by his solar once with the door half-open—her maester was there and he’d gone these texts are not for women, quick as a snake did Father grab him by the chain—)

Gwayne trained with the sword for many hours a day, even back then; while she remained inside—always reading, pages and pages, turning.

Father had come to her chambers, to the doorway. Alicent.

(He never said hello.)

“Who is Torgon Greyiron?”

She’d been sat at her loom; fingers red.

“I—” He’d stood silent, expectant; hands clasped. “An Ironborn prince, still at sea upon his father’s death. Father.” He’d watched. “Urrathon IV was raised up at the kingsmoot in his place. Torgon returned to challenge him, after his bloodthirst had lost him their fealty.” She’d looked back to her weft—clouds on a summer sky, almost finished. “They called him Torgon the Latecomer.”

“What is the lesson, do you think?” He’d mused. “In Torgon the Latecomer.”

(She’d only stared back upon him, expressionless in the silence.)

She’d worried her lip. “Inaction is costly.”

His brow flattened. Wrong.

She picked at her thumb.

(Glanced down, for the first time, to find blood blooming—)

He’d stared lazy, like a cat. “Sometimes,” he’d said, before he had gone. “It is better to be late.”

Gwayne drops her back in her rooms; leaves without looking.

(Her maidens pull her silks from her; the robes and dress, socks and chemise.)

She crawls back in bed; turns away from the window.

(Lady Rosby with her mouth open—that back-tooth long gone—her hands bled in the hot ash, that animal scream—)

She dreams of her summer knight again, golden and gallant.

Where is my father?

Her knight spins her upon the mountain. They’re married; she’s happy. Still she hears no song.

There are flowers upon her table, when she wakes, beyond her folding-screen. Lilacs and bellflower and goldencups.

(So beautiful in the summer daylight that she almost mourns instantly their death—wonders that she could press them into Ten Thousand Ships—)

“Arrived at dawn,” her maid supplies, setting her breakfast. “By a white cloak, no less.”

“I’ve—” She touches gentle the little petals. “I’ve only ever seen them drawn. Archmaester Hake’s Flowers.” She looks up. “From my father?”

Her maid blinks back. “I—no, my lady.” Like it’s obvious. “The Queen.”

The Queen.

She looks down. There’s a scroll, seal unbroken. She breaks it.

Seven apologies for your troubles on the road.

And she unfurls it, further—

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

She stares at it between her thumbs.

“Lylla,” she says, then. “Is the Queen—” She stops. Her maid looks back. Her frown deepens. “Is the Queen—funny?”

(And something gleams behind her eyes—)

But then her maid only sighs, again.

She turns back to setting forks. “No,” she says, softer. “Well—not in a while, my lady.”

Alicent nods.

“No one’s ever given me flowers,” she says.

Her bump’s almost gone.

She’s never imagined her father grey. Didn’t think to; there was always something eternal about him.

He stares back unimpressed. “I trust you understand why I’ve called for you.”

(Some things, eternal indeed.)

There’s a chill in the air. The windows are uncovered in his study.

“To—”  Some voice inside, unbidden—ten years and a woman grown and your only daughter and barely a hint of—“To make a good match, I expect.”

He raises a brow. “You expect.”

I am two and twenty, she thinks. And you have never sought to marry me. She turns her cup in her hands. Her hair’s woven up, some sort of tight aching Crownlander style. “I wouldn’t presume to know a grander design.”

He stands, then, if not a bit effortfully; leans tall by the window.

(Open, there, in the corner of her vision, the work table—Valyrian Histories; Valyrian Songs—)

“The war is done.” He says.

“So Gwayne has told me.”

“Daemon has fled east, half-burnt. Rhaenys remains at Storm’s End, with her dragon. And her granddaughters. I expect those three beings are the sum of her interest.” He looks back to her, again, almost smug. “Rhaenyra rules unencumbered.”

It certainly so seems. “The Seven have surely granted her wisdom.”

“The Seven are not its source.”

(He rounds when he looks at her that way and it always makes her hairs stand on end, always has.)

“You’re very pretty,” he says. It sounds almost strange in his mouth. “That’s good.” Returns to his seat, then; braces hands on the back of his chair with a sigh. “My counsel, however sound, faces limits. Rhaenyra’s ear craves a different voice, I suspect.”

(The Queen has different tastes.)

She only watches.

“There shall be a banquet, in two days’ time.” He clasps his hands. “To honour your arrival to court. You shall sit in my place.” He instructs. “By her side.”

“I don’t understand—”

“A companion.” Like she’s an idiot. “Provides company.”

And it’s something to his tone, then—

“Pretty company, apparently.”

Her stomach drops as soon as she’s said it.

(His beard grey, his hair grey, all grey, even his eyes have gone grey—)

She digs fingernails into her skirts. Her chest rises and falls beneath blue. He stands and the shadow covers her face and she can feel her eyes adjust.

(Two and twenty and you have never sought—)

“The Queen frightens me,” she whispers.

(He doesn’t care. She doesn’t have to look to see it.)

(Her head against armour—her hand upon breastplate, with her eyes closed—

Heads on spikes; on spikes on spikes on spikes—)

He rounds the desk, then.

“Allow me to say something now.” She pins her eyes to her skirts. He stops tall by her side, large and looming. “Since we’re only just reacquainting.”

And then—

He snatches her wrist in his hand—her wrist in his fist—she gasps—crushing.

“You should not fear the Queen,” he murmurs, as her heart beats in her ears, as her bones bruise. “You should fear me.”

She sits at her loom, in her room. Weaves quiet blue strings—sunset’s edges. Waits until her maids go; and then peels her sleeve back from her wrist.

Purpling; green edges.

(In her dreams, her summer knight—gentle gloves. What’s this?)

I shouldn’t show Gwayne.

She places elbows on her knees, her face in her hands.

(Alicent cries and cries.)

Lylla notices, when she dresses her.

(She can tell, because her eyes go that way, and then away, far too quick; and her mouth makes that line, so unlike the rest of her face, happy and round, and then she laces her dress quite gentle; and returns with a milk salve, only a candle mark later, for any aches, she says.)

She puts it on and covers it with linen and walks the gardens, where she’s allowed.

Counts the flora—black lotus, bloodbloom; penny royal, poison kisses—

(Bigger and wider than she’s ever seen, stretching long toward the ocean sparkling blue and dancing with its waves, and that salt-wind sliding off, and around her a thousand colours, a thousand trees.)

No wonder he left, she thinks, when the wind stops. No wonder he wanted it.

And then there, rooted as the trees in the distance, a hundred metres out and a single level below—

The Queen.

Unmistakably yellow-gold, in that morning sun. Two queensguard gleaming behind her. She’s faced outward, toward the sea. She doesn’t move.

It’s quiet. She’s not in armour; not a surcoat, nor a mantle.

(She’s in a dress.)

You look so peaceful, this way. Alicent watches, silent. Maybe like once as a girl.

The Queen stares out, statuesque.

(Not for a while, Lylla said.)

Alicent remains, too. Leans soft on the stonework—watches.

And then Rhaenyra turns—

Hanging on her garberobe.

Beautiful. The finest silk she’s ever seen.

She and Lylla stare at it.

It’s a dress.

“It’s a dress.” Lylla states.

Alicent only blinks.

And the queensguard who waits, now, in her door—Erryk, maybe?—stares back, seemingly just as bewildered.

“The, erm—” He swallows. “The Queen requests to know if it is to your taste. The—colour, or, erm—” He shifts on his feet. “The—silks, I assume—"

“The dress.” Lylla supplies.

“Right.” He nods, blank. “If you like the dress.”

Lylla stares up. “She loves the dress.” Alicent looks. “I assume.”

“It’s—” And she reaches out; lets the silk caress her fingers, just the edges, that smooth expanse of the side. Seven gods together. “Please tell her—” She stops. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Erryk nods.

(And she thinks—for a moment—he smiles.)

She used to imagine the capital, as a girl. Red, and black, and gold, and dragons—and halls arching, wider than the confines of her solar, and skies brighter than the ones when Oldtown used to storm—

She dons Rhaenyra’s dress. Her father commands it.

(But how it kisses her skin—soft on her wrist.)

Gwayne comes to take her to the Great Hall; smug, hand of the hand, grandiose and half-stupid in his finery.

(She imagines him chastising his daughter.)

She watches him lean in the door.

He looks down at her dress. “Pretty wrapping,” he says. Lylla places the last piece of gold in her hair. She takes his arm. “You do know what children do with wrapping, don’t you?”

(Rhaenyra with snake’s eyes—Rhaenyra on that grassy field, that half-curved nose. Don’t worry.)

She doesn’t say anything.

They descend down the stairs—stairs and stairs, the spiral and then the grand staircase—the rest of the court in silks and blacks, too, and reds, and coronets and grand capes—trumpets and lyres and strings, from someplace else—

“You’ll wait here,” Gwayne says, placing her in a train of ladies. He’s still smirking, that epicaric glimmer. “Good luck.”

And in they enter—Lord and Lady Hayford, Lord and Lady Brune, Massey and Celtigar and Crabb—

Lyman Beesbury and Lyonel Strong, their wives; Tyland Lannister, Maester Orwyle—

And Father. Still in a green tunic and mantle, brocade beneath his jewels.

And she knows—knows—he’s gone, without looking, and she can’t breathe, I should have jumped with my books, and then—

And then she’s there.

Just there. Just her.

(In front of those spilled-open doors, in that waiting silence.)

Only a bit taller than her; red and black, with little metalwork, resplendent again, coronated still.

Aegon’s crown.

And blue eyes (not a snake’s), open, and waiting, (and that nose), and patient, and real.

With a real hand—offered.

“I am extremely pleased, my lady,” she says, simply, quietly. “By the honour of your company.”

She offers back her hand—her hurt hand—she hopes Rhaenyra doesn’t pull it—

(But her thumb takes it gentle; like a crystal glass—like an egg.)

“The pleasure is mine,” she tells her.

And then Rhaenyra faces front; and the trumpets sound.

If I trip I’ll really jump—if I fall I really will. Walking with her—down the steps, before the Queensguard—past the Celtigars, and the Beesburys—Hayfords and Brunes and Crabbs—

(Past Father, who watches as she passes him at the high table, with calm, exacting eyes.)

And to her chair, where Rhaenyra’s hand leaves her.

(I want it back. She buries the thought.)

“Tonight the gods bestow us this banquet,” she says. “Though not as fine a pleasure as the company of my guest. It is my grand honour to present to my court the daughter of my unfailing Hand.” She turns. “Lady Alicent Hightower.”

Blackfyre’s at her hip.

If I had a thing like that I’d run away.

Alicent smiles, and sits, and swallows her heartbeat, as instructed.

Rhaenyra doesn’t really look at her, exactly.

Well she does. Glances, really. Through the forcemeat and the curds and the sausages; and again, during the crusty breads; and the pickled cabbages—and the plums—the codcake and lampreys—

Her father looks, too, and she’s not even sure she’s seen it until he looks and a throng goes up her spine and she reaches for her wine and drinks, drinks, and Rhaenyra seems to notice that, too.

She sets her goblet down. And Rhaenyra re-fills it.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she says—

But Rhaenyra’s already engaged by Beesbury on the other side by then. The Queen seems happy. Sort of.

(Heads and heads and heads—)

A fool emerges with a troupe, breathing fire when the peacock’s set down—

(Her father sits up in his chair; grins.)

And now—behold, the dramatic retelling: my lords and ladies—the Dance of the Dragons!

(Fire, fire everywhere—fire-breath on all sides, and Lord Celtigar’s going shite, leaning back—)

The red dragon, long, gangling—four mummers puppeting its underbelly—two more beneath the gold.

The dragons dance; Harrenhal, she thinks she sees, and Rook’s Rest, next—fire spills over again, Lady Brune jumping from her chair—

(The God’s Eye, maybe—)

Before she knows it, the red dragon’s gone. A peacock’s on fire. Servants put it out. The gold gallivants through the hall.

(Rhaenyra’s still; still as a statue.)

Glory, Rhaenyra the Victorious! He calls. Father leans back, satisfied.

Rhaenyra taps at her fork, downcast beside her.

(Rhaenyra the Cruel has a better ring.)

Her fool bows, after—

“Grand,” Rhaenyra comments—she’s smiling, and Alicent wonders if anyone else notices, how convincing it is on a glance and how unbelievably little joy is in it—“Excellent.”

