Chapter Text
Alicent was chagrined to say she was counting down the days until Rhaenyra returned to King’s Landing like a child eager for their nameday gifts.
For the first time in six years, she could feel the heat of the blood in her veins, she could hear the sound of her heart thumping, steady and sure, in her chest. She almost hadn’t realized how quiet and cold she had become until suddenly all the sound and the warmth flooded back to her. Every passing day was an obstacle, a placeholder, something to get through before she returned. Alicent was almost out of breath, she was running so quickly through her days in the hopes to get there faster.
It was easy to keep these feeling private from her family. Aegon payed no need to anything but himself, Aemond spent more time in the training yard with Ser Criston than he did with her, and Helaena was too occupied with children of her own to take note of her mother’s lack of focus. Viserys, of course, noticed little once milk of the poppy had touched his tongue, but she almost wished that weren’t so. If he’d been of his right mind, he’d have been just as excited as her that Rhaenyra had promised to return. He would see that things were mending and he would be pleased.
Alicent’s father saw more, however. Alicent was more than aware of that. She’d known when she toasted to Rhaenyra, told her she’d be a good queen, that Otto Hightower would be displeased with the sentiment—particularly coming from her. There had not been a day since she’d wed the king that her father had not lobbied for Alicent to place her son on the throne, had not warned her of the danger to come if she did not. It had been burned into her skin like a brand, that fear. It was a scar she hadn’t realized she’d worn until it had shown up on Rhaenyra’s skin. That had changed things for her.
She’d lived a life of quiet, reserved penance since that day. But as Talya laced up her dress and slid golden beads into her hair that morning, she wondered if it might be time to set her penance aside. If maybe, finally, she could forgive herself, if only Rhaenyra could as well.
Travel was not a science and there were no guarantees of when Rhaenyra would arrive or even what day. That made it worse, putting Alicent on an eager, jittery edge of anticipation. There were so many words crowding behind her closed lips, twenty years of emotions and confessions and stories she ached to purge. She felt so heavy and full and slowed by all the experiences she had never been able to share with Rhaenyra. She thought to do so would make her feel lighter than the blessing of any septon.
The day Rhaenyra returned, Alicent did not receive the news until it was nearly nightfall. Another handmaiden, not Talya, cleared her throat delicately behind Alicent. She had taken a moment to catch her breath in narrow corridor, not expecting to see anyone there, and jumped at the sound.
“Apologies, Your Grace,” the girl said, eyes downcast.
“Don’t apologize,” Alicent said, though her tone was brusque. “What is it?”
“Your guest has arrived,” she said. “The Princess, that is.”
All at once, Alicent straightened, feeling a strange concoction of anticipation and fear brewing in her belly. “Where?”
“She asked to be taken to your chambers,” the girl’s brow furrowed. “I hope that is all right, Your Grace.”
“Yes,” Alicent said. “Yes, that’s just fine. Thank you for telling me. That will be all.”
The girl dropped a curtsy and scurried away, but Alicent paid her no heed. As soon as the girl turned away from her, Alicent lifted her skirts and walked with a rare expediency back toward her chambers.
❂
Rhaenyra, as always, had chosen to shuck propriety. And, for the first time in the past twenty years, Alicent found that she did not mind very much.
When Alicent entered her chambers, Rhaenyra was seated on her bed, one hand raised as she ran her fingers over the green silk of the bed’s canopy. She didn’t turn to face Alicent when she entered, but her eyes flickered Alicent’s way. That was all.
“Rhaenyra,” Alicent said, trying hard to cover her breathlessness. Part of it was from how quickly she had walked to get there, part of it was just from seeing her.
It was true that Alicent had seen Rhaenyra plenty of times in the past twenty years—they’d spent ten hellish ones trapped in this castle together, Alicent stewing in grim loathing as she watched Rhaenyra happily birth bastard after bastard. On some level that still bothered her, but she was not unaware enough to fail to understand that a good deal of her hatred of Rhaenyra came from watching her be happy without Alicent. Watching her be happier than Alicent, friendless and alone, could ever hope to be. It was a bitter tincture to swallow to know that you had always done right, followed the rules, been good, and the only thing it had garnered you was bleak misery.
But that was in the past, wasn’t it? Or, at least, it could be. If they tried hard enough, if Alicent could just hold onto Rhaenyra’s hand again and this time choose to never let go, maybe that could all belong to the past.
