Chapter Text
She still sometimes kisses Rhaenyra, off-beat and tempestuous; Rhaenyra always kisses her back, possessive even in the dark.
I’ve lived a life about you. I want to say how I feel.
(These nights have opened my eyes.)
They’d ended up in the blue room, her skirt was blue, too. She still remembers.
It’s time to be honest about what you both want.
“I want to go home.” She’d murmured. Dr. Lang had nodded even still. “I want to go home, to my baby.”
"Naturally.” Rhaenyra scoffed. “Begs me for therapy then can’t wait to leave.”
(She’d tightened her arms around her middle, swallowed it down.)
“And he’s our baby.”
Alicent traced lines on the rug. “Our baby.”
(And Rhaenyra’s eyes had flickered, then; hurt and apology tangled together.)
“We discussed, when we began,” Lang counselled, hands clasped, “Our foundational goals. One of which was to build mutual honesty. Both of you need to feel safe, in this space, and your home, to express what you think and feel—”
“Is that how the newspapers and tabloids know our business before I do?” Rhaenyra had crossed her legs, angry again. “The Sunday Times made you feel safe, love?”
I haven’t felt safe in three years. She didn’t say anything.
Lang—“Rhaenyra, why don’t we try, instead—"
“I’m sorry.” Rubbing at her brow; tangled silver hair. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
Rhaenyra’s grief moved in weird ways. It’s alright, she whispered. Rhaenyra never seemed to hear.
(When Rhaenyra shouted at her she wanted to go find Rhaenyra, tell Rhaenyra what happened. It had gotten strange that way.)
Hearing and seeing and trying. It had all broken down.
“Are you still intimate?”
Except that.
“It’s not intimacy.” Rhaenyra re-crossed her legs. “It’s just sex.”
It’s definitely not just sex, but she’d let Rhaenyra have it, anyway.
(Arms under her back, and lips her collarbone, kissing, sucking, biting—crossing her ankles about her hips, tangling fingers in silver strands—whispering you’re mine, whispering please—)
“And you, Alicent?” Lang, still in cool tones. “Is it intimate for you?”
She’d set her chin. “I’m not sure that’s an appropriate question.”
(Lost to the night-time, that other special place. Still awake, love?)
(What if he’d been a girl—)
“Shouldn’t your wife know how it makes you feel?”
(Her wife’s eyes out the window; a spaceship to the moon.)
“Rhaenyra’s not the one asking.”
And then she’d looked over at her, picking her skin raw; that hair of a split-second, like she might have thought she actually would—
(She didn’t.)
The humdrum again—I think what we’ve discovered, et cetera, above all, et cetera et cetera, is that a lack of honest communication has precipitated a complete breakdown in trust—and you might consider (she’d looked back to Rhaenyra, then, still soaring somewhere else) an honest examining of what’s changed—
Rhaenyra snapped back on a dime. Award-winningly angry. “Nothing’s changed.”
Alicent scoffed—right there, in her face.
And then the silence stretched long, like hours.
“When we met you were eighth in line to the throne.” She’d whispered, eventually. “Your royalty was so obscure and your name so ungoogled and as beautiful as it is your face so unknown that our life was almost normal—it almost seemed like it would be. Like it would be always, even.”
“I couldn’t predict the accident.” Rhaenyra had seethed. “Or the referendum.”
“I know, Rhaenyra.” Her eyes were long and deep and sad. “But neither could I.”
And Rhaenyra had been like no, but of course, and she’d believed her; how could I, right, and how could I not—with her aunt and her grandfather gone, and when the baby had been born, and Rhaenyra, at Rhaenys’ pyre, ailing.
She was a mother to me, once.
You called her a cunt on the regular.
(Of course, she wouldn’t know if those things were mutually exclusive, would she.)
She hadn’t said anything, not when the smoke started to clear, when Rhaenyra stared into it with an utterly mixed expression; not when Corlys had shown up half-greyed in an Armani suit and told her father I know we can count on your support and she’d thought you’d never count on my father for anything but she hadn’t, she hadn’t, she hadn’t.
She’d stayed silent trotted out for the crowds. Silent again when Rhaenyra had slouched by the window in the nursery and gone he doesn’t look at me the way he looks at you (not even remotely true) and again, when Rhaenyra’d left, when she’d kneeled beside her baby on that blue quilt playmat and said Daeron, when he’d hugged his stuffie sheep, Daeron, and when he’d stared off toward the window, Daeron, sweetling, Daeron?
And then she’d touched his little shoulder and he’d startled half to death—
He'd hugged it again when the doctor had come, cuddled on her lap behind the fortress walls of her forearms; chewed a blue dummy with tiny brand-new teeth.
It’s not permanent. Removed his glasses, clicked the little light shut. It’s a delicate system—she’d watched him, stock-still, something something overexposure—(and Daeron reached for her hair and smiled and she’d conjured back a smile through the despair so he’d know—I can see you sweetling, watch me see you—gumming a curl, staring up into her eyes—I’m looking, I’m looking, yes.)
Something something prolonged exposure. Daeron had turned back to his sheep, when she’d wiggled it. To very loud noise.
The crowds, she’d told her.
The public, Rhaenyra corrected.
(A play in three parts:
We don’t need to stand and wave all the time.
I told you you don’t have to stand and wave all the time.
Rhaenyra, standing and waving, alone.)
(And her circles grew darker and her skin dehydrated, that time she’d stood up off the sofa and then fallen right down and Alicent had screamed—lifting her head up onto her thighs, ambulance, panicked shouts—and then an IV bag, and then a pill, just vitamins, and then a pill, and then another day, life serial, waving and speaking and waving—)
And grieving, too.
(A play in four parts:
Rhaenyra knocks hot tea onto her papers; Rhaenyra screams at herself and the servants; Alicent comes downstairs and dismisses them; Rhaenyra unleashes full-body sobs into her lap on the sofa; Rhaenyra apologises to the servants.)
Meanwhile Alicent fed the baby and walked the gardens and wore and said and believed the right thing and stood where she was told and sat by the marble edge while the bath was filling and ran aground, kept herself in tight circles.
(There’d been other things, too.
Rhaenyra on the cover of magazines. Person of the Year: The Realm’s Delight.
Rhaenyra on the cover of other magazines. ROYAL TREATMENT: PRINCESS OF DRAGONSTONE’S SECRET AFFAIR—
(No, but of course—no but of course, of course it’s lies, Alicent, they invent this drivel all the time, look what they do to my father, how could you even think—)
Lyonel had seen to it, like everything else.
The King had sagged before old oils, aging years in months and months in days—I’m truly sorry, my dear. His replica model, too, in the low light, the marble—how it glinted. What rubbish.
Rhaenyra, unrepentant; tired. Thank you, Father.
And her own father—
My beloved daughter, he’d patronised. He’d been triumphal since the investiture. You are not a fairytale princess.)
Daeron’s eyes, once—bright-blue and gleaming up at her, clutching and whining, tearstained and weeping for milk, forbidden to him—
Weening at ten months, Talia had told her. Royal protocol. For all royal princes.
(Custom dictates—)
And she’d cornered Rhaenyra when she’d gotten home from wherever and said no— finally—no no no no no—
And then—
No, Rhaenyra had said. To Talia, and her secretary, and her father’s secretary, Wylde, who’d wrinkled his nose with burning hateful eyes; to the constitutionalist who’d come; and to Lyonel—and finally to Jason Lannister, who’d driven all the way up from Westminster for the sneer and scold.
(Rhaenyra bent him like a drop-leaf table.)
And how exactly do you propose to stop us?
He hadn’t known exactly how.
She dismissed him. And proffered her signet. Lord Lannister.
Insulted and incensed—Members of the peerage are beholden only to kiss the ring of the monarch—!
And the Princess of Dragonstone. Her hand hung suspended; she shook it, like steak at a dog. It’s one of those rules you keep blathering about.
(He’d kissed it.)
And her wife had watched her, later, silently, from the edge of the door of his room. He’d nursed unsettled and tired and clingy. She’d nearly fallen asleep.
Don’t let me.
I won’t. And she’d seemed unsettled, too, sitting close by as he’d finally eaten, as that maddening swelling had eased. I’m so sorry.
(And it was something under the surface, at the edges, something she still couldn’t talk about—the one time you help, the one time you actually help is the time you deign to apologise—)
But Rhaenyra had brought her up a tea, and buttered toast, and sliced persimmons; all with her own hands, from that behind three doors and three different corridors industrial kitchen, and kissed her cheek and the baby’s head and left quite like a stranger, really.