And the fool bows, then, again, low and honoured, and he’s going I call it Syrax, Your Grace—

(And as he stands his bell-laden dancing-stick whips up and smacks the flagon and it runs pouring down the table, and the music half-stops, as the singers look up, and it splashes to the tile, and onto Lady Celtigar, who yelps, and it falls to the ground clanging—)

The Queen freezes.

Alicent closes her eyes.

(The Queen draws Blackfyre—the Queen slashes forth and that hungry blade relieves him of his neck and the blood mixes with wine and she sits still and her father watches—)

Rhaenyra tosses her cloth on the spill, then—grabs Lord Beesbury’s, by her side, tosses it, too. “Oh, misfortunate.”

“Your Grace I humbly beg with the sincerest regret your—”

“No, no.” Beckons him up from his knees; eyes still on the drip. "Not to worry, Butternip.” Turns to a servant, behind—beckons them, as they run forth. Waves her hand again. “Not to worry at all.”

Rhaenyra’s pretty.

She’s never had much wine before. It opens her chest again.

(And numbs the pain by her thumbnail, too, where she’s battered it worn and bloody, and now she can’t feel that, really, either.)

Father’s speaking to Lord Lannister. Father’s not looking.

(Rhaenyra’s not looking, either, which makes it far easier to look at Rhaenyra—)

She’s never seen hair like that. Maybe in storybooks, of course. Good Queen Alysanne. Jaehaerys the Conciliator. Baelon the Brave.

(They said only Prince Aemon’s hair ever shone white-gold, but she wonders if in the firelight the Queen’s doesn’t, too—)

“Do you like it?”

“What—?”

Rhaenyra’s eyes are upon her; open and blue as the day.

(And that smile. Just little.)

Her lips part. No sound emerges. “I—” Gods above, say someth—“I am deeply grateful for your hospitality, Your Grace.” She waits, for a moment; casts her eyes back on her hands. “And your flowers, too.”

“No—well. The pleasure is mine.” Then she raises a brow; looks down. “But I meant your dress.”

Of course of course of course she would have wanted me to—

“It is desperately beautiful, Your Grace.” She hopes her voice doesn’t shake. She touches the latticework, toward the shoulder. “I am most grateful.”

“It was a gift. For that nasty business upon my road.” Seven apologies. Alicent only watches, as Rhaenyra looks down—the bodice, the waist. Something plays in her eyes. Regret, maybe.  “I am truly sorry, my lady.”

She swallows. Rhaenyra drinks. “Of course.”

“And if there’s anything else.”

“What?”

Rhaenyra looks back; seems to look down, again, across her—

My hair. She almost reaches up to touch it; pins her hands to her lap. She’s looking at my hair.

“I only—” The Queen stops. “I meant—if you wanted for anything else.” Fingers rub at the rim, the inlays of her goblet. “I would oblige you.”

The fire flickers, behind them; beyond her shoulder, Lady Celtigar parts from the table, her lord not far behind.

The hour of ghosts.

I want my father not to touch me. Rhaenyra’s hand rests easy on the table. It’s quite pretty, actually. “I want for nothing.”

Rhaenyra smiles, then—

(And even if she is a tyrant she’s still laughing at her, which is very rude, actually, and she doesn’t have to be a rude tyrant—)

Rhaenyra reaches for the flagon, fills her cup, again; looks back, eyes sparkling.

(And it’s kind. Sort of.)

A half-smile, at the edges. “Nobody wants for nothing.”

It’s a strange dream, actually.

(She’d bid Rhaenyra good night only hours before—and when Alicent had risen to go she’d looked up with wine-stained lips, taken her knuckles in gentle fingers, and something like true—like bold—the Queen had kissed her hand—)

They’re alone, in her vision. The same table. No one’s there.

Her hand is in Rhaenyra’s again. It’s soft.

I want a golden flower, she tells her. Rhaenyra turns from her other side—blue eyes—goldencups fill her plate, runneth over.

I want the sun to shine, and then it’s daylight again.

I want you to kiss my hand, and she does, and it feels just the same as it did; Rhaenyra’s in armour, then, she realises—blacks and greys, that same kind, with the dragon embossed.

Again.  

Rhaenyra doesn’t look away; merely raises her fingers, soft, and kisses her.

And again.

Rhaenyra smiles; but kisses her hand, again.

(Alicent smiles, too.)

And then she is looking away—her brow’s contorting, and her fingers are working down at her sleeve—no, Your Grace—

It bunches up by her wrist; above the nasty black and green and stomach-turning yellowing blue.

Rhaenyra’s nose wrinkles. You’re ugly, she says.

Gwayne appears in the morning.

“Father has called you to the gardens.” He says. She sits up in her bedclothes. “To take a walk with the Queen.”

She rubs at an eye. “The Queen has requested—” She frowns. “Me?”

He tilts his head; raises a brow. “The order is from Father.”

She worries her thumb, beneath the sheets.

(A companion provides company.)

Then—

“Gwayne,” she calls, before he goes. He turns. “What is his aim, in all this?”

Her brother merely rolls his eyes; walks off.

(But it’s that jealous look, upon his features, bewilderingly.)

Her cousin Ceryse once said it, those gardens beneath the tower.

I want a husband soon. She’d been one-and-ten years. A handsome prince. Someone to love me.

(He will not be a handsome prince. She hadn’t said it. And he will not necessarily love you.)

Rhaenyra looks bright, when she approaches—another shining black silk, today. Alicent, in blue—the most similar one she could find to the one she had sent.

She waits for her by the water lilies. She’s smiling.

(They were smoking upon the floor—

But it seems almost unbelievable, the way she looks at her.)

“I’m very pleased,” Rhaenyra says, “That you’ve come to join me this day.”

It’s evident. Alicent takes her arm; lets her lead them around the pool and westward, toward the arbor. She is.

(Flowers and flowers, there in her room, and here, in the gardens, Rhaenyra and flowers.)

I grant you my permission, her father had said—and a queensguard (Arryk?) had looked on, and the Hand had seemed quite pleased, pleased in a different way than she’s seen.

The gardens go on forever, still. A thousand colours in a thousand places—the way the Hightower never had scale like this, not up but out, not tall but wide; stretching long and out into the distance, like a ship to the horizon-line, a thousand thousand flowers in a hundred hundred gardens.

(How delicately Rhaenyra—who struck off Rosby’s head with her sword—handles them close; fingers soft to their underside, like a child’s chin, easy and simple, says lovely.)

“I should have moonbloom planted here, in place of the lilacs.” She gestures across, with her other hand. “For you.”

Rhaenyra doesn’t look to see what she thinks, evidently; only faces forward, still—leads her on. “Your Grace?”

“From Oldtown. So that you might visit them. If ever you regretted being away.”

(Again, she’d said, and Rhaenyra had lifted her wrist and—)

Rhaenyra’s hair shines in the sun. White-gold. Something’s off in her chest. She puts it away. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“And I should have proper ladies in waiting for you, soon.” She says. They stop by another pool. Lilies again. Rhaenyra gazes down at it. “My mother was an Arryn. So I must give the honour to my cousins, you see. But their journey shouldn’t be much longer.”

She’s never had ladies in waiting. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“And your father tells me you enjoy your weaving. I’ve a Pentoshi master who could—” she waves her hand—something like vaguely confused. “Illuminate his art. As it were.” She purses her lips, then, as they walk again. “Never done it myself, of course.” And then she smiles, a little. “So you’ll have to tell me if he’s any good.”

(It’s a sort of half-way thing—just one side of her lips. Alicent likes it.)

And then Rhaenyra doesn’t say anything and she realises she’s been staring and indeed she’s still staring and the Queen’s asked her a question and then worse, maybe—

Rhaenyra’s staring back. Big and open and blue.

“If it please you, I mean.” The Queen says, then. “Of course it’s not a command.”

Not a command.

She nods. And then—

(Smart girls don’t ask after desires, smart girls follow their fathers’ command—)

She swallows. Her arm tightens on Rhaenyra’s, a little. “Yes.” Eyes on her feet. “It does, Your Grace.”

I could weave her a panel of the clouds in the sky—

She banishes the thought.

And expects to move on; waits for the Queen to lead elsewhere.

She doesn’t.

(It’s only deep blue staring back, when she looks.)

(Her hand on a breastplate and her head on a pauldron and kisses on her wrists and Rhaenyra opens her up, tongue to tail—)

“Has someone frightened you, my lady?”

Rhaenyra’s eyes; Rhaenyra frowning. “I—” Her throat sticks. “No, Your—”

“Your brother?” It deepens, between her brows, and it’s something there, behind the eyes—gods I’d give all to know what it is she made of Gwayne— “Does he mistreat you?”

What would there be to do about it, anyway? She looks back to the lilies. “No, Your Grace.”

(The Queen gives her a look—something like suspicious.

Still, she keeps walking, anyway.)

Then—

A pool of blue; of green and blue and white and pink flowers, floating and cool, and ever silent. It’s only the wind rattling the trees above, then; the queensguards’ metallic clink.

Rhaenyra glitters, still, in the shade.

(She remembers it written, once. They’re the most beautiful people in the w—

But surely none like this, not Daemon or Viserys. Surely no one ever could.)

And Rhaenyra glances at her, again; sort of stolen, maybe.

“My lady,” she entreats, then. They stand together, before the still water. “I’d like you to name a stone.”

She glances back. “A stone.”

“A stone. Whatever gemstone you fancy.”

(Smart girls don’t—)

She sets herself, her shoulders. “Your Grace, I humbly want for noth—”

“Don’t treat me a fool.”

(And Alicent’s eyes whip back, but then Rhaenyra’s only looking, and then she’s looking—utterly contrite, her arm dropping, jaw working, silent.)

(There are a hundred dragons where you’re going.)

Still there’s a look on her face. Like the word fuck must be.

Rhaenyra’s eyes return to the sea.

“Please accept my sincerest apologies. I should not again speak to you so harshly.” Her hair glitters, long down her shoulders. Blue, blue, blue again. “And nor shall any other.”

You could never will it so. Not with those hundred dragons.

(But Rhaenyra’s looking so openly, then.)

“Rubies.” Before she can take it back; before she can think not to. Someone else speaking with her voice. She takes her arm, again. “My favourite stone is a ruby.”

And she waits, a moment longer. “My mother had them.”

Rhaenyra doesn’t say anything; merely leads them, gently, on.

Dreams, dreams again—when her father smacked her mother in the face with a maester’s chain—

She goes to the open air, when the day grows warm; to the ramparts.

Rhaenyra trains with Ser Criston upon the yard.

That whistle of a morningstar’s swing—and again, and again, and the Queen, in that silver armour—ducking and diving; waiting for an overextension and lunging, Blackfyre skittering off of his corselet, that whistle again—

(Back-and-forth, like the songs used to say, like the water-dance.)

She watches for a long while.

(Whistle, and whistle, and strike—)

Lylla brings soup and bread and butter at midday. She takes it on a little veranda.

Plays idly with her spoon; watches Rhaenyra’s dragon circle overhead.

I wonder if I called out if you’d hear me, she muses. I wonder if you’d land right here. On this ledge.

I wonder if you could catch me, if I jumped.

(Lylla seems to look at her strangely, then, from the corner; but surely her maid can’t read her mind.)

Yellow Death circles and circles, round and round, and quite peacefully, even.

Dangerous, she thinks. The air’s clear. And free.

Ser Erryk arrives, later. Rhaenyra’s invited her company after supper. For apple cakes.

Lylla stands by her garderobe; looks something like downright excited, and then Alicent greets Ser Erryk, and accepts, and Lylla looks—if at all possible—more excited.

But it’s when she’s talking, later—

And your lace can go here, to match in your hair, and the gem of the earrings, you see—and then—

“I’m so very glad,” And Alicent thinks she’s never maybe even seen the lines on Lylla’s round face, then; the wear to her hands. “It’s been too long since the Queen had a friend—so long sought, and deserved—”

“What?”

Lylla looks up. Oh. “My lady—forget, I only meant—” And then she moves back around—starts tugging at her hair, again, tosses the waves still loose down her shoulders—“No, no. Silly of me.”

(Alicent doesn’t say anything.)

The Queen crouches batlike and bow-legged in her chambers, feasts on bloodsweets atop Laenor Velaryon’s dragonskull—

There are no skulls in Rhaenyra’s chambers, light and windy; they are messy, though—blankets and parchments and settees and swords. Half-set cyvasse; an empty inkwell; pomander.

