Chapter Text
The thorn catches deep in Alicent’s palm, causing her to hiss out in pain.
“Seven hells–” she breathes, jerking her hand back from the rose bush. A bead of blood wells brightly against her pale skin. The garden around them smells thickly of rain and roses gone overripe beneath the summer heat, the red blooms hanging heavy from their stems like drops of fresh meat.
Alicent presses her hand to her chest instinctively, curling her fingers inward.
Across the courtyard, Rhaenyra looks up from the book she’s been buried in.
“What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” Alicent says quickly, though her voice tightens around the lie.
Rhaenyra is already crossing toward her anyway, black boots scraping against the stone. She wears dark velvet despite the heat, silver rings glinting on her polished fingers, her pale braid hanging over one shoulder like spun moonlight. Even at sixteen, there is something unsettling about her beauty. Too sharp. Too still.
“Let me see.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
Rhaenyra catches her wrist before Alicent can hide it again and Alicent’s breathing goes still. She stares down at their hands, at Rhaenyra’s cool fingers wrapped over her pulse, thumb resting just beneath it. Alicent knows she hears her violently rapid pulse.
Blood slips slowly down Alicent’s palm.
“This is more than a scratch.” Rhaenyra murmurs.
Alicent swallows, she’s never enjoyed the sight of blood. “I’ll survive.”
A faint smile touches at Rhaenyra’s mouth.
“You will.” She says softly.
The garden seems quieter suddenly, the distant sounds of the city swallowed beneath the hum of cicadas and rustling leaves. Alicent becomes painfully aware of how close Rhaenyra stands, close enough that the cold scent of her rises between them–like night air and smoke and something metallic.
Rhaenyra lifts Alicent’s hand slowly and Alicent’s breath catches.
“What are you–”
Rhaenyra brings her palm toward her mouth, violet eyes fixed not on the wound, but on Alicent herself.
She sinks her fangs into Alicent’s soft flesh.
“Oh–” Alicent breathes the words, her eyes fluttering at the sudden venom that pumps through her veins, the pull of Rhaenyra’s mouth, how her tongue presses against her skin.
“Rhaenyra–” Alicent attempts to whisper out.
Rhaenyra does not release Alicent immediately. Her eyes flutter half shut as though savoring the taste. When she finally does, a thin smear of blood stains her pale lips. She licks it slowly from her lower lip, never breaking Alicent’s gaze.
“There.” She says quietly, and Alicent’s eyes drift down to the healed cut, along with a fresh scar. “Better.”
***
A sharp rap against Alicent’s bedroom door tears her from the memory, her hand jerking away from her palm quickly.
The city sprawls beyond the floor to ceiling windows of her penthouse, drenched in the dying orange light of sunset. King’s Landing glows ugly and beautiful at this hour, smoke curls from rooftops as neon signs begin to flicker awake beneath the darkening sky. Somewhere far below, a siren wails through the street.
Alicent stands motionless before the glass a moment longer, her pulse still uneven from the ghost of Rhaenyra’s mouth against her skin.
The scar is aching again.
It always seems to when she thinks of Rhaenyra too long.
The door opens behind her and she catches her father’s reflection in the window.
“Alicent.”
Her father barely glances at her before adjusting the cuff of his dark green suit jacket, expensive wool tailored so precisely it looks carved onto him. Gold glints at his wrist as he fastens his watch. Everything about him is immaculate, pressed and primed for the gala.
His gaze flicks downward at her hands and she follows it, realizing her thumb has drifted back over the scar embedded into the meat of her palm, two perfect dots indented slightly.
“I really don’t understand why you won’t get that taken care of.” Otto says under his breath.
She could get it taken care of, though it’s in the palm of her hand which is rarely ever seen and she’s sworn to allow herself to have a bit of imperfect left.
“I have more important things to worry about, wouldn’t you say?” Alicent answers absentmindedly, dropping her hands.
He moves further into the room, sweeping his eyes over her silk pajamas.
“Yes, you do.” Otto answers in a clipped voice. “Like the fact that you still aren’t dressed.”
