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Rhaenyra still doesn’t understand what went wrong. She doesn’t understand why Daemon seemed to want her so badly but then pushed her away and left like a scared little boy.
Daemon is a man, and a Targaryen, and a prince; what could possibly have frightened him? The whole of King’s Landing—the whole of the world—is his for the taking. She herself was more than ready to be his for the taking tonight, a realization that makes Rhaenyra feel small and embarrassed when she allows herself to consider it.
Shame and disappointment and a faint ache between her legs that she dimly recognizes as arousal swirl around inside her as she makes her way back to the Red Keep; when Rhaenyra scrubs at her face with the back of her hand, it comes away wet with hot tears. She tries her best to keep her head down, cursing Daemon under her breath once again—this time for stealing her hat and leaving her to walk home alone with nothing to hide her hair.
Once she’s inside the castle walls, Rhaenyra realizes that she doesn’t know where she’s going. If she goes to her own chambers, she’ll have to get past Criston; he’ll ask her where she was, why she’s dressed like a boy, why she’s upset, and she won’t be able to tell him. What she wants, more than anything else, is to be comforted; to have her hair smoothed back and her forehead kissed and to be told that nothing is wrong with her, that there isn’t something disgusting and unspeakable about her that made Daemon push her away only a few minutes after his mouth had been on hers. But the only people who could ever soothe Rhaenyra in that way, or who had any interest in doing so, are her mother and Alicent.
When Rhaenyra imagines what Alicent is doing now, she pictures her lying demurely in bed, hands clasped under her chin, nightgown buttoned to her throat, as far as possible from the place Rhaenyra just left that she might as well be occupying another plane of existence entirely. A different image enters Rhaenyra’s mind unbidden—Alicent in bed with her father, back arching and lips parted like the women in the pleasure den—and Rhaenyra swallows around a rush of nausea.
Rhaenyra knows that Alicent would be horrified, disgusted even, if she had seen her with Daemon tonight. But then again, who is Alicent to judge anyone? At least Daemon is young, at least he’s handsome, at least he isn’t anyone’s father. Rhaenyra feels herself growing angrier by the minute, thinking of Alicent, so prim and proper and prudish on her father’s arm. It’s this anger that propels her forward, toward the queen’s chambers.
When Rhaenyra was much younger, she found it incredibly satisfying to chisel away at Alicent’s composure in small ways: by splashing water on her dresses or tugging at her curls or whispering dirty jokes in her ear during important feasts. Now, this old urge is back, but stronger: Rhaenyra wants to make Alicent angry. She wants to watch Alicent come undone, to see what she normally keeps papered over with tight smiles and empty pleasantries. She’s spoiling for a fight, the desire that pooled low in her belly when Daemon first touched her face shifting into something different but just as urgent, and Rhaenyra is so caught up in her own thoughts that she almost walks straight into the guard stationed outside of Alicent’s door.
Rhaenyra stumbles backward; the guard squints at her like he doesn’t quite believe what he sees. Rhaenyra studies the door, once so familiar; she hasn’t been in the rooms behind it and since they still belonged to her mother. Then she collects herself, looks the guard directly in the eye, and says, “I want to see the queen.”
He frowns. “The hour is late, princess.”
Rhaenyra assumes her most imperious expression. “I didn’t come to talk to you, I came to see the queen. Let me in or do not let me in, but know that if you do not, you directly defy the wishes of the crown and your future queen.”
The guard doesn’t seem impressed by this; he and Rhaenyra arrive at a stalemate until she comes up with the rather inspired idea of stealing his helmet.
“My helmet, please, princess.” He goes to grab for it; Rhaenyra moves just out of his reach. They play keep-away like this for a while, the increasingly irritated expression on the guard’s face only serving to spur Rhaenyra on, until the door opens, revealing a very bewildered Alicent. The moment she sees her—loose curls framing her face, so different from the way she wears her hair in public now that she’s married—Rhaenyra loses interest in her game.