Rhaenyra the Cruel. A wooden children’s doll, ancient and worn on a bureau.

Rhaenyra, for her own part, has apparently shuffled a little table and chairs onto her veranda, outside—

“By myself,” she adds; fluffs what Alicent determines to be her pillow—again. “Can’t have you thinking I’ve rung the bell for something simple.”

Alicent sits, when Rhaenyra gestures, on the thrice-fluffed pillow. The air’s still warm, again—sunset a light purple. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

(Rhaenyra looks quite pleased.)

And then, perhaps only slightly out of turn—

She smiles, little; thumbs her sleeve. “I do wonder if Your Grace could claim credit for the apple cakes, though.”

“Ah, you’ve found me out.” Rhaenyra crosses her legs and grins. “Those aren’t so simple, you know.”

It’s only when the apple cakes do arrive—cinnamonish and hot and beautiful and dressed and not so simple indeed—that Alicent notices.

The Queen is—under her robes—wearing trousers. And a knight’s tunic.

(And looking terribly comfortable, to boot.)

She’s almost wondering how it is she’s allowed, while Rhaenyra pours her tea—who exactly would presume to stop her?

(The Queen has different t—)

And the air’s soft, and clear, and the sky turns from purple to orange; and Rhaenyra’s notion of a slice is sinful, and they’re silent again, for a while.

“I wonder,” Rhaenyra muses, then. Her eyes are on the clouds. “If you ever thought of the capital. As a girl.”

She adjusts her skirts, again, upon her knees. Blue, all blue. Hesitates. “I had great reverence for your lord father’s court, Your Grace. As did the Realm.”

“No, I really—” She waves her hand, a little, beside her; that brow creasing. The clouds are wispy behind her. “I really mean it.” And looks back at her, again. “I mean—I’m really asking.”

Her lips part, then. She looks off, away from blue, that summer sky. “I don’t think I considered I’d ever see it.”

“Not even when your father became his Hand?”

“No, I—” Once, in a carriage turning. She looks down. “No. Your Grace.”

Rhaenyra purses her lips. “What did you think about, then?”

She shakes her head. “My readings,” she murmurs. “History. Mostly. And travel. The roads of the east, beasts of the sea. The Jade Compendium, those—the illuminated colours, in the illustrated work, and when I was a girl, I loved—”

Smart girls don’t blather.

Her jaw clicks shut.

(But then the Queen’s eyes are still on her; and the Queen is still listening.)

“I loved Ten Thousand Ships,” she finishes. “The tale of Nymeria.”

Rhaenyra hums; and then nods, chin dimpled. “The country’s first queen, was it.”

Alicent looks, then. Is it a test? “You are—” She stops. “Your Grace is the only one that’s been true.” Her nail pressing, then, that scarred-up corner. Her eyes fall to her feet. “It was a silly book, I suppose.”

“If you had such love for it, I’m sure it was not.” Rhaenyra’s gaze is fixed upon her. Certain. “You are not a silly woman.”

(And colour creeps to her cheeks, then, though she’s not sure why.)

“In any case,” the Queen continues. “I wouldn’t know.” Re-crosses her legs. “Never read a book.”

She can’t even stop herself—“Your Grace—”

“No, I’m serious.” Waves a hand. “Gods I really don’t know how anyone—more, and more, and more, and more, and blah, and blah, and blah—” Shakes her head. “Don’t misunderstand, I’ve—I received an education, but. Seven above. What a fucking slog.”

(And then the Queen giggles; and when she looks over, Alicent does, too.)

She picks at her cake, again. “Were you quite unruly, as a child?”

Rhaenyra scoffs, grinning. “Oh, yes, well. Any child with a dragon—” Sighs. “But then, Syrax was an unruly dragon. I suppose that’s why it stuck.”

Alicent hesitates, for a moment. The sky’s pink.

“Syrax,” she murmurs, quiet. Like it’s not her word to say. “That is her name.”

Rhaenyra quirks a brow, eyes toward the water. “What?” Chuckles, though it’s mirthless. “You thought I called her Yellow Death?”

Alicent’s silent. Not even breathing.

The Queen scoffs. “Yellow Death,” she repeats, again. “Like she’s a spring fever. Ridiculous name.”

(But then Rhaenyra’s looking, again, and she’s got to—)

“Your Grace did not—” She stops. Clutches round her mug, both hands. “Your Grace did not—develop. This moniker.”

“No.” Then the Queen sighs, again; a long sigh. “That would be your father.”

(Alicent doesn’t say anything at all.)

“In any case.” And then the Queen’s leaning forward, reaching for the pot—consternation evaporating. “I’m sure Syrax would like it, if she knew. I suspect she fancies herself quite fearsome.”

She smiles, just small. “She’d be flattered by it, you think.”

“Oh, please—that’s a perpetually flattered dragon.” Rhaenyra looks back, then—something like indignant. “You know how long it took to get her to accept a saddle? Grumbling and roaring and more goats and whining, all this turning and nipping at it like I’d fucking shackled her. Honestly, what did she expect—that I’d just clutch onto her spines?” Scoffs. “Right—you go on and barrel roll, then, I’ll just be back here, counting my very days.”

Alicent smiles, over her cup. “Perhaps it was a sign of trust.”

“Oh, I’m flattered.”

“Flattered as Syrax herself.”

(And then Rhaenyra smiles, too.)

The sky begins to bleed blue—dark blue—then.

(Rhaenyra watches, and Alicent watches her hair turn white-silver again, from gold.)

“I wonder,” the Queen says, after a while. “If you remember the maester. When he came. Finally.” Waves her hand, a little. “That trouble upon my road.”

(The Queen lays her down slow in the summer grass—

Their hands, clasped together.)

“Yes.” Her fingers on her skirts; nail upon her thumb. “I do.”

Rhaenyra nods. “His forked beard was quite funny.”

That tug, her chest, again.

(How Rhaenyra’s long fingers curl round her cup.

The sweet slope of her nose, in the darkening shadow.)

And then—

“I’m quite grateful,” Rhaenyra says, and it’s quieter. “That you’ve come.”

Your Grace, she murmurs, but she’s not sure Rhaenyra even hears it.

Alicent watches the evening sky.

Her father calls for her. It’s the hour of the wolf.

Little girls late for Father are eaten by hounds.

It’s not a queensguard who comes for her, but a sentry. There’s blood on his cape, and he doesn’t look away, when she rises in bedclothes.

(Her cousin Uthor used to collect houndsteeth—wolf’s, at first, but he wasn’t much of a hunter, and he could never get them, and he’d grown frustrated and cruel about it and hit Ceryse when she’d said that’s small, that’s from a dog though she’d been right and Hobert’s wife had him caned and then Hobert wanted none to do with it.

Father had crossed his arms, mannerly and patient. Let him rip the teeth from the older dogs.

He’s a cunt, Gwayne had said, and patted Old Nose’s furry head, showed her his gummy smile.)

His fire’s roaring, in his solar. There’s a darkness to his teeth.

(He’s twenty feet tall, if only in shadow.)

“Come.” He commands. “Sit.”

She gathers her robe against ice-cold leather. He rises from his seat; paces away—stops by the fire.

“I’ve waited to betroth you,” he says, then. “As I’m sure you have known.”

(Because you’re ugly, Gwayne had said, once, when he’d ripped her weaving and she’d told, because only the dogs would have you.)

Her breaths feel loud. She wonders if he can hear. “Yes, Father.”

(Maybe Father should let them.)

“I wanted better for you.” He doesn’t turn. She doesn’t want him to. The shadows dance. “Not some—Caswell. Or Florent.”

(How Mother screamed, how her hands flew to her face—)

“Yes, Father.”

“Things are not always as we know them, Alicent,” he says. “Things are not always as they seem.” Then he does turn. His face is dark. “The Starks are not as they seem. The Targaryens are not as they seem.”

Tomes open on the settee, benches and rugs, that dark wood desktop; buckles undone, edges ribboned with the sealing-knife—

(One by his feet—Valyrian Myths—)

“The maesters doubt Starks speak to trees,” he murmurs. “Because they cannot speak to them. This is a folly. I need not ride a dragon to know someone has ridden one.” He looks down, then; pages and pages. “The maesters doubt the Valyrian magics, though the Targaryens remind them all the time. Viserys in his poltroonery could scarcely command his own court—and yet stood master of a beast two hundred feet tall?” He shakes his head. “There was power in the Fourteen Flames. As there is power in those trees, and in the wolves.” Looks to her, then. “The world is not as we know it.”

And he’s watching, and watching, and the fire’s higher, but her hands are cold—

“I don’t understand.”

“You remember your cousin Garth.” He paces back toward the opposite wall, that tapestry—two men and two women, a tangled embrace. “He preferred the company of men.”

(Swordswallower. Uthor had pushed him down and laughed, and Ceryse had lifted her skirts as if to scare him—)

“Yes.”

“There are women,” he says, then. “Who prefer others’ company.”

He turns back toward his fire, again.

(And she remains seated, watching and waiting, like his hound—)

“The Queen has different tastes.”

It’s out from her lips in an instant; and then she looks up at him, blank, as if surprised to have spoken.

(He looks surprised, too.)

“Indeed.” He folds his hands. His brows are raised. Barely. And then it changes. “Odd tastes. Which were not at all odd in Valyria, once.” Rests his hands upon his silver belt. “Some dragons lay eggs, and then they do not. Others do not, and then they lay eggs. Their magics confused the natural order.” Shakes his head down at his texts. “Or so I’ve come to believe.”

The Seven do not permit alchemy. A man who’s a witch is a blasphemer. “Father—”

“Your brother failed in his purpose at court.” Father declares. “You have not.”

(She opens her lips; and then can’t even speak.)

The fire casts on him in the red light; paints him same as those red stones. The bleeding castle.

(Old Nose’s bleeding mouth—)

“You’ve been promised to the Queen,” he says.

(Little girls who heed their fathers are given life’s rewar—)

Alicent stands.

“She’s a woman.” It’s a statement. It’s stronger. He looks. “It is not permitted by the Faith.”

“The Faith will bend again,” he snaps, “As always.”

“I could bear no children—heirs to the Realm—”

“There are secrets buried in these texts that prove the nature of life is not simple like your songs.”

“She scares me.”

(The sound drops off to the crackle of the flame; soft and silent as a whisper.)

“She scares me, Father,” she whispers. Her voice’s thick. Something blooms in her eyes. She blinks it away, stares back, wet and wide. “The heads, and the—ship, the dragon, the fires, Lord Rosby, the spikes—” Her voice catches. Her throat feels like it bleeds. “Rhaenyra the Cruel.”

His eyes are black. The light flickers in them unsteady.

(Something nags at her chest, something deep.)

(He rounds the settee, then, he grabs her by the wrist yanks her standing and then strikes her—he pushes her across the desk and shoves her nose in the books, yanks her hair by the fist as she screams—)

He stands cold, and mum, and solemn. And terrifying.

“You will marry Rhaenyra Targaryen,” he says. Like the sky’s blue. Like ice’s cold. “You will say the words. You will share her bed.” Or I’ll beat you broken. He doesn’t have to say it. He clasps his hands. He looks contented. “And if you don’t wish to look upon her—” He scoffs. “You can close your eyes.”

Do you have dying dreams?

(Daughter, he invokes.)

She lays sleepless in her bed.

Break fast, Lylla urges. She doesn’t. Dinner, she entreats. Supper, she tries.

Alicent lays down on soft curls; listens close to summer rains.

Her summer knight moves through the window. She closes her eyes. Her summer knight extends his gauntlet. Her summer knight won’t break her fall.

Mercy, mercy, she pleads, to let her drop right down—and meet her, wherever it leads.

Rhaenyra calls for her at sunset.

She dons her simplest dress. Suppose it doesn’t matter much, anyway.

(But it’s Erryk, who comes to ask for her; and he moves to the door and turns his back, when she rises, faces opposite her screen, while Lylla helps her dress; only when she touches his pauldron does he turn and open her door and entreat after you, my lady, and thank you.)

Rhaenyra waits at her balcony, in a soft red. Her hair’s down her back. The edges pick up with the wind.

Lady Alicent Hightower of the Hightower, Your Grace.

Erryk departs. And Rhaenyra seems to wait, before she turns.

Yellow eyes, snake’s eyes, heads on heads on heads on heads on—

She can almost see it; something in the mist of the light from the rains of the morning. There, in that stretch of sun, for that split-second.