“My gown is being steamed.” Alicent replies evenly. “I will be shortly.”
Otto’s mouth presses into a thin line. “The benefit begins in less than an hour.”
“And it is in my name,” Alicent says as she turns back to the window. “I think all will survive if I’m a bit late.”
“You’ve inherited so much from your mother.” Otto says as he adjusts his watch again, Alicent stares out into the horizon as her jaw tightens.
“Especially the qualities I found least useful.”
She catches his reflection in the window again, watching as he clasps his hands behind his back. He’s watching her again, as he always seems to be. To be sure she’s exactly where she’s meant to, he’s always commanded more than guided her.
“You are not a girl anymore, Alicent.” He says quietly. “You are the widow of Viserys Targaryen. You would do well to remember that.”
She wants to laugh. How can she forget? The city reminds her daily. Her faces stares down from magazine covers and towering digital billboards alike–the beautiful grieving widow standing at the forefront of a new era. Humanity untethered to walk freely at night without fear in their hearts. The wife of the late Viserys Targaryen, final patriarch of the ancient vampyric bloodline that once ruled over Westros and beyond.
She is a symbol. A saint.
Though the last true blood of House Targaryen still breathes beneath the streets of the city, locked in darkness.
Alicent pressed her fingers harder into her palm until the scar begins to throb again.
Perhaps things may have been different if Rhaenyra had not murdered her father–Alicent’s husband. Perhaps things might have been different if Otto had not forced Alicent into a marriage with Rhaenyra’s father when she was barely more woman than child herself and told her duty was holier than desire.
She does not let herself linger in thoughts like these for long. They are dangerous things. Rotten things. They crack open parts of her that she has spent years trying to bury beneath silk and polite smiles.
Because beneath it all is a longing. Longing for a girl in a rose garden with silver hair and blood on her lips.
“I’ll meet you downstairs.” Otto says impatiently. “Try not to keep the city waiting.”
He leaves her bedroom door open, and a moment later she hears the sound of the elevator arrive. Alicent remains at the window long after he leaves, staring down at the city below while dusk slowly swallows it whole.
Her gown is prepared and ready for her by her assistants when she returns to the dressing room. Deep green silk spills like water, rich enough to appear almost black in the low light until it catches the gold of the lamps above her. The fabric clings through the waist before softening toward the floor, elegant without excess. Old money refinement. The neckline dips lower than Alicent usually wears, it’s not exactly scandalous, but it’s enough to bare the pale column of her throat. The seven pointed star resting there gleams silver against her skin, nestled in the hollow between her collarbones.
She stares at herself in the mirror emptily as her assistant pull at the laces until she can’t breathe, but she looks beautiful–which is all that matters, doesn’t it?
Alicent steps into the elevator and watches the levels descend, the glowing numbers ticking one by one as she folds her arms loosely, clutch hanging off of the crook of her arm. The doors slide open onto the ground floor lobby and Criston Cole appears, standing as if he knew she were descending. Perhaps he did–she’s not sure anymore.
He’s standing in front of the fountain in black tactical clothing instead of formalwear, broad shoulders rigid beneath the fitted material. A firearm rests holstered at his side, equipped with wooden bullets with a sliver of silver. A clear earpiece curls behind one ear. He is her bodyguard, Otto trusts few people absolutely and Criston Cole is one of them.
His eyes lift the second Alicent steps out of the elevator and stay there for a moment.
“Alicent.” He says quietly. His gaze drags over her slowly enough to make heat crawl beneath her skin. They work their way up over the gown, then her throat, then her mouth like he’s memorizing every inch of her other beneath the warm lobby lighting.
Alicent gives him a small nod, wishing that he would stop looking at her like this. Not because she dislikes it–she really doesn’t mind it. But someone else might notice. There are cameras everywhere in the building. Staff moving in the distance. The drivers waiting beneath the awning. One wrong glance held too long could become gossip by morning, and gossip becomes ruin quickly.
No one can or needs to know that she’s let Criston into her bed more than once.
The sex isn’t bad, but she craves what awaits beyond it. When he holds her. That’s mostly what she wants. It’s the pathetic truth of it all.
