Chapter Text
I bet on losing dogs
I always want you when I'm finally fine
How you'd be over me looking in my eyes when I come
Someone to watch me die
***
In the sleepless nights and aching days that followed, Alicent would silently berate herself for failing to rise earlier the morning Rhaenyra fulfilled her promise to return to King’s Landing on dragonback.
Perhaps she could have taken one last walk through the halls of the keep, seen the light filter through trees in the outcropping just before the Godswood, touched her daughter’s face without fear one last time before they were all consumed.
It would not have changed anything that followed. Alicent understood this. Long ago, she had abandoned the concept of rectification, the idea of setting the world right. This was how it was always meant to be. The gods had willed it — the loss, the destruction, the chaos — and it was meaningless to pretend this fate could be altered. To wish against the will of the gods was a fallacy, just a helpless strain against shackles that would never be loosened.
Still, in her quieter moments of solitude, Alicent would come to wish for a handful of moments to be returned, if only to say goodbye to the last dregs of the life she once knew. To make peace.
The bells tolled to signal the arrival of war. It had raged long enough outside their walls, consuming the realm that surrounded them. Alicent heard Rhaenyra’s return long before she ever saw her, the dull beat of Syrax’s wings familiar in a way that once might have been comforting. She stood in the arched overlook at the top of the Hand’s tower, watched Rhaenyra and her family descend on dragonback like vultures, ravenous and unyielding, upon King’s Landing.
Criston’s armor clamored against itself as he hurried up the steps behind Alicent, voice low and urgent as he moved to her side.
“We need to leave.” The knight’s eyes scanned the scene below them, flicked back to Alicent’s face once, twice. “The dragons are landing to the south of the Keep, but there are several routes we can take to circumvent them.”
Criston swept past her into the adjoining room, eyes roaming for any valuables he might need to collect before they fled, voice prattling with matter-of-fact certainty as he detailed his plan to spirit them away to a ship already set to sail for safety. Alicent closed her eyes, let the sound of his voice muffle against the building roar in her ears.
“My queen.” Criston strode across the room, hand wrenching away from the pommel of his sword to grab at her arm. Half a lifetime together and he had laid his hands on her only a half-dozen times. Never like this, never with feeling, never grasping and pleading with desperation. His touch felt as foreign as that of a stranger. “ Alicent .”
Another heartbeat passed, slow and painstaking, before Alicent turned to meet his gaze. Criston was not her friend, not quite her confidante. She did not trust him, even as he safeguarded the deepest of her secrets — at least the ones she could speak aloud. Still, his steadfastness had always been a comfort. Even now, he held such assurance, such a certainty that he could save her.
“We must leave. Now.” Criston hesitated, hand faltering against her elbow before it raised to her face. His armor was too bulky, gloved hand too callous to muster much in the way of tenderness. Alicent flinched at the feel of leather against her cheek, the cold brush of the chain mail encircling his wrist. “ Please .”
Alicent jerked away, turned to avoid seeing the way Criston’s face crumbled. She couldn’t bring herself to care that this would crush him. The last three decades of her life were spent imprisoned in this castle, contained within the cage of this city. She had seen nothing else, been nowhere else, could not even remember the home of her youth. Alicent had learned to hide, to paint the walls of her own prison, but she had never learned to run. If Rhaenyra would take King’s Landing, the queen would have her as well.
With a numb lurch in her gut, Alicent realized Criston was still speaking, still beseeching. She brushed him off, waved him away as if dismissing a handmaiden. As her sworn protector followed, baffled and bereft, Alicent returned to her chambers, knelt to the floor, clasped her hands to assume an almost childish posture of piety.
In the dawning light of her world’s collapse, Alicent began to pray.
***
106 AC
The tile of the septa dug into Alicent’s knees, a pain that had long since dulled in the hours since she first knelt before the altar in prayer. The first candle she had lit for her mother, for the Stranger, had since melted down to a pathetic puddle of wax. As had the second, and the third, and the fourth.
At some point, her right knee had split open against the harsh floor, a small scrape that deepend with each hour Alicent held this pose. Yet still, she remained frozen, head bowed, hands clasped, a slight flow of blood soaking into the floor below — a sacrifice, she thought, or perhaps just a sacrilege.
The gods are not ours to command , her mother once told her as they prayed together. When we pray, it is often they who ask the question, then look for the answer in our own actions.
That doesn’t seem fair , Alicent had whined, earning the sweetest of smiles, a brush of fingers through her hair. If they have all the answers, why wouldn’t they just tell them to us?