I can see you as a girl, she thinks, that wide-open blue. I can see you as a child, and how young you are, still.

(Yellow Death is just Syrax, who didn’t want to wear a saddle—)

Her hand’s still on the balustrade. “I thought to have flowers brought,” Rhaenyra murmurs. “But they said you were asleep.”

Her face doesn’t move. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do anything.”

Unblinking. “Yes, Your Grace.”

And then Rhaenyra sighs; seems to slump where she stands.

“I understand you’ve been told,” she says, then. “My offer. I suppose foolishly I had hoped you’d be happy. Or—” And she looks at her face, again, and her chagrin etches longer. “At least not miserable.”

(Her body and her spine aches and she’s starving and Blackfyre’s there, by the dresser, and sweat blooms on cold palms—)

“I’ve long known I shan’t marry a man, you see. I shall likewise not marry a stone. If you do not want of me, my lady,” and then Alicent’s throat’s thick and her hands numb and I can’t feel it when I breathe and she’s still looking—“Speak it. And I shall send you back.”

(Girls who disobey their fathers are eaten by hounds.)

“Your Grace—” Her voice shakes. “If it please—”

“Why are you so afraid of me?”

She’s never heard it, not once.

(Not the authority or the finality or the venom—not even Father, how it cuts through the air like a lance and Rhaenyra’s hand leaves the balustrade.)

Dark blue in the light, hard. “Why? What have I done to deserve this—” Gesturing at her, jerking, cutting—“This terror? Is it the war? His war? I didn’t start that fucking war, I didn’t seek bloodshed—"

Head down and tears behind her vision and eyes shut tight—

“Is it really so evil that I should put down the pretender—is my traitor uncle really so beloved, is that what’s been—”

(Her mother had sunk to the ground, ever slowly. She’d looked up to the door through a bloody eye, where the white was red.)

The sobs choke out of her like nothing, like fish down a stream.

(With a hand at her mouth and her eyes screwed shut and the other outstretched—don’t swing—anticipating—

(Rhaenyra raising Blackfyre in a vision—)

Your Grace, she tries. It doesn’t come.

And then—

Soft, softer than a whisper. “No—no no no.” A hand on her wrist. “No no, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please don’t, my lady, forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

A hand falls to her waist; another to her back. Her forehead bumps with a shoulder. Unarmoured. It’s warm.

(And she knows, knows, can hear it in his voice—stop it, stop it, stop it right now—her chest convulses, those laborious tremors—)

She’s being held.

She only recognises it after a moment; after her breath catches. Rhaenyra’s arms are around her.

(Her hand leaves her face; rests gentle, tentative, upon Rhaenyra’s shoulder.)

“Look.” Through blurry vision, Rhaenyra reaching to a slit pocket—producing a pouch. She lets her head dip on Rhaenyra’s shoulder, turns her cheek to the fabric; watches her pull the string. A necklace. Silver and gold.

I’m so so sorry, she whispers.

Shh, Rhaenyra says.

Inlaid with gemstones—red and lovely; almost pink.

“Rubies,” Rhaenyra murmurs, soft, and there’s a thumb working gentle, rubbing on her spine. “Don’t cry, sweetling. Don’t cry. I’ve got your rubies, see?”

Alicent stares down at them.

(Her mother’s necklace. The chain broke it.)

She tilts her chin upward, into blue. Rhaenyra’s arm tightens about her waist.

“Your Grace,” she whispers. It’s silent. “Are you going to strike me?”

She can see the shock; plain as day.

Oh.

(Arcs of light above the black water; arcs of light like sparks of dawn.)

“Lady Alicent,” she whispers. “I wouldn’t strike you for a thousand pounds of gold.”

She’s silent.

(Her skin feels raw.)

I shall be a good wife to you, Your Grace—obey your commands—

She chokes it out and then wrenches away and Rhaenyra reaches for her again, but she murmurs apologies and then runs, runs, runs—before she can see that look; before she can say what she’d like.

When’s the first time you’ll hurt me? Would you use the window, not your sword?

Something deeper in her soul. (Would you kiss my wrists, Rhaenyra?)

(She dreams she’s in her arms, again, that she cries and cries and opens her soul; that Rhaenyra hears it all, that Rhaenyra never, ever lets go.)

Her father comes in the morning, though she already knows.

It’s done. It’s over. She’s set me aside.

(That first dog, she dreams of it, that first bite—)

“There shall be a tourney at the moon’s end.” Father announces. He stands with his hands clasped loose in the door. “To celebrate your wedding.”

She stares.

“And a week of feasting, after.”

“So she’s—” She blinks. “She wants of me. Still.”

Her father lifts a brow. “I do assume that’s why she asked. In any case.” Waves his hand. “We’ll move quickly. The wedding is, of course, a formality in the whole affair—best done quick. So the marriage can take root.” He sits down on her chair, then. She doesn’t invite him. “Daemon’s supporters rouse in the east. Stronger and louder as his dogs find passage back. The Queen is unconcerned—wilfully, I think. But I find myself suspicious.” He inhales, long. “I need her other ear.”

(Father has a plan. The sky’s blue.)

She offers it slow, like an angling lure.

“Surely her bloodlust is trustworthy,” she entreats. “Rhaenyra the Cruel.”

He takes it.

“I devised such a moniker,” he states, haughty, “Precisely because it isn’t.”

She breathes inward, slow.

“And the—traitors. On spikes,” she offers. Waits. “You.”

He only raises a brow. Like she’s an idiot. “Targaryens burn their enemies.”

And then—

“Corlys Velaryon.” Her hand digs into the sheet, at her chest. He only watches. “He was your rival.”

He leans back, self-satisfied.

Ah, she thinks.

Rhaenyra invites her for supper.

Alicent dons her red dress—blush coloured, the one that matches her lip colour, and her earrings, and that tiny bit of rouge.

And her rubies, gentle around her neck.

It shouldn’t be formal. Daughter of a second son of a second house.

But Ser Erryk escorts her, her hand on his vambrace; and they announce her when she enters. Lady Alicent Hightower of the—and it’s not Rhaenyra’s quarters.

(A dining room, a real one, arching; with tapestries not of horrors—but of outside, of the sky.)

Rhaenyra’s in a black-and-red cloak. Rhaenyra’s donned her crown.

Bloodred, bloodred—

(Pink, maybe, at the edges.)

When she approaches her, then, from the edge, from the roaring fire—it’s a smile, and then—

And then the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms lowers, before her. Just low enough—hand reaching for her hand, her rings—she’ll see the scars—to take it; to kiss it, gentle, upon her fingers.

Her lips are soft.

(Almost her wrist, really.)

“My lady,” she says.

(And something stirs within her, truly.)

Rhaenyra waves her servant away—withdraws Alicent’s chair from the table; pushes it in behind her.

Pours her wine, even. Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

It’s quail and berries and breads and spices. Fireplums from the Reach.

She raises a brow. “Fireplums, Your Grace?”

“A short trip.” Rhaenyra merely shrugs. “On dragonback, anyway.”

(Free, free, free.)

Rhaenyra eats politely; seems to watch her, even still.

(And Alicent waits, until her gaze is gone, so she can stare herself.)

A servant finishes pouring Arbor red—and then Rhaenyra turns, all too quickly, to request something else, and it knocks clean out of her hands, empty—

Rhaenyra leans down—picks it up off the floor, hands it back. Pays absolutely no mind, unfazed, as she scurries away.

You’ve never been cruel, have you.

(Father hadn’t even picked up the chain.)

She meets blue, true blue, then; only looking.

(Quite intently, though.)

Alicent represses a smile. “You’re staring at me.”

Hypocrite, she knows.

“Apologies.” Rhaenyra doesn’t suppress it. “It’s quite tempting, really.”

Her ladies-in-waiting come; and her Pentoshi master, aboard a great and strange ship.

(And others disembark with him—something like the dragonkeepers, somehow, in dress—and shuffle away quickly, to a different litter, strange and then quick and then gone, as she watches.)

They come in Arryn blues, dress her in reds and blacks; loose waves, coiled braids. They’re Alyssa and Amanda and Elys, and they all touch her soft, and slow, and come easy and kind in the mornings; and they’re kind to Lylla. You’ve got such pretty hair.

(Lylla smiles.)

They keep her hands soft and clean; and they rub slow on the scarring—the tears—never look with disgust, or with scorn.

(Yarrow, and rosewater, and then balm, and then done, always.)

They help her adorn her rubies, too.

Her master is kind; black-haired and silent, and his smile is kind, and he’s gentle with her, when the tension’s off on her warp. Patho. He handles the shuttle like a string-bow; beat the batten like a song.

And he tells her about Pentos.

It sounds like a promise sometimes. Far across the sea there are many worlds.

She always demurs, across the loom. Everywhere there are fathers.

She watches her, there in the garden—sat with her feet up on another chair, eyes closed, silver shining in the sun.

And waving her hand so mercifully, pitifully off-beat.

(Still, if her bard notices, he doesn’t say anything.)

“—and there, on the sycamore boat,” he finishes, a final pluck to the lute, “Lyman and his goat.”

Rhaenyra sighs. “Incredible.” And sits up; looks back over at her. Big and wide and blue. “Would you like to hear it again?”

Alicent blinks. “A fourth time?”

(Is the Queen funny?)

Rhaenyra merely smiles. “Exactly my thought.” And nods again to her bard. “Wat—have at it.”

He takes another—maybe heavier—breath. “Lyman, he knew it, that tree would float—"

A tent’s being erected, outside the city—that great grass field.

And then several tents, like molehills; and then stands, and lists, and butts—

To celebrate your wedding.

She finds herself alone on the ramparts; watches with windswept curls.

(Leans forth, just above the yard.)

Clang. Rhaenyra’s sword, sideswiping Cole. Alicent leans across the balustrade. Rhaenyra turns, parries Erryk’s blow. Alicent settles on her elbows. Whistles of the morningstar—Rhaenyra parries again—trips Erryk to his knees—Alicent braces her hands underneath her chin, and bends a knee, and silver hair’s shining, whipping each way—

“Hey!”

Rhaenyra’s looking up. Cole’s morningstar whistles just by her ear—she catches it on the flat—shoves him back by the breastplate.

Points Blackfyre right up at her. “Praying for my victory, my lady?”

Caught.

And she’s about to call down—Your Grace, I apologi—

But then Rhaenyra only smiles. And reaches out with a gauntlet. “Come down.”

The training yard’s mucky. Cole and Erryk trod off, back toward the arms rack.

The Queen’s smiling.

(Smirking, maybe.)

Rhaenyra outstretches a hand; Alicent grants her own.

(It’s soft the way she takes it—pulling her closer ever-gently, with the thumb over her fingers barely pressing, nothing like Gwayne, or Mother, when she was angry, nothing like anyone.)

Rhaenyra’s arm snakes around her waist; her fingers push in gentle.

And with the other—offers her the sword.

“Hold it,” she encourages, something like tickled. Looking back—blue and unjudging and open. “If you wish.”

She does.

(The leather onyx strap. Silver of the otherworld.

Lost art, they’d once written, from that abandon, that dream, envy of kings, that black oily place—

That ruby; gleaming like her necklace.)

Blackfyre’s in her hand.

(She’d never felt like a king at—)

Rhaenyra reaches round her, again—close enough against her back and over her shoulder that she can feel her breath, see it in the morning chill, cold and slow.

The Queen guides her wrist. “Hold it aloft.”

And again—she does.

How dangerous, how free—

Rhaenyra, something of a grin. “Do you like it?”

She shakes her head. “I—” Gleaming, in that light. “It’s a wonder to behold, Your Grace.” She lowers it, gently, though, then—Rhaenyra’s fingers still soft under her wrist. Twists it in her hand; hands it back. “Though I’m not sure I’m one for swords.”

Rhaenyra acquiesces, it seems, takes it again; still she doesn’t move away.

There’s a glint in her eye. Smirking in that sense.

I want to touch her mouth.

(Alicent looks away.)

Rhaenyra’s fingers alight on her waist, then. “I shall hold the sword for us both, then,” she murmurs. “Shall I?”

And then Rhaenyra puts her free hand round her free wrist.

And lifts it—and chastely, purely, politely—kisses.

It’s not a dying dream.

It’s her summer knight, gleaming upon the hill.

She dreams he swings his sword; dreams he’s cutting chains.