“What is the meaning of this?” Alicent asks her guard, wiping the sleep from her eyes. “The hour is—”
“Late, yes, very late,” Rhaenyra says, eager to move the conversation along. “Your grace, I wish to speak with you. Alone.”
Alicent’s eyebrows draw together the way they always do when she’s thinking. She studies Rhaenyra’s face, then her clothes, her gaze so intense that Rhaenyra feels unable to meet it and ends up staring at a spot on the wall above Alicent’s head. Eventually, Alicent nods at the guard and pulls Rhaenyra into the room behind her, closing the door as she goes.
Once the two of them are alone, Alicent lets go of Rhaenyra, immediately putting space between them. Rhaenyra idly grabs at the spot on her forearm that Alicent had touched. Seeing Alicent like this, alone and vulnerable and away from both of their fathers, has made the righteous anger she felt mere minutes ago dissipate somewhat, but she still feels like she can’t relax, not with Alicent looking at her the way she is—as if she’s a dangerous animal that escaped from its confines and somehow ended up in Alicent’s bedchamber.
The expression doesn’t leave Alicent’s face as she moves closer to Rhaenyra—just barely, almost not enough to be noticed— and asks “Why are you dressed like that?”
“I was with my uncle. We went—” She pauses, mostly to brace herself. “He took me to a pleasure house. I wore this so I wouldn’t be recognized.”
Alicent clenches her jaw. “A pleasure house,” she says slowly, as if she’s sounding out the words.
“Yes.” Rhaenyra scuffs the toe of her boot along the floor, suddenly desperate to avoid Alicent’s gaze. If she had decided to lie, she knows she would be making perfect, unbroken eye contact, standing tall with her shoulders back the way they were both taught so many years ago, but that kind of behavior seems somehow improper now that she’s telling the truth.
“And what did you and your uncle do in the pleasure house?” Alicent asks.
Rhaenyra swallows and looks up from the floor. Alicent’s stiff composure is melting away, replaced by a look of disapproval that Rhaenyra would bristle under from anyone, even the girl who used to be her closest friend. “He didn’t fuck me, if that’s what you’re trying to ask,” she snaps. “There’s no need to be coy.”
Alicent flushes crimson from her cheeks to the collar of her dressing gown. “Why did he bother taking you there, if he wasn’t going to fuck you?”
It’s Rhaenyra’s turn to blush, now. “I don’t know. We almost—or I thought—and then he left me there. I don’t know why.”
“I don’t understand why you went with him in the first place. Anyone could have seen you, and then what would happen?” Alicent seems genuinely angry now. “The king is trying to find a match for you, and he’s presenting you as a maiden, not a whore who cavorts in brothels with her own uncle.”
Rhaenyra feels tears welling up in her eyes again; she tries to hide them. “So you think I’m a whore?” she asks, hating the sound of her voice as she does.
“Do you really believe that there won’t be consequences for what you’ve done tonight? You’re not Daemon, no matter how badly you want to be him.”
“Do you think I don’t already know that?” Rhaenyra bites out, frustrated. “I am very aware that I’m not Daemon and I’m reminded of that fact every time my father tries to pawn me off to another lord I couldn’t care less about.”
Alicent laughs humorlessly. “You think your father is pawning you off? He’s gone out of his way to give you the best of everything he can offer you, presenting you to every eligible young man in the Seven Kingdoms, and it’s still not enough for you. Nothing is ever enough for you!”
“There’s nothing I want that my father could ever give me.”
“What else could you possibly want that you don’t already have?” Alicent’s voice takes on a desperate, pleading quality. “And don’t you dare tell me something stupid about eating cake and flying on dragonback, I don’t want to hear it."
“I wasn’t being stupid when I said those things,” Rhaenyra says. She’s surprised that Alicent even remembers that conversation. “Just because you disapprove of me—”
“You think I disapprove of you?” Alicent interrupts.