Truth has no value if it is not earned, her mother replied. It falls to each of us to follow their teachings and prove our devotion .
For the three days and three nights since her mother’s death, Alicent knelt in the sept to pray. To beg. She wasn’t quite certain of the difference between the two anymore, wasn’t quite sure what question the gods had laid at her feet by stealing her mother away.
Some fragment of her spent also those three days and nights straining for the sound of beating dragon’s wings, hoping to catch a glimpse of silver-blonde hair at the entry to the sept. Alicent spent most of her days craning her neck to sight the princess, filling time idly between the hours she spent in her presence. And so it came as little surprise — and yet with a stroke of mortification nonetheless — when she found herself tugged from her prayers into a daydream of Rhaenyra returning in a rush upon Syrax, sweeping down into sept like a knight come to rescue her from a nightmare, like the savior Alicent had sought ever since her mother first fell ill.
It was preposterous, embarrassing, the foolish hope of a girl constantly forgetting her own station. Her mother was of no import to the king or to his daughter, her death simply another line in a long catalog of daily tragedies in King’s Landing. Her father did not require a wife to perform his duties as Hand to the King, nor did Alicent require a mother to serve as a lady in waiting.
The princess would return in a week’s time, according to plan. By then, Alicent’s mother would be buried, already begun on the long journey of fading into a worn memory.
It did not matter that Rhaenyra stumbled into her arms three days later, led to her by Ser Harrold, who had fetched her from the carriage at the entry to the keep and brought her directly to her friend’s chambers. Alicent smiled weakly at Rhaenyra’s apologies, brushed the tear from the princess’ cheek, stroked her hair as she mournfully promised to never leave her alone again. Too much time, however brief, had already passed. New skin had begun to knit across her knee, the wound retreating into the white gossamer of a scar. She could not, would not allow herself to mourn any longer.
Her father insisted on standing the full vigil for her mother himself, same as he demanded her burial take place in King’s Landing rather than her home. Her father, who would praise devotion to family at the start and end of each prayer, who cited his duty to the king as reason for his refusal to take the three-days trip by carriage to lay her mother at rest before her own family.
There was no one else to stand for her, he explained in that overly patient tone. We must do our duty to your mother. To the gods.
There is no one else because you refuse to take her home , Alicent wanted to argue. We are all alone here because of you. Take me home. Take us home.
Instead, she clung to her silence. There was a comfort in docility, in fulfilling the role she knew was expected of her. Alicent stood at her father’s side, lit the incense, picked the proper reading to begin each hour, chasing after the approving nod it would earn.
In the final hour of their vigil, Alicent shifted her weight, feet aching. The movement was slight, yet still enough to rupture the scab across her knee. Alicent could feel it crackle, stiff and sore. Another moment, another breath. Blood trickled down her leg, just a hint of dampness carving its way across her shin, snaking around to the back of her ankle. Alicent winced, tucked one leg behind the other in a desperate attempt to keep from staining her mother’s dress.
It was a waste of effort. The skirt shifted, brushed against the sticky wound, clinging against the blood as it seeped through the satin. Alicent darted her eyes to the side, breath faltering in her throat as the stain bloomed, a dark blossom beneath her knee. But her father didn’t notice, would never truly notice her again.
Alicent had stolen into her father’s chambers the night her mother died, tears staining her face and her throat and the front of her nightdress. She had crept softly to his elbow where he sat at his writing table, quill hovering haplessly above the parchment sprawled before him. Her hand had been gentle against his arm, yet still he flinched against her touch. When her father finally glanced sideways at Alicent, he seemed alarmed to see his own sadness reflected in his daughter.
My child, he had murmured and Alicent had waited. For an embrace, for an apology, for anything . Her father only descended into silence. Eventually, the scratch of his quill had filled the room, almost loud enough to drown out the choking gasps as Alicent swallowed another wave of her own tears.
She knew better now than to hope for her father’s comfort. Instead, Alicent prayed in the way her mother had taught her, counting to seven with painstaking slowness, committing moments from the passing days to the permanency of her own memory.
One . Her father’s hand on her shoulder, too rough to be gentle, the only thing anchoring her to the ground. Two. Her mother’s touch, shaky and delicate against her cheek. Three. The dress draped across her bed, deep blue satin, the one her mother wore for name days and tourney days. Four. The clang of bells high above the sept, reverberating deep in her throat, in her chest. Five. The tremor in her mother’s voice when she asked Alicent for a name to bestow on her brother. Six. Incense cloying, choking at her throat as she chapped her own lips in her second night knelt in the sept. Seven. Twin stones heavy in Alicent’s palm, smoothed by the river, painted to match her mother’s eyes.