“It’s lovely,” Rhaenyra said. “What you’ve done to the place.”
Alicent’s eyes flicked around the space, remembering. “These were your mother’s chambers,” she said softly.
“Quite different now,” Rhaenyra mused. She didn’t sound angry, but Alicent was nervous all the same. “Much of the castle is.”
“The children all arrived home safely?” Alicent asked, hoping to change the subject.
Rhaenyra turned to her at last and smiled, letting her hand drop into her lap. “I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t.” Rhaenyra’s gaze was sharp on her, probing. This was still so new to both of them, the concept of reconciliation. It was difficult to build a bridge over the sea of twenty years’ enmity, but Alicent hoped they could try.
“That’s good then,” Alicent cleared her throat and wiped her hands on her dress. “I appreciate your willingness to return, and with such haste. I am sure the king will be, as well.”
“Alicent,” Rhaenyra said, and it was so much the way she would have said when they were young, just two girl studying books beneath a weirwood tree, that Alicent felt tears prick at the back of her eyes. “Enough with the stiff formality,” Rhaenyra stood and took a few steps closer. “We must talk, you and I, as we once did, if we should ever hope to bridge this gap.”
“And that is something you would wish to do?” Alicent asked hesitantly.
“If I wished to maintain this distance between us, I would never have agreed to return to King’s Landing at all,” Rhaenyra said, an edge of exasperation creeping into her tone. “If we can put this pain behind us, if only for the sake of my father in his final weeks, and for the continued happiness of our children, then perhaps we can finally behave as a family should. I want that. Do not doubt that of me.”
“I’m sorry,” Alicent found herself saying. She had to lower her gaze so Rhaenyra would see no sign of the tears that had begun to pool in her eyes.
“For what?” Rhaenyra asked, surprised.
“For being the cause of our bitter enmity,” she said. “I did not have your fire, Rhaenyra. I did not have a way to refuse it. My father was determined, and all I ever wanted was to make him happy.”
It was quiet for a beat, but Alicent did not look up at Rhaenyra. She had been Queen of the Seven Kingdoms for two decades now and did not cow for anybody. Except, perhaps, for this woman she had loved and wronged nonetheless.
“Are you speaking of your betrothal?” Rhaenyra said at last, a small quaver in her voice as well.
This was a pain that lanced deeply in both of them. The origin of their ire. The first of a thousand cuts they’d traded.
“I am,” Alicent said, finally looking up.
Rhaenyra was a difficult one to read. It had not been that way in her youth, but as she matured she had learned to keep her face blank of emotion when needed. A useful skill in court, and one that Alicent knew well. Unfortunately, Alicent did not know how to see past this mask and glimpse whatever lay underneath.
“You met with him,” Rhaenyra said, the quaver in her voice growing more pronounced. Alicent could not tell if it was from sadness or anger or both. “In secret. For six months.”
“I did,” Alicent said.
The mask slipped off Rhaenyra’s face then, revealing the stark pain underneath. “Why?”
Alicent drew in a deep breath, trying to steady herself. Unconsciously, she began to pick at her nailbeds. “Because my father told me to,” she said, her voice more choked than she’d expected it to be. “He said it would be a kindness to comfort the king in his grief. It wasn’t meant to last, it wasn’t meant to be anything more than that. I wanted it to end, but my father didn’t, and then Viserys—” She cut herself off, closing her eyes and shaking her head slowly. “He said he took great pleasure in my company. He asked to dine with me. My father encouraged me to go. It was never meant to be anything more than supper.” At least not for me.
“Why—” Rhaenyra cut herself off, voice thick, and cleared her throat before she could start again. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did you think I wouldn’t help you? That I wouldn’t do anything I could to stop this, that I couldn’t intervene with my father and put a rest to all this? Why didn’t you trust me to fix this for you?”
Alicent tore away a little piece of skin, not caring if it made her bleed. She only realized tears had slipped down her cheeks when she tasted salt on her lips. “What was I supposed to do? I was a child, and my father told me to do something, so I did it. I followed the rules he laid out for me. I did my duty.”
“I assure you, it is quite possible to refuse your father something,” Rhaenyra said in a biting tone. She took quick steps forward and grabbed Alicent’s hands. “Don’t do that,” she hissed.