(Your father’s so confusing, she’d once moaned. Some ribbon-cutting or another. Alicent had closed her eyes.
At least his intentions are clear.
Rhaenyra hadn’t responded.)
Her loving wife disappeared once. It was a week in November, cold and grey. The baby kept turning in her arms, through the hallways, in the gardens; looking and looking and looking. Whispering into his little ear, close. Mama will come back to you, my love. Mama’s back so so soon.
(He couldn’t hear her. He didn’t find her.)
Her father in a dark room, drinking Rhaenyra’s whisky. Daeron was down. There’s been a change in the landscape. Another headline after that.
And her loving wife returned (the same one, or maybe only the same face, who’d leaned over her shoulder and taken the plaster and lifted her thumb and let her close her eyes and said gentle, gentle, let me see—); pulled up the gravel drive low and hungover and smelling distinctly of an alien—of somebody else.
(She’d braced before the bathroom mirror when she’d heard the engine, exhaling.)
And tearing from that fucking castle like cannon shot from the warpath—fuck the dragon, I am the dragon this night—giving her just as much hell as she’d felt the way she’d felt it, burning below paper-thin windows shouting her eyes red, her voice raw, so all the vines and roses of the garden and all Rhaenyra’s rabbits and pheasants and stags could hear.
(She’d wrested her hands in her shirt, crying, accusing, livid; Rhaenyra had gripped her wrists right back and tried a lot of things—you’re exhausted, my love, and that’s not true and let’s please speak and be calm and stop it and then quiet, white-hot, “You’re humiliating yourself—”)
She’ll never forget the silence; that incredulity. “I?”
(Her wife—the one who had closed the adhesive around the pad of her finger and then kissed it—that was the one who said we have nowhere to be and they’d laid a quilt down at the back of the property by the wildflowers, there in pyjamas, and Alicent told her about that chateau in Brittany her uncle had once owned—the one from candlelit dinners but also endless summer, bright blue, and she’d run her fingers through silver and told her and told her and told her.)
How could you?
(And Rhaenyra had fallen asleep, blissful as always.)
How? How could you do this to me?
MEDIEVAL CROWN TRIED TO FORCE PRINCESS ALICENT TO GIVE PRINCE DAERON TO ‘WET-NURSE’: INSIDE PRINCESS’ FIGHT TO KEEP HER BABY.
This week, sources close to the Princess Consort report that in a new low for archaic palace officials, the infant prince—
Rhaenyra can’t hear herself over the thrum of the bass; can’t hear anything at all.
(She’s not exactly sure when it started; some time after they were kids and she’d revved her father’s Triumph Hurricane outside the family home at Fathermas and Laena was the only one cocksure enough to climb on the back end.
Or that time they were sixteen and she’d taught her how to kiss. Or six months later when she’d taught her how to—
They’d gone and got married, of course, to other people, because it wasn’t the nineteenth century, moved elsewhere. Smiled across banquets in polite exchanges like normal third cousins.
Still. Laena was always ahead of the game.)
“Fuck,” Laena whines, and then she’s throwing back—back with her hips, strong from her riding, and it’s only been like fifteen minutes after she’d greeted her at the door with a near-empty glass of wine in hand and shoved the harness into her hands and said you can fuck me in the bedroom as her protection officer stood directly fucking beside her and said I’ll see you upstairs.
(Rhaenyra watches the long lithe insane curve of her back and the length of her neck and that silver silken hair, and how her arms stretch out like a cat’s tongue before her—and the meeting of her hips to the waist and down, where Rhaenyra’s hands are latched strong as joists on her hips and she’s sweating and her jaw’s jumping with the tendons in her neck and she’s—)
Fucking me, Laena breathes, loud and soft all at once, so fucking deep—
Hard, rapid thrusts—and watching it stretch and pull, glistening, gods above, and then delivering harsh rapid spanks and then Laena’s coming and crawling away for mercy beneath her and her hands are on Rhaenyra’s neck, instead, and pulling her down, dragonlike, turning over, and over, until she’s on top, like a viking, like a Valkyrie, like with that sword raised to the lights, to the heavens, and sinking down on it again—
(She always forgets that Laena can do that, when she thumbs Laena’s clit without mercy and thrusts up from below and then her stomach, her thighs are soaked—)
“Gods above you’re gonna make me fucking sore,” and then Laena’s gripping her by the wrists, where her hands bind her waist, with a sound coming out of her, “I don’t—”
She doesn’t believe in mercy anymore—bambambambambambambam—Laena’s jaw throws open, dead silent—I’ll never bow to you, Rhaenyra, not even when you are the fucking Queen—and with her brows knit in something like genuine shock she’s coming, coming, coming again.
(And then her hand flies to Rhaenyra’s throat and squeezes sharp along the sides, and Rhaenyra can almost see it—that treehouse in the woods where they’d played, once, makeshift and dirty—where Corlys Velaryon let them spray-paint the walls made out of plyboard and trellis—she moves her hips in that way that’s mostly for the bumper, but also for the watching, and tilts her head, and Rhaenyra takes a deep breath in and watches stars play in her vision—
Daddy, Laena moans, something like clairvoyant, and then it all releases.
Laena lights a cigarette by the window. She lives in her mother’s castle. Rhaenyra’s supposed to have quit. She basks in the secondhand.
“You’re still here.”
“Not for much longer.” Takes a drag. “Too maudlin, I guess.” Rhaenyra only hums. She turns back. “My father offered to buy me another.”
“Buy you another castle.”
“Not just for me.” She replies. “My brother too.”
“Oh, well that’s more reasonable.” Chuckles. “Consolation prize for the crown?”
“Now, now, Rhaenyra,” she only chides. Her eyes are out the window. “Mind the Maginot line.”
The rain beats the old glass. Rhaenyra watches unfocused.
“I saw The Sun today.” And Rhaenyra looks back and no, no, please don’t. “Cheeky of her.”
“You were just mentioning the line, I thought—"
“Come now, Rhaenyra.” The lighter flickers. “I mean. After all of this.”
Silence.
“She’s the mother of my children, Laena.”
“So?”
She starts off toward the shower. “So she’s the mother of my children.”
She can grieve their marriage perfectly well. After her brother and grandfather and Rhaenys—after Daemon’s one-way to New York—Mother—
(And Alicent’s mother, too. They’re so practiced at it, both of them are.)
Watching Alicent paint eyeliner with stiletto precision; naked beneath a plush robe sitting at a vanity, just another one of those moments where her body seems close and she’s still yet somewhere else, as far as Mother or Daemon, elsewhere entirely.
(She shakes her by the shoulders in her dreams—turns her around and shakes her until the curls loosen from their pins and the tears fall, why, why, why are you doing this to me—)
Instead her ladies-in-waiting come, stand her up in front of the full-length. They affix her princely tiara. She watches her where the mirrors meet. Alicent never looks.
(EXCLUSIVE: SOURCES CLOSE TO THE PRINCESS CONSORT CLAIM—)
She’s learned, these liminal kinds of nights, after baths run and the servants go—if she remains perfectly still, if her breathing never changes, Alicent will come; like some skittish creature, like a doe—the door will creak, and the sheets will crinkle, and her hand will find its way to Rhaenyra’s arm—and after the mattress dips she’ll feel her warm breath against her cheek, and her cheek against her shoulder, and Alicent will softly inhale; touching, examining, snuggling—determining whether it’s who she might remember.
Alicent had never awoken last—not until she was expecting Daeron and she’d sleep for late periods.
Shyly pregnant, in white sheets, at Summerhall, in the springtime. Green mornings in the sunlight.
(Kissing just below her navel, soft taut skin.)
Fresh eggs from the Celtigars’ coop—come, now, you’ve got to help us with these—fresh fruit from the groves. Wild blackberries softened on the windowsill. Rhaenyra used to row the dory out, when they’d grown along the stream.
Kneeling down before her in a sunlit kitchen—soft-white, watching her smile and feeling her fingers in her hair—picking up the edge of her shirt again, to greet him, good morning, my little wonder.
Arthor Celtigar banging on their door, banging—the plane—those moments that begin to fray the image at the edges of the frame and burn them—tasting blackberry on her tongue and then acid—Rhaenyra you’ve got to get to Lon—
Covering her eyes with her hands barefoot on the ryegrass. Someone slipping keys from her fingers. Rhaenys is dead. Great-grandfather too.
Let me drive, Rhaenyra.
(She can grieve their marriage perfectly well.)