“How could I possibly think anything else?” Rhaenyra asks. “The way you look at me, the way you talk to me, mere moments ago you called me a whore—”
“You went to a pleasure den with a man, Rhaenyra,” says Alicent. “And I know you claim that you didn’t fuck Daemon, but it’s obvious that you did something untoward with him, so pardon me for being honest enough to tell you that your behavior tonight was unacceptable for someone in your position—for any woman.”
Rhaenyra has always hated being lectured; she especially hates it now, coming from Alicent, this girl who grew up by her side only to abandon Rhaenyra and take up residence in her mother’s chambers and speak to her as if she is an adult and Rhaenyra is a petulant, wayward child. If they were men, Rhaenyra thinks, they could come to blows and resolve this, but instead she has to rely on using her words.
“You’re a hypocrite,” she tells Alicent, feeling her words coming from a hollow, mean place deep within herself but choosing to go on anyway. “I may have gone into the city with a man unsupervised, but I seem to recall that you are the one who went alone into a man’s chambers. An unmarried man’s chambers, at that.”
Alicent takes a step forward, crowding into Rhaenyra’s space. She looks really, truly furious now. “It always comes back to the same thing, doesn’t it?” she asks. “I know you will never forgive me for marrying him, Rhaenyra. Believe me, I stopped hoping that you would years ago.”
Rhaenyra swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. She hasn’t been this close to Alicent in years: close enough to see the tears gathering at the ends of her eyelashes, close enough that reaching out and touching her would require no more effort than breathing. “You thought I would forgive you?”
“I thought you would understand,” says Alicent. “I thought you would be intelligent enough to know that it wasn’t my choice, but I suppose that having been spoiled all your life, you would just assume that everyone was privileged enough to do as they please. And my marriage changed nothing for you, in the end; I can assure you that the king has no desire to see my son placed on the throne.”
Rhaenyra can hardly believe that Alicent is so blind. “You think I was angry with you because of that? Because I thought you would create a threat to my place in the line of succession?”
Alicent frowns. “I don’t understand you.”
“I’m not hard to understand.”
At first it seems as if Alicent is going to disagree, but she changes the subject instead. “Why did you come here tonight?” she asks. She no longer looks angry, just exhausted.
“I don’t really know,” Rhaenyra says. “I think I wanted something, but…now I’m not sure.” She suddenly feels very, very tired as well—tired of being awake, but also tired of talking to Alicent like this, like they exist on opposite sides of a wall that neither one of them can climb.
Alicent starts to move away from Rhaenyra and back toward her bed, a clear dismissal. “If there is something you want, I’m sure you won’t find it here. You should leave.”
Rhaenyra is no longer at all sure what she wanted from this encounter, but she knows it isn’t this. She doesn’t want to leave this room with everything between herself and Alicent unresolved like this, although she has no idea how, exactly, to go about resolving it. She has a strange feeling, almost as if a part of her knows that if she leaves now, she will never be able to come back. So she does the only thing she can think to do: she grabs Alicent by the arm, pulling her back in. Alicent jerks away from Rhaenyra’s touch as if she’s been burned, but she doesn’t try to go back to bed.
“Do you want me to leave?” Rhaenyra asks.
Alicent wraps her arms around herself, as if she’s hiding something she needs to protect. “You heard what I said.”
“You said that I should leave,” Rhaenyra says. “But you said nothing about what you actually want me to do.” She tilts her head to the side, studying Alicent: her wide eyes, her pink cheeks, the rise and fall of her chest as she tries and fails to breathe evenly. “What do you want from me, Alicent?”
Alicent answers quickly: “I want you to think of your position before you act,” she says, adopting the tone she uses when she speaks to her father, the voice that says I am a lady and I would never, ever do anything that a lady would not do. “I want you to be responsible, and to conduct yourself in a way that brings honor to your—to our—family.”