She recalls studying the histories—when the maester would skip the pages. Not important, too much, too many. And so real life seems, eventually, too—

The days feel like flaps of a raven’s wings, as the fortnight comes and goes.

Rhaenyra’s lips on her wrist.

The tourney comes as if dreamed up in a day. Her hand in a thousand hands, my lord, my lord, my lady—the smallfolk and hedge knights and heralds and minstrels and bards and pages and armourers and squires—faces, endless; banners and trumpets and noise.

She sits by her father, in the royal box; Rhaenyra’s other councillors beside.

(And Gwayne. Hand of the Hand.)

Her Grace is going to joust, Gwayne leers.

Her father leans back. His pin gleams. Inappropriate.

Unless she wins, he retorts.

Alicent ignores them both.

Back and forth, back and forth Rhaenyra goes—whipping in the wind under that black armour, and silver running in waves beneath her helm—

Down, down, down.

She swallows. Bunches her skirts in her hand.

(The clashing sound of her lance, the clapping and thunder of her stallion—)

Rhaenyra asks after her favour, when it’s over; rides up to their box—extends her lance, removes her helm. The crowd’s uproarious. She’s smiling.

“If you would,” Rhaenyra calls.

Your tapestry’s almost finished, she wants to say.

Slides her favour down like it’s nothing.

(And sits again, after the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms tips her head to her, with a feeling she can’t describe.)

There’s a banquet, when the day’s done.

Rhaenyra’s dewy, when she finds her; freshly bathed. Smells like lavender when she leads her to the high table, when she bids her to sit down.

(And when Rhaenyra sits beside and turns and takes it and kisses her hand, again, and puts her eyes on that ruby necklace—and her dark red dress—and says you put the songs to shame, my lady.)

The hour of the eel, when Rhaenyra pours more wine—

She’s not sure why she says it.

The rest of the hall, preoccupied, encased in that low hum.

My mother died. Her eyes on her setting. When I was younger. And I sometimes feel that it’s coloured my life. Like ink spill on the page.

Rhaenyra looks.

(And no one’s ever looked at her that deep, not anyone.)

It has. Her hand comes over her own, by their cups. And it hasn’t.

Jousts, again.

Rhaenyra’s victorious—again.

They feast, again.

But before it a dance—where Rhaenyra takes her hand and leads her down, then, from the high table, puts her hand on her waist and takes the other; she’s never danced it, this Crownlander custom—her father’s watching though she doesn’t see him and doesn’t know where; Rhaenyra leads easy, and happily demanding, and sort of gentle, really.

And when her line separates—she backs up, and Alicent follows the lady beside her, backs away, too—

They draw together, and Rhaenyra snatches her waist, and lifts her.

Right up, clean into the air—her hands fly to her shoulders—puts her right down.

I like that, she thinks.

And then another, unbidden. I want you to touch me again.

It’s the duels, the next morning, and Rhaenyra says come to my tent and Alicent replies no, Your Grace, I should leave you to it, of course, and Rhaenyra says really and she replies really and then Rhaenyra sends a page to her box, something like begging.

(She ends up in the tent. Of course.)

Her squire’s doing up the last of her armour. It’s Cole and Erryk, behind her, again, attending to some collection of swords.

“Behold,” Rhaenyra grins. “Invincible.”

(She resists the urge to roll her eyes as she smiles; and then wonders with a start where the urge even came from.)

“Yes, Your Grace,” she indulges. “I have no doubt.”

“Well go on, then.” She steps forward—into her space—arms out. “Do your worst.”

“Your Grace—?”

“Strike me.”

She raises a brow. “In front of your queensguard, Your Grace?”

“Oh,” Rhaenyra’s grinning like a cat. “They well know they cannot protect me from you.”

(She’s not sure she doesn’t see Erryk grin, somewhere from the corner.)

“Right, then.”

(Rhaenyra only holds out her hands, surrender; raises a brow.)

She knocks her on the breastplate. Hard. A fistful strike. It clangs, and the side of her fist explodes—

And Rhaenyra’s fucking smiling.

Rude, she thinks, impatient, you don’t have to be a rude Queen—

Clang. Again. And then Rhaenyra’s smiling wider, and it’s emboldening, somehow—somewhere inside herself—and she pounds it again, and then again, and Rhaenyra’s biting her lip and then she’s fucking laughing and then Alicent’s fighting a grin at the edges of her lips and smacks her with two fists this time because this is fucking ridiculous—

(Wonders briefly what it must look like—her, in her dress, hitting Rhaenyra the Cruel like she’s a training yard dummy—)

“Excellent work. I’m defeated.”

And then quick as anything—Rhaenyra snatches her waist with two hands and pulls her close and kisses her right there, right on her cheekbone.

Heads off. Motions for her queensguard to follow. “Enjoy the show.”

(Alicent can’t enjoy the show. Alicent can’t even think.)

That night, at the banquet—

“But the Jade Compendium never reaches as far as the Dothraki sea. It bears mention of them, of course—as nomadic conquerors, their domain touched every end of Essos, at some unlucky hour of history—” She frowns, thinking, still, and Rhaenyra pours another goblet—“But in order to understand the north of the continent you’ve got to read Illister’s Horse Tribes. It’s the only one, really, with that detail—have you read it?”

“No, my lady,” Rhaenyra replies, then; arm stretched across the back of her chair. She takes a drink. “But I’m—right, I’m quite curious indeed,” And another drink. “What’s Illister say, then?”

(She knows Rhaenyra’s indulging her; that Rhaenyra knows nothing of Horse Lords and that it’s very much not by accident.

But Rhaenyra listens, when she speaks, and asks questions, like she’s heard it, and maybe it feels good, a new sort of good, to be indulged, sometimes.)

“Yes, it’s—it’s masterful, really,” she tells her. Rhaenyra’s eyes are back on her necklace, again, but she’s nodding along, anyway. “The Kingdom of Sarnor, to the north—a vast and strange people—it’s written in Summer and Winter Annals, but the book’s lost—only scraps, now. The Sarnori were once ruled by Fisher Queens, when the Silver Sea was broad and plentiful. It dried over the eons, and so the Sarnori descend from the last of their heroic sons—he married the daughters of the strongest neighbouring lords, and they call themselves the Tall Men, you know. They raced chariots, can you imagine?”

Rhaenyra’s on the side of her chair, sat a bit closer—watching her earrings, seemingly, now. “Chariots? In that snow and ice?”

“Yes, well—exactly, but they had hot summers—they gathered around the Sarne river, and in the Century of Blood after the Doom the horselords exacted their spoils.” She shakes her head. “Only one Sarnori settlement remains. But it’s incredible, isn’t it. None would have happened should they have been hemmed into the Freehold—but the Valyrians had no interest. Same with the Rhoynar. Left alone, changing history. Isn’t that sort of wondrous, how those—” She grasps. “Little choices, you know?”

“Wondrous,” Rhaenyra replies—fills her goblet again. “Sweet cakes, my lady?”

“No—do you ever wonder why—”

“Custard?”

“No, Your Grace—do you know why the Valyrians paid no mind?”

“No.” She can feel, then, light fingers—Rhaenyra’s eyes on her hair, hand on the back of her chair, just barely tracing her curls. “Tell me.”

“Oh.” She stops, then—Rhaenyra meets her eyes, again. “No, I was—I was hoping—I thought you might know, I suppose—because.” She stops. “Well.”

That lopsided grin. “I’ll throw a few bones into the fire. Confer with the ancestors.”

Alicent grins, too—takes a drink. “No. Well—the going theory is infighting. I don’t know if I believe it. But they say—it’s a dragon, that best occupies a dragon.”

Rhaenyra’s face falls, a little.

“Yes.” And she drinks again; longer. “I, erm—” Stops. “I imagine they’re right.”

Oh.

(That look, etched into her face, those blues; how Alicent can hardly stand it.)

Rhaenyra’s hand is still, atop the table. She takes it in her own; in both—plays gentle with her fingers, between the tendons. Rhaenyra lets her.

There are fingers at her curls, again. She sighs. “The war was not your doing, Rhaenyra.”

(She doesn’t exactly know it. But she knows it, somewhere deeper on.)

Rhaenyra looks off, then; and then reaches for the flagon. Turns back. “More?”

“I shouldn’t.” Eyes toward her father, only a few seats away. “I—” Exhales, slow. “Father would not approve.”

Rhaenyra looks, too; and leans back.

(Something in her face.)

“You realise when you’re crowned beside me,” she murmurs, low, “And round with a Targaryen babe. It shall be you.” Unwavering. “Who commands him.”

(That will never be true.)

Still she leans close—pulls her softly in by the wrist, kisses her cheek, anyway.

Father’s always sat in the dark with a fire. They’d grown up with black hounds and he’d liked them invisible in the corner that way—she’d notice as a child when it flickered in their eyes, the wet of the dog-eyeballs, which seen from the side looked too much like a man’s, and father had them cleaned with soap and oiled down so they never would stink but always smelled strangely, like it was covering something.

He tells her sit, and she always does, like always.

His eyes are locked upon the desk. Pressing one wax seal; then another.

“Father.”

He hums.

“You summoned me.”

“I did.” Another seal. “Has Rhaenyra yet agreed to pursue a campaign in the East?”

She pauses. “A campaign,” she repeats, syrupy—“In the East?”

“We can crush his Tyroshi dogs before they arrive at our shores.” And another. “Or after.” He doesn’t look at her. “Which do you think is preferable.”

Silence, then.

“Father.” Slow. “You didn’t ask me to—ask the Queen to pursue war—”

“Quite right. I didn’t ask you. And my command was not to ask her. You shall impress upon Rhaenyra the importance of an immediate muster and you shall exercise whatever tools at your disposal to see that she agrees.”

The flames dance. His shadow’s long on the wall, again. “Whatever tools.”

“Indeed. Those that women have always possessed.”

Another seal; another gob of wax.

She watches, then, as the ring departs; peels up, as it cools, and—

The three-headed dragon.

Something feels tight in her jaw.

“Father,” she whispers. “What’s that?”

He doesn’t even look. “Appeals,” he deadpans. “To the Iron Bank. To the Lysene fleet, for passage. To the Tyrells, for wartime provisions. Among others.”

“Those are matters of state.”

“Quite.”

“And the Queen doesn’t know.” She stares. “That’s the regnal seal.”

He used to feed deer to the hounds and watch them enjoy it.

He gazes up, lazy. The fire flickers in his eyes—the wet.

The Queen is young, he says.

Rhaenyra is gorgeous in triumph; golden-skinned and black-armoured, beaming and shining, dewy, like beaten silver, like the Sun—and all the clouds are gone, and all the mist’s burned off, and all the sky is clear, and shows itself, vaunting her, watching her too, like she’s come to love to watch her, like all the lords and ladies and women and men, like the maesters and the minstrels, the broad red realm.

When the crowd roars, and gleaming trumpets play, just for her, in this one moment, in this one place, on this sunlit day, helm gone, chin-up, hair down—

A queen.

With her favour pinned to the bridle, so everyone can see it.

Rhaenyra flows up to her like a river mouth.

For you. It’s devotion. The only woman in the Realm.

(Rhaenyra kisses her hand, slow, each finger. Then fills it with a moonbloom laurel.)

I know how you feel, she thinks.

Rhaenyra crowns her the queen of love and beauty.

She asks if it’s ivory, the dress.

No, Lylla replies. It’s not a dress at all.

She sees them hang it on the garderobe—the yellow-grey robe; the waistcoat and sash.

(And beneath it, on a pedestal—a silver-beaded headpiece.)

Quite foreign, Lylla comments. Beautiful though.

She doesn’t think of it.

(Her thoughts are quite simple, really.

Rhaenyra will kiss me tomorrow.)

And she wants her to, she wants her to, she wants to feel her face in her hands, take Rhaenyra’s face in her own. Doesn’t know what the words will be. Wishes she could write them.

You wanted me and I had never been wanted.

And made me feel bigger than all of it—the men, and the dragons, and dogs.

Her summer knight, godlike and resplendent in her dreams.

They’re on the hill. The sun’s shining. She’s in his arms, asleep, almost; and his sword’s drawn to the wind. It’s warm there.

She looks up. His arm departs her, and he reaches, and removes his helm—

Rhaenyra’s eyes glimmer blue; Rhaenyra’s silver spills forth.

It comes and comes sweetly.

They dress her, and adorn her, and bring her to the hill. The Queensguard is waiting—the court, and Crownlander lords, and knights of great honour.