Once—
“Right, Pearse, I don’t think anyone’s trying to say that an end to the so-called Grand Question is in any manner unwelcome, I think we can all agree it is—but the point I’m trying to get across to you and to your viewers who as you’ve just said are effectively evenly split on the—”
“—Yes, do please make your point because it sounds like you’re fairly blankly in favour of allowing the Velaryon family to purchase the British throne—”
“—Is that, listen, no, you want to talk about progressive politics at play—how progressive is this really? I think a large number of people in our country are asking this too, I mean, you want to talk about this being according to liberal or leftist values, or, as you suggest, Viserys being the nation’s choice because of his daughter for liberal or leftist values—well it’s still a wife, the reality is it’s still a wife.”
“What’s that meant to mean, ‘it’s still a wife’—”
“No, hear me out, I’m just saying, right, Pearse, you’ll still have got a monarch, yes, and then, beside them the dutiful wife—I don’t think you can say it’s a subversion of gender roles because she goes to sleep beside another woman—look at—ask what’s the Princess Consort doing? Well, she’s doing everything every other Princess ever did and having the title ‘Consort’ tacked on does not inherently make it progressive—”
“—Really—”
“—Really, and as many others have said already maybe what would have been progressive was a ruler who inherited from his mother, as Laenor Velaryon would, and had a man in the woman’s traditional role—”
“—But a woman in a man’s traditional role isn’t good enough? Sounds like a lot of hubbub to justify maintaining a country ruled since its inception and as many would have it, henceforth, by men—”
Once—
I, Viserys Targaryen, First of His Name.
It had still sounded so strange on his lips. And Alicent’s fingers were so close to her own, by the Archmaester and his oils; tracing with her eyes the rings upon them, each ring and their ring, too, that ring of their love, and of Daeron’s conception, gold and red as Father’s dais.
(Her belly swollen full under splendid white.)
Their family, in ceremonial raiment; the skies pure grey outside the Sept, in the rain—and the press, waiting, and the crowds, waiting after them, all wet, and still waiting, waiting, waiting—
Her father with his grandfather’s sword and sceptre; her father with half-lifeless eyes, imagining Mother, doubtless, transfixed on something else. She’d worn Mother’s necklace. He’d insisted.
(Alicent had taken it from her ladies in waiting; made it lay down softly upon her.
Kissed her where it clasped. She’s with you, Rhaenyra.)
Just a few nights before—sobbing uncontrollable in their bed tearstaining the tops of her thighs, going she’ll never meet the baby, Alicent’s fingers in her hair, softer than silk, softer even than her voice was, shh, shh, shh.)
King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men. Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
She’d knelt. He’d dubbed her. She’d knelt again. Received the oils.
And Protector of the Realm, do hereby name—
She’d risen before her wife; found her eyes beneath that veil, silk-silver. And Alicent had taken her hand, and taken it from a pillow, outstretched upon white-gloved fingers; turned the ring toward her, appended that traditional signet.
Curtsied before her. (That was the first time.)
I love you, Rhaenyra whispered. Her wife’s lips quirked beneath the veil. And then Rhaenyra looked down, lifted her hand to the light—
Princess of Dragonstone.
Placed it softly down upon the crest of her swollen round.
Heir to the Iron Throne.
Trumpets sounded. Terrible timing, she’d whispered.
Alicent hadn’t replied; moved her hand just north. Here. He’s kicking.
(Her eyes had gleamed, as she’d rubbed. Rhaenyra gazed right back.)
When she dreams about her she dreams about her in the rose garden—a late addition, one of those Summerhall things that was like everything at Summerhall, some strange accident with some hidden ring to it—all those members of her family that had gotten to live that hidden sort of life, all those peaceful years in that palace by the stream; that residence that was actually a house, the house that, ever strangely, was actually a home.
(She used to stand in it, in the springtime morning when the air was fresh and the sun was new, in white and smiling through those early eras when Rhaenyra couldn’t bring herself to catch her alone and not get her naked. Hello, my love.)
(She still can’t stand it now.)
Alicent sometimes stands by that crib, that little one—the one she’d insisted they take from the house. They’d had to leave everything else behind.
(Father, please—not so soon before—she’s only a few weeks—)
She’d kiss his little head, standing by it; pick him up into her arms and soothe him back to sleep in the night-time. Rhaenyra would stand in the doorway. Hello.
And she’d intone back hi, and she wouldn’t look—the baby would wiggle and she’d curl her hand soft behind his head, swaddled in his blanket, utter adoration, utterly focused, and she’d feel it too, that unbelievable unalienable eternal love—
(Rhaenyra lives here in her mind, this disgusting seminal moment.)
They can both name this tragedy.
(Mother of my child; how are you a stranger?)
You’re back, she’ll say, these days.
(Alicent never says home.)
She takes her waist and Alicent smiles back in that glistening green gown—she fits her hands around her ribs, takes her, pulls her soft against her chest—Alicent tosses curls behind her and looks from under those lash curves, rests her arms around her shoulders, snuggling, and grins—looks back at Jeyne Arryn when Rhaenyra stamps her cheekbone with a kiss, yes, here she is; the great intimidating Princess of Dragonstone.
(So like before. A near-perfect imitation.)
Until the dancing is over and Lord Arryn and Jeyne and the Borrel sisters and Viscount Corbray and the others have greeted them—until they’re on the interior balcony again, above the ballroom, alone in that gross grandiose corridor—
Alicent’s smile drops as though off of scaffolding and hand looses from Rhaenyra’s own and she stands palms down at the banister, watching her twitch for a cigarette.
And then turns back. “I can still smell it, you know.”
Gods I’d kill for one. “What’s that.”
“The perfume.” She doesn’t move. Rhaenyra leans over on her elbows beside her. “Of your whore.”
“Mm.” Sighs, long and tired. “The Daily Mirror will be pleased to know.”
Somewhere below, someone laughs; they both watch. She’s perfectly motionless; a statue in the garden.
“Erryk’s been following me.”
“’Following’ is a particularly faithless turn of phrase.”
“Is it you?” She faces her, then; those utterly feelingless eyes. “Or is it Lyonel.”
“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest.”
Rolling her eyes, vicious signature exhausted disgust—
“Unless you could imagine some particular reason the firm might have, of course.” Rhaenyra muses, brow even. “To mind you.”
That half-blink, downturn at her mouth. “That’s not fair.”
(If she cries I’ll cry too and then everyone will think we hate each other—)
Quieter, then—almost a whisper: “You can’t do it like this.”
“It’s not fair, is it.”
“No.” Eyes down, fists clenched against the marble. “It’s not fair that you can but I can’t, Rhaenyra. It’s not equal.”
“It’s not equal.” Hands behind her back, tilting her head—watching her swallow, and glare, casting her that image of utterly infuriating indifference. “Nothing about this is equal. I’m to play the bullish, brazen Princess of Dragonstone, remember?” Eyes flicker to that neckline, again; rising and falling faster. “Selfish and uncaring. And you, my entrapped long-suffering wife.”
“You’ve forgotten humiliated.”
“Humiliated?”
“You might recall other women are fucking my wife—”
“I’m not the one putting it in the press.” She shoves away from the banister, thirsting for nicotine—“You and your absurd, performative, false fucking righteousness—”
(She wishes sometimes amid the savagery that she’d have what it takes to say it: If you sleep in the bed with me tonight, I promise, I promise. I promise you’ll like it—)
She stares back, lips parted. There is no sound.
(With her eyes welling with tears and glistening like pearls, resignation and hurt and betrayal, that near-nauseating round-the-clock cocktail of an expression—she’s going to go cry her mascara gone—she’s not going to touch you and everyone’s going to see—your wife is crying, she’s fucking crying, apologise to the mother of your—)
“Princess?”
She steps immediately in front of her, a practiced dance—Alicent’s hands fly to the underside of her eyes as Rhaenyra plasters it on all soft smile and yes, hello—
But it’s only Criston, then, holding Alicent’s phone from the pocket of his evening jacket. “I’m very sorry to interrupt, Your Royal Highness. Your Royal Highness.” Holds it out toward her. “Telephone call for you, ma’am. Regarding the Prince.”
“I—what?”
Rhaenyra can almost watch all the gears halt, that night-to-day shift—barely an oh and then she’s taking the phone and Rhaenyra by the wrist into an empty parlour room and hitting speakerphone and—
“It may only be the reflux again.” Bess, then, from across the line; that soothing Scottish expertise that generally manages to keep just about everyone from completely fucking panicking—“But he’s asked, ma’am, and I thought you might wish the call.”