Alicent did not wish to forget this pain, did not wish to bury it. She wanted to hold it, to stitch it into her skin. Maybe then she could understand why this was the fate the gods had writ for her. Alicent knew her teachings well, knew the duty as it was laid out before her. A childhood, a lifetime at the service of the father.
The Father judges. The Mother loves. Take one and the other will remain. Alright. Alright . If the gods commanded it, so it must be. Alicent could survive on justice, on righteousness alone.
***
Rhaenyra did not announce her entry to the Hand’s tower. There was no need. Alicent would know the fall of her footsteps in any room. She did not lift her head, did not turn, at the opening of the door or the shuffle of steps and swords as the Queensguard followed behind.
Gloved hands and armored arms caught her unceremoniously by each arm, hauled her upwards without explanation. Again, she did not need it. Alicent had spent the day, the year awaiting this reckoning. Still, her body screamed in protest as she was propelled to her feet, the muscles spanning her back and thighs straining with the suddenness of the movement. The sun had fallen nearly completely past the horizon, hours melting away in the time since Rhaenyra first landed upon the city.
Alicent’s knees buckled as her feet pressed into the floor for the first time in hours, the knights grasping at either side of her clearly misinterpreting the sudden limpness as an attempt to delay her own detainment rather than the reality of her exhaustion. They tightened their grip, tugged harder to move her toward the door, toward the steps and the long descent that followed. It was only in that moment that Alicent caught her first glimpse of Rhaenyra.
Nearly two years had stretched since the last time they laid eyes upon one another. Alicent found herself soaking up details as if she were a parched animal stumbled across a running stream, surging against the Queensguard in her first true display of resistance.
Rhaenyra’s hair was still windswept from flying on dragonback, her father’s crown balanced regally across her temple, something rusted red — blood , Alicent realized with staggering dread — staining the right sleeve of her riding suit. There had never been a part of Rhaenyra that Alicent had not recognized, had not devoted to memory with the familiarity of her own face in a mirror. Yet there was something foreign in her features, in the set of her shoulders and the fervor of her eyes. She wondered what had grown alien in her own appearance, what would feel unfamiliar in her own face. Perhaps all of her. Perhaps Rhaenyra had never known her at all.
Alicent's lips formed Rhaenyra's name on impulse, an involuntary compulsion driven by all these years apart. The queen's eyes widened, throat shuddering with something scarcely contained, and then Alicent was dragged away again, bodily, wrenching her chin upwards to keep her eyes on Rhaenyra where she stood in the doorway of her chambers, setting sun casting a halo around her figure.
The halls of the Keep were eery, echoing with the Alicent’s panted breaths and the clattering steps of the Queensguard as they hauled her down into the bowels of the castle. Rhaenyra had not accompanied them, yet she appeared as if from within a wall herself just as her guard reached the first of the row of cells. The passageways , Alicent thought vaguely, remembering with a sudden flush how Rhaenyra had crept through the castle as a princess, undetected even by her father, by the Kingsguard.
One hand forced Alicent back to her knees, another pressing her arms together. Rhaenyra did not speak as the guards bound her in chains. Her eyes were stone, flint, fire. She leaned in the doorway with an almost casual demeanor, watching the cuffs slide over Alicent’s wrists, the firm tightening of metal against her skin, the sureness as her binding was tightened to a metal ring on the floor before her.
Absently, Alicent wondered if she would come any closer, disgust and something even more virulent bubbling in her stomach. She was intoxicated, repulsed by their proximity. Her eyes roved over Rhaenyra’s form, over her hands, the curve of her hips, the chin she lofted so high in the proud pose of a monarch.
“The city fell within a morning.” When Rhaenyra finally spoke, it was with a softness, a delicacy. “Not much of a fight.”
Rheanyra’s voice fell melodic on Alicent’s ears. She had not lost that tone — almost tender, almost fragile, if not for the solid sureness that always sang just underneath — in her voice even after all these years. Somehow, that made it all worse. This was not the voice of a vengeful god, of a vindictive usurper. It was just Rhaenyra.
“My children-” Alicent choked the words out, her throat tight and dry with disuse.
“Are traitors to the realm.” Rhaenyra cut her off, lip curling slightly around the words as she bit them out. “They will meet the fates they deserve.”
The venom in Rhaenyra’s voice plunged a spear of ice through Alicent’s chest. Although she would never admit it elsewhere, she had long given up the prospect of protecting her children — not out of desire, but out of an acceptance of the futility, of her own helplessness. This war was no longer her own, her children were no longer her own, yet their fates would be hers forever, bound up intrinsically in her own whether they rejected or embraced her.