(The Faith is not there, but Father’s cowed them, Gwayne says.)

With dogs, maybe.

Father and Gwayne, too, all mum, all watching—deferential and toadying and silent, as the dragonkeepers murmur some Valyrian rite, some strange song.

(Rhaenyra’s court, Rhaenyra’s realm. Not belonging to Viserys. Aegon’s daughter.

Syrax, beating her wings, coasts peaceful overhead.)

Rhaenyra.

Waiting, and wondrous, and smiling, with hands outstretched.

(She takes them.)

She’s not sure what happens next. Her hands are in her hands and her hands are in her hands—Rhaenyra strokes them gentle, with the underside of her thumb—more rights, and then a dragonglass knife, in her hands—

(And the murmur is like a battle drum, like a rhythm, deep and ancient and low, something foul in the chalice between them, and there’s a beast behind Rhaenyra’s eyes, I want to ride it; maybe I can.

Dragonrider.)

Rhaenyra cuts her lip. She barely feels it. Rhaenyra cuts her hand—she feels that, searing in the windchill, but then Rhaenyra cuts her own, and doesn’t react, and takes her hand, and it’s numb, from the cold, bleeding sluggish and numb, red against green, red against blue.

Rhaenyra’s clear as anything.

She murmurs something in Valyrian to her; she doesn’t know what it means.

(It sounds an orison; an intercession.

It sounds like I love you.)

Alicent leans in first.

Her hand falls upon Rhaenyra’s cheek—strokes, for a moment, but then she doesn’t want to wait; leans in closer.

I want your mouth.

Rhaenyra gives it to her.

(And she closes her eyes to the most beautiful thing.)

Her jaw is cradled delicate in her fingers, in her hands; her own at the back of Rhaenyra’s neck—against her cheek, still, pressing into the bone, into the curvature of it, like a statue in the garden.

Rhaenyra’s lips are soft, and open, and hot. Her mouth opens, and closes, and opens; soft and sweet each time. Rhaenyra touches her tongue with her tongue.

(Something burns and breaks and washes over, and there’s clear sun, like on a beach, but behind her eyes, in her soul.)

And her tongue leaves, then—lips become tentative and retreating and easier, and she moves further, and Alicent grips tighter, chases—

Rhaenyra pulls back. Rhaenyra’s smiling.

That’s all I want to do, she thinks.

“I shall be forever your servant,” Rhaenyra whispers.

I command you to love me, she almost says.

The celebration comes; the feast comes.

(Alicent kisses her at the high table, and tries to kiss her much longer, and then my father is watching and the court is watching and the septas are watching and even Patho is watching and her cheeks grow red and she pulls away with her eyes on her plate but Rhaenyra looks something like very much guiltless, very much satisfied.)

I wish you to call me Rhaenyra, she says.

I shall remain your lady, Alicent replies.

(Rhaenyra only grins.)

And then the afterwards comes.

(He beholds her; Your Grace, her father says.)

Rhaenyra kisses her again and apologises and tells her I must attend to Syrax. I should be abed very shortly, to join you.

(To join you.)

Gwayne approaches, after she goes. He saunters like he’s taken the castle, when Father’s not looking; thumbs braced on his girdle. And he’s smirking.

He leans down, low.

“I pray it isn’t rough for you,” he murmurs. “She’s used to riding a dragon.”

They dress her that night without smallclothes.

At first it’s only kissing—she loves kissing—

Rhaenyra’s hand travels down, to her waist; and then her thumb is at the side of her breast.

(Her throat grows tight.)

She brackets her arms around her neck, then—closes her eyes, shuts them to Rhaenyra’s hearth and canopy—Rhaenyra’s lips move away and fear throngs through her—and then they only return, but at her neck, and her heart races—

I want to go back to kissing, she wants to say, but that’s—that’s not—

(Smart girls shut up and t—)

Rhaenyra’s lips are still on her neck, a different part. Then they’re on her collarbone, open to the air above that silk chemise.

Rhaenyra’s hand falls to her open thigh. But it’s only just there. Not even squeezing or anything. It’s just there, it’s alright, it can be there, it’s alright if it’s just there—

It moves northward, slowly, as Rhaenyra’s mouth moves south.

(She can’t even see her face anymore.)

It’s dark.

(One day a man will see inside you.)

You know what she’s going to do. She’s not sure whose voice it is. Maybe her own. Why not just let her do it.

Save all the trouble of it, really.

Her thighs fall open, like she’s cut their string.

And Rhaenyra hums, like she’s said something (she hasn’t said anything) and then she’s reaching up and removing the silk from her breast and her breast is bare and Rhaenyra’s touching it, touching her nipple, with her fingers, playing with it, I can’t, and her throat closes and she freezes and her hands feel like bricks on Rhaenyra’s back I can’t and then Rhaenyra’s hand—on her thigh—it’s too close and no smallclothes and she’s going to do it and it’s too close and her mouth contorts and eyebrows draw and—

Rhaenyra touches her intimate place.

Alicent yelps.

“Oh my gods—!”

Quick as she came Rhaenyra’s hands are gone—braced on the bed, either side of her waist—her hair’s falling down her back.

Staring at her. With wide startled eyes.

“You—you—” Her brow contorts; and then flattens, and contorts again. “W—where?”

She can’t even breathe. Tries to make speech; fails. Then—“What?”

“Where?” Rhaenyra says, and it’s true panic, in her vision. “Where does it hurt?”

Her eyes are wide. She shakes her head.

(And shakes her head and shakes her head and shakes it—)

Tears blur her vision but still she can see that look upon her face. Of horror.

Rhaenyra’s placing the blankets over her—pulling the silk back over her breast and pulling the blankets over that.

“Gods,” Rhaenyra murmurs. To herself. “Gods gods gods.”

Her face tangles. Her tears are hot. “I’m sorry—”

“No. No, no, no. No.” More blankets. She’s got one leg off the bed, now. “No, no no. No.”

“I just—” Can she even be heard? “I just—I want to do kissing, again, Rhaenyra, please—if we could just do kissing—”

“We don’t have to do anything.” A final blanket. Both feet on the ground. “We don’t have to do anything. I’ll go. I’m so sorry. It’s okay. I’m going.”

“No.” And then Rhaenyra looks, again; maybe something just as startled as before. She’s wiping at her cheeks, the back of her hand—sitting up and wiping and reaches, all the way out, extended and wanting, like when she was a girl. “Stay, please stay—I beg of you.”

Rhaenyra takes it—consternation still in her eyes—takes it without question.

“My wife need not ever beg me,” she breathes.

They do just kissing, again.

Get on top, Rhaenyra tells her, through stolen breaths. Alicent murmurs what and then she says it again—on top, on top of me.

(Alicent slides on top of her; parts her thighs upon her hips.)

(Something stirs.)

“Do you like this better?” Rhaenyra whispers. She’s a picture on the pillow—gazing up in the moonbeam, a godlike face. “How’s this feel?”

Good, she murmurs, and traces the tips of her fingers—Rhaenyra’s neck, down to her shoulders, her collarbones, the top of the beginning of the swell of her—

“You can touch me wherever you like.”

Alicent swallows; moves her hand to the edge of her breast, then; the gentle side, where it swells up, round.

“How does it feel?” She whispers.

Rhaenyra merely raises a brow. “Like it does for you,” she croons. “When you touch your own.” And  her gaze flickers down; remains. “Have you ever touched your own?”

Alicent shakes her head.

“Ever?” It’s unjudging. Shakes her head no again. “What about your—”

“Of course not.” Like she’s asked if she’s bedded a stable hand. “Never.”

Rhaenyra quirks a brow. “Alicent,” she begins, gently. “You have to touch yourself. At least once.”

She swallows. No. No no no. Her breath comes in uneven. “That belongs to you now.” Shakier still. “It’s not for me to touch.”

“Belongs to—” Rhaenyra leans back on the pillow; shuts her eyes, even as her thumb continues in soft circles on her hip. “Alicent.” And fixes her gaze, again. “Your quim belongs to you.”

“Don’t say that.” Her nose wrinkles. “That word.”

Rhaenyra’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “Your quim?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it called, then—?”

“It’s my—my flower.”

(She wonders if she doesn’t see Rhaenyra grin, then.)

“Right.” Squeezes her hips again, gentle. “As my wife, then,” she begins, slow, “I would make a request of you.”

Alicent waits.

“That I should kiss you,” she drawls; eyes low. “And whilst I do. You should touch your flower. Whatever way you wish.”

Alicent bites her lip.

“Alright,” she whispers.

Rhaenyra’s lips come back—Rhaenyra sits up, a little, again, with her in her lap, kissing her hot and hungry and good and soft—that feeling again—something in her chest—that need, lower—

I should be a good wife and touch it. Like she asked.

Alicent reaches down; slips a hand past her silk, where her legs are spread over Rhaenyra’s lap, her soft braies. Rhaenyra keeps kissing her—her tongue touching her tongue.

(Her silk’s lifted up, and then her fingers find it; she rubs, and it’s wet-sounding.

And then Rhaenyra’s off of her mouth, looking down, as her hand moves in a circle, and something feels good, and her lips part.

Good girl, Rhaenyra murmurs, and it throngs, somewhere deep down, and it feels very good, and she moves her hand faster, and the silk is hiked up near her navel, and she knows Rhaenyra can see.

Rhaenyra goes back to kissing, though—as promised.)

It’s some moments more—she’s moving fast, and it’s an—it’s—an odd instinct, really—she wants to rub against it—wants to rub against Rhaenyra—spreads her legs frustratedly wider—

“Good girl,” Rhaenyra croons, again. “Does your little flower feel good?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like touching it? Does she like to be touched?”

“Yes, yes–“

Her hands are almost round her backside, now—just one.

(And she doesn’t know what she wants exactly but wants to keep rubbing and wants something else too but isn’t certain really what that is and maybe just more kissing, but she wants Rhaenyra to touch her backside, too—)

Rhaenyra takes a handful of her arse and then squeezes.

(Bright above in arcs of light—shocking the cloud-cover sunlit again, like a lightning storm, like a burning star—

Dragonflame.)

It sings. That’s the only way she can think to describe it.

(She clutches desperate to Rhaenyra’s shoulders, her back.

And as soon as it’s over she scrambles for the hem of her silk and lifts it up and looks down at it, pink and wet, almost as though to make sure it’s still fucking there.)

“Oh, beautiful,” Rhaenyra murmurs, lips glistening. Her eyes are on it, too. “Beautiful, look at you.” Staring. Alicent likes it. “Swollen. Her very first time.”

She’s not sure where she is, in space, exactly.

(Somewhere upon a great big world.)

“I want to kiss again,” she breathes, heady.

Rhaenyra’s open and clear and blue. “I wonder if you’d let me kiss you,” she murmurs, “Somewhere else.”

And then she’s laying down—tentative—Rhaenyra’s crawling toward, slow, telegraphing, and then Rhaenyra’s kissing her knee, do you like that, she’s nodding, and kissing the inside of her thigh, do you like that, nodding, and her hands are just there, on each side, not moving, where Alicent can see, and then—

“I’m going to kiss your flower now.” Eyes up, over her belly, her sternum—looking her right in the face. “I’m going to kiss it very soft. Is that okay?”

Nods nods nods. “Okay.”

(It pulls a sound from her throat the likes of which she’s never seen.)

“Beautiful,” Rhaenyra murmurs, as she’s going again again again Rhaenyra kiss it again. “Your flower,” she smiles, soft, “Gives the most wonderous nectar indeed.”

She sleeps in Rhaenyra’s arms; nose to her sternum, entirely flush, entirely held, entirely asleep.

And then Rhaenyra moves, extricating—making to leave, even—

“No.”

When she opens her eyes, Rhaenyra’s laughing, albeit silently. “No?”

She wraps her fingers about her sleeve, again; looks up at her, big-eyed.

“No,” she repeats, softer. “A little longer.”

(Rhaenyra settles in behind her—tugs her back and falls asleep.)

She spends time with the ladies of the court. It’s expected.

Your Grace, they call her.

They weave with her. It’s what she wants to do.

(“I couldn’t give a fig about those old fucking bats,” Rhaenyra says, but her father feels differently.

They hold sway to powerful ears, he intones. As you should.)

(Rhaenyra gets a lightless look in her eye when she remembers the war, and Alicent isn’t going to bid her to start another one.)

Rhaenyra does, however, expect her at the small council.

(When Father’s not machinating, she stares at her lips.