“Yes—yes of course.” And there’s distinct wailing in the background, pained and wrenching and growing louder as it nears and Rhaenyra lasts about four seconds before going I’m sending for the car but then Alicent’s hand’s soft on her sternum and there’s smudged mascara on her finger and she’s going no, no, wait. “My love?”
And Daeron weeping, on the other end, half-desperate—Mama, Mama, Mama—
“It’s alright, sweetling.” It’s that voice—(Rhaenyra’s favourite voice)—the phone lifted up close. “Be calm, my love, I’m here. And Mummy’s here too—right here, my sweet—can you hear us, love? Can you hear the telephone?”
Alicent’s hand lingers on her body, soft on her shoulder. There’s a weak yes; Rhaenyra, then—“It’s alright, sweet boy. You’ll be right as rain, I promise—you’ll take your medicine from Miss Bess, won’t you? So it’ll feel all better?”
Another yes, garbled, and Bess, again, through the line, a couple of moments later—something like there you are—and drink that all—and then a pause, almost too long, and shuffling, and “Good boy,” Rhaenyra calls, “Good boy, Daeron—that’s my brave boy, yes?”
They wait. Alicent’s hand leaves her—braces her arm under her elbow, holds the phone still, waits until Bess gets him back down into bed, slowly, as Alicent paces, coos across the line—soothing and hush, my love, and singing his song—velvet, easy, until the cries taper off; until it’s quiet.
Bess bids them goodnight. Alicent clicks the phone shut.
(And glances back at her, with that altogether different glance.)
“Two is too old for this sort of reflux.” She murmurs. Smooths the edges of her dress; silk green. “I want the doctor to see him.”
“Agreed.” A glance at her watch, then. “Shouldn’t be too late. I’ll call Talia.”
And Alicent nods, brisk. “Right.” Arms drawn. “Thank you.”
Rhaenyra only watches, for a moment.
And then—
“I’m sorry,” she ventures. “For when—well I was harsh.”
And Alicent parts her lips; but whatever it is she doesn’t say.
They hand the phone back to Criston,. Alicent makes away down the corridor.
Rhaenyra lingers.
“I think she’s got about another hour in her,” she murmurs, eyes following flowing green. “So we’ll leave in forty-five.”
She raps him on the shoulder without a glance; makes off. He watches as she goes.
She remembers that first fight they had; that first awful one, the first one leaving knife wounds, the un-take-backable amid the stains of gunpowder—
“Because he’s the future King!”
“And yet you’re the one who’s—"
(And a sob had broken her wife before she could finish, and she’d covered her mouth, before the tears started flowing in earnest.
Like the phantasm, the hideous dream—that look she’d seen on her face before, holding her wrist and banding a cuticle scratch, leant on her shoulder in the bright light of the bathroom. My father didn’t mean it, it’s my fault, I’m sorry.
Their first winter at Summerhall. He most certainly did mean it and he’s no longer welcome in this house.)
What? She’d snapped. Does the destiny of my birthright hurt your feelings?
She’d stormed off, fished for her cigarettes. Alicent had cried and cried.
She awoke alone.
Come by, Laena texted.
She found Alicent in the gardens, alone, warm on the swing chair with the baby on her lap; delicate clutching his middle, lines of the ring on her finger, collarbones under her dress. How she’d traced and traced and traced them.
She’d smiled with red-rimmed eyes. And a book on her knees.
“Shireen was a very kind sheep.” She’d bounced him, clapped his hands together three times, soft. "Yes-she-was. And Shireen was an honest sheep. Yes-she-was. And—”
Rhaenyra had walked through the grass; sat down beside them with an arm behind her. Smiled as Daeron drew her eyes, pointed him back at the pages.
“—Shireen was a brave little sheep.” She’d whispered. “Yes-she-was.”
And later, when he was distracted—
Pressed her a kiss to her curls, feather-light. “Do you need anything?”
She’d shaken her head, eyes on the book. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Moving a curl aside. “I know there’s something I can get you.”
She’d leaned closer, under her arm. Their boy had flipped the page again, marvelled at the pictures. “I’m content.”
“They told me you nursed this morning.” Moved that same curl again, stubborn, when it had fallen. Let Daeron seize her thumb on her other hand. “You’re not thirsty?”
She’d worried her lip. “Only a little.”
Rhaenyra waved the servants aside in the kitchens; fetched a glass, and ripe blueberries and toast, and a flagon of water.
Once—a microphone in an attic—
“Here’s the thing, right. Is the kid even like—royal? Like who provided the snot for this bogie, you know—?” Raucous, wolfish laughter—“Like what if it’s born—”
“Dead ringer for Boy George.”
More, more, more laughter—
“—Yeah like fucking—he’s Dornish actually—”
“Right, it’s a comedy podcast, folks!”
Cackling, cackling—and a can opens—
“—But like so are we supposed to hail him as king? One day? Like this is father to son—like, alpha genetics, right, one to the next, so like I’m sorry to the—I dunno, test tube lesbian Lefties but if that’s not actually her fucking baby then like that’s not her fucking—”
Once—
Alicent’s pregnant. Alicent’s rushing to a car. A reporter is rushing after her. Criston is rushing toward.
“Lady Alicent, tell the people who’s the real father of your—”
Criston’s got her door open and then he’s trying to dive in front of her and she’s turning and the stranger’s lifting his camera and shouting obscenities and it flashes and he clips the curb and then he flies.
She flinches—something hits her like a knife and she yelps, and then Criston’s got hands on her arm and her shoulder and waist and the door’s shut with a slam behind her—she looks back and he’s dashing, diving for something on the ground—
(And then the car’s headlong into the street and Criston’s beside her, with a scrape on his knuckles, snapping a memory card between his fingers.)
She looks down, where it feels sticky. There’s blood on her shirt.
(Criston looks over and she thinks it might have been the only time she’s ever heard him say fuck—looks and then scrambles for a travel kit in his bag, unfurling gauze, applying pressure—phone tucked between his ear and shoulder.)
She’s home. She’s in bed. The window’s open. Their doctor is there. There’s a gauze bandage over the skin, over her stomach.
Criston opens the door and Rhaenyra’s through it like lightening—
She captures her hand when she nears, tight. I’m fine, I’m fine, he’s fine, we’re okay. Begs for her eyes, be calm—
“Show me.”
Mellos—“Your Royal Highness, perhaps we should leave the dressing—"
“Show me.”
(Mellos almost seems to jump, at that tone; she does, too.)
He pulls up the adhesive, slowly. Just the edge. She closes her eyes.
“I’ll kill him.”
And they fly open. “No—do not—do not make a scene in the press.” Tugging at her hand, again, squeezing, tugging until she looks down. “Not now. The investiture, your father, everything is too fresh—” But she’s not listening, and so she’s pulling, pulling, pulling until Rhaenyra’s bending over her, until she’s closer, until she’s got her eyes on her own. "Rhaenyra. Do not be goaded. When it comes to it—I mean, it doesn’t—it was an accident. And I’m fine. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened?”
She closes her eyes at the tone, how sharp. Rhaenyra massages her forearm, then; a kiss to her hairline. I’m sorry.
(Her bruise roils. She knows something happened.)
She’d beseeched her, once—well. Almost funny way to think of it, really.
(Informed her, really.)
“I’d like to have the baby at home,” she’d announced; sat in a sundress at their breakfast table at Summerhall. She’d folded the morning papers, set an apple down from the bowl upon the page of her novel. “When the time comes.”
And Rhaenyra had nodded, pressed the button on the espresso machine. “No.”
She placed a cup at its edge. Felt Alicent’s eyes on her. “No?”
“No.” She’d replied; brows perfectly even. “We’ll give birth at the hospital. Around doctors. And the miracle of modern medicine.”
“We’ll give birth, will we.”
“It was you, if memory serves, who once told Father we were pregnant.”
“Love, thousands of women—”
“The answer is no.”
The coffee started to pour amid silence. Rhaenyra ventured a look, just the corner of her eye.
Alicent was almost—
Laughing?
“No?” Brows raised, lips curling upward. “The ‘answer is no?’”
“No.” Setting herself, that I’m very serious look. Or trying to. “Or—yes. It’s no.”
“Right, then.” And then Alicent had risen, with some effort, and strode forth; cupped her cheeks in her hands, soft hands, not fair, by the open window. “Your wife has grown very pregnant.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“And very impatient.”
“Mm.”
Alicent grinned—held her back by the jaw, when she’d leaned in for the kiss. “And, as a consequence, is quite determined to do as she likes.”
Thumbs tracing her hips, those soft bones, the edges. “Is that so.”
“It is.” And then she’d let her have a little one, soft; winding her arms round. “And your very determined, very pregnant, very impatient wife shall have her labours where she feels safe. And at peace. And you may marshal there as many doctors and midwives and miracles of modern medicine as you wish—” Closed her eyes, let Rhaenyra press another kiss to her jaw. “But she expects you to do this for her.” And another still. “In exchange for letting your son kick her kidneys.”
Rhaenyra had peered down into the space between them; raised a brow. “I’ve told you to ease up on the kicking.” She’d scolded. “Very naughty indeed. Unbecoming of a future lord.”
Alicent drew her hand to the side, where she could feel it—his insistent heel, that one spot. Smiled. “Yes, the future—what is it again?”
Traced her thumb, slow. “Well, he’d take my subsidiary title, customarily, if Great-Grandfather allowed it. So, erm.” And dimples her chin. “Baron Summerhall, I expect.”
“All the more reason, then.” Alicent had hummed, and moved aside wayward silver strands. “This is where he should be born.”
When she’d held him that first time—staring at him in a white blanket in Alicent’s arms, petting soft hairs, leaning on the bed and curled around them; and then Alicent had lifted him, long fingers behind his neck, and said my love—with a look she’d never seen, a look she’s never seen again.
And Alicent had pressed him into her arms, slowly; softly and slowly, and she’d gathered him up, gentle—terrified, smaller than anything she’d ever—
He’d opened a little blue eye. Time stopped.
The doctors, still milling about. And we’ll have you keep drinking your water, there, much as you can. Her hair was up in a loose bun, sweaty. Alicent had nodded. We’ll check fluids again before you sleep.
She’d wiggled it, that tiny fist. His lips were bright red, milk-wet, a little bright red o. Alicent’s hand had lingered on her forearm, thumb gently gliding.
(A lock of those silver strands, clear even among the baby hairs—a perfect ringlet.)
She’d looked back at her; tired, deep circles, elated brown eyes, soft and glistening, dark diamonds. They’d never looked at one another that way, she knew it. And they’d never shared what she held between them.
Staring back at her through the deep. You made the most beautiful thing.
Alicent’s love, effusive. You made him with me.
Alicent glares back at her. It’s pure contempt. “We’re late.”
Rhaenyra raises her brows, mock-surprise. “My gods—how did you know? What is it? Is it this?” Points to the wall. “This contraption? Gods, what had you called it again—”
Alicent turns on her heel, lips curling—
“—‘Clock’, was it?” Laughs as she descends the steps, fuming. “And you’re saying this tells the time—?”
They get in the car. Alicent’s in a strapless black dress, in a loose curled updo, in beautiful finery. And Rhaenyra’s pretty sure she’d choke her if she could.
(An image so fucking hot that she might just let her try.)
“I’m sorry for the delay.” She needles. Takes a sip and pockets the flask, again. “I was reading the Daily Mirror.”
Alicent scoffs; turns back to the opposite window.
“Cocktail reception is progressive, isn’t it?” Slouches; hits the button to raise the partition just before Alicent presses it right back down again, without looking. “Just that small little intimate rehearsal dinner. How many were at our rehearsal dinner, love?” Looks back over her brow at her, slouched against the centre console, nearly upside-down. “North of two hundred?”
“You’re drunk.”
“Well, then, as far as royal weddings go, suppose we were—ah, what did Lyla say the other day—low-key—”
“I’d like to ride in silence.”
“I’d like you to wear this dress all the time.”
“Oh yes?” And then she does look, pure unadulterated venom. “Would that keep you home with your child?”
(It sours the colour in her vision, fades it to black-and-white.)
She takes another sip; stares out the window. Passes the flask over the console. Alicent takes it and does the same.
She’ll always remember.
It was just after Rhaenyra had come out—not officially, of course, not nationally; she wasn’t even royal enough for that to matter, then, anyway—just to them. Their little community on the countryside.
Her father had learned. And then returned from Viserys’ lunch, one day, up to her room—she’d been sketching, as she used to, long beautiful gowns—
You are to begin riding lessons on the morrow. With Princess Rhaenyra.
She was terrified of horses.
(But she looked her father in the eye that day when he’d said it; and likes to think she knew, even then.)
Rhaenyra’s hair was long and wild in those days and she wore a perpetual half-smile and stunned, shone in the sunlight, wherever she’d go. And she used to tell her, once the instructor had been properly bullied, shooed away—
We don’t have to go. Kicking around the hay, turning back, that effervescent smirk. I could just tell my father we rode.
She didn’t like her horse. He was a stallion, and he was mean. I don’t mind it so much, she’d said. With it’s with you.
(Rhaenyra rode a beautiful brilliant mare; and she was patient, while Rhaenyra saddled up, and patient still, when she pulled Alicent up after.
She’d bound her arms about her waist. Hold on tight.)
Rhaenyra would unpack blueberries and lemon cakes on that grassy hill, under their tree, while the horse grazed. She’d stand a few paces by, unfurling their quilt; behold her, sometimes.
I know what my father wants of this.
But then Rhaenyra would approach, confident and languid; place her hands on her waist, sparkling eyes, lean close. Do you want to kiss today?
And sometimes she’d say no, I don’t; and she’d rather lay with Rhaenyra’s head in her lap on the quilt and read stories to no one, to Rhaenyra and the horse, to the wind.
But that was only sometimes.
(She used to let Rhaenyra push her—gently, how she was always so surprisingly gentle—against that wide sun-warm trunk of the tree and put her tongue in her mouth, and she’d run fingers through silver strands and cup a sculpted jawline that had only grown stronger and let Rhaenyra kiss her neck and say do you do this with anyone else and watch Rhaenyra pull back and look at her, purple-blue in the afternoon.
I don’t want to do this with anyone else.)
She fell asleep some hours after their baby was born; an exhaustion she couldn’t even name, couldn’t describe—full-bodied and consuming. But when she’d awoken, Rhaenyra was there, standing by the window, deep circles under her eyes but holding him still—not the nannies or the nurses. She’d had him upright in her arms—hand under his rump, the other behind his head, delicate fingers just by his ear, under his neck; and swaying side to side, barely bouncing, the most delicate lithe movements, like she’d done it all a hundred times before, like they’d had a newborn for a thousand years.
Her father visited, when Rhaenyra was away. Rhaenyra hated her father openly and made no attempt to hide it. She doesn’t quite remember (and Rhaenyra probably doesn’t, either) when they’d undergone that mortal shift in consciousness—maybe that day with the baby in her arms by the window but there was a moment that turned where Rhaenyra rejected that they were Otto’s daughter and grandson and embraced solely only my wife and child. Like she’d need her permission to see him.
(Like she didn’t know what he was.)
But her father hadn’t even wanted to hold the baby—more peered at him under the blankets in her arms, on the settee, almost as though only to verify that he was real, that he was alive.
(Only months after that moment together—that terrible moment together, and there were a lot of them, but that worst moment, that phone call—when they’d returned to London, and Rhaenyra had been ushered off, whisked this and that way, and then finally dumped home—well, to the temporary palace apartment, anyway, where Alicent waited, with her back and feet screaming and her eyes feeling hollow; and she’d stood lost in the doorway and said it’s true and then was sick for the better part of an hour and then Alicent had got her to bed, finally, finally, the overtired panic and shell-shock and tears.
And then her father called, that terrible call. And she’d expected him to—to tell her I’m sorry, or please send Rhaenyra my condolences, et cetera, though he knew she wouldn’t want them, because even her father, in all his ways, even he would have—
Barely-contained glee. She could hear it through the phone clear as day, clear as anything, while Rhaenyra slept on red eyes and tears. Glee and ambition. You understand what is to happen, don’t you.)
During that time, the Grand Question, absurd label—
Your children might be kings and queens.
Rhaenyra wants a footballer, she’d thought, mum. And I’ll take any child that’s happy.
Daeron was gaining weight quickly in those early early early days, those very first few months, thank the gods, eating all the time. She’d place the knit blanket over her knees by the window while he nursed and listen to the birdsong—and the attendants, over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseam, it’s important to rest, full diary tomorrow, it’s important to rest, won’t you allow the wet-nurses this fuss? Why don’t you allow the wet-nurses, at this hour—don’t worry yourself, I’ll take His Royal Highness on to the nanny—
She wouldn’t even look up after a while. Stroked his emergent silver curls. My son and I are not to be disturbed again, she’d stated. Or the Princess of Dragonstone shall hear about it.
She’d felt it falling apart. The snaps and barbs and bullshit. The endlessness of their diaries and the endlessness of the waving and non-political not-politics politics. Rhaenyra’s voice slowly changing, haughty edges creeping in. Impulsiveness and ire and how mean she sounded sometimes, how mean her own voice sounded, too. How in the beginning she used to return into Rhaenyra’s study and wake her, where she’d fallen asleep in her chair, and then lean down, hand on her cheek, and an arm braced on her desk, listen, my love. Soothe her earlobe, between two fingers. My heart, I should never have spoken to you that way. I love you so much, and I am so sorry.
Eventually it was only come to bed, love. Or a shoulder squeeze and in tired timbre, Rhaenyra.
She knew when she’d started to come and go that way, what it meant.
(I don’t want to do this with anyone else.)
Her father, still, watching. You are not a fairytale princess. You must accept this path is one of ardour. People define marriages. Marriages do not define people.
This isn’t about you anymore. It’s about the Realm.
(No, she’d wanted to say; no, no, it’s about you.)
The way he’d refer to Daeron, in that time—
The Prince. His Royal Highness. The royal baby. Your royal son. The future king.
(The future king, the future king, the future king.)
Watching Rhaenyra drag herself through hours, I still love you.
Staring down at her son in the dark. I don’t want this for him.
Remembering how she put that ring on—sliding it up Rhaenyra’s hand, in the Grand Sept, how Rhaenyra had gleamed like a god, how she’d placed it upon her belly and he’d kicked, something like happy, and she swore, she swore he knew it was her when Rhaenyra touched that skin—
When Rhaenyra broke her vows, when their son spent six months deaf. When their home was left empty, and they were some worse place else.
Cursing her father. I should never have helped you.
The day after they’d been married, Rhaenyra—
You’re all I ever think about, you know.
She’d leaned up and kissed her, climbed atop her, slid her slip off again. The sun shone. Rhaenyra grinned.
(She’ll always remember.)
There’s something about Rhaenyra in a black wide-shoulder suit that makes her wet. Rhaenyra’s also apparently determined Jessamyn and Jeyne’s wedding weekend is the optimal time to act like a fucking asshole; which also makes her wet.
Fuck you, she’s thinking, and really thinking it, as she watches Rhaenyra across the room throw her head back and laugh at Corwin Corbray, of all people, classist old-world whisky stain that he is—that business laugh, chatting him up again, for the second time in the night, and yes she’s had three champagnes and yes she’s having another and yes, while Rhaenyra’s eyes are most decidedly on her, she’s letting Elissa Farman run her hand from her wrist up to her elbow with a cocktail at her lips and go, My my, you wouldn’t mind if I’m blind jealous of that right royal prick you’ve married, would you—look at you, you’d never know you’d had a baby, lucky you—
She’s laughing, and flashing hooded smiling eyes, and sipping again. No, well. Raising a brow. I certainly wouldn’t mind at all.
(And then the mean glee she feels that’s so beneath her, blood-rich when out of the corner of her eye Rhaenyra excuses herself and starts over like a shark to the cage—
“My lady.” She jumps, a little, when Rhaenyra’s arm is slides right around her waist. Not in the mood, then. She looks up, half-up, to Rhaenyra’s eyes—can tell already by the constriction of the muscle and the near-empty tumbler that she’s—
“So glad to see you again.”
“And you, Your Royal Highness.” Elissa gives her the neck bow, smiles. Gods, she hates watching people bow to Rhaenyra. It also makes her wet. Wonders briefly if they should discuss it in therapy. “I was hoping to make away with your beautiful wife, you see—no such luck.”
“I should think not.” Rhaenyra smiles down at her, fake, fingers press into the divot below her ribs. Alicent plasters it on, that tiresome bashful flirtatious charmed sort of grin. Rhaenyra raises the hint of a brow. “I’m quite a jealous wife.”
(“You’re humiliating yourself—”)
She swallows it down, even as her nostrils flare. “Protective, darling,” she coos, and reminds herself that if she’s going to strangle Rhaenyra she ought not to do it in public. Smiles back at Elissa. “And where is Samantha, these days?”
“Home, with Androw,” she laments, sighing. “Coughing pox again, it seems. You’d think once you’re off out of the toddling stage you’d be done with fits and fevers, but—and, well, you’re just in your terrible twos, are you not?” She smiles again, then; eyes flicker down to the exposure of her collarbone. She’s certain Rhaenyra notices. “How’s yours?”
Rhaenyra, with that perfect confidence, that immediacy. “He’s the most beautiful child the gods ever saw fit to create.” Index finger traces along her ribs. “If I can say so myself.”
(Gods, it makes her wet.)
And Elissa only smiles, and oh yes, how wonderful, and how old, exactly, and ah, riding lessons soon, and Rhaenyra’s chuckling and nodding and replying and—
Maybe it’s just instinctual, she wonders.
(Because when Rhaenyra gushes and boasts about their baby it gets something inside her, and something inside her, something feral and divorced from all the rest of it that only makes her want to drag her somewhere private and do her damnedest to make another—)
“You’re looking flush, my love.” Rhaenyra looks down, then. Alicent stares back. She’s gloating. “Would you take some air?”
Alicent finishes her drink.
They end up out on Jeyne’s veranda, like not a long time ago.
(You’re one of my favourite cousins, Rhaenyra once said. Well—maybe my second favourite.
Jeyne had only laughed. Right, who’s your favourite?
But she hadn’t responded.)
Alicent puts her palms on the railing, closes her eyes to the night time.
Feels Rhaenyra slide right behind her; chin over her shoulder—hands just on the edge of her own. Alicent lays hers atop them.
(She likes to feel the muscle in Rhaenyra’s knuckles, sometimes.)
“You’re angry with me.” There’s a kiss to her neck, pillow-soft. “Why’s that.”
Our marriage is in shambles. Our son spent six months deafened. You betray and neglect me. This institution will drown us. I shout for help via headline.
She leans back, lets Rhaenyra block the wind; closer still. “Furious with you. For quite a while actually.”
Rhaenyra hums. “Right. But tonight seems different.” Another kiss, strong and sure on her cheek. Rhaenyra smells like champagne. “You look so beautiful.”
“I think we’ve exited our era of flattery.”
“Perhaps only one of us.”
They’re silent, for a while. She traces her tendons, lithe, that razor-edge. “I was thinking about when the baby was born.”
Rhaenyra doesn’t move. “Which part.”
“The good part.”
“Ah.” Another kiss, then, by her ear. “And why were you thinking about it.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I only was.”
“I think about you, sometimes.” Rhaenyra’s hands move, out from under hers; rest on her hips. “What it is you’re doing, across the hall.”
She raises a brow; scoffs, almost. “Sleeping?”
“Ah, well, maybe. You’ve never slept well alone.”
“I’ve never slept well at all.” She stares out at the dark. It’s velvet-deep. “Except for one place.”
“Summerhall.”
“Yes, magical fantastical Summerhall, where everything was good.” She lulls her head back to Rhaenyra’s shoulder. Rhaenyra leans closer, softer. Her hands come over hers, on her hips; thread between the lines. “You used to bring me blackberries, remember.”
Close, by her ear, that whisper. “I remember.”
(That something else in Rhaenyra’s voice; that private Rhaenyra, the one capable of apology, or even, on her best days, second thoughts—)
“You rowed the stream for them.”
“I know I did.” Leaning forward, just at the edge of her vision; a singular raised brow. “You thought I’d forgotten?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Rubs with her thumb, ruminating. “It’s been a long time.”
Rhaenyra waits, for a moment. “I could bring you something else.”
“What’s that.”
“Good news.”
Something in her throat constricts, as she waits; it’s something in the tone. It’s not Rhaenyra of the blackberries. It’s that other Rhaenyra.
(The Rhaenyra that’s Daemon, somewhere inside her, may New York keep and swallow him, the Rhaenyra that’s Aegon somewhere in the bloodstream, Aegon the Terrible, her grandfather had said—)
Her thumb stills. “What’s that.”
“Your friend Arryk.” Her heart stills. She digs her thumb in, for her palm, for Rhaenyra’s hand at her side—Rhaenyra grips her right back. “Ah, you remember him, I take it.”
She swallows. “Rhaenyra.”
Rhaenyra hums. “I was curious, actually, to know who’d been following you. As I knew it wasn’t me—not on my command, anyway. But you were right, probably, maybe Lyonel, right as always. Still, it just doesn’t sit right.” She inhales through her teeth; that mock-concern, that teasing cruelty. “One’s wife, tailed by strangers. That wouldn’t do. So I paid a visit to your press office. Well—not I, of course, and not a visit, per se. But perhaps they’d know.”
She waits; lips a hard line. “They’d be the last to know.”
“Ah, well, every rock, as they say. Anyway. We came upon—gosh, something really quite odd.”
She can hear her grin, that mirthless, humourless, merciless smirk. Alicent doesn’t say anything.
“Arryk Cargyll, passing letters and missives onto the newspapers. And you’ll never believe—” A mock gasp, hands hard—“Purporting, wait for it, to have come directly from you. Now, now, before you panic, we’ve sacked him, of course—for the breach of confidentiality, but what really gets me, I think, is the impersonation—” Shakes her head; huffs. “To think. Whatever could give him the gall.”
“He’s got a child, Rhaenyra.” She whispers, throat tight. “A baby.” Come now, come now—tries to soothe, again, tries to trace her thumb. “Daeron’s age.”
“Yes. Except Daeron is my baby—and Arryk’s is, well. Not.” Pats the side of her hip, then; looks down. “You’ll forgive me if I prioritise our own, won’t you.”
She looks out, Jeyne’s dark gardens. That perfect stillness.
(And tries to find that voice, the one that’s always swayed her, and turns in her arms to face her and winds her arms round her neck and Rhaenyra stares right back; backlit and silvery and purple and quite expressionless, really, and you can stare and stare and stare and you’re still not a dragon and I’m still not afraid of you.) “My love, please.”
But then Rhaenyra only quirks a brow; face just as inscrutable as before. “Right, well.” And her hands drift to her waist, again, tight. “If you feel that strongly about it.”
(She rests her chin on her shoulder, so she can’t see the relief.)
“But if ever I get word again.” She feels the timbre, hot and low. “I’m afraid you’ll have forced my hand. My love.”
“I see.”
And there’s only one way to meet this Rhaenyra, only one way there’s ever been—
“And that would make me terribly upset, I should think,” she murmurs, as Rhaenyra’s arms come about her, quite like a hug, really. “The baby and I might need to go rest in the countryside, for a while.”
Rhaenyra stiffens.
Alicent leans back up; cups her jaw, presses a kiss to her mouth.
Jeyne is no bacchanalian. The same cannot be said for Jessamyn.
And they’re drinking, and dancing, and dancing, and drinking, and you’re getting married on the morrow, she thinks, but Jeyne isn’t afraid, and Jessamyn, gods, looking freer and lighter and brighter than ever—
She seeps with exhaustion, at the hour of the wolf. Feels Rhaenyra’s rage; finds her by the cocktail bar, sipping by a north window and leans soft against her back, her jacket, closes her eyes.
“Are you done, for the night?”
She snags a finger in Rhaenyra’s belt loop, lets her arm rest. “I suppose.”
“I think Jeyne’s already found her way upstairs.”
“Yes, I think she has.” She hums. “I should follow.”
“We’re not upstairs, actually. We’ve been granted the guest house, for the weekend.”
She exhales, slow. “That’s very kind.”
“It’s a matter of rank.”
And sighs, again; lets Rhaenyra turn, lays prim back upon her chest, eyes closed, as her hands ghost her waist. “Yes.” Tries to banish that spinning, behind her vision. “Of course it is.”
There’s one room, in their guest cottage.
“It’s fine,” Rhaenyra says, almost immediately, slipping rings off her fingers and into their box. “I’ll take the sofa.”
Alicent rolls her eyes from the bed, even as she rubs at them, hair down in waves. “Right. And then gripe and grieve all day about how tired and sore you are. Get in bed.”
And she watches how gingerly she approaches, how quiet—in her white t-shirt and those beautiful silk pyjama trousers, with the blouse still likely balled up somewhere because I’ll not wear something matching to bed, like a fucking child, and slides under the quilt quite dextrously, without it dipping, without almost making a sound.
“I’ll turn the lamp off.”
“Alright.”
She lays back, for a while.
Waits—waits until Rhaenyra’s silent, and then until she’s not, breathing those louder, deeper breaths through the nose, until her head lulls quite to the side, and then—
She’s always fit perfectly against her side. Can’t explain it. Couldn’t even as kids. Something puzzle-piece between them, and natural; and right.
She fits her head on Rhaenyra’s chest, just below her shoulder; nestles her arm right between them, on her side, folds a leg over hers, too, ducks her nose beneath the covers.
I’ve never slept well.
(This is the only way I can sleep.)
She doesn’t move, later, when Rhaenyra’s arm comes over her waist; nor when she turns her just a little, gentle, so she can breathe soft and slow against her hair—
And then moves away, back to the other side of the bed, back to the darkness.
I don’t want to go to the countryside, I don’t want to ever leave you. Shuts her eyes, forces them closed. Hears the rustling, as Rhaenyra moves back, too, from the middle. I wish things had been different between us. I love you more than breathing air.
Rhaenyra’s gone, when she awakens. The shower’s running.
The wedding is beautiful. It’s in their garden, summery and flowering and crisp and in cool air. Rhaenyra seems to keep looking and then keep looking away and there’s a melancholy behind the eyes and she’s too many drinks in, even before the reception.
Do you always have a flask?
Do you always have a complaint?
And still, before, when she catches her rubbing elbows with Corbray, again, for the Foundation—
(“It’s a hateful organisation, Rhaenyra, he’s a hateful man.”
“Not as understood by the King. This is charitable work.”
“Charitable work.”
“Provision of winter fuel, for instance.”
“The government provides fuel subsidies.”
“They can’t reach everybody—”
“And nor do the Corbrays, who overtly refuse to serve immigrants, for example.”
“I can’t believe we’re arguing over fucking politics—”)
She tears up, a little, at the ceremony. Jeyne takes Jessamyn’s face in her hands and she knows Rhaenyra’s never understood the appeal but Alicent does, sees it plain and clear as day.
(Rhaenyra spots her tears, tries to reach for her hand. She wrests it away.)
But still, the night comes quickly again—quickly, as Rhaenyra touches her waist off and on through conversation mostly to prove that she can, and quickly, as she insists we’ve got to have a walk about the gardens and it’s sunset and she acquiesces for what fucking reason she doesn’t know and Rhaenyra puts her jacket over Alicent’s shoulders and it smells like her and then Rhaenyra says I snuck a cigar earlier you know and she knows from her breath that it’s not even true but that Rhaenyra wants to fucking fuck with her anyway and then she’s furious again—quickly as she refills her champagne from a bottle snatched right out of a server’s hand (arrogant, arrogant prick) going lightweight, darling? and swishing about in that suit, with flowing hair, and those ethereal hunter’s eyes, and winning at darts and cards and holding court and stepping aside as some young pretty woman says would you like to dance and Rhaenyra says no and Rhaenyra moves toward a butler and says where’s the Princess, please and then she’s moving out of the ballroom but Rhaenyra’s moving faster and she walks her back onto the dance floor by her middle and spins her like a top and then pulls her right back safe in her arms and Alicent pushes right back away and she looks down at her dress, looks down at her lupine. You’ve been avoiding me.
(And she has, but that’s no excuse to handle her waist like this, absolutely no excuse at all—)
She draws the line when she feels Rhaenyra’s teeth on her neck in an empty corridor and turns around and pushes her.
“Stop.”
Rhaenyra only laughs.
(But two can play at that game, really—
As though Rhaenyra really thinks she doesn’t know which buttons to press; as though haughty and taunting aren’t in her arsenal, or doe eyes, as she tells that story again, to Jeyne and Jess and the other women, in the parlor room, while Jeyne balances her new wife in her lap and breaks into good whisky. The one that ends in and that’s when I realised I’d lost my underthings.
Her eyes lock on Rhaenyra, smiling, head tilted. And we drove all the way home, in that soaking wet dress. Laughter. Rhaenyra gazes right back. And my wife had no idea.
Jessamyn laughs again, laughs truly; nods to Arianne, beside her, who’s got her hand over her mouth in an effort not to spit champagne. Looks back to Jeyne. “I do hope we’ll accrue our own share of holiday disasters, don’t you, sweetling?”
“Well, of course, if the experts recommend it.” Nods up to Rhaenyra, with her whisky, then. “Any advice, from our longest lasting pair?”
“Separate bedrooms.” Alicent quips.
(The table roars again, raucous. Rhaenyra’s eyes narrow; only a smirk.)
“And warfare.” Rhaenyra supplements. Sips at her tumbler. “Pick a battlefield, any.”
Alicent nods. “Secrets, too.”
“Right—keeping secrets.” Rhaenyra agrees. “Very important. But they need to be fraught.”
“Yes, exactly. Damning—”
“Alright, alright,” Jeyne smiles, waves them off, all eyeroll. “Very funny, yes. Real advice, now, please.”
And Alicent looks back up to her.
“Well,” she says, simply. “Perhaps, just…” And sighs. “Always keep them guessing.”
Jeyne smiles, kisses Jess’s cheek, holds out her glass. “To always keeping them guessing.”
And she excuses herself, afterward, just to find the lav—turns the corridor, and then again, twice, what a maze, tries a door—
A hand grabs her ass. Hard.
She jumps and whirls—“What in the gods’ name—”
Rhaenyra only raises her brows, dimples her chin, innocent. “Keeping you guessing.”
Rhaenyra touches her better than she touches herself. It’s part of the problem.
It’s downright rude, how Rhaenyra shoves her on the bed, sometimes—
Or how she shoves her up against the wall, in that guest cottage, against the back of the door; runs her hands up the side and back of that dress and reaches down and palms her ass, squeezes, bites her neck and whispers you’re really going to fucking tease me in public in this, are you—
(And she hadn’t intended to, really. But she’s not sorry about it.)
Rhaenyra’s dropping to her knees, then, pressing her harder against the wood by the waist, and she’s got her hands on it, trying to avoid crushing her breasts against—
But then Rhaenyra’s pushing the dress up and away, painstakingly bunching fabric, and reaching up and getting her hand between that raw beautiful thin silk and her quim and “No, no, delicate—”
Rhaenyra rips them right off her body, lets the tatters drift to the floor.
Alicent turns, jaw set, all daggers. “I liked those.”
And then she’s standing up and much as Alicent fights and bites for dominance Rhaenyra’s still got larger (not even larger!) hands around the slim of her waist with a good enough grip she seems to think she can do whatever she wants with her, even, up against the wall or bent over the bed or pulling her onto her lap on the sofa where Alicent spreads her legs to straddle and takes her face in her hands and looks down at her and goes are you just going to push me around or are you going to fuck me and Rhaenyra smirks and it’s bloodlust and goes, both.
She grips her shoulders and hangs on for dear life as three fingers piston up into her—closes her eyes and soaks Rhaenyra’s pants and concentrates and don’t fucking come don’t give her the satisfaction I won’t I won’t do it—
But then she’s biting at her collar, kissing her neck, and curling her fingers and fucking, she’s fucking and curling and pressing and her cunt’s going to betray her—
Rhaenyra growls. “Don’t make me make you take a fourth.”
And then it breaks subtle over the edge and she comes and Rhaenyra fucking spanks her.
(Stars, stars, stars behind her vision, open lips and oustretched all, relaxing her limbs, ocean-wet, coming and coming and coming.)
(Rhaenyra touches her better than she touches herself. It’s part of the problem.)
She’s catching her breath with her cheek on her shoulder. And she can’t, can’t catch it.
Rhaenyra traces circles on her back; brushes her hair aside, slowly, hums feather-soft into her ear. “Okay?” Another kiss to her collarbone, an open-mouth one, hotter still. “Happy? Now that you’ve come all over me?” Alicent nods; feels her heartrate rush in her ears. Rhaenyra cups her cunt. “And what about her?” Rubs her swollen entrance, delicious soft circles. “Is she happy?”
How do things that are so fucking weird come out of Rhaenyra’s mouth and sound so fucking hot—
“I had to make you come, didn’t I? You weren’t going to help me, were you?”
She noses Rhaenyra’s neck, then, as her mind fucking finally slowly returns. “I’m still not going to help you.”
Hands return to her ass, lips harder along her pulse. “Where do you want it.”
Alicent only leans up, arms tight around her shoulders; nuzzles her cheek, wants to say it, something like I love you, or you smell good, or something between them, even. Leans down toward her jaw. “Why don’t you put me down on the bed,” she whispers, then, “And give her a very sweet kiss.”
She goes to sleep utterly content in her arms, sore and relaxed and unanxious, with Rhaenyra’s kisses on her cheek, and by her eye, and Rhaenyra’s arms around her arms, spooned picture-perfect, spooned with the air a little chilly, Rhaenyra deep-breathing behind her.
And wakes up—not awake. Something in the liminal spaces. Like a dream where the covers are bunched and she adjusts in the dream to un-bunch them; feels something push against her leg and she turns her head, back toward the window, assumes Rhaenyra’s gotten up, and she’s dreaming again—maybe of the night before, and she can’t quite see it, but it’s Rhaenyra’s tongue against her, and it’s slow, and it’s private, and it’s loving—
Rhaenyra smiles when she feels it.
That mumble, at first, when she wakes up. “Rhaenyra—?”
And then when she wakes up—when Rhaenyra’s already gotten her legs open, and that silk slip pushed up across her hips, and then her mouth moves again, a kiss, and then another, kissing sweet tang, and soft lips, and then sucking, right there, right at the edge with her tongue curled and then Alicent’s awake awake and there’s hands in her hair and she’s going “Rhaenyra—!” and then “Rhaenyra—” and then her legs are opening, and spreading, and she’s got her arms around her thighs and pulls her even closer and Alicent’s throwing her head back and she thinks she might have heard her laugh, actually, like it’s hot and wonderful and ludicrous, and it is, and then she slips her tongue in just that way and hears it again, one more time.
“Rhaenyra—”
Alicent doesn’t like to think she believes in revenge, Rhaenyra knows. It’s that side to her that’s fitfully and effortfully good, the side that takes no pleasure in winning, that believes in forgiveness, in grace.
But not this side. This side is merciless.
“Yeah?” And she hangs on for dear life, really, head back against the pillows, watching the morning sun higher through the window—we’re going to be late for breakfast, she’d panted, and Alicent had tilted her head, oh and how did you know? Oh, was it the clock? and she’d closed her eyes and gone Alicent— and she’d shrugged and mused I’m not the one holding us up, sweetling, you can come any time you’d like—
(Her hand’s moving fast and dextrous and gods, gods above beneath the sheets and Rhaenyra has become religious, maybe, in the intervening six minutes—)
Alicent’s sweet kisses to her neck, beautiful lips firm on her jaw, you’re not going to win; rubbing firm, tight circles, Rhaenyra’s clutching the sheets—
Her fingers start working determined, languid on her clit; Rhaenyra’s soul is going to leave her very body. They have to get to breakfast.
“Do you miss your Page Six girls, my love?” She murmurs. Rhaenyra suppresses a whine. “I’m sure they miss you. Shall I stop?”
“No, no no no—”
“Not to worry, anyway, surely Jeyne and Jess will be late, I should hope.” And she smirks, doeish and devilish—“Do you remember our wedding night—no, not our wedding night; three nights after, I think? In Bellagio. We barely made it fit, didn’t we—oh no, don’t come, sweetling, not yet, I’m not sure I’m doing this again for a while—it was too big when you were on top of me, remember, but I was so wet, I promised you I could take it—and then we found that angle, love, do you remember that, I bet that looked so good, when I turned around for you—”
(Rhaenyra’s soul leaves her very body. Alicent kisses her on the lips and then starts taking her slip off, again.)
She wakes Alicent up around noon; slides back on top of the bed, in her day clothes, climbs up atop the quilt until she’s laying back over her, pressing a kiss easy and soft to the side of her cheek. “My sweet.”
Alicent hums.
“Time to wake up.” Another kiss, sure and soft. “Time to go.”
And Alicent nods. “Okay.”
Someone packs for them; Alicent showers, dries, returns, puts her dress on; slips her arms around Rhaenyra’s shoulders once she has. Demands a little kiss, just one, close-mouth. “I’m still sleepy.”
Rhaenyra rubs her waist, where the slightest bruise indentations still linger. “I’m sure you are.”
She runs nails over her shoulder. “I want to sleep once we’re home.”
She nods; kisses just over her ear. “As you command.”
They bid their goodbyes to Jeyne, to Jess; their friends, those other peers, other guests. Corbray, again; though Alicent doesn’t, thankfully, seem to quite notice.
It’s not a long drive.
And when they’re back in the apartments, with their bags brought up, and Alicent’s there, in the sun, by the window, glittery-red—
Gods, you’re so beautiful, you really are.
She comes close, into the light, reaches for her waist—smiles, leans in for a kiss—
“Don’t touch me.”
Rhaenyra freezes. Her wife draws her arms round herself; moves back toward the corridor, again.
She can hear her, faintly. Lyla, where’s my baby, please?
Rhaenyra blinks; looks down, under the window, on the breakfast table.
It’s a newspaper. Well. Not a newspaper. It’s the Sun.
Herself in a car. Laena’s face obstructed. The front page.
A black-lettered headline: MISS MYSTERY.