Rhaenyra rolls her eyes. “That isn’t a real answer.”
“Of course it’s a real answer,” says Alicent, frustrated. “That is what I want from you, what your father wants from you—”
“And that’s why it isn’t a real answer! I asked you what you want from me. You, not my father. If I wanted to speak with him, I would have gone to him.” Rhaenyra hears her voice start to sound shakier and shakier, but she continues on: “Do you even have any of your own thoughts left, Alicent? Or have our fathers reached into your head and rearranged them to mirror theirs?”
Alicent stiffens. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you know what I mean. I never know what you want, or what you’re thinking, or how you feel. How am I supposed to know? You never tell me. You act as if we’re friends, and then you end up betrothed to my father, and you never said anything about it, and you were supposed to love me best— ”
“And what was I supposed to say, exactly? I’m not you, Rhaenyra. I’m not the heir to the throne, I’m not a princess, and my father didn’t organize a months-long tour for me so I could find the exact husband I wanted. He told me to put on my mother’s dress and visit my best friend’s father in his chambers and I did what I was told. And you never bothered to understand! Just because you always get your way, in everything—Daemon and Ser Criston and every man in the Seven Kingdoms trailing after you–”
“I never wanted every man in the Seven Kingdoms trailing after me. I don’t care if they want me or not, I care if you want me–”
“If I want you?” Alicent’s eyes narrow. “Rhaenyra, what are you talking about?”
“You chose him over me,” Rhaenyra says, speaking too quickly to even think about the words coming out of her mouth or to consider which of their fathers she refers to when she says him. “You were my friend, you were supposed to love me, and then you went behind my back and now the way you look at me—it’s as if you don’t see me at all, and you act as if we’re so different, as if you never want anything at all and all I do is want things, and you say you don’t understand me, but you’re the one it’s impossible to understand! You say you miss me, you say you want us to be friends like before, but how can I be your friend when you’re the one who’s so far away from me?”
“I’m not the one who’s far away. I’m right here, you’re the one who left! You wouldn’t talk to me, you wouldn’t let me explain—how could you possibly think I chose him, how could you think that I wanted any of this? You say you don’t want to be imprisoned in a castle and made to squeeze out heirs—do you think I did?” Alicent’s face is wet with tears. “And how could you think I don’t want anything, I’m a fucking human being, Rhaenyra, of course I want things!”
“But you act as if you don’t. And you treat me like I’m some sort of deviant because I can’t pretend as well as you do.”
“Oh, my apologies, princess,” Alicent says, taking on the drawling tone she and Rhaenyra used to use between themselves to mock particularly pompous adults at court. “I am truly sorry that I have offended you by not going about with each and every emotion I feel plastered on my face like an idiot child.”
“I hate it when you call me that,” Rhaenyra snaps. “We’re alone, you can use my name.”
“But you are the princess,” Alicent insists. “And I am the queen, and it does no good to pretend otherwise.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend. I’m asking you to stop pretending, for once.” Rhaenyra looks into Alicent’s red-rimmed eyes. “For once, try and feel something real.”
When Alicent moves towards Rhaenyra again, the look on her face is unreadable. For a brief moment, Rhaenyra thinks she is about to strike her, but instead the unthinkable happens: Alicent kisses her.
Rhaenyra has thought about this before, although not recently. She used to think about it, sometimes, lying in the grass with her head in Alicent’s lap: what would happen if she reached up and kissed her. She never imagined that Alicent would be the one to kiss her first, and she stopped imagining it entirely after the wedding, but now here she is, Alicent’s tears mingling with her own while they kiss in the dark.
It’s odd, she thinks, how similar this is to kissing Daemon—that Alicent and Daemon are as different as two people could possibly be, and yet she’s done the same thing with both of them in the same night.