Alicent no longer remembers what gentle touch feels like, not truly. Viserys had been absent even before death hollowed him out–too lost in the mourning of his late wife and Otto had raised her with all of the warmth one might fight in the dead of winter.
Criston leads her through the lobby and out beneath the glow of the building entrance where a black, gleaming SUV waits curbside, engine idling. Rain from earlier in the evening still slicks the pavement, turning the city lights nearly molten.
Otto is already in the back seat, waiting with his knuckles pressed against the corner of his jaw. Criston opens the door for her, offering his hand automatically as Alicent steps into the SUV. His fingers close around hers firmly, his thumb brushing once over her knuckles.
Alicent pulls her hand away immediately, keeping her eyes forward as she settles into her seat. His jaw tightens almost immediately as he pauses beside the open door, neither Alicent nor Otto acknowledging what had just conspired.
Criston shuts the door and a moment later he slides into the passenger seat beside the driver, expression once more smoothed into something unreadable and professional.
The SUV pulls away from the curb and disappears into the glowing veins of the city, only to arrive less than twenty minutes later to where the massive gala is being hell, a large cathedral style building.
Camera flashes erupt immediately the moment she steps out of the vehicle and she flinches in response–she’s never been able to grow used to them. The white light bursts across her vision in dizzying waves as photographers shout over one another behind the barricades that line the green carpet.
“Alicent!”
“Alicent–over here!”
She poses when she’s meant to, as does Otto who seems to manage the cameras far more composed than she can.
Criston’s hand steadies briefly at the small of her back to guide her away by the light until she finally is led into the gala hall. It rises around her in towering black marble and fire bowls that hang from the high ceiling, the flames dancing violently in the night air that pours in from the open doors, live orchestral music drifts from beyond.
It’s the Annual Dawn Benefit.
A celebration of humanity’s future, or this is what Otto has told her to proclaim.
She finds Larys Strong waiting near the entrance and the temporary numbness of the evening wears off immediately, her skin crawling at his heavy gaze.
“Alicent,” he says her name warmly. “You look beautiful this evening.”
She wants desperately to have worn something with sleeves. Something high-necked and suffocating. Something that hides more than it reveals. Instead she only smiles politely as he falls into step beside her.
“You’re too kind.”
“No,” Larys says quietly, as he always seems to be. “Merely observant.”
His gaze lingers over at her at the bare column of her throat before continuing forward through the gala entrance.
Hundreds of people fill the grand hall beneath vaulted ceilings painted black as midnight skies, crystal chandeliers drip gold light over the sea of gowns and tuxedos below. Politicians. Socialites. CEOs. Religious leaders. Old families with old money and newer monsters hiding beneath their new, pretty faces with violet eyes and sharp teeth.
Larys begins quietly informing her who has arrived already.
“The Baratheons donated another hospital wing.” He notes as they pass The Baratheon’s table, she nods and smiles at them softly before continuing. “The Lannisters are in talks of sponsoring a blood bank out east in the city.” Larys smirks slightly. “And Borros brought his newest wife.”
Alicent keeps her eyes forward as he speaks, smiling and nodding to those who meet her eyes. Her cheeks already ache from smiling, she wants nothing more than a drink.
She sees Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond already sitting in the massive table at the head of the room, raised and adorned with pale florals and dripping candelabras.
They are Viserys’s legacy made of flesh–or death. They are not truly Alicent’s children, not by blood. Alicent had never bore Viserys an heir, though the reasons for that now remain buried so deeply inside herself that she refuses even now to touch them.
Instead, Viserys had made heirs himself. His fledglings.
Alicent remembers Helaena the most before the change, she’d had strawberry blonde hair and soft blue eyes, a heartbeat and a color to her cheeks. Now her hair falls nearly white around her shoulders, pale as frost beneath the chandelier light, her violet eyes glance emptily across the crowd, distant and strange enough to make Alicent’s chest tighten painfully when she pauses her gaze on her for far too long.
Aemond had changed the last, his white hair hanging sharply against his black velvet suit, sapphire gleaming in the hollow of his ruined eye.