When Father’s machinating she sits, and is silent, and good, and rolls her marble back and forth—red, like her rubies, rising and falling with her breath—watches Rhaenyra. Tries to see if she sees it in him. The design.

We must pursue him, Father urges.

Rhaenyra’s distracted. Sellswords. Ironborn. Grain to the North. Rebuilding ships. She’s not sure she does.)

They eat, together; drink together; walk together.

(Rhaenyra’s still scary, sometimes; when they’re at the council—when she’s angry.

Slamming her fists on the table, and commanding her councillors, dragonflame, dragonflame—)

And other times not.

(Stroking her bare knee, again, her calf. Wiping tears away. You are my wife. And we can lay together whenever, whatever time it is that you wish it. You call for me day or night, and we will go very slow, and very gentle. Stroking again, her soft thumb. Never a rush, my moonbloom. It isn’t a race.

I’m a bad wife to you.

No.

Glistening. Do you—She’d choked. Do you wish it weren’t me?

You are the wife I chose. Eyes warm, clear. You are who I want.)

Kissing her, in stolen corridors; asking her to kiss my—

Yes, yes, Rhaenyra always says yes.

(Stood up off the Iron Throne once, when she’d whispered it, her request—and how perfect Rhaenyra fit that chair—

This audience is finished. Departed from the court, Alicent’s hand in her hand.)

Sometimes she says slow, and show me your hands.

(Her father snarling, holding the chain—)

Rhaenyra holds her after. She smells like her dragon sometimes. Here I am, sweetling, she whispers, here I am. Did that feel good?

Rhaenyra wears armour on her daily rides, and Alicent lays her cheek against her breastplate, when she’s back, black and warm from the sun.

She reads her Ten Thousand Ships.

Do you remember when you saved me, she says.

I do, Rhaenyra replies. You were so beautiful.

Rhaenyra never drinks alone. She’s noticed.

But still there she finds her—on the veranda, after the twilight’s done. The hour of the bat.

Arbor gold on the table beside her. Staring off at the night.

Perhaps time alone is a part of marriage. Alicent shuts the door quietly; moves behind the screen—sheds her shoes, her earrings; wonders if she should call for her bath in the other rooms, if the noise might disturb her.

But then Rhaenyra turns, just as she looks up.

Her wife leans back; silver in the half-moon. “Did you always fancy girls?”

Alicent dimples her chin; sits feet away at Rhaenyra’s desk—works on shedding her stockings. Rhaenyra watches. “I suppose. In a manner of speaking.” Slides one off her ankle—onto the stone. “I don’t know, in truth. The only person I’ve ever fancied is you.”

She raises her glass; brows quirking. “Well. That’s always nice to hear.”

Alicent sighs, looking at her again; melancholy.

(Father always hated it when mother pestered and pestered and she nagged, he said—)

Rhaenyra isn’t Father.

“Sweetling,” she says, softly. “Is everything alright?”

Rhaenyra traces the rim of her cup, a single finger.

“It’s the anniversary,” she murmurs, then. “It’s been a year.”

Alicent looks on. “Daemon.”

“No.” And she’s looking out, again. “Laenor.”

Laenor.

Alicent finds a cup, by the sideboard.

(She sits beside her.)

Rhaenyra’s eyes float to her; and then float away.

She’ll tell me, she thinks.

(She does.)

“My father never remarried,” Rhaenyra begins, slowly. Takes another drink. “My mother died terribly. I think it broke him somewhere inside. They were an arranged match, of course. But he wouldn’t have had it another way. It was always her, for him.” Sighs; smiles softly. “Which I can understand.”

Alicent gives her a look; still kind. “You didn’t know me, sweetling. Only that my father was willing to countenance a very—ancient custom.”

“I knew.” Rhaenyra says. “I knew upon the road.”

“When I was half-conscious—”

“Especially when you were half-conscious. There’s an honesty to half-consciousness.” Another drink. “And you were beautiful. Like a song.”

Eyes on the floor; immaculate stonework. Blood-bricks. “My brother told me I was fit for the dogs.” The night’s quiet. “And that my father should let them have me.”

Something returns to her then; solid and slow-moving, volcano-fire. “Your brother’s a cunt.”

She doesn’t say anything. He probably is.

“No, but—” Gestures with her goblet. “She died. And he died too, in time. First in the soul, before the body. But Corlys—my cousin Laena, you see. He couldn’t understand why the King wouldn’t do him the honour. He said there was no comparable match, which was true. That Laena was young, and rich, and Valyrian, all true, too. That putting a child in her would be no more work than a night. I suppose I can’t fault him for that outlook either.

“Laena was wed to Daemon instead. A consolation prize. And then she died as well.” Purses her lips. “My father succumbed to—to the chill. A fortnight later. Just—” Shakes her head. “Gone. This entire man. Like blowing a candle out. News reached him quickly. My uncle returned for his crown.”

Alicent frowns. “But he knew who Viserys chose—”

“Daemon isn’t ruled by those things.” She waves her hand. “I don’t know why—but his daughters fled upon my cousin’s young dragon. That she made it across the Narrow Sea is itself a wonder, and they landed by fortune upon Storm’s End—once home to their maternal great-grandmother, Lady Jocelyn. Only upon her memory did Borros Bonehead send a raven to Rhaenys. She took Meleys from Driftmark. Never returned. And the Baratheons chose no side.”

She swallows. “But Lord Corlys.”

“Declared for Daemon—to spite your father. His rival. And Daemon’s. Forgetting me—his cousin, too.” She exhales, slow; drinks. “Those men and their bitterness. Say what you want about your father—at least he had grander plans for this realm than to needle those damned child-kings. And old Otto got there first, anyway. By the time Corlys and Daemon mustered no great house had love for my uncle. Not the Lannisters, who financed my cause, or the Tyrells, who heeded their bannermen’s call. The Knights of the Vale marched for me, for my mother, and Old Tully was too addled to choose sides. Of course the Starks couldn’t be bothered to face a Southron war. But none of it mattered, really. The war of men was not real.” A star shoots, then,  just small—they watch. “It was always about the dragons.”

(She burned everything.)

“Syrax and me—we stood alone. And Laenor—his father beseeching him to tilt the odds, he, ever the good son—Daemon upon Caraxes. Laenor upon Seasmoke.”

She’s silent, then. For a long time.

(Alicent waits.)

“Laenor was the worse rider,” she whispers. “By far. He flew out to battle alone one day. It had been months. Maybe he felt more confident. Caraxes, miles away.” Sad eyes, deep. “He forced my hand, you know.”

“That’s not your fault, Rhaenyra.”

Shakes her head. “Laenor was a good man. And a good sailor. Good cousin. He was never cross, always kind, perpetually true. We—” Stops. “We caught him by surprise. The cloud cover. And I remember—it was so hazy, so foggy—I remember Seasmoke sensed it and turned, belly up, to lock with Syrax, but I think the fog—he missed.” Turns her cup; turns it again. “The sound was unbelievable. Ripping and tearing. The smell worse. And then they just—” She waves her hand. “Fell. Just like that. Through the cloud bank in an instant, in the blink of an eye. Gone. Like he’d never taken flight at all.”

Rhaenyra, she whispers.

“I looked for him on the ground,” she whispers.

(Alicent says it again.)

Silence, for a while.

“Daemon garrisoned all his fucking foreign sellswords at Harrenhal, sleeping in the damp.” Examines her cup. “No Westerosi would fight to give him Westeros, you’d think that’d have been a signal of the futility—we met above the God’s Eye. It took hours. We had to be swift, and endure. A blow, then another—diving and retreating, diving and retreating, until that beautiful beast was in ribbons, and—just like that.” A flick of her wrist. “He flew away. I pursued him to the end of the continent. To the edge of the Narrow Sea. And then I stopped.” She stares out at the city. “And Daemon kept flying.

“And Corlys was stranded—I was so angry—” Stops. Looks. “You will think badly of me.”

Alicent doesn’t say anything at all.

“I burned it,” she whispers. “I burned him to ash. All of it. Later your father counselled me—so long as Daemon was alive—forever a challenged queen. Half-legitimate.”

She doesn’t say anything.

Rhaenyra sighs. “Rhaenyra the Cruel, he said.”

He doesn’t summon her. He comes upon her rooms, this time.

(And she’s so rarely there, anymore—asleep with Rhaenyra, in Rhaenyra’s bed—dressing in Rhaenyra’s alcove, Rhaenyra liked to watch her dress—

“You weren’t at council today.”

He stands in the door. It shuts behind him.

“No.” She looks up from her letters—Ceryse, first; and thanking Rhaenyra’s honoured guests, from the fortnight prior—“I had other matters.”

His eyes are cold. “You have a single matter.”

She holds her chin steady. “Clearly not.”

(Rhaenyra kissed me today, as long as I wanted; and read my writings on the trouble in the North and told me I was sharp, and wise, and so, so wanted.)

He paces closer. She doesn’t move.

“If Rhaenyra,” he begins, slow, like she’s an idiot but she knows she isn’t, “Is no longer Queen. What do you think happens to us?”

He gazes into her. She looks right back.

(She doesn’t even know why, when—)

“Daemon might carve a domain in the East. But he has made no attempt to turn West. No attempt to recover his forces. No attempts of diplomacy, no appeals to the great houses.” Her voice barely wavers. “A war is not in Rhaenyra’s interest. Not the way it’s in your own. Preoccupied dragonrider, fearing and paranoid dragonrider, one who rides where you say. And where else, in such a time, should the realm turn,” she whispers. “But her first, sensible councillor.”

He nods; dimples his chin. Silent as stone.

“Well,” he intones, slow, lazy. “How very saddening to hear.” Sighs, then. “There need not have been sides between us.”

Quick as anything, quick as a snake—

His hand slams high onto the back of her neck—thick and hard and tightening as he drags her from round the desk, hauls her before him, towering close, looming.

By the scruff, like a dog.

His nose by her nose. She can smell his breath.

“Do you think,” he hisses, hot and venomous, “That this crown gives you power?”

His other hand up to her ear—earrings, new, Rhaenyra’s gift—he closes his hand around the gemstone; yanks.

She screams. There’s blood on his hand.

“You will impress wisdom upon the Queen,” he breathes, close. “Or I will impress it upon you.”

Rhaenyra holds her that night.

(It isn’t torn. Just scratched. Lylla’s cleaned it. She tells Rhaenyra it caught on her dress.

I’m so very sorry, Rhaenyra says, contrite, and Alicent feels bile rise.)

It’s always quiet in their rooms, this way; when Rhaenyra’s lost in that liminality, and she’s still thinking, all the time.

(Rhaenyra wanted to kiss her flower again; she’d said I don’t feel well—true—and Rhaenyra had dismissed the idea without another thought.

I should make war on the illness that’s done it. And then merely kissed her cheek.)

Her head’s on her shoulder; her hand on her chest.

“Rhaenyra,” she murmurs, to the dark. Rhaenyra hums in return. “Do you ever worry over the east.”

Rhaenyra exhales, then—long and low. “I think of it. From time to time.”

“I—” Bile, again. She shoves it down. “I should think you might consider it,” and it’s acid in her mouth, rotten cheese, but still—“Proactivity. With Daemon.”

She’s silent, for a while. Alicent wonders momentarily if she’s gone to sleep.

“Proactivity,” Rhaenyra repeats.

Alicent settles in, then, closer. Rhaenyra tucks her in firm.

She’s at the council today.

(Small and stuck-still, with her eyes wide, with her soul bleeding.)

Father sits like iron in the chair.

“I should think,” Rhaenyra begins—hand idly on her marble, eyes out the window, when the rest of the business is done—"We might revisit the business with Daemon.”

Tyland Lannister quirks a brow. “Yes, Your Grace—” Glances to Otto, then—“Some of us  have considered the matter quite closely.”

“And.”

“And we think it might be—prudent,” he continues, ever supplicant, “Should we approach reports on his conquests as something of a—” He frowns. “A sign, if you will. Of things to come. On this side of the Narrow Sea.”

“They’re a bit modest to call conquests,” Rhaenyra counters.

“Indeed, Your Grace—but as each keep falls, its garrison is sworn to Daemon’s cause—”

“Assuming he has one, and it’s not a characteristic pastime—”

“Your Grace.”  Father raises his hand; Tyland’s jaw snaps shut. “I understand your desire to keep a lasting peace. But circumstances have changed. Daemon takes action.” Gaze hard, long, sure. Maybe in another life—maybe somewhere else, a different daughter believed him. “We must do the same.”