But it’s different, too; different when she tangles her hand in Alicent’s curls, different when Alicent’s hands are soft underneath her shirt, different when she can feel Alicent’s breasts against her own through the thin fabric of Alicent’s nightgown. And then there’s the biggest difference: Alicent never pushes her away. Shy, nervous Alicent—scared of heights, scared of dragons, scared of her own father—seems completely unafraid here.
Eventually, Alicent does start to pull away. A disappointed noise escapes Rhaenyra’s lips unbidden; Alicent shushes her and drops to her knees. “What are you doing?” Rhaenyra asks.
“Undoing your bootlaces.” Alicent looks up at Rhaenyra—pupils blown wide, lips swollen, more beautiful than she’s ever been before—as if what she’s doing is the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want your dirty shoes in my bed.”
Before Rhaenyra can come up with a response, the laces are undone and Alicent is back on her feet, kissing her frantically, first on her mouth and then on her neck. They stumble backward towards the bed. Rhaenyra nearly sends them both toppling to the floor when she kicks off her boots; Alicent takes them careening onto the mattress when she tries to untie her dressing gown while unbuttoning Rhaenyra’s shirt at the same time.
They end up collapsed in a heap in the middle of the bed, half-dressed and breathless; the throbbing feeling between Rhaenyra’s legs that began in the pleasure den is back and made more intense than before from the way she and Alicent are tangled together and the purposeful way that Alicent works to remove her pants, then her shirt. The moment the shirt is off, she dips her mouth downward, nipping at Rhaeyra’s collarbone and kissing the valley between her breasts. “You’ve thought about this before, haven’t you?” Rhaenyra murmurs as she helps Alicent out of her nightgown.
Alicent looks up from Rhaenyra’s chest. “You said to tell you what I wanted from you.” She kisses Rhaenyra’s neck, her jawline, her mouth; she traces over Rhaenyra’s breasts with one hand and grips Rhaenyra’s bare waist with the other. “So I’m telling you.”
Rhaenyra’s hips buck against Alicent’s of their own accord. “I’ve thought about this too,” she tells her. “I used to imagine”—her hips jerk forward again when Alicent scrapes her nails across her ribs—“what it would be like if I was a boy.” Rhaenyra adjusts their position, settling back against the headboard with Alicent straddling her lap; when she moves her hips a third time, Alicent’s hips move to meet them. “What we could have done together.”
“I used to imagine that too.” Alicent leans forward, resting her forehead against Rhaenyra’s. “If you were a boy, my father would have married me off to you instead.” Her movements grow a little sloppier, a little more frantic. “My children would have been yours.”
Rhaenyra feels as if she has gained a second heartbeat, between her legs instead of in her chest; it pounds insistently when she allows herself to imagine how it would feel to say my queen if Alicent really was hers. “Would you have wanted to marry me?” she asks. She doesn’t bother to add the qualifier if I was a boy.
“Don’t”— Alicent’s voice is strained; she tries to meet Rhaenyra’s eyes with her own, but they flutter closed when Rhaenyra moves her hands to the small of her back, guiding her against her lap—“ask stupid questions.”
“What about questions that aren’t stupid?” Rhaenyra presses a lingering kiss to the base of Alicent’s throat. “Can I ask those?”
Alicent stills in her lap and fixes Rhaenyra with a look that she recognizes all too well, the look that used to mean stop trying to make me laugh when I’m trying to be serious. “You’re ridiculous,” she tells Rhaenyra, moving to get off of her lap.
Rhaenyra frowns; this isn’t what she wants at all. “Where are you going?”
Alicent takes a deep breath. “If we only have tonight—” she starts. She closes her eyes as if she’s trying to brace herself for something painful, then continues: “You will be married soon, and you will have children—don’t make that face, you know it’s true—and you’ll belong to them—”
“I won’t belong to anyone.” Rhaenyra moves forward, grabbing for Alicent’s hips; Alicent stops her with a hand planted firmly in the middle of her chest.