“Possible for you, perhaps, to refuse your father. Your father loves you more than you could understand. He is willing to give you leeway in everything,” Alicent snapped back, snatching her hands free of Rhaenyra’s. If she was going to talk about this, then she needed the familiar comfort of her vice. “It is not the same for me. It was never the same for me.”
“Even still,” Rhaenyra said, snatching her hand back. “If your fear was that Otto Hightower would push you into this, I could have done something. I could have stopped him and my father and the whole court. All you had to do was talk to me.”
“Let go of me,” Alicent said, trying to tug away from her again.
“No,” Rhaenyra said, her grip tightening. “It’s a nasty habit of yours. One I thought long broken.”
“It is a habit long broken,” Alicent said. “It requires a particular kind of apprehension to reanimated it, I suppose.”
Rhaenyra huffed out a breath, her grip on Alicent’s hands never loosening. They were of a similar height, but the inch or so that Rhaenyra had on her loomed in that moment, Rhaenyra looking down at her, making her feel small. “You,” Rhaenyra started, decades of petrified anger strangling her words. “You broke my heart. Do you know that? When he announced you were to be wed in that small council chamber, I thought my heart would never heal.”
“You were not the only one left heartbroken,” Alicent said quietly. “Perhaps I should have confided in you. Trusted you to help me. But you were a rash girl and I was a careful one. Mayhaps at this age, I can imagine how my life would have been easier if I’d leaned on you more when we were young, but I did not have such wisdom at that age. I was a child, Rhaenyra. I had no interest in being queen—only in making mine own father happy.”
“Did you?” Rhaenyra asked. “Make him happy?”
A lump formed in her throat. She shook her head. “I don’t think I ever did. I’m certainly not now. If he knew I was entertaining you at this moment…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“Your father wants you to put Aegon on the throne,” Rhaenyra said, matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” Alicent confirmed.
“Do you intend to?”
“I don’t know,” Alicent said honestly. “I have asked myself that question since I was a girl of fifteen. When the day comes, do I press Aegon’s claim? Do I betray you one last time? There never seems to be a good answer. What happens when you come to power, after all? What becomes of my children when they are nothing more than a threat to your claim?”
“Do you mean to imply,” Rhaenyra started, eyes widening in shock, “that I would do harm to your children?”
“Haven’t you already?” Alicent said, but there was little heat left in her words. Their hands were still clasped and neither seemed keen to let the other go. “Aemond lost an eye for speaking truth. Would you have his tongue next? Or mine?”
Rhaenyra hissed out an irritated breath through her teeth. “Not if you would stop proclaiming my children bastards.”
“Rhaenyra.”
“Some things,” Rhaenyra said, delicately, “are better left unsaid.”
“I know,” Alicent heartily agreed. “Why do you think I never told you of my shame? The meetings I took with your father?”
Rhaenyra sighed deeply and finally broke away from Alicent, taking a step back and turning to face the room instead of her. Alicent’s hands felt immediately cold without her to warm them.
“We are talking in circles,” Rhaenyra said. “What has transpired in the past two decades cannot be so easily untangled in one simple meeting.”
“Perhaps not,” Alicent said, trying to smother the sudden fear that made her heart gallop in her chest, fear that Rhaenyra would give up and go. “But I hope it is a conversation we can continue. Maybe I broke both of our hearts, but not a day has passed since that I have not loved you.” The admission was raw, and left Alicent feeling naked, vulnerable. Rhaenyra would likely spurn her for it and she did not even know if she could blame her. But Alicent had spent so many years with liars, trapped in a cage of her own lies, her inability to be what she wanted, to choose a path of her own. If the road to reconciliation lay open to them in this moment, Alicent would do all she could to ensure it was the path they walked. Even if she had to finally lay her heart bare in order to do so. “I-it was a twisted kind of a love, perhaps. But it is unceasing.”
Rhaenyra paused, and glanced over her shoulder at Alicent, studying her tear streaked face and the way she clenched her hands. Alicent did not know what she saw in her eyes, but after a moment, Rhaenyra’s faced softened. Minutely, almost imperceptibly. But it was there. “I have missed you,” she breathed.
“As have I,” Alicent said.