Aegon lounges across his chair already half drunk, crystal tumbler hanging loosely from his gold ringed fingers, nearly half unbuttoned. He’s eyeing a woman in diamonds not far off, lazily running her deep red nails against her neck, clearly interested in him. His beauty is almost grotesque in its perfection. Pale white hair in waves, violet eyes rimmed red from whatever it is he’s taken this evening.
Aegon was the first to turn–and he nearly died in doing so.
Alicent remembers the screaming, the blood that poured from his eyes. The way Viserys refused to leave the room–he had done the same for the dozens others who hadn’t survived the venom.
Not many survived the change, the body has to be willing to accept it, to be right for it. For centuries, the Targaryens guarded it, and because of it, the bloodline dwindled. There were too many deaths, too much rot that spread through immortal veins.
Until Rhaenyra and the discovery of what her blood could do.
It could heal any sickness, it could turn anyone successfully. A miracle now trapped beneath the city, milked like a sacrificial god.
Aemond stands when Alicent comes to the table, pulling her chair out for her.
“Mother,” he says in greeting, the word coming easier from him than the other. Out of all of them, Aemond alone truly attempts to play the role of the family. Helaena merely exists within it, and Aegon survives it however he can. Usually through liquor, powder, or a mouth.
Alicent carefully lowers herself into the chair and whispers out a thank you. Aemond returns to his seat, his sharp eye scanning over the room like a predator scenting for blood in the water.
Alicent leans towards Aegon as servers begin to pour Alicent’s glass with white one.
“Did you prepare your speech like I asked?”
Aegon blinks at her slowly. He lifts his glass lazily instead, violet eyes heavy lidded and glassy. “Prepared-ish.” The words slur together and Alicent squeezes her eyes shut for a moment as she struggles to take a breath.
“Aegon.” Alicent hisses his name.
“I don’t know what you want me to say to any of them.” Aemond waves off half heartedly. “I have nothing to say to them.”
Alicent wants to strike him, and her nails claw at the armrest of her chair beneath the table. She wants to grab his jaw and force him upright, demand he pulls himself together for an evening–but there are cameras. So instead she smooths the expression of annoyance from her face.
“I’ll speak.” She breathes.
Aegon merely raises his glass toward her in acknowledgement before taking another drink. Aemond watches the exchange in silence on Helaena’s other side, who continues to stare at the flame in front of her.
The podium is prepared and she is quietly called forward by the coordinator. The room quiets as they wait for her words, hundreds of eyes following her movement as she steps towards the floral dripped podium. Cameras pivot, tracking every step that she takes as the orchestra softens.
Alicent steps beneath the golden lights and smiles.
“Good evening,” she says, her voice carrying cleanly through the room.
Applause ripples politely before it settles.
“When my late husband first spoke of peace between humankind and vampyrkind, many believed such a future impossible.”
She pauses as she lets her eyes sweep over them.
“In truth, perhaps some still do.”
A soft ripple of laughter echoes through the room.
“For centuries, our histories have been written in blood, fear, hunger, and violence. Humans feared vampyr, vampyr ruled over humans. Entire generations raised believing coexistence could never exist without domination.”
She smiles gently.
“And yet here we stand together now.”
Applause sweeps the room, a short burst as Otto watches from the high table with sharp satisfaction in his eyes.
“The laws established over the last decade have ensured protections for both human and vampyr citizens alike. Regulated feeding programs. Ethical blood banks. Sanctuary protections. Curfews lifted. Predatory territories dissolved. Gone are the days where fear must govern our lives.”
The crowd nods along eagerly, men and women who have built entire fortunes from this new era.
“Tonight’s benefit supports continued medical research utilizing the sanctified blood of the final true vampyric lineage.”
The room stills at the mention of it, the Targaryen bloodline that carries mythic weight.
“The gifts found within that blood have changed our world,” Alicent continues carefully, “diseases once thought incurable are now eradicated. Failed turnings now survivable. Human lifespans extended. Countless lives saved.”