“Don’t interrupt me.” Alicent keeps Rhaenyra at arm’s length. “What I’m trying to say is—if we only have tonight, then we might as well…” She trails off, becoming visibly flustered.
“Might as well what?” Rhaenyra feels warm all over; she wants to reach for Alicent, but not as badly as she wants Alicent to reach for her. “Might as well…have a drink? Go to sleep? Jump out the window?”
Alicent looks away from Rhaenyra, scowling. “I should have known that you wouldn’t take this seriously.”
Rhaenyra stays where she is, resisting the urge to get any closer, to make Alicent look at her. “If you want something from me,” she says, carefully, “then ask for it.”
Alicent looks everywhere but Rhaenyra—at the wall, the floor, the ceiling, the sheets. “I want you to bed me,” she says, finally, in the same tone of voice one might use to admit to having a horrible, painful secret.
Rhaenyra bites back the urge to mock Alicent for being so prudish; she knows that Alicent was right, before, when she said they might only have this night. They have already wasted so much time; it would be a mistake to waste any more. So she says nothing at all; she takes Alicent’s face in her hands and kisses her, slow and sure, as they lie down together.
Rhaenyra is used to getting what she wants, and not getting what she wants; what she isn’t as familiar with is having something that she hadn’t even known she wanted until it’s right in front of her. Later, she will tell herself that she came to Alicent’s chambers unaware of any specific desire at all; she was thoroughly convinced that she had outgrown whatever she used to want or not want from Alicent like an old dress that no longer fit. But when Alicent finally touches her, everything that Rhaenyra thought was locked away in a place deep inside herself, never to be looked at again, comes rushing back as if it had never really been put away in the first place. She would almost be embarrassed by how quickly she responds to Alicent’s touch if it weren’t so obvious that Alicent—flushed all the way down to her chest, the prettiest shade of red Rhaenyra has ever seen, and panting into Rhaenyra’s neck—is just as overcome as she is.
After Rhaenyra falls apart under Alicent’s fingers, not once but twice, she lets her own hands drift lower, fingertips grazing Alicent’s hips, then her thighs, then even lower, until Alicent starts to shift away from her. “You don’t have to,” she whispers, an all-too-familiar anxious expression on her face.
“I want to,” Rhaenyra reassures her. She brushes Alicent’s hair from her forehead, noting the way that Alicent blindly leans into her touch. “You’ve already done me a great favor tonight. Allow me to thank you.”
Alicent raises her eyebrows. “When did you become so interested in manners?”
“I’m very polite. Didn’t you know?” Rhaenyra looks Alicent dead in the eye, wearing her most serious expression, until Alicent laughs.
“Well, if you’re interested in returning the favor…” Alicent takes Rhaenyra by the wrist, placing her hand back on her hip.
And then it’s the easiest thing in the world, letting her fingers dip down between Alicent’s legs, and Rhaenyra swears she’s never felt so powerful: not when she was named heir, not when she’s riding Syrax, not when she catches Ser Criston staring at her. For the first time in a long time, she doesn’t find herself wishing she had been born a son, not when she can have this—Alicent’s hips stuttering under her touch, Alicent saying her name over and over, Alicent’s nails digging into her forearm—just as she is.
Afterwards, they lie together in Alicent’s bed, facing each other, legs tangled together, just as they did when they were younger. Rhaenyra can barely keep her eyes open; gray early morning light is starting to stream in through the window. “You’ll have to leave when the sun rises,” Alicent tells her.
“I know.” Rhaenyra stifles a yawn behind her hand. “I wish I didn’t, though.”
Alicent smiles; it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Rhaenyra feels a vague prickle of irritation—why doesn’t Alicent admit that she wants her to stay? Because she doesn’t or because she feels she can’t?
Rhaenyra is barely awake enough to speak in full sentences, let alone start another argument; she lets her eyes drift shut. Whatever may come, she knows Alicent will make sure she leaves by sunrise.