“We can lay down our arms,” Rhaenyra’s voice was almost a whisper. “I assure you I have no intention of harming my half-siblings. I never have.”
“Daemon,” Alicent protested.
“Daemon will do as he is bid by his queen,” Rhaenyra said with an assured confidence so familiar Alicent felt as if she was looking upon the face of her younger self, the girl she’d spent to much time with she’d practically been an extension of Alicent herself. “And so he will do them no harm either.”
Alicent must have looked dubious, because Rhaenyra growled in frustration and turned fully to face her once more. “Do now as you did not in the past,” Rhaenyra commanded. “Cast aside the folly of youth. Trust me this time. Trust that I tell the truth. That I would let no harm come to you or yours. They are my family, too.”
“I did trust you once,” Alicent said softly. “I trusted your word in the Godswood, as to those vile rumors spun at court. You lied to my face in order to secure your position. Who is to say you could not be doing so now?”
Rhaenyra scoffed. “My childhood dalliances have no bearing on this moment. Swearing my virtue to you is hardly the same as swearing to protect the lives of your children.”
“But you lied once,” Alicent said. “You could lie again.”
“As could you,” Rhaenyra shot back. “Perhaps there is something you aren’t telling me. How would I know? You’re very good at keeping secrets.”
They stared at each other a long moment, feeling that divide stretch out between each other again.
“We are talking in circles,” Alicent said after a moment.
“I swear this to you,” Rhaenyra said. “Not in front of a weirwood, not in the light of the Seven, but as one mother to another: I will protect you and your children. I am a child no longer and am not prone to the same rash follies as I was then. If you swear to trust me one more time, then I swear I will honor that.”
Alicent considered this. She did not know what to say, what to believe. She had spent so long sure of Rhaenyra’s deviousness that the idea she may be truthful was foreign enough she found it difficult to consider. “This is a matter of faith, I suppose,” she said.
Rhaenyra titled her head. “You’ve become rather good at that these days.”
“I’m tired.” Alicent felt her shoulders slump as if the weight of the world pressed down on them. In truth, it had these many years. She did not know how her back was not bowed with the weight of it all. “I’m tired of being alone.”
There was a gaping hole in her. She could feel it now, right there in her chest. A large, black, empty space, a wound that festered and grew with each passing year, just a Viserys’ ulcers did. She wondered if, on the inside, she was as decayed and decrepit as her husband and why no one ever seemed able to see it.
“I’m tired of lies,” she continued. “But most of all, I am tired of fear. Do not touch my children, Rhaenyra. They are all I have, and even I confess to struggling with them oftentimes. But they are mine when nothing else in the world is.” Let me rest, she did not say. Give me a reason to let down this burden I never wished to carry in the first place.
“I’m tired, too,” Rhaenyra said. “All I wanted when we were girls was to live our lives together. To be carefree and happy. I never asked for this weight, either.”
The room was silent. Neither of them spoke. It was a comfortable silence, though, tinged with memory and melancholy and even a bit of hope. The tapestry of their lives swirled around them and for once it did not seem so full of pain, not when she was there and the potential for change hung in the air like lit lanterns. It was a moment full of possibility, aching and waiting to see who would move first.
And so it was Alicent, who had landed the first blow in their rivalry—whether she’d intended to or not—that broke the spell.
She rushed to Rhaenyra and threw her arms around her shoulders, holding her close, squeezing her eyes shut so she didn’t have to see it if Rhaenyra was appalled or disgusted or betrayed any hatred for her. “I missed you,” she said, her tears returning. “I missed you so much, Rhaenyra, you have no idea.”
It took Rhaenyra a moment to reciprocate—maybe she was as stunned by the intensity of Alicent’s grip as Alicent was herself—but then her arms wrapped around Alicent in kind, pulling her closer still.
“I’m sorry,” Alicent said, pressing her face into Rhaenyra’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for what happened and all I’ve done. I’m sorry.”
“As am I,” Rhaenyra breathed into her ear, the words tender and astonished. Her hands flexed on Alicent’s back, feeling her, clinging to her. “I’m sorry you’ve been so alone. I should have stood by you. I turned my back and that wasn’t fair of me, either. I’m so sorry it’s been like this.”
“I missed you,” Alicent repeated, her tears coming faster, like blood from an unstaunched wound.