She does not mention where the blood comes from, nor that it comes from the woman imprisoned beneath the city. The way Otto refuses to speak her name in front of Alicent, like he does not trust her to handle it so easily. Alicent knows that she is fed and safe, which is the best she can ask for the woman who had murdered her husband in cold blood.
Alicent’s fingers tighten slightly against the podium.
“Peace,” she says softly into the mic, “requires sacrifice from all of us. But I truly believe that this new world we have built together is worth protecting.”
Applause rises through the room again.
“They say history remembers monsters and martyrs,” Alicent says. “I pray that ours remembers mercy.”
The applause sweeps through the room, loud and thunderous as a few even rise to their feet.
Cameras flash again and Alicent smiles beautifully beneath the golden lighting. But she feels exhaustion beneath her smile, bone deep and ancient. Alicent finally steps away from the podium as the orchestra begins to tangle with the applause that slowly dies away. Servers emerge carrying silver trays and crystal glasses for the dinner service. She returns to the high table with that same perfect smile still fixed into place until her back is turned, only facing Otto and Viserys’s fledglings as it drops for a brief moment to relax her face.
Dinner arrives beneath another swell of the music, silver domes are lifted down the length of the tables, releasing the heavy scent of butter and rosemary and garlic and the metallic scent of blood while rare steaks glisten, nearly raw as the juices bleed slowly across the porcelain plates. For the human guests, fresh glasses of wine are poured, and for the vampyrs, crystal decanters darker than garnets appear instead, filled with heated blood selected from the finest patrons.
They drink from their cups, pleased at the selection. Before Viserys’s death, the vampyrs had hidden away in feeding dens, hunting in alleyways and shadows if they were not the elite. Now blood is served beneath chandeliers while soft music plays–it’s civilized and structured.
Aegon downs nearly half of his glass before touching his steak, violet eyes dull with boredom as he waves off a politician attempting to make conversation with him. Down the table, Aemond cuts carefully into his steak, his glowing eyes sweeping over the crowd tactically.
Helaena merely stares down at her plate emptily, as if the meat has gone rotten. She pokes absentmindedly at the center of her steak.
“They’re too loud tonight,” Helaena says softly, moreso to herself than Alicent.
Alicent looks over at her, squeezing Helaena’s hand lightly beneath the table. “You’re just overwhelmed. I know how you don’t like crowds.”
Helaena shakes her head once, eyes fixed across the room.
“No. They’re excited.” Her fingers tighten slightly around Alicent’s. “Something is about to open wrong.”
Alicent frowns faintly. “What does that mean?”
Helaena blinks slowly.
“I can hear teeth.”
Alicent frowns as Helaena stiffens. She’s never fully settled after the turning, these strange visions come to her. Sometimes it’s something, and other times it’s nothing at all, just a trick of her mind. Helaena has always seemed to exist slightly outside of herself as though some essential tether to humanity had snapped the moment Viserys had sunk his fangs into her neck.
“I’d like to go home.” Helaena murmurs quietly.
Alicent squeezes her hand. “I know.”
Helaena’s fingers are ice cold, and Alicent remembers when they used to be warm.
“It’ll be over soon enough.” Alicent reassures her quietly. “We’ll slip away after the biddings, would you like that?”
Helaena nods faintly, though her distant gaze never leaves the ballroom crowd. Alicent hesitates before she speaks again.
“There’s a new exhibit at the Natural History Museum opening this weekend,” she says softly. “Entomology and preservation studies. They’re displaying preserved spider colonies from the old underground tunnels beneath the city.”
Helaena looks over at her, the words catching her interest.
“They preserved the webs as well,” Alicent continues carefully. “I thought perhaps we could go see them together?”
For a flash, something almost humanlike flickers across Helaena’s face, but it vanishes as quickly as it had appeared. Helaena gently pulls her hand back beneath the table cloth.
Alicent’s fingers close around empty air.
“Oh,” Helaena says softly. “Maybe.”
She returns her attention to the untouched meal before her and Alicent lowers her hand slowly back into her lap, forcing her gaze forward. Her thumb drifts once more over the old scar in her palm without thinking, tracing the two silver marks while the music fades into a new piece.
