Chapter Text
Second Moon of 116 AC
The Sept bells rang across King's Landing, their bronze voices announcing what the realm already knew—King Viserys Targaryen was to wed Lady Alicent Hightower this very day.
Alicent stood before the looking glass in her chambers, watching strange hands adjust the green silk of her wedding gown.
Strange, because they were young—smooth and unblemished, without the liver spots and creeping wrinkles she remembered. In her mind—in her other mind, the one that didn't belong here—she was forty-five, a grandmother, a woman who had spent decades navigating the treacherous waters of court politics.
But the girl in the mirror was barely fifteen.
This cannot be real, she thought, not for the first time since waking three days ago in this impossible body. And yet...
She flexed her fingers, felt the strength in them, the absence of joint pain that had plagued her for years. The memories of both lives sat uneasily in her skull—the future that would never be, and this present she didn't understand.
"You look beautiful, my lady," one of her handmaids whispered.
Alicent barely heard her. Her thoughts were on someone else. "Has the Princess Rhaenyra arrived yet?"
The handmaid's eyes widened slightly. "No, my lady. The princess departed three days past."
"Departed?" The word came sharper than intended.
In this soul's memories—the memories of this Alicent, the young one who had lived this life before Alicent's older consciousness arrived—she and Rhaenyra had been close. Childhood companions. Friends who had whispered secrets and dreamed of dragons.
Why would Rhaenyra not attend?
The Sept ceremony passed in a blur of incense and holy oils. Viserys spoke his vows with somber dignity, his face kind but distant, still wearing grief for Aemma like a second crown. Alicent heard herself respond in the proper places, her voice steady even as her mind churned.
The throne room was packed for the feast, lords and ladies from across the realm come to witness the union. But as Alicent surveyed the crowd from her place beside the king, she noted the absences as keenly as the presences.
No Rhaenyra, seated where she should be as heir to the Iron Throne.
No Lord Corlys Velaryon, no Princess Rhaenys, no Laenor or Laena—the entire House Velaryon had sent their regrets, citing "unrest in the tides" and matters requiring attention at Driftmark.
And Daemon... Prince Daemon Targaryen was somewhere in the city, but not here.
"Your Grace," Alicent murmured to Viserys during a lull in the festivities. "Where is Ser Criston Cole? I don't see him among the Kingsguard."
Viserys blinked, as if surprised by the question. "Cole? He serves in the City Watch now. Captain of the northern wing, I believe. Why do you ask?"
"No reason, Your Grace. I merely... I thought I recognized the name."
But that wasn't right. In her memories—both sets of them—Criston Cole had been important. A Kingsguard. Devoted to...
To Rhaenyra.
Alicent's unease deepened.
Later, when the feast had descended into wine-soaked revelry, Alicent overheard two courtiers speaking in hushed tones behind a pillar.
"Three days, they say. The Princess worked like a woman possessed."
"Nine ships! Can you imagine? Dresses, jewelry, even Queen Aemma's falcons—"
"And the tapestries. Historical pieces, some of them. Kings going back to the Conquest."
"She took her household too. Serving staff, guards from the Vale, her Arryn kinsmen. Even her mother's ladies."
"With the King's permission, I heard. He granted it all without question."
"Dragonstone, then. That's where she's gone?"
"Where else? Syrax was seen flying east, and the ships were bound for Dragonstone's harbor."
Alicent's chest tightened. Rhaenyra had fled. Packed her life into nine ships and removed herself from court entirely, all within three days of the wedding announcement.
This wasn't grief. This was... something else.
The next morning, Alicent learned that her father Otto Hightower was no longer Hand of the King.
"It was done gently," Lord Lyonel Strong explained when Alicent requested an audience. The new Hand was a broad-shouldered man with an honest face, respected for his fairness. "His Grace made a jest of it—said a Hightower Queen and a Hightower Hand was too much Hightower in one keep. Then he named me to the position and raised your father to a seat on the Small Council. Master of Laws, a position of great honor."
"I see." Alicent kept her voice neutral, though her mind raced. Viserys moved against my father. Why? Because I'm Queen now, and he fears the appearance of Hightower dominance? Or...