“Proactive,” Rhaenyra repeats; drumming her fingers.

(And it comes up and Alicent excuses herself and finds the privy and purges—purges it all.)

There’s no stopping her in a bloodthirst.

She takes it off the garderobe; traces it slow, with bare hands.

Rhaenyra’s dress.

For her troubles upon the road.

Little girls without family are worth very little.

That first time in the stream—Uthor had pushed her, and Ceryse had laughed, and Gwayne, too; she’d stood up with a sob and he’d shoved her back, the ends of his toes. Stay there, he’d jeered. You play the fish, remember?

Rhaenyra’s pillow smells like Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra’s jewellery doesn’t quite fit her hands. You can have whatever you like. Her first dying dream was nine years old.

You were terrible, monstrous and terrible—

Wrong, said Septa Agnes. Not like a high-born girl.

Rhaenyra stands out at the edge of the veranda, some nights; with her hair down, silver-white in her nightdress. The fabric tousles on the wind, rippling slow, like waves, palms down on the balustrade, bare hands, bare feet.

(Rhaenyra stands tall in steel-armour, black as dragonglass, holds her up with her face framing the Sun in the sky and says you’re dreaming, you know.)

Hurrying from the dogs, hurrying in the red.

Lord Rosby, closing her eyes, the sound, the sword, I looked for him on the ground, Corlys’ ship burning, like blowing a candle out.

I should have them make beautiful pictures, she traces the silk, So our grandchildren will know what you meant to me, then.

(The world is not as we know it.

My father is not as I know him.)

She hangs it back up.

His fire’s roaring, in his hearth.

(Hers as well.)

She sits, just across; her back to the light.

(He’s enshrouded.)

“You saw Gwayne push me down, once. And I got up and he did it again.”

Otto hums; eyes on his papers. “Indeed.” Toneless. “It made you tougher.”

“It made me afraid. That was what you wanted.”

And then he sighs; looks up with tired eyes. “And what do you want now?”

(She doesn’t reply.)

Watches the lines on his face in the lowlight. We were kings once.

“You brought me those books,” she says. “Though you never put much stock in women.”

“I hardly think a fair history should bear that out.”

He shakes his head. Pulls a seal up. The three-headed dragon.

And then he stops. Puts his hands down, folded, before him; and looks.

“You are an uncommonly pretty, commonly intelligent, bookish girl, of whims and odd dreams and pains and melodrama and strange flights of fancy that only the gods could decipher. Your mother was no beauty to speak of and I’ve seen mine own face, even young, and so I can only give to understand that the Seven have cursed this perennial infantilism upon you as an act of balancing gifts. I thought once it might be different but I have seen these last months what you are. For all you’ve made of what you’ve got from me I might have been better off selling Rhaenyra a sacred cow.” He leans back. “And Rhaenyra. Uncommonly pretty and with a similar affliction, uncommonly unintelligent. Predictably ferocious, true to what rewards, full of sawdust and hungry and easily led. Like a bitch. And so I shall lead her. And you—” He stops, stops, leadening. “Will lay down for her just reward.”

You don’t know what it means to love somebody.

She gets up.

“Where are you going?”

She shakes her head, incredulous. What even to say? “To Her Grace, of course.” His eyes burn. She stares right back. “To tell her. As a good wife should.”

There are footsteps down the hall. He’s out of time.

And she turns, on her heel—

It beats into the side of her skull and she stumbles for half of three paces and falls to her knees, ringing—

Her father, nose wrinkled. A journal in his hand.

Run—like with the dogs, like through the stream—I’ve got to—

She looks up.

Rhaenyra’s standing in the door.

(The hilt of Blackfyre in her hand.)

Perfect, perfect silence.

Rhaenyra gazes quite slow—from her, hands and knees on the ground, prone; to Father, over her.

He draws breath. She can hear it. “Your Grace—”

She holds up a hand.

(It’s strange, upon her face, that look.)

“Did you,” she breathes, and it’s the quietest she’s ever been, “Did you lay hands on my wife, Otto?”

He works his jaw. “She is my daughter.” Hard and cold. “And I shall strike her as I please.”

And then Rhaenyra’s advancing and her hands moving and she’s drawing the blade and Otto’s beginning to shout and retreat and Rhaenyra’s striding and Alicent scrambles scrambles scrambles to her feet—

“No—no no no!” Hands on Rhaenyra’s chest, both, hard, pushing—“No, Rhaenyra—”

Rhaenyra all but shoves her aside with arm over her waist, pushing her backward right into Erryk, who’s there, then, startled, who’s just entered behind—he catches her against his breastplate, gentle even as she struggles—looks back to the Queen. “Your Grace—"

“See my wife to our chambers.”

“Rhaenyra—”

(Erryk complies; and Erryk’s stronger—)

But she turns, in that split-second he’s dragging her off, imagines it—

Rhaenyra, leaning over, sword tip to his throat—“You will depart at nightfall with nothing but your life,”—Rhaenyra digging it in—“And should I ever get word—” Her father nodding, nodding, humbled, begging, complying—Rhaenyra telling him you are stripped, hereby, of your position—

But she doesn’t.

She just runs him through.

He sputters in the final moments.

“The Realm will know,” he rasps. “They’ll know you’ve slew your Hand.”

She leans down low, right in his face. “I suppose they’ll fear me more.”

She sits on their bed.

(The dress hangs, limp, by the firelight.)

Rhaenyra enters. She looks up. There’s a speck of blood on her face. She can see it across the parlour.

Father’s—

“I should release you.” Her hands hang at her sides. “From this union. You should not have to look upon my face.”

Alicent rises.

“No,” she says.

She strides in long gaits to close the distance and Rhaenyra opens her arms as always and Alicent kisses her with her tongue and her teeth and her wrists and her hips and her lips and her body and oh, Mother, Mother, Mother above.

It happens upon Dragonstone.

(I didn’t want to. I wanted to tell you.

(I’ve lied to you, my love.)

Rhaenyra, cool in the salt spray. Well I killed your father. So. Even.

She’d stared out. He beat my mother.

I know, Rhaenyra said.)

It’s a black new moon upon the mount. Blankets and feather pillows upon a mighty dais, the open air.

Here, here, now.

The dragonkeepers pour black oil to a cup. She drinks it. Rhaenyra drinks it too.

(Her dragon circles overhead.)

There’s a great fire.

Rhaenyra cuts her hand. King’s blood.

And hands her the dragonglass, too. King’s blood.

(We were kings, once.)

She’s laid down in silks upon the pillows and when she pulls her by the neck—my dragon—Rhaenyra follows, devoted, as ever, sinking in, true.

She closes her eyes and when she opens them the world is gone; swallowing the light behind her eyes, shifting focus—the oil thickens in her veins with rhythmic humming, ink on a water lily. And Rhaenyra descends.

Fourteen fires all around them; fourteen flames in the darkness, and Rhaenyra’s eyes flicker, kaleidoscopic like stars—blood-red, grass-green, bright-blue, gold; amethyst, amethyst, amethyst—

(The world is not as we know it.)

She closes her eyes once more.

A king, kneeling in the wood. His hair’s red and damp. He’s holding Vigilance.

She turns. A man standing tall in the shadow of a great dragon, larger than all the world; his daughter points across the sea.

Behind her, behind her, the head of the dais—a Stark. With a black cloak, and a bear’s head pommel. He raises the blade to the sky. It bursts into flame.

And Rhaenyra.

Nose to nose, face to face, eye to eye—breathing into her lungs; breathing her breath.

You’re inside me.

(It’s as close as she can get. It’s not close enough.)

The feeling is unspeakable.

(It’s not about the feeling at all.)

I love you, Rhaenyra says.

(Alicent hears a roar in the flames. Alicent closes her eyes.)

She wakes Rhaenyra, in their chambers, at Dragonstone.

You have blessed me with a son, she tells her, lips on her skin. And his name is Aegon.

She stares outward, even as Rhaenyra kisses her, her cheek, her shoulder—falls back asleep.

It doesn’t rain, day or night. Clear.

This baby shall have no father.

She sees them in the gardens, from the ramparts.

(She’d recognise Rhaenys Targaryen anywhere, maybe.)

She’s wearing black. Rhaenyra is, too.

I never wanted to kill your son.

(Rhaenyra’s never looked younger, she thinks, than then.)

Rhaenys puts her hands upon her shoulders.

Men have made terrible choices.

Squeezes, gentle, solemn, long.

We carry on.

Rhaenys accepts the golden pin.

The heads come down, after that. And the pyres.

She presents it to her, later, when Rhaenyra touches her swell, just shy.

(I can see it when you bathe, Rhaenyra vows. She scoffs. You can’t see anything.)

A great soft tapestry, wide and blue, of the summer sky.

He’ll look like you did, young, she insists.

Rhaenyra grins. I’m not sure you’d have liked me back then.

She shrugs. I think I’d like you any way.

Quite the commitment, that.

I’m glad it happened this way. Tilts her head upward, mouth open, hands in her hair, when Rhaenyra makes contact. Better to be late sometimes.

The moons wax and wane.

And then­—

Hours they wait, hours and hours.

Her maesters and midwives pay it no mind; and not Lylla, either, who practices needlepoint in the corner going nature of kings, Your Grace. They’ll come when they so decide.

(Rhaenyra is beside herself. Watching and rubbing and worrying and tensing and pacing—)

“Go for a ride,” she says, again, shoving Rhaenyra gently at the shoulder, where she’s watching the maester prod her stomach with something resembling terror. “Syrax is restless.”

Rhaenyra swallows. “I cannot leave.”

“You can, Rhaenyra, we’ve hours to go, even after my labours have truly begun. My waters have only just broken.” Another shove. “Go. And a long one, please.” Accepts Rhaenyra’s gentle kiss to her cheek. And another. “Rid this frenetic energy.”

Rhaenyra sighs, then. “Right.” And, as ever, complies—

“I love you,” Alicent calls.

She turns in the doorway; smiles.

The baby comes in four hours.

The Grand Maester marvels. The fastest I’ve ever seen.

Rhaenyra, utterly in love—cradling him by the window. There’s a dragon egg in his cradle. Syrax’s.

“And my wife shall have lavender water,” she calls. Yes, Your Grace, the maids say. “And my wife’s bath shall have lilies.” Yes, Your Grace. “And my wife shall have suckling pig with verjus—”

“Shall I?” Alicent muses.

“—And spiced pheasant, and bread, with figs and honey—”

Alicent hums. “And she shall have a nap.”

Rhaenyra barely hears it. “And the furs upon her bed—she shall have mink, and sable—”

It’s five nights, before the maesters allow Rhaenyra to sleep in her bed.

“I’m still bleeding, a little,” she forwarns, even as Rhaenyra saddles right up behind—tangles their legs together. “Spotting, really.”

Rhaenyra kisses her neck; lavender-clean. “I should give you the Seven Kingdoms for this hardship.”

She smiles; basks in the weight of Rhaenyra, solidity of her.

And hums. “I’ll have just one kingdom, maybe.”

Aegon turns one. His hair’s in ringlets.

He says mama, and that’s all he wants to say—mama mama mama. Her swell is just gentle, again—a fortnight less than four moons—but enough that fresh bread and honey have begun to materialise in her quarters, suddenly, and fourteen exotic pelts from Essos, and the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms often lingers around her apartments; wondering if she’d like a back massage, again.

She tells her later, in the bath. I should desire four children from you.

Rhaenyra raises a brow. Four, is it.

Alicent pouts. To think I’ve been a loving wife to you. Dutiful. And Rhaenyra’s rolling her eyes, already—And you would deny me a baby.

Her hands splay over her stomach, gentle. We will speak again. Her thumb, just slow. After Aegon’s gotten his brother.

It’s not. Leans back, onto Rhaenyra’s shoulder, stares up into the stained-glass moonlight. She’s a girl.

Once upon a time she was a lady in a carriage; once upon a time getting tossed along the road.

(Her baby smiles up at her from soft linens; she kisses her red-blonde curls.

My eternal love, my little joy.

Daughter, she invokes.)

Aegon races through the Godswood, quick; giggling from his belly. Rhaenyra chases right behind him. Here comes the dragon. Aegon laughs and laughs.

She snatches him up and kisses and cuddles. Alicent loves to watch.

Rhaenyra the Restorer.

The Realm heals, in its peace.

(She does, too.)