“I missed you,” Rhaenyra echoed, pressing her cheek against Alicent’s hair. She sighed, the sound a relief, a returning, a homecoming.
But Alicent almost did not hear it, she was so overcome. Every deadened nerve she had cultivated over the years suddenly flared to awful, burning life. Pain whipped through her like a gale, every terrible day she’d spent alone and sad and in pain since their friendship ended echoing endlessly in her chest. Her tears turned to sobs, wracking and heaving, an ocean of sadness she had carried inside of herself for decades released in a tidal wave of tears.
“Alicent,” Rhaenyra said soothingly, stroking her hair. “Alicent.”
“I’ve been so alone,” she said between sobs, but wasn’t sure how intelligible the words were. “And so afraid, for all these years.”
“I know,” Rhaenyra said. Alicent did not know if it was simply placating or if she finally did understand, if she could at last see the tragedy of a life Alicent had been living. “I know.”
Rhaenyra did her a great comfort then, holding her close and humming a tuneless song while Alicent cried. It was loving, motherly in a way Alicent had not experienced since before her own mother’s death. A soft touch, a kindness, a gentle caress. The world was cruel and terrible and bent even the best of people into twisted perversions of themselves, but this was the first time Alicent was equally sure there had to be some goodness in the universe, like a gift of the gods that Rhaenyra wielded in gentle hands.
When Alicent had finally calmed, Rhaenyra pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. “Come,” she said. “It’s late. We should get you ready for bed.”
“What?” Alicent asked dumbly.
“It’s been a long day,” Rhaenyra said. “We should rest now.”
Alicent could have protested, but there was no fight left in her. When Rhaenyra’s hands moved to the laces of her dress, Alicent had the strongest feeling of reliving the past, like she was a young girl preparing for her wedding all over again, Rhaenyra’s soft hands on her shoulders, preparing her. This time, though, they loosened the knots, drew the laces out, smoothed the sleeves of her dress off her arms until it pooled at her feet and she stood in nothing but a shift. Still humming that tuneless song, Rhaenyra pulled pins out of her hair, slipped the golden beads out of her strands, and secured it in a simple braid down her back. She plucked Alicent’s earrings out of her ears, removed her necklace, and laid it all on the bedside table.
When she had finished, she turned her back to Alicent. “Would you mind helping me?” Rhaenyra asked, as if she had ever minded the thousand times she’d done this as girls.
Emotion made her fingers clumsy, but she got the laces done in due time, green and black fabric mingling from their place on the floor as Alicent did all the same for Rhaenyra, removing her jewelry, taking down her hair. Rhaenyra slept with her hair loose, so she left it untouched after unbraiding it.
Rhaenyra turned back to her, placing her hands on Alicent’s shoulders and touching their foreheads together. “We should get to bed,” Rhaenyra said.
“My handmaids,” Alicent protested without much effort. “They might see.”
“I instructed them to let us be.”
A small smile quirked up Alicent’s lips. “That sounds dangerous. They might disobey you.”
“I should hope not,” Rhaenyra said, smiling back. “I’d be quite cross if they did. Though even if they did, what would they see but two friends who have finally rekindled their affection for each other?”
“Is that not precisely what we are?” Alicent asked, though an odd tingle of electricity sparked in her heart at Rhaenyra’s words.
“That is what we are,” Rhaenyra said with a quiet mischief. “And now we should rest. This may be our last quiet moment in the next coming weeks.”
Alicent nodded her consent, and allowed Rhaenyra to lead her to the bed. The only times Alicent had ever shared a bed was when she was quite young, with Rhaenyra, and then a handful of terrible nights with Viserys. When they both tucked themselves beneath the covers and Rhaenyra took Alicent’s hand in hers, Alicent could not help but see them as they had been, once. Young and bright eyed and not yet trampled or torn to pieces by the world. Alicent remembered long nights whispering beneath covers, giggling and happy, joyful as she had never been with another.
Rhaenyra pulled Alicent close in the bed, letting her rest her head on Rhaenyra’s chest. She idly played with the end of Alicent’s braid, that tuneless song playing, playing, playing, the sweetest lullaby Alicent had ever heard
“Thank you,” Alicent whispered into the quiet.
The humming stopped. “For what?”
“For coming back.”
Rhaenyra smiled, sliding her hand into Alicent’s hair and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Always,” she said.