By the time the dinner plates are cleared away, the ballroom has melted into something softer around the edges. Wine glows warm and heavy in Alicent’s veins, taking just enough of the sharpness out of the evening to make it bearable. By her side, Aegon is laughing too loudly at something one of the socialites beside him says, his glass hanging loose from elegant fingers already stained dark red from blood and wine, but she’s nearly too drunk to care anymore of what he does.
Larys rises from his seat, his gold embellished cane shines in the light. The room gradually falls quiet as he ascends the stage.
“Well,” he says as he leans into the microphone, smiling broadly beneath the chandelier lights. “I believe it’s time we begin the evening’s most anticipated tradition.”
A murmur of excitement ripples through the crowd–The Renewal Auction–and Alicent suppresses the urge to sigh at the mention of it.
She’s argued against this portion of the gala when Otto first proposed it years ago, but the public adored it too much. A symbol that they claimed of trust between human and vampyr. A willing exchange that involved no fear or violence. Merely consent and luxury, just another way they dressed blood up in silk and diamonds to make it palatable to the human race.
“Our first guest this evening,” Larys continues smoothly, “has traveled all the way from Oldtown to join us tonight.”
Applause swells as the curtains at the back of the stage part to reveal a breathtaking woman with sunkissed skin, her dark hair pinned elegantly above one shoulder to leave the long line of her neck completely bare. Her gown is a soft ivory, the silk falling like water over her perfect body. The neckline tips low and a delicate gold chain drapes around her throat, drawing the eye precisely where it’s meant to be, highlighting the beating pulse that no human can pick up on.
The woman smiles knowingly at the crowd before flirtatiously tilting her head to one side and rolls her neck slightly. The vampyrs near the stage fall visibly still.
“Shall we begin?” Larys asks brightly.
Hands immediately rise across the ballroom with burgundy paddles.
“Twenty thousand.”
“Thirty.”
“Fifty.”
The numbers climb quickly while the woman glides across the stage, smiling at the bidders who wish to sink their teeth into her soft flesh, letting her fingertips ghost teasingly along the elegant line of her throat.
“Eighty thousand.”
“Ninety.”
“One hundred thousand.”
Aegon whistles low beneath his breath beside Alicent.
“Christ.”
Aemond shifts in his seat. “I fear they’re being a bit too gracious. But perhaps she isn’t my type.”
Helaena merely lets out a ‘hmph.’
The final bid comes from a man seated near the center of the ballroom floor.
“One hundred and twenty thousand.”
Silence follows briefly at the offer.
“Is anyone willing to counter the steep offer?” Larys calls, though no one speaks. “And there we are, a generous contribution to the future of our city.”
The crowd laughs politely, followed by applause that roars in Alicent’s ears. The winner rises smoothly from his seat, adjusting the front of his tan suit jacket as he approaches the stage. He’s handsome, Alicent remembers him as someone who’d applied for the transition and he’d been approved with his involvement in the stock market and a generous donation to a blood bank in the southern part of the city. He’s in his mid-thirties, though she can never tell with a vampyr anymore. They all look strange to her, like something is slightly off.
Larys beams at him, stepping aside so that the vampyr can claim his drink for the evening where he’ll take it in a private room, and what happens beyond those doors is none of Alicent’s business.
The woman extends her hand toward the bidder as he reaches the stage.
The air seems to change then, and Alicent can feel it instantly as the man falls still, though Alicent can’t see his face.
Aemond and Helaena notice it too, Helaena stiffens and Aemond leans forward curiously as the woman’s smile falters.
“Sir?” She says quietly, though the room is silent enough that Alicent can just slightly hear it.
He turns just a fraction to her and Alicent can see the sudden glow of his eyes, violet and bright as gasps rack through the room. Fledglings through Rhaenyra’s blood have always kept their features–but this–this is new.
When he speaks, his voice is not the one that Alicent knows. It’s darker. Nearly warped, as if something is attempting to fight its way out of his skin.
“You will all bleed for the true queen.”
The words scrape out wet and distorted, sending a chill down Alicent’s spine.
The woman attempts to pull her hand away, but he snatches her wrist and the air fills with a sickening crack as she screams in pain as the bones collapse.
Panic detonates instantly across the room as people lurch to their feet, someone screams for security as the woman sobs in terror, trying desperately to wrench herself backward, the man jerks her violently into him and his teeth sink into her throat.
Blood explodes across the stage, hot and crimson as it sprays over his face, his tan suit immediately drenched in scarlet as the flesh rips open beneath his mouth. The sound is horrific, wet and tearing as he rips through cartilage as she falls limp against his grip.
Screams fill the room as glasses shatter, tables overturn as they begin to stampede toward the exits while the model hits the floor, blood pouring down her ruined gown in violent waves.
He doesn’t stop, he only continues to feed on his hands and knees above her, ripping his head violently as he burrows his fangs deeper into the meat.
Larys stumbles backward across the stage in horror while security surges forward through the screaming crowd, fighting against the panicked bodies that surge against them.
Alicent sits frozen at the table, unable to look at the grotesque scene before her as the man lifts his head slowly from the woman’s destroyed throat, blood dripping from the lower half of his face in thick, crimson streams. For a mere moment, the ballroom seems to fall silent as she watches him turn toward her, his eyes still glowing that hauntingly familiar purple color.
It’s not the soft violet common among vampyrs, not the muted lilac that lived in Aemond’s remaining eye or the strange dreamlike shade that clouds Helaena’s gaze. This is something brighter. Far hungrier. Violent and feral.
He moves quickly, launching himself onto a table with impossible force, silver platters and crystal exploding beneath him as panic rips through the ballroom, the doors finally opened to release them.
Someone grabs Otto and drags him backward into the crowd, Aegon vanishes amidst the chaos with security swarming around him while Aemond surges to his feet, pulling Helaena to safety.
No one thinks to take Alicent–or perhaps they have simply forgotten she is there at all. She remains seated at the center of the high table, frozen as he vaults himself to the table, landing swiftly on his feet, causing the glasses to spill and shatter around her as they hit the floor.
Alicent cannot bring herself to move as he lowers himself into a crouch before her, the putrid smell of his breath washing across her flushed cheeks as terror roots her into place. Her body has gone cold despite the heat of the room. She wants to run, she knows she should run–fight, do anything at all to get away from him but she merely stays trapped by the violet glow of his eyes.
The man tilts his head slightly, studying her with those eyes. When he speaks, the voice that emerges sounds wrong in a way Alicent can’t fully grasp. It sounds deeper than before, layered strangely beneath itself as though something had crawled down his throat, speaking through him as his body jerks violently as if he’s attempting to fight it off.
“The queen,” he rasps, his body jerking slightly as Alicent stares up at him, wide eyed. Blood drips from his mouth onto Alicent’s pale hands that are stretched across the table.
“The queen will pick her teeth with your bones when she’s through with you.”
Something twists violently in Alicent’s chest at the words. Not recognition exactly, but something close enough to make her pulse stutter painfully.
Rhaenyra.
His breathing suddenly changes, the manic reverence disappears, replaced by something sharp and frightened as the light slowly drains from his eyes until they’re dark again. Normal.
“Wait,” the man says suddenly, frantically whipping his head through the room. He looks down at his bloodied hands, the terror prominent in Alicent’s features. He reaches towards Alicent, his hand on her shoulder suddenly, the blood staining her pale skin. “Wait–no wait–I–”
A gunshot cracks through the room before he can finish his words. Alicent flinches violently as the bullet tears through the man’s skull. The back of his head bursts apart in a spray of blood and bone as his body lurches backwards and falls in a heap to the floor.
Silence follows, but not true silence. She can hear people crying somewhere beyond the ringing of her ears. Somewhere alarms have begun to blare through the building, but around Alicent herself, the world seems to close in on the ringing voice.
Criston Cole stands several feet away with his gun still raised, barrel smoking slightly. His chest rises and falls harshly beneath his tactical vest, his tan face paled with adrenaline.
Alicent holds still, blood slipping down her cheek.
And beneath the city far below the streets and glittering towers and carefully constructed laws, something has woken.