“My daughter has not known a day of treachery in her life.” Alicent’s voice had descended into desperation long before Rhaenyra arrived in her chambers. Now, it just sounded pathetic — she sounded pathetic. Still, Rhaenyra’s resolve flickered, a glimmer of something close to regret falling across her face in a sudden wave.
“Helaena will come to no harm by my hand,” Rhaenyra murmured. All the promise was good for was to spark a memory, a nightmare in Alicent — splinters digging into her cheek as it pressed against the floorboards, Helaena’s screams descending into raw silence as her voice lost all strength, the low gurgle of bloody breath as little Jaehaerys flitted his eyes helplessly, pleading, between his mother and grandmother.
“Was it not your hand that murdered her child before her eyes?” For the first time, Alicent located her own fury, buried deep in her belly. She surged up on her knees, forced a flinch to pass across Rhaenyra’s features. “Or was that the work of one of your bastard-”
The blow took Alicent by surprise. She didn’t see the knight at her side raise his arm, had no time to turn away before the back of his hand cracked against her jaw with a sickly thud. The force sent Alicent slumping on both of her palms against the floor, dislodging a pathetic whimper. Eyes murky with unbidden tears, she raised a hand to her chin to trace the pain, tasted copper and salt against her tongue. Alicent gasped for breath — once, twice — before raising her gaze back to Rhaenyra.
Again, she wanted to beg. Please, again. Crack me open. Split me in two.
Rhaenyra’s eyes flashed, still severe. It was surprising to see a simpler form of anger that filled her, shoulders rippling with a self-contained fury as she turned slightly to the man standing wordlessly over Alicent.
“Ser Lorent.” Rhaenyra’s mouth quivered, lips molding together with effort as she grasped at the fingers of her left hand in a mindless gesture of exerted restraint. “Lay another hand on her and your sword will be the next added to the Iron Throne.”
It was not the first time Alicent marveled at Rhaenyra’s quiet conviction. She had been such a boisterous child, incapable of prudence, of moderation, but those tendencies dissipated as she grew to become a woman. Motherhood had not softened Rhaenyra; instead it steeled her, smoothed each of her edges with a grace, a wisdom Alicent had never felt in herself. Alicent might cling to the gods, but Rhaenyra held within herself the quiet dignity of a deity. Even in the depths of her distaste, she had never been able to truly deny — at least to herself — that Rhaenyra would make a good queen.
Her own son — even her husband — had always commanded with a voice that boomed loud to hide the way it shook. But Rhaenyra led with the tip of her chin, the slight flex of her hand. The two knights behind Rhaenyra unsheathed their swords in an imitation of a threat, baring their blades by the width of two fingers. The display was unnecessary, Ser Lorent already dipping his chin under the force of Rhaenyra’s glare alone.
“Apologies, your grace.” The words came out in a mumble, his eyes dolefully glancing between Rhaenyra and Alicent.
“She is my prisoner, not yours,” Rhaenyra muttered. The added reprimand was unnecessary, the knight already cowed and well-rebuked. Perhaps she said it for Alicent’s benefit, perhaps for her own. Her eyes returned to Alicent’s face, tracing the smear of crimson along her lower lip where the skin had split open. Alicent watched her hand twitch again, wondered — stupidly, stupidly — if she had any thought of wiping the blood away.
Rhaenyra’s gaze twitched away, fixed on the stone wall behind her. Whatever flame had been stoked in her eyes vanished, doused in an expression that felt dutifully grim. She set her shoulders, jaw flexing slightly.
“Post a member of my guard outside her chambers at all times.” Rhaenyra turned, her guard following, a last half-glance over her shoulder the only sign of the vulnerability that lay beneath her regal veneer. “She will be cared for as befits her station.”
The cell door swung shut without theatrics, not loud enough to even be a slam. It didn’t echo, didn’t leave hardly a sound behind for Alicent to hold onto in the solitude of her confinement. Rhaenyra had come and she had left and Alicent was trapped all the same — different walls perhaps, but still shackled in the Keep, in a castle that was not her home, the same reality she had faced since she was a girl of nine years.
When Alicent prayed again, she spoke her devotions out loud, let her voice crack and crumble and cry around each syllable. She begged the Father, the Mother, even the Stranger for release. For guidance. For anything. When she ran out of words to speak to the gods, she called to Rhaenyra herself. Begged for absolution, for relief, for death. For her to stand in the doorway, to speak, to meet her eyes again.
No answer came.