Or had something happened she didn't know about? Something that made the King wary?
She thought of Rhaenyra's flight, of Daemon's insulting absence—word had spread quickly that the Rogue Prince had been in King's Landing but refused to attend, making crude jests about the King marrying "a leech" and suggesting he should have wed Otto himself. The entire city had heard variations of that particular mockery within hours.
Everything felt wrong, like a familiar song played in the wrong key.
The moon turned, then another.
Alicent performed her duties as Queen with the grace her older self had learned over decades, startling the court with her poise and political acumen.
Let them wonder at her transformation from shy girl to confident queen—she had neither the time nor the inclination to explain.
Then, in the third moon of their marriage, the maester confirmed what Alicent had suspected: she was with child.
Otto Hightower's joy was palpable and, to Alicent's experienced eye, transparently ambitious. He spoke constantly of heirs and succession, never quite saying that Rhaenyra should be passed over, but making his thoughts abundantly clear.
"A son, Your Grace," he would say to Viserys at every opportunity. "The realm needs a son."
Alicent said nothing, but she noticed how Viserys's jaw would tighten, how his eyes would grow cold. The King loved his daughter, that much was clear, even if she had removed herself to Dragonstone.
Rhaenyra is still heir, Alicent thought. Nothing has changed that.
But she wondered what her father was planning.
The pregnancy progressed. Alicent felt the child move within her, a flutter like wings. In her other life, she had borne four children—though those memories felt dreamlike now, belonging to a woman who had never existed in this world. Would this child be the same? Would she hold baby Aegon again, or would this be someone entirely new?
The eighth moon came.
The pains started in the night, sharp and wrong. Alicent woke gasping, her sheets soaked, and knew with the instinct of a woman who had done this before that something was terribly amiss.
The maesters came. Grand Maester Mellos, who served her father's interests more faithfully than the crown's, took charge. There were hours of agony, of bleeding, of desperate whispered consultations.
When it was over, Alicent held a tiny, breathing son.
His legs were twisted, the bones malformed, muscles that would never bear weight. The maesters said he would never walk.
"Aegon," Viserys named him, his voice breaking. "My son. My boy."
They tried. Gods, how they tried. Alicent held him close, nursed him, sang to him.
Viserys commissioned special cradles, consulted every maester and healer in the realm. But the baby was weak, his body unable to thrive.
Seven months. Prince Aegon lived for seven months, each day a battle, each breath a victory. Then one morning Alicent woke to find him cold in his cradle, his tiny chest still.
The funeral was a small affair. Rhaenyra did not come. Daemon did not come. The Velaryons sent their condolences by raven.
Alicent stood in the Sept, her young body rigid with grief that belonged to two lifetimes, and wondered what cruel god had given her this second chance only to take her child away.
Afterward, in the Red Keep's corridors, the whispers started again.
"Poor Queen Alicent," some said with genuine sympathy.
"Just like Queen Aemma," others murmured. "Unable to give the King a healthy heir."
"Perhaps she inherited the previous queen's... difficulties."
That last comment stopped Alicent cold. She stood in the shadow of a pillar, listening to two ladies discuss her as if she weren't ten paces away.
"It's strange, isn't it? Queen Aemma lost so many babes. And now this."
"The maesters say the Lady Alicent's son was malformed from the womb. Something about the blood, perhaps."
"Or the seed." A meaningful pause. "The King is not young."
"Hush! Such talk is dangerous."
They moved on, but Alicent remained frozen.
Perhaps she inherited the previous queen's abilities.
The words echoed in her mind, taking on new and terrible significance. In her other life—the one that would never be—she had given Viserys four children. Four living children, however complicated their lives had become.
But this wasn't that life.
This was something else entirely.
Some other world, some other possibility, where Rhaenyra had fled to Dragonstone before the wedding, where Daemon made his contempt public, where the Velaryons had withdrawn their support, where Criston Cole served in the City Watch instead of the Kingsguard.
Where Alicent, it seemed, could not give the King a healthy heir.
That night, alone in her chambers, Alicent stared at her young hands and wondered: if she had been given a second chance at life, who else had been given the same terrible gift?
And what did they remember of the future that